The Monster

V

“There are too many of us,” Verplank, the day following, found himself saying to Silverstairs.

The two men were lunching at Voisin’s.

The charming resort which, since the passing of Véry, of Véfour and the Maison Dorée, has become the ultimate refuge of the high gastronomic muse of Savarin and of Brisse was, on this forenoon, filled with its usual clientèle: – old men with pink cheeks, young women with ravishing hats, cosmopolitan sportsmen, ladies of both worlds, assortments of what Paris calls High Life and pronounces Hig Leaf.

Without, a fog draped the windows, blurred the movement of the street, transforming it into a cinematograph of misty silhouettes. But within, the brilliant damask, the glittering service, the studied excellence of everything, produced an atmosphere of wealth and ease.

Silverstairs, after swallowing a glass of Chablis, meditatively lit a cigar. But meditation was not his forte. The twentieth of his name, he was tall and robust. He had straw-coloured hair, blue eyes, a skin of brick, and an appearance of simple placidity. At the moment he was mentally fondling certain reminiscences of the Isis and certain bouts with bargees there.

“You know,” he said at last, “if I were you I would just march up to him and knock him down.”

Verplank nodded. “I dare say. But not if he had taken your wife.”

The suggestion, penetrating the earl’s placidity, punctured it. He threw back his head. “By George! If he had, I’d kill him.”

“There, you see!”

Silverstairs puffed at his cigar. His placidity now was reforming itself.

“Yes,” he answered. “But then in taking yours, he did it after she was divorced. You can’t have him out for that.”

“All the same there are one too many of us.”

Silverstairs filled his mouth with smoke. Longly, with an air of considering the situation he expelled it. Then he said:

“It is what I call damned awkward. But what the deuce can you do?”

“What can I do?” Verplank with an uplift of the chin repeated. “Why, if only for the manner in which he acted last night – ”

“I know,” Silverstairs interrupted. “The missis told me. He behaved like a fidgety Frenchman. I grant you that. But there were no words, nothing that you could put a finger on.”

Through an adjacent door a man strolled in. He had his hat on and in one gloved hand he held a thin umbrella of which the handle was studded with gold nails. With the other hand he smoothed a black moustache. Through a monocle he was surveying the room. He looked careless and cynical.

Deferentially a maître d’hôtel addressed him. Ignoring the man he waved his umbrella at Silverstairs.

Silverstairs waved his hand. He turned to Verplank. “Here’s de Fresnoy. He can put us straight. Let’s ask him to join us.”

Rising, he greeted the Parisian, invited him to the table, introduced Verplank, speaking as he did so in French, with an accent frankly barbarous which de Fresnoy seemed to enjoy.

The latter raised his hat to Verplank, confided it to the maître d’hôtel, gave him the umbrella also, while another waiter drew up for him a chair.

“Thanks,” he said in an interval of these operations. “I see you have breakfasted. If you don’t mind my eating while you smoke – ”

Seating himself he turned to the waiter, a man short and stout, completely bald, with large dyed whiskers and an air of repressed satisfaction.

“Listen, Léopold, and note well what I say. To begin with do not attempt to tell me what you wish me to eat. You have heard? Good! Listen again. A dozen Ostendes, an omelette, a pear. Nothing else. Not a crumb. Yes, some Eau de Vals. Allez!”

Léopold bowed. “Perfectly, monsieur le baron. I shall have the honour of serving monsieur le baron with what he has been good enough to be willing to desire.”

Again the waiter bowed. But behind the oleaginousness of his speech a severity had entered, one which intimated that in this preserve of gastronomics such an order was unworthy.

“These gentlemen?” he added, his eyes moving from Verplank to Silverstairs. “Some coffee? A liqueur?”

But now, in fluent French, Verplank was addressing de Fresnoy. “Silverstairs and I have been having an argument. In your quality of Parisian, will you tell us whether a man can have another out for looking impertinently at him?”

De Fresnoy adjusted his collar, patted his neck-cloth. “But certainly, most assuredly. To look impertinently at a man constitutes an attack on his self esteem, which in itself is an integral part of his moral wealth. To omit to return a man’s bow, to neglect to take his proffered hand, to regard him in an offensive manner, are one and all so many assaults on his dignity.”

Verplank, pleased with this view of things, smiled. “Thanks. Mine has been assailed and I was in doubt how to rebuke the aggressor.”

“It is simple as Good day. You have only to select two representatives and get them to put themselves in communication with him. If then he refuses to have friends of his meet yours, or if, afterward, he will neither apologise or fight, he is outlawed.”

De Fresnoy, as he spoke, made a gesture, a wide movement of the arm which indicated, or was intended to indicate, the uttermost limits of the world.

“It is Barouffski,” Silverstairs, with some idea that de Fresnoy might be aware of the anterior complication, threw out.

“Barouffski!” de Fresnoy repeated, his head held appreciatively a little to one side. “In a bout he is very clever. Barring d’Arcy, Helley-Quetgen” – and myself he was about to add, but throwing the veil he desisted – “I don’t know his equal. How he is on the field, personally I cannot say. But there, the absence of buttons, the absence of masks, the inevitable emotion, the sight of the other man, the consciousness of an injury to be maintained or avenged, the consciousness too of the definite character of any thrust you may give and particularly of any thrust you may receive, these things have such an effect that often the cleverest acts like a fool. On the boards, fencing is an exercise, it is an amusement. On the field, it is another man’s blood – or yours. Though, after all, one is rarely killed except by one’s seconds.”

He turned to Verplank. “You fence? Or is it that you shoot?”

Verplank leaned back in his chair. “Oh, I suppose I can fire a gun.”

Silverstairs laughed. “I say now! You are too modest by half.” He looked at de Fresnoy. “Verplank is one of the crack shots of America.”

De Fresnoy turned again to Verplank. “You should demand pistols then. Barouffski draws well, but at twenty paces he is less sure of himself. Have you selected your seconds?”

“I suppose I may count on Silverstairs for one – ”

The young earl nodded. “That’s of course, and perhaps you, de Fresnoy, will act with me.”

The Parisian smoothed his moustache. “I shall be much honoured. In that case, however, as necessary preliminary, I shall have to ask to be made acquainted with all the circumstances.”

But now Léopold, bearing a dish on which were oysters green as stagnant scum, approached and with an air of infinite tenderness, much as though it were a baby, placed it before de Fresnoy.

Leisurely he began to eat.

Verplank, who had been looking out of the window, leaned forward. “The circumstances are evangelical in their simplicity. Last evening I was about to speak to Madame Barouffska when he put himself between us and eyed me in the manner which I have described.”

De Fresnoy, considering him over an oyster, said:

“You were at the Joyeuses then?”

Verplank nodded.

“And there Barouffski objected to your speaking to his wife?”

“Yes.”

De Fresnoy swallowed the oyster. “In that case he was guilty not only of a grave offense to you, but to Madame de Joyeuse as well. The duke would be the first to resent it.”

With an idea of making it all very clear, Silverstairs put an oar in: “Madame Barouffska, you know, was formerly Madame Verplank.”

De Fresnoy bent a little. It may be that because of Silverstairs’ ultra English accent he had not understood. “Pardon?”

But here Verplank intervened. “This lady had been divorced from me before she married Barouffski.”

De Fresnoy, over another oyster, turned to him again. Yet any surprise he may have experienced he was too civil to display.

“Ah, indeed!” he replied. He looked as though he were about to add something, but refraining, he paused.

Verplank helped him out. “You are thinking perhaps that there may have been circumstances that rendered further acquaintance between us inadmissible. I may assure you that there are none and, without wishing to intrude my private affairs, I may assure you also that to this hour I am unaware why the divorce was obtained. This lady had no grievance of any kind against me and I had none whatever against her.”

Pontifically, in his deepest note, Silverstairs threw out: “In the States they give you a divorce for a Yes or a No.”

“For married people,” de Fresnoy remarked, yet so pleasantly that the sarcasm was lost, “America is the coming country.”

As he spoke, the fat waiter, after supervising the removal of the first dish, produced, with the air of a conjurer, another. It was an omelette, golden without, frothy within.

De Fresnoy glanced up. “Countermand the pear. Instead, bring me paper and ink.”

“Perfectly, monsieur le baron.”

Slowly de Fresnoy attacked the food. After a mouthful he said to Silverstairs:

“When the writing materials come we can get off a note to Barouffski. If he has any explanation he can advance it. Otherwise – on guard!”

After another mouthful he said to Verplank:

“You have fought before?”

“I have not had the occasion.”

“Nor I,” interjected Silverstairs. “It is against the law in England.”

Gravely, as though he were receiving valuable information de Fresnoy bowed. “So it is here. But with us it is custom that rules, not law. No jury would convict an honourable man for fighting a fair fight. Besides, dueling is in our blood. It will not disappear as chivalry has. It will last as long as there are French men – and French women. And yet, in saying that chivalry has disappeared, I am in error. Not later than the week before last a cousin of mine, a young man truly charming, married a monster.”

He pushed aside his plate. “Well, then, Léopold, am I to sit here the entire day?”

Serviceably, a buvard in his hand, the waiter approached. “I have subventioned a new pen for the use of monsieur le baron.”

“There, Léopold, your sins are remitted. See at once if the chasseur is free.”

De Fresnoy looked at Silverstairs. “With your permission, in our joint names, I write.”

He looked at Verplank. “Will you pardon me if I ask how your name is spelled?”

Verplank, getting at his case, extracted a card.

De Fresnoy glanced at it. Then, taking that new pen, he read, as he wrote, aloud.

Monsieur: M. Verplank has requested the Earl of Silverstairs and myself to arrive at an understanding with two of your friends concerning an incident which occurred last evening in the Avenue Cours la Reine.

Lord Silverstairs and I will be obliged if, as soon as possible, you will ask one of your friends to appoint a meeting at which we may deliberate.

Receive, Monsieur, the expression of my distinguished sentiments.

He looked over at Silverstairs. “Is that to your liking? Good! We will send it to the Little Club where the answer is to be left and we will have a reply to-day. En attendant, there are matters that claim me.”

With a movement of the chin he summoned the waiter.

A little byplay followed; the presentation of the bill, the click of gold on porcelain, the carelessly gathered change, the meagre tip, the reappearance of the hat, the bowing waiters, the craning necks, and the departure of de Fresnoy, an umbrella under his arm, a cigar between his teeth.

Verplank, emptying a glass of Chablis, looked out of the window. A panorama was forming. He saw the room at Coronado, Leilah as she told him of her love, his brief absence, his harrowing return, the hunt for her that had extended over half the globe, a hunt that divorce had not terminated, which her re-marriage had not stopped and which, had he not at last discovered her, nothing could have stayed save his death or hers or the reason of the implacable Why. An obstacle to the Why or, it might be, the incarnation of it, was Barouffski, and Verplank saw himself standing somewhere with Barouffski before him. There was a command, the call of numbers, a detonation and the sight of Barouffski turning, swaying, falling down.

The panorama faded. A picture had appeared. Before the window, arrested by a congestion of traffic, a motor was stopping. In it and the mist was Leilah.

Verplank sprang to his feet. With the idea of going out to her there and forcing an explanation, he looked about for his hat.

Silverstairs also got up. He had not seen. He too was looking for his hat. Placidly he remarked:

“I have an appointment with a chap named Tempest. Will you come with me?”

But now, the congestion relieved, the motor shot on. Verplank had the spectacle of a face fading instantly in the fog and the future.

“Will you?” Silverstairs repeated.

“Will I what?”

“I have to see a man about a horse. He lives just off the Bois de Boulogne, in the rue de la Pompe. Will you come up there with me?”

“Yes, if you will go on foot. In that case I’ll leave you there and walk back. I need the exercise. I feel like what you described as a fidgety Frenchman.”

Silverstairs pulled at his moustache. “It’s no end of a walk. But no matter, I’ll go with you.”

VI

That morning Leilah had two appointments, one with a modiste, the other with Violet Silverstairs. She did not feel equal to either. The episode of the previous evening had been to her like the supreme torture which medieval legislation devised. It was all she could bear – and more!

When, abruptly, she found herself face to face with Verplank, it was as though she were confronted by the dead. The sense of it numbed her, and the numbness was heightened by a horror that has no name. Into the seats of thought there entered the realisation that, in spite of all, she still loved him, that in spite of all he still loved her. In the core of these convictions fear entered, fear of him, fear of herself, a sensation of common peril and mutual perdition so blinding that Barouffski’s rudeness she barely noticed, and it was with a look the damned may have that she saw Verplank turn with Violet Silverstairs, and go.

As they passed, Barouffski, with the air of one commenting on a triviality, remarked:

“How odd it is that the Joyeuses should care to hobnob with demi-castors. Shall we go?”

That demi-castors meant bounders generally, and, in this instance, specifically, she would, ordinarily, have been insufficiently familiar with the slang of the boulevards to know. But she did not hear. Moreover, the remark required no reply. Even otherwise she was unable to speak, and it was not until Barouffski reiterated his suggestion that mechanically she acceded to it with a movement of the head.

Her demeanor then in traversing the salons, her leave-taking of the duchess, her bearing in descending the stairs, were as mechanical as her reply to Barouffski, and it was not until after the motor had dropped him, as he had asked that it should, at the door of the Little Club, that, at last alone, the mental anchylosis fell by.

At once in a sort of retrograde vision, she relived the past. There had been the flight from Coronado, the halt at Salt Lake, the descent into Nevada, the divorce, the journey abroad, the platonic marriage to Barouffski. These – the succeeding episodes in the drama of her life – were so many hostages to joy, barricades thrown one after another between Verplank and herself, and unavailingly thrown, since, with but a look, they were almost destroyed.

They had seemed wholly impregnable, but she knew then that unless reinforced by surer bars, they would one and all collapse. At the foreknowledge of that she appreciated what the heroines in the old tragedies endured, when circled by the seven-times-twisted coil of fate. Yet, though they had yielded, she would not yield, and it was with this determination that she alighted in the rue de la Pompe.

The house there had a church for neighbour, and stood between a court and a garden. Before the court was a high, white wall. The garden extended back to the parallel street, where, also, was a wall. The entrance to the court was a double doorway, the entrance to the garden was an iron gate. Between the gate and the house were large urns, a marble bench, a marble chair, most noticeably the kennels of two mastiffs, pets of Barouffski who, at whatever hour he returned at night, had them loosed. They were, he declared, a great protection, as indeed they were – for him. Apart from the occasional barking of these dogs, barring also occasional music from the church, usually the garden was quiet. But that was in the order of things. It lacked both stable and garage. These had been secured elsewhere.

Except for that detail, the arrangements generally were satisfactory. The house was commodious, agreeably furnished. On the ground floor were the usual offices, beneath which the servants slept. On the floor above were the salons and dining hall. Above these were the bedrooms. On this upper floor the apartment which Barouffski occupied gave on the street, while Leilah’s overlooked the garden.

Adjacent to her suite was a stairway designed for servants, but which, because of its convenience, she occasionally used. It led directly to the dining hall, and from there she could descend into the garden.

It had a superior advantage. It enabled her to avoid the hazards of the main stairway, which was used by Barouffski, whom nearer acquaintance had discovered to her without the mask – without one mask, that is – for histrion that he was, he had many, but the best, the feigned nobility of noble pride, the assumed parage, had gone.

In its place was a smile, constant, equivocal, ambiguous, a smile such as the consciously damned may display. It gave Leilah little creeps. She dreaded it, dreaded him, dreaded both, what is worse she dreaded instinctively, without knowing why. The man was amiable, serviceable, gallant. He wore his domino not faultlessly perhaps but with the fine air of a bravo who, when the time comes, will knife you, yes, but who in so doing will rather require that you admire the chasing on the handle of the blade. As yet the knife was concealed. But Leilah felt that it was there. He knew it was. Occasionally he fingered the point.

Hitherto he had lived by expedients. A golden six had been tossed him. He had pocketed it. For him the economic problem of life was solved. He asked little else, merely that the solution should endure and that his dignity, of which he had a humorous conception, be outwardly preserved. In addition to his dignity, or to his idea of it, he had another attribute. He was not exacting. It is a great charm in any one. But with him it did not extend to money. Freely he demanded it, freely she gave and it was precisely when he demanded it that she felt, and he felt, too, the point of the knife.

On this evening when, after the usual din at the doors, the motor entered the court and she alighted at the perron, two footmen busied themselves in aiding her.

Leilah passed through the dining room to the garden where for a while she walked along the path that led from the house to the gate.

The garden was cloistered, the night serene. The influences of both affected her. The darkness put her thoughts into relief, the solitude relaxed the tension of her nerves.

Another thing was helpful, the determination which she had reached, though for that determination to be maintained there must, she saw, be further hostages, new barricades. But what further hostages could she give she wondered, what firmer barricades was it possible to erect? Barring flight or an appeal to Verplank, some message begging him to leave Paris, she could not imagine any. Flight she had already tried, but not flight to some one of the world’s far away places where any one may be lost forever. It was a miserably dismal thing to do, she reflected, a thing so dismal and so miserable that she doubted her ability to do it.

As she thought it over she wondered if in some former existence she could have injured Verplank and whether it were by way of retribution that he had the power to tempt and torture her now. Tenets of this character the Vidyâ advanced and as she had told Tempest, she had come to believe in that Scripture as many do in the Bible, though as many also do without being able to accept it entirely, without being able to accept for instance stories such as that of Jonah and the whale which none the less all would accept were it known how profound is the symbolism behind them. With like reservations, Leilah accepted the Vidyâ. She was very ignorant as women in her station generally are and the reservations were due to that ignorance and also to the demand which the doctrine made on her imagination. But though she was ignorant she was conscious of it and consciousness of ignorance is usually the condition precedent to enlightenment.

Now, in considering the episode of the evening, she asked herself whether she was warranted in accepting this creed of past lives. At the Joyeuses, during the announcements of resonant names, Tempest had said that unless we swallow the ridiculous dogma of a soul specially created at every birth and unless too we are indecent enough to fancy the Deity waiting for that purpose on the passions and caprices of man, we have to accept it, have to accept with it the corollary of past actions and their consequences, have to accept, too, the deduction that, in accordance with our past actions, it is we who reward or punish ourselves, we who become avenging furies or angels of light.

Leilah wished that she could have discussed the matter more fully with Tempest yet she felt that what he had said was logical, but if it were true, then the parallel doctrine that all misdeeds and with them all misfortunes spring from desire must be true also, in which case, before their consequences can be effaced, all misdeeds must be atoned. But how can they be atoned? she asked herself. Presently she remembered. According to the Vidyâ, any desire no matter what, desire for pleasure, for gain, for attainments, for honours, even the desire for spiritual perfection, even the desire for the lack of desire, must be extinguished before old scores are paid. That was the way she saw, the only way. The debtor must sacrifice himself to himself.

But, uncertain still, she went over the matter again, putting to it little tests, passably naïf yet serviceable to her. She had ardently desired to marry Verplank, then, desiring as ardently a barricade against him, she had married Barouffski. In the one case the result had been catastrophic; in the other, calamitous. Doubtless she had sinned in the past and these disasters, brought about by her own desires, were her punishment. There were other things that she had desired. She had wanted to be loved, she had wanted to be thought a beauty, and not only her love had shamed her but soon she might be ashamed to show her face. At the thought of these things she realised anew and more profoundly than ever that selfish desire is the root of evil and that only in its extirpation may peace be had. But coincidently she realised also that any such extirpation was beyond her. Heredity, environment, the circumstances of her life, had given an impetus to desire which she could not arrest. She liked wealth, ease, pretty clothes, becoming hats, the society of agreeable people. She liked the world and in liking it she feared that she liked also the flesh, it might be even that she liked, too, the devil. Yet, she must not, she knew.