Part 56 (1/2)
At five, hatted and cloaked, she was gently shaking Eugenia and saying, ”I'm so sorry to bother you, but do you happen to have some money on hand? I've been worrying about Father for some time. It's so long since I've been back to straighten out the household for him. I've just decided to get off on the early morning train. I ought to go to see Jeanne too. It's past my regular time for making her a visit. If you could just loan me enough to buy the ticket to Paris? I've almost enough as it is, but I must leave some for Miss Oldham and my _pension_.”
How kind Eugenia had been! How discreet and uninquisitive! She reached under her pillow, pulled out her gold-meshed purse with the ridiculously large sum in cash she always carried with her, and gave her a five-hundred-lira note together with a kiss on each cheek. ”When will you be back, Marise?”
”Oh, I don't know. I don't know. Quite a long time. I may--I shall probably not come back at all. It won't be worth while. Mme. de la Cueva will soon be in Paris again. Good-by, Eugenia dear. You'll be soon coming north, too, won't you?”
”Oh, I dare say,” said Eugenia, ”if it gets too hot here.”
Going down the hall, silent and empty in the dawn, Marise stopped for an instant before his door. For an instant she was forced to think of him, the thought like a weakening potion. She stared hard at his door, her hands pressed tightly together, trembling from head to foot. She was going away. She would never see him again. She turned back towards her own room. She could not go. She ran desperately down the stairs, sick at the idea of what love is. She had almost been caught. She heard the steel jaws snap shut as she fled.
CHAPTER LI
”Yes,” said Eugenia at the breakfast table, ”Marise was suddenly called back to France by family matters. She is her widowed father's housekeeper, you know; and then too, there is an old servant somewhere who brought her up, whom she feels it her duty to go to see every once in a while.”
”What's her address in Paris?” asked Mr. Crittenden urgently.
”I can give that to you, but if you're thinking of writing her a card it wouldn't reach her, for she was to go directly on to the south, and I haven't the least idea what _that_ address is. Some tiny village on the sea-coast, I believe. Or is it in the Pyrenees? But she will be back very soon, almost any day. It's hardly worth while trying to write her.
She'll be here before a card could follow her around.”
Mr. Crittenden got up, leaving his coffee untouched, and left the breakfast-room in his unceremonious American way, without a sign of decent civility.
Mr. Livingstone looked at Miss Mills eloquently, with a shrug which meant, ”What can you expect?”
Eugenia waited till every one, except herself and Mr. Livingstone had left the room, and then said hesitatingly, ”Mr. Livingstone, I wonder....” He was on the alert in an instant, surprised at her personal manner. ”It's an outrageously big favor to ask of you, but I don't know any one else adroit enough to manage it.” She paused, reflected and drew back shaking her head, ”Oh, no; no! What am I thinking of?”
By this time Mr. Livingstone was in the chair beside her, a.s.suring her warmly that if there was anything, _any_thing he could do to be of service--”I shall consider it an honor, Miss Mills, I a.s.sure you, an _honor_!”
Miss Mills let her blue eyes rest on his deeply, as if sounding the depths of his sincerity, and then, with a yielding gesture of abandon, decided to trust him, ”I've been foolish, and I'm so afraid I shall have trouble unless you can help me. Promise me you won't tell Mlle.
Vallet. Or _any_ one.”
Impa.s.sioned protestations from Mr. Livingstone.
She looked over her shoulder to be sure they were alone, ”You know the rule of the Italian government about taking out of Italy any valuable antiquities. They are so afraid that tourists of means will carry off some of the fragments of Greek and Roman sculpture. I _knew_ about it of course, but I'd no idea it was really enforced--those things so seldom are in Europe. And I bought a lovely little antique bas-relief to go over a mantel-piece in my Paris apartment. I had it sent yesterday, up by the Simplon route; it's too late to get it back and now I'm in mortal terror of what may happen at the Italian frontier. I heard last night the most dreadful tales of what they do to any one who tries to smuggle out such things--not only fines, you know, but lawsuits, lawyers to frighten you--_publicity_!”
She looked very pale and anxious as she explained all this so that Livingstone was deeply touched. But he wondered what she thought he could do about it.
”I'm really ashamed, now I've come to the point, to ask you what I thought. But I _will_--and if you think it too preposterous--more than I have any right to--it's this. To take a pocket full of money (I don't care _what_ it costs) and go up to the frontier station and when it comes along, bribe it through the inspectors. You see, Mr. Livingstone, it's something that not everybody could manage, even with ever so much money. But you understand the European mentality so perfectly. It would need to be done with just the right manner.... Oh, no, _no_,” she broke off abruptly, getting up from her chair. ”What a thing to dream of asking any one to do! What claim have I on your...?”
Livingstone, blinking joyfully, sprang up too, protesting that nothing would amuse and interest him more than such a mission. And for _her_, any mission would be his joy!
”Well, think it over. Let me know to-night. I'm ashamed to have mentioned it,” she said in confusion. ”I don't know how I dared. But oh Mr. Livingstone, I am so troubled about it. And I am so alone! No one on whom to....” She had gone, murmuring apologies, touched by his instant response, leaving Livingstone as much moved and agitated as she.
She went through into her own rooms and told Josephine, ”Put those manicure things away for the time being. I must go out to do a bit of shopping. But you can have them ready at ten. I'll be back by that time.
It won't take me long.”
Neale stood, frowning and looking at his watch, waiting for Eugenia to come down from the ladies' dressing-room and have dinner. As he fidgeted about, looking glumly at the brilliant scene about him, he was wondering with inward oaths of exasperation what in h.e.l.l could be the matter with anybody's clothes and hair after the slight exertion of sitting perfectly still in a cab from the door of the pension to the door of the restaurant. It was not, G.o.d knew, that he was impatient to have her join him. It was because he was in a steady fever of impatience to have everything over, the evening, the day, the night--to put back of him another of those endless, endless days--to be one day nearer to the time when Marise would return.