The Azure Rose Part 24

"It means," chanted the ghosts, "that her friends.h.i.+p is as dead as this dry flower!"

Did it? He would make one trial more.

Vivid as was her face in his mind, he brought to the lamp his pictures of her. She had liked those pictures; in spite of herself, she had shown him that she liked them----

(The ghosts were crooning:

"Though you had the brush of Diego Velasquez, she would not heed you now!")

Had he painted her--he had tried to--as she should have been? Or had he painted her as she really was?

He searched the pictures. Her eyes seemed to look at him with a long farewell in their blue-black depths, the parted lips to tremble on a sob. A light was born in the canvas--the reflected light of his own high faith revived. Whatever separated them, it was by no will of hers. No, there was no ghost in all the fields of night that he would listen to again: in that pictured face there was as much of pride as there was of beauty, but there was nothing of either cruelty or deceit. Yes, he had only touched her hand, but certainly hand had never yet touched hand as his touched hers. He was sure of it and sure of her. A short acquaintance--it had been long enough to prove her. A few broken words in the twilight--they were volumes. The merest breath of feeling--it would last them to their graves.

He would move earth and Heaven to find Vitoria: the wine of that resolution rang in his ears and fired his heart. The sun, coming up over the Pantheon in a glory of red and gold, sent into Cartaret's room a s.h.i.+ning messenger of royal encouragement before whose sword the ghosts forever fled. The lover was almost gay again: here was new service for her; here, for him, was work, the best surcease of sorrow.

He felt like an athlete trained to the minute and crouching for the starter's pistol-shot. He believed in Vitoria! He believed in her, and so he could not doubt his own ability to discover her in the face of all hards.h.i.+ps and to win her against all odds; he believed in her and in himself, and so he could not doubt G.o.d.

He understood something of the difficulties that presented themselves.

He knew scarcely anything of the woman whom he sought; his only clews were her name and the name of the rose; he must first find to what country those names belonged, and to find that country he might have to seek through all the world. He could not ask help of the police; he would not summon to his a.s.sistance those vile rats who call themselves private-detectives. It was a task for himself alone; it was a task that must occupy his every working-hour; but it was a task that he would accomplish.

A second cable-message interrupted him at his ablutions. It was from his uncle, and it read:

"Cora wires me received no reply from you. Do you accept trust's offer stated in her cable? Advise you say yes. Better come home and attend to business."

This brought Cartaret to the realization that he was in a paradoxical position: he was a penniless millionaire. He went to Fourget's and borrowed some money. Thence he went to the cable-office in the Avenue de l'Opera. There had been, he now recalled, an offer--a really dazzling offer--mentioned in his sister's message; but more practical matters had driven it from his mind. He therefore sent his uncle this:

"I accept trust's offer. Advise Cora to agree. Don't worry: New York's not the only place for business. There's business in Paris--lots of it."

His uncle had been very annoying: Charlie should have been at work at the Bibliotheque Nationale a full half-hour ago. He had resolved to begin with the floral clew.

He went there immediately and asked what books they had about flowers; they told him that they had many thousand. Cartaret narrowed his field; he said what he wanted was a book on roses, and he was told that he might choose any of hundreds that were at hand. In despair, he ordered brought to him any one that began with an "A"; he would work through the alphabet.

By closing-time he had reached "Ac." He hurried out into the fresh breeze that blew down through the public square and the narrow rue Colbert, and so cut across to the cable-office.

He wanted to send a message mentioning a little matter he had forgotten that morning. As it happened, the operator had just received a message for Charlie. It was again from his uncle, and said that the sale would be consummated early next day. There was about it a brevity more severe than even cables require: the elder Cartaret patently disapproved of the communication that his nephew had sent him. Still, the sale seemed to be a.s.sured, and that was the main thing, so Charlie put the word "Five" in place of the word "One" in the message he was drafting, and sent it off:

"Cable me five thousand."

He interrupted his library-researches the next day to make a sporadic raid upon florist-shops along the boulevards, but found no florist that had ever heard of the Azure Rose.

The answer to his latest cable-message came the next day at noon. He had resumed his search at the Bibliotheque and instructed the cable-clerk to hold all messages until he should call for them. He called for this at lunch-time:

"Sale completed, thanks to power-of-attorney you left me when sailing. Do you mean dollars?"

Cartaret groaned at this procrastination.

"And my uncle brags of his American hustle!" he cried.

He filed his reply:

"Of course I meant dollars. What did you suppose I meant?

Francs? Pounds sterling? I mean dollars. Hurry!"

"Be sure to put in the punctuation marks," he admonished the pretty clerk.

He dashed back to the library. During the next hundred and twenty hours, he divided his time between botanical researches and one side of the following cable-conversation:

"Come home."

"Can't."

"Why?"

"Busy."

"How?"

"Botanizing. But if you don't send me immediately that little bit of all that belongs to me, I'll knock off work to find out the reason why."

The money arrived just as his credit in short-credit Paris was everywhere close to the breaking-point, and just as he gave up hope of ever finding what he wanted at the great library, where he had driven every sub and deputy librarian to the brink of insanity. Money, however, brings resourcefulness: Cartaret then remembered the Jardin des Plantes, where he had once been with Vitoria.

No official knew anything about the Azure Rose, but an old gardener (Cartaret was trying them all) gave him hope. He was a little Gascon, that gardener, with white hair and blue eyes, and his long labor had bent him forward, as if the earth in which he worked had one day laid hold of his shoulders and never since let go.

"I had a brother once who was a _faineant_ and so a great traveler.

He spoke of such a rose," the Gascon nodded; "but I cannot remember what it was that he told me."

"Here are five francs to help you remember," said Cartaret.

The old man took the money and thanked him.

"But I cannot remember what my brother told me," he said, "except that the rose was found nowhere but in the Basque provinces of Spain." ...

A half-hour later Cartaret had bought his traveling-kit, which included a forty-five caliber automatic revolver. Forty minutes later he had paid Refrogne ten months' rent in advance, together with a twenty-five franc tip, and directed that his room be held against his return. An hour later he was sheepishly handing Seraphin a bulky package, evidently containing certain canvases, and saying to him:

"These are something I wouldn't leave about and couldn't bring myself to store, and you're--well, I think you'll understand."

At twelve o'clock that night, from an opened window in his compartment of a sleeping-car on a southward-speeding _train de luxe_, Cartaret was looking up at the yellow stars somewhere about Tours.

"Good-night, Vitoria!" he was whispering. "Good-night, and--G.o.d keep you!"

He was a very practical man.

CHAPTER XIII

FURTHER ADVENTURES OF AN AMATEUR BOTANIST