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

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

Mr. Carriston's face now assumed a grave expression as he put the last question to his host.

"And the religious point?"

"I am not troubled on that score, sir."

The Rev. Stephen looked doubtful.

"Whatever my religious views may be," resumed Maurice, seeing the Rector was but half convinced, "and I am afraid they can hardly be called orthodox, I at least can safely say that my past life is not open to misconstruction."

"Good! good! I always had confidence in you, Maurice. Yours is not the nature to find pleasure in gutter-raking. Well, it seems that none of those three points meet the case. Can you not give me some understandable reason for this melancholy which renders your life so bitter?"

"No. I went to London full of joy, energy, and ambition; but in some way--I cannot tell you how--I lost all those feelings. First joy departed, then ambition fled away, and with these two feelings absent I felt no further energy to do anything. It may be satiety, certainly. I have explored the heights and depths of London life, I have read books new and old, I have studied as far as in me lay my fellow-men, I have tried to fall in love with my fellow-women--and failed dismally. In fact, Mr. Carriston, I have exhausted the world, and find it as empty as this."

He held up a nut which he had just cracked, and it contained no kernel--an apt illustration of his wasted life.

The rector shook his head again in some perplexity, and filled himself another glass of port, while Maurice, rising from his seat, sauntered to the window, and looked absently at the peaceful scene before him. The moon, rising slowly over the tree-tops, flooded the landscape with her pale gleam, so that the gazer could see the glimmer of the white marble statues far down in the dewy darkness of the lawn, the sombre woods black against the clear sky, and away in the distance the thin streak of silver, which told of the restless ocean. A salt wind was blowing overland from thence, and, dilating his nostrils, opening his mouth, he inhaled the vivifying breeze in long breaths, while dully in his ears sounded the sullen thunder of the far-away billows rolling backward in sheets of shattered foam.

"Oh, Mother Nature! Demeter! Tellus! Isis!" he murmured, half closing his eyes; "tis only from thee I can hope to gain a panacea for this gnawing pain of life. I am weary of the world, tired of this aimless existence, but to thee will I fly to seek solace in thine healing balms."

"Maurice!"

"Yes, sir."

It was the rector who spoke, and the sound of his mellow voice roused the young man from his dreaming; therefore, resuming his normal manner, he lighted a cigarette and prepared to listen to the conversation of his old tutor.

"Are you still as good a German scholar as you used to be?" asked the rector deliberately.

"Not quite. My German, like myself, has grown somewhat rusty."

"Self-sickness."

"Yes; that is about as good an English equivalent as can be found. Well, that is what you are suffering from."

"Oh, wise physician," retorted Roylands, with irony. "I know the cause of the disease myself, but what of the cure?"

"You must fall in love."

"No one can fall in love to order."

"Well, you must make the attempt at all events," said Carriston, with a genial laugh; "it is the only cure for your disease."

"Why do you think so?"

"Because it is your egotism makes you miserable. You care for no one but yourself, and are therefore bound to suffer from such selfishness. True happiness lies in self-abnegation, a virtue which all men preach, but few men practise. 'Every man,' says Goethe, 'thinks himself the centre of the universe.' This is true--particularly true in your case. You have been so much taken up with your own woes and troubles that you have had no time to see those of your fellow-creatures, and such exclusive analysis of one's inner life leads naturally to self-sickness. You are torturing yourself by yourself; you have destroyed the sense of pleasure, and can therefore see nothing good on God's earth. You would like to cut the Gordian knot by death, but have neither the courage nor resolution to make away with yourself. Oh, I know the reason of such hesitation.

''Tis better to endure the ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of.'

I have no doubt that is your feeling about the hereafter. Well, with all this you feel you are in prison and cannot escape, because a last remnant of manliness forbids you opening the only door by which you can go hence. Therefore you are forced to remain on earth, and condemned yourself to supply the tortures from which you suffer. Have I not described your condition accurately?"

"You have," replied Maurice, rather astonished at the rector's penetration. "I do torture myself, I know, but that is because I cannot escape from my own thoughts. Pin-pricks hurt more than cannon balls, and incessant worries are far more painful than great calamities. But all you have said touches on the disease only, it does not say how the cure you propose will benefit me."

He had come back to his seat, and was now leaning forward with folded arms, looking at the benevolent face of his friend. The discussion, having roused his interest, made him forget himself for the moment, and with such forgetfulness the moody look passed away from his face. The rector saw this, and immediately made use of it as a point in his favor.

"Ah, if you could but behold yourself in the glass at this moment," he said approvingly, "you would see the point I am aiming at without need of further discussion. I have interested you, and consequently you have forgotten for the moment your self-torture. That is what love will do. If you love a woman, she will fill your whole soul, your whole being, and give you an interest in life. What she admires you will admire, what she takes an interest in you will take an interest in; and thus, being busy with other things, you will forget to worry your brains about your own perfections or imperfections. And if you are happy enough to become a father, children will give you a great interest in life, and you will find that God has appointed you work to do which is ready to your hand. When you discover the work, aided by wife and children, you will do it, and thus be happy. Remember those fine words of Burns,--

'To make a happy fireside clime For weans and wife, That's the true pathos and sublime Of human life.'"

"What you say sounds fine but dull. I don't care about such wearisome domesticity."

"What you call wearisome domesticity," said the Rector in a voice of emotion, "is the happiest state in which a man can find himself. Home, wife, children, domestic love, domestic consolations--what more can the heart of man desire? Laurel crowns cure no aching head, but the gentle kiss of a loved wife in time of trouble is indeed balm in Gilead."

Maurice looked at the old man in amazement, for never had he seen him so moved.

"You speak feelingly, Rector," he said at length, with a certain hesitation.

"I speak as I feel," replied Carriston with a sigh. "I also have my story, old and unromantic-looking as I am. Come over to the Rectory to-morrow, my dear lad, and I will tell you something which will make you see how foolish it is to be miserable in God's beautiful world."

"I am afraid it will give you pain."

"No; it will not give me pain. What was my greatest sorrow is now my greatest consolation. You will come and see me to-morrow?"

"If you wish it."

"I do wish it."

"Then I will come."

"But come, Maurice," said the Rector, after a pause, "I was talking about curing you by marriage."

"Love!"

"Well, marriage in your case, I hope, will be love," observed Carriston, a trifle reproachfully. "I would be sorry indeed to see you make any woman your wife unless it was for true love's sake."

"Well, whom do you want me to love?"

"Ah, that is for you to decide. But, if I may make a suggestion, I should say, Eunice."

"Eunice!"

"She is a charming girl. Highly educated, good-looking"--

"But so prim."

"Oh, that is but a suspicion of old maidism, which will wear off after a month or two of married life."

"Do you think she would make me a good wife?"

"I am sure of it."

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