CHAPTER VI
In the front bedroom the gas had been lit and lowered. The objects in the room showed obscurely, till suddenly there flashed into it three lights—one purest white, one blending every colour of the rainbow, one brilliant red—but after the first clear flash more dusky.
Plucritus leant his hand upon the wall and looked upon a picture. It was quite a small one—a simple print—but when the glowing light around him shone on it, it seemed to gain life and size out of all proportion to the room.
“There! what do you think of my picture?” said he, turning to Genius.
“Your picture? It belongs to me,” he answered. And there was evident annoyance in his tone.
“Pardon,” replied Plucritus, lightly. “You and I lately seem rather to have rubbed each other and quarrelled over trifles. This is a little print in black and white—not worth a farthing—it is in an old frame scarce worth a cent. It is therefore worthy of the flames—and therefore, by most biblical reasoning, it belongs to me.”
“The Bible be damned!” said Genius, striking his hand upon the maple bed-post. “I say it belongs to me.”
“Virginius, he hasdamnedthe Bible,” commented Plucritus, ignoring the last remark. He spoke in a half-serious, half-comic tone, with just a little heightening of surprise in it.
“No,” said Genius, quickly recovering himself. “I simply wanted to express an opinion upon biblical reasoning.”
“But still for all that you have damned the Bible.”
“You enjoy the repetition.”
“Well, it sticks to me. It is but a trifle; but then I remember trifles—life is made up of them.”
“Yes. It is for that precise reason that I demand the rights of the picture. It belongs to me.”
“Oh, I see. You wish it to stand as a kind of object-lesson picture. Is that it?”
“Exactly.”
“Then I give way at once. I did not quite understand you. I thought you meant to monopolise the personages represented in it.”
“Well, so I do,” asserted Genius, smiling. “They are in some ways very nearly allied to me.”
“Indeed?” said Plucritus, affecting astonishment.
“Indeed and indeed,” replied the other. “The Spirit who accompanies the man in this picture is my twin brother—at least I please to think so.”
“How you must feel for him,” said Plucritus, sympathetically.
“But do you know, Genius, without wishing to tread on your corns in the least, I must admit to being a little vain.”
“Of what?”
“Well, of my histrionic powers.”
“Ha! you had better be careful. I am very jealous;” but he was laughing.
“Yes,” continued the other. “I can manage acting with the exact ease and precision with which you can manage it yourself.”
“Well, let me see some of your acting,” remarked Genius, “so that I may judge of your opinion of yourself.”
“I shall be only too delighted. Now, as you know, Deborah is coming to bed in a few moments.”
“Yes, I am waiting for that. It is then that the real teaching begins, the only kind she truly appreciates.”
“But for all that you do not monopolise the whole of her attention. Deborah has some little regard for her father.”
“A very strong affection,” affirmed Genius.
“As you will, but please do not look so serious. The thing I am going to show you is purely farcical.”
“Plucritus,” said Virginius, speaking for the first time, “I must ask you to leave this alone; the child is not old enough to fight the battle.”
“Fight it yourself then. What else are you here for?” he answered.
There was silence, and there came swimming through the mind of Genius the words of Virginius—“When I am most silent, look at me most.” But though he looked he saw nothing.
Just then the door opened and Deborah came in.
The room was dark, as the gas was very low, but after groping about she managed to turn it up.
Then she began to unfasten her frock, and was very soon ready for bed. When ready, she knelt down to pray.
Plucritus now stepped forward and sat down by the bedside. He took her two hands in his very tenderly.
“Debbie,” said he, “don’t you think it would be a very good thing to pray for your father?” His voice was so low that it sounded just like sweetness.
“Oh, yes. But I don’t know how. I can only think it.”
“Well, listen to me and I will tell you. Say this after me.”
So she clasped her hands very tightly and closed her eyes.
“Please, God, let father live a very, very long time.”
“Please, God, let father live a very, very long time,” she repeated.
“And let him be very, very happy.”
“And let him be very, very happy.”
“Let the business that he goes to every day be a very prosperous one.”
“Let the business that he goes to every day be a very prosperous one.”
“And let his death-bed be a bed of roses.”
“And let his death-bed be a bed of roses.”
“And let me soon grow up to work for him.”
“And let me soon grow up to work for him.”
“And let me be with him always.”
“And let me be with him always.”
“And let me be with him when he dies to comfort him.”
“And let me be with him when he dies to comfort him.”
“Please, God, oh, please, God, do. Amen.”
She added that last line herself, she was so frightened He might be hurrying off somewhere else and think she only meant it a good three-quarters instead of a brimming-over whole.
But during the prayer Virginius had drawn very near, and just before the ending he placed his hand upon the kneeler’s head and Deborah felt a sudden thrill of pure happiness run through her.
Scarcely, however, had his hand touched her head than Plucritus with his free hand tried to wrench it off, and not only tried but succeeded, and a feeling of intense misery followed the thrill of joy.
“It is because I love him so, and I dread the thought that he should ever die,” she said; and then she prayed it all over again still more fervently.
“God is love, and God is good,” she said. “And He loves father because he’s good too, and so He’ll look after him real well,” and then she got up feeling very comforted.
Plucritus turned to Genius.
“How did I manage it?” he asked.
“I suppose I need not tell you,” Genius answered. “Ah! what have you done?”
“You should have been watching,” said Plucritus. “You are just too late.”
Once more he had turned the curious dull red light upon the picture, and changed it by this glamour till it seemed almost life-size. And Deborah, led by what she did not understand, looked across at it. It had been put there for the first time that day, and was a simple representation of a wooded terrace and a garden. On the broad steps a woman stood, upon the ground a man—dressed for a period some three hundred years ago.
Deborah looked and looked again, and then with a sudden start, the colour rising to her cheeks and the light to her eyes, she walked across to it.
“How funny! How very funny!” she exclaimed, and looked at the picture for a long time without speaking. Then she looked at the words underneath it, and they were:—
“Against my wish I am sent to bid you come to dinner.”“Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.”“I took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me.”
“Against my wish I am sent to bid you come to dinner.”
“Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.”
“I took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me.”
“How curious,” said Deborah. “I suppose these words are what they’re saying to each other. How beautiful they look! Just like the people in my world.”
Then hearing someone calling she put the light low and got into bed.
Deborah, once in bed, was happy. The day was over and done; that long, half-miserable day in which you were never sure from one minute to the next whether you were going to be punished for some offence you hadn’t done. For then it was that Genius, taking the child in his arms, showed her all those pictures and scenes that she so loved.
From this earth she flew away to another just as real, where the people lived and talked like us; only not quite like the people she met every day, as Deborah’s life was bound up in the church-school walls and the poverty-stricken home.
Indeed she loved the other world far more passionately and clung to it far more faithfully than ever she loved or clung to this.
“I love to watch them and listen to them,” she used to whisper to herself. “They never bother to notice me nor try to send me away, and that is what I like.”
And watching them along with Deborah from the very earliest times was always a crowd of grown-up school-children.
“Why don’t they go away?” she used to ask herself. “No one asked them to come. They’re too inquisitive by far. But though they look in some ways like school-children they are quite grown up, and they behave far better and are far quieter than ever school-children are.”
No wonder Deborah loved this other world.
It had in it every glorious blended colour of the rainbow, and was essentially so different from the life she led herself.
Still, though she gave almost all her time, consciously or unconsciously, to this other world, she did occasionally spare some of it for thoughts upon religion.
It would, perhaps, have been impossible to find a child with a stronger belief in God’s power and goodness, or one who tried to walk in the right path more earnestly.
But along with it she was constantly trying to gauge the depth of her own truth and feeling.
On this particular night of the hanging of the picture she was especially wakeful.
“Now I wonder whom I really do love best,” she said to herself, “God or father?”
“You love your father best,” said a voice.
But because it was very low and even, she thought it must be the devil.
“I don’t,” she answered; “I love them differently, that’s all. Father lets me kiss the back of his head, but God I worship.”
“Did you hear that?” said Plucritus, turning to Virginius. “That is capital. ‘God I worship.’ Why are you not more clever? When I speak she takes me for an angel; when you speak she makes sure you are the devil.”