Part 12

‘Don’t defend him, you dear thing!’ she said frankly. ‘He isn’t worth it! He thinks he’s made a great impression on me, but, lor’! I wouldn’t have him as a butler! My heart is as sound as a bell,’ and she slapped herself emphatically on the chest, as though in proof of it. ‘When I take a lover—a real one, you know,—no sham!—I’ll pick out a good, honest, worthy chap from the working classes. I don’t care about your “blue blood” coming down from the Conquest, with all the evils of the Conquest fellows in it; it seems to me the older the blood the worse the man!’

Delicia grew desperate. It was no time to play civilities off one against the other; it was a case of woman to woman.

‘You know I cannot answer you!’ she said hotly. ‘You know I cannot speak to you of my husband or myself. Oh, how _dare_ you insult me!’

‘La Marina’ looked at her amazedly with great, wide-open, unabashed black eyes.

‘Good gracious!’ she exclaimed, ‘here’s a row! Insult you? I wouldn’t insult you for the world; I like your books too much; and now, having seen you, I like _you_. I suppose you’ve heard your husband runs after me; but, lor’! you shouldn’t let that put you out. They all do it—married men most of all. I can’t help it! There’s the Duke of Stand-Off—he’s after me day and night; he’s got three children, and his wife’s considered a leading beauty. Then there’s Lord Pretty-Winks; he went and sold an old picture that’s been in his family hundreds of years, and bought me a lot of fal-lals with the proceeds. I didn’t want them, and I told him so; but it’s all no use—they’re noodles, every one of them.’

‘But you encourage them,’ said Delicia, passionately. ‘If you did not—’

‘If I did not _pretend_ to encourage them,’ said ‘La Marina,’ composedly, ‘I should lose all chance of earning a living. No manager would employ me! That’s a straight tip, my dear; follow it; it won’t lead you wrong!’

But Delicia, with a smarting pain in her eyes and a sense of suffocation in her throat, was forced on by her emotions to put another question.

‘Stop—you make me think I have done you an injustice,’ she said. ‘Do you mean to tell me—that you are—?’

‘A good woman?’ finished ‘La Marina,’ smiling curiously. ‘No, I don’t mean to tell you anything of the sort! I’m not good; it doesn’t pay me. But I am not as bad as men would like me to be. Come, let’s go into the drawing-room. Or shall I go first? Yes?’—this as Delicia drew back and signed to her to proceed—‘All right; you look _sweet_!’

And she swept her green and silver skirts out of the room, leaving Delicia alone to steady her nerves as best she might, and regain her sorely-shaken self-control. And in a few minutes the fashionable crowd assembled at Lady Dexter’s stirred and swayed with excitement as all eyes were turned on the sylph-like vision of a fair woman in gleaming white and jewels, with a pale face and dark violet eyes, whose name was announced through the length and breadth of the great drawing-rooms by the servants-in-waiting as ‘Lady Carlyon,’ but whom all the world of intelligence and culture present whispered of as ‘the famous Delicia Vaughan.’ For a handle to one’s name is a poor thing in comparison to the position of genius; and that the greatest emperor ever crowned is less renowned throughout the nations than plain William Shakespeare, is as it should be, and serves as a witness of the eternal supremacy of truth and justice amid a world of shams.

*CHAPTER X*

The first person Delicia saw after her hostess on entering the rooms was her husband. She bowed to him serenely, with a charming smile and playful air, as if she had only just left his company, then passed him by, entering at once into conversation with an artist of note, who came eagerly forward to present his young wife to her. Carlyon, quite taken aback, stared at her half-angrily, half-obsequiously, for there was something very queenly in the way she moved, something very noble in the manner she carried her proud little head, on which the diamond star she wore shone like Venus on a frosty night. He watched her slim figure in its white draperies moving hither and thither; he saw the brilliant smile light up her whole countenance and flash in her violet eyes; he watched men of distinction in art and statesmanship crowd about her with courtly flatteries and elegantly-worded compliments, and the more he watched her, the more morose and ill-humoured he became.

‘Anyhow,’ he muttered to himself, ‘she is my wife, and she can’t get rid of me. She has no fault whatever to find with me in the eyes of the law!’

He had always been vain of his personality, and it irritated him curiously to notice that she never glanced once in his direction. No one could possibly deny his outward attractiveness—he was distinctly what is called a ‘beautiful man.’ Beautiful in form and physique, manly in bearing, ‘god-like’ in feature. Nothing could do away with these facts. And he had imagined that when Delicia—tender, worshipping Delicia—set eyes on him again after her temporary absence from him, her ravishment at the sight of his perfections would be so great that she would fling herself into his arms or at his feet, and, as he expressed it to himself, ‘make it all right.’ But her aspect this evening was rather discouraging to these hopes, for she seemed not to see him or his attractions at all. She was apparently more fascinated with the appearance of a gouty ambassador, who sat far back in a corner carefully resting one foot on a velvet hassock, and who was evidently afraid to move. To this old gentleman Delicia talked in her most charming manner, and Carlyon, as his eyes wandered about the room, suddenly caught the mischievous and mocking glance of ‘La Marina’—a glance which said as plainly as words, ‘What a fool you are!’ Flushing with annoyance, he moved from the position he had taken up near the grand piano and strolled by himself through the rooms, picking out here and there a few of his own friends to speak to, who, however, seemed to have nothing much to say except, ‘How charming Lady Carlyon looks this evening!’ a phrase which irritated rather than pleased him, simply because it was true. It was true that Delicia looked lovely; it was true that she eclipsed every woman in the room by her intelligence, grace of manner and brilliancy of conversation; and it was true that for a time at least she was the centre of attraction and absorbed the whole interest of everyone present. And Carlyon was distinctly vexed at the sensation she made, because he had no part in it, because he felt himself left out in the cold, and, moreover, because he was forced to understand that she, his wife, had determined that so he should be left. He would not—perhaps by some defect of brain he could not—realise that he had himself forfeited all claim to her consideration or respect, and he was glad when the arrival of another celebrity was announced, who at once distracted the attention of the frivolous throng from Delicia altogether—a lady of brilliant beauty, and of exalted rank, who had distinguished herself by becoming a _demi-mondaine_ of the most open and shameless type, but who, nevertheless, continued to ‘move in society,’ as the phrase goes, with a considerable amount of _éclat_, simply because she had money, and was wont to assist churches with it and shower pecuniary benefits on penniless clerics. Deity (through the said clerics) blessed her in spite of her moral backslidings; and instead of denouncing her as it should have done, the Church went to her garden-parties. Lady Brancewith was a clever woman in her way, as well as a beautiful one; she loved her own vices dearly, and was prepared to sacrifice anything for the indulgence of them—husband, children, name, fame, honour; but she took a great deal of pains to keep in with ‘pious’ people, and she knew that the best way to do that was continually to give _largesse_ all round. The worthy clergyman of the parish in which her great house was the chiefest of the neighbourhood, shut his eyes to her sins and opened them to her cheques; so all went well and merrily with her. Her entrance into Lady Dexter’s drawing-room was the signal for a complete change in the attitude of the fashionable throng. Everybody craned their necks to look at her and comment on her dress and diamonds; people began to whisper to each other the newest bits of scandal about her, and Delicia, with her fair face and unsullied character, was soon deserted and forgotten. She was rather glad of this, and she sat down in a retired corner to rest, near the entrance to the great conservatory, where the curtains shaded her from the light, and where she could see without being seen. She watched the smiles and gestures of Lady Brancewith with a good deal of inward pain and contempt.

‘That is the kind of “society woman” men like,’ she mused, ‘One who will go down into the mud with them and never regret the loss of cleanliness. I think she is a worse type than “La Marina,” for “La Marina” does not pretend to be good; but this woman’s whole life is occupied in the despicable art of feigning virtue.’

She remained in her quiet nook looking at the restless, talking, giggling throng, and now and then turning her eyes towards the flowers in the conservatory—tall lilies, brilliant azaleas, snowy Cape jessamine, drooping passion flowers—all exquisite creations of perfect beauty, yet silent and seemingly unconscious of their own charms.

‘How much more lovely and worthy of love flowers are than human beings!’ she thought. ‘If I had been the Creator, I think I would have given the flowers immortal souls, rather than to men!’

At that moment her husband passed her without perceiving her. Lady Brancewith was on his arm, evidently delighted to be seen in the company of so physically handsome a person. The little diamonds sewn on her priceless lace flashed in Delicia’s eyes like sparks of light; the faint, sickly odour of patchouli was wafted from her garments as she moved; the hard lines which vice and self-indulgence had drawn on that fair face were scarcely perceptible in the softened light, and her little low laugh of coquettish pleasure at some remark of Lord Carlyon’s sounded musical enough even to Delicia, who, though she knew and detested the woman’s character, could not refrain from looking after her half in wonderment, half in aversion. Within a few paces of where she sat they stopped,—Lord Carlyon placed a chair for his fair companion near a giant palm, which towered up nearly to the roof of the conservatory, and then, drawing another to her side, sat down himself.

‘At last in my wretched life I am allowed a moment’s pleasure!’ he said, conveying into his fine eyes a touch of the Beautiful Sullenness expression which he generally found answer so well with women.

Lady Brancewith laughed, unfurling her fan.

‘Dear me, how very tragic!’ she said. ‘I had, no idea you were so wretched, Lord Carlyon! On the contrary, I thought you were one of the most envied of men!’

Carlyon was silent a moment, looking at her intently.

‘The only man in the world to be really envied is your husband,’ he said morosely.

Delicia, hidden by the protecting curtain, kept herself quite still. A smile of disdain came on her proud mouth as she thought within herself, ‘What liars men are! I have heard him say often that Lord Brancewith ought to be hounded out of the clubs for allowing his wife to dishonour his name! And now he declares him to be the only man in the world to be really envied!’

But Carlyon was speaking again, and some force stronger than herself held her there motionless, an unwilling listener.

‘You have never been kind to me,’ he complained, the Beautiful Sullenness look deepening in his eyes. ‘Lots of other fellows get a chance to make themselves agreeable to you, but you never give me the ghost of one. You are awfully hard on me—Lily!’

He paused a moment before uttering Lady Brancewith’s Christian name, then spoke it softly and lingeringly, as though it were a caress. She, by way of reply, gave him a light tap on the cheek with her fan.

‘And you are awfully impertinent,’ she said, smiling. ‘Don’t you remember you are a married man?’

‘I do, to my cost,’ he answered. ‘And you are a married woman!’

‘Oh, but I am so different,’ she declared naïvely. ‘You see, you have got a wonderful celebrity for a wife—clever and brilliant, and all that. Now, poor Brancewith is a dreadful, dear old dunce, and I should really die if I hadn’t some other man to speak to sometimes—’

‘Or several other men!’ he put in, taking her fan from her hand and beginning to wave it to and fro.

She laughed.

‘Perhaps! How jealous you are! Do you treat your wife to these sort of sarcasms?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t talk about my wife,’ he said pettishly. ‘My wife and I have nothing in common.’

‘Really!’ Lily Brancewith yawned slightly. ‘How often that happens in married life, doesn’t it? She is here to-night, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, she is in the rooms somewhere,’ and Carlyon began to look decidedly cross. ‘She was quite the centre of attraction till you came in. Then, of course, it was a case of a small star paling before the full moon in all her splendour!’

‘How sweetly poetical! But please don’t break my fan,’ and she took the delicate toy in question from him. ‘It cost twenty guineas, and it isn’t paid for yet.’

‘Let me settle the bill,’ said Carlyon, looking adoringly into her eyes, ‘or any amount of bills!’

A faint tremor ran through Delicia’s body, as though a cold wind were playing on her nerves. Bending a little forward, she listened more intently.

‘Generous man!’ laughed Lady Brancewith. ‘I know your wife has made you rich, but I remember the time when you were not a bit flush of money, were you, poor boy! But you were always very nice and very complimentary, even then.’

‘Glad you admit it,’ said Carlyon, drawing a little nearer to her. ‘The memory of it may decide you not to throw me over now!’

‘What nonsense you talk!’ and Lady Brancewith gave him her hand to hold. ‘I want to see your wife; do introduce me to her! I have often been on the point of meeting her, but never have done so. _She_ doesn’t know the people I know, and _I_ don’t know the people she knows, so we’ve always missed each other. She is such a genius! Dunce as you are, you must have sense enough to be very proud of her!’

Carlyon looked dubious. Then he suddenly said,—

‘Well, I don’t know! I think a clever woman—a writer of books, you know, like my wife—is a mistake. She is always _unsexed_.’

As the word passed his lips, Delicia rose, pale, fair and calm in her glistening robes, and confronted them. Like an austere white angel suddenly descended from heaven to earth she stood,—quite silent,—looking straight at her husband and his companion with such a grand scorn in her dark violet eyes as made Carlyon shrink within himself like a beaten hound. Lady Brancewith glanced up at her with a half-impertinent, half-questioning smile, but not a word did Delicia utter. One moment she stood surveying the disloyal, ungracious and ungrateful churl who owed all he possessed in the world to her tenderness and bounty; then coldly, quietly, and with an unshaken grace of bearing and queenliness of movement, she turned away, her soft satin train sweeping them by as she moved forward into the crowded rooms and disappeared.

‘Who was that wonderful-looking woman?’ asked Lady Brancewith, eagerly.

Carlyon flushed, anon grew deadly pale.

‘That was Delicia—my wife,’ he answered curtly.

‘That! That the novelist!’ almost screamed Lady Brancewith. ‘Why didn’t you say so? Why didn’t you introduce me? I had no idea she was like that! I thought all literary women wore short hair and spectacles! Good gracious me! And she must have heard you say you considered her “unsexed!” Billy, what a brute you are!’

Carlyon started angrily. The fair Lily and he used in former days to call each other ‘Billy’ and ‘Lily’ so frequently that a wag among their acquaintance made a rhyme on them, running thus:—

‘Lily and Billy Are invariably silly!

and at that time he did not mind it. But now, considering that he was ‘Lord’ Carlyon, he did not care to be addressed as ‘Billy,’ and his resentment showed itself pretty plainly on his darkened countenance. But Lady Brancewith was too much excited to heed his annoyance.

‘The idea!’ she continued. ‘If she was sitting there all the while she must have heard _everything_! A nice mess you have made of it! If I were in her place, I’d throw you off like a pair of old shoes!’

‘I haven’t the least doubt you would,’ he said with temper. ‘It’s the way you behave with most men who have the honour of sharing your favour!’

Lily Brancewith showed her pearly teeth in a savage little smile.

‘You were always what is called “rather shady,” Billy,’ she observed calmly. ‘But I didn’t give you credit for being _quite_ a cad! Ta-ta! I’m going to find your wife and introduce myself to her. You know in society people said you were to be pitied for marrying a “literary” celebrity, but I shall put the gossips right on that point—I shall tell everybody it is she who is to be pitied for marrying a military nonentity!’

With a light laugh at her own sarcasm she left him, and started on a voyage of discovery after Delicia. The people were wedged together in groups at every available point to watch the dancing of “La Marina,” who had commenced her performance, and who was announced for that evening as ‘Mademoiselle Violet de Gascon’ out of deference to the ‘proprieties,’ who might possibly have been shocked had they been too openly told that the _figurante_ was the ‘Empire’s’ famous ‘Marina,’ though they were quite aware of the fact all the time. For in the strange motley we call society, one of the chief rules is that if you know a truth you must never say it; you must say something else, as near to a lie as possible. For example, if you are aware, and everybody else is aware, that a lady of exalted title has outraged, or is outraging, every sense of decency and order in her social and private life, you must always say she is one of the purest and most innocent creatures living. _Of_ course, if she is a nobody, without any rank at all, you are at liberty to give her poor name over to the dogs of slander to rend at will; but if she is a countess or a duchess, you must entirely condone her vulgar vices. Think of her title! Think of her family connections! Think of the manner in which her influence might be brought to bear on some little matter in which you personally have an interest! Lady Brancewith knew all this well enough; she knew exactly how to play her cards, and she was sufficiently a woman of the world to salute ‘La Marina’ with a pretty bow and compliment as soon as her dance was finished, and to express the plaintive wish, uttered sighingly, ‘How glad I should be if I were half so clever!’

Whereat Marina sniffed the air dubiously and said nothing. ‘Jewlia Muggins,’ _alias_ ‘Violet de Gascon,’ knew a thing or two, and was not to be taken in by Lady Brancewith or any of her set. She was keenly disappointed. Delicia had not been present to see her dance, and she had very much wished to create a favourable impression on that ‘sweet thing in white’ as she called her. She had danced her best, gracefully, and with an exquisite modesty; too exquisite for many of the gentlemen assembled, some of whom whispered to each other that she was ‘going off’ a bit, simply because they could not see much above her slender ankles. She herself, however, cared nothing for what they said or thought, and at the conclusion of her dance she boldly asked her hostess where Lady Carlyon was.

‘She has gone home, I am sorry to say,’ was the reply. ‘She is not very well, she tells me; and she found the heat of the room rather trying.’

‘Are you speaking of the guest of the evening—Lady Carlyon?’ inquired Lady Brancewith, sweetly.

‘Yes. She extremely regretted having to leave so early, but she works hard, you know, and she is not at all robust.’

Here Lady Dexter’s attention was distracted by the claims of a long-haired violinist desirous of performing a ‘classical’ piece immediately, which, when it did begin, had the effect of driving many people down to supper or out of the house altogether; and in the general scrimmage on the stairs ‘La Marina’ found herself elbowing Lord Carlyon.

‘Your wife’s gone home,’ she said curtly. ‘Why didn’t you go with her?’

‘I have another engagement,’ he answered coldly.

‘Not with me!’ she said, showing all her even white teeth in a broad grin. ‘I talked ever so long to Lady Carlyon this evening, and told her just what I thought of you!’

His eyes darkened furiously, and the lines of his mouth grew hard and vindictive.

‘You wild cat!’ he said savagely. ‘If you have _dared_—’

‘Puss, puss! Pretty puss!’ laughed Marina. ‘Cats have claws, my Lord Bill, and they scratch occasionally!’

With a swish of her silken skirts she darted past him into the supper-room, where she immediately became surrounded by a circle of young noodles, who evidently deemed it a peculiar glory and honour to be allowed to hand chicken salad to the gifted creature who nightly knocked her own nose with her foot in the presence of a crowded house. What was any art compared to this? What was science? What was learning? What was virtue? Nothing,—less than nothing! To have a shapely leg and know how to hit your nose with your foot, is every day proved to be the best way for a woman to have what is called a ‘good time’ in this world. She needn’t be able to spell, she may drop her h’s broadcast, she may ‘booze’ on brandy,—but so long as the nose is hit every night with the foot in an accurate and rhythmic manner, she will always have plenty of jewels and more male admirers than she can conveniently manage. For there is no degradation that can befall a woman which man will not excuse and condone; equally there is no elevation or honour she can win which he will not grudge and oppose with all the force of his nature! For man loves to hold a strangulation-grip on the neck of all creation, women included; and the idea that woman should suddenly wrench herself out of his grasp and refuse to be either trapped like a hare, hunted like a fox, or shot like a bird, is a strange, new and disagreeable experience for him. And very naturally he clings to the slave type of womanhood, and encourages the breed of those who are willing to become dancers and toys of his ‘harem,’ for, if all women were to rise to the height of their true and capable dignity, where should he go to for his so-called ‘fun’?

Some thoughts of this kind were in Lord Carlyon’s head as he threw on his opera-coat and prepared to leave the scene of revelry at the Dexters. The pale, noble face of Delicia haunted him; the disdain of her clear eyes still rankled in his soul; and he was actually indignant with her for what he considered ‘that offensive virtue of hers,’ which shamed him, and which had, for a moment at least, made ‘the most distinguished Lady Brancewith’ seem nothing but a common drab, daubed with paint and powder. Even as he thought of her thus, the fair and faithless Lily approached him, smiling, with a coaxing and penitent air.

‘Still huffy?’ she inquired sweetly. ‘Poor, dear thing! Did it fret and fume and turn nasty?’ She laughed, then added, ‘Don’t be cross, Billy! I was very rude to you just now—I’m sorry! See!’ and she folded her hands with an appealing air. ‘Drive home with me, will you? I’m so lonely! Brancewith’s at Newmarket.’

Carlyon hesitated, looking at her. She was undoubtedly very lovely, despite her artificial flesh tints and distinctly dyed hair.

‘All right!’ he said with a stand-offish manner of coldness and indifference, ‘I don’t mind seeing you home.’