Anonymous - The altar of VVenus - The Making of a Victorian Rake

Fifteen minutes later I wsa at a telephone, and when the call was effected, the uneasy voice of my detective friend inquired:

" What in the world happened? I was about to take a man and go out there. Thought maybe that little witch had stuck a knife in your ribs. She stalled you off, didn' t she?"

" No, she didn' t stall me off. I' ll tell you later."

" Well: I' ll be: did you really:?"

" Yes, yes; I' ll tell you all about it when I see you. But that fellow: where is he?"

" Detained for investigation."

" Could you get him out tonight, if you wanted to?"

" Tonight! Why: I could, I guess, but what' s the rush?"

" Get him out, if you want to do me a favor. It' s important to me. I' ve given my word, and I want to make it good. I' ll get a cab and be down soon. Try and have him loose by the time I get there."

And I hung up the receiver.

The following week I was back in England.

But instead of going home, I took a room in London and in accordance with previously formulated plans, began looking around for an opportunity to invest what remained of the money grandmother had left me in some manner which would yield me a living.

After investigating many solicitations which came to me as the result of a small advertisement in theDaily Mail, I finally decided upon one that would also provide me with employment at a nominal salary.

Once located, I applied myself diligently to the task of learning the fundamentals of the business and at the end of the first year, was made assistant manager. During this period I had dedicated my time and interest almost exclusively to the business, and such amorous expansion as I permitted myself was confined to that class which usually paid for by the hour or by the night. Fastidious tastes stood in the way of any extended relationships with the girls or women which I encountered as purely physical necessities. I remained heart whole and fancy free for something like a year and a half.

And then I met Edyth.

I found her in the unromantic and prosaic atmosphere of a big department store – a sweet faced, modest, lovable girl of attractive personality. Her voice immediately set up in my heart that mysterious vibration which is a prelude to what we call love.

On the wiles of strategems I employed and the prolonged courtship I paid her, before she finally surrendered her affections and something else to me, I shall not dwell. Suffice it to say that eventually she gave up her employment, and we established ourselves in a pretty little flat in Kensington Gardens.

Of ardent and passionate nature, she unfolded like an exotic tropical blossom and enshrined with her memory are the recollections of many happy hours.

She had no vices, no eccentricities; she was just a wholesome, normal, adorable girl, whose heart, starved for affection, responded with passionate ardor to my caresses, a harp which had but waited the touch of a master to give forth its sweetest strains

Edyth had been married, but had left her husband after a series of heartbreaking disillusions. Because of the peculiarly hard divorce laws of Great Britain, and the unique circumstances under which she had separated from her husband, she had never attempted to secure a divorce and presumed herself to be still legally bound to a man she had not seen in over two years.

The events which preceded her separation from this man as she related them to me were so startling that despite the fact that this biography was intended to refer only to my experiences, I cannot bring myself to deprive my readers of their telling. I shall therefore, step out of the picture for an interval, to transcribe the story, exactly as Edyth, with dramatic realism, averted eyes and frequent blushes as some of the succulent details were recounted, told it to em. And may I observe that in the telling, she employed a few words which I never previously, or afterward either for that matter, heard fall from her lips.

I was eighteen years old when Vernon began to pay me attention. He was five years older than I, and in my inexperience he seemed to me the epitome of masculine perfection. Nice looking, well groomed, gallant and attentive, he quickly captured my youthful affections. When he proposed marriage to me, my parents, solicitous for my welfare, interposed some objections, for Vernon had nothing but an unimportant clerkship, and evidently had not impressed them as favorably as he had me. But this being the only tangible objection they could present against our marriage, I laughed it to scorn, and when they realized that my heart was set, they withdrew their opposition, and we were married.

I was deeply in love with my handsome husband and for a short time was ideally happy.

My first shock came when I discovered that a beautiful diamond engagement ring he had slipped on my finger was unpaid for, and that the installments due on it were sadly in arrears. The small salary which he received had, before our marriage, sufficed for his own necessities but as he had saved nothing we were compelled to adopt methods of strictest economy. Before marriage I had been accustomed to a comfortable living, and generous parents had always provided me with money to purchase the little luxuries of dress and toilet so dear to the feminine heart. After marriage, my father continued to give me small sums destined to my own personal use, but the pressure of domestic obligations was such that I was obliged to use this money for household expenses. The former luxuries were sadly missed, but still deeply enamored with my husband, I would not give him up for all the treasures of India.

But, alas, the sweetest illusions of life are those most prone to rapid destruction.

The installments due on the ring had mounted to a figure which in our actual finances was appalling, and to save Vernon from the embarrassment of constant dunning threats, I silently withdrew it from my finger, and handed it to him with a request that it be returned.

This was but the beginning, and before we had been married half a year, I began to see life through less rosy spectacles. The sad realization that the idol of my girlish affections was far from being all I had so confidently assumed, was forced upon me.

Vernon was of weak character and lacked the manly aggressive qualities which women require in the men they love, and without which respect and admiration are impossible. Marriage, instead of developing these latent if at all existent qualities was having just the contrary effect upon him and day by day he was becoming accustomed to lean more on me. The money given me by my father was now accepted as a matter of course as being our main dependence in household finances, and his own salary was devoted almost entirely to personal expenditures.

I still loved Vernon – but instead of loving him with respect and admiration, it was a pitying love – more as a mother might love a weak and petulant child.

When we had been married about a year, Vernon lost his position, and as the weeks went by, without a serious effort on his part to find another, I was obliged to seek employment. In this I was successful and thought the pay was small between it and what my father gave me we managed to live.

Vernon spent most of the time lying around the house, smoking innumerable cigarettes and reviling his " rotten luck" as he called it. If I reproved him for his failure to make a more determined effort to improve his circumstances he became cross and irritable, and would leave the house, to return at a late hour of the night.

Now appeared on the scene a Mr. George Tucker.

This individual came home one evening with Vernon, and was introduced to me as an old friend of my husband' s. Mr. Tucker, though not of displeasing appearance, was an uncultured man several years older than Vernon, addicted to flashy clothing, and apparently well supplied with money. From the moment I saw this man I felt an instinctive dislike for him. His conversation was in bad taste, and the first evening he spent with us, he eyed me incessantly, assuring my husband that he had known what a " topping little woman" he had, he would not have delayed so long in paying his respects.