“He used to show his gratitude,” we are told, “in odd little ways of his own, which had a curious and softening effect on the mind of the learned Cadman-Gore. He would carefully brush the ugly hat of the great man and bring it to him,—he would pull out and smooth the large sticky fingers of his loose leather gloves and lay them side by side on a table ready for him to wear,—he would energetically polish the top of his big silver-knobbed stick,—and he would invariably make a ‘buttonhole’ of the prettiest flowers he could find for him to put in his coat at dinner.”
One can imagine the grim old gentleman being by turns astonished and touched by such attentions: the Professor indeed warms to the lad, and, when they return to Combmartin, bids him go and play instead of returning to his investigation of “The Advance of Positivism and Pure Reason,” which formed part of that schedule of study which his father had previously insisted upon.
Before his illness Lionel had become close friends with the village sexton, Reuben Dale, and that worthy’s little daughter, Jessamine. It had been the boy’s keenest joy to romp and talk with Jessamine, and so, on being afforded a holiday by the Professor’s thoughtfulness, he proceeds with a light heart in search of his former playmate. He finds Reuben at work in the churchyard, and “the significant hollow in the ground was shaped slowly in a small dark square, to the length of a little child.”
The old man’s sobs betray the truth—during Lionel’s absence his baby sweetheart has fallen a prey to diphtheria. The boy’s anguish is terrible: the sexton’s simple faith in God’s way being the best way has no comfort for the helpless little pagan who has been taught that such faith as this is sheer nonsense. “No, no!” he cries; “there is no God; you have not read,—you have not studied things, and you do not know,—but you are all wrong. There is no God,—there is only the Atom which does not care.”
Distracted with grief, Lionel tears away into the woods, his bewildered and weary head full of strange thoughts. At last a firm resolve takes possession of him. “I know!—I know the best way to discover the real secret,—I must find it out!—and I will!”
And he does. With the cool deliberation that is often a distinguishing attribute of one bent on self-destruction, he goes to bed in the usual way. When the house is quite still, and all its other inmates are slumbering, he steals down to his schoolroom, where he carefully pens some letters—one to his father, another to the Professor, and a third to Mr. Montrose. This done, he falls upon his knees by the open window and prays to that Being whom he feels “must be a God, really and truly,” in spite of the many learned theories to the contrary by which his child-mind has been distracted.
A little later “there came a heavy stillness, ... and a sudden sense of cold in the air, as of the swift passing of the Shadow of Death.”
One may reasonably contend that such passages as these are unnecessarily distressing, and certainly there are several of Miss Corelli’s works which should not be left in the way of weak-minded persons. The authoress, it is clear, wishes to drive home her arguments in a manner that will be remembered. Chapter XIV. of “The Mighty Atom” is not one that is ever likely to be forgotten by those who have read this book.
People who object to such methods as Miss Corelli employs in “The Mighty Atom” must bear in mind that the motive underlying each of her stories is to show up a certain evil and suggest remedial measures, themselves as powerful as the disease requiring their application.
The lesson taught so startlingly in “The Mighty Atom” must have brought home the truths of its straightforward doctrines to a multitude of readers. Thus can a book drop seed which is destined to flourish abundantly for a great length of time and in widely separated places. If a book be good, it will have a long life: living, its effects will be felt by more than one generation of readers. Such is the power of literature—such the strength of a mere pen when wielded by one whose principal stock-in-trade is knowledge combined with sincerity and a determination to speak out for the general weal at all hazards, critics notwithstanding.