preparing to treat the discovered deception as a little private joke on
the prince between his daughter and himself. “We can get Tiffany to set
an emerald in the ring. No one will know. And some day you can tease
him about it. If he is innocent it would mortify him to learn the truth
now, wouldn’t it?”
Elsie smiled somewhat cheerfully. She was trying hard to make herself
doubt the prince’s guilty knowledge. “It must be done right away,” she
said.
She wore her gloves that afternoon. But Rontivogli, with nerves like a
sensitive plant’s leaves, felt a change in her, hard though she tried
to seem unchanged. In the clear light of hind-sight he had been cursing
himself for saying so much to her of Madame Almansa’s insinuations;
and at first he feared that by his blundering he had roused suspicion
in her. But she showed that she was still in the mood to marry him,
and the negotiations for settlements went smoothly on between Senator
Pope’s lawyer and the attorney to the Italian Embassy, whom he had
engaged to represent him. He dismissed his fear as a wild imagining of
guilt and set himself to remove the coolness just under Elsie’s surface
of warmth by lavishing his “temperament” upon her. And he was rewarded
with swift success. A flaw in such a lover was as inconsequential as a
flaw in an emerald--and was it not as much a matter of course?
Toward the end of the week she went with her father to New York, and
in two days Tiffany changed the setting for a consideration of four
thousand eight hundred dollars. She returned fully restored--but she
kept the false stone, hid it far back in the bottom of her jewel-safe.
The shock and its after-effects were soon over. She was a little
astonished that she, so used to the quaint ways of foreigners, should
have attached importance to the quaintness of this foreigner--a lover
who was fiery and infatuated, a lover who sang, a lover who was a
Prince of a “house” that ruled and plotted and patronised the arts
when Europe beyond the Alps was a savage wilderness. Rontivogli
had not been studying women for twenty years--or ever since he was
eighteen--aided by a classic face, a classic figure, a classic name,
and classic recklessness, without learning thoroughly the business he
was now following.
Frothingham had ceased to hope, and, for lack of any other opening, was
arranging to go to Chicago, there to visit his steamer friend Barney,
whom he had not permitted to forget him--Barney had a marriageable
daughter and was rated at eleven millions; also, Chicago was reputed
to be a promising field for titled foreigners. He felt that he was
neglecting business in lingering at Washington. He saw no signs, heard
no news, of available rich girls or rich men’s daughters. Half a
dozen questions about any girl and he would get an answer that would
force him to strike her from his list--the father was opposed to
large settlements; the family was opposed to international marriages;
the family’s social ambitions were of the new cis-Atlantic kind; the
daughter was already engaged; the mother’s aim was for princely or
ducal rank. And he was kept in low spirits by the spectacle of the
triumphant Rontivogli and was exasperated by Elsie’s treating him as
an object of pity, a rejected and inconsolable lover.
As he sat alone in a corner of the club, staring with grim satire into
the ugly face of his affairs, upon him intruded a man whom he had often
described as the most viciously tiresome person he had ever met--Count
Eitel zu Blickenstern. He disliked Blickenstern because he was a
German; he avoided him because he was dull, because he was a chronic
and ingenious borrower of small sums of money, and because every remark
that seemed to him to have been intended humourously was hailed by him
with a loud, mirthless laugh--the laugh of those who have no notion of
wit or humour and fear their deformity will be discovered.
Frothingham had first met Blickenstern in the Riviera, where he was
living on the last lees of tolerance. He would have cut him when he ran
across him in New York had he not found him in high favour with the
women who dominated fashionable society. They admitted Blickenstern as
they admitted almost any of the few available men with no occupation
but idleness. They needed escorts, attendants, fetch-and-carry men;
Blickenstern was idle and willing, was big and always well-dressed, was
useful to do the hard work of arranging an entertainment once it had
been planned. And his noisy convulsions flattered those unaccustomed to
having their jokes appreciated.
Frothingham’s cold stare did not disturb Blickenstern, born insensible
to mental temperatures. He posed for a moment to give Frothingham a
chance to admire his fashionable array of new light grey frock suit,
white spats, orchid in buttonhole, and dark red tie; then he dropped
upon the lounge with the good-natured, slightly condescending greeting
he gave men when he had money in his pockets. He explained that he had
come the night before in a private car with a party of distinguished
New Yorkers who had to testify before a Senate committee. “And, do
you know,” said he--his English was idiomatic American and almost
without accent, “the first person I ran into was that Italian scalawag,
Rontivogli.”
Frothingham’s eyeglass glistened; otherwise he did not change
expression. “D’you know ’im?” he asked languidly. “What’ll you drink?”
“Brandy and soda,” replied Blickenstern. “Know ’im? Rather! I’m
responsible for him in this country. He landed without a friend and the
people he had letters to shut the door in his face--they don’t fancy
Italians in New York. I introduced him round and got him in everywhere.
And, by gad, he not only refused to pay a note he gave me, but when
I met him here last night he stared at me as if he’d never seen me
before.”
“Rough, wasn’t it?”
Blickenstern laughed cheerfully, without a trace of irritation. Insults
did not disturb him; he had killed one man and had wounded several
in duels, but he fought only because it was the “proper thing for a
gentleman”--and respect-inspiring in certain countries and in certain
circumstances. “I’m off for home next week,” he said, “never to return
to this bounder-land. I think, just before I go, I’ll get the face
value of that note and interest--and not in money, either.”
Blickenstern had several drinks “on” Frothingham--half a dozen in
as rapid succession as Frothingham could induce. But he refused to
disclose his proposed revenge, only chuckled, “I’ll bet the dago’ll
leave on the first steamer after I sail.”
[Illustration: “_I’ll give the guinea one more chance_”]
Frothingham got Boughton to attempt Blickenstern, and Boughton not
only tried it himself, but also put at work a friend of his in the
German Embassy. Blickenstern, however, would not go beyond wagging
his big blond head and saying, “Wait! I don’t want to spoil the fun.”
The military attaché at the German Embassy was with him when he met
Rontivogli again. “I’ll give the guinea one more chance,” said he,
overflowing with good nature as always when he had drunk to excess.
It was the office of the Shoreham, and Rontivogli was on his way out;
Blickenstern bore down upon him, caught him by the lapel.
“I’m giving you your last chance, Cosimo,” he said. “You’d better pay
up.”
“If you don’t take your hands off me,” exclaimed Rontivogli in French,
“I’ll have you put into the street.” The look in his black eyes
suggested the glitter of a stiletto.
Blickenstern shook him gently. “If you don’t pay that note,” he replied
with unruffled good nature, “I’ll publish it and the contract also. I’m
leaving the country, and don’t care what they think of me here. But
you--I hear you’re about to marry?”
Rontivogli grew yellow under the bronze of his clear, pale skin. “I
tell you, I can’t pay the note. You know it. You drove me out of New
York with your dogging and dunning me. In a few weeks I can pay, and
will.”
“Yes--when you’re married.” Blickenstern laughed loudly and not
hollowly--here was a joke he could see. “What do you think I am--an
imbecile? Don’t I know that as soon as you’re married you can snap your
fingers--and will?”
Rontivogli disengaged himself and readjusted his close-fitting coat.
“I’m certain you will not lay yourself liable to arrest for blackmail,”
he said with calm contempt, and went on to his carriage.
Blickenstern looked after him, nodding and laughing. “Just wait!” he
said, addressing his fellow-German, and including the curious loungers
in the office.
Frothingham searched for Blickenstern--he had a vague idea of
taking him to call at the Popes’. But he could not find him. He did
see Rontivogli, however--one glance was enough to tell him that
Blickenstern’s threats had devoured his high spirits and were eating
into his courage. He waited impatiently for the explosion--a five-days’
wait, for it did not come until the following Tuesday. That morning,
as Hutt went out of his bedroom after fixing his bath, Joe Wallingford
called from their common sitting room:
“You’re awake, aren’t you?”
“Almost,” answered Frothingham.
“Then just read that.” He flung a newspaper through the crack in
Frothingham’s door onto his bed.
Frothingham took the paper and instantly caught the names of Rontivogli
and Blickenstern in the largest headlines. He began eagerly upon a
three-column article, the most of it under a New York date line.
“Ain’t that cruel?” called Wallingford. “Ain’t it a soaker?”
“Um,” replied Frothingham, too busy to pause.
It was an account of a suit brought by Blickenstern against Rontivogli
to collect a note for twenty-five hundred dollars. The “sensation” lay
in a document which Blickenstern had attached to the note and had filed
with the papers in the suit--a contract, reading:
I, Cosimo di Rontivogli, hereby agree to pay Count Eitel zu
Blickenstern twenty-five hundred dollars as soon as he has introduced
me to the persons whose names are written upon the back of this
contract in my handwriting. And I further agree to pay him an
additional twenty-five hundred dollars within one month after I
become engaged to an American lady, whether or not I am introduced to
her by him. And I further agree to pay him an additional ten thousand
dollars within three months after my marriage with an American lady,
whether or not he introduced me to her.
(Signed) COSIMO DI RONTIVOGLI.
This contract, the newspaper said, was in Rontivogli’s autograph,
and was witnessed by two clerks at the Holland House; on the back of
the contract, and also in Rontivogli’s autograph, were the names of
fifteen fashionable and rich New York women. Frothingham glanced at
the names--he knew the bearers of most of them--and hastened on into
Blickenstern’s interview. “In Europe,” he had said to the reporter,
“I should call the fellow out and kill him. Here, where the duel does
not exist, I must take the only redress open to me for his betrayal of
my friendship. I asked him to pay only the note. In fact he owes me
five thousand, as he is now engaged to a Washington heiress. He is a
black rascal. If you will send to Milan you can get a fine tale of how
he happened to come to your country. I owe all my American friends an
apology for introducing him. I confess with shame that but for me he
would have known no one.”
The article went on with an account of Rontivogli’s engagement to
“Miss Elsie Pope, one of the best known young women in Washington,
Philadelphia, and New York society, the only daughter of Senator John
C. Pope, reputed to be the third richest man in the Millionaires’ Club,
as the Senate is called.” Then followed Rontivogli’s sweeping denial,
and his denunciation of the Prussian as a “blackmailer,” a “notorious
card-sharp,” a “thorough scoundrel.”
When Frothingham finished he said, “Gad, what a facer for Miss Pope!”
“Isn’t it, though?” replied Wallingford. “And for her father. I always
blame the fathers.”
“But I thought it was the mothers who hankered after European
marriages,” said Frothingham.
“That’s what is usually said,” Wallingford answered, “because only the
mothers appear in the public part of the business. But who gives up the
money for the settlements? The women ain’t a nose ahead of the men in
the race of snobbishness. Poor little Elsie Pope! This ought to be a
lesson to our girls against----”
He paused abruptly and reddened, though Frothingham could not see him.
“I almost forgot that Frothingham’s one of ’em,” he said to himself.
Frothingham was grinning in the seclusion of his bedroom. “I should say
so!” he exclaimed in his drawling, satirical voice. “Wonder what the
Milan yarn is?”
He learned in a few hours, for the Washington afternoon papers had a
long Associated Press despatch from Milan. Rontivogli, heavily in debt
and ruined, had been backed by a syndicate of his creditors for an
American tour in search of an heiress. They had risked in the venture
forty thousand lire and, within a month, an additional twenty thousand.
They regarded it as a by no means desperate investment for the recovery
of the very large sum which Rontivogli had got out of them before they
discovered his financial plight--certainly with such a title and so
much personal beauty and charm he could win the daughter of one of the
multitude of rich men among those title-crazy American vulgarians. The
Milan despatch set forth that the correspondent had had no difficulty
in getting the facts, as “everyone here knows the story. The formation
of such syndicates is said to be common in England, France, Germany,
Austria, and Italy, and many of them have been successful.”
“Poor Frothingham!” Wallingford thought as he read. “This is bad for
his business. I fancy it’ll be many a day before I see my thousand
again.” And then he delicately gave Frothingham a hint that if he
needed another thousand he could have it. But Frothingham didn’t need
it just then--and, it should be set down to his credit, he would have
hesitated long before taking it, had he needed it. Wallingford was not
wrong in thinking there had been since he met Frothingham a marked
decline in his “honour as a gentleman,” and a marked rise in his
“honour as a man.”
Rontivogli went to the Popes’ at eleven o’clock that morning. The
look of the flunky who opened the door foreshadowed to him his fate.
He was shown not into the drawing room, but into a reception room--a
small alcove to the left of the door, intended for wraps rather than
for callers. The servant returned with a package on his tray. “Miss
Pope is not at ’ome,” he said haughtily, omitting the customary “Your
’Ighness,” and not even substituting so much as a “Sir” for it, “and
she left this to be given to you.”
Rontivogli ignored the impudences of omitting his title and of
addressing him as “you,” and took the package. The servant held aside
the portière with the broadest possible hint in his face and manner.
“Tell Senator Pope that the Prince di Rontivogli wishes to see him,”
said Rontivogli in a tone which at once reduced the servant, in
spite of himself, from a human being to a mechanical device for the
transmission of messages.
When he hesitatingly withdrew Rontivogli opened the package--his ring
with the stone unset and loose in the box. He solved the puzzle almost
as soon as it was presented to him. He scowled, then gave a short,
sneering laugh, put the lid on the box, and thrust it into the tail
pocket of his frock coat.
Senator Pope received him in his study, rising and bowing without
advancing or extending his hand. He was serious, but bland--he did not
know how to be brusque, or even unkind in manner; he did know how to be
diplomatic.
“I have come, sir, to repel the lies of that infamous Prussian,” began
Rontivogli with suppressed passion.
“You will, I trust, not distress me with the painful subject,” said
Pope slowly and gently. “We know that the Count has maligned you. But
you, as a gentleman, must appreciate how terrible the notoriety is to
us all. I assume that you have come to relieve the young lady of the
embarrassment of the situation.”
Rontivogli lost control of himself, raved, paced the floor, pleaded,
denounced, threatened even. But Pope, sympathetic and in the proper
places tenderly sorrowful, pressed in upon the Prince his and Elsie’s
unchangeable determination. At last Rontivogli gave up the useless
battle and drew the box from his pocket. “Your daughter,” he said,
“sent me by a servant this broken ring. The stone has been removed and
to my astonishment I find that a false emerald has been substituted.”
His voice and manner were apologetic, deprecatory, as if Senator Pope
owed him an explanation which he was loath to demand.
He opened the box and exhibited its contents to Pope, who looked with
polite interest. “The stone has become detached,” was all he said.
“But why was it not returned to me?” asked Rontivogli. “Why this false
emerald in its place?”
“It is the same stone,” said Pope. His tone was absent, as if he were
thinking of something else.
“It is not!” Rontivogli’s voice was bold and hard, a covert threat in
it.
They looked each the other straight in the eyes--Pope inquiringly, the
Prince defiantly. Then Pope said: “Ah! Excuse me one moment.”
He left the room, muttering as he reached the hall, “The miserable
swindler! He knows we won’t have any further scandal, no matter what it
costs.” When he returned he had in his hand the emerald he and Elsie
had bought at Tiffany’s. He laid it on the corner of the desk nearest
the nobleman.
“This is _a_ genuine emerald,” he said, his voice neither hot nor cold.
“You may take _it_--if you like.”
“I thank you,” replied the nobleman with a slight bow of
acknowledgment, as if a wrong to him had been righted.
He put the emerald and the ring in his waistcoat pocket; he put the
box, with the false emerald in it, on the corner of the desk exactly
where Senator Pope had laid the genuine stone. Then he went on, in a
way that was the perfection of courtesy: “May I presume further on your
kindness? This German cur has placed me in a distressing position. I
wish to leave America at once, to return where a gentleman cannot be
thus attacked without defence. Unfortunately----” He hesitated with a
fine affectation of delicacy.
Senator Pope’s eyes were more disagreeable to look at than any human
being had ever before seen them. “I shall be glad to give you any
_reasonable_ assistance,” he said with resolute self-control.
“You are most kind!” Rontivogli was almost effusive. “I shall return
any advance you may make as soon as I am at home.”
“How much?” asked Pope with a trace of impatience.
“I have many obligations which must be settled before I leave. I had
just cabled for a remittance, but I wish to go before it can arrive.
Might I trouble you for an advance of, perhaps, five thousand--I think
that will be enough.”
Senator Pope unlocked and opened a drawer, took out a flat package of
bills. “Here is a thousand dollars,” he said. “I cannot advance you
more. And I trust you will sail the day after to-morrow.” He looked
hard at the Prince. “That will spare me the necessity of making a
_private_ appeal to the Italian Embassy through our State Department.”
“You are most kind, _mon cher_ Senator,” replied Rontivogli.
He put the package of bills in the inside pocket of his coat. He
reflected a few seconds, then took his top hat. “Will you do me the
honour of presenting my compliments and regrets to Madame Pope--and to
Mademoiselle?” he said with steady eyes and elaborate politeness. “I
thank you again. I regret that we part in circumstances so unhappy. I
shall send your little advance within the month.”
He bowed profoundly, and Senator Pope inclined his head. He went to
the door, turned there, bowed again. “_Au revoir_, my dear Senator,”
he said cordially, and was gone--a fascinating patrician figure of
handsome ease and dignity.
XV
Frothingham let three days pass, and on the fourth called at Senator
Pope’s. Elsie was in Philadelphia--was visiting an aunt. It had not
occurred to him that she would run away and hide herself, so little did
he think of the matter in any other light than that of a game between
himself and Rontivogli. He was much upset, and did not know what move
to make next. Fate helped him the evening of the same day--the mail
brought a note from Elsie:
MY DEAR FRIEND:
I can’t help writing to thank you. You warned me, and you were good
and kind about it, and I was very disagreeable. I should like to say
so to you, but I don’t suppose you’ll be in Philadelphia, will you?
And it will be many a day before I see Washington. Indeed, I hope I
shall never see it again. I didn’t deserve your friendship.
E. W. P.
Frothingham had not reflected on this letter long before he was
telling Hutt to get his belongings together. The next afternoon found
him at the Bellevue in Philadelphia, and a few hours later he was
dining at the Hopkins’ with Elsie and her uncle and aunt. He liked
the Hopkinses--stiff and shy, but kindly. He liked the dark furniture,
and walls and woodwork, suggesting old English; liked the faces in
the family portraits--English faces; liked surroundings where there
was nothing new or new-fashioned except his own and Elsie’s dress,
where there was so much that was fine as well as old. And he had never
liked Elsie so well as now that she was chastened into an appealing
gentleness and humility.
He saw that he had been right in thinking her note an apology, and an
attempt to recall him. And when the Hopkinses left them alone in the
parlour after dinner he soon said: “I’ve come for an answer to that
question I asked you--down by the monument.”
She hung her head and flushed deeply. “Oh, I wish to get away from
all this,” she said in a low voice. “I’ll be glad to go far away--far
as--as you care to take me.”
He sat beside her and took her hand. But he made no effort to show
“temperament.” “I’ll go back to Washington and see your father
to-morrow--if you wish,” he said, after a silence.
“Yes,” she replied.
She wrote a long letter to her father as soon as Frothingham was
gone--her maid posted it at midnight. So it came to pass that Senator
Pope was expecting him. He received him with the benign courtesy he
gave to the humblest negro. He liked Frothingham--but, for that matter,
it was impossible for him to dislike any member of the human race, even
Rontivogli, or any well-disposed domestic animal; ever since he had
“gathered his bunch,” his content and complacence had, with a few brief
pauses, been bubbling over in words and acts of kindness. But when
Frothingham said, “I’ve come to see you, sir, about something of which
I and your daughter have been talking,” his face clouded with a look
of apologetic distress--almost the same look as that with which he had
received Rontivogli for the final interview.
Frothingham would not have attributed it to embarrassment had he known
Senator Pope better. It was the look he wore whenever the exigencies
of fate forced him to do anything unpleasant--whether to refuse a
small favour, or to cut a rival’s throat, or to scuttle a financial or
political ship. For, being a good man, and a lover of smoothness, it
pained him exceedingly to cause his fellow-beings any other emotion
than happiness. In the present instance the cause of his distress was
the discovery that an alliance with nobility would destroy his chances
for the Vice-Presidential nomination which he was plotting to get. He
had not confided his ambition to his closest political lieutenant.
But when Rontivogli was exposed and cast out, his colleague and
boss had said to him: “I’m glad to hear you’re not going to take a
foreign nobleman into your family, Senator. Until the engagement was
announced we were hoping you could be induced to make the race for
the Vice-Presidency. While an Italian wouldn’t have been as bad as an
Englishman on account of the Irish vote, I don’t think the party would
have stood for even an Italian. The people don’t like that sort of
thing.”
That settled Senator Pope’s aristocratic ambitions.
“I’ve come, sir,” Frothingham was saying, “to ask your consent to
marrying your daughter.”