The Beautiful Lady

Chapter Nine

For several minutes neither of us spoke. Then I looked up to meet my friend’s gaze of perturbation.

A waiter was proffering cigars. I took one, and waved Poor Jr.‘s hand away from the box of which the waiter made offering.

“Do not remain!” I whispered, and I saw his sad perplexity. “I know her answer has not been given. Will you present him his chance to receive it—just when her sympathy must be stronger for him, since she will think he has had to bear rudeness?”

He went out of the door quickly.

I dod not smoke. I pretended to, while the waiters made the arrangements of the table and took themselves off. I sat there a long, long time waiting for Antonio to do what I hoped I had betrayed him to do.

It befell at last.

Poor Jr. came to the door and spoke in his steady voice. “Ansolini, will you come out here a moment?”

Then I knew that I had succeeded, had made Antonio afraid that I would do the thing he himself, in a panic, had already done—speak evil of another privately.

As I reached the door I heard him call out foolishly, “But Mr. Poor, I beg you—”

Poor Jr. put his hand on my shoulder, and we walked out into the dark of the terrace. Antonio was leaning against the railing, the beautiful lady standing near. Mrs. Landry had sunk into a chair beside her daughter. No other people were upon the terrace.

“Prince Caravacioli has been speaking of you,” said Poor Jr., very quietly.

“Ah?” said I.

“I listened to what he said; then I told him that you were my friend, and that I considered it fair that you should hear what he had to say. I will repeat what he said, Ansolini. If I mistake anything, he can interrupt me.”

Antonio laughed, and in such a way, so sincerely, so gaily, that I was frightened.

“Very good!” he cried. “I am content. Repeat all.”

“He began,” Poor Jr. went on, quietly, though his hand gripped my shoulder to almost painfulness,—“he began by saying to these ladies, in my presence, that we should be careful not to pick up chance strangers to dine, in Italy, and—and he went on to give me a repetition of his friendly warning about Paris. He hinted things for a while, until I asked him to say what he knew of you. Then he said he knew all about you; that you were an outcast, a left-handed member of his own family, an adventurer—”

“It is finished, my friend,” I said, interrupting him, and gazed with all my soul upon the beautiful lady. Her face was as white as Antonio’s or that of my friend, or as my own must have been. She strained her eyes at me fixedly; I saw the tears standing still in them, and I knew the moment had come.

“This Caravacioli is my half-brother,” I said.

Antonio laughed again. “Of what kind!”

Oh, he went on so easily to his betrayal, not knowing the United-Statesians and their sentiment, as I did.

“We had the same mother,” I continued, as quietly as I could. “Twenty years after this young—this somewhat young—Prince was born she divorced his father, Caravacioli, and married a poor poet, whose bust you can see on the Pincian in Rome, though he died in the cheapest hotel in Sienna when my true brother and I were children. This young Prince would have nothing to do with my mother after her second marriage and—”

“Marriage!” Antonio laughed pleasantly again. He was admirable. “This is an old tale which the hastiness of our American friend has forced us to rehearse. The marriage was never recognized by the Vatican, and there was not twenty years—”

“Antonio, it is the age which troubles you, after all!” I said, and laughed heartily, loudly, and a long time, in the most good-natured way, not to be undone as an actor.

“Twenty years,” I repeated. “But what of it? Some of the best men in the world use dyes and false—”

At this his temper went away from him suddenly and completely. I had struck the right point indeed!

“You cammorrista!” he cried, and became only himself, his hands gesturing and flying, all his pleasant manner gone. “Why should we listen one second more to such a fisherman! The very seiners of the bay who sell dried sea-horses to the tourists are better gentlemen than you. You can shrug your shoulders! I saw you in Paris, though you thought I did not! Oh, I saw you well! Ah! At the Cafe de la Paiz!”

At this I cried out suddenly. The sting and surprise of it were more than I could bear. In my shame I would even have tried to drown his voice with babblings but after this one cry I could not speak for a while. He went on triumphantly:

“This rascal, my dear ladies, who has persuaded you to ask him to dinner, this camel who claims to be my excellent brother, he, for a few francs, in Paris, shaved his head and showed it for a week to the people with an advertisement painted upon it of the worst ballet in Paris. This is the gentleman with whom you ask Caravacioli to dine!”

It was beyond my expectation, so astonishing and so cruel that I could only look at him for a moment or two. I felt as one who dreams himself falling forever. Then I stepped forward and spoke, in thickness of voice, being unable to lift my head:

“Again it is true what he says. I was that man of the painted head. I had my true brother’s little daughters to care for. They were at the convent, and I owed for them. It was also partly for myself, because I was hungry. I could find not any other way, and so—but that is all.”

I turned and went stumblingly away from them.

In my agony that she should know, I could do nothing but seek greater darkness. I felt myself beaten, dizzy with beatings. That thing which I had done in Paris discredited me. A man whose head-top had borne an advertisement of the Folie-Rouge to think he could be making a combat with the Prince Caravacioli!

Leaning over the railing in the darkest corner of the terrace, I felt my hand grasped secondarily by that good friend of mine.

“God bless you!” whispered Poor Jr.

“On my soul, I believe he’s done himself. Listen!”

I turned. That beautiful lady had stepped out into the light from the salon door. I could see her face shining, and her eyes—ah me, how glorious they were! Antonio followed her.

“But wait,” he cried pitifully.

“Not for you!” she answered, and that voice of hers, always before so gentle, rang out as the Roman trumpets once rang from this same cliff. “Not for you! I saw him there with his painted head and I understood! You saw him there, and you did nothing to help him! And the two little children—your nieces, too,—and he your brother!”

Then my heart melted and I found myself choking, for the beautiful lady was weeping.

“Not for you, Prince Caravacioli,” she cried, through her tears,—“Not for you!”