Mr. Marx's Secret Part 3

One afternoon chance led me into the little room which my mother called her own, a room I seldom entered. There was a small volume lying on the table and carelessly I took it up and glanced at the t.i.tle. Then, with a quick exclamation of pleasure, I carried it away with me. It was Mr.

Ravenor's first little volume of poems, which I had tried in vain to get.

The Mellborough bookseller of whom I had ordered it told me that it was out of print. The first edition had been exhausted long since and the author had refused to allow a second edition to be issued.

I met my mother in the hall and held out the volume to her.

"You never told me that you had a copy of Mr. Ravenor's poems," I said reproachfully. "I have just found it in your room."

She started, and for a moment I feared that she was going to insist upon my giving up the book. She did not do so, however; but I noticed that the hand which was resting upon the banister was grasping the handrail nervously, as though for support, and that she was white to the very lips.

"No; I had forgotten," she said slowly--"I mean that I had forgotten you had ever asked for it. Take care of it, Philip, and give it me back to-night. It was given to me by a friend and I value it."

I promised and left the house. My range of pleasures was in some respects a limited one, but it did not prevent me from being an epicure with regard to their enjoyment. I did not glance inside the book, although I was longing to do so, until I had walked five or six miles and had reached one of my favourite halting-places. Then I threw myself down in the shadow of a great rock on the top of Beacon Hill and took the volume from my pocket.

It was a small, olive-green book, delicately bound, and printed upon rough paper. It had been given to my mother, evidently, for her Christian name was inside, written in a fine, dashing hand, and underneath were some initials which had become indistinct. Then, having satisfied myself of this, and handled it for a few moments, I turned over the pages rapidly and began to read.

The first part was composed almost entirely of sonnets and love-poems.

One after another I read them and wondered. There was nothing amateurish, nothing weak, here. They were full of glowing imagery, of brilliant colouring, of pa.s.sion, of fire. Crude some of them seemed to me, who had read no modern poetry and knew many of Shakespeare's and Milton's sonnets by heart; but full of genius, nevertheless, and with the breath of life warm in them.

The second portion was devoted to longer poems and these I liked best.

There was in some more than a touch of the graceful, fascinating mysticism of Sh.e.l.ley, the pa.s.sionate outcry of a strong, n.o.ble mind, seeking to wrest from Nature her vast secrets and to fathom the mysteries of existence; the wail of bewildered n.o.bility of soul turning in despair from the cold creeds of modern religion to seek some other and higher form of spiritual life.

I read on until the sun had gone down and the shades of twilight had chased the afterglow from the western sky. Then I closed the book and rose suddenly with a great start.

Scarcely a dozen yards away, on the extreme summit of the hill, a man on horseback sat watching me. His unusually tall figure and the fine shape of the coal-black horse which he was riding, stood out against the background of the distant sky with a vividness which seemed almost more than natural. Such a face as his I had never seen, never imagined. I could neither describe it, nor think of anything with which to compare it.

Dark, with jet-black hair, and complexion perfectly clear, but tanned by Southern suns; a small, firm mouth; a high forehead, furrowed with thought; aquiline nose; grey-blue eyes, powerful and expressive--any man might thus be described, and yet lack altogether the wonderful charm of the face into which I looked. It was the rare combination of perfect cla.s.sical modelling with intensity of character and n.o.bility of intellect. It was the face of a king among men; and yet there were times when a certain smile played around those iron lips, and a certain light flashed in those brilliant eyes, when to look into it made me shudder.

But that was afterwards.

He remained looking at me and I at him, for fully a minute. Then he beckoned to me with his whip--a slight but imperious gesture. I rose and walked to his side.

"Who are you?" he asked curtly.

"My name is Philip Morton," I answered. "I live at Rothland Wood farmhouse."

"Son of the man who was murdered?"

I a.s.sented. He gazed at me fixedly, with the faintest possible expression of interest in his languid grey eyes.

"You were very intent upon your book," he remarked. "What was it?"

I held it up.

"You should know it, sir," I answered.

He glanced at the t.i.tle and shrugged his shoulders slightly. There were indications of a frown upon his fine forehead.

"You should be able to employ your time better than that," he said.

"I don't think so. I am fond of reading--especially poetry," I replied.

The idea seemed to amuse him, for he smiled, and the stem lines in his countenance relaxed for a moment. Directly his lips were parted his whole expression was transformed and I understood what women had meant when they talked about the fascination of his face.

"Fond of reading, are you? A village bookworm. Well, they say that to book-lovers every volume has a language and a mission of its own. What do my schoolboy voices tell you?"

"That you were once in love," I answered quickly.

A half-amused, half-contemptuous shade pa.s.sed across his face.

"Youth has its follies, like every other stage of life," he said. "I daresay I experienced the luxury of the sensation once, but it must have been a long time ago. Come, is that all it tells you?"

"It tells me that men lie when they call you an Atheist."

He sat quite still on his horse and the smile on his lips became a mocking one.

"Atheism was most unfashionable when those verses were written," he remarked. "Any other 'ism' was popular enough, but Atheism sounded ugly.

Besides, I was only a boy then. Perhaps I had some imagination left. It is a gift which one loses in later life."

"But religion is not dependent upon imagination."

"Wholly. Religion is an effort of imagination and, therefore, is more or less a matter of disposition. That is one of its chief absurdities. Women and sensitive boys are easiest affected by it. Men of st.u.r.dy common-sense, men with brains and the knowledge how to use them, are every day bursting the trammels of an effete orthodoxy."

"And what can their common-sense and their brains give them in its place?" I asked. "I cannot conceive any practical religion without orthodoxy."

"A little measure of philosophy. It is all they want. Only the faint-hearted, who have not the courage to contemplate physical annihilation, console themselves by building up a hysterical faith in an impossible hereafter. There is no hereafter."

"A horrible creed!" I exclaimed.

"By no means. Let men devote half the time and the efforts that they devote to this phantasy of religion to schooling themselves in philosophic thought, and they will learn to contemplate it unmoved. To recognise that the end of life is inevitable is to rob it of most of its terrors, save to cowards. The man who wastes a tissue of his body in regretting what he cannot prevent is a fool. Annihilation is a more comfortable doctrine and a more reasonable one, too. Don't you agree with me, boy?"

"No; not with a single word!" I cried, growing hot and a little angry, for I could see that he was only half in earnest and I had no fancy to be made a b.u.t.t of. "Imagination is not the groundwork of religion; common-sense is. Why----"

"Oh, spare me the stock arguments!" he broke in, with a slight shudder.

"Keep your religion and hug it as close as you like, if you find it any comfort to you. Where have you been to school?"

"Nowhere," I answered. "I have read with Mr. Sands, the curate of Rothland."

He laughed softly to himself, as though the idea amused him, looking at me all the time as though I were some sort of natural curiosity.

"Fond of reading, are you?" he asked abruptly.

"Yes. Fonder than I am of anything else."

"And your books--where do they come from?"

"Wherever I can get any. From the library at Mellborough, or from Mr.

Sands, most of them." He laughed again and repeated my words, as though amused.

"No wonder you're behind the times," he remarked. "Now, shall I lend you some books?"