Sibyl looked at the tableau with a pale face and wistful eyes.
“That is a true picture!” she said under her breath—“Geoffrey, it is painfully true!”
I made no answer,—I thought I knew to what she alluded; but alas!—I did not know how deeply the ‘seeds of corruption’ had been sown in her own nature, or what a harvest they would bring forth. The curtain closed,—to open again almost immediately on “His Latest Purchase.” Here we were shown the interior of a luxurious modern drawing-room, where about eight or ten men were assembled, in fashionable evening-dress. They had evidently just risen from a card-table,—and one of them, a dissipated looking brute, with a wicked smile of mingled satire and triumph on his face was pointing to his ‘purchase,’—a beautiful woman. She was clad in glistening white like a bride,—but she was bound, as prisoners are bound, to an upright column, on which the grinning head of a marble Silenus leered above her. Her hands were tied tightly together,—with chains of diamonds; her waist was bound,—with thick ropes of pearls;—a wide collar of rubies encircled her throat;—and from bosom to feet she was netted about and tied,—with strings of gold and gems. Her head was flung back defiantly with an assumption of pride and scorn,—her eyes alone expressed shame, self-contempt, and despair at her bondage. The man who owned this white slave was represented, by his attitude, as cataloguing and appraising her ‘points’ for the approval and applause of his comrades, whose faces variously and powerfully expressed the differing emotions of lust, cruelty, envy, callousness, derision, and selfishness, more admirably than the most gifted painter could imagine.
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“A capital type of most fashionable marriages!” I heard some-one say.
“Rather!” another voice replied—“The orthodox ‘happy couple’ to the life!”
I glanced at Sibyl. She looked pale,—but smiled as she met my questioning eyes. A sense of consolation crept warmly about my heart as I remembered that now, she had, as she told me ‘learnt to love,’—and that therefore her marriage with me was no longer a question of material advantage alone. She was not my ‘purchase,’—she was my love, my saint, my queen!—or so I chose to think, in my foolishness and vanity!
The last tableau of all was now to come,—“Faith and Materialism,” and it proved to be the most startling of the series. The auditorium was gradually darkened,—and the dividing curtain disclosed a ravishingly beautiful scene by the sea-shore. A full moon cast its tranquil glory over the smooth waters, and,—rising on rainbow-wings from earth towards the skies, one of the loveliest creatures ever dreamed of by poet or painter, floated angel-like upwards, her hands holding a cluster of lilies clasped to her breast,—her lustrous eyes full of divine joy, hope, and love. Exquisite music was heard,—soft voices sang in the distance a chorale of rejoicing;—heaven and earth, sea and air,—all seemed to support the aspiring Spirit as she soared higher and higher, in ever-deepening rapture, when,—as we all watched that aerial flying form with a sense of the keenest delight and satisfaction,—a sudden crash of thunder sounded,—the scene grew dark,—and there was a distant roaring of angry waters. The light of the moon was eclipsed,—the music ceased; a faint lurid glow of red shone at first dimly, then more vividly,—and ‘Materialism’ declared itself,—a human skeleton, bleached white and grinning ghastly mirth upon us all! While we yet looked, the skeleton itself dropped to pieces,—and one long twining worm lifted its slimy length from the wreck of bones, another working its way through the eye-holes of the skull. Murmurs of genuine horror were heard in the auditorium,—people on all sides [p 279] rose from their seats—one man in particular, a distinguished professor of sciences, pushed past me to get out, muttering crossly—“This may be very amusing to some of you, but to me, it is disgusting!”
“Like your own theories, my dear Professor!” said a rich laughing voice, as Lucio met him on his way, and the bijou theatre was again flooded with cheerful light—“They are amusing to some, and disgusting to others!——Pardon me!—I speak of course in jest! But I designed that tableau specially in your honour!”
“Oh, you did, did you?” growled the Professor—“Well, I didn’t appreciate it.”
“Yet you should have done, for it is quite scientifically correct,”—declared Lucio laughing still. “Faith,—with the wings, whom you saw joyously flying towards an impossible Heaven, is not scientifically correct,—have you not told us so?—but the skeleton and the worms were quite of your cult! No materialist can deny the correctness of that ‘complexion to which we all must come at last.’ Positively, some of the ladies look quite pale! How droll it is, that while everybody (to be fashionable, and in favour with the press) must accept Materialism as the only creed, they should invariably become affrighted, or let us say offended, at the natural end of the body, as completed by material agencies!”