We live but learn little. As to myself it appears that I learn
nothing--nothing! You will at once convey to me by _cable_ five
thousand lire. No; add the difference in exchange so as to make it
one thousand dollars which I shall receive, taking that sum from
the two-hundred and thirty thousand lire which I entrusted to your
safekeeping by cable as the result of my enterprise in this place.
I should have returned at once, content with that success, but as
you know I am a very stupid fellow, never pleased with a moderate
triumph, nor with a large one, when there is a possible prospect
of greater. I am compelled to believe that the greater I had in
mind in this case was an illusion: my gentle diplomacy avails
nothing against a small miser--for we have misers even in these
States, though you will not believe it. I abandon him to his
riches! From the success of my venture I reserved four thousand
dollars to keep by me and for my expenses, and it is humiliating
to relate that all of this, except a small banknote or two, was
taken from me last night by amateurs. I should keep away from
cards--they hate me, and alone I can do nothing with them. Some
young gentlemen of the place, whose acquaintance I had made at a
ball, did me the honour of this lesson at the native game of
poker, at which I--though also native--am not even so expert as
yourself, and, as you will admit, Antonio, my friend, you are not
a good player--when observed. Unaided, I was a child in their
hands. It was also a painful rule that one paid for the counters
upon delivery. This made me ill, but I carried it off with an air
of carelessness creditable to an adopted Neapolitan. Upon receipt
of the money you are to cable me, I shall leave this town and sail
immediately. Come to Paris, and meet me there at the place on the
Rue Auber within ten days from your reading this letter. You will
have, remaining, two hundred and twenty-five thousand francs,
which it will be safer to bring in cash, and I will deal well with
you, as is our custom with each other. You have done excellently
throughout; your cables and letters for exhibition concerning
those famous oil wells have been perfection; and I shall of course
not deduct what was taken by these thieves of poker players from
the sum of profits upon which we shall estimate your commission. I
have several times had the feeling that the hour for departure had
arrived; now I shall delay not a moment after receiving your
cable, though I may occupy the interim with a last attempt to
interest my small miser. Various circumstances cause me some
uneasiness, though I do not believe I could be successfully
assailed by the law in the matter of oil. You do own an estate in
Basilicata, at least your brother does--these good people here
would not be apt to discover the difference--and the rest is a
matter of plausibility. The odious coincidence of encountering the
old cow, Pryor, fretted me somewhat (though he has not repeated
his annoying call), and I have other small apprehensions--for
example, that it may not improve my credit if my loss of last
night becomes gossip, though the thieves professed strong habits
of discretion. My little affair of gallantry grows embarrassing.
Such affairs are so easy to inaugurate; extrication is more
difficult. However, without it I should have failed to interest my
investor and there is always the charm. Your last letter is too
curious in that matter. Licentious man, one does not write of
these things while under the banner of the illustrious Uncle
Sam--I am assuming the American attitude while here, or perhaps my
early youth returns to me--a thing very different from your own
boyhood, Don Antonio. Nevertheless, I promise you some laughter in
the Rue Auber. Though you will not be able to understand the half
of what I shall tell you--particularly the portraits I shall
sketch of my defeated rivals--your spirit shall roll with
laughter.
To the bank, then, the instant you read. Cable me one thousand
dollars, and be at the Rue Auber not more than ten days later. To
the bank! Thence to the telegraph office. Speed! V. C.
He was in better spirits as he read over this letter, and he
chuckled as he addressed it. He pictured himself in the rear room
of the bar in the Rue Auber, relating, across the little
marble-topped table, this American adventure, to the delight of
that blithe, ne'er-do-well outcast of an exalted poor family, that
gambler, blackmailer and merry rogue, Don Antonio Moliterno,
comrade and teacher of this ductile Valentine since the later days
of adolescence. They had been school-fellows in Rome, and later
roamed Europe together unleashed, discovering worlds of many
kinds. Valentine's careless mother let her boy go as he liked, and
was often negligent in the matter of remittances: he and his
friend learned ways to raise the wind, becoming expert and making
curious affiliations. At her death there was a small inheritance;
she had not been provident. The little she left went rocketing,
and there was the wind to be raised again: young Corliss had wits
and had found that they could supply him--most of the time--with
much more than the necessities of life. He had also found that he
possessed a strong attraction for various women; already--at
twenty-two--his experience was considerable, and, in his way, he
became a specialist. He had a talent; he improved it and his
opportunities. Altogether, he took to the work without malice and
with a light heart. . . .
He sealed the envelope, rang for a boy, gave him the letter to
post, and directed that the apartment should be set to rights. It
was not that in which he had received Ray Vilas. Corliss had moved
to rooms on another floor of the hotel, the day after that
eccentric and somewhat ominous person had called to make an
"investment." Ray's shadowy forebodings concerning that former
apartment had encountered satire: Corliss was a "materialist" and,
at the mildest estimate, an unusually practical man, but he would
never sleep in a bed with its foot toward the door; southern Italy
had seeped into him. He changed his rooms, a measure of which Don
Antonio Moliterno would have wholly approved. Besides, these were
as comfortable as the others, and so like them as even to confirm
Ray's statement concerning "A Reading from Homer": evidently this
work had been purchased by the edition.
A boy came to announce that his "roadster" waited for him at the
hotel entrance, and Corliss put on a fur motoring coat and cap,
and went downstairs. A door leading from the hotel bar into the
lobby was open, and, as Corliss passed it, there issued a mocking
shout:
"Tor'dor! Oh, look at the Tor'dor! Ain't he the handsome
Spaniard!"
Ray Vilas stumbled out, tousled, haggard, waving his arms in
absurd and meaningless gestures; an amused gallery of tipplers
filling the doorway behind him.
"Goin' take Carmen buggy ride in the country, ain't he? Good ole
Tor'dor!" he quavered loudly, clutching Corliss's shoulder. "How
much you s'pose he pays f' that buzz-buggy by the day, jeli'm'n?
Naughty Tor'dor, stole thousand dollars from me--makin'
presents--diamond cresses. Tor'dor, I hear you been playing cards.
Tha's sn't nice. Tor'dor, you're not a goo' boy at all--_you_ know
you oughtn't waste Dick Lindley's money like that!"
Corliss set his open hand upon the drunkard's breast and sent him
gyrating and plunging backward. Some one caught the grotesque
figure as it fell.
"Oh, my God," screamed Ray, "I haven't got a gun on me! He _knows_
I haven't got my gun with me! _Why_ haven't I got my gun with me?"
They hustled him away, and Corliss, enraged and startled, passed
on. As he sped the car up Corliss Street, he decided to anticipate
his letter to Moliterno by a cable. He had stayed too long.
Cora looked charming in a new equipment for November motoring; yet
it cannot be said that either of them enjoyed the drive. They
lunched a dozen miles out from the city at an establishment
somewhat in the nature of a roadside inn; and, although its
cuisine was quite unknown to Cora's friend, Mrs. Villard (an eager
amateur of the table), they were served with a meal of such
unusual excellence that the waiter thought it a thousand pities
patrons so distinguished should possess such poor appetites.
They returned at about three in the afternoon, and Cora descended
from the car wearing no very amiable expression.
"Why won't you come in now?" she asked, looking at him angrily.
"We've got to talk things out. We've settled nothing whatever. I
want to know why you can't stop."
"I've got some matters to attend to, and----"
"What matters?" She shot him a glance of fierce skepticism.
"Are you packing to get out?"
"Cora!" he cried reproachfully, "how can you say things like that
to _me_!"
She shook her head. "Oh, it wouldn't surprise me in the least! How
do _I_ know what you'll do? For all I know, you may be just that
kind of a man. You _said_ you ought to be going----"
"Cora," he explained, gently, "I didn't say I meant to go. I said
only that I thought I ought to, because Moliterno will be needing
me in Basilicata. I ought to be there, since it appears that no
more money is to be raised here. I ought to be superintending
operations in the oil-field, so as to make the best use of the
little I have raised."
"You?" she laughed. "Of course _I_ didn't have anything to do with
it!"
He sighed deeply. "You know perfectly well that I appreciate all
you did. We don't seem to get on very well to-day----"
"No!" She laughed again, bitterly. "So you think you'll be going,
don't you?"
"To my rooms to write some necessary letters."
"Of course not to pack your trunk?"
"Cora," he returned, goaded; "sometimes you're just impossible.
I'll come to-morrow forenoon."
"Then don't bring the car. I'm tired of motoring and tired of
lunching in that rotten hole. We can talk just as well in the
library. Papa's better, and that little fiend will be in school
to-morrow. Come out about ten."
He started the machine. "Don't forget I love you," he called in a
low voice.
She stood looking after him as the car dwindled down the street.
"Yes, you do!" she murmured.
She walked up the path to the house, her face thoughtful, as with
a tiresome perplexity. In her own room, divesting herself of her
wraps, she gave the mirror a long scrutiny. It offered the picture
of a girl with a hard and dreary air; but Cora saw something else,
and presently, though the dreariness remained, the hardness
softened to a great compassion. She suffered: a warm wave of
sorrow submerged her, and she threw herself upon the bed and wept
long and silently for herself.
At last her eyes dried, and she lay staring at the ceiling. The
doorbell rang, and Sarah, the cook, came to inform her that Mr.
Richard Lindley was below.
"Tell him I'm out."
"Can't," returned Sarah. "Done told him you was home." And she
departed firmly.
Thus abandoned, the prostrate lady put into a few words what she
felt about Sarah, and, going to the door, whisperingly summoned in
Laura, who was leaving the sick-room, across the hall.
"Richard is downstairs. Will you go and tell him I'm sick in
bed--or dead? Anything to make him go." And, assuming Laura's
acquiescence, Cora went on, without pause: "Is father worse?
What's the matter with you, Laura?"
"Nothing. He's a little better, Miss Peirce thinks."
"You look ill."
"I'm all right."
"Then run along like a duck and get rid of that old bore for me."
"Cora--please see him?"
"Not me! I've got too much to think about to bother with him."
Laura walked to the window and stood with her back to her sister,
apparently interested in the view of Corliss Street there
presented. "Cora," she said, "why don't you marry him and have
done with all this?"
Cora hooted.
"Why not? Why not marry him as soon as you can get ready? Why
don't you go down now and tell him you will? Why not, Cora?"
"I'd as soon marry a pail of milk--yes, tepid milk, skimmed!
I----"
"Don't you realize how kind he'd be to you?"
"I don't know about that," said Cora moodily. "He might object to
some things--but it doesn't matter, because I'm not going to try
him. I don't mind a man's being a fool, but I can't stand the
absent-minded breed of idiot. I've worn his diamond in the pendant
right in his eyes for weeks; he's never once noticed it enough
even to ask me about the pendant, but bores me to death wanting to
know why I won't wear the ring! Anyhow, what's the use talking
about him? He couldn't marry me right now, even if I wanted him
to--not till he begins to get something on the investment he made
with Val. Outside of that, he's got nothing except his rooms at
his mother's; she hasn't much either; and if Richard should lose
what he put in with Val, he couldn't marry for years, probably.
That's what made him so obstinate about it. No; if I ever marry
right off the reel it's got to be somebody with----"
"Cora"--Laura still spoke from the window, not turning--"aren't
you tired of it all, of this getting so upset about one man and
then another and----"
"_Tired_!" Cora uttered the word in a repressed fury of emphasis.
"I'm sick of _everything_! I don't care for anything or anybody on
this earth--except--except you and mamma. I thought I was going to
love Val. I thought I _did_--but oh, my Lord, I don't! I don't
think I _can_ care any more. Or else there isn't any such thing as
love. How can anybody tell whether there is or not? You get kind
of crazy over a man and want to go the limit--or marry him
perhaps--or sometimes you just want to make him crazy about
you--and then you get over it--and what is there left but hell!"
She choked with a sour laugh. "Ugh! For heaven's sake, Laura,
don't make me talk. Everything's gone to the devil and I've got to
think. The best thing you can do is to go down and get rid of
Richard for me. I _can't_ see him!"
"Very well," said Laura, and went to the door.
"You're a darling," whispered Cora, kissing her quickly. "Tell him
I'm in a raging headache--make him think I wanted to see him, but
you wouldn't let me, because I'm too ill." She laughed. "Give me a
little time, old dear: I may decide to take him yet!"
It was Mrs. Madison who informed the waiting Richard that Cora was
unable to see him, because she was "lying down"; and the young
man, after properly inquiring about Mr. Madison, went blankly
forth.
Hedrick was stalking the front yard, mounted at a great height
upon a pair of stilts. He joined the departing visitor upon the
sidewalk and honoured him with his company, proceeding storkishly
beside him.
"Been to see Cora?"
"Yes, Hedrick."
"What'd you want to see her about?" asked the frank youth
seriously.