The Perfume of Eros

“Royal,” said the man’s mother that evening, “are you still thinking of Fanny Price?”

It was in Gramercy Park. As you may or may not know, Gramercy Park is the least noisy spot in the metropolitan Bedlam. Without being unreasonably aristocratic it is sedate and what agents call exclusive.

The park itself is essentially that. Its design is rather English. The use is restricted to adjoining residents. About it is a fence of high iron. Within are trees, paths, grasses, benches, great vases and a fountain. But none of the usual loungers, none of the leprous men, rancid women, and epileptic children that swarm in other New York squares. Yet these squares are open to all. To enter this park you must have a key. By day it is a playground. Nursemaids come there with little boys and girls, the subdued, undemonstrative, beautifully dressed children of the rich. At night it is empty as a vacant bier.

In a house that fronted the north side Royal Loftus lived with his mother, a proud, arrogant woman socially known to all, but who socially knew but few. Behind her, in the shade of the family tree, was her dead lord, Royal’s father and, more impressively still, the latter’s relatives, the entire Loftus contingent, a set of people super-respectable, supernally rich. She too was rich. She wore a wig, walked with a staff, spoke with a Mayfair intonation in a high-pitched voice, and, in the amplitudes of widowhood and wealth, entertained frequently but cared only for her son.

“I think,” said Loftus, “that I have had the pleasure of seeing you before.”

At this inanity Marie looked first at him, then at the carpet. She did not know at all what he was saying. But in his voice was a deference, in his manner a sorcery and in his bearing and appearance something that went to her head. It was all very novel and delightful, and she flushed again.

“Yes,” Loftus resumed, “and when I did see you I committed a very grave offense. Can you forgive me?”

For countenance sake the girl turned to Mme. Machin. But the ex-first lady, pretexting a pretext, had gone.

“Can you?” Loftus requested. “Can you forgive?”

Forgive indeed! Had she not so forgiven that she had almost wished a renewal of that grave offense? She did not answer. It was her face that spoke for her. But the silence Loftus affected to misconstrue.

“Couldn’t you try?”

“Yes.” The monosyllable fell from her softly, almost inaudibly. Yet for his purpose it sufficed.

“Thank you. I hoped that you would. But will you let me tell you now how I came to behave as I did?”

To this, timorously, with the slightest movement of her pretty head, the girl assented.

“Because I could not help myself. Because at the first sight of you I knew that I loved you. Because I felt that I could never love anyone else.”

Marie started. She was crimson. Starting, she half got from her seat. Loftus caught at her hand. She disengaged it. But he caught at it again.

“I love you,” he continued, burning her with his words, with the contact of his fingers, that had intertwisted with hers. “Look at me, I love your eyes. Speak to me, I love your voice.”

“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.

With the air of one inquiring the time of day she glanced at Annandale and asked, almost with a lisp: “Why didn’t you shoot me?”

Orr turned to Annandale. He was rising. From his face the flush had gone. He was lurid. The word lurid is used because it is more dramatic than its synonym, ghastly. And here was drama, real drama, in real life.

“Fanny, you don’t think that I⁠—”

Drama, real drama, is an enjoyable rarity. Orr longed to stay and see it out. But, obviously, anything of the kind would have been worse than indiscreet. He picked up his hat.

“Fanny,” Annandale repeated, “you can’t think⁠—”

“Oh,” she interrupted, “you see you made it quite unnecessary for me to think at all. You told me beforehand. Wasn’t it considerate?” she added, turning to Orr.

“But I did not mean it,” cried Annandale. “As God is my witness⁠—”

“I am a witness,” Fanny interjected, interrupting him again. But the interruption was effected without abruptness, without apparent emotion, sweetly, almost lispingly, with a modulation of the voice that was restful to the ear. “And,” she added, in the same sugary, leisurely way, but raising now a slender finger gloved in white, “I will swear to what you said.”

At this Orr swam, or tried to swim, to the rescue. “Surely,” he protested, “you would not do that?”

“Wouldn’t I?” she answered, addressing Orr and speaking in the same smiling, seductive fashion that she had to Annandale. “Wouldn’t I, indeed! Really, believe me, you are quite in error.”