DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL.
“If one should love you with real love--
Such things have been--
Things that your fair face knows nothing of
It seems--Faustine?
* * * * *
“Curled lips, long since half kissed away,
Still sweet and keen,
You’d give him poison, shall we say?
Or what--Faustine?”
They are much sought after, the little suppers that Mademoiselle Ange
gives on Wednesday nights.
Dainty, _récherché_ feasts, where the guests are chosen more for social
than moral worth, and the _cuisine_ is irreproachable.
Mademoiselle, with the tact of a hostess to the manner born, and the
_savoir-faire_ that she has learned goodness knows how, is careful that
these small feasts shall savour rather of gay Bohemianism than the
conventional dullness that some people deem inseparable from propriety.
But while she regulates the social element, she does not ignore sympathy
between mind and body, and knowing that the nearest way to men’s hearts
is through their palates, secures the services of a noted _chef_, who
drives to the Rue Tronchet in his own _chic_ brougham, and disburses
himself of a hundred-guinea diamond ring before he commences the
momentous operation of trussing an ortolan.
This Wednesday night most of the guests are assembled in the _salon_.
Lounging on a sofa is a superb brunette, perfectly dressed and
bejewelled. She is Leonide Leroux, a dramatic star both in Paris and
London. By her side, languidly stroking his moustache, sits Ivan
Scoboloff, a Russian baron with more money than brains. Beside these are
little Rose Marigny, soubrette at the Theatre des Galléries, Monsieur
Chavard, dramatic critic and author, and Louis, Marquis de Belcour, a
good-looking giant and as rich as Crœsus.
Mademoiselle Ange is not herself to-night. Lovely, of course, but with
the sparkle of her beauty lacking, as she reclines in a red velvet
chair, in an artistic pose, and gives small heed to the little
tittle-tattle around.
The last Parisian scandal is discussed, the last _mot_ of the coulisses
related, but, contrary to her usual habit, Marguerite is evidently
_distraite_, and every now and then she throws anxious glances towards
the door.
The full light of the crystal chandelier falls upon the snowy white of
her skin, the exquisite rose and opal tints of her lips and cheeks, and
her large black eyes full of passion and fire.
The strongest glare can only show up her brilliance, and find no flaw or
blemish in the marvellous colouring that looks as if it was Nature’s own
handiwork.
All that the best Parisian _modiste_ can do has been done for her, and
she is exceptionally well got up this evening; for she has abandoned her
usual preference for gorgeous hues and costly heavy materials, and her
trailing skirts of purest white fall in cloud-like masses round her as
she leans back with the mien of a young empress. Opals and brilliants
fasten the laces on her bosom, and a single tropical flower, with
blood-red petals, gleams near her slender throat.
Suddenly a radiant light flashes in her restless eyes. The _portière_ is
held back, and Lord Delaval enters.
As he approaches, a vivid flush of pleasure surges over her lovely face,
and, as he takes her hand, she says, in a low, reproachful voice:
“I feared so much you were not coming, but you have come! Will you take
me in?”
He offers her his arm and at this moment catches sight of De Belcour,
who is looking at him with ill-concealed jealousy and vexation. He has
met this man before, a year or two ago, and nods recognition, then,
turning towards his companion, forgets his existence.
The _portière_ is drawn aside, and they enter the supper-room. On the
table are antique silver tripods holding rare hothouse flowers and
richest fruit, vases of exquisite camellias of every colour are
interspersed between, and the whole are lit up by the soft light of
waxen tapers. The supper itself is one of those which has made Monsieur
Hector a king of _chefs_. Meats have lost their identity in the
elaboration of the flavouring, cunning dishes are ingeniously devised to
give zest to appetites already satiated. Rhenish of the rarest bouquet
and Comet claret, tribute from the cellar of a youthful Duc, contribute
to the hilarious enjoyment of the company.
The talk is animated, bright sallies and sharp repartee and racy
anecdotes succeed one another, and amidst it all, pleasant as it is,
Lord Delaval’s conscience rather smites him for being where he is, while
De Belcour waxes momentarily more wrathful at Mademoiselle Ange’s
evident partiality for the comparative stranger--“_ce milord Anglais_!”
“Are these to-night’s spoils, Mademoiselle,” asks Ivan Scoboloff, taking
a lovely red camellia bud from its vase and quietly putting it into his
button-hole. “I believe all the conservatories are pillaged for your
especial benefit, and you’ll turn Paris into a wilderness.”
“I am afraid my reign will last too short a while for that!” Marguerite
laughs, but in a tone rather tinged with regret, as she carelessly
plucks an exquisite Sofrano rose to pieces, that lies by her plate. “I
am only the rage of an hour, the fashion of a season, you know!”
“If you _did_ lay Paris waste, what matter?” asks De Belcour, “and
while a laurel grows, you should have its tribute, for are you not the
Queen of--Hearts?”
“I hate laurels, they are so gloomy, and I love flowers! though they are
not so lasting! still I prefer them, and as for tributes, of course the
praises of the public are for the singer and not for the woman! and I
like it so. I love to be applauded when I sing. It is life and soul to
me, but as for individual tributes, I don’t want them. I wonder why
people pester me with baubles and with _billets doux_. Heaven knows I
would rather be without them!” She speaks contemptuously, her eyes are
scornful, and it is easy to see that she is absolutely in earnest.
“How inscrutable is woman!” Delaval remarks, with a little of his old
cynicism; “she despises the admiration she does all her best to inspire,
and repudiates the passion she has taken an immense trouble to create!”
“Inscrutable you call us?” Marguerite answers, her face sparkling with
animation. “And yet you affect to read us so easily! We are not
inscrutable, I think, but we are inconsistent perhaps--cold and
passionate, selfish and self-denying, tender and heartless, kind and
cold, a mixture of the serpent and the dove; gentle as a faithful hound
when we love, fierce and relentless as the hawk to the quarry when we
hate, or have cause for revenge!”
“A list of contradictions that prove you _are_ inscrutable, _ma belle_!”
observes Chavard, filling up his glass with Roussillion for the fifth
time.
“I thought _you_ knew us better; it is your trade,” Marguerite says
carelessly, peeling a peach whose bloom is less lovely than her own. “I
wonder when men who want to win our love will cease to woo us? The prize
beyond a woman’s reach is always the most coveted; it has been so since
Paradise; it will be so for all eternity!”
Her voice sinks lower as she says this, and there is quite a wistful
look in her eyes as she turns them towards Delaval, that evinces them to
be no affectation, but a true echo of her heart.
“Don’t let us talk of love, _ma chère_,” Leonide Leroux breaks in
brightly. “It is the wettest blanket in the world. Love may be a
charming companion, but we all know it is an intolerable master. It’s
like this absinthe, delicious but dangerous; once let it get hold of
you--_eh bien!_--the rest I know nothing about, but I have heard it is
too terrible!”
“I cannot think what the devil people fall in love for,” Ivan Scoboloff
murmurs languidly; “it’s an amusement that only suits boys and girls,
but after five-and-twenty no sane man would think of such folly.”
“And yet I have seen you go in for it, although I fancy you have arrived
at a little beyond twenty-five,” Chavard says quietly, with a meaning
glance at Leonide Leroux.
“I am a girl, but I have never gone in for love,” Rose Marigny cries in
her bird-like voice.
“That’s well done, Mademoiselle Rose; mind you keep to that. No love is
half so sweet as _caramels à la vanille_ or _marrons glacés_,”
Mademoiselle Leroux answers, as she piles the above comestibles on her
plate.
Meanwhile De Belcour joins very little in either conversation or
laughter, and grows momentarily more ill at ease. Desperately jealous by
nature, it irritates him almost beyond endurance to see Marguerite
bestow her attention upon any other man.
Hitherto he has hugged to his bosom the notion that she is invariably
cold--to him only she has been kind of late, and her kindness has made a
great impression on him, simply from its contrast to the capricious
manner she has towards others.
Is the love which he had begun to persuade himself she bore him nothing
but a passing caprice after all--an _amourette_ of an hour--to be
abandoned when it has lost the zest of freshness? Irritation, wounded
_amour propre_, fierce jealousy, all mingle together in his breast and
make a formidable whole when the fear creeps on him that the woman he
loves to fatuous stupidity sets so little value on his feelings that she
is ready to sacrifice it to the gratification of a passing whim, the
transient excitement of a new conquest.
For what else, he argues, and not without reason on his side, can prompt
her to look and speak to Lord Delaval with eyes and lips that too truly
simulate a love she cannot possibly feel for him, stranger as he is?
Every word, every glance she gives, tortures this impassioned, impetuous
Frenchman, and he determines to dog her steps and her house to find out
the mystery that drives him wild.
“When’s the new play coming out, Chavard?” Scoboloff asks, gloating,
_gourmet_ as he is, on the lusciousness of an apricot before him.
Chavard has written a play which his clique declare will take Paris by
storm, and, intolerably vain of his brains, he is of their opinion.
“In about a month or two,” he answers.
“Shocking bad time for that sort of thing, isn’t it? No one will be left
in Paris.”
“No one at all to speak of--only about a couple of millions!”
“Keep your smartness for your play, _mon cher_. Of course I meant no one
in Society.”
“I don’t mind _that_. You swells are so phlegmatic, you see. The
_canaille_ laugh, and clap, and hoot, and shout at my work, and
thoroughly appreciate my pet points, but the golden youth sleep always,
snore even, through my best situations.”
“Quite true!” cries Leonide Leroux. “I have often noticed them yawn when
I have been dying _so_ beautifully in the Sphinx. What makes swells so
sleepy, I wonder?”
“Affectation--a little _ennui_--and a great deal of dinner,” says
Chavard.
“Let us go into the drawing-room and have some music,” Marguerite
suggests, feeling possibly that at the supper-table she and Lord Delaval
are too much _en evidence_.
So they all go, and Leonide Leroux sings them _Il Bacio_ deliciously in
a lovely soprano, while Marguerite lounges as usual in a large chair,
and her eyes glance frequently at a group near the window of smokers,
and which is composed of Scoboloff, Delaval and Rose Marigny, who puffs
away prettily at a dainty _Sultan doux_, and evidently is no novice in
the accomplishment.
Presently De Belcour draws near his hostess--De Belcour, with half his
beauty spoiled by scowling eyes and a frown on his brow.
“Why waste your glances on people who don’t appreciate them?” he asks,
in a low voice that has a sullen ring in it.
She laughs, and does not answer, so he pulls viciously at his long
moustache to vent his anger on something, since he is afraid to vent it
on her.
“You spoke the truth at supper to-night, Marguerite, when you said to
woo a woman was a sure way not to win her; and yet, poets rave about the
softness and the tenderness of women, and call them the link that
unites earth with Heaven. _Sapristi!_ for cold-blooded cruelty, for
passionless devilment, a woman is to a man what a hawk is to a dove, a
tigress to a tame cat!”
Marguerite elevates her pencilled brows slightly.
“I wish you would try and be less violent and abusive in your talk,
Monsieur le Marquis: if you _must_ talk to me, let the talk be
endurable, anyway.”
He clenches his teeth to suppress the oath that rises to his lips.
“Marguerite! listen to me! Tell me, I implore of you, what spirit
possesses you to-night? Is it your vanity, your love of fresh victories,
that induces you to treat me like this? Marguerite, for the love of
Heaven!--for the sake of what we have been to each other--do not make
me suffer like this.”
But he might as well plead to a marble pillar.
“I wish you would go and smoke, and not talk nonsense,” she says, almost
in a whisper, with a flush of annoyance on her cheek. “I only wish _I_
could smoke.”
“If _that_ is your only ambition, do it; most things _end in smoke_,” he
replies meaningly and savagely; and while all this is going on, Lord
Delaval watches her covertly, and it is dear incense to his vanity when
he marks that De Belcour moves away from the evident contest, foiled and
angry. “After all, perhaps Shropshire and Silverlake wronged her,” he
thinks, and rather than the Frenchman shall monopolise her, he throws
away his half-smoked cigar and saunters towards her.
Her eyes flash with pleasure as he approaches--her cheeks glow--and she
listens enraptured to his voice.
Yes! It is evidently love at first sight with her, and to this man she
is certainly not acting a part. As her sweet warm breath sweeps past
him, he feels the sensuous delirium of a dream, he is intoxicated by the
power of her beauty; and she, hard and cold as she really is, deadly in
her revenge, cruel in her greed of love, relentless in her hate, her
heart yearns to him with quite a real feeling, a feeling which, though
wicked and worthless in itself, yet ennobles her to a certain extent,
for it makes her feel her own utter unworthiness.
“Stay a few minutes,” she whispers, as he rises among the other guests
for his adieux.
And so he stays, but in his mind’s eye he sees his wife’s face, and--man
of the world as he is, flirt, _vaurien_, lax to the last degree--his
deep blue eyes actually glisten with generous remorse.
“Poor little woman!” he thinks. “By Jove! what an awful fool I was to
come here.”
He calls himself a fool, but fool is a mild term to apply to a man who
deliberately seeks temptation, knowing himself to be uncommonly weak in
the flesh; nevertheless, he stays a little longer, and yet a little
longer.
Marguerite Ange leans back in a pose that would drive a sculptor into a
phrensy of delight. The fragrance of her golden hair goes out to him,
and her charming red lips tempt dreadfully.
How he anathematises inwardly the _convenances_ so dear to his
mother-in-law’s heart!
The conventionalities (he does not dream of calling them by any more
serious term) that bid him and her sit apart.
“It is growing very late, I am afraid,” he says, after a little.
“If it is, what matter?”
“I am afraid!”
“Afraid! Afraid of whom?”
“Afraid of _myself_,” he answers.
“Is that really true?”
“Quite, _quite_ true, so help me Heaven! Marguerite, you don’t _really_
doubt me! Have you lived till now, and never learnt that a man often
fears to try and climb to the highest pinnacle of his desire, be it for
fame, or fortune, or bliss, lest he fall before he has tasted it. Don’t
you know what your face can do to a man?”
She shakes her head, and the bright light glistening on it seems to turn
each tress to living gold.
“It can send him into a dream of Heaven! fire his soul with rapture, or
drive him mad with disappointment and regret!”
He pauses, a little breathless. Sentiment is not a plant of common or
spontaneous growth in our aristocracy, and it is not at all in Lord
Delaval’s line.
The age is far too practical for it, more’s the pity.
He is, in fact, a little astonished at his flight of eloquence, mediocre
though it be, and a little silence ensues.
Then Marguerite Ange leans forward, puts her white hand, all sparkling
with gems, on his arm and looks up in his face.
He is certainly the handsomest man she has ever seen.
“The _last_ would never be _your_ fate,” she says, in a low, thrilling
tone; but he hears her, of course. Trust a man, even if he is partially
deaf, not to hear any sort of incense to his vanity, if he can hear
nothing else; and this man is especially vain, from the top of his blond
head to the sole of his well-made boot.
His ultramarine eyes kindle at once into great fires, and the red spots
glow on his cheeks to match.
“Do you know what your face has done to me, Marguerite?” he asks slowly.
She does not reply, but somehow this face of hers seems to have come
nearer him, and through a bewildered haze he sees nothing but a pair of
lips, soft and maddening; a pair of eyes, black as midnight, lustrous as
two stars, with a depth of passion in their liquid depths that stirs his
pulse and makes his head whirl.
It is a picture that brings oblivion of everything, save of dangerous
proximity.
“I told you a falsehood the other day, Marguerite, when I said I was not
married. I _am_ married! I have not been married two years, and I
married for _love_. My wife loves me with all her soul, and it would
break her heart to lose me, and yet--Heaven forgive me!--I feel to-night
as if I _hated her_! because she seems to rise up between you and me.”
She averts her face, and a little smile passes quickly over her mouth--a
smile that has triumph in it, a smile that is absolutely _wicked_.
“When I entered this house to-night something told me of the end. It
seems utter folly for a man to go mad over a woman’s face like this,
doesn’t it? But, Marguerite, it _is_ so. I _have_ gone mad, I believe,
for, strangers as we were but three short days ago, I love you as I
_never_ loved anyone before! I swear it, Marguerite!”
She does not smile now at his rhapsody. She knows he is watching her,
and he sees nothing but the sweetest, tenderest light in the wonderful
eyes, a softer look on the perfect mouth.
“Strange!” she says simply, “that we should have felt the same
to-night--that----”
“_We?_” he interrupts. “Say that again, Marguerite!”
“Yes! Did I not tell you the first time we spoke that you were--_my
fate_!” And Marguerite’s head is very close to his shoulder, and her
lips seem to seek his. But she starts away hastily as De Belcour,
unannounced, strides into the room.
“Pardon, Mademoiselle!” he says through his set teeth, “I forgot my
gloves! I am sorry to have interrupted you.”
And Marguerite, forgetting the conventional smile which is one of the
tricks of her trade, sits silent and a little uncomfortable.
“We may as well walk a little way together,” Lord Delaval says quietly.
“Mademoiselle’s society is so charming, I really forgot the hour!”