The Flirt Part 11

"Not in the least," said Richard, dropping upon a rustic bench, and beginning to fan himself with his straw hat. "What's the use of fretting about a boy who hasn't sense enough to fret about himself?"

"'Boy?'" Mr. Vilas affected puzzlement. "Do I hear aright? Sir, do you boy me? Bethink you, I am now the sh.e.l.l of five mint-juleps plus, and am pot-valiant. And is this mere capacity itself to be lightly _boyed_? Again, do I not wear a man's garment, a man's garnitures? Heed your answer; for this serge, these flannels, and these silks are yours, and though I may not fill them to the utmost, I do to the longmost, precisely. I am the stature of a man; had it not been for your razor I should wear the beard of a man; therefore I'll not be boyed. What have you to say in defence?"

"Hadn't you better let me get Joe to bring you something to eat?"

asked Richard.

"Eat?" Mr. Vilas disposed of the suggestion with mournful hauteur.

"There! For the once I forgive you. Let the subject never be mentioned between us again. We will tactfully turn to a topic of interest. My memories of last evening, at first hazy and somewhat disconcerting, now merely amuse me. Following the pleasant Spanish custom, I went a-serenading, but was kidnapped from beneath the precious cas.e.m.e.nt by--by a zealous arrival. Host, 'zealous arrival' is not the julep in action: it is a triumph of paraphrase."

"I wish you'd let Joe take you back to bed," said Richard.

"Always bent on thoughts of the flesh," observed the other sadly.

"Beds are for bodies, and I am become a thing of spirit. My soul is grateful a little for your care of its casing. You behold, I am generous: I am able to thank my successor to Carmen!"

Lindley's back stiffened. "Vilas!"

"Spare me your protests." The younger man waved his hand languidly. "You wish not to confer upon this subject----"

"It's a subject we'll omit," said Richard.

His companion stopped swinging, allowed the hammock to come to rest; his air of badinage fell from him; for the moment he seemed entirely sober; and he spoke with gentleness. "Mr. Lindley, if you please, I am still a gentleman--at times."

"I beg your pardon," said Richard quickly.

"No need of that!" The speaker's former careless and boisterous manner instantly resumed possession. "You must permit me to speak of a wholly fict.i.tious lady, a creature of my wanton fancy, sir, whom I call Carmen. It will enable me to relieve my burdened soul of some remarks I have long wished to address to your excellent self."

"Oh, all right," muttered Richard, much annoyed.

"Let us imagine," continued Mr. Vilas, beginning to swing again, "that I thought I had won this Carmen----"

Lindley uttered an exclamation, s.h.i.+fted his position in his chair, and fixed a bored attention upon the pa.s.sing vehicles in the glimpse of the street afforded between the house and the shrubberies along the side fence. The other, without appearing to note his annoyance, went on, cheerfully:

"She was a precocious huntress: early in youth she pa.s.sed through the acc.u.mulator stage, leaving it to the crude or village belle to rejoice in numbers and the excitement of teasing cubs in the bear-pit. It is the nature of this imagined Carmen to play fiercely with one imitation of love after another: a man thinks he wins her, but it is merely that she has chosen him--for a while.

And Carmen can have what she chooses; if the man exists who could show her that she cannot, she would follow him through the devil's dance; but neither you nor I would be that man, my dear sir. We a.s.sume that Carmen's eyes have been mine--her heart is another matter--and that she has grown weary of my somewhat Sicilian manner of looking into them, and, following her nature and the law of periodicity which Carmens must bow to, she seeks a cooler gaze and calls Mr. Richard Lindley to come and take a turn at looking.

Now, Mr. Richard Lindley is straight as a die: he will not even show that he hears the call until he is sure that I have been dismissed: therefore, I have no quarrel with him. Also, I cannot even hate him, for in my clearer julep vision I see that he is but an interregnum. Let me not offend my friend: chagrin is to be his as it is mine. I was a strong draught, he but the quieting potion our Carmen took to settle it. We shall be brothers in woe some day. Nothing in the universe lasts except h.e.l.l: Life is running water; Love, a looking-gla.s.s; Death, an empty theatre! That reminds me: as you are not listening I will sing."

He finished his drink and lifted his voice hilariously:

"The heavenly stars far above her, The wind of the infinite sea, Who know all her perfidy, love her, So why call it madness in me?

Ah, why call it madness----"

He set his gla.s.s with a crash upon the table, staring over his companion's shoulder.

"_What_, if you please, is the royal exile who thus seeks refuge in our hermitage?"

His host had already observed the approaching visitor with some surprise, and none too graciously. It was Valentine Corliss: he had turned in from the street and was crossing the lawn to join the two young men. Lindley rose, and, greeting him with sufficient cordiality, introduced Mr. Vilas, who bestowed upon the newcomer a very lively interest.

"You are as welcome, Mr. Corliss," said this previous guest, earnestly, "as if these sylvan shades were mine. I hail you, not only for your own sake, but because your presence encourages a hope that our host may offer refreshment to the entire company."

Corliss smilingly declined to be a party to this diplomacy, and seated himself beside Richard Lindley on the bench.

"Then I relapse!" exclaimed Mr. Vilas, throwing himself back full-length in the hammock. "I am not replete, but content. I shall meditate. Gentlemen, speak on!"

He waved his hand in a gracious gesture, indicating his intention to remain silent, and lay quiet, his eyes fixed steadfastly upon Corliss.

"I was coming to call on you," said the latter to Lindley, "but I saw you from the street and thought you mightn't mind my being as informal as I used to be, so many years ago."

"Of course," said Richard.

"I have a sinister purpose in coming," Mr. Corliss laughingly went on. "I want to bore you a little first, and then make your fortune. No doubt that's an old story to you, but I happen to be one of the adventurers whose argosies are laden with real cargoes.

n.o.body knows who has or hasn't money to invest nowadays, and of course I've no means of knowing whether _you_ have or not--you see what a direct chap I am--but if you have, or can lay hold of some, I can show you how to make it bring you an immense deal more."

"Naturally," said Richard pleasantly, "I shall be glad if you can do that."

"Then I'll come to the point. It is exceedingly simple; that's certainly one attractive thing about it." Corliss took some papers and unmounted photographs from his pocket, and began to spread them open on the bench between himself and Richard. "No doubt you know Southern Italy as well as I do."

"Oh, I don't 'know' it. I've been to Naples; down to Paestum; drove from Salerno to Sorrentoby Amalfi; but that was years ago."

"Here's a large scale map that will refresh your memory." He unfolded it and laid it across their knees; it was frayed with wear along the folds, and had been heavily marked and dotted with red and blue pencillings. "My millions are in this large irregular section," he continued. "It's the anklebone and instep of Italy's boot; this sizable province called Basilicata, east of Salerno, north of Calabria. And I'll not hang fire on the point, Lindley.

What I've got there is oil."

"Olives?" asked Richard, puzzled.

"Hardly!" Corliss laughed. "Though of course one doesn't connect petroleum with the thought of Italy, and of all Italy, Southern Italy. But in spite of the years I've lived there, I've discovered myself to be so essentially American and commercial that I want to drench the surface of that antique soil with the brown, bad-smelling crude oil that lies so deep beneath it. Basilicata is the coming great oil-field of the world--and that's my secret. I dare to tell it here, as I shouldn't dare in Naples."

"Shouldn't 'dare'?" Richard repeated, with growing interest, and no doubt having some vague expectation of a tale of the Camorra.

To him Naples had always seemed of all cities the most elusive and incomprehensible, a laughing, thieving, begging, mandolin-playing, music-and-murder haunted metropolis, about which anything was plausible; and this impression was not unique, as no inconsiderable proportion of Mr. Lindley's fellow-countrymen share it, a fact thoroughly comprehended by the returned native.

"It isn't a case of not daring on account of any bodily danger,"

explained Corliss.

"No," Richard smiled reminiscently. "I don't believe that would have much weight with you if it were. You certainly showed no symptoms of that sort in your extreme youth. I remember you had the name of being about the most daring and foolhardy boy in town."

"I grew up to be cautious enough in business, though," said the other, shaking his head gravely. "I haven't been able to afford not being careful." He adjusted the map--a prefatory gesture.

"Now, I'll make this whole affair perfectly clear to you. It's a simple matter, as are most big things. I'll begin by telling you of Moliterno--he's been my most intimate friend in that part of the continent for a great many years; since I went there as a boy, in fact."

He sketched a portrait of his friend, Prince Moliterno, bachelor chief of a historic house, the soul of honour, "land-poor"; owning leagues and leagues of land, hills and mountains, broken towers and ruins, in central Basilicata, a province described as wild country and rough, off the rails and not easy to reach. Moliterno and the narrator had gone there to shoot; Corliss had seen "surface oil" upon the streams and pools; he recalled the discovery of oil near his own boyhood home in America; had talked of it to Moliterno, and both men had become more and more interested, then excited. They decided to sink a well.

Corliss described picturesquely the difficulties of this enterprise, the hards.h.i.+ps and disappointments; how they dragged the big tools over the mountains by mule power; how they had kept it all secret; how he and Moliterno had done everything with the help of peasant labourers and one experienced man, who had "seen service in the Persian oil-fields."

He gave the business reality, colouring it with details relevant and irrelevant, anecdotes and wayside incidents: he was fluent, elaborate, explicit throughout. They sank five wells, he said, "at the angles of this irregular pentagon you see here on the map, outlined in blue. These red circles are the wells." Four of the wells "came in tremendous," but they had managed to get them sealed after wasting--he was "sorry to think how many thousand barrels of oil." The fifth well was so enormous that they had not been able to seal it at the time of the speaker's departure for America.

"But I had a cablegram this morning," he added, "letting me know they've managed to do it at last. Here is, the cablegram." He handed Richard a form signed "Antonio Moliterno."

"Now, to go back to what I said about not 'daring' to speak of this in Naples," he continued, smiling. "The fear is financial, not physical."

The knowledge of the lucky strike, he explained, must be kept from the "Neapolitan money-sharks." A third of the land so rich in oil already belonged to the Moliterno estates, but it was necessary to obtain possession of the other two thirds "before the secret leaks into Naples." So far, it was safe, the peasants of Basilicata being "as medieval a lot as one could wish." He related that these peasants thought that the devils hiding inside the mountains had been stabbed by the drills, and that the oil was devils' blood.