“I found her message when I returned. I tried to see her and walked back home through the Park.”
“Which is just as well.” The old maestro smiled significantly. “Youth is utterly mad. You rave now, and say your career is ended. My poor boy, you have not heard from Casanova, no? This very hour he tells me they will surely produce your operetta next season. Is not that enough?”
“The operetta?” repeated Griffeth grimly. “I had forgotten all about it. When I lost her everything went out of my life. I felt like using the world for a football and kicking the stars up a little higher out of reach. You don’t know how blank life seemed to me until she came down here. I had been across during the war with Carrollton Phelps in the Aerial Service. We fell about the same time, and after months of being patched up, I was sent home, excess baggage on the war wagon. I was twenty then, and when I had my grip back, my father let me do as I pleased, and I came here to work out some of the things I had always hoped to do. I’ve felt like an idler beating out harmonies in this bird’s-eye castle until she came.”
“Then I will tell you something to comfort you and light the path again. Always remember the path is there even though you are in darkness.” Jacobelli pressed his finger-tips together, his eyes brilliant with the fire of enthusiasm. “One of your own great men has said he would rather write the songs of a nation than its laws. We are but teachers, my boy. You who compose music are the living current between humanity and those mighty, immutable laws of harmony and vibration which move the universe, is it not so?—and love is the greatest of all divine laws.”
From a street piano at the curb below the studio windows the melody of the “Barcarole” came to them in ascending volume. A taxicab drew up beside it. Carlota could almost have blown kisses to each dear, remembered spot along the Square as she alighted with Maria. Only forty-eight hours since she had been to the studio, yet the tidal wave of circumstance had nearly swept the happiness of her life out to sea. She smiled at the Greek boy beside the pushcart, smiled at the children playing in the patches of ground before the old brownstone row of houses, smiled almost in the face of Sergeant Lorrie, of the Central Detective Bureau, as she passed him on the steps.
Maria followed her, resigned and tragic. She had called up the Marchese at the final moment, even after he had left them and returned to the Lafayette, to tell him Carlota’s ultimate choice, and to her amazement the old Italian courtier had congratulated her on her own defeat.
“Remember, signora,” he had urged buoyantly, a “certain ancient gentleman of varied experience in matrimony, one King Solomon, has stated as his opinion that love is stronger than death and many waters cannot quench it. I agree with him perfectly. Request our beloved Carlota that she will permit my presence at her nuptials with Pierrot. I have a penchant for romantic weddings. They recall to me the fragrance of roses abloom at Vallombrosa. Once, as we two walked under the olive grove years ago, you refused me, Maria mia. When you are tempted to be unyielding and forbidding to these children, these two lovers, remember Vallombrosa, I implore you. Had you said yes, I should not have carried the fragrance of roses as a bitter-sweet memory all my life long.”
So it happened that, despite her sense of duty to the last wishes of the old Contessa, Maria felt a thrill of sympathy in the great adventure as she followed Carlota into the studio on the top floor.
“We have come for Carlota’s sake,” she said majestically. “It is against my wishes and judgment, but we are here, signor. You have won.”
“What is it, dear?” exclaimed Griffeth, as he held Carlota’s hands in his. “You are cold as ice, and trembling.” He drew her favorite Roman chair forward to the open grate fire, but Carlota drew back.