Edgar Saltus - The Monster

“Gammon!” cried this man who at Eton and Christ Church had abundantly acquired everything which is most useless. “I never heard such rot.”

“I daresay, but that is not the point. The point is that it is no joke to her.”

Nor was it. Leilah at first refused to go anywhere, to see any one, to be present when there were guests. But Violet, declaring that she would have no moping in her diggings, forced her. It was very reluctantly that Leilah acceded. After a while she did so as a matter of course. Finally, as was inevitable, she accepted invitations elsewhere.

It was what Violet had aimed at, though not at all at the result. Yet that, Leilah, who had come to believe in karma, afterward regarded as fate.

Presently, it so fell about that at one dinner she had at her left a man whom she did not know, whose name she had not caught and with whom, during the preliminary courses, she had not exchanged a word. As the dinner progressed, cigarettes were served. Twice she refused them. The second time, as she turned again to the man at her right, she heard a cry, across the table she saw a face, the eyes staring, the features elongated. At once there was an uproar, behind her there was a crash, she was torn bodily from her chair, a piece of tapestry had been thrown about her and in it she was rolled on the floor by the man whom she did not know.

Probably, at no dinner, anywhere, had a woman suffered such indignities. She was so telling herself when she realised, as she immediately did realise, that the man and others who had joined him, were but occupied in saving her life. Her dress had caught fire and it was in this flaming fashion, hurled on the floor by a stranger and there brutalised by him, that she made the acquaintance of Count Kasimiérz Barouffski.

The sack of her costume forced her to return to the rue François Premier, where at five o’clock the next day, Barouffski appeared. He appeared the day following, the day after, the day after that.

These attentions Violet Silverstairs viewed with suspicion.

“I verily believe,” she said to Leilah, “that it was that polecat who set you on fire, and if he did no one can convince me that he did not do it on purpose.”

“Violet!”

“That’s right, fly at me. I thought you would. Are you going to take him?”

In an elaborate drawing room in the rue François Premier the two women were having tea. Leilah, without replying, raised her cup.

Violet cocked an eye at her. “One would have thought that you had had enough of matrimony. But perhaps your intentions are not honourable.”

Leilah reddened. “Violet!” she again exclaimed.

“My dear,” Lady Silverstairs resumed, “remember that you are no longer in the States. England is the most hypocritical country in Europe. America is the most hypocritical country in the world. That is what we call progress. But France being old-fashioned and behind the times is not censorious. I admit, I used to be. But I am not censorious any longer. I am not because any such état d’âme while advanced is not becoming.

“I am an old married woman,” added the lady who was not twenty-two. “But if I were not, if for instance I were like you, free, independent and not a fright, and I had to choose between love and matrimony, it would not take me a moment to decide. Not one.”

Leilah put down her cup. “Of course it would not. If you had it to do again you would marry Silverstairs and you would marry for love. That is over for me, over forever.”

Narrowly, out of a corner of an eye, Violet considered her. “He was such a brute, was he?”

“Who? Gulian, do you mean?”

“I suppose so. There has been no other, has there?”

“Violet!”

It was at this juncture, for the fiftieth time, that Lady Silverstairs exclaimed:

“It is downright mean of you to keep me in the dark. What was it that happened? Make a soiled breast of it. Do!”

For the fiftieth time Leilah protested:

“Don’t ask me. Don’t. He knows and that is enough. As for me I am trying to forget.”

“And you think Barouffski will help you. But has it ever occurred to you that if you were not very rich he might lack the incentive?”

To this Leilah assented. “He said he is poor.”

“At least he does not exaggerate. I told Silverstairs that he was after you for your money and he said that was what he married me for. So he did and I married him for his title. It was a fair bargain. Now if we had it to do over I would say – I would say – well, I would say that it is better to have loved your husband than never to have loved at all. But six months hence, if you had it to do over, do you think you could say as much – or as little?”

“At least I could say that I did not marry for a title.”

“Well, hardly, particularly a Polish one, though I daresay even that might be useful in the servants’ hall. But what could you say you married for? It isn’t love?”

“No.”

“Nor position?”

“No.”

“Then what on earth – ”

“Violet, how hard you make it for me. Can’t you see that if I do, it will be for protection?”

“For protection! Merciful fathers! You talk like a chorus girl! Protection against what? Against whom? Verplank?”

“No.” Leilah choking down something in her throat, replied: “Against myself.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Violet slowly. But she did or thought she did, and that night told Silverstairs that Leilah was still in love with her ex.

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