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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Beautiful Lady, by Booth Tarkington
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Beautiful Lady
+
+Author: Booth Tarkington
+
+Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5798]
+Posting Date: March 24, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEAUTIFUL LADY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL LADY
+
+By Booth Tarkington
+
+
+
+
+Chapter One
+
+
+Nothing could have been more painful to my sensitiveness than to occupy
+myself, confused with blushes, at the center of the whole world as a
+living advertisement of the least amusing ballet in Paris.
+
+To be the day's sensation of the boulevards one must possess an
+eccentricity of appearance conceived by nothing short of genius; and my
+misfortunes had reduced me to present such to all eyes seeking mirth. It
+was not that I was one of those people in uniform who carry placards and
+strange figures upon their backs, nor that my coat was of rags; on the
+contrary, my whole costume was delicately rich and well chosen, of soft
+grey and fine linen (such as you see worn by a marquis in the pe'sage
+at Auteuil) according well with my usual air and countenance, sometimes
+esteemed to resemble my father's, which were not wanting in distinction.
+
+To add to this my duties were not exhausting to the body. I was required
+only to sit without a hat from ten of the morning to midday, and from
+four until seven in the afternoon, at one of the small tables under
+the awning of the Cafe' de la Paix at the corner of the Place de
+l'Opera--that is to say, the centre of the inhabited world. In the
+morning I drank my coffee, hot in the cup; in the afternoon I sipped it
+cold in the glass. I spoke to no one; not a glance or a gesture of mine
+passed to attract notice.
+
+Yet I was the centre of that centre of the world. All day the crowds
+surrounded me, laughing loudly; all the voyous making those jokes for
+which I found no repartee. The pavement was sometimes blocked; the
+passing coachmen stood up in their boxes to look over at me, small
+infants were elevated on shoulders to behold me; not the gravest or
+most sorrowful came by without stopping to gaze at me and go away
+with rejoicing faces. The boulevards rang to their laughter--all Paris
+laughed!
+
+For seven days I sat there at the appointed times, meeting the eye
+of nobody, and lifting my coffee with fingers which trembled with
+embarrassment at this too great conspicuosity! Those mournful hours
+passed, one by the year, while the idling bourgeois and the travellers
+made ridicule; and the rabble exhausted all effort to draw plays of wit
+from me.
+
+I have told you that I carried no placard, that my costume was elegant,
+my demeanour modest in all degree.
+
+"How, then, this excitement?" would be your disposition to inquire. "Why
+this sensation?"
+
+It is very simple. My hair had been shaved off, all over my ears,
+leaving only a little above the back of the neck, to give an appearance
+of far-reaching baldness, and on my head was painted, in ah! so
+brilliant letters of distinctness:
+
+     Theatre
+
+     Folie-Rouge
+
+     Revue
+
+     de
+
+     Printemps
+
+     Tous les Soirs
+
+Such was the necessity to which I was at that time reduced! One has
+heard that the North Americans invent the most singular advertising,
+but I will not believe they surpass the Parisian. Myself, I say I cannot
+express my sufferings under the notation of the crowds that moved about
+the Cafe' de la Paix! The French are a terrible people when they
+laugh sincerely. It is not so much the amusing things which cause
+them amusement; it is often the strange, those contrasts which contain
+something horrible, and when they laugh there is too frequently some
+person who is uncomfortable or wicked. I am glad that I was born not a
+Frenchman; I should regret to be native to a country where they invent
+such things as I was doing in the Place de l'Opera; for, as I tell you,
+the idea was not mine.
+
+As I sat with my eyes drooping before the gaze of my terrible and
+applauding audiences, how I mentally formed cursing words against the
+day when my misfortunes led me to apply at the Theatre Folie-Rouge for
+work! I had expected an audition and a role of comedy in the Revue; for,
+perhaps lacking any experience of the stage, I am a Neapolitan by birth,
+though a resident of the Continent at large since the age of fifteen.
+All Neapolitans can act; all are actors; comedians of the greatest,
+as every traveller is cognizant. There is a thing in the air of
+our beautiful slopes which makes the people of a great instinctive
+musicalness and deceptiveness, with passions like those burning in
+the old mountain we have there. They are ready to play, to sing--or to
+explode, yet, imitating that amusing Vesuvio, they never do this last
+when you are in expectancy, or, as a spectator, hopeful of it.
+
+How could any person wonder, then, that I, finding myself suddenly
+destitute in Paris, should apply at the theatres? One after another,
+I saw myself no farther than the director's door, until (having had no
+more to eat the day preceding than three green almonds, which I took
+from a cart while the good female was not looking) I reached the
+Folie-Rouge. Here I was astonished to find a polite reception from the
+director. It eventuated that they wished for a person appearing like
+myself a person whom they would outfit with clothes of quality in all
+parts, whose external presented a gentleman of the great world, not
+merely of one the galant-uomini, but who would impart an air to a table
+at a cafe' where he might sit and partake. The contrast of this with
+the emplacement of the establishment on his bald head-top was to be the
+success of the idea. It was plain that I had no baldness, my hair being
+very thick and I but twenty-four years of age, when it was explained
+that my hair could be shaved. They asked me to accept, alas! not a part
+in the Revue, but a specialty as a sandwich-man. Knowing the English
+tongue as I do, I may afford the venturesomeness to play upon it
+a little: I asked for bread, and they offered me not a role, but a
+sandwich!
+
+It must be undoubted that I possessed not the disposition to make any
+fun with my accomplishments during those days that I spent under the
+awning of the Cafe' de la Paix. I had consented to be the advertisement
+in greatest desperation, and not considering what the reality would be.
+Having consented, honour compelled that I fulfil to the ending. Also,
+the costume and outfittings I wore were part of my emolument. They had
+been constructed for me by the finest tailor; and though I had impulses,
+often, to leap up and fight through the noisy ones about me and run far
+to the open country, the very garments I wore were fetters binding me to
+remain and suffer. It seemed to me that the hours were spent not in the
+centre of a ring of human persons, but of un-well-made pantaloons and
+ugly skirts. Yet all of these pantaloons and skirts had such scrutinous
+eyes and expressions of mirth to laugh like demons at my conscious,
+burning, painted head; eyes which spread out, astonished at the sight
+of me, and peered and winked and grinned from the big wrinkles above
+the gaiters of Zouaves, from the red breeches of the gendarmes, the
+knickerbockers of the cyclists, the white ducks of sergents de ville,
+and the knees of the boulevardiers, bagged with sitting cross-legged at
+the little tables. I could not escape these eyes;--how scornfully they
+twinkled at me from the spurred and glittering officers' boots! How with
+amaze from the American and English trousers, both turned up and creased
+like folded paper, both with some dislike for each other but for all
+other trousers more.
+
+It was only at such times when the mortifications to appear so greatly
+embarrassed became stronger than the embarrassment itself that I could
+by will power force my head to a straight construction and look out
+upon my spectators firmly. On the second day of my ordeal, so facing
+the laughers, I found myself facing straight into the monocle of my
+half-brother and ill-wisher, Prince Caravacioli.
+
+At this, my agitation was sudden and very great, for there was no one
+I wished to prevent perceiving my condition more than that old Antonio
+Caravacioli! I had not known that he was in Paris, but I could have no
+doubt it was himself: the monocle, the handsome nose, the toupee',
+the yellow skin, the dyed-black moustache, the splendid height--it was
+indeed Caravacioli! He was costumed for the automobile, and threw but
+one glance at me as he crossed the pavement to his car, which was in
+waiting. There was no change, not of the faintest, in that frosted
+tragic mask of a countenance, and I was glad to think that he had not
+recognized me.
+
+And yet, how strange that I should care, since all his life he had
+declined to recognize me as what I was! Ah, I should have been glad to
+shout his age, his dyes, his artificialities, to all the crowd, so to
+touch him where it would most pain him! For was he not the vainest man
+in the whole world? How well I knew his vulnerable point: the monstrous
+depth of his vanity in that pretense of youth which he preserved through
+superhuman pains and a genius of a valet, most excellently! I had much
+to pay Antonio for myself, more for my father, most for my mother.
+This was why that last of all the world I would have wished that old
+fortune-hunter to know how far I had been reduced!
+
+Then I rejoiced about that change which my unreal baldness produced in
+me, giving me a look of forty years instead of twenty-four, so that
+my oldest friend must take at least three stares to know me. Also, my
+costume would disguise me from the few acquaintances I had in Paris
+(if they chanced to cross the Seine), as they had only seen me in the
+shabbiest; while, at my last meeting with Antonio, I had been as fine in
+the coat as now.
+
+Yet my encouragement was not so joyful that my gaze lifted often. On
+the very last day, in the afternoon when my observances were most and
+noisiest, I lifted my eyes but once during the final half-hour--but such
+a one that was!
+
+The edge of that beautiful grey pongee skirt came upon the lid of my
+lowered eyelid like a cool shadow over hot sand. A sergent had just made
+many of the people move away, so there remained only a thin ring of
+the laughing pantaloons about me, when this divine skirt presented its
+apparition to me. A pair of North-American trousers accompanied it,
+turned up to show the ankle-bones of a rich pair of stockings; neat,
+enthusiastic and humorous, I judged them to be; for, as one may
+discover, my only amusement during my martyrdom--if this misery can
+be said to possess such alleviatings--had been the study of feet,
+pantaloons, and skirts. The trousers in this case detained my
+observation no time. They were but the darkest corner of the chiaroscuro
+of a Rembrandt--the mellow glow of gold was all across the grey skirt.
+
+How shall I explain myself, how make myself understood? Shall I be
+thought sentimentalistic or but mad when I declare that my first
+sight of the grey pongee skirt caused me a thrill of excitation, of
+tenderness, and--oh-i-me!--of self-consciousness more acute than all my
+former mortifications. It was so very different from all other skirts
+that had shown themselves to me those sad days, and you may understand
+that, though the pantaloons far outnumbered the skirts, many hundreds of
+the latter had also been objects of my gloomy observation.
+
+This skirt, so unlike those which had passed, presented at once the
+qualifications of its superiority. It had been constructed by an artist,
+and it was worn by a lady. It did not pine, it did not droop; there was
+no more an atom of hanging too much than there was a portion inflated
+by flamboyancy; it did not assert itself; it bore notice without
+seeking it. Plain but exquisite, it was that great rarity--goodness made
+charming.
+
+The peregrination of the American trousers suddenly stopped as they
+caught sight of me, and that precious skirt paused, precisely in
+opposition to my little table. I heard a voice, that to which the
+skirt pertained. It spoke the English, but not in the manner of the
+inhabitants of London, who seem to sing undistinguishably in their
+talking, although they are comprehensible to each other. To an Italian
+it seems that many North-Americans and English seek too often the
+assistance of the nose in talking, though in different manners, each
+equally unagreeable to our ears. The intelligent among our lazzaroni
+of Naples, who beg from tourists, imitate this, with the purpose of
+reminding the generous traveller of his home, in such a way to soften
+his heart. But there is some difference: the Italian, the Frenchman,
+or German who learns English sometimes misunderstands the American: the
+Englishman he sometimes understands.
+
+This voice that spoke was North-American. Ah, what a voice! Sweet as the
+mandolins of Sorento! Clear as the bells of Capri! To hear it, was like
+coming upon sight of the almond-blossoms of Sicily for the first time,
+or the tulip-fields of Holland. Never before was such a voice!
+
+"Why did you stop, Rufus?" it said.
+
+"Look!" replied the American trousers; so that I knew the pongee lady
+had not observed me of herself.
+
+Instantaneously there was an exclamation, and a pretty grey parasol,
+closed, fell at my feet. It is not the pleasantest to be an object which
+causes people to be startled when they behold you; but I blessed the
+agitation of this lady, for what caused her parasol to fall from her
+hand was a start of pity.
+
+"Ah!" she cried. "The poor man!"
+
+She had perceived that I was a gentleman.
+
+I bent myself forward and lifted the parasol, though not my eyes I could
+not have looked up into the face above me to be Caesar! Two hands came
+down into the circle of my observation; one of these was that belonging
+to the trousers, thin, long, and white; the other was the grey-gloved
+hand of the lady, and never had I seen such a hand--the hand of an angel
+in a suede glove, as the grey skirt was the mantle of a saint made by
+Doucet. I speak of saints and angels; and to the large world these may
+sound like cold words.--It is only in Italy where some people are found
+to adore them still.
+
+I lifted the parasol toward that glove as I would have moved to set a
+candle on an altar. Then, at a thought, I placed it not in the glove,
+but in the thin hand of the gentleman. At the same time the voice of the
+lady spoke to me--I was to have the joy of remembering that this voice
+had spoken four words to me.
+
+"Je vous remercie, monsieur," it said.
+
+"Pas de quoi!" I murmured.
+
+The American trousers in a loud tone made reference in the idiom to my
+miserable head: "Did you ever see anything to beat it?"
+
+The beautiful voice answered, and by the gentleness of her sorrow for me
+I knew she had no thought that I might understand. "Come away. It is too
+pitiful!"
+
+Then the grey skirt and the little round-toed shoes beneath it passed
+from my sight, quickly hidden from me by the increasing crowd; yet I
+heard the voice a moment more, but fragmentarily: "Don't you see how
+ashamed he is, how he must have been starving before he did that, or
+that someone dependent on him needed--"
+
+I caught no more, but the sweetness that this beautiful lady understood
+and felt for the poor absurd wretch was so great that I could have wept.
+I had not seen her face; I had not looked up--even when she went.
+
+"Who is she?" cried a scoundrel voyous, just as she turned. "Madame of
+the parasol? A friend of monsieur of the ornamented head?"
+
+"No. It is the first lady in waiting to his wife, Madame la Duchesse,"
+answered a second. "She has been sent with an equerry to demand of
+monseigneur if he does not wish a little sculpture upon his dome as well
+as the colour decorations!"
+
+"'Tis true, my ancient?" another asked of me.
+
+I made no repartee, continuing to sit with my chin dependent upon my
+cravat, but with things not the same in my heart as formerly to the
+arrival of that grey pongee, the grey glove, and the beautiful voice.
+
+Since King Charles the Mad, in Paris no one has been completely free
+from lunacy while the spring-time is happening. There is something in
+the sun and the banks of the Seine. The Parisians drink sweet and fruity
+champagne because the good wines are already in their veins. These
+Parisians are born intoxicated and remain so; it is not fair play to
+require them to be like other human people. Their deepest feeling is
+for the arts; and, as everyone had declared, they are farceurs in their
+tragedies, tragic in their comedies. They prepare the last epigram in
+the tumbril; they drown themselves with enthusiasm about the alliance
+with Russia. In death they are witty; in war they have poetic spasms; in
+love they are mad.
+
+The strangest of all this is that it is not only the Parisians who are
+the insane ones in Paris; the visitors are none of them in behaviour as
+elsewhere. You have only to go there to become as lunatic as the rest.
+Many travellers, when they have departed, remember the events they have
+caused there as a person remembers in the morning what he has said and
+thought in the moonlight of the night.
+
+In Paris it is moonlight even in the morning; and in Paris one falls in
+love even more strangely than by moonlight.
+
+It is a place of glimpses: a veil fluttering from a motor-car, a little
+lace handkerchief fallen from a victoria, a figure crossing a lighted
+window, a black hat vanishing in the distance of the avenues of the
+Tuileries. A young man writes a ballade and dreams over a bit of lace.
+Was I not, then, one of the least extravagant of this mad people? Men
+have fallen in love with photographs, those greatest of liars; was I
+so wild, then, to adore this grey skirt, this small shoe, this divine
+glove, the golden-honey voice--of all in Paris the only one to pity and
+to understand? Even to love the mystery of that lady and to build my
+dreams upon it?--to love all the more because of the mystery? Mystery
+is the last word and the completing charm to a young man's passion. Few
+sonnets have been written to wives whose matrimony is more than five
+years of age--is it not so?
+
+
+
+Chapter Two
+
+
+When my hour was finished and I in liberty to leave that horrible
+corner, I pushed out of the crowd and walked down the boulevard, my
+hat covering my sin, and went quickly. To be in love with my mystery, I
+thought, that was a strange happiness! It was enough. It was romance! To
+hear a voice which speaks two sentences of pity and silver is to have a
+chime of bells in the heart. But to have a shaven head is to be a monk!
+And to have a shaven head with a sign painted upon it is to be a pariah.
+Alas! I was a person whom the Parisians laughed at, not with!
+
+Now that at last my martyrdom was concluded, I had some shuddering, as
+when one places in his mouth a morsel of unexpected flavour. I wondered
+where I had found the courage to bear it, and how I had resisted hurling
+myself into the river, though, as is known, that is no longer safe, for
+most of those who attempt it are at once rescued, arrested, fined, and
+imprisoned for throwing bodies into the Seine, which is forbidden.
+
+At the theatre the frightful badge was removed from my head-top and I
+was given three hundred francs, the price of my shame, refusing an offer
+to repeat the performance during the following week. To imagine such
+a thing made me a choking in my throat, and I left the bureau in some
+sickness. This increased so much (as I approached the Madeleine, where
+I wished to mount an omnibus) that I entered a restaurant and drank a
+small glass of cognac. Then I called for writing-papers and wrote to
+the good Mother Superior and my dear little nieces at their convent. I
+enclosed two hundred and fifty francs, which sum I had fallen behind in
+my payments for their education and sustenance, and I felt a moment's
+happiness that at least for a while I need not fear that my poor
+brother's orphans might become objects of charity--a fear which,
+accompanied by my own hunger, had led me to become the joke of the
+boulevards.
+
+Feeling rich with my remaining fifty francs, I ordered the waiter to
+bring me a goulasch and a carafe of blond beer, after the consummation
+of which I spent an hour in the reading of a newspaper. Can it be
+credited that the journal of my perusement was the one which may be
+called the North-American paper of the aristocracies of Europe? Also, it
+contains some names of the people of the United States at the hotels and
+elsewhere.
+
+How eagerly I scanned those singular columns! Shall I confess to what
+purpose? I read the long lists of uncontinental names over and over, but
+I lingered not at all upon those like "Muriel," "Hermione,"
+"Violet," and "Sibyl," nor over "Balthurst," "Skeffington-Sligo," and
+"Covering-Legge"; no, my search was for the Sadies and Mamies, the
+Thompsons, Van Dusens, and Bradys. In that lies my preposterous secret.
+
+You will see to what infatuation those words of pity, that sense of a
+beautiful presence, had led me. To fall in love must one behold a face?
+Yes; at thirty. At twenty, when one is something of a poet--No: it
+is sufficient to see a grey pongee skirt! At fifty, when one is a
+philosopher--No: it is enough to perceive a soul! I had done both; I
+had seen the skirt; I had perceived the soul! Therefore, while hungry, I
+neglected my goulasch to read these lists of names of the United
+States again and again, only that I might have the thought that one
+of them--though I knew not which--might be this lady's, and that in so
+infinitesimal a degree I had been near her again. Will it be estimated
+extreme imbecility in me when I ventured the additional confession that
+I felt a great warmth and tenderness toward the possessors of all these
+names, as being, if not herself, at least her compatriots?
+
+I am now brought to the admission that before to-day I had experienced
+some prejudices against the inhabitants of the North-American republic,
+though not on account of great experience of my own. A year previously I
+had made a disastrous excursion to Monte Carlo in the company of a
+young gentleman of London who had been for several weeks in New York and
+Washington and Boston, and appeared to know very much of the country.
+He was never anything but tired in speaking of it, and told me a
+great amount. He said many times that in the hotels there was never a
+concierge or portier to give you information where to discover the best
+vaudeville; there was no concierge at all! In New York itself, my
+friend told me, a facchino, or species of porter, or some such
+good-for-nothing, had said to him, including a slap on the shoulder,
+"Well, brother, did you receive your delayed luggage correctly?" (In
+this instance my studies of the North-American idiom lead me to
+believe that my friend was intentionally truthful in regard to the
+principalities, but mistaken in his observation of detail.) He declared
+the recent willingness of the English to take some interest in the
+United-Statesians to be a mistake; for their were noisy, without real
+confidence in themselves; they were restless and merely imitative
+instead of inventive. He told me that he was not exceptional; all
+Englishmen had thought similarly for fifty or sixty years; therefore,
+naturally, his opinion carried great weight with me. And myself, to my
+astonishment, I had often seen parties of these republicans become all
+ears and whispers when somebody called a prince or a countess passed
+by. Their reverence for age itself, in anything but a horse, had often
+surprised me by its artlessness, and of all strange things in the world,
+I have heard them admire old customs and old families. It was strange to
+me to listen, when I had believed that their land was the only one
+where happily no person need worry to remember who had been his
+great-grandfather.
+
+The greatest of my own had not saved me from the decoration of the
+past week, yet he was as much mine as he was Antonio Caravacioli's; and
+Antonio, though impoverished, had his motor-car and dined well, since
+I happened to see, in my perusal of the journal, that he had been to
+dinner the evening before at the English Embassy with a great company.
+"Bravo, Antonio! Find a rich foreign wife if you can, since you cannot
+do well for yourself at home!" And I could say so honestly, without
+spite, for all his hatred of me,--because, until I had paid my addition,
+I was still the possessor of fifty francs!
+
+Fifty francs will continue life in the body of a judicial person a long
+time in Paris, and combining that knowledge and the good goulasch, I
+sought diligently for "Mamies" and "Sadies" with a revived spirit.
+I found neither of those adorable names--in fact, only two such
+diminutives, which are more charming than our Italian ones: A Miss
+Jeanie Archibald Zip and a Miss Fannie Sooter. None of the names was
+harmonious with the grey pongee--in truth, most of them were no prettier
+(however less processional) than royal names. I could not please myself
+that I had come closer to the rare lady; I must be contented that the
+same sky covered us both, that the noise of the same city rang in her
+ears as mine.
+
+Yet that was a satisfaction, and to know that it was true gave me
+mysterious breathlessness and made me hear fragments of old songs during
+my walk that night. I walked very far, under the trees of the Bois,
+where I stopped for a few moments to smoke a cigarette at one of the
+tables outside, at Armenonville.
+
+None of the laughing women there could be the lady I sought; and as my
+refusing to command anything caused the waiter uneasiness, in spite of
+my prosperous appearance, I remained but a few moments, then trudged on,
+all the long way to the Cafe' de Madrid, where also she was not.
+
+How did I assure myself of this since I had not seen her face? I cannot
+tell you. Perhaps I should not have known her; but that night I was sure
+that I should.
+
+Yes, as sure of that as I was sure that she was beautiful!
+
+
+
+Chapter Three
+
+
+Early the whole of the next day, endeavoring to look preoccupied, I
+haunted the lobbies and vicinity of the most expensive hotels, unable to
+do any other thing, but ashamed of myself that I had not returned to
+my former task of seeking employment, although still reassured by
+possession of two louis and some silver, I dined well at a one-franc
+coachman's restaurant, where my elegance created not the slightest
+surprise, and I felt that I might live in this way indefinitely.
+
+However, dreams often conclude abruptly, and two louis always do, as
+I found, several days later, when, after paying the rent for my
+unspeakable lodging and lending twenty francs to a poor, bad painter,
+whom I knew and whose wife was ill, I found myself with the choice of
+obtaining funds on my finery or not eating, either of which I was very
+loath to do. It is not essential for me to tell any person that when you
+seek a position it is better that you appear not too greatly in need
+of it; and my former garments had prejudiced many against me, I fear,
+because they had been patched by a friendly concierge. Pantaloons suffer
+as terribly as do antiques from too obvious restorations; and while I
+was only grateful to the good woman's needle (except upon one occasion
+when she forgot to remove it), my costume had reached, at last, great
+sympathies for the shade of Praxiteles, feeling the same melancholy over
+original intentions so far misrepresented by renewals.
+
+Therefore I determined to preserve my fineries to the uttermost; and
+it was fortunate that I did so; because, after dining, for three nights
+upon nothing but looking out of my window, the fourth morning brought me
+a letter from my English friend. I had written to him, asking if he knew
+of any people who wished to pay a salary to a young man who knew how to
+do nothing. I place his reply in direct annexation:
+
+"Henrietta Street, Cavendish Square, May 14.
+
+"My dear Ansolini,--Why haven't you made some of your relatives do
+something? I understand that they do not like you; neither do my own,
+but after our crupper at Monte Carlo what could mine do, except provide?
+If a few pounds (precious few, I fear!) be of any service to you, let
+me know. In the mean time, if you are serious about a position, I
+may, preposterously enough, set you in the way of it. There is an old
+thundering Yankee here, whom I met in the States, and who believed me a
+god because I am the nephew of my awful uncle, for whose career he
+has ever had, it appears, a life-long admiration, sir! Now, by chance,
+meeting this person in the street, it developed that he had need of
+a man, precisely such a one as you are not: a sober, tutorish,
+middle-aged, dissenting parson, to trot about the Continent tied to a
+dancing bear. It is the old gentleman's cub, who is a species of Caliban
+in fine linen, and who has taken a few too many liberties in the land
+of the free. In fact, I believe he is much a youth of my own kind with
+similar admiration for baccarat and good cellars. His father must return
+at once, and has decided (the cub's native heath and friends being too
+wild) to leave him in charge of a proper guide, philosopher, courier,
+chaplain, and friend, if such can be found, the same required to travel
+with the cub and keep him out of mischief. I thought of your letter
+directly, and I have given you the most tremendous recommendation--part
+of it quite true, I suspect, though I am not a judge of learning. I
+explained, however, that you are a master of languages, of elegant
+though subdued deportment, and I extolled at length your saintly habits.
+Altogether, I fear there may have been too much of the virtuoso in my
+interpretation of you; few would have recognized from it the gentleman
+who closed a table at Monte Carlo and afterwards was closed himself in
+the handsome and spectacular fashion I remember with both delight and
+regret. Briefly, I lied like a master. He almost had me in the matter of
+your age; it was important that you should be middle-aged. I swore that
+you were at least thirty-eight, but, owing to exemplary habits, looked
+very much younger. The cub himself is twenty-four.
+
+"Hence, if you are really serious and determined not to appeal to your
+people, call at once upon Mr. Lambert R. Poor, of the Hotel d'Iena. He
+is the father, and the cub is with him. The elder Yankee is primed with
+my praises of you, and must engage someone at once, as he sails in a day
+or two. Go--with my blessing, an air of piety, and as much age as you
+can assume. When the father has departed, throw the cub into the Seine,
+but preserve his pocket-book, and we shall have another go at those
+infernal tables. Vale! J.G.S."
+
+I found myself smiling--I fear miserably--over this kind letter,
+especially at the wonder of my friend that I had not appealed to my
+relatives. The only ones who would have liked to help me, if they had
+known I needed something, were my two little nieces who were in my own
+care; because my father, being but a poet, had no family, and my mother
+had lost hers, even her eldest son, by marrying my father. After that
+they would have nothing to do with her, nor were they asked. That
+rascally old Antonio was now the head of all the Caravacioli, as was I
+of my own outcast branch of our house--that is, of my two little nieces
+and myself. It was partly of these poor infants I had thought when I
+took what was left of my small inheritance to Monte Carlo, hoping, since
+I seemed to be incapable of increasing it in any other way, that number
+seventeen and black would hand me over a fortune as a waiter does wine.
+Alas! Luck is not always a fool's servant, and the kind of fortune she
+handed me was of that species the waiter brings you in the other bottle
+of champagne, the gold of a bubbling brain, lasting an hour. After
+this there is always something evil to one's head, and mine, alas! was
+shaved.
+
+Half an hour after I had read the letter, the little paper-flower
+makers in the attic window across from mine may have seen me shaving
+it--without pleasure--again. What else was I to do? I could not
+well expect to be given the guardianship of an erring young man if I
+presented myself to his parent as a gentleman who had been sitting at
+the Cafe' de la Paix with his head painted. I could not wear my hat
+through the interview. I could not exhibit the thick five days' stubble,
+to appear in contrast with the heavy fringe that had been spared;--I
+could not trim the fringe to the shortness of the stubble; I should
+have looked like Pierrot. I had only, then, to remain bald, and, if
+I obtained the post, to shave in secret--a harmless and mournful
+imposition.
+
+It was well for me that I came to this determination. I believe it was
+the appearance of maturity which my head and dining upon thoughts lent
+me, as much as my friend's praises, which created my success with the
+amiable Mr. Lambert R. Poor. I witness that my visit to him provided
+one of the most astonishing interviews of my life. He was an instance of
+those strange beings of the Western republic, at whom we are perhaps too
+prone to pass from one of ourselves to another the secret smile, because
+of some little imperfections of manner. It is a type which has grown
+more and more familiar to us, yet never less strange: the man in costly
+but severe costume, big, with a necessary great waistcoat, not noticing
+the loudness of his own voice; as ignorant of the thousand tiny things
+which we observe and feel as he would be careless of them (except for
+his wife) if he knew. We laugh at him, sometimes even to his face, and
+he does not perceive it. We are a little afraid that he is too large
+to see it; hence too large for us to comprehend, and in spite of our
+laughter we are always conscious of a force--yes, of a presence! We jeer
+slyly, but we respect, fear a little, and would trust.
+
+Such was my patron. He met me with a kind greeting, looked at me very
+earnestly, but smiling as if he understood my good intentions, as one
+understands the friendliness of a capering poodle, yet in such a way
+that I could not feel resentment, for I could see that he looked at
+almost everyone in the same fashion.
+
+My friend had done wonders for me; and I made the best account of myself
+that I could, so that within half an hour it was arranged that I
+should take charge of his son, with an honourarium which gave me great
+rejoicing for my nieces and my accumulated appetite.
+
+"I think I can pick men," he said, "and I think that you are the man I
+want. You're old enough and you've seen enough, and you know enough to
+keep one fool boy in order for six months."
+
+So frankly he spoke of his son, yet not without affection and
+confidence. Before I left, he sent for the youth himself, Lambert R.
+Poor, Jr.,--not at all a Caliban, but a most excellent-appearing, tall
+gentleman, of astonishingly meek countenance. He gave me a sad, slow
+look from his blue eyes at first; then with a brightening smile he
+gently shook my hand, murmuring that he was very glad in the prospect
+of knowing me better; after which the parent defined before him, with
+singular elaboration, my duties. I was to correct all things in his
+behaviour which I considered improper or absurd. I was to dictate the
+line of travel, to have a restraining influence upon expenditures; in
+brief, to control the young man as a governess does a child.
+
+To all of his parent's instructions Poor Jr. returned a dutiful nod and
+expressed perfect acquiescence. The following day the elder sailed from
+Cherbourg, and I took up my quarters with the son.
+
+
+
+Chapter Four
+
+
+It is with the most extreme mortification that I record my ensuing
+experiences, for I felt that I could not honourably accept my salary
+without earning it by carrying out the parent Poor's wishes. That first
+morning I endeavoured to direct my pupil's steps toward the Musee de
+Cluny, with the purpose of inciting him to instructive study; but in the
+mildest, yet most immovable manner, he proposed Longchamps and the races
+as a substitute, to conclude with dinner at La Cascade and supper at
+Maxim's or the Cafe' Blanche, in case we should meet engaging company.
+I ventured the vainest efforts to reason with him, making for myself
+a very uncomfortable breakfast, though without effect upon him of any
+visibility. His air was uninterruptedly mild and modest; he rarely
+lifted his eyes, but to my most earnest argument replied only by
+ordering more eggs and saying in a chastened voice:
+
+"Oh no; it is always best to begin school with a vacation. To
+Longchamps--we!"
+
+I should say at once that through this young man I soon became
+an amateur of the remarkable North-American idioms, of humour and
+incomparable brevities often more interesting than those evolved by the
+thirteen or more dialects of my own Naples. Even at our first breakfast
+I began to catch lucid glimpses of the intention in many of his almost
+incomprehensible statements. I was able, even, to penetrate his meaning
+when he said that although he was "strong for aged parent," he himself
+had suffered much anguish from overwork of the "earnest youth racquette"
+in his late travels, and now desired to "create considerable trouble for
+Paris."
+
+Naturally, I did not wish to begin by antagonizing my pupil--an
+estrangement at the commencement would only lead to his deceiving me, or
+a continued quarrel, in which case I should be of no service to my
+kind patron, so that after a strained interval I considered it best to
+surrender.
+
+We went to Longchamps.
+
+That was my first mistake; the second was to yield to him concerning
+the latter part of his programme; but opposition to Mr. Poor, Jr. had
+a curious effect of inutility. He had not in the least the air of
+obstinacy,--nothing could have been less like rudeness; he neither
+frowned not smiled; no, he did not seem even to be insisting; on
+the contrary, never have I beheld a milder countenance, nor heard a
+pleasanter voice; yet the young man was so completely baffling in his
+mysterious way that I considered him unique to my experience.
+
+Thus, when I urged him not to place large wagers in the pesage, his
+whispered reply was strange and simple--"Watch me!" This he conclusively
+said as he deposited another thousand-franc note, which, within a few
+moments, accrued to the French government.
+
+
+Longchamps was but the beginning of a series of days and nights
+which wore upon my constitution--not indeed with the intensity of
+mortification which my former conspicuosity had engendered, yet my
+sorrows were stringent. It is true that I had been, since the age of
+seventeen, no stranger to the gaieties and dissipations afforded by the
+capitals of Europe; I may say I had exhausted these, yet always with
+some degree of quiet, including intervals of repose. I was tired of all
+the great foolishnesses of youth, and had thought myself done with them.
+Now I found myself plunged into more uproarious waters than I had ever
+known I, who had hoped to begin a life of usefulness and peace, was
+forced to dwell in the midst of a riot, pursuing my extraordinary
+charge.
+
+There is no need that I should describe those days and nights. They
+remain in my memory as a confusion of bad music, crowds, motor-cars and
+champagne of which Poor Jr. was a distributing centre. He could never be
+persuaded to the Louvre, the Carnavalet, or the Luxembourg; in truth, he
+seldom rose in time to reach the museums, for they usually close at
+four in the afternoon. Always with the same inscrutable meekness of
+countenance, each night he methodically danced the cake-walk at Maxim's
+or one of the Montemarte restaurants, to the cheers of acquaintances of
+many nationalities, to whom he offered libations with prodigal enormity.
+He carried with him, about the boulevards at night, in the highly
+powerful car he had hired, large parties of strange people, who would
+loudly sing airs from the Folie-Rouge (to my unhappy shudderings) all
+the way from the fatiguing Bal Bullier to the Cafe' de Paris, where the
+waiters soon became affluent.
+
+And how many of those gaily dressed and smiling ladies whose bright
+eyes meet yours on the veranda of the Theatre Marigny were provided with
+excessive suppers and souvenir fans by the inexhaustible Poor Jr.! He
+left a trail of pink hundred-franc notes behind him, like a running boy
+dropping paper in the English game; and he kept showers of gold louis
+dancing in the air about him, so that when we entered the various cafes
+or "American bars" a cheer (not vocal but to me of perfect audibility)
+went up from the hungry and thirsty and borrowing, and from the
+attendants. Ah, how tired I was of it, and how I endeavoured to discover
+a means to draw him to the museums, and to Notre Dame and the Pantheon!
+
+And how many times did I unwillingly find myself in the too enlivening
+company of those pretty supper-girls, and what jokings upon his head-top
+did the poor bald gentleman not undergo from those same demoiselles with
+the bright eyes, the wonderful hats, and the fluffy dresses!
+
+How often among those gay people did I find myself sadly dreaming of
+that grey pongee skirt and the beautiful heart that had understood!
+Should I ever see that lady? Not, I knew, alas! in the whirl about Poor
+Jr.! As soon look for a nun at the Cafe' Blanche!
+
+For some reason I came to be persuaded that she had left Paris, that she
+had gone away; and I pictured her--a little despairingly--on the borders
+of Lucerne, with the white Alps in the sky above her,--or perhaps
+listening to the evening songs on the Grand Canal, and I would try to
+feel the little rocking of her gondola, making myself dream that I sat
+at her feet. Or I could see the grey flicker of the pongee skirt in
+the twilight distance of cathedral aisles with a chant sounding from
+a chapel; and, so dreaming, I would start spasmodically, to hear the
+red-coated orchestra of a cafe' blare out into "Bedelia," and awake to
+the laughter and rouge and blague which that dear pongee had helped me
+for a moment to forget!
+
+To all places, Poor Jr., though never unkindly, dragged me with him,
+even to make the balloon ascent at the Porte Maillot on a windy evening.
+Without embarrassment I confess that I was terrified, that I clung to
+the ropes with a clutch which frayed my gloves, while Poor Jr. leaned
+back against the side of the basket and gazed upward at the great
+swaying ball, with his hands in his pockets, humming the strange ballad
+that was his favourite musical composition:
+
+     "The prettiest girl I ever saw
+     Was sipping cider through a straw-aw-haw!"
+
+In that horrifying basket, scrambling for a foothold while it swung
+through arcs that were gulfs, I believed that my sorrows approached a
+sudden conclusion, but finding myself again upon the secure earth, I
+decided to come to an understanding with the young man.
+
+Accordingly, on the following morning, I entered his apartment and
+addresses myself to Poor Jr. as severely as I could (for, truthfully,
+in all his follies I had found no ugliness in his spirit--only a
+good-natured and inscrutable desire of wild amusement) reminding him
+of the authority his father had deputed to me, and having the
+venturesomeness to hint that the son should show some respect to my
+superior age.
+
+To my consternation he replied by inquiring if I had shaved my head as
+yet that morning. I could only drop in a chair, stammering to know what
+he meant.
+
+"Didn't you suppose I knew?" he asked, elevating himself slightly on his
+elbow from the pillow. "Three weeks ago I left my aged parent in London
+and ran over here for a day. I saw you at the Cafe' de la Paix, and even
+then I knew that it was shaved, not naturally bald. When you came here I
+recognized you like a shot, and that was why I was glad to accept you
+as a guardian. I've enjoyed myself considerably of late, and you've been
+the best part of it,--I think you are a wonderation! I wouldn't have any
+other governess for the world, but you surpass the orchestra when you
+beg me to respect your years! I will bet you four dollars to a lead
+franc piece that you are younger than I am!"
+
+Imagine the completeness of my dismay! Although he spoke in tones the
+most genial, and without unkindness, I felt myself a man of tatters
+before him, ashamed to have him know my sorry secret, hopeless to
+see all chance of authority over him gone at once, and with it my
+opportunity to earn a salary so generous, for if I could continue to
+be but an amusement to him and only part of his deception of Lambert R.
+Poor, my sense of honour must be fit for the guillotine indeed.
+
+I had a little struggle with myself, and I think I must have wiped some
+amounts of the cold perspiration from my absurd head before I was able
+to make an answer. It may be seen what a coward I was, and how I feared
+to begin again that search for employment. At last, however, I was in
+self-control, so that I might speak without being afraid that my voice
+would shake.
+
+"I am sorry," I said. "It seemed to me that my deception would not cause
+any harm, and that I might be useful in spite of it--enough to earn
+my living. It was on account of my being very poor; and there are two
+little children I must take care of.--Well, at least, it is over now. I
+have had great shame, but I must not have greater."
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked me rather sharply.
+
+"I will leave immediately," I said, going to the door. "Since I am no
+more than a joke, I can be of no service to your father or to you; but
+you must not think that I am so unreasonable as to be angry with you. A
+man whom you have beheld reduced to what I was, at the Cafe' de la Paix,
+is surely a joke to the whole world! I will write to your father before
+I leave the hotel and explain that I feel myself unqualified--"
+
+"You're going to write to him why you give it up!" he exclaimed.
+
+"I shall make no report of espionage," I answered, with, perhaps, some
+bitterness, "and I will leave the letter for you to read and to send, of
+yourself. It shall only tell him that as a man of honour I cannot keep a
+position for which I have no qualification."
+
+I was going to open the door, bidding him adieu, when he called out to
+me.
+
+"Look here!" he said, and he jumped out of bed in his pajamas and came
+quickly, and held out his hand. "Look here, Ansolini, don't take it that
+way. I know you've had pretty hard times, and if you'll stay, I'll get
+good. I'll go to the Louvre with you this afternoon; we'll dine at
+one of the Duval restaurants, and go to that new religious tragedy
+afterwards. If you like, we'll leave Paris to-morrow. There's a little
+too much movement here, maybe. For God's sake, let your hair grow, and
+we'll go down to Italy and study bones and ruins and delight the aged
+parent!--It's all right, isn't it?"
+
+I shook the hand of that kind Poor Jr. with a feeling in my heart that
+kept me from saying how greatly I thanked him--and I was sure that I
+could do anything for him in the world!
+
+
+
+Chapter Five
+
+
+Three days later saw us on the pretty waters of Lake Leman, in the
+bright weather when Mont Blanc heaves his great bare shoulders of ice
+miles into the blue sky, with no mist-cloak about him.
+
+Sailing that lake in the cool morning, what a contrast to the champagne
+houpla nights of Paris! And how docile was my pupil! He suffered me to
+lead him through the Castle of Chillon like a new-born lamb, and even
+would not play the little horses in the Kursaal at Geneva, although,
+perhaps, that was because the stakes were not high enough to interest
+him. He was nearly always silent, and, from the moment of our departure
+from Paris, had fallen into dreamfulness, such as would come over myself
+at the thought of the beautiful lady. It touched my heart to find how he
+was ready with acquiescence to the slightest suggestion of mine, and,
+if it had been the season, I am almost credulous that I could have
+conducted him to Baireuth to hear Parsifal!
+
+There were times when his mood of gentle sorrow was so like mine that I
+wondered if he, too, knew a grey pongee skirt. I wondered over this so
+much, and so marvellingly, also, because of the change in him, that at
+last I asked him.
+
+We had gone to Lucerne; it was clear moonlight, and we smoked on our
+little balcony at the Schweitzerhof, puffing our small clouds in the
+enormous face of the strangest panorama of the world, that august
+disturbation of the earth by gods in battle, left to be a land of tragic
+fables since before Pilate was there, and remaining the same after
+William Tell was not. I sat looking up at the mountains, and he leaned
+on the rail, looking down at the lake. Somewhere a woman was singing
+from Pagliacci, and I slowly arrived at a consciousness that I had
+sighed aloud once or twice, not so much sadly, as of longing to see that
+lady, and that my companion had permitted similar sounds to escape him,
+but more mournfully. It was then that I asked him, in earnestness, yet
+with the manner of making a joke, if he did not think often of some one
+in North America.
+
+"Do you believe that could be, and I making the disturbance I did in
+Paris?" he returned.
+
+"Yes," I told him, "if you are trying to forget her."
+
+"I should think it might look more as if I were trying to forget that I
+wasn't good enough for her and that she knew it!"
+
+He spoke in a voice which he would have made full of ease--"off-hand,"
+as they say; but he failed to do so.
+
+"That was the case?" I pressed him, you see, but smilingly.
+
+"Looks a good deal like it," he replied, smoking much at once.
+
+"So? But that is good for you, my friend!"
+
+"Probably." He paused, smoking still more, and then said, "It's a
+benefit I could get on just as well without."
+
+"She is in North America?"
+
+"No; over here."
+
+"Ah! Then we will go where she is. That will be even better for you!
+Where is she?"
+
+"I don't know. She asked me not to follow her. Somebody else is doing
+that."
+
+The young man's voice was steady, and his face, as usual, showed
+no emotion, but I should have been an Italian for nothing had I not
+understood quickly. So I waited for a little while, then spoke of old
+Pilatus out there in the sky, and we went to bed very late, for it was
+out last night in Lucerne.
+
+Two days later we roared our way out of the gloomy St. Gotthard and
+wound down the pass, out into the sunshine of Italy, into that broad
+plain of mulberries where the silkworms weave to enrich the proud
+Milanese. Ah, those Milanese! They are like the people of Turin, and
+look down upon us of Naples; they find us only amusing, because our
+minds and movements are too quick for them to understand. I have
+no respect for the Milanese, except for three things: they have a
+cathedral, a picture, and a dead man.
+
+We came to our hotel in the soft twilight, with the air so balmy one
+wished to rise and float in it. This was the hour for the Cathedral;
+therefore, leaving Leonardo and his fresco for the to-morrow, I
+conducted my uncomplaining ward forth, and through that big arcade of
+which the people are so proud, to the Duomo. Poor Jr. showed few signs
+of life as we stood before that immenseness; he said patiently that it
+resembled the postals, and followed me inside the portals with languor.
+
+It was all grey hollowness in the vast place. The windows showed not
+any colour nor light; the splendid pillars soared up into the air and
+disappeared as if they mounted to heights of invisibility in the sky at
+night. Very far away, at the other end of the church it seemed, one lamp
+was burning, high over the transept. One could not see the chains of
+support nor the roof above it; it seemed a great star, but so much all
+alone. We walked down the long aisle to stand nearer to it, the darkness
+growing deeper as we advanced. When we came almost beneath, both of us
+gazing upward, my companion unwittingly stumbled against a lady who was
+standing silently looking up at this light, and who had failed to notice
+our approach. The contact was severe enough to dislodge from her hand
+her folded parasol, for which I began to grope.
+
+There was a hurried sentence of excusation from Poor Jr., followed
+by moments of silence before she replied. Then I heard her voice in
+startled exclamation:
+
+"Rufus, it is never you?"
+
+He called out, almost loudly,
+
+"Alice!"
+
+Then I knew that it was the second time I had lifted a parasol from the
+ground for the lady of the grey pongee and did not see her face; but
+this time I placed it in her own hand; for my head bore no shame upon it
+now.
+
+In the surprise of encountering Poor Jr. I do not think she noticed that
+she took the parasol or was conscious of my presence, and it was but
+too secure that my young friend had forgotten that I lived. I think,
+in truth, I should have forgotten it myself, if it had not been for the
+leaping of my heart.
+
+Ah, that foolish dream of mine had proven true: I knew her, I knew her,
+unmistaking, without doubt or hesitancy--and in the dark! How should I
+know at the mere sound of her voice? I think I knew before she spoke!
+
+Poor Jr. had taken a step toward her as she fell back; I could only see
+the two figures as two shadows upon shadow, while for them I had melted
+altogether and was forgotten.
+
+"You think I have followed you," he cried, "but you have no right to
+think it. It was an accident and you've got to believe me!"
+
+"I believe you," she answered gently. "Why should I not?"
+
+"I suppose you want me to clear out again," he went on, "and I will; but
+I don't see why."
+
+Her voice answered him out of the shadow: "It is only you who make a
+reason why. I'd give anything to be friends with you; you've always
+known that."
+
+"Why can't we be?" he said, sharply and loudly. "I've changed a great
+deal. I'm very sensible, and I'll never bother you again--that other
+way. Why shouldn't I see a little of you?"
+
+I heard her laugh then--happily, it seemed to me,--and I thought I
+perceived her to extend her hand to him, and that he shook it briefly,
+in his fashion, as if it had been the hand of a man and not that of the
+beautiful lady.
+
+"You know I should like nothing better in the world--since you tell me
+what you do," she answered.
+
+"And the other man?" he asked her, with the same hinting of sharpness in
+his tone. "Is that all settled?"
+
+"Almost. Would you like me to tell you?"
+
+"Only a little--please!"
+
+His voice had dropped, and he spoke very quietly, which startlingly
+caused me to realize what I was doing. I went out of hearing then, very
+softly. Is it creible that I found myself trembling when I reached the
+twilit piazza? It is true, and I knew that never, for one moment, since
+that tragic, divine day of her pity, had I wholly despaired of beholding
+her again; that in my most sorrowful time there had always been a
+little, little morsel of certain knowledge that I should some day be
+near her once more.
+
+And now, so much was easily revealed to me: it was to see her that the
+good Lambert R. Poor Jr., had come to Paris, preceding my patron; it was
+he who had passed with her on the last day of my shame, and whom she had
+addressed by his central name of Rufus, and it was to his hand that I
+had restored her parasol.
+
+I was to look upon her face at last--I knew it--and to speak with her.
+Ah, yes, I did tremble! It was not because I feared she might recognize
+her poor slave of the painted head-top, nor that Poor Jr. would tell
+her. I knew him now too well to think he would do that, had I been even
+that other of whom he had spoken, for he was a brave, good boy, that
+Poor Jr. No, it was a trembling of another kind--something I do not know
+how to explain to those who have not trembled in the same way; and I
+came alone to my room in the hotel, still trembling a little and having
+strange quickness of breathing in my chest.
+
+I did not make any light; I did not wish it, for the precious darkness
+of the Cathedral remained with me--magic darkness in which I beheld
+floating clouds made of the dust of gold and vanishing melodies. Any
+person who knows of these singular things comprehends how little of them
+can be told; but to those people who do not know of them, it may appear
+all great foolishness. Such people are either too young, and they must
+wait, or too old--they have forgotten!
+
+It was an hour afterward, and Poor Jr. had knocked twice at my door,
+when I lighted the room and opened it to him. He came in, excitedly
+flushed, and, instead of taking a chair, began to walk quickly up and
+down the floor.
+
+"I'm afraid I forgot all about you, Ansolini," he said, "but that girl I
+ran into is a--a Miss Landry, whom I have known a long--"
+
+I put my hand on his shoulder for a moment and said:
+
+"I think I am not so dull, my friend!"
+
+He made a blue flash at me with his eyes, then smiled and shook his
+head.
+
+"Yes, you are right," he answered, re-beginning his fast pace over the
+carpet. "It was she that I meant in Lucerne--I don't see why I should
+not tell you. In Paris she said she didn't want me to see her
+again until I could be--friendly--the old way instead of something
+considerably different, which I'd grown to be. Well, I've just told her
+not only that I'd behave like a friend, but that I'd changed and felt
+like one. Pretty much of a lie that was!" He laighed, without any
+amusement. "But it was successful, and I suppose I can keep it up. At
+any rate we're going over to Venice with her and her mother to-morrow.
+Afterwards, we'll see them in Naples just before they sail."
+
+"To Venice with them!" I could not repress crying out.
+
+"Yes; we join parties for two days," he said, and stopped at a window
+and looked out attentively at nothing before he went on: "It won't be
+very long, and I don't suppose it will ever happen again. The other man
+is to meet them in Rome. He's a countryman of yours, and I believe--I
+believe it's--about--settled!"
+
+He pronounced these last words in an even voice, but how slowly! Not
+more slowly than the construction of my own response, which I heard
+myself making:
+
+"This countryman of mine--who is he?"
+
+"One of your kind of Kentucky Colonels," Poor Jr. laughed mournfully.
+At first I did not understand; then it came to me that he had sometimes
+previously spoken in that idiom of the nobles, and that it had been
+his custom to address one of his Parisian followers, a vicomte, as
+"Colonel."
+
+"What is his name?"
+
+"I can't pronounce it, and I don't know how to spell it," he answered.
+"And that doesn't bring me to the verge of the grave! I can bear to
+forget it, at least until we get to Naples!"
+
+He turned and went to the door, saying, cheerfully: "Well, old
+horse-thief" (such had come to be his name for me sometimes, and it was
+pleasant to hear), "we must be dressing. They're at this hotel, and we
+dine with them to-night."
+
+
+
+Chapter Six
+
+
+How can I tell of the lady of the pongee--now that I beheld her? Do you
+think that, when she came that night to the salon where we were awaiting
+her, I hesitated to lift my eyes to her face because of a fear that it
+would not be so beautiful as the misty sweet face I had dreamed would be
+hers? Ah, no! It was the beauty which was in her heart that had made me
+hers; yet I knew that she was beautiful. She was fair, that is all I
+can tell. I cannot tell of her eyes, her height, her mouth; I saw her
+through those clouds of the dust of gold--she was all glamour and light.
+It was to be seen that everyone fell in love with her at once; that the
+chef d'orchestre came and played to her; and the waiters--you should
+have observed them!--made silly, tender faces through the great groves
+of flowers with which Poor Jr. had covered the table. It was most
+difficult for me to address her, to call her "Miss Landry." It seemed
+impossible that she should have a name, or that I should speak to her
+except as "you."
+
+Even, I cannot tell very much of her mother, except that she was
+adorable because of her adorable relationship. She was florid, perhaps,
+and her conversation was of commonplaces and echoes, like my own, for
+I could not talk. It was Poor Jr. who made the talking, and in spite of
+the spell that was on me, I found myself full of admiration and sorrow
+for that brave fellow. He was all gaieties and little stories in a way I
+had never heard before; he kept us in quiet laughter; in a word, he was
+charming. The beautiful lady seemed content to listen with the greatest
+pleasure. She talked very little, except to encourage the young man to
+continue. I do not think she was brilliant, as they call it, or witty.
+She was much more than that in her comprehension, in her kindness--her
+beautiful kindness!
+
+She spoke only once directly to me, except for the little things one
+must say. "I am almost sure I have met you, Signor Ansolini."
+
+I felt myself burning up and knew that the conflagration was visible.
+So frightful a blush cannot be prevented by will-power, and I felt it
+continuing in hot waves long after Poor Jr. had effected salvation for
+me by a small joke upon my cosmopolitanism.
+
+Little sleep visited me that night. The darkness of my room was luminous
+and my closed eyes became painters, painting so radiantly with divine
+colours--painters of wonderful portraits of this lady. Gallery after
+gallery swam before me, and the morning brought only more!
+
+What a ride it was to Venice that day! What magical airs we rode
+through, and what a thieving old trickster was time, as he always
+becomes when one wishes hours to be long! I think Poor Jr. had made
+himself forget everything except that he was with her and that he must
+be a friend. He committed a thousand ridiculousnesses at the stations;
+he filled one side of the compartment with the pretty chianti-bottles,
+with terrible cakes, and with fruits and flowers; he never ceased his
+joking, which had no tiresomeness in it, and he made the little journey
+one of continuing, happy laughter.
+
+And that evening another of my foolish dreams came true! I sat in a
+gondola with the lady of the grey pongee to hear the singing on the
+Grand Canal;--not, it is true, at her feet, but upon a little chair
+beside her mother. It was my place--to be, as I had been all day, escort
+to the mother, and guide and courier for that small party. Contented
+enough was I to accept it! How could I have hoped that the Most Blessed
+Mother would grant me so much nearness as that? It was not happiness
+that I felt, but something so much more precious, as though my
+heart-strings were the strings of a harp, and sad, beautiful arpeggios
+ran over them.
+
+I could not speak much that evening, nor could Poor Jr. We were very
+silent and listened to the singing, our gondola just touching the others
+on each side, those in turn touching others, so that a musician from
+the barge could cross from one to another, presenting the hat for
+contributions. In spite of this extreme propinquity, I feared the
+collector would fall into the water when he received the offering of
+Poor Jr. It was "Gra-a-az', Mi-lor! Graz'!" a hundred times, with bows
+and grateful smiles indeed!
+
+It is the one place in the world where you listen to a bad voice with
+pleasure, and none of the voices are good--they are harsh and worn with
+the night-singing--yet all are beautiful because they are enchanted.
+
+They sang some of our own Neapolitan songs that night, and last of all
+the loveliest of all, "La Luna Nova." It was to the cadence of it that
+our gondoliers moved us out of the throng, and it still drifted on the
+water as we swung, far down, into sight of the lights of the Ledo:
+
+     "Luna d'ar-gen-to fal-lo so-gnar--
+     Ba-cia-lo in fron-te non lo de-star...."
+
+Not so sweetly came those measures as the low voice of the beautiful
+lady speaking them.
+
+"One could never forget it, never!" she said. "I might hear it a
+thousand other times and forget them, but never this first time."
+
+I perceived that Poor Jr. turned his face abruptly toward hers at this,
+but he said nothing, by which I understood not only his wisdom but his
+forbearance.
+
+"Strangely enough," she went on, slowly, "that song reminded me of
+something in Paris. Do you remember"--she turned to Poor Jr.--"that poor
+man we saw in front of the Cafe' de la Paix with the sign painted upon
+his head?"
+
+Ah, the good-night, with its friendly cloak! The good, kind night!
+
+"I remember," he answered, with some shortness. "A little faster,
+boatman!"
+
+"I don't know what made it," she said, "I can't account for it, but I've
+been thinking of him all through that last song."
+
+Perhaps not so strange, since one may know how wildly that poor devil
+had been thinking of her!
+
+"I've thought of him so often," the gentle voice went on. "I felt so
+sorry for him. I never felt sorrier for any one in my life. I was sorry
+for the poor, thin cab-horses in Paris, but I was sorrier for him. I
+think it was the saddest sight I ever saw. Do you suppose he still has
+to do that, Rufus?"
+
+"No, no," he answered, in haste. "He'd stopped before I left. He's all
+right, I imagine. Here's the Danieli."
+
+She fastened a shawl more closely about her mother, whom I, with a
+ringing in my ears, was trying to help up the stone steps. "Rufus,
+I hope," the sweet voice continued, so gently,--"I hope he's found
+something to do that's very grand! Don't you? Something to make up to
+him for doing that!"
+
+She had not the faintest dream that it was I. It was just her beautiful
+heart.
+
+The next afternoon Venice was a bleak and empty setting, the jewel
+gone. How vacant it looked, how vacant it was! We made not any effort
+to penetrate the galleries; I had no heart to urge my friend. For us the
+whole of Venice had become one bridge of sighs, and we sat in the shade
+of the piazza, not watching the pigeons, and listening very little to
+the music. There are times when St. Mark's seems to glare at you with
+Byzantine cruelty, and Venice is too hot and too cold. So it was then.
+Evening found us staring out at the Adriatic from the terrace of a cafe'
+on the Ledo, our coffee cold before us. Never was a greater difference
+than that in my companion from the previous day. Yet he was not silent.
+He talked of her continually, having found that he could talk of her to
+me--though certainly he did not know why it was or how. He told me, as
+we sat by the grey-growing sea, that she had spoken of me.
+
+"She liked you, she liked you very much," he said. "She told me she
+liked you because you were quiet and melancholy. Oh Lord, though, she
+likes everyone, I suppose! I believe I'd have a better chance with her
+if I hadn't always known her. I'm afraid that this damn Italian--I beg
+your pardon, Ansolini!--"
+
+"Ah, no," I answered. "It is sometimes well said."
+
+"I'm afraid his picturesqueness as a Kentucky Colonel appeals to her too
+much. And then he is new to her--a new type. She only met him in Paris,
+and he had done some things in the Abyssinian war--"
+
+"What is his rank?" I asked.
+
+"He's a prince. Cheap down this way; aren't they? I only hope"--and Poor
+Jr. made a groan--"it isn't going to be the old story--and that he'll be
+good to her if he gets her."
+
+"Then it is not yet a betrothal?"
+
+"Not yet. Mrs. Landry told me that Alice had liked him well enough to
+promise she'd give him her answer before she sailed, and that it was
+going to be yes. She herself said it was almost settled. That was just
+her way of breaking it to me, I fear."
+
+"You have given up, my friend?"
+
+"What else can I do? I can't go on following her, keeping up this play
+at second cousin, and she won't have anything else. Ever since I grew up
+she's been rather sorrowful over me because I didn't do anything but try
+to amuse myself--that was one of the reasons she couldn't care for
+me, she said, when I asked her. Now this fellow wins, who hasn't done
+anything either, except his one campaign. It's not that I ought to have
+her, but while I suppose it's a real fascination, I'm afraid there's
+a little glitter about being a princess. Even the best of our girls
+haven't got over that yet. Ah, well, about me she's right. I've been a
+pretty worthless sort. She's right. I've thought it all over. Three days
+before they sail we'll go down to Naples and hear the last word, and
+whatever it is we'll see them off on the 'Princess Irene.' Then you and
+I'll come north and sail by the first boat from Cherbourg.
+
+"I--I?" I stammered.
+
+"Yes," he said. "I'm going to make the aged parent shout with unmanly
+glee. I'm going to ask him to take me on as a hand. He'll take you, too.
+He uses something like a thousand Italians, and a man to manage them
+who can talk to them like a Dutch uncle is what he has always needed. He
+liked you, and he'll be glad to get you."
+
+He was a good friend, that Poor Jr., you see, and I shook the hand
+that he offered me very hard, knowing how great would have been his
+embarrassment had I embraced him in our own fashion.
+
+"And perhaps you will sail on the 'Princess Irene,' after all," I cried.
+
+"No," he shook his head sadly, "it will not happen. I have not been
+worth it."
+
+
+
+Chapter Seven
+
+
+That Naples of mine is like a soiled coronet of white gems, sparkling
+only from far away. But I love it altogether, near or far, and my heart
+would have leaped to return to it for its own sake, but to come to it
+as we did, knowing that the only lady in the world was there.... Again,
+this is one of those things I possess no knowledge how to tell, and that
+those who know do know. How I had longed for the time to come, how I had
+feared it, how I had made pictures of it!
+
+Yet I feared not so much as my friend, for he had a dim, small hope,
+and I had none. How could I have? I--a man whose head had been painted?
+I--for whom her great heart had sorrowed as for the thin, beaten
+cab-horses of Paris! Hope? All I could hope was that she might never
+know, and I be left with some little shred of dignity in her eyes!
+
+Who cannot see that it was for my friend to fear? At times, with him, it
+was despair, but of that brave kind one loves to see--never a quiver of
+the lip, no winking of the eyes to keep tears back. And I, although of
+a people who express everything in every way, I understood what passed
+within him and found time to sorrow for him.
+
+Most of all, I sorrowed for him as we waited for her on the terrace of
+the Bertolini, that perch on the cliff so high that even the noises
+of the town are dulled and mingle with the sound of the thick surf far
+below.
+
+Across the city, and beyond, we saw, from the terrace, the old mountain
+of the warm heart, smoking amiably, and the lights of Torre del Greco at
+its feet, and there, across the bay, I beheld, as I had nightly so long
+ago, the lamps of Castellamare, of Sorrento; then, after a stretch of
+water, a twinkling which was Capri. How good it was to know that all
+these had not taken advantage of my long absence to run away and vanish,
+as I had half feared they would. Those who have lived here love them
+well; and it was a happy thought that the beautiful lady knew them now,
+and shared them. I had never known quite all their loveliness until I
+felt that she knew it too. This was something that I must never tell
+her--yet what happiness there was in it!
+
+I stood close to the railing, with a rambling gaze over this enchanted
+earth and sea and sky, while my friend walked nervously up and down
+behind me. We had come to Naples in the late afternoon, and had found a
+note from Mrs. Landry at our hotel, asking us for dinner. Poor Jr. had
+not spoken more than twice since he had read me this kind invitation,
+but now I heard a low exclamation from him, which let me know who
+was approaching; and that foolish trembling got hold of me again as I
+turned.
+
+Mrs. Landry came first, with outstretched hand, making some talk
+excusing delay; and, after a few paces, followed the loveliest of all
+the world. Beside her, in silhouette against the white window lights of
+the hotel, I saw the very long, thin figure of a man, which, even before
+I recognized it, carried a certain ominousness to my mind.
+
+Mrs. Landry, in spite of her florid contentedness, had sometimes a
+fluttering appearance of trivial agitations.
+
+"The Prince came down from Rome this morning," she said nervously, and
+I saw my friend throw back his head like a man who declines the
+eye-bandage when they are going to shoot him. "He is dining with us. I
+know you will be glad to meet him."
+
+The beautiful lady took Poor Jr.'s hand, more than he hers, for he
+seemed dazed, in spite of the straight way he stood, and it was easy to
+behold how white his face was. She made the presentation of us both
+at the same time, and as the other man came into the light, my mouth
+dropped open with wonder at the singular chances which the littleness of
+our world brings about.
+
+"Prince Caravacioli, Mr. Poor. And this is Signor Ansolini."
+
+It was my half-brother, that old Antonio!
+
+
+
+Chapter Eight
+
+
+Never lived any person with more possession of himself than Antonio; he
+bowed to each of us with the utmost amiability; and for expression--all
+one saw of it was a little streak of light in his eye-glass.
+
+"It is yourself, Raffaele?" he said to me, in the politest manner, in
+our own tongue, the others thinking it some commonplace, and I knew by
+his voice that the meeting was as surprising and as exasperating to him
+as to me.
+
+Sometimes dazzling flashes of light explode across the eyes of blind
+people. Such a thing happened to my own, now, in the darkness. I found
+myself hot all over with a certain rashness that came to me. I felt that
+anything was possible if I would but dare enough.
+
+"I am able to see that it is the same yourself!" I answered, and made
+the faintest eye-turn toward Miss Landry. Simultaneously bowing, I let
+my hand fall upon my pocket--a language which he understood, and for
+which (the Blessed Mother be thanked!) he perceived that I meant to
+offer battle immediately, though at that moment he offered me an open
+smile of benevolence. He knew nothing of my new cause for war; there was
+enough of the old!
+
+The others were observing us.
+
+"You have met?" asked the gentle voice of Miss Landry. "You know each
+other?"
+
+"Exceedingly!" I answered, bowing low to her.
+
+"The dinner is waiting in our own salon," said Mrs. Landry,
+interrupting. She led the way with Antonio to an open door on the
+terrace where servants were attending, and such a forest of flowers on
+the table and about the room as almost to cause her escort to stagger;
+for I knew, when I caught sight of them, that he had never been wise
+enough to send them. Neither had Poor Jr. done it out of wisdom, but
+because of his large way of performing everything, and his wish that
+loveliest things should be a background for that lady.
+
+Alas for him! Those great jars of perfume, orchids and hyacinths and
+roses, almost shut her away from his vision. We were at a small round
+table, and she directly in opposition to him. Upon her right was
+Antonio, and my heart grew cold to see how she listened to him.
+
+For Antonio could talk. At that time he spoke English even better than
+I, though without some knowledge of the North-American idiom which my
+travels with Poor Jr. had given me. He was one of those splendid egoists
+who seem to talk in modesty, to keep themselves behind scenes, yet who,
+when the curtain falls, are discovered to be the heroes, after all,
+though shown in so delicate a fashion that the audience flatters itself
+in the discovery.
+
+And how practical was this fellow, how many years he had been developing
+his fascinations! I was the only person of that small company who could
+have a suspicion that his moustache was dyed, that his hair was toupee,
+or that hints of his real age were scorpions and adders to him. I should
+not have thought it, if I had not known it. Here was my advantage: I had
+known his monstrous vanity all my life.
+
+So he talked of himself in his various surreptitious ways until coffee
+came, Miss Landry listening eagerly, and my poor friend making no
+effort; for what were his quiet United States absurdities compared to
+the whole-world gaieties and Abyssinian adventures of this Othello,
+particularly for a young girl to whom Antonio's type was unfamiliar? For
+the first time I saw my young man's brave front desert him. His mouth
+drooped, and his eyes had an appearance of having gazed long at a bright
+light. I saw that he, unhappy one, was at last too sure what her answer
+would be.
+
+For myself, I said very little--I waited. I hoped and believed Antonio
+would attack me in his clever, disguised way, for he had always hated
+me and my dead brother, and he had never failed to prove himself too
+skilful for us. In my expectancy of his assault there was no mistake. I
+comprehended Antonio very well, and I knew that he feared I might seek
+to do him an injury, particularly after my inspired speech and gesture
+upon the terrace. Also, I felt that he would, if possible, anticipate
+my attempt and strike first. I was willing; for I thought myself in
+possession of his vulnerable point--never dreaming that he might know my
+own!
+
+At last when he, with the coffee and cigarettes, took the knife in his
+hand, he placed a veil over the point. He began, laughingly, with the
+picture of a pickpocket he had helped to catch in London. London was
+greatly inhabited by pickpockets, according to Antonio's declaration.
+Yet, he continued, it was nothing in comparison to Paris. Paris was
+the rendezvous, the world's home, for the criminals, adventurers,
+and rascals if the world, English, Spanish, South-Americans,
+North-Americans,--and even Italians! One must beware of people one had
+met in Paris!
+
+"Of course," he concluded, with a most amiable smile, "there are many
+good people there also. That is not to be forgotten. If I should dare
+to make a risk on such a trifle, for instance, I would lay wager that
+you"--he nodded toward Poor Jr.--"made the acquaintance of Ansolini in
+Paris?"
+
+This was of the greatest ugliness in its underneath significance, though
+the manner was disarming. Antonio's smile was so cheerful, his eye-glass
+so twinkling, that none of them could have been sure he truly meant
+anything harmful of me, though Poor Jr. looked up, puzzled and frowning.
+
+Before he could answer I pulled myself altogether, as they say, and
+leaned forward, resting my elbows upon the table. "It is true," and I
+tried to smile as amiably as Antonio. "These coincidences occur. You
+meet all the great frauds of the world in Paris. Was it not there"--I
+turned to Mrs. Landry--"that you met the young Prince here?"
+
+At this there was no mistaking that the others perceived. The secret
+battle had begun and was not secret. I saw a wild gleam in Poor Jr.'s
+eyes, as if he comprehended that strange things were to come; but, ah,
+the face of distress and wonder upon Mrs. Landry, who beheld the peace
+of both a Prince and a dinner assailed; and, alas! the strange and hurt
+surprise that came from the lady of the pongee! Let me not be a boastful
+fellow, but I had borne her pity and had adored it--I could face her
+wonder, even her scorn.
+
+It was in the flash of her look that I saw my great chance and what I
+must try to do. Knowing Antonio, it was as if I saw her falling into the
+deep water and caught just one contemptuous glance from her before the
+waves hid her. But how much juster should that contempt have been if I
+had not tried to save her!
+
+As for that old Antonio, he might have known enough to beware. I had
+been timid with him always, and he counted on it now, but a man who has
+shown a painted head-top to the people of Paris will dare a great deal.
+
+"As the Prince says," replied Mrs. Landry, with many flutters, "one
+meets only the most agreeable people in Paris!"
+
+"Paris!" I exclaimed. "Ah, that home of ingenuity! How they paint there!
+How they live, and how they dye--their beards!"
+
+You see how the poor Ansolini played the buffoon. I knew they feared
+it was wine, I had been so silent until now; but I did not care, I was
+beyond care.
+
+"Our young Prince speaks truly," I cried, raising my voice. "He is wise
+beyond his years, this youth! He will be great when he reaches middle
+age, for he knows Paris and understands North America! Like myself, he
+is grateful that the people of your continent enrich our own! We need
+all that you can give us! Where should we be--any of us" (I raised my
+voice still louder and waved my hand to Antonio),--"where should we be,
+either of us" (and I bowed to the others) "without you?"
+
+Mrs. Landry rose with precipitousness, and the beautiful lady, very red,
+followed. Antonio, unmistakably stung with the scorpions I had set upon
+him, sprang to the door, the palest yellow man I have ever beheld, and
+let the ladies pass before him.
+
+The next moment I was left alone with Poor Jr. and his hyacinth trees.
+
+
+
+Chapter Nine
+
+
+For several minutes neither of us spoke. Then I looked up to meet my
+friend's gaze of perturbation.
+
+A waiter was proffering cigars. I took one, and waved Poor Jr.'s hand
+away from the box of which the waiter made offering.
+
+"Do not remain!" I whispered, and I saw his sad perplexity. "I know her
+answer has not been given. Will you present him his chance to receive
+it--just when her sympathy must be stronger for him, since she will
+think he has had to bear rudeness?"
+
+He went out of the door quickly.
+
+I dod not smoke. I pretended to, while the waiters made the arrangements
+of the table and took themselves off. I sat there a long, long time
+waiting for Antonio to do what I hoped I had betrayed him to do.
+
+It befell at last.
+
+Poor Jr. came to the door and spoke in his steady voice. "Ansolini, will
+you come out here a moment?"
+
+Then I knew that I had succeeded, had made Antonio afraid that I would
+do the thing he himself, in a panic, had already done--speak evil of
+another privately.
+
+As I reached the door I heard him call out foolishly, "But Mr. Poor, I
+beg you--"
+
+Poor Jr. put his hand on my shoulder, and we walked out into the dark of
+the terrace. Antonio was leaning against the railing, the beautiful lady
+standing near. Mrs. Landry had sunk into a chair beside her daughter. No
+other people were upon the terrace.
+
+"Prince Caravacioli has been speaking of you," said Poor Jr., very
+quietly.
+
+"Ah?" said I.
+
+"I listened to what he said; then I told him that you were my friend,
+and that I considered it fair that you should hear what he had to say.
+I will repeat what he said, Ansolini. If I mistake anything, he can
+interrupt me."
+
+Antonio laughed, and in such a way, so sincerely, so gaily, that I was
+frightened.
+
+"Very good!" he cried. "I am content. Repeat all."
+
+"He began," Poor Jr. went on, quietly, though his hand gripped my
+shoulder to almost painfulness,--"he began by saying to these ladies, in
+my presence, that we should be careful not to pick up chance strangers
+to dine, in Italy, and--and he went on to give me a repetition of his
+friendly warning about Paris. He hinted things for a while, until I
+asked him to say what he knew of you. Then he said he knew all about
+you; that you were an outcast, a left-handed member of his own family,
+an adventurer--"
+
+"It is finished, my friend," I said, interrupting him, and gazed with
+all my soul upon the beautiful lady. Her face was as white as Antonio's
+or that of my friend, or as my own must have been. She strained her eyes
+at me fixedly; I saw the tears standing still in them, and I knew the
+moment had come.
+
+"This Caravacioli is my half-brother," I said.
+
+Antonio laughed again. "Of what kind!"
+
+Oh, he went on so easily to his betrayal, not knowing the
+United-Statesians and their sentiment, as I did.
+
+"We had the same mother," I continued, as quietly as I could. "Twenty
+years after this young--this somewhat young--Prince was born she
+divorced his father, Caravacioli, and married a poor poet, whose bust
+you can see on the Pincian in Rome, though he died in the cheapest hotel
+in Sienna when my true brother and I were children. This young Prince
+would have nothing to do with my mother after her second marriage and--"
+
+"Marriage!" Antonio laughed pleasantly again. He was admirable. "This is
+an old tale which the hastiness of our American friend has forced us to
+rehearse. The marriage was never recognized by the Vatican, and there
+was not twenty years--"
+
+"Antonio, it is the age which troubles you, after all!" I said, and
+laughed heartily, loudly, and a long time, in the most good-natured way,
+not to be undone as an actor.
+
+"Twenty years," I repeated. "But what of it? Some of the best men in the
+world use dyes and false--"
+
+At this his temper went away from him suddenly and completely. I had
+struck the right point indeed!
+
+"You cammorrista!" he cried, and became only himself, his hands
+gesturing and flying, all his pleasant manner gone. "Why should we
+listen one second more to such a fisherman! The very seiners of the bay
+who sell dried sea-horses to the tourists are better gentlemen than you.
+You can shrug your shoulders! I saw you in Paris, though you thought I
+did not! Oh, I saw you well! Ah! At the Cafe de la Paiz!"
+
+At this I cried out suddenly. The sting and surprise of it were more
+than I could bear. In my shame I would even have tried to drown his
+voice with babblings but after this one cry I could not speak for a
+while. He went on triumphantly:
+
+"This rascal, my dear ladies, who has persuaded you to ask him to
+dinner, this camel who claims to be my excellent brother, he, for a few
+francs, in Paris, shaved his head and showed it for a week to the people
+with an advertisement painted upon it of the worst ballet in Paris. This
+is the gentleman with whom you ask Caravacioli to dine!"
+
+It was beyond my expectation, so astonishing and so cruel that I could
+only look at him for a moment or two. I felt as one who dreams himself
+falling forever. Then I stepped forward and spoke, in thickness of
+voice, being unable to lift my head:
+
+"Again it is true what he says. I was that man of the painted head. I
+had my true brother's little daughters to care for. They were at the
+convent, and I owed for them. It was also partly for myself, because I
+was hungry. I could find not any other way, and so--but that is all."
+
+I turned and went stumblingly away from them.
+
+In my agony that she should know, I could do nothing but seek greater
+darkness. I felt myself beaten, dizzy with beatings. That thing which
+I had done in Paris discredited me. A man whose head-top had borne an
+advertisement of the Folie-Rouge to think he could be making a combat
+with the Prince Caravacioli!
+
+Leaning over the railing in the darkest corner of the terrace, I felt my
+hand grasped secondarily by that good friend of mine.
+
+"God bless you!" whispered Poor Jr.
+
+"On my soul, I believe he's done himself. Listen!"
+
+I turned. That beautiful lady had stepped out into the light from the
+salon door. I could see her face shining, and her eyes--ah me, how
+glorious they were! Antonio followed her.
+
+"But wait," he cried pitifully.
+
+"Not for you!" she answered, and that voice of hers, always before so
+gentle, rang out as the Roman trumpets once rang from this same cliff.
+"Not for you! I saw him there with his painted head and I understood!
+You saw him there, and you did nothing to help him! And the two little
+children--your nieces, too,--and he your brother!"
+
+Then my heart melted and I found myself choking, for the beautiful lady
+was weeping.
+
+"Not for you, Prince Caravacioli," she cried, through her tears,--"Not
+for you!"
+
+
+
+Chapter Ten
+
+
+All of the beggars in Naples, I think, all of the flower-girls and boys,
+I am sure, and all the wandering serenaders, I will swear, were under
+our windows at the Vesuve, from six o'clock on the morning the "Princess
+Irene" sailed; and there need be no wonder when it is known that Poor
+Jr. had thrown handfuls of silver and five-lire notes from our balcony
+to strolling orchestras and singers for two nights before.
+
+They wakened us with "Addio, la bella Napoli, addio, addio!" sung to the
+departing benefactor. When he had completed his toilet and his coffee,
+he showed himself on the balcony to them for a moment. Ah! What a
+resounding cheer for the signore, the great North-American nobleman! And
+how it swelled to a magnificent thundering when another largess of his
+came flying down among them!
+
+Who could have reproved him? Not Raffaele Ansolini, who was on his knees
+over the bags and rugs! I think I even made some prolongation of that
+position, for I was far from assured of my countenance, that bright
+morning.
+
+I was not to sail in the "Princess Irene" with those dear friends. Ah
+no! I had told them that I must go back to Paris to say good-bye to my
+little nieces and sail from Boulogne--and I am sure they believed that
+was my reason. I had even arranged to go away upon a train which would
+make it not possible for me to drive to the dock with them. I did not
+wish to see the boat carry them away from me.
+
+And so the farewells were said in the street in all that crowd. Poor Jr.
+and I were waiting at the door when the carriage galloped up. How the
+crowd rushed to see that lady whom it bore to us, blushing and laughing!
+Clouds of gold-dust came before my eyes again; she wore once more that
+ineffable grey pongee!
+
+Servants ran forward with the effects of Poor Jr. and we both sprang
+toward the carriage.
+
+A flower-girl was offering a great basket of loose violets. Poor Jr.
+seized it and threw them like a blue rain over the two ladies.
+
+"Bravo! Bravo!"
+
+A hundred bouquets showered into the carriage, and my friend's silver
+went out in another shower to meet them.
+
+"Addio, la bella Napoli!" came from the singers and the violins, but I
+cried to them for "La Luna Nova."
+
+"Good-bye--for a little while--good-bye!"
+
+I knew how well my friend liked me, because he shook my hand with his
+head turned away. Then the grey glove of the beautiful lady touched my
+shoulder--the lightest touch in all the world--as I stood close to the
+carriage while Poor Jr. climbed in.
+
+"Good-bye. Thank you--and God bless you!" she said, in a low voice. And
+I knew for what she thanked me.
+
+The driver cracked his whip like an honest Neapolitan. The horses sprang
+forward. "Addio, addio!"
+
+I sang with the musicians, waving and waving and waving my handkerchief
+to the departing carriage.
+
+Now I saw my friend lean over and take the beautiful lady by the hand,
+and together they stood up in the carriage and waved their handkerchiefs
+to me. Then, but not because they had passed out of sight, I could see
+them not any longer.
+
+They were so good--that kind Poor Jr. and the beautiful lady; they
+seemed like dear children--as if they had been my own dear children.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Beautiful Lady, by Booth Tarkington
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