by George Moore
But Lewis did not give her time to think much, for the feeling that if he did not succeed now he never would, forced him to be explicit All hints were now laid aside; putting away the childish pretext of marriage, which be knew was impossible, he boldly urged her to be his mistress. Pleading in passionate tones he swore that no one would ever know, or even suspect their secret, that he would never cease to love her. Remembering what he had read in books, he did not neglect to assure her of the slight esteem in which virtue was held in modern society, and he insisted that it would be absurd, nay mad, of her to waste her life in remaining faithful to such a person as he had always heard Mr. Bentham described.
This led to an infinite digression; and all sorts of subjects were discussed, the injustice of the marriage laws, the certainty that, could you look into the lives of the noblest ladies, you could find lovers; and, when this was done with, the eternal question, the brevity of man’s love and the durability of woman’s, was anxiously argued.
Lewis talked methodically, hoping to persuade Mrs. Bentham that her life would not be worth living if she did not accept him as her lover. At last, losing all patience, he exclaimed:
“But surely you aren’t going to sacrifice me for a little wretched pride! Is my love worth so little? I would give up the world for you.” He whispered passionately, “You are driving me mad; I would sooner go and drown myself in the Seine than — than — lose your love,” he added, seeing that another hundred yards would bring them to the door of his hotel.
But Mrs. Bentham did not look frightened; the mention of suicide did not startle her as it had Gwynnie Lloyd, and Lewis saw that the threat which he had uttered half involuntarily, half with a vague remembrance of its success on a former occasion, had in the present instance failed. Mrs. Bentham only smiled sorrowfully, laid her hand tenderly on his, and as the carriage stopped said quickly:
“Now you must bid me good-night, I have been very good, I have driven you to your hotel.”
“Oh! no — no — no — no — I cannot go in yet, I have something to say to you, let me go with you to the Hôtel Meurice and I will walk home afterwards.”
Mrs. Bentham looked despairingly at the round shoulders which remained as impassive as an obelisk. The two buttons in the middle of the maroon coloured coat glistened in the light of a gas-lamp, and a fat hand held the whip as steadfastly as Osiris might the wand with which he rules the world. Lewis continued to plead, again Mrs. Bentham began to lose her head. “What was she,” she asked herself, “to do?” Lewis decided the question for her by telling the coachman authoritatively to drive home. The horse sprang forward, and the protestations of affection began again. At the Hôtel Meurice, Mrs. Bentham got out of the carriage wearily, she asked Lewis if he wanted it to take him back, and on his declaring that he preferred to walk home, she sent the coachman away. Time and place were now bringing the argument to a close, although the arguers had gone back to the beginning and were again discussing the morality of the question. On the pavement’s edge the lovers remained, stared at by the different people who passed into the hotel; she refusing, and he pleading to be fallowed to come upstairs for a few minutes.
Lewis was worn out with fear and expectation; Mrs. Bentham was tired and heartsick. For the last four hours they had been talking, and were now apparently no nearer an agreement than before. At length, at the end of a long silence she said, and with more determination than she had hitherto shown:
“You must let me go in; what will the people think of me for remaining outside all this time?”
Twenty times he had prevented her from ringing the bell, but now before he was aware of it, she passed her arm behind him and rang. Clearly the die had been cast; the concierge would pull the string in a moment: they stood looking blankly at each other with disappointment written on both their faces. Then the sharp click came, the door opened, and putting out her hand, she said:
“Now you must say good-night.”
“Oh, I cannot,” he replied, with the courage of despair, “do let me come upstairs, I promise—”
“No, no, it is impossible; do go away I beg of you.”
Lewis still kept his hand on the door.
“If you don’t go the concierge will come out to see what the matter is,” she said with desperation.
The moment was a critical one. There was no time for further words. Mrs. Bentham pushed past him; but determined not to be beaten he followed her. It was the bravest act of his life.
CHAPTER XIV.
A HOLIDAY.
HENCEFORTH LEWIS AND Mrs. Bentham spent whole days together. They breakfasted generally at the hotel with Mrs. Thorpe; but afterwards they were free to go where they pleased. They made the most delicious excursions. They dined at St. Cloud, St. Germains, and even up in the great tree at Robinson. Encouraged by their successes, they extended their travels as far as Enghien, and in a month there was scarcely a suburb they had not explored.
The only drawback to this life of pleasure was that they could not persuade Mrs. Thorpe to accompany them to the theatres, and Mrs. Bentham did not like to go alone. But the evenings passed so stupidly in the hotel drawing-rooms, and the streets looked so bright and gay, that she found herself at last obliged to break through her scruples.
This concession opened up a new world of pleasures; and every evening they found a new place of amusement. Opposite the “Gymnase” there was a café, where everybody went to take chocolate after the theatre, and for a week they never missed going there.
Then there was the “Cascade,” hidden far away in the woods of Longchamps, and they loved to drive there in the soft stillness of the summer night, and sit under the porch for an hour or so, watching the carriages arrive.
Very often they saw the same faces. There were two ladies who amused them particularly: one was fair and thin, the other stout and dark; and they spoke to a young man who drove up, sitting between a black pony and a little groom; pony, groom, and master all looking equally vicious. Then there was a parvenu, who spoke in a loud voice, and whose manner seemed to say, “That carriage is mine, I paid for it, and could have a dozen like it if I wanted.” He was always with an old lady, plastered all over, and dressed in a very shrill dress; he seemed so proud of promenading “the old pastel,” as Lewis used to call her, that Mrs. Bentham used to die with laughter when he handed her out of the carriage.
And so they idled the weeks away, until the cold skies of October brought the Parisians back to Paris, and then Mrs. Bentham and Lewis went out shopping every morning. She intended going into society that winter, and was determined that no one should reproach her with dressing like an Englishwoman.
Breakfast was no sooner finished than off they went, in the blue silk-lined brougham, all cushions and looking-glasses, scouring Paris from the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle to the Arc de Triomphe.
Mrs. Bentham had a hundred things to buy, to see; and, as she wanted to receive her friends, if not to give parties, it was necessary to find a furnished apartment. At last they decided on one in the Rue de Galilée.
Then Worth occupied a great deal of their time, and Lewis, whose artistic talent lay in designing, electrified that gentleman by the way he made suggestions.
One day he scored a veritable triumph: Mrs. Bentham had asked to have a court dress, expressly made for her, and they had a special appointment. Liveried footmen announced them, and they were shown through the wide, square show-rooms, into the great man’s private consulting room. It was wainscotted in light oak. Worth rose from a dark green velvet divan, where he had been reclining, to receive them. At both ends of the room were two large mirrors, one that could be moved about at discretion, the other fixed into the wall; on the right was a high desk where a clerk stood waiting to take down the inspiration, as it came from the master’s lips.
After a few preliminary questions, the great man said, sinking back on the green velvet divan:
“Will you kindly walk this way, so that I may catch the character of your shoulders.
”
Mrs. Bentham passed across the room and stopped. Worth did not speak, but motioned her with his hand to walk back again, and after some moments of deep meditation, he murmured:
“Florentine, bronze tinted, falling over a bouillonné pleating of pale moonlight blue;” then, after a pause, he added:
“The front breadths also blue, closely gathered up more than half-way down.”
The inspiration seemed then to have left him, and he moved uneasily on the divan of dark green velvet. The assistant waited at his desk, pen in hand, and the silence was full of much uneasy solemnity. After some moments the master murmured about flounces, and his brow contracted like that of a poet. Mrs. Bentham and Lewis approved of the flounces, but Worth shook his head, and, with the candour of genius, admitted that there was something to be found, which for the moment he could not think of. He pulled his hair, and grew excited, but it was of no use, and he was on the point of asking Mrs. Bentham to call another day, when Lewis hinted that the top might be partially concealed by some handsome bronze and gold bead trimming.
Casting a look of undisguised admiration at Lewis, he added, with an expression of triumph:
“Forming a garland of fringed leaves.”
Then three-quarters of an hour were spent in discussing the shape of the body, also in brown satin; but eventually the great man, after listening to their suggestions, decided that it was to be cut in the shape of a heart.
Since Mrs. Bentham had come to Paris, an obvious change had taken place in her character. When Mrs. Thorpe, ten years before, agreed to live with her, she found her suffering from the most intense despondency, declaring that she had neither husband nor child to care for, and that if she were a Roman Catholic she would retire to a convent.
Gradually she got over this melancholy, and her natural tastes for society came back to her; but the many friendships she had formed had added to, rather than detracted from, the reputation she had gained of being a very cold woman.
Now, all this was changed; she laughed, talked, and smiled, with the excitement of a girl of twenty, not only in manner, but in face, she seemed suddenly to have grown ten years younger. There was not a fashionable novelty she did not procure, and her bill at Worth’s alone was twelve thousand francs. All her tastes seemed to have changed; she was no longer an Englishwoman, either in dress or manner; she took a prodigious interest in all that belonged to Paris; she read all the newspapers, and soon knew the names of all the actors and actresses. She loved to know the jokes of the boulevards; she learned the tunes of all the operettas. She could not remain still a minute; she became, as it were, possessed by a craving for pleasure; theatres, cafés, balls, turned in her head in a gorgeous and confused dream. Her friends were limited to three or four English families, but she soon found that in the monde étranger à Paris it is not only easy to make acquaintances, but impossible not to do so. Soon her salon was crowded, and she found herself adrift in that cosmopolitan element which is gradually taking Paris to itself; and in this exotic society she and Lewis enjoyed themselves immensely. The arrival of a young man so singularly beautiful as he, was to this circle of pleasure-seeking Russian countesses, and brilliant Americans, a matter of no small interest, and invitations to dinners, balls, parties and theatres flowed in.
At first Mrs. Bentham used to dread meeting her husband. On entering a theatre, the first thing she did was to look along the lines of fauteuils to see if he were there; and, when she went to balls, she was always in a state of terror that in his cool, cynical way, he would come up and ask for a waltz, or if he might take her down to supper.
But as week after week passed, her fears wore away, and at the Marquis de Maure’s ball she danced the whole evening without once looking into the corners of the rooms to see if he were watching her.
The marquise was one of her new friends; she was a great admirer of Lewis, of whom she had bought a picture. Mrs. Bentham was a little jealous of her, but that did not prevent her from enjoying herself immensely. She was beautifully dressed in clear muslin and black velvet. Never had she looked so handsome in her life; and as she passed through the groups of dress coats, all eyes followed her superb white shoulders. She danced the cotillon with Lewis, and at six in the morning they were both covered with favours; every woman had wanted to dance with him, every man with her. For both of them it had been an evening of triumph; and in the brougham, for Mrs. Bentham had offered to drive him home, they admitted that they had never enjoyed themselves better in their lives.
Mrs. Bentham was glad that she had been admired, for many reasons; and, not being a jealous woman, it flattered her to see that the man she had chosen to help was as successful in the ball-room as in the studio.
At the door of his hotel she bade Lewis good-bye. The dawn was just beginning to break, and, delightfully tired, she leaned back in the little brougham, never dreaming that the same black cab that had followed them to the Quai Voltaire was now following her back.
The Champs-Elysées were deserted; the raw green masses of the chestnut trees grew rawer under the cold sky, and the carnages seemed like two crawling insects, lost in a wide plain of interminable grey.
As the brougham turned into the Rue Galilée, a tall thin man jumped out of the fiacre that could no longer keep up, paid the driver, and, catching up his long overcoat, ran at full speed up the trottoir.
It being no uncommon thing for two inhabitants of the same house to meet at the door, Mrs. Bentham paid no attention to the gentleman in evening dress, who walked rapidly towards her, and who followed her into the house as soon as the concierge pulled the latch.
They passed up the wide staircase, and it was not until she had begun to ascend the second flight of stairs that she thought of looking to see who was following her.
It was Mr. Bentham!
She gave a little scream, and leant against the marble painted wall, both hands trying to grasp the polished surface.
“Pray don’t make a noise,” he said in a cold, distinct voice. He then added, with a little clear laugh: “They might mistake me for your lover.”
“I do not know what you mean,” returned Mrs. Bentham, who, in her fright, did not catch his meaning; “but you must go; you have no right to follow me into my house.”
“Perhaps not; but if you have me turned out, you shall be a free woman in a year, then you can marry him.” The diffused light of the dawn came through the window over their heads, and with fatigue and fear, Mrs. Bentham’s face grew ghastly on the wide marble-painted wall. The rose was faded in her hair: a few petals fell on the carpet.
“I want to speak to you about a little business; and I warn you, that if you refuse me a hearing, I shall apply at once for a divorce.”
“And on what pretext?” asked Mrs. Bentham, indignantly.
“You surely don’t suppose I am ignorant of Mr. Seymour’s existence? Of course you are innocent,” he said, interrupting Mrs. Bentham, who was going to protest; “that is not the question; I want to see you on business; will you give me half-an-hour of your time?”
“I fancied all business between us had been concluded long ago; if not, you should have applied to your solicitor.”
“There are things which cannot be confided to a solicitor. Will you lead the way?”
“Why not say what you have to say to me here?”
“First, because I am tired and would like to sit down; secondly, because cela blesserait mon amourpropre; thirdly, because someone might come downstairs, and then you would be compromised, for I should be taken for your lover, or for another lover, and that would be too stupid. You see how careful I am of your honour.”
Without answering, she went wearily upstairs. She opened the large mahogany door and passed through the ante-room into the drawing-room. It was one of those large, modern French salons, with white painted walls, polished parquet, covered in the centre with a Smyrna carpet, and furnished with large armchairs and sofas, all in a rich brown yellow tint Two large mirrors reflected the opu
lent ceremoniousness of this apartment, about which seemed to hang an indescribable souvenir of formal phrases.
Mrs. Bentham, broken with fatigue, threw herself down on one of the sofas. Mr. Bentham drew off his glove, and looked mockingly at his wife. After a pause, he said, very slowly and quietly:
“He’s not bad looking, ‘pon my word; a little effeminate, but that is the fashion, il parait; but I hear he costs you a great deal of money.”
Insulting as were these words, the cold, sarcastic tones in which they were uttered rendered them doubly so; and Mrs. Bentham started as if he had struck her with a whip across the bare arms. Mild and motherly as her nature was, she grew red with the keenest passion, and at that moment would have given her life to trample him to death under her feet. But, catching sight of his sarcastic smile, she stopped short, and said as calmly as she could:
“If you have only come to insult me you must go, for I will not bear it.”
“I congratulate you on the importation. I hear he is a great success in Paris; and that, owing to your generosity, he is enabled to make many pretty little presents to the Marquise de Maure.”
“That is not true,” exclaimed Mrs. Bentham, turning red for an instant, and then going back to her blank paleness. “You know—”
She did not finish the sentence, for her husband’s cackling little laugh told her how she had betrayed herself. Then, losing her self-possession, she cried:
“How dare you insult me! Oh, you beast! how dare you insinuate what you do! Look here,” she said, advancing towards him appealingly, “I swear to you I am as innocent now as when—”
Her husband’s cackling little laugh again took the words out of her mouth, and she stopped and looked at him in amazement, as if doubtful of his human nature; then, bursting into tears, she fell across the sofa, hiding her face in her arms.
