Part 30

"Lucio! ... Lucio!" she whispered, and her whisper sounded through the long gallery like the hiss of a snake--"Say what you will--say all you will of me,--you can say nothing that is not true. I am vile--I own it. But is it of much avail to be virtuous? What pleasure comes from goodness?--what gratification from self-denial? There is no God to care! A few years, and we all die, and are forgotten even by those who loved us,--why should we lose such joys as we may have for the mere asking? Surely it is not difficult to love even me for an hour?--am I not fair to look upon?--and is all this beauty of my face and form worthless in your sight, and you no more than man? Murder me as you may with all the cruelty of cruel words, I care nothing!--I love you--love you!"--and in a perfect passion of self-abandonment she sprang to her feet, tossing back her rich hair over her shoulders, and stood erect, a very bacchante of wild loveliness--"Look at me! You shall not,--you dare not spurn such a love as mine!"

Dead silence followed her outburst,--and I stared in fascinated awe at Lucio as he turned more fully round and confronted her. The expression of his countenance struck me then as quite unearthly,--his beautiful broad brows were knitted in a darkling line of menace,--his eyes literally blazed with scorn, and yet he laughed,--a low laugh, resonant with satire.

"Shall not!--dare not!" he echoed disdainfully--"Woman's words,--woman's ranting!--the shriek of the outraged feminine animal who fails to attract, as she thinks, her chosen mate. Such a love as yours!--what is it? Degradation to whosoever shall accept it,--shame to whosoever shall rely upon it! You make a boast of your beauty; your mirror shows you a pleasing image,--but your mirror lies!--as admirably as you do! You see within it not the reflection of yourself, for that would cause you to recoil in horror, ... you merely look upon your fleshly covering, a garment of tissues, shrinkable, perishable, and only fit to mingle with the dust from which it sprang. Your beauty! I see none of it,--I see You! and to me you are hideous, and will remain hideous for ever. I hate you!--I hate you with the bitterness of an immeasurable and unforgiving hatred,--for you have done me a wrong,--you have wrought an injury upon me,--you have added another burden to the load of punishment I carry!"

She made a forward movement with outstretched arms,--he repulsed her by a fierce gesture.

"Stand back!" he said--"Be afraid of me, as of an unknown Terror! O pitiless Heaven!--to think of it!--but a night ago I was lifted a step nearer to my lost delight!--and now this woman drags me back, and down!--and yet again I hear the barring of the gates of Paradise! O infinite torture! O wicked souls of men and women!--is there no touch of grace or thought of God left in you!--and will ye make my sorrows eternal!"

He stood, lifting his face to the light where it streamed through the oriel window, and the moonbeams colouring themselves faintly roseate as they filtered through the painted garments of St Stephen, showed a great and terrible anguish in his eyes. I heard him with amazement and awe,--I could not imagine what he meant by his strange words,--and it was evident by her expression, that my reckless and abandoned wife was equally mystified.

"Lucio,"--she murmured--"Lucio, ... what is it ... what have I done?--I who would not wound you for the world?--I who but seek your love, Lucio, to repay it in full with such fond passion and tenderness as you have never known! For this and this only, I married Geoffrey,--I chose your friend as husband because he was your friend!" (O perfidious woman!) "and because I saw his foolish egotism--his pride in himself and his riches,--his blind confidence in me and in you;--I knew that I could, after a time, follow the fashion of many another woman in my set and choose my lover,--ah, my lover!--I had chosen him already,--I have chosen you, Lucio!--yes, though you hate me you cannot hinder me from loving you,--I shall love you till I die!"

He turned his gaze upon her steadily,--the gloom deepening on his brows.

"And after you die?" he said--"Will you love me then?"

There was a stern derision in his tone which appeared to vaguely terrify her.

"After death! ..." she stammered.

"Yes,--after death!" he repeated sombrely--"There _is_ an after;--as your mother knows!" A faint exclamation escaped her,--she fixed her eyes upon him affrightedly. "Fair lady," he went on--"your mother was, like yourself, a voluptuary. She, like you, made up her mind to 'follow the fashion' as you put it, as soon as her husband's 'blind' or willing confidence was gained. She chose, not one lover but many. You know her end. In the written but miscomprehended laws of Nature, a diseased body is the natural expression of a diseased mind,--her face in her last days was the reflex of her soul. You shudder?--the thought of her hideousness is repellent to your self-conscious beauty? Yet the evil that was in her is also in you,--it festers in your blood slowly but surely, and as you have no faith in God to cure the disease, it will have its way--even at the final moment when death clutches at your throat and stops your breathing. The smile upon your frozen lips then will not be the smile of a saint, believe me, but of a sinner! Death is never deceived, though life may be. And afterwards ... I ask again, will you love me, do you think? ... when you know WHO I am?"

I was myself startled at his manner of putting this strange question;--I saw her lift her hands beseechingly towards him, and she seemed to tremble.

"When I know who you are!" she repeated wonderingly--"Do I not know? You are Lucio,--Lucio Rimânez--my love,--my love!--whose voice is my music,--whose beauty I adore,--whose looks are my heaven" ...

"And Hell!" he interposed, with a low laugh--"Come here!"

She went towards him eagerly, yet falteringly. He pointed to the ground,--I saw the rare blue diamond he always wore on his right hand, flash like a flame in the moonrays.

"Since you love me so well,"--he said--"Kneel down and worship me!"

She dropped on her knees--and clasped her hands,--I strove to move,--to speak,--but some resistless force held me dumb and motionless;--the light from the stained glass window fell upon her face, and showed its fairness illumined by a smile of perfect rapture.

"With every pulse of my being I worship you!" she murmured passionately--"My king!--my god! The cruel things you say but deepen my love for you,--you can kill, but you can never change me! For one kiss of your lips I would die,--for one embrace from you I would give my soul! ..."

"Have you one to give?" he asked derisively--"Is it not already disposed of? You should make sure of that first! Stay where you are and let me look at you! So!--a woman, wearing a husband's name, holding a husband's honour, clothed in the very garments purchased with a husband's money, and newly risen from a husband's side, steals forth thus in the night, seeking to disgrace him and pollute herself by the vulgarest unchastity! And this is all that the culture and training of nineteenth-century civilization can do for you? Myself, I prefer the barbaric fashion of old times, when rough savages fought for their women as they fought for their cattle, treated them as cattle, and kept them in their place, never dreaming of endowing them with such strong virtues as truth and honour! If women were pure and true, then the lost happiness of the world might return to it,--but the majority of them are like you, liars, ever pretending to be what they are not. I may do what I choose with you, you say? torture you, kill you, brand you with the name of outcast in the public sight, and curse you before Heaven--if I will only love you!--all this is melodramatic speech, and I never cared for melodrama at any time. I shall neither kill you, brand you, curse you, nor love you;--I shall simply--call your husband!"

I stirred from my hiding-place,--then stopped. She sprang to her feet in an insensate passion of anger and shame.

"You dare not!" she panted--"You dare not so ... disgrace me!"

"Disgrace you!" he echoed scornfully--"That remark comes rather late, seeing you have disgraced yourself!"

But she was now fairly roused. All the savagery and obstinacy of her nature was awakened, and she stood like some beautiful wild animal at bay, trembling from head to foot with the violence of her emotions.

"You repulse me,--you scorn me!" she muttered in hurried fierce accents that scarcely rose above an angry whisper--"You make a mockery of my heart's anguish and despair, but you shall suffer for it! I am your match,--nay your equal! You shall not spurn me a second time! You ask, will I love you when I know who you are,--it is your pleasure to deal in mysteries, but I have no mysteries--I am a woman who loves you with all the passion of a life,--and I will murder myself and you, rather than live to know that I have prayed you for your love in vain. Do you think I came unprepared?--no!" and she suddenly drew from her bosom a short steel dagger with a jewelled hilt, a _curio_ I recognized as one of the gifts to her on her marriage; "Love me, I say!--or I will stab myself dead here at your feet, and cry out to Geoffrey that you have murdered me!"

She raised the weapon aloft,--I almost sprang forward--but I drew back again quickly as I saw Lucio seize the hand that held the dagger and drag it firmly down,--while, wresting the weapon from her clutch he snapped it asunder and flung the pieces on the floor.

"Your place was the stage, Madam!" he said--"You should have been the chief female mime at some 'high-class' theatre! You would have adorned the boards, drawn the mob, had as many lovers, stagey and private as you pleased, been invited to act at Windsor, obtained a payment-jewel from the Queen, and written your name in her autograph album. That should undoubtedly have been your 'great' career--you were born for it--made for it! You would have been as brute-souled as you are now,--but that would not have mattered,--mimes are exempt from chastity!"

In the action of breaking the dagger, and in the intense bitterness of his speech he had thrust her back a few paces from him, and she stood breathless and white with rage, eyeing him in mingled passion and terror. For a moment she was silent,--then advancing slowly with the feline suppleness of movement which had given her a reputation for grace exceeding that of any woman in England, she said in deliberately measured accents--

"Lucio Rimânez, I have borne your insults as I would bear my death at your hands, because I love you. You loathe me, you say--you repulse me,--I love you still! You cannot cast me off--I am yours! You shall love me, or I will die,--one of the two. Take time for thought,--I leave you to-night,--I give you all to-morrow to consider,--love me,--give me yourself,--be my lover,--and I will play the comedy of social life as well as any other woman,--so well that my husband shall never know. But refuse me again as you have refused me now, and I will make away with myself. I am not 'acting,'--I am speaking calmly and with conviction; I mean what I say!"

"Do you?" queried Lucio coldly--"Let me congratulate you! Few women attain to such coherence!"

"I will put an end to this life of mine;" she went on, paying no sort of heed to his words--"I cannot endure existence without your love, Lucio!" and a dreary pathos vibrated in her voice--"I hunger for the kisses of your lips,--the clasp of your arms! Do you know--do you ever think of your own power?--the cruel, terrible power of your eyes, your speech, your smile,--the beauty which makes you more like an angel than a man,--and have you no pity? Do you think that ever a man was born like you?" he looked at her as she said this, and a faint smile rested on his lips--"When you speak, I hear music--when you sing, it seems to me that I understand what the melodies of a poet's heaven must be;--surely, surely you know that your very looks are a snare to the warm weak soul of a woman! Lucio!--" and emboldened by his silence, she stole nearer to him--"Meet me to-morrow in the lane near the cottage of Mavis Clare...."

He started as if he had been stung--but not a word escaped him.

"I heard all you said to her the other night;" she continued, advancing yet a step closer to his side--"I followed you,--and I listened. I was well-nigh mad with jealousy--I thought--I feared--you loved her,--but I was wrong. I never do thank God for anything,--but I thanked God that night that I was wrong! She was not made for you--I am! Meet me outside her house, where the great white rose-tree is in bloom--gather one,--one of those little autumnal roses and give it to me--I shall understand it as a signal--a signal that I may come to you to-morrow night and not be cursed or repulsed, but loved,--loved!--ah Lucio! promise me!--one little rose!--the symbol of an hour's love!--then let me die; I shall have had all I ask of life!"

With a sudden swift movement, she flung herself upon his breast, and circling her arms about his neck, lifted her face to his. The moonbeams showed me her eyes alit with rapture, her lips trembling with passion, her bosom heaving, ... the blood surged up to my brain, and a red mist swam before my sight, ... would Lucio yield? Not he!--he loosened her desperate hands from about his throat, and forced her back, holding her at arm's length.

"Woman, false and accurséd!" he said in tones that were sonorous and terrific--"You know not what you seek! All that you ask of life shall be yours in death!--this is the law,--therefore beware what demands you make lest they be too fully granted! A rose from the cottage of Mavis Clare?--a rose from the garden of Eden!--they are one and the same to me! Not for my gathering or yours! Love and joy? For the unfaithful there is no love,--for the impure there is no joy. Add no more to the measure of my hatred and vengeance!--Go while there is yet time,--go and front the destiny you have made for yourself--for nothing can alter it! And as for me, whom you love,--before whom you have knelt in idolatrous worship--" and a low fierce laugh escaped him--"why,--restrain your feverish desires, fair fiend!--have patience!--we shall meet ere long!"

I could not bear the scene another moment, and springing from my hiding-place, I dragged my wife away from him and flung myself between them.

"Let me defend you, Lucio, from the pertinacities of this wanton!" I cried with a wild burst of laughter--"An hour ago I thought she was my wife,--I find her nothing but a purchased chattel, who seeks a change of masters!"

XXXI

For one instant we all three stood facing each other,--I breathless and mad with fury,--Lucio calm and disdainful,--my wife staggering back from me, half-swooning with fear. In an access of black rage, I rushed upon her and seized her in my arms.

"I have heard you!" I said--"I have seen you! I have watched you kneel before my true friend, my loyal comrade there, and try your best to make him as vile as yourself! I am that poor fool, your husband,--that blind egoist whose confidence you sought to win--and to betray! I am the unhappy wretch whose surplus of world's cash has bought for him in marriage a shameless courtezan! You dare to talk of love? You profane its very name! Good God!--what are such women as you made of? You throw yourselves into our arms,--you demand our care--you exact our respect--you tempt our senses--you win our hearts,--and then you make fools of us all! Fools, and worse than fools,--you make us men without feeling, conscience, faith, or pity! If we become criminals, what wonder! If we do things that shame our sex, is it not because you set us the example? God--God! I, who loved you,--yes, loved you in spite of all that my marriage with you taught me,--I, who would have died to save you from a shadow of suspicion,--I am the one out of all the world you choose to murder by your treachery!"

I loosened my grasp of her,--she recovered her self-possession by an effort, and looked at me straightly with cold unfeeling eyes.

"What did you marry me for?" she demanded--"For my sake or your own?"

I was silent,--too choked with wrath and pain to speak. All I could do was to hold out my hand to Lucio, who grasped it with a cordial and sympathetic pressure. Yet ... I fancied he smiled!

"Was it because you desired to make me happy out of pure love for me?" pursued Sibyl--"Or because you wished to add dignity to your own position by wedding the daughter of an Earl? Your motives were not unselfish,--you chose me simply because I was the 'beauty' of the day whom London men stared at and talked of,--and because it gave you a certain 'prestige' to have me for your wife, in the same way as it gave you a footing with Royalty to be the owner of the Derby-winner. I told you honestly what I was before our marriage,--it made no effect upon your vanity and egoism. I never loved you,--I could not love you, and I told you so. You have heard, so you say, all that has passed between me and Lucio,--therefore you know why I married you. I state it boldly to your face,--it was that I might have your intimate friend for my lover. That you should pretend to be scandalized at this is absurd; it is a common position of things in France, and is becoming equally common in England. Morality has always been declared unnecessary for men,--it is becoming equally unnecessary for women!"

I stared at her, amazed at the glibness of her speech, and the cool convincing manner in which she spoke, after her recent access of passion and excitement.

"You have only to read the 'new' fiction,"--she went on, a mocking smile lighting up her pale face, "and indeed all 'new' literature generally, to be assured that your ideas of domestic virtue are quite out of date. Both men and women are, according to certain accepted writers of the day, at equal liberty to love when they will, and where they may. Polygamous purity is the 'new' creed! Such love, in fact, so we are taught, constitutes the only 'sacred' union. If you want to alter this 'movement,' and return to the old-fashioned types of the modest maiden and the immaculate matron, you must sentence all the 'new' writers of profitable pruriency to penal servitude for life, and institute a Government censorship of the modern press. As matters stand, your attitude of the outraged husband is not only ridiculous,--it is unfashionable. I assure you I do not feel the slightest prick of conscience in saying I love Lucio,--any woman might be proud of loving him;--he, however, will not, or cannot love me,--we have had a 'scene,' and you have completed the dramatic effect by witnessing it,--there is no more to be said or done in the affair. I do not suppose you can divorce me,--but if you can, you may--I shall make no defence."

She turned, as if to go;--I still stared dumbly at her, finding no words to cope with her effrontery,--when Lucio's voice, attuned to a grave and soothing suavity, interposed,--

"This is a very painful and distressing state of things,"--he said, and the strange half-cynical, half contemptuous smile still rested on his lips--"but I must positively protest against the idea of divorce, not only for her ladyship's sake, but my own. I am entirely innocent in the matter!"

"Innocent!" I exclaimed, grasping him again by the hand; "You are nobility itself, Lucio!--as loyal a friend as ever man had! I thank you for your courage,--for the plain and honest manner in which you have spoken. I heard all you said! Nothing was too strong,--nothing could be too strong to awaken this misguided woman to a sense of her outrageous conduct,--her unfaithfulness----"

"Pardon me!" he interrupted delicately--"The Lady Sibyl can scarcely be called unfaithful, Geoffrey. She suffers,----from----let us call it, a little exaltation of nerves! In thought she may be guilty of infidelity, but society does not know that,--and in act she is pure,--pure as the newly-driven snow,--and as the newly-driven snow, will society, itself immaculate, regard her!"

His eyes glittered,--I met his chill derisive glance.

"You think as I do, Lucio!" I said hoarsely--"You feel with me, that a wife's unchaste thought is as vile as her unchaste act. There is no excuse,--no palliative for such cruel and abominable ingratitude. Why,"--and my voice rose unconsciously as I turned fiercely again towards Sibyl--"Did I not free you and your family from the heavy pressure of poverty and debt? Have I grudged you anything? Are you not loaded with jewels?--have you not greater luxuries and liberties than a queen? And do you not owe me at least some duty?"

"I owe you nothing!" she responded boldly--"I gave you what you paid for,--my beauty and my social position. It was a fair bargain!"

"A dear and bitter one!" I cried.

"Maybe so. But such as it was, you struck it,--not I. You can end it when you please,--the law ..."

"The law will give you no freedom in such a case,"--interposed Lucio with a kind of satirical urbanity--"A judicial separation on the ground of incompatibility of temper might be possible certainly--but would not that be a pity? Her ladyship is unfortunate in her tastes,--that is all!--she selected me as her _cavaliere servente_, and I refused the situation,--hence there is nothing for it but to forget this unpleasant incident, and try to live on a better understanding for the future----"

"Do you think"--said my wife, advancing with her proud head uplifted in scorn, the while she pointed at me--"Do you think I will live with him after what he has seen and heard to-night? What do you take me for?"

"For a very charming woman of hasty impulses and unwise reasoning,"--replied Lucio, with an air of sarcastic gallantry--"Lady Sibyl, you are illogical,--most of your sex are. You can do no good by prolonging this scene,--a most unpleasant and trying one to us poor men. You know how we hate 'scenes'! Let me beg of you to retire! Your duty is to your husband; pray heaven he may forget this midnight delirium of yours, and set it down to some strange illness rather than to any evil intention."

For all answer she came towards him, stretching out her arms in wild appeal.

"Lucio!" she cried--"Lucio, my love! Good-night!--Good-bye!"

I sprang between him and her advancing form.

"Before my very face!" I exclaimed--"O infamous woman! Have you no shame?"

"None!" she said, with a wild smile--"I glory in my love for such a king of worth and beauty! Look at him!--and then look at yourself in the nearest mirror that reflects so poor and mean a picture of a man! How, even in your egoism, could you deem it possible for a woman to love _you_ when _he_ was near! Stand out of the light!--you interpose a shadow between my god and me!"

As she uttered these mad words, her aspect was so strange and unearthly, that out of sheer stupefied wonder, I mechanically did as she bade me, and stood aside. She regarded me fixedly.

"I may as well say good-bye to you also,"--she observed--"For I shall never live with you again."

"Nor I with you!" I said fiercely.

"Nor I with you--nor I with you!" she repeated like a child saying a lesson--"Of course not!--if I do not live with you, you cannot live with me!" She laughed discordantly; then turned her beseeching gaze once more upon Lucio--"Good-bye!" she said.

He looked at her with a curious fixity, but returned no word in answer. His eyes flashed coldly in the moonlight like sharp steel, and he smiled. She regarded him with such passionate intentness that it seemed as though she sought to draw his very soul into herself by the magnetism of her glance,--but he stood unmoved, a very statue of fine disdain and intellectual self-repression. My scarcely controlled fury broke out again at the sight of her dumb yearning, and I gave vent to a shout of scornful laughter.