A DOOR IS OPENED THAT GIOVANNI PREFERS TO KEEP CLOSED
The eyes of La Favorita boded good to no one! As a hostess her
deportment left much to be desired, but since her visitors were limited
to her very intimate friends it mattered, perhaps, little. At all
events, as guest after guest arrived in her over-decorated salon, she
looked up expectantly, and then resumed her expression of ugly
indifference.
"_Per Bacco!_" she muttered quite audibly enough for one to overhear,
"this crowd seems to think I have asked all Rome to supper!"
She attacked two young men of fashion as they entered. Fortunately, her
manner somewhat modified the rudeness of her words--and the ill humor of
her tone carried no conviction. "You cannot come in. I did not invite
you! I have no room!"
Instead of being angry, one, the Count Rosso, answered her in a voice
that was half jesting, half conciliatory, in the familiar second person
singular: "But thou art quite mad, my dear! We were all asked at Zizi's
supper. I, for one, call it very ungracious of you to try to dispense
with our agreeable society."
La Favorita lapsed once more into indifference. "Oh well, I don't
care"--she shrugged her shoulders--"I don't care whether you all go or
stay!"
A moment later a group that had formed at the end of the room made a
great noise, and the hostess, suddenly rousing again, swept toward them
with the floating motion of the professional dancer. "I wish you to
understand," she said in a fury, "that you are to comport yourselves in
my house as you would in the palaces of the nobility!"
The group fell into a half-sympathetic hush as she moved back again to
the door of the entrance. A little woman--a _café_ singer--broke into a
snatch of song:
"The moon has two sides, a black and a white,
When the heart is dark there can be no light."
Laughing, she snapped her fingers. "Fava has been in a bad temper ever
since that American heiress came to Rome. She fears that Miss America
will cut the leading strings of Giovanni."
"Why pout at that? Giovanni will then be rich--a rich lover is better
than a poor one any day!" laughed another soubrette.
"What is the matter with Fava, anyway?" put in a third. "She was quite
delighted with the American's arrival at first. Now she might draw a
stiletto at any time."
"The matter is that she has heard the millionairess is pretty, and she
fears she will take Giovanni's heart as well as his name!"
"Fava jealous! A delicious thought that! Yet I am not sure that I should
care to be in Giovanni's shoes if he wants to get away from her,"
observed Rigolo, the actor.
Favorita again swept toward the group, her voice strident: "_Per Dio!_
Do you suppose I can't imagine what you are all talking about, with your
long ears together like so many donkeys chewing in a cabbage patch? You
need not imagine to yourselves that I am jealous. No novice could hold
Giovanni long. It is I who can tell you that, for I know such men and
their ways fairly well--I have had experience! Me!"
The others took it up in chorus: "Favorita has had some experience,
_hein_! A race between the countries! Italy and America at the barrier.
Holla, zip! they are off! La Favorita in the lead--America second,
coming strong." And so it went on. Favorita had returned to her position
by the door. She was more quiet, and in repose it might be seen that her
face looked drawn--her eyes, if one observed closely, beneath the black
penciling showed traces of recent weeping. "Tell me something," she said
to Count Rosso. "What is she like, this Miss Randolph? Is it true"--her
breath came short--"that Giovanni is trailing after her?"
"Say after her millions, rather! I hope he gets them for your sake,
Fava. Then you can have the house in the country that you have always
wanted."
"I'd rather he got his money some other way. It does not please me that
he should marry!"
"Aren't you unreasonable? Can't you give him up for a few weeks?"
"If you call marriage a few weeks."
Rosso, laughing, threw his hand up. "How long does a honeymoon last? A
few weeks and he will be back."
But the dancer's eyes filled, and she set her sharp little teeth
together. "I cannot bear it! _Ah Dio!_ I cannot! She is young--and
surely she loves him."
"Every woman thinks the man she prefers is alike beloved by every other
woman he meets! I have not heard that she loves him!"
"Be quiet about what you have heard--what I want to know is, does he
return it? I am told she is attractive; if she is--I shall----"
Count Rosso chanced upon the right remark in answering, "Could a man, do
you, think, who has had your favor, be satisfied with a cold American
girl? Do not be stupid!"
Favorita was slightly pacified. "Is she at all like me? Paint me her
portrait!"
"Her eyes are--m--m--rather nice; her skin--yes, good; her
features--imperfect; she holds herself haughtily--chin out, and her back
very straight, and"--as a last assurance, he added, "she speaks broken
Italian."
La Favorita's coal-black eyes lit with a new light, and her whole body
seemed to flutter. Her carmine lips parted as, with an expression of
quick joy, she clapped her hands together and exclaimed, "American
accent! _Per Dio!_ She has an American accent!"
In her delight she threw her arms about the count's neck and kissed him
on the lips. With perfect impartiality she turned to two other men
standing near and kissed them also, repeating to herself the while, "An
American accent!"
The next arrivals she received as though they were both expected and
welcome; greeting them with the unintelligible exclamation, "Imagine
speaking the only language in the world worth speaking with an American
accent!"
"But why do we not go into the dining-room?" asked her stage manager, a
heavy puff of a man. "I have a void within."
"May the void always stay, great beef!" she laughed. Then, with a shrug
and a wave of her arms, as though to sweep every one out of the room,
she cried petulantly, "Go! and eat, all of you. I am glad, if only you
go!"
The company, for the most part, laughed and went into the dining-room,
whence the sound of revelry gradually grew louder. The Count Rosso alone
remained with the hostess. "Come, Fava, don't be so headstrong--you're
spoiling the party."
"Spoiling the party! Do you hear the noise they are making? Is that the
way to conduct one's self in a lady's house--I said a lady's house! Why
do you look at me like that? Am I not a lady just as much as that
daughter of an Indian squaw from over the Atlantic? Those in there"--she
pointed with her thumb toward the dining-room--"they would not behave so
in the Palazzo Sansevero!" Then, without another word, she followed
where she had pointed, so fast that her thin draperies fluttered behind
the lithe lines of her figure like butterfly wings. On the threshold of
the dining-room she paused, like the bad fairy at the christening.
"Why should you think you can behave in my house as you would not behave
in the house of a princess?"
The count, who had followed her, seemed relieved that she mentioned no
specific name. Her remark seemed to touch a chord of sympathy in the
company, for the women, especially, became very quiet. Favorita sat down
at the end of the table between the manager and an empty place.
"Eat something, my girl!" he said to her. "It will be the best thing you
can do!"
"My need is not the same as yours--I have emptiness of heart."
Her alert hearing caught a footfall, and she was looking eagerly at the
door when Giovanni Sansevero entered. At once her face became
transfigured. "Ah, there thou art, my mouse!" she said, pulling out the
chair beside her for him.
He smiled and nodded familiarly to all at the table.
"At least it is good for the rest of us that you come, Prince!" said the
manager. "Fava is in a frightful mood." But there was that in Giovanni's
expression that made the manager's speech turn quickly from any too
personal allusion, and a qualifying clause was trailed at the end of his
sentence, "She may show you more politeness."
Giovanni looked annoyed. The dancer, to appease him, said gently: "You
know I am nervous from overwork. The rehearsals have been doubled
lately. If you don't come when I expect you, I imagine horrors!" The
manager was about to put his fork into a grilled quail, when she whisked
it away and put it on Giovanni's plate. The former was obliged to vent
his indignation against her obstinately turned back and deaf ears. She
was conscious of nothing and of no one but Giovanni, whom she was
feeding with her own fork. His appetite, however, paying small
compliment to her attention, she arose, and he followed her into the
other room. Whereupon her guests, less constrained without her, drank
and were merry.
In the salon Giovanni's musical, caressing voice was saying, "You look
bewitching to-night, Fava _mia_!" He covered her with his glance, so
that she preened herself. He laughed lightly at her vanity, and, leaning
over, kissed her lovely shoulder. Quickly, with both hands she held him
close, her cheek against his.
"_Carissimo_," she said tensely, "if you ever love any other woman----"
"I love you," he said, against her lips; "let there be no doubt of
that." And there was a long silence between them.
Giovanni was not one of those who can withstand a woman of beauty. He
loved La Favorita passionately; she perhaps more than any one else could
hold him--a Griselda one day, a fury the next, but always alive and
always beautiful.
Yet he might have indulged his curiosity as to what she would do if
seriously aroused to jealousy, had it not been for his innate hatred of
all exhibitions of feeling, which seemed to him _bourgeois_. He knew
that if the dancer had an idea that he might be falling in love with
Nina, she would be capable of any scandal. On the other hand, he could
not imagine Favorita's being jealous of the American girl. He had often
congratulated himself that she was not jealous of her only real rival,
the Contessa Potensi, his devotion to whom, however, he had managed to
keep so quiet that very few persons in Rome had a suspicion of it.
The contessa, on the other hand, looked upon Giovanni's attention to the
dancer as an artifice practised solely on her account, so that the world
would the less suspect his attachment to herself. Neither woman had
until now felt any jealousy of Nina. To their Italian temperament she
had seemed too cold a type, too antipathetic, to be a danger. The
contessa was quite willing to have Giovanni marry the heiress, for she
never doubted that the end of the honeymoon would find him tied more
securely than ever to her own footstool.
Giovanni, at present, with his arms about the dancer, was raining a
succession of kisses upon her lips, her eyes, her hair. He could feel
that she was all on edge about something, but, man-like, he preferred to
keep things on the surface and not stir depths that might be turbulent.
His efforts, however, were of small avail.
"Swear to me by the Madonna, and by your ancestors, that you will not
marry!"
With sudden coldness Giovanni drew away from her. He let both arms hang
limp at his sides. "Why let this thought come always between us!" Then,
exasperated into taking up the discussion, he crossed his arms and faced
her: "We might as well have this out. I am not engaged--I swear that;
but whether I ever shall be or not, you have no cause for jealousy.
Marriage in my world, you know very well, is not a matter of
inclination, but of advantageous arrangement. There is every reason why
I ought to marry, and if that is the case why not one as well as
another? My brother has no children; I am the last of my name."
With a cry she flung her arms around his neck and broke into a storm of
weeping. "You shan't marry her! You shan't. She shall not have your
children for you!"
But Giovanni grew impatient. He unclasped her hands and pushed her away.
"If you make these scenes all the time, I won't come near you! Please,
once for all, let us have this ended. If there is one thing I can't
endure, it is a woman who cries. Here, take my handkerchief. Come
now--that is right, be reasonable." His tone modified, and he lightly
and more affectionately laid his hand upon her shoulder. "Come here a
minute, I want to show you a picture." He led her, as he spoke, before a
long mirror.
"Now, _cara mia_, tell me, do you think that a man who possessed the
love of such a woman as that would be apt to run seeking elsewhere?"
La Favorita looked at her own reflection, at the slender yet full
perfection of southern beauty, and she saw also the returning ardor in
the face of her lover as he, too, looked at her image. Her black eyes
grew soft, her lips parted slightly--with a sudden exuberance he caught
her to him, and this time he held her so tensely that, although her
plaint was the same, her tone was altogether different. "But I don't
want you to marry--even without love, I don't want you to," she pouted
softly.
"You are an idiot, Fava!" But the words were whispered caressingly. "It
would be much better for you if I did."