The Place of Honeymoons
me the wrong way. The man who thinks he's going to get Nora by walking
over me, has got a guess coming. Of course, it's meat and drink to Molly
to have sons of grand dukes and kings trailing around. She says it gives
tone."
"Isn't she afraid sometimes?"
"Afraid? I should say not! There's only three things that Molly's afraid
of these days: a spool of thread, a needle, and a button."
Courtlandt laughed frankly. "I really don't think you need worry about
Herr Rosen. He has gone, and he will not come back."
"Say! I'll bet a dollar it was you who shoo'd him off."
"Yes. But it was undoubtedly an impertinence on my part, and I'd rather
you would not disclose my officiousness to Miss Harrigan."
"Piffle! If you knew him you had a perfect right to pass him back his
ticket. Who was he?"
Courtlandt poked at the gravel with his cane.
"One of the big guns?"
Courtlandt nodded.
"So big that he couldn't have married my girl even if he loved her?"
"Yes. As big as that."
Harrigan riffled the leaves of his book. "What do you say to going down to
the hotel and having a game of _bazzica_, as they call billiards here?"
"Nothing would please me better," said Courtlandt, relieved that Harrigan
did not press him for further revelations.
"Nora is studying a new opera, and Molly-O is ragging the village
dressmaker. It's only half after ten, and we can whack 'em around until
noon. I warn you, I'm something of a shark."
"I'll lay you the cigars that I beat you."
"You're on!"
Harrigan put the book in his pocket, and the two of them made for the
upper path, not, however, without waving a friendly adieu to Celeste, who
was watching them with much curiosity.
For a moment Nora became visible in the window. Her expression did not
signify that the sight of the men together pleased her. On the contrary,
her eyes burned and her brow was ruffled by several wrinkles which
threatened to become permanent if the condition of affairs continued to
remain as it was. To her the calm placidity of the man was nothing less
than monumental impudence. How she hated him; how bitterly, how intensely
she hated him! She withdrew from the window without having been seen.
"Did you ever see two finer specimens of man?" Celeste asked of Abbott.
"What? Who?" mumbled Abbott, whose forehead was puckered with impatience.
"Oh, those two? They _are_ well set up. But what the deuce _is_ the matter
with this foreground?" taking the brushes from his teeth. "I've been
hammering away at it for a week, and it does not get there yet."
Celeste rose and laid aside her work. She stood behind him and studied the
picture through half-closed critical eyes. "You have painted it over too
many times." Then she looked down at the shapely head. Ah, the longing to
put her hands upon it, to run her fingers through the tousled hair, to
touch it with her lips! But no! "Perhaps you are tired; perhaps you have
worked too hard. Why not put aside your brushes for a week?"
"I've a good mind to chuck it into the lake. I simply can't paint any
more." He flung down the brushes. "I'm a fool, Celeste, a fool. I'm crying
for the moon, that's what the matter is. What's the use of beating about
the bush? You know as well as I do that it's Nora."
Her heart contracted, and for a little while she could not see him
clearly.
"But what earthly chance have I?" he went on, innocently but ruthlessly.
"No one can help loving Nora."
"No," in a small voice.
"It's all rot, this talk about affinities. There's always some poor devil
left outside. But who can help loving Nora?" he repeated.
"Who indeed!"
"And there's not the least chance in the world for me."
"You never can tell until you put it to the test."
"Do you think I have a chance? Is it possible that Nora may care a little
for me?" He turned his head toward her eagerly.
"Who knows?" She wanted him to have it over with, to learn the truth that
to Nora Harrigan he would never be more than an amiable comrade. He would
then have none to turn to but her. What mattered it if her own heart ached
so she might soothe the hurt in his? She laid a hand upon his shoulder, so
lightly that he was only dimly conscious of the contact.
"It's a rummy old world. Here I've gone alone all these years...."
"Twenty-six!" smiling.
"Well, that's a long time. Never bothered my head about a woman. Selfish,
perhaps. Had a good time, came and went as I pleased. And then I met
Nora."
"Yes."
"If only she'd been stand-offish, like these other singers, why, I'd have
been all right to-day. But she's such a brick! She's such a good fellow!
She treats us all alike; sings when we ask her to; always ready for a
romp. Think of her making us all take the _Kneip_-cure the other night!
And we marched around the fountain singing 'Mary had a little lamb.'
Barefooted in the grass! When a man marries he doesn't want a wife half so
much as a good comrade; somebody to slap him on the back in the morning to
hearten him up for the day's work; and to cuddle him up when he comes home
tired, or disappointed, or unsuccessful. No matter what mood he's in. Is
my English getting away from you?"
"No; I understand all you say." Her hand rested a trifle heavier upon his
shoulder, that was all.
"Nora would be that kind of a wife. 'Honor, anger, valor, fire,' as
Stevenson says. Hang the picture; what am I going to do with it?"
"'Honor, anger, valor, fire,'" Celeste repeated slowly. "Yes, that is
Nora." A bitter little smile moved her lips as she recalled the happenings
of the last two days. But no; he must find out for himself; he must meet
the hurt from Nora, not from her. "How long, Abbott, have you known your
friend Mr. Courtlandt?"
"Boys together," playing a light tattoo with his mahl-stick.
"How old is he?"
"About thirty-two or three."
"He is very rich?"
"Oceans of money; throws it away, but not fast enough to get rid of it."
"He is what you say in English ... wild?"
"Well," with mock gravity, "I shouldn't like to be the tiger that crossed
his path. Wild; that's the word for it."
"You are laughing. Ah, I know! I should say dissipated."
"Courtlandt? Come, now, Celeste; does he look dissipated?"
"No-o."
"He drinks when he chooses, he flirts with a pretty woman when he chooses,
he smokes the finest tobacco there is when he chooses; and he gives them
all up when he chooses. He is like the seasons; he comes and goes, and
nobody can change his habits."
"He has had no affair?"
"Why, Courtlandt hasn't any heart. It's a mechanical device to keep his
blood in circulation; that's all. I am the most intimate friend he has,
and yet I know no more than you how he lives and where he goes."
She let her hand fall from his shoulder. She was glad that he did not
know.
"But look!" she cried in warning.
Abbott looked.
A woman was coming serenely down the path from the wooded promontory, a
woman undeniably handsome in a cedar-tinted linen dress, exquisitely
fashioned, with a touch of vivid scarlet on her hat and a most tantalizing
flash of scarlet ankle. It was Flora Desimone, fresh from her morning bath
and a substantial breakfast. The errand that had brought her from
Aix-les-Bains was confessedly a merciful one. But she possessed the
dramatist's instinct to prolong a situation. Thus, to make her act of
mercy seem infinitely larger than it was, she was determined first to cast
the Apple of Discord into this charming corner of Eden. The Apple of
Discord, as every man knows, is the only thing a woman can throw with any
accuracy.
The artist snatched up his brushes, and ruined the painting forthwith, for
all time. The foreground was, in his opinion, beyond redemption; so, with
a savage humor, he rapidly limned in a score of impossible trees, turned
midday into sunset, with a riot of colors which would have made the
Chinese New-year in Canton a drab and sober event in comparison. He hated
Flora Desimone, as all Nora's adherents most properly did, but with a
hatred wholly reflective and adapted to Nora's moods.
"You have spoiled it!" cried Celeste. She had watched the picture grow,
and to see it ruthlessly destroyed this way hurt her. "How could you!"
"Worst I ever did." He began to change the whole effect, chuckling audibly
as he worked. Sunset divided honors with moonlight. It was no longer
incongruous; it was ridiculous. He leaned back and laughed. "I'm going to
send it to L'Asino, and call it an afterthought."
"Give it to me."
"What?"
"Yes."
"Nonsense! I'm going to touch a match to it. I'll give you that picture
with the lavender in bloom."
"I want this."
"But you can not hang it."
"I want it."
"Well!" The more he learned about women the farther out of mental reach
they seemed to go. Why on earth did she want this execrable daub? "You may
have it; but all the same, I'm going to call an oculist and have him
examine your eyes."
"Why, it is the Signorina Fournier!"
In preparing studiously to ignore Flora Desimone's presence they had
forgotten all about her.
"Good morning, Signora," said Celeste in Italian.
"And the Signore Abbott, the painter, also!" The Calabrian raised what she
considered her most deadly weapon, her lorgnette.
Celeste had her fancy-work instantly in her two hands; Abbott's were
occupied; Flora's hands were likewise engaged; thus, the insipid mockery
of hand-shaking was nicely and excusably avoided.
"What is it?" asked Flora, squinting.
"It is a new style of the impressionist which I began this morning,"
soberly.
"It looks very natural," observed Flora.
"Natural!" Abbott dropped his mahl-stick.
"It is Vesuv', is it not, on a cloudy day?"
This was too much for Abbott's gravity, and he laughed.
"It was not necessary to spoil a good picture ... on my account," said
Flora, closing the lorgnette with a snap. Her great dark eyes were dreamy
and contemplative like a cat's, and, as every one knows, a cat's eye is
the most observing of all eyes. It is quite in the order of things, since
a cat's attitude toward the world is by need and experience wholly
defensive.
"The Signora is wrong. I did not spoil it on her account. It was past
helping yesterday. But I shall, however, rechristen it Vesuvius, since it
represents an eruption of temper."
Flora tapped the handle of her parasol with the lorgnette. It was
distinctly a sign of approval. These Americans were never slow-witted. She
swung the parasol to and fro, slowly, like a pendulum.
"It is too bad," she said, her glance roving over the white walls of the
villa.
"It was irrevocably lost," Abbott declared.
"No, no; I do not mean the picture. I am thinking of La Toscana. Her voice
was really superb; and to lose it entirely...!" She waved a sympathetic
hand.
Abbott was about to rise up in vigorous protest. But fate itself chose to
rebuke Flora. From the window came--"_Sai cos' ebbe cuore!_"--sung as only
Nora could sing it.
The ferrule of Flora Desimone's parasol bit deeply into the clover-turf.
CHAPTER XVII
THE BALL AT THE VILLA
"Do you know the Duchessa?" asked Flora Desimone.
"Yes." It was three o'clock the same afternoon. The duke sat with his wife
under the vine-clad trattoria on the quay. Between his knees he held his
Panama hat, which was filled with ripe hazelnuts. He cracked them
vigorously with his strong white teeth and filliped the broken shells into
the lake, where a frantic little fish called _agoni_ darted in and about
the slowly sinking particles. "Why?" The duke was not any grayer than he
had been four or five months previous, but the characteristic expression
of his features had undergone a change. He looked less Jovian than
Job-like.
"I want you to get an invitation to her ball at the Villa Rosa to-night."