At the glass door, which a chasseur opened, Barouffski stopped, spoke
to the man, gave him an order. As the others, conducted by a maître
d’hôtel, approached a table, a fat woman in a pulpit charged them,
before they were seated, with the use of the silver and the cloth.
Beyond, a band of Bohemians, costumed in crimson, were loosing, with
nervous and dirty fingers, whirlwinds of notes. The atmosphere, filled
with vibrations, fevered by the fury of the violins, dripped with
the scent of flowers, with the bouquet of burgundies, the smell of
champagne, the odour of tobacco and food.
At adjacent tables were demi-reps and foreigners, mondaines and
clubmen, a sprinkle of the cream of the venal, the exotic and the
ultra-chic, whom omnibuses and waiters, marshaled by maîtres d’hôtel,
served with the same deference and zeal.
For the Barouffski party, these latter had turned two tables into one,
at which Violet Silverstairs occupied one end, Leilah the other. Violet
had Barouffski at her right, Tempest at her left, while Leilah had
Silverstairs at her left and d’Arcy at her right, a disposition natural
enough and otherwise fortuitous which placed Tempest next to d’Arcy,
with Barouffski and Silverstairs opposite.
In the rising storm of the music, Leilah turned to d’Arcy. What she was
saying the others could not hear and all, save Silverstairs, who was
munching a hors d’œuvre, addressed themselves to Violet.
Presently, in a lull of the gale, Tempest would have tried to talk
to this woman who, in abandoning her Madonna air had now the merit
of suggesting both the Chimera and the Sphinx, but something in her
attitude to d’Arcy prevented. It was not, to employ a vulgarism, that
she was making eyes at the man, but she was obviously permitting him to
make eyes at her.
D’Arcy was seated, his arms on the table, talking in her face. His
plate was empty. A chaudfroid had been served. He had refused it. A
mousse had followed. He had refused that also. Over the glasses at his
side he had put a hand. It seemed a pose of his not to eat or to drink
that he might do nothing but talk.
Leilah herself had not eaten. But as soon as champagne was served she
had drunk of it, she had drunk since and in her manner, in the way
she held herself, in the inflection of her voice, there had entered a
trace of the excessive which the mondaine avoids. It was this that had
deterred Tempest. Moreover she had been laughing and that surprised
Violet who, except a little earlier in the rotunda, never, since Leilah
reached Paris, had seen her laugh before.
Now, her head drawn back, her eyes half closed, she was gratifying
d’Arcy with that look with which a woman can appear not to listen
merely but to drink the words, the appearance even, of the man by
whom she is addressed. While perhaps flattering to him, it was too
marked for good taste. The others noticed it, but, as is usual in such
circumstances, they acted as though they had not.
Barouffski conscious of the impression produced, conscious also of the
impressions of the afternoon, leaned forward and said in French:
“But, my dear! You eat nothing!”
Silverstairs, tugging at his moustache, laughed inanely and addressing
himself to both Leilah and d’Arcy, threw in:
“If this is a private conversation----”
“What nonsense!” Leilah threw back.
“I was about to say,” Silverstairs resumed, “that if it is a private
conversation, I’d like to hear it. If it is not, never mind.”
Barouffski, still leaning forward, continued:
“I pray you take a bit of the chaudfroid.”
With a movement of impatience, yet otherwise ignoring him completely,
Leilah turned again to d’Arcy.
Barouffski was not in a mood to be ignored. The sight of d’Arcy in the
afternoon, the man’s unawaited advent at the Opéra, his demeanour to
Leilah, her attitude to him, the hazards which both seemed to suggest;
yet chiefly the precariousness of his own position, the constant effort
to appear other than what he was, the consciousness of danger ever
present, the obligation to cover irritation with calm, anxiety with
banter, these things and the tension of them, fevered and enraged.
At the moment he felt like a fiend and looked it. A moment only.
Reacting at once, he compressed his lips, parted them and summoning his
ambiguous smile, called out:
“If the chaudfroid says nothing to you, will you not try the mousse?”
Leilah was raising a glass to her lips. She looked over it at him and,
much as though he were a servant, said:
“Do me the favour to attend to your own affairs.”
Barouffski’s smile evaporated. A man with no sense of honour and
some sense of humour may go far, provided that he keep his temper.
Barouffski knew it but forgot it. With a tone of authority which in the
rue de la Pompe he would have ordinarily avoided, angrily he replied:
“Then do me the favour not to drink any more.”
Leilah, the glass at her lips, paused, looked over it again, and very
gently, almost sweetly, with the pretty air of a spoiled child, nodded
at him.
“Only one sip.”
She touched the glass with her lips, for a moment held it there, then,
offering it to d’Arcy, rather languorously she said:
“Beau sire, will you drink the rest?”
Instantly Violet intervened. “Leilah! Behave yourself!”
“But with delight,” d’Arcy was saying.
From Leilah’s extended hand he took the glass, raised it, drained it,
put it down, looked at her.
Barouffski was looking at him. Quietly, without emphasis, he asked:
“Will you drink mine, too?”
Half rising as he spoke, he had taken his own glass in his hand and
with a gesture which, even as he made it, he regretted, a gesture
incited by vibrations which he was unable to resist, he flung the
contents at him.
“Barouffski!” Violet indignantly exclaimed.
She glanced about her. At her elbow an omnibus, a lad undersized
but stout, stood gaping. Beyond, the Bohemians were storming. At
the adjacent table were demi-reps and South Americans. They had not
noticed. At this table, Tempest, his teeth visible, was contemplating
his host. Silverstairs, tugging at his moustache, was considering
Leilah. The latter was looking--and with what a look!--at Barouffski.
But no one spoke. A spell seemed to have settled on all. With the idea
of doing or of saying something that would break it, Violet turned to
d’Arcy.
Delicately, with a coroneted handkerchief, he had wiped his face and
was then mopping at his shirt.
Interrupting the operation, he looked up and laughed. “Oh, la, la!
The dangers that may be avoided in remaining at home! These are the
accidents of restaurant life!”
He laughed again. The laugh humanised and deformed the Pheidian beauty
of his face. He bowed to Leilah, bowed to Violet and collectively
added:
“Mesdames, I have ceased to be presentable. A thousand pardons. You
will permit me?”
In a moment, after another bow, circular this time, a bow which while
managing to omit Barouffski, included the rest of the table, he had
gone.
“He looks like Keats,” said Silverstairs animated by an unconscious
desire to second his wife and break the spell which still persisted.
Ordinarily he would have taken her and gone. The assault had been as
much of an affront to her as it had been to d’Arcy. But to have left
the table would have been a reproof to Leilah, whom, in the ridiculous
way in which society is organized, he was unable to disassociate from
Barouffski.
“Keats!” Tempest, coming to his aid, exclaimed. “I’ll lay a guinea you
would not know his picture if you saw it.”
Amiably Silverstairs tugged at his moustache. “Well, perhaps not. What
I meant was that he looks like a poet.”
“I don’t agree with you,” Tempest retorted. “To begin with, there are
not any. Besides, latterly there have been but two--Hugo, who looked
like a green-grocer, and Swinburne who looked like a bookseller’s
assistant. Moreover I hate poets, though, as someone said somewhere,
an inability to write in verse can hardly be regarded as constituting a
special talent. No, d’Arcy does not look like a poet, he looks like a
poet’s creation.”
“Excuse me,” Silverstairs with affected meekness threw out. “And thanks
for the lecture.”
Tempest nodded. “You’re entirely welcome.”
He turned to Violet. She was looking at Leilah who was looking at
Barouffski. The latter was looking at the fingers of his right hand
against which his thumb passed and repassed mechanically. But now,
aroused from his reflections by the entire cessation of talk, he
glanced about him, summoned a waiter, settled the score. The Bohemians
who momentarily had been silent, abruptly striped the air with spangles
from their bows.
Violet and Leilah stood up, resumed their wraps, passed on. The men,
buttoning their coats, putting their gloves on, followed.
At the door were the eager grooms. As one of them touched his hat to
Leilah, Violet turned to her.
“My dear, I cannot thank you for a very pleasant evening. But I will
look in on you to-morrow. That bone isn’t picked and what’s more, now
I’ve got sauce for it.”
With Silverstairs and Tempest at her heels, she went to her brougham.
Leilah entered the motor.
At the door of the latter Barouffski stood. He raised his hat. Leilah
looked at him. She had had, she thought, her last glimpse of the world
and this was her last glimpse of him. The sight was so repugnant that
she almost sickened and the nausea which she felt, her face expressed.
Barouffski tried to smile but the unconcealed candour of her abhorrence
made his lips twitch. Now, though, the motor was starting. As it
whirred away, he drew his coat closely about him, turned up the collar
and stuck his hands deep in the pockets. There had come to him that
odd sensation which homely fancy attributes to someone walking on your
grave.