Front matter (continued 4)

‘She has gone home, I am sorry to say,’ was the reply. ‘She is not very well, she tells me; and she found the heat of the room rather trying.’

‘Are you speaking of the guest of the evening—Lady Carlyon?’ inquired Lady Brancewith, sweetly.

‘Yes. She extremely regretted having to leave so early, but she works hard, you know, and she is not at all robust.’

Here Lady Dexter’s attention was distracted by the claims of a long-haired violinist desirous of performing a ‘classical’ piece immediately, which, when it did begin, had the effect of driving many people down to supper or out of the house altogether; and in the general scrimmage on the stairs ‘La Marina’ found herself elbowing Lord Carlyon.

‘Your wife’s gone home,’ she said curtly. ‘Why didn’t you go with her?’

‘I have another engagement,’ he answered coldly.

‘Not with me!’ she said, showing all her even white teeth in a broad grin. ‘I talked ever so long to Lady Carlyon this evening, and told her just what I thought of you!’

His eyes darkened furiously, and the lines of his mouth grew hard and vindictive.

‘You wild cat!’ he said savagely. ‘If you have dared—’

‘Puss, puss! Pretty puss!’ laughed Marina. ‘Cats have claws, my Lord Bill, and they scratch occasionally!’

With a swish of her silken skirts she darted past him into the supper-room, where she immediately became surrounded by a circle of young noodles, who evidently deemed it a peculiar glory and honour to be allowed to hand chicken salad to the gifted creature who nightly knocked her own nose with her foot in the presence of a crowded house. What was any art compared to this? What was science? What was learning? What was virtue? Nothing,—less than nothing! To have a shapely leg and know how to hit your nose with your foot, is every day proved to be the best way for a woman to have what is called a ‘good time’ in this world. She needn’t be able to spell, she may drop her h’s broadcast, she may ‘booze’ on brandy,—but so long as the nose is hit every night with the foot in an accurate and rhythmic manner, she will always have plenty of jewels and more male admirers than she can conveniently manage. For there is no degradation that can befall a woman which man will not excuse and condone; equally there is no elevation or honour she can win which he will not grudge and oppose with all the force of his nature! For man loves to hold a strangulation-grip on the neck of all creation, women included; and the idea that woman should suddenly wrench herself out of his grasp and refuse to be either trapped like a hare, hunted like a fox, or shot like a bird, is a strange, new and disagreeable experience for him. And very naturally he clings to the slave type of womanhood, and encourages the breed of those who are willing to become dancers and toys of his ‘harem,’ for, if all women were to rise to the height of their true and capable dignity, where should he go to for his so-called ‘fun’?

Some thoughts of this kind were in Lord Carlyon’s head as he threw on his opera-coat and prepared to leave the scene of revelry at the Dexters. The pale, noble face of Delicia haunted him; the disdain of her clear eyes still rankled in his soul; and he was actually indignant with her for what he considered ‘that offensive virtue of hers,’ which shamed him, and which had, for a moment at least, made ‘the most distinguished Lady Brancewith’ seem nothing but a common drab, daubed with paint and powder. Even as he thought of her thus, the fair and faithless Lily approached him, smiling, with a coaxing and penitent air.

‘Still huffy?’ she inquired sweetly. ‘Poor, dear thing! Did it fret and fume and turn nasty?’ She laughed, then added, ‘Don’t be cross, Billy! I was very rude to you just now—I’m sorry! See!’ and she folded her hands with an appealing air. ‘Drive home with me, will you? I’m so lonely! Brancewith’s at Newmarket.’

Carlyon hesitated, looking at her. She was undoubtedly very lovely, despite her artificial flesh tints and distinctly dyed hair.

‘All right!’ he said with a stand-offish manner of coldness and indifference, ‘I don’t mind seeing you home.’

‘How sweet and condescending of you!’ and Lady Brancewith threw on her mantle gleaming with iridescent jewels and showered with perfumed lace. ‘So good of you to bore yourself with my company!’

Her eyes flashed; she was in a dangerous mood, and Carlyon saw it. In silence he piloted her through the ranks of attendant flunkeys, and when her carriage came bowling up to the door assisted her into it.

‘Good-night!’ he then said, raising his hat ceremoniously.

Lily Brancewith turned white with sudden passion.

‘Aren’t you coming in?’ she asked.

He smiled, thoroughly enjoying the position.

‘No, I have changed my mind. I am going home—to my wife!’

Lady Brancewith trembled, but quickly controlled herself.

‘So right of you,’ she said, smiling. ‘So proper!’ Then, putting out her hand, she caught him by the coat-sleeve. ‘Do you know what I wish for you?’ she said slowly.

‘Can’t imagine!’ he responded carelessly. ‘Something nasty, no doubt.’

‘Yes, it is something nasty!’ She laughed under her breath as she spoke. ‘Something nasty, yet very commonplace, too. I wish your wife may discover the kind of man you are,—and stop your allowances! Good-night!

She smiled brilliantly; the horses started suddenly and he drew back, smothering an angry oath. Another moment and the carriage had rolled away, leaving him alone staring at the pavement. He stood for a little lost in gloomy meditation; then, summoning a hansom, was driven home at a brisk pace, having made up his mind to ‘face it out,’ as he inwardly said, with Delicia.

‘She can’t help loving me,’ he mused. ‘She always has loved me, and she is not a woman likely to change her feelings in a hurry. I’m sorry she saw me with Lily Brancewith; and of course, if that jade Marina has really been talking to her there’ll be a devil of a row. I must make it right with her somehow, and I think I know the best way to go to work.’ Here he smiled. ‘Poor little woman! I daresay she feels awfully sore; but I know her character—a few loving words and plenty of kisses and embraces, and she’ll be just the same as ever she was, and—and—by Jove! I’ll see if I can’t turn over a new leaf. It’ll be infernally dull, but I’ll try it!’

And perfectly satisfied with the plan he had formulated in his own mind for setting things straight, he arrived at his own house. The door was opened to him by Robson, who informed him that her ladyship had returned about an hour ago and was waiting to see him in her study.

‘In her study, did you say?’ he repeated.

‘Yes, my lord. Her ladyship said, would you kindly go up at once, as soon as you came in.’

A touch of ‘nerves’ affected him as he threw off his coat and began to ascend the stairs. He saw Robson extinguish the gas in the hall and descend kitchenwards, and a great silence and darkness seemed to encompass the house as he paused for a moment outside his wife’s room. Then, slowly and with some hesitation, he lifted the velvet portière and entered.

CHAPTER XI

Delicia was at her desk, writing. She had taken off her rich evening costume and was clad in a loose robe of white cashmere that fell down to her feet, draping her after the fashion of one of Fra Angelico’s angels. Her hair was unbound from its ‘dress coiffure’ of elaborate twists and coils, and was merely thrust out of her way at the back of her head in one great knot of gold. She rose as her husband entered, and turned her face, deadly pale and rigid as a statue’s, full upon him. He paused, looking at her, and felt his braggart courage oozing out at his fingers’ ends.

‘Delicia,’ he began, making a poor attempt at smiling. ‘Delicia, I am awfully sorry—’

Her eyes, full of a burning indignation, flashed upon him like lightning and struck him, despite himself, into silence.

‘Spare yourself and me any further lies!’ she said, in a low voice that vibrated with intense passion. ‘There is no longer any need of them. You have shown me yourself as you are, in your true colours—the mask has fallen, and you need not stoop to pick it up and put it on again. It is mere waste of time!’

He stared at her, foolishly pulling at his moustache and still trying to smile.

‘You called me “unsexed” to-night,’ she went on, never removing her steadfast gaze from his face. ‘Do you know what the word means? If not, I will tell you. It is to be like the women you admire!—to be like “La Marina,” who strips her body to the gaze of the public without either shame or regret; it is to be like Lady Brancewith, who flings her husband’s name and honour to the winds for any fool to mock at, and who in her high position is worse, yes, worse than “La Marina,” who at any rate is honest in so far that she admits her position and makes no pretence of being what she is not! But I,—what have I done that you should call me “unsexed?”’

She paused, breathing quickly.

‘I didn’t say you were “unsexed,”’ he stammered awkwardly. ‘I said clever women were, as a rule, unsexed.’

‘Pardon me,’ she interrupted him coldly. ‘You said “women who write books, like my wife.” Those were your exact words. And, I repeat, what have I done to deserve them? Have I ever dishonoured your name? Have you not been the one thought, the one pride, the one love of my life? Has not every beat of my heart, together with every stroke of my pen, been for you and you only? While all the time to me you have played traitor—your very looks have been lies, you have deceived and destroyed all my most sacred beliefs and hopes; you have murdered me as thoroughly as if you had thrust a knife through my heart and hurled me down dead at your feet!’

Her voice vibrated with passion—strong, deeply-felt passion, unshaken by the weakness of sobs or tears.

He made a step towards her.

‘Look here, Delicia,’ he said, ‘don’t let us have a scene! I have been a fool, I daresay—I am quite willing to admit it—but can’t you forget and forgive?’ And undeterred by the chill aversion in her face, he held out his arms. ‘Come, I am sure your own heart cannot tell you to be unkind to me! You do love me—’

‘Love you!’ she cried, recoiling from him; ‘I hate you! Your very presence is hideous to my sight; and just as I once thought you the noblest of men, so I think you now the lowest, the meanest! You have been a fool, you say; oh, if you were only that! Only a fool! There are so many of them! Some of them such good fellows, too, in their folly. Fools there are in plenty who, nevertheless, do manage to preserve some cleanliness in their lives; who would not wrong a woman or insult her for the world—fools whom, mayhap, it might be good to love and to work for, and who at any rate are not cads or cowards!’

He started, and the colour leapt to his face in a shamed red, then died away, leaving him very pale.

‘Oh, if you are going to rant and scream—’ he began.

She turned upon him with a regal air.

‘Lord Carlyon, to rant and scream is not my métier,’ she said. ‘I leave that to the poor “Marina,” when you have dosed her with too much champagne. There is no need to go over the cause of our present conflict; what I have to say can be said in very few words. Your “unsexed” wife, who has had the honour of maintaining you ever since your union with her, by the ungrudging labour of her brain and hand, has sufficient sense of justice and self-respect to continue no longer in that eminently unpractical mode of action. We must for the future live apart; for I cannot consent to share your attentions with one stage artiste or any number of stage artistes. I do not choose to pay for their jewels; and your generous offer to settle Lady Brancewith’s bills for her does not meet with my consent or approval.’

Her face grew colder and more contemptuous as she continued,—

‘Your estimate of what is called a “clever” woman is as low as that of most men. I do not especially blame you for being like the rest of your sex in that one particular. Women who will not become as dirt under a man’s foot, to be trodden on first, then kicked aside, are generally termed “unsexed,” because they will not lower themselves to the man’s brute level. Nothing is more unnatural from a man’s point of view than that a woman should have brains,—and with those brains make money and position often superior to his, and at any rate manage to be independent of him. What men prefer is that their wives should be the slaves of their humour, and receive a five-pound note with deep thankfulness whenever they can get it, shutting their eyes to the fact that people like “Marina” get twenty pounds to their five from the same quarter. But you,—you have had nothing to complain of in the way of a pecuniary position, though I, as bread-winner, might readily have comported myself after approved masculine examples and given you five pounds where I spent twenty on myself and my own pleasure. But I did nothing of this sort; on the contrary, I have trusted you with half of everything I earned, believing you to be honest; believing that, of all men in the world, you would never cheat, defraud, or otherwise deceive me. And not only have you made a mock of me in society, but you have even helped to vilify my name. For it was distinctly your business to chastise the writer of that lying paragraph in the paper; but you left me to be defended by one who shares with me the drawback of being a “public character,” and with whom I have no connection whatever beyond that of friendship, as you perfectly well know. Why, I have heard of men, well-born, too, and of considerable social attainment, who have been willing enough to fight for the so-called “honour” of an admitted demi-mondaine; but for an honest woman and faithful wife, who is there in these days that will stir a finger to defend her from slander! Very few; least of all her husband! To such a height has nineteenth-century morality risen! I, who have been true to you in every thought, word and deed, am rewarded by your open infidelity, and for my work, which has at any rate kept you in ease and comfort, I am called “unsexed,” despite my pains! If I chose, I could fling you back your insult; for a man who lives on a woman’s earnings is more “unsexed” than the woman who earns. I never thought of this before; my love was too blind, too passionate. Now I do think of it; and thinking, I wonder at myself and you!’

He dropped lazily into a chair and looked at her.

‘I suppose your temper will be over presently,’ he said, ‘and you will see things in a more reasonable light. You must remember I have given you a great position, Delicia; I think our marriage has been one of perfect mutual benefit. “Literary” women hardly ever get a chance of marrying at all, you know; men are afraid of them—won’t marry them on any account;—would rather have a barmaid, really—and when a “literary” woman gets into the aristocracy and all that—well, by Jove!—it’s a splendid thing for her, you know, and gives her a great lift! As for being unfaithful to you, why, there is not a man in my “set” who is absolutely immaculate; I am no worse than any of them—in fact, I am much better. You read so much, and you write so much, that you ought to know these things without my telling them to you. “Give and take” is the only possible rule in marriage, and I really thought you would have good sense enough to admit it—’

Delicia regarded him with a chill smile.

‘I think I have admitted it!’ she said ironically. ‘Fully and freely! For I have given everything; equally you have taken everything! That is plain enough. And now you insult me afresh by the suggestion that it was really a condescension on your part to marry me at all, I being “literary”! If I had been a music-hall dancer, of course you would have been much prouder of me; it would have been something indeed worth boasting of, to say your wife had originally been famous for a break-down or can-can at the “Empire!” But because I follow, with what force and ability I can, the steps of the truly great, who have helped to mould the thoughts and feelings of men and nations, it is quite extraordinary I should have found a husband at all! Wonderful! And you have given me a great position, you assert. I confess I fail to perceive it! If you consider your title something of value, I am sorry for you; to me it is a nothing. In the old days of chivalry titles meant honour; now they have become, for the most part, the mere results of wealth and back-stair influence. Yours is an old title, I grant you that; but what does it matter? The latest brewer raised to the peerage puts himself on an equality with you, whether you like it or not. But between me—untitled Delicia Vaughan—and the self-same peer of the ale-cask, there is a great gulf fixed; and not all his wealth can put him on an equality with me, or with any author who has once won the love of nations. And so, Lord Carlyon, permit me to return your title, for I shall not wear it. When we separate I shall keep to my own name simply; thus I shall owe you nothing, not even prestige!’

Carlyon suddenly lifted his fine eyes and flashed them effectively at her.

‘You are talking nonsense, Delicia,’ he said impatiently. ‘You know you don’t really mean that we are to separate. Why,’ this with the most naïve conceit, ‘what will you do without me?’

She met his gaze without the least emotion.

‘I shall continue to live, I suppose,’ she replied, ‘or I shall die, one of the two. It really doesn’t matter which.’

There was a slight tremor in her voice, and emboldened by it he sprang up and tried to put his arm round her. She recoiled from him swiftly, thrusting him back.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she cried wildly. ‘Don’t dare to come near me! I cannot answer for myself if you do; this shall defend me from you if necessary!’

And almost before he could realise it she had snatched a small, silver-mounted pistol from its case on a shelf hard by, and, holding it in her hand, she stood as it were at bay.

He gave a short, embarrassed laugh.

‘You have gone mad, Delicia!’ he said. ‘Put down that thing. It isn’t loaded, of course; but it doesn’t look pretty to see you with it.’

‘No, it doesn’t look pretty,’ she responded slowly. ‘But it is loaded! I took care of that before you came in! I don’t want to injure either you or myself; but I swear to you that if you come closer to me by one step, presume to offer me such an insult as your caress would be to me now, I will kill you!’

Her white figure was firm as that of some menacing fate carved in marble; her pale face, with the violet eyes set in it like flashing stars, had a marvellous power and passion imprinted on its every line, and despite himself he fell back startled and in a manner appalled.

‘I have gone mad, you think?’ she went on. ‘If I had, would it be wonderful? To have one’s dearest hopes ruined, one’s heart broken, one’s life made waste—is that not something of a cause for madness? But I am not mad; I am simply resolved that your lips, which have bestowed their kisses on “la Marina,” shall never touch mine again; that your arms, which have embraced her, shall never embrace me, and that, come what will, I will keep my self-respect if I die for it! Now you know my mind, you will go your way; I mine. I cannot divorce you; for though you have murdered my very soul in me, brutally and pitilessly, you have not been “cruel” according to legal opinion. But I can separate from you—thank God for that! I cannot marry again. Heaven forbid that I should ever desire to do so! Neither can you; but you will not wish for that unless you meet with an American heiress with several millions, which you may have the chance of doing when I am dead—someone who has inherited her money and has not worked for it as I have,—honestly,—thereby becoming “unsexed!”’

He stood silent for a minute.

‘You actually mean to say you want a judicial separation?’ he inquired at last, sullenly.

She bent her head in the affirmative.

‘Well, you can get that, of course. But I must say, Delicia, of all the ungrateful, heartless women, you are the very worst! I should never have thought it of you! I imagined you had such a noble nature! So sweet and loving and forgiving! Good heavens! After all, what have I done? Just had a bit of fun with a dancing girl! Quite a common amusement with men of my class!’

‘I have no doubt of it,’ she answered; ‘Very common! All the same, I do not choose to either tolerate it or pay for it. Ungrateful, heartless “unsexed”! This is my character, according to your estimate of me. I thank you! Poor Love’s last breath went in that final blow from the rough fist of ingratitude! I will not detain you any longer; in truth, you need not have stayed so long. I merely wished to let you know my decision. I had no intention to either upbraid you or condemn. Reproaches or complaints, however just, could leave no impression on a temperament like yours. I will see my lawyers to-morrow, and in a very short space of time you will be free of my company for ever. Shall we say good-bye now?’

She raised her eyes,—her gold hair shone about her like an aureole, and a sudden sweetness softened her face, though its gravity was unchanged. A sharp pang of remorse and sorrow stabbed him through and through, and he looked at her in mingled abasement and yearning.

‘Delicia—must we part?’

He whispered the question, half in hope half in fear.

She regarded him steadily.

‘Dare you ask it? Can you imagine I could love you again after what has passed? Some women might do so—I could not.’

He stood irresolute; there was a mean and selfish trouble at his heart to which he could not give utterance for very shame’s sake. He was really wondering what arrangements she meant to make for his future, but some few of the better instincts of manhood rose up within him protestingly, and bade him hold his peace. Still the brooding egotistical thought lingered in him and made him angry; he grew more and more wrathful as he realised that she,—this woman, whose whole life and devotion he had had so recently in his keeping,—had suddenly fathomed his true nature and cast him from her as something contemptible, and that she—she had the power to maintain herself free of him in wealth and ease, whilst he, if she were at all malevolently inclined, would have to return to the state of semi-poverty and ‘living on tick,’ which had been his daily and yearly lot before he met her. Inwardly he cursed ‘la Marina,’ Lily Brancewith and everybody, except himself. He never thought of including his own vices in the general big ‘Damn!’ he was mentally uttering. And as he hesitated, shuffling one foot against the other, a prey to the most disagreeable reflections, Delicia advanced a step and held out her hands.

‘Good-bye, Will! I loved you once very deeply; a few days ago you were everything to me, and for the sake of that love, which has so suddenly perished and is dead for ever, let us part in peace!’

But he turned from her roughly.

‘Oh, it is all very well for you!’ he said. ‘You can afford to talk all this high-falutin’ rubbish, and give yourself airs and graces, but I am a poor devil of a fellow always getting into a hole; and it isn’t to be supposed that I am going to take my dismissal in this way, just as if I were a lackey. I am your husband, you know; you can’t undo that!’

‘Not at present,’ said Delicia, drawing back from him quickly, the tenderness passing from her face and leaving it coldly disdainful. ‘But it is very possible the Gordian knot of marriage may be cut for me sooner or later. Death may befriend me in this matter, if nothing else will.’

‘Death! Nonsense! I am not likely to die, nor are you. And I don’t see what you want to get a separation for. I will go away for a time if you like. I will make any promises you want me to make; but why you should bring a lawyer into it, I cannot imagine. The fact is, you are making a fuss about nothing, and I am not going to say good-bye at all. I will take a trip abroad, and by the time I come back I daresay all this will have blown over and you will be glad to see me.’

She said nothing, but simply turned from him, and sitting quietly down at her desk resumed the letter she had been writing when he entered.

‘Do you hear me?’ he repeated querulously. ‘I sha’n’t say good-bye.’

She did not speak; her pen moved swiftly over the paper before her, but otherwise she never moved.

‘I am sure it is no wonder,’ he continued crossly, ‘that the Government protests against too much independence being allowed to women! What tyrants they would all become if they could have everything their own way as much as you can! Women ought to be gentle and submissive; and if they are fortunate enough to be wealthy, they ought to use their wealth for their husbands’ benefit. That is the natural order of creation—woman was made to be subservient to man, and when she is not, things always go wrong.’

Still Delicia wrote on without uttering a word.

He paused a moment, then observed,—

‘Well, I’m quite worn out with all this rumpus! I shall go to bed. Good-night, Delicia!’

At this she turned and looked at him fully.

‘Good-night!’ she said.

Something in the transparent beauty of her face and the dark tragedy of her eyes awed him. She looked as if during the past few minutes she had risen above and beyond him to a purer atmosphere than that of earth. The majority of men hate women who look so; and Carlyon was painfully conscious that he had suddenly grown to hate Delicia. She had entirely changed, he thought. From a loving, tender idolater of his manly graces and perfections, she had become a proud, cynical, fault-finding, unforgiving ‘virago.’ This latter term did not suit her at all, but he considered that it did; for, as usual, by the aid of man’s logic, he deemed himself the injured party and she the injuring. And irritated beyond measure at the queenly tranquillity of her demeanour, he muttered something profane under his breath, and dashing aside the portière with a clatter of its brazen rings and a violence that threatened to tear its very substance, he left the room.

As soon as he had gone, Delicia moved slowly to the door and shut and locked it after him; then as slowly returned to her chair, where, leaning her head back against the carved escutcheon, she quietly fainted.

CHAPTER XII

Next day Delicia was too weak and broken in body and spirit to leave her bedroom, which she had managed to reach by herself on recovering from her swoon. Her husband sent her a brief note of farewell by one of the servants. He was leaving London immediately for Paris, he said, ‘and when all this nonsense had blown over,’ he would return. Till then he was ‘hers affectionately.’ She crumpled the note in her hand and lay still, her fair head fallen wearily back among her pillows, and a great sense of exhaustion and fatigue numbing all her faculties. A batch of letters came by the mid-day post, letters from strangers and friends, all warmly testifying as usual to her genius; and as she read she sighed heavily and wondered what was the use of it all?

‘They do not know I am dead!’ she said to herself, ‘That all my life is done with—finished! If I had never known the meaning of love; if I had never thought and believed that love was truly mine, how much better it would have been for me! I should have worked on contentedly; I should not have missed what I had no experience of, and I might—yes, I might have been really great. Now there is no hope for any more attainment—Love has murdered me!’

She rested in bed all day, dozing and dreaming and thinking; all night between the slow-pacing hours she had long waking intervals of strange, half-troubled, half-mystic musings. She saw herself, so she imagined, dead;—laid out in her coffin with flowers round her; but as she looked at her own stiffened corpse she knew it was not herself, she thus saw, but only the image of what she had been. She, Delicia, was another being—a being through whose fine essence light and joy were flowing. She fancied she heard sweet voices murmuring in her ears,—

‘Sorrowful Delicia! Slain Delicia! This is not thine end—work has but begun for thee, though earth has no more part in either thy toil or pleasure! Come, Delicia! Love is not dead because of human treachery; Love is immortal, unconquerable, unchangeable, and waits for thee elsewhere, Delicia! Come and see!’

And so persistently was she haunted by the impression that something new and strange awaited her, that almost unconsciously to herself she began to be expectant of a sudden change in her destinies, though what that change might be she could not by herself determine.

When she rose from her bed to resume her daily work an idea flashed upon her,—an idea bold and new, and suggesting itself forcibly for brief and brilliant literary treatment. Seized by this fresh inspiration, she shut herself up in her study and worked day after day, forgetting her own troubles in the fervour of creative energy. She saw no visitors and went nowhere; her morning ride was all the relaxation she permitted herself; and she grew paler and paler as she toiled unremittingly with her pen, and lived a life of almost unbroken solitude all through the height of the London ‘season.’ The people one calls by courtesy ‘friends,’ grew tired of leaving cards which were not responded to, and ‘society’ began to whisper that ‘it was rather singular, my dear, that Lord Carlyon should suddenly have left London and gone by himself to Paris, while that extremely peculiar wife of his remained at home shut up as closely as if she had the small-pox.’ ‘Perhaps she had the small-pox,’ suggested the Noodle section of opinion, deeming the remark witty. Whereupon Lady Brancewith, joining in the general chitter-chatter, ventured upon the scathing observation that ‘if she had, it would make her more popular in society, as no one could then be angry with her for her good looks.’ Which suggestion was voted ‘charming’ of Lady Brancewith; and ‘so generous of Lady Brancewith, being so lovely herself, to even consider for a moment in a favourable light the looks of a “female authoress!”—quite too sweet of Lady Brancewith!’

And the inane whispering of such tongues as wag without any brains to guide them went on and on, and Delicia never heard them. Her old friends, the Cavendishes, had left London for Scotland—they hated the ‘season’ with all the monotony of its joyless round—so that there was no one in town whom she particularly cared to see, And, like the enchanted ‘Lady of Shalott,’ she sat in her own small study weaving her web of thought, or, as her husband had once put it, ‘spinning cocoons.’

Only on one special day was there a break in her self-imposed routine. This occurred when two elderly gentlemen of business-like demeanour arrived carrying small black bags. They were lawyers, and were shown up to the famous author’s study at once, where they remained in private converse with her for the greater part of the afternoon.

When they came down again to the dining-room, where wine and biscuits were prepared for their refreshment, Delicia accompanied them; her face was very pale, yet calm, and she had the look of one whose mind has been relieved of an oppressive burden.

‘You have made everything quite clear now, have you not?’ she asked gently, as she dispensed the wine to her visitors with her usual hospitable forethought and care.

‘Perfectly so,’ responded the elder of the two legal men; ‘And if you will permit me to say so, I congratulate you, Lady Carlyon, on your strength of mind. Had the other will remained in force, your hardly-earned fortune would have soon been squandered.’

She answered nothing. After a little pause she spoke again.

‘You quite understand that, in the event of my death, you yourself take possession of my last manuscript, and place it personally in the hands of my publishers?’

‘Quite so. Everything shall be carried out in exact accordance with your instructions.’

‘You think,’ she went on hesitatingly—‘that I have given him enough to live upon?’

‘More than enough—more than he deserves, said the lawyer. ‘To be the possessor of two hundred and fifty a year for life is a great advantage in these days. Of course,’ and he laughed a little, ‘he’ll not be able to afford tandem-driving and the rest of his various amusements, but he can live comfortably and respectably if he likes. That is quite sufficient for him.’

‘He has already a sum in his own private bank, which, if placed at interest, will bring him in more than another hundred,’ said Delicia, meditatively. ‘Yes, I think it is sufficient. He cannot starve, and he is sure to marry again.’

‘But you talk as if you were going to leave us at once and for ever, Lady Carlyon,’ and the old lawyer looked somewhat concerned as he observed the extreme pallor of her face and the feverish splendour of her eyes. ‘You will live for many and many a long day yet to enjoy the fruit of your own intellectual labours—’

‘My dear sir, pray do not talk of my “intellectual labours!” In the opinion of my husband and of men generally, especially unsuccessful men, these very labours have rendered me “unsexed.” I am not a woman at all, according to their idea! I have neither heart nor feeling. I am simply a money-making machine, grinding out gold for my “lord and master” to spend.’

Her lawyer looked distressed.

‘If you remember, I told you some time back that I thought you were unaware of your husband’s extravagance,’ he said. ‘I put it as “extravagance,”—because I was unwilling to convey to you all the rumours I had actually heard. Men are naturally fickle; and my experience is that they always take benefits badly, thinking all good fortune their right. You made a mistake, I consider, to trust Lord Carlyon so completely.’

‘What would you have of me?’ asked Delicia, simply. ‘I loved him!’

There followed a silence. Nothing could be said to this, and the two men of the law munched their biscuits and drank their wine hastily, conscious of a sudden excitement stirring in them,—a strange impulse, moving them both to the desire of thrashing Lord Carlyon, which would be an action totally inconsistent with legal custom and procedure. But the sight of the fair, grave, patient woman who had worked so hard, who held such a high position of fame, and who was so grievously wronged in her private life, had a powerful effect upon even the practical and prosaic disposition of the two men born to considerations of red tape and wordy documents; and when they took their leave of her it was with a profound deference and sympathy which she did not fail to notice. Another time their evident interest and kindliness would have moved her, but now she was so strung up with feverish excitement and eagerness to finish the work she had begun, that external things made very little impression upon her.

She returned to her writing with renewed zest; Spartan was her chief companion; and only her maid Emily began to notice how ill she was looking. She had intended to consult a doctor about her health; but, absorbed in her work, she put it off from day to day, promising herself that she would do so when her book was finished. She received no news whatever from her husband; he was trying the effect of a lengthy absence and sustained silence on her always sensitive mind.

And so the days went on, through all bright June and the warm beginning of July, till one morning she entered her room prepared to write the last portion of what she instinctively felt and knew would lift her higher among the cold pinnacles of fame than she had ever been. She was aware of a soft lassitude upon her,—a sense of languor that was more delightful than unpleasing; the beautiful repose that distinguishes a studious and deeply-thinking mind, which had been hers in a very great degree before her marriage, when, as single-hearted Delicia Vaughan, she had astonished the world by her genius, came back to her now, and the clouds of trouble and perplexity seemed suddenly to clear and leave her life as blank and calm and pure as though the shadow of a false love had never darkened it. The sun fell warmly across her desk, flickering over the pens and paper; and Spartan stretched himself full length in his usual place in the window-nook with a deep sigh of absolute content. And with radiance in her eyes and a smile on her lips, Delicia sat down and wrote her ‘conclusion.’ Her brain had never been clearer,—thoughts came quickly, and with the thoughts were evoked new and felicitous modes of expression, which wrote themselves, as it were, without an effort on her own part.

Suddenly she started to her feet;—a great and solemn sound was in her ears, like the stormy murmur of a distant sea, or the beginning of a grand organ chant, gravely sustained. Listening, she looked wildly up at the dazzling sunlight streaming through her window pane. What strange, what distant Glory did she see, that all the light and all the splendour of the summer day should seem, for that one moment, to be mirrored in her eyes? Then—she gave a sharp, choking cry, ...

‘Spartan! Spartan!’

With one bound the great dog obeyed the call, and sprang up against her, putting his huge, soft paws upon her breast. Convulsively she clasped them close,—as she would have clasped the hands of an only friend,—and fell back heavily in her chair—dead!

* * * * *

So they found her an hour later,—her cold hands still holding Spartan’s rough paws to her bosom,—while he, poor faithful beast, imprisoned in that death-grip, sat patiently watching his mistress with anxious and loving eyes, waiting till she should wake. For she looked as if she had merely fallen asleep for a few minutes; a smile was on her lips,—the colour had not quite left her face,—and her body was yet warm. For some time no one dared touch the dog, and only at last by dint of sheer force and close muzzling could they drag him away and lock him up in the yard, where he filled the surrounding neighbourhood with his desolate howling. He was ‘only a dog;’ he had not the beautiful reasoning ability of a man, who is able to console himself easily for the death of friends by making new ones. He had a true heart, poor Spartan! It is an unfashionable commodity, and useless, too, since it cannot be bought or sold. And when all the newspapers had headings—‘Death of Delicia Vaughan,’ with accounts of the ‘sudden heart failure,’ which had been the cause of her unexpected end, Lord Carlyon returned in haste to town to attend the funeral and to hear the will. But he found his presence scarcely needed,—for the great public, seized by a passionate grief for the loss of one of its favourite authors, took it upon itself to make the obsequies of this ‘unsexed’ woman as imposing as any that ever attended king or emperor. Thousands followed the coffin to the quiet Mortlake cemetery, where Delicia had long ago purchased her own grave; hundreds among these thousands wept, and reminded each other of the good actions, the many kindnesses that had made her suddenly-ended life a blessing and consolation to the sick and the afflicted, and many wondered where they should again find so true and sympathetic a friend. And when it came to be publicly known that all her fortune, together with all future royalties to be obtained from her books, was left in equal shares among the poverty-stricken of certain miserable London districts, with full and concise instructions as to how it was to be paid and when,—then callous hearts melted at the sound of her name, and eyes unaccustomed to weeping shed soft tears of gratitude and spoke of her with a wondering tenderness of worship and reverence as though she had been a saint. The Press made light of her work, and had scarce a word of sympathy for her untimely demise; their general ‘tone’ being that adopted by the late Edward Fitzgerald, who wrote of one of England’s greatest poets thus:—‘Mrs Barrett Browning is dead. Thank God we shall have no more “Aurora Leighs!”’ It is the usual manner assumed by men who have neither the brain nor the feeling to write an ‘Aurora Leigh’ themselves. All the same, the public ‘rushed,’ in its usual impulsive fashion, for the last book Delicia had written, and when they got it, such a chorus of enthusiasm arose as entirely overwhelmed the ordinary press cackle and brought down the applauding verdict of such reasoning readers and sober judges who did not waste their time in writing newspaper paragraphs. Delicia’s name became greater in death than in life; and only one person spoke of her with flippant ease and light disparagement; this was her husband. His indignation at finding her fortune entirely disposed of among ‘charities’ was too deep and genuine to be concealed. He considered his allowance of two hundred and fifty a year an ‘insult,’ and he became an ardent supporter of the tyrannic theories of the would-be little Nero of Germany, who permits a law to be in active force which unjustly provides that all the earnings of wives shall belong to their husbands. He considered the painter-poet-composer-autocrat of the Fatherland an extremely sensible person, and wished such a law might be carried into effect in England. He forgot all Delicia’s tenderness, all her beauty, all her intelligence, all her thoughtfulness and consideration for his personal comfort; and all her love counted as nothing when set against the manner in which he considered he had been ‘done’ in the results of his marriage with an ‘unsexed’ woman of genius. But gradually, very gradually, by some mysterious means, probably best known to Lady Brancewith, who had never forgiven the slight inflicted on her by his look and manner when he suddenly refused to drive home with her after promising to do so, rumour began to whisper the story of his selfishness, and to comment upon it.

‘He had committed no crime. Oh, no,’ said society, beginning to waver in its former adoration of his manly perfections, ‘but he broke his wife’s heart! Yes, that was it! How he did it nobody quite knew; there was something about the “Marina” woman at the “Empire,” but nothing was quite certain. Anyhow, she died very suddenly, and Lord Carlyon was away at the time.’

And as people nowadays hardly ever express regret for a person’s death, but immediately ask ‘What money has been left behind?’ the gossips had ample food for reflection, in the fact that nearly forty thousand pounds was Delicia’s legacy to the poor.

‘She must have had a very noble nature,’ said the world at last, when the shrieking pipe of irritated criticism had died away, and when from the dark vista of death Delicia’s star of fame shone clear, ‘Her husband was not worthy of her!’

And Paul Valdis, stricken to the soul with a grief beyond expression, heard this great verdict of the world finally pronounced, with an anguish of mind, and a despair as tragic as that of Romeo when he found his lady in her death-like sleep.

‘Too late, too late! My love, my darling!’ he groaned in bitterness of spirit. ‘What is it worth, all this shouting of praise over your silent grave? Oh, my Delicia! All you sought was love; so little to ask, my darling, so little in return for all the generous overflow of your gifted soul! If you could have loved me; but no! I would not have had you change your nature; you would not have been Delicia had you loved more than once!’

And his eyes rested tenderly on the wistful companion of his musing, Spartan, who had been left to his care in a very special manner, with a little note from Delicia herself, which was delivered to him by her lawyers and which ran thus:—

‘DEAR FRIEND,—Take care of Spartan. He will be contented with you, for he loves you. Please console him and make him happy for my sake. DELICIA.’

Valdis knew that little letter by heart; it was more priceless to him than any other worldly possession.

‘Spartan,’ he said now, calling the faithful animal to his side and taking his shaggy, massive head between his hands, ‘Out of the whole world that calls our Delicia “famous,” the world that has gained new beauty, hope and joy from the blossoming of her genius,—only you and I loved her!’

Spartan sighed. He had become a melancholy, meditative creature, and his great brown eyes were often suffused with tears. Had he been able to answer his new master then, he might have said,—

‘Honesty is an ordinary quality in dogs, but it is exceptional in men. Dogs love and are faithful; men desire, and with possession are faithless! Yet men, so they say, are higher in the scale of creation than dogs. I do not understand this. If truth, fidelity and devotion are virtues, then dogs are superior to men; if selfishness, cunning and hypocrisy are virtues, then men are certainly superior to dogs! I cannot argue it out, being only a dog myself; but to me it seems a strange world!’

And truly it is a strange world to many of us, though perhaps the strangest and most incomprehensible part of the whole mystery is the perpetual sacrifice of the good to the bad, and the seeming continual triumph of conventional lies over central truths. But, after all, that triumph is only ‘seeming’; and the martyrdom of life and love endured by thousands of patiently-working, self-denying women will bring its own reward in the Hereafter, as well as its own terrific vengeance on the heads of the callous egotists among men who have tortured tender souls on the rack, or burnt them in the fire, making ‘living torches’ of them, to throw light upon the wicked deeds done in the vast arena of Sensualism and Materialism. Not a tear, not a heart-throb of one pure woman wronged shall escape the eyes of Eternal Justice, or fail to bring punishment upon the wrong-doer! This we may believe,—this we MUST believe,—else God Himself would be a demon and the world His Hell!

THE END

Colston & Coy., Limited, Printers, Edinburgh.