The Beautiful Lady - Booth Tarkington (books recommended by bts TXT) 📗
- Author: Booth Tarkington
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And how practical was this fellow, how many years he had been developing his fascinations! I was the only person of that small company who could have a suspicion that his moustache was dyed, that his hair was toupee, or that hints of his real age were scorpions and adders to him. I should not have thought it, if I had not known it. Here was my advantage: I had known his monstrous vanity all my life.
So he talked of himself in his various surreptitious ways until coffee came, Miss Landry listening eagerly, and my poor friend making no effort; for what were his quiet United States absurdities compared to the whole-world gaieties and Abyssinian adventures of this Othello, particularly for a young girl to whom Antonio’s type was unfamiliar? For the first time I saw my young man’s brave front desert him. His mouth drooped, and his eyes had an appearance of having gazed long at a bright light. I saw that he, unhappy one, was at last too sure what her answer would be.
For myself, I said very little—I waited. I hoped and believed Antonio would attack me in his clever, disguised way, for he had always hated me and my dead brother, and he had never failed to prove himself too skilful for us. In my expectancy of his assault there was no mistake. I comprehended Antonio very well, and I knew that he feared I might seek to do him an injury, particularly after my inspired speech and gesture upon the terrace. Also, I felt that he would, if possible, anticipate my attempt and strike first. I was willing; for I thought myself in possession of his vulnerable point—never dreaming that he might know my own!
At last when he, with the coffee and cigarettes, took the knife in his hand, he placed a veil over the point. He began, laughingly, with the picture of a pickpocket he had helped to catch in London. London was greatly inhabited by pickpockets, according to Antonio’s declaration. Yet, he continued, it was nothing in comparison to Paris. Paris was the rendezvous, the world’s home, for the criminals, adventurers, and rascals if the world, English, Spanish, South-Americans, North-Americans,— and even Italians! One must beware of people one had met in Paris!
“Of course,” he concluded, with a most amiable smile, “there are many good people there also. That is not to be forgotten. If I should dare to make a risk on such a trifle, for instance, I would lay wager that you”—he nodded toward Poor Jr.—“made the acquaintance of Ansolini in Paris?”
This was of the greatest ugliness in its underneath significance, though the manner was disarming. Antonio’s smile was so cheerful, his eye-glass so twinkling, that none of them could have been sure he truly meant anything harmful of me, though Poor Jr. looked up, puzzled and frowning.
Before he could answer I pulled myself altogether, as they say, and leaned forward, resting my elbows upon the table. “It is true,” and I tried to smile as amiably as Antonio. “These coincidences occur. You meet all the great frauds of the world in Paris. Was it not there”—I turned to Mrs. Landry—“that you met the young Prince here?”
At this there was no mistaking that the others perceived. The secret battle had begun and was not secret. I saw a wild gleam in Poor Jr.‘s eyes, as if he comprehended that strange things were to come; but, ah, the face of distress and wonder upon Mrs. Landry, who beheld the peace of both a Prince and a dinner assailed; and, alas! the strange and hurt surprise that came from the lady of the pongee! Let me not be a boastful fellow, but I had borne her pity and had adored it—I could face her wonder, even her scorn.
It was in the flash of her look that I saw my great chance and what I must try to do. Knowing Antonio, it was as if I saw her falling into the deep water and caught just one contemptuous glance from her before the waves hid her. But how much juster should that contempt have been if I had not tried to save her!
As for that old Antonio, he might have known enough to beware. I had been timid with him always, and he counted on it now, but a man who has shown a painted head-top to the people of Paris will dare a great deal.
“As the Prince says,” replied Mrs. Landry, with many flutters, “one meets only the most agreeable people in Paris!”
“Paris!” I exclaimed. “Ah, that home of ingenuity! How they paint there! How they live, and how they dye—their beards!”
You see how the poor Ansolini played the buffoon. I knew they feared it was wine, I had been so silent until now; but I did not care, I was beyond care.
“Our young Prince speaks truly,” I cried, raising my voice. “He is wise beyond his years, this youth! He will be great when he reaches middle age, for he knows Paris and understands North America! Like myself, he is grateful that the people of your continent enrich our own! We need all that you can give us! Where should we be—any of us” (I raised my voice still louder and waved my hand to Antonio),—“where should we be, either of us” (and I bowed to the others) “without you?”
Mrs. Landry rose with precipitousness, and the beautiful lady, very red, followed. Antonio, unmistakably stung with the scorpions I had set upon him, sprang to the door, the palest yellow man I have ever beheld, and let the ladies pass before him.
The next moment I was left alone with Poor Jr. and his hyacinth trees.
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
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