"It's only rum. Don't worry. What are you crying about?" Tears streamed down his tortured features. "I'm crying—I'm crying—because I'm so glad to be home again" ... he stuttered. "What a liar!" laughed Dora, and not attempting to undress him, she covered him with a shawl and went to her bed, where she slept the untroubled sleep of the wicked.
... "You see, it's this way," explained Alfred years afterwards to some of the newspaper boys around a table at Lüchow's. "Poor Ulick never had the staying power. Brilliant? Yes—after a fashion. His mind was a crazy-quilt. Mince pie and Chopin. Can you beat it? He had the cosmopolitan bug, but he soon found out that the North American climate withered the Flowers of Evil of his Baudelaire and all the other decadent ideas and poetry he brought over with him. Poisonous honey from France—what? Our native air is too tonic for such stuff. His Fleurs du Mal wilted. So did he. He hadn't the guts to last. After his paralytic stroke at Dora's he was sent back to Paris, but he didn't live many years. He and his brother Oswald died within a few months of each other. Old man Invern didn't only bequeath them money—he probably gave them something worse. You know. Our old enemy, Spirochaeta Pallida, I suspect. Otherwise, why did Ulick crumble after one real debauch? Their money—oh, it reverted to the Bartletts, cousins of the boys. Was he engaged to Mona Milton? That's news. I never heard of it and I was pretty thick with her family. You know she married Paul Godard, and it turned out a happy match—at least for her. She has a houseful of children. A blooming matron. But self-righteous now; turns up her nose at 'fallen women.' I visit there every now and then. Paul isn't a bad sort. He used to be a loose fish, and now he wears slippers and goes to bed early. Everything passes—even regret. Strange! Ulick never drank—except that time—or smoked—and he's gone. Mona doesn't mention his name. Her brother! He got into a woman scrape here—never mind the lady's name—scandale oblige! He was fished out of the gutter and sent away to repent in some monastery out West. After he became a priest he was exported as a missionary to China. He was a born preacher. I think he drove Ulick to drink with his preaching—that's what Istar says. Istar? Thank you, she's very well. She's composed of harps, anvils and granite. The steely limit! A heartless, ungrateful creature. Fly-blown caviar.... Yes, a wonderful artiste. But that doesn't always mean a civilised human. Yet, singers, actors, artists are not a whit worse as to morals than your business men, politicians, your shoemakers or your pious folk. The artists get found out quicker—that's all. I see her daily—I've known her nearly twenty years—and she grows wickeder every year. She is the great singing harlot of modern Babylon, a vocal Scarlet Woman. I'm sick of her. I've told her so. She expects me to be her fetch-and-carry. Not for thirty cents, d'ye hear? Why, boys, she's too mean to play the horses—and that's a bad sign. I'm tired, I'm going home. You can scandalise when my back is turned. But remember one thing—I'll live to write Easter's obituary in the "Clarion" perhaps write the epitaph on her headstone. As for music, I'm weary of it—opera in particular. When it isn't silly fashion, then people go for the sensual music. Sex and music, a rotten mixture."
He faded into the next room, where the band was playing, vertigionously.
"I'll bet that he will live to write Istar's obituary. Alfred must be fifty, but he's a wiry old rum-hound," remarked some one. "He's a parasite on Istar. He does all her dirty jobs. She hates him as much as he hates her. They hate each other so much that I wonder they aren't man and wife." It was the much-married Bell who spoke. His companions assented. As for poor forgotten Ulick—Oh! well, any young man of twenty can be brilliant. The test comes when you are sixty. It must have been a queer crowd—that sextet! Their reactions—or should I say, their vaso-motor reflexes?—weren't precisely admirable. Dainty Dora, fair, fat, forty, was the squarest of the lot. She played the game. Now she's a fashionable modiste—a Madame. All her customers are men. But Istar? Ah! Istar panned out first-class. She may be a painted veil, as Ulick said, but the paint is beautiful, and the veil doesn't hide her good looks. To Istar! was the toast. And they drank the health of the greatest Isolde since Lilli Lehmann. Esther Brandès, the unvanquished. Istar, the Great Singing Whore of Modern Babylon.
At the seventh gate, the warden stripped her; he took off the last veil that covers her body....
And because Istar had abhorred the Seven Deadly Virtues, and renounced them at the Last Gate in favour of the Seven Deadly Arts, the Warden of Life Eternal bestowed upon her the immeasurable boon of the Seven Capital Sins, which are: Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Sloth.... Added to these are the Eighth Deadly Sin, which is Perfume; the Sin Against the Holy Ghost; the sweet sin of Sappho; and the Supreme Sin, which is the denial of the Devil.... And Istar, Daughter of Sin, was happy and her days were long in the land, and she passed away in the odor of sanctity.... Blessed are the pure of heart; for they shall see God...!(Alfred Stone's epitaph for Easter)
Thus lived and died Ulick Invern in the companionship of his most intimate mentors throughout the tragi-comedy of his existence. Two books had imaged his reverse aspirations: Petronius, his thirst for an Absolute in evil; Thomas à Kempis, his God-intoxicated craving for the Infinite. Euthanasia came to him wearing an ambiguous smile. Yet, who shall dare say that he had lived in vain? On the vast uncharted lamp of mysticism extremes may meet, even mingle....Credo quia impossibile est....
New YorkJuly 9—August 25, 1919