PART IV.KATY AND CARL.
When I first awoke at Langham’s in London and looked from my window the fog was so thick that I could see nothing but the gas jets flickering faintly in the gloom, seeming not much larger than the smallest taper. It was what the English call beastly weather and a verynarstyday, for a cold, drizzling rain was falling and adding to the general discomfort, but to me it was glorious sunshine, and has been ever since the night Jack made me his wife. What a grand wedding we had, and how the people must have gossiped about the expenditure,—the canopies,—the carpets,—the caterers,—the flowers,—the lanterns and lights and music which made the place fairyland, in the midst of which I walked like one in a dream, knowing only that Jack was by my side,—that the people were calling me by his name,—and that I was perfectly happy. Occasionally I caught a glimpse in a mirror of a little brown-haired woman, gorgeous in satin and pearls and lace, with a fleecy veil sweeping the floor as she walked, and was conscious of wondering who she was, and thinking she was rather pretty, though not like Fan, the queen of the evening.
How wonderfully beautiful her face was, beaming everywhere and always with that smile, the brightest I have ever seen. Poor Fan! I pitied her the next morning when she said good-bye to me. The roses were gone from her cheeks, and her eyes were so sad as she kissed me and said “God bless you, Annie, and bring you safely back.” Then she turned to Jack and involuntarily put up her lips. He kissed her and I was glad. There can be no jealousy of her now. Jack is mine, and I say it over and over to myself so many times. Mine,—my Jack, who grows dearer to me every day. If there are storms on the sea I do not know it from experience, for the ocean was like a lake and our crossing like a dream. We had the same stateroom where Fanny suffered so much, but although Jack’s eyes were on me a good share of the time when I was awake they did not trouble me, and I always smiled back at them when I met their gaze.
We did not go to Morley’s, but to the Langham instead, although the former is the more central of the two. I think the fact that Col. Errington stopped there decided Jack against it. He never speaks of the man and very seldom of Fanny, who has left The Plateau and gone back to Washington. I think we saw everything in London, even to the Queen and the Princess; and we went everywhere,—not to dinners and receptions as Fanny did, for we knew no one, but to every place of interest of which I had ever heard. And it was such a delight to see things with Jack, although I think I tired him out, as I used occasionally to hear him groan and see him put his hand on his back as if it ached when I suggested Mad. Tussaud’s, or the theatre, in the evening after we had been out all day. In the museum he was specially listless, saying life was not long enough to see all there was there, and heused frequently to sit down and tell me he would rest while I examined the coins and stones and things for which he did not care a red. But at the Tower and the Abbey and St. Paul’s he was wide-awake, and knew so much more about the old dead kings and queens and people buried there that I felt myself quite an ignoramus beside him.
We staid in London two weeks, and with the exception of the first few days the weather was as clear and fine as it is at home in November. We had letters of congratulation from Miss Errington and Katy, who were in Berlin, and were to join us later in southern France or Italy. Katy had sung twice at parlor concerts and had received overtures for a public engagement at a high price if she would take it. But she declined, actuated, as I afterwards learned, by the remembrance of Carl’s last words to her, implying that she must choose between his good opinion and her Career. She had an aptitude for foreign languages, and before going abroad had studied French, Italian and German, and had applied herself so assiduously to them since that she could render almost any song in the language of the country, her English accent only adding piquancy to her singing. Had she been sure of Carl she might have gone upon the stage, knowing that with her innate purity and sense of propriety she could have maintained her integrity of character against all odds and resisted temptation in every form. But Carl’s “Then good-bye” was always present with her, much as she tried to put it from her and to tell herself that he was nothing to her, and she nothing to him, and might, if she chose, be a law unto herself.
Carl had staid in Paris until Paul’s cure was assured, if care were exercised for the next few years. Then hestarted suddenly for Switzerland, where, in Lucerne, he met Katy, who, with Miss Errington, was at the same hotel, the Schweitzerhof. She was undeniably glad to see him, and her eyes told him so and brought back all the love he had ever felt for her. There were walks under the chestnuts which skirt the lovely lake,—trips up the Rigi and Pilatus, with excursions into the country. Katy’s loveliness had expanded and deepened like the rose when the morning dew lies upon it. And Carl had drank in her beauty and sweetness eagerly, like one thirsting for something pure and good and a better life than he had known, but as often as he opened his lips to say the words he wanted to, she seemed to know it and either managed to withdraw herself from him, or to talk of something else until a third party joined them. She had never forgotten the summer which meant so much to her and so little to him, and had also heard rumors of the French widow, which she resented, and held herself from him in such a manner that love-making was impossible. She had given up her Career for him, or thought she had, and his record must be as spotless as her own and he as single-hearted as herself, if she ever accepted him, and when at last she left Lucerne his words of love were still unspoken and she seemed as far from him as ever.
By some chance the train which took Katy and Miss Errington away brought Madame Felix, greatly surprised and delighted to meet Monsieur Haverleigh andle petitgarçon, who she had no idea were in Lucerne. All this she said in very broken English for the benefit of Sam Slayton, who confided to Paul that Madame was an infernal liar and more dangerous than ever. Possibly Carl thought so too. It was such a change from Katy to this woman who, by her delicate flattery and tacit appeal for sympathy, had fascinated and controlled him against his better judgment. He had left Paris without letting her know where he was going, and had breathed freer when the Jura mountains divided him from her. When with her she absorbed him entirely and held him with cords he could neither understand nor loosen. Away from her, he could rebel against her influence and the ownership of him which her manner implied. He was hergood American friend,—heradviser,—herbrother, since she lost her dear Felix, whose name she never mentioned without her handkerchief going to her eyes in token of her sorrow.
At the Grand Hotel where she had spent much of her time since her husband’s death she had been sitting one evening with Carl in the court near some English people, a part of whose conversation they overheard as it related to themselves. “She has him sure,—more’s the pity;—her husband hasn’t been dead so very long;—he don’t look quite the chap to be roped in by a widow older than himself,” were the disjointed sentences Carl caught, and which Madame with all her ignorance of English understood. Carl flushed angrily and was about to move away when, with a shrug of her shoulders, Madame laid her hand on his arm and detained him, saying, “Stay where you are. I will go, if either; it is I they aim at, these nasty English. I hate them;—not to understand that we are friends, nothing more. Absurd to think different, andI so much older than you;—many years,—two, three, four perhaps. I am twenty-seven, and you? You are quite a boy compared to me.”
Carl did not reply. He knew she would never see thirty again, and he did not fancy being called a boy.
“I will go to Passy and bury myself, if it annoys you to be friends with me. Shall I?” she continued.
Carl told her he didn’t care asoufor the English or what they thought, and she was not to go to Passy on his account. She did go, however, the next day,—called there suddenly on business which took her to Marseilles. Left to himself Carl began to think, and as a result of the thinking he packed his trunks and left Paris without leaving his address at the hotel, an act for which Sam gave special thanksgiving and dropped a piece of money on the plate at St. Eustace’s, where he was in the habit of going to hear the music. If Carl hoped to be rid of Madame in this way he was mistaken, for she found his address at his banker’s and started at once for Lucerne.
“I believe she is the devil,” he said to himself when he saw her alight from the railway carriage, affecting a pretty air of invalidism as she came towards him.
She had been ill in Marseilles, she said, and her physician had ordered her to Switzerland for a change of air, “and here you are, at the Schweitzerhof, I suppose. All the swells go there. I was once there a month with dear Felix, but now,—” she hesitated a moment and then went on: “I did not write you the nature of the business which took me so suddenly to Passy and Marseilles. I knew your good heart would be so sorry for me. Felix was not as rich as I supposed. He has a brother to whom he owed a great deal of money and who had a mortgage on the chateau. He is there now, and I,—I am poor. I must go to the Cygne, where it is cheaper.”
She said all this very rapidly, with a tear or two on her eyelashes, which might have dropped on her nose, if she had ever done so unbecoming and vulgar a thing as to let a tear stand upon that organ. She had the rare faculty to cry just when she wanted to, and also to keep her tears where they would do the most effective work. Naturally she did not go to the Cygne, but to the Schweitzerhof, and took a parlor and bedroom and seemed anything but poor. She was, however, very quiet, and mixed but little with any of the guests, except Carl. Over him she speedily resumed her influence to some extent. She was so bright and original and said such amusing things, and always made him feel at his best with her delicate flattery, which seemed so sincere that he could not resist her.
“Katy stands on so high a plane of puritanism that I can’t touch her with a ten-foot pole. I always feel like a cad with her, while with Julie I am satisfied and believe myself a pretty good fellow,” he thought, and drifted again into an atmosphere he knew was unhealthy and one which he would not like Katy to breathe.
Of himself he would not have told Julie that Katy had been there; but Madame heard of her from Paul, who was full of Katy, so beautiful, he said, and Carl loved her so much and sat with her under the chestnuts and rowed on the lake, and everything. Others than Paul talked of the lovely American who had sung for them one night in the parlor as no one had ever sung in Lucerne before. Every guest in the house had come in to hear her, while a crowd had gathered outside to listen. Madame smiled sweetly as she heard all this, but there was fierce jealousy in her heart of this young girl who had come between her and Carl. He might never marry her, she knew, but she would bind him to her with one of those Platonic friendshipswhich French women delight in, and which would remove Katy from her path almost as effectually as marriage would have done.
“American women are so prudish,” she thought, “and cannot understand that a man and woman can be everything to each other and still be perfectly correct. Once let Katy believe there is something between us not quiteau fait, and I have nothing to fear from her.”
Still Katy troubled her, and she felt an irresistible desire to talk of her to Carl, but always on the assumption that she was his sister and nothing more.
“They tell me your sister is very beautiful and sings divinely. I wish I might have seen her. You must be proud of her,” she said to him, and he answered, “She is beautiful, and I am proud of her.”
Madame understood at once that he would rather not discuss Katy with her, and her eyes shone for a moment with a dangerous light, as she said next, “You must love her very much?”
To this Carl made no answer, and Madame continued: “She was very young, I believe, when your mother went to The Elms, was she not?”
“Yes, very young,” Carl replied, wondering vaguely how Madame knew so much about The Elms as she sometimes seemed to know.
“Paul has told her a great deal, I dare say,” he thought, and then, at a sudden turn of Madame’s head and a lifting of her eyelids there came to him a misty kind of feeling, such as he had several times experienced, that somewhere he had seen just such a poise of the head and heard just such purring tones as belonged to Madame Felix.
He had never spoken to her about it, but now, glad of anything which would turn the conversation away from Katy, he asked abruptly if she were ever in America.
“In America!” she answered with great energy. “Mon dieu! Jamais!America, Monsieur?—nothing could tempt me to cross the sea. I die upon the Channel. Why do you think I have been in America?”
“Because you remind me of some one I must have seen,” he said, “and just now when you were talking of Katy I could almost think who it was.”
“Impossible that you could have seen me. Impossible!” and Madame shook her head very decidedly, but said no more of Katy, either then or afterwards.
Carl was going to Homburg from Lucerne, and when he told Madame of his intention she declared it to be the very place where she was expecting to go, hoping the waters would do her good and where she knew of an inexpensivepension.
“I must retrench now,” she said. “Nearly every letter I get brings worse news than the one before with regard to my fortune, which I thought so large. I really ought not to have staid at this hotel, and but for the accident of meeting you should not.”
Carl understood her, and with his usual generosity offered to pay her bills, and when she declined with horror from putting herself in so questionable a position, especially as she had no Felix to protect her, he felt almost as if he had insulted her and promptly asked her pardon, offering as a loan what her self-respect would not allow her to take as a gift. This she accepted, and a week later found her in Homburg, whither Carl had preceded her by a few days.
Chapter III.—Author’s Story Continued.AT HOMBURG.
Carl had expected Madame to go when he did, but with a very pretty throwing up of her hands and a shrug of her shoulders she had exclaimed “Mon dieu, Monsieur, if all the world were as unsuspicious as you what a delight to live. But there are more vile English than those we met in Paris. Homburg is full of them, and I must be discreet. Should we go together they might talk, and I owe it to Felix’s memory to avoid the very appearance of anything like an understanding. You will go first, and I shall follow. There can be no harm in that.”
For the life of him Carl could see no harm in their traveling on the same train, while going purposely at different times looked as if there were something to conceal, and, so far as he was concerned, there was nothing. But he acquiesced and left her in Lucerne, promising to look at the inexpensivepensionshe named, and to engage a room for her if it were not too second-classy and he thought she could endure it. She hatedpensions. She had staid in one or two after the Commune when the French aristocracy fled for their lives. She detested them then, but must get accustomed to them now in her changed circumstances, she said, and remembering this Carl found the inexpensivepensiontoo second-classy to suit Madame, for whom rooms were engaged at the —— Hotel, which enjoyed the prestige of having the Princess Christian dine in its garden every night, accompanied occasionally by her brother the Prince of Wales. There was at first a pretense on Madame’s part of protesting that she mustnot take the rooms. She could not afford it, but Carl quieted her with another loan and the matter was finally amicably adjusted.
It was astonishing to Carl how many people Madame knew at Homburg. Friends of other and happier days, she said, as she presented them to him. Some of them had titles, some seemed very well-bred, while others were rather seedy, Carl thought. They all paid homage to Madame, who soon had a little court around her and forgot to weep for Felix as much as she had done. As an American Carl felt himself the equal of anyone, and still in his heart there was a kind of respect for rank and aristocracy which made him overlook any little idiosyncracies of manner and action in Madame’s friends. It was this same feeling which had drawn him more closely to Madame herself. He knew that Monsieur Felix’s family was good, and without saying it in so many words Madame had insinuated that hers was equally as good. If he had ever doubted this he believed it in Homburg, where she knew so many titled people, and he was not a little proud to be one of her set. Sam suspected them of being sharpers, especially after he found how much time they spent with cards in Madame’s private parlor. Carl was usually with them a looker-on at first. He had never played for money in his life, and for a few days his New England training and the memory of his mother restrained him. Then Julie persuaded him to take a hand with her just for once.
“The stakes are not very high and I nearly always win, and Count de Varré is ill to-night,” she said, and Carl sat down and won and gave his winnings to Madame.
Then he tried his hand again and won till Madame had quite a little sum at her command. Naturally social, Carlfound Madame’s friends very agreeable and amusing, especially the ladies, one of whom was young and unmarried, while the other was a widow and a baroness and took snuff and talked loud and wore big diamonds. They all made much of Carl, whose fortune rumor, as usual, had doubled. Every night they played, sometimes in one private salon, sometimes in another,—and Carl frequently was one of the party. When he played with Madame he usually won, not very much,—but still won,—and when he played against her, he lost,—sometimes heavy sums, which made him shiver a little when next day he gave his cheque for the amount, and all the time Sam Slayton watched them as closely as if he had been a detective.
One night they met in Carl’s salon, Madame playing with Count de Varré and the old baroness with Carl, who lost, but kept on playing until Sam, who had persisted in staying in the room and at a little distance had been watching the game closely, suddenly exclaimed, as he caught Carl’s arm, and prevented him from putting down a certain card, “Great Jerusalem, don’t you know they are all in league and fleecing you? I learned a trick or two in the army, but never thought to see it practiced among decent people.”
Madame, the only one who understood Sam, nearly fainted, while the Count sprang to his feet, demanding angrily the cause of the disturbance and why this boor of a fellow was allowed with gentlemen, and what he had said.
“He said you were cheating at cards, and by George I believe he spoke the truth,” Carl answered, the mists suddenly clearing from his moral perceptions and showing him the danger he was in.
The scene which followed was rather lively, the Countdenying the charge and hurling angry invectives against Sam, who, not comprehending a word, met them with Yankee coolness and indifference, but stood his ground manfully and showedhowthe cheating was done, while Madame protested that if there had been cheating she was not a party to it, and begged Carl to believe her, and became at last so violently hysterical that, whether he believed her or not, he made a pretense of doing so.
“It was as plain as the nose on your face,” Sam said in describing it to Carl. “I can’t say that Madame cheated, but the others did and gave information across the table in the most barefaced way. I told you they was sharpers.”
Carl began to think so too. Possibly Madame was innocent. He was inclined to think she was, but it was a very questionable kind of people to whom she had introduced him, and he resolved to break away from his Homburg associates,—cleanse himself from their atmosphere,—and then find Katy, confess everything to her, and sue for the love for which he was beginning to long so intensely. To leave Madame, however, was not so easy to do. Since the episode in his room she had been very despondent, and while affecting to be indignant at the Count, had clung more and more to Carl, and always spoke of going when and where he went as a matter of course. In this respect an accident favored him. He was not very fond of early rising, and seldom joined the crowds which went to the Springs before breakfast. He had been there once with Madame, who never missed a morning, and once with Paul, who went to see the Prince of Wales, and who, when he saw him, exclaimed “Why, Carl, he’s only a man with a white dog and gray clothes like Sam’s,”—a remark which greatly amused those whoheard and understood it. After that Carl staid in bed and left Paul to go alone with Sam to see the Prince and his white dog.
One morning as he was waiting for them to return and wondering why they were so late Sam came rushing into his room, exclaiming, “Hurrah, now’s your time to cut and run! Madame has broken her ankle and will not walk for weeks. We had a great time getting her to the hotel. Took me and the Count and two lords, and all hands. I tell you, she’s solid!”
It seemed that in going to the Springs for her eight glasses of water, Madame had somehow slipped and broken her ankle in two places and was brought to her room at the hotel in great agony. It was impossible not to be sorry for her and for a day or two Carl staid by her, seeing that she had every attention and comfort. Then he announced his intention to leave Homburg, which had become so distasteful to him that he hated himself for being there and was anxious to get away. Just where he was going he did not know, but he had Copenhagen in mind, with Stockholm afterwards, and possibly St. Petersburg and Moscow and Warsaw, if it were not too late. Madame’s ankle would keep her a prisoner for some time in Homburg, and the trip he contemplated was far too expensive for her to undertake. She could not follow him, and he felt as if a great weight had been lifted from him and left him a free man as the train took him away from Homburg and the people whose influence had been so pernicious. He would like to have joined Katy, but did not think himself worthy yet to stand in her presence and meet the glance of her innocent blue eye.
“I must be washed and boiled and ironed first,” he thought, and after a few days’ stay at Frankfort, whereSam affected to live in constant expectancy of seeing Madame come hobbling in on crutches, they left for Copenhagen.
All this happened in the summer and early autumn before Jack and I went to London and from thence to Paris, where the brightness and beauty of the gay city astonished and bewildered me. I did not know that anything could be as beautiful as its boulevards, its parks, its late flowers and fountains, and crowds of happy-looking people seen everywhere. Its shop windows were a constant delight, and Jack could scarcely get me away from them. Had we staid in Paris long I should have developed a great passion for dress. As it was I began to want everything I saw, until I inquired the price, when my ardor cooled a little. I was never tired of the picture galleries, or the Bois de Boulogne, or the Champs d’Elysées, or the Avenue de l’Opéra, on which our hotel looked, or of counting the number of white or gray horses seen in a day, and which sometimes amounted to a thousand.
The weather was cold, but crisp and dry,—the trees were leafless and the grass dead, but I did not mind it at all, and would like to have staid in Paris all winter, but for Jack, who wanted to move on.
Carl, who had been to St. Petersburg and Moscow was now in Berlin, while Katy and Miss Errington were in Monte Carlo, and urged us to join them.
“We are not here for play,” Katy wrote, “althoughthere is a great fascination in watching it and the people, and when you see how easily money is sometimes won you are tempted to try your luck. But I have not done so, and shall not. I should be ashamed to look Paul in the face (I knew she meant Carl), if I had played with the men and women who nightly crowded the Casino. We are not in a hotel, but in a lovely villa which Miss Errington has rented. She is not strong,—is very tired with travel, and the air here suits her, while the town suits me. It is the loveliest spot in all the world, and like a garden every where, while the sea is a constant delight. Do come and join us. We have plenty of room and the weather is soft and warm as October at home. Norah isn’t with us, but is coming soon. She found some cousins in Germany and wanted torest upawhile with them. We miss her more than I can tell. She is so efficient and faithful. I doubt, though, if she gets along amicably with the servants here, and her shoes will undoubtedly creak some at their way of doing things. I am getting to be quite a gossip, or at least very curious about my neighbors, and so suspicious too. So many seem to be under a cloud. If you see a beautiful woman driving in a beautiful carriage, behind beautiful horses, with a young man beside her, and ask who she is, the chances are that the person you interrogate shrugs her shoulders and says, ‘She is LadySo-and-so, separated from her husband, and the young man beside her is LordSomebody, who owns the fine turnout and the villa she lives in and the diamonds she wears.’
“Then you feel disgusted and ashamed of your sex, but go to the Casino just the same to watch the play, and the haggish old women, with their black bags, in which they keep their gold and silver, and the young women, fair English and American girls, sitting side by side withblear-eyed roués whom they sometimes touch in their feverish haste to gather up what they have gained, and put down more. Then, in spite of yourself, you look about till you find LadySo-and-so, painted and powdered, with the young man who owns the horses and carriage and diamonds and her, standing behind her while she stakeshismoney as coolly as if it were her own. By and by a friend, who knows everybody, calls your attention to a gray-haired man in the crowd and tells you it is EarlSo-and-so, husband of the painted woman playing so recklessly. While you are hurrying to look at him you stumble upon another celebrity, who tried to kill himself and failed, and is now at the table again, with the perspiration rolling down his face and despair showing in his eyes. To-morrow he may finish the work he began a week ago, and there will be a fresh grave in that enclosure of suicides on the hillside.
“Miss Errington laughs at me, I get so excited, and interested in it all, particularly in our next-door neighbors, who occupy the grand villa which stands so close to ours that I can see all they do, and often hear what they say. It is a very gay party, of French and Germans; several gentlemen and three ladies, one of whom interests me greatly and seems to be the central figure. She is all in black, except when she wears a rose or some other flower to relieve her sombre dress. Her eyes are black, her eyebrows heavy, her color brilliant and her hair golden and wavy. She is slightly lame, and in the morning sits a good deal on the verandah on our side just where from my window I can see her distinctly, or could until she caught me looking at her through a glass. Impertinent in me, I know, but she fascinates me somehow with her complexion and hair and eyes. Maybe she didn’t see me, but shespoke to our cook that day and asked her who we were and since that she has sat further away with her back to me and her long hair rippling down to her waist as if she were drying it. She goes to the Casino every night, and once when I stood watching her she stopped suddenly and left her seat. People tell me that old habitues are superstitious and will not play if strangers are looking at them.
“You must come soon and help me attend to my neighbors’ business. Miss Errington is no good at all, and only laughs at my excitement, but she, too, says, tell you to hurry. We need a man with us to keep us from being talked about, as two lone women whom nobody knows.”
After the receipt of this letter I was crazy to reach Monte Carlo and see LadySo-and-so, who was separated from her husband, and the Earl from whom she was separated, and the haggish old women with black bags, and the man who had tried to kill himself, and all the other questionable people of the place. Jack made no objection to leaving Paris, and in three days we were at Monte Carlo, said to be the loveliest and wickedest place in the world. I saw only the loveliness at first; and from the moment I began to climb the steep steps from the station to the terrace above I was one exclamation point of delight, and when I reached Miss Errington’s villa, which looked out upon the sea and the Casino and Park in front, I was speechless with wonder that anything could be so fair as the scene around me. Miss Errington’s villa was small, but exceedingly pretty, and stood on the same grounds with what we called The Grand Villa, while ours wasLa Petite.
It was late in the afternoon when we arrived, and I had just time to freshen myself a little before dinner was served. Katy had given us her room, which was larger than the guest chamber, and while making my toilet I was constantlyglancing from the windows toward the Grand Villa, the piazza of which seemed to be full of people in evening dress, and the sound of their voices was distinctly heard. Conspicuous among their light costumes was a soft, black, fleecy dress, the train of which reached far behind the lady who wore it, and whose face I could not see, as her back was towards me. I could, however, distinguish masses of golden hair piled high on the top of her head, with one or two curls falling gracefully in her neck.
“That is Katy’s Madame,” I said, as I tried to get a glimpse of her face, while Jack chaffed me for my curiosity.
Evidently it was a large dinner party assembled at the villa, and we saw them filing into the salon and seating themselves at the long table loaded with silver and cut glass and flowers. Then the shades were dropped, and hid them from our sight, but we could hear their merry laughter, louder it seemed to me and coarser than that of real gentlemen and ladies.
“I do not believe they are real,” Katy said. “They are shams,—even if they have titles among them. Theircheftold ours that Count de Varré rents the villa and they picnic together. The woman in black is Madame Felix. Paul has written me something about her. What do you know of her?”
I replied by repeating at length all I had heard of her. “I should not be greatly surprised if Carl joined the party later. He was at Homburg with some of them,” I said, and repented my words the next moment, Katy turned so pale and looked so distressed.
“Carl consorting with such people and Paul with him; and you knew it and did not stop it!” she exclaimed, and in her eyes, blue as they were, there was a look like Fanwhen her blood was at fever heat and her eyes at their blackest with red spots in them.
“What could I do?” I asked. “Paul is beyond my control when with Carl, and I do not believe he has been harmed. She has evidently been very kind to him and he likes her.”
“Yes, I remember. I understand perfectly why she is kind to Paul,” Katy replied, and I could hear her foot tap impatiently under the table, as she grew more and more like Fan. “If Carl comes to that villa with Paul, I’ll never speak to him again,” she added.
She was greatly excited and her excitement continued until dinner was over and we were on our way to the Casino. The party from the Grand Villa were just ahead of us,—Madame, with her black train thrown over her arm, showing clouds of white lace and muslin underwear, while the man who, Katy said, was Count de Varré, walked beside her, occasionally putting his hand on her shoulder when she limped more than usual. We purposely held back that they might enter before us; “and get well under way before Madame spies me,” Katy said, a trifle viciously for her. “The last time I was here I went in when she did, and you should have seen the great black eyes she leveled at me for an instant, and then with a half shrug walked away. She didn’t play that night while I was there. I believe she thinks I am her evil genius.”
We were in the Casino by this time and I wanted to look about me a little, but Katy hurried us on to the play-rooms, ablaze with light and splendor and people gathered from all parts of the globe,—French, Germans, Russians, Italians, English and Americans,—young and old, beauties and belles, wrinkled hags and fair, innocent looking girls, who had staked their first five francs stealthily, as ifashamed to do it,—their second, if they won, with more assurance,—their third, with still more, until at last every afternoon and evening, Sunday not excepted, found them there, sitting between and jostled by men to whom at home they would consider it a degradation to speak, or be near. At one table sat an old, shrivelled woman, playing heavily, but so blind and deaf and demented that she did not always know whether she had lost or won, until her maid, who stood behind her, told her, and raked the gold into her bag. At another table was a young man; an American, just married, and also playing heavily, but losing as heavily, while his girl-wife beside him looked on with tearful eyes and an occasional remonstrance as she saw what was perhaps their all melting away so fast. It was wonderful, and bewildering, and intoxicating, and as I went from table to table and heard above the hum of voices the constant sing-song of the croupiers “Faite le jeu; le jeu est fait,” and looked at the players and saw how rapidly the gold and silver changed hands, I could understand how strong was the temptation to try one’s luck when only five francs was the stake and there was no possible chance for cheating or being cheated.
“Would you like to risk a dollar?” Jack said, to try the strength of my principles.
“No, indeed,” I replied, just as Katy pulled my sleeve and whispered, “There they are,—the party from the Grand Villa,—all at the same table. Madame has her back to us. You and Jack go round where you can see her without letting her know you are watching her. By and by I’ll come and hypnotize her so she’ll quit playing. You’ll see!”
We left Katy and went round to the other side of the table, getting as near to it as possible and, without seemingto watch Madame, scanned her curiously. She was handsome, with that voluptuous kind of beauty so many men admire. She was quite tall and stout, but her figure was so perfect that one forgot her size entirely. I knew that she owed much of her brilliant color to art, but it was art perfected, as was the shading under her eyes which two or three times swept the crowd in front of her as if in quest of someone. I might have been mistaken, but I thought there was a look of relief in them as if the one they feared to see was not there. Once she smiled and spoke to the man beside her, Count de Varré, showing a dimple in one cheek and a set of very white even teeth. Her chief attraction, however, was in her golden hair which contrasted so strongly with her eyes and eyebrows. It was certainly a strange freak of nature,—that hair and those eyes,—and I said so to Jack, and asked him what he thought of her.
“She is striking, certainly,” he said, “and just the kind of woman to please some men,—Carl, for example; but she is not my style, and by George, I believe I’ve seen her before.”
“That is hardly possible,” I replied, “inasmuch as she is a born French woman.”
“How do you know she is a born French woman,” he asked, and I rejoined, “I don’t know for sure, but have taken it for granted. When Paul first met her she could not speak English. Don’t you remember he wrote that he was teaching her?”
“English or no English, I have seen that woman before, or some one like her,” Jack said.
He was good at remembering faces, while I was not good at all, and still I, too, was beginning to think that I had seen Madame, when Katy came up and said, “Nowlet me have your place, while you step aside, and see how soon I can make her uncomfortable.”
I stepped aside, standing a little to the right of Katy, whose face I could not see. But I saw Madame who, after a little, began to fidget in her chair and cast frequent glances across the table to where Katy stood, not looking at her all the time, but making it sufficiently manifest that she was watching her. Strangely, too, Madame began to lose. This made her more nervous than ever, and at last, folding her hands in a despairing kind of way, she said something to the man beside her. Following the direction of her eyes he saw Katy and at once came round to her. Bowing low he begged a thousand pardons, but did she speak French or English?
“Both,” she said, and he continued, rubbing his hands and bowing all the time, “So sorry, but Madame Felix, the lady in black, is not well,—is nervous,—and it affects her much to have Mademoiselle look at her with those eyes, which,—pardon,—if I were not a stranger I should compliment.”
Something in the eyes warned him not to compliment them, and he went on: “She loses courage; she loses money. In short, will Mademoiselle be so very good to go to some other table and watch somebody else. Am very sorry to ask it?”
“Certainly I will,” Katy said, turning her back upon Madame, who recovered her composure and began to play again.
Jack and I were watching her now almost as intently as Katy had done and with a more startling effect. Evidently she had not been aware of our presence before, and now when she saw us she seemed for a moment spellbound and stared at me as if I had been some unexpectedapparition confronting her. Then she looked at Jack, who, I have always insisted, bowed slightly. He says he didn’t, but confesses to a half smile which so disconcerted her that she turned pale and, leaning back in her chair, whispered to the Count and left her seat.
“You are worse than Katy,” Jack said, with what sounded like a low whistle as he saw her going to another table as far from us as possible.
“I told you I would rout her,” Katy said, as she joined us, while Jack declared it was I who did it. “She actually turned green when she saw Annie,” he said. “Who the dickens can she be?”
“A miserable scheming woman,” Katy answered, and I knew she was thinking of Carl and his connection with Madame.
I was getting tired of the play-rooms and we went outside into the vestibule where we sat down so near the entrance to the little opera that we could hear the music distinctly. I did not care to go in that night, preferring to sit where I was and see the people pass and repass. After a moment Katy said, “There is something I want to tell you and may as well do it here. I am going to sing in public to-morrow night.”
“Sing in Monte Carlo,—in the Casino!” I exclaimed, and Katy replied, “In Monte Carlo, yes; but not in the Casino. There is a grand salon at the —— Hotel capable of seating two or three hundred, and they are willing to give from two to five dollars to hear me sing, or rather, to be more modest, to the cause for which I am to sing.”
“And what is that?” I asked in a tone which made Katy look closely at me as she replied, “You have some of Fan’s prejudice against the stage, I see. Well, this isn’t the stage exactly, although there is to be a temporaryone, I believe. Haven’t you heard of that little town near here which has been visited with pestilence and earthquakes and lastly by a fire until it is half a ruin and the people sleep in the fields? The concert is for their benefit, gotten up and engineered by an English earl and his lady. So, you see, it is in every wayen règle. All amateurs, except the tenor and the contralto, whose voices harmonize perfectly with mine. They are husband and wife and highly respectable. The other performers are English. I am the only American, and the drawing card!”
“What do they know of you?” I asked, and she replied, “I sang in Berlin and in Nice and once here. The Earl heard me in Berlin and Nice, too, and insisted upon my taking part here as prima donna. Now you have it in a nutshell, except that the rush for tickets increased and the prices went up when it was known that I was to sing.”
“Don’t you dread it?” I asked, and with a merry laugh she answered, “Dread it? No. I anticipate it. I know I can sing. I sometimes feel as if I could fill the whole world when I get my voice under control, and how I should like to try the Grand Opera House in Paris. I sang twice in Berlin in a concert hall to crowded houses. Just before I was to go on my heart beat like a big drum, but the moment I was on the stage and saw the people and they saw me and began to cheer, I forgot everything but my own voice to which I was listening, and which carried me back to the robins I used to imitate in the garden and woods at home, and it seemed to me that I was a big robin making my throat move just as they used to do when they sat in the jasmine and honeysuckle and sang to me in the morning. I imitated them then; I cando it better now. You will see. You don’t know how the people applauded and encored until I was tired of coming out, and when the concert was over they nearly broke through the floor, and so many came forward to congratulate me,—the Earl and his lady with the rest. The next day I was deluged with cards and calls and flowers, and had I chosen I might have commenced a career then and there, I had so many overtures for engagements with real stage people. I am glad I am to sing to-morrow night, and that you and Jack are to hear me. Fan said she’d rather see me dead than on the stage. Carl said so, too, but God gave me my voice. Why shouldn’t I use it?”
“You should, for all good objects, but don’t go in for a Career,” I said.
“You are as bad as the rest of them; all are against me,—even Jack,” Katy rejoined, glancing up at Jack, who had listened but said nothing, except to ask if we were not ready to go home.
Miss Errington, who had not been with us at the Casino, was waiting for us in the salon and there were lights at the Grand Villa, showing that some of its occupants had returned. It was Madame and the Count, Miss Errington told us, adding that they had come back sometime ago, and that, judging from the sound of Madame’s voice, she was either excited or ill.
“She’s seen the evil eye again,” Katy said, recounting her experience with the lady, while Jack whistled just as he had done at the Casino, and was promptly reproved by me for his ill-manners in whistling before people.
“Don’t you remember that girl we used to have?” I said, “what was her name,—Julina Smith. She used to whistle until Mrs. Hathern heard her and nearly took her head off.”
“What made you think of her?” Jack asked, and I replied, “I don’t know. She happened to come into my mind,” and there the conversation ceased.
The next day I saw that great preparations were making for the concert to be given in the grand salon, and heard from Miss Errington that much interest was felt by the Americans and English because Katy was to sing. Several times the Earl came to our villa to consult with her, and once the Italian tenor and contralto came and practiced one or two pieces, and Katy went with the Earl to the hotel to see just where she was to stand and where enter. Taken altogether, there seemed to be quite a professional air about it all which I didn’t quite like, and I said so to Jack, who answered “Oh, let Katy sing, if she wants to. It won’t hurt her.”
“But what will Fan and Carl say? I wish he were here,” I continued, whereupon Jack was more provoking than ever, and replied, “I don’t think Carl need say much after his racket with Madame!” and then he whistled again in what I thought a very exasperating way and told him so, from which it will be seen that we were getting quite like married people.
For answer he laughed and said “Nous verrons,” about the only French he had picked up, and I heard him laughing in his dressing-room where he was making his toilet for the evening. We went early to the salon, but early as we were the party from the Grand Villa were there beforeus, all except Madame, who was probably enjoying herself at play, undisturbed by Katy, or myself. We were not far from the front and could not see who entered behind us, but we knew the salon was filling fast and that some were standing near the door. Behind the curtain of the improvised stage shadowy figures were flitting, and we caught occasionally the sound of suppressed voices evidently giving orders. Jack had gone to the villa, after my fan which I had forgotten, and I had fought one or two battles over his chair and was longing for him to return and wondering why he was gone so long, when he came tearing in. I can use no other expression thantear, he was so excited and warm, as if he had been running. “By George,” he said, handing me my fan and sinking into his seat, “It’s the best joke I ever knew.”
“What’s the best joke? Are you crazy, Jack?” I asked, as he seemed about to roar.
Then he pulled himself together and answered quite soberly, “You wished Carl were here, and heishere,—in this hotel,—or was; came on the evening train. I glanced at the register and saw his name, and Paul’s and Sam’s. Norah is here, too, at the villa; came on the same train, but could not have known Carl was in it, as she said nothing of having seen him.”
“Norah! I am so glad,” Miss Errington said, while I exclaimed, “Carl and Paul! Then, they must be in the salon. Look, Jack, and find them.”
He did look, and saying “Nix,” sat down again, and continued: “Carl is undoubtedly in the Casino by this time cheek-by-jowl with Madame. She passed the villa with her maid while Norah and I were standing on the piazza. I got one flash of her black eyes in the moonlight.She looked rather haggard, I thought, in spite of the color on her cheeks. I don’t believe she half likes our proximity to her.”
Then he laughed and was about to say more when I warned him to stop, as the orchestra had ceased playing and the curtain was going up. Everything which could be done to make the stage attractive and like a private parlor had been done. The furniture was of the daintiest kind and most artistically arranged; the lights were shaded just right, and there were flowers and potted plants everywhere, with a whole forest of palms, tall ferns and azaleas at the rear, where the singers were to enter.
The first on the programme was a quartette sung in Italian, and mildly cheered. Then a violin solo played by the Earl,—also mildly cheered, with a faint attempt at an encore. “Stupid,” I whispered to Jack, who did not seem to be listening at all. Once, when there was a commotion near the door he turned his head and then said to me in a whisper, “That Yankee has just come in with Paul. He’ll have a good time getting a seat.”
I asked Jack to bring Paul to me, for I was longing for a sight of his face, and wanted to see what effect the sight of Katy would have upon him. But Jack said that was impossible.
“Are you sure Carl is not with him?” I asked, and he replied, “Yes, sure. He is probably at the Casino.”
And he was! Since leaving Berlin he had traveled slowly from place to place,—not quite certain whether he was sufficiently scrubbed and boiled and ironed to join the girl whom he felt a great desire to see. He had heard of her triumphs in Berlin from some friends who were at the concert, and for a moment had set his teeth together hard that she should thus go against his known wishes.
Then he thought, “Who or what am I that I should raise so high a standard for her, and have so low a one for myself? If she sings every day in the week I want her, and mean to have her.”
Of Madame he frequently thought;—sometimes with disgust, when he remembered Homburg, and again kindly and charitably as one who was not to blame for being a French woman, with all the instincts of her class. She had amused and interested him, and shown that she cared for him, and no young man is wholly insensible to the preference of a handsome woman. Just where she was he did not know, but fancied she was at Cannes. Of Katy’s whereabouts he knew as little as of Madame’s, but had an impression that she might be in Monte Carlo, as in her last letter to Paul she had spoken of going there. If so, he knew Jack and I must be with her, as we were to join her in southern France, and with a hope to find her and us he had come on the evening train.
As our names were not on the hotel register he decided to look for us in the Casino,—the resort of the most of Monte Carlo’s visitors. Paul knew he could not enter the play-rooms, but was anxious to see the place. Taking him and Sam with him Carl left them to look about in the vestibule, while he slowly made the circuit of the rooms. Not finding us, or anyone he knew, he decided to enquire at the different hotels and was about to leave when he came upon Madame who was so heartily glad to see him that for a time he was glad to see her. She was thinner than when he left her in Homburg, with something quiet and subdued in her manner, and a shade of anxiety in her face which softened and toned down her striking beauty.
“Is in straits again I dare say,” Carl thought, resolving if she were he would not come to the rescue.
But Madame soon undeceived him. She had had splendid luck as a rule at the tables, and, best of all, her brother-in-law in Passy had been very generous and made over to her more of the estate than she had hoped for.
“I feel quite rich again,” she said, “and can pay you what you have loaned me.”
At this Carl laughed. She was welcome to all he had advanced to her, he said, as he took a seat beside her at one of the tables, more to see her play than to play himself. After a little, however, the fever seized him, and he was about to put down his first piece of gold when there came an unexpected diversion in the shape of a young boy, whose English voice rang out shrill and clear above the hum of the room and startled every player there.
“Carl, Carl, come quick! Katy is singing at the hotel, and the people are yelling like mad. Come on.”
It was Paul, bareheaded and breathless, as he grasped Carl’s hand before the gold was upon the table. In an instant Carl was on his feet, electrified by the news Paul brought and by the sight of him in those rooms so rigidly forbidden to all under twenty-one. Close behind him was an official, but before he could seize the child Carl interposed and led him into the vestibule, where he met Sam who had come in hot pursuit of the boy. Paul and Sam had looked about the Casino until they were tired and had then returned to the hotel, where they heard of the concert in progress, but not who the singers were. Paul, who was very fond of music, begged to go in, and securing a ticket Sam managed to find standing-room for himself at the rear of the salon, where, putting Paul upon the window seat so that he could see over the heads of the people, he stood, little dreaming of the surprise which awaited him. The quartette was finished and the solo,and then there fell a great hush of expectancy as the people studied their programs and waited during what seemed to me an eternity, I was so nervous and excited.
Would Katy fail? Would she mind that sea of heads, or care for the eyes and glasses so soon to be leveled at her? I didn’t know, and I felt as if I should scream if the suspense were not soon ended. There was a stir among the palms and azaleas, and something which sounded like a long breath ran through the audience, as a tall slim girl walked easily and gracefully to the front of the stage, where she stood, acknowledging the cheers which greeted her as composedly as if she had been at home and about to sing a ballad to me. She was very lovely in her simple white gown, with neither paint nor powder on her face. Her fair hair was twisted into a loose coil at the back of her head and kept in place by a long gold pin, her only ornament, if I except the bunch of roses fastened in her bosom. Nor did she need anything to set off the matchless beauty of her face and the light which shone in her eyes as they swept the house in one swift glance until they fell upon Jack and me. Then she began singing tous,—I was sure,—with a thought of home in her heart,—singing in a language I could not understand, but the music of which made me grow faint as a great joy sometimes affects us. I could feel the stillness of the people, which continued for a brief instant after she finished; then, there was a perfect hail-storm of cheers and flowers, which she received with the same composure which had characterized her singing.
It was at this point that Paul had started in quest of Carl. He had been very quiet, Sam said, through the quartette and solo, and was beginning to yawn when Katy appeared.
“Oh-h!” he began aloud, when Sam put his hand over his mouth to stop him.
Then putting his arms around Sam’s neck and nearly strangling him Paul whispered, “Is it she? Is it Katy? It is! It is!”
Shaking like a leaf he listened till the song was over and then, before Sam knew what he was doing, he sprang from the window stool and started for the Casino to find Carl. Fortunately for him a party was just entering the rooms, and taking advantage of the open door he shot through it under the nose of the astonished official, who put out his arm to detain him. But Paul was off like the wind, darting from point to point until he found Carl and startled him with the news that Katy was singing at the hotel and the people were yelling like mad.
Madame was white to her lips as she watched Carl going from the room and knew that he was going from her forever,—the only man she had ever really cared for. Then she turned to her game with nerveless fingers which could hardly hold the gold which she lost as fast as she put it down.
Meanwhile Carl was hurrying to the hotel, questioning Paul as he went, but getting no very satisfactory replies. Katy was singing and the house was full, was all Paul could say. Carl had fancied it a little parlor entertainment, but when he saw the crowd filling the salon and all the scenic effect of stage accessories, he thought to himself, “Katy has commenced herCareer,” and a sting like the cut of a knife ran through him for an instant, with a feeling that he had lost her. With some difficulty he made his way to a window, where, with Paul again on the stool, he waited while an English girl wailed through some sentimental trash about “Kissing me quick if youlove me.” Then there was another hush, reminding me of the stillness said to brood in the air before the coming of a cyclone. I believe I could have heard a pin drop, and I did hear the beating of my heart and leaned over on Jack just as the palms and azaleas stirred again, and the tall slim girl in the white dress stood before us a second time, her cheeks flushed with excitement and her face beautiful as the faces of the angels whose pictures we sometimes see. Two or three curls had escaped from the coil at the back of her head and fallen down upon her neck. These she tossed back with a graceful motion, putting up her hands to fasten them in their place as readily and naturally as if she had been in her dressing-room at home. She was wholly unconventional, and this was one of her great charms as she stood there, her eyes again sweeping the house, but failing to take in the group by the window watching her so eagerly, Paul only restrained from calling out to her by Carl’s warning “sh-sh,” spoken very low. If she had seen them and known Carl was there she might not have sung as she did,—clearer, sweeter than before,—going up and up without a break until she reached a point from which it seemed as if her voice could go no farther, and there it staid and warbled and trilled with perfect ease like the robins she used to imitate. And I was sure she saw and heard them, and that The Elms and evergreens and woods were full of them singing to her of Virginia and home, and she hated to leave them. But with an easy movement she slid down at last from the dizzy heights to which she had carried us, and with a bow her song was ended.
If the applause was great before it was thunderous now, and she stood as if wondering what it all was for. Then suddenly it subsided,—stopped by the same shrill, penetratingvoice which had so startled the players in the Casino. Paul had nearly tumbled off the window stool with his stamping, and as soon as there was a lull he called out “Hurrah, Katy! That was splendid, and we are all here, Carl and Sam andme. Look!”
Three-fourths of the audience were English and Americans, who understood him, and all turned towards the window where the little fellow’s hands were still in the air clapping his approval. Then the cheers broke forth again, louder than before, and this time almost as much for Paul as for Katy. She was as white as her dress, and it seemed to me had scarcely strength to leave the stage. In response to the protracted calls for her reappearance she only came in front of the palms and bowed. She was not down to sing again, but when the program was finished some of the English, who knew she was a southern girl, sent up a request for a negro song, such as was sung before the war. This everyone seconded and Katy came again, looking now like a water-lily she was so pale, as she stood for a moment wondering what to sing.
“I hope it will be Old Kentucky Home,” I whispered to Jack, and as if my wish had been communicated to her she began it at once, without any accompaniment, filling the room with the old-time melody I had so often heard as a child in the hemp fields and cabins at home, but which had never sounded as it did now when Katy sang it with so much feeling and pathos.
This time I feared the people would break through the floor, and was told that the proprietor did look in alarmed at the noise. One more song was asked for and this time it was Swannee River which she chose, changing the words of the last two lines of each verse into