The Place of Honeymoons
raised his hat."
"Oh, bother! I was looking at Fritz."
Celeste searched her face keenly, but Nora looked on ahead serenely; not a
quiver of an eyelid, not the slightest change in color or expression.
"She did not see him!" thought the musician, curiously stirred. She knew
her friend tolerably well. It would have been impossible for her to have
seen that man and not to have given evidence of the fact.
In short, Nora had spoken truthfully. She had seen a man dressed in white
flannels and canvas shoes, but her eyes had not traveled so far as his
face.
"Mother, we must have some of those silk blankets. They're so comfy to lie
on."
"You never see anything except when you want to," complained Mrs.
Harrigan.
"It saves a deal of trouble. I don't want to go to the colonel's this
afternoon. He always has some frump to pour tea and ask fool questions."
"The frump, as you call her, is usually a countess or a duchess," with
asperity.
"Fiddlesticks! Nobility makes a specialty of frumps; it is one of the
species of the caste. That's why I shall never marry a title. I wish
neither to visit nor to entertain frumps. Frump,--the word calls up the
exact picture; frump and fatuity. Oh, I'll go, but I'd rather stay on my
balcony and read a good book."
"My dear," patiently, "the colonel is one of the social laws on Como. His
sister is the wife of an earl. You must not offend him. His Sundays are
the most exclusive on the lake."
"The word exclusive should be properly applied to those in jail. The
social ladder, the social ladder! Don't you know, mother mine, that every
rung is sawn by envy and greed, and that those who climb highest fall
farthest?"
"You are quoting the padre."
"The padre could give lessons in kindness and shrewdness to any other man
I know. If he hadn't chosen the gown he would have been a poet. I love the
padre, with his snow-white hair and his withered leathery face. He was
with the old king all through the freeing of Italy."
"And had a fine time explaining to the Vatican," sniffed the mother.
"Some day I am going to confess to him."
"Confess what?" asked Celeste.
"That I have wished the Calabrian's voice would fail her some night in
_Carmen_; that I am wearing shoes a size too small for me; that I should
like to be rich without labor; that I am sometimes ashamed of my calling;
that I should have liked to see father win a prizefight; oh, and a
thousand other horrid, hateful things."
"I wish to gracious that you would fall violently in love."
"Spiteful! There are those lovely lace collars; come on."
"You are hopeless," was the mother's conviction.
"In some things, yes," gravely.
"Some day," said Celeste, who was a privileged person in the Harrigan
family, "some day I am going to teach you two how to play at foils. It
would be splendid. And then you could always settle your differences with
bouts."
"Better than that," retorted Nora. "I'll ask father to lend us his old set
of gloves. He carries them around as if they were a fetish. I believe
they're in the bottom of one of my steamer trunks."
"Nora!" Mrs. Harrigan was not pleased with this jest. Any reference to the
past was distasteful to her ears. She, too, went regularly to confession,
but up to the present time had omitted the sin of being ashamed of her
former poverty and environment. She had taken it for granted that upon her
shoulders rested the future good fortune of the Harrigans. They had money;
all that was required was social recognition. She found it a battle within
a battle. The good-natured reluctance of her husband and the careless
indifference of her daughter were as hard to combat as the icy aloofness
of those stars into whose orbit she was pluckily striving to steer the
family bark. It never entered her scheming head that the reluctance of the
father and the indifference of the daughter were the very conditions that
drew society nearward, for the simple novelty of finding two persons who
did not care in the least whether they were recognized or not.
The trio invaded the lace shop, and Nora and her mother agreed to bury the
war-hatchet in their mutual love of Venetian and Florentine fineries.
Celeste pretended to be interested, but in truth she was endeavoring to
piece together the few facts she had been able to extract from the rubbish
of conjecture. Courtlandt and Nora had met somewhere before the beginning
of her own intimacy with the singer. They certainly must have formed an
extraordinary friendship, for Nora's subsequent vindictiveness could not
possibly have arisen out of the ruins of an indifferent acquaintance. Nora
could not be moved from the belief that Courtlandt had abducted her; but
Celeste was now positive that he had had nothing to do with it. He did not
impress her as a man who would abduct a woman, hold her prisoner for five
days, and then liberate her without coming near her to press his vantage,
rightly or wrongly. He was too strong a personage. He was here in
Bellaggio, and attached to that could be but one significance.
Why, then, had he not spoken at the photographer's? Perhaps she herself
had been sufficient reason for his dumbness. He had recognized her, and
the espionage of the night in Paris was no longer a mystery. Nora had sent
her to follow him; why then all this bitterness, since she had not been
told where he had gone? Had Nora forgotten to inquire? It was possible
that, in view of the startling events which had followed, the matter had
slipped entirely from Nora's mind. Many a time she had resorted to that
subtle guile known only of woman to trap the singer. But Nora never
stumbled, and her smile was as firm a barrier to her thoughts, her
secrets, as a stone wall would have been.
Celeste had known about Herr Rosen's infatuation. Aside from that which
concerned this stranger, Nora had withheld no real secret from her. Herr
Rosen had been given his conge, but that did not prevent him from sending
fabulous baskets of flowers and gems, all of which were calmly returned
without comment. Whenever a jewel found its way into a bouquet of flowers
from an unknown, Nora would promptly convert it into money and give the
proceeds to some charity. It afforded the singer no small amusement to
show her scorn in this fashion. Yes, there was one other little mystery
which she did not confide to her friends. Once a month, wherever she
chanced to be singing, there arrived a simple bouquet of marguerites, in
the heart of which they would invariably find an uncut emerald. Nora never
disposed of these emeralds. The flowers she would leave in her
dressing-room; the emerald would disappear. Was there some one else?
Mrs. Harrigan took the omnibus up to the villa. It was generally too much
of a climb for her. Nora and Celeste preferred to walk.
"What am I going to do, Celeste? He is here, and over at Cadenabbia last
night I had a terrible scene with him. In heaven's name, why can't they
let me be?"
"Herr Rosen?"
"Yes."
"Why not speak to your father?"
"And have a fisticuff which would appear in every newspaper in the world?
No, thank you. There is enough scandalous stuff being printed as it is,
and I am helpless to prevent it."
As the climb starts off stiffly, there wasn't much inclination in either
to talk. Celeste had come to one decision, and that was that Nora should
find out Courtlandt's presence here in Bellaggio herself. When they
arrived at the villa gates, Celeste offered a suggestion.
"You could easily stop all this rumor and annoyance."
"And, pray, how?"
"Marry."
"I prefer the rumor and annoyance. I hate men. Most of them are beasts."
"You are prejudiced."
If Celeste expected Nora to reply that she had reason, she was
disappointed, Nora quickened her pace, that was all.
At luncheon Harrigan innocently threw a bomb into camp by inquiring: "Say,
Nora, who's this chump Herr Rosen? He was up here last night and again
this morning. I was going to offer him the cot on the balcony, but I
thought I'd consult you first."
"Herr Rosen!" exclaimed Mrs. Harrigan, a flutter in her throat. "Why,
that's...."
"A charming young man who wishes me to sign a contract to sing to him in
perpetuity," interrupted Nora, pressing her mother's foot warningly.
"Well, why don't you marry him?" laughed Harrigan. "There's worse things
than frankfurters and sauerkraut."
"Not that I can think of just now," returned Nora.
CHAPTER XI
AT THE CRATER'S EDGE
Harrigan declared that he would not go over to Caxley-Webster's to tea.
"But I've promised for you!" expostulated his wife. "And he admires you
so."
"Bosh! You women can gad about as much as you please, but I'm in wrong
when it comes to eating sponge-cake and knuckling my knees under a dinky
willow table. And then he always has some frump...."
"Frump!" repeated Nora, delighted.
"Frump inspecting me through a pair of eye-glasses as if I was a new kind
of an animal. It's all right, Molly, when there's a big push. They don't
notice me much then. But these six by eight parties have me covering."
"Very well, dad," agreed Nora, who saw the storm gathering in her mother's
eyes. "You can stay home and read the book mother got you yesterday. Where
are you now?"
"Page one," grinning.
Mrs. Harrigan wisely refrained from continuing the debate. James had made
up his mind not to go. If the colonel repeated his invitation to dinner,
where there would be only the men folk, why, he'd gladly enough go to
that.
The women departed at three, for there was to be tennis until five
o'clock. When Harrigan was reasonably sure that they were half the
distance to the colonel's villa, he put on his hat, whistled to the
dachel, and together they took the path to the village.
"We'd look fine drinking tea, wouldn't we, old scout?" reaching down and
tweaking the dog's velvet ears. "They don't understand, and it's no use
trying to make 'em. Nora gets as near as possible. Herr Rosen! Now, where
have I seen his phiz before? I wish I had a real man to talk to. Abbott
sulks half the time, and the Barone can't get a joke unless it's driven in
with a mallet. On your way, old scout, or I'll step on you. Let's see if
we can hoof it down to the village at a trot without taking the count."
He had but two errands to execute. The first was accomplished expeditely
in the little tobacconist's shop under the arcade, where the purchase of a
box of Minghetti cigars promised later solace. These cigars were cheap,
but Harrigan had a novel way of adding to their strength if not to their
aroma. He possessed a meerschaum cigar-holder, in which he had smoked
perfectos for some years. The smoke of an ordinary cigar became that of a
regalia by the time it passed through the nicotine-soaked clay into the
amber mouthpiece. He had kept secret the result of this trifling
scientific research. It wouldn't have been politic to disclose it to
Molly. The second errand took time and deliberation. He studied the long
shelves of Tauchnitz. Having red corpuscles in superabundance, he
naturally preferred them in his literature, in the same quantity.
"Ever read this?" asked a pleasant voice from behind, indicating _Rodney
Stone_ with the ferrule of a cane.
Harrigan looked up. "No. What's it about?"
"Best story of the London prize-ring ever written. You're Mr. Harrigan,
aren't you?"
"Yes," diffidently.
"My name is Edward Courtlandt. If I am not mistaken, you were a great
friend of my father's."
"Are you Dick Courtlandt's boy?"
"I am."
"Well, say!" Harrigan held out his hand and was gratified to encounter a
man's grasp. "So you're Edward Courtlandt? Now, what do you think of that!
Why, your father was the best sportsman I ever met. Square as they make
'em. Not a kink anywhere in his make-up. He used to come to the bouts in