But Marion, who had been sitting with her face averted, and her cheek leaning on her hand, now turned toward him with a look in which pain mingled with a curious smile.
“Don’t say any more, Philip,” she said, with a sort of dreary lightness. “I would rather do all you wish than hear any more reasons. Everything shall be as you please: I am your wife, and since you won’t be what I want, I will be what you want, and there’s an end of it! It will be easier for me, now the pinch is over, and I hope ’twill he pleasanter for you. It’s better, I suppose, that we should understand each other now than later. Heigho! Well, I’m sleepy. To-morrow we’ll begin to be rich; and let us see who does it best!”
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE Marquise Desmoines had, at the end of the summer, relinquished her abode in Red Lion Square and gone to live in more luxurious quarters further west. Apparently, her experiment of life in London had pleased her, and she meant to have some more of it. She had remained in town during the greater part of the dead season, giving the house furnishers and decorators the benefit of her personal supervision and suggestions. The lady had a genius for rendering her surroundings both comfortable and beautiful: even more, perhaps, than for enjoying the beauty and comfort when they were at her disposal. She appreciated the ease and ornament of life with one side of her nature; but another and dominant side of it was always craving action, employment and excitement, and, as a means to these ends, the companionship and collisions of human beings. Her imagination was vivid, and she was fond of giving it rein, though she seldom lost control of it; but it led her to form schemes and picture forth situations, in mere wantonness of spirit, which, sometimes, her sense of humor or love of adventure prompted her to realize. At the same time, she was very quick to comprehend the logic of facts, and to discriminate between what could and what could not be altered. But it was her belief that one of the most stubborn and operative of facts is the human will, especially the will of a woman like herself; and upon this persuasion much of her career was conditioned.
After her house was finished, and she established in it, and before the return from their wedding-trip of Mr. and Mrs. Philip Lancaster, Perdita spent most of her time in retirement and apparent serenity. She rode on horseback a great deal, and saw very little company. Indoors, she occupied herself ostensibly in arranging flowers and in music. Old Madame Cabot, her respectable and dreary female companion, had seldom known her mistress to be so composed and unenterprising. All the Marquise seemed to want was to be let alone: she had developed a novel passion for meditation. What did she meditate about? To judge by her countenance, of nothing very melancholy. To be sure, although no one could express more by her countenance than the Marquise Desmoines, it was rash to make inferences from it to her mind. It might well be that, had she wished to indulge in lugubrious thoughts, she was not without means of doing so. She had been in contact with some tragic experiences of late: and her entrance upon the estate of widowhood had placed her at a turning point in the path of existence; a place where one must needs pause, to review what is past and to conjecture or to plan what may be to come. Such periods are seldom altogether cheerful to those who have passed the flush of their youth. It cannot be denied, moreover, that Perdita had undergone an unusual moral stimulus at the time when she and Marion met over the murdered body of Charles Grantley; and that stimulus had been followed by consequences. But did it mark a permanent new departure? For a character like Perdita’s was anything permanent except the conflicting and powerful elements whereof the character itself was composed? Were evil and good anything more to her than different ways of keeping alive the interest of life? Whoever is virtuous, whoever is wicked in this world, still the balance of wickedness and virtue will remain broadly the same. The individual varies, the human race continues unaltered. We grow and act as nature and circumstances determine; and sometimes circumstances are the stronger, sometimes nature.
There were phases of Perdita’s inward existence with which Madame Cabot was probably unacquainted. The Marquise wanted several things, and would not be at rest until she got them: and, by that time, new objects of desire would arise. It may be that she had not defined to herself exactly what she wanted, or that she merely wanted to achieve a certain mental or moral situation and sensation, and was indifferent by what methods she achieved it. The truth is, a woman like Perdita is as dangerous as fire—resembles fire in her capacities both for benefit and mischief. And if Madame Cabot could have beheld her at certain times, in the solitude of her room, pacing up and down the floor, with her hands behind her back; or cutting a sheet of paper into shreds with a sharp pair of scissors; or lying at full length upon the cushions of a lounge, with her hands clasped behind her head, her white throat exposed, and her dark eyes roving restlessly hither and thither; or springing up to examine herself minutely in the looking-glass; or talking to herself in a low, rapid tone, with interspersed smiles and frowns;—if Madame Cabot could have seen all this, she might have doubted whether, after all, the Marquise was going to settle down into an uneventful, humdrum existence.
The party at Lady Flanders’ was Perdita’s first prominent appearance in London society, and it seemed also to introduce a change in her mood. She was now less inclined to shut herself up alone, more talkative and vivacious than she had latterly been. She kept Madame Cabot in constant employment, though about nothing in particular, and addressed to her all manner of remarks and inquiries, of many of which the dreary old lady could not divine the drift, and almost fancied, at times, that the Marquise must imagine her to be some one else; especially as Perdita had more than once exclaimed, “But after all you are not a man!” One afternoon, when Perdita had been in exceptionally good spirits, the servant announced Mr. Merton Fillmore.
“Mr. Fillmore?” she repeated. “Well, ... let him be admitted.”
He had already called upon her several times, always with more or less reference to business matters, and there was a fair degree of familiarity between them. Perdita had not been insensible to the keenness and virility of his mind and the cultivation of his taste; and for this and other reasons she was disposed to have a liking for him. As he entered the room she rose to receive him, with a smile that might have conferred distinction on a night-watchman. Fillmore, on his part, seemed also in a very genial frame of mind, and they began to chat together most pleasantly.
“Now, I hope you have not come about any business,” said the Marquise, after they had touched upon Lady Flanders and kindred topics.