Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski | Page 3

any statute in force prohibiting
a man from visiting his mother in February if he wants to."
Delaney made some light remark about the pleasure of communing
with Nature with a cold in her head, and the topic was dropped.
Livingstone was hand in glove with Van Twilier, and if any man shared
his confidence it was Livingstone. He was aware of the gossip and
speculation that had been rife in the club, but he either was not at
liberty or did not think it worth while to relieve our curiosity. In the
course of a week or two it was reported that Van Twiller was going to
Europe; and go he did. A dozen of us went down to the Scythia to see
him off. It was refreshing to have something as positive as the fact that
Van Twiller had sailed.

II.
Shortly after Van Twiller's departure the whole thing came out.
Whether Livingstone found the secret too heavy a burden, or whether it
transpired through some indiscretion on the part of Mrs. Vanrensselaer
Vanzandt Van Twiller, I cannot say; but one evening the entire story
was in the possession of the club.
Van Twiller had actually been very deeply interested--not in an actress,
for the legitimate drama was not her humble walk in life, but--in

Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, whose really perilous feats on the
trapeze had astonished New York the year before, though they had
failed to attract Delaney and me the night we wandered into the
up-town theatre on the trail of Van Twiller's mystery.
That a man like Van Twiller should be fascinated even for an instant by
a common circus-girl seems incredible; but it is always the incredible
thing that happens. Besides, Mademoiselle Olympe was not a common
circus-girl; she was a most daring and startling gymnaste, with a beauty
and a grace of movement that gave to her audacious performance
almost an air of prudery. Watching her wondrous dexterity and pliant
strength, both exercised without apparent effort, it seemed the most
natural proceeding in the world that she should do those unpardonable
things. She had a way of melting from one graceful posture into
another, like the dissolving figures thrown from a stereopticon. She was
a lithe, radiant shape out of the Grecian mythology, now poised up
there above the gaslights, and now gleaming through the air like a
slender gilt arrow.
I am describing Mademoiselle Olympe as she appeared to Van Twiller
on the first occasion when he strolled into the theatre where she was
performing. To me she was a girl of eighteen or twenty years of age
(maybe she was much older, for pearl-powder and distance keep these
people perpetually young), slightly but exquisitely built, with sinews of
silver wire; rather pretty, perhaps, after a manner, but showing plainly
the effects of the exhaustive drafts she was making on her physical
vitality. Now, Van Twiller was an enthusiast on the subject of
calisthenics. "If I had a daughter," Van Twiller used to say, "I would n't
send her to a boarding-school, or a nunnery; I 'd send her to a
gymnasium for the first five years. Our American women have no
physique. They are lilies, pallid, pretty--and perishable. You marry an
American woman, and what do you marry? A headache. Look at
English girls. They are at least roses, and last the season through."
Walking home from the theatre that first night, it flitted through Van
Twiller's mind that if he could give this girl's set of nerves and muscles
to any one of the two hundred high-bred women he knew, he would
marry her on the spot and worship her forever.

The following evening he went to see Mademoiselle Olympe again.
"Olympe Zabriski," he soliloquized, as he sauntered through the
lobby--"what a queer name! Olympe is French, and Zabriski is Polish.
It is her nom de guerre, of course; her real name is probably Sarah
Jones. What kind of creature can she be in private life, I wonder? I
wonder if she wears that costume all the time, and if she springs to her
meals from a horizontal bar. Of course she rocks the baby to sleep on
the trapeze." And Van Twiller went on making comical domestic
tableaux of Mademoiselle Zabriski, like the clever, satirical dog he was,
until the curtain rose.
This was on a Friday. There was a matinée the next day, and he
attended that, though he had secured a seat for the usual evening
entertainment. Then it became a habit of Van Twiller's to drop into the
theatre for half an hour or so every night, to assist at the interlude, in
which she appeared. He cared only for her part of the programme, and
timed his visits accordingly. It was a surprise to himself when