THE MURDER OF DELICIA




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Title: The Murder of Delicia
Author: Marie Corelli
Release Date: September 19, 2016 [EBook #53097]
Language: English
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                                  THE
                           MURDER OF DELICIA


                                   BY

                             MARIE CORELLI

         _Author of "The Sorrows of Satan," "The Mighty Atom,"
              "Barabbas," "A Romance of Two Worlds," etc._



                                 LONDON
                           HUTCHINSON AND CO.
                           34 Paternoster Row
                               MDCCCXCVI




                          *INTRODUCTORY NOTE*


The following slight and unelaborated sketch of a very commonplace and
everyday tragedy will, I am aware, meet with the unqualified disapproval
of the ’superior’ sex.  They will assert, with much indignant emphasis,
that the character of ’Lord Carlyon’ is an impossible one, and that such
a ’cad’ as he is shown to be never existed.  Anticipating these remarks,
I have to say in reply that the two chief personages in my story,
namely, ’Lord Carlyon’ and his wife, are drawn strictly from the life;
and, that though both the originals have some years since departed from
this scene of earthly contest and misunderstanding, so that my
delineation of their characters can no longer grieve or offend either,
the ’murder of Delicia’ was consummated at the hands of her husband
precisely in the way I have depicted it.

There are thousands of such ’murders’ daily happening among us—murders
which are not considered ’cruelty’ in the eyes of the law. There are any
number of women who work night and day with brain and hand to support
useless and brainless husbands; women whose love never falters, whose
patience never tires, and whose tenderness is often rewarded only by the
most callous neglect and ingratitude. I do not speak of the countless
cases among the hard-working millions whom we elect to call the ’lower
classes,’ where the wife, working from six in the morning till ten at
night, has to see her hard earnings snatched from her by her ’better’
half and spent at the public-house in strong drink, despite the fact
that there is no food at home, and that innocent little children are
starving.  These instances are so frequent that they have almost ceased
to awaken our interest, much less our sympathy.  In my story I allude
principally to the ’upper’ ranks, where the lazy noodle of an aristocrat
spends his time, first, in accumulating debts, and then in looking about
for a woman with money to pay them—a woman upon whose income he can
afterwards live comfortably for the rest of his worthless life.  To put
it bluntly and plainly, a great majority of the men of the present day
want women to keep them.  It is not a manly or noble desire; but as the
kind of men I mean have neither the courage nor the intelligence to
fight the world for themselves, it is, I suppose, natural to such
inefficient weaklings that they should,—seeing the fierce heat and
contest of competition in every branch of modern labour,—gladly sneak
behind a woman’s petticoats to escape the general fray.  But the point
to which I particularly wish to call the attention of the more
thoughtful of my readers is that these very sort of men (when they have
secured the ignoble end of their ambition, namely, the rich woman to
live upon, under matrimonial sufferance) are the first to run down
women’s work, women’s privileges, women’s attainments and women’s
honour.  The man who owes his dinner to his wife’s unremitting toil is
often to be heard speaking of the ’uselessness’ of women, their
frivolity and general incapacity.  And in cases where the woman’s
intellectual ability is brought into play, and where the financial
results of her brain work are such that they enable the husband to live
as he likes, surrounded with every ease and comfort, then it is that at
the clubs, or in any other place where he can give himself sublime airs
of independence, he will frequently express regret, in grandiloquent
terms, that there should be any women who ’want to be clever’; they are
always ’unsexed.’  This word ’unsexed’ is always cast at brilliant women
by every little halfpenny ragamuffin of the press that can get a
newspaper corner in which to hide himself for the convenience of
throwing stones.  The woman who paints a great picture is ’unsexed’; the
woman who writes a great book is ’unsexed’; in fact, whatever woman does
that is higher and more ambitious than the mere act of flinging herself
down at the feet of man and allowing him to walk over her, makes her in
man’s opinion unworthy of his consideration as woman; and he fits the
appellation ’unsexed’ to her with an easy callousness, which is as
unmanly as it is despicable.

Now, to turn to the other side of the medal; let us see what are the
occupations man graciously permits to woman without affronting her by
this opprobrious epithet. In the first place, he is chiefly willing to
see her on the stage.  And he generally prefers the music-hall stage as
the best one fitted to her ’poor’ abilities.  It is no particular ’fun’
to him to see her rise to the histrionic height of a Rachel or a Sarah
Bernhardt—the sublimity of tragedy in her eyes does not specially move
him—the simulation of heartbreak in her face may possibly awake in him a
curious emotion, divided between pity and astonishment,—but it does not
amuse him. Nor does the exquisite grace of the finished ’comedienne’
delight him entirely,—her pretty airs and graces, and her ringing laugh,
are fascinating in a way, but in the huge amount of _amour-propre_,
which swells the head of the smallest masculine noodle about town, he
has an uncomfortable, lurking suspicion that she may all the while,
under her charming stage-feigning, be really laughing at him and the
whole of his sex generally.  No! Neither the height of tragedy nor
comedy in the woman on the stage really satisfy men so much as the happy
medium,—the particular ’no-man’s-land’ of art, where nothing is demanded
of her but—Body and Grin.  A beautiful Body, trained to walk and look
well—an affable Grin, expanding at the sight of champagne and other
mundane delicacies,—these are all that is necessary.  Now, if this
beautiful Body be well-nigh stripped to man’s gaze night after night on
the boards, he will never call the woman who so exposes herself
’unsexed,’ nor will he apply the word to her if she drinks too much wine
and brandy.  But if another woman, with quite as beautiful a body,
instead of exhibiting herself half nude on the music-hall stage, prefers
to keep her woman’s modesty, and execute some great work of art which
shall be as good and even better than anything man can accomplish, she
will be dubbed ’unsexed’ instantly.  And I ask—Why is it that man elects
to compass woman’s degradation rather than her up-lifting and
sanctification?  It is a wrong course to adopt,—an evil course; and one
that carries with it a terrible retribution in the lives of the coming
generation.

I think, as I write, of a certain individual, living at the present
moment in one of the most fashionable quarters of London,—a man who is
generally looked upon with a considerable amount of respect by the
monied and titled classes.  Some years ago he married a bright little
American woman for her money, and since that time he has made her life
an hourly misery.  She loved him,—more’s the pity!—and though he does
not scruple to insult her before others with an insolent brutality which
is as shameful as it is disgusting,—though he will upbraid her before
his servants and his guests at dinner with the harshness one might
expect of a slave-driver, she endures his cruelty with patience—and why?
For her children’s sake.  Her womanly idea is, that they should respect
their father, and to that end she puts her own injuries aside and does
her best and bravest to keep the household straight.  Her money it is
that pays for all the costly dinners and entertainments with which her
husband glorifies himself before his acquaintances each London ’season,’
pushing her into the background at every turn, and hanging on to the
skirts of the newest fashionable _demi-mondaine_ instead; and through
her and her constant bounty alone he has attained the social position he
holds.  This is only one instance out of many where men, indebted to
women for every honour and advancement they possess, turn and rend their
’good angels,’ or torture them by every conceivable means of private
malice and wickedness, which cannot come under the jurisdiction of the
law.  And love is so much the best part of a good woman’s nature, that
when she once truly gives her whole heart and soul away to a man, she
finds it difficult, nay, almost impossible, to uproot that deep
affection and understand that it has been, or is wasted upon him.  This
was the trouble and incurable wound of ’Delicia’; it is the trouble and
incurable wound of thousands of women to-day.

It is perhaps scarcely necessary to touch on another grievous and
ignoble phase of modern manhood which is constantly exhibited among us
at the present time,—namely, the miserable position voluntarily held by
certain ’noblemen’ who, because they have placed themselves in the
unnatural and unbecoming condition of owing everything to their wives’
money, permit those wives to play fast and loose with their honour and
good name, and apparently shut their eyes to the shameless infidelities
which make them the by-word and contempt of all self-respecting
’commoners.’  It would be a wholesome and refreshing stimulus to society
if such ’blue-blooded’ lacqueys could awake to the fact that manhood is
better than money, and would by their own free will and choice go out to
hard labour in the gold-fields or elsewhere and earn their own
livelihood bravely and independently, instead of lounging and frittering
their days away, the silent and inactive spectators of their wives’ open
and wanton degradation.

I have purposely selected the case of ’Delicia’ from several more or
less similar ones as a type of the fate frequently meted out by men to
the women who have by their own intellectual attainments succeeded in
winning fame and fortune.  There are three radical errors chiefly made
by the ’superior’ sex in their hasty estimation of what are called
’clever’ women;—the first on the question of heart; the second in the
matter of permanence; and the third on the always momentous
consideration of good looks. If a woman does anything out of the common
in the way of art or literature, she is immediately judged by men as
being probably without tenderness, without permanence in her work, and
certainly without personal beauty.  Now, as far as tenderness goes, a
woman who thinks, who has read much and has studied human life in its
various wonderful and often sad aspects, is far more able to realise the
rareness and the worth of true love than the woman who has never thought
or studied at all. She,—the woman thinker,—understands with full pathos
the real necessity there is for being kind, patient and forbearing one
with the other, since at any moment Death may sever the closest ties and
put an end to the happiest dreams; and in her love—if she does
love—there must needs be far more force, truth and passion than in the
light emotion of the woman who lives for society alone, and flits from
pleasure to pleasure like a kind of moth whose existence and feeling are
but for a day.  On the question of permanence in her work, she is the
equal of man, as permanence in both ambition and attainment depends
chiefly on temperament. A man’s work or fame may be as unstable as that
of any weak woman if he himself is unstable in nature.  But put man and
woman together,—start them both equally with a firm will and a
resoluteness of endeavour, the woman’s intellect will frequently
outstrip the man’s.  The reason of this is that she has a quicker
instinct and finer impulses.  And lastly, on the subject of good
looks,—it is not a _sine qua non_ that a clever woman must be old and
must be ugly.  It sometimes happens so,—but it is not always so.  She
may be young and she may be lovely; nevertheless, men prefer to run
after the newest barmaid or music-hall dancer, who is probably painted
up to the eyes, and whose figure is chiefly the result of the
corset-maker’s art, under the impression that in such specimens alone of
our sex will they find true beauty.  Were they told that a certain
artist who painted a certain great picture was a young and beautiful
woman, they would never believe it; if someone volunteered the
information that the sculptor whose massive marble group of classic
figures adorns one of the galleries in Rome was a woman whose smile was
ravishing and whose figure was a model for Psyche, they would shrug
their shoulders incredulously. ’No, no!’ they would say, ’Clever women
are always ’unsexed,’—give me the barmaid—the shop-girl—the dancer—the
’living picture’—the aerial gymnast—give me anything rather than a pure,
finely-cultured, noble-natured woman to be the mother of my sons!’

Thus things drift; badly for England, if we are to believe all we are
told by scientific physiologists,—and whether these wiseacres and
doom-prophets are wrong or right in their prognostications, it is
certain that the true intention of Woman’s destiny has not yet been
carried out.  She is fighting towards it,—but, if I may venture to say
so, she is using her weapons wildly and in various wrong directions. It
is not by opposing herself to man that she can be his real
helpmeet,—neither is it by supporting him on her money, whether such
money be earned or inherited.  She will never make a true man of him
that way.  And it is not by adopting his pastimes or apeing his manners.
It is by cultivating and cherishing to the utmost every sweet and sacred
sentiment of womanhood,—every grace, every refinement, every beauty; by
taking her share in the world’s intellectual work with force, as well as
with modesty, and by showing a faultless example of gentle reserve and
delicate chastity.  When she is like this, it is of course highly
probable that she will be ’murdered’ often as ’Delicia’ was;—but the
death of many martyrs is necessary to the establishment of a new creed.

When man begins to understand that woman is not meant to be a toy or a
drudge, but a comrade,—the closest, best and truest that God has given
him,—then the clouds will clear; and marriage will be a blessing instead
of (as it too often proves) a curse,—and there will be few, if any,
’Delicias’ to be slain, inasmuch as there will be few, if any men left,
so unworthy of their manhood as to play coward and traitor to the women
who trust them.

MARIE CORELLI.

July 6th, 1896.




                        *The Murder of Delicia*



                              *CHAPTER I*


A flood of warm spring sunshine poured its full radiance from the south
through the large, square lattice-window of Delicia’s study, flashing a
golden smile of recognition on Delicia herself and on all the objects
surrounding her.  Gleaming into the yellow cups of a cluster of
daffodils which stood up, proudly erect, out of a quaint, brown vase
from Egypt, it flickered across a pearl-inlaid mandoline that hung
against the wall, as though it were playing an unheard melody in
delicate _tremolo_ on the strings; then, setting a crown of light on
Delicia’s hair, it flung an arrowy beam at the head of Hadrian’s
’Antinous,’ whose curved marble lips, parted in an inscrutable,
half-mocking smile, seemed about to utter a satire on the ways of women.
Delicia had purchased this particular copy of the original bust in the
British Museum because she imagined it was like her husband.  No one
else thought it in the least like him—but she did.

She had all sorts of fancies about this husband of hers—fancies both
pretty and passionate—though she had none about herself.  She was only a
worker; one whom certain distinguished noodles on the Press were
accustomed to sneer at from their unintellectual and impecunious
standpoint as ’a lady novelist’ not meriting the name of ’author,’ and
who, despite sneers and coarse jesting, was one of the most celebrated
women of her time, as well as one of the wealthiest.  The house she
lived in, built from her own designs, furnished with every luxury and
filled with valuable pictures, curios and art-treasures, was one of the
material results of her brilliant brain-work; the perfectly-ordered
_ménage_, the admirably-trained servants, the famous ’table’ at which
many of London’s most fastidious _gourmets_ had sat and gorged
themselves to repletion, were all owing to her incessant and unwearying
labour.  She did everything; she paid everything, from the taxes down to
the wages of the scullery-maid; she managed everything, from the
advantageous disposal of her own manuscripts down to the smallest detail
of taste and elegance connected with the daily serving of her husband’s
dinner.  She was never idle, and in all her literary efforts had never
yet failed to score a triumph above her compeers.

As a writer, she stood quite apart from the rank and file of modern
fictionists.  Something of the spirit of the Immortals was in her
blood—the spirit that moved Shakespeare, Shelley and Byron to proclaim
truths in the face of a world of lies—some sense of the responsibility
and worth of Literature—and with these emotions existed also the
passionate desire to rouse and exalt her readers to the perception of
the things she herself knew and instinctively felt to be right and just
for all time.  The public responded to her voice and clamoured for her
work, and, as a natural result of this, all ambitious and aspiring
publishers were her very humble suppliants.  Whatsoever munificent and
glittering ’terms’ are dreamed of by authors in their wildest
conceptions of a literary El Dorado, were hers to command; and yet she
was neither vain nor greedy.  She was, strange to say, though an author
and a ’celebrity,’ still an unspoilt, womanly woman.

Just when the sunshine crowned her, as the sunshine had a way of doing
at that particular hour of the morning, she was very busy finishing the
last chapter of a book which had occupied all her energies during the
past four months. She wrote rapidly, and the small, well-shaped, white
hand that guided the pen held that dangerous intellectual weapon firmly,
with a close and somewhat defiant grip, suggestive of the manner of a
youthful warrior grasping a light spear and about to hurl it in the face
of a foe.  Her very attitude in writing indicated mental force and
health; no ’literary stoop’ disfigured her supple back and shoulders, no
sign of ’fag’ or ’brain-muddle’ clouded the thoughtful yet animated
expression of her features.  Her eyes were bright, her cheeks delicately
flushed.  She had no idea of her own poetic and unique loveliness, which
was utterly unlike all the various admitted types of beauty in woman.
She scarcely knew that her eyes were of that divinely rare, dark violet
colour which in certain lights looks almost black, that her skin was
white as a snowdrop, or that her hair, in its long, glistening masses of
brown-gold, was a wonder and an envy to countless numbers of her sex who
presented themselves to the shrewdly-grinning gaze of the world with
dyed ’fronts’ and false ’back coils.’  She truly never thought of these
things. She had grown to understand, from current ’smart’ newspaper
talk, that all authoresses, without exception, were bound to be judged
as elderly and plain, even hideous, in the matter of looks, according to
the accepted conventional standard of ’press’ ethics, and though she was
perfectly aware that she was young, and not as repulsive in her personal
appearance as she ought to be for the profession of letters, she took
very little trouble to assert herself, and made no attempt whatever to
’show off her points,’ as the slang parlance hath it, though those
’points’ outnumbered in variety and charm the usual attractions of
attractive women.  Admirers of her genius were too dazzled by that
genius to see anything but the glow of the spiritual fire burning about
her like the Delphic flames around Apollo’s priestess, and the dainty
trifles of personality, which are ordinarily all a woman has to boast
of, were in her case lost sight of. Compliments and flatteries, however,
were distasteful to her, except when on rare occasions she received them
from her husband.  Then her sweet soul kindled within her into a warm
glow of rapture and gratitude, and she wondered what she had done to
deserve praise from so lordly and perfect a being.

There was something very touching as well as beautiful in the way
Delicia bent her proud intellect and prouder spirit to the will of her
chosen mate.  For him, and for him only, she strove to add fresh glory
to the lustre of her name; for him she studied the art of dressing
perfectly, loving best to drape herself in soft white stuffs that clung
in close, artistic folds round her light and lissom figure, and made her
look like a Greuze or a Romney picture; for him she took pains to twist
the rich treasure of her hair in cunning braids and love-locks manifold,
arranging it in a soft cluster on her fair forehead after the fashion of
the ancient Greeks, and scattering here and there one or two delicate
rings about her finely-veined temples, as golden suggestions of kisses
to be pressed thereon.  For him she cased her little feet in fascinating
_brodequins_ of deftest Paris make; for him she moved like a sylph and
smiled like an angel; for him she sang, when the evenings fell, old
tender songs of love and home, in her rich, soft contralto; for him
indeed she lived, breathed and—worked.  She was the hiving bee—he the
luxurious drone that ate the honey.  And it never occurred to him to
consider the position as at all unnatural.

Certainly Delicia loved her work—of that there could be no doubt.  She
enjoyed it with every fibre of her being.  She relished the keen
competition of the literary arena, where her rivals, burning with
jealousy, endeavoured vainly to emulate her position; and she valued her
fame as the means of bringing her into contact with all the leading men
and women of her day.  She was amused at the small spites and envies of
the malicious and unsuccessful, and maintained her philosophical and
classic composure under all the trumpery slights, ignorant censures and
poor scandals put upon her by the less gifted of her own sex.  Her
career was one of triumph, and being sane and healthy, she enjoyed that
triumph to the full.  But more than triumph, more than fame or the
rewards of fame, more indeed than all things in the world ever devised,
measured or possessed, she loved her husband,—a strange passion for a
woman in these wild days when matrimony is voted ’out of date’ by
certain theory-mongers, and a ’nobleman’ can be found ready to give a
money-bribe to any couple of notoriety-hunters who will consent to be
married in church according to the holy ordinance, and who will
afterwards fling a boorish insult in the face of Religion by protesting
publicly against the ceremony. Delicia had been married three years, and
those three years had passed by like three glittering visions of
Paradise, glowing with light, colour, harmony and rapture.  Only one
grief had clouded the pageant of her perfect joy, and this was the death
of her child, a tiny mortal of barely two months old, which had, as it
were, dropped out of her arms like a withered blossom slain by sudden
frost.  Yet, to Delicia’s dreamy and sensitive temperament, the sadness
of this loss but deepened her adoration for him round whom her brilliant
life twined like a luxurious vine full of blossom and fruit—the strong,
splendid, bold, athletic, masterful creature who was hers—hers only!
For she knew—her own heart told her this—that no other woman shared his
tenderness, and that never, never had his faith to her been shaken by so
much as one unruly thought!

And thus it was that Delicia often said of herself that she was the
happiest woman in the world, and that her blessings were so many and so
various that she was ashamed to pray.  ’For how can I, how dare I ask
God for anything else when I have so much?’ she would inwardly reflect.
’Rather let me be constant in the giving of thanks for all the joys so
lavishly bestowed upon me, which I so little deserve!’  And she would
work on with redoubled energy, striving after perfection in all she did,
and full of a strange ardour combined with a yet stranger humility.  She
never looked upon her work as a trouble, and never envied those of her
own sex whose absolute emptiness of useful occupation enabled them to
fritter away their time in such ’delightful’ amusements as bicycling,
rinking, skirt-dancing and other methods of man-hunting at present in
vogue among the fair feminine animals whose sole aim of existence is
marriage, and after that—nullity.  Her temperament was eminently
practical as well as idealistic, and in the large amounts of money she
annually earned she never lost a penny by rash speculation or foolish
expenditure.  Lavish in her hospitalities, she was never ostentatious,
and though perfect in her dress, she was never guilty of the wild and
wicked extravagance to which many women in her position and with her
means would have yielded without taking a moment’s thought. She
carefully considered the needs of the poor, and helped them accordingly,
in secret, and without the petty presumption of placarding her charities
to the world through the medium of a ’bazaar’ or hypocritical
’entertainment at the East End.’  She felt the deep truth of the saying,
’Unto whom much is given, even from him shall much be required,’ and
gave her largesse with liberal tenderness and zeal. On one point alone
did she outrun the measure of prudence in the scattering of her wealth,
and this was in the consideration of her husband. For him nothing was
too good, nothing too luxurious, and any wish he expressed, even by the
merest chance, she immediately set herself, with pride and joy, to
gratify.  As a matter of fact, he had not really a penny to call his
own, though his private banking account always showed a conveniently
large surplus, thanks to Delicia’s unfailing care.  Wilfred de Tracy
Gifford Carlyon, to give him all his names in full, was an officer in
the Guards, the younger son of a nobleman who had, after a career of
wild extravagance, died a bankrupt.  He had no other profession than the
military, and though a man of good blood and distinguished descent, he
was absolutely devoid of all ambition, save a desire to have his surname
pronounced correctly.  ’Car*lee*-on,’ he would say with polite emphasis,
’not Car-_ly_-on.  Our name is an old, historical one, and like many of
its class is spelt one way and pronounced another.’

Now, without ambition, the human organisation becomes rather like a
heavy cart stuck fast in the mud-rut it has made for itself, and it
frequently needs a strong horse to move it and set it jogging on again.
In this case, Delicia was the horse; or, to put it more justly, the
high-spirited mare, galloping swiftly along an open road to a destined
end, and scarcely conscious of the cart she drew at such a rattling pace
behind her.  How indignant she would have been had she overheard any
profane person using this irreverent cart simile in connection with her
one supremely Beloved! Yet such was the true position of things as
recognised by most people around her; and only he and she were blind to
the disproportionate features of their union; she with the rare and
beautiful blindness of perfect love, he with the common every-day
blindness of male egotism.

That he had exceptional attractions of his own wherewith to captivate
and subdue the fair sex was beyond all question.  The qualities of
’race,’ derived from a long ancestral line of warriors and statesmen,
had blossomed out in him physically if not mentally.  He had a fine,
admirably-moulded figure, fit for a Theseus or a Hercules, a handsome
face and a dulcet voice, rich with many gradations of persuasive and
eloquent tone.  Armed with these weapons of conquest, he met Delicia at
the moment when her small foot had touched the topmost peak of Fame, and
when all the sharp thorns and icicles of the strange crown wherewith Art
rewards her chosen children were freshly set among her maiden hair.
Society thought her a chilly vestal—shrank from her, indeed, somewhat in
vague fear; for her divine, violet eyes had a straight way of looking
through the cunningly-contrived mask of the social liar, and, like the
’Rontgen rays,’ taking a full impression of the ugly devil behind it.
Society refused to recognise her ethereal and half elfin type of beauty.
It ’could see nothing in her.’  She was to it ’a curious sort of woman,
difficult to get on with,’—and behind her back it said of her the usual
mysterious nothings, such as, ’Ah! one never knows what those kind of
persons are!’ or, ’Who _was_ she?’ and, ’Where does she get her strange
ideas from?’—slobbering its five o’clock tea and munching its watercress
sandwiches over these scrappy suggestions of scandal with a fine relish
only known to the ’upper class’ matron and the Whitechapel washerwoman.
For however much apart these two feminine potentialities may be in
caste, they are absolutely one in their love of low gossip and slander.

Nevertheless, the dashing Guards officer, who had been flung into an
expensive regiment at the reckless whim of his late father, found
several engaging qualities in Delicia, which appealed to him partly on
account of their rarity, and partly because he, personally, had never
been able to believe any woman capable of possessing them.  Perhaps the
first of the various unique characteristics he recognised in her, and
marvelled at, was her total lack of vanity. He had never in all his life
before met a pretty woman who attached so little importance to her own
good looks; and he had certainly never come across a really ’famous’
personage who wore the laurels of renown so unconsciously and
unassumingly.  He had once in his life had the honour of shaking hands
with an exceedingly stout and florid poetess, who spoke in a deep,
masculine voice, and asked him what he thought of her last book, which,
by-the-bye, he had never heard of, and he had also lunched in the
distinguished company of a ’sexual fictionist,’ a very dirty and
dyspeptic-looking man, who had talked of nothing else but the excellence
and virtue of his own unsavoury productions all through the course of
the meal.  But Delicia!—Delicia, the envy of all the struggling,
crowding climbers up Parnassus,—the living embodiment of an almost
phenomenal triumph in art and letters—Delicia said nothing about herself
at all.  She assumed no ’airs of superiority;’ she talked amusing
trifles like other less brilliant and more frivolous people; she was
even patient with the ubiquitous ’society idiot,’ and drew him out with
a tactful charm which enabled him to display all his most glaring points
to perfection; but when anyone began to praise her gifts of authorship,
or ventured to comment on the wide power and influence she had attained
through her writings, she turned the conversation instantly, without
_brusquerie_ but with a gentle firmness that won for her the involuntary
respect of even the flippant and profane.

This unpretentious conduct of hers, so exceptional in ’celebrities,’
who, in these days of push-and-scramble have no scruples about giving
themselves what is called in modern parlance ’any amount of side,’
rather astonished the gallant ’Beauty Carlyon,’ as he was sometimes
nicknamed by his fellow officers; and, as it is necessary to analyse his
feelings thoroughly, it must also be conceded that another of his
sensations on being introduced to the woman whose opinions and writings
were the talk of London, was one of unmitigated admiration mingled with
envy at the thought of the fortune she had made and was still making.
What!—so slight a creature, whose waist he could span with his two
hands, whose slender neck could be wrung as easily as that of a
singing-bird, and whose head seemed too small for its glistening weight
of gold hair—she, to be the possessor of a name and fame reaching
throughout every part of the British Empire, and far across the wide
Atlantic, and the independent mistress of such wealth as made his
impecunious mouth water! Ten thousand pounds for her last book!—paid
down without a murmur, even before the work was finished!—surely ’these
be excellent qualities,’ he mused within himself, afterwards falling
into a still more profound reverie when he heard on unimpeachable
authority that the royalties alone on her already-published works
brought her in an income of over five thousand a year.  Her first book
had been produced when she was but seventeen, though she had feigned,
when asked, to be several years older, in order to ensure attention from
publishers; and she had gone on steadily rising in the scale of success
till now—when she was twenty-seven, and famous with a fame surpassing
that of all her men contemporaries.  No doubt much money had been put by
during those ten triumphal years!

Taking all these matters into consideration, it was not to be wondered
at that the penniless Guardsman thought often and deeply concerning the
possibilities and advantages of Delicia as a wife, and that, during the
time he formed one of the house-party among whose members she was the
most honoured guest, he should seize every opportunity of making himself
agreeable to her.  He began to study her from a physical point of view,
and very soon discovered in her a charm which was totally unlike the
ordinary attractiveness of ordinary women.  In strict fairness to him,
it must be admitted that his realisation of Delicia’s fine and delicate
nature was due to distinctly sincere feeling on his part, and was not
inspired by any ulterior thought of Mammon.  He liked the way she moved;
her suave, soft step and the graceful fold and flow of her garments
pleased him; and once, when she raised her eyes suddenly to his in quick
response to some question, he was startled and thrilled by the glamour
and sweet witchery of those dark purple orbs, sparkling with such light
as can only be kindled from a pure soul’s fire.  Gradually he, six feet
of man, nobly proportioned, with a head which might be justly termed
classic, even heroic, though it lacked certain bumps which phrenology
deems desirable for human perfection—fell desperately in love, and here
his condition must be very positively emphasised, lest the slightest
doubt be entertained of it hereafter. To speak poetically, the fever of
love consumed him with extraordinary violence night and day; and the
strongest form of that passion known to men, namely, the covetous greed
of possession, roused him to the employment of all his faculties in the
task of subduing the Dian-like coldness and crystalline composure of
Delicia’s outward-seeming nature to that tenderness and warmth so
eminently desirable in a woman who is, according to the dictum of old
Genesis, meant to be a man’s helpmate, though the antique record does
not say she is to be so far helpful as to support him altogether.  Among
the various artful devices Carlyon brought to his somewhat difficult
attack on the ivory castle of a pure, studious and contemplative
maidenhood, were a Beautiful Sullenness,—a Dark Despair,—and a
Passionate Outbreak—the latter he employed at rare intervals only.  When
the Beautiful Sullenness was upon him he had a very noble appearance;
the delicate, proud curve of his upper lip was prominent,—his long,
silky lashes, darkly drooping, gave a shadow of stern sweetness to his
eyes; and Delicia, glancing at him timidly, would feel her heart beat
fast, like the fluttering wing of a frightened bird, if he chanced to
raise those eyes from their musing gloom and fix them half-ardently,
half-reproachfully on her face.  As for the Dark Despair, the sublimity
of aspect he managed to attain in that particular mood could never be
described in ordinary language; perhaps, in the world’s choicest
galleries of art, one might find such a wronged and suffering greatness
in the countenance of one of the sculptured gods or heroes, but surely
not elsewhere.  However, it was the Passionate Outbreak,—the
lightning-like fury and determination of mere manhood, springing forth
despite the man himself, and making havoc of all his preconceived
intentions, that won his cause for him at last.  The moment came—the one
moment which, truly speaking, comes but once to any human life; the
pre-ordained, divine moment, brief as the sparkle of foam on a breaking
wave,—the glimpse of Heaven that vanishes almost before we have looked
upon it.  It was a night never to be forgotten—by Delicia, at least; a
night when Shakespeare’s elves might have been abroad, playing mischief
with the flowers and scattering wonder-working charms upon the air—a
true ’Midsummer Night’s Dream’ which descended, full-visioned in silver
luminance, straight from Paradise for Delicia’s sake.  She was, at that
time, the guest of certain ’great’ people; the kind of ’great’ who say
they ’must have a celebrity or two, you know!—they are such queer, dear
things!’  Delicia, as a ’queer, dear thing,’ was one of the celebrities
thus entertained, and Pablo de Sarasate, also as a ’queer, dear thing,’
was another.  A number of titled and ’highly-connected’ personages, who
had the merit of being ’queer’ without being in the least ’dear,’ made
up the rest of the party.  The place they were staying at was a lordly
pile, anciently the ’summer pleasaunce’ and favourite resort of a great
Norman baron in the days of Richard the Lion-hearted, and the grounds
extending round and about it were of that deep-shadowed, smooth-lawned
and beautifully sylvan character which only the gardens of old, historic
English homes possess.  Up and down, between a double hedge of roses,
and under the radiance of a golden harvest moon, Delicia moved slowly
with Carlyon at her side; and from the open drawing-room windows of the
house floated the pure, penetrating voice of Sarasate’s violin.
Something mystic in the air; something subtle in the scent of the roses;
a stray flash of light on the falling drops of the fountain close by,
which perpetually built and unbuilt again its glittering cupola of
spray, or some other little nothing of the hour, brought both man and
woman to a sudden pause,—a conscious pause, in which they each fancied
they could hear their own hearts beating loudly above the music of the
distant violin.  And the man,—the elected son of Mars, who had never yet
lifted his manhood to the height of battle, there to confront horror
upon horror, shock upon shock,—now sprang up full-armed in the lists of
love, and, strong with a strength he had hardly been aware of as
existing in himself before, he swiftly and boldly grasped his prize.

’Delicia!’ he whispered—’Delicia, I love you!’

There was no audible answer.  Sarasate’s violin discoursed suitable
love-passages, and the moon smiled as if she would have spoken, but
Delicia was silent.  She had no need of speech—her eyes were
sufficiently eloquent.  She felt herself drawn with a passionate force
into her lover’s strong arms, and clasped firmly, even jealously, to his
broad breast; and like a dove, which after long journeyings finds its
home at last, she thought she had found hers, and folding her
spirit-wings, she nestled in and was content.

Clinging to this great and generous protector who thus assumed the
guardianship of her life, she marvelled innocently at her own good
fortune, and asked herself what she had done to deserve such ineffable
happiness.  And he? He too, at this particular juncture, may be given
credit for nobler emotions than those which ordinarily swayed him.  He
was really very much in love; and Love, for the time being, governed his
nature and made him a less selfish man than usual.  When he held Delicia
in his arms, and kissed her dewy lips and fragrant hair for the first
time, he was filled with a strange ecstasy, such as might have moved the
soul of Adam when, on rising from deep sleep, he found embodied Beauty
by his side as ’help-meet’ through his life for ever. He was conscious
that in Delicia he had won not only a sweet woman, but a rare
intelligence; a spirit far above the average,—a character tempered and
trained to finest issues,—and from day to day he studied the grace of
her form, the fairness of her skin, the lustre of her eyes, with an
ever-deepening intensity of delight which imparted a burning, masterful
ardour to the manner of his wooing, and brought her whole nature into a
half-timid, half-joyous subjection—the kind of subjection which might
impel a great queen to take off her crown and lay it at the feet of some
splendid warrior, in order that he might share her throne and kingdom.
And in this case the splendid warrior was only too ready to accept the
offered sovereignty.  Certainly he loved Delicia; loved her with very
real and almost fierce passion,—the passion that leaps up like a tall,
bright flame, and dies down to a dull ember; but he could hardly be
altogether insensible to the advantages he personally gained by loving
her.  He could not but exult at the thought that he, with nothing but
his handsome appearance and good birth to recommend him, had won this
woman whose very name was a lode-star of intellectual attraction over
half the habitable globe, and, in the very midst of the ardent caresses
he lavished upon her, he was unable to entirely forget the fortune she
had made, and which she was adding to every day. Then she was charming
in herself, too—lovely, though not at all so according to the accepted
’music-hall’ standard of height and fleshy prominence; she was more like
the poet’s dream of ’Kilmeny in Fairyland’ than the ’beauty’ of
eighteenpenny-photograph fame; but she was, as Carlyon himself said, ’as
natural as a rose—no paint, no dye, no purchased hair cut from the heads
of female convicts, no sickly perfumes, no padding, nothing in the least
artificial about her.’  And hearing this, his particular ’chum’ in the
Guards Club said,—

’Lucky dog!  You don’t deserve such a "draw" in the matrimonial
lottery!’

And Carlyon, smiling a superior smile, looked in a conveniently near
mirror, and replied,—

’Perhaps not!  But—’

A flash of the fine eyes, and a touch of the Beautiful Sullenness manner
finished the sentence.  It was evident that the gallant officer was not
at all in doubt as to his own value, however much other folks might be
disposed to consider the pecuniary and other advantages of his marriage
as altogether exceeding his merits.

Yet, on the whole, most people, with that idiotic inconsistency which
characterises the general social swarm, actually pitied him when they
heard what was going to happen.  They made round eyes of astonishment,
shook their heads and said, ’Poor Carlyon!’  Why they made round eyes or
shook their heads, they could not themselves have explained, but they
did so.  ’Poor,’ Carlyon certainly was; and his tailor’s bill was an
appalling one.  But ’they,’—the five-o’clock-tea gossips, knew nothing
about the tailor’s bill—that was a private affair,—one of those indecent
commonplaces of life which are more or less offensive to persons of high
distinction, who always find something curiously degrading in paying
their tradesmen. ’They’ saw Carlyon as he appeared to them—superb of
stature, proud of bearing, and Greekly ’god-like’ of feature—and that he
was always irreproachably dressed was sufficient for them, though not
for the unpaid tailor who fitted him so admirably.  Looking at him in
all his glory, ’they’ shuddered at the thought that he—this splendid
specimen of manhood—was actually going to marry a—what?

’A novelist, my dear! just think of it!’ feebly screamed Mrs Tooksey
over her Queen Anne silver teapot.  ’Poor Wilfred Carlyon! Such a
picturesque figure of a man!  How awful for him!’

And Mrs Snooksey, grabbing viciously at muffin, chorused, ’Dreadful,
isn’t it!  A female authoress!’—this, with a fine disregard of the fact
that an authoress is generally a female.  ’No doubt steeped in ink and
immorality!  Poor Carlyon!  _My_ mother knew _his_ father!’

This remark of Mrs Snooksey’s had evidently some profound bearing on the
subject, because everybody looked politely impressed, though no one
could see where the point came in.

’She’s ugly, of course!’ tittered Miss Spitely, nervously conscious that
once—once, at a ball—Carlyon had picked up her fan, and wishing she had
’gone in’ for him then.  ’Authoresses always are, aren’t they?’

’This one isn’t,’ put in the One Man, who through some persecuting fate
always manages to turn up in a jaded and gloomy condition at these kind
of ’afternoon teas.’  ’She’s pretty. That’s the worst of it.  Of course
she’ll lead Carlyon a devil of a life!’

’Of course!’ groaned Mrs Snooksey and Mrs Tooksey in melancholy duet.
’What else can you expect of a—of a public character? Poor, dear
Carlyon!  One cannot help feeling sorry for him!’

So on, and in such wise, the jumble of humanity which is called
’society’ gabbled, sniggered and sneered; nevertheless, despite dismal
head-shakings and dreary forebodings, ’poor, dear Carlyon’ carried out
his intention, and married Delicia in the presence of one of the most
brilliant assemblages of notabilities ever assembled at a wedding.  The
marriage of a Guards officer is always a pretty sight, but when the fame
of Delicia was added to the fame of the regiment, it was no wonder the
affair created a sensation and a flutter in the world of fashionable
news and ladies’ pictorials. Delicia astonished and irritated several
members of her own sex by the extreme simplicity of her dress on the
occasion.  She always managed somehow, quite unintentionally, to
astonish and irritate her sweet ’sisters’ in womanhood, who, forced to
admit her intellectual superiority to themselves, loved her accordingly.
Thus her very wedding garment was an affront to them, being only a
classic gown of softly-draped white silk _crêpe-de-chine_, without any
adornment of either lace or flowers.  Then her bridal veil was a
vexatious thing, because it was so unusually becoming—it was made of
white chiffon, and draped her, like a moonlight mist, from head to foot,
a slender chaplet of real orange-blossoms being worn with it.  And that
was all—no jewels, no bouquet—she only carried a small ivory prayer-book
with a plain gold cross mounted on the cover.  She looked the very
picture of a Greek vestal virgin, but in the eyes of the fashion-plate
makers there was a deplorable lack of millinery about her.  What would
God think of it!  Could anything be more irreverent than for a woman of
position and fortune to take her marriage-vows before the altar of the
Most High without wearing either a court train or diamonds!  And the
bridesmaids made no great ’show’—they were only little girls, none of
them over ten years of age.  There were eight of these small damsels,
clad in blush-pink like human roses, and very sweet they looked
following the lissom, white-veiled form of Delicia as she moved with her
own peculiarly graceful step and ethereal air between the admiring rows
of the selected men of her husband’s regiment, who lined either side of
the chancel in honour of the occasion.  The ceremony was brief; but
those who were present somehow felt it to be singularly impressive.
There was a faint suggestion of incongruity in the bridegroom’s
eloquently-pronounced declaration—’With all my worldly goods I thee
endow,’ which provoked one of his brother officers to profanely whisper
in the ear of a friend, ’By Jove!  I don’t think he’s got anything to
give her but his hair-brushes.  They were a present; but most of his
other things are on tick!’

This young gentleman’s unbecoming observations were promptly quashed,
and the holy ordinance was concluded to the crashing strains of
Mendelssohn.  A considerably large crowd, moved by feelings of sincere
appreciation for the union of the professions of War and Literature,
waited outside the church to give the bride a cheer as she stepped into
her carriage, and some of them, hustling a little in advance of the
policemen on duty, and peering up towards the entrance of the sacred
edifice, were rewarded by seeing the Most Distinguished Personage in the
realm, smiling his ever-cordial smile, and shaking hands with the fair
’celebrity’ just wedded.  At this sight a deafening noise broke out from
the throats of the honest ’masses,’ a noise which became almost
tumultuous when the Distinguished Personage walked by the side of the
newly-married pair down the red-carpeted pavement from the church to the
nuptial carriage-door, and lifted his hat again and again to the
’huzzas’ which greeted him.  But the Distinguished Personage did not get
all the applause by any means.  Delicia got the most of it, and many of
the crowd pelted her with flowers which they had brought with them for
the purpose.  For she was one of the few ’beloved women’ that at rare
intervals are born to influence nations—so few they are and so precious
in their lives and examples that it is little wonder nations make much
of them when they find them.  There were people in the crowd that day
who had wept and smiled over Delicia’s writings, and who had, through
her teaching, grown better, happier and more humane men and women; and
there was a certain loving jealousy in these which grudged that she
should stoop from her lofty height of fame, to marry, like any other
ordinary woman.  They would have had her exempt from the common lot, and
yet they all desired her happiness.  So in half-gladness, half-regret,
they cheered her and threw roses and lilies at her, for it was the month
of June; and she with her veil thrown back, and the sunshine glinting on
her gold hair, smiled bewitchingly as she bowed right and left to the
clamorous throng of her assembled admirers; then, with her glorious six
feet of husband, she stepped into her carriage and drove away to the
sound of a final cheer.  The Distinguished Personage got into his
brougham and departed. The brilliantly-attired guests dispersed slowly,
and with much chatting and gaiety, in their different directions, and
all was over.  And the One Man whose earthly lot it was to appear at
various ’afternoon teas,’ stood under the church portico and muttered
gloomily to an acquaintance,—

’Fancy that simple-looking creature being actually the famous Delicia
Vaughan!  She isn’t in the least like an authoress—she’s only a woman!’
Whereat the acquaintance, whose intellectual resources were somewhat
limited, smiled and murmured,—

’Oh, well, when it came to that, you know, you couldn’t expect a woman
to be anything else, could you?  The idea was certainly that authoresses
should be—well! a sort of no-sex, ha-ha-ha!—plenty of muscle about them,
but scrappy as to figure and doubtful in complexion, with a general air
of spectacled wisdom—yes, ha-ha!  Well, if it came to that, you know, it
must be owned Miss Vaughan—beg her pardon!—Mrs Carlyon, was not by any
means up to the required mark.  Ha-ha-ha! Graceful little woman, though;
very fascinating—and as for money—whew-w! Beauty Carlyon has fallen on
his feet this time, and no mistake!  Ha-ha!  Good-morning!’

With this, he and the One Man nodded to each other and went in opposite
directions. The verger of the church came out, glowered suspiciously at
stragglers, picked up a few bridal flowers from the red carpet, and shut
the church gates.  There had been a wedding, he said condescendingly to
one or two nursemaids who had just arrived breathlessly on the scene,
wheeling perambulators in front of them, but it was over; the company
had gone home.  The Distinguished Personage had gone home too.  Thus
there was nothing to see, and nothing to wait for.  Depart, disappointed
nursemaids!  The vow that binds two in one—that ties Intellect to Folly,
Purity to Sensuality, Unselfishness to Egotism—has been taken before the
Eternal; and, so far as we can tell, the Eternal has accepted it.  There
is nothing more to be said or done—the sacrifice is completed.

All this had happened three years ago, yet Delicia, writing peacefully
as usual in the quiet seclusion of her study, remembered every incident
of her wedding as though it were only yesterday.  Happiness had made the
time fly on swift wings, and her dream of love had as yet lost nothing
of its heavenly glamour.  Her marriage had caused no very perceptible
change in her fortunes—she worked a little harder and more incessantly,
that was all.  Her husband deserved all the luxuries and enjoyments of
life that she could give him—so she considered—and she was determined he
should never have to complain of her lack of energy. Her fame steadily
increased—she was at the very head and front of her profession—people
came from far and near to have the privilege of seeing her and speaking
with her, if only for a few minutes.  But popular admiration was nothing
to her, and she attached no importance whatever to the daily tributes
she received, from all parts of the world, testifying to her genius and
the influence her writings had upon the minds of thousands.  Such things
passed her by as the merest idle wind of rumour, and all her interests
were concentrated on her work—first, for the work’s own sake, and next,
that she might be a continual glory and exhaustless gold mine to her
husband.

Certainly Carlyon had nothing to desire or to complain of in his
destiny.  A crowned king might have envied him; unweighted with care, no
debts, no difficulties, a perpetual balance at his banker’s, a luxurious
home, arranged not only with all the skill that wealth can command, but
also with the artistic taste that only brains can supply; a lovely wife
whose brilliant endowments were the talk of two continents, and last,
but not least, the complete unfettered enjoyment of his own way and
will.  Delicia never played the domestic tyrant over him; he was free to
do as he liked, go where he would and see whom he chose.  She never
catechised him as to the nature of his occupations or amusements, and
he, on his part, was wise enough to draw a line between a certain ’fast
set’ he personally favoured, and the kind of people he introduced to
her, knowing well enough that were he to commit the folly of bringing
some ’shady’ character within his wife’s circle of acquaintance, it
would be only once that the presence of such a person would be tolerated
by her.  For she had very quick perceptions; and though her disposition
was gentleness itself, she was firmly planted in rectitude, and managed
to withdraw herself so quietly and cleverly from any contact with social
swindlers and vulgar _nouveaux riches_, that they never had the ghost of
a chance to gain the smallest footing with her.  Unable to obtain
admittance to her house, they took refuge in scandal, and invented lies
and slanders concerning her, all of which fell flat owing to her frankly
open life of domestic peace and contentment. Sneers and false rumours
were inserted about her in the journals; she ignored them, and quietly
lived them down, till finally the worst thing anyone could find to say
of her was that she was ’idiotically in love’ with her own husband.

’She’s a perfect fool about him!’ exclaimed the Tookseys and Snookseys,
angrily.  ’Everybody knows Paul Valdis is madly in love with her.  It’s
only she who never seems to see it!’  ’Perhaps she does not approve of
the French fashion of having a lover as well as a husband,’ suggested a
Casual Caller of the male sex.  ’Though it is now _la mode_ in England,
she may not like it.  Besides, Paul Valdis has been "madly in love," as
you call it, a great many times!’

The Tookseys and Snookseys sighed, shivered, rolled up their eyes and
shrugged their shoulders. They were old and ugly and yellow of skin; but
their hearts had a few lively pulsations of evil left in them still, and
they envied and marvelled at the luck of a woman—a literary female, too,
good heavens! to think of it!—who not only had the handsomest man in
town for a husband, but who could also have the next handsomest—Paul
Valdis, the great actor—for a lover, if she but ’dropped the
handkerchief.’

And while ’society’ thus talked, Delicia worked, coining money for her
husband to spend as he listed.  She reserved her household expenses, and
took a moderate share of her earnings for her own dress, but all the
rest was his.  He drove ’tandem’ in the Row with two of the most superb
horses ever seen in that fashionable thoroughfare.  In the early spring
mornings he was seen cantering up and down on a magnificent Arab, which
for breed and action was the envy of princes. He had his own
four-in-hand coach, which he drove to Ranelagh, Hurlingham, and the
various race meetings of the year, with a party of ’select’ people on
top—the kind of ’select’ whom Delicia never knew or cared to know,
consisting of actresses, betting men, ’swells about town,’ and a
sprinkling of titled dames, who had frankly thrown over their husbands
in order to drink brandy privately, and play the female Don Juan
publicly.  Occasionally a ’candid friend,’ moved by a laudable desire to
make mischief between husband and wife, would arrive, full-armed at all
points with gossip, and would casually remark to Delicia,—

’Oh, by the way, I saw your husband at Ranelagh the other day
with—well!—some _rather_ odd people!’  To which Delicia would reply
tranquilly, ’Did you?  I hope he was amusing himself.’  Then with a
straight, half-disdainful look of her violet eyes at the intruding
meddler, she would add, ’I know what you mean, of course!  But it is a
man’s privilege to entertain himself in his own fashion, even with "odd"
people if he likes. "Odd" people are always infinitely diverting, owing
to their never being able to recognise their own abnormal absurdity.
And I never play spy on my husband.  I consider a wife who condescends
to become a detective as the most contemptible of creatures living.’

Whereupon the ’candid friend,’ vexed and baffled, would retire behind an
entrenchment of generalities, and afterwards, at ’afternoons’ and social
gatherings, would publicly opine that, ’It was most probable Mrs Carlyon
was carrying on a little game of her own, as she seemed so indifferent
to her husband’s goings-on.  She was a deep one, oh, yes! very deep!
She knew a thing or two!—and perhaps, who could tell?—Paul Valdis had
his own reasons for specially "fixing" her with his dark, passionate
eyes whenever she appeared in her box at the theatre where he was
playing the chief character in an English version of "Ernani."

It was true enough that Delicia was hardly ever seen at the places her
husband most frequented, but this happened because he was fond of racing
and she was not.  She disliked the senseless, selfish and avaricious
side of life so glaringly presented at the favourite ’turf’ resorts of
the ’swagger’ set, and said so openly.

’It makes me think badly of everybody,’ she declared once to her
husband, when he had languidly suggested her ’turning up’ at the Oaks.
’I begin to wonder what was the use of Christ dying on the cross to
redeem such greedy, foolish folk.  I don’t want to despise my
fellow-creatures, but I’m obliged to do it when I go to a race.  So it’s
better I should stay at home and write, and try to think of them all as
well as I can.’

And she did stay at home very contentedly; and when he was absent with a
party of his own particular ’friends,’ dispensing to them the elegant
luncheon and champagne which her work had paid for, she was either busy
with some fresh piece of literary labour, or else taking her sweet
presence into the houses of the poor and suffering, and bringing relief,
hope and cheerfulness, wherever she went.  And on the morning when the
sunshine placed a crown on her head, and hurled a javelin of light full
in the cold eyes of the marble Antinous, she was in one of her
brightest, most radiant moods, satisfied with her lot, grateful for the
blessings which she considered were so numerous, and as unconscious as
ever that there was anything upside down in the arrangement which had
resulted in her being obliged to ’love, honour, obey,’ keep, and clothe,
six feet of beautiful man, by her own unassisted toil, while the said
six feet of beautiful man did nothing but enjoy himself.

The quaint ’Empire’ clock, shaped as a world, with a little god of love
pointing to the hours numbered on its surface, chimed two from its
golden bracket on the wall before she laid down her pen for the day.
Then, rising, she stretched her fair, rounded arms above her head, and
smiled at the daffodils in the vase close by—bright flowers which seemed
fully conscious of the sunshine in that smile.  Anon, she moved into the
deep embrasure of her wide lattice window, where, stretched out at full
length, lay a huge dog of the St Bernard breed, winking lazily with one
honest brown eye at the sunbeams that danced about him.

’Oh, Spartan, you lazy fellow!’ she said, putting her small foot on his
rough, brown body, ’aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’

Spartan sighed, and considered the question for a moment, then raised
his noble head and kissed the point of his mistress’s broidered shoe.

’It’s lunch-time, Spartan,’ continued Delicia, stooping down to pat him
tenderly.  ’Will master be home to luncheon, or not, Spartan? I’m afraid
not, old boy.  What do you think about it?’

This inquiry roused Spartan to an attitude of attention.  He got up, sat
on his big haunches, and yawned profoundly; then he appeared to
meditate, conveying into his fine physiognomy an expression of deep
calculation that was almost human.

’No, Spartan,’ went on Delicia, dropping on one knee and putting her arm
round him, ’we mustn’t expect it.  We generally lunch alone, and we’ll
go and get what the gods have provided for us in the dining-room, at
once—shall we?’

But Spartan suddenly pricked his long ears, and rose in all his
lion-like majesty, erect on his four handsome legs; then he gave one
deep bark, turning his eyes deferentially on his mistress as one who
should say, ’Excuse me, but I hear something which compels my
attention.’

Delicia, her hand on the dog’s neck, listened intently; her breath came
and went, then she smiled, and a lovely light irradiated her face as the
velvet _portière_ of her study door was hastily pushed aside, and her
husband, looking the very incarnation of manly beauty in his becoming
riding-gear, entered abruptly.

’Why, Will, how delightful!’ she exclaimed, advancing to meet him, ’you
hardly ever come home to lunch.  This is a treat!’

She clung to him and kissed him.  He held her round the waist a moment,
gazing at her with the involuntary admiration her grace and intelligence
always roused in him, and thinking for the hundredth time how curious it
was that she should be so entirely different to other women.  Then,
releasing her, he drew off his gloves, threw them down, and glanced at
the papers which strewed her writing-table.

’Finished the book?’ he queried, with a smile.

’Yes, all but the last few sentences,’ she replied.  ’They require
careful thinking out. It doesn’t do to end with a platitude.’

’Most books end so,’ he said carelessly. ’But yours are always
exceptions to the rule. People are never tired of asking me how you do
it.  One fellow to-day said he was sure I helped you to write the strong
parts.’

Delicia smiled a little.

’And what did you say?’

’Why, of course I said I didn’t—couldn’t write a line to save my life!’
he responded, with a laugh.  ’But you know what men are! They never can
bring themselves to believe in the reality of a woman’s genius.’

The musing smile still lingered on Delicia’s face.

’Genius is a big thing,’ she said.  ’I do not assume to possess it.  But
it is curious to see how very many quite ungifted men announce their own
claims to it, while indignantly denying all possibility of its endowment
to women. However, one must have patience; it will take some time to
break men of their old savagery. For centuries they treated women as
slaves and cattle; it may take other centuries before they learn to
treat them as their equals.’

Carlyon looked at her, half-wonderingly, half-doubtfully.

’They won’t give them full academic honours yet,’ he said, ’which I
think is disgracefully unfair.  And the Government won’t give them
titles of honour in their own right for their services in Science, Art
or Literature, which they ought to have, in my opinion.  And this brings
me round to the news which sent me galloping home to-day as soon as I
heard it.  Delicia, I can give you a title this morning!’

She raised her eyebrows a little.

’Are you joking, Will?’

’Not a bit of it.  You’ve heard me speak of my brother Guy, Lord
Carlyon?’

She nodded.

’Well, when my father died a bankrupt, of course Guy had what he could
get out of the general wreck, which was very little, together with the
title.  The title was no use to him, he having no means to keep it up.
He went off to Africa, gold-hunting, under an assumed name, to try and
make money out there—and—and now he’s dead of fever.  I can’t pretend to
be very sorry, for I never saw much of him after we left school, and he
was my senior by five years.  Anyhow, he’s gone—and so—in fact—I’m Lord
Carlyon!’

He made such a whimsical attempt to appear indifferent to the honour of
being a lord, while all the time it was evident he was swelling with the
importance of it, that Delicia laughed outright, and her violet eyes
flashed with fun as she dropped him a demure curtsey.

’My lord, allow me to congratulate your lordship!’ she said.  ’By my
halidame, good my lord, I am your lordship’s very humble servant!’

He looked a trifle vexed.

’Don’t be nonsensical, Delicia!’ he urged. ’You know I never expected
it.  I always thought Guy would have married.  If he had, and a son had
been born to him, of course that son would have had the title.  But he
remained a bachelor to the end of his days, and so the luck has fallen
to me.  Aren’t you rather pleased about it?  It’s a nice thing for you,
at anyrate.’

Delicia gave him a bright glance of humorous surprise.

’A nice thing for me?  My dear boy, do you really think so?  Do you
really and truly imagine I care about a title tacked on to my name?  Not
a bit of it!  It will only attract a few extra snobs round me at
parties, that’s all.  And to my public I am always Delicia Vaughan; they
won’t even give me the benefit of _your_ name, Will, because somehow
they prefer the one by which they knew and loved me first.’

A faint suggestion of the Beautiful Sullenness manner clouded Carlyon’s
face.

’Oh, of course, you swear by your public!’ he said, a trifle crossly.
’But whatever you may think of it, I’m glad the title has come my way.
It’s a good thing—it gives me a _status_.’

She was silent, and stood quietly beside him, stroking Spartan’s head.
Not a thought of the _status_ she herself gave her husband by her
world-wide fame crossed her mind, and the reproach that might have
leaped to the lips of a less loving woman than she was—namely, that the
position she had won by her own brilliant intellect far outweighed any
trumpery title of heritage—never once occurred to her brain.  But all
the same, something in the composed grace of her attitude conveyed the
impression of that fact to Carlyon silently, and with subtle force; for
he was conscious of a sudden sense of smallness and inward shame.

’Yet after all,’ she said presently, with a playful air, ’it isn’t as if
you were a brewer, you know!  So many brewers and building contractors
become lords nowadays, that somehow I always connect the peerage with
Beer and Bricks.  I suppose it’s very wrong, but I can’t help it.  And
it will seem odd to me at first to associate you with the two B’s—you
are so different to the usual type.’

He smiled,—well pleased to see her eyes resting upon him with the tender
admiration to which he had become accustomed.

’Is luncheon ready?’ he asked, after a brief pause, during which he was
satisfied that he looked his best and that she was fully aware of it.

’Yes; let us go down and partake thereof,’ she answered gaily.  ’Will
you tell the servants, or shall I?’

’Tell the servants what?’ he demanded, with a slight frown.

She turned her pretty head over her shoulder laughingly.

’Why, to call you for the future "My Lord," or "m’lud."  Which shall it
be?’

She looked charmingly provocative; his momentary ill-humour passed, and
he flung an arm round her waist and kissed her.

’Whichever you please,’ he said.  ’Anyway you are, as you always have
been, "my" lady!’




                              *CHAPTER II*


Delicia was perfectly right when she said that her new distinction would
draw ’extra snobs’ around her.  A handle to one’s name invariably
attracts all the social ’runaways,’—in the same fashion that mischievous
street-boys are attracted to bang at a particularly ornate and
glittering door-knocker and then scamper off in hiding before any
servant has time to answer the false summons.  People who are of old and
good family themselves think nothing of titles, but those who have
neither good birth, breeding nor education, attach a vast amount of
importance to these placards of rank, and can never refrain from an
awe-stricken expression of countenance when introduced to a duke, or
with-hold the regulation ’royalty-dip’ when in the presence of some
foreign ’princess,’ who, as a matter of fact, has no right to ’royalty’
honours at all. Delicia had met a great many such small dignitaries, but
she never curtsied to any of them, whereat their petty vanity was
wounded, and they thought, ’These authors have bad manners.’  She read
their thoughts and smiled, but did not care.  She reserved her
salutations for Royalty itself, not for the imitation of it. And now
that she was a ’ladyship,’ she obtained a good deal of amusement out of
the study of character among her various ’friends’ who envied and
grudged her the trumpery honour.  The Tookseys and Snookseys of society
could scarcely contain themselves for spite when they learned that for
the future they would have to speak of the ’female authoress’ as Lady
Carlyon.  The Casual Caller and the One Man began to allude to her as
’Delicia, Lady Carlyon,’ rolling the sweet, quaint name of ’Delicia’ on
their tongues with a keener sense of enjoyment than usual in its
delicate flavour, thereby driving the Tookseys and Snookseys into a more
feverish condition then ever.  Paul Valdis heard the news suddenly, when
he was dressing for his part as Ernani, on an evening when Royalty had
announced its ’gracious’ intention of being present to see him do it.
And there would appear to have been something not altogether incorrect
in the rumour that he was ’madly in love’ with Delicia, for he turned
very white and lost command of his usual equable temper in an
altercation with his ’dresser,’ whom he dismissed abruptly with
something like an oath.

’"Lady" Carlyon!’ he said to himself, staring at his own classic face
and brilliant, dark eyes in the little mirror which dominated his
’make-up’ table.  ’And I no more than mime!—stage-puppet and plaything
of the public!  Wait, though!  I am something more! I am a MAN!—in heart
and soul and feeling! a man, which my "Lord" Carlyon is not!’

And he played that night, not for Royalty, which clapped its lavender
kid gloves at him in as much enthusiastic approval as Royalty ever
shows, but for her new ’ladyship,’ who sat in a box overlooking the
stage, dressed in pure white with a knot of lilies at her bosom,
dreamily unconscious that Ernani was anything but Ernani, or that Valdis
was putting his own fiery soul into Victor Hugo’s dummy, and making it
live, breathe and burn with a passionate ardour never equalled on the
stage, and of which she, Delicia, was the chief inspiration.

Delicia was, in very truth, curiously unconscious of the excitement and
unrest she always managed to create around herself unintentionally. Her
strong individuality was to blame, but she was as unaware of the
singular influence she exerted as a rose is unaware of the fragrance its
sheds.  Everything she did was watched and commented upon—her manners,
her dress, her gestures, the very turn of her head, and the slow, supple
movements of her body.  And society was for ever on the lookout for a
glance, a sigh, a word which might indicate the ’dropping of the
handkerchief’ to Paul Valdis.  But the closest espionage failed to
discover anything compromising in Delicia’s way of life or daily
conduct.  This caused the fury of the Tookseys and Snookseys to rage
unabatedly, while, so far as Delicia herself was concerned, she had no
thought beyond the usual two subjects which absorbed her existence—her
work and her husband. Her title made no sort of difference to her in
herself—’Delicia Vaughan’ was still the charmed name wherewith she
’drew’ her public, many of whom scarcely glanced at the ’Lady Carlyon’
printed in small type between brackets, underneath the more famous
appellation on the title-pages of all her books.  And in her own mind
she was more amused than edified by the flunkey-like attention shown to
her ’ladyship’ honours.

’How nice for you,’ said a female acquaintance to her on one of her
visiting days, ’to have a title!  Such a distinction for literature,
isn’t it?’

’Not at all!’ answered Delicia, tranquilly, ’It is a distinction for the
title to have literature attached to it!’

The female acquaintance started violently.

’Dear me!’ and she tittered; ’You really—er—excuse me! seem to have a
very good opinion of yourself!’

Delicia’s delicate brows drew together in a proud line.

’You mistake,’ she said; ’I have no good opinion of myself at all, but I
have of Literature.  Perhaps you will more clearly understand what I
mean if I remind you that there have been several Lord Byrons, but
Literature makes it impossible to universally recognise more than one.
Literature can add honour to the peerage, but the peerage can never add
honour to Literature—not, at any rate, to what _I_ understand as
Literature.’

’And what is your definition of Literature, Lady Carlyon, may I ask?’
inquired a deferential listener to the conversation.

’Power!’ replied Delicia, closing her small, white hand slowly and
firmly, as though she held the sceptre of an empire in its grasp. ’The
power to make men and women think, hope and achieve; the power to draw
tears from the eyes, smiles from the lips of thousands; the power to
make tyrants tremble, and unseat false judges in authority; the power to
strip hypocrisy of its seeming fair disguise, and to brand liars with
their name writ large for all the world to see!’

The female acquaintance got up, disturbed in her mind.  She did not like
the look of Delicia’s violet eyes which flashed like straight shafts of
light deep into the dark recesses of her soul.

’I must be going,’ she murmured.  ’So sorry!  It’s quite delightful to
hear you talk, Lady Carlyon, you are so very eloquent!—but I have
another call to make—he-he-he!—good afternoon!’

But the Deferential Listener lingered, strangely moved.

’I wish there were more writers who felt as you do, Lady Carlyon!’ he
said gently. ’I knew you first as Delicia Vaughan, and loved your
books—’

’I hope you will try and love them still,’ she said simply.  ’There is
no difference, I assure you, between Delicia Vaughan and Lady Carlyon;
they are, and always will be, the same working woman!’

She gave him her hand in parting; he stooped low, kissed it and went.
Left alone with the great dog, Spartan, she sat looking musingly up at
the glossy, spreading leaves of the giant palm that towered up to the
ceiling from a painted Sèvres vase in the middle of her drawing-room,
and almost for the first time in her life a faint shadow of trouble and
uneasiness clouded her bright nature.

’How I do hate humbug!’ she thought. ’It seems to me that I have had to
put up with so much more of it lately than I ever had before; it’s this
wretched title, I suppose. I wish I could dispense with it altogether;
it does not please me, though it pleases Will. He is so good-natured
that he does not seem able to distinguish between friends, and others
who are mere toadies.  It would be a good thing for me if I had the same
unsuspecting disposition; but, most unfortunately, I see things as they
are—not as they appear to be.’

And this was true.  She did see things clearly and comprehensively
always;—except in one direction.  There she was totally blind.  But in
her blindness lay all her happiness, and though the rose-coloured veil
of illusion was wearing thin, no rent had yet been made in it.

It was her ’at home’ day, and she sat waiting resignedly for the callers
who usually flocked to her between five and six in the afternoon.  The
two people who had come and gone, namely, the Female Acquaintance and
the Deferential Listener, had been chance visitors out of the ordinary
run.  And it was only half-past four when a loud ring at the bell made
Spartan growl and look to his mistress for orders to bite, if necessary.

’Quiet, Spartan!’ said Delicia, gently.  ’We are "at home" to-day, you
know!  You mustn’t bark at anybody.’

Spartan rolled his eyes discontentedly.  He hated ’at home’ days, and he
went off in a far corner of the drawing-room, where there was a
convenient bear-skin rug to lie on; there he curled himself up to sleep.
Meanwhile the visitor who had rung the bell so violently was
announced—’Mrs Lefroy,’—and Delicia rose, with a slightly weary and
vexed air, as a handsome woman, over-dressed and over-powdered, entered
the room; her white teeth bared to view in the English ’society smile.’

’My dear!’ she exclaimed, ’how delightful you look, and what a perfectly
lovely room!  I have seen it often before, of course, and yet it seems
to me always lovelier!  And you, too!—what a _sweet_ gown!  Oh, my dear,
I have such fun to tell you; I know you didn’t expect to see me!  I got
away from the Riviera much sooner than I thought I should.  All my money
went at Monte Carlo in the most frightfully rapid way, and so I came
back to town—one can have larks in town as well as anywhere else,
without the temptation of that dear, wicked, fascinating Casino!  And,
my dear, nothing is talked of but your book; everybody’s waiting for it
with the greatest impatience—it’s finished, isn’t it?  In the hands of
the publishers! How delightful!  And, of course, you have got loads of
money for it?  How nice for you, and for that glorious-looking husband
of yours!  And you are looking so well! No tea, dearest, thank you!  Oh,
I really must take off my cloak a moment—thanks! Is there anyone else
coming to-day?  Oh, of course, you always have _crowds_!  That is why I
want to tell you what fun we had last night; Lord Carlyon never expected
we should see him, you know!’

Delicia looked up from the tea tray whither she had moved on the impulse
of hospitality. She had not spoken; she knew Mrs Lefroy of old, and was
aware that it was better to let her have her talk out.

’Of course,’ went on Mrs Lefroy, ’you have heard of Marina, the new
dancer—the girl who appears on the stage like a hooded cobra, and
gradually winds herself out of her serpent-skin into a woman with
scarcely any clothes on, and dances about among a lot of little snakes
of fire, done with electricity?  The one that all the men are going mad
over, on account of her wonderful legs?’

Delicia, with a slight movement, more of regret than offence, nodded.

’Well, we were having supper at the Savoy last night, and what do you
think, my dear!’  And here Mrs Lefroy clasped her well-gloved hands
together in a kind of slander-mongering ecstasy.  ’Who should come in
and sit down at the very next table, but Lord Carlyon and this very
Marina!’

Delicia turned round slowly, her eyes shining, and a smile on her mouth.

’Well?’ she said.

Mrs Lefroy’s nose reddened through the powder, and she tossed her head.

’Well?  Is that all you say—well?  I should certainly find some more
forcible observation than that, if I heard of _my_ husband taking the
Marina to supper at the Savoy!’

’Would you?’ said Delicia, smiling.  ’But then, you see, I am not you,
and your husband is not my husband.  There’s all the difference!
Besides, men are free to amuse themselves in their own way, provided
they wrong no one by doing so.’

’With "creatures" like Marina?’ inquired Mrs Lefroy, with a wide smile.
’Really, my dear, you are extremely tolerant!  Do you know that even
Paul Valdis, an actor—and you wouldn’t think he was particular—would not
be seen with the Cobra person!’

’Mr Valdis chooses his own associates, no doubt, to please his own
taste,’ said Delicia, quietly.  ’It is nothing to me whether he would be
seen with the Cobra person, as you call her, or whether he would not.
If my husband likes to talk to her, there must be something clever about
her, and something nice, too, I should imagine.  All dancers are not
demons.’

’My poor Delicia!’ exclaimed Mrs Lefroy. ’Really, you are too
unsuspicious and sweet for anything!  If you would only let me open your
eyes a little—’

’The Duke and Duchess of Mortlands,’ announced the maid-in-waiting at
this juncture; and the conversation was broken off for the reception of
a very stately old lady and a very jolly old gentleman.  The old
gentleman took a cup of tea, and bowed so often to Delicia over it that
he spilt some drops of tea down his waistcoat, while his portly spouse
spread cake-crumbs profusely over the broad expanse known to dressmakers
and tailors as the ’bust measurement.’  They were charming old people,
though untidy; and being of an immensely ancient family, their ancestors
having had something to do with the Battle of Crecy, they admired
Delicia for herself and her brilliant gifts alone, even to the
forgetting of her married name occasionally, and to the calling of her
’Miss Vaughan,’ for which slip they instantly apologised.  Numbers of
people now began to arrive, and Delicia’s drawing-rooms were soon full.
A famous Swedish cantatrice came among others, and in her own pleasant
way offered to sing a ’Mountain Melody’ of her native land.  Her rich
voice was still pealing through the air when there was a slight stir and
excitement among the silent listeners to the music, and Paul Valdis
entered unannounced.  He stood near the door till the song that was
being sung had ended, then he advanced towards Delicia, who greeted him
with her usual simple grace, and showed no more effusion towards him
than she had shown to the old duke who had spilt his tea. He was pale
and somewhat absent-minded; though he talked generalities with several
people present, much as he disliked talking generalities.  Now and then
he became gloomy and curt of speech, and at such moments, Mrs Lefroy,
watching him, felt that she would have given worlds to stay on and hide
herself somewhere behind a curtain that she might see how he was going
to comport himself after the gabbling crowd had gone.  But she had
already stayed more than an hour—she would get no more chance of talking
to Delicia—she was obliged to go home and dress for a dinner-party that
evening; so finally she reluctantly made the best of a bad business, and
glided up to her hostess to say good-bye.

’So sorry to be going!’ she murmured.  ’I really wish I could have a few
minutes’ private talk with you!  But you are such a busy woman!’

’Yes, I am!’ agreed Delicia, smiling. ’However, opportunities for
talking scandal always turn up sometime or other—don’t you find it so?’

Mrs Lefroy was not quite proof against this delicate home-thrust.  She
felt distinctly angry.  But there was no time to show it. She forced a
smile and went—determining within herself that some day she would shake
the classic composure of the ’female authoress’ to its very foundations,
and make of her a trembling, weak, jealous woman like many others whom
she knew who were blessed with husbands like Lord Carlyon.

Gradually the ’after-tea’ crowd dispersed, and Delicia was left alone
with only one remaining visitor—Paul Valdis.  The dog Spartan rose from
the corner where he had lain peacefully retired from view during the
crush of visitors, and advancing majestically, with wagging tail, laid a
big head caressingly on the actor’s knee.  Valdis patted him and spoke
out his thought involuntarily.

’One, at least, out of your many friends, is honest, Lady Carlyon,’ he
said.

Delicia, somewhat fatigued with the business of receiving her guests,
had seated herself in a low arm-chair, her head leaning back on a
cushion, and now she looked round, slightly smiling. ’You mean Spartan?’
she said, ’or yourself?’

’I mean Spartan,’ he replied, with a touch of passion; ’A dog may be
honest without offence to the world in general, but a man must never be
honest, unless he wishes to be considered a fool or a madman, or both.’

She regarded him intently for a moment. Her artistic eye quickly took
note of the attractive points of his face and figure, and, with the
perception of a student of character, she appreciated the firm and manly
lines of the well-shaped hand that rested on Spartan’s head, but it was
with the admiration which she would have given to a fine picture more
readily than to a living being.  Something, however, troubled her as she
looked, for she saw that he was suppressing some strong emotion in her
presence, and her first thought was that the English version of ’Ernani’
was going to prove a failure.

’You speak bitterly, Mr Valdis,’ she said, after a pause, ’and yet you
ought not to do so, considering the brilliancy of your position and your
immense popularity.’

’Does a brilliant position and immense popularity satisfy a man, do you
think?’ he asked, not looking at her, but keeping his gaze on the honest
brown eyes of Spartan, who, with the quaint conceit of a handsome dog
who knows his own value, went on wagging his tail, under the impression
that the conversation was addressed to him alone.  ’Though I suppose it
ought to satisfy an actor, who, by some folks, is considered hardly a
man at all.  But if we talk of position and popularity, you far
outbalance me in honours—and are you satisfied?’

’Perfectly!’ and Delicia smiled full into his eyes; ’I should, indeed,
be ungrateful if I were not.’

He made a slight movement of impatience.

’Ungrateful!  How strange that word sounds from your lips!  Why use it
at all?  You are surely the last person on earth who should speak of
gratitude, for you owe no one anything.  You have worked for your
fame,—worked harder than anyone I know,—and you have won it; you have
given out the treasures of your genius to the public, and they reward
you by their love and honour; it is a natural sequence of cause and
effect.  There is no reason why you should be grateful for what is
merely the just recognition of your worth.’

’You think not?’ said Delicia, still smiling. ’Ah, but I cannot quite
agree with you!  You see there have been so many who have toiled for
fame and never won it,—so many who have poured out the "treasures of
their genius," to quote your own words, on a totally unappreciative
world which has never recognised them till long after they are dead.
And that is why I consider one cannot be too grateful for a little
kindness from one’s fellow-creatures while one is living; though, if you
ask the Press people, they will tell you it’s a very bad sign of your
quality as an author if you succeed.  The only proofs of true genius
are, never to sell one’s books at all, die burdened with debts and
difficulties, and leave your name and fame to be glorified by a
posterity whom you will never know!’

Valdis laughed; and Delicia, her eyes sparkling with fun, rose from her
chair and took up a newspaper from one of the side tables close by.

’Listen!’ she said.  ’This appears in yesterday’s _Morning Chanticleer_,
_apropos_ of your humble servant—"The rampant lady-novelist, known as
Delicia Vaughan, is at it again. Not content with having married
’Beauty’ Carlyon of the Guards, who has just stepped into his deceased
brother’s titled shoes and is now Lord Carlyon, she is about to issue a
scathing book on the manners and morals of the present age, written, no
doubt, in the usual hysterical style affected by female _poseurs_ in
literature, whose works appeal chiefly to residents up Brixton and
Clapham way.  We regret that ’Lady’ Carlyon does not see the necessity
of ’assuming dignity,’ even if she hath it not, on her elevation,
through her husband, to the circles of the ’upper ten.’"  There, what do
you think of that?’ she asked gaily, as she flung the journal down.

Valdis had risen, and stood confronting her with frowning brow and
flashing eyes.  ’Think of it!’ he said angrily, ’Why, that I should like
to horse-whip the dirty blackguard who wrote it!’

Delicia looked up at him in genuine amazement.

’Dear me!’ she exclaimed playfully.  ’But why so fierce, friend Ernani?
This is nothing—nothing at all to what the papers generally say of me.
I don’t mind it in the least; it rather amuses me, on the whole.’

’But don’t you see how they mistake the position?’ exclaimed Valdis,
impetuously. ’Don’t you see that they are giving your husband all the
honour of elevation to the circles of the upper ten; as if you were not
there already by the merit of your genius alone!  What would Lord
Carlyon be without you, even were he twenty times a lord! He owes
everything to you, and to your brain-work; he is nothing in himself, and
less than nothing!  There,—I have gone too far!’

Delicia stood very still; her face was pale, and her beautiful eyes were
cold in their shining as the gleam of stars in frosty weather.

’Yes, you have gone too far, Mr Valdis,’ she said, ’and I am sorry—for
we were friends.’

She laid the slightest little emphasis on the word ’were,’ and the
strong heart of the man who loved her sank heavily with a forlorn sense
of misery.  But the inward rage that consumed him to think that she—the
patient, loving woman, who coined wealth by her own unassisted work,
while her husband spent the money and amused himself with her
earnings—should be publicly sneered at as a nothing, and her worser-half
toadied and flattered as if he were a Yankee millionaire in his own
right, was stronger than the personal passion he entertained for her,
and his manful resentment of the position could not be repressed.

’I am sorry too, Lady Carlyon,’ he said hoarsely, avoiding her gaze,
’for I do not feel I can retract anything I have said.’

There was a silence.  Delicia was deeply displeased; yet with her
displeasure there was mingled a vague sense of uneasiness and fear. She
found it difficult to maintain her self-possession; there was something
in the defiant look and attitude of Valdis that almost moved her to give
way to a sudden, undignified outburst of anger.  She was tempted to cry
out to him, ’What is it you are hiding from me? There is something—tell
me all you know!’

But she bit her lips hard, and laid her hand on Spartan’s collar to
somewhat conceal its trembling.  Thus standing, she bent her head with
grave grace and courtesy.

’Good-bye, Mr Valdis!’

He started, and looked at her half imploringly. The simple words were
his dismissal, and he knew it.  Because he had, in that unguarded
moment, spoken a word in dispraise of the glorious six feet of husband,
the doors of Delicia’s house would henceforth be closed to him, and the
fair presence of Delicia herself would be denied to his sight.  It was a
blow—but he was a man, and he took his punishment manfully.

’Good-bye, Lady Carlyon,’ he said.  ’I deserve little consideration at
your hands, but I will ask you not to condemn me altogether as a
discourteous churl and boor, till—till you know a few things of which
you are now happily ignorant.  Were I a selfish man, I should wish you
to be enlightened speedily concerning these matters; but being, God
knows! your true friend’—here his voice trembled—’I pray you may remain
a long time yet in the purest paradise known on earth—the paradise of a
loving soul’s illusion. My hand shall not destroy one blossom in your
fairy garden!  In old days of chivalry, beautiful and beloved women had
champions to defend their honour and renown, and fight for them if
needful; and though the old days are no longer with us, chivalry is not
quite dead, so that if ever you need a champion—heavens! what am I
saying?  No wonder you look scornful!  Lady Delicia Carlyon to need the
championship of an actor!  The thing is manifestly absurd!  You, in your
position, can help me by your influence, but I can do nothing to help
you—if by chance you should ever need help.  I am talking wildly, and
deepening my offences in your eyes; perhaps, however, you will think
better of me some day.  And so good-bye again—I cannot ask you to
forgive me.  If ever you desire to see me once more, I will come at your
command—but not till then.’

Inflexibly she stood, without offering him her hand in farewell.  But he
desperately caught that hand, and kissed it with the ardour of an Ernani
and Romeo intermingled, then he turned and left the room.  Delicia
listened to his retreating footsteps as he descended the stairs and
passed into the hall below, then she heard the street door close.  A
great sigh of relief broke from her lips; he was gone,—this impertinent
actor who had presumed to say that her husband was ’nothing, and less
than nothing’—he was gone, and he would probably never come back.  She
looked down at Spartan, and found the dog’s eyes were turned up to hers
in inquiring wonder and sadness.  As plainly as any animal could speak
by mere expression, he was saying,—

’What is the matter with Valdis?  He is a friend of mine, and why have
you driven him away?’

’Spartan, dear,’ she said, drawing him towards her, ’he is a very
conceited man, and he says unkind things about our dear master, and we
do not intend to let him come near us any more!  These great actors
always get spoilt, and think they are lords almighty, and presume to
pass judgment on much better men than themselves.  Paul Valdis is being
so run after and so ridiculously flattered that he will soon become
quite unbearable.’

Spartan sighed profoundly; he was not entirely satisfied in his canine
mind.  He gave one or two longing and wistful glances towards the door,
but his wandering thoughts were quickly recalled to his immediate
surroundings by the feeling of something warm and wet dropping on his
head.  It was a tear,—a bright tear, fallen from the beautiful eyes of
his mistress,—and in anxious haste he pressed his rough body close
against her with a mute caress of inquiring sympathy.  In very truth
Delicia was crying,—quietly and in a secret way, as though ashamed to
acknowledge her emotion even to herself.  As a rule, she liked to be
able to give a reason for her feelings, but on this occasion she found
it impossible to make any analysis of the cause of her tears.  Yet they
fell fast, and she wiped them away quickly with a little filmy
handkerchief as fine as a cobweb, which Spartan, moved by a sudden
desire to provide her with some harmless distraction from melancholy,
made uncouth attempts to secure as a plaything.  He succeeded so far in
his clumsy gambols as to bring the flicker of a smile on her face at
last, whereat he rejoiced exceedingly, and wagged his tail with a
violence that threatened to entirely dislocate that useful member.  In a
few minutes she was quite herself again, and when her husband returned
to dinner, met him with the usual beautiful composure that always
distinguished her bearing, though there was an air of thoughtful resolve
about her which accentuated the delicate lines of her features and made
her look more intellectually classic than ever.  When she took her seat
at table that evening, her statuesque serenity, combined with her fair
face, steadfast eyes, and rich hair knotted loosely at the back of her
well-shaped head, gave her so much the aspect of something far superior
to the ordinary run of mortal women, that Carlyon, fresh from a game of
baccarat, where he had lost over three hundred pounds in a couple of
hours, was conscious of a smarting sense of undefinable annoyance.

’I wish you could keep our name out of the papers,’ he said suddenly,
when dessert was placed before them, and the servants had withdrawn; ’it
is most annoying to me to see it constantly cropping up in all manner of
vulgar society paragraphs.’

She looked at him steadfastly.

’You used not to mind it so much,’ she answered, ’but I am sorry you are
vexed. I wish I could remedy the evil, but unfortunately I am quite
powerless.  When one is a public character, the newspapers will have
their fling; it cannot possibly be helped; but if one is leading an
honest life in the world, and has no disgraceful secrets to hide, what
does it matter after all?’

’I think it matters a great deal,’ he grumbled, as he carefully skinned
the fine peach on his plate, and commenced to appreciate its flavour. ’I
hate to have my movements forestalled and advertised by the Press.  And,
as far as you are concerned, I am sure I heartily wish you were not a
public character.’

She opened her eyes a little.

’Do you?  Since when?  Since you became Lord Carlyon?  My dear boy, if a
trumpery little handle to your name is going to make you ashamed of your
wife’s reputation as an author, I think it’s a great pity you ever
succeeded to the title.’

’Oh, I know you don’t care a bit about it,’ he said, keeping his gaze on
the juicy peach; ’but other people appreciate it.’

’What other people?’ queried Delicia, laughing. ’The droll little units
that call themselves "society?"  I daresay they do appreciate it—they
have got nothing else to think or talk about but "he" and "she" and "we"
and "they."  And yet poor old Mortlands, who was here this afternoon,
forgot all about this same wonderful title many times, and kept on
calling me "Miss Vaughan."  Then he apologised, and said in extenuation,
that to add a "ladyship" to my name was "to gild refined gold and paint
the lily."  That quotation has often been used before under similar
circumstances, but he gave it quite a new flavour of gallantry.’

’The Mortlands family dates back to about the same period as ours,’ said
Carlyon, musingly.

’As ours?  Say as yours, my dear lord!’ returned Delicia, gaily, ’for I
am sure I do not know where the Vaughans come from.  I must go down to
the Heralds’ College and see if I cannot persuade someone in authority
there to pick me out an ancestor who did great deeds before the Carlyons
ever existed!  Ancestral glory is such a question with you now, Will,
that I almost wish I were the daughter of a Chicago pork-packer.’

’Why?’ asked Carlyon, a trifle gloomily.

’Why, because I could at any rate get up a past "Pilgrim Father" if
necessary.  A present-day reputation is evidently not sufficient for
you.’

’I think the old days were best,’ he said curtly.

’Yes?  When the men kept the women within four walls, as cows are kept
in byres, and gave them just the amount of food they thought they
deserved, and beat them if they were rebellious?  Well, perhaps those
times were pleasant, but I am afraid I should never have appreciated
them.  I prefer to see things advancing—as they are—and I like a
civilisation which includes the education of women as well as of men.’

’Things are advancing a great deal too quickly, in my opinion,’ said
Carlyon, languidly, pouring out a glass of the choice claret beside him.
’I should be inclined to vote for a little less rapid progress, in
regard to women.’

’Yet only the other day you were saying what a shame it was that women
could not win full academic honours like men; and you even said that
they ought to be given titles, in reward for their services to Science,
Art and Literature,’ said Delicia.  ’What has made you change your
opinion?’

He did not look up at her, but absently played with the crumbs on the
table-cloth.

’Well, I am not sure that it is the correct thing for women to appear
very prominently in public,’ he said.

A momentary contraction of Delicia’s fine brows showed that a touch of
impatience ruffled her humour.  But she restrained herself, and said
with perfect composure,—

’I am afraid I don’t quite follow your meaning, unless, perhaps, your
words apply to the new dancer, La Marina?’

He gave a violent start, and with a sudden movement of his hand upset
his wine glass. Delicia watched the red wine staining the satiny
whiteness of the damask table-cloth without any exclamation or sign of
annoyance. Her heart was beating fast, because through her drooping
lashes she saw her husband’s face, and read there an expression that was
strange and new to her.

’Oh, I know what has happened,’ he said fiercely, and with almost an
oath, as he strove to wipe off the drops of Chateau Lafite that soiled
his cuff as well as the table-cloth.  ’That woman Lefroy has been here
telling tales and making mischief!  I saw her, with her crew of social
rowdies, at the Savoy the other night....’

’And she saw you!’ interpolated Delicia, smiling.

’Well, what if she did?’ he snapped out irritably.  ’I was introduced to
La Marina by Prince Golitzberg—you know that German fellow—and he asked
me to take her off his hands.  He had promised her a supper at the
Savoy, and at the last moment he was sent for to go to his wife, who was
seized with sudden illness.  I could not refuse to oblige him; he’s a
decent sort of chap.  Then, of course, as luck would have it, in comes
that spoil-sport of a Lefroy and makes all this rumpus!’

’My dear Will!’ expostulated Delicia, in gentle amazement, ’what are you
talking about?  Where is the rumpus?  What has Mrs Lefroy done?  She
simply mentioned to me to-day that she had seen you at the Savoy with
this Marina, and there the matter ended, and, as far as I am concerned,
there it will for ever end.’

’That is all nonsense!’ said Carlyon, still wiping his cuff.  ’You know
you are put out, or you wouldn’t look at me in the way you do!’

Delicia laughed.

’What way am I looking?’ she demanded merrily.  ’Pray, my dear boy,
don’t be so conceited as to imagine I mind your taking the Marina, or
any amount of Marinas, to supper at the Savoy, if that kind of thing
amuses you!  Surely you don’t suppose that I bring myself into
comparison with "ladies" of Marina’s class, or that I could be jealous
of such persons?  I am afraid you do not know me yet, Will, though we
have spent such happy years together!  You have neither fathomed the
depth of my love, nor taken the measure of my pride!  Besides,—I trust
you!’  She paused.  Then rising from the table, she handed him the
little silver box containing his cigars.  ’Smoke off your petulance,
dear boy!’ she said, ’and join me upstairs when you are ready.  We go to
the Premier’s reception to-night, remember.’

Her hand rested for a moment on his shoulder with a caressing touch;
anon, humming a little tune under her breath, and followed by Spartan,
who never let her go out of his sight for a moment if he could help it,
she left the room.  Ascending the staircase, she stopped on the
threshold of her study and looked in with a vague air, as though the
place had suddenly grown unfamiliar.  There, immediately facing her,
smiled the pictured lineaments of Shakespeare, that immortal friend of
man; her favourite books greeted her with all the silent yet persuasive
eloquence of their well-known and deeply-honoured titles; the electric
lights, fitted up to represent small stars in the ceiling, were not
turned on, and only the young moon peered glimmeringly through the
lattice window, shedding a pale lustre on the marble features of the
’Antinous.’  Standing quite still, she gazed at all these well-known
objects of her daily surroundings with a curious sense of strangeness,
Spartan staring up wonderingly at her the while.

’What is it that is wrong with me?’ she mused.  ’Why do I feel as if I
were suddenly thrust out of my usual peace, and made to take a part in
the common and mean disputes of petty-minded men and women?’

She waited another minute, then apparently conquering whatever emotion
was at work within her, she pressed the ivory handle which diffused
light on all visible things, and entered the room with a quiet step and
a half-penitent look, as of regret for having given offence to some
invisible spirit-monitor.

’Oh, you dear, dear friends!’ she said, approaching the bookshelves, and
softly apostrophising the volumes ranged there as if they were sentient
personages, ’I am afraid I do not consult you half enough!  You are
always with me, ready to give me the soundest advice on any subject
under the sun; advice founded on sage experience, too!  Tell me
something now, out of your stores of wisdom, to stop this foolish little
aching at my heart—this irritating, selfish, suspicious trouble which is
quite unworthy of me, as it is unworthy of anyone who has had the high
privilege of learning great lessons from such teachers as you are!  It
is not as if I were a woman whose sole ideas of life are centred on
dress and domesticity, or one of those unhappy, self-tormenting
creatures who cannot exist without admiration and flattery; I am, I
think and hope, differently constituted, and mean to try for great
things, even if I never succeed in attaining them.  But in trying for
greatness, one must not descend to littleness—save me from this danger,
my dear old-world comrades, if you can, for to-night I am totally unlike
myself.  There are thoughts in my brain that might have excited
Xantippe, but which should never trouble Delicia, if to herself Delicia
prove but true!’

And she raised her eyes, half smiling, to the meditative countenance of
Shakespeare. ’Excellent and "divine Williams," you must excuse me for
fitting your patriotic line on England to my unworthy needs; but why
_would_ you make yourself so eminently quotable?’  She paused, then took
up a book lying on her desk.  ’Here is an excellent doctor for a sick,
petulant child such as I am—Marcus Aurelius.  What will you say to me,
wise pagan?  Let me see,’ and opening a page at random, her eyes fell on
the words, ’Do not suppose you are hurt, and your complaint ceases.
Cease your complaint and you are not hurt.’

She laughed, and her face began to light up with all its usual
animation.

’Excellent Emperor!  What a wholesome thrashing you give me!  Anything
more?’  And she turned over a few pages, and came upon one of the
imperial moralist’s most coolly-dictatorial assertions.  ’What an easy
matter it is to stem the current of your imagination, to discharge a
troublesome or improper thought, and at once return to a state of calm!’

’I don’t know about that, Marcus,’ she said.  ’It is not exactly an
"easy" matter to stem the current of imagination, but certainly it’s
worth trying;’ and she read on, ’To-day I rushed clear out of
misfortune, or rather, I threw misfortune from me; for, to speak the
truth, it was not outside, and never came any nearer than my own fancy.’

She closed the book smilingly—the beautiful equanimity of her
disposition was completely restored.  She left her pretty writing den,
bidding Spartan remain there on guard—a mandate he was accustomed to,
and which he obeyed instantly, though with a deep sigh, his mistress’s
’evenings out’ being the chief trouble of his otherwise enviable
existence. Delicia, meantime, went to dress for the Premier’s reception,
and soon slipped into the robe she had had designed for herself by a
famous firm of Indian embroiderers;—a garment of softest white satin,
adorned with gold and silver thread, and pearls thickly intertwined, so
as to present the appearance of a mass of finely-wrought jewels.  A
single star of diamonds glittered in her hair, and she carried a fan of
natural lilies, tied with white ribbon.  Thus attired, she joined her
husband, who stood ready and waiting for her in the drawing-room. He
glanced up at her somewhat shamefacedly.

’You look your very best this evening, Delicia,’ he said.

She made him a sweeping curtsey, and smiled.

’My lord, your favouring praise doth overwhelm me!’ she answered.  ’Is
it not meet and right that I should so appear as to be deemed worthy of
the house of Carlyon!

He put his arm round her waist and drew her to him.  It was curious, he
thought, how fresh her beauty seemed!  And how the men in his ’set’
would have burst into a loud guffaw of coarse laughter if any of them
had thought that such was his opinion of his wife’s charm—his own wife,
to whom he had been fast wedded for over three years! According to the
rules of ’modern’ morality, one ought in three years to have had enough
of one’s lawful wife, and find a suitable ’soul’ wherewith to claim
’affinity.’

’Delicia,’ he said, playing idly with the lilies of her fan, ’I am sorry
you were vexed about the Marina woman—’

She interrupted him by laying her little white-gloved fingers on his
lips.

’Vexed?  Oh, no, Will, not vexed.  Why should I be?  Pray don’t let us
talk about it any more; I have almost forgotten the incident.  Come!
It’s time we started!’

And in response to the oddly penitent, half-sullen manner of the
’naughty boy’ he chose to assume, she kissed him.  Whereupon he tried
that one special method of his, which had given him the victory in his
wooing of her, the Passionate Outbreak; and murmuring in his rich voice
that she was always the ’one woman in the world,’ the ’angel of his
life,’ and altogether the very crown and summit of sweet perfection, he
folded her in his arms with all a lover’s fervour.  And she, clinging to
him, forgot her doubts and fears, forgot the austere observations of
Marcus Aurelius, forgot the triumphs of her own intellectual career,
forgot everything, in fact, but that she was the blindly-adoring devotee
of a six-foot Guardsman, whom she had herself set up as a ’god’ on the
throne of the Ideal, and whom she worshipped through such a roseate
cloud of sweet self-abnegation that she was unable to perceive how poor
a fetish her idol was after all—made of nothing but the very commonest
clay!




                             *CHAPTER III*


The smoking-room of the ’Bohemian’ was full of a motley collection of
men of the literary vagabond type—reporters, paragraphists, writers of
penny dreadfuls, reeled off tape-wise from the thin spools of
smoke-dried masculine brains; stray actors, playwrights anxious to
translate the work of some famous foreigner and so get fastened on to
his superior coat-tails, ’adapters’ desirous of dramatising some
celebrated novel and pocketing all the profits, anxious ’proposers’ of
new magazines looking about for ’funds’ to back them up, and among all
these an extremely casual sprinkling of the brilliant and successful
workers in art and literature, who were either honorary members, or who
had allowed their names to stand on the committee in order to give
’prestige’ to a collection which would otherwise be termed the ’rag-tag
and bob-tail’ of literature.  The opinions of the ’Bohemian,’—the airily
idiotic theories with which the members disported themselves, and
furnished food for laughter to the profane—were occasionally quoted in
the newspapers, which of course gave the club a certain amount of
importance in its own eyes, if in nobody else’s.  And the committee put
on what is called a considerable amount of ’side’; now and then
affecting to honour some half-and-half celebrity by asking him to a
Five-Shilling dinner, and dubbing him the ’guest of the evening,’ he
meantime gloomily taking note of the half-cold, badly-cooked poorness of
the meal, and debating within himself whether it would be possible to
get away in time to have a chop ’from the grill’ somewhere on his way
home.  The ’Bohemian’ had been a long time getting started, owing to the
manner in which the gentlemen who were ’in’ persistently black-balled
every new aspirant for the honours of membership.  The cause of this
arose from the chronic state of nervous jealousy in which the
’Bohemians’ lived.  To a certain extent, and as far as their personal
animosities would permit, they were a ’Mutual Admiration Society,’ and
dreaded the intrusion of any stranger who might set himself to discover
’their tricks and their manners.’  They had a lawyer of their own, whose
business it was to arrange the disputes of the club, should occasion
require his services, and they also had a doctor, a humorous and very
clever little man, who was fond of strolling about the premises in the
evening, and taking notes for the writing of a medical treatise to be
entitled ’Literary Dyspepsia, and the Passion of Envy considered in its
Action on the Spleen and Other Vital Organs,’ a book which he justly
considered would excite a great deal of interest among his professional
compeers.  But in spite of the imposing Committee of Names, the lawyer
and the doctor, the ’Bohemian’ did not pay.  It struggled on, hampered
with debts and difficulties, like most of its members. It gave
smoking-concerts occasionally, for which it charged extra, and twice a
year it admitted ladies to its dinners, during which banquets speeches
were made distinctly proving to the fair sex that they had no business
at all to be present.  Still, with every advantage that a running fire
of satirical comment could give it in the way of notoriety, the
’Bohemian’ was not a prosperous concern; and no Yankee Bullion-Bag
seemed inclined to take it up or invest in the chances of its future.  A
more sallow, sour, discontented set of men than were congregated in the
smoking-room on the particular evening now in question could hardly be
found anywhere between London and the Antipodes, and only the little
doctor, leaning back in a lounge-chair with his neatly-shaped little
legs easily crossed, and a smile on his face, seemed to enjoy his
position as an impartial spectator of the scene.  His smile, however,
was one of purely professional satisfaction; he was making studies of a
’subject’ in the person of a long-haired ’poet,’ who wrote his own
reviews.  This son of the Muses was an untidy, dirty-looking man, and
his abundant locks irresistibly reminded one of a black goat-skin
door-mat, worn in places where reckless visitors had wiped their muddy
boots thereon.  No doubt this poet washed occasionally, but his skin was
somewhat of the peculiar composition complained of by Lady Macbeth—’All
the perfumes of Arabia’ would neither cleanse nor ’sweeten’ it.

’Jaundice,’ murmured the little doctor, pleasantly; ’I’ll give him a
year, and he’ll be down with its worst form.  Too much smoke, too much
whisky, combined mentally with conceit, spite, and the habitual
concentration of the imagination on self; and no gaiety, wit or kindness
to temper the mixture.  All bad for the health—as bad as bad can be!
But, God bless my soul, what does it matter? He’d never be missed!’

And he rubbed his hands jubilantly, smiling still.

Meanwhile the rhymester thus doomed was seated at a distant table and
writing of himself thus,—

’If Shelley was a poet, if Byron was a poet, if we own Shakespeare as a
king of bards and dramatists, then Mr Aubrey Grovelyn is a poet also,
eminently fitted to be the comrade of these immortals.  Inspired
thought, beauty of diction, ease and splendour of rhythm distinguish
Aubrey Grovelyn’s muse as they distinguish Shakespeare’s utterances; and
in bestowing upon this gifted singer the praise that is justly due to
him, we feel we are rendering a service to England in being among the
first to point out the glorious promise and value of a genius who is
destined to outsoar all his contemporaries in far-reaching originality
and grandeur of design.’

Finishing this with a bold dash, he put it in an envelope and addressed
it to the office of the journal on which he was employed and known,
simply as Alfred Brown.  Mr Alfred Brown was on the staff of that
journal as a critic; and as Brown he praised himself in the person of
Aubrey Grovelyn.  The great editor of the journal, being half his time
away shooting, golfing, or otherwise amusing himself, didn’t know
anything about either Grovelyn or Brown, and didn’t care.  And the
public, seeing Grovelyn described as a Shakespeare, promptly concluded
he must be a humbug, and avoided his books as cautiously as though they
had been labelled ’Poison.’  Hence Brown-Aubrey-Grovelyn’s chronic
yellow melancholy—his poems wouldn’t ’sell.’  He crammed his eulogistic
review of his own latest production into his pocket, and went over to
the doctor, from whose cigar he kindled his own.

’Have you seen the papers this evening?’ he asked languidly, dropping
into a chair next to the club’s ’Galen,’ and running one skinny hand
through his door-mat curls.

’I have just glanced through them,’ replied the doctor, indifferently.
’I never do read anything but the telegrams.’

The poet raised his eyebrows superciliously.

’So?  You don’t allow your mind to be influenced by the ebb and flow of
the human tide of events,’ he murmured vaguely.  ’But I should have
thought you would have observed the ridiculous announcement concerning
the new book by that horrid woman, Delicia Vaughan.  It is monstrous!  A
sale of one hundred thousand copies; it’s an infernal lie!’

’It’s a damnation truth!’ said a pleasant voice, suddenly, in the
mildest of accents; and a good-looking man with a pretty trick of
twirling his moustache, and an uncomfortable way of flashing his eyes,
squared himself upright in front of both physician and poet.  ’I’m the
publisher, and I know!’

There was a silence, during which Mr Grovelyn smiled angrily and
re-arranged his door-mat.  ’When,’ proceeded the publisher, sweetly,
’will you enable me to do the same thing for you, Mr Grovelyn?’

The doctor, whose name was Dalley, laughed; the poet frowned.

’Sir,’ said Grovelyn, ’my work does not appeal to this age, which is
merely prolific in the generating of idiots; I trust myself and my
productions to the justice of posterity.’

’Then you must appeal to posterity’s publishers as well, mustn’t he, Mr
Granton?’ suggested Doctor Dalley, with a humorous twinkle in his eyes,
addressing the publisher, who, being the head of a wealthy and
influential firm, was regarded by all the penniless scribblers in the
’Bohemian’ with feelings divided betwixt awe and fear.

’He must, indeed!’ said Granton.  ’Personally, I prefer to speculate in
Delicia Vaughan, now Lady Carlyon.  Her new book is a masterpiece; I am
proud to be the publisher of it.  And upon my word, I think the public
show capital taste in "rushing" for it.’

’Pooh, she can’t write!’ sneered Grovelyn. ’Did you ever know a woman
who could?’

’I have heard of George Eliot,’ hinted Dalley.

’An old hen, that imagined it could crow!’ said the poet, with intense
malignity.  ’She’ll be forgotten as though she never existed, in a
little while; and as for that Vaughan woman, she’s several grades lower
still, and ought only to be employed for the _London Journal_!’

Granton looked at him, and bit his lips to hide a smile.

’It strikes me you’d rather like to stand in Lady Carlyon’s shoes, all
the same, Mr Grovelyn,’ he said.

Grovelyn laughed, with such a shrill sound in the laughter, that Dr
Dalley immediately made a mental note entitled ’Splenetic Hysteria,’ and
watched him with professional eagerness.

’Not I,’ he exclaimed.  ’Everybody knows her husband writes more than
half her books!’

’That’s a lie!’ said a full, clear voice behind them.  ’Her husband is
as big an ass as you are!’

Grovelyn turned round fiercely, and confronted Paul Valdis.  There was a
silence of surprise and consternation.  Several men rose from various
parts of the room, and came to see what was going on.  Dr Dalley rubbed
his hands in delightful anticipation of a ’row,’ but no one spoke or
moved to interfere. The two men, Grovelyn and Valdis, stood face to
face; the one mean-featured, with every movement of his body marked by a
false and repulsive affectation, the other a manly and heroic figure
distinguished by good looks and grace of bearing, with the consciousness
of right and justice flashing in his eyes.

’You accuse me of telling a lie, Mr Valdis,’ hissed Grovelyn, ’and you
call me an ass!’

’I do,’ retorted Valdis, coolly.  ’It is certainly a lie that Lord
Carlyon writes half his wife’s books.  I had a letter from him once, and
found out by it that he didn’t known how to spell, much less express
himself grammatically. And of course you are an ass if you think he
could do anything in the way of literature; but you don’t think so—you
only say so out of pure jealousy of a woman’s fame!’

’You shall answer for this, Mr Valdis!’ exclaimed Grovelyn, the curls of
his door-mat coiffure bristling with rage.  ’By Heaven, you shall answer
for it!’

’When you please, and how you please,’ returned Valdis, composedly; ’Now
and here, if you like, and if the members permit fighting on the club
premises.’

Exclamations of ’No, no!’ mingled with laughter, partially drowned his
voice. Everyone at the ’Bohemian’ knew and dreaded Valdis; he was the
most influential person on the committee, and the most dangerous if
offended.

’Lady Carlyon’s name is hardly fitted to be a bone of contention for us
literary and play-acting dogs-in-the-manger,’ he continued. ’She does
not write verse, so she is not in your way, Mr Grovelyn, nor will she
interfere with your claim on posterity.  She is not an actress, so she
does not rob me of any of my honours as an actor, and I think we should
do well to magnanimously allow her the peaceful enjoyment of her
honestly-earned reputation, without grouping ourselves together like
dirty street-boys to try and throw mud at her.  Our mud doesn’t stick,
you know! Her book is an overwhelming success, and her husband will
doubtless enjoy all the financial profits of it.’

He turned on his heel and looked over some papers lying on the table.
Grovelyn touched his arm; there was an evil leer on his face.

’The pen is mightier than the sword, Mr Valdis!’ he observed.

’Ay, ay!  That means you are going to blackguard me in the next number
of the ha’penny _Clarion_?  Be it so!  Truth shall not budge for a
ha’porth of slander!’

He resumed his perusal of the papers, and Grovelyn walked away slowly,
his eyes fixed on the ground, and a brooding mischief in his face.

’You should never ruffle the temper of a man who has liver complaint,
Valdis,’ said Dr Dalley, cheerfully, drawing his chair up to the table
where the handsome actor still leaned. ’All evil humours come from the
troubles of that important organ, and I am sure, if I could only meet a
would-be murderer in time, I could save him from the committal of his
intended wicked deed by a dose—quite a small dose—of suitable medicine!’

Valdis laughed rather forcedly.

’Could you?  Then you’d better attend to Grovelyn without delay.  He’s
ripe for murder—with the pen!’

Dr Dalley rubbed his well-shaven, rounded chin meditatively.

’Is he?  Well, perhaps he is; I really shouldn’t wonder!  Curiously
enough, now I come to think of it, he has certain points about him that
are synonymous with a murderer’s instinct—phrenologically and
physiologically speaking, I mean.  It is rather strange he should be a
poet at all.’

’Is he a poet?’ queried Valdis, contemptuously; ’I never heard it
honestly admitted. One does not acknowledge a man as a poet simply
because he has a shock head of very dirty hair.’

’My dear Valdis,’ expostulated the little doctor, amiably, ’you really
are very bitter, almost violent in your strictures upon the man, who to
me is one of the most interesting persons I have ever met!  Because I
foresee his death—due to very complex and entertaining complications of
disease—in the space of—let me see!  Well, suppose we say eighteen
months!  I do not think we shall have any chance of an autopsy.  I wish
I could think it likely, but I am afraid—’  Here Dr Dalley shook his
head, and looked so despondent concerning the slender hope he had of
dissecting Grovelyn after death, that Valdis laughed heartily, and this
time unrestrainedly.

’You forget, there’s the new photography; you could photograph his
interior while he’s alive!’

’By Jove!  I never thought of that!’ cried the doctor, joyfully; ’Of
course!  I’ll have it done when the disease has made a little more
progress.  It will be extremely instructive!’

’It will,’ said Valdis.  ’Especially if you reproduce it in the
journals, and call it "Portrait of a Lampooner’s Interior under Process
of Destruction by the Microbes of Disappointment and Envy."

’Good! good!’ chuckled Dalley, ’And, my dear Valdis, how would you like
a photo entitled, "Portrait of a Distinguished Actor’s Imaginative
Organism consumed by the Fires of a Hopeless Love?"’

Valdis coloured violently, and anon grew pale.

’You are an old friend of mine, Dalley,’ he said slowly, ’but you may go
too far!’

’So I may, and so I have!’ returned the little doctor, penitently, and
with an abashed look.  ’Forgive me, my dear boy; I’ve been guilty of a
piece of impertinence, and I’m sorry!  There!  But I should like a few
words with you alone, if you don’t mind. It’s Sunday night; you can’t go
and be "Ernani."  Will you waste a few minutes of your company on
me—outside these premises, where the very walls have ears?’

Valdis assented, and in a few minutes they left the club together.  With
their departure there was a slight stir among the men in the room, who
were reading, smoking, and drinking whisky and water.

’I wish she’d take up with him!’ growled one man, whose head was half
hidden behind a _Referee_.  ’Why the devil doesn’t she play the fool
like other women?’

’Whom are you speaking of?’ inquired a stout personage, who was busy
correcting his critical notes on a new play which had been acted for the
first time the previous evening.

’Delicia Vaughan—Lady Carlyon,’ answered the first man.  ’Valdis is
infatuated with her. Why she doesn’t go over to him, I can’t imagine; a
writing female need not be more particular than a dancing female, I
should say they’re both public characters, and Carlyon has thrown
himself down as a free gift at the feet of La Marina, so there’s no
obstacle in the way, except the woman’s own extraordinary "cussedness."

’What good would it do you that she should "go over," as you call it, to
Valdis?’ inquired the stout scribbler, dubiously, biting the end of his
pencil.

’Good?  Why, none to me in particular,’ said the other, ’but it would
drag her down! Don’t you see?  It would prove to the idiotic public,
that is just now running after her as if she were a goddess, that she is
only the usual frail stuff of which women are made.  I should like that!
I confess I should like it!  I like women to keep in their places—’

’That is, on the down grade,’ suggested the stout gentleman, still
dubiously.

’Of course! what else were they made for? La Marina, who kicks up her
skirts, and hits her nose with the point of her big toe, is far more of
a woman, I take it, and certainly more to the taste of a man, than the
insolent, brilliant, superior Delicia Vaughan!’

’Oh!  You admit she is brilliant and superior?’ said the stout critic,
with a smile. ’Well, you know that’s saying a great deal! I’m an
old-fashioned man—’

’Of course you are!’ put in a young fellow, standing near.  ’You like to
believe there may be good women,—real angels,—on earth; you like to
believe it, and so do I!’

He was a fresh-coloured youth, lately come up to London from the
provinces to try his hand at literature; and the individual with the
_Referee_, who had started the conversation, glanced him over with the
supremest contempt.

’I hope your mother’s in town to take care of you, you ninny,’ he said.
’You’re a very callow bird!’

The young man laughed good-naturedly.

’Am I?  Well, all the same, I’d rather honour women than despise them.’

The stout critic looked up from his notebook approvingly.

’Keep that up as long as you can, youngster,’ he said.  ’It won’t hurt
you!’

A silence followed; the man with the _Referee_ spoke not another word,
and the fresh-coloured provincial, getting tired of the smoke and the
general air of egotistical self-concentration with which each member of
the club sat fast in his own chosen chair, absorbed in his own chosen
form of inward meditation, took a hasty departure, glad to get out into
the cool night air.  His way home lay through a part of Mayfair, and at
one of the houses he passed he saw a long line of carriages outside and
a brilliant display of light within. Some fashionable leader of society
was holding a Sunday evening reception; and moved by a certain vague
interest and curiosity, the young reporter lingered for a moment
watching the gaily-dressed women passing in and out.  While he yet
waited, a dignified butler appeared on the steps and murmured something
in the ear of a gold-buttoned commissionaire, who thereupon shouted
vociferously,—

’Lady Car-ly-on’s carriage!  This way!’

And as an elegant _coupé_, drawn by two spirited horses drove swiftly up
in response to the summons, a woman wrapped in a soft, white mantilla of
old Spanish lace, and holding up her silken train with one hand, came
out of the house with a gentleman, evidently her host, who was escorting
her to the carriage. The young man from the country leaned eagerly
forward and caught sight of a proud, delicate face illumined by two dark
violet eyes, a flashing glimpse of beauty that vanished ere fully seen.
But it was enough to make him who had been called a ’callow bird’ wax
suddenly indignant with certain self-styled celebrities he had just left
behind at the ’Bohemian.’

’What beasts they are!’ he muttered; ’what cads!  Thank God they’ll
never be famous; they’re too mean!  To fling their dirty spite at a
woman like that!  It’s disgusting!  Wait till I get a chance; I’ll
"review" their trash for them!’

And warmed by the prospect of this future vengeance, the ’callow bird’
went home to roost.




                              *CHAPTER IV*


Some days after the war of words between Valdis and Aubrey Grovelyn at
the ’Bohemian,’ Delicia was out shopping in Bond Street, not for
herself, but for her husband.  She had a whole list of orders to execute
for him, from cravats and hosiery up to a new and expensive
’coach-luncheon-basket,’ to which he had taken a sudden fancy; and
besides this, she was looking about in all the jeweller’s shops for some
tasteful and valuable thing to give him as a souvenir of the approaching
anniversary of their marriage day.  Pausing at last in front of one
glittering window, she saw a rather quaint set of cuff-studs which she
thought might possibly answer her purpose, and she went inside the shop
to examine them more closely.  The jeweller, not knowing her personally,
but judging from the indifferent way in which she took the announcement
of his rather stiff prices, that she must be a tolerably rich woman,
began to show her some of his most costly pieces of workmanship, hoping
thereby to tempt her into the purchase of something for herself.  She
had no very great love for jewels, but she had for artistic design, and
she gratified the jeweller by her intelligent praise of some
particularly choice bits, the merits of which could only be fully
recognised by a quick eye and cultivated taste.

’That is a charming pendant,’ she said, taking up a velvet case, in
which rested a dove with outspread wings, made of the finest diamonds,
carrying in its beak the facsimile of a folded letter in finely-wrought
gold, with the words, ’_Je t’adore ma mie!_’ set upon it in lustrous
rubies.  ’The idea is graceful in itself, and admirably carried out.’

The jeweller smiled.

’Ah, that’s a very unique thing,’ he said, ’but it’s not for sale.  It
has been made to special order for Lord Carlyon.’

A faint tremor passed over Delicia like the touch of a cold wind, and
for a moment the jewels spread out on the glass counter before her
danced up and down like sparks flying out of a fire, but she maintained
her outward composure.  And in another minute she smiled at herself,
wondering why she had been so startled, for, of course, her husband had
ordered this pretty piece of jewellery as a gift for her, on the very
anniversary she was preparing to celebrate by a gift to him! Meanwhile
the jeweller, who was of an open mind, and rather fond of confiding bits
of gossip to stray customers, took the diamond dove out of its
satin-lined nest, and held it up in the sunlight to show the lustre of
the stones.

’It’s a lovely design!’ he said enthusiastic-ally; ’It will cost Lord
Carlyon a little over five hundred pounds.  But gentlemen of his sort
never mind what they pay, so long as they can please the lady they are
after.  And the lady in this case isn’t his lordship’s wife, as you may
well suppose!’

He sniggered, and one of his eyelids trembled as though it were on the
point of a profane wink.  Delicia regarded him with a straight, clear
look.

’Why should I suppose anything of the sort?’ she queried calmly.  ’I
should, on the contrary, imagine that it was just the tasteful gift a
man would wish to choose for his wife.’

The jeweller made a curious little bow over his counter, implying
deference towards Delicia’s unsuspicious nature.

’Would you really?’ he said.  ’Well, now, as a matter of fact, in our
trade, when we get special orders from gentlemen for valuable jewels,
they are never by any chance intended for the gentlemen’s wives.  Of
course it is not our business to interfere with, or even comment upon
the actions of our customers; but as far as our own artistic work goes,
it often pains us—yes, I may say it pains us—to see some of our finest
pieces being thrown away on dancers and music-hall singers, who don t
really know how to appreciate them, because they haven’t the taste or
culture for it.  They know the money’s worth of jewels—oh, you may trust
them for that.  And whenever they want to raise cash, why, of course
their jewels come handy.  But it’s not satisfactory to us as a firm, for
we take a good deal of pride in our work.  This dove, for instance,’ and
again he dangled the pendant in the sunbeams, ’It’s a magnificent
specimen of diamond-setting, and of course we, as the producers of such
a piece, would far rather know it was going to Lady Carlyon than to La
Marina.’

Delicia began to feel as if she were in a kind of dull dream; there were
flickering lines of light flashing before her eyes, and her limbs
trembled.  She heard the jeweller’s voice, going on again in its
politely gossiping monotone, as though it were a long way off.

’Of course La Marina is a wonderful creature, a marvellous dancer, and
good-looking in her way, but common.  Ah! common’s no word for it!  She
was the daughter of a costermonger in Eastcheap.  Now, Lady Carlyon is a
very different person; she is best known by her maiden name, Delicia
Vaughan. She’s the author of that name; I daresay you may have read some
of her books?’

’I believe—yes, I think I have,’ murmured Delicia, faintly.

’Well, there you are!  She’s a really famous woman, and very much loved
by many people, I’ve heard say; but, lord! her husband hardly gives her
a thought!  I’ve seen him in this very street walking with females that
even I’d be ashamed to know; and it’s rumoured that he hasn’t got a
penny of his own, and that all the money he throws about so lavishly is
his wife’s; and if that’s the case, it’s really shameful, because of
course she, without knowing it, pays for Marina’s jewels!  However,
there’s no accounting for tastes.  I suppose Lady Carlyon’s too clever,
or else plain in her personal appearance; and that’s why this diamond
dove is going to La Marina instead of to her.  Will you take the
cuff-studs?’

’Yes, thank you, I will take them,’ said Delicia, opening her purse with
cold, trembling fingers, and counting out crisp bank-notes to the value
of twenty pounds.  ’They are pretty, and very suitable for a—a
gentleman.’

Unconsciously she laid an emphasis on the word ’gentleman,’ and the
jeweller nodded.

’Exactly!  There’s nothing vulgar about them, not the least suspicion of
anything ’fast’!  Really you can’t be too particular in the choice of
studs, for what with the sporting men, and the jockeys and trainers who
get presents of valuable studs from their turf patrons, it’s difficult
to hit upon anything really gentlemanly _for_ a gentleman.  But’—and the
worthy man smiled as he packed up the studs—’after all, real gentleman
are getting very scarce!  Allow me!’  Here he flung open the door of his
establishment with the grace of a Sir Charles Grandison, and royally
issued his command to the small boy in buttons attached to the shop,
’See this lady to her carriage!’

How ’this lady’ got into that carriage she never quite knew.  The page
boy did his part in carefully attending to her dress that it should not
touch the wheel, in wrapping her round with the rich bear-skin rug that
protected her from side winds, and in quietly grasping the shilling she
slipped into his palm for his services, but she herself felt more like a
mechanical doll moving on wires than a living, feeling woman. Her
coachman, who always had enough to do in the management of the spirited
horses which drew her light victoria, glanced back at her once or twice
doubtfully, as he guided his prancing animals out of the confusion of
Bond Street and drove towards the Park, considering within himself that,
if he were going in an undesired direction, ’her ladyship’ would
speedily stop him; but her ladyship lay back in her cushioned seat,
inert, indifferent, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.  The fashionable
pageant of the Park ’season’ seemed to her a mere chaotic whirl; and
several eager admirers of her beauty and her genius raised their hats to
her in vain—she never perceived them.  A curious numbness had crept over
her; she wondered, as she felt the movement of the carriage, whether it
was not a hearse, and she the dead body within it being carried to her
grave!  Then, quite suddenly, she raised herself and sat upright,
glancing about at the rich foliage of the trees, the gay flower-beds and
the up-and-down moving throng of people; a bright flush reddened her
face, which for the past few minutes had been deadly pale, and as two or
three of her acquaintances passed her in their carriages or on foot, she
saluted them with her usual graceful air of mingled pride and sweetness,
and seemed almost herself again.  But she was not long able to endure
the strain she put upon her nerves, and after one or two turns in the
Row, she bade her coachman drive home. Arrived there, she found a
telegram from her husband, running thus:—


’Shall not return to dinner.  Don’t wait up for me.’


Crushing the missive in her hand, she went to her own study immediately,
the faithful Spartan following her, and there she shut herself up alone
with her dog friend for a couple of hours.  The scholarly peace of the
place had its effect in soothing her, and in allaying the burning smart
of her wounded spirit; and with a sigh of relief she sat down in her
favourite arm-chair with her back purposely turned to the white marble
’Antinous,’ whose cruel smile had nothing but mockery in it for a
woman’s pain.  Spartan laid his head on her knee, and she rested one
hand caressingly on his broad brow.

’I must think this worry out, Spartan!’ she said gently.  ’I feel as if
I had swallowed poison and needed an antidote.’

Spartan wagged his bushy tail and looked volumes.  Had he been able to
speak, he might have said, ’Why did you ever trust a man?  Dogs are much
more faithful!’

She sank into a profound reverie.  Her brain was clear, logical and
evenly balanced, and she had none of the flighty, fantastical,
hysterical notions common to many of her sex.  She had been trained, or
rather, she had trained herself, in the splendid school of classic
philosophy; and in addition to this, she was a devout Christian, one of
the old-world type, who would have willingly endured martyrdom for the
faith had it been necessary.  She was not a church-goer, and she
belonged to no special ’sect;’ she had no vulgar vices to hide by an
ostentatious display of public charities, but she had the most absolute
and passionate belief in, and love for Christ, as the one Divine
Messenger from God to man; and now she was bringing both her faith and
her philosophic theories to bear on the present unexpected crisis in her
life.

’If I were a low woman, a vulgar woman, a virago in domestic life, or
what the French call _une femme impossible_, I could understand his
seeking a change from my detestable company anywhere and everywhere,’
she mentally argued; ’but as things are, what have I done that he should
descend from me to La Marina?  Men will amuse themselves—I know that
well enough—but need the amusement be obtained on such a low grade!  And
is it fair that my earnings should keep La Marina in jewels?’

At this latter thought she started up and began to pace the room
restlessly.  In so doing she came face to face with the marble bust of
’Antinous,’ and she stopped abruptly, looking full at it.

’Oh men, what were you made for?’ she demanded, half aloud.  ’To be
masters of the planet?  Then surely your mastership should be
characterised by truth and nobility, not vileness and fraud!  Surely God
originally intended you for better things than to trample under your
feet all the weak and helpless, to work ravage on the fairest scenes in
nature, and to make miserable wrecks of all the women that love you!
Yes, Antinous, I can read in your sculptured face the supreme Egotism of
manhood, an Egotism which fate will avenge in its own good time!  No
wonder so few men are real Christians; it is too sublime and spiritual a
creed for the male nature, which is a composition of wild beast and
intellectual pagan. Now, what shall be my course of action? Shall I,
Delicia, seeing my husband in the mud, go down into the mud also?  Or
shall I keep clean—not only clean in body but clean in mind?  Clean from
meanness, clean from falsehood, clean from spite, not only for his sake,
but for the sake of my own self-respect?  Shall I let things take their
course until they culminate of themselves in the pre-ordained
catastrophe that always follows evil? Yes, I think I will!  Life after
all is a shadow; and love, what is it?’  She sighed and shuddered.
’Less than a shadow, perchance; but there is something in me which must
outlast both life and love—something which is the real Delicia, who must
hereafter answer to a Supreme Judge for the thoughts which have elevated
or degraded her soul!’

She resumed her pacing to and fro.

’How easy it would be to act like other women!’ she mused; ’to rant and
weep, and hysterically shriek complaints in the ears of "my lord" when
he returns to-night; or begin the day to-morrow with fume and fuss as
hot and steaming as the boiling water with which I make the breakfast
tea!  Or to go and grumble to a female _confidante_ who would at once
sell her information for five shillings to the most convenient "society
journal!"  Or to sink right down into the deepest mire of infamy and
write anonymous letters to La Marina, daughter of the green-grocer in
Eastcheap!  Or employ a detective to dodge his movements and hers!
Heavens! How low we can fall if we choose! and equally how high we can
stand if we determine to take a firm footing on

    ’"Some snow-crowned peak,
    Lofty and glittering in the golden glow
    Of summer’s ripening splendour."

Some people ask what is the good of "standing high?"  Certainly you get
on much better, in society at least, if you creep low, and crawl on very
humble all-fours to the feet of the latest _demi-mondaine_, provided she
be of the aristocracy.  If you know how to condone the vulgarity of a
prince and call his vices virtue, if you can pardon the blackguardism of
a duke and speak of him as a "gentleman," in spite of the fact that he
is not fit to be tolerated among decent-minded people, you are sure to
"get on," as the phrase goes.  To keep oneself morally clean is a kind
of offence nowadays; but methinks I shall continue to offend!’  She
passed her hand across her forehead dreamily. ’Something has confused
and stunned me; I cannot quite realise what it is.  I think I had an
idol somewhere, set up on a pedestal of gold; it has suddenly tumbled
down of its own accord!’  She smiled vaguely.  ’It is not broken yet,
but it has certainly fallen!’

That night, when Lord Carlyon returned about one o’clock, he found the
house dark and silent.  No one was waiting up for him but his valet, a
discreet and sober individual who knew his master’s secrets and kept
them; not at all because he respected his master, but because he
respected his master’s wife.  And the semi-obscurity and grave solitude
of his home irritated ’Beauty’ Carlyon to a most inconsistent degree,
inasmuch as he had himself telegraphed to Delicia that she was not to
sit up for him.

’Where is her ladyship?’ he demanded haughtily.  ’Did she go out this
evening?’

Gravely the valet assisted him to pull off his opera coat as he
replied,—

’No, sir—my lord, I mean—her ladyship dined alone, and retired early.  I
believe the maid said her ladyship was in bed by ten.’

Carlyon grumbled something inaudible and went upstairs.  Outside his
wife’s room he paused and tried the handle of her bedroom door; it was
locked.  Surprised and angry, he rapped smartly on the panels; there was
no answer save a low, fierce growl from Spartan, who, suddenly rising
from his usual post on the landing outside his mistress’s sleeping
chamber, manifested unusual and extraordinary signs of temper.

’Down, you fool!’ muttered Carlyon, addressing the huge beast.  ’Lie
down, or it will be the worse for you!’

But Spartan remained erect, with ears flattened and white teeth a-snarl,
and Carlyon, after rapping once more vainly at the closed door, gave it
up as a bad job and retired to his own private room.

’Never knew her so dead asleep before,’ he grumbled.  ’She generally
stays awake till I come home.’

He flung himself into his bed with a kind of sullen rage upon him;
things had gone altogether very wrong with him that evening.  He had
lost money (Delicia’s money) at play, and La Marina had been in what her
intimates called ’one of her nasty humours.’  That is, she had drunk a
great deal more champagne than was good for her, and had afterwards
exhibited a tendency to throw wine glasses at her admirers.  She had
boxed Carlyon’s ears, put a spoonful of strawberry ice down his back,
and called him ’a ha’porth of bad aristocrat.’

’What do you suppose we _artistes_ marry such fellows as you for?’ she
had yelled, with a burst of tipsy laughter.  ’Why, to make you look
greater fools than ever!’

And then she had shot a burnt almond nearly into his eye.  And he had
endured all this stoically, for the mere stupid satisfaction of having
the other men round La Marina’s supper-table understand that she was his
property at present, no matter to whom she might hereafter belong.  But
she had behaved so badly, and she had treated him with such ingratitude,
that he, unconsciously to himself, longed for the fair, calm presence of
Delicia, who always received him with the honour and worship he
considered due to him as a man, a lord, and an officer in the Guards;
and now when he came home, expecting to be charmed and flattered and
caressed by her, she had committed the unwarrantable indiscretion of
going to bed and falling sound asleep!  It was really too bad!—enough to
sting the lofty spirit of a Carlyon!  And such is the curious self-pity
and egotism of some men at their worst, that ’his lordship’ felt himself
to be a positively injured man as he settled his ’god-like’ head upon
his lonely pillow, and fell into an uneasy slumber, disturbed by very
unpleasant dreams of his losses at baccarat, and the tipsy rages of
Marina.




                              *CHAPTER V*


Next morning Delicia rose at about six o’clock and went out riding in
the Row long before the fashionable world was astir.  Attended by her
groom and Spartan, who took long racing gambols on the grass beyond the
railings of the ’Ladies’ Mile,’ she cantered under the deep, dewy shade
of the trees, and thought out her position in regard to her husband. In
spite of inward grief and perplexity, she had slept well; for to a clear
conscience and pure heart, combined with a healthy state of body, sleep
is never denied.  Mother Nature specially protects her straightforward
and cleanly children; she keeps their faces young, their eyes bright,
their spirits elastic, their tempers equable, and for the soothing of
Delicia’s trouble this morning, the sunbeams danced about her in a
golden waltz of pleasure, the leaves rustled in the wind, the flowers
exhaled their purest fragrance and the birds sang. Riding easily on her
beautiful mare ’Phillida’—who was almost as much a personal friend of
hers as Spartan himself, and whom she had purchased out of the
’royalties’ accumulating on one of her earlier works—she found herself
more than usually receptive of the exquisite impressions of natural
loveliness.  She was aware of everything; from the white clouds that
were heaped in snowy, mountainous ranges along the furthest visible edge
of the blue sky, to the open-hearted daisies in the grass that stared up
at the lately-risen sun with all the frankness of old friendship and
familiarity.  The fresh morning air and the exhilarating exercise sent a
lovely colour to her cheeks, and as her graceful form swayed lightly to
the half-coquettish, gay cantering of ’Phillida,’ who was also conscious
that it was a very agreeable morning, she felt as if the information she
had so unexpectedly and reluctantly received in the jeweller’s shop in
Bond Street on the previous day was a bad dream and nothing more.  After
about an hour’s riding she returned home at a quick trot, and on
entering the house heard that her ’lord and master’ had not yet risen.
She changed her riding habit for one of her simple white morning gowns,
and went into her study to open and read her numerous letters, and mark
them in order for her secretary to answer.  She was still engaged in
this occupation when Lord Carlyon came down, slowly, sleepily, and in no
very good humour.

’Oh, there you are at last, Will!’ she said, looking up at him brightly.
’You came home late last night, I suppose, and are tired?’

He stood still for a moment, wondering within himself why she did not
give him her usual good-morning kiss.

’It was not so very late,’ he said crossly. ’It was only half-past
twelve.  You’ve often stayed awake waiting for me later than that. But
last night, when I knocked at your door, you never answered me—you must
have been dead asleep.’

This in a tone of injury.

Delicia read calmly through the letter she held in her hand, then set it
aside.

’Yes, I must have been,’ she replied tranquilly.  ’You see I work pretty
hard, and nature is good enough to give me rest when I need it.  You
work hard too, Will, but in quite another way—you toil after amusement.
Now that’s the hardest form of labour I know! Treadmills are nothing to
it!  No wonder you’re tired!  Breakfast’s ready; let us go and have it;
I’ve been out riding for an hour this morning, and I feel desperately
hungry.  Come along!’

She led the way downstairs; he followed slowly and with a vague feeling
of uneasiness. He missed something in his wife’s manner—an indefinable
something which he could not express—something that had always
characterised her, but which now had unaccountably disappeared.  It was
as if a wide river had suddenly rolled in between them, forcing her to
stand on one side of the flood and he on the other.  He studied her
observantly from under his fine eyelash growth, as she made the tea and
with a few quick touches here and there altered the decorous formality
of the breakfast-table into the similitude of an Arcadian feast of
beauty by the mere artistic placing of a vase of flowers or a dish of
fruit, and this done, handed him the morning’s newspaper with smiling
and courteous punctilio.

’Spartan seems to be turning crusty,’ he remarked as he unfolded the
journal.  ’Last night, when I knocked at your door, he showed his teeth
and growled at me.  I didn’t know he had such an uncertain temper.’

Delicia looked round at her canine friend with a pretty air of
remonstrance.

’Oh, Spartan!  What is this I hear?’ she said, whereat Spartan hung his
head and tucked his tail well under his haunches. ’Don’t you know your
master when he comes home late?  Did you take him for a regular "rake,"
Spartan?  Did you think he had been in bad company?  Fie, for shame!
You ought to know better, naughty boy!’

Spartan looked abashed, but not so abashed as did Lord Carlyon.  He
fidgeted on his chair, got red in the face, and made a great noise in
folding and unfolding the newspaper; and presently, finding his own
thoughts too much for him, he began to get angry with nobody in
particular, and, as is the fashion with egotistical men, turned a sudden
unprovoked battery of assault on the woman he was hourly and daily
wronging.

’I heard something last night that displeased me very much, Delicia,’ he
said, affecting a high moral tone.  ’It concerns you, and I should like
to speak to you about it.’

’Yes?’ said Delicia, with the very slightest lifting of her delicate
eyebrows.

’Yes.’  And Lord Carlyon hummed and hawed for a couple of dubious
seconds.  ’You see, you are a woman, and you ought to be very careful
what you write.  A man told me that in your last book there were some
very strong passages,—really strong—you know what I mean—and he said
that it is very questionable whether any woman with a proper sense of
delicacy ought to write in such a manner.’

Delicia looked at him steadily.

’Who is he?  My book has probably touched him on a sore place!’

Carlyon did not answer immediately; he was troubled with an awkward
cough.

’Well,’ he said at last, ’it was Fitz-Hugh; you know him—an awfully good
fellow,—has sisters and all that—says he wouldn’t let his sisters read
your book for the world, and it was deuced disagreeable for me to hear,
I can tell you.’

’You have read my book,’ said Delicia, slowly; ’and did you discover
anything of the nature complained of by Captain Fitz-Hugh?’

Again Lord Carlyon coughed uncomfortably.

’Well, upon my word, I don’t exactly remember now, but I can’t say I
did!’

Delicia still kept her eyes fixed upon him.

’Then, of course, you defended me?’

Carlyon flushed, and began to butter a piece of toast in nervous haste.

’Why, there was no need for defence,’ he stammered.  ’The whole thing is
in a nutshell—an author’s an author, man or woman, and there’s an end of
it.  Of course you’re alone responsible for the book, and, as I said, if
he don’t like it he needn’t read it, and no one asked him to give it to
his sisters!’

’You prevaricate,’ interrupted Delicia, steadily; ’But perhaps it is as
well you did not think it necessary to defend me to such a man as
Captain Fitz-Hugh, who for years has been the notorious lover of Lady
Rapley, to the disgrace of her husband who permits the scandal.  And for
Captain Fitz-Hugh’s sisters, who are the chief purveyors of slander in
the wretched little provincial town where they live, each one of them
trying her best to catch the curate or the squire, I shall very
willingly write a book some day that deals solely with the petty lives
lived by such women—women more unclean in mind than a Swift, and lower
in the grade of intellect than an aspiring tadpole, who at any rate has
the laudable ambition and intention of becoming an actual frog some
day!’

Carlyon stared, vaguely startled and chilled by her cold, calm accents.

’By Jove!  You _are_ cutting, you know, Delicia!’ he expostulated.
’Poor Fitz-Hugh! he can’t help himself falling in love with Lady
Rapley—’

’Can’t help himself!’ echoed Delicia, with supreme scorn.  ’Can he not
help disgracing her?  Is it not Possible to love greatly and nobly, and
die with the secret kept?  Is there no dignity left in manhood?  Or in
womanhood?  Do you think, for instance, that _I_ would permit myself to
love any other man but you?’

His handsome face flushed, and his eyes kindled.  He smiled a
self-satisfied smile.

’Upon my life, that’s splendid—the way you say that!’ he exclaimed.
’But all women are not like you—’

’I know they are not,’ she replied.  ’Captain Fitz-Hugh’s sisters, for
example, are certainly not at all like me!  They do well to avoid my
book; they would find female cant and hypocrisy too openly exposed there
to please them.  But with regard to your complaint—for I regard it to be
a complaint from you—you may challenge the whole world of
slander-mongers, if you like, to point to one offensive expression in my
writings—they will never find it.’

He rose and put his arm round her.  At his touch she shuddered with a
new and singular aversion.  He thought the tremor one of delight.

’And so you will never permit yourself to love any other man but me?’ he
asked caressingly, touching the rich masses of her hair with his lips.

’Never!’ she responded firmly, looking straight into his eyes.  ’But do
not misunderstand my meaning!  It is very possible that I might cease to
love you altogether—yes, it certainly might happen at any moment; but I
should never, because of this, love another man.  I could not so degrade
myself as to parcel my affections out in various quarters, after the
fashion of Lady Rapley, who has descended voluntarily, as one of our
latter-day novelists observes, "to the manners and customs of the
poultry yard."  If I ceased to love you, then love itself for me would
cease.  It could never revive for anyone else; it would be dead dust and
ashes!  I have no faith in women who love more than once.’

Carlyon still toyed with her hair; the undefinable something he missed
in her fretted and perplexed him.

’Are you aware that you look at me very strangely this morning,
Delicia?’ he said at last; ’Almost as if I were not the same man! And
this is the first time I have ever heard you speak of the possibility of
your ceasing to love me!’

She moved restlessly in his embrace, and presently, gently putting him
aside, rose from the breakfast-table and pretended to busy herself with
the arrangement of some flowers on the mantelpiece.

’I have been reading philosophy,’ she answered him, with a tremulous
little laugh. ’Grim old cynics, both ancient and modern, who say that
nothing lasts on earth, and that the human soul is made of such
imperishable stuff that it is always out-reaching one emotion after
another and striving to attain the highest perfection.  If this be true,
then even human love is poor and trifling compared to love divine!’  Her
eyes darkened with intensity of feeling.  ’At least, so say some of our
sage instructors; and if it be indeed a fact that mortal things are but
the passing shadow of immortal ones, it is natural enough that we should
gradually outlive the temporal in our desire for the eternal.’

Carlyon looked at her wonderingly; she met his gaze fully, her eyes
shining with a pure light that almost dazzled him.

’I can’t follow all your transcendental theories,’ he said, half
pettishly; ’I never could.  I have always told you that you can’t get
reasoning men to care about any other life than this one—they don’t see
it; they don’t want it.  Heaven doesn’t suggest itself to them as at all
a jolly sort of place, and you know, if you come to think of it, you’d
rather not have an angel to love you; you’d much rather have a woman.’

’Speak for yourself, my dear Will,’ answered Delicia, with a slight
smile.  ’If angels, such as I imagine them to be, exist at all, I should
much prefer to be loved by one of them than by a man.  The angel’s love
might last; the man’s would not.  We see these things from different
points of view.  And as for this life, I assure you I am not at all
charmed with it.’

’Good heavens!  You’ve got everything you want,’ exclaimed Carlyon,
’Even fame, which so rarely attends a woman!’

’Yes, and I know the value of it!’ she responded.  ’Fame, literally
translated, means slander.  Do you think I am not able to estimate it at
its true worth?  Do you think I am ignorant of the fact that I am
followed by the lies and envies and hatreds of the unsuccessful?  Or
that I shut my eyes to the knowledge of the enmity that everywhere
pursues me?  If I were old, if I were poor, if I were ugly, and had
scarcely a gown to my back, and still wrote books, I should be much more
liked than I am.  I daresay some rich people might even be found willing
to "patronise" me!’  She laughed disdainfully. ’But when these same rich
people discover that I can afford to patronise _them_,—who is there that
can rightly estimate the measure or the violence of their antipathy for
me?  Yet when I say I am not charmed with life, I only mean the "social"
life; I do not mean the life of nature—of that I am never tired.’

’Well, this morning, at any rate, you appear to be tired of me,’ said
Carlyon, irritably.  ’So I suppose I’d better get out of your way!’

She made no answer whatever.  He fidgeted about a little, then began to
grumble again.

’I’m sorry you’re in such a bad humour.’  At this she raised her
eyebrows in smiling protest.  ’Yes, you know you’re in a bad humour,’ he
went on obstinately; ’you pretend you’re not, but you are.  And I wanted
to ask you a question on your own business affairs.’

’Pray ask it!’ said Delicia, still smiling. ’Though, before you speak,
let me assure you my business affairs are in perfect order.’

’Oh, I don’t know,’ he went on uneasily; ’these d——d publishers often
wriggle out of bargains, and try to "do" a woman.  That firm, now—the
one that has just published your last book—have they paid you?’

’They have,’ she answered with composure. ’They are, though publishers,
still honourable men.’

’It was to be eight thousand, wasn’t it?’ he asked, looking down at the
lapels of his well-fitting morning-coat and flicking a speck of dust off
the cloth.

’It was, and it is,’ she answered.  ’I paid four thousand of it into
your bank yesterday.’

His eyes flashed.

’By Jove!  What a clever little woman you are!’ he exclaimed.  ’Fancy
getting all that cash out of your brain-pan!  It’s quite a mystery to me
how you do it, you know!  I can never make it out—’

’There’s no accounting for the public taste,’ said Delicia, watching him
with the pained consciousness of a sudden contempt.  ’But you need not
puzzle yourself over the matter.’

’Oh, I never bother my head over literature at all!’ laughed Carlyon,
becoming quite hilarious, now that he knew an extra four thousand pounds
had been piled into his private banking account.  ’People often ask me,
"How does your wife manage to write such clever books?"  And I always
reply, "Don’t know, never could tell.  Astonishing woman!  Shuts herself
up in her own room like a silkworm, and spins a regular cocoon!"  That’s
what I say, you know; yet nobody ever seems to believe me, and lots of
fellows swear you _must_ get a man to help you.’

’It is part of man’s conceit to imagine his assistance always
necessary,’ said Delicia, coldly smiling.  ’Considering how loudly men
talk of their own extraordinary abilities, it is really astonishing how
little they manage to do. Good-bye!  I’m going upstairs to spin
cocoons.’

He stopped her as she moved to leave the room.

’I say, Delicia, it’s awfully sweet of you to hand over that four
thousand—’

She gave a little gesture of offence.

’Why speak of it, Will?  You know that half of every sum I earn is
placed to your account; it has been my rule ever since our marriage, and
there is really no need to allude to what is now a mere custom of
business.’

He still held her arm.

’Yes, that’s all very well; but look here, Delicia, you’re not angry
with me for anything, are you?’

She raised her head and looked straightly at him.

’No, Will—not angry.’

Something in her eyes intimidated him. He checked himself abruptly,
afraid to ask her anything more.

’Oh, that’s all right,’ he stammered hurriedly. ’I’m glad you’re not
angry.  I thought you seemed a little put out; but it’s jolly that I’m
mistaken, you know.  Ta-ta!  Have a good morning’s grind.’

’And as she went, he drew out a cigar from his silver case with rather
shaking fingers, and pretended to be absorbed in lighting it.  When it
was finally lit and he looked up, she was gone.  With a sigh, he flung
himself into an arm-chair and puffed away at his choice Havana in a sore
and miserable confusion of mind.  No human being, perhaps, is quite so
sore and miserable as a man who is born with the instincts of a
gentleman and yet conducts himself like a cad.  There are many such
tramps of a decayed and dying gentility amongst us—men with vague
glimmerings of the ancient chivalry of their race lying dormant within
them, who yet lack the force of will necessary to plan their lives
resolutely out upon those old-fashioned but grand foundations known as
truth and loyalty.  Because it is ’the thing’ to talk slang, they
pollute the noble English language with coarse expressions copied from
stable conversation; and because it is considered ’swagger’ to make love
to other men’s wives, they enter into this base form of vulgar intrigue
almost as if it were a necessary point of dignity and an added grace to
manhood.  If we admit that men are the superior and stronger sex, what a
pitiable thing it is to note how little their moral forces assist in the
elevation of woman, their tendency being to drag her down as low as
possible!  If she be unwedded, man does his best to compromise her; if
he has married her, he frequently neglects her; if she be another’s
wife, he frequently tries to injure her reputation.  This is ’modern’
morality, exhibited to us in countless varying phases every day,
detailed every morning and evening in our newspapers, witnessed over and
over again through every ’season’s’ festivities; and this, combined with
atheism, and an utter indifference as to the results of evil, is making
of ’upper class’ England a something worse than pagan Rome was just
before its fall.  The safety of the country is with what we elect to
call the ’lower classes,’ who are educating themselves slowly but none
the less surely; but who, it must be remembered, are not yet free from
savagery,—the splendid brute savagery which breaks out in all great
nations when aristocratic uncleanness and avarice have gone too far,—a
savagery which threw itself panting and furious upon the treacherous
Marie Antoinette of France, with her beauty, her wicked wantonness, her
thoughtless extravagance and luxury, and her cruel contempt for the
poor, and never loosened its fangs till it had dragged her haughty head
to the level of the scaffold, there to receive the just punishment of
selfishness and pride.  For punishment must fall sooner or later on
every wilful misuser of life’s opportunities; though had anyone told
Lord Carlyon this by way of warning, he would have bidden him, in the
choicest of ’swagger’ terms, to ’go and be a rotten preacher!’  And in
saying so, he would have considered himself witty.  Yet he knew well
enough that his ’little affair’ with La Marina was nothing but a
deliberate dishonour done to his blameless wife; and he was careful to
avoid thinking as to where the money came from as he flung it about at
cards, or in restaurants, or on race-courses.

’After all,’ he considered now, as he smoked his cigar leisurely, and
allowed his mind to dwell comfortably on the reflection of that four
thousand pounds placed to his account, ’she likes her work; she couldn’t
get on without it, and there’s nothing so much in her handing me over
half the "dibs" as she’s got all the fame.’

And through some curious process of man’s logic he managed to argue
himself into a perfect state of satisfaction with the comfortable way
the world was arranged for him through his wife’s unremitting toil.

’Poor little soul!’ he murmured placidly, glancing at his handsome face
in an opposite mirror, ’She loves me awfully!  This morning she half
pretends she doesn’t, but she would give every drop of blood in her body
to save me from a pin-prick of trouble.  And why shouldn’t she?  Women
must have something to love; she’s perfectly happy in her way, and so am
I in mine.’

With which consoling conclusion he ended his meditations, and went out
for the day as usual.

On returning home to dinner, however, he was considerably put out to
find a note waiting for him in the hall; a note from his wife, running
thus:—


’Shall not return to dinner.  Am going to the "Empire" with the
Cavendishes; do not wait up for me.’


’Well, I call that pretty cool!’ he muttered angrily.  ’Upon my word, I
call that infernally cool!’

He marched about the hall, fuming and fretting for a minute or two, then
he called his valet.

’Robson, I sha’n’t want dinner served,’ he said snappishly; ’I’m going
out.’

’Very good, my lord.’

’Did her ladyship leave any message?’

’None, my lord.  She merely said she was going to dine with Mr and Mrs
Cavendish, and would probably not be back till late.’

He frowned like a spoilt child.

’Well, I sha’n’t be back till late either, if at all,’ he said
fretfully.  ’Just come and get me into my dress suit, will you?’

Robson followed him upstairs obediently, and bore with his caprices,
which were many, during the business of attiring him for the evening.
He was in an exceedingly bad humour, and gave vent to what the children
call a ’bad swear’ more than once.  Finally he got into a hansom and was
driven off at a rattling pace, the respectable Robson watching his
departure from the open hall door.

’You’re a nice one!’ remarked that worthy personage, as the vehicle
containing his master turned a sharp corner and disappeared.  ’Up to no
end of pranks; as bad and worse than if you was the regular son of a
king!  Yes, taking you on and off, one would almost give you credit for
being a real prince, you’ve got so little conscience!  But my lady’s one
too many for you, I fancy; she’s quiet but she’s clever; and I don’t
believe she’ll keep her eyes shut much longer.  She can’t, if you’re
a-going on continual in the way you are.’

Thus Robson soliloquised, shutting the street door with a bang to
emphasise the close of his half-audible observations.  Then he went up
into Delicia’s study to give Spartan some dinner.  Spartan received the
plateful brought to him with majestic indifference, and an air which
implied that he would attend to it presently.  He had a little white
glove of Delicia’s between his paws, and manifested no immediate desire
to disturb himself.  He had his own canine ideas of love and fidelity;
and though he was only a dog, it may be he had a higher conception of
honour and truth than is attained by men, who, in the excess of
self-indulgence, take all the benefits of love and good fortune as their
’rights,’ and are destitute of even the saving grace of gratitude.




                              *CHAPTER VI*


It was no impetus of feminine recrimination or spite that had caused
Delicia to go out on that particular evening, and thus deprive her
husband of her society in the same abrupt fashion with which he had so
often deprived her of his.  Mr and Mrs Cavendish were old friends of
hers.  They had known her when she was a little orphan girl with no
brothers or sisters—no companions of her own age to amuse her—nothing,
in fact, but her own pensive and romantic thoughts, which had, though
she then knew it not, helped to weave her now brilliant destiny.  They
were elderly, childless people, and they had always been devoted to
Delicia, so that when Mrs Cavendish paid an unexpected call in the
afternoon and stated that she and her husband were ’mopy,’ and that they
would take it very kindly if Delicia would come and dine with them, and
afterwards accompany them to the ’Empire,’ for which they had a box near
the stage, Delicia readily accepted the proposition as a welcome change
from her own uncomfortable and unprofitable thoughts. To begin with, she
had grown so accustomed now to her husband’s telegrams announcing that
he would not be back to dinner, that she accepted his absence as a far
greater probability than his home-returning.  Therefore she was glad of
the chance of dining in friendly company.  Next, the idea of going to
the ’Empire’ filled her with a certain sense of pained curiosity and
excitement.  La Marina was the chief attraction there, and she had never
seen her.  So she shut up her books and papers, put on a simple black
skirt, and a pretty blouse of soft pink chiffon, daintily adorned with a
shoulder-knot of roses, tied her rich hair up, in the fashion of the
picture of Madame le Brun, with a strip of pink ribbon, bade good-bye to
Spartan, gave him her glove to guard by way of consolation, and then
went with her old friend, leaving for her husband, in case he should
return, the brief note that had vexed his high mightiness so seriously.
And it was with a strained anticipation and sharp unrest that she sat in
the box at the ’Empire,’ withdrawn from view as much as possible, and
waited for the appearance of the famous dancer, whose performance was
advertised on the programme as ’Marvellous Evolution!  The Birth of a
Butterfly!  La Marina!’  The music-hall was crowded, and looking down on
the densely-packed arena, she saw rows and rows of men, smoking,
grinning, whispering in each other’s ears,—some sitting squat in their
_fauteuils_, with the bulging appearance of over-filled flour sacks, the
extended feet beyond the sacks, and the apoplectically swelled heads on
the tops thereof, suggestive of the full meals just enjoyed,—others,
standing up with opera glasses levelled at the promenade, or else
leering in the same direction without glasses at all.  There were young
men, sodden and stupid with smoke and drink,—and old men, blear-eyed and
weak-jointed, painfully endeavouring to assume the airs of joyous
juvenility.  There were fast women, with eyelashes so darkened with kohl
as to give them the appearance at a distance of having no eyes at all,
but only black sockets;—middle-aged frowsy feminine topers, whose very
expression of face intimated a ’looking forward to the next glass,’—and
a few almost palsy-stricken antiquities of womanhood, the possible ruins
of fifty-year-ago ballet-girls and toe-and-heel stage ’fairies,’ who sat
in the stalls twisting their poor old mouths into the contortion of a
coquettish smile—a contortion dreadfully reminding one of the way a
skull grins when some careless gravedigger throws it out of the mould
where it has hidden its ghastly mirth for perhaps twenty years.  All
this seething witches’ cauldron of life, Delicia looked down upon with a
mingling of shame and sorrow. Were these low-looking creatures real
humanity?—the humanity which God created and redeemed?  Surely not!
They were more like apes than human beings—how was it?—and why was it?
She was still pondering the question when old Mr Cavendish spoke.

’Not a very distinguished audience, is it, Delicia?’ he said.  He had
called her Delicia from childhood, and he did not care, at the age of
sixty-five, to break himself of the pleasant habit.

’No,’ she replied, with a faint smile; ’I have never been here before.
Have you?’

’Oh, yes, often; and so has my wife. The great advantage of music-halls
like these is that one can come and be entertained at any moment of the
evening without being forced to devour one’s dinner with the lightning
speed of a Yankee tourist.  The mistake made by all theatre managers is
the earliness of the hour they appoint for the rising of the curtain.
Eight o’clock! Good heavens!—that’s the usual London dinner time; and if
one wants to get to the theatre punctually one must dine at six-thirty,
which is ridiculous.  Plays ought to commence at half-past nine and
finish at half-past eleven; especially during the season.  No man who
loves his home comfort cares to gallop through the pleasantest meal of
the day, and rush off to a theatre at eight o’clock; it’s hard work, and
is seldom rewarded by any real pleasure.  The "Empire" and other places
of the same character get on so very well, partly because they leave us
a certain choice of hours.  La Marina, you see, doesn’t come on till
ten.’

’She is very beautiful, isn’t she?’ asked Delicia.

’Oh, my dear!’ said Mrs Cavendish, laughing a little, ’Beautiful is
rather a strong expression!  She’s a—well—!  What would you call her,
Robert?’ appealing to her husband.

’I should call her a fine, fleshy woman,’ answered Mr Cavendish;
’Coarsely built, certainly; and I should say she drank a good deal.
She’ll get on all right enough while she’s young; but at middle-age
she’ll be an appalling spectacle in the way of fat!’

He laughed, but Delicia scarcely heard his last words.  She was lost in
a wondering reverie.  She could have easily understood a low-minded man
becoming enamoured of an equally low-minded woman, but what puzzled her
was to realise that her handsome and proudly-aristocratic husband should
find anything attractive in a person who was ’coarse’ and ’drank a good
deal.’  But now the musical prelude to the wonderful ’Birth of a
Butterfly’ began, and the low shivering of the violins responded to the
melodious complaints of the deeper-toned ’cellos, as the lights of the
’Empire’ were darkened, and over the crowded audience the kindly veil of
a semi-obscurity fell, hiding the play of mean and coarse emotions on
many a degraded face, and completely shadowing the wicked devilry of
eyes so bereft of honesty, that had hell itself needed fresh sparks to
kindle flame, those ugly human glances might have served the purpose.
The curtain rose, displaying an exquisitely-painted scene called the
’Garden of Aurora,’ where, in the rosy radiance of a deftly-simulated
’dawn of day,’ the green trees trembled to the murmur of the subdued
orchestral music, and roses—admirable creations of calico and gauze—hung
from the wings in gay clusters, looking almost as if they were real.  In
the middle of the stage, on a broad green leaf that glittered with a
thousand sparkles of imitation dew, lay a large golden cocoon, perfect
in shape and shining gloriously in the beams of the mimic sun, to this
central object the gaze of everyone in the audience was drawn and fixed.
The music now grew wilder and sharper, the violins began to scream, the
’cellos to swear, and Sound itself, torn into shreds of impatient
vibration, was beginning to protest discordantly at the whole
representation, when lo!—the golden cocoon grew slowly more and more
transparent, as if some invisible hand were winding off the silken
treasure of the spinning, and the white form of a woman was dimly,
delicately seen through the half-opaque covering.  Loud murmurs of
applause began, which swelled into a rapturous roar of ecstasy as with a
sudden, sharp noise, which was echoed and repeated in the orchestra, the
cocoon split asunder, and La Marina bounded forward to the footlights.
Clad in diaphanous drapery, which scarcely concealed her form, and
spreading forth two white butterfly wings, illumined in some mysterious
way by electricity, she commenced her gliding dance—an intricate whirl
of wonderful sinuous movements, every one of which might have served as
a study for a sculptor.  Her feet moved flyingly without sound; her
face, artistically tinted for stage-effect, was beautiful; her hair of
reddish-brown, lit weirdly by concealed electric dewdrops, flowed about
her in a cloud that resembled a smouldering fire; and as she danced, she
smiled as sweetly and with as perfect an imitation of childlike
innocence as though she had in very truth been newly born in fairyland
that night, just as she seemed,—a creature of light, love and mirth,
with no idea at all of the brandy awaiting her by her own order in her
dressing-room off the ’wings.’  And Delicia, frozen into a kind of
unnatural calm, watched her steadily, coldly, critically; and watching,
realised that the Bond Street jeweller had not spoken without knowledge,
for there, on Marina’s panting bosom, gleamed the diamond dove carrying
the golden love-token, which said, ’_Je t’adore ma mie!_’  Flashing
brilliantly with every toss and whirl of the dancer’s pliant body, it
was to Delicia the proof-positive of her husband’s dishonour.  And yet
she found it difficult to grasp the truth at once; she was not aware of
any particular emotion of hurt, or rage, or grief; she only felt very
cold and sick, and she could not put so strong a control on herself as
to quite hide these physical sensations altogether, for Mrs Cavendish,
glancing at her in alarm, exclaimed,—

’Delicia, you are not well!  Robert, she’s going to faint; take her out
of the box! Give her some air!’

Delicia forced herself to smile—to speak.

’It is nothing, I assure you,’ she said, ’nothing but the heat and the
smoke.  Pray do not mind me; it will soon pass.’

But despite her words, she half rose and looked nervously about her as
if seeking for some escape; then, refusing Mr Cavendish’s
hastily-offered arm, she sat down again.

’I will see this dance out,’ she said tremulously; ’and then, perhaps,
if you are ready, we will go.’

And she turned her eyes once more on the stage, which was now flooded
with purple and golden light, causing La Marina, in her impersonation of
a butterfly, to glow with all the brilliant and soft colours of the
rainbow.  Her white wings were irradiated with all sorts of wonderful
tints—now crimson, now blue, now green—and in the midst of all the
glitter and play of light shone Marina’s face, smiling with its sweetly
simulated expression of innocence, while the diamond dove sparkled
beneath her rounded chin.  And as Delicia glanced from her to the arena
to see the effect of the performance on the audience, she started, and
in the extreme tension of her nerves almost screamed,—for there,—looking
straight up at her, was her husband!  Their eyes met; the crowded space
of the auditorium and the brilliantly-lit stage, with the swaying figure
of the popular dancer gliding to and fro upon it, severed them—the
visible and outward signs of a wider separation to come. Lord Carlyon
surveyed his wife with a lofty and offended air, and quickly
understanding the expression on his features, Delicia could have laughed
aloud, had she been less stunned and miserable.  For he was assuming an
aspect of injured virtue, which, considering the actual state of
affairs, had something ludicrous about it; and for a moment Delicia
studied him with a curiously calm and critical analysis, just as if he
were a subject for literary treatment and no more.  She saw, from his
very look upward at her, that he considered her to have outraged the
proprieties by visiting the ’Empire’ at all, even though she was
accompanied by two of her oldest and most familiar friends; and of his
own guilt in connection with La Marina it was highly probable he never
thought at all.  Men are judged to be excellent logicians, superseding
in that particular branch of knowledge all the feeble efforts of
womankind; and undoubtedly they have a very peculiar form of arguing out
excuses for their own vices, which must be acknowledged as exceedingly
admirable. Before La Marina’s gyrations were over, and while the male
part of the audience was exhausting itself in frantic salvos of
applause, Delicia was moved by such a keen and pungent appreciation of
the comedy side of the situation that she could not help smiling. There
was a wide wound in her heart; but it was so deep and deadly that as yet
the true anguish of it was not betrayed—the throbbing ache had not
begun, and she herself was scarcely as yet aware of her own mortal hurt.
The brilliancy of her brain saved her, for the time being, from knowing
to what extent her tenderest and best emotions had been outraged; and
she could not avoid perceiving something almost droll in the fact that
she, Delicia, had worked, among other things, for this, to enable her
husband to deck his mistress with jewels purchased out of her hard
earnings!

’It is very funny!’ she said half aloud, ’and perhaps the funniest thing
of all is that I should never have thought it of him!’

’What did you say, Delicia?’ asked Mr Cavendish, bending down towards
her.

Delicia smiled.

’Nothing!’ she replied.  ’I was talking to myself, which is a bad habit.
I saw Will just now; he’s in the arena somewhere.  I expect he’s not
best pleased to see me here.’

’Well, he’s here himself often enough,’ retorted Mr Cavendish; ’at
least, if one is to believe what people say.’

’Ah, but one must never believe what people say,’ answered Delicia,
still smiling quite radiantly.  ’The majority of mankind tell more lies
than truths; it suits their social customs and conveniences better.  May
we go now?’

’Willingly,’ and the Cavendishes rose at once.  ’Shall we look for Lord
Carlyon?’

’Oh, no; there is such a crowd, we should never find him.  He will
probably go home in a hansom.’

They left the hall; and Delicia, who had placed her carriage at the
service of her friends that night, took them back in it to their own
door.

’You haven’t told us what you think of La Marina,’ said Mrs Cavendish,
smiling, when they were bidding each other good-night. ’Were you
disappointed in her?’

’Not at all,’ Delicia answered tranquilly; ’she is an admirable dancer.
I never expected her to be anything more than that.’

’Numbers of men have quite lost their heads about her,’ observed Mr
Cavendish, as he stood on the pavement outside his house and looked in
at Delicia, where she sat in her carriage shadowed from the light.
’Somebody told me the other day she had more jewels than a queen.’

’No doubt,’ responded Delicia, carelessly; ’She is a toy, and the only
chance she has of not being broken is to make herself expensive.
Good-night!’

She waved her hand, and was driven off. Mr and Mrs Cavendish entered
their own quiet house, and in the semi-lighted hall looked at each other
questioningly.

’It is no use dropping any more casual hints,’ said Mr Cavendish, almost
crossly; ’she doesn’t take them.’

’I don’t think she’ll ever believe a word against Carlyon,’ responded
his wife; ’and old friends as we are, we should only offend her if we
speak out and tell her all we hear.  It is no use making mischief.’

’It is no use speaking truth, you mean,’ observed Mr Cavendish.  ’What a
singular thing it is that one can never be honest in society without
offending somebody!’

Mrs Cavendish sighed and smiled.  She had had her turn of social life
long years ago, and had got thoroughly tired of its vapid folly and
hypocrisy, but she had managed to find a good husband, and for that was
daily and hourly thankful.  The great sorrow of her life was that she
had not been blessed with children, and it was partly this shadow, on
her otherwise happy and tranquil lot, which made her attachment to
Delicia peculiarly tender.  Had that brilliant and popular novelist been
her own daughter, she could not have loved her more, and there was an
uneasy sense of foreboding in her good, motherly soul that night which
kept her awake for a long time, thinking and wondering as to what would
happen if certain rumours concerning Lord Carlyon turned out to be true.
She knew Delicia’s character better than most people; she was aware that
beneath that apparently pliant, sweet nature, there was a resolute
spirit, strong as iron, firm as adamant—a spirit which would assuredly
make for right and justice whenever and however tested and tried; but
she could not foresee in what way Delicia would resent a wrong,
supposing she had cause for such resentment.  She looked slight as a
reed and delicate as a lily; but appearances are deceptive; and nothing
can well be more foolish than to estimate a person’s mental capacity by
his or her outward bearing.  A rapier is a thin, light weapon, but it
can nevertheless kill; a nightingale has nothing to boast of in its
plumage, but its singing surpasses that of all the other birds in
creation. Only the purely barbaric mind judges things or individuals by
surface appearances.  Anyone who had attempted to fathom Delicia’s
character by her looks would have formed a very erroneous estimate of
her, for, to the casual observer, she was merely a pretty, lovable
woman, with a sunny smile and a graceful bearing, and that was all.  No
one would have given her credit for such virtues as strong
self-restraint, courage, determination, and absolute indifference to
opinions; yet all these she had in no small degree, combined with an
extraordinary directness and swiftness of action which is commendable
enough when it distinguishes a man, but is somewhat astonishing when
discovered in the naturally capricious composition of a woman.  This
direct method of conduct impelled her now; for while Mrs Cavendish lay
awake worrying about her, she herself, on returning home that evening,
had fully made up her mind as to what she meant to do.  Going into her
study, she sat down and wrote a letter to her husband, in which, with
concise and uncomplaining brevity, she told him all.  She concluded her
epistle thus:—


’I am unable to tell you my own feelings on this matter, as I have not
yet had time to realise them even to myself.  The surprise is too
sudden—the disappointment I experience in you too keen.  I am quite
aware that many men keep stage-artistes for their own amusement in hours
of leisure, but I do not think they are accustomed to do so on their
wives’ earnings.  It would be inexpressibly painful to me to have to
talk this over with you; it is a subject I could not possibly discuss.
I therefore deem it best to leave you for a few days in order that we
may both, apart from one another, have leisure in which to consider our
positions and arrange what is best to do for the future.  In order to
save all unnecessary gossip and scandal, I shall return to town in time
for Lady Dexter’s "crush," to which we are both especially invited.  I
am going to Broadstairs, and will telegraph my address on arrival.

’DELICIA VAUGHAN.’


When she had written all she had to say, she placed the letter in an
envelope, addressed it, and, calling Robson, bade him deliver it to his
master directly he returned.  Robson glanced at her deferentially,
wondering within himself at the extreme pallor of her face and feverish
brightness of her eyes.

’His lordship said he would probably not return to-night,’ he ventured
to observe.

Delicia started slightly, but quickly controlled herself.

’Did he?  Well, whenever he does return, give him that letter.’

’Yes, my lady.’

He withdrew, and Delicia went quietly upstairs to her bedroom and
summoned her maid.

’I am going down to the sea for a few days, Emily,’ she said; ’to
Broadstairs.  Just put my things together, and be ready yourself by ten
o’clock to-morrow morning.’

Emily, a bright-looking young woman, who had none of the airs and graces
about her which are too frequently assumed by ladies’ maids, and who,
moreover, had the further recommendation of being devotedly attached to
her mistress, received her instructions with her usual pleased
readiness, and set about loosening her lady’s hair for the night.  As
she unwound the glistening mass and let it fall, Delicia suddenly
started up with a smothered cry of pain.

’Oh, my lady, what is it?’ exclaimed Emily, startled.

Delicia stood trembling and looking at her.

’Nothing, nothing,’ she faltered at last, faintly forcing a smile.  ’I
have just found out something, that is all—something I did not quite
understand before.  I understand it now—I understand—my God, I
understand! There, Emily, don’t look so frightened. I am not ill; I am
only a little tired and puzzled.  You can go now; I would rather be
alone.  Be sure you call me in good time for the train, and have
everything packed in readiness.  I shall take Spartan with me.’

’Yes, my lady,’ stammered Emily, still looking a trifle scared.  ’Are
you sure you are not ill?  Can’t I do anything for you?’

’No, nothing,’ answered Delicia, gently. ’Go to bed, Emily, and get up
early, that’s all.  Good-night!’

’Good-night, my lady!’ and Emily reluctantly retired.

Left alone, Delicia moved to the door and locked it.  Then, turning, she
drew aside the curtain which hung before the niche she called her
’oratory,’ where an ivory crucifix hung white against draperies of
purple.  The anguished eyes of the suffering Saviour looked down upon
her; the thorn-crowned head drooped as it were towards her; the ’Man of
Sorrows acquainted with grief,’ with arms outstretched upon the cross,
seemed waiting to receive her,—and with a sudden, sobbing cry she fell
on her knees.

’Oh, my God, my God.’  she wailed, ’I know now what I have lost!  All my
love and all my joy!  Gone, gone like a foolish dream,—gone for ever!
Gone, and nothing left but the crown of thorns called Fame!’

Shuddering, she hid her face on the cushion of her _prie-dieu_ and wept
slow, passionate tears, that rose from a breaking heart and scalded her
eyelids as they fell.  Veiled in the golden glory of her hair, she
fretted like a little ailing child, till finally, exhausted and
shivering with emotion, she lifted her head and looked straight at the
sculptured Christ that faced her.

’I have loved him too much,’ she said half aloud.  ’I have made him the
idol of my life, and I am punished for my sin.  We are all apt to forget
the thunders of Mount Sinai and the great Voice which said, "Thou shalt
have none other gods save Me."  I had forgotten,—nay, I was almost
willing to forget! I made of my beloved a god; he has made of me—a
convenience!’

She rose, flung back her hair over her shoulders, and standing still for
a moment listened.  There was not a sound in the house, save an
occasional uneasy movement from Spartan, who was lying on his mat
outside her bedroom door.

’"My lord’s" sense of what is right and proper for women has been
outraged to-night by seeing me at the "Empire," she said, with a little
disdainful smile; ’but his notions of morality do not go far enough to
prevent him from being with La Marina at this very moment!’

A look of disgust passed over her mobile features.

’Poor Love!  Poor little, delicate moth! How soon a coarse touch will
kill it—kill it hopelessly, so that it will never rise again! It is the
only passion I think we possess that once dead, can never be
resuscitated.  Ambition is perennial, but Love!—it is the aloe flower
that blossoms but once in a hundred years. I wonder what I shall do with
my life now,—now that it is crippled and paralysed?’

She walked slowly to her mirror and looked long and earnestly at her own
reflection.

’You poor little woman!’ she said pityingly, ’What a mistake you have
made of it!  You fancied that out of all the world of men you had won
for yourself a hero,—a man whose nature was noble, whose disposition was
chivalrous, whose tenderness and truth were never to be doubted!  A
protector and defender who, had anyone presumed to slander you, would
have struck the liar across the mouth and made him answer for his
insolence. Instead of this wonderful Marc Antony or Theseus of your
imagination, what have you got?  Don’t be afraid, poor Delicia!  I see
your mouth trembling and your eyes filling with foolish tears—now that’s
all nonsense, you know!  You must not shrink from the truth, my dear;
and if God has chosen to take up your beautiful idol and break it in
your sight, you must not begin to argue about it, or try to pick up the
pieces and tell God He is wrong.  Courage, Delicia! Face it out!  What
did you think you had won for a sure certainty out of all the flitting
pageant of this world’s illusions?  A true heart,—a faithful lover,—and,
as before said, a kind of Theseus in looks and bravery!  But even
Theseus deserted Ariadne, and in this case your hero has deserted you.
Only what you have to realise, you deluded creature, is this—that he is
not a hero at all—that he never was a hero!  That is the hardest part,
isn’t it?  To think that the god you have worshipped is no more than an
"officer and gentleman," as a great many "officers and gentlemen" go,
who lives comfortably on your earnings, and spends the surplus money on
the race-course, music-halls and—La Marina!  Put off your rose-coloured
spectacles, my dear, and look at him as he is.  Don’t be a little coward
about it!  Yes, I know what you are saying over and over again in your
own heart; it is the old story, "I loved him, oh, I loved him!" like the
burden of a sentimental song.  Of course you loved him—-how deeply,—how
passionately,—how dearly,—you will never, never be able to express, even
to yourself.’

Here, in spite of her remonstrances to her own image in the glass, the
tears brimmed over and fell.

’There, of course I suppose you must cry a little; you can’t help
it,—you have been so thoroughly deceived, and the disillusion is so
complete, you poor, poor little woman!’

And, moved by a quaint compassion for herself, she leant forward and
kissed the reflection of her own quivering lips in the mirror.

’It’s no good your looking about anywhere for consolation,’ she went on,
wiping away her tears.  ’You are not made after the fashion of the
modern lady, who can love anywhere and everywhere, so large is her
heart; you are of that dreadfully old-world type of person, who, loving
once, can never love again. Your love is killed in you; you are only
half yourself now, and you must make the best of it.  You must cut down
your sentiments, smother your emotions, and live like St John in the
wilderness, on ’locusts and wild honey,’ by which you will for the
future understand the rewards of Fame.  And you will be in a desert all
by yourself, fasting—fasting day and night—for the food of tenderness
and love which you will never, never get—remember that! It’s rather a
hard lot, you poor, weeping, weak little woman!  But it’s marked out for
you, and you will have to bear it!’

She smiled a pained, difficult smile, and she watched her own reflection
smile back at her in the same sad way.  Glancing at a time-piece on her
dressing-table, she saw it was nearly two in the morning.  Her husband
had not returned.  Twisting up her hair in a loose knot, she lay down on
the bed and tried to sleep, but only succeeded in falling into an uneasy
doze for about an hour.  Ill and restless as she felt, however, she was
up and dressed when her maid came to her in the morning, and before
eleven o’clock she had left the house, with Spartan sitting beside her
on the floor of the brougham which took her to the station, from whence
she started for Broadstairs.  She left no instructions with her
household, beyond impressing once again upon Robson the urgent necessity
of giving Lord Carlyon the letter she had written for him as soon as he
returned.  Robson promised implicit obedience, and watched the
disappearance of the carriage containing his lady, her maid and her dog,
with feelings of mingled curiosity and uneasiness.

’Something’s in the wind, I’m pretty sure,’ he mused; ’she has never
gone away in this way, sudden-like, before.  Very quiet, too, she looks,
and very pale.  She wouldn’t be the one to make a fuss about anything,
but she’d feel all the more.  I wonder if she knows?’

He stopped abruptly in the middle of the hall, evidently struck by this
idea, and repeated the words to himself slowly and reflectively—’I
wonder if she knows?’




                             *CHAPTER VII*


It is strange, but nevertheless true, despite all our latter-day efforts
at the reasoning away of sentiment, that conscience is still so very
much alive in some of us, that when a man of birth and good-breeding
has, according to his own stock-phrase for indulgence in vicious
amusements, ’seen life,’ by spending his time in low company, he is
frequently moved by a strong reaction,—so powerful as almost to create
nausea, and put him in a very bad and petulant humour.  This was the
case with Carlyon when he returned to his home at about luncheon time on
the day Delicia departed seawards.  He was not merely irritable, but he
took a fantastic pleasure in knowing himself to be irritable, and in
keeping his temper up to the required pitch of spleen. He was really
angry with himself, but he managed to pretend that he was angry with
Delicia.  He had seen something in one of the papers about her which he
judged as quite sufficient ground of offence to go upon, though he knew
it was an attempt to vilify her fair name, which he, as her husband,
should have instantly resented.  In his own mind he was perfectly
cognisant that, had he acted a manly part in the matter, he should have
taken his riding-whip, and with it dealt a smart cut across the face of
the literary liar who had published the false rumour, and yet, though he
was aware of this, he had managed to work himself up into such a
peculiar condition of self-pity that he could see nothing at all on his
limited horizon but himself, his own feelings and his own perfections;
and though he was partially and shamedly conscious of his own vices as
well, he found such a number of excuses for these, that by the time he
reached his own door he had, by dint of many soothing modern doctrines,
and comfortable progressive moralist arguments, almost decided that he,
taking men as they were, was really an exceptional paragon and pattern
of virtue.

’I must really speak very seriously to Delicia,’ he said to himself.  ’A
woman as well-known as she is ought not to be seen at the "Empire," and
she has no business to receive actors at her "at homes."’

With these highly moral feelings at work within him, he admitted himself
into his own house, or rather his wife’s house, with his latch-key, and
finding no one about, walked straight upstairs into Delicia’s study. The
blinds were down, the room was deserted, and only the marble ’Antinous’
stared at him with a cold smile.  Descending to the hall again, he
summoned Robson, who, instantly appearing, handed him Delicia’s letter
on a silver salver with elaborately polite ceremony.

’What’s this?’ he asked impatiently.  ’Is her ladyship out again?’

’She left for Broadstairs this morning, my lord,’ replied Robson,
demurely.  ’Her maid went with her, and she took Spartan.’

Carlyon muttered something like an oath, and turning into the
smoking-room, opened and read his wife’s letter.  Growing hot and cold
by turns, he perused every calm, convincing, clearly-written word, and
for a moment sat stunned and completely overwhelmed.  Guilt, shame and
remorse fought for the mastery of his feelings, and during the space of
two or three minutes he thought he would at once follow Delicia, throw
himself on her mercy, declare everything, and ask her forgiveness.  But
what would be the use of that?  She might forgive, but she would never
forget.  And her blind adoration of him, her passionate love, her devout
confidence?  He had sense enough to realise that these fair feelings of
tenderness and reverence in her for him were dead for ever!

Pulling at his handsome moustache fretfully, he surveyed his position
and wondered whether it was likely that she would sue for a divorce?
And if so, would she get it?  No, for she could not prove cruelty or
desertion. There was no cruelty in his having an ’affair’ with Marina,
or a dozen Marinas if he liked—_not in the eyes of the law_.  There was
not even any cruelty, legally speaking, in his spending his wife’s
earnings on Marina, if his wife gave him money to do as he liked with.
To get a divorce legally, Delicia would have to prove not only
infidelity but cruelty and desertion as well for two years and upwards.
Oh, just law!  Made by men for themselves and their own convenience!
The ’cruelty’ which robs an innocent woman of love, of confidence, of
happiness at one blow, has no existence, according to masculine justice.
She may have to endure wilful neglect, and to be the witness of the open
intimacy of her husband with other women; but provided he does not beat
her, or otherwise physically ill-use her, and continues to live with her
in apparent union, while all the while she shrinks from his touch and
resents his companionship as an outrage, she cannot be separated from
him.  This Carlyon remembered with a commendable amount of
self-congratulation.

’She can’t get rid of me, that’s one thing,’ he reflected; ’not that I
suppose she would try it on.  Damn that Bond Street jeweller for an ass!
Why couldn’t the fellow hold his confounded tongue!  Of course, it is a
split between us; but, by Jove!—a woman who writes books ought to know
that a man must get some fun out of life.  We can’t all be literary!
Besides, if there is to be a row, I have got a very good cause of
complaint on my side!’

Whereupon he snatched up a pen and wrote as follows:—


’DEAR DELICIA,—I regret that a woman of your culture and intelligence
should not be able to understand the world and the ways of the world
better.  Men do not discuss such subjects as that alluded to in your
letter; the least said the soonest mended.  I enclose a cutting from
_Honesty_, in which you will perceive that I possibly have more cause to
complain of you than you of me.  Greater licence is permitted to men
than to women, as I imagined you knew, and your position with regard to
the public should make you doubly careful.  I hope you will enjoy your
change of air.—Yours affectionately, WILL.’


He read over the press-cutting alluded to, which ran as follows:—


’It has been frequently rumoured that the real "Dona Sol" of the
"Ernani" who has been so long delighting the histrionic world, is a
well-known lady novelist, who has been lifted into far more prominence
that her literary capabilities would ever have given her, by her
marriage into the aristocracy with a certain gallant Guards officer.
The "Dona" in question has long been considered "as chaste as ice, as
pure as snow," but ice and snow are prone to melt in the heat of an
ardent passion, and the too evident ardour of the "Ernani" in this case
has, we hear, won him his cause, with the result that the "ears of the
groundlings" will shortly be tickled with a curious scandal.’


’After all,’ muttered Carlyon, as he thrust this in an envelope, ’it’s
much worse that she, as a woman, should be coupled with Paul Valdis,
than that I as a man should amuse myself with Marina.  She is
ridiculously inconsistent; she ought to know that a man in this world
does as he likes,—a woman does as she must.  The two things are totally
different.  Now, I shall have to wait till she telegraphs her address
before I can send this.  What an infernal nuisance!’

He betook himself to his usual consolation—a cigar and puffed away at it
crossly, wondering what he should do with himself.  He was sick of La
Marina for the time being—there were no race-meetings on, and he felt
that to be thus left to his own resources was a truly unkind
dispensation of Providence.  He had a very limited brain capacity, his
one idea of life being to get amusement out of it somehow. Perpetual
amusement is apt to tire; but of this the votaries of so-called pleasure
never think, till they are flung back upon themselves exhausted.
Carlyon would have been in his right place had he been born as a noble
of high rank in ancient Pompeii—going to the baths, having his hair
combed and his garments scented; wearing fresh chaplets of flowers round
his neck, being fed on the rarest delicacies and drinking the costliest
wines, and dividing his affections between several of the prettiest
dancing girls.  Such an existence would have suited him perfectly, and
it is quite possible that when Vesuvius blazed forth its convincing
representation of the Day of Judgment, he would have fronted his fate
with the stern composure of the immortal ’Roman soldier’; for it is
precisely such pampered persons who are the best possible food for
flame, or powder and shot; and who generally, as though moved by some
instinctive perception of the worthlessness of their lives to the world,
meet death with equanimity.

In the interim, while her husband was preparing what he considered a
Parthian shot for her in the way of the press-cutting from the society
scandal bill called _Honesty_, Delicia had, by the merest chance, bought
the paper and read the paragraph on her way down to Broadstairs. She was
a woman who never wasted time about anything, and on arriving at her
destination she enclosed the paper in an envelope to her lawyers, with
the brief instruction appended—:


’Insist on immediate retraction and apology. If refused, take
proceedings.’


This done, she dismissed the matter from her mind with a quickness which
would have been impossible to any woman who was not absolutely innocent
of wrong-doing.  A clear conscience is never disturbed by outside
slanders, and a straightforward life is never thrust out of its clean
onward course by a scandalmonger’s sneer.  Besides, Delicia’s thoughts
were too much occupied with her broken idols to dwell long on any other
subject of contemplation.  All she desired for the moment was rest—a
space of silence in which to think calmly and to brace her spirit up to
the necessary fortitude required for the realisation of what she must
expect to endure for the remainder of her life.  She took some quiet
rooms facing the sea, telegraphed her address to her husband, and then
prepared to settle down for a few days of serious meditation. She began
to consider her position with a logical steadiness worthy of any and all
or her ’dear old Pagans,’ as she called Socrates and the rest of his
school,—and with a mingling of timidity and resolve tried the measure of
her feminine strength, as a warrior might try his weapon, against the
opposing evils which confronted her.  The greatest loss that can befall
a woman had befallen her—the loss of love.  Her love had been deep and
passionate, but the object of that love had proved himself
unworthy—hence love was dead and would never revive again.  This was the
first clause of the argument, and it had to be mastered thoroughly.
Next came the fact that, notwithstanding the death of love, she,
Delicia, was bound to the corpse of that perished passion—bound by the
marriage tie and also by the law, which has generously provided that a
husband may be guilty of infidelity to his wife every day and every hour
of the day, without her having any right to punish or to leave him
unless he treats her with ’cruelty,’ his unfaithfulness not being judged
by the so admirable law as ’cruel.’  By no means—oh, no!—not at all!
When it comes to blows, face-scratching and hair-tearing, then ’cruelty’
can be complained of; but the slow breaking of a heart, the torturing of
delicate nerve-fibres on the rack of mental and moral outrage, the smile
which is an insult, the condescending tolerance which is an affront, the
conventional keeping up of appearances which is a daily lie—all this has
no touch of ’cruelty’ at all about it—not in the very least!

’Therefore,’ argued Delicia, with a fine disdain, ’unless he ever takes
it into his head to beat me, or fire a pistol at me, I have no cause of
complaint against him, and must not complain.  Then must I play the
hypocrite and pretend to worship him still?  No!  That I cannot do; that
I will not do.  Perhaps he will agree to a separation—’ she paused and
her face darkened; ’if I make it financially worth his while!’

It was the evening of her arrival at Broadstairs, and she was walking
along by the shore, Spartan pacing majestically beside her.  The
after-glow of the sunken sun rested on the calm sea, and little waves,
dimpling one over the other in long, fine lines, broke on the pebbly
beach with a soft sound as of children’s laughter.  Everything was very
peaceful and beautiful, and by degrees her troubled mind became soothed
and gently attuned to the symphonic vibrations of the eternal pulse of
Nature for ever beating in answer to the voice of God.  Some strong
emotion in her own soul suddenly stirred and spoke as it were aloud in
accents half-reproachful, half-consoling.

’What is it you have lost?’ demanded the inward voice.  ’Love?  But what
do you understand by love?  The transitory gleam of light that falls
upon a fleck of foam and passes?  Or the eternal glory of a deepening
day whose summer splendours shall not cease? All that is of the earth
must perish; choose therefore that which is of Heaven, and for which you
were destined when God kindled first within your woman’s soul the fires
of aspiration and endeavour!  Nature is unrolled before you like an open
book; humanity, with all its sufferings, needs and hopes, is here for
you to help and comfort; self is a nothing in what you have to do; your
earthly good, your earthly love, your earthly hopes are as the idle wind
in the countings of eternity!  Sail by the compass of the Spirit of God
within you; and haply out of darkness, light shall come!’

With dreamy, half-tearful eyes she looked out upon the darkening sea;
the sense or a great solitude, a vast loneliness, encompassed her; and
almost in unconscious appeal she laid her small, delicate, bare hand on
Spartan’s shaggy head, who received the caress with a worshipping
reverence in his brown eyes.

’It is so hard, Spartan!’ she murmured, ’So hard for a woman to be quite
alone in the world!  To work on, solitary, wearing a bitter laurel-crown
that makes one’s brow ache; to be deprived, for no fault of one’s own,
of all the kisses and endearments so freely bestowed on foolish,
selfish, ungrateful, and frequently unchaste women—to be set apart in
the cold Courts of Fame,—a white statue, with frozen lips and eyes
staring down the illimitable ways of Death—Oh God! is not an hour of
love worth all this chill renown!’

Tears sprang to her eyes and blotted out the view of the darkening
heavens and quiet sea.  She turned blindly to move onward, when Spartan
suddenly sprang forward with a deep bark of pleasure, and a man’s voice,
low, and trembling with emotion, said hastily,—

’Lady Carlyon, may I speak to you?  I came after you from town.  I
thought I should find you here!’

And looking up amazed, she found herself face to face with Paul Valdis.




                             *CHAPTER VIII*


For a moment she could not speak; astonishment and a lurking sense of
indignation held her mute.  He meanwhile caressing and endeavouring to
soothe Spartan, who frolicked about him in an uncouth dance of joy, went
on quickly,—.

’I have followed you.  I wanted to tell you all.  Yesterday afternoon I
saw that paragraph in _Honesty_; and last night I thrashed the writer of
it within an inch of his life!’

She raised her eyes with a faint, deprecating smile.

’Yes,’ he continued, with an involuntary clenching of his hands, ’I wish
all the dirty scandalmongers of the Press were as sore and thoroughly
well bruised as he is to-day! This morning I went to the editor of the
paper on which he chiefly works, and told him the true character of the
man he was employing, and how, under the name of "Brown" he was writing
himself up in the press as the "poet" Aubrey Grovelyn, and a complete
exposure of the rascal will be published to-morrow.  This done, I drove
straight to your house.  The servants told me you had left early for
Broadstairs, and that Lord Carlyon was out.  Acting on an impulse, I
came after you.  We are preparing for a new piece at my theatre, as I
daresay you have heard, and I am just now at comparative leisure.  I
knew nothing of your address, but this is a little place, and I imagined
I should find you somewhere by the sea.’

He stopped abruptly, almost breathlessly, looking at her with a world of
speechless anxiety in his eyes.  She met his gaze with a most untroubled
calm.

’I am afraid I do not quite understand you, Mr Valdis,’ she said gently.
’What is it you are speaking of?  The paragraph in _Honesty_? I have not
given it a thought, I assure you, except to send it to my lawyers.  They
will know exactly what to do on my behalf.  You have troubled yourself
about it most needlessly. It is very good of you; but I thought you knew
I never paid the slightest attention to what the journals say of me.
They may call me a black woman, or a Cherokee squaw for all I care, and
they may endow me with a dozen husbands and fifty grandchildren—I should
never take the trouble to contradict them!’  She laughed a little, then
regarded him intently.  ’You look quite ill.  What have you been doing
with yourself?  Don’t imagine I am angry with you for coming—I am
delighted.  I was just beginning to feel very lonely and to wish I had a
friend.’

Her lip trembled suspiciously, but she turned her head aside that he
might not see the emotion in her face.

’I have always been your friend,’ said Valdis, huskily, ’but—you were
offended with me.’

She sighed.

’Oh, yes, I was!  I am not now.  Circumstances alter cases, you know.  I
did not want to look bad fortune in the face till I was forced to do so,
and I resented your attempt to tear the bandage from my eyes.  But it’s
all right now—I am no longer blind.  I wish I were!’

’It is my turn to say I don’t understand,’ said Valdis, wonderingly.  ’I
thought you would naturally be as annoyed at that insolent paragraph as
I was—and I took instant means to punish—’

’Oh, the paragraph again!’ murmured Delicia, wearily.  ’What does it
matter?  If the newspapers said you were me, or I were you, or that we
had been married and separated, or that we danced a hornpipe together on
the sly whenever we could get a chance, why should we care?  Who that
has any common sense cares for the half-crown or five-shilling
paragraphist?  And who, having brains at all, pays any attention to
society journalism?’

’Brains or no brains,’ said Valdis, hotly, ’it does one good to thrash a
liar now and then, whether he be in journalism or out of it, and I have
given Mr Brown, _alias_ Aubrey Grovelyn, good cause to remember me this
time.  I only hope he’ll have sufficient spirit left to summon me for
assault, that I may defend myself and state openly in a court of justice
what a precious rascal he is!’

’Aubrey Grovelyn!’ echoed Delicia, with a half smile, ’why, that’s the
man the press has been "booming" lately, isn’t it?  Calling him a
"second Shakespeare and Milton combined?"  Oh, dear!  And you have
actually beaten this marvel of the ages!’

She began to laugh—the natural vivacity of her nature asserted itself
for a moment, and her face lightened with all that brilliant animation
which gave it its chiefest charm.  Valdis looked at her, and, despite
the heat of his own conflicting emotions, smiled.

’Yes, I have beaten him like a dog,’ he responded, ’though why I should
do the noble race to which Spartan belongs, a wrong by mentioning it in
connection with a creature like Grovelyn, I do not know.  Spartan, old
boy, I ask your pardon!  The booming you speak of, Lady Carlyon, has in
every instance been done by Grovelyn himself.  It is he and he alone who
has styled himself "Shakespeare and Milton _redivivus_," and his
self-log-rolling scheme was so cunningly devised that it was rather
difficult to find him out.  But I have been on the watch some time, and
have hunted him down at last.  He has been on the staff of the _Daily
Chanticleer_ for two years as Alfred Brown, and in that character has
managed to work up "a new poet" in Aubrey Grovelyn, the said Aubrey
Grovelyn being himself.  I understand, however, that it is not at all an
original idea on his part; the same thing has been and is being done by
several other fellows like him.  But you are not listening, Lady
Carlyon.  I suppose I am boring you—’

’Not at all,’ and Delicia turned her eyes upon him kindly; ’and you
mistake,—I was listening very attentively.  I was thinking what
miserable tricks and mean devices some people will stoop to in order to
secure notoriety.  I do not speak of fame—fame is a different thing,
much harder to win, much heavier to bear.’

Her voice sank into a melancholy cadence, and Valdis studied her
delicate profile in the darkening light with passionate tenderness in
his eyes.  But he did not speak, and after a little pause she went on
dreamily, more to herself than to him,—

’Notoriety is a warm, noisy thing—personified, it is like a fat,
comfortable woman who comes into your rooms perspiring, laughing,
talking with all the gossip of the town at her tongue’s end, who folds
you in her arms whether you like it or not, and tells you you are a
"dear," and wants to know where you get your gowns made and what you had
for dinner—the very essence of broad and vulgar good humour! Fame is
like a great white angel, who points you up to a cold, sparkling,
solitary mountain-top away from the world, and bids you stay there
alone, with the chill stars shining down on you.  And people look up at
you and pass; you are too far off for the clasp of friendship; you are
too isolated for the caress of love; and your enemies, unable to touch
you, stare insolently, smile and cry aloud, "So you have climbed to the
summit at last!  Well, much good may it do you!  Stay there, live there,
and die there, as you must, alone for ever!"  And I think it is hard to
be alone, don’t you?’

Her words were tremulous, and Valdis saw tears in her eyes.  They had
wandered on unconsciously, and were close to the pier, which was
deserted save for the weather-beaten old mariner, who sat in his little
box at the entrance waiting for the pennies that were rather slow in
coming in at that particular time of year. Valdis passed himself and his
companion through the turn-stile, and they walked side by side on
towards the solemn shadows of the murmuring sea.

’Now that we have a few minutes together, you can surely tell me what it
is that has gone wrong with you, Lady Carlyon,’ he said, his rich voice
softening to a great tenderness.  ’I am your friend, as you know.  I
imagined that your displeasure at that paragraph in _Honesty_ would have
been very great, and justly so; but I begin to fear it is something more
serious that makes you seem so unlike yourself—’

She interrupted him by a light touch on his arm.

’Is that true?  Do you find me changed?’

And she raised her eyes trustingly to his. He met that confiding look
for a moment, then turned away lest the deep love of his soul should be
betrayed.

’You are not changed in appearance—no!’ he said slowly, ’You are always
lovely.  But there is a great sadness in your face.  I cannot help
seeing that.’

She laughed a little, then sighed.

’I should have made a very bad actress,’ she said; ’I cannot put a
complete disguise on my thoughts.  You are right; I am sad; as sad as
any woman can be in the world.  I have lost my husband’s love.’

He started.

’You have heard all, then;—you know?’

She stopped in her walk and faced him steadily.

’What! is it common gossip?’ she asked. ’Does all the town chatter of
what I, till a few days ago, was ignorant of?  If so, then, alas! poor
Delicia!’

Her eyes flashed suddenly.

’Tell me, is it possible that Lord Carlyon has so far forgotten himself
as to make his attentions to La Marina open and manifest, thus allowing
his wife to become an object for the pity and mockery of society?’

’Lady Carlyon,’ replied Valdis, ’your friends sought to warn you long
ago, but you would not listen.  Your own nature, pure and lofty as it
is, rejected what you deemed mere scandalous rumour.  You resented with
the noble confidence of a true wife the least word of suspicion against
Lord Carlyon.  When I ventured to hint that your confidence was
misplaced, you dismissed me from your presence. I do not say you were
wrong; you were right. The worthy wife of a worthy husband is bound to
act as you did.  But suppose the husband is not worthy, and the wife
deceives herself as to his merits, it is for her own sake, for her
honour and her self-respect that she should be persuaded to realise the
fact and take such steps as may prevent her from occupying a false
position.  And now you know—’

’Now I know,’ interrupted Delicia, with a vibrating passion in her
voice, ’what is the use of it?  What am I to do?  What can I do? A woman
is powerless in everything which relates to her husband’s infidelity
merely.  I can show no bruises, no evidence of ill-treatment; then what
is my complaint about? "Go home, silly woman," says the law, "and
understand that if your husband chooses to have a new love every day,
you cannot get separated from him, provided he is civil to you; man has
licence which woman has not."  And so on, and so on, with their eternal
jargon! Paul Valdis, you can act emotions and look tragedies; but have
you ever realised the depth or the terror of the dumb, dreadful dramas
of a woman’s broken heart?  No!  I don’t think that even you, with all
your fine, imaginative sympathy, can reach thus far.  Do you know why I
came away from home to-day and made straight for the sea,—the great,
calm sea which I knew would have the gentleness to drown me if the pain
became too bitter to bear?  Nay, do not hold me!’  For Valdis, struck by
the complete breakdown of her reserve, and the brilliant wildness of her
eyes, had unconsciously caught her arm.  ’There is no danger, I assure
you.  I have not been given my faith in God quite vainly; and there is
so much of God’s thought in the beauty of ocean, that even to
contemplate it has made me quieter and stronger; I shall not burden it
with my drifting body yet!  But do you know, can you guess why I came
here and avoided meeting my husband to-day?’

Valdis shook his head, profoundly moved himself by her strong emotion.

’Lest I should kill him!’ she said in a thrilling whisper.  ’I was
afraid of myself! I thought that if I had to see him enter my room with
that confident smile of his, that easy manner, that grace of a supreme
conceit swaying his every movement, while I all the time knew the fraud
he was practising on me, the hypocrisy of his embrace, the lie of his
kiss on my lips, I might, in the rush of remembering how I had loved
him, murder him!  It was possible; I knew it; I realised it; I confessed
it before God as a sin; but despite of prayer and confession, the
devil’s thought remained!—I might do it in a moment of fury,—in a moment
when wronged love clamoured for vengeance and would listen to no
appeal,—and so I fled from temptation; but now I think the sea and air
have absorbed all my evil desires, for they have gone!—and I shall try
to be content now, content with solitude, till I die!’

Valdis was still silent.  She leant over the pier, looking dreamily down
into the darkly-heaving sea.

’Life at best is such a little thing!’ she said, ’One wonders sometimes
what it is all for!  You see crowds of men and women rushing hither and
thither, building this thing, destroying that, scheming, contriving,
studying, fretting, working, courting, marrying, bringing up their
children, and it is quite appalling to think that the same old road has
been travelled over and over again since the very beginning!  All
through the Ptolemies and the Cæsars,—imagine!  Exactly the same old
monotonous course of human living and dying!  What a waste it seems!
Optimists say we have progressed; but then are we sure of that?  And
then one wants to know where the progression leads to; if we are going
forward, what _is_ the "forward?"  Myself, I think the great charm of
life is love; without love life is really almost valueless, and surely
not worth the trouble of preserving.  Don’t you agree with me?’

She looked up, and, looking, saw his eyes filled with such an intensity
of misery as touched and startled her.  He made a slight gesture of
appeal.

’For God’s sake, don’t speak to me like this!’ he whispered; ’You
torture me!’

She still gazed at him, half wondering, half fearing.  He was silent for
a few minutes, then resumed slowly in quiet tones.

’You are so candid in your own nature that you can neither wear a
disguise yourself nor see when it is worn by others,’ he said; ’and just
as you have never suspected your husband of infidelity, you have never
suspected me—of love.  I suppose you, with the majority, have looked
upon me as merely the popular mime of the moment, feigning passions I
cannot feel, and dividing what purely human emotions my life allows me
still to enjoy, among the light wantons of the stage, who rejoice in a
multitude of lovers.  It is possible you would never believe me capable
of a deep and lasting love for any woman?’

He paused,—and Delicia spoke softly and with great gentleness, moved by
the strength of her own grief to compassionate his, whatever it might
be.

’Indeed I would, Mr Valdis,’ she said earnestly.  ’I am quite sure you
have a strong and steadfast nature, and that with you it would be a case
of "once love, love always."’

He met her eyes fully.

’Thank you,’ he said in low accents; ’I am glad you do me that justice.
It moves me to make full confession, and to tell you what I thought
would never be told.  Others, I fear, have guessed my secret, but
you—you have never seen it, never guessed it.  You are not vain enough
to realise your own charm; you live like an angel in a land of divine
dreams, and so you have never known that I—I—’

But she suddenly started away from him, her eyes filling with tears, her
hands thrust out to keep him back from her.

’No, no,’ she cried, ’you must not say it; you must not!’

’Nay, I must and will,’ said Valdis, now losing a little of his hard
self-control, for he sprang to her side and seized her two hands in his.
’You have guessed it at last, then? That I love you, Delicia!  Love you
with all my soul, with every breath of my being, every beat of my heart!
I have tried to hide it from you; I have battled against my own passion,
and the fight has been hard; but when you say—oh, God! with what
piteousness in your dear voice—that without love life is valueless, you
break down my strength; you make me helpless in your hands, and you
unman me!  You need not be afraid of me, nor indignant, for I know all
you would say.  You will never love me; your whole heart was given to
one man, your husband; he has flung away the precious gift as though it
were naught, and it is broken, dear, quite broken!  I know that even
better than you do.  Such a nature as yours can never love twice.  And I
know, too, that your proud, pure soul resents my love as an outrage
because you are married, though your marriage itself has been one
continual outrage.  But you tempt me to speak; I cannot bear to hear the
grief in your voice when you speak of life without love.  I want you to
know that there is one man on earth who worships you; who would come
from the ends of the earth to serve you; who will consecrate his days to
you, and who will die blessing your name! No, there shall be no time or
space for reproaches, for, sweet woman as you are, I know the force of
your indignation; I am going away at once, and you need never think of
me again.  See, I kiss your hands and ask your forgiveness for my
roughness, my presumption.  I have no right to speak as I have done, I
know—but you will have pity—’

He stopped as she gently withdrew her hands from his clasp and gazed at
him with sad, wet eyes.  There was no anger in her face, only a profound
despair.

’Oh, yes, I will have pity,’ she murmured vaguely.  ’Who would not be
pitiful for such a waste of love—of life!  It is very cruel and
confusing—one cannot be angry; I grieve for you, and I grieve for
myself.  You see, in my case, love is now a thing of the past.  I have
to look back upon it and say with the German poet, "I have lived and
loved."  I love no more, and therefore I live no more. You, at any rate,
have more vitality than I—you are still conscious of love—’

’Bitterly conscious!’ said Valdis.  ’Hopelessly conscious!’

She was silent for a little; her face was turned away, and Valdis could
not see the tears falling from her eyes.  Presently she spoke very
tranquilly, putting out her hand to meet his.

’My dear friend,’ she said, ’I am very sorry!  I think you understand my
nature, and you will therefore feel instinctively how sorry I am!  I am
quite an unfortunate mortal; I win love where I never sought it, and I
have given love where it is not valued. Let us say no more about it.
You are a brave man; you have your work, your art, and your career.  You
will, I hope, in time forget that Delicia Vaughan ever existed.  A few
days ago I should certainly have resented the very idea of your loving
me as an insult and a slur upon my married life; but when I know that my
marriage is a farce—a very devil’s mockery of holy union—why!  I am not
in a position to resent anything!  Some women, without being as
grief-stricken as I am, or in need of any consolation, hearing such a
confession as yours to-night, would fling themselves into your arms and
give you love for love; but I cannot do that.  I have no love left; and
if I had, I would not so forfeit my own self-respect,—or your reverence
for me as a woman.’

’Oh, my love, my saint!  Forgive me!’ cried Valdis, moved by a sudden
deep humiliation. ’I should still have kept my secret; I ought never to
have spoken!’

She looked at him candidly, the tears still in her eyes and a faint
smile trembling on her mouth.

’I am not sure about that,’ she said.  ’You see, when a woman is very
sad and lonely, just as if she had grown suddenly too old and poor to
have a friend in the world, there is a wonderful sweetness in the
knowledge that someone still loves her, even though she may be quite
unable to return that love.  That is how I feel to-night; and so I
cannot be quite as angry with you as I should like to be!’

She paused, then laid her hand on his arm.

’It is growing dark, Mr Valdis; will you see me home?  My rooms are
quite close to the pier, so it will only be a few minutes’ walk.’

Silently he turned and walked beside her. Overhead, through
slowly-flitting clouds, one or two stars twinkled out for a moment and
vanished again, and the solemn measure of the sea around them sounded
like the subdued chanting of a dirge.

’Where are you staying?’ asked Delicia, presently.

’Nowhere,’ he answered quickly.  ’I shall go back to town to-night.’

She said nothing further, and they walked slowly off the pier and up a
little bit of sloping road, whither Spartan preceded them out of an
intelligent desire to show his mistress that though he had only been at
Broadstairs a few hours he already knew the house they were staying at.
Arrived there, Delicia held out both her hands.

’Good-bye, my dear friend!’ she said.  ’It is a long good-bye, you
know—for it is better you should see as little of me as possible.’

’Is it necessary to make me suffer?’ asked Valdis, unsteadily.  ’I will
obey you in anything; but must you banish me utterly?’

’I do not banish you,’ she answered gently. ’I only say I shall honour
you more deeply and think you a truer friend than ever, if you will
spare yourself and me the pain of constant meeting.’

She looked steadfastly at him; her eyes were grave and sweet; her face
pale and tranquil as that of some marble saint in the niche of a votive
chapel.  His heart beat; all the passion and tenderness of the man were
roused.  He would have given his life to spare her a moment’s grief, and
yet this quiet desolation of hers, united to such a holy calm, awed him
and kept him mute and helpless.  Bending down, he took her hands and
raised them reverently to his lips.

’Then good-bye, Delicia!’ he said; ’Good-bye, my love—for you will be my
love always!  God keep you!  God bless you!’

Loosening her hands as quickly as he had grasped them, he raised his hat
and stood bare-headed in the shadowy evening light, gazing at her as a
man might gaze who was looking his last on life itself.  Then he turned
swiftly and was gone.

For a moment Delicia remained passively watching his retreating figure,
her hand on the collar of Spartan, who manifested a wild desire to bound
after him and bring him back.  Then, shuddering a little, she went into
the house and shut herself up alone in her bedroom for an hour.  When
she came out again her eyes were heavy with the shedding of tears; but
such an expression was on her face as might be on the radiant features
of an angel.  And she was very quiet all that evening, sitting at her
window and watching the clouds gradually clear, and the great stars
shine out above the sea.




                              *CHAPTER IX*


The next day she received her husband’s letter, the letter in which he
had excused himself altogether and started a complaint against her
instead.  She glanced over it with a weary sense of disgust, and smiled
disdainfully as she thought what a mountain he was trying to make out of
the mole-hill of the paragraph in _Honesty_.

’As if any one of the lying tongues of journalism wagging against me
could do me such wrong as his open infidelity,’ she mused. ’God!  How is
it that men manage to argue away their own vices as if they were
nothing, and yet take every small opportunity they can find for damaging
an innocent woman’s reputation!’

She flung aside the letter and turned over the morning paper.  There she
found, under the heading of ’Scene at a London Club,’ an account of
Aubrey Grovelyn’s horse-whipping at the hands of Paul Valdis.  The
_exposé_ of the so-called ’poet,’ who, as Mr Brown, had been steadily
booming himself, was cautiously hinted at in darkly ambiguous terms—no
journal likes to admit that it has been cleverly fooled by one of its
own staff.  And great editors, who are anywhere and everywhere except
where they should be, namely, in the editorial room, are naturally loth
to make public the results of their own inattention to business. They do
not like to confess that, in their love of pleasure and their devotion
to race-meetings and shooting-parties, it often happens that the very
porters guarding the doors of their offices know more about the staff
than they do.  The porter can tell exactly the hour that Mr B—— comes in
to the office at night, the shortness of the time he stays there, and
the precipitate hurry with which he goes home to bed.  The porter knows
that Mr B—— is paid five hundred a year for doing hard work at that
office during a certain number of hours, and that Mr B—— seldom looks in
for more than one hour, having other work on other papers, about which
he says nothing.  And that, therefore, Mr B—— is distinctly ’doing’ his
editor and proprietor. But as long as editors and proprietors prefer to
caper about at the heels of ’swagger’ society instead of attending
strictly to their duties and to the grave responsibilities of
journalism, so long will the British Press be corrupted by underlings,
and ’used’ for purposes which are neither honourable nor national, nor
in any way exact, as reflecting the real current of public opinion.
Delicia knew all this of old, hence her indifference to the press
generally.  She had always been entertained and surprised at the naïve
delight with which certain society ’belles’ had shown her descriptions
of themselves in certain fashionable journals, where their personal
attractions were enumerated and discussed as if they were nothing more
than cattle in a market.  She could never understand what pleasure there
was in the vulgar compliments of the cheap paragraphist.  And in the
same way she never thought it worth while to attach importance to the
scurrilities that appeared in similar quarters concerning all those
women who stood aloof from self-advertisement and declined to ’give
themselves away’ by consenting to the maudlin puffery of the ’ladies’
paper.’  So that the lofty tone of injury her husband assumed in his
letter not only struck her as mean, but infinitely grotesque as well.
She did not answer him, nor did he write again; and she passed a quiet
fortnight at Broadstairs, finishing some literary work she had promised
to her publishers at a certain date, and trying to think as little as
possible of herself or her private griefs.  When she was not engaged in
creative composition, she turned to the study of books with almost as
much ardour as had possessed her when, at the age of twelve, she had
preferred to shut herself up alone and read Shakespeare to any other
form of entertainment.  And gradually, almost unconsciously to herself,
the tone and temper of her mind changed and strengthened; she began to
reconcile herself to the idea of the lonely lot which would henceforward
be her portion.  Turning the matter practically over in her mind, she
decided that the best course to adopt would be that of a ’judicial
separation.’  She would make her husband a suitable ’allowance’ (she
smiled rather bitterly as she thought what a trouble he would make of
it, and how he would fret and fume if he had to do without his
four-in-hand and his tandem turn-out), and she herself would travel all
over the world and gain fresh knowledge and experience for her literary
labours.  Or, if constant travel proved to be too fatiguing, she would
take some place in the remote Highlands of Scotland, or the beautiful
sequestered valleys of Ireland, and make a little hermitage among the
hills, where she could devote herself to work and study for the
remainder of her days.

’I daresay I shall manage to be at least content, if I am not happy,’
she said to herself; ’though, of course, society will reverse the
position in its usual eminently false and disgusting way, and will
whisper all sorts of lies about me, such as, "Oh, you know a literary
woman is impossible to live with!  It is always so; poor, dear Carlyon
could not possibly stand her, she was so dreadful!  Clever, but quite
dreadful!  Yes, and so they are separated.  Such a good thing for
Carlyon!  He looks ten years younger since he got rid of her!  And they
say she’s living down in the country somewhere not _too_ far from town;
not _so_ far but that Paul Valdis knows where to find her!"  Oh, yes, I
can hear them all at it,—croaking harpies!’ and her small hand clenched
involuntarily. ’The vultures of society can never understand anyone
loving the sweet savour of truth; they only scent carrion.  No man is
true in their estimation, no woman pure; and chastity is so far from
being pleasing to them that they will not even believe it exists!’

On the last afternoon of her stay at Broadstairs, she spent several
hours strolling by the sea, listening to its solemn murmur and watching
the sunlight fall in golden lines over its every billow and fleck of
foam. With the gravity of her thoughts, her face had grown more serious
during the last few days, though it had lost nothing in sweetness of
expression; and as she paced along the sand, close to the very fringe of
the waves, with Spartan bounding now and then into the water and back
with joyous, deep barks of delight, a sudden, inexplicable sense of pain
and regret surprised her into tears. Gazing far out beyond the last
gleam of the ocean line with longing eyes, she murmured,—

’How strange it is!  I feel as if I should never look upon the sea
again!  I am growing morbid, I suppose, but to my fancy the waves are
saying, "Good-bye, Delicia! Good-bye for ever, and still good-bye!" like
Tosti’s old song!’

She stood silent for a little while, then turned and went homeward,
resolutely battling with the curious foreboding that had suddenly
oppressed her brain and heart.  Spartan, shaking the wet spray from his
shaggy coat, trotted by her side in the highest spirits; he was
untroubled by any presentiments; he lived for the moment and enjoyed it
thoroughly—a habit of mind common to all animals except man.

The next day she returned to London and entered her own house with her
usual quiet and unruffled air.  She looked well, even happy; and Robson,
who opened the door for her admittance, began to think he was wrong
after all, and that she ’knew’ nothing.

’Is Lord Carlyon in?’ she asked, with the civil coldness of a visitor
rather than of a wife.

’No, my lady.’  Here Robson hesitated, then finally spoke out.  ’His
lordship has not been home for some days.’

Delicia looked at him steadily, and Robson stammered on, giving her more
information.

’Since the grand dinner his lordship gave here last week, he has only
called in for his letters; he has been staying with friends.’

Delicia glanced around her at the picturesque hall with its heraldic
emblems, stained-glass windows and rare old oak furniture, all of which
she had collected herself and arranged with the taste of a perfect
artist, and a faint chill crept over her as she thought that perhaps
even her home—the home she had built and planned and made beautiful out
of the work of her own brain—had been desecrated by the company of her
husband’s ’private friends.’

’Was it a very grand dinner, Robson?’ she asked, forcing a smile, ’Or
did you all get into a muddle and do things badly?’

’Well, my lady, we had very little to do with it,’ answered Robson, now
gaining sufficient courage to pour out his suppressed complaints.  ’His
lordship ordered all the dinner himself from Benoist, and sent cook and
some of the other servants out for the day.  They wasn’t best pleased
about it, my lady.  I stayed to help in the waiting.  It was a very
queer party indeed, but of course it isn’t my business to say anything—’

’Go on,’ said Delicia, quietly.  ’What people dined here?  Do I know any
of them?’

’Not that I am aware of, my lady,’ said Robson, with an injured air.  ’I
should say it wasn’t at all likely you knew any of them; they were very
loud in their ways, very loud indeed.  Two of the females—I beg
pardon—ladies, stayed to sleep—one young one, and one old.’

Trembling from head to foot, Delicia managed still to restrain herself
and to speak quietly,—

’Did you know their names?’

’Oh, yes, my lady—Madame de Gascon and her daughter, Miss de Gascon.
Their names are French, but they spoke a sort of costermonger’s
English.’

’Did any of them go into my study?’

’No, my lady,’ and honest Robson squared himself proudly.  ’I took the
liberty of locking the door and putting the key in my pocket, and saying
that you had left orders it was to be kept locked, my lady.’

’Thank you!’  But as she spoke she quivered with rage and shame—her very
servant pitied her; even _he_ had had more decency and thought for her
than the man she had wedded.  Was it possible to drain much deeper the
dregs of humiliation?

She went upstairs to her own bedroom and looked nervously about her.
Had ’Madame de Gascon and Miss de Gascon,’ whoever they were, slept
there?  She dared not ask; she feared lest she should lose the self
control she had practised during her absence, and so be unable to meet
her husband with that composure and dignity which her own self-respect
taught her would be necessary to maintain.  She loosened her cloak and
took off her hat, glancing at all the familiar objects around her the
while, as though she expected to see them changed.  In the evening she
would have to go to Lady Dexter’s ’crush,’ which was being given in her
special honour. She determined she would lie down and rest till it was
time to dress.  But just as she turned towards her bed a sharp pain ran
through her body, as though a knife had been plunged into her heart,—a
black cloud loomed before her eyes, and she fell forward in a dead
swoon.  Emily, the maid, who was fortunately in the adjoining
dressing-room, heard her fall, and rushed at once to her assistance.
With the aid of cold water and smelling-salts, she shudderingly revived
and gazed about her in pitiful wonderment.

’Emily, is it you?’ she asked feebly. ’What is the matter?  Did I faint?
What a strange thing for me to do!  I remember now; it was a dreadful
pain that came at my heart.  I thought I was dying—’

She paused, shivering violently.

’Shall I send for the doctor, my lady?’ asked the frightened Emily.
’You look very white; you will never be able to go to the party this
evening.’

’Oh, yes, I shall,’ and with an effort Delicia rose to her feet and
tried to control the trembling of her limbs.  ’I will sit in this
arm-chair and rest, and I shall soon be all right.  Go and make me a cup
of tea, Emily, and don’t say anything about my illness to the other
servants.’

Emily, after lingering about a little, left the room at last, with some
uneasiness; and when she had gone, Delicia leaned back in her chair and
closed her eyes.

’That was a horrible, horrible pain!’ she thought.  ’I wonder if there
is anything wrong with my heart?  To-morrow I will see a doctor;
to-night I shall want all my strength, physical and moral, to help me to
look with calmness on my husband’s face.’

Gradually she grew better; her breathing became easier and the nervous
trembling of her limbs ceased.  When the maid came up with the tea she
was almost herself again, and smiled at her attendant’s anxious face in
a perfectly reassuring manner.

’Don’t be frightened, Emily,’ she said gently.  ’Women often faint, you
know; it is nothing extraordinary; it might happen to you any day.’

’Yes, my lady,’ stammered Emily.  ’But you never have fainted—and—’

’You want me to ask a doctor about myself? So I will to-morrow.  But
to-night I must look my best.’

’What gown will you wear, my lady?’ asked Emily, beginning to regain her
wits and composure.

’Oh, the very grandest, of course,’ said Delicia, with a little laugh.
’The one with the embroidered train, which you say looks as if it were
sewn all over with diamonds.’

Emily’s bright face grew more radiant; the care of this special gown was
her delight; her mistress had only worn it once, and then had looked
such a picture of ethereal loveliness as might have made ’Oberon, the
fairy king,’ pause in his flight over flowers to wonder at her; and
while the willing ’Abigail’ busied herself in preparing the adornments
of the evening, Delicia sipped her tea and reclined in her chair
restfully, thinking all the while strange thoughts that had not occurred
to her before.

’If I were to die now,’ so ran her musings, ’all the results of my
life’s work would, by the present tenor of my will, go to my husband. He
would care nothing for my fame or honour; his interests would centre
round the money only.  And with that money he would amuse himself with
La Marina or any other new fancy of the hour; possibly my own jewels
would be scattered as gifts among his favourites, and I doubt if even my
poor, faithful Spartan would find a home for his old age!  This must be
seen to.  I have made a mistake and it must be remedied.  Fortunately
the law, which is generally so unjust to women, has been forced into
permitting our unhappy sex to have at least an individual right over our
own money, whether earned or inherited; formerly we were not allowed to
have any property apart from our lords and masters! Good heavens!  What
a heavy score we women shall run up against men at the Day of Judgment!’

The hours wore on, and by the time she was dressed for Lady Dexter’s ’at
home’ she was in one of her most brilliant, vivacious moods.  Emily, the
maid, stared at her in rapt fascination, as arrayed in the
richly-embroidered dress of jewel-work, with its train of soft satin to
match, springing from the shoulders and falling in pliant folds to the
ground, she stood before her mirror fastening a star of diamonds among
her luxuriant hair. Through the rare old lace that fringed the sleeves
of her gown, her fair white arms shone like the arms of the marble
Psyche; her eyes were dark and luminous, her lips red, her cheeks
faintly flushed with excitement.  A single branch of ’Annunciation’
lilies garlanded her dress from waist to bosom, and as she regarded her
own fair image she smiled sorrowfully, mentally apostrophising herself
thus:—

’No, you are not quite bad-looking, Delicia, but you have one horrible
defect—you have got what is called an "expressive" face.  That is a
mistake!  You should not have any expression; it is "bad form" to look
interested, surprised, or indignant.  A beautiful nullity is what men
like—a nullity of face combined with a nullity of brain.  You should
paint and powder and blacken your eyelashes, and you should also be
ready to show your ankles, "by accident," if necessary.  The men would
find you charming then, Delicia; they would say you had "go" in you; but
to be simply a student, with ideas of your own about the world in
general, and to write down these ideas in books, which give you a fame
and position equal to the fame and position of a man,—this makes you a
bore in their eyes, Delicia!—an unmitigated nuisance, and they wish you
were well out of their way!  If you could only have been a "Living
Picture" at the Palace Theatre, or turned out your arms and twiddled
your toes in front of the footlights with as few garments on as
possible, you would have been voted "clever," Delicia!  But being a
successful rival with men in the struggle for fame, they vent their
spite by calling you a fool.  And you are a fool, my dear, to have ever
married one of them!’

Smiling at herself disdainfully, she gathered up her fan and gloves, and
descended to her carriage.  No message had come from Carlyon to say
whether or no he meant to be present at the party that evening; but his
wife had attained to such an appreciable height of cool self-control,
that she now viewed the matter with complete indifference.  Arrived at
Lord Dexter’s stately house in Park Lane, she went to the ladies’ room
to throw off her wraps, and there found, all alone, and standing well in
front of the long mirror, so as to completely block the view for anyone
else, a brilliant-looking, painted personage in a pale-green costume,
glittering with silver, who glanced up as she entered and surveyed her
pearl embroideries with greedy admiration.

’What an awfully sweet gown!’ she burst out frankly.  ’I always say what
I think, though I am told it is rude.  It’s awfully sweet!  I should
like just such a one to dance in!’

Delicia looked at her in a haughty silence. The other woman laughed.

’I suppose you think it pretty cool of me making remarks on your
clothes,’ she said; ’but I’m a "celebrity," you see, and I always say
what I like and do what I like.  I’m Violet de Gascon;—_you_ know!—the
"Marina."’

Frozen into a rigid state of calm, Delicia loosened her lace wrappings
with chilly fingers, and allowed the servant in attendance to take them
from her.

’Are you?’ she then said, slowly and bitterly, ’I congratulate you!  As
you have given me your name, I may as well give you mine.  I am Lady
Carlyon.’

’No!’ cried ’La Marina,’ known in polite society as ’Miss de Gascon,’
and to her father in Eastcheap as ’my gal, Jewlia Muggins.’ ’No!  You
don’t mean to say you’re the famous Delicia Vaughan?  Why, I’ve read all
your books, and cried over them, I can tell you!  Well now, to think of
it!’  And her hard, brilliant face was momentarily softened in sudden
interest.  ’Why, all these swagger people are asked to meet _you_ here
to-night, and I’m the paid _artiste_.  I’m to have forty guineas to
dance twice before the assembled company!  Tra-la-la!’ and she executed
a sudden lively pirouette.  ’I am pleased!  I’d rather dance before you
than the Queen!’

In an almost helpless state of amazement, Delicia sat down for a moment
and gazed at her.  The servant had left the room, and ’La Marina,’
glancing cautiously about her, approached on tip-toe, moving with all
the silent grace of a beautiful Persian cat.  ’I say, she said
confidentially, ’you are sweetly pretty!  But I suppose you know that;
and you’re awfully clever, and I suppose you know that too!  But why
ever did you go and marry such a cad as "Beauty" Carlyon?’

Springing to her feet, Delicia fronted her, her eyes flashing
indignation, her breath coming and going, her lips parted to speak, when
swift as thought ’La Marina’ tapped her fingers lightly against her
mouth.

’Don’t defend him, you dear thing!’ she said frankly.  ’He isn’t worth
it!  He thinks he’s made a great impression on me, but, lor’! I wouldn’t
have him as a butler!  My heart is as sound as a bell,’ and she slapped
herself emphatically on the chest, as though in proof of it.  ’When I
take a lover—a real one, you know,—no sham!—I’ll pick out a good,
honest, worthy chap from the working classes. I don’t care about your
"blue blood" coming down from the Conquest, with all the evils of the
Conquest fellows in it; it seems to me the older the blood the worse the
man!’

Delicia grew desperate.  It was no time to play civilities off one
against the other; it was a case of woman to woman.

’You know I cannot answer you!’ she said hotly.  ’You know I cannot
speak to you of my husband or myself.  Oh, how _dare_ you insult me!’

’La Marina’ looked at her amazedly with great, wide-open, unabashed
black eyes.

’Good gracious!’ she exclaimed, ’here’s a row!  Insult you?  I wouldn’t
insult you for the world; I like your books too much; and now, having
seen you, I like _you_.  I suppose you’ve heard your husband runs after
me; but, lor’! you shouldn’t let that put you out.  They all do
it—married men most of all.  I can’t help it!  There’s the Duke of
Stand-Off—he’s after me day and night; he’s got three children, and his
wife’s considered a leading beauty.  Then there’s Lord Pretty-Winks; he
went and sold an old picture that’s been in his family hundreds of
years, and bought me a lot of fal-lals with the proceeds.  I didn’t want
them, and I told him so; but it’s all no use—they’re noodles, every one
of them.’

’But you encourage them,’ said Delicia, passionately.  ’If you did not—’

’If I did not _pretend_ to encourage them,’ said ’La Marina,’
composedly, ’I should lose all chance of earning a living.  No manager
would employ me!  That’s a straight tip, my dear; follow it; it won’t
lead you wrong!’

But Delicia, with a smarting pain in her eyes and a sense of suffocation
in her throat, was forced on by her emotions to put another question.

’Stop—you make me think I have done you an injustice,’ she said.  ’Do
you mean to tell me—that you are—?’

’A good woman?’ finished ’La Marina,’ smiling curiously.  ’No, I don’t
mean to tell you anything of the sort!  I’m not good; it doesn’t pay me.
But I am not as bad as men would like me to be.  Come, let’s go into the
drawing-room.  Or shall I go first? Yes?’—this as Delicia drew back and
signed to her to proceed—’All right; you look _sweet_!’

And she swept her green and silver skirts out of the room, leaving
Delicia alone to steady her nerves as best she might, and regain her
sorely-shaken self-control.  And in a few minutes the fashionable crowd
assembled at Lady Dexter’s stirred and swayed with excitement as all
eyes were turned on the sylph-like vision of a fair woman in gleaming
white and jewels, with a pale face and dark violet eyes, whose name was
announced through the length and breadth of the great drawing-rooms by
the servants-in-waiting as ’Lady Carlyon,’ but whom all the world of
intelligence and culture present whispered of as ’the famous Delicia
Vaughan.’  For a handle to one’s name is a poor thing in comparison to
the position of genius; and that the greatest emperor ever crowned is
less renowned throughout the nations than plain William Shakespeare, is
as it should be, and serves as a witness of the eternal supremacy of
truth and justice amid a world of shams.




                              *CHAPTER X*


The first person Delicia saw after her hostess on entering the rooms was
her husband.  She bowed to him serenely, with a charming smile and
playful air, as if she had only just left his company, then passed him
by, entering at once into conversation with an artist of note, who came
eagerly forward to present his young wife to her.  Carlyon, quite taken
aback, stared at her half-angrily, half-obsequiously, for there was
something very queenly in the way she moved, something very noble in the
manner she carried her proud little head, on which the diamond star she
wore shone like Venus on a frosty night.  He watched her slim figure in
its white draperies moving hither and thither; he saw the brilliant
smile light up her whole countenance and flash in her violet eyes; he
watched men of distinction in art and statesmanship crowd about her with
courtly flatteries and elegantly-worded compliments, and the more he
watched her, the more morose and ill-humoured he became.

’Anyhow,’ he muttered to himself, ’she is my wife, and she can’t get rid
of me.  She has no fault whatever to find with me in the eyes of the
law!’

He had always been vain of his personality, and it irritated him
curiously to notice that she never glanced once in his direction.  No
one could possibly deny his outward attractiveness—he was distinctly
what is called a ’beautiful man.’  Beautiful in form and physique, manly
in bearing, ’god-like’ in feature.  Nothing could do away with these
facts.  And he had imagined that when Delicia—tender, worshipping
Delicia—set eyes on him again after her temporary absence from him, her
ravishment at the sight of his perfections would be so great that she
would fling herself into his arms or at his feet, and, as he expressed
it to himself, ’make it all right.’  But her aspect this evening was
rather discouraging to these hopes, for she seemed not to see him or his
attractions at all.  She was apparently more fascinated with the
appearance of a gouty ambassador, who sat far back in a corner carefully
resting one foot on a velvet hassock, and who was evidently afraid to
move.  To this old gentleman Delicia talked in her most charming manner,
and Carlyon, as his eyes wandered about the room, suddenly caught the
mischievous and mocking glance of ’La Marina’—a glance which said as
plainly as words, ’What a fool you are!’  Flushing with annoyance, he
moved from the position he had taken up near the grand piano and
strolled by himself through the rooms, picking out here and there a few
of his own friends to speak to, who, however, seemed to have nothing
much to say except, ’How charming Lady Carlyon looks this evening!’ a
phrase which irritated rather than pleased him, simply because it was
true.  It was true that Delicia looked lovely; it was true that she
eclipsed every woman in the room by her intelligence, grace of manner
and brilliancy of conversation; and it was true that for a time at least
she was the centre of attraction and absorbed the whole interest of
everyone present.  And Carlyon was distinctly vexed at the sensation she
made, because he had no part in it, because he felt himself left out in
the cold, and, moreover, because he was forced to understand that she,
his wife, had determined that so he should be left. He would not—perhaps
by some defect of brain he could not—realise that he had himself
forfeited all claim to her consideration or respect, and he was glad
when the arrival of another celebrity was announced, who at once
distracted the attention of the frivolous throng from Delicia
altogether—a lady of brilliant beauty, and of exalted rank, who had
distinguished herself by becoming a _demi-mondaine_ of the most open and
shameless type, but who, nevertheless, continued to ’move in society,’
as the phrase goes, with a considerable amount of _éclat_, simply
because she had money, and was wont to assist churches with it and
shower pecuniary benefits on penniless clerics.  Deity (through the said
clerics) blessed her in spite of her moral backslidings; and instead of
denouncing her as it should have done, the Church went to her
garden-parties.  Lady Brancewith was a clever woman in her way, as well
as a beautiful one; she loved her own vices dearly, and was prepared to
sacrifice anything for the indulgence of them—husband, children, name,
fame, honour; but she took a great deal of pains to keep in with ’pious’
people, and she knew that the best way to do that was continually to
give _largesse_ all round. The worthy clergyman of the parish in which
her great house was the chiefest of the neighbourhood, shut his eyes to
her sins and opened them to her cheques; so all went well and merrily
with her.  Her entrance into Lady Dexter’s drawing-room was the signal
for a complete change in the attitude of the fashionable throng.
Everybody craned their necks to look at her and comment on her dress and
diamonds; people began to whisper to each other the newest bits of
scandal about her, and Delicia, with her fair face and unsullied
character, was soon deserted and forgotten. She was rather glad of this,
and she sat down in a retired corner to rest, near the entrance to the
great conservatory, where the curtains shaded her from the light, and
where she could see without being seen.  She watched the smiles and
gestures of Lady Brancewith with a good deal of inward pain and
contempt.

’That is the kind of "society woman" men like,’ she mused, ’One who will
go down into the mud with them and never regret the loss of cleanliness.
I think she is a worse type than "La Marina," for "La Marina" does not
pretend to be good; but this woman’s whole life is occupied in the
despicable art of feigning virtue.’

She remained in her quiet nook looking at the restless, talking,
giggling throng, and now and then turning her eyes towards the flowers
in the conservatory—tall lilies, brilliant azaleas, snowy Cape
jessamine, drooping passion flowers—all exquisite creations of perfect
beauty, yet silent and seemingly unconscious of their own charms.

’How much more lovely and worthy of love flowers are than human beings!’
she thought.  ’If I had been the Creator, I think I would have given the
flowers immortal souls, rather than to men!’

At that moment her husband passed her without perceiving her.  Lady
Brancewith was on his arm, evidently delighted to be seen in the company
of so physically handsome a person. The little diamonds sewn on her
priceless lace flashed in Delicia’s eyes like sparks of light; the
faint, sickly odour of patchouli was wafted from her garments as she
moved; the hard lines which vice and self-indulgence had drawn on that
fair face were scarcely perceptible in the softened light, and her
little low laugh of coquettish pleasure at some remark of Lord Carlyon’s
sounded musical enough even to Delicia, who, though she knew and
detested the woman’s character, could not refrain from looking after her
half in wonderment, half in aversion.  Within a few paces of where she
sat they stopped,—Lord Carlyon placed a chair for his fair companion
near a giant palm, which towered up nearly to the roof of the
conservatory, and then, drawing another to her side, sat down himself.

’At last in my wretched life I am allowed a moment’s pleasure!’ he said,
conveying into his fine eyes a touch of the Beautiful Sullenness
expression which he generally found answer so well with women.

Lady Brancewith laughed, unfurling her fan.

’Dear me, how very tragic!’ she said. ’I had, no idea you were so
wretched, Lord Carlyon!  On the contrary, I thought you were one of the
most envied of men!’

Carlyon was silent a moment, looking at her intently.

’The only man in the world to be really envied is your husband,’ he said
morosely.

Delicia, hidden by the protecting curtain, kept herself quite still.  A
smile of disdain came on her proud mouth as she thought within herself,
’What liars men are!  I have heard him say often that Lord Brancewith
ought to be hounded out of the clubs for allowing his wife to dishonour
his name! And now he declares him to be the only man in the world to be
really envied!’

But Carlyon was speaking again, and some force stronger than herself
held her there motionless, an unwilling listener.

’You have never been kind to me,’ he complained, the Beautiful
Sullenness look deepening in his eyes.  ’Lots of other fellows get a
chance to make themselves agreeable to you, but you never give me the
ghost of one.  You are awfully hard on me—Lily!’

He paused a moment before uttering Lady Brancewith’s Christian name,
then spoke it softly and lingeringly, as though it were a caress.  She,
by way of reply, gave him a light tap on the cheek with her fan.

’And you are awfully impertinent,’ she said, smiling.  ’Don’t you
remember you are a married man?’

’I do, to my cost,’ he answered.  ’And you are a married woman!’

’Oh, but I am so different,’ she declared naïvely.  ’You see, you have
got a wonderful celebrity for a wife—clever and brilliant, and all that.
Now, poor Brancewith is a dreadful, dear old dunce, and I should really
die if I hadn’t some other man to speak to sometimes—’

’Or several other men!’ he put in, taking her fan from her hand and
beginning to wave it to and fro.

She laughed.

’Perhaps!  How jealous you are!  Do you treat your wife to these sort of
sarcasms?’

’I wish you wouldn’t talk about my wife,’ he said pettishly.  ’My wife
and I have nothing in common.’

’Really!’  Lily Brancewith yawned slightly. ’How often that happens in
married life, doesn’t it?  She is here to-night, isn’t she?’

’Yes, she is in the rooms somewhere,’ and Carlyon began to look
decidedly cross.  ’She was quite the centre of attraction till you came
in.  Then, of course, it was a case of a small star paling before the
full moon in all her splendour!’

’How sweetly poetical!  But please don’t break my fan,’ and she took the
delicate toy in question from him.  ’It cost twenty guineas, and it
isn’t paid for yet.’

’Let me settle the bill,’ said Carlyon, looking adoringly into her eyes,
’or any amount of bills!’

A faint tremor ran through Delicia’s body, as though a cold wind were
playing on her nerves.  Bending a little forward, she listened more
intently.

’Generous man!’ laughed Lady Brancewith. ’I know your wife has made you
rich, but I remember the time when you were not a bit flush of money,
were you, poor boy!  But you were always very nice and very
complimentary, even then.’

’Glad you admit it,’ said Carlyon, drawing a little nearer to her.  ’The
memory of it may decide you not to throw me over now!’

’What nonsense you talk!’ and Lady Brancewith gave him her hand to hold.
’I want to see your wife; do introduce me to her!  I have often been on
the point of meeting her, but never have done so.  _She_ doesn’t know
the people I know, and _I_ don’t know the people she knows, so we’ve
always missed each other.  She is such a genius! Dunce as you are, you
must have sense enough to be very proud of her!’

Carlyon looked dubious.  Then he suddenly said,—

’Well, I don’t know!  I think a clever woman—a writer of books, you
know, like my wife—is a mistake.  She is always _unsexed_.’

As the word passed his lips, Delicia rose, pale, fair and calm in her
glistening robes, and confronted them.  Like an austere white angel
suddenly descended from heaven to earth she stood,—quite silent,—looking
straight at her husband and his companion with such a grand scorn in her
dark violet eyes as made Carlyon shrink within himself like a beaten
hound.  Lady Brancewith glanced up at her with a half-impertinent,
half-questioning smile, but not a word did Delicia utter.  One moment
she stood surveying the disloyal, ungracious and ungrateful churl who
owed all he possessed in the world to her tenderness and bounty; then
coldly, quietly, and with an unshaken grace of bearing and queenliness
of movement, she turned away, her soft satin train sweeping them by as
she moved forward into the crowded rooms and disappeared.

’Who was that wonderful-looking woman?’ asked Lady Brancewith, eagerly.

Carlyon flushed, anon grew deadly pale.

’That was Delicia—my wife,’ he answered curtly.

’That!  That the novelist!’ almost screamed Lady Brancewith.  ’Why
didn’t you say so? Why didn’t you introduce me?  I had no idea she was
like that!  I thought all literary women wore short hair and spectacles!
Good gracious me!  And she must have heard you say you considered her
"unsexed!"  Billy, what a brute you are!’

Carlyon started angrily.  The fair Lily and he used in former days to
call each other ’Billy’ and ’Lily’ so frequently that a wag among their
acquaintance made a rhyme on them, running thus:—

    ’Lily and Billy
    Are invariably silly!

and at that time he did not mind it.  But now, considering that he was
’Lord’ Carlyon, he did not care to be addressed as ’Billy,’ and his
resentment showed itself pretty plainly on his darkened countenance.
But Lady Brancewith was too much excited to heed his annoyance.

’The idea!’ she continued.  ’If she was sitting there all the while she
must have heard _everything_!  A nice mess you have made of it!  If I
were in her place, I’d throw you off like a pair of old shoes!’

’I haven’t the least doubt you would,’ he said with temper.  ’It’s the
way you behave with most men who have the honour of sharing your
favour!’

Lily Brancewith showed her pearly teeth in a savage little smile.

’You were always what is called "rather shady," Billy,’ she observed
calmly.  ’But I didn’t give you credit for being _quite_ a cad!  Ta-ta!
I’m going to find your wife and introduce myself to her.  You know in
society people said you were to be pitied for marrying a "literary"
celebrity, but I shall put the gossips right on that point—I shall tell
everybody it is she who is to be pitied for marrying a military
nonentity!’

With a light laugh at her own sarcasm she left him, and started on a
voyage of discovery after Delicia.  The people were wedged together in
groups at every available point to watch the dancing of "La Marina," who
had commenced her performance, and who was announced for that evening as
’Mademoiselle Violet de Gascon’ out of deference to the ’proprieties,’
who might possibly have been shocked had they been too openly told that
the _figurante_ was the ’Empire’s’ famous ’Marina,’ though they were
quite aware of the fact all the time.  For in the strange motley we call
society, one of the chief rules is that if you know a truth you must
never say it; you must say something else, as near to a lie as possible.
For example, if you are aware, and everybody else is aware, that a lady
of exalted title has outraged, or is outraging, every sense of decency
and order in her social and private life, you must always say she is one
of the purest and most innocent creatures living.  _Of_ course, if she
is a nobody, without any rank at all, you are at liberty to give her
poor name over to the dogs of slander to rend at will; but if she is a
countess or a duchess, you must entirely condone her vulgar vices.
Think of her title!  Think of her family connections! Think of the
manner in which her influence might be brought to bear on some little
matter in which you personally have an interest!  Lady Brancewith knew
all this well enough; she knew exactly how to play her cards, and she
was sufficiently a woman of the world to salute ’La Marina’ with a
pretty bow and compliment as soon as her dance was finished, and to
express the plaintive wish, uttered sighingly, ’How glad I should be if
I were half so clever!’

Whereat Marina sniffed the air dubiously and said nothing.  ’Jewlia
Muggins,’ _alias_ ’Violet de Gascon,’ knew a thing or two, and was not
to be taken in by Lady Brancewith or any of her set.  She was keenly
disappointed.  Delicia had not been present to see her dance, and she
had very much wished to create a favourable impression on that ’sweet
thing in white’ as she called her.  She had danced her best, gracefully,
and with an exquisite modesty; too exquisite for many of the gentlemen
assembled, some of whom whispered to each other that she was ’going off’
a bit, simply because they could not see much above her slender ankles.
She herself, however, cared nothing for what they said or thought, and
at the conclusion of her dance she boldly asked her hostess where Lady
Carlyon was.

’She has gone home, I am sorry to say,’ was the reply.  ’She is not very
well, she tells me; and she found the heat of the room rather trying.’

’Are you speaking of the guest of the evening—Lady Carlyon?’ inquired
Lady Brancewith, sweetly.

’Yes.  She extremely regretted having to leave so early, but she works
hard, you know, and she is not at all robust.’

Here Lady Dexter’s attention was distracted by the claims of a
long-haired violinist desirous of performing a ’classical’ piece
immediately, which, when it did begin, had the effect of driving many
people down to supper or out of the house altogether; and in the general
scrimmage on the stairs ’La Marina’ found herself elbowing Lord Carlyon.

’Your wife’s gone home,’ she said curtly. ’Why didn’t you go with her?’

’I have another engagement,’ he answered coldly.

’Not with me!’ she said, showing all her even white teeth in a broad
grin.  ’I talked ever so long to Lady Carlyon this evening, and told her
just what I thought of you!’

His eyes darkened furiously, and the lines of his mouth grew hard and
vindictive.

’You wild cat!’ he said savagely.  ’If you have _dared_—’

’Puss, puss!  Pretty puss!’ laughed Marina.  ’Cats have claws, my Lord
Bill, and they scratch occasionally!’

With a swish of her silken skirts she darted past him into the
supper-room, where she immediately became surrounded by a circle of
young noodles, who evidently deemed it a peculiar glory and honour to be
allowed to hand chicken salad to the gifted creature who nightly knocked
her own nose with her foot in the presence of a crowded house.  What was
any art compared to this?  What was science? What was learning?  What
was virtue? Nothing,—less than nothing!  To have a shapely leg and know
how to hit your nose with your foot, is every day proved to be the best
way for a woman to have what is called a ’good time’ in this world.  She
needn’t be able to spell, she may drop her h’s broadcast, she may
’booze’ on brandy,—but so long as the nose is hit every night with the
foot in an accurate and rhythmic manner, she will always have plenty of
jewels and more male admirers than she can conveniently manage.  For
there is no degradation that can befall a woman which man will not
excuse and condone; equally there is no elevation or honour she can win
which he will not grudge and oppose with all the force of his nature!
For man loves to hold a strangulation-grip on the neck of all creation,
women included; and the idea that woman should suddenly wrench herself
out of his grasp and refuse to be either trapped like a hare, hunted
like a fox, or shot like a bird, is a strange, new and disagreeable
experience for him.  And very naturally he clings to the slave type of
womanhood, and encourages the breed of those who are willing to become
dancers and toys of his ’harem,’ for, if all women were to rise to the
height of their true and capable dignity, where should he go to for his
so-called ’fun’?

Some thoughts of this kind were in Lord Carlyon’s head as he threw on
his opera-coat and prepared to leave the scene of revelry at the
Dexters.  The pale, noble face of Delicia haunted him; the disdain of
her clear eyes still rankled in his soul; and he was actually indignant
with her for what he considered ’that offensive virtue of hers,’ which
shamed him, and which had, for a moment at least, made ’the most
distinguished Lady Brancewith’ seem nothing but a common drab, daubed
with paint and powder.  Even as he thought of her thus, the fair and
faithless Lily approached him, smiling, with a coaxing and penitent air.

’Still huffy?’ she inquired sweetly.  ’Poor, dear thing!  Did it fret
and fume and turn nasty?’  She laughed, then added, ’Don’t be cross,
Billy!  I was very rude to you just now—I’m sorry!  See!’ and she folded
her hands with an appealing air.  ’Drive home with me, will you?  I’m so
lonely!  Brancewith’s at Newmarket.’

Carlyon hesitated, looking at her.  She was undoubtedly very lovely,
despite her artificial flesh tints and distinctly dyed hair.

’All right!’ he said with a stand-offish manner of coldness and
indifference, ’I don’t mind seeing you home.’

’How sweet and condescending of you!’ and Lady Brancewith threw on her
mantle gleaming with iridescent jewels and showered with perfumed lace.
’So good of you to bore yourself with my company!’

Her eyes flashed; she was in a dangerous mood, and Carlyon saw it.  In
silence he piloted her through the ranks of attendant flunkeys, and when
her carriage came bowling up to the door assisted her into it.

’Good-night!’ he then said, raising his hat ceremoniously.

Lily Brancewith turned white with sudden passion.

’Aren’t you coming in?’ she asked.

He smiled, thoroughly enjoying the position.

’No, I have changed my mind.  I am going home—to my wife!’

Lady Brancewith trembled, but quickly controlled herself.

’So right of you,’ she said, smiling.  ’So proper!’  Then, putting out
her hand, she caught him by the coat-sleeve.  ’Do you know what I wish
for you?’ she said slowly.

’Can’t imagine!’ he responded carelessly. ’Something nasty, no doubt.’

’Yes, it is something nasty!’ She laughed under her breath as she spoke.
’Something nasty, yet very commonplace, too.  I wish your wife may
discover the kind of man you are,—and _stop your allowances_!
Good-night!

She smiled brilliantly; the horses started suddenly and he drew back,
smothering an angry oath.  Another moment and the carriage had rolled
away, leaving him alone staring at the pavement.  He stood for a little
lost in gloomy meditation; then, summoning a hansom, was driven home at
a brisk pace, having made up his mind to ’face it out,’ as he inwardly
said, with Delicia.

’She can’t help loving me,’ he mused.  ’She always has loved me, and she
is not a woman likely to change her feelings in a hurry.  I’m sorry she
saw me with Lily Brancewith; and of course, if that jade Marina has
really been talking to her there’ll be a devil of a row.  I must make it
right with her somehow, and I think I know the best way to go to work.’
Here he smiled.  ’Poor little woman!  I daresay she feels awfully sore;
but I know her character—a few loving words and plenty of kisses and
embraces, and she’ll be just the same as ever she was, and—and—by Jove!
I’ll see if I can’t turn over a new leaf.  It’ll be infernally dull, but
I’ll try it!’

And perfectly satisfied with the plan he had formulated in his own mind
for setting things straight, he arrived at his own house. The door was
opened to him by Robson, who informed him that her ladyship had returned
about an hour ago and was waiting to see him in her study.

’In her study, did you say?’ he repeated.

’Yes, my lord.  Her ladyship said, would you kindly go up at once, as
soon as you came in.’

A touch of ’nerves’ affected him as he threw off his coat and began to
ascend the stairs.  He saw Robson extinguish the gas in the hall and
descend kitchenwards, and a great silence and darkness seemed to
encompass the house as he paused for a moment outside his wife’s room.
Then, slowly and with some hesitation, he lifted the velvet _portière_
and entered.




                              *CHAPTER XI*


Delicia was at her desk, writing.  She had taken off her rich evening
costume and was clad in a loose robe of white cashmere that fell down to
her feet, draping her after the fashion of one of Fra Angelico’s angels.
Her hair was unbound from its ’dress coiffure’ of elaborate twists and
coils, and was merely thrust out of her way at the back of her head in
one great knot of gold.  She rose as her husband entered, and turned her
face, deadly pale and rigid as a statue’s, full upon him.  He paused,
looking at her, and felt his braggart courage oozing out at his fingers’
ends.

’Delicia,’ he began, making a poor attempt at smiling.  ’Delicia, I am
awfully sorry—’

Her eyes, full of a burning indignation, flashed upon him like lightning
and struck him, despite himself, into silence.

’Spare yourself and me any further lies!’ she said, in a low voice that
vibrated with intense passion.  ’There is no longer any need of them.
You have shown me yourself as you are, in your true colours—the mask has
fallen, and you need not stoop to pick it up and put it on again.  It is
mere waste of time!’

He stared at her, foolishly pulling at his moustache and still trying to
smile.

’You called me "unsexed" to-night,’ she went on, never removing her
steadfast gaze from his face.  ’Do you know what the word means?  If
not, I will tell you.  It is to be like the women you admire!—to be like
"La Marina," who strips her body to the gaze of the public without
either shame or regret; it is to be like Lady Brancewith, who flings her
husband’s name and honour to the winds for any fool to mock at, and who
in her high position is worse, yes, worse than "La Marina," who at any
rate is honest in so far that she admits her position and makes no
pretence of being what she is not! But I,—what have _I_ done that you
should call me "unsexed?"’

She paused, breathing quickly.

’I didn’t say _you_ were "unsexed," he stammered awkwardly.  ’I said
clever women were, as a rule, unsexed.’

’Pardon me,’ she interrupted him coldly. ’You said "women who write
books, like my wife."  Those were your exact words.  And, I repeat, what
have I done to deserve them? Have I ever dishonoured your name?  Have
you not been the one thought, the one pride, the one love of my life?
Has not every beat of my heart, together with every stroke of my pen,
been for you and you only? While all the time to me you have played
traitor—your very looks have been lies, you have deceived and destroyed
all my most sacred beliefs and hopes; you have murdered me as thoroughly
as if you had thrust a knife through my heart and hurled me down dead at
your feet!’

Her voice vibrated with passion—strong, deeply-felt passion, unshaken by
the weakness of sobs or tears.

He made a step towards her.

’Look here, Delicia,’ he said, ’don’t let us have a scene!  I have been
a fool, I daresay—I am quite willing to admit it—but can’t you forget
and forgive?’  And undeterred by the chill aversion in her face, he held
out his arms.  ’Come, I am sure your own heart cannot tell you to be
unkind to me!  You do love me—’

’Love you!’ she cried, recoiling from him; ’I hate you!  Your very
presence is hideous to my sight; and just as I once thought you the
noblest of men, so I think you now the lowest, the meanest!  You have
been a fool, you say; oh, if you were only that!  Only a fool!  There
are so many of them!  Some of them such good fellows, too, in their
folly. Fools there are in plenty who, nevertheless, do manage to
preserve some cleanliness in their lives; who would not wrong a woman or
insult her for the world—fools whom, mayhap, it might be good to love
and to work for, and who at any rate are not cads or cowards!’

He started, and the colour leapt to his face in a shamed red, then died
away, leaving him very pale.

’Oh, if you are going to rant and scream—’ he began.

She turned upon him with a regal air.

’Lord Carlyon, to rant and scream is not my _métier_,’ she said.  ’I
leave that to the poor "Marina," when you have dosed her with too much
champagne.  There is no need to go over the cause of our present
conflict; what I have to say can be said in very few words. Your
"unsexed" wife, who has had the honour of maintaining you ever since
your union with her, by the ungrudging labour of her brain and hand, has
sufficient sense of justice and self-respect to continue no longer in
that eminently unpractical mode of action.  We must for the future live
apart; for I cannot consent to share your attentions with one stage
_artiste_ or any number of stage _artistes_.  I do not choose to pay for
their jewels; and your generous offer to settle Lady Brancewith’s bills
for her does not meet with my consent or approval.

Her face grew colder and more contemptuous as she continued,—

’Your estimate of what is called a "clever" woman is as low as that of
most men.  I do not especially blame you for being like the rest of your
sex in that one particular. Women who will not become as dirt under a
man’s foot, to be trodden on first, then kicked aside, are generally
termed "unsexed," because they will not lower themselves to the man’s
brute level.  Nothing is more unnatural from a man’s point of view than
that a woman should have brains,—and with those brains make money and
position often superior to his, and at any rate manage to be independent
of him.  What men prefer is that their wives should be the slaves of
their humour, and receive a five-pound note with deep thankfulness
whenever they can get it, shutting their eyes to the fact that people
like "Marina" get twenty pounds to their five from the same quarter.
But you,—you have had nothing to complain of in the way of a pecuniary
position, though I, as bread-winner, might readily have comported myself
after approved masculine examples and given you five pounds where I
spent twenty on myself and my own pleasure.  But I did nothing of this
sort; on the contrary, I have trusted you with half of everything I
earned, believing you to be honest; believing that, of all men in the
world, you would never cheat, defraud, or otherwise deceive me.  And not
only have you made a mock of me in society, but you have even helped to
vilify my name. For it was distinctly your business to chastise the
writer of that lying paragraph in the paper; but you left me to be
defended by one who shares with me the drawback of being a "public
character," and with whom I have no connection whatever beyond that of
friendship, as you perfectly well know. Why, I have heard of men,
well-born, too, and of considerable social attainment, who have been
willing enough to fight for the so-called "honour" of an admitted
_demi-mondaine_; but for an honest woman and faithful wife, who is there
in these days that will stir a finger to defend her from slander!  Very
few; least of all her husband!  To such a height has nineteenth-century
morality risen!  I, who have been true to you in every thought, word and
deed, am rewarded by your open infidelity, and for my work, which has at
any rate kept you in ease and comfort, I am called "unsexed," despite my
pains!  If I chose, I could fling you back your insult; for a man who
lives on a woman’s earnings is more "unsexed" than the woman who earns.
I never thought of this before; my love was too blind, too passionate.
Now I do think of it; and thinking, I wonder at myself and you!’

He dropped lazily into a chair and looked at her.

’I suppose your temper will be over presently,’ he said, ’and you will
see things in a more reasonable light.  You must remember I have given
you a great position, Delicia; I think our marriage has been one of
perfect mutual benefit.  "Literary" women hardly ever get a chance of
marrying at all, you know; men are afraid of them—won’t marry them on
any account;—would rather have a barmaid, really—and when a "literary"
woman gets into the aristocracy and all that—well, by Jove!—it’s a
splendid thing for her, you know, and gives her a great lift!  As for
being unfaithful to you, why, there is not a man in my "set" who is
absolutely immaculate; I am no worse than any of them—in fact, I am much
better.  You read so much, and you write so much, that you ought to know
these things without my telling them to you. "Give and take" is the only
possible rule in marriage, and I really thought you would have good
sense enough to admit it—’

Delicia regarded him with a chill smile.

’I think I _have_ admitted it!’ she said ironically.  ’Fully and freely!
For I have given everything; equally you have taken everything! That is
plain enough.  And now you insult me afresh by the suggestion that it
was really a condescension on your part to marry me at all, I being
"literary"!  If I had been a music-hall dancer, of course you would have
been much prouder of me; it would have been something indeed worth
boasting of, to say your wife had originally been famous for a
break-down or can-can at the "Empire!"  But because I follow, with what
force and ability I can, the steps of the truly great, who have helped
to mould the thoughts and feelings of men and nations, it is quite
extraordinary I should have found a husband at all!  Wonderful! And you
have given me a great position, you assert.  I confess I fail to
perceive it!  If you consider your title something of value, I am sorry
for you; to me it is a nothing.  In the old days of chivalry titles
meant honour; now they have become, for the most part, the mere results
of wealth and back-stair influence. Yours is an old title, I grant you
that; but what does it matter?  The latest brewer raised to the peerage
puts himself on an equality with you, whether you like it or not.  But
between me—untitled Delicia Vaughan—and the self-same peer of the
ale-cask, there is a great gulf fixed; and not all his wealth can put
him on an equality with _me_, or with any author who has once won the
love of nations.  And so, Lord Carlyon, permit me to return your title,
for I shall not wear it.  When we separate I shall keep to my own name
simply; thus I shall owe you nothing, not even _prestige_!’

Carlyon suddenly lifted his fine eyes and flashed them effectively at
her.

’You are talking nonsense, Delicia,’ he said impatiently.  ’You know you
don’t really mean that we are to separate.  Why,’ this with the most
naïve conceit, ’what will you do without me?’

She met his gaze without the least emotion.

’I shall continue to live, I suppose,’ she replied, ’or I shall die, one
of the two.  It really doesn’t matter which.’

There was a slight tremor in her voice, and emboldened by it he sprang
up and tried to put his arm round her.  She recoiled from him swiftly,
thrusting him back.

’Don’t touch me,’ she cried wildly.  ’Don’t dare to come near me!  I
cannot answer for myself if you do; this shall defend me from you if
necessary!’

And almost before he could realise it she had snatched a small,
silver-mounted pistol from its case on a shelf hard by, and, holding it
in her hand, she stood as it were at bay.

He gave a short, embarrassed laugh.

’You have gone mad, Delicia!’ he said.  ’Put down that thing.  It isn’t
loaded, of course; but it doesn’t look pretty to see you with it.’

’No, it doesn’t look pretty,’ she responded slowly.  ’But it _is_
loaded!  I took care of that before you came in!  I don’t want to injure
either you or myself; but I swear to you that if you come closer to me
by one step, presume to offer me such an insult as your caress would be
to me _now_, I will kill you!’

Her white figure was firm as that of some menacing fate carved in
marble; her pale face, with the violet eyes set in it like flashing
stars, had a marvellous power and passion imprinted on its every line,
and despite himself he fell back startled and in a manner appalled.

’I have gone mad, you think?’ she went on. ’If I had, would it be
wonderful?  To have one’s dearest hopes ruined, one’s heart broken,
one’s life made waste—is that not something of a cause for madness?  But
I am not mad; I am simply resolved that your lips, which have bestowed
their kisses on "la Marina," shall never touch mine again; that your
arms, which have embraced her, shall never embrace me, and that, come
what will, I will keep my self-respect if I die for it!  Now you know my
mind, you will go your way; I mine.  I cannot divorce you; for though
you have murdered my very soul in me, brutally and pitilessly, you have
not been "cruel" according to legal opinion.  But I can separate from
you—thank God for that!  I cannot marry again.  Heaven forbid that I
should ever desire to do so!  Neither can you; but you will not wish for
that unless you meet with an American heiress with several millions,
which you may have the chance of doing when I am dead—someone who has
inherited her money and has not _worked_ for it as I
have,—honestly,—thereby becoming "unsexed!"’

He stood silent for a minute.

’You actually mean to say you want a judicial separation?’ he inquired
at last, sullenly.

She bent her head in the affirmative.

’Well, you can get that, of course.  But I must say, Delicia, of all the
ungrateful, heartless women, you are the very worst!  I should never
have thought it of you!  I imagined you had such a noble nature!  So
sweet and loving and forgiving!  Good heavens!  After all, what have I
done?  Just had a bit of fun with a dancing girl!  Quite a common
amusement with men of my class!

’I have no doubt of it,’ she answered; ’Very common!  All the same, I do
not choose to either tolerate it or pay for it.  Ungrateful, heartless
"unsexed"!  This is my character, according to your estimate of me.  I
thank you!  Poor Love’s last breath went in that final blow from the
rough fist of ingratitude! I will not detain you any longer; in truth,
you need not have stayed so long.  I merely wished to let you know my
decision.  I had no intention to either upbraid you or condemn.
Reproaches or complaints, however just, could leave no impression on a
temperament like yours.  I will see my lawyers to-morrow, and in a very
short space of time you will be free of my company for ever.  Shall we
say good-bye now?’

She raised her eyes,—her gold hair shone about her like an aureole, and
a sudden sweetness softened her face, though its gravity was unchanged.
A sharp pang of remorse and sorrow stabbed him through and through, and
he looked at her in mingled abasement and yearning.

’Delicia—must we part?’

He whispered the question, half in hope half in fear.

She regarded him steadily.

’Dare you ask it?  Can you imagine I could love you again after what has
passed? Some women might do so—I could not.’

He stood irresolute; there was a mean and selfish trouble at his heart
to which he could not give utterance for very shame’s sake.  He was
really wondering what arrangements she meant to make for his future, but
some few of the better instincts of manhood rose up within him
protestingly, and bade him hold his peace.  Still the brooding
egotistical thought lingered in him and made him angry; he grew more and
more wrathful as he realised that she,—this woman, whose whole life and
devotion he had had so recently in his keeping,—had suddenly fathomed
his true nature and cast him from her as something contemptible, and
that she—she had the power to maintain herself free of him in wealth and
ease, whilst he, if she were at all malevolently inclined, would have to
return to the state of semi-poverty and ’living on tick,’ which had been
his daily and yearly lot before he met her. Inwardly he cursed ’la
Marina,’ Lily Brancewith and everybody, except himself.  He never
thought of including his own vices in the general big ’Damn!’ he was
mentally uttering. And as he hesitated, shuffling one foot against the
other, a prey to the most disagreeable reflections, Delicia advanced a
step and held out her hands.

’Good-bye, Will!  I loved you once very deeply; a few days ago you were
everything to me, and for the sake of that love, which has so suddenly
perished and is dead for ever, let us part in peace!’

But he turned from her roughly.

’Oh, it is all very well for you!’ he said. ’You can afford to talk all
this high-falutin’ rubbish, and give yourself airs and graces, but I am
a poor devil of a fellow always getting into a hole; and it isn’t to be
supposed that I am going to take my dismissal in this way, just as if I
were a lackey.  I am your husband, you know; you can’t undo that!’

’Not at present,’ said Delicia, drawing back from him quickly, the
tenderness passing from her face and leaving it coldly disdainful.  ’But
it is very possible the Gordian knot of marriage may be cut for me
sooner or later.  Death may befriend me in this matter, if nothing else
will.’

’Death!  Nonsense!  I am not likely to die, nor are you.  And I don’t
see what you want to get a separation for.  I will go away for a time if
you like.  I will make any promises you want me to make; but why you
should bring a lawyer into it, I cannot imagine. The fact is, you are
making a fuss about nothing, and I am not going to say good-bye at all.
I will take a trip abroad, and by the time I come back I daresay all
this will have blown over and you will be glad to see me.’

She said nothing, but simply turned from him, and sitting quietly down
at her desk resumed the letter she had been writing when he entered.

’Do you hear me?’ he repeated querulously. ’I sha’n’t say good-bye.’

She did not speak; her pen moved swiftly over the paper before her, but
otherwise she never moved.

’I am sure it is no wonder,’ he continued crossly, ’that the Government
protests against too much independence being allowed to women!  What
tyrants they would all become if they could have everything their own
way as much as you can!  Women ought to be gentle and submissive; and if
they are fortunate enough to be wealthy, they ought to use their wealth
for their husbands’ benefit. That is the natural order of creation—woman
was made to be subservient to man, and when she is not, things always go
wrong.’

Still Delicia wrote on without uttering a word.

He paused a moment, then observed,—

’Well, I’m quite worn out with all this rumpus!  I shall go to bed.
Good-night, Delicia!’

At this she turned and looked at him fully.

’Good-night!’ she said.

Something in the transparent beauty of her face and the dark tragedy of
her eyes awed him.  She looked as if during the past few minutes she had
risen above and beyond him to a purer atmosphere than that of earth. The
majority of men hate women who look so; and Carlyon was painfully
conscious that he had suddenly grown to hate Delicia.  She had entirely
changed, he thought.  From a loving, tender idolater of his manly graces
and perfections, she had become a proud, cynical, fault-finding,
unforgiving ’virago.’  This latter term did not suit her at all, but he
considered that it did; for, as usual, by the aid of man’s logic, he
deemed himself the injured party and she the injuring.  And irritated
beyond measure at the queenly tranquillity of her demeanour, he muttered
something profane under his breath, and dashing aside the _portière_
with a clatter of its brazen rings and a violence that threatened to
tear its very substance, he left the room.

As soon as he had gone, Delicia moved slowly to the door and shut and
locked it after him; then as slowly returned to her chair, where,
leaning her head back against the carved escutcheon, she quietly
fainted.




                             *CHAPTER XII*


Next day Delicia was too weak and broken in body and spirit to leave her
bedroom, which she had managed to reach by herself on recovering from
her swoon.  Her husband sent her a brief note of farewell by one of the
servants.  He was leaving London immediately for Paris, he said, ’and
when all this nonsense had blown over,’ he would return. Till then he
was ’hers affectionately.’  She crumpled the note in her hand and lay
still, her fair head fallen wearily back among her pillows, and a great
sense of exhaustion and fatigue numbing all her faculties.  A batch of
letters came by the mid-day post, letters from strangers and friends,
all warmly testifying as usual to her genius; and as she read she sighed
heavily and wondered what was the use of it all?

’They do not know I am dead!’ she said to herself, ’That all my life is
done with—finished!  If I had never known the meaning of love; if I had
never thought and believed that love was truly mine, how much better it
would have been for me!  I should have worked on contentedly; I should
not have missed what I had no experience of, and I might—yes, I might
have been really great.  Now there is no hope for any more
attainment—Love has murdered me!’

She rested in bed all day, dozing and dreaming and thinking; all night
between the slow-pacing hours she had long waking intervals of strange,
half-troubled, half-mystic musings.  She saw herself, so she imagined,
dead;—laid out in her coffin with flowers round her; but as she looked
at her own stiffened corpse she knew it was not herself, she thus saw,
but only the image of what she had been.  She, Delicia, was another
being—a being through whose fine essence light and joy were flowing.
She fancied she heard sweet voices murmuring in her ears,—

’Sorrowful Delicia!  Slain Delicia!  This is not thine end—work has but
begun for thee, though earth has no more part in either thy toil or
pleasure!  Come, Delicia!  Love is not dead because of human treachery;
Love is immortal, unconquerable, unchangeable, and waits for thee
elsewhere, Delicia! Come and see!’

And so persistently was she haunted by the impression that something new
and strange awaited her, that almost unconsciously to herself she began
to be expectant of a sudden change in her destinies, though what that
change might be she could not by herself determine.

When she rose from her bed to resume her daily work an idea flashed upon
her,—an idea bold and new, and suggesting itself forcibly for brief and
brilliant literary treatment. Seized by this fresh inspiration, she shut
herself up in her study and worked day after day, forgetting her own
troubles in the fervour of creative energy.  She saw no visitors and
went nowhere; her morning ride was all the relaxation she permitted
herself; and she grew paler and paler as she toiled unremittingly with
her pen, and lived a life of almost unbroken solitude all through the
height of the London ’season.’  The people one calls by courtesy
’friends,’ grew tired of leaving cards which were not responded to, and
’society’ began to whisper that ’it was rather singular, my dear, that
Lord Carlyon should suddenly have left London and gone by himself to
Paris, while that extremely peculiar wife of his remained at home shut
up as closely as if she had the small-pox.’  ’Perhaps she _had_ the
small-pox,’ suggested the Noodle section of opinion, deeming the remark
witty.  Whereupon Lady Brancewith, joining in the general
chitter-chatter, ventured upon the scathing observation that ’if she
had, it would make her more popular in society, as no one could then be
angry with her for her good looks.’  Which suggestion was voted
’charming’ of Lady Brancewith; and ’so generous of Lady Brancewith,
being so lovely herself, to even consider for a moment in a favourable
light the looks of a "female authoress!"—quite too sweet of Lady
Brancewith!’

And the inane whispering of such tongues as wag without any brains to
guide them went on and on, and Delicia never heard them.  Her old
friends, the Cavendishes, had left London for Scotland—they hated the
’season’ with all the monotony of its joyless round—so that there was no
one in town whom she particularly cared to see, And, like the enchanted
’Lady of Shalott,’ she sat in her own small study weaving her web of
thought, or, as her husband had once put it, ’spinning cocoons.’

Only on one special day was there a break in her self-imposed routine.
This occurred when two elderly gentlemen of business-like demeanour
arrived carrying small black bags. They were lawyers, and were shown up
to the famous author’s study at once, where they remained in private
converse with her for the greater part of the afternoon.

When they came down again to the dining-room, where wine and biscuits
were prepared for their refreshment, Delicia accompanied them; her face
was very pale, yet calm, and she had the look of one whose mind has been
relieved of an oppressive burden.

’You have made everything quite clear now, have you not?’ she asked
gently, as she dispensed the wine to her visitors with her usual
hospitable forethought and care.

’Perfectly so,’ responded the elder of the two legal men; ’And if you
will permit me to say so, I congratulate you, Lady Carlyon, on your
strength of mind.  Had the other will remained in force, your
hardly-earned fortune would have soon been squandered.’

She answered nothing.  After a little pause she spoke again.

’You quite understand that, in the event of my death, you yourself take
possession of my last manuscript, and place it personally in the hands
of my publishers?’

’Quite so.  Everything shall be carried out in exact accordance with
your instructions.

’You think,’ she went on hesitatingly—’that I have given him enough to
live upon?’

’More than enough—more than he deserves, said the lawyer.  ’To be the
possessor of two hundred and fifty a year for life is a great advantage
in these days.  Of course,’ and he laughed a little, ’he’ll not be able
to afford tandem-driving and the rest of his various amusements, but he
can live comfortably and respectably if he likes.  That is quite
sufficient for him.’

’He has already a sum in his own private bank, which, if placed at
interest, will bring him in more than another hundred,’ said Delicia,
meditatively.  ’Yes, I think it is sufficient.  He cannot starve, and he
is sure to marry again.’

’But you talk as if you were going to leave us at once and for ever,
Lady Carlyon,’ and the old lawyer looked somewhat concerned as he
observed the extreme pallor of her face and the feverish splendour of
her eyes. ’You will live for many and many a long day yet to enjoy the
fruit of your own intellectual labours—’

’My dear sir, pray do not talk of my "intellectual labours!"  In the
opinion of my husband and of men generally, especially unsuccessful men,
these very labours have rendered me "unsexed."  I am not a woman at all,
according to their idea!  I have neither heart nor feeling.  I am simply
a money-making machine, grinding out gold for my "lord and master" to
spend.’

Her lawyer looked distressed.

’If you remember, I told you some time back that I thought you were
unaware of your husband’s extravagance,’ he said.  ’I put it as
"extravagance,"—because I was unwilling to convey to you all the rumours
I had actually heard.  Men are naturally fickle; and my experience is
that they always take benefits badly, thinking all good fortune their
right.  You made a mistake, I consider, to trust Lord Carlyon so
completely.’

’What would you have of me?’ asked Delicia, simply.  ’I loved him!’

There followed a silence.  Nothing could be said to this, and the two
men of the law munched their biscuits and drank their wine hastily,
conscious of a sudden excitement stirring in them,—a strange impulse,
moving them both to the desire of thrashing Lord Carlyon, which would be
an action totally inconsistent with legal custom and procedure. But the
sight of the fair, grave, patient woman who had worked so hard, who held
such a high position of fame, and who was so grievously wronged in her
private life, had a powerful effect upon even the practical and prosaic
disposition of the two men born to considerations of red tape and wordy
documents; and when they took their leave of her it was with a profound
deference and sympathy which she did not fail to notice. Another time
their evident interest and kindliness would have moved her, but now she
was so strung up with feverish excitement and eagerness to finish the
work she had begun, that external things made very little impression
upon her.

She returned to her writing with renewed zest; Spartan was her chief
companion; and only her maid Emily began to notice how ill she was
looking.  She had intended to consult a doctor about her health; but,
absorbed in her work, she put it off from day to day, promising herself
that she would do so when her book was finished.  She received no news
whatever from her husband; he was trying the effect of a lengthy absence
and sustained silence on her always sensitive mind.

And so the days went on, through all bright June and the warm beginning
of July, till one morning she entered her room prepared to write the
last portion of what she instinctively felt and knew would lift her
higher among the cold pinnacles of fame than she had ever been.  She was
aware of a soft lassitude upon her,—a sense of languor that was more
delightful than unpleasing; the beautiful repose that distinguishes a
studious and deeply-thinking mind, which had been hers in a very great
degree before her marriage, when, as single-hearted Delicia Vaughan, she
had astonished the world by her genius, came back to her now, and the
clouds of trouble and perplexity seemed suddenly to clear and leave her
life as blank and calm and pure as though the shadow of a false love had
never darkened it.  The sun fell warmly across her desk, flickering over
the pens and paper; and Spartan stretched himself full length in his
usual place in the window-nook with a deep sigh of absolute content.
And with radiance in her eyes and a smile on her lips, Delicia sat down
and wrote her ’conclusion.’  Her brain had never been clearer,—thoughts
came quickly, and with the thoughts were evoked new and felicitous modes
of expression, which wrote themselves, as it were, without an effort on
her own part.

Suddenly she started to her feet;—a great and solemn sound was in her
ears, like the stormy murmur of a distant sea, or the beginning of a
grand organ chant, gravely sustained.  Listening, she looked wildly up
at the dazzling sunlight streaming through her window pane.  What
strange, what distant Glory did she see, that all the light and all the
splendour of the summer day should seem, for that one moment, to be
mirrored in her eyes? Then—she gave a sharp, choking cry, ...

’Spartan!  Spartan!’

With one bound the great dog obeyed the call, and sprang up against her,
putting his huge, soft paws upon her breast.  Convulsively she clasped
them close,—as she would have clasped the hands of an only friend,—and
fell back heavily in her chair—dead!

                     *      *      *      *      *

So they found her an hour later,—her cold hands still holding Spartan’s
rough paws to her bosom,—while he, poor faithful beast, imprisoned in
that death-grip, sat patiently watching his mistress with anxious and
loving eyes, waiting till she should wake.  For she looked as if she had
merely fallen asleep for a few minutes; a smile was on her lips,—the
colour had not quite left her face,—and her body was yet warm. For some
time no one dared touch the dog, and only at last by dint of sheer force
and close muzzling could they drag him away and lock him up in the yard,
where he filled the surrounding neighbourhood with his desolate howling.
He was ’only a dog;’ he had not the beautiful reasoning ability of a
man, who is able to console himself easily for the death of friends by
making new ones.  He had a true heart, poor Spartan!  It is an
unfashionable commodity, and useless, too, since it cannot be bought or
sold.  And when all the newspapers had headings—’Death of Delicia
Vaughan,’ with accounts of the ’sudden heart failure,’ which had been
the cause of her unexpected end, Lord Carlyon returned in haste to town
to attend the funeral and to hear the will.  But he found his presence
scarcely needed,—for the great public, seized by a passionate grief for
the loss of one of its favourite authors, took it upon itself to make
the obsequies of this ’unsexed’ woman as imposing as any that ever
attended king or emperor.  Thousands followed the coffin to the quiet
Mortlake cemetery, where Delicia had long ago purchased her own grave;
hundreds among these thousands wept, and reminded each other of the good
actions, the many kindnesses that had made her suddenly-ended life a
blessing and consolation to the sick and the afflicted, and many
wondered where they should again find so true and sympathetic a friend.
And when it came to be publicly known that all her fortune, together
with all future royalties to be obtained from her books, was left in
equal shares among the poverty-stricken of certain miserable London
districts, with full and concise instructions as to how it was to be
paid and when,—then callous hearts melted at the sound of her name, and
eyes unaccustomed to weeping shed soft tears of gratitude and spoke of
her with a wondering tenderness of worship and reverence as though she
had been a saint.  The Press made light of her work, and had scarce a
word of sympathy for her untimely demise; their general ’tone’ being
that adopted by the late Edward Fitzgerald, who wrote of one of
England’s greatest poets thus:—’Mrs Barrett Browning is dead.  Thank God
we shall have no more "Aurora Leighs!"’  It is the usual manner assumed
by men who have neither the brain nor the feeling to write an ’Aurora
Leigh’ themselves.  All the same, the public ’rushed,’ in its usual
impulsive fashion, for the last book Delicia had written, and when they
got it, such a chorus of enthusiasm arose as entirely overwhelmed the
ordinary press cackle and brought down the applauding verdict of such
reasoning readers and sober judges who did not waste their time in
writing newspaper paragraphs.  Delicia’s name became greater in death
than in life; and only one person spoke of her with flippant ease and
light disparagement; this was her husband.  His indignation at finding
her fortune entirely disposed of among ’charities’ was too deep and
genuine to be concealed. He considered his allowance of two hundred and
fifty a year an ’insult,’ and he became an ardent supporter of the
tyrannic theories of the would-be little Nero of Germany, who permits a
law to be in active force which unjustly provides that all the earnings
of wives shall belong to their husbands.  He considered the
painter-poet-composer-autocrat of the Fatherland an extremely sensible
person, and wished such a law might be carried into effect in England.
He forgot all Delicia’s tenderness, all her beauty, all her
intelligence, all her thoughtfulness and consideration for his personal
comfort; and all her love counted as nothing when set against the manner
in which he considered he had been ’done’ in the results of his marriage
with an ’unsexed’ woman of genius.  But gradually, very gradually, by
some mysterious means, probably best known to Lady Brancewith, who had
never forgiven the slight inflicted on her by his look and manner when
he suddenly refused to drive home with her after promising to do so,
rumour began to whisper the story of his selfishness, and to comment
upon it.

’He had committed no crime.  Oh, no,’ said society, beginning to waver
in its former adoration of his manly perfections, ’but he broke his
wife’s heart!  Yes, that was it!  How he did it nobody quite knew; there
was something about the "Marina" woman at the "Empire," but nothing was
quite certain.  Anyhow, she died very suddenly, and Lord Carlyon was
away at the time.’

And as people nowadays hardly ever express regret for a person’s death,
but immediately ask ’What money has been left behind?’ the gossips had
ample food for reflection, in the fact that nearly forty thousand pounds
was Delicia’s legacy to the poor.

’She must have had a very noble nature,’ said the world at last, when
the shrieking pipe of irritated criticism had died away, and when from
the dark vista of death Delicia’s star of fame shone clear, ’Her husband
was not worthy of her!’

And Paul Valdis, stricken to the soul with a grief beyond expression,
heard this great verdict of the world finally pronounced, with an
anguish of mind, and a despair as tragic as that of Romeo when he found
his lady in her death-like sleep.

’Too late, too late!  My love, my darling!’ he groaned in bitterness of
spirit.  ’What is it worth, all this shouting of praise over your silent
grave?  Oh, my Delicia!  All you sought was love; so little to ask, my
darling, so little in return for all the generous overflow of your
gifted soul!  If you could have loved me; but no!  I would not have had
you change your nature; you would not have been Delicia had you loved
more than once!’

And his eyes rested tenderly on the wistful companion of his musing,
Spartan, who had been left to his care in a very special manner, with a
little note from Delicia herself, which was delivered to him by her
lawyers and which ran thus:—


’DEAR FRIEND,—Take care of Spartan.  He will be contented with you, for
he loves you. Please console him and make him happy for my sake.
DELICIA.’


Valdis knew that little letter by heart; it was more priceless to him
than any other worldly possession.

’Spartan,’ he said now, calling the faithful animal to his side and
taking his shaggy, massive head between his hands, ’Out of the whole
world that calls our Delicia "famous," the world that has gained new
beauty, hope and joy from the blossoming of her genius,—only you and I
loved her!’

Spartan sighed.  He had become a melancholy, meditative creature, and
his great brown eyes were often suffused with tears.  Had he been able
to answer his new master then, he might have said,—

’Honesty is an ordinary quality in dogs, but it is exceptional in men.
Dogs love and are faithful; men desire, and with possession are
faithless!  Yet men, so they say, are higher in the scale of creation
than dogs.  I do not understand this.  If truth, fidelity and devotion
are virtues, then dogs are superior to men; if selfishness, cunning and
hypocrisy are virtues, then men are certainly superior to dogs!  I
cannot argue it out, being only a dog myself; but to me it seems a
strange world!’

And truly it is a strange world to many of us, though perhaps the
strangest and most incomprehensible part of the whole mystery is the
perpetual sacrifice of the good to the bad, and the seeming continual
triumph of conventional lies over central truths.  But, after all, that
triumph is only ’seeming’; and the martyrdom of life and love endured by
thousands of patiently-working, self-denying women will bring its own
reward in the Hereafter, as well as its own terrific vengeance on the
heads of the callous egotists among men who have tortured tender souls
on the rack, or burnt them in the fire, making ’living torches’ of them,
to throw light upon the wicked deeds done in the vast arena of
Sensualism and Materialism.  Not a tear, not a heart-throb of one pure
woman wronged shall escape the eyes of Eternal Justice, or fail to bring
punishment upon the wrong-doer! This we may believe,—this we MUST
believe,—else God Himself would be a demon and the world His Hell!



                                THE END



             Colston & Coy., Limited, Printers, Edinburgh.






*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MURDER OF DELICIA ***




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