XIV
SHE went straight to her father with the whole story. He listened sitting at his desk, balancing a broad ivory paper-cutter on his forefinger. She felt much better when she had finished; her anger seemed to have been carried off in her words.
After a long silence her father said: “What do you wish to do?”
She looked foolish. “I don’t know, papa,” she said feebly. “What do you think we ought to do?”
“He may have been honestly deceived.”
“But Mr. Macready said——”
“That was merely his offhand opinion,” he interrupted. “They’ve been making imitation jewels of all kinds for years. I know the Italians have long been clever at it.”
Elsie was silent. She could not help remembering Rontivogli’s stupid, over-crafty reiterations. She knew that he knew.
“And,” continued her father, examining the paper-cuttercritically, “there isn’t the slightest doubt as to the genuineness of Prince Rontivogli himself.”
Another long silence during which neither father nor daughter showed the slightest curiosity as to what thoughts the other’s face might be revealing.
“Even if he did wilfully deceive in this—not vitally important—matter,” continued the aspirant for a princess-daughter, “I can imagine many extenuating circumstances. It isn’t the young man’s fault that he’s poor. It isn’t unnatural that he shouldn’t wish to expose his poverty—especially if he”—the Senator’s face took on a smile of fatherly benevolence—“happened to care for the young lady. ‘All’s fair in love and war,’ you know. And we must not judge harshly those who have less than we have. Still——”
Rontivogli’s “temperament” was vigorously reinforcing his title in repairing the havoc the false jewel had played with him in Elsie’s mind. He had been a convincing lover; Elsie had too much vanity and too much desire to be loved madly not to be a credulous young woman. “I don’t know what to do, papa,” she said in the tone that proclaims a decision reached and a wish for support in it.
“I can imagine many extenuating circumstances”
“Perhaps,” replied the Senator slowly, the personificationof forgiving charity, “it might be best to let the matter drop.”
“But I simply can’twearthe ring! I’d feel such a fraud, and I’d soon be disliking him, though this may not be at all his fault. Besides, someone might——”
“That could be easily arranged.” Her father’s eyes twinkled—he was preparing to treat the discovered deception as a little private joke on the prince between his daughter and himself. “We can get Tiffany to set an emerald in the ring. No one will know. And some day you can tease him about it. If he is innocent it would mortify him to learn the truth now, wouldn’t it?”
Elsie smiled somewhat cheerfully. She was trying hard to make herself doubt the prince’s guilty knowledge. “It must be done right away,” she said.
She wore her gloves that afternoon. But Rontivogli, with nerves like a sensitive plant’s leaves, felt a change in her, hard though she tried to seem unchanged. In the clear light of hind-sight he had been cursing himself for saying so much to her of Madame Almansa’s insinuations; and at first he feared that by his blundering he had roused suspicion in her.But she showed that she was still in the mood to marry him, and the negotiations for settlements went smoothly on between Senator Pope’s lawyer and the attorney to the Italian Embassy, whom he had engaged to represent him. He dismissed his fear as a wild imagining of guilt and set himself to remove the coolness just under Elsie’s surface of warmth by lavishing his “temperament” upon her. And he was rewarded with swift success. A flaw in such a lover was as inconsequential as a flaw in an emerald—and was it not as much a matter of course?
Toward the end of the week she went with her father to New York, and in two days Tiffany changed the setting for a consideration of four thousand eight hundred dollars. She returned fully restored—but she kept the false stone, hid it far back in the bottom of her jewel-safe.
The shock and its after-effects were soon over. She was a little astonished that she, so used to the quaint ways of foreigners, should have attached importance to the quaintness of this foreigner—a lover who was fiery and infatuated, a lover who sang, a lover who was a Prince of a “house” that ruled and plotted and patronised the arts when Europe beyond the Alps wasa savage wilderness. Rontivogli had not been studying women for twenty years—or ever since he was eighteen—aided by a classic face, a classic figure, a classic name, and classic recklessness, without learning thoroughly the business he was now following.
Frothingham had ceased to hope, and, for lack of any other opening, was arranging to go to Chicago, there to visit his steamer friend Barney, whom he had not permitted to forget him—Barney had a marriageable daughter and was rated at eleven millions; also, Chicago was reputed to be a promising field for titled foreigners. He felt that he was neglecting business in lingering at Washington. He saw no signs, heard no news, of available rich girls or rich men’s daughters. Half a dozen questions about any girl and he would get an answer that would force him to strike her from his list—the father was opposed to large settlements; the family was opposed to international marriages; the family’s social ambitions were of the new cis-Atlantic kind; the daughter was already engaged; the mother’s aim was for princely or ducal rank. And he was kept in low spirits by the spectacle of the triumphant Rontivogli and was exasperated byElsie’s treating him as an object of pity, a rejected and inconsolable lover.
As he sat alone in a corner of the club, staring with grim satire into the ugly face of his affairs, upon him intruded a man whom he had often described as the most viciously tiresome person he had ever met—Count Eitel zu Blickenstern. He disliked Blickenstern because he was a German; he avoided him because he was dull, because he was a chronic and ingenious borrower of small sums of money, and because every remark that seemed to him to have been intended humourously was hailed by him with a loud, mirthless laugh—the laugh of those who have no notion of wit or humour and fear their deformity will be discovered.
Frothingham had first met Blickenstern in the Riviera, where he was living on the last lees of tolerance. He would have cut him when he ran across him in New York had he not found him in high favour with the women who dominated fashionable society. They admitted Blickenstern as they admitted almost any of the few available men with no occupation but idleness. They needed escorts, attendants, fetch-and-carry men; Blickenstern was idle and willing, was big and always well-dressed, was useful to do the hardwork of arranging an entertainment once it had been planned. And his noisy convulsions flattered those unaccustomed to having their jokes appreciated.
Frothingham’s cold stare did not disturb Blickenstern, born insensible to mental temperatures. He posed for a moment to give Frothingham a chance to admire his fashionable array of new light grey frock suit, white spats, orchid in buttonhole, and dark red tie; then he dropped upon the lounge with the good-natured, slightly condescending greeting he gave men when he had money in his pockets. He explained that he had come the night before in a private car with a party of distinguished New Yorkers who had to testify before a Senate committee. “And, do you know,” said he—his English was idiomatic American and almost without accent, “the first person I ran into was that Italian scalawag, Rontivogli.”
Frothingham’s eyeglass glistened; otherwise he did not change expression. “D’you know ’im?” he asked languidly. “What’ll you drink?”
“Brandy and soda,” replied Blickenstern. “Know ’im? Rather! I’m responsible for him in this country. He landed without a friend and the people he had letters to shut the door in his face—they don’tfancy Italians in New York. I introduced him round and got him in everywhere. And, by gad, he not only refused to pay a note he gave me, but when I met him here last night he stared at me as if he’d never seen me before.”
“Rough, wasn’t it?”
Blickenstern laughed cheerfully, without a trace of irritation. Insults did not disturb him; he had killed one man and had wounded several in duels, but he fought only because it was the “proper thing for a gentleman”—and respect-inspiring in certain countries and in certain circumstances. “I’m off for home next week,” he said, “never to return to this bounder-land. I think, just before I go, I’ll get the face value of that note and interest—and not in money, either.”
Blickenstern had several drinks “on” Frothingham—half a dozen in as rapid succession as Frothingham could induce. But he refused to disclose his proposed revenge, only chuckled, “I’ll bet the dago’ll leave on the first steamer after I sail.”
“I’ll give the guinea one more chance”
Frothingham got Boughton to attempt Blickenstern, and Boughton not only tried it himself, but also put at work a friend of his in the German Embassy. Blickenstern, however, would not go beyondwagging his big blond head and saying, “Wait! I don’t want to spoil the fun.” The military attaché at the German Embassy was with him when he met Rontivogli again. “I’ll give the guinea one more chance,” said he, overflowing with good nature as always when he had drunk to excess. It was the office of the Shoreham, and Rontivogli was on his way out; Blickenstern bore down upon him, caught him by the lapel.
“I’m giving you your last chance, Cosimo,” he said. “You’d better pay up.”
“If you don’t take your hands off me,” exclaimed Rontivogli in French, “I’ll have you put into the street.” The look in his black eyes suggested the glitter of a stiletto.
Blickenstern shook him gently. “If you don’t pay that note,” he replied with unruffled good nature, “I’ll publish it and the contract also. I’m leaving the country, and don’t care what they think of me here. But you—I hear you’re about to marry?”
Rontivogli grew yellow under the bronze of his clear, pale skin. “I tell you, I can’t pay the note. You know it. You drove me out of New York with your dogging and dunning me. In a few weeks I can pay, and will.”
“Yes—when you’re married.” Blickenstern laughed loudly and not hollowly—here was a joke he could see. “What do you think I am—an imbecile? Don’t I know that as soon as you’re married you can snap your fingers—and will?”
Rontivogli disengaged himself and readjusted his close-fitting coat. “I’m certain you will not lay yourself liable to arrest for blackmail,” he said with calm contempt, and went on to his carriage.
Blickenstern looked after him, nodding and laughing. “Just wait!” he said, addressing his fellow-German, and including the curious loungers in the office.
Frothingham searched for Blickenstern—he had a vague idea of taking him to call at the Popes’. But he could not find him. He did see Rontivogli, however—one glance was enough to tell him that Blickenstern’s threats had devoured his high spirits and were eating into his courage. He waited impatiently for the explosion—a five-days’ wait, for it did not come until the following Tuesday. That morning, as Hutt went out of his bedroom after fixing his bath, Joe Wallingford called from their common sitting room:
“You’re awake, aren’t you?”
“Almost,” answered Frothingham.
“Then just read that.” He flung a newspaper through the crack in Frothingham’s door onto his bed.
Frothingham took the paper and instantly caught the names of Rontivogli and Blickenstern in the largest headlines. He began eagerly upon a three-column article, the most of it under a New York date line.
“Ain’t that cruel?” called Wallingford. “Ain’t it a soaker?”
“Um,” replied Frothingham, too busy to pause.
It was an account of a suit brought by Blickenstern against Rontivogli to collect a note for twenty-five hundred dollars. The “sensation” lay in a document which Blickenstern had attached to the note and had filed with the papers in the suit—a contract, reading:
I, Cosimo di Rontivogli, hereby agree to pay Count Eitel zu Blickenstern twenty-five hundred dollars as soon as he has introduced me to the persons whose names are written upon the back of this contract in my handwriting. And I further agree to pay him an additional twenty-five hundred dollars within one month after I become engaged to an American lady, whether or not I am introduced to her by him. And I further agree to pay him an additional ten thousand dollars within three months after mymarriage with an American lady, whether or not he introduced me to her.(Signed)Cosimo di Rontivogli.
I, Cosimo di Rontivogli, hereby agree to pay Count Eitel zu Blickenstern twenty-five hundred dollars as soon as he has introduced me to the persons whose names are written upon the back of this contract in my handwriting. And I further agree to pay him an additional twenty-five hundred dollars within one month after I become engaged to an American lady, whether or not I am introduced to her by him. And I further agree to pay him an additional ten thousand dollars within three months after mymarriage with an American lady, whether or not he introduced me to her.
(Signed)Cosimo di Rontivogli.
This contract, the newspaper said, was in Rontivogli’s autograph, and was witnessed by two clerks at the Holland House; on the back of the contract, and also in Rontivogli’s autograph, were the names of fifteen fashionable and rich New York women. Frothingham glanced at the names—he knew the bearers of most of them—and hastened on into Blickenstern’s interview. “In Europe,” he had said to the reporter, “I should call the fellow out and kill him. Here, where the duel does not exist, I must take the only redress open to me for his betrayal of my friendship. I asked him to pay only the note. In fact he owes me five thousand, as he is now engaged to a Washington heiress. He is a black rascal. If you will send to Milan you can get a fine tale of how he happened to come to your country. I owe all my American friends an apology for introducing him. I confess with shame that but for me he would have known no one.”
The article went on with an account of Rontivogli’s engagement to “Miss Elsie Pope, one of the best known young women in Washington, Philadelphia,and New York society, the only daughter of Senator John C. Pope, reputed to be the third richest man in the Millionaires’ Club, as the Senate is called.” Then followed Rontivogli’s sweeping denial, and his denunciation of the Prussian as a “blackmailer,” a “notorious card-sharp,” a “thorough scoundrel.”
When Frothingham finished he said, “Gad, what a facer for Miss Pope!”
“Isn’t it, though?” replied Wallingford. “And for her father. I always blame the fathers.”
“But I thought it was the mothers who hankered after European marriages,” said Frothingham.
“That’s what is usually said,” Wallingford answered, “because only the mothers appear in the public part of the business. But who gives up the money for the settlements? The women ain’t a nose ahead of the men in the race of snobbishness. Poor little Elsie Pope! This ought to be a lesson to our girls against——”
He paused abruptly and reddened, though Frothingham could not see him. “I almost forgot that Frothingham’s one of ’em,” he said to himself.
Frothingham was grinning in the seclusion of his bedroom. “I should say so!” he exclaimed in hisdrawling, satirical voice. “Wonder what the Milan yarn is?”
He learned in a few hours, for the Washington afternoon papers had a long Associated Press despatch from Milan. Rontivogli, heavily in debt and ruined, had been backed by a syndicate of his creditors for an American tour in search of an heiress. They had risked in the venture forty thousand lire and, within a month, an additional twenty thousand. They regarded it as a by no means desperate investment for the recovery of the very large sum which Rontivogli had got out of them before they discovered his financial plight—certainly with such a title and so much personal beauty and charm he could win the daughter of one of the multitude of rich men among those title-crazy American vulgarians. The Milan despatch set forth that the correspondent had had no difficulty in getting the facts, as “everyone here knows the story. The formation of such syndicates is said to be common in England, France, Germany, Austria, and Italy, and many of them have been successful.”
“Poor Frothingham!” Wallingford thought as he read. “This is bad for his business. I fancy it’ll be many a day before I see my thousand again.” Andthen he delicately gave Frothingham a hint that if he needed another thousand he could have it. But Frothingham didn’t need it just then—and, it should be set down to his credit, he would have hesitated long before taking it, had he needed it. Wallingford was not wrong in thinking there had been since he met Frothingham a marked decline in his “honour as a gentleman,” and a marked rise in his “honour as a man.”
Rontivogli went to the Popes’ at eleven o’clock that morning. The look of the flunky who opened the door foreshadowed to him his fate. He was shown not into the drawing room, but into a reception room—a small alcove to the left of the door, intended for wraps rather than for callers. The servant returned with a package on his tray. “Miss Pope is not at ’ome,” he said haughtily, omitting the customary “Your ’Ighness,” and not even substituting so much as a “Sir” for it, “and she left this to be given to you.”
Rontivogli ignored the impudences of omitting his title and of addressing him as “you,” and took the package. The servant held aside the portière with the broadest possible hint in his face and manner.
“Tell Senator Pope that the Prince di Rontivogli wishes to see him,” said Rontivogli in a tone which at once reduced the servant, in spite of himself, from a human being to a mechanical device for the transmission of messages.
When he hesitatingly withdrew Rontivogli opened the package—his ring with the stone unset and loose in the box. He solved the puzzle almost as soon as it was presented to him. He scowled, then gave a short, sneering laugh, put the lid on the box, and thrust it into the tail pocket of his frock coat.
Senator Pope received him in his study, rising and bowing without advancing or extending his hand. He was serious, but bland—he did not know how to be brusque, or even unkind in manner; he did know how to be diplomatic.
“I have come, sir, to repel the lies of that infamous Prussian,” began Rontivogli with suppressed passion.
“You will, I trust, not distress me with the painful subject,” said Pope slowly and gently. “We know that the Count has maligned you. But you, as a gentleman, must appreciate how terrible the notoriety is to us all. I assume that you have come to relieve the young lady of the embarrassment of the situation.”
Rontivogli lost control of himself, raved, paced the floor, pleaded, denounced, threatened even. But Pope, sympathetic and in the proper places tenderly sorrowful, pressed in upon the Prince his and Elsie’s unchangeable determination. At last Rontivogli gave up the useless battle and drew the box from his pocket. “Your daughter,” he said, “sent me by a servant this broken ring. The stone has been removed and to my astonishment I find that a false emerald has been substituted.” His voice and manner were apologetic, deprecatory, as if Senator Pope owed him an explanation which he was loath to demand.
He opened the box and exhibited its contents to Pope, who looked with polite interest. “The stone has become detached,” was all he said.
“But why was it not returned to me?” asked Rontivogli. “Why this false emerald in its place?”
“It is the same stone,” said Pope. His tone was absent, as if he were thinking of something else.
“It is not!” Rontivogli’s voice was bold and hard, a covert threat in it.
They looked each the other straight in the eyes—Pope inquiringly, the Prince defiantly. Then Pope said: “Ah! Excuse me one moment.”
He left the room, muttering as he reached the hall, “The miserable swindler! He knows we won’t have any further scandal, no matter what it costs.” When he returned he had in his hand the emerald he and Elsie had bought at Tiffany’s. He laid it on the corner of the desk nearest the nobleman.
“This isagenuine emerald,” he said, his voice neither hot nor cold. “You may takeit—if you like.”
“I thank you,” replied the nobleman with a slight bow of acknowledgment, as if a wrong to him had been righted.
He put the emerald and the ring in his waistcoat pocket; he put the box, with the false emerald in it, on the corner of the desk exactly where Senator Pope had laid the genuine stone. Then he went on, in a way that was the perfection of courtesy: “May I presume further on your kindness? This German cur has placed me in a distressing position. I wish to leave America at once, to return where a gentleman cannot be thus attacked without defence. Unfortunately——” He hesitated with a fine affectation of delicacy.
Senator Pope’s eyes were more disagreeable to lookat than any human being had ever before seen them. “I shall be glad to give you anyreasonableassistance,” he said with resolute self-control.
“You are most kind!” Rontivogli was almost effusive. “I shall return any advance you may make as soon as I am at home.”
“How much?” asked Pope with a trace of impatience.
“I have many obligations which must be settled before I leave. I had just cabled for a remittance, but I wish to go before it can arrive. Might I trouble you for an advance of, perhaps, five thousand—I think that will be enough.”
Senator Pope unlocked and opened a drawer, took out a flat package of bills. “Here is a thousand dollars,” he said. “I cannot advance you more. And I trust you will sail the day after to-morrow.” He looked hard at the Prince. “That will spare me the necessity of making aprivateappeal to the Italian Embassy through our State Department.”
“You are most kind,mon cherSenator,” replied Rontivogli.
He put the package of bills in the inside pocket of his coat. He reflected a few seconds, then took his tophat. “Will you do me the honour of presenting my compliments and regrets to Madame Pope—and to Mademoiselle?” he said with steady eyes and elaborate politeness. “I thank you again. I regret that we part in circumstances so unhappy. I shall send your little advance within the month.”
He bowed profoundly, and Senator Pope inclined his head. He went to the door, turned there, bowed again. “Au revoir, my dear Senator,” he said cordially, and was gone—a fascinating patrician figure of handsome ease and dignity.