CHAPTER LI
"Yes," said Eugenia at the breakfast table, "Marise was suddenly called back to France by family matters. She is her widowed father's housekeeper, you know; and then too, there is an old servant somewhere who brought her up, whom she feels it her duty to go to see every once in a while."
"What's her address in Paris?" asked Mr. Crittenden urgently.
"I can give that to you, but if you're thinking of writing her a card it wouldn't reach her, for she was to go directly on to the south, and I haven't the least idea what that address is. Some tiny village on the sea-coast, I believe. Or is it in the Pyrenees? But she will be back very soon, almost any day. It's hardly worth while trying to write her. She'll be here before a card could follow her around."
Mr. Crittenden got up, leaving his coffee untouched, and left the breakfast-room in his unceremonious American way, without a sign of decent civility.
Mr. Livingstone looked at Miss Mills eloquently, with a shrug which meant, "What can you expect?"
Eugenia waited till every one, except herself and Mr, Livingstone had left the room, and then said hesitatingly, "Mr. Livingstone, I wonder …" He was on the alert in an instant, surprised at her personal manner. "It's an outrageously big favor to ask of you, but I don't know any one else adroit enough to manage it." She paused, reflected and drew back shaking her head, "Oh, no; no! what am I thinking of?"
By this time Mr. Livingstone was in the chair beside her, assuring her warmly that if there was anything, anything he could do to be of service—"I shall consider it an honor, Miss Mills, I assure you, an honor!"
Miss Mills let her blue eyes rest on his deeply, as if sounding the depths of his sincerity, and then, with a yielding gesture of abandon, decided to trust him, "I've been foolish, and I'm so afraid I shall have trouble unless you can help me. Promise me you won't tell Mile. Vallet. Or any one."
Impassioned protestations from Mr. Livingstone.
She looked over her shoulder to be sure they were alone, "You know the rule of the Italian government about taking out of Italy any valuable antiquities. They are so afraid that tourists of means will carry off some of the fragments of Greek and Roman sculpture. I knew about it of course, but I'd no idea it was really enforced—those things so seldom are in Europe. And I bought a lovely little antique bas-relief to go over a mantel-piece in my Paris apartment. I had it sent yesterday, up by the Simplon route; it's too late to get it back and now I'm in mortal terror of what may happen at the Italian frontier. I heard last night the most dreadful tales of what they do to any one who tries to smuggle out such things—not only fines, you know, but lawsuits, lawyers to frighten you—publicity!"
She looked very pale and anxious as she explained all this so that Livingstone was deeply touched. But he wondered what she thought he could do about it.
"I'm really ashamed, now I've come to the point, to ask you what I thought. But I will—and if you think it too preposterous—more than I have any right to—it's this. To take a pocket full of money (I don't care what it costs) and go up to the frontier station and when it comes along, bribe it through the inspectors. You see, Mr. Livingstone, it's something that not everybody could manage, even with ever so much money. But you understand the European mentality so perfectly. It would need to be done with just the right manner.… Oh, no, no," she broke off abruptly, getting up from her chair. "What a thing to dream of asking any one to do! What claim have I on your …?"
Livingstone, blinking joyfully, sprang up too, protesting that nothing would amuse and interest him more than such a mission. And for her, any mission would be his joy!
"Well, think it over. Let me know to-night. I'm ashamed to have mentioned it," she said in confusion. "I don't know how I dared. But oh Mr. Livingstone, I am so troubled about it. And I am so alone! No one on whom to …" She had gone, murmuring apologies, touched by his instant response, leaving Livingstone as much moved and agitated as she.
She went through into her own rooms and told Joéephine, "Put those manicure things away for the time being. I must go out to do a bit of shopping. But you can have them ready at ten. I'll be back by that time. It won't take me long."
Neale stood, frowning and looking at his watch, waiting for Eugenia to come down from the ladies' dressing-room and have dinner. As he fidgeted about, looking glumly at the brilliant scene about him, he was wondering with inward oaths of exasperation what in hell could be the matter with anybody's clothes and hair after the slight exertion of sitting perfectly still in a cab from the door of the pension to the door of the restaurant. It was not, God knew, that he was impatient to have her join him. It was because he was in a steady fever of impatience to have everything over, the evening, the day, the night—to put back of him another of those endless, endless days—to be one day nearer to the time when Marise would return.
"What?" he said irritably to the smooth-voiced waiter who now approached him with an intimate manner. "Oh, I don't care which table!"
"Here, sir, is one right by the edge of the terrace, where the view is finest," said the waiter in excellent English. "Perhaps the lady would like a screen. There is occasionally a draught from below."
He hastened to set a small screen, to rearrange fussily the handsome silver and linen on the daintily-set table, to slant the single fine rose in the vase at another angle.
Another waiter, also impeccably polyglot, with gleaming hair, admirably cut clothes, and an insinuating manner, now murmured in Neale's ear, "What wine, sir?"
Neale answered on a mounting note of irritation, "Oh, I don't care what wine!"
"We have an excellent Frascati, sir, that is our specialty. Not found everywhere, sir. The ladies usually like it. Or …"
"All right, serve that," said Neale, adding to himself unreasonably, "If you knew so well, why bother me about it?"
The real waiter in charge of his table now arrived in all his majesty, the first one having been but an aide. Neale saw by the earnest expression in his eyes that he intended to make their conference a serious one, and cut him short as he began to call over the possibilities of the menu by a repeated, "All right, that'll do," before he had had time to do more than mention one sort of fish or one entree, or one variety of fowl.
"There, that's over!" he said to himself with a long breath of relief as the pained waiter turned away to carry into execution that brutally impromptu order.
Eugenia arrived now, followed by a little stir all over the restaurant, as people turned to pay tribute to her beauty and her toilette. "He can't help noticing that!" she thought happily, her pride and satisfaction showing itself only in an increase of the perfectly unconscious naturalness with which she took her seat.
"Oh, what a beautiful view!" she said in a low tone to Neale, looking down over the cypresses of the Palatine to the city, like a heap of uncut jewels, dully, deeply colored, under the light of the setting sun. "You know how to choose a table, I see!" she added admiringly, in an intimate tone. She wondered if perhaps he had come out in the afternoon to reserve it. She noticed the screen now, and looked at him gratefully, really touched.
The waiter arrived with the soup.
"Yes, it is a fine view," said Neale, rousing himself. "A very fine view indeed. That's the Colosseum over there, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Eugenia, "and that's the Arch of Titus."
"That's the one with the awfully bad bas-reliefs, isn't it?" said Neale.
"Oh, no," corrected Eugenia, "the one with the poor sculptures is the arch of Septimius Severus. The arch of Titus is the good one, you know, with the bas-reliefs of the Hebrews."
"Oh, yes, of course. You're right," admitted Neale.
Eugenia thought to herself triumphantly, "Ah, it's not only Marise who can talk history with him!"
She was very happy, happier than she ever remembered feeling. Everything had played into her hands. Everything was going perfectly. She had succeeded in getting him into just the sort of restaurant where she could show to the best advantage.
She was eating her soup with a lively appreciation of its excellence and found herself perfectly able to keep up an artistic and historic conversation with Neale; but she was also acutely aware through the pores of her skin that every woman around her was jealously scrutinizing her costume. She expanded joyously, like a cut flower set in water. How well everything was going! Certainly Neale must be aware how he was being envied.
She made a remark about the style of the gigantic statues on St. John Lateran, visible in the distance, and turned her arm slightly so that her sleeve would hang better.
Neale answered the remark about the statues on St. John Lateran and continued to look in that direction as though he were thinking about them.
He was saying to himself, "Five days since she left! Only five days! God! How am I going to live through any more of them. How many more sleepless nights! Will she ever get back!"
"Yes, isn't it warm to-night?" said Eugenia, seeing that he was wiping his wet forehead with his handkerchief.
"Unseasonable, very," agreed Neale. He had turned sick with his recurrent panic lest she never come back. He ought to have taken that next train and gone right after her, as he wanted to.
The waiter brought the fish. It was not what Neale had ordered, but a more expensive variety. He looked somewhat apprehensively at the gentleman as he offered it, but the gentleman did not seem to notice. On this the waiter disappeared and brought back a bottle of wine, not the variety Neale had bargained for.
"Have you any news from Miss Allen?" asked Neale.
"Oh, no," said Eugenia, slightly surprised. "When she's coming back so soon, she probably doesn't see there's any need to write."
She began on the fish. After the first mouthful she said to Neale with enthusiasm, "You know how to order a dinner as well as to choose a table, that's evident."
"It was the first fish he proposed," said Neale.
Eugenia thought, "How much better breeding he has, after all, than Mr. Livingstone, always boasting of his savoir-faire."
Neale's thoughts were jumping incoherently from one thing to another. "Funny place Rome is, to be planning how to run a woodworking plant in Vermont. Funny change of direction, from planning to go out to China and the East, about-face to planning to settle down and take root. You wouldn't think that would appeal to a man who had had the idea of ranging the world a while longer, to tie himself …" This attempt at reasonable consideration of things vanished in an explosion of emotion, as if a spark had fallen into gunpowder. "Oh, if she will! If she will! Why didn't I make a chance to see her alone before she went away?"
Eugenia was talking about traveling. She had noticed Neale's interest in travels. "I'm thinking, Mr. Crittenden, of making a leisurely trip around the world—not one of those detestable, herded, conducted tours. And yet how else can I go about it? What would you do? I'm so ignorant of anything outside of Europe. I wish I had some one intelligent and enlightened to go with me. It's so forlorn to travel alone!"
"Why, you'll like traveling alone!" said Neale reassuringly, thinking of his own past year. "It's great not to have to bother with some one's else tastes and notions and foolishness and limitations."
"Oh, but," said Eugenia, looking down at her wineglass pensively, "of course it's better to be alone than with some one whose tastes and interests are nothing to you. But to have with you some one you really care for …"
Neale thought suddenly what the past year would have been if he had had Marise with him, and cried out fervently, "Oh, of course, that would be the ideal!"
The waiter brought the roast and the Frascati. And still the gentleman made no objection. Well, he would bring a cordial with the coffee, ordered or not. The gentleman didn't seem to know what he had ordered or what he was eating. And no wonder, with such a beautiful girl across the table. The waiter shot an experienced, appraising eye at Eugenia's clothes. "He ought to be good for a big tip," he reflected hopefully.
Eugenia thought best to leave a thoughtful silence after the remarks on companionship in travel, and sipped her wine with downcast eyes.
Neale was trying again to think things over reasonably, trying to do as he had always done about everything, to get things clear and straight and sure in his head. There must be no possibility of a mistake where Marise was concerned. "How about this now? I've gone stale on other things. How do I know I won't have a slump some time later? A human being is so full of such damn unexpected things—I must be sure for Marise's sake. How can any man be …" At this he was shaken by so terrible a throe of desire, of longing for Marise that he was frightened. He sat pale, breathless, helpless before it; suffering, tortured, exalted.
When he could breathe he wiped his forehead again. His fingers were shaking. He would go out of his mind if she didn't come back soon. His need for her was like a man's need for air and food and water and sleep. Think reasonably about such essential needs as that! A man cannot live without them. He could not live without Marise. He had not lived before he knew her.
"How moved he is," thought Eugenia, seeing his pale, shaken look. "But he doesn't dare speak. He will to-morrow. Or the day afterwards."
The waiter brought the dessert. Also coffee with the unordered cordial.