It was on the morning succeeding these incidents that Leilah felt
unequal for the appointments she had made. But however she felt, she
always did what she had planned. In this instance nature punished her.
On the way to the first appointment, a malaise overtook her, enveloped
her, beat at her and although, gradually, it fell by, she was still
conscious of it when, in the rue Cambon, the motor stopped at the
modiste’s door.
“The fitting of madame la comtesse Barouffska!” a fair young girl in
black immediately and authoritatively announced.
Before landscapes of silk, in the delight of new modes, customers were
sunning themselves. At the announcement they turned, while Leilah,
conducted by another girl who had advanced to meet her, crossed the
laboratory of enchantments and entered an adjoining room.
But, for the moment, the fitting was delayed. The première was
elsewhere occupied. When presently she appeared she excitedly
exclaimed:
“I hope I have not detained madame. I am desolated if I have. But!
But! If madame knew! One is literally torn to pieces! All day long it
is nothing but Ernestine that dress! Ernestine, that robe! Ernestine,
that costume! Ernestine this! Ernestine that! Truly madame, there are
moments when I say I die! I go crazy!”
Abruptly dropping her voice, she added: “But pardon, I monologue.”
At once, indicating a gown which an assistant had brought, she
exclaimed again:
“It will ravishingly become madame.”
The gown, a work of the best Parisian art, suggested something of the
immateriality of a moonbeam, and as the assistant, a girl with a tired
face and circled eyes, held it for inspection, it gleamed.
Leilah looked at it, wondering the while where she would wear it,
whether indeed she would wear it at all. Then, before a sheet that had
been placed on the floor and on which the assistant arranged the gown
in a circle she proceeded to undress.
To the amateur in feminine beauty, there are few spectacles more
attractive than that of an attractive woman clothed in lingerie and a
hat. This spectacle Leilah presented.
The première exclaimed at it. “Madame la comtesse has a figure truly
divine. But! But! Who could have laced her?”
“I was not very well this morning,” Leilah replied. “I told my women
not to make me too tight. But you can take me in I think about an inch.”
“Marguerite,” said the première, “draw the stays a little closer.”
The girl with the tired face undid the corset and pulled at the
strings. But she pulled awkwardly, perhaps too suddenly.
Leilah gasped, turned, sat down and fell forward. The première hurried
to her. She had fainted.
“The smelling salts!” the première cried. “The smelling salts! Cognac!
Get some cognac!”
With one hand she was supporting Leilah, with the other she gesticulated
at Marguerite who, hurriedly from the mantel, fetched a vinaigrette
which Ernestine then took and sniffed at.
“She’s coming to,” said the assistant.
Ernestine waved the vinaigrette. “The gods be praised!”
For Leilah now had opened her eyes. Wearily she looked about,
straightened herself and sighed.
“I must have fainted.”
“It is nothing madame,” Ernestine anxiously protested. “Truly nothing
and yet so modish. Yesterday the Princesse de Solférino fainted. The
day before it was the turn of the young Duchesse de Malakoff. Such a
good augury for these ladies! Like them madame is perhaps----”
But Leilah now was making an effort to rise.
Abandoning the vinaigrette Ernestine aided her.
“Madame will perhaps wish the fitting postponed. Yes, is it not? It
might further fatigue madame. To-morrow--no, to-morrow I regret but
in the afternoon I have three appointments and in the morning there
is the trousseau of Miss Smith of New York who is to marry an English
lord. Marguerite!” she interrupted herself to exclaim. “The costume of
madame!”
Then, as the assistant also assisted Leilah, reflectively the première
resumed:
“I hear that every New York young lady loves a lord. But----”
She hesitated. Visibly the vision evoked, confused. Yet, after a
second’s pause, rallying, she continued.
“Perhaps it is not every New York young lady who has a lord to love.
Perhaps many of them love the same lord.”
Discreetly she smiled. “And that must be so nice for him!”
Considering Leilah, she concluded:
“But another day----”
Of it all, Leilah heard but that. “Yes,” she answered, “another day.”
Then, presently, after more attentions, the première accompanied her to
the door.
“Rue François Premier,” Leilah told the groom.
The machine shot ahead. Arrested shortly by a congestion of traffic, it
halted before a window behind which Verplank and Silverstairs sat.
Leilah, unconscious of their presence, gazed at the murky cinematograph
of the street, filled at this hour with faces sordid, petulant,
indifferent, or frankly gay; with the passing forms of workmen, idlers,
shopgirls, vagabonds; the swarming Parisian crowd which did not, she
believed, contain one soul as miserable as her own.
The congestion relieved, the motor shot on. Leilah leaned back. It was
not so long ago that she was on her way from New York to Coronado. She
was happy then, happy with a happiness so perfect that it lifted her
into the ultimate ecstasies which love and life comport. It was not so
long ago, only six short months, only that brief eternity of sorrow
which, unended yet, had been the damning penalty of that joy.
“In this life ye shall have tribulation,” the Christ had said, and
truly said, and as she rememorated the significant menace, she wondered
whether for such as she, tribulation ended here. But her creed assured
her. From the _Vidyâ_ she had acquired faith in fate, the belief rather
that we make our own destiny, that it is by our own hands that our
lives are cast in places pleasant or the reverse, that our conduct
in one life creates the conditions of our existence in another, that
anything experienced now is the effect of a cause set going in the
past, that happiness is the recompense of beneficence, deformity the
result of cruelty, melancholy the penalty of evil thoughts. But whether
retribution pursued its victim into future planes or abandoned them
when they died, depended, she also believed, on how they faced it here,
and it was in this idea that, during the unended sorrow, she had found
the strength to bear its coils.
The motor stopped. She told the groom to wait. Presently she was among
the subdued tints and harmonised furnishings of the drawing room of her
friend.
At once, clearly in her limpid voice, considering her with brilliant
eyes, Violet Silverstairs aimed and fired.
“You’re a liar!”
At the shot Leilah attempted to smile, and though she failed, it was
not because she fancied there could be any reproach in the term, but
because latterly she had been unable to smile at all.
“You’re a liar,” Violet repeated. “Also, you are late.”
“I know I am late and I am sorry,” Leilah withdrawing her gloves,
replied. “But how am I a liar?”
“Come to luncheon and you will precious soon find out. I had some eggs
for you, eggs à l’Aurore Boréale. I had a sweetbread. I had--I have
forgotten what else. Now I have nothing. Everything is spoiled.”
Violet Silverstairs was perhaps imaginative. There were eggs, very good
eggs too, though whether prepared in the Aurora Borealis fashion is
perhaps beside the issue. Moreover there was a sweetbread, one that had
been germinated on salt meadows and which was not spoiled in the least.
In addition there were the other things which she had forgotten and
all of them appetising in the extreme. It was an excellent luncheon,
perfectly served in a beautiful room. But it was a luncheon for
Sybarites, not for the suffering. After the first morsel Leilah was
unable to eat.
“Where is Silverstairs?” she asked when that morsel had been consumed.
“With your ex.”
Leilah put down her fork. “With Gulian?”
Violet laughed. “Have you more than one? But it was just through him
that your lie cropped out. Last night he swore by bell, book and candle
that you had never told him why you cut and ran.”
It was at this juncture that Leilah found herself unable to eat.
Instantly her mind shot back. She was at Coronado again, in the
sunshine and frippery of her sitting room. She could see Verplank as
he left it, see the letters that had been brought, see herself as
she opened one of them, that one which with its enclosures she had
redirected and left for him. The possibility never before conjectured,
that he had not received it girdled her with a zone of ice. For a
moment she looked fixedly at one of the windows through which the
pale daylight fell. In the beautiful room, companioned by her nearest
friend, she felt that sense of utter loneliness which in the great
crises of life is experienced by all. Yet was it true?
“Violet!” she cried. “You are jesting.”
But the lady, determined then or never to learn the truth, cocked an
eye at her. “I am not, nor was he.”
At that, Leilah felt the girdle of ice sending its shivers through her.
The plan she had made must, she saw, be foregone. If Verplank did not
know why she had separated from him, never would he leave Paris until
he did. But what must he have thought, she agonisedly reflected, and
what must he think!
Violet, who had been watching her, said:
“Why don’t you tell me?”
Leilah taking up her fork again, tried for countenance sake, to affect
to eat. The effort was beyond her. She put it down.
“I can’t,” she at last replied.
Violet, her brilliant eye still cocked, almost winked.
“Yes, you said that before. But you see, don’t you know, that whether
you can or cannot tell me, you will have to tell him and, in the
circumstances, would it not be best to have me do it for you? To be
sure, if you had taken my advice and omitted to marry Barouffski, I
would say, have it out with him yourself. But your marriage does not
seem to have simplified matters, which, so far as I can make out, are
now pretty thoroughly mixed.”
The lady spoke better than she knew. Matters were complicated
though how profoundly she had no idea, nor was Leilah aware that the
situation, already tortuous, was to become even more intricately
labyrinthine.
“Of course,” Violet, in her bell-like voice, threw out, “after running
away, getting a divorce and marrying another man, I can fancy that you
don’t much want to see him. But, really, you owe it to yourself to give
the reason, particularly as it is he who is to blame.”
At this, Leilah, who had been looking down into her prison, looked up.
“I never said so.”
“No, but was it necessary? Even nowadays, even in the States, a woman
does not cut and run because butter won’t melt in her husband’s mouth.
She does so because she has, or thinks she has, a grievance and the
man, if he is a man, ought to be given an opportunity to apologise,
however imaginary the grievance may be.”
Leilah shook her head. “There can be no apology here.”
Violet laughed. “That is just what I would say if I had gone and done
it. Then it would be for Silverstairs to try on his knees to get me to
listen to one--provided, of course, that in the interim I had not taken
over another man, for in that case I verily believe he would wring my
neck. But you need fear nothing of the sort from Verplank. He seemed
anxious only to wring Barouffski’s.”
Leilah made another futile effort with her fork. Absently she answered:
“I don’t believe he knew who he was.”
“You don’t! After his telling him! But, apropos, what became of d’Arcy?
I thought you and he were safely tucked away in a corner, otherwise
never in the world would I have marched your Number One up to your
Number Two.”
“D’Arcy!” Leilah repeated. She had barely heard. She scarcely knew what
she was saying, still less what was being said.
“Yes, le beau d’Arcy. Marie de Fresnoy told me that the other day at
the races he was about to pay a ragamuffin of a girl for a flower, when
she said: ‘I’d rather you kissed me.’ Fancy that! She told me too that
a man who had a husband’s reasons for wanting to kill him, was afraid
to say a word. It appears he is a dead shot. But it appears also that
your lovely Barouffski is one of the best swordsmen here. Verplank had
better look out. To return though to our Chablis Moutonne. What will
you do?”
Leilah, her thoughts afar, made no reply.
“What will you do?” Violet repeated.
From afar the question floated, descended, trod among the tender
places of Leilah’s soul. At the pain of it she winced. “God help me, I
do not know.”
Violet, cocking an eye again, insinuated: “Let me take a hand.” She
paused, then, for clincher, threw out: “He dines here to-morrow.”
“Here!” Leilah exclaimed, half rising, fearful now that at any moment
he might appear. “Here! With you?”
Violet nodded. “Why yes. Why not? If I can’t confess you, perhaps I can
him. At any rate I can try. You can’t blame me for wanting to, either.
You abandoned him on your honeymoon. You won’t tell me why and he says
he don’t know. But he must suspect. He must have concluded that you
left him for this, that or the other. I want to find out what his this,
that and the other are and then make my own selection. It is true he
did say that it was because of Barouffski. But that’s all gammon. You
never saw Barouffski until you got here. There is something else and
what that is I want to find out. No, you can’t blame me. It is the
instinct of self-preservation. If I don’t get at the bottom of it soon,
I shall simply go mad.”
A laugh, clear and musical, wound up the lady’s chatter. She had no
more idea of going mad than she had of jumping out of the window. But
she wanted to know and that was only human.
But now, Leilah, who a moment before had half risen, stood up. “Violet,
I am not well, you must let me go. Yes,” she added as the lady remarked
that on the morrow she might appear in the rue de la Pompe. “Yes, yes.”
She would have said yes to anything. Hurriedly she got away.
Without the motor waited.
“Home,” she told the groom.
A little before she had thought herself the most miserable of
beings. But however deep the hell, there is always a deeper one. Add
uncertainty to distress and the sum of it is sorrow multiplied by the
infinite. That hell, that sorrow was or seemed to be, hers. She did not
know where to go, what to do, to whom to turn.
The pitiable plan of flight returned to her. Again she put it aside.
She could not adopt it now. Besides, though she owed a duty to herself,
she owed another to Verplank. In what manner he had failed to receive
the letter, it was impossible for her to imagine, but the fact that he
had not received it, hurt her doubly, hurt her for herself, hurt her
for him. Had it reached him, both would have been spared this pass.
But it had not reached him and since then what must he have thought of
her? What!
The query, which kept repeating itself, tortured her and on that
torture was superposed the precarious problem of his enlightenment.
See him she could not. To write was beyond her ability. For there are
things no pen should write as there are others no tongue should tell.
None the less the truth she knew must reach him and would do so best,
she thought, through some channel similar to that from which the letter
had proceeded, from a source either indifferent or inimical to them
both.
At the auto-suggestion, her thoughts fluttered, scattered, grouped,
then suddenly regrouping, produced a name. Beneath her breath she
uttered it.
“Barouffski!”
It was not in provision of this that she had married him. At the
time no such possibility had even impossibly loomed. But she had
married him precisely as she had obtained a divorce, in order to
barricade the future from the past; in order also for the fleshpots
which she craved--peace and security. She had not had much of either.
None the less, the primary object which she had sought had, in its
accomplishment, persisted. He was a barricade. He was her official and
paid protector.
For the task therefore which she could not perform, he seemed naturally
indicated. What alone gave her pause was the certainty that he would
enjoy it. She could see him, see his ambiguous smile, see his green
eyes aglow, his cruel and sensual mouth distended.
From the picture she turned. Beyond was a church, the frontal draped
with black. The motor had stopped. It had reached the house in the rue
de la Pompe and pending the opening of the doors, whirred as it blocked
the sidewalk.
It was then that she turned. Beside her, arrested by the car, stood
Verplank.
After walking up from Voisin’s with Silverstairs he had left him a
moment earlier at Tempest’s.
But the great doors had opened. Before Verplank could speak, the
machine slid in. As it entered the court, the doors closed noisily.