Over the tea she was unusually silent, while Maria, ensconced at last
on her favorite chaise longue, mellowed under the warmth. Carlota’s
voice, cool with daring, broke in on her relaxation.
“Maria, when will you treat me as a woman?”
Maria’s face flushed as she spilled the tea blindly on the rug.
“You are in love?” she gasped. “Never would you have thought of such a
thing if you were not in love.”
“Oh, you poor, old preciosa!” Carlota laughed richly, folding her arms
around the signora’s ample shoulders. “I wouldn’t know love if I met
him face to face this minute in your teacup. But I want to know so
much, Maria. I want to ask you about so many things. You love me, do
you not? Enough to tell me anything at all I ask you?”
“Ah, do I not,” sighed Maria uneasily. “Is it about Mr. Ward?”
Carlota drew up a low footstool of rose silk and ivory carving, and
laid her glossy head close to the one on the pillows.
“I have said I hate him,” she replied composedly. “Let us forget that
I ever have to see him again. I want you to listen and love me more
than you ever have so you will answer me truthfully. Why did Signor
Jacobelli tell Mr. Ward to-day that my grandmother sacrificed her whole
womanhood and that he would rather see me dead than have me like her.
What was behind the wall of Tittani that I never knew about?”
“He is a pompous old egoist,” Maria answered with amazing composure
considering the tumult in her mind. “You remember her? Did she not live
like a queen with her court even at her age? She was the most regal
person I ever knew. You can remember the life at the villa? Was it
somber or full of unhappiness? She was the Contessa Tittani. She had
everything she wanted. Some day when you have gained all that she did,
we will go back to the old villa, and spend our summers there. Remember
your goats, beloved, the little Nini and Cherubini--”
“They will be gone when we get back,” Carlota said slowly. “You have
lied to me as you always do, Maria, with love. I will tell you things
I remember that you do not know I know. I can remember my mother. She
was very white, with eyes like the lower pool in the moonlight, and
her hair was so soft and so long. I felt it always over my face in the
darkness when she bent to kiss me good-night. I have dreamt I felt it
since, and wakened reaching for her. You know Assunta?”
Maria murmured an inarticulate, doubtful injunction to Assunta’s
attendant dæmon, and made horns with her finger-tips with a
subconscious reversion to the old superstition of the Trentino fireside
tales.
“She had a rattling tongue. What has she told you?”
“It was about the wall.” Carlota clasped her hands around her knees,
and looked before her seeing the way of the old villa and the beauty of
it. “It was so high to me in those days. I have looked up at it, Maria,
until it seemed as if its highest terrace met the sky.”
“There were seven, built by Giovanni Fontana.”
“I loved them. The stone was so old and rose-colored with green and
violet streaking it. On the side towards the road it was so bare and
forbidding, and on our side it was all beauty and lavishness as if
it could not give us too much, of its bounty. There was no entrance,
you remember, Maria, there by the road, and I used to follow the wall
around the garden trying to see how you ever went out through it. And
Assunta told me, I suppose to keep me satisfied, that no one had ever
found the way over the wall excepting my mother--”
“Ah, the blind, cackling pullet. If I had known--” Maria nodded her
head with relish. “She was selling melons in Mondragone when your
mother lived.”
“And when I asked her how my mother ever climbed the wall”--Carlota’s
eyes closed and opened again with dreamy ecstasy--“she told me she
escaped with the wings of love. After that--don’t scold, dear, I love
to talk to you about it, and there is no one else now--after that
I loved the wall better than all the gardens and the fountains and
the grottoes even. Won’t you tell me what Jacobelli meant, now? What
meaning did he put into it all, the wall and the unhappiness of my
grandmother and the tragedy of it all?”
Maria Roma was silent for some time. Slowly she reached for a cigarette
and lighted it, drawing deeply on it as she stared upward at the
ceiling.
“I have waited for this,” she said finally, with a sigh of resignation.
“Some day I knew you would ask me, and out of all the world, I would
rather tell you, because I will discriminate between what you should
know and what is best buried in that old garden tomb. Wait.” She
pushed away Carlota’s reaching arms. “See what I have saved for you out
of the past.”
Impulsively she rose and crossed to the end of the studio. Hidden here
behind old strips of tapestry and mediæval embroidery were old locked
chests which had been brought from Italy with all the care the dower
treasures of a princess might have commanded. Carlota had never even
guessed at their contents. If she had given the matter a thought at
all, she had believed them filled with little household keepsakes,
linen, silver, bric-à-brac which Maria had managed to save for her.
Now she stood in amazement as the old singer lifted out costume after
costume from the chests, stage raiment and festive gowns of thirty and
forty years before. From carved and inlaid boxes she drew out gems and
decorations that had been lavished on the great diva and laid them
before Carlota, forgetting in the pride of the moment the discretion of
silence regarding the romance of genius. The girl’s eyes widened with
glowing wonder and delight as she fingered the old treasures, listening
to Maria’s vivid, picturesque recital of the reign of Margherita Paoli.
“She was taller than you, cara mia, majestic, a queen in carriage
and expression. She never wore other hair than her own. It was
golden bronze and hung in ripples to her knees. I have woven it in
Marguerita’s plaits with these strands of pearls, and coiled it high
into Fedora’s crown with this diamond and ruby tiara. The necklace is
here, too.” She piled the contents of the cases eagerly until she found
it. “Rubies and diamonds. They came from the crown jewels of Roumania,
a part of the Constantinople loot centuries ago. The crown prince was
exiled to a mountain garrison in the Caucasus for two years after he
gave them to her, but he never told where they were. This center ruby
in the tiara is from Persia, one of the finest in the world. Some day
you shall wear them. They will suit you as they did her. And this--ah,
my child, you should have seen her wearing this in ‘Semiramide.’” She
lifted out a heavy barbaric stomacher encrusted in rough, uncut jewels.
“This was given to her by the Rajah of Kadurstan. He tried to kill
himself after the performance one night in Paris when she refused to
see him. This necklace of opals and emeralds was from the Grand Duke
of Teklahava. It had been part of the Byzantine loot in the days of
Ivan the Terrible. Ah, but, Carlota, behold, this was ever about her
throat, the medallion hidden in her breast from all eyes. Never will
I forget the night when Tennant gave it to her. The king had given
a farewell banquet for her. She was decorated and fêted as never any
other singer was. And after it was over, I saw the two as they stood
out in the moonlit loggia of the palace, and he clasped this about
her white throat. His portrait is in the medallion. There is a secret
spring--wait--so it opens. Was he not a worthy lover for her?”
Carlota looked long at the pictured face in the old gold and crystal
case. It was old-fashioned in style. The hair was worn long and curled
back thickly from his forehead. It was the head of an enthusiast,
boyish, too, in its eager intensity, passionate, unsatisfied.
“He does not look happy,” she said slowly. “I have never heard his name
before. Who was he, Maria?”
Signora slipped from the clouds with a shock of reality and caught the
medallion from her hand.
“No one, no one at all. See this ring, one single perfect solitaire
surrounded by black pearls, a gift from the Empress of France, my
child.”
Carlota rose, staring down at the wealth of jewels with puzzled, hurt
pride.
“Why have we accepted money from Mr. Ward to pay for my tuition when we
had these to sell?”
The vandalism of the suggestion horrified Maria. She replaced
everything with a resolute hand, locking each case from a small bunch
of keys suspended from a slender chain on her neck.
“You would market the trophies of your grandmother!” she said
haughtily. “America has commercialized you. They belong to the woman
you will be. I will give you the keys at your début.”
“I don’t care so very much for them. They are beautiful, but, after
all, they are only things you buy. I asked you for something richer.”
She laid her arms coaxingly about Maria’s throat. “Was my mother happy?”
“If love can make any woman happy, she was.” Signora Roma’s voice broke
with agitation. “Do not ask me anything further.”
“She was very young to die, was she not, only twenty-two? She was
younger than I am now when she first met my father, wasn’t she, Maria?”
No answer, but she felt the tears on her own cheek as she pressed it to
Maria’s face. “I think I know what it is you will not tell me. With all
the jewels and triumphs, my grandmother lost her love, and somehow, my
mother found love even though she died so young and was never famous.
Is that it?”
Maria suddenly reached her hands upward and framed the face above her
in a tremulous caress.
“You have the heritage of rebellion; how can I warn you or teach you to
fight it? Your worst enemy, Carlota, is your own heart. Distrust it. It
is the traitor to your individuality--your genius, whatever you like to
call it.”
Carlota stood erect, laughing suddenly, her arms outstretched widely.
“Listen to this that Assunta told me too,” she said teasingly. “Once,
hundreds of years ago, the Villa Tittani was part of an old castle. The
wall is all that is left of it, and the old tower above the grottoes.
And there was a Princess Fiametta--”
Maria made horns with her finger-tips hastily.
“Assunta was a scandalous waggle-tongue. Had I only guessed that she
was stuffing your ears with this sort of gunpowder, I would have known
how to finish her forever. I hear the bell.”
It was the Marchese, courtly and whimsical as he glanced shrewdly from
one to the other.
“I have come to entreat a favor,” he said happily. “After I have
partaken of your most excellent tea, ma bella Maria, I will ask it. I
have not the courage yet. How is our little one?”
Carlota’s brows drew together behind his back. She waited in silence,
listening while the Marchese brought Maria into a mellow mood with his
little buoyant stories and high lights of adventure.
“Ah, but I have seen sights to-day, a whole avenue of traffic held up
because a tiny goldfinch escaped from a bird store on Twenty-Third
Street. It alighted directly in the car track and shrank there panting
and terrified, and in this hard-hearted, prosaic city, not one would
drive over it. Is not that a fair sign of the times, my friend? And
again, I take the ’bus down the Avenue at dusk for the beauty of the
lights in perspective, like magnolia blooms if you but half close your
eyes. And yesterday I saw the conductor, a red-cheeked Irish boy,
reading a newspaper that had been left on a seat. What you think?
The baseball column? The sports? Not at all.” The Marchese chuckled
tenderly. “He reads the advice to young mothers. See? It is the brand
new bambino somewhere with its finger-tips rose-petaled, holding his
heart fast. And a pack of children on Thompson Street fighting--for
what? A trampled pink carnation. I would have turned them loose if I
could have, in that meadow of oleanders and the orange grove beyond,
you remember, Maria, as you come down from Frascati and below the
Campagna and the sea. Salute!” He sighed reminiscently, and reached
for his teacup. “I am an old romanticist, Carlota. Your youth must be
patient with my maunderings of sentiment.”
Maria retired to the kitchenette to prepare fresh tea, and Carlota
lighted the candles on the low table by the fire.
“You are happy, yes?” the Marchese asked, regarding her with the pride
he took no pains to conceal. “Jacobelli tells me it may only be for one
year more, and then, behold! I live for that first night of triumph.”
Carlota sighed impatiently. It was as though the sight of the jewels
and story of La Paoli’s life had wakened in her youth’s urge for
adventure. She looked up at the fine old face wistfully.
“I am lonely. Tanta keeps me as secluded as if I were in a convent.
Surely I am old enough to go out somewhere. Now that summer is over, it
seems as if I could not stand another winter. Aren’t they bleak here?
Every day when we walk in the Park, I want to turn and run from it all,
the stripped trees and caged animals, and Maria and Jacobelli, and
everything!” Her finger-tips stretched widely. “I am homesick.”
“No, you are just ennuied, that is all,” said the Marchese soothingly.
He pursed his lips until his silver-gray imperial and pointed mustache
took on the semblance of a crescent and scimitar. Yet his eyes twinkled
down at her understandingly. “Sunday evening I go, as is my custom, to
the home of my friend Carrollton Phelps. Many, many interesting people
drop in there at that time. It would be a beginning for you, but, mind,
I will not have you known for what you are. Not a whisper.”
“Are they all”--Carlota checked herself; not for worlds would she have
wounded the debonnair old courtier by even suggesting that he was past
the meridian of life--“famous?”
“No, no, no. They are all aspirants,” he corrected. “One must show some
signs of having the germ, at least, of genius before the door opens
widely, but you will find many who are young like yourself, many. I,
myself, will prepare Maria.”
But when the evening came the signora was indisposed, and insisted on
Carlota’s remaining with her. The Marchese waved her objections aside
tenderly.
“It is most informal and Mrs. Phelps is charming. Here in America,
Maria, we adjust the barriers of etiquette to the whim of the moment. I
will guard her from anything dangerous, you may be sure.”
They had taken a hansom down the avenue, instead of a taxi. It was the
Marchese’s choice.
“I never like to be hurried,” he told her. “I do not like this--what do
they call it?--joy of speeding. The aeroplane, yes. I have two boys in
the service at home, but not for amusement. I like to take my little
moments of outdoor enjoyment leisurely. You will see, my dear, how
beautiful this is. I call it my avenue of flower lights.”
The home of the Phelpses was on East Tenth Street, a tall four-storied
residence of dark brown stone. Above the low deep French doorway there
stretched across the entire second floor a great carved Moorish window
of exquisite fretwork which Phelps had transported from an old palace
in Seville.
Despite her indisposition Maria had given much thought and anxiety to
Carlota’s toilette for the occasion. Finally, she had laid out for her
a beautiful old scarf of Point Venise, so yellowed by age that it was
the tint of old ivory. It was encrusted with tiny seed pearls, and
with it she selected from one of the chests a girdle of gold links,
cunningly joined in serpentine fashion with pendent topaz here and
there.
“It is a trifle too barbaric,” she had mused, “but yet it suits you.
And you shall wear white velvet like Julietta.”
“Oh, no, I will not,” laughed Carlota, kissing her. “You would have me
perpetually making my début, tanta.” Accordingly she had chosen her own
gown, the hue of an oak autumn leaf, which fell close to her slender
young figure in mediæval lines. As she lingered before the mirror
before leaving, Carlota smiled back at her reflection almost with a
challenge. Back at the villa there was an old painting hanging at a
turn in a staircase, where the sunlight would fall full upon it from an
oriel window high above. It was the Princess Fiametta, her eyes wearied
with the weight of the golden crown that bound her brows, her gown the
same tint and style as the one Carlota wore to-night. She turned her
girdle sideways so that its line might correspond with that in the
painting, and rumpled her hair to make the resemblance more striking.
The old legend Assunta had told her recurred vividly to-night. She had
been merely a girl princess, imprisoned in the old garden and towered
castle by custom and precedent. And there had been a young fisherman
from the village at the foot of the mountain, Peppino, who had come
to the Castle. From her tower window she had seen and loved him, and
at a fête in the village she had dared to escape over the wall and
mingle with the people. Peppino had danced with her, and wooed her,
not knowing she was the princess in disguise, and his sweetheart had
stabbed her through jealousy. It was the tragedy of youth’s eternal
quest after romance and had lost nothing from Assunta’s impassioned
telling.
“To-night, maybe,” Carlota told herself, half laughingly, half in
earnest, as she looked back in the mirror, “we scale the wall of
Tittani.”