To solve the mystery of human tears,
And, unambiguous I would speak my will
Nor hint it darkly to the dreaming seers.
He rose from his chair and went to a corner of the library, where stood a tall cabinet heavily clamped with iron. Opening it, he took out a small box, apparently made of steel, or of platinum, and set it on the table. Then, attaching a thin electric switch to it, he sat down again and waited. In about two or three minutes the room was suffused with a brilliant glow of crimson which seemingly emanated from the box, though there was no indication of any outlet. Still he watched and waited — the crimson effulgence wavered and swayed as though moved by a wind, and presently formed itself into a long, straight ray of intense brilliancy stretching entirely across the room. The Distinguished Scientist took a long breath of satisfaction.
“Perfect!” he said. “So far as anything can be perfect! Now if there is — if there should be anything in this atmosphere that is commonly invisible to human eyes, it should show up! It should certainly show up — even if it were the road to happiness!”
As he spoke, he reeled back, dazzled and amazed, something there was indeed in the atmosphere not commonly visible to human eyes — not even to scientific eyes aided by scientific appliances — another ray more brilliant than the first, but pure white and without a flicker, which slowly extended itself over the whole length of the red ray in the form of a Cross. Clear as a diamond, still as a pearl, it obliterated every other gleam of light save its own, and so remained. The scientist gazed and gazed — here was a thing beyond his comprehension; moreover, a sense of sudden awe stole over his senses and held him in thrall. Slowly, very slowly, he attempted to move toward that mysterious pure Whiteness, but was held back by a force not his own. He caught at the table edge to support himself and involuntarily sank on his knees. The Great Light surrounded him in its pearly purity, and its form as a Cross was clear — the head and summit pointing upward and onward. For many minutes it remained then gradually began to fade, though not so much to fade as to vanish — and he was possessed by an eager desire to follow it wherever it went. He had completely forgotten his own “discovery” in the box left neglected on the table, or else he would have seen that whatever properties of light or radio-activity or power it possessed, which he had considered “perfect,” were, for the time at any rate, utterly extinguished. The wonderful White Ray was departing — he made haste to go in its track; it led him through the hall of his house to the door and out into the street, where crowds of people jostling one another on the pavements, murmuring noisily and pushing restlessly, swept to and fro under a driving shower of rain. And again he stood amazed, doubting the evidence of his own senses, for high above them all in its pure radiance stretched the White Ray in its Cross-like form, stretching out, as it were, shining arms of light to embrace the whole dark world. And the Scientist lingered on his doorstep watching the dark, drifting crowd. “So blind they are,” he said to himself, “that they cannot see what is above them!”
This thought seemed to strike his brain with a sharp pang — was it not the solution of the “conflict” between Science and Religion? “So blind they are!” and if blind, who should lead them? And another hammer-stroke smote his mental consciousness — a stroke of memory, which like a finger typing out a message produced the words— “In the daytime also He led them with a cloud, and all the night through with a light of fire!”
A light of fire! There it was — most surely! — those wide, embracing beams of splendour extended over the restless multitude! But— “so blind they could not see!” And was he, the Scientist, clearer of vision than they? He dared not assert it. His great “discovery” was, after all, only one of a million more waiting to be discovered, and as to whether it would add to human happiness, why that was not in his province to determine — that was the business of a Higher Force than any that could be probed or tested by science. So far in his knowledge he was as blind as the blind crowd moving under the stretched-out White Radiance which emanated from nothing that could be scientifically explained, and which seemed to all those moving beneath it invisible! Then — all at once — clear above the murmuring city noises, came the voice of a street singer ringing sweetly on the rain-swept air — a voice full of the rich, strange pathos born of long suffering, and the words she sang smote the ears of the Scientist distinctly where he stood —
“Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead thou me on;
The night is dark and I am far from home,
Lead thou me on;
Keep thou my feet — I do not ask to see
The distant scene: one step enough for me.”
The Scientist stepped softly within his own house and closed the door. Returning to his library he found it dark — whatever his “great discovery” was, there was no hint of it — no gleam of “radio-activity” anywhere, not even from the mysterious box he had set so carefully on his table. He groped for the electric light and turned it on, then looked in a dazed way round the room — all was as he had left it. Was his strange experience a dream? A warning? — or a lesson?
“We go too far!” he said, aloud. “We seek to know too much, and in the arrogance of our knowledge we lose the great Ideal! And so we miss the way to happiness both for ourselves and others. We must learn to be wise in time lest we destroy the whole fabric of our hopes and all the beauty of belief. Science is Religion — but we may not forget that Religion is Science! One step at a time! — for the night is dark!” Involuntarily he closed his eyes.
“One step!” he repeated. “With faith and guidance — but not with pride! — not with arrogance! Lead, kindly light! — One step enough for me!”
The Short Stories
In 1884 Corelli, her father Charles Mackay and her childhood friend Bertha Vyver moved back to London, settling in a house at 47 Longridge Road, Earls Court.
List of Short Stories in Chronological Order
THREE WISE MEN OF GOTHAM.
ANGEL’S WICKEDNESS.
THE DISTANT VOICE.
THE WITHERING OF A ROSE.
NEHEMIAH P. HOSKINS, ARTIST.
AN OLD BUNDLE.
MADEMOISELLE ZEPHYR.
TINY TRAMPS.
THE LADY WITH THE CARNATIONS.
MY WONDERFUL WIFE.
THE SONG OF MIRIAM
THE SOUL OF THE NEWLY BORN
THE SILENCE OF THE MAHARAJAH
ONE OF THE WORLD’S WONDERS
JANE
THE STRANGE VISITATION
KITTUMS
THE GHOST IN THE SEDAN CHAIR
A BREACH OF POST-OFFICE DISCIPLINE
TWO OF A ‘TRUST’
THE DESPISED ANGEL
THE HIRED BABY
THE LOVE OF LONG AGO
BROWN JIM’S PROBLEM
THE BOY
CLAUDIA’S BUSINESS
REJECTED!
SUNNY
THE PANTHER
THE STEPPING-STAR
WHY SHE WAS GLAD
THE SCULPTOR’S ANGEL
LOLITA
THE TRENCH COMRADE
THE SIGNAL
THE MYSTIC TUNE
LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT
List of Short Stories in Alphabetical Order
A BREACH OF POST-OFFICE DISCIPLINE
AN OLD BUNDLE.
ANGEL’S WICKEDNESS.
BROWN JIM’S PROBLEM
CLAUDIA’S BUSINESS
JANE
KITTUMS
LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT
LOLITA
MADEMOISELLE ZEPHYR.
MY WONDERFUL WIFE.
NEHEMIAH P. HOSKINS, ARTIST.
ONE OF THE WORLD’S WONDERS
REJECTED!
SUNNY
THE BOY
THE DESPISED ANGEL
THE DISTANT VOICE.
THE GHOST IN THE SEDAN CHAIR
THE HIRED BABY
THE LADY WITH THE CARNATIONS.
THE LOVE OF LONG AGO
> THE MYSTIC TUNE
THE PANTHER
THE SCULPTOR’S ANGEL
THE SIGNAL
THE SILENCE OF THE MAHARAJAH
THE SONG OF MIRIAM
THE SOUL OF THE NEWLY BORN
THE STEPPING-STAR
THE STRANGE VISITATION
THE TRENCH COMRADE
THE WITHERING OF A ROSE.
THREE WISE MEN OF GOTHAM.
TINY TRAMPS.
TWO OF A ‘TRUST’
WHY SHE WAS GLAD
The Non-Fiction
Corelli lived and died in Stratford-upon-Avon from 1901–1924.
Corelli’s house, Mason Croft, still stands on Church Street and is now the home of the Shakespeare Institute.
The Modern Marriage Market
AMONG the many ages or periods in this world’s existence, — ages and periods which have been separated and classified, according to the fancy of historians, as the “Dark,” the “Mythical,” the “Classical,” or the “Mediæval,” — it is doubtful whether there has ever been one which has so richly merited the pre-eminent and prominent label of “Sham” writ across it as this, our own blessed and enlightened time. If any pride can be taken in the fact, let those who will be proud. For never in all the passing pageant and phantasmagoria of history did a greater generation of civilised hypocrites cumber the face of the globe than cumber it to-day, — never was the earth so oppressed with the weight of polite lying, — never were there such crowds of civil masqueraders, cultured tricksters, and social humbugs, who, though admirable as tricksters and humbugs, are wholly contemptible as men and women. Truth is at a discount, — and if one should utter it, the reproachful faces of one’s so-called “friends” show how shocked they are at meeting with anything honest. We are drifting our days away in a condition of false luxury, — of over-ripe civilisation, — which has bred in us that apathetic inertia which is always a premonitory symptom of fatal disease. If one should talk to us of heroic actions — even the simplest — our befuddled minds connect them vaguely with a necessity for the police or the law courts, — if we should hear of a bold man’s attempt to scale the heights of a seeming too lofty ambition, we express our sickly belief that he will fail, — and if he succeeds, we are, in the same sickly spirit, more disappointed than gratified. We cannot abide boldness. We are too weak in our nerves to stand the warm and splendid fervours of enthusiasm. We shudder — we cry — we whine at things that threaten to disturb our slothful self-indulgence, — our eating — our drinking — our sleeping in soft beds, guarded from draught and noise — our dear, pet vices — our morbid egotism — our blind, idiot vanity: we cannot endure troublous emotions — the great stress and storm of heart which moulds noble character. Away with such! We cannot be expected to exert ourselves more than is absolutely necessary for the feeding of our bodies and the carrying of them about, carefully, to such places as may seem adequate for their entertainment and further nourishment. I am not speaking of the “millions underground,” — the vast, toiling, silent millions of unregarded and unrewarded workers, who labour out of sight as it were and with such ominous speechlessness, — the speechlessness being only for a time. I am addressing you, — women, most of you, — who read the pages of this popular magazine (This article, and those which follow, appeared in The Lady’s Realm, 1897.) because you expect you will find something therein to minister to pleasure or vanity, — something in the way of advice of dress or the toilette, or the thousand-and-one little fascinations wherewith you hope to entrap the often silly souls of men, — not because you want to be told where you fail in the very mission and intention of Womanhood. Some of you are sincere enough, no doubt, in the wish to do the best with the responsibilities invested in you: but “wishing to do” is one thing, — and “doing” is another. Most women of Society find it more than difficult to carry out the good intentions with which they have perhaps begun their careers; and the more exalted their position, the less, as a rule, are they able to withstand the temptations, follies, and hypocrisies which surround them. Follies, temptations, and hypocrisies surround in a greater or less degree all women, whether in Society or out of it, — and we are none of us angels, though to their credit be it said, that some men still think us so. Some men still make “angels” out of us in spite of our cycling mania, — our foolish “clubs,” where we do nothing at all, — our rough games at football and cricket, our general throwing to the winds of all dainty feminine reserve, delicacy, and modesty, — and we alone are to blame if we shatter their ideals and sit down by choice in the mud when they would have placed us on thrones. It is our fault, not theirs. We have willed it so. Many of us are more “mannish” than womanly; we are more inclined to laugh at and make mock of a man’s courtesy and reverence than we are to be flattered by it. The result is that nowadays we are married, both men and women alike, for what we have, and not for what we are.
It is one of our many hypocrisies to pretend we do not see things that are plainly put before us every day, and also to assume a fastidious disgust and horror when told of certain “barbarisms” still practised in Europe, barbarisms which we consider we have, in our state of ultra-civilisation, fortunately escaped. One of these “barbaric” institutions which moves us to shudder gracefully and turn up the whites of our eyes, is slavery. “Britons never, never shall,” we say. British women shall never, for example, stand stripped in the market-place to be appraised and labelled at a price, and purchased by a sensualist and ruffian for so much money down. No British man shall ever stand with bound hands and manacled feet, shamed and contemptible in his own eyes, waiting till some luxurious wanton of the world, with more cash than modesty, buys him with her millions to be her fetch-and-carry slave till death releases him from the unnatural bondage. These things are done in Stamboul. True. Stamboul is barbaric. What of London? What of the “season,” when women are as coolly “brought out” to be sold as any unhappy Armenian girl that ever shuddered at the lewd gaze of a Turkish tyrant? What of the mothers and fathers who force their children thus into the open market? Come — face the thing out — don’t put it away or behind you as a matter too awkward and difficult of discussion. It is an absolute grim fact that in England, women — those of the upper classes, at any rate — are not to-day married, but bought for a price. The high and noble intention of marriage is entirely lost sight of in the scheming, the bargaining, and the pricing.
What is marriage? Many of you have, I think, forgotten. It is not the church, the ritual, the blessing of the clergyman, or the ratifying and approving presence of one’s friends and relations at the ceremony, — still less is it a matter of “settlements” and expensive millinery. It is the taking of a solemn vow before the Throne of the Eternal, — a vow which declares that the man and woman concerned have discovered in each other his and her true mate, — that they feel life is alone valuable and worth living in each other’s company, — that they are prepared to endure trouble, poverty, pain, sickness, death itself, provided they may only be together, — and that all the world is a mere grain of dust in worth as compared to the exalted passion which fills their souls and moves them to become one in flesh as well as one in spirit. Nothing can make marriage an absolutely sacred thing except the great love, combined with the pure and faithful intention, of the human pair involved. They have to realise first of all that a God exists; and that before that God, Whom they solemnly acknowledge and believe in, they are One.
What has the cash-box to do with this? The reply will be that in order to live, one must have the wherewithal for living. Quite so. But then, if it be once fully realised that there is a Supreme Creator of things, to Whom we are answerable for the breaking of any of His laws, we shall understand that no two human beings have a right to share each other’s lives at all, if the result of such sharing should be to drag each other down. Marriage is intended to uplift — to consecrate — to inspire, — and while these noble duties cannot altogether be properly fulfilled if extreme poverty bars the way,
and starvation looks in at the door, it is not at all necessary that the married pair should be so grossly and vulgarly wealthy as to be free of every shadow of difficulty. Shadows of difficulty show best where love’s sunshine falls. We are never as strong, as sweet, or as true as we might be if we lack the divine difficulties which nerve us to fresh endeavour. It is as easy — perhaps easier — to be happy on five hundred a year, as on five thousand, and a study of the faces of those who possess a hundred thousand a year will move us more to compassion than envy.
I know an artist who lives on the Island of Capri, — a perfectly happy man. He earns about one hundred pounds per annum by painting charming little studies of the beauties of the island, and disposing of them whenever he can to chance visitors. He is a gentleman by birth, breeding, and education, — he is essentially one in manners, and excels in the almost lost art of conversation. He is passionately in love with his wife, — a pretty, coaxing little creature of the fair Sicilian type, — and he adores his son, a sturdy small person of three years, whose exquisite baby beauty is the delight of every inhabitant of the place. Nature surrounds the little trio with her loveliest scenery — the melting charm of sea and sky and island picturesqueness is theirs to enjoy from every window of their flower-wreathed habitation, and they crave for nothing more than they possess. “We love each other,” is the simple secret of the idyllic life they lead; and when you have been at one of the merry little Bohemian suppers which the artist often gives to friends coming over from Naples to Sorrento, — when in the warmth of the Italian night the windows are set wide open to let the white moon light up with her full Southern brilliance the unpretentious “feast” of luscious fruit and genuine wine, and your fair hostess leans against the rose-twined porch, softly playing her mandolin in subdued accompaniment to the gay songs of her guests, — you begin to think you have found something like the lost paradise, — which, after all, was only a paradise just so long as the human beings in it were content to obey their Maker’s commandment. Beyond that commandment lay the forbidden tree, — the sting of the serpent-devil, and afterwards distrust — mutual reproach and misery.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 965