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Morals of Marcus Ordeyne

<h2> CHAPTER XV </h2> 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 he 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 unruffled 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. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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