The Place of Honeymoons

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 button. 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 Japanese 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 brass – 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 passed 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 gods 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-Elysées. In England and America she had amassed a fortune. Given the warm beauty of the Southern Italian, the passion, 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 gods – 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 attitude 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 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 rôle. 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 Théâtre 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.

Her statement as to the primal cause was purely inventive. There was not a grain of truth in it. He could not possibly have been so rude. He had been too indifferent. Too indifferent! The repetition of the phrase made him sit straighter. Pshaw! It could not be that. He possessed a little vanity; if he had not, his history would not have been worth a scrawl. But he denied the possession vehemently, as men are wont to do. Strange, a man will admit smashing those ten articles of advisement known as the decalogue and yet deny the inherent quality which surrenders the admission – vanity. However you may look at it, man’s vanity is a complex thing. The vanity of a woman has a definite and commendable purpose: the conquest of man, his purse, and half of his time. Too indifferent! Was it possible that he had roused her enmity simply because he had made it evident that her charms did not interest him? Beyond lifting his hat to her, perhaps exchanging a comment on the weather, his courtesies had not been extended. Courtlandt was peculiar in some respects. A woman attracted him, or she did not. In the one case he was affable, winning, pleasant, full of those agreeable little surprises that in turn attract a woman. In the other case, he passed on, for his impressions were instant and did not require the usual skirmishing.

A grand duchess! The straw-colored mustache now described two aggressive points. What an impossible old world it was! The ambition of the English nobility was on a far lower scale than that of their continental cousins. On the little isle they were satisfied to marry soubrettes and chorus girls. Here, the lady must be no less a personage than a grand-opera singer or a première danseuse. The continental noble at least showed some discernment; he did not choose haphazard; he desired the finished product and was not to be satisfied with the material in the raw.

Oh, stubborn Dutchman that he had been! Blind fool! To have run away instead of fighting to the last ditch for his happiness! The Desimone woman was right: it had taken him a long time to come to the conclusion that she had done him an ill turn. And during all these weary months he had drawn a melancholy picture of himself as a wounded lion, creeping into the jungle to hide its hurts, when, truth be known, he had taken the ways of the jackass for a model. He saw plainly enough now. More than this, where there had been mere obstacles to overcome there were now steep mountains, perhaps inaccessible for all he knew. His jaw set, and the pressure of his lips broke the sweep of his mustache, converting it into bristling tufts, warlike and resolute.

As he was leaving, a square of light attracted his attention. He looked up to see the outline of the bearded Russ in the window. Poor devil! He was going to have a merry time of it. Well, that was his affair. Besides, Russians, half the year chilled by their bitter snows, were susceptible to volcanoes; they courted them as a counterbalance. Perhaps he had spoken roughly, but his temper had not been under control. One thing he recalled with grim satisfaction. He had sent a barbed arrow up the tube to disturb the felicity of the dove-cote. The duke would be rather curious to know what was meant in referring to the night she had come to his, Courtlandt’s, room. He laughed. It would be a fitting climax indeed if the duke called him out.

But what of the pretty woman in the Taverne Royale? What about her? At whose bidding had she followed him? One or the other of them had not told the truth, and he was inclined to believe that the prevarication had its source in the pomegranate lips of the Calabrian. To give the old barb one more twist, to learn if its venomous point still held and hurt; nothing would have afforded the diva more delight. Courtlandt glared at the window as the shade rolled down.

When the taxicab joined the long line of carriages and automobiles opposite the Austrian ambassador’s, Courtlandt awoke to the dismal and disquieting fact that he had formulated no plan of action. He had done no more than to give the driver his directions; and now that he had arrived, he had the choice of two alternatives. He could wait to see her come out or return at once to his hotel, which, as subsequent events affirmed, would have been the more sensible course. He would have been confronted with small difficulty in gaining admission to the house. He knew enough of these general receptions; the announcing of his name would have conveyed nothing to the host, who knew perhaps a third of his guests, and many of these but slightly. But such an adventure was distasteful to Courtlandt. He could not overstep certain recognized boundaries of convention, and to enter a man’s house unasked was colossal impudence. Beyond this, he realized that he could have accomplished nothing; the advantage would have been hers. Nor could he meet her as she came out, for again the odds would have been largely in her favor. No, the encounter must be when they two were alone. She must be surprised. She must have no time to use her ready wit. He had thought to wait until some reasonable plan offered itself for trial; yet, here he was, with nothing definite or recognizable but the fact that the craving to see her was not to be withstood. The blood began to thunder in his ears. An idea presented itself. It appealed to him at that moment as quite clever and feasible.