The Harrigans occupied the suite in the east wing of the villa. This
consisted of a large drawing-room and two ample bedchambers, with
window-balconies and a private veranda in the rear, looking off toward the
green of the pines and the metal-like luster of the copper beeches. Always
the suite was referred to by the management as having once been tenanted
by the empress of Germany. Indeed, tourists were generally and
respectively and impressively shown the suite (provided it was not at the
moment inhabited), and were permitted to peer eagerly about for some sign
of the vanished august presence. But royalty in passing, as with the most
humble of us, leaves nothing behind save the memory of a tip, generous or
otherwise.
It was raining, a fine, soft, blurring Alpine rain, and a blue-grey
monotone prevailed upon the face of the waters and defied all save the
keenest scrutiny to discern where the mountain tops ended and the sky
began. It was a day for indoors, for dreams, good books, and good
fellows.
The old-fashioned photographer would have admired and striven to
perpetuate the group in the drawing-room. In the old days it was quite the
proper thing to snap the family group while they were engaged in some
pleasant pastime, such as spinning, or painting china, or playing the
piano, or reading a volume of poems. No one ever seemed to bother about
the incongruence of the eyes, which were invariably focused at the camera
lens. Here they all were. Mrs. Harrigan was deep in the intricate maze of
the Amelia Ars of Bologna, which, as the initiated know, is a wonderful
lace. By one of the windows sat Nora, winding interminable yards of
lace-hemming from off the willing if aching digits of the Barone, who was
speculating as to what his Neapolitan club friends would say could they
see, by some trick of crystal-gazing, his present occupation. Celeste was
at the piano, playing (pianissimo) snatches from the operas, while
Abbott looked on, his elbows propped upon his knees, his chin in his
palms, and a quality of ecstatic content in his eyes. He was in his
working clothes, picturesque if paint-daubed. The morning had been
pleasant enough, but just before luncheon the rain clouds had gathered and
settled down with that suddenness known only in high altitudes.
The ex-gladiator sat on one of those slender mockeries, composed of
gold-leaf and parabolic curves and faded brocade, such as one sees at the
Trianon or upon the stage or in the new home of a new millionaire, and
which, if the true facts be known, the ingenious Louis invented for the
discomfort of his favorites and the folly of future collectors. It creaked
whenever Harrigan sighed, which was often, for he was deeply immersed (and
no better word could be selected to fit his mental condition) in the
baneful book which he had hurled out of the window the night before, only
to retrieve like the good dog that he was. To-day his shoes offered no
loophole to criticism; he had very well attended to that. His tie
harmonized with his shirt and stockings; his suit was of grey tweed; in
fact, he was the glass of fashion and the mold of form, at least for the
present.