Chapter 2

A very trim, very intelligent-looking maid opened the door, and the two men followed Madame de Vaurigard into a square hall, hung with tapestries and lit by two candles of a Brobdingnagian species Mellin had heretofore seen only in cathedrals. Here Mr. Sneyd paused.

“I weon't be bawthring you,” he said. “Just a wad with you, Cantess, and I'm off.”

The intelligent-looking maid drew back some heavy curtains leading to a salon beyond the hall, and her mistress smiled brightly at Mellin.

“I shall keep him to jus' his one word,” she said, as the young man passed between the curtains.

It was a nobly proportioned room that he entered, so large that, in spite of the amount of old furniture it contained, the first impression it gave was one of spaciousness. Panels of carved and blackened wood lined the walls higher than his head; above them, Spanish leather gleamed here and there with flickerings of red and gilt, reflecting dimly a small but brisk wood fire which crackled in a carved stone fireplace. His feet slipped on the floor of polished tiles and wandered from silky rugs to lose themselves in great black bear skins as in unmown sward. He went from the portrait of a “cinquecento” cardinal to a splendid tryptich set over a Gothic chest, from a cabinet sheltering a collection of old glass to an Annunciation by an unknown Primitive. He told himself that this was a “room in a book,” and became dreamily assured that he was a man in a book. Finally he stumbled upon something almost grotesquely out of place: a large, new, perfectly-appointed card-table with a sliding top, a smooth, thick, green cover and patent compartments.

He halted before this incongruity, regarding it with astonishment. Then a light laugh rippled behind him, and he turned to find Madame de Vaurigard seated in a big red Venetian chair by the fire.

She wore a black lace dress, almost severe in fashion, which gracefully emphasized her slenderness; and she sat with her knees crossed, the firelight twinkling on the beads of her slipper, on her silken instep, and flashing again from the rings upon the slender fingers she had clasped about her knee.

She had lit a thin, long Russian cigarette.

“You see?” she laughed. “I mus' keep up with the time. I mus' do somesing to hold my frien's about me. Even the ladies like to play now--that breedge w'ich is so tiresome--they play, play, play! And you--you Americans, you refuse to endure us if we do not let you play. So for my frien's when they come to my house--if they wish it, there is that foolish little table. I fear”--she concluded with a bewitching affectation of sadness--“they prefer that to talkin' wiz me.”

“You know that couldn't be so, _Comtesse_,” he said. “I would rather talk to you than--than--”

“Ah, yes, you say so, Monsieur!” She looked at him gravely; a little sigh seemed to breathe upon her lips; she leaned forward nearer the fire, her face wistful in the thin, rosy light, and it seemed to him he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

He came across to her and sat upon a stool at her feet. “On my soul,” he began huskily, “I swear--”

She laid her finger on her lips, shaking her head gently; and he was silent, while the intelligent maid--at that moment entering--arranged a tea-table and departed.

“American an' Russian, they are the worse,” said the Countess thoughtfully, as she served him with a generous cup, laced with rum, “but the American he is the bes' to play _wiz_.” Mellin found her irresistible when she said “wiz.”

“Why is that?”

“Oh, the Russian play high, yes--but the American”--she laughed delightedly and stretched her arms wide--“he make' it all a joke! He is beeg like his beeg country. If he win or lose, he don' care! Ah, I mus' tell you of my great American frien', that Honor-able Chanlair Pedlow, who is comin' to Rome. You have heard of Honor-able Chanlair Pedlow in America?”

“I remember hearing that name.”

“Ah, I shall make you know him. He is a man of distinction; he did sit in your Chamber of Deputies--what you call it?--yes, your Con-gress. He is funny, eccentric--always he roar like a lion--Boum!--but so simple, so good, a man of such fine heart--so lovable!”

“I'll be glad to meet him,” said Mellin coldly.

“An', oh, yes, I almos' forget to tell you,” she went on, “your frien', that dear Cooley, he is on his way from Monte Carlo in his automobile. I have a note from him to-day.”

“Good sort of fellow, little Cooley, in his way,” remarked her companion graciously. “Not especially intellectual or that, you know. His father was a manufacturer chap, I believe, or something of the sort. I suppose you saw a lot of him in Paris?”

“Eh, I thought he is dead!” cried Madame de Vaurigard.

“The father is. I mean, little Cooley.”

“Oh, yes,” she laughed softly. “We had some gay times, a little party of us. We shall be happy here, too; you will see. I mus' make a little dinner very soon, but not unless you will come. You will?”

“Do you want me very much?”

He placed his empty cup on the table and leaned closer to her, smiling. She did not smile in response; instead, her eyes fell and there was the faintest, pathetic quiver of her lower lip.

“Already you know that,” she said in a low voice.

She rose quickly, turned away from him and walked across the room to the curtains which opened upon the hall. One of these she drew back.

“My frien', you mus' go now,” she said in the same low voice. “To-morrow I will see you again. Come at four an' you shall drive with me--but not--not more--_now_. Please!”

She stood waiting, not looking at him, but with head bent and eyes veiled. As he came near she put out a limp hand. He held it for a few seconds of distinctly emotional silence, then strode swiftly into the hall.

She immediately let the curtain fall behind him, and as he got his hat and coat he heard her catch her breath sharply with a sound like a little sob.

Dazed with glory, he returned to the hotel. In the lobby he approached the glittering concierge and said firmly:

“What is the Salone Margherita? Cam you get me a box there to-night?”

IV. Good Fellowship

He confessed his wickedness to Madame de Vaurigard the next afternoon as they drove out the Appian Way. “A fellow must have just a bit of a fling, you know,” he said; “and, really, Salone Margherita isn't so tremendously wicked.”

She shook her head at him in friendly raillery. “Ah, that may be; but how many of those little dancing-girl' have you invite to supper afterward?”

This was a delicious accusation, and though he shook his head in virtuous denial he was before long almost convinced that he _had_ given a rather dashing supper after the vaudeville and had _not_ gone quietly back to the hotel, only stopping by the way to purchase an orange and a pocketful of horse-chestnuts to eat in his room.

It was a happy drive for Robert Russ Mellin, though not happier than that of the next day. Three afternoons they spent driving over the Campagna, then back to Madame de Vaurigard's apartment for tea by the firelight, till the enraptured American began to feel that the dream in which he had come to live must of happy necessity last forever.

On the fourth afternoon, as he stepped out of the hotel elevator into the corridor, he encountered Mr. Sneyd.

“Just stottin', eh?” said the Englishman, taking an envelope from his pocket. “Lucky I caught you. This is for you. I just saw the Cantess and she teold me to give it you. Herry and read it and kem on t' the Amairikin Baw. Chap I want you to meet. Eold Cooley's thyah too. Gawt in with his tourin'-caw at noon.”

“You will forgive, dear friend,” wrote Madame de Vaurigard, “if I ask you that we renounce our drive to-day. You see, I wish to have that little dinner to-night and must make preparation. Honorable Chandler Pedlow arrived this morning from Paris and that droll Mr. Cooley I have learn is coincidentally arrived also. You see I think it would be very pleasant to have the dinner to welcome these friends on their arrival. You will come surely--or I shall be so truly miserable. You know it perhaps too well! We shall have a happy evening if you come to console us for renouncing our drive. A thousand of my prettiest wishes for you.

“Helene.”

The signature alone consoled him. To have that note from her, to own it, was like having one of her gloves or her fan. He would keep it forever, he thought; indeed, he more than half expressed a sentiment to that effect in the response which he wrote in the aquarium, while Sneyd waited for him at a table near by. The Englishman drew certain conclusions in regard to this reply, since it permitted a waiting friend to consume three long tumblers of brandy-and-soda before it was finished. However, Mr. Sneyd kept his reflections to himself, and, when the epistle had been dispatched by a messenger, took the American's arm and led him to the “American Bar” of the hotel, a region hitherto unexplored by Mellin.

Leaning against the bar were Cooley and the man whom Mellin had seen lolling beside Madame de Vaurigard in Cooley's automobile in Paris, the same gross person for whom he had instantly conceived a strong repugnance, a feeling not at once altered by a closer view.

Cooley greeted Mellin uproariously and Mr. Sneyd introduced the fat man. “Mr. Mellin, the Honorable Chandler Pedlow,” he said; nor was the shock to the first-named gentleman lessened by young Cooley's adding, “Best feller in the world!”

Mr. Pedlow's eyes were sheltered so deeply beneath florid rolls of flesh that all one saw of them was an inscrutable gleam of blue; but, small though they were, they were not shifty, for they met Mellin's with a squareness that was almost brutal. He offered a fat paw, wet by a full glass which he set down too suddenly on the bar.

“Shake,” he said, in a loud and husky voice, “and be friends! Tommy,” he added to the attendant, “another round of Martinis.”

“Not for me,” said Mellin hastily. “I don't often--”

“_What!_” Mr. Pedlow roared suddenly. “Why, the first words Countess de Vaurigard says to me this afternoon was, 'I want you to meet my young friend Mellin,' she says; 'the gamest little Indian that ever come down the pike! He's game,' she says--'he'll see you _all_ under the table!' That's what the smartest little woman in the world, the Countess de Vaurigard, says about you.”

This did not seem very closely to echo Madame de Vaurigard's habit of phrasing, but Mellin perceived that it might be only the fat man's way of putting things.

“You ain't goin' back on _her_, are you?” continued Mr. Pedlow. “You ain't goin' to make her out a liar? I tell you, when the Countess de Vaurigard says a man 's game, he is game!” He laid his big paw cordially on Mellin's shoulder and smiled, lowering his voice to a friendly whisper. “And I'll bet ten thousand dollars right out of my pants pocket you _are_ game, too!”

He pressed a glass into the other's hand. Smiling feebly, the embarrassed Mellin accepted it.

“Make it four more, Tommy,” said Pedlow. “And here,” continued this thoughtful man, “I don't go bandying no ladies' names around a bar-room--that ain't my style--but I do want to propose a toast. I won't name her, but you all know who I mean.”

“Sure we do,” interjected Cooley warmly. “Queen! That's what she is.”

“Here's _to_ her,” continued Mr. Pedlow. “Here's to her--brightest and best--and no heel-taps! And now let's set down over in the corner and take it easy. It ain't hardly five o'clock yet, and we can set here comfortable, gittin' ready for dinner, until half-past six, anyway.”

Whereupon the four seated themselves about a tabouret in the corner, and, a waiter immediately bringing them four fresh glasses from the bar, Mellin began to understand what Mr. Pedlow meant by “gittin' ready for dinner.” The burden of the conversation was carried almost entirely by the Honorable Chandler, though Cooley, whose boyish face was deeply flushed, now and then managed to interrupt by talking louder than the fat man. Mr. Sneyd sat silent.

“Good ole Sneyd,” said Pedlow. “_He_ never talks, jest saws wood. Only Britisher I ever liked. Plays cards like a goat.”

“He played a mighty good game on the steamer,” said Cooley warmly.

“I don't care what he did on the steamer, he played like a goat the only time _I_ ever played with him. You know he did. I reckon you was _there!_”

“Should say I _was_ there! He played mighty well--”

“Like a goat,” reiterated the fat man firmly.

“Nothing of the sort. You had a run of hands, that was all. Nobody can go against the kind of luck you had that night; and you took it away from Sneyd and me in rolls. But we'll land you pretty soon, won't we, ole Sneydie?”

“We sh'll have a shawt at him, at least,” said the Englishman.

“Perhaps he won't want us to try,” young Cooley pursued derisively. “Perhaps he thinks I play like a goat, too!”

Mr. Pedlow threw back his head and roared. “Give me somep'n easy! You don't know no more how to play a hand of cards than a giraffe does. I'll throw in all of my Blue Gulch gold-stock--and it's worth eight hundred thousand dollars if it's worth a cent--I'll put it up against that tin automobile of yours, divide chips even and play you freeze-out for it. You play cards? Go learn hop-scotch!”

“You wait!” exclaimed the other indignantly. “Next time we play we'll make you look so small you'll think you're back in Congress!”

At this Mr. Pedlow again threw back his head and roared, his vast body so shaken with mirth that the glass he held in his hand dropped to the floor.

“There,” said Cooley, “that's the second Martini you've spilled. You're two behind the rest of us.”

“What of it?” bellowed the fat man. “There's plenty comin', ain't there? Four more, Tommy, and bring cigars. Don't take a cent from none of these Indians. Gentlemen, your money ain't good here. I own this bar, and this is my night.”

Mellin had begun to feel at ease, and after a time--as they continued to sit--he realized that his repugnance to Mr. Pedlow was wearing off; he felt that there must be good in any one whom Madame de Vaurigard liked. She had spoken of Pedlow often on their drives; he was an “eccentric,” she said, an “original.” Why not accept her verdict? Besides, Pedlow was a man of distinction and force; he had been in Congress; he was a millionaire; and, as became evident in the course of a long recital of the principal events of his career, most of the great men of the time were his friends and proteges.

“'Well, Mack,' says I one day when we were in the House together”--(thus Mr. Pedlow, alluding to the late President McKinley)--“'Mack,' says I, 'if you'd drop that double standard business'--he was waverin' toward silver along then--'I don't know but I might git the boys to nominate you fer President.' 'I'll think it over,' he says--'I'll think it over.' You remember me tellin' you about that at the time, don't you, Sneyd, when you was in the British Legation at Washin'ton?”

“Pahfictly,” said Mr. Sneyd, lighting a cigar with great calmness.

“'Yes,' I says, 'Mack,' I says, 'if you'll drop it, I'll turn in and git you the nomination.'”

“Did he drop it?” asked Mellin innocently.

Mr. Pedlow leaned forward and struck the young man's knee a resounding blow with the palm of his hand.

“He was _nominated_, wasn't he?”

“Time to dress,” announced Mr. Sneyd, looking at his watch.

“One more round first,” insisted Cooley with prompt vehemence. “Let's finish with our first toast again. Can't drink that too often.”

This proposition was received with warmest approval, and they drank standing. “Brightest and best!” shouted Mr. Pedlow.

“Queen! What she is!” exclaimed Cooley.

_“Ma belle Marquise!”_ whispered Mellin tenderly, as the rim touched his lips.

A small, keen-faced man, whose steady gray eyes were shielded by tortoise-rimmed spectacles, had come into the room and now stood quietly at the bar, sipping a glass of Vichy. He was sharply observant of the party as it broke up, Pedlow and Sneyd preceding the younger men to the corridor, and, as the latter turned to follow, the stranger stepped quickly forward, speaking Cooley's name.

“What's the matter?”

“Perhaps you don't remember me. My name's Cornish. I'm a newspaper man, a correspondent.” (He named a New York paper.) “I'm down here to get a Vatican story. I knew your father for a number of years before his death, and I think I may claim that he was a friend of mine.”

“That's good,” said the youth cordially. “If I hadn't a fine start already, and wasn't in a hurry to dress, we'd have another.”

“You were pointed out to me in Paris,” continued Cornish. “I found where you were staying and called on you the next day, but you had just started for the Riviera.” He hesitated, glancing at Mellin. “Can you give me half a dozen words with you in private?”

“You'll have to excuse me, I'm afraid. I've only got about ten minutes to dress. See you to-morrow.”

“I should like it to be as soon as possible,” the journalist said seriously. “It isn't on my own account, and I--”

“All right. You come to my room at ten t'morrow morning?”

“Well, if you can't possibly make it to-night,” said Cornish reluctantly. “I wish--”

“Can't possibly.”

And Cooley, taking Mellin by the arm, walked rapidly down the corridor. “Funny ole correspondent,” he murmured. “What do _I_ know about the Vatican?”

V. Lady Mount Rhyswicke

The four friends of Madame de Vaurigard were borne to her apartment from the Magnifique in Cooley's big car. They sailed triumphantly down and up the hills in a cool and bracing air, under a moon that shone as brightly for them as it had for Caesar, and Mellin's soul was buoyant within him. He thought of Cranston and laughed aloud. What would Cranston say if it could see him in a sixty-horse touring-car, with two millionaires and an English diplomat, brother of an earl, and all on the way to dine with a countess? If Mary Kramer could see him!... Poor Mary Kramer! Poor little Mary Kramer!

A man-servant took their coats in Madame de Vaurigard's hall, where they could hear through the curtains the sound of one or two voices in cheerful conversation.

Sneyd held up his hand.

“Listen,” he said. “Shawly, that isn't Lady Mount-Rhyswicke's voice! She couldn't be in Reom--always a Rhyswicke Caws'l for Decembah. By Jev, it is!”

“Nothin' of the kind,” said Pedlow. “I know Lady Mount-Rhyswicke as well as I know you. I started her father in business when he was clerkin' behind a counter in Liverpool. I give him the money to begin on. 'Make good,' says I, 'that's all. Make good!' And he done it, too. Educated his daughter fit fer a princess, married her to Mount-Rhyswicke, and when he died left her ten million dollars if he left her a cent! I know Madge Mount-Rhyswicke and that ain't her voice.”

A peal of silvery laughter rang from the other side of the curtain.

“They've heard you,” said Cooley.

“An' who could help it?” Madame de Vaurigard herself threw back the curtains. “Who could help hear our great, dear, ole lion? How he roar'!”

She wore a white velvet “princesse” gown of a fashion which was a shade less than what is called “daring,” with a rope of pearls falling from her neck and a diamond star in her dark hair. Standing with one arm uplifted to the curtains, and with the mellow glow of candles and firelight behind her, she was so lovely that both Mellin and Cooley stood breathlessly still until she changed her attitude. This she did only to move toward them, extending a hand to each, letting Cooley seize the right and Mellin the left.

Each of them was pleased with what he got, particularly Mellin. “The left is nearer the heart,” he thought.

She led them through the curtains, not withdrawing her hands until they entered the salon. She might have led them out of her fifth-story window in that fashion, had she chosen.

“My two wicked boys!” she laughed tenderly. This also pleased both of them, though each would have preferred to be her only wicked boy--a preference which, perhaps, had something to do with the later events of the evening.

“Aha! I know you both; before twenty minute' you will be makin' love to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. Behol' those two already! An' they are only ole frien's.”

She pointed to Pedlow and Sneyd. The fat man was shouting at a woman in pink satin, who lounged, half-reclining, among a pile of cushions upon a divan near the fire; Sneyd gallantly bending over her to kiss her hand.

“It is a very little dinner, you see,” continued the hostess, “only seven, but we shall be seven time' happier.”

The seventh person proved to be the Italian, Corni, who had surrendered his seat in Madame de Vaurigard's victoria to Mellin on the Pincio. He presently made his appearance followed by a waiter bearing a tray of glasses filled with a pink liquid, while the Countess led her two wicked boys across the room to present them to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. Already Mellin was forming sentences for his next letter to the Cranston Telegraph: “Lady Mount-Rhyswicke said to me the other evening, while discussing the foreign policy of Great Britain, in Comtesse de Vaurigard's salon...” “An English peeress of pronounced literary acumen has been giving me rather confidentially her opinion of our American poets...”

The inspiration of these promising fragments was a large, weary-looking person, with no lack of powdered shoulder above her pink bodice and a profusion of “undulated” hair of so decided a blond that it might have been suspected that the decision had lain with the lady herself.

“Howjdo,” she said languidly, when Mellin's name was pronounced to her. “There's a man behind you tryin' to give you something to drink.”

“Who was it said these were Martinis?” snorted Pedlow. “They've got perfumery in 'em.”

“Ah, what a bad lion it is!” Madame de Vaurigard lifted both hands in mock horror. “Roar, lion, roar!” she cried. “An' think of the emotion of our good Cavaliere Corni, who have come an hour early jus' to make them for us! I ask Monsieur Mellin if it is not good.”

“And I'll leave it to Cooley,” said Pedlow. “If he can drink all of his I'll eat crow!”

Thus challenged, the two young men smilingly accepted glasses from the waiter, and lifted them on high.

“Same toast,” said Cooley. “Queen!”

_“A la belle Marquise!”_

Gallantly they drained the glasses at a gulp, and Madame de Vaurigard clapped her hands.

“Bravo!” she cried. “You see? Corni and I, we win.”

“Look at their faces!” said Mr. Pedlow, tactlessly drawing attention to what was, for the moment, an undeniably painful sight. “Don't tell me an Italian knows how to make a good Martini!”

Mellin profoundly agreed, but, as he joined the small procession to the Countess' dinner-table, he was certain that an Italian at least knew how to make a strong one.

The light in the dining-room was provided by six heavily-shaded candles on the table; the latter decorated with delicate lines of orchids. The chairs were large and comfortable, covered with tapestry; the glass was old Venetian, and the servants, moving like useful ghosts in the shadow outside the circle of mellow light, were particularly efficient in the matter of keeping the wine-glasses full. Madame de Vaurigard had put Pedlow on her right, Cooley on her left, with Mellin directly opposite her, next to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. Mellin was pleased, because he thought he would have the Countess's face toward him. Anything would have pleased him just then.

“This is the kind of table _everybody_ ought to have,” he observed to the party in general, as he finished his first glass of champagne. “I'm going to have it like this at my place in the States--if I ever decide to go back. I'll have six separate candlesticks like this, not a candelabrum, and that will be the only light in the room. And I'll never have anything but orchids on my table--”