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THE STRANGE VISITATION

THE STRANGE VISITATION

BY MARIE CORELLI

HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

THE

STRANGE VISITATION

A wild night, with a gale of wind, a wind that scratched and tore and howled at doors and windows like an angry cat spitting and spluttering--its miauling voice now rising, now sinking--at one moment savage, at another querulous, but always incessant of complaint, with a threatening under snarl of restless rage in its tone. A wild night!--full of storm and quarrel, with occasional dashes of cold rain sweeping down on the shrieking blast like gusts of angry tears--a noisy night in which the elements were at open war with themselves, making no secret of their hostile intentions--and yet it was the one night of all nights in the year when "peace and goodwill" were the suggested influences of the time. For it was Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve! What a wonderful anniversary it is, if we would but pause in our reckless and senseless rush onward to the grave, just to think quietly about it for a moment! Long, long ago--yet but a short while since--if we count by the world's great epochs of civilisation wherein a little two thousand years are but a moment--a host of Angels descended from heaven and sang a joyous hymn of general amnesty to mankind on the first Christmas Eve that ever was--and according to the noble poesy of high-thinking, God-revering John Milton:

"No war or battle's sound Was heard the world around, The idle spear and shield were high up hung; The unhook?d chariot stood Unstain'd with hostile blood, The trumpet spake not to the arm?d throng; And kings sat still with awful eye As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

"And peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the earth began; The winds, with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kist, Whisp'ring new joys to the mild oce?n, Who now hath quite forgot to rave, While birds of calm sit brooding on the charm?d wave!"

One wonders if--in those far-off days of angel-singing--there was such a thing as a millionaire? Not a merely "rich" man;--not a "Wise Man of the East," who, possessing knowledge and insight as well as wealth, hastened to bring his gold with frankincense and myrrh, and to lay these reverently in the humble manger which served as cradle to a Child, whose vast power was destined to conquer and subdue all the mightiest kings of the earth:--but an actual money-gorged, banknote-stuffed ruler of some octopus-like "Trade," whose tentacles clutched and held everything within its reach--some owner of huge factories where human creatures "sweated" their lives out to fill his pockets, and died in their hundreds,--perchance their thousands--in order that he, like some monstrous bloated leech, should swell to the point of bursting on the blood he sucked from their throbbing arteries! Was there such an one existing in the miracle days when the "Glory to God in the Highest!" rang from star to star, from point to point of the myriad constellations, like a great wave of melody breaking against illimitable and endless shores? Surely not!--else there would have been some break in the music!--some ugly jar in the divine chorus! For instance, if there had at that time been living a multi-millionaire at all resembling the one whose strange experiences are now about to be related, the angels would have fled in dismay and weeping from the spectacle of a soul so warped from good, so destitute of sympathy, so drained and dry of every drop of the milk of human kindness, and so utterly at variance with the "peace and goodwill" of which they sang!

It was Christmas Eve,--and though this fact has already been stated before, it cannot for the purposes of the present veracious chronicle of events be too strongly insisted upon. It was the Eve of the Angels,--and no devils were supposed to be anywhere about. For, as our Shakespeare tells us:--

"Ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long, And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious is the time!"

Perhaps the great McNason, if he had not been so occupied with himself and his own affairs, might have thought of these lines when, on leaving his head office in the city, he travelled with the swiftness of the wind through a storm of sleet and snow to his palatial private abode some twenty miles out of town, rushing along at full speed in a superb motor-car sumptuously furnished with a rain-proof covering, rugs, foot-warmers, and all the luxurious paraphernalia wherewith a multi-millionaire may shield his valuable joints from the cold. For he professed, did McNason, to have Shakespearean proclivities, and had been heard to declare publicly that he preferred the Bard of Avon to the Bible. That was the way he put things,--with all the agreeable free-and-easy indifference to religion and to other folks religious sentiments which so frequently embellishes the character of the multi-millionaire. As a matter of fact he knew nothing about either the Immortal Plays or Holy Writ. They were sealed books to his limited comprehension. The divine teachings of Scripture, and the broadly beneficent and tender philosophy of Shakespeare were alike beyond him. He understood Ledger Literature in its every branch,--every smallest point concerning L.S.D. was familiar to him,--and such "quotations" from books as he could make, were intimately connected with the Stock Market. But for all romance he had a fine contempt, and for poetry and poetic sentiment a saturnine derision. More than anything perhaps, he hated and scorned any idea of things "supernatural." He attended church very regularly on Sundays,--oh yes!--that was a particular item of "conscience and respectability" with him. But as everything he heard there had to do with "supernatural" matters, it is safe to presume that he was a hypocrite in going to listen to what he did not believe. However, in this he was not exceptional,--there are many like him. "Respectability" may be permitted to play the humbug when it is a millionaire, and drives to its country seat in a motor-car costing two thousand guineas, especially on Christmas Eve, which--despite colossal fortune-makers--remains indissolubly associated in the human mind with Poverty and a Manger. And it was with all the glow and splendour of humbug shining lustrously about him that the world-renowned McNason stepped out of his sumptuous vehicle as it stopped at his own door, and entered his stately baronial hall, where four powdered and liveried flunkeys stood waiting deferentially to receive him. Taking scarcely any notice of these gorgeous personages, who were in his sight no more than flower-pots, umbrella stands, or other portions of ordinary household furniture, he addressed himself to a fifth retainer, severely attired in black, who, by a set of cords and tassels on his left shoulder and the effective simplicity of his costume as compared with the liveries of the other menials, implied to all whom it might concern that he was the commanding officer or major-domo of the royal McNason household.

"Anybody called, Towler?"

"Yessir. Mr. Pitt."

"Mr. Pitt? Dear me! I saw him only this morning at the office. What did he want?"

"I couldn't say, sir. He is waiting to see you."

"Waiting? Here--at this hour?"

"Yessir. In the library."

With a frown of irritation, the great Josiah threw off his sable-lined overcoat, which was received obsequiously by one of the powdered lacqueys in attendance, while a second accepted his hat with an air of grateful and profound humility. Then he walked slowly, deliberately, not to say in heavy-footed style, along a broad corridor, dimly yet richly lit by electric light filtering through coloured glass, where classic marbles were artistically grouped here and there in snowy contrast with the dark fall of velvet draperies and pyramidal masses of flowers,--where Venus gazed from under her sleepless lids, with white eyeballs astare at the ugly little man who passed her without looking up,--where Mercury, poising on tip-toe with winged heels, appeared to meditate an immediate flight from the wizened, wrinkled, moneyed creature below him who was so far and away from any conception of the god-like--and where Psyche, bending over the butterfly in her small caressing hands, seemed almost to shudder lest the very breath of the celebrated millionaire should shrivel the delicate expanding wings of the Immortal Soul she so tenderly fostered. Preceded by the black-costumed Towler, who threw open various doors majestically as he advanced, Josiah entered the library, warm and cheerful with the red heat and glow of a sparkling log fire. A well-dressed gentlemanly-looking man who had been sitting near the table turning over a newspaper, rose as he approached and stood a moment without speaking, as though in some doubt or hesitation.

"Well, Pitt, what's the matter? Anything gone wrong since this morning?"

"No, sir. Nothing."

"Oh! Then what are you here for at such an hour and in such weather, eh?"

Mr. Pitt hummed and hawed. He was one of McNason's most trusted overseers; and at the great factories which daily ground down human lives into the McNason millions, he had under his management a very large number of the men employed. The only fault that could be found with him from a strictly business point of view was, that he had some vestiges of a heart. These vestiges were troubling him a little just now.

"There was one thing I forgot to mention to you in my report to-day," he began; "I can't think how it slipped my memory."

Mr. Pitt did not seem to perceive the implied compliment to himself.

Here he broke off and coughed nervously, while McNason, drawing a large elbow-chair to the fire, sat down and spread out his thin veiny hands to the blaze in irresponsive silence.

McNason looked up with peering eyes that narrowed at the corners like those of a snake.

"Willie Dove!" he echoed, slowly. "H'm--h'm--let me see! Who is Willie Dove?"

"Was he?" And McNason smiled blandly, but indifferently.

"Quite right of him!" interpolated McNason,--"He did his duty, no doubt, and was paid for doing it. Well?"

Mr. Pitt played absently with his watch-chain. He was conscious that a check had been summarily put on any eloquent dissertation he might have been disposed to make concerning the past abilities and qualifications of Willie Dove.

"I thought--I fancied you might perhaps be interested," he murmured.

"Twenty-five years is a long time, Pitt," said McNason, slowly,--"a very long time! It is a quarter of a century. One's interest in any man is apt to exhaust itself naturally in such a period."

Mr. Pitt looked up quickly, and then looked down. There was something in the hard, furrowed countenance of Josiah that suggested a mental dry heat or dry cold,--any force in fact, that may be known to absorb or disperse particles of generous sentiment. Yet Pitt was not a coward, and though he stood in wholesome awe of the captious moods and whims of the great millionaire upon whom his own existence and that of his family depended, he determined not to relinquish the errand on which he was bound without a struggle.

"He should not have had a large family,"--interpolated McNason, stretching out his lean ill-shaped legs more comfortably in front of the fire--"it's quite his own fault!"

"Well, if he wants to live, why doesn't he?" inquired McNason, lazily.

"Simply because he can't afford it," replied Pitt, bluntly.

The great millionaire took up a poker, and looking critically at the fire, broke a large gaseous lump of coal into a bright blaze.

"Oh! Well, that settles it," he said. "Then I suppose he must, as the common folk say, 'go home'!"

A sparkle of indignation lightened Mr. Pitt's quiet grey eyes. But he restrained his feelings.

"The operation fee would be a hundred guineas," he went on in a calm business-like tone--"Good nursing and a change of air would perhaps run into a hundred more. Say two hundred pounds. That sum would save his life."

"I daresay!" And McNason's thin lips widened into a grin--"But if he hasn't got the two hundred, he must accept the inevitable. After all, when a man is nearly sixty, a few years more or less in the world doesn't matter!"

Mr. Pitt looked at his employer steadily.

"Have you any cause of complaint or offence against Dove, sir?"

McNason met his inquiring eyes with his own special gimlet glance, sharp as the point of a screw.

"None! Not the least in the world! Why should I? I scarcely remember the man!"

"Did he send you to beg of me?" asked McNason with a kind of vicious abruptness.

Mr. Pitt's pale face flushed a little.

McNason smiled a smile resembling the death-grin of the fabulous dragon of St. George.

"A mistake, Pitt!--quite a mistake! Large families merely make the world more difficult to live in and money scarcer to get! Money needs to be kept in close quarters--close, very close quarters! It has a habit of running away unless it is imprisoned, Pitt! It runs away much faster than it runs in! Governments know that!--and kings! And when governments and kings find it slipping through their fingers, they come to Me!--to me, Josiah McNason!--and I tell you what it is, Pitt, I've enough to do with lending money to Big Persons and taking securities on Big Things without bothering myself concerning Little Commercials! See? I lend to Royalties, Titles and Magnificences of all classes and all nations,--and I've done so much lately in this line that I'm short of money myself just now, Pitt!--ha, ha!--I'm short of money!"

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