II

In Paris, many moons later, an Englishman, Howard Tempest, looked in, at the Opéra, on his cousin, Camille de Joyeuse. This lady, connected by birth with Britannia’s best, and, through her husband, with the Bourbons, delighted the eye, the ear, and the palate. In appearance, she suggested certain designs of Boucher; in colouring and in manner, the Pompadour. Admirable in these respects, she was admired also, for her gayety, her tireless smile, and her chef. She had one of the best cooks in Paris – that is to say, in the world. Her husband, the Duc de Joyeuse, harmonised very perfectly with her. He had a head, empty, but noble, an air vaguely Régence. A year younger than herself, Time had had the impertinence to whiten his hair. The duchess was forty-two. Those unaware of the fact fancied her twenty-eight. The error greatly gratified this lady, who, familiarly, was known as Muffins.

One evening in May, Tempest entered her box, saluted her, examined the house, and, as, in a crash of the orchestra, the curtain fell, seated himself, in response to a gesture, beside her.

Camille de Joyeuse turned to him, and with that smile of hers, said: “Do not fail to come on Sunday, Howard. There is to be a Madame Barouffska, whom I want you to meet. She was formerly a Mrs. Verplank. Barouffski is Number Two.”

“Verplank! Barouffski! What barbarous names!” Tempest exclaimed. He had vivid red hair, violent blue eyes, and a great scarlet cicatrix that tore one side of his face. In spite of the severity of his evening clothes, he looked rather barbarous himself. “What was she, a widow?”

“Yes, but with no tombstone to show. It appears that she was in love with Verplank for years, married him one minute and left him the next.”

Tempest stifled a yawn. “How extremely fastidious!”

“She ran away, got a divorce, met Barouffski and married him.”

“Very honourable of her, certainly. From what pond did you fish her?”

“The Silverstairs’. Violet Silverstairs is an American you know – ”

“Know! I should say I did know. Though, if I did not, I would take my oath to it. It’s got so a fellow can’t stir without running into one of them. How does Louis like her?”

Louis was the duke.

The duchess displayed her beautiful false teeth. “Oddly enough, when he was in the States, he went hunting with her Number One.”

“In the Rockies?” Tempest, with sudden interest, inquired. “In the Dakotas?”

“I fancy so. It was a place called, let me see; yes, Long Island, I think. I remember, he said it was very jolly.”

Tempest tossed his red head. “Her Number Two, I suppose, is that chap I have seen at the Little Club. The Lord knows how he got there. He looks like a thimblerigger.”

The duchess raised her opera-glass. “Possibly. Nowadays, so many men do, don’t you think? There is Marie de Fresnoy with the Helley-Quetgens! You will have her next to you on Sunday, Howard. Do not lacerate her tender heart.”

At the suggestion, Tempest made a face. His expression amused Camille de Joyeuse. Indulgently she added: “To make up for it you shall take Madame Barouffska out.”

But now the curtain was rising. The clear brilliance of the house faded into a golden gloom.

On the Sunday following, when Tempest reached the Cours la Reine, in which his cousin resided, there was a motor before the perron, and from it a woman was alighting. As rhythmically, with a grace that is rare in women who are not ballerines, she mounted the stair, Tempest had a vision of a figure, tall and slight, of a mass of black hair, and of a neck emerging from ermine. In the anteroom above, while a servant took from her her cloak and another received Tempest’s hat and coat, he saw that she was extremely beautiful.

Immediately a footman, throwing open a door, announced: “Madame la comtesse Barouffska!” He added at once: “Lord Howard Tempest!”

In this marriage of their names they entered a drawing room in which were the Joyeuses, the Fresnoys, the Silverstairs; others, also, who momentarily were indistinguishable. The room – large, wide, high-ceiled – was decorated gravely, with infinite taste. Beyond it, a suite of salons extended.

Camille de Joyeuse, advancing to meet her guests, presented Tempest to Mme. Barouffska.

In a voice which, if a trifle high, was fluted, the duchess added:

“My dear, this cousin of mine has a terrible reputation, and that, I am sure, will commend him to you.”

With the semblance of a smile, Mme. Barouffska replied:

“You know I am never quite able to decide just what construction to put on your remarks.”

“Put the worst, put the worst!” answered the duchess, whose costume left her splendidly nude. From a billowy corsage her shoulders and bust emerged as though rising through foam, while the light gold tissue of her gown accentuated the royal outlines of her figure.

Leilah Barouffska, slenderer, taller, wholly in white, contrasted ethereally with her. Turning to Tempest she said:

“Lord Howard, I have heard so much that is interesting about you.”

“Not from Muffins, then.”

“Yes, but also from Silverstairs. He told me that you are the best gentleman jockey in England and a Sanskrit scholar besides.”

“Oh, I can straddle a horse, if it comes to that, but otherwise he exaggerates. He has caught that from his wife – unless it happens to be from her sister.”

At mention of the girl, Leilah, who had been looking across the room, turned to Tempest again. In looking she saw this young woman whose allurements – and possibilities – were generally regarded as excessive. Recently she had become engaged – perhaps for the tenth time. Coincidentally was the announcement that she was going in for light opera. Now, in reference to her, Leilah said:

“You have met Aurelia, then?”

“I found it very difficult not to.”

“And this young Lord Buttercups to whom she is engaged, is he nice?”

Tempest adjusted his monocle. “Very. A trifle wrong in the upper story. So was his father. So was his grandfather. A fine old English family.”

Faintly, as before, Leilah smiled. “I understand that Aurelia is studying for the stage. Such a queer idea, don’t you think – for an American heiress, I mean.”

Tempest, extracting his eyeglass, nodded. “Nowadays, unless an idea is queer, it can hardly be called an idea at all. But I am glad this young person is studying something. When she went to school she must have been taught everything which it is easiest to forget.”

A servant announced:

“His Excellency, Mustim Pasha!”

The man who entered was short and stout. He had a full black beard, and the appearance, slightly Hebraic, which Turks possess. After M. de Joyeuse had greeted him, he saluted the duchess.

Beyond, on a sofa, Violet Silverstairs sat talking to the Baronne de Fresnoy, a young woman who looked very much as might a statuette of Tanagra, to which Grévin had given two big blue circles for eyes, and a small pink one for mouth, but a statuette articulated, perhaps, by Eros, and costumed, certainly, by the Rue de la Paix – though a shade less artistically than Lady Silverstairs, who always seemed to have just issued from some paradise inhabited solely by poet-modistes, and who, in addition, possessed what Mme. de Fresnoy lacked, a face delicately and rarely patrician.

Adjacently was her sister, Aurelia, a girl with a face like an opening rose, and a frock of such astonishing simplicity that it looked both virginal and ruinous. This young person had the loveliest eyes imaginable. In them and about an uncommonly bewitching mouth was an expression quite ideally ingénue which, when least expected, it amused her to transform into one of extreme effrontery.

On one side of her was Lord Buttercups, an English youth, small, snubnosed, stupid. On the other lounged a Roman, Prince Farnese, a remarkably fine-looking pauper.

Turning from the girl’s sister to the Turk, the young baroness called:

“Here, Musty, come and make love to us.”

The Asiatic was about to abandon Mme. de Joyeuse, when doors at the farther end of the room were thrown open, and the duchess put a hand on his arm.

At table, Tempest, who had taken Leilah Barouffska out, found his seat indicated beside her. At his left was Mme. de Fresnoy, whom he detested. He turned to the American. At the moment some preoccupation, a nostalgia or a regret, contracted the angle of her mouth. The contraction gave her the expression which those display who have deeply suffered either from some long malady or from some perilous constraint.

Mechanically, Tempest considered a dish which a footman, his hands gloved in silk, was presenting. When he again turned to the American, it was as though a curtain had fallen or risen. Her face had lighted, and it was with an entirely worldly air that she put before him this unworldly question:

“Do you believe in fate?”

Tempest laughed. “Not on an empty stomach. I believe then in nothing but virtue.”

Leilah put down her spoon. “It seems to me that our lives are sketched in advance. It may be that we have the power to amplify incidents or to curtail them, but the events themselves remain unchanged. They are there in our paths awaiting us. Though why they are there – ”

As was usual with her, she spoke with little pauses, in a voice that caressed the ear. Now she stopped and raised the spoon, in which was almond soup.

Tempest took a sip of Madeira. “A pal of mine, a chap I never met for a number of reasons, though particularly, I suppose, because he died two thousand years ago, well, he told me that we should wish things to be as they are. I have no quarrel with fate. But if you have, or do have – ”

A maître d’hôtel, after presenting a carp that had been arranged as though swimming in saffron, was supervising its service.

“Padapoulos,” exclaimed the young Baronne de Fresnoy, whom the sight of the fish had, perhaps, excited, “Padapoulos told me that he dined best on an orchid soup, a mousse of aubergine, and the maxims of Confucius.”

“Padapoulos,” the legate of the Sublime Porte gravely commented, “is a poet, and a Greek. Add those two things together, and you get – you get – ”

“Nothing to eat!” the young baroness, with an explosion of little laughs, threw at him. “Musty!” she cried. “Whom were you with at the Variétés last night? I saw you. Yes, I did. Oh, Musty, who would have thought that you would be unfaithful to me!”

“These Roumis!” the Turk mentally exclaimed. “If a wife of mine talked in that way I would have her impaled.”

Beyond, across an opulent bosom, de Joyeuse and Silverstairs were talking sport. They delighted in things that men have always loved, the pursuit of prey, the joy of killing, the murderous serenity of the woods.

Farther up was Aurelia. As before, she had Buttercups on one side, Farnese on the other. She poked at the former.

“That horrid de Fresnoy woman is trying to flirt with you, Parsnips. Now, don’t deny it. I don’t blame her. You are too good-looking. When we are married – if we ever are – I’ll make you wear a veil. You sha’n’t go out except in a closed carriage. Yes, and with some big, fat, strapping woman to look after you.”

Beatifically the youth considered her. “Couldn’t you do that?”

Delicately Aurelia raised a fork. “I shall have my own affairs to attend to.” For a second she nibbled. “I have a few on my hands as it is.”

Buttercups stabbed at his plate. “I, too, may have business of my own.”

“Business! Business!” The girl repeated. “You are so commercial just like all the nobility. If you were not a peer you would be mistaken for one. It’s quite painful.”

“That may b-be,” Buttercups spluttered. “But this idea of yours of going on the stage is quite as p-painful to me.”

He hesitated, then, as though uttering a great moral truth, threw out:

“It’s so dreadful to have your name in the papers!”

“And still more dreadful not to!” the girl threw back. She turned to Farnese. “You do nothing but eat!”

With large, melancholy, inconstant eyes the Italian looked at her. “It is my one consolation since you became engaged to that imbecile.”

Aurelia pecked at her food. “One always feels quite safe with an imbecile, and that is so restful. Try it and see.”

“I’d like to try it with you.”

Aurelia put down her fork. “Am I your idea of an imbecile? You are flattering, if insincere.”

Again the Roman covered her with his eyes. “It is rather difficult to be the one and not the other. But I am perfectly sincere in saying that you are my idea of perfection.”

“Thanks, but, then, you are not mine.”

“And might one ask what yours is?”

Dreamily, with an air of innocence that was infinite, Aurelia looked at him. “You will think it childish of me, perhaps, but, like all young girls – like all young and inexperienced girls – I have an ideal. A mere maiden’s fancy, no doubt, and yet one which I cherish so. It is a vision which at times I have of a blind man, a deaf mute, a divine creature, invalid and octogenarian, who would not know what I did and would not care.”

Pausing, she dropped her eyes and sadly shook her head. “You will tell me that he don’t exist.”

“He might be manufactured,” Farnese cheerfully replied.

Then he, too, paused, drank of the wine before him, and, perhaps stimulated by it, whispered:

“Believe me, I feel as though I could cut my throat for you.”

Maliciously Aurelia looked up. “When a man does not feel that way he has no feeling at all. One might even say that he is quite heartless.”