Read Ebook: The Island of Fantasy: A Romance by Hume Fergus

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Ebook has 4311 lines and 189585 words, and 87 pages

Transcriber's Note:

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber's note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

Sorrow and weariness, Heartache and dreariness, None should endure; Scale ye the mountain peak, Vale 'o the fountain seek, There is the cure.

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY

THE ISLAND OF FANTASY.

Your Eastern drugs, your spices, your perfumes, Are all in vain; They cannot snatch my soul from out its glooms, Nor soothe the brain. My mind is dark as cycle-seal?d tombs, And must remain In darkness till the light of God illumes Its black inane.

It was eight o'clock on a still summer evening, and, the ladies having retired, two men were lingering in a pleasant, indolent fashion over their wine in the dining-room of Roylands Grange. To be exact, only the elder gentleman was paying any attention to his port, for the young man who sat at the head of the table stared vaguely on his empty glass, and at his equally empty plate, as if his thoughts were miles away, which was precisely the case. Youth was moody, age was cheerful, for, while the former indulged in a brown study, the latter cracked nuts and sipped wine, with a just appreciation of the excellence of both. Judging from this outward aspect of things, there was something wrong with Maurice Roylands, for if reverend age in the presentable person of Rector Carriston could be merry, there appeared to be no very feasible reason why unthinking youth should be so ineffably dreary. Yet woe was writ largely on the comely face of the moody young man, and he joined but listlessly in the jocund conversation of his companion, which was punctuated in a very marked manner by the cracking of filberts.

Outside, a magical twilight brooded over the landscape, and the chill odors of eve floated from a thousand sleeping flowers into the mellow atmosphere of the room, which was irradiated by the soft gleam of many wax candles rising white and slender from amid the pale roses adorning the dinner-table. All was pleasant, peaceful, and infinitely charming; yet Maurice Roylands, aged thirty, healthy, wealthy, and not at all bad-looking, sat moodily frowning at his untasted dessert, as though he bore the weight of the world on his shoulders.

In truth, Mr. Roylands, with the usual self-worship of latter-day youth, thought he was being very hardly treated by Destiny, as that all-powerful goddess had given him everything calculated to make a mortal happy, save the capability of being happy. This was undeniably hard, and might be called the very irony of fate, for one might as well offer a sumptuous banquet to a dyspeptic, as give a man all the means of enjoyment, without the faculty of taking advantage of such good fortune. Roylands had considerable artistic power, an income of nearly six thousand a year, a fine house, friends innumerable--of the summer season sort; yet he neither cared about nor valued these blessings, for the simple reason that he was heartily sick of them, one and all. He would have been happier digging a patch of ground for his daily bread, than thus idling through life on an independent income, for Ennui, twin sister of Care, had taken possession of his soul, and in the midst of all his comforts he was thoroughly unhappy.

The proverb that "The rich are more miserable than the poor," is but a trite one on which to preach a sermon, for did not Solomon say all that there was to be said in the matter? It was an easier task to write a new play on the theme of Hamlet, than to compose a novel discourse on the "All is vanity" text; for on some subjects the final word has been said, and he who preaches thereon says nothing new, but only repeats the ideas of former orators, who in their turn doubtless reiterated the sayings of still earlier preachers, and so on back to Father Adam, to whom the wily serpent possibly delivered a sermon on the cynically wise saying illustrated so exhaustively by Solomon ben David. Therefore, to remark that Maurice was miserable amid all his splendors is a plagiarism, and they who desire to study the original version for themselves must read Ecclesiastes, which gives a minute analysis of the whole question, with cruelly true comments thereon.

When Roylands ten years before had gone to London, against the desire of his father, to take up the profession--if it can be called so--of a sculptor, he was full of energy and ambition. He had fully determined to set the Thames on fire by the creation of statues worthy of Canova, to make a great name in the artistic world, to become a member of the Academy, to inaugurate a new era in the history of English sculpture; so, with all this glory before him, he turned his back on the flesh-pots of Egypt and went to dwell in the land of Bohemia. In order to bring the lad to his senses, Roylands senior refused to aid him with a shilling until he gave up the pitiful trade--in this country squire's opinion--of chipping figures out of marble. Supplies being thus stopped, Maurice suffered greatly in those artistic days for lack of an assured income; yet in spite of all his deprivations, he was very happy in Bohemia until he lived down his enthusiasms. When matters came to that pass, the wine of life lost its zest for this young man, and he became a victim to melancholia, that terrible disease for which there is rarely--if any cure. He lived because he did not agree with Addison's Cato regarding the virtues of self-destruction, but as far as actual dying went it mattered to him neither one way nor the other. If he had done but little good during his life, at least he had done but little harm, so, thinking he could scarcely be punished severely for such a negative existence, he was quite willing to leave this world he found so dreary, provided the entrance into the next one was not of too painful a nature.

It is a bad thing for a young man to thus take to the pessimistic school of philosophy as exemplified by Schopenhauer, as, having nothing to look back at, nothing to look forward to, and nothing to hold on by, the scheme of his life falls into a ruinous condition, so, being without the safety anchor of Hope, he drifts aimlessly through existence, a nuisance to himself and to every one around him. Maurice, listless and despairing, did no more work than was absolutely necessary to earn a bare subsistence, and lived his life in a semi-dreamy, semi-lethargic condition, with no very distinct idea as to what was to be the ultimate end of all this dreariness. When night fell he was then more at rest, for in sleep he found a certain amount of compensation for the woes of his waking hours. As to his modelling, he took a positive dislike to it, and for this reason improved but little in his work during the last years of his Bohemian existence. Profoundly disgusted, without any positive reason, with himself, his art, the world, and his fellow-men, heaven only knows what would have become of him, had not an event happened which, by placing him in a new position, seemed to promise his redemption from the gloomy prison of melancholia.

The event in question was none other than the death of his father, and Maurice, as in duty bound, came down to the funeral. When the will of the late Squire was read, it was discovered that, with the exception of one or two trifling bequests, all the real and personal property was left to his only son; thus this fortunate young man at the age of thirty found himself independent of the world for the rest of his days, provided always he did not squander his paternal acres, a thing he had not the slightest intention of doing. Maurice had no leanings towards what is vulgarly termed a "fast life," for he detested horse-racing, cared but little for wine, and neither cards nor women possessed any fascination for him. Not that he was a model young man by any means, but his tastes were too refined, his nature too intellectual, to admit of his finding pleasure in drinking, gaming, and their concomitants. As to love, he did not know the meaning of the word,--at least not the real meaning,--which was rather a mistake, as it would certainly have given him an interest in life, and perhaps have prevented him yielding so readily to the influence of "black care," which even the genial Venusian knew something about, seeing he made her an equestrian.

Of course, he was sorry for the death of his father, but there had been so little real sympathy between them, that he could not absolutely look upon the event as an irreparable calamity. Maurice had always loved his mother more than his father, and when she died as he was leaving home for college he was indeed inconsolable; but he saw the remains of the late Mr. Roylands duly committed to the family vault without any violent display of grief, after which he returned to live the life of a country gentleman at the Grange, and wonder what would be the upshot of this new phase of his existence.

Solitude was abhorrent to him, as his thoughts were so miserable; therefore, for the sake of having some one to drive away the evil spirit, he invited his aunt, the Hon. Mrs. Dengelton, to stay at the Grange for a week or so. She came without hesitation, and brought her daughter Eunice also, upon which Maurice, finding two women more than an unhappy bachelor could put up with, asked the new poet Crispin, for whom he had a great liking, to come down to Roylands, which that young man did very willingly, as he was in love with Eunice, a state of things half guessed and wholly hated by Mrs. Dengelton, who much desired her daughter to marry the new Squire.

On this special evening, the Rev. Stephen Carriston, Rector of Roylands, had come to dinner, and, Crispin having retired to the drawing-room with the ladies, he found himself alone with his former pupil, much to his satisfaction, as he wished greatly to have a quiet talk with Maurice. Mr. Carriston was the oldest friend the young man had, having been his tutor in the long ago, and prepared him for college. Whatever success Maurice gained at Oxford--and such success was not inconsiderable--was due to the admirable way in which he had been coached by the rubicund divine.

Certainly the Rector loved the good things of this life, and looked as if he did, which is surely pardonable enough, especially in a bachelor; for at sixty-five years of age the Rector was still single, and much beloved by his parishioners, to whom he preached short, pithy sermons on the actions of their daily lives, which was assuredly much better than muddling their dull brains with theological hair-splitting. Being very fond of Maurice, he was greatly concerned to see the marked change which six years of London life had made in the young fellow. The merry, ambitious lad, who had departed so full of resolution to succeed, had now returned a weary-looking, worn-out man; and as the Rector, during the intervals of his nut-cracking, glanced at his former pupil, he was struck by the extreme melancholy which pervaded the whole face. Comely it was certainly, of the fresh-colored Saxon type, but the color had long since left those haggard cheeks, there were deep lines in the high forehead, the mouth was drawn downward in a dismal fashion under the trim mustache, and from the eyes looked forth an unhappy soul.

Yes, the Rector was considerably puzzled to account for this change, and resolved to find out what ailed the lad, but he hardly knew how to set about this delicate task, the more so, as he feared the consolations of religion would do but little good in this case; for Maurice, without being absolutely a sceptic, yet held opinions of a heterodox type, quite at variance with the declarations of the Thirty-Nine Articles in which the good Rector so firmly believed.

At length Mr. Carriston grew weary of cracking nuts and sipping port wine without the digestive aid of pleasant conversation, and therefore began to talk to his quondam pupil, with the firm determination to keep on talking until he discovered the secret of the young man's melancholy.

"Are you not going to fill your glass, Maurice?"

"No, thank you, sir. I am rather tired of port."

"I'm tired of claret."

"It seems to me, sir," observed Mr. Carriston leisurely, "that you are tired of all things."

"I am--including myself."

"Strange! A young man of thirty years of age, sound of mind and body, who is fortunate enough to inherit six thousand a year, ought to be happy."

"Money does not bring happiness."

"Ah, that proverb is quite worn out," replied the Rector cheerily; "try another, my boy, try another."

Maurice, leaning forward with a sigh, took a handful of nuts, which he proceeded to crack in a listless fashion. The Rector said nothing, but waited for Maurice to speak, which he was obliged to do out of courtesy, although much disinclined to resume the argument.

"I've tried everything, and I'm tired of everything."

"Even of that marble-chipping you call art?"

"I am more tired of that than of anything else," said Maurice emphatically.

"A bad case," murmured the Rector, shaking his gray head; "a very bad case, which needs curing. 'Nothing's new! nothing's true! and no matter,' says my Oxford fine gentleman. Maurice, I must assert my privilege as an old friend, and reason with you in this matter. I am sadly afraid, my dear lad, that you need whipping."

The ghost of a smile played over the tired face of the young man, and he assented heartily to the observation of his old tutor--nay, even added an amendment thereto.

"I do, sir, I do!" he said sombrely; "we all need whipping more or less--men, women, and children."

"I am afraid the last-named get the most of it," replied Carriston, with dry humor.

"With the birch, yes. But 'tis not so pleasant to be whipped by Fate."

"My dear lad, you cannot say she has whipped you."

"To continue your illustration, Rector, there are several modes of whipping,--the birch which pains the skin, poverty which pains the body, and despair which pains the soul. The latter is my case. I have health, wealth, and youth; but I feel the stings of the rod all the same."

"Yes?" queried Carriston interrogatively; "in what way?"

"I have not the capability of enjoying the blessings I possess."

"How so? Explain this riddle."

"I cannot explain it. I simply take no pleasure in life. Rich or poor, old or young, well or ill, I would still be as miserable as I am now."

"Hum! Let us look at the question from three points of view--comprehensive points. The legal, the medicinal, the religious. One of these, if properly applied, will surely solve the enigma."

"I doubt it."

"Ah, that is because you have made up your mind to doubt. 'None so blind as those who won't see.'"

"Who is quoting proverbs now, Mr. Carriston?"

"I am, sir, even I who dislike such arid chips of wisdom; but 'tis an excellent proverb, which has borne the wear and tear of centuries. Come now, Maurice, are you in any trouble connected with money? are you involved in any law-suit, or--or--well," said the Rector, delicately eying his glass, "I hardly know how to put it,--er--er--are you involved in any love affair?"

"No; my worldly position is all right, and I am not mixed up in any feminine trouble."

"Good! that settles the legal point. Now for the medical. Your liver must be out of order."

"I assure you, sir, I never felt better in my life."

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