The telephone bell rang in the living-room. Carlota lifted her head
eagerly from the pillow to listen as Maria answered.
“It is quite impossible. Miss Trelango is ill and cannot come to the
telephone herself.”
“Oh, Maria, but I can--please--” Carlota called breathlessly from the
inner bedroom, but the voice went on inexorably and with chill finality.
“I regret I cannot listen any further. It is impossible for her to see
you.”
Carlota sat up in bed, slim and tragic, her wealth of dark hair
tumbling about her shoulders.
“Was that Mr. Ames? You begged me to come and talk to Jacobelli not
five minutes ago, and now you say that I am too ill to get up.”
“Cara mia, you are not to excite yourself with anger,” Maria soothed
her. “Lie very still, my preciosa, relax your nerves. Remember
agitation is very bad for your voice.”
“But you will not understand, Maria,” she protested. “This is the man I
love, the man I shall surely marry, and you will not even let me speak
to him when I know how troubled he is. I must see him, Maria. If you
really loved me, you would not keep us apart.”
“Would I not?” Maria repeated fervently. “How did he know this number?”
“I do not know,” Carlota asserted proudly. “I did not even tell him my
name, nothing at all.”
“So? Then it is maybe--the Marchese. He is soft-hearted. He regards
this as a romance when it is a calamity. Do you realize what it means,
Jacobelli saying Ward insists everything is to be canceled if you
persist in jeopardizing your career?”
“Mr. Ward?” Carlota smiled. “When did he say that? Not to-day surely?”
“You are concealing something from me.” Maria bent over her with wide,
accusing eyes, even while her fingers stroked her hair fondly. “Ah,
if I had never gone to Casanova’s reception, I might have saved you
everything, the wild escapade at this Mrs. Nevins’s, the exposé, the
loss of the jewels, the horror of last night--Now, behold, your career
is ruined.”
Carlota was silent, her eyes bright with anger. It was all they thought
of, the money which Ward had given for her musical education, the door
which he might have opened for her to success. They thought that life
was made up only of achievement. Even Maria, whom she had loved and
leaned upon always, had veered completely over to the enemy, and found
a sacred obligation in keeping her thus, behind the wall of Tittani.
She closed her eyes as Maria’s voice declaimed solemnly:
“With the world at her feet, Paoli tossed it aside like a withered
flower and retired to her villa with only her friends and her memories.
Bianca, your beloved mother, fled with her love and died, still half a
child. This is only the very first false dawn of love, carina. You will
forget him in a month. Ah, if I could but take you back, for even a
little while, to the garden.”
“If you try to part us, I will never sing again,” Carlota told her
tragically. “I will never accept any aid from Mr. Ward again.”
“Then you are what Jacobelli called you, an ingrate, after all the love
and hope we have lavished upon you.” Maria was weeping plenteously,
helplessly, as she realized the power behind Carlota’s words.
The outer bell rang, silencing the argument. Hurriedly she went to
open it, while the girl slipped from the bed, flung a silk robe over
her shoulders, and slipped her feet into satin mules. If it should be
Griffeth, if he had really dared to come again to penetrate her tower
of durance, she would force them to let her see him. She listened
eagerly for his voice. Instead it was a messenger boy, bearing Ames’s
first shell into the enemy’s camp. He had gone from the telephone
booth, and had spent all he had in an orgy of roses from a flower-stand.
“Return them. There is no answer,” Maria said firmly.
But the boy was loyal. Stolidly he insisted there was no place to
return them. The gentleman had gone on his way. In the doorway Carlota
appeared suddenly and Maria stepped back from the look in her eyes as
she took the long box as if it had been a tiny bambino. Holding it
close to her breast, she went back to her bed, her chin pressed against
it.
“I shall not even speak to you or look at you, if you treat me like
this, Maria. I am not a child,” she said haughtily. “Whatever he sends
to me, you will regard it as sacred.”
“You are not responsible. You are unreasonable and reckless, and I
shall lock you in your room. The Marchese and Jacobelli will be here
later, and then you will tell them the truth about last night.”
“I will tell them nothing.” Carlota held her breath, listening to
the turn of the lock in the door, and shrugged her shoulders as she
laid her face on the red roses. It would not do to break her heart in
solitude, not when she knew he was thinking of her and trying to reach
her. Dmitri would surely find him and tell him all that had occurred
the previous night. He would clear him of any charge Ward might lodge
against him. What charge could they bring, save that he had befriended
the boy Steccho and had loved her? Ingrate, they called her. The word
puzzled her. She found her little red morocco dictionary in her desk
drawer and looked it up in deepest interest. The definition was brief
and to the point:
“Ingrate: One who is ungrateful.”
Sitting up in bed, girl fashion, she leaned her elbows on her knees,
and thought seriously. The melody of “Cerca d’Amore” ran through her
mind, the quest of love, and all her being seemed to become, in some
mystical sense, a chalice to hold this divine essence of love that
had glorified her life. Impulsively she turned the pages to the word
“love.” The definition was vague and unsatisfactory.
“Love: to have affection.”
She pursed her lips, and gravely sought another route to knowledge.
“Husband: a man who marries a woman.”
This was utterly absurd to a seeker after life’s greatest, sweetest
mystery. She hurried to “wife,” and found merely an echo.
“Wife: a woman who marries a man.”
Last of all, she found “marriage.” It was positively trite.
“Marriage: wedlock.”
Under “wedlock” she discovered “marriage.” She hurled the little book
from her, and seized a pencil and pad from the stand beside her.
“Love,” she dashed off impetuously, “the divine gift that joins two
hearts for eternity.”
This looked nearer the ecstasy of real truth. Not that one could even
approach in words the expression of the miracle of love, but this was
closer. In the next room Maria sang a tender old chant of the nuns
at Leguna Marino, the tiny town that clung to the cliffs below Villa
Tittani. This was a ruse, to lift her mind from earthly things, she
knew, and yet she tried again, her own improvements in the lexicon of
love.
“Marriage,” she wrote carefully. “The blessed union of two souls who
love perfectly.”
It was an inspired improvement on the dictionary definition, she
thought, and after “love” she added, “the divine gift that awakens
souls to life’s meaning.”
Maria would never understand. She would smile at her pityingly and
guard her from the passion that was her heritage. Jacobelli would rage
and beat the air and denounce all romance as a detractor of art, but
the old Marchese, he would sympathize with her. Sometimes, when he sat
at dinner with them, smoking leisurely, a smile of content on his fine
old face, she had often wondered what memories lay behind his charm of
manner and unfailing understanding with youth’s heritage of yearning.
With the rose on the pillow beside her and the little pad in her hand,
she fell asleep.
In the living-room Maria Roma knelt beside the Florentine chest,
selecting the remainder of the Paoli collection to be deposited in the
safety vault. It was true, as Ward had told Jacobelli the previous
night, coming from the Nevins fête, neither Carlota nor she had
appreciated the full value of the royal gems. The stolen rubies alone
were worth several hundred thousand dollars, yet Carlota had worn
them as if they had been paste. There was not another stone in the
world that could compare in purity with the Zarathustra ruby. Maria
knew the story of how it had come into the possession of Margherita
Paoli, nearly half a century before. She had heard of the impassioned
young Balkan prince who had cast all he owned at the feet of the most
beautiful woman in Europe. When she would have returned the rubies, he
had refused them, even with the knowledge of her affair with Tennant.
“You deny me your love. Let the rubies tell you ever of mine. I may not
hold you in my arms. Let them rest on your glorious hair, your throat,
your breast, telling you forever that Boris loved you.”
Yet it was doubtful whether Paoli herself had even grasped the great
value of the jewels. She had never been the type of woman to seek the
price of anything. It belittled rather than enhanced the value of a
thing to have it rated. So the rubies had lain for years in the old
chest with her other jewels, half forgotten as the years went by,
and Crown Prince Boris had long since lain upon his gold and purple
catafalque.
Delicately and precisely Maria placed each remaining piece in its
separate velvet case, sighing heavily over her task. The burden of
responsibility laid by the old Contessa upon her shoulders, weighed
heavily in the present crisis. Love or ambition? Which pathway was the
feet of girlhood to follow when genius had given wings for flight? It
would be fatal for Carlota, on the threshold of her career, to marry
as her mother had done, flinging all into the balance of romance. Yet
there came a thrill to Maria’s Trentino blood as she realized how the
old Marchese sympathized with such recklessness.
It was all quite simple, he had told her the previous night when they
had returned and found Carlota gone, the jewels stolen, and Ishigaki
caring for Ward. While Ward had smiled at her inscrutably as she wept
and demanded the truth, the old Marchese had ignored him, and had
calmed her gently.
“Whatever has happened, there is no cause for alarm. Youth and art, a
boy and girl singing love duets together, pouf! What would they have
come from such a tragedy, she and Jacobelli, and Mr. Ward himself?
Compel a girl like Carlota to don gray and walk softly to set measures
like some little novice, a girl with the Trelango and Paoli blood
beating love’s tempo in her veins!”
“But her voice, her career?” she had protested wildly. “Is it nothing,
all we have done and hoped for her?”
The Marchese had smiled tenderly.
“Jacobelli is a great teacher,” he said, “but there is one greater than
he. His heartstrings are insulated copper wires, my dear Maria. And for
the rubies--remember what the old Contessa herself used to say of them,
that they were accursed, pearls for the tears of an oppressed people,
rubies for the blood of the innocent? Regret them not. I have never
craved such things myself, not while there is truth and beauty and love
left to us to cherish.”
Carlota slept heavily, dreamlessly, the sleep of utter exhaustion of
mind and body after the long night. Through her windows the late autumn
sunlight poured an amber glow. A mellow stillness seemed to lie over
the city as if the hush of Indian summer had already laid a finger upon
the laughing lips of Manhattan. Even the ringing of the outer bell when
the Marchese arrived failed to rouse her. He was smiling and debonair
as ever, bearing his customary votive offering of flowers. Laying his
gloves upon his hat on the piano, he beamed upon Maria’s anxious face.
“Cheer up, my friend,” he exclaimed. “The world is very beautiful this
afternoon. Where is Carlota? So, asleep.” He lowered his voice. “That
is better, for you and I, Maria, have seen life, have looked it in the
face and not quailed, have we not, and we are not afraid, where she is
very young and tender.”
“Ah, what now?” Maria whispered, her hands pressed to her temples. “He
is not here?”
“He? Who, the boy Griffeth? No, no, my dear, he is not here. In fact,
he may be quite safe behind prison bars by night. That would please
you, yes?”
“In prison? For persecuting her with his attentions?”
“No, for complicity in the attempt to murder Ogden Ward and the robbery
of the jewels. I have just come from Ward himself. He is not injured
seriously. The ribs deflected the blow. His greatest wish is to avoid
all publicity--naturally.”
The sardonic note in his tone struck Maria.
“You surely do not place any reliance in what she said last night? She
was excited and distraught. A child like that would mistake the fervor
of love for an attack--”
She stopped short. Carlota stood in the doorway, slim and erect in a
hasty toilette. She had overheard their voices and arisen. With the
long refreshing sleep had come high resolve. The Marchese, looking
at her arrayed in a long, clinging négligé of creamy lace, with its
borders of rich fur, thought of the young Paoli in her first fire of
love.
“Ah, cara mia,” exclaimed Maria eagerly, “you have rested. Kiss your
old cross Maria, so. We dine with the Marchese to-night; you will like
that, yes?”
Carlota shook her head, her eyes brilliant with resentment and
determination.
“I will not go,” she said passionately. “You have treated me as if I
were a spoiled child, locking me in my room. What is this about Ward
accusing Griffeth, Marchese? He was not even here last night.”
“But where was he, then, my child? The night doorman tells another
story. He was here after you had left.”
Carlota’s eyes closed and opened again widely, fearlessly.
“Mr. Ward dares to accuse Griffeth of the robbery and attack on
himself, does he?”
“No. He is very considerate, my dear, very kind,” Veracci assured her
tenderly. “You are over-anxious and must not lose the perspective
of things. Mr. Ward has silenced the news of the robbery. There is
nothing at all in the papers. He is handling the entire affair most
diplomatically, with private detectives, and the police commissioner
muzzled. Ah, he is very clever. His own wound is nothing to him, but
the loss of the jewels is everything. His theory is this, you have been
meeting friends of Ames, no doubt, in his studio. You may have spoken
of the jewels--”
“I did not!” flashed Carlota.
“Possibly without intent. You wore them at the fête. There has been a
secret search going on for these royal gems, it appears, for months.
Ward knew all about it. He did not know they were in your possession
until the night of the fête, he says. They are part of the crown jewels
of Bulgaria.”
“But they were given to Margherita outright by Boris himself,”
protested Maria; “there was no theft. They were hers.”
“He had no right to give them.” The old Marchese spoke gently. “When
the revolution came and Ferdinand fled, Sophia took the crown jewels
with her. Since then, Ward tells me, parts of them have been turning up
at every jewel mart in the world, where she has sought to raise funds
for the royalist cause. These were traced to America from Italy by a
man named Count Jurka, the queen’s chamberlain. Ward knew him. He was
found dead this morning.”
Maria stared at him in silence. Carlota came to his side quickly, her
face white with dread, as she remembered Dmitri’s promise to find the
jewels.
“Where?”
“In a room on East Twenty-Eighth Street. It is in the Bulgarian
quarter, next door to where a man lives named Dmitri Kavec, the closest
friend of Griffeth Ames. My dear,” as his arm encircled her swaying
figure, “you must be strong. He was found with another, a Bulgarian
boy called Steccho, also a friend of Ames and Kavec’s. Have you met
them at his studio?”
“I know Dmitri Kavec,” she said brokenly, her hands covering her face.
“Has he accused Griffeth?”
“He has not been found himself. That is why they are going to hold the
boy as witness against him, and for possible complicity in the crime.
Did you see the man who entered this room last night and took the
jewels?”
Carlota stared up at him almost beseechingly, and shook her head.
“I fainted when Mr. Ward’s arms touched me.” She shuddered at the
memory of that moment. “But I know Dmitri is not guilty.” She
hesitated. Dmitri, Griffeth’s friend, to whom she had gone last night
in her trouble. His buoyant words rang in her mind when he had left
her. She was to have no fear. He would recover the jewels for her and
bring them to her. Did he have them in his possession at that very
moment? Was it all part of some secret conspiracy to escape with them
himself, defrauding not only her, but Jurka as well? She lifted her
head with swift resolution.
“I am going to Griffeth. No, you cannot hold me, Maria. Come with me if
you like, but I am going to him. He will need me greatly. If you will
not, then I must ask the Marchese to take me to him.”
And Maria Roma, looking into her eyes, knew the days of girlhood had
passed and the feet of Paoli’s grandchild had scaled the wall of
Tittani in her quest for love.