CHAPTER XV
October 26th.
I knew something would happen. Messer Diavolo does not ride
whooping to no purpose by the windows of people whom he desires
to torment; nor does he inspire photographs for nothing with an
active spirit of mockery.
We dined at the Trocadero. Carlotta loves the band and the buzz
of Babel and the heavy scents and the clatter and the tumult and
the glare of light; otherwise I should have chosen a discreeter
hostelry where the footfalls of the waiting-men were noiseless
and the walls in quiet shadow, where there was nothing but
the mellow talk of friends to distract the mind from the
consideration of exquisite flavours. But in these palaces of
clashing splendour, the stunned brain fails to receive
impressions from the glossopharyngeal nerve, and one eats
unthinkingly like a dog. But this matters little to Carlotta.
Perhaps when I was nineteen it mattered little to me. And
to-night, also, it mattered little, for my mind was preoccupied
and a dinner with Lucullus would have been savourless.
If the Psalmist cried, "What is man that Thou art mindful of
him?" what cry had he at the back of his head to utter concerning
woman? Did he leave her to be implicitly dealt with by Charles
Darwin in his "Theory of Sexual Selection"? Or did he in the
good old oriental way regard her as unimportant in the eyes of
the Deity? If the latter, he was a purblind prophet and missed
the very fount of human tears.
When I looked at Judith, I was smitten with a great pain. She
had not looked so young, so fresh, so fragilely fair for many
months. She wore a dress of corn-flower blue that deepened the
violet of her eyes. In the mass of flax hued thistle-down that
is her hair a blue argus butterfly completed the chord of colour.
There was the faintest tinge of pink in her cheek applied with
delicate art. Her dress seemed made of unsubstantial dream
stuff--I believe they call it chiffon--and it covered her bosom
and arms like the spray of a fairy sea. She had the air of an
impalpable Undine, a creation of sea-foam and sea-flower; an
exquisite suggestion of the ethereal which floated beauty, as it
were, into her face. I know little of women, save what these
past few grievous months have taught me; but I know that hours of
anxious thought and desperate hope lay behind this effect of
fragile loveliness. The wit of woman could not have rendered a
woman's body a greater contrast to that of her rival; and with
infinite subtlety she had imbued the contrast with the deeper
significance of rare and spiritual things. I know this was so.
I know it was a challenge, a defiance, an ordeal by combat; and
the knowledge hurt me, so that I felt like a Dathan or Abiram who
had laid hand on the Ark of the Covenant (for the soul of a
woman, by heaven! is a holy thing), and I wished that the earth
could open and swallow me up.
We sat down to table in the middle of the great room--a quiet
corner on the balcony away from the band is not to Carlotta's
taste--like any conventional party of four, and at first talked
of indifferent matters. Conciergerie dinner-parties in the
Terror always began with a discussion of the latest cure for
megrims, or the most fashionable cut of a panier. Presently
Pasquale who had been talking travel with Judith appealed to me.
"What year was it, Ordeyne, that I came home from Abyssinia?"
"I forget," said I. "I only remember you presenting me with that
hideous thing hanging in my passage, which you called a
dulcimer."
_"Gage d'amour?"_ smiled Judith.
Pasquale laughed and twirled his swaggering moustache.
"I did get it from a damsel, and that is why I called it a
dulcimer, but she didn't sing of Mount Abora. I wish I could
remember the year."
"I think it was in 1894," said Judith quietly.
Pasquale, who had been completely unaware of Judith's existence
until half an hour before, could not repress a stare of polite
surprise.
"I believe you are right. In fact, you are. But how can you
tell?"
"Through the kindness of Sir Marcus," replied Judith graciously,
"you are a very old acquaintance. I could write you off-hand a
nice little obituary notice with all the adventures--well, I will
not say complete--but with all the dates accurate, I assure you.
I have a head for that sort of thing."
"Yes," I cried, desiring to turn the conversation. "Don't tell
Mrs. Mainwaring anything you wish forgotten. Facts are her
passion. She writes wonderful articles full of figures that make
your head spin, and publishes them in the popular magazines over
the signature of Willoughby the statistician. Allow me to
present to you a statistical ghost."
But Pasquale's subtle Italian brain was paying but half attention
to me. I could read his inferences from Judith's observations,
and I could tell what she wanted him to infer. I seem to have
worn my sensory system outside instead of inside my skin this
evening.
"Ordeyne," said he, "you are a pig, and the great-grandfather of
pigs--"
"Foul" cried Carlotta, seizing on an intelligible point of the
conversation.
"Why didn't you present me to Mrs. Mainwaring in 1894.? I
declare I have thought myself allied to that man for twenty years
in bonds of the most intimate friendship, and he has never so
much as mentioned you to me."
"Seer Marcous says that Pasquale is a bad lot," remarked
Carlotta, with an air of sapience, after a sip of orangeade, a
revolting beverage which she loves to drink at her meals.
Pasquale threw back his handsome head and laughed again like the
chartered libertine he is, and Judith smiled.
"'Out of the mouths of babes, etc.,"' said I, apologetically.
"In all seriousness," said Pasquale to Judith, "I had no idea
that any one was such a close friend of Ordeyne's."
Judith turned to me, with a graceful gesture of her shoulders.
"I think we have been close friends, Marcus?"
"Oh, ye-es," broke in Carlotta. "Mrs. Mainwaring has the picture
of Seer Marcous in her bedroom, and there is the picture of Mrs.
Mainwaring in our drawing-room. You have not seen it? But yes.
You have not recognised it, Pasquale? Mrs. Mainwaring is so
pretty tonight. Much prettier than the photograph. Yes, you are
so pretty. I would like to put you on the mantel-piece as an
ornament instead of the picture."
"May I be allowed to endorse Carlotta's sentiment of
appreciation?" I said, with a view to covering her indiscretion,
for I saw a flash of conjecture in Pasquale's eyes and a sudden
spot of real red in Judith's cheeks. She had evidently desired
to suggest an old claim on my regard, but to have it based on
such intimate details as the enshrining of my photograph was not
to her fancy.
"I am vastly beholden to you both," said Judith, who has a
graceful way of receiving compliments. "But," turning to
Pasquale, "we have travelled far from Abyssinia."
"To Sir Marcus's mantel-piece. Suppose we stay there."
"There is you and me and Mrs. Mainwaring," said the literal
Carlotta, "and I am the big one in the middle. It was made big--
big," she added, extending her arms in her exaggerating way. "I
was wearing this dress."
"Mr. Pasquale and I will have to enlarge our frames, Marcus,"
said Judith, "or we shall be jealous. We shall have to make
common cause together."
"We will declare an inoffensive alliance," laughed Pasquale.
"Offensive if you like," said Judith.
It may have been some effect of the glitter of lights, but I vow
I saw a swift interchange of glances. Pasquale immediately
turned to Carlotta with a jesting remark, and Judith engaged me
in conversation on our old days in Rome. Suddenly she swerved
from the topic, and leaning forward, indicated our companions
with an imperceptible motion of her head.
"Don't you think," she said in a low voice, "they are a
well-matched pair? Both young and picturesque; it would solve
many things."
I glanced round. Carlotta, elbow on the table and chin in hand,
was looking deep into Pasquale's eyes, just as she has looked
into mine. Her lips had the half-sensuous, half-childish pout
provocative of kisses.
"Do, and I will love you," I heard her say.
Oh, those dove-notes, those melting eyes, those lips! Oh, the
horrible fool passion that burns out my soul and brain and
reduces me to rave like a lovelorn early Victorian tailor! Which
was worse I know not--the spasm of jealousy or the spasm of
self-contempt that followed it. At that moment the music ceased
suddenly on a loud crashing chord.
The moment seemed to be magnetic to all but Carlotta, who was
enjoying herself prodigiously. Our three personalities appeared
to vibrate rudely one against the other. I was conscious that
Judith read me, that Pasquale read Judith, that again something
telegraphic passed between them. The waiter offered me
partridge. Pasquale quickly turned from Carlotta to his
left-hand neighbour.
"I think we ought to drink Faust's health, don't you?"
I started. Had I not myself traced the analogy?
"Faust?" queried Judith at a loss.
"Our friend Faust opposite me," said Pasquale, raising his
champagne glass. "Hasn't he been transformed from the lean and
elderly bookworm into the gay, young gallant about the town?
Once one could scarcely drag him from his cell to the quietest of
dinners, and now--has he told you of his dissipations this past
month, Mrs. Mainwaring
Judith smiled. "Have you been Mephistopheles?"
"What is Mephistopheles?" asked Carlotta.
"The devil," said Pasquale, "who made Sir Marcus young again."
"Oh, that's me," cried Carlotta, clapping her hands. "He does not
read in big books any longer. Oh, I was so frightened when I
first came." (I must say she hid her terrors pretty
effectually.) "He was so wise, and always reading and writing,
and I thought he was fifty. And now he is not wise at all, and
he said two, three days ago I had made him twenty-five."
"If you go on at the rate you have begun, my dear," Judith
remarked in her most charming manner, "in another year you will
have brought him down to long clothes and a feeding-bottle."
Carlotta thought this very funny and laughed joyously. I laughed
too, out of courtesy, at Judith's bitter sarcasm, and turned the
conversation, but Pasquale was not to be baulked of his toast.
"Here's to our dear friend Faust; may he grow younger and younger
every day."
We clinked glasses. Judith sighed when the performance was
concluded.
"That is one of the many advantages of being a man. If you do
sell your soul to the devil you can see that you get proper
payment. A woman is paid in promissory notes, which are
dishonoured when they fall due."
I contested the proposition. The irony of this peculiarly
painful revel lay in the air of gaiety it seemed necessary to
maintain. A miserable business is civilisation!
"Did you ever hear of a woman getting youth out of such a
bargain?" she retorted with some vehemence.
"As women systematically underpay cabmen," said I, "so do they
try to underpay the devil; and he is one too many for them."
"I am afraid," said Pasquale, "that the old days of shrewd
bargains are over. There is a glut in the soul-market and they
only fetch the price of old bones."
"He is talking foolish things that I do not understand," said
Carlotta, putting her hand on my arm.
"It is called sham cynicism, my dear," said I, "and we all ought
to be ashamed of ourselves."
"What do you like best to talk about?" Judith asked sweetly.
"Myself. And so does everybody," replied Carlotta.
We laughed, and for a time talk ceased to be allusive. But
later, over our coffee, while the band was playing loudly some
new American march, and Carlotta and Pasquale were laughing
together, Judith drew near me.
"You did not answer my question about those two, Marcus."
My fingers trembled as I lit a fresh cigarette.
"He is not a man to whom any woman's destiny should be
entrusted."
"And is she a woman on whom a man should stake his life's
happiness?"
"God knows," said I, setting my teeth.
It was not an enjoyable dinner-party. I longed for the evening
to be over, to have Carlotta safe back with me at home. I felt a
curious dread of the Empire.
We arrived there towards the end of the first ballet. Carlotta,
as soon as she had taken her seat, leaned both elbows on the
front of the box and surrendered her senses to the stage.
Pasquale talked to Judith. Wishing for a few moments alone I
left the box and sauntered moodily along the promenade behind the
First Circle. The occupants were either leaning over the
partitions and watching the spectacle or sitting with drink
before them at the little marble tables at the back. The gaudy,
gilded, tobacco-smoke and humanity-filled theatre seemed to be
unreal, the stage but a phantom cloud effect. I wondered why I,
a creature from the concrete world, was there. I had an insane
impulse to fly from it all, to go out into the streets, and
wander, wander for ever, away from the world. I was walking
along the promenade, lost in this lunacy, when I stumbled against
a fellow-promenader and the shock brought me to my senses. It
was an elderly, obese Oriental wearing a red fez. He had a long
nose and small, crafty eyes, and was deeply pitted with smallpox.
I made profuse apologies and he accepted them with suavity. It
then occurring to me that I was be having in a discourteous and
abjectly absurd manner, I made my way back to the box. I drew a
chair to Judith's side.
"You are giving me a captivating evening," she said, with a
smile.
"Whom are you captivating?" I asked, idly jesting. "Pasquale?"
"You are cruel," whispered Judith, with a flicker of her eyelids.
I flushed, ashamed, not having weighed the significance of my
words. All I could say was: "I beg your pardon," whereat Judith
laughed mirthlessly. I relapsed into silence. Turn followed
turn on the stage. While the curtain was lowered Carlotta sank
back with a little sigh of enjoyment, and nodded brightly at me.
"Do you remember," she said, turning to me, at a fresh fall of
the curtain, "when you brought me first? I said I should like to
live here. Wasn't I silly?"
She turned again, then suddenly rose to her feet and staggered
back to the back of the box, pointing outward, with an expression
of wild terror on her face.
"Hamdi--he's down there--he saw me."
I sprang to her assistance and put my arm around her.
"Nonsense, dear," said I.
But Pasquale, looking around the house, cried:
"By Jove! she's right. I would recognise the old villain a
thousand years hence in Tartarus. There he is."
I left Carlotta, and the first person my eyes rested upon in the
stalls was my obese but suave Oriental, regarding the box with an
impassive countenance.
"That's Hamdi Effendi, all right," said Pasquale.
Carlotta clutched my arms as I joined her at the back of the box.
"Oh, take me away, Seer Marcous, take me away," she moaned
piteously. My poor child was white and shaken with fear. I
again put my arm round her.
"No harm can happen to you, dear," I said, soothingly.
"Oh, darling Seer Marcous, take me home," cried Carlotta.
"Very well," said I. I helped her on with her wrap, and
apologising to the two others, begged them to remain.
"We'll all go together," said Judith quietly.
"And form a body-guard," laughed Pasquale.
Carlotta clinging to my arm we left the box and slipped through
the promenade and down the stairs.
Hamdi Effendi, having anticipated our intention, cut off our
retreat in the vestibule. Carlotta shrank nearer to me.
"I beg your pardon, Monsieur, but may I have the pleasure of a
few words with you about this young lady?" said he in the
urbanest manner and the most execrable French.
"I hardly see the necessity," said I.
"Pardon me, but this young lady is a Turkish subject and my
daughter. My name is Hamdi Effendi, Prefect of Police at Aleppo,
and my address in London is the Hotel Metropole."
"I am charmed to make your acquaintance," said I. "I have often
heard of you from Mademoiselle--but I believe both her father and
mother were English, so she is neither your daughter nor a
Turkish subject."
"Ah, that we will see," rejoined the polite Oriental. He
addressed some words rapidly in Turkish to Carlotta, who
shudderingly replied in the same language.
"Mademoiselle unfortunately does not consent to accompany me," he
interpreted with a smile. "So I am afraid I will have to take
her back without her consent."
"If you do, Hamdi Effendi," said Pasquale in a light tone of
conversation, but with the ugliest snarl of the lips that I have
ever beheld, "I shall most certainly kill you."
Hamdi turned to him with a polite bow.
"Ah, it is Monsieur Pasquale. I thought I recognised you."
"You have every reason to do so," said Pasquale.
"I saved you from prison."
"You accepted a bribe."
"For heaven's sake," cried Judith, "go on speaking in low voices,
or we shall have a scene here."
One or two idlers hung near with an air of curiosity and the huge
beuniformed commissionaire watched us with an uncertain eye. I
kept a tight hold of Carlotta and drew her more behind the screen
of a palm near which we happened to stand.
"Madame is right," said Hamdi. "We can discuss this little
affair like gentlemen."
"Then, in the most gentlemanly way in the world," said Pasquale,
"I swear to you that if you touch this young lady, I will kill
you."
"It appears, to be Monsieur," said the obese Turk with a graceful
wave of the hand in my direction, "and not you, who has robbed my
home of its treasure, unless," he added, and I shall always
remember the hideous leer of that pulpy-nosed and small-pox
pitted face, "unless Monsieur has relieved you of your
responsibilities."
For a moment I was speechless. Pasquale put himself in front of
me.
"Steady on, Ordeyne."
"Sir," said I, "I found this young lady destitute in the streets
of London. She is my wife and therefore a British subject; so
you can take yourself and your infamous insinuations to the
devil, and the quicker the better."
"Or there'll be two of us engaged in the killing," said Pasquale.
Hamdi again exchanged a few sentences in Turkish with Carlotta,
and then smiled upon us with the same unruffeled suavity.
_"Au revoir, Mesdames et Messieurs."_ With a courteous salute he
shuffled back towards the stall-entrance.
The tension over, Carlotta broke from me and clutched Pasquale by
the arm.
"Oh, kill him, kill him, kill him!" she cried in a passionate
whisper.
He freed himself gently and took out a cigarette case.
"Scarcely necessary. He'll soon die." And turning to me he
added: "Not a sound organ in his body. Besides, it seems to me
that if there is any murdering to be done, it's the business of
Sir Marcus."
"There is going to be no murdering," said I, profoundly
disgusted, "and don't talk in that revolting way about the
wretched man dying."
I regained possession of Carlotta who, seeing that I was angry,
cast a scared glance at me, and became docile as suddenly as she
had grown passionate. I turned to Judith.
"Will you ever forgive me--" I began.
But the sight of her face froze me. It was white and hard and
haggard, and the lips were drawn into a thin line, and the
delicate colour she had put upon her cheeks stood out in ghastly
contrast. Her dress, like the foam of a summer sea, mocked the
winter in her face.
"There is nothing to forgive," she said, smiling icily. "I came
for a variety entertainment and I have not been disappointed.
Good-bye. Perhaps Mr. Pasquale will be so kind as to put me into
a cab."
"I will drive you home, if you will allow me," said Pasquale.
We separated, shaking hands as if nothing had happened, as
perfunctorily as if we had been the most distant of
acquaintances.
On our way back we spoke very little. Carlotta nestled close
against me, seeking the shelter of my arm. She cried, I don't
know why, but it seemed to afford comfort. I kissed her lips and
her hair.
At home, I drew the sofa near the fire--it has been a raw night
and she feels the cold like a tropical plant--and sat down by her
side.
"Did you hear what I said to Hamdi Effendi--that you were my
wife?"
"But that was only a lie," she answered in her plain idiom.
My petting and soothing together with the sense of home security
and a cup of French chocolate prepared by Antoinette, who,
astonished at our early return and seeing her darling in
distress, had hastened to provide culinary consolation, had
restored her wonted serenity of demeanour. Polyphemus also
purred reassuringly upon her lap.
"It was a lie this evening," said I, "but in a few days I hope it
will be true."
"You are going to marry me?" she asked, suddenly sitting erect
and looking at me rather bewildered.
"If you will have me, Carlotta."
"I will do what Seer Marcous tells me," she answered. "Will you
marry me to-morrow?"
"I think it hardly possible, my dear," I answered. "But I shall
lose no time, I assure you. Once you are my wife neither Hamdi
Effendi nor the Sultan of Turkey can claim you. No one can take
an Englishman's wife away from him."
"Hamdi is a devil," said Carlotta.
"We can laugh at him," said I.
"Did you ever see such an ugly mug?"
Where she gets her occasional bits of slang from I do not know;
but her little foreign staccato pronunciation gives them unusual
quaintness. I laughed, and Carlotta, throwing Polyphemus off her
lap, laughed too, and sidled up against me. The cat regarded us
for a moment with a disgusted eye, then stretched himself as if
he had quitted Carlotta of his own accord, and walked away in a
state of dignified boredom.
"Hamdi is like a pig and an elephant and a great fat turkey,"
said Carlotta.
"If all the world were beautiful," I exclaimed, "such a thing as
our appreciation of beauty would not exist. I should not even be
aware that my Carlotta was beautiful."
She put her hands on my knees in her impulsive way, and bending
forward looked at me delightedly.
"Oh, you do think so?"
"You are the loveliest and most intoxicating creature on the
earth, Carlotta."
"Now I am sure, sure, sure," she cried, enraptured. "You have
never said it before, Seer Marcous darling, and I must kiss you."
I checked her with my hands on her soft shoulders.
"Only if you promise to marry me."
"Of course," said Carlotta.
She said it as thoughtlessly and light-heartedly as if I had
asked her to come out for a walk. Again I felt the odd spasm of
pain. In my late madness I had often pictured the scene: how I
should hold her throbbing beauty in my arms, my senses clouded
with the fragrance of her, and how, in burning words, I should
pour out the litany of my passion. But to the gods it seemed
otherwise. No Quaker maiden's betrothal kiss was chaster. Cold
grew the fever in my veins and the litany died on my lips.
Who and what is she whom I love? There have been days when her
eyes have carried in their depths the allurements of a sorceress,
when her limbs have woven Venusberg enchantments which it has
taken all my strength to withstand. But tonight, when I take the
greatest step and claim her as mine till our lives' end, she
yields with the complaisance of an ignorant child and raises up
between us the barrier of her innocence. When shall I learn the
soul of her?
Well, _jacta est alea_. The events of to-night have precipitated
our destiny. In all probability Hamdi is powerless to take her
from my protection, and this marriage is unnecessary as a
safeguard. I have no notion of the international law on such
points--but at any rate it will make the assurance of her safety
absolute. No power on earth can take her from me. Great Heaven!
The thought of her gone forever out of my life brings the cold
sweat to my forehead. Without her, child, enchantress,
changeling that she is, how could I face existence?
I shall have my heart's desire. Why, I should be athrill with
the joy and the flame of youth! I should laugh and sing! I
should perform the happy antics of love's exuberance! I should
be transported to the realms where the fairy tales end!
Instead, I sit before a dying fire, as I sat last night, and am
oppressed with the sense of tragedy. It was not altogether
Carlotta's innocence that formed the barrier between us. That
which rendered it impassable was Judith's white face.
Judith's white face will haunt my dreams to-night.
