Chapter III: Part 3

Her hand rested for a moment on his shoulder with a caressing touch; anon, humming a little tune under her breath, and followed by Spartan, who never let her go out of his sight for a moment if he could help it, she left the room. Ascending the staircase, she stopped on the threshold of her study and looked in with a vague air, as though the place had suddenly grown unfamiliar. There, immediately facing her, smiled the pictured lineaments of Shakespeare, that immortal friend of man; her favourite books greeted her with all the silent yet persuasive eloquence of their well-known and deeply-honoured titles; the electric lights, fitted up to represent small stars in the ceiling, were not turned on, and only the young moon peered glimmeringly through the lattice window, shedding a pale lustre on the marble features of the ‘Antinous.’ Standing quite still, she gazed at all these well-known objects of her daily surroundings with a curious sense of strangeness, Spartan staring up wonderingly at her the while.

‘What is it that is wrong with me?’ she mused. ‘Why do I feel as if I were suddenly thrust out of my usual peace, and made to take a part in the common and mean disputes of petty-minded men and women?’

She waited another minute, then apparently conquering whatever emotion was at work within her, she pressed the ivory handle which diffused light on all visible things, and entered the room with a quiet step and a half-penitent look, as of regret for having given offence to some invisible spirit-monitor.

‘Oh, you dear, dear friends!’ she said, approaching the bookshelves, and softly apostrophising the volumes ranged there as if they were sentient personages, ‘I am afraid I do not consult you half enough! You are always with me, ready to give me the soundest advice on any subject under the sun; advice founded on sage experience, too! Tell me something now, out of your stores of wisdom, to stop this foolish little aching at my heart—this irritating, selfish, suspicious trouble which is quite unworthy of me, as it is unworthy of anyone who has had the high privilege of learning great lessons from such teachers as you are! It is not as if I were a woman whose sole ideas of life are centred on dress and domesticity, or one of those unhappy, self-tormenting creatures who cannot exist without admiration and flattery; I am, I think and hope, differently constituted, and mean to try for great things, even if I never succeed in attaining them. But in trying for greatness, one must not descend to littleness—save me from this danger, my dear old-world comrades, if you can, for to-night I am totally unlike myself. There are thoughts in my brain that might have excited Xantippe, but which should never trouble Delicia, if to herself Delicia prove but true!’

And she raised her eyes, half smiling, to the meditative countenance of Shakespeare. ‘Excellent and “divine Williams,” you must excuse me for fitting your patriotic line on England to my unworthy needs; but why _would_ you make yourself so eminently quotable?’ She paused, then took up a book lying on her desk. ‘Here is an excellent doctor for a sick, petulant child such as I am—Marcus Aurelius. What will you say to me, wise pagan? Let me see,’ and opening a page at random, her eyes fell on the words, ‘Do not suppose you are hurt, and your complaint ceases. Cease your complaint and you are not hurt.’

She laughed, and her face began to light up with all its usual animation.

‘Excellent Emperor! What a wholesome thrashing you give me! Anything more?’ And she turned over a few pages, and came upon one of the imperial moralist’s most coolly-dictatorial assertions. ‘What an easy matter it is to stem the current of your imagination, to discharge a troublesome or improper thought, and at once return to a state of calm!’

‘I don’t know about that, Marcus,’ she said. ‘It is not exactly an “easy” matter to stem the current of imagination, but certainly it’s worth trying;’ and she read on, ‘To-day I rushed clear out of misfortune, or rather, I threw misfortune from me; for, to speak the truth, it was not outside, and never came any nearer than my own fancy.’

She closed the book smilingly—the beautiful equanimity of her disposition was completely restored. She left her pretty writing den, bidding Spartan remain there on guard—a mandate he was accustomed to, and which he obeyed instantly, though with a deep sigh, his mistress’s ‘evenings out’ being the chief trouble of his otherwise enviable existence. Delicia, meantime, went to dress for the Premier’s reception, and soon slipped into the robe she had had designed for herself by a famous firm of Indian embroiderers;—a garment of softest white satin, adorned with gold and silver thread, and pearls thickly intertwined, so as to present the appearance of a mass of finely-wrought jewels. A single star of diamonds glittered in her hair, and she carried a fan of natural lilies, tied with white ribbon. Thus attired, she joined her husband, who stood ready and waiting for her in the drawing-room. He glanced up at her somewhat shamefacedly.

‘You look your very best this evening, Delicia,’ he said.

She made him a sweeping curtsey, and smiled.

‘My lord, your favouring praise doth overwhelm me!’ she answered. ‘Is it not meet and right that I should so appear as to be deemed worthy of the house of Carlyon!’

He put his arm round her waist and drew her to him. It was curious, he thought, how fresh her beauty seemed! And how the men in his ‘set’ would have burst into a loud guffaw of coarse laughter if any of them had thought that such was his opinion of his wife’s charm—his own wife, to whom he had been fast wedded for over three years! According to the rules of ‘modern’ morality, one ought in three years to have had enough of one’s lawful wife, and find a suitable ‘soul’ wherewith to claim ‘affinity.’

‘Delicia,’ he said, playing idly with the lilies of her fan, ‘I am sorry you were vexed about the Marina woman—’

She interrupted him by laying her little white-gloved fingers on his lips.

‘Vexed? Oh, no, Will, not vexed. Why should I be? Pray don’t let us talk about it any more; I have almost forgotten the incident. Come! It’s time we started!’

And in response to the oddly penitent, half-sullen manner of the ‘naughty boy’ he chose to assume, she kissed him. Whereupon he tried that one special method of his, which had given him the victory in his wooing of her, the Passionate Outbreak; and murmuring in his rich voice that she was always the ‘one woman in the world,’ the ‘angel of his life,’ and altogether the very crown and summit of sweet perfection, he folded her in his arms with all a lover’s fervour. And she, clinging to him, forgot her doubts and fears, forgot the austere observations of Marcus Aurelius, forgot the triumphs of her own intellectual career, forgot everything, in fact, but that she was the blindly-adoring devotee of a six-foot Guardsman, whom she had herself set up as a ‘god’ on the throne of the Ideal, and whom she worshipped through such a roseate cloud of sweet self-abnegation that she was unable to perceive how poor a fetish her idol was after all—made of nothing but the very commonest clay!

*CHAPTER III*

The smoking-room of the ‘Bohemian’ was full of a motley collection of men of the literary vagabond type—reporters, paragraphists, writers of penny dreadfuls, reeled off tape-wise from the thin spools of smoke-dried masculine brains; stray actors, playwrights anxious to translate the work of some famous foreigner and so get fastened on to his superior coat-tails, ‘adapters’ desirous of dramatising some celebrated novel and pocketing all the profits, anxious ‘proposers’ of new magazines looking about for ‘funds’ to back them up, and among all these an extremely casual sprinkling of the brilliant and successful workers in art and literature, who were either honorary members, or who had allowed their names to stand on the committee in order to give ‘prestige’ to a collection which would otherwise be termed the ‘rag-tag and bob-tail’ of literature. The opinions of the ‘Bohemian,’—the airily idiotic theories with which the members disported themselves, and furnished food for laughter to the profane—were occasionally quoted in the newspapers, which of course gave the club a certain amount of importance in its own eyes, if in nobody else’s. And the committee put on what is called a considerable amount of ‘side’; now and then affecting to honour some half-and-half celebrity by asking him to a Five-Shilling dinner, and dubbing him the ‘guest of the evening,’ he meantime gloomily taking note of the half-cold, badly-cooked poorness of the meal, and debating within himself whether it would be possible to get away in time to have a chop ‘from the grill’ somewhere on his way home. The ‘Bohemian’ had been a long time getting started, owing to the manner in which the gentlemen who were ‘in’ persistently black-balled every new aspirant for the honours of membership. The cause of this arose from the chronic state of nervous jealousy in which the ‘Bohemians’ lived. To a certain extent, and as far as their personal animosities would permit, they were a ‘Mutual Admiration Society,’ and dreaded the intrusion of any stranger who might set himself to discover ‘their tricks and their manners.’ They had a lawyer of their own, whose business it was to arrange the disputes of the club, should occasion require his services, and they also had a doctor, a humorous and very clever little man, who was fond of strolling about the premises in the evening, and taking notes for the writing of a medical treatise to be entitled ‘Literary Dyspepsia, and the Passion of Envy considered in its Action on the Spleen and Other Vital Organs,’ a book which he justly considered would excite a great deal of interest among his professional compeers. But in spite of the imposing Committee of Names, the lawyer and the doctor, the ‘Bohemian’ did not pay. It struggled on, hampered with debts and difficulties, like most of its members. It gave smoking-concerts occasionally, for which it charged extra, and twice a year it admitted ladies to its dinners, during which banquets speeches were made distinctly proving to the fair sex that they had no business at all to be present. Still, with every advantage that a running fire of satirical comment could give it in the way of notoriety, the ‘Bohemian’ was not a prosperous concern; and no Yankee Bullion-Bag seemed inclined to take it up or invest in the chances of its future. A more sallow, sour, discontented set of men than were congregated in the smoking-room on the particular evening now in question could hardly be found anywhere between London and the Antipodes, and only the little doctor, leaning back in a lounge-chair with his neatly-shaped little legs easily crossed, and a smile on his face, seemed to enjoy his position as an impartial spectator of the scene. His smile, however, was one of purely professional satisfaction; he was making studies of a ‘subject’ in the person of a long-haired ‘poet,’ who wrote his own reviews. This son of the Muses was an untidy, dirty-looking man, and his abundant locks irresistibly reminded one of a black goat-skin door-mat, worn in places where reckless visitors had wiped their muddy boots thereon. No doubt this poet washed occasionally, but his skin was somewhat of the peculiar composition complained of by Lady Macbeth—‘All the perfumes of Arabia’ would neither cleanse nor ‘sweeten’ it.

‘Jaundice,’ murmured the little doctor, pleasantly; ‘I’ll give him a year, and he’ll be down with its worst form. Too much smoke, too much whisky, combined mentally with conceit, spite, and the habitual concentration of the imagination on self; and no gaiety, wit or kindness to temper the mixture. All bad for the health—as bad as bad can be! But, God bless my soul, what does it matter? He’d never be missed!’

And he rubbed his hands jubilantly, smiling still.

Meanwhile the rhymester thus doomed was seated at a distant table and writing of himself thus,—

‘If Shelley was a poet, if Byron was a poet, if we own Shakespeare as a king of bards and dramatists, then Mr Aubrey Grovelyn is a poet also, eminently fitted to be the comrade of these immortals. Inspired thought, beauty of diction, ease and splendour of rhythm distinguish Aubrey Grovelyn’s muse as they distinguish Shakespeare’s utterances; and in bestowing upon this gifted singer the praise that is justly due to him, we feel we are rendering a service to England in being among the first to point out the glorious promise and value of a genius who is destined to outsoar all his contemporaries in far-reaching originality and grandeur of design.’

Finishing this with a bold dash, he put it in an envelope and addressed it to the office of the journal on which he was employed and known, simply as Alfred Brown. Mr Alfred Brown was on the staff of that journal as a critic; and as Brown he praised himself in the person of Aubrey Grovelyn. The great editor of the journal, being half his time away shooting, golfing, or otherwise amusing himself, didn’t know anything about either Grovelyn or Brown, and didn’t care. And the public, seeing Grovelyn described as a Shakespeare, promptly concluded he must be a humbug, and avoided his books as cautiously as though they had been labelled ‘Poison.’ Hence Brown-Aubrey-Grovelyn’s chronic yellow melancholy—his poems wouldn’t ‘sell.’ He crammed his eulogistic review of his own latest production into his pocket, and went over to the doctor, from whose cigar he kindled his own.

‘Have you seen the papers this evening?’ he asked languidly, dropping into a chair next to the club’s ‘Galen,’ and running one skinny hand through his door-mat curls.

‘I have just glanced through them,’ replied the doctor, indifferently. ‘I never do read anything but the telegrams.’

The poet raised his eyebrows superciliously.

‘So? You don’t allow your mind to be influenced by the ebb and flow of the human tide of events,’ he murmured vaguely. ‘But I should have thought you would have observed the ridiculous announcement concerning the new book by that horrid woman, Delicia Vaughan. It is monstrous! A sale of one hundred thousand copies; it’s an infernal lie!’

‘It’s a damnation truth!’ said a pleasant voice, suddenly, in the mildest of accents; and a good-looking man with a pretty trick of twirling his moustache, and an uncomfortable way of flashing his eyes, squared himself upright in front of both physician and poet. ‘I’m the publisher, and I know!’

There was a silence, during which Mr Grovelyn smiled angrily and re-arranged his door-mat. ‘When,’ proceeded the publisher, sweetly, ‘will you enable me to do the same thing for you, Mr Grovelyn?’

The doctor, whose name was Dalley, laughed; the poet frowned.

‘Sir,’ said Grovelyn, ‘my work does not appeal to this age, which is merely prolific in the generating of idiots; I trust myself and my productions to the justice of posterity.’

‘Then you must appeal to posterity’s publishers as well, mustn’t he, Mr Granton?’ suggested Doctor Dalley, with a humorous twinkle in his eyes, addressing the publisher, who, being the head of a wealthy and influential firm, was regarded by all the penniless scribblers in the ‘Bohemian’ with feelings divided betwixt awe and fear.

‘He must, indeed!’ said Granton. ‘Personally, I prefer to speculate in Delicia Vaughan, now Lady Carlyon. Her new book is a masterpiece; I am proud to be the publisher of it. And upon my word, I think the public show capital taste in “rushing” for it.’

‘Pooh, she can’t write!’ sneered Grovelyn. ‘Did you ever know a woman who could?’

‘I have heard of George Eliot,’ hinted Dalley.

‘An old hen, that imagined it could crow!’ said the poet, with intense malignity. ‘She’ll be forgotten as though she never existed, in a little while; and as for that Vaughan woman, she’s several grades lower still, and ought only to be employed for the _London Journal_!’

Granton looked at him, and bit his lips to hide a smile.

‘It strikes me you’d rather like to stand in Lady Carlyon’s shoes, all the same, Mr Grovelyn,’ he said.

Grovelyn laughed, with such a shrill sound in the laughter, that Dr Dalley immediately made a mental note entitled ‘Splenetic Hysteria,’ and watched him with professional eagerness.

‘Not I,’ he exclaimed. ‘Everybody knows her husband writes more than half her books!’

‘That’s a lie!’ said a full, clear voice behind them. ‘Her husband is as big an ass as you are!’

Grovelyn turned round fiercely, and confronted Paul Valdis. There was a silence of surprise and consternation. Several men rose from various parts of the room, and came to see what was going on. Dr Dalley rubbed his hands in delightful anticipation of a ‘row,’ but no one spoke or moved to interfere. The two men, Grovelyn and Valdis, stood face to face; the one mean-featured, with every movement of his body marked by a false and repulsive affectation, the other a manly and heroic figure distinguished by good looks and grace of bearing, with the consciousness of right and justice flashing in his eyes.

‘You accuse me of telling a lie, Mr Valdis,’ hissed Grovelyn, ‘and you call me an ass!’

‘I do,’ retorted Valdis, coolly. ‘It is certainly a lie that Lord Carlyon writes half his wife’s books. I had a letter from him once, and found out by it that he didn’t known how to spell, much less express himself grammatically. And of course you are an ass if you think he could do anything in the way of literature; but you don’t think so—you only say so out of pure jealousy of a woman’s fame!’

‘You shall answer for this, Mr Valdis!’ exclaimed Grovelyn, the curls of his door-mat coiffure bristling with rage. ‘By Heaven, you shall answer for it!’

‘When you please, and how you please,’ returned Valdis, composedly; ‘Now and here, if you like, and if the members permit fighting on the club premises.’

Exclamations of ‘No, no!’ mingled with laughter, partially drowned his voice. Everyone at the ‘Bohemian’ knew and dreaded Valdis; he was the most influential person on the committee, and the most dangerous if offended.

‘Lady Carlyon’s name is hardly fitted to be a bone of contention for us literary and play-acting dogs-in-the-manger,’ he continued. ‘She does not write verse, so she is not in your way, Mr Grovelyn, nor will she interfere with your claim on posterity. She is not an actress, so she does not rob me of any of my honours as an actor, and I think we should do well to magnanimously allow her the peaceful enjoyment of her honestly-earned reputation, without grouping ourselves together like dirty street-boys to try and throw mud at her. Our mud doesn’t stick, you know! Her book is an overwhelming success, and her husband will doubtless enjoy all the financial profits of it.’

He turned on his heel and looked over some papers lying on the table. Grovelyn touched his arm; there was an evil leer on his face.

‘The pen is mightier than the sword, Mr Valdis!’ he observed.

‘Ay, ay! That means you are going to blackguard me in the next number of the ha’penny _Clarion_? Be it so! Truth shall not budge for a ha’porth of slander!’

He resumed his perusal of the papers, and Grovelyn walked away slowly, his eyes fixed on the ground, and a brooding mischief in his face.

‘You should never ruffle the temper of a man who has liver complaint, Valdis,’ said Dr Dalley, cheerfully, drawing his chair up to the table where the handsome actor still leaned. ‘All evil humours come from the troubles of that important organ, and I am sure, if I could only meet a would-be murderer in time, I could save him from the committal of his intended wicked deed by a dose—quite a small dose—of suitable medicine!’

Valdis laughed rather forcedly.

‘Could you? Then you’d better attend to Grovelyn without delay. He’s ripe for murder—with the pen!’

Dr Dalley rubbed his well-shaven, rounded chin meditatively.

‘Is he? Well, perhaps he is; I really shouldn’t wonder! Curiously enough, now I come to think of it, he has certain points about him that are synonymous with a murderer’s instinct—phrenologically and physiologically speaking, I mean. It is rather strange he should be a poet at all.’

‘Is he a poet?’ queried Valdis, contemptuously; ‘I never heard it honestly admitted. One does not acknowledge a man as a poet simply because he has a shock head of very dirty hair.’

‘My dear Valdis,’ expostulated the little doctor, amiably, ‘you really are very bitter, almost violent in your strictures upon the man, who to me is one of the most interesting persons I have ever met! Because I foresee his death—due to very complex and entertaining complications of disease—in the space of—let me see! Well, suppose we say eighteen months! I do not think we shall have any chance of an autopsy. I wish I could think it likely, but I am afraid—’ Here Dr Dalley shook his head, and looked so despondent concerning the slender hope he had of dissecting Grovelyn after death, that Valdis laughed heartily, and this time unrestrainedly.

‘You forget, there’s the new photography; you could photograph his interior while he’s alive!’

‘By Jove! I never thought of that!’ cried the doctor, joyfully; ‘Of course! I’ll have it done when the disease has made a little more progress. It will be extremely instructive!’

‘It will,’ said Valdis. ‘Especially if you reproduce it in the journals, and call it “Portrait of a Lampooner’s Interior under Process of Destruction by the Microbes of Disappointment and Envy.”’

‘Good! good!’ chuckled Dalley, ‘And, my dear Valdis, how would you like a photo entitled, “Portrait of a Distinguished Actor’s Imaginative Organism consumed by the Fires of a Hopeless Love?”’

Valdis coloured violently, and anon grew pale.

‘You are an old friend of mine, Dalley,’ he said slowly, ‘but you may go too far!’

‘So I may, and so I have!’ returned the little doctor, penitently, and with an abashed look. ‘Forgive me, my dear boy; I’ve been guilty of a piece of impertinence, and I’m sorry! There! But I should like a few words with you alone, if you don’t mind. It’s Sunday night; you can’t go and be “Ernani.” Will you waste a few minutes of your company on me—outside these premises, where the very walls have ears?’

Valdis assented, and in a few minutes they left the club together. With their departure there was a slight stir among the men in the room, who were reading, smoking, and drinking whisky and water.

‘I wish she’d take up with him!’ growled one man, whose head was half hidden behind a _Referee_. ‘Why the devil doesn’t she play the fool like other women?’

‘Whom are you speaking of?’ inquired a stout personage, who was busy correcting his critical notes on a new play which had been acted for the first time the previous evening.

‘Delicia Vaughan—Lady Carlyon,’ answered the first man. ‘Valdis is infatuated with her. Why she doesn’t go over to him, I can’t imagine; a writing female need not be more particular than a dancing female, I should say they’re both public characters, and Carlyon has thrown himself down as a free gift at the feet of La Marina, so there’s no obstacle in the way, except the woman’s own extraordinary “cussedness.”’

‘What good would it do you that she should “go over,” as you call it, to Valdis?’ inquired the stout scribbler, dubiously, biting the end of his pencil.

‘Good? Why, none to me in particular,’ said the other, ‘but it would drag her down! Don’t you see? It would prove to the idiotic public, that is just now running after her as if she were a goddess, that she is only the usual frail stuff of which women are made. I should like that! I confess I should like it! I like women to keep in their places—’

‘That is, on the down grade,’ suggested the stout gentleman, still dubiously.

‘Of course! what else were they made for? La Marina, who kicks up her skirts, and hits her nose with the point of her big toe, is far more of a woman, I take it, and certainly more to the taste of a man, than the insolent, brilliant, superior Delicia Vaughan!’

‘Oh! You admit she is brilliant and superior?’ said the stout critic, with a smile. ‘Well, you know that’s saying a great deal! I’m an old-fashioned man—’

‘Of course you are!’ put in a young fellow, standing near. ‘You like to believe there may be good women,—real angels,—on earth; you like to believe it, and so do I!’

He was a fresh-coloured youth, lately come up to London from the provinces to try his hand at literature; and the individual with the _Referee_, who had started the conversation, glanced him over with the supremest contempt.

‘I hope your mother’s in town to take care of you, you ninny,’ he said. ‘You’re a very callow bird!’

The young man laughed good-naturedly.

‘Am I? Well, all the same, I’d rather honour women than despise them.’

The stout critic looked up from his notebook approvingly.

‘Keep that up as long as you can, youngster,’ he said. ‘It won’t hurt you!’

A silence followed; the man with the _Referee_ spoke not another word, and the fresh-coloured provincial, getting tired of the smoke and the general air of egotistical self-concentration with which each member of the club sat fast in his own chosen chair, absorbed in his own chosen form of inward meditation, took a hasty departure, glad to get out into the cool night air. His way home lay through a part of Mayfair, and at one of the houses he passed he saw a long line of carriages outside and a brilliant display of light within. Some fashionable leader of society was holding a Sunday evening reception; and moved by a certain vague interest and curiosity, the young reporter lingered for a moment watching the gaily-dressed women passing in and out. While he yet waited, a dignified butler appeared on the steps and murmured something in the ear of a gold-buttoned commissionaire, who thereupon shouted vociferously,—

‘Lady Car-ly-on’s carriage! This way!’

And as an elegant _coupé_, drawn by two spirited horses drove swiftly up in response to the summons, a woman wrapped in a soft, white mantilla of old Spanish lace, and holding up her silken train with one hand, came out of the house with a gentleman, evidently her host, who was escorting her to the carriage. The young man from the country leaned eagerly forward and caught sight of a proud, delicate face illumined by two dark violet eyes, a flashing glimpse of beauty that vanished ere fully seen. But it was enough to make him who had been called a ‘callow bird’ wax suddenly indignant with certain self-styled celebrities he had just left behind at the ‘Bohemian.’

‘What beasts they are!’ he muttered; ‘what cads! Thank God they’ll never be famous; they’re too mean! To fling their dirty spite at a woman like that! It’s disgusting! Wait till I get a chance; I’ll “review” their trash for them!’

And warmed by the prospect of this future vengeance, the ‘callow bird’ went home to roost.

*CHAPTER IV*

Some days after the war of words between Valdis and Aubrey Grovelyn at the ‘Bohemian,’ Delicia was out shopping in Bond Street, not for herself, but for her husband. She had a whole list of orders to execute for him, from cravats and hosiery up to a new and expensive ‘coach-luncheon-basket,’ to which he had taken a sudden fancy; and besides this, she was looking about in all the jeweller’s shops for some tasteful and valuable thing to give him as a souvenir of the approaching anniversary of their marriage day. Pausing at last in front of one glittering window, she saw a rather quaint set of cuff-studs which she thought might possibly answer her purpose, and she went inside the shop to examine them more closely. The jeweller, not knowing her personally, but judging from the indifferent way in which she took the announcement of his rather stiff prices, that she must be a tolerably rich woman, began to show her some of his most costly pieces of workmanship, hoping thereby to tempt her into the purchase of something for herself. She had no very great love for jewels, but she had for artistic design, and she gratified the jeweller by her intelligent praise of some particularly choice bits, the merits of which could only be fully recognised by a quick eye and cultivated taste.

‘That is a charming pendant,’ she said, taking up a velvet case, in which rested a dove with outspread wings, made of the finest diamonds, carrying in its beak the facsimile of a folded letter in finely-wrought gold, with the words, ‘_Je t’adore ma mie!_’ set upon it in lustrous rubies. ‘The idea is graceful in itself, and admirably carried out.’

The jeweller smiled.

‘Ah, that’s a very unique thing,’ he said, ‘but it’s not for sale. It has been made to special order for Lord Carlyon.’

A faint tremor passed over Delicia like the touch of a cold wind, and for a moment the jewels spread out on the glass counter before her danced up and down like sparks flying out of a fire, but she maintained her outward composure. And in another minute she smiled at herself, wondering why she had been so startled, for, of course, her husband had ordered this pretty piece of jewellery as a gift for her, on the very anniversary she was preparing to celebrate by a gift to him! Meanwhile the jeweller, who was of an open mind, and rather fond of confiding bits of gossip to stray customers, took the diamond dove out of its satin-lined nest, and held it up in the sunlight to show the lustre of the stones.

‘It’s a lovely design!’ he said enthusiastic-ally; ‘It will cost Lord Carlyon a little over five hundred pounds. But gentlemen of his sort never mind what they pay, so long as they can please the lady they are after. And the lady in this case isn’t his lordship’s wife, as you may well suppose!’

He sniggered, and one of his eyelids trembled as though it were on the point of a profane wink. Delicia regarded him with a straight, clear look.

‘Why should I suppose anything of the sort?’ she queried calmly. ‘I should, on the contrary, imagine that it was just the tasteful gift a man would wish to choose for his wife.’

The jeweller made a curious little bow over his counter, implying deference towards Delicia’s unsuspicious nature.

‘Would you really?’ he said. ‘Well, now, as a matter of fact, in our trade, when we get special orders from gentlemen for valuable jewels, they are never by any chance intended for the gentlemen’s wives. Of course it is not our business to interfere with, or even comment upon the actions of our customers; but as far as our own artistic work goes, it often pains us—yes, I may say it pains us—to see some of our finest pieces being thrown away on dancers and music-hall singers, who don’t really know how to appreciate them, because they haven’t the taste or culture for it. They know the money’s worth of jewels—oh, you may trust them for that. And whenever they want to raise cash, why, of course their jewels come handy. But it’s not satisfactory to us as a firm, for we take a good deal of pride in our work. This dove, for instance,’ and again he dangled the pendant in the sunbeams, ‘It’s a magnificent specimen of diamond-setting, and of course we, as the producers of such a piece, would far rather know it was going to Lady Carlyon than to La Marina.’

Delicia began to feel as if she were in a kind of dull dream; there were flickering lines of light flashing before her eyes, and her limbs trembled. She heard the jeweller’s voice, going on again in its politely gossiping monotone, as though it were a long way off.

‘Of course La Marina is a wonderful creature, a marvellous dancer, and good-looking in her way, but common. Ah! common’s no word for it! She was the daughter of a costermonger in Eastcheap. Now, Lady Carlyon is a very different person; she is best known by her maiden name, Delicia Vaughan. She’s the author of that name; I daresay you may have read some of her books?’

‘I believe—yes, I think I have,’ murmured Delicia, faintly.

‘Well, there you are! She’s a really famous woman, and very much loved by many people, I’ve heard say; but, lord! her husband hardly gives her a thought! I’ve seen him in this very street walking with females that even I’d be ashamed to know; and it’s rumoured that he hasn’t got a penny of his own, and that all the money he throws about so lavishly is his wife’s; and if that’s the case, it’s really shameful, because of course she, without knowing it, pays for Marina’s jewels! However, there’s no accounting for tastes. I suppose Lady Carlyon’s too clever, or else plain in her personal appearance; and that’s why this diamond dove is going to La Marina instead of to her. Will you take the cuff-studs?’

‘Yes, thank you, I will take them,’ said Delicia, opening her purse with cold, trembling fingers, and counting out crisp bank-notes to the value of twenty pounds. ‘They are pretty, and very suitable for a—a gentleman.’

Unconsciously she laid an emphasis on the word ‘gentleman,’ and the jeweller nodded.

‘Exactly! There’s nothing vulgar about them, not the least suspicion of anything ‘fast’! Really you can’t be too particular in the choice of studs, for what with the sporting men, and the jockeys and trainers who get presents of valuable studs from their turf patrons, it’s difficult to hit upon anything really gentlemanly _for_ a gentleman. But’—and the worthy man smiled as he packed up the studs—‘after all, real gentleman are getting very scarce! Allow me!’ Here he flung open the door of his establishment with the grace of a Sir Charles Grandison, and royally issued his command to the small boy in buttons attached to the shop, ‘See this lady to her carriage!’

How ‘this lady’ got into that carriage she never quite knew. The page boy did his part in carefully attending to her dress that it should not touch the wheel, in wrapping her round with the rich bear-skin rug that protected her from side winds, and in quietly grasping the shilling she slipped into his palm for his services, but she herself felt more like a mechanical doll moving on wires than a living, feeling woman. Her coachman, who always had enough to do in the management of the spirited horses which drew her light victoria, glanced back at her once or twice doubtfully, as he guided his prancing animals out of the confusion of Bond Street and drove towards the Park, considering within himself that, if he were going in an undesired direction, ‘her ladyship’ would speedily stop him; but her ladyship lay back in her cushioned seat, inert, indifferent, seeing nothing and hearing nothing. The fashionable pageant of the Park ‘season’ seemed to her a mere chaotic whirl; and several eager admirers of her beauty and her genius raised their hats to her in vain—she never perceived them. A curious numbness had crept over her; she wondered, as she felt the movement of the carriage, whether it was not a hearse, and she the dead body within it being carried to her grave! Then, quite suddenly, she raised herself and sat upright, glancing about at the rich foliage of the trees, the gay flower-beds and the up-and-down moving throng of people; a bright flush reddened her face, which for the past few minutes had been deadly pale, and as two or three of her acquaintances passed her in their carriages or on foot, she saluted them with her usual graceful air of mingled pride and sweetness, and seemed almost herself again. But she was not long able to endure the strain she put upon her nerves, and after one or two turns in the Row, she bade her coachman drive home. Arrived there, she found a telegram from her husband, running thus:—

‘Shall not return to dinner. Don’t wait up for me.’

Crushing the missive in her hand, she went to her own study immediately, the faithful Spartan following her, and there she shut herself up alone with her dog friend for a couple of hours. The scholarly peace of the place had its effect in soothing her, and in allaying the burning smart of her wounded spirit; and with a sigh of relief she sat down in her favourite arm-chair with her back purposely turned to the white marble ‘Antinous,’ whose cruel smile had nothing but mockery in it for a woman’s pain. Spartan laid his head on her knee, and she rested one hand caressingly on his broad brow.

‘I must think this worry out, Spartan!’ she said gently. ‘I feel as if I had swallowed poison and needed an antidote.’

Spartan wagged his bushy tail and looked volumes. Had he been able to speak, he might have said, ‘Why did you ever trust a man? Dogs are much more faithful!’

She sank into a profound reverie. Her brain was clear, logical and evenly balanced, and she had none of the flighty, fantastical, hysterical notions common to many of her sex. She had been trained, or rather, she had trained herself, in the splendid school of classic philosophy; and in addition to this, she was a devout Christian, one of the old-world type, who would have willingly endured martyrdom for the faith had it been necessary. She was not a church-goer, and she belonged to no special ‘sect;’ she had no vulgar vices to hide by an ostentatious display of public charities, but she had the most absolute and passionate belief in, and love for Christ, as the one Divine Messenger from God to man; and now she was bringing both her faith and her philosophic theories to bear on the present unexpected crisis in her life.

‘If I were a low woman, a vulgar woman, a virago in domestic life, or what the French call _une femme impossible_, I could understand his seeking a change from my detestable company anywhere and everywhere,’ she mentally argued; ‘but as things are, what have I done that he should descend from me to La Marina? Men will amuse themselves—I know that well enough—but need the amusement be obtained on such a low grade! And is it fair that my earnings should keep La Marina in jewels?’

At this latter thought she started up and began to pace the room restlessly. In so doing she came face to face with the marble bust of ‘Antinous,’ and she stopped abruptly, looking full at it.

‘Oh men, what were you made for?’ she demanded, half aloud. ‘To be masters of the planet? Then surely your mastership should be characterised by truth and nobility, not vileness and fraud! Surely God originally intended you for better things than to trample under your feet all the weak and helpless, to work ravage on the fairest scenes in nature, and to make miserable wrecks of all the women that love you! Yes, Antinous, I can read in your sculptured face the supreme Egotism of manhood, an Egotism which fate will avenge in its own good time! No wonder so few men are real Christians; it is too sublime and spiritual a creed for the male nature, which is a composition of wild beast and intellectual pagan. Now, what shall be my course of action? Shall I, Delicia, seeing my husband in the mud, go down into the mud also? Or shall I keep clean—not only clean in body but clean in mind? Clean from meanness, clean from falsehood, clean from spite, not only for his sake, but for the sake of my own self-respect? Shall I let things take their course until they culminate of themselves in the pre-ordained catastrophe that always follows evil? Yes, I think I will! Life after all is a shadow; and love, what is it?’ She sighed and shuddered. ‘Less than a shadow, perchance; but there is something in me which must outlast both life and love—something which is the real Delicia, who must hereafter answer to a Supreme Judge for the thoughts which have elevated or degraded her soul!’

She resumed her pacing to and fro.

‘How easy it would be to act like other women!’ she mused; ‘to rant and weep, and hysterically shriek complaints in the ears of “my lord” when he returns to-night; or begin the day to-morrow with fume and fuss as hot and steaming as the boiling water with which I make the breakfast tea! Or to go and grumble to a female _confidante_ who would at once sell her information for five shillings to the most convenient “society journal!” Or to sink right down into the deepest mire of infamy and write anonymous letters to La Marina, daughter of the green-grocer in Eastcheap! Or employ a detective to dodge his movements and hers! Heavens! How low we can fall if we choose! and equally how high we can stand if we determine to take a firm footing on

‘“Some snow-crowned peak,
Lofty and glittering in the golden glow
Of summer’s ripening splendour.”

Some people ask what is the good of “standing high?” Certainly you get on much better, in society at least, if you creep low, and crawl on very humble all-fours to the feet of the latest _demi-mondaine_, provided she be of the aristocracy. If you know how to condone the vulgarity of a prince and call his vices virtue, if you can pardon the blackguardism of a duke and speak of him as a “gentleman,” in spite of the fact that he is not fit to be tolerated among decent-minded people, you are sure to “get on,” as the phrase goes. To keep oneself morally clean is a kind of offence nowadays; but methinks I shall continue to offend!’ She passed her hand across her forehead dreamily. ‘Something has confused and stunned me; I cannot quite realise what it is. I think I had an idol somewhere, set up on a pedestal of gold; it has suddenly tumbled down of its own accord!’ She smiled vaguely. ‘It is not broken yet, but it has certainly fallen!’

That night, when Lord Carlyon returned about one o’clock, he found the house dark and silent. No one was waiting up for him but his valet, a discreet and sober individual who knew his master’s secrets and kept them; not at all because he respected his master, but because he respected his master’s wife. And the semi-obscurity and grave solitude of his home irritated ‘Beauty’ Carlyon to a most inconsistent degree, inasmuch as he had himself telegraphed to Delicia that she was not to sit up for him.

‘Where is her ladyship?’ he demanded haughtily. ‘Did she go out this evening?’

Gravely the valet assisted him to pull off his opera coat as he replied,—

‘No, sir—my lord, I mean—her ladyship dined alone, and retired early. I believe the maid said her ladyship was in bed by ten.’

Carlyon grumbled something inaudible and went upstairs. Outside his wife’s room he paused and tried the handle of her bedroom door; it was locked. Surprised and angry, he rapped smartly on the panels; there was no answer save a low, fierce growl from Spartan, who, suddenly rising from his usual post on the landing outside his mistress’s sleeping chamber, manifested unusual and extraordinary signs of temper.

‘Down, you fool!’ muttered Carlyon, addressing the huge beast. ‘Lie down, or it will be the worse for you!’

But Spartan remained erect, with ears flattened and white teeth a-snarl, and Carlyon, after rapping once more vainly at the closed door, gave it up as a bad job and retired to his own private room.

‘Never knew her so dead asleep before,’ he grumbled. ‘She generally stays awake till I come home.’

He flung himself into his bed with a kind of sullen rage upon him; things had gone altogether very wrong with him that evening. He had lost money (Delicia’s money) at play, and La Marina had been in what her intimates called ‘one of her nasty humours.’ That is, she had drunk a great deal more champagne than was good for her, and had afterwards exhibited a tendency to throw wine glasses at her admirers. She had boxed Carlyon’s ears, put a spoonful of strawberry ice down his back, and called him ‘a ha’porth of bad aristocrat.’

‘What do you suppose we _artistes_ marry such fellows as you for?’ she had yelled, with a burst of tipsy laughter. ‘Why, to make you look greater fools than ever!’

And then she had shot a burnt almond nearly into his eye. And he had endured all this stoically, for the mere stupid satisfaction of having the other men round La Marina’s supper-table understand that she was his property at present, no matter to whom she might hereafter belong. But she had behaved so badly, and she had treated him with such ingratitude, that he, unconsciously to himself, longed for the fair, calm presence of Delicia, who always received him with the honour and worship he considered due to him as a man, a lord, and an officer in the Guards; and now when he came home, expecting to be charmed and flattered and caressed by her, she had committed the unwarrantable indiscretion of going to bed and falling sound asleep! It was really too bad!—enough to sting the lofty spirit of a Carlyon! And such is the curious self-pity and egotism of some men at their worst, that ‘his lordship’ felt himself to be a positively injured man as he settled his ‘god-like’ head upon his lonely pillow, and fell into an uneasy slumber, disturbed by very unpleasant dreams of his losses at baccarat, and the tipsy rages of Marina.

*CHAPTER V*

Next morning Delicia rose at about six o’clock and went out riding in the Row long before the fashionable world was astir. Attended by her groom and Spartan, who took long racing gambols on the grass beyond the railings of the ‘Ladies’ Mile,’ she cantered under the deep, dewy shade of the trees, and thought out her position in regard to her husband. In spite of inward grief and perplexity, she had slept well; for to a clear conscience and pure heart, combined with a healthy state of body, sleep is never denied. Mother Nature specially protects her straightforward and cleanly children; she keeps their faces young, their eyes bright, their spirits elastic, their tempers equable, and for the soothing of Delicia’s trouble this morning, the sunbeams danced about her in a golden waltz of pleasure, the leaves rustled in the wind, the flowers exhaled their purest fragrance and the birds sang. Riding easily on her beautiful mare ‘Phillida’—who was almost as much a personal friend of hers as Spartan himself, and whom she had purchased out of the ‘royalties’ accumulating on one of her earlier works—she found herself more than usually receptive of the exquisite impressions of natural loveliness. She was aware of everything; from the white clouds that were heaped in snowy, mountainous ranges along the furthest visible edge of the blue sky, to the open-hearted daisies in the grass that stared up at the lately-risen sun with all the frankness of old friendship and familiarity. The fresh morning air and the exhilarating exercise sent a lovely colour to her cheeks, and as her graceful form swayed lightly to the half-coquettish, gay cantering of ‘Phillida,’ who was also conscious that it was a very agreeable morning, she felt as if the information she had so unexpectedly and reluctantly received in the jeweller’s shop in Bond Street on the previous day was a bad dream and nothing more. After about an hour’s riding she returned home at a quick trot, and on entering the house heard that her ‘lord and master’ had not yet risen. She changed her riding habit for one of her simple white morning gowns, and went into her study to open and read her numerous letters, and mark them in order for her secretary to answer. She was still engaged in this occupation when Lord Carlyon came down, slowly, sleepily, and in no very good humour.

‘Oh, there you are at last, Will!’ she said, looking up at him brightly. ‘You came home late last night, I suppose, and are tired?’

He stood still for a moment, wondering within himself why she did not give him her usual good-morning kiss.

‘It was not so very late,’ he said crossly. ‘It was only half-past twelve. You’ve often stayed awake waiting for me later than that. But last night, when I knocked at your door, you never answered me—you must have been dead asleep.’

This in a tone of injury.

Delicia read calmly through the letter she held in her hand, then set it aside.

‘Yes, I must have been,’ she replied tranquilly. ‘You see I work pretty hard, and nature is good enough to give me rest when I need it. You work hard too, Will, but in quite another way—you toil after amusement. Now that’s the hardest form of labour I know! Treadmills are nothing to it! No wonder you’re tired! Breakfast’s ready; let us go and have it; I’ve been out riding for an hour this morning, and I feel desperately hungry. Come along!’

She led the way downstairs; he followed slowly and with a vague feeling of uneasiness. He missed something in his wife’s manner—an indefinable something which he could not express—something that had always characterised her, but which now had unaccountably disappeared. It was as if a wide river had suddenly rolled in between them, forcing her to stand on one side of the flood and he on the other. He studied her observantly from under his fine eyelash growth, as she made the tea and with a few quick touches here and there altered the decorous formality of the breakfast-table into the similitude of an Arcadian feast of beauty by the mere artistic placing of a vase of flowers or a dish of fruit, and this done, handed him the morning’s newspaper with smiling and courteous punctilio.

‘Spartan seems to be turning crusty,’ he remarked as he unfolded the journal. ‘Last night, when I knocked at your door, he showed his teeth and growled at me. I didn’t know he had such an uncertain temper.’

Delicia looked round at her canine friend with a pretty air of remonstrance.

‘Oh, Spartan! What is this I hear?’ she said, whereat Spartan hung his head and tucked his tail well under his haunches. ‘Don’t you know your master when he comes home late? Did you take him for a regular “rake,” Spartan? Did you think he had been in bad company? Fie, for shame! You ought to know better, naughty boy!’

Spartan looked abashed, but not so abashed as did Lord Carlyon. He fidgeted on his chair, got red in the face, and made a great noise in folding and unfolding the newspaper; and presently, finding his own thoughts too much for him, he began to get angry with nobody in particular, and, as is the fashion with egotistical men, turned a sudden unprovoked battery of assault on the woman he was hourly and daily wronging.

‘I heard something last night that displeased me very much, Delicia,’ he said, affecting a high moral tone. ‘It concerns you, and I should like to speak to you about it.’

‘Yes?’ said Delicia, with the very slightest lifting of her delicate eyebrows.

‘Yes.’ And Lord Carlyon hummed and hawed for a couple of dubious seconds. ‘You see, you are a woman, and you ought to be very careful what you write. A man told me that in your last book there were some very strong passages,—really strong—you know what I mean—and he said that it is very questionable whether any woman with a proper sense of delicacy ought to write in such a manner.’

Delicia looked at him steadily.

‘Who is he? My book has probably touched him on a sore place!’

Carlyon did not answer immediately; he was troubled with an awkward cough.

‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘it was Fitz-Hugh; you know him—an awfully good fellow,—has sisters and all that—says he wouldn’t let his sisters read your book for the world, and it was deuced disagreeable for me to hear, I can tell you.’

‘You have read my book,’ said Delicia, slowly; ‘and did you discover anything of the nature complained of by Captain Fitz-Hugh?’

Again Lord Carlyon coughed uncomfortably.

‘Well, upon my word, I don’t exactly remember now, but I can’t say I did!’

Delicia still kept her eyes fixed upon him.

‘Then, of course, you defended me?’

Carlyon flushed, and began to butter a piece of toast in nervous haste.