The Place of Honeymoons
blinded him to the truth; he saw in the look a feminine desire to throw
the others off the track as to the sentiment expressed in his whispered
words.
The hour passed tolerably well. Herr Rosen then observed the time, rose
and excused himself. He took the steps leading abruptly down the terrace
to the carriage road. He had come by the other way, the rambling stone
stairs which began at the porter's lodge, back of the villa.
"Padre," whispered Courtlandt, "I am going. Do not follow. I shall explain
to you when we meet again."
The padre signified that he understood. Harrigan protested vigorously, but
smiling and shaking his head, Courtlandt went away.
Nora ran to the window. She could see Herr Rosen striding along, down the
winding road, his head in the air. Presently, from behind a cluster of
mulberries, the figure of another man came into view. He was going at a
dog-trot, his hat settled at an angle that permitted the rain to beat
squarely into his face. The next turn in the road shut them both from
sight. But Nora did not stir.
Herr Rosen stopped and turned.
"You called?"
"Yes." Courtlandt had caught up with him just as Herr Rosen was about to
open the gates. "Just a moment, Herr Rosen," with a hand upon the bars. "I
shall not detain you long."
There was studied insolence in the tones and the gestures which
accompanied them.
"Be brief, if you please."
"My name is Edward Courtlandt, as doubtless you have heard."
"In a large room it is difficult to remember all the introductions."
"Precisely. That is why I take the liberty of recalling it to you, so that
you will not forget it," urbanely.
A pause. Dark patches of water were spreading across their shoulders.
Little rivulets ran down Courtlandt's arm, raised as it was against the
bars.
"I do not see how it may concern me," replied Herr Rosen finally with an
insolence more marked than Courtlandt's.
"In Paris we met one night, at the stage entrance of the Opera, I pushed
you aside, not knowing who you were. You had offered your services; the
door of Miss Harrigan's limousine."
"It was you?" scowling.
"I apologize for that. To-morrow morning you will leave Bellaggio for
Varenna. Somewhere between nine and ten the fast train leaves for Milan."
"Varenna! Milan!"
"Exactly. You speak English as naturally and fluently as if you were born
to the tongue. Thus, you will leave for Milan. What becomes of you after
that is of no consequence to me. Am I making myself clear?"
"_Verdampt!_ Do I believe my ears?" furiously. "Are you telling me to
leave Bellaggio to-morrow morning?"
"As directly as I can."
Herr Rosen's face became as red as his name. He was a brave young man, but
there was danger of an active kind in the blue eyes boring into his own.
If it came to a physical contest, he realized that he would get the worst
of it. He put his hand to his throat; his very impotence was choking him.
"Your Highness...."
"Highness!" Herr Rosen stepped back.
"Yes. Your Highness will readily see the wisdom of my concern for your
hasty departure when I add that I know all about the little house in
Versailles, that my knowledge is shared by the chief of the Parisian
police and the minister of war. If you annoy Miss Harrigan with your
equivocal attentions...."
"_Gott!_ This is too much!"
"Wait! I am stronger than you are. Do not make me force you to hear me to
the end. You have gone about this intrigue like a blackguard, and that I
know your Highness not to be. The matter is, you are young, you have
always had your way, you have not learnt restraint. Your presence here is
an insult to Miss Harrigan, and if she was pleasant to you this afternoon
it was for my benefit. If you do not go, I shall expose you." Courtlandt
opened the gate.
"And if I refuse?"
"Why, in that case, being the American that I am, without any particular
reverence for royalty or nobility, as it is known, I promise to thrash you
soundly to-morrow morning at ten o'clock, in the dining-room, in the
bureau, the drawing-room, wherever I may happen to find you."
Courtlandt turned on his heel and hurried back to the villa. He did not
look over his shoulder. If he had, he might have felt pity for the young
man who leaned heavily against the gate, his burning face pressed upon his
rain-soaked sleeve.
When Courtlandt knocked at the door and was admitted, he apologized. "I
came back for my umbrella."
"Umbrella!" exclaimed the padre. "Why, we had no umbrellas. We came up in
a carriage which is probably waiting for us this very minute by the
porter's lodge."
"Well, I am certainly absent-minded!"
"Absent-minded!" scoffed Abbott. "You never forgot anything in all your
life, unless it was to go to bed. You wanted an excuse to come back."
"Any excuse would be a good one in that case. I think we'd better be
going, Padre. And by the way, Herr Rosen begged me to present his regrets.
He is leaving Bellaggio in the morning."
Nora turned her face once more to the window.
CHAPTER XVI
THE APPLE OF DISCORD
"It is all very petty, my child," said the padre. "Life is made up of
bigger things; the little ones should be ignored."
To which Nora replied: "To a woman, the little things are everything; they
are the daily routine, the expected, the necessary things. What you call
the big things in life are accidents. And, oh! I have pride." She folded
her arms across her heaving bosom; for the padre's directness this morning
had stirred her deeply.
"Wilfulness is called pride by some; and stubbornness. But you know, as
well as I do, that yours is resentment, anger, indignation. Yes, you have
pride, but it has not been brought into this affair. Pride is that within
which prevents us from doing mean or sordid acts; and you could not do one
or the other if you tried. The sentiment in you which should be
developed...."
"Is mercy?"
"No; justice, the patience to weigh the right or wrong of a thing."
"Padre, I have eyes, eyes; I _saw_."
He twirled the middle button of his cassock. "The eyes see and the ears
hear, but these are only witnesses, laying the matter before the court of
the last resort, which is the mind. It is there we sift the evidence."
"He had the insufferable insolence to order Herr Rosen to leave," going
around the barrier of his well-ordered logic.
"Ah! Now, how could he send away Herr Rosen if that gentleman had really
preferred to stay?"
Nora looked confused.
"Shall I tell you? I suspected; so I questioned him last night. Had I been
in his place, I should have chastised Herr Rosen instead of bidding him be
gone. It was he."
Nora, sat down.
"Positively. The men who guarded you were two actors from one of the
theaters. He did not come to Versailles because he was being watched. He
was found and sent home the night before your release."
"I am sorry. But it was so like _him_."
The padre spread his hands. "What a way women have of modifying either
good or bad impulses! It would have been fine of you to have stopped when
you said you were sorry."
"Padre, one would believe that you had taken up his defense!"
"If I had I should have to leave it after to-day. I return to Rome
to-morrow and shall not see you again before you go to America. I have
bidden good-by to all save you. My child, my last admonition is, be
patient; observe; guard against that impulse born in your blood to move
hastily, to form opinions without solid foundations. Be happy while you
are young, for old age is happy only in that reflected happiness of
recollection. Write to me, here. I return in November. _Benedicite?_"
smiling.
Nora bowed her head and he put a hand upon it.
* * * * *
"And listen to this," began Harrigan, turning over a page. "'It is
considered bad form to call the butler to your side when you are a guest.
Catch his eye. He will understand that something is wanted.' How's that?"
"That's the way to live." Courtlandt grinned, and tilted back his chair
until it rested against the oak.
The morning was clear and mild. Fresh snow lay upon the mountain tops;
later it would disappear. The fountain tinkled, and swallows darted hither
and thither under the sparkling spray. The gardeners below in the
vegetable patch were singing. By the door of the villa sat two old ladies,
breakfasting in the sunshine. There was a hint of lavender in the lazy
drifting air. A dozen yards away sat Abbott, two or three brushes between
his teeth and one in his hand. A little behind was Celeste, sewing posies
upon one of those squares of linen toward which all women in their idle
moments are inclined, and which, on finishing, they immediately stow away
in the bottom of some trunk against the day when they have a home of their
own, or marry, or find some one ignorant enough to accept it as a gift.
"'And when in doubt,'" continued Harrigan, "'watch how other persons use
their forks.' Can you beat it? And say, honest, Molly bought that for me
to read and study. And I never piped the subtitle until this morning.
'Advice to young ladies upon going into society.' Huh?" Harrigan slapped
his knee with the book and roared out his keen enjoyment. Somehow he
seemed to be more at ease with this young fellow than with any other man
he had met in years. "But for the love of Mike, don't say anything to
Molly," fearfully. "Oh, she means the best in the world," contritely. "I'm
always embarrassing her; shoe-strings that don't match, a busted stud in
my shirt-front, and there isn't a pair of white-kids made that'll stay
whole more than five minutes on these paws. I suppose it's because I don't
think. After all, I'm only a retired pug." The old fellow's eyes sparkled
suspiciously. "The best two women in all the world, and I don't want them
to be ashamed of me."
"Why, Mr. Harrigan," said Courtlandt, letting his chair fall into place so
that he could lay a hand affectionately upon the other's knee, "neither of
them would be worth their salt if they ever felt ashamed of you. What do
you care what strangers think or say? You know. You've seen life. You've
stepped off the stage and carried with you the recollection of decent
living, of playing square, of doing the best you could. The worst
scoundrels I ever met never made any mistake with their forks. Perhaps you
don't know it, but my father became rich because he could judge a man's
worth almost at sight. And he kept this fortune and added to it because he
chose half a dozen friends and refused to enlarge the list. If you became
his friend, he had good reason for making you such."
"Well, we did have some good times together," Harrigan admitted, with a
glow in his heart. "And I guess after all that I'll go to the ball with
Molly. I don't mind teas like we had at the colonel's, but dinners and
balls I have drawn the line at. I'll take the plunge to-night. There's
always some place for a chap to smoke."
"At the Villa Rosa? I'll be there myself; and any time you are in doubt,
don't be afraid to question me."
"You're in class A," heartily. "But there's one thing that worries
me,--Nora. She's gone up so high, and she's such a wonderful girl, that
all the men in Christendom are hiking after her. And some of 'em.... Well,
Molly says it isn't good form to wallop a man over here. Why, she went on
her lonesome to India and Japan, with nobody but her maid; and never put
us hep until she landed in Bombay. The men out that way aren't the best.
East of Suez, you know. And that chap yesterday, Herr Rosen. Did you see
the way he hiked by me when I let him in? He took me to be the round
number before one. And he didn't speak a dozen words to any but Nora. Not
that I mind that; but it was something in the way he did it that scratched