‘Emily, is it you?’ she asked feebly. ‘What is the matter? Did I faint? What a strange thing for me to do! I remember now; it was a dreadful pain that came at my heart. I thought I was dying—’
She paused, shivering violently.
‘Shall I send for the doctor, my lady?’ asked the frightened Emily. ‘You look very white; you will never be able to go to the party this evening.’
‘Oh, yes, I shall,’ and with an effort Delicia rose to her feet and tried to control the trembling of her limbs. ‘I will sit in this arm-chair and rest, and I shall soon be all right. Go and make me a cup of tea, Emily, and don’t say anything about my illness to the other servants.’
Emily, after lingering about a little, left the room at last, with some uneasiness; and when she had gone, Delicia leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
‘That was a horrible, horrible pain!’ she thought. ‘I wonder if there is anything wrong with my heart? To-morrow I will see a doctor; to-night I shall want all my strength, physical and moral, to help me to look with calmness on my husband’s face.’
Gradually she grew better; her breathing became easier and the nervous trembling of her limbs ceased. When the maid came up with the tea she was almost herself again, and smiled at her attendant’s anxious face in a perfectly reassuring manner.
‘Don’t be frightened, Emily,’ she said gently. ‘Women often faint, you know; it is nothing extraordinary; it might happen to you any day.’
‘Yes, my lady,’ stammered Emily. ‘But you never have fainted — and—’
‘You want me to ask a doctor about myself? So I will to-morrow. But to-night I must look my best.’
‘What gown will you wear, my lady?’ asked Emily, beginning to regain her wits and composure.
‘Oh, the very grandest, of course,’ said Delicia, with a little laugh. ‘The one with the embroidered train, which you say looks as if it were sewn all over with diamonds.’
Emily’s bright face grew more radiant; the care of this special gown was her delight; her mistress had only worn it once, and then had looked such a picture of ethereal loveliness as might have made ‘Oberon, the fairy king,’ pause in his flight over flowers to wonder at her; and while the willing ‘Abigail’ busied herself in preparing the adornments of the evening, Delicia sipped her tea and reclined in her chair restfully, thinking all the while strange thoughts that had not occurred to her before.
‘If I were to die now,’ so ran her musings, ‘all the results of my life’s work would, by the present tenor of my will, go to my husband. He would care nothing for my fame or honour; his interests would centre round the money only. And with that money he would amuse himself with La Marina or any other new fancy of the hour; possibly my own jewels would be scattered as gifts among his favourites, and I doubt if even my poor, faithful Spartan would find a home for his old age! This must be seen to. I have made a mistake and it must be remedied. Fortunately the law, which is generally so unjust to women, has been forced into permitting our unhappy sex to have at least an individual right over our own money, whether earned or inherited; formerly we were not allowed to have any property apart from our lords and masters! Good heavens! What a heavy score we women shall run up against men at the Day of Judgment!’
The hours wore on, and by the time she was dressed for Lady Dexter’s ‘at home’ she was in one of her most brilliant, vivacious moods. Emily, the maid, stared at her in rapt fascination, as arrayed in the richly-embroidered dress of jewel-work, with its train of soft satin to match, springing from the shoulders and falling in pliant folds to the ground, she stood before her mirror fastening a star of diamonds among her luxuriant hair. Through the rare old lace that fringed the sleeves of her gown, her fair white arms shone like the arms of the marble Psyche; her eyes were dark and luminous, her lips red, her cheeks faintly flushed with excitement. A single branch of ‘Annunciation’ lilies garlanded her dress from waist to bosom, and as she regarded her own fair image she smiled sorrowfully, mentally apostrophising herself thus: —
‘No, you are not quite bad-looking, Delicia, but you have one horrible defect — you have got what is called an “expressive” face. That is a mistake! You should not have any expression; it is “bad form” to look interested, surprised, or indignant. A beautiful nullity is what men like — a nullity of face combined with a nullity of brain. You should paint and powder and blacken your eyelashes, and you should also be ready to show your ankles, “by accident,” if necessary. The men would find you charming then, Delicia; they would say you had “go” in you; but to be simply a student, with ideas of your own about the world in general, and to write down these ideas in books, which give you a fame and position equal to the fame and position of a man, — this makes you a bore in their eyes, Delicia! — an unmitigated nuisance, and they wish you were well out of their way! If you could only have been a “Living Picture” at the Palace Theatre, or turned out your arms and twiddled your toes in front of the footlights with as few garments on as possible, you would have been voted “clever,” Delicia! But being a successful rival with men in the struggle for fame, they vent their spite by calling you a fool. And you are a fool, my dear, to have ever married one of them!’
Smiling at herself disdainfully, she gathered up her fan and gloves, and descended to her carriage. No message had come from Carlyon to say whether or no he meant to be present at the party that evening; but his wife had attained to such an appreciable height of cool self-control, that she now viewed the matter with complete indifference. Arrived at Lord Dexter’s stately house in Park Lane, she went to the ladies’ room to throw off her wraps, and there found, all alone, and standing well in front of the long mirror, so as to completely block the view for anyone else, a brilliant-looking, painted personage in a pale-green costume, glittering with silver, who glanced up as she entered and surveyed her pearl embroideries with greedy admiration.
‘What an awfully sweet gown!’ she burst out frankly. ‘I always say what I think, though I am told it is rude. It’s awfully sweet! I should like just such a one to dance in!’
Delicia looked at her in a haughty silence. The other woman laughed.
‘I suppose you think it pretty cool of me making remarks on your clothes,’ she said; ‘but I’m a “celebrity,” you see, and I always say what I like and do what I like. I’m Violet de Gascon; — you know! — the “Marina.”’
Frozen into a rigid state of calm, Delicia loosened her lace wrappings with chilly fingers, and allowed the servant in attendance to take them from her.
‘Are you?’ she then said, slowly and bitterly, ‘I congratulate you! As you have given me your name, I may as well give you mine. I am Lady Carlyon.’
‘No!’ cried ‘La Marina,’ known in polite society as ‘Miss de Gascon,’ and to her father in Eastcheap as ‘my gal, Jewlia Muggins.’ ‘No! You don’t mean to say you’re the famous Delicia Vaughan? Why, I’ve read all your books, and cried over them, I can tell you! Well now, to think of it!’ And her hard, brilliant face was momentarily softened in sudden interest. ‘Why, all these swagger people are asked to meet you here to-night, and I’m the paid artiste. I’m to have forty guineas to dance twice before the assembled company! Tra-la-la!’ and she executed a sudden lively pirouette. ‘I am pleased! I’d rather dance before you than the Queen!’
In an almost helpless state of amazement, Delicia sat down for a moment and gazed at her. The servant had left the room, and ‘La Marina,’ glancing cautiously about her, approached on tip-toe, moving with all the silent grace of a beautiful Persian cat. ‘I say, she said confidentially, ‘you are sweetly pretty! But I suppose you know that; and you’re awfully clever, and I suppose you know that too! But why ever did you go and marry such a cad as “Beauty” Carlyon?’
Springing to her feet, Delicia fronted her, her eyes flashing indignation, her breath coming and going, her lips parted to speak, when swift as thought ‘La Marina’ tapped her fingers lightly against her mouth.
‘
Don’t defend him, you dear thing!’ she said frankly. ‘He isn’t worth it! He thinks he’s made a great impression on me, but, lor’! I wouldn’t have him as a butler! My heart is as sound as a bell,’ and she slapped herself emphatically on the chest, as though in proof of it. ‘When I take a lover — a real one, you know, — no sham! — I’ll pick out a good, honest, worthy chap from the working classes. I don’t care about your “blue blood” coming down from the Conquest, with all the evils of the Conquest fellows in it; it seems to me the older the blood the worse the man!’
Delicia grew desperate. It was no time to play civilities off one against the other; it was a case of woman to woman.
‘You know I cannot answer you!’ she said hotly. ‘You know I cannot speak to you of my husband or myself. Oh, how dare you insult me!’
‘La Marina’ looked at her amazedly with great, wide-open, unabashed black eyes.
‘Good gracious!’ she exclaimed, ‘here’s a row! Insult you? I wouldn’t insult you for the world; I like your books too much; and now, having seen you, I like you. I suppose you’ve heard your husband runs after me; but, lor’! you shouldn’t let that put you out. They all do it — married men most of all. I can’t help it! There’s the Duke of Stand-Off — he’s after me day and night; he’s got three children, and his wife’s considered a leading beauty. Then there’s Lord Pretty-Winks; he went and sold an old picture that’s been in his family hundreds of years, and bought me a lot of fal-lals with the proceeds. I didn’t want them, and I told him so; but it’s all no use — they’re noodles, every one of them.’
‘But you encourage them,’ said Delicia, passionately. ‘If you did not—’
‘If I did not pretend to encourage them,’ said ‘La Marina,’ composedly, ‘I should lose all chance of earning a living. No manager would employ me! That’s a straight tip, my dear; follow it; it won’t lead you wrong!’
But Delicia, with a smarting pain in her eyes and a sense of suffocation in her throat, was forced on by her emotions to put another question.
‘Stop — you make me think I have done you an injustice,’ she said. ‘Do you mean to tell me — that you are — ?’
‘A good woman?’ finished ‘La Marina,’ smiling curiously. ‘No, I don’t mean to tell you anything of the sort! I’m not good; it doesn’t pay me. But I am not as bad as men would like me to be. Come, let’s go into the drawing-room. Or shall I go first? Yes?’ — this as Delicia drew back and signed to her to proceed— ‘All right; you look sweet!’
And she swept her green and silver skirts out of the room, leaving Delicia alone to steady her nerves as best she might, and regain her sorely-shaken self-control. And in a few minutes the fashionable crowd assembled at Lady Dexter’s stirred and swayed with excitement as all eyes were turned on the sylph-like vision of a fair woman in gleaming white and jewels, with a pale face and dark violet eyes, whose name was announced through the length and breadth of the great drawing-rooms by the servants-in-waiting as ‘Lady Carlyon,’ but whom all the world of intelligence and culture present whispered of as ‘the famous Delicia Vaughan.’ For a handle to one’s name is a poor thing in comparison to the position of genius; and that the greatest emperor ever crowned is less renowned throughout the nations than plain William Shakespeare, is as it should be, and serves as a witness of the eternal supremacy of truth and justice amid a world of shams.
CHAPTER X
The first person Delicia saw after her hostess on entering the rooms was her husband. She bowed to him serenely, with a charming smile and playful air, as if she had only just left his company, then passed him by, entering at once into conversation with an artist of note, who came eagerly forward to present his young wife to her. Carlyon, quite taken aback, stared at her half-angrily, half-obsequiously, for there was something very queenly in the way she moved, something very noble in the manner she carried her proud little head, on which the diamond star she wore shone like Venus on a frosty night. He watched her slim figure in its white draperies moving hither and thither; he saw the brilliant smile light up her whole countenance and flash in her violet eyes; he watched men of distinction in art and statesmanship crowd about her with courtly flatteries and elegantly-worded compliments, and the more he watched her, the more morose and ill-humoured he became.
‘Anyhow,’ he muttered to himself, ‘she is my wife, and she can’t get rid of me. She has no fault whatever to find with me in the eyes of the law!’
He had always been vain of his personality, and it irritated him curiously to notice that she never glanced once in his direction. No one could possibly deny his outward attractiveness — he was distinctly what is called a ‘beautiful man.’ Beautiful in form and physique, manly in bearing, ‘god-like’ in feature. Nothing could do away with these facts. And he had imagined that when Delicia — tender, worshipping Delicia — set eyes on him again after her temporary absence from him, her ravishment at the sight of his perfections would be so great that she would fling herself into his arms or at his feet, and, as he expressed it to himself, ‘make it all right.’ But her aspect this evening was rather discouraging to these hopes, for she seemed not to see him or his attractions at all. She was apparently more fascinated with the appearance of a gouty ambassador, who sat far back in a corner carefully resting one foot on a velvet hassock, and who was evidently afraid to move. To this old gentleman Delicia talked in her most charming manner, and Carlyon, as his eyes wandered about the room, suddenly caught the mischievous and mocking glance of ‘La Marina’ — a glance which said as plainly as words, ‘What a fool you are!’ Flushing with annoyance, he moved from the position he had taken up near the grand piano and strolled by himself through the rooms, picking out here and there a few of his own friends to speak to, who, however, seemed to have nothing much to say except, ‘How charming Lady Carlyon looks this evening!’ a phrase which irritated rather than pleased him, simply because it was true. It was true that Delicia looked lovely; it was true that she eclipsed every woman in the room by her intelligence, grace of manner and brilliancy of conversation; and it was true that for a time at least she was the centre of attraction and absorbed the whole interest of everyone present. And Carlyon was distinctly vexed at the sensation she made, because he had no part in it, because he felt himself left out in the cold, and, moreover, because he was forced to understand that she, his wife, had determined that so he should be left. He would not — perhaps by some defect of brain he could not — realise that he had himself forfeited all claim to her consideration or respect, and he was glad when the arrival of another celebrity was announced, who at once distracted the attention of the frivolous throng from Delicia altogether — a lady of brilliant beauty, and of exalted rank, who had distinguished herself by becoming a demi-mondaine of the most open and shameless type, but who, nevertheless, continued to ‘move in society,’ as the phrase goes, with a considerable amount of éclat, simply because she had money, and was wont to assist churches with it and shower pecuniary benefits on penniless clerics. Deity (through the said clerics) blessed her in spite of her moral backslidings; and instead of denouncing her as it should have done, the Church went to her garden-parties. Lady Brancewith was a clever woman in her way, as well as a beautiful one; she loved her own vices dearly, and was prepared to sacrifice anything for the indulgence of them — husband, children, name, fame, honour; but she took a great deal of pains to keep in with ‘pious’ people, and she knew that the best way to do that was continually to give largesse all round. The worthy clergyman of the parish in which her great house was the chiefest of the neighbourhood, shut his eyes to her sins and opened them to her cheques; so all went well and merrily with her. Her entrance into Lady Dexter’s drawing-room was the signal for a complete change in the attitude of the fashionable throng. Everybody craned their necks to look at her and comment on her dress and diamonds; people began to whisper to each other the newest bits of scandal about her, and Delicia, with her fair face and unsullied character, was soon deserted and for
gotten. She was rather glad of this, and she sat down in a retired corner to rest, near the entrance to the great conservatory, where the curtains shaded her from the light, and where she could see without being seen. She watched the smiles and gestures of Lady Brancewith with a good deal of inward pain and contempt.
‘That is the kind of “society woman” men like,’ she mused, ‘One who will go down into the mud with them and never regret the loss of cleanliness. I think she is a worse type than “La Marina,” for “La Marina” does not pretend to be good; but this woman’s whole life is occupied in the despicable art of feigning virtue.’
She remained in her quiet nook looking at the restless, talking, giggling throng, and now and then turning her eyes towards the flowers in the conservatory — tall lilies, brilliant azaleas, snowy Cape jessamine, drooping passion flowers — all exquisite creations of perfect beauty, yet silent and seemingly unconscious of their own charms.
‘How much more lovely and worthy of love flowers are than human beings!’ she thought. ‘If I had been the Creator, I think I would have given the flowers immortal souls, rather than to men!’
At that moment her husband passed her without perceiving her. Lady Brancewith was on his arm, evidently delighted to be seen in the company of so physically handsome a person. The little diamonds sewn on her priceless lace flashed in Delicia’s eyes like sparks of light; the faint, sickly odour of patchouli was wafted from her garments as she moved; the hard lines which vice and self-indulgence had drawn on that fair face were scarcely perceptible in the softened light, and her little low laugh of coquettish pleasure at some remark of Lord Carlyon’s sounded musical enough even to Delicia, who, though she knew and detested the woman’s character, could not refrain from looking after her half in wonderment, half in aversion. Within a few paces of where she sat they stopped, — Lord Carlyon placed a chair for his fair companion near a giant palm, which towered up nearly to the roof of the conservatory, and then, drawing another to her side, sat down himself.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 407
