Kitabı oku: «The Monster», sayfa 7
“That will take time,” he objected. “The shortest way ’round is the quickest way out. If you had not interfered in the garden – ”
A gesture completed the sentence.
“No matter,” he grimly added. “I haven’t done with him yet.”
In speaking he had crossed the room, now he recrossed it.
Imploringly Leilah approached him.
“Gulian, not that, not that! Don’t fight with him again. Don’t, I beseech you. It is not alone that anything of the kind is so horrible but he is one of the trickiest swordsmen here. Think what that means! Think what would become of me if – if – ”
From the pocket of his coat Verplank had taken the revolver. He looked at it, looked at her, replaced it.
“I am a trifle interested in the matter myself. Besides, there are other weapons than the foil. If I can shoot pigeons – and I believe I can – I ought to be able to land a buzzard.”
At sight of the revolver Leilah had winced. Now she cried:
“Give it to me!”
Verplank, amused at her simplicity, smiled.
“That isn’t a dueling pistol.”
“But you never carried one before.”
“In the States I did not need to. Here, in Paris, particularly at night, the streets are seldom sure. I have this thing for protection.”
“Promise me then – ”
Verplank looked her over.
“Don’t be a fool.”
But as he looked, suddenly she started and he saw that she was trembling.
“What the deuce is the matter?”
Trembling still, peeringly now she had turned to the portières.
“What is it?” he repeated.
“I am so frightened.”
“Frightened? What at?”
Uncertainly, her head drawn back as a deer’s is when surprised, she glanced about her. Slowly then her eyes returned to his.
“I am so frightened!”
“Yes, but at what?”
She motioned at the room. “Before you came there seemed to be something here, something around me and just now – ”
“Well?”
“I heard something.”
“Your maid probably.”
With an intake of the breath she raised a finger and for a moment both were silent.
“There is no one,” he presently told her. “And what if there were!”
At the idea, he laughed.
The laugh, succeeding the silence, while intended to reassure her, did not wholly succeed. She turned to him anew and in a low voice, said:
“You must go. To-morrow come to Violet’s.”
“I dine there to-night.”
“Yes, I know. Tell her that to-morrow, say at three, we will both be with her. Then she can tell us – ”
But Verplank had drawn her to him. Again her eyes closed.
“Go,” she said at last.
On the sofa was his hat. He reached for it. While he did so, she moved to the tapestry, raised it, disclosing the stair up which he had come.
“To-morrow, then,” he said, as he entered there.
She nodded at him. “At three!”
Dropping the tapestry she turned, but very quickly, for again she heard or thought she heard a noise.
Across the room the portières were parting. Through them Barouffski appeared.
“I might have known it,” she told herself, and realising that he had been listening, she realised also that the opportunity was as good as another for making an offer which she had in mind.
These ideas, instantaneous at sight of him, were for the moment stayed. On turning she had seen but the man. Now hastening toward her was a creature with an expression so venomous that instinctively, in search of help, with the idea of calling to Verplank, she turned to the tapestry again.
Quicker than she, he caught and tossed her spinning on the sofa. Then, running to the open window, he shouted from it:
“Emmanuel! The dogs!”
Leilah, falling backward on the lounge, was too stunned to hear. But she steadied herself, recovered, got to her feet and making again for the stair, called at Barouffski:
“Free me from you and you shall have half of what I have.”
“Half!” he repeated. At once he was upon her. “All,” he cried. “I want it all, all of yours and all of his.”
As he spoke he struck her, shoved her aside, raised the tapestry and vanished. For a second she heard him hastening down, while at once from without came the barking of dogs, the jar of oaths, the sound of cries.
What it meant she did not know. Her head was whirling. The fall, the blow, the indignity of both clouded and confused her. From without the uproar mounted and suddenly, the uproar prompting, into the turmoil that was her mind, a gleam of understanding shot. At the apperception of it she shrieked, ran to the window where she shrieked again. The loosened dogs had sprung at Verplank, who, overwhelmed had fallen.
Again she shrieked. Answering the shriek, mingling with it, were snarls, the gnashing of fangs, the din of great hounds ferociously struggling for blood, tearing vehemently at flesh, at a flesh, though, that rebelled.
Verplank rose up between them. With a kick he sent one of them sprawling. But, in the recoil, torn at by the other hound, he stumbled. The dog was at his throat. In protection he held his left arm against it. With his right hand he got at the revolver in his pocket, and, through the pocket, fired twice into the brute. Gnashing still, it rolled away.
But now, from the other side, the second hound was on him. He saw its eyes, felt its breath, felt its fangs. Again he fired. As he did so, his hand relaxed. He heard a woman shrieking, the sound of hurrying feet. The wall before him mounted. His senses scattered into night.
Suddenly the garden was filled with people. Through the gate, two sergents de ville had come. These, forms furtive and uncertain followed. From the house, led by Barouffski, the footmen ran. Above, from the window, still there issued a woman’s shrieks.
Barouffski stopped, and turned. He looked up at the window. He smiled. With one hand he tapped his breast, with the other he pointed at Verplank. Then, in French, reassuringly, he called:
“My dear! See! You may be tranquil. I, I am unharmed. It is the robber.”
At the ignominy of that flouting jeer, Leilah, impelled by the impulse to do something, though it were but to beat her head against a wall, rushed from the window, and, strangling with spasms, fled out of the room and down the stair, where horror so suffocatingly enveloped her that in it her brain tipped, and she fell.
XI
In the golden half light of the Opéra, a chorus, soprano voices on one side of the stage alternating with contralto on the other, vaporised the subtle sensuality of the scene.
Violet Silverstairs, turning to her husband, who was seated behind her, remarked:
“How much better the Italian school is than the French.”
Silverstairs, ignorant of either, and indifferent to both, promenaded his glass about the house.
“I wonder why Tempest doesn’t show up? There is Marie de Fresnoy! I saw de Fresnoy to-day for the first time since his duel with Barouffski. What a ridiculous affair that was! I suppose one of these days he will have another with d’Arcy.”
Violet turned to him again.
“Because of Marie? How absurd you are! D’Arcy doesn’t interest her. No man could unless he drove at her with a four-in-hand, and d’Arcy has nothing.”
Silverstairs, still promenading his glass, exclaimed:
“There he is now!”
“Who? D’Arcy?”
“Yes, with the Helley-Quetgens, in that box between the columns. Isn’t that your friend Leilah whom he is talking to? By Jove, it is, and Barouffski is there, also.”
Violet, who had also been promenading her glass, put it down.
“Well, he ought to be. I do think she has acted scandalously. What is said at the club?”
“About Verplank? It is forgotten already. Barouffski, you know, claimed that it was a mistake, and as it appears that Verplank agreed with him, as from neither the one nor the other any charge was forthcoming, the police could do nothing but get Verplank back to the Ritz.”
Impatiently Violet unfurled her fan.
“Yes, where she has been every day; every day, that is, when she has not been with d’Arcy.”
The statement was inexact. Leilah had indeed been at the Ritz but d’Arcy she had seen but once, momentarily, by accident – if there be such a thing, in any event through one of those seeming hazards which, however fortuitous at first, afterward appear to have been designed. It was a little, though, before Leilah took that view of things. Meanwhile, when, on recovering from her swoon, she learned that Verplank had also recovered she realised with thanksgiving that Destiny which has its tyrannies has its mercies as well. So soon then as she could get from the bed into which the horrors of the midspring nightmare had thrown her, she went to the Ritz where she found Verplank amply attended, abundantly bandaged, severely but not dangerously hurt.
“One of the brutes nearly chewed my arm off,” he told her. “If the other omitted to eat me entirely, it was not because he did not try. I did for them, though,” he added, and smiled as he said it. After the manner of man, he took comfort in the feat.
“But not for the worst brute,” Leilah answered wishing in spite of herself, wishing instinctively and even ungrammatically that some good fate might.
From beneath a bandage, Verplank laughed:
“Bah! I’ll do for him, too.”
But Leilah did not hear. She was speaking to the surgeon, whom – with a bravery which in itself was a little defiant, and which in any event might have been more discreet – thereafter, daily and openly, she supplied with that which every surgeon wants, a nurse obedient, attentive, skilful, alert, and who, in addition ministers for love.
Presently, Verplank was able to be up. The surgeon said that in a day he would be able to be out. Verplank, who knew as much without being told, asked Leilah to go with him on the morrow.
Leilah refused. Verplank, for an invalid, became then surprisingly demoniac. The demonism of him affected her less than a conception, feminine perhaps but erroneous, of her own selfishness. If she went, she knew beforehand that irremissibly she would be dishonoured. But she knew also that any sense of dishonour must, if it is to ashame, come not from without but from within. If she went, her conscience, she thought, would acquit her. She thought that she would not feel dishonoured, though she knew that she would be disgraced. To refuse on that account seemed to her selfish. As a result finally she consented. Yet in consenting she made one stipulation. Characteristic in itself, it was that there must be nothing clandestine, that he must come for her in the rue de la Pompe, and that from there, her boxes put on whatever vehicle he brought, they would leave for darkness by daylight.
The plan pleased Verplank. He agreed at once. He told her that he would come the next day.
When he had, she added: “To-night I go to the Opéra; the Helley-Quetgens have asked me. It is my last look at this world.”
Then, shortly, the arrangements for the evasion completed, she left the hotel.
Without, her motor waited. She told the groom to have it follow her. The air tempted, though the sky was dirty. She thought of the California glare, the eager glitter of New York. She wondered would they go back there. Perhaps, she told herself, we shall at last see Bora-Bora.
Her walk took her through the arcades of the rue de Rivoli to the fountains of the Place de la Concorde. From there she was about to enter the Champs Elysées when she became conscious of being accosted.
“Chère madame,” some one was saying, “I precipitate myself to renew the expression of my homage.”
D’Arcy, hat in hand, was before her. At once, with a view to what the French agreeably describe as the placing of landmarks —pour poser des jalons– he asked to be permitted to accompany her.
Leilah smiled.
“Not for the world!”
She motioned at the motor. Then, with that graciousness which is natural to the mondaine, with perhaps the desire also to attenuate whatever there were of brusqueness in her reply, she added, as she got in the car:
“I shall be at the Opéra with the Helley-Quetgens to-night. Could you not look in?”
D’Arcy, habituated to the abruptest victories, accustomed to inflame, with but a glance, by the mere exhibition of his Olympian good looks, and, therefore, indifferent when not bored by the celerity of his successes, but piqued by the tranquil air with which this woman had always regarded him, thanked her, assured her that he would not fail to be there, and replaced his hat.
Immediately he raised it again, straight from the head, high in the air. Looking with brilliant eyes from a brilliant brougham, Violet Silverstairs was dashing by.
Coincidentally, unobserved but observant, Barouffski was also passing that way.
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.”
