Edgar Saltus - The Monster

“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.”