Part 17 (1/2)
”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 friends.h.i.+p, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt to show her scorn in this fas.h.i.+on. 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.”