He stood quite motionless, wondering a little at the melodramatic passion she had thrown into the utterance of her words, — then he remembered she had been on the stage. And he questioned whether her brusque admission of utter atheism was only part of the society rôle she had elected to play, or whether it was her real attitude of mind. Had she any real attitude of mind? Many a woman has none, preferring to feign the similitude of the mind of another person. This, he divined, was likely to be the case with Jacynth, and her glib utterances concerning nature and God were probably the mere reflection, as in a mirror, of the mind of her ‘great friend,’ Claude Ferrers.
“You say I don’t know what love is,” — she went on, “you are quite right. I don’t know what your kind of love is — it must be some idea of your own, for it doesn’t exist among the men and women of the world. Love that lasts for ever would be terribly boresome!” here she smiled enchantingly— “besides it doesn’t last and can’t last! — if it did, we should not see so many disconsolate widows and widowers marrying again! And so far as women go, I always notice that if a woman is really fond of a man he at once avoids her and goes after somebody else. Now men rave about me because I don’t care for any one of them in particular — they’re all alike in my opinion. And that you should pity me, makes me laugh! It does really! Because as I’ve already told you, the one to be pitied is yourself. I am perfectly happy.”
“For how long will your happiness last?” he asked, suddenly.
She gave a playful gesture of indifference.
“Till I lose my beauty,” — she answered, “but when that happens, a little overdose of morphia will finish me off prettily before age and ugliness fairly set in.”
“Then with no heart, you have no hope, Jacynth!” he said, sadly.
Her laughter rang out like a little chime.
“Heart is a mistake — hope is a mistake,” she rejoined, lightly; “If you have heart, everybody despises you for a fool, — if you hope for anything, people take pleasure in disappointing you! The only way to live with comfort is to get all you can for yourself out of everything and every one, and enjoy what you get! In the social life of to-day there’s no time for any sentiment.”
She pulled some roses out of a vase close by and began putting them together in a cluster.
“Ever since I left Shadbrook,” she said, “I have had no time to think about the past. The actor I ran away with introduced me to his friends as his pupil, — it was understood that I was studying for the stage under his care. We went to Paris for a time, — and, Dan’s child was born there, dead. That was a piece of luck for me. But if it had lived I should have sent it to Dan. He was such a curious sort of fellow that I think he would have loved it.”
She paused, half expecting him to speak; but his face was averted from her, and he said nothing.
“Well!” she resumed, somewhat impatiently, “then I came back to London and made an instant success. I had nothing to do but wear lovely frocks and move my arms and legs about in different postures, and crowds came just to stare at me. Israel Nordstein was the owner of the theater at which I appeared — he had great influence with the ‘Upper Ten’ because so many of them borrowed money of him; and he made me the fashion. And then, — when any number of men were in love with me, peers and statesmen and all sorts, he suddenly took me off the stage and married me. And here I am, — well established for life! — my husband settled ten thousand a year upon me on our marriage, — and he gives me so much besides that I hardly ever touch my own allowance. I have jewels worth a hundred thousand pounds, — horses, carriages, motor-cars, a lovely yacht, a box at the opera and everything I want; I was presented at Court by a tiptop peeress who never asked who I was or where I came from, — she owes my husband heaps of money! — and I got into the swim at once. Just a year after my marriage the newspapers were full of the account of the murder of your poor wife, — and I was horribly shocked! I knew Dan must have done it, — and I was a little afraid lest he should come to London and perhaps find me out. But — with my usual good fortune — my car ran over him the very night of the murder! Wasn’t that strange! It makes one believe in Providence after all!”
He looked at her with a sudden and close scrutiny.
“And have you never thought,” — he said— “that you, Jacynth, are mainly responsible for that murder? — more so than for his death?”
She lifted her head in haughty amaze.
“I?” she ejaculated; “Why, what had I to do with it?”
“You made Dan unfaithful to his wife—”
“No woman makes a man unfaithful to his wife unless he is more than willing to be faithless,” — she interrupted him, disdainfully— “I was certainly not to blame for being handsomer than Jennie!”
“You prevaricate,” he said, with some annoyance— “His infidelity killed her—”
She pointed her cluster of roses reproachfully at him.
“No!” she said, emphatically, “His infidelity would never have killed her if she had never known of it! Who was to blame for telling? Your wife! Your wife! No one else!”
His hand clenched the woodwork of the piano against which he leaned, — if he could have flung the assertion back at her as a lie it would have relieved the tension of his nerves, but he knew he could not. —
“If every woman in London to-day were told of her husband’s infidelities,” went on Jacynth, still pointing her roses at him, “and died of the news, the streets would be strewn with dead bodies!”
And her lips parted in a little peal of laughter.
“Dear Parson Everton! I wish you would be happy! It’s so easy! The world is so pleasant, and so full of pretty things! The past is past! Try and like me a little in the future!”
Over his pale face swept a shadow; the shadow of an intense repulsion and futile wrath.
“Try and like you!” he echoed bitterly, “Like you,—”
“Yes, — or love me! — which you please!” she answered gayly, the smile dancing with jewel-like radiance in her eyes— “But don’t be hard upon me! You ought to think better of me than you do! If I had been an ugly woman I should have been good, I suppose. But what’s the use of being good and ugly? Christ was very kind to Mary Magdalen, — she was wicked, but I’m sure she was beautiful. And her sins, which were many, were forgiven because she loved much. That’s me! I love much! I love everything that gives me pleasure! Not all the sermons that were ever preached could ever alter me, — I want to be happy as long as I can and in my own way,”
“Are you happy in your marriage?” he demanded, with an almost angry abruptness.
“Of course! Why should I not be? Isra is devoted to me, — he’s old and not much to look at, — but he let’s me do just as I like—” ——
“I see!” said Everton, with quiet scorn, “Life, love and death, and all the things belonging to these, are summed up for you in ‘doing as you like’!” —
She laughed; a soft little laugh of perfect satisfaction.
“Exactly!” she said— “What can a woman want more?” And, detaching a rose from the little bouquet she held, she offered it to him— “Will you have it?”
Swift as running fire his thoughts flew back to the moment when his wife had pinned a rosebud in his coat before she had gone out in all her winsome prettiness innocently and unwittingly to meet a cruel death, — and he waved away her outstretched hand with a kind of horror.
“No, no!” he said, in low, hoarse tones, “Keep your roses for the men who let you fool them, Jacynth! I am not one of them!”
She looked at him with a sudden air of serious musing.
“You are rather unkind,” — she said slowly, “Considering that I have made you famous.”
He started as though he had been stung.
“You! You — you have—”
“Worked you up,” — she rejoined, with tranquil bluntness. “Given you a big boom in my husband’s newspaper syndicate. That’s what I’ve done. Do you suppos
e you would ever have been heard of as a preacher if I hadn’t?”
He flung out his hands with an unconsciously desperate action.
“My God!” he cried, passionately— “This is the hardest blow of all! I would rather have died than owe anything to you!”
CHAPTER XXI
A MOMENT’S silence followed.
She looked at him and smiled. Her eyes, large and luminous, seemed to hold strange thoughts and memories mirrored in their wells of living light.
“Men are proverbially ungrateful,” she said at last, her voice breaking the stillness with a charm of honey-sweet sound, “And you are no exception to the rule, Mr. Everton! You would rather have died than owe anything to me, you say? Well, as it happens, you owe everything to me; — everything that makes you known to the world! Ever since Dan murdered your wife I have pitied you in your loneliness at Shadbrook — and I have tried to help you on in all the best ways I could think of. I have striven to fill your life and make you forget your grief in ambition. I knew you were a clever man and a good man, — and that both your cleverness and goodness were lost in the wretched little village where your lot is cast. When you preached for the first time after your wife’s death, I had a special representative of the press sent down to hear you; your sermon was reported in quite a dozen newspapers, and that was the beginning of the ‘boom.’ It has been very successful so far, — you are named everywhere as one among the few great preachers of the day, — your influence is widening, — your theories are quoted and admired, but, — if you are tired of your growing celebrity, it can be easily stopped, — one word from me, and neither the press nor the world will know you any more!” As she spoke she clenched her hand and unclenched it again as though she allowed some worthless thing to fall to the ground.
He looked full at her. —
“Speak that word then!” he said, “And without delay! I would prefer never to preach again than be degraded by the thought that you are at work to make my preaching known! I would wish every word I ever utter to sink into oblivion rather than that you should help to keep it in the public memory! Let me remain in my own obscurity, disregarded and forgotten, — but spare me the indignity and suffering of any obligation to you!”
His breath came and went quickly; he was strongly moved. She gave him a half-amused, half-surprised glance.
“Why are you so bitter with me?” she asked; “Because I am what I am? — or — because Dan Kiernan was my lover?”
He uttered a sharp exclamation. Something rose in him that would not be gainsaid. He went up to her and took her by the hands almost roughly.
“If you will have the truth as a man may tell it you,” he said— “because Dan Kiernan was your lover! Because you were a living lie to me when you knelt before me at the Communion Table and took God’s Holy Name in vain! Because you, a child, a girl whose aspect was that of purity itself, could give yourself without any thought or after regret to a brutal sot—” —
“Have I not told you I was drunk?” — she said— “You forget that!”
He dropped her hands. Drunk! Yes, she had told him. She, — this exquisite dainty woman of perfect form and feature had begun her callous career of shame in Drink. Bewildering thoughts flew through his brain, — he had meant to reproach her, — should he not rather, in the very name of Christianity itself, compassionate and forgive her? Had he not pronounced a pardon from his own pulpit on his wife’s murderer, Dan Kiernan? The very words he had said came back to him in a flash of recollection: “I fasten no blame on the memory of the evil-doer of the deed that has left me desolate, for he never was, and never could be considered as fully responsible for his actions. A man drugged by poison which the laws of the realm most wickedly allow to be sold to him as pure and wholesome liquor, cannot be held as personally guilty of any crime, — therefore I have only to say that even as God has punished the unhappy sinner, so may God forgive him! And so may God equally forgive all sinners who are led astray by sinners worse than themselves!”
Did not this apply to Jacynth even more than to Dan? Then he dwelt on the phrase: ‘Even as God has punished the unhappy sinner, so may God forgive him!’ In Jacynth’s case God had not punished sin but had apparently rewarded it. Then was he to be her judge? And while his mind was swept by cross currents of contradictory feeling, her voice, calm and a little sorrowful, went on: —
“You make no allowances for me,” she said, “And in that I think you fail in charity! I know how strongly you have always fought against the drink curse, — and I thought I might perhaps help you, now that I have plenty of money and influence. It has been a hope and dream of mine that I might be useful to you, — and so be a sort of ‘best girl in the village’ after all! That is why I have done my utmost to bring your preaching into public notice. I wanted you to be heard in London, and I asked that particular Bishop you met yesterday to write and invite you to preach for the charity in which so many people of distinction are interested—”
“You again! It is through you I came?” he said, bitterly.
A flicker of disdain for his slowness of comprehension passed over her face. He was entangled in her meshes and yet did not appear to realize his own helplessness.
“Through me, of course!” she answered, quietly; “It is generally through a woman that a man makes his mark, though he will never own it! I wanted your coming to be the beginning of a great social campaign for you, — for there is quite as much to be done among the upper classes as among the lower, where the Drink is concerned. Dan Kiernan was a drunkard, but he was not more so than many a fine gentleman I could name!”
Her delicate eyebrows drew together in a little pucker of contempt.
“The ‘lower classes’!” she said, “That is the name given to the best and biggest half of the people! The ‘lower classes ‘are ever so much kinder, more patient, and more temperate than the ‘upper ten’ of to-day. I say this from my heart, — I who came from the ‘lower’ and am now in the ‘upper’ ranks, through the power of my husband s money. The ‘lower classes ‘drink because they have nothing else to do out of working hours, — and they crowd the public-houses because their homes are often comfortless. But the ‘upper class’ drunkards drink for sheer vice and bestiality, women as well as men, — and I have seen so much of it since I married that I am angry to think that the poor should always be blamed for this failing, when the rich are often twenty times worse. Most of the men I meet in society seem to use whisky as a perfume!”
He looked at her in vague surprise that she could make a jest of the vice that had been her own ruin. She laughed a little.
“It’s a fact!” she said; “Everybody doesn’t drink beer, but everybody drinks whisky, even girls and women. Their doctors order it for them, and tell them it’s the only ‘safe’ drink. Safe!” And she gave a gesture of cynical impatience. “They might as well say that to put your hand in a lion’s mouth is safe if only the lion will promise not to bite! And whisky, — by medical advice! — is always on the sideboard in every dining-room or smoke-room, — it would be difficult to find any statesman, politician, diplomat, financier, or for that matter any clergyman, in London who would refuse a glass of whisky-and-soda at any hour of the day. Not all the clergy are set against the drink, you know! Some of them are good old humbugs, I can tell you! They talk a lot in their Church congresses about the ‘national curse’ — but many of the very fellows who talk, have invested money in breweries and distilleries, and get a good slice of their incomes out of the ‘curse ‘they condemn. So encouraging to the cause of religion, isn’t it, to see such hypocrites in the pulpit preaching ‘truth’!”
Everton was perplexed and embarrassed. It was not easy to answer her or to deny her words. Moreover, she spoke not at all like the Jacynth of the old days, though even then she had always possessed a certain fluency of utterance, but like a woman of the world whose experience had taught her much that could not be contradicted.
“I never get drunk now,” — she continu
ed, with an almost brutal frankness; “You might perhaps think I do, — so I just tell you at once that I don’t. I’ve plenty of opportunities for drinking — but I don’t take them. However, I should not scandalize ‘high’ society very much if I did, — because so many ‘distinguished ‘persons would be in the same boat with me. They don’t reel about the street and curse and swear as Dan used to do, — some of them take a drug to counteract all that — but they’ve got into the habit of a standing-straight, set-faced drunkenness which almost disguises the fact that they are drunk. I know a Duchess who is in that condition nearly every night, and when she goes out to dinner you can always tell if she’s very much ‘on’ because she tells awful stories that shock every one at table, with a perfectly pale, grave face as though she were reading prayers! People think she’s eccentric, and say ‘Poor dear Duchess!’ — but the matter with the poor dear Duchess is that she’s drunk. That’s all!”
She laughed again, and went on with a kind of quick recklessness:
“The actor who took me away from Shadbrook was a drunkard of the ‘artistic’ type, — he never turned color or tumbled about, — he simply sat and talked by the hour to himself about his own genius till it made one perfectly sick to hear him. I married Israel Nordstein quite as much because he was a sober man as because he was a rich one. - He never loses his head — not he! He would not be so successful in money-making if he did. I watch drunken men fall into the financial nets he spreads for them — and I am glad when they are trapped. It serves them right!”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 744