Part 6

‘Then you must appeal to posterity’s publishers as well, mustn’t he, Mr Granton?’ suggested Doctor Dalley, with a humorous twinkle in his eyes, addressing the publisher, who, being the head of a wealthy and influential firm, was regarded by all the penniless scribblers in the ‘Bohemian’ with feelings divided betwixt awe and fear.

‘He must, indeed!’ said Granton. ‘Personally, I prefer to speculate in Delicia Vaughan, now Lady Carlyon. Her new book is a masterpiece; I am proud to be the publisher of it. And upon my word, I think the public show capital taste in “rushing” for it.’

‘Pooh, she can’t write!’ sneered Grovelyn. ‘Did you ever know a woman who could?’

‘I have heard of George Eliot,’ hinted Dalley.

‘An old hen, that imagined it could crow!’ said the poet, with intense malignity. ‘She’ll be forgotten as though she never existed, in a little while; and as for that Vaughan woman, she’s several grades lower still, and ought only to be employed for the _London Journal_!’

Granton looked at him, and bit his lips to hide a smile.

‘It strikes me you’d rather like to stand in Lady Carlyon’s shoes, all the same, Mr Grovelyn,’ he said.

Grovelyn laughed, with such a shrill sound in the laughter, that Dr Dalley immediately made a mental note entitled ‘Splenetic Hysteria,’ and watched him with professional eagerness.

‘Not I,’ he exclaimed. ‘Everybody knows her husband writes more than half her books!’

‘That’s a lie!’ said a full, clear voice behind them. ‘Her husband is as big an ass as you are!’

Grovelyn turned round fiercely, and confronted Paul Valdis. There was a silence of surprise and consternation. Several men rose from various parts of the room, and came to see what was going on. Dr Dalley rubbed his hands in delightful anticipation of a ‘row,’ but no one spoke or moved to interfere. The two men, Grovelyn and Valdis, stood face to face; the one mean-featured, with every movement of his body marked by a false and repulsive affectation, the other a manly and heroic figure distinguished by good looks and grace of bearing, with the consciousness of right and justice flashing in his eyes.

‘You accuse me of telling a lie, Mr Valdis,’ hissed Grovelyn, ‘and you call me an ass!’

‘I do,’ retorted Valdis, coolly. ‘It is certainly a lie that Lord Carlyon writes half his wife’s books. I had a letter from him once, and found out by it that he didn’t known how to spell, much less express himself grammatically. And of course you are an ass if you think he could do anything in the way of literature; but you don’t think so—you only say so out of pure jealousy of a woman’s fame!’

‘You shall answer for this, Mr Valdis!’ exclaimed Grovelyn, the curls of his door-mat coiffure bristling with rage. ‘By Heaven, you shall answer for it!’

‘When you please, and how you please,’ returned Valdis, composedly; ‘Now and here, if you like, and if the members permit fighting on the club premises.’

Exclamations of ‘No, no!’ mingled with laughter, partially drowned his voice. Everyone at the ‘Bohemian’ knew and dreaded Valdis; he was the most influential person on the committee, and the most dangerous if offended.

‘Lady Carlyon’s name is hardly fitted to be a bone of contention for us literary and play-acting dogs-in-the-manger,’ he continued. ‘She does not write verse, so she is not in your way, Mr Grovelyn, nor will she interfere with your claim on posterity. She is not an actress, so she does not rob me of any of my honours as an actor, and I think we should do well to magnanimously allow her the peaceful enjoyment of her honestly-earned reputation, without grouping ourselves together like dirty street-boys to try and throw mud at her. Our mud doesn’t stick, you know! Her book is an overwhelming success, and her husband will doubtless enjoy all the financial profits of it.’

He turned on his heel and looked over some papers lying on the table. Grovelyn touched his arm; there was an evil leer on his face.

‘The pen is mightier than the sword, Mr Valdis!’ he observed.

‘Ay, ay! That means you are going to blackguard me in the next number of the ha’penny _Clarion_? Be it so! Truth shall not budge for a ha’porth of slander!’

He resumed his perusal of the papers, and Grovelyn walked away slowly, his eyes fixed on the ground, and a brooding mischief in his face.

‘You should never ruffle the temper of a man who has liver complaint, Valdis,’ said Dr Dalley, cheerfully, drawing his chair up to the table where the handsome actor still leaned. ‘All evil humours come from the troubles of that important organ, and I am sure, if I could only meet a would-be murderer in time, I could save him from the committal of his intended wicked deed by a dose—quite a small dose—of suitable medicine!’

Valdis laughed rather forcedly.

‘Could you? Then you’d better attend to Grovelyn without delay. He’s ripe for murder—with the pen!’

Dr Dalley rubbed his well-shaven, rounded chin meditatively.

‘Is he? Well, perhaps he is; I really shouldn’t wonder! Curiously enough, now I come to think of it, he has certain points about him that are synonymous with a murderer’s instinct—phrenologically and physiologically speaking, I mean. It is rather strange he should be a poet at all.’

‘Is he a poet?’ queried Valdis, contemptuously; ‘I never heard it honestly admitted. One does not acknowledge a man as a poet simply because he has a shock head of very dirty hair.’

‘My dear Valdis,’ expostulated the little doctor, amiably, ‘you really are very bitter, almost violent in your strictures upon the man, who to me is one of the most interesting persons I have ever met! Because I foresee his death—due to very complex and entertaining complications of disease—in the space of—let me see! Well, suppose we say eighteen months! I do not think we shall have any chance of an autopsy. I wish I could think it likely, but I am afraid—’ Here Dr Dalley shook his head, and looked so despondent concerning the slender hope he had of dissecting Grovelyn after death, that Valdis laughed heartily, and this time unrestrainedly.

‘You forget, there’s the new photography; you could photograph his interior while he’s alive!’

‘By Jove! I never thought of that!’ cried the doctor, joyfully; ‘Of course! I’ll have it done when the disease has made a little more progress. It will be extremely instructive!’

‘It will,’ said Valdis. ‘Especially if you reproduce it in the journals, and call it “Portrait of a Lampooner’s Interior under Process of Destruction by the Microbes of Disappointment and Envy.”’

‘Good! good!’ chuckled Dalley, ‘And, my dear Valdis, how would you like a photo entitled, “Portrait of a Distinguished Actor’s Imaginative Organism consumed by the Fires of a Hopeless Love?”’

Valdis coloured violently, and anon grew pale.

‘You are an old friend of mine, Dalley,’ he said slowly, ‘but you may go too far!’

‘So I may, and so I have!’ returned the little doctor, penitently, and with an abashed look. ‘Forgive me, my dear boy; I’ve been guilty of a piece of impertinence, and I’m sorry! There! But I should like a few words with you alone, if you don’t mind. It’s Sunday night; you can’t go and be “Ernani.” Will you waste a few minutes of your company on me—outside these premises, where the very walls have ears?’

Valdis assented, and in a few minutes they left the club together. With their departure there was a slight stir among the men in the room, who were reading, smoking, and drinking whisky and water.

‘I wish she’d take up with him!’ growled one man, whose head was half hidden behind a _Referee_. ‘Why the devil doesn’t she play the fool like other women?’

‘Whom are you speaking of?’ inquired a stout personage, who was busy correcting his critical notes on a new play which had been acted for the first time the previous evening.

‘Delicia Vaughan—Lady Carlyon,’ answered the first man. ‘Valdis is infatuated with her. Why she doesn’t go over to him, I can’t imagine; a writing female need not be more particular than a dancing female, I should say they’re both public characters, and Carlyon has thrown himself down as a free gift at the feet of La Marina, so there’s no obstacle in the way, except the woman’s own extraordinary “cussedness.”’

‘What good would it do you that she should “go over,” as you call it, to Valdis?’ inquired the stout scribbler, dubiously, biting the end of his pencil.

‘Good? Why, none to me in particular,’ said the other, ‘but it would drag her down! Don’t you see? It would prove to the idiotic public, that is just now running after her as if she were a goddess, that she is only the usual frail stuff of which women are made. I should like that! I confess I should like it! I like women to keep in their places—’

‘That is, on the down grade,’ suggested the stout gentleman, still dubiously.

‘Of course! what else were they made for? La Marina, who kicks up her skirts, and hits her nose with the point of her big toe, is far more of a woman, I take it, and certainly more to the taste of a man, than the insolent, brilliant, superior Delicia Vaughan!’

‘Oh! You admit she is brilliant and superior?’ said the stout critic, with a smile. ‘Well, you know that’s saying a great deal! I’m an old-fashioned man—’

‘Of course you are!’ put in a young fellow, standing near. ‘You like to believe there may be good women,—real angels,—on earth; you like to believe it, and so do I!’

He was a fresh-coloured youth, lately come up to London from the provinces to try his hand at literature; and the individual with the _Referee_, who had started the conversation, glanced him over with the supremest contempt.

‘I hope your mother’s in town to take care of you, you ninny,’ he said. ‘You’re a very callow bird!’

The young man laughed good-naturedly.

‘Am I? Well, all the same, I’d rather honour women than despise them.’

The stout critic looked up from his notebook approvingly.

‘Keep that up as long as you can, youngster,’ he said. ‘It won’t hurt you!’

A silence followed; the man with the _Referee_ spoke not another word, and the fresh-coloured provincial, getting tired of the smoke and the general air of egotistical self-concentration with which each member of the club sat fast in his own chosen chair, absorbed in his own chosen form of inward meditation, took a hasty departure, glad to get out into the cool night air. His way home lay through a part of Mayfair, and at one of the houses he passed he saw a long line of carriages outside and a brilliant display of light within. Some fashionable leader of society was holding a Sunday evening reception; and moved by a certain vague interest and curiosity, the young reporter lingered for a moment watching the gaily-dressed women passing in and out. While he yet waited, a dignified butler appeared on the steps and murmured something in the ear of a gold-buttoned commissionaire, who thereupon shouted vociferously,—

‘Lady Car-ly-on’s carriage! This way!’

And as an elegant _coupé_, drawn by two spirited horses drove swiftly up in response to the summons, a woman wrapped in a soft, white mantilla of old Spanish lace, and holding up her silken train with one hand, came out of the house with a gentleman, evidently her host, who was escorting her to the carriage. The young man from the country leaned eagerly forward and caught sight of a proud, delicate face illumined by two dark violet eyes, a flashing glimpse of beauty that vanished ere fully seen. But it was enough to make him who had been called a ‘callow bird’ wax suddenly indignant with certain self-styled celebrities he had just left behind at the ‘Bohemian.’

‘What beasts they are!’ he muttered; ‘what cads! Thank God they’ll never be famous; they’re too mean! To fling their dirty spite at a woman like that! It’s disgusting! Wait till I get a chance; I’ll “review” their trash for them!’

And warmed by the prospect of this future vengeance, the ‘callow bird’ went home to roost.

*CHAPTER IV*

Some days after the war of words between Valdis and Aubrey Grovelyn at the ‘Bohemian,’ Delicia was out shopping in Bond Street, not for herself, but for her husband. She had a whole list of orders to execute for him, from cravats and hosiery up to a new and expensive ‘coach-luncheon-basket,’ to which he had taken a sudden fancy; and besides this, she was looking about in all the jeweller’s shops for some tasteful and valuable thing to give him as a souvenir of the approaching anniversary of their marriage day. Pausing at last in front of one glittering window, she saw a rather quaint set of cuff-studs which she thought might possibly answer her purpose, and she went inside the shop to examine them more closely. The jeweller, not knowing her personally, but judging from the indifferent way in which she took the announcement of his rather stiff prices, that she must be a tolerably rich woman, began to show her some of his most costly pieces of workmanship, hoping thereby to tempt her into the purchase of something for herself. She had no very great love for jewels, but she had for artistic design, and she gratified the jeweller by her intelligent praise of some particularly choice bits, the merits of which could only be fully recognised by a quick eye and cultivated taste.

‘That is a charming pendant,’ she said, taking up a velvet case, in which rested a dove with outspread wings, made of the finest diamonds, carrying in its beak the facsimile of a folded letter in finely-wrought gold, with the words, ‘_Je t’adore ma mie!_’ set upon it in lustrous rubies. ‘The idea is graceful in itself, and admirably carried out.’

The jeweller smiled.

‘Ah, that’s a very unique thing,’ he said, ‘but it’s not for sale. It has been made to special order for Lord Carlyon.’

A faint tremor passed over Delicia like the touch of a cold wind, and for a moment the jewels spread out on the glass counter before her danced up and down like sparks flying out of a fire, but she maintained her outward composure. And in another minute she smiled at herself, wondering why she had been so startled, for, of course, her husband had ordered this pretty piece of jewellery as a gift for her, on the very anniversary she was preparing to celebrate by a gift to him! Meanwhile the jeweller, who was of an open mind, and rather fond of confiding bits of gossip to stray customers, took the diamond dove out of its satin-lined nest, and held it up in the sunlight to show the lustre of the stones.

‘It’s a lovely design!’ he said enthusiastic-ally; ‘It will cost Lord Carlyon a little over five hundred pounds. But gentlemen of his sort never mind what they pay, so long as they can please the lady they are after. And the lady in this case isn’t his lordship’s wife, as you may well suppose!’

He sniggered, and one of his eyelids trembled as though it were on the point of a profane wink. Delicia regarded him with a straight, clear look.

‘Why should I suppose anything of the sort?’ she queried calmly. ‘I should, on the contrary, imagine that it was just the tasteful gift a man would wish to choose for his wife.’

The jeweller made a curious little bow over his counter, implying deference towards Delicia’s unsuspicious nature.

‘Would you really?’ he said. ‘Well, now, as a matter of fact, in our trade, when we get special orders from gentlemen for valuable jewels, they are never by any chance intended for the gentlemen’s wives. Of course it is not our business to interfere with, or even comment upon the actions of our customers; but as far as our own artistic work goes, it often pains us—yes, I may say it pains us—to see some of our finest pieces being thrown away on dancers and music-hall singers, who don’t really know how to appreciate them, because they haven’t the taste or culture for it. They know the money’s worth of jewels—oh, you may trust them for that. And whenever they want to raise cash, why, of course their jewels come handy. But it’s not satisfactory to us as a firm, for we take a good deal of pride in our work. This dove, for instance,’ and again he dangled the pendant in the sunbeams, ‘It’s a magnificent specimen of diamond-setting, and of course we, as the producers of such a piece, would far rather know it was going to Lady Carlyon than to La Marina.’

Delicia began to feel as if she were in a kind of dull dream; there were flickering lines of light flashing before her eyes, and her limbs trembled. She heard the jeweller’s voice, going on again in its politely gossiping monotone, as though it were a long way off.

‘Of course La Marina is a wonderful creature, a marvellous dancer, and good-looking in her way, but common. Ah! common’s no word for it! She was the daughter of a costermonger in Eastcheap. Now, Lady Carlyon is a very different person; she is best known by her maiden name, Delicia Vaughan. She’s the author of that name; I daresay you may have read some of her books?’

‘I believe—yes, I think I have,’ murmured Delicia, faintly.

‘Well, there you are! She’s a really famous woman, and very much loved by many people, I’ve heard say; but, lord! her husband hardly gives her a thought! I’ve seen him in this very street walking with females that even I’d be ashamed to know; and it’s rumoured that he hasn’t got a penny of his own, and that all the money he throws about so lavishly is his wife’s; and if that’s the case, it’s really shameful, because of course she, without knowing it, pays for Marina’s jewels! However, there’s no accounting for tastes. I suppose Lady Carlyon’s too clever, or else plain in her personal appearance; and that’s why this diamond dove is going to La Marina instead of to her. Will you take the cuff-studs?’

‘Yes, thank you, I will take them,’ said Delicia, opening her purse with cold, trembling fingers, and counting out crisp bank-notes to the value of twenty pounds. ‘They are pretty, and very suitable for a—a gentleman.’

Unconsciously she laid an emphasis on the word ‘gentleman,’ and the jeweller nodded.

‘Exactly! There’s nothing vulgar about them, not the least suspicion of anything ‘fast’! Really you can’t be too particular in the choice of studs, for what with the sporting men, and the jockeys and trainers who get presents of valuable studs from their turf patrons, it’s difficult to hit upon anything really gentlemanly _for_ a gentleman. But’—and the worthy man smiled as he packed up the studs—‘after all, real gentleman are getting very scarce! Allow me!’ Here he flung open the door of his establishment with the grace of a Sir Charles Grandison, and royally issued his command to the small boy in buttons attached to the shop, ‘See this lady to her carriage!’

How ‘this lady’ got into that carriage she never quite knew. The page boy did his part in carefully attending to her dress that it should not touch the wheel, in wrapping her round with the rich bear-skin rug that protected her from side winds, and in quietly grasping the shilling she slipped into his palm for his services, but she herself felt more like a mechanical doll moving on wires than a living, feeling woman. Her coachman, who always had enough to do in the management of the spirited horses which drew her light victoria, glanced back at her once or twice doubtfully, as he guided his prancing animals out of the confusion of Bond Street and drove towards the Park, considering within himself that, if he were going in an undesired direction, ‘her ladyship’ would speedily stop him; but her ladyship lay back in her cushioned seat, inert, indifferent, seeing nothing and hearing nothing. The fashionable pageant of the Park ‘season’ seemed to her a mere chaotic whirl; and several eager admirers of her beauty and her genius raised their hats to her in vain—she never perceived them. A curious numbness had crept over her; she wondered, as she felt the movement of the carriage, whether it was not a hearse, and she the dead body within it being carried to her grave! Then, quite suddenly, she raised herself and sat upright, glancing about at the rich foliage of the trees, the gay flower-beds and the up-and-down moving throng of people; a bright flush reddened her face, which for the past few minutes had been deadly pale, and as two or three of her acquaintances passed her in their carriages or on foot, she saluted them with her usual graceful air of mingled pride and sweetness, and seemed almost herself again. But she was not long able to endure the strain she put upon her nerves, and after one or two turns in the Row, she bade her coachman drive home. Arrived there, she found a telegram from her husband, running thus:—

‘Shall not return to dinner. Don’t wait up for me.’

Crushing the missive in her hand, she went to her own study immediately, the faithful Spartan following her, and there she shut herself up alone with her dog friend for a couple of hours. The scholarly peace of the place had its effect in soothing her, and in allaying the burning smart of her wounded spirit; and with a sigh of relief she sat down in her favourite arm-chair with her back purposely turned to the white marble ‘Antinous,’ whose cruel smile had nothing but mockery in it for a woman’s pain. Spartan laid his head on her knee, and she rested one hand caressingly on his broad brow.

‘I must think this worry out, Spartan!’ she said gently. ‘I feel as if I had swallowed poison and needed an antidote.’

Spartan wagged his bushy tail and looked volumes. Had he been able to speak, he might have said, ‘Why did you ever trust a man? Dogs are much more faithful!’

She sank into a profound reverie. Her brain was clear, logical and evenly balanced, and she had none of the flighty, fantastical, hysterical notions common to many of her sex. She had been trained, or rather, she had trained herself, in the splendid school of classic philosophy; and in addition to this, she was a devout Christian, one of the old-world type, who would have willingly endured martyrdom for the faith had it been necessary. She was not a church-goer, and she belonged to no special ‘sect;’ she had no vulgar vices to hide by an ostentatious display of public charities, but she had the most absolute and passionate belief in, and love for Christ, as the one Divine Messenger from God to man; and now she was bringing both her faith and her philosophic theories to bear on the present unexpected crisis in her life.

‘If I were a low woman, a vulgar woman, a virago in domestic life, or what the French call _une femme impossible_, I could understand his seeking a change from my detestable company anywhere and everywhere,’ she mentally argued; ‘but as things are, what have I done that he should descend from me to La Marina? Men will amuse themselves—I know that well enough—but need the amusement be obtained on such a low grade! And is it fair that my earnings should keep La Marina in jewels?’

At this latter thought she started up and began to pace the room restlessly. In so doing she came face to face with the marble bust of ‘Antinous,’ and she stopped abruptly, looking full at it.