Signor Jacobelli was in a baffled mood. Every time Carlota came for
her lesson, he would regard her thoughtfully, dubiously, but found no
solution to his problem in her happy, serene face and dark eyes that
held a gleam of mirth nowadays.
Once she had just missed meeting Ward himself there. It had been his
first visit since the dinner, and after his departure a florist’s
messenger brought her a purple box filled with single-petaled Parma
violets. Under them lay a velvet case containing a pendant, two
perfect, pear-shaped pearls. She retained the messenger, writing on the
back of Ward’s own card in haste:
SIGNOR: I thank you. The only jewels I ever wear are those of my
grandmother!
CARLOTA TRELANGO.
“And the flowers--behold!” she flung up a window and leaned far out to
throw them down into the street. A street piano played below, the wife
of the owner turning the crank with a stout bambino on one hip. “You
throw her some money now, maestro, so that both soul and body are fed.
Who was it said, bread for the body, white hyacinths--” She checked
herself, recalling suddenly that it had been Dmitri who loved to chant
Mahomet’s axiom, but Jacobelli had not even noticed it. Grumblingly he
dropped a crumpled bill to the woman’s extended apron.
“You are not a spoiled child any longer,” he told Carlota. “You are
now a person of destiny. Why, then, do you persist in acting like a
petulant marionette instead of the dignified artiste. You cannot afford
to rebuff Ward. He is your patron. You are merely a little beggar on
the doorstep of hope, my child, and you take on the airs of a queen.”
“And here you have been telling me all along that I must learn to be
queenlike and aloof.” Carlota sat back in the winged armchair beside
the fireplace. It was far too deep and too high for her, having been
selected solely to accommodate the rotund proportions of Jacobelli, but
she preferred it. Some way, it had the significance of a throne chair
when she felt herself holding the balance of power, as now. “And if I
am a person of destiny, then how can anything that I do alter events?”
She laughed up at him softly, teasingly. He looked away from her in
somber disapproval. “Oh, my dear, dear good teacher and friend,” she
pleaded with swift reaction. “Forgive me. I will try, indeed I will.
What do you want me to do? Anything but see Mr. Ward alone.”
“You shall prepare for your début.” Jacobelli took up her challenge
instantly. “Casanova will place you on the list for next season. That
will give you an entire year for more study. And you shall flame forth
in glory as Margherita or Gilda--”
“Why not Santuzza or Aïda?” Carlota’s temper rose at his suggestion.
“Let me sing these, my maestro, when I am stout and placid some day,
but now, give me the new rôles.”
“You seek the spectacular,” he accused. “You would be like all of the
women. They must have the greatest rôle of all written for them alone,
dedicated to them. Ah, do I not know!”
Maria arrived in time to prevent his tirade against whims. She listened
in delight as he told of the interview with Casanova.
“After it is all settled, she will be sweet and docile once more,” she
promised. “She has not been the same even to me since that night at Mr.
Ward’s.”
“You think that is the reason, eh?” Jacobelli stared moodily before
him, feeling it was the proper time to enlighten Maria. And yet, how?
Were not his suspicions based on air? Only the voice down in the
Square was actually proof to himself, and how could he prove it to
others, when he had not even traced it?
“For one thing, she is studying too hard, I think,” Maria pursued
earnestly. “Four lessons a week and such long ones; are they not too
much for the child, signor?”
“Four?” repeated Jacobelli, one bushy eyebrow lifting in amazement.
“She tells you she has four lessons a week?”
“Two hours in the morning, two in the afternoon. It is very strenuous,
I think.”
“Doubtless so.” He rose and paced the floor with rising agitation.
Carlota had come to his studio three times each week, for a two-hour
lesson only. Here was proof positive that she was straying somewhere
into forbidden paths. “It is absolutely imperative, signora,” he began
huskily, when the suspected one came from the inner room, humming to
herself from the love tragedy of Mélisande. “Imperative that she make
her début next year,” he finished conclusively. “Delays are dangerous,
especially when one is overstudying.”
The hidden rebuke passed completely by Carlota, as she said good-bye,
sparkling and confident, and Jacobelli pondered, with a sense of
responsibility, feeling that he alone knew the real reason for her
deception. Possibly Ptolemy or Dmitri might have enlightened him still
further. Necessarily Carlota’s visits had become more frequent, since
she was to sing the leading rôle in Ames’s operetta. He had won her
consent after many arguments and stormy scenes. Six times in one week
he had been summoned to Belvoir to consult with Mrs. Nevins about her
fête. Four times the black car with its buff and old gold interior had
waited his convenience outside the old brownstone row on Fourth Street,
and when Carlota arrived for her lesson, she had found only Ptolemy
in possession. Yet Ames had argued her into agreeing with him, that
this was his great opportunity to present his operetta under the most
favorable auspices.
“And you are to sing Fiametta,” he told her positively. “You are the
perfect type for her, dear, a slim, aloof little princess, questing for
love. Can you get the two costumes, the peasant’s for the fête, and
the princess’s when she is in the castle? I suppose you could manage
the first out of your own wardrobe, and we will have to rent the other
royal raiment.”
He was like a boy over the fun of actually preparing the production.
Carlota looked at him unforgivingly, even appraisingly, if one could
appraise joy.
“I will never, never sing at the house of this Mrs. Nevins. She
has nothing in the whole world but money--nothing. She is utterly
impossible. She does not even know how to patronize graciously.”
“But, dear heart, you must forget her entirely. You are not doing this
for her. It is for your own home land and the people you love there,
for their relief.”
“But there is not a single person in your company with whom I care
to be seen. You have not one single artist, no one but these society
girls. I would never appear with them. I am a professional.”
He laughed at her vehemence and hauteur. It was as if Ptolemy had taken
offense and expostulated against the privileged classes. He held her
hands fast in his.
“You will, too. It will be over in no time, and I ask it for myself,
Carlota. I am absolutely selfish about it. You are my Fiametta. I wrote
it for you. No one else could ever sing it. You know you were its sole
inspiration. And who will know you out there? It is only to lend me
your wonderful voice for our success, and some day I shall see that you
sing it at the grand opera. Don’t you want me to win out?”
He placed his hand under her obstinate, pointed little chin. Who was it
had written,
“her perfect, fruit-shaped chin,
Such as Correggio loved to paint”?
And her small, thoroughbred head with its close, brown curls, the
splendid depth and luster of her dark eyes, the clean, fine curve of
chin and throat, they were an ever-new delight to him. She lifted her
lashes slowly and met his gaze with accusing eyes.
“Will--will this girl, your new pupil, sing a rôle also?”
“Surely, dear,” he told her confidently. “One must throw some sops to
Cerberus, three-headed monster of wealth and otherwise. She will only
have the mezzo rôle of Nedda. But you will be my princess girl, singing
my ‘Quest of Love’ for love of Italy and me. And some day, when we are
very rich, just we two, we will go to Italy and find your Villa Tittani
with its rose-tinted walls. Would you climb them to find me?”
Carlota smiled up at him, a flash of quick mischief in her glance.
“And what of your father who lives in Colorado? Would he allow you
to”--she hesitated for the word: he had not said to marry--“to go away
after love quests for rose-walled villas?”
“Dad wouldn’t say a word if I had produced several successful operas.”
Ames went over to the window and stared quizzically down at the Square.
“The verdict of your family rests solely on the world’s verdict first.
That’s the last word with Dad, success; whether you can change your
dreams into reality, kind of like the old alchemist’s trick with lead
into gold. The difference is that, to us, it is the dreams that are
more real than the consummation, eh, dear? Forget about him. Let’s
figure out about your costume.”
“I can get both, signor,” she promised demurely; “and they will be
perfectly correct, I promise.”
“Don’t call me that. Say Griffeth, or Griff. It isn’t exactly a pet
name, but I rather like it. I got it from some old Welsh forbear.
Listen, I know just what you should wear. Something with a straight
mediæval line like the velvet gown you wore at the Phelpses the first
night I met you. I thought then how much you were like some stray
princess girl like Rostand’s Lointaine. Remember, he called her his
remote princess.”
Carlota slipped aside from his disturbing nearness, and knelt by the
fire to pet Ptolemy.
“But that dress was not at all royal. I shall amaze you with one truly
magnificent.”
He laughed at her boasting and insisted on showing her his idea of the
gown, draping her with a long silken strip of piña cloth that made a
train from her slim shoulders. On the shelf above the door was a brown
casserole in a perforated silver stand, crown-shaped. It made a perfect
coronal, Ames declared gravely, setting it down low over her curls,
somewhat heavy and Byzantine, but most becoming. Dmitri came in to
acclaim her, bringing with him the first potted azalea he had happened
to see in the market. He set it down on the window-seat in triumph.
“See how much I love you!” he cried. “It was very heavy, but I
brought it, green tub and all. Do you know why? Of course not, my
poor simpletons. It is because these flowers grow wild in abundance
in my native land. They are like the roses of Sharon blossoming in
our mountain wildernesses, and the color is like the dawn flush, like
the maiden glow in the cheeks of our girls.” He regarded the plant
reflectively. “It is very strange how precious a symbol of memory
becomes. My heart leapt when I saw it in the window, all abloom. How do
you like it?”
“I always want to kneel before flowers,” Carlota said softly, as she
touched the petals with her finger-tips lingeringly. “In Italy you
find flowers before the wayside shrines, and I liked them better than
churches. We had a shrine in a grotto at the end of the garden--”
She stopped, but neither had noticed her words. Dmitri was in a fine
abstract mood.
“Shrines are the proper places of worship,” he stated positively.
“Groves first, no mountain-tops. All philosophers prefer the isolation
of the mountain-top; witness whoever thought first of Parnassus, also
Zarathustra and his taste for peaks. Every heart is in reality a secret
shrine where the spirit may worship beauty, truth, ideals, love,
without distraction. Why are you crowned to-day?” He broke off abruptly
to smile with a brooding tenderness over Carlota.
Ames answered for her, telling of the approaching fête and of the
production of his opera.
“And at last she has consented to sing Fiametta for me, isn’t that
great?” He spoke with a certain carelessness that always aroused Dmitri.
“For you? And who are you?” he demanded. “You are the eternal
Harlequin, the dancing, masked juvenile of all history and fiction, the
necessary evil in all romance. You always win, no matter what cards
Fate deals you. You play with a stacked deck, I tell you to your face,
and your dice are loaded too. You are a trickster, and none may win the
hand of Columbine from you. We, who are a million times more worthy of
her love, we, the thinkers, the stable, faithful adorers, are not even
seen by her when you flirt your rapier, and twirl before her eyes. I
hate you.” He turned to Carlota calmly. “Are you going to sing at this
fête?”
She smiled in confusion at his earnestness.
“I feel I must because its theme is all about my princess of Castle
Tittani. I am responsible for it and its success.”
“What name do you think would be good for her to take, Dmitri? You know
I do not even know her own to this day. It is her whim to hide it from
me. I think if it were really a beautiful one, she would tell, don’t
you?”
“Ignore him,” Dmitri told her gravely. “Names are nothing. I thank
God I was a foundling. No, you did not know that, eh? There is a
certain road that leads to a monastery. If I told you where it is and
its name, you would not know anything about it, but it is very old,
back to the Crusades, a place of sanctuary for kings and road knights
alike. There is a shrine to Saint Demetra below it. I was left before
it, and a brother found me and took me to the gray stone refuge.
That is quite all as a basis of fact, but I weave about it the usual
fantasy of desire. First, Demetra is only our pagan goddess disguised.
She is Demeter of the harvest, the mother of food for the world, the
bountiful, the ever-pitiful. And I was named Dmitri. Again, always
your foundling grows up, imagining he is the lost son of the king,
always of noble blood. But not I, Dmitri.” He perched himself on the
window-seat, one arm around the azalea tub, smoking peacefully. “I like
to think there were many of us, and before I came, my mother hoped to
save me, the unwanted one, from the crowded life. I like to think she
found courage, with my coming, to put me forth to high adventure and
give me what you call ‘the big chance.’ So I feel brotherhood with all
the world; and when I was fourteen, they put me out of the monastery
with a fair education and a fine digestion. They feed you very well
there. The only thing is, I was undoubtedly ruined for the seats of
the mighty. A good digestion makes a man an optimist, and I was taught
to choose my food wisely, without satiety. I paraphrase the prophet.
Behold, as a man eateth, so is he.”
“Perhaps they are all alive, your mother, and the others,” Carlota
almost whispered, as she leaned towards him, listening intently.
“See, I have made you believe in my fantasy, too,” he smiled down at
her. “Child, even if they had existed, they would have died under the
sword of the Turks like all the rest. I was called Kavec by my friends
later on. It has a pleasant meaning, the giver. I have not found out
yet what it is I give best to the world, but you could have all I have.”
“He is only trying to prove to you how selfish I am and what a
high-minded mountain dweller he is,” laughed Ames. “The car is
downstairs and my appointment is for one. You’ll go out with me to
rehearsal Tuesday, Carlota, then?”
She rose with a little sigh. When Dmitri talked she forgot the
inevitable to-morrow of reality.
“Have courage to refuse if you are doing it against your will,” urged
Dmitri. “He is merely a time-server.”
“No.” She shook her head, meeting Ames’s anxious eyes. “I will go
Tuesday.”