The Wrung Heart

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

 

THE WRUNG HEART

A Story of Quittance Dearly Bought

By

E. Phillips Oppenheim

Illustrated by Marshall Frantz

IT WAS one of Madame's black days. For forty-eight hours the sun had not shone. Yet a heat seemed to arise from the ground itself—a baking, enervating heat, which left even the birds tired, and sapped the energy of human beings and animals. In no corner of the garden of the villa was there any breeze, yet above St. Jeanette, covering the blunt mountain top, hung a cloud almost as black as ink—a cloud which had hung there stationary hour after hour.

Away in the sloping stretch of vineyard at the back of his farm-château, Cardinge was walking slowly with one of his laborers who was spraying the vines. By his side was Claire. Madame watched them, and the lifelessness of her expression for a moment vanished. The mask was lifted. She looked at them with suspiciously brightened eyes. Presently she rang the bell by her side. A footman answered her summons.

“Tell Denise I want her,” she ordered.

There was a brief delay. Presently an elderly, almost an old woman, dressed in plain black with a white cap, made her appearance. She looked at Madame with the eyes of many years' faithful service.

“Denise, how old am I?” Madame asked.

Denise hesitated for a moment.

“Madame has several ages,” she murmured.

“The truth,” her mistress insisted.

“Madame is forty-six years old this month,” Denise confided. “I ought to know for I was in the room when Madame was born.”

“And how old do I look, Denise?”

The maid considered the question carefully. “Between thirty and thirty-five,” she decided. “Madame has been very successful with her complexion.”

“Nevertheless,” said Madame, “I am getting old.”

The little gesture of Denise was full of incredulous contempt.

“Not for many years yet,” she assured her mistress. “Besides, before that time comes he will arrive and Madame will know youth again.”

The woman of forty-six who looked so sadly toward the mountains sighed.

“They have all come save four, Denise,” she said. “But not he.”

“He will come,” the maid pronounced confidently.

“To-day I feel that he will never come.”

Denise spread out her brown palms.

“To-day? But who takes count of to-day?” she exclaimed. “There is a feeling in the air which might be even of death. In the kitchen no one can work. I saw one of the gardeners just now asleep, with his tools in his hands, in the shadow of a pine tree. Soon there will be a storm and all this will pass.”

“You are sure that you have told me the truth about my age, Denise?” Madame persisted.

The woman smiled.

“Even I,” she said, “would never dare to tell you a falsehood.”

“You can go, Denise,” Madame ordered. “Rest well. Remember this weather is trying.”

“Thanks to Madame there is little else but rest in my life,” the woman replied, as with a little courtesy she turned and departed.

AWAY on the hillside Claire watched the spraying of the vines and almost choked. The heat was insufferable—a heat, too, from which there seemed no escape. Her green parasol was useless, for there was no sun. By her side, Cardinge, although he was as hard as nails, shed his coat and waistcoat. There were drops of perspiration breaking from his forehead. The ground upon which they trod burned.

“Please come to lunch, Hugh,” Claire begged.

“My child,” Cardinge answered, “I am not sure that it is seemly for you to call a person of my mature years by his Christian name, and how the mischief can I come to lunch? It is half past eleven already and look at me.”

“I will sit in the shade of your portico and wait for you,” she proposed. “Any old clothes will do and I shall call you exactly what I like—and you are not mature.”

He smiled.

“I fancy I see Madame's face,” he said, “if I should present myself at lunch in any modification of my present costume. Madame has carried with her all over the world her love of ceremony.”

“It wouldn't take you long, Hugh,” she suggested, “to put on a suit of nice gray tweeds—and you look so nice in tweeds, with a white collar and one of the club ties you hide away so carefully.”

“You are an observant child, aren't you?” he remarked, smiling. “What will become of my vines while I go away and play?”

“You won't get your men to go on working through the midday hours,” she assured him. “Look at Jacques now. He's almost done. They'll have to have their siesta.”

He glanced upwards at the motionless clouds.

“I can't think why we don't have a storm,” he said. “I want to get the spraying done first. However, so be it, child.... Jacques, for the morning it is finished. Go and get your lunch somewhere in the shade.”

THE husbandman's face was expressionless. As he paused to straighten himself he, too, glanced upwards. Then he took a bottle which hung from the belt at his side and drank.

“In an hour, Monsieur,” he declared, “one must work again.”

Claire and Hugh strolled down toward where the roof of the low farmhouse showed at the bottom of the field.

“Wonderful fellows, these laborers,” he observed. “To them there is something almost sacred in the thought of the vintage. I really believe Jacques there would give his life to avert disaster. No wonder they let themselves go afterwards.”

“If I'm here,” Claire announced, “I shall go to the celebrations this year up at St. Paulos. Everybody says that it's perfectly wonderful. I should like to realize that there is such a thing as real gaiety in the world. Somehow or other we all seem so sad lately.”

He looked at her a little surprised.

“At your time of life,” he protested, “gaiety should come naturally. I thought that you were so happy here, that you loved the place.”

“I do love the place,” she assented, “but what is there to make me really happy? Madame speaks kindly to me very seldom. She herself, I feel, has something continually on her mind. Always she has the air of one who sits and waits.”

“And Armand?”

“With Armand I am absolutely dissatisfied,” she confessed frankly. “I thought once that I could marry him if Madame wished it. I permitted him to talk of such things. I allowed him,” she went on simply, “to embrace me. And afterwards I was unhappy. I do not think that I can have any love for Armand. I do not think that he himself knows what real love is.”

“You are very young,” he ventured lamely.

“Even the young have instincts,” she replied. “And wasn't it you yourself who once said that the ignorance of youth is a surer guide to the truth than the wisdom gained by experience? I am glad that Armand is away at Deauville, and I hope that Madame says no more about my going there. Tell me, Hugh, how many more of these strange visitors does Madame expect?”

“If they all obey the call,” he answered, “there are four more of them, but the one whom she would like most to see, I feel will never come.”

“Is that what keeps her so sad, do you think?”

“Very likely.”

“And you?” she went on, suddenly looking up at him. “Why are you always so depressed, Hugh?”

“Me depressed?” he laughed. “How can you say so? I am perfectly happy. Since I bought this little farm I have everything a man could want.”

“Idiot!” she scoffed.

They had reached the entrance to the farmhouse. He arranged a chair for her on the stretch of piazza which overlooked the valley. Then he turned to leave.

“Hugh!” she called out to his departing figure.

He paused.

“Well?”

“I know what's really the matter with you. You're lonely.”

“Rubbish!” he exclaimed.

The irritation of his little outburst seemed to please her. She sat quite still laughing softly to herself. A touch of her old light-heartedness had returned.

“I' sang,' said Rapasto, 'and there was not one in that great audience who did not know that something new had come into the world.'”

AFTER luncheon Madame remained in the only cool place in the house—her drawing-room. The windows were open, but the blinds drawn. Cardinge, however, stepped out onto the piazza and Claire followed him. There were signs of a change. The wind was springing up, blowing in eddies—a wind which had neither the faint sting of the sea, nor the chill of the mountains—which seemed, indeed, as though it had come up from the seething earth. The air was no longer stagnant. There were shades of violet in the great bank of clouds, little portions of which were becoming detached.

“In a few minutes,” Cardinge prophesied, “we shall see the lightning; after that the deluge. Well, we have done all we can.”

Almost as he spoke their eyes were dazzled for a moment, and the air seemed filled with invisible lightning. Afterwards they stood still listening. The thunder was coming from the back of the mountains, far away, low at first and menacing. The first peal had scarcely died away when it was succeeded by another and louder one. A single drop of rain, as large as half-a-crown, dropped on the piazza. Round the last corner of the avenue came a great motor-car—a black limousine with silver mountings. Claire clutched at her companion's arm.

“Look, Hugh!” she exclaimed. “There is just one man inside. Is he a Virgin?”

There was another peal of thunder. The wind brought down a shower of rose leaves and orange-blossom petals, which filled the air like a hail storm.

“Whoever it is,” Cardinge observed, “he comes in dramatic fashion.”

THERE was an hour's interval during which the visitor lunched. Afterward Cardinge brought him in to Madame. He advanced toward her at once—his rather fat, pudgy hands outstretched, a smile which a generation of womenkind had found irreresistible, parting his lips and showing his very white teeth.

“Madame,” he exclaimed, “as always, your servant and your slave! You do not remember me?”

“Of course!” she murmured.

“I am still Rapasto,” he proclaimed, as he raised her beautiful hands to his lips and released them again with artistically assumed reluctance. “I am known all the world over by no other name. I have been offered titles in many countries. I declined. I am myself what I am myself. I am Rapasto! You knew?”

“I knew,” Madame assented.

“I guessed,” Cardinge echoed.

“Sometimes I thought of sending word,” their visitor continued. “I thought it would make you happy to know that I, who have become world-famed, was once your associate. But the time slipped on. Opportunities passed. As you know, I travel around the world at the call of my art. Other matters fade from the mind. I sing, and I forget myself that there is a world around me.”

Cardinge and Claire exchanged a swift glance of sympathetic understanding. It was gone in a moment, but both had experienced the pleasure of it. Claire's expression became one of ingenuous and childish hero-worship. A quaint air of introspective enjoyment seemed to have temporarily rejuvenated Cardinge.

“You must please let me get you a comfortable chair,” Claire begged, “so that you can talk to Madame. When the storm is over you will enjoy the view from our piazza.”

Rapasto accepted the chair. He was a little corpulent and he was not fond of standing.

“I thank you, child,” he said. “Madame, your ward delights me. She is of a charming age and appearance.”

“She will be very flattered,” Madame murmured.

“Cigar or cigarets?” Cardinge invited.

Rapasto closed his eyes with a little shiver.

“Neither,” he answered. “I have in my keeping one of the greatest gifts God has ever presented to the world. It is a sacred charge. I should love to smoke but I may not.”

THERE was a moment's silence. Rapasto smiled around at them all, as though anxious to put them at their ease. He wished to be gracious. He sat in their midst and was disposed to be conversational. In all ways he desired that they should look upon themselves as his equals.

“Madame,” he pronounced, pressing the tips of his forefingers together, and displaying three, if not more, rings with marvelously cut stones, “you are amazing. You look no older than in those very gay and happy days we spent together some—shall I say fifteen years ago?”

“Let us leave dates alone,” Madame sighed.

“Why not?” he agreed. “I too have been fortunate. I am still a young man, it is true, but a careful life has also enabled me to preserve my figure.”

The eyes of all of them seemed attracted as though by some common fascination toward the broad expanse of waistcoat. He himself looked down with complacency.

“I have on,” he remarked, “an ill-fitting waistcoat, but in the gymnasium, the swimming bath—ah, well, I must not boast! Now, tell me what you thought, Madame, when you realized that it was indeed I who had been one of your—what did we call ourselves—'Virgins.' Capital that! 'Virgins'!”

“You still are,” Madame reminded him, “You are one of those who are, as yet, not disbanded.”

Rapasto stroked his mustache.

“Quite so,” he murmured. “There was to be a little formality, I remember—a visit and the return of a document—one's quittance, it was called. But that can come later. I have only just arrived. It interests me to meet those who knew me in my younger days when I was just an ordinary person, and hear from their own lips what they felt when they realized the great fame which had come to their companion. It was wonderful, eh, Madame?”

“Amazing!” Madame assented. “I never thought you could sing a note.”

RAAPASTO leaned back in his chair and laughed. There was not much real merriment in his laugh, but a great deal of sound.

“That is good!” he declared. “Still—why should I wonder at it? I remember I used to go about in those days utterly unconscious that there was something in me which no other man could share—that I was set apart from the whole of the world, that a gift had been bestowed upon me which kings and princes might have craved for in vain. I should have taken more care of myself in those days, my friend Cardinge, had I known—a little more care, eh?”

Cardinge smiled.

“I never noticed that you were particularly reckless in our little enterprises,” he remarked.

“You have a bad memory,” the other rejoined a little curtly. “I remember several occasions upon which I ran great risks. If only the world had known! However, fortunately they did not. You have read many sketches of my career, of course,” he went on, “but for the sake of the little girl here, who will no doubt remember this occasion all her life, I will tell you direct from my own lips that it is the American newspapers whose account of my triumphant progress has been the most truthful. It was in New York, as you know, that I suddenly stepped onto the mountain top where no other has ever stood—where no other will ever reach, while I live.”

“In New York?” Claire exclaimed breathlessly. “Won't you tell us about it?”

RAPASTO smiled tolerantly. “My child,” he replied, “it is world's history. I could tell you nothing of that great occasion which has not already been written in letters of gold. Simply I sang, and there was not a single person in that great audience who did not know that something new had come into the world. That night,” he went on, “after the performance was over, the stage was strewn with flowers and articles of jewelry, shawls, passionate notes, a tiara, I remember, torn from the brow of a princess. In my dressing-room they had to barricade the door. There were women waiting for me in automobiles all up the street.”

“And you?” Claire cried. “What did you do?”

Rapasto's fingers strayed once more to his mustache.

“My child,” he answered, “if I had been another sort of man, that might have been a dangerous question, but, before all things, I am an artist. There was nothing else but the glory of my art in my veins that night. My soul triumphed over everything. I had myself escorted back to my room in the hotel, and locked in. I supped alone before an open window. I looked out over New York. I prayed. I gave thanks that it was I, Rapasto, who knew himself in that moment to be the greatest singer in the world's history.”

Madame's face was like the face of a sphinx. If she was enjoying herself she gave no sign of it.

“Perhaps our guest will take a little coffee?” she invited.

“I never touch it,” he declared. “Beer, champagne, and old brandy sometimes at my physician's advice. A little old brandy now, if you will.”

He was promptly served. Claire herself took him a large glass. He patted her on the shoulder.

“You must remember, child,” he said kindly, “that you gave me brandy with your own hand. It will be something to tell your children when you are happily married. Alas, Madame,” he went on, “I grieve to announce that this visit must be a short one. I have been staying with my friend, the Prince Madorni, at his villa in Nice. He insists that I am back by six o'clock. The King of Gothland is coming to meet me and I must not disappoint him.”

Madame inclined her head understandingly.

“Perhaps,” she murmured, “you will pay us a longer visit while you are in the neighborhood?”

“I shall make every effort,” Rapasto promised, with a sigh, glancing toward Claire. “Still, we are all human. The fates might intervene. Let us go through our little ceremony now. Give me that scrap of paper, Madame, and we will shake hands and bid one another farewell. Then,” he added, with a smile, “I shall no longer be a Virgin.”

Madame made no movement.

“You are the eighth who has presented himself here to seek his quittance,” she replied. “I must not treat you any differently from the others. Each one was called upon to perform some service before he received his discharge.”

“Service!” Rapasto repeated, a little querulously.

Madame assented.

“It varies, of course, according to their capacities,” she continued. “Our friend Cardinge here has still the love of adventure in his veins and the courage of a lion. I was obliged to ask him, I admit, to run some slight risk—a little daylight hold-up—a matter you would have enjoyed yourself fifteen years ago.”

Rapasto moved uneasily in his chair.

“Anything of that sort for me, in my present position, would, of course, be out of the question,” he pointed out.

“Naturally,” Madame agreed softly. “I do not ask my Virgins to fill unsuitable rôles. I should never make a bandit of you. Still, something must be thought of.”

Rapasto shrugged his shoulders.

“Madame,” he said. “I am not a vain man, but when one of your Virgins comes to see you who has achieved immortal fame, I ask you whether you think that the conditions which apply to those others apply also to him? I say no more than this. You will be able to remember always that Rapasto was one of your Virgins. Those others will be able to remember it. I ask you whether this is not of itself a greater thing by far than any last service I could perform?”

“The reflection to which you allude,” Madame conceded, “will always be a proud one. The last service, however, must be rendered even by you.”

“Even by me?” he repeated incredulously.

“It will not be difficult,” Madame assured him. “An idea even now presents itself to me. My friend, the Countess de Pleyell, who has a villa at Cap Ferrat, is giving in Nice three concerts during the next month for the benefit of the French Red Cross Society. At each one of these three you shall sing.”

“I shall what?” Rapasto gasped.

“You shall sing,'” Madame reiterated. “It will be a great gift of yours to a great cause. You will, without doubt, fill the Casino.”

Rapasto held tightly onto the arms of his chair.

“Fill the Casino!” he shouted. “You are proposing to me—Rapasto—that I sing for charity?”

“Undoubtedly,” Madame replied. “It will earn you your quittance.”

RAPASTO had genuinely the appearance of a man who has received a terrible shock. He sat quite still for a moment with his eyes closed.

“The prices were to have been popular ones,” Madame went on. “Ten francs were to have admitted any one, and there were to have been a few reserved seats. Under the circumstances I dare say the Countess will be able to charge twenty francs. I shall—”

“Stop!” Rapasto thundered.

Madame looked at him without change of expression. He was white and trembling.

“It is a sacrilege!” he declared. “Blasphemous! I never dreamed—I never believed it possible that I should ever find any one in the world who would dare to ask me to sing in a Casino for charity at twenty francs a head. It is the most ghastly suggestion—a nightmare!”

“Really!” Madame exclaimed with upraised eyebrows, “I am afraid you will have to explain yourself a little.”

“Explain myself!” Rapasto groaned. “It is a terrible thing to be confronted with ignorance so profound—such callousness toward the greatest art in the world. Madame, it is incredible to me that you should have spoken these words. Do you not realize that when it is proposed that I should sing they come to me, two or three—a committee—from some great undertaking—from Covent Garden or from New York, from Paris—and they ask humbly for an audience? I grant it for some time my secretary finds convenient. My man of affairs is there. They produce a contract. My man of affairs discusses it. I myself am not offended with the details. When all is ready for my signature the document is presented. I sign it. Occasionally I shake hands with my visitors. They depart filled with happiness. They have performed a great task for the world. I have promised to sing. The next day the press of the world is ablaze with the news. Thousands of people are made happy. Rapasto has promised to sing.”

“Very interesting,” Madame murmured.

“And, mind you, this is only a trifle,” he continued. “Such affairs are not for me. I never discuss them. I know nothing of them. But they pay vast sums. They pay more money than they have ever paid anybody else in the world. They are right. When it is known that I sing, price is of no account. Every seat is sold ten times over. Even then there are women who weep their eyes out because they cannot hear me.”

“Most graphic,” Madame declared. “You must be a very rich man, my friend.”

“Very likely,” he replied. “I do not know. Perhaps my secretary could tell you, I have never asked him.”

“Please forgive me if I seem very ignorant,” Claire intervened, “but why does it matter so much if for three times only you sing for a great cause without all these wonderful arrangements?”

His smile was almost pitiful.

“Dear child,” he explained softly, “a gift such as mine is most precious because of its rarity. Queens have begged me to sing at their courts. The most wonderful women in Europe have offered everything they possess for half-a-dozen notes in their boudoir. It is not for me to grant such requests. I am the trustee of an immortal gift. There are many who may sing for charity—not Rapasto!”

Madame yawned.

“It seems a pity,” she remarked. “Those are my terms.”

THE singer looked at her in frank amazement. Real tears stood in his eyes. It was incredible that there could be any person living with so little understanding.

“Madame,” he pleaded, “what you suggest is sheer sacrilege. The press of the world would be horrified. My manager, my secretary, the committees who wait upon me from the opera houses of the world, would protest. There are others who could fill your Casino at twenty francs a seat.”

“I am not so sure of that,” Madame replied. “It takes a great deal to make people go to concerts nowadays.”

He rose to his feet, shaken but indomitable.

“I will go home,” he announced, “back to the villa of my friend the Prince. When I faced the storm this afternoon I felt the imminence of some strange and mysterious discord. Now that it has arrived I find it worse even than I had imagined. I am unnerved. I must leave at once.”

“You don't care about singing at my concert, then?” Madame persisted.

He folded his arms, closed his eyes, and shivered.

“So might one ask the popular tenor of a suburban district to give his services at a bazaar,” he groaned. “Madame, I implore you, seek the advice of some who know. Tell them what you have done and be guided by them. I am not angry, I am only shocked.”

“The programs,” Madame replied calmly, as he made a tragical bow of farewell, “will have to be printed next week. If you desire your quittance, you will know what to do. Hugh, will you ring the bell for Signor Rapasto's car?”

Claire and Cardinge stepped out onto the piazza to wave their farewells. The whole world was storm-drenched. Great boughs had been broken off from the trees. The flowers were beaten down. In the distance the slanting rain was still falling. The sulphurous heat, however, had passed. The air was soft and sweet. Rapasto, his arms folded, his pose Napoleonic, drove off. Claire laughed till the tears stood in her eyes.

“If only he would come again,” she cried.

“He will come again,' Cardinge assured her.

IN TWO days he arrived. He brought with him a person whom he introduced as Signor Saul Mattino, who looked like a watered-down caricature of himself, and whom he introduced as his secretary and manager. Signor Mattino was urbane, but he did not beat about the bush.

“Our great friend here,” he began, “has confided to me the proposition which you made to him on his last visit.”

Madame's interest was a little languid.

“It was scarcely a proposition,” she explained. “I want him to sing for charity. The greatest in the world can do that.”

Signor Saul Mattino was shocked.

“Madame,” he said, “you probably live a retired life. You do not know what it means to the world when Rapasto sings.”

“It seems to mean the lightening of their pockets to a very considerable extent, for one thing,” Madame murmured.

“Must we be frivolous?” Mattino protested, with a ponderous frown. “It is not, indeed, a matter for jest. A promise to sing from our great friend is published throughout the press of the world as an event unique in its interest—amazing in its prospects of happiness. People who have been fortunate enough to secure seats count the days before the moment of their rapture arrives.”

Madame closed her eyes. Cardinge had caught the wave of her hand.

“Am I correct, Signor Mattino,” he inquired, “in surmising that you were born an American?”

“I was born in New York,” the other confessed.

“Then let us use the vernacular which we both understand,” Cardinge suggested. “Cut this out and come to the point. Will 'our great friend,' as you call him, sing or will he not?”

“The world would not permit it,” Signor Mattino replied. “His managers would not permit it. There would be an outcry from hemisphere to hemisphere.”

“Then let Signor Rapasto understand that the object of his visit here will remain unattained,” Cardinge said drily.

Rapasto personally intervened. His attitude was one of incredulity.

“But, Madame,” he expostulated, “it is I, Rapasto, who comes to you. I have brought everlasting glory upon your society. The world rings with my name. It is I who have come to see you, who sits in your room with you, who accepts you all as friends of the past. I ask the simple boon of my quittance. Do you still refuse?”

“My dear man,” Madame declared, “if this goes on any longer, I shall relate that little story to every one present.”

Rapasto rose to his feet. He was like a man who scarcely knows which way to turn.

“Mattino,” he begged, “take me away.”

“An excellent suggestion,” Mattino agreed.

“You need not come to see me again, either of you, unless you are prepared to send me the names of the songs 'our great friend' would like to sing. The announcements will be out to-morrow.”

There were no words left. In solemn silence the two men left the villa. Once more Claire and Cardinge watched their departure from the piazza.

“Isn't he lovely?” Claire exclaimed. “Do you think he will sing, Hugh?”

Cardinge nodded.

“I think so,” he answered. “He bluffs about it, but I think he's frightened out of his life.”

ON THE following day a very imposing person presented himself. His name, it appeared, was Stuttaker. He made no effort to conceal the fact that he was an American. Madame received him on the piazza and Cardinge, who had left a little time before, was fetched back in hot haste by Claire.

“Madame,” Mr. Stuttaker began, “I am the business manager of Rapasto.”

“Is that so?” Madame rejoined. “I should scarcely have thought that he needed one.”

Mr. Stuttaker smiled a superior smile.

“Dear Madame,” he said, “you probably lead a retired life. You have no idea of the consequence in the world which a man like our great friend has achieved. There is not an artist in the universe who does not look upon it as an event when Rapasto sings.”

Madame suddenly sat bolt upright.

“Look here, Mr. Stuttaker,” she protested, “I've been through all this from Rapasto himself, and from his agent, and I don't want any more of it from you.”

“You have actually billed the great Rapasto to sing at a charity concert!” Mr. Stuttaker complained with horror.

“Yes, and he's going to sing there,” Madame replied, “or he does not get what he wants from me.”

“I will not appeal any longer to your finer feelings as regards this matter,” Mr. Stuttaker said coldly. “I will simply proceed to discuss the affair from a business point of view. I have been to the Casino and interviewed the manager. I find that the full capacity of the place, at your announced prices, would be forty-two thousand francs. I am prepared to offer you a check for that amount.”

Madame turned to Claire and Cardinge who had just arrived.

“Listen!” she exclaimed. “This is Rapasto's business manager. He offers a check for the whole of the receipts of the house.”

“What a pity!” Claire sighed. “I was beginning to think that I should quite like to hear him sing.”

“You still may,” Madame rejoined drily. “Mr. Stuttaker, your offer is declined.”

“You mean that you insist upon Rapasto singing?”

“I do.”

“He has signed a bond not to sing a note except under my direction,” Mr. Stuttaker pointed out.

“Then you had better direct him,” Madame suggested. “Go back and tell Rapasto, if he wants his quittance, he will sing at the Comtesse de Pleyell's concerts. That is the end of it.”

“Madame,” Mr. Stuttaker said solemnly, as he rose to his feet, “I do not know what your hold over our great friend may be, but I venture to tell you that this is blackmail of the most terrible description.”

“You are a shockingly rude man,” Madame declared. “But I really am not cross with you. The whole business is so funny.”

“Funny!” Mr. Stuttaker gasped.

Madame nodded.

“First of all,” she explained, “there is Rapasto's vanity, which affords illimitable scope for humor, and would afford more still if it were not a little pathetic. Then there is Signor Mattino and you, his entourage, bent on making as much as you can out of the man and keeping him puffed up to the skies all the time with the idea that he is a sort of superman, a great artist who flatters the earth he treads upon. The man sings well, I have no doubt. If I feel like it I shall go to one of the three concerts. But he's just a professional singer, and for the first time in his life, he's going to sing for nothing. You go and tell him so with my compliments. Hugh, will you fetch Mr. Stuttaker's car?”

“Blackmail!” Mr. Stuttaker repeated, rising to his feet. “Disgraceful blackmail!”

“Tell your man to be very careful going down the avenue,” Madame advised. “There are some awkward corners.”

ON THE afternoon after his third concert, Rapasto drove up to the villa. Madame and Claire received him upon the piazza. His manner was grave and dignified. He was like a man who had passed through the valley of an undeserved humiliation. There was a moment, however, when he was almost himself. It was when Claire came up to greet him.

“You have heard me sing?” he asked, looking at her earnestly.

“Rather!” she answered. “I was in the front row and I stayed until nearly the end. I had to miss your last song because the Countess was giving a supper party. Armand was waiting to take me there. Do tell me, is your voice a tenor or do you call it a baritone?”

He drew away with a little shiver.

“My voice,” he replied, “has never been classified.”

Madame handed him a sealed envelop. He buttoned it up in the pocket of his coat.

“Madame,” he said, “I understand that I have had seven predecessors. Seven before myself have been put to difficult tasks to with their quittances. Yet I can safely say this—not one of them has paid as I have.”

He looked at them both for a moment, intently. Then he bowed and turned away. Madame rang the bell.

“Be sure to remind your chauffeur about the corners,” she advised him.

“And if you are singing again in these parts,” Claire begged, as he stepped into the car, “do let us know. I should like to come if it's not too far.”

Rapasto bowed once more. Then he folded his arms. The black and silver car started off. At the first corner they all caught a glimpse of him, seated there—silent, motionless, shocked.

(The eighth story in this series will appear in the February issue)