The Place of Honeymoons - Page 45/123

"Ah, if I had been there the right time!"

"But what puts me down for the count is the action of the fellow. Never

showed up; just made her miss two performances."

"He was afraid. Men who do cowardly things are always afraid." The Barone

spoke with decided accent, but he seldom made a grammatical error. "But

sometimes, too, men grow mad at once, and they do things in their madness.

Ah, she is so beautiful! She is a nightingale." The Italian looked down on

Como whose broad expanse was crisscrossed by rippled paths made by

arriving and departing steamers. "It is not a wonder that some man might

want to run away with her."

Harrigan looked curiously at the other. "Well, it won't be healthy for any

man to try it again." The father held out his powerful hands for the

Barone's inspection. They called mutely but expressively for the throat of

the man who dared. "It'll never happen again. Her mother and I are not

going away from her any more. When she sings in Berlin, I'm going to trail

along; when she hits the high note in Paris, I'm lingering near; when she

trills in London, I'm hiding in the shadow. And you may put that in your

pipe and smoke it."

"I smoke only cigarettes," replied the Barone gravely. It had been

difficult to follow, this English.

Harrigan said nothing in return. He had given up trying to explain to the

Italian the idiomatic style of old Broadway. He got up and brushed his

flannels perfunctorily. "Well, I suppose I've got to dress for supper,"

resentfully. He still called it supper; and, as in the matter of the silk

hat, his wife no longer strove to correct him. The evening meal had always

been supper, and so it would remain until that time when he would cease to

look forward to it.

"Do you go to the dancing at Cadenabbia to-night?"

"Me? I should say not!" Harrigan laughed. "I'd look like a bull in a

china-shop. Abbott is coming up to play checkers with me. I'll leave the

honors to you."

The Barone's face lighted considerably. He hated the artist only when he

was visible. He was rather confused, however. Abbott had been invited to

the dance. Why wasn't he going? Could it be true? Had the artist tried his

luck and lost? Ah, if fate were as kind as that! He let Harrigan depart

alone.

Why not? What did he care? What if the father had been a fighter for

prizes? What if the mother was possessed with a misguided desire to shine

socially? What mattered it if they had once resided in an obscure tenement

in a great city, and that grandfathers were as far back as they could go

with any certainty? Was he not his own master? What titled woman of his

acquaintance whose forebears had been powerful in the days of the Borgias,

was not dimmed in the presence of this wonderful maid to whom all things

had been given unreservedly? Her brow was fit for a royal crown, let alone

a simple baronial tiara such as he could provide. The mother favored him a

little; of this he was reasonably certain; but the moods of the daughter

were difficult to discover or to follow.