CHAPTER XII
Thelearning of Fiametta’s rôle was a delight to Carlota. Once she resolved to sing it at the fête, she threw herself into it with all her heart. Ames would turn from the piano and stare up at her in amazement as she delivered the difficult passages with a perfection of tone and harmony that seemed unbelievable to him, considering the training she had received.
“You will be a sensation,” he told her. “The beautiful Signorita Incognita. Sounds florid, doesn’t it? I want a stately, aloof name for you. Listen, at the dress rehearsal, don’t be too distant with Mrs. Nevins. She really can help you if she wants to.”
Carlota’s fine dark brows had lifted at this, but she had not revolted. She had all of the true artist’s consistency and faithfulness to a rôle, once assumed. When the day arrived, and she went out to Belvoir to the dress rehearsal in the Nevins’s car, she played her part with a vivid charm and adaptability that puzzled Ames. She had her peasant’s costume with her for the fête, but not the royal raiment.
Mrs. Nevins picked her way through the transformed ballroom past decorators andcarpenters, more like the sprightly Queen of Trianon at her amusements than ever. Her white curly hair was dressed in high waves, her house-gown of black chiffon velvet trailing behind her, and one bewildered Pekinese dog trying to rest itself on her train whenever she paused.
“My dear Griff, it is wonderful the progress you have made!” she exclaimed. “Nathalie is completely enthralled over her rôle. Such a tender, appealing little part, isn’t it? One feels she is merely the toy of fate, torn from her love by the caprice of the princess. I have spoken to Casanova of the operetta and he has half promised to come out. Such a delightful and distinguished audience for your first effort, the Italian ambassador and his wife, Ogden Ward, Count and Countess Triolini, court painter to Humbert years ago, and Count Jurka, who was court chamberlain to the unhappy Queen Sophia. The most charming and unexpected sequence of this fearful war business has been the eager willingness of one-time enemies to coöperate now in these little relief funds. We must all pull together, mustn’t we, and forget now. Jurka is the handsomest thing you ever saw; looks like a Zenda hero and all that sort of thing. He is studying our relief methods for the rehabilitationof the wounded, a special mission for the exiled queen; so dear of her, isn’t it?”
Carlota, sitting behind them, heard without noting the names. Her mind was on Nathalie and her assumption of authority over Ames. It was impossible for her to avoid seeing it. She had watched them together constantly. Nathalie was beside him all the time, consulting, directing, planning on every detail. She called him by his nickname with a little, indolent proprietary intonation that enraged Carlota. Yet she had kept her temper, and had sung her own rôle with ease and surety.
“Are you quite sure,” Nathalie had asked her, “that your gown will be of the period and quite appropriate? It is too bad you could not have worn it to-day so we might be certain. You understand, of course, mamma would be only too pleased to secure exactly the right one for you if you wish.”
“It is most kind of you,” smiled back Carlota serenely. “I have my gown. It is of the period and suitable for the princess.”
“What name did you wish on the programme? I didn’t quite catch it, and we are correcting the last proof on them to-day.”
Carlota thought quickly and gave her new name with a flash of mischief.
“Paola Roma.”
“Oh, yes, you are really Italian, aren’t you? How interesting! Griff told us that you had given him the little story that inspired the operetta.” Nathalie’s slim fingers were busy with her hair, puffing out the soft blond strands until it looked bobbed. “Of course,” she added thoughtfully, “it’s one thing to give the idea, but quite another to have made it a reality, isn’t it?”
“I do not consider this a reality of Mr. Ames’s hopes or inspiration.” Carlota’s heavy-lidded eyes glanced over the ballroom interior as if it had been the side-show of some carnival. “This is really nothing but a dress rehearsal from start to finish for him. The reality will be at the grand opera itself next year.”
“If mamma and Signor Casanova think it worth while,” Nathalie added smilingly. “It was so nice of you to come out to-day. Griff has talked of you a great deal but rather made you out a little tiger cat in temperament. He told us how you broke the flower jar. You mustn’t have any attacks out here to-morrow night, will you? We’ll all promise to make everything easy for you.”
“Better to break the flower jar than to flat your B,” laughed Carlota wickedly, and the girl flushed quickly.
Ames had pleaded with her for nearly fifteenminutes to beware of one high note she always missed the purity of. The quick rap of his baton called them to attention, but the sparkle did not leave Carlota’s eyes, and on the way home she was silent and unresponsive.
She had planned a dozen different ways how to escape from Maria’s watchfulness the following night. Almost she had decided to take the Marchese into her confidence, and beg him to coax the signora away for the evening. It could not possibly go on much longer, the deception, nor did she wish it to. She would appear for him this once, secure the triumph for him, and afterwards the visits to the Square would cease. He was too absorbed, too selfish, she told herself passionately. He was stupid, too, else he would never have been deceived by her voice. If he had loved her, he would have found out about her at all hazards. She had given him freely, all she knew of art, had even given him the theme for his operetta, and he was thankless, as Dmitri said. He took it for granted that she was a girl of the people, from the Italian quarter below the Square, when, if he had merely thought twice, he might have known, as the protégée of the Marchese Veracci that first night he had seen her, she must have been somebody unusual.
“Shall I take you to the entrance?” Amesasked, as they neared the apartment. “You are tired, aren’t you?”
She shook her head.
“Stop at the subway station in the Circle. I will take a taxi over from there, and say I have been shopping. Maria is not home, anyway. She had a call from her lawyer here—” Suddenly she turned and faced him. “How did you know where I lived? I did not know what I was saying.”
He took both hands in his, drawing her to him tenderly.
“Dmitri told me you were from peacock land. That is what he calls it up this way. He has a friend who knows you and gave it away.”
“A friend who knows me, Dmitri?” she repeated in surprise. “But I—we have no friends here. What did he tell you?”
“Nothing at all, except that you lived in an apartment near Central Park, when I had pictured you on Mulberry or Spring, enriching the quarter with your sweetness. And I was tempted to go to the old Marchese and ask him all about you.”
She drew her hands from his, shrinking from the mere mention of such a possibility, foreseeing the excitement that would follow. Maria, Jacobelli, would the Marchese deem it his duty to tell them?
“Listen to me,” she said, with the somber earnestness that sat so oddly on her youth. “I forbid you ever to discuss me with any one. When I wish you to know all about me, I myself will tell you. You understand?”
“And I am supposed to bow and say the queen can do no wrong,” laughed Ames. “You will tell me yourself after the fête to-morrow night. There will be a little time between the end of the operetta and the dancing. Mrs. Nevins has arranged a special little celebration for a few and I shall have to stay for that, but I’ll send you back in the car safely.”
“I wish you to leave me here,” she said abruptly.
The car had turned into Park Avenue from Fifty-Ninth Street, and against every protest she left him, walking north towards the St. Germain, hardly caring whether he watched her destination or not. As she turned into the vestibule, the Marchese himself rose to greet her, smiling, courtly, immaculately garbed as if he had just stepped from a reception at the Quirinal. After Ames’s threat the sight of him almost weakened her; and she gave him her hand in silence.
“I knew if I but waited long enough, you would surely come,” he said jauntily. “And the time was not long. I have been loitering inthe tobacconist’s shop at the corner. There is a man whom one might talk with over the coffee-cups in any famous center of the world, Cairo, Bagdad, Calcutta, Constantinople, or a desert khan in Persia. He was a worker in enamels before the war, then a spy, and now, behold, he sells cigarettes with a good conscience to New Yorkers. An incipient seer.”
Carlota was relieved as he occupied himself with his own conversation. Maria had not returned when they entered the apartment, and she threw off her velvet cloak with relief.
“I’ll make us some Russian tea, just as you like it best,” she promised—“slices of orange with whole cloves in them. Maria will come soon. She went to see the lawyer about the mistake on the jewels, something about the customs, I think it was.”
The Marchese sat erect.
“The customs on the jewels?” he repeated. “I saw to that myself when you entered the port. There could be no possible error. Why did she not consult me first? Who is this person?”
“A friend of Mr. Ward’s. Signor Jacobelli recommended him, I believe. He thought she might have paid too much, and offered to go over the list with her.”
“I do not care for our friend and good patron,Mr. Ward.” The Marchese’s pointed mustache rose higher. “There is something sinister about him. Ah,” as Carlota brought a tea-tray and set it beside him on a low stool, “so did your beloved grandmother always serve it in the terrace loggia. You have her way exactly, my child, and her lovely hands.”
Carlota piled cushions beside him, and lighted the lamp beneath the tea-kettle. Then she settled herself comfortably, and looked up at him as she had so often in the days he spoke of. Always it had been the Marchese who had been her confidant.
“Don’t you think that Maria is looking very tired?”
“I thought her never more attractive and charming than that evening at Mr. Ward’s.”
“But since then. I don’t think that she goes out enough,” Carlota insisted. “She is sacrificing herself too much for me. I beg her to go and she will not. She says she has nowhere to go and she knows no one here excepting yourself.”
“But, my dear child, it must not be!” exclaimed the Marchese warmly. “Of course it has been for your sake that she has secluded herself here in New York. You can see what a beauty she was in her day. Signora Roma! I have heard La Scala resound with her praises,rise to her triumph! She must not feel that she is neglected or lonely, such a woman.”
“Perhaps if you would only tell her. She needs some one who has known her at her great moments, don’t you know?”
“Certainly I know,” he reassured her. “It was quite right of you to tell me. We will have a beautiful, quiet little dinner for her to-morrow night down at the Brevoort or Lafayette, yes? Whichever she likes, and afterwards the opera. The San Remo Company is here from South America; not so wonderful as the Metropolitan, but very delightful and intimate. You persuade her for me, and then at the psychological moment, as they say over here, we will take her by storm and make her say yes.”
The outer bell rang lightly.
“Don’t tell her about it now,” warned Carlota. “It must be done very diplomatically or she will suspect us. Telephone to her later that you have the seats and cannot take no for an answer.”
After he had gone Maria took her accustomed siesta. Veracci had sought to interest her by talking of the customs matter coming up again, but she waved him from her laughingly.
“I will not talk of anything disagreeable with you. It is quite all right, merely a littleformality to go through. I assured them we were not remaining here permanently and the collection belongs in Italy. Mr. Ward had insured me every courtesy there.”
The Marchese had elevated his expressive eyebrows, but did not press the point. After his departure Carlota sat by the window, embroidering a headband in rose and gold thread. How was she to open the jewel chest without Maria’s knowledge. And she must have them for the princess’s court costume. There was one gown of gold tissue over old-rose metal cloth, an exquisite mediæval robe that lay like a web of sunlight in one of the chests. The court train was of crimson velvet embroidered in seed pearls, and with it she longed to wear the full set of the Zoroaster rubies. Since she was to be his princess before these people, she must bear herself royally for his sake.
She sighed, and laid aside her work to look down at the quiet street. Below strolled a figure she recognized, Steccho, a belated sentinel. He had lingered in the cigar-shop while the Marchese chatted to his friend, the worker in enamels. Halfway through the night he had sat with him and Dmitri in a basement coffee-house on East Twenty-Seventh Street, listening to the new gospel of optimism which Dmitri loved to spread, he who could see good in allthings and believed that service is the stabilizer of humanity’s caprice. Yet, while Steccho had listened and smoked, he had watched the face of every newcomer eagerly, hoping to find one fresh from Rigl. He was growing tired of playing watchdog for Jurka.
Carlota drew the curtains together as she encountered his steady, uplifted gaze. Why did this boy keep guard over her? she wondered, and slowly smiled. He did not seem a menace. There had been a look of admiration in his eyes the day he had returned her gloves to her. Jacobelli had told her she must prepare to accept homage from all, and Ames had said a friend of Dmitri’s had told him where she lived. She looked out after him as he passed leisurely down the street. In all the old-time romances that she loved, there was the “shepherd in the distance,” the page who caroled unseen to Kate the queen, the gondolier who dared to lift his heart to the rose that touched a closed lattice. She wondered who he could be.
Maria sighed and stirred. The telephone rang on the little painted stand, and Carlota answered it. It was the Marchese, calling the signora. She laughed softly as he spoke to her, the color rising softly in her cheeks.
“Cara mia, it is delightful of him,” she exclaimed,as she hung up the receiver. “He is the most thoughtful, charming knight errant. Ah, if you could have seen him thirty years ago! The handsomest man in all Italy. He has asked us to dine to-morrow with him and go to see ‘The Jewels of the Madonna.’ It will do you good. Jacobelli tells me you will have it in your repertoire next year.”
A curious light came in Carlota’s dark eyes, a tender, half-penitent light. “The Jewels of the Madonna,” and she was planning how to secure the old jewels lying hidden away in the Florentine chest by the fireplace. Even though they were her own, she felt a secret, guilty thrill over deceiving those who loved her. Surely the “Quest of Love” led one far astray and alone.
But the signora was in a gaysome mood, affectionate, pliable. She would have everything en fête. Never was she so happy as when planning a new costume that should charm and bewilder. For the dinner she would wear black velvet with a scarf of Roumanian gypsy work, intricate embroidery of orange and black that seemed made for her, Carlota said, as she draped it around her statuesque shoulders.
“You should wear a heavy necklace of topaz with that, topaz and emeralds, or just topaz set in silver.”
“Heart’s treasure, how you know the correct touch. Get me the key of the small chest.”
“But—aren’t you wearing it, dear, around your neck?”
Maria smiled at her delightedly, archly.
“I find a new hiding-place for it daily, ever since I have feared it was known we had them here. To-day it is in the pot of cyclamen. Yesterday I put it in the back of the clock. Am I not wonderful?”
Carlota laughed and discovered the key planted carefully in the pot of cyclamen as she said.
“To-night you shall hide it and show if you are a good mystifier. Look in the third tray and get out the necklaces. They are in the large tray.”
The lock gave rustily. Carlota sat on the floor with the tray on her lap, lifting out the old necklaces in a dream. They were heavy and old-fashioned, but set with perfect gems. She found the topaz one and hung it around the signora’s throat gently.
“It is superb,” she sighed. “I was very attractive in my prime, carina, but never like your grandmother. Ah, jewels were made for her as stars for the night. Here, pile them in my drawer and pick out pearls for yourself. You will wear white while you can. After thirty it is sad.”
The following day dragged slowly. Towards evening Carlota suddenly pressed her cheek with one palm as she sat at the piano. It was nothing at all, she protested, a little faintness and pain in her head.
“Nothing at all!” exclaimed Maria stormily. “When that miserable old slave-driver Jacobelli is killing you! He thinks you are made of steel. You must not go out to-night. I will telephone Veracci at once and he will agree with me.”
But Carlota protested the Marchese would be broken-hearted if neither of them put in an appearance. He had his seats for the opera, and had even assured her he would order special delicacies from the chef he knew they would enjoy. It would never do to disappoint him. Maria must go, at all events.
It seemed hours before the last hum of the taxicab died away in the street below, and she turned from the window after waving to Maria. She was to go immediately to bed, relax utterly, breathe deep, forget everything and sleep. She had promised compliance faithfully, and now stood hesitant, feeling herself a traitor to all their love for her and kindness. Only for this one night, she told herself, to make sure of his success and she would never go to the Square again. It was a twenty-minuterun out to Belvoir once the Jamaica turnpike was reached. She ordered a taxi softly over the house telephone, and turned to the chest. Almost wistfully and regretfully she drew the key from the hiding-place Maria had let her choose, in the back of an oval silver frame that held her mother’s portrait. Would not Bianca Trelango understand, more than any other, her daughter’s temptation to aid her love?
“You would not think it wrong, would you?” she whispered, as she knelt before the outspread treasures from the past. Maria kept each piece of jewelry carefully separate and wrapped in chamois, the pearls in one tray, the rubies in another, and so on. The largest pieces lay in their velvet cases at the bottom, tiaras and stomachers. Carlota hunted through the chest until she found all she longed for, the rubies her grandmother had worn in “Semiramide.” There were three pieces, the tiara, necklace, and heavy girdle, each set with the gems so thickly that she caught her breath with delight. The rubies were clumsily cut and needed polishing, but they glowed slumberously against the black-velvet case, and the center stone of the tiara was the superb Zarathustra jewel itself, part of the plunder of Persia. The necklace was in sixteen strands of matched pearls with a double pendant of rubies.As she stood up to try it around her neck, she let the heavy golden girdle fall to the floor.
The sudden noise startled her, and she listened, one hand pressed hard against her beating heart. The curtains were drawn at the front windows, but were up here at the fire escapes. She drew them carefully, and waited, but there was no sound, nothing but the occasional rumble of a street car over on Madison Avenue.
The telephone bell rang and she barely kept back a cry of alarm, forgetting the taxi call she had sent in. With the costumes in a suitcase and the jewels in her traveling bag, she went downstairs, whiter than usual, her eyes wide and expectant.
“Shall I take the bag outside, miss?” asked the chauffeur. He reached for it solicitously, but she held it on her lap with both hands, and leaned back with closed eyes.
“Thanks, no. Hurry, please. Belvoir, Mrs. Carrington Nevins’s residence at Strathmore. It is down near the shore past the country club. Take the shortest way after you leave the turnpike. How long will it take, do you think?”
“About an hour.”
As the taxi turned into Park Avenue, she leaned forward and drew the curtain hastily.Standing on the corner, with his back to the street, was Steccho talking to Dmitri. Neither had seen her, but she left the curtains down all the long, lonely way out to Strathmore, on the north shore of Long Island. Already the rubies had laid their crimson fear on her imagination, and she dreaded she knew not what from the two silent figures that lingered near her home. Was Dmitri, too, one to be shunned and doubted? Why did they seek her? She wished with all her heart that she had taken the Marchese into her confidence.