CHAPTER X

MARGUERITES AND EMERALDS

From where he sat Courtlandt could see down the main thoroughfare of the

pretty village. There were other streets, to be sure, but courtesy and

good nature alone permitted this misapplication of title: they were merely

a series of torturous enervating stairways of stone, up and down which

noisy wooden sandals clattered all the day long. Over the entrances to the

shops the proprietors were dropping the white and brown awnings for the

day. Very few people shopped after luncheon. There were pleasanter

pastimes, even for the women, contradictory as this may seem. By eleven

o'clock Courtlandt had finished the reading of his mail, and was now ready

to hunt for the little lady of the Taverne Royale. It was necessary to

find her. The whereabouts of Flora Desimone was of vital importance. If

she had not yet arrived, the presence of her friend presaged her ultimate

arrival. The duke was a negligible quantity. It would have surprised

Courtlandt could he have foreseen the drawing together of the ends of the

circle and the relative concernment of the duke in knotting those ends.

The labors of Hercules had never entailed the subjugation of two

temperamental women.

He rose and proceeded on his quest. Before the photographer's shop he saw

a dachel wrathfully challenging a cat on the balcony of the adjoining

building. The cat knew, and so did the puppy, that it was all buncombe on

the puppy's part: the usual European war-scare, in which one of the

belligerent parties refused to come down because it wouldn't have been

worth while, there being the usual Powers ready to intervene. Courtlandt

did not bother about the cat; the puppy claimed his attention. He was very

fond of dogs. So he reached down suddenly and put an end to the sharp

challenge. The dachel struggled valiantly, for this breed of dog does not

make friends easily.

"I say, you little Dutchman, what's the row? I'm not going to hurt you.

Funny little codger! To whom do you belong?" He turned the collar around,

read the inscription, and gently put the puppy on the ground.

Nora Harrigan!

His immediate impulse was to walk on, but somehow this impulse refused to

act on his sense of locomotion. He waited, dully wondering what was going

to happen when she came out. He had left her room that night in Paris,

vowing that he would never intrude on her again. With the recollection of

that bullet whizzing past his ear, he had been convinced that the play was

done. True, she had testified that it had been accidental, but never would

he forget the look in her eyes. It was not pleasant to remember. And

still, as the needle is drawn by the magnet, here he was, in Bellaggio. He

cursed his weakness. From Brescia he had made up his mind to go directly

to Berlin. Before he realized how useless it was to battle against these

invisible forces, he was in Milan, booking for Como. At Como he had

remained a week (the dullest week he had ever known); at the Villa d'Este

three days; at Cadenabbia one day. It had all the characteristics of a

tug-of-war, and irresistibly he was drawn over the line. The night before

he had taken the evening boat across the lake. And Herr Rosen had been his

fellow-passenger! The goddess of chance threw whimsical coils around her

victims. To find himself shoulder to shoulder, as it were, with this man

who, perhaps more than all other incentives, had urged him to return again

to civilization; this man who had aroused in his heart a sentiment that

hitherto he had not believed existed,--jealousy.... Ah, voices! He stepped

aside quickly.

"Fritz, Fritz; where are you?"

And a moment later she came out, followed by her mother ... and the little

lady of the Taverne Royale. Did Nora see him? It was impossible to tell.

She simply stooped and gathered up the puppy, who struggled determinedly

to lick her face. Courtlandt lifted his hat. It was in nowise offered as

an act of recognition; it was merely the mechanical courtesy that a man

generally pays to any woman in whose path he chances to be for the breath

of a second. The three women in immaculate white, hatless, but with

sunshades, passed on down the street.

Courtlandt went into the shop, rather blindly. He stared at the shelves of

paper-covered novels and post-cards, and when the polite proprietor

offered him a dozen of the latter, he accepted them without comment.

Indeed, he put them into a pocket and turned to go out.

"Pardon, sir; those are one franc the dozen."

"Ah, yes." Courtlandt pulled out some silver. It was going to be terribly

difficult, and his heart was heavy with evil presages. He had seen

Celeste. He understood the amusing if mysterious comedy now. Nora had

recognized him and had sent her friend to follow him and learn where he

went. And he, poor fool of a blunderer, with the best intentions in the

world, he had gone at once to the Calabrian's apartment! It was damnable

of fate. He had righted nothing. In truth, he was deeper than ever in the

quicksands of misunderstanding. He shut his teeth with a click. How neatly

she had waylaid and trapped him!

"Those are from Lucerne, sir."

"What?" bewildered.

"Those wood-carvings which you are touching with your cane, sir."

"I beg your pardon," said Courtlandt, apologetically, and gained the open.

He threw a quick glance down the street. There they were. He proceeded in

the opposite direction, toward his hotel. Tea at the colonel's? Scarcely.

He would go to Menaggio with the hotel motor-boat and return so late that

he would arrive only in time for dinner. He was not going to meet the

enemy over tea-cups, at least, not under the soldier's tactless

supervision. He must find a smoother way, calculated, under the rose, but

seemingly accidental. It was something to ponder over.

"Nora, who was that?" asked Mrs. Harrigan.

"Who was who?" countered Nora, snuggling the wriggling dachel under her

arm and throwing the sunshade across her shoulder.

"That fine-looking young man who stood by the door as we passed out. He

raised his hat."

"Oh, bother! I was looking at Fritz."

Celeste searched her face keenly, but Nora looked on ahead serenely; not a

quiver of an eyelid, not the slightest change in color or expression.

"She did not see him!" thought the musician, curiously stirred. She knew

her friend tolerably well. It would have been impossible for her to have

seen that man and not to have given evidence of the fact.

In short, Nora had spoken truthfully. She had seen a man dressed in white

flannels and canvas shoes, but her eyes had not traveled so far as his

face.

"Mother, we must have some of those silk blankets. They're so comfy to lie

on."

"You never see anything except when you want to," complained Mrs.

Harrigan.

"It saves a deal of trouble. I don't want to go to the colonel's this

afternoon. He always has some frump to pour tea and ask fool questions."

"The frump, as you call her, is usually a countess or a duchess," with

asperity.

"Fiddlesticks! Nobility makes a specialty of frumps; it is one of the

species of the caste. That's why I shall never marry a title. I wish

neither to visit nor to entertain frumps. Frump,--the word calls up the

exact picture; frump and fatuity. Oh, I'll go, but I'd rather stay on my

balcony and read a good book."

"My dear," patiently, "the colonel is one of the social laws on Como. His

sister is the wife of an earl. You must not offend him. His Sundays are

the most exclusive on the lake."

"The word exclusive should be properly applied to those in jail. The

social ladder, the social ladder! Don't you know, mother mine, that every

rung is sawn by envy and greed, and that those who climb highest fall

farthest?"

"You are quoting the padre."

"The padre could give lessons in kindness and shrewdness to any other man

I know. If he hadn't chosen the gown he would have been a poet. I love the

padre, with his snow-white hair and his withered leathery face. He was

with the old king all through the freeing of Italy."

"And had a fine time explaining to the Vatican," sniffed the mother.

"Some day I am going to confess to him."

"Confess what?" asked Celeste.

"That I have wished the Calabrian's voice would fail her some night in

_Carmen_; that I am wearing shoes a size too small for me; that I should

like to be rich without labor; that I am sometimes ashamed of my calling;

that I should have liked to see father win a prizefight; oh, and a

thousand other horrid, hateful things."

"I wish to gracious that you would fall violently in love."

"Spiteful! There are those lovely lace collars; come on."

"You are hopeless," was the mother's conviction.

"In some things, yes," gravely.

"Some day," said Celeste, who was a privileged person in the Harrigan

family, "some day I am going to teach you two how to play at foils. It

would be splendid. And then you could always settle your differences with

bouts."

"Better than that," retorted Nora. "I'll ask father to lend us his old set

of gloves. He carries them around as if they were a fetish. I believe

they're in the bottom of one of my steamer trunks."

"Nora!" Mrs. Harrigan was not pleased with this jest. Any reference to the

past was distasteful to her ears. She, too, went regularly to confession,

but up to the present time had omitted the sin of being ashamed of her

former poverty and environment. She had taken it for granted that upon her

shoulders rested the future good fortune of the Harrigans. They had money;

all that was required was social recognition. She found it a battle within

a battle. The good-natured reluctance of her husband and the careless

indifference of her daughter were as hard to combat as the icy aloofness

of those stars into whose orbit she was pluckily striving to steer the

family bark. It never entered her scheming head that the reluctance of the

father and the indifference of the daughter were the very conditions that

drew society nearward, for the simple novelty of finding two persons who

did not care in the least whether they were recognized or not.

The trio invaded the lace shop, and Nora and her mother agreed to bury the

war-hatchet in their mutual love of Venetian and Florentine fineries.

Celeste pretended to be interested, but in truth she was endeavoring to

piece together the few facts she had been able to extract from the rubbish

of conjecture. Courtlandt and Nora had met somewhere before the beginning

of her own intimacy with the singer. They certainly must have formed an

extraordinary friendship, for Nora's subsequent vindictiveness could not

possibly have arisen out of the ruins of an indifferent acquaintance. Nora

could not be moved from the belief that Courtlandt had abducted her; but

Celeste was now positive that he had had nothing to do with it. He did not

impress her as a man who would abduct a woman, hold her prisoner for five

days, and then liberate her without coming near her to press his vantage,

rightly or wrongly. He was too strong a personage. He was here in

Bellaggio, and attached to that could be but one significance.

Why, then, had he not spoken at the photographer's? Perhaps she herself

had been sufficient reason for his dumbness. He had recognized her, and

the espionage of the night in Paris was no longer a mystery. Nora had sent

her to follow him; why then all this bitterness, since she had not been

told where he had gone? Had Nora forgotten to inquire? It was possible

that, in view of the startling events which had followed, the matter had

slipped entirely from Nora's mind. Many a time she had resorted to that

subtle guile known only of woman to trap the singer. But Nora never

stumbled, and her smile was as firm a barrier to her thoughts, her

secrets, as a stone wall would have been.

Celeste had known about Herr Rosen's infatuation. Aside from that which

concerned this stranger, Nora had withheld no real secret from her. Herr

Rosen had been given his conge, but that did not prevent him from sending

fabulous baskets of flowers and gems, all of which were calmly returned

without comment. Whenever a jewel found its way into a bouquet of flowers

from an unknown, Nora would promptly convert it into money and give the

proceeds to some charity. It afforded the singer no small amusement to

show her scorn in this fashion. Yes, there was one other little mystery

which she did not confide to her friends. Once a month, wherever she

chanced to be singing, there arrived a simple bouquet of marguerites, in

the heart of which they would invariably find an uncut emerald. Nora never

disposed of these emeralds. The flowers she would leave in her

dressing-room; the emerald would disappear. Was there some one else?

Mrs. Harrigan took the omnibus up to the villa. It was generally too much

of a climb for her. Nora and Celeste preferred to walk.

"What am I going to do, Celeste? He is here, and over at Cadenabbia last

night I had a terrible scene with him. In heaven's name, why can't they

let me be?"

"Herr Rosen?"

"Yes."

"Why not speak to your father?"

"And have a fisticuff which would appear in every newspaper in the world?

No, thank you. There is enough scandalous stuff being printed as it is,

and I am helpless to prevent it."

As the climb starts off stiffly, there wasn't much inclination in either

to talk. Celeste had come to one decision, and that was that Nora should

find out Courtlandt's presence here in Bellaggio herself. When they

arrived at the villa gates, Celeste offered a suggestion.

"You could easily stop all this rumor and annoyance."

"And, pray, how?"

"Marry."

"I prefer the rumor and annoyance. I hate men. Most of them are beasts."

"You are prejudiced."

If Celeste expected Nora to reply that she had reason, she was

disappointed, Nora quickened her pace, that was all.

At luncheon Harrigan innocently threw a bomb into camp by inquiring: "Say,

Nora, who's this chump Herr Rosen? He was up here last night and again

this morning. I was going to offer him the cot on the balcony, but I

thought I'd consult you first."

"Herr Rosen!" exclaimed Mrs. Harrigan, a flutter in her throat. "Why,

that's...."

"A charming young man who wishes me to sign a contract to sing to him in

perpetuity," interrupted Nora, pressing her mother's foot warningly.

"Well, why don't you marry him?" laughed Harrigan. "There's worse things

than frankfurters and sauerkraut."

"Not that I can think of just now," returned Nora.