Her Celestial Husband

Chapter I

The old years' dead hands are full of their dead flowers, The old days are full of dead old loves of ours, Born as a rose, and briefer born than she ; Couldst thou not watch with me ? Since thou art not as these are, go thy ways ; Thou hast no part in all my nights and days. Lie still, sleep on, be glad — as such things be. Thou couldst not watch with me. Swinburne. — " I HAVE not written to you for months ; it is not because there has been nothing to tell you, but because I have not been able to bring myself to write. " I am unhappy, wretchedly unhappy. How many days and nights I have thought of what has at length come to pass ! I was so fond of Lindsay and it is so 2 » bitter for me to have lost him. For the last few months, longer even, I have seen it as something inevitable, a bitter cup which the future held for me, and which I must drink, and now I have drank it, yes, every drop.

My God, the taste is still on my lips, but I have recovered sufficiently to write about it to you ; as I write I don't cry or rave, I am quite calm. " I wonder if I see things too clearly, if I am too exacting ; perhaps I am, anyhow I can't help it, I cannot accept a stone for bread. To many women this falling off on Lindsay's part would have come as a surprise, some perhaps would not have perceived it at all, but I for a long while past have seen it, yet there vvas nothing very marked ; he is to-day as kind as ever, doubtless if I had not myself put a stop to the engagement and insisted on his taking back his freedom, we should, ere long, have become the ordinary married couple, boring each other and being bored, living in a villa with that halo of respectability about us, which the world at large seems to accept as a substitute for happiness.

" But I cannot stand this lukewarm affection ; I have ahvays wanted love, and even now, wretched as I am, I believe I would sooner have nothing, since I could not have had all. I need not explain all this to you, you know my nature, and you are, I think, the only person in the world who does. " After all, I am not surprised at Lindsay's getting tired of me, for, look back at my life, you who have known it all. In some book I once read, there is a hideous saying that one's past is also one's future. " Oh, Nancy, think of it, think of my past coming over again ! Yet, do you know, terrible as the thought is, I almost believe it to be true, for, consider my life ; has not each event, each catastrophe in it been a repetition of the one before ? You know when George Terrence jilted me years ago, he told me that no man could keep in with me, I was too exacting, and my mind was too strange.

Then far back there was my first lover, Valesworth, you remember, he said the same, almost indeed in the identical words. It has always been the same story, and now again I hear it from Lindsay, so it seems there's some fatal flaw in me which every man perceives, and thereupon casts me back into the water like drift-wood. " Nancy, I had thought about it for a long time, I had watched him growing colder and colder, and as I tell you, this period of awakening from happiness was the more bitter to me as I had gone through it so often before. At the last, however, the crisis came quite suddenly, and though there has been a gulf like years between that day and this, yet — sometimes it seems to me that it happened only yesterday, and then, Nancy — well — I feel as if I were going mad ! " Do bear with me, for I have no one but you to tell it to ; my mother has trouble enough, I cannot grieve her more, my past, present, and future are alike a sorrow to her, while to every one else this crowning misfortune of my life is only 'another of Miss Conyer's unfortunate love affairs.' "What that terrible Frenchman said about other people's misfortunes is quite true.

People do enjoy hearing of them ; I can see it in their faces. Though they pretend to deplore the thing, I can see that they are really not sorry in the least — glad if anything. You and you alone will really feel for me, and realise the disaster this thing is to me. And then again, I'm feeling so ill, my head is so queer, it has such an odd heavy feeling, it feels just as if it were stuffed with rags, and I can't disentangle things in my mind. " But all of this resolves itself into the one fact that I've lost Lindsay ! " My mind reverts to that evening when enraged by his indifference, his obvious cooling on me, I turned on him and gave him back his liberty. It was at a dance. I remember the foggy evening through which we drove, the dances with various people, and then the next thing I remember is that dance with Lindsay, and afterwards the words we had.

I vvas looking at him and wondering, in a fury at his apathy, why I had ever loved him so passion ately and well. Yes, it had come to that ; I could look at him and ask myself what there had been to love. The gaslight showed me a young man neither handsome nor ugly ; you see how dispassionately I can judge him. In the time then already past, I had adored him, and now, it seemed to me I sat there and appraised him like an auctioneer. We had left the dancing-room and gone upstairs ; the room we entered contained several other couples ; we sat down and he began talking — about the weather, it had been wet and cold, — he had met my cousin Jack at Charing Cross, and he had told him that he should not be able to come down to-night, &c, &c, all these trivialities in an inert manner and without looking at me.

" It was then that for the first time I asked myself what there had been about Lindsay Brookes that I should once have loved him ; I felt dispirited, both of us I felt were changed, and I sat answering him in monosyllables and thinking. " He is a dark man, of that dark type which is now so common, his eyes are very handsome, but he vvas not looking at me. I noticed for the first time that his shoulders are narrow, his features are good, but there is a pallor about his face which I suppose has been there all along, but which I only noticed now. The waltz began, a faint sound of music came up the staircase, Lindsay looked at his programme, and then for the first time at me. " ' Shall we dance it ? ' he asked. " As he spoke, I was watching the various couples leave the room. A girl in a white dress with her companion, a tall man, took my attention ; as she went out before him, he stooped down and arranged the tail of her skirt.

Something in this, a certain tenderness and grace in the action, came into sharp contrast with Lindsay's nonchalant tones and a certain inertness in his attitude, and in the mood I was then in, the contrast galled me. " ' As you like, Lindsay,' said I, ' but I am tired.' " He didn't say he was sorry, but sat still, one white gloved hand on his knee, the other twirling his programme by its string ; I noticed that he tried to disguise a yawn. I glanced again at his face ; he had stifled the yawn and his countenance was expressionless once more, save for a weary, bored look that it has had of late. " He looked at me not unkindly, but still, coldly, dispassionately ; he might have been looking at the wall paper, for all his face showed, and said — "' Yes, you look tired.' "You know that the very keynote of my nature is an intense longing for sympathy and love ; I would do anything in the world for those two things, yes, I think I would commit crimes for them.

I have said that I did not love Lindsay at that moment, but if he had loved me as he did at first, I should have con tinued faithful ; it was the dying down of his fire that had chilled me to the heart, but for that I should have continued to love him, of that I am certain, now his tones and the coldness of his eyes made me shiver. " It was at that moment that the loneliness I feel now, began to creep over me, for I perceived that we vvere far apart. " ' Lindsay,' I said, ' you'd be happier downstairs dancing.' "'And how about you?' he asked, but without denying what I had suggested. " ' WThat does it matter about me ? I'll come too,' I said wearily. " ' My next,' he observed, consulting his card, ' is with Miss Dynevor ; she's looking very smart to night, don't you think so ? Well, let's be moving — if you like.

Poor Mabel,' he added, scrutinizing my face, ' you're not looking at all well, or is it that your dress doesn't suit you ? Aren't you thinner ? As I catch your face in this light ' " The sadness of heart that had been gathering for some time, culminated in this speech of his. The allusion to Miss Dynevor angered me, for I had got it into my head that he admired her. Tears came to my eyes. '"I suppose I am,' I replied. 'I'm always up or down ; when I am happy I look well enough.' " He didn't challenge this, or appear as if he attached any significance to my words, but laughed lightly. " ' Well, be happy then,' said he, tucking away his ball programme into his pocket, and sitting down once more, " ' What is the matter, Mabel ? ' asked he after a moment, but I made no reply. " ' What a funny girl you are ! ' he observed, and then suddenly I found myself speaking.

" ' Lindsay,' I said, ' I know I am,— I can't help my nature. If I thought you loved me or were even very fond of me, I should love you beyond everything in the world ; nothing would turn me from you ; but when you look coldly at me and don't seem to care, all seems over and I am alone — get some one else and let me go my way.' " I stopped still, astonished at my own words, for though I had for so long been thinking all these things, I had never, even in my fancy, said them. Even now I would have returned to him if he had shown any great emotion, but the pallor of his face didn't change, and he said, without a move of his features, without a gesture — " 'You don't mean this.' " ' Yes I do,' cried I. " ' Do you mean,' he asked, ' that you really want it to be over between us ? ' And even in saying this he showed, it seemed to me, as little emotion as if he had been inviting an acquaintance to lunch.

" ' Well,' I returned, ' what does it amount to ? You have ceased to love me, you regard me as a sort of half wife, only not so dear ; it is neither your fault nor mine, I suppose, but Fate's, which has thrown us together so constantly and has staled everything. I don't blame you, Lindsay ; it is all, I suppose, my own fault. No man can love me for long. You know my past, — you know it all ; every one wearies of me or I expect too much, one or the other. If I vvere like the ordinary girl you would have continued to care, whereas now you can dissect me and see my faults, and God knows I have enough of them.' " I stopped short, crying bitterly. Though every word I uttered cut me like a knife, the emotional part Of my nature, those unguided impulses which have always been my enemies and will ruin me yet, vvere urging me to further rash speech.

Yet why call it rash, what else could I have done ? " ' I cannot think why you are saying all this,' said he, with cold displeasure. ' What have I done to displease you, tell me ? What a strange fit of temper, and about nothing too ! Mabel, you know you are an odd girl, a very odd girl, but of late you've seemed stranger still. I cannot pretend to understand you ; why, for instance, if you found me wanting in affection did you not tell me of it ? Any other girl but you would ; but instead of that, after dancing with me and talking and behaving just as usual, you suddenly, apropos of nothing as it appears to me, declare that you wish our engagement at an end.' " But whj' write down every word of that conversation ? It only grieves me anew ; it is enough to say that my engagement is broken off!

" Nancy, I feel so unutterably lonely, for Lindsay after all belonged to me, and my past was so sad that I was happy to be in smooth water. You should have read the letter Lindsay wrote me the next day ; only he, I think, could have written it. I could see so plainly in every line his astonishment at my conduct, and also his intense relief. It was a letter cold as his eyes and heart It is chilly writing up in my room. I shall wake up to-morrow morning and when my eyes fall on the roses and jasmine on my wall-paper, I shall think of all this as one does at once of any sad thing. " Nancy, there's one thing more I want to tell you but I hardly dare, for you'll think me mad. Well, perhaps I am, yet mad or not Fate seems to be drifting me to a certain end, and if I do drift there, as is possible, you'll have to hear of it sooner or later and then, — why, Nancy, if you've read all this, and how madly, madly miserable I am, instead of blaming me as the others will do, you'll only pity me.

" I daresay mother in her letters to your mother has mentioned a Mr. Lew-Ching who came here a short while ago and vvas introduced to us by our friend Mr. Deans, whose people knew his family in China She has described his funny Chinese way of looking at things, his pigtail, his accent, and so on. There is little news in a suburban place like this, so that any thing as exciting as the advent of a Chinaman in one's midst would not have escaped recounting. Well, prepare yourself, and for Heaven's sake don't collapse at the news. " I'm going to marry Lew-Ching ! " There, the murder's out ! " I can picture your face, but say nothing, nothing will alter it. Yes, I'm to be Mrs. Lew-Ching and live among the Celestials. Well, it cannot be less celestial there than it has been here of late. " Good-night. — If I could only sleep !

Oh, Nancy, if only I could ever sleep again as I used ! " Miss Conyers laid down her pen, the fire was getting low, the candles on the looking-glass were almost worn out. She paused for a moment, and going to a wardrobe at the end of the room, took from it a robe of dark blue satin worked with a design of flowers and blue dragons. She looked at it with a half repulsion, her fingers strayed over the design, exquisitely worked and having the appearance almost of a painting. It was a Chinese robe. A curious set expression had come over her face. As she looked, the candles burnt low and guttered into semi-darkness. She shivered, tears came into her eyes. " Ah, no, no," she murmured, " oh, my God ! No, I cannot ! " Blowing out the candle, she crept into bed, but in her sleep she saw the blue dragon ; it was a shape of horror in amongst the pink roses.

Chapter II

When the idea of marrying Lew-Ching first pre sented itself to Miss Conyer's mind, she had treated it as a joke, after that she had considered it for a moment seriously, and the next had decided that it was a thought too wild to be entertained. But she was a creature of impulse, and close on the heels of this last reflection had come the thought that in marrying him she would be getting away from Barford, from the people who knew her history, that history of failures, from the commonplaces of a suburban life which, with this last and crowning mis fortune of the loss of Lindsay Brookes, she had begun to hate with a concentrated hatred. Life had become too bitter to be borne, out of this existence of restricted means and blighted aims she must extricate herself, but how ? That was the question, since she had no aptitude for any of the things that women turn to, to support themselves.

When the night-time came and Mabel was left to herself in the little upstairs bedroom, where she had lain awake so many nights grieving, she sought in her mind, with an intense anxiety, for some means of escape, and it vvas then that out of these feelings of desperation and of broken love, out of the common place routine of her life, had come a reckless despair, in which her curiously unbalanced, impulsive mind came gradually to accept as possible what she had at first shrunk from. It was exactly four months since she had first met Lew-Ching, since that day when the curious twistings of Fate had thrown him in her path. Lew-Ching vvas singularly handsome, for a China man, with polished and pleasant manners, but a Chinese voice, it was at once guttural and woodeny. He spoke English as an educated Chinaman does, precisely and grammatically, but with that slight struggle with the letter N, and the peculiar hiss in certain words which the Chinese can never get over in speaking our language.

His eyes were of a tawny darkness, and though obliquely set in his face, were handsome, his sallow skin had the curiously stretched look over the cheekbones, the yellowness, the coarse, open pores, that are a racial peculiarity, his teeth were white, his lips well formed, and not thicker than those of many Englishmen. It was only when he was vexed that he looked ugly, for then two lines came from the cheek bones, either side of the face down to the chin. These lines gave him a sinister appearance, but they did not very often appear. To the young ladies of Barford, the advent of the Chinaman had been full of excitement, a nine days' wonder, and the astonishing discovery that though he looked so outlandish, he could talk to them in very fair English, and flirt in an altogether new and, they supposed, Chinese fashion, made him very popular.

The fact that with the exception of Edward Deans and his son, and one or two others intimate with the Deans family, not a man in the place liked him was another circumstance that added piquancy to their intercourse with the stranger. He was very interesting ; he vvas also they thought wicked, and that was very delightful. He was also quite new and original. And then too it was very plain that he admired them, his eyes told them that he considered them beautiful, as he met them rosy and blooming, in their sailor hats and neat dresses, walking into the town or setting out with their golf sticks to play on Barford Common. Now the Barford young mens' eyes did not express admiration in any marked degree ; they had seen too much of the girls. The girls had also seen too much of them ; they knew them with the absolute and exhaustive knowledge of young women who had been brought up in the same town.

They met them every day in shoals as they returned from London. They saw them at golf and tennis and again in the evening at concerts and dances. Nothing astonished Lew-Ching more than the tennis and golf. He smiled benignantly as he saw these games played on the common. " No, no, we don't do this," he replied to a question, showing his uneven teeth. Curiously enough his manner made them feel that he vvas in the right, and that to be running about after a ball was ridiculous and un dignified. He was always dignified, his manner was very graceful, his voice, the guttural Chinese voice, was the worst part of him, but this, as they said, they could forgive him since he said such pretty things in it ; and besides it was uncommon. The young men of the place were jealous of the amount of attention paid to the Chinaman, one or two of them disliked him very much.

They drew the attention of their women friends to what they called his " snuffling " manner of speaking, and to one or two peculiarities of his, they hinted even at a superior knowledge of Lew-Ching's character and morals, but by virtue of that curious kink in the minds of the British, who cannot make enough of foreigners if they are only sufficiently outlandish, the Chinaman seemed to have firmly established himself in Barford society. The matrons, though from the fact of his being a foreigner, they necessarily knew little about him, none the less liked to have him at their dances and dinners ; it was rather a dull suburb and it was not surprising that they should. He is a charming man," they said. Lew-Ching accepted their kindness and hospitality, and looked out on the world with his dark, half opened eyes which yet saw everything.

His manner to ladies, though profoundly ceremonious with the ceremony of a well-bred Chinaman, yet suggested a profound admiration, the more touching as it was offered in distant language, and with this foreign manner which charmed like the scent of a rare flower. It was a change from the talk of young England, garnished with the slang of business and racecourse. His entertainers said he vvas " so natural," — but since every usage of ours was different from his own, he was not : on the contrary he was clever enough to walk very warily. Only once had he been quite natural ; then he had said things which, if these ladies could have heard him, would have shocked the British matrons, who are not easily disgusted, and seldom in the right place. It had been a case of " in vino veritas," only the wine in this case had been whiskey, which, at first accustomed to his own wines, he had not understood.

The mistake had been in drinking whiskey after much champagne at a ball, and had resulted in Lew- Ching's standing some time by the ball-room door and then returning to Mr. Vaughan, the man who supplied him with the whiskey, and giving him a sketch of his impressions of English society and English morals. Lew-Ching's views of society after whiskey were singularly coarse and vile ; he expressed himself with a beastial directness and in a mixture of very good English and the best Chinese. This was when he had first come to Barford and before he had met Miss Conyers. A slight flush had come under his yellow skin and had mounted up to the cheekbones, where the skin was so tightly stretched, his eyes had leered and glinted evilly as he spoke, his voice was more guttural than ever, gestures that had been dignified had become more rapid.

Owing to the mixture of Chinese and English, one or two of the expressions he used had been lost on his companion. Mr. Vaughan was not very refined himself, also he happened to be a London man and not a native of the place, thus it was that the Chinaman's sentiments, though they startled the recipient, never got further than that gentleman. Lew-Ching never again erred ; he was never again " natural " ; in future he knew what to drink and how to drink it. He returned to his solemnity and cere mony. He treated the women he had besmirched, as if they vvere princesses, he once more looked calmly and coolly out of his dark eyes.

Chapter III

It vvas curious that Lew-Ching should enter the girl's life just at this crisis of unhappiness, but Fate, which can make or mar our lives and wreck our souls, had thrown him in the girl's path at this precise moment. She had met him in the house of a Mrs. Deans, an old friend of theirs, he had helped her to tea, and had talked to her, sitting near her in the firelight. In the fashionable dimness of shaded lamps she could not see his features very distinctly, but she thought that he vvas very good-looking for a China man, yet she didn't like his face. That was her first impression. His mouth, as she saw it by this shaded light, had given her, she long afterwards remembered, a species of horror, and the glint of his eyes, what did this mean ? or did all Chinamen look at one with this peculiar glint ?

Yes, the eyes attracted her ; she couldn't help looking at them, the iris vvas a dark, golden brown shot with little rays or specks of an orange colour ; on one of the eyes there vvas a dark blotch near the pupil ; she found herself looking at this mark and wondering what colour it was. The same subdued light that showed his face and silken robes to her eyes, had fallen on the exquisite fairness of her skin, that wonderful fairness that goes with red hair, and Lew-Ching had noted the white and red of her face and lips. In the intervals of decorous phrases he had sat in a curiously alert silence, looking at Mabel as often as he dared. Her face had once been too full ; her enemies had compared it to a dairymaid's ; now grief had wrecked the merely animal beauty of it, had planted a suspicion of hollow in the cheeks, and had saddened her eyes.

These changes had given passion to her face and piquancy, and it chanced to please Lew- Ching's eyes. Meanwhile, in the distance, their hostess was telling Mabel's mother about her guest. He was, she said, a merchant in Hankow. Her nephew, years ago in China, had been befriended by Lew-Ching's father, and now the son had come to England before settling down. Her nephew had merely known Lew-Ching's father, so that what they really knew of the China man himself was not very much. " But he's really very nice," concluded the hostess to Mrs. Conyers. " I don't think I've ever seen a Chinaman before," observed Mrs. Conyers. " Both appearance and dress are so foreign to us, aren't they ? " "That's the worst of it," laughed Mrs. Deans; " people who meet him about the streets are quite unprepared for him, and quite startled.

He's the observed of all, poor man ; sometimes I've quite pitied him. I need not," she added with a chuckle, for nothing on earth disturbs him ; I really think he's the coolest-headed person I ever met. I must tell you," continued she, " that he's a great favourite already with people we've introduced him to. My girls think him very amusing ; he can make him self perfectly charming when he likes, and then, you see, all his funny little foreign ways and his not quite understanding our customs, make him most interesting. My dear, he's a change, and that's what we all like," and she laughed again, a comfortable laugh. At this moment, as they looked towards the couple, Mr. Lew-Ching vvas holding Mabel's white hand and examining a ring. There was an appearance of intimacy and devotion in tbe action, and Mrs. Conyers, as she observed it, was conscious of a feeling of distaste that this man with the yellow skin and strange eyes should touch her daughter's hand.

Mrs. Conyer's heart had never been very strong. Poor Mabel's mishaps had worn her rather more than they had worn her daughter ; now, as she looked, her heart gave a little flutter, and she felt a pain about it. She avoided Mrs. Deans' eye, and almost immediately got up to go. The couple were so occupied that they did not at once notice this movement on her part, but when the Chinaman rose, Mrs. Conyers could not avoid the reflection that, though she felt a repulsion to him, he vvas a handsome man. " Come, Mabel," said she. As he pressed the girl's hand she heard him say — " Then I may do myself the honour ? " Mrs. Conyers disliked the voice and wondered whether Mabel did too ; it was so horribly woodeny. The girl looked back in his face, and then looked at her mother with the curiously reckless expression she had worn of late, and then glanced again at her companion.