Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22)

by Marie Corelli

  Thus far Honoria had listened to me in absolute silence, a smile on her lips and her cigar-case still open in her hand. Now, however, she gave way to unfeigned and irrepressible laughter.

  “Upon my word,” she exclaimed, “I never heard a better bit of sentimental palaver than that! Willie, you are a goose! For pity’s sake, don’t talk such old-fashioned nonsense to me. I’m past it. Georgie might like that sort of thing” (Georgie was my wife’s youngest sister, a timid little morsel of a woman I had always despised), “but I thought you knew me better. Come, you’re longing to have a smoke yourself, you know you are! Here!” and she held out her cigar-case with the most brilliant smile in the world. “You won’t? Don’t be a mule, now!” and she whipped out of her side-pocket a tiny silver match-box, lit a cigar, and again proffered it to me. I took it mechanically. I should have been a brute to refuse her on that evening of all evenings; but I still remonstrated feebly.

  “Honoria, I don’t like it—”

  “Don’t like what?” she inquired mirthfully. “The cigar? Then you don’t know the flavour of good tobacco!”

  “No, no, I don’t mean the cigar,” I said, puffing at it slowly as I spoke; “it is an exceedingly choice cigar, in fact, remarkably so; but I don’t like your smoking one.”

  And I watched her in melancholy amaze as she placed a similar cigar to my own between her rosy lips and began to puff away in evident delight. “I don’t like your smoking,” I repeated earnestly. “No, Honoria, I do not! I shall never like it!”

  “Then you’re very selfish,” she returned, with perfect good-humour. “You wish to deprive your wife of a pleasure you indulge in yourself.”

  Now, there was a way of putting it!

  “But, Honoria,” I urged, “surely, surely men are permitted to do may things which, pardon me, are hardly fitted for the finer susceptibilities of women?”

  She flicked off the ash from her “weed” with her little finger, settled her smoking-cap, and smiled a superior smile.

  “Not a bit of it!” she replied. “Once, in those detestable ‘good old times’ some people are always talking about, men were permitted to keep women out of every sort of enjoyment, and nice tyrants they were! But now, nous avons change tout cela” — she had a very charming French accent by the way—” and we are no longer the drudges, housekeepers, general servants and nurses that adorned that bygone age of darkness! We are the equals of man. What he can do, we can do as well, and often better; we are his companions now, not his slaves. For instance, here am I — your wife — am I not?”

  “Just so, Honoria,” I murmured. What an excellent cigar she had given me, to be sure!

  “You are indeed my wife, my very dearly beloved wife—”

  “Don’t!” she interrupted. “It sounds like an epitaph!”

  I laughed — it was impossible to help laughing. She was such a whimsical creature, such an extraordinary girl! She laughed too, and went on —

  “Suppose I had lived and suppose you had lived in the ‘good old times,’ Willie, do you know what we should have done?”

  I shook my head drowsily in the negative, and blinked my eyes at her in bland admiration. (That cigar was really first-class, and it was gradually having a softening influence on my brain.)

  “We should have died of dulness,” she declared emphatically. “Just died of it! We could never have borne it. Fancy! I should have been shut up nearly all day in the house, with a huge apron on, sorting jams and pickles, and counting over the sheets and pillow-cases like a silly old noodle, and you would have tumbled home drunk regularly every afternoon, and gone to bed under the table every evening!”

  She nodded her head decisively and the tassel of her smoking-cap came down over her nose. She cast it off defiantly and looked at me with such a twinkling mischief in her eyes that I fairly roared.

  “That last part of the daily entertainment would have been lively, Honoria” — I giggled convulsively—” lively for me at any rate!”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” she said. “You’ve no idea how tired you’d have got of being continually drunk! It might be all very well for a time, but you would have wanted a change. And in that period there was no change possible! A man and his wife had to jog on together for ever and a day — Amen to it! — without a single distraction to mar the domestic bliss of the awful years! Domestic bliss — ugh! it makes me shudder!”

  I grew suddenly serious. “Why, surely, Honoria,” I said, “you believe in domestic bliss, don’t you?”

  “Certainly not! Good gracious, no! What on earth is domestic bliss all about? I’ve studied it, I assure you. I’ll tell you what it is. In winter, the united members of a large family sit solemnly round the fire and roast chestnuts to the tune of ‘Home, sweet Home,’ played by the youngest boy on the old harmonium (harmonium that belonged to darling dear grandmamma, you know!); in summer they all go down to the sea-side (still fondly united) and sit in a ring on the hot sand, reading antediluvian novels, quite happy! and so good, and so devoted to one another, and so ugly, most of them; no wonder they can never get any other company than their own!”

  She puffed away at her cigar quite fiercely, and her eyes twinkled again. As for me, I was off once more in an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

  “Honoria, Honoria!” I gasped, “what a droll girl you are; where do you get your ideas from?”

  “Can’t imagine,” she replied smilingly. “They come. Inspiration, I suppose, as the towzle-haired ‘geniuses’ say. But I am jolly — I believe there’s no denying that. You’ll find me quite a good fellow, don’t you know, when you’ve once got accustomed to my ways. But I may as well tell you at once that it’s no use your expecting me to give up my smoke. It’s possible I may get tired of shooting; when I do I’ll let you know. And one word more, old boy — don’t preach at me again, will you? Can’t bear being preached at; never could. Say right out what you mean without sentiment, and we’ll see how we can settle it. I never lose temper — waste of time. Much better to come to a calm understanding about everything — think so?”

  I agreed heartily, and would have kissed her, but that vile cigar stuck out of her mouth and prevented me. Besides, I was smoking my own particular “vile” and it was no use disturbing myself or her just then. Moreover, did she not evince a wholesome dislike of sentiment? And is not kissing a sentimental business, totally unsuited to the advanced intelligence of the advanced woman of our advancing day?

  CHAPTER III.

  HONEYMOONS are generally supposed to be the briefest of all moons, and mine was particularly so, as it only lasted a fortnight. I will not here attempt to describe the chronic state of wonder, doubt, affection, dismay, admiration, and vague alarm in which I passed it. It seemed to me that I was all the time in the company of a very cheerful, good-tempered lad just home from his college for the holidays. I knew this “lad” was a woman and my wife, but somehow, as the Americans say, I couldn’t “fix” it. At the end of our recognised “spooney” season, we returned to our own house in Kensington, a comfortable dwelling, luxuriously furnished, and provided with all the modern improvements, electric light included, and settled down to the serious realisation of our married existence. We had hosts of friends; too many friends, I thought. We certainly could not boast of a “quiet” home, neither could we be accused of indulging in the guilty tameness of “domestic bliss.” All “the boys” fraternized with me; those “boys” who before Honoria’s marriage had been, she assured me, like so many brothers to her. They were most of them young men, none of them above thirty, and I was approaching my fortieth birthday. Moreover, I had the sundry cares of the business of living upon me; the “Battle of Life” (I have to thank the noble Daily Telegraph for this admirable and entirely new expression) had to be fought by me single-handed, and this gave me the appearance of being older than I actually was. In fact “the boys” seemed to consider me a sort of harmless paterfamilias; but I myself often wondered whether I was not more like the meek proprietor of
an exceptionally convenient hotel, where bachelors under thirty might find board, lodging, and good entertainment free of charge. At first, I did not feel my position so keenly, because really “the boys” were not bad fellows. They were like young colts, frisky and full of fun. They were fools undoubtedly, but they were not knaves, and to this day I don’t think there was an ounce of wit among them, so that they lacked the means to be seriously mischievous; in fact there was no malice about them, they were too absolutely silly for that — more like Brobdingnagian babies than men. They had a great many old associations with Honoria. Many of them had known her long before I did, and one of these declared to me joyously that “it was no end of a lark, dontcherknow, to think she was married!” I would have sought an explanation from this vivacious and muscular youth (he was over six feet high) as to his reasons for considering it “no end of a lark” but that he was such an utterly brainless “boy,” such a cheerfully-confessed and openly-advertised donkey, that I saw at once it would be no use asking him any questions that did not lead up somehow or other to a discussion on lawn-tennis, which was the only subject in earth or heaven that appealed to his minute fragment of intellect. There was just one other individual who surpassed him in fatuous foolishness; this was a “boy” with heavy moustaches, whose sole delight in life was to “scull.” Sculling up and down the river, sculling here, sculling there (with a very useless skull of his own, Heaven knows! — excuse the unintentional pun), his pride and joy were concentrated in the steady work of strengthening his muscles and reducing his brain by swift degrees from the little to the infinitely less. He had fine eyes, this “boy,” and his moustaches, “long, silky and sweeping” (vide “Ouida”), threw all little school-girls and inexperienced housemaids into ecstasies of admiration. He looked very well in his white boating flannels; so well, that he was, by some rash persons who did not know him, judged intelligent, but, to speak with exactitude, a more hopeless idiot never existed. He was such an overpoweringly polite idiot too, exceedingly deferential to me, and automatically courteous to everyone, though he always maintained that delightfully funny air of coy reserve which very good-looking young men sometimes assume, that air which is meant as a mild touch-me-not or warner-off to over-susceptible ladies — for these sort of absurd fellows generally flatter themselves that every woman who sees them is bound to fall in love with them on the spot. This particular “boy” was constantly in and out of our house; he liked Honoria because she made such game of him and his stand-offish manner. I suppose the poor devil was so flattered everywhere else (on account of those moustaches) that he found some comfort in being ridiculed now and then. And my wife had a great talent for ridicule, an immense and ever-developing talent; she “chaffed” people unmercifully; in fact, after the novelty of our marriage had worn off a bit, she began to “chaff” me. I am bound to confess I did not quite like this, but I forbore to complain — she had such high spirits, I thought, and she did not really mean to wound my feelings.

  However, taking it all in all, home was not the home I had hoped for. There was no repose in it — no relief from the business fatigues and worries of the day. And the whole place was always horribly redolent of tobacco — tobacco-smoke permeated every room in it, including even the big dining-room — and the smell of cigars was in my nostrils morning, noon and night. All those “boys” smoked, of course; they were very friendly, and used to sit chatting away with me after dinner till long past midnight (Honoria being of the party). I could scarcely turn them out without being rude, and naturally I did not wish to be rude to my wife’s old friends. I had my own friends also, but they were men of a different stamp. They were older, more serious, more settled in their modes of life; they liked to talk on the politics, progress and science of the age; and though they admired Honoria (for she could converse well on any subject) they could not get on with the “boys,” no, not with any of them. So one by one they dropped off, and by and by a sort of desolate shutout feeling began to steal over me — and I wondered ruefully if I should be obliged to go on living like this for the rest of my days. I sat down in my arm-chair one evening and seriously considered my position. Honoria was out; she had gone to supper with her friend Mrs. Stirling, of Glen Ruach (the misguided woman who had presented her with that wedding-gift of the cigar and ash tray), who was staying in London for a couple of weeks, and I knew they and their “set” would make a night of it. I had not been asked to join the party — I was evidently not wanted. I sat, as I said, in my chair, and looked at the fire; it was cold weather, and the wind whistled drearily outside the windows, and I took to hard and earnest thinking. Was I happy in my married life? No! most emphatically not. But why? I asked myself. What prevented my happiness? Honoria was a bright woman, a clever woman, handsome, good-tempered and cheerful as the day, never ill, never dull, never cross. What on earth was my complaint? I sighed heavily; I felt I was unreasonable; and yet, I had certainly missed something out of my life — something I felt the want of now. Was it the frequent visitations of “the boys” that fretted my mind? No, not exactly; for, as I said before, they were thoroughly harmless fellows. And as for Honoria herself, whatever her faults (or what I considered her faults) might be, she was good as gold, with a frank, almost blunt straightforwardness and honesty about her that was really admirable — in fact, she was the kind of woman to knock down a man who would have dared to offer her any insult; and thus far her “mannishness” set her above all suspicion of deceit or infidelity. It was impossible to doubt her word — she never told a lie — and she had a sort of military-disciplined idea of honour, rare to find in the feminine nature. Yes, her sterling virtue was unquestionable. What qualities, then, did she lack? Why did I feel that she was in a way removed from me, and that instead of having a woman by my side, I had a sort of hybrid human growth which was neither man nor woman — which confused and perplexed me instead of helping and comforting me, and which filled me with surprise rather than respect? Again I sighed, and stirring the smouldering fire into a blaze watched its flickering flashes on the wall of the room. It was a large room — we called it the library, because there were books in it. Not rare volumes by any means, still what there were I liked; in fact they were mostly mine. My wife read nothing but the newspapers; she devoured the Referee on Sundays, and she took the Sporting Times because she always had certain bets on certain racing events. Needless to say I objected to her betting, but with no result beyond the usual laugh, and the usual, “Don’t be a goose, Willie; it’s all right! I never bet with your money!” Which was true enough. She had turned out another sporting novel at a “dead heat,” as she herself expressed it; the publisher had paid her well for it, and she certainly had every right to do as she liked with her own earnings. Moreover, she generally won her bets, that was the odd part of it; she seemed to have an instinctive faculty for winning. Her losses were always small, her gains always large. In fact, as I have already remarked, she was a wonderful woman!

  Apropos of this last novel of hers, I reflected uneasily that I had not yet read a word of it. It was only just published, I had seen no reviews of it, and she seemed to attach no importance to it herself. She had no real love for literature; she called all the ancient classic writers “old bores,” and all the works of the after-giants, such as Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, Walter Scott, Dickens, or Thackeray, “stuff and rubbish.” She wrote a novel as she wrote a letter — almost without taking thought, and certainly without correction. She would hand the proofs over to one of “the boys” who knew all about sporting terms, that he might see whether her slang was correct, and when his hall-mark said (as it did once, for I saw it pencilled on the margin of a chapter), “Bully for you!” off the whole thing went to the publisher without further anxiety or trouble on her part. And when people said to me, sweetly, “Your wife is quite a literary genius?” in the usual humbugging way of polite society, I was very well aware that they didn’t mean it; I knew in my very heart of hearts that Honoria, judged strictly from an art and letter
s point of view, was a fraud — positively a fraud! The thought stabbed me to the soul, but still I had to think it if I would be at peace with my own conscience. I am not a clever man myself, yet I know very well what female literary “genius” is. We have it in the poems of Elizabeth Barrett and the romances of Georges Sand, and when we consider the imperishable work of such women as these, the sporting novels of even a Honoria Hatwell-Tribkin sink into shadowy insignificance! And I am a great believer in woman’s literary capability. I think that, given a woman with a keen instinct, close observation and large sympathies, she ought to be able to produce greater masterpieces of literature than a man. But there is no necessity for her to part with her womanly gentleness because she writes. No, for it is just that subtle charm of her finer sex that should give the superiority to her work — not the stripping herself of all those delicate and sensitive qualities bestowed on her by Nature, and the striving to ape that masculine roughness which is precisely what we want eliminated from all high ideals of art. But, as I have hinted, it was absurd to call my wife “literary she was a mere scribbler of sporting platitudes, and I have only been led on to speak of her entering the ranks of pen and ink at all, because (on referring to some back numbers of the Daily Telegraph) I understand that there are a few uninstructed persons about, in the shape of “London clergymen” and others, who think that women who write books are therefore rendered unwomanly. Never was there a greater mistake. One of the sweetest and most womanly women I ever met is rapidly coming to the front as a most gifted and brilliant writer. She neither smokes nor keeps late hours; she does not hunt, or fish, or shoot; she dresses exquisitely; her voice is “low and sweet” as “Annie Laurie’s,” and the roughest man of her particular circle — one who has been called the “Ursa Major” of literature — becomes the softest and most courtly preux chevalier in her presence, much to the relief and satisfaction of all his and her friends. To my idea the “mannish” woman should be altogether debarred from entering into the profession of literature, inasmuch as she can do no good whatever in it. She takes a wrong view of life; her theories are all at sixes and sevens; she mixes up her rights and privileges with those of the coarser sex till she does not know which is which; she has wilfully blunted all her finer susceptibilities, and is therefore practically useless as a thinker-out of high problems, or a consoler to her fellow-creatures. Literature of itself does not unsex a woman; its proper influence is a softening, dignifying and ennobling one; therefore if, in that calling, a woman proves herself unwomanly in her speech, manners and customs, you may be sure the unsexing process was pretty well completed before she ever took up the pen.