"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.