IN THE MESHES.
“Take hands and part with laughter,
Touch lips and part with tears,
Once more, and no more after,
Whatever comes with years.
We twain shall not remeasure
The ways that left us twain,
Nor crush the lees of pleasure
From sanguine grapes of pain.”
Lord Delaval has never let a desire of his remain ungratified in his
life, so now, haunted by the beauty of a woman for the space of
twenty-four hours, he resolves to make her acquaintance.
“Her sort are not very particular about the _convenances_,” he says to
himself as he approaches _Numèro 17 Rue de Tronchet_, but it must be
confessed that his courage does not rear its crest much aloft as he
rings the bell, and hears from the _concierge_ that “Mademoiselle Ange
_est chez elle_.”
Still, though his mind is perturbed, his pulses throb, and there is a
mingling of expectation and trepidation in his breast, if his _real_
feelings were finely analysed, it would be found that Mademoiselle’s
beauty repels even while it attracts him to the point of looking on it
closer.
Possibly the daylight may dissipate his delusion, he thinks. And he is
conscious of a sort of half-hope, half-regret, that it may be so.
The apartment, into which he is ushered by Mademoiselle’s own smart
_soubrette_, disappoints him at once.
The decorations are florid and over-done. The big mirrors gleam too
brightly on the sea-green of the walls, the vivid scarlet of the
ottomans, the chairs, the velvet cushions, the too heavily perfumed
atmosphere, the curious medley of _objets d’art_, individually costly,
but making a strange and heterogeneous whole, all seem to his fastidious
eyes as redolent of the Alcazar.
The sunbeams that fall through the rose-tinted blinds are studiously
toned down to a pale mystic light, fit for the languor of magnificent,
heavy-lidded eyes--a Marie Antoinette fan with a jewelled handle, a
flacon of _esprit des millefleurs_, a tiny handkerchief with a Chantilly
border, a volume of De Musset’s poems, lie together, and _bric-à-brac_,
rococo, ormolu, and Sèvres are heaped everywhere in picturesque
confusion. If Mademoiselle Ange has ever desired to be grand, she has
gained her desire.
While he waits, he wonders if the woman is really content, and whether
these things are worth possessing at the price she has to pay for them.
“Gratified vanity goes a precious long way, so I suppose she is happy
and satisfied,” he thinks with a sneer, and a sort of savage sensation
in his heart, that he has not found her in a barely furnished room,
devoid of luxury, and indicative of high moral worth.
It certainly is not marvellous that _La Blonde aux Yeux Noir_ has
created a regular furore in Paris.
As the heavy red velvet portières are pushed aside, and she comes into
the room, the sneer dies right away from his mouth, and he confesses
that this woman is a thing to wonder at.
If she had struck him as beautiful in her diaphanous robes, in her
semi-nudity, with manacles of gold on her neck and arms, fit for an
Eastern Satrap’s love, she strikes him as ten times more attractive in
her day attire.
She wears a deep wine-coloured satin, covered with a profusion of lace;
the bodice is cut square and the sleeves are open and hanging. Her
throat and slender wrists gleam like the purest alabaster under the
delicious rose-tinted light, and wine-coloured bands, studded with small
but rare brilliants, go round them. Her hair, perfectly golden, falls in
light bright curls above her dark straight brows, and is knotted
carelessly, but artistically, in thick glossy coils at the back of her
well-shaped head.
She is thoroughly well got up, she has made the most of herself in every
particular, and yet she has the art of letting her magnificence seem
part and parcel of herself, as if it belonged to her and was not a
studied effect.
And one of Marguerite Ange’s attractions is that she looks so young; she
cannot have reached one score to judge by her flawless face and her
slender figure, which is all bends and curves without an angle in it.
“I scarcely dared to hope that you _would_ come and see me,” she says in
French that is true Parisian, though Delaval has heard that she comes
from Arles, the birth-place of beauty; and she holds out, rather
deprecatingly, a slim white hand, which, of course, he clasps eagerly, a
sharp thrill going through him as he does so.
“Why not?” he asks in as excellent French as her own. “Could I be the
only man to resist the Queen of--_Hearts_?”
And his voice has certainly a fervour and a ring of truth about it,
which perhaps gratifies her, for a little smile, savouring of triumph,
crosses her lips.
She throws herself back among her vivid scarlet cushions, and makes a
gesture to him to sit down beside her.
Then, for the first time, he grows conscious of the presence of a third
person, an old woman, hideous as Hecuba, who has seated herself close to
the portière.
“That’s the sheep-dog Shropshire spoke of,” he thinks.
“Madame Perchard, you can go for a walk if you like. It is a charming
day, and it will do you good. Stay! you might call at the costumier’s,
and desire them to send the domino and mask for the _Bal de l’Opera_
to-morrow.”
Madame Perchard, who looks as if she were well paid and well fed, smiles
feebly and goes on her way, and the others are left _tête-à-tête_.
If anyone had suggested two months ago that he would be seated in a
dimly-lit room, side by side with a music-hall singer, Lord Delaval
would probably have scouted the notion, and resented the speaker’s
impertinence; but now it seems to him as if it is the most natural thing
in the world that he should be here, at Marguerite Ange’s feet
(mentally).
He turns, and looks into her beautiful eyes long and steadfastly,
without speaking, until she, who has grown hardened to the boldest
stare, reddens a little.
“_Eh bien?_” she says smiling, and her voice startles him out of a
reverie. He is not only thinking how exquisitely lovely she is, but
taxing his brain once more to find out _who_ she resembles.
“I was dreaming, I believe, Mademoiselle Ange! Will you forgive me for
coming here like this? My only excuse is that my heart was stronger than
myself,” he says, in a low, passionate voice.
“I forgive you!” she answers. “Ah! you don’t know what I felt the other
night when I first saw you. You are very like someone I once
knew--someone I loved as women only love once in their lives!--someone
who is dead to me, and when I saw you I fainted.”
So, this is why she fainted at sight of him--simply because he happens
to resemble some sweetheart of other days. The idea is not flattering,
and irritates him. Somehow, he had fancied that his own irresistible
attractions had had an effect on her; but he cannot gaze on her and not
soften at once.
“Mademoiselle Ange, why do you live this life?” he says abruptly.
“What harm is there in my life?” she asks. “It suits me!”
“It suits no woman to forfeit respect for admiration--modest life for
public display; but what right have I to talk to you so? To what good
can I talk? For, _is it not a little too late_?”
“You are very hard on me,” she falters. “Ah! I see you will _never_ like
me--for you are prejudiced!”
“What does it matter to you if I am prejudiced? After all, you could
only care for my liking as you care for the liking of a dozen other men.
Come--strangers almost though we are--tell me who is the most favoured
amongst your worshippers! For, in spite of being prejudiced, I have felt
a great interest in you ever since I first looked on your face.”
She glances up at him, and the colour deepens on her cheek.
“Why should you take an interest in me? I am only a poor artist, and
quite below _your_ notice,” she answers, with a sort of proud humility.
“You would not say that if you knew how much I have thought about you,
_how_ your face has haunted me. It has bewitched me--_malgre moi_--I
think. Do you know, Mademoiselle Ange, that if I am like someone you
knew, you are strangely like someone I have seen; someone who certainly
was not so beautiful as you are, or I should remember her to my cost,”
he adds softly.
She flushes still deeper as she listens, then turns the subject by
saying lightly:
“And what am I to tell you about myself? Only that I have a great deal
of admiration and very little love! Perhaps you will think that is all I
ought to expect, being myself! But really I don’t believe anyone has
ever _loved me_!”
“It would indeed, be strange if they hadn’t,” he replies, unable to
remove his gaze from her. “You are deceiving yourself or deceiving _me_.
You are not one to be seen and not loved--_madly loved_! No matter the
dire results of it!” he cries eagerly, and her lids droop under the
infinite passion of his eyes.
“It is very hard to tell the real from the sham in love, and in
everything else I don’t take the trouble to try; I class them all
together, and value them at just as much as they are worth,” she says
with a low laugh. “You asked me which of them I liked best--no _one_;
but somehow, though I only saw you two nights ago, _you_ seem to stand
apart from the rest, you are different _to me_! You won’t be ashamed to
come here now and then? I am not a _grande duchesse_, but still----”
“I’ll come till you tire of me. I am afraid that will be _too soon_. You
women are so capricious, especially lovely ones.”
“To everyone else, perhaps, but _never to you_!” she almost whispers,
looking right into his eyes now with a yearning, wistful look that might
make him lose his head, and he feels already that the best thing he can
do is not to see Mademoiselle Ange again.
But what man has the strength of mind to resist a sudden and violent
passion like this? He thinks, as he gazes infatuated on her, of some
splendidly plumaged bird, of a mirage in the desert, of heavily scented
exotics, of burning skies, or rather he _feels_ all this, for her
prerogative is to inspire sensation. To look at her is a species of
moral dram drinking, and she stands in comparison to better, purer
women, women like Zai, as brandy stands to weak wine and water.
“If Rubens had seen this girl,” Delaval says to himself, “he would not
have sent down for all time a burlesque upon this splendid red and
white, this fleshly magnificence!”
“Do you know I had an instinct when I saw you the other night? I
believed you were my fate,” she says in a dreamy voice, but so suddenly
that he starts a little.
It _is_ startling to think that he should in any way be connected with
the fate of this exquisite woman.
As she sits here before him, her hands clasped loosely together, a sort
of abandon in her lovely figure, the light throws up richer gold on her
hair, the soft folds of her satin gown fall round her moulded form like
the robes of an empress, and he almost groans as he realises how
impossible it would be to choose a life for one gifted with such rare
physical beauty, that would not be hedged round with ten thousand
dangers.
He shudders as he feels that this gift of beauty _must_ be a curse,
dragging her downwards.
“_I_ your fate? God knows _what_ your fate will be! You must have been
mad to choose such an awful life.”
“Because you think me pretty, you say that! What is the use of being
good-looking if it can bring me none of the nice things I desire? I
might as well be ugly and old and senseless, if I had to be shut up
within the narrow limits of most women’s lives. How could I gain power,
the appreciation which is my due, if the public do not see me and judge
for themselves? I wanted to be rich and I am so; I wanted to ride in
carriages like I have seen women do, whose beauty has paled beside mine.
What women care to live always in insignificance, obscurity, and, worst
of all, in _poverty_?” she asks simply.
Lord Delaval is too much _homme du monde_ to shrink from her when she
says all this--when she breathes a creed utterly antagonistic to the
training of _good_ women. He does not revolt even from the evidently
hard realism of her nature; the manner in which she seems to appraise
and value her own attractions, setting no store on the beauty which
womanly women hold as a gift beyond price, but only as a means of
winning money, makes him regard her with a curious feeling that has no
repulsion in it.
“Marguerite,” he says--he has already come to her Christian name, but
among her class this is so common that she probably never even notices
it. “Tell me, have you no heart, no feeling, that you talk so
strangely?”
“_Do_ I talk strangely?” she asks with a bewildering smile. “Do I differ
so much in my words and ways from your high-born English misses--the
women who live in what you call your May Fair, your Belgravia, who sell
themselves for gold? I have heard that it is the trade, the profession,
of those ladies very often to lay themselves out to win some man, no
matter how old he is, how ugly he is, so that he is rich! And then they
give themselves in exchange for money or title. But it is a fair
bargain, is it not so? So much flesh and blood for so much gold, and
your aristocratic world smiles on them and honours them, while it and
you condemn such poor girls as I, who only use my youth and good looks
in the pursuit of my profession. There is only one difference you see,
the matrimonial market is not open to such as me with my soiled name, so
I am obliged to try and make a name and reputation for myself.”
As he listens to her he wonders how a music-hall singer has learned the
astute wisdom of the world, how words flow to her lips so easily, how,
in spite of the surroundings of her daily life, her voice is so sweet
and low and soft, her manner so well-bred, her language so refined.
“You say I have no heart, no feeling?” she goes on, drawing nearer him
and placing her hand upon her breast with a melo-dramatic air, “but what
have I to do with such things? Who has ever taught me what love means?
Cruelty and insult I have suffered. Once--ah! I nearly died because he
whom I adored, trampled on my heart as if it had been dust beneath his
feet! But that is past and gone. I forgive him and I do not resent it,
but love him still. Love, you know, like one gives to the dead. No!
Respect and tenderness to me are just empty sounds. Who in all this
world ever cared whether I suffered, whether I lived or--died? _No
one!_”
Her face glows with emotion, and he, as her wild, reckless words sweep
over his ear, feels as if some spell was at work; the room seems to
stifle him, and Marguerite’s great black eyes seem to blaze and burn
into his brain.
“You see I am quite removed from the pale of men’s sympathy. I cannot
find any happiness in the way other women find it. I am only a
pariah--an outcast.”
“You say that you have no chances of happiness like other women have,
that there are none who would care to marry you! You will find out your
mistake some day, Marguerite. You will find that such a face as yours
can win, not only admiration and love, but a husband,” he answers. And
he actually believes that, if the Gordian knot was not already tied,
there is no knowing what imprudence he might not commit for a creature
as rarely lovely as this!
“Is that true?” she asks, lifting her head with a strange light in her
eyes. “Would men who are far above me--like you, for instance--ever
stoop to me?”
He half turns away from her. Perhaps his good angel is hovering near,
for he comes to the conclusion that it may be best for her and best for
himself if this interview comes to an end.
She seems to have the power of drawing him nearer and nearer to her
every moment.
“When you know more of the world,” he says quietly, “_my_ greatness will
diminish very greatly in your eyes, if it does not cease altogether.
Why, you have raised me aloft, Marguerite, when you don’t even know my
name or the class I belong to!”
She smiles rather bitterly, and a bright pink surges over her face.
“I know who you are--you are Lord Delaval!” she answers in a very low
voice, that lingers a little over his name. “Your friends who were with
you the other night told me.”
“Ah!” he says, “and did they tell you more about me than my name?” he
asks eagerly, for somehow he is very averse to her knowing that he is
married.
“No,” she replies. “Nothing. Wait! They did say that you were not
married.”
He flushes and is silent a second.
“They told you the truth,” he says calmly, but, lax as he is, his
conscience gives a throb of compunction at denying the existence of
Zai--Zai, who loves him with every inch of her heart. “But I _must_ go
now. I have been here too long already, Marguerite,” he adds rather
abruptly.
“You are going?” she asks regretfully, and a tear glistens on her lash.
“Do you know I believe I shall _never_ see you again. Is this the only
time--tell me the truth, it will be kinder!--that my eyes will look on
your face?”
“No. Of _course_ we shall meet again.”
“When?” she asks fervently.
“When? In a very few days, I trust.”
“Will you come here on Wednesday night to supper? Ah, _do_! Let me have
some date to look forward to! Yet, no! Do not come! What use is it for
us to meet again? Are you not as far removed from me as heaven from
earth? as respectability from unrespectability? Say, is there not an
obstacle between us two that we cannot surmount?”
Her lips are quivering. Her heart beats so loudly that he can almost
count its throbs. Truly there is no acting in this. Marguerite has
fallen in love with him at first sight, as he has done with her.
“There is no obstacle between us,” he whispers, once more denying his
wife. “I will come on Wednesday.”
“You will?”
She holds out her hands to him, and as he clasps them closely, he bends
his head and his lips nearly rest upon hers.
But it is only a passing madness. He is not quite lost yet. And
Marguerite, as she looks up at him hastily, sees no trace of passion in
his face.
When she is alone she kisses eagerly the hands he has held in his.
“He will come again, and again!” she says aloud. “He is not a man to
stop at anything if inclination leads him. He spoke of my _beauty_. Oh!
how I thank Heaven for it now--_now_ that I know it will give me my
heart’s desire yet!”
[Illustration]