Marie Corelli

“ I am but a Shadow—but the world believes me Substance—I am but a breath and a colour, but men take me for a fixed Star!"
"I am the Phantom of Pride!"—said a third voice—"For me humanity scales the height of ambition—for my sake king's and queens occupy uneasy thrones, and surround themselves with pomp and panoply—for me men lie and cheat and wrong their neighbours—for me the homes that should be happy are laid waste—for me false laws are made and evil conquers good I am but a Shadow—and the world takes me for the Sun!—I am but a passing flash of light, and men take me for the perfect Day!" ”

“ My eyes filled with tears.
"O Angel invisible!" I prayed—"Forgive my weakness and unwisdom! How can the world be saved or comforted by a Love it never finds!"
Again a silence. Again that dazzling, quivering radiance, flashing as in an atmosphere of powdered gold.
"What does the world seek most ardently?" it demanded—"The Love of God?—or the Love of Self? If it seeks the first, all things in heaven and earth shall be added to its desire—if the second, all shall be taken from it, even that which it hath!" ”

“ How shall we find each other? When shall I be able to tell you that I know you now to be the only Beloved!—the one centre of my life round which all other things must for evermore revolve,—the very mainspring of my best thought and action,—the god of my universe from whose love and pleasure spring the light and splendour of creation! When shall I see you again to tell you all that my heart longs to express?—when may I fold myself in your arms as a bird folds its wings in a nest, and be at peace, knowing that I have gained the summit of all ambition and desires in love's perfect union? ”

“ I stooped and caught it quickly—surely it was a real rose from some dewy garden of the earth, and no dream!
"One rose from all the roses in Heaven!" said the mystic Voice, in tones of enthralling sweetness—"One—fadeless and immortal!—only one, but sufficient for all! One love from all the million loves of men and women—one, but enough for Eternity! How long the rose has awaited its flowering,—how long the love has awaited its fulfilment—only the recording angels know! Such roses bloom but once in the wilderness of space and time; such love comes but once in a Universe of worlds!" ”

“ Santoris smiled.
"Primitive passions are as forceful as they ever were," he answered. "No culture can do away with them. Jealousy, like love, is one of the motive powers of progress. It is a great evil—but a necessary one—as necessary as war. Without strife of some sort the world would become like a stagnant pool breeding nothing but weeds and the slimy creatures pertaining to foulness. Even in love, the most divine of passions, there should be a wave of uncertainty and a sense of unsolved mystery to give it everlastingness."
"Everlastingness?" queried Mr. Harland—"Or simply life lastingness?" ”

“ Of what avail then is the struggle of human life? Is it for the many or only for the few? Is all the toil and sorrow of millions merely for the uplifting and perfecting of certain individual types, and is this what Christ meant when He said 'Many are called but few are chosen'? If so, why such waste of brain and heart and love and patience? Tears came suddenly into my eyes and I started as from a bad dream when Dr. Brayle approached me softly from behind.
"I am sorry to disturb your reverie!"—he said—"But Miss Harland has gone into the deck saloon and we are all waiting to hear you sing." ”

“ We—my Beloved and I—can only prove the truth of the Soul's absolute command over all spiritual, material and elemental forces by our One life and the way we live it—we, to whom everything that is necessary and desirable for our progress, comes on demand,—we, whom Science serves as an Aladdin's lamp, realising every imaginable delight—we, with whom Love, which with many human beings is judged the most variable and transitory of emotions, is the very Principle of Life, the very essence of the waves of the air through which we move and have our being. ”

“ You yourself can arrest it!—the dream of Faust is no fallacy!—only that the renewal of youth is not the work of magic evil, but of natural good. If you would be young, leave the world as you have known it and begin it anew,—leave wife, children, friends, all that hang like fungi upon an oak, rotting its trunk and sapping its strength without imparting any new form of vitality. Live again—love again!"
"I!"—and he who was thus spoken to threw back his cowl, showing a face wan and deeply wrinkled, yet striking in its fine intellectuality of feature—"I!—with these white hairs! ”

“ Moreover, they are content to be born for no other visible reason than to die—and no matter how often they may be told there is no such thing as death, they receive the assertion with as much indignant incredulity as the priesthood of Rome received Galileo's assurance that the earth moves round the sun. But we—you and I—who know that life, being ALL Life, CANNOT die,—ought to be wiser in our present space of time than to doubt each other's infinite capability for love and the perfect world of beauty which love creates. ”

“ However much I disagree with your theories of life, Santoris," said Mr. Harland,—"I will give you full credit for this extraordinary yacht of yours! It's the most wonderful thing I ever saw, and you are a wonderful fellow to have carried out such an unique application of science. You ought to impart your secret to the world."
Santoris laughed lightly.
"And the world would take a hundred years or more to discuss it, consider it, deny it, and finally accept it," he said—"No! One grows tired of asking the world to be either wise or happy. ”

“ I moved a little away from my companions, and leaned over the deck rail, looking far into the black shadows of the shore, defined more deeply by the contrasting brilliance of the moon, and my thoughts flew with undesired swiftness to the darkest line of life's horizon—I had for the moment lost the sense of joy. How wretched all we human creatures are!—I said to my inner self,—what hope after all is there for us, imprisoned in a world which has no pity for us whatever may be our fate,—a world that goes on in precisely the same fashion whether we live or die, work or are idle? ”

“ It is possible for every human being to live in the sunshine of the soul whatever may be the material surroundings of the body. The so-called 'practical' person would have said to me:—'Why are you happy?' There is no real cause for this sudden elation. You think you have met someone who is in sympathy with your tastes, ideas and feelings,—but you may be quite wrong, and this bright wave of joy into which you are plunging heedlessly may fling you bruised and broken on a desolate shore for the remainder of your life. One would think you had fallen in love at first sight. ”

“ I still held the book—'The Secret of Life'—and in a dull, aimless way thought how useless it was! What does Life matter if Love be untrue? The sun was shining somewhere above me, for I saw glinting reflections of it through the close boughs, and there were birds singing. But both beauty of sight and beauty of sound were lost to me—I had no real consciousness left save that the lover who professed to love me with an eternal love loved me no more! So the world was desolate, and heaven itself a blank!—death, and death alone seemed dear and desirable! ”

“ The dawn of Christianity brought the first glimmering suggestion that a gospel of love and pity might be more serviceable in the end to the needs of the world, than a ruthless code of slaughter and vengeance—though history shows us that the annals of Christianity itself are stained with crime and shamed by the shedding of innocent blood. Only in these latter days has the world become faintly conscious of the real Force working behind and through all things—the soul of the Divine, or the Psychic element, animating and inspiring all visible and invisible Nature. ”

“ I said, and I felt the tremor of tears in my voice—"Yes, for women death often seems very kind! When there is no love and no hope of love,—when the world is growing grey and the shadows are deepening towards night,—when the ones we most dearly love misjudge and mistrust us and their hearts are closed against our tenderness, then death seems the greatest god of all!—one before whom we may well kneel and offer up our prayers! Who could, who WOULD live for ever quite alone in an eternity without love? ”

“ Why, I inwardly asked, had I been so suddenly and forcibly brought into this place for no apparent reason save to look upon Rafel Santoris in the company of another woman whom it seemed that he now preferred to me? Ought that to make any difference in my love for him? "In love, if love be love, if love be ours, Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers, Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all." If the happiness of the one I loved was obtained through other means than mine, ought I to grudge it? ”

“ Age cannot touch them—death has no meaning for them,—life is their air and space and movement—life palpitates through them and warms them with colour and glory as the sunshine warms and reddens the petals of the rose—they grow beyond mortality and are immune from all disaster—they are a world in themselves, involuntarily creating other worlds as they pass from one phase to another of production and fruition. For there is no good work accomplished without love,—no great triumph achieved without love,—no fame, no victory gained without love! ”

“ Brayle, drily—"Faust should have consulted him instead of Mephistopheles!"
"'Faust' is a wonderful legend, but absurd in the fact that the old philosopher sold his soul to the Devil, merely for the love of woman,"—said Mr. Harland. "The joy, the sensation and the passion of love were to him supreme temptation and the only satisfaction on earth."
Dr. Brayle's eyes gleamed.
"But, after all, is this not a truth?" he asked—"Is there anything that so completely dominates the life of a man as the love of a woman? It is very seldom the right woman—but it is always a woman of some kind. ”

“ Harland, irritably. "What's the use of gaining anything if it is to be lost at a moment's bidding?"
"It is the only way to hold and keep whatever there is to win," answered Santoris, calmly—"And the paradox is no greater than that of 'He that loveth his life shall lose it.' The only 'moment' of supreme self-surrender is Love—when that comes everything else must go. Love alone can compass life, perfect it, complete it and carry it on to eternal happiness. But please bear in mind that I am speaking of real Love,—not mere physical attraction. ”

“ Thinking is, I know, the hardest of all hard tasks to the modern mind. But if you would learn, you must undertake this trouble. If you would find the path which is made fair and brilliant by the radiance of the soul's imperishable summer, you must not grudge time. If I try, no matter how inadequately, to show you something of the mystic power that makes for happiness, do not shut your eyes in scorn or languor to the smallest flash of light through your darkness which may help you to a mastery of the secret. ”

“ Shakespeare, the greatest human exponent of human nature at its best and worst,—the profound Thinker and Artist who dealt boldly with the facts of good and evil as they truly are,—and did not hesitate to contrast them forcibly, without any of the deceptive 'half-tones' of vice and virtue which are the chief stock-in-trade of such modern authors as we may call 'degenerates,'—makes his Hamlet exclaim:—
"What a piece of work is man!—how noble in reason!—how infinite in faculty!—in form and moving how express and admirable!—in action how like an angel!—in apprehension how like a god!" ”

“ Every man, every woman, must give of his or her best. The artist must give his noblest art, not for what it brings to him personally of gain or renown, but for what it does to others in the way of uplifting;—the poet must give his highest thought, not for praise, but for love;—the very craftsman must do his best and strongest work not for the coin paid, but for the fact that it is work, and as such must be done well—and none must imagine that they can waste the forces wherewith they have been endowed. ”

“ God Himself cannot do that, for it is His Will and Law that each human soul shall shape its own eternal future. No one mortal can make the happiness or salvation of another. I, like yourselves, am in the 'Wilderness,'—but I know that there are ways of making it blossom like the rose! Yet,—were all my heart and all my love outpoured upon you, I could not teach you the Divine transfiguring charm,—unless you, equally with all your hearts and all your love, resolutely and irrevocably WILLED to learn. ”

“ Without the keynote there can be no music,—there is dumbness where there should be sound,—there is discord where there should be harmony. Love!—the one vibrant tone to which the whole universe moves in tune,—Love, the breath of God, the pulsation of His Being, the glory of His work, the fulfilment of His Eternal Joy,—Love, and Love alone, is the web and texture and garment of happy Immortality! O Soul that seekest the way to wisdom and to power, what dost thou make of Love? ”

“ Surely I had!—one that I knew well and had known for a long time,—one for whom I had guarded my life sacredly as belonging to another as well as to myself,—a lover who loved me beyond all power of human expression,—here the rush of strange and inexplicable emotion in me was hurled back on my mind with a shock of mingled terror and surprise from a dead wall of stony fact,—it was true, of course, and Catherine Harland was right—I had no lover. No man had ever loved me well enough to be called by such a name. ”

“ LIFE AND ITS ADJUSTMENT "Life is the Divine impetus of Love. The Force behind the Universe is Love—and from that Love is bred Desire and Creation. Even as the human lover passionately craves possession of his beloved, so that from their mutual tenderness the children of Love are born, the Divine Spirit, immortally creative and desirous of perfect beauty, possesses space with eternal energy, producing millions of solar systems, each one of which has a different organisation and a separate individuality. ”

“ Delicious harmonies trembled through the air, soft as fine rain falling on roses,—and with their penetrating tenderness a thousand suggestions, a thousand memories came to me, all infinitely sweet. I began to think that even if Rafel Santoris were separated from me by some mischance, or changed to me in any way, it need not affect me over-much so long as I cherished the love I had for him in my own soul. Our passion was of a higher quality than the merely material,—it was material and spiritual together, the spiritual predominating, thus making of it the only passion that can last. ”

“ The fiercest gale that ever blew down strong trees and made havoc of men's dwellings is a mere whisper compared with the fury of human minds set to destroy one heaven-aspiring soul! Think of the petty grudge borne by the loveless against Love!—the spite of the restless and unhappy against those who have won peace! All this you will have to bear,—for the world is envious—and even a friend breaks down in the strength of friendship when thwarted or rendered jealous by a greater and more resistless power! ”

“ What is called Love is the mere physical attraction between the two sexes—no more,—and it soon palls. All that we gain we quickly cease to care for—it is the way of humanity."
"What a poor creation humanity is, then!" said Santoris, with a smile—"How astonishing that it should exist at all for no higher aims than those of the ant or the mouse! My dear Harland, if your beliefs were really sound we should be bound in common duty and charity to stop the population of the world altogether—for the whole business is useless. ”

“ Yet love defies analysis,—and is the only thing that binds the Universe together. A fact beyond all proving—a truth which cannot be expounded by any given rule or line but which is the most emphatic force of life! My queen, it is a force that must either bend or break you!"
I made no reply. He still held my hand, and we looked out together on the shining expanse of the sea where there was no vessel visible and where our schooner alone flew over the watery, moonlit surface like a winged flame. ”

“ Help her to attain to all that shall be for her wisdom and betterment, and make her one with that Nature whereof she is born. Thou, silent and peaceful Night, invest her with thy deep tranquillity!—thou, bright Moon, penetrate her spirit with the shining in of holy dreams!—give her of thy strength and depth, O Sea!—and may she draw from the treasures of the air all health, all beauty, all life, all sweetness, so that her existence may be a joy to the world, and her love a benediction! ”

“ It is not, however, possible to the ordinary mind to realise that somewhere and somehow, every two component parts of a whole MUST come together, sooner or later, and that herein may be found the key to most of the great love tragedies of the world. The wrong halves mated,—the right halves finding each other out and rushing together recklessly and inopportunely because of the resistless Law which draws them together,—this is the explanation of many a life's disaster and despair, as well as of many a life's splendid attainment and victory. ”