The Innocent Adventuress

Maria Angelina was eavesdropping. Not upon her sister Lucia and Paolo Tosti whom she had been assigned to chaperon by reading a book to herself in the adjoining room-no, they were safely busy with piano and violin, and she was heartily bored, anyway, with their inanities. Voices from another direction had pricked her to alertness.

Maria Angelina was in the corner room of the Palazzo Santonini, a dim and beautiful old library with faded furnishings whose west arch of doorway looked into the pretentious reception room where the fiancés were amusing themselves with their music and their whisperings. It was quite advanced, this allowing them to be so alone, but the Contessa Santonini was an American and, moreover, the wedding was not far off.

One can be indulgent when the settlements are signed.

So only Maria Angelina and her book were stationed for propriety, and, wanting another book, she had gone to the shelves and through the north door, ajar, caught the words that held her intent.

"Three of them!" a masculine voice uttered explosively, and Maria knew that Papa was speaking of his three daughters, Lucia, Julietta and Maria Angelina-and she knew, too, that Papa had just come from the last interview with the Tostis' lawyers.

The Tostis had been stiff in their demands and Papa had been more complaisant than he should have been. Altogether that marriage was costing him dear.

He had been figuring now with Mamma for a pencil went clattering to the floor.

"And something especial," he proclaimed bitterly, "will have to be done for Julietta!"

At that the eavesdropper could smile, a faint little smile of shy pride and self-reliance.

Nothing especial would have to be done for her! A decent dowry, of course, as befitting a daughter of the house, but she would need no more, for Maria was eighteen, as white as a lily and as slender as an aspen, with big, dark eyes like strange pools of night in her child's face.

Whereas poor Julietta--!

"Madre Dio!" said Papa indignantly. "For what did we name her Julietta? And born in Verona! A pretty sentiment indeed. But it was of no inspiration to her-none!"

Mamma did not laugh although Papa's sudden chuckle after his explosion was most irresistible.

"But if Fate went by names," he continued, "then would Maria Angelina be for the life of religion." And he chuckled again.

Still Mamma did not laugh. Her pencil was scratching.

"It's a pity," murmured Papa, "that you did not embrace the faith, my dear, for then we might arrange this matter. They used to manage these things in the old days."

"Send Julietta into a convent?" cried Mamma in a voice of sudden energy.

Maria could not see but she knew that the Count shrugged.

"She appears built to coif Saint Catherine," he murmured.

"Julietta is a dear girl," said the Contessa in a warm voice.

"When one knows her excellencies."

"She will do very well-with enough dowry."

"Enough dowry-that is it! It will take all that is left for the two of them to push Julietta into a husband's arms!"

When the Count was annoyed he dealt directly with facts-a proceeding he preferred to avoid at other moments.

Behind her curtains Maria drew a troubled breath. She, too, felt the family responsibility for Julietta-dear Julietta, with her dumpy figure and ugly face. Julietta was nineteen and now that Lucia was betrothed it was Julietta's turn.

If only it could be known that Julietta had a pretty dot!

Maria stood motionless behind the curtains, her winged imagination rushing to meet Julietta's future, fronting the indifference, the neglect, the ridicule before which Julietta's sensitive, shamed spirit would suffer and bleed. She could see her partnerless at balls, lugged heavily about to teas and dinners, shrinking eagerly and hopelessly back into the refuge of the paternal home. . . . Yet Julietta had once whispered to her that she wanted to die if she could never marry and have an armful of bambinos!

Maria Angelina's young heart contracted with sharp anxiety. Things were in a bad way with her family indeed. There had always been difficulties, for Papa was extravagant and ever since brother Francisco had been in the army, he, too, had his debts, but Mamma had always managed so wonderfully! But the war had made things very difficult, and now peace had made them more difficult still. There had been one awful time when it had looked as if the carriages and horses would have to go and they would be reduced to sharing a barouche with some one else in secret, proud distress-like the Manzios and the Benedettos who took their airings alternately, each with a different crested door upon the identical vehicle-but Mamma had overcome that crisis and the social rite of the daily drive upon the Pincian had been sacredly preserved. But apparently these settlements were too much, even for Mamma.

Then her name upon her mother's lips brought the eavesdropper to swift attention.

It appeared that the Contessa had a plan.

Maria Angelina could go to visit Mamma's cousins in America. They were rich-that is understood of Americans; even Mamma had once been rich when she was a girl, Maria dimly remembered having heard-and they would give Maria a chance to meet people. . . . Men did not ask settlements in America. They earned great sums and could please themselves with a pretty, penniless face. . . . And what was saved on Maria's dowry would plump out Julietta's.

Thunderstruck, the Count objected. Maria was his favorite.

"Send Julietta to America, then," he protested, but swallowed that foolishness at Mamma's calm, "To what good?"

To what good, indeed! It would never do to risk the cost of a trip to America upon Julietta.

Sulkily Papa argued that the cost in any case was prohibitive. But Mamma had the figures.

"One must invest to receive," she insisted; and when he grumbled, "But to lose the child?" she broke out, "Am I not losing her?" on a note that silenced him.

Then she added cheerfully, "But it will be for her own good."

"You want her to marry an American? You are not satisfied, then, with Italians?" said Papa playfully leaning over to ruffle Mamma's soft, light hair and at his movement Maria Angelina fled swiftly from those curtains back to her post, and sat very still, a book in front of her, a haze of romance swimming between it and her startled eyes.

America. . . . A rich husband. . . . Travel. . . . Adventure. . . . The unknown. . . .

It was wonderful. It was unbelievable. . . . It was desperate.

It was a hazard of the sharpest chance.

That knowledge brought a chill of gravity into the hot currents of her beating heart-a chill that was the cold breath of a terrific responsibility. She felt herself the hope, the sole resource of her family. She was the die on which their throw of fortune was to be cast.

Dropping her book she slid down from her chair and crossed to a long mirror in an old carved frame where a dove was struggling in a falcon's talons while Cupids drew vain bows, and in the dimmed glass stared in passionate searching.

She was so childish, so slight looking. She was white-that was the skin from Mamma-and now she wondered if it were truly a charm. Certainly Lucia preferred her own olive tints.

And her eyes were so big and dark, like caverns in her face, and her lips were mere scarlet threads. The beauties she had seen were warm-colored, high-bosomed, full-lipped.

Her distrust extended even to her coronet of black braids.

Her uncertain youth had no vision of the purity and pride of that braid-bound head, of the brilliance of the dark eyes against the satin skin, of the troubling glamour of the red little mouth. In the clear definition of the delicate features, the arch of the high eyebrows, the sweep of the shadowy lashes, her childish hope had never dreamed of more than mere prettiness and now she was torturingly questioning that.

"Practicing your smiles, my dear?" said a voice from the threshold, Lucia's voice with the mockery of the successful, and Maria Angelina turned from her dim glass with a flame of scarlet across her pallor, and joined, with an angry heart, in the laugh which her sister and young Tosti raised against her.

But Maria Angelina had a tongue.

"But yes-for the better fish are yet uncaught," she retorted with a flash of the eyes toward the young man, and Paolo, all ardor as he was for Lucia's olive and rose, shot a glance of tickled humor at her impudence.

He promised himself some merry passes with the little sister-in-law.

Lucia resented the glances.

"Wait your turn, little one," she scoffed. "You will be in pinafores until our poor Julietta is wed," and she laughed, unkindly.

There were times, Maria felt furiously, when she hated Lucia.

Her championing heart resolved that Julietta should not be left unwed and defenseless to that mockery. Julietta should have her chance at life!

Not a word of the great plan was breathed officially to the girl, although the mother's expectancy for mail revealed that a letter had already been sent, until that expectancy was rewarded by a letter with the American postmark. Then the drama of revelation was exquisitely enacted.

It appeared that the Blairs of New York, Mamma's dear cousins, were insistent that one of Mamma's daughters should know Mamma's country and Mamma's relatives. They had a daughter about Maria Angelina's age so Maria Angelina had been selected for the visit. The girls would have a delightful time together. . . . Maria would start in June.

Vaguely Maria Angelina recalled the Blairs as she had seen them some six years ago in Rome-a kindly Cousin Jim who had given her sweets and laughed bewilderingly at her and a Cousin Jane with beautiful blonde hair and cool white gowns. Their daughter, Ruth, had not been with them, so Maria had no acquaintance at all with her, but only the recollection of occasional postcards to keep the name in memory.

She remembered once that there had been talk of this Cousin Ruth's coming to school for a winter in Rome and that Mamma had bestirred herself to discover the correct schools, but nothing had ever come of it. The war had intervened.

And now she was to visit them. . . .

"You are going to America just as I went to Italy at your age," cried Mamma. "And-who knows?-you too, may meet your fate on the trip!"

Mamma would overdo it, thought Maria Angelina nervously, her eyes downcast for fear her mother would read their discomfort and her knowledge of the pitiful duplicity, and her cheeks a quick shamed scarlet.

"She will have to-to repair the expense," flashed Lucia with a shrill laugh. "Such expenditure, when you have just been preaching economy on my trousseau!"

"One must economize on the trousseau when the bridegroom has cost the fortune," Maria found her wicked little tongue to say and Lucia turned sallow beneath her olive.

Briskly Mamma intervened. "We are thinking not of one of you but all. Now no more words, my little ones. There is too much to be done."

There was indeed, with this trip to be arranged for before the onrush of Lucia's preparation! Once committed to the great adventure it quickly took on the outer aspects of reality. There were clothes to be made and clothes to be bought, there were discussions, decisions, debates and conjectures and consultations. A thousand preparations to be pushed in haste, and at once the big bedroom of Mamma blossomed with delicate fabrics, with bright ribbons and frilly laces, and amid the blossoming, the whir of the machine and the feet and hands of the two-lire-a-day seamstress went like mad clockwork, while in and out Mamma's friends came hurrying, at the rumor, to hint of congratulation or suggest a style, an advice.

The contagion of excitement seized everyone, so that even Lucia was inspired to lend her clever fingers from her own preparations for September.

"But not to be back by then! Not here for my wedding-that would be too odd!" she complained with the persistent ill-will she had shown the expedition.

Shrewd enough to divine its purpose and practical enough to perceive the necessity for it, the older girl cherished her instinctive objection to any pleasure that did not include her in its scope or that threatened to overcast her own festivities.

"That will depend," returned Mamma sedately, "upon the circumstance. Our cousins may not easily find a suitable chaperon for your sister's return. And they may have plans for her entertainment. We must leave that to them."

A little panic-stricken, Maria Angelina perceived that she was being left to them-until otherwise disposed of!

So fast had preparations whirled them on, that parting was upon the girl before she divined the coming pain of it. Then in the last hours her heart was wrung.

She stared at the dear familiar rooms, the streets and the houses with a look of one already lost to her world, and her eyes clung to the figures of her family as if to relinquish the sight of them would dissolve them from existence.

They were tragic, those following, imploring eyes, but they were not wet. Maria understood it was too late to weep. It was necessary to go. The magnitude of the sums already invested in her affair staggered her. They were so many pledges, those sums!

But America was so desolately far.

She could not sleep, that last night. She lay in the big four-poster where once heavy draperies had shut in the slumbers of dead and gone Contessas, and she watched the square of moonlight travel over the painted cherubs on the ceiling. There was always a lump in her throat to be swallowed, and often the tears soaked into the big feather pillows, but there were no sobs to rouse the household.

Julietta, beside her, slept very comfortably.

But the most terrible moment of all was that last look of Mamma and that last clasp of her hands upon the deck of the steamer.

"You must tell me everything, little one," the Contessa Santonini kept saying hurriedly. She was constrained and repetitious in the grip of her emotion, as they stood together, just out of earshot of the Italian consul's wife who was chaperoning the young girl upon her voyage.

"Write me all about the people you meet and what they say to you, and what you do. Remember that I am still Mamma if I am across the ocean and I shall be waiting to hear. . . . And remember that but few of your ideas of America may be true. Americans are not all the types you have read of or the tourists you have met. You must expect a great difference. . . . I should be strange, myself, now in America."

Maria's quick sensitiveness divined a note of secret yearning.

"Yes, Mamma," she said obediently, tightening her clasp upon her mother's hands.

"You must be on guard against mistakes, Maria Angelina," said the other insistently-as if she had not said that a dozen times before! "Because American girls do things it may be not be wise for you to do. You will be of interest because you are different. Be very careful, my little one."

"Yes, Mamma," said the girl again.

"As to your money-you understand it must last. There can be little to pay when you are a guest. But send to Papa and me your accounts as I have told you."

"Yes, Mamma."

"You will not let the American freedom turn your head. You will be wise-Oh, I trust you, Maria Angelina, to be very wise!"

How wise Maria Angelina thought herself! She lifted a face that shone with confidence and understanding and for all her quivering lips she smiled.

"My baby!" said the mother suddenly in English and took that face between her hands and kissed it.

"You will be careful," she began again abruptly, and then stopped.

Too late for more cautions. And the child was so sage.

But it was such a little figure that stood there, such young eyes that smiled so confidently into hers. . . . And America was a long, long way off.

The bugles were blowing for visitors to be away. Just one more hurried kiss and hasty clasp.

An overwhelming fright seized upon the girl as the mother went down the ship's ladder into the small boat that put out so quickly for the shore.

Suppose she should fail them! After all she was not so wise-and not so very pretty. And she had no experience-none!

The sun, dancing on the bright waves, hurt Maria Angelina's eyes. She had to shut them, they watered so foolishly. And something in her young breast wanted to cry after that boat, "Take me back-take me back to my home," but something else in her forbade and would have died of shame before it uttered such weakness.

For poor Julietta, for dear anxious Mamma, she knew herself the only hope.

So steadily she waved her handkerchief long after she had lost the responding flutter from the boat.

She was not crying now. She felt exalted. She pressed closer to the rail and stared out very solemnly over the blue and gold bay to beautiful Naples. . . . Suddenly her heart quickened. Vesuvius was moving. The far-off shores of Italy were slipping by. Above her the black smoke that had been coming faster and faster from the great funnels streamed backward like long banners.

Maria Angelina was on her way.