And somehow it did seem a singular thing, till one fine day somebody discovered the reason of it. It was very simple, and not at all uncommon. ‘Lolly’ had money; Colonel Annesley had none, or what was as bad as none. ‘Lolly’ entertained largely, and gave expensive luncheons and garden-parties; her husband was little more than an invited guest at these. He did not pay for them — he could not pay: and though he was supposed to do the honours, he fulfilled this duty with so timid and hesitating a demeanour that Mrs. Annesley would generally send him away to smoke by himself, saying, with a perfectly unruffled brow and good-natured laugh, “Really, Claude, you have no tact!” And certainly he did appear to be deficient in this social quality. It was impossible to the gaunt, young-old Colonel to feign things — to pretend he was rich when he knew he was poor; to assume the airs of manly and easy independence when his wife had all the sinews of war and reins of government and expenditure in her hands, and seldom lost an opportunity of reminding him of the fact. Of course he had his pay, but that he scrupulously set aside for his own clothes, tobacco, and extras. A good deal of it went, by the by, in his annual birthday present to his wife. He was at heart a good fellow, yet somehow as soon as people found out that his wife had all the money and he had none, he got generally misunderstood. Sentimental young ladies exclaimed to one another, “What a horrid man! — to marry for money!” Mothers who had dowerless daughters to wed experienced a violent revulsion of feeling against him, and observed, “Dear me! Fancy if all men were as selfish as Colonel Annesley!” His own sex, however, thought more leniently of him. Impecunious officers judged him by themselves, and said feelingly, “He’s not to be blamed for looking after the main chance. And Lolly must be a trial, even taking the cash in.”
Nevertheless they were obliged to own that ‘Lolly’ was not without her charm. She was extremely good-tempered, an excellent hostess, a clever match-maker, a sprightly talker, and a generally accomplished society woman all round. So that everybody was not a little interested and excited when it was known that Mrs. Claude Annesley had made up her mind to entertain for three or four days in the grandest style the Maharajah of the neighbouring province, a prince noted for his wealth and the enormous quantity of his jewels. He was young, and had received a first-class English college education, and according to report was a very superior type of native potentate, being something of a poet in his own fanciful way of Eastern symbolism, and having furthermore distinguished himself by the publication of a brilliantly-written treatise in Hindustani on the most recent discoveries in astronomy. Wherefore Mrs. Annesley determined to ‘lionise’ him. She did not consult the Colonel on the subject at all; his opinion would have been worth nothing. She believed somewhat in the creed of the ‘New’ woman, which declares men generally to be either brutes or fools. She did not include her husband in the former class; he was too gentlemanly and inoffensive; but she silently and without open incivility placed him among the latter. Consequently, in her proposed intention to ‘make capital’ out of the entertainment of a bejewelled Maharajah, he—’ poor Claude,’ as she called him — was not admitted into the discussion of ways and means. He was only the ornamental dummy or figure-head of the establishment. The house, the biggest residence in the whole place, and almost palatial, was Hers; the money was Hers. He had nothing to do with it; he was merely Her husband. Therefore, when he met people who said, “So the Maharajah is coming to stay with you?” he answered absently, “I believe so,” without being at all certain on the point. He thought about it now and then while smoking his own tobacco, tobacco which he found particularly soothing because he had paid for it himself, and did not owe it to his wife’s purse. And he was not at all sure that he liked the idea of the Maharajah’s visit. He did not take kindly to native princes. He had all the prejudices of the pugnacious Briton ‘born for precedence,’ and had no love for that type of human being known to some poets as the ‘dusky, dark-eyed Oriental.’ Dusky and dark-eyed the Oriental might be, but he was also likely to be dirty And ‘poor Claude,’ though apparently vague on other matters, had particularly strong ideas on the subject of frequent ‘tubbing.’ It was to this, perhaps, that he owed his rather fine, clear skin, under which the blood flowed with such easy freedom that he was frequently accused of blushing. The least emotion or excitement of a pleasurable nature brought a ruddy tint to his cheeks, and gave them that ‘glow of health’ for which certain beauties pay so much per box or bottle at the perfumer’s. He blushed now at the possibility of having an untubbed Maharajah in the house.
“However,” he murmured, “he’s had an English education, and she will have her way” — the ‘she’ referring to his wife, lady, and ruler—” I like a quiet life, and it’s best not to interfere. She’s got a perfect right to do as she likes with her own money.”
And he resigned himself as usual to the inevitable. For there was no doubt that the Maharajah was coming. — He had — accepted the invitation given him, and he was known to be a man of his word. His treatise on astronomy had proved him to be that. He had said he would write that treatise, and nobody believed him, not even his college tutors. “He’s too lazy,” one Englishman remarked of him, the said Englishman having been four years at work on the writing of an extremely feeble novel which he had sent to London to get published, and which no publisher would accept; “he’ll never write anything. I know these native fellows!” But, despite this prophecy, he had done it, and done it so well that it was the subject of interested and admiring comment among scientific people generally. And this very treatise on modern astronomy was one of the reasons why Mrs. Annesley wanted to lionise him. But it was not the chief reason — not by any means. The chief reason was perfectly human and particularly feminine: it was that Mrs. Claude Annesley wished to impress everybody in the place with a sense of her wealth, her importance, her influence, her position generally. And she had chosen this special time to do it because — well, the ‘because involves a little explanation, which runs as follows: —
Long ago, and long before handsome Laura Egerton, now Mrs. Claude Annesley, had married Colonel Claude Annesley, while she was yet the dashing belle of the London ‘season,’ she had contracted what was for her a curiously sentimental friendship with a girl several years younger than herself — a pale, slim, tiny, golden-haired creature with great plaintive grey eyes set in her small face like stars too big for the position in which they found themselves. This elf-like being exercised a peculiar fascination over the sprightly ‘Lolly,’ partly on account of her ethereal looks, which caused her to be sometimes called La Belle Dame sans Merci, after Keats’s heart-throbbing poem, partly because she was so unworldly and childlike, and partly because she had such naïve and fantastic notions concerning men. She was named Idreana, which had the advantage of being an unusual name and fascinating in its long-drawn vowel sound.
Idreana used to say in her soft, thrilling voice, that a man, according to the notion she had formed of the one she could ‘love, honour and obey,’ must be a hero, morally and physically; that she pictured him as brave and tender, chivalrous and true. A grand great creature whom to look upon was to honour, revere, and adore! To lose one’s very identity in an absorbing passion for such an one, to sacrifice everything for so worthy a master and lord, would be the happiest, proudest, most glorious fate imaginable for any woman! So she would speak, this fairy-like feminine bundle of nerves and sentiment, her whole little frame a-quiver with enthusiasm. And ‘Lolly,’ then in the thick of motley ‘society,’ would listen vaguely entranced, compassionately amused, wholly astonished, wondering within herself as to what would become of this self-deluding, imaginative small maiden when she came to know the world — when Fashion and Frivolity burst in like drunken clowns upon the holy quiet of her girlish fancies, and with blatant laughter and lascivious jest tore down the rose-coloured veil she had woven about herself, and forced her to look on social life as it is, and on men as they are. ‘Lolly’ did not suffer from sentiment as a rule; and the only really
violent attack of that malady she ever had was during her intimacy with this weird little Idreana.
And now Idreana was married — had been married three years or more, to a Captain Le Marchant, whose regiment was also stationed in India, but at a rather dismal place, a good way distant from the ‘happy valley,’ where Mrs. Claude Annesley held her social court; and thus it had happened that the two ladies, since their respective marriages, had never met. But they were going to meet now. Mrs. Annesley had invited Captain and Mrs. Le Marchant to stay with her, and after some little delay the Captain had obtained a month’s leave of absence, and the invitation was accepted. It was after this acceptance of the Le Marchants that Mrs. Annesley had bethought herself of entertaining the Maharajah. “It will astonish the Le Marchants,” was her first thought. “It will please Idreana’s picturesque turn of mind,” was her second. Perhaps if her motive had been probed down to its farthest root, it would have been found to be nothing more nor less than a desire to ‘show off’ before the friend of her unmarried days, and prove that her position as a wife was unexceptionable. She knew that la belle dame sans merci had made a poor match, financially considered, and she had heard (only through friendly rumour of course) that Captain Le Marchant, though a ‘fine man,’ had contracted rather a disagreeable habit, that of getting heavily drunk on occasions. But she could not quite believe this. “If it were so, Idreana, with her fastidious notions about men, would never have married him,” she thought. Yet she admitted within herself that it was quite possible Idreana, like other women ‘with fastidious notions,’ might have been deceived.
It was with a certain amount of curiosity and excitement, therefore, that Mrs. Claude Annesley prepared to receive the Le Marchants on the afternoon of their arrival. They came a few days before the date fixed for the visit of the Maharajah, and it is due to Mrs. Claude Annesley’s sense of old friendship and hospitality to observe that she was much more particular over the comfortable arrangements of the rooms set apart for Idreana and Idreana’s husband than she was for the adornment of those palatial apartments, the best in her large luxurious residence, which were destined to receive the Maharajah. She was genuinely eager to see her little friend of former days again, and wondered if marriage had altered her — if she had lost that singularly sylph-like belle dame sans merci expression that had once marked her out from ordinary young women.
“‘Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild!’”
hummed Mrs. Annesley softly, as she moved from room to room, setting flowers here, a mirror there, and giving to everything that final touch which is essentially feminine, and which imparts even to lifeless furniture a sentient, confidential, and welcoming air. “What will she think of us all, I wonder?”— ‘Us all’ included herself and a very large number of officers and civilians, married and unmarried—’ the boys,’ as she called them. The wives of the married ones did not come into the category, neither was Colonel Annesley counted among ‘the boys.’ In fact, he was not to be discovered in any particular social roll-call; he was not exactly a ‘boy’; and as he was in a manner dependent on his wife, he was not exactly a man. This is socially speaking. In his regiment he was thought a good deal of. But as this story has nothing to do with his regiment, and does not in the least concern his military career, there is no occasion to enlarge on the ideas of the regiment concerning him. They were old-fashioned ideas, very blunt and commonplace, and did not take in Mrs. Annesley at all as part of the Colonel’s existence. They are very well known, and have been duly chronicled.
“What will she think of us all?” repeated Mrs. Annesley with a smile and an approving glance at her well-dressed figure as she passed a convenient mirror. “She was always such a quixotic little thing. I am curious to see what sort of a husband she has chosen.”
Her curiosity was almost immediately gratified, for as she entered her drawing-room, after a final survey of the apartments prepared for her visitors, Captain and Mrs. Le Marchant, with their servants, their bag and baggage, duly arrived, and were straightway announced.
“My dear Idreana!” cried Mrs. Annesley, stepping quickly to embrace the small, slight figure of the woman now entering the doorway, “What an age it is since we met!” Then again, “My dear Idreana!”
The small woman smiled — a rather grave and doubtful smile.
“It is pleasant to see you again, Laura,” she said in a low voice. Then with a touch of something like appeal in her tone, “Let me introduce — my husband.”
A tall, heavily-made man, thickly moustached, with fine eyes and a somewhat flushed face, bowed.
“Charmed to meet you!” he drawled. “Old friend of my wife’s — delightful! Awfully good of you to put us up!”
“Oh, the pleasure is mine, I assure you!” exclaimed Mrs. Annesley eagerly, anxious to put an end to the temporary embarrassment of introduction, and nervously conscious that she had taken an instant dislike to Captain Le Marchant. “I cannot tell you how delighted I am to see dear Idreana again. And as sweet as ever! Positively, my dear, you look a mere child still; no one would ever take you for a married woman. Do sit down and have some tea before you go to your rooms. Claude! Claude!”
Colonel Annesley, part of whose marital duty it was to be always within call on the arrival of visitors, entered from the verandah.
“This is my husband,” said Mrs. Annesley with a sudden glow of unaccustomed pride as she noticed that c poor Claude’ did really look singularly distinguished as contrasted with Le Marchant—” Colonel Annesley, Captain Le Marchant: and this, Claude, is Mrs. Le Marchant, my dear little friend of old days at home, Idreana.”
Colonel Annesley bowed, not without a certain grace. In one keen glance he had taken in the characteristics of the married pair.
“The man is of the ‘fine brute’ bull-throated type,” he said inwardly, “and his wife — poor little sweet soul!”
These were his only mental comments; he was accustomed to disguise his feelings. He sat down by Mrs. Le Marchant and began talking to her, now and then asking her husband the particulars of their journey and other trifles, in order to bring him into the conversation. For once Mrs. Annesley felt grateful to ‘poor Claude.’ He was making things easy — things that she would somehow have found difficult. For not only did she not like the look of Captain Le Marchant but she was painfully impressed by the expression in Mrs. Le Marchands face. Idreana was still wonderful to look at with her cloud of gold hair and small delicate face — she was still the very ideal of the belle dame sans merci, but she was a belle dame who had been mysteriously insulted and outraged. A silent tragedy was written in her large deep eyes; a hint of it was set in the proud curve of her upper lip; traces of it were discernible in one or two lines about her mouth and forehead. She was choicely though simply attired. She listened to Colonel Annesley’s conversation attentively, and answered his various questions with that gentleness and grace which mark perfect breeding; and then, tea being finished, she accompanied Mrs. Annesley to her room, leaving her husband to smoke with his host in the verandah. Once alone together, the two women looked each other steadily in the face. Then Mrs. Annesley spoke out impulsively.
“Idreana, you are not happy?”
“I’m sorry my condition is so evident,” said Idreana with a pale smile, setting aside her hat and cloak. “Certainly, I am not happy. But it doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?”
“No! Why should it? People are not meant to be happy in this world.” She sat down, and clasping her hands in her lap looked up seriously. “Dreams fade, delusions die — life is never what it seems to promise. This is everybody’s story; it is mine. I do not complain.”
“But you married for love, Idreana?”
“Certainly I did,” she answered. “You put it exactly — for love. I wanted love — I longed for it, as they say the saints long for God. One hears and reads so much about love in one’s youth, you know, one actually believes in it. I believ
ed in it; it was foolish of me to fasten my faith on a mere rumour. Did you marry for love too?”
A faint flush tinted Mrs. Annesley’s well-preserved skin.
“No dear,” she admitted frankly. “I married — well, because it was time I married. I was getting what they call passée. I wanted a sober and respectable husband. And Colonel Annesley is that.”
“Ah!” and Idreana’s straight brows contracted. “Well, Captain Le Marchant is not that.”
Mrs. Annesley started. The report she had heard, the friendly report, was true, then.
“My dear, I am sorry,” she began stammeringly.
“Don’t be sorry,” said Idreana, rising and beginning to arrange her hair in front of the mirror. “And don’t let us talk about it. You know what fancies I used to have? Well, they are dead and done for. I have buried them all, and — sometimes — I brood a little over the grave. But you were always sensible; you never had any delusions to bury, and my griefs, such as they are, have chiefly arisen from my own wilful ignorance of things. I understand life now, and am quite prepared to live it out without undue grumbling at the inevitable.”
She raised a mass of her bright hair and settled it in its place. Mrs. Annesley looked at her wonderingly, and the former romantic fascination this slight creature used to exercise over her own matter-of-fact disposition, returned.
“How pretty you are, Idreana!” she said with ungrudging admiration. “How very pretty! Whatever you have suffered, your looks are not spoilt.”
“I am glad of that,” returned Mrs. Le Marchant with a little laugh in which there was a ring of bitterness. “No woman likes to grow ugly — the sense of ugliness almost makes one lose one’s selfrespect. But, my dear Laura” — here her voice softened—” you always thought too much of me. You were a beauty in your girlhood — I never was.”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 922
