Thus it came about that the genetic word was spoken. To stop its effect
was now beyond the power of man. Thenceforward it remained for the
Younger only to stand by and admire his handiwork.
Events were by no means slow in materialising. The Elder quickly
reported on the knockers. Melconi, the sculptor, had taken a cast and
was to remodel the head in accordance with the Younger’s suggestion.
The prospective donor was already engaged upon a sequence of
sonnets--in the manner of Petrarch, he said--to accompany the gift.
In the meantime he had ascertained that Susannah would not draw a
tranquil breath until she possessed a certain heraldic shield, an old
stone coat-of-arms which hung high above the street on the corner of a
house across the Arno. He had accordingly entered into negotiation with
the owner of the house, had acquired for a fabulous sum the shield in
question and had borne it in triumph to the expectant Susannah.
This was but the beginning. The Younger no longer needed to offer
suggestions. The Elder’s own imagination was fertilised, and now that
he knew how ladies were wooed in America he purposed to win Susannah.
That young woman expressed no fleeting fancy which her admirer did
not at once embody for her in some form of art. She could not look
with favour on the moon but that the marquis would run to order of his
jeweller a replica of that heavenly orb, in material far more precious
than the original. He could think only in terms of the idea which the
Younger had implanted in his mind. The door of the _villino_ swung
unceasingly to messengers from the goldsmith, the dealer in antiques,
the florist, the pastry cook. Even the upholsterer went, and to all was
displayed an equal hospitality.
At this the Younger began to feel a secret irritation. He was amused.
He was gratified to find his types turn out so typical. But it seemed
to him they overdid it. He had not really supposed that Susannah was
so bad as that. It verged on the scandalous. Unless--but it could mean
only one thing.
Matters, however, proved not to be so simple, after all. There came a
day when the Elder entered the studio in a state of mind more perturbed
than any he had yet betrayed.
“She has refused me,” he called out. “What do you think of that?”
The Younger did not know what to think of it. While, on the one
hand, he could not restrain a certain gratification at Susannah’s
discernment, he deprecated, on the other, her amazing course with
regard to the presents. But the Elder left him no time to muse.
“And what do you suppose she said?” he continued excitedly. “She said
she wasn’t sure how much I really cared for her. How much! She holds
out her hand for everything I bring and then she agreeably withdraws it
when she sees nothing more. After I have made myself the talk of the
town!”
“Well, you know what I told you,” remarked the Younger, who was much at
sea. “Did you expect to bribe her?”
“Yes, I know what you told me. And I know what to think of such people.”
The Younger shrugged his shoulders.
“If that is the way you take it, I begin to think Susannah is right.”
The Elder threw him a look.
“But what does she want?” he cried, clasping his hands dramatically in
the air. “What does she want that I can’t give her? What is she now,
compared to what she would be as my wife?”
The Younger examined his finger nails.
“You have already had some opportunity to learn that an American girl
is the most unfettered creature in the universe. She may think it more
amusing to stay so than to become an Italian marchioness.”
“I thought you said they were respectable--your famous _jeunes
filles_,” exclaimed the Elder sarcastically.
The Younger shrugged his shoulders.
“At any rate she won’t stay _jeune_ forever. And what is she now,
compared to what she would become? She is nobody, whereas my wife----”
A handsome gesture left the Younger to figure that personage. “Then
she evidently finds the attractions of this country superior to the
rather problematical ones--if you will pardon me!--of her own. She says
every day she is going, but she never goes.”
“Well, she is at least free to go. And you must remember that America
is gilded with the associations of an unbitted youth. There is but an
open door between her and an iridescent dream. When Europe has no more
to offer her champing spirit she has but to step back into that happy
hunting-ground of the _jeune fille_. Whereas with you--the door would
close behind her.”
The Elder put this from him with a twist of head and hand. “Excuse
me, _caro mio_, if I seem to allude to personal matters. But you will
remember that at Viareggio, that first time, you attributed something
of your own coolness to--to the fact----”
“Of being a pauper?” filled out the Younger cheerfully. “Yes.”
“Well, if I must say it, she could do much worse than to marry me.
Doesn’t she know?”
“That is true,” admitted the Younger, studying his nails anew. From
another these facts somehow came with less grace. So he contented
himself with adding: “But she might also do better.”
“How?” interrogated the Elder, turning savagely upon him. “What more, I
ask you, can a respectable girl want? In God’s name, what more?”
The Younger suddenly knew that he approved enough of Susannah’s
discernment to suspend judgment upon her bad taste.
“Perhaps what you call ‘respectability,’ for one thing,” he suggested.
“And for another----” He pulled up. “Yet she has that already. So why
should she want it?”
“What?” demanded the Elder. “I will give her whatever she wants. What
is it?”
The way in which he shouted it made the Younger look out of the window.
“Youth,” he replied.
There was a silence. There was such a silence that the Younger knew
he had been a fool. He turned around with the intention of smoothing
things over a bit, and the look which he caught on the Elder’s face
deepened his pang.
But the marquis, giving him no time, passed it off.
“Eh, my young friend, you have hit it on the head. But never mind.
I have not made myself the talk of the town for nothing. And Miss
Susannah shall find it out. I will go on as I have begun. I will pay
her such attention, I will give her such presents, that even she--even
she--will find that she is compromised. Then I will tell you whom she
will marry.”
And with this delicate intimation he stalked away.
V
This was how it came to the Younger that more might lie in experiments
than one foresaw. He did not like at all that insinuation that the
marquis would catch Susannah by foul means if not by fair. But,
however he might dislike the Elder’s tactics, the Younger felt his own
share of the responsibility.
The two men met one morning at the gate of the _villino_--the Younger
going in, the Elder coming out. They exchanged ceremonious salutations,
as usual.
“I have just brought the knockers,” said the latter. “I am much obliged
for that clever suggestion of yours. The head is a speaking likeness.”
The Younger smiled uncomfortably.
“Yes? And what does our young lady think of them?”
“She is very pretty. She says they are too charming to put out here on
the door. She must keep them by her.”
The Younger stepped inside and slammed the gate in the other’s face.
Could a spectator then have seen both sides of the wall he would have
observed each gentleman, very red, contemplating for a moment the
closed door. He would finally have beheld them turn and walk away--the
Elder slowly, shrugging his shoulders; the Younger in haste, his head
held high.
He found Susannah in the _sala_, laughing over the obnoxious knockers.
The sight of it angered him the more.
“My dear young lady,” he cried out, “you have made a fool of yourself
long enough. You must go home.”
Susannah stopped laughing, for very surprise. She examined the flushed
Younger curiously, as if he had been a strange beast in a cage.
“Why,” she said, “what is the matter with you? Do you feel ill? Shall I
ring for Gilda?”
The Younger flung his hat into a chair.
“I do feel ill! You and the marquis make me ill between you!”
“Oh, the marquis!” Susannah glanced at the knockers and smiled. “Yes, I
remember. You introduced the marquis to me. Didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he snapped. “That’s why I’m here now.”
She laughed.
“What funny creatures men are! They never think of things beforehand.
And they said you were clever.”
“I never told you so,” he retorted rather dully. “You’d better wait
till you get things from headquarters.”
“So had you,” she rapped out. “Who told you, I was making a fool of
myself?”
“Nobody! Nobody needed to! What under the sun do you mean by filling
your house with his truck?”
“What business is it of yours?” demanded Susannah hotly. “You don’t
care anything about us!”
“What if I don’t? I care about seeing my country made a scandal.”
Susannah again looked at him curiously a moment.
“O! If you are so patriotic I wonder you don’t go home yourself.
Wouldn’t that be the easiest way out of your--” she smiled--“your
troubles?”
“No! That wouldn’t stop anything. I want things stopped. I want you to
go.”
“Well, well!” she exclaimed. “You _are_ in a hurry all of a sudden. It
seems to me that you ask a good deal of people you have done so little
for--though perhaps you have done a good deal. Is that all?”
“No!” he cried. “Since you ask, I want you to send him back all these
things--every single one of them.”
She looked at him more curiously still.
“What! All these pretty things! Why, we’re only just beginning to get
comfortable. And see! He just brought me something else.”
She held up the knockers, as if they had been two dolls. The Younger
shrugged his shoulders and walked to the end of the room.
“What are you going to do?” he suddenly threw at her. “Are you going to
marry him?”
She laughed softly.
“Him? O no! No! And I don’t even think he really wants me to. It’s a
sort of game, you see,” she added, with a confiding seriousness.
“_Dio mio!_ I do see. I have seen for a good while. How long are you
going to keep it up?”
“I don’t think you really deserve to know,” she said, with her head on
one side. “But since you ask, and since you began it, I will tell you.”
She assumed an air of great mystery. “I’m going to keep it up till he
brings me the gold salt cellars!”
He stared at her. But she faced him out. And when he walked away to a
window she threw him a question in turn.
“Now that I’ve told you what you wanted to know, will you tell me
something?”
“What is it?” He faced partly about.
“Just how did the game begin? What did you tell him, I mean? You see,
his--his manners--were so different before you came and after.”
The Younger laughed curtly.
“I told him you were respectable.”
At this he looked out of the window again.
“Oh--respectable,” said Susannah behind him. “You told him I was
respectable? That was very kind of you--I’m sure.” And then the Eternal
Feminine came out with a sob. “You horrid man! You perfectly horrid
man! You’re just----”
She flounced out of the room.