Strong, square-shouldered, and with that well set-up appearance which is acquired by drill, he looked every inch what he had really been, a Captain in a crack cavalry Regiment. He had seen some fighting in his time, as the sword-cuts on his chest and legs, had he cared to show them, would have proved. He came of a fighting family. His brother had fallen in a charge, and his father owed the whiteness of his head less to the cares of age than to the anxiety of a forlorn hope that he had once led.
Our hero had quitted the Regiment partly for love of a woman, and partly owing to a duel with a French officer, in which he had maimed his man for the rest of his days. Owing to the scandal created by this affair, and a few tales circulated by slanderous tongues concerning a little supposed cleverness with the cards, Brandon had resolved to resign his commission and live on the ample fortune he had at his command.
In the first years of his freedom, he wandered about the world with his handsome wife, and found his way into all manner of strange places.
Clever and cute as he was, he at last met his masters and fell into the hands of a gang of sharpers who flitted between Ostend and Monaco. Like all people who lose money in these places, he at first had a run of luck, winning large sums.
Elated by success, he continued playing, only to find the tables turning against him. He then, of course, commenced to plunge, and losing his habitual caution, grew perfectly reckless. After ten days hard play he left the gorgeous gaming Palace a ruined man, white, haggard, and broken-down. His ten day's play had aged him five years. After spending the remainder of his fortune, he took to painting, for which he had always had a strong predilection; indeed, he was no mean amateur.
It was about this time that he commenced to notice a change in the bearing of his wife towards him. She was still beautiful beyond compare, and while the change of fortune had only increased his love for her, it had weakened hers for him.
She was only thirty years of age and splendidly built, and her small waist and magnificent breasts were the cynosure of all eyes. She was plump, fresh coloured, and had large greyish eyes, swimming in an ocean of voluptuousness, with red, slightly sensual lips. She would have made a capital banquet for a king. In fact, we are inclined to believe that had King David seen her, he would have overlooked the seduction of Bathsheba for the pleasure of dwelling between the thighs of Brandon's wife. It required, too; a King's purse to satisfy all the whims and caprices of this lady for dress. In the days of their wealth, toilet had formed one of the heaviest items in their expenditure. And now that they had fallen upon evil days, she could not forego the fine feathers that had once been the delight of her heart. Instead of endeavouring to humour his wife, Brandon tried to frown down this weakness.
The inevitable result was that his wife resorted to adultery in order to procure those articles of dress that she coveted. She paid for them as the vulgar saying goes, upon her back, with wriggling buttocks and legs in the air.
At last the painter had no further doubt. The tales he had heard, and had wished not to believe, could no longer be ignored: his wife had a lover. The strangest thing about it was that he should have so long remained in ignorance as to the fact. He must have known well that the low prices which were paid for his pictures were hardly sufficient for the needs of the household, let alone the terrible prices marked on the invoices that were sent home with the goods she had purchased.
She often went out driving in Hyde Park, and on long lonely country-roads, in the fashionable carriage of the Count de Sainte-Galette, a French nobleman who had been setting London society by the ears for the last two years, on account of his extravagance. When she came home in the evening after the theatre very late, her hair looked as though she had done it up in a hurry, little tufts stuck out from under her hat, which kept its place badly, and her voluptuous gray eyes shone with a strange fire of lubricity, like two shining stars. She wore the look of a woman who had first enjoyed the caresses of a lover, and who may have made some show of resistance only to give herself away with a greater amount of abandonment. She had undoubtedly taken a late supper in some private room, and enjoyed the sweetmeats and the pastry on the sofa.
Already they had many stormy scenes on account of these late and frequent absences. He had even on several occasions gone the length of beating her in a most unmerciful manner, without producing any change in her conduct.
And yet this man loved his wife with all his heart. He had talked to her and treated her like a child, but the proud and magnificent Maud had treated him with scorn.
Once, however, as they were on the point, of starting, — he was already in his dress clothes, and she, dressed all in pink silk, was standing before the cheval-glass occupied in hooking the clasp of a necklace of imitation pearls., it so happened that Brandon was abandoning himself to doleful thoughts and, thinking out loud. He said that no doubt she was pretty. Oh! of that he was sure! in this dress in which she looked like a lily in a rose. But it comes expensive, the silk and the making, and he was not rich, having barely?200 a year! And it would be necessary to diminish expenses, and not go so often to balls, if they wished to avoid falling soon into difficulties.
She turned round towards him, her cheeks flushing, a spark of anger in her eyes, and then in a sharp shrill voice that he had never yet heard from her, with her lip raised showing her little teeth, she began to speak very fast, after stamping her foot.
“Now you just listen. I intend to amuse myself. I did not get married to stick at home in a hole. If it does not please you, it's all the same to me. Let the ugly women hide themselves, that's quite right: I mean to show myself. After this ball, other balls; after this dress, other dresses. You may as well make up your mind to it. If it was a housekeeper you wanted, you should have hired one at so much a year. I am worth more than that. I have never told you so before; I tell it you now-once for all! If you have not enough money, try to make some. I must have money, and more than I have ever yet had. I tell you beforehand; I don't deceive you. Borrow, get into debt, do what you like. Honest business if you can, or dishonest business. But understand this well, find money! If you cannot, all the worse for you, my boy! It is I who will find cash. Is that plain enough, eh? It's ten o'clock, come along.”
She was already descending the stairs; he followed, amazed, stupefied. It was Maud who had spoken in these terms. He staggered from step to step, hurt and bruised as if he had received blows from a stick, or as if he had tumbled out of window.
The ball took place at the house of the Count of Sainte-Galette, a wealthy man, a man who had long remained still young, who had filled a rather high situation in the French Ministry of Foreign affairs; and who, although a widower, gave evening parties where vaguely unclassed mundane ladies might be found, and where also were to be met with wives of government employees, anxious to procure the promotion of their husbands.
Brandon was stupefied, without a thought in his brain, and had not opened his mouth in the carriage, and when he entered the drawing-room full of noise and light, staggered like a drunken man. He wished almost to escape, to return home, but Maud was already whirling along the rosy train of her ball-dress in the mazes of the waltz with noisy rustle, and the poor man leaned against the wall, unperceived by the laughing and dancing crowd. He somehow found his way to another room, went still farther on, seeking instinctively for solitude, silence, and darkness; at last he pushed open another door, and fell down into an arm-chair.
He was alone, and in a rather small room, dimly lighted from above, and in which was a bed.