"LOVE IS LOVE FOR EVERMORE."
The Rosary, St. John's Wood: that was the address which Christabel had
given the cabman. Had any less distinguished person than Stella Mayne
lived at the Rosary it might have taken the cabman all the evening to
find that particular house, with no more detailed address as to road and
number. But a brother whip on a rank near Hamilton Terrace was able to
tell Christabel's cabman the way to the Rosary. It was a house at which
hansoms were often wanted at unholy hours between midnight and
sunrise--a house whose chief hospitality took the form of chablis and
oysters after the play--a house which seldom questioned poor cabby's
claim or went closely into mileage--a house which deserved and commanded
respectful mention on the rank.
"The Rosary--yes, that's where Miss Mayne lives. Beech Tree Road--a low
'ouse with veranders all round--yer can't miss it."
The cabman rattled away to Grove End Road, and thence to the superior
quietude and seclusion of Beech Tree Road, where he drew up at a house
with a glazed entrance. He rang the bell, and Christabel alighted before
the summons was answered.
"Is Miss Mayne at home?" she asked a servant in plain clothes--a servant
of unquestionable respectability.
"Yes, ma'am," he replied, and preceded her along a corridor,
glass-roofed, richly carpeted, and with a bank of hot-house flowers on
either side.
Only at this ultimate moment did Christabel's courage begin to falter.
She felt as if she were perhaps entering a den of vice. Innocent,
guileless as she was, she had her own vague ideas about
vice--exaggerated as all ignorant ideas are apt to be. She began to
shiver as she walked over the dark subdued velvet pile of that shadowy
corridor. If she had found Miss Mayne engaged in giving a masked
ball--or last night's supper party only just finishing--or a party of
young men playing blind hookey, she would hardly have been
surprised--not that she knew anything about masked balls--or late
suppers--or gambling--but that all these would have come within her
vague notions of an evil life.
"_He_ loved her," she said to herself, arguing against this new terror,
"and he could not love a thoroughly wicked woman."
No, the Gretchen idea--purity fallen, simplicity led astray--was more
natural--but one could hardly imagine Gretchen in a house of this
kind--this subdued splendour--this all-pervading air of wealth and
luxury.
Miss Courtenay was shown into a small morning-room--a room which on
one side was all window--opening on to a garden, where some fine
old trees gave an idea of space--and where the foreground showed
a mass of flowers--roses--roses--roses everywhere--trailing over
arches--clustering round tall iron rods--bush roses--standard
roses--dwarf roses--all shining in the golden light of a westering sun.
The room was elegantly simple--an escritoire in the Sherraton
style--two or three book-tables crowded with small volumes in exquisite
binding, vellum, creamy calf, brown Russia, red edges, gold edges,
painted edges, all the prettinesses of bookbinding--half a dozen low
chairs--downy nests covered with soft tawny Indian silk, with here and
there a brighter patch of colour in the shape of a plush pillow or an
old brocade anti-macassar--voluminous curtains of the same soft tawny
silk, embroidered with poppies and corn-flowers--a few choice flowers in
old Venetian vases--a large peacock-feather fan thrown beside an open
book, upon a low pillow-shaped ottoman.
Christabel gazed round the room in blank surprise--nothing
gaudy--nothing vulgar--nothing that indicated sudden promotion from the
garret to the drawing-room--an air of elegant luxury, of supreme fashion
in all things--but no glare of gilding, no discords in form or colour.
"Your name, if you please, madam?" said the servant, a model of decorum
in well-brushed black.
"Perhaps, you had better take my card. I am not personally known to Miss
Mayne," answered Christabel, opening her card-case. "Oh!" she exclaimed
suddenly, as with a cry of pain.
"I beg your pardon," said the servant, alarmed.
"It's nothing. A picture startled me--that was all. Be good enough to
tell Miss Mayne that I shall be very much obliged to her if she will see
me."
"Certainly, madam!" said the man, as he retired with the card, wondering
how a young lady of such distinguished appearance happened to call upon
his mistress, whose feminine visitors were usually of a more marked
type.
"I dare say she's collectin' funds for one of their everlastin'
churches," thought the butler, "'igh, low, or Jack, as I call 'em--'igh
church, low church, or John Wesley--ever so many predominations, and all
of 'em equally keen after money. But why did she almost s'riek when she
clapt her eyes on Mr. 'Amleigh's portrait, I wonder, just as if she had
seen a scorpiont."
Christabel stood motionless where the man left her, looking at a
photograph on a brass easel upon an old ebony table in the middle of the
room. A cluster of stephanotis in a low Venetian vase stood in front of
that portrait, like flowers before a shrine. It was an exquisitely
painted photograph of Angus Hamleigh--Angus at his best and brightest,
before the flush and glory of youth had faded from eyes and brow--Angus
with a vivacity of expression which she had never seen in his face--she
who had known him only since the fatal hereditary disease had set its
mark upon him.
"Ah!" she sighed, "he was happier when he loved her than he ever was
with me."
She stood gazing at that pictured face, her hands clasped, her heart
beating heavily. Everything confirmed her in her despair--in her iron
resolve. At last, with a long-drawn sigh, she withdrew her eyes from the
picture, and began to explore the room. No, there was no trace of
vulgarity--no ugly indication of a vicious mind. Christabel glanced at
the open book on the ottoman, half expecting to find the trail of the
serpent there--in some shameful French novel, the very name of which she
had not been allowed to hear. But the book was only the last
_Contemporary Review_, open at an article of Gladstone's. Then, with
faintly tremulous hand, she took one of the vellum-bound duodecimos from
a shelf of the revolving book-table--"Selections from Shelley"--and on
the title-page, "Angus to Stella, Rome," and a date, just three years
old, in the hand she knew so well. She looked in other books--all
choicest flowers of literature--and in each there was the same familiar
penmanship, sometimes with a brief sentence that made the book a
_souvenir_--sometimes with a passionate line from Shakespeare or Dante,
Heine or De Musset. Christabel remembered, with a sharp pang of
jealousy, that her lover had never so written in any book he had given
her. She ignored the change which a year or two may make in a man's
character, when he has reached one of the turning points of life; and
how a graver deeper phase of feeling, less eager to express itself in
other people's flowery language, succeeds youth's fervid sentiment. Had
Werther lived and loved a second Charlotte, assuredly he would have
loved her after a wiser and graver fashion. But Christabel had believed
herself her lover's first and only love, and finding that she was but
the second volume in his life, abandoned herself at once to despair.
She sank into one of the low luxurious chairs, just as the door opened,
and Miss Mayne came into the room.
If she had looked lovely as Psyche, in her classic drapery, with the
emerald butterfly on her shoulder, she looked no less beautiful in the
costly-simplicity of her home toilet. She wore a sacque-shaped tea-gown
of soft French-grey silk, lined with palest pink satin, over a petticoat
that seemed a mass of cream-coloured lace. Her only ornaments were three
half-hoop rings--rubies, diamonds, and sapphires--too large for the
slender third finger of her left hand, and half concealing a thin
wedding-ring--and a star-shaped brooch--one large cat's-eye with diamond
rays, which fastened the lace handkerchief at her throat.
Christabel, quick to observe the woman whose existence had ruined her
life, noted everything, from the small perfectly-shaped head--shaped for
beauty rather than mental power--to the little arched foot in its
pearl-coloured silk stocking, and grey satin slipper. For the first
time in her life she beheld a woman whose chief business in this world
was to look her loveliest, at all times and seasons, for friend or
foe--for whom the perfection of costume was the study and delight of
life--who lived and reigned by the divine right of beauty.
"Pray sit down!" said Miss Mayne, with a careless wave of her hand--so
small--so delicate and fragile-looking under the lace ruffle; "I am
quite at a loss to guess to what I am indebted for the honour of this
visit."
She looked at her visitor scrutinizingly with those dark, too lustrous
eyes. A hectic flush burned in her hollow cheeks. She had heard a good
deal about this Miss Courtenay, of Mount Royal and Mayfair, and she came
prepared to do battle.
For some moments Christabel was dumb. It was one thing to have come into
this young lioness's den, and another thing to know what to say to the
lioness. But the straightness and purity of the girl's purpose upheld
her--and her courage hardly faltered.
"I have come to you, Miss Mayne, because I will not consent to be
governed by common report. I want to know the truth--the whole
truth--however bitter it may be for me--in order that I may know how to
act."
Miss Mayne had expected a much sharper mode of attack. She had been
prepared to hear herself called scorpion--or viper--the pest of
society--a form of address to which she would have been able to reply
with a startling sharpness. But to be spoken to thus--gravely, gently,
pleadingly, and with that sweet girlish face looking at her in
unspeakable sorrow--was something for which she had not prepared
herself.
"You speak to me like a lady--like a good woman," she said, falteringly.
"What is it you want to know?"
"I have been told that Mr. Hamleigh--Angus Hamleigh--was once your
lover. Is that true?"
"True as the stars in heaven--the stars by which we swore to love each
other to the end of our lives--looking up at them, with our hands
clasped, as we stood on the deck of the steamer between Dover and
Calais. That was our marriage. I used to think that God saw it, and
accepted it--just as if we had been in church: only it did not hold
water, you see," she added, with a cynical laugh, which ended in a hard
little cough.
"He loved you dearly. I can see that by the lines that he wrote in your
books. I ventured to look at them while I waited for you. Why did he not
marry you?"
Stella Mayne shrugged her shoulders, and played with the soft lace of
her _fichu_.
"It is not the fashion to marry a girl who dances in short petticoats,
and lives in an attic," she answered. "Perhaps such a girl might make a
good wife, if a man had the courage to try the experiment. Such things
have been done, I believe; but most men prefer the safer course. If I
had been clever, I daresay Mr. Hamleigh would have married me; but I was
an ignorant little fool--and when he came across my path he seemed to me
like an angel of light. I simply worshipped him. You've no idea how
innocent I was in those days. Not a carefully educated, lady-like
innocence, like yours, don't you know, but absolute ignorance. I didn't
know any wrong; but then I didn't know any right. You see I am quite
candid with you."
"I thank you with all my heart for your truthfulness. Everything--for
you, for me, for Angus--depends upon our perfect truthfulness. I want to
do what is best--what is wisest--what is right--not for myself only, but
for Angus, for you."
Those lovely liquid eyes looked at her incredulously.
"What," cried Stella Mayne, with her mocking little laugh--a musical
little laugh trained for comedy, and unconsciously artificial--"do you
mean to tell me that you care a straw what becomes of me--that it
matters to you whether I die in the gutter where I was born, or pitch
myself into the Regent's Canal some night when I have a fit of the blue
devils?"
"I care very much what becomes of you. I should not be here if I did not
wish to do what is best for you."
"Then you come as my friend, and not as my enemy?" said Stella.
"Yes, I am here as your friend," answered Christabel, with an effort.
The actress--a creature all impulse and emotion--fell on her knees at
Miss Courtenay's feet, and pressed her lips upon the lady's gloved hand.
"How good you are," she exclaimed--"how good--how good. I have read of
such women--they swarm in the novels I get from Mudie--they and fiends.
There's no middle distance. But I never believed in them. When the man
brought me your card I thought you had come to blackguard me."
Christabel shuddered at the coarse word, so out of harmony with that
vellum-bound Shelley, and all the graciousness of Miss Mayne's
surroundings.
"Forgive me," said Stella, seeing her disgust. "I am horribly vulgar. I
never was like that while--while Angus cared for me."
"Why did he leave off caring for you?" asked Christabel, looking gravely
down at the lovely up-turned face--so exquisite in its fragile sensitive
beauty.
Now Stella Mayne was one of those complex creatures, quite out of the
range of a truthful woman's understanding--a creature who could be
candour itself--could gush and prattle with the innocent expansiveness
of a child, so long as there was nothing she particularly desired to
conceal--yet who could lie with the same sweet air of childlike
simplicity, when it served her purpose--lie with the calm stolidity, the
invincible assurance, of an untruthful child. She did not answer
Christabel's question immediately, but looked at her thoughtfully for a
few seconds, wondering how much of her history this young lady knew, and
to what extent lying might serve. She had slipped from her knees to a
sitting position on the Persian hearthrug, her thin, semi-transparent
hands clasped upon her knee, the triple circlet of gems flashing in the
low sunlight.
"Why did we part?" she asked, shrugging her shoulders. "I hardly know.
Temper, I suppose. He has not too good a temper, and I--well, I am a
demon when I am ill--and I am often ill."
"You keep his portrait on your table," said Christabel.
"Keep it? Yes--and round my neck," answered Stella, jerking a gold
locket out of her loose gown, and opening it to show the miniature
inside. "I have worn his picture against my heart ever since he gave it
me--during our first Italian tour. I shall wear it so when I am dead.
Yes--when he is married, and happy with you, and I am lying in my grave
in Hendon Churchyard. Do you know I have bought and paid for my grave?"
"Why did you do that?"
"Because I wanted to make sure of not being buried in a cemetery--a city
of the dead--streets and squares and alleys of gravestones. I have
chosen a spot under a great spreading cedar, in a churchyard that might
be a hundred miles from London--and yet it is quite near here, and handy
for those who will have to take me. I shall not give any one too much
trouble. Perhaps, if you will let him, Angus may come to my funeral, and
drop a bunch of violets on my coffin."
"Why do you talk like that?"
"Because the end cannot be very far off. Do you think I look as if I
should live to be a grandmother?"
The hectic bloom, the unnatural light in those lovely eyes, the
transparent hands, and purple-tinted nails, did not, indeed, point to
such a conclusion.
"If you are really ill why do you go on acting?" asked Christabel,
gently. "Surely the fatigue and excitement must be very bad for you."
"I hardly know. The fatigue may be killing me, but the excitement is the
only thing that keeps me alive. Besides, I must live--thirty pounds a
week is a consideration."
"But--you are not in want of money?" exclaimed Christabel. "Mr. Hamleigh
would never----"
"Leave me to starve," interrupted Stella, hurriedly; "no, I have plenty
of money. While--while we were happy Mr. Hamleigh lavished his money
upon me--he was always absurdly generous--and if I wanted money now I
should have but to hold out my hand. I have never known the want of
money since I left my attic--four and sixpence a week, with the use of
the kitchen fire, to boil a kettle, or cook a chop--when my resources
rose to a chop--it was oftener a bloater. Do you know, the other day,
when I was dreadfully ill and they had been worrying me with invalid
turtle, jellies, oysters, caviare, all kinds of loathsome
daintinesses--and the doctor said I should die if I didn't eat--I
thought perhaps I might get back the old appetite for bloater and bread
and butter--I used to enjoy a bloater tea so in those old days--but it
was no use--the very smell of the thing almost killed me--the whole
house was poisoned with it."
She prattled on, looking up at Christabel with a confiding smile. The
visit had taken quite a pleasant turn. She had no idea that anything
serious was to come of it. Her quondam lover's affianced wife had taken
it into her head to come and see what kind of stuff Mr. Hamleigh's
former idol was made of--that was all--and the lady's amiability was
making the interview altogether agreeable.
Yet, in another moment, the pain and sorrow in Christabel's face showed
her and there was something stronger than frivolous curiosity in the
lady's mind.
"Pray be serious with me," said Christabel. "Remember that the welfare
of three people depends upon my resolution in this matter. It would be
easy for me to say--I will shut my eyes to the past: he has told me that
he loves me--and I will believe him. But I will not do that. I will not
live a life of suspicion and unrest, just for the sweet privilege of
bearing him company, and being called by his name--dear as that thought
is to me. No, it shall be all or nothing. If I cannot have his whole
heart I will have none of it. You confess that you wear his picture next
your heart. Do you still love him?"
"Yes--always--always--always," answered the actress, fervently. This at
least was no bold-faced lie--there was truth's divine accent here.
"There is no man like him on this earth." And then in low impassioned
tones she quoted those passionate lines of Mrs. Browning's:--
There is no one beside thee, and no one above thee;
Thou standest alone as the nightingale sings;
And my words, that would praise thee, are impotent things.
"And do you believe that he has quite left off loving you?"
"No," answered the actress, looking up at her with flashing eyes, "I
don't believe it. I don't believe he could after all we have been to
each other. It isn't in human nature to forget such love as ours."
"And you believe--if he were free--if he had not engaged himself to
me--perhaps hardly intending it--he would come back to you?"
"Yes, if he knew how ill I am--if he knew what the doctor says about
me--I believe he would come back."
"And marry you?" asked Christabel, deadly pale.
"That's as may be," retorted the other, with her Parisian shrug.
Christabel stood up, and laid her clenched hand on the low draperied
mantelpiece, almost as if she were laying it on an altar to give
emphasis to an oath. "Then he shall come back--then he shall marry you,"
she said in a grave earnest voice. "I will rob no woman of her husband.
I will doom no fellow-creature to lifelong shame!"
"What," cried Stella Mayne, with almost a shriek, "you will give him
up--for me!"
"Yes. He has never belonged to me as he has belonged to you--it is no
shame for me to renounce him--grief and pain--yes, grief and pain
unspeakable--but no disgrace. He has sinned, and he must atone for his
sin. I will not be the impediment to your marriage."
"But if you were to give him up he might not marry me: men are so
difficult to manage," faltered the actress, aghast at the idea of such a
sacrifice, seeing the whole business in the light of circumstances
unknown to Miss Courtenay.
"Not men with conscience and honour," answered Christabel, with unshaken
firmness. "I feel very sure that if Mr. Hamleigh were free he would do
what is right. It is only his engagement to me that hinders his making
atonement to you. He has lived among worldly people who have never
reminded him of his duty--who have blunted his finer feelings with their
hideous wordliness--oh, I know how worldly women talk--as if there were
neither hell nor heaven, only Belgravia and Mayfair--and no doubt
worldly men are still worse. But he--he whom I have so loved and
honoured--cannot be without honour and conscience. He shall do what is
just and right."
She looked almost inspired as she stood there with pale cheeks and
kindling eyes, thinking far more of that broad principle of justice than
of the fragile emotional creature trembling before her. This comes of
feeding a girl's mind with Shakespeare and Bacon, Carlyle and Plato, to
say nothing of that still broader and safer guide, the Gospel.
Just then there was the sound of footsteps approaching the door--a
measured masculine footfall. The emotional creature flew to the door,
opened it, murmured a few words to some person without, and closed it,
but not before a whiff of Latakia had been wafted into the
flower-scented room. The footsteps moved away in another direction, and
Christabel was much too absorbed to notice that faint breath of tobacco.
"There's not the least use in your giving him up," said Stella,
resolutely: "he would never marry me. You don't know him as well as I
do."
"Do I not? I have lived only to study his character for the best part
of a year. I know he will do what is just."
Stella Mayne suddenly clasped her hands before her face and sobbed
aloud.
"Oh, if I were only good and innocent like you!" she cried, piteously;
"how I detest myself as I stand here before you!--how loathsome--how
hateful I am!"
"No, no," murmured Christabel, soothingly, "you are not hateful: it is
only impenitent sin that is hateful. You were led into wrong-doing
because you were ignorant of right--there was no one to teach you--no
one to uphold you. And he who tempted you is in duty bound to make
amends. Trust me--trust me--it is better for my peace as well as for
yours that he should do his duty. And now good-by--I have stayed too
long already."
Again Stella Mayne fell on her knees and clasped this divine visitant's
hand. It seemed to this weak yet fervid soul almost as if some angel
guest had crossed her threshold. Christabel stooped and would have
kissed the actress's forehead.
"No," she cried, hysterically, "don't kiss me--don't--you don't know. I
should feel like Judas."
"Good-by, then. Trust me." And so they parted.
A tall man, with an iron-grey moustache and a soldier-like bearing, came
out of a little study, cigarette in hand, as the outer door closed on
Christabel. "Who the deuce is that thoroughbred-looking girl?" asked
this gentleman. "Have you got some of the neighbouring swells to call
upon you, at last? Why, what's the row, Fishky, you've been crying?"
Fishky was the stage-carpenters', dressers' and supernumeraries'
pronunciation of the character which Miss Mayne acted nightly, and had
been sportively adopted by her intimates as a pet name for herself.
"That lady is Miss Courtenay."
"The lady Hamleigh is going to marry? What the devil is she doing in
this _galère_? I hope she hasn't been making herself unpleasant?"
"She is an angel."
"With all my heart. Hamleigh is very welcome to her, so long as he
leaves me my dear little demon," answered the soldier, smiling down from
his altitude of six feet two at the sylph-like form in the Watteau gown.
"Oh, how I wish I had never seen your face," said Stella: "I should be
almost a good woman, if there were no such person as you in the world."
END OF VOL. I.