He hesitated. A strong instinct urged him to go with her, and yet an equally strong disinclination to be seen in her company held him back.
“I would rather not,” — he began —
“Oh, nonsense! It won’t take much more of your time; besides, you’ve made it perfectly clear that you never wish to see me again after to-day, so you may as well be amiable and finish the afternoon pleasantly!” She smiled and added— “It will be something for you to think about and remember when you get back to stupid little Shadbrook. Wait here for me, — I won’t be long.”
She left the room before he could speak another word; — and he paced up and down wretchedly, angry with himself that he could do nothing with her, — neither reproach, nor condemn, nor persuade, nor intimidate. He asked himself bitterly of what use was the influence of the Church or the teaching of the Gospel to a woman such as she was, endowed with extraordinary beauty, and now by fortune’s hazard, possessed of sufficient wealth to move in whatever social sphere of influence she chose. For it is only necessary to read the list of guests who are received by King, Queen, and nobility nowadays to realize that it is certainly not distinctive merit or fine character which effect an entrance into the circles once renowned for an honorable exclusiveness, but simply Cash. The man who pays liberally in one way or the other for a peerage obtains it, — the natural result being that lords are nowadays made up of commons. Very soon the prestige of a name will rest upon its remaining that of a simple squire or dame, untainted by political intrigues or party bribery. According to modern methods of ‘honors’ conferred, there was nothing to prevent Jacynth’s husband from becoming a peer of the realm if he decided to play the game and give a couple of hundred thousand pounds to a hospital, or for educational purposes, — and nothing to hinder Jacynth herself, though formerly a day-laborer’s light-o’-love, from wearing a coronet with the proudest ladies in the land. No one in London knew her early history, and even if it ever came to be known, it was certain that, in the general omnium gatherum of anybodies and everybodies, clean and unclean, moral and immoral, who now compose ‘Court and Society’ in Great Britain, no one would care. She was absolutely without a conscience, — if she had ever possessed the germ of one it had been withered in her orgies of drink with Dan Kiernan. Her woman’s nature had been warped, and the faculties of her brain perverted by the foul and degrading habit which works disaster on so many thousands of human lives, — and though chance had now placed her in such a position that she might probably, for pure vanity’s sake, if for no other cause, resist temptation for a time, there was no certainty that the mischief generated in her blood by the horrible experience of her youth, might not break out in future years all the more violently for its present repression. Drink was the beginning of her career; Drink would surely be the end!
And while his thoughts thus dwelt upon her with a strange sorrow, not altogether unmixed with a poignant and personal bitterness to which he could not give a name, she re-entered the room, clad in a dainty out-of-door costume of ivory-colored cloth, with a coquettishly contrived hood of the same hue, which she wore closely drawn over her luxuriant hair, and tied with a knot of velvet ribbon under the chin. She looked like the nymph-embodiment of a white rose, — the dull cream of her dress enhancing the delicate tint of her skin and the dark luster of her wonderful eyes. And Everton, looking at her, was suddenly reminded, though he knew not why, of a verse in the Apocryphal ‘Book of Enoch’ —
‘This spirit of light was given unto thee, a virgin clothed with the heavens; take heed, I charge thee, that thou keep her pure, that thou preserve her from all stain. Let her be free from worldliness and sin, as the snow upon the mountain-top. Let her venerate the Lord God and walk in His holy laws.’
And his heart ached heavily, for he could not forget that she had been one of his ‘little flock’ — and that upon him, perchance, as much as any one had fallen the charge to ‘keep her pure’ — to ‘preserve her from all stain.’ He had been deceived in her; but was it not his fault? Should he not, as her Vicar, when he first went to Shadbrook, have tried to know her better? Could he not have gained her confidence and by sympathy and help prevented her ruin? And the cry of Bob Hadley rang again in his ears— “Save Jacynth!
She’s lost — lost! Try if you can do anything — save her from herself! — from the shame—”
Had he obeyed this last request of the dead? Had he ‘tried’ to save her? Had he not rather been like so many country parsons, content to wait the course of events and listen to what other people said before going steadily to work to form his own opinion? Surely he might have done some good before all good for her was past his power! A wave of self-tormenting memory swept over him, while she, all unconscious of his feeling, only saw that he seemed to be looking at her very intently, and in her own mind she decided that he must be admiring the becoming effect of her cream-colored hood.
“I’m quite ready,” — she said, smiling radiantly; “And the car is at the door. Come along, Mr. Everton! We’ll get to Hurlingham in less than half an hour. You’ve no train to catch, have you? You’re not going back to Shadbrook to-night?”
“No. Not till to-morrow morning,” he replied.
“You stayed in town a day longer to please me, didn’t you?” she asked, with a sparkling glance at him.
“I stayed, because you wished it, certainly,” — he said; then on a sudden impulse he added— “I thought I might perhaps be of some service to you—”
“In reading the Prayers for the Sick, or the Prayers for Dying?” she queried, lightly.
His brows darkened.
“You jest with me, of course,” he said; “Nothing is of serious import to you any more. Life has become to you a mere comedy in which for the moment you play a leading part. I understand your humor—”
“It is quite a good humor!” she smilingly assured him.
“You may think so; it is the natural outcome of your ‘social’ position and surroundings,” — he answered her, with a tinge of scorn, “The men and women with whom you associate are modern degenerates who have no belief in God or a future state — you imbibe their theories and think them clever — even intellectual, — though there is no more intellect in atheism than there is in the spectacle of an ape chattering at the sun. I cannot change your views; it would be useless for me to try — now. But I wish you would tell me one thing—”
She drew nearer to him.
“What is that?” she asked, with such sudden gentleness that he was vaguely moved and startled.
“Just this,” — and the deep, tender voice trembled— “In the old days, — when I first went to Shadbrook, — when I knew you as a young girl, — a child almost — could I have helped and guided you at any time when I did not?”
She looked at him with soft eyes that held an infinity of dreams.
“Could you have helped and guided me?” she echoed; “I think not! Unless,” — arid her lips parted in a slow, enchanting smile— “Unless you had come to Shadbrook unmarried, — unless it had chanced that you had been one of those much-sought-after male creatures, a bachelor parson! — then I would have made you fall in love with me! I am sure,” and she paused, watching the flush on his face die away into pallor— “it would have been easy!” She paused again, — and he stood before her mute and rigid. “Then perhaps,” — and she laughed, “You might have married me, and like the children’s stories say, we should have been ‘happy ever afterwards.’ And I should have been good and respectable, and — dull! Oh, very dull!
No, Parson Everton, you could never have ‘helped’ or ‘guided’ me! Be quite easy on that score! You could never have made me believe anything I didn’t want to believe. I was always a ‘bad lot’! But there are many others equally bad, — quite ‘distinguished’ ladies too! Don’t look so dreadfully serious! Come to Hurlingham — we’ll say good-by there! ——
For a moment he stood irresolute; then, as she went towards the door and beckoned him out of the roo
m, he followed. A certain curiosity impelled him to accompany her, — and also an odd but distinct reluctance to bid her farewell.
Her car, as she had said, was in waiting, — a luxurious vehicle upholstered in dark blue with gold and ivory fittings, guided by a French chauffeur in livery. She sprang lightly in, her butler or major-domo standing on guard while one of the two attendant flunkeys obsequiously handed her a cloak of superb sables.
“I shall not be home to dinner,” she said to these, her menials, “Tell your master I have gone ballooning with Mr. Ferrers.”
The butler received the statement with a well-trained bow. What the respectable man thought of her ‘ballooning with Mr. Ferrers’ did not appear on his carefully composed countenance.
“Come, Mr. Everton!” she called, a trifle imperiously.
Everton obeyed the summons, and entering the car, took his seat beside her. In another moment they were gliding swiftly out of Portman Square and threading their way through the crowded streets of the metropolis, amid the roar and crush of traffic more dangerous to life and limb than any other known means of hazardous wayfaring.
“This is not the car that ran over Dan Kiernan,” — she then observed, with the simple air of making quite an ordinary remark— “But it is the same chauffeur.”
Everton shuddered.
“Was it necessary to tell me that?” he asked.
She laughed.
“Have I given you a thrill? So sorry! I am always forgetting that you live out of the world and don’t ‘go’ with the time. But, really, the motor-cars run over and kill so many people that one ceases to think about it. It’s part of the fun. And most of the lives are of no value.”
“Except to their families and friends!” said Everton, with indignant emphasis.
She laughed again.
“Families? Friends? Oh dear! Families seem to exist merely to quarrel among themselves; see how they’ll wrangle over a Will! And as for friends! — surely you know what they are? — pleasant to your face — slanderous behind your back!”
“Those are not friends,” — he answered; “They are mere time-servers and hypocrites.”
“Of course! But they are the only sort of ‘friends’ one gets nowadays. People are only kind to you when they fancy you can be useful to them; when once they are sure you can’t or won’t be useful, they ‘drop’ you. That’s quite understood.”
“Then you do not believe even in friendship, Jacynth!” he said.
She shook her head.
“No, indeed! I’m not so silly! I’ve told you my creed — it is — To Enjoy! Never mind how the enjoyment is got or where it comes in — Enjoy! I am enjoying myself now!”
“In any special way?” he asked, coldly.
“Oh, yes — in a very special way!” she answered, smiling, “I’m enjoying the company of the dear kind parson who wanted to make me a good girl! I am, indeed! It is a pleasure to me to have you beside me. I’m not a good girl, you know, — I’m a bad one, according to your view of life, and I’ve told you all about myself — yet here you are!”
He was silent. She gave him a covert glance.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Everton! A parson may be seen anywhere, and with any one. That’s why so many of your calling turn up at the music-halls and hang around the stage-doors! It’s all for the Christian saving of souls!”
A profound disgust filled him as he heard her. Yet, to defend any position taken up by a woman of her type was mere waste of breath. Even to show offense at her manner of attacking the Christian ministry was to pay her too much honor. He, therefore, kept silence. His calm demeanor evidently irritated her, — his composed face, with just the faintest touch of wondering pity and contempt expressed upon it, conveyed a hint to her mind, full of egotism as she was, that her raillery did not seem to him clever, as she thought it, but merely vulgar. She looked at him once or twice half angrily and hummed a little tune under her breath.
“I suppose when you go back to Shadbrook to-morrow,” she said, presently— “You will stay there all your life!”
“I hope so,” he answered, quietly.
“Will you tell them you have seen me?”
“Tell them? You mean the villagers? No; I shall not mention your name.”
“Why not? I should like them to know how much better off I am than they are!”
“No doubt you would!” — he said— “You would like them to know that the wages of sin is not death in your case, but life, — such life as you live — which is not life at all. You would like them to envy your clothes, your jewels, your possessions; you would like to sow the seeds of restlessness, evil desire and discontent in the hearts of the girls who knew you, and who, as yet, are innocent of your wrong-doing, — you would like this, — it would be a pleasure to you! But if such mischief is to be worked I shall have no hand in it. I shall let the village think as it thinks now, that you are among those whom it is best and kindest to forget.”
Her cheeks crimsoned; her eyes flashed.
“Thank you!” she smiled— “It is so easy to forget me, isn’t it?”
He made no reply. Her beauty was almost aggressive in its brilliancy as she turned her face towards him. The afternoon sunlight set warm ripples of living gold in her rich brown hair, and she looked so lovely, that even as the car raced along, being now out of the more crowded thoroughfares, men turned and stared, amazed by the vision that flew past them. If ever the goddess of a poet’s dream could be supposed to take mortal shape, then Jacynth represented in herself the external embodiment of all the love-lyrics of the world. Yet inwardly she was corrupt and cruel; a very devil in woman’s fairest shape; and Richard Everton, fighting strenuously between the strong attraction of her physical charm and his own spiritual knowledge of her innate wickedness, found the stress of the battle gradually diminishing, and the storm clearing to calm. Temptation had assailed him; but his strength had lain in the consciousness that he was not above temptation. And the victory was now being given into his hands.
They reached Hurlingham ten minutes before the appointed hour, and on descending from her motor-carriage, Jacynth led the way to an open part of the grounds where several groups of gayly-dressed people were standing and sitting about or sauntering round a broad expanse of greensward in the center of which a huge balloon, nearly filled with gas, was swaying uneasily to and fro as though struggling to release itself and tear asunder its cords from the sand-bags that held it to the ground. The afternoon was one of clear light and warm air, — the London ‘season,’ though wearing on apace, had not yet closed — and the women who were gathered together to watch the ascent of the aerial monster of the sky were all elegantly, not to say extravagantly attired in dainty muslin and chiffon toilettes, with hats perched on their marvelous artificial coiffures like miniature flower-gardens, and parasols of painted silk designed to match their gowns. Some pretty faces and figures were among them, — but all paled into humblest insignificance when Jacynth, in her plainly cut white cloth frock, with her radiant face smiling out of its coquettish hood, appeared on the scene. Then every man left every other woman to crowd around the fair heroine of the hour, — and the women, in consequence of being so ‘left,’ looked coldly critical or spitefully derisive, indulging in light raillery among themselves as to the identity and personality of Mrs. Nordstein’s companion— “Another clerical capture, my dear! Just fancy! I thought Cardinal Lyall was the latest victim! How many gentlemen of all the Churches does she intend to fool!” Jacynth herself, conscious of the sensation she made, yet assuming a perfectly graceful un-consciousness of it, moved among her acquaintances with an easy pleasantness, shaking hands with this person, bowing to that, but introducing Everton to nobody till the massive figure of Claude Ferrers raised itself from somewhere among the ropes and cords of the balloon and advanced to meet her. The ‘poet’ and aeronaut looked very pale, and the expression of his glassy blue eyes was a staring enigma.
“Ah, most beautiful lady!” he exclaimed— “At l
ast! I was beginning to fear you would fail me!”
“Have I ever done so?” she asked, with a charming upward glance, — then she added— “I’ve been talking all the afternoon to an old friend who knew me when I was a little girl! Let me introduce you to each other — Mr.
Richard Everton: Mr. Claude Ferrers.”
The two men acknowledged each other by the very slightest salutation. Ferrers looked with a cynical air at Everton’s tall slim figure arrayed in its clerical suit — then he said in a slow drawling voice:
“I see you are of the other-world persuasion, Mr. Everton! You teach us how to go to heaven after death, — but I and my ‘Shooting Star ‘“ (and he pointed to the balloon) “will take you there during life! What do you say? Will you come?”
Everton’s clear blue eyes rested upon him fixedly, expressing in their grave scrutiny a complete comprehension of his temperament and character.
“Your heaven and mine are possibly dissimilar,” he answered, with constrained civility— “We should probably have to journey in different directions.”
Ferrers laughed softly, and stroked his clean-shaven flabby chin with one fat white hand on which a large diamond sparkled.
“Very much so!” he agreed, nodding condescendingly— “You will keep to the narrow line of dogma, — I to the broad high-road of science. We should never meet!” And he turned with a smile to Jacynth— “Magic Crystal, are you ready?”
“Quite!” she answered, whereupon he made a sign to the men who were busy filling the balloon with gas, to hasten the completion of their work. The scattered people in the grounds of Hurlingham now began to collect in groups, which speedily extended till there was a considerably large crowd watching, like curious children, the turning off of the gas and the removal of the India-rubber pipe which had supplied the balloon with its soaring power. Preparations were now made to fix the wicker car to the bottom of the balloon — and while this business was going on, several persons entered into conversation with both Ferrers and Jacynth, and Everton was left for a moment alone and apart. A vague sense of pain and foreboding crept over him as he looked round upon the brilliant scene; he wondered how it was that no one present appeared to entertain the slightest anxiety as to the safety of the voyagers who were about to sail the seas of space. It seemed to be taken for granted that to go up in a balloon was as simple and ordinary as to drive in a carriage. And while he was yet considering the various probabilities of risk in the undertaking, Jacynth came up to him with outstretched hand and said:
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 746
