The Murder of Delicia ... Thirty-ninth to forty-third thousand

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BY MARIE CORELLI Author of " The Sorrows of Satan," " The Mighty Atom,' " Barabbas," "A Romance of Two Worlds," etc. THIRTY-NINTH TO FORTY-THIRD THOUSAND LONDON SKEFFINGTON & SON, PICCADILLY publishers to *.«.*>. Ube prince of TOlales i«96 INTRODUCTORY NOTE The following slight and unelaborated sketch of a very commonplace and everyday tragedy will, I am aware, meet with the unqualified disapproval of the * superior ' sex. They will assert, with much indignant emphasis, that the character of ' Lord Carlyon ' is an impossible one, and that such a ' cad as he is shown to be never existed. Anticipating these remarks, I have to say in reply that the two chief personages in my story, namely, ' Lord Carlyon ' and his wife, are drawn strictly from the life ; and, that though both the originals have some years since departed from this scene of earthly contest and misunderstanding, so that my de lineation of their characters can no longer grieve or offend either, the ' murder of Delicia ' v b VI +9 Introductory Note was consummated at the hands of her husband precisely in the way I have depicted it.

There are thousands of such ' murders ' daily happening among us — murders which are not considered ' cruelty ' in the eyes of the law. There are any number of women who work night and day with brain and hand to support useless and brainless husbands ; women whose love never falters, whose patience never tires, and whose tenderness is often rewarded only by the most callous neglect and ingratitude. I do not speak of the countless cases among the hard-working millions whom we elect to call the ' lower classes,' where the wife, working from six in the morning till ten at night, has to see her hard earnings snatched from her by her ' better ' half and spent at the public-house in strong drink, despite the fact that there is no food at home, and that innocent little children are starving. These instances are so frequent that they have almost ceased to awaken our interest, much less our sympathy.

In my story I allude principally to the • upper ' ranks, where Introductory Note So the lazy noodle of an aristocrat spends his time, first, in accumulating debts, and then in looking about for a woman with money to pay them — a woman upon whose income he can afterwards live comfortably for the rest of his worthless life. To put it bluntly and plainly, a great majority of the men of the present day want women to keep them. It is not a manly or noble desire ; but as the kind of men I mean have neither the courage nor the intelligence to sight the world for themselves, it is, I suppose, natural to such inefficient weaklings that they should, — seeing the fierce heat and contest of competition in every branch of modern labour, -^-gladly sneak behind a woman's petticoats to escape the general fray.

Chapter I

A flood of warm spring sunshine poured its full radiance from the south through the large, square lattice-window of Delicia's study, flashing a golden smile of recognition on Delicia herself and on all the objects surrounding her. Gleam ing into the yellow cups of a cluster of daffodils which stood up, proudly erect, out of a quaint, brown vase from Egypt, it flickered across a pearl-inlaid mandoline that hung against the wall, as though it were playing an unheard melody in delicate tremolo on the strings ; then, setting a crown of light on Delicia's hair, it flung an arrowy beam at the head of Hadrian's ' Antinous,' whose curved marble lips, parted in an inscrutable, half-mocking smile, seemed about to utter a satire on the ways of women. A 4>$ The Murder of Delicia Delicia had purchased this particular copy of the original bust in the British Museum because she imagined it was like her husband.

No one else thought it in the least like him — but she did. She had all sorts of fancies about this husband of hers — fancies both pretty and passionate — though she had none about herself. She was only a worker ; one whom certain distinguished noodles on the Press were accustomed to sneer at from their unintellectual and impecunious standpoint as ' a lady novelist ' not meriting the name of ' author,' and who, despite sneers and coarse jesting, was one of the most cele brated women of her time, as well as one of the wealthiest. The house she lived in, built from her own designs, furnished with every luxury and filled with valuable pictures, curios and art-treasures, was one of the material re sults of her brilliant brain-work ; the perfectly ordered menage, the admirably-trained servants, the famous ' table ' at which many of London's most fastidious gourmets had sat and gorged themselves to repletion, were all owing to her incessant and unwearying labour.

She did every thing ; she paid everything, from the taxes down to the wages of the scullery-maid ; she managed everything, from the advantageous disposal of her own manuscripts down to the smallest detail of taste and elegance connected with the daily serving of her husband's dinner. She was never idle, and in all her literary efforts had never yet failed to score a triumph above her compeers. As a writer, she stood quite apart from the rank and file of modern fictionists. Something of the spirit of the Immortals was in her blood — the spirit that moved Shakespeare, Shelley and Byron to proclaim truths in the face of a world of lies — some sense of the responsibility and worth of Literature — and with these emo tions existed also the passionate desire to rouse and exalt her readers to the perception of the things she herself knew and instinctively felt to be right and just for all time.

The public responded to her voice and clamoured for her work, and, as a natural result of this, all ambitious and aspiring publishers were her very humble suppliants. Whatsoever muni ficent and glittering ' terms ' are dreamed of by authors in their wildest conceptions of a literary El Dorado, were hers to command ; and yet she was neither vain nor greedy. She +9 The Murder of Delicia was, strange to say, though an author and a ' celebrity,' still an unspoilt, womanly woman. Just when the sunshine crowned her, as the sunshine had a way of doing at that particular hour of the morning, she was very busy finishing the last chapter of a book which had occupied all her energies during the past four months. She wrote rapidly, and the small, well-shaped, white hand that guided the pen held that dangerous intellectual weapon firmly, with a close and somewhat defiant grip, suggestive of the manner of a youthful warrior grasping a light spear and about to hurl it in the face of a foe.

Her very attitude in writing indicated mental force and health ; no ' literary stoop ' disfigured her supple back and shoulders, no sign of ' fag ' or ' brain-muddle ' clouded the thoughtful yet animated expression of her features. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks delicately flushed. She had no idea of her own poetic and unique loveliness, which was utterly unlike all the various admitted types of beauty in woman. She scarcely knew that her eyes were of that divinely rare, dark violet colour which in certain lights looks almost black, that her skin was white as a snowdrop, or that her hair, in its long, glistening masses of brown-gold, was a wonder and an envy to countless numbers of her sex who pre sented themselves to the shrewdly-grinning gaze of the world with dyed ' fronts ' and false ' back coils.' She truly never thought of these things.

She had grown to understand, from current ' smart ' newspaper talk, that all authoresses, without exception, were bound to be judged as elderly and plain, even hideous, in the matter of looks, according to the accepted conventional standard of ' press ' ethics, and though she was perfectly aware that she was young, and not as repulsive in her personal appearance as she ought to be for the profession of letters, she took very little trouble to assert herself, and made no attempt whatever to ' show off her points,' as the slang parlance hath it, though those ' points ' outnumbered in variety and charm the usual attractions of attractive women. Admirers of her genius were too dazzled by that genius to see anything but the glow of the spiritual fire burning about her like the Delphic flames around Apollo's priestess, and the dainty trifles of per sonality, which are ordinarily all a woman has to boast of, were in her case lost sight of. +9 The Murder of Delicia Compliments and flatteries, however, were dis tasteful to her, except when on rare occasions she received them from her husband.

Then her sweet soul kindled within her into a warm glow of rapture and gratitude, and she wondered what she had done to deserve praise from so lordly and perfect a being. There was something very touching as well as beautiful in the way Delicia bent her proud intellect and prouder spirit to the will of her chosen mate. For him, and for him only, she strove to add fresh glory to the lustre of her name; for him she studied the art of dressing perfectly, loving best to drape herself in soft white stuffs that clung in close, artistic folds round her light and lissom figure, and made her look like a Greuze or a Romney picture; for him she took pains to twist the rich treasure of her hair in cunning braids and love-locks manifold, arranging it in a soft cluster on her fair forehead after the fashion of the ancient Greeks, and scattering here and there one or two delicate rings about her finely-veined temples, as golden suggestions of kisses to be pressed thereon.

For him she cased her little feet in fascinating brodequins of deftest Paris make ; for him she moved like a sylph and smiled like an angel ; for him she sang, when the evenings fell, old tender songs of love and home, in her rich, soft contralto ; for him in deed she lived, breathed and — worked. She was the hiving bee — he the luxurious drone that ate the honey. And it never occurred to him to consider the position as at all unnatural. Certainly Delicia loved her work — of that there could be no doubt. She enjoyed it with every fibre of her being. She relished the keen competition of the literary arena, where her rivals, burning with jealousy, endeavoured vainly to emulate her position ; and she valued her fame as the means of bringing her into contact with all the leading men and women of her day.

She was amused at the small spites and envies of the malicious and unsuccessful, and maintained her philosophical and classic com posure under all the trumpery slights, ignorant censures and poor scandals put upon her by the less gifted of her own sex. Her career was one of triumph, and being sane and healthy, she en joyed that triumph to the full. But more than triumph, more than fame or the rewards of +9 The Murder of Delicia fame, more indeed than all things in the world ever devised, measured or possessed, she loved her husband, — a strange passion for a woman in these wild days when matrimony is voted ' out of date ' by certain theory-mongers, and a ' noble man ' can be found ready to give a money-bribe to any couple of notoriety-hunters who will consent to be married in church according to the holy ordinance, and who will afterwards fling a boorish insult in the face of Religion by protesting publicly against the ceremony.

Delicia had been married three years, and those three years had passed by like three glittering visions of Paradise, glowing with light, colour, harmony and rapture. Only one grief had clouded the pageant of her perfect joy, and this was the death of her child, a tiny mortal of barely two months old, which had, as it were, dropped out of her arms like a withered blossom slain by sudden frost. Yet, to Delicia's dreamy and sensitive temperament, the sadness of this loss but deepened her adoration for him round whom her brilliant life twined like a luxurious vine full of blossom and fruit — the strong, splendid, bold, athletic, masterful creature who was hers — hers only ! For she knew — her g^ own heart told her this — that no other woman shared his tenderness, and that never, never had his faith to her been shaken by so much as one unruly thought !

And thus it was that Delicia often said of herself that she was the happiest woman in the world, and that her blessings were so many and so various that she was ashamed to pray. ' For how can I, how dare I ask God for anything else when I have so much ? ' she would inwardly reflect. ' Rather let me be constant in the giving of thanks for all the joys so lavishly bestowed upon me, which I so little deserve ! ' And she would work on with redoubled energy, striving after perfection in all she did, and full of a strange ardour combined with a yet stranger humility. She never looked upon her work as a trouble, and never envied those of her own sex whose absolute emptiness of use ful occupation enabled them to fritter away their time in such ' delightful ' amusements as bicycling, rinking, skirt-dancing and other methods of man-hunting at present in vogue among the fair feminine animals whose sole aim of existence is marriage, and after that •nullity.

Her temperament was eminently +9 The Murder of Delicia practical as well as idealistic, and in the large amounts of money she annually earned she never lost a penny by rash speculation or foolish expenditure. Lavish in her hospitalities, she was never ostentatious, and though perfect in her dress, she was never guilty of the wild and wicked extravagance to which many women in her position and with her means would have yielded without taking a moment's thought. She carefully considered the needs of the poor, and helped them accordingly, in secret, and without the petty presumption of placarding her charities to the world through the medium of a ' bazaar ' or hypocritical ' entertainment at the East End.' She felt the deep truth of the saying, ' Unto whom much is given, even from him shall much be required,' and gave her largesse with liberal tenderness and zeal.

On one point alone did she outrun the measure of prudence in the scattering of her wealth, and this was in the consideration of her husband. For him nothing was too good, nothing too luxurious, and any wish he expressed, even by the merest chance, she immediately set herself, with pride and joy, to gratify. As a matter of fact, he had not really a penny to call his own, though his private banking account always showed a conveniently large surplus, thanks to Delicia's unfailing care. Wilfred de Tracy Gifford Carlyon, to give him all his names in full, was an officer in the Guards, the younger son of a nobleman who had, after a career of wild extravagance, died a bankrupt. He had no other profession than the military, and though a man of good blood and distinguished descent, he was absolutely devoid of all ambition, save a desire to have his surname pronounced correctly. ' Car/^-on,' he would say with polite emphasis, ' not Car-/y-on.

Our name is an old, historical one, and like many of its class is spelt one way and pronounced another.' Now, without ambition, the human organisa tion becomes rather like a heavy cart stuck fast in the mud-rut it has made for itself, and it frequently needs a strong horse to move it and set it jogging on again. In this case, Delicia was the horse; or, to put it more justly, the high-spirited mare, galloping swiftly along an open road to a destined end, and scarcely conscious of the cart she drew at such a rattling pace behind her. How indignant +9 The Murder of Delicia she would have been had she overheard any profane person using this irreverent cart simile in connection with her one supremely Beloved ! Yet such was the true position of things as recognised by most people around her ; and only he and she were blind to the dispropor tionate features of their union ; she with the rare and beautiful blindness of perfect love, he with the common every-day blindness of male egotism.

That he had exceptional attractions of his own wherewith to captivate and subdue the fair sex was beyond all question. The qualities of ' race,' derived from a long ancestral line of warriors and statesmen, had blossomed out in him physically if not mentally. He had a fine, admirably-moulded figure, fit for a Theseus or a Hercules, a handsome face and a dulcet voice, rich with many gradations of persuasive and eloquent tone. Armed with these weapons of conquest, he met Delicia at the moment when her small foot had touched the topmost peak of Fame, and when all the sharp thorns and icicles of the strange crown wherewith Art rewards her chosen children were freshly set among her maiden hair. Society thought her a chilly vestal — shrank from her, indeed, some what in vague fear ; for her divine, violet eyes had a straight way of looking through the cunningly-contrived mask of the social liar, and, like the ' Rontgen rays,' taking a full impression of the ugly devil behind it.

Society refused to recognise her ethereal and half elfin type of beauty. It ' could see nothing in her.' She was to it ' a curious sort of woman, difficult to get on with,' — and behind her back it said of her the usual mysterious nothings, such as, ' Ah ! one never knows what those kind of persons are ! ' or, ' Who was she ? ' and, ' Where does she get her strange ideas from ? ' — slobbering its five o'clock tea and munching its watercress sandwiches over these scrappy suggestions of scandal with a fine relish only known to the ' upper class ' matron and the Whitechapel washerwoman. For however much apart these two feminine potentialities may be in caste, they are absolutely one in their love of low gossip and slander. Nevertheless, the dashing Guards officer, who had been flung into an expensive regiment at the reckless whim of his late father, found several engaging qualities in Delicia, which appealed to +9 The Murder of Delicia him partly on account of their rarity, and partly because he, personally, had never been able to believe any woman capable of possess ing them.

Perhaps the first of the various unique characteristics he recognised in her, and marvelled at, was her total lack of vanity. He had never in all his life before met a pretty woman who attached so little importance to her own good looks ; and he had certainly never come across a really ' famous ' personage who wore the laurels of renown so unconsciously and unassumingly. He had once in his life had the honour of shaking hands with an exceedingly stout and florid poetess, who spoke in a deep, masculine voice, and asked him what he thought of her last book, which, by-the-bye, he had never heard of, and he had also lunched in the distinguished com pany of a ' sexual fictionist,' a very dirty and dyspeptic-looking man, who had talked of nothing else but the excellence and virtue of his own unsavoury productions all through the course of the meal.

But Delicia ! — Delicia, the envy of all the struggling, crowding climbers up Parnassus, — the living embodiment of an almost phenomenal triumph in art and letters — Delicia said nothing about herself at all. She assumed no ' airs of superiority ; ' she talked amusing trifles like other less brilliant and more frivolous people ; she was even patient with the ubiquitous ' society idiot,' and drew him out with a tactful charm which enabled him to display all his most glaring points to perfection ; but when anyone began to praise her gifts of authorship, or ventured to com ment on the wide power and influence she had attained through her writings, she turned the conversation instantly, without brusquerie but with a gentle firmness that won for her the involuntary respect of even the flippant and profane.

This unpretentious conduct of hers, so exceptional in ' celebrities,' who, in these days of push-and-scramble have no scruples about giving themselves what is called in modern parlance ' any amount of side,' rather astonished the gallant ' Beauty Carlyon,' as he was some times nicknamed by his fellow officers ; and, as it is necessary to analyse his feelings thoroughly, it must also be conceded that another of his sensations on being introduced to the woman whose opinions and writings +9 The Murder of Delicia were the talk of London, was one of unmitigated admiration mingled with envy at the thought of the fortune she had made and was still making. What ! — so slight a creature, whose waist he could span with his two hands, whose slender neck could be wrung as easily as that of a singing-bird, and whose head seemed too small for its glistening weight of gold hair — she, to be the possessor of a name and fame reaching throughout every part of the British Empire, and far across the wide Atlantic, and the independent mistress of such wealth as made his impecunious mouth water !

Ten thousand pounds for her last book ! — paid down without a murmur, even before the work was finished ! — surely ' these be excellent qualities,' he mused within himself, afterwards falling into a still more profound reverie when he heard on unimpeachable authority that the royalties alone on her already-published works brought her in an income of over five thousand a year. Her first book had been produced when she was but seventeen, though she had feigned, when asked, to be several years older, in order to ensure attention from publishers ; and she had gone on steadily rising in the scale of success till now — when she was twenty seven, and famous with a fame surpassing that of all her men contemporaries. No doubt much money had been put by during those ten triumphal years ! Taking all these matters into consideration, it was not to be wondered at that the penniless Guardsman thought often and deeply concerning the possibilities and advantages of Delicia as a wife, and that, during the time he formed one of the house-party among whose members she was the most honoured guest, he should seize every opportunity of making himself agreeable to her.

He began to study her from a physical point of view, and very soon discovered in her a charm which was totally unlike the ordinary attractiveness of ordinary women. In strict fairness to him, it must be admitted that his realisation of Delicia's fine and delicate nature was due to distinctly sincere feeling on his part, and was not inspired by any ulterior thought of Mammon. He liked the way she moved ; her suave, soft step and the graceful fold and flow of her garments pleased him ; and once, when she raised her eyes suddenly to his in quick response to some question, he b +9 The Murder of Delicia was startled and thrilled by the glamour and sweet witchery of those dark purple orbs, sparkling with such light as can only be kindled from a pure soul's fire. Gradually he, six feet of man, nobly proportioned, with a head which might be justly termed classic, even heroic, though it lacked certain bumps which phren ology deems desirable for human perfection — fell desperately in love, and here his condition must be very positively emphasised, lest the slightest doubt be entertained of it hereafter.

To speak poetically, the fever of love con sumed him with extraordinary violence night and day ; and the strongest form of that passion known to men, namely, the covetous greed of possession, roused him to the employment of all his faculties in the task of subduing: the Dian-like coldness and crystalline composure of Delicia's outward - seeming nature to that tenderness and warmth so eminently desirable in a woman who is, according to the dictum of old Genesis, meant to be a man's helpmate, though the antique record does not say she is to be so far helpful as to support him altogether. Among the various artful devices Carlyon brought to his somewhat difficult attack on the ivory castle of a pure, studious and contemplative maidenhood, were a Beautiful Sullenness, — a Dark Despair, — and a Passionate Outbreak — the latter he employed at rare inter vals only.

When the Beautiful Sullenness was upon him he had a very noble appearance ; the delicate, proud curve of his upper lip was pro minent, — his long, silky lashes, darkly drooping, gave a shadow of stern sweetness to his eyes ; and Delicia, glancing at him timidly, would feel her heart beat fast, like the fluttering wing of a frightened bird, if he chanced to raise those eyes from their musing gloom and fix them half-ardently, half-reproachfully on her face. As for the Dark Despair, the sublimity of aspect he managed to attain in that particular mood could never be described in ordinary language ; perhaps, in the world's choicest galleries of art, one might find such a wronged and suffering greatness in the countenance of one of the sculptured gods or heroes, but surely not elsewhere. However, it was the Passionate Outbreak, — the lightning-like fury and deter mination of mere manhood, springing forth despite the man himself, and making havoc of all his preconceived intentions, that won his +9 The Murder of Delicia cause for him at last.

The moment came — the one moment which, truly speaking, comes but once to any human life ; the pre-ordained, divine moment, brief as the sparkle of foam on a breaking wave, — the glimpse of Heaven that vanishes almost before we have looked upon it. It was a night never to be forgotten — by Delicia, at least ; a night when Shakespeare's elves might have been abroad, playing mischief with the flowers and scattering wonder-work ing charms upon the air— a true ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' which descended, full-visioned in silver luminance, straight from Paradise for Delicia's sake. She was, at that time, the guest of certain ' great ' people ; the kind of ' great ' who say they ' must have a celebrity or two, you know ! — they are such queer, dear things ! ' Delicia, as a ' queer, dear thing,' was one of the celebrities thus entertained, and Pablo de Sarasate, also as a ' queer, dear thing,' was another.

A number of titled and ' highly connected ' personages, who 'had the merit of being ' queer ' without being in the least ' dear,' made up the rest of the party. The place they were staying at was a lordly pile, anciently the ' summer pleasaunce ' and favourite resort of a great Norman baron in the days of Richard the Lion-hearted, and the grounds extending round and about it were of that deep-shadowed, smooth-lawned and beautifully sylvan character which only the gardens of old, historic English homes possess. Up and down, between a double hedge of roses, and under the radiance of a golden harvest moon, Delicia moved slowly with Carlyon at her side ; and from the open drawing-room windows of the house floated the pure, penetrating voice of Sarasate's violin. Something mystic in the air ; something subtle in the scent of the roses ; a stray flash of light on the falling drops of the fountain close by, which perpetually built and unbuilt again its glittering cupola of spray, or some other little nothing of the hour, brought both man and woman to a sudden pause, — a conscious pause, in which they each fancied they could hear their own hearts beating loudly above the music of the distant violin.

And the man, — the elected son of Mars, who had never yet lifted his man hood to the height of battle, there to confront horror upon horror, shock upon shock, — now sprang up full-armed in the lists of love, and, strong with a strength he had hardly been aware *>9 The Murder of Delicia of as existing in himself before, he swiftly and boldly grasped his prize. ' Delicia ! ' he whispered — ' Delicia, I love you ! ' There was no audible answer. Sarasate's violin discoursed suitable love-passages, and the moon smiled as if she would have spoken, but Delicia was silent. She had no need of speech — her eyes were sufficiently eloquent. She felt herself drawn with a passionate force into her lover's strong arms, and clasped firmly, even jealously, to his broad breast ; and like a dove, which after long journeyings finds its home at last, she thought she had found hers, and folding her spirit-wings, she nestled in and was content.