... "You see, it's this way," explained Alfred years afterwards to
some of the newspaper boys around a table at Lüchow's. "Poor Ulick
never had the staying power. Brilliant? Yes--after a fashion. His
mind was a crazy-quilt. Mince pie and Chopin. Can you beat it? He had
the cosmopolitan bug, but he soon found out that the North American
climate withered the Flowers of Evil of his Baudelaire and all the
other decadent ideas and poetry he brought over with him. Poisonous
honey from France--what? Our native air is too tonic for such stuff.
His Fleurs du Mal wilted. So did he. He hadn't the guts to last. After
his paralytic stroke at Dora's he was sent back to Paris, but he didn't
live many years. He and his brother Oswald died within a few months of
each other. Old man Invern didn't only bequeath them money--he probably
gave them something worse. You know. Our old enemy, Spirochaeta
Pallida, I suspect. Otherwise, why did Ulick crumble after one real
debauch? Their money--oh, it reverted to the Bartletts, cousins of the
boys. Was he engaged to Mona Milton? That's news. I never heard of
it and I was pretty thick with her family. You know she married Paul
Godard, and it turned out a happy match--at least for her. She has a
houseful of children. A blooming matron. But self-righteous now; turns
up her nose at 'fallen women.' I visit there every now and then. Paul
isn't a bad sort. He used to be a loose fish, and now he wears slippers
and goes to bed early. Everything passes--even regret. Strange! Ulick
never drank--except that time--or smoked--and he's gone. Mona doesn't
mention his name. Her brother! He got into a woman scrape here--never
mind the lady's name--scandale oblige! He was fished out of the gutter
and sent away to repent in some monastery out West. After he became
a priest he was exported as a missionary to China. He was a born
preacher. I think he drove Ulick to drink with his preaching--that's
what Istar says. Istar? Thank you, she's very well. She's composed of
harps, anvils and granite. The steely limit! A heartless, ungrateful
creature. Fly-blown caviar.... Yes, a wonderful artiste. But that
doesn't always mean a civilised human. Yet, singers, actors, artists
are not a whit worse as to morals than your business men, politicians,
your shoemakers or your pious folk. The artists get found out
quicker--that's all. I see her daily--I've known her nearly twenty
years--and she grows wickeder every year. She is the great singing
harlot of modern Babylon, a vocal Scarlet Woman. I'm sick of her. I've
told her so. She expects me to be her fetch-and-carry. Not for thirty
cents, d'ye hear? Why, boys, she's too mean to play the horses--and
that's a bad sign. I'm tired, I'm going home. You can scandalise when
my back is turned. But remember one thing--I'll live to write Easter's
obituary in the "Clarion" perhaps write the epitaph on her headstone.
As for music, I'm weary of it--opera in particular. When it isn't silly
fashion, then people go for the sensual music. Sex and music, a rotten
mixture."
He faded into the next room, where the band was playing, vertigionously.
"I'll bet that he will live to write Istar's obituary. Alfred must
be fifty, but he's a wiry old rum-hound," remarked some one. "He's a
parasite on Istar. He does all her dirty jobs. She hates him as much as
he hates her. They hate each other so much that I wonder they aren't
man and wife." It was the much-married Bell who spoke. His companions
assented. As for poor forgotten Ulick--Oh! well, any young man of
twenty can be brilliant. The test comes when you are sixty. It must
have been a queer crowd--that sextet! Their reactions--or should I say,
their vaso-motor reflexes?--weren't precisely admirable. Dainty Dora,
fair, fat, forty, was the squarest of the lot. She played the game. Now
she's a fashionable modiste--a Madame. All her customers are men. But
Istar? Ah! Istar panned out first-class. She may be a painted veil, as
Ulick said, but the paint is beautiful, and the veil doesn't hide her
good looks. To Istar! was the toast. And they drank the health of the
greatest Isolde since Lilli Lehmann. Esther Brandès, the unvanquished.
Istar, the Great Singing Whore of Modern Babylon.