The Guests Of Hercules Part 37

Vanno saw that Marie was looking at her husband intently, with a peculiar, almost frightened expression, as if she were studying him wistfully, and finding out something new which she had not wholly understood.

"Angelo," she ventured, in a small, beguiling voice, "perhaps this poor man has his pride of an artist. You see, I have a fellow feeling!" She smiled pleadingly, yet mischievously, and turned an explanatory glance on the cure. "I was an artist, and I should so love to know what is a Stereo-Mondaine."

Vanno had never before liked her so much.

Angelo's face changed and softened. "If you want him, it is different!"

he returned. "But you've seemed always to have a horror of snapshotters."

"He might take the garden," she suggested.

"Bring the fellow, Americo," said Prince Della Robbia.

The butler flushed furiously with joy. "Rightho, my good Highnesses," he exclaimed; and the three who understood why he was funny stifled laughter till he was out of earshot. "His English is a constant delight to us," said Marie, instantly picking up again her sleigh-bell gayety of manner, like a dropped, forgotten garment. "It's as wonderful as my English maid's French, which she's earnestly studying, though she finds that a language where meat is feminine and milk masculine simply doesn't appeal to her reason. She's learned to call Wednesday 'Mur_cree_dy' and Sat.u.r.day 'Samdy.' When she goes to Mentone to buy me something at Aux Dames de France, she says she's bought it at the 'Ox Daimes.' But she reached her grandest height this morning. I walked into my room, to hear her groaning at a window that looks toward Monte Carlo. 'Oh, those poor, poor men committing suicide! I can't get them out of my head,' she moaned when I asked if she were ill. 'That day when I went over there sightseeing. It was too awful, walking on the terrace, to hear those poor creatures blowing out their brains every two minutes down under the Casino. I couldn't stand it, so I had to come away, but n.o.body else seemed to mind, and some of 'em was hanging over the wall to see what was going on!' I couldn't imagine what she meant, for a minute. Then I knew it must be the pigeon-shooters."

Angelo laughed. "Of course. But what do _you_ know of the pigeon-shooters, Marie mia? You have sternly refused to let me take you to Monte Carlo."

Marie blushed, a sudden bright blush. "Oh, you have told me about them--how they shoot under the terrace. That's one reason why I love staying here at Cap Martin, or taking excursions where everything is purely beautiful, and nothing to make one sad."

"I don't remember telling you about the pigeon-shooting," Angelo said.

"Well, if you didn't tell me, somebody else must have, mustn't they--else how could I know?"

"Highnesses, Mister the Stereo-Mondaine."

A frail wisp of a man was ushered by the butler on to the loggia: a man very shabby, very thin, very proud, with a camera out of proportion to his size and strength, hugged under one arm. He would have been known as a Frenchman if found dressed in furs at the North Pole.

He explained pa.s.sionately that, had he been a mere photographer, he would not have ventured to intrude upon such distinguished company; but he was unique in his profession, a Stereo-Mondaine, a traveller who knew his world and had a _metier_ very special. He was, in short, an artist in colour photography; and before asking the privilege that he desired, he would beg to show a sample of his most successful work at Monte Carlo.

"Here, for instance," he went on hurriedly in his French of the Midi, "is a treasure of artisticness; a marvel of a portrait, a poem!" And he displayed a large gla.s.s plate, neatly bound round the edges with gilt paper. His thin hand, on which veins rose in a bas relief, held the plate up tremulously against the light. All bent forward with a certain interest, for none of the three had seen many specimens of colour photography. Vanno and the cure both gave vent to slight exclamations.

They were looking at a picture of Mary Grant, dressed in pale blue, with a blue hat. She was standing in the _Place_ of the Casino at Monte Carlo, feeding pigeons.

It seemed to Vanno that his sister-in-law also uttered a faint, "Oh!"

But turning to her, he saw that she was leaning back among the cushions of the hammock, having ceased to take an interest in the prettily coloured photograph. She met his eyes. "I thought I heard Americo coming to call us to luncheon," she said. "It must be nearly time. But it wasn't he, after all. Yes, indeed, it is a charming photograph."

Breaking from English into French, she complimented the Stereo-Mondaine.

"Will you sell me that picture?" Vanno asked.

"But, Monsieur, it is my best. I should have to demand a good price; for it could be produced in a journal, and I would be well paid. When the plate of a coloured photograph is gone--biff! _all_ is gone. There is an end."

"I will give you three louis."

The Stereo-Mondaine accepted at once, lest the Monsieur should change his mind; and Vanno having taken the plate from him, he proceeded to produce others.

"Nothing more, thanks--unless you have any of the same lady."

"No, unfortunately, Monsieur. She would have posed again, for she was a most sympathetic as well as beautiful personality. But the crowd closed around us. I may induce her to stand again, however."

"I hardly think that is likely to happen," Vanno muttered.

"Let him go into the garden, and take half a dozen of the prettiest views--things we should like to carry away with us," the Princess said, hastily, as if she were anxious now to be rid of her protege. "When they are ready, he can send them to us--and the bill."

The Stereo-Mondaine was disposed of, while Angelo took the gla.s.s plate from Vanno, and looked at the picture.

"Do you know the lady, by any chance," he asked lightly, "or did you buy merely as an admirer of beauty?"

"I--am going to marry her, I hope," said Vanno. "We have been engaged since last night. I came over early to tell you."

There was a pause. Each one seemed waiting for another to break the silence. Then the cure stepped into the breach.

"I speak from knowledge when I say that the Principino's fiancee is as good as beautiful--a most rare lady. He is to be congratulated."

"Of course we congratulate him!" Angelo said cordially. He got up and shook hands warmly with his brother, like an Englishman: then he patted him affectionately on the shoulder. "Dear boy," he added, "you have given us a great surprise. But I am sure it is a happy one. And we can feel for you because of our own happiness, which is so new: though I think it always will be new. Can we not sympathize, Marie mia?"

"Yes," said the Princess. "Yes, of course. I congratulate you." There was a different quality in her voice. It did not ring quite true; and Vanno was disappointed. He thought that to please Angelo and him she was affecting more interest than she was able to feel.

Angelo still had the coloured photograph on the gla.s.s plate, but now he handed it to his wife. "What a lovely girl!" he exclaimed. "I don't believe that in your artist days, dearest, you ever had a prettier model."

"No, never," said Marie. She took the plate that Angelo held out, and looked at it with a slight quivering of the eyelids as if the sun, which was very bright, shone too strongly. Then, quickly, she sprang up, leaving the photograph in the hammock. "An awfully pretty girl," she went on. "Vanno must tell us all about her, at luncheon. Here comes Americo to announce it."

She hurried to the door, smiling at the three men over her shoulder. The sun had given her a bright colour. Even her ears were rose-pink. Vanno, in following, retrieved the gla.s.s plate from among the cushions. He was not sure whether or no his announcement had been a success, but the method of it seemed to have been thrust on him by Fate.

For a few minutes after they were seated at the table Marie chatted of other things, talking very fast about a _Blinis au caviar_ for which she had given Filomena the recipe. "I tasted it first in Russia," she remarked, immediately adding "when I was very young." Then abruptly she jumped back to the subject of Vanno's great news. "Tell us about _her_,"

she commanded, giving her brother-in-law a charming smile. But as he began, rather jerkily, to supply the information asked for, the Princess looked down at her plate, eating slowly and daintily, as a child eats when it wishes to make some delicious food last as long as possible. Not once did she raise her thick, straight eyelashes, as Vanno said that the girl was a Miss Grant, now staying with the wife of the chaplain at Monte Carlo. Her first question seemed to have satisfied the Princess'

curiosity, for all those that followed were asked by her husband.

"Miss Grant!" he echoed, deeply interested in his brother's love affair, though still puzzled by its suddenness, and a little uneasy. He felt that it would not be well for both the Duke's sons to marry women unknown socially; and almost unconsciously he was influenced by a selfish consideration. Vanno was expected to make his, Angelo's, peace with the father, who worshipped the younger, tolerated the elder, of his sons. It was Vanno's duty to describe Marie in glowing terms, to induce the Duke to feel that despite her social unimportance she was a pearl among women. But if Vanno had his own peace to make, his own pearl to praise, other interests might suffer. "Miss Grant! It is odd, isn't it, that we should choose girls of names so much alike? Marie Gaunt, and--but what is your Miss Grant's Christian name?"

Vanno had to confess ignorance; and this forced him to explain that he had known Miss Grant for a very short time. "But I felt from the beginning that I'd known her always," he added bravely. "It was--love at first sight. You--I think you'll understand when you see her. The cure sees. And that's what I want to ask. Will you both go to call upon her with me--and be kind?"

"Of course," said Angelo. "It can't be too soon. When shall we go?"

"Well," said Vanno, almost shamefacedly, "I thought if you could manage it this afternoon----"

Angelo laughed a pleasant but teasing laugh. "He doesn't want any gra.s.s to grow between Cap Martin and Monte Carlo before our motor-car has rushed us to his lady's bower. We can go this afternoon, I'm sure, can't we, Marie?"

The eyes of the three men were turned upon the Princess, who was still delicately eating her _Blinis au caviar_, though the others had finished. For an instant she did not answer. Then she looked up suddenly, first at Angelo, her glance travelling to Vanno almost pleadingly before she spoke. "I should love to go," she said to him, emphatically. "Only, I do think it would be so much more proper and better in every way for me to call on--on Miss Grant first alone, without either of you. Do let me. It will be far more of a compliment, I a.s.sure you. And she will prefer it."

"I don't quite see that," observed Angelo.

"Because you are a man! Why, she can talk to me, and tell me little confidential things that she will love telling, and couldn't so much as mention before you. Vanno says she has no relatives with her, but is staying with friends; and I will try to make her feel as if I were a sister."

"Marie, you _are_ good!" exclaimed Vanno, his eyes warm with grat.i.tude.

After all, his sister-in-law was not disapproving, as he had begun to fear. "She's perfectly right, Angelo. It will be splendid of her to go alone."

"I begin to see the point of view," said Angelo. "I might have known.

She's always right."