Madam Sapphira by Edgar Saltus

"Yes, I am off for Europe. For centuries I have been travelling on the map, now I am to try another tack. Come with me, Carol. You don't know what a charming companion I am. No one does. I never open my head."

Jones, a leg over the arm of a chair, a cigarette in his fingers, a smile of protracted amiability fluttering in and out his tawny beard, was discounting the pleasures of a trip abroad.

"In the autumn we could visit that city from which you have just returned. Mention Egypt and you see a priest, Persia, and you see a king, Greece -- a goddess, but Rome was Might Triumphant. And to think that I have never been there -- in this existence I mean, for I can swear I have jolted in chariots over those wide white roads. I can swear that I have supped with Lalage and thrown dice with Faustine. When I read history, memories return in floods. Let us go together and see what remains of the temples in which we have lived."

He puffed at his cigarette. "And such good as it would do you. A change of scene and you would begin to forget. You need to forget. This accursed divorce is assuming the proportions of a pyramid. It is over a year since it ended, and still you brood. You will kill yourself as Tredegar has if you sit moping in this horror of a house. Not but what I appreciate the advantage of sorrow. Che non soffre, non vince -- non Leonardo da Vinci. The tragedy of my life is that there has been no tragedy at all. If I have not written a great novel, there is the cause. An artist's one value consists in his sorrows. They are all aspirations. The world is filled with people whose lives are so puerile, whose aims are so narrow that we should bless the misfortune which makes us nobler than they. Why, grief is a pleasure, it is a joy to weep. But -- "

"Si je doute des larmes! " Nevius inconsequently objected. "C'est que je l'ai vu pleurer."

"Ah, we have been reading de Musset have we? Fort bien, Monseigneur, fort bien, mais écoute:

"N' es-tu pas jeune, heureux, partout le bien venu, / Et ces plaisirs légers qui font aimer la vie, / Si tu n'avais pleuré, quel cas en ferais-tu? / Lorsqu'au déclin du jour, assis sur la bruyère -- / La bruyère c'est ton fauteuil -- / Avec un vieil ami -- le vieil ami, c'est moi -- tu bois en liberté -- / Oh, pour ca! Comme un Polonais même -- / Dis moi, d'aussi bon cœur lèveras-tu ton verre / Si tu n'avais senti le prix de la gaieté? / Aimerais-tu les fleurs, les prés et la verdure / Les sonnets de Pétrarque et le chant des oiseaux, / Michel-Ange et les arts, Shakespeare et la nature / Si tu n'y retrouvais quelques anciens sanglots? / Comprendrais-tu des cieux l' ineffable harmonie, / Le silence des nuits, le murmure des flots / Si quelque part, làbas, la fiévre et l'insomnie / Ne t' avait fait songer a l' éternel repos? / Plains la donc, plains la donc, cette belle infidèle -- "

"Yes, had she been that," Nevius interrupted, moved in spite of himself by the beauty of lines which he, too, knew by heart. "Had she been infidèle, I could see my way clearer. But though a year has gone by since she got the decree, still I am unable to understand why she asked for it. There was a moment when I thought her insane, when I thought, God forgive me, that this affair at an end I could win her back, reason with her, plead with her, love her again. But there was no insanity in her eyes when we met in court, a malignant exultation merely. And why? That Why is the first thing I find in the morning, the last that leaves me at night. For a year I have been haunted by interrogation marks, they are everywhere, they are in the food I eat. I close my eyes and still I see them. Even in sleep they pursue me, they fill my dreams."

"It is of course supposable," Jones, with singular acquiescence, replied, "that in asking for a divorce this lady had a motive. The malignity was due to your effort to thwart her. The exultation came of the prospect of showing that her lies were true."

"But why drag herself through all that mud? I am a gentleman at least, am I not? If she wanted a divorce why in God's name didn't she tell me before I went to Paris. I am not a bit better than another, I have had my little hearts as well as anyone else, and I could have got it for her, without scandal, without disgrace, without the ruin of three lives -- Well, Patrick, what is it?"

From the tray which the man held he took a pink card, gilt-edged.

"A lady, sir."

Jones laughed loud and long. "En avant les amourettes. Va donc, farceur."

"Blythe Sisseton," Nevius repeated. "Never heard of her. Patrick, ask her what she wants."

"That's Ablaut's Ex," said Jones, as Patrick turned, but he bit his tongue as he did so.

"Ablaut's Ex?"

"Oh, a little chorus girl whom he invited to dance the waltz in Faust. Man proposes you know, and chorus girls accept. But in accepting she meant Forever and he meant Tonight."

"Well?"

"That's all. What do you expect? A three-volume novel? He wrote Finis on a cheque ages ago. In the circumstances it would be foolish of you to see her."

"Foolish of me? What in thunder do you mean? What have I got to do with her? Why should it be foolish of me to see her? But what are you staring at me for?"