“Do read it!” she said earnestly—“It will make you feel so happy!”
I laughed. The idea of a modern author writing anything to make one feel happy, seemed to me quite ludicrous, the aim of most of them being to awaken a disgust of life, and a hatred of one’s fellow-creatures. However, to please Eva, I read the ‘Wings of Psyche,’—and if it did not make me actually happy, it moved me to a great wonder and deep reverence for the woman-writer of such a book. I found out all about her,—that she was young, good-looking, of a noble character and unblemished reputation, and that her only enemies were the press-critics. This last point was so much in her favour with me that I at once bought everything she had ever written, and her works became, as it were, my haven of rest. Her theories of life are strange, poetic, ideal and beautiful;—though I have not been able to accept them or work them out in my own case, I have always felt soothed and comforted for a while in the very act of wishing they were true. And the woman is like her books,—strange, poetic, ideal and beautiful,—how odd it is to think that she is within ten minutes walk of me now!—I could send for her if I liked, and tell her all,—but she would prevent me carrying out my resolve. She would cling to me woman-like and kiss me, and hold my hands and say ‘No, Sibyl, no! You are not yourself,—you must come to me and rest!’ An odd fancy has seized me, ... I will open my window and call her very gently,—she might be in the garden coming here to see me,—and if she hears and [p 413] answers, who knows!—why, perhaps my ideas may change, and fate itself may take a different course!
· · · · ·
Well, I have called her. I have sent her name ‘Mavis!’ softly out on the sunshine and still air three times, and only a little brown namesake of hers, a thrush, swinging on a branch of fir, answered me with his low autumnal piping. Mavis! She will not come,—to-day God will not make her His messenger. She cannot guess—she does not know this tragedy of my heart, greater and more poignant than all the tragedies of fiction. If she did know me as I am, I wonder what she would think of me!
· · · · ·
Let me go back to the time when love came to me,—love, ardent, passionate, and eternal! Ah, what wild joy thrilled through me! what mad ecstasy fired my blood!—what delirious dreams possessed my brain!—I saw Lucio,—and it seemed as if the splendid eyes of some great angel had flashed a glory in my soul! With him came his friend, the foil to his beauty,—the arrogant, self-satisfied fool of a millionaire, Geoffrey Tempest,—he who bought me, and who by virtue of his purchase, is entitled by law to call himself my husband ...”
Here I paused in my reading and looked up. The dead woman’s eyes appeared now to regard me as steadily as herself in the opposite mirror,—the head was a little more dropped forward on the breast, and the whole face very nearly resembled that of the late Countess of Elton when the last shock of paralysis had rendered her hideous disfigurement complete.
“To think I loved that!” I said aloud, pointing at the corpse’s ghastly reflection—“Fool that I was indeed!—as great a fool as all men are who barter their lives for the possession of a woman’s mere body! Why if there were any life after death,—if such a creature had a soul that at all resembled this poisoned clay, the very devils might turn away aghast from such a loathly comrade!”
[p 414]
The candles flickered and the dead face seemed to smile,—a clock chimed in the adjoining room, but I did not count the hour,—I merely arranged the manuscript pages I held more methodically, and read on with renewed attention.