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 t.i.tled 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 s.n.a.t.c.h of song--
_O solo mio_ ... _che bella cosa_...!
What a beautiful thing indeed! Pa.s.sionately 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 a.s.signed 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 cas.e.m.e.nt 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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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 appet.i.te 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.
"Who cares? He"s the patientest man I know. We"re always nagging him, and I for one am going to stop. Look about! So few men and women dress for dinner. You do as you please here, and that is why I like it."
"I shall never be able to do anything with him as long as he sees that his mistakes are being condoned by you," bitterly responded the mother. "Some day he will humiliate us all by his carelessness."
"Oh, bother!" Nora"s elbow slyly dug into Celeste"s side.
The pianist"s pretty face was bent over her soup. She had grown accustomed to these little daily rifts. For the great, patient, clumsy, happy-go-lucky man she entertained an intense pity. But it was not the kind that humiliates; on the contrary, it was of a mothering disposition; and the ex-gladiator dimly recognized it, and felt more comfortable with her than with any other woman excepting Nora. She understood him perhaps better than either mother or daughter; he was too late: he belonged to a distant time, the beginning of the Christian era; and often she pictured him braving the net and the trident in the saffroned arena.
Mrs. Harrigan broke her bread vexatiously. Her husband refused to think for himself, and it was wearing on her nerves to watch him day and night.
Deep down under the surface of new adjustments and social ambitions, deep in the primitive heart, he was still her man. But it was only when he limped with an occasional twinge of rheumatism, or a tooth ached, or he dallied with his meals, that the old love-instinct broke up through these artificial crustations. True, she never knew how often he invented these trivial ailments, for he soon came into the knowledge that she was less concerned about him when he was hale and hearty. She still retained evidences of a blossomy beauty. Abbott had once said truly that nature had experimented on her; it was in the reproduction that perfection had been reached. To see the father, the mother, and the daughter together it was not difficult to fashion a theory as to the latter"s splendid health and physical superiority. Arriving at this point, however, theory began to fray at the ends. No one could account for the genius and the voice. The mother often stood lost in wonder that out of an ordinary childhood, a barelegged, romping, hoydenish childhood, this marvel should emerge: her"s!
She was very ambitious for her daughter. She wanted to see nothing less than a ducal coronet upon the child"s brow, British preferred. If ordinary chorus girls and vaudeville stars, possessing only pa.s.sable beauty and no intelligence whatever, could bring earls into their nets, there was no reason why Nora could not be a princess or a d.u.c.h.ess. So she planned accordingly. But the child puzzled and eluded her; and from time to time she discovered a disquieting strength of character behind a disarming amiability. Ever since Nora had returned home by way of the Orient, the mother had recognized a subtle change, so subtle that she never had an opportunity of alluding to it verbally. Perhaps the fault lay at her own door. She should never have permitted Nora to come abroad alone to fill her engagements.
But that Nora was to marry a duke was, to her mind, a settled fact. It is a peculiar phase, this of the humble who find themselves, without effort of their own, thrust up among the great and the so-called, who forget whence they came in the fierce contest for supremacy upon that tottering ledge called society. The cad and the sn.o.b are only infrequently well-born. Mrs. Harrigan was as yet far from being a sn.o.b, but it required some tact upon Nora"s part to prevent this dubious accomplishment.
"Is Mr. Abbott going with us?" she inquired.
"Donald is sulking," Nora answered. "For once the Barone got ahead of him in engaging the motor-boat."
"I wish you would not call him by his first name."
"And why not? I like him, and he is a very good comrade."
"You do not call the Barone by his given name."
"Heavens, no! If I did he would kiss me. These Italians will never understand western customs, mother. I shall never marry an Italian, much as I love Italy."
"Nor a Frenchman?" asked Celeste.
"Nor a Frenchman."
"I wish I knew if you meant it," sighed the mother.
"My dear, I have given myself to the stage. You will never see me being led to the altar."
"No, you will do the leading when the time comes," retorted the mother.
"Mother, the men I like you may count upon the fingers of one hand. Three of them are old. For the rest, I despise men."
"I suppose some day you will marry some poverty-stricken artist," said the mother, filled with dark foreboding.
"You would not call Donald poverty-stricken."
"No. But you will never marry him."
"No. I never shall."
Celeste smoothed her hands, a little trick she had acquired from long hours spent at the piano. "He will make some woman a good husband."
"That he will."
"And he is most desperately in love with you."
"That"s nonsense!" scoffed Nora. "He thinks he is. He ought to fall in love with you, Celeste. Every time you play the fourth _ballade_ he looks as if he was ready to throw himself at your feet."