The Monster. Saltus Edgar
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