A Romance of Two Worlds Part 28

Every eye was now turned upon me, and I looked up and laughed.

"Do you remember, Amy," I said, addressing Mrs. Everard, "how you told me I looked like a sick nun at Cannes? What do I look like now?"

"You look as if you had never been ill in your life," she replied.

"I was going to say," remarked Mr. Challoner in his deliberate manner, "that you remind me very much of a small painting of Diana that I saw in the Louvre the other day. You have the same sort of elasticity in your movements, and the same bright healthy eyes."

I bowed, still smiling. "I did not know you were such a flatterer, Mr.

Challoner! Diana thanks you!"

The conversation now became general, and turned, among other subjects, upon the growing reputation of Raffaello Cellini.

"What surprises me in that young man," said Colonel Everard, "is his colouring. It is simply marvellous. He was amiable enough to present me with a little landscape scene; and the effect of light upon it is so powerfully done that you would swear the sun was actually shining through it."

The fine sensitive mouth of Heliobas curved in a somewhat sarcastic smile.

"Mere trickery, my dear sir--a piece of clap-trap," he said lightly.

"That is what would be said of such pictures--in England at least. And it WILL be said by many oracular, long-established newspapers, while Cellini lives. As soon as he is dead--ah! c'est autre chose!--he will then most probably be acknowledged the greatest master of the age.

There may even be a Cellini 'School of Colouring,' where a select company of daubers will profess to know the secret that has died with him. It is the way of the world!"

Mr. Challoner's rugged face showed signs of satisfaction, and his shrewd eyes twinkled.

"Right you are, sir!" he said, holding up his gla.s.s of wine. "I drink to you! Sir, I agree with you! I calculate there's a good many worlds flying round in s.p.a.ce, but a more ridiculous, feeble-minded, contrary sort of world than this one, I defy any archangel to find!"

Heliobas laughed, nodded, and after a slight pause resumed:

"It is astonishing to me that people do not see to what an infinite number of uses they could put the little re-discovery they have made of LUMINOUS PAINT. In that simple thing there is a secret, which as yet they do not guess--a wonderful, beautiful, scientific secret, which may perhaps take them a few hundred years to find out. In the meantime they have got hold of one end of the thread; they can make luminous paint, and with it they can paint light-houses, and, what is far more important--ships. Vessels in mid-ocean will have no more need of fog-signals and different-coloured lamps; their own coat of paint will be sufficient to light them safely on their way. Even rooms can be so painted as to be perfectly luminous at night. A friend of mine, residing in Italy, has a luminous ballroom, where the ceiling is decorated with a moon and stars in electric light. The effect is exceedingly lovely; and though people think a great deal of money must have been laid out upon it, it is perhaps the only great ballroom in Italy that has been really cheaply fitted up. But, as I said before, there is another secret behind the invention or discovery of luminous paint--a secret which, when once unveiled, will revolutionize all the schools of art in the world."

"Do you know this secret?" asked Mrs. Challoner.

"Yes, madame--perfectly."

"Then why don't you disclose it for the benefit of everybody?" demanded Erne Challoner.

"Because, my dear young lady, no one would believe me if I did. The time is not yet ripe for it. The world must wait till its people are better educated."

"Better educated!" exclaimed Mrs. Everard. "Why, there is nothing talked of nowadays but education and progress! The very children are wiser than their parents!"

"The children!" returned Heliobas, half inquiringly, half indignantly.

"At the rate things are going, there will soon be no children left; they will all be tired little old men and women before they are in their teens. The very babes will be born old. Many of them are being brought up without any faith in G.o.d or religion; the result will be an increase of vice and crime. The purblind philosophers, miscalled wise men, who teach the children by the light of poor human reason only, and do away with faith in spiritual things, are bringing down upon the generations to come an unlooked-for and most terrific curse. Childhood, the happy, innocent, sweet, unthinking, almost angelic age, at which Nature would have us believe in fairies and all the delicate aerial fancies of poets, who are, after all, the only true sages--childhood, I say, is being gradually stamped out under the cruel iron heel of the Period--a period not of wisdom, health, or beauty, but one of drunken delirium, in which the world rushes feverishly along, its eyes fixed on one hard, glittering, stony-featured idol--Gold. Education! Is it education to teach the young that their chances of happiness depend on being richer than their neighbours? Yet that is what it all tends to.

Get on!--be successful! Trample on others, but push forward yourself!

Money, money!--let its c.h.i.n.k be your music; let its yellow shine be fairer than the eyes of love or friendship! Let its piles acc.u.mulate and ever acc.u.mulate! There are beggars in the streets, but they are impostors! There is poverty in many places, but why seek to relieve it?

Why lessen the sparkling heaps of gold by so much as a coin? Acc.u.mulate and ever acc.u.mulate! Live so, and then--die! And then--who knows what then?"

His voice had been full of ringing eloquence as he spoke, but at these last words it sank into a low, thrilling tone of solemnity and earnestness. We all looked at him, fascinated by his manner, and were silent.

Mr. Challoner was the first to break the impressive pause.

"I'm not a speaker, sir," he observed slowly, "but I've got a good deal of feeling somewheres; and you'll allow me to say that I feel your words--I think they're right true. I've often wanted to say what you've said, but haven't seen my way clear to it. Anyhow, I've had a very general impression about me that what we call Society has of late years been going, per express service, direct to the devil--if the ladies will excuse me for plain speaking. And as the journey is being taken by choice and free-will, I suppose there's no hindrance or stoppage possible. Besides, it's a downward line, and curiously free from obstructions."

"Bravo, John!" exclaimed Mrs. Challoner. "You are actually corning out!

I never heard you indulge in similes before."

"Well, my dear," returned her husband, somewhat gratified, "better late than never. A simile is a good thing if it isn't overcrowded. For instance, Mr. Swinburne's similes are laid on too thick sometimes.

There is a verse of his, which, with all my admiration for him, I never could quite fathom. It is where he earnestly desires to be as 'Any leaf of any tree;' or, failing that, he wouldn't mind becoming 'As bones under the deep, sharp sea.' I tried hard to see the point of that, but couldn't fix it."

We all laughed. Zara, I thought, was especially merry, and looked her loveliest. She made an excellent hostess, and exerted herself to the utmost to charm--an effort in which she easily succeeded.

The shadow on the face of her brother had not disappeared, and once or twice I noticed that Father Paul looked at him with a certain kindly anxiety.

The dinner approached its end. The dessert, with its luxurious dishes of rare fruit, such as peaches, plantains, hothouse grapes, and even strawberries, was served, and with it a delicious, sparkling, topaz-tinted wine of Eastern origin called Krula, which was poured out to us in Venetian gla.s.s goblets, wherein lay diamond-like lumps of ice.

The air was so exceedingly oppressive that evening that we found this beverage most refreshing. When Zara's goblet was filled, she held it up smiling, and said:

"I have a toast to propose."

"Hear, hear!" murmured the gentlemen, Heliobas excepted.

"To our next merry meeting!" and as she said this she kissed the rim of the cup, and made a sign as though wafting it towards her brother.

He started as if from a reverie, seized his gla.s.s, and drained off its contents to the last drop.

Everyone responded with heartiness to Zara's toast and then Colonel Everard proposed the health of the fair hostess, which was drunk with enthusiasm.

After this Zara gave the signal, and all the ladies rose to adjourn to the drawing-room. As I pa.s.sed Heliobas on my way out, he looked so sombre and almost threatening of aspect, that I ventured to whisper:

"Remember Azul!"

"She has forgotten ME!" he muttered.

"Never--never!" I said earnestly. "Oh, Heliobas! what is wrong with you?"

He made no answer, and there was no opportunity to say more, as I had to follow Zara. But I felt very anxious, though I scarcely knew why, and I lingered at the door and glanced back at him. As I did so, a low, rumbling sound, like chariot-wheels rolling afar off, broke suddenly on our ears.

"Thunder," remarked Mr. Challoner quietly. "I thought we should have it. It has been unnaturally warm all day. A good storm will clear the air."

In my brief backward look at Heliobas, I noted that when that far-distant thunder sounded, he grew very pale. Why? He was certainly not one to have any dread of a storm--he was absolutely dest.i.tute of fear. I went into the drawing-room with a hesitating step--my instincts were all awake and beginning to warn me, and I murmured softly a prayer to that strong, invisible majestic spirit which I knew must be near me--my guardian Angel. I was answered instantly--my foreboding grew into a positive certainty that some danger menaced Heliobas, and that if I desired to be his friend, I must be prepared for an emergency.

Receiving this, as all such impressions should be received, as a direct message sent me for my guidance, I grew calmer, and braced up my energies to oppose SOMETHING, though I knew not what.

Zara was showing her lady-visitors a large alb.u.m of Italian photographs, and explaining them as she turned the leaves. As I entered the room, she said eagerly to me:

"Play to us, dear! Something soft and plaintive. We all delight in your music, you know."

"Did you hear the thunder just now?" I asked irrelevantly.

"It WAS thunder? I thought so!" said Mrs. Everard. "Oh, I do hope there is not going to be a storm! I am so afraid of a storm!"

"You are nervous?" questioned Zara kindly, as she engaged her attention with some very fine specimens among the photographs, consisting of views from Venice.

"Well, I suppose I am," returned Amy, half laughing. "Yet I am plucky about most things, too. Still I don't like to hear the elements quarrelling together--they are too much in earnest about it--and no person can pacify them."