Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli

by Marie Corelli

  Yours as long as you desire it

  Lucio Rimânez.

  I laughed over this letter and showed it to my wife, who did not laugh. She read it through with a closeness of attention that somewhat surprised me, and when she laid it down there was a strange look of pain in her eyes.

  “How he despises us all!” she said slowly— “What scorn underlies his words! Do you not recognise it?”

  “He was always a cynic,—” I replied indifferently— “I never expect him to be anything else.”

  “He seems to know some of the ways of the women who are coming here—” she went on in the same musing accents; “It is as if he read their thoughts, and perceived their intentions at a distance.”

  Her brows knitted frowningly, and she seemed for some time absorbed in gloomy meditation. But I did not pursue the subject, — I was too intent on my own fussy preparations for the Prince’s arrival to care about anything else.

  And, as I have said, Royalty, in the person of one of the most genial of men, came and went through the whole programme devised for his entertainment, and then departed again with his usual courteous acknowledgments for the hospitality offered and accepted, — leaving us, as he generally leaves everybody, charmed with his good-humour and condescension, provided his temper has not been ruffled. When, with his exit from the scene, the whole party broke up, leaving my wife and me to our own two selves once more, there came a strange silence and desolation over the house that was like the stealthy sense of some approaching calamity. Sibyl seemed to feel it as much as I did, — and though we said nothing to each other concerning our mutual sensations, I could see that she was under the same cloud of depression as myself. She went oftener to Lily Cottage, and always from these visits to the fair-haired student among the roses, came back, I hopefully fancied in softer mood, — her very voice was gentler, — her eyes more thoughtful and tender. One evening she said —

  “I have been thinking, Geoffrey, that perhaps there is some good in life after all, if I could only find it out and live it. But you are the last person to help me in such a matter.”

  I was sitting in an arm-chair near the open window, smoking, and I turned my eyes upon her with some astonishment and a touch of indignation.

  “What do you mean, Sibyl?” I asked— “Surely you know that I have the greatest desire to see you always in your best aspect, — many of your ideas have been most repugnant to me....”

  “Stop there!” she said quickly, her eyes flashing as she spoke— “My ideas have been repugnant to you, you say? What have you done, you as my husband, to change those ideas? Have you not the same base passions as I? — and do you not give way to them as basely? What have I seen in you from day to day that I should take you as an example? You are master here, and you rule with all the arrogance wealth can give, — you eat, drink and sleep, — you entertain your acquaintances simply that you may astonish them by the excess of luxury in which you indulge, — you read and smoke, shoot and ride, and there an end, — you are an ordinary, not an exceptional man. Do you trouble to ask what is wrong with me? — do you try, with the patience of a great love, to set before me nobler aims than those I have consciously or unconsciously imbibed? — do you try to lead me, an erring, passionate, misguided woman, into what I dream of as the light, — the light of faith and hope which alone gives peace?”

  And suddenly, burying her head in the pillows of the couch on which she leaned, she broke into a fit of smothered weeping.

  I drew my cigar from my mouth and stared at her helplessly. It was about an hour after dinner, and a warm soft autumnal evening, — I had eaten and drunk well, and I was drowsy and heavy-brained.

  “Dear me!” I murmured— “you seem very unreasonable, Sibyl! I suppose you are hysterical....”

  She sprang up from the couch, — her tears dried on her cheeks as though by sheer heat of the crimson glow that flushed them, and she laughed wildly.

  “Yes, that is it!” she exclaimed— “Hysteria! — nothing else! It is accountable for everything that moves a woman’s nature. A woman has no right to have any emotions that cannot be cured by smelling-salts! Heart-ache? — pooh! — cut her stay-lace! Despair and a sense of sin and misery? — nonsense! — bathe her temples with vinegar! An uneasy conscience? — ah! — for an uneasy conscience there is nothing better than sal volatile! Woman is a toy, — a breakable fool’s toy; — and when she is broken, throw her aside and have done with her, — don’t try to piece together the fragile rubbish!”

  She ceased abruptly, panting for breath, — and before I could collect my thoughts or find any words wherewith to reply, a tall shadow suddenly darkened the embrasure of the window, and a familiar voice enquired —

  “May I, with the privilege of friendship, enter unannounced?”

  I started up.

  “Rimânez!” I cried, seizing him by the hand.

  “Nay, Geoffrey, my homage is due here first,” — he replied, shaking off my grasp, and advancing to Sibyl, who stood perfectly still where she had risen up in her strange passion— “Lady Sibyl, am I welcome?”

  “Can you ask it!” she said, with an enchanting smile, and in a voice from which all harshness and excitement had fled; “More than welcome!” Here she gave him both her hands which he respectfully kissed. “You cannot imagine how much I have longed to see you again!”

  “I must apologise for my sudden appearance, Geoffrey,” — he then observed, turning to me— “But as I walked here from the station and came up your fine avenue of trees, I was so struck with the loveliness of this place and the exquisite peace of its surroundings, that, knowing my way through the grounds, I thought I would just look about and see if you were anywhere within sight before I presented myself at the conventional door of entrance. And I was not disappointed, — I found you, as I expected, enjoying each other’s society! — the happiest and most fortunate couple existent, — people whom, out of all the world I should be disposed to envy, if I envied worldly happiness at all, which I do not!”

  I glanced at him quickly; — he met my gaze with a perfectly unembarrassed air, and I concluded that he had not overheard Sibyl’s sudden melodramatic outburst.

  “Have you dined?” I asked, with my hand on the bell.

  “Thanks, yes. The town of Leamington provided me with quite a sumptuous repast of bread and cheese and ale. I am tired of luxuries you know, — that is why I find plain fare delicious. You are looking wonderfully well, Geoffrey! — shall I offend you if I say you are growing — yes — positively stout? — with the stoutness befitting a true county gentleman, who means to be as gouty in the future as his respectable ancestors?”

  I smiled, but not altogether with pleasure; it is never agreeable to be called ‘stout’ in the presence of a beautiful woman to whom one has only been wedded a matter of three months.

  “You have not put on any extra flesh;—” I said, by way of feeble retort.

  “No” — he admitted, as he disposed his slim elegant figure in an arm-chair near my own— “The necessary quantity of flesh is a bore to me always, — extra flesh would be a positive infliction. I should like, as the irreverent though reverend Sidney Smith said, on a hot day, ‘to sit in my bones,’ or rather, to become a spirit of fine essence like Shakespeare’s Ariel, if such things were possible and permissible. How admirably married life agrees with you, Lady Sibyl!”

  His fine eyes rested upon her with apparent admiration, — she flushed under his gaze I saw, and seemed confused.

  “When did you arrive in England?” she inquired.

  “Yesterday,” — he answered,— “I ran over Channel from Honfleur in my yacht, — you did not know I had a yacht, did you Tempest? — oh, you must come for a trip in her some day. She is a quick vessel, and the weather was fair.”

  “Is Amiel with you?” I asked.

  “No. I left him on board the yacht. I can, as the common people say, ‘valet myself’ for a day or two.”

  “A day or two?” echoed Sibyl—
“But you surely will not leave us so soon? You promised to make a long visit here.”

  “Did I?” and he regarded her steadily, with the same languorous admiration in his eyes— “But, my dear Lady Sibyl, time alters our ideas, and I am not sure whether you and your excellent husband are of the same opinion as you were when you started on your wedding-tour. You may not want me now!”

  He said this with a significance to which I paid no heed whatever.

  341”Not want you!” I exclaimed— “I shall always want you Lucio, — you are the best friend I ever had, and the only one I care to keep. Believe me! — there’s my hand upon it!”

  He looked at me curiously for a minute, — then turned his head towards my wife.

  “And what does Lady Sibyl say?” he asked in a gentle, almost caressing tone.

  “Lady Sibyl says,” she answered with a smile, and the colour coming and going in her cheeks— “that she will be proud and glad if you will consider Willowsmere your home as long as you have leisure to make it so, — and that she hopes, — though you are reputed to be a hater of women,—” here she raised her beautiful eyes and fixed them full upon him— “you will relent a little in favour of your present châtelaine!”

  With these words, and a playful salutation, she passed out of the room into the garden, and stood on the lawn at a little distance from us, her white robes shimmering in the mellow autumnal twilight, — and Lucio, springing up from his seat, looked after her, clapping his hand down heavily on my shoulder.

  “By Heaven!” he said softly, “A perfect woman! I should be a churl to withstand her, — or you, my good Geoffrey,” — and he regarded me earnestly— “I have led a very devil of a life since I saw you last, — it’s time I reformed, — upon my soul it is! The peaceful contemplation of virtuous marriage will do me good! — send for my luggage to the station, Geoffrey, and make the best of me, — I’ve come to stay!”

  XXIX

  A tranquil time now ensued; a time which, though I knew it not, was just that singular pause so frequently observed in nature before a storm, and in human life before a crushing calamity. I put aside all troublesome and harassing thoughts, and became oblivious of everything save my own personal satisfaction in the renewal of the comradeship between myself and Lucio. We walked together, rode together, and passed most of our days in each other’s company, — nevertheless though I gave my friend much of my closest confidence I never spoke to him of the moral obliquities and perversions I had discovered in Sibyl’s character, — not out of any consideration for Sibyl, but simply because I knew by instinct what his reply would be. He would have no sympathy with my feelings. His keen sense of sarcasm would over-rule his friendship, and he would retort upon me with the question — What business had I, being imperfect myself, to expect perfection in my wife? Like many others of my sex I had the notion that I, as man, could do all I pleased, when I pleased and how I pleased; I could sink to a level lower than that of the beasts if I chose, — but all the same I had the right to demand from my wife the most flawless purity to mate with my defilement. I was aware how Lucio would treat this form of arrogant egoism, — and with what mocking laughter he would receive any expression of ideas from me on the subject of morality in woman. So I was careful to let no hint of my actual position escape me, — and I comported myself on all occasions to Sibyl with special tenderness and consideration, though she, I thought, appeared rather to resent my playing the part of lover-husband too openly. She was herself, in Lucio’s presence, strangely erratic of humour, by turns brilliant and mournful, — sometimes merry and anon depressed: yet never had she displayed a more captivating grace and charm of manner. How foolish and blind I was all the while! — how dead to any perception of the formation and sequence of events! Absorbed in gross material pleasures, I ignored all the hidden forces that make the history of an individual life no less than of a whole nation, and looked upon each day that dawned almost as if it had been my own creation and possession, to waste as I thought fit, — never considering that days are but so many white leaflets from God’s chronicle of human life, whereon we place our mark, good or bad, for the just and exact summing-up of our thoughts and deeds here after. Had any one dared to say this truth to me then, I should have bade him go and preach nonsense to children, — but now, — when I recall those white leaves of days that were unrolled before me fresh and blank with every sunrise, and with which I did nothing save scrawl my own Ego in a foul smudge across each one, I tremble, and inwardly pray that I may never be forced to send back my self-written record! Yet of what use is it to pray against eternal Law? It is eternal Law that we shall ourselves count up our own misdeeds at the final reckoning, — hence it is no wonder that many are found who prefer not to believe in a future after death. Rightly do such esteem it better to die utterly, than be forced to live again and look back upon the wilful evil they have done!

  October ripened slowly and almost imperceptibly towards its end, and the trees put on their gorgeous autumnal tints of burning crimson and gold. The weather remained fine and warm, and what the French Canadians poetically term the ‘Summer of all Saints’ gave us bright days and cloudless moonlit evenings. The air was so mild that we were always able to take our coffee after dinner on the terrace overlooking the lawn in front of the drawing-room, — and it was on one of these balmy nights that I was the interested spectator of a strange scene between Lucio and Mavis Clare, — a scene I should have thought impossible of occurrence had I not myself witnessed it. Mavis had dined at Willowsmere; she very rarely so honoured us; and there were a few other guests besides. We had lingered over the coffee longer than usual, for Mavis had given an extra charm to the conversation by her eloquent vivacity and bright humour, and all present were anxious to hear, see and know as much of the brilliant novelist as possible. But when a full golden moon rose in mellow splendour over the tree-tops, my wife suggested a stroll in the grounds, and everyone agreeing to the proposal with delight, we started, — more or less together, — some in couples, some in groups of three or four. After a little desultory rambling however, the party got separated in the rose-gardens and adjacent shrubberies, and I found myself alone. I turned back to the house to get my cigar-case which I had left on a table in the library, and passing out again in another direction I strolled slowly across the grass, smoking as I went, towards the river, the silver gleam of which could clearly be discerned through the fast-thinning foliage overhanging its banks. I had almost reached the path that followed the course of the winding water, when I was brought to a standstill by the sound of voices — one, a man’s, low and persuasive, — the other a woman’s, tender, grave and somewhat tremulous. Neither voice could be mistaken; I recognized Lucio’s rich penetrating tones, and the sweet vibrante accents of Mavis Clare. Out of sheer surprise I paused, — had Lucio fallen in love, I wondered, half-smiling? — was I about to discover that the supposed ‘woman-hater’ had been tamed and caught at last? By Mavis too! — little Mavis, who was not beautiful according to accepted standards, but who had something more than beauty to enravish a proud and unbelieving soul, — here, as my thoughts ran on, I was conscious of a foolish sense of jealousy, — why should he choose Mavis, I thought, out of all women in the world? Could he not leave her in peace with her dreams, her books and her flowers? — safe under the pure, wise, impassive gaze of Pallas Athene, whose cool brows were never fevered by a touch of passion? Something more than curiosity now impelled me to listen, and I cautiously advanced a step or two towards the shadow of a broad elm where I could see without being seen. Yes, there was Rimânez, — standing erect with folded arms, his dark, sad, inscrutable eyes fixed on Mavis, who stood opposite to him a few paces off, looking at him in her turn with an expression of mingled fascination and fear.