DIDO.
The armed neutrality between man and wife continued, and the domestic
sky at Fareham House was dark and depressing. Lady Fareham, who had
hitherto been remarkable for a girlish amiability of speech which went
well with her girlish beauty, became now the height of the mode for
acidity and slander. The worst of the evil speakers on her ladyship’s
visiting-day flavoured the China tea with no bitterer allusions than
those that fell from the rosy lips of the hostess. And, for the
colouring of those lips, which once owed their vermeil tint only to
nature, Lady Fareham was now dependent upon Mrs. Lewin, as well as for
the carnation of cheeks that looked pallid and sunken in the glass
which reflected the sad mourning face.
Mrs. Lewin brought roses and lilies in her queer little china pots and
powder boxes, pencils and brushes, perfumes and washes without number.
It cost as much to keep a complexion as to keep a horse. And Mrs. Lewin
was infinitely useful at this juncture, since she called every day at
St. James’s Street, to carry a lace cravat, or a ribbon, or a flask of
essence to the invalid languishing in lodgings there, and visited by
all the town, except Fareham and his wife. De Malfort had lain for a
fortnight at Lady Castlemaine’s house, alternately petted and neglected
by his fair hostess, as the fit took her, since she showed herself ever
of the chameleon breed, and hovered betwixt angel and devil. His
surgeon told him in confidence that when once his wound was healed
enough to allow his removal, the sooner he quitted that feverish
company the better it would be for his chance of a speedy
convalescence. So, at the end of the second week, he was moved in a
covered litter to his own lodgings, where his faithful valet, who had
followed his fortunes since he came to man’s estate, was quite capable
of nursing him.
The town soon discovered the breach between Lord Fareham and his
friend—a breach commented upon with many shoulder-shrugs, and not a few
coarse innuendoes. Lady Lucretia Topham insisted upon making her way to
the sick man’s room, in the teeth of messages delivered by his valet,
which, even to a less intelligent mind than Lady Lucretia’s, might have
conveyed the fact that she was not wanted. She flung herself on her
knees by De Malfort’s bed, and wept and raved at the brutality which
had deprived the world of his charming company—and herself of the only
man she had ever loved. De Malfort, fevered and vexed at her intrusion,
and at this renewal of fires long burnt out, had yet discretion enough
to threaten her with his dire displeasure if she betrayed the secret of
his illness.
“I have sworn Dangerfield and Masaroon to silence,” he said. “Except
servants, who have been paid to keep mute, you are the only other
witness of our quarrel; and if the story becomes town talk, I shall
know whose busy tongue set it going—and then—well, there are things I
might tell that your ladyship would hardly like the world to know.”
“Traitor! If your purse has accommodated me once in a way when luck has
been adverse——”
“Oh, madam, you cannot think me base enough to blab of a money
transaction with a lady. There are secrets more tender—more romantic.”
“Those secrets can be easily denied, wretch. However, I know you would
not injure me with a husband so odious and tyrannical that I stood
excused in advance for inconstancy when I stooped to wed country
manners and stubborn ignorance. Indeed, mon ami, if you will but take
pains to recover, I will never breathe a word about the duel; but
if—if—” a sob indicated the tragic possibility which Lady Lucretia
dared not put into words—“I will do all that a weak woman can do to get
Fareham hanged for murder. There has never been a peer hanged in
England, I believe. He should be the first.”
“Dear soul, there need be no hanging! I have been on the mending hand
for a week, or my doctors would not have let you upstairs. There, go,
my pretty Lucrèce; but if your milliner or your shoemaker is pressing,
there are a few jacobuses in the right-hand drawer of yonder
escritoire, and you may as well take them as leave them for my valet to
steal. He is one of those excellent old servants who make no
distinctions, and he robs me as freely as he robbed my father before
me.”
“Mrs. Lewin is always pressing,” sighed Lady Lucretia. “She made me a
gown like that of Lady Fareham’s, for which you were all eyes. I
ordered the brocade to please you; and now I am wearing it when you are
not at Whitehall. Well, as you are so kind, I will be your debtor for
another trifling loan. It is wicked to leave money where it tempts a
good servant to dishonesty. Ah, Henri”—she was pocketing the gold as
she talked—“if ten years of my life could save you ten days of pain and
fever, how gladly would I give them to you!”
“Ah, douce, if there were a market for the exchange of such
commodities, what a roaring trade would be done there! I never loved a
woman yet but she offered me her life, or an instalment of it.”
“I have emptied your drawer,” laughing coyly. “There is just enough to
keep Lewin in good humour till you are well again, and we can be
partners at basset.”
“It will be very long before I play basset in London.”
“Oh, but indeed you will soon be well.”
“Well enough to change the scene, I hope. It needs change of places and
persons to make life bearable. I long to be at the Louvre again, to see
a play by Molière’s company, as only they can act, instead of the
loathsome translations we get here, in which all that there is of wit
and charm in the original is transmuted to coarseness and vulgarity.
When I leave this bed, Lucrèce, it will be for Paris.”
“Why, it will be ages before you are strong enough for such a journey.”
“Oh, I will risk that. I hate London so badly, that to escape from it
will work a miraculous cure for me.”
An armed neutrality! Even the children felt the change in the
atmosphere of home, and nestled closer to their aunt, who never changed
to them.
“Father mostly looks angry,” Henriette complained, “and mother is
always unhappy, if she is not laughing and talking in the midst of
company; and neither of them ever seems to want me. I wish I was grown
up, so that I could be maid of honour to the Queen or the Duchess, and
live at Whitehall. Mademoiselle told me that there is always life and
pleasure at Court.”
“Your father does not love the Court, dearest, and mademoiselle should
be wiser than to talk to you of such things, when she is here to teach
you dancing and French literature.”
“Mademoiselle” was a governess lately imported from Paris, recommended
by Mademoiselle Scudéry, and full of high-flown ideas expressed in
high-flown language. All Paris had laughed at Molière’s _Precieuses
Ridicules_; but the Précieuses themselves, and their friends, protested
that the popular farce was aimed only at the low-born imitators of
those great ladies who had originated the school of superfine culture
and romantic aspirations.
“Sapho” herself, in tracing her own portrait with a careful and
elaborate pencil, told the world how shamefully she had been imitated
by the spurious middle-class Saphos, who set up their salons, and vied
with the sacred house of Rambouillet, and the privileged coterie of the
Rue de Temple.
Lady Fareham had not ceased to believe in her dear, plain, witty
Scudéry, and was delighted to secure a governess of her choosing,
whereby Papillon, who loved freedom and idleness, and hated lessons of
all kinds, was set down to write themes upon chivalry, politeness,
benevolence, pride, war, and other abstractions; or to fill in
bouts-rimés, by way of enlarging her acquaintance with the French
language, which she had chattered freely all her life. Mademoiselle
insisted upon all the niceties of phraseology as discussed in the Rue
Saint Thomas du Louvre.
There had been a change of late in Fareham’s manner to his
sister-in-law, a change refreshing to her troubled spirit as mercy,
that gentle dew from heaven, to the criminal. He had been kinder; and
though he spent very few of his hours with the women of his household,
he had talked to Angela somewhat in the friendly tone of those fondly
remembered days at Chilton, when he had taught her to row and ride, to
manage a spirited palfrey and fly a falcon, and had been in all things
her mentor and friend. He seemed less oppressed with gloom as time went
on, but had his sullen fits still, and, after being kind and courteous
to wife and sister, and playful with his children, would leave them
suddenly, and return no more to the saloon or drawing-room that
evening. Yet on the whole the sky was lightening. He ignored Hyacinth’s
resentment, endured her pettishness, and was studiously polite to her.
It was on Lady Fareham’s visiting-day, deep in that very severe winter,
that some news was told her which came like a thunder-clap, and which
it needed all the weak soul’s power of self-repression to suffer
without swooning or hysterics.
Lady Sarah Tewkesbury, gorgeous in velvet and fur, her thickly painted
countenance framed in a furred hood, entered fussily upon a little
coterie in which Masaroon, vapouring about the last performance at the
King’s theatre, was the principal figure.
“There was a little woman spoke the epilogue,” he said, “a little
creature in a monstrous big hat, as large and as round as a cart-wheel,
which vastly amused his Majesty.”
“The hat?”
“Nay, it was woman and hat. The thing is so small it might have been
scarce noticed without the hat, but it has a pretty little,
insignificant, crumpled face, and laughs all over its face till it has
no eyes, and then stops laughing suddenly, and the eyes shine out,
twinkling and dancing like stars reflected in running water, and it
stamps its little foot upon the stage in a comic passion—and—_nous
verrons_. It sold oranges in the pit, folks tell me, a year ago. It may
be selling sinecures and captaincies in a year or two, and putting
another shilling in the pound upon land.”
“Is it that brazen little comedy actress you are talking of, Masaroon?”
Lady Sarah asked, when she had exchanged curtsies with the ladies of
the company, and established herself on the most comfortable tabouret,
near Lady Fareham’s tea-table; “Mrs. Glyn—Wynn—Gwyn? I wonder a man of
wit can notice such a vulgar creature, a she-jack-pudden, fit only to
please the rabble in the gallery.”
“Ay, but there is a finer sort of rabble—a rabble of quality—beginning
with his Majesty, that are always pleased with anything new. And this
little creature is as fresh as a spring morning. To see her laugh, to
hear the ring of it, clear and sweet as a skylark’s song! On my life,
madam, the town has a new toy; and Mrs. Gwyn will be the rage in high
quarters. You should have seen Castlemaine’s scowl when Rowley laughed,
and ducked under the box almost, in an ecstasy of amusement at the huge
hat.”
“Lady Castlemaine’s brow would thunder-cloud if his Majesty looked at a
fly on a window-pane. But she has something else to provoke her frowns
to-day.”
“What is that, chère dame?” asked Hyacinth, snatching a favourite fan
from Sir Ralph, who was teasing one of the Blenheims with African
feathers that were almost priceless.
“The desertion of an old friend. The Comte de Malfort has left
England.”
Lady Fareham turned livid under her rouge. Angela ran to her and leant
over her, upon a pretence of rescuing the fan and chiding the dogs; and
so contrived to screen her sister’s change of complexion from the
malignity of her dearest friends.
“Left England! Why, he is confined to his bed with a fever!” Hyacinth
said faintly, when she had somewhat recovered from the shock.
“Nay, it seems that he began to go abroad last week, but would see no
company, except a confidential friend or so. He left London this
morning for Dover.”
“No doubt he has business in Burgundy, where his estate is, and at
Paris, where he is of importance at the Court,” said Hyacinth, as
lightly as she could; “but I’ll wager anything anybody likes that he
will be in London again in a month.”
“I’ll take you for those black pearls in your ears, ma mie,” said Lady
Sarah. “His furniture is to be sold by auction next week. I saw a bill
on the house this afternoon. It is sudden! Perhaps the Castlemaine had
become too exacting!”
“Castlemaine!” faltered Hyacinth, agitated beyond her power of
self-control. “Why, what is she to him more than she is to other men?”
“Very little, perhaps,” said Sir Ralph, and then everybody laughed, and
Hyacinth felt herself sitting among them like a child, understanding
nothing of their smiles and shrugs, the malice in their sly interchange
of glances.
She sat among them feeling as if her heart were turned to stone. He had
left the country without even bidding her farewell—her faithful slave,
upon whose devotion she counted as surely as upon the rising of the
sun. Whatever her husband might do to separate her from this friend of
her girlhood, she had feared no defection upon De Malfort’s part. He
would always be near at hand, waiting and watching for the happier days
that were to smile upon their innocent loves. She had written to him
every day during his illness. Good Mrs. Lewin had taken the letters to
him, and had brought her his replies. He had not written so often, or
at such length, as she, and had pleaded the languor of convalescence as
his excuse; but all his billets-doux had been in the same delicious
hyperbole, the language of the Pays du Tendre. She sat silent while her
visitors talked about him, plucking a reputation as mercilessly as a
kitchen wench plucks a fowl. He was gone. He had left the country deep
in debt. It was his landlord who had stuck up that notice of a sale by
auction. Tailors and shoemakers, perruquiers and perfumers were
bewailing his flight.
So much for the sordid side of things. But what of those numerous
affairs of the heart—those entanglements which had made his life one
long intrigue?
Lady Sarah sat simpering and nodding as Masaroon whispered close in her
ear.
Barbara? Oh, that was almost as old as the story of Antony and
Cleopatra. She had paid his debts—and he had paid hers. Their purse had
been in common. And the handsome maid of honour? Ah, poor silly soul!
That was a horrid, ugly business, and his Majesty’s part in it the
horridest. And Mrs. Levington, the rich silk mercer’s wife? That was a
serious attachment. It was said that the husband attempted poison, when
De Malfort refused him the satisfaction of a gentleman. And the poor
woman was sent to die of _ennui_ and rheumatism in a castle among the
Irish bogs, where her citizen husband had set up as a landed squire.
The fine company discussed all these foul stories with gusto,
insinuating much more than they expressed in words. Never until to-day
had they spoken so freely of De Malfort in Lady Fareham’s presence; but
the story had got about of a breach between Hyacinth and her admirer,
and it was supposed that any abuse of the defaulter would be pleasant
in her ears. And then, he was ruined and gone; and there is no
vulture’s feast sweeter than to banquet upon a departed rival’s
character.
Hyacinth listened in dull silence, as if her sensations were suddenly
benumbed. She felt nothing but a horrible surprise. Her lover—her
platonic lover—that other half of her mind and heart—with whom she had
been in such tender sympathy, in unison of spirit, so subtle that the
same thoughts sprang up simultaneously in the minds of each, the same
language leapt to their lips, and they laughed to find their words
alike. It had been only a shallow woman’s shallow love—but trivial woes
are tragedies for trivial minds; and when her guests had gradually
melted away, dispersing themselves with reciprocal curtsies and airy
compliments, elegant in their modish iniquity as a troop of vicious
fairies—Hyacinth stood on the hearth where they had left her, a statue
of despair.
Angela went to her, when the stately double doors had closed on the
last of the gossips and lackeys, and they two were alone amidst the
spacious splendour. The younger sister hugged the elder to her breast,
and kissed her, and cried over her, like a mother comforting her
disappointed child.
“Don’t heed that shameful talk, dearest. No character is safe with
them. Be sure Monsieur de Malfort is not the reprobate they would make
him. You have known him nearly all your life. You know him too well to
judge him by the idle talk of the town.”
“No, no; I have never known him. He has always worn a mask. He is as
false as Satan. Don’t talk to me—don’t kiss me, child. You have smeared
my face horribly with your kisses and tears. Your pity drives me mad.
How can you understand these things—you who have never loved any one?
What can you know of what women feel? There, silly fool! you are
trembling as if I had hit you,” as Angela withdrew her arms suddenly,
and stood aloof. “I have been a virtuous wife, sister, in a town where
scarce one woman in ten is true to her marriage vows. I have never
sinned against my husband; but I have never loved him. Henri had my
heart before I knew what the word, love meant; and in all these years
we have loved each other with the purest, noblest affection—at least he
made me believe my love was reciprocated. We have enjoyed a most
exquisite communion of thought and feeling. His letters—you shall read
his letters some day—so noble, so brilliant—all poetry, and chivalry,
and wit. I lived upon his letters when fate parted us. And when he
followed us to England, I thought it was for my sake that he came—only
for me. And to hear that he was her lover—hers—that woman! To know that
he came to me—with sweetest words upon his lips—knelt to kiss the tips
of my fingers—as if it were a privilege to die for—from her arms, from
her caresses—the wickedest woman in England—and the loveliest!”
“Dear Hyacinth, it was a childish dream—and you have awakened! You will
live to be glad of being recalled from falsehood to truth. Your husband
is worth fifty De Malforts, did you but know it. Oh, dearest, give him
your heart who ought to be its only master. Indeed he is worthy. He
stands apart—an honourable, nobly thinking man in a world that is full
of libertines. Be sure he deserves your love.”
“Don’t preach to me, child! If you could give me a sleeping-draught
that would blot out memory for ever—make me forget my childhood in the
Marais—my youth at St. Germain—the dances at the Louvre—all the days
when I was happiest: why, then, perhaps, you might make me in love with
Lord Fareham.”
“You will begin a new life, sister, now De Malfort is gone.”
“I will never forgive him for going!” cried Hyacinth, passionately.
“Never—never! To give me no note of warning! To sneak away like a thief
who had stolen my diamonds! To fly for debt, too, and not come to me
for money! Why have I a fortune, if not to help those I love? But—if he
was that woman’s lover—I will never see his face again—never speak his
name—never—from the moment I am convinced of that hellish
treason—never! Her lover! Lady Castlemaine’s! We have laughed at her,
together! Her lover! And there were other women those spiteful wretches
talked about just now—a tradesman’s wife! Oh, how hateful, how hateful
it all is! Angela, if it is true, I shall go mad!”
“Dearest, to you he was but a friend—and though you may be sorry he was
so great a sinner, his sins cannot concern your happiness——”
“What! not to know him a profligate? The man to whom I gave a chaste
woman’s love! Angela, that night, in the ruined abbey, I let him kiss
me. Yes, for one moment I was in his arms—and his lips were on mine.
And he had kissed her—the same night perhaps. Her tainted kisses were
on his lips. And it was you who saved me! Dear sister, I owe you more
than life—I might have given myself to everlasting shame that night.
God knows! I was in his power—her lover—judging all women, perhaps, by
his knowledge of that——”
The epithet which closed the sentence was not a word for a woman’s
lips; but it was wrung from the soreness of a woman’s wounded heart.
Hyacinth flung herself distractedly into her sister’s arms.
“You saved me!” she cried, hysterically. “He wanted me to go to Dover
with him—back to France—where we were so happy. He knelt to me, and I
refused him; but he prayed me again and again; and if you had not come
to rescue me, should I have gone on saying no? God knows if my courage
would have held out. There were tears in his eyes. He swore that he had
never loved any one upon this earth as he loved me. Hypocrite!
Deceiver—liar! He loved that woman! Twenty times handsomer than ever I
was—a hundred times more wicked. It is the wicked women that are best
loved, Angela, remember that. Oh, bless you for coming to save me! You
saved Fareham’s life in the plague year. You saved me from everlasting
misery. You are our guardian angel!”
“Ah, dearest, if love could guard you, I might deserve that name——”
It was late in the same evening that Lady Fareham’s maid came to her
bed-chamber to inquire if she would be pleased to see Mrs. Lewin, who
had brought a pattern of a new French bodice, with her humble apologies
for waiting on her ladyship so late.
Her ladyship would see Mrs. Lewin. She started up from the sofa where
she had been lying, her forehead bound with a handkerchief steeped in
Hungary water. She was all excitement.
“Bring her here instantly!” she said, and the interval necessary to
conduct the milliner up the grand staircase and along the gallery
seemed an age to Hyacinth’s impatience.
“Well? Have you a letter for me?” she asked, when her woman had
retired, and Mrs. Lewin had bustled and curtsied across the room.
“In truly, my lady; and I have to ask your ladyship’s pardon for not
bringing it early this morning, when his honour gave it to me with his
own hand out of ‘his travelling carriage. And very white and wasted he
looked, dear gentleman, not fit for a voyage to France in this severe
weather. And I was to carry you his letter immediately; but, eh, gud!
your ladyship, there was never such a business as mine for surprises. I
was putting on my cloak to step out with your ladyship’s letter, when a
coach, with a footman in the royal undress livery, sets down at my
door, and one of the Duchess’s women had come to fetch me to her
Highness; and there I was kept in her Highness’s chamber half the
morning, disputing over a paduasoy for the Shrove Tuesday
masquerade—for her Highness gets somewhat bulky, and is not easy to
dress to her advantage or to my credit—though she is a beauty compared
with the Queen, who still hankers after her hideous Portuguese
fashions——”
“And employs your rival, Madame Marifleur——”
“Marifleur! If your ladyship knew the creature as well as I do, you’d
call her Sally Cramp.”
“I never can remember a low English name. Marifleur seems to promise
all that there is of the most graceful and airy in a ruffled sleeve and
a ribbon shoulder-knot.”
“I am glad to see your ladyship is in such good spirits,” said the
milliner, wondering at Lady Fareham’s flushed cheeks and brilliant
eyes.
They were brilliant with a somewhat glassy brightness, and there was a
touch of hysteria in her manner. Mrs. Lewin thought she had been
drinking. Many of her customers ended that way—took to cognac and
ratafia, when choicer pleasures were exhausted and wrinkles began to
show through their paint.
Hyacinth was reading De Malfort’s letter as she talked, moving about
the room a little, and then stopping in front of the fireplace, where
the light from two clusters of wax candles shone down upon the finely
written page.
Mrs. Lewin watched her for a few minutes, and then produced some pieces
of silk out of her muff.
“I made so bold as to bring your ladyship some patterns of Italian
silks which only came to hand this morning,” she said. “There is a
cherry-red that would become your ladyship to the T.”
“Make me a gown of it, my excellent Lewin—and good night to you.”
“But sure your ladyship will look at the colour? There is a pattern of
amber with gold thread might please you better. Lady Castlemaine has
ordered a Court mantua——”
Lady Fareham rang her hand-bell with a vehemence that suggested anger.
“Show Mrs. Lewin to her coach,” she said shortly, when her woman
appeared. “When you have done that you may go to bed; I want nothing
more to-night.”
“Mrs. Kirkland has been asking to see your ladyship.”
“I will see no one to-night. Tell Mrs. Kirkland so, with my love.”
She ran to the door when the maid and milliner were gone, and locked
it, and then ran back to the fireplace, and flung herself down upon the
rug to read her letter.
“Chérie, when this is handed to you, I shall be sitting in my coach on
the dull Dover road, with frost-clouded windows and a heart heavier
than your leaden skies. Loveliest of women, all things must end; and,
despite your childlike trust in man’s virtue, you could scarce hope for
eternity to a bond that was too strong for friendship and too weak for
love. Dearest, had you given yourself that claim upon love and honour
which we have talked of, and which you have ever refused, no lesser
power than death should have parted us. I would have dared all,
conquered all, for my dear mistress. But you would not. It was not for
lack of fervid prayers that the statue remained a statue; but a man
cannot go on worshipping a statue for ever. If the Holy Mother did not
sometimes vouchsafe a sign of human feeling, even good Catholics would
have left off kneeling to her image.
“Or, shall I say, rather, that the child remains a child—fresh, and
pure, and innocent, and candid, as in the days when we played our _jeu
de volant_ in your grandmother’s garden—fit emblem of the light love of
our future years. You remained a child, Hyacinth, and asked childish
love-making from a man. Dearest, accept a cruel truth from a man of the
world—it is only the love you call guilty that lasts. There is a
stimulus in sin and mystery that will fan the flame of passion and keep
love alive even for an inferior object. The ugly women know this, and
make lax morals a substitute for beauty. An innocent intrigue, a
butterfly affection like ours, will seldom outlive the butterfly’s
brief day. Indeed, I sometimes admire at myself as a marvel of
constancy for having kept faith so long with a mistress who has
rewarded me so sparingly.
“So, my angel, I am leaving your foggy island, my cramped London
lodgings, and extortionate London tradesmen, on whom I have squandered
so much of my fortune that they ought to forgive me for leaving a
margin of debt, which I hope to pay the extortioners hereafter for the
honour of my name. I doubt if I shall ever revisit England. I have
tasted all London pleasures, till familiarity has taken the taste out
of them; and though Paris may be only London with a difference, that
difference includes bluer skies, brighter streets and gardens, and all
the originals of which you have here the copies. There, at least, I
shall have the fashion of my peruke and my speech at first hand. Here
you only adopt a mode when Paris begins to tire of it.
“Farewell, then, dearest lady, but let it be no tragical or eternal
parting, since your fine house in the Rue de Touraine will doubtless be
honoured with your presence some day. You have only to open a salon
there in order to be the top of the mode. Some really patrician milieu
is needed to replace the antique court of the dear old Marquise, and to
extinguish the Scudéry, whose Saturdays grow more vulgar every week.
Yes, you will come to Paris, bringing that human lily, Mrs. Angela, in
your train; and I promise to make you the fashion before your house has
been open a month. The wits and Court favourites will go where I bid
them. And though your dearest friend, Madame de Longueville, has
retired from the world in which she was more queenly than the Queen,
you will find Mademoiselle de Montpensier as faithful as ever to
mundane pleasures, and, after having refused kings and princes,
slavishly devoted to a colonel of dragoons who does not care a straw
for her.
“Louise de Bourbon, a woman who can head a revolt and fire a cannon,
would think no sacrifice too great for a cold-hearted schemer like
Lauzun—yet you who swore you loved me, when the coach was waiting that
would have carried me to paradise, and made us one for all this life,
could suffer a foolish girl to separate us in the very moment of
triumphant union. You were mine, Hyacinth; heart and mind were
consenting, when your convent-bred sister surprised us, and all my
hopes of bliss expired in a sermon. And now I can but say, with that
witty rhymester, whom everybody in London quotes—
‘Love in your heart as idly burns,
As fire in antique Roman urns.’
“Good-bye, which means ‘God be with you.’ I know not if the fear of Him
was in your mind when you sacrificed your lover to that icy abstraction
women call virtue. The Romans had but one virtue, which meant the
courage that dares; and to me the highest type of woman would be one
whose bold spirit dared and defied the world for love’s sake. These are
the women history remembers, and whom the men who live after them
worship. Cleopatra, Mary Stuart, Diana of Poictiers, Marguerite de
Valois, la Chevreuse, la Montbazon! Think you that these became famous
by keeping their lovers at a distance?
“‘Go, lovely rose!’
“How often I have sung those lines, and you have listened, and nothing
has come of it; except time wasted, smiles, sighs, and tears, that ever
promised, and ever denied. Beauty, too choice to be kind, adieu!
“DE MALFORT.”
When she had read these last words, she crushed the letter in her palm,
clenching her fingers over it till the nails wounded the delicate
flesh; and then she opened her hand, and employed herself in smoothing
out the crumpled paper, as if her life depended on making the letter
readable again. But her pains could not undo what her passion had done;
and finding this, she tossed the ragged paper into the flames, and
began to walk about the room in a distracted fashion, giving a little
hysterical cry every now and then, and clasping her hands upon her
forehead.
Anger, humiliation, wounded love, wounded vanity, disappointment,
disillusion, were all in that cry, and in the passionate beating of her
heart, her stifled breath, her clenched hands.
“He was laughing when he wrote that letter—I am sure he was laughing.
There was not one serious moment, not one pang at leaving me! He has
been laughing at me ever since he came to London. I have been his fool,
his amusement. Other women have had his love, the guilty love that he
praises! He has come to me straight from their wicked houses, their
feasting, and riot, and drunkenness—has come and pretended to love
poetry, and Scudéry’s romances, and music, and innocent
conversation—come to rest himself after dissolute pleasures, bringing
me the leavings of that hellish company! And I have reviled such women,
and he has pretended an equal horror of them; and he was their slave
all the time, and went from me to them, and made a jest of me for their
amusement I know his biting raillery. And he was at the play-house day
after day, where I could not go, sitting side by side with his
Jezebels, laughing at filthy comedies, and at me that was forbidden to
appear there. He had pleasures of which I knew nothing; and when I
fancied our inmost souls moved in harmony, his thoughts were full of
wanton women and their wanton jests, and he smiled at my childishness,
and fooled me as children are fooled.”
The thought was distraction. She plucked out handfuls of her pale gold
hair, the pretty blonde hair which had been almost as famous in Paris
as Beaufort’s or Madame de Longueville’s yellow locks. The thought of
De Malfort’s ridicule cut her like a whalebone whip. She had fancied
herself his Beatrice, his Laura, his Stella—a being to be worshipped as
reverently as the stars, to make her lover happy with smiles and kindly
words, to stand for ever a little way off, like a goddess in her
temple, yet near enough to be adored.
And fondly believing this to be her mission, having posed for the
character, and filled it to her own fancy, she found that she had only
been a dissolute man’s dupe all the time; and no doubt had been the
laughing-stock of her acquaintance, who looked at the game.
“And I was so proud of his devotion—I carried my slave everywhere with
me. Oh, fool, fool, fool!”
And then—the poor little brains being disordered by passionate
regrets—wickedest ideas ran riot in the confusion of a mind not wide
enough to hold life’s large passions. She began to be sorry that she
was not like those other women—to hate the modesty that had lost her a
lover.
To be like Barbara Castlemaine! That was woman’s only royalty. To rule
with sovereign power over the hearts and senses of men. A King for her
lover, constant in inconstancy, always going back to her from every
transient fancy—her property, her chattel; and the foremost wits and
dandies of the age for her servants, her Court of adorers, whom she
ruled with frowns or smiles, as her humour prompted. To be daring,
profuse, reckless, tyrannical; to suffer no control of heaven or
men—yes, that was, indeed, to be a Queen! And compared with such
empire, the poor authority of the Précieuse, dictating the choice of
adjectives, condemning pronouns, theorising upon feelings and passions
of which in practice she knows nothing, was a thing for scornfullest
laughter.