The Price of Things: Chapter 3

Chapter 3

It was nearing sunset in the garden below the Trocad�ro. A tall German
officer waited impatiently not far from the bronze of a fierce bull in a
secluded corner under the trees; he was plainly an officer although he
was clothed in mufti of English make. He was a singularly handsome
creature in spite of his too wide hips. A fine, sensual, brutal male.

He swore in his own language, and then, through the glorious light,
a woman came towards him. She wore an unremarkable overcoat and a
thick veil.

"Hans!" she exclaimed delightedly, and then went on in fluent German with
a strong American accent.

He looked round to be sure that they were alone, and then he clasped her
in his arms. He held her so tightly that she panted for breath; he kissed
her until her lips were bruised, and he murmured guttural words of
endearment that sounded like an animal's growl.

The woman answered him in like manner. It was as though two brute
beasts had met.

Then presently they sat upon a seat and talked in low tones. The woman
protested and declaimed; the man grumbled and demanded. An envelope
passed between them, and more crude caresses, and before they parted the
man again held her in close embrace--biting the lobe of her ear until she
gave a little scream.

"Yes--if there was time--" she gasped huskily. "I should adore you like
this--but here--in the gardens--Oh! do mind my hat!"

Then he let her go--they had arranged a future meeting. And left alone,
he sat down upon the bench again and laughed aloud.

The woman almost ran to the road at the bottom and jumped into a waiting
taxi, and once inside she brought out a gold case with mirror and powder
puff, and red greases for her lips.

"My goodness! I can't say that's a mosquito!" and she examined her ear.
"How tiresome and imprudent of Hans! But Jingo, it was good!--if there
only had been time--"

Then she, too, laughed as she powdered her face, and when she alighted at
the door of the Hotel du Rhin, no marks remained of conflict except the
telltale ear.

But on encountering her maid, she was carrying her minute Pekinese dog in
her arms and was beating him well.

"Regardez, Marie! la vilaine b�te m'a mordu l'oreil!"

"Tiens!" commented the affronted Marie, who adored Fou-Chou. "Et le cher
petit chien de Madame est si doux!"

* * * * *

Stanislass Boleski was poring over a voluminous bundle of papers when his
wife, clad in a diaphanous wrap, came into his sitting room. They had a
palatial suite at the Rhin. The affairs of Poland were not prospering as
he had hoped, and these papers required his supreme attention--there was
German intrigue going on somewhere underneath. He longed for Harietta's
sympathy which she had been so prodigal in bestowing before she had
secured her divorce from that brute of a Teutonic husband, whom she
hated so much. Now she hardly ever listened, and yawned in his face when
he spoke of Poland and his high aims. But he must make allowances for
her--she was such a child of impulse, so lovely, so fascinating! And here
in Paris, admired as she was, how could he wonder at her distraction!

"Stanislass! my old Stannie," she cooed in his ear, "what am I to wear
to-night for the Montivacchini ball? You will want me to look my best, I
know, and I just love to please you."

He was all attention at once, pushing the documents aside as she put her
arms around his neck and pulled his beard, then she drew his head back to
kiss the part where the hair was growing thin on the top--her eyes fixed
on the papers.

"You don't want to bother with those tiresome old things any more; go and
get into your dressing-gown, and come to my room and talk while I am
polishing my nails,--we can have half an hour before I must dress. I'll
wait for you here--I must be petted to-night, I am tired and cross."

Stanislass Boleski rose with alacrity. She had not been kind to him for
days--fretful and capricious and impossible to please. He must not lose
this chance--if it could only have been when he was not so busy--but--

"Run along, do!" she commanded, tapping her foot.

And putting the papers hastily in a drawer with a spring lock, he went
gladly from the room.

Her whole aspect changed; she lit a cigarette and hummed a tune, while
she fingered a key which dangled from her bracelet.

No one eclipsed Madame Boleski in that distinguished crowd later on.
Her clinging silver brocade, and the one red rose at the edge of the
extreme d�colletage, were simply the perfection of art. She did not wear
gloves, and on her beautifully manicured hands she wore no rings except
a magnificent ruby on the left little finger. It was her caprice to
refuse an alliance. "Wedding rings!" she had said to Stanislass. "Bosh!
they spoil the look. Sometimes it is chic to have a good jewel on one
finger, sometimes on another, but to be tied down to that band of homely
gold! Never!"

Stanislass had argued in those early days--he seldom argued now.

"My love!" he cried, as she burst upon his infatuated vision, when ready
for the ball, "let me admire you!"

She turned about; she knew that she was perfection.

Her husband kissed her fingers, and then he caught sight of the ruby
ring. He examined it.

"I had not seen this ruby before," he exclaimed in a surprised voice,
"and I thought I knew all your jewel case!"

She held out her hand while her big, stupid, appealing hazel eyes
expressed childish innocence.

"No--I'd put it away, it was of other days--but I do love rubies, and so
I got it out to-night, it goes with my rose!"

He had perceived this. Had he not become educated in the subtleties of a
woman's apparel? For was it not his duty often, and his pleasure
sometimes, to have to assist at her toilet, and to listen for hours to
discussions of garments, and if they could suit or not. He was even
accustomed now to waiting in the hot salons in the Rue de la Paix, while
these stately perfections were being essayed. But the ruby ring worried
him. Why had she asked him to give her just such a one only last month,
if she already possessed its fellow?... He had refused because her
extravagance had grown fantastic, but he had meant to cede later. Every
pleasure of the senses he always had to secure by bribes.

"I do not understand why?--" he began, but she put her hand over his
mouth and then kissed him voluptuously before she turned and shrilly
cried to Marie to bring her ermine cloak.

The maid's eyes were round and sullen with resentment; she had not
forgotten the beating of Fou-Chou! "As for the ear of Madame!" she said,
clasping the tiny dog to her heart, as she watched her mistress go
towards the lift from the sitting-room, "as for that maudite ear, thy
teeth are innocent, my angel! But I wish that he who is guilty had bitten
it off!" Then she laughed disdainfully.

"And look at the old fool! He dreams of nothing! And if he dreamed, he
would not believe--such _insens�s_ are men!"

Meanwhile the Boleskis had arrived at the hotel of the Duchesse di
Montivacchini, that rich and ravishing American-Italian, who gave the
most splendid and exclusive entertainments in Paris. So, too, had arrived
Sir John and Lady Ardayre, brought on from the dinner at the Ritz by
Verisschenzko.

Denzil had left that morning for England, or he would have had the
disagreeable experience of meeting his _soi-disant_ cousin, to whom he
had applied the epithet "toad." For Ferdinand Ardayre had just reached
the gay city from Constantinople, and had also come to the ball with a
friend in the Turkish Embassy.

He happened to be standing at the door when the Boleskis were announced,
and his light eyes devoured Harietta--she seemed to him the ideal of
things feminine--and he immediately took steps to be presented. Assurance
was one of his strongest cards. He was a fair man--with the fairness of a
Turk not European--and there was something mean and chetive in his
regard. He would have looked over-dressed and un-English in a London
ball-room, but in that cosmopolitan company he was unremarkable. He had
been his mother's idol and Sir James had left him everything he could
scrape from his highly mortgaged property. But certain tastes of his own
made a Continental life more congenial to him, and he had chosen early to
enter a financial house which took him to the East and Constantinople. He
was about twenty-seven years old at this period and was considered by
himself and a number of women to be a creature of superlative charm.

The one burning bitterness in his spirit was the knowledge that Sir John
Ardayre had never recognised him as a brother. During Sir James' lifetime
there had been silence upon the matter, since John had no legal reason
for denying the relationship, but once he had become master of Ardayre he
had let it be known that he refused to believe Ferdinand to be his
father's son. On the rare occasions when he had to be mentioned, John
called him "the mongrel" and Ferdinand was aware of this. A silent,
intense hatred filled his being--more than shared by his mother who,
until the day of her death, two years before, had always plotted
vengeance--without being able to accomplish anything. Either mother or
son would willingly have murdered John if a suitable and safe method had
presented itself. And now to know that John had married a beautiful
far-off cousin and might have children, and so forever preclude the
possibility of his--Ferdinand's--own inheritance of Ardayre was a further
incentive to hate! If only some means could be discovered to remove John,
and soon! But while Ferdinand thought these things, watching his
so-called brother from across the room, he knew that he was impotent.
Poisons and daggers were not weapons which could be employed in civilised
Paris in the twentieth century! If they would only come to
Constantinople!

Amaryllis Ardayre had never seen a Paris ball before. She was enchanted.
The sumptuous, lofty rooms, with their perfect Louis XV gilt _boiseries_,
the marvellous clothes of the women, the gaiety in the air! She was
accustomed to the new weird dances in England, but had not seen them
performed as she now saw them.

"This orgie of mad people is a wonderful sight," Verisschenzko said, as
he stood by her side. "Paris has lost all good taste and sense of the

fitness of things. Look! the women who are the most expert in the wriggle
of the tango are mostly over forty years old! Do you see that one in the
skin-tight pink robe? She is a grandmother! All are painted--all are
feverish--all would be young! It is ever thus when a country is on the
eve of a cataclysm--it is a dance Macabre."

Amaryllis turned, startled, to look at him, and she saw that his eyes
were full of melancholy, and not mocking as they usually were.

"A dance Macabre! You do not approve of these tangoes then?"

He gave a small shrug of his shoulders, which was his only form of
gesticulation.

"Tangoes--or one steps--I neither approve nor disapprove--dancing should
all have its meaning, as the Greek Orchises had. These dances to the
Greeks would have meant only one thing--I do not know if they would have
wished this to take place in public, they were an aesthetic and refined
people, so I think not. We Russians are the only so-called civilised
nation who are brutal enough for that; but we are far from being
civilised really. Orgies are natural to us--they are not to the French or
the English. Savage sex displays for these nations are an acquired taste,
a proof of vicious decay, the middle note of the end."

"I learned the tango this Spring--it is charming to dance," Amaryllis
protested. She was a little uncomfortable--the subject, much as she
was interested in the Russian's downright views, she found was
difficult to discuss.

"I am sure you did--you counted time--you moved your charming form this
way and that--and you had not the slightest idea of anything in it beyond
anxiety to keep step and do the thing well! Yes--is it not so?"

Amaryllis laughed--this was so true!

"What an incredibly false sham it all is!" he went on. "Started by
niggers or Mexicans for what it obviously means, and brought here
for respectable mothers, and wives, and girls to perform. For me a
woman loses all charm when she cheapens the great mystery-ceremonies
of love--"

"Then you won't dance it with me?" Amaryllis challenged smilingly--she
would not let him see that she was cast down. "I do so want to dance!"

His eyes grew fierce.

"I beg of you not! I desire to keep the picture I have made of you since
we met--later I shall dance it myself with a suitable partner, but I do
not want you mixed with this tarnished herd."

Amaryllis answered with dignity:

"If I thought of it as you do I should not want to dance it at all." She
was aggrieved that her expressed desire might have made him hold her less
high--"and you have taken all the bloom from my butterfly's wing--I will
never enjoy dancing it again--let us go and sit down."

He gave her his arm and they moved from the room, coming almost into
conflict with Madame Boleski and her partner, Ferdinand Ardayre, whose
movements would have done honour to the lowest nigger ring.

"There is your friend, Madame Boleski--she dances--and so well!"

"Harietta is an elemental--as I told you before--it is right that she
should express herself so. She is very well aware of what it all means
and delights in it. But look at that lady with the hair going grey--it is
the Marquise de Saint Vrilli�re--of the bluest blood in France and of a
rigid respectability. She married her second daughter last week. They all
spend their days at the tango classes, from early morning till
dark--mothers and daughters, grandmothers and demi-mondaines, Russian
Grand Duchesses, Austrian Princesses--clasped in the arms of incredible
scum from the Argentine, half-castes from Mexico, and farceurs from New
York--decadent male things they would not receive in their ante-chambers
before this madness set in!"

"And you say it is a dance Macabre? Tell me just what you mean."

They had reached a comfortable sofa by now in a salon devoted to bridge,
which was almost empty, the players, so eager to take part in the
dancing, that they had deserted even this, their favourite game.

"When a nation loses all sense of balance and belies the traditions of
its whole history, and when masses of civilised individuals experience
this craze for dancing and miming, and sex display, it presages some
great upheaval--some calamity. It was thus before the revolution of 1793,
and since it is affecting England and America and all of Europe it seems,
the cataclysm will be great."

Amaryllis shivered. "You frighten me," she whispered. "Do you mean some
war--or some earthquake--or some pestilence, or what?"

"Events will show. But let us talk of something else. A cousin of your
husband's, who is a very good friend of mine, was here yesterday. He went
to England to-day, you have not met him yet, I believe--Denzil Ardayre?"

"No--but I know all about him--he plays polo and is in the Zingari."

"He does other things--he will even do more--I shall be curious to hear
what you think of him. For me he is the type of your best in England.
We were at Oxford together; we dreamed dreams there--and perhaps time
will realise some of them. Denzil is a beautiful Englishman, but he is
not a fool."

A sudden illumination seemed to come into Amaryllis' brain; she felt how
limited had been all her thoughts and standpoints in life. She had been
willing to drift on without speculation as to the goal to be reached.
Indeed, even now, had she any definite goal? She looked at the Russian's
strong, rugged face, his inscrutable eyes narrowed and gazing ahead--of
what was he thinking? Not stupid, ordinary things--that was certain.

"It is the second evening, amidst the most unlikely surroundings, that
you have made me speculate about subjects which never troubled me before.
Then you leave me unsatisfied--I want to know--definitely to know!"

"Searcher after wisdom!" and he smiled. "No one can teach another very
much. Enlightenment must come from within; we have reached a better stage
when we realise that we are units in some vast scheme and responsible for
its working, and not only atoms floating hither and thither by chance.
Most people have the brains of grasshoppers; they spring from subject to
subject, their thoughts are never under control. Their thoughts rule
them--it is not they who rule their thoughts."

They were seated comfortably on their sofa, and Verisschenzko leaning
forward from his corner, looked straight into her eyes.

"You control your thoughts?" she asked. "Can you really only let them
wander where you choose?"

"They very seldom escape me, but I consciously allow them indulgences."

"Such as?"

"Visions--day dreams--which I know ought not to materialise."

Something disturbed her in his regard; it was not easy to meet, so full
of magnetic emanation. Amaryllis was conscious that she no longer felt
very calm--she longed to know What his dreams could be.

"Yes--but if I told you, you would send me away."

It seemed that he could read her desire. "I shall order myself to be
gone presently, because the interest which you cause me to feel would
interfere with work which I have to do."

"And your dreams? Tell them first?" she knew that she was playing
with fire.

He looked down now, and she saw that he was not going to gratify her
curiosity.

"My noblest dream is for the regeneration of a nation--on that I have
ordered my thoughts to dwell. For the others, the time is not yet for me
to tell you of them--it may never come. Now answer me, have you yet seen
your new home, Ardayre?"

"No, but why should you be interested in that? It seems strange that you,
a Russian, should even know that there is such a place as Ardayre!"

"Continue--I know that it is a wonderful place, and that your husband
loves it more than his life."

Amaryllis pouted slightly.

"He does indeed! Perhaps I shall grow to do so also when I know it; it is
the family creed. Sir James--my late father-in-law--was the only
exception to this rule."

"You must uphold the idea then, and live to do fine things."

"I will try--if only--" then she paused, she could not say "if only John
would be human and unfreeze to me, and love me, and let us go on the road
together hand in hand!"

"It is quite useless for a family merely to continue from generation to
generation piling up possessions, and narrowing its interests. It must do
this for a time to become solid, and then it should take a vaster view,
and begin to help the world. Nearly everything is spoiled in all
civilisation because of this inability to see beyond the nose, this poor
and paltry outlook."

"People rave vaguely," Amaryllis argued, "about one's duty and vast
outlooks and those things, but it is difficult to get any one to give
concrete advice--what would you advise me to do, for instance?"

"I would advise you first to begin asking yourself the reason of
everything, each day, since Pandora's box has been opened for you in any
case. 'What caused this? What caused that?' Search for causes--then
eradicate the roots, if they are not good, do not waste time on trying to
ameliorate the results! Determine as to why you are put into such and
such a place, and accomplish what you discover to be the duty of the
situation. But how serious we have become! I am not a priest to give you
guidance--I am a man fighting a tremendously strong desire to take you in
my arms--so come, we will return to the ball room, and I will deliver you
to your husband."

Amaryllis rose and stood facing him, her heart was beating fast. "If I
try to do well--to climb the straight road of the soul's advancement,
will you give me counsel should I need it by the way?"

"Yes, this I will do when I have complete control, but for the moment you
are causing me emotions, and I wish to keep you a thing apart--of the
spirit. Hermits and saints subdue the flesh by abstinence and fasting;
they then become useless to the world. A man can only lead men while he
remains a man, with a man's passions, so that he should not fight in this
beyond his strength--only he should _never sully the wrong thing_. Come!
Return to the husband--and I shall go for a while to hell."

And presently Amaryllis, standing safely with John, saw Verisschenzko
dancing the maddest one-step with Madame Boleski, their undulations
outdoing all others in the room!

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