She took a sip at her ‘cordial,’ watching with artistic appreciation the gay scene in the Manor dining-room — the twinkling lights on the silver and glass and flowers — the elegant dresses of the women, — the jewels that flashed like starbeams on the lovely neck and shoulders of Lady Beaulyon, — the ripples of gold-auburn in Maryllia’s hair, — it was a picture that radiated with a thousand colours on the eye and the brain, and was certainly one destined, so far as many of those who formed a part of it were concerned, never to be forgotten. Not that there was anything very remarkable or brilliant in the conversation at the dinner-table, — there never is nowadays. Peeple dine with their friends merely to eat, not to talk. One never by any chance hears so much even as an echo of wit or wisdom. Occasionally a note of scandal is struck, — and more often than not, a questionable anecdote is related, calculated to bring ‘a blush to the cheek of the Young Person,’ if a Young Person who can blush still exists, and happens to be present. But as a rule, the general habitude of the dining class is to discourse in a very desultory and inconsequential, not to say stupid, style, and the guests at the Manor proved no exception to the rule. Sir Morton Pippitt fired off bumptious observations at Walden, who paid no heed to them — Bruce Ittlethwaite of Ittlethwaite Park, found a congenial spirit in Lord Charlemont, and talked sport right through the repast — and Louis Gigue enlivened the table by a sudden discussion with Mr. Marius Longford, relative to the position of art in Great Britain.
“Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed, with a snap of his fingers— “Ze art is dead in Angleterre, — zere is no musique, ze poesie. Zis is ze land of ze A-penny journal — ze musique, ze poesie, ze science, ze politique, ze sentiment, — one A-penny! Bah! Ca, ce, n’est pas possible! — zis pauvre pays is kill avec ze vulgarite of ze cheap! Ze people are for ze cheap — for ze photographic, instead of ze picture- -ze gramophone, instead of ze artist fingers avec ze brain — et ze literature — it is ze cheap ‘imitation de Zola,’ qui obtient les eloges du monde critique a Londres. Vous ecrivez?” — and he shook his finger at Longford— “Bien’! Ecrivez un roman qui est sain, pure et noble — et ze A-penny man vill moque de ca — mais — ecrivez of ze dirt of ze human naturel, et voila! Ze A-penny man say ‘Bon! Ah que c’est l’art! Donnes moi l’ordure que je peux sentir! C’est naturel! C’est divin! C’est l’art!’”
A murmur, half of laughter, half of shocked protest, went round the table.
“I think,” said Mr. Longford, with a pale smile— “that according to the school of the higher criticism, we must admit the natural to be the only divine.”
Gigue’s rolling eyes gleamed under his shaggy hair.
“Je ne comprends pas!” — he said— “Ven ze pig squeak, c’est naturel — ce n’est pas divin! Ven ze man scratch ze flea, c’est naturel — ce n’est pas divin! Ze art ne desire pas ze picture of ze flea! Ze literature n’existe pas pour ze squeak of ze pig! Ah, bah! L’art, — c’est l’imagination — l’ideal — c’est le veritable Dieu en l’homme!”
Longford gave vent to a snigger, which was his way of laughing.
“God is an abstract illusion,” — he said— “One does not introduce a non-available quantity in the summing up of facts!”
“Ah! Vous ne croyez pas en Dieu?” And Gigue ruffled up his grey hair with one hand. “Mais — a quoi bon! Ca ne sert rien! Dieu pent exister sans votre croyance, Monsieur! — je vous jure!”
And he laughed — a hearty laugh that was infectious and carried the laughter of everyone else with it. Longford, irritated, turned to his next neighbour with some trite observation, and allowed the discussion to drop. But Walden had heard it, and his heart went out to Gigue for the manner in which he had, for the moment at least, quenched the light of the ‘Savage and Savile.’
Up at the end of the table at which he, Walden, sat, things were of rather a strained character. Lord Roxmouth essayed to be witty and conversational, but received so little encouragement in his sallies from Maryllia, that he had to content himself with Lady Wicketts, whom he found a terrible bore. Sir Morton Pippitt, eating heartily of everything, was gradually becoming purple in the face and somnolent under the influence of wine and food, — Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay, tired of trying to ‘draw’ Walden on sundry topics, got cross and impatient, the more so as she found that he could make himself very charming to the other people in his immediate vicinity, and that, as the dinner proceeded, he ‘came out’ as it were, very unexpectedly in conversation, and proved himself not only an intellectually brilliant man, but a socially entertaining one. Lord Roxmouth glanced at him curiously from time to time with growing suspicion and disfavour. He was not the kind of subservient, half hypocritical, mock-meek being that is conventionally supposed to represent a country ‘cure.’ His independent air, his ease of manner, and above all, his intelligence and high culture, were singularly displeasing to Lord Roxmouth, especially as he noticed that Maryllia listened to everything Walden said, and appeared to be more interested in his observations than in those of anyone else at the table. Exchanging a suggestive glance with Lady Beaulyon, Roxmouth saw that she was taking notes equally with himself on this circumstance, and his already hard face hardened, and grew colder and more inflexible as Walden, with a gaiety and humour irresistibly his own, kept the ball of conversation rolling, and gradually drew to his own strong and magnetic personality, the appreciative attention of nearly all present.
Truth to tell, a sudden exhilaration and excitement had wakened up John’s latent forces, — Maryllia’s eyes, glancing half timidly, half wistfully at him, and her fair face, slightly troubled in its expression, had moved him to an exertion of his best powers to please her, and make everything bright and gay around her. Instinct told him that some secret annoyance fretted her — and watching her looks, and noting the monosyllabic replies she gave to Lord Roxmouth whenever that distinguished personage addressed her, he decided, with a foolish thrill at his heart, that the report of her intended marriage with this nobleman could not be true — she could never look so coldly at anyone she loved! And with this idea paramount in his brain he gave himself up to the humour of the hour — and by and by heads were turned in his direction, and people whispered— ‘Is that the parson of the parish?’ — and when the answer was given in the affirmative, wondering glances were exchanged, and someone at the other end of the table remarked sotto voce:— ‘Much too brilliant a man for the country!’ — whereat Miss Arabella Ittlethwaite bridled up and said she ‘hoped nobody thought that town offered the only samples of the human brain worth noticing,’ as she would, in that case, ‘beg to differ.’ Whereat there ensued a lively discussion, which ended, so far as the general experience went, in the decision that clever men were always born or discovered in the country, but that after a while they invariably went up to town, and there became famous.
Presently, the dinner drawing to an end, dessert, coffee and the smoking conveniences for both ladies and gentlemen were handed round, — cigars for the gentlemen, cigarettes for both gentlemen and ladies. All the women helped themselves to cigarettes, as a matter of course, with the exception of Miss Ittlethwaite, — (who, as a ‘county’ lady of the old school, sat transfixed with horror at the bare idea of being expected to smoke) — poor old Miss Fosby, and Maryllia. And now occurred an incident, in itself trifling, but fraught with strange results to those immediately concerned. Lady Beaulyon was just about to light her own cigarette when, in obedience to a sudden thought that flashed across her brain, she turned her lovely laughing face round towards Walden, and said:
“As there’s a clergyman present, I’m sure we ought to ask his permission before we light up! Don’t you think it very shocking for women to smoke, Mr. Walden?”
He looked straight at her — his face paling a little with a sense of strongly suppressed feeling.
“I have always been under the impression that English ladies never smoke,” — he said, quietly, with a very slight emphasis on the word ‘ladies.’ “The rest, of course, must do as they pl
ease!”
Had a bombshell suddenly exploded in the dining-room, the effect could hardly have been more stupefying than these words. There was an awful pause. The women, holding the unlit cigarettes delicately between their fingers, looked enquiringly at their hostess. The men stared; Lord Roxmouth laughed.
Maryllia turned white as a snowdrop — but her eyes blazed with sudden amazement, indignation and pride that made lightning in their tender blue. Then, — deliberately choosing a cigarette from the silver box which had been placed on the table before her, she lit it, — and began to puff the smoke from her rosy lips in delicate rings, turning to Lord Roxmouth as she did so with a playful word and smile. It was enough; — the ‘lead’ was given. A glance of approval went the round of her London lady guests — who, exonerated by her prompt action from all responsibility, lighted their cigarettes without further ado, and the room was soon misty with tobacco fumes. Not a word was addressed to Walden, — a sudden mantle of fog seemed to have fallen over him, covering him up from the consciousness of the company, for no one even glanced at him, except covertly, — no one appeared to have heard or noticed his remark. Lord Charlemont looked, as he felt, distressed. In his heart he admired Walden for his boldness in speaking out frankly against a modern habit of women which he also considered reprehensible, — but at the same time he recognised that the reproof had perhaps been administered too openly. Walden himself sat rigid and very pale — he fully realised what he had done, — and he knew he was being snubbed for it — but he did not care.
“Better so!” — he said to himself in an inward rage— “Better that I should never see her again than see her as she is now! She wrongs herself! — and I cannot be a silent witness of her wrong, even though it is wrought by her own hand!”
The buzz of talk now grew more loud and incessant; — he saw Sir Morton Pippitt’s round eyes fixed upon him with an astonished and derisive stare, — and he longed for the moment to come when he might escape from the whole smoking, chattering party. All that his own eyes consciously beheld was Maryllia — Maryllia, the dainty, pretty, delicate feminine creature who seemed created out of the finest mortal and spiritual essences, — smoking! That cigarette stuck in her pretty mouth, vulgarised her appearance at once, — coarsened her — made her look as if she were indeed the rapid ‘Maryllia Van’ his friend Bishop Brent had written of. What did he care if not a soul at that table ever spoke to him again? Nothing! But he cared — oh, he cared greatly for any roughening touch on that little figure of smooth white and rose flesh, which somehow he had, unconsciously to himself, set in a niche for thoughts higher than common! He was quite aware that he had committed a social error, yet he was sorry she could not have reproved him in some other fashion than that of deliberately doing what he had just condemned as unbecoming to a lady. And his mind was in a whirl, when at last she rose to give the signal to adjourn, passing out of the dining-room without a glance in his direction.
The moment she had vanished, he at once prepared to leave, not only the room, but the house. No one offered to detain him. The men were all too conscious of what they considered his ‘faux pas’ — and they were also made rather uncomfortable by the decided rebuff he had received from their hostess. Yet they all liked him, and were, in their way, sorry for what had occurred. Lord Roxmouth, with the easy assurance of one who is conscious of his own position, remarked with kindly banter: —
“Won’t you stay with us, Mr. Walden? Are you obliged to go?”
Walden looked at him unflinchingly, yet with a smile.
“When a man elects to speak his mind, Lord Roxmouth, his room is better than his company!”
And with this he left them — to laugh at him if they chose — caring little whether they did or not. Passing into the hall, he took his hat and coat, — he was angry with himself, yet not ashamed, — for something in his soul told him that he had done rightly, even as a minister of the Gospel, to utter a protest against the vulgarising of womanhood. He stepped out into the courtyard — the moon was rising, and the air was very sweet and cool.
“I was wrong!” — he said, half aloud— “And yet I was right! I should not have said what I did, — and yet I should! If no man is ever bold enough to protest again the voluntary and fast-increasing self- degradation of women, then men will be most to blame if the next generation of wives and mothers are shameless, unsexed, indecorous, and wholly unworthy of their life’s mission. How angry she looked! Possibly she will never speak to me again. Well, what does it matter! The wider apart our paths are set, the better!”
He reached the gate of the courtyard, and was about to pass through it, when a little fluttering figure in white, with crimson in its rough dark hair, rushed after him. It was Cicely.
“Don’t go, please Mr. Walden!” she said, breathlessly; and he saw, even by the light of the moon, that her eyes were wet— “Please don’t go! Maryllia wishes to speak to you.”
He turned a pale, composed face upon her.
“Where?”
“In the picture-gallery. She is alone there. She saw you cross the courtyard, and sent me after you. All the other people are in the drawing-room, waiting to hear me sing — and I must run, for Gigue is there, and he is so impatient! Please, Mr. Walden!” — and Cicely’s voice shook— “Please don’t mind if Maryllia is angry! She IS angry! But it’s all on the surface — she doesn’t really mean it — she wouldn’t be unkind for all the world! I know what you said, — I was watching the dinner-party from the ante-room and I saw everything — and — and — I think you were just splendid! — it’s horrid for women to smoke — but they nearly all do it nowadays — only I never saw Maryllia do it before, and oh, Mr. Walden, make it all right with her, please!”
For a moment John hesitated. Then a kind smile softened his features.
“I can’t quite promise that, Cicely, — but I’ll do my best!” And taking her hand he patted it gently, as she furtively dashed one or two tear-drops from her lashes— “Come, come, you mustn’t cry! Run away and sing like the little nightingale you are — don’t fret—”
“But you’ll go to Maryllia, won’t you?” she urged, anxiously.
“Yes. I’ll go!”
She lifted her dark eyes, and he saw how true and full of soul they were, despite their witch-like wildness and passion. Just then a stormy passage of music, played on the piano, and tumbling out, as it seemed, on the air through the open windows of the Manor drawing- room, reminded her that she was being waited for by her impetuous and impatient maestro.
“That’s the signal for me!” she said— “I must run! But oh do, do make it up with Maryllia and be friends!”
She rushed away. He waited till she had disappeared, then turning back through the courtyard, slowly re-entered the house.
XXIII
The lights were burning low and dimly in the picture-gallery when he entered it and saw Maryllia there, pacing restlessly up and down, the folds of her dress with the ‘diamants’ sparkling around her as she moved, like a million little drops of frost on gossamer, while her small head, lifted proudly on its slim arched throat, seemed to his heated fancy, as though crowned with fresh coronals of gold woven from the summer sun. Turning, she confronted him and paused irresolute, — then, with a sudden impulsive gesture, came forward swiftly, — her cheeks flaming crimson, — her lips trembling, and her bosom heaving with its quickened breath like that of a fluttered bird.
“How dare you!” she said, in a low, strained voice— “How dare you!”
He met her eyes, — and in that moment individual and personal considerations were swept aside, and only the Right and the Wrong presented themselves to his mental vision, like witnesses from a higher world, invisible but omnipotent, waiting for the result of the first clash of combat between two human souls. Yielding to his own over-mastering emotion, and reckless of consequences, he caught her two hands lightly in his own.
“And how dare YOU!” he said earnestly,— “Little girl, how dare YOU so hurt
yourself!”
They gazed upon one another, — each one secretly amazed at the other’s outbreak of feeling, — she grown white and speechless, — he with a swift strong sense of his own power and authority as a mere man, nerving him to the utterance of truth for her sake — for her sake! — regardless of all forms and ceremonies. Then he dropped her hands as quickly as he had grasped them.
“Forgive me!” he said, very softly, — and paused, till recovering more of his self-possession, he continued quietly— “You should not have sent for me, Miss Vancourt! Knowing that I had offended you, I was leaving your house, never intending to enter it again. Why did you summon me back? To reproach me? It would be kinder to spare me this, and let me go my own way!”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 629