Roy Horniman

“ Her curiously vivid auburn hair, the almost marble pallor of her skin, the enormous dark blue eyes, full of a peaceful queenliness, were so alien to my own type as to subjugate the opposite in me. In my polygamous scheme I could see her nowhere except on the throne itself. Sibella might have the jewels, Edith Gascoyne would inevitably demand a share of real power. Miss Gascoyne made me proud to have a half right to the name she bore. She inspired me with the same feeling of pride in relationship as the turrets and battlements of Hammerton had done. ”

“ Once, when Sibella had taunted me and teased me past bearing, I threw the Gascoyne pedigree in her face. I shall never forget the silvery and maddening laugh of disbelief with which she received the announcement. She did not even ask me for proof but went on laughing till I could have struck her. At the moment I hated her. It was on a half-holiday. I had been asked to tea, and was making love to her in the schoolroom, waiting for Grahame and his brother to come in from football.
“When you laugh at me like that,” I said tersely, “I feel as if I could kill you.” ”

“ I had not been in the house an hour before I realised that she was a very charming woman, and that she was sincerely in love with Ughtred Gascoyne.
She harped a good deal on friendship, as if to exaggerate her sense of its value, and send the hearer away with the notion that a pure friendship between man and woman was her ideal.
I have, however, always had a keen instinct for the subtleties of female deception, and I was fully alive to the trend of her dissertations on friendship. They were the weapons she kept constantly in use for the defence of her character. ”

“ She was not the woman to dismiss a lover lightly and with a mere sensation of triumph at her own conquest. She had, I was sure, suffered in a way which most women would not have done.
With most women the dismissal of a lover brings with it a certain feeling of power. It is the one moment at which their sex can be truly said to rule.
Miss Gascoyne’s manner had in it a trace of sadness, probably, I thought, expressive of regret that she had been unable to accept as a husband a man whom she thoroughly respected and who perhaps she even felt was in many ways her natural mate. ”

“ Grahame’s criticism showed that I was playing my game with the right effect, and that the weeks of prostration following on the successful coup at Lowhaven had left no effect. Sibella, from her very nature, could not forbear giving me one or two glances with just enough of feeling in them to fill the atmosphere with a vague suggestion of sentimentality, but I behaved as if the very air she breathed was not to me love’s own narcotic. I fought fiercely against myself lest I should give the least sign that her power over me was supreme as ever. ”

“ I dined at the house in South Kensington, outside which I had so often watched. It seemed a quiet and sad household. Mrs. Gascoyne possessed the feminine capacity for filling the house with the presence of her dead, and turning a home into a tomb. Mr. Gascoyne was pleased that I managed to make her smile once or twice, and said as much as we sat over our wine.
“I am afraid there is very little to amuse you here, but I should be glad if you would dine with us now and then. I think my wife likes you. You have dignity, and she always likes people with dignity.” ”

“ Edith was radiantly happy, and her romance had brought something into her face which it had hitherto lacked. I was very proud of her. Poor Sibella, who had seen her at some public function, had evidently not expected anything so beautiful, for she declared that I must surely love so exquisite a creature better than herself. As a matter of fact, Miss Gascoyne’s beauty, although of a higher type, was not so dazzling as Sibella’s, and I could honestly say, “One admires Miss Gascoyne, but one does not love her,” which had a very good effect on Sibella. ”

“ Sibella made a face.
“Thank you. I’m nothing of the kind.”
“For goodness’ sake don’t flatter Sibella,” said Grahame. “She is vain enough already.”
“So long as she is vain and not conceited it does not matter.”
“The difference?”
“Well, vanity is a determination to make the best of our superiorities whilst frankly admitting them; conceit is a morbid desire to enforce the fact on other people.”
“Subtle,” murmured Grahame, who never spoke above his middle tones, “but I am not convinced. Sibella thinks a great deal too much of herself.” ”

“ The evening star shone solitary, a little pale for the moment, a faint flame set in a ghastly pallor. I turned down the lane of the romantic memory; why, I could not have said, unless, perhaps, some occult informing power gave me a premonition of what I should find there. The actual road track was quite narrow, there being a wide expanse of grass on each side. I had not gone very far before I saw a figure lying in a curiously huddled heap close to the hedge. I knew it was young Gascoyne at a glance. The expected had happened. My heart almost leapt into my mouth. ”

“ The guide touched his cap, and turning to the group who stood waiting, said impressively: “That is his lordship.”
The excursionists gaped after the carriage as if my lord and my lady were a show.
I rode back to London in the cool of a perfect summer evening thinking deeply. I had seen enough of the world to be quite sure that luck or capital were the only two things which could bring wealth while a man was still young enough to enjoy it. The first could in the nature of things only come to one man in a thousand, and the chances of a stroke of luck really worth having were even more remote. ”

“ I rode back thinking a good deal of Miss Gascoyne. I hold—what to the female mind is a heresy—that a man may be in love with half a dozen women at once.
Miss Gascoyne occupied my thoughts a great deal after I returned to town, and for the first few days I even thought that Sibella had been superseded. This I found not to be the case after a visit paid to the Hallwards, in the course of which Lionel Holland succeeded in rousing my jealousy to a high pitch by his ostentatious airs of proprietorship. I was in love with two women: with Sibella ecstatically as always, and with Miss Gascoyne. ”

“ There was a brand-new bronze tablet—somewhat of a relief after the black-edged marble mementoes of the rest of the Hutchins family—to the memory of Mary Gascoyne, the beloved wife of Henry Gascoyne, incumbent of the parish, with a space for the name of the Reverend Henry when he should be carried, by a power stronger than his own, from the comforts of Lye Rectory to that land, the glories and happinesses of which he expatiated upon every Sunday, but which he was in no hurry to set out for. ”

“ I inwardly smiled at Miss Gascoyne’s notion of poverty. I knew what she thought the Army should mean for a Gascoyne:—a crack cavalry regiment and unlimited private means.
“An inexpensive line regiment.”
“Oh dear!”
I laughed. “It’s the thing, depend upon it. He will be in a profession he likes, among men who take their profession seriously. After all, he will have a better average of gentlemen than he would have in a crack regiment, even if he does not have the high nobility of exceptions.” ”

“ At Christmas I paid a flying visit to the Gascoynes in the South of France, and was welcomed with a curious quietness of passion by Miss Gascoyne, and like a son by her aunt and uncle.
Miss Gascoyne always exalted me, mentally if not morally, and even in the latter direction she led me out of the limitations I had laid down for myself, and beyond which it would be dangerous for me to venture. I am quite capable of great moral enthusiasm, and it has always been my habit to keep out of the way of those likely to infect me with strenuousness. ”

“ Brown is a complete and wholly irreclaimable blackguard. That he has been an honest citizen, an attentive husband, and an irreproachable father hitherto counts for nothing. These virtues only aggravate the offence, inasmuch as they are shown by the nature of his guilt to have been mere hypocrisies. Public exposure is the real guilt in his fellow-men’s eyes. The old, old crime of being found out is the unforgivable offence. They know in their hearts that he is rather a fine fellow, that his slip is what might have happened to any of them. ”

“ How far my interest went beyond delight in their beauty I cannot say. I sometimes wonder how anyone can love anything but children. Their delicacy and sweetness are so exquisite compared to the faded or grosser beauty of their elders.
I held out my arms, and to Lady Gascoyne’s great surprise took the child with perfect confidence from Mrs. Gascoyne. I fancy Lady Gascoyne was somewhat alarmed, but, mother-like, could not help feeling flattered. As for Simeon, Lord Hammerton, he held out a little fat hand, and clutched a piece of my cheek cooing wildly. ”

“ He was obviously one of those born to the worship of beautiful apparitions, and his life had been passed at the extremes of joy and bitterness which that apparently exoteric, but in reality deeply esoteric, cult involves. It was a face that could never have known the lethargy of mediocrity. When his spirit slumbered it must have been the sleep of satiety. I am glad I never saw a picture of him in old age. That face, stained with the vices of an intoxicating youth and torn by the humiliation and agonies of middle and old age, could not have been pleasant. ”

“ Lovers are modest, yet at the same time I fancy a favoured lover has as a rule a very fair impression that he is not distasteful, however fluttered he may be before he has made sure of his prize. So by some curious undercurrent flowing between us I gathered that Miss Gascoyne was more interested in my visits than she had ever been before. I had nothing very tangible to go on. There was no sudden development of coquetry, such as a smaller-minded woman would have displayed. She showed towards me the same even friendship, and we did not see more of each other. ”

“ True, he would be rich, but Sibella had other admirers who would be richer. He had personality, and perhaps this wins with women more than anything. With all his faults he was not insignificant, and he was undeniably a very beautiful young man, notwithstanding his obvious veneer.
I had taken my courage in my hands and stayed and smoked with Grahame in the library, knowing full well that Lionel and Sibella were in each other’s arms in the schoolroom. It is strange how we manage to endure the things which in anticipation were to slay us with their mere agony. ”

“ It might be worth the while of a smaller criminal to make the attempt. In my case I cannot help thinking it would be somewhat undignified to linger in the public mind as an individual who was mouthing through the remainder of his existence with straws in his hair. Besides, it would be a satisfaction for the public—who have been made uncomfortable by such wholesale murdering—to be able to say, “Poor creature! he was mad.” On the whole, I would sooner live as the wicked Lord Gascoyne than with a reputation for insanity. ”

“ Great ladies have a way of carrying young men into the vortex of society to which they have not been accustomed, and then, when weary, leaving them to be slowly slain by general indifference, till they are only too glad to find themselves back again in their proper middle-class element.
I did not consider the middle-class my element, and I was determined that Lady Pebworth should keep me afloat as long as I chose and not as long as she chose.
As I was engaged in snaring young Gascoyne, I was only able to give her a divided attention. ”