In Paris, many moons later, an Englishman, Howard Tempest, looked in,
at the Opéra, on his cousin, Camille de Joyeuse. This lady, connected
by birth with Britannia’s best, and, through her husband, with the
Bourbons, delighted the eye, the ear, and the palate. In appearance,
she suggested certain designs of Boucher; in colouring and in manner,
the Pompadour. Admirable in these respects, she was admired also, for
her gayety, her tireless smile, and her chef. She had one of the best
cooks in Paris--that is to say, in the world. Her husband, the Duc de
Joyeuse, harmonised very perfectly with her. He had a head, empty, but
noble, an air vaguely Régence. A year younger than herself, Time had
had the impertinence to whiten his hair. The duchess was forty-two.
Those unaware of the fact fancied her twenty-eight. The error greatly
gratified this lady, who, familiarly, was known as Muffins.
One evening in May, Tempest entered her box, saluted her, examined the
house, and, as, in a crash of the orchestra, the curtain fell, seated
himself, in response to a gesture, beside her.
Camille de Joyeuse turned to him, and with that smile of hers, said:
“Do not fail to come on Sunday, Howard. There is to be a Madame
Barouffska, whom I want you to meet. She was formerly a Mrs. Verplank.
Barouffski is Number Two.”
“Verplank! Barouffski! What barbarous names!” Tempest exclaimed. He
had vivid red hair, violent blue eyes, and a great scarlet cicatrix
that tore one side of his face. In spite of the severity of his evening
clothes, he looked rather barbarous himself. “What was she, a widow?”
“Yes, but with no tombstone to show. It appears that she was in love
with Verplank for years, married him one minute and left him the next.”
Tempest stifled a yawn. “How extremely fastidious!”
“She ran away, got a divorce, met Barouffski and married him.”
“Very honourable of her, certainly. From what pond did you fish her?”
“The Silverstairs’. Violet Silverstairs is an American you know----”
“Know! I should say I did know. Though, if I did not, I would take my
oath to it. It’s got so a fellow can’t stir without running into one
of them. How does Louis like her?”
Louis was the duke.
The duchess displayed her beautiful false teeth. “Oddly enough, when he
was in the States, he went hunting with her Number One.”
“In the Rockies?” Tempest, with sudden interest, inquired. “In the
Dakotas?”
“I fancy so. It was a place called, let me see; yes, Long Island, I
think. I remember, he said it was very jolly.”
Tempest tossed his red head. “Her Number Two, I suppose, is that chap I
have seen at the Little Club. The Lord knows how he got there. He looks
like a thimblerigger.”
The duchess raised her opera-glass. “Possibly. Nowadays, so many men do,
don’t you think? There is Marie de Fresnoy with the Helley-Quetgens!
You will have her next to you on Sunday, Howard. Do not lacerate her
tender heart.”
At the suggestion, Tempest made a face. His expression amused Camille
de Joyeuse. Indulgently she added: “To make up for it you shall take
Madame Barouffska out.”
But now the curtain was rising. The clear brilliance of the house faded
into a golden gloom.
On the Sunday following, when Tempest reached the Cours la Reine, in
which his cousin resided, there was a motor before the perron, and from
it a woman was alighting. As rhythmically, with a grace that is rare
in women who are not ballerines, she mounted the stair, Tempest had a
vision of a figure, tall and slight, of a mass of black hair, and of a
neck emerging from ermine. In the anteroom above, while a servant took
from her her cloak and another received Tempest’s hat and coat, he saw
that she was extremely beautiful.
Immediately a footman, throwing open a door, announced: “Madame la
comtesse Barouffska!” He added at once: “Lord Howard Tempest!”
In this marriage of their names they entered a drawing room in which
were the Joyeuses, the Fresnoys, the Silverstairs; others, also,
who momentarily were indistinguishable. The room--large, wide,
high-ceiled--was decorated gravely, with infinite taste. Beyond it, a
suite of salons extended.
Camille de Joyeuse, advancing to meet her guests, presented Tempest to
Mme. Barouffska.
In a voice which, if a trifle high, was fluted, the duchess added:
“My dear, this cousin of mine has a terrible reputation, and that, I
am sure, will commend him to you.”
With the semblance of a smile, Mme. Barouffska replied:
“You know I am never quite able to decide just what construction to put
on your remarks.”
“Put the worst, put the worst!” answered the duchess, whose costume
left her splendidly nude. From a billowy corsage her shoulders and bust
emerged as though rising through foam, while the light gold tissue of
her gown accentuated the royal outlines of her figure.
Leilah Barouffska, slenderer, taller, wholly in white, contrasted
ethereally with her. Turning to Tempest she said:
“Lord Howard, I have heard so much that is interesting about you.”
“Not from Muffins, then.”
“Yes, but also from Silverstairs. He told me that you are the best
gentleman jockey in England and a Sanskrit scholar besides.”
“Oh, I can straddle a horse, if it comes to that, but otherwise he
exaggerates. He has caught that from his wife--unless it happens to be
from her sister.”
At mention of the girl, Leilah, who had been looking across the
room, turned to Tempest again. In looking she saw this young woman
whose allurements--and possibilities--were generally regarded as
excessive. Recently she had become engaged--perhaps for the tenth time.
Coincidentally was the announcement that she was going in for light
opera. Now, in reference to her, Leilah said:
“You have met Aurelia, then?”
“I found it very difficult not to.”
“And this young Lord Buttercups to whom she is engaged, is he nice?”
Tempest adjusted his monocle. “Very. A trifle wrong in the upper story.
So was his father. So was his grandfather. A fine old English family.”
Faintly, as before, Leilah smiled. “I understand that Aurelia is
studying for the stage. Such a queer idea, don’t you think--for an
American heiress, I mean.”
Tempest, extracting his eyeglass, nodded. “Nowadays, unless an idea is
queer, it can hardly be called an idea at all. But I am glad this young
person is studying something. When she went to school she must have
been taught everything which it is easiest to forget.”
A servant announced:
“His Excellency, Mustim Pasha!”
The man who entered was short and stout. He had a full black beard, and
the appearance, slightly Hebraic, which Turks possess. After M. de
Joyeuse had greeted him, he saluted the duchess.
Beyond, on a sofa, Violet Silverstairs sat talking to the Baronne de
Fresnoy, a young woman who looked very much as might a statuette of
Tanagra, to which Grévin had given two big blue circles for eyes, and
a small pink one for mouth, but a statuette articulated, perhaps, by
Eros, and costumed, certainly, by the Rue de la Paix--though a shade
less artistically than Lady Silverstairs, who always seemed to have
just issued from some paradise inhabited solely by poet-modistes,
and who, in addition, possessed what Mme. de Fresnoy lacked, a face
delicately and rarely patrician.
Adjacently was her sister, Aurelia, a girl with a face like an opening
rose, and a frock of such astonishing simplicity that it looked
both virginal and ruinous. This young person had the loveliest eyes
imaginable. In them and about an uncommonly bewitching mouth was an
expression quite ideally ingénue which, when least expected, it amused
her to transform into one of extreme effrontery.
On one side of her was Lord Buttercups, an English youth, small,
snubnosed, stupid. On the other lounged a Roman, Prince Farnese, a
remarkably fine-looking pauper.
Turning from the girl’s sister to the Turk, the young baroness called:
“Here, Musty, come and make love to us.”
The Asiatic was about to abandon Mme. de Joyeuse, when doors at the
farther end of the room were thrown open, and the duchess put a hand on
his arm.
At table, Tempest, who had taken Leilah Barouffska out, found his
seat indicated beside her. At his left was Mme. de Fresnoy, whom he
detested. He turned to the American. At the moment some preoccupation,
a nostalgia or a regret, contracted the angle of her mouth. The
contraction gave her the expression which those display who have deeply
suffered either from some long malady or from some perilous constraint.
Mechanically, Tempest considered a dish which a footman, his hands
gloved in silk, was presenting. When he again turned to the American,
it was as though a curtain had fallen or risen. Her face had lighted,
and it was with an entirely worldly air that she put before him this
unworldly question:
“Do you believe in fate?”
Tempest laughed. “Not on an empty stomach. I believe then in nothing
but virtue.”
Leilah put down her spoon. “It seems to me that our lives are sketched
in advance. It may be that we have the power to amplify incidents or
to curtail them, but the events themselves remain unchanged. They are
there in our paths awaiting us. Though why they are there----”
As was usual with her, she spoke with little pauses, in a voice that
caressed the ear. Now she stopped and raised the spoon, in which was
almond soup.
Tempest took a sip of Madeira. “A pal of mine, a chap I never met for
a number of reasons, though particularly, I suppose, because he died
two thousand years ago, well, he told me that we should wish things to
be as they are. I have no quarrel with fate. But if you have, or do
have----”
A maître d’hôtel, after presenting a carp that had been arranged as
though swimming in saffron, was supervising its service.
“Padapoulos,” exclaimed the young Baronne de Fresnoy, whom the sight of
the fish had, perhaps, excited, “Padapoulos told me that he dined best
on an orchid soup, a mousse of aubergine, and the maxims of Confucius.”
“Padapoulos,” the legate of the Sublime Porte gravely commented, “is
a poet, and a Greek. Add those two things together, and you get--you
get----”
“Nothing to eat!” the young baroness, with an explosion of little
laughs, threw at him. “Musty!” she cried. “Whom were you with at the
Variétés last night? I saw you. Yes, I did. Oh, Musty, who would have
thought that you would be unfaithful to me!”
“These Roumis!” the Turk mentally exclaimed. “If a wife of mine talked
in that way I would have her impaled.”
Beyond, across an opulent bosom, de Joyeuse and Silverstairs were
talking sport. They delighted in things that men have always loved,
the pursuit of prey, the joy of killing, the murderous serenity of the
woods.
Farther up was Aurelia. As before, she had Buttercups on one side,
Farnese on the other. She poked at the former.
“That horrid de Fresnoy woman is trying to flirt with you, Parsnips.
Now, don’t deny it. I don’t blame her. You are too good-looking. When
we are married--if we ever are--I’ll make you wear a veil. You sha’n’t
go out except in a closed carriage. Yes, and with some big, fat,
strapping woman to look after you.”
Beatifically the youth considered her. “Couldn’t you do that?”
Delicately Aurelia raised a fork. “I shall have my own affairs to
attend to.” For a second she nibbled. “I have a few on my hands as it
is.”
Buttercups stabbed at his plate. “I, too, may have business of my own.”
“Business! Business!” The girl repeated. “You are so commercial just
like all the nobility. If you were not a peer you would be mistaken for
one. It’s quite painful.”
“That may b-be,” Buttercups spluttered. “But this idea of yours of
going on the stage is quite as p-painful to me.”
He hesitated, then, as though uttering a great moral truth, threw out:
“It’s so dreadful to have your name in the papers!”
“And still more dreadful not to!” the girl threw back. She turned to
Farnese. “You do nothing but eat!”
With large, melancholy, inconstant eyes the Italian looked at her. “It
is my one consolation since you became engaged to that imbecile.”
Aurelia pecked at her food. “One always feels quite safe with an
imbecile, and that is so restful. Try it and see.”
“I’d like to try it with you.”
Aurelia put down her fork. “Am I your idea of an imbecile? You are
flattering, if insincere.”
Again the Roman covered her with his eyes. “It is rather difficult to
be the one and not the other. But I am perfectly sincere in saying that
you are my idea of perfection.”
“Thanks, but, then, you are not mine.”
“And might one ask what yours is?”
Dreamily, with an air of innocence that was infinite, Aurelia looked
at him. “You will think it childish of me, perhaps, but, like all
young girls--like all young and inexperienced girls--I have an ideal.
A mere maiden’s fancy, no doubt, and yet one which I cherish so. It is
a vision which at times I have of a blind man, a deaf mute, a divine
creature, invalid and octogenarian, who would not know what I did and
would not care.”
Pausing, she dropped her eyes and sadly shook her head. “You will tell
me that he don’t exist.”
“He might be manufactured,” Farnese cheerfully replied.
Then he, too, paused, drank of the wine before him, and, perhaps
stimulated by it, whispered:
“Believe me, I feel as though I could cut my throat for you.”
Maliciously Aurelia looked up. “When a man does not feel that way he
has no feeling at all. One might even say that he is quite heartless.”
Across the table, Tempest, turning again to Leilah, said: “Monsieur
Barouffski is not here to-night.”
At the remark, instantly in her face its former expression of
constraint appeared.
“No, he is to join us later.”
At the other end, where the duchess sat, everybody was laughing. The
lady had been giving an account of a recent bankruptcy, that of Lord
Auld Reekie.
“Heavens!” Violet Silverstairs exclaimed. “What will become of Bobbles!”
Bobbles was Lady Auld Reekie, a fair young craft of light timber and
many sails.
Camille de Joyeuse, summoning her diligent smile, replied: “She will go
into the hands of a receiver.”
Another jest followed, and presently, in the contagion of it almost the
entire table joined.
The delicately toxic fare, the slightly emotionalising wines, loosened
tongues, robbing them of discretion, and, before the servants, as
though the latter were deaf and dumb, hosts and guests revealed their
naked minds.
“It is rotten to talk in that way before these men,” Tempest exclaimed.
“They get their wages with lessons in anarchy thrown in. It’s too
much.”
“I had not heard,” Leilah replied. “I was thinking of that friend of
yours whom you never met.”
Tempest laughed. “The one who said we should wish things to be as they
are? Ah, well! I am afraid I am not up to that yet.”
“Nor I. But who was he, if one may ask? Not Aristotle?”
“No, but, by the way, do you know whom Aristotle is supposed to be,
or rather to have become? Herbert Spencer! An occultist told me. He
told me also such a curious story. You have heard, have you not, of
Apollonius of Tyana? Then you may remember it is said of him that he
healed the sick, raised the dead, knew all things save the caresses of
women, and spoke every language including that of colours. Well, the
occultist told me that Jesus was a rabbi who surrendered his entity to
the Christ, and afterward reappeared here as Apollonius. He said, too,
that he was not crucified. Crucifixion, you know, is merely the symbol
of initiation.”
“And whom did he say was the Christ?”
“An envoy from a higher sphere.”
Leilah inclined her head. “Yes, and there have, I believe, been
others. From zeniths or from nadirs unknown to us, from planes, let us
say, where all beatitudes are as usual as all shames are common here,
spirits commissioned to regenerate the hearts of man pass into the
slums of space. Confident, with a crown of light they come, only to
return with one of thorns.”
Tempest turned squarely in his chair. “That is a singularly beautiful
idea!”
Again Leilah inclined her head. “It is beautiful. It is beautiful to
think that earthward from some chromatic star the soul of Krishna may
have sunk. But the idea is not mine. I found it in the _Vidyâ_.”
This last statement was lost. Mme. de Fresnoy was insisting on
Tempest’s attention. Meanwhile a cygnet, its plumage replaced, a pond
lily in its ochre beak, had been presented, carved and served. A
salad, known as Half-Mourning, a composition of artichoke hearts and
Piedmontese truffles, had departed with it. Now sweets had come, pastry
light as a caress, volatile as an essence, that pastry of which the art
is known only to the Oriental and the occasional cordon bleu.
Devoutly, with an air of invoking the Prophet, the Turk was absorbing
it.
The young Baronne de Fresnoy, abandoning Tempest, looked at him. With
a wicked glitter in her big blue eyes she called:
“Musty! Are you thinking of me?”
The pasha was framing a reply, a reply perhaps rather bald, when
Camille de Joyeuse also addressed him. Presently she stood up. The
others imitated her. The gayeties of the table were abandoned for the
brilliance of the salons beyond.
Tempest, who had accompanied Leilah Barouffska said, as she seated
herself:
“Are you to remain in Paris?”
Before answering, she looked up at him, for he was standing. “Who can
tell what one will do? But I fancy so. We have taken a house in the rue
de la Pompe.”
“In the rue de la Pompe!” Tempest exclaimed. “That is where I live.” He
smiled. The fact that they were neighbours seemed to constitute a bond.
“Whereabouts in the rue de la Pompe?”
“Next to the church.”
“Do you find it convenient?”
A servant announced:
“Monsieur and madame Spencer-Poole!”
“You mean,” Leilah replied, “am I a Catholic? No, I am an Episcopalian.
But my views, I fear, are not orthodox. I have got so far that I
believe fully in the _Vidyâ_.”
She had cited the book at the dinner table but, at the time, distracted
by Marie de Fresnoy, Tempest had not heard; now he exclaimed at it.
“The _Vidyâ_! Of all things! Why not the Upanishads?”
A servant announced:
“Madame la marquise de Charleroi!”
Leilah made a little gesture. “The Upanishads, too. I have great faith
in them also. Their conceptions seem to me the most perfect that the
human mind has evolved, that is, if it were a human mind that evolved
them.”
A servant announced:
“Madame la princesse Orlonna!”
“What particularly impressed you in them?” Tempest asked.
“The demonstration that life is a laboratory in which the strength of
the soul is tried.”
“And in the _Vidyâ_?”
“The fact that selfishness is the root of evil. That impressed me very
much, primarily I suppose because it is true, but chiefly I think
because I had not realized it before.”
Tempest nodded. Never had he heard a mondaine cite the Upanishads. In
no drawing room had he ever heard the _Vidyâ_ mentioned. In his life he
had not dreamed of having a digest of each produced in an atmosphere
dripping with frivolities. As he nodded he reconsidered this woman.
From the first he had realized that she differed from the ordinary
society type. Now he saw that she belonged to a superior world.
“Do you not admire them, too?” Leilah, who had also been considering
him, inquired.
Tempest adjusted his monocle. “You see, you know, the Self, the
All-Self, the One, the oneness of self with everything, the oneness of
all things with One, these minor motifs of theirs I may admire but I do
not grasp. On the contrary, there is a certain voluminous complexity
about them that makes me gasp. None the less they advance certain ideas
which, while curious to the few and to the many absurd, are yet so
mathematically evident; the fact for instance----”
A servant announced:
“His Highness monseigneur le prince Paul de Montebianco!”
“Monsieur Harris!”
The salons were becoming filled. The floor was swept by trains brief
but brilliant. There was a multiplication of black coats, a renewed
animation, a mounting murmur in which occasionally the name of a new
arrival was lost.
The servant announced:
“Monsieur le vicomte and madame la vicomtesse de Helley-Quetgen!”
“Madame la princesse Zubaroff!”
“Monsieur d’Arcy!”
“Monsieur le comte Barouffski!”
The last of these, a large man, very fair, with grey-green eyes, had a
studied manner which, however, his voice relieved. As he advanced and
addressed Mme. de Joyeuse, it sounded supple and silken, as indeed most
Slav voices do.
Already groups had formed. The corner in which Tempest stood before
Leilah developed another. The Spencer-Pooles approached. With them was
d’Arcy, a young man abominably good looking, famous for the prodigious
variety of his affairs.
Tempest who had continued talking, who had even been expounding and who
now felt that he had been holding forth, moved on. He wanted to smoke
and being an habitué of the household, he knew where the smoking room
was.
There, before an open fire, his hands behind his back, in that
after-dinner attitude which some men assume, M. de Joyeuse stood. He
was telling of a stag hunt that had been held at Monplaisir, his estate.
The duke was not an impressionist, his description lacked colour.
But de Fresnoy, who had been present, resaw it all; the sheen of the
horses, the green of the whippers-in, the pink coats of the sportsmen,
the blue dolmans of the officers that had ridden over from a garrison
near by, the verdure of the forest’s edge, the view, the scramble,
the run, the quarry, the hallali of the huntsman, the leaping hounds,
the fastidious ceremonial of the death and the sky of pale silk which
draped with faint gold the magnificent brutality of the scene.
“It was just my luck to have missed it,” Silverstairs threw in.
De Joyeuse turned to him. “We count on you next autumn. And on you
also, mon vieux,” he added to Tempest who had approached.
Tempest nodded. He was lighting a cigar. The operation concluded, he
drew a chair beside Silverstairs. “Now, tell me all about Madame B.”
Silverstairs eyed him quizzingly. “She interests you?”
“Enormously.”
“Then look out for Barouffski whom she interests still more.”
Tempest shrugged his shoulders. “Was it her interest in Number One or
Number One’s interest in her that declined?”
“You mean Verplank?”
“I suppose I do. Anyway I mean her first husband. Why were they
divorced?”
“Why? But my dear Tempest, divorce in the States is what racing is with
us, a national amusement. Everybody takes a hand in it.”
“The right or the left?”
“Both I fancy. Though in the case of Madame B. I have an idea that the
right turned out to be wrong.”
Tempest flicked the ashes from his cigar. “I may compliment you,
Silverstairs. You have a manner of expressing yourself which is highly
cryptic. But now, to an every day sort of chap like myself, would you
mind being less abstruse?”
“I should feel sordid if I refused. Verplank is a very good sort,
whereas this Barouffski is a rotter.”
Tempest bowed. “Thank you for descending to my level. The long and
short of it is that she has made a mess of it. Well, most people do. I
don’t wonder now that over the soup she talked about fate.”
“Oh, as for that, after certain experiences of my own, with which, pray
do not be alarmed, I have no intention of boring you, I have stopped
wondering at anything at all.”
“Silverstairs, in ceasing to be cryptic, do not become Spartan. My
cousin told me that Joyeuse hunted with this, with What’s-his-name,
with--er----”
“With Verplank?”
“Yes, that he had hunted with him in the States. And that reminds me.
What have you decided about that horse?”
Silverstairs pulled at his straw-coloured moustache. “I’ll let you know
to-morrow. When are you to be at home?”
“Any time after two.”
Silverstairs nodded. “Very good, I will drop in on you.”
From beyond, blue and vibrant, came the upper notes of a violin. In the
now crowded salons a Roumanian, the rage of the season, a youth, very
pale, with melancholy eyes, flowing hair and the waist of a girl, was
executing a fantasy of his own.
De Joyeuse flicked a speck from his sleeve, threw back his noble and
empty head, gave a circular look of inquiry, a little gesture of
invitation, and accompanied by his friends, sauntered to the rooms
without.
There, Barouffski after saluting Mme. de Joyeuse had engaged her
briefly in talk. But her attention had been attracted rather than
claimed by the Montebiancan prince, a young man extremely gentlemanly
and equally modest who, with that diffidence which royals and poets
share, stood bashfully at her side.
Barouffski, bowing again, passed on. During his short and entirely
fragmentary conversation with Mme. de Joyeuse, his eyes had rummaged
the room.
Leilah, meanwhile, rising from the sofa where she had been seated,
moved with the inflammatory d’Arcy into the salon beyond.
Barouffski would have followed. But the young Baronne de Fresnoy
addressed him. Perversely, with sudden glimpses of little teeth and an
expression of glee in her piquant face, she asked:
“Was it you who performed that high act of gallantry at Longchamps
to-day?”
“Was it I who did what?” Barouffski surprisedly exclaimed.
“What was it?” asked Aurelia, who with Buttercups in tow, had
approached.
But Mme. de Fresnoy waved at her. “Go away my dear, it is not for an
ingénue.”
“Ah then, but you see,” Aurelia indolently interjected, “I am tired of
being an ingénue. An ingénue is supposed to be in a state of constant
surprise and that is so exhausting.”
None the less, with Buttercups still in tow she betook herself to a
corner where she was promptly joined by Farnese.
Then at once to Barouffski, to Mustim Pasha, to the Helley-Quetgens,
to others that stood about, the young baroness related a morsel of
gossip, the report of which had been brought her but a moment before,
a story that had one of the reigning demireps for heroine and for hero
a man unidentified by the baronne’s informant, the tale of an assault
committed before all Paris, before all Paris that is, that happened
to be at the races that day; an extravaganza in which the heroine,
erupting suddenly on the pelouse before the Grand Stand, had, with her
parasol, struck the hero over the head and had been about to strike him
again, when he, pinioning her arms with his own, had to the applause
of everybody, prevented the second assault by kissing her through
her veil; after which releasing the lady, he had raised his hat and
strolled away.
“Was it you, Barouffski?” Mme. de Fresnoy, the narrative at an end,
inquired. “Was it?”
“I? Nonsense! Why should you ask?”
“It would be just like you, you know. Besides, I hear that the man was
tall and good-looking.”
“You are exceedingly complimentary. But the world is peopled with tall,
good-looking men.”
“_Pas tant que ça_,” laughed the baroness. “Well, if it was not you,
perhaps it was that man who is just coming in.”
Involuntarily Barouffski turned, while a footman bawled:
“Monsieur Verplank!”