The Perfume of Eros: A Fifth Avenue Incident

This defect Fanny had fancied that she could overlook. She was young, therefore ignorant, and, in fancying that she could ignore that fatal defect, fancied also that she had the ability to order herself about, to command her nature and dictate to her heart. The fallacy is common. Many of us have entertained it and kept at it too until the discovery is made that the heart is a force which we must yield to or break.

Fanny became aware of this shortly after Loftus returned. There in her existence was the If. As a consequence, although Annandale was quite perfect to her, his perfection was as nothing to his one defect.

Of this defect Annandale was wholly unconscious. Yet, though he could not see the mote in his own eye, there was one in Fanny's which, though he saw, he was unable to define. It is true on the mote question he was not an expert. A husband, particularly when he happens to be big and blond, seldom is. Then, too, the effect of the mote was odd. It affected Fanny's disposition. When he approached her he could not but notice that she became elusive. He could not but perceive that she was as afraid of a kiss as of a bee.

"What is the matter with you?" he inquired on one occasion when she appeared even more tantalizingly intangible than he had seen her yet.

"Women are the very devil," he muttered as, without answering, she moved yet further away.

The question, though, was very unreasonable. So at least Mrs. Price, whom he tried to take into his confidence, assured him with fine scorn. "The idea of a man asking his wife what is the matter with her!" she exclaimed. "A man ought to know. If he doesn't, how in the world can he expect her to?"

But that was before the episode with Loftus in the Park. Had Annandale gone to Mrs. Price then she would have been quite capable of putting a flea in his ear. That opportunity he neglected. Stocks were soaring. On paper he was making money hand over fist. He had no time to bother with women's whims. When men do have time for such things the time has passed.

Even then it had gone. One night early in May Fanny had a few people in, among whom were Loftus and Sylvia Waldron.

Sylvia, who long since had let bygones be bygones, was now as sisterly as ever with Fanny, and with Annandale on terms friendly and frank, an attitude which, as Fanny put it, "made it so easy, don't you know, all around." Yet then in putting it in that way Fanny may have been actuated by the fellow-feeling which makes us all so wondrous kind. With Loftus she was rather friendly herself.

That, however, by the way. During the dinner a telegram was brought to Annandale. It concerned the morrow's market and interested him considerably. As soon as he decently could he got away to confer with Skitt. Later the other guests began to go. But Loftus lingered. Presently he and Fanny were alone.

"How is the lady?" Fanny negligently inquired.

Her arms and neck were bare. Her dress, immaterial as cobwebs, was of starbeams' restful hue. About her throat was a string of opals. They were colorful, though less so than her eyes and mouth.

She was seated on a sofa. Loftus was standing. As always, he was superiorly sent out. Other men who got their things at the same places that he got his never succeeded, however they tried, in appearing half so well.

"Do you know," Fanny continued, "she has improved vastly since that day when I saw you trying to pick her up. How did you ever manage? Tell me."

Loftus, his hands in his pockets, shrugged a shoulder.

"And she is so delightfully disdainful," Fanny ran on. "In Central Park this afternoon she turned up her nose at me. It is a very pretty nose, Royal, did you know that?"

"I know that it is a bit out of joint," Loftus condescended at last to reply.

"Dear me! Fancy that! But then the course of true love never did run smooth."

Loftus assumed an air of great weariness. "Do drop it," he said. "You know very well that I have never cared for anyone but you."

"Oh, of course," Fanny promptly and pleasantly retorted. "I may have had a doubt or two about it. But when you put this lady in a flat around the corner, then, naturally, you convinced me. It was a rather circuitous way, though, to go at it, don't you think?"

Beside her on the sofa Loftus flopped. "Why do you always go back to that?" he asked, with the same affectation of weariness.

Fanny turned from him. "I don't seem to be able to get away from it," she answered, but less promptly and pleasantly than before. Her fair face had grown serious. From her eyes the bantering look had gone. "Besides," she added after a moment, "you took her to Europe, and that did seem a trifle steep."

"Would you like her to go back there?" Loftus tentatively inquired.

In and out from Fanny's skirt a white slipper, butterflied with gold, moved restlessly. "I should have preferred that you had let her alone. It was not nice of you. It was not nice at all."

From him she had turned to the carpet. She was looking at it still. "I wonder," she presently resumed, "if you ever suspected how it hurt me." Pausing a bit she looked up. "But you have been so dense, Royal."

Loftus was about to interrupt. She checked him. "The first time I saw you I was just fifteen. That is eight years ago. Since then I can honestly say that until I accepted Arthur I had never thought of anyone but you. Never. Not once. Can you realize now how this affair of yours affected me? It hurt. If it had not been for that, do you suppose I would have taken the prince in the fairy tale? You were my prince."

"But," Loftus protested, "this affair, as you call it, came about only faute de mieux, faute de toi. Why cannot I – why cannot we – ?"

Fanny checked him again. "No, we cannot. Two years ago you said the same thing to me. I forgave you then because I loved you. For the same reason I forgive you now. But, however I care for you, never will I be your mistress."

"Fanny – "

"No, never. If, as again and again you have told me during the past few months, you still care for me, either you must love me openly or I will not permit you to love me at all."

At the sudden horizon Loftus bent to her. "Let us go, then. In Europe we can love before all the world."

Fanny drew back. "Particularly before all the half-world," she answered with a sniff. "No. You misunderstand me. Perhaps, too, I misunderstand you. Let my hand be."

"Fanny, I will do anything – "

"It is rather late to say that. But if I were free now, what would you do? Would you repeat the invitation you have made?"

Loftus, his wonderful eyes looking deep into hers, answered quickly and sweetly, "I would beg you to be my wife."

Fanny straightened herself. "Then give that girl her congé, give her a dot too, send her abroad and let her marry some count."

"Very good, I will do so."

"When you have," said Fanny, "I will ask Arthur for a divorce."

"What?" And Loftus, with those wonderful eyes, stared in surprise. He was in for it, let in for it, was his first impression. Yet at once, on looking back, he realized that Fanny was incapable of trick of any kind. "But," he objected, "supposing he refuses?"

"Then I will apply."

"But you can't, you see. He is good as gold."

"Oh, I don't mean here. I mean out West."

For a moment Loftus said nothing. Even in the West, he reflected, divorce took time. Yet then, reflecting, too, that it would be very gentlemanly of Annandale were he to go there and leave the coast free for him, he smiled and remarked, with what seemed astounding inappositeness, "I have been selling short."

"Ah!" said Fanny longly. "And what of it?"

"Unless the market turns I shall be out, God knows how much!"

"But what of it?" Yet even as she spoke she understood. "Fiddlesticks!" she exclaimed with a gesture of annoyance. "I sha'n't care if you haven't two cents."

To this Loftus had no chance to reply. Annandale came lounging in.

"Do you know what I have done?" he collectively and blandly inquired. "I told Skitt to buy me, at the opening, 1,000 Atchison and 1,000 Steel. Now I would like a quiet drink."

Loftus stood up. "I am going in the Park for a quiet smoke. But I thought you had sworn off."

Annandale tugged at his cavalry mustache and laughed. "I haven't touched a thing for nearly a year. But on a night like this, when the whole town is mad, I think I might have a drop. Stop, dear boy, won't you, and have one with me? No? Well – " And, accompanying Loftus to the door, he whispered to him there, "My compliments to Miss Leroy."

"Don't forget, Royal," Fanny called after him, "that you dine with us on the ninth."

CHAPTER III

THE GATES OF LIFE

IN her sitting-room at the Arundel Marie sat. It was nearly midnight. Hours before she had dined. Since then she had wandered from one room to another, from one chair to another, wondering would Loftus come. Sometimes he did. More often he did not. She never knew beforehand. It was as it pleased him. Always the uncertainty irked her. But on this evening it was particularly enervating. She had reached the gates of her endurance. She could stand no more. She must pass through them, pass or fall back, where she did not know, but somewhere, to some plane, in which, though life forsook her, at least its degradation would be foregone.

At first, in the old days, when he met her in the ex-first lady's den, it had seemed to her that life would be incomplete without him. Then it had seemed that with him it would be fulfilled to the tips. Subsequently the long train of disenchantments had ensued. In Paris he had pained her greatly. There, after a series of those things, little in themselves, but which, when massed, become mountainous, she had been forced to consider not her love for him but the nature of such love as he had for her. In him there was a reticence which perplexed, depths which she could not reach. At times his silence was that of one to whom something has happened, who is suffering from some constraint, from some pressure or from some long illness of which traces remain. At others, it had exasperated her, it made her feel like a piano, on which, a piece played, the cover is shut. She had seemed to serve as a pastime, nothing more; a toy which now and then he took up, but only because it was there, beneath his feet. Yet even then she was not quite unhappy. Even then she had faith. She believed in him still. Hope had not gone.

Hope has its braveries. Its outposts patrol our lives. Until death annihilates it and us, always beyond is a sentry. The sentry which she still discerned was the promise he had made. Latterly it had not been much of a sentry. It had far more resembled a straw. But it was all she had. She had clung to it. Hope indeed has its braveries, but it has its cowardices as well.

This hope, ultimate and forlorn, she knew now was craven, mated to her degradation, born of her shame. If it were to be realized the realization must delay no more. She was at the gates. She must pass through. On that she had decided. When Loftus came she would tell him so. She would tell him that she would work for him, slave for him, envelop him with her love, pillow him on her heart. Though he lost his wretched money what would it matter to her and how should it matter to him? She could sing him if not into affluence at least into ease. Tambourini, with whom until recently she had studied, had told her not once, out of politeness merely, but again and again that in her throat was a volcano of gold. With Italian exaggeration he had called her Pasta, Alboni, Malibran, predicting their triumphs for her. If Loftus would make an honest woman of her those triumphs would be for him. But as she told herself that she told herself too that such triumphs he would prefer to avoid. He should have, though, the chance. If he rejected it she would go. And of its rejection she had little manner of doubt. But the chance he should have, yes, even though she knew beforehand that with his usual civility – a civility which she had learned to hate – he would hand it back. She could see him at it. She could see his negligent smile. That smile she had learned too to hate. Always she loved him to distraction, but sometime she hated him to the death.

From Loftus for a moment her thoughts veered to Tambourini. The week previous suddenly, without warning, he had told her torrentially that he adored her. He was a good teacher. Yet, of course, after that she had been obliged to let him go.

But now her thoughts were interrupted. At the table where she sat she started, her head drawn abruptly in that attitude which deers have when surprised. In the door without had come the fumble of a key and, in the hall, she caught the almost noiseless tread of her lover. As he entered she got from her seat. Loftus had his hat on. He took it off, put it down on the table and taking a cigar from his pocket lit it at the chimney of a lamp that was there.

At the conclusion of the operation he looked at her. Her dress was canary. From the short loose sleeves lace fell that was repeated at the neck. There a yellow sapphire had been pinned. As he looked at her, she looked at him.

"I have something to say to you, Marie," he began.

With an uplift of the chin she answered: "And I, Royal, have something to say to you."

"The usual thing, I suppose. Well, shy a teacup at me if you like, but spare me a scene."

As he spoke he seated himself. "Marie," he at once resumed, "I shall have to take my mother up the Hudson shortly – "

The girl interrupted him. "Does Mrs. Annandale go too?"

The man's cigar had gone out. He relighted it. "No," he replied, "the last time I saw her she said something about going West."

"Ah!" Marie exclaimed, and immediately with that curious intuition which women that really love possess she added, "to Dakota?"

"Perhaps," replied Loftus with a puff. The surety of the shot amazed him, but of the amazement he gave no sign. "Perhaps, though I do not remember that she said just where she did intend to go." He drew in a large mouthful of smoke, which leisurely he blew forth. It circled about her. She moved away. "Oh, excuse me," he said, "I did not mean – " The girl made a gesture of indifference. "You see," he began again, "the point is just here. My mother is not well. She rather wants me with her this summer. In the circumstances I thought you might like to go abroad."

Marie, through half-closed eyes, cautiously peered at him. "Without you?" she asked.

Loftus nodded.

"For good?"

To this Loftus made no answer. Provided she went, though it were for bad, he did not much care.

Marie, who had been standing, crossed the room and recrossed it. A year before she had suggested the kitten. Where that had been the leopard had come. In her movements were the same supple ease, the same grace and alertness. Suddenly at the table where he sat she stopped, rested a hand on it and bending a little looked him in the face.

"Liar," she muttered. "Liar! I know and so do you. Yes, I knew it almost from the first, but, though I knew it, I tried as hard to deceive myself as you did to deceive me. You never intended to marry me, not for a moment, not even at the moment when you called God to witness that you would."

Her hand had gone from the table, from it and him she turned away.

Loftus, who at the arraignment had retreated a full inch in his chair, called after her. "It is untrue; what I said, I meant."

Marie turned back. "Then if you meant it, marry me this night. If you have any honor, any whatever, a spark of it, you will; if not – "

She paused and looked at him. It was not this at all she had meant to say. She had meant to entreat him, to picture what their life might be, to tell him of her enveloping love, and that failing, to go, but to go without words, without reproaches, without suffering that which had been between them to be marred by vituperation and, so marred, to descend to the level of some coarse intrigue. But something, his manner, the manifest lie about his mother, the apparition of that other woman, battening on nerves overwrought had irritated her into entire forgetfulness of what she had meant to do and say.

The pause Loftus noticed. What was behind it he misconstrued. "Don't mind me," he encouragingly interjected. "Threaten away. It is so nice and well-bred. Yet I must be allowed to say that while I did intend to marry you, the intention has been rather weakened through just such scenes as this. Though, to be frank, it is not so much that I object to scenes as it is that, if scenes there must be, I prefer to make them myself."

At the humor of that Marie ran her nails into her hands, dug them in. Without some such moxa it seemed to her that she might take and hurl the lamp at him, fire the place and, fate favoring, be calcinated with him there.

"And now that I have been frank," he went on, "let me be franker. You and I have ceased to be able to hit it off. The blame for that I will, if you like, assume."

Then he too paused. But not at all because he did not fully know what he meant to do and say.

"Marie," he continued, putting a hand in a pocket as he spoke, "in the past year we have been more than friends. Friends at least let us remain. Friends do part, and for awhile we must. Your voice, like yourself, is charming. If I may advise, go and study abroad. Though if you prefer remain here. But, of course, whatever you do you will need money. I have brought some."

In his hand now was a card case which he offered her. She took it, looked at it, opened it, then moving to a window she raised the sash and threw the card case into the night, yet so quickly and unexpectedly that Loftus had no time to interfere.

"That is an agreeable way of getting rid of twelve thousand dollars," he remarked.

Yet, however lightly he affected to speak, the action annoyed him. Like all men of large means he was close. It seemed to him beastly to lose such a sum. He got up, went to the window and looked down. He could not see the case and he much wanted to go and look for it. But that for the moment Marie prevented.

"If it were twelve times twelve million," she exclaimed, "I would do the same! Oh, Royal," she cried, "don't you know it is not your money I want; don't you know it is you?"

Loftus did know, but he did not care. The flinging away of the money was all he could think of. It was an act which he could not properly qualify as plebeian, but which seemed to him crazily courtesanesque. He returned to the table and picked up his hat. "I am going," he announced.

Marie sprang at him. "Is that your answer?"

He brushed her aside. She saw that he was going, saw too, or thought she saw, that he was going never to return, saw also that now at last she was at the gates.

"My God!" she cried. "My God!"

So resonant was the cry that Loftus turned, not to her but to the window. He closed it. But already the cry had passed elsewhere.

From regions beyond a fat negress waddled hurriedly in. Her eyes rolled whitely from the girl to Loftus and then again to the girl.

"Are you sick, miss?"

"Go away," said Loftus, "there is nothing the matter."

"Nothing?" exclaimed Marie. "Nothing!" she repeated in a higher key. "Nothing!" Then, visibly, anger enveloped her. "Do you call it nothing to be cheated and decoyed? Nothing to have faith and love and be gammoned of them by a living lie, by a perjury in flesh and blood? Is that what you call nothing? Is it? Then tell me what something is?"

At the moment she stared at Loftus, her lips still moving, her breast heaving, her small hands clenched, her face very white. And Loftus stared at her. In the vehemence and contempt of her anger he did not recognize at all the kitten of the year before. But it was very vulgar, he decided.

That vulgarity Blanche complicated at once. "What has he done, miss?" she asked, her hands on her hips.

"Done?" Marie echoed. "He has made me drink of shame. Now, tired of that, he is going."

"Not to leave you, miss?"

"To leave me for another woman."

"Then hanging is too good for him."

Loftus gestured at the negress. "I say," he called. "Did you hear what I told you? Go away and hold your tongue."

Blanche's eyes that had rolled whitely before were rolling now not merely whitely but wildly.

"I won't go away, sir. I won't hold my tongue, sir. I am as good as you, sir. I have a son that's better nor you, sir. He wouldn't treat a lady as you have her, sir. Staying away from her as you have, sir. Making her eat her heart out, sir. No, sir, I won't hold my tongue, sir."

And Blanche, mounting in paroxysms of indignation, shouted: "For the Lord's sake, sir. Hanging is too good for you, sir. You ought to have your ghost kicked. Yes, sir."

"Oh, hell!" muttered Loftus between his teeth, and turning on his heel, he stalked out, flecking from his sleeve as he went an imaginary speck.

CHAPTER IV

THE RETURN OF THE YELLOW FAY

IN Fanny's drawing-room the next evening, at six minutes after eight, Loftus appeared. Although tolerably punctual, others had preceded him. On a sofa with Fanny was Sylvia Waldron. On another sofa were Mrs. Waldron and Melanchthon Orr. Annandale, who seemed to have lost flesh, was standing in the middle of the floor.

"How are you?" he asked as Loftus entered.

"And you?"

"They did me," Annandale answered. "Atch., U. P., St. Paul, Steel, I had the list." As he spoke he mopped himself. Then in confidential aside, he added, "It has affected my stomach. It is as though I had a hole there. Will you have a sherry and bitters?"

Loftus moved forward to where Sylvia and Fanny sat. Fanny gave him a finger; Sylvia, a little distant nod. She was dressed in white. About her neck was a string of pearls. Fanny was in a frock of tender asparagus green fluttered with lace, very cool to the eye and cut rather low.

"I hope Arthur isn't hurt much," said Loftus.

"Are you?" Fanny asked.

"No. I have been selling. Today I covered. It was not easy, though. Everybody was crazy. I have never seen a panic before."

"It will be a generation before you see another," Orr, from across the room, called out.

At the further end of the room Harris, Annandale's former valet, since promoted to the position of butler, appeared, smug-faced and solemn, in silent announcement of dinner.

For the time being the subject was abandoned, but presently when at table all were seated it was resumed.

"It will cost the country $50,000,000," said Orr. He was at Fanny's left. At her right was Loftus.

"Well," said Annandale, emptying a glass of Ruinart, "I am glad I don't have to produce it." Emptying another glass he added, "I have produced all I could."

"I think I do not quite understand," said Mrs. Waldron, who led a highly unspeculative life and seldom saw the evening papers.

Orr and Annandale both hastened to enlighten her. Ever since the Presidential election there had been a boom in the Street, a soaring market in which the whole community, down to and including messenger boys and chorus girls, had joined. On this, the ninth of May, it had, in the slang of the Street, just "busted." Since the great black day of a generation previous, never had there been such a crash, so many landed gentry, so much paper profit sunk into such absolute loss.

In the flow of talk Fanny turned to Loftus.

"How is the lady?"

Loftus, whose mouth was full of jellied consommé, did not answer for a moment. Then he made a slight gesture. "She has gone."

"Already?"

"I had your orders!"

Fanny looked at him wonderingly. "How did she take it?"

"What difference does it make? She has gone. Is not that sufficient?"

"For you, no doubt. But for her! No; really I am sorry. When you told her that you loved her I am sure she thought you meant forever. I am sure, too, that you meant for a week. It is a shame to treat a girl like that and then turn her loose."

Loftus had begun to busy himself with some fish. He put his fork down. "But, confound it, you told me to."

"Did I? I forgot. Besides, you are not usually so obedient."

Loftus turned to his fish. "It seems to me that there is rather a change in the temperature. Isn't there?" he asked.

"But, Royal, I cannot help feeling sorry for that girl. I cannot help feeling, too, that if you can get rid of her in this lively fashion you might do the same with me."