There was something so marvelous in this excited, angry
manifestation that Beulah, who had never before seen him other than
phlegmatic, looked at him with curious wonder. His clenched hand
rested on the arm of the chair, and he continued sarcastically: "Oh, a precious pair of idiots! They will have a glorious life. Such
harmony, such congeniality! Such incomparable sweetness on her part,
such equable spirits on his! Not the surpassing repose of a windless
tropic night can approach to the divine serenity of their future.
Ha! by the Furies! he will have an enviable companion; a matchless
Griselda!" Laughing scornfully, he started up and strode across the
floor. As Beulah caught the withering expression which sat on every
feature she shuddered involuntarily. Could she bear to incur his
contempt? He approached her, and she felt as though her very soul
shrank from him; his glowing eyes seemed to burn her face, as he
paused and said ironically: "Can't you participate in my joy? I have a new brother-in-law.
Congratulate me on my sister's marriage. Such desperate good news
can come but rarely in a lifetime."
"Whom has she married, sir?" asked Beulah, shrinking from the iron
grasp on her shoulder.
"Percy Lockhart, of course. He will rue his madness. I warned him.
Now let him seek apples in the orchards of Sodom! Let him lay his
parched lips to the treacherous waves of the Dead Sea! Oh, I pity
the fool! I tried to save him, but he would seal his own doom. Let
him pay the usurious school-fees of experience."
"Perhaps your sister's love for him will--"
"Oh, you young, ignorant lamb! You poor, little, unfledged birdling!
I suppose you fancy she is really attached to him. Do you, indeed?
About as much as that pillar of salt in the plain of Sodom was
attached to the memory of Lot. About as much as this peerless Niobe
of mine is attached to me." He struck the marble statue as he spoke.
"Then, how could she marry him?" asked Beulah naively.
"Ha! ha! I will present you to the Smithsonian Institution as the
last embodiment of effete theories. Who exhumed you, patron saint of
archaism, from the charnel-house of centuries?" He looked down at
her with an expression of intolerable bitterness and scorn. Her
habitually pale face flushed to crimson, as she answered with
sparkling eyes: "Not the hand of Diogenes, encumbered with his tub!"
He smiled grimly.
"Know the world as I do, child, and tubs and palaces will be alike
to you. Feel the pulse of humanity, and you will--"