Part 47 (2/2)

That's what she's for! And look here,” he stopped his pitiful attempt at Italian and ended fiercely, trusting to a grim eye and a set jaw to make his meaning plain, ”Don't you try any funny business on the cat when I'm not around, or I'll knock your heads together till you can't see.”

He heard the girl speak to the men in an Italian that was so rapid it made him dizzy and at the end caught the phrase, ”do you understand?”

The men nodded, by no means pleased at the rebuff, the boy motioned Neale to give him the cat, and carried her off carefully down the corridor.

”That was the very most splendid thing for you to do,” the girl said to him, with a soft energy of accent.

He whirled about towards her, the immensity of his relief flooding his face. ”Oh, you _do_ speak Englis.h.!.+ You're _not_ Italian!” he cried, the intonation of his phrase seeming to indicate that she had lifted from his mind an apprehension of infinitely long standing.

”Oh, yes,” she said, smiling and looking directly at him, ”of course I speak English. I'm an American girl. My name is Marise Allen.”

Neale was so affected by the sweetness of her smile on him, by the softness of her s.h.i.+ning dark eyes, that he felt himself blus.h.i.+ng and stammering like a little boy. ”M-mine is Neale Crittenden,” he answered.

CHAPTER XLIII

The dream-like Arabian Night unexpectedness which had descended on Neale the evening before, on the roof, continued s.h.i.+mmeringly to wrap everything in improbability. Instead of receiving his unfamiliar name with the vague, conventional smile of a new acquaintance, the girl raised her eyebrows high in a long, delicate arch and cried out, ”You are! Really! The one who has inherited Crittenden's?” Seeing Neale's look of almost appalled amazement, she broke into a sudden laugh. Neale had never heard any one laugh like that, almost like some one singing, so clear and purely produced was its little trill. And yet it had been as sudden and spontaneous as a gush of water from a spring.

”I don't wonder you look astonished,” she told him. ”But you see when I was a little girl I used often to play in and out of old Mr.

Crittenden's house and mill. I've never seen anything since in all my life that seemed as wonderful and mighty to me as the way the saw used to gnash its teeth at the great logs and slowly, shriekingly tear them apart into boards. Didn't you use to love the moss on the old water-wheel, too?”

”I never saw the mill or the house,” he told her. ”I never saw my great-uncle but once or twice in my life.” He was too amazed to do anything but answer her literally and baldly.

”Why, how in the world...?” she began to ask, and then as a bell from one of the innumerable church belfries outside began clangorously to strike the hour, she glanced at her wrist-watch, and shook her head.

”It's breakfast-time,” she said. She nodded, smiled and turned away, stepping down the corridor with a light, supple gait. Neale had never seen any one walk like that, as though every step were in time to music.

He went back to his room to wash his hands and brush his clothes, which showed signs of contact with dusty Roman walls and roofs. When, ten minutes later, he went into the dining-room, five or six people were already at table, Livingstone among them. Miss Oldham, the head of the pension, introduced the newcomer to the others, mentioning names on both sides. To Neale's surprise, Miss Allen did not explain (as he had opened his mouth to do) that she had already seen and talked to Mr. Crittenden that morning. Instead, she now gave him the conventional smile he had expected ten minutes before, accepted the introduction as though she had never seen his face and went on drinking her cafe-au-lait.

More Arabian Nights. What did _this_ mean? Neale swallowed the reference he had begun to their earlier meeting. Miss Oldham said to him with the wearily playful accent of the conscientious pension-keeper, fostering cheerful talk around her table, ”I understand, Mr. Crittenden, that you and Miss Allen are in a way related, as I might say.”

Livingstone joined in with his usual sprightliness: ”Yes, Crittenden, why didn't you tell me you had a fellow-townswoman in Rome? Last evening when I went back into the salon and told the a.s.sembled company about you and your inheritance there was Mademoiselle Allaine, who had often, in her remote childhood, climbed on the respected knees of Monsieur your Great-uncle.”

Miss Allen smiled quietly over her cup, remarked that it would have taken a bolder child than she had ever been to climb on the knees of old Mr. Crittenden, and, looking at her watch, rose to go. ”Music, divine music?” inquired Livingstone.

”Yes, divine music,” she answered lightly. ”We are getting ready to play at a soiree at Donna Antonia Pierleoni's. I'm due there at half past nine to try out the piano in a new position in the room.”

”Clear out there by half-past nine!” cried Livingstone, as if exhausted by the idea.

She did not seem to consider that this required any answer, made a graceful inclination of the head to the company at table and went off.

Neale was repeating to himself, in mortal terror of forgetting it, ”Pierleoni. Pierleoni.” He drank his coffee and ate his roll as though he had a train to catch, and, rus.h.i.+ng back to his room, seized his hat and made off to the nearest cafe to consult the directory. With a sigh of relief he found that there was only one Pierleoni, and that the address was indeed as Livingstone had said, far away in the rich, new, fas.h.i.+onable quarter. He set off on foot, but before he had walked five minutes he was overcome with panic lest he be late, and hailed a rickety cab. Thinking of nothing but the precious address which he had committed to memory, he shouted it out to the cabman. Half-way there, he suddenly remembered that he had no possible business at that address. He had a horrid vision of driving up to the door, having the _portiere_ ask him his errand, perhaps of having Miss Allen look out of the window and see the scene.

This threw him into such a fright that for an instant he could think of no escape and sat pa.s.sive, borne along to his fate by the unconscious cabman. Then his wits came back to him, he called out to the cabman to drive to number seventy-five and not a hundred and twenty; and having thus s.n.a.t.c.hed himself from destruction, perceived that they were even then turning into the street. At number seventy-five he descended, hastily paid the driver a good deal more than was due him, stepped into the house, inquired if a gentleman by the name of Robinson lived there, professed surprise and regret on hearing that he did not and walked on, settling his necktie nervously.

He told himself that he was acting like an imbecile, but he could not seem to consider that important fact seriously. Having started in to do anything, naturally he liked to put it through. Everybody did. And he really would like to know how under the sun a dark-eyed girl in Rome happened to know anything about his Great-uncle Burton. Any one would feel a natural human curiosity on that score. And he had only five days in Rome.

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