"You protest against your own existence then!" I said.
His eyes darkened slowly to a sombre brooding blackness.
"When the sea roars and flings itself in anger on the shore, it craves
its prey--Mankind!--it seeks to wash the fair earth clean of the puny
insect that troubles the planet's peace! It drowns the noxious creature
when it can, with the aid of its sympathizing comrade the wind! When the
thunder crashes down a second after the lightning, does it not seem to
you that the very clouds combine in the holy war? The war against God's
one mistake;--the making of humanity,--the effort to sweep it out of the
universe as one erases a weak expression in an otherwise perfect Poem!
You and I, for example, are the only discords in to-day's woodland
harmony. We are not particularly grateful for life,--we certainly are
not content with it,--we have not the innocence of a bird or a flower.
We have more knowledge you will say,--but how can we be sure of that?
Our wisdom came from the devil in the first place, according to the
legend of the tree of knowledge,--the fruit of which taught both good
and evil, but which still apparently persuades man to evil rather than
good, and leads him on to a considerable amount of arrogance besides,
for he has an idea he will be immortal as a god in the hereafter,--ye
majestic Heavens!--what an inadequately stupendous fate for a grain of
worthless dust,--a dwarfish atom such as he!"
"Well, _I_ have no ideas of immortality"--I said--"I have told you that
often. This life is enough for me,--I want and expect no other."
"Aye, but if there were another!" answered Lucio, fixing me with a
steady look--"And--if you were not asked your opinion about it--but
simply plunged headlong into a state of terrible consciousness in which
you would rather not be----"
"Oh come," I said impatiently--"do not let us theorise! I am happy
to-day!--my heart is as light as that of the bird singing in the sky; I
am in the very best of humours, and could not say an unkind word to my
worst enemy."
He smiled.
"Is that your humour?" and he took me by the arm--"Then there could be
no better opportunity for showing you this pretty little corner of the
world;"--and walking on a few yards, he dexterously turned me down a
narrow path, leading from the lane, and brought me face to face with a
lovely old cottage, almost buried in the green of the young spring
verdure, and surrounded by an open fence overgrown with hawthorn and
sweet-briar,--"Keep firm hold over your temper Geoffrey,--and maintain
the benignant tranquillity of your mind!--here dwells the woman whose
name and fame you hate,--Mavis Clare!"