Part 3

This young gentleman’s unbecoming observations were promptly quashed, and the holy ordinance was concluded to the crashing strains of Mendelssohn. A considerably large crowd, moved by feelings of sincere appreciation for the union of the professions of War and Literature, waited outside the church to give the bride a cheer as she stepped into her carriage, and some of them, hustling a little in advance of the policemen on duty, and peering up towards the entrance of the sacred edifice, were rewarded by seeing the Most Distinguished Personage in the realm, smiling his ever-cordial smile, and shaking hands with the fair ‘celebrity’ just wedded. At this sight a deafening noise broke out from the throats of the honest ‘masses,’ a noise which became almost tumultuous when the Distinguished Personage walked by the side of the newly-married pair down the red-carpeted pavement from the church to the nuptial carriage-door, and lifted his hat again and again to the ‘huzzas’ which greeted him. But the Distinguished Personage did not get all the applause by any means. Delicia got the most of it, and many of the crowd pelted her with flowers which they had brought with them for the purpose. For she was one of the few ‘beloved women’ that at rare intervals are born to influence nations—so few they are and so precious in their lives and examples that it is little wonder nations make much of them when they find them. There were people in the crowd that day who had wept and smiled over Delicia’s writings, and who had, through her teaching, grown better, happier and more humane men and women; and there was a certain loving jealousy in these which grudged that she should stoop from her lofty height of fame, to marry, like any other ordinary woman. They would have had her exempt from the common lot, and yet they all desired her happiness. So in half-gladness, half-regret, they cheered her and threw roses and lilies at her, for it was the month of June; and she with her veil thrown back, and the sunshine glinting on her gold hair, smiled bewitchingly as she bowed right and left to the clamorous throng of her assembled admirers; then, with her glorious six feet of husband, she stepped into her carriage and drove away to the sound of a final cheer. The Distinguished Personage got into his brougham and departed. The brilliantly-attired guests dispersed slowly, and with much chatting and gaiety, in their different directions, and all was over. And the One Man whose earthly lot it was to appear at various ‘afternoon teas,’ stood under the church portico and muttered gloomily to an acquaintance,—

‘Fancy that simple-looking creature being actually the famous Delicia Vaughan! She isn’t in the least like an authoress—she’s only a woman!’ Whereat the acquaintance, whose intellectual resources were somewhat limited, smiled and murmured,—

‘Oh, well, when it came to that, you know, you couldn’t expect a woman to be anything else, could you? The idea was certainly that authoresses should be—well! a sort of no-sex, ha-ha-ha!—plenty of muscle about them, but scrappy as to figure and doubtful in complexion, with a general air of spectacled wisdom—yes, ha-ha! Well, if it came to that, you know, it must be owned Miss Vaughan—beg her pardon!—Mrs Carlyon, was not by any means up to the required mark. Ha-ha-ha! Graceful little woman, though; very fascinating—and as for money—whew-w! Beauty Carlyon has fallen on his feet this time, and no mistake! Ha-ha! Good-morning!’

With this, he and the One Man nodded to each other and went in opposite directions. The verger of the church came out, glowered suspiciously at stragglers, picked up a few bridal flowers from the red carpet, and shut the church gates. There had been a wedding, he said condescendingly to one or two nursemaids who had just arrived breathlessly on the scene, wheeling perambulators in front of them, but it was over; the company had gone home. The Distinguished Personage had gone home too. Thus there was nothing to see, and nothing to wait for. Depart, disappointed nursemaids! The vow that binds two in one—that ties Intellect to Folly, Purity to Sensuality, Unselfishness to Egotism—has been taken before the Eternal; and, so far as we can tell, the Eternal has accepted it. There is nothing more to be said or done—the sacrifice is completed.

All this had happened three years ago, yet Delicia, writing peacefully as usual in the quiet seclusion of her study, remembered every incident of her wedding as though it were only yesterday. Happiness had made the time fly on swift wings, and her dream of love had as yet lost nothing of its heavenly glamour. Her marriage had caused no very perceptible change in her fortunes—she worked a little harder and more incessantly, that was all. Her husband deserved all the luxuries and enjoyments of life that she could give him—so she considered—and she was determined he should never have to complain of her lack of energy. Her fame steadily increased—she was at the very head and front of her profession—people came from far and near to have the privilege of seeing her and speaking with her, if only for a few minutes. But popular admiration was nothing to her, and she attached no importance whatever to the daily tributes she received, from all parts of the world, testifying to her genius and the influence her writings had upon the minds of thousands. Such things passed her by as the merest idle wind of rumour, and all her interests were concentrated on her work—first, for the work’s own sake, and next, that she might be a continual glory and exhaustless gold mine to her husband.

Certainly Carlyon had nothing to desire or to complain of in his destiny. A crowned king might have envied him; unweighted with care, no debts, no difficulties, a perpetual balance at his banker’s, a luxurious home, arranged not only with all the skill that wealth can command, but also with the artistic taste that only brains can supply; a lovely wife whose brilliant endowments were the talk of two continents, and last, but not least, the complete unfettered enjoyment of his own way and will. Delicia never played the domestic tyrant over him; he was free to do as he liked, go where he would and see whom he chose. She never catechised him as to the nature of his occupations or amusements, and he, on his part, was wise enough to draw a line between a certain ‘fast set’ he personally favoured, and the kind of people he introduced to her, knowing well enough that were he to commit the folly of bringing some ‘shady’ character within his wife’s circle of acquaintance, it would be only once that the presence of such a person would be tolerated by her. For she had very quick perceptions; and though her disposition was gentleness itself, she was firmly planted in rectitude, and managed to withdraw herself so quietly and cleverly from any contact with social swindlers and vulgar _nouveaux riches_, that they never had the ghost of a chance to gain the smallest footing with her. Unable to obtain admittance to her house, they took refuge in scandal, and invented lies and slanders concerning her, all of which fell flat owing to her frankly open life of domestic peace and contentment. Sneers and false rumours were inserted about her in the journals; she ignored them, and quietly lived them down, till finally the worst thing anyone could find to say of her was that she was ‘idiotically in love’ with her own husband.

‘She’s a perfect fool about him!’ exclaimed the Tookseys and Snookseys, angrily. ‘Everybody knows Paul Valdis is madly in love with her. It’s only she who never seems to see it!’ ‘Perhaps she does not approve of the French fashion of having a lover as well as a husband,’ suggested a Casual Caller of the male sex. ‘Though it is now _la mode_ in England, she may not like it. Besides, Paul Valdis has been “madly in love,” as you call it, a great many times!’

The Tookseys and Snookseys sighed, shivered, rolled up their eyes and shrugged their shoulders. They were old and ugly and yellow of skin; but their hearts had a few lively pulsations of evil left in them still, and they envied and marvelled at the luck of a woman—a literary female, too, good heavens! to think of it!—who not only had the handsomest man in town for a husband, but who could also have the next handsomest—Paul Valdis, the great actor—for a lover, if she but ‘dropped the handkerchief.’

And while ‘society’ thus talked, Delicia worked, coining money for her husband to spend as he listed. She reserved her household expenses, and took a moderate share of her earnings for her own dress, but all the rest was his. He drove ‘tandem’ in the Row with two of the most superb horses ever seen in that fashionable thoroughfare. In the early spring mornings he was seen cantering up and down on a magnificent Arab, which for breed and action was the envy of princes. He had his own four-in-hand coach, which he drove to Ranelagh, Hurlingham, and the various race meetings of the year, with a party of ‘select’ people on top—the kind of ‘select’ whom Delicia never knew or cared to know, consisting of actresses, betting men, ‘swells about town,’ and a sprinkling of titled dames, who had frankly thrown over their husbands in order to drink brandy privately, and play the female Don Juan publicly. Occasionally a ‘candid friend,’ moved by a laudable desire to make mischief between husband and wife, would arrive, full-armed at all points with gossip, and would casually remark to Delicia,—

‘Oh, by the way, I saw your husband at Ranelagh the other day with—well!—some _rather_ odd people!’ To which Delicia would reply tranquilly, ‘Did you? I hope he was amusing himself.’ Then with a straight, half-disdainful look of her violet eyes at the intruding meddler, she would add, ‘I know what you mean, of course! But it is a man’s privilege to entertain himself in his own fashion, even with “odd” people if he likes. “Odd” people are always infinitely diverting, owing to their never being able to recognise their own abnormal absurdity. And I never play spy on my husband. I consider a wife who condescends to become a detective as the most contemptible of creatures living.’

Whereupon the ‘candid friend,’ vexed and baffled, would retire behind an entrenchment of generalities, and afterwards, at ‘afternoons’ and social gatherings, would publicly opine that, ‘It was most probable Mrs Carlyon was carrying on a little game of her own, as she seemed so indifferent to her husband’s goings-on. She was a deep one, oh, yes! very deep! She knew a thing or two!—and perhaps, who could tell?—Paul Valdis had his own reasons for specially “fixing” her with his dark, passionate eyes whenever she appeared in her box at the theatre where he was playing the chief character in an English version of “Ernani.”’

It was true enough that Delicia was hardly ever seen at the places her husband most frequented, but this happened because he was fond of racing and she was not. She disliked the senseless, selfish and avaricious side of life so glaringly presented at the favourite ‘turf’ resorts of the ‘swagger’ set, and said so openly.

‘It makes me think badly of everybody,’ she declared once to her husband, when he had languidly suggested her ‘turning up’ at the Oaks. ‘I begin to wonder what was the use of Christ dying on the cross to redeem such greedy, foolish folk. I don’t want to despise my fellow-creatures, but I’m obliged to do it when I go to a race. So it’s better I should stay at home and write, and try to think of them all as well as I can.’

And she did stay at home very contentedly; and when he was absent with a party of his own particular ‘friends,’ dispensing to them the elegant luncheon and champagne which her work had paid for, she was either busy with some fresh piece of literary labour, or else taking her sweet presence into the houses of the poor and suffering, and bringing relief, hope and cheerfulness, wherever she went. And on the morning when the sunshine placed a crown on her head, and hurled a javelin of light full in the cold eyes of the marble Antinous, she was in one of her brightest, most radiant moods, satisfied with her lot, grateful for the blessings which she considered were so numerous, and as unconscious as ever that there was anything upside down in the arrangement which had resulted in her being obliged to ‘love, honour, obey,’ keep, and clothe, six feet of beautiful man, by her own unassisted toil, while the said six feet of beautiful man did nothing but enjoy himself.

The quaint ‘Empire’ clock, shaped as a world, with a little god of love pointing to the hours numbered on its surface, chimed two from its golden bracket on the wall before she laid down her pen for the day. Then, rising, she stretched her fair, rounded arms above her head, and smiled at the daffodils in the vase close by—bright flowers which seemed fully conscious of the sunshine in that smile. Anon, she moved into the deep embrasure of her wide lattice window, where, stretched out at full length, lay a huge dog of the St Bernard breed, winking lazily with one honest brown eye at the sunbeams that danced about him.

‘Oh, Spartan, you lazy fellow!’ she said, putting her small foot on his rough, brown body, ‘aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’

Spartan sighed, and considered the question for a moment, then raised his noble head and kissed the point of his mistress’s broidered shoe.

‘It’s lunch-time, Spartan,’ continued Delicia, stooping down to pat him tenderly. ‘Will master be home to luncheon, or not, Spartan? I’m afraid not, old boy. What do you think about it?’

This inquiry roused Spartan to an attitude of attention. He got up, sat on his big haunches, and yawned profoundly; then he appeared to meditate, conveying into his fine physiognomy an expression of deep calculation that was almost human.

‘No, Spartan,’ went on Delicia, dropping on one knee and putting her arm round him, ‘we mustn’t expect it. We generally lunch alone, and we’ll go and get what the gods have provided for us in the dining-room, at once—shall we?’

But Spartan suddenly pricked his long ears, and rose in all his lion-like majesty, erect on his four handsome legs; then he gave one deep bark, turning his eyes deferentially on his mistress as one who should say, ‘Excuse me, but I hear something which compels my attention.’

Delicia, her hand on the dog’s neck, listened intently; her breath came and went, then she smiled, and a lovely light irradiated her face as the velvet _portière_ of her study door was hastily pushed aside, and her husband, looking the very incarnation of manly beauty in his becoming riding-gear, entered abruptly.

‘Why, Will, how delightful!’ she exclaimed, advancing to meet him, ‘you hardly ever come home to lunch. This is a treat!’

She clung to him and kissed him. He held her round the waist a moment, gazing at her with the involuntary admiration her grace and intelligence always roused in him, and thinking for the hundredth time how curious it was that she should be so entirely different to other women. Then, releasing her, he drew off his gloves, threw them down, and glanced at the papers which strewed her writing-table.

‘Finished the book?’ he queried, with a smile.

‘Yes, all but the last few sentences,’ she replied. ‘They require careful thinking out. It doesn’t do to end with a platitude.’

‘Most books end so,’ he said carelessly. ‘But yours are always exceptions to the rule. People are never tired of asking me how you do it. One fellow to-day said he was sure I helped you to write the strong parts.’

Delicia smiled a little.

‘And what did you say?’

‘Why, of course I said I didn’t—couldn’t write a line to save my life!’ he responded, with a laugh. ‘But you know what men are! They never can bring themselves to believe in the reality of a woman’s genius.’

The musing smile still lingered on Delicia’s face.

‘Genius is a big thing,’ she said. ‘I do not assume to possess it. But it is curious to see how very many quite ungifted men announce their own claims to it, while indignantly denying all possibility of its endowment to women. However, one must have patience; it will take some time to break men of their old savagery. For centuries they treated women as slaves and cattle; it may take other centuries before they learn to treat them as their equals.’

Carlyon looked at her, half-wonderingly, half-doubtfully.

‘They won’t give them full academic honours yet,’ he said, ‘which I think is disgracefully unfair. And the Government won’t give them titles of honour in their own right for their services in Science, Art or Literature, which they ought to have, in my opinion. And this brings me round to the news which sent me galloping home to-day as soon as I heard it. Delicia, I can give you a title this morning!’

She raised her eyebrows a little.

‘Are you joking, Will?’

‘Not a bit of it. You’ve heard me speak of my brother Guy, Lord Carlyon?’

She nodded.

‘Well, when my father died a bankrupt, of course Guy had what he could get out of the general wreck, which was very little, together with the title. The title was no use to him, he having no means to keep it up. He went off to Africa, gold-hunting, under an assumed name, to try and make money out there—and—and now he’s dead of fever. I can’t pretend to be very sorry, for I never saw much of him after we left school, and he was my senior by five years. Anyhow, he’s gone—and so—in fact—I’m Lord Carlyon!’

He made such a whimsical attempt to appear indifferent to the honour of being a lord, while all the time it was evident he was swelling with the importance of it, that Delicia laughed outright, and her violet eyes flashed with fun as she dropped him a demure curtsey.

‘My lord, allow me to congratulate your lordship!’ she said. ‘By my halidame, good my lord, I am your lordship’s very humble servant!’

He looked a trifle vexed.

‘Don’t be nonsensical, Delicia!’ he urged. ‘You know I never expected it. I always thought Guy would have married. If he had, and a son had been born to him, of course that son would have had the title. But he remained a bachelor to the end of his days, and so the luck has fallen to me. Aren’t you rather pleased about it? It’s a nice thing for you, at any rate.’

Delicia gave him a bright glance of humorous surprise.

‘A nice thing for me? My dear boy, do you really think so? Do you really and truly imagine I care about a title tacked on to my name? Not a bit of it! It will only attract a few extra snobs round me at parties, that’s all. And to my public I am always Delicia Vaughan; they won’t even give me the benefit of _your_ name, Will, because somehow they prefer the one by which they knew and loved me first.’

A faint suggestion of the Beautiful Sullenness manner clouded Carlyon’s face.

‘Oh, of course, you swear by your public!’ he said, a trifle crossly. ‘But whatever you may think of it, I’m glad the title has come my way. It’s a good thing—it gives me a _status_.’

She was silent, and stood quietly beside him, stroking Spartan’s head. Not a thought of the _status_ she herself gave her husband by her world-wide fame crossed her mind, and the reproach that might have leaped to the lips of a less loving woman than she was—namely, that the position she had won by her own brilliant intellect far outweighed any trumpery title of heritage—never once occurred to her brain. But all the same, something in the composed grace of her attitude conveyed the impression of that fact to Carlyon silently, and with subtle force; for he was conscious of a sudden sense of smallness and inward shame.

‘Yet after all,’ she said presently, with a playful air, ‘it isn’t as if you were a brewer, you know! So many brewers and building contractors become lords nowadays, that somehow I always connect the peerage with Beer and Bricks. I suppose it’s very wrong, but I can’t help it. And it will seem odd to me at first to associate you with the two B’s—you are so different to the usual type.’

He smiled,—well pleased to see her eyes resting upon him with the tender admiration to which he had become accustomed.

‘Is luncheon ready?’ he asked, after a brief pause, during which he was satisfied that he looked his best and that she was fully aware of it.

‘Yes; let us go down and partake thereof,’ she answered gaily. ‘Will you tell the servants, or shall I?’

‘Tell the servants what?’ he demanded, with a slight frown.

She turned her pretty head over her shoulder laughingly.

‘Why, to call you for the future “My Lord,” or “m’lud.” Which shall it be?’

She looked charmingly provocative; his momentary ill-humour passed, and he flung an arm round her waist and kissed her.

‘Whichever you please,’ he said. ‘Anyway you are, as you always have been, “my” lady!’

*CHAPTER II*

Delicia was perfectly right when she said that her new distinction would draw ‘extra snobs’ around her. A handle to one’s name invariably attracts all the social ‘runaways,’—in the same fashion that mischievous street-boys are attracted to bang at a particularly ornate and glittering door-knocker and then scamper off in hiding before any servant has time to answer the false summons. People who are of old and good family themselves think nothing of titles, but those who have neither good birth, breeding nor education, attach a vast amount of importance to these placards of rank, and can never refrain from an awe-stricken expression of countenance when introduced to a duke, or with-hold the regulation ‘royalty-dip’ when in the presence of some foreign ‘princess,’ who, as a matter of fact, has no right to ‘royalty’ honours at all. Delicia had met a great many such small dignitaries, but she never curtsied to any of them, whereat their petty vanity was wounded, and they thought, ‘These authors have bad manners.’ She read their thoughts and smiled, but did not care. She reserved her salutations for Royalty itself, not for the imitation of it. And now that she was a ‘ladyship,’ she obtained a good deal of amusement out of the study of character among her various ‘friends’ who envied and grudged her the trumpery honour. The Tookseys and Snookseys of society could scarcely contain themselves for spite when they learned that for the future they would have to speak of the ‘female authoress’ as Lady Carlyon. The Casual Caller and the One Man began to allude to her as ‘Delicia, Lady Carlyon,’ rolling the sweet, quaint name of ‘Delicia’ on their tongues with a keener sense of enjoyment than usual in its delicate flavour, thereby driving the Tookseys and Snookseys into a more feverish condition then ever. Paul Valdis heard the news suddenly, when he was dressing for his part as Ernani, on an evening when Royalty had announced its ‘gracious’ intention of being present to see him do it. And there would appear to have been something not altogether incorrect in the rumour that he was ‘madly in love’ with Delicia, for he turned very white and lost command of his usual equable temper in an altercation with his ‘dresser,’ whom he dismissed abruptly with something like an oath.

‘“Lady” Carlyon!’ he said to himself, staring at his own classic face and brilliant, dark eyes in the little mirror which dominated his ‘make-up’ table. ‘And I no more than mime!—stage-puppet and plaything of the public! Wait, though! I am something more! I am a MAN!—in heart and soul and feeling! a man, which my “Lord” Carlyon is not!’