Meanwhile, John Valliscourt of Valliscourt, shut up in his own room in the now lonely house at Combmartin, wrote to his lawyers preparing them for his visit to their office next day, and instructed them at once to sue for his divorce from Helen Valliscourt, the co-respondent in the case being Charles Lascelles, Baronet. There would be no defence, he added, — and then, turning from his own methodical statement of the facts, he took up and re-read the letter his recreant wife had written him by way of farewell. It ran thus —
“I leave you without shame, and without remorse. While I was faithful to you, you made my life a misery. Your pride and egotism need humbling, — I am glad to be at least the means of dragging you down in the dust of dishonour. You have killed every womanly sentiment in me, — you have even separated me from my child. You have robbed me of God, of hope, of every sense of duty. I have gone with Charles Lascelles whose chief merit in my eyes is, that he hates you as much as I do! In other respects you know his character, and so do I. When you divorce me, he will not marry me, — I would not have him if he offered. I have consented to be his mistress in exchange for a year’s amusement, attention and liberty — and for the rest of my life what shall I do? I neither know, nor care! Perhaps I shall repent — perhaps I shall die. To me nothing matters, — your creed, — the creed of Self, — suffices. Your Self is content with dull respectability, — my Self craves indulgence. If anything could have kept me straight, and given me patience to bear with your arrogance and pedantry, it would have been my boy’s love, but that you are deliberately bent on depriving me of. Every day you set up new barriers between him and me. And yet I loved you once — you! — I laugh now to think of my folly! You did everything you could to crush that love out of me, — you have succeeded! What remnant of a heart I have, is left with Lionel, — my spirit is in the boy’s blood, and already he rebels against your petty tyranny. Sooner or later he will escape you, — may it be soon for the poor child’s own sake! — and then, — whether there be a God or no God, you will reap the curses you have so lavishly sown! May they amply reward you for your ‘generosity’ to
“Your wife no longer
“HELEN.”
Over and over again Mr. Valliscourt read these words, till they seemed burned into his brain, — far into the night he mused upon their purport, — and the phrases “My spirit is in the boy’s blood,” “already he rebels,”— “sooner or later he will escape you,” sounded loudly in his ears, like threats from some unseen enemy.
“No!” he muttered, rising from his chair at last, and thrusting the letter into a secret drawer of his desk— “Let her go, the jade! — the way of all such trash! — let her mix herself with the mud of the street and be forgotten, — but the boy is mine! — he shall obey me, — and I will crush her spirit out of him, and make of him what I choose!”
CHAPTER XII.
POOR Clovelly, — beautiful Clovelly! Once an ideal village for poets to sing of, and artists to dream of, to what ‘base uses’ hast thou come! Now no longer a secluded bower for the ‘melancholy mild-eyed lotus-eaters’ of thought, — no longer a blessed haven of rest for weary souls seeking cessation from care and toll, thou art branded as a ‘place of interest’ for cheap trippers, who with loud noise of scrambling feet, and goose-like gigglings, crowd thy one lovely upward-winding street, — which is like nothing so much as a careless garland of flowers left by chance on the side of a hill, — and thrust their unromantic figures and vulgarly inquisitive faces through thy picturesque doorways and quaint fuchsia-wreathed lattice-windows. It is as though a herd of swine should suddenly infest a fairy’s garden, nosing the fine elfin air, and rooting up the magic blossoms. Demoralised Clovelly! Even thy inhabitants, originally simple-hearted, gentle, and hospitable with all the unaffected primitive sweetness of oldest English hospitality, are tainted by the metropolitan disease of money-grubbing, — love of ‘the chinks’ is fast superseding the love of nature, and this to such an extent that even a damsel in waiting at the New Inn, a native of the place, hath had no scruple in dyeing her hair an outrageous straw-tint with some ‘sunbeam’ or ‘aurora’ mixture. Dyed hair in the village of Clovelly! — it is a curious anomaly, and gives one a kind of shock. Dyed hair, painted cheeks, and blackened eyebrows are the ordinary tawdry defacements wherewith the women of our large and over-crowded cities foolishly strive to make themselves look as much like their ‘fallen’ sisters as possible, and as it were, voluntarily label themselves prominently as ‘under surveillance,’ — but in a tiny village tenderly nestling between two flowery hills, itself in a flowery chine, and crowned at the summit by a flowery knoll, — a village apparently born of nature, cherished by nature, and meant for nature, what stranger sight can there be than an ‘artless’ native maiden with dyed hair! As strange as though one should find a clown in full theatrical paint and costume, seated among the primroses and bluebells of the ‘Hobby Drive!’ Yet the girl’s dyed hair serves somewhat as a sign and symbol of the gradual spoiling of Clovelly, — though Dame Nature with many fond tears of appealing love, still twines the jessamine and pushes the may-blossom over the roofs and against the walls of the cherished spot, and pleads in all her tenderest ways for its preservation. “Leave Clovelly to me!” she cries— “Let the tramping herd wander over the face of foreign lands if they must and will, — let them break their soda-water bottles against the ruins of the Coliseum in Rome, — let them write their worthless names on the topmost statue adorning Milan Cathedral, — let them paint their glaring advertisements across the rocks and glaciers of Switzerland, — let them chip at the features of the Sphinx, and scrawl vile phrases on the Pyramids, — but spare me Clovelly! Let me still keep the guardianship of my own sea-paradise, — let me twist the crimson fuchsia round the doors, and bunch the purple blossoms of wistaria above the windows, — let me grow my daisies and bright pimpernels in the crannies of the climbing street, — let me trail the golden ‘creeping-Jenny’ down the stone steps of side- dwellings and in quaint hole-and-corner alleys, — let me wreathe the honeysuckle in fragrant tufts about the balconies and chimneys, and let me put all the sweetness of my flowers, my sea-foam, my bright air, and my fresh foliage into the hearts of the people! I would fain keep them a race apart, — the women simple, noble, maternal, — the men strong, brave, God-fearing and manly, with eyes grown blue in the fronting of the sea, and hearts kept young by the companionship of flowers and children, — so that even when storm rushes in from the Atlantic, and makes of my Clovelly nothing but a shining gleam of light in a haze of rain, and the thunder of the billows on the shore is as God’s voice arguing with His creation, these village-folk may be unafraid and calm, with faith in their souls and love in their hearts, a contrast to the dwellers in cities, who, pampered and spoilt in their fancied security of wealth and ease, cower and scurry away from the slightest touch of misfortune as rats fly from a falling house! Release me from the scourge of savages and pilferers who have thrust themselves in upon this my deeply-hidden nook and favourite bower! — let me keep Clovelly ‘unspotted from the world’!”
Thus Dame Nature; — but her appeal is vain. She could not save Foyers, — she will not save Clovelly. The spoiler’s hand has fallen, — the work of destruction has already begun, not outwardly, but inwardly. What though the present owners of the land have vowed to keep Clovelly as it is, — what though they rightly and justly refuse to have hotels built, and lodging-houses set up, to deface one of the most unique and exquisite spots in all creation? The taint is in the hearts of the people, — the love of gain, — the greed of cash; discontent and ambition, like two evil genii, have crept into Fairyland, and their promptings and suggestions will in time prevail more strongly than all the earnest voices of good angels!
Lionel led a curious sort of life at Clovelly. He and the Professor occupied the quaintest and funniest little rooms that ever were designed, — rooms with floors that sloped and ceilings that slanted, and that altogether suggested the remains of some earthquake, by reason of
numerous wide cracks in the walls and gaps in the chimney-nooks, and that yet were pretty with an odd, old-world prettiness not found everywhere. The landlady of these ‘desirable apartments’ was a bakeress by profession, though she did many other useful things besides baking bread and letting lodgings. She was a clean, buxom-looking woman, and had excellent notions concerning the wholesomeness of fresh air and sweet linen, — so that all her beds were lavender-scented, and her entire abode neatly ordered, and redolent of the honeysuckle and the rose that clambered round her windows. She was unceasing in her care for her lodgers, — her anxious deference towards the grim-featured long-legged Professor knew no bounds, while her warm heart was quite taken captive by the plaintive gentleness and pretty ways of Lionel, whom she always called “the dear little boy,” — a term which set Lionel himself thinking. Was he so very little? He was nearly eleven, — surely that was almost a man! True, his mother had called him her ‘baby’ — and his inwardly-grieving soul suffered an additional pang at this recollection of her tenderness. He dared not dwell upon the image of her face as it had looked in the white moonlight, when she kissed him for the last time, — was it indeed the last time, he wondered sadly? — should he ever see her again? He had full leisure now for thought, — the Professor let him wander about just as he liked, and was altogether extraordinarily kind to him. He could not quite make it out, — but he was grateful. And he used to show his gratitude in odd little ways of his own, which had a curious and softening effect on the mind of the learned Cadman-Gore. He would carefully brush the ugly hat of the great man and bring it to him, — he would pull out and smooth the large sticky fingers of his loose leather gloves, and lay them side by side on a table ready for him to wear, — he would energetically polish the top of his big silver-knobbed stick, — and he would invariably make a ‘button-hole’ of the prettiest flowers he could find, for him to put in his coat at dinner. The astonishment with which the distinguished disciplinarian first received these attentions, and afterwards grew to expect them every day as a matter of course, was somewhat remarkable. And it is to be noted that the worthy Cadman-Gore was so far moved from his usual self during these sunshiny days at Clovelly, as to go rummaging down, down, into the far recesses of his own past youth, and search there for fragments of fairy-tales, which fragments, laid hold of after much difficulty, he would piece together laboriously for Lionel’s benefit and amusement. One day it occurred to him that he would relate in ‘fairy’ style, the beautiful old classic legend of Cupid and Psyche, and see what the boy made of it. They had gone for a walk that afternoon along the ‘Hobby Drive,’ and had paused to sit down and rest on a grassy knoll from which the sea gleamed distantly, like a turquoise set in diamonds, between the tremulous foliage of the bending trees. And in his harsh hoarse voice which he vainly strove to soften, the Professor told the tender and poetic story, — of the happiness of Psyche with her divine lover, till that fatal night, when she held her little lamp aloft that she might satisfy her curiosity, and see for herself the actual shape and lineaments of the god, — then came the thunder and the darkness, — the breaking and extinguishing of the lamp, — the rush of great wings through the midnight — and lo, Love had fled, — and poor Psyche was left alone weeping. And ever since, has she not been solitary? — searching for the vanished Glory which she knows of, yet cannot find? Lionel listened in rapt silence, his earnest eyes every now and then raised to his tutor’s furrowed visage, which under the influence of the beauty of Clovelly, and the wistful presence of the child, had taken upon itself a certain expression of benevolence that struggled to overcome aind banish the old long lines of practised austerity.
“I like that story;” — he said when it was finished— “And I see a lot of meaning in it, — quite serious meaning you know! May I tell you what I think about it?”
Professor Cadman-Gore nodded. Lionel, taking up the large wide-awake hat that lay on the grass, proceeded delicately to remove without injury, a tiny grasshopper that had boldly presumed to settle on that misshapen covering of one of the wisest heads in Christendom.
“You see Psyche didn’t know, and she wanted to find out;” — he went on musingly— “That’s just like me, and you, and everybody, isn’t it? And then we light our little lamps, and begin to try and discover things, — and perhaps we think we have found the Atom, — when all at once the thunder comes and the darkness, — and we die! — our lamps go out! But we don’t hear the rush of wings, do we? If we only heard that, — just the rush of wings — we should feel that Someone had gone — Somewhere! — and we should try to follow — I’m sure we should try. Perhaps we shall hear it when we die — that rush of wings, — and we shall know what we can’t know now, because our lamps go out so quickly.”
The Professor was silent. He could find nothing to say, inasmuch as there was no contradiction to offer to the boy’s logic. Lionel meanwhile doubled one leg loosely under him on the grass, and throwing off his cap, let the light flower-scented wind play with his fair curly locks.
“Now for people who believe in Christ,” — he continued— “There it is — that rush of wings! — because they say ‘He rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven.’ And they have just that feeling I suppose — that Someone has gone Somewhere, and they try to follow as best they can. That’s how it is I am sure, and it must be a great help to them. I should dearly like to believe some of the beautiful things in the Bible. In old Genesis for instance, you know if there were a God, it would be quite natural that when He made a place like Clovelly, He should be pleased. And then those words would be exactly right— ‘And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good!’”
Professor Cadman-Gore’s love of argument stirred rebelliously in him, but he gave it no speech. He would have liked to say that there were a great many learned persons who, thinking that they saw all that God had made, said “behold, it was very bad!” Humane persons too, who, unable to look behind the veil, could not understand the reason of the stress and worry, and torture of life; — but to this little, frail, sorrow-stricken lad, but lately tottering on the verge of a dangerous illness, he could not propound any problems, so he was mercifully silent. Once a thought leaped across his brain like a blinding flash of light, startling him with its acute shock, — and it was this;— “What a monstrous crime it is to bring up this child without a faith!” Amazed at his own involuntary and unusual feeling, he resolutely crushed it back into the innermost depths of his consciousness, — yet every now and then it would persistently recur to him, accompanied by other thoughts of a like nature which worried him, and which he had never dwelt upon with so much pertinacity before. A teasing inward voice asked him questions, such as— “Was it right to attack, and endeavour to pull down Faith, when nothing could be offered in place of it?” For Faith, substitute Reason, argued the Professor. “But,” went on the voice, “Reason is apt to totter on its throne. Grief will subdue it, — Passion overcome it. The ecstasy of love will hurl its votaries beyond all the bounds of sense or argument, — into folly, sin, desperation, death! The madness and abandonment of grief will make of the miserable human thing a mere despairing clamour, — a figure of frenzy with wild hair and piteous eyes, — what can Reason do with such? Only Faith can save, — faith in a God of Love; and the words— ‘Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea’; must rest for ever as a curse upon every man or woman who by word, deed or example, strives to tear down the one divine support of struggling souls, — the one great prop of a world contending with ceaseless storm.” So murmured the inward voice; and hearing it discourse thus plainly, the Professor thought his intellectual faculties must be decaying. Something strange was at work within him, — something to which he could not give a name, — something which perchance would make of him in time a wiser man than he had yet assumed himself to be.
During this peaceful and ab
solutely idle holiday at Clovelly, Lionel used often to go down the winding way from the village to the rough cobbly beach, and sit and talk to the boatmen gathered there. They liked the little lad, and would frequently take him out in their fishing-smacks for a toss on the sea, though from these excursions he did not return much the brighter, but rather the sadder. The Clovelly men have many a harrowing tale to tell of shipwreck, and of poor drowned creatures washed ashore with eyes staring open to the pitiless sky, and hands clinging convulsively to a bit of rope or spar, — and such narratives as these they would relate to the boy in their own roughly eloquent, realistic way, till his heart grew cold within him, and he almost learned to hate the sea. The old weary wonder came back to his brain and tortured him, — what was the good of it all? What was the use of living or loving, hoping or working? None, that he could see!
On one rather stormy afternoon towards sunset, he was strolling as usual down to the beach, when he was attracted by a little crowd of men that stood closely grouped round the door of an open boat-house. They were all peering in with an expression of mingled horror and morbid fascination in their faces, and as he came near, one of them motioned him to stand back.
“What’s the matter?” he asked anxiously— “Is some one drowned?”
“No, no little measter,” — answered a tough old seaman standing by. “The sea’s not to blame this time. But it’s no sight for you, — it’s a stranger to us, a sort o’ queer tourist-like chap — he’s bin an’ hanged hisself in Davey Loame’s boat-house.”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 388