CHAPTER XIII
EVERYTHING BUT THE TRUTH
“I don’t see why the colonel didn’t invite some of the ladies,” Mrs. Harrigan complained.
“It’s a man-party. He’s giving it to please himself. And I do not blame him. The women about here treat him abominably. They come at all times of the day and night, use his card-room, order his servants about, drink his whisky and smoke his cigarettes, and generally invite themselves to luncheon and tea and dinner. And then, when they are ready to go back to their villas or hotel, take his motor-boat without a thank-you. The colonel has about three thousand pounds outside his half-pay, and they are all crazy to marry him because his sister is a countess. As a bachelor he can live like a prince, but as a married man he would have to dig. He told me that if he had been born Adam, he’d have climbed over Eden’s walls long before the Angel of the Flaming Sword paddled him out. Says he’s always going to be a bachelor, unless I take pity on him,” mischievously.
“Has he…?” in horrified tones.
“About three times a visit,” Nora admitted; “but I told him that I’d be a daughter, a cousin, or a niece to him, or even a grandchild. The latter presented too many complications, so we compromised on niece.”
“I wish I knew when you were serious and when you were fooling.”
“I am often as serious when I am fooling as I am foolish when I am serious…”
“Nora, you will have me shrieking in a minute!” despaired the mother. “Did the colonel really propose to you?”
“Only in fun.”
Celeste laughed and threw her arm around the mother’s waist, less ample than substantial. “Don’t you care! Nora is being pursued by little devils and is venting her spite on us.”
“There’ll be too much Burgundy and tobacco, to say nothing of the awful stories.”
“With the good old padre there? Hardly,” said Nora.
Celeste was a French woman. “I confess that I like a good story that isn’t vulgar. And none of them look like men who would stoop to vulgarity.”
“That’s about all you know of men,” declared Mrs. Harrigan.
“I am willing to give them the benefit of a doubt.”
“Celeste,” cried Nora, gaily, “I’ve an idea. Supposing you and I run back after dinner and hide in the card-room, which is right across from the dining-room? Then we can judge for ourselves.”
“Nora Harrigan!”
“Molly Harrigan!” mimicked the incorrigible. “Mother mine, you must learn to recognize a jest.”
“Ah, but yours!”
“Fine!” cried Celeste.
As if to put a final period to the discussion, Nora began to hum audibly an aria from Aïda.
They engaged a carriage in the village and were driven up to the villa. On the way Mrs. Harrigan discussed the stranger, Edward Courtlandt. What a fine-looking young man he was, and how adventurous, how well-connected, how enormously rich, and what an excellent catch! She and Celeste – the one innocently and the other provocatively – continued the subject to the very doors of the villa. All the while Nora hummed softly.
“What do you think of him, Nora?” the mother inquired.
“Think of whom?”
“This Mr. Courtlandt.”
“Oh, I didn’t pay much attention to him,” carelessly. But once alone with Celeste, she seized her by the arm, a little roughly. “Celeste, I love you better than any outsider I know. But if you ever discuss that man in my presence again, I shall cease to regard you even as an acquaintance. He has come here for the purpose of annoying me, though he promised the prefect in Paris never to annoy me again.”
“The prefect!”
“Yes. The morning I left Versailles I met him in the private office of the prefect. He had powerful friends who aided him in establishing an alibi. I was only a woman, so I didn’t count.”
“Nora, if I have meddled in any way,” proudly, “it has been because I love you, and I see you unhappy. You have nearly killed me with your sphinx-like actions. You have never asked me the result of my spying for you that night. Spying is not one of my usual vocations, but I did it gladly for you.”
“You gave him my address?” coldly.
“I did not. I convinced him that I had come at the behest of Flora Desimone. He demanded her address, which I gave him. If ever there was a man in a fine rage, it was he as he left me to go there. If he found out where we lived, the Calabrian assisted him, I spoke to him rather plainly at tea. He said that he had had nothing whatever to do with the abduction, and I believe him. I am positive that he is not the kind of man to go that far and not proceed to the end. And now, will you please tell Carlos to bring my dinner to my room?”
The impulsive Irish heart was not to be resisted. Nora wanted to remain firm, but instead she swept Celeste into her arms. “Celeste, don’t be angry! I am very, very unhappy.”
If the Irish heart was impulsive, the French one was no less so. Celeste wanted to cry out that she was unhappy, too.
“Don’t bother to dress! Just give your hair a pat or two. We’ll all three dine on the balcony.”
Celeste flew to her room. Nora went over to the casement window and stared at the darkening mountains. When she turned toward the dresser she was astonished to find two bouquets. One was an enormous bunch of violets. The other was of simple marguerites. She picked up the violets. There was a card without a name; but the phrase scribbled across the face of it was sufficient. She flung the violets far down into the grape-vines below. The action was without anger, excited rather by a contemptuous indifference. As for the simple marguerites, she took them up gingerly. The arc these described through the air was even greater than that performed by the violets.
“I’m a silly fool, I suppose,” she murmured, turning back into the room again.
It was ten o’clock when the colonel bade his guests good night as they tumbled out of his motor-boat. They were in more or less exuberant spirits; for the colonel knew how to do two things particularly well: order a dinner, and avoid the many traps set for him by scheming mamas and eligible widows. Abbott, the Barone and Harrigan, arm in arm, marched on ahead, whistling one tune in three different keys, while Courtlandt set the pace for the padre.
All through the dinner the padre had watched and listened. Faces were generally books to him, and he read in this young man’s face many things that pleased him. This was no night rover, a fool over wine and women, a spendthrift. He straightened out the lines and angles in a man’s face as a skilled mathematician elucidates an intricate geometrical problem. He had arrived at the basic knowledge that men who live mostly out of doors are not volatile and irresponsible, but are more inclined to reserve, to reticence, to a philosophy which is broad and comprehensive and generous. They are generally men who are accomplishing things, and who let other people tell about it. Thus, the padre liked Courtlandt’s voice, his engaging smile, his frank unwavering eyes; and he liked the leanness about the jaws, which was indicative of strength of character. In fact, he experienced a singular jubilation as he walked beside this silent man.
“There has been a grave mistake somewhere,” he mused aloud, thoughtfully.
“I beg your pardon,” said Courtlandt.
“I beg yours. I was thinking aloud. How long have you known the Harrigans?”
“The father and mother I never saw before to-day.”
“Then you have met Miss Harrigan?”
“I have seen her on the stage.”
“I have the happiness of being her confessor.”
They proceeded quite as far as a hundred yards before Courtlandt volunteered: “That must be interesting.”
“She is a good Catholic.”
“Ah, yes; I recollect now.”
“And you?”
“Oh, I haven’t any religion such as requires my presence in churches. Don’t misunderstand me! As a boy I was bred in the Episcopal Church; but I have traveled so much that I have drifted out of the circle. I find that when I am out in the open, in the heart of some great waste, such as a desert, a sea, the top of a mountain, I can see the greatness of the Omnipotent far more clearly and humbly than within the walls of a cathedral.”
“But God imposes obligations upon mankind. We have ceased to look upon the hermit as a holy man, but rather as one devoid of courage. It is not the stone and the stained windows; it is the text of our daily work, that the physical being of the Church represents.”
“I have not avoided any of my obligations.” Courtlandt shifted his stick behind his back. “I was speaking of the church and the open field, as they impressed me.”
“You believe in the tenets of Christianity?”
“Surely! A man must pin his faith and hope to something more stable than humanity.”
“I should like to convert you to my way of thinking,” simply.
“Nothing is impossible. Who knows?”
The padre, as they continued onward, offered many openings, but the young man at his side refused to be drawn into any confidence. So the padre gave up, for the futility of his efforts became irksome. His own lips were sealed, so he could not ask point-blank the question that clamored at the tip of his tongue.
“So you are Miss Harrigan’s confessor?”
“Does it strike you strangely?”
“Merely the coincidence.”
“If I were not her confessor I should take the liberty of asking you some questions.”
“It is quite possible that I should decline to answer them.”
The padre shrugged. “It is patent to me that you will go about this affair in your own way. I wish you well.”
“Thank you. As Miss Harrigan’s confessor you doubtless know everything but the truth.”
The padre laughed this time. The shops were closed. The open restaurants by the water-front held but few idlers. The padre admired the young man’s independence. Most men would have hesitated not a second to pour the tale into his ears in hope of material assistance. The padre’s admiration was equally proportioned with respect.
“I leave you here,” he said. “You will see me frequently at the villa.”
“I certainly shall be there frequently. Good night.”
Courtlandt quickened his pace which soon brought him alongside the others. They stopped in front of Abbott’s pension, and he tried to persuade them to come up for a nightcap.
“Nothing to it, my boy,” said Harrigan. “I need no nightcap on top of cognac forty-eight years old. For me that’s a whole suit of pajamas.”
“You come, Ted.”
“Abbey, I wouldn’t climb those stairs for a bottle of Horace’s Falernian, served on Seneca’s famous citron table.”
“Not a friend in the world,” Abbott lamented.
Laughingly they hustled him into the hallway and fled. Then Courtlandt went his way alone. He slept with the dubious satisfaction that the first day had not gone badly. The wedge had been entered. It remained to be seen if it could be dislodged.
Harrigan was in a happy temper. He kissed his wife and chucked Nora under the chin. And then Mrs. Harrigan launched the thunderbolt which, having been held on the leash for several hours, had, for all of that, lost none of its ability to blight and scorch.
“James, you are about as hopeless a man as ever was born. You all but disgraced us this afternoon.”
“Mother!”
“Me?” cried the bewildered Harrigan.
“Look at those tennis shoes; one white string and one brown one. It’s enough to drive a woman mad. What in heaven’s name made you come?”
Perhaps it was the after effect of a good dinner, that dwindling away of pleasant emotions; perhaps it was the very triviality of the offense for which he was thus suddenly arraigned; at any rate, he lost his temper, and he was rather formidable when that occurred.
“Damn it, Molly, I wasn’t going, but Courtlandt asked me to go with him, and I never thought of my shoes. You are always finding fault with me these days. I don’t drink, I don’t gamble, I don’t run around after other women; I never did. But since you’ve got this social bug in your bonnet, you keep me on hooks all the while. Nobody noticed the shoe-strings; and they would have looked upon it as a joke if they had. After all, I’m the boss of this ranch. If I want to wear a white string and a black one, I’ll do it. Here!” He caught up the book on social usages and threw it out of the window. “Don’t ever shove a thing like that under my nose again. If you do, I’ll hike back to little old New York and start the gym again.”
He rammed one of the colonel’s perfectos (which he had been saving for the morrow) between his teeth, and stalked into the garden.
Nora was heartless enough to laugh.
“He hasn’t talked like that to me in years!” Mrs. Harrigan did not know what to do, – follow him or weep. She took the middle course, and went to bed.
Nora turned out the lights and sat out on the little balcony. The moonshine was glorious. So dense was the earth-blackness that the few lights twinkling here and there were more like fallen stars. Presently she heard a sound. It was her father, returning as silently as he could. She heard him fumble among the knickknacks on the mantel, and then go away again. By and by she saw a spot of white light move hither and thither among the grape arbors. For five or six minutes she watched it dance. Suddenly all became dark again. She laid her head upon the railing and conned over the day’s events. These were not at all satisfactory to her. Then her thoughts traveled many miles away. Six months of happiness, of romance, of play, and then misery and blackness.
“Nora, are you there?”
“Yes. Over here on the balcony. What were you doing down there?”
“Oh, Nora, I’m sorry I lost my temper. But Molly’s begun to nag me lately, and I can’t stand it. I went after that book. Did you throw some flowers out of the window?”
“Yes.”
“A bunch of daisies?”
“Marguerites,” she corrected.
“All the same to me. I picked up the bunch, and look at what I found inside.”
He extended his palm, flooding it with the light of his pocket-lamp. Nora’s heart tightened. What she saw was a beautiful uncut emerald.
CHAPTER XIV
A COMEDY WITH MUSIC
The Harrigans occupied the suite in the east wing of the villa. This consisted of a large drawing-room and two ample bedchambers, with window-balconies and a private veranda in the rear, looking off toward the green of the pines and the metal-like luster of the copper beeches. Always the suite was referred to by the management as having once been tenanted by the empress of Germany. Indeed, tourists were generally and respectively and impressively shown the suite (provided it was not at the moment inhabited), and were permitted to peer eagerly about for some sign of the vanished august presence. But royalty in passing, as with the most humble of us, leaves nothing behind save the memory of a tip, generous or otherwise.
It was raining, a fine, soft, blurring Alpine rain, and a blue-grey monotone prevailed upon the face of the waters and defied all save the keenest scrutiny to discern where the mountain tops ended and the sky began. It was a day for indoors, for dreams, good books, and good fellows.
The old-fashioned photographer would have admired and striven to perpetuate the group in the drawing-room. In the old days it was quite the proper thing to snap the family group while they were engaged in some pleasant pastime, such as spinning, or painting china, or playing the piano, or reading a volume of poems. No one ever seemed to bother about the incongruence of the eyes, which were invariably focused at the camera lens. Here they all were. Mrs. Harrigan was deep in the intricate maze of the Amelia Ars of Bologna, which, as the initiated know, is a wonderful lace. By one of the windows sat Nora, winding interminable yards of lace-hemming from off the willing if aching digits of the Barone, who was speculating as to what his Neapolitan club friends would say could they see, by some trick of crystal-gazing, his present occupation. Celeste was at the piano, playing (pianissimo) snatches from the operas, while Abbott looked on, his elbows propped upon his knees, his chin in his palms, and a quality of ecstatic content in his eyes. He was in his working clothes, picturesque if paint-daubed. The morning had been pleasant enough, but just before luncheon the rain clouds had gathered and settled down with that suddenness known only in high altitudes.
The ex-gladiator sat on one of those slender mockeries, composed of gold-leaf and parabolic curves and faded brocade, such as one sees at the Trianon or upon the stage or in the new home of a new millionaire, and which, if the true facts be known, the ingenious Louis invented for the discomfort of his favorites and the folly of future collectors. It creaked whenever Harrigan sighed, which was often, for he was deeply immersed (and no better word could be selected to fit his mental condition) in the baneful book which he had hurled out of the window the night before, only to retrieve like the good dog that he was. To-day his shoes offered no loophole to criticism; he had very well attended to that. His tie harmonized with his shirt and stockings; his suit was of grey tweed; in fact, he was the glass of fashion and the mold of form, at least for the present.
“Say, Molly, I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“Difference what makes, James?” Mrs. Harrigan raised her eyes from her work. James had been so well-behaved that morning it was only logical for her to anticipate that he was about to abolish at one fell stroke all his hard-earned merits.
“About eating salads. We never used to put oil on our tomatoes. Sugar and vinegar were good enough.”
“Sugar and vinegar are not nourishing; olive-oil is.”
“We seemed to hike along all right before we learned that.” His guardian angel was alert this time, and he returned to his delving without further comment. By and by he got up. “Pshaw!” He dropped the wearisome volume on the reading-table, took up a paper-covered novel, and turned to the last fight of the blacksmith in Rodney Stone. Here was something that made the invention of type excusable, even commendable.
“Play the fourth ballade,” urged Abbott.
Celeste was really a great artist. As an interpreter of Chopin she had no rival among women, and only one man was her equal. She had fire, tenderness, passion, strength; she had beyond all these, soul, which is worth more in true expression than the most marvelous technique. She had chosen Chopin for his brilliance, as some will chose Turner in preference to Corot: riots of color, barbaric and tingling. She was as great a genius in her way as Nora was in hers. There was something of the elfin child in her spirit. Whenever she played to Abbott, there was a quality in the expression that awakened a wonderment in Nora’s heart.
As Celeste began the andante, Nora signified to the Barone to drop his work. She let her own hands fall. Harrigan gently closed his book, for in that rough kindly soul of his lay a mighty love of music. He himself was without expression of any sort, and somehow music seemed to stir the dim and not quite understandable longing for utterance. Mrs. Harrigan alone went on with her work; she could work and listen at the same time. After the magnificent finale, nothing in the room stirred but her needle.
“Bravo!” cried the Barone, breaking the spell.
“You never played that better,” declared Nora.
Celeste, to escape the keen inquiry of her friend and to cover up her embarrassment, dashed into one of the lighter compositions, a waltz. It was a favorite of Nora’s. She rose and went over to the piano and rested a hand upon Celeste’s shoulder. And presently her voice took up the melody. Mrs. Harrigan dropped her needle. It was not that she was particularly fond of music, but there was something in Nora’s singing that cast a temporary spell of enchantment over her, rendering her speechless and motionless. She was not of an analytical turn of mind; thus, the truth escaped her. She was really lost in admiration of herself: she had produced this marvelous being!
“That’s some!” Harrigan beat his hands together thunderously. “Great stuff; eh, Barone?”
The Barone raised his hands as if to express his utter inability to describe his sensations. His elation was that ascribed to those fortunate mortals whom the gods lifted to Olympus. At his feet lay the lace-hemming, hopelessly snarled.
“Father, father!” remonstrated Nora; “you will wake up all the old ladies who are having their siesta.”
“Bah! I’ll bet a doughnut their ears are glued to their doors. What ho! Somebody’s at the portcullis. Probably the padre, come up for tea.”
He was at the door instantly. He flung it open heartily. It was characteristic of the man to open everything widely, his heart, his mind, his hate or his affection.
“Come in, come in! Just in time for the matinée concert.”
The padre was not alone. Courtlandt followed him in.
“We have been standing in the corridor for ten minutes,” affirmed the padre, sending a winning smile around the room. “Mr. Courtlandt was for going down to the bureau and sending up our cards. But I would not hear of such formality. I am a privileged person.”
“Sure yes! Molly, ring for tea, and tell ’em to make it hot. How about a little peg, as the colonel says?”
The two men declined.
How easily and nonchalantly the man stood there by the door as Harrigan took his hat! Celeste was aquiver with excitement. She was thoroughly a woman: she wanted something to happen, dramatically, romantically.
But her want was a vain one. The man smiled quizzically at Nora, who acknowledged the salutation by a curtsy which would have frightened away the banshees of her childhood. Nora hated scenes, and Courtlandt had the advantage of her in his knowledge of this. Celeste remained at the piano, but Nora turned as if to move away.
“No, no!” cried the padre, his palms extended in protest. “If you stop the music I shall leave instantly.”
“But we are all through, Padre,” replied Nora, pinching Celeste’s arm, which action the latter readily understood as a command to leave the piano.
Celeste, however, had a perverse streak in her to-day. Instead of rising as Nora expected she would, she wheeled on the stool and began Morning Mood from Peer Gynt, because the padre preferred Grieg or Beethoven to Chopin. Nora frowned at the pretty head below her. She stooped.
“I sha’n’t forgive you for this trick,” she whispered.
Celeste shrugged, and her fingers did not falter. So Nora moved away this time in earnest.
“No, you must sing. That is what I came up for,” insisted the padre. If there was any malice in the churchman, it was of a negative quality. But it was in his Latin blood that drama should appeal to him strongly, and here was an unusual phase in The Great Play. He had urged Courtlandt, much against the latter’s will this day, to come up with him, simply that he might set a little scene such as this promised to be and study it from the vantage of the prompter. He knew that the principal theme of all great books, of all great dramas, was antagonism, antagonism between man and woman, though by a thousand other names has it been called. He had often said, in a spirit of raillery, that this antagonism was principally due to the fact that Eve had been constructed (and very well) out of a rib from Adam. Naturally she resented this, that she had not been fashioned independently, and would hold it against man until the true secret of the parable was made clear to her.
“Sing that, Padre?” said Nora. “Why, there are no words to it that I know.”
“Words? Peste! Who cares for words no one really ever understands? It is the voice, my child. Go on, or I shall make you do some frightful penance.”
Nora saw that further opposition would be useless. After all, it would be better to sing. She would not be compelled to look at this man she so despised. For a moment her tones were not quite clear; but Celeste increased the volume of sound warningly, and as this required more force on Nora’s part, the little cross-current was passed without mishap. It was mere pastime for her to follow these wonderful melodies. She had no words to recall so that her voice was free to do with as she elected. There were bars absolutely impossible to follow, note for note, but she got around this difficulty by taking the key and holding it strongly and evenly. In ordinary times Nora never refused to sing for her guests, if she happened to be in voice. There was none of that conceited arrogance behind which most of the vocal celebrities hide themselves. At the beginning she had intended to sing badly; but as the music proceeded, she sang as she had not sung in weeks. To fill this man’s soul with a hunger for the sound of her voice, to pour into his heart a fresh knowledge of what he had lost forever and forever!
Courtlandt sat on the divan beside Harrigan who, with that friendly spirit which he observed toward all whom he liked, whether of long or short acquaintance, had thrown his arm across Courtlandt’s shoulder. The younger man understood all that lay behind the simple gesture, and he was secretly pleased.
But Mrs. Harrigan was not. She was openly displeased, and in vain she tried to catch the eye of her wayward lord. A man he had known but twenty-four hours, and to greet him with such coarse familiarity!
Celeste was not wholly unmerciful. She did not finish the suite, but turned from the keys after the final chords of Morning Mood.
“Thank you!” said Nora.
“Do not stop,” begged Courtlandt.
Nora looked directly into his eyes as she replied: “One’s voice can not go on forever, and mine is not at all strong.”
And thus, without having originally the least intent to do so, they broke the mutual contract on which they had separately and secretly agreed: never to speak directly to each other. Nora was first to realize what she had done, and she was furiously angry with herself. She left the piano.
As if her mind had opened suddenly like a book, Courtlandt sprang from the divan and reached for the fat ball of lace-hemming. He sat down in Nora’s chair and nodded significantly to the Barone, who blushed. To hold the delicate material for Nora’s unwinding was a privilege of the gods, but to hold it for this man for whom he held a dim feeling of antagonism was altogether a different matter.
“It is horribly tangled,” he admitted, hoping thus to escape.
“No matter. You hold the ball. I’ll untangle it. I never saw a fish-line I could not straighten out.”
Nora laughed. It was not possible for her to repress the sound. Her sense of humor was too strong in this case to be denied its release in laughter. It was free of the subtler emotions; frank merriment, no more, no less. And possessing the hunter’s extraordinarily keen ear, Courtlandt recognized the quality; and the weight of a thousand worlds lightened its pressure upon his heart. And the Barone laughed, too. So there they were, the three of them. But Nora’s ineffectual battle for repression had driven her near to hysteria. To escape this dire calamity, she flung open a casement window and stood within it, breathing in the heavy fragrance of the rain-laden air.
This little comedy had the effect of relaxing them all; and the laughter became general. Abbott’s smile faded soonest. He stared at his friend in wonder not wholly free from a sense of evil fortune. Never had he known Courtlandt to aspire to be a squire of dames. To see the Barone hold the ball as if it were hot shot was amusing; but the cool imperturbable manner with which Courtlandt proceeded to untangle the snarl was disturbing. Why the deuce wasn’t he himself big and strong, silent and purposeful, instead of being a dawdling fool of an artist?
No answer came to his inquiry, but there was a knock at the door. The managing director handed Harrigan a card.
“Herr Rosen,” he read aloud. “Send him up. Some friend of yours, Nora; Herr Rosen. I told Mr. Jilli to send him up.”
The padre drew his feet under his cassock, a sign of perturbation; Courtlandt continued to unwind; the Barone glanced fiercely at Nora, who smiled enigmatically.