CHAPTER VI

“WORMWOOD” AND “THE SOUL OF LILITH”

Some day a selection of extracts from “The Works of Marie Corelli” will be published, and excellent reading it will prove. For, scattered about the novelist’s goodly list of books, one may light on many interesting little observations concerning human nature which will well bear reproduction without the context. In the course of this biography a modest choice of Miss Corelli’s thoughts on religion, men, women, education, and such-like topics will be found; but it is impossible in the narrow scope of the present publication to quote everything that one would like to.

Early in “Wormwood” there occurs a passage of the kind to which we refer. It is a pretty description of the ill-fated heroine of the story, and of her “soft and trifling chatter.” Pauline de Charmilles is eighteen, newly home from school--“a child as innocent and fresh as a flower just bursting into bloom, with no knowledge of the world into which she was entering, and with certainly no idea of the power of her own beauty to rouse the passions of men.” Pauline, by mutual parental head-nodding, is thrown much into the society of young Beauvais (who tells the story), a wealthy banker’s son. His description of the girl forms the passage alluded to above:

“Pauline de Charmilles was not a shy girl, but by this I do not mean it to be in the least imagined that she was bold. On the contrary, she had merely that quick brightness and _esprit_ which is the happy heritage of so many Frenchwomen, none of whom think it necessary to practice or assume the chilly touch-me-not diffidence and unbecoming constraint which make the young English “mees” such a tame and tiresome companion to men of sense and humor. She was soon perfectly at her ease with me, and became prettily garrulous and confidential, telling me stories of her life at Lausanne, describing the loveliness of the scenery on Lake Leman, and drawing word-portraits of her teachers and schoolmates with a facile directness and point that brought them at once before the mind’s eye as though they were actually present.”

Pauline’s ingenuousness and alluring looks quickly enslave young Beauvais. He cannot understand the reason of this fascination. He quite realizes that she is a bread-and-butter schoolgirl, and “a mere baby in thought,” but--she is beautiful. So, having granted that the net in which he finds himself immeshed is purely a physical one, he thus descants on the reasonableness of his fall:

“Men never fall in love at first with a woman’s mind; only with her body. They may learn to admire the mind afterwards, if it prove worth admiration, but it is always a secondary thing. This may be called a rough truth, but it is true, for all that. Who marries a woman of intellect by choice? No one; and if some unhappy man does it by accident, he generally regrets it. A stupid beauty is the most comfortable sort of housekeeper going, believe me. She will be strict with the children, scold the servants, and make herself look as ornamental as she can, till age and fat render ornament superfluous. But a woman of genius, with that strange subtle attraction about her which is yet not actual beauty,--she is the person to be avoided if you would have peace; if you would escape reproach; if you would elude the fixed and melancholy watchfulness of a pair of eyes haunting you in the night.”

The love of Beauvais is apparently returned by Pauline, and all goes merrily in the direction of marriage-bells, whose ringing seems a matter of no great distance off when the two young people become betrothed; although it is apparent to a great friend of Pauline’s, Heloïse St. Cyr, that the schoolgirl is not so sure of herself in the matter of being in love as she should be.

Among the many charmingly French touches in this book is Pauline’s reassuring speech to her lover. “Be satisfied, Gaston; I am thy very good little _fiancée_, who is very, very fond of thee, and happy in thy company, _voilà tout_!” And then, taking a rose from her _bouquet-de-corsage_, she fastens it in his button-hole, enchanting him completely.

Then comes Silvion Guidèl, nephew of M. Vaudron, Curé of the parish in which live the De Charmilles. Guidèl is destined for the priesthood and possesses considerable personal charms. Beauvais _père_ comments on them:

“A remarkably handsome fellow, that Guidèl!” he said. “Dangerously so, for a priest! It is fortunate that his lady penitents will not be able to see him very distinctly through the confessional gratings, else who knows what might happen! He has a wonderful gift of eloquence too. Dost thou like him, Gaston?”

“No!” I replied frankly, and at once, “I cannot say I do!”

My father looked surprised.

“But why?”

“Impossible to tell, _mon père_. He is fascinating, he is agreeable, he is brilliant; but there is something in him that I mistrust!”

As events prove, Beauvais _fils_ has only too good reason to distrust the embryo priest. Soon after, Beauvais _père_ is called away to London for several weeks, and, as a consequence of the superintending of the Paris banking house falling entirely to the son, Gaston sees but little of his _fiancée_. But he is often in the company of Silvion Guidèl, to whom he becomes much attached in spite of his previous feelings towards M. Vaudron’s nephew. So, writing the history of those days long afterwards, Beauvais acknowledges that he was mistaken in changing his attitude towards Guidèl:

“Though first impressions are sometimes erroneous, I believe there is a balance in favor of their correctness. If a singular antipathy seizes you for a particular person at first sight, no matter how foolish it may seem, you may be almost sure that there is something in your two natures that is destined to remain in constant opposition. You may conquer it for a time; it may even change, as it did in my case, to profound affection; but, sooner or later, it will spring up again, with tenfold strength and deadliness; the reason of your first aversion will be made painfully manifest, and the end of it all will be doubly bitter because of the love that for a brief while sweetened it. I say I loved Silvion Guidèl!--and in proportion to the sincerity of that love, I afterwards measured the intensity of my hate!”

The wedding day draws closer, and Beauvais remains blind to everything save his own joy and the bliss which he fondly imagines will result from the union. True, he sometimes notices a certain lack of enthusiasm in Pauline’s view of the approaching ceremony, but he attributes this and her wistfulness of expression to “the nervous excitement a young girl would naturally feel at the swift approach of her wedding day.” Strangely enough, Guidèl, too, shows signs of physical and mental distress, but when Beauvais rallies him on his manner and appearance, he puts the young banker off with light speeches in which, however, there is a certain bitterness which puzzles the latter considerably. However, Beauvais still suspects nothing. At length Pauline shatters all his dreams of the future, and makes him a miserable wretch for life, by confessing that she loves Silvion Guidèl, that her love is returned, and that, in consequence of this mutual passion, the worst of possible fates has befallen her.

Then Beauvais flies to absinthe drinking, which is the keynote of the story. From that time on it is all absinthe. A broken-down painter, André Gessonex, lures him on to this disastrous form of begetting forgetfulness; and this is the first step down the short steep hill which leads to the young banker’s utter ruin. Having once tasted the potent and fascinating mixture, he returns to it again and again, and gradually it warps him, physically and mentally, finally transforming him into one of the meanest scoundrels in Paris.

But this is after many days. On the morning after his first bout of absinthe drinking, Beauvais decides to challenge Silvion, but discovers that the betrayer of Pauline has disappeared from Paris. Thereupon, though sore at heart, he determines to save Pauline’s family an infinity of shame by marrying the girl; and so the preparations continue.

But in the interval that elapses between this decision and the date fixed for the nuptials, the absinthe works a terrible change in Beauvais’ attitude towards Pauline, with the result that, when the day of the ceremony arrives, he denounces her before her parents and the large assembly of guests as the cast-off mistress of Guidèl, and harshly refuses to make her his wife.

The awful effect of this speech may be imagined; poor Pauline’s looks confirm the truth of his statement; the guests quietly leave the broken-hearted parents with their daughter; there is no marriage. Take the decorations down; fling the wedding feast to the mendicants who whine round the house; there is no marriage!

Even Beauvais _père_ turns on his miscreant of a son as they quit the desolate girl’s abode:

“Gaston, you have behaved like a villain! I would not have believed that my son could have been capable of such a coward’s vengeance!”

I looked at him and shrugged my shoulders.

“You are excited, _mon père_! What have I done save speak the truth, and, as the brave English say, shame the devil?”

“The truth--the truth!” said my father passionately. “Is it the truth? and if it is, could it not have been told in a less brutal fashion? You have acted like a fiend!--not like a man! If Silvion Guidèl be a vile seducer, and that poor child Pauline his credulous, ruined victim, could you not have dealt with _him_ and have spared _her_? God! I would as soon wring the neck of a bird that trusted me, as add any extra weight to the sorrows of an already broken-hearted woman!”

More than this, the indignant old man gives his son a substantial sum of money, and turns him out of his house.

Pauline, too, leaves her home in a mysterious and sudden fashion, without telling any one where she is going. The death of her father, M. de Charmilles, quickly follows. Beauvais drinks himself stupid every night, and spends his days doggedly hunting for Pauline, who, he feels sure, has hidden herself in the loathsome slums in which Paris abounds. And in time he does meet her, but long before this he encounters her seducer, Silvion Guidèl, and, after a mad struggle, throttles him, and casts the corpse into the Seine.

The murder is not traced home to Beauvais, who drinks more deeply than ever of the deadly absinthe, and becomes more surely its slave with every draught. Gessonex, the disreputable artist who introduced him to this form of vice, ends his failure of a career by shooting himself on the pavement outside of a _café_ after one of these carousals, and it is while Beauvais is visiting the artist’s grave that he at last sets eyes on Pauline, kneeling by the tomb of the De Charmilles. For he cannot mistake the figure crouching by that closed door: “She was slight, and clad in poorest garments--the evening wind blew her thin shawl about her like a gossamer sail,--but the glimmer of the late sunlight glistened on a tress of nut-brown hair that had escaped from its coils and fell loosely over her shoulders,--and my heart beat thickly as I looked,--I knew--I felt that woman was Pauline!”

When he endeavors to track her to her lodgings, however, she unconsciously eludes him, and he obtains no clue as to where she may be found.

Weeks go by, and Beauvais swallows more and more absinthe by way of deadening thought and feeling. The insidious poison is beginning to tell on his brain. At times he is seized by the notion that everything about him is of absurdly abnormal proportions, or the reverse. “Men and women would, as I looked at them, suddenly assume the appearance of monsters both in height and breadth, and again, would reduce themselves in the twinkling of an eye to the merest pigmies.” So, while the _absintheur’s_ brain and body decline, the summer fades into autumn, and he is still looking for Pauline. At length, one dismal November evening, whilst wandering home in his usual heavily drugged condition, he hears a woman singing in one of the by-streets. She is singing a well-known convent chant, the “Guardian Angel”:

“_Viens sur ton aile, Ange fidèle_ _Prendre mon cœur!_ _C’est le plus ardent de mes vœux;--_ _Près de Marie_ _Place-moi bientôt dans les cieux!_ _O guide aimable, sois favorable_ _A mon désir_ _Et viens finir_ _Ma triste vie_ _Avec Marie!"_

It is Pauline at last! Then the absinthe tells its tale, and Beauvais completes his scheme of vengeance. With cold-blooded ferocity he confesses that he has slain her lover, whereupon the desolate girl, the hopes she had fostered of meeting Silvion again being forever shattered, buries her woes in the dark bosom of the river of sighs.

Beauvais haunts the Morgue for two days, and his patience is rewarded. Here is a piece of description which, in its way, is perfect:

“An afternoon came when I saw the stretcher carried in from the river’s bank with more than usual pity and reverence,--and I, pressing in with the rest of the morbid spectators, saw the fair, soft, white body of the woman I had loved and hated and maddened and driven to her death, laid out on the dull hard slab of stone like a beautiful figure of frozen snow. The river had used her tenderly--poor little Pauline!--it had caressed her gently and had not disfigured her delicate limbs or spoilt her pretty face;--she looked so wise, so sweet and calm, that I fancied the cold and muddy Seine must have warmed and brightened to the touch of her drowned beauty!

“Yes!--the river had fondled her!--had stroked her cheeks and left them pale and pure,--had kissed her lips and closed them in a childlike, happy smile,--had swept all her soft hair back from the smooth white brow just to show how prettily the blue veins were penciled under the soft transparent skin,--had closed the gentle eyes and deftly pointed the long dark lashes in a downward sleepy fringe,--and had made of one little dead girl so wondrous and piteous a picture, that otherwise hard-hearted women sobbed at sight of it, and strong men turned away with hushed footsteps and moistened eyes.”

And that, practically, is the end of the story, for Gaston Beauvais, having revenged himself on his sweetheart and her betrayer, has nought to do now save drink absinthe. _Delirium tremens_ ensues, Beauvais is laid up for a month, and at the end of that period the doctor speaks plain words of wisdom and warning to him:

“You must give it up,” he said decisively, “at once,--and forever. It is a detestable habit,--a horrible craze of the Parisians, who are positively deteriorating in blood and brain by reason of their passion for this poison. What the next generation will be, I dread to think! I know it is a difficult business to break off anything to which the system has grown accustomed,--but you are still a young man, and you cannot be too strongly warned against the danger of continuing in your present course of life. Moral force is necessary,--and you must exert it. I have a large medical practice, and cases like yours are alarmingly common, and as much on the increase as morphinomania amongst women; but I tell you frankly, no medicine can do good where the patient refuses to employ his own power of resistance. I must ask you, therefore, for your own sake, to bring all your will to bear on the effort to overcome this fatal habit of yours, as a matter of duty and conscience.”

But the physician’s admonition falls on heedless ears. Beauvais returns to the alluring glass, and the book ends with the confession that he is a confirmed _absintheur_--“a thing more abject than the lowest beggar that crawls through Paris whining for a sou!--a slinking, shuffling beast, half monkey, half man, whose aspect is so vile, whose body is so shaken with delirium, whose eyes are so murderous, that if you met me by chance in the daytime, you would probably shriek for sheer alarm!”

Such is the graphic and terrible picture drawn by Marie Corelli of the effects of this iniquitous draught. If Beauvais had not been tempted by Gessonex to taste it, it is not probable that Pauline’s piteous confession would have resulted in such wholesale tragedy; for Heloïse St. Cyr, the sweet woman-friend of the bride-elect’s, dies, too, and so an entire happy household is destroyed by reason of one man’s uncontrollable savagery.

Had Beauvais never put his lips to the fatal glass, he would in all probability, on hearing what had befallen his sweetheart, have quietly broken off the match. For, it must be remembered, he was a respectable young banker, of sober mien and quiet ways, not a Bohemian and frequenter of all-night _cafés_. But he tasted absinthe, and so brought about his undoing, as many another young Parisian is bringing it about at the present day. Here is the novelist’s fierce denunciation of the vice:

“Paris, steeped in vice and drowned in luxury, feeds her brain on such loathsome literature as might make even coarse-mouthed Rabelais and Swift recoil. Day after day, night after night, the absinthe-drinkers crowd the _cafés_, and swill the pernicious drug that of all accursed spirits ever brewed to make of man a beast, does most swiftly fly to the seat of reason to there attack and dethrone it;--and yet, the rulers do nothing to check the spreading evil,--the world looks on, purblind as ever and selfishly indifferent,--and the hateful cancer eats on into the breast of France, bringing death closer every day!”

“Wormwood” is undoubtedly a work of genius--a strange, horrible book, yet fraught with a tremendous moral. The story of inhuman vengeance goes swiftly on, without a stop or stay; one feels that the little bride-girl is doomed, that the priest must die, that unutterable misery must be the final lot of all the actors in the story.

Marie Corelli does not overstate the case when she declares that absinthe has taken a grim and cancerous hold of Paris. It is called for in the _cafés_ as naturally as we, in London, order a “small” or “large” Bass. But what a difference in the two beverages! A French writer of authority says that fifteen per cent. of the French army are rendered incapable by the use of absinthe.

The bulk of the French populace drinks either _bock_ or light wine, and it takes a fairly large amount of either to produce intoxication. In England the populace drinks draught ale or whiskey. Comparing the two peoples and their behavior--for example--on public holidays, we must allow that the French are by far the more sober nation. But in London we have not--except in one or two West-End _cafés_--this dreadful absinthe, and we may well be thankful that the drinking of it has not grown upon us as it has grown upon the Parisians.

Could not Marie Corelli turn the heavy guns of her genius on the drink question _this_ side of the Channel! The field is a very wide one. Children under fourteen are now prevented by law from being served at public-houses. It would be a good plan, too, if women could not order intoxicants from grocers. Many a man, in discharging his grocer’s account, does not trouble to inspect the items, or is not afforded the chance of inspecting them; many a man, however, if he were to submit his grocer’s book to a close scrutiny, would find that bottles of inferior wines and spirits were being supplied along with the raisins and baking-powder not for his own, the cook’s, or his family’s use, but for the secret consumption of his wife.

In suggesting new legislative measures with regard to the sale of intoxicants in this country, Marie Corelli would be performing a public service worthy of the Nation’s profoundest gratitude.

* * * * *

“The Soul of Lilith,” which was published about a year after “Wormwood,” is a work of a very different character. This book treats of a subject in which Marie Corelli revels. As a brief introductory note explains, “The Soul of Lilith” does not assume to be what is generally understood by a “novel,” being simply the account “of a strange and daring experiment once actually attempted,” and offered to those who are interested in the unseen possibilities of the Hereafter. It is the story of a man “who voluntarily sacrificed his whole worldly career in a supreme effort to prove the apparently Unprovable.”

This persistent probing on Marie Corelli’s part of what most writers shun and very few have ever attempted to solve, is one of the secrets of her great sales. Turn to page 319 of “The Soul of Lilith,” and you will find the matter put neatly in a nutshell:

“And so it happens that when wielders of the pen essay to tell us of wars; of shipwrecks, of hairbreadth escapes from danger, of love and politics and society, we read their pages with merely transitory pleasure and frequent indifference, but when they touch upon subjects beyond earthly experience--when they attempt, however feebly, to lift our inspirations to the possibilities of the Unseen, then we give them our eager attention and almost passionate interest.”

This passage may afford a little light to those people who are forever declaring that they cannot understand what other people can see in Marie Corelli. The fact is, Marie Corelli appeals to a tremendous section of the public--a section in which, we are assured, the fair sex does not predominate. Indeed, the majority of the novelist’s correspondents are _men_. Marie Corelli is intensely in earnest, imaginative, and passionate. She lets her reader know, before she has covered many pages, precisely what her book is to be about, and in this way she spares one the irritation excited by those old-fashioned writers who used to drone on for chapter after chapter, making headway in an exasperatingly slow and cumbrous fashion.

Then it must be taken into consideration that there is a very big public which has practically nothing to do except eat meals, sleep, take exercise, and read novels. Such people are necessarily more introspective than busy folk, and many of them are exceedingly anxious as to what will become of them when it shall please Providence to put an end to their aimless existence in this vale of smiles and tears. Marie Corelli supplies them with ample food for thought and argument.

Perhaps all these attempts to solve the Unsolvable have a morbid tendency; a little simple faith is certainly more salutary. However that may be, a very great public regards such attempts as more engrossing reading-matter than tales “of love and politics and society”; and a still stronger reason for Marie Corelli’s immense popularity is to be found in the fact that she is the only female Richmond in the field. She sits on a splendidly isolated throne, a writer whose genius has enabled her to soar to certain peculiar heights which no other literary man or woman has succeeded in scaling.

“The Soul of Lilith,” as we have inferred, displays its author in her element. It is a work which, from its nature, may be classed with “A Romance of Two Worlds” and “Ardath.” It possesses the same mystic properties, the same speculative endeavors to obtain knowledge that is denied to mortals.

“_I have kept one human creature alive and in perfect health for six years on that vital fluid alone._”

This is the kernel of the story, which narrates how El-Râmi, a man of Arabian origin, possessing many of the mysteriously occult powers peculiar to the Indian _fakir_, injects a certain fluid into the still warm veins of a dead Egyptian girl-child called Lilith. In this way he preserves her body in a living condition, and the success of his experiment is proved by the fact that Lilith passes from childhood to womanhood whilst in this state, and answers questions put to her by El-Râmi.

It is the desire of El-Râmi, however, to make himself master of Lilith’s soul as well as of her body, and this impious object leads to the destruction of the fair form he has preserved and of his own reason. For he falls in love with Lilith, and the declaration of his passion is followed by her crumbling away to dust. The shock to his highly strung organization results in his mental collapse, and from this he never recovers.

There are many passages of wild beauty and extraordinary power in this story, which occupies many pages in the telling before the superbly dramatic _dénouement_ is reached. Heliobas, the wise physician of “A Romance of Two Worlds,” but now turned monk, is introduced into the story, and warns El-Râmi that his atheistic experiment will prove fruitless:

“How it is that you have not foreseen this thing I cannot imagine,”--continued the monk. “The body of Lilith has grown under your very eyes from the child to the woman by the merest material means,--the chemicals which Nature gives us, and the forces which Nature allows us to employ. How then should you deem it possible for the Soul to remain stationary? With every fresh experience its form expands,--its desires increase,--its knowledge widens,--and the everlasting necessity of Love compels its life to Love’s primeval source. The Soul of Lilith is awakening to its fullest immortal consciousness,--she realizes her connection with the great angelic worlds--her kindredship with those worlds’ inhabitants, and, as she gains this glorious knowledge more certainly, so she gains strength. And this is the result I warn you of--her force will soon baffle yours, and you will have no more influence over her than you have over the highest Archangel in the realms of the Supreme Creator.”

El-Râmi reminds Heliobas that it is only a woman’s soul that he is striving for--“how should it baffle mine? Of slighter character--of more sensitive balance--and always prone to yield,--how should it prove so strong? Though, of course, you will tell me that Souls, like Angels, are sexless.”

The monk repudiates such a suggestion. “All created things have sex,” he declares, “even the angels. ‘Male and Female created He them’--recollect that,--when it is said God made Man in ‘His Own Image.’”

“What! Is it possible you would endow God Himself with the Feminine attributes as well as the Masculine?” cries El-Râmi, in astonishment.

“There are two governing forces of the Universe,” replied the monk deliberately; “one, the masculine, is Love,--the other, feminine, is Beauty. These Two, reigning together, are GOD;--just as man and wife are One. From Love and Beauty proceed Law and Order. You cannot away with it--it is so. Love and Beauty produce and reproduce a million forms with more than a million variations, and when God made Man in His Own Image it was as Male and Female. From the very first growths of life in all worlds,--from the small, almost imperceptible beginning of that marvelous evolution which resulted in Humanity,--evolution which to us is calculated to have taken thousands of years, whereas in the eternal countings it has occupied but a few moments,--Sex was proclaimed in the lowliest sea-plants, of which the only remains we have are in the Silurian formations,--and was equally maintained in the humblest _lingula_ inhabiting its simple bivalve shell. Sex is proclaimed throughout the Universe with an absolute and unswerving regularity through all grades of nature. Nay, there are even male and female Atmospheres which when combined produce forms of life.”

The verbal duel between Heliobas, the man of God, and El-Râmi, the man of Science, is exceedingly well-written. In the course of their conversation El-Râmi opines that Heliobas is more of a poet than either a devotee or a scientist. The monk’s rejoinder is worth quoting:

“Perhaps I am! Yet poets are often the best scientists, because they never _know_ they are scientists. They arrive by a sudden intuition at the facts which it takes several Professors Dry-as-Dust years to discover. When once you feel you are a scientist, it is all over with you. You are a clever biped who has got hold of a crumb out of the universal loaf, and for all your days afterwards you are turning that crumb over and over under your analytical lens. But a poet takes up the whole loaf unconsciously, and hands portions of it about at haphazard and with the abstracted behavior of one in a dream.”

In spite, however, of Heliobas’ warning words, El-Râmi proceeds with his experiment, which ends as recorded. The scientist is taken by his brother Féraz--a poetically conceived character--to a monastery in Cyprus, where he lives in placid contentment. Here he is visited by some English friends, who sum up his condition and suggest a simple remedy for others inclined to pursue similar researches in a way that strikes one as singularly practical:

“He always went into things with such terrible closeness, did El-Râmi,”--said Sir Frederick after a pause; “no wonder his brain gave way at last. You know you can’t keep on asking the why, why, why of everything without getting shut up in the long run.”

“I think we were not meant to ask ‘why’ at all,” said Irene slowly; “we are made to accept and believe that everything is for the best.”

And surely the gentle rejoinder of Irene is one that should silence controversy, dissipate vain speculation, and bring peace and rest to many thousands of minds which are wearied with attempts “to prove the apparently Unprovable.”