The Beautiful Lady Part 3

Two days later we roared our way out of the gloomy St. Gotthard and wound down the pa.s.s, out into the sunshine of Italy, into that broad plain of mulberries where the silkworms weave to enrich the proud Milanese. Ah, those Milanese! They are like the people of Turin, and look down upon us of Naples; they find us only amusing, because our minds and movements are too quick for them to understand. I have no respect for the Milanese, except for three things: they have a cathedral, a picture, and a dead man.

We came to our hotel in the soft twilight, with the air so balmy one wished to rise and float in it. This was the hour for the Cathedral; therefore, leaving Leonardo and his fresco for the to-morrow, I conducted my uncomplaining ward forth, and through that big arcade of which the people are so proud, to the Duomo. Poor Jr. showed few signs of life as we stood before that immenseness; he said patiently that it resembled the postals, and followed me inside the portals with languor.

It was all grey hollowness in the vast place. The windows showed not any colour nor light; the splendid pillars soared up into the air and disappeared as if they mounted to heights of invisibility in the sky at night. Very far away, at the other end of the church it seemed, one lamp was burning, high over the transept. One could not see the chains of support nor the roof above it; it seemed a great star, but so much all alone. We walked down the long aisle to stand nearer to it, the darkness growing deeper as we advanced. When we came almost beneath, both of us gazing upward, my companion unwittingly stumbled against a lady who was standing silently looking up at this light, and who had failed to notice our approach. The contact was severe enough to dislodge from her hand her folded parasol, for which I began to grope.

There was a hurried sentence of excusation from Poor Jr., followed by moments of silence before she replied. Then I heard her voice in startled exclamation:

"Rufus, it is never you?"

He called out, almost loudly,

"Alice!"

Then I knew that it was the second time I had lifted a parasol from the ground for the lady of the grey pongee and did not see her face; but this time I placed it in her own hand; for my head bore no shame upon it now.

In the surprise of encountering Poor Jr. I do not think she noticed that she took the parasol or was conscious of my presence, and it was but too secure that my young friend had forgotten that I lived. I think, in truth, I should have forgotten it myself, if it had not been for the leaping of my heart.

Ah, that foolish dream of mine had proven true: I knew her, I knew her, unmistaking, without doubt or hesitancy--and in the dark! How should I know at the mere sound of her voice? I think I knew before she spoke!

Poor Jr. had taken a step toward her as she fell back; I could only see the two figures as two shadows upon shadow, while for them I had melted altogether and was forgotten.

"You think I have followed you," he cried, "but you have no right to think it. It was an accident and you've got to believe me!"

"I believe you," she answered gently. "Why should I not?"

"I suppose you want me to clear out again," he went on, "and I will; but I don't see why."

Her voice answered him out of the shadow: "It is only you who make a reason why. I'd give anything to be friends with you; you've always known that."

"Why can't we be?" he said, sharply and loudly. "I've changed a great deal. I'm very sensible, and I'll never bother you again--that other way. Why shouldn't I see a little of you?"

I heard her laugh then--happily, it seemed to me,--and I thought I perceived her to extend her hand to him, and that he shook it briefly, in his fashion, as if it had been the hand of a man and not that of the beautiful lady.

"You know I should like nothing better in the world--since you tell me what you do," she answered.

"And the other man?" he asked her, with the same hinting of sharpness in his tone. "Is that all settled?"

"Almost. Would you like me to tell you?"

"Only a little--please!"

His voice had dropped, and he spoke very quietly, which startlingly caused me to realize what I was doing. I went out of hearing then, very softly. Is it creible that I found myself trembling when I reached the twilit piazza? It is true, and I knew that never, for one moment, since that tragic, divine day of her pity, had I wholly despaired of beholding her again; that in my most sorrowful time there had always been a little, little morsel of certain knowledge that I should some day be near her once more.

And now, so much was easily revealed to me: it was to see her that the good Lambert R. Poor Jr., had come to Paris, preceding my patron; it was he who had pa.s.sed with her on the last day of my shame, and whom she had addressed by his central name of Rufus, and it was to his hand that I had restored her parasol.

I was to look upon her face at last--I knew it--and to speak with her.

Ah, yes, I did tremble! It was not because I feared she might recognize her poor slave of the painted head-top, nor that Poor Jr. would tell her. I knew him now too well to think he would do that, had I been even that other of whom he had spoken, for he was a brave, good boy, that Poor Jr. No, it was a trembling of another kind--something I do not know how to explain to those who have not trembled in the same way; and I came alone to my room in the hotel, still trembling a little and having strange quickness of breathing in my chest.

I did not make any light; I did not wish it, for the precious darkness of the Cathedral remained with me--magic darkness in which I beheld floating clouds made of the dust of gold and vanishing melodies. Any person who knows of these singular things comprehends how little of them can be told; but to those people who do not know of them, it may appear all great foolishness. Such people are either too young, and they must wait, or too old--they have forgotten!

It was an hour afterward, and Poor Jr. had knocked twice at my door, when I lighted the room and opened it to him. He came in, excitedly flushed, and, instead of taking a chair, began to walk quickly up and down the floor.

"I'm afraid I forgot all about you, Ansolini," he said, "but that girl I ran into is a--a Miss Landry, whom I have known a long--"

I put my hand on his shoulder for a moment and said:

"I think I am not so dull, my friend!"

He made a blue flash at me with his eyes, then smiled and shook his head.

"Yes, you are right," he answered, re-beginning his fast pace over the carpet. "It was she that I meant in Lucerne--I don't see why I should not tell you. In Paris she said she didn't want me to see her again until I could be--friendly--the old way instead of something considerably different, which I'd grown to be. Well, I've just told her not only that I'd behave like a friend, but that I'd changed and felt like one. Pretty much of a lie that was!" He laighed, without any amus.e.m.e.nt. "But it was successful, and I suppose I can keep it up. At any rate we're going over to Venice with her and her mother to-morrow.

Afterwards, we'll see them in Naples just before they sail."

"To Venice with them!" I could not repress crying out.

"Yes; we join parties for two days," he said, and stopped at a window and looked out attentively at nothing before he went on: "It won't be very long, and I don't suppose it will ever happen again. The other man is to meet them in Rome. He's a countryman of yours, and I believe--I believe it's--about--settled!"

He p.r.o.nounced these last words in an even voice, but how slowly! Not more slowly than the construction of my own response, which I heard myself making:

"This countryman of mine--who is he?"

"One of your kind of Kentucky Colonels," Poor Jr. laughed mournfully.

At first I did not understand; then it came to me that he had sometimes previously spoken in that idiom of the n.o.bles, and that it had been his custom to address one of his Parisian followers, a vicomte, as "Colonel."

"What is his name?"

"I can't p.r.o.nounce it, and I don't know how to spell it," he answered.

"And that doesn't bring me to the verge of the grave! I can bear to forget it, at least until we get to Naples!"

He turned and went to the door, saying, cheerfully: "Well, old horse-thief" (such had come to be his name for me sometimes, and it was pleasant to hear), "we must be dressing. They're at this hotel, and we dine with them to-night."

Chapter Six

How can I tell of the lady of the pongee--now that I beheld her? Do you think that, when she came that night to the salon where we were awaiting her, I hesitated to lift my eyes to her face because of a fear that it would not be so beautiful as the misty sweet face I had dreamed would be hers? Ah, no! It was the beauty which was in her heart that had made me hers; yet I knew that she was beautiful. She was fair, that is all I can tell. I cannot tell of her eyes, her height, her mouth; I saw her through those clouds of the dust of gold--she was all glamour and light.

It was to be seen that everyone fell in love with her at once; that the chef d'orchestre came and played to her; and the waiters--you should have observed them!--made silly, tender faces through the great groves of flowers with which Poor Jr. had covered the table. It was most difficult for me to address her, to call her "Miss Landry." It seemed impossible that she should have a name, or that I should speak to her except as "you."

Even, I cannot tell very much of her mother, except that she was adorable because of her adorable relationship. She was florid, perhaps, and her conversation was of commonplaces and echoes, like my own, for I could not talk. It was Poor Jr. who made the talking, and in spite of the spell that was on me, I found myself full of admiration and sorrow for that brave fellow. He was all gaieties and little stories in a way I had never heard before; he kept us in quiet laughter; in a word, he was charming. The beautiful lady seemed content to listen with the greatest pleasure. She talked very little, except to encourage the young man to continue. I do not think she was brilliant, as they call it, or witty.

She was much more than that in her comprehension, in her kindness--her beautiful kindness!

She spoke only once directly to me, except for the little things one must say. "I am almost sure I have met you, Signor Ansolini."

I felt myself burning up and knew that the conflagration was visible.

So frightful a blush cannot be prevented by will-power, and I felt it continuing in hot waves long after Poor Jr. had effected salvation for me by a small joke upon my cosmopolitanism.

Little sleep visited me that night. The darkness of my room was luminous and my closed eyes became painters, painting so radiantly with divine colours--painters of wonderful portraits of this lady. Gallery after gallery swam before me, and the morning brought only more!