The Place of Honeymoons

“Divided by two,” grinned Abbott.

“Ha, I see; half nerve and half gall. I’ll remember that. But we were talking of airships.”

“I was,” retorted Courtlandt. “You were the man who started the powwow.” He looked down into the street with sudden interest. “Who is that?”

The colonel and Abbott hurried across the room.

“What did I say, Abbott? I told you I saw him. He’s crazy; fact. Thinks he can travel around incognito when there isn’t a magazine on earth that hasn’t printed his picture.”

“Well, why shouldn’t he travel around if he wants to?” asked Courtlandt coolly.

The colonel nudged the artist.

“There happens to be an attraction in Bellaggio,” said Abbott irritably.

“The moth and the candle,” supplemented the colonel, peering over Courtlandt’s shoulder. “He’s well set up,” grudgingly admitted the old fellow.

“The moth and the candle,” mused Courtlandt. “That will be Nora Harrigan. How long has this infatuation been going on?”

“Year and a half.”

“And the other side?”

“There isn’t any other side,” exploded the artist. “She’s worried to death. Not a day passes but some scurrilous penny-a-liner springs some yarn, some beastly innuendo. She’s been dodging the fellow for months. In Paris last year she couldn’t move without running into him. This year she changed her apartment, and gave orders at the Opera to refuse her address to all who asked for it. Consequently she had some peace. I don’t know why it is, but a woman in public life seems to be a target.”

“The penalty of beauty, Abby. Homely women seldom are annoyed, unless they become suffragists.” The colonel poured forth a dense cloud of smoke.

“What brand is that, Colonel?” asked Courtlandt, choking.

The colonel generously produced his pouch.

“No, no! I was about to observe that it isn’t ambrosia.”

“Rotter!” The soldier dug the offender in the ribs. “I am going to have the Harrigans over for tea this afternoon. Come over! You’ll like the family. The girl is charming; and the father is a sportsman to the backbone. Some silly fools laugh behind his back, but never before his face. And my word, I know rafts of gentlemen who are not fit to stand in his shoes.”

“I should like to meet Mr. Harrigan.” Courtlandt returned his gaze to the window once more.

“And his daughter?” said Abbott, curiously.

“Oh, surely!”

“I may count on you, then?” The colonel stowed away the offending brier. “And you can stay to dinner.”

“I’ll take the dinner end of the invitation,” was the reply. “I’ve got to go over to Menaggio to see about some papers to be signed. If I can make the three o’clock boat in returning, you’ll see me at tea. Dinner at all events. I’m off.”

“Do you mean to stand there and tell me that you have important business?” jeered Abbott.

“My boy, the reason I’m on trains and boats, year in and year out, is in the vain endeavor to escape important business. Now and then I am rounded up. Were you ever hunted by money?” humorously.

“No,” answered the Englishman sadly. “But I know one thing: I’d throw the race at the starting-post. Millions, Abbott, and to be obliged to run away from them! If the deserts hadn’t dried up all my tears, I should weep. Why don’t you hire a private secretary to handle your affairs?”

“And have him following at my heels?” Courtlandt gazed at his lean brown hands. “When these begin to shake, I’ll do so. Well, I shall see you both at dinner, whatever happens.”

“That’s Courtlandt,” said Abbott, when his friend was gone. “You think he’s in Singapore, the door opens and in he walks; never any letter or announcement. He arrives, that’s all.”

“Strikes me,” returned the other, polishing his glass, holding it up to the light, and then screwing it into his eye; “strikes me, he wasn’t overanxious to have that dish of tea. Afraid of women?”

“Afraid of women! Why, man, he backed two musical shows in the States a few years ago.”

“Musical comedies?” The glass dropped from the colonel’s eye. “That’s going tigers one better. Forty women, all waiting to be stars, and solemn Courtlandt wandering among them as the god of amity! Afraid of them! Of course he is. Who wouldn’t be, after such an experience?” The colonel laughed. “Never had any serious affair?”

“Never heard of one. There was some tommy-rot about a Mahommedan princess in the newspapers; but I knew there was no truth in that. Queer fellow! He wouldn’t take the trouble to deny it.”

“Never showed any signs of being a woman-hater?”

“No, not the least in the world. But to shy at meeting Nora Harrigan…”

“There you have it; the privilege of the gods. Perhaps he really has business in Menaggio. What’ll we do with the other beggar?”

“Knock his head off, if he bothers her.”

“Better turn the job over to Courtlandt, then. You’re in the light-weight class, and Courtlandt is the best amateur for his weight I ever saw.”

“What, boxes?”

“A tough ’un. I had a corporal who beat any one in Northern India. Courtlandt put on the gloves with him and had him begging in the third round.”

“I never knew that before. He’s as full of surprises as a rummage bag.”

Courtlandt walked up the street leisurely, idly pausing now and then before the shop-windows. Apparently he had neither object nor destination; yet his mind was busy, so busy in fact that he looked at the various curios without truly seeing them at all. A delicate situation, which needed the lightest handling, confronted him. He must wait for an overt act, then he might proceed as he pleased. How really helpless he was! He could not force her hand because she held all the cards and he none. Yet he was determined this time to play the game to the end, even if the task was equal to all those of Hercules rolled into one, and none of the gods on his side.

At the hotel he asked for his mail, and was given a formidable packet which, with a sigh of discontent, he slipped into a pocket, strolled out into the garden by the water, and sat down to read. To his surprise there was a note, without stamp or postmark. He opened it, mildly curious to learn who it was that had discovered his presence in Bellaggio so quickly. The envelope contained nothing more than a neatly folded bank-note for one hundred francs. He eyed it stupidly. What might this mean? He unfolded it and smoothed it out across his knee, and the haze of puzzlement drifted away. Three bars from La Bohème. He laughed. So the little lady of the Taverne Royale was in Bellaggio!

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 congé, 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.

CHAPTER XI

AT THE CRATER’S EDGE

Harrigan declared that he would not go over to Caxley-Webster’s to tea.

“But I’ve promised for you!” expostulated his wife. “And he admires you so.”

“Bosh! You women can gad about as much as you please, but I’m in wrong when it comes to eating sponge-cake and knuckling my knees under a dinky willow table. And then he always has some frump…”

“Frump!” repeated Nora, delighted.

“Frump inspecting me through a pair of eye-glasses as if I was a new kind of an animal. It’s all right, Molly, when there’s a big push. They don’t notice me much then. But these six by eight parties have me covering.”

“Very well, dad,” agreed Nora, who saw the storm gathering in her mother’s eyes. “You can stay home and read the book mother got you yesterday. Where are you now?”

“Page one,” grinning.

Mrs. Harrigan wisely refrained from continuing the debate. James had made up his mind not to go. If the colonel repeated his invitation to dinner, where there would be only the men folk, why, he’d gladly enough go to that.

The women departed at three, for there was to be tennis until five o’clock. When Harrigan was reasonably sure that they were half the distance to the colonel’s villa, he put on his hat, whistled to the dachel, and together they took the path to the village.

“We’d look fine drinking tea, wouldn’t we, old scout?” reaching down and tweaking the dog’s velvet ears. “They don’t understand, and it’s no use trying to make ’em. Nora gets as near as possible. Herr Rosen! Now, where have I seen his phiz before? I wish I had a real man to talk to. Abbott sulks half the time, and the Barone can’t get a joke unless it’s driven in with a mallet. On your way, old scout, or I’ll step on you. Let’s see if we can hoof it down to the village at a trot without taking the count.”

He had but two errands to execute. The first was accomplished expeditely in the little tobacconist’s shop under the arcade, where the purchase of a box of Minghetti cigars promised later solace. These cigars were cheap, but Harrigan had a novel way of adding to their strength if not to their aroma. He possessed a meerschaum cigar-holder, in which he had smoked perfectos for some years. The smoke of an ordinary cigar became that of a regalia by the time it passed through the nicotine-soaked clay into the amber mouthpiece. He had kept secret the result of this trifling scientific research. It wouldn’t have been politic to disclose it to Molly. The second errand took time and deliberation. He studied the long shelves of Tauchnitz. Having red corpuscles in superabundance, he naturally preferred them in his literature, in the same quantity.

“Ever read this?” asked a pleasant voice from behind, indicating Rodney Stone with the ferrule of a cane.

Harrigan looked up. “No. What’s it about?”

“Best story of the London prize-ring ever written. You’re Mr. Harrigan, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” diffidently.

“My name is Edward Courtlandt. If I am not mistaken, you were a great friend of my father’s.”

“Are you Dick Courtlandt’s boy?”

“I am.”

“Well, say!” Harrigan held out his hand and was gratified to encounter a man’s grasp. “So you’re Edward Courtlandt? Now, what do you think of that! Why, your father was the best sportsman I ever met. Square as they make ’em. Not a kink anywhere in his make-up. He used to come to the bouts in his plug hat and dress suit; always had a seat by the ring. I could hear him tap with his cane when there happened to be a bit of pretty sparring. He was no slouch himself when it came to putting on the mitts. Many’s the time I’ve had a round or two with him in my old gymnasium. Well, well! It’s good to see a man again. I’ve seen your name in the papers, but I never knew you was Dick’s boy. You’ve got an old grizzly’s head in your dining-room at home. Some day I’ll tell you how it got there, when you’re not in a hurry. I went out to Montana for a scrap, and your dad went along. After the mill was over, we went hunting. Come up to the villa and meet the folks… Hang it, I forgot. They’re up to Caxley-Webster’s to tea; piffle water and sticky sponge-cake. I want you to meet my wife and daughter.”