The Place of Honeymoons
did so involuntarily, for lack of further funds. They called her villas
Circe's isles. She hated but two things in the world; the man she could
have loved and the woman she could not surpass.
Arrayed in a kimono which would have evoked the envy of the empress of
Japan, supposing such a gorgeous raiment--peacocks and pine-trees,
brilliant greens and olives and blues and purples--fell under the gaze of
that lady's slanting eyes, she sat opposite the Slavonic Jove and smoked
her cigarette between sips of coffee. Frequently she smiled. The short
powerful hand of the man stroked his beard and he beamed out of his
cunning eyes, eyes a trifle too porcine to suggest a keen intellect above
them.
"I am like a gorilla," he said; "but you are like a sleek tigress. I am
stronger, more powerful than you; but I am always in fear of your claws.
Especially when you smile like that. What mischief are you plotting now?"
She drew in a cloud of smoke, held it in her puffed cheeks as she glided
round the table and leaned over his shoulders. She let the smoke drift
over his head and down his beard. In that moment he was truly Jovian.
"Would you like me if I were a tame cat?" she purred.
"I have never seen you in that role. Perhaps I might. You told me that you
would give up everything but the Paris season."
"I have changed my mind." She ran one hand through his hair and the other
she entangled in his beard. "You'd change your mind, too, if you were a
woman."
"I don't have to change my mind; you are always doing it for me. But I do
not want to go to America next winter." He drew her down so that he might
look into her face. It was something to see.
"Bah!" She released herself and returned to her chair. "When the season is
over I want to go to Capri."
"Capri! Too hot."
"I want to go."
"My dear, a dozen exiles are there, waiting to blow me up." He spoke
Italian well. "You do not wish to see me spattered over the beautiful
isle?"
"Tch! tch! That is merely your usual excuse. You never had anything to do
with the police."
"No?" He eyed the end of his cigarette gravely. "One does not have to be
affiliated with the police. There is class prejudice. We Russians are very
fond of Egypt in the winter. Capri seems to be the half-way place. They
wait for us, going and coming. Poor fools!"
"I shall go alone, then."
"All right." In his dull way he had learned that to pull the diva, one
must agree with her. In agreeing with her one adroitly dissuaded her. "You
go to Capri, and I'll go to the pavilion on the Neva."
She snuffed the cigarette in the coffee-cup and frowned. "Some day you
will make me horribly angry."
"Beautiful tigress! If a man knew what you wanted, you would not want it.
I can't hop about with the agility of those dancers at the Theatre du
Palais Royale. The best I can do is to imitate the bear. What is wrong?"
"They keep giving her the premier parts. She has no more fire in her than
a dead grate. The English-speaking singers, they are having everything
their own way. And none of them can act."
"My dear Flora, this Eleonora is an actress, first of all. That she can
sing is a matter of good fortune, no more. Be reasonable. The consensus of
critical opinion is generally infallible; and all over the continent they
agree that she can act. Come, come; what do you care? She will never
approach your Carmen...."
"You praise her to me?" tempest in her glowing eyes.
"I do not praise her. I am quoting facts. If you throw that cup, my
tigress...."
"Well?" dangerously.
"It will spoil the set. Listen. Some one is at the speaking-tube."
The singer crossed the room impatiently. Ordinarily she would have
continued the dispute, whether the bell rang or not. But she was getting
the worst of the argument and the bell was a timely diversion. The duke
followed her leisurely to the wall.
"What is it?" asked Flora in French.
The voice below answered with a query in English. "Is this the Signorina
Desimone?"
"It is the duchess."
"The duchess?"
"Yes."
"The devil!"
She turned and stared at the duke, who shrugged. "No, no," she said; "the
duchess, not the devil."
"Pardon me; I was astonished. But on the stage you are still Flora
Desimone?"
"Yes. And now that my identity is established, who are you and what do you
want at this time of night?"
The duke touched her arm to convey that this was not the moment in which
to betray her temper.
"I am Edward Courtlandt."
"The devil!" mimicked the diva.
She and the duke heard a chuckle.
"I beg your pardon again, Madame."
"Well, what is it you wish?" amiably.
The duke looked at her perplexedly. It seemed to him that she was always
leaving him in the middle of things. Preparing himself for rough roads, he
would suddenly find the going smooth. He was never swift enough mentally
to follow these flying transitions from enmity to amity. In the present
instance, how was he to know that his tigress had found in the man below
something to play with?
"You once did me an ill turn," came up the tube. "I desire that you make
some reparation."
"Sainted Mother! but it has taken you a long time to find out that I have
injured you," she mocked.
There was no reply to this; so she was determined to stir the fire a
little.
"And I advise you to be careful what you say; the duke is a very jealous
man."
That gentleman fingered his beard thoughtfully.
"I do not care a hang if he is."
The duke coughed loudly close to the tube.
Silence.
"The least you can do, Madame, is to give me her address."
"Her address!" repeated the duke relievedly. He had had certain grave
doubts, but these now took wing. Old flames were not in the habit of
asking, nay, demanding, other women's addresses.
"I am speaking to Madame, your Highness," came sharply.
"We do not speak off the stage," said the singer, pushing the duke aside.
"I should like to make that young man's acquaintance," whispered the
duke.
She warned him to be silent.
Came the voice again: "Will you give me her address, please? Your
messenger gave me your address, inferring that you wished to see me."
"I?" There was no impeaching her astonishment.
"Yes, Madame."
"My dear Mr. Courtlandt, you are the last man in all the wide world I wish
to see. And I do not quite like the way you are making your request. His
highness does not either."
"Send him down!"
"That is true."
"What is?"
"I remember. You are very strong and much given to fighting."
The duke opened and shut his hands, pleasurably. Here was something he
could understand. He was a fighting man himself. Where was this going to
end, and what was it all about?
"Do you not think, Madame, that you owe me something?"
"No. What I owe I pay. Think, Mr. Courtlandt; think well."
"I do not understand," impatiently.
"_Ebbene_, I owe you nothing. Once I heard you say--'I do not like to see
you with the Calabrian; she is--Well, you know.' I stood behind you at
another time when you said that I was a fool."
"Madame, I do not forget that, that is pure invention. You are mistaken."
"No. You were. I am no fool." A light laugh drifted down the tube.
"Madame, I begin to see."
"Ah!"
"You believe what you wish to believe."
"I think not."
"I never even noticed you," carelessly.
"Take care!" whispered the duke, who noted the sudden dilation of her
nostrils.
"It is easy to forget," cried the diva, furiously. "It is easy for you to
forget, but not for me."
"Madame, I do not forget that you entered my room that night ..."
"Your address!" bawled the duke. "That statement demands an explanation."
"I should explain at once, your Highness," said the man down below calmly,
"only I prefer to leave that part in Madame's hands. I should not care to
rob her of anything so interesting and dramatic. Madame the duchess can
explain, if she wishes. I am stopping at the Grand, if you find her
explanations are not up to your requirements."
"I shall give you her address," interrupted the diva, hastily. The duke's
bristling beard for one thing and the ice in the other man's tones for
another, disquieted her. The play had gone far enough, much as she would
have liked to continue it. This was going deeper than she cared to go. She
gave the address and added: "To-night she sings at the Austrian
ambassador's. I give you this information gladly because I know that it
will be of no use to you."
"Then I shall dispense with the formality of thanking you. I add that I
wish you twofold the misery you have carelessly and gratuitously cost me.
Good night!" Click! went the little covering of the tube.
"Now," said the duke, whose knowledge of the English tongue was not so
indifferent that he did not gather the substance, if not all the shadings,
of this peculiar conversation; "now, what the devil is all this about?"
"I hate him!"
"Refused to singe his wings?"
"He has insulted me!"
"I am curious to learn about that night you went to his room."
Her bear had a ring in his nose, but she could not always lead him by it.
So, without more ado, she spun the tale, laughing at intervals. The story
evidently impressed the duke, for his face remained sober all through the
recital.
"Did he say that you were a fool?"
"Of course not!"
"Shall I challenge him?"
"Oh, my Russian bear, he fences like a Chicot; he is a dead shot; and is
afraid of nothing ... but a woman. No, no; I have something better. It
will be like one of those old comedies. I hate her!" with a burst of fury.
"She always does everything just so much better than I do. As for him, he
was nothing. It was she; I hurt her, wrung her heart."
"Why?" mildly.
"Is not that enough?"
"I am slow; it takes a long time for anything to get into my head; but
when it arrives, it takes a longer time to get it out."
"Well, go on." Her calm was ominous.
"Love or vanity. This American singer got what you could not get. You have
had your way too long. Perhaps you did not love him. I do not believe you
can really love any one but Flora. Doubtless he possessed millions; but on
the other hand, I am a grand duke; I offered marriage, openly and legally,
in spite of all the opposition brought to bear."
Flora was undeniably clever. She did the one thing that could successfully
cope with this perilous condition of the ducal mind. She laughed, and
flung her arms around his neck and kissed him.
"I have named you well. You are a tigress. But this comedy of which you
speak: it might pass in Russia, but not in Paris."
"I shall not be in the least concerned. My part was suggestion."
"You suggested it to some one else?"
"To be sure!"
"My objections ..."
"I will have my way in this affair. Besides, it is too late."
Her gesture was explicit. He sighed. He knew quite well that she was
capable of leaving the apartment that night, in her kimono.
"I'll go to Capri," resignedly. Dynamite bombs were not the worst things
in the world.
"I don't want to go now."
The duke picked up a fresh cigarette. "How the devil must have laughed
when the Lord made Eve!"
CHAPTER IV
THE JOKE OF MONSIEUR
With the same inward bitterness that attends the mental processes of a
performing tiger on being sent back to its cage, Courtlandt returned to
his taxicab. He wanted to roar and lash and devour something. Instead, he
could only twist the ends of his mustache savagely. So she was a grand
duchess, or at least the morganatic wife of a grand duke! It did not seem
possible that any woman could be so full of malice. He simply could not
understand. It was essentially the Italian spirit; doubtless, till she
heard his voice, she had forgotten all about the episode that had
foundered his ship of happiness.