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

regretted the two lire fifty. This was something worth while.

"We did not know that the princess lived here."

"It is but a temporary visit. She is here incognito. You must not repeat what I have told you," was O'Mally's added warning.

On the balcony the two women were talking quietly.

"What in the world is that man O'Mally up to now?" said La Signorina curiously.

"Can't you see?" replied Kitty. "He is acting as guide in Pietro's place."

"Merciful heavens!" La Signorina retired, stifling her laughter.

At the gates O'Mally received his pourboire of twenty centesimi, saw his charge outside, closed and locked the gates, and returned to Pietro, who was in a greatly agitated state of mind.

"Quando!" he cried.

O'Mally handed him the exact amount, minus the lira for the button.

"Santa Maria! All thees? How? No more I take dem; you!"

O'Mally sat down on the bench and laughed. It was as good a part as he had ever had.

* * * * *

Early evening. La Signorina leaned over the terrace wall, her hand idly trailing over the soft cool roses. Afar down the valley shimmered the lights of Florence. There were no outlines; no towers, no domes, no roofs were visible; nothing but the dim haze upon which the lights serenely floated. It might have been a harbor in the peace of night. To the south, crowning the hills with a faint halo, the moon, yet hidden, was rising across the heavens. Stretched out on either hand, white and shadowy, lay the great road. She was dreaming. Presently upon the silence came the echo of galloping horses. She listened. The sound came from the north. It died away, only to return again sharply, and this time without echo. Two horsemen came cantering toward the Villa Ariadne. They drew down to a walk, and she watched them carelessly. It was not long before they passed under her. She heard their voices.

"Jack, this has been the trip of my life. Verona, Padua, Bologna, and now Florence! This is life; nothing like it."

"I am glad, Dan. It has been enjoyable. I only hope our luggage will be at the hotel for us. Twelve days in riding-breeches are quite enough for a single stretch."

La Signorina's hand closed convulsively over a rose, and crushed it. The vine, as she did so, gave forth a rustling sound. The men turned and glanced up. They saw a woman dimly. That was all.

"A last canter to Fiesole!"

"Off she goes!"

The two went clattering down the road.

La Signorina released the imprisoned rose, and, unmindful of the prick of the thorn, walked slowly back to the villa. It was fatality that this man should again cross her path.


CHAPTER XX

KITTY DROPS A BANDBOX


"What's the matter, Jack? Whenever you smoke, your cigar goes out; you read a newspaper by staring over the top of it; you bump into people on the streets, when there is plenty of room for you to pass; you leave your watch under the pillow and have to hike back for it; you forget, you are absent-minded. Now, what's the matter?"

"I don't know, Dan," said Hillard, relighting his cigar.

"Or you won't tell."

"Perhaps that's more like it."

"It's that woman, though you will not acknowledge it. By George, I'd like to meet her face to face; I'd give her a piece of my mind."

"Or a piece of your heart!"

"Bah!" cried Merrihew, flipping his cigar-ash to the walk below, careless whether it struck any of the leisurely-going pedestrians or not.

"You have not seen her face, Dan; I have."

"Oh, she may be a queen and all that; but she has an evil influence over all the people she meets. Here's Kitty, following her round, and the Lord knows in what kind of trouble. She has hooked you, and presently you'll be leaving me to get back home the best way I can."

"It is quite possible, my boy." And Hillard did not smile.

"Come, Jack, have you really got it? If you have, why, we'll pack up and leave by the next steamer. I don't care to wander about Italy with a sick man on my hands."

"Don't be hard on me, Dan," pleaded Hillard, smiling now. "Think of all the Kitty Killigrews you've poured into my uncomplaining ears!"

"I got over it each time." But Merrihew felt a warmth in his cheeks.

"Happy man! And, once you see the face of this adventuress, as you call her, Kitty Killigrew will pass with all the other lasses."

"I?" indignantly. "Rot! She won't hold a candle to Kitty."

"No, not a candle, but the most powerful light known to the human eye-perfect beauty." Hillard sighed unconsciously.

"There you go again!" laughed Merrihew. "You tack that sigh to everything you say; and that's what I've been complaining about."

Hillard was human; he might be deeply in love, but this had not destroyed his healthy sense of humor. So he laughed at himself.

Then they mused silently for a while. On either side, from their window-balcony, the lights of Lungarno spread out in a brilliant half-circle, repeating themselves, after the fashion of women, in the mirror of the Arno. On the hill across the river the statue of David was visible above the Piazza Michelangelo.

"You never told me what she was like," said Merrihew finally.

"Haven't I? Perhaps you never asked. We went through the Pitti Palace to-day. I couldn't drag you from Raphael's Madonna of the Chair. She is as beautiful as that."

"Imagination is a wonderful thing," was Merrihew's solitary comment.

"Mine has not been unduly worked in this instance," Hillard declared with emphasis. "Beauty in women has always been to me something in the abstract, but it is so no longer. There is one thing which I wish to impress upon you, Dan. She is not an adventuress. She has made no effort to trap me. On the contrary, she has done all she could to keep out of my way."

"It's a curious business; the dinner, the mask, the veil, the mystery. I tell you frankly, Jack, something's wrong, and we shall both live to find it out."

"But what? Heaven on earth, what? Haven't I tried to figure it out till my brain aches? I haven't gone forward a single inch. On the steps of the Formosa I told her that I loved her. There, you have it! I was in doubt till I looked at her face, and then I knew that I had met the one woman, and that there was a barrier between us that was not self-imposed. Not even friendship, Dan; not even an ordinary thing like that. I have spoken to this woman on only two occasions, and only once have I seen her face. I am not a disciple of the theory of love at first sight. I never shall be. An educated, rational man must have something besides physical beauty; there must be wit, intellect, accomplishments. Usually we recognize the beauty first, and then the other attributes, one by one, as the acquaintance ripens. With me the things have been switched round. The accomplishments came first; I became fascinated by a voice and a mind. But when I saw her face.... Oh, well! Mrs. Sandford warned me against her; the woman herself has warned me; the primal instinct of self-preservation has warned me; yet, here I am! I had not intended to bother you, Dan."

"It doesn't bother me, it worries me. If I have hurt you with any of my careless jests, forgive me." Merrihew now realized that his friend was in a bad way. Still, there was a hidden gladness in his heart that Hillard, always railing at his (Merrihew's) affairs, was in the same boat now, and rudderless at that.

"You haven't hurt me, Dan. As a matter of fact, your gibes have been a tonic. They have made me face the fact that I was on the highroad to imbecility."

"What shall you do?"

"Nothing. When we have seen Florence we'll drop down to Perugia and Rome, then up to the Italian lakes; after that, home, if you say. The bass season will be on then, and we've had some good sport on Lake Ontario."

"Bass!" Merrihew went through the pleasant foolery of casting a line, of drawing the bait, of lifting the hook, and of reeling in. "Four pounds, Jack. He fit hard, as old Joe used to say. Remember?"

And so naturally they fell to recounting the splendid catches of the gamiest fish in water. When the interest in this waned, Hillard looked at his watch.

"Only nine," he said. "Let's go over to Gambrinus' and hear the music."

"And drink a boot of beer. Better than moping here."

The Hotel Italie was but a few blocks from the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. They found the Halle crowded, noisy and interesting. The music was good, as it always is in Italy, and the beer had the true German flavor, Münchener. Handsome uniforms brightened the scene; and there was flirting and laughter, in which Merrihew found opportunity to join.

"If Kitty should see you!"

"Well, what if she did? When I'm married to her it will be mutually understood that so long as I do not speak to them I may look at pretty women."

"You seem very sure of marrying her."

"It's only a matter of time. The man who hangs on wins finally." Merrihew had lost none of his confidence.

"I see; they marry you to get rid of you," said Hillard. "Yes, the man who hangs on finally wins, in love or war or fortune. But I haven't anything to hang on to."

"Who knows?" said Merrihew, wagging his head.

From the Halle they went down-stairs to the billiard-room. The pockets in the table bothered Merrihew; he did not care particularly for the English game; and the American table was occupied by a quartet of young Americans who were drinking champagne like Pittsburg millionaires. The ventilation was so bad that the two friends were forced to give up the game. Under the arcade they found a small table. It was cool and delightful here, and there was a second boot of Munich beer.

Officers passed to and fro, in pairs or with women. Presently two officers, one in the resplendent uniform of a colonel, went past. Merrihew touched Hillard with his foot excitedly. Hillard nodded, but his pulse was tuned to a quicker stroke.

"I hope he doesn't see us," he said, tipping his panama over his eyes.

Merrihew curled the ends of his juvenile mustache and scowled fiercely.

"This is his post evidently," he said. "What a smacking uniform! He must have had a long furlough, to be wandering over Europe and America. If I get a chance I'm going to ask a waiter who he is."

"So long as he doesn't observe us," said Hillard, "I have no interest in his affairs." Had he none? he wondered. "A lady? Grace of Mary, that is droll!" The muscles in his jaws hardened.

"But you twisted his cuffs for him that night in Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo!" reminiscently. "Eighteen hundred dollars, my boy, and a good fourteen still in my inside pocket. Wasn't I lucky? But I'll never forgive