A COMEDY WITH MUSIC
The Harrigans occupied the suite in the east wing of the villa. This consisted of a large drawing-room and two ample bedchambers, with window-balconies and a private veranda in the rear, looking off toward the green of the pines and the metal-like luster of the copper beeches. Always the suite was referred to by the management as having once been tenanted by the empress of Germany. Indeed, tourists were generally and respectively and impressively shown the suite (provided it was not at the moment inhabited), and were permitted to peer eagerly about for some sign of the vanished august presence. But royalty in passing, as with the most humble of us, leaves nothing behind save the memory of a tip, generous or otherwise.
It was raining, a fine, soft, blurring Alpine rain, and a blue-grey monotone prevailed upon the face of the waters and defied all save the keenest scrutiny to discern where the mountain tops ended and the sky began. It was a day for indoors, for dreams, good books, and good fellows.
The old-fashioned photographer would have admired and striven to perpetuate the group in the drawing-room. In the old days it was quite the proper thing to snap the family group while they were engaged in some pleasant pastime, such as spinning, or painting china, or playing the piano, or reading a volume of poems. No one ever seemed to bother about the incongruence of the eyes, which were invariably focused at the camera lens. Here they all were. Mrs. Harrigan was deep in the intricate maze of the Amelia Ars of Bologna, which, as the initiated know, is a wonderful lace. By one of the windows sat Nora, winding interminable yards of lace-hemming from off the willing if aching digits of the Barone, who was speculating as to what his Neapolitan club friends would say could they see, by some trick of crystal-gazing, his present occupation. Celeste was at the piano, playing (pianissimo) snatches from the operas, while Abbott looked on, his elbows propped upon his knees, his chin in his palms, and a quality of ecstatic content in his eyes. He was in his working clothes, picturesque if paint-daubed. The morning had been pleasant enough, but just before luncheon the rain clouds had gathered and settled down with that suddenness known only in high altitudes.
The ex-gladiator sat on one of those slender mockeries, composed of gold-leaf and parabolic curves and faded brocade, such as one sees at the Trianon or upon the stage or in the new home of a new millionaire, and which, if the true facts be known, the ingenious Louis invented for the discomfort of his favorites and the folly of future collectors. It creaked whenever Harrigan sighed, which was often, for he was deeply immersed (and no better word could be selected to fit his mental condition) in the baneful book which he had hurled out of the window the night before, only to retrieve like the good dog that he was. To-day his shoes offered no loophole to criticism; he had very well attended to that. His tie harmonized with his shirt and stockings; his suit was of grey tweed; in fact, he was the glass of fashion and the mold of form, at least for the present.
“Say, Molly, I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“Difference what makes, James?” Mrs. Harrigan raised her eyes from her work. James had been so well-behaved that morning it was only logical for her to anticipate that he was about to abolish at one fell stroke all his hard-earned merits.
“About eating salads. We never used to put oil on our tomatoes. Sugar and vinegar were good enough.”
“Sugar and vinegar are not nourishing; olive-oil is.”
“We seemed to hike along all right before we learned that.” His guardian angel was alert this time, and he returned to his delving without further comment. By and by he got up. “Pshaw!” He dropped the wearisome volume on the reading-table, took up a paper-covered novel, and turned to the last fight of the blacksmith in Rodney Stone. Here was something that made the invention of type excusable, even commendable.