“The strawberries were delicious,” Violet, the following day, remarked
to Leilah.
The two women were seated in the garden of the house in the rue de la
Pompe. It was just after luncheon and between them was a table on which
coffee had been served. From without came the whirr of passing motors,
the cries of those hawkers who are never still. But the garden itself
was quiet, scented too and the day superb.
Violet, patting a yawn, resumed: “One never really gets strawberries
except in Paris. They are so big! And so expensive, aren’t they? I know
that in a restaurant a man gave one to the waiter for a tip.”
She looked about her. “But, mercy! What can have become of Aurelia? She
was to have stopped for me.”
“Don’t you think it unwise to let her go on the stage?” Leilah, with an
air of talking for talk’s sake, inquired.
“Let her! But she’s got her head. I can’t prevent her. She’ll never
come to any harm though. She isn’t the kind to want to do anything she
thought was wrong. No indeed. She would never think anything wrong that
she wanted to do. But tell me. I could not very well ask before the
servants. What are you going to do?”
For a moment Leilah did not answer. Then, a bit resignedly, she folded
her hands.
“I do not see that I have the ability to do anything.”
The pause, the gesture, the reply, angered Violet. She bristled.
“Don’t be so modest, you make me nervous!”
For a moment she also paused. Then, ruminantly, as though in self
communion, the lady uttered these cryptic words:
“But perhaps----”
Leilah, who had turned away, turned to her. “Perhaps what?”
But Violet, compressing her lips, assumed the appearance which a very
worldly, exquisitely gowned and beautiful Sphinx might present.
“Perhaps what?” Leilah, puzzled by the attitude, repeated.
“Oh, nothing. That is, nothing in particular. I was merely thinking
from battle, murder and sudden death, Good Lord deliver us! And yet----”
“Well?”
Violet looked her over. “I know I ought not to tell and for that very
reason I will. Your two husbands are to fight to-day. They may be at it
now----”
Abruptly she made a face, dropped her voice and threw out:
“No such luck.”
In the doorway Barouffski stood.
Leilah had not seen. Inwardly she had shrivelled. To the sudden
knowledge that the two men were to fight, fear, as suddenly, superposed
the conviction that Verplank would be killed. It stirred in her a
wholly animal longing to get away from herself; to be rid, however
transiently, of that sense of horror and helplessness which only the
tortured know. In an effort to shut out the pain of it, she closed her
eyes.
When she opened them, Barouffski was before her. Affably he was
addressing her friend.
“Beautiful day, Lady Silverstairs. In London you do not often have such
weather. I hope Lord Silverstairs is planning to keep you here a very
long time.”
“What? What?” Violet in a crescendo of surprise, exclaimed.
Affably, smilingly, unperturbedly, Barouffski reiterated the expression
of his hope.
Icily Violet cut him short. “With us it is the woman who makes and
unmakes plans.”
Barouffski, unabashed and smiling, plucked at his beard. “A most
excellent custom. Yes. For when has reason governed the world? It is
only by the heartstrings that men can be led and women alone can lead
them.”
But now Violet with the air of an empress had risen. “Leilah, my motor
is at the door. Let me take you for a turn in the Bois.”
“Do,” Barouffski exclaimed, looking as he spoke at Leilah. “You are a
trifle pale, cara mia. A turn or two now in the Bois----”
With a gesture he signified, that is what you need.
Turning to Violet he added: “So thoughtful of you, Lady Silverstairs.”
In speaking he bowed for Violet now was vacating the garden and Leilah
who had risen was following her.
Barouffski bowed again. “Cara mia, a pleasant drive to you.”
But, when both women had entered the house, he sighed, sighed with
relief, looked about him, consulted his watch, looked again about
him, moved to the entrance, touched a bell which presently a footman
answered.
Barouffski indicated the table and chairs. “Get all that out of here.”
“Perfectly, monsieur le comte,” the man, with marked deference,
answered and started to do as bidden.
Barouffski checked him. “In five or ten minutes some gentlemen will
come by the main entrance. Show them in the reception room. About the
same time others will come by the gate. When they do, see that I am
notified at once.”
“Perfectly, monsieur le comte.”
“Afterward, when they are gone, come back here and tidy up.”
“Perfectly, monsieur le comte.”
But now Barouffski had turned, he was entering the house. The man stuck
his tongue out at him. “Canaille, va!” he muttered. Raising his arms,
he added: “Tidy up, eh? Tidy up what? The remains of your conversation,
no doubt. Bah! That won’t be much.” He laughed, took first the table,
then the chairs, vanished with them and reappeared.
A bell at the gate had sounded, he hurried there and bowing, admitted
Aurelia and that young person’s young man.
The girl made straight for the kennels. “Parsnips!” she delightedly
exclaimed. “Aren’t those two big brutes simply dear?”
Swiftly Emmanuel intervened. “Pardon, they are very savage.” Then,
as the girl hesitated he added: “Will mademoiselle give herself the
trouble to pass into the salon?”
Aurelia tossed her pretty head. “No, I like it here. Besides I hate
suggestions. Tell Madame Barouffska that I have come on a most
unimportant matter which will probably detain me a very long time.”
“Yes,” her companion rejoined as the footman retreated. “Yes, I often
think that it is only unimportant matters that are really momentous.”
In his hand was a stick which negligently he twirled. “What is this
one, if I may ask?”
“I have forgotten.”
“Perhaps then it was really important.”
Aurelia, who, with her delicious face and delicate garments, looked
like a wayward angel, lifted a finger.
“So it was! So it was! I remember now I wanted to ask her how she likes
matrimony.”
“Cæsar!” the youth exclaimed. “You are not collecting data on the
subject, are you?”
Meekly, with a treacherously innocent air, the girl surveyed him. “You
wouldn’t wish me to take leaps in the dark, would you?”
“Certainly I would. Certainly I do--since you are to take them with me.”
With the same wicked look, Aurelia moistened her lips. “What a
beautiful nature you have!”
Pleased at this, the little lord nodded.
“I’ll tell you what matrimony is, two souls with but a single
thought----”
“Yes,” Aurelia interrupted. “Two souls with half a thought apiece.”
Rapturously she sighed. “There is real bliss!”
Buttercups snarled. “Oh come, now! If you turn everything into
ridicule----”
Dreamily Aurelia continued. “I asked the duchess, and she said----”
“The old harridan!”
“You know her manner”--a manner which Aurelia instantly made her own.
“My dear, matrimony is three months of adoration, three months of
introspection, thirty years of toleration--with the children to begin
it all over.”
Buttercups frowned. “A rather voluminous definition.”
“Rather luminous, I should call it.”
Frowning still, Buttercups threw out.
“While you were at it, it’s a pity you did not ask her what love is.”
But the sarcasm, if sarcasm it were, convulsed Aurelia. “Parsnips!” she
delightedly exclaimed. “You’ll never believe it! She asked me!”
“Mistook you for an expert,” Buttercups, glowering at the beautiful,
laughing girl snapped back. “What did you say?”
Aurelia, her eyes sparkling, her little white teeth visible, her little
pink tongue also, looked about her, turned, went to the bench, got up
on it and there, solemnly now as though on a platform, coughed.
“I said, that while from studies and statistics I was inclined to
believe that, theoretically, love is a fermentation of the molecules of
the imagination, actually it is the affection of somebody else.”
Blankly Buttercups stared. “I don’t understand that.”
Aurelia coughed again. “I added that from the same studies and
statistics I was also inclined to believe that love is the tragedy of
those who lack it, the boredom of those who don’t.”
“Eh?” Buttercups whined. “I don’t understand that either.”
“I further stated that love is a specific emotion, more or less
exclusive in selection, more--or less--permanent in duration and due
to a mental disturbance, in itself caused by a law of attraction which
somebody or other said was the myth of happiness, invented by the devil
for man’s despair.”
Helplessly Buttercups groaned. “I don’t understand that at all.”
With birdlike ease Aurelia hopped from the bench and with consoling
delicacy nodded:
“Violet said she didn’t either.”
Buttercups brightened. “Now there’s a woman of sense.”
Very sweetly Aurelia nodded again. “Leilah Barouffska said she did
understand, so I may suppose that she is stupid.”
At the shot--which missed him--Buttercups tormented the tip of his nose.
“No doubt, she does seem to have made a mess of things. Why now did she
leave her first husband?”
Aurelia looked down and away.
“It is not a thing I could mention.”
Buttercups gave a little jump. “What?”
Perversely, her lovely eyes still lowered, Aurelia added:
“She caught him in the act.”
Buttercups jumped again.
Aurelia blushed or rather appeared to do so. “With her own eyes she saw
him eating fish with his knife.”
But Buttercups had rallied. “Now, Aurelia,” he protested, “I have heard
too many lies about myself, too many confounded lies, to believe any
such story.”
Superciliously, her delicate nose in the air, Aurelia looked him over.
“Ah, indeed! But then you see sensible people never object to the lies
that are told about them. What we do object to is the truth. Now when
we are married--if we ever are----”
“Aurelia,” the poor devil pathetically interrupted, “you never say when
we are married without adding if we ever are!”
“That’s to teach you not to take things for granted. I have been
engaged before--and may be again.”
“B-before!” the flustered Buttercups stuttered. “A-again!”
Frostily this ingénue considered the youth. “Parsnips, don’t look at me
in that fashion, you inflame me.”
She cocked an ear. “What’s that?”
At the gate the bell was ringing and unperceived by either Emmanuel had
reappeared. The footman was descending the garden. Midway he stopped.
“I have the honour to inform mademoiselle that madame la comtesse is
momentarily awaited.”
He bowed, moved on, opened the gate through which then a brief
procession passed:--Silverstairs, a green bag under his arm; de
Fresnoy, a stick under his; an old man with a small valise; finally
Verplank.
Verplank, raising his hat, approached Aurelia. De Fresnoy, after
saluting the young woman, addressed the old man.
But Silverstairs, sidling up to Buttercups and indicating Aurelia,
whispered:
“Get her away, there’s to be a fight.”
“The deuce there is!” Buttercups exclaimed.
For a moment he looked helplessly about and made a little futile
gesture. “If I ask her to go she’ll stay.”
Silverstairs pulled at his moustache. “Then tell her to stay and she’ll
go.”
But such strategy was needless. Aurelia had no intention of loitering
among these men, not one of whom interested her remotely. With a
glimpse of her pretty teeth to Verplank and a nod at the others, she
passed, followed by Buttercups, through the gate which the footman held
open.
Meanwhile the dogs were barking and, from the house beyond, Barouffski
appeared. With him were friends of his, Palencia, Tyszkiewicz; also a
young man with a serious face who, like the old man, had with him a
case which gingerly he put on the ground.
Verplank glanced at them, went to the bench and began removing his
coat.
The night before he had dreamed pleasurably, as the great beasts of the
jungles dream, of blood and the joy of killing. He had dreamed also
and less agreeably that Leilah’s story was true. However he had denied
it, he did not know but that it might be. Nonetheless he doubted. He
doubted it for the most human of reasons, because he wanted to. He
doubted it for another and a better reason, because his intuitions so
prompted. He had yet another reason, one less valid perhaps but cogent,
the dissimilarity between Leilah and himself. The contrast was so
marked that they might have come of alien races, from different zones.
On leaving her house other differences had occurred to him, differences
not physical but moral. It is ridiculous, he had told himself.
Nonetheless he dreamed that the story was true.
Meanwhile the parliamentaries had not been entirely successful. The
note dispatched from Voisins had resulted that evening in a conference
between Verplank’s seconds and Barouffski’s. These latter, Tyszkiewicz
and Palencia, had begun by insisting that it was their principal who
was aggrieved, that Verplank, in attempting to address a lady whom he
knew did not wish to speak to him, had been wholly at fault and was
deprived in consequence of the choice of weapons.
To this de Fresnoy had objected that Verplank knew nothing of the kind,
that in addressing or in attempting to address the lady, he had acted
in accordance with the usages of the world: moreover assuming him to
have been in error in thinking that the lady did not object to being
addressed, her slightest indication to the contrary would have been
super-sufficient to make him desist, the result being that Barouffski’s
intervention reflected on his good-breeding and was therefore an insult.
This view of the matter Barouffski’s seconds refused to accept.
They represented that it were difficult for the lady to have more
punctiliously informed Verplank of her disinclination to be addressed
by him than she had already done in obtaining a divorce.
At the easy logic de Fresnoy laughed. According to him, all that was
beside the issue. He declared that many divorced couples were better
friends afterward than they had found it possible to be before. In
support of the statement he cited history: he cited the case of
Henri IV and the Reine Margot. He did more than cite, he quoted the
chronicles of Pierre l’Estoile, and he insisted that if his view were
not accepted the conference must dissolve and an arbiter be convened.
In face of these arguments advanced to provincials by a Parisian,
advanced too with that tone of authority which only a man sure of his
ground or of his assurance may maintain and advanced, moreover, to men
not over sure of their own, the latter hesitated.
Then, as though to demonstrate the truth of the paradox of which de
Fresnoy had delivered himself at Voisins, the quip that a man is rarely
killed except by his seconds, Silverstairs who, thus far throughout the
conference, had smoked in placid silence, suddenly stuck his oar in.
“Why not toss for it?”
Tyszkiewicz and Palencia, hesitating still, agreed. A coin was flipped,
heads for Verplank, tails for Barouffski. Tails it was. Barouffski was
accorded the choice of arms, foils were designated by his seconds and
the meeting was arranged to be held in his garden, at two the next day.
Verplank would have preferred pistols. But, informed of the result,
he dreamed pleasurably. The encounter was the main thing. Presently
sleep sank him deeper. Life and death ceased to be. He became part of
the inchoate and primordial. Then, from the voids in which he lay,
lightly, delicately, imperceptibly, an artery reached and drew him.
But his scattered selves, the objective, subjective, superjective,
satisfied with their temporary decentralisation, resisted. In the
subtle struggle a memory, catalogued Leilah, was aroused. The syllables
of the name resounded remotely, like a damp drum beaten obscurely
behind the shelves of thought. They conveyed no meaning and, before
they could suggest any, they passed, drifted by the currents of
unconsciousness. But at once, those currents, barred by assembling
ideas, broke to the murmur of the vocables--Leilah! Leilah! Other
memories, incidents, possibilities eddied among them and the sleeper,
awakening, found himself confronted by the tragic mystery which the
name revived.
Immediately the picture that had formed itself before him at Voisins
returned. From it the Why had gone but the obstacle remained, and, as
he got from the bed, he promised himself to demolish it.
Now, in the hostile enclosure, as the dogs barked and Barouffski
appeared, Verplank removed his coat, undid his collar, rolled up his
sleeves.
Beside him, bending over a case, the old man mumbled. He was a surgeon.
The hour was not to his liking. He believed in duels, they were a
source of revenue to him, but he believed in fighting on an empty
stomach and, in the afternoon, who had that?
He looked up at Verplank. “Monsieur, you are young, you are brave, I
doubt not you are also adroit. But had I been you, when your seconds
asked, as I may suppose they asked: ‘Which shall it be, the pistol at
twenty paces or the sword?’ I would have said to them: ‘Give me the
sword at twenty paces.’ Yes; that is what I would have said.”
Verplank ignored him utterly. In the center of the garden the seconds
grouped together, were concluding details. Beyond, near the house,
Barouffski stood. He also was now bare-armed. Near him, emptying a
case, was the young man with the serious face. Beside him, placed
upright against a wall, were two long green bags. From the street
came the usual rumble, the noise of motors, the cries of hawkers, the
snorting of stallions, the clatter of hoofs.
Silverstairs, abandoning the others went over to Verplank.
“De Fresnoy has been chosen director.”
Verplank, from his trowsers pocket, had taken a pair of gloves. The
palm of one of them, previously moistened, had been dusted with rosin.
Now, as he put it on, he looked across at Barouffski who was looking
at him. The man’s bare arms were hairy and the sight of them was
repugnant to Verplank. At once all the jealousy, all the hate of the
male, mounted like wine to his head. He coloured, his hand shook. Then,
resolutely, he reacted. In a moment he had again control of himself
and it was idly, with an air of indifference, as he finished with his
glove, that, in reference to the dinner that evening, he said:
“Are you to have many people to-night?”
Silverstairs, delighted that Verplank, showing up in such form, should
be so sure of the result, laughed. “No, it is to be small and early.
Afterward we go on to a play. The missis has a box for something, the
Gymnase I think.”
Verplank bent over and turned up the ends of his trowsers. A moment
before he had been considering methods of attack, in particular a
direct riposte after a certain parade and it was springingly, as though
delivering it, that he straightened.
But now de Fresnoy approached. Silverstairs moved to one side where
he was joined by Tyszkiewicz, a thin, tall man with a prominent nose
and an air vaguely pedagogic, and by Palencia who, with great black
eyebrows that met and a full black beard, looked like Fra Diavolo
disguised as a clubman.
From one of the long green bags de Fresnoy had taken a pair of foils.
These he offered, hilt foremost, to Verplank who grasped one and then
to gauge its temper, or his own, lashed the air with it. The movement
revealed a suppleness of arm, a muscular ease, the swelling biceps
which training alone provides.
Save Barouffski, no one noticed. For a moment his eyes shifted
absently. It was as though he too had meditated a coup and now was
meditating another. Meanwhile he also had received a foil.
“Messieurs!” de Fresnoy called. He spoke in a loud, clear voice. He had
moved back and stood at an angle to Barouffski and Verplank. Opposite,
at an equal angle were the seconds and surgeons. All now were so
stationed that they formed a sort of cross.
“Messieurs, I do not need to remind you of the common loyalty to be
observed. What I have to say is that the encounter will proceed in
engagements of three minutes, followed each by three minutes of repose,
until one of you is incapacitated.”
De Fresnoy looked from Barouffski to Verplank. At once in his loud,
clear voice he called:
“On guard!”
The two men fell into position. De Fresnoy moved forward, took in
either hand the foils at the points, drew them together until they met,
left them so and moved back.
“Allez, messieurs!”
At the word Allez, or, in English, go, and without waiting for the term
Messieurs that followed, instantly Barouffski lunged. His foil pierced
Verplank in the cheek and touched the upper jaw.
Verplank had a vision of a footman peering from a window, a taste of
something hot and acrid in his mouth, a sense of pain, the sensation of
vulperine fury.
De Fresnoy’s face had grown red as his neckcloth. He brandished his
stick.
“Monsieur!” he cried at Barouffski. “Your conduct is odious. You shall
answer to me for it.”
Barouffski bowed. “For the expression which it has pleased you to
employ, you shall answer to me.”
“Permit me! Permit me!” Tyszkiewicz interjected. “To what do you
object?”
Angrily de Fresnoy turned at him. “Your principal drew before the
order. He----”
“Permit me! Permit me!” Tyszkiewicz interrupted. “The word Allez is an
order. The moment it is uttered hostilities begin. The term Messieurs
is but a polite accessory, a term which may or may not be employed.”
Insolently de Fresnoy considered him. “I have no lessons to receive
from you.”
“Permit me! Permit me----”
But de Fresnoy had turned on his heel. Before him Verplank stood,
Silverstairs on one side, the old surgeon on the other. The young
surgeon had joined them. Beyond, Barouffski was examining the point of
his foil.
From Verplank’s mouth and face blood was running. The wound had not
improved his appearance. The old surgeon, on tiptoes, was staunching it.
“What I like,” he confided, speaking the while very unctuously as
though what he was saying would be a comfort to Verplank; “what I like
is to attend to gentlemen whose wives have deceived them. Outraged
husbands, monsieur, that is my specialty!”
Verplank brushed him aside, shook his foil, and called at de Fresnoy.
“Are the three minutes up?”
“Monsieur!” the old surgeon protested.
The young surgeon intervened.
“But, monsieur----”
De Fresnoy motioned at them.
“Is he in a condition to continue?”
“Why not?” Verplank scornfully replied.
He raised his left hand, and, with a gesture of excuse, turned and
spat. He looked up. His mouth was on fire, his jaw burned, the wound in
his cheek was a flame. Yet these things but added to the intensity of
his eyes. They blazed. There was blood on his face, on his chin, on his
shirt, on his feet. He was hideous. But he was a man, and a mad one.
“He ought to be horsewhipped,” muttered Silverstairs, glaring as he
spoke at Barouffski, who was talking to his seconds.
“On guard, then!” called de Fresnoy.
“Permit me, permit me,” cried Tyszkiewicz. “The point of my principal’s
sword is broken.”
“Give him another then,” de Fresnoy roughly threw out. Insolently he
added: “And teach him how to use it.” In a moment, when from the other
bag, a foil had been got and measured, “On guard,” he repeated.
Again he united the foils. Again he gave the command.
For a moment the weapons clashed.
Suddenly and excitedly Palencia cried: “My principal is touched.”
“Halt,” de Fresnoy, intervening with raised stick, commanded.
Verplank moved back. “Damn him,” he muttered, “I haven’t done with him
yet.”
About Barouffski now, Palencia and the young man with the serious face
had come. The latter was examining Barouffski’s right arm. On it a thin
red line was visible. Very gravely the young man looked up.
“My client is disabled. Profound incision in the region of the flexor
digitorum sublimis accompanied by a notable effusion of blood.”
The old surgeon chuckled. Confidentially as before he addressed
Verplank. “I know that term. It means a scratch. Those ladies there, it
must amuse even them.”
As he spoke he indicated a window at which Violet and Leilah had
appeared, but from which now Leilah was retreating.
Verplank did not hear, did not see. The young surgeon, resuming, had
announced himself as opposed to a continuation of the encounter. It was
this that preoccupied Verplank.
Loudly and angrily he cried: “Let’s have pistols then. That man can use
his left hand and I’ll do the same.”
“Cristi! La jolie dame!” the old surgeon muttered to himself.
In the doorway Leilah had come. Hurriedly she moved to Verplank. As she
did so Barouffski tried to prevent her.
“Cara mia, I must beg of you----”
He had got in her way but she eluded him, while the other men looked
curiously at this woman who now agitatedly was addressing Verplank.
“Don’t fight any more, don’t!”
Roughly Verplank answered: “I haven’t begun.”
“Sir,” cried Barouffski. “I can permit no conversation with this lady.”
Verplank ignoring Barouffski as utterly as he had ignored the surgeon,
looked at Leilah.
“That story of yours is----”
But whatever he may have intended to say, Barouffski interrupted. He
was shouting at Verplank, calling, too, at Leilah whom he had got by
the arm and whom he would have drawn away, but this Verplank prevented.
Shifting his foil to his left hand, with his right he seized Barouffski
and with a twist which separated him from Leilah, shoved him aside.
“To your shambles!” he called at him.
But already the others were intervening. Tyszkiewicz with his eternal
“Permit me,” got between the two men. Palencia held Barouffski by the
shoulder. Silverstairs drew Verplank away, while de Fresnoy, viewing
the situation as hopeless, declared the duel at an end.
The actions of all were practically so simultaneous that they were as
one to Leilah who, bewildered by the confusion which she herself had
caused, horrified by Verplank’s appearance and tortured by the riddle
of his interrupted words, now, over the heads of the others, again
called to him:
“You say that the story is----”
“At five!” Verplank threw back.
Barouffski, bursting with rage and impotence, shouted:
“I say this conversation must cease.”
The old surgeon, nudging his colleague, laughed:
“There is my specialty!”
Both surgeons then were occupied with their bags. De Fresnoy,
overhearing the remark, could not but smile. To conceal it he turned
to the gate where he was joined by Silverstairs and where at once,
Palencia and Tyszkiewicz followed, leaving in the center of the garden
Leilah and her two husbands, one of whom with a shrug which for an
American was perhaps rather French, went to the bench where his coat
lay.
In this instance again the actions of all so closely coincided that
barely an instant intervened before Leilah was throwing after Verplank
the two syllables he had thrown at her.
“At five!”
Later she was unconscious of having done so. But Barouffski heard and
presently, when the others had gone and in this garden those two were
alone, with angry suspicion he confronted her.
“Five! What is that? What does it mean?”
Leilah had turned to go. A bit unsteadily she moved on, reached the
entrance, leaned there for support.
But Barouffski was at her heels.
“Five,” he repeated. “He said it, you said it, what does it mean?”
“It means that God willing some day I may have peace.”
She had half-turned. She turned again. In a moment she had gone.
Menacingly Barouffski’s eyes followed her. “That’s what five means,
does it?”
Then he too turned. Nearby, on the marble chair, were his coat and
waistcoat. Slowly, thoughtfully, he put them on. As he did so he
noticed the dogs. It may have seemed to him then that they were his
only friends. Longly he looked their way.
Suddenly, as though illumination had come, he touched a bell and looked
up at Leilah’s window.
After a brief delay, Emmanuel appeared.
“Shut the gate,” Barouffski ordered.
“Perfectly, monsieur le comte,” the footman very deferentially replied
and started to do as bidden.
Barouffski checked him. Indicating the lower window, he added:
“At five or thereabouts be in there. I will tell you then what to do.
You hear me?”
“Perfectly, monsieur le comte.”
Again Barouffski glanced at the upper window. As he glanced he smiled.
“Cara mia, five may mean more things than you say, more even than you
think.”
He was still smiling but it was not a pleasant smile to see.
Beneath his breath, Emmanuel, who was looking at him, muttered:
“Quelle gueule de maquereau!”
X
“Gracious!” Violet exclaimed. She had been smoking and now in putting a
cigarette in a cendrier she had succeeded in overturning it. Undismayed
she looked at a clock. “Gracious!” she repeated. “Since that stupid
duel, I have sat here an hour.”
Leisurely the lady arose. She was a glowing object in this room which,
filled with costly futilities and furnished in canary and black,
otherwise was Empire and brilliant. The main entrance, hung with
heavy portières of yellow damask had, opposite it, across the room,
a tapestry panel which masked a spiral stairway that led below. To
one side, at an elaborate table, which now the overturned cendrier
had strewn with ashes, Leilah was seated. Behind her, through an open
window, shone the eager sun. Before her, rising from a sofa was her
friend.
Leilah wished that she would go, wished too that she would stay, wished
rather--as at times we all wish of those who are near us--that she were
different, less mondaine perhaps, more simple. To Violet, the spectacle
in the garden had been tedious. To Leilah it was horrible. Moreover
the atmosphere of blood and hate, the enigma of Verplank’s words, the
menaces of Barouffski’s eyes, these things frightened her, inducing a
dread which seemed to brood not in the mind but in the body. She could
have put a hand to her girdle and have said: “It is here.” In addition
she felt--as in every spiritual crisis we all do--alone. Of this she
could not tell Violet. She felt that she lacked the power to express
it and that Violet lacked the ability to understand. Pain has accents
which only its graduates know. Violet, in all her brilliant life, had
never shed a poignant tear.
“What do you propose to do now?” the lady was asking.
Cheerlessly Leilah replied: “My duty.”
Here was something which Violet did understand. Brightly she nodded.
“Yes, and I may tell you that it is your duty to preserve your looks
and avoid a scandal. I did not at all like your fantasia in the garden.
A gentlewoman never does anything important and that was an important
thing. In no time it will be all over the place. You can believe that,
can’t you?”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
Violet laughed. “I always believe what I like. That I find so
satisfactory. Apropos. What was that story about which Verplank was
shouting? Mercy! I could have heard him a mile away.”
In weary protest Leilah shook her head. “You know I can’t tell you.”
“The same old thing, was it? But how antiquated you are! Really it is
piteous. There are no secrets any more. All that sort of thing went out
with hoopskirts. Private life which used to be a sealed book has become
an open newspaper. It is plain for instance, plain to everybody, plain
as a pikestaff that you are still in love with Verplank. What you left
him for the Lord in his infinite wisdom and mercy only knows. That is a
secret certainly but only because you choose to make it one. It is no
secret to me though that you are dying to go back to him. But don’t you
know you can’t? Don’t you know it? Don’t you know that you can’t budge
an inch until you have shipped Barouffski? Now how are you going to do
that? Tell me.”
Leilah made a pass with a hand. It was as though, in some rite known
but to her, she were consulting the lap of the invisible gods and, in
it, the equally invisible future.
“Then I will tell you. You have got to buy him off. Listen to this. I
will pack Silverstairs straight to the Embassy. There he will get all
the law and most of the prophets. Meanwhile promise that you’ll keep
your head.”
“I will try,” Leilah, mechanically, her thoughts afar, replied.
“There!” Violet exclaimed. “That’s right. When there is a divorce in
the air it’s so much better to try than to be tried.”
At the inane jest she laughed, embraced her friend. In a moment she had
gone, distributing as she went a faint, sweet smell of orris.
Leilah who had risen moved to the window and looked out at the gate
through which Verplank would come. It was as she had said: She did not
know what to believe and mutely for a moment she prayed for guidance.
“O, Lords of Karma, Watchers of the Seven Spheres, grant me so to live
that, hereafter, I may say, I have harmed no heart, I have made no one
weep. Out of your infinite bounty grant that somewhere, sometime, there
may be peace to Gulian’s soul and mine.”
The prayer concluded she felt securer. Momentarily the cancer of
anxiety had ceased to gnaw, the fascination of fear had departed. In
the respite she turned to the clock. It was nearly five and she rang
for one of her women.
“Parker,” she began, when the servant appeared.
“Yes, my lady.”
“Presently, in a few minutes, a gentleman will come by the gate. Be
there and bring him here. Bring him through the dining room and up the
back way. If possible, I prefer that no one should see him.”
“Yes, my lady. Thank your ladyship.”
At once, with that air which those acquire who attended to delicate
matters, the woman drew aside the tapestry that masked the stair, which
then discreetly, almost atiptoe, she descended.
As the tapestry fell again, instantly there returned to Leilah the
sense of evil and impending ill. The brilliant room seemed full of
terrors. In each bright corner a danger lurked. So strong was the
impression that she felt it must be she was being warned, that she
was being visited by those obscure phenomena which occultists call
impacts from the astral, and that these were urging her to go, to meet
Verplank without, in the garden, in the street, anywhere except in this
fastidiousness.
Coerced by the impression, she entered an adjoining room, got there
a fichu which she put on her head, a light wrap which she drew about
her. Excited as she was, unaided as well, it took several minutes
before she could find these accouterments. When, at last equipped, she
re-entered the sitting room, she started.
Before her, his hat on, one side of his face medallioned with
courtplaster, stood Verplank.
At sight of Leilah, he removed his hat which he tossed on the sofa and
said at once and simply enough:
“That story of yours is false as Judas.”
“Gulian!” At the moment it was all she found, but then fancy a blind
man dazzled.
Verplank nodded. “Yes. The letters you received at Coronado--there were
three of them, were there not? three written on gray paper each signed
Effingham Verplank?--well, my father wrote them, that’s true enough,
but he wrote them to your aunt, your mother’s sister, Hilda Hemingway.
Did you never hear that the governor had an affair with her? Did you?”
Leilah’s face spoke for her. From the bewilderment there, it was
obvious that of it all she was ignorant.
With an uplift of the chin Verplank considered her.
“That’s odd, girls generally only hear what they ought not to. However,
Hemingway became suspicious--for very good reasons, no doubt, or, if
you prefer, for very bad ones--the result being that his wife turned
the letters over for safe keeping to your mother. When she died your
father found them. He did not stop there, he showed them to my mother.
My mother knew the facts, but she said your father was so convinced of
your mother’s infidelity that it seemed a pity to disabuse him. Those
were her very words to me to-day.”
“Gulian!” Still Leilah found but that. Visibly the light was there. As
yet she could not credit it.
Again, but now appreciatively, Verplank nodded. “Yes. I know. It does
seem queer. But then my mother is not the ordinary woman. She thought
the governor so created to conquer that it no more occurred to her to
sit in judgment on his victims than it occurred to her to sit on him.
In the true spirit of Christian charity she overlooked it all.”
Verplank paused, opened and closed a hand. “It was not matrimony
perhaps, but it was magnificent,” he obliging resumed, forgetting
wholly that it was not in him to do likewise.
“Come,” he added. From the start, Leilah’s apparel, the fichu and wrap,
had made him fancy that she was as ready to go as he was to take her
and it all seemed very simple. “Come. Let’s be off. I have a cab for
you.”
But at the suggestion which was a command she undid the lace, loosened
the cloak.
“Gulian, I cannot.”
“Cannot!” he angrily repeated. “Why can’t you? Have you not heard what
I said. You are not my sister, you are my wife. Come.”
“Gulian! You do not know what you ask!”
“I know perfectly well. If you hesitate it is because you do not
believe me. But would I urge you if that malignity were true? Would I?”
“Gulian, no, you would not.”
“There! You see! You have to believe me.”
“It is not that.”
“It is the divorce then! But you are no more married to that dismal
cad than I am to one of your maids. Except in Nevada the decree has no
effect whatever. But without bothering to have it set aside, come with
me and let this saurian get another.”
“Gulian, yes, but for the moment surely you can see that this is
impossible.”
“Impossible! There is nothing impossible. Why do you say so? Why do
you make so many objections? You should not make any. You hear a
cock-and-bull story, take it for gospel, run away, get a divorce, marry
a damned scoundrel and, when you find the story is a brutal lie, stick
like a leech to him.”
“Gulian, if you but knew. My position is horrible----”
She wanted to tell him that she was in a prison replete with tortures,
one from which she was as eager to go as he was to take her, yet one
from which she could not escape through the open door of sinning.
He gave her no time. Instantly he interrupted her.
“I know your position, it is all of your own making, too. By God, you
can make up your mind to one thing. You’ll come, if I have to take you.”
As he spoke he looked so brutal that she shrank.
“Gulian, you will kill me. I thought so before. I know it now.”
“It is only what you deserve.”
“Gulian! And you said you loved me!”
“Yes, but you make me doubt it.”
The wrap which previously she had loosened she let fall on a chair
beside her and put the fichu on the table.
“Gulian, you must give me time.”
The words were simple, plaintively uttered, but her action with the
cloak and lace, gave them an emphasis which added to his irritation.
“Nonsense,” he retorted. “You have had time enough. Now you must act.”
Roughly he considered her. “Anyone else might think you cared for
that----”
“Gulian, in all the world you know I love but you.”
Verplank raised the cloak, reached for the fichu.
“Put these on, then, and come.”
But Leilah, with a gesture that was less of resistance than of appeal,
motioned them from her. The gesture infuriated him. He threw the cloak
about her.
“By God! You shall put them on. What’s more, you will come whether or
not you want to.”
As he spoke he seized her, lifted her.
To Leilah it seemed as though she were about to be carried off
violently, like a prey. Unresistingly she raised her face to his.
“Gulian, kill me. It will be better; it will end it all.”
Something, the words, the tone in which they were uttered, the
helplessness of them and of her; but, more than anything else perhaps,
the fact that as he held her he felt her tremble, stayed him. He put
her down. His arms fell from her.
Catching again at the chair she steadied herself, and added:
“But if I am to live and love you, be patient. Gulian, if you would
stop to think, to realise, you would be patient, you----”
He started from her. “You don’t mean----”
At the question and its insinuation, hotly she flushed. Verplank saw
but the flush. The day previous she had told him that she had taken
Barouffski to serve as a barricade between them. Since then he had
cajoled his imagination with the idea that the creature stood to her
as husbands do on the stage, show entities who, the rôle performed,
cease otherwise to be husbands. Now the idea seemed to him hideously
naïf. The flush refuted it. It did more. It revealed not only other
relations but the result of them. Instantly he divined that it was for
this that she refused to go. At once within him waked the primitive,
the aboriginal self that lurks always and, save in the high crises of
the emotions, sleeps always within us all. He was in that condition in
which men slay with bare hands and afterward consider them marvelingly,
wondering at whose command they could have worked. Perspiration came to
his forehead, started about his nose and mouth. With the fichu which
he held he wiped them, but on the table from which he had taken it was
a layer of dust and ashes, the refuse of the cendrier which Violet had
overturned. It streaked his face, griming him with a mask comic and
sinister.
With that mask, he called at her.
“Then may you be forever damned.”
The malediction passed from him, reached her, shook her. She held to
the chair for support. Then indignantly she protested.
“Gulian!”
He did not hear. An idea had come to him, one that had visited him in
Melbourne, again in New York, to desist from further effort, to leave
her where she was, behind the barriers she had raised. At the moment he
believed he desired her no longer, loved her no more, had never loved
her at all. Occupied with the idea he looked at this woman who had
ruined her life, ruined his own.
She had been saying something, what he did not know nor, self-centered
in his anger, did he care.
In his pocket was a revolver. He felt of it and infuriatedly cried:
“You ought to be shot.”
“Gulian!”
“You are on a par with the beast you took up with.”
“I took his name, Gulian, his name alone.”
It was her turn to be angry. The flush had gone, she was pale again and
she had abandoned the chair’s support. She stood upright, confronting
him with that purity which was hers.
“I have no more been his wife than I was yours.”
“What!”
This time he heard. But her words, conflicting with his thoughts,
rolled over together. In this mental confusion he stared.
“What!”
“It is as I tell you.”
“You swear it?”
“Do I need to?”
Still he stared. Truth which acts on us and in us like a chemical
precipitate was disclosing to him her whiteness and its own.
“Do I?” she repeated.
“No, by God, you don’t. I believe you. I can’t help myself. It is in
your eyes.”
He paused and awkwardly added:
“Forgive me.”
Faintly and sadly she smiled.
“Will you?” he asked.
“Kiss me.”
In the unique syllables of the words, which in a woman’s mouth are so
fluid, there was a forgiveness so entire and a love so great that in
passionate contrition he drew her to him. Longly their lips met. She
closed her eyes, opened them, disengaged herself, moved back a step and
looked at him. For the first time she noticed the grime on his face.
It did not astonish. It seemed natural after what they had both been
through and it occurred to her that her own appearance might be equally
bizarre.
Briefly then, in this lull in the storm, she told him what Violet had
suggested--the buying and divorce of Barouffski.
“That will take time,” he objected. “The shortest way ’round is the
quickest way out. If you had not interfered in the garden----”
A gesture completed the sentence.
“No matter,” he grimly added. “I haven’t done with him yet.”
In speaking he had crossed the room, now he recrossed it.
Imploringly Leilah approached him.
“Gulian, not that, not that! Don’t fight with him again. Don’t, I
beseech you. It is not alone that anything of the kind is so horrible
but he is one of the trickiest swordsmen here. Think what that means!
Think what would become of me if--if----”
From the pocket of his coat Verplank had taken the revolver. He looked
at it, looked at her, replaced it.
“I am a trifle interested in the matter myself. Besides, there are
other weapons than the foil. If I can shoot pigeons--and I believe I
can--I ought to be able to land a buzzard.”
At sight of the revolver Leilah had winced. Now she cried:
“Give it to me!”
Verplank, amused at her simplicity, smiled.
“That isn’t a dueling pistol.”
“But you never carried one before.”
“In the States I did not need to. Here, in Paris, particularly at
night, the streets are seldom sure. I have this thing for protection.”
“Promise me then----”
Verplank looked her over.
“Don’t be a fool.”
But as he looked, suddenly she started and he saw that she was
trembling.
“What the deuce is the matter?”
Trembling still, peeringly now she had turned to the portières.
“What is it?” he repeated.
“I am so frightened.”
“Frightened? What at?”
Uncertainly, her head drawn back as a deer’s is when surprised, she
glanced about her. Slowly then her eyes returned to his.
“I am so frightened!”
“Yes, but at what?”
She motioned at the room. “Before you came there seemed to be something
here, something around me and just now----”
“Well?”
“I heard something.”
“Your maid probably.”
With an intake of the breath she raised a finger and for a moment both
were silent.
“There is no one,” he presently told her. “And what if there were!”
At the idea, he laughed.
The laugh, succeeding the silence, while intended to reassure her, did
not wholly succeed. She turned to him anew and in a low voice, said:
“You must go. To-morrow come to Violet’s.”
“I dine there to-night.”
“Yes, I know. Tell her that to-morrow, say at three, we will both be
with her. Then she can tell us----”
But Verplank had drawn her to him. Again her eyes closed.
“Go,” she said at last.
On the sofa was his hat. He reached for it. While he did so, she moved
to the tapestry, raised it, disclosing the stair up which he had come.
“To-morrow, then,” he said, as he entered there.
She nodded at him. “At three!”
Dropping the tapestry she turned, but very quickly, for again she heard
or thought she heard a noise.
Across the room the portières were parting. Through them Barouffski
appeared.
“I might have known it,” she told herself, and realising that he had
been listening, she realised also that the opportunity was as good as
another for making an offer which she had in mind.
These ideas, instantaneous at sight of him, were for the moment stayed.
On turning she had seen but the man. Now hastening toward her was a
creature with an expression so venomous that instinctively, in search
of help, with the idea of calling to Verplank, she turned to the
tapestry again.
Quicker than she, he caught and tossed her spinning on the sofa. Then,
running to the open window, he shouted from it:
“Emmanuel! The dogs!”
Leilah, falling backward on the lounge, was too stunned to hear. But
she steadied herself, recovered, got to her feet and making again for
the stair, called at Barouffski:
“Free me from you and you shall have half of what I have.”
“Half!” he repeated. At once he was upon her. “All,” he cried. “I want
it all, all of yours and all of his.”
As he spoke he struck her, shoved her aside, raised the tapestry and
vanished. For a second she heard him hastening down, while at once from
without came the barking of dogs, the jar of oaths, the sound of cries.
What it meant she did not know. Her head was whirling. The fall, the
blow, the indignity of both clouded and confused her. From without the
uproar mounted and suddenly, the uproar prompting, into the turmoil
that was her mind, a gleam of understanding shot. At the apperception
of it she shrieked, ran to the window where she shrieked again. The
loosened dogs had sprung at Verplank, who, overwhelmed had fallen.
Again she shrieked. Answering the shriek, mingling with it, were
snarls, the gnashing of fangs, the din of great hounds ferociously
struggling for blood, tearing vehemently at flesh, at a flesh, though,
that rebelled.
Verplank rose up between them. With a kick he sent one of them
sprawling. But, in the recoil, torn at by the other hound, he stumbled.
The dog was at his throat. In protection he held his left arm against
it. With his right hand he got at the revolver in his pocket, and,
through the pocket, fired twice into the brute. Gnashing still, it
rolled away.
But now, from the other side, the second hound was on him. He saw its
eyes, felt its breath, felt its fangs. Again he fired. As he did so,
his hand relaxed. He heard a woman shrieking, the sound of hurrying
feet. The wall before him mounted. His senses scattered into night.
Suddenly the garden was filled with people. Through the gate, two
sergents de ville had come. These, forms furtive and uncertain
followed. From the house, led by Barouffski, the footmen ran. Above,
from the window, still there issued a woman’s shrieks.
Barouffski stopped, and turned. He looked up at the window. He smiled.
With one hand he tapped his breast, with the other he pointed at
Verplank. Then, in French, reassuringly, he called:
“My dear! See! You may be tranquil. I, I am unharmed. It is the robber.”
At the ignominy of that flouting jeer, Leilah, impelled by the impulse
to do something, though it were but to beat her head against a wall,
rushed from the window, and, strangling with spasms, fled out of the
room and down the stair, where horror so suffocatingly enveloped her
that in it her brain tipped, and she fell.