‘DELICIA VAUGHAN.’
When she had written all she had to say, she placed the letter in an envelope, addressed it, and, calling Robson, bade him deliver it to his master directly he returned. Robson glanced at her deferentially, wondering within himself at the extreme pallor of her face and feverish brightness of her eyes.
‘His lordship said he would probably not return to-night,’ he ventured to observe.
Delicia started slightly, but quickly controlled herself.
‘Did he? Well, whenever he does return, give him that letter.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
He withdrew, and Delicia went quietly upstairs to her bedroom and summoned her maid.
‘I am going down to the sea for a few days, Emily,’ she said; ‘to Broadstairs. Just put my things together, and be ready yourself by ten o’clock to-morrow morning.’
Emily, a bright-looking young woman, who had none of the airs and graces about her which are too frequently assumed by ladies’ maids, and who, moreover, had the further recommendation of being devotedly attached to her mistress, received her instructions with her usual pleased readiness, and set about loosening her lady’s hair for the night. As she unwound the glistening mass and let it fall, Delicia suddenly started up with a smothered cry of pain.
‘Oh, my lady, what is it?’ exclaimed Emily, startled.
Delicia stood trembling and looking at her.
‘Nothing, nothing,’ she faltered at last, faintly forcing a smile. ‘I have just found out something, that is all — something I did not quite understand before. I understand it now — I understand — my God, I understand! There, Emily, don’t look so frightened. I am not ill; I am only a little tired and puzzled. You can go now; I would rather be alone. Be sure you call me in good time for the train, and have everything packed in readiness. I shall take Spartan with me.’
‘Yes, my lady,’ stammered Emily, still looking a trifle scared. ‘Are you sure you are not ill? Can’t I do anything for you?’
‘No, nothing,’ answered Delicia, gently. ‘Go to bed, Emily, and get up early, that’s all. Good-night!’
‘Good-night, my lady!’ and Emily reluctantly retired.
Left alone, Delicia moved to the door and locked it. Then, turning, she drew aside the curtain which hung before the niche she called her ‘oratory,’ where an ivory crucifix hung white against draperies of purple. The anguished eyes of the suffering Saviour looked down upon her; the thorn-crowned head drooped as it were towards her; the ‘Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief,’ with arms outstretched upon the cross, seemed waiting to receive her, — and with a sudden, sobbing cry she fell on her knees.
‘Oh, my God, my God.’ she wailed, ‘I know now what I have lost! All my love and all my joy! Gone, gone like a foolish dream, — gone for ever! Gone, and nothing left but the crown of thorns called Fame!’
Shuddering, she hid her face on the cushion of her prie-dieu and wept slow, passionate tears, that rose from a breaking heart and scalded her eyelids as they fell. Veiled in the golden glory of her hair, she fretted like a little ailing child, till finally, exhausted and shivering with emotion, she lifted her head and looked straight at the sculptured Christ that faced her.
‘I have loved him too much,’ she said half aloud. ‘I have made him the idol of my life, and I am punished for my sin. We are all apt to forget the thunders of Mount Sinai and the great Voice which said, “Thou shalt have none other gods save Me.” I had forgotten, — nay, I was almost willing to forget! I made of my beloved a god; he has made of me — a convenience!’
She rose, flung back her hair over her shoulders, and standing still for a moment listened. There was not a sound in the house, save an occasional uneasy movement from Spartan, who was lying on his mat outside her bedroom door.
‘“My lord’s” sense of what is right and proper for women has been outraged to-night by seeing me at the “Empire,” she said, with a little disdainful smile; ‘but his notions of morality do not go far enough to prevent him from being with La Marina at this very moment!’
A look of disgust passed over her mobile features.
‘Poor Love! Poor little, delicate moth! How soon a coarse touch will kill it — kill it hopelessly, so that it will never rise again! It is the only passion I think we possess that once dead, can never be resuscitated. Ambition is perennial, but Love! — it is the aloe flower that blossoms but once in a hundred years. I wonder what I shall do with my life now, — now that it is crippled and paralysed?’
She walked slowly to her mirror and looked long and earnestly at her own reflection.
‘You poor little woman!’ she said pityingly, ‘What a mistake you have made of it! You fancied that out of all the world of men you had won for yourself a hero, — a man whose nature was noble, whose disposition was chivalrous, whose tenderness and truth were never to be doubted! A protector and defender who, had anyone presumed to slander you, would have struck the liar across the mouth and made him answer for his insolence. Instead of this wonderful Marc Antony or Theseus of your imagination, what have you got? Don’t be afraid, poor Delicia! I see your mouth trembling and your eyes filling with foolish tears — now that’s all nonsense, you know! You must not shrink from the truth, my dear; and if God has chosen to take up your beautiful idol and break it in your sight, you must not begin to argue about it, or try to pick up the pieces and tell God He is wrong. Courage, Delicia! Face it out! What did you think you had won for a sure certainty out of all the flitting pageant of this world’s illusions? A true heart, — a faithful lover, — and, as before said, a kind of Theseus in looks and bravery! But even Theseus deserted Ariadne, and in this case your hero has deserted you. Only what you have to realise, you deluded creature, is this — that he is not a hero at all — that he never was a hero! That is the hardest part, isn’t it? To think that the god you have worshipped is no more than an “officer and gentleman,” as a great many “officers and gentlemen” go, who lives comfortably on your earnings, and spends the surplus money on the race-course, music-halls and — La Marina! Put off your rose-coloured spectacles, my dear, and look at him as he is. Don’t be a little coward about it! Yes, I know what you are saying over and over again in your own heart; it is the old story, “I loved him, oh, I loved him!” like the burden of a sentimental song. Of course you loved him — how deeply, — how passionately, — how dearly, — you will never, never be able to express, even to yourself.’
Here, in spite of her remonstrances to her own image in the glass, the tears brimmed over and fell.
‘There, of course I suppose you must cry a little; you can’t help it, — you have been so thoroughly deceived, and the disillusion is so complete, you poor, poor little woman!’
And, moved by a quaint compassion for herself, she leant forward and kissed the reflection of her own quivering lips in the mirror.
‘It’s no good your looking about anywhere for consolation,’ she went on, wiping away her tears. ‘You are not made after the fashion of the modern lady, who can love anywhere and everywhere, so large is her heart; you are of that dreadfully old-world type of person, who, loving once, can never love again. Your love is killed in you; you are only half yourself now, and you must make the best of it. You must cut down your sentiments, smother your emotions, and live like St John in the wilderness, on ‘locusts and wild honey,’ by which you will for the future understand the rewards of Fame. And you will be in a desert all by yourself, fasting — fasting day and night — for the food of tenderness and love which you will never, never get — remember that! It’s rather a hard lot, you poor, weeping, weak little woman! But it’s marked out for you, and you will have to bear it!’
She smiled a pained, difficult smile, and she watched her own reflection smile back at her in the same sad way. Glancing at a time-piece on her dressing-table, she saw it was nearly two in the morning. Her husband had not returned. Twisting up her hair in a loose knot, she lay down on the bed and tried to sleep, but only succeeded in
falling into an uneasy doze for about an hour. Ill and restless as she felt, however, she was up and dressed when her maid came to her in the morning, and before eleven o’clock she had left the house, with Spartan sitting beside her on the floor of the brougham which took her to the station, from whence she started for Broadstairs. She left no instructions with her household, beyond impressing once again upon Robson the urgent necessity of giving Lord Carlyon the letter she had written for him as soon as he returned. Robson promised implicit obedience, and watched the disappearance of the carriage containing his lady, her maid and her dog, with feelings of mingled curiosity and uneasiness.
‘Something’s in the wind, I’m pretty sure,’ he mused; ‘she has never gone away in this way, sudden-like, before. Very quiet, too, she looks, and very pale. She wouldn’t be the one to make a fuss about anything, but she’d feel all the more. I wonder if she knows?’
He stopped abruptly in the middle of the hall, evidently struck by this idea, and repeated the words to himself slowly and reflectively— ‘I wonder if she knows?’
CHAPTER VII
It is strange, but nevertheless true, despite all our latter-day efforts at the reasoning away of sentiment, that conscience is still so very much alive in some of us, that when a man of birth and good-breeding has, according to his own stock-phrase for indulgence in vicious amusements, ‘seen life,’ by spending his time in low company, he is frequently moved by a strong reaction, — so powerful as almost to create nausea, and put him in a very bad and petulant humour. This was the case with Carlyon when he returned to his home at about luncheon time on the day Delicia departed seawards. He was not merely irritable, but he took a fantastic pleasure in knowing himself to be irritable, and in keeping his temper up to the required pitch of spleen. He was really angry with himself, but he managed to pretend that he was angry with Delicia. He had seen something in one of the papers about her which he judged as quite sufficient ground of offence to go upon, though he knew it was an attempt to vilify her fair name, which he, as her husband, should have instantly resented. In his own mind he was perfectly cognisant that, had he acted a manly part in the matter, he should have taken his riding-whip, and with it dealt a smart cut across the face of the literary liar who had published the false rumour, and yet, though he was aware of this, he had managed to work himself up into such a peculiar condition of self-pity that he could see nothing at all on his limited horizon but himself, his own feelings and his own perfections; and though he was partially and shamedly conscious of his own vices as well, he found such a number of excuses for these, that by the time he reached his own door he had, by dint of many soothing modern doctrines, and comfortable progressive moralist arguments, almost decided that he, taking men as they were, was really an exceptional paragon and pattern of virtue.
‘I must really speak very seriously to Delicia,’ he said to himself. ‘A woman as well-known as she is ought not to be seen at the “Empire,” and she has no business to receive actors at her “at homes.”’
With these highly moral feelings at work within him, he admitted himself into his own house, or rather his wife’s house, with his latch-key, and finding no one about, walked straight upstairs into Delicia’s study. The blinds were down, the room was deserted, and only the marble ‘Antinous’ stared at him with a cold smile. Descending to the hall again, he summoned Robson, who, instantly appearing, handed him Delicia’s letter on a silver salver with elaborately polite ceremony.
‘What’s this?’ he asked impatiently. ‘Is her ladyship out again?’
‘She left for Broadstairs this morning, my lord,’ replied Robson, demurely. ‘Her maid went with her, and she took Spartan.’
Carlyon muttered something like an oath, and turning into the smoking-room, opened and read his wife’s letter. Growing hot and cold by turns, he perused every calm, convincing, clearly-written word, and for a moment sat stunned and completely overwhelmed. Guilt, shame and remorse fought for the mastery of his feelings, and during the space of two or three minutes he thought he would at once follow Delicia, throw himself on her mercy, declare everything, and ask her forgiveness. But what would be the use of that? She might forgive, but she would never forget. And her blind adoration of him, her passionate love, her devout confidence? He had sense enough to realise that these fair feelings of tenderness and reverence in her for him were dead for ever!
Pulling at his handsome moustache fretfully, he surveyed his position and wondered whether it was likely that she would sue for a divorce? And if so, would she get it? No, for she could not prove cruelty or desertion. There was no cruelty in his having an ‘affair’ with Marina, or a dozen Marinas if he liked — not in the eyes of the law. There was not even any cruelty, legally speaking, in his spending his wife’s earnings on Marina, if his wife gave him money to do as he liked with. To get a divorce legally, Delicia would have to prove not only infidelity but cruelty and desertion as well for two years and upwards. Oh, just law! Made by men for themselves and their own convenience! The ‘cruelty’ which robs an innocent woman of love, of confidence, of happiness at one blow, has no existence, according to masculine justice. She may have to endure wilful neglect, and to be the witness of the open intimacy of her husband with other women; but provided he does not beat her, or otherwise physically ill-use her, and continues to live with her in apparent union, while all the while she shrinks from his touch and resents his companionship as an outrage, she cannot be separated from him. This Carlyon remembered with a commendable amount of self-congratulation.
‘She can’t get rid of me, that’s one thing,’ he reflected; ‘not that I suppose she would try it on. Damn that Bond Street jeweller for an ass! Why couldn’t the fellow hold his confounded tongue! Of course, it is a split between us; but, by Jove! — a woman who writes books ought to know that a man must get some fun out of life. We can’t all be literary! Besides, if there is to be a row, I have got a very good cause of complaint on my side!’
Whereupon he snatched up a pen and wrote as follows: —
‘DEAR DELICIA, — I regret that a woman of your culture and intelligence should not be able to understand the world and the ways of the world better. Men do not discuss such subjects as that alluded to in your letter; the least said the soonest mended. I enclose a cutting from Honesty, in which you will perceive that I possibly have more cause to complain of you than you of me. Greater licence is permitted to men than to women, as I imagined you knew, and your position with regard to the public should make you doubly careful. I hope you will enjoy your change of air. — Yours affectionately, WILL.’
He read over the press-cutting alluded to, which ran as follows: —
‘It has been frequently rumoured that the real “Dona Sol” of the “Ernani” who has been so long delighting the histrionic world, is a well-known lady novelist, who has been lifted into far more prominence that her literary capabilities would ever have given her, by her marriage into the aristocracy with a certain gallant Guards officer. The “Dona” in question has long been considered “as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,” but ice and snow are prone to melt in the heat of an ardent passion, and the too evident ardour of the “Ernani” in this case has, we hear, won him his cause, with the result that the “ears of the groundlings” will shortly be tickled with a curious scandal.’
‘After all,’ muttered Carlyon, as he thrust this in an envelope, ‘it’s much worse that she, as a woman, should be coupled with Paul Valdis, than that I as a man should amuse myself with Marina. She is ridiculously inconsistent; she ought to know that a man in this world does as he likes, — a woman does as she must. The two things are totally different. Now, I shall have to wait till she telegraphs her address before I can send this. What an infernal nuisance!’
He betook himself to his usual consolation — a cigar and puffed away at it crossly, wondering what he should do with himself. He was sick of La Marina for the time being — there were no race-meetings on, and he felt that to be thus left to his own resou
rces was a truly unkind dispensation of Providence. He had a very limited brain capacity, his one idea of life being to get amusement out of it somehow. Perpetual amusement is apt to tire; but of this the votaries of so-called pleasure never think, till they are flung back upon themselves exhausted. Carlyon would have been in his right place had he been born as a noble of high rank in ancient Pompeii — going to the baths, having his hair combed and his garments scented; wearing fresh chaplets of flowers round his neck, being fed on the rarest delicacies and drinking the costliest wines, and dividing his affections between several of the prettiest dancing girls. Such an existence would have suited him perfectly, and it is quite possible that when Vesuvius blazed forth its convincing representation of the Day of Judgment, he would have fronted his fate with the stern composure of the immortal ‘Roman soldier’; for it is precisely such pampered persons who are the best possible food for flame, or powder and shot; and who generally, as though moved by some instinctive perception of the worthlessness of their lives to the world, meet death with equanimity.
In the interim, while her husband was preparing what he considered a Parthian shot for her in the way of the press-cutting from the society scandal bill called Honesty, Delicia had, by the merest chance, bought the paper and read the paragraph on her way down to Broadstairs. She was a woman who never wasted time about anything, and on arriving at her destination she enclosed the paper in an envelope to her lawyers, with the brief instruction appended — :
‘Insist on immediate retraction and apology. If refused, take proceedings.’
This done, she dismissed the matter from her mind with a quickness which would have been impossible to any woman who was not absolutely innocent of wrong-doing. A clear conscience is never disturbed by outside slanders, and a straightforward life is never thrust out of its clean onward course by a scandalmonger’s sneer. Besides, Delicia’s thoughts were too much occupied with her broken idols to dwell long on any other subject of contemplation. All she desired for the moment was rest — a space of silence in which to think calmly and to brace her spirit up to the necessary fortitude required for the realisation of what she must expect to endure for the remainder of her life. She took some quiet rooms facing the sea, telegraphed her address to her husband, and then prepared to settle down for a few days of serious meditation. She began to consider her position with a logical steadiness worthy of any and all or her ‘dear old Pagans,’ as she called Socrates and the rest of his school, — and with a mingling of timidity and resolve tried the measure of her feminine strength, as a warrior might try his weapon, against the opposing evils which confronted her. The greatest loss that can befall a woman had befallen her — the loss of love. Her love had been deep and passionate, but the object of that love had proved himself unworthy — hence love was dead and would never revive again. This was the first clause of the argument, and it had to be mastered thoroughly. Next came the fact that, notwithstanding the death of love, she, Delicia, was bound to the corpse of that perished passion — bound by the marriage tie and also by the law, which has generously provided that a husband may be guilty of infidelity to his wife every day and every hour of the day, without her having any right to punish or to leave him unless he treats her with ‘cruelty,’ his unfaithfulness not being judged by the so admirable law as ‘cruel.’ By no means — oh, no! — not at all! When it comes to blows, face-scratching and hair-tearing, then ‘cruelty’ can be complained of; but the slow breaking of a heart, the torturing of delicate nerve-fibres on the rack of mental and moral outrage, the smile which is an insult, the condescending tolerance which is an affront, the conventional keeping up of appearances which is a daily lie — all this has no touch of ‘cruelty’ at all about it — not in the very least!
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 404