Part 7

‘Oh men, what were you made for?’ she demanded, half aloud. ‘To be masters of the planet? Then surely your mastership should be characterised by truth and nobility, not vileness and fraud! Surely God originally intended you for better things than to trample under your feet all the weak and helpless, to work ravage on the fairest scenes in nature, and to make miserable wrecks of all the women that love you! Yes, Antinous, I can read in your sculptured face the supreme Egotism of manhood, an Egotism which fate will avenge in its own good time! No wonder so few men are real Christians; it is too sublime and spiritual a creed for the male nature, which is a composition of wild beast and intellectual pagan. Now, what shall be my course of action? Shall I, Delicia, seeing my husband in the mud, go down into the mud also? Or shall I keep clean—not only clean in body but clean in mind? Clean from meanness, clean from falsehood, clean from spite, not only for his sake, but for the sake of my own self-respect? Shall I let things take their course until they culminate of themselves in the pre-ordained catastrophe that always follows evil? Yes, I think I will! Life after all is a shadow; and love, what is it?’ She sighed and shuddered. ‘Less than a shadow, perchance; but there is something in me which must outlast both life and love—something which is the real Delicia, who must hereafter answer to a Supreme Judge for the thoughts which have elevated or degraded her soul!’

She resumed her pacing to and fro.

‘How easy it would be to act like other women!’ she mused; ‘to rant and weep, and hysterically shriek complaints in the ears of “my lord” when he returns to-night; or begin the day to-morrow with fume and fuss as hot and steaming as the boiling water with which I make the breakfast tea! Or to go and grumble to a female _confidante_ who would at once sell her information for five shillings to the most convenient “society journal!” Or to sink right down into the deepest mire of infamy and write anonymous letters to La Marina, daughter of the green-grocer in Eastcheap! Or employ a detective to dodge his movements and hers! Heavens! How low we can fall if we choose! and equally how high we can stand if we determine to take a firm footing on

‘“Some snow-crowned peak, Lofty and glittering in the golden glow Of summer’s ripening splendour.”

Some people ask what is the good of “standing high?” Certainly you get on much better, in society at least, if you creep low, and crawl on very humble all-fours to the feet of the latest _demi-mondaine_, provided she be of the aristocracy. If you know how to condone the vulgarity of a prince and call his vices virtue, if you can pardon the blackguardism of a duke and speak of him as a “gentleman,” in spite of the fact that he is not fit to be tolerated among decent-minded people, you are sure to “get on,” as the phrase goes. To keep oneself morally clean is a kind of offence nowadays; but methinks I shall continue to offend!’ She passed her hand across her forehead dreamily. ‘Something has confused and stunned me; I cannot quite realise what it is. I think I had an idol somewhere, set up on a pedestal of gold; it has suddenly tumbled down of its own accord!’ She smiled vaguely. ‘It is not broken yet, but it has certainly fallen!’

That night, when Lord Carlyon returned about one o’clock, he found the house dark and silent. No one was waiting up for him but his valet, a discreet and sober individual who knew his master’s secrets and kept them; not at all because he respected his master, but because he respected his master’s wife. And the semi-obscurity and grave solitude of his home irritated ‘Beauty’ Carlyon to a most inconsistent degree, inasmuch as he had himself telegraphed to Delicia that she was not to sit up for him.

‘Where is her ladyship?’ he demanded haughtily. ‘Did she go out this evening?’

Gravely the valet assisted him to pull off his opera coat as he replied,—

‘No, sir—my lord, I mean—her ladyship dined alone, and retired early. I believe the maid said her ladyship was in bed by ten.’

Carlyon grumbled something inaudible and went upstairs. Outside his wife’s room he paused and tried the handle of her bedroom door; it was locked. Surprised and angry, he rapped smartly on the panels; there was no answer save a low, fierce growl from Spartan, who, suddenly rising from his usual post on the landing outside his mistress’s sleeping chamber, manifested unusual and extraordinary signs of temper.

‘Down, you fool!’ muttered Carlyon, addressing the huge beast. ‘Lie down, or it will be the worse for you!’

But Spartan remained erect, with ears flattened and white teeth a-snarl, and Carlyon, after rapping once more vainly at the closed door, gave it up as a bad job and retired to his own private room.

‘Never knew her so dead asleep before,’ he grumbled. ‘She generally stays awake till I come home.’

He flung himself into his bed with a kind of sullen rage upon him; things had gone altogether very wrong with him that evening. He had lost money (Delicia’s money) at play, and La Marina had been in what her intimates called ‘one of her nasty humours.’ That is, she had drunk a great deal more champagne than was good for her, and had afterwards exhibited a tendency to throw wine glasses at her admirers. She had boxed Carlyon’s ears, put a spoonful of strawberry ice down his back, and called him ‘a ha’porth of bad aristocrat.’

‘What do you suppose we _artistes_ marry such fellows as you for?’ she had yelled, with a burst of tipsy laughter. ‘Why, to make you look greater fools than ever!’

And then she had shot a burnt almond nearly into his eye. And he had endured all this stoically, for the mere stupid satisfaction of having the other men round La Marina’s supper-table understand that she was his property at present, no matter to whom she might hereafter belong. But she had behaved so badly, and she had treated him with such ingratitude, that he, unconsciously to himself, longed for the fair, calm presence of Delicia, who always received him with the honour and worship he considered due to him as a man, a lord, and an officer in the Guards; and now when he came home, expecting to be charmed and flattered and caressed by her, she had committed the unwarrantable indiscretion of going to bed and falling sound asleep! It was really too bad!—enough to sting the lofty spirit of a Carlyon! And such is the curious self-pity and egotism of some men at their worst, that ‘his lordship’ felt himself to be a positively injured man as he settled his ‘god-like’ head upon his lonely pillow, and fell into an uneasy slumber, disturbed by very unpleasant dreams of his losses at baccarat, and the tipsy rages of Marina.

*CHAPTER V*

Next morning Delicia rose at about six o’clock and went out riding in the Row long before the fashionable world was astir. Attended by her groom and Spartan, who took long racing gambols on the grass beyond the railings of the ‘Ladies’ Mile,’ she cantered under the deep, dewy shade of the trees, and thought out her position in regard to her husband. In spite of inward grief and perplexity, she had slept well; for to a clear conscience and pure heart, combined with a healthy state of body, sleep is never denied. Mother Nature specially protects her straightforward and cleanly children; she keeps their faces young, their eyes bright, their spirits elastic, their tempers equable, and for the soothing of Delicia’s trouble this morning, the sunbeams danced about her in a golden waltz of pleasure, the leaves rustled in the wind, the flowers exhaled their purest fragrance and the birds sang. Riding easily on her beautiful mare ‘Phillida’—who was almost as much a personal friend of hers as Spartan himself, and whom she had purchased out of the ‘royalties’ accumulating on one of her earlier works—she found herself more than usually receptive of the exquisite impressions of natural loveliness. She was aware of everything; from the white clouds that were heaped in snowy, mountainous ranges along the furthest visible edge of the blue sky, to the open-hearted daisies in the grass that stared up at the lately-risen sun with all the frankness of old friendship and familiarity. The fresh morning air and the exhilarating exercise sent a lovely colour to her cheeks, and as her graceful form swayed lightly to the half-coquettish, gay cantering of ‘Phillida,’ who was also conscious that it was a very agreeable morning, she felt as if the information she had so unexpectedly and reluctantly received in the jeweller’s shop in Bond Street on the previous day was a bad dream and nothing more. After about an hour’s riding she returned home at a quick trot, and on entering the house heard that her ‘lord and master’ had not yet risen. She changed her riding habit for one of her simple white morning gowns, and went into her study to open and read her numerous letters, and mark them in order for her secretary to answer. She was still engaged in this occupation when Lord Carlyon came down, slowly, sleepily, and in no very good humour.

‘Oh, there you are at last, Will!’ she said, looking up at him brightly. ‘You came home late last night, I suppose, and are tired?’

He stood still for a moment, wondering within himself why she did not give him her usual good-morning kiss.

‘It was not so very late,’ he said crossly. ‘It was only half-past twelve. You’ve often stayed awake waiting for me later than that. But last night, when I knocked at your door, you never answered me—you must have been dead asleep.’

This in a tone of injury.

Delicia read calmly through the letter she held in her hand, then set it aside.

‘Yes, I must have been,’ she replied tranquilly. ‘You see I work pretty hard, and nature is good enough to give me rest when I need it. You work hard too, Will, but in quite another way—you toil after amusement. Now that’s the hardest form of labour I know! Treadmills are nothing to it! No wonder you’re tired! Breakfast’s ready; let us go and have it; I’ve been out riding for an hour this morning, and I feel desperately hungry. Come along!’

She led the way downstairs; he followed slowly and with a vague feeling of uneasiness. He missed something in his wife’s manner—an indefinable something which he could not express—something that had always characterised her, but which now had unaccountably disappeared. It was as if a wide river had suddenly rolled in between them, forcing her to stand on one side of the flood and he on the other. He studied her observantly from under his fine eyelash growth, as she made the tea and with a few quick touches here and there altered the decorous formality of the breakfast-table into the similitude of an Arcadian feast of beauty by the mere artistic placing of a vase of flowers or a dish of fruit, and this done, handed him the morning’s newspaper with smiling and courteous punctilio.

‘Spartan seems to be turning crusty,’ he remarked as he unfolded the journal. ‘Last night, when I knocked at your door, he showed his teeth and growled at me. I didn’t know he had such an uncertain temper.’

Delicia looked round at her canine friend with a pretty air of remonstrance.

‘Oh, Spartan! What is this I hear?’ she said, whereat Spartan hung his head and tucked his tail well under his haunches. ‘Don’t you know your master when he comes home late? Did you take him for a regular “rake,” Spartan? Did you think he had been in bad company? Fie, for shame! You ought to know better, naughty boy!’

Spartan looked abashed, but not so abashed as did Lord Carlyon. He fidgeted on his chair, got red in the face, and made a great noise in folding and unfolding the newspaper; and presently, finding his own thoughts too much for him, he began to get angry with nobody in particular, and, as is the fashion with egotistical men, turned a sudden unprovoked battery of assault on the woman he was hourly and daily wronging.

‘I heard something last night that displeased me very much, Delicia,’ he said, affecting a high moral tone. ‘It concerns you, and I should like to speak to you about it.’

‘Yes?’ said Delicia, with the very slightest lifting of her delicate eyebrows.

‘Yes.’ And Lord Carlyon hummed and hawed for a couple of dubious seconds. ‘You see, you are a woman, and you ought to be very careful what you write. A man told me that in your last book there were some very strong passages,—really strong—you know what I mean—and he said that it is very questionable whether any woman with a proper sense of delicacy ought to write in such a manner.’

Delicia looked at him steadily.

‘Who is he? My book has probably touched him on a sore place!’

Carlyon did not answer immediately; he was troubled with an awkward cough.

‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘it was Fitz-Hugh; you know him—an awfully good fellow,—has sisters and all that—says he wouldn’t let his sisters read your book for the world, and it was deuced disagreeable for me to hear, I can tell you.’

‘You have read my book,’ said Delicia, slowly; ‘and did you discover anything of the nature complained of by Captain Fitz-Hugh?’

Again Lord Carlyon coughed uncomfortably.

‘Well, upon my word, I don’t exactly remember now, but I can’t say I did!’

Delicia still kept her eyes fixed upon him.

‘Then, of course, you defended me?’

Carlyon flushed, and began to butter a piece of toast in nervous haste.

‘Why, there was no need for defence,’ he stammered. ‘The whole thing is in a nutshell—an author’s an author, man or woman, and there’s an end of it. Of course you’re alone responsible for the book, and, as I said, if he don’t like it he needn’t read it, and no one asked him to give it to his sisters!’

‘You prevaricate,’ interrupted Delicia, steadily; ‘But perhaps it is as well you did not think it necessary to defend me to such a man as Captain Fitz-Hugh, who for years has been the notorious lover of Lady Rapley, to the disgrace of her husband who permits the scandal. And for Captain Fitz-Hugh’s sisters, who are the chief purveyors of slander in the wretched little provincial town where they live, each one of them trying her best to catch the curate or the squire, I shall very willingly write a book some day that deals solely with the petty lives lived by such women—women more unclean in mind than a Swift, and lower in the grade of intellect than an aspiring tadpole, who at any rate has the laudable ambition and intention of becoming an actual frog some day!’

Carlyon stared, vaguely startled and chilled by her cold, calm accents.

‘By Jove! You _are_ cutting, you know, Delicia!’ he expostulated. ‘Poor Fitz-Hugh! he can’t help himself falling in love with Lady Rapley—’

‘Can’t help himself!’ echoed Delicia, with supreme scorn. ‘Can he not help disgracing her? Is it not possible to love greatly and nobly, and die with the secret kept? Is there no dignity left in manhood? Or in womanhood? Do you think, for instance, that _I_ would permit myself to love any other man but you?’

His handsome face flushed, and his eyes kindled. He smiled a self-satisfied smile.

‘Upon my life, that’s splendid—the way you say that!’ he exclaimed. ‘But all women are not like you—’

‘I know they are not,’ she replied. ‘Captain Fitz-Hugh’s sisters, for example, are certainly not at all like me! They do well to avoid my book; they would find female cant and hypocrisy too openly exposed there to please them. But with regard to your complaint—for I regard it to be a complaint from you—you may challenge the whole world of slander-mongers, if you like, to point to one offensive expression in my writings—they will never find it.’

He rose and put his arm round her. At his touch she shuddered with a new and singular aversion. He thought the tremor one of delight.

‘And so you will never permit yourself to love any other man but me?’ he asked caressingly, touching the rich masses of her hair with his lips.

‘Never!’ she responded firmly, looking straight into his eyes. ‘But do not misunderstand my meaning! It is very possible that I might cease to love you altogether—yes, it certainly might happen at any moment; but I should never, because of this, love another man. I could not so degrade myself as to parcel my affections out in various quarters, after the fashion of Lady Rapley, who has descended voluntarily, as one of our latter-day novelists observes, “to the manners and customs of the poultry yard.” If I ceased to love you, then love itself for me would cease. It could never revive for anyone else; it would be dead dust and ashes! I have no faith in women who love more than once.’

Carlyon still toyed with her hair; the undefinable something he missed in her fretted and perplexed him.

‘Are you aware that you look at me very strangely this morning, Delicia?’ he said at last; ‘Almost as if I were not the same man! And this is the first time I have ever heard you speak of the possibility of your ceasing to love me!’

She moved restlessly in his embrace, and presently, gently putting him aside, rose from the breakfast-table and pretended to busy herself with the arrangement of some flowers on the mantelpiece.

‘I have been reading philosophy,’ she answered him, with a tremulous little laugh. ‘Grim old cynics, both ancient and modern, who say that nothing lasts on earth, and that the human soul is made of such imperishable stuff that it is always out-reaching one emotion after another and striving to attain the highest perfection. If this be true, then even human love is poor and trifling compared to love divine!’ Her eyes darkened with intensity of feeling. ‘At least, so say some of our sage instructors; and if it be indeed a fact that mortal things are but the passing shadow of immortal ones, it is natural enough that we should gradually outlive the temporal in our desire for the eternal.’

Carlyon looked at her wonderingly; she met his gaze fully, her eyes shining with a pure light that almost dazzled him.

‘I can’t follow all your transcendental theories,’ he said, half pettishly; ‘I never could. I have always told you that you can’t get reasoning men to care about any other life than this one—they don’t see it; they don’t want it. Heaven doesn’t suggest itself to them as at all a jolly sort of place, and you know, if you come to think of it, you’d rather not have an angel to love you; you’d much rather have a woman.’

‘Speak for yourself, my dear Will,’ answered Delicia, with a slight smile. ‘If angels, such as I imagine them to be, exist at all, I should much prefer to be loved by one of them than by a man. The angel’s love might last; the man’s would not. We see these things from different points of view. And as for this life, I assure you I am not at all charmed with it.’

‘Good heavens! You’ve got everything you want,’ exclaimed Carlyon, ‘Even fame, which so rarely attends a woman!’

‘Yes, and I know the value of it!’ she responded. ‘Fame, literally translated, means slander. Do you think I am not able to estimate it at its true worth? Do you think I am ignorant of the fact that I am followed by the lies and envies and hatreds of the unsuccessful? Or that I shut my eyes to the knowledge of the enmity that everywhere pursues me? If I were old, if I were poor, if I were ugly, and had scarcely a gown to my back, and still wrote books, I should be much more liked than I am. I daresay some rich people might even be found willing to “patronise” me!’ She laughed disdainfully. ‘But when these same rich people discover that I can afford to patronise _them_,—who is there that can rightly estimate the measure or the violence of their antipathy for me? Yet when I say I am not charmed with life, I only mean the “social” life; I do not mean the life of nature—of that I am never tired.’

‘Well, this morning, at any rate, you appear to be tired of me,’ said Carlyon, irritably. ‘So I suppose I’d better get out of your way!’

She made no answer whatever. He fidgeted about a little, then began to grumble again.

‘I’m sorry you’re in such a bad humour.’ At this she raised her eyebrows in smiling protest. ‘Yes, you know you’re in a bad humour,’ he went on obstinately; ‘you pretend you’re not, but you are. And I wanted to ask you a question on your own business affairs.’

‘Pray ask it!’ said Delicia, still smiling. ‘Though, before you speak, let me assure you my business affairs are in perfect order.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he went on uneasily; ‘these d——d publishers often wriggle out of bargains, and try to “do” a woman. That firm, now—the one that has just published your last book—have they paid you?’

‘They have,’ she answered with composure. ‘They are, though publishers, still honourable men.’

‘It was to be eight thousand, wasn’t it?’ he asked, looking down at the lapels of his well-fitting morning-coat and flicking a speck of dust off the cloth.

‘It was, and it is,’ she answered. ‘I paid four thousand of it into your bank yesterday.’

His eyes flashed.

‘By Jove! What a clever little woman you are!’ he exclaimed. ‘Fancy getting all that cash out of your brain-pan! It’s quite a mystery to me how you do it, you know! I can never make it out—’

‘There’s no accounting for the public taste,’ said Delicia, watching him with the pained consciousness of a sudden contempt. ‘But you need not puzzle yourself over the matter.’

‘Oh, I never bother my head over literature at all!’ laughed Carlyon, becoming quite hilarious, now that he knew an extra four thousand pounds had been piled into his private banking account. ‘People often ask me, “How does your wife manage to write such clever books?” And I always reply, “Don’t know, never could tell. Astonishing woman! Shuts herself up in her own room like a silkworm, and spins a regular cocoon!” That’s what I say, you know; yet nobody ever seems to believe me, and lots of fellows swear you _must_ get a man to help you.’

‘It is part of man’s conceit to imagine his assistance always necessary,’ said Delicia, coldly smiling. ‘Considering how loudly men talk of their own extraordinary abilities, it is really astonishing how little they manage to do. Good-bye! I’m going upstairs to spin cocoons.’

He stopped her as she moved to leave the room.

‘I say, Delicia, it’s awfully sweet of you to hand over that four thousand—’

She gave a little gesture of offence.

‘Why speak of it, Will? You know that half of every sum I earn is placed to your account; it has been my rule ever since our marriage, and there is really no need to allude to what is now a mere custom of business.’

He still held her arm.

‘Yes, that’s all very well; but look here, Delicia, you’re not angry with me for anything, are you?’

She raised her head and looked straightly at him.

‘No, Will—not angry.’

Something in her eyes intimidated him. He checked himself abruptly, afraid to ask her anything more.

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ he stammered hurriedly. ‘I’m glad you’re not angry. I thought you seemed a little put out; but it’s jolly that I’m mistaken, you know. Ta-ta! Have a good morning’s grind.’