Books: The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne
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William J. Locke >> The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne
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I repeat she is indecently beautiful. A chit of a girl of
eighteen (for that I learn is her age) has no right to flaunt the
beauty that should be the appanage of the woman of seven and
twenty. She should be modestly well-favoured, as becomes her
childish stage of development. She looked incongruous among my
sober books, and I regarded her with some resentment. I dislike
the exotic. I prefer geraniums to orchids. I have a row of pots
of the former on my balcony, and the united efforts of Stenson,
Antoinette, and myself have not yet succeeded in making them
bloom; but I love the unassuming velvety leaves. Carlotta is a
flaring orchid and produces on my retina a sensation of disquiet.
I broke the tidings of the tragedy as gently as I could. I had
news of Harry, I said, gravely. She merely looked interested and
asked me when he was coming.
"I'm afraid he will never come," said I.
"If he does not come, then I can stay here with you?"
Her eyes betrayed a quiver of anxiety. For the life of me I
could not avoid the ironical.
"If you will condescend to dwell as a member of my family beneath
my humble roof."
The irony was lost on her. She uttered a joyous little cry and
held out both her hands to me. Her eyes danced.
"Oh, I am glad he is not coming. I don't like him any more. I
love to stay here with you."
I took both the hands in mine. Mortal man could not have done
otherwise.
"Have you thought why it is that you will never see Harry again?"
She shook her beautiful head and held it to one side and puckered
up her brows, like a wistful terrier.
"Is he dead?"
"Would it grieve you, if he were?"
"No-o," she replied, thoughtfully.
"Then," said I, dropping her hands and turning away, "Harry is
dead."
She stood silent for a couple of minutes, regarding the row of
pink toes that protruded beneath the peignoir. At last her bosom
shook with a sigh. She glanced up at me sweetly.
"I am so glad," she said.
That is all she has vouchsafed to say with regard to the unhappy
young man. "She was so glad!" She has not even asked how he met
his death. She has simply accepted my statement. Harry is dead.
He has gone out of her life like yesterday's sunshine or
yesterday's frippery. If I had told her that yesterday's cab-
horse had broken his neck, she could not be more unconcerned.
Nay, she is glad. Harry had not treated her nicely. He had
boxed her up in a cabin where she had been sick, and had
subjected her to various other discomforts. I, on the contrary,
had surrounded her with luxuries and dressed her in red silk.
She rather dreaded Harry's coming. When she learned that this
was improbable she was relieved. His death had turned the
improbable into the impossible. It was the end of the matter.
She was so glad!
Yet there must have been some tender passage in their brief
intercourse. He must have kissed her during their flight from
home to steamer. Her young pulses must have throbbed a little
faster at the sight of his comely face.
What kind of a mythological being am I housing? Did she come at
all out of Hamdi Effendi's harem? Is she not rather some strange
sea-creature that clambered on board the vessel and bewitched the
miserable boy, sucked the soul out of him, and drove him to
destruction? Or is she a Vampire? Or a Succubus? Or a
Hamadryad? Or a Salamander?
One thing, I vow she is not human.
If only Judith were here to advise me! And yet I have an uneasy
feeling that Judith will suggest, with a certain violence that is
characteristic of her, the one course which I cannot follow: to
send Carlotta back to Hamdi Effendi. But I cannot break my word.
I would rather, far rather, break Carlotta's beautiful neck.
I have not written to Judith. Nor, by the way, have I received a
letter from her. Delphine has been whirling her off her legs,
and she is ashamed to confess the delusion of the sequestered
life. I wish I were enjoying myself half as much as Judith.
"I have adopted Mademoiselle," said I to Antoinette this morning.
"If she returned to Asia Minor they would put a string round her
neck, tie her up in a sack, and throw her into the sea."
"That would be a pity," said Antoinette, warmly.
"_Cela depend_," said I. "Anyhow she is here, and here she
remains."
"In that case," said Antoinette, "has Monsieur considered that
the poor angel will need clothes and articles of toilette--and
this and that and the other?"
"And shoes to hide her shameless tus," I said.
"They are the most beautiful toes I have ever seen!" cried
Antoinette in imbecile admiration. She has bewitched that old
woman already.
I put on my hat and went to Wellington Road to consult Mrs.
McMurray. Heaven be thanked, thought I, for letting me take her
little boy the day before yesterday to see the other animals, and
thus winning a mother's heart. She will help me out of my
dilemma. Unfortunately she was not alone. Her husband, who is
on the staff of a morning newspaper, was breakfasting when I
arrived. He is a great ruddy bearded giant with a rumbling
thunder of a laugh like the bass notes of an organ. His
assertion of the masculine principle in brawn and beard and bass
somewhat overpowers a non-muscular, clean-shaven, and tenor
person like myself. Mrs. McMurray, on the contrary, is a small,
bright bird of a woman.
I told my amazing story from beginning to end, interrupted by
many Hoo-oo-oo-oo's from McMurray.
"You may laugh," said I, "but to have a mythical being out of
Olympiodorus quartered on you for life is no jesting matter."
Olymp--?" began McMurray.
"Yes," I snapped.
"Bring her this afternoon, Sir Marcus, when this unsympathetic
wretch has gone to his club," said his wife, "and I'll take her
out shopping."
"But, dear lady," I cried in despair, "she has but one garment
--and that a silk dressing-gown of horrible depravity that
belonged to a dancer of the second Empire! She is also barefoot."
"Then I'll come round myself and see what can be done."
"And by Jove, so will I!" cried McMurray.
"You'll do such thing," said his wife
"If I gave you a cheque for 100," said I, "do you think you
could get her what she wants, to go on with?"
"A hundred pounds!" The little lady uttered a delighted gasp and
I thought she would have kissed me. McMurray brought his
sledgehammer of a hand down on my shoulder.
"Man!" he roared. "Do you know what you are doing--casting a
respectable wife and mother of a family loose among London
drapery shops with a hundred pounds in her pocket? Do you think
she will henceforward give a thought to her home or husband? Do
you want to ruin my domestic peace, drive me to drink, and wreck
my household?"
"If you do that again," said I, rubbing my shoulder, "I'll give
her two hundred."
When I returned Carlotta was sitting, Turkish fashion, on a sofa,
smoking a cigarette (to which she had helped herself out of my
box) and turning over the pages of a book. This sign of literary
taste surprised me. But I soon found it was the second volume of
my _edition de luxe_ of Louandre's _Les Arts Somptuaires_, to
whose place on the shelves sheer feminine instinct must have
guided her. I announced Mrs. McMurray's proposed visit. She
jumped to her feet, ravished at the prospect, and sent my
beautiful book (it is bound in tree-calf and contains a couple of
hundred exquisitely coloured plates) flying onto the floor. I
picked it up tenderly, and laid it on my writing-table.
"Carlotta," said I, "the first thing you have to learn here is
that books in England are more precious than babies in
Alexandretta. If you pitch them about in this fashion you will
murder them and I shall have you hanged."
This checked her sumptuary excitement. It gave her food for
reflection, and she stood humbly penitent, while I went further
into the subject of clothes.
"In fact," I concluded, "you will be dressed like a lady." She
opened the book at a gaudy picture, "_France, XVI(ieme)
Siecle--Saltimbanque et Bohemmienne_," and pointed to the female
mountebank. This young person wore a bright green tunic,
bordered with gold and finished off at the elbows and waist with
red, over an undergown of flaring pink, the sleeves of which
reached her wrist; she was crowned with red and white carnations
stuck in ivy.
"I will get a dress like that," said Carlotta.
I wondered how far Mrs. McMurray possessed the colour-sense, and
I trembled. I tried to explain gently to Carlotta the
undesirability of such a costume for outdoor wear in London; but
with tastes there is no disputing, and I saw that she was but
half-convinced. She will require training in aesthetics.
She is very submissive. I said, "Run away now to Antoinette,"
and she went with the cheerfulness of a child. I must rig up a
sitting-room for her, as I cannot have her in here. Also for the
present she must take her meals in her own apartments. I cannot
shock the admirable Stenson by sitting down at table with her in
that improper peignoir. Besides, as Antoinette informs me, the
poor lamb eats meat with her fingers, after the fashion of the
East. I know what that is, having once been present at an
Egyptian dinner-party in Cairo, and pulled reeking lumps of flesh
out of the leg of mutton. Ugh! But as she has probably not sat
down to a meal with a man in her life, her banishment from my
table will not hurt her feelings. She must, however, be trained
in Christian table-manners, as well as in aesthetics; also in a
great many other things.
Mrs. McMurray arrived with a tape-measure, a pencil, and a
notebook.
"First," she announced, "I will measure her all over. Then I
will go out and procure her a set of out-door garments, and
tomorrow we will spend the whole livelong day in the shops. Do
you mind if I use part of the 100 for the hire of a private
brougham?"
"Have a coach and six, my dear Mrs. McMurray," I said. "It will
doubtless please Carlotta better."
I summoned Carlotta and performed the ceremony of introduction.
To my surprise she was perfectly at her ease and with the
greatest courtesy of manner invited the visitor to accompany her
to her own apartments.
When Mrs. McMurray returned to the drawing-room she wore an
expression that can only be described as indescribable.
"What, my dear Sir Marcus, do you think is to be the ultimate
destiny of that young person?"
"She shall learn type-writing," said I, suddenly inspired, "and
make a fair copy of my Renaissance Morals."
"She would make a very fair copy indeed of Renaissance Morals,"
returned the lady, dryly.
"Is she so very dreadful?" I asked in alarm. "The peignoir, I
know--"
"Perhaps that has something to do with it."
"Then, for heaven's sake," said I, "dress her in drabs and greys
and subfusc browns. Cut off her hair and give her a row of
buttons down the back."
My friend's eyes sparkled.
"I am going," said she, "to have the day of my life tomorrow."
Carlotta had already gone to sleep, so Antoinette informed me,
when the results of Mrs. McMurray's shopping came home. I am
glad she has early habits. It appears she has spent a happy and
fully occupied afternoon over a pile of French illustrated comic
papers in the possession of my excellent housekeeper.
I wonder whether it is quite judicious to make French comic
papers her initiation into the ideas of Western civilisation.
Into this I must inquire. I must also talk seriously to her with
a view to her ultimate destiny. But as my view would be
distorted by the red dressing-gown, I shall wait until she is
decently clad. I think I shall have to set apart certain hours
of the day for instructive conversation with Carlotta. I shall
have to develop her mind, of which she distinctly has the
rudiments. For the rest of the day she must provide entertainment
out of her own resources. This her oriental habits of
seclusion will render an easy task, for I will wager that
Hamdi Effendi did not concern himself greatly as to the way in
which the ladies of his harem filled up their time. And now I
come to think of it, he certainly did not allow Carlotta to
sprawl about his own private and particular drawing-room. I will
not westernise her too rapidly. The Turkish educational system
has its merits.
This, in its way is comforting. If only I could accept her as a
human creature. But when I think of her callous reception of the
tidings of the unhappy boy's death, my spirit fails me. Such a
being would run a carving-knife into you, as you slept, without
any compunction, and when you squeaked, she would laugh. Look at
her base ingratitude to the good Hamdi Effendi, who took her in
before she was born and has treated her as a daughter all her
life. No: her spiritual attitude all through has been that of
the ladies who used to visit St. Anthony--in the leisure moments
when they were not actively engaged in temptation. I don't
believe her father was an English vice-consul. He was Satan.
I wonder what she told Mrs. McMurray.
I have been thinking over the matter to-night. The good lady was
wrong. Whatever were the morals of the Renaissance,
personalities were essentially positive. They were devilishly
wicked or angelically good. There was nothing _rosse_, non-moral
about the Renaissance Italian. The women were strongly tempered.
I love to believe the story told by Machiavelli and Muratori of
Catherine Sforza in the citadel of Forli. "Surrender or we slay
your children which we hold as hostages," cried the besiegers.
"Kill them if you like. I can breed more to avenge them." It is
the speech of a giant nature. It awakens something enthusiastic
within me; although such a lady would be an undesirable helpmeet
for a mild mannered man like myself.
And then again there is Bonna, the woman for whose career I
desired to consult the prime authority Cristoforo da Costa. I
have been sketching her into my chapter tonight. Here is a
peasant girl caught up to his saddle-bow by a condottiere,
Brunoro, during some village raid. She fights like a soldier by
his side. He is imprisoned in Valencia by Alfonso of Naples,
languishes in a dungeon for ten years. And for ten years Bonna
goes from court to court in Europe and from prince to prince,
across seas and mountains, unwearying, unyielding, with the
passion of heaven in her heart and the courage of hell in her
soul, urging and soliciting her man's release. After ten long
years she succeeds. And then they are married. What were her
tumultuous feelings as she stood by that altar? The old
historian does not say; but the very glory of God must have
flooded her being when, in the silence of the bare church, the
little bell tinkled to tell her that the Host was raised, and her
love was made blessed for all eternity. And then she goes away
with him and fights in the old way by his side for fifteen years.
When he is killed, she languishes and dies within the year.
Porcelli sees them in 1455. Brunoro, an old, squinting,
paralysed man. Bonna, a little shrivelled, yellow old woman,
with a quiver on her shoulder, a bow in her hand; her grey hair
is covered by a helmet and she wears great military boots. The
picture is magical. There is infinite pathos in the sight of the
two withered, crippled, grotesque forms from which all the
glamour of manhood and beauty have departed, and infinite awe in
the thought of the holy communion of the unconquerable and
passionate souls. I wonder it has not come down to us as one of
the great love-stories of the world.
Elements such as these sway the Morals of the Renaissance.
But I am taking Mrs. McMurray too seriously; and it is really not
a bad idea to have Carlotta taught type-writing.
CHAPTER V
May 26th.
This morning a letter from Judith.
"Do not laugh at me," she writes. "The road to Paris is paved
with good intentions. I really could not help it. Delphine put
her great arm round my would-be sequestered and meditative self
and carried it off bodily, and here it is in the midst of
lunches, picture-shows, dinners, suppers, theatres and dances;
and if you laugh, you will make me humiliated when I confess that
it is thoroughly enjoying itself."
Laugh at her, dear woman? I am only too glad that she can fling
her Winter Garment of Repentance into the Fires of Paris
Springtide. She has little enough enjoyment in friendless
London. Fill your heart with it, my dear, and lay up a store for
use in the dull months to come. For my part, however, I am
content to be beyond the reach of Delphine's great arm. I must
write to Judith. I shall have to explain Carlotta; but for that
I think I shall wait until she becomes a little more explicable.
In dealing with women it is well to employ discrimination. You
are never quite sure whether they are not merely simple geese or
the most complex of created beings. Perhaps they are such a
curious admixture that you cannot tell at a given moment which
side, the simple or the complex, you are touching. May not there
be the deepest of all allegories in Eve standing midway between
the innocent apple and the guileful serpent? I shall have to see
more of Carlotta before I can safely explain her to Judith.
At any rate she is no longer attired like an odalisque of the
Second Empire, and Mrs. McMurray has saved her from the
lamentable errors of taste shown by the female mountebank of
sixteenth century France. My excellent friend safely delivered
up an exhausted and bewildered charge at half-past seven last
evening, assuring me that her task had been easy, and that her
anticipations of it being the day of her life had been fulfilled.
It had been like dressing a doll, she explained, beaming.
An edifying pastime for an adult woman! I did not utter this
sentiment, for she would rightly have styled me the most
ungrateful of unhung wretches.
Carlotta, then, had followed her about like a perambulatory doll,
upon which she had fitted all the finery she could lay her hands
on. Apparently the atmosphere of the great shops had acted on
Carlotta like an anaesthetic. She had moved in a sensuous dream
of drapery, wherein the choice-impulse was paralysed. The only
articles upon which, in an unclouded moment, she had set her
heart--and that with a sudden passion of covetousness--were a
pair of red, high-heeled shoes and a cheap red parasol.
"You have no idea what it means," said Mrs. McMurray, "to buy
_everything_ that a woman needs."
I replied that I had a respectful distaste for transcendental
philosophy.
"From a paper of pins to an opera-cloak," she continued.
"I'm afraid, dear Mrs. McMurray, an opera-cloak is not the
superior limit of a woman's needs," said I. "I wish it were."
She called me a cynic and went.
This morning Carlotta interrupted me in my work.
"Will Seer Marcous come to my room and see my pretty things?"
In summer blouse and plain skirt she looked as demure as any
damsel in St. John's Wood. She hung her head a little to one
side. For the moment I felt paternal, and indulgently consented.
Words of man cannot describe the mass of millinery and chiffonery
in that chamber. The spaces that were not piled high with
vesture gave resting spots for cardboard boxes and packing-paper.
Antoinette stood in a corner gazing at the spoil with a smile of
beatific idiocy. I strode through the cardboard boxes which
crackled like bracken, and remained dumb as a fish before these
mysteries. Carlotta tried on hats. She shewed me patent leather
shoes . She exhibited blouses and petticoats until my eyes ached.
She brandished something in her hand.
"Tell me if I must wear it" (I believe the sophisticated call it
"them"). "Mrs. McMurray says all ladies do. But we never wear
it in Alexandretta, and it hurts."
She clasped herself pathetically and turned her great imploring
eyes on me.
"_Il faut souffrir pour etre belle_," I said.
"But with the figure of Mademoiselle, it is stupid!" cried
Antoinette.
"It is outrageous that I should be called upon to express an
opinion on such matters," I said, loftily. And so it was. My
assertion of dignity impressed them.
Then, with characteristic frankness, my young lady shakes out
before me things all frills, embroidery, ribbons, diaphaneity,
which the ordinary man only examines through shop-front windows
when a philosophic mood induces him to speculate on the
unfathomable vanity of woman.
"_Les beaux dessous!_" breathed Antoinette.
"The same ejaculation," I murmured, "was doubtless uttered by an
enraptured waiting-maid, when she beheld the stout linen smocks
of the ladies of the Heptameron."
I reflected on the relativity of things mundane. The waiting-
maid no doubt wore some horror made of hemp against her skin. If
Carlotta's gossamer follies had been thrown into the vagabond
court of the Queen of Navarre, I wonder whether those delectable
stories would have been written?
As Antoinette does not understand literary English, and as
Carlotta did not know what in the world I was talking about, I
was master of the conversational situation. Carlotta went to the
mantel-piece and returned with a glutinous mass of sweet stuff
between her fingers.
"Will Seer Marcous have some? It is nougat."
I declined.
"Oh!" she said, tragically disappointed. "It is good."
There is something in that silly creature's eyes that I cannot
resist. She put the abominable morsel into my mouth--it was far
too sticky for me to hold--and laughingly licked her own fingers.
I went down to work again with an uneasy feeling of imperilled
dignity.
May 29th.
I sent her word that I would take her for a drive this afternoon.
She was to be ready at three o'clock. It will be wholesome for
her to regard her outings with me as rare occurrences to be
highly valued. Ordinarily she will go out with Antoinette--for
the present at least--as she did yesterday.
At three o'clock Stenson informed me that the cab was at the
door.
"Go up and call Mademoiselle," said I.
In two or three minutes she came down. I have not had such a
shock in my life. I uttered exclamations of amazement in several
languages. I have never seen on the stage or off such a figure
as she presented. Her cheeks were white with powder, her lips
dyed a pomegranate scarlet, her eyebrows and lashes blackened.
In her ears she wore large silver-gilt earrings. She entered the
room with an air of triumph, as who should say: "See how
captivatingly beautiful I am!"
At my stare of horror her face fell. At my command to go
upstairs and wash herself clean, she wept.
"For heaven's sake, don't cry," I exclaimed, "or you will look
like a rainbow."
"I did it to please you," she sobbed.
"It is only the lowest class of dancing-women who paint their
faces in England," said I, _splendide mendax._ "And you know
what they are in Alexandretta."
"They came to Aziza-Zaza's wedding," said Carlotta, behind her
handkerchief. "But all our ladies do this when they want to make
themselves look nice. And I have put on this nasty thing that
hurts me, just to please Seer Marcous."
I felt I had been brutal. She must have spent hours over her
adornment. Yet I could not have taken her out into the street.
She looked like Jezebel, who without her paint must have been,
like Carlotta, a remarkably handsome person.
"It strikes me, Carlotta," said I, "that you will find England is
Alexandretta upside down. What is wrong there is right here, and
vice versa. Now if you want to please me run away and clean
yourself and take off those barbaric and Brummagem earrings."
She went and was absent a short while. She returned in dismay.
Water would not get it off. I rang for Antoinette, but
Antoinette had gone out. It being too delicate a matter for
Stenson, I fetched a pot of vaseline from my own room, and as
Carlotta did not know what to make of it, I with my own hands
cleansed Carlotta. She screamed with delight, thinking it vastly
amusing. Her emotions are facile. I cannot deny that it amused
me too. But I am in a responsible position, and I am wondering
what the deuce I shall be doing next.
I enjoyed the drive to Richmond, where I gave her tea at the Star
and Garter and was relieved to see her drink normally from the
cup, instead of lapping from the saucer like a kitten. She was
much more intelligent than during our first drive on Tuesday.
The streets have grown more familiar, and the traffic does not
make her head ache. She asks me the ingenuous questions of a
child of ten. The tall guardsmen we passed particularly aroused
her enthusiasm. She had never seen anything so beautiful. I
asked her if she would like me to buy one and give it her to play
with.
"Oh, would you, Seer Marcous?" she exclaimed, seizing my hand
rapturously. I verily believe she thought I was in earnest, for
when I turned aside my jest, she pouted in disappointment and
declared that it was wrong to tell lies.
"I am glad you have some elementary notions of ethics," said I.
It was during our drive that it occurred to me to ask her where
she had procured the paint and earrings. She explained,
cheerfully, that Antoinette had supplied the funds. I must talk
seriously to Antoinette. Her attitude towards Carlotta savours
too much of idolatry. Demoralisation will soon set in, and the
utter ruin of Carlotta and my digestion will be the result. I
must also make Carlotta a small allowance.
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