Carlyon muttered something like an oath, and turning into the smoking-room, opened and read his wife's letter. Growing hot and cold by turns, he perused every calm, convincing, clearly-written word, and for a moment sat stunned and completely overwhelmed. Guilt, shame and remorse fought for the mastery of his feelings, and during the space of two or three minutes he thought he would at once follow Delicia, throw himself on her mercy, declare everything, and ask her forgiveness. But what would be the use of that? She might forgive, but she would never forget. And her blind adoration of him, her passionate love, her devout confidence? He had sense enough to realise that these fair feelings of tenderness and reverence in her for him were dead for ever!
Pulling at his handsome moustache fretfully, he surveyed his position and wondered whether it was likely that she would sue for a divorce? And if so, would she get it? No, for she could not prove cruelty or desertion. There was no cruelty in his having an 'affair' with Marina, or a dozen Marinas if he liked—not in the eyes of the law. There was not even any cruelty, legally speaking, in his spending his wife's earnings on Marina, if his wife gave him money to do as he liked with. To get a divorce legally, Delicia would have to prove not only infidelity but cruelty and desertion as well for two years and upwards. Oh, just law! Made by men for themselves and their own convenience! The 'cruelty' which robs an innocent woman of love, of confidence, of happiness at one blow, has no existence, according to masculine justice. She may have to endure wilful neglect, and to be the witness of the open intimacy of her husband with other women; but provided he does not beat her, or otherwise physically ill-use her, and continues to live with her in apparent union, while all the while she shrinks from his touch and resents his companionship as an outrage, she cannot be separated from him. This Carlyon remembered with a commendable amount of self-congratulation.
'She can't get rid of me, that's one thing,' he reflected; 'not that I suppose she would try it on. Damn that Bond Street jeweller for an ass! Why couldn't the fellow hold his confounded tongue! Of course, it is a split between us; but, by Jove!—a woman who writes books ought to know that a man must get some fun out of life. We can't all be literary! Besides, if there is to be a row, I have got a very good cause of complaint on my side!'
Whereupon he snatched up a pen and wrote as follows:—
'DEAR DELICIA,—I regret that a woman of your culture and intelligence should not be able to understand the world and the ways of the world better. Men do not discuss such subjects as that alluded to in your letter; the least said the soonest mended. I enclose a cutting from Honesty, in which you will perceive that I possibly have more cause to complain of you than you of me. Greater licence is permitted to men than to women, as I imagined you knew, and your position with regard to the public should make you doubly careful. I hope you will enjoy your change of air.—Yours affectionately, WILL.'
He read over the press-cutting alluded to, which ran as follows:—
'It has been frequently rumoured that the real "Dona Sol" of the "Ernani" who has been so long delighting the histrionic world, is a well-known lady novelist, who has been lifted into far more prominence that her literary capabilities would ever have given her, by her marriage into the aristocracy with a certain gallant Guards officer. The "Dona" in question has long been considered "as chaste as ice, as pure as snow," but ice and snow are prone to melt in the heat of an ardent passion, and the too evident ardour of the "Ernani" in this case has, we hear, won him his cause, with the result that the "ears of the groundlings" will shortly be tickled with a curious scandal.'
'After all,' muttered Carlyon, as he thrust this in an envelope, 'it's much worse that she, as a woman, should be coupled with Paul Valdis, than that I as a man should amuse myself with Marina. She is ridiculously inconsistent; she ought to know that a man in this world does as he likes,—a woman does as she must. The two things are totally different. Now, I shall have to wait till she telegraphs her address before I can send this. What an infernal nuisance!'
He betook himself to his usual consolation—a cigar and puffed away at it crossly, wondering what he should do with himself. He was sick of La Marina for the time being—there were no race-meetings on, and he felt that to be thus left to his own resources was a truly unkind dispensation of Providence. He had a very limited brain capacity, his one idea of life being to get amusement out of it somehow. Perpetual amusement is apt to tire; but of this the votaries of so-called pleasure never think, till they are flung back upon themselves exhausted. Carlyon would have been in his right place had he been born as a noble of high rank in ancient Pompeii—going to the baths, having his hair combed and his garments scented; wearing fresh chaplets of flowers round his neck, being fed on the rarest delicacies and drinking the costliest wines, and dividing his affections between several of the prettiest dancing girls. Such an existence would have suited him perfectly, and it is quite possible that when Vesuvius blazed forth its convincing representation of the Day of Judgment, he would have fronted his fate with the stern composure of the immortal 'Roman soldier'; for it is precisely such pampered persons who are the best possible food for flame, or powder and shot; and who generally, as though moved by some instinctive perception of the worthlessness of their lives to the world, meet death with equanimity.
In the interim, while her husband was preparing what he considered a Parthian shot for her in the way of the press-cutting from the society scandal bill called Honesty, Delicia had, by the merest chance, bought the paper and read the paragraph on her way down to Broadstairs. She was a woman who never wasted time about anything, and on arriving at her destination she enclosed the paper in an envelope to her lawyers, with the brief instruction appended—: