Stella Fregelius: A Tale of Three Destinies Read online

  CHAPTER IV

  MARY PREACHES AND THE COLONEL PREVAILS

  A fortnight had gone by, and during this time Morris was a frequentvisitor at Seaview. Also his Cousin Mary had come over twice or thriceto lunch, with her father or without him. Once, indeed, she had stoppedall the afternoon, spending most of it in the workshop with Morris. Thisworkshop, it may be remembered, was the old chapel of the Abbey, a verybeautiful and still perfect building, finished in early Tudor times, inwhich, by good fortune, the rich stained glass of the east window stillremained. It made a noble and spacious laboratory, with its wide naveand lovely roof of chestnut wood, whereof the corbels were seraphs,white-robed and golden-winged.

  "Are you not afraid to desecrate such a place with your horrid vices--Imean the iron things--and furnace and litter?" asked Mary. She had sunkdown upon an anvil, on which lay a newspaper, the first seat that shecould find, and thence surveyed the strange, incongruous scene.

  "Well, if you ask, I don't like it," answered Morris. "But there is noother place that I can have, for my father is afraid of the forge in thehouse, and I can't afford to build a workshop outside."

  "It ought to be restored," said Mary, "with a beautiful organ in acarved case and a lovely alabaster altar and one of those perpetuallamps of silver--the French call them 'veilleuses', don't they?--and theStations of the Cross in carved oak, and all the rest of it."

  Mary, it may be explained, had a tendency to admire the outwardadornments of ritualism if not its doctrines.

  "Quite so," answered Morris, smiling. "When I have from five to seventhousand to spare I will set about the job, and hire a high-churchchaplain with a fine voice to come and say Mass for your benefit. By theway, would you like a confessional also? You omitted it from the list."

  "I think not. Besides, what on earth should I confess, except beingalways late for prayers through oversleeping myself in the morning, andgeneral uselessness?"

  "Oh, I daresay you might find something if you tried," suggested Morris.

  "Speak for yourself, please, Morris. To begin with your own account,there is the crime of sacrilege in using a chapel as a workshop. Look,those are all tombstones of abbots and other holy people, and undereach tombstone one of them is asleep. Yet there you are, using stronglanguage and whistling and making a horrible noise with hammers justabove their heads. I wonder they don't haunt you; I would if I werethey."

  "Perhaps they do," said Morris, "only I don't see them."

  "Then they can't be there."

  "Why not? Because things are invisible and intangible it does not followthat they don't exist, as I ought to know as much as anyone."

  "Of course; but I am sure that if there were anything of that sort aboutyou would soon be in touch with it. With me it is different; I couldsleep sweetly with ghosts sitting on my bed in rows."

  "Why do you say that--about me, I mean?" asked Morris, in a more earnestvoice.

  "Oh, I don't know. Go and look at your own eyes in the glass--butI daresay you do often enough. Look here, Morris, you think me verysilly--almost foolish--don't you?"

  "I never thought anything of the sort. As a matter of fact, if you wantto know, I think you a young woman rather more idle than most, and witha perfect passion for burying your talent in very white napkins."

  "Well, it all comes to the same thing, for there isn't much differencebetween fool-born and fool-manufactured. Sometimes I wake up, however,and have moments of wisdom--as when I made you hear that thing, youknow, thereby proving that it is all right, only useless--haven't I?"

  "I daresay; but come to the point."

  "Don't be in a hurry. It is rather hard to express myself. What I meanis that you had better give up staring."

  "Staring? I never stared at you or anyone else, in my life!"

  "Stupid Morris! By staring I mean star-gazing, and by star-gazing I meantrying to get away from the earth--in your mind, you know."

  Morris ran his fingers through his untidy hair and opened his lips toanswer.

  "Don't contradict me," she interrupted in a full steady voice. "That'swhat you are thinking of half the day, and dreaming about all thenight."

  "What's that?" he ejaculated.

  "I don't know," she answered, with a sudden access of indifference. "Doyou know yourself?"

  "I am waiting for instruction," said Morris, sarcastically.

  "All right, then, I'll try. I mean that you are not satisfied withthis world and those of us who live here. You keep trying to fashionanother--oh! yes, you have been at it from a boy, you see I have got agood memory, I remember all your 'vision stories'--and then you try toimagine its inhabitants."

  "Well," said Morris, with the sullen air of a convicted criminal,"without admitting one word of this nonsense, what if I do?"

  "Only that you had better look out that you don't _find_ whatever it isyou seek. It's a horrible mistake to be so spiritual, at least in thatkind of way. You should eat and drink, and sleep ten hours as I do, andnot go craving for vision till you can see, and praying for power untilyou can create."

  "See! Create! Who? What?"

  "The inhabitant, or inhabitants. Just think, you may have been buildingher up all this time, imagination by imagination, and thought bythought. Then her day might come, and all that you have put outpiecemeal will return at once. Yes, she may appear, and take you, andpossess you, and lead you----"

  "She? Why she? and where?"

  "To the devil, I imagine," answered Mary composedly, "and as you area man one can guess the guide's sex. It's getting dark, let us goout. This is such a creepy place in the dark that it actually makesme understand what people mean by nerves. And, Morris, of courseyou understand that I have only been talking rubbish. I always likedinventing fairy tales; you taught me; only this one is too grownup--disagreeable. What I really mean is that I do think it might be agood thing if you wouldn't live quite so much alone, and would go outa bit more. You are getting quite an odd look on your face; you areindeed, not like other men at all. I believe that it comes from yourworrying about this wretched invention until you are half crazy over thething. Any change there?"

  He shook his head. "No, I can't find the right alloy--not one that canbe relied upon. I begin to doubt whether it exists."

  "Why don't you give it up--for a while at any rate?"

  "I have. I made a novel kind of electrical hand-saw this spring, andsold the patent for 100 pounds and a royalty. There's commercial successfor you, and now I am at work on a new lamp of which I have the idea."

  "I am uncommonly glad to hear it," said Mary with energy. "And, I say,Morris, you are not offended at my silly parables, are you? You knowwhat I mean."

  "Not a bit. I think it is very kind of you to worry your head aboutan impossible fellow like me. And look here, Mary, I have done somedreaming in my time, it is true, for so far the world has been a placeof tribulation to me, and it is sick hearts that dream. But I mean togive it up, for I know as well as you do that there is only one end toall these systems of mysticism." Mary looked up.

  "I mean," he went on, correcting himself, "to the mad attempt unduly andprematurely to cultivate our spiritual natures that we may live to andfor them, and not to and for our natural bodies."

  "Exactly my argument, put into long words," said Mary. "There willbe plenty of time for that when we get down among those old gentlemenyonder--a year or two hence, you know. Meanwhile, let us take the worldas we find it. It isn't a bad place, after all, at times, and there areseveral things worth doing for those who are not too lazy.

  "Good-bye, I must be off; my bicycle is there against the railings.Oh, how I hate that machine! Now, listen, Morris; do you want to dosomething really useful, and earn the blessings of an affectionaterelative? Then invent a really reliable electrical bike, that would looknice and do all the work, so that I could sit on it comfortably and getto a place without my legs aching as though I had broken them, and a redface, and no breath left in my body."

  "I will think about it," he said; "
indeed, I have thought of it alreadybut the accumulators are the trouble."

  "Then go on thinking, there's an angel; think hard and continually untilyou evolve that blessed instrument of progression. I say, I haven't alamp."

  "I'll lend you mine," suggested Morris.

  "No; other people's lamps always go out with me, and so do my own, forthat matter. I'll risk it; I know the policeman, and if we meet I willargue with him. Good-bye; don't forget we are coming to dinner to-morrownight. It's a party, isn't it?"

  "I believe so."

  "What a bore, I must unpack my London dresses. Well, good-bye again."

  "Good-bye, dear," answered Morris, and she was gone.

  "'Dear,'" thought Mary to herself; "he hasn't called me that since I wassixteen. I wonder why he does it now? Because I have been scolding him,I suppose; that generally makes men affectionate."

  For a while she glided forward through the grey twilight, and then beganto think again, muttering to herself:

  "You idiot, Mary, why should you be pleased because he called you'dear'? He doesn't really care two-pence about you; his blood goes noquicker when you pass by and no slower when you stay away. Why do youbother about him? and what made you talk all that stuff this afternoon?Because you think he is in a queer way, and that if he goes on givinghimself up to his fancies he will become mad--yes, mad--because--Oh!what's the use of making excuses--because you are fond of him, andalways have been fond of him from a child, and can't help it. What afate! To be fond of a man who hasn't the heart to care for you or forany other woman. Perhaps, however, that's only because he hasn't foundthe right one, as he might do at any time, and then----"

  "Where are you going to, and where's your light?" shouted a hoarse voicefrom the pathway on which she was unlawfully riding.

  "My good man, I wish I knew," answered Mary, blandly.