Mlle. Folly Delaires was not born within a stone's throw of the Paris
fortifications, as her manager would have liked you to believe, but in
an indefinite street in Cockneydom, so like its mates that, in the words
of Folly herself, she had to have the homing instinct of a pigeon to
find it at all. Folly's original name had been--but why give it away?
She was one of those women who are above and beyond a name--of a class,
or, rather, of a type that a relatively merciful world produces
sparingly. She was all body and no soul.
From the moment that Lewis kissed Folly, and then kissed her several
times more, discovering with each essay depths in the art which even his
free and easy life had never given him occasion to dream of, he became
infatuated--so infatuated that the following dialogue passed over him
and did not wake him.
"Why are you crying?" asked Lewis, whom tears had never before made
curious.
"I'm crying," gasped Folly, stamping her little foot, "because it's
taken so _long_!"
Lewis looked down at her brown head, buried against his shoulder, and
asked dreamily:
"Are you spirit and flower, libertine and saint?"
To which Folly replied: "Well, I was the flower-girl once in a great
hit, and I played 'The Nun' last season, you remember. As for spirits, I
had the refusal of one of the spirit parts in the first "Blue Bird"
show, but there were too many of them, so I turned it down. I'd have
felt as though I'd gone back to the chorus. Libertine," she mused
finally--"what _is_ a libertine?"
Lewis's father could have looked at Folly from across the street and
given her a very complete and charming definition for a libertine in one
word. But Lewis had not yet reached that wisdom which tells us that man
learns to know himself last of all. He did not realize that your
true-born libertine never knows it. Whatever Folly's life may have been,
and he thought he had no illusions on that score, he seized upon her
question as proving that she still held the potential bloom of youth and
a measure of innocence.
To do her justice, Folly was young, and also she had asked her question
in good faith. As to innocence--well, what has never consciously
existed, causes no lack. Folly's little world was exceedingly broad in
one way and as narrow in another, but, like few human worlds, it
contained a miracle. The miracle was that it absolutely satisfied her.
She dated happiness, content, and birth itself from the day she went
wrong.
She had the appearance of being frank, open, and lovable, just as she
had that appearance of culture which every woman of her type gets from
the cultivated class of men they prey upon. Pet her, and she murmured
softly in the king's best English: scratch her, and, like the rock that
Moses struck, she burst forth in a surprising torrent. Without making
others merry, she was eternally merry. Without ever feeling the agony of
thirst, she instilled thirst. A thousand broken-hearted women might have
looked on her as an avenging sword, if the sword hadn't been two-edged.
She had a motto, a creed, a philosophy, packed into four words: "Be
loved; never love."
If both parts of this creed had not been equally imperative, Lewis might
have escaped. His aloofness was what doomed him. Like all big-game
hunters, Folly loved the rare trophy, the thing that's hard to get. By
keeping his distance, Lewis pressed the spring that threw her into
action. Almost instinctively she concentrated on him all her forces of
attraction, and Folly's forces of attraction, once you pressed the
spring, were simply dynamic. Beneath that soft, breathing skin of hers
was such store of vitality, intensity, and singleness of purpose as only
the vividly monochromatic ever bring to bear on life.
Lewis, unconsciously in very deep waters indeed, reached London in a
state of ineffable happiness. Not so Folly. Lewis had awakened in her
desire. With her, desire was merely the prelude to a natural
consummation. Folly was worried because one of the first and last things
Lewis had said to her was, "Darling, when will you marry me?" To which
she had replied, but without avail, "Let's think about that afterward."
When Lewis reached the flat on a Saturday night, he did not have to tell
his father that something wonderful had happened. Leighton saw it in his
face--a face suddenly become more boyish than it had ever been before.
They rushed feverishly through dinner, for Lewis's mood was contagious.
Then they went into the living-room, and straight for the two big
leather chairs which, had they lacked that necessary measure of
discretion which Nelton had assigned to them, might have told of many a
battle of the mind with the things that are.
"Well, Boy," said Leighton, "what is it?"
"Dad," cried Lewis, with beaming face, "I've found the woman--the
all-embracing woman."
Leighton's mind wandered back to the tales of Lewis's little pal
Natalie.
"Tell me about her--again," he said genially.
"Again!" cried Lewis. "But you've never heard of her--not from me,
anyway."
"What's her name?" asked Leighton, half aroused.
"Her name," said Lewis, smiling absently into the fire, "is Folly--Folly
Delaires."
Leighton was a trained stalker of dangerous game. Surprise never
startled him into movement. It stilled him. Old Ivory had once said of
him that he could make his heart stop beating at the smell of elephant;
which is quite a different thing from having your heart stop beating on
its own hook. When Lewis said, "Folly--Folly Delaires," Leighton
suddenly became intensely still. He remained still for so long that
Lewis looked up.
"Well, Dad, what Is it?" he asked, still smiling. "Have you heard of
her?"
"Yes," said Leighton, quietly, "I've heard of her. I've even seen her.
She's a beautiful--she has a beautiful body. Tell me just how it
happened."
Then Lewis talked, and Leighton appeared to listen. He knew all the
stages of that _via dolorosa_ too well to have to pay close attention to
Lewis's description, of the first emotional step of man toward man's
surest tribulation.
There was no outburst from Leighton when Lewis finished. On the
contrary, he made an effort to hide his thoughts, and succeeded so well
that, had it not been for a touch of bitterness in his smile, Lewis
might have been led to think that with this active calm his father would
have received the announcement of his son's choice of any woman.
"Dad," said Lewis, troubled, "why do you smile like that?"
"I am smiling," said Leighton, "at the tragedy of philanthropy. Any man
can get; it takes a genius to give. There are things I've got that I'd
like to give you now--on the eve of your greatest trouble." Lewis threw
up his head in amazement. He would have protested but, with a
half-raised hand, Leighton stilled him. "No," he went on, "I don't
expect you to acquire prescience all in a moment, nor do I expect myself
to acquire the genius of giving to a sudden need in half an hour. Let's
let things stand this way. You love Folly Delaires; I don't. I don't
want to be converted, and you don't. But one of us has simply got to be,
because--well--because I like to think we've lived too long together in
spirit to take to two sides of a fence now."
Lewis felt a sudden depression fall on him, all the more terible for the
exaltation that had preceded it.
"Two sides of a fence, Dad?" he said. "That can never be. I--I've just
got to convert you. When you know her, she'll help me."
The two rose to their feet on a common impulse. Leighton laid his hand
on Lewis's shoulder.
"Boy," he said, "forgive me for making your very words my own. I have no
illusions as to the power of woman. She is at once the supreme source of
happiness and of poignant suffering. You think your woman will help you;
I think she'll help me. That neutralizes her a bit, doesn't it? It
reduces our battle to the terms of single combat--unless one of us is
right about Folly."
"But, Dad," stammered Lewis, "I don't _want_ a battle."
Leighton pressed his hand down. Unconsciously Lewis straightened under
the pressure.
"Listen to this," said Leighton. "The battles of life aren't served up
like the courses at a dinner that you can skip at will. In life we have
to fight. Mostly we have to fight people we love for things we love
better. Sometimes we fight them for the very love we bear them. You and
I are going to fight each other because we can't help it. Let's fight
like gentlemen--to the finish--and smile. My boy, you don't know Folly."
"It's you who don't know Folly, Dad," said Lewis, He tried to smile, but
his lips twitched treacherously. Not since Leighton had gambled with
him, and won all he possessed, had such a blow been dealt to his faith.