"Say, Milt," speculated Stone in his most aggressively malicious manner, "whenever I look at a fresh-colored young priest like you, I don't wonder that the girls swarm about you like flies in a molasses cask. Your purity is written in your eyes. It oozes from your expression. It's an aura. The female ever in pursuit of masculine honey feels this, and you are her idol, as is, in a different fashion, a tenor." Milt protested. Paul suddenly lost his head, crying: "Woman is the split-infinitive in the grammar of life," which was capped by Bell: "Woman is an ecstasy-breeding machine." "I hate speeches beginning with—Woman is this, woman is that," proclaimed Ulick. "When men foregather and booze they suddenly land in that bohemia of dead-sea fruit, the woman question. Women are human like men, and the little difference"—"Bless de Lawd fer de difference, as the darky preacher said—" It was the thick voice of Bell—"is the cause for the lot of rotten talk and theorizing." "Bravo, Ulick"! said Milt, with sentimental vehemence. "Faire remonter tout son sexe dans son cerveau," he added. But Stone was curious. "I'd like to know the trick of that sex-transposition. Women are a nuisance—sometimes; often I should like to do without them; but I acknowledge I can't. What's the method, Milt, camphor or prayer"? Milt, scandalized, didn't reply. To break the embarrassing silence Ulick turned to Paul and asked him if he knew anything new.
"Oh, yes, Marie, the singing comedienne, had just had a row with her last husband. You know that fastidious baronet of hers who wears a bangle on his ankle. The other night at Lady Murchison's dinner I sat next to her. I wished to be friendly so I asked how she was getting along with her young man. "Oh nicely," she said, with that dazzling Celtic smile, "we never quarrel unless we fall in love with the same man." A roar followed. Milt groaned.
"Only the women a man doesn't win are desirable." "Listen to the Rochefoucauld! Bell, where do you get your novel ideas"? "Such ideas should be caged like monkeys"—this from Milt. Then he arose, disgusted. "You chaps are rubbing it in. One would suppose that sex ruled this planet, instead of being perhaps, only a necessary incident, or by-product. I'll move homewards. Will you be seen tomorrow afternoon, Ulick"? He knows something, thought Ulick, but he cordially invited Milt assuring him that he would be found any time after the midday breakfast. Couldn't Milt take that meal with him? Milt consented. "Then sit down a moment, Milt, I should like to tell you of a theory advanced by Remy de Gourmont concerning sex. You spoke of a "necessary incident." Milt sat down. "It's this," resumed Ulick. "De Gourmont insisted that the real protagonist of humanity, indeed, of all organic life, is to be found in the procreative process, which act epitomizes all creation. This theory may not be found in his remarkable Physique de l'Amour, it was something he thought out later. Briefly, we are not the rulers of our personal destiny, but only an envelope of flesh and blood to protect the chief factor of our being, our sex-organs. As long as they are vital our organism flourishes; when they weaken, men and women weaken with them, wither and die. It has a sinister ring, hasn't it, this idea of a hidden force directing our energies, our very fate. It is supported by the seers who through the ages have recognized a blind, remorseless power in whose grip our individual happiness is as helpless as a straw in a hurricane. Only the species counts. Love is always tragic, even the amours of a ragpicker and a gutter-wench. Fatality is stamped on the forehead of every human. Little wonder primitive nations in the dusky depths of Asiatic mystic groves have prostrated themselves before the carved images of the lingam and yoni, the male and female principles. Sex is in the background of every modern religion, from the phallic symbol of the churchspire to the worshipping of the matrix." "I'm off," cried Milt, as he jumped up. "I can't stay here any longer in such a fetid atmosphere to have religion bespattered. Good-night, boys. Ulick—I'll be with you at the Maison Felicé at one o'clock, or thereabouts" He disappeared.
"I say, Ulick," remarked Paul, "you do draw the longbow, don't you, about sex-worship? Did you yarn for Milt's benefit or is it all gospel truth?" "It is in the gospels that you will find it," answered Ulick, who was distrait and feeling anxious over that projected visit. What did it presage! Stone nudged Bell who was in his cups and snoring.
"Give us a rest with your sex-symbolism. I heard a good story this afternoon—wake up Bell, this will fit your case someday—from Dr. Williams. He's my doctor. The best ever. Hasn't sent me a bill for years because the last one we shook dice for and I won. He has a patient, an old chap of sixty who came to him one day and begged, on his knees, the Doc said, for once more, only once! His doctor bluntly told him a man isn't like a woman—toujours prête—but given by nature a certain number of cartridges which he is to use as suits his temperament. If he fires them off in his youth, in middle-age he will be empty-handed and must avoid targets and rifle-ranges. The wise space their shooting and we sometimes, not often, witness the spectacle of an old man, hale and hearty, buying a buxom young target and actually scoring bullseyes. This, however, is an exceptional occurrence. The offspring of aged men are not taken seriously, as is evidenced by the brutal query: 'Who is the other fellow?' Horns seldom decorate the brows of youthful males. To make a short story long the doctor gave the poor old top a doze of some devilish compound, a Brown-Séquard cocktail containing picric acid with mountain oysters, or lamb-fries as a chaser. He was curious enough to ask his patient where he would fire off his last cartridge. The chap became voluble. He had an old wife whom he loved very much, but he kept all physical manifestations for his mistress, a younger woman, who supported her husband and a large family in the sweat of her deceit. A conscientious hard-working woman, who never deceived her lover, except with the aid of her legitimate husband—an arrangement understood, I believe. But the funny thing was that the old fellow became jealous of this same husband. He had boasted so much of the naked conflicts he had waged when young that he greatly desired to give the lady of his affections a touch of his early quality. With the potent fluid of the doctor's drug sizzling in him he literally, so the Doc averred to me, scampered off helter-skelter to his beloved. Not his wife, mind you. Oh, no! That would be wasting powder and shot on a fortress already captured. He had telephoned the faithful concubine, who awaited him, her curiosity aroused. She felt certain that he would again make his usual fiasco. As the rejuvenated old goat bounded over the sidewalk, his blood tingling with the passion of youth and Damiana Mormon Elder's Wafers, a pretty puss of eighteen touched his elbow. She was an impudent mutt, but provocative. She winked and whispered:
"Hello Pop! Come along and I'll give you the time of your life"! and by God he went with her, and that patient Griselda waiting for him in his second home, not to mention the wife of his bosom, at home (where she played a stiff Bridge every afternoon and never bothered her head about her foolish matrimonial partner). Yes, he went to the new rifle-range and heaven knows what lie he invented for the benefit of his mistress. The affair only proves that any woman who can give to an old man the illusion of virility, he will not only marry her, but he will wear her on his heart of hearts; become her slave, in fact. Sex dies hard in us, and despite popular belief, it is the last of the passions, pushing out avarice and gluttony, which pair of entertaining passions are supposed to illuminate the dusty lonesome years of a man's existence. Goethe married his cook, a stout country wench who drank herself into her grave in the august presence of her husband-poet. And all those old women titled and otherwise who marry coachmen, gardeners and grooms, husky young fellows—do they do this for intellectual companionship? The darky woman who said when asked as to her sex emotions: "I'se over eighty. You've got to ask some lady older than me, illustrates that sex fights as long as it can. The original Adam in us. That de Gourmont theory, Ulick, is a horrible idea; sex is hideous if you study it. Let the boys and girls keep their illusions and don't let them believe old Schopenhauer and his instinct of the species dictating their destiny"—"For the sake of sanity, Alfred, shut your trap and let's go home. Wake up, Bell. There's a fresh wife waiting you," said Ulick, glad to get away. "Which wife?" sleepily inquired Bell. "It seems as if a crowd of men can't end the evening without talking sex," grumbled Ulick. "I'm sick of sex." "So are we all," Stone assented, "because sex is a sickly thing. It's not health and conservation, but destruction, disease, death." Ulick fairly ran from him when they reached the street. Sex and damnation! he said between his teeth.
The first news of Easter came over the cables. She made her début at a concert in Berlin under the powerful wing of Lilli Lehmann and achieved a remarkable success. Her brilliant beauty was a factor, but it was her voice, luscious as an August sunset and her emotional temperament that caused the furore. (A press-agent's fiction. There are no "furores" in concert rooms, or at the opera. A lot of noise-loving imbeciles stamp their feet and shout. The claque is always busy. Hysterical criticism does the rest.) Certain exalted personages in the royal-box condescended to express their approval of Fraülein Esther Brandès, who was at once offered huge sums to sign a contract for future European appearances. (These offers are always announced in cablegrams.) Easter must have been ubiquitous for in the foreign dispatches next day was a sensational account of a duel she fought with Mary Garden in the Bois at Paris with Johnstone Bennett—dear old sporting "Johnny" as referee. Sybil Sanderson and Augusta Holmès sat in a balcony and compared scandals. Mary, lithe, elastic, and younger than Easter, pinked her antagonist. The duellists clasped hands and the party, chiefly composed of Parisian newspaper men, adjourned to Pré au Catalan there to drink fresh milk and stale gossip. Rumour had it that the two girls were in love with the same man, no less than the fascinating barytone at the Opera, Maurice Renaud. When Allie Wentworth, who was Easter's second, read this in "Le Soir" she burst into laughter and showed the story to "Johnny", who only lighted a fresh cigarette repeating the classic, "cinq lettres, le mot de Cambronne."