The Monster · Chapter 9 (1/2)

IX

“The strawberries were delicious,” Violet, the following day, remarked to Leilah.

The two women were seated in the garden of the house in the Rue de la Pompe. It was just after luncheon and between them was a table on which coffee had been served. From without came the whirr of passing motors, the cries of those hawkers who are never still. But the garden itself was quiet, scented too and the day superb.

Violet, patting a yawn, resumed: “One never really gets strawberries except in Paris. They are so big! And so expensive, aren’t they? I know that in a restaurant a man gave one to the waiter for a tip.”

She looked about her. “But, mercy! What can have become of Aurelia? She was to have stopped for me.”

“Don’t you think it unwise to let her go on the stage?” Leilah, with an air of talking for talk’s sake, inquired.

“Let her! But she’s got her head. I can’t prevent her. She’ll never come to any harm though. She isn’t the kind to want to do anything she thought was wrong. No indeed. She would never think anything wrong that she wanted to do. But tell me. I could not very well ask before the servants. What are you going to do?”

For a moment Leilah did not answer. Then, a bit resignedly, she folded her hands.

“I do not see that I have the ability to do anything.”

The pause, the gesture, the reply, angered Violet. She bristled.

“Don’t be so modest, you make me nervous!”

For a moment she also paused. Then, ruminantly, as though in self communion, the lady uttered these cryptic words:

“But perhaps⁠—”

Leilah, who had turned away, turned to her. “Perhaps what?”

But Violet, compressing her lips, assumed the appearance which a very worldly, exquisitely gowned and beautiful Sphinx might present.

“Perhaps what?” Leilah, puzzled by the attitude, repeated.

“Oh, nothing. That is, nothing in particular. I was merely thinking from battle, murder and sudden death, Good Lord deliver us! And yet⁠—”

“Well?”

Violet looked her over. “I know I ought not to tell and for that very reason I will. Your two husbands are to fight today. They may be at it now⁠—”

Abruptly she made a face, dropped her voice and threw out:

“No such luck.”

In the doorway Barouffski stood.

Leilah had not seen. Inwardly she had shrivelled. To the sudden knowledge that the two men were to fight, fear, as suddenly, superposed the conviction that Verplank would be killed. It stirred in her a wholly animal longing to get away from herself; to be rid, however transiently, of that sense of horror and helplessness which only the tortured know. In an effort to shut out the pain of it, she closed her eyes.

When she opened them, Barouffski was before her. Affably he was addressing her friend.

“Beautiful day, Lady Silverstairs. In London you do not often have such weather. I hope Lord Silverstairs is planning to keep you here a very long time.”

“What? What?” Violet in a crescendo of surprise, exclaimed.

Affably, smilingly, unperturbedly, Barouffski reiterated the expression of his hope.

Icily Violet cut him short. “With us it is the woman who makes and unmakes plans.”

Barouffski, unabashed and smiling, plucked at his beard. “A most excellent custom. Yes. For when has reason governed the world? It is only by the heartstrings that men can be led and women alone can lead them.”

But now Violet with the air of an empress had risen. “Leilah, my motor is at the door. Let me take you for a turn in the Bois.”

“Do,” Barouffski exclaimed, looking as he spoke at Leilah. “You are a trifle pale, cara mia. A turn or two now in the Bois⁠—”

With a gesture he signified, that is what you need.

Turning to Violet he added: “So thoughtful of you, Lady Silverstairs.”

In speaking he bowed for Violet now was vacating the garden and Leilah who had risen was following her.

Barouffski bowed again. “Cara mia, a pleasant drive to you.”

But, when both women had entered the house, he sighed, sighed with relief, looked about him, consulted his watch, looked again about him, moved to the entrance, touched a bell which presently a footman answered.

Barouffski indicated the table and chairs. “Get all that out of here.”

“Perfectly, monsieur le comte,” the man, with marked deference, answered and started to do as bidden.

Barouffski checked him. “In five or ten minutes some gentlemen will come by the main entrance. Show them in the reception room. About the same time others will come by the gate. When they do, see that I am notified at once.”

“Perfectly, monsieur le comte.”

“Afterward, when they are gone, come back here and tidy up.”

“Perfectly, monsieur le comte.”

But now Barouffski had turned, he was entering the house. The man stuck his tongue out at him. “Canaille, va!” he muttered. Raising his arms, he added: “Tidy up, eh? Tidy up what? The remains of your conversation, no doubt. Bah! That won’t be much.” He laughed, took first the table, then the chairs, vanished with them and reappeared.

A bell at the gate had sounded, he hurried there and bowing, admitted Aurelia and that young person’s young man.

The girl made straight for the kennels. “Parsnips!” she delightedly exclaimed. “Aren’t those two big brutes simply dear?”

Swiftly Emmanuel intervened. “Pardon, they are very savage.” Then, as the girl hesitated he added: “Will mademoiselle give herself the trouble to pass into the salon?”

Aurelia tossed her pretty head. “No, I like it here. Besides I hate suggestions. Tell Madame Barouffska that I have come on a most unimportant matter which will probably detain me a very long time.”

“Yes,” her companion rejoined as the footman retreated. “Yes, I often think that it is only unimportant matters that are really momentous.” In his hand was a stick which negligently he twirled. “What is this one, if I may ask?”

“I have forgotten.”

“Perhaps then it was really important.”

Aurelia, who, with her delicious face and delicate garments, looked like a wayward angel, lifted a finger.

“So it was! So it was! I remember now I wanted to ask her how she likes matrimony.”

“Caesar!” the youth exclaimed. “You are not collecting data on the subject, are you?”

Meekly, with a treacherously innocent air, the girl surveyed him. “You wouldn’t wish me to take leaps in the dark, would you?”

“Certainly I would. Certainly I do⁠—since you are to take them with me.”

With the same wicked look, Aurelia moistened her lips. “What a beautiful nature you have!”

Pleased at this, the little lord nodded.

“I’ll tell you what matrimony is, two souls with but a single thought⁠—”

“Yes,” Aurelia interrupted. “Two souls with half a thought apiece.” Rapturously she sighed. “There is real bliss!”

Buttercups snarled. “Oh come, now! If you turn everything into ridicule⁠—”

Dreamily Aurelia continued. “I asked the duchess, and she said⁠—”

“The old harridan!”

“You know her manner”⁠—a manner which Aurelia instantly made her own. “My dear, matrimony is three months of adoration, three months of introspection, thirty years of toleration⁠—with the children to begin it all over.”

Buttercups frowned. “A rather voluminous definition.”

“Rather luminous, I should call it.”

Frowning still, Buttercups threw out.

“While you were at it, it’s a pity you did not ask her what love is.”

But the sarcasm, if sarcasm it were, convulsed Aurelia. “Parsnips!” she delightedly exclaimed. “You’ll never believe it! She asked me!”

“Mistook you for an expert,” Buttercups, glowering at the beautiful, laughing girl snapped back. “What did you say?”

Aurelia, her eyes sparkling, her little white teeth visible, her little pink tongue also, looked about her, turned, went to the bench, got up on it and there, solemnly now as though on a platform, coughed.

“I said, that while from studies and statistics I was inclined to believe that, theoretically, love is a fermentation of the molecules of the imagination, actually it is the affection of somebody else.”

Blankly Buttercups stared. “I don’t understand that.”

Aurelia coughed again. “I added that from the same studies and statistics I was also inclined to believe that love is the tragedy of those who lack it, the boredom of those who don’t.”

“Eh?” Buttercups whined. “I don’t understand that either.”

“I further stated that love is a specific emotion, more or less exclusive in selection, more⁠—or less⁠—permanent in duration and due to a mental disturbance, in itself caused by a law of attraction which somebody or other said was the myth of happiness, invented by the devil for man’s despair.”

Helplessly Buttercups groaned. “I don’t understand that at all.”

With birdlike ease Aurelia hopped from the bench and with consoling delicacy nodded:

“Violet said she didn’t either.”

Buttercups brightened. “Now there’s a woman of sense.”

Very sweetly Aurelia nodded again. “Leilah Barouffska said she did understand, so I may suppose that she is stupid.”

At the shot⁠—which missed him⁠—Buttercups tormented the tip of his nose.

“No doubt, she does seem to have made a mess of things. Why now did she leave her first husband?”

Aurelia looked down and away.

“It is not a thing I could mention.”

Buttercups gave a little jump. “What?”

Perversely, her lovely eyes still lowered, Aurelia added:

“She caught him in the act.”

Buttercups jumped again.

Aurelia blushed or rather appeared to do so. “With her own eyes she saw him eating fish with his knife.”

But Buttercups had rallied. “Now, Aurelia,” he protested, “I have heard too many lies about myself, too many confounded lies, to believe any such story.”

Superciliously, her delicate nose in the air, Aurelia looked him over. “Ah, indeed! But then you see sensible people never object to the lies that are told about them. What we do object to is the truth. Now when we are married⁠—if we ever are⁠—”

“Aurelia,” the poor devil pathetically interrupted, “you never say when we are married without adding if we ever are!”

“That’s to teach you not to take things for granted. I have been engaged before⁠—and may be again.”

“B-before!” the flustered Buttercups stuttered. “A-again!”

Frostily this ingénue considered the youth. “Parsnips, don’t look at me in that fashion, you inflame me.”

She cocked an ear. “What’s that?”

At the gate the bell was ringing and unperceived by either Emmanuel had reappeared. The footman was descending the garden. Midway he stopped.

“I have the honour to inform mademoiselle that madame la comtesse is momentarily awaited.”

He bowed, moved on, opened the gate through which then a brief procession passed:⁠—Silverstairs, a green bag under his arm; de Fresnoy, a stick under his; an old man with a small valise; finally Verplank.

Verplank, raising his hat, approached Aurelia. De Fresnoy, after saluting the young woman, addressed the old man.

But Silverstairs, sidling up to Buttercups and indicating Aurelia, whispered:

“Get her away, there’s to be a fight.”

“The deuce there is!” Buttercups exclaimed.

For a moment he looked helplessly about and made a little futile gesture. “If I ask her to go she’ll stay.”

Silverstairs pulled at his moustache. “Then tell her to stay and she’ll go.”

But such strategy was needless. Aurelia had no intention of loitering among these men, not one of whom interested her remotely. With a glimpse of her pretty teeth to Verplank and a nod at the others, she passed, followed by Buttercups, through the gate which the footman held open.

Meanwhile the dogs were barking and, from the house beyond, Barouffski appeared. With him were friends of his, Palencia, Tyszkiewicz; also a young man with a serious face who, like the old man, had with him a case which gingerly he put on the ground.

Verplank glanced at them, went to the bench and began removing his coat.

The night before he had dreamed pleasurably, as the great beasts of the jungles dream, of blood and the joy of killing. He had dreamed also and less agreeably that Leilah’s story was true. However he had denied it, he did not know but that it might be. None the less he doubted. He doubted it for the most human of reasons, because he wanted to. He doubted it for another and a better reason, because his intuitions so prompted. He had yet another reason, one less valid perhaps but cogent, the dissimilarity between Leilah and himself. The contrast was so marked that they might have come of alien races, from different zones.

On leaving her house other differences had occurred to him, differences not physical but moral. It is ridiculous, he had told himself. None the less he dreamed that the story was true.

Meanwhile the parliamentaries had not been entirely successful. The note dispatched from Voisins had resulted that evening in a conference between Verplank’s seconds and Barouffski’s. These latter, Tyszkiewicz and Palencia, had begun by insisting that it was their principal who was aggrieved, that Verplank, in attempting to address a lady whom he knew did not wish to speak to him, had been wholly at fault and was deprived in consequence of the choice of weapons.

To this de Fresnoy had objected that Verplank knew nothing of the kind, that in addressing or in attempting to address the lady, he had acted in accordance with the usages of the world: moreover assuming him to have been in error in thinking that the lady did not object to being addressed, her slightest indication to the contrary would have been super-sufficient to make him desist, the result being that Barouffski’s intervention reflected on his good-breeding and was therefore an insult.

This view of the matter Barouffski’s seconds refused to accept. They represented that it were difficult for the lady to have more punctiliously informed Verplank of her disinclination to be addressed by him than she had already done in obtaining a divorce.

At the easy logic de Fresnoy laughed. According to him, all that was beside the issue. He declared that many divorced couples were better friends afterward than they had found it possible to be before. In support of the statement he cited history: he cited the case of Henri IV and the Reine Margot. He did more than cite, he quoted the chronicles of Pierre l’Estoile, and he insisted that if his view were not accepted the conference must dissolve and an arbiter be convened.

In face of these arguments advanced to provincials by a Parisian, advanced too with that tone of authority which only a man sure of his ground or of his assurance may maintain and advanced, moreover, to men not over sure of their own, the latter hesitated.

Then, as though to demonstrate the truth of the paradox of which de Fresnoy had delivered himself at Voisins, the quip that a man is rarely killed except by his seconds, Silverstairs who, thus far throughout the conference, had smoked in placid silence, suddenly stuck his oar in.

“Why not toss for it?”

Tyszkiewicz and Palencia, hesitating still, agreed. A coin was flipped, heads for Verplank, tails for Barouffski. Tails it was. Barouffski was accorded the choice of arms, foils were designated by his seconds and the meeting was arranged to be held in his garden, at two the next day.