"I am afraid." And she was so. This wasn"t the tone of a man madly in love. It was wild anger.
"Afraid of what?"
"You."
"I will give you a hundred francs." He watched her closely and shrewdly.
Came the little wrinkle again, but this time urged in perplexity. "A hundred francs, for something I was sent to tell you?"
"And now refuse."
"It is very generous. She has a heart of flint, Monsieur."
"Well I know it. Perhaps now I have one of steel."
"Many sparks do not make a fire. Do you know that your French is very good?"
"I spent my boyhood in Paris; some of it. Her address, if you please." He produced a crisp note for a hundred francs. "Do you want it?"
She did not answer at once. Presently she opened her purse, found a stubby pencil and a slip of paper, and wrote. "There it is, Monsieur." She held out her hand for the bank-note which, with a sense of bafflement, he gave her. She folded the note and stowed it away with the pencil.
"Thank you," said Courtlandt. "Odd paper, though." He turned it over. "Ah, I understand. You copy music."
"Yes, Monsieur."
This time the nervous flicker of her eyes did not escape him. "You are studying for the opera, perhaps?"
"Yes, that is it."
The eagerness of the admission convinced him that she was not. Who she was or whence she had come no longer excited his interest. He had the Calabrian"s address and he was impatient to be off.
"Good night." He rose.
"Monsieur is not gallant."
"I was in my youth," he replied, putting on his hat.
The bald rudeness of his departure did not disturb her. She laughed softly and relievedly. Indeed, there was in the laughter an essence of mischief.
However, if he carried away a mystery, he left one behind.
As he was hunting for a taxicab, the waiter ran out and told him that he had forgotten to settle for the wine. The lady had refused to do so.
Courtlandt chuckled and gave him a ten-franc piece. In other days, in other circ.u.mstances, he would have liked to know more about the unknown who scribbled notes on composition paper. She was not an idler in the Rue Royale, and it did not require that indefinable intuition which comes of worldly-wiseness to discover this fact. She might be a friend of the Desimone woman, but she had stepped out of another sphere to become so. He recognized the quality that could adjust itself to any environment and come out scatheless. This was undeniably an American accomplishment; and yet she was distinctly a Frenchwoman. He dismissed the problem from his mind and bade the driver go as fast as the police would permit.
Meanwhile the young woman waited five or ten minutes, and, making sure that Courtlandt had been driven off, left the restaurant. Round the corner she engaged a carriage. So that was Edward Courtlandt? She liked his face; there was not a weak line in it, unless stubbornness could be called such.
But to stay away for two years! To hide himself in jungles, to be heard of only by his harebrained exploits! "Follow him; see where he goes," had been the command. For a moment she had rebelled, but her curiosity was not to be denied. Besides, of what use was friendship if not to be tried? She knew nothing of the riddle, she had never asked a question openly. She had accidentally seen a photograph one day, in a trunk tray, with this man"s name scrawled across it, and upon this flimsy base she had builded a dozen romances, each of which she had ruthlessly torn down to make room for another; but still the riddle lay unsolved. She had thrown the name into the conversation many a time, as one might throw a bomb into a crowd which had no chance to escape. Fizzles! The man had been calmly discussed and calmly dismissed. At odd times an article in the newspapers gave her an opportunity; still the frank discussion, still the calm dismissal. She had learned that the man was rich, irresponsible, vacillating, a picturesque sort of fool. But two years? What had kept him away that long? A weak man, in love, would not have made so tame a surrender. Perhaps he had not surrendered; perhaps neither of them had.
And yet, he sought the Calabrian. Here was another blind alley out of which she had to retrace her steps. Bother! That Puck of Shakespeare was right: What fools these mortals be! She was very glad that she possessed a true sense of humor, spiced with harmless audacity. What a dreary world it must be to those who did not know how and when to laugh! They talked of the daring of the American woman: who but a Frenchwoman would have dared what she had this night? The taxicab! She laughed. And this man was wax in the hands of any pretty woman who came along! So rumor had it. But she knew that rumor was only the attenuated ghost of Ananias, doomed forever to remain on earth for the propagation of inaccurate whispers. Wax! Why, she would have trusted herself in any situation with a man with those eyes and that angle of jaw. It was all very mystifying. "Follow him; see where he goes." The frank discussion, then, and the calm dismissal were but a woman"s dissimulation. And he had gone to Flora Desimone"s.
The carriage stopped before a handsome apartment-house in the Avenue de Wagram. The unknown got out, gave the driver his fare, and rang the concierge"s bell. The sleepy guardian opened the door, touched his gold-braided cap in recognition, and led the way to the small electric lift. The young woman entered and familiarly pushed the b.u.t.ton. The apartment in which she lived was on the second floor; and there was luxury everywhere, but luxury subdued and charmed by taste. There were fine old Persian rugs on the floors, exquisite oils and water-colors on the walls; and rare j.a.panese silk tapestries hung between the doors. In one corner of the living-room was a bronze jar filled with artificial cherry blossoms; in another corner near the door, hung a flat bell-shaped piece of bra.s.s--a Burmese gong. There were many photographs ranged along the mantel-top; celebrities, musical, artistic and literary, each accompanied by a liberal expanse of autographic ink.
She threw aside her hat and wraps with that manner of inconsequence which distinguishes the artistic temperament from the thrifty one, and pa.s.sed on into the cozy dining-room. The maid had arranged some sandwiches and a bottle of light wine. She ate and drank, while intermittent smiles played across her merry face. Having satisfied her hunger, she opened her purse and extracted the bank-note. She smoothed it out and laughed aloud.
"Oh, if only he had taken me for a ride in the taxicab!" She bubbled again with merriment.
Suddenly she sprang up, as if inspired, and dashed into another room, a study. She came back with pen and ink, and with a celerity that came of long practise, drew five straight lines across the faint violet face of the bank-note. Within these lines she made little dots at the top and bottom of stubby perpendicular strokes, and strange interlineal hieroglyphics, and sweeping curves, all of which would have puzzled an Egyptologist if he were unused to the ways of musicians. Carefully she dried the composition, and then put the note away. Some day she would confound him by returning it.
A little later her fingers were moving softly over the piano keys; melodies in minor, sad and haunting and elusive, melodies that had never been put on paper and would always be her own: in them she might leap from comedy to tragedy, from laughter to tears, and only she would know. The midnight adventure was forgotten, and the hero of it, too. With her eyes closed and her lithe body swaying gently, she let the old weary pain in her heart take hold again.
CHAPTER III
THE BEAUTIFUL TIGRESS
Flora Desimone had been born in a Calabrian peasant"s hut, and she had rolled in the dust outside, yelling vigorously at all times. Specialists declare that the reason for all great singers coming from lowly origin is found in this early development of the muscles of the throat. Parents of means employ nurses or sedatives to suppress or at least to smother these infantile protests against being thrust inconsiderately into the turmoil of human beings. Flora yelled or slept, as the case might be; her parents were equally indifferent. They were too busily concerned with the getting of bread and wine. Moreover, Flora was one among many. The G.o.ds are always playing with the Calabrian peninsula, heaving it up here or throwing it down there: _il terremoto_, the earthquake, the terror. Here nature tinkers vicariously with souls; and she seldom has time to complete her work. Constant communion with death makes for callosity of feeling; and the Calabrians and the Sicilians are the cruellest among the civilized peoples. Flora was ruthless.
She lived amazingly well in the premier of an apartment-hotel in the Champs-Elysees. In England and America she had ama.s.sed a fortune. Given the warm beauty of the Southern Italian, the pa.s.sion, the temperament, the love of mischief, the natural cruelty, the inordinate craving for attention and flattery, she enlivened the nations with her affairs. And she never put a single beat of her heart into any of them. That is why her voice is still splendid and her beauty unchanging. She did not dissipate; calculation always barred her inclination; rather, she loitered about the Forbidden Tree and played that she had plucked the Apple. She had an example to follow; Eve had none.
Men scattered fortunes at her feet as foolish Greeks scattered floral offerings at the feet of their marble G.o.ds--without provoking the sense of reciprocity or generosity or mercy. She had worked; ah, no one would ever know how hard. She had been crushed, beaten, cursed, starved. That she had risen to the heights in spite of these bruising verbs in no manner enlarged her pity, but dulled and vitiated the little there was of it. Her mental att.i.tude toward humanity was childish: as, when the parent strikes, the child blindly strikes back. She was determined to play, to enjoy life, to give back blow for blow, nor caring where she struck. She was going to press the juice from every grape. A thousand odd years gone, she would have led the cry in Rome--"Bread and the circus!" or "To the lions!" She would have disturbed Nero"s complacency, and he would have played an obbligato instead of a solo at the burning. And she was malice incarnate.
They came from all climes--her lovers--with roubles and lire and francs and shillings and dollars; and those who finally escaped her enchantment 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 surpa.s.s.
Arrayed in a kimono which would have evoked the envy of the empress of j.a.pan, supposing such a gorgeous raiment--peac.o.c.ks 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 cla.s.s 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!"