Kitabı oku: «The Monster», sayfa 5
VIII
On alighting at the perron, Leilah had as always to endure the ceremonial of two footmen assiduously assisting her.
“Emmanuel,” she said to one of them. “Is Monsieur Barouffski at home?”
“No, madame la comtesse.”
Leilah passed on and up. For a moment, in the hall above, she hesitated. Then, pushing a portière aside, she entered a salon, went to the window, and looked out. Crossing the court was Verplank.
Fear and the fear of it, the throttling sensation which children know when pursued, enveloped her. With an idea of telling the servants that she was out, that she was ill, that she could see no one, she turned. On a table near the entrance was a service of Sevrès. Its tender hues were repeated on the ceiling. Beneath was the mirror of a waxed and polished floor. On the glistening wood work her foot slipped. She staggered, recovered herself, got to the door.
Already Verplank had entered. She could hear him. He was not asking, he was demanding to see her. The form of the order mounted violently.
“Tell your mistress that I am here.”
Even then, with the idea that she might still deny herself, Leilah drew back into the room. Mentally she was framing a phrase when Emmanuel entered.
With that air domestics have when tidying something objectionable, the footman reconstructed Verplank’s command:
“There is a monsieur who inquires whether madame la comtesse receives?”
“Tell him – ”
But the injunction, as yet not wholly formed, was never completed. Verplank, brushing the man aside, strode in.
Leilah, retreating before him, motioned at Emmanuel, and the servant, with an affronted air of personal grievance, vacated this room that was charged now with the vibrations of hostilities begun.
Retreating yet farther, her eyes on the foe, Leilah stared at him, and, as she retreated, Verplank, staring, too, advanced. In his stare were threats so voluble that she thought: “He will kill me.” At the thought, there appeared before her Death’s liberating face, the mysteriously consoling visage which it reveals to those alone who have reached the depth of human woe.
Beyond, from the church, came the music of an organ. A requiem was being held. Leilah felt as though it were her own.
Verplank, his hands clenched, the look of an executioner about him, threw at her:
“For six months I have been looking for you. I am come to have you tell me why I have had to look at all.”
“Dies irae, dies illa,” admirably, in a clear contralto, a woman’s voice rang out.
Neither heard it. At the menace of the man, Leilah shrank, and in an effort at defense cried pitiably:
“Gulian! I left a letter for you.”
Angrily he tossed his head.
“I received none, nor did I need any to tell me that there are women on the street, others in jail, that are less vile than you.”
“Teste David cum Sibylla,” clearly and beautifully the voice resumed.
“Gulian!” Leilah cried again.
With whips in his words, he added:
“No harlot could have acted more infamously than you.”
At the lash of the outrage, Leilah, joining her hands, held them to him. “Gulian! You are killing me!”
“It is what you deserve. There are no penalties now for such turpitudes as yours. But, when there were, women like you were beaten with rods, they were lapidated, stoned to death, and death was too good for them; they should have been made to go about, as they afterward were, as you should be, in a yellow wig, in a yellow gown, that even children might point and cry: ‘Shame!’”
The words, which he tore from his mouth, he hurled at her. She cowered before them. On a chair near by she had put her bag. Her wrap had fallen from her. In the church now the hymn had ceased. The ringing of the Elevation was beginning.
“Gulian! As if shame had not cried at me! Gulian, I have been scourged, I have been stoned. If I live, it is to implore of you mercy.”
Her hands, still joined, were still extended, and in her face was an expression of absolute despair. But this martyr attitude seemed to him the most abominable of hypocrisies, and it was with anger refreshed that he lashed her again.
“Mercy? Yes, you want mercy, you, who were merciless in your treachery to me. A sweep would have had more decency, a scullion more heart. I put in your hands my trust, my love, my honour, and you who want mercy dragged them in dirt.”
“Gulian!” Within her now was that invincible need of justice which impels the weakest to protest against the savagery of wrong. “Gulian! When you know!”
“I do know. I know you and your lies, and the infamy of them too well. At Coronado – ”
“Gulian! You are not killing me merely, you torture my very soul.”
He sneered.
“Do I? Do I, indeed! No, you compliment yourself. It is what I want to do, but you cheat me even there. No woman with a soul could have done this soulless thing.”
The brutality of the arraignment shook her. She leaned against the chair for support. She felt hopeless, helpless, defenseless, and it was because the need for justice still impelled her, that she protested anew.
“Gulian, if only you knew! If only you had had that letter! Had it reached you, you would know that there was no deceit, that I left you for your sake as well as my own. Gulian, if I had not gone you would have seen and made me tell you, and then it may be you would have taken me and thrown me with you from the yacht.”
There were tears in her words. With one hand she held to the chair, the other she raised to her head. It pained her. She felt bruised and looked it.
“Ecce panis Angelorum
Factus cibus viatorum —”
Beyond, sustained by the arpeggios of the organ, the voice of a singer mounted sheerly like a thread of gold. It lowered and heightened. Presently, on a note, as if abruptly snapped, it ceased. The organ continued. It renewed the canticle. It projected a scale that ascended slowly, as though upward and onward, over the limitless steps of eternity, it were lifting the soul of the dead.
Leilah wished it were her own. Sadly she added:
“God knows it would have been better. Anything would be better than that you should speak to me as you do.”
There is an innocence that appeals, a sincerity that disarms, a candour that outfaces every proof, and Verplank, who had been bent on overwhelming this woman with a contempt which he felt wholly deserved, was impressed, in spite of himself, by the evident ingenuousness, by the evident wretchedness, too, of her words.
He moved back.
“You say I would have made you tell me?”
“Yes. Yes. You would have.”
“But made you tell me what?”
Leilah, still holding one hand to her head, raised the other from the chair, and with it made a gesture slight, yet desolate.
“What was it?” he asked.
Before replying, she looked away.
“What I hid from you rather than repeat.”
“But repeat what?”
Her face still turned from him, she answered:
“Something, my – something Mr. Ogston sent me.”
“Mr. Ogston!” Verplank exclaimed. The formality of the statement astounded him. “Do you mean your father? What did he send you?”
But Leilah would not or could not speak. Her mouth contracted as though she were choking, and she put a hand to her throat.
“Tell me,” he insisted.
She turned, and beseechingly she looked at him.
“Gulian, I cannot.”
At that Verplank moved nearer, and so dominatingly that again she extended her hands.
“Gulian, I will get some one else to tell you. I had intended to. Believe me, it is better so.”
“It concerns me?”
“Yes, you.”
“And you?”
“Yes, both of us.”
“Then you shall tell me, and tell me now. Do you hear?”
“Gulian!” she cried. She raised her clasped hands to him. “Gulian!”
But Verplank, his jaw ominously square, confronted her.
“I say you shall.”
“Don’t look at me then,” she pleaded. “Bend your head, bend it lower. One second, then I will. One second – one. Ah, God! I cannot.”
Verplank, who at her bidding had stooped, straightened himself, and caught at her.
“I say you shall.”
“Gulian, a moment. Give me a moment. Now bend your head again. One moment, Gulian; your father, your father – My mother loved him.”
“Your mother loved my father!”
“Gulian, I am his daughter.”
“You are what?”
“I am your sister.”
As she whispered it, she covered her face. Verplank started, straightened again, raised his arm, and, with a gesture wide, elemental, absurd, and human, struck at the empty air.
Savagely he turned to her.
“And you believe this?”
Leilah, her head bowed, her face covered, shook with sobs.
“You believe it?” he repeated.
“There were letters,” she stammered. “Three letters. No one could read them and not – and not – ”
“And it was for this you left me?”
A fresh access seized her. He could not see her tears, he heard them.
“And it was for this you got a divorce?”
On the chair beside her was her bag. She felt in it, and got out a handkerchief.
“And it was for this you took that cad?”
Slowly, with infinite hesitations, the bit of cambric held to a face that was wet and white, she turned to him.
“I thought you would forget. I thought you would marry. I thought you would be happy. I hoped so that you would. But my leaving you, the divorce, the marriage, these things were done with no idea of happiness. They were to serve as barriers between us.”
Impotently he stamped a foot. He was furious still. But his anger had deflected. He was enraged less at her than at circumstances.
“Rubbish! That’s what your barriers are.”
Leilah, wiping her eyes, turned from him. The barriers, however fragile, were not rubbish to her.
Violently he continued:
“As for Barouffski – ”
But Leilah, turning to him again, interrupted:
“Gulian, let me tell you. Last night I planned to have some one ask you, for my sake, to go away. Gulian, I thought you would, but I determined if you would not that I would go.”
Verplank moved back.
“Go! Go where?”
“Ah! God knows! Anywhere. Wherever I could hide myself. Wherever I could hide my love for you.”
Her eyes had been raised to his. At the confession they lowered of themselves. Then again she looked him in the face.
“Gulian, it is that which cried shame at me. It is that which scourged me with rods bitterer than those of which you spoke. You say the barriers are nothing. Gulian, you are wrong. To me they are eternal.”
“Yes,” he angrily retorted. “Yes, if your story were true. But it isn’t. It’s arrant nonsense.”
In miserable protest, she half raised a hand.
“Gulian, when I read those letters my youth died in me. Never since they reached me have I had the heart to smile. If you had seen them you would have felt the truth in every line.”
“I would have felt nothing of the kind; the fact that you still care for me ought to show you that they are false.”
“Gulian, I tried to think that, too; but even in trying I felt that I was pleading for myself.”
“Then, for the love of God, stop pleading and act! Look at yourself, look at me! We could not be more unlike if we came from different planets.”
She was making an effort to answer. He stopped her.
“Listen to this. If you can’t act, I shall. My mother is in London. To-morrow she is to be here. Probably she can tell me the truth. If not, I will go to the States. There I will see your father. When I return it will be with proofs. I will bring them if I have to drag that old scoundrel with me.”
He paused. Though angry still, her story had pacified him. He felt it to be false, nonetheless she had believed it and the fact that she had, absolved her of much that she had done. However she had erred, she had at least tried to do right. He closed and opened a hand, looked at it and from it looked at her.
“But first I will see my mother. In any case I will be here to-morrow. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. Why shouldn’t I come. Why not?”
Leilah did not answer. She did not believe he would come, except to cause fresh agony to them both there was no reason why he should do so. The horror which she had told him and to which incredulously he had listened was gospel to her, an evil gospel, yes, but nonetheless a true one. Besides if he did come as, in any case, he said he would, he might meet Barouffski, and affrightedly she foresaw blows, afterwards a duel – one which she was unaware was then impending.
“Why not?” Verplank repeated, fumbling her as he spoke with suspicious eyes and appearing to divine and to resent her forecast.
She caught at a straw. Usually, between four and seven, Barouffski was tabled at baccarat, gambling with her money. That straw she produced.
“Come at five.”
Verplank, appeased, nodded. “Very good, at five then.”
But at once she realised that other safeguards were needful. She hesitated, looked about her, looked at Verplank, gave him his hat, motioned to him. Then, preceding him, she passed into an adjoining salon, entered the dining room and moved from it to the garden below.
Passably mystified, he followed.
The air, freighted with fragrance, stirred by music from the church, the dogs, at sight of him, charged suddenly with menaces. Straining at their chains, viciously they clamoured.
Indifferently Verplank glanced from them to the gate beyond, to which Leilah was leading him.
When both reached it, she opened it and said: “Come this way to-morrow, will you?”
For a second he considered her. Her face was as a book in which he could read the reason. In view of many things, particularly of the duel, it seemed to him all very puerile.
But, replacing his hat, grimly he nodded. “Before then I have rather an idea that there may be a deficit among us.”
This expression, in itself perhaps over precise, was too much for her and the fact that it was showed itself in her eyes.
Without heeding their inquiry he nodded again. “I will come this way but only that together we may leave by the other.”
Again he nodded. In a moment he had gone.
Leilah, closing the gate behind him watched him go. It was, she felt, her last earthly sight of him. There would be no going away together. He would never come back. Never. His mother, if she knew the truth, could only substantiate it. If she did not, another would. Helplessly she held at the gate. A vagrant passed, she did not see. A hawker called, she did not hear. She was not only helpless, she was hopeless. She wished that death really were, that it could beneficently come, take her, shroud her in blankness, in endless oblivion of what was and of what might have been. Long since the dogs, mollified by Verplank’s exit, had ceased to bark. Shrilly now from the church came boys’ fresh voices. The music of them stirred her a little and she turned.
Before her, framed in a window of the dining room, Barouffski stood. At sight of him she started. Amiably he smiled. When she looked again he had vanished.
But, in a moment, in the doorway beneath, smiling still, he reappeared.
“What a beautiful day, is it not?” Oilily he rubbed his hands. “You have been having visitors, cara mia?”
As he spoke he moved toward her. Urbanely he continued! “And what did they have to say?”
He was quite near her now and, with his head held a trifle to one side he was regarding her with affectionate indulgence, much as one would regard a child.
“They told you nothing new, cara mia?”
Without looking at him, Leilah shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing at least that I did not know.”
Smiling still, indulgent as before, Barouffski plucked at his pointed beard. “And what is that, cara mia?”
Remotely, in a voice without colour, as though speaking not to him at all but only to herself, she answered:
“That I am the most miserable woman in the world.”
Barouffski’s smile broadened. “Bah! They exaggerated, cara mia. It is the way of the world. Mon Dieu, à qui se fier? You are not at all what they said. You are – how shall I put it – perhaps a bit indiscreet. That is it, a bit indiscreet.” He pointed to the bench. “Will you not seat yourself?”
He was still smiling, but the smile wholly muscular, was one in which the eyes have no part. The “visitors” whom he affected to ridicule, alarmed him. They were, he knew, quite capable of taking Leilah away. Her presence or absence was quite one to him. Only if she departed, so would her purse.
“Will you not?” he repeated.
“I am going in.”
“Certainly, cara mia. It is as it pleases you. But – ”
At this Leilah, who had passed him, turned.
“Well, what?”
“You see, cara mia, supposing I had visitors. Supposing rather I had a visitor. We are only supposing, are we not? Bon! Supposing this visitor happened to be what we call an ancienne, an old flame, an inamorata of mine. Supposing that were so. Do you know what you could do?”
“No,” Leilah from over her shoulder answered. “Nor do I care.”
“Forgive me, cara mia. You mean that you do not care to be informed. Yet you should know, for you could if you wished have me fined. Yes, that is what you could do. You could have me fined.
“But I,” he resumed. “Do you know in similar circumstances what I could do? Do you know rather what the law says I may do? Do you, cara mia? Do you? For really you ought to.”
But Leilah now was approaching the entrance.
“What!” Barouffski exclaimed. “You are not interested? You are really going?”
As he spoke, he bowed. “Bon, à ce soir, cara mia. And a last word. If I may advise, do not be led into indiscretions.”
“Do not,” he repeated, while shrilly from the adjacent church came the voices of boys chanting the final phrase of the Pater Noster:
“Sed libera nos a malo.”
“That is it,” he called at Leilah’s retreating back. “Pray rather to be delivered of them. Otherwise – ”
But Leilah now had entered the house.
“Otherwise,” he continued to himself and moving to the kennels, patted the dogs, “otherwise a sojourn in Poland may improve you.”
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 to-day. 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.”
“Cæsar!” 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. Nonetheless 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. Nonetheless 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.
