He had an air of wrath and ire; a rich, nervous, irritable, insist-upon-my-rights sort of personage; a gold-mounted eyeglass swung on his chest one moment, and was up at his eye the next; his Java cane came down thump on the sanded floor; a man no fishmonger dared baulk of his whim.
“Oysters,” he said.
The fishmonger bowed, rubbed his hands, quite shone with obsequiousness.
“Natives,” continued the old gentleman. “Two dozen, and mind, they are to be opened at my door.”
“Certainly, sir; with pleasure, sir. Anything else, sir; fine turbot, sir—ah—hum!”
The old gentleman had gone down the street.
“Don’t see how it’s to be done,” said a shop-assistant.
“Take a knife with you and open them on the area windowsill.”
But why should the old gentleman wish the oysters opened at his door? Could they possess the power of transforming themselves on the way from natives into bluepoints? Or could it be possible that mistakes occasionally occur when quantities are opened at shops, and “natives” and other varieties get mixed? The old gentleman wanted them to arrive at his house in the shell they had been dredged up in; he feared the craft and subtleity of the wicked oyster.
The lame silversmith was a sort of person with whom, if you had dealings, it was as well to have the oysters opened at your door.
Volume II
I
Felise drove rapidly out of the town, and as she passed glanced carelessly once more at the brilliant flowers in the bow-window.
“Ah, she knows I live here—she is triumphing over me!” said Rosa to herself, writhing, the cruel fangs of jealousy striking deeply into her. Rosa went to the mirror, looked at herself, and turned away trembling. The truth went home to her like a thrust from a poniard—she had but prettiness, her rival was beautiful. It was a beauty with which competition was impossible.
Till now the poor girl had held on to a secret hope; in time, long time, still perhaps in time, some remembrance of the face he once praised, some memory of the features which had once delighted him might move Martial, might bring him repentant to her side.
He had tired of her face; well, in time he might tire of another’s face. After all, the other was only a woman like herself.
This woman was not like herself.
Rosa recognised it in a moment. A woman can see a woman so clearly—faults, excellences, details, all are so clear to her. Rosa recognised the loveliness of the face, the nobleness of the proportioned head, the form, the very way she sat in the plain, old-fashioned pony-carriage was sufficient. This woman was not like herself. This was a woman with whom she could never enter into competition.
Martial was gone from her forever. No use any more to cultivate these poor flowers, to watch him passing once now and then; all was over.
The bitter tears flowed, and were not checked; the brave woman who had borne up against all else broke down utterly now.
She could not have put it into words, but she felt that she was fighting against something stronger than human beings—against an influence—a power which directed circumstances against her. It was not her own fault, not even her lack of singular and exceptional loveliness, not Martial’s fickleness; it was the irresistible Event which decides life. For all might have been—all would have been well had not Felise existed.
The fact of Felise’s existence—her birth, her life, her breathing existence at that moment—was the cruel fact that sternly shut her out from happiness. Nothing that Felise had done—no act of hers—simply because she was; that was enough.
Rosa was weeping the iron tyranny of the universe—of the laws of life which decree pain and unhappiness for no cause whatsoever upon those whom chance selects.
Rosa had done no wrong—why should she suffer? There never lived a better woman; yet she was punished and tortured to the very heart’s core.
Human dramatists arrange for all their characters to find happiness in the end. If there be any difficulty someone transfers his or her love with the greatest facility to another person; and thus being all paired off, they dance down the stage to the tune of “Sir Roger de Coverley.”
The drama of real life never ends like this. Someone has to suffer—always someone has to suffer.
The old Greeks dwelt on the tendency of human affairs to drift downwards irresistibly to unhappiness. Guilt—that is, untoward and often involuntary actions—pulls generation after generation heavily as lead down, down, down. Sophocles, Aeschylus—take which you will, still the same thought pervades their sculptured groups (for they are sculptured in words, nude, noble, unhappy). Grief falls upon human beings as the rain, not selecting good or evil, visiting the innocent, condemning those who have done no wrong.
Rosa, presently becoming calmer, began to reflect, and thought how admirably this beautiful woman would fit in with those poetical fancies of Martial. She had listened to him unmoved; she knew she did not care for these delicate sentiments—these dreams of the imagination. If only she could have taken an interest in them, perhaps this might have been averted. Martial doubtless had at last found that she was not the ideal goddess of his fancy.
But this woman—this Felise, with her features, her beautiful head, her form—this was the ideal Martial imagined. To her he would joyfully transfer his poetical reveries; and to her, Rosa owned bitterly to herself—to her they were fitted.
Another mood, and now losing touch of the deep chords of life which dignified her sorrow, Rosa fell to the level of a mere woman. Martial had not been taken from her by fair means—he had been inveigled, trapped with golden hair, with sweet, false smiles, warm hints of unutterable love. Shameless coquetry—she could see it all—bold advances. How should a man distinguish the false from the true?
A man was so easily beguiled—a man could not see a woman as a woman saw her. These trickeries and soft
