The next day, Violet, entering the brilliant room, gazed first about it
and then at Leilah.
“Aurelia is not here? That’s odd. She is simply horrid but so reliable.
You don’t mind my having told her to meet me?”
Leilah sighed. “I am getting so that soon I shan’t mind anything.”
Violet, seating herself, nodded vivaciously.
“I call that very fine. But there is something finer. Never mind
anybody. Silverstairs now----” and as the lady spoke she summoned a
smile feline and Cheshire--“he fancied I would be a good, obedient
little wife. Instead of which he is a good, obedient big husband.”
In entire self-appreciation she exhibited the tip of her tongue and
moistened her lips with it. “It takes us, doesn’t it? But forgive me,
dear, us is perhaps an exaggeration. I am afraid you have made rather a
mess of things. Now what are you going to do?”
Without replying, Leilah looked away. During the night she had barely
slept. The incident in the restaurant, events that had preceded it,
anterior complications, subsequent developments, these things, like
the Bohemians at Paillard’s, had stormed at her, attacked her fibres,
wrenched her nerves, striating the darkness of her room with variations
on the tragedy of her life.
In what manner the affair in the restaurant had terminated, she had
no one to inform her but she could readily fancy that shortly d’Arcy
and Barouffski would go somewhere and fight, or pretend to, and then
return, none the worse and none the better, but with honour satisfied
and their names in print.
The entire episode was shameful. But though provoked by her she had not
premeditated it. In offering d’Arcy her glass, she had wished solely to
display her independence. Subsequently, in going over the matter, she
had realised that the wish, while human, had not been nice. Then, a bit
conscience-stricken, she had wondered how she could have behaved as she
had.
“I did it without thinking,” was her immediate excuse. But that,
she told herself was untrue. Ever since the duel and the blow and
the nightmare that followed, some such wish had been fermenting in
her. The wish, reasonable in itself, though in her case unreasoned,
persisted, as in certain natures a wish will persist, until, after
the fashion of a constantly recurring idea, the individual becomes so
saturated with it that, given the impulse, given less than that, given
a vibration, some effect, perhaps wholly atmospheric, and suddenly the
idea has solidified into an act, an act noble, degrading or merely
banal, according to the influence that produced it, but an act which,
whatever its character, has then become inevitable, even involuntary,
its constant mental recurrence having exhausted the ability to choose
between it and another.
Leilah had thought of this and, in search of comfort, had groped for
another excuse. As an Oriental will say: “My body is tired.” “My body
is hungry,” so Leilah decided: “It was my nerves that did it.”
But the sophistry displeased her. She knew that she had judged and
condemned Barouffski and she knew also that she had no right to do
either. The man was clearly a cad, a scoundrel and a brute, yet even
though he were these things and worse and more besides, he so became in
her eyes merely because her consciousness had evolved to a point higher
than his own. Seen from a different angle, she might appear only a
shade less reprehensible, and it might be, even equally vile. Moreover,
according to the _Upanishads_, this consciousness of hers and that
consciousness of his were fundamentally one. Both had come from the
same source. To that source both would ultimately return. They would be
fused there, as originally there they had been merged.
At the apperception of that, the curious lines which occur in the _Book
of Dzyan_ suggested themselves:
“_Said the Flame to the Spark: ‘I have clothed myself in thee, thou art
my image, my body, until that day when thou shalt rebecome myself and
others, thyself and me.’_”
In the penetrating beauty of the allegory Leilah told herself that she,
Barouffski, Verplank, the Silverstairs, the Helley-Quetgens, everybody
whom she knew, everyone whom she did not know, all the fillers of
space, were sparks of one Flame, the Flame from which they had been
formerly emitted and into which they would finally return. That, she
felt she must believe, if she were to believe anything. But she felt
too that though she did believe it, she believed also that for the
present there were sparks better parted than united, as there were also
others better united than apart.
On the table before her was a treatise on the Paramitas--which are The
Blessed Things. She looked at it, knowing that what she had done was
wrong and what she was about to do was evil. But she felt also that she
could not help herself. Whatever the penalty, it was impossible for her
to live with Barouffski. Whatever the punishment, it was impossible
for her not to live with Verplank. At the moment it seemed to her as
though the high fates had set her in a circle from which she could not
escape except by the door of death or that of further sinning. At this
idea she wondered about Barouffski as, after Verplank’s eruption at
the Joyeuses, she had wondered about him. She wondered whether in some
former existence she had injured Barouffski and whether it were for
that reason that she had been led into giving him the power to injure
her now. It might be so, she told herself, in which case she ought to
bear it. But how could she know that it was so? Yet even though it
were and the fact were made clear to her, even then, even too if the
certainty of a punishment more poignant than any were shaken in her
eyes, still she could not bear it.
“But I ought to,” she found herself saying.
These reflections Violet’s advent had interrupted.
“What are you going to do?” the lady was asking.
Leilah, unfit at the moment for battle, felt unable to tell. She looked
away.
“Nothing, I suppose.”
Violet, cocking a belligerent eye, threw out:
“You carry moderation to excess.”
Leilah looked up. “What would you have me do?”
“Divorce Barouffski.”
“Because he threw champagne about? I hardly fancy I could get a divorce
for that.”
Militantly Violet whipped off a glove. “Frankly that creature is a
criminal. Never, in all my life, have I seen such an exhibition of bad
taste. But then, as they say here, bad taste leads to crime--to such
vulgar forms of it at that.”
“Even so, I don’t see how it helps me.”
“But he struck you,” Violet, more bellicose than ever, exclaimed. “You
told me so. What more would you have. But aren’t you difficile to-day!”
Suspiciously she considered her friend. “You’ve got something up your
sleeve.”
“If I have,” Leilah, in an effort to parry the thrust, replied, “at
least it is not witnesses.”
Cogently Violet nodded. “Come to me then. Divorce is the mother-in-law
of invention. If you haven’t any witnesses, I’ll find something else.
I make a specialty of finding things before they are lost.”
This programme hardly suited Leilah’s book. Again she parried. “Last
night--and what a night!--I dreamed I was feasting with the dead. It
was so peaceful. It is that that I want. It is peace the very fibres of
my being crave.”
Here were heights--or depths--where Violet could not follow. With a
smile she tacked.
“Before you dreamed your dream I noticed that you wore a very ducky
frock.”
“It is stained. So am I. The champagne Barouffski threw stained me
within and without.”
Here were other heights. Readily Violet skirted them.
“I believe I got a drop or two myself. But then I don’t mind. It is
true I am not a theosophist.”
At this, in indignation at herself, Leilah protested.
“Theosophy is primarily a school of good manners. In giving d’Arcy my
glass, mine were detestable.”
Now they were on surer ground. Wickedly Violet winked.
“Nobody has any manners any more or, when they do, they have them in
plenty and all of them bad.”
“If I have an excuse,” Leilah continued, “it is that Gulian drove me
nearly demented.”
Now, Violet felt, they were getting at it. Mentally she girded herself
and with an engaging appearance of sympathy, exclaimed:
“A man never does that unless he loves a woman to distraction.”
The sympathy, however feigned, did its work. After all, Leilah
reflected, why should she not tell what she was about to do? On the
impulse she turned.
“Violet, I offered Barouffski half my fortune to free me. His reply was
a blow. Apart from that I have no grounds for a divorce, none at least
which I can show. Previously there was something between Gulian and me.
It has gone. He cares for me still and I care for him. Shortly he is to
be here. For a long time I hesitated. But after last night--after the
nights and days that preceded it!--it does not seem to me that I need
hesitate any more.”
Pausing, she drew breath. “Violet, when he comes I am to go with him.
Is there a reason why I should not?”
Violet, who had long suspected as much, now at last had nailed it.
Cautiously she buckled to.
“No. Not one. On the contrary. There is every reason why you should.
Every reason. Particularly as to greet you there will be the disdainful
eyes, the lifted skirts, the averted heads, every one of the very
slight and very fiendish tortures that are visited on the woman who has
gone and done it.”
For a second she too paused, then with a war whoop added:
“But you can’t do anything of the kind. I won’t let you.”
“Would you turn from me also?”
“I! Merciful fathers! But I am not the world. No matter what is done in
private, the world does not care. The world is very well bred. It never
sees anything that was not intended for it. But on the open scandal of
scandalous conduct instantly it turns its well bred back. It will turn
it on you.”
Indifferently Leilah assented. She had examined this phase of the
matter. It had not seemed very important.
“No doubt,” she replied. “Yet then destiny seldom closes a door without
opening another. I told you of my dream. It was a dream of peace.
Here there can be none. It may be my karma perhaps. But this,” she
continued, motioning at the brilliant room, “this is my prison.”
She hesitated and a bit lamely concluded:
“It is horrible to be in such a place.”
“And worse to be nowhere at all,” Violet shot at her. In firing she had
sat up. Now, lolling back on the cushions, she enigmatically resumed:
“You may be right though. I daresay it is dreadful to be in prison. I
daresay it is even worse than you think.”
Enigmatic still, she smiled. With another shot, with two at most,
Leilah, she told herself, would be routed.
“It is as though I were in a vortex,” the latter was saying. “It is
as though I were being torn from places where I do not wish to be to
others I may not like. But can one argue with a vortex? It is idle even
to struggle. Whether you will or you won’t, you have to let yourself
go.”
Lightly, in her most worldly manner, Violet laughed.
“Never in the world! A woman should never let herself go--except in an
aeroplane. At a pinch a four-in-hand might do, but----”
At the moment the lady was thoroughly _en veine_ and, sure of victory,
might have bantered on, but this, Aurelia, ushered by Parker, prevented.
Sharply Violet threw at her: “Where have you been?”
Ignoring Violet, Aurelia nodded at Leilah.
“I was here the other day, did they tell you?”
She turned and with blithe impertinence looked her sister up and down.
“Don’t be so ordinary as to ask a girl where she has been. If you are
inquisitive, ask where she is going, and, if you ask me, I’ll tell you.
I am going to become----”
“Yes, yes.” Violet impatiently interrupted. “We’ve heard all that.
You’re going to become a star. I know what kind too--a fallen star.”
A fresher smile bubbled about Aurelia’s delicious mouth.
“It pleases your ladyship to jest. I am to become the Princess Farnese!”
“Merciful heavens!” Violet exclaimed, turning as she spoke to Leilah.
“She’ll go in to dinner before me!”
But Leilah who, after a word of greeting to Aurelia, had, from the
table before her, taken and reopened the Paramitas, perhaps did not
hear.
Violet turned again to her sister. “When did he propose?”
With an air of amused contempt, again Aurelia looked her up and down.
“How antiquated you are! Don’t you know that all that sort of thing has
gone out?”
“Do you mean that he didn’t propose?”
“Of course not. I proposed to him.”
“What?”
“He was so coy about it, too,” Aurelia, quite as though she were
eating sweetmeats, resumed. “He asked me all about my finances, what
settlements I would make and whether I would object if he kept a
separate establishment. You can’t really fancy how coy he was. He quite
blushed and stammered, the poor thing.”
“I should think he might.”
“Yes, indeed. He asked me if I had spoken to his mamma, and I told
him that while it was perhaps incorrect of me to speak to him in the
first instance, yet that there could be no real love without a mutual
misunderstanding, and now that we had one I would make a formal demand
of the old lady to-day.”
Aurelia, executing a little _pas_, added: “I have just seen her.”
“Well?”
“She said: ‘And so you want my little boy for your husband.’ Partly
that I told her, but partly also I want you for mother-in-law. You
should have seen her lick her chops over that. Then she asked me about
my affections. I told her they were just like the fashions. They came
and went.”
“She must have been delighted.”
“She hugged me. Then, of course, I asked about him. She told me that he
has just been named as co-respondent in the Kincardine divorce suit,
and I said that that was perfectly satisfactory.”
“What!”
“Perfectly satisfactory. It appears that the poor boy can’t remember
whether the charge is true or false and that I think is so dear of him.”
Violet, rising, extended her arms. “Aurelia, I have been wrong, I have
misjudged you. Come to me.”
But Aurelia, moving back, waved her away. “You’ll only muss me. Now I
must run. I must break the news to Parsnips. Will you come, Vi?”
“In a moment.” Violet answered. “Wait for me in the brougham. There is
something I want to say to Leilah.”
Endearingly the ingénue smiled. “Something I ought not to hear, I
suppose.” In speaking she made for the door. “The amount of things I
ought not to hear and do hear is simply amazing.”
As the portières fell on her gracile back, Violet, with a gesture
which, for so warlike a lady, resembled defeat, reseating herself,
exclaimed:
“Frankly, she is impossible.”
At once though, buckling anew for the fray, she aimed at Leilah and
fired.
“So are you.”
Leilah, who had been considering the Paramitas, started at the attack
which instantly was followed up by another.
“Do you know anything about the code here, the law code, I mean. Do
you?”
Leilah, a bit bewildered, shook her head. “No, that is, very little.”
Violet’s eyes fairly snapped. “I congratulate you. A little is
sometimes a great deal. I also know a little and that little is, well,
immense, so enormous even that because of it I am in a position to tell
you that if you go with Verplank, Barouffski can, if he catches you,
have you jailed.”
Gravely, with curious calm, Leilah looked at her.
Annoyed that the shot had fallen short, Violet aimed again.
“Didn’t you hear me? I said jailed. J-a-i-l-e-d! Now I may add for two
years. That is what I meant when you spoke of your prison. I agreed
with you that it must be dreadful to be in one. I said I daresay it is
even worse than you think.”
Leilah half raised a hand. “But----”
Unheedingly Violet continued. “Now, as for Verplank, if Barouffski
were to surprise him here with you he could kill you both, yes, and be
acquitted. But you--I have told you what he can do. Moreover, if he so
much as suspects you, he can call the police. But excuse me. You were
saying?”
“Nothing of any moment.”
But Violet persisted. “What was it?”
“Merely that during the Terror a woman went to the guillotine smelling
a rose.”
At this flank movement Violet winced, but she rallied.
“Yes and rehearsed the act beforehand. They all did. The great ladies
of the period rehearsed for the guillotine that they might die, as they
had lived, with grace. Those were the good old days. These are the bad
new ones. Anything of the kind would be ridiculous now.”
To this, gravely as before, Leilah assented. “No doubt. But aren’t you
rather rambling about the grounds? It seems to me that you also have
something up your sleeve.”
Violet rose to the challenge. “Something! I have the entire
pharmacopœia. In it is a remedy heroic but sovereign. If you’ll take
it, it may maim but it will cure.”
Leilah, well entrenched, braved her. “I may not need it.”
With a rush, then, the attack began.
“That’s because you don’t know. You think you are sane and sound.
Don’t you now? Yes, and you are neither. You have a high temperature
complicated with nausea. The temperature is due to exposure, the nausea
to indigestion. You have been exposed to Verplank and you have supped
on Barouffski. You fancy you can’t be rid of the incubus. That is an
hallucination which the fever has caused. You can be rid of it. You can
throw it up. I have an emetic that will do the trick. It may not be
tasty but I’ll warrant it will make him gag far more than you.”
At the ferocity of the assault, Leilah quailed. “Really, Violet, your
language----”
But the lady was not to be denied. “Aha! You want me to be
butter-fingered, don’t you? Not a bit of it. You shall have the dose
whether you like it or not and here it is for you. You called this
place a prison. Now who runs it? You do. And on what? Your money.
Supposing you hadn’t any? Would Barouffski supply it? He would pack in
a jiffy. Couldn’t you then sue for divorce? Of course you could. Then
there is the emetic. Verplank has enough for you both, enough for an
army. All you have to do is to hold your nose, open your mouth, give
your money away and vomit Barouffski. Will you?”
It was Violet’s last shot. With it she had expected to bowl Leilah
completely over. Anxiously she looked to see the result.
“Will you?” she repeated.
With manifest exaltation Leilah answered: “I had thought of it.”
Surprisedly Violet stared, wondering could all her ammunition have gone
for nothing, wondering too at the almost rapt expression that had come
into Leilah’s face.
“What?”
“Yes, Violet, I had thought of it--and of other things also. While
Aurelia was here, I was reading a little book. It told me what I once
knew and had since forgotten. It told me that if we have ideals we
should live for them, that it is only by living for them and suffering
for them that we can lift ourselves above the brutes. Violet, it was
sinful of me to think of going with Gulian.”
Dispassionately the now mollified lady toned that phrase.
“It was not perhaps quite nice.”
“But I had not seen,” Leilah continued. “No, not that,” she interrupted
herself to explain. “I had forgotten that this prison, all I have
endured, all I shall endure, these are my debts to the Lords of Karma.”
But that was a bit too strong. Violet laughed.
“You mean the Lords of Gammon.”
“I mean,” Leilah, with heightening fervour, replied, “that I have
looked upon my prison as a cross. It is not a cross, it is a boon--one
of which I have not been worthy. For I forgot that any sorrow should
be welcomed. I forgot that it has been sent to make us nobler than we
are. But my sorrows I have not welcomed. I have rebelled against them.
I shall rebel no more. They were my masters. They shall be my servants
now.”
At these fine sentiments Violet sniffed.
“If that is theosophy I will believe in it when I am old, fat and a
German. But I am glad it enabled you to reach a decision. Otherwise----”
But what the lady may have intended to say was never expressed or at
least not then. Through the yellow portières, the delicate oval of
Aurelia’s face appeared.
“Aren’t you ever coming?” she called. “What have you two been talking
about?”
As the ingénue spoke, she entered, strolled to the mirror, considered
herself.
“We have been discussing your engagement,” Violet, in a very matter of
fact way, replied.
Aurelia adjusted her hat, patted her hair, and addressed the mirror.
“I fancied it must be something important. Did I tell you what happened
before I took Farnese?”
Violet yawned. “I have forgotten.”
Aurelia, still pluming herself, smiled.
“Then I didn’t. Besides, it is so shocking.”
Violet motioned at her. “Don’t be tiresome. I may have lost the ability
to be shocked but not the ability to be bored.”
With an air of great satisfaction Aurelia turned.
“Well, this morning, d’Arcy called. He told me about the gayeties last
evening and it seemed to me that he must have looked so sweet with the
champagne all over him that I could hardly resist accepting him, too.”
“Accepting him, three!” Violet exclaimed. She raised her eyes as though
calling heaven to witness. “There’s constancy for you!”
Aurelia gave another glance at her enticing self.
“Do you know, I have always thought that constancy must be due either
to a lack of imagination or else of opportunity. That is what you would
call a moral standpoint, isn’t it? Though what morality itself is you
never deigned to explain. Personally I am inclined to think that it
must be a preference in a choice of experiences.”
Violet stood up. “One might suppose you thought it consisted in being
engaged to half a dozen men at the same time.”
Enthusiastically the girl regarded her. “There! That’s it! You’ve
struck it! There is safety in numbers and what a moral young person I
am!”
Violet nodded. “I never suspected it before.”
“Nor I,” Aurelia contentedly replied. She looked at Leilah. “By-by.”
“Good-by,” Violet added.
In a moment both had gone and Leilah, again alone, reopened the little
treatise on the Paramitas.
The way was now clear and to that way the pamphlet had pointed. It
had done more. It had brought the exaltation which such beatitudes do
bring to those in great distress. But though it had exalted, suddenly
the fervour fell from her, for at once she foresaw the scene which she
would have with Verplank, when now, at the last moment, she had to
tell him that she could not go. The terror of it daunted her. She could
see him, demanding that she tell him why--that faltering why of hers
which would be gibberish to him and yet which summarised her ideals.
For the moment she felt that she lacked the strength for this, that
it would be better to write him and she was thinking what she would
say and how she would say it, when something external, a noise from
without, distracted her.
She stood up and went to the window, from which, since the day of the
ambuscade, she had had no heart to look.
Below, a footman in a canary coat and black knee-breeches was walking,
bareheaded, straight on. At the gate he stopped, fumbled with the
latch, drew back the door, held it open.
A man entered. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had a rigid face, calm
eyes, the air of a judge. His beard, intensely black, the beard of a
Saracen, was close cut and pointed. He was dressed in black.
Another man followed. Shorter, fairer, distinctly fat, he had a box
under his arm. About the box were broad bands, sealed with red wax.
A third man appeared. Older than the others, he had gray hair, glasses
rimmed with tortoise-shell, and a bag.
All three were in black, all were grave, all were silent, and as they
stood before the gate they partially concealed a fourth man, who, in
black also, wore white gloves.
What they had come for Leilah could not imagine. Then, at once,
she recalled what Violet had said: the rigors of French justice,
a husband’s ability to cage an erring wife, to put her away,
indefinitely, among the demented and the depraved, and at the sight
of these men, at the thought of the Byzantine abysses of Barouffski’s
nature, abysses perhaps unsounded yet, dread shook her. She shuddered.
But now another procession appeared, one that issued not from the gate,
but from the house, a procession also composed of four men, also grave,
also silent. One of them she vaguely recalled, and her stumbling memory
tried to put a name on him, Dal, Mal, Pal-Palencia! Another, too, she
remembered, Tyszkiewicz. A third also, and, to her cost, she knew. It
was Barouffski.
In the first procession there was now a fourth acquaintance. The man
with white gloves was raising his hat. As he did so she recognised
d’Arcy. Then at last she understood, and, lest they should see her,
drew back.
Meanwhile the footman had disappeared. From the first procession the
man with the umbrella and the man with the box detached themselves.
From the second, Palencia and Tyszkiewicz advanced.
For a little, grouped together, they conversed inaudibly, but amply
with gestures and movements that included the tossing of a coin.
A pantomime followed. Tyszkiewicz, Palencia and the fat man moved
to one side. The man with the umbrella drew with the ferule of it a
line on the ground. Then, his head bent, one foot put directly in
front of the other, he walked slowly until he had covered a space
equal apparently to about fifteen yards. There he drew a second line,
straightened himself, turned to Barouffski, who went to that line,
while d’Arcy stationed himself at the other.
Immediately the fat man handed his box to Palencia. Palencia looked
at the seals, broke them, opened the box, and, going to where d’Arcy
stood, presented it. D’Arcy removed a glove, removed his hat, which he
put brim upward beside him, and taking a pistol from the box, pointed
it at the ground.
Palencia went back, restored the box to the fat man, who presented
it to Barouffski. Another pistol was extracted. The fat man moved to
one side. The man with the umbrella placed himself at an angle to
d’Arcy and Barouffski. In front of him, at an equal angle, Palencia,
Tyszkiewicz and the fat man stood. These the old man with the bag and
the fourth member of the Barouffski party joined. The man with the
umbrella took out a watch, and held it open in his hand.
“Attention!”
The pantomime had ended. Leilah leaned forward. Of Barouffski she could
see now but the back of his head, the back of his tight-fitting coat.
But d’Arcy, who stood sideways, his heels drawn together, might have
been posing for a photograph.
The sky was leaden. The shrubbery resembled it. From behind an urn
a cat appeared. It meowed and vanished. For a moment more there was
silence.
The man with the umbrella looked from d’Arcy to Barouffski.
“Messieurs, after I give the command Fire, I will count from one to
ten, leaving between each number an interval of ten seconds. It is
unnecessary, but it is my duty to add, that to fire before I have
given the word, or after I have counted ten, constitutes attempted
assassination and, should death ensue, murder.”
He paused, looked at his watch, looked at d’Arcy, again at Barouffski.
“Fire!”
Simultaneously the two men raised and extended their right arms, d’Arcy
in such a manner that the forearm and butt of the pistol masked the
abnormal beauty of his face. The hand was bare, but the left, which
hung at his side, was gloved.
“One! Two! Three!”
With the ridiculous noise of a firecracker a pistol went off. D’Arcy,
lowering his right hand, raised and shook the left. The delicate
material of the glove had reddened, and on the ground specks of crimson
dropped.
“Four! Five!”
D’Arcy’s left hand fell back. He raised the right.
“Six! Seven! Eight!”
Measuredly, monotonously, but more loudly than before, the final
numbers were being called. Infinitesimally the point of d’Arcy’s pistol
moved. His heels were no longer drawn together. His right hand was held
less high. His left hand burned. Otherwise he was entirely at his ease.
He had withstood Barouffski’s fire. It was Barouffski’s turn to
withstand his. He had time and to spare. Slowly, coolly, deliberately,
he was taking aim.
It was very agreeable. He was smiling. He was enjoying himself. He
was enjoying Barouffski’s presumable suspense. He was savouring his
equally presumable agitations. The man’s face had turned ashen. The
fact that it had, that he could see it had, delighted him. He felt sure
of himself, and his thoughts were pleasant.
He was thinking: “That glass of wine of yours was the last you will
ever ask me or any one else to drink.”
He had become aware of Leilah’s presence. That, too, delighted him.
If he had a regret, it was that Tempest, the Silverstairs, all the
demi-mondaines and exotics of the night before, the Bohemians to boot,
the waiters as well, were not present also. Though in appearance
divine, at heart he was human.
Again, imperceptibly, the point of his pistol moved.
“Nine!”
The trigger had been pulled. There was a fresh detonation. D’Arcy
handed his pistol to the fat man, bent over, took up his hat, put it
on, took it off, raised it straight upward, and for a moment, before
replacing it, held it high in the air.
Leilah, without noticing the salute which was intended for her, saw
Barouffski turn completely around, sink on his knees, press his hands
to his side, and pitch forward.
It was a feint, she thought, histrionics for the gallery, perhaps for
her. But now the old man and his colleague were bending over him.
Behind them, Palencia, Tyszkiewicz and the man with the umbrella
leaned. Barouffski’s coat and waistcoat were opened, his shirt was torn
apart.
Leilah heard what to her was the meaninglessness of technical terms.
She saw the men who had been bending arise. She saw the others remove
their hats. At the significant action she saw that the garden had been
again invaded, this time by Death.
She turned, clutching for support at the velvet of a curtain,
overwhelmed at the knowledge that her prison had crumbled, that the
jailer was gone.
It had been her destiny to have sorrow spring into her life, fell her,
make her its own, and to what end? Tearfully she had put that query
to walls as callous as fate. Tearfully she had come to believe that
she was damned in this existence for sins committed in another. It is
this life that is hell she had told herself. But now, abruptly, the
malediction was lifted. Still in hell, she was at the portals, the
gates were open, she was free!
Yet was she? At the moment it seemed to her that it was all a
hallucination; that, if she looked again into the accursed garden, she
would see Barouffski tapping his breast with one hand, pointing to some
prostrate form with the other, and, with his ambiguous smile, calling
to her:
“See, my dear, I, I am unharmed.”
So poignant was the impression that she did look. A litter had been
improvised, and on it Barouffski, an arm pendent, his head fallen back,
his face a gray green, was being put.
On the door behind her sounded the muffled tap of fingers furtive and
discreet. She turned. At the threshold was Parker.
“If you please, my lady. Will your ladyship receive----”
“No,” Leilah answered. She was about to add that she was at home to no
one. But she caught herself. “Who is it?”
With that air which those acquire who attend to delicate matters, the
woman answered: “Mr. Verplank.”
Leilah drew a long breath. She went to the mirror. The curtain had
disarranged her hair. She readjusted it, and passed out and down into
the slippery salon.
Verplank was leaning against the piano. His left arm was in a sling,
and the left side of his face from the nose to the ear was bandaged.
Before either could speak there came from the hall a murmur of voices,
the sound of lumbering feet, the noise of people labouring upward.
Verplank looked at Leilah, and from her to the door.
“What is that?”
On and upward moved the steps, the noise decreasing as they passed, the
sound subsiding with them.
“What is it?” Verplank asked again.
Leilah’s under lip trembled. The deliverance from the vortex, the
after-shudder that comes when some great peril has been barely escaped,
the sensation of strength overtaxed, these things fusing with the
consciousness that the last barricade had been taken, that there were
now no more hostages to joy, induced in her one of the most curious of
physical phenomena.
With tears running down her cheeks, she smiled. Then, sobbing and
smiling still, she answered him:
“The key of the prison.”
Verplank nodded. He did not in the least understand. But the
singularity of her appearance, joined to the singularity of her reply,
aroused in him a great pity for this woman who had ruined her life,
ruined his own, and who then seemed to him demented.
“Pardon, madame la comtesse. Monsieur Palencia and Monsieur Tyszkiewicz
ask if madame la comtesse will receive them?”
At the door, behind her, was Emmanuel.
At once another phenomenon occurred. Galvanised by that instinct of
form which, when requisite, enables women of the world to banish
instantly any trace of emotion, Leilah turned to the footman a face in
which the tears had been reabsorbed, and from which the smile had gone.
“Say to these gentlemen that I appreciate and thank them, but that I
can see no one.”
Emmanuel compressed his lips. He wondered how she knew. There was
a great deal occurring in this house that perplexed him. Moreover,
Verplank’s bandage and sling interested him very much. But, trained to
his calling, he bowed and withdrew.
“What do they want?” Verplank asked, memories of his own duel surging
at mention of their names before him.
In Leilah’s face the tears and smiles reappearing, mingled.
“Barouffski is dead,” she answered.
Verplank closed and opened a hand. His mouth opened also. He was sure
now that she was crazy.
“Dead! How? What do you mean?”
Leilah made a gesture.
“There, a moment ago, in the garden. D’Arcy shot him.”
Verplank started. The definiteness of her reply divested him of his
idea concerning her, but it produced another which was also, though
differently, disturbing. His eyes blazed. The old scar, the scar on the
right side of his face, reddened.
“Who the devil is d’Arcy?”
For a moment he stared. Then, angrily snapping two fingers, he cried:
“In taking you from this damned house to-day, I had intended to leave
a card for him, not a p. p. c. either, one with our address on it and
the hours when I would be at home. If there was any shooting going on,
I intended to be in it. Now some duffer must interfere.”
With a rapid intake of the breath, he considered her. At the moment, he
doubted it could be true. Yet her face, with its hysterical blending
of joy and sorrow, seemed to certify that it was so. After all, he
reflected, however the odour may occur, always the smell of an enemy’s
corpse is sweet. But, uncertain still, he threw out for clincher:
“Is that what you meant by the key of the prison?”
She moved to him.
“Gulian, yes, and never can I be thankful enough that it was not your
hand that turned it.”
Verplank tossed his bandaged head.
“So this is the end!”
Leilah looked up at him.
“Gulian, no, not that. The end of the beginning, if you like. Hereafter
we will be beginning anew. Hereafter----”
She paused. The word had been evocative. Its repetition showed her that
which she had not yet had time to consider; the decencies of life, the
decencies, too, of death, the funeral, the widow’s weeds, the delay
which the world exacts; new hostages to joy, real though impermanent.
She told him of them.
From the church next door the organ pealed, and as they then remade
their plans--those plans which mortals think they make, and which
always are unmade unless intended for them--a ray of sunshine entered;
the organ pealed louder, the beauty of the melody hushed their voices,
and for a moment, to the appoggiatura of Stradella, on that shaft of
light, Leilah’s thoughts, ascending, mounted into realms where all
things broken are made complete, and where are found again things
vanished.
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
--Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
--Archaic and variable spelling is preserved.
--Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
--The author’s long dash style has been retained.