“Je vis le lendemain non plus au bord de l’ondeMais assise au chemin la jeune fille blonde!Je vis qu’ils étaient deux—A! deux âmes sont joyeuse!Comme il était heureux! Comme elle était heureuse!Et moi, dans mon bonheur—de les voir si contentJe me mis a pleurer! Comme on pleure à vingt ans!Et moi! dans mon bonheur—de les voir si contentJe me mis a pleurer! Comme on pleure à vingt ans!”
“Je vis le lendemain non plus au bord de l’ondeMais assise au chemin la jeune fille blonde!Je vis qu’ils étaient deux—A! deux âmes sont joyeuse!Comme il était heureux! Comme elle était heureuse!Et moi, dans mon bonheur—de les voir si contentJe me mis a pleurer! Comme on pleure à vingt ans!Et moi! dans mon bonheur—de les voir si contentJe me mis a pleurer! Comme on pleure à vingt ans!”
“Je vis le lendemain non plus au bord de l’ondeMais assise au chemin la jeune fille blonde!Je vis qu’ils étaient deux—A! deux âmes sont joyeuse!Comme il était heureux! Comme elle était heureuse!Et moi, dans mon bonheur—de les voir si contentJe me mis a pleurer! Comme on pleure à vingt ans!Et moi! dans mon bonheur—de les voir si contentJe me mis a pleurer! Comme on pleure à vingt ans!”
Lord Delaval—fanatico per la musica—listens enthralled as the last sweet, sad, soft notes die away on his ear.
Once more shouts of “Margueritela Blonde aux yeux noir!” fill the house with deafening roar, and coming closer to the footlights with a beaming smile on her scarlet lips, for the first time her eyes fallon the box where Delaval sits leaning forward.
Her glance rests an instant upon him. She utters a sharp cry, her face through its rouge turns ghastly white, and Marguerite Ange drops senseless on the floor.
In a moment, however, the curtain falling, hides her from view.
“What ails her?” cries Shropshire, as much concerned as if he had not his Countess—(for whom he has gone through a good deal)—demanding his allegiance and fidelity.
“It’s the infernal excitement of all the noise that’s done her up,” Silverlake says. “Isn’t she more like a witch than a woman? She’d take the heart out of a man whether he would or no!”
But Delaval answers nothing. His face is very pale, and there is a queer dazed lookin his eyes which is foreign to them, and a shiver passes over his whole frame as the manager comes forward, announcing that Mademoiselle Ange having recovered her indisposition, will sing again.
After a few minutes she comes forward and sings a short but passionate love song, in which her voice falters, and tears glitter in her magnificent eyes.
The cheers and cries from the motley audience would have gladdened the ears of the greatest Diva that ever lived. And they bring triumph to the heart of this woman, a mighty triumph that gleams from her glance as she fixes one long look on Delaval’s face when she makes her final curtsey and retires.
“What sort of a woman is this Marguerite Ange?” Lord Delaval asks carelessly, though he is conscious that his heartthrobs a little faster than usual as he awaits the answer. “She’s not over particular, is she?”
“Particular,” laughs Shropshire, “did you ever know an Alcazar songstress particular? You might as well expect prudery from Rose Stanley at the Holborn, or from little Kitty Mortimer at the Pavilion. Do you imagine her salary at the Alcazar pays for her charmingau premierin the Rue Tronchet, her carriage andhaute ecolecattle, the jewels and laces and velvets that are the very soul and essence of the beautiful Marguerite. Sapristi! You must have forgotten the world and its ways.”
“And the parable of the lamb and the wolves,” Silverlake adds. “I defy any woman making head against the current of lovers that Marguerite has.”
“I might have known it! They are all alike, these women,” Delaval mutters savagely through his set teeth.
“Understand, I don’t mean to hint a word against her morals, in fact, the Ange is extra proper. She always goes about with the most hideous of duennas. But she’s the very devil with men—twists them round her fingers—fools them to any extent—cleans them out and then throws them overboard. Young Valentin de Brissac blew his brains out about her last week, and not very long ago Jules de Grammont Charleville, a capital fellow, and one of the Faubourg St. Germain Charleville’s, went to the bad—took to drinking like a madman—tried to shoot her, and has got five years for it. The Ange is as hard as granite, as calculating as a Jew, and as vain as—well—I reallycan’t find anything to compare with her vanity.”
“Where did you say she lived, Shropshire?”
Shropshire looks at him and elevates his eyebrows, while Silverlake bursts out laughing.
This is the model Benedict all London has talked about!
“I thought you’d soon tire of domestic bliss and look out for pastures new,” Shropshire says. “Well—well—Marguerite won’t have anything to say to me, so I won’t be a dog in the manger, but wish you success. She lives at Number 17 Rue de Tronchet, just close to the Madelaine, you know.”
“Thanks.”
And Delaval, leaving his companions,saunters towards the Champs Elysèes instead of going home.
It is a lovely night. There is no moon, but myriads of stars cluster overhead, and somehow the quiet and the stillness of midnight are pleasant to him. He has quite made up his mind to see Marguerite Ange again.
It is not because he has fallen in love with her, far from it. The feeling she has inspired in him has at present, at any rate, no particle of love in it, but something draws him on to seeing her—to speaking to her—to saving her from a path thatmustlead to perdition.
And he smiles almost bitterly at such a feeling possessing him about a singing woman at the Alcazar!
By and by, when the air has cooled his hot temples a little, and the oppressive sortof spell this evening has brought him disperses somewhat, he goes back to the hotel and enters the room where Zai lies fast asleep. How pretty she looks to his feverish eyes! The purity and sweetness of her face come like a glimpse of blue sky after a storm. She is happy, too, for her red lips part in a smile as she clasps her child close to her heart.
Lord Delaval stoops down and kisses her so softly that she never stirs. He is a worshipper of female beauty, and here before him—within his grasp—lies as fair a woman as ever was made to please the eyes of man. His wife—his own! a legitimate object for love and passion and admiration.
But men’s hearts are perverse things.
Noiselessly as he entered he steals away again to the adjoining room, and withoutundressing, flings himself into an armchair.
Here the break of dawn finds him—still sleepless, but lost in a waking dream of “La Blonde aux yeux noir.”
“A year divides us—love from love,Though you love now, though I loved then,The gulf is straight, but deep enough,Who shall recross—who among menShall cross again?”
“A year divides us—love from love,Though you love now, though I loved then,The gulf is straight, but deep enough,Who shall recross—who among menShall cross again?”
“A year divides us—love from love,Though you love now, though I loved then,The gulf is straight, but deep enough,Who shall recross—who among menShall cross again?”
“Youcame in very late last night, darling,” Zai says, a little reproachfully, as she sitsen peignoir—but apeignoirdaintily got up, with Valenciennes and pink ribbons, and looks divinely fair at the head of the breakfast-table.
“There was a carriage accident on the Boulevard, and I helped the occupants to get out,” he answers.
It is the first falsehood he has uttered to his wife, and in spite of him a tinge of red sweeps across his fair skin, to hide which he buries his face in his coffee-cup.
“Were the occupantsladies?” Zai asks, with a sensation of incipient jealousy.
She has learned to think this husband of hers so superbly handsome and irresistible that she believes all other women must consider him so likewise.
“Yes, ladies—oldladies, going home from some concert. They were terribly frightened, poor old girls,” he says, coolly.
“And how did you amuse yourself, darling?—and did you talk to anyone?”
“Why, you’ve grown into the Grand Inquisitor, my pet! I went to the theatre and I talked to Shropshire and Silverlake.”
“Thosemen!” she says with a littlemoue. “They are dreadfully fast, are they not, Delaval?”
“So so!”
“Were Lady Shropshire and Lady Silverlake there?”
“Oh, no!—the husbands are doing Parisen garçon.”
“How very horrid!” she decides. “Youwouldn’t care to go abouten garçon, would you, my own?”
“Certainlynot,” he answers fervently.
But he has made up his mind to go outen garçonall the same.
“And how’s baby?” he inquires unctuously, in the hope of turning the subject.
“He’s very well. I am sure he has grown half-an-inch in the last few days, and I really think he tried to say ‘pa—pa’ this morning, Delaval!”
“Did he really! Dear little chap!”
“Yes! and Madame Le Blanc tells me that she has been a monthly-nurse for thirty years, and that its the first time she has ever heard a child of two months-and-a-half pronounce so plainly!”
“Why the little chap must be the infant prodigy! Pity he’s so beastly red!”
“Red, Delaval! Why he’s exactly like Dresden China!” she replies, with intense mortification.
He gives a forced laugh. Then he pushes his plate away, with the devilled kidneys untouched, for he has no appetite. And leaning back in his chair, looks at his wife.
And he comes to the conclusion that he ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself.
There she is, facing him. Could any creature of mortal mould be sweeter, lovelier, purer, more adorable?
And yet!
These are two little words that carry more meaning in them than all the long, grandiose phrases in the Queen’s English. These two little words, indefinite as they seem, show exactly what a man’s mind is when it oscillates ’twixt right and wrong. Zai is undeniably charming, but she is not—la Blonde aux yeux noir!
She lacks the power to inflame the heart of the million. Her soft, dove-like eyes, cannot burn into men’s brains and souls like the dangerous but glorious black ones of Marguerite Ange!
“What piece did you see last night, Delaval?”
It is a poser. For one moment Lord Delaval, with the impatience and dislike of being catechised, which is natural to him, has a mind to speak the truth, and tell his wife that this morning he is not up to smalltalk. But he thinks better of it, and is equal to the occasion.
“A piece calledLa Tentation, darling! A thing in which there was a lot of love-making and smiling and bowing, and a woman, supposed to be an angel—but probably she is a devil,” he adds, almostsotto voce.
“Was she pretty?”
“Tol lol! You can’t tell what an actress is like on the stage, you know!”
“I hope you won’t find out what she is like off the stage!” Zai says earnestly. “Actresses are such bad, dangerous women, sometimes!”
“And how aboutactors?”
The shot goes home, for she flinches and flushes a little, and he is rather sorry he has said this. It was snobbish, perhaps! But when a man wishes to stop his wife’smouth, he must do it the best way he can. Zai will not pursue the subject of Theatres and Thespians after his cut, he thinks. But he is wrong. She flushed more from a wounded feeling at his manner and tone than from the reference to her old lover, for whom she has the most profound indifference now.
“Have you heard anything about Trixy, Delaval?” she asks, in a low, humble voice. She is very much ashamed of this sister of hers, and scarcely likes mentioning her name before the man she not only loves but honours.
“Yes. Stubbs has got a divorce. Poor old chap! It appears that he was awfully cut up; had a fit, and nearly died. He wanted her to go back to him, and promised never to breathe a word of recrimination; but when he found she wouldn’t, he got adivorce, and gave that scoundrel Conway a bill at six months for ten thousand pounds provided he married her! Of course, the money was too much for the fellow; so the marriage will come off by-and-by.”
“And where is Trixy now?”
“Living at Hammersmith; dining at Richmond and the Orleans with all the fast men; dressing to the nine, and making herself the talk of town. She has quite forgotten the word more familiar to her youth than her Bible—convenances; but what can be expected? If a girl is innately bad, no power on earth can keep her straight.”
“But Trixy was not innately bad,” Zai murmurs, deprecatingly. “She married a man she could not love, and then—she yielded to——”
“The fascinations of Mr. Conway! Joygo with her! Men are not fair judges of their own sex, but if I was a woman, I should prefer old Stubbs to a dozen Conways!”
“And so should I—now,” Zai confesses meekly. “What a pity women have not the gift ofclair-voyance!”
“Thank God, they haven’t!” he says to himself, as he rises, and walking up to the mirror on the mantel, looks at himself. “I wonder what Mademoiselle Ange saw in me to make her faint? It could not have been myugliness!” he thinks, as the glass reflects back his handsome face—a face which heknowsto be handsome and irresistible to most women.
Then he turns away carelessly—for he is not a vain man—and going up to his wife kisses her on her forehead.
But Zai is not satisfied with this.
“Won’t you kiss me properly, darling?” she says, holding up her fresh, red lips.
And her darling kisses her “properly,” though all the while he is wronging her in his heart, on the principle that sins ofomissionare as bad as sins ofcommission!
“Take hands and part with laughter,Touch lips and part with tears,Once more, and no more after,Whatever comes with years.We twain shall not remeasureThe ways that left us twain,Nor crush the lees of pleasureFrom sanguine grapes of pain.”
“Take hands and part with laughter,Touch lips and part with tears,Once more, and no more after,Whatever comes with years.We twain shall not remeasureThe ways that left us twain,Nor crush the lees of pleasureFrom sanguine grapes of pain.”
“Take hands and part with laughter,Touch lips and part with tears,Once more, and no more after,Whatever comes with years.We twain shall not remeasureThe ways that left us twain,Nor crush the lees of pleasureFrom sanguine grapes of pain.”
Lord Delavalhas never let a desire of his remain ungratified in his life, so now, haunted by the beauty of a woman for the space of twenty-four hours, he resolves to make her acquaintance.
“Her sort are not very particular about theconvenances,” he says to himself as he approachesNumèro 17 Rue de Tronchet,but it must be confessed that his courage does not rear its crest much aloft as he rings the bell, and hears from theconciergethat “Mademoiselle Angeest chez elle.”
Still, though his mind is perturbed, his pulses throb, and there is a mingling of expectation and trepidation in his breast, if hisrealfeelings were finely analysed, it would be found that Mademoiselle’s beauty repels even while it attracts him to the point of looking on it closer.
Possibly the daylight may dissipate his delusion, he thinks. And he is conscious of a sort of half-hope, half-regret, that it may be so.
The apartment, into which he is ushered by Mademoiselle’s own smartsoubrette, disappoints him at once.
The decorations are florid and over-done. The big mirrors gleam too brightly on thesea-green of the walls, the vivid scarlet of the ottomans, the chairs, the velvet cushions, the too heavily perfumed atmosphere, the curious medley ofobjets d’art, individually costly, but making a strange and heterogeneous whole, all seem to his fastidious eyes as redolent of the Alcazar.
The sunbeams that fall through the rose-tinted blinds are studiously toned down to a pale mystic light, fit for the languor of magnificent, heavy-lidded eyes—a Marie Antoinette fan with a jewelled handle, a flacon ofesprit des millefleurs, a tiny handkerchief with a Chantilly border, a volume of De Musset’s poems, lie together, andbric-à-brac, rococo, ormolu, and Sèvres are heaped everywhere in picturesque confusion. If Mademoiselle Ange has ever desired to be grand, she has gained her desire.
While he waits, he wonders if the woman is really content, and whether these things are worth possessing at the price she has to pay for them.
“Gratified vanity goes a precious long way, so I suppose she is happy and satisfied,” he thinks with a sneer, and a sort of savage sensation in his heart, that he has not found her in a barely furnished room, devoid of luxury, and indicative of high moral worth.
It certainly is not marvellous thatLa Blonde aux Yeux Noirhas created a regular furore in Paris.
As the heavy red velvet portières are pushed aside, and she comes into the room, the sneer dies right away from his mouth, and he confesses that this woman is a thing to wonder at.
If she had struck him as beautiful in herdiaphanous robes, in her semi-nudity, with manacles of gold on her neck and arms, fit for an Eastern Satrap’s love, she strikes him as ten times more attractive in her day attire.
She wears a deep wine-coloured satin, covered with a profusion of lace; the bodice is cut square and the sleeves are open and hanging. Her throat and slender wrists gleam like the purest alabaster under the delicious rose-tinted light, and wine-coloured bands, studded with small but rare brilliants, go round them. Her hair, perfectly golden, falls in light bright curls above her dark straight brows, and is knotted carelessly, but artistically, in thick glossy coils at the back of her well-shaped head.
She is thoroughly well got up, she has made the most of herself in every particular,and yet she has the art of letting her magnificence seem part and parcel of herself, as if it belonged to her and was not a studied effect.
And one of Marguerite Ange’s attractions is that she looks so young; she cannot have reached one score to judge by her flawless face and her slender figure, which is all bends and curves without an angle in it.
“I scarcely dared to hope that youwouldcome and see me,” she says in French that is true Parisian, though Delaval has heard that she comes from Arles, the birth-place of beauty; and she holds out, rather deprecatingly, a slim white hand, which, of course, he clasps eagerly, a sharp thrill going through him as he does so.
“Why not?” he asks in as excellentFrench as her own. “Could I be the only man to resist the Queen of—Hearts?”
And his voice has certainly a fervour and a ring of truth about it, which perhaps gratifies her, for a little smile, savouring of triumph, crosses her lips.
She throws herself back among her vivid scarlet cushions, and makes a gesture to him to sit down beside her.
Then, for the first time, he grows conscious of the presence of a third person, an old woman, hideous as Hecuba, who has seated herself close to the portière.
“That’s the sheep-dog Shropshire spoke of,” he thinks.
“Madame Perchard, you can go for a walk if you like. It is a charming day, and it will do you good. Stay! you might call at the costumier’s, and desirethem to send the domino and mask for theBal de l’Operato-morrow.”
Madame Perchard, who looks as if she were well paid and well fed, smiles feebly and goes on her way, and the others are lefttête-à-tête.
If anyone had suggested two months ago that he would be seated in a dimly-lit room, side by side with a music-hall singer, Lord Delaval would probably have scouted the notion, and resented the speaker’s impertinence; but now it seems to him as if it is the most natural thing in the world that he should be here, at Marguerite Ange’s feet (mentally).
He turns, and looks into her beautiful eyes long and steadfastly, without speaking, until she, who has grown hardened to the boldest stare, reddens a little.
“Eh bien?” she says smiling, and hervoice startles him out of a reverie. He is not only thinking how exquisitely lovely she is, but taxing his brain once more to find outwhoshe resembles.
“I was dreaming, I believe, Mademoiselle Ange! Will you forgive me for coming here like this? My only excuse is that my heart was stronger than myself,” he says, in a low, passionate voice.
“I forgive you!” she answers. “Ah! you don’t know what I felt the other night when I first saw you. You are very like someone I once knew—someone I loved as women only love once in their lives!—someone who is dead to me, and when I saw you I fainted.”
So, this is why she fainted at sight of him—simply because he happens to resemble some sweetheart of other days. The idea is not flattering, and irritates him.Somehow, he had fancied that his own irresistible attractions had had an effect on her; but he cannot gaze on her and not soften at once.
“Mademoiselle Ange, why do you live this life?” he says abruptly.
“What harm is there in my life?” she asks. “It suits me!”
“It suits no woman to forfeit respect for admiration—modest life for public display; but what right have I to talk to you so? To what good can I talk? For,is it not a little too late?”
“You are very hard on me,” she falters. “Ah! I see you willneverlike me—for you are prejudiced!”
“What does it matter to you if I am prejudiced? After all, you could only care for my liking as you care for the liking of a dozen other men. Come—strangers almost though we are—tell me who is the most favoured amongst your worshippers! For, in spite of being prejudiced, I have felt a great interest in you ever since I first looked on your face.”
She glances up at him, and the colour deepens on her cheek.
“Why should you take an interest in me? I am only a poor artist, and quite belowyournotice,” she answers, with a sort of proud humility.
“You would not say that if you knew how much I have thought about you,howyour face has haunted me. It has bewitched me—malgre moi—I think. Do you know, Mademoiselle Ange, that if I am like someone you knew, you are strangely like someone I have seen; someone who certainly was not so beautiful asyou are, or I should remember her to my cost,” he adds softly.
She flushes still deeper as she listens, then turns the subject by saying lightly:
“And what am I to tell you about myself? Only that I have a great deal of admiration and very little love! Perhaps you will think that is all I ought to expect, being myself! But really I don’t believe anyone has everloved me!”
“It would indeed, be strange if they hadn’t,” he replies, unable to remove his gaze from her. “You are deceiving yourself or deceivingme. You are not one to be seen and not loved—madly loved! No matter the dire results of it!” he cries eagerly, and her lids droop under the infinite passion of his eyes.
“It is very hard to tell the real from the sham in love, and in everything elseI don’t take the trouble to try; I class them all together, and value them at just as much as they are worth,” she says with a low laugh. “You asked me which of them I liked best—noone; but somehow, though I only saw you two nights ago,youseem to stand apart from the rest, you are differentto me! You won’t be ashamed to come here now and then? I am not agrande duchesse, but still——”
“I’ll come till you tire of me. I am afraid that will betoo soon. You women are so capricious, especially lovely ones.”
“To everyone else, perhaps, butnever to you!” she almost whispers, looking right into his eyes now with a yearning, wistful look that might make him lose his head, and he feels already that the best thing he can do is not to see Mademoiselle Ange again.
But what man has the strength of mind to resist a sudden and violent passion like this? He thinks, as he gazes infatuated on her, of some splendidly plumaged bird, of a mirage in the desert, of heavily scented exotics, of burning skies, or rather hefeelsall this, for her prerogative is to inspire sensation. To look at her is a species of moral dram drinking, and she stands in comparison to better, purer women, women like Zai, as brandy stands to weak wine and water.
“If Rubens had seen this girl,” Delaval says to himself, “he would not have sent down for all time a burlesque upon this splendid red and white, this fleshly magnificence!”
“Do you know I had an instinct when I saw you the other night? I believed you were my fate,” she says in a dreamyvoice, but so suddenly that he starts a little.
Itisstartling to think that he should in any way be connected with the fate of this exquisite woman.
As she sits here before him, her hands clasped loosely together, a sort of abandon in her lovely figure, the light throws up richer gold on her hair, the soft folds of her satin gown fall round her moulded form like the robes of an empress, and he almost groans as he realises how impossible it would be to choose a life for one gifted with such rare physical beauty, that would not be hedged round with ten thousand dangers.
He shudders as he feels that this gift of beautymustbe a curse, dragging her downwards.
“Iyour fate? God knowswhatyourfate will be! You must have been mad to choose such an awful life.”
“Because you think me pretty, you say that! What is the use of being good-looking if it can bring me none of the nice things I desire? I might as well be ugly and old and senseless, if I had to be shut up within the narrow limits of most women’s lives. How could I gain power, the appreciation which is my due, if the public do not see me and judge for themselves? I wanted to be rich and I am so; I wanted to ride in carriages like I have seen women do, whose beauty has paled beside mine. What women care to live always in insignificance, obscurity, and, worst of all, inpoverty?” she asks simply.
Lord Delaval is too muchhomme du mondeto shrink from her when she says all this—when she breathes a creed utterly antagonistic to the training ofgoodwomen. He does not revolt even from the evidently hard realism of her nature; the manner in which she seems to appraise and value her own attractions, setting no store on the beauty which womanly women hold as a gift beyond price, but only as a means of winning money, makes him regard her with a curious feeling that has no repulsion in it.
“Marguerite,” he says—he has already come to her Christian name, but among her class this is so common that she probably never even notices it. “Tell me, have you no heart, no feeling, that you talk so strangely?”
“DoI talk strangely?” she asks with a bewildering smile. “Do I differ so much in my words and ways from your high-bornEnglish misses—the women who live in what you call your May Fair, your Belgravia, who sell themselves for gold? I have heard that it is the trade, the profession, of those ladies very often to lay themselves out to win some man, no matter how old he is, how ugly he is, so that he is rich! And then they give themselves in exchange for money or title. But it is a fair bargain, is it not so? So much flesh and blood for so much gold, and your aristocratic world smiles on them and honours them, while it and you condemn such poor girls as I, who only use my youth and good looks in the pursuit of my profession. There is only one difference you see, the matrimonial market is not open to such as me with my soiled name, so I am obliged to try and make a name and reputation for myself.”
As he listens to her he wonders how a music-hall singer has learned the astute wisdom of the world, how words flow to her lips so easily, how, in spite of the surroundings of her daily life, her voice is so sweet and low and soft, her manner so well-bred, her language so refined.
“You say I have no heart, no feeling?” she goes on, drawing nearer him and placing her hand upon her breast with a melo-dramatic air, “but what have I to do with such things? Who has ever taught me what love means? Cruelty and insult I have suffered. Once—ah! I nearly died because he whom I adored, trampled on my heart as if it had been dust beneath his feet! But that is past and gone. I forgive him and I do not resent it, but love him still. Love, you know, like one gives to the dead. No! Respect and tenderness tome are just empty sounds. Who in all this world ever cared whether I suffered, whether I lived or—died?No one!”
Her face glows with emotion, and he, as her wild, reckless words sweep over his ear, feels as if some spell was at work; the room seems to stifle him, and Marguerite’s great black eyes seem to blaze and burn into his brain.
“You see I am quite removed from the pale of men’s sympathy. I cannot find any happiness in the way other women find it. I am only a pariah—an outcast.”
“You say that you have no chances of happiness like other women have, that there are none who would care to marry you! You will find out your mistake some day, Marguerite. You will find that such a face as yours can win, not only admiration and love, but a husband,” he answers. Andhe actually believes that, if the Gordian knot was not already tied, there is no knowing what imprudence he might not commit for a creature as rarely lovely as this!
“Is that true?” she asks, lifting her head with a strange light in her eyes. “Would men who are far above me—like you, for instance—ever stoop to me?”
He half turns away from her. Perhaps his good angel is hovering near, for he comes to the conclusion that it may be best for her and best for himself if this interview comes to an end.
She seems to have the power of drawing him nearer and nearer to her every moment.
“When you know more of the world,” he says quietly, “mygreatness will diminish very greatly in your eyes, if it does notcease altogether. Why, you have raised me aloft, Marguerite, when you don’t even know my name or the class I belong to!”
She smiles rather bitterly, and a bright pink surges over her face.
“I know who you are—you are Lord Delaval!” she answers in a very low voice, that lingers a little over his name. “Your friends who were with you the other night told me.”
“Ah!” he says, “and did they tell you more about me than my name?” he asks eagerly, for somehow he is very averse to her knowing that he is married.
“No,” she replies. “Nothing. Wait! They did say that you were not married.”
He flushes and is silent a second.
“They told you the truth,” he says calmly, but, lax as he is, his conscience gives a throb of compunction at denyingthe existence of Zai—Zai, who loves him with every inch of her heart. “But Imustgo now. I have been here too long already, Marguerite,” he adds rather abruptly.
“You are going?” she asks regretfully, and a tear glistens on her lash. “Do you know I believe I shallneversee you again. Is this the only time—tell me the truth, it will be kinder!—that my eyes will look on your face?”
“No. Ofcoursewe shall meet again.”
“When?” she asks fervently.
“When? In a very few days, I trust.”
“Will you come here on Wednesday night to supper? Ah,do! Let me have some date to look forward to! Yet, no! Do not come! What use is it for us to meet again? Are you not as far removed from me as heaven from earth? as respectabilityfrom unrespectability? Say, is there not an obstacle between us two that we cannot surmount?”
Her lips are quivering. Her heart beats so loudly that he can almost count its throbs. Truly there is no acting in this. Marguerite has fallen in love with him at first sight, as he has done with her.
“There is no obstacle between us,” he whispers, once more denying his wife. “I will come on Wednesday.”
“You will?”
She holds out her hands to him, and as he clasps them closely, he bends his head and his lips nearly rest upon hers.
But it is only a passing madness. He is not quite lost yet. And Marguerite, as she looks up at him hastily, sees no trace of passion in his face.
When she is alone she kisses eagerly the hands he has held in his.
“He will come again, and again!” she says aloud. “He is not a man to stop at anything if inclination leads him. He spoke of mybeauty. Oh! how I thank Heaven for it now—nowthat I know it will give me my heart’s desire yet!”
“If one should love you with real love—Such things have been—Things that your fair face knows nothing ofIt seems—Faustine?. . . . . . . . . .“Curled lips, long since half kissed away,Still sweet and keen,You’d give him poison, shall we say?Or what—Faustine?”
“If one should love you with real love—Such things have been—Things that your fair face knows nothing ofIt seems—Faustine?. . . . . . . . . .“Curled lips, long since half kissed away,Still sweet and keen,You’d give him poison, shall we say?Or what—Faustine?”
“If one should love you with real love—Such things have been—Things that your fair face knows nothing ofIt seems—Faustine?. . . . . . . . . .“Curled lips, long since half kissed away,Still sweet and keen,You’d give him poison, shall we say?Or what—Faustine?”
Theyare much sought after, the little suppers that Mademoiselle Ange gives on Wednesday nights.
Dainty,récherchéfeasts, where the guests are chosen more for social than moral worth, and thecuisineis irreproachable.
Mademoiselle, with the tact of a hostess to the manner born, and thesavoir-fairethat she has learned goodness knows how, is careful that these small feasts shall savour rather of gay Bohemianism than the conventional dullness that some people deem inseparable from propriety.
But while she regulates the social element, she does not ignore sympathy between mind and body, and knowing that the nearest way to men’s hearts is through their palates, secures the services of a notedchef, who drives to the Rue Tronchet in his ownchicbrougham, and disburses himself of a hundred-guinea diamond ring before he commences the momentous operation of trussing an ortolan.
This Wednesday night most of the guests are assembled in thesalon.
Lounging on a sofa is a superb brunette,perfectly dressed and bejewelled. She is Leonide Leroux, a dramatic star both in Paris and London. By her side, languidly stroking his moustache, sits Ivan Scoboloff, a Russian baron with more money than brains. Beside these are little Rose Marigny, soubrette at the Theatre des Galléries, Monsieur Chavard, dramatic critic and author, and Louis, Marquis de Belcour, a good-looking giant and as rich as Crœsus.
Mademoiselle Ange is not herself to-night. Lovely, of course, but with the sparkle of her beauty lacking, as she reclines in a red velvet chair, in an artistic pose, and gives small heed to the little tittle-tattle around.
The last Parisian scandal is discussed, the lastmotof the coulisses related, but, contrary to her usual habit, Marguerite is evidentlydistraite, and every now and thenshe throws anxious glances towards the door.
The full light of the crystal chandelier falls upon the snowy white of her skin, the exquisite rose and opal tints of her lips and cheeks, and her large black eyes full of passion and fire.
The strongest glare can only show up her brilliance, and find no flaw or blemish in the marvellous colouring that looks as if it was Nature’s own handiwork.
All that the best Parisianmodistecan do has been done for her, and she is exceptionally well got up this evening; for she has abandoned her usual preference for gorgeous hues and costly heavy materials, and her trailing skirts of purest white fall in cloud-like masses round her as she leans back with the mien of a young empress. Opals and brilliants fasten the laces on herbosom, and a single tropical flower, with blood-red petals, gleams near her slender throat.
Suddenly a radiant light flashes in her restless eyes. Theportièreis held back, and Lord Delaval enters.
As he approaches, a vivid flush of pleasure surges over her lovely face, and, as he takes her hand, she says, in a low, reproachful voice:
“I feared so much you were not coming, but you have come! Will you take me in?”
He offers her his arm and at this moment catches sight of De Belcour, who is looking at him with ill-concealed jealousy and vexation. He has met this man before, a year or two ago, and nods recognition, then, turning towards his companion, forgets his existence.
Theportièreis drawn aside, and theyenter the supper-room. On the table are antique silver tripods holding rare hothouse flowers and richest fruit, vases of exquisite camellias of every colour are interspersed between, and the whole are lit up by the soft light of waxen tapers. The supper itself is one of those which has made Monsieur Hector a king ofchefs. Meats have lost their identity in the elaboration of the flavouring, cunning dishes are ingeniously devised to give zest to appetites already satiated. Rhenish of the rarest bouquet and Comet claret, tribute from the cellar of a youthful Duc, contribute to the hilarious enjoyment of the company.
The talk is animated, bright sallies and sharp repartee and racy anecdotes succeed one another, and amidst it all, pleasant as it is, Lord Delaval’s conscience rather smites him for being where he is, while De Belcourwaxes momentarily more wrathful at Mademoiselle Ange’s evident partiality for the comparative stranger—“ce milord Anglais!”
“Are these to-night’s spoils, Mademoiselle,” asks Ivan Scoboloff, taking a lovely red camellia bud from its vase and quietly putting it into his button-hole. “I believe all the conservatories are pillaged for your especial benefit, and you’ll turn Paris into a wilderness.”
“I am afraid my reign will last too short a while for that!” Marguerite laughs, but in a tone rather tinged with regret, as she carelessly plucks an exquisite Sofrano rose to pieces, that lies by her plate. “I am only the rage of an hour, the fashion of a season, you know!”
“If youdidlay Paris waste, what matter?” asks De Belcour, “and whilea laurel grows, you should have its tribute, for are you not the Queen of—Hearts?”
“I hate laurels, they are so gloomy, and I love flowers! though they are not so lasting! still I prefer them, and as for tributes, of course the praises of the public are for the singer and not for the woman! and I like it so. I love to be applauded when I sing. It is life and soul to me, but as for individual tributes, I don’t want them. I wonder why people pester me with baubles and withbillets doux. Heaven knows I would rather be without them!” She speaks contemptuously, her eyes are scornful, and it is easy to see that she is absolutely in earnest.
“How inscrutable is woman!” Delaval remarks, with a little of his old cynicism; “she despises the admiration she does all her best to inspire, and repudiates thepassion she has taken an immense trouble to create!”
“Inscrutable you call us?” Marguerite answers, her face sparkling with animation. “And yet you affect to read us so easily! We are not inscrutable, I think, but we are inconsistent perhaps—cold and passionate, selfish and self-denying, tender and heartless, kind and cold, a mixture of the serpent and the dove; gentle as a faithful hound when we love, fierce and relentless as the hawk to the quarry when we hate, or have cause for revenge!”
“A list of contradictions that prove youareinscrutable,ma belle!” observes Chavard, filling up his glass with Roussillion for the fifth time.
“I thoughtyouknew us better; it is your trade,” Marguerite says carelessly, peeling a peach whose bloom is less lovelythan her own. “I wonder when men who want to win our love will cease to woo us? The prize beyond a woman’s reach is always the most coveted; it has been so since Paradise; it will be so for all eternity!”
Her voice sinks lower as she says this, and there is quite a wistful look in her eyes as she turns them towards Delaval, that evinces them to be no affectation, but a true echo of her heart.
“Don’t let us talk of love,ma chère,” Leonide Leroux breaks in brightly. “It is the wettest blanket in the world. Love may be a charming companion, but we all know it is an intolerable master. It’s like this absinthe, delicious but dangerous; once let it get hold of you—eh bien!—the rest I know nothing about, but I have heard it is too terrible!”
“I cannot think what the devil people fall in love for,” Ivan Scoboloff murmurs languidly; “it’s an amusement that only suits boys and girls, but after five-and-twenty no sane man would think of such folly.”
“And yet I have seen you go in for it, although I fancy you have arrived at a little beyond twenty-five,” Chavard says quietly, with a meaning glance at Leonide Leroux.
“I am a girl, but I have never gone in for love,” Rose Marigny cries in her bird-like voice.
“That’s well done, Mademoiselle Rose; mind you keep to that. No love is half so sweet ascaramels à la vanilleormarrons glacés,” Mademoiselle Leroux answers, as she piles the above comestibles on her plate.
Meanwhile De Belcour joins very little in either conversation or laughter, and grows momentarily more ill at ease. Desperately jealous by nature, it irritates him almost beyond endurance to see Marguerite bestow her attention upon any other man.
Hitherto he has hugged to his bosom the notion that she is invariably cold—to him only she has been kind of late, and her kindness has made a great impression on him, simply from its contrast to the capricious manner she has towards others.
Is the love which he had begun to persuade himself she bore him nothing but a passing caprice after all—anamouretteof an hour—to be abandoned when it has lost the zest of freshness? Irritation, woundedamour propre, fiercejealousy, all mingle together in his breast and make a formidable whole when the fear creeps on him that the woman he loves to fatuous stupidity sets so little value on his feelings that she is ready to sacrifice it to the gratification of a passing whim, the transient excitement of a new conquest.
For what else, he argues, and not without reason on his side, can prompt her to look and speak to Lord Delaval with eyes and lips that too truly simulate a love she cannot possibly feel for him, stranger as he is?
Every word, every glance she gives, tortures this impassioned, impetuous Frenchman, and he determines to dog her steps and her house to find out the mystery that drives him wild.
“When’s the new play coming out,Chavard?” Scoboloff asks, gloating,gourmetas he is, on the lusciousness of an apricot before him.
Chavard has written a play which his clique declare will take Paris by storm, and, intolerably vain of his brains, he is of their opinion.
“In about a month or two,” he answers.
“Shocking bad time for that sort of thing, isn’t it? No one will be left in Paris.”
“No one at all to speak of—only about a couple of millions!”
“Keep your smartness for your play,mon cher. Of course I meant no one in Society.”
“I don’t mindthat. You swells are so phlegmatic, you see. Thecanaillelaugh, and clap, and hoot, and shout at my work, and thoroughly appreciate mypet points, but the golden youth sleep always, snore even, through my best situations.”
“Quite true!” cries Leonide Leroux. “I have often noticed them yawn when I have been dyingsobeautifully in the Sphinx. What makes swells so sleepy, I wonder?”
“Affectation—a littleennui—and a great deal of dinner,” says Chavard.
“Let us go into the drawing-room and have some music,” Marguerite suggests, feeling possibly that at the supper-table she and Lord Delaval are too muchen evidence.
So they all go, and Leonide Leroux sings themIl Baciodeliciously in a lovely soprano, while Marguerite lounges as usual in a large chair, and her eyes glance frequently at a group near the windowof smokers, and which is composed of Scoboloff, Delaval and Rose Marigny, who puffs away prettily at a daintySultan doux, and evidently is no novice in the accomplishment.
Presently De Belcour draws near his hostess—De Belcour, with half his beauty spoiled by scowling eyes and a frown on his brow.
“Why waste your glances on people who don’t appreciate them?” he asks, in a low voice that has a sullen ring in it.
She laughs, and does not answer, so he pulls viciously at his long moustache to vent his anger on something, since he is afraid to vent it on her.
“You spoke the truth at supper to-night, Marguerite, when you said to woo a woman was a sure way not to win her; and yet, poets rave about the softness andthe tenderness of women, and call them the link that unites earth with Heaven.Sapristi!for cold-blooded cruelty, for passionless devilment, a woman is to a man what a hawk is to a dove, a tigress to a tame cat!”
Marguerite elevates her pencilled brows slightly.
“I wish you would try and be less violent and abusive in your talk, Monsieur le Marquis: if youmusttalk to me, let the talk be endurable, anyway.”
He clenches his teeth to suppress the oath that rises to his lips.
“Marguerite! listen to me! Tell me, I implore of you, what spirit possesses you to-night? Is it your vanity, your love of fresh victories, that induces you to treat me like this? Marguerite, for the love of Heaven!—for the sake of what we havebeen to each other—do not make me suffer like this.”
But he might as well plead to a marble pillar.
“I wish you would go and smoke, and not talk nonsense,” she says, almost in a whisper, with a flush of annoyance on her cheek. “I only wishIcould smoke.”
“Ifthatis your only ambition, do it; most thingsend in smoke,” he replies meaningly and savagely; and while all this is going on, Lord Delaval watches her covertly, and it is dear incense to his vanity when he marks that De Belcour moves away from the evident contest, foiled and angry. “After all, perhaps Shropshire and Silverlake wronged her,” he thinks, and rather than the Frenchman shall monopolise her, he throws away hishalf-smoked cigar and saunters towards her.
Her eyes flash with pleasure as he approaches—her cheeks glow—and she listens enraptured to his voice.
Yes! It is evidently love at first sight with her, and to this man she is certainly not acting a part. As her sweet warm breath sweeps past him, he feels the sensuous delirium of a dream, he is intoxicated by the power of her beauty; and she, hard and cold as she really is, deadly in her revenge, cruel in her greed of love, relentless in her hate, her heart yearns to him with quite a real feeling, a feeling which, though wicked and worthless in itself, yet ennobles her to a certain extent, for it makes her feel her own utter unworthiness.
“Stay a few minutes,” she whispers, ashe rises among the other guests for his adieux.
And so he stays, but in his mind’s eye he sees his wife’s face, and—man of the world as he is, flirt,vaurien, lax to the last degree—his deep blue eyes actually glisten with generous remorse.
“Poor little woman!” he thinks. “By Jove! what an awful fool I was to come here.”
He calls himself a fool, but fool is a mild term to apply to a man who deliberately seeks temptation, knowing himself to be uncommonly weak in the flesh; nevertheless, he stays a little longer, and yet a little longer.
Marguerite Ange leans back in a pose that would drive a sculptor into a phrensy of delight. The fragrance of her golden hair goes out to him, and her charming red lips tempt dreadfully.
How he anathematises inwardly theconvenancesso dear to his mother-in-law’s heart!
The conventionalities (he does not dream of calling them by any more serious term) that bid him and her sit apart.
“It is growing very late, I am afraid,” he says, after a little.
“If it is, what matter?”
“I am afraid!”
“Afraid! Afraid of whom?”
“Afraid ofmyself,” he answers.
“Is that really true?”
“Quite,quitetrue, so help me Heaven! Marguerite, you don’treallydoubt me! Have you lived till now, and never learnt that a man often fears to try and climb to the highest pinnacle of his desire, be it for fame, or fortune, or bliss, lest he fall before he has tasted it. Don’tyou know what your face can do to a man?”
She shakes her head, and the bright light glistening on it seems to turn each tress to living gold.
“It can send him into a dream of Heaven! fire his soul with rapture, or drive him mad with disappointment and regret!”
He pauses, a little breathless. Sentiment is not a plant of common or spontaneous growth in our aristocracy, and it is not at all in Lord Delaval’s line.
The age is far too practical for it, more’s the pity.
He is, in fact, a little astonished at his flight of eloquence, mediocre though it be, and a little silence ensues.
Then Marguerite Ange leans forward, puts her white hand, all sparkling withgems, on his arm and looks up in his face.
He is certainly the handsomest man she has ever seen.
“Thelastwould never beyourfate,” she says, in a low, thrilling tone; but he hears her, of course. Trust a man, even if he is partially deaf, not to hear any sort of incense to his vanity, if he can hear nothing else; and this man is especially vain, from the top of his blond head to the sole of his well-made boot.
His ultramarine eyes kindle at once into great fires, and the red spots glow on his cheeks to match.
“Do you know what your face has done to me, Marguerite?” he asks slowly.
She does not reply, but somehow this face of hers seems to have come nearer him, and through a bewildered haze he seesnothing but a pair of lips, soft and maddening; a pair of eyes, black as midnight, lustrous as two stars, with a depth of passion in their liquid depths that stirs his pulse and makes his head whirl.
It is a picture that brings oblivion of everything, save of dangerous proximity.
“I told you a falsehood the other day, Marguerite, when I said I was not married. Iammarried! I have not been married two years, and I married forlove. My wife loves me with all her soul, and it would break her heart to lose me, and yet—Heaven forgive me!—I feel to-night as if Ihated her! because she seems to rise up between you and me.”
She averts her face, and a little smile passes quickly over her mouth—a smile that has triumph in it, a smile that is absolutelywicked.
“When I entered this house to-night something told me of the end. It seems utter folly for a man to go mad over a woman’s face like this, doesn’t it? But, Marguerite, itisso. Ihavegone mad, I believe, for, strangers as we were but three short days ago, I love you as Ineverloved anyone before! I swear it, Marguerite!”
She does not smile now at his rhapsody. She knows he is watching her, and he sees nothing but the sweetest, tenderest light in the wonderful eyes, a softer look on the perfect mouth.
“Strange!” she says simply, “that we should have felt the same to-night—that——”
“We?” he interrupts. “Say that again, Marguerite!”
“Yes! Did I not tell you the first time we spoke that you were—my fate!” AndMarguerite’s head is very close to his shoulder, and her lips seem to seek his. But she starts away hastily as De Belcour, unannounced, strides into the room.
“Pardon, Mademoiselle!” he says through his set teeth, “I forgot my gloves! I am sorry to have interrupted you.”
And Marguerite, forgetting the conventional smile which is one of the tricks of her trade, sits silent and a little uncomfortable.
“We may as well walk a little way together,” Lord Delaval says quietly. “Mademoiselle’s society is so charming, I really forgot the hour!”