The four friends of Madame de Vaurigard were borne to her apartment from
the Magnifique in Cooley's big car. They sailed triumphantly down and up
the hills in a cool and bracing air, under a moon that shone as brightly
for them as it had for Caesar, and Mellin's soul was buoyant within him.
He thought of Cranston and laughed aloud. What would Cranston say if it
could see him in a sixty-horse touring-car, with two millionaires and an
English diplomat, brother of an earl, and all on the way to dine with a
countess? If Mary Kramer could see him!... Poor Mary Kramer! Poor little
Mary Kramer!
A man-servant took their coats in Madame de Vaurigard's hall, where
they could hear through the curtains the sound of one or two voices in
cheerful conversation.
Sneyd held up his hand.
“Listen,” he said. “Shawly, that isn't Lady Mount-Rhyswicke's voice! She
couldn't be in Reom--always a Rhyswicke Caws'l for Decembah. By Jev, it
is!”
“Nothin' of the kind,” said Pedlow. “I know Lady Mount-Rhyswicke as well
as I know you. I started her father in business when he was clerkin'
behind a counter in Liverpool. I give him the money to begin on. 'Make
good,' says I, 'that's all. Make good!' And he done it, too. Educated
his daughter fit fer a princess, married her to Mount-Rhyswicke, and
when he died left her ten million dollars if he left her a cent! I know
Madge Mount-Rhyswicke and that ain't her voice.”
A peal of silvery laughter rang from the other side of the curtain.
“They've heard you,” said Cooley.
“An' who could help it?” Madame de Vaurigard herself threw back the
curtains. “Who could help hear our great, dear, ole lion? How he roar'!”
She wore a white velvet “princesse” gown of a fashion which was a shade
less than what is called “daring,” with a rope of pearls falling from
her neck and a diamond star in her dark hair. Standing with one arm
uplifted to the curtains, and with the mellow glow of candles and
firelight behind her, she was so lovely that both Mellin and Cooley
stood breathlessly still until she changed her attitude. This she did
only to move toward them, extending a hand to each, letting Cooley seize
the right and Mellin the left.
Each of them was pleased with what he got, particularly Mellin. “The
left is nearer the heart,” he thought.
She led them through the curtains, not withdrawing her hands until they
entered the salon. She might have led them out of her fifth-story window
in that fashion, had she chosen.
“My two wicked boys!” she laughed tenderly. This also pleased both of
them, though each would have preferred to be her only wicked boy--a
preference which, perhaps, had something to do with the later events of
the evening.
“Aha! I know you both; before twenty minute' you will be makin' love to
Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. Behol' those two already! An' they are only ole
frien's.”
She pointed to Pedlow and Sneyd. The fat man was shouting at a woman in
pink satin, who lounged, half-reclining, among a pile of cushions upon a
divan near the fire; Sneyd gallantly bending over her to kiss her hand.
“It is a very little dinner, you see,” continued the hostess, “only
seven, but we shall be seven time' happier.”
The seventh person proved to be the Italian, Corni, who had surrendered
his seat in Madame de Vaurigard's victoria to Mellin on the Pincio. He
presently made his appearance followed by a waiter bearing a tray of
glasses filled with a pink liquid, while the Countess led her two wicked
boys across the room to present them to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. Already
Mellin was forming sentences for his next letter to the Cranston
Telegraph: “Lady Mount-Rhyswicke said to me the other evening,
while discussing the foreign policy of Great Britain, in Comtesse de
Vaurigard's salon...” “An English peeress of pronounced literary acumen
has been giving me rather confidentially her opinion of our American
poets...”
The inspiration of these promising fragments was a large, weary-looking
person, with no lack of powdered shoulder above her pink bodice and a
profusion of “undulated” hair of so decided a blond that it might have
been suspected that the decision had lain with the lady herself.
“Howjdo,” she said languidly, when Mellin's name was pronounced to her.
“There's a man behind you tryin' to give you something to drink.”
“Who was it said these were Martinis?” snorted Pedlow. “They've got
perfumery in 'em.”
“Ah, what a bad lion it is!” Madame de Vaurigard lifted both hands in
mock horror. “Roar, lion, roar!” she cried. “An' think of the emotion of
our good Cavaliere Corni, who have come an hour early jus' to make them
for us! I ask Monsieur Mellin if it is not good.”
“And I'll leave it to Cooley,” said Pedlow. “If he can drink all of his
I'll eat crow!”
Thus challenged, the two young men smilingly accepted glasses from the
waiter, and lifted them on high.
“Same toast,” said Cooley. “Queen!”
_“A la belle Marquise!”_
Gallantly they drained the glasses at a gulp, and Madame de Vaurigard
clapped her hands.
“Bravo!” she cried. “You see? Corni and I, we win.”
“Look at their faces!” said Mr. Pedlow, tactlessly drawing attention to
what was, for the moment, an undeniably painful sight. “Don't tell me an
Italian knows how to make a good Martini!”
Mellin profoundly agreed, but, as he joined the small procession to the
Countess' dinner-table, he was certain that an Italian at least knew how
to make a strong one.
The light in the dining-room was provided by six heavily-shaded candles
on the table; the latter decorated with delicate lines of orchids. The
chairs were large and comfortable, covered with tapestry; the glass was
old Venetian, and the servants, moving like useful ghosts in the shadow
outside the circle of mellow light, were particularly efficient in the
matter of keeping the wine-glasses full. Madame de Vaurigard had put
Pedlow on her right, Cooley on her left, with Mellin directly opposite
her, next to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. Mellin was pleased, because he
thought he would have the Countess's face toward him. Anything would
have pleased him just then.
“This is the kind of table _everybody_ ought to have,” he observed to
the party in general, as he finished his first glass of champagne. “I'm
going to have it like this at my place in the States--if I ever decide
to go back. I'll have six separate candlesticks like this, not a
candelabrum, and that will be the only light in the room. And I'll never
have anything but orchids on my table--”
“For my part,” Lady Mount-Rhyswicke interrupted in the loud, tired
monotone which seemed to be her only manner of speaking, “I like more
light. I like all the light that's goin'.”
“If Lady Mount-Rhyswicke sat at _my_ table,” returned Mellin dashingly,
“I should wish all the light in the world to shine upon so happy an
event.”
“Hear the man!” she drawled. “He's proposing to me. Thinks I'm a widow.”
There was a chorus of laughter, over which rose the bellow of Mr.
Pedlow.
“'He's game!' she says--and _ain't_ he?”
Across the table Madame de Vaurigard's eyes met Mellin's with a mocking
intelligence so complete that he caught her message without need of the
words she noiselessly formed with her lips: “I tol' you you would be
making love to her!”
He laughed joyously in answer. Why shouldn't he flirt with Lady
Mount-Rhyswicke? He was thoroughly happy; his Helene, his _belle
Marquise_, sat across the table from him sending messages to him with
her eyes. He adored her, but he liked Lady Mount-Rhyswicke--he liked
everybody and everything in the world. He liked Pedlow particularly, and
it no longer troubled him that the fat man should be a friend of Madame
de Vaurigard. Pedlow was a “character” and a wit as well. Mellin laughed
heartily at everything the Honorable Chandler Pedlow said.
“This is life,” remarked the young man to his fair neighbor.
“What is? Sittin' round a table, eatin' and drinkin'?”
“Ah, lovely skeptic!” She looked at him strangely, but he continued with
growing enthusiasm: “I mean to sit at such a table as this, with such
a chef, with such wines--to know one crowded hour like this is to live!
Not a thing is missing; all this swagger furniture, the rich atmosphere
of smartness about the whole place; best of all, the company. It's a
great thing to have the _real_ people around you, the right sort, you
know, socially; people you'd ask to your own table at home. There are
only seven, but every one _distingue_, every one--”
She leaned both elbows on the table with her hands palm to palm, and,
resting her cheek against the back of her left hand, looked at him
steadily.
“And you--are you distinguished, too?”
“Oh, I wouldn't be much known over _here_,” he said modestly.
“Do you write poetry?”
“Oh, not professionally, though it is published. I suppose”--he sipped
his champagne with his head a little to one side as though judging its
quality--“I suppose I 've been more or less a dilettante. I've knocked
about the world a good bit.”
“Helene says you're one of these leisure American billionaires like Mr.
Cooley there,” she said in her tired voice.
“Oh, none of us are really quite billionaires.” He laughed
deprecatingly.
“No, I suppose not--not really. Go on and tell me some more about life
and this distinguished company.”
“Hey, folks!” Mr. Pedlow's roar broke in upon this dialogue. “You two
are gittin' mighty thick over there. We're drinking a toast, and you'll
have to break away long enough to join in.”
“Queen! That's what she is!” shouted Cooley.
Mellin lifted his glass with the others and drank to Madame de
Vaurigard, but the woman at his side did not change her attitude and
continued to sit with her elbows on the table, her cheek on the back of
her hand, watching him thoughtfully.