The Lure of the Mask, Harold MacGrath [best beach reads of all time .txt] 📗

them: five hundred for tickets and doubtless five hundred more for unpaid hotel bills. It would never do, Dan, unless we wish to go home with them."

"But I haven't touched my letter of credit yet. I could get along on two thousand."

"Not with the brand of cigars you are smoking; a lira-fifty each."

"Well I'll try the native brand for a while, Trabucos."

"Not in my immediate vicinity," Hillard objected. "No, we can't bail them out, but we can ease up their bills till money comes from home. Not one of them by this time will have a watch. O'Mally will remain sober from dire necessity. Poor Kitty Killigrew! All the wonderful shops and not a stiver in her pockets!"

"Aren't they the most careless lot, these professional people? They never prepare for emergencies, and are always left high and dry. Instead of putting their cash in banks, they buy diamonds, with the idea that they have always something convertible into cash at a moment's notice."

"Usually at one-third of what the original price was." Hillard threw off his hat and coat and lighted his pipe.

Merrihew paced the floor for some time, his head full of impossible schemes. He stopped in the middle of the room with an abruptness which portended something.

"I have it. Instead of going directly to Venice, we'll change the route and go to Monte Carlo. I'll risk my four hundred, and if I win!"

"Then the announcement cards, a house-wedding, and pictures in the New York papers. Dan, you are impossible. You have gambled enough to know that when you are careless of results you win, but never when you need the cash. But it is Monte Carlo, if you say so. Two or three days there will cure you of your beautiful dream. After all," with a second thought, "it's a good cause, and it might be just your luck to win. The masquerading lady! I'll stake my word that there is comedy within comedy, and rare good comedy at that. Monte Carlo it is."

Merrihew danced a jig. Hillard stepped to the mirror and bowed profoundly. The jig ceased.

"Madame, permit me, a comparative stranger, to offer you passage money home. We won it at Monte Carlo; take it, it is yours. Polite enough," mused Hillard, turning and smiling; "but hanged if it sounds proper."

"To the deuce with propriety!" cried Merrihew buoyantly. "We'll start, then, at nine to-morrow?"

"At nine promptly."

"I'm off to bed, then." As Merrihew reached the door he paused. "I forgot to tell you. Do you recollect that Italian you ran into at the club that night? Saw him at the hotel to-night. He bowed to Sandford, and Sandford cut him dead. It set me thinking."

"The Sandfords entertained him somewhere, once upon a time, and he behaved like a cad. I don't know what about, and I don't care."

"Humph! I hope Giovanni gets off safely."

"I think he will."

When Merrihew had gone Hillard opened the shutters to clear the room of the tobacco smoke, and stood beside the sill, absorbing the keen night air and admiring the serene beauty of the picture which lay spread before him. The moon stood high and clear now, the tiled roofs shone mistily, and from some near-by garden came the perfume of boxwood and roses. All was silence; noisy Naples slept. He would see her face this time; he would tear aside the mystery. She had made a great mistake? That was of small consequence to him. He could laugh at Mrs. Sandford's warning. He was no green and untried youth; he was a man. Then he laughed aloud. It was so droll. Here was Merrihew in love with the soubrette, and he himself.... Was he in love, or was only his fancy trapped? A fine comedy! The soubrette and the prima donna! He closed the shutters, for the Neapolitan is naturally a thief, and an open window is as large as a door to him. He packed his cases, and this done, went to bed. For a time he could hear Merrihew in the adjoining room; but even this noise ceased. Hillard fell asleep and dreamed that he and Giovanni were being pursued by carabinieri in petticoats and half-masks, that Merrihew had won tons of napoleons at Monte Carlo, and that Kitty Killigrew was a princess in disguise. Such is the vagary of dreams.


CHAPTER XI

THE CITY IN THE SEA


From her window Kitty looked down on the Campo which lay patched with black shadows and moonshine. A magic luster, effective as hoar-frost, enveloped the ancient church, and the lines of the eaves and the turns of the corners were silver-bright. How still at night was this fairy city in the sea! Save for the occasional booming of bells-and in Italy they are for ever and ever booming-and the low warning cry of the gondoliers, there was nothing which spoke of life, certainly not here in the Campo Santa Maria Formosa. There were no horses clattering over the stone pavements, no trams, no omnibuses; the stillness which was of peace lay over all things. And some of this had entered Kitty's heart. She was not deeply read, but nevertheless she had her share of poetical feeling. And to her everything in the venerable city teemed with unexpressed lyric. What if the Bridge of Sighs was not true, or the fair Desdemona had not dwelt in a palace on the Grand Canal, or the Merchant had neither bought nor sold in the shadow of the Rialto bridge? Historians are not infallible, and it is sometimes easier and pleasanter to believe the poets.

But for one thing the hour would have been perfect. Kitty, ordinarily brave and cheerful, was very lonesome and homesick. Tears sparkled in her eyes and threatened to fall at any moment. It was all very well to dream of old Venice; but when home and friends kept intruding constantly! The little bank-account was so small that five hundred would wipe it out of existence. And now she would be out of employment till the coming autumn. The dismal failure of it all! She had danced, sung, spoken her lines the very best she knew how; and none had noticed or encouraged her. It was a bitter cup, after all the success at home. If only she could take it philosophically; like La Signorina! She shut her eyes. How readily she could see the brilliant, noisy, friendly Broadway, the electric signs before the theaters, the gay crowds in the restaurants! It was all very fine to see Europe on a comfortable letter of credit, but to see it under such circumstances as these, that was a different matter. To live in this evil-smelling old tenement, with seldom any delicacy to eat, a strange jabber-jabber ringing in one's ears from morning till night, and to wait day after day for that letter from home, was not a situation such as would hearten one's love of romance. The men had it much easier; they always do. There was ever some place for a man to go; and there were three of them, and they could talk to one another. But here, unless La Signorina was about-and she had an odd way of disappearing-she, Kitty, had to twiddle her thumbs or talk to herself, for she could understand nothing these people, kindly enough in their way, said to her.

She opened her eyes again, and this time the tears flowed unheeded. Of what use is pride, unless it be observed by others? She missed some one, a frank, merry, kind-hearted some one; and it was balm to her heart to admit it at last. Had he appeared to her at that moment, she must have fallen gratefully into his arms.

And there were so many things she could not understand. Why should La Signorina always go veiled? Why should she hide her splendid beauty? Where did she disappear so mysteriously in the daytime? And those sapphires, and diamonds, and emeralds? Why live here, with such a fortune hanging round her neck? Kitty forgot that, for the sake of sentiment, one will sometimes eat a crust when one might dine like a prince.

"Kitty?" The voice came from the doorway. Kitty was startled for a moment, but it was only La Signorina. Kitty furtively wiped her eyes.

"I am over here by the window. The moon was so bright I did not light the lamp."

La Signorina moved with light step to the window, bent and caught Kitty's face between her hands and turned it firmly toward the moon.

"You have been crying, cara!"

"I am very lonely," said Kitty.

"You poor little homeless bird!" La Signorina seized Kitty impulsively in her arms. "If I were not-" She hesitated.

"If you were not?"

"If I were not poor, but rich instead, I'd take you to one of the fashionable hotels. You are out of place here, in this rambling old ruin."

"Not half so much as you are," Kitty replied.

"I am never out of place. I can live comfortably in the fields with the peasants, in cities, in extravagant hotels. It is the mind, my dear, not the body. My mind is always at one height; where the body is does not matter much."

There was a subtle hauteur in the voice; it subdued Kitty's inquisitiveness. And no other woman had, till recently, accomplished this feat. Kitty was proud, but there was something in her companion that she recognized but could not express in words.

"Come!" said the older woman. "I myself am lonely and desperate to-night. I am going to throw away a precious bit of silver on a gondolier. We haven't been out three times together since we arrived. Perhaps it would have been better had we all remained in Rome; but there I could not have helped you. The band plays in the Piazza to-night. They are going to play light opera, and it will tone us both up a bit. More than that, we'll have coffee at Florian's, if we can find a table. To-morrow we may have to do without breakfast. But there's the old saying that he who sleeps dines. Avanti!"

"Sometimes," said Kitty, drying the final tear, "sometimes I am afraid of you."

"And wisely. I am often afraid of myself. I always do the first thing that enters my head, and generally it is the wrong thing. Never mind. The old woman here will trust us for some weeks yet." She leaned from the window and called. "Pomp-e-o!"

From the canal the gondolier answered.

"Now then!" said the woman to the girl.

Kitty threw a heavy shawl over her head and shoulders, while the other wound about her face the now familiar dark grey veil; and the two went down into the Campo to the landing. Kitty longed to ask La Signorina why she invariably wore that veil, but she did not utter the question, knowing full well that La Signorina would have evaded it frankly.

Pompeo threw away his cigarette and doffed his hat. He offered his elbow to steady the women as they boarded; and once they were seated, a good stroke sent the gondola up the canal. The women sat speechless for some time. At each intersection Pompeo called right or left musically. Sometimes the moon would find its way through the brick and marble cañon, or the bright ferrule of another gondola flashed and disappeared into the gloom. Under bridges they passed, they glided by little restaurants where the Venetians, in olden days, talked liberty for themselves and death to the Austrians, and at length they came out upon the