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!’