After further passages of this description, concluding with some passes with a dagger, the scene ends, the hidden but listening husband coming forth and blessing the friend for his upright conduct. The inevitable follows. Lady Sibyl commits suicide; and the husband, finding the corpse seated in a chair before a mirror, carries out a plan for an awful midnight interview with the dead, turning on a blaze of lamps, and sitting down there in the death-chamber to read a document left by his wife, in which she gives a pitiful picture of the training that has made her character so repellent. She describes, in a remarkable and appalling letter, of which an extract follows, how the death-giving poison is taken and the agonizing thoughts of the last moments.
“Oh, God!... Let me write—write—while I can! Let me yet hold fast the thread which fastens me to earth,—give me time—time before I drift out, lost in yonder blackness and flame! Let me write for others the awful Truth, as I see it,—there is No death! None—none! I cannot die!... Let me write on,—write on with this dead fleshly hand, ... one moment more time, dread God!... one moment more to write the truth,—the terrible truth of Death whose darkest secret, Life, is unknown to men!... To my despair and terror,—to my remorse and agony, I live!—oh, the unspeakable misery of this new life! And worst of all,—God whom I doubted, God whom I was taught to deny, this wronged, blasphemed and outraged God EXISTS! And I could have found Him had I chosen,—this knowledge is forced upon me as I am torn from hence,—it is shouted at me by a thousand wailing voices!... too late!—too late!—the scarlet wings beat me downward,—these strange half-shapeless forms close round and drive me onward ... to a further darkness, ... amid wind and fire!... Serve me, dead hand, once more ere I depart, ... my tortured spirit must seize and compel you to write down this thing unnamable, that earthly eyes may read, and earthly souls take timely warning!... I know at last WHOM I have loved!—whom I have chosen, whom I have worshiped!... Oh, God, have mercy!... I know who claims my worship now, and drags me into yonder rolling world of flame!... his name is ——”
Here the manuscript ends,—incomplete and broken off abruptly,—and there is a blot on the last sentence as though the pen had been violently wrenched from the dying fingers and flung hastily down.
From this terrible incident the story hastens to its close, remarkable alike for the discourses of the Prince of Darkness, for the experiences of Tempest, for his final severance from the evil genius and his return to honest work. And here it is necessary to consider the conception of his Satanic Majesty with which the author presents us. She states that the idea came to her in the first place from the New Testament: “There I found that Christ was tempted by Satan with the offer of thrones, principalities and powers, all of which the Saviour rejected. When the temptation was over I read that Satan left Him, and that angels came and ministered to Him. I thought this out in my own mind and I concluded that if man, through Christ, would only reject Satan, Satan would leave him, and that angels would minister to him in the same way that they ministered to Christ. Out of this germ rose the wider idea that Satan himself might be glad for men to so reject him, as he then might have the chance of recovering his lost angelic position.” In fact, the writer would have it that Satan becomes on terms of intimacy with man, and man then becomes consequently evil, only if man shows that he wishes to travel an evil course; that man may never redeem the devil, but that when man has become as perfect as, through Christ, he may, then the devil may again become an angel—a Doctrine of universal salvation for sinners and for Satan too. No other writer has given such a conception of the devil’s character and position.
The central conception of “The Sorrows of Satan,” Marie Corelli further says, is that as the possession of an immortal spirit must needs breed immortal longings, Satan, being an angel once, must of necessity long for that state of perfection; and that God, being the perfection of love, could not in His love deny all hope of final redemption even to Satan. Truly she here gives a conception of the God of Love more attractive than the pitiless readings of the Divine character which some theologians would have us accept.
There are the two conflicting influences in the novelist’s conception of the devil—Satan endeavoring to corrupt and destroy man, yet knowing that if man rejects him he is nearer to his own redemption. And so in this book we find Prince Lucio Rimânez often giving utterance to thoughts and principles which the man enslaved by him refuses to adopt and practice, as if he longed for Tempest to repel him, though helping forward all his selfish schemes. And we are given, too, the picture of this Prince of Darkness, finding that Mavis Clare could not be tempted, begging for her prayers—“you believe God hears you.... Only a pure woman can make faith possible to man. Pray for me, then, as one who has fallen from his higher and better self; who strives, but who may not attain; who labors under heavy punishment; who would fain reach Heaven, but who by the cursed will of man, and man alone, is kept in hell! Pray for me, Mavis Clare; promise it; and so shall you lift me a step nearer the glory I have lost.”
Rimânez and Tempest go on a long yachting cruise together,—to Egypt,—and during this journey the discourses of the Prince are numerous and of intense interest. In one he states that if men were true to their immortal instincts and to the God that made them,—if they were generous, honest, fearless, faithful, reverent, unselfish, ... if women were pure, brave, tender, and loving,—then “Lucifer, Son of the Morning,” lifted towards his Creator on the prayers of pure lives, would wear again his Angel’s crown. There is for a brief period after this a vision of the devil,—“one who, proud and rebellious, like you, errs less, in that he owns God as his Master”—as an Angel. And then the yacht, steered by the demon Amiel, crashes on through ice with a noise like thunder, to the world’s end. Tempest catches a passing glimpse of his dead wife, and feels remorse and pity at last. A few moments pass and Tempest’s hour has come, an hour for a great decision:
“Know from henceforth that the Supernatural Universe in and around the Natural is no lie,—but the chief Reality, inasmuch as God surroundeth all! Fate strikes thine hour,—and in this hour ’tis given thee to choose thy Master. Now, by the will of God, thou seest me as Angel;—but take heed thou forget not that among men I am as Man! In human form I move with all humanity through endless ages,—to kings and counselors, to priests and scientists, to thinkers and teachers, to old and young, I come in the shape their pride or vice demands, and am as one with all. Self finds in me another Ego;—but from the pure in heart, the high in faith, the perfect in intention, I do retreat with joy, offering naught save reverence, demanding naught save prayer! So am I—so must I ever be—till Man of his own will releases and redeems me. Mistake me not, but know me!—and choose thy Future for truth’s sake and not out of fear! Choose and change not in any time hereafter,—this hour, this moment is thy last probation,—choose, I say! Wilt thou serve Self and Me? or God only?”
The choice is made. Tempest realizes with shame his miserable vices, his puny scorn of God, his effronteries and blasphemies; and in the sudden strong repulsion and repudiation of his own worthless existence, being, and character, he finds both voice and speech. “God only! Annihilation at His hands, rather than life without Him! God only! I have chosen!” From the brightening heaven there rings a silver voice, clear as a clarion-call,—“Arise, Lucifer, Son of the Morning! One soul rejects thee,—one hour of joy is granted thee! Hence, and arise!” And with a vision of the man fiend rushing for a brief hour to celestial regions, because of one soul that rejected Satan, Geoffrey Tempest finds himself tied to a raft on the open sea, and remembers the promise, “Him who cometh unto me will I in no wise cast out.”
The late Rev. H. R. Haweis, preaching on this book, said: “‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you,’ is the grand moral carried out,” and that is an opinion, notwithstanding the ban of the Romish Church, which is entertained of the book by many Christian men, by a large number of Christian clergy. It is a declaration of the Nemesis of everything that opposes itself to the will of God. The book teaches the softening influences upon mankind of good deeds done, of good words spoken. It teaches, in brief, that there are two contending powers at work upon mankind—the evil and the good; and the book is an eloquent, beautiful, effective contribution to the victory of the Good. The sensuality, the evil imagination, the prostitution of the marriage sacrament to commercial bargains, the infidelity, in thought and intention, though not in deed, of Lady Sibyl Elton, are stripped of their pretty dressings and shown in their detestable reality. “The acts of selfishness in man,” Mr. Haweis added, “are exhibited in the person of Geoffrey Tempest in a garb that repels and with results that horrify; and the pure influence of Mavis Clare is shown on the other side of the picture, bright and attractive, the spirit of peace, contentment, and love in a glorious and glorified conquest of the spirit of evil.”