VI

That morning Leilah had two appointments, one with a modiste, the other

with Violet Silverstairs. She did not feel equal to either. The episode

of the previous evening had been to her like the supreme torture which

medieval legislation devised. It was all she could bear--and more!

When, abruptly, she found herself face to face with Verplank, it was

as though she were confronted by the dead. The sense of it numbed her,

and the numbness was heightened by a horror that has no name. Into the

seats of thought there entered the realisation that, in spite of all,

she still loved him, that in spite of all he still loved her. In the

core of these convictions fear entered, fear of him, fear of herself,

a sensation of common peril and mutual perdition so blinding that

Barouffski’s rudeness she barely noticed, and it was with a look the

damned may have that she saw Verplank turn with Violet Silverstairs,

and go.

As they passed, Barouffski, with the air of one commenting on a

triviality, remarked:

“How odd it is that the Joyeuses should care to hobnob with demi-castors.

Shall we go?”

That demi-castors meant bounders generally, and, in this instance,

specifically, she would, ordinarily, have been insufficiently familiar

with the slang of the boulevards to know. But she did not hear.

Moreover, the remark required no reply. Even otherwise she was unable

to speak, and it was not until Barouffski reiterated his suggestion

that mechanically she acceded to it with a movement of the head.

Her demeanor then in traversing the salons, her leave-taking of the

duchess, her bearing in descending the stairs, were as mechanical as

her reply to Barouffski, and it was not until after the motor had

dropped him, as he had asked that it should, at the door of the Little

Club, that, at last alone, the mental anchylosis fell by.

At once in a sort of retrograde vision, she relived the past. There

had been the flight from Coronado, the halt at Salt Lake, the descent

into Nevada, the divorce, the journey abroad, the platonic marriage

to Barouffski. These--the succeeding episodes in the drama of her

life--were so many hostages to joy, barricades thrown one after another

between Verplank and herself, and unavailingly thrown, since, with but

a look, they were almost destroyed.

They had seemed wholly impregnable, but she knew then that unless

reinforced by surer bars, they would one and all collapse. At the

foreknowledge of that she appreciated what the heroines in the old

tragedies endured, when circled by the seven-times-twisted coil of

fate. Yet, though they had yielded, she would not yield, and it was

with this determination that she alighted in the rue de la Pompe.

The house there had a church for neighbour, and stood between a court

and a garden. Before the court was a high, white wall. The garden

extended back to the parallel street, where, also, was a wall. The

entrance to the court was a double doorway, the entrance to the garden

was an iron gate. Between the gate and the house were large urns,

a marble bench, a marble chair, most noticeably the kennels of two

mastiffs, pets of Barouffski who, at whatever hour he returned at

night, had them loosed. They were, he declared, a great protection, as

indeed they were--for him. Apart from the occasional barking of these

dogs, barring also occasional music from the church, usually the garden

was quiet. But that was in the order of things. It lacked both stable

and garage. These had been secured elsewhere.

Except for that detail, the arrangements generally were satisfactory.

The house was commodious, agreeably furnished. On the ground floor were

the usual offices, beneath which the servants slept. On the floor above

were the salons and dining hall. Above these were the bedrooms. On this

upper floor the apartment which Barouffski occupied gave on the street,

while Leilah’s overlooked the garden.

Adjacent to her suite was a stairway designed for servants, but which,

because of its convenience, she occasionally used. It led directly to

the dining hall, and from there she could descend into the garden.

It had a superior advantage. It enabled her to avoid the hazards of the

main stairway, which was used by Barouffski, whom nearer acquaintance

had discovered to her without the mask--without one mask, that is--for

histrion that he was, he had many, but the best, the feigned nobility

of noble pride, the assumed parage, had gone.

In its place was a smile, constant, equivocal, ambiguous, a smile such

as the consciously damned may display. It gave Leilah little creeps.

She dreaded it, dreaded him, dreaded both, what is worse she dreaded

instinctively, without knowing why. The man was amiable, serviceable,

gallant. He wore his domino not faultlessly perhaps but with the fine

air of a bravo who, when the time comes, will knife you, yes, but who

in so doing will rather require that you admire the chasing on the

handle of the blade. As yet the knife was concealed. But Leilah felt

that it was there. He knew it was. Occasionally he fingered the point.

Hitherto he had lived by expedients. A golden six had been tossed him.

He had pocketed it. For him the economic problem of life was solved.

He asked little else, merely that the solution should endure and that

his dignity, of which he had a humorous conception, be outwardly

preserved. In addition to his dignity, or to his idea of it, he had

another attribute. He was not exacting. It is a great charm in any one.

But with him it did not extend to money. Freely he demanded it, freely

she gave and it was precisely when he demanded it that she felt, and he

felt, too, the point of the knife.

On this evening when, after the usual din at the doors, the motor

entered the court and she alighted at the perron, two footmen busied

themselves in aiding her.

Leilah passed through the dining room to the garden where for a while

she walked along the path that led from the house to the gate.

The garden was cloistered, the night serene. The influences of both

affected her. The darkness put her thoughts into relief, the solitude

relaxed the tension of her nerves.

Another thing was helpful, the determination which she had reached,

though for that determination to be maintained there must, she saw, be

further hostages, new barricades. But what further hostages could she

give she wondered, what firmer barricades was it possible to erect?

Barring flight or an appeal to Verplank, some message begging him to

leave Paris, she could not imagine any. Flight she had already tried,

but not flight to some one of the world’s far away places where any

one may be lost forever. It was a miserably dismal thing to do, she

reflected, a thing so dismal and so miserable that she doubted her

ability to do it.

As she thought it over she wondered if in some former existence she

could have injured Verplank and whether it were by way of retribution

that he had the power to tempt and torture her now. Tenets of this

character the _Vidyâ_ advanced and as she had told Tempest, she had

come to believe in that Scripture as many do in the Bible, though as

many also do without being able to accept it entirely, without being

able to accept for instance stories such as that of Jonah and the

whale which none the less all would accept were it known how profound

is the symbolism behind them. With like reservations, Leilah accepted

the _Vidyâ_. She was very ignorant as women in her station generally

are and the reservations were due to that ignorance and also to the

demand which the doctrine made on her imagination. But though she was

ignorant she was conscious of it and consciousness of ignorance is

usually the condition precedent to enlightenment.

Now, in considering the episode of the evening, she asked herself

whether she was warranted in accepting this creed of past lives. At the

Joyeuses, during the announcements of resonant names, Tempest had said

that unless we swallow the ridiculous dogma of a soul specially created

at every birth and unless too we are indecent enough to fancy the Deity

waiting for that purpose on the passions and caprices of man, we have

to accept it, have to accept with it the corollary of past actions

and their consequences, have to accept, too, the deduction that,

in accordance with our past actions, it is we who reward or punish

ourselves, we who become avenging furies or angels of light.

Leilah wished that she could have discussed the matter more fully

with Tempest yet she felt that what he had said was logical, but if

it were true, then the parallel doctrine that all misdeeds and with

them all misfortunes spring from desire must be true also, in which

case, before their consequences can be effaced, all misdeeds must be

atoned. But how can they be atoned? she asked herself. Presently she

remembered. According to the _Vidyâ_, any desire no matter what, desire

for pleasure, for gain, for attainments, for honours, even the desire

for spiritual perfection, even the desire for the lack of desire, must

be extinguished before old scores are paid. That was the way she saw,

the only way. The debtor must sacrifice himself to himself.

But, uncertain still, she went over the matter again, putting to it

little tests, passably naïf yet serviceable to her. She had ardently

desired to marry Verplank, then, desiring as ardently a barricade

against him, she had married Barouffski. In the one case the result had

been catastrophic; in the other, calamitous. Doubtless she had sinned

in the past and these disasters, brought about by her own desires,

were her punishment. There were other things that she had desired. She

had wanted to be loved, she had wanted to be thought a beauty, and not

only her love had shamed her but soon she might be ashamed to show

her face. At the thought of these things she realised anew and more

profoundly than ever that selfish desire is the root of evil and that

only in its extirpation may peace be had. But coincidently she realised

also that any such extirpation was beyond her. Heredity, environment,

the circumstances of her life, had given an impetus to desire which

she could not arrest. She liked wealth, ease, pretty clothes, becoming

hats, the society of agreeable people. She liked the world and in

liking it she feared that she liked also the flesh, it might be even

that she liked, too, the devil. Yet, she must not, she knew.

In telling herself that, she thought of the Church. The Church was so

much more comfortable. There you were not asked impossibilities, the

one requirement was to throw yourself in her arms and repent. As the

facile process occurred to her she recalled George Moore’s story of

_Evelyn Innes_. That masterwork seemed to tell her to do as the heroine

had done and go in a convent.

Perhaps she might, she thought. Perhaps she must.

Several times already she had crossed and recrossed the garden. Now she

found herself at the farther end facing the iron gate. Leilah opened

it, walked to the corner and returned.

The little tentative evasion had been successful. At any time, unseen

even by a servant, she could leave the house, disappear utterly, be

forever ingulfed. But the knowledge that she could escape into darkness

and be lost there, offered little more than a choice between tears. It

presented a form of suicide which was superior only to actual death.

She hoped she might be spared it. She hoped an appeal to Verplank would

suffice, though in what manner it could best reach him, or, for that

matter, reach him at all, she found it difficult to decide. To make it

personally was impossible. To attempt it through Violet Silverstairs

would involve an explanation and that was impossible also. The idea

of employing one of her women occurred to her. There were manifest

objections to such a course, though the particular woman whom she had

in view she trusted entirely.

Slowly she returned to the house and went to her room. There, when at

last the servants had gone and she was alone, she knelt on a prie-dieu

and, to the Watchers of the Seven Spheres, prayed for the earthly peace

of her soul and of his. She knew that no prayer could affect them, she

knew that they are not to be propitiated or coerced, but it soothed

her as prayer, in raising the vibrations, does soothe the distressed.

The prayer concluded she began another. She prayed that sometime she

might be somewhere, on some plane, where all things broken are made

complete and found again things vanished.

Then, the solace of it still upon her, suddenly she saw by what the

prayer had been induced. The consciousness confused and presently,

in the melancholy sotto-voce of thought, she told herself that to

extinguish that desire, she would have to be in Dharmakaya--the mystic

state where there is oblivion of all things here.

“Here!” she caught herself repeating. For, at once, a passage from the

_Upanishads_ prompting, she remembered that here means Myalba, which is

hell, the greatest of all hells and, for those of this evolution, the

only hell there is.