The Monster

VII

It was on the morning succeeding these incidents that Leilah felt unequal for the appointments she had made. But however she felt, she always did what she had planned. In this instance nature punished her. On the way to the first appointment, a malaise overtook her, enveloped her, beat at her and although, gradually, it fell by, she was still conscious of it when, in the rue Cambon, the motor stopped at the modiste’s door.

“The fitting of madame la comtesse Barouffska!” a fair young girl in black immediately and authoritatively announced.

Before landscapes of silk, in the delight of new modes, customers were sunning themselves. At the announcement they turned, while Leilah, conducted by another girl who had advanced to meet her, crossed the laboratory of enchantments and entered an adjoining room.

But, for the moment, the fitting was delayed. The première was elsewhere occupied. When presently she appeared she excitedly exclaimed:

“I hope I have not detained madame. I am desolated if I have. But! But! If madame knew! One is literally torn to pieces! All day long it is nothing but Ernestine that dress! Ernestine, that robe! Ernestine, that costume! Ernestine this! Ernestine that! Truly madame, there are moments when I say I die! I go crazy!”

Abruptly dropping her voice, she added: “But pardon, I monologue.”

At once, indicating a gown which an assistant had brought, she exclaimed again:

“It will ravishingly become madame.”

The gown, a work of the best Parisian art, suggested something of the immateriality of a moonbeam, and as the assistant, a girl with a tired face and circled eyes, held it for inspection, it gleamed.

Leilah looked at it, wondering the while where she would wear it, whether indeed she would wear it at all. Then, before a sheet that had been placed on the floor and on which the assistant arranged the gown in a circle she proceeded to undress.

To the amateur in feminine beauty, there are few spectacles more attractive than that of an attractive woman clothed in lingerie and a hat. This spectacle Leilah presented.

The première exclaimed at it. “Madame la comtesse has a figure truly divine. But! But! Who could have laced her?”

“I was not very well this morning,” Leilah replied. “I told my women not to make me too tight. But you can take me in I think about an inch.”

“Marguerite,” said the première, “draw the stays a little closer.”

The girl with the tired face undid the corset and pulled at the strings. But she pulled awkwardly, perhaps too suddenly.

Leilah gasped, turned, sat down and fell forward. The première hurried to her. She had fainted.

“The smelling salts!” the première cried. “The smelling salts! Cognac! Get some cognac!”

With one hand she was supporting Leilah, with the other she gesticulated at Marguerite who, hurriedly from the mantel, fetched a vinaigrette which Ernestine then took and sniffed at.

“She’s coming to,” said the assistant.

Ernestine waved the vinaigrette. “The gods be praised!”

For Leilah now had opened her eyes. Wearily she looked about, straightened herself and sighed.

“I must have fainted.”

“It is nothing madame,” Ernestine anxiously protested. “Truly nothing and yet so modish. Yesterday the Princesse de Solférino fainted. The day before it was the turn of the young Duchesse de Malakoff. Such a good augury for these ladies! Like them madame is perhaps – ”

But Leilah now was making an effort to rise.

Abandoning the vinaigrette Ernestine aided her.

“Madame will perhaps wish the fitting postponed. Yes, is it not? It might further fatigue madame. To-morrow – no, to-morrow I regret but in the afternoon I have three appointments and in the morning there is the trousseau of Miss Smith of New York who is to marry an English lord. Marguerite!” she interrupted herself to exclaim. “The costume of madame!”

Then, as the assistant also assisted Leilah, reflectively the première resumed:

“I hear that every New York young lady loves a lord. But – ”

She hesitated. Visibly the vision evoked, confused. Yet, after a second’s pause, rallying, she continued.

“Perhaps it is not every New York young lady who has a lord to love. Perhaps many of them love the same lord.”

Discreetly she smiled. “And that must be so nice for him!”

Considering Leilah, she concluded:

“But another day – ”

Of it all, Leilah heard but that. “Yes,” she answered, “another day.”

Then, presently, after more attentions, the première accompanied her to the door.

“Rue François Premier,” Leilah told the groom.

The machine shot ahead. Arrested shortly by a congestion of traffic, it halted before a window behind which Verplank and Silverstairs sat.

Leilah, unconscious of their presence, gazed at the murky cinematograph of the street, filled at this hour with faces sordid, petulant, indifferent, or frankly gay; with the passing forms of workmen, idlers, shopgirls, vagabonds; the swarming Parisian crowd which did not, she believed, contain one soul as miserable as her own.

The congestion relieved, the motor shot on. Leilah leaned back. It was not so long ago that she was on her way from New York to Coronado. She was happy then, happy with a happiness so perfect that it lifted her into the ultimate ecstasies which love and life comport. It was not so long ago, only six short months, only that brief eternity of sorrow which, unended yet, had been the damning penalty of that joy.

“In this life ye shall have tribulation,” the Christ had said, and truly said, and as she rememorated the significant menace, she wondered whether for such as she, tribulation ended here. But her creed assured her. From the Vidyâ she had acquired faith in fate, the belief rather that we make our own destiny, that it is by our own hands that our lives are cast in places pleasant or the reverse, that our conduct in one life creates the conditions of our existence in another, that anything experienced now is the effect of a cause set going in the past, that happiness is the recompense of beneficence, deformity the result of cruelty, melancholy the penalty of evil thoughts. But whether retribution pursued its victim into future planes or abandoned them when they died, depended, she also believed, on how they faced it here, and it was in this idea that, during the unended sorrow, she had found the strength to bear its coils.

The motor stopped. She told the groom to wait. Presently she was among the subdued tints and harmonised furnishings of the drawing room of her friend.

At once, clearly in her limpid voice, considering her with brilliant eyes, Violet Silverstairs aimed and fired.

“You’re a liar!”

At the shot Leilah attempted to smile, and though she failed, it was not because she fancied there could be any reproach in the term, but because latterly she had been unable to smile at all.

“You’re a liar,” Violet repeated. “Also, you are late.”

“I know I am late and I am sorry,” Leilah withdrawing her gloves, replied. “But how am I a liar?”

“Come to luncheon and you will precious soon find out. I had some eggs for you, eggs à l’Aurore Boréale. I had a sweetbread. I had – I have forgotten what else. Now I have nothing. Everything is spoiled.”

Violet Silverstairs was perhaps imaginative. There were eggs, very good eggs too, though whether prepared in the Aurora Borealis fashion is perhaps beside the issue. Moreover there was a sweetbread, one that had been germinated on salt meadows and which was not spoiled in the least. In addition there were the other things which she had forgotten and all of them appetising in the extreme. It was an excellent luncheon, perfectly served in a beautiful room. But it was a luncheon for Sybarites, not for the suffering. After the first morsel Leilah was unable to eat.

“Where is Silverstairs?” she asked when that morsel had been consumed.

“With your ex.”

Leilah put down her fork. “With Gulian?”

Violet laughed. “Have you more than one? But it was just through him that your lie cropped out. Last night he swore by bell, book and candle that you had never told him why you cut and ran.”

It was at this juncture that Leilah found herself unable to eat. Instantly her mind shot back. She was at Coronado again, in the sunshine and frippery of her sitting room. She could see Verplank as he left it, see the letters that had been brought, see herself as she opened one of them, that one which with its enclosures she had redirected and left for him. The possibility never before conjectured, that he had not received it girdled her with a zone of ice. For a moment she looked fixedly at one of the windows through which the pale daylight fell. In the beautiful room, companioned by her nearest friend, she felt that sense of utter loneliness which in the great crises of life is experienced by all. Yet was it true?

“Violet!” she cried. “You are jesting.”

But the lady, determined then or never to learn the truth, cocked an eye at her. “I am not, nor was he.”

At that, Leilah felt the girdle of ice sending its shivers through her. The plan she had made must, she saw, be foregone. If Verplank did not know why she had separated from him, never would he leave Paris until he did. But what must he have thought, she agonisedly reflected, and what must he think!

Violet, who had been watching her, said:

“Why don’t you tell me?”

Leilah taking up her fork again, tried for countenance sake, to affect to eat. The effort was beyond her. She put it down.

“I can’t,” she at last replied.

Violet, her brilliant eye still cocked, almost winked.

“Yes, you said that before. But you see, don’t you know, that whether you can or cannot tell me, you will have to tell him and, in the circumstances, would it not be best to have me do it for you? To be sure, if you had taken my advice and omitted to marry Barouffski, I would say, have it out with him yourself. But your marriage does not seem to have simplified matters, which, so far as I can make out, are now pretty thoroughly mixed.”

The lady spoke better than she knew. Matters were complicated though how profoundly she had no idea, nor was Leilah aware that the situation, already tortuous, was to become even more intricately labyrinthine.

“Of course,” Violet, in her bell-like voice, threw out, “after running away, getting a divorce and marrying another man, I can fancy that you don’t much want to see him. But, really, you owe it to yourself to give the reason, particularly as it is he who is to blame.”

At this, Leilah, who had been looking down into her prison, looked up. “I never said so.”

“No, but was it necessary? Even nowadays, even in the States, a woman does not cut and run because butter won’t melt in her husband’s mouth. She does so because she has, or thinks she has, a grievance and the man, if he is a man, ought to be given an opportunity to apologise, however imaginary the grievance may be.”

Leilah shook her head. “There can be no apology here.”

Violet laughed. “That is just what I would say if I had gone and done it. Then it would be for Silverstairs to try on his knees to get me to listen to one – provided, of course, that in the interim I had not taken over another man, for in that case I verily believe he would wring my neck. But you need fear nothing of the sort from Verplank. He seemed anxious only to wring Barouffski’s.”

Leilah made another futile effort with her fork. Absently she answered:

“I don’t believe he knew who he was.”

“You don’t! After his telling him! But, apropos, what became of d’Arcy? I thought you and he were safely tucked away in a corner, otherwise never in the world would I have marched your Number One up to your Number Two.”

“D’Arcy!” Leilah repeated. She had barely heard. She scarcely knew what she was saying, still less what was being said.

“Yes, le beau d’Arcy. Marie de Fresnoy told me that the other day at the races he was about to pay a ragamuffin of a girl for a flower, when she said: ‘I’d rather you kissed me.’ Fancy that! She told me too that a man who had a husband’s reasons for wanting to kill him, was afraid to say a word. It appears he is a dead shot. But it appears also that your lovely Barouffski is one of the best swordsmen here. Verplank had better look out. To return though to our Chablis Moutonne. What will you do?”

Leilah, her thoughts afar, made no reply.

“What will you do?” Violet repeated.

From afar the question floated, descended, trod among the tender places of Leilah’s soul. At the pain of it she winced. “God help me, I do not know.”

Violet, cocking an eye again, insinuated: “Let me take a hand.” She paused, then, for clincher, threw out: “He dines here to-morrow.”

“Here!” Leilah exclaimed, half rising, fearful now that at any moment he might appear. “Here! With you?”

Violet nodded. “Why yes. Why not? If I can’t confess you, perhaps I can him. At any rate I can try. You can’t blame me for wanting to, either. You abandoned him on your honeymoon. You won’t tell me why and he says he don’t know. But he must suspect. He must have concluded that you left him for this, that or the other. I want to find out what his this, that and the other are and then make my own selection. It is true he did say that it was because of Barouffski. But that’s all gammon. You never saw Barouffski until you got here. There is something else and what that is I want to find out. No, you can’t blame me. It is the instinct of self-preservation. If I don’t get at the bottom of it soon, I shall simply go mad.”

A laugh, clear and musical, wound up the lady’s chatter. She had no more idea of going mad than she had of jumping out of the window. But she wanted to know and that was only human.

But now, Leilah, who a moment before had half risen, stood up. “Violet, I am not well, you must let me go. Yes,” she added as the lady remarked that on the morrow she might appear in the rue de la Pompe. “Yes, yes.”

She would have said yes to anything. Hurriedly she got away.

Without the motor waited.

“Home,” she told the groom.

A little before she had thought herself the most miserable of beings. But however deep the hell, there is always a deeper one. Add uncertainty to distress and the sum of it is sorrow multiplied by the infinite. That hell, that sorrow was or seemed to be, hers. She did not know where to go, what to do, to whom to turn.

The pitiable plan of flight returned to her. Again she put it aside. She could not adopt it now. Besides, though she owed a duty to herself, she owed another to Verplank. In what manner he had failed to receive the letter, it was impossible for her to imagine, but the fact that he had not received it, hurt her doubly, hurt her for herself, hurt her for him. Had it reached him, both would have been spared this pass. But it had not reached him and since then what must he have thought of her? What!

The query, which kept repeating itself, tortured her and on that torture was superposed the precarious problem of his enlightenment. See him she could not. To write was beyond her ability. For there are things no pen should write as there are others no tongue should tell. None the less the truth she knew must reach him and would do so best, she thought, through some channel similar to that from which the letter had proceeded, from a source either indifferent or inimical to them both.

At the auto-suggestion, her thoughts fluttered, scattered, grouped, then suddenly regrouping, produced a name. Beneath her breath she uttered it.

“Barouffski!”

It was not in provision of this that she had married him. At the time no such possibility had even impossibly loomed. But she had married him precisely as she had obtained a divorce, in order to barricade the future from the past; in order also for the fleshpots which she craved – peace and security. She had not had much of either. None the less, the primary object which she had sought had, in its accomplishment, persisted. He was a barricade. He was her official and paid protector.

For the task therefore which she could not perform, he seemed naturally indicated. What alone gave her pause was the certainty that he would enjoy it. She could see him, see his ambiguous smile, see his green eyes aglow, his cruel and sensual mouth distended.

From the picture she turned. Beyond was a church, the frontal draped with black. The motor had stopped. It had reached the house in the rue de la Pompe and pending the opening of the doors, whirred as it blocked the sidewalk.

It was then that she turned. Beside her, arrested by the car, stood Verplank.

After walking up from Voisin’s with Silverstairs he had left him a moment earlier at Tempest’s.

But the great doors had opened. Before Verplank could speak, the machine slid in. As it entered the court, the doors closed noisily.

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.