Part 9

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.”

XII

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.

XIII

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.”