ED ink?” asked Carla, raising the bottle and her eyebrows, as she looked inquiringly at the others.
“Let us have real Chianti!” begged Dufresne. “Madame, two bottles of your best.”
Fancini was looking at Carla with adoring eyes.
“What does it matter what we drink?” he said impatiently.
“Ah!” said little Madame Berta Kraumer whimsically. “But she has left no 'Kiss within the cup!' You must go thirsty for both, nicht?”
The four friends and fellow artists were celebrating the close of the opera season, and their departure for the summer. The winter had been a delightful, they agreed. Full of hard work—yes, that always, of course! But good work, interesting work.
Carla had created three new rôles, and had had plenty of opportunity to sing her old favorites as well. Berta Kraumer had been promoted to the singing of Delilah, a part for which, like most dramatic contraltos, she had yearned for many years. Dufresne and Fancini, incomparable basso and most glorious of tenors, had had some brilliant offers from royal-opera managements on the other side. All of them had added to their bank accounts, and, “best of all,” as Carla said, not one of them had disappointed an audience all the season.
Now they were about to separate for six months. Dufresne was sailing a week later to take his royally conferred position in Europe. Madame Kraumer was hastening home to Austria, where a good, housekeeping husband was mounting guard over her family of six children. Carla, for the first spring in years, was not going to leave her own country, but intended to spend several months visiting friends in the mountains and by the sea. Fancini, who worshiped her, had contrived to be asked to several of the same houses.
This little farewell breakfast was her idea, of course. She was nearly always the guiding spirit in their merrymakings as in their beautiful work, and had been the same leading impetus in many sweet, friendly charities of which no one knew but these four great singers themselves.
They had chosen a small Italian restaurant for the occasion. They did not want to dress, to be stared at, to behave like public characters. They ardently loved to renew the days of their early artistic struggles; to eat spaghetti and fritto misto, and drink cheap red wine. They even took joy in the smell of frying oil, and the pictures of Garibaldi and the Milan Cathedral on the dusty walls, and in the raucous Italian street songs that Pietro, the cook, droned out over his mysterious cook pots in the kitchen next door.
The signora loved them, and served them herself, commenting with easy Italian effrontery on the good looks of the men and the unacknowledged romance that surrounded the comradeship of Carla and Fancini like a fragrance.
“Va bene!” she said, bringing two straw-covered flasks, and setting them on the table between a dish of olives and a saucer of Parmesan cheese. “Give him not too much of the good wine, signorina. He will tell you before us all how adorable he finds you!” And she smiled her impudent, disarming smile into Fancini's blue eyes. “Eh! He is good to see, il bambino!” For so she always called the big, golden man—golden of hair and beard, as well as of voice so irresistibly boyish of speech and gesture.
“Bambino!” repeated Carla. “Yes, that is all you are, Guido. The signora sees your baby ways through all that affectation of being grown up.”
The spring was dancing in the air, in the veins of the four friends, in their eyes. They laughed irresponsibly, as emotional persons will without much cause. They were in holiday spirits. The dingy little back yard, with dusty vines trying to make an arbor, was as delightful as a garden to them. The spaghetti, and Gruyère, and thin red wine were all delicious; the Neapolitan air that Pietro hummed over his brazier was intoxicating. Oh, was it not glorious to be so strong, so happy, so successful, and so preposterously fond of each other?
It was Dufresne who reached across to a recently vacated table and purloined a discarded newspaper; Dufresne who idly looked through it, reading out gems of news with absurd comments till they commanded him to be silent.
“'Wife of capitalist elopes with carpenter!' What a country!' Voyons! 'Trousseau of society bride.' And they call France immodest! 'Negro lynched for murder.' I wonder it was not for stealing potatoes! What a country! What a country! I am glad that I leave it to-morrow. This paper has nothing in it of beauty or solace but the shipping list. Bon Dieu! What is this?”
His good-humored grumbling gave way to a tone of sheer horror and distress. His eyes were fixed incredulously upon the heading of a column on the page he had just turned.