CHAPTER X

“THE MIGHTY ATOM” AND “BOY”

Marie Corelli never writes without a purpose--never solely to excite or entertain the reader who regards books as pleasant things provided for his regalement just as ices, pantomimes, and balloon ascents are.

The greatest of novelists have generally told their stories with an object other than mere story-telling. Charles Reade brought about asylum reform by publishing “Hard Cash,” while in “Foul Play” he made clear the injustice of preventing a prisoner from giving evidence in his own behalf--a state of things which has been only recently remedied; Dickens showed up villainous schoolmasters, receivers of stolen goods, the delays of the Law, Bumbledom, emigration frauds, and a hundred other abuses; Thackeray preached against cant; Wilkie Collins broke a lance with the vivisectionists; and Clark Russell, in “The Wreck of the _Grosvenor_,” told a harrowing story of the rotten food provided for the helpless merchant sailor.

Miss Corelli has grappled with human wrongs just as great, even though they may not be amenable to jurisdiction.

In the two books before us she deals, in hard-hitting, thought-compelling terms, with the criminally mistaken up-bringing of children. Her object in writing “The Mighty Atom” she tersely explains in her dedicatory note to “those self-styled ‘progressivists’” who support the cause of education without religion. The short and pathetic history of Lionel Valliscourt is placed before us as typical of the fate which so often befalls the overwrought child-brain: the horrible end to the young life is depicted with the idea of manifesting in what the absence of religion even from a boy’s mind may result. Had Lionel learned to say his prayers at his mother’s knee; had he trotted off to Church every Sunday morning, his hand within his father’s, and at eventide listened to the sweet old Bible-stories which so appeal to a child’s imagination, the Christian precepts thus implanted in his heart would surely have stayed his hand when he conceived the idea of taking his own life.

This most sad story fully brings home to the reader the evils attendant on the entirely godless teaching bestowed on a young and exceptionally bright boy, who has an instinctive yearning for that “knowledge and love of God” of which our authoress is the strenuous champion.

Lionel, the small centre of the picture, is introduced as a boy who “might have been a bank clerk or an experienced accountant in a London merchant’s office, from his serious old-fashioned manner, instead of a child barely eleven years of age; indeed, as a matter of fact, there was an almost appalling expression of premature wisdom on his pale wistful features;--the ‘thinking furrow’ already marked his forehead,--and what should still have been the babyish upper curve of his sensitive little mouth was almost, though not quite, obliterated by a severe line of constantly practiced self-restraint.”

Mr. Valliscourt has hired tutor after tutor to assist him in forcing Lionel’s intellect: by turns each tutor has thrown up his task in disgust. At last comes William Montrose, B. A., a breezy Oxonian, who refuses point-blank to go through the “schedule of tuition” which Mr. Valliscourt “formulates” for his son’s holiday tasks. Montrose is angrily dismissed, and Professor Cadman-Gore, “the dark-lantern of learning and obscure glory of university _poseurs_,” is engaged in his place to squeeze the juice out of poor little Lionel’s already wearied brains.

Very early in his holiday term of coaching the Professor has to submit to some cross-examination from Lionel on the subject of the Atom. “Where is it?--that wonderful little First Atom, which, without knowing in the least what it was about, and with nobody to guide it, and having no reason, judgment, sight, or sense of its own, produced such beautiful creations? And then, if you are able to tell me where it is, will you also tell me where it came from?”

It appears that Lionel has imbibed atheistic principles not only from his father, but from a former tutor, and he is determined to thrash the matter out with the Professor, whom he takes to be the cleverest man in the world. The Professor’s replies, however, are unsatisfactory, and Lionel goes on wondering.

The work continues, and he grows yet wearier. Manfully he struggles to accomplish his allotted tasks, each effort sapping his strength still further and adding to the pains which fill his head and drive sleep from his tired eyes. The Professor, acting according to orders, continues to grind the young brains to powder.

At last the crisis arrives. Under dishonorable circumstances Lionel’s mother leaves her husband: over-work, sorrow, too little exercise--all these combined bring about Lionel’s collapse. The plain-spoken village doctor orders him away for rest, and so the Professor and his young charge go to Clovelly, where they spend some bewilderingly delightful weeks of absolute idleness. The Professor’s eyes have been somewhat opened by Lionel’s break-down to the real state of the child, whom thereafter he treats with a certain rough kindness which wins him the boy’s whole heart. Lionel cannot quite make it out--but he is grateful.

“He used to show his gratitude,” we are told, “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 ‘buttonhole’ of the prettiest flowers he could find for him to put in his coat at dinner.”

One can imagine the grim old gentleman being by turns astonished and touched by such attentions: the Professor indeed warms to the lad, and, when they return to Combmartin, bids him go and play instead of returning to his investigation of “The Advance of Positivism and Pure Reason,” which formed part of that schedule of study which his father had previously insisted upon.

Before his illness Lionel had become close friends with the village sexton, Reuben Dale, and that worthy’s little daughter, Jessamine. It had been the boy’s keenest joy to romp and talk with Jessamine, and so, on being afforded a holiday by the Professor’s thoughtfulness, he proceeds with a light heart in search of his former playmate. He finds Reuben at work in the churchyard, and “the significant hollow in the ground was shaped slowly in a small dark square, to the length of a little child.”

The old man’s sobs betray the truth--during Lionel’s absence his baby sweetheart has fallen a prey to diphtheria. The boy’s anguish is terrible: the sexton’s simple faith in God’s way being the best way has no comfort for the helpless little pagan who has been taught that such faith as this is sheer nonsense. “No, no!” he cries; “there is no God; you have not read,--you have not studied things, and you do not know,--but you are all wrong. There is no God,--there is only the Atom which does not care.”

Distracted with grief, Lionel tears away into the woods, his bewildered and weary head full of strange thoughts. At last a firm resolve takes possession of him. “I know!--I know the best way to discover the real secret,--I _must_ find it out!--and I will!”

And he does. With the cool deliberation that is often a distinguishing attribute of one bent on self-destruction, he goes to bed in the usual way. When the house is quite still, and all its other inmates are slumbering, he steals down to his schoolroom, where he carefully pens some letters--one to his father, another to the Professor, and a third to Mr. Montrose. This done, he falls upon his knees by the open window and prays to that Being whom he feels “must be a God, really and truly,” in spite of the many learned theories to the contrary by which his child-mind has been distracted.

A little later “there came a heavy stillness, ... and a sudden sense of cold in the air, as of the swift passing of the Shadow of Death.”

One may reasonably contend that such passages as these are unnecessarily distressing, and certainly there are several of Miss Corelli’s works which should not be left in the way of weak-minded persons. The authoress, it is clear, wishes to drive home her arguments in a manner that will be remembered. Chapter XIV. of “The Mighty Atom” is not one that is ever likely to be forgotten by those who have read this book.

People who object to such methods as Miss Corelli employs in “The Mighty Atom” must bear in mind that the motive underlying each of her stories is to show up a certain evil and suggest remedial measures, themselves as powerful as the disease requiring their application.

The lesson taught so startlingly in “The Mighty Atom” must have brought home the truths of its straightforward doctrines to a multitude of readers. Thus can a book drop seed which is destined to flourish abundantly for a great length of time and in widely separated places. If a book be good, it will have a long life: living, its effects will be felt by more than one generation of readers. Such is the power of literature--such the strength of a mere pen when wielded by one whose principal stock-in-trade is knowledge combined with sincerity and a determination to speak out for the general weal at all hazards, critics notwithstanding.

* * * * *

“Boy,” a book about equal in length to “The Mighty Atom,” is less picturesque in its setting than the latter, but, on the other hand, is lightened by considerable humor and happy characterization. It is a sermon to parents. The boy, as we know, is father of the man; consequently, if you bring a boy up badly, the complete growth of him when he reaches man’s estate is hardly likely to be satisfactory.

“It is a dangerous fallacy,” says the author of “Boy,” “to aver that every man has the making of his destiny in his own hands: to a certain extent he has, no doubt, and with education and firm resolve, he can do much to keep down the Beast and develop the Angel; but a terrific responsibility rests upon those often voluntarily reckless beings, his parents, who, without taking thought, use God’s privilege of giving life, while utterly failing to perceive the means offered to them for developing and preserving that life under the wisest and most harmonious conditions.”

The career of the particular “boy” under notice is traced from the time when, a crawling babe, he gravely surveys his father’s drunken antics and ascribes them to attacks of illness. Hence his frequent references to the “poo’ sing” whose too close attentions to the bottle have earned him this mistaken infantile sympathy. “Boy’s” especial admirer is a maiden lady of ample means, who has an ardent desire to adopt him, but whose wishes are invariably thwarted by “Boy’s” mother, a “large, lazy, and unintelligent” woman with limited and peculiar ideas on the rearing and educating of children. The maiden lady herself has a devoted cavalier, in the shape of an elderly Major, who proposes to her regularly, only to be met with a gentle but steady negative. The lady’s heart is buried with a former lover, who, years before, went to India and died there; and although the Major knows that the object of his attachment is burning perpetual candles before a worthless shrine--for the dead man was a sad rascal in his day, and was, moreover, false to her--he prefers to let her live with her illusion rather than profit by acquainting her with the true facts of the case.

As the Major is generally in attendance on Miss Letitia Leslie we see a good deal of the bluff old soldier, for “Boy” is occasionally allowed to go and stay with “Miss Letty.” These are the golden periods of the good maiden lady’s life--and, too, of “Boy’s,” for while Miss Leslie cares for him properly, his mother exploits her ideas of motherhood by feeding the little fellow “on sloppy food which frequently did not agree with him, in dosing him with medicine when he was out of sorts, in dressing him anyhow, and in allowing him to amuse himself as he liked wherever he could, however he could, at all times, and in all places, dirty or clean.”

Meantime, Captain the Honorable D’Arcy Muir rolls in and out of the house--more often than not in that state of drunken combativeness which finds a vent in assaulting mantelpiece ornaments and the lighter articles of furniture--and Mrs. D’Arcy Muir reads novels, or, studying personal ease before appearance, slouches about the house in soft felt slippers and loosely fitting garments which frequently lack a sufficiency of buttons and hooks.

In spite of such surroundings “Boy” remains a very lovable little fellow until he goes to school. Then Miss Letty and the Major lose sight of him for a long period, for he is sent to a school in Brittany. The Major deplores the fact: “You must say good-bye to ‘Boy’ forever!... Don’t you see? The child has gone--and he’ll never come back. _A_ boy will come back, but not the boy _you_ knew. The boy you knew is practically dead.... The poor little chap had enough against him in his home surroundings, God knows!--but a cheap foreign school is the last straw on the camel’s back. Whatever is good in his nature will go to waste; whatever is bad will grow and flourish!”

As it happens, “Boy” stays in France only a year, but during that period Miss Letty, the Major, and the Major’s niece go to America and settle down there for a time. “Boy” reappears at the age of sixteen, when he is being educated at an English military school. One of the best-written scenes in the book describes the meeting of “Boy” with Miss Letty, who returns from America about this time. “Boy” has grown into a slim, awkward youth, getting on to six feet in height, callous, listless, and cynical. He has lost his old frankness; he is not, as the Major predicted, the “boy” that Miss Letty knew in the days gone by.

The description of the luncheon party when the four sides of the table are occupied respectively by Miss Letty, the Major, the latter’s niece, and “Boy,” is exceedingly well done, “Boy’s” stolid, _blasé_ replies to the many questions he is asked being exceedingly diverting, although one feels sorry to see into what an automaton he has grown.

“Are you glad you are going to be a soldier?” the Major asks him. “Oh, I don’t mind it!” says “Boy.” “Are you fond of flowers?” the girl demands of him a little later. “I don’t mind them much!” replies “Boy” indifferently. “Well, what _do_ you mind? Anything?” puts in the Major. “Boy” laughed. “I don’t know.”

This scene--from which we have merely extracted a few remarks--is in its way an excellent bit of comedy, but on behalf of public schoolboys generally we must say that we don’t think “Boy” would have put his hat on--as he is reported to have done--while still in the room with the ladies.

“Boy” passes into Sandhurst, but is expelled therefrom for drunkenness; he gets a clerkship, incurs card debts, alters the amount on a check which Miss Letty has sent him, repents of the fraud, returns the whole amount, with a manly apology, to Miss Letty, enlists, and is killed by the Boers. That, then, is the sad end of “Boy.”

In addition to the characters mentioned there are others of subsidiary importance, and there is, threading in and out of the “Boy” episodes, a love-story which ends tragically, at the time, for the Major’s niece, though she eventually meets the man Fate has decreed she shall marry, on a South African battle-field.

In no other book has Miss Corelli favored us with so many smile-provoking passages. There is, for instance, a good deal of grim humor about “Rattling Jack”--the salt-dried veteran of whom “Boy” makes a friend when the D’Arcy Muirs move from their London home in Hereford Square to cheaper quarters on the coast.

Rattling Jack doesn’t sympathize with the elementary methods of the young student of natural history. He doesn’t see why beetles and butterflies should be trapped and carried home for the “museum.” One day “Boy” brings for the old sailor’s inspection a beautiful rose-colored sea-anemone which he had managed to detach from the rocks and carry off in his tin pail.

“There y’are, you see!” cries Rattling Jack. “Now ye’ve made a fellow-creature miserable, y’are as ’appy as the day is long! Eh, eh--why for mussy’s sake didn’t ye leave it on the rocks in the sun with the sea a-washin’ it an’ the blessin’ of the Lord A’mighty on it? They things are jes’ like human souls--there they stick on a rock o’ faith and hope maybe, jes’ wantin’ nothin’ but to be let alone; and then by and by some one comes along that begins to poke at ’em, and pull ’em about, and wake up all their sensitiveness-like--’urt ’em as much as possible, that’s the way!--and then they pulls ’em off their rocks and carries ’em off in a mean little tin pail! Ay, ay, ye may call a tin pail whatever ye please--a pile o’ money or a pile o’ love--it’s nought but a tin pail--not a rock with the sun shinin’ upon it. And o’ coorse they dies--there ain’t no sense in livin’ in a tin pail.”

This weary-wise old fellow must be credited to Miss Corelli as one of her best portraits in miniature. His observations are full of sage and seasoning, and we could do with more of him.

Did Miss Corelli’s themes allow of it, we might have been treated to a good deal more humor in her works, but she is too good an artist to intrude comic relief when such relief would merely be an annoying interruption. But various passages in her books show her to be the possessor of a considerable sense of the laughable, and it is to be hoped that she will some day find time to write a story dealing with the lighter side of existence.