The love of Beauvais is apparently returned by Pauline, and all goes merrily in the direction of marriage-bells, whose ringing seems a matter of no great distance off when the two young people become betrothed; although it is apparent to a great friend of Pauline’s, Heloïse St. Cyr, that the schoolgirl is not so sure of herself in the matter of being in love as she should be.

Among the many charmingly French touches in this book is Pauline’s reassuring speech to her lover. “Be satisfied, Gaston; I am thy very good little fiancée, who is very, very fond of thee, and happy in thy company, voilà tout!” And then, taking a rose from her bouquet-de-corsage, she fastens it in his button-hole, enchanting him completely.

Then comes Silvion Guidèl, nephew of M. Vaudron, Curé of the parish in which live the De Charmilles. Guidèl is destined for the priesthood and possesses considerable personal charms. Beauvais père comments on them:

As events prove, Beauvais fils has only too good reason to distrust the embryo priest. Soon after, Beauvais père is called away to London for several weeks, and, as a consequence of the superintending of the Paris banking house falling entirely to the son, Gaston sees but little of his fiancée. But he is often in the company of Silvion Guidèl, to whom he becomes much attached in spite of his previous feelings towards M. Vaudron’s nephew. So, writing the history of those days long afterwards, Beauvais acknowledges that he was mistaken in changing his attitude towards Guidèl:

The wedding day draws closer, and Beauvais remains blind to everything save his own joy and the bliss which he fondly imagines will result from the union. True, he sometimes notices a certain lack of enthusiasm in Pauline’s view of the approaching ceremony, but he attributes this and her wistfulness of expression to “the nervous excitement a young girl would naturally feel at the swift approach of her wedding day.” Strangely enough, Guidèl, too, shows signs of physical and mental distress, but when Beauvais rallies him on his manner and appearance, he puts the young banker off with light speeches in which, however, there is a certain bitterness which puzzles the latter considerably. However, Beauvais still suspects nothing. At length Pauline shatters all his dreams of the future, and makes him a miserable wretch for life, by confessing that she loves Silvion Guidèl, that her love is returned, and that, in consequence of this mutual passion, the worst of possible fates has befallen her.

Then Beauvais flies to absinthe drinking, which is the keynote of the story. From that time on it is all absinthe. A broken-down painter, André Gessonex, lures him on to this disastrous form of begetting forgetfulness; and this is the first step down the short steep hill which leads to the young banker’s utter ruin. Having once tasted the potent and fascinating mixture, he returns to it again and again, and gradually it warps him, physically and mentally, finally transforming him into one of the meanest scoundrels in Paris.

But this is after many days. On the morning after his first bout of absinthe drinking, Beauvais decides to challenge Silvion, but discovers that the betrayer of Pauline has disappeared from Paris. Thereupon, though sore at heart, he determines to save Pauline’s family an infinity of shame by marrying the girl; and so the preparations continue.

But in the interval that elapses between this decision and the date fixed for the nuptials, the absinthe works a terrible change in Beauvais’ attitude towards Pauline, with the result that, when the day of the ceremony arrives, he denounces her before her parents and the large assembly of guests as the cast-off mistress of Guidèl, and harshly refuses to make her his wife.

The awful effect of this speech may be imagined; poor Pauline’s looks confirm the truth of his statement; the guests quietly leave the broken-hearted parents with their daughter; there is no marriage. Take the decorations down; fling the wedding feast to the mendicants who whine round the house; there is no marriage!

Even Beauvais père turns on his miscreant of a son as they quit the desolate girl’s abode:

More than this, the indignant old man gives his son a substantial sum of money, and turns him out of his house.

Pauline, too, leaves her home in a mysterious and sudden fashion, without telling any one where she is going. The death of her father, M. de Charmilles, quickly follows. Beauvais drinks himself stupid every night, and spends his days doggedly hunting for Pauline, who, he feels sure, has hidden herself in the loathsome slums in which Paris abounds. And in time he does meet her, but long before this he encounters her seducer, Silvion Guidèl, and, after a mad struggle, throttles him, and casts the corpse into the Seine.

The murder is not traced home to Beauvais, who drinks more deeply than ever of the deadly absinthe, and becomes more surely its slave with every draught. Gessonex, the disreputable artist who introduced him to this form of vice, ends his failure of a career by shooting himself on the pavement outside of a café after one of these carousals, and it is while Beauvais is visiting the artist’s grave that he at last sets eyes on Pauline, kneeling by the tomb of the De Charmilles. For he cannot mistake the figure crouching by that closed door: “She was slight, and clad in poorest garments—the evening wind blew her thin shawl about her like a gossamer sail,—but the glimmer of the late sunlight glistened on a tress of nut-brown hair that had escaped from its coils and fell loosely over her shoulders,—and my heart beat thickly as I looked,—I knew—I felt that woman was Pauline!”

When he endeavors to track her to her lodgings, however, she unconsciously eludes him, and he obtains no clue as to where she may be found.

Weeks go by, and Beauvais swallows more and more absinthe by way of deadening thought and feeling. The insidious poison is beginning to tell on his brain. At times he is seized by the notion that everything about him is of absurdly abnormal proportions, or the reverse. “Men and women would, as I looked at them, suddenly assume the appearance of monsters both in height and breadth, and again, would reduce themselves in the twinkling of an eye to the merest pigmies.” So, while the absintheur’s brain and body decline, the summer fades into autumn, and he is still looking for Pauline. At length, one dismal November evening, whilst wandering home in his usual heavily drugged condition, he hears a woman singing in one of the by-streets. She is singing a well-known convent chant, the “Guardian Angel”:

It is Pauline at last! Then the absinthe tells its tale, and Beauvais completes his scheme of vengeance. With cold-blooded ferocity he confesses that he has slain her lover, whereupon the desolate girl, the hopes she had fostered of meeting Silvion again being forever shattered, buries her woes in the dark bosom of the river of sighs.

Beauvais haunts the Morgue for two days, and his patience is rewarded. Here is a piece of description which, in its way, is perfect:

And that, practically, is the end of the story, for Gaston Beauvais, having revenged himself on his sweetheart and her betrayer, has nought to do now save drink absinthe. Delirium tremens ensues, Beauvais is laid up for a month, and at the end of that period the doctor speaks plain words of wisdom and warning to him:

But the physician’s admonition falls on heedless ears. Beauvais returns to the alluring glass, and the book ends with the confession that he is a confirmed absintheur—“a thing more abject than the lowest beggar that crawls through Paris whining for a sou!—a slinking, shuffling beast, half monkey, half man, whose aspect is so vile, whose body is so shaken with delirium, whose eyes are so murderous, that if you met me by chance in the daytime, you would probably shriek for sheer alarm!”

Such is the graphic and terrible picture drawn by Marie Corelli of the effects of this iniquitous draught. If Beauvais had not been tempted by Gessonex to taste it, it is not probable that Pauline’s piteous confession would have resulted in such wholesale tragedy; for Heloïse St. Cyr, the sweet woman-friend of the bride-elect’s, dies, too, and so an entire happy household is destroyed by reason of one man’s uncontrollable savagery.

Had Beauvais never put his lips to the fatal glass, he would in all probability, on hearing what had befallen his sweetheart, have quietly broken off the match. For, it must be remembered, he was a respectable young banker, of sober mien and quiet ways, not a Bohemian and frequenter of all-night cafés. But he tasted absinthe, and so brought about his undoing, as many another young Parisian is bringing it about at the present day. Here is the novelist’s fierce denunciation of the vice:

“Wormwood” is undoubtedly a work of genius—a strange, horrible book, yet fraught with a tremendous moral. The story of inhuman vengeance goes swiftly on, without a stop or stay; one feels that the little bride-girl is doomed, that the priest must die, that unutterable misery must be the final lot of all the actors in the story.

Marie Corelli does not overstate the case when she declares that absinthe has taken a grim and cancerous hold of Paris. It is called for in the cafés as naturally as we, in London, order a “small” or “large” Bass. But what a difference in the two beverages! A French writer of authority says that fifteen per cent. of the French army are rendered incapable by the use of absinthe.

The bulk of the French populace drinks either bock or light wine, and it takes a fairly large amount of either to produce intoxication. In England the populace drinks draught ale or whiskey. Comparing the two peoples and their behavior—for example—on public holidays, we must allow that the French are by far the more sober nation. But in London we have not—except in one or two West-End cafés—this dreadful absinthe, and we may well be thankful that the drinking of it has not grown upon us as it has grown upon the Parisians.

Could not Marie Corelli turn the heavy guns of her genius on the drink question this side of the Channel! The field is a very wide one. Children under fourteen are now prevented by law from being served at public-houses. It would be a good plan, too, if women could not order intoxicants from grocers. Many a man, in discharging his grocer’s account, does not trouble to inspect the items, or is not afforded the chance of inspecting them; many a man, however, if he were to submit his grocer’s book to a close scrutiny, would find that bottles of inferior wines and spirits were being supplied along with the raisins and baking-powder not for his own, the cook’s, or his family’s use, but for the secret consumption of his wife.

In suggesting new legislative measures with regard to the sale of intoxicants in this country, Marie Corelli would be performing a public service worthy of the Nation’s profoundest gratitude.

“The Soul of Lilith,” which was published about a year after “Wormwood,” is a work of a very different character. This book treats of a subject in which Marie Corelli revels. As a brief introductory note explains, “The Soul of Lilith” does not assume to be what is generally understood by a “novel,” being simply the account “of a strange and daring experiment once actually attempted,” and offered to those who are interested in the unseen possibilities of the Hereafter. It is the story of a man “who voluntarily sacrificed his whole worldly career in a supreme effort to prove the apparently Unprovable.”

This persistent probing on Marie Corelli’s part of what most writers shun and very few have ever attempted to solve, is one of the secrets of her great sales. Turn to page 319 of “The Soul of Lilith,” and you will find the matter put neatly in a nutshell:

This passage may afford a little light to those people who are forever declaring that they cannot understand what other people can see in Marie Corelli. The fact is, Marie Corelli appeals to a tremendous section of the public—a section in which, we are assured, the fair sex does not predominate. Indeed, the majority of the novelist’s correspondents are men. Marie Corelli is intensely in earnest, imaginative, and passionate. She lets her reader know, before she has covered many pages, precisely what her book is to be about, and in this way she spares one the irritation excited by those old-fashioned writers who used to drone on for chapter after chapter, making headway in an exasperatingly slow and cumbrous fashion.

Then it must be taken into consideration that there is a very big public which has practically nothing to do except eat meals, sleep, take exercise, and read novels. Such people are necessarily more introspective than busy folk, and many of them are exceedingly anxious as to what will become of them when it shall please Providence to put an end to their aimless existence in this vale of smiles and tears. Marie Corelli supplies them with ample food for thought and argument.

Perhaps all these attempts to solve the Unsolvable have a morbid tendency; a little simple faith is certainly more salutary. However that may be, a very great public regards such attempts as more engrossing reading-matter than tales “of love and politics and society”; and a still stronger reason for Marie Corelli’s immense popularity is to be found in the fact that she is the only female Richmond in the field. She sits on a splendidly isolated throne, a writer whose genius has enabled her to soar to certain peculiar heights which no other literary man or woman has succeeded in scaling.

“The Soul of Lilith,” as we have inferred, displays its author in her element. It is a work which, from its nature, may be classed with “A Romance of Two Worlds” and “Ardath.” It possesses the same mystic properties, the same speculative endeavors to obtain knowledge that is denied to mortals.

This is the kernel of the story, which narrates how El-Râmi, a man of Arabian origin, possessing many of the mysteriously occult powers peculiar to the Indian fakir, injects a certain fluid into the still warm veins of a dead Egyptian girl-child called Lilith. In this way he preserves her body in a living condition, and the success of his experiment is proved by the fact that Lilith passes from childhood to womanhood whilst in this state, and answers questions put to her by El-Râmi.

It is the desire of El-Râmi, however, to make himself master of Lilith’s soul as well as of her body, and this impious object leads to the destruction of the fair form he has preserved and of his own reason. For he falls in love with Lilith, and the declaration of his passion is followed by her crumbling away to dust. The shock to his highly strung organization results in his mental collapse, and from this he never recovers.

There are many passages of wild beauty and extraordinary power in this story, which occupies many pages in the telling before the superbly dramatic dénouement is reached. Heliobas, the wise physician of “A Romance of Two Worlds,” but now turned monk, is introduced into the story, and warns El-Râmi that his atheistic experiment will prove fruitless:

El-Râmi reminds Heliobas that it is only a woman’s soul that he is striving for—“how should it baffle mine? Of slighter character—of more sensitive balance—and always prone to yield,—how should it prove so strong? Though, of course, you will tell me that Souls, like Angels, are sexless.”

The monk repudiates such a suggestion. “All created things have sex,” he declares, “even the angels. ‘Male and Female created He them’—recollect that,—when it is said God made Man in ‘His Own Image.’”

“What! Is it possible you would endow God Himself with the Feminine attributes as well as the Masculine?” cries El-Râmi, in astonishment.

The verbal duel between Heliobas, the man of God, and El-Râmi, the man of Science, is exceedingly well-written. In the course of their conversation El-Râmi opines that Heliobas is more of a poet than either a devotee or a scientist. The monk’s rejoinder is worth quoting:

In spite, however, of Heliobas’ warning words, El-Râmi proceeds with his experiment, which ends as recorded. The scientist is taken by his brother Féraz—a poetically conceived character—to a monastery in Cyprus, where he lives in placid contentment. Here he is visited by some English friends, who sum up his condition and suggest a simple remedy for others inclined to pursue similar researches in a way that strikes one as singularly practical:

And surely the gentle rejoinder of Irene is one that should silence controversy, dissipate vain speculation, and bring peace and rest to many thousands of minds which are wearied with attempts “to prove the apparently Unprovable.”

CHAPTER VII

MR. BENTLEY’S ENCOURAGEMENT—SOME LETTERS OF AN OLD PUBLISHER

The young and aspiring writer has probably trodden a thorny path in his pursuit of fame at all stages of literary history; for, dealing only with the facts of yesterday and to-day, the scribe of tender years, after successfully arranging for the publication of his work has still had the vitriolic condemnation of the jealous critic to contend with.

There have been occasional straightforward articles in the literary journals on the ethics of criticism, and now and then a writer of note and influence has come forward with a word in behalf of the literary pilgrim, who, however, still goes on his way having no real weapon of defense save his native ability—and in Marie Corelli’s case this has proved to be a very sharp weapon indeed!

How Mr. Bentley first became acquainted with Miss Corelli has already been described in the chapter on “A Romance of Two Worlds.” When Mr. Bentley paid his first call on her, he found her, to his astonishment, a mere schoolgirl. It was altogether a novel experience to him to have dealings with a writer who was at once so youthful and so gifted, and the attitude he adopted towards her from that time onwards was benignly paternal.

Marie Corelli has never employed a literary agent, and fails to see why a writer should not manage his or her own business affairs without any such extraneous assistance. In some respects we ourselves are of the opinion that the agent is an undesirable “middleman,” he being far too apt to hold out glittering awards which lure authors on to work above their normal pace; but it must be borne in mind that there are many authors who are poor hands at haggling over terms with publishers and editors, and, in such cases, the literary agent proves of great service.

No gentleman of this order, then, came between Miss Corelli and Mr. Bentley after the successful appearance of the “Romance;” terms for future work were arranged to the mutual satisfaction of author and publisher; and book after book, under these genial auspices, was steadily written, each new volume serving still more fully to substantiate the high opinion Mr. Bentley formed of Miss Corelli’s abilities after reading her first manuscript.

Shortly after the publication of “The Soul of Lilith” Mr. George Bentley retired from active participation in the business of his firm (which was subsequently incorporated with the house of Macmillan), and Miss Corelli transferred her books to Messrs. Methuen. Hereunder is a list of the novelist’s works published by Messrs. Bentley:

Portions of some of the many letters written to the author of these works by her publisher we have already quoted. We will now proceed to give a selection of extracts from others. The reader will not fail to observe how happily cordial—affectionate, almost—were the relations of these two—the gray-headed publisher and the young lady novelist.

The first of our selection has to do with “Ardath,” which Mr. Bentley had been reading in manuscript form:

It would appear from the next letter that the novelist had been throwing out a hint that the doughty knights of Grub Street might be approached with a preface of a nature to make them pause ere they ground her latest work under heel. Mr. Bentley’s letter in reply, like that which follows it, is redolent of his sturdy independence and sound common sense.

The following was written after Mr. Gladstone’s first visit to the novelist. It should be explained that Mr. Gladstone, when he first called, found Miss Corelli “out,” and was afterwards invited by her to come to tea on a particular date:

And again, on the same topic:

The following are characteristic of Mr. Bentley’s opinions and frame of mind. The conclusion of the letter written in October is pleasantly Johnsonian:

Now occurs an interval of ten months, and then the manuscript of “Wormwood” evokes the following sentiments:

The first part of the next letter has reference to “The Soul of Lilith.” Following it are further remarks about “Ardath,” which, of all Marie Corelli’s books, seems to have taken the greatest hold on Mr. Bentley.