“Do you not like it better this way?”
He never suspected that she was giving him all of Jacobelli’s tricks in teaching, all she knew of the great maestro’s art of technique. He only knew that the fame of his pupil was spreading through the Quarter and that people were coming up the narrow stairs to inquire his rates as teacher of voice culture.
“If I can only get enough to keep the friendly wolf jolly and contented, I can find time to work on my opera,” he told her happily. “I owe it all to you, though. You’ve got such a perfect voice naturally, you don’t need a teacher, and here everybody who hears you sing will give me the credit for it.”
Carlota smiled at him silently, delighted that her visits to the studio were bringing him even a glimmer of success. To her they were all that filled her days now with expectancy. Maria’s ill health continued to prevent her from calling for Carlota every day at the uptown studio, and while she longed to tell the Marchese, she feared that even his solicitude might put an end to the only gleam of romance or adventure that had come to her. So far as she knew, no one had discovered her visits to the Square, yet never did she leave the arched doorway of her home that the nonchalant stranger did not follow her. Patiently, without haste or apparent malevolence, he shadowed her to Jacobelli’s or downtown. Sometimes in the morning, he would lounge at Cecco’s cigar store around the corner on Madison Avenue, smoking his endless store of curious, long, thin cigarettes. From Cecco’s one could look through the middle of the block towards Fifth Avenue, over the tops of intervening fences. The only apartment house was the one where Maria Roma and Carlota lived. And while he chatted over the latest juggling with the fates of nations and peoples overseas, he would forget to look at Cecco rolling cigarettes, and eye the distant fire escapes like a bird of prey, gauging the flight.
One day, as she came from Ames’s place, the impulse swept over Carlota to see the old Marchese and tell him. He would understand, she was sure, and she longed to have him know Griffeth well, to appreciate his work and help him.
Through Maria and Jacobelli she knew that even in New York, where the power of great wealth dominated the will of the people through its manifold channels of politics, society, and charity, yet there was an altar erected even here to the unknown god of truth, and the Marchese stood ever as a high priest of the eternal verities.
“You must not be discouraged, my dear,” he had told her one afternoon at tea beside Maria’s couch. “Look beneath the surface of things. The brass band is always at the head of the procession. Once one has escaped its clamor, one may pay attention to the motive behind the parade, yes? There is always in any race, in any period, a certain group of people, in all walks of life, who worship truth wherever manifest, in art or the grace of right living. It is absurd to claim that any class has a monopoly of this spirit. Ogden Ward is a multi-millionaire, doubtless a thorough robber baron in his way, yet he serves a certain purpose through his fascination for the beautiful and rarest in art. Some day, when, God willing, he passes on, perhaps his collections will be given back to the people. I can do little except encourage this spirit wherever I find it. Casanova, of the Opera, is a noble fellow, yet he must perforce kowtow when the mighty atoms on the subscribers’ list say they will have this or that. But that does not prevent Casanova from his personal worship of real art, you see. I know him very well, indeed, and some day he will meet you.”
Remembering this, Carlota stepped into a shop on Eighth Street and telephoned to the Lafayette. It was the one golden moment when she felt she must see the Marchese and tell him everything, take him back with her to the old studio and make him listen to Ames’s compositions for the new opera. But at that particular instant the Marchese was meeting Ogden Ward at his club by appointment, and the message was left on a slip in his box at the hotel unheeded.
“I want you to meet Count Jurka; used to be with the Bulgarian Legation, remember. He has proven to be a very valuable agent along the new lines of readjustment. I met him in Egypt first in connection with the Rhodopis emeralds. They were found in the royal mummy, and there was some argument in connection with them. I had furnished the means for the research work and I have the emeralds. He is quite a savant in his way when it comes to the history of famous jewels.”
“I do not care for them,” returned the old Marchese blandly, as he ensconced himself in a deep leather armchair and smiled. “Relics of barbarism, my dear Ward; rings in noses and bangles on leaping toes, merely a variation of the same impulse in humanity to decorate itself that we see to-day in certain types of women.”