The Place of Honeymoons
"Oh, you funny little dog! You merry little dachel! Fritz, mustn't; let
go!" Silence.
The artist knew that she was cuddling the puppy to her heart, and his own
grew twisted. He stooped over his materials again and tied the box to the
easel and the stool, and shifted them under his arm.
"I'll be up after dinner, Mr. Harrigan," he said.
"All right, Abbott." Harrigan waved his hand pleasantly. He was becoming
so used to the unvarying statement that Abbott would be up after dinner,
that his reply was by now purely mechanical. "She's getting her voice back
all right; eh?"
"Beautifully! But I really don't think she ought to sing at the Haines'
villa Sunday."
"One song won't hurt her. She's made up her mind to sing. There's nothing
for us to do but to sit tight. No news from Paris?"
"No."
"Say, do you know what I think?"
"What?"
"Some one has come across to the police."
"Paris is not New York, Mr. Harrigan."
"Oh, I don't know. There's a hundred cents to the dollar, my boy, Paris or
New York. Why haven't they moved? They can't tell me that tow-headed
chap's alibi was on the level. I wish I'd been in Paris. There'd been
something doing. And who was he? They refuse to give his name. And I can't
get a word out of Nora. Shuts me up with a bang when I mention it. Throws
her nerves all out, she says. I'd like to get my hands on the
blackguard."
"So would I. It's a puzzle. If he had molested her while she was a
captive, you could understand. But he never came near her."
"Busted his nerve, that's what."
"I have my doubts about that. A man who will go that far isn't subject to
any derangement of his nerves. Want me to bring up the checkers?"
"Sure. I've got two rubbers hanging over you."
The artist took the path that led around the villa and thence down by many
steps to the village by the waterside, to the cream-tinted cluster of
shops and enormous hotels.
The Italian was more fortunate. He was staying at the villa. He rose and
sauntered over to Harrigan, who was always a source of interest to him.
Study the man as he might, there always remained a profound mystery to his
keen Italian mind. Every now and then nature--to prove that while she
provided laws for humanity she obeyed none herself--nature produced the
prodigy. Ancestry was nothing; habits, intelligence, physical appearance
counted for naught. Harrigan was a fine specimen of the physical man, yes;
but to be the father of a woman who was as beautiful as the legendary
goddesses and who possessed a voice incomparable in the living history of
music, here logic, the cold and accurate intruder, found an unlockable
door. He liked the ex-prizefighter, so kindly and wholesome; but he also
pitied him. Harrigan reminded him of a seal he had once seen in an
aquarium tank: out of his element, but merry-eyed and swimming round and
round as if determined to please everybody.
"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.