Here, chancing to turn her head rather quickly from the wardrobe towards the mirror again, she saw the charming profile of — a pretty woman! — a woman with fair skin and a sparkling eye that smiled in opposition to the gravity of rather set lip-lines, — and the suddenness of this apparition gave her quite a nervous start.
“Who is it?” she half whispered to the silence, — then, as she moved her head again and the reflection vanished, “Why, it’s me! I do believe it’s me!”
Amazed, she sat down to think about it. Then, with a hand-glass she tried to recapture the vision, but in vain! — no position in which she now turned gave just the same effect.
“It’s enough to drive one silly!” she said—” I won’t bother myself any more about it. The plain truth is that I’m better in health and happier in mind than I’ve ever been, and of course I look as I feel. Only the dear Madame Dimitrius hasn’t noticed it before — and he? — well, he never notices anything about me except that I do his work well, or well enough to suit him. If his mysterious ‘globule’ had killed me, I wonder whether he would have been really sorry?”
She considered a moment, — then shook her head in a playful negative and smiled incredulously. She finished undressing, and throwing a warm boudoir wrap about her, a pretty garment of pale rose silk lined with white fur which had been a parting gift from her friend Sophy Lansing, and which, as she had declared, was “fit for a princess,” she went into her sitting-room, where there was a cheerful wood fire burning, and sat down to read. Among the several hooks arranged for her entertainment on a row of shelves within reach of the hand, was one old one bearing the title: “Of the Delusions whereby the Wisest are Deluded” — and the date 1584. Taking this down she opened it haphazard at a chapter headed: “Of the Delusion of Love.” It was written in old style English with many quaint forms of expression, more pointed and pithy than our modern “newspaper slang.”
“How many otherwise sober and sane persons are there,” soliloquized the, ancient author—” who nevertheless do pitifully allow themselves to be led astray by this passion, which considered truly, is no more than the animal attraction of male for female, and female for male, no whit higher than that which prevails in the insect and brute world. For call it Love as they will, it is naught but Lust, as low an instinct or habit as that of craving for strong, liquor or any wherewithal! to still the insatiate demands of uncontrolled appetite. Love hath naught to do with Lust, — for Love is a Principle, not a Passion. For this cause it is comforting to read in Holy Scripture that in Heaven there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, for there we are as the angels. And to be as the angels implyeth that we shall live in the Principle and not in the Passion. Could we conceive it possible on this earth for such an understanding to be arrived at between two persons of intelligence that they should love each other in this highest sense, then there would be no satiety in their tenderness for one another, and the delicacies of the soul would not be outraged by the coarseness of the body. It is indeed a deplorable and mournful contemplation, that we should be forced to descend from the inexpressible delights of an imagined ideal to the repulsive condition, of the material stye, and that the fairest virgin, bred up softly, with no rougher composition of spirit than that of a rose or a lily, should be persuaded by this, delusion of ‘love’ to yield her beauties to the deflowering touch which destroys all maidenly reserve, grace and modesty. For the familiarity of married relations doth, as is well known, put an end to all illusions of romance, and doth abase the finest nature to the gross animal level. And though it is assumed to be necessary that generations should be born without stint to fill an already over-filled world, meseemeth the necessity is not so great as it appeareth. Wars, plagues and famines are bred from the unwisdom of over-population, for whereas the over-production of mites in a cheese do rot the cheese, so doth the over-production of human units rot the world. Therefore it is apparent to the sage and profound that while the material and animal portion of the race may very suitably propagate their kind, they having no higher conception of their bodies or their souls, the more intelligent and cleanly minority of purer and finer temperament may possibly find the way to a nobler and more lasting ‘love’ than that which is wrongfully called by such a name, — a love which shall satisfy without satiating, and which shall bind two spirits so harmoniously in one, that from their union shall be born an immortal offspring of such great thoughts and deeds as shall benefit generations unborn and lead the way back to the lost Paradise!”
Here Diana let the book fall in her lap, and sat meditating, gazing into the hollows of the wood fire. Love! It was the thing she had longed for, — the one joy she had missed! To be loved, — to be “dear to someone else” seemed to her the very acme of all desirable attainment. For with Tennyson’s hero in “Maud” she felt:
“If I be deaf to some one else
I should be to myself more dear.”
Her thoughts went “homing” like doves down the air spaces of memory to the days when she had, or was fooled into believing she had, a lover whose love would last, — a bold, splendid creature, with broad shoulders and comely countenance, and “eyes which looked love to eyes that spake again,” — and when, as the betrothed bride of the Splendid Creature, she had thanked God night and morning for giving her so much happiness! — when the light in the sides and the flowers in the fields apparently took part in the joyous gratitude of her spirit, and when the very songs of the birds had seemed for her a special wedding chorus! She went over the incidents of that far-away period of her existence, — and presently she began to ask herself what, after all, did they amount to? Why, when they were all cruelly ended, had she shed such wild tears and prayed to God in such desperate agony? Was it worth while to have so shaken her physical and spiritual health for any Splendid Creature? For what had he done to merit such passionate regret? — such weeping and wailing? He had kissed her a great deal (when he was in the mood for kissing), and sometimes more than she quite cared for. He had embraced her in gusts of brief and eager passion, tinged with a certain sensuality which roused in her reluctant repulsion — he had called her by various terms of endearment such as “sweetest,”
“dearest,” and “wood-nymph,” a name he had bestowed upon her on one occasion when he had met her by chance in a shady corner of Kew Gardens, and which he thought poetical, but which she privately considered silly, — but What real meaning could be attached to these expressions? When, all suddenly, his regiment was ordered to India, and she had to part from him, he had sworn fidelity, and with many protestations of utmost tenderness had told her that “as soon as cash would allow,” he would send for her to join him, and marry her out there, — and for this happy consummation she had waited, lovingly and loyally, seven years. Meanwhile his letters grew shorter and fewer, — till at last, when his father died and he came into a large fortune, he struck the final blow on the patient life that had been sacrificed to his humour. He wrote a last letter, telling her he was married, — and so everything of hope and promise fell away from her like the falling leaves of a withering flower, though her friend, Sophy Lansing, in hot indignation at the callous way in which she had been treated, advised her to “take on another man at once.” But poor Diana could not do this. Hers was a loyal and tender spirit, — she was unable to transfer her affections from one to another au grand, galop. She thought of it all now in a half amused way, as she sat in her easy chair by the sparkling fire, in the charming room which she could for the present call her own, surrounded by every comfort and luxury, and she looked at her ringless hand, — that small, daintily-shaped hand, on which for so many wasted years her lover’s engagement ring had sparkled as a sign of constancy. Poor little hand! — it was shown off with effect at the moment, lying with a passive prettiness on the roseate silk of her “boudoir wrap” — as white as the white fur which just peeped beneath the palm. Suddenly she clenched it.
“I should like to punish him!” she said. “It may be small —
it may be spiteful — but it is human! I should like to see him suffer for his treachery! I should have no pity on him or his fat wife!” Here she laughed at herself.
“How absurd I am!” she went on—” making ‘much ado about nothing!’ The fat wife herself is a punishment for him, I’m sure! He’s rich, and has a big house in Mayfair and five very ugly children, — that ought to be enough for him! I saw his wife by chance at a bazaar quite lately — like a moving jelly! — rather like poor mother in the fit of her clothes, — and smiling the ghastly smile of that placid, ineffable content which marks the fool! If I could do nothing else I’d like to disturb that smug, self-satisfied constitution of oozing oil! — yes, I would! — and who knows if I mayn’t do it yet!”
She rose, and the antique book “Of Delusions” fell to the floor. Her slim figure, loosely draped in the folds of crimson silk and white fur, looked wonderfully graceful and well-poised, and had there been a mirror in the sitting-room, as there was in the bedroom, she might possibly have seen something in her appearance worthy of even men’s admiration. But her thoughts were far away from herself, — she had before her eyes the picture of her old lover grown slightly broader and heavier in build, with ugly furrows of commonplace care engraven on his once smooth and handsome face, “hen-pecked” probably by Iris stout better-half and submitting to this frequently inevitable fate with a more or less ill grace, and again she laughed, — a laugh of purest unforced merriment.
“Here I am, like Hamlet, ‘exceeding proud and revengeful,’ and after all I ought to be devoutly thankful!” she said. “For, if I analyse myself honestly, I do not really consider I have lost anything in losing a man who would certainly have been an unfaithful husband. What I do feel is the slight on myself! That he should have callously allowed me to wait all those years for him, and then — have cast me aside like an old shoe, is an injury which I think I may justly resent — and which, — if I ever get the chance — I may punish!” Here her brows clouded, and she sighed. “What an impossible idea! I talk as if I were young, with all the world before me! — and with power to realize my dreams! — when really everything of that sort is over for me, and I have only to see how I can best live out the remainder of life!”
Then like a faint whisper stealing through the silence, came the words which Dimitrius had spoken on the first night of her arrival — that night when the moonlight had drenched the garden in a shower of pearl and silver, —
“What would you give to be young?”
A thrill ran through her nerves as though they had been played upon by an electric vibration. Had Dimitrius any such secret as that which he hinted at? — or was he only deluding himself, and was his brain, by over much study, slipping off the balance? She had heard of the wisest scientists who, after astonishing the world by the brilliancy of their researches and discoveries, had suddenly sunk from their lofty pinnacles of attained knowledge to the depth of consulting “mediums,” who pretended to bring back the spirits of the dead that they might converse with their relatives and friends in bad grammar and worse logic, — might not Dimitrius be just as unfortunate in his own special “scientific” line Tired at last of thinking, she resolved to go to bed, and in her sleeping chamber, she found herself facing the long mirror again. Something she saw there this time appeared really to startle her, for she turned abruptly away from it, threw off her wrap, slipped into her nightgown, and brushed her hair hastily without looking at herself for another second. And kneeling at her bedside as she said her prayers she included an extra petition, uttered in a strangely earnest whisper:
“From all delusions of vanity, self-love and proud thinking, good Lord, deliver me!”
The next morning she awoke, filled and fired with a new resolve. She had slept well and was strong in energy and spirit, and she determined, as she expressed it to herself, to “have it out” with Dr. Dimitrius. So after breakfast, when he was about to go to his laboratory as usual, she stopped him on the way.
“I want to speak to you,” she said. “Please give me a few moments of your time.”
“Now?” he queried, with a slight uplifting of his eyebrows.
She bent her head.
“NOW!”
“In the library, then,” he said, and thither they went together.
On entering the room he closed the door behind them and stood looking at her somewhat quizzically.
“Weh?”
“Well!” she echoed, slightly smiling. “Are you wondering what I want to say? You ought not to wonder at all, — you ought to know!”
“I know nothing!” he answered—” I may guess — but guessing is risky. I prefer to hear.”
“So you shall hear,” — and she drew a little closer to him — —” If I express myself foolishly you must tell me, — if you think me officious or over-bold, you must reprove me — there is only one thing I will not bear from you, and that is, want of confidence!”
He looked at her in something of surprise.
“Want of confidence? My dear Miss Diana, you surely cannot complain on that score! I have trusted you more than I have ever trusted any man or any woman—”
“Yes,” she interrupted him, quickly—” I know that wherever it is absolutely necessary to trust me you have done so. But where you think it is un-necessary, you have not. For example — why don’t you tell me just straight what you mean to do with me?”
His dark, lustrous eyes flashed up under their drooping lids.
“What I mean to do with you?” he repeated—” Why, what do you imagine—”
“I imagine nothing,” she answered, quietly. “The things you teach are beyond all imagination! But see! — I have signed myself and my services away to you for a certain time, and as you have yourself said, you did not engage me merely to copy old Latin script. What you really want of me is, as I begin to understand, just what the vivisector wants with the animal he experiments upon. If this is so, I offer no opposition. I am not afraid of death — for I am out of love with life. But I want to know your aims — I want to understand the actual thing you are striving for. I shall be better able to help you if I know. You put me through one test yesterday — you saw for yourself that I had no fear of the death or life properties of the thing I took from your hand without any hesitation —
I have not even spoken of the amazing and terrifying sensations it gave me — I am ready to take it again at any moment. You have a willing servant in me — but, as I say, I feel I could help you more if I knew the ultimate end for which you work, — and you must trust me!”
He listened attentively to every word, — charmed with the silvery softness of her voice and its earnest yet delicate inflections.
“I do trust you!” he said, when she had ceased speaking. “If I did not, you would not be here a day. I trusted you from the moment I saw you. If I had not, I should never have engaged you. So be satisfied on that score. For the rest — well! — I confess I have hesitated to tell you more than (as you put it) seemed necessary for you to know, — the old fear and the narrow miscomprehension of woman is still inherent in me, as in all of my sex, though I do my best to eliminate it, — and I have thought that perhaps if I told you all my intentions with regard to yourself, you might, at the crucial moment, shrink back and fail me —— —”
“When I shrink from anything you wish me to do, or fail in my undertaking to serve you loyally, I give you leave to finish me off in any way you please!” she said, calmly—” and without warning!”
He smiled — but his eyes were sombre with thought.
“Sit down,” he said, and signed to her to take a chair near the window. “I will tell you as much as I can — as much as I myself know. It is briefly said.”
He watched her closely, as, in obedience to his wish she, seated herself, and he noted the new and ardent brilliance in her eyes which gave them a look of youthful and eager vitality. Then he drew up another chair and sat opposite to her. Outside the window the garden had a wintry aspect — the flower-
beds were empty, — the trees were leafless, and the summits of the distant Alps peered white and sharp above a thick, fleece-like fog which stretched below.
“You say you are out of love with life,” he began.
“And this, only because you have been spared the common lot of women — the so-called ‘love’ which would have tied you to one man to be the drudge of his coarse passions till death. Well! — I admit it is the usual sort of thing life offers to the female sex, — but to be ‘out of love’ with the stupendous and beautiful work of God because this commonest of commonplace destinies has been denied you, is — pardon my brusquerie, — mere folly and unreasoning sentiment. However, I am taking you at your word, — you are ‘out of love’ with life, and you are not afraid of death. Therefore, to me you are not a woman — you are a ‘subject’: — you put it very clearly just now when you said that I need you as the vivisector needs the animal he experiments upon — that is perfectly correct. I repeat, that for my purpose, you are not a woman, — you are simply an electric battery.”
She looked up, amazed — then laughed as gaily as a child.
“An electric battery!” she echoed. “Oh dear, oh dear! I have imagined myself as many things, but never that!”
“And yet that is what you really are,” he said, unmoved by her laughter. “It is what we all are, men and women alike. Our being is composed of millions of cells, charged with an electric current which emanates from purely material sources. We make electricity to light our houses with — and when the battery is dry we say the cells need recharging — a simple matter. Youth was the light of your house of clay — but the cells of the battery are dry — they must be recharged!”
She sat silent for a moment, gazing at him as though’ seeking to read his inmost thought. His dark, fine eyes met hers without flinching.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 850