AN INVITATION TO A BALL
In the Villa Ariadne the wonderful fountain by Donatello was encircled
by a deep basin in which many generations of goldfish swam about. Only
the old gardener knew the secret of how these fish lived through the
chill Florentine winters. Yet, every spring, about the time when the
tourists began to prowl round, the little goldfish were to be seen
again, ready for bread-crumbs and bugs of suicidal tendencies. Forming a
kind of triangle about the basin were three ancient marble benches, such
as the amiable old Roman senators were wont to lounge upon during the
heat of the afternoon, or such as Catullus reclined upon while reading
his latest lyric to his latest affinity. At any rate, they were very
old, earth-stained and time-stained and full of unutterable history, and
with the eternal cold touch of stone which never wholly warms even under
warmest sun. The kind of bench which Alma-Tadema usually fills with
diaphanous maidens.
At this particular time a maiden, not at all diaphanous, but mentally
and physically material, sat on one of these benches, her arms thrown
out on either side of the crumbling back, her chin lowered, and her eyes
thoughtfully directed toward the little circle of disturbed water where
the goldfish were urging for the next crumb. Now, as Phoebus was
somewhere near four in the afternoon, he was growing ruddy with effort
in the final spurt for the western horizon. So the marbles and the
fountain and the water and the maiden all melted into a harmonious
golden tone.
Merrihew was not so poetical as to permit this picture to go on
indefinitely; so he stole up from behind with all the care of a
practised hunter till he stood directly behind the maiden. She still
dreamed. Then he put his hands over her eyes. She struggled for a brief
moment, then desisted.
"It is no puzzle at all," she declared. "I can smell horse, horse, and
again horse. Mr. Merrihew--"
"Yes, I know all about it. I should have fetched along a sachet-powder.
I never remember anything but one thing, Kitty, and that's you." He came
round and sat down beside her. "There's no doubt that I reek of the
animal. But the real question is," bluntly, "how much longer are you
going to keep me dangling on the string? I've been coming up here for
ten days, now, every afternoon."
"Ten days," Kitty murmured. She was more than pretty to-day, and there
was malice aforethought in all the little ribbons and trinkets and
furbelows. She had dressed expressly for this moment, but Merrihew was
not going to be told so. "Ten days," she repeated; and mentally she
recounted the pleasant little journeys into the hills and the
cherry-pickings.
"And dangling, dangling. I've been hanging in mid-air for nearly a year
now. When are you going to put me out of my misery?" His tone was
chiding and moody.
"But am I to be blamed if, after having refused twice to marry you, you
still persist?" Kitty assumed a judicial air.
"All you have to do," sadly, "is to tell me to clear out."
"That's just it," cried Kitty wrathfully. "If I tell you to go it will
be for good; and I don't want you to go that way. I like you; you are
cheerful and amusing, and I find pleasure in your company. But every day
in the year, breakfast and dinner!" She appealed to the god in the
fountain. What unreasonable beings men were!
"But you haven't refused me this time."
"Because I wish to make it as easy as possible for you." Which of the
two meanings she offered him was lost upon Merrihew; he saw but one, nor
the covert glance, roguish and mischievous withal. "Come, let us be
sensible for ten minutes."
Merrihew laid his watch on the bench beside him. Kitty dimpled.
"Don't you love it in Florence?" she asked.
"Oh, yes," scraping the gravel with his crop. "Hillard says I'm
finishing my bally education at a canter. I can tell a saint from a
gentleman in a night-gown, a halo from a barrel-hoop, and I can drink
Chianti without making a face."
Kitty laughed rollickingly. For beneath her furbelows and ribbons and
trinkets she was inordinately happy and light of heart. Her letter had
come; she was only waiting for the day of sailing; and she was to take
back with her the memory of the rarest adventure which ever befell a
person, always excepting those of the peripatetic sailor from Bagdad.
"I want to go home," said Merrihew, when her laughter died away in a
soft mutter.
"What! leave this beautiful world for the sordid one yonder?"
"Sordid it may be, but it's home. I can speak to and understand every
man I meet on the streets there; there are the theaters and the club and
the hunting and fishing and all that. Here it's nothing but pictures and
concierges and lying cabbies. If I could collect all my friends and
plant 'em over here, why, I could stand it. But I'm lonesome. Did you
ever try to spread frozen butter on hot biscuits? Well, that's the way I
feel."
This metaphor brought tears of merriment to Kitty's eyes. She would have
laughed at anything this day.
"Daniel, you are hopeless."
"I admit it."
"How beautiful the cypresses are in the sunshine!" she exclaimed,
standing.
He reached out and caught her hand, gently pulling her down to the
bench.
"The ten minutes are up," he said.
"Oh, I said let us be sensible for ten minutes," she demurred.
"I've been telling you the truth; that's sensible enough. Kitty, will
you marry me?"
"Could you take care of me?"
"I have these two hands. I'll work."
"That would be terrible! Oh, if you were only rich!"
"You don't mean that, Kitty."
"No," relenting, "I don't. But you bother me."
"All right. This will be the last time. Will you marry me? I will do all
a man can to make you happy. I love you with all my heart. I know.
You're afraid; you've an idea that I am fickle. But not this time,
Kitty, not this time. Will you?"
"I can not give up the stage." She knew very well that she could, but
she had an idea.
"I don't ask even that. I'll travel with you and make myself useful."
"You would soon tire of that." But Kitty eyed him with a kindly look. He
_was_ good to look at. Kitty was like the timid bather; she knew that
she was going to take the plunge, but she must put one foot into the
water, withdraw it, shudder, and try it again.
"Tire?" said Merrihew. "If I did I shouldn't let you know it. I'm a
homeless beggar, anyhow; I've always been living in boarding-houses and
clubs and hotels; it won't matter so long as you are with me."
Kitty threw a crust to the goldfish and watched them swirl about it
greedily. Merrihew had no eyes but for her. Impulsively he held out his
hand. Kitty looked at it with thought; this would be the final plunge.
Then, without further hesitance, indifferent to the future or the past,
conscious only of the vast happiness of the present, Kitty laid her hand
in his. He would have drawn her into his arms had not they both seen
O'Mally pushing through the box-hedge, followed by some belated
tourists. Merrihew swore softly and Kitty laughed.
On the terrace the tea-table dazzled the eye with its spotless linen,
its blue Canton, and its bundle of pink roses. Hillard extended his cup
for a second filling, vaguely wondering where Merrihew was. They had
threshed continental politics, engineering, art and the relative crafts,
precious stones, astronomy and the applied sciences, music, horses, and
geology, with long pauses in between. Both knew instinctively that this
learned discourse was but a makeshift, a circuitous route past
danger-points. "Have you ever heard of telling fortunes in tea-grounds?"
he asked.
"Yes. It is a pleasant fallacy, and nothing ever comes true." And La
Signorina vaguely wondered where Kitty was. She needed Kitty at this
moment, she who had never needed anybody.
The tramp of feet beyond the wall diverted them for a space. A troop of
marksmen from the range were returning cityward. They were dirty and
tired, yet none seemed discontented with his lot. They passed in a haze
of dust.
The man and woman resumed their chairs, and Hillard bent his head over
the cup and stared at the circling tea-grounds in the bottom. The
movement gave her the opportunity she desired: to look freely and
without let at his shapely head. Day after day, serene and cloudless
Florentine days, this same scene or its like had been enacted. It took
all her verbal skill to play this game safely; a hundred times she saw
something in his eyes that warned her and armed her. When he passed that
evening on horseback she knew that these things were to be. She had two
battles where he had only one; for she had herself to war against. Each
night after he had gone she fought with innocent desire; argument after
argument she offered in defense. But these were all useless; she must
send him away. And yet, when he came, as she knew he would, she offered
him tea! And in rebellion she asked, Why not? What harm, what evil? Was
it absolutely necessary that she should let all pleasure pass, thrust it
aside? The suffering she had known, would not that be sufficient penance
for this little sin? But on his side, was this being fair to him? This
man loved her, and she knew it. Up to this time he had met her but
twice, and yet he loved her, incredible as it seemed. And though he
never spoke of this love with his lips, he was always speaking it with
his eyes; and she was always looking into his eyes.
She never looked into her own heart; wisely she never gave rein to
self-analysis; she dared not. And so she drifted on, as in some sunny
dream of remote end.
How inexplicable were the currents and cross-currents of life! She had
met a thousand men, handsomer, more brilliant; they had not awakened
more than normal interest. And yet this man, quiet, humorous, ordinarily
good-looking, aroused in her heart discord and penetrated the barriers
to the guarded sentiment. Why? Always this query. Perhaps, after all, it
was simply the initial romance which made the impression so lasting. Ah,
well; to-morrow or the next day the end would come; so it did not
matter.
There was one bit of light in this labyrinth: Worth had spoken; that
disagreeable incident was closed. And this present dream, upon what reef
would it carry her? She shrugged. This action brought Hillard back to
earth, for he, too, had been dreaming. He raised his head.
"Why did you do that?" he asked.
"Do what?"
"Shrug."
"Did I shrug? I did so unconsciously. Perhaps I was thinking of O'Mally
and his flock of tourists."
"Doesn't it annoy you?"
"Not in the least. It has been a fine comedy. I believe he is the most
accomplished prevaricator I ever met. He remembers the lie of yesterday
and keeps adding to it. I don't see how he manages to do it. He is
better than Pietro. Pietro used to bring them into the house." She
gathered up a handful of the roses and pressed them against her face,
breathing deeply.
Hillard trembled. She was so beautiful; the glow of the roses on her
cheeks and throat, the sun in her hair, and the shadows in her eyes. To
smother the rush of words which were gathering at his lips, he raised
his cup and drank. Ten days! It was something. But the battle was
wearing; the ceaseless struggle not to speak from his full heart was
weakening him. Yet he knew that to speak was to banish the dream,
himself to be banished with it.
"If I were a poet, which I am not--" He paused irresolutely.
"You would extemporize on the beauty of the perspective," she
supplemented. "How the Duomo shines! And the towers, and the Arno--"
"I was thinking of your hair," he interrupted. "I have never seen
anything quite like it. It isn't a wig, is it?" jestingly.
"No, it is my own," with an answering smile.
"Ah, that night! It is true, as you said; it is impossible to forget the
charm of it."
She had recourse to the roses again. Dangerous ground.
"You have not told me the real reason why you sang under my window that
night."
"Have I not? Well, then, there can be no harm in telling you that. I had
just signed the contract to sing with the American Comic Opera Company
in Europe. I saw the world at my feet, for it would be false modesty to
deny that I have a voice. More disillusions! The world is _not_ at my
feet," lightly.
"But I am," he replied quietly.
She passed this declaration. "I might have more successfully applied to
the grand opera in New York; but my ambition was to sing here first."
"But in comic opera?"
"Another blunder, common of its kind to me. Have I not told you that I
am always making missteps such as have no retracing?"
"Will you answer a single question?"
She stroked the roses.
"Will you?"
"I can make no promise. Rather ask the question. If I see the wisdom of
answering it, I shall do so."
"Is there another man?" He did not look at her but rather at her fingers
embedded in the roses. Silence, which grew and lengthened.
"What do you mean?" she asked evenly, when she realized that the silence
was becoming too long.
"In Venice you told me that there was a barrier. I ask now if this
barrier be a man."
"Yes."
A wrinkle of pain passed over his heart. "If you love him--"
"Love him? No, no!... I had hoped you would not speak like this; I
relied upon your honor."
"Is it dishonorable for me to love you?"
"No, but it is for me--to permit you to say so!"
He could hear the birds twittering in the boughs of the oak. A lizard
paused on the damp stone near-by. A bee hovered over the roses, twirled
a leaf impatiently, and buzzed its flight over the old wall. He was
conscious of recognizing these sounds and these objects, but with the
consciousness of a man suddenly put down in an unknown country, in an
unknown age, far away from all familiar things.
"I deplore the misfortune which crossed your path and mine again," she
went on relentlessly, as much to herself as to him. "But I am something
of a fatalist. We can not avoid what is to be."
He was pale, but not paler than she.
"I offer you nothing, Mr. Hillard, nothing; no promise, no hope,
nothing. A few days longer, and we shall separate finally."
She was about to rise and ask him to excuse her and retire, when
Merrihew and Kitty came into view. There was nothing now to do but wait.
She sought ease from the tenseness of the moment in sorting the roses.
Hillard stirred the cold dregs in his tea-cup. Cold dregs, indeed! The
light of the world was gone out.
Merrihew's face was as broad and shining as the harvest moon. He came
swinging down the path, Kitty's arm locked in his. And Kitty's face was
rosy. Upon reaching the table Merrihew imitated the bow of an old-time
courtier.
"It is all over," he said, swallowing. "Kitty has promised to marry me
as soon as we land in America. I'm a lucky beggar!"
"Yes, you are," said Hillard. "Congratulations to both of you."
La Signorina took hold of Kitty's hands. This was a much-needed
diversion.
"Is it true, Kitty?"
"Yes, ma'am," Kitty answered, with a stage courtesy. "I have promised to
marry him, for there seemed no other way of getting rid of him."
Hillard forced a smile. "It's a shame to change such a pretty name as
yours, Miss Killigrew."
"I realize that," replied Kitty with affected sadness.
"Go to!" laughed the happy groom-elect. "Merrihew and Killigrew; there's
not enough difference to matter. And this very night I shall cable to
America."
"Cable to America?" echoed a tri-chorus.
"Yes; to have a parson in the custom-shed when we land. I know Kitty,
and I am not going to take any chances."
This caused real laughter. La Signorina relighted the tea-lamp, and
presently they were all talking together, jesting and offering
suggestions. No matter how great the ache in the heart may be, there is
always some temporary surcease. Hillard was a man.
They laughed quietly as they saw O'Mally gravely conducting his charge
to the gates. He returned with Smith. Both were solemn-visaged.
"Well, noble concierge?" inquired La Signorina. "Why, you look as if you
were the bearer of ill-tidings."
"Perhaps I am," said O'Mally. He tossed his cap on the stones and sat
down with Smith on the iron bench. "No, no tea, thank you. What I need
is a glass, a whole glass, of good Irish whisky. This thing has been on
my mind since noon, but I concluded to wait rather than spoil the whole
day. I should have known nothing about it if it hadn't been for old
Pietro."
"What has happened?" asked Merrihew.
"Enough," said O'Mally laconically. He directed his next words to La
Signorina. "You are sure of this friend of yours, the princess?"
"Certainly," answered La Signorina, her astonishment increasing.
"She gave you the right authority?"
"Absolutely," more and more astonished.
"Agreed that we could remain here as long as we pleased?"
"Yes, yes!" impatiently.
"Well, before I swing the thunder, let me tell you something," said
O'Mally. "I was in Florence a few days ago. I made some inquiries."
"About my friend the princess?"
"Yes. It was impertinent, I know. I interviewed four or five hotel
concierges. Only one of them ever heard of the name; and then it was an
old prince, not a woman. This concierge directed me to another, but as
he spoke only Italian, we could not make things fit. But when I
mentioned the princess' name, he shrugged and laughed, as if something
highly amusing had hit him."
"Go on, Mr. O'Mally; go on. This is interesting. Your doubt is not at
all complimentary to me. The police have recognized my authority."
"And that's what feazes me. But the main thing is this: your princess
has played us all rather a shabby trick. In the letter you read to us in
Venice she said that she had never visited this villa."
"Only in her youth," replied La Signorina, her brows drawing together in
a frown. "But I know her so well; she is not in the habit of making
misstatements. To the point at once. What has happened to bring about
all this pother?"
"It is simply this: our little jig is up," responded O'Mally. "Read
these and see for yourself." He gave to her a broad white envelope and a
clipping from _La Nazione_ of the day before.
[Illustration: "Our little jig is up. Read these and see for yourself."]
She seized the clipping eagerly, but the eagerness died from her face
quickly, leaving it pale and stony. The clipping fluttered unheeded from
her fingers to the ground. Her gaze passed from one face to another, all
the while a horror growing in her eyes. Slowly she picked up the
envelope and drew out the card. Her eyes filled, but with tears of rage
and despair.
"Tell me, what is it?" cried Hillard, troubled, for his keen lover's
eyes saw these changes.
In answer she gave him the card. He read it. It _was_ rather a knock.
Now, why should the Principessa di Monte Bianca take it into her head to
give a ball in the Villa Ariadne, Wednesday week, when she had loaned
the villa indefinitely to her friend, La Signorina?