For the loss of her ladyship’s smile—
By a cluster of diamonds prest,
’Twas slain on her chilly breast;
Together we’ll go, the rose and I—we both have need of rest!
THE LAURELS OF THE BRAVE
She was a thin, tall, “willowy” woman, long-necked, auburn-haired (“Titian Gloire,” her coiffeur called it on the bottle), and dark-eyed, with a carefully got-up complexion and an expensive way of wearing her clothes. She never paid less than six guineas for a pair of corsets, thirty guineas for a “plain” morning gown, and ten guineas for a “simple” hat. The prices of the various other articles of her attire may thus, by these little items, be dimly guessed at. Whenever she moved, shook her silk skirts, or played with her handkerchief, a faint odour was exhaled from her person,—an odour supposed to be “violets,” but more like the last trail of a musk-rat. She passed for being very romantic and spirituelle, owing to a trick she had of clasping her hands and looking up at the sky or the ceiling in a sudden ecstasy. She would do this, often without warning, in the middle of an ordinary commonplace conversation, greatly disconcerting everyone else who happened to be present. Good-natured people said it was her “soul-forces” that got too strong for her on these occasions,—others shook their heads darkly and hinted that she had “too much brain.” As a matter of fact, however, neither soul-forces nor brain-power were concerned in her composition, and the rapt “pose” which she found so effective was the chief stock-in-trade of the “leading lady” at one of the theatres, from whom she had carefully copied it. Few women studied “histrionic” attitudes as arduously as she did, and the chief object with which she ever attended a play at all was that she might take mental note of the languishing movements, the roll of the painted eyes, and the airs and graces generally of the newest fashionable heroine of the footlights,—not because the said heroine was an Actress, for that she never is by any chance nowadays,—but simply that she might copy her “poses” and her gowns. Yet with all the trouble she took, and all the nervous excitement she suffered lest any “other” woman of her particular style and contour should turn up and compete with her on her own lines of conquest, she was not so much in the “social swim” as she craved to be. No. There was some fatality about it. She—“the beautiful Mrs. Arteroyd,” as she was occasionally called in society paragraphs (she having paid the modest sum of Five Pounds for this distinction to the enterprising lady journalist who “arranged” for such special items of interest)—was not yet where she fain would be. She had made a poor marriage,—or so she considered it. Her husband was only a Colonel in the British army—just a man with a V.C. Other women, older and plainer, had “caught” or bought real live Russian princes. They—the said princes—had not any V.C., but then their wives were princesses and went everywhere, and everybody said, “There is the Princess Rumstuffski!” or, “How charming the Princess Numskullskoff is looking!” Why was she not a Princess Rumstuffski? Why had an unkind fate elected her to be the wife of a mere British officer with a V.C. won in the prime of his manhood? And with absolutely no fortune! Though, when she first fell in love with him—(what a stupid thing to fall in love!)—she had considered him very well off, and herself very lucky. He was the only son of a saving father who had left him an income of about three thousand a year, the result of capital soundly and safely invested. But what was three thousand a year to a spirituelle creature of super-sensitive intelligence who wore six-guinea corsets? Nothing!—absolutely nothing! Especially at such a time as the present, when excessive ostentation, vulgar, brazen wealth is the only pass-key into what is called “society.” Poor Mrs. Arteroyd! She had tried all sorts of ways to obtain a firm footing on that slippery ladder which, like the magic Bean-Stalk of the fairy-tale, is supposed to lead aspiring Jacks and Jills to that mysterious region variously entitled “The Upper Ten” and “the top of the tree,”—but what success she had won was too perilously like failure to be altogether gratifying. Sitting in her cosy boudoir, she thought it all over, the while she read the morning papers sulkily,—they were full of war-news,—nothing but war—war—war! How sick she was of the war!—how tired of all the deaths and wounds, and blunders and casualties and botherments generally! She skimmed quickly through the list of “killed and wounded,” just to see whether her husband was among them,—not that her heart beat one pulse more anxiously during the search,—she was only interested in so far as that if he were killed she would have to go into mourning.
“And I look my worst in black,” she commented, as she glanced from name to name of all those included in the terrible “Death Roll of Honour.” But no—Colonel John Arteroyd, V.C., was not mentioned as either slain or wounded or sick of fever—there was no allusion to him anywhere as being in or out of action, and when she had made herself quite sure of this, she breathed more freely. There was no occasion for her to “look her worst” just yet.