with a filmy little square of cambric edged with the narrowest possible
line of black, “about the—about the boys.”
Galahad strove to compose his features into an expression of decent
regret.
“Mr. Ambrose and Mr. Theodosius Lasher.... I rather anticipated that
you—that possibly there were discoveries to be made.” He turned his
weary gray eyes upon Laura, and pulled at one wiry end of his little
gingery mustache. “Have they done anything very bad?” he asked, and his
tone was not uncheerful.
“Bad!” echoed Laura, with indignant scorn. “As though two young men
gifted with natures like theirs”—she had left off calling them “boys,”
Galahad noticed—“so lofty, so noble, so unselfish—and yes, I will say
it, so pure!—could possibly be guilty of any bad or even doubtful
action. But you do not know them, and you are prejudiced; you must admit
you are prejudiced when you hear the—the truth.” The cork escaped, and
the secret came with it in a gush. “It is this: I cannot be a mother to
Dosy and Brosy; they, poor dears, cannot be my sons. I had not the least
idea of their true feeling with regard to me, nor had they, until quite
recently.” She swallowed a little sob and dabbed her eyes again. “Oh,
Galahad, they are madly in love with me, both of them. What, what am I
to do?”
“Send them to the devil, the impudent young beggars!” snorted Galahad.
And, striding up and down between the trembling china-tables with
clenched fists and angry eyes, he said all the things he had longed to
say about folly, and madness and infatuation.
A woman will always submit with a good grace to masculine upbraiding
when she has reason to believe the upbraider jealous. Laura bore his
reproaches with saintly sweetness.
“They have behaved in the most honorable way, poor darlings!” she
protested, “though the realization of the true nature of their feelings
towards me, of course, came as a terrible shock. The deeds of settlement
had been drawn up. We planned, as soon as everything had been sealed and
signed, that the dear boys were to come and live here. I had furnished
their bedrooms exactly alike, and fitted up the smoking-room with twin
armchairs, twin tobacco-tables, and so on, when the blow fell.” She
deepened her voice to a thrilling whisper. “Dosy, looking quite pale and
tragic, asked for an interview in the conservatory; Brosy begged for a
private word in the pavilion at the end of the upper croquet-lawn. And
then,” said Laura, shedding abundant tears, “I knew what I had done. It
did occur to me that I might—might marry Brosy and adopt Dosy as my son,
or marry Dosy and regard Brosy as an heir. But no, it could not be. Dosy
proposed to take poison, or shoot himself, in the most unselfish way;
and Brosy suggested going in for a swim too soon after breakfast, and
never rising from a dive again. But neither could endure to live to see
me the bride of the other,” sobbed Laura.
“And as this is England, and not Malabar,” uttered Galahad, dryly, “the
law is against your marrying both.”
“Why, of course, my dear Galahad,” cried Laura innocently, scandalized
and round-eyed.
The man who really loved her looked at her and forgave her foolishness.
She had set the County buzzing with the tale of her absurd infatuation;
she had compromised her dignity by the tragic follies of the past few
months; there was but one way of gagging the scandalmongers and
regaining lost ground, one way of getting out of the _impasse_. Galahad
pointed out that way, as Laura entreated him to suggest something.
“Why not marry me?” he said bluntly.
“Oh, Galahad!” cried Laura, bright-eyed and quite pleasantly thrilled.
“And then we can both adopt the boys.”
“Whether they embrace that idea or not,” said Galahad, with his arm
round the long-coveted waist, “remains to be seen. But I promise you, if
occasion should arise, that I will act as a father to them.”
He went out, in his new parental character, to look for Dosy and Brosy
and break the joyful news. His freckled little face was beaming with
smiles, his usually weary gray eyes were alight; he smiled under his
bristly little mustache as he selected a stout but stinging Malacca cane
from the late Thompson Kingdom’s collection in the hall....
A DISH OF MACARONI
On the occasion of the tenth biennial visit of the Carlo Da Capo Grand
Opera Combination to the musical, if murky, city of Smutchester, the
principal members of the company pitched their tents, as was their wont,
at the Crown Diamonds Hotel, occupying an entire floor of that capacious
caravanserie, whose _chef_, to the grief of many honest British stomachs
and the unrestrained joy of these artless children of song, was of
cosmopolitan gifts, being an Italian-Spanish-Swiss-German. Here _prime
donne_, tenors, and bassos could revel in national dishes from which
their palates had long been divorced, and steaming masses of yellow
polenta, _knüdels_, and _borsch_, heaped dishes of sausages and red
cabbage, ragouts of cockscombs and chicken-livers, veal stewed with
tomatoes, frittura of artichokes, with other culinary delicacies strange
of aspect and garlicky as to smell, loaded the common board at each
meal, only to vanish like the summer snow, so seldom seen but so
constantly referred to by the poetical fictionist, amidst a Babel of
conversation which might only find its parallel in the parrot-house at
the Zoo. Ringed hands plunged into salad-bowls; the smoke of cigarettes
went up in the intervals between the courses; the meerschaum-colored
lager of Munich, the yellow beer of Bass, the purple Chianti, or the
vintage of Epernay brimmed the glasses; and the coffee that crowned the
banquet was black and thick and bitter as the soul of a singer who has
witnessed the triumph of a rival.
For singers can be jealous: and the advice of Dr. Watts is more at
discount behind the operatic scenes, perhaps, than elsewhere. For women
may be, and are, jealous of other women; and men may be, and are,
jealous of men, off the stage; but it is reserved for the hero and
heroine of the stage to be jealous of one another. The glare of the
footlights, held by so many virtuous persons to be inimical to the
rosebud of innocence, has a curiously wilting and shriveling effect upon
the fine flower of chivalry. Signor Alberto Fumaroli, _primo uomo_, and
possessor of a glorious tenor, was possessed by the idea that the chief
soprano, De Melzi, the enchanting Teresa—still in the splendor of her
youth, with ebony tresses, eyes of jet, skin of ivory, an almost
imperceptible mustache, and a figure of the most seductive, doomed ere
long to expand into a pronounced _embonpoint_—had adorned her classic
temples with laurels which should by rights have decked his own. The
press-cuttings of the previous weeks certainly balanced in her favor.
Feeble-minded musical critics, of what the indignant tenor termed
“provincial rags,” lauded the Signora to the skies. She was termed a
“springing fountain of crystal song,” a “human bulbul in the rose-garden
of melody.” Eulogy had exhausted itself upon her; while he, Alberto
Fumaroli, the admired of empresses, master of the emotions of myriads of
American millionairesses, he was fobbed off with half a dozen
patronizing lines. Glancing over the paper in the saloon carriage, he
had seen the impertinent upper lip of the De Melzi, tipped with the
faintest line of shadow, curl with delight as she scanned each accursed
column in turn, and handed the paper to her aunt (a vast person
invariably clad in the tightest and shiniest of black satins, and
crowned with a towering hat of violet velvet adorned with once snowy
plumes and crushed crimson roses), who went everywhere with her niece,
and mounted guard over the exchequer. Outwardly calm as Vesuvius, and
cool as a Neapolitan ice on a hot day, the outraged Alberto endured the
triumph of the women, marked the subterranean chuckles of the stout
Signora, the mischievous enjoyment of Teresa; pulled his
Austrian-Tyrolese hat over his Corsican brows, and vowed a wily
_vendetta_. His opportunity for wreaking retribution would come at
Smutchester, he knew. Wagner was to be given at the Opera House, and as
great as the previous triumph of Teresa de Melzi in the rôle of
Elsa—newly added by the soprano to her _repertoire_—should be her fall.
_Evviva!_ Down with that fatally fascinating face, smiling so
provokingly under its laurels! She should taste the consequences of
having insulted a Neapolitan. And the tenor smiled so diabolically that
Zamboni, the basso, sarcastically inquired whether Fumaroli was
rehearsing _Mephistofole_?
“Not so, dear friend,” Fumaroli responded, with a dazzling show of
ivories. “In that part I should make a _bel fiasco_; I have no desire to
emulate a basso or a bull.... But in this—the rôle in which I am
studying to perfect myself—I predict that I shall achieve a dazzling
success.” He drew out a green Russia-leather cigarette case, adorned
with a monogram in diamonds. “It is permitted that one smokes?” he
added, and immediately lighted up.
“It is permitted, if I am to have one also.”
The De Melzi stretched a white, bejeweled hand out, and the seething
Alberto, under pain of appearing openly impolite, was forced to comply.
“No, I will not take the cigarette you point out,” said the saucy _prima
donna_, as the tenor extended the open case. “It might disagree with me,
who knows? and I have predicted that in the part of Elsa to-morrow night
at Smutchester _I_ shall achieve a ‘dazzling success.’” And she smiled
with brilliant malice upon Alberto Fumaroli, who played Lohengrin. “They
are discriminating—the audiences of that big, black, melancholy
place—they never mistake geese for swans.”
“_Ach_, no!” said the Impresario, looking up from his tatting—he was
engaged upon a green silk purse for Madame Da Capo, a wrinkled little
doll of an old lady with whom he was romantically in love. “They will
not take a _dournure_, some declamation, and half a dozen notes in the
upper register _bour dout botage_. Sing to them well, they will be ready
to give you their heads. But sing to them badly, and they will be ready
to pelt yours. Twenty years ago they did. I remember a graceless
impostor, a _ragazzo_ (foisted upon me for a season by a villain of an
agent), who annoyed them in _Almaviva_.... _Ebbene_! the elections were
in progress—there was a _dimonstranza_. I can smell those antique eggs,
those decomposed oranges, now.”
“Heart’s dearest, thou must not excite thyself,” interrupted Madame; “it
is so bad for thee. Play at the poker-game, _mes enfants_,” she
continued, “and leave my good child, my beloved little one, alone!”
Saying this, Madame drew from her vast under-pocket a neat case
containing an ivory comb, and, removing the fearfully and wonderfully
braided traveling cap of the Impresario, fell to combing his few
remaining hairs until, soothed by the process, Carlo, who had been
christened Karl, fell asleep with his head on Madame’s shoulder; snoring
peacefully, despite the screams, shrieks, howls, and maledictions which
were the invariable accompaniment of the poker-game.
The train bundled into Smutchester some hours later; a string of cabs
conveyed the Impresario, his wife, and the principal members of his
company to the Crown Diamonds Hotel. Before he sought his couch that
night the revengeful Alberto Fumaroli had interviewed the _chef_ and
bribed him with the gift of a box of regalias from the cedar
smoking-cabinet of a King, to aid in the carrying-out of the _vendetta_.
Josebattista Funkmuller was not a regal judge of cigars; but these were
black, rank, and oily enough to have made an Emperor most imperially
sick. Besides, the De Melzi had, or so he declared, once ascribed an
indigestion which had ruined, or so she swore, one of her grandest
_scenas_, to an omelette of his making, and the cook was not unwilling
that the haughty spirit of the _cantatrice_ should be crushed. His
complex nature, his cosmopolitan origin, showed in the plan Josebattista
Funkmuller now evolved and placed before the revengeful tenor, who
clasped him to his bosom in an ecstasy of delight, planting at the same
time a huge, resounding kiss upon both his cheeks.
“It is perfection!” Fumaroli cried. “My friend, it can scarcely fail! If
it should, _per Bacco_! the Fiend himself is upon that insolent
creature’s side! But I never heard yet of his helping a woman to resist
temptation—_oh, mai!_ it is he who spreads the board and invites Eve.”
And the tenor retired exultant. His sleeping-chamber was next door to
that of the hated _cantatrice_. He dressed upon the succeeding morning
to the accompaniment of _roulades_ trilled by the owner of the lovely
throat to which Fumaroli would so willingly have given the fatal
squeeze. And as Fumaroli, completing his frugal morning ablutions by
wiping his beautiful eyes and classic temples very gingerly with a damp
towel, paused to listen, a smile of peculiar malignancy was only partly
obscured by the folds of the towel. But when the tenor and the soprano
encountered at the twelve o’clock _déjeuner_, Fumaroli’s politeness was
excessive, and his large, dark, brilliant eyes responded to every glance
of the gleaming black orbs of De Melzi with a languorous, melting
significance which almost caused her heart to palpitate beneath her
Parisian corsets. Concealed passion lay, it might be, behind an
affectation of enmity and ill-will.
“_Mai santo cielo!_” exclaimed the stout aunt, to whom the _cantatrice_
subsequently revealed her suspicions, “thou guessest always as I myself
have thought. The unhappy man is devoured by a grand passion for my
Teresa. He grinds his teeth, he calls upon the saints, he grows more
bilious every day, and thou more beautiful. One day he will declare
himself——”
“And I shall lose an entertaining enemy, to find a stupid lover,”
gurgled Teresa. She was looking divine, her dark beauty glowing like a
gem in the setting of an Eastern silk of shot turquoise and purple,
fifty yards of which an enamored noble of the Ukraine had thrown upon
the stage of the Opera House, St. Petersburg, wound round the stem of a
costly bouquet. She glanced in the mirror as she kissed the black nose
of her Japanese pug. “Every man becomes stupid after a while,” she went
on. “Even Josebattista is in love with me. He sends me a little note
written on _papier jambon_ to entreat an interview.”
“My soul!” cried the stout aunt, “thou wilt not deny him?”
The saucy singer shook her head as Funkmuller tapped at the door. One
need not give in detail the interview that eventuated. It is enough that
the intended treachery of Fumaroli was laid bare. His intended victim
laughed madly.
“But it is a _cerotto_—what the English call a nincompoop,” she gasped,
pressing a laced handkerchief to her streaming eyes. “If the heavens
were to fall, then one could catch larks; but the proverb says nothing
about nightingales.”
She tossed her brilliant head and took a turn or two upon the hotel
sitting-room carpet, considering.
“I will keep this appointment,” said she.
“_Dio!_ And risk thy precious reputation?” shrieked the aunt.
“Chi sa? Chi sa?
Evviva l’opportunita!”
hummed the provoking beauty. And she dealt the cook a sparkling glance
of such intelligence that he felt Signor Alberto would never triumph.
Relieved in mind, Josebattista Funkmuller took his leave.
“I will return the King’s cigars,” he said, as he pressed his
garlic-scented mustache to the pearly knuckles of the lady.
“Bah!” said she, “they were won in a raffle at Vienna.”
The door closed upon the disgusted _chef_, and reopened ten minutes
later to admit a waiter carrying upon a salver a pretty three-cornered
pink note with a gold monogram in the corner. The writer entreated the
inestimable privilege of three minutes’ conversation with Madame de
Melzi in a private apartment in the basement of the hotel. He did not
propose to visit the _prima donna_ in her own rooms, even under the wing
of her aunt, for it was of supreme importance that tongues should not be
set wagging. Delicacy and respect prevented him from suggesting an
interview in the apartments occupied by himself. On the neutral ground
of an office in the basement the interview might take place without
comment or interruption. He was, in fact, waiting there for an answer.
The answer came in the person of the singer herself, charmingly dressed
and radiant with loveliness.
“Fie! What an underground hole! The window barred, the blank wall of an
area beyond it!” Her beautiful nostrils quivered. “_Caro mio_, you have
in that covered dish upon the table there something that smells good.
What is under the cover?”
“Look and see!” said the cunning tenor, with a provoking smile.
“I am not curious,” responded Teresa, putting both hands behind her and
leaning her back against the door. “Come, hurry up! One of your three
minutes has gone by, the other two will follow, and I shall be obliged
to take myself off without having heard this mysterious revelation. What
is it?” She showed a double row of pearl-hued teeth in a mischievous
smile. “Shall I guess? You have, by chance, fallen in love with me, and
wish to tell me so? How dull and unoriginal! A vivacious, interesting
enemy is to be preferred a million times before a stupid friend or a
commonplace adorer.”
“_Grazie a Dio!_” said the tenor, “I am not in love with you.” But at
that moment he was actually upon the verge; and the dull, dampish little
basement room, floored with kamptulicon warmed by a grudging little
gas-stove, its walls adorned with a few obsolete and hideous prints, its
oilcloth-covered table, on which stood the mysterious dish, closely
covered, bubbling over a spirit lamp and flanked by a spoon, fork, and
plate—that little room might have been the scene of a declaration
instead of a punishment had it not been for the De Melzi’s amazing
nonchalance. It would have been pleasant to have seen the spiteful
little arrow pierce that lovely bosom. But instead of frowning or biting
her lips, Teresa laughed with the frankest grace in the world.
“Dear Signor Alberto, Heaven has spared you much. Besides, you are of
those who esteem quantity above quality—and, for a certain thing, I
should be torn to pieces by the ladies of the Chorus.” She shrugged her
shoulders. “Well, what is this mysterious communication? The three
minutes are up, the fumes of a gas fire are bad for the throat—and I
presume you of all people would not wish me to sing ‘Elsa’ with a veiled
voice, and disappoint the dear people of Smutchester, and Messieurs the
critics, who say such kind things.”
Alberto Fumaroli’s brain spun round. Quick as thought his supple hand
went out; the wrist of the coquettish _prima donna_ was imprisoned as in
a vise of steel.
“_Ragazza!_” he gnashed out, “you shall pay for your cursed insolence.”
He swung the _cantatrice_ from the door, and Teresa, noting the
convulsed workings of his Corsican features, and devoured by the almost
scorching glare of his fierce eyes, felt a thrill of alarm.
“_Oimè!_ Signor,” she faltered, “what do you mean by this violence?
Recollect that we are not now upon the stage.”
A harsh laugh came from the bull throat of the tenor.
“By mystic Love
Brought from the distance
In thy hour of need.
Behold me, O Elsa!
Loveliest, purest—
Thine own
Unknown!”
he hummed. But his Elsa did not entreat to flow about his feet like the
river, or kiss them like the flowers blooming amidst the grasses he
trod. Struggling in vain for release from the rude, unchivalrous grasp,
an idea came to her; she stooped her beautiful head and bit Lohengrin
smartly on the wrist, evoking, instead of further music, a torrent of
curses; and as Alberto danced and yelled in agony, she darted from the
room. With the key she had previously extracted she locked the door; and
as her light footsteps and crisping draperies retreated along the
passage, the tenor realized that he was caught in his own trap. Winding
his handkerchief about his smarting wrist, he bestowed a few more hearty
curses upon Teresa, and sat down upon a horsehair-covered chair to wait
for deliverance. They could not possibly give “Lohengrin” without
him—there was no understudy for the part. For her own sake, therefore,
the De Melzi would see him released in time to assume the armor of the
Knight of the Swan. _Ebbene!_ There was nothing to do but wait. He
looked at his watch, a superb timepiece encrusted with brilliants. Two
o’clock! And the opera did not commence until eight. Six hours to spend
in this underground hole, if no one came to let him out. Patience! He
would smoke. He got over half an hour with the aid of the green
cigarette-case. Then he did a little pounding at the door. This bruised
his tender hands, and he soon left off and took to shouting. To the
utmost efforts of his magnificent voice no response was made; the part
of the hotel basement in which his prison happened to be situated was,
in the daytime, when all the servants were engaged in their various
departments, almost deserted. Therefore, after an hour of shouting,
Fumaroli abandoned his efforts.
What was to be done? He could take a _siesta_, and did, extended upon
two of the grim horsehair chairs with which the apartment was furnished.
He slept excellently for an hour, and woke hungry.
Hungry! _Diavolo!_ with what a raging hunger—an appetite of Gargantuan
proportions, sharpened to the pitch of famine by the bubbling gushes of
savory steam that jetted from underneath the cover of the mysterious
dish still simmering over its spirit-lamp upon the table! He knew what
that dish contained—his revenge, in fact. Well, it had missed fire, the
_vendetta_. He who had devised the ordeal of temptation for Teresa found
himself helpless, exposed to its fiendish seductions. Not that he would
be likely to yield, _oh mai!_ was it probable? He banished the idea with
a gesture full of superb scorn and a haughty smile. Never, a thousand
times never! The cunning Teresa should be disappointed. That evening’s
performance should be attacked by him as ever, fasting, the voice of
melody, the sonorous lungs, supported by an empty frame. _Cospetto!_ how
savory the smell that came from that covered dish! The unhappy tenor
moved to the table, snuffed it up in nosefuls, thought of flinging the
dish and its contents out of window—would have done so had not the
window been barred.
“After all, perhaps she means to keep me here all night,” he thought,
and rashly lifted the dish-cover, revealing a vast and heaving plain of
macaroni, over which little rills of liquid butter wandered. Parmesan
cheese was not lacking to the dish, nor the bland juices of the sliced
tomato, and, like the violet by the wayside, the modest garlic added its
perfume to the distracting bouquet. Fumaroli was only human, though, as
a tenor, divine. He had been shut up for four hours, fasting, in company
with a dish of macaroni.... Ah, Heaven! he could endure no longer.... He
drew up a chair, grasped fork and spoon—fell to. In the act of finishing
the dish, he started, fancying that the silvery tinkle of a feminine
laugh sounded at the keyhole. But his faculties were dulled by vast
feeding; his anger, like his appetite, had lost its edge. With an effort
he disposed of the last shreds of macaroni, the last trickle of butter;
and at seven o’clock a waiter, who accidentally unlocked the door of the
basement room, awakened a plethoric sleeper from heavy dreams.
“To the Opera House,” was the listless direction he gave the driver of
his hired brougham; as one in a dream he entered by the stage-door, and
strode to his room.
The curtain had already risen upon grassy lowlands in the neighborhood
of Antwerp. Henry, King of Germany, seated under a spreading canvas oak,
held court with military pomp. Frederic of Telramond, wizard husband of
Ortrud, the witch, had stepped forward to accuse Elsa of the murder of
her brother, Gottlieb; the King had cried, “Summon the maid!” and in
answer to the command, amidst the blare of brass and the clashing of
swords, the De Melzi, draped in pure white, followed by her ladies, and
looking the picture of virginal innocence, moved dreamily into view:
“How like an angel!
He who accuses her
Must surely prove
This maiden’s guilt.”