XI

In the golden half light of the Opéra, a chorus, soprano voices on one

side of the stage alternating with contralto on the other, vaporised

the subtle sensuality of the scene.

Violet Silverstairs, turning to her husband, who was seated behind her,

remarked:

“How much better the Italian school is than the French.”

Silverstairs, ignorant of either, and indifferent to both, promenaded

his glass about the house.

“I wonder why Tempest doesn’t show up? There is Marie de Fresnoy! I saw

de Fresnoy to-day for the first time since his duel with Barouffski.

What a ridiculous affair that was! I suppose one of these days he will

have another with d’Arcy.”

Violet turned to him again.

“Because of Marie? How absurd you are! D’Arcy doesn’t interest her. No

man could unless he drove at her with a four-in-hand, and d’Arcy has

nothing.”

Silverstairs, still promenading his glass, exclaimed:

“There he is now!”

“Who? D’Arcy?”

“Yes, with the Helley-Quetgens, in that box between the columns. Isn’t

that your friend Leilah whom he is talking to? By Jove, it is, and

Barouffski is there, also.”

Violet, who had also been promenading her glass, put it down.

“Well, he ought to be. I do think she has acted scandalously. What is

said at the club?”

“About Verplank? It is forgotten already. Barouffski, you know, claimed

that it was a mistake, and as it appears that Verplank agreed with him,

as from neither the one nor the other any charge was forthcoming, the

police could do nothing but get Verplank back to the Ritz.”

Impatiently Violet unfurled her fan.

“Yes, where she has been every day; every day, that is, when she has

not been with d’Arcy.”

The statement was inexact. Leilah had indeed been at the Ritz but

d’Arcy she had seen but once, momentarily, by accident--if there

be such a thing, in any event through one of those seeming hazards

which, however fortuitous at first, afterward appear to have been

designed. It was a little, though, before Leilah took that view of

things. Meanwhile, when, on recovering from her swoon, she learned

that Verplank had also recovered she realised with thanksgiving that

Destiny which has its tyrannies has its mercies as well. So soon then

as she could get from the bed into which the horrors of the midspring

nightmare had thrown her, she went to the Ritz where she found Verplank

amply attended, abundantly bandaged, severely but not dangerously hurt.

“One of the brutes nearly chewed my arm off,” he told her. “If the

other omitted to eat me entirely, it was not because he did not try. I

did for them, though,” he added, and smiled as he said it. After the

manner of man, he took comfort in the feat.

“But not for the worst brute,” Leilah answered wishing in spite of

herself, wishing instinctively and even ungrammatically that some good

fate might.

From beneath a bandage, Verplank laughed:

“Bah! I’ll do for him, too.”

But Leilah did not hear. She was speaking to the surgeon, whom--with

a bravery which in itself was a little defiant, and which in any

event might have been more discreet--thereafter, daily and openly,

she supplied with that which every surgeon wants, a nurse obedient,

attentive, skilful, alert, and who, in addition ministers for love.

Presently, Verplank was able to be up. The surgeon said that in a day

he would be able to be out. Verplank, who knew as much without being

told, asked Leilah to go with him on the morrow.

Leilah refused. Verplank, for an invalid, became then surprisingly

demoniac. The demonism of him affected her less than a conception,

feminine perhaps but erroneous, of her own selfishness. If she went,

she knew beforehand that irremissibly she would be dishonoured. But

she knew also that any sense of dishonour must, if it is to ashame,

come not from without but from within. If she went, her conscience,

she thought, would acquit her. She thought that she would not feel

dishonoured, though she knew that she would be disgraced. To refuse on

that account seemed to her selfish. As a result finally she consented.

Yet in consenting she made one stipulation. Characteristic in itself,

it was that there must be nothing clandestine, that he must come for

her in the rue de la Pompe, and that from there, her boxes put on

whatever vehicle he brought, they would leave for darkness by daylight.

The plan pleased Verplank. He agreed at once. He told her that he

would come the next day.

When he had, she added: “To-night I go to the Opéra; the Helley-Quetgens

have asked me. It is my last look at this world.”

Then, shortly, the arrangements for the evasion completed, she left the

hotel.

Without, her motor waited. She told the groom to have it follow

her. The air tempted, though the sky was dirty. She thought of the

California glare, the eager glitter of New York. She wondered would

they go back there. Perhaps, she told herself, we shall at last see

Bora-Bora.

Her walk took her through the arcades of the rue de Rivoli to the

fountains of the Place de la Concorde. From there she was about to

enter the Champs Elysées when she became conscious of being accosted.

“Chère madame,” some one was saying, “I precipitate myself to renew the

expression of my homage.”

D’Arcy, hat in hand, was before her. At once, with a view to what the

French agreeably describe as the placing of landmarks--_pour poser des

jalons_--he asked to be permitted to accompany her.

Leilah smiled.

“Not for the world!”

She motioned at the motor. Then, with that graciousness which is

natural to the mondaine, with perhaps the desire also to attenuate

whatever there were of brusqueness in her reply, she added, as she got

in the car:

“I shall be at the Opéra with the Helley-Quetgens to-night. Could you

not look in?”

D’Arcy, habituated to the abruptest victories, accustomed to inflame,

with but a glance, by the mere exhibition of his Olympian good looks,

and, therefore, indifferent when not bored by the celerity of his

successes, but piqued by the tranquil air with which this woman had

always regarded him, thanked her, assured her that he would not fail to

be there, and replaced his hat.

Immediately he raised it again, straight from the head, high in the

air. Looking with brilliant eyes from a brilliant brougham, Violet

Silverstairs was dashing by.

Coincidentally, unobserved but observant, Barouffski was also passing

that way.

Leilah’s motor flew off and she sank back, wondering at herself,

wondering rather what influence, malign and unhallowed, could possibly

have prompted her to ask this man, whom she disliked as--in spite of a

theory to the contrary--honest women do dislike a man of his type. But

though, at the time, she could not understand what impelled her, later

it seemed to her that it must have been fate.

Barouffski had a different interpretation. At the Joyeuses he had

seen Leilah and d’Arcy together. Now, here they were again. The

circumstance, of which the fortuitousness was unknown to him, irritated

him for that very cause. But he could imagine and did. At once it was

clear to him that the brute was after the blue eyes of her bankbook.

The deduction, however erroneous, was easy. He was viewing the matter,

not, as he fancied, from d’Arcy’s standpoint, but from his own. In

spite of which, or rather precisely on that account, he told himself

that d’Arcy was a damned scoundrel. The humour of this quite escaped

him. But that perhaps was in the order of things.

Since the night at the Joyeuses, he had been measuring himself solely

against Verplank. Twice he had failed with him, but he knew that soon

they would be at each other again and for the next bout he had in view

a coup which, he felt, would do for him definitely. Meanwhile, if in

regard to Leilah he had been led into certain vivacities, he felt that

with time, which is the great emollient, her memory of these vivacities

would pass. Even otherwise, the law was with him. He proposed to see

to it that she was also--she and with her her purse. The one menace to

both had been Verplank. Here, now, apparently, was another. Here was

d’Arcy with his pseudo-Pheidian air, that famous yet false appearance

of a young and dissolute Olympian which made imbeciles turn and stare.

Ragingly Barouffski reflected that canaille though d’Arcy were, he

carried a great many guns, almost as many as Verplank, who, worse

luck, had, in addition, the signal advantage of being Leilah’s first

love--that love to which it is said one always returns.

But even as he sounded the stupidity of that aphorism, vaguely, for a

dim second, he intercepted a gleam refracted from truth. The danger

with which he had to contend, Verplank did not personify or d’Arcy

either, it was himself. When the golden six was tossed him, had he but

then known how to secure the box, there would now be no danger at all.

But truth, when it does not console, confounds. Barouffski put it from

him. It was too exasperating. “Bah!” he told himself, “if her attitude

does not change, a sojourn in the solitudes of Lithuania may alter it.”

Angrily he nodded. Things more surprising have occurred there.

On this day it was Leilah who surprised him.

Since he had called to her from the garden, she had encountered him

only in the hazards of entrances and halls. On such occasions she had

passed with an air of being unaware that there were anything save

chairs and tables about.

In part, it was this attitude which he thought certain solitudes might

change. Oddly enough, Leilah herself wished it altered. But to want

to do one thing and to do something else, happens to all of us, even

to the best. She despised Barouffski and yet in despising him knew

that the one contemptible thing is contempt. For what he had done,

she felt that no punishment could be too severe, yet in so feeling

she knew that he was only the embodiment of past misdeeds of her own.

Physically he had struck her. Spiritually, it was her own hand that had

dealt the blow. He had loosed the dogs on Verplank and she had judged

and condemned him for it, though she knew that not only she should not

judge at all, but that never perhaps do useless events occur. Clearly

these events were evil, but were not those which she planned evil too?

In this dilemma there was some slight consolation for her in the

knowledge that it was not her fault, at least not her present fault,

that she had been born with a nature so problematic. But the _Vidyâ_,

in teaching her that whatever we suffer is derived from our past; that

the people who wrong us--or seem to--are mere puppets come to claim

karmic debts which we owe; the _Vidyâ_, in teaching her that taught

her also that every life we lead here is but a day in school. Her

schooling, she felt, had as yet been insufficient. No doubt she would

know better when she came here again.

The thin gilt hope of that fortified her a little on this day when, to

Barouffski’s surprise, she sent for him and then, her head raised, said

distantly:

“The Helley-Quetgens have asked us to the Opéra. I am going. You are

free to do as you like.”

Here, obviously, was something new. At it and at her Barouffski looked

with shifting eyes. Uncertainly he rubbed his hands.

“But how then! I am at your orders. It is a festival to be where you

are.”

But as he did nothing without an object, he wondered what hers was.

Obviously, there was a reason. Yet, what? Could it be an olive branch?

He was too adroit to ask. Even otherwise, he lacked the opportunity.

Leilah had gone from the room.

It was in these circumstances that, on this night, she appeared at the

Opéra where Violet was complaining at having seen her with d’Arcy.

At the complaint, Silverstairs pulled at his moustache.

“I did not know that she had taken up with him.”

“I don’t know that she has either. But she was with him to-day in the

Champs Elysées.”

“Oh, come now! Things haven’t got to such a pass that a woman can’t be

seen with a man----”

“No, but no honest woman can be seen alone with d’Arcy. Leilah ought to

know better. She ought to know better too than to go to the Ritz. As

she does not appear to, I propose to tell her.”

“Do as you like,” replied Silverstairs who would have said the same

thing no matter what his wife had suggested. The lady had not entirely

Americanised this Englishman but she had at least made him realise the

futility of argument.

“Do as you like,” he repeated. “There are the Orlonnas. There are the

Zubaroffs.”

At once to the quick click of an ouvreuse’s key, the door opened and

Tempest appeared, a foulard showing above his coat.

While he removed these things Violet called at him:

“You’re late.”

Silverstairs laughed. “He always is. At Christ Church he was known as

the late Lord Howard.”

Tempest moved forward and sat down between them.

But now, to the volatile sweetmeats of the score, the curtain was

falling. In the stalls there was a movement. Men stood up, put their

hats on, turned their back to the stage or set forth for a chat with

the vestals in the green room.

Silverstairs also stood up.

Violet turned to him:

“I do wish you would look in on the Helley-Quetgens, and ask Leilah to

come to luncheon to-morrow. Say I have a bone to pick with her. That

may fetch her, if nothing else will.”

Tempest ran a hand through his vivid hair.

“A bone over what, if I may ask? You may not know it, but I greatly

admire Madame Barouffska.”

Violet smiled.

“She’s a dear. But I saw her to-day with d’Arcy, and I propose to scold

her for it.”

Tempest showed his teeth.

“D’Arcy is not a man’s man, though he certainly is a woman’s. Yet, when

you come to that, not such a woman as Madame Barouffska. What an odd

thing that was about her first husband!”

“You mean about the dogs?”

“Yes. I never got the rights of it. What was he doing there? Is she

living in the past?”

Violet raised her opera-glass.

“She would be very lucky if she could be; living in the present is so

expensive, don’t you think?”

Again there was a quick click. The door opened. Silverstairs, filling

the entrance with his tall stature, reappeared.

“Violet,” he began, “the Helley-Quetgens are going on to some dance

in the Faubourg, and Leilah wants the three of us to sup with her at

Paillard’s. What do you say?”

Violet laughed. “I say it will be just my chance.” She turned to

Tempest. “You will come?”

“Thanks, yes. Isn’t that de Fresnoy with the Zubaroffs?”

Silverstairs, without sitting down, raised his glass.

“Yes, and I was just saying, this is the first time since his duel that

I have seen him. But what an asinine affair that was! He lunged at

Barouffski’s neck, Barouffski knocked the foil up and pricked himself

on the chin with it. Then Barouffski’s surgeon stopped the fight on

the ground that it might interfere with his breathing. Fancy that!

Afterward, in the account given to the press, the surgeon described

the prick as an incisive wound in the hyoïdian region, accompanied by

a notable flow of blood. Anyone who did not know would have thought

that Barouffski had been nearly done for. But that’s a French duel for

you--a funeral at which everybody giggles.”

Tempest looked gravely up at his friend. “What did you have for dinner?”

Suspiciously, Silverstairs considered him.

“Why do you ask?”

“You are so expansive and brilliant.”

On the stage, the drama continued, poignantly, beatifically, in a

unison of violins and voices that was interrupted at last by the

usual stir in the stalls and boxes, by the haste to be going, to be

elsewhere, and a defile began; a procession of silken robes, gorgeous

cloaks, jeweled headgear, black coats, white ties; a procession that

presently filled the subscribers’ rotunda, from which, at sight of it,

grooms fled, then hurried back, touching their hats, eager and zealous.

Between the columns groups loitered, regarding each other with

indulgence, with indifference, at times with a loftiness that put

isolating zones about them; and women assumed that attitude which

women alone can assume, that attitude of being not only apart from the

crowd, but of being unaware of the crowd’s existence.

In the centre, Mme. Orlonna, an Italian princess, with a slight

moustache and an ancestry that extended to the super-Neronian days

of Heliogabalus, stood, laughing and talking, lisping _Bonthoirs_ to

everybody.

Another princess, a Russian, Mme. Zubaroff, with a young girl at her

side, and an escort of blond giants, passed, inclining her head to the

left, to the right, bowing with a grace mechanical, but sovereign.

Beyond, Leilah appeared, d’Arcy on one side, Barouffski on the other.

Her face, ordinarily pale, was flushed, and her manner, usually

subdued, was animated. She was laughing, not loudly, but noticeably.

Violet, accompanied by Tempest and Silverstairs, approached. As the

men, after saluting the women, greeted each other, Violet tapped Leilah

with her fan.

“My dear, I have a bone to pick with you.”

Leilah, with a levity that was rare with her, interrupted:

“It is just for that we are going to supper. How will you have it,

grilled or deviled?”

“Her ladyship’s carriage is at the door,” a groom announced, in English.

Another added, in French: “The motor of madame la comtesse is advanced.”

“Yes,” Violet retorted. “But my bone belongs to a different kettle of

fish. Now, you come with me.” With a smile, she turned to the others.

“We will go in the brougham, and you take the motor.”

Stooping, she lifted her train, and the two women, accompanied by the

men, followed the groom to the carriage.

There, after seeing them in, Barouffski called:

“To Paillard’s, Chaussée d’Antin.”