The Monster. Saltus Edgar
demonstration that life is a laboratory in which the strength of the soul is tried.”
“And in the Vidyâ?”
“The fact that selfishness is the root of evil. That impressed me very much, primarily I suppose because it is true, but chiefly I think because I had not realized it before.”
Tempest nodded. Never had he heard a mondaine cite the Upanishads. In no drawing room had he ever heard the Vidyâ mentioned. In his life he had not dreamed of having a digest of each produced in an atmosphere dripping with frivolities. As he nodded he reconsidered this woman. From the first he had realized that she differed from the ordinary society type. Now he saw that she belonged to a superior world.
“Do you not admire them, too?” Leilah, who had also been considering him, inquired.
Tempest adjusted his monocle. “You see, you know, the Self, the All-Self, the One, the oneness of self with everything, the oneness of all things with One, these minor motifs of theirs I may admire but I do not grasp. On the contrary, there is a certain voluminous complexity about them that makes me gasp. None the less they advance certain ideas which, while curious to the few and to the many absurd, are yet so mathematically evident; the fact for instance——”
A servant announced:
“His Highness monseigneur le prince Paul de Montebianco!”
“Monsieur Harris!”
The salons were becoming filled. The floor was swept by trains brief but brilliant. There was a multiplication of black coats, a renewed animation, a mounting murmur in which occasionally the name of a new arrival was lost.
The servant announced:
“Monsieur le vicomte and madame la vicomtesse de Helley-Quetgen!”
“Madame la princesse Zubaroff!”
“Monsieur d’Arcy!”
“Monsieur le comte Barouffski!”
The last of these, a large man, very fair, with grey-green eyes, had a studied manner which, however, his voice relieved. As he advanced and addressed Mme. de Joyeuse, it sounded supple and silken, as indeed most Slav voices do.
Already groups had formed. The corner in which Tempest stood before Leilah developed another. The Spencer-Pooles approached. With them was d’Arcy, a young man abominably good looking, famous for the prodigious variety of his affairs.
Tempest who had continued talking, who had even been expounding and who now felt that he had been holding forth, moved on. He wanted to smoke and being an habitué of the household, he knew where the smoking room was.
There, before an open fire, his hands behind his back, in that after-dinner attitude which some men assume, M. de Joyeuse stood. He was telling of a stag hunt that had been held at Monplaisir, his estate.
The duke was not an impressionist, his description lacked colour. But de Fresnoy, who had been present, resaw it all; the sheen of the horses, the green of the whippers-in, the pink coats of the sportsmen, the blue dolmans of the officers that had ridden over from a garrison near by, the verdure of the forest’s edge, the view, the scramble, the run, the quarry, the hallali of the huntsman, the leaping hounds, the fastidious ceremonial of the death and the sky of pale silk which draped with faint gold the magnificent brutality of the scene.
“It was just my luck to have missed it,” Silverstairs threw in.
De Joyeuse turned to him. “We count on you next autumn. And on you also, mon vieux,” he added to Tempest who had approached.
Tempest nodded. He was lighting a cigar. The operation concluded, he drew a chair beside Silverstairs. “Now, tell me all about Madame B.”
Silverstairs eyed him quizzingly. “She interests you?”
“Enormously.”
“Then look out for Barouffski whom she interests still more.”
Tempest shrugged his shoulders. “Was it her interest in Number One or Number One’s interest in her that declined?”
“You mean Verplank?”
“I suppose I do. Anyway I mean her first husband. Why were they divorced?”
“Why? But my dear Tempest, divorce in the States is what racing is with us, a national amusement. Everybody takes a hand in it.”
“The right or the left?”
“Both I fancy. Though in the case of Madame B. I have an idea that the right turned out to be wrong.”
Tempest flicked the ashes from his cigar. “I may compliment you, Silverstairs. You have a manner of expressing yourself which is highly cryptic. But now, to an every day sort of chap like myself, would you mind being less abstruse?”
“I should feel sordid if I refused. Verplank is a very good sort, whereas this Barouffski is a rotter.”
Tempest bowed. “Thank you for descending to my level. The long and short of it is that she has made a mess of it. Well, most people do. I don’t wonder now that over the soup she talked about fate.”
“Oh, as for that, after certain experiences of my own, with which, pray do not be alarmed, I have no intention of boring you, I have stopped wondering at anything at all.”
“Silverstairs, in ceasing to be cryptic, do not become Spartan. My cousin told me that Joyeuse hunted with this, with What’s-his-name, with—er——”
“With Verplank?”
“Yes, that he had hunted with him in the States. And that reminds me. What have you decided about that horse?”
Silverstairs pulled at his straw-coloured moustache. “I’ll let you know to-morrow. When are you to be at home?”
“Any time after two.”
Silverstairs nodded. “Very good, I will drop in on you.”
From beyond, blue and vibrant, came the upper notes of a violin. In the now crowded salons a Roumanian, the rage of the season, a youth, very pale, with melancholy eyes, flowing hair and the waist of a girl, was executing a fantasy of his own.
De Joyeuse flicked a speck from his sleeve, threw back his noble and empty head, gave a circular look of inquiry, a little gesture of invitation, and accompanied by his friends, sauntered to the rooms without.
There, Barouffski after saluting Mme. de Joyeuse had engaged her briefly in talk. But her attention had been attracted rather than claimed by the Montebiancan prince, a young man extremely gentlemanly and equally modest who, with that diffidence which royals and poets share, stood bashfully at her side.
Barouffski, bowing again, passed on. During his short and entirely fragmentary conversation with Mme. de Joyeuse, his eyes had rummaged the room.
Leilah, meanwhile, rising from the sofa where she had been seated, moved with the inflammatory d’Arcy into the salon beyond.
Barouffski would have followed. But the young Baronne de Fresnoy addressed him. Perversely, with sudden glimpses of little teeth and an expression of glee in her piquant face, she asked:
“Was it you who performed that high act of gallantry at Longchamps to-day?”
“Was it I who did what?” Barouffski surprisedly exclaimed.
“What was it?” asked Aurelia, who with Buttercups in tow, had approached.
But Mme. de Fresnoy waved at her. “Go away my dear, it is not for an ingénue.”
“Ah then, but you see,” Aurelia indolently interjected, “I am tired of being an ingénue. An ingénue is supposed to be in a state of constant surprise and that is so exhausting.”
None the less, with Buttercups still in tow she betook herself to a corner where she was promptly joined by Farnese.
Then