Читать книгу: «The Place of Honeymoons», страница 5

“It will be a fine night,” said the Italian, pausing at Harrigan’s bench.

“Every night is fine here, Barone,” replied Harrigan. “Why, they had me up in Marienbad a few weeks ago, and I’m not over it yet. It’s no place for a sick man; only a well man could come out of it alive.”

The Barone laughed. Harrigan had told this tale half a dozen times, but each time the Barone felt called on to laugh. The man was her father.

“Do you know, Mr. Harrigan, Miss Harrigan is not herself? She is – what do you call? – bitter. She laughs, but – ah, I do not know! – it sounds not real.”

“Well, she isn’t over that rumpus in Paris yet.”

“Rumpus?”

“The abduction.”

“Ah, yes! Rumpus is another word for abduction? Yes, yes, I see.”

“No, no! Rumpus is just a mix-up, a row, anything that makes a noise, calls in the police. You can make a rumpus on the piano, over a game of cards, anything.”

The Barone spread his hands. “I comprehend,” hurriedly. He comprehended nothing, but he was too proud to admit it.

“So Nora is not herself; a case of nerves. And to think that you called there at the apartment the very day!”

“Ah, if I had been there the right time!”

“But what puts me down for the count is the action of the fellow. Never showed up; just made her miss two performances.”

“He was afraid. Men who do cowardly things are always afraid.” The Barone spoke with decided accent, but he seldom made a grammatical error. “But sometimes, too, men grow mad at once, and they do things in their madness. Ah, she is so beautiful! She is a nightingale.” The Italian looked down on Como whose broad expanse was crisscrossed by rippled paths made by arriving and departing steamers. “It is not a wonder that some man might want to run away with her.”

Harrigan looked curiously at the other. “Well, it won’t be healthy for any man to try it again.” The father held out his powerful hands for the Barone’s inspection. They called mutely but expressively for the throat of the man who dared. “It’ll never happen again. Her mother and I are not going away from her any more. When she sings in Berlin, I’m going to trail along; when she hits the high note in Paris, I’m lingering near; when she trills in London, I’m hiding in the shadow. And you may put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

“I smoke only cigarettes,” replied the Barone gravely. It had been difficult to follow, this English.

Harrigan said nothing in return. He had given up trying to explain to the Italian the idiomatic style of old Broadway. He got up and brushed his flannels perfunctorily. “Well, I suppose I’ve got to dress for supper,” resentfully. He still called it supper; and, as in the matter of the silk hat, his wife no longer strove to correct him. The evening meal had always been supper, and so it would remain until that time when he would cease to look forward to it.

“Do you go to the dancing at Cadenabbia to-night?”

“Me? I should say not!” Harrigan laughed. “I’d look like a bull in a china-shop. Abbott is coming up to play checkers with me. I’ll leave the honors to you.”

The Barone’s face lighted considerably. He hated the artist only when he was visible. He was rather confused, however. Abbott had been invited to the dance. Why wasn’t he going? Could it be true? Had the artist tried his luck and lost? Ah, if fate were as kind as that! He let Harrigan depart alone.

Why not? What did he care? What if the father had been a fighter for prizes? What if the mother was possessed with a misguided desire to shine socially? What mattered it if they had once resided in an obscure tenement in a great city, and that grandfathers were as far back as they could go with any certainty? Was he not his own master? What titled woman of his acquaintance whose forebears had been powerful in the days of the Borgias, was not dimmed in the presence of this wonderful maid to whom all things had been given unreservedly? Her brow was fit for a royal crown, let alone a simple baronial tiara such as he could provide. The mother favored him a little; of this he was reasonably certain; but the moods of the daughter were difficult to discover or to follow.

To-night! The round moon was rising palely over Lecco; the moon, mistress of love and tides, toward whom all men and maids must look, though only Eros knows why! Evidently there was no answer to the Italian’s question, for he faced about and walked moodily toward the entrance. Here he paused, looking up at the empty window. Again a snatch of song —

O solo mio … che bella cosa…!

What a beautiful thing indeed! Passionately he longed for the old days, when by his physical prowess alone oft a man won his lady. Diplomacy, torrents of words, sly little tricks, subterfuges, adroitness, stolen glances, careless touches of the hand; by these must a maid be won to-day. When she was happy she sang, when she was sad, when she was only mischievous. She was just as likely to sing O terra addio when she was happy as O sole mio when she was sad. So, how was a man to know the right approach to her variant moods? Sighing deeply, he went on to his room, to change his Piccadilly suit for another which was supposed to be the last word in the matter of evening dress.

Below, in the village, a man entered the Grand Hotel. He was tall, blond, rosy-cheeked. He carried himself like one used to military service; also, like one used to giving peremptory orders. The porter bowed, the director bowed, and the proprietor himself became a living carpenter’s square, hinged. The porter and the director recognized a personage; the proprietor recognized the man. It was of no consequence that the new arrival called himself Herr Rosen. He was assigned to a suite of rooms, and on returning to the bureau, the proprietor squinted his eyes abstractedly. He knew every woman of importance at that time residing on the Point. Certainly it could be none of these. Himmel! He struck his hands together. So that was it: the singer. He recalled the hints in certain newspaper paragraphs, the little tales with the names left to the imagination. So that was it?

What a woman! Men looked at her and went mad. And not so long ago one had abducted her in Paris. The proprietor threw up his hands in despair. What was going to happen to the peace of this bucolic spot? The youth permitted nothing to stand in his way, and the singer’s father was a retired fighter with boxing-gloves!

CHAPTER VIII
MOONLIGHT AND A PRINCE

When he had fought what he considered two rattling rounds, Harrigan conceded that his cravat had once more got the decision over him on points. And the cravat was only a second-rater, too, a black-silk affair. He tossed up the sponge and went down to the dining-room, the ends of the conqueror straggling like the four points of a battered weather-vane. His wife and daughter and Mademoiselle Fournier were already at their table by the casement window, from which they could see the changing granite mask of Napoleon across Lecco.

At the villa there were seldom more than ten or twelve guests, this being quite the capacity of the little hotel. These generally took refuge here in order to escape the noise and confusion of a large hotel, to avoid the necessity of dining in state every night. Few of the men wore evening dress, save on occasions when they were entertaining. The villa wasn’t at all fashionable, and the run of American tourists fought shy of it, preferring the music and dancing and card-playing of the famous hostelries along the water-front. Of course, everybody came up for the view, just as everybody went up the Corner Grat (by cable) at Zermatt to see the Matterhorn. But for all its apparent dulness, there, was always an English duchess, a Russian princess, or a lady from the Faubourg St. – Germain somewhere about, resting after a strenuous winter along the Riviera. Nora Harrigan sought it not only because she loved the spot, but because it sheltered her from idle curiosity. It was almost as if the villa were hers, and the other people her guests.

Harrigan crossed the room briskly, urged by an appetite as sound as his views on life. The chef here was a king; there was always something to look forward to at the dinner hour; some new way of serving spinach, or lentils, or some irresistible salad. He smiled at every one and pulled out his chair.

“Sorry to keep you folks waiting.”

“James!”

“What’s the matter now?” he asked good-naturedly. Never that tone but something was out of kilter.

His wife glanced wrathfully at his feet. Wonderingly he looked down. In the heat of the battle with his cravat he had forgotten all about his tennis shoes.

“I see. No soup for mine.” He went back to his room, philosophically. There was always something wrong when he got into these infernal clothes.

“Mother,” said Nora, “why can’t you let him be?”

“But white shoes!” in horror.

“Who cares? He’s the patientest man I know. We’re always nagging him, and I for one am going to stop. Look about! So few men and women dress for dinner. You do as you please here, and that is why I like it.”

“I shall never be able to do anything with him as long as he sees that his mistakes are being condoned by you,” bitterly responded the mother. “Some day he will humiliate us all by his carelessness.”

“Oh, bother!” Nora’s elbow slyly dug into Celeste’s side.

The pianist’s pretty face was bent over her soup. She had grown accustomed to these little daily rifts. For the great, patient, clumsy, happy-go-lucky man she entertained an intense pity. But it was not the kind that humiliates; on the contrary, it was of a mothering disposition; and the ex-gladiator dimly recognized it, and felt more comfortable with her than with any other woman excepting Nora. She understood him perhaps better than either mother or daughter; he was too late: he belonged to a distant time, the beginning of the Christian era; and often she pictured him braving the net and the trident in the saffroned arena.

Mrs. Harrigan broke her bread vexatiously. Her husband refused to think for himself, and it was wearing on her nerves to watch him day and night. Deep down under the surface of new adjustments and social ambitions, deep in the primitive heart, he was still her man. But it was only when he limped with an occasional twinge of rheumatism, or a tooth ached, or he dallied with his meals, that the old love-instinct broke up through these artificial crustations. True, she never knew how often he invented these trivial ailments, for he soon came into the knowledge that she was less concerned about him when he was hale and hearty. She still retained evidences of a blossomy beauty. Abbott had once said truly that nature had experimented on her; it was in the reproduction that perfection had been reached. To see the father, the mother, and the daughter together it was not difficult to fashion a theory as to the latter’s splendid health and physical superiority. Arriving at this point, however, theory began to fray at the ends. No one could account for the genius and the voice. The mother often stood lost in wonder that out of an ordinary childhood, a barelegged, romping, hoydenish childhood, this marvel should emerge: her’s!

She was very ambitious for her daughter. She wanted to see nothing less than a ducal coronet upon the child’s brow, British preferred. If ordinary chorus girls and vaudeville stars, possessing only passable beauty and no intelligence whatever, could bring earls into their nets, there was no reason why Nora could not be a princess or a duchess. So she planned accordingly. But the child puzzled and eluded her; and from time to time she discovered a disquieting strength of character behind a disarming amiability. Ever since Nora had returned home by way of the Orient, the mother had recognized a subtle change, so subtle that she never had an opportunity of alluding to it verbally. Perhaps the fault lay at her own door. She should never have permitted Nora to come abroad alone to fill her engagements.

But that Nora was to marry a duke was, to her mind, a settled fact. It is a peculiar phase, this of the humble who find themselves, without effort of their own, thrust up among the great and the so-called, who forget whence they came in the fierce contest for supremacy upon that tottering ledge called society. The cad and the snob are only infrequently well-born. Mrs. Harrigan was as yet far from being a snob, but it required some tact upon Nora’s part to prevent this dubious accomplishment.

“Is Mr. Abbott going with us?” she inquired.

“Donald is sulking,” Nora answered. “For once the Barone got ahead of him in engaging the motor-boat.”

“I wish you would not call him by his first name.”

“And why not? I like him, and he is a very good comrade.”

“You do not call the Barone by his given name.”

“Heavens, no! If I did he would kiss me. These Italians will never understand western customs, mother. I shall never marry an Italian, much as I love Italy.”

“Nor a Frenchman?” asked Celeste.

“Nor a Frenchman.”

“I wish I knew if you meant it,” sighed the mother.

“My dear, I have given myself to the stage. You will never see me being led to the altar.”

“No, you will do the leading when the time comes,” retorted the mother.

“Mother, the men I like you may count upon the fingers of one hand. Three of them are old. For the rest, I despise men.”

“I suppose some day you will marry some poverty-stricken artist,” said the mother, filled with dark foreboding.

“You would not call Donald poverty-stricken.”

“No. But you will never marry him.”

“No. I never shall.”

Celeste smoothed her hands, a little trick she had acquired from long hours spent at the piano. “He will make some woman a good husband.”

“That he will.”

“And he is most desperately in love with you.”

“That’s nonsense!” scoffed Nora. “He thinks he is. He ought to fall in love with you, Celeste. Every time you play the fourth ballade he looks as if he was ready to throw himself at your feet.”

“Pouf! For ten minutes?” Celeste laughed bravely. “He leaves me quickly enough when you begin to sing.”

“Glamour, glamour!”

“Well, I should not care for the article second-hand.”

The arrival of Harrigan put an end to this dangerous trend of conversation. He walked in tight proper pumps, and sat down. He was only hungry now; the zest for dining was gone.

“Don’t go sitting out in the night air, Nora,” he warned.

“I sha’n’t.”

“And don’t dance more than you ought to. Your mother would let you wear the soles off your shoes if she thought you were attracting attention. Don’t do it.”

“James, that is not true,” the mother protested.

“Well, Molly, you do like to hear ’em talk. I wish they knew how to cook a good club steak.”

“I brought up a book from the village for you to-day,” said Mrs. Harrigan, sternly.

“I’ll bet a dollar it’s on how to keep the creases in a fellow’s pants.”

“Trousers.”

“Pants,” helping himself to the last of the romaine. “What time do you go over?”

“At nine. We must be getting ready now,” said Nora. “Don’t wait up for us.”

“And only one cigar,” added the mother.

“Say, Molly, you keep closing in on me. Tobacco won’t hurt me any, and I get a good deal of comfort out of it these days.”

“Two,” smiled Nora.

“But his heart!”

“And what in mercy’s name is the matter with his heart? The doctor at Marienbad said that father was the soundest man of his age he had ever met.” Nora looked quizzically at her father.

He grinned. Out of his own mouth he had been nicely trapped. That morning he had complained of a little twinge in his heart, a childish subterfuge to take Mrs. Harrigan’s attention away from the eternal society page of the Herald. It had succeeded. He had even been cuddled.

“James, you told me…”

“Oh, Molly, I only wanted to talk to you.”

“To do so it isn’t necessary to frighten me to death,” reproachfully. “One cigar, and no more.”

“Molly, what ails you?” as they left the dining-room. “Nora’s right. That sawbones said I was made of iron. I’m only smoking native cigars, and it takes a bunch of ’em to get the taste of tobacco. All right; in a few months you’ll have me with the stuffed canary under the glass top. What’s the name of that book?” diplomatically.

“Social Usages.”

“Break away!”

Nora laughed. “But, dad, you really must read it carefully. It will tell you how to talk to a duchess, if you chance to meet one when I am not around. It has all the names of the forks and knives and spoons, and it tells you never to use sugar on your lettuce.” And then she threw her arm around her mother’s waist. “Honey, when you buy books for father, be sure they are by Dumas or Haggard or Doyle. Otherwise he will never read a line.”

“And I try so hard!” Tears came into Mrs. Harrigan’s eyes.

“There, there, Molly, old girl!” soothed the outlaw. “I’ll read the book. I know I’m a stupid old stumbling-block, but it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, that is, at the ring of the gong. Run along to your party. And don’t break any more hearts than you need, Nora.”

Nora promised in good faith. But once in the ballroom, that little son of Satan called malice-aforethought took possession of her; and there was havoc. If a certain American countess had not patronized her; if certain lorgnettes (implements of torture used by said son of Satan) had not been leveled in her direction; if certain fans had not been suggestively spread between pairs of feminine heads, – Nora would have been as harmless as a playful kitten.

From door to door of the ballroom her mother fluttered like a hen with a duckling. Even Celeste was disturbed, for she saw that Nora’s conduct was not due to any light-hearted fun. There was something bitter and ironic cloaked by those smiles, that tinkle of laughter. In fact, Nora from Tuscany flirted outrageously. The Barone sulked and tore at his mustache. He committed any number of murders, by eye and by wish. When his time came to dance with the mischief-maker, he whirled her around savagely, and never said a word; and once done with, he sternly returned her to her mother, which he deemed the wisest course to pursue.

“Nora, you are behaving abominably!” whispered her mother, pale with indignation.

“Well, I am having a good time … Your dance? Thank you.”

And a tender young American led her through the mazes of the waltz, as some poet who knew what he was about phrased it.

It is not an exaggeration to say that there was not a woman in the ballroom to compare with her, and some of them were marvelously gowned and complexioned, too. She overshadowed them not only by sheer beauty, but by exuberance of spirit. And they followed her with hating eyes and whispered scandalous things behind their fans and wondered what had possessed the Marchesa to invite the bold thing: so does mediocrity pay homage to beauty and genius. As for the men, though madness lay that way, eagerly as of old they sought it.

By way of parenthesis: Herr Rosen marched up the hill and down again, something after the manner of a certain warrior king celebrated in verse. The object of his visit had gone to the ball at Cadenabbia. At the hotel he demanded a motor-boat. There was none to be had. In a furious state of mind he engaged two oarsmen to row him across the lake.

And so it came to pass that when Nora, suddenly grown weary of the play, full of bitterness and distaste, hating herself and every one else in the world, stole out to the quay to commune with the moon, she saw him jump from the boat to the landing, scorning the steps. Instantly she drew her lace mantle closely about her face. It was useless. In the man the hunter’s instinct was much too keen.

“So I have found you!”

“One would say that I had been in hiding?” coldly.

“From me, always. I have left everything – duty, obligations – to seek you.”

“From any other man that might be a compliment.”

“I am a prince,” he said proudly.

She faced him with that quick resolution, that swift forming of purpose, which has made the Irish so difficult in argument and persuasion. “Will you marry me? Will you make me your wife legally? Before all the world? Will you surrender, for the sake of this love you profess, your right to a great inheritance? Will you risk the anger and the iron hand of your father for my sake?”

“Herr Gott! I am mad!” He covered his eyes.

“That expression proves that your Highness is sane again. Have you realized the annoyances, the embarrassments, you have thrust upon me by your pursuit? Have you not read the scandalous innuendoes in the newspapers? Your Highness, I was not born on the Continent, so I look upon my work from a point of view not common to those of your caste. I am proud of it, and I look upon it with honor, honor. I am a woman, but I am not wholly defenseless. There was a time when I thought I might number among my friends a prince; but you have made that impossible.”

“Come,” he said hoarsely; “let us go and find a priest. You are right. I love you; I will give up everything, everything!”

For a moment she was dumb. This absolute surrender appalled her. But that good fortune which had ever been at her side stepped into the breach. And as she saw the tall form of the Barone approach, she could have thrown her arms around his neck in pure gladness.

“Oh, Barone!” she called. “Am I making you miss this dance?”

“It does not matter, Signorina.” The Barone stared keenly at the erect and tense figure at the prima donna’s side.

“You will excuse me, Herr Rosen,” said Nora, as she laid her hand upon the Barone’s arm.

Herr Rosen bowed stiffly; and the two left him standing uncovered in the moonlight.

“What is he doing here? What has he been saying to you?” the Barone demanded. Nora withdrew her hand from his arm. “Pardon me,” said he contritely. “I have no right to ask you such questions.”

It was not long after midnight when the motor-boat returned to its abiding place. On the way over conversation lagged, and finally died altogether. Mrs. Harrigan fell asleep against Celeste’s shoulder, and the musician never deviated her gaze from the silver ripples which flowed out diagonally and magically from the prow of the boat. Nora watched the stars slowly ascend over the eastern range of mountains; and across the fire of his innumerable cigarettes the Barone watched her.

As the boat was made fast to the landing in front of the Grand Hotel, Celeste observed a man in evening dress, lounging against the rail of the quay. The search-light from the customs-boat, hunting for tobacco smugglers, flashed over his face. She could not repress the little gasp, and her hand tightened upon Nora’s arm.

“What is it?” asked Nora.

“Nothing. I thought I was slipping.”