"And look at the old fool! He dreams of nothing! And if he dreamed, he would not believe—such insensés 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 Vrillière—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