4.

Eugénie gave her blessing to the idea of the marriage.
"I heartily approve," she said to Philo when he told her over tea at the Hotel Continental the following day. "It may be the smartest thing you've done for yourself in forty years. You've given to everyone but yourself. Now let this darling girl give some of it back. Why do you think I surround myself with young people? As a tonic!
"This is simply a mariage de convenance, the kind of marriage for convenience that we Europeans understand. Most of us marry that way. We are matched to protect titles or fortunes, or to unite families of equal rank. Few of us marry for love, as you Americans do. Of course, I was an exception. My husband broke all the rules when he married me. Ours was a love match.
"All who are acquainted with you understand that you are not an old fool. All acquainted with Romelle understand her as an accomplished artist who knows her own mind. Everyone, absolutely everyone, will approve!"
"Thank you, Madame," Philo commented gratefully.
"When will you marry?"
"Quite soon, I think," he replied. "Having reached the decision, it behooves us to make it a fait accompli. Later today, I shall explain to her the intricacies of Dragon's Heart."
Eugénie sighed. "Oh, I pray the mystery of Dragon's Heart will be resolved in my lifetime. I so want to know!"
She called for more tea with a shake of a crystal table bell.
"Captain, may I make an offer concerning the marriage?"
"Of course, Madame."
The waiter brought the tea. She poured for Philo and herself.
"I shall be returning to the villa at Cap Martin for the remainder of the season," she proceeded. "I find that with the passing of the years, the English winters are simply too harsh for my comfort. I offer you Villa Cyrnos for the ceremony. I would love to have you down there. It may provide you with an element of privacy you will not find in Paris."
Overwhelmed by her generosity, Philo accepted on the contingency that it did not interfere with anything Romelle had in mind.
Romelle approved it gladly, adding that she would like the marriage to take place six weeks later, on Saint Valentine's Day, the fourteenth of February.
A flooding of the Seine had devastated central Paris the year before. Icy water overflowed to the depth of a meter in several streets on both sides of the river. Parts of the city resembled Venice. The Trocadéro, where Annie and Pierre sang during the Revolutionary Centennial more than twenty years before, was compared to an Indian temple lapped by the Ganges.
In the Place Dauphine, water had inundated the wine cellar. Philo instructed a houseman to dive from the top of the basement stairs to save a case of Pommery 1904 presented him as a gift by the Empress. In gratitude, Philo gave the houseman a bottle of impeccable sauterne. Accepting the expensive wine with no more than a nod, the surly fellow felt cheated that he had not been awarded a bottle of the priceless champagne he had reclaimed. A year had passed, but still the imagined wound festered.
A second incident conspired with this earlier one to create an explosive situation.
It began the night Picasso opened a showing of recent works two weeks before the wedding. The centerpiece was The Golden Parisienne. During the opening reception, a gang of thugs marched into the gallery, menaced everyone with guns, and walked out with half a dozen paintings, including the centerpiece.
Quickly apprehended, the "thieves" turned out to be starving artists hired by the gallery as a stunt to call public attention to the exhibition. Picasso was furious and demanded the return of his paintings. Despite his offended sensibilities, the ruse worked. The canvases stayed on display, and the show was what one critic called a succès fou, a "wild success." The hit of the exhibit proved to be The Golden Parisienne. Picasso refused to identify the model, but an enterprising reporter for a scandal sheet paid one of the "thieves," a man bitterly jealous of Picasso's talent, to really steal the Spaniard's portfolio of preliminary studies for the painting.
The first of the series of twelve sketches was not abstract; it was easily recognizable as Romelle.
She had consented to pose in a nightgown of clinging satin. The pillaging artist had no difficulty, therefore, imagining her in the nude. A fine copyist, he recreated the sketch brilliantly, taking license to show her unclad.
The next morning, the front page of the reporter's scandalous newspaper displayed the copy on every newsstand in the city, emblazoned with the words, Qui est cette femme? "Who is this woman?"
Passing one such display on his way to work in the Place Dauphine, the disgruntled houseman from Philo's household recognized an opportunity for revenge. He proceeded at once to the newspaper and extorted quite a few francs in exchange for relaying his information to the conniving reporter. He revealed the "golden Paris lady" to be Romelle and also gave out details of the wedding plans he had overheard.
The story was flashed across Europe and North America by an international wireless news service. "Pablo Picasso's latest nude to marry millionaire shipping magnate at Riviera villa of erstwhile Empress of France" was the general tenor of the articles that appeared virtually everywhere in the Western world that evening.
When Philo informed Eugénie apologetically the morning after, she surprised him by noting she had been the second person to receive a wireless communication, from Canada, when such transatlantic service was inaugurated in 1901.
"The first was King Edward the Seventh of England, who died last year," she continued. "Bertie would have enjoyed reading this message even more than that one! I rather think the old roué would have liked to run off with a Picasso nude himself! Do not fret, my dear capitaine. Only the hoi polloi relish this sort of titillating tale. The one who may be most disturbed will be our Romelle. She has acquired instant celebrity, or notoriety. She will outlive it, of course, as do we all who have been publicly defamed. But, initially, it will be crushing for such a high-minded, idealistic girl as she. The story makes her elegant romance with you sound sordid. Something very special must be done."
Philo nodded. "I concur, Madame, and I have an idea. When Bart came aboard the Thistle in the Crimea sixteen years ago, he gave me a small package for safekeeping. I have kept it hidden away. I opened it once, just to see what was inside."
The Empress raised her eyebrows expectantly, waiting to hear.
"The box contained a ruby," he explained, "not an ordinary ruby, but one more glorious than any I have ever seen."
"More so than this?" she wondered, lifting her hand to show him a magnificent ring.
He nodded his admiration, but shrugged. "No comparison, Madame! Your gem is exquisite, but Bart's stone is larger than an apricot, very nearly the size of a peach. It is absolutely flawless. Held to the sunlight, it is more dazzling than a diamond. Its rays are almost blinding. I have never seen anything that approaches it. It is absolutely spectacular!."
The Empress murmured, "Ah! It sounds divine!"
"Truly, Madame," he stated, "one thinks of 'divine' when peering into its depths. I never saw such a ballet of colored light! An extraordinary stone!"
"You propose, then, to give the gem to Romelle as an assuagement for this Golden Parisienne affair?"
"Perhaps 'give' is not the right word, Madame. 'Pass over' expresses the idea better. In leaving the stone with me, Bart said it was of great consequence, and I should make arrangements to place it in the care of a trustworthy person if anything should happen to me. I have always meant for that person to be you, but now that Romelle is grown, and about to become my wife, it is proper that it be she."
"Of course," agreed Eugénie. "She will deeply appreciate the gesture. It comes at precisely the right time. It will be somewhat like getting a wedding gift from her father."
"Ah, yes!" Philo smiled, pleased by that perception. "A wedding gift! After all, it will be little more than a formality. She will accept it, and then return it to its hiding place. But, ad interim, it will serve our purpose nicely. She will be diverted from the nastiness at hand."
Romelle amazed both Philo and the Empress with her poise as she faced reporters who leapt at her from behind every bush and tree in the Place Dauphine. She fielded potentially embarrassing questions from the international press with verve and candor. The French papers wrote of her savoir faire, the English of her aplomb, the Americans of her self-assurance. Flash powder exploded from all directions. Even when she walked with Rebel, some photographers braved his growls and snarls, although none came too close.
When Philo presented her with Bart's ruby, she was overwhelmed. He told her about that day in the Crimea, and took her into Roxanne's suite. He went to the mantel and lifted his finger to the Vigée-Lebrun painting. Firmly, he pressed on one of the portrait's bejeweled toes. Romelle noticed now that it was the only toe that wore a ruby.
The spot concealed a spring release embedded in the wall behind the picture.
One among the little naked cupids disporting themselves in the mantel's stucco decoration popped out. He comprised the handle of a secret, velvet-lined drawer.
Philo removed Bart's package from the drawer, carefully folded away the paper covering, and opened the box.
In the candlelight of Roxanne's suite, Bart's ruby took on a life of its own. It almost seemed to tremble in Romelle's hand when she held it up to peer through it at the fire. " Grand-père!" she chortled as though she were again a child. "Look! Look!"
He held it to his eye. He shook his head in awe.
"Romelle," he murmured, his voice humble and low, "I know now that I have done the right thing in passing this stone on to you. Please look through it again yourself. You will see the Northern Lights as they shone upon us the night Annie, your father, and I stood on the battlefield at Fredericksburg almost fifty years ago, the night Doctor Will, your real grand-père, ascended to Heaven."
She gazed through the ruby again, sighing in wonder.
"May I keep it with me tonight?" she asked. "I would like to lay it on the pillow beside my head and look through it at the moon," she said pensively. "Perhaps there is magic in it. Perhaps I shall see my father's face. Do you know, Grand-père, Captain, Philo, dear - all the sweet things you are to me - my father is no more real to me than the Man in the Moon? I wonder if he will ever be as real as thee? Will we meet? Will I see him face to face? Oh, King David, will it ever be?"
A stricken look set her features in a melancholy frown. Philo placed his arms around her. She rested her head on his chest.
"Yes, child, keep it with you till after we are married. Keep it next to your heart. Perchance it is a magic stone. Surely it can bring no evil to us. Only good will come. Now I have other treasures to show you."
He reached up again to touch the painting. This time, his finger fell on a toe of the other foot, which showed a diamond. Another cupid popped out. This drawer, larger and deeper than the other, secreted Roxanne's chain of massive diamonds.
"I draped them around the mannequin's waist on the evening I brought you here because I had determined before I went to you upstairs that the time had come to speak of Roxanne," he informed her. "Now, press there, please."
She pressed a finger wearing a cameo ring. Another cupid revealed a drawer containing a very small box.
"Take it out, Romelle, and open it."
In it was an exquisite canary diamond cut in the shape known as navette. The glittering gem was set in gold.
As she held the box open in her right hand, he removed the ring without a word and placed it, in the American tradition, on the third finger of her left hand. He kissed her on the cheek.
"Oh, darling," she cried, "it's the same color as the canaries in the wood-violet earrings the Empress gave me coming back from Martinique!"
"Of course," he grinned. "Her Imperial Majesty and I use the same jeweler. It's a perfect match for the stones you already have, not too big for your delicate hand."
The day before their departure for Cap Martin, Romelle took Bart's ruby to her dressmaker, Paul Poiret. He was then the dominant couturier in the esoteric world of haute couture, renowned for coat-and-dress ensembles. Strongly influenced by Oriental designs, he made everything Romelle wore.
For her wedding, he had selected an unusually creamy peau de soie to fashion into a loose-fitting gown with long, flowing, kimono sleeves. The shade exactly matched Annie's pearls which Romelle had redesigned as a double-strand collar to fit around the high lace neck of her wedding dress. The floor-length veil of sheer Chantilly lace would fall from a platinum tiara studded with pearls, given her as a wedding gift by Eugénie.
"Queen Victoria conferred upon your mother the rank of duchess after Beth died," the Empress had said when she presented Romelle with the crown. "You are thus entitled to wear a coronet."
Romelle sat with Poiret in his inner office. "Paul, I don't know how you'll do it, but I want this stone set into my dress, perhaps just below the pearl collar, at the yoke. Tuesday is Saint Valentine's Day, and I am officially giving my heart to Captain Duncan then. A ruby is symbolically perfect."
"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Poiret. "What a jewel! Where did you get it?"
She shook her head vigorously. "I cannot tell you anything, Paul. This gesture is even a surprise for my future husband. Absolutely nothing is to be said except between you and me. Understand?"
He shrugged. "Oui, I understand, but the yoke is too high a place for the stone. If it is to represent the heart you are so foolishly giving away to a man other than the great designer, Paul Poiret, then we shall put it where it belongs - between the breasts!"
He boldly tapped her bosom. "! There! Precisely in the middle! Leave the gem with me, and I shall have everything in order when your people come for the gown tomorrow morning en route to the train."
"Ah, no, Paul, I cannot part with it," she insisted. "You must measure it now and contrive a pocket of some sort where it is to be placed. At the last moment, before I march down the aisle, I shall insert the ruby. I dare not risk exposing it before then. I intend to wear it only for the ceremony. Afterward, it must be removed. Have I made myself clear to you?"
He sighed melodramatically. "Sometimes you are very American, my dear. A European woman would never put me through this."
Romelle smiled slyly. "You mean, of course, that I shall have to pay extra for it, and quite handsomely?"
His response was an eloquently Gallic shrug.
"Well, it must be done," she said, her smile broadening into a mocking grin. "Naturally, though, when the reporters of the international press ask what the 'golden parisienne' wore at her wedding, they will not be told that Paul Poiret designed the gown. Photographs for the front pages of the world? There will be none of those! I detest flash powder! "
He laughed nervously. "It was only a jest, my dear. I would not dream of charging you more! A jest!"
She slipped the ruby into her purse and returned to her Daimler waiting at the curb. As the car wended its way through the busy streets, Philo's words came back to her. They gave her peace.
Perchance it is a magic stone. Surely it can bring no evil to us. Only good will come.

Table of Contents · Chapter12