The man in black put a counter question.
“Mr. Richard Everton?”
“Yes.”
And he presented his visiting-card.
The man in black immediately relaxed his severity of manner, and became almost obsequious.
“This way, if you please, sir.”
Waving the flunkeys majestically aside, he preceded Richard through a magnificent hall, rich with paintings and statuary and great marble vases which brimmed over like fountains with a wealth of bloom and color provided by masses of cut flowers and hot-house plants, — then up a wide, softly-carpeted staircase to the next landing, where passing through a doorway hung with rich rose silk curtains, he ushered him into a long, light lovely room, exquisitely decorated and furnished, and crowded with the most costly and beautiful objects of art and luxury.
Here pausing, he said —
“Will you take a seat, sir. I will tell Mrs. Nordstein you are here.”
And he made his pompous exit, bearing Everton’s visiting-card before him on a massive silver salver as though it were a trophy.
In a daze of sheer bewilderment Everton stood looking about him, trying to realize that all the evidences of a lavish expenditure and easy mode of life which surrounded him were so many incontestable proofs that so far as Jacynth was concerned the result of evil was good. Who in ‘Society’ knew, or knowing who would wish to remember, that Mrs. Nordstein had been a girl of bad character, now that she was ‘respectably’ married to a millionaire? A wealthy marriage is the oblivion of every woman’s past indiscretions! A sudden sharp regret stung him as he thought of his dead wife Azalea, — of her harmless little vanities, — of her excusable longings for pretty dresses and dainty things which he could not afford to give her — of the patient way in which she had endured the dullness of Shadbrook when her whole nature was one that instinctively craved for gayety and freedom from restraint, — and choking tears rose in his throat at the cruelty of fate. To serve God faithfully had been his proudest effort — did such service merit the destruction of all that his life held dear? There was an unspoken protest in his soul such as that expressed by Omar Khayyam:
“Almighty Potter on whose wheel of blue,
The world is fashioned, and is broken too,
Why to the race of men is heaven so dire?
In what, O Wheel, have I offended you?”
Was it right or just that Azalea, his innocent love, the mother of his child, should be done to death for no real fault of her own, — while Jacynth — she for whom there was no God — she who had recklessly and shamelessly abandoned herself to the world, the flesh and the devil, should be living in the satisfaction of full health and vitality, nourished by everything that could make life fair and pleasant —
Here his bitter thoughts were interrupted by a soft rustling sound caused by the gentle swaying aside of the silken portière. A door opened and closed again, and a light step approached him. He felt a curious reluctance to raise his eyes till the usages of civility compelled him to do so, — yet he was conscious that Jacynth had entered the room. With a mental effort as strong as though he were lifting his very soul out of a grave where it had been buried alive, he forced himself to look at her. She had advanced towards him till she was within reach of his hand, and she now stood still, smiling as sweetly as one who welcomes a dear friend after long absence. —
“So you have come!” she said; “I was afraid you wouldn’t!”
He was silent. He wondered how it was that God could have made an evil thing so beautiful. Her loveliness was like that of a delicate rose opening into summer bloom, and the soft mystery of a gown she wore, which seemed a mere trailing sheath of old lace and silken tissue that clung to her slim figure like the calyx to a flower, defining without too boldly declaring its exquisite outline, was the finishing touch of art to nature. She met his gravely scrutinizing glance with charming self-possession, and held out her hand. He barely touched it. —
“Won’t you sit down?” she murmured, moving to a cushioned ottoman close by, and sinking upon it in the languid grace of attitude practiced by the stage favorites and toy-women of society. “You look so uncomfortable standing!”
Something lightly derisive in her tone sent a flush to his pale face. Her air and manner implied that he appeared more or less ridiculous in her eyes, — that the very cut of his clerical coat amused her, and that she was maliciously bent on making him feel that his presence as the Vicar of a parish where her whole past life was known, did not impress her with the slightest shadow of shame or remorse. Quietly he drew a chair opposite to her, and seated himself.
“Haven’t you a word to throw at me?” she went on— “I know you hate me — and you are the only man who does! That’s why I am interested in you.” She laughed softly, and raised her wonderful eyes appealingly to his. “You mustn’t be too hard upon me, Mr. Everton! I was a hopeless case from the first. I never wanted to be good. I always thought — I think still — that good people seem to have a dull drab time of it. I wanted the joy of life — luxury, flattery, wealth, comfort, position! I have got them all. And you ought to be glad for me — glad enough to forget the past.”
He looked full at her.
“The past is not so easily forgotten,” he said, in a voice that trembled a little, “Not by me.”
She smiled, indulgently.
“When there is nothing pleasant to remember, it is best to forget,” she answered; “We should copy Nature. Nature makes haste to cover up and put out of sight every ugly thing. We ought to do the same. You think too much, Mr. Everton. You always did. You are anxious to serve God, — but you do not positively know whether there is a God to serve. He exists in your imagination. Beyond that He gives no sign. You have always been a good man, yet you have had to suffer a great deal of sorrow. I have always been what you call a bad woman; and I have suffered nothing! How is that? Your God does not care whether you are good or I am bad. Life offers the same joys to both of us.”
Her careless, half-disdainful way of putting her argument sounded almost conclusive. But he caught at her last words.
“Not the same joys,” — he said, quickly; “Not the same joys by any means! What you have chosen as happiness, to me would be utter misery.”
“I do not believe you!” she declared, and her lovely face lighted up with a sudden sparkle of mirth, “It would be a very strange parson indeed who could be miserable in a beautiful house with plenty of money, if he had the health and strength to enjoy it all. Of course you may be the wonderful exception! — but it is: so odd to think of you as a man without any other wish in the world than to serve God! It must be such a lonesome sort of feeling!”
She smiled at him archly, and went on —
“I know a great many parsons, — heaps of them, — and they all want ready cash, poor things! Some of them boldly ask for it; others prefer to make love to me, — the last predominate in numbers, I think!”
She stretched out her arms lazily, and folded them above her head, leaning back on the embroidered cushions behind her.
“Let’s talk of Shadbrook now,” she said, “Dull, wretched little Shadbrook! The most miserable place on earth! I wonder how you can stand it! As for saving souls, there are no souls to save! There are a lot of dirty, ugly old women who talk from morning to night about births and deaths and washing-days; there are several old men, and a few able-bodied laborers who work eight hours and drink ten; and what young people there are in the place get so lonely and miserable that no wonder they go together like the birds, without a priest, for sheer company’s sake. That’s half the cause of the drinking too. Loneliness, and the want of some one to look at me and admire me, drove me to drink in the old days. I loved it! It drowned all the dullness of your preaching and teaching, — it sent the color to my cheeks and made me wild! Why, the very first time Dan Kiernan kissed me, I was drunk, and so was he!”
A sickening shock ran through Everton’s nerves. He gazed at her as she lay back
on her cushions, a vision of indolent beauty, with her lovely skin, clear eyes, and rose-red lips, and he marveled at her effrontery. —
“Jacynth— “And his voice almost failed him. “Jacynth—”
“Jacynth! Well! That’s me!”
“That’s you! Yes, I know!” he said, in low, tense accents of strong pain; “Would it were not you! But for God’s sake, do not speak to me of Dan Kiernan — you forget—”
“No; I remember!” she answered, slowly, “I remember all. Dan killed your wife. But, — I killed Dan!”
“You! You killed Dan!”
Every vestige of color fled from his face, and he sprang up, amazed and horrified. She, however, did not move from her reclining position.
“How tragic you look!” she said; “I believe you think I am an escaped murderess! Not quite! When I say I killed Dan, I mean that it was my motor-car that ran over him. Nobody knows it, of course, — it was pure accident. He was lying in the middle of a high-road in Wiltshire, — drunk, as usual, I suppose. My husband and I were touring; we were racing at night against time, in order to reach a house where we were expected to join a party early next day. When the car jolted I made the chauffeur stop, — and I got out and went to see what mischief we had done. Then I saw Dan. He was quite dead. I had never seen a dead man before, — and well! it was not a pleasant sight! But I recognized Dan at once. And he would have been glad if he had known!”
Everton stood staring at her, bewildered by the calm entirely matter-of-fact way in which she had related the whole incident. Had her car crushed a snail or a worm, she could not have spoken more indifferently than she did of the horrid end of her first lover.
“Glad!” he echoed, stupidly— “Glad if he had known?”
“That it was I, — Jacynth!” and her voice rang out silver clear as a note of triumph music; “That it was I who had driven over him and crushed him to death! That it was I who looked down at his bleeding face, and rested my foot upon it! He would have been glad and proud! He would have wished no better end! Poor Parson Everton, you seem quite frightened! I suppose you do not know, in the humdrum life you lead, that a man — even a brute man such as Dan was — may idolize a woman as he would never idolize God! Every hair of my head, every inch of my body, was gold and honey to Dan! Gold and honey, — life and death! I did not care for him, — no, not a jot! That is why he cared so much for me! He made me drink with him because he knew that drink would do with me what he never could do with me himself. Why,” —— — and she lifted her head from the cushions and drew her slim throat upwards with a swan-like gesture of pride and defiance; “do you, even you, think that if I had not been drunk, I would have given myself to Dan?”
He was speechless. Who could find reply to such a question? What man, seeing her and hearing her wild words, could utter commonplaces of regret, pity or reproach? All the ordinary things of life seemed blurred to his mind; — Drink only, — Drink, the Black Death of the nation, loomed before him like a widespreading cloud of pestilence in which all honest efforts for the betterment of humanity were absorbed into mere blight and miasma, and he stood stricken by the utter hopelessness of it, — the despair of it. She rose and went to him, laying both her hands in a half-caressing way upon his arm.
“Do not look at me like that,” — she said, quite gently; “You seem so sorry; and there is no need to be sorry. There is nothing to pity me for—”
His heart thrilled with a sudden agony.
“Nothing to pity you for!” he exclaimed— “Oh, Jacynth, Jacynth! If I had been told the truth, I might have saved you!” —
Her lovely eyes opened widely upon him in something of amusement. Then she shook her head. —
“Impossible! I never wanted to be saved,” — she said; “I don’t understand the process. I was never a girl that any parson could teach, though I used to come to your Sunday class, and listen to your kind talk, just as I would have listened to a play. You were always so good! — you are so good! — and I’m ever so much sorrier for you than you ought to be for me! Because you see your goodness has brought you a lot of misfortune; and my badness, if it is badness, has brought me nothing but luck. And, I’ve never forgotten you — I’ve always thought of that day when I met you in the pouring rain, and when you trusted me, actually trusted me to keep Dan from the drink, — and told me you hoped I would be the best girl in the village. Do you remember.
There was a mist before his eyes as they met hers.
“I remember!” he answered, simply.
“It was so strange,” she went on— “to be trusted in that way! I laughed at you for it, but I liked you all the same. You seemed such a child in your faith, and in your wish to believe good of everybody. ‘The best girl in the village!’ Now, think for a moment, Mr. Everton! Suppose I had been ‘the best girl,’ what sort of a life would it have been for me? Look at me! — and answer me, not according to the Church and the Sunday class, but as a man!.”
Her white fingers pressed insistently on his arm, — her face, with the soft color flushing its flower-like delicacy, and made almost luminous by the brilliancy of her star-like eyes, was upturned to his. He could not affect a Pharisaical attitude of mind which was not true to his own inward thought, nor would he attempt to suggest, even to himself, the incongruous idea that she, with her graceful personality and physical fascination, could possibly have been content with the attainment of a ‘best village girl’ ideal. So he answered quietly:
“It would have been no life at all for you — not as you have chosen to live. But it might have been happy, and, — innocent!”
She laughed, and moving away from him, resumed her former indolent position on the cushioned ottoman.
“What is it to be happy? What is it to be innocent?” she demanded; “Happiness surely consists in doing what is agreeable to one’s self in this world as long as health and opportunity last. As for innocence, — you will not find it among village girls! They read too many newspapers!”
Then she looked at him where he stood, and in her eyes there was a touch of compassionate derision.
“Come and sit down again, Mr. Everton,” — she said; and as he obeyed her, she added, “I want a real serious talk with you. I want you to understand me better than you do, because I believe it will help you to understand other people like me.”
“Other people like you!” asked Everton, incredulously— “Are there any?”
Her pretty laughter rippled out like a soft cadence of song.
“Indeed there are! Hundreds! Especially society people who have given up trying to be good. I daresay it seems odd to you to think of me as a ‘society person,’ but I am, you know! I always meant to be, and I knew from what the newspapers taught me that the stage was the shortest cut to my ambition. Especially the variety stage. To dance about there with as few clothes on as possible doesn’t want much talent; and it’s the surest way to get the notice of Royalty! I got it at once. With my face and figure I had no difficulty. You don’t know the society world; if you did, you would not find anything surprising in the fact that I, Jacynth, the worst girl in the village of Shadbrook, instead of the best, should have done well for myself. A woman I know who is hand and glove with all the smart set, once kept a bar in a Chicago Hotel, and still gets all her money from the profits of the drink concern. She is no better than I am, — she has no birth, no education and no manners; but nobody minds that as long as she rents a big house, entertains and throws money about. Now I have tried to learn a few things, — as soon as I came to London I spent some of my earnings in being trained and taught; but the Chicago woman doesn’t even know how to speak English properly. And though she’s years and years older than I am, and has bleached her hair, because a rusty gray was less becoming than all white, she has not done having lovers yet. I’ve only just begun! Oh, don’t look so shocked!”
She folded her hands like a penitent child asking pardon for some naughty prank.
“Please be patient with me!” —
she said— “I’m not half so bad as some of the ‘leaders’ of fashion! I’m not, really! And I’ve thought far more of you than you have of me. Because— “and her eyes darkened with a sudden seriousness, “even in the old days you always had a certain attraction for me.”
He was silent. She went on slowly —
“I had never seen a good clergyman before I saw you. The former Vicar of Shadbrook was a brute; despised by the whole village for his hypocrisy and meanness. When he died, and you came to take his place, people wondered whether you would not perhaps be worse than he. They could not imagine you might be better. They had left off believing in clergymen at all, and it was difficult for them to trust you. But you won them round a good deal; they began to like you. I don’t think they ever liked your wife. She was too pretty.”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 742
