I assented to this, and accompanied him readily, feeling in high spirits and good humour. Willowsmere and its peaceful loveliness seemed to cleanse my mind of all corroding influences;—the blessed silence of the woods and hills, after the rush and roar of town life, soothed and cheered me, and I walked beside my companion with a light heart and smiling face,—happy, and filled with a dim religious faith in the blue sky, if not in the God beyond it. We sauntered through the fair gardens which were now mine, and then out through the park into a lovely little lane,—a true Warwickshire lane, where the celandines were strewing the grass with their bright gold coinage, and the star-wort thrust up fairy bouquets of white bloom between buttercups and lover, and where the hawthorn-buds were beginning to show themselves like minute snow-pellets among the glossy young green. A thrush warbled melodiously,—a lark rose from almost our very feet and flung itself joyously into the sky with a wild outburst of song,—a robin hopped through a little hole in the hedge to look at us in blithe inquisitiveness as we passed. All at once Lucio stopped and laid his hand on my shoulder,—his eyes had the beautiful melancholy of a far-off longing which I could neither understand nor define.
“Listen, Geoffrey!” he said—“Listen to the silence of the earth while the lark sings! Have you ever observed the [p 219] receptive attitude in which Nature seems to wait for sounds divine!”
I did not answer,—the silence around us was indeed impressive;—the warbling of the thrush had ceased, and only the lark’s clear voice pealing over-head, echoed sweetly through the stillness of the lane.
“In the clerical Heaven,” went on Lucio dreamily—“there are no birds. There are only conceited human souls braying forth ‘Alleluia’! No flowers are included,—no trees; only ‘golden streets.’ What a poor and barbarous conception! As if a World inhabited by Deity would not contain the wonders, graces and beauties of all worlds! Even this little planet is more naturally beautiful than the clerical Heaven,—that is, it is beautiful wherever Man is not. I protest—I have always protested,—against the creation of Man!”
I laughed.
“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 [p 220] 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——”