"That's some!" Harrigan beat his hands together thunderously. "Great
stuff; eh, Barone?"
The Barone raised his hands as if to express his utter inability to
describe his sensations. His elation was that ascribed to those fortunate
mortals whom the gods lifted to Olympus. At his feet lay the lace-hemming,
hopelessly snarled.
"Father, father!" remonstrated Nora; "you will wake up all the old ladies
who are having their siesta."
"Bah! I'll bet a doughnut their ears are glued to their doors. What ho!
Somebody's at the portcullis. Probably the padre, come up for tea."
He was at the door instantly. He flung it open heartily. It was
characteristic of the man to open everything widely, his heart, his mind,
his hate or his affection.
"Come in, come in! Just in time for the matinée concert."
The padre was not alone. Courtlandt followed him in.
"We have been standing in the corridor for ten minutes," affirmed the
padre, sending a winning smile around the room. "Mr. Courtlandt was for
going down to the bureau and sending up our cards. But I would not hear of
such formality. I am a privileged person."
"Sure yes! Molly, ring for tea, and tell 'em to make it hot. How about a
little peg, as the colonel says?"
The two men declined.
How easily and nonchalantly the man stood there by the door as Harrigan
took his hat! Celeste was aquiver with excitement. She was thoroughly a
woman: she wanted something to happen, dramatically, romantically.
But her want was a vain one. The man smiled quizzically at Nora, who
acknowledged the salutation by a curtsy which would have frightened away
the banshees of her childhood. Nora hated scenes, and Courtlandt had the
advantage of her in his knowledge of this. Celeste remained at the piano,
but Nora turned as if to move away.
"No, no!" cried the padre, his palms extended in protest. "If you stop the
music I shall leave instantly."
"But we are all through, Padre," replied Nora, pinching Celeste's arm,
which action the latter readily understood as a command to leave the
piano.
Celeste, however, had a perverse streak in her to-day. Instead of rising
as Nora expected she would, she wheeled on the stool and began Morning
Mood from Peer Gynt, because the padre preferred Grieg or Beethoven to
Chopin. Nora frowned at the pretty head below her. She stooped.
"I sha'n't forgive you for this trick," she whispered.
Celeste shrugged, and her fingers did not falter. So Nora moved away this
time in earnest.
"No, you must sing. That is what I came up for," insisted the padre. If
there was any malice in the churchman, it was of a negative quality. But
it was in his Latin blood that drama should appeal to him strongly, and
here was an unusual phase in The Great Play. He had urged Courtlandt, much
against the latter's will this day, to come up with him, simply that he
might set a little scene such as this promised to be and study it from the
vantage of the prompter. He knew that the principal theme of all great
books, of all great dramas, was antagonism, antagonism between man and
woman, though by a thousand other names has it been called. He had often
said, in a spirit of raillery, that this antagonism was principally due to
the fact that Eve had been constructed (and very well) out of a rib from
Adam. Naturally she resented this, that she had not been fashioned
independently, and would hold it against man until the true secret of the
parable was made clear to her.