diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 19:54:11 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 19:54:11 -0700 |
| commit | 36fc4ee01973c29fa780613f1e731e52538bea82 (patch) | |
| tree | 47b303768dec92466a5ff9afbfead3dbcf87f69b | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 30642-8.txt | 14115 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 30642-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 289717 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 30642-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 782759 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 30642-h/30642-h.htm | 14233 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 30642-h/images/illus-020.jpg | bin | 0 -> 51717 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 30642-h/images/illus-082.jpg | bin | 0 -> 59854 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 30642-h/images/illus-200.jpg | bin | 0 -> 64303 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 30642-h/images/illus-272.jpg | bin | 0 -> 64015 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 30642-h/images/illus-290.jpg | bin | 0 -> 53968 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 30642-h/images/illus-316.jpg | bin | 0 -> 66359 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 30642-h/images/illus-384.jpg | bin | 0 -> 60346 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 30642-h/images/illus-emb.png | bin | 0 -> 1929 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 30642-h/images/illus-fpc.jpg | bin | 0 -> 56846 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 30642.txt | 14115 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 30642.zip | bin | 0 -> 289602 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
18 files changed, 42479 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/30642-8.txt b/30642-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..075cb88 --- /dev/null +++ b/30642-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14115 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Aurora the Magnificent, by Gertrude Hall + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Aurora the Magnificent + +Author: Gertrude Hall + +Release Date: December 10, 2009 [EBook #30642] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AURORA THE MAGNIFICENT *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[Illustration: Alone in her room later ... she looked at the other +portrait] + + + + +AURORA THE MAGNIFICENT + +BY + +GERTRUDE HALL + +AUTHOR OF "THE TRUTH ABOUT CAMILLA," "THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY," ETC. + +ILLUSTRATED BY GERALD LEAKE + + +NEW YORK + +THE CENTURY CO. + +1917 + + + + +Copyright, 1916, 1917, by + +The Century Co. + +Published, March, 1917 + + + + +TO + +MY SISTER GRACE + +WITHOUT WHOM THIS BOOK + +WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN. + +AND TO + +MY DEAR HELEN R----, + +WITHOUT WHOM IT WOULD + +HAVE BEEN + +DIFFERENT + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + +Alone in her room later ... she looked at the +other portrait Frontispiece + + FACING PAGE + +After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the sanctuary 20 + +"I thought," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "that you were going to +come and take us sight-seeing" 82 + +Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find no +words to express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove 200 + +Gerald turned, and beheld that lady 272 + +Aurora's eyes, fixed and starry, rested upon the little flame 290 + +Aurora, with a comedy of pride, threw up her chin, lifted +her arms, and turned as if on a pivot 316 + +"Come, let us reason together, Aurora" 384 + + + + +AURORA THE MAGNIFICENT + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +Near sunset, one day in early October, not too long ago for some of us +to remember with distinctness, Mr. Foss, United States consul at +Florence, Italy, took a cab, as on other days, to the Porta Romana. +Here, where the out-of-town tariff comes into effect, he paid his man, +and set out to walk the rest of the way, thus meeting the various needs +he felt: that for economy,--he was a family man with daughters to +clothe,--that for exercise,--his wife told him he was growing fat,--and +the need in general for an opportunity to think. He had found that +walking aided reflection, that walking in beautiful places started the +spring of apt and generous ideas. Though in his modest way a scholar, he +was not as yet an author, but Florence had inspired him with the desire +to write a book. + +Just beyond the Roman Gate begins the long Viale dei Colli,--Avenue of +the Hills,--which climbs and winds, broad, shady, quiet, between lines +of gardens and villas, occupied largely by foreigners, to the Piazzale, +whence Michelangelo's boyish colossus gazes with a slight frown across +Florence, outspread at his feet. Mr. Foss, as he mounted the easy grade, +and noted with a liking unabated after years the pleasantness of each +habitation glimpsed through iron railings and embowering green, thought +how privileged a person should feel, after all, whose affairs involved +residence in Italy. + +This recognized good fortune had not been properly tasted before another +aspect of the thing presented itself for consideration.... + +The consul felt a sigh trying to escape him, and turning from the images +whose obtrusion had called it up from the depths, directed his attention +to a different set of subjects, unwilling at the moment to be troubled. + +The glories and iniquities of that great family whose cannon-balls--or +pills?--adorn so many of the 'scutcheons on Florentine street-corners +and palace-fronts are what he selected as the theme for his meditations, +a choice which seems less odd when we know that his book, the labor and +pleasure of his spare hours, was a study of the Medici. + +He had not been busy many minutes with their supplanted policies and +extinct ambitions before these dropped back into the past whence he had +drawn them, and his mind gave itself over to an exercise more curious +than reconstructing a dead epoch. A shortish, stoutish man, with a +beginning of baldness on his crown and gray in his mustache, was trying +by the whole force of a sympathetic imagination to fit himself into the +shoes, occupy the very skin, of a delicate young girl, to look at the +world through her eyes and feel life with her pulses. + +Thus absorbed, he hardly saw the posts of his own carriage gate; he +passed unnoticing between his flower-beds, up his stone steps and came +to himself only when, rubbing the hands he had just washed, he entered +the dining-room and saw his wife. + +"Where are the girls?" he asked even before kissing her, for the most +casual eye must be informed by the blank look of the table that instead +of being laid for half a dozen as usual, it was prepared for a meagre +two. + +Mrs. Foss was fond of sitting in the dining-room, which had a glass door +into the garden on the side farthest from the road. There she read her +book while waiting for dinnertime and her husband. The good gentleman +did not always come directly home from his office. He had the love of +dropping into dim churches, of loitering on bridges, of fingering the +junk in old shops, but he was considerately never late for dinner. + +Mrs. Foss rose to receive her husband's salutation, and while answering +his question settled herself at the table; for she had caught sight of a +domestic peeping in at the door to see if the masters were there to be +served. + +"Leslie and Brenda went to call on the Hunts," she gave her account, +"and presently the Hunts' man came with a note from Mrs. Hunt, asking if +the girls could stay to dine and go to the theater. A box had just been +sent them. I was very glad to give my consent. Charlie will probably be +one of the party and bring them home. Or perhaps Gerald. Or they will be +put in a cab. I was delighted of the diversion for Brenda." + +"And where's Lily?" + +"She, too, is off having a good time. Fräulein was invited by some +German friends who were giving a _Kinder-sinfonie_. Awful things, +if you want my opinion. She asked if she might go and take Lily, and the +poor child was so eager about it I thought I would just for once let her +sit up late. She has so few pleasures of the kind." + +Mrs. Foss had helped the soup, with a ladle, out of a tureen. + +It was after her husband and she had emptied their soup-plates in +companionable silence that, leaning back to wait for the next course, +she asked her regular daily question. + +"Well, anything new? Anything interesting at the consulate?" + +Mr. Foss seemed in good faith to be searching his mind. Then he answered +vaguely: + +"No; nothing in particular." All at once he smiled a smile of +remembrance. "Yes, I saw some Americans to-day." He nodded, after an +interval, with an appearance of relish. "The real thing." + +"In what way, Jerome? But, first of all, who were they?" + +"Wait a moment. I stuck their cards in my pocket to show you. They came +to see me at the consulate. No, they are in my other coat. One of them +was Mrs. Something Hawthorne, the other Miss Estelle Something." + +"What did they want?" + +"Everything--quite frankly everything. They have grown tired of their +hotel; they speak nothing but English and don't know a soul. They came +to find out from me how to go about getting a house and servants, horses +and carriage." + +"Did they think that was part of a consul's duty?" + +"They didn't think. They cast themselves on the breast of a +fellow-countryman. They caught at a plank." + +"A house, horses. They are rich, then." + +"So one would judge. Oh, yes, they're rich in a jolly, shameless, +old-fashioned American way." + +"Well, it's a nice way." Mrs. Foss added limitingly: "When they're also +generous. One has noticed, however, hasn't one,"--she seemed on second +thought to be taking back something of her approval,--"a certain +reticence, as a rule, with regard to the display of wealth in people of +any real culture?" + +"These aren't, my dear. It's as plain as that they're rich. And, for a +change, let me whisper to you, I found it pleasant. Not one tiresome +word about art did they utter in connection with this, their first, +visit to Italy." + +"I can see you liked them, but what you have so far said doesn't +entirely help me to see why. Rich and ignorant Americans, +unfortunately--A light breaks upon me! They were pretty!" + +A twinkle came into the consul's eyes, looking over at his wife, as one +is amused sometimes by a joke old and obvious. + +His pause before answering seemed filled with an effort to visualize the +persons in question. + +"Upon my word, Etta, I couldn't tell you." He laughed at his inability. + +"By that token they were not beauties," said the wife. + +"It seems likely you are right. At the same time"--he was still mentally +regarding his visitors--"one would never think of wishing them other +than they are." + +"Describe them if you can. What age women?" + +"My dear, there again you have me. Let us say that they are in the +flower of life. One of them, so much I did remark, was rather more +blooming than the other. Perhaps she was younger." + +"The miss?" + +"The married one. But perhaps it was only the difference between a rose +and--" he searched--"let us say a bunch of mignonette. The rose--here I +believe I tread safely on the road of description--had of that flower +the roundness and solidity, if nothing else." + +"Stout?" + +"We will call it well developed, nobly planned. But what would be the +good of telling you the color of these ladies' hair and eyes had I +noticed it? It will help you much more effectively to pick them out in a +crowd to be told they are very American." + +"Voices, too, I suppose." + +"Of course. You don't strictly mean high and nasal, do you? All I can +say with any positiveness is that one of them had what I will call a +warm voice--a voice, to make my meaning quite clear, like the crimson +heart on a valentine." + +"I am enlightened. Was it the mignonette one?" + +"No; the hardy-garden rose." + +"And what did she say to you in her warm crimson voice?" + +"I have told you. She called for help." + +"You said, I hope, that your wife and daughters would be very happy to +call on them and be of use if they could." + +"I did." + +The time-tried, well-mated friends were looking over at each other +across the table, not expressing any more than at all times the quiet, +daily desire of each to further the interests and comforts of the other. + +"Where are they staying?" the lady continued to question. + +"Hôtel de la Paix." + +"And they haven't any letters, introductions, addresses, anything?" + +"Apparently not." + +"Where are they from?" + +"Let me see. Did they mention it? My dear, if they did, I don't recall +it." + +"New York?" + +"No. If I am to guess, I shouldn't guess that." + +"Out West?" + +"H-m, they might be. No, I guess they're Yankees." + +"Boston?" + +"If so, not aggressively. Where do most people come from? There's +nothing very distinctive about most." + +"Perhaps it will be on their cards." + +Then the Fosses talked of other things. But when Mrs. Foss, after +dinner, went upstairs for her scarf,--it was too cool now to sit out of +doors in the evening without a wrap,--she remembered the cards, and took +them out of her husband's pocket. + +"Miss Estelle Madison," she read. "Mrs. Aurora Hawthorne." There was +nothing else. She continued a little longer to look at the bits of +pasteboard in her hand. "Well-sounding names, both of them--like names +in a play. Mrs. Aurora. She's a widow, then." Mrs. Foss considered. "Or +else divorced." + + * * * * * + +Jerome Foss sat out in the garden on fine evenings with his cigar, and +watched the serene oncoming of the night, because he loved to do this. +His wife stayed with him to be company, when, without an old-fashioned +ideal of married life, her natural bent would have urged her indoors, +where the lamps were, to read or sew or even play patience. But she +lingered contentedly and all seemed to her as it should be, with the two +of them sitting near each other in their garden chairs before the family +door-stone, he smoking, she getting the benefit of it by now and then +fanning his smoke toward her face. She liked the odor. + +They only spoke to each other, as is common with married people, when +they had something to say, and so were often silent for long spaces. +That they had talked a great deal lately in the seclusion of their +bedroom, away from the ears of the children, was a reason why they +should not be very communicative to-night. They had threshed out the +matter foremost in their minds so thoroughly that there could be little +to add. Now and then, however, when they were alone, scraps of +conversation would occur, part of the long discussion continued from day +to day; which fragments, isolated from their context, might have sounded +odd enough to any one overhearing. + +Thus it was to-night. After half an hour without a syllable, Mrs. Foss's +voice came out of the dark. + +"When I was a young girl, there was a music-master, Jerome," she opened, +with no more preface than a shooting-star. "I don't know that he was +particularly fascinating, but he seemed so to me. I suppose he was +thirty, I was seventeen or eighteen. It was during my year at Miss +Meiggs's. Whether he really did anything to win my young affections I +can't tell at this distance, but at the time I imagined all sorts of +things, that he looked at me differently from the other girls, that his +voice was different when he addressed me, that an extreme delicacy was +all that kept him from declaring his love. Oh, I used to wish on the +first star, and I used to pull daisies to pieces, and I practiced, how I +practiced! Well, there was a rich girl in the school, older than I and +not nearly so good looking. The moment she graduated he proposed to her. +How did I feel? Jerome, the sun went out for good and all the day I +heard of their engagement. It was as serious as anything could ever be +in this world.--I'm sure I have told you about that music-master before, +Jerome.--Well, and what happened? At the age of twenty-two I cheerfully +married you. And I was not a scarred and burnt-out crater either, was +I?... In the interval, let me not neglect to mention, there had been +other flirtations and minor affairs. Thank Heaven, those things pass," +the words came out devoutly. "It seems at the time as if only death +could end it, but two or three years will do a lot. And it's God's mercy +makes it so. How else could life be carried on?" + +"In my case, Etta," the consul followed her story, after an interval, +"it was a landlady's daughter. I don't believe I have ever spoken of her +to you. I was in college, but I boarded outside the buildings. I wrote +to my father and begged him to let me go into business so that I could +earlier support a wife and family. The wise man let me go down to a +fruit-farm in Florida. You have noticed that I know something about +orange-growing. It was not quite a year before the dear divinity whose +name was Lottie found it too long to wait. I posted home. The room I had +once rented from her mother was let to a handsomer man. I took up my +studies where I had dropped them, and to all appearance there was little +harm done. But for a long time I thought I should die a bachelor." + +"I know. Your cousin Fannie told me about it in the early days, before +we were engaged. It all goes to show.... And there again was Selina +Blackstone, one of my girlhood friends. She had a cough and they thought +her lungs affected and sent her South. There she met an unhappy boy in +the same case, only he, as it proved, really was in a bad way with his +lungs. The poor things fell desperately in love with each other, but her +parents wouldn't hear of their marrying, in which course they were +right. Now you would have thought from her face that the separation was +going to kill her. It didn't, that's all. He died, and she married. And +it can't be said of her that she was either shallow, or fickle, or +heartless. I knew her very well. Merely, time did the work that time was +set to do." + +There was in the lady's tone an effect of protest against any view, +determination against any theory, but her own. + +"There are the cases like Miss Seymour's, however," Mr. Foss brought in +softly, as one calls to another's attention a lapse of memory or a slip +in logic. + +"Miss Seymour? Blanche? What about her?" + +"That she is Miss Seymour, my dear, and to my mind a melancholy lesson. +Because Nature so plainly had not planned her for an old maid. Her +mother--who told me? I think it was Miss Brown--interfered with her +marrying the man she wished to, and she has accepted nothing in his +place. It has been an empty life. And so it goes. One can't be sure, +Etta." + +"Jerome," Mrs. Foss's voice rose to a sharper protest and firmer +rejection, "those are the cases we simply must not allow ourselves to +think about. If we begin to think of cases like that...." + +She did not finish and he said no more, but in the darkness through +which the fiery point of his cigar continued for some time to glow, it +is to be feared the faces of both went on to reflect for nobody to see +the working of those thoughts precisely which Mrs. Foss had said with so +much emphasis they must guard against. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Upon a day not much later in the month--a goodly day which thousands +without a doubt were thinking all too short for the useful or merely +delectable things they wanted to do--a certain young man in Florence +would, if he could, have treated this mellow golden masterpiece of +autumn's like a bad sketch, torn it across and dropped it into the +waste-basket. What is one to do with a day when nothing that has been +invented seems enough fun to pay for the bother? He did not wish to +paint, he did not wish to read, or to play on the piano, as he sometimes +did in solitude, with one hand, to solace himself by re-framing a +remembered melody. He did not wish to go out, but was restless from +staying in. He did not want to see the face of friend or foe, but could +no longer endure to be alone. + +He stood for a moment in the middle of the floor, with his hands over +his face, the ends of his fingers pressing back his eyeballs, and got in +his throat a taste of the bitter waters which he felt as a perpetual +pool in the center of his heart. Next minute he sneered at himself, like +a schoolmaster at a boy who blubbers, and without further paltering put +on his hat, took up a very slender cane with a slender grasp of yellow +ivory, and ran down the long stairs of his house to the street. + +"Air and exercise, air and exercise!" This prescription he repeated to +himself, and, surely enough, in a quarter of an hour felt better. + +He was on Via Tornabuoni. Passing Giacosa's, he glanced in to see if it +were any one he knew taking tea so early behind the great plate glass +window. No, they were chance English. He halted before a shop farther on +to look at a display of jewelry, wondering that there should be fools +enough in the whole world to support one such dealer in turquoise +trinkets that at once drop out their stones; crude, big mosaics, and +everlasting little composition-silver copies of the Strozzi lantern. + +He crossed the street and entered the bank, where he found the usual +table strewn with weeklies and monthlies for the advantage of those +clients who must be asked to wait. He seated himself with his face so +directed that if an acquaintance should enter, he need not bow, and +turned over the magazines one after the other. It hurt him like a direct +personal injury to find these authors all alike so shallow, dishonest, +giving the public not their thought or their experience, but something, +anything, it would buy. + +"A little more air and exercise is what I evidently need," said the +young man, and again went out into the streets. + +He turned toward the river, and had not followed the Lungarno for more +than ten yards before it was with him as when, looking out of the window +in despair at the weather, we see a break in the clouds. His step took +on alertness; his face lighted in the very nicest way. + +The young lady on whom his eyes were fastened from afar did not see him. +She came at her usual step, a happy mean between quick and slow, +accompanied by a hatless serving-woman carrying a music-roll. She looked +straight before her, but her glance was absent. The passers could not +but notice her,--she had beauty enough for that, and was besides +conspicuous in wearing a costume entirely white,--but she was not +noticing them or the eyes that turned to keep her a moment longer in +sight. She looked rather shut in herself, rather silent; not really +proud and cold, but proud and cold as the feeling and modest and young +have to look if they are to keep their sacred precincts from the +intrusions of curiosity. + +The young man approaching questioned her face to see if it were sad. No, +as far as he could tell, she was not in any way troubled. At the same +time he knew that it was neither a face nor a nature to be easily read. +Still, not to find her visibly sad comforted him. + +She did not recognize the young man till he was almost near enough to +touch her, and she had heard her name called, "Brenda!" + +Then her face showed a genuine, if moderate, pleasure. + +"Gerald!" + +"What are you doing?" he asked, with the freedom of a familiarity +reaching back over long years. He shortened his step to keep time with +hers, which she at the same moment lengthened. + +"I have been for my singing-lesson." + +"And where are you going?" + +"Home." + +"I haven't seen you for ages." + +"You haven't come. One never sees you, one never meets you anywhere any +more." + +Her English was different from the ordinary in having occasional Italian +turns and intonations. His partook of the same defect, but in a lesser +degree. + +"But I have come," he stood up for himself, "and you were all out except +Lily. Didn't she tell you I was there? We had a long talk. She told me +her plans for the future. She is going to keep a school for poor +children. We discussed their diet and their flannels and every point of +their bringing-up. We invented things to do on holidays to give them a +good time. There is only one thing I can see leaving a doubt of this +school coming into being. It is that Lily has moments, she confessed to +me, of thinking almost equally well of a castle with a moat and +drawbridge and a page to walk before her carrying her prayer-book on a +cushion. She's a funny young one." + +"It's partly Fräulein." + +"How are they all?" + +"Well, thank you. At least, I suppose they are well." She gave a slight +laugh at the humor of this. "You could hardly imagine how little I see +of them." + +"What has happened?" + +"They have been going around with some new people, some Americans. They +have been helping them to shop, and showing them the way one does things +over here. Mother, you know, is always so ready." + +"Your mother is a dear." + +"Leslie is just like her. But I am sure they both enjoy it, too. They +have not been home to lunch for a week." + +"And you?" + +"Oh, I am not needed where there are already two who do the thing so +much better than I could. I have not even seen the people. My day is +very full, you know. Piano and singing-lessons, and I am painting again +this winter, with Galletti, and I am going to a course of +_conferenze_ on Italian literature. That involves a lot of reading. +There are, besides, the other, the usual things, the--" Her voice stuck; +then, as she went on, deepened with the depth of a suppressed +impatience. "I wish one might be allowed not to do what is meant for +pleasure unless one takes pleasure in it. But going to teas and parties +is apparently as much a duty as school or church. Mother and Leslie at +least seem to think it so for me." + +"I see their point, Brenda dear, don't you?" He was not looking at her +as with a gentle brotherliness he spoke this. + +"You don't go to many parties yourself, Gerald." + +"I am afraid nothing I do is fit to be an example to anybody. But it +doesn't matter about me. About you it does. I can't say to you all I +think. It would sound fulsome, and from such an old chum might make you +laugh. But, being as you are, Brenda, surely your mother is right in +thinking of _le monde_ as the proper setting for you. You know I'm +not fond of _le monde_, but it's because it hasn't enough such +ornaments as yourself. With the life that lies before you--" + +"Who can possibly know what my life will be?" the girl asked quickly, +almost roughly. + +"True, Brenda. I dare say I am talking like a fool." He left off, +wondering that for a moment he should actually have been speaking on the +side of convention. + +They walked a few rods in silence. They had crossed the bridge, and were +headed for Porta Romana, the handmaiden trotting in their tracks, when +at a corner Gerald stopped, and, as if to change the subject, or to +regain favor by a felicitous suggestion, said: + +"Do you remember my telling you of a painting I came upon in a little +old church on this street? _Scuola di Giotto_, they call it, but +the thing is undoubtedly Sienese. Have you the time? Shall we take a +moment to see it?" + +"I should be glad. If you will walk home with me afterward, Gerald, I +might tell Gemma she can go." + +There was an exchange of Italian between the young lady and the maid, +after which the latter turned, and with a busy, delighted effect about +the rear view of her walked back across the bridge to spend her gift of +an hour in what divertisements we shall never know. + +The church was closed. Gerald pulled the bell-handle of the next door. A +priest opened to them, and, seeing at a glance what was wanted, guided +them through a white-washed corridor to a living-room where a crucifix +hung on the wall and the table had a red cloth; by this into a dim and +stony sacristy, whence they emerged into the back of a darkling little +church, with shadowy candlesticks and kneeling-benches, the whole full +of a cold, complex odor of old incense and old humanity and, one could +fancy, old prayers. + +The priest brought a lighted taper and, crossing to one of the side +altars, held it near the painting, which was all that well-dressed +people ever came for outside of hours. + +The reddish light trembled over the figure of a majestic virgin, in the +diadem and mantle of a princess, bearing the palm of martyrs in her +hand. It was a very simple and noble face, beautiful in a separate way, +which not every one would perceive, so little in common had it with the +present-day fair ladies whose photographs are sold. + +Gerald had taken the light from the priest's hands and was lifting, +lowering, shading it, experimenting, to bring out all that might still +be seen of the withdrawn image on its faintly glinting field of gold. +His face was keen with interest; the love of beautiful things in this +moment of satisfaction smoothed away from it every line of dejection and +irritability. + +Brenda was examining the picture with an attention equal to his, but, if +one might so describe it, of a different color. Her admiration got its +life largely from Gerald's, whose tastes in art she was in the habit of +adopting blindfold. Of this, however, she was not aware, and gazed doing +good to her soul by the conscious and deliberate contemplation of a +masterpiece. + +"Do you remember a great calm, white figure in the communal palace at +Siena?" Gerald asked, "with other figures of Virtues on the same wall? +Doesn't this remind you of them?" + +Brenda answered abstractedly: + +"Yes," and continued to look. "How amazing they are!" she fervently +exclaimed. He supposed she meant the saint's hands or eyes, but she +explained, "The Italians." + +He did not take up the idea either to agree or to dispute; his mind was +busy with one Italian only, the painter of the picture before him. + +The young girl's interest flagged sooner than his own; he felt her melt +from his side while he continued seeking proof in this detail and that +of the painter's identity. + +When he turned to find her and to follow, she was kneeling on one of the +wooden forms, her gloved hands joined, her face toward the high altar. + +He approved the courtesy of it, done, as he knew, in order that the +priest, who stood aside, waiting for them to finish, should not think +these barbarians who came into his church to see a work of art had no +respect for his shrines and holies. Having returned the light to the +priest Gerald himself, while waiting for Brenda, took a melancholy +religious attitude, his hat and cane held against his breast, and sent +his thoughts gropingly upward, where the solitary thing they encountered +was his poor mother in heaven. Heaven and the changes undergone by those +who enter there he could never make very real to himself. He thought of +her as she used to be, affectionate and ill. + +At the stir of Brenda rising from her knees he, too, stirred, ready to +depart. She was bowing to the altar, making an obeisance so deep, so +beautifully reverent, that the priest could never have guessed she was +not a Catholic. After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the +sanctuary, like one with last fond words to say after the farewell; and +this excess of either regard for the priest's feelings or else a +devoutness he had not suspected in her quickened Gerald's attention. And +there in the dimness he saw what he had not seen in the broad light of +day, that his friend's little face, which had presented the effect of a +house with all the blinds drawn down, was lighted up behind the +blinds--oh, lighted as if for a feast! + +He felt himself at sea. He had thought he knew the circumstances. Some +part, of course, nobody could know unless Brenda chose to tell them. But +what reason there should be for positive joy-- + +A suspicion flashed across his mind. He looked at her more closely, and +put it away. + +She might have been the wisest of the virgins, the one who before any +other heard the music of the bridegroom and was first to light her lamp. +She stood as if listening to his footsteps. + +[Illustration: After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the +sanctuary] + +That such a simile should have been possible to Gerald shows how much +the expression of Brenda's face centered attention on itself, for her +white serge dress was in the fashion of that year, and it was not a +fashion to be remembered with any artistic joy. Gerald was never +reconciled to it. + +He had the power to detach himself and at will see persons as if he +looked at them for the first time. So for a moment he saw Brenda as a +thing solely of form and color, a white shape against a ground of gloom, +and took new account of the fact that the little girl who had had +pigtails when he first knew her, and gone to the _Diaconesse_ with +lunch-basket and satchel of books, had from one season to the next, +stealthily, as it were, and while his back was turned, become beautiful. + +More than that. He was looking at Brenda--he recognized it with a pulse +of exquisite interest--in her exact and particular hour. He had +surprised a rose at its moment of transition from bud to bloom, that +delicate and perfect moment when the natural beauty which women and +fruits and flowers have in common, reaching its height, hangs +poised--for such a pitifully short time, alas!--before it changes, if +not declines, to something less dewily fresh, less heart-movingly +untouched, less complete. + +The artist could not long in this case be regarding the girl as part of +a picture; his human relation to the owner of that lifted profile +brought him back to wondering in what the quiet ecstasy it breathed +could have its source. He was touched by it, by the whole character, at +the moment, of her face, with its strength so nullified by gentleness. + +When the will is strong and nature sensitive, what arms has youth with +which to prevail? What but the power to keep still and hold on? Nothing +was in Brenda's face so marked as that power, except, in this moment of +undisguise, while she thought herself unwatched, its singular happiness, +a mingling of tenderness, dedication, hope. + +The genuine sympathy he felt for her made Gerald deserving of the +intuition that blessed him while he stood there trying to divine. An +interpretation of her secret offered itself, worthier of him as of her +than the suspicion of erewhile; one so beautiful, indeed, that he felt +uplifted by standing in its presence. All he had most cared for in his +life, the things that had touched and inspired him,--visions of +painters, dreams of poets, scenes of beauty, sweet of human +intercourse,--all the influences that make life dignified and fair, +seemed in their essence to be in the air around him, like scents of +flowers in the dark.... + +The wish to pray came over him again, yet he wanted to weep, too, +because as soon as his heart expanded a little the rusty splinter of a +knife corroding there reminded him that lofty sentiments, sincerities, +idealisms, have as their fruit in this life--dust, derision! He wondered +that without being any older one could feel as old as he did while +watching Brenda transfigured by her poor young dream. + +Now for the second time she curtseyed to the altar. The priest moved, +Gerald moved, all three passed up the aisle, to a faint chink of coins +in Gerald's pocket where he groped for a fee. At the main altar the +priest dipped a rapid genuflexion. + +As soon as they were outside Brenda began to talk about the picture, to +ask questions, as if the art of the Italians had been of all things +nearest to her heart, and Gerald was drawn into holding in the street +while they walked a sort of lecture on the primitives. + +All the while, in an independent corner of his brain he was reflecting +upon the absurdity of supposing that because he was an old familiar of +the Fosses, and so fond of them all, he knew anything of their affairs +these days, when he saw them so seldom. Ever so many things could have +happened without his knowledge. The girls might have new friends and +admirers just as they had hats and dresses that he had never seen. + +They were making their way while talking toward Porta Romana, and were +often obliged to step off the narrow sidewalk to make room for other +passers, the street being busy at that time of day. + +Brenda was in the midst of an entirely pertinent remark when her voice +softly died, like the flame of a candle sucked out by a draft or like a +music-box run down. Gerald, looking round for the end of her sentence, +saw that she had sighted an acquaintance on the other side of the +street. + +She nodded, without a smile, slowly. Just so must Beatrice have bowed in +these same streets of Florence when she passed the dreamy passionate +youth through whom we are acquainted with her name. + +Gerald's eyes traveled across the way to see who might be the recipient +of the lady's most sweet salute, and hurriedly uncovered to an officer +of the Italian army who, holding his hand to his cap, stood at attention +till the two had passed. + +Was the man pale or was it that one had never before noticed, meeting +him indoors and at evening, how strongly the black of his mustache and +brows contrasted with his skin? The suspicion that had for a moment +troubled Gerald in church returned as a stronger infection. Had Brenda +expected this? Did they concert such meetings? + +He might have said to himself that a tryst which consisted in crossing +glances from opposite sides of the street was very innocent. In a moment +he did see that as the villas _fuori la porta_ must be reached +through the _porta_, a lover whose lady lived on Vial dei Colli +might without previous arrangement hope for a glimpse of her by walking +in its neighborhood. + +As we have seen him doing more than once this afternoon, Gerald here +tried to get his clue from Brenda herself, her face, her atmosphere. Yet +he knew, as has already been said, that it was Brenda Foss's way to keep +these as much as she could from telling anything to the world. This +wariness notwithstanding a tinge of unaccustomed rose had spread through +the clear white of her cheek; her eyes had in them noticeably more life. +Emotion or mere self-consciousness? + +On one point only he was satisfied: Brenda had done nothing that +involved deceit. Into the very structure of her face, which had almost +nothing left of the American look, was built a certain Puritan +truthfulness. She could conceal if she must, but hated to shuffle, to +prevaricate. She concealed exactly because of that. + +"Go on with the Sienese masters, Gerald," she bade him, collectedly. "I +am listening, and learning a lot." + +As they passed under the great arch of the Roman Gate, Gerald was saying +modestly: + +"I don't know anything about them, really. I've just been impressed by a +thing or two. This Lorenzetti, for instance--" And so on up the +_viale_ to the house. + +In the drawing-room they found Mrs. Foss and Leslie, who, just home from +town, tired and thirsty, had had tea brought to them, and were +strengthening themselves before even taking off their hats. + +Their welcome to Gerald was mingled with reproaches of the sort that +flatters more than it hurts. + +"It's perfect ages since we saw you. We thought you had forgotten us. +What have you been doing this long, long time?" + +"It is you, who are never at home, my dear friends," Gerald took his +turn. "I was here a fortnight or so ago. Didn't Lily tell you? Of course +she told you, and you have forgotten, so it's I, properly, who should be +calling names." + +"Have you been quite well, Gerald?" Mrs. Foss asked in her maternal +voice, after a more careful look at him. + +"Certainly." + +"I am glad you have come. I have been on the point more than once of +sending for you, but the days fly so! We have been busy, too." + +She had poured cups of tea for Gerald and Brenda. All four were seated +and refreshing themselves. + +It was a very large room, but a corner had been so arranged as to look +shut in and cozy. There stood the tea-table convenient to the sofa and, +surrounding it, a few chosen chairs in which one could sink and lean +back and be comfortable. + +"Have you had a tiring day?" Brenda asked her mother, somewhat as if she +were tired herself at the mere thought of such a day as she supposed her +mother to have had. + +"No," Mrs. Foss answered briskly; "it's rather fun. I don't mean that +one doesn't get tired after a fashion. Has Brenda told you, Gerald, how +we have lately been occupied?" + +"Some new people, I think she said." + +"Yes, some nice, funny Americans." + +"Funny, you say?" + +"I say it fondly, Gerald. Let me tell you a little about them, and you +will see what I mean. They are going to spend the winter here and wanted +a house. What house do you think they selected?" + +"You really mustn't set me riddles, Mrs. Foss." + +"For years we have seen it every time we drive to the Cascine, and seen +it with a certain curiosity--always deserted, always with closed blinds, +in its way the most beautiful house in Florence." + +"The most--I can't think what house you mean." + +"Of course not, with your tastes. But imagine some nice, rich Americans, +without either art education or the smallest affectation of such a +thing, and ask yourself what they would like. Why, a big, square, +clean-looking, new-looking, wealthy-looking house, of course, set in a +nice garden, with, at the end of the garden, a nice stable. I was +thankful to find the place had been kept up." + +"But is there--on the Lungarno, did you say?" + +"It is that house we have called the Haughty Hermitage, Gerald," Brenda +helped him. + +"Oh, that! But surely one doesn't live in a house like that!" + +"Your excellent reason?" inquired Leslie. + +"I don't know,"--he hesitated,--"but surely one doesn't live in a house +like that!" + +They had to laugh at the expression brought into his face by his sense +of a mysterious incongruity. + +"No," he went on with knitted brows to reject the idea; "a house like +that--one doesn't come all the way from America to live in a house which +has no more atmosphere than that!" + +"Ah, but that's the point, Gerald," said Mrs. Foss. "What you call +atmosphere these people avoid as they would an unsanitary odor. +Atmosphere! What would you say if you saw the things Leslie and I have +been helping them to buy and put into it! I love to buy, you know, even +when not for myself. I thought with joy, 'Now I shall at least go +through the form of acquiring certain objects I have lusted after for +years.' Delightful old things Jerome has discovered in antiquarians' +places, and that we shall never be able to afford. Do you think I could +persuade them to take one of these? I represented that the worm-holes +could be stopped up and varnished over, that the missing bits of inlay, +precious crumbs of pearl and ivory, could be replaced, the tapestries +renovated. In vain. They want everything new--hygienically new, fresh, +and shining. And, Gerald, prejudice apart, the idea is not without its +good side. The result is not so bad as you may think. Why, after all, +should my taste, your taste, prevail in their house, will you tell me?" + +"For no reason in the world. This liberal view comes the easier to me +that I do not expect ever to see the interesting treasures you may have +collected from Peyron's and Janetti's." + +"If it were no worse than that!" put in Leslie, and laughed a covered +laugh. + +Mrs. Foss explained, after a like little laugh of her own. + +"You see, things that we have seen till we have utterly ceased to see +them, the things that nobody who really lives in Florence ever dreams of +buying, are new to these people. They _love_ them. As a result, you +can guess. There will be in their apartments alabaster plates with +profiles of Dante and Michelangelo on a black center. There will be +mosaic tables with magnolias and irises. There will be Pliny's doves. +Think of it! There will be green bronze lamps and lizards--" + +"And the fruit--tell about that, Mother!" Leslie prompted. + +"There will be on the sideboard in the dining-room a perpetual dish of +magnificent fruit, marble, realistic to a degree. You know the kind." + +"And you could stand by and let them--you and Leslie!" spoke Brenda, in +an astonishment almost seriously reproachful. + +"My dear," Leslie took up their common defense, "one's feeling in this +case is: What does it matter? A little more, a little less.... It all +goes together. When they have those curtains, they might as well have +that fruit." + +"At the same time, my dear children, let me tell you that the effect is +not displeasing," insisted Mrs. Foss. "Such at least is my humble +opinion. In its way it's all right. They are people of a certain kind, +and they have bought what they like, not what they thought they ought to +like. Thousands of people, if it were not for you artists perverting +them, would be thinking a marble lemon that you can't tell from a real +one a rare and dear possession. These people haven't known any artists. +They are innocent." + +"They're awfully good fun," Leslie started loyally in to make up for +anything she had said which might seem to savor of mockery or dispraise. +"One enjoys being with them, if they aren't our usual sort. They are in +good spirits, really good--good spirits with roots to them. And that's +such a treat these days!" + +From which it was supposable that Leslie had been living in circles +where the gaiety was hollow. The suggestion did not escape Gerald. But, +then, Leslie, just turned twenty-four, was rather given to judging +_these days_ as if she remembered something less modern, an +affectation found piquant by her friends in a particularly +young-looking, blond girl with a short nose. Gerald might have hoped +that her sigh meant nothing had not Leslie, awake to the implication of +her remark as soon as she had made it, gone hurriedly on to call +attention away from it. + +"Yes, it's pleasant to be with them. It's a change. The world seems +simple and life easy. Life _is_ easy, with all that money. Besides, +Mrs. Hawthorne really is something of a dear. After all, if people make +much of one, one is pretty sure to like them. Haven't you found it so, +Gerald?" + +"I don't know. I am trying to remember if there is anybody who has made +much of me." + +"_We_ have made much of you." + +"And don't think I temperately like you. I adore you all, as you well +know. You're the only people I do. By that sign there has been nobody +else kind enough to make much of me." + +"You're so bad lately, Gerald; that's why," Mrs. Foss affectionately +chide him. "You never go anywhere. You neglect your friends. What have +you been doing with yourself? Is it work?" + +"No; not more than usual. I work, but I'm not exactly absorbed--obsessed +by it. I don't know--" He seemed to search, and after a moment summed up +his vague difficulties: "It seems a case for quoting 'Hamlet.'" He was +bending forward, his elbows resting on his knees, as they could do +easily, his chair being low and his thin legs long. His thin, long hands +played with that slender cane of his, which he had set down and taken up +again, while he tried to recall the passage, and mumbled snatches of it: +"'This goodly firmament--congregation of vapors--Man delights not +me--no, nor'--the rest of it." + +"But it won't do, Gerald dear; it won't do at all," Mrs. Foss addressed +him anxiously, between scolding and coaxing. "Shake yourself, boy! Force +yourself a little; it will be good for you. _Make_ yourself go to +places till this mood is past. What is it? Bad humor, spleen, +hypochondria? It doesn't belong with one of your age. We miss you +terribly, dear. Here we have had two of our Fridays, and you have not +been. And we have always counted on you. Charming men are scarce at +parties the world over. The Hunts have begun their little dances, too. +One used to see you there. And at Madame Bentivoglio's. She was asking +what had become of you. Promise, Gerald, that we shall see you at our +next Friday! We want to make it a nice, gay season. Will you promise? +Oh, here's Lily. Why didn't you tell us, Lily, that Gerald had come to +see us when we were out?" + +A long-legged, limp-looking little girl with spectacles had come in. A +minute before she had been passing the door on her way to walk, and +catching the sound of a male voice in the drawing-room, insisted upon +listening till she had made sure whose it was. At the name Gerald she +had pulled away from her governess and burst into the drawing-room. + +She stood still a moment after this impulsive entrance, and the +governess turned toward Mrs. Foss a face that, benign and enlightened +though it was, called up the memory of faces seen in good-humored German +comic papers. The expression of her smile said to the company that she +was guiltless in the matter of this invasion. Could one use severity +toward a little girl who suffered from asthma and weak eyes? + +Lily, after her pause, went half shyly, half boldly to Gerald. He did +not kiss her,--she was ten years old,--but placed an arm loosely around +her as she stood near his knee. + +"Did you forget it, Lily?" + +"No, Mother, I didn't forget, but I never thought to speak of it. You +didn't tell me to, did you, Gerald?" + +"No, we had so much else to talk about. Well, Lily, have you decided +what color the uniform must be for our orphanage? The thing is +important. It makes a great difference in an orphan's disposition +whether she goes dressed in a dirty gray or a fine, bright apricot +yellow." + +"Gerald,"--Lily lowered her voice to make their conversation more +private,--"will you be the cuckoo?" As he gazed, she went earnestly on: +"We can't find anybody to do the cuckoo. I am going to be the +nightingale. Fräulein is going to be the drum. Leslie is going to be the +_Wachtel_. Mother is going to be the triangle. Brenda will play the +piano. Papa says that if he is to take part he must be the one who sings +on the comb and tissue-paper. But I am afraid to let him. You know he +hasn't a good ear. That leaves the cuckoo, the comb, and the rattle +still to find before we can have our _Kinder-sinfonie_. Which +should you like to be, Gerald?" + +"What an opening for musical talent! But, my dear little lady, I'm not a +bit of good. I can't follow music by note any more than a cuckoo. I am +so sorry." + +"But, Gerald, all you have to do is--" + +"I have told you, Lili," said the governess in German, "that we would +take the gardener's boy and drill him for the cuckoo. Come now quickly, +dear child; we must go for our walk." + +The casual, unimportant talk of ordinary occasions went on after the +interruption. + +"And what do you hear from that charming friend of yours, the abbé, +Gerald?" And, "I hope you have good news from your son, Mrs. Foss." And, +"Do you know whether the Seymours have come back from the country?" + +Gerald left the Fosses, warmed by his renewed sense of their friendship, +and believing that he would go very soon again to see them. But he did +not, and his feeling of shame was more definite than his gratitude when +he in time received a note from Mrs. Foss, kind as ever, asking him to +dine. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +There was dancing at the Fosses' on two Fridays in the month. It was +their contribution toward the gaiety of the winter. They did not often +give a formal dinner, and when such an entertainment appeared to be +called for from them, planned it with forethought to make it serve as +many ends as it would. Every careful housewife will understand. + +It was with Leslie that Mrs. Foss talked such matters over. The eldest +daughter was so sufficient as adjutant that one did not inquire whether +Brenda would have been useful if needed. The latter took no part in the +domestic councils which had for object to decide who should be asked to +dinner and of what the dinner should consist. + +The question whom to invite to meet Professor Longstreet had taken Mrs. +Foss and Leslie time and reflection. The Fosses' only son had a great +regard for this man, one of the faculty during his period at Harvard, +and now that the travels of the professor's sabbatical year brought him +to Florence, the family was anxious to entertain him as dear John, +studying medicine in far-off Boston, would have wished. + +The professor was engaged upon a new translation of the "Divine Comedy." +The guests had therefore better be chosen among their literary +acquaintance, thought Mrs. Foss. But Leslie was of the opinion that they +would do better to make the requisite just any gift or grace, and keep +an eye on having the company compose well and the table look beautiful. + +When she reminded her mother that a dinner was owing the Balm de Brézés, +and that this would be a chance to pay the debt, Mrs. Foss objected: + +"But I want to ask Gerald. I felt sorry for him last time he came. We +must look after him a little bit, you know." + +Leslie did not show herself in any wise disposed to set aside Gerald's +claim, but expressed the idea that Gerald probably would not mind +meeting the De Brézés now. After all, the memories sweet and sour +associated with them had had time to lose their edge. And they could be +seated at the opposite end of the table. + +It was finally decided to ask the Balm de Brézés, Gerald, the Felixsons, +Miss Cecilia Brown, and Gideon Hart, all intelligent, all people who +could talk. It was further frugally resolved to have the dinner on a +Friday and let it be followed by the usual evening party, thus making +the same embellishment of the house do for two occasions, as well as +augmenting their visitor's opportunity to make acquaintance with the +Anglo-American colony in Florence. + + * * * * * + +All had been going so well, the guests were in such happy and talkative +form, that the minor matter of taking food had dragged, and the diners +were not ready to rise when a servant whispered to Mrs. Foss that the +first evening guest had arrived. + +Mrs. Foss's eyes found those of Leslie, who understood the words +soundlessly framed, and excused herself from the table. + +In the garnished and waiting drawing-room, lighted with candles, like a +shrine, and looking vast, with the furniture taken out of the way, she +found the Reverend Arthur Spottiswood, of whom it was not easy to think +that eagerness to dance had driven him to come so sharply on time. He +looked serious-minded, almost somber, and Leslie, though prepared to be +vivacious with peer or pauper, found it all duty and little fun to make +conversation with him until the next arrival should come to her relief. +The gentleman was Brenda's adorer, but Brenda would never, if she could +help it, let him have one moment with her. His love-charged eye inspired +in her the simple desire to flee. Singularly, this was, with one notable +exception, beautiful Brenda's only conquest, while Leslie, who was just +ordinarily pretty and wore a pince-nez, received tribute and proposals +from almost every unattached young fellow who drifted inside the circle +of her wide invisible net. Boys in particular had to pass through her +hands, receive good advice from her, be encouraged in their work, +cheered in their distance from home, and refused, and consoled for the +refusal, and sent away finally rather improved than otherwise. With very +little sentiment, she had a kind and cozy quality, like her mother. + +The Satterlees were next to arrive, mother with son and daughter, and +Leslie was warm as never before in her welcome to them. The Reverend +Arthur was gently shed from her and with pleasure picked up by Isabel +Satterlee, who was charmed to have any kind of man to talk with. + +Then arrived a group of unrelated people living for the moment at the +same pension in town and coming in the same conveyance. Among them was +Percy Lavin, who had the extraordinary tenor voice, and along with it an +exuberance of confidence in his future that made him as destructive of +coherence in company as a large frisking pup. Leslie had at the very +first meeting felt that it would be her sacred mission to attend to that +young man. + +The hired pianist had come, he was unrolling his sheets of dance-music +and rolling them the contrary way. Mr. Hunt, the English banker, with +his wife and daughters, had come; and Maestro Vannuccini with his +signora on his arm; and a glittering young officer or two; and Landini, +Hunt's partner; and Charlie Hunt, the banker's nephew. + +Charlie, bold through long acquaintance, asked, "Where are the others?" + +Leslie told him, whereupon the young man said "Oh!" and his "Oh" sounded +blank, whether because it was apparent to him through her answer that +there had been indiscretion in his question, or because he wondered at +there being a dinner-party in this house and he not asked to it. Leslie +paid no attention, for at that moment the diners were beginning to +appear. + +The drawing-room had two doors in the same wall: people coming from the +dining-room would enter by one of these, while those who came from the +street entered by the other, after passing through the small +reception-room where they left their things, and the larger +reception-room intervening between this and the drawing-room. Charlie +Hunt, talking with Mrs. Satterlee, let a casual eye roll away from her +middle-aged agreeableness to see who was entering by that different door +from the one which had given him passage. Curiosity, pure and simple. + +Ah, so. Madame Balm de Brézé, spare, sharp, high-nosed, beaked and +clawed like a bird--a picked bird. Very elegant. It was clear to Charlie +Hunt why with a dinner to give one should care to secure her and her +husband. They looked so fiendishly aristocratic. + +The Felixsons. Naturally. Felixson had to be asked when the guest of +honor was a scholar. Mrs. Felixson's warm brilliancy to-night bore +testimony to a good dinner. Abundance of meats and wines always turned +her a burning pink. It looked to Charlie like a new frock she was +wearing; he did not remember seeing her in it before. + +Gideon Hart, the old sculptor. It was his picturesque white hair and +beard that people liked to see at their tables, for the old fellow, +thought Hunt, was phenomenally a bore. In this case patriotism explained +his presence. America quaintly loved his name. + +And Cecilia Brown. But was it really Cecilia?... What had she been doing +to herself?... Oh. Her hair. Her hair was cropped and curled all over +her head like wicked Caracalla's. That was the fashion in England, he +had heard, where she had been spending the summer. + +But who was this, at the end of the procession, after Mrs. Foss and +Brenda and the consul? + +Hunt had a genuine surprise. Gerald Fane. + +Now, wherefore Gerald Fane rather than Charlie Hunt? + +Mrs. Foss, coming into the drawing-room, felt a glow of pleasure at the +scene meeting her eyes. The occasion, the success of it, had lifted life +for her above its usual plane. She could feel how blessed she was in +ways she did not sufficiently consider on common days when common cares +blinded her. It was a beautiful home, this of hers; here was a beautiful +room, with its mirrors and flowers and candle-light and happy guests. +She smiled at everybody and everything with a brooding sweetness. + +Her sense of herself was satisfactory too at the moment. She felt her +dress--an old one, rejuvenated--to be becoming. She was young to have +grown children. Her blond hair did not show the silver threads among it. +She was as handsome in her older way as she had been when young, and she +was sure she was nicer. She had family and friends, all full of regard +for her. Her smile reflected the state of her mind and did one good to +see. + +Her eyes resting upon Brenda--whom the reverend Arthur had tried to +capture the moment she appeared, and been baffled--Mrs. Foss in the +optimism of her mood said to herself that all would very likely go well +in that quarter; they ought not to worry as they did. + +The pianist had struck up a polka. One still danced the polka in those +days, and the schottische and the dear old lancers, though the waltz was +already the favorite. + +The floor was at first sparsely, then ever more thickly, sown with +hopping and revolving couples. Hunt, one arm curled around a young waist +in pink muslin, had enough of his mind to spare from the amount of talk +one has breath for while dancing to continue in a line of thought +started by an annoying little smart where a shred of skin had been +rubbed off his vanity when he saw Gerald come from the dining-room. He +mentally looked at himself and looked at Gerald, and after comparing the +pictures felt his astonishment increase. He could admit, as an excuse +for inviting Gerald instead of himself, that Gerald was an artist, and +this dinner had presumably been planned with the idea of having it +literary-artistic. But then--an artist! Gerald was so little of one. One +never heard of his selling a painting. In the darkest corners of his +friends' rooms you sometimes discovered one of his queer things--a gift, +hung there as a compliment. One might, furthermore, grant that it did +not matter that a man should be agreeable in appearance. But Gerald was +not even agreeable in disposition; he did not try to make himself +agreeable. What did the Fosses see in him? + +The music had worked through a mighty flourish to a banging final chord. +Hunt escorted his lady to a chair, took the fan from her hand to fan her +with,--himself a little, too,--and while talking let his dark eye stray +from her and go roving, as was the habit of his eye. + +It plunged through an open door into the quietly lighted library, where +the consul and his distinguished guest and a few more of the older or +staider people had withdrawn from the tumult and were having smokes and +conversation. They were considering a marble fragment, passing it from +hand to hand. + +Hunt knew that fragment, and at sight of it looked cynical. The consul, +who had discovered it immured in an ancient garden-wall, believed it to +have been carved by Orcagna. + +Old Hart had it in his hand. What he said could hardly be heard at that +distance; he passed it to Gerald with a look that seemed to ask for +corroboration. Gerald held it long and gazed seriously, with that +conceit in his own judgment which made him sometimes dispute the +attributions in no less a gallery than the Uffizi--say that a Verocchio +was not a Verocchio, a Giorgione not a Giorgione. + +Charlie strained to catch some syllable of what he said. Vainly. The +pianist was preluding. Bertie Bentivoglio came to ask the girl in pink +to dance with him. From the chair she left empty Charlie moved nearer to +the library door, of half a mind to join the group in there. But Gerald, +upon whom Leslie had impressed it that he must do his duty and let there +be no wall-flowers, when the prelude had developed into a waltz returned +the marble into Hart's hand and came to the door. Whereupon Charlie +changed his mind and after saying "Hello, Gerald!" turned again, and the +young men stood looking over the scene side by side, two figures +contrasting in reality nearly as much as they did in Charlie's mental +image of them for purposes of comparison. + +Any Rosina who sold buttonhole bouquets at the theater door could have +seen that Charlie was handsome, with his pale brown smoothness and +regularity of feature; the pretty mustache accentuating and not +concealing the neat and agreeable mold of his lip; the fine whiteness of +his teeth, his civilized and silken look altogether. The defects of his +face, if one could call them that, did not appear at first glance or +even at second. His forehead had begun to gain on his hair,--it ran up +at the sides in two points,--and his slightly prominent eyes were brown +in the same sense as a horn button or a bit of chestnut-shell is +brown,--while some eyes that we remember were brown like woodland pools +with autumn leaves at the bottom! He did not look English, yet did not +look quite Italian either. He was in fact both, and the thing evenly +balanced. The banker Hunt's brother had married an Italian; Charlie had +been born in Italy and hardly ever stirred out of it; on the other hand +he had found his society largely among the English and Americans in +Florence. + +As he stood there, conforming gracefully to a recognized canon of manly +beauty, his neighbor Gerald, who would not have been noticed one way or +the other for his looks, yet from being beside him took on an +indescribable effect of eccentricity. The bone showed plainly around his +eye-sockets and at the bridge of his nose. One eyebrow became different +from the other the moment he regarded a thing analytically; and when he +smiled those who noticed such things could detect that nature had marked +him for recognition: there showed beneath his mustache three of the +broad front middle teeth whereof two are the common portion. For the +remainder, a slight beard veiled the character of his chin and jaw and a +little disguised the thinness of his throat. Above a large forehead his +dark hair rose on end in a bristling bank, like that of most Italian men +at the time. He looked solitary, unsociable, critical, but not +altogether ungentle. His forehead was full of the suggestion of +thoughts, his gray-blue eyes were full of the reflection of feelings, +that you could be comfortably sure he would not trouble you with. + +"Well, Gerald, what are you doing with yourself these days?" asked +Charlie as they stood looking on, delaying to seek partners for the +dance. "Immortal masterpieces?" + +This innocuous playfulness somehow jarred. Gerald looked down at Charlie +from the side of his eye,--he was by a couple of inches or so the +taller,--then asked in his turn, a little crustily: + +"Do you really want to know?" + +"Why, no, my dear fellow, I don't, if that's your reply. It was not +curiosity. I was only showing an amiable interest." His tone conveyed +that he had intended no offense and refused to take any; the +disagreeableness should be all on the same side. + +"Thank you for the interest. I am doing much as usual," Gerald answered, +placated. + +"Who is this professor from America whom the very select are invited to +meet?" Charlie asked after an interval, as if they had been on the best +of terms again. + +The playfulness again was innocent, again might have been regarded as +almost an attempt to flatter; nevertheless it again jarred upon Gerald. +It was by an effort that he answered soberly and literally, without +betraying that the point of irony had irritated him, as, he did not +doubt, it was meant to irritate. + +"Another translation of Dante?" Charlie made merry, when Gerald had +finished telling as much as he knew about the professor. "I tell you +what--I will set myself to translating the 'Divine Comedy'! It will give +me distinction, and then--it 's very simple,--I will never show my +translation!" + +There was surely no harm in this. It was just stupid. Charlie's +_esprit_ was never of any fineness. He and Gerald had known each +other from the days when both went to M. Demonget's school, whence, +without having been friends, they had emerged intimates. It would have +been ridiculous for either to try to impress the other by the profundity +of his thoughts. Charlie was right in thinking of himself as standing in +a relation to Gerald that made him free to expose ideas in their +undress. And yet it was on this evening and this occasion that Gerald +said to himself for the first time definitely that he did not like +Charlie Hunt. An antipathy existing perhaps from the beginning had risen +to the point where it crossed the threshold of consciousness. No, he +neither liked nor thought well of him. + +Luckily, it did not much matter, their relations were superficial. +Belonging in the same circles they must meet from time to time; but if +Gerald avoided him whenever it was decently feasible, he need not often +suffer as at this moment from the repressed nervous need to repudiate in +explicit terms his person, his society, his manners, his morals, +everything that was his. By way of beginning this avoidance, Gerald cast +his eyes more particularly about him in search of a partner. Charlie's +eyes too were wandering over the small and scattered number of ladies +still available to late comers. + +Both of them knew every one present. Charlie had picked out with his eye +a still youthful mama, who would not, he believed, refuse to dance, but +would jest and appear flattered and, when after some hesitation she +consented, lean in his arms only a little more heavily than her +daughter. Gerald had singled a slender, faded woman in garments of ivory +lace, who, seated near Mme. Vannuccini in the far corner of the room, +was devoting herself to conversation as if she really had not cared to +dance. Gerald was moved to go and give her the chance of refusing, if +she were in total earnest. He remembered Blanche Seymour as a passionate +dancer still when he began to go to grownup parties. + +Now her hair was gray, her face had lines, but she did not look +accustomed to them; there was plaintiveness in her expression, as if she +had been a young girl, really, made up for an elderly part in +theatricals, and did not like her part. It was some sense of this which +was attracting Gerald to her across the room. Leslie had ordered him to +dance, so dance he must. But the glare of festivity all around him did +something to his inner self comparable to a light too bright making the +eyes ache. Leslie would have told him that he picked up his party by the +wrong end. The general gaiety instead of infecting him, reinforced his +feeling that everybody, beneath the surface, was perplexed, bleeding, +afraid of the future, and had good cause to be. + +The dinner had been interesting,--he had not been much affected, he was +glad to find, by the presence of the De Brézés,--but he had risen from +it haunted by the conviction that the Fosses were not happy. Nobody, if +one examined into it, was happy; all this pretense was pathetic to the +point of dreariness. Gerald knew everybody's affairs to some extent, +after spending most of his life in the same community, and a little city +where gossip is an elegant occupation. This person had made bad +investments; that one was crippled by the necessity to pay a son's +debts; this couple did not live in harmony, the husband was said to be +infatuated with a dancer. The fact that so much of their own fault +entered into people's misfortunes, while rousing rage, forced him to +pity, because the limitation of their intelligence had so much to do +with people's faults. He was in fact oppressed by the sense of the +limits set to all the lives around him in this beautiful little +Florence, his home, his love, sometimes his despair: the narrow actual +opportunities after the boundless illusions and hopes of youth; the +limited outlook, the limited breathing-room, the limited fortunes. Bars +at the windows, closed doors on every hand. + +It was with the feeling that Miss Seymour was no more truly in holiday +spirits than was he that he turned toward her, as toward a spot of +shadow amid too fervid sunshine. It would be more congenial, drifting +with her to the languid measure of this very modern, morbidly emotional +waltz, knowing that, whatever their light talk, they alike felt life to +be a sad affair, than going through livelier evolutions with a young +person who would secretly desire him to flatter and flirt. An instinct +founded less upon male conceit than knowledge of his world drove the +young bachelor determined to remain unattached to seek in preference +women who would found no smallest hope upon his notice of them. + +So, keeping at the edge of the room in order to be out of the way of the +dancers, he started on his way to Miss Seymour, while Charlie, whose +mood was as different from Gerald's as was his eye,--that brown eye +which looked upon the world as a barrel of very passable oysters, of +which he would open as many as he could get hold of,--started after. + +The approach of a stormily whirling couple, waltzing _all'_ +_italiana_, and then another and still another following, forced +them to suspend their journey. While they prudently waited, "Who is +that?" came from Charlie in a voice of acute curiosity. + +Gerald, after half a glance at him, mechanically looked in the same +direction. + +There stood at the door opening from the reception-room an unknown. + +When it was said that our young men knew everybody at the Fosses' +soirée, it was not strictly meant that there might not be a person or +two whom they had not seen before: a plain little visiting cousin whom +the Bentivoglios had begged permission to bring; a new face of a young +Italian introduced by a fellow officer. But at the door now, displacing +a good deal of air, stood a real and striking unknown, in a Paris dress +and diamonds and a smile. + +Gerald did not take the trouble to answer Charlie; to himself he said +that this was perhaps Mrs. Hawthorne, the Fosses' new friend. + +Mrs. Foss had hastened to meet her. Leslie, disengaging herself from a +partner, left him standing in the middle of the room while she hastened +likewise. It must be Mrs. Hawthorne. + +Gerald took back his eyes, and continued on his way to Miss Seymour. But +Charlie, always alive to the possibilities of a new acquaintance, always +eager to be first in the field, dropped his quest of the mama. With an +air of nonchalant abstraction he went to stand in the neighborhood of +the new arrival, conveniently at hand for an introduction. He saw then +that there were two fine new birds; the light and size of the one had at +first obscured the other, though she, too, had on a Paris dress and +diamonds and a smile. But the dress--though there could be little +difference in the women's age, both were young, without being unripe +girls,--was of soberer tones: a sage green moire with pale +coffee-colored lace; and the jewels were more modest, and the smile was +smaller, its beam did not carry so far, nor was perched on so +considerable an eminence. + +As he had known she would do, Mrs. Foss after a moment looked about her +for men to introduce. And there he was. + +Mrs. Hawthorne. Miss Madison. + +Leslie had at the same moment brought up Captain Viviani, who spoke a +little English, and liked very much to practise it with the charming +American ladies, as he told them. + +Mrs. Foss lingered awhile, helping the progress of the acquaintance by +bits of elucidation and compliment, then, when the thing was under way, +withdrew so adroitly that she was not missed. A young man, coming up to +importune Leslie for a promised dance, was allowed to carry her off; +Miss Madison, assured by the _capitano_ that he could dance the +American waltz, trusted herself, though a little doubtfully, to his +arms; and Charlie was left with Mrs. Hawthorne. + +"Shall we take a turn?" he offered. + +"Me?" The lady gave him a look sidewise from dewy blue eyes, as if to +see whether he were serious. He perceived that she with effort kept her +dimples from denting in. He could not be sure what the joke was. But she +went on, as if there had been no joke: "I was brought up a Baptist. My +pa and ma considered it wicked to dance, so would never let me learn. It +doesn't look very wicked to me." + +She watched the dancers with an earnestly following eye, preoccupied, he +supposed, with the moral aspect of their embraces and gyrations. + +"It looks easy enough," she said, with suppressed excitement, immensely +fascinated. "I should think anybody could do that. You hop on this foot, +you slide, you hop on that foot, you slide. I believe I could do it. No, +no, I mustn't let myself be tempted. I don't want to be a sight." Her +voice had wavered; it suddenly came out bold. "My land!" she exclaimed +full-bloodedly, "there goes a woman who's not a bit slimmer than me! +Look here, let's try. Not right before everybody. I see a side room +where it's nice and dark. Come on in there." As, hardly muffling a gleam +of peculiar and novel amusement, he escorted her toward the room +indicated, she reassured him, "I'm big, but I'm light on my feet." + +Charlie was afterward fond of telling that he had taught Mrs. Hawthorne +to dance. But the single lesson he gave her did not of a truth take her +beyond the point where, holding hands with him, like children, and +counting one-two-three, she tried hopping on this foot, then on the +other. For Mrs. Foss, who seemed to have specially at heart that the new +people should enjoy themselves, in her idea of securing this end, +brought one person after the other to be introduced. + +How carefully selected these were, or how diplomatically prepared, the +good hostess alone could know. + +"Oh, I'm having such a good time!" Mrs. Hawthorne sighed from a full and +happy heart, later in the evening, having gone to sit beside her hostess +on the little corner sofa which that tired woman had selected for a +moment's rest. The dancing was passing before them. "It's the loveliest +party I ever was to. What delightful friends you have, Mrs. Foss, and +what a lot of them! I've made ever so many friends, too, this evening. +Mrs. Satterlee has told me about the Home she's interested in, and Miss +Seymour about the church-fair, and I've had a good talk with the +minister. Those are three nice girls of the banker's, aren't they? +Florence, Francesca, and Beatrice, commonly known as Flick, Fran, and +Trix, they told me. Mr. Hunt, the nephew, is nice, too; we get on like +sliding down-hill. They're all going to come and see me.--Mrs. +Foss,"--her attention had veered,--"do look at that little fellow +playing the piano! Isn't he _great_! But isn't he comical, too! +I've been noticing him all the evening. He fascinates me. I never heard +such splendid playing. The bouncing parts make my feet twitch to dance, +but the sighful, wind-in-the-willow parts make me want to just lean back +and close my eyes. I could listen till the cows come home. I call it a +wonderful gift." + +Mrs. Foss looked over at the little Italian, the unpretentious musical +hack whom one sent for when there was to be dancing, and paid--it was +all he asked--so very little. Her eyebrows went up a point as she +smiled. It was true, she remarked it for the first time, that his hands +flew over the keys with an air of breezy virtuosity. He raised them from +the keyboard and brought them down again with the action of a snorting +high-stepping horse. When the passage was loud he nearly lifted himself +off the stool with pounding; when it was soft he tickled the ivories +with the delicacy of raindrops, at the same time diminishing his person +till he seemed the size of a fairy. Now and then he tossed his head, as +if champing a bit, and the bunch of black frizz over his left temple +trembled. A decidedly comic figure he appeared to Mrs. Foss. + +"I will tell Signor Ceccherelli what you say," she amiably promised. "I +am sure it will please him." + +Leslie, whose responsibilities kept her from dancing her young fill at +her own parties, sought Mrs. Hawthorne still later in the evening, when +she thought that lady might have had enough of Mr. Hunt senior sitting +beside her. The heavy old banker was not considered very entertaining, +and everybody in Florence knew his way of sticking at the side of a +good-looking woman. Lest this one, so evidently making herself pleasant, +should be unduly taxed, Leslie stepped in to free her, tactfully +interested the banker in a game of cards going on upstairs, and took the +place he vacated--took it for just a minute, as a bird perches. + +"No, you don't!" Mrs. Hawthorne laid a hand on her arm when she seemed +near dashing off to bring somebody else to present. "You've done the +social act till you ought to be tired, if you aren't. Sit here by me a +moment and take it easy. This party doesn't need any nursing. It's the +loveliest party I ever was to." + +Leslie looked off in front of her to verify the statement, and +unreluctantly settled down on the little sofa to rest awhile. She liked +Mrs. Hawthorne. One could not help liking her, as she had had occasion +to assert and reassert in defense against a vague body of reasons for +not adopting the new-comer into the sacred circle of friends, or +launching her on the waters of their little world. Now, as they chatted, +she said to herself again that if Mrs. Hawthorne's homeliness of phrase +were not a simple thing of playfulness, a disclaimer of the affectation +of elegance in talk as stilted, bumptious, unsuited to a proper modesty, +it could very well pass for that. Mrs. Hawthorne seldom expressed +herself quite seriously. As she seldom looked serious either, one could +hardly hear her say it was the loveliest party she ever was to without +suspecting her of a humorous intention. By the sly gleam of her eye one +should know she was doing it to amuse you, imitating a child, a +country-woman, a shop-girl, for the sake of promoting an easy +pleasantness. With her bearing of entire dignity, her honest +handsomeness, her air of secure and generous wealth, she was truly not +one whom the ordinary public would feel disposed to seek reasons for +excluding. Leslie and her mother had refrained from presenting to her +particular persons in the company. All remarks heard from those who had +been presented led to an almost certainty that the new Americans were a +success. + +"Do look at Estelle!" exclaimed Mrs. Hawthorne. "She's been dancing one +dance after the other, and sits there now looking cool as a cucumber. I +would have her life if it could make me into a bone like her. Miss +Foss,"--she was diverted from the envious contemplation of +Estelle,--"who is that lovely girl over there?" + +"Which one? There are so many to-night!" + +"The white one with the knob of dark hair down in her neck. An Italian, +I guess. Rather small. See who I mean? There. She's going to speak to +the little fellow at the piano." + +Leslie looked, but did not at once answer. The girl in white was indeed +strangely, at this moment poignantly, lovely. Some intensity of +repressed feeling made her cheek of a white-rose pallor, and her dark +eyes, those spots of velvet shadow, mysteriously deep. She had gone +where the piano stood in a bower of palm and bamboo, with Signor +Ceccherelli seated before it, busy wiping the sweat of his brow. More +than one had gone to him that evening to ask for some favorite piece. +She was perhaps just requesting him to play The Blue Danube, or La +Manola or Bavardage, and it was merely the romantic way of her beauty to +express a sense of doom. She spoke quietly to the pianist, who looked at +her while she spoke and when she ceased made with his head a motion of +assent. She turned and went from the room. + +"It is my sister Brenda," said Leslie. "How singular you should not +recognize her!" + +"I've never met her, my dear. You don't remember. The time I came to tea +she was in town taking a music lesson. The time I came to dinner she was +in bed with a headache. Well, well, she's not a bit like the rest of +you, is she? I took her for an Italian." + +"She was only twelve when we came over here, it has somehow molded her. +I was seventeen; too old, I fancy, to change. Brenda is going back to +America before long, to be with our aunt, father's sister, for whom +Brenda was named. It was only decided a day or two ago, when we heard +from some friends who are going and will take her under their wing. And +if she goes there's no telling when she will come back, you see, because +with every change of administration father may be recalled. And Italy +has been her home so long, all her friends are here. It's no wonder she +doesn't look exactly light of heart." + +"No, poor child!" + +There was a sympathetic silence, after which, "Who is that?" Mrs. +Hawthorne asked, to take their minds off the intrusive sadnesses of +life. With her gaze across the room she counted, "One, two, three, four, +to the left of the piano, with his hands behind him and a round glass in +his eye." + +Leslie looked over at a figure of whom it was natural to ask who that +was, it so surely looked like Somebody--though Mrs. Hawthorne had very +likely asked because, merely, in her eyes he was queer. It was an oldish +man, dressed with marked elegance, white tie, white waistcoat, white +flower at his lapel. The whole of worldly wisdom dwelt in his weary eye. +He had yellow and withered cheeks, black hair with a dash of white above +the ears, and a mustache whose thickest part curved over his mouth like +a black lacquer box-lid, while its long ends, stiff as thorns of a +thorn-tree, projected on either side far beyond his face. + +"His name is Balm de Brézé, vicomte. He is by birth a Belgian, I think; +the title, however, is French. He has lived mostly in Paris, but now +spends about half of his time here. He married a friend of ours, an +American. There is Amabel, in ruby velvet, just inside the library door. +A good deal younger than he, yet they seem appropriately matched, +somehow." + +"She looks about as foreign as he does. Who's the one she's talking to, +handsome, dark as night? Never saw such a dark skin before except on a +cullud puss'n." + +"I know. He might be an Arab, only he's very good Tuscan. It's Mr. +Landini,--Hunt and Landini." + +"Ah, the bankers. They do my business, but I've never seen the heads +before to-night." + +Mrs. Hawthorne's eyes wandered, as if she said, "Whom else do I want to +know about?" and Leslie made internal comment upon the fact that Mrs. +Hawthorne's interest was quickened by those individuals precisely whom +they had withheld, for reasons, from presenting to her. + +Mrs. Hawthorne suddenly pressed closer, and with a little chuckle +grasped Leslie's knee, by this affectionate touch to make herself +forgiven for the disrespect about to be shown. + +"And who's Stickly-prickly?" + +Leslie had to laugh, too. Impossible not to know which one was meant of +all the people in the direction of Mrs. Hawthorne's glance. He was +leaning against the wall between two chairs deserted by the fair, +looking off with a slightly mournful indifference at everything and at +nothing. His mustache ended in upturned points, his beard was pointed, +his hair stood up in little points. He gave the impression besides of +one whose nervous temper put out porcupine shafts to keep you off. + +"It's one of our very best friends, Mrs. Hawthorne. Dear old Gerald! Mr. +Fane. Shall I go get him and bring him over?" + +"No, don't. I should be scared of him." + +"Let me! His prickles are harmless. He has heard us speak of you so +much! See, he is looking over at us wistfully, in a way that plainly +suggests our course. Here comes Charlie Hunt, who will keep you amused +while I fetch Gerald; then we will go in together and have an ice." + +Charlie Hunt, modern moth without fear or shyness, but with a great deal +of caution, was indeed returning for the third or fourth time to Mrs. +Hawthorne's side, drawn by the sparkle of eyes and tresses and smiles +and diamonds. Francesca had already described him that evening to +another young lady as dancing attendance on the new American. He dropped +into the seat vacated by Leslie, addressed Mrs. Hawthorne as if they had +been friends for at least weeks, and made conversation joyfully easy by +getting at once on to a playful footing. + +Leslie meanwhile steered her course toward Gerald. The music had started +up again, men were presenting themselves to maidens with their request +for the favor.... Leslie threaded her way between the first on the +floor. Her eyes were naturally turned toward the object of her search; +some intention toward him was probably apparent in her look. As if he +had not seen it, or as if, having seen it, he scented in her approach +some conspiracy against his peace, Gerald in a moment during which her +eye was not on him quietly vanished. + +Missing him, Leslie looked about in some surprise, then entered the door +by which inevitably he must have passed. She gave a glance around the +library; Gerald did not seem to be there. Mystified, she looked more +carefully at the faces to be seen through the thin tobacco smoke. No, +Gerald's was not among them. Gerald, acquainted with the house, knew the +door, of course, of the kind frequent in Italian houses, the little door +indistinguishable from the wall, by which one could leave the library, +and after crossing the landing of the kitchen stairs, reach the +dining-room. From the dining-room, then, one could come into the +entrance hall, whence go upstairs, or out into the garden, or, as one +pleased, back into the drawing-room. Leslie did not think the matter of +sufficient importance to pursue the chase farther. + +The dancing was suspended while the musician had sandwiches and glasses +of a fragrant and delicious-looking but weak punch. The Fosses' waiter +knew him well and fraternally attended to his wants. + +The dining-room, though large, would not permit all the couples to enter +at once, so ices and cakes were borne from the table by cavaliers to +expectant ladies in the antechamber, on the stairs, and in the farther +rooms. + +The musician after eating to his satisfaction took the time for a +cigarette, which he enjoyed, not in the library, but in cool and +peaceful isolation on the top step of the kitchen stairs. Refreshed, he +briskly went back to his piano, persuaded that the young people were +sighing to see him there. With new vigor he struck up a march. The crowd +in the dining-room thinned. + +Mrs. Hawthorne and Miss Madison, with Charlie Hunt and Doctor Chandler, +one of the Americans from the pension, lingered on in the corner where, +with the migration of so many to the ball-room, all four had been able +to find chairs. Mrs. Hawthorne, of the fair moon-face, was as a matter +of course eating sweet stuff; Miss Madison, contrariwise, sipped a small +cup of black coffee. Miss Madison, no need to say, had a neat jaw-bone +to show--collarbones, too. She was not pretty, her features were hardly +worth describing, but yet it was an attractive face, as merry as it was +fundamentally shrewd, as sensible as it was sprightly. The frank, almost +business-like manner of her setting out to have a good time at the party +ensured her having at least a lively one, and her partners not finding +it slow. She at once and impartially interested herself in the men +brought up to her, and sought to interest them. Her flirtatiousness was, +however, sedate--in its way, moral--not intended to have any result +beyond the enlivenment of the hour. + +Miss Madison had been finding exhilaration and delight this evening in +dancing, and when presently the alluring strains of a waltz came +floating to their ears, she looked at Chandler, and he in the same +manner looked at her; whereupon she rose, as if words had been +exchanged, took his arm, and they deserted for the ball-room. Charlie +Hunt was left ensconced in an intimate nook alone with Mrs. Hawthorne. + +But he had hardly a moment in which to enjoy the feeling of advantage +this gave him before his cousin Francesca came looking for him. They +were going, she said. Father was sleepy, and mother said they must go. +If he wanted a lift home, he must hurry up. Charlie had come with them, +on the box near the driver, there being five already inside the landau. +Gallantry should perhaps have made him answer that rather than be +dragged away at this moment he would walk. But gallantry was dumb. +Charlie was not fond of walking. It was a great convenience, an economy +as well, being permitted to make use of his aunt's carriage. + +Having delivered her message, Francesca had gone to put on her things, +and Charlie, after expressions of regret over the inevitable, asked Mrs. +Hawthorne whither she would wish to be taken before he left. + +Let him not bother, she answered; she could find her friends without +help. + +They separated. Walking slowly, she looked for faces of acquaintances. +She glanced in at the ball-room door. They were dancing still, but not +nearly so many. She turned into the reception-room, whence she could +reënter the ball-room at the other end without danger of collision, and +reach that comfortable blue satin sofa, now standing empty. There she +would sit looking on till Estelle joined her, when they would set about +making their adieux. The carriage must have been waiting for them ever +so long. + +She had sat a minute, unconsciously smiling to herself, because the +sensations and impressions of the evening were all so pleasant, when +something occurred to her as desirable to be done. She rose to carry out +her idea. + +The dancing had stopped; the floor was clear except in the neighborhood +of the walls, where couples stood or sat recovering breath and coolness. +She started to cross the long room. She did not skirt it because the +direct line to her destination was by the middle; she did not go fast +because there was no occasion, and it was not her way. She advanced like +a goodly galleon pushing along the sea with finely curved bows, all +sails set to catch the breeze. Her mind was entirely on her idea, and +she did not at first feel herself to be conspicuous. But all the eyes in +the room, before she had gone half her way, were fastened upon her, a +natural and legitimate mark. One might now without impertinence have the +satisfaction of a good look at the newly come American who had taken the +big house on the Lungarno; the women might study the fashion of her hair +and dress. + +She was smiling faintly, but fixedly; she smiled, indeed, all the time, +as if smiles had been an indispensable article of wear at a party. The +least of her smiles brought dimples into view, and her dimples seemed +multitudinous, though there were really only three in her face and one +of those irregular things called apple-seeds. Her agreeably blunted +features and peachy roundness of cheek belonged to a good-humored, +unimposing type, which took on a certain nobility in her case from being +carried high on a strong, round neck over a splendid broad breast, +partly bare this evening, and seen to be white as milk, as swans'-down, +as pearl. + +If one had tried to define the look which left one so little doubt as to +her nationality, one would perhaps have said it was a combination of +fearlessness and accessibility. She feared not you, nor should you fear +her; she counted on your friendliness, you might count on hers. + +She was a person simple in the main. The colors she had selected to wear +accorded with the rest, showing little intricacy of taste. The two silks +composing her dress were respectively the blue of a summer morning and +the pink of a rose. From cushioned and dimpled shoulders the bodice +tapered to as fine a waist as a Paris dressmaker had found possible to +bring about in a woman who, despite a veritable yearning to look +slender, cared also for freedom to breathe, and, as she said with a +sigh, guessed she must make up her mind to be happy without looking like +a toothpick. At the back of the waist, the dress leapt suddenly out and +away from the dorsal column--every lady's dress did that for a season or +two at the time we are telling of, and at every step she took the back +of her skirt gave a bob, for the bustle was supplemented by three or +four concealed semi-circles of thin steel, reeds we called them, which +hit against you as you went and sprang lightly away from your heels. + +The arrangement of Mrs. Hawthorne's hair equalled in artificiality the +mode of her dress: the front locks were clipped and twisted into little +curls, the back locks drawn to the top of the head, where they were +disposed in silken loops and rolls, at the top of which, like a flag +planted on a hill, stood an aigrette, a sparkle and two whiffs. + +It may not sound pretty, it was not, but the eye of that day had become +used to it, as eyes have since become used to fashions no prettier, and +as Mrs. Hawthorne's hair was of a soft sunny tint it was that evening +admired by more than one, as was her intrinsically ugly beautiful gown, +which gave a little jerky rebound every time she placed one of those +neat solid satin-shod feet before the other in her progress across the +now attentive room. + +She had taken off her long white gloves to eat a cake--or cakes; she was +carrying them loosely swinging from one dimpled hand. + +In the middle of the room self-consciousness overtook her. With the +awakening sense of eyes upon her, she looked first to one side, then to +the other. Her smile broadened while growing by just a tinge sheepish; +she seemed to waver and consider turning from her course and finishing +her journey close along the wall, like a mouse.... + +She finally did not, nor yet hurried. She made her smile explain to +whoever was looking on that a person was excusable for making this sort +of mistake, that it hurt nobody, that one need not and did not care; +that she was sure they did not like her any less for it; they would not +if they knew how void of offense toward them all was her heart; that +having exposed herself to being looked at, she hoped they liked her +looks. Her dress was a very good dress, her laces were very good lace, +and the maid who had done her hair was considered a first-rate hand at +doing hair. + +So she was carrying it off, and her smile was only a little +self-conscious, only a shade embarrassed, when from among the men +standing near the library door, for which she was directly making, there +stepped out one to meet her, not unlike a slender needle darting toward +a large, rounded magnet as it comes into due range. + +More sensitive than she, feeling the situation much more uncomfortably +for his country-woman than she felt it for herself, a foreign-looking +fellow, who had not quite forgotten that he was an American, after a +moment's hard struggle against his impulse, hastened forward to shorten +for her that uncompanioned course across the floor under ten thousand +search-lights. + +"I'm looking for somebody," said Mrs. Hawthorne, with the smile of a +child. + +The voice which had made one man think of the crimson heart on a +valentine reminded this other of rough velvet. + +He showed his eccentric three front teeth in a responding smile that had +a touch of the faun, and asked whimsically: + +"Will I do?" + +"Help me to find Mr. Foss, and you'll do perfectly," she said merrily. +"I haven't seen him more than just to shake hands this whole evening, +and I do want to have a little talk before I go." + +"If I am not mistaken, we shall find him in the library." He offered his +arm. + +"I may have appeared to be doing something else, Mrs. Hawthorne, but I +have really been looking for you the last hour," said the consul when he +had been found. "I wanted to have a little talk. How are you enjoying +Florence?" + +"Oh, we're having an elegant time, thanks to that dear wife of yours and +that dear girl, Leslie. I don't know what we should have done without +them and you." + +"But the city itself, Florence, doesn't it enchant you?" + +"We--ell, yes. N-n-n-no. Yes and no. That's it. You want me to tell the +truth, don't you? Some of it does, and some of it doesn't. Some of it, I +guess, will take me a long time to get used to. It's terribly different +from what we expected--I, in particular. You see, I came here because an +old friend used to talk so much about it. Florence the Fair! The City of +Lilies! He said Italy was the most beautiful country in the world, and +Florence the most beautiful city in Italy. So my expectations were way +up.--Oh, I don't know; it's hard to tell. I don't exactly remember now +what I did expect. I guess my picture of it was something like the New +Jerusalem on an Easter day. But I shall get used to this, like to the +taste of olives. It must be all right, for the friend I was speaking of +had the finest mind I've ever known. I'm green as turnip-tops, of +course, but I shall get educated up to it, I suppose. Give me time." + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, hear me prophesy," said Mr. Foss. "In six months you +will love it all. It's the fate of us who come here from new countries. +It will steal in upon you, grow upon you, beset and besot you, till you +like no other place in the world so well." + +"Will it? Well, if you say so. The Judge--the friend I was speaking +of,--said so much of the same kind that the minute I thought of coming +to Europe, right after I'd said, 'I'll go to Paris,' I said to myself, +'I'll go to Florence.'" + +"Your friend was a judge of places." + +"It wasn't he alone influenced me. He was sick a long time, and I used +to read aloud to him, and one spell, when his mind for some reason or +other was running on Italy, every book he chose had the scene laid here. +There were whole pages of description, and anything so lovely, so +luscious, as the places and people described I never did dream. I didn't +understand more than a quarter, but I swallowed it all and gloated. The +woman who wrote those books certainly did have an imagination. O +Antonia, let me meet you and have a good look at you so I can tell +a--hm, the owner of an imagination when I see one again!" + +"Antonia, did you say?" The consul smiled. + +"That was the writer's name. You know the books I mean?" + +"I have read a work or two of Antonia's, yes. She lives near Florence, +you know, on another of these little hills." + +"Oh, does she!" + +"Her name is Mrs. Grangeon. She is an Englishwoman, with an +extraordinary sense of, and feeling for, Italy. She is, at her best, a +poet; at her worst, slightly deficient, perhaps, in humor. But her +passion for Italy is genuine, and I have no doubt she sees it as glowing +as the pictures she makes of it." + +"Her books are 'grand, John'! If I never had come here, I never should +have appreciated them or her--making up that wonderful world, all +pomegranates and jasmin-stars, and curls like clustering blue-black +grapes, and staturesque limbs, out of the back of her head. Yes, and the +golden dust of centuries, and time's mellow caressing touch--oh, I wish +I could remember it all!" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, we must take you in hand. Be it ours to initiate you. +Come, what have you been to see?" + +"Treasures of art? We haven't had time yet. We've been getting a house +fit to live in. When you asked me how I liked Florence, I ought to have +begun by that end. I love my house, Mr. Foss. I love my garden. I love +the Lungarno. And the Casheeny. And Boboly. And the drive up here. And +the stores! I positively dote on those little bits of stores on the +jewelers' bridge." + +"Well, well, that's quite enough to begin with." + +"Now that we're going to have some time to spare, we mean to go +sight-seeing like other folks." + +"How I wish, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, that I were not such a busy man! +But"--Mr. Foss had a look of bright inspiration--"should I on that +account be dejected? Here is Mr. Fane--" + +He turned to Gerald, who, after bringing up Mrs. Hawthorne, had stood +near, a silent third, waiting to act further as her escort by and by. +Meanwhile he had been listening with a varied assortment of feelings and +a boundless fatigue of spirit. + +"Mr. Fane," said the consul, "who is not nearly so busy a man as I, and +is the most sympathetic, well-informed cicerone you could find. When we +wish to be sure our visiting friends shall see Florence under the best +possible circumstances, we turn them over to Mr. Fane." + +Gerald's face struggled into a sourish smile, and he bowed ironical +thanks for the compliment. Lifting his head, he shot a glance of +reproachful interrogation at the consul. Was his friend doing this +humorously, to tease him, or was the man simply not thinking? + +The consul looked innocent of any sly intention; he was all of a jocund +smile; the consul, who should have known better, wore the air of doing +him a pleasure and her a pleasure and a pleasure to himself; the air of +thinking that any normally constituted young man would be grateful for +such a chance. + +"I shall be most happy," said Gerald, with irreproachable and misleading +politeness. + +Mrs. Hawthorne turned to him readily. + +"Any time you say. Let me tell you where we live." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +The room in which Mrs. Hawthorne went to bed an hour or two after taking +leave of the dwindling company at Villa Foss was large and luxurious. +Its windows were enormous, arched at the top and reaching the floor. A +wrought-iron railing outside made them safe. In the angle of the wall +between two of them--it was a corner room--stood a mirror nearly the +size of the windows, in a broad frame of carved and gilt wood, resting +on a marble shelf that supported besides two alabaster vases holding +bunches of roses. + +In the corner opposite to the mirror and placed "catty-corner," as the +occupier worded it, stood the stateliest of beds, upholstered and draped +in heavy watered silk of a dull, even dingy, yellow. Its hangings were +gathered at the top into the hollow of a great gold coronet, whence they +spread and fell in folds that were looped back with silk cords. The +walls were covered by that same texture of dull gold, held in place by +tarnished gilt moldings. + +Mrs. Hawthorne had wanted all this dusty and faded splendor removed,--it +seemed to her the possible lurking-place of mice or worse,--but the +agent would not hear of it. The noble landlord was not really eager to +let. + +So Mrs. Hawthorne, to brighten the room in spite of it, for she wished +to keep it for her own, having taken a fancy to the fresco +overhead,--that fascinating chariot driven among clouds by a radiant +youth surrounded by smiling, flower-scattering maidens,--Mrs. Hawthorne +to "gay up" the room, as she said, had hung windows and doors with +draperies of her favorite cornflower blue, and covered the chairs with +the same. On the floor she had stretched a pearl-gray carpet all aglow +with wreaths of roses tied with ribbons of blue; and over the carpet--at +the bedside, before the dressing-table, in front of the fireplace--laid +down white bear-skins. + +To cover further the yellow silk, she had hung in one panel of it a +painting of the "Madonna della Seggiola," in another, Carlo Dolci's +"Angel of the Annunciation," and in another, Carlo Dolci's Magdalen +clasping the box of ointment--all works of art bought in Via dei Fossi, +framed in great gilt-wood frames, like the mirror. + +The lace curtains under the cornflower blue brocade were like Brussels +wedding veils seen through a magnifying glass. + +Yes, the room had been made to look bright. It had lamps of +cream-colored biscuit, painted with roses and crowned with pink shades; +it had polished brass fire-irons. But the point of supreme brightness +was the dressing-table, where glittered in orderly display Mrs. +Hawthorne's American toilet silver, mirror, trays, brushes, boxes, +bottles--solid, shining, richly embossed. + +There was just one thing in all the room that looked poor, workaday. It +was on the small table at the head of the bed, beside the candle-stick +and match-safe, a black book, the commonest kind of Bible, such a Bible +as is dispensed by those who have to furnish the sacred writings in +large numbers--Sunday schools, for instance. + +It was in fact a Sunday-school prize that now lay on the night-stand, in +what the sober volume presented to a pious little girl must have thought +strange company. Cover to cover with it, cheek by jowl, lay a book on +etiquette. + +It was for the Bible, however, that Mrs. Hawthorne reached after she had +got into bed. She found her place. She read in it every night before +sleeping, to keep a promise made long ago, and avoid the reproaches of a +person gone from this earth, but who still, she never questioned, could +be pleased or displeased with her actions. + +She did not always try to understand or follow; when she was sleepy she +read merely with her eyes. To-night her mind was too full of personal +things to permit of strict attention to the text. As she enumerated the +wonders of the House that Solomon built for the Lord, there formed no +picture of it in her mind. + +"I wonder what knops are," she said to herself drowsily. "I must +remember to ask Hattie." + +There was a stir. Both doors of her room were open; the little +unobtrusive one into the dressing-room for air,--the window there stood +wide open through the night,--the large one into the sitting-room so as +to leave a free road to Miss Madison's room beyond. Through this now +slipped a slender form in a soft, fur-bordered wrapper, and with front +locks done up in curling-kids. + +"You in bed?" + +"Yes; I'm just reading my chapter." + +"Livvy gone?" + +Livvy, or Miss Deliverance Jones, was the maid they had brought from +America, a New York negress of the most faintly colored complexion, with +hair mysteriously blond. Her head was egg-shaped, her nose slightly +flat, her lip voluptuous, her brown-black eye sad as a homesick +monkey's; but she could wind a chocolate veil about her face and stylish +hat, and walk forth happy in the fancy that she passed for white. She +was an accomplished dressmaker and hair-dresser; she moreover had spent +some time in the service of a beauty-doctor. The ladies had secured her +just before sailing, and liked her, but did not talk freely when she was +present. + +"Yes, she's gone." + +"I'm not a bit sleepy, are you? I'm too excited. Let's talk." + +She climbed on to her friend's bed, gathered her knees to her chin, and +hugged them, with the effect of hugging to herself a great happiness. + +Mrs. Hawthorne closed her Bible and put it aside. The single candle by +which she had been reading showed the shining mirthfulness of the eyes +with which the two regarded each other. + +"Wasn't it fun?" + +"Oh, wasn't it!" + +They spoke softly, whether because the suggestion of the late hour was +upon them, or they thought, without thinking, that Livvy might still be +near. They whispered like school-girls who have come together in +forbidden fun. + +"I never did have such a good time." + +"Nor I, neither. Oh, Hat, _isn't it_ fun!" + +"_Isn't it_, just!" + +"See here, Hat, you've got to teach me to dance. I was almost crazy this +evening, I wanted so to be dancing with the rest. Where d'you learn?" + +"I went to dancing-school, my dear." + +"No! Did you?" + +"Yes, I did; all one winter. What are you thinking about? I've been to +parties in my life. Not many, but I've been. There was the Home Club +party----" + +"Yes, of course. I remember how I teased once to go to the Home Club +party; but ma wouldn't let me. I hadn't anything to put on, anyhow. But +I'd have gone in my shirt if they'd let me. The nearest to a real party +I'd been to before to-night was a clam-bake. I don't count church +sociables. Out West there used to be celebrations in a sort of bar-room +place, but even I couldn't stand those. To think I've always yearned so +to have a good time, and now I'm having it! Oh, Hat, wasn't it lovely! +That's a mighty nice house of the Fosses. How good it looked, all fixed +up! The flowers and candles, one room opening into the other, everything +just right. Hat, Mrs. Foss is the finest woman I ever knew, and in my +opinion makes the most elegant appearance. She's the one I'd choose to +be like if I could. Just watch me copy-cat her. You'll see. 'My dear +Mrs. Hawthorne, pray don't speak of the trouble! It's been nothing but a +pleasure. Be sure you call upon us whenever we can be of the smallest +service.'" + +"You've caught her, Nell, you silly thing! Down to the ground." + +"I'm going to pattern after her till it comes natural. How sweet they +all are! How kind they've been!" Mrs. Hawthorne grew dreamy. + +"Your dress, Nell, was a perfect success," the other ran on--"perfect. +How did you think mine looked? I'll tell you a compliment I got for you, +if you'll tell me one you got for me. If not, I'll save it up in my +secret breast till you're ready to make a trade." + +"To think," said Mrs. Hawthorne, still engrossed by her dream of absent +and bygone things, "that we're the same little girls--and one of them +barefoot!--who used to play house together on a sand-heap of old Cape +Cod and pin on any old rag that would tail along the ground and play +ladies! 'My dear Mrs. Madison, how do you do?'" + +"'My dear Mrs. Hawthorne, my toes are just as sore as they can be!'" + +"'That comes, my dear Mrs. Madison, of you dancing like a crazy woman +from ten o'clock till one, in tight shoes!'--Mrs. Hawthorne! Mrs. +Madison! Aurora! Estelle! To think, after all these years, we should be +playing our old play that we played at Wellfleet and East Boston, only +playing it with real things, in Paris and Florence!" + +"Nell, I'm so afraid of forgetting and calling you Nell that every time +I catch myself near doing it I can feel the cold sweat break out on my +brow." + +"What would it matter? We aren't impostors, Hat. We're just having fun, +and don't want our real names to queer it. If they should slip out when +we aren't thinking, they'd simply sound like nicknames we've got for +each other. But they won't slip out. I'm too fond of calling you +Estelle. Don't you _love_ to call me Aurora? Hat, how did I behave, +far as you could see?" + +"Nell, if I hadn't known you, and had just been seeing you for the first +time, I should have said to myself: 'What a fine, good-looking, +beautifully dressed, refined, and ladylike woman that is! Wish t' I +might make her acquaintance.' And what would you have said, if you'd +seen me, never having met me before?" + +"I should have said: 'What a bright, smart, intelligent, and rarely +beautiful girl! So well dressed, too, and slender as a worm! A queen of +society. I do like her looks! She's the spittin' image of my little +friend Hattie Carver, the schoolmarm in East Boston, that I used to +know!' Oh, Hat, the _queerest_ thing! What do you suppose I saw +this evening at that lovely house full of lovely people? I was in the +library learning to dance. And I looked up and there was what I took to +be a young man smoking a cigarette. Next thing, I saw that his dress was +low-necked almost down to the waist. Hat, it was a _woman_ smoking! +a woman with her hair cut short. I never saw anything like it, except an +old Irishwoman once, with her pipe." + +"Seems to me I've heard of ladies in Europe doing it, and it being +considered all right. I _have_ heard that some do it in New York, +but I guess they're careful not to be seen." + +"Well, it does seem a queer thing to do!--Go ahead, Hat; what was the +compliment?" + +"Sure, now, you've got one for me?" + +"Sure." + +"It was What's-his-name, the English fellow we see every time we go in +to Cook's--Mr. Dysart. Leslie says he comes of a very good family. He +said to me, 'How very charming Mrs. Hawthorne is looking this evening!'" + +"Hattie, that man's a humbug, that man's leading a double life. He said +to me, 'How very charming Miss Madison is looking this evening!' He +did." + +"Go 'way! You're making it up to save trouble." + +"No, I ain't! Stop, Hattie! I know! I _am not_. Confusion upon it! +You've made me so nervous when I talk that I can't say ain't without +jumping as if I'd sat on a pin!" + +"Nell Goodwin, look me square in the eye. How many times did you say +ain't at the party this evening?" + +"Not once; I swear it. I was looking out every minute. 'I am not,' I +said; 'We are not,' I said; 'He doesn't,' I said; 'He isn't,' I said. +There! Between you'n' I, Hat, it's a dreadful nuisance, keeping my mind +on the way I talk. I hope I shall come in time to talking lofty without +thinking about it. Why do I have to, Hat, after all? I've lived among +educated people. Wasn't the Judge highly educated? And nobody ever found +fault with my way of talking. My folks all had been to school and read +books. And didn't I go to school till I was fourteen? And didn't I +graduate from the grammar school with the rest? What's the matter with +my natural way of talking?" + +"It's all right at home, Nell, but it's different over here. They're a +different kind of people we're thrown with." + +"This pernickety way of talking never sounds cozy or friendly one bit. +We're as good as anybody, of course, but when I say 'I am not, he does +not,' I always feel as if I were setting up to be better than the +rest!--Oh, it isn't, is it? Oh, do you say so? 'Between you and I' isn't +correct? But I thought you told me.... To Jericho, Hattie! How's a +feller ever going to get to know?" + +"Listen, Nell, while I go over it again. When you say----" + +"Ah, no! Not at this time of night, Estelle! Let me live in ignorance +till morning! You know all those sorts of things, my dear Estelle, +because you're paid by the government to know them. I don't; but I know +lots and lots of things that are a sight funnier." + +She grabbed one of the pillows and flung it at her friend, who flung it +back at her; and the simple creatures laughed. + +Aurora re-tied in a bow the blue ribbon that closed the collar of her +nightgown, and settled back again, with her arms out on the white satin +quilt, flowered with roses and lined with blue. The two braids of her +fair hair lay, one on each side, down her big, frank, undisguised bosom. + +"You heaping dish of vanilla ice-cream!" said Hattie. + +"You stick of rhubarb!" said Nell. "Stop, Hat! Behave! Do you suppose +all the people we've invited to come and see us will come?" + +"Doctor Chandler will come. And the Hunt girls will come. And Madame +Bentivoglio I guess will come." + +"Yes, and the Satterlees I'm sure will come. And Mrs. Seymour and her +daughter that I said I'd help with the church fair. And the minister; +what was it? Spottiswood." + +"And won't the Mr. Hunt come that you seemed to be having such a good +time with?" + +"Yes, he'll come. He'll come to-morrow, I shouldn't wonder. Then that +thinnish fellow with the hair like a hearth-brush--did you meet him? Mr. +Fane, a great friend of the Fosses. He's coming to take us +sight-seeing." She yawned a wide, audible yawn. "I only hope there'll be +some fun in it. Confound you, Hat, go to bed!" + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +After the Fosses had helped the lessees of the Haughty Hermitage to make +it habitable; found for them a coachman who had a little French and, +when told what they desired to buy, would take them to the proper shops; +provided them with a butler to the same extent a linguist, through whom +Estelle, who in Paris had ambitiously studied a manual of conversation, +could give her orders, they not unnaturally became less generous of +their company. + +But they were not permitted to make the intervals long between visits. +The coachman wise in French was perpetually driving his spanking pair to +their gates, delivering a message, and waiting to take them down for +lunch or dinner with their joyfully welcoming and grateful friends. It +was not at all unpleasant. It was not prized preciously,--there was too +much of it and too urgently lavished,--but the lavishers were loved for +it by two women neither dry-hearted nor world-hardened. Leslie fell into +the way, when she was in town and had time, of running in to Aurora's, +where it would be cheerful and she looked for a laugh. + +Leslie, having reached, as she considered, years of discretion, thought +fit to disregard the Florentine rule that young unmarried women must not +walk in the streets unattended. She had balanced the two inconveniences: +that of staying at home unless some one could go out with her, and that +of being spoken to in the street, and decided that it was less +unpleasant to hear a strange young man murmur as she passed, "Angel of +paradise!" or "Beautiful eyes!"--no grosser insult had ever been offered +her,--than to be bothered by a servant at her heels. The fact that she +looked American and was understood to be following the custom of her own +country secured her against any real misinterpretation. + +It was chilly, Novemberish, and within the doors of Florentine domiciles +rather colder, for some reason, than in the open air. The Fosses kept +their house at a more human temperature than most people, but yet after +years of Italy did not heat very thoroughly: one drops into the way of +doing as others do, and grows accustomed to putting up with cold in +winter. Leslie often expressed the opinion that in America people really +exaggerate in the matter of heating their houses. Nevertheless, just for +the joy of the eyes and, through the eyes, of the depressed spirit, she +was glad to-day of the big fire dancing and crackling in Aurora's +chimney-place. + +The upstairs sitting-room, where the ladies generally sat, might look +rather like a day nursery; yet after one had accepted it, with its +chintz of big red flowers and green foliage, its rich strawberry rug and +new gold picture-frames, it did seem to brighten one's mood. How think +grayly amid that dazzle and glow any more than feel cold before that +fire? + +Leslie held her hands to the blaze, and with an amiable display of +interest inquired of their affairs, the progress made in "getting +settled." There was still a good deal to do of a minor sort. + +Accounts were given her in a merry duet; purchases were shown; she was +told all that had happened since they last saw her, who had called, whom +they had been to see. + +Casting about in her mind for further things to communicate, Aurora was +reminded of a small grievance. + +"I thought your friend Mr. Fane was going to come and take us +sight-seeing," she said. + +"Was it so arranged?" + +"So I supposed." + +"And he hasn't been?" + +"Hide nor hair of him have we seen." + +"I meant, hasn't he perhaps called while you were out?" + +"He hasn't." + +"Strange. It's not like him to be rude. But, then, he's not like himself +these days. You must excuse him." + +"What's the matter with him? Isn't he well?" + +"He's not ill in the usual sense. If he were, we should make him have a +doctor and hope to see him cured. It's worse than an illness. He is +blue--chronically blue." + +"Why?" + +"Oh, he has reasons. But the same reasons, of course, would not have +made a person of a different temperament change as he has changed." + +"I don't suppose you want to tell us what the reasons are?" Very +tentatively this was said. + +"Why ... ordinarily one would not feel free to do so, but you are sure +to hear about it before you have been here long. In Florence, you know, +everybody knows everything about everybody else. Not always the truth, +but in any case an interesting version. Oh, it behooves one to be +careful in Florence if one doesn't wish one's affairs known and talked +about. But in the case of Gerald there was nothing secret. Everybody +knows him, everybody knew when he was engaged to Violet Van Zandt, +everybody knows that she married some one else." + +"Oh, the poor boy!" + +"It's very simple, you see, commonplace as possible. But it's like the +old story of the poem: an old story, yet forever new. And the one to +whom it happens has his heart broken, one way or the other." + +"And she married some one else?" + +Both Aurora and Estelle were craning toward the speaker in a curiosity +full of sympathy. + +Leslie was used to seeing them hang on her lips. "I do love to hear you +talk!" Aurora candidly said. "It doesn't make any difference whether I +know what you're talking about, it fascinates me, the way you say +things!" And the compliment disposed Leslie to talk to them no otherwise +than she talked with Lady Linbrook or Countess Costetti, leaving them to +grasp or not her allusions and fine shades. She was by a number of years +the youngest of the three drawn up to the fire; yet some advantage of +fluency, collectedness, habit of good society--a neat effect altogether +of authority, made her seem in a way the oldest. + +"Violet," she began, like a grown person willing to indulge children +with a story, "is Madame Balm de Brézé's sister. You saw Madame de Brézé +that Friday evening at our house. Violet is very like her, only much +younger and a blonde. Amabel is--let us call things by their names in +the seclusion of this snug fireside--Amabel is scrawny; Violet was +ethereal. Amabel is sharp-featured; Violet's face was delicate and +clear-cut. I say _was_, because she has grown much stouter. We have +known them since they first came to Florence, and have been friends +without being passionately attached. They are Americans, but had lived +in Paris since Violet was a baby. They came here, orphans, because it is +cheaper. They used to live on the top floor of a stony old palace in Via +de' Servi, where they painted fans on silk, sending them to a firm in +Paris. Amabel did them exquisitely: shepherds and shepherdesses, corners +of old gardens, Cupids--Watteau effects, veritable miniature work. The +little sister was beginning to do them well, too; she painted only +flowers. Amabel had no objection to Violet marrying Gerald. He was as +far as possible from being a good match, but in those days both Amabel +and Violet seemed to live in an atmosphere that excluded the +consideration of things from a vulgar material point of view. Violet and +Gerald were alike in that, and so very much alike in their superfine +tastes and ways of thinking. _Nous autres_ who live upon this earth +wondered how they would keep the pot boiling in case of 'that not remote +contingent, _la famille_.' Gerald has an income simply tiny. You +would hardly believe how small. We supposed that now he would paint a +little more than he ever has done with the idea of pleasing the general +public and securing patronage. They were so much in love, anyhow, and +made such an interesting pair, that one's old romantic feelings were +gratified by seeing them together. They were to wait until she was +twenty-one, when a crumb of money in trust for her would fall due. Then +Amabel surprises us all by marrying De Brézé. Violet of course lives +with them, and with them goes to Paris. And in Paris she becomes Madame +Pfaffenheim. _Tout bonnement!_" + +"Oh, the wretch, the bad-hearted minx!" + +"No," said Leslie, reflectively. She turned from the warmth of the fire +and let her eyes rest on the gray sky seen in wide patches through the +three great windows, arched at the top and blocked at the bottom by +wrought-iron guards, that admitted into the red and green room such very +floods of light--"no," Leslie repeated. "One is the sort of person one +is. The sin is to pretend. I don't believe Violet knew the sort of +person she was until it came to the test. She thought, very likely, that +she was all composed of poetry and fine sentiments and eternal love. She +wasn't; and there it is. When she had the chance actually to choose, she +preferred money, a fine establishment, luxury, and she took them. How +ghastly if, with that nature concealed in her behind the pearl and pale +roses, she had married poor Gerald! It's much better as it is, don't you +agree with me? I call him fortunate beyond words." + +"Well, of course; that's one way of looking at it." + +"It's his way. Gerald knows just how fortunate he has been, and it's +exactly that which makes him so miserable. At first, you understand, he +could lay the entire blame on the De Brézés; he was sure they had in +some mysterious way constrained her, and though he was angrily, +tragically, suicidally wretched, it was one kind of woe--a clean, +classic woe, I will call it. He believed it shared by her in the secret +of her uncongenial conjugal life. '_Ich grolle nicht_,' he could +say, and all that. But a year or two ago she came to Florence with +Pfaffenheim on a visit to her sister. I don't know how Gerald felt, +whether he tried to avoid her or tried to see her. That he saw her, +however, is certain. She is perfectly happy, my dears, in her marriage! +And that she should love Pfaffenheim, or be proud of him, is +inconceivable. So her happiness rests entirely upon the fact of her +riches and worldly consequence." + +"Say what you please, I call her a nasty, mean thing!" exclaimed Aurora. + +Leslie shrugged her shoulders, as if saying: "Have it your way; but a +more philosophical view is possible." + +"She was looking very beautiful," she went on. "Much more beautiful than +before, but in such a different way! From diaphanous she has become +opaque; from airy, solid. She brought a most wonderful wardrobe, and, +kept in the background with her husband, two fat babies." + +"I should think she would have been ashamed to come back here." + +"Oh, no; not Violet. She was enchanted to show herself in her glory to +those who remembered her in the modest plumage of her girlhood. Florence +did not really like it, because she affected toward Florence the +attitude of one who comes to it from places immeasurably grander. You +would have thought Florence an amusing little hole where she long ago, +by some accident, had spent a month or two. She found us quaint, +provincial, old-fashioned. She was witty about us. She criticized us +with a freedom and publicity that made her funnier to us than we were +funny to her. It was not an endearing thing to do or a very intelligent +one. It was, in fact, rather antipathetic." + +"Antip--I call it the actions of a _bug!_" + +"You can see how it all left Gerald. The Violet he cared for was +obviously no more. Worse than that, she had probably never been. +Comforting knowledge, isn't it, that for years you have treasured +memories that had no reality to start from; that you have suffered +agonies of love without any real object. Nauseous! Intolerable! A +tragedy that is shown to have been all along a farce! To a man of +imagination, to a person as sincere as Gerald, you can see what it would +mean. You can see what it would leave behind it." + +"I should think he would just despise her, and shake it off, and forget +her as she deserves." + +"Your simple device, dear Aurora, is the one he adopted. But to have an +empty hollow where your beautiful hoard of pure gold was stored is a +thing it takes time to grow used to. He is not an unhappy lover now, +certainly; but he is a man who has been robbed, and he has fallen into +the habit of low spirits. It is a thousand pities his poor mother and +sister could not have been spared to make a home for him. Being too much +alone is bad for any one. He shuts himself in with his blues, and they +are growing more and more confirmed. Love is a curious thing." Leslie +said the latter separately and after a pause, as if from a particular +case she had been led to reviewing the whole subject. "It complicates +life so," she added, and rose to go. + +They teased her to remain and lunch with them. But Leslie was suddenly +more tired at the contemplation of life than she had been when she came. +The total result of her call had not been to cheer her, for by an +uncomfortable stirring within, as soon as she had finished, she was made +to repent having talked to outsiders about things so personal, so +private, regarding Gerald--Gerald, who was infinitely reserved. It +seemed a crime against friendship. That somebody else would have been +sure to tell his story did not excuse her. + +Leslie's mood to talk was over for that morning and she went home, but +not before she had been forced to take a bottle of perfume which she had +carelessly picked up off Aurora's toilet-table, sniffed, and praised; +also, lifted out of their vase, a bunch of orchids for her mother; and +for Lily the box of sweets that had stood invitingly open on the +sitting-room table. + + * * * * * + +Next time Aurora saw Gerald--it was on Viale Principe Amedeo--she waved +to him. + +He did not see it. He was just aware of a victoria coming down the +middle of the street he was preparing to cross and of something +fluttering, but that it concerned him he did not suspect. + +Then suddenly the victoria, like a huge Jack-in-the-box, shot up a +figure, and he recognized Mrs. Hawthorne standing at full height in the +moving carriage, and waving both hands, as he must suppose, nobody else +being near,--to him. + +He lifted his hat. He saw her reach for the coachman and by touch make +him aware that she wished to stop. The horses were pulled up. Mrs. +Hawthorne, from the seat into which the jerk had thrown her, made +beckoning signs to him, laughing the while, and calling, "Mr. Fane! Mr. +Fane!" + +He went to stand at the carriage-step. + +"I thought," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "that you were going to come and take +us sight-seeing." + +"I thought I was," said Gerald, with that scant smile of his; "but I was +not so fortunate as to find you at home." + +It was true that he had gone to her door one afternoon, having +previously caught a glimpse of her in the heart of the city, shopping. + +"You mean to say you came?" + +"You did not find my card?" + +"No; but it's all right. This is Miss Madison--Mr. Fane. We are +together. What have you got to do?" + +Gerald looked as if the question had not been quite clear, and he waited +for some amplification of it before he could answer. + +"Have you got anything very important to do? Aren't you lonesome? Don't +you want to jump in and come home with us? Wish you would." + +Gerald smiled again in his remote way, and looked as if he knew, as any +one would know, that this was not meant to be taken seriously. + +"I have just seen a beautiful spectacle," he said, after a vague +head-shake that thanked her shadowily for an unreal invitation. "A game +of _pallone_, which is the nearest to your football that boys have +over here. Beautiful bronzed athletes at exercise, a delightful sight, +statues in motion. I go to see them whenever I can.--The days are +becoming very short, are they not?" + +"Yes. Jump in and come home with us. Tell you what we'll do. I'll go +down into the kitchen and make some soda biscuits that we'll have hot +for supper--with maple syrup. We've had a big box of sugar come." + +Gerald again smiled his civil, but joyless, smile, and after another +vague head-shake that thanked, but eluded the question, he said: "They +are very indigestible; hot bread is not good for the health. At least, +that is what they tell us over here. We keep our bread two days before +eating it, or longer. But I am afraid I am detaining you." + +The horses were jingling their bits, frisking their docked tails. The +driver, checking their restless attempts to start, was giving them +smothered thunder in Italian. Gerald withdrew by a step from the danger +to his shins. + +[Illustration: "I thought," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "that you were going +to come and take us sight-seeing"] + +"Oh, jump in!" said Mrs. Hawthorne for the third time. And because his +choice lay between saying curtly, "Impossible!" and letting the +impatient horses proceed, or else obeying, Gerald, who hated being rude +to women, found himself irresolutely climbing in, just long enough, as +he intended, to explain that he could not and must not go home with them +to the hot biscuits and syrup. + +The little third seat had been let down for him; his knees were snugly +wedged in between those of the ladies. Aurora was beaming over at him; +Estelle was beaming, too. Aurora's smile was a blandishment; Estelle's +was a light. The horses were flying toward the Lungarno. And he gave up; +he helplessly gave up trying to find an excuse for asking to be set down +again and allowed to go his lonely way. + +It might be entertaining, he tried to think, to see what they had done +to the Hermitage. But no! That was very sure to be revolting. If the +evening were to afford entertainment, it must be found in watching this +healthy and unhampered being who, just as certain fishes color the water +around them, seemed to affect the air in such a way that, coming near +enough, you were forced to like her, without ceasing to think her the +most impossible person that had ever found her way into cultivated +society. + +The carriage-wheels crunched gravel; the horses' hoofs rang on the +pavement of a columned portico; the door was opened by a man in blue +livery. + +Entering the wide hall, they faced an ample double staircase, between +the converging flights of which stood, closed, a great stately +white-and-gold door. + +Gerald, as bidden, followed the ladies up the stairs to the cozier +sitting-room, where a fire, they hoped, had been kept up. In the +beginning dimness of an early twilight he first saw the big red flowers +and green, green leaves. He was left a moment alone while the ladies +took off their hats, and he sent his eyes traveling around him, prepared +really for something worse than they found, though the pictures on the +wall called from him the gesture of trying to sweep away an unpleasant +dream. + +Aurora reappeared from her room in a business-like white apron. + +"Now I'm going down to make the biscuit. Oh, no trouble. No trouble at +all. I want them myself. I'm homesick for some food that tastes like +home. Estelle will entertain you while I'm gone. I sha'n't be but a +minute." + +Estelle sat in a low arm-chair close to the fire. + +Gerald, to whom it did not seem cold enough for a fire, took a seat +nearer the windows, whence he could watch the fading sunset-end beyond +garden and street, river and hill. + +He would have cared less, no doubt, to make himself not too dull company +for this stranger, had he known that there, before that fireplace, a few +days before, she had been placed in possession of the most intimate +facts of his humiliating destiny. Unsuspecting, in a mood rather more +amiable than usual, he asked, by way of entering into conversation, +whether she and her friend were not New-Englanders. It established the +sense of a bond, however light, to find that they and he were almost +townsmen. He had been born in Boston, or, at least, near it. His parents +had owned a house in Charlestown, where he had lived till he was ten +years old. They talked for a while of Boston. + +He had heard a singular thing, he said, she might be able to tell him +how true: that in Boston a new medical method had arisen by which the +sick were said to be made well without the help of drugs. Mind cure, he +believed it was called. It seemed very extraordinary, and rather +interesting, if it were not all a fraud or a fable, that persons of the +most prosaic, as these had been described to him, should go about +professing to do for a fee the same thing that saints of old are +recorded to have done through their mysterious powers. The subject had +come into his mind--he went on making conversation--from recently +re-reading a book of George Sand's, _La Petite Fadette_, in which a +cure is performed which seemed to him very similar. If she had not read +the book, she must permit him to bring it for her perusal. He talked +about the book. + +A maid brought in a lighted lamp, and, as is the pleasant custom of the +country, wished them a happy evening. + +Very soon after it came Aurora, with a dab of flour on one cheek, which +the kitchen fire had warmed to a deeper pink. + +"There," she said, "they're all ready for the oven. When we took the +house, all the stove we had was a big stone block thing with little +square holes. The cook fanned them with a turkey-wing. But now we've got +a range. Don't you want me to show you over the house? There'll be just +time before supper." + +"I'm afraid it's all dark," said Estelle. "Let me ring and have them +light up. Think of a city house without gas!" + +"No, they'd be too long. I can take a lamp." + +She went for it to her dressing-room, and came back with one easy to +carry, long in the stem and small in the tank, from which, to make it +brighter, she had lifted off the shade. Gerald reached to take it from +her, but she refused his help. + +"The weight's nothing. I want you to be free to look around. Coming, +Estelle?" + +"I'll join you in a minute." + +They went down the wide stairs side by side. She led through a door, at +the right, as you entered the house, of the main door. + +"Here's one of the parlors. We have four on this floor, between big and +little. Four parlors and a dining-room. Doesn't that seem a good many +for two lone women?" + +The unshaded lamplight showed a crowd of furniture, modern, muffled, +expensive, the lack of simplicity in design of which was further +rendered dreadful to the artist by every device to make it still less +simple, embroidered scarfs thrown over chair-backs, varicolored textiles +depending from the mantel-shelf, drooping over the mirror, down pillows +of every shape and tint piled in sofa-corners. Nothing was left +undecorated. The waste-basket even wore a fat satin bow, like a pet +poodle. Every horizontal surface was encumbered with knick-knacks. + +"This is where we have people come when we don't know them very well," +said Mrs. Hawthorne, hardly concealing her pride. "We couldn't ask the +minister to come right upstairs, as we did you. How do you--" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne," came hurriedly from Gerald, "I beg you will not ask me +how I like it! It is a peculiarity like--like not liking oysters. I +can't bear to be asked how I like things." + +"How funny! But, then, you're different from other people, aren't you? +That's what makes you so interesting." + +She preceded him into the next room, which was not so bad as the first +for the reason that, as she explained, "they hadn't yet finished with +it." He seized the occasion almost eagerly to praise the chairs. + +"We found them here when we came," she informed him. "There was a good +lot of furniture of this big, bare sort; clumsy, I call it. We stored +some of it in the top rooms, but Leslie Foss begged me so to let these +stay that we just had the seats covered over with this new stuff and +left them." + +When she opened the next door and stepped into the space beyond it +seemed as if her lamp had dwindled to a taper, the room was so vast. It +had nine great windows, five in an unbroken row on the front of the +house the entire width of which it occupied. Aurora's light was faintly +reflected in a polished floor; it twinkled in the myriad motionless +drops of two great crystal chandeliers. + +"Ah," exclaimed Gerald in a long sigh. "This is superb!" + +"Yes," she said, "but you might as well try to furnish all outdoors. You +see that we haven't done anything beyond putting up curtains. We never +use it. All those chairs along the walls are going to be regilded when +we can get them to come and fetch them. Things move awfully slowly over +here, don't they, even if you're willing to pay." + +"What a ball-room!" + +"Yes. Wish we could give a ball; but we only know about a dozen people. +We've got to wait till we know enough at least for two sets of a +quadrille." + +She was moving across the wide floor, holding her torch-like lamp high +the better to illumine the great pale, silent emptiness. No longer +hearing his footsteps echoing behind hers, she looked over her shoulder; +whereupon he hurriedly joined her, without explaining why he had lagged. + +"This," she said, as turning to the left they passed from the ball-room +into a small oval room the domed ceiling of which was all tenderly +bepainted with Cupids and garlands--"this is almost my favorite." + +She set down her lamp on a table of rose-tinged marble, and dropped for +a minute on to a little rococo settee. + +"The things in here we found just as you see them." + +"So I imagined." + +"All but the ornaments on the mantel." + +"Very astute in me; I divined that, too." + +"We liked it, so we left it. Pretty, ain't it? Oh, beg pardon!" She +blushed and looked at him sidelong, laughing. "That was a bad break! +That came mighty near to being the forbidden question how you like it. +All the same, it is pretty, _is it not_?" + +"Extremely. Extremely pretty." + +"There are going to be some tapestries presently. Oh, don't be afraid! +Not those old worsted things full of maggots, but beautiful new ones, +painted by hand, all in these same delicate colors. A story in four +scenes, one for each panel. The 'Fountain of Love' is the subject. It +sounds to me like something Biblical, Sunday-schoolish, but Mr. Hunt +says, no, _it is not_." + +"Mr. Hunt--" + +"The nephew, Charlie. You know him, don't you? He's getting them done +for me. He's a great friend of mine. He's helped me a lot to buy +things." + +"Did he help you to buy the pictures?" + +"Yes. He knows the dealers, and gets them to make fair prices. I think +it perfectly wonderful how cheap everything is over here. He helped me +to buy these, too." She lifted the chain of pink corals, graduated from +the size of a pea to that of a hazelnut, which with their delicate +living color brightened her winter dress. "I can't say, though," she +dropped, "that I found these particularly cheap. Hush!" she broke off. +"It's Hat! Quick!" she whispered, "let's get behind the door and say +'Boo!' as she comes in." + +Amazingly, incredibly to him, this grown woman appeared about to +ensconce herself. + +"But won't it make her jump?" he asked, supposing it to be Miss Madison +for whom the little surprise was intended. + +"Of course it'll make her jump. No matter how often I do it, she jumps. +That's the fun." + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, please!" he begged nervously. "As a very special favor +to me, don't! It would make me jump, too--horribly." + +She stood listening while the footsteps turned away and faded +fruitlessly. With a look of disappointment, as at opportunity missed, +she took up her lamp and moved on. + +"And here," she said, leaving the oval room by the door opposite to the +one they had come through, "is the dining-room. Which takes us back to +the hall and completes the circle." + +This room, of a fine new Pompeian red, was lighted. The table was set; a +butler busied himself at the sideboard. Gerald's eye was caught by the +brightness of a china basket piled high with sumptuous fruit, and +similarly caught the next moment by the pattern of the curtains, in +which the same rampant red lion was innumerably repeated on a ground of +wide-meshed lace. + +"Wouldn't it be a lovely house to give a party in?" she asked him. +"Isn't it exactly right to give a party in? There are two big spare +chambers upstairs at the back that would do, one for gentlemen, one for +ladies, to lay off their things in. No use; we shall have to give a +party." + +Having returned upstairs, he was without any false delicacy shown her +bedroom and her friend's bedroom and their dressing-rooms, as well as +given a peep into the two spare rooms, as yet incompletely furnished, +that he might get an idea how beautiful these were going to be when +finally industry and good taste had been brought to bear on them. + + * * * * * + +At dinner, which Mrs. Hawthorne seemed to have a fixed preference for +calling supper, it was Gerald who did most of the talking. The ladies +abandoned the lead to him, and listened with flattering attention while +he called into use his not too sadly rusted social gifts. He related +what he knew about the Indian Prince whose monument at the far end of +the Cascine had roused their interest. He explained the Misericordia. He +asked if they had noticed the wonderful figures of babies over the +colonnade of the Foundling Hospital, and told them how the "infantile +asylum," as he rendered it, was managed. He tried to amuse them by the +episodes from which certain streets in Florence have derived their +names, Street of the Dead Woman, Street of the Dissatisfied, Burg of the +Blithe. + +Whenever he stopped there was silence, which he hastened again to break. + +"You talk like Leslie," suddenly remarked Mrs. Hawthorne. + +But now came the hot biscuits and the syrup, borne in by the mystified +butler at the same time as the more conventional dessert prepared by the +cook. + +Aurora smiled at the biscuits' beautiful brown and, having broken one to +test its lightness, nodded in self-approval. + +"They're all right. Now you want to put on lots of butter," she said. +"Here, that's not near enough," she reproved him. She reached over, took +his biscuit, buttered it as she thought it should be buttered, and +returned it to his plate; then, while eating, watched him eat with eyes +that expressed her simple love of feeding up any one, man or animal, so +lean as he. + +There had been shining in Aurora's eyes all this evening, when they +rested on him, a look of great kindness, the consequence of knowing how +badly life had treated him, and desiring that compensation should be +made. He could not fail to feel that warm ray playing over his bleak +surface. He could not but think what nice eyes Mrs. Hawthorne had. + +When he asked her if she knew how to make many other such delicious +things it became her turn to talk. Estelle here joined in, and they +exalted the fare of home, affecting the fiction of having found nothing +but frogs' legs, cocks' combs, and snails to feed upon since they struck +Italy. Blueberry-pie--did Mr. Fane remember it? Fried oysters! Buckwheat +cakes! + +He said he remembered, but did not confess to any great emotion. + +"You wait till Thursday," said Aurora. "It's Thanksgiving. We're going +to have chicken-pie, roast turkey, mince-pie, squash-pie, everything but +cranberry sauce. We can't get the cranberries. Will you come?" + +In haste and confusion he said, alas! it would be impossible, wholly +impossible, intimating that he was a man of a thousand engagements and +occupations. + +But after an interval, and talk of other things, he inquired, with an +effect of enormous discretion, whether he might without too great +impertinence ask who was coming to eat that wonderful Thanksgiving +dinner which her own hands, he must suppose, would largely have to +prepare. + +"Just the Fosses. All the Fosses." + +"Ah, Mr. Foss will feel agreeably like the great Turk." + +"You mean he'll be the only man? I guess he can stand it. We thought of +asking Charlie Hunt, too, but he's English and would seem an outsider at +this particular gathering. Wish you'd come. You're such a friend of +theirs. Come on, come!" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, you are so very unusually kind. If you would leave it +open, and then when the day arrives, if I should find I could do so +without--without--" + +"Oh, yes. Come if you can. And be sure, now, you come!" + +They were still sitting at the table--dinner had been retarded by the +circumstantial round of the house--when music resounding through the +echoing rooms stopped the talk. + +It was the piano across the hall that had been briskly and powerfully +attacked. The "Royal March" of Italy was played, first baldly, then with +manifold clinging and wreathing variations. + +Aurora signed to the servant to open the dining-room door. All three at +the table sat in silence till the end of the piece. + +Gerald wondered what the evening caller could be who made the moments of +waiting light to himself in this fanciful manner. + +"It's Italo," said Mrs. Hawthorne, rising. "I call him Italo because I +never can remember his other name. Come, let's go into the parlor." + +It was all rosily lighted. Candles set on the piano at each side of the +music-rest enkindled glossy high lights on the nose-bump and forehead +bosses of Signor Ceccherelli, who at Mrs. Hawthorne's appearance sprang +up to salute. She reached him her hand, over which he deeply bowed. + +"You're to play all those lovely things I'm so fond of," she directed +him. "'The Swallow and the Prisoner,' 'The Butterflies,' 'The Cascade of +Pearls.' And don't forget the 'Souvenir of Saint Helena.' Then the one +of the soldiers marching off and the soldiers coming home again. All our +favorites. Mr. Fane-- Are you acquainted with each other? Italo--you'll +have to tell him your name yourself. All I can think of is +Checkerberry." + +"Yes, yes, we are acquainted," said Gerald, hurriedly. "We have seen +each other many times. _Come sta?_" + +"Oh, he can speak English." + +"A leetle," Ceccherelli modestly admitted. + +"He understands everything I say. We have great conversations. He comes +every evening when he isn't engaged to play somewhere else." + +She went to sit on the gorgeous brocade sofa, arranging herself amid the +multitude of cushions so as to listen long and happily. Estelle +preferring a straight-backed chair, Gerald took the other corner of +Aurora's sofa. Immediately Ceccherelli opened with "Souvenir de +Sainte-Hélène." Aurora, respectful to the artist, talked in a whisper. + +"He's so talented! You simply couldn't count the pieces he can play. We +do enjoy it so! We haven't anything in particular to do evenings if no +one calls. We don't often go out. We haven't been here long enough to +know many people. And aside from his magnificent playing, the little man +is such good company! We do have fun! There, I mustn't talk, I'm keeping +you from listening." + +Gerald settled back, too, as if to listen, but to do the contrary was +his fixed purpose, even though the pianist, at last appreciated, put +into his playing so much feeling and force. Gerald's eyes went wandering +among the clutter of bric-à-brac, from a green bronze lizard to a mosaic +picture of Roman peasants, from a leaning tower of Pisa to a Sorrento +box. Then they rose to the paintings. He closed them. + +The music was describing a hero's death-bed, besieged by dreams of +battle, at moments so noisy that Gerald had to open his eyes again for a +look of curiosity at the person who could produce so much sound. As he +watched him and his nose, like the magnified beak of a hen,--the nose of +a man who loves to talk,--he tried a little to imagine those merry +evenings spoken of by Aurora. The fellow looked almost ludicrously +solemn at this moment. He took himself and his art right seriously, +there could be no doubt of it. His face was a map of the emotions +expressed by the music, and wore, besides, according to his conception +of the part, the look of a great man unacclaimed by his own generation. + +_Dio!_ what an ugly little man! + +Gerald closed his eyes again. + +The last cannon was fired over the hero's grave, the music stopped. The +ladies applauded. Gerald, smiling sickly, clapped his hands, too, +without, it might have been observed, making any noise to speak of. +Estelle went to the piano to compliment the player more articulately, +and loitered there, practising her French while he perfected himself in +English, by mutual aid. + +"Italo," Mrs. Hawthorne interrupted them, "play that lovely thing of +your own now--you know, the one we're so crazy about, that by and by +turns into a waltz." + +Without laying upon the ladies the tiresome necessity of pressing him, +the composer plunged into this masterpiece, and Gerald sat back again, +wondering what the little man thought of hearing himself called Italo by +the fair _forestiera_. He was dimly troubled, knowing that there is +no hope of an Italian ever really understanding the ways of being and +doing of American women, and especially an Italian of that class. But +then it would be equally difficult to make this American woman +understand just how the Italian might misunderstand her. + +He permitted himself a direct look at her, where she rested among the +cushions, with eyes closed again and a smile diffused all over her face; +her whole person, indeed, permeated with the essence of a smile. +Extraordinary that, loving music so much, one could so much love such +music. + +She surprised him by opening her eyes and whispering: + +"Don't you want to smoke?" showing that for a moment at least she had +not been thinking of music. "You can, if you want to. Here, we've got +some. Don't go and think, now, that Estelle and I have taken to smoking. +Heavens above! We sent out for them the other night when Charlie Hunt +was here." + +She reached across the table near her and handed him a box of +cigarettes. + +He was very glad to light one. To smoke is soothing, and he felt the +need of it. Added to his vague distress at the spectacle of such +familiarity from these ladies to that impossible little Italian, a +ferment of resentment was disquieting him apropos of Hunt--those works +of art of which Hunt had facilitated the purchase. + +Hunt, of a truth, ever since the first mention of him that evening had +been like a fish bone in Gerald's throat. + +He checked his thoughts, recognizing that it is not sane or safe to +permit oneself to interpret the conduct of a person whom one does not +like. The chances of being misled are too great. He uprooted a suspicion +dishonoring to both. + +Let it be taken for assured, then, that Hunt had in this case no +interest to forward beyond his love for making himself important. After +all, if the ladies liked bad pictures!... Yet it was a shame that he +should frequent their house, be accepted as their friend, invited by +them, made much of in their innocent and generous way, then should make +fun of them. Permissible, if you choose, to make fun of funny people, +but you must not at the same time make use of their kindness. A precept +for the perfect gentleman, in Florence or elsewhere: You can make fun of +persons, or you can cultivate their friendship, but not both things at +once. And Gerald, without proof, felt certain that Charlie Hunt spread +good stories about Aurora. + +Mrs. Innes, his mother's old friend, meeting him at Vieusseux's +reading-room a few days before, had detained him for a chat, and in the +course of it asked him if he knew this Mrs. Hawthorne of whom the Fosses +appeared so fond. An amusing type, she must be. Seeing that statue of +the she-wolf and little Romulus and Remus at the foot of Vial de' Colli, +it seemed she had asked what it meant, and said she didn't believe it. + +It indefinably hurt him, incommoded some nerve of envenomed +sensitiveness--yes, annoyed him like sand in his salad, to think of his +country-woman, with the good faith of a dog in her face, so quoted as to +make her ridiculous by a fellow wanting in human vitals, like Hunt. + +He would have liked, had it been possible, to ask a few frank questions +of Mrs. Hawthorne, and find out more certainly what he should think. He +would have liked to warn her against trusting her enormous ignorance to +one who would have so little good-humor and protectiveness toward that +baby-eyed giant-child. Really, instinct ought to teach her better whom +to make her confident as respected that grave affair. + +Singularly, when next the music stopped, Mrs. Hawthorne, after she with +true politeness had taken the box of cigarettes to the other of her +guests, spoke of Hunt. Perhaps her thoughts, too, had gone straying, and +mysteriously encountered some straying thought of his. + +"Charlie Hunt," she said, "is coming on Sunday morning to take us to the +picture-galleries. We're going to play hooky from church. His work, +don't you see, keeps him at the bank on week days till everything of +that sort is closed." + +"Mrs. Hawthorne," cried Gerald and sat up in unaffected indignation, +while mustache, beard, hair, everything about him appeared to bristle, +"I thought _I_ had been engaged to take you sight-seeing! I thought +it was to be _my_ honor and privilege. Mrs. Hawthorne, my dear +friend, if you do not wish deeply to hurt me, deeply to hurt me, you +will write to Mr. Hunt at once, this evening, and I will post the +letter, that you have thought better of that immoral plan for Sunday +morning, and are going to church like a good Christian woman. And +to-morrow, Mrs. Hawthorne, at whatever time will be convenient for you, +I will come and take you to the Uffizi." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +And so because, in his uncalled-for chivalry, he had made himself guide +to a lady in a ball-room, Gerald, one thing leading to another, was once +more committed to serving as a guide in Florence. + +He had filled the part so often, at the appeal of one good friend and +another, that he had sworn never again to be caught, cajoled, or hired. +He could have hated the Ghiberti doors had such a thing not been +impossible. He did rather hate the Santissima Annunziata. And now it was +all to do over again. + +It might be adduced, as a mitigation of his misfortune, that this was +different. + +This was sometimes very different. + +A singular thing about acquaintance with Mrs. Hawthorne was that it had +in a sense no beginning. One started fairly in the middle. No sooner did +one meet her than one seemed to have known her long and know her well. +Most people found this so. One therefore readily slid into speaking +one's mind to Mrs. Hawthorne, dispensing with the formal affectation of +a perfect respect for her every act and opinion, secure in the +recognition that anger, sulkiness, the self-love that easily takes +umbrage, were as far from her breezy sturdiness as the scrupulosities of +an anxious refinement. + +That one could say what one pleased to Mrs. Hawthorne put more life into +intercourse with her, naturally, than there would have been if, with her +limitations, one had been forced to be entirely and tamely circumspect. + +"Mrs. Hawthorne," cried Gerald, "do me the very real favor, will you, +like a dear good woman, of not calling the most venerable of the +primitives Simma Bewey!" + +It was astonishing what things Gerald Fane could say without losing his +effect of a complete, even considerate politeness. + +"But that's the way it's written," said Mrs. Hawthorne. + +"You will pardon the liberty I take of contradicting you; it is not. It +gives me goose-flesh. Cimabue!" + +"Very well. I'll try to remember. But it doesn't matter what I call him; +his Madonna is no beauty. Do you mean to tell me there was a time when +people admired faces like that? She gives me a pain." + +"That is not the point; her beauty is not the point. Besides, she is +beautiful." + +"Oh, very well. If you'd like to have me look like her, I can." + +She tipped her head to one side, lengthened her jaw, pointed her hand, +and by a knack she had for mimicry made herself vaguely resemble the +large-eyed, small-mouthed, pale and serious Lady of Heaven before whose +portrait by the old master this dialogue took place. + +"It is really a very poor joke, Mrs. Hawthorne," Gerald said, with mouth +distorted by the conflict between laughter and disgust. "To travesty a +dignified and sacred thing is a very poor pastime. Of course I laugh. +Miss Madison laughs, and I laugh. I think very poorly of it, all the +same. You would do much better to frame your mind to an attitude of +respect and try to understand. I can't say, though, that I think it +unnatural you should not at first appreciate the earliest old masters. +We will go to look at something more obvious." + +"Wait a moment. These fascinate me, they're so queer and so awful. I +tell you those old codgers of the time you say these belong to had +strong nerves and stomachs. All these wounds and dripping blood and +hollow ribs and criminals being boiled in caldrons, and having their +heads cut off and arrows shot into them!... I guess you're right; we'd +better move on to something more cheerful." + +Miss Madison was never guilty of the foolishness that fell from Mrs. +Hawthorne's gross and unconcerned ignorance. Miss Madison took modesty +and tact with her, as well as keenness of eye, when she went to +picture-galleries and museums. But this, strange to say, did not make +her the more acceptable companion of the two to their guide. What Miss +Madison did never seemed so important as what her larger, weightier +friend did. The one personality to a singular extent eclipsed the other, +who was accustomed to this to the point of not feeling it. A laughing +lack of conceit in both women marvelously simplified their relation. + +Gerald, in choosing pictures for their enjoyment, avoided with a +conscientiousness of very special brand to halt with them before +paintings fit to please their unpracticed eyes but which he did not +think worthy of admiration. He likewise passed Venuses, Eves, Truths, +all nudities, without remark or pause, acquainted of old with the +simple-minded prudery of certain Americans, and not disrespectful to it. + +"Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, "to be ignorant is no sin. One may have been +doing beautiful, gracious, useful and merciful things while others were +cultivating the arts and sciences. But ignorance on any subject is not +in itself beautiful or desirable. One should therefore not be complacent +in it, proud of it. With a little humility, Mrs. Hawthorne, what can one +not hope to accomplish? Now, please, Mrs. Hawthorne, drop all +preconception, and use your eyes. Look at that angel." + +"Do you mean to tell me I could live long enough to think that angel +beautiful? With those Chinese eyes?... Give it up, my friend, why do you +want to bother?" + +"Because, Mrs. Hawthorne, you have essentially a good brain. You are at +the back of all a very intelligent woman--" + +"Go 'way with you! You know that if you feed me taffy enough you can +make me see and say anything you want." + +"--a very intelligent woman. And I am so constituted that I simply +cannot go on living in the same world with a really intelligent +woman--my friend, besides--who does not see the difference between +Raphael and Guido Reni, and likes one exactly as well as the other. I +ache to change it!" + +"Go ahead. We don't want you to die. But I'm afraid it'll take surgery. +You'll have to drill a hole in my thick head to get the things you mean +into that good brain so full of real intelligence." + +"If you wouldn't be flippant!" + +"What's that?" + +"If you would bring reverence to the study of things done by great +people, and that people of great taste and learning have collected for +our joy and improvement!" + +"See here! Don't you want me to have a little fun while we do Florence? +I don't see how I can stand it, if we're to be solemn as those old +saints with mouldy green complexions." + +"We're not to be solemn. I have done these galleries solemnly times +enough, Heaven knows. But we're to be attentive, respectful, of an open +and receptive mind. We're not to say outrageous things in the mere +desire to shock our guide, or tease him." + +"You don't mean to say you think that I--?" + +"It's not funny." + +"It mayn't be funny--but it's fun! Go on and lecture. You haven't got a +bit of fun in you." + +"Yes, I have!" said Gerald, and with a creeping smile--grudging at +first, then brighter--looked Mrs. Hawthorne in the eye, while such fun +as lived in him traveled over the bridge of their glances, and she was +permitted to get a glimpse of his underlying relish. + +"All I ask of you, Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, finally, "is that you will +not let your innocence on these subjects appear when you are with +others. I don't say pretend. Just keep still, be silent! It does not +matter when you are with me. When you are with me I beg of you to be +yourself. But with others.... You would become the talk of the town, +and--" he shuddered, "I should most horribly hate it!" + + * * * * * + +"Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, with a quiver of annoyance in his voice a few +days later, "did I not implore you not to let it be known in Florence +how you are affected by the proudest treasures of her world-famous +collections?" + +"Yes, you told me. But I didn't promise." + +"And now I am asked--with laughter and mockery--whether I have seen Mrs. +Hawthorne giving an imitation of a Madonna by Simma Bewey, and heard +Mrs. Hawthorne on the subject of G. Ottow and Others." + +"Didn't you say--with laughter? Well, then, it's all right. Don't you +care. I just got to training and did it to make them a little sport. +Didn't they tell you about my Native of Italy eating Macaroni?" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, you are just a bad big school-girl--a bad big +school-girl--" + +"'Hark, from the tomb!'" said Mrs. Hawthorne, in lieu of anything more +scintillating. + +"A bad big school-girl, and I will have nothing more to do with you. If +you delight in being the talk of the town, all you have to do is allow +your friend Mr. Hunt in his spare hours to take you to see such things +as I have not yet had the honor of showing you." + +"Blessed if I--Look here, you aren't mad in earnest? Sooner'n lose you, +I won't say another word. There! I've been Tchee-mah-boo-eh's Madonna +for the last time. Don't be cross with little T. T.--Talk of the Town!" + +"If you had any discrimination, any reticence ..." + +"No reticence? Does that mean can't keep anything to myself? You don't +know me!" + +"You even tell your age." + +"You aren't going to find fault with me for _that_?" + +"Yes. At your age one should know better. It is part of your general and +too great frankness." + +They upon occasions came near quarreling, but not seriously, her +disposition to quarrel was so small. Yet, two could not be outspoken and +one of them irritable, and those rocks never even be grazed. + +She unwarily enlarged to him one day upon her disappointment in +Florence. By this time, she said, she was growing used to it, she didn't +notice so much the things she didn't like. But at first, with her +expectation high, her imagination inflamed by the Judge's and Antonia's +eloquence, the narrow streets, in some of them no sidewalks even, the +gloomy bars at the windows, the muddy river with the dirty old houses +huddled on the bank, the stuffy churches with the average height of the +Italian populace marked on the pillars by a dubious grindy brown tint, +the dreadful beggars, the black fingernails, the smells.... + +"Mrs. Hawthorne!" came from Gerald, who with difficulty had let her go +on thus far, "those were all you noticed, were they? In the most +wonderful city in the whole world, those are all you find to talk about! +The narrow streets, the beggars, the smells. Mrs. Hawthorne--" he nearly +trembled with the effort to keep calm, "this is obviously not the place +for you. You should have gone to ... to Switzerland! Instead of a +sunburned hill-side, with sober silver olives and solemn black +cypresses, and a pair of beautiful calm white oxen plowing, you would +have seen a nice grass-green pasture, at the foot of blinding peaks, cut +by an arsenic-green stream, on whose bank a red and white cow feeding! +Then among the habitations all would have been well-regulated, the +churches swept, perhaps even ventilated, the people washed, clean +aprons, clean caps, no beggars, no disorder, no crimes. And there would +have been no disturbing manifestations of genius, either; no troublesome +masterpieces or other evidences of a little fire in the blood. It would +have suited you perfectly." + +"I guess you mean that to be cutting, don't you?" + +"Let me try to tell you how much I liked New York, when I went back +there some years ago after an absence of ten or eleven years. I had some +idea, you know, of perhaps returning to live in America. Well, I +shivered. I shut my eyes. I held my ears. I fled. I remained just the +time I was forced to by the affairs of my poor mother and, as I tell +you, I fled!" + +"Why, what's the matter with New York?" + +"I will tell you what is the matter with New York, with Boston, with all +the places in America that I have seen again since I was grown up--" + +"No! Stop! Don't say anything against America. It's the one way to make +me mad.--I didn't know you felt the same way about Florence. You aren't +an Italian, are you? It's because we're both alike Americans that we sit +here fighting so chummily." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +Lending her spacious front room for the Christmas bazaar in aid of the +church, and beholding it full of bustle and brightness, was the thing +that brought to the acute stage Mrs. Hawthorne's longing to see her +whole house the scene of some huge good time: she sent out innumerable +invitations to a ball. Mrs. Foss's card was inclosed with hers. It was a +farewell party given for Brenda, whose day of sailing was very near. The +frequent inquiry how Brenda should be crossing the ocean so late in the +year met with the answer that her traveling companions had a brother +whose wedding had been timed thus awkwardly for them. + +On the morning of the day before the ball Gerald came to see Mrs. +Hawthorne. He was still intrusting the servant with his message when +Aurora, leaning over the railing of the hallway above, called down to +him, "Come right upstairs!" + +He was aware of unusual activities all around--workmen, the sound of +hammering, housemaids plying brooms and brushes. Leslie Foss, with her +hat on, looked from the dining-room and said, "Hello, Gerald!" too busy +for anything more. Fräulein seemed to be with her, helping at something. + +The great central white-and-gold door, to-day open, permitted a glimpse, +as he started up the stairs, of a man on a step-ladder fitting tall +wax-candles into one of the great chandeliers. From unseen quarters +floated Estelle's voice, saying, "_Ploo bah! Nong, ploo hoe!_" + +Mrs. Hawthorne met him at the head of the stairs. The slight disorder of +her hair, usually so tidy, pointed to unusual exertions on her part, +also. Her face was flushed with excitement and, to judge by her +wreathing smiles, with happiness. + +"I saw you coming," she greeted him. "_Riverisco! Beata Lei! Mamma +mia!_ And do you know how I saw you? Come here." + +She led the way to the back, where the window-door stood open on to the +roof of the portico, which formed a terrace. + +"See? I've had it glassed in for to-morrow night. We couldn't say we +hadn't plenty of rooms before, and plenty of room in them. That's just +the trouble: there aren't any nooks in this big, square house. So I've +made one. This is Flirtation Alcove. Here a loving couple can come to +cool off after dancing and look up at the stars together. Oh, it's going +to be so pretty! You can't tell anything about it as it looks now; I've +only got these few things in it. But the gardeners are going to bring +all sorts of tall plants and flowers in pots. Just wait till to-morrow +night!" + +"You are very busy, I am afraid, Mrs. Hawthorne. I ought not to take +your time." + +"Can't you sit down a minute?" + +"I have come to ask a favor." + +"I guess I can say it's granted even before you ask." + +"I should like to retract my refusal of your very kind invitation for +to-morrow evening. I have explained to you my weak avoidance of crowds. +I have determined to overcome it in this case, and I want your +permission to bring a friend." + +"That? How can you ask? Bring ten! Bring twenty! Bring as many as you've +got! As for coming yourself, I'm tickled to death that you've +reconsidered." + +"It's not quite as simple as it seems, Mrs. Hawthorne. I shall have to +tell you more." + +At her indication, he took the other half of the little dumpling sofa +which had seemed to her an appropriate piece of furniture for Flirtation +Alcove, and which, with a rug on the floor, formed so far its only +decoration. In the clear, bare morning light of outdoors, which bathed +them, she still looked triumphantly fresh, but he looked tired. + +"It is Lieutenant Giglioli for whom I have come to beg an invitation. +You perhaps know whom I mean." + +"Let me see. I can't tell. Quite a few officers have been introduced, +but I never can get their names." + +"Hasn't Mrs. Foss or Leslie ever spoken of him?" + +"Not so far as I can remember. In what way do you mean?" + +"They evidently have not." He seemed to be given pause by this and need +to gather force from reflection before going on, as he did after a +moment, overcoming his repugnance. "He is the reason for poor Brenda +being packed off to America." + +"Oh, is that it?" + +"He came to see me last evening and spent most of the night talking of +her. We were barely acquainted before; but he knew I am a close friend +of the Fosses, and in that necessity to ease their hearts with talk +which Italians seem to feel he chose me. I felt sorry for him." + +"She's turned him down?" + +"No; she loves him." + +Again Gerald stopped, as after making a communication of great gravity. +Mrs. Hawthorne, listening with breathless interest, made no sound that +urged him to go on. The fact he had announced seemed solemn to both +alike, with the vision floating between them of Brenda's white-rose face +and deer's eyes, the feeling they had in common that Brenda, for +indefinable reasons, was not like ordinary mortals, and that what she +felt was more significant, more important. + +"But he has nothing beside his officer's pay," Gerald went on when the +surprise of his revelation had been allowed time to pass, "and she on +her side has nothing but what her parents might give her, who, you +probably know, have no great abundance. His proposals were made to them, +as is the custom in this country, and have been formally declined." + +He left it to her to appreciate the situation created by this, and, +while thinking on his side, ran the point of the slender cane which he +had not abandoned round and round the same figure of the rug-pattern at +their feet. + +"They are both too poor. I see," said Mrs. Hawthorne; but added quickly, +as if she had not really seen: "It seems sort of funny, though, doesn't +it, to let that keep them, if they're fond of each other?" + +"Oh, it's not that. However fond, they couldn't marry without her +bringing her husband a fixed portion. It is the law in this country, in +the case of officers of the army,--to keep up the dignity of that +impressive body, you understand. In the case of a lieutenant the +_dote_, or dowry, must be forty thousand francs. I learned the +exact sum for the first time last night." + +"How much is that? Let me see,"--Mrs. Hawthorne did mental arithmetic, +rather quickly for a woman,--"eight thousand dollars. And the Fosses +can't give it." + +"Of their ability to give it if they wished to I am no judge. I dare say +they could, though with their son John going before long to hang out his +shingle, as they call it, I doubt if it could be without bleeding +themselves. But they are not convinced that the sacrifice ought to be +made." He frowned at the pattern on the rug, and suddenly cut at it +impatiently with his stick. "It is a singular story, in which everybody +is right and the result wrong, horribly wrong!" + +"Oh, dear me!" sighed Mrs. Hawthorne, feeling with him even before +understanding. + +"I ought perhaps to say," he corrected, "everybody is good and +well-meaning, but has been unwise. And everybody now has to pay." + +"I've thought right along that the Fosses had some reason for not being +very happy," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "and I guessed it was something about +Brenda. But they never said anything, and I didn't try to make out. +Brenda doesn't take to me, somehow, as the others do. I'm not her kind, +of course; but I do adore her from afar. She's so beautiful! She's like +a person in a story-book, who at the end dies, looking at the sunset +over the sea, or else marries the prince." + +"Yes, Brenda is wonderful." + +"I never should take her for an American." + +"She's not like one, and yet she is. She has grown up in this country +and breathed in its ideas and feelings till she even looks Italian. Her +parents are the sort of Americans that fifty years of foreign countries +wouldn't budge; but they began later. Still, it is because Brenda is +American, after all, that cruelties are being committed. Her family have +taken it for granted that one of them couldn't really be in love with an +Italian, least of all that joke, a dapper and decorative Italian officer +that a girl buys at a fixed price for her husband. And Brenda can't say +to them: 'But I am. I am in love with just such a man. The happiness of +my life depends upon your finding the vulgar sum of money with which to +buy him for me.' Because of the American-ness all round, Brenda can't +say that to them, and because she doesn't say it, they are in doubt, +they only half apprehend, they don't understand. The one thing they are +sure of is that to marry a foreigner is a mistake. And the one safe +thing they see to do, when Brenda's face, combined with her entire +reserve toward them, has begun to torment them seriously, is to send her +away where, if the truth be that she mysteriously is 'interested in' an +Italian, the change of scene may help to put him out of her head." + +"So that's why they're sending her home!" + +"There are no better or dearer people in the world, kind, true, just; +but"--Gerald held in, and showed how much he hated to make any sort of +reservation--"in this they have been to blame. They bring growing girls +to Italy, where, such is their confidence in I don't know what quality +supposed to be inherent and to produce immunity from love of Italian +men, they never dream that there might happen to them an Italian +son-in-law." + +He gave her a moment to realize how rash this was; then hurried, as if +wishing to get through as quickly as possible with the disagreeable, if +not disgraceful, task of criticizing his friends and of gossiping: + +"During the progress of the affair Mrs. Foss lets all go on as the +little affairs and flirtations of her own youth were allowed to go on at +home. She likes her daughters to be admired. It is only proper they +should make conquests, have beaus. Leslie has had flirtations with +Italians as well as with others, and come out of them without impairing +that sense of humor which permits her to see as funny that one should +succumb to the attractions of one of those only half-understood men, who +may either be playing a comedy of love while in truth pursuing a +fortune, or, if in earnest, are rather alarming, with the hint of +jealous ferocity in their eyes. With Mrs. Foss's knowledge, Brenda, +during a whole summer at the seaside, receives Giglioli's letters, +written at first, or partly, in English, which he is learning with her +help. With this excuse of English, it is a correspondence and courtship +_dans toutes les règles_. Brenda is not asked by an American mother +to show her letters or his. Giglioli, with his traditions, could not +have imagined such a thing if the parents were unwilling to receive him +as a suitor. Brenda herself--one will never know about Brenda, how it +began, what she thought or hoped. She is very young; no doubt she did +hope. Children seldom know much about their parents' means. She very +likely thought hers could make her the present of a dowry, as they had +made her other presents. But when she discovered their attitude toward +the whole matter, with dignity and delicacy she let all be as they +desired, incapable of pressing them to tax their resources to give her a +thing their prejudice is so strongly set against. They did what they +thought best, and have hung in doubt ever since as to whether it was +best; for though Brenda gives her confidence to none of them, and they +do not press her to give it, with that respect for a child's liberty +which is also American, they are growing more and more uneasy with the +suspicion that it was serious on her part, too. They love her +extraordinarily, and she has always dearly loved them. They show their +love by protecting her youth from a step she may repent. She shows hers +by being strong, poor love, and trying not to grieve them with the +revelation of her heart. And they are making one another wretched." + +For a moment Mrs. Hawthorne had nothing to say, busy with pondering what +she had heard. "I don't see how, if she really loves this Italian, she +could give him up so gracefully," she finally said. + +"She has not given him up, Mrs. Hawthorne," said Gerald. "Believe me, +she has not. She has some plan, some dream, for bringing about the good +end in time without aid from her parents. I am sure of it. No, she has +not given him up." He had before him, vivid in memory, the image of +Brenda in the little church, and was looking at that, though his eyes +were on Mrs. Hawthorne's friendly and attentive face. "She is at the +wonderful hour of her love," he said, "when the world is transfigured +and life lifted above the every-day into regions of poetry; when the +simple fact of his existence justifies the plan of creation, when to +wait a hundred years for him would seem no more difficult than to wait a +day, and to perform the labors of Hercules no more than breaking off so +many roses. She is sure of him, the immortality of his passion, as she +is sure of herself. So they are above circumstances, and nothing that +friend or foe can do should trouble their essential serenity." + +"How wonderful!" breathed Mrs. Hawthorne, after a little silence in +which Gerald had been thinking with a very sickness of sympathy of +Brenda and the sinister propensity of the Fates for bringing to nothing +the most valiant dreams and hopes; and Mrs. Hawthorne had been thinking +entirely of Gerald, whose own heart was so much more certainly revealed +by what he said than could be anybody else's. + +"Unfortunately,"--he turned abruptly to another part of his +subject,--"he is not of the same temperament. She has some project, I +imagine, for earning the money for her dowry, poor child, by music, +singing, painting. But he does not know her vows of fidelity, because +her parents did use their authority so far as gently to request her not +to write to him or see him; and she promised, and a promise with Brenda +is binding. And he has felt his honor involved in not writing or meeting +her. But, though separated, they have been in the same city; they could +hope to catch a glimpse of each other now and then. Heaven only knows +how often he has stood to see her pass, or watched her window, and lived +on such things as unhappy lovers find to live on. After all, the faith +that when he dreamed of her she dreamed of him, that as he kissed a +glove she kissed a silver button, was a life, something to go on with. I +dare say, too, he cherished the hope of some miracle,--it is so natural +to hope!... But now they are sending her away, and it seems to him the +black end of everything." + +"I see. And what you want is--" + +"To be driven half a world apart for indefinite periods, more than +probably forever, without one look, one word of leave-taking, is truly +too much. Granted that they are not to have each other, they ought not +to be torn in two like a bleeding body. Let them have to remember a few +last beautiful moments!" + +Mrs. Hawthorne had become pensive. He watched her sidewise, trying to +divine what turn her thoughts were taking. Her prolonged silence made +him uneasy. + +"It wouldn't be wrong, you think?" she asked finally. "Mrs. Foss +wouldn't be cross with us?" + +"If it is wrong, my dear Mrs. Hawthorne, let it be wrong!" he cried +impetuously. "If any one is cross, we will bow our heads meekly--after +having done what we regarded as merciful. Let us not permit a cruelty it +was in our power to prevent!" + +But Mrs. Hawthorne continued to disquiet him by hesitating, while her +face suggested the travels of her thought all around and in and out of +the question under consideration. + +"You don't think it would perhaps be cruel to Brenda?" she laid before +him another difficulty in the way of making up her mind. "Mightn't it +just ruin the evening for her, with the painfulness of good-bys? Or, if +she doesn't in the least expect him, the shock of the surprise?" + +"If I know that beautiful girl, passionate as an Italian under her +American self-control, it will be the blessed shock of an answered +prayer. She prays nightly, never doubt it, that Heaven may manage for +her just such a surprise." + +He was growing afraid of the calm common sense that tried to see the +thing from every side and weight the merits of each person's point of +view. Feeling it intolerable to be refused, he suddenly appealed to her +pity, away from her justice. + +"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, life is so unkind, and to be always wise simply +deadly! A few memories to treasure are all the good we finally have of +our miserable days, and to catch at a moment of gold without care that +it will have to be paid for is the only way to have in our hands in all +our lives anything but copper and lead; yes, dull lead, common copper." +He covered his face and pressed his eyes, in a way he had when the world +seemed too hopeless and baffling; then as suddenly straightened up, +remarking more quietly, "The Fosses are too wise." + +"They have my sympathy, I must say, Mr. Fane," Mrs. Hawthorne hurriedly +defended herself against being moved. "I should be just as much afraid +as they to have my daughter marry a foreigner." + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, you ought to be afraid to have your daughter marry +anybody." He gathered heat again and vehemence. "As regards Italians, we +are all one mass of superstitions. We are always comparing our best with +their bad. As a matter of truth, our best and their best and the best +the world over are one as good as the other, and our worst can't be +exceeded by anything Italy can show. If you make the difficulty that we +are different, our point of view different, I object that Brenda's is +not so different. The international marriages that turn out well make no +noise, but there are plenty of them. I have seen any number in the +ordinary middle classes. No, parents are twice as old as their children; +that is the trouble and always will be. The older people by prudence +secure a certain thing, but it's not the thing youth wanted. The older +see a certain thing as preferable, because they are old; but the young +were right for themselves, for a time, at least, until they, too, grew +old and saw a long peace and comfort as superior to a brief love and +rapture. Brenda is not shallow or changeable; it may be her one chance +of happiness that her parents in their anxious affection are trying to +remove her from, and which she will cling to with every invisible fiber +of her being until she conquers, or turns into a dismal old maid. Brenda +is not like other girls. Love is serious to her. She never played with +it as Leslie has always done, and as American girls do, yes, in +Massachusetts and Virginia alike. She is an earnest, simple, sincere, +constant nature, very much, in fact, like him." + +"You seem to like him. Is he such a fine man really?" + +"I don't know a finer, in his way." + +"Good looking?" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, what a frivolous question! But he is. He is one of the +most completely handsome men I know. Rather short, that's all." + +"Oh, what a pity!" + +"But, if you must insist on that sort of symmetry, Brenda is not tall. +He is a kind of Italian, more common than one thinks, that doesn't get +into literature, having nothing exciting, mysterious, wicked, or even +conspicuously picturesque about him. After being a good son,--they are +very often good sons,--he will be a good husband and a good father, like +his own father before him. He is without vanity, while looking like a +square-built, stocky, responsible Romeo. Devoted to duty, passionate for +order, absolutely punctilious in matters of honor and courtesy, he is a +good citizen, a good soldier. He belongs to excellent people, I +gathered, whose fortune, once larger, is very small. They live in the +Abruzzi, I think he said. He is the eldest son and hope of the house. +His gratitude to them comes first of all, he made me understand. He +would be an _indegno_, unworthy of esteem and love, if that were +not so. He had never cared for pleasures, he told me; even in the time +not demanded by the service he studied. He wished to be useful to his +country; he looked for the advancement to be gained by solid capacity in +military things. He felt older than his years, he said, from being the +eldest of the family and always carrying responsibilities. He committed +no follies of youth, had no quarrels, made no debts. His companions +sometimes laughed at him for this prosaic seriousness. But he had +friends, for he is of a manly, modest sort. One evening during Carnival +last year certain of these friends dropped in on their way to a dance, a +costume party at the house of Americans, and seeing him so absorbed by +duties and studies, thought it a lark to tempt him from these and take +him along. And he, to astonish them for once, he says, let it happen, +they assuring him that he would be well received if presented as their +friend. One of them had on two costumes, one on top of the other, of +which he lent him one, a monk's frock and cowl. So they went. At the +ball was Brenda as the Snow-queen. And the fatal thing happened at very +first sight of her. It is a repetition of _Romeo and Juliet_, as +you see. He had shunned women as the rivals of duty and work. He +believes his instantaneous adoration owing to the fact that Brenda so +far surpassed all he had ever known,--a being entirely formed of light +and snow and fragrance.... I am using his words. Her very name is sweet +to Italian lips. He permitted himself the dreams of other men. He +permitted himself to hope. And then!... These things he told me with +actual tears in the finest dark eyes I have perhaps ever seen, and +without seeming any the less manly for them. He told me, and I believed +him. He came to me, poor fellow, because it was the nearest he could +come to Brenda, and he trusted, I suppose, that I would tell her he had +been. It was a way of sending her a message. He talked more than half +the night, walking the floor, then throwing himself into a chair and +grasping his head. I can't tell you all he said, but it filled me with +pity and respect. It made me his friend." + +Mrs. Hawthorne looked soft and sympathetic, but far away, and when he +stopped did not speak, engrossed, it was to be hoped, by the story just +told. + +He continued, though discouraged: + +"He wanted to know if I thought he would be guilty of an unpardonable +breach should he ask permission to write her one letter before she left. +This parting without farewell is the last bitter touch to his tragedy. +Brenda, when it had been decided that she should leave, sent word to him +by that little pianist who comes here. Again through the same channel he +received word that the day of departure was fixed. Can you think what it +means, Mrs. Hawthorne? Have you in your experience or imagination the +wherewith to form any conception, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, of what it means? +The day of departure fixed! The day of parting! Do you realize? No more +sight or sound of each other! The end! The sea between! Silence! And it +is to befall on Saturday of this week, and we are at Wednesday!" + +"All right, Mr. Fane; bring him!" she said in haste. "You've made me +want to cry. I mustn't let myself cry; it makes my nose red. What did +you say his name is?" + +"Giglioli." + +"Spell it. Gig--no, it's no use. What's the other part of his name?" + +"Manlio." + +"That's a little better. I guess he'll have to be Manlio to me. Bring +him along, whatever happens, and then let's pray hard to have everything +happen right." + + * * * * * + +Not much later on the same day Mrs. Hawthorne's brougham might have been +seen climbing Viale dei Colli, with the lady inside, alone, engaged in +meditation. + +"It would be a pity," she was thinking, as she alighted before Villa +Foss, "that a little matter of eight thousand dollars should stand in +the way of perfect bliss!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +So many forces had been enlisted, into so many hands the white card +given, to make Mrs. Hawthorne's ball a success, that it could hardly +fail to be somewhat splendid. On a platform raised in one corner of the +ball-room sat the little orchestra assembled and conducted by Signor +Ceccherelli, who, from his mien, might have been the creator of these +musicians and originator of all music. + +Charlie Hunt was floor-master, and busy enough. Another might perhaps +have done as much and not appeared so busy. The cotillion especially +gave him a great deal to do. Everybody understood that he had planned +all the figures and bought the favors. Some received an impression that +the ball was entirely managed by him, who was such a very great friend +of the hostess's. Some even carried home an idea that the hostess never +did anything without consulting him, and more often than not besought +him to do it for her. + +This sounds cruder than it actually was. Charlie was looking most +handsome and high-bred. Animation shone from his eyes, his teeth, his +skin, over which he now and then swept a fine white silk handkerchief. +He danced devotedly every minute during which he was not engaged in +making others dance. Mrs. Hawthorne, gazing after him with a benignant +smile, was truly grateful to him for putting into her party so much +"go." It was his atmosphere rather than his words--though he did drop +words, but not many or really in bad taste--that made him appear the one +indispensable person in the house. + +Mrs. Foss stood near the central door with Mrs. Hawthorne, receiving. +She had not omitted from her list one acquaintance in Florence of the +suitable class. Everybody was there; the style of invitation-card sent +had suggested a grand occasion. + +All the persons she had seen at the Fosses on the first Friday evening +at their house Mrs. Hawthorne saw again, and many more. Balm de Brézé, +with a gallantry of old style, bent his black-lacquer mustache over her +glove. The dark Landini pressed her hand with a pinch the warmth of +which pricked her attention, and she found his eyes fixed on her with +more the air of seeing her than is common at a first meeting. + +Suddenly her heart thumped like a school-girl's. Gerald was coming, and +with him an officer who must surely be Manlio. She tried to keep down +her emotion, but the pink of her face deepened, a trembling seized her +smile. + +The Italian was as white as paper, his mustache and brows made spots of +ink on it; his eyes were as deep and still as wells in the night. She +could hardly doubt that his heart was in a tumult, but he spoke without +disaster to his voice, thanking her in a formal phrase. She perceived, +from a distinct advantage over him in height, how faultlessly handsome +he was in a quiet, unmagnetic way. Never had she seen anything to equal +the whiteness of his teeth except her pearls in their black velvet case. + +After having paid his duty to her, he remained for some minutes speaking +with Mrs. Foss, who appeared as kind, while he appeared as calm and +natural, as if time had moved back, and they were still at last spring +and the beginning of his visits. Of all concerned Aurora was the least +collected. + +"I can't help it!" she murmured to Gerald, while the other two were +talking together. "I'm all of a tremble. I feel as if I were Brenda; and +at the same time I feel as if I were him--or he." + +Mrs. Foss turned to them to say she believed everybody had arrived, and +with Giglioli moved away from the door. Gerald asked Mrs. Hawthorne if +they should waltz, but she refused, because she ought to be looking +after the people who were not dancing and seeing that every one had a +good time. She should dance only once that evening, she told him, and it +should be with Mr. Foss, who had promised to dance at her party if she +would promise to dance with him. + +Mr. Foss was seen approaching, and Mrs. Hawthorne smiled and sparkled in +anticipation of the jokes they would exchange on her fairy weight and +his youthful limberness. + +Gerald sent his eyes around the room to see if any one were free whom it +would be a sort of duty to ask to dance. He did not look for pleasure +from dancing, the less so that Charlie Hunt, on the perpetual jump, and +dancing with a perfection almost unmanly, had brought the exercise into +temporary discredit with him. Miss Madison was dancing, Miss Seymour was +dancing, Leslie was dancing, Brenda--his eyes were unable to find. In a +doorway, and not quite as festive in looks as the majority, which gave +to the room the effect of an animated flower-bed, he perceived a figure +in snuff-brown silk, just in front of which, soberly watching the +dancers, was a little girl in a short dress of embroidered white, a blue +hair-ribbon and blue enamel locket. At once dropping his search for a +partner, Gerald went to join this pair, thinking, as he approached, that +Lily without her spectacles was beginning to have a look of Brenda,--a +Brenda with less beauty, but more originality; more--what could one call +it?--geniality, perhaps. + +"Oh, Gerald!"--the little girl caught his hand without ceasing for more +than a second to watch the ball-room floor,--"I have promised to go home +willingly at ten o'clock!" It was spoken in a gentle wail. + +"My child," said Fräulein, "you must begin to prepare, for I fear it +cannot be far from ten." + +"Oh, Fräulein, don't keep talking about it! _Please!_" + +"When you leave this pleasure, Lili, remember, there will be still that +other pleasure of the long ride home in the night and the moonlight." + +"Yes." Lily, glad again, turned wholly to Gerald, the music having +stopped. "Mrs. Hawthorne told mother that if she would let me come I +should be taken home in her own carriage, with all the furs around us +and a hot water-box for our feet, so that we never could catch cold. +Wasn't it sweet of her? And we've both already had ices and cakes, +before anybody else, because she said we must. Don't you think she's +sweet, Gerald?" + +"Sweet as honey," he said. + +"Oh, Gerald,"--Lily's tone was fairly lamentable,--"have you seen the +baskets of favors that are going to be given away by and by? There are +roses of red silk, and lilies of white velvet, and chocolate cigars, and +fans, and bonbonnières, and silver bangles! Then funny ones of little +monkeys and ducks and things. And I have to go home willingly, +cheerfully, promptly, at ten o'clock!" + +"Lily, if any lady is so good and so misguided as to honor me with a +favor, I will bring it to you in my pocket to-morrow or soon after, I +promise." + +"What hour is it, Herr Fane?" asked Fräulein over Lily's head. + +Gerald drew out his watch and hesitated, sincerely sorry. + +"To be exact, it is three minutes and three quarters to ten," he said. + +Lily's mouth dropped open, and out of the small dark hollow one could +fear for a second that a cry of protest or revolt might come; but the +very next moment it was seen that Lily had returned to be the best child +in the world and the most honorable. + +"Good night, Gerald!" she said, with a wistfully willing, cheerful, +ready face. "You won't forget?" + +He was left in the oval room, and as the dancers who had come in to +occupy its seats seemed all to be in pairs, he remained aloof. He took +the occasion to have a look at the panels, which he had not before seen, +the tapestries, which were not tapestries, but paintings on rep. He +remembered--the Fountain of Love, not Biblical. + +The fountain, surely enough, spouted from a marble dolphin squeezed in +the chubby arms of a marble Love, and was four times repeated, at +different hours of the day and seasons of the year. In spring, at dawn, +a maiden filled her cup at it. At noon, in summer, the same maiden and a +youth drank from it with cheeks close together. In autumn, at sunset, +the maiden, sadder of countenance, stared at the fountain, visibly +wrapped in memories. In winter the fountain stood solitary and frozen, +Cupid had a hood of snow, the purplish twilight landscape was drowned in +melancholy. + +Gerald's mind made an excursion from the things before him to the studio +where those facile works of art had been produced. The place was +imaginary, and the artist not altogether clear, but the features of the +second figure which he saw, the visitor at the studio, were well-known +to him, and the sentiments of the artist receiving the order to treat a +subject in four large panels for a rich _forestiera_ not difficult +to estimate. + + * * * * * + +The ball had been raging, if one may so express it, for several hours, +the feast was at its height, when Aurora, confused with the richness and +multiplicity of her impressions, and aware of a happy fatigue, withdrew +from her guests to be for a few minutes just a quiet looker-on. She +chose as her retreat a spot at the curve of the stairs, where she felt +herself in the midst of everything and yet isolated. Her back was toward +the persons going up and down; she leaned on the sloping balustrade, and +breathed and rested and hoped no one would notice her for a little +while, all being delightfully engaged. + +She could see a little way into the ball-room, where certain younger +couples, mad for dancing, were making the most of the time when the +floor was relatively empty, the supper-room being proportionately full. +Supper over, the cotillion would begin. She could see Leslie, in +Nile-green crape, eating an ice out in the hall with that American boy, +the singer, whose conceit, by his looks, had not yet been made to +totter. She could hear the merry sound of spoons and glasses, and knew +what good things were being consumed. All the house was involved in +festivity, and resounding with it. In the upstairs sitting-room were +card-tables. In the improvised conservatory opposite one large dim +lantern glowed softly amid palms and flowers. To Aurora every goose +present that evening was a swan. There were frumpy dresses more than a +few,--there always are,--and there was the usual proportion of plain +girls and uninteresting men, but she did not see those. She saw a crowd +more brilliant and beautiful and fit to be loved than had ever before +been assembled beneath one roof. Her heart felt very large, very soft, +very light. + +All evening it had seemed to her rather as if she walked in a dream. +More than ever now, as she stopped to take account of all the +wonderfulness surrounding her, it felt to her like a dream; so that she +said to herself, "This is I, Nell--is it possible? Is it possible that +this is I--Nell?" + +And no doubt because she had been too excitedly happy and was tired, and +the time had come for some degree of reaction, her joy fell, withered +like a child's collapsing pink balloon, when, contrasting the present +with the past for the sake of seeing the things before her as more +rarely full of wonder and charm, she saw those other things. Memories +she did not willingly call up rose of themselves, and forced her to give +them her attention in the midst of that scene of flowers, light, music. +The brightness, the flavor, went out of these as if under an unkind +magic. + +"It's a wonder," she thought, "that I can ever be as happy as I am. I do +wonder at myself how I can do it to rejoice." + +But the next minute she was smiling again, sweetly, heart-wholly, +forgetfully. She had caught sight of Gerald looking at her as if about +to approach. + +"Who are you going to dance the cotillion with?" she asked gaily. + +"You, Mrs. Hawthorne, with your kind consent." + +"No, I couldn't do it. I only dance a little bit, just what Estelle has +taught me since we've been here. I don't keep step very well; I walk all +over my partner's feet. Besides, it wouldn't do, because I've already +refused to dance with Mr. Landini." + +"Sit it out with me, then, I implore you, if you positively do not wish +to dance." + +"Oh, but you must dance! I want you to. I want to behold you all stuck +over with favors." + +"It's true that I must have a few favors for Lily; but couldn't a good +fairy arrange it, and then we let the others heat themselves while we +keep cool and rest? I feared a moment ago that you were feeling tired, +Mrs. Hawthorne." + +"Look!" she whispered, interrupting him. + +He imperceptibly turned in the direction of her stolen glance. Two +figures were ascending the opposite flight of stairs, looking at each +other while they inaudibly talked: Brenda, in filmy white diversified by +a thread of silver; Manlio, carrying over his arm, and in his absorption +letting trail a little, a white scarf beautiful with silver +embroideries; in his hand a white pearl fan. Brenda's face was angelic, +nothing less. When the young and rose-lipped cherubim are full of +celestial sensations and adoring, eternal thoughts, they must look as +Brenda did at that moment. Manlio's head was so turned that his +night-black hair alone was presented to our friends. Slowly the pair +mounted and was lost to sight. + +Neither Gerald nor Mrs. Hawthorne made any comment. Gerald, after a +silence, spoke of Lily's increasing resemblance to her sister. Mrs. +Hawthorne was reminded that they must go to select some favors for Lily, +and led the way. + +They sat together through the cotillion, and Gerald, because he had seen +the shadow of sadness on Mrs. Hawthorne's face, tried more than usual to +be a sympathetic companion, easy to talk to, easy to get on with. He was +always quick to see such things. + +No trace of it remained. Her dimples were in full play, but he found it +according to his humor to continue uncritical, inexpressively tender, +toward this big, bonny child who never curbed the expression of a +complete kindness toward himself. + +More interesting to them than any other dancers were naturally Brenda +and Manlio, partners for the cotillion. Certainly the plot for giving +those two a few beautiful last hours together was proving a success. +Brenda was calmly, collectedly luminous; Manlio, uplifted to the point +of not quite knowing what he did. Radiant and desperate, he looked to +Gerald, who found his state explained by the facts as he knew them. + +"Poor things! Poor dears!" he thought, with the cold to-morrow in view, +yet retained his conviction of having done the unhappy lovers on the +whole a good turn. + +He had been glad to find the Fosses sharing his point of view that to +forbid Giglioli a sight of Brenda before the long parting would have +been unnecessarily cruel. Mrs. Hawthorne, it seemed to him, had lost +sight of what was to follow. She was exclusively delighted with their +joy of the evening, she gave no thought to their misery next day. It was +amazing to him, the extent to which she had forgotten. + +So he said aloud, "Poor things! Poor dears!" and discovered that it was +not forgetfulness exactly in Mrs. Hawthorne, but that general optimism +which insists on believing in a loophole of possibility through which +things can slip and somehow turn out right after all. + + * * * * * + +The party was over. The musicians had laid their instruments in +coffin-like black boxes and were getting into their overcoats. The +candles were burned to the end, the flowers looked tired, the place all +at once amazingly empty. The last half dozen people were standing and +laughing with Mrs. Hawthorne and Miss Madison around Percy Lavin while +he told a final good story when one of the guests who had departed some +time before returned. + +Mrs. Hawthorne caught sight of the figure in closed coat, tall hat, and +white silk muffler as soon as it entered the house, for the group of +laughers stood near the ball-room door, and this was only separated from +the inner house door by the wide hall. Without waiting for the end of +the comic story Mrs. Hawthorne hurried to the guest, whose reason for +returning she wished to know, though it so easily might have been only +his forgotten cane. + +That it was nothing of the kind she at once perceived. He looked upset. + +"May I speak with you a moment?" he asked at once. + +They stepped into the nearest room, still brightly lighted, but +deserted. + +"What's the matter?" she inquired, prepared by his face for news of +trouble. + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, we've done it!" said Gerald. "Giglioli tells me that +he's giving up the army, and Brenda has promised to marry him!" He was +on the verge of laughing hysterically. + +"Oh!" Mrs. Hawthorne paused to watch him, and wonder why they should not +without further to-do rejoice and triumph. "Well? What's wrong with +that?" + +"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, it's deadly!" he exclaimed with conviction. "If it +were a simple solution, why shouldn't it have been suggested before?" + +"It did suggest itself to me, in the quiet of my inside, you know." + +"But you, dear lady, can't be supposed to understand. Oh, it's either +too, too beautiful, or else too, too bad! And in this dear world of ours +the probability is that it's too bad. He was taken off his feet by his +emotion; he offered her what he will feel later he had no right to +offer--a good deal more than his life. But it shows, doesn't it, that he +does immensely love her? To throw into the balance everything--his +career, his family, his country--and offer them up! To cut his throat +for a kiss." + +"You're quite right; I can't understand," she hurried in. "What makes +you say 'cut his throat'? Couldn't he go into some other business just +as well as the army?" + +"All in the world he's fitted for is the army. Do you see that beautiful +fellow going to America, for instance, and earning a living as a teacher +of Italian, or as the representative of some tobacco interest? There is +no way of earning a proper living over here, you know. Oh, I'm afraid he +will feel, when he wakes up, like a deserter toward his country and an +ingrate toward his family and even toward Brenda like a misguider of her +youth." + +"But, look here, isn't there a chance that having each other will make +up to them for everything else?" + +"That of course was their sentiment at the moment of doing it. We did +the work so well, Mrs. Hawthorne, that their passion, raised to a +beautiful madness, would make them see anything as possible to be done +so long as it gave them to each other, obviated the horrible necessity +to part. Oh, it is touching, but dreadful! What were we dreaming? The +thing I so greatly fear is that when he comes to himself he will feel +dishonored, and Italians do not bear that easily, if at all." + +"Now, see here, don't you go imagining things and worry. And don't you +let that young man worry. He isn't leaving the army to-morrow or the day +after, is he?" + +"No. In the natural course of things, I suppose, it will take some +time." + +"Well, I don't at all relish, myself, the idea of seeing that beautiful +fellow, as you say, in every-day clothes--the sort they wear over +here--after seeing him all glorious in silver braid and stars. No. I +just can't bear to think of him giving them up. At the same time I don't +agree with you that he had better have given up his girl than them. And +I don't believe she will mind about his clothes one way or the other." + +"But there is his family, a thousand obligations--he spoke of them +himself." + +"Perhaps the Fosses, now this has happened and they see how much in +earnest the blessed creatures are, will sell some of their stock in +California gold-mines and afford the dowry you spoke of." + +"But Giglioli will blush at this forcing of their hand." + +"Now, see here, you keep that young man cool. He hasn't done anything to +be ashamed of. Brenda knows her own mind, and I don't believe her father +and mother would stand in the way of her marrying a tramp if he was +honest and her heart set on him. You tell that young man, in your own +way, to sit tight and put his trust in the Lord." + +Gerald's nervous laughter for a moment got the better of him. He covered +his face to check it, then, tearing away his hands, made the gesture of +releasing a pack of tugging hounds too strong for him to hold. Let them +be off and at the devil! + +"I didn't come here looking for comfort, dear Mrs. Hawthorne. Your +optimism is constitutional, you know, rather than enlightened. I merely +came to tell my accomplice the result of our meddling with destiny. +'Accomplice' is a manner of speaking. Don't suppose I forget that I +alone am to blame. Good night. I must go back to him where I left him, +with his head among the stars and clouds, and his feet perhaps beginning +to burn already with the heat of the nether fire. As you say, 'let's be +cheerful, let's hope for the best!' Ha!" + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +Brenda, reaching home after the ball, had asked her parents to hear a +thing she must tell them, and, very pale, informed them of the manner in +which she had taken the direction of her life into her own hands. At the +sight of their faces something had melted within her; she had trusted to +them at last all that was in her heart, so that father and mother, +greatly moved, felt as if they had found their child again rather than +lost her. At the almost incredible spectacle of tears in her father's +eyes Brenda had crept into his arms, against his breast, and lain there +so still, so silent, that it seemed unnatural. They perceived that she +had fainted. + +She left for America on the date that had been set, but a term was fixed +for her visit; April was to see her back in Florence. + +Her engagement was not announced. Mr. Foss, talking of it with his wife, +expressed liking and respect for their prospective son-in-law. His +confidence in the man had been increased by an action that seemed to him +quite in the American spirit. No doubt Giglioli would prove a good +business man, just as he had been a good soldier, the chief requisites +in all walks of life being a clear head, a heart in its place, and the +will to work. + +Mrs. Foss was secretly unhappy during these conversations. The model +wife had never before kept anything from her husband nor taken any step +without his sanction, and she was ashamed now of the duplicity she was +forced to practice. She strengthened herself by the assurance that in so +doing she was really sparing Jerome, saving him possible moments of +indecision, or conflict with himself. She was saving Brenda from the +same troubles, if not worse: such perhaps as seeing her brilliant hero +made into an unsuccessful struggle-for-lifer. She, the mother, would +swallow by her single self all the mental discomforts that might have +been the general portion, and, nobody being any the wiser, shoulder +hardily for their sakes the consciousness of an obligation which might +to the others have poisoned a gift, if not made it impossible to accept. +No member of her family, it seemed to Mrs. Foss, knew quite as well as +she how simple, native, and without self-conceit was Aurora Hawthorne's +generosity; so that taking from her was hardly different, in a sense, +from giving her something. You did not have to pay with gratitude. You +paid, first and last and all the time, with affection. + + * * * * * + +Gerald, who had seen as beset with difficulty the rôle of friend which +he might be called upon to play, heard with relief that Giglioli had +obtained leave of absence and gone to see his family. With Brenda over +the seas, and Manlio in the Abruzzi, the subject of their attachment and +future could fall a little into the background, crowded out by the +nearer things. + +The fact became of some consequence to Gerald that in his relation to +Mrs. Hawthorne he was so largely a taker. He did not count as any return +for her hospitalities the time he gave to sight-seeing with her and her +friend; he was modest with regard to his own contributions. + +He had in truth not desired to fall into Mrs. Hawthorne's debt. He would +have liked best to keep away from her; but fate, likewise character, set +snares for him. After he had stayed away for a certain length of time, +the thought would rise to trouble him, "She will feel hurt," and all +against the voice of good sense, such a reason as that had power with +Gerald. He would then call, and her welcome would be so kind, her +heartiness so warming, that he would stay to dinner, and promise to go +somewhere with them on the following day, after which he would dine with +them again. + +So now the gentlemanly wish defined itself in him to show by some token +that he did not take favors all as a matter of course. + +He would have liked to make her an offering a little exquisite, a little +rare, which she might recognize as possessing these points and +accordingly prize. To bestow anything concrete would have been folly. A +few possessions he had which he would have thought worthy of the +acceptance of queens: a tear phial of true Roman glass, a Japanese print +or two, a few coins that were old already when Christ was young. And he +would have parted with any one of these treasures to Mrs. Hawthorne, +though not wholly without a pang: first, because he liked her, and then +because he had eaten as it seemed to him a good deal of her bread and +syrup. But she would not have cared for these things; while bereaving +himself, he would have enriched her not at all. + +The duty of doing something for Mrs. Hawthorne's pleasure was felt even +by Charlie Hunt, who took her to a concert. When Gerald heard of it, he +searched more persistently and, fate aiding, found something which might +give the lady amusement, he thought, and would certainly afford an +opportunity that would hardly have come her way without his good +offices. + +The morning mail brought him a note relating to his project; he did not +wait for afternoon to communicate its contents. + +It was eleven when he rang at Mrs. Hawthorne's door. He had hardly +finished asking the servant whether the signora were at home when he +heard her voice upstairs, singing behind closed doors. + +She had said so many times, when he went through the formality of having +himself announced and waiting for permission to present himself, "Why +didn't you come right up?" that this morning he said to the servant, "It +imports not to advise her. I shall mount." Did the servant look faintly +ironical, or did Gerald mistakenly imagine it? + +The tune she sang sounded familiar. It must be a hymn, he decided, but +could not remember what hymn, or even be sure it was one he had heard +before, hymns are so much alike. He stopped at the sitting-room door and +waited, listening to the big, free, untrained velvet voice, true +throughout the low and medium registers, flat on the upper notes, the +singer having carelessly pitched her hymn too high. He could hear the +lines now, given with a swing that made them curl over at the ends, and +with a punch on certain of the syllables, irrespective of their meaning: + + "Feed me _with_--the heavenly manna + In this _barr_--en wilder_ness_; + Be my _shield_, my sword, my banner, + Be the Lord--my righteous_ness_!" + +When she came to the words, + + "Death of death and hell's destruction," + +a bang and rattling ensued, as if some one were taking a practical hand +in that work. The heavenly ferryman was thereupon besought with vigor to +land her safe on Canaan's side, and the singing ceased. + +Gerald stood waiting, if perchance there might be another verse, and +wondered, while waiting, at the sounds he heard in the room, easy to +recognize, but difficult to explain. When it seemed certain that the +music was at an end, he, after hesitating for some minutes longer, +gently tapped. + +"Oh, come in!" was shouted from inside. "_Entrez_, will you? +_Avanti!_" + +He opened the door a little way, discreetly, and put in his head, ready +to draw it back at once should he see his morning call as befalling +inopportunely. + +Aurora was so far from expecting him that for a second or two she +actually did not recognize him, and waited to understand what was wanted +of her. Her head was tied in a white cloth, her sleeves were turned +back, she had on an apron, and she held a broom. The furniture was +pushed together out of the corners, some of it covered with sheets; the +windows were open. No mistake possible. Aurora was sweeping. + +A burst of laughter rang; the broom-handle knocked on the floor. + +"Yes, I'm sweeping," she cried. "Come right in! You find me practising +one of my accomplishments. I can't play the piano, I can't speak +languages, I can't paint bunches of flowers on black velvet; but I can +sweep, I can cook, I can wash dishes--or babies, one just as well as the +other, and I can nurse the sick." + +"I am afraid I have come at an inconvenient moment." + +"Not at all. I'm glad to see you. I was most through, anyhow." + +She had pulled the cloth off her head, and was patting her hair before +the glass. She turned down her cuffs, untied her apron, and came to +shake hands, smiling as usual. + +"You caught me," she said. "When I feel a certain way, I've got to work +off steam, and there's nothing that does it like sweeping." + +"I beg of you--I beg of you to let me close those windows for you!" + +"All right. I'm awfully hot, but I guess the room's cold. We can have a +fire in a minute. Everything's there to make it." + +"I beg you will not trouble! I shall only remain a moment and leave you +to finish." + +"No, now, no; don't go and leave me. I was only sweeping to be doing +something. To clean the room wasn't my real object. I took their work +from Zaira and Vitale, who are the ones to do it usually, in a way +that's new to me, with damp sawdust. It's nearly finished, anyhow. All +I've got to do is fold the sheets and push things back into their +places." + +"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, please, please, allow me--" + +He tried to help her, waking to the fact that she was as strong as he, +if not stronger. + +The room in a minute looked as usual, and she knelt in front of the +hearth, piling up a kindling of pine-cones and little fagots, on which +she laid a picturesque old root of olive-wood. + +"You seem to be alone," he remarked. + +"Yes; Estelle's gone out." + +He was not sorry to hear it. Miss Madison, whom he entirely liked, +affected him curiously, or, to express the matter more exactly, in a +curious degree failed to affect him at all. Her personality did not bite +on his consciousness. Unless some chance left them on each other's +hands, he had difficulty in remembering her presence. It was not that +she was colorless; not by any means. She obviously had character, +brightness, individuality, even charm; but so far as he was concerned +she might have had none of these. Particularly when her big friend was +by Gerald ceased to see her. He recognized the danger of her negative +effect on him, and often made a point of devoting to her a special +amount of attention, being toward her of an unnatural amiability, trying +thus to keep her ignorant of the extent to which she did not exist for +him. Now he suddenly remembered that from the choice little treat +provided for Mrs. Hawthorne Miss Madison had been left out--forgotten. +He was dismayed. Then a pleasant side to the affair revealed itself by a +dim gleam. He was mortified by his forgetfulness, but the ladies were +after all not Siamese twins. + +"You must wonder what brought me at this unusual time of day," he said. + +"Any time's good that brings you. But what in particular was it?" + +"I wanted to ask you to keep free next Saturday afternoon and, if you +will be so good, spend it in part with me. I should like to take you to +Mrs. Grangeon's." + +"Mrs. Grangeon's...?" + +"Don't you remember? Antonia! It is Antonia's real name. On the first +evening of our acquaintance you had a good deal to say about her. If I +remember rightly, you expressed then a desire to meet her--see her +face." + +"Yes, yes. Antonia, of course." + +"She is a figure of importance here in Florence. She is in truth a very +gifted woman--in her way, great, and of wide reputation. And she is +clever, except in just some little spots. Geniuses, one has observed, +are seldom quite free from such spots. She has kept herself very much to +herself now for several years, so that an occasion to see her is grasped +eagerly. This affair of hers on Saturday is the first thing of the kind +in an age. Her villa at Bellosguardo is most interesting and full of +interesting things. And the view from her terrace is worthy of a +pilgrimage. You perceive, Mrs. Hawthorne, that I am doing what I can to +_faire valoir_ the scrap of entertainment I have to offer." + +"I think it perfectly lovely of you! Of course I'll go, and delighted +to. And see how it fits in--" She kindled to joyful enthusiasm. "We've +just bought a lot of her books. We realized we'd got to have some books +to make this room look finished off. We bought hers in paper covers and +have had them beautifully bound. Just look here." She went to take a +specimen from the bookcase, a white parchment volume with gold tooling, +a crimson fleur-de-lys painted on the front cover. "Aren't they lovely? +An idea! We'll take some of them up to her and ask her to write her name +in them. Wouldn't that be flattering?" + +"Ye ... es." + +"I've been trying to read some of it over since these came home from the +binder's. My! Aren't those people of hers wonderful--where you'd think +the ladies never could have a stomache-ache nor the gentlemen a corn!" + +"I hope Miss Madison will not think I forgot her," he disingenuously +said, "when in replying to Mrs. Grangeon's invitation I begged +permission to bring you, and that she will do me the honor some day very +soon--" + +"Oh, Estelle won't mind!" + +The mention of Estelle seemed to change the color of Mrs. Hawthorne's +thoughts, casting a shadow over them. + +"Estelle and I had a spat this morning," she told him. + +"Oh!" + +"That's why I was sweeping and why she's gone for a walk by herself." + +"I'm so sorry!" was all he found to say. + +"It doesn't amount to anything," she cheered him. "We've had times of +quarreling all our lives, and we've known each other since we were +children. Her aunt and my grandmother had houses side by side in the +country; there was just a fence between our yards. That's how we first +came to be friends. All our lives we've had the way of sometimes saying +what the other doesn't like. And do you know what's always at the bottom +of it? That each one thinks she knows what would be most for the other's +good to do, and we get so mad because the other won't do what we ourself +think would be best for her! Just as some people abuse you because +you're a pig, we as likely as not abuse the other because she isn't a +pig. One of the biggest fights we ever had was because once late at +night, when she was dead tired, tired as a yellow dog, I wanted her to +sit still and let me pack for her, or, anyhow, let me help her pack. And +she said I was as tired as she,--as if that was possible!--and if I +didn't go to bed and get some rest myself and let her alone to get +through her packing as she pleased if it was daylight before she +finished she should have a fit. And from one thing to another we went on +getting madder and madder till we said things you would have thought +made it impossible for us ever to speak to each other again. But the +first thing next morning, when we opened our eyes, we just looked at +each other and began to laugh. Another time we fought like cats and dogs +because I wanted to give her something and she refused to take it." + +"I don't call those quarrels, Mrs. Hawthorne." + +"You would if you could hear us; you would have if you could have heard +us this morning. And it was only a little one. You see, two people +aren't best friends for nothing. It gives you a sort of freedom; you +aren't a bit afraid. And when you know it's only the other's good you +have at heart, it makes you awfully firm and fast-set in your point of +view. I don't mind telling you that I'm always the one in the wrong." + +"Are you?" + +"Of course I am. But I like to have my way, even if it's wrong. Hear me +talk! How that does sound! And I was brought up so strict! But it's so. +I want to do as I please. I want to have fun. It began this morning with +Hat saying I spent too much money." + +"Did she say that? How unreasonable, how far-fetched!" + +"'What's the good of having it,' I said, 'if I can't spend it?' + +"'You'd buy anything,' she said, 'that anybody wanted you to buy, if it +was a mangy stuffed monkey. It isn't generosity,' she said; 'it's just +weakness.' + +"'Oh, suck an orange!' I said, 'Chew gum! It's anything you choose to +call it. But when a thing takes my fancy, I'm going right on to buy it. +And if it enables a greasy little Italian to buy himself and his +children more garlic,' I said, 'that's not going to stop me,' I said. I +don't mind showing you"--she dropped her selections from the morning's +dialogue--"the thing I bought which started our little discussion. The +artist who made it brought it himself to show me." + +She went to take the object referred to from her desk, and held it +before him, examining it at the same time as he did. + +"Do you see what it is? Can you tell at once?" + +"H-m, I'm not sure. Is it intended for a portrait of Queen Margherita?" + +"Right you are! Of course that's what it is. It's a picture of the +queen, done by hand with pen and ink; but that's not all. If you should +take a magnifying glass, you would see that every line is a line of +writing--fine, fine pen-writing, the very finest possible, and if you +begin reading at this pearl of her crown, and just follow through all +the quirligiggles and everything to the end, you will have read the +whole history of Italy in a condensed form! Isn't it wonderful? Don't +you think it extraordinary, a real curiosity? Don't you think I was +right to buy it?" + +"My opinion on that point, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, would rather depend on +what you paid for it." + +"Oh, would it?" She lost impetus, and gave a moment to reflection. +"Well, I shall never know, then, for I'm not going to tell you. One's +enough blaming me for extravagance." + +"My dear Mrs. Hawthorne, pray don't suppose me bold enough to--" + +"Oh, you're bold enough, my friend. But while I like my friends to speak +their minds, I've had just enough of it for one day, d' you see? I've +had enough, in fact, to make me sort of homesick." + +She looked it, and not as far as could be from tears. The small vexation +of his failure to think her treasure worth anything she might have paid +for it, the intimation that he might join the camp of the enemy in +finding her extravagant, had acted apparently as a last straw. + +"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, I beg of you not to feel homesick!" he cried, +compunctious and really eager. "It's such a poor compliment to Florence +and to us, you know, us Florentines, who owe you so much for bringing +among us this winter your splendid laughter and good spirits and the +dimples which it does us so much good to see." + +"No," she said ruefully, "you can't rub me the right way till I'm +contented here as I was yesterday. Florence is all right, and the +Florentines are mighty polite; but--" She looked at the fire a moment, +while he tried, and failed, to find something effectively soothing to +say. "In the State of Massachusetts there's a sort of spit running into +the sea, and on a sand hill of this there's a little shingled house that +never had a drop of paint outside of it nor of plumbing inside; but +there's an old well at the back, deep as they dig them, with, on the +hottest day, ice-water at the bottom. The yard is pretty well scratched +up by the hens, but there are a few things in it you can't kill +out--some lilacs and some tiger-lilies and a darling, ragged, straggling +old strawberry-bush. Outside the fence, hosts of Bouncing Bets--you know +what they are, don't you? The front door has some nice neat blinds, +always closed, like those of the best room, except for weddings and +funerals; but the back door is open, and when you sit on the step you +can look off down an old slope of apple-orchard and over across it at +the neighbors' roofs and chimneys. And there, Geraldino, is where +Auroretta would like to be." + +He had the impulse to reach out and touch the ends of his fingers to her +hand, fondly, as one might do to a child, but he prudently refrained. +His eyes, however, dwelled on her with a smile that conveyed sympathy. +He said, after her, amusedly: + +"Auroretta!" + +She brightened. + +"After I've been bad," she said, "I always am blue." + + * * * * * + +But within the hour he had come near quarreling with her, he also, and +on more than one score. + +It began with his making a pleasant remark upon her voice, which seemed +to him worth cultivating. She brushed aside the idea of devoting study +to the art of singing. + +"But," she said, "Italo has brought me some songs. He plays them over +and shows me how to sing them. We have lots of fun." To give him an +example, she broke forth, adapting her peculiarly American pronunciation +to Ceccherelli's peculiarly Italian intonations, "'_Non so resistere, +sei troppo bella!_'" + +Gerald winced and darkened. + +"Then there's this one," she went on, "'_Mia piccirella, deh, vieni +allo mare!_' Do you want to hear me sing it like Miss Felixson, +together with her dog, which always bursts out howling before she's +done? I've heard them three times, and can do the couple of them to a +T." + +"Please don't!" he hurriedly requested. "I hope," he added doubtfully, +"that you won't do it to amuse any of your other friends, either." As +she did not quickly assure him that she neither had done, nor ever would +dream of doing, such a low thing, he went on, with the liberty of speech +that amazingly prevailed between them: "Extraordinary as it seems, you +would be perfectly capable of it. And it would be a grave mistake." + +"I've done it for Italo when he was playing my accompaniment. For nobody +else." + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, if that little man has become your singing-master, will +you not intrust me with the honorable charge of likewise teaching you +something? No, not painting. I should like to drill you in the +pronunciation of that little man's name. It is Ceccherelli. +Cec-che-rel-li. _Cec-che-rel-li._" + +She shook her head. + +"No use. I've got accustomed to the other now." + +He felt a spark dropped among the recesses where his inflammable temper +was kept. + +"Before you know it the fellow will be calling you Aurora!" he said, +repressing the outburst of his wrath at this possibility. + +"He does, my friend," she answered him quietly. "He can't say Hawthorne. +Do you hear him saying Hawthorne? He calls me Signora Aurora." + +"Then why not call him Signor Italo?" + +"At this time of day? It would be too formal. He would wonder what he'd +done to offend me." + +Gerald was reminded that since Christmas Ceccherelli had been wearing, +instead of his silver turnip, a fine gold watch, her overt gift and his +frank boast, which he conspicuously extracted from its chamois-skin case +every time he needed to know the hour. + +"Mrs. Hawthorne," said Gerald, "you have repeatedly said that you have +what you call lots of fun with Ceccherelli. Would you mind giving me an +idea of what the fun consists in? I wish to have light--that I may do +the man justice. Left to myself, I should judge him to be the dullest, +commonest, cheapest of inexpressibly vulgar, insignificant, pretentious, +ugly, and probably dishonest, little men." The adjectives came rolling +out irrepressibly. + +"Perhaps he is," Aurora said serenely; "but haven't you noticed, +Stickly-prickly, that about some things you and I don't feel alike? +Italo plays the piano in a way that perfectly delights me, he's +good-hearted, and he makes me laugh. Isn't that enough?" + +"In short, you like him. You like so many people, Mrs. Hawthorne, and of +such various kinds, that though one is bound to be glad to be among your +friends, one needn't--need one?--feel exactly flattered." + +She seemed to consider this, but instead of taking it up, went on with +the subject of Italo. + +"He entertains me. He knows all about everybody in Florence and tells +me." + +"He gossips, you mean." + +Again she considered a moment before going on. + +"Funny, when I don't know the people, or just know them by sight, and +they and the life are all so foreign and apart from me, gossip about +them doesn't seem the same as gossip at home. It's more like Antonia's +novels, condensed and told in the queerest English! It was some time +before I could make out what he meant when he said two gentlemen had +fought a duel because one of them had found the other nasconding in his +garden-house. The one thus found obstinated himself, says Italo, to +maintain that he had come to make a copy of the architectural design +over the door. But as he didn't seem to have any pencil--" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, how can you be amused by such disgusting stuff?" + +She gazed at him inquiringly, with very blue eyes and a look of +innocence, real or put on, then laughed. + +"I am, just. I can't tell you the how of it. Do you know Italo's sister +Clotilde?" + +"I have not that advantage, no." + +"You soon will have, if you care for it, for she's coming to live with +us." + +He stared. + +"Yes, she's coming to keep house. She speaks English quite well, because +she's had so much to do with English and Americans, being a teacher of +Italian and French. It began with Italo wanting us to take lessons of +her. But, bless you, I don't want to study! I can pick up all I need +without. We said, however, 'Bring her to see us.' And he did. She's real +nice." + +"Does she resemble her brother?" + +"In some ways. I've an idea, though, that you'd like her better than you +seem to do him. I believe we shall be very well satisfied with her, and +shall save money. Since we seem to have got on to the subject of money +to-day: Luigi, the butler, who has everything under him now, Estelle +says is a caution to snakes, the way he robs us. Now, we're easy-going +and, I dare say, fools; but not darn, darn fools. It's a mistake to +think we wouldn't see a thing big's a mountain, and that you could cheat +us the way that handsome, fine-mannered, dignified villain Loo-ee-gy +thinks he can. So we're going to put in his place a nice woman who is, +in part, our friend, and will care to see that we're dealt fairly with. +Clotilde doesn't seem to mind giving up her lessons to come and be a +sort of elegant housekeeper for us." + +"I understand." + +"Charlie Hunt is disgusted about it, because when we complained of Luigi +before him, he said he would find us exactly the right person to take +his place. But, you see, we didn't wait. I don't see that we were bound +to. What do you think?" + +"It is a case, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, where I must not allow myself to say +what I think." + +"Personally, I must say I was rather glad to have Clotilde step in as +she did, because I don't mind telling you--you won't tell anybody +else?--I find just the least little bit of a disposition in that young +man Charlie to run things in this house. D'you know what I mean? I +suppose it's the way he's made. He has been awfully kind, and helped a +lot in all sorts of ways, and I like him ever so much; but I was glad to +check him just a little, and put who I pleased over my own servants, and +then go on just as good friends with him as ever." + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, why don't you make Mrs. Foss your adviser in all such +matters? She is so kind always and of such good counsel. It would be so +much the safest thing." + +"Of course; but it was she who found Luigi for us, you see. She can't +always know. As far as Charlie Hunt is concerned, I don't want you to +think that we think any less of him than before. He's good and kind as +can be, and does ever so many nice things for us. We were at his +apartment the other day, where he had a tea-party expressly for us, with +his cousins there, and Mr. Landini and two or three others. And then +when he heard me say I like dogs he promised to give me a dog, one of +those lovely clown dogs,--poodles,--with their hair cut in a fancy +pattern, when he can lay his hand on a real beauty." + +"Mrs. Hawthorne"--Gerald almost lifted himself off his seat with the +emphasis of his cry,--"Don't let him give you a dog!" + +She looked at him in amazement. + +"Why, what's wrong?" + +"Don't! don't! Can't you see that you must not let him give you a dog?" + +"No, I can't. Why on earth?" + +"After what you said a few minutes ago," he stammered, feeling blindly +for reasons, "which shows that you have something to complain of in his +conduct toward you, you ought not to allow him to give you a dog. A +dog--you don't understand, and I can't make you. It will be too awful!" + +"You surely are the queerest man I have ever known," she said sincerely. + +To which he did not reply. + +He restrained himself from blurting out that Charlie Hunt, for such and +such reasons, could never deserve the extreme privilege of giving her a +dog. Leslie had once casually spoken the true word about Charlie. +"Charlie has no real inside," she had said, and continued, nevertheless, +to like him well enough. He was young, handsome, in his way attractive. +Most people liked him to just that extent--well enough; few went beyond, +unless early in the acquaintance. He so systematically did what would be +most useful to himself that it was difficult to preserve illusions about +his powers of devotion or unselfishness. He had lived as one of the +family with his aunt and cousins till he found himself desiring an +increase of personal liberty; then an occasion presenting itself to make +a really good arrangement with an Italian family of decent middle class +with their best rooms to let, he had set up bachelor quarters, and +ceasing to be an inmate of his aunt's house, retained unusually little +sense of tie with it. + +"Charlie might be nicer about going to places with us," Francesca openly +grumbled, "seeing he's the nearest we've got to a brother." + +All this was formlessly in Gerald's mind--this and much more--when his +spirit groaned that Charlie should be giving Aurora a dog. + +Mrs. Hawthorne was looking at him, trying to make him out. She could +not. One thing, however, was plain, and it being so plain simplified +all. He felt actual pain because Charlie Hunt was going to give her a +dog. The wherefore it was vain to seek. But she had no desire to give +pain of any kind, even by way of teasing him, to this funnily sensitive +fellow whose shoulders looked so sharp under his coat. + +"All right," she said. "If he says anything more about it, I'll tell him +I've changed my mind and don't want a dog. Are you satisfied? And then +if you won't tell me what the objection is to my having one, I shall +have to sit down and try to guess." + +Gerald, upon obtaining so easily what he had wanted apparently to the +point of tragedy, looked sheepish, ashamed of himself. His thanks were +given in a slowly returning smile. + +"I shouldn't think it would be so difficult," he said. + +Antonia had been very friendly to Gerald at the period of their first +acquaintance. She had cared for his painting, specimens of which had +come to her notice through Amabel Van Zandt, and distinguished the at +that time very young artist to the extent of inviting him to her villa, +showing interest in his talent and future, making him talk. From one +year to the next, other things had taken up her mind to his exclusion. +He had continued, however, to pay his respects, if she were at home, at +least once in the season, and retained gratitude toward her, along with +the presumption that he could never be to her the same exactly as the +first-come outsider. He remembered At Homes of hers attended in the old +days, and saw every reason why Mrs. Hawthorne should enjoy one of these, +none why it should not enjoy her. On the contrary. Making full allowance +for the fact that he had grown accustomed to her manner and mode, Mrs. +Hawthorne had yet seemed to him lately of a circumspection not to be +surpassed. When alone with him and Estelle, she was one person; when in +company, she was another, not a little like Mrs. Foss, retaining enough +of her own irrepressible self to seem just acceptably original. Antonia, +the novelist, declared a fondness for people out of the ordinary, the +conventional. Gerald thought the American might interest her. But if she +did not, little depends, at a reception, upon the hostess being charmed +with individual guests; he still believed that Aurora would have a good +time--he meant to ensure her doing this. + +Aurora had, as she described it, dressed herself to kill, and was +looking, Estelle told her, perfectly stunning. She had on velvets and +furs, pearls and plumes. She had wished at one and the same time to make +Gerald Fane proud of her and do honor to Antonia's party. Concealed in +her muff was a white parchment volume--muffs were small in those days. A +similar volume had been stuffed into each of Gerald's overcoat pockets. + +Gerald, as has been said, remembered At Homes of Antonia's, and had in +mind an image of what he might expect to see. + +He perceived at once that to-day all was different. This was immensely +choice, the most so afforded by Florence. That he had been invited +showed Antonia's estimate of him still as a person of artistic +significance; also, he modestly decided, the difficulty one had to make +up an assemblage solely of notabilities. Her permission to bring a +friend showed flattering faith in his taste. + +Persons were there whom one but seldom saw anywhere; the persons whom +one saw everywhere were conspicuously absent. Among a majority of +English, there was a sprinkling of Italian nobility, mostly older +people. Antonia had lived for many years in Florence. There was a very +able historian, allied to the English through his wife; there was an old +General of the wars of liberation; there was a Church dignitary of +infinite elegance and high rank: all serious people who did not go to +teas, and whose coming to this one was a compliment to Antonia. The +exceptional woman's right to the like homage was established; her +celebration of Italy was by Italy, in the persons of such sons of hers +as got an inkling of their debt, gracefully acknowledged. + +Gerald, entering the large drawing-room with Aurora, at first wondered, +then understood. The interesting Princess Rostopchine, on a visit to +Florence, was present--woman of accomplishments in every +branch--painter, sculptress, musician, author; a beauty into the +bargain, and lady-in-waiting for many years to a queen. + +She was no longer in the freshness of youth; her beauty had been left a +little bony, a little fatigued and bloodless; her eyelids drooped over +the brilliant intelligence of her eyes. The poetry of her looks was +increased by her costume. In wise disdain of the fashion, she went robed +rather than dressed; her things clung and trailed and undulated; they +were gray as cobwebs, dim as pressed orchids. She was as fascinating as +at any time in her life--perhaps more so, because she cared to be. + +Antonia, who had made her acquaintance at Aix-les-bains, was under her +spell. The reception was given to honor her, rather than to enable +Antonia, as Gerald had at first supposed, to see her friends again after +several years of absence and neglect. + +A niece of Antonia's received, and invited guests to be refreshed with +tea, while Antonia and the Princess sat side by side, and now talked +together, now with others, who of themselves approached, or whom Antonia +invited to join them. The conversation was part of the time in French, +which Antonia spoke fluently, but for the greater part in English, which +the princess spoke well, as Russians speak every language. + +Gerald was watching for the favorable moment to present Aurora; they +therefore stood within earshot. While he talked to keep her diverted, he +was aware that his companion less than half listened to him, absorbed in +Antonia and the princess. + +A princess and a famous writer! Aurora had never set eyes on a princess +before, nor, to her knowledge, on an author. They hypnotized her, those +two. Their conversation was far beyond Leslie's, she did not understand +any of it, though every syllable reached her ear. The marked Englishness +of Antonia's speech caused an almost necessity in Aurora to say the +words after her, echoing their peculiarity. Her lips unconsciously +moved. + +Aurora's eyes were busy as well as her ears. Antonia was clad in a +tea-gown--Aurora thought it was a wrapper. The tea-gown had long lain in +a chest, while Antonia was on her travels, and the great woman's eyes, +fixed on more important things, had not perceived when it was taken out +for her wear to-day that it was crushed and rumpled. Aurora believed it +had been recovered from the ash-can, and her breast was filled with awe. +It was with unqualified and childlike admiration that she gazed at the +two women whose soaring superiority she unenviously felt. + +As it seemed unbefitting as yet to interrupt their conversation, Gerald +looked around him in search of acquaintances whom to present to Aurora +while waiting. + +Balm de Brézé first met his eye--the vicomte was Antonia's landlord--but +Gerald discriminated against him. He next spied Hamilton Spencer and +Carlo Guerra, both genial fellows, left Aurora's side for an instant and +brought them up. + +Aurora called back her attention and gave it to them. A certain success +of smiles and bright eyes she was almost sure to have, with men. Gerald +went off to get her some tea, took it to her, and finding her in the +midst of a sufficiently lively time with her new acquaintances, returned +to Antonia's niece at the tea-table for a chat and cup of tea. While +hearing the news from this unassuming elderly girl, he could keep an eye +on Mrs. Hawthorne at a distance, and catch any facial signal for help. + +Aurora was drinking her tea, holding her cup like a real lady, with her +little finger delicately curled back. Aurora's figure stood out from +among those surrounding her like a thing of a different make, an earthen +jar among glass vases, a Swede among Japanese. + +Aurora was out of place, it could not be blinked; and that she was so +visible, in her able-bodied comeliness, her supremacy of dimples, her +extremely good corset, increased the offense. So did also the native +assurance of her eye--which had something at all times of a jovial +sea-captain, with his foot on his own deck. + +Gerald looked from her to Antonia, slightly uneasy. Antonia's face had +characteristics of a man's, but along with them indications above all +feminine. Power and caprice in the great woman went linked. He saw her +while listening to the princess turn her head toward the quarter of the +room tinctured by Aurora's unmodified presence, as if taking account of +the voice and accent of the stranger in her house. + +This seemed to him his opportunity, and excusing himself from Miss +Grangeon, he started toward Aurora. + +"There are more ways than one of skinning a cat!" came floating to him +in Aurora's deep-piled voice, borne on her frank laugh, as he +approached. + +He found her having a very good time, but ready to call an end to it and +go to be presented. + +"I'm awfully nervous!" she whispered to Gerald, but that was a manner of +speech. Aurora's nerves were author-proof. She meant that she was +impressed by the greatness of the moment. She picked up her three books +from the table near by, held them with her left arm so that her right +hand might be free to clasp Antonia's, and, smiling as a basket of +chips--thus did she later describe herself--advanced toward the crowning +honor of the day. + +Antonia saw her coming and narrowed her eyes the better to see. +Antonia's face, at no time in her life soft, was as much like granite at +this moment as it had the moment before been like old white soap; her +eyes, fixed on the approaching pair, turned stonily unseeing. + +Gerald bravely went through with the introduction, and tried to warm the +atmosphere with winged words. Aurora's hand was all ready to shake. + +Antonia's hand did not go forth to meet it, but Aurora, elate and +overflowing, was not put off by this. + +"I can never tell you"--she gushed, "how pleased I am to meet you--how +honored I feel. Nor can I ever tell you how perfectly wonderful I think +your books. Perfectly wonderful.... Perfectly wond ... Perf ... See what +I've brought. These three that I'm going to leave for you to write in, +if you'll be so very kind. It would increase their value for me I never +can tell you how much." + +"My dear Madam," said Antonia, "I never inscribe a book that I have not +myself presented. I am not acquainted with the phrase in which it is +done. The value of my autograph will be enormously increased hereafter +for collectors by the fact that when I receive requests for it I drop +them into the waste-basket. Yes, I merely keep the stamps." + +"Oh!" + +"Yes." + +"Oh!" more faintly. + +"Yes!" more firmly. + +Turning her back to Aurora, Antonia once more addressed Princess +Rostopchine. "Vera Sergeievna, you were saying...." + +The only sign Aurora gave of being flabbergasted was forgetting the +books she held. They slid with noise to the floor. As Gerald picked them +up, "Did I ever tell you"--she asked him chattily, and leisurely moved +on,--"about the time I stood on the sidewalk to see the procession go +by, in Boston, when we commemorated Bunker Hill?" And she went on with a +favorite reminiscence: how she had held on to her inch of standing-room, +in spite of a fat and puffing man, a gimlet-elbowed woman, and a +policeman. + + * * * * * + +When they were in her coupé, smartly bowling toward town, silence fell. +Gerald's brow was black, his eyes were steely. + +"Mrs. Hawthorne," he jerked out, "I am not going to express myself on +the experiences of this afternoon. Words could not do them justice, and +I am not cool enough to trust myself. But I wish to apologize to you +most humbly for my egregious, my imbecile mistake." + +"Don't you care, Geraldino! Don't you care one bit! Bless your dear +heart, I'm not touchy!" Aurora said cheerily, and, not resisting as he +had recently done the impulse to comfort his friend by a caressing +touch, gave his hand as tight a squeeze as her snug new glove permitted. +"Nasty old thing! What does it matter? But"--her eyes rounded at the +amazed recollection,--"that I should have lived, I--me--my size--to feel +like a fly-speck on the wall! It did beat everything! Yours truly, F. S. +W.! Fly Speck on the Wall!" + +She was lost for a moment in the consideration of herself reduced to a +negligible dot, and Gerald, too angry to talk, thought hydrophobia +thoughts in silence. In these he was disturbed by the sound of her +trying in a murmur to speak like Antonia, and hitting off the +Englishwoman's pronunciation rather successfully. + +"Deah Madam! I nevah, nevah inscrrribe a book.... I drap them into the +baaahsket. Yesss. I marely keep the stamps." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +The house where Gerald lived was the same one he had lived in since the +days of Boston and Charlestown. His mother, coming to Florence with her +two children, a boy of ten, a girl of seven, had needed to look for a +modest corner in which to build their nest. The income of which she +found herself possessed after settling up her husband's affairs, even +when supplemented by the allowance made her by his family, so little +permitted of extravagance that she chose the topmost story of the house +in Borgo Pinti, with those long, long stairs that perhaps had +contributed to keep Gerald's legs thin. + +Its street door was narrow, its entrance-hall dark; the stone stairs +climbed from darkness into semi-darkness, reaching the daylight when +they likewise reached the Fanes' landing. But the old house was not +without dignity; all three loved it. + +As you entered the Fanes', there was another dark hall, very long, +running to right and left. One small window opposite, on an inner court, +was all that lighted it. This hall grew darker still, as well as +narrower, after turning a corner to the left; then it turned to the +right, and was lighter. At the end of it was a window from which, if you +bent out, you saw far below you a garden. + +The rooms, without being lofty and vaulted, like those on the ground and +first floors, were pleasantly high, and paved with brick tiles. From the +one large interior room a window-door opened on to a terrace in the +court--a deep brick terrace with a broad ledge on which stood a row of +flower-pots. When water was wanted, you opened a little door in the +kitchen wall and let your copper urn down, down, down into +mossy-smelling blackness; you heard a splash and gurgle, and after +proper exertions got it back brimming. + +The Italian-ness of it all captivated the mother, who had been drawn to +this dot on the map, where she was told one could live well at less +expense than in the United States, by the lure of the idea of Italy. She +was very humbly an artist. She had given drawing lessons to young ladies +in an elegant seminary, and, when approaching middle age, married the +father of one of these, a troubled, conscientious man whom the cares of +an entangled and disintegrating business kept awake at night. When his +need for feminine sympathy ceased, and administrators settled in their +summary way the questions that had furrowed his brow, his widow's wish +to start life anew far from the scene of her worries had led to the +balmy thought of Italy--Italy, where were all the wonders which had most +glamour for her fancy. + +She had loved it in an undiminished way to the end, had never really +desired to go home, though she spoke of it sometimes when the chill of +the stone floors and walls shook her fortitude, and the remembrance of +furnace heat, gas-light, hot water on tap, glowed rosy as a promise of +eternal summer. The children, however, were taught in their respective +schools that artificial heat is insalubrious; they had Italian ideas and +chilblains; not on account of any creature comfort that they missed +would Florence have been changed back for Charlestown. + +In her picturing of days far ahead Mrs. Fane certainly saw Lucile, an +accomplished young lady, receiving tributes of attention in the +drawing-rooms of home; and Gerald, a young man of parts, finding +recognition and fortune among his countrymen. To go home eventually was +among her cloudy plans. + +But Lucile died at sixteen, without adequate cause, one almost would +have said. She merely had not the ruggedness, the resistance, needed to +go on living among the rough winds of this world. The mother, a creature +of old-fashioned gentleness and profound affections, survived her by +only a few years. + +A business matter then obliged Gerald to go to America, and had he liked +the place, he might have taken up his abode there. It affected him like +vinegar dropped in a wound, like street din heard from a hospital bed. +He turned back, and the long stairs to his empty dwelling were dear and +sweet to him on the day of his return. + +This, then, had remained his home. His needs were simple, and he could +live without applying himself to uncongenial work, though the allowance +had been stopped, and the income, as Leslie had said, was incredibly +small. The good Giovanna, who had been his mother's servant, stayed on +with her _signorino_, and economized for him; the wages of an +Italian servant were in those days no extravagance. He had no pleasures +that cost money; he neither traveled nor went to fine restaurants. He +wore neat, old well-brushed clothes, went afoot, gave to the poor single +coppers. But he had liberty, worked when he pleased and as he pleased; +he was content to be poor, so long as his poverty did not reach the +point where it involves cutting a poor figure. Giovanna, prouder than +her master, disliked the thought of _far cattiva figura_ even more +than did he, and was careful in her household management to keep up a +certain style, never forgetting the sprig of parsley on the platter +beside the single _braciolina_. + +At one period he had contemplated a change in his mode of living, had +dreamed of entering the contest for laurels and gold, so as to afford a +more appropriate setting for the beauty of his charmer. The Charmer had +attained without need of him the setting she craved, and Gerald went on +climbing his long stairs, painting in his so personal and unpopular way, +and at night reading by light of a solitary lamp the choice and subtle +masterpieces of many literatures. + + * * * * * + +"My land! shall we _ever_ get to the top?" whispered Aurora to +Estelle as, one behind the other, sliding their hands along the wall, +they felt with their feet for the steps that led to Gerald's door. "He +told us they were long, and he warned us they were dark, but this!... I +wonder why they don't have a lamp going, or something." + +"Because there isn't any image of the Virgin," said Estelle, lightly. +"It's our just having come in from the sunshine makes it seem dark. It's +getting lighter. Cheer up! It's good for you." + +"It'll make me lose three pounds, I shouldn't wonder." + +They spoke in whispers, because when they had pulled the bell-knob and +the door had swung open, a voice from incalculable altitudes had shouted, +"_Chi è?_" They had answered, as instructed, "_Amici_," and now they +pictured somebody listening to their shuffling ascent. + +At the top, in fact, stood Giovanna, who regarded them with an eye the +color of strong black coffee and said, "_Riverisco_!" + +The small old woman had a thin, bronze Dantesque face, molded by a +thousand indignations--all directed against proper objects of +indignation--to a settled severity; a face of narrow concentrated +passions and perfect fidelity and a preference for few words. The +friendly smiles of Aurora and Estelle produced in her a relenting. +Courtesy here demanded a pleasant look, and Giovanna was always +courteous. She stood aside for Gerald, who came to the very door to +welcome these ladies. + +The guests were now assembled. One of them was staying with Gerald--Abbé +Johns, who had come for a few days from Leghorn, where he lived. The +others were Mrs. Foss and Miss Seymour. + +What had been in Mrs. Fane's time the drawing-room had since become also +a studio. The landlord had permitted his tenant to increase the light by +extending the windows across the street-side wall. Beyond that, there +were as few signs about of the art-trade as Gerald had affectations of +the artist. The model-stand supporting books and things appeared like a +low table; easel, canvases, portfolios, all the littering properties of +a painter, had been shoved for the occasion into the next room, a +spacious glory-hole which Giovanna did not permit to become dusty beyond +the decent. + +The result of removing, first, many of the things that made the room a +drawing-room, then, most of the things that made it a studio, left the +place rather bare. It was according to Gerald's taste: few things in it, +each having the merit of either beauty or interest, else the excuse of +utility. + +Mrs. Foss had waited for Aurora's arrival to make the tea. The feast was +very simple. Gerald offered what his mother had used to offer. Giovanna +cut the bread-and-butter as that genteel lady had taught her, and +continued to buy the plum-cake at the same confectioner's. + +Aurora had come in from the sunshine and cold with January roses in her +cheeks and exhilaration in her blood. At sight of her beloved Mrs. Foss +she laughed for joy. She rejoiced also to see Miss Seymour, who was one +of her "likes," and she was immensely interested to meet the abbé, whom +she knew to be Gerald's best friend, even as Estelle was hers. She loved +Gerald for having just these people to meet them at tea, the ones he +himself thought most of. She felt sweetly flattered at being made one of +a company so choicely wise and good. + +But the result was not exactly fortunate for the gaiety of the little +party, if Aurora's laugh had been counted upon to enliven it. Far from +shy though she was, she developed a disinclination to-day to speak. She +was impressed by the abbé, for whom her conversation did not seem to her +good enough. + +The young priest, a convert to Catholicism, was Gerald's age, and had it +not been for his collar, the cut of his coat, would have looked like a +not at all unusual Englishman with blue eyes, curly black hair, a touch +of warm color in his shaven cheeks. Unless you sat across the tea-table +from him and now and then, while he quietly and unassumingly talked, met +his eyes. + +Some persons said that he looked ascetic, some austere, some angelic. +Mrs. Foss, not finding the right adjective for his mixture of poise and +humanity, was content to call him charming. Gerald, who had known him +when they were Vin and Raldi to each other and equally far from entering +the Church, regarded him as simply the nicest fellow he knew. Aurora had +no definition for him, but did not feel disposed to ripple on as usual +in his hearing. Yet she would have liked to make friends with him, too. +She would have said to him some such thing as, "What are the thoughts +you have, which make you so calm, deep inside? But I know. We learned +them at our mother's knee, but in the fury of living, having fun, +getting on, we never revisit the chamber where they are kept. You live +in it." + +He was talking with Estelle like any other man whose conversation should +not contain the faintest element of gallantry, and Estelle was talking +to him with an ease that Aurora marveled at. Aurora marveled how Estelle +could know, or seem to know, a lot of things which she had never before +given sign of caring about. If the two of them were not conversing upon +the symbolism of religious art! Having finished his tea, the abbé went +to fetch a book from Gerald's shelves, which he knew as well as his own, +and Estelle was shown reproductions of carvings on old cathedrals. + +Mrs. Foss, who had been talking of the Carnival now beginning, telling +Aurora about corsi and coriandoli of the past as compared with the poor +remnants of these customs, and describing the still undiminished glories +of a veglione, perceiving finally that the usually merry lady was on her +best behavior to the point of almost complete taciturnity, from +necessity addressed herself more directly to Miss Seymour, who shared +the sofa with her; and from talking of _veglioni_ the two slid into +talking of Florentine affairs more personal. + +The task of entertaining Mrs. Hawthorne thus devolving upon Gerald, he +took it up in a way that flatteringly presupposed in her an interest in +general questions. His manner seemed to her very formal. She forgot +that, innocent as their relations were, he yet could not before people +speak to her with the lack of ceremony that in private made her feel +they were such good friends. But even aside from this cool and correct +manner, Gerald seemed to her different to-day--calmer, more serene, less +needing sympathy, as if something of his friend the abbé had rubbed off +on to him. + +As he was going on, in language that reminded her of a book, she +interrupted him. + +"Don't you want to show me your house?" + +"I was going to suggest it," he said at once. "There are several things +I should like to show you. Will you come?" + +She rose to follow, losing some of her constraint. + +"It's what we always do on the Cape. Any one comes for the first time, +we show them all over our house." + +When they were outside the drawing-room door, she felt more like +herself. + +"Oh, I'm so glad I can't tell you to see the place where you live!" she +expanded. + +They went down the long corridor, past a closed door which he +disappointingly did not open. + +"It's a dark room we use to store things," he explained. Neither did he +open the door at the end of the hall. "It's Vincent's room," he said. + +They turned into the darker, narrower corridor, bent again, and went +toward the little window high over somebody else's garden. He ushered +Mrs. Hawthorne into the kitchen, for here, near the ceiling, was the +door-bell, and on it the well-known coat of arms, crown and +cannon-balls, which testified to the age and aristocracy of the house. + +While he sought to interest her in this curiosity, Aurora was looking at +everything besides; for Giovanna was making preparations for dinner, and +Aurora's thoughts were busy with the fowl she saw run on a long spit and +waiting to be roasted before a bundle of sticks at the back of the sort +of masonry counter that served as kitchen stove. + +"They do have the queerest ways of doing things!" she murmured. + +He took her across the passage and into the dining-room. He wished to +show her an old china tea-set, quaintly embellished with noble palaces +and parks, that had been his great-grandmother's. There again she looked +but casually at the thing he accounted fit for her examination, and +carefully, if surreptitiously, at all the rest. + +Last he showed her into the great square interior room with the glass +door on to the terrace over the court, the room which had been his +mother's and was now his own, and where hung a portrait of his mother. +On this Aurora fixed attentive and serious eyes, and had no need to +feign feeling, for appropriate feelings welled in her heart. + +"How gentle she looks!" she said softly. "And how much you must miss +her!" + +She stood for some time really trying to make acquaintance with the +vanished woman through that faded pastel likeness of her in youth which +Gerald kept where it had hung in her day, the portrait of herself which +she womanishly preferred because, as she did not conceal, it flattered +her. + +"She looks like one of those people you would have just loved to lift +the burdens off and make everything smooth for," Aurora said; "and yet +she looks like one of those people who spend their whole lives trying to +make things smooth for others." + +"Yes," said Gerald to that artless description of the feminine woman his +mother had been, and stood beside his guest, looking pensively up at the +portrait. + +All at once, Aurora felt like crying. It had been increasing, the +oppression to her spirits, ever since she entered this house to which +she had come filled with gay anticipation and innocent curiosity. It had +struck her from the first moment as gloomy, and it was undoubtedly cold, +with its three sticks of wood ceremoniously smoking in the unaccustomed +chimney-place. Its esthetic bareness had affected her like the +meagerness of poverty. And now it seemed to her sad, horribly so, +haunted by the gentle ghosts of that mother and sister who had known and +touched all these things, sat in the chairs, looked through the windows, +and who conceivably came back in the twilight to flit over the +uncarpeted floor and peer in the dim mirrors to see how much the grave +had changed them. She shivered. Yes, cold and bare and sad seemed +Gerald's dwelling. And Gerald, whose very bearing was a dignified denial +that anything about himself or his circumstances could call for +compassion--Gerald, thin and without color, looked to her cold-pinched +and under-nourished. She had a sense of his long evenings alone, +drearily without fire, his solitary meals in that dining-room so +unsuggestive of good cheer; she thought of that single candle on the +night-table burning in this cold, large room where he went to bed in +that bed of iron, laying his head on that small hair pillow, to dream +bitter dreams of a fair girl's treachery. + +She wanted to turn to him protesting: + +"Oh, I can't stand it! What makes you do it?" + +His next words changed the current of her thoughts. + +"I have another portrait of my mother," he said; "one I painted, which I +will show you if you care to see it." + +She cheered up. + +"Do! do!" she urged heartily. "I'm crazy to see something you've +painted." + +"You won't care for my painting," he pronounced without hesitation; "but +the portrait gives a good idea of my mother, I think, when she was older +than this." + +They returned to the drawing-room, where their friends were in the same +way engaged as when they left them. One pair was looking at a large +illustrated book; the other two sat leaning toward each other talking in +undertones. + +"The bird which you see," the abbé was saying, "with the smaller birds +crowding around him, is a pelican. The pelican, you know, who opens his +breast to feed his young, is a symbol of the Church." + +"It's not true, though, that the pelican does that," Estelle was on the +point of saying with American freedom, "any more than that a scorpion +surrounded by fire commits suicide. I read it in a Sunday paper where a +lot of old superstitions were exploded." But she tactfully did nothing +of the sort. She appeared instructed and impressed. + +What Miss Seymour was saying to Mrs. Foss would have sounded a little +singular to any one overhearing. The two women had been friends for +years, but never come so near to each other as, it chanced, they did +that afternoon, when all fell so favorably for a heart to heart talk. + +"I feel as if I had lost a key!" said Miss Seymour, and looked like a +bewildered princess turned old by a wicked fairy's spell. "When I +possessed it I thought nothing of it. It opened all the doors, but I +didn't know what it was made them so easy to open. Only now, when it's +gone, I know the value of that little golden key." + +"I know," said Mrs. Foss, sympathetically. "There's no use in us women +pretending we don't mind! Those who really and truly don't must be great +philosophers or great fools, or else selfless to a degree that is rarer +even than philosophy...." + +Gerald and Aurora crossed the room unhailed and entered the room beyond, +where dusty canvases, many deep, stood face to the wall. + +He found the unframed painting of his mother and placed it on the easel. +The short winter day was waning, but near the window where the easel +stood there was still light enough to see by. + +Aurora looked a long time without saying anything; Gerald did not speak +either. After the length of time one allows for the examination of a +picture, he took away that one and put another in its place; and so on +until he had shown her a dozen. + +"I don't know what to say," she finally got out, as if from under a +crushing burden of difficulty to express herself. + +"Please don't try!" he begged quickly. "And please not to care a bit if +you don't like them." + +She let out her breath as at the easing of a strain. He heard it. + +"I won't be so offensive," he went on, "as to say that in not liking +them you merely add yourself to the majority, nor yet that my feelings +are in no wise hurt by your failure to like them. But I do wish you to +know that I think it a sin and a shame to get a person like you, who +can't pretend a bit, before a lot of beastly canvases inevitably +repugnant to your mood and temperament, and make you uncomfortable with +the feeling that compliments are expected." + +"All right, then; I won't tell any lies." She added in a sigh, "I did +want so much to like them!" + +And he would never know what shining bubble burst there. She had wanted +so much, as she said, to like them, and, as she did not say, to buy some +of them, a great many of them, and make him rich with her gold. + +He replied to her sigh: + +"You are very kind." + +After a moment spent gazing at the last painting placed on the easel, as +if she hoped tardily to discover some merit in it, she said: + +"I don't know a thing about painting, so nothing I could say about your +way of doing it could matter one way or the other. But I have eyes to +see the way things and people look. Tell me, now, honest Injun, do they +look that way to you--the way you paint them?" + +He laughed. + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, no! Emphatically, no. And emphatically yes. When I look +at them as you do, in the street, across the table, they look to me +probably just as they do to you; but when I sit down to paint them--yes, +they look to me as I have shown them looking in these portraits." + +"But they're so sad! So sad it's cruel!" she objected. + +"Oh, no," he objected to her objection; "it's not quite as bad as that." + +"They make me perfectly miserable." + +He whipped the canvas off the easel, saying dryly: + +"Don't think of them again!" + +It looked like impatience. With hands thrust in his pockets he took a +purposeless half-turn in the room, then came back to her side. + +"If you totally detest them, I am sorry," he said mildly. "I had wanted +to offer you one, a little, unobtrusive one to stick in some corner, a +token of the artist's regard." + +"Oh, do! do!" she grasped at his friendly tender. "Find a little +cheerful one, if you can. I shall love to have it." + +He selected a small panel of a single tall, palely expanding garden +poppy, more gray than violet, against a background of shade. Flower +though it was, it still affected one like the portrait of a lady wronged +and suffering. + +In the drawing-room to which they returned Giovanna had lighted a lamp. +The fire had properly caught and was burning more brightly; the place +looked rosy and warm, after the winter twilight filling the other room +and the chill that reigned there. + +Aurora returned to the tea-table; with a disengaged air she reached for +plum-cake. She ascertained with comfort that Mrs. Foss did not look sad +or Estelle ill used; that the abbé was as serene as ever and Miss +Seymour, after her talk with Mrs. Foss, rather serener than usual. +Gerald was far jollier than any of his portraits. To make sure that she +was no depressing object herself, she smiled the warmest, sunniest smile +she was capable of. + +"Do come and talk a little bit with me, before I have to go home!" she +unexpectedly called out to the abbé. + +When at the end of the long evening spent together smoking and talking +the two friends separated for the night, Gerald went to his room as did +Vincent to his. But Gerald had no more than pulled off his necktie when +he changed his mind, went back to the drawing-room, crossed the +tobacco-scented space where something seemed to linger of the warmth of +goodfellowship, and entered the farther room. + +A doubt had risen in his mind. He could not wait till morning to see his +work with a fresh eye, an eye as fresh as Mrs. Hawthorne's, and satisfy +himself as to whether he, so careful of truth, had unconsciously come to +exaggerating, falsifying his impressions, grown guilty of hollow +mannerisms. + +Whatever he had said, he had been stung by Mrs. Hawthorne's liking his +paintings so little. It was easy to console oneself remembering the poor +lady's ignorance of art. The truth might be that something was wrong +with the pictures, which suspicion had driven the artist to go and have +a dispassionate look at them in the frigid hour between twelve and one +of the night. If a person is on the way to becoming a morbid ass he +cannot find it out too soon. + +Gerald's dogma was that the first duty of a picture is to be beautiful. +His critics did not give sufficient attention to that aspect of his +work, he privately thought; they were put off by what they mistakenly +called its queerness, its mere difference from the academic, the +conventional. This was bitter, because he had always so loved beautiful +lines, beautiful tints, had insisted that the very texture, of his +painting should have the beauty of fine-grained skin. + +He was no conspicuous colorist, of course, he did not by temperament +revel in the glow of rich, bold, endlessly varied tints. It was a +limitation, which his work naturally reflected. This was marked in fact +by modesty and melancholy of color-scheme. But that did not interfere +with beauty, he maintained. He had been thrilled by the discovery in the +Siena gallery of an old master with the same predilections as he, an +antipathy apparently to the vivid, crying, self-assertive colors, which +he accordingly with admirable simplicity left out, and interpreted the +world all in blues and greens, grays and violets, whites of many degrees +and tones and meanings. + +"They're so sad that it's cruel!" Mrs. Hawthorne had voiced the +instinctive objection of her earth-loving, life-praising disposition to +the view he took of people and things. But what was there to do about +it? When he looked at a sitter to render his personality sincerely, that +was the way he saw him. If he had been limited to rendering a human +being in the single aspect he wore while walking from the drawing-room +to the dinner-table with a lady on his arm and a rich meal in prospect, +he would have given up painting, it interested him so little. Most of +the portrait-painters in vogue did thus paint the surface and nothing +besides. Gerald had no envy of their large fees at the price of such +boredom as he would have suffered in their place. + +He held a canvas to the light of his candle. It was an old one of +Amabel. She had not been sitting for him, he had made this sketch from a +distance while she worked on her side. It was easy to see that the room +was cold, that the woman with the pinched aristocratic nose, the little +shawl over her shoulders, was poor, determined and anxious. If Mrs. Foss +had said, "But Amabel never was as hollow-cheeked as that, nor ever +looked pathetic in the least," Gerald could only have answered, "I swear +to you this is how she looked to me on that day." + +He studied the portrait of his mother, one of his earliest, bad in a +way, but excellent in the matter of likeness. His mother no more than +Amabel had been a pathetic person, Mrs. Foss would certainly have said. +To which Gerald might have answered that she was not so during an +afternoon call; but that the most characteristic thing about that gentle +and delicate woman had been the fact of her living so much in the life +of others and being open to endless sorrows through them. The dim +affectionate eyes, the deprecating half-smile of his mother, engaged +sympathy for the unfair plight. + +Last, he took up a portrait of Violet. She had been in the perfection of +young beauty; she had had no capacity for deep feeling, really,--why did +an aroma of sadness escape from that dainty colored shadow of her? Why, +but because of the artist's yearning sense that beauty is transitory, +and the loveliest girl subject to destiny, and the future full of +pitfalls for the fragility of all flesh! + +"Imagine a barnyard fowl, a common white hen pecking among the gravel," +Gerald once illustrated his view-point, "and imagine hovering over it a +hawk, which it hasn't seen. Does it make no difference in your sense of +the hen that _you_ see the hawk?" + +"It comes to this," Leslie on a certain occasion summed up Gerald's +case: "Gerald isn't satisfied to paint the thing that's before him. All +he cares to paint is the soul of things, and what you finally see +expressed on the canvas is his pity for everything that has the +misfortune to be born into an unsatisfactory world. Gerald can't see a +thing as being common: the moment he narrows his eyes to look for +purposes of art, it becomes to him exceptional, unique. I asked him +once, as a joke, to paint me a simple, large, bright orange squash, in a +field. And he did. A masterpiece. One can't say that the squash isn't +large, orange, and true to life. But what a squash! It has an amount of +personal distinction, an air of rarity and remoteness, that would make +you think twice, nay, three times, before making such a precious product +of the sacred earth into pies!" + +When he was chilled through and his hands were numb, Gerald remembered +to pick up his candle and go to bed. No change of opinion, it is +needless to say, had resulted from his midnight inquiry. + +A point of natural spite made him say that he did not ask people to like +his pictures. All he asked was permission to go on painting as he +pleased, obscure and independent, the sincere apostle of a peculiar +creed, working out his problems with conscience and fidelity. If fate +might send him critics whose opinion he valued he would be properly +grateful. He felt the need of criticism and companionship, in his work, +but had no regard for his fellow artists in Florence. His thoughts +turned sometimes with envy toward Paris, where modern art had some +vitality, and artist life the advantage of stimulating associations. +There was a good deal of talk at the time, and some derision, of a new +phase called impressionism, whose chief seat was Paris. + +As for the opinion of such a person as Mrs. Hawthorne, it obviously had +no value. But while the artist could brush her aside in the character of +critic, it remained a little galling to the man to know he figured in +her mind as a painter who did not know how to paint. + +"Can't paint for sour apples!" he seemed to hear her reporting to +Estelle, and got in his mouth the taste of the apples. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +When Gerald asked Mrs. Hawthorne to sit for him, she stared in his face +without a word. + +"Don't be afraid," he hastened to reassure her; "I engage to paint a +portrait you will like." + +She felt herself blush for the dismay she had not been able to conceal, +and to hide this embarrassment she lifted to her face--not the +handkerchief or the bouquet with which beauty is wont to cover the +telltale signal in the cheek, but a wee dog, as white as a handkerchief +and no less sweet than a bouquet. She rubbed her nose fondlingly in the +soft silk of his breast, while, tickled, he tried, with baby growls and +an exposure of sharp pin teeth, to get a bite at it. + +Gerald looked on with simple pleasure. Because he had given Aurora that +dog. On the day of making a scene because she was to receive a dog from +Hunt he had set to work to find one for her himself, the prior +possession of which would make it natural to decline Charlie's, if, as +Gerald doubted, Charlie's offer had been anything more than facile +compliment. And now, instead of the torment to his nerves of seeing her +fondle and kiss a brute of Charlie's, he had the not disagreeable +spectacle of her pressing to her warm and rosy face an animal that +related her caresses, even if loosely and distantly, to a less unworthy +object. Sour and sad, dried up and done with women, a man still has +feelings. + +It would be unfair not to add that something better than primeval +jealousy actuated Gerald, at the same time as, no doubt, some tincture +of that. A sort of impersonal delicacy made the idea disagreeable to him +of a dear, nice woman cherishing with the foolish fondness such persons +bestow on their pets the gift of a friend whom she, in taking his +loyalty for granted, overrated, as he thought. + +The dog he had selected to present to her belonged to a breed for which +he had respect as well as affection, crediting to Maltese terriers, +besides all the sterling dog virtues, a discretion, a fineness of +feeling, rare enough among humans. That Gerald kept no dog was due to +the fact that he was still under the impression of the illness and death +of his last, Lucile's pet and his mother's, who had been his companion +until a year or two before, a senile, self-controlled little personage +of the Maltese variety. + +Having decided to give Mrs. Hawthorne a dog, Gerald had spent some hours +watching the several components of one litter as they disported +themselves in the flagged court of a peasant house, and had fixed upon +one dusty ball of fluff rather than another upon solid indications of +character. + +Snowy after strenuous purifications at the hands of Giovanna, +sweet-smelling from the pinch of orris powder rubbed in his fur, and +brave with a cherry ribbon, he was taken from the breast of Gerald's +overcoat and deposited in the hands of Aurora, whose delight expressed +itself in sounds suggestive of an ogreish craving to eat the little +beast, interspersed with endearments of dim import, such as, "Diddums! +Wasums! Tiddledewinkums!" Estelle's did the same. There was no +difference in the affection the two instantly bestowed on this dog. +Aurora remarked later on that Busteretto couldn't be blamed for not +knowing which was his mother. + +Sensitively timid, yet bold in his half dozen inches with curiosity of +life and the exuberant gladness of youth, Busteretto could frisk and he +could tremble. He was cowed by the sight of fearful things, beetles and +big dogs, but next moment, with budding valor, would dash to investigate +them. He twinkled when he ran, his bark lifted him off his four feet. +Withal something exquisite marked him even among Maltese puppies, which +Aurora felt without art to define it. She said he reminded her of the +new moon when it is no bigger than a fingernail. If with the tip of his +rose-petal tongue he laid the lick of fondness and approval on the end +of your nose, you felt two things: that the salute had come directed by +the purest heart-guidance, and that the nose had something about it +subtly right. You were flattered. + +When Gerald encouraged Mrs. Hawthorne to decide for herself how she +should like to be painted, with what habiliments, appurtenances and +surroundings, she decided first of all to have Busteretto on her +lap,--but that was afterward given up: he wiggled. Then her white +ostrich fan in her hand, her pearls around her neck, her diamond stars +in her hair, a cluster of roses at her corsage, her best dress on, and +an opera-cloak thrown over the back of her chair. + +Catching, as she thought, a look of irony on Gerald's face, she had a +return of suspicion. + +"See here," she said, observing him narrowly, "there's no trick about +this, is there?" + +"Not the shadow of one. Please trust me, Mrs. Hawthorne. This is to be a +portrait entirely satisfactory as well as entirely resembling. It is +like you to desire to be painted with your plumes and pearls and roses, +and they are very becoming. I shall put them in with pleasure. I know +you do not believe I can paint a portrait to suit you. Very well. Grant +me the favor of a chance to try. We shall see." + +It was true that she did not believe it, but she was so willing to hope. +One of the upstairs rooms at the back was chosen for the sittings +because the light through its windows was the least variable. The +necessary artist's baggage was brought over from Gerald's, and the work +began. + +Charcoal in hand, he regarded Mrs. Hawthorne quietly and lengthily +through half-closed eyes. + +"You have not one good feature," he said, as if thinking aloud. + +"Oh!"--she started out of the pose they had after much experimenting +decided upon--"oh! is that the way you're going to pay me for keeping +still on a chair by the hour?" + +"You have no eyebrows to speak of." + +"What do you mean? Yes, I have, too; lots of them; lovely ones. Only +they don't show up. They're fair, to match my hair." + +"You are undershot." + +"What's that?" + +"Your lower jaw closes outside of your upper." + +"Oh, but so little! Just enough to take the curse off an otherwise too +perfect beauty." + +As she curled up the corners of her mouth in an affected smirk, he +quickly shifted his glance, with a horrible suspicion that she was +crossing her eyes. As she had pronounced the word perfect +"_parfect_," he presumed that she was making herself look, for the +remainder, like Antonia. It was her latest vaudeville turn, imitating +Antonia. He was careful not to look again in her direction until she had +stopped doing what annoyed him furiously. He could not hope to make her +understand to what point the debasing of beauty to brutal comic uses +wounded him. + +"Faultless features," he went on after a time, in commentary on his +earlier remark, "do not by any means always make a beautiful face," +politely leading her to suppose he meant that to be without them was no +great misfortune. + +Estelle came into the room for company. She brought her sewing, one of +those elegant pieces of handiwork that give to idleness a good +conscience. Gerald felt her delicately try to get acquainted with him. +She was not as altogether void of intellectual curiosity as her friend. +She would seem to care about discovering further what sort of man he was +mentally, what his ideas were on a variety of subjects. Also, but even +more delicately, to interest him, just a little bit, in her own self and +ideas. + +He was grateful to her, and did what he could to show himself +responsive. With the portrait began the period of a less perfunctory +relation between them. They had talks sometimes that Aurora declared, +without trace of envy, were 'way above her head. + +Estelle was waking to an interest in the art and history of the Old +World. She was "reading up" on these things. She was also "working at" +her French, and would in a little systematic way she had excuse herself +at the same hour daily, saying she must go and get her lessons. Not +feeling quite the enterprise to study two languages at one time, she had +given the preference to French, as being the more generally useful in +Europe. + +Gerald now made the acquaintance of a new member of the household. She +came into the room bearing a small tray with a hot-water pot and a cup. +She took this to Aurora, who helped herself to plain hot water, +explaining: + +"I am trying to 'redooce.' This is good for what ails me, they say. But +I could never in the world think of it. Clotilde thinks of it for me, +and she's that punctual! Clotilde, you're too punctual with this stuff. +You don't suppose I like it?" + +"But think, Madame, of the sylph's form that it will give you!" replied +Clotilde, in respectably good English. + +"I do think of it. Give me another cup. Mr. Fane, this is Miss--no, I +won't launch on that name. It's Italo's sister, who has saved our lives +and become our greatest blessing." + +Clotilde exposed in smiling a fine array of white teeth. She was not at +all like her brother, but well-grown, white and pink beneath her neat +head-dress of crisp black hair. She impressed Gerald as belonging to a +different and better class. If she were vulgar, it was at least not in +the same way. She appeared like that paradox, a lady of the +working-class, with a distinguishing air of capability, good humor, and +openness. The latter Gerald was not disposed absolutely to trust, but he +was glad to trust all the rest. + +No sooner had she left the room than Aurora and Estelle in one voice +started telling him about her. He learned that she and Italo were not +what they called "own" brother and sister, but only half. Their father, +being left by the death of his wife with a young family on his hands, +had in feeble despair married the cook, become the father of one more +child, and died. Italo was that latest born. The children of the first +wife had then been taken by her folks, while their step-mother retained +her own chick, assisted from a distance by the prouder portion of the +family to educate and give him a trade. He had chosen an art instead, +and by it was rising in the world. There had been published a waltz of +his composing, dedicated by permission to a name with a coronet over it. +He lived with and supported his good soul of a mother, and saw something +of his half-brethren, all of them through lack of fortune condemned to +small ways of life, like himself. + +Clotilde, the best-hearted, was his favorite and he hers. She recognized +his gifts, she further regarded him as a man of spirit, or wit. + +"It must be," reflected Gerald, "that the fellow can stir up a laugh." + +He knew him only as a fixture at the piano, but could well accommodate +the idea of a species of buffoonery to that boldly jutting nose of his. +He fancied that _maldicenza_, gossip further spiced with +backbiting, would form the chief baggage of his wit. If he possessed +sharp ears, his opportunities for picking up knowledge of other people's +affairs were certainly unusual. He passed from house to house, playing +accompaniments, drumming for dancing, so insignificant on his +screw-stool that many no doubt talked before him as if nobody had been +there. + +Gerald did not dislike Ceccherelli, really, only had him on his nerves +in relation to Aurora. He felt him, indeed, rather likeable at a +distance, as part of a story; he had the good point of being an +individual. Gerald was in general touched to benevolence at sight of a +poor devil elated by his little draught of success. To Ceccherelli +without a doubt the patronage of the wealthy American represented +success. Ceccherelli pulling out his gold watch was a disarming vision. + +Gerald cherished a hope, born of curiosity, that he might witness some +exhibition of Ceccherelli's _spirito_, or wit, and upon an evening +when the pianist dropped in after dinner was on the alert for +manifestations.... + +It may here be inserted that upon being asked to remain for dinner +Gerald had artfully delayed answering until he had made sure that +Clotilde did not dine with the ladies. Their familiarity had made him +fear it. Highly as he was prepared to esteem Clotilde, the meal would, +with her making the fourth, have lost for him those points on account of +which he prized it. But he gathered that she found it more convenient to +take her meals in private. In rejoicing for himself, he rejoiced also +for her, eating in holy peace, as he pictured her doing, the dishes of +her country, cooked with oil and onion; pouring the wine of her country +from a good fat flask such as never found its place on the table of the +strangers. + +To go back: Gerald when after dinner the pianist came to make music for +the ladies, was hoping for some example of that brightness for which he +had a reputation with three persons, possibly more. But Ceccherelli +remained on the piano-stool and never once raised his voice. Estelle and +Aurora went in turns to chat with him there, but not one witty word +reached Gerald. Then he had the sense to see that it was he, Gerald, who +acted as a spoil-feast, a dampener. He got an outside view of himself, +stiff, dry, critical, ungenial-looking. It was not to be wondered at +that the flow of spirits was dried up in the man of temperament by his +vicinity. He suspected, catching a side-look from the pianist's small +brown eye, that the little man who did not care to speak aloud in his +hearing yet had plenty to say on the subject of him in a different +entourage. + +This notwithstanding, it was only when Gerald got whiffs and echoes of +Ceccherelli through Aurora that he called him a pest. + +"Italo says," she began, after a silence such as often fell while she +posed and he painted, "that Mr. Landini has the evil eye." + +"What rubbish!" + +"Glad to hear you say so. I don't believe there's any such thing, +myself. But Italo swears there is, and has told me story upon story to +prove it. He wants me to wear a coral horn and poke it at Mr. Landini +whenever he comes near me." + +"Wherefore a coral horn? You can more cheaply, and quite as effectually, +make horns of your fingers, like this. I should strongly advise you not +to let the object of this precaution catch you doing it.... I should +think, Mrs. Hawthorne, you would be ashamed to let that inferior little +individual corrupt your mind." + +Fancying it teased him, she pursued, "What do you think he says besides? +That Mr. Landini's color isn't natural, but a juice, he says, a dye, +that he stains himself with." + +"For the love of Heaven, why?" + +"That's what I wanted to know. Why go to all that trouble for the sake +of looking like a darkey? But Italo says, says Italo, that it gives him +more success with the ladies. His difference from other men obliges them +to look at him, then his eyes do the rest." + +"I only hope your laugh is sincere, Mrs. Hawthorne, and that you do not +allow this poisonous nonsense to affect your feelings towards--" + +"Don't be afraid. If I did, I shouldn't be having him to dinner, should +I? And he's coming to-night." + +"Oh." + +"Yes. Quite a party. You weren't asked, because we know you now. You +would have managed by sly questions to find out who else was coming and +then you wouldn't have come." + +"Well, who is coming? There is nothing sly about that." + +"I sha'n't tell you. This much I will tell you, though--" she added with +the frankness usual to her, "I don't look forward to it much." + +It was on the end of his tongue to ask next morning how her dinner had +gone off, but on second thoughts he left it for her to speak of when she +was ready. + +She at first appeared much as on other days, but when she had lapsed +into silence and fallen into thought her expression became a shade +gloomy. He had noticed that when her eyes were rather more grey than +blue it was the sign of a cloud in her sky. + +"Might one ask the lady sitting for her picture to look pleasant?" he +said. + +"Yes, yes," she remembered herself; "I will try to look pleasant. But I +feel cross." + +"Well?... What went wrong with your dinner?" + +"Oh, I made a fool of myself." + +"That sounds serious. Was it?" + +"Yes. No. Oh, I don't know. I don't suppose it was really serious.... +But the whole thing has made me cross." + +She labored under an urgent necessity to tell somebody all about it, +that was evident. + +"You see," she plunged without preamble into her confidence, "from the +beginning, I didn't want that party! I love to have folks to dinner, any +number, all the time. You know I just love a jollification. But this was +different, as I knew it was going to be. It began with Charlie Hunt +telling me--or, not exactly telling, I forget how it came out--that +yesterday was his birthday. I said, 'Come and celebrate with us!' I was +thinking of making a big cake and sticking it full of pink candles. And +from that simple beginning, blessed if I know how it happened, except my +always wanting to say yes to anything anybody proposes, it came to be a +regular dinner-party, the kind they give over here, with courses and +wines and finger-bowls, all the frills, and twelve people, not friends +of mine at all, barely acquaintances, but people Charlie Hunt thought it +would be nice to ask. Well, it was my fault, every bit of it, and nobody +else's. I've no business to say all those joyful yeses if I don't mean +them. Good enough for me if I have to swallow my pill afterwards without +so much as making a face. It wasn't so bad, after all, everything went +all right, thanks to Clotilde and Charlie. Only I wasn't having much +fun. Charlie had planned how people should sit, and Mr. Landini was on +one side of me, and he was making himself terribly agreeable. He means +all right, but his talk, as I guess you know, isn't a bit my kind. And +last night, I don't mind telling you--" her voice dropped to a note +confidentially low, "with his compliments and incinerations, you'd +almost have thought he was sweet on me. Only I know better. And so, as I +say, I wasn't having much fun. Then I don't know what got into me. They +were passing the fruit. I got up and went to the sideboard and took one +of those fine hot-house looking peaches out of our permanent assortment +that needs dusting every few days, and I came back to my seat and +offered that marble fruit with a fetching smile to Mr. Landini. He +looked as if he felt I was bestowing a very particular favor. He took +it--and it dropped out of his hand on to the plate with a crash that +laid it in smithereens.... You can see why I am cross." + +"I shouldn't be surprised, dear woman, if he were cross, too." + +"He was perfect! I respected him! Liked him better than I ever had +before! I never saw anything so well done as the way he carried it off! +I was never so uncomfortable in all my life, though we united in +laughing, ha, ha.... Charlie would have taken my head off, if he had +dared, afterwards in a corner of the parlor. But the first word he said, +I cut in, short as pie-crust, 'Young man,' I said, 'if you aren't +careful I shall sit on you. Do you know how much I weigh?' And I meant +it." + +Gerald prudently placed a paint-brush across his mouth, and shut his +teeth on it as on a bridle-bit, to excuse his saying nothing in the way +of comment on what he had heard. + +Mrs. Hawthorne told him next day at the first opportunity, like one +eager to make reparation for an injustice, "It's all right now! A +beautiful plate came yesterday afternoon from Ginori's where my +dinner-set was bought--a plate, you know, to match the one that got +broken. As if I cared anything about the old plate! And along with it +Mr. Landini's card, with such a nice message written on it. Don't you +think it white in him? When it was all my fault. And in the evening +Charlie Hunt came and was sweet as pie. We're just as good friends as +ever. I'm ashamed of myself for having felt so put out. Forget anything +I said that didn't seem quite kind. He's all right. It's me that's +crochety.... Isn't that picture far enough along for you to let me see +it?" + +"No, Mrs. Hawthorne." + +"Will you let me see it when it's far enough along?" + +"No." + +"I think you're real mean. How much longer will it take to finish it?" + +"Does sitting bore you so much?" + +"Land, no! Bore me? I perfectly love it! It's like taking a sea-voyage +with some one. You see more of them in a week or two than you would in +the same number of years on land. I'm getting to feel I know you quite +well." + +"Wasn't it clever of me to think of the portrait?" + +"Go 'way! D'you see anything green in my eye? As I was saying, I'm +getting to know you pretty well. You get mad awful' easy, don't you? But +you don't hate people, really, nearly as much as I do, that it takes a +lot to make mad. There are people in this world that I hate--oh, how I +hate 'em! I hate 'em so I could almost put their eyes out. But you, +Stickly-prickly, when it comes right down to it, I notice you make a lot +of allowance for people. Do you know, when it comes right down to it, +you're one of the patientest persons I know. I'd take my chances with +you for a judge a lot sooner than I'd like to with loads of people who +aren't half so ready to call you a blame' fool." + +"While you have been making these valuable discoveries in character, +what do you suppose I have been doing, Mrs. Hawthorne?" asked Gerald, +after the time it would take to bow ceremoniously in acknowledgement of +a compliment. + +"Oh, finding out things about me, I suppose." + +"Not things. One thing. I had known you for some length of time before +my felicitous invention of the portrait, you remember, and as you are +barely more elusive than the primary colors, or more intricate than the +three virtues, I did not suppose I had anything more to learn. But I +had. It can't be said I didn't suspect it. I had seen signs of it. I +smelled it, as it were. But I had no idea of its extent, its magnitude, +its importance. It is simply amazing, bewildering, funny." + +"For goodness' sake, what?" she cried, breathless with interest. + +"I can't tell you. It would ill become me to say. The least mention of +it on my part would be the height of impertinence. The thing is none of +my business. Be so kind as to resume the pose, Mrs. Hawthorne, and to +keep very, very still, like a good girl. Do not speak, please, for some +time; I am working on your mouth." + +Gerald had indeed been astonished, amused, appalled. He had in a general +way known that Mrs. Hawthorne was prodigal, the impression one received +of her at first sight prepared one to find her generous; but he had +formed no idea of the ease and magnificence with which she got rid of +money. + +In the time so far devoted to painting her he had grown quite accustomed +to a little scene that almost daily repeated itself--a scene which he, +busy at his side of the room, was presumably not supposed to see, or, if +he saw it, to think anything about. + +Clotilde would come in with a look of great discretion, a smile of great +modesty, and stand hesitating, like a person with a communication to +make, but not sufficient boldness to interrupt. Aurora, always glad to +drop the pose, would excuse herself to Gerald and ask what Clotilde +wanted. Clotilde would then approach and speak low,--not so low, +however, but that in spite of him messages and meanings were telegraphed +to Gerald's brain. The look itself of the unsealed envelopes in +Clotilde's hand was to Gerald's eye full of information. She would +sometimes extract and unfold a document for Aurora to look at; but +Aurora would wave it aside with a careless, "You know I couldn't read it +if I wanted to." At the end of the murmured conference Aurora would say, +"Will you go and get my porte-monnaie? It's in my top drawer," and when +this had been brought, her dimpled hand would take from it and give to +Clotilde bills of twenty, of fifty, of a hundred francs, hardly +appearing to count. Sometimes she would say: "I'm afraid I haven't +enough. I shall have to make out a check." + +Gerald's _flair_, and knowledge of his Florence, enabled him +perfectly to divine what was in question. He was only puzzled as to why +these transactions should not have taken place at a more private hour, +and acutely observed that they took place when they could, this being +when Estelle was out of the way. Clotilde also had _flair_. + +After Clotilde had retired, Aurora one morning, having imperfectly +understood what her money was wanted for, puckered her brows over the +letters that, through an oversight, had remained in her hands. She held +one out to Gerald to translate. It was from the united chorus-singers of +Florence, a simple, direct, and ingenuous appeal for a gratuity. Another +letter was from a poor young girl who wished for money to buy her +wedding outfit. Another from a poor man out of work. + +Gerald could have laughed. But he did not; nor made any remark. He did +not dislike seeing those voracious maws stuffed with a fat morsel. He +knew as much of the real poverty in Florence as of the innocent +impudence of many poor, with their lingering medieval outlook upon the +relations of the poor and the rich. He sided with those against these. +Singularly, perhaps, he regarded himself as belonging among the latter, +the rich. He was glad the chorus-singers and the _sposina_ and the +worried _padre di famiglia_ were going to be made glad by rich +crumbs from Aurora's board. But he could not help uneasiness for the +future, when the famished locusts, still approaching single scout, +should precipitate themselves in battalions, when the whole of Florence +should have got the glad tidings and gathered impetus.... + +Well, Clotilde was there. Clotilde would know pertinent discourses to +hold to the brazen beggars when their shamelessness passed bounds. +Meanwhile Gerald could see that she enjoyed this distributing of good +things among her fellow-citizens. Not that she was strongly disposed to +charity. He did not believe she gave away anything of her own, but she +loved to see Aurora give. After a life spent in a home where the lumps +of sugar were counted and the coffee-beans kept under lock and key, it +attracted her like wild, incredible romance. + +It would have hurt her to behold this unproductive output, no doubt, had +it not been a mere foreigner who lost what her own people +gained,--money, besides, that could never have benefited her, and that +came nearer to benefiting her when spent in that manner than in another. +Clotilde, loyal in service, giving more than good measure, offering all +the pleasant fruits of a visible devotion, could yet not be expected to +have--or, to state it more fairly, was not supposed by Gerald to +have--any real bowels for this outsider, who might for one thing be +drawing from bottomless gold-mines, or, if she were not, would suffer a +ruin she had richly deserved. And might it not in aftertimes profit her, +Clotilde, to have been instrumental to this person and that in obtaining +money from the millionaire? The shops recognized such a title to reward, +and offered it regularly to such private middlemen as herself for a +careful guiding of the dispensing hand, and this without the feeling on +any side that it was the payment of the unjust steward. + +Gerald did not in the least despise Clotilde, poor Clotilde, with her +nose like a little white trumpet between her downy pink and white +cheeks, for this business-like outlook and use of her position. It would +have been different if she had been a friend and gentleman. + + * * * * * + +The portrait did not progress rapidly. Gerald was not hurrying. On +Gerald's lips as he painted there played an ambiguous smile, privately +derisive of his work and the fun he was having. + +No problems, no effort, none of those searching doubts of oneself that +produce heart-sickness; nor yet any of those exaltations that cause one +to forget the hour of meals. Curious that it should have been fun all +the same!... His reply to which was that only a very poor observer could +think it curious that the lower man within a man should feel it fun to +be indulged. Fortunately, a natural limit was set to this Capuan period. + +He would come from the winter world into the room which the American +kept enervatingly warm, a pernicious practice. One could not deny, +however, that the body relaxed in it with a sense of well-being, after +steeling itself to resist the insidious Italian cold, exuding from damp +pavements and blown on the sharp tramontana; that cold which is never, +if measured by the thermometer, severe, but against which clothing seems +ineffectual. The blood does not react against it; the blood shrinks +away, and stagnates around the heart. + +He would change his coat for a velveteen jacket, not in order to be +picturesque, but to keep his coat-cuffs clean. He was as particular as +an old maid, Aurora told him, before he had been caught absentmindedly +wiping paint off on his hair. + +The fair model would get her chair-legs into correspondence with certain +chalk-marks on the carpet, be helped to find her pose, and having made +herself comfortable, turn on him blue eyes, with a faint brown shadow +under them--blue eyes that wore a sheepish look until she presently +forgot she was sitting for her picture. She was pressed to keep her +opera-cloak over her shoulders, lest she take cold in her décolleté; the +high fur collar made an effective background for her face. Then he would +fall to painting, and the hours of the forenoon would fly. + +An amiable woman would now and then make a remark, easily jocular. +Another amiable woman--soothing presences, both--would answer. Or he +would answer; there would be an interlude of familiar talk, rest, and +laughing, and throwing a ball for a scampering puppy. At noon an end to +labor. He would remain for lunch, that meal of cheery luxury, immorally +abundant. After it he would still linger in this house, bright and warm +with fires, smoking cigarettes in a chair as luxuriously soft as those +curling clouds on which are seen throning the gods in ceiling frescos, +and grow further day by day into the intimacy of the amiable women. In +full afternoon they would ask him if he would go out with them in their +carriage, take an airing, and return for dinner; or, if he obstinately +declined, might they set him down somewhere. He would make a point of +not accepting, and hurry off afoot with his damp umbrella. + +Although Gerald had enlightened contempt for the sensuous comfort he was +taking in the fleshpots of the Hermitage, there was in it one element +which he did not analyze merely to despise. + +He was aware of it most often after Estelle had left the room. He +settled down then for a time of heightened well-being. It was observable +that the sitter also took on a faintly different air. Often at that +moment she would vaguely, purposelessly, smile over to him, and he would +smile in absolute reciprocity. They would not seize the opportunity for +more personal exchange of talk. All would go on as before. He had +nothing to say to Aurora or she to him that could not have been said +before an army of witnesses. Yet it was to him as if a touch of magic +had removed an impediment, and the mysterious effluvium which made the +vicinity of Mrs. Hawthorne calming, healing to him, had a chance to flow +and steep his nerves in a blessed quiet, a quiet which--one hardly knows +how to describe such a thing--was at the same time excitement. + +Gerald did not really care for talking. He could, it was true, sit up +all night with Vincent Johns, discussing this subject and that; he could +split hairs and wander into every intricacy of argument with men and +artists; with women too he could sometimes be litigious. The bottom +truth was nevertheless that he did not care for talking. It had happened +to him to sigh for a world where nobody talked forever and ever. + +What he cared for was faces. They were what discoursed to you, told the +veracious story of lives and emotions--not lamely, as words do, mingling +the trivial with the significant, but altogether perfectly. It rested +with you to understand. + +Mrs. Hawthorne in talk was cheap as echoes of a traveling-circus tent: +you had the simple fooling of the clown, the plain good sense of the +farmer's wife, the children's ebullient joy in the show. But Mrs. +Hawthorne in silence and abstraction was allied to things august and +mysterious, things far removed from her own thoughts. These, while she +sat in her foolish jewels, unsuitable by day, were very likely busy with +her house, her dressmaker, the doings of her little set, gossip, the +personal affairs--who knows?--of the painter painting her. But, +profounder than words or thoughts, Mrs. Hawthorne's essential manner of +being related her to those forces of the world which the ancient mind +figured in the shapes of women. There was something present in her of +the basic kindness of old Earth, who wants to feed everybody, is ready +to give her breast to all the children. Her robust joyousness reposed, +one felt, on a reality, some great fact that made angers and anxieties +irrational. + +The student of faces could not have maintained that he got these +impressions of his sitter through his eyes. It was more, after all, like +a reflection received on the sensitive plate of his heart. + +One day Gerald began to hurry. He had had enough of it. The portrait was +finished in a few hours. The ladies were not permitted to see it. They +were made to wait until it was varnished and framed in one of the great, +bright Florentine frames of which they were so fond. + +Gerald, while they took their first long, rapt look, stood at one side, +with a smile like a faun's when a faun is Mephistophelian. + +Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find no words to +express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove. + +Estelle echoed this exclamation, but her charmed surprise did not ring +so true, if any one had been watchful enough to seize the shade of +difference. Because, not having been made to give a promise, she had +from time to time taken a look privately at the painting during its +progress. Aurora had known of this and been sorely tempted to do the +same, but had resisted the temptation, afraid of Gerald's bad opinion. + +"My soul!" she murmured, really much moved. + +Of course she knew that the portrait flattered her; but she felt as +Lauras and Leonoras and Lucastas no doubt felt when their poets +celebrated them under ideal forms in which their friends and families +may have had trouble to recognize them. The pride of having inspired an +immortal masterpiece must have stirred their hearts to gratitude toward +the gifted beings able to see them disencumbered from their faults, and +fix them for the contemplation of their own eyes and their neighbors' as +they had been at the best moment of their brightest hour. + +[Illustration: Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find +no words to express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove] + +In the days when La Grande Mademoiselle was painted as Minerva, Aurora's +portrait might have been called "Mrs. Hawthorne as Venus." The +expression of her face was as void of history as the fair goddess's. The +tender beam of pleasure lighting it suggested that she might that moment +have been awarded the apple. The portrait was, nevertheless, in a way, +"Aurora all over," as Estelle pronounced it; but an Aurora whose +imperfections had been smoothed out of existence, and with them her +humor; an Aurora whose good working complexion, as she called it, had +been turned to lilies and roses, her hair of mortal gold to immortal +sunshine, and those sagacious orbs of blue, which made friends for her +by their twinkle, into melting azure stars. + +The painter had, besides, glorified every detail of the setting: the +rich fabric of the dress, the creamy feathers of the fan, even the roses +of the breast-knot. The pearls and diamonds he had amused himself with +making larger than they were, and filled these with a winking fire, +those with a lambent luster. But Gerald had no mind when he indulged in +satire to be gross. The whole was dainty, as shimmering as a +soap-bubble, and of a fineness that rightly commended it to lovers of +beautiful surfaces. + +"I don't care," burst from Aurora, as if in reply to an inaudible +criticism, "I just love it! I don't care if it is flattered. I could hug +you for it, Gerald Fane. I think it's perfectly lovely. It's going to be +a solid satisfaction. By and by, when my double chin has caught up with +me, and I'm a homely old thing, and nobody knows what I did look like in +my prime, I'll have this to show them. By that time, with my brain +weakening, I hope I shall have come to thinking it was as like me as two +peas. There's some reason for living now." + +Every caller was taken to see the portrait, and heard Mrs. Hawthorne's +opinion of the talented artist. The majority of visitors candidly shared +her admiration, though not one woman among them can have failed to say +to herself that the portrait was flattered. But with a portrait of +oneself to have executed, who would not prefer the brush that makes +beautiful? + +Interest spread in the painter, whose work few even of the Florentines +knew except from hearsay. No one who saw Mrs. Hawthorne's portrait was +very clearly aware--such is fame!--that it was for Fane a departure. +Until it came to Leslie. She stood a long time before the painting, then +exclaimed: + +"What a joke!" + +But she was inclined to take the same view as Mrs. Hawthorne, that when +he could paint like that it was a pity Gerald should not do it oftener, +to build up a reputation and fill his purse. She only would have advised +him not to go quite so far another time in the same direction. + + * * * * * + +As Gerald, the portrait finished, came no more to the house, fairly as +if modesty could not have endured the compliments showered upon him, +Aurora with a communication to make had to square herself before her +desk in the room of the red flowers and painstakingly pen a note. + +Aurora, when taking pains, wrote the cleanest, clearest, most +characterless hand that was ever seen outside of a school copy-book, and +took pride in it. Aurora's language, when she applied herself to +composition, lost the last vestige of color and life. She wrote: + + "My dear Mr. Fane: + + "You have not been to see us for a long time, and so I am + obliged to write what I have to say. It is that our friends + _cannot say enough_ in praise of your portrait of me, and + Mrs. Bixby, an American who is staying at the pension Trollope, + wants to have one just like it--one, of course, I mean, as much + like her as that is like me, but not a bit more. But before she + decides she wants to know what it will cost. And that brings me + to the question, What is the price of my picture? Please, let me + beg you to make it _a figure I shall not blush to pay_ for + such a _fine piece of work_. Make it a price that agrees + with my estimate of the picture rather than your _very + modest_ one. I shall be glad, you ought to know, to pay + anything you say. You couldn't, if you tried, make it seem too + much for me to pay for _such a fine piece of work_. I have + got up in the middle of the night and gone down to look at it + with a candle, and stood till I began to sneeze, I like it so + much, though I know it's too good-looking. So please set a good + price on it and not _make me feel mean_ taking it. Then + I'll tell Mrs. Bixby what I paid. She's got plenty of money, and + even if she beats you down, it will be better if she knows I + paid a big price. You have such a wonderful talent it ought to + make your fortune, and so it will by and by. Don't forget that + we are always glad to see you and that you haven't been for + quite a while. + + "Yours sincerely, + "Aurora Hawthorne. + + "P.S. What do you think Busteretto did? He saw me pouring some + water into a bowl and imagined I was going to give him a bath. + So he went to hide under the grate. Then of course he had to + have a bath, which he wouldn't have had to otherwise. He sends + much love. + + "Another P.S. I meant to tell you we have got a box for the + veglione (I hope that is the way to spell it) on the last night + of the Carnival. We have only asked the Fosses so far, and we + want you to be sure to save that night to come with us." + +Gerald, having read, sat down and wrote, with a disregard to the +delicacy of his hair-lines and the shading of his down-strokes that +would have furnished a poor example to anybody: + + "The portrait, my dear Mrs. Hawthorne, is a gift, for which I + will not even accept thanks, as it is, your kind opinion + notwithstanding, absolutely without value. One sole point of + interest it has, that of a future curiosity--the only thing of + the kind that will have been painted in his whole lifetime by + + "Your devoted friend, + "G. F. + + "Shall I find you at home this evening?" + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +No festivity has quite the vast and varied glitter of a _veglione_. +It takes a whole city to make a party so big and bright. And the last +_veglione_ of the season is rather brighter than the rest, as if +the spirit of revelry, inexhausted at the end of Carnival, made haste to +use itself up in fireworks before the cold dawn of Ash Wednesday. + +The opera-house is cleared of its rows of seats, the stage united to the +parquet by a sloping floor. Every one of the boxes, rising tier above +tier in a jeweled horseshoe, offers the sight of a merry supper-party, +with spread table, twinkling candelabra, flowers, gala display. + +Crowding floor and stage and lobbies, swarm the maskers. In the center +of the great floor the _corps de ballet_, regiment of sylphs in +tulle petticoats and pale-pink tights, performs its characteristic +evolutions to the pulsating strains of the opera orchestra. The public +dances in the remaining space--dances, promenades, and plays pranks, the +special diversion of the evening being to "intrigue" some one. They are +heard speaking in high squeaks, in bass rumbles, in any way that may +disguise the voice. Many are in costume,--Mephistos, Pierrots, Figaros, +Harlequins, but the most are in simple domino. + +When a lady wishes to descend among the crowd she, in the darkness at +the back of the box, slips a domino over her ball-dress, a mask over her +features, and goes forth unknown to all save the cavalier on whose arm +she leans. + +The only uncovered faces belong to gentlemen. These look often a little +foolish, a little bored, because the uncovered faces are the natural +objects of the maskers' impertinences, their part the rather barren +amusement of trying to divine who it is endeavoring to intrigue, or +puzzle, them, and wittily to parry personalities often more pointed than +the drawing-room permits. + +The party in Aurora's box was large for the size of the box. She had +gone on inviting people, then brought hampers and hampers of good things +with which to feed them. There were the Fosses, Charlie with all the +Hunt girls, Landini, Lavin, the American doctor, the American dentist, +and Gerald. + +Also Manlio. The Fosses had brought him. He had returned from furlough +some time before. It was known now to everybody that he was the +_fidanzato_ of Brenda Foss. There was no talk of his leaving the +army; on the contrary, he was rumored to have prospects of early +advancement to the grade of captain; wherefore the general public took +it for granted that the bride's parents were providing the indispensable +marriage portion. + +Aurora's eyes, at a moment when Manlio's attention was elsewhere, rested +on him with a brooding, shining look. The symptoms of a great happiness, +though modestly muffled, were plain in his face. The Beautiful One was +coming back in the spring, already near, to marry him. + +Aurora's affectionate look was just tinged with regret. She had suffered +a disappointment in connection with Manlio. An obstinate and +uncompromising woman beyond the ocean, when invited to join in a +harmless conspiracy, had preferred to do actually, to the tune of eight +thousand dollars, what the grasping creature should have been satisfied +with merely appearing to do. The happiness that pierced through Manlio's +calm, like a strong light through pale marble, came to him from the +bride elect's aunt, and Aurora felt robbed. + +But Mrs. Foss's hand found hers under the table and gave it a warm +squeeze, whereupon Aurora's heart swelled in a way it had of doing. When +such a dilation took place, something simultaneously happened to her +eyes: the surrounding world was revealed to them as "too lovely for +anything." Dimples declared her joy. + +"Won't somebody have something more?" she asked, with the spoon in her +hand poised over a bowl still half full of chicken mayonnaise. + +But every one was done with eating; all were in haste to go down on to +the floor and find amusement, perhaps adventure, amid the fluctuating, +fascinating crowd. + +The box was fairly deserted when the door opened again, and the eyes of +those left in it, turning to see who entered, were met by two unknown +maskers. + +One wore the costume of a _bravo_ of old times, picturesque, +disreputable, an operatic _Sparafucile_ in tattered mantle and +ragged plume. The other was in a black satin domino, and had the face of +a crow, a great black beak projecting from a black mask. + +They stood a little way inside of the door as if waiting to be +addressed. There was silence for a moment, while the others waited +likewise. Within the eye-holes of their masks the eyes of the intruders +glittered in the glassy, baffling way of eyes behind masks. + +Aurora, unused to the mode of procedure at a _veglione_, asked +helplessly in a whisper of Landini: + +"What shall I say to them?" + +He spoke for her then, in Italian, because he thought it probable that +these were Florentines who had come into a strange box for a lark. + +"Good evening," he said. "Will you speak, or sing, and let us know what +we can do for your service?" + +The bravo, lifting two long hands in loose and torn black gloves, +rapidly made signs, like the deaf and dumb. + +"You speak too loud," said Gerald. "We are deafened. Let the lady +speak." + +The black domino, with a shrug of the shoulders and a gesture of +black-gloved hands excusing the limitations of a bird, answered by a +simple caw. + +Aurora now found her tongue and her cue: + +"And is it yourselves?" she burst in rollickingly. "Proud to meet you! +Will you partake?" + +With a hospitable sweep of the arm, intelligible to speakers of any +language, she made them free of her supper-table, where the candles +still twinkled over an appetizing abundance. + +Gerald watched sharply, saying to himself: "If they accept, we shall at +least see their chins." + +But upon the invitation _Sparafucile_, with farcical demonstrations +of greed, reached forth his long fingers in the flapping gloves, seized +cakes, white grapes, mandarins, nuts, and stuffed them into his wide +pockets; while the black domino grasped the neck of a bottle of +champagne and possessed herself of a glass. A caw of thanks issued from +the black beak, and from the bravo, as with their booty the two +retreated to the door, there proceeded, as unexpected as upsetting, a +whoop of rejoicing so loud that those near him fell back as if from the +danger of an explosion. In the midst of this consternation the maskers +were gone. + +"My land! did you hear that?" cried Aurora, who had clapped both hands +over the pit of her stomach. "Goodness! he's scared the liver-pin out of +me! Who d'you suppose they were?" + +Landini lost not another minute before asking Mrs. Hawthorne if they +should go down together for a turn. + +Gerald had been on the point of asking the same thing. He had almost +uttered the first word when Landini anticipated him. He felt a sharp +prick of annoyance with himself for not having been quicker as much as +with Landini for having been so quick. A little jealousy was quite in +order with regard to Mrs. Hawthorne now, on the simple ground of that +more intimate footing of friendship established between them by the +portrait. With the expression of courteous mournfulness proper in an +outrivaled cavalier, he made the gesture silently of having been at the +lady's service. Manlio did the same. + +The singular blonde, with Nubian lip and Parisian hair, Miss Deliverance +Jones, or, more commonly, Livvy, who spent this evening at the farther +end of the box making her own reflections on the European doings of +which she got glimpses, held up a white satin domino for her mistress's +arms. Gerald precipitated himself, took it from the maid and held it in +her place. He tried to meet his friend's glance, hoping for some +faintest sign of participation in his regret at not having been +"spryer." For the space of a second, just before she fastened on her +mask, he caught her eye. Brief and bright as the illumination of summer +lightning, a look of fun flashed over her face. She winked at him. + +Landini ceremoniously held his arm for her and Gerald saw them leave +together with a lessened objection. + +Gerald had for some time past suspected that Landini was paying court to +Mrs. Hawthorne. Whether the lady were aware of it he could not tell. +Gerald had not believed the man had a chance, although, women being +incalculable, one can never feel quite easy. But now he could almost +have found it in himself to pity the somewhat singular man--Italian in +fact, English in manner, Oriental in looks,--if so were he had built up +any little practical dream on the fair widow's acceptance of him. To the +possibility of a sentimental dream Gerald did not accord one single +thought. + +He seated himself, to wait for their return. Only Manlio was left in the +box besides himself. Manlio, consecrated to the worship of one afar, +cared little to mix with the profane and noisy multitude. As Gerald +leaned forth to see the couple that had just left them reappear +down-stairs, Manlio, whose eyes followed his, remarked very sincerely, +when the large easily-recognized white domino came into sight "_È +buona_!" which can be translated either, "She is kind," or "She is +good." + +Gerald felt the warmth of an increased liking for him, because of the +perspicacity he showed. They lighted cigarettes, and together looked +over the marvelous scene, so rich in color and life, while they talked +of things that bore no relation to it, serious things and +manly--politics. + +Charlie came in with Francesca, who at the door doffed her domino and +mask. Both, heated from dancing, were ready for a rest and a little more +of the Champagne-cup. + +"By the way, Gerald," said Charlie, "that's a jolly good painting, old +chap, you made of our charming hostess." + +"Glad you like it!" answered Gerald carelessly, without irony. + +He did not at the moment dislike Charlie. + +He was genially inclined to-night toward all the world. While he had +been tying on his white cravat before the glass in preparation for the +_veglione_, it had dawned on him, to his surprise and glimmering +relief, that he felt something resembling pleasure in the prospect of +the confused and promiscuous affair he was enlisted for. He had +constated that something like normal responsiveness to the common +exterior solicitations to enjoyment was returning to his spirit, his +nerves. The tang of life was pleasant to his palate. + +A dim gladness moved him, as at coming across a precious thing one had +supposed lost, in remembering that he was young.... + +He laid all this to the mere passage of time, and thanked the gods that +unless one dies of one's hurts one finally recovers. + +Under these circumstances it is conceivable that he should not +momentarily feel hate or impatience toward any fellow-passenger on the +amusing old Ship of the World. + +Scraps of poetry stirred in the wells of memory where they are dropped +and lost sight of. "I feel peaceful as old age," he quoted. + +But his eye falling on the white carnation which Giovanna, knowing her +signorino was going _in serata_, had provided for his buttonhole, +lines less grey came to his lips: "_Neque tu choreas_...." He +fished for the half-forgotten words. "_Donec virenti canities +abest...._" + +Because a positive sense of health pervaded him, he, with a philosophy +founded upon observation, remarked that by this sign no doubt he was on +the verge of an illness. But he absentmindedly neglected the practices +preventive of misfortune, believed in not solely by the _popolino_ +of Italy, but recommended to him in boyhood by the excellent physician +who after curing his mumps had taught him to make horns with his fingers +against calamity of any sort that might threaten. + +So, being in a good humor, and made further contented by the uplifting +privilege of a broad unmistakable wink from a lady, he did not dislike +Charlie as usual; he even, as he looked at him, lustrous-eyed, +clear-skinned, smooth, lighting his cigarette at a candle, wondered why +one should not like him. He had his good qualities. Mere vitality is +one. Those points of conduct that called upon him the disdain of persons +more fastidious with regard to their actions, secret or revealed, than +he, were not productive, after all, of much harm.... + +With eyes narrowed, as when he was examining a face to paint it, Gerald +watched the handsome fellow in an animated cousinly dispute with +Francesca--with the result, really against his hope, of finding himself, +instead of aided by his effort of good-will to discover new virtues, +confirmed in his previous disesteem. He could make himself almost love +Charlie by picturing him afflicted, humiliated, sorrowful. But he could +not picture him sorrowful except for narrowly personal misfortunes, such +as poverty, sickness. One could not even be sure, with a face of so +little generosity or moral consciousness as Charlie's, that he would +under all circumstances be incapable of active malignity.... + +The latter thought Gerald had the justice to sweep aside with an +unspoken apology. + +"Of course, you, Charlie, never could admit that a cousin and a female +might know better than you!" Francesca was contending noisily. "It +happens that I have lately looked up, with some care, the costumes of +the _trecento_...." + +"My dear girl!" interrupted Charlie. "You will be insisting next that an +_incroyable_ is a Greek, or that creature, that sort of Italian +bandit who gave the disgusting roar, is a French marquis.... Lend me +your glass, will you? I think I see some one I know." + +"It's Trix," he said after a moment, "making signs to us from the +Sartorio's box. They want us to come over. Come on, let's go." + +Manlio and Gerald were again left alone in the silent company of the +pale coffee-with-milk-colored maid, who unnoticed crept nearer and +nearer the front of the box to peep at the brilliant house. + +Gerald was beginning to think that Landini kept Mrs. Hawthorne rather +longer than was fair when the door opened to let them in, with Estelle +and Leslie and Percy and Doctor Baldwin, all laughing together. + +"Well, have you intrigued any one?" Gerald asked Aurora. + +"Me? Oh, _I_ wouldn't be up to any such pranks," she said. "Has any +one been intriguing you?" + +"I haven't been down, Mrs. Hawthorne. I have stayed quietly here, hoping +to go down with you, if you will be so good, merely intriguing myself +meanwhile--" he dropped his voice so as to be heard of her only,--"with +wondering what kept you so awfully long." + +"Interesting company, funny sights." + +"Are you too tired to come down again and give me a dance?" + +"Bless your soul, I'm not tired, but I'm going home." + +"_Going home?_" + +"Man, do you know what time it is?" + +"I know, of course. But you can't mean you are going home. You only came +at midnight, and it's less than half-past two. Hosts of people stay +until the big chandelier goes out." + +"Ah, don't try to talk me over! It's time I sought my downy, if I want +to get up in the morning. We're going to begin Lent like good girls, +Estelle and I, by going to church." + +Gerald was certain these excuses were hollow. It was obvious, at the +same time, that Mrs. Hawthorne was bent on leaving. He was vexed. He +wondered what her real reason was, as men so often do, after women have +taken pains to give them in detail their reasons, and tried, ignoring +what she said, to get some light from her face. + +It looked to him excited in a smothered way. He at once connected this +repressed excitement with Landini; but then, the face was mirthful, too, +in the same lurking manner, and the proposals of a serious man could +hardly affect even the most frivolous quite like a comic valentine. + +He finally preferred the simplest interpretation: she had seen as much +as she wanted to; she was prosaically sleepy and going home to bed. + +"Good night," she said. "Come soon to see us! Adieu; no, +_ory-vwaw_." + +"Am I not permitted to take you to your carriage?" + +After seeing them tucked in their snug coupé and hearing this wheel off, +Gerald returned to the great hall. He without question would remain +until the big light was extinguished. Colors, forms, sparkle, golden +haze--a painter must be dead or a duffer to leave before the gay glory +of it faded and was dispersed in the gray dawn. + +The scene viewed from near had its cheapness, its crudity, like those +poor painted faces of the dancers pirouetting in the midst of a public +they can more surely enchant from the distance of the stage. The +costumes, so many of them, came from humble costumers who let them from +year to year without renewal of the tinsel or freshening of the ribbons. +But those very things gave to this page of life its depth of interest, +gave reality to this romance. + +The ball was taking a slightly rougher, noisier character as it +approached the end. Some of the boxes were darkened, but the floor was +full, even after the tired _ballerine_ had been permitted by the +management to go home. + +Gerald himself now became one of the slightly bored-looking men he had +observed earlier, strolling about, _claque_ under arm, in the rigid +black and white which took on an effect of austerity amid the +blossom-colors of the costumes. He sincerely hoped no one would approach +him to intrigue him, and the hope found expression, more than he knew, +in his countenance. He felt unable to meet such an adventure in a manner +that would satisfy his taste. It marked a fundamental difference between +him, at bottom a New-Englander, and his friends of Latin blood, he +thought, that he had not the limberness, the laisser-aller, the lack of +self-consciousness and stupid shame, which enables them so +good-humoredly to take the chance of appearing fools. And so before this +romance he was only a reader; they were it--the romance. + +He could deplore his own gray rôle, but not change it; he therefore +wished anew, every time a merry masker looked as though she might intend +accosting him that she would think better of it and leave him in +deserved neglect. He had his wish; he was in the whole evening teased by +nobody whatever. + +His eyes, straying over the crowd, sought for known faces. All Florence +had turned out for the occasion, but some of it had by this time gone +home. Most of the men he knew had women on their arms, and from their +silence or talkativeness one might without undue cynicism determine +whether these were their own wives and daughters or wives and daughters +of others. + +A tall, gray-whiskered old gentleman in uniform passed him--none other +than Antonia's friend, General Costanzi--who was trying to retain all +his dignity while beset by two frolicsome little creatures looking like +the chorus in "Faust," who, suspended one on each of his arms, were +trying to win from him a promise to take them to supper. He sent toward +Gerald a look of comical long-suffering, to which Gerald replied by a +nod vaguely congratulatory, and a smile that courteously wished him luck +in that lottery. + +The painter Castagnola, broad-blown, debonair, passed him, in a costume +of sterling and royal magnificence, copied from a portrait of Francis +First whom he in feature resembled. At his side, with gold cymbals in +her hands, went a figure in floating robes of daffodil gauze, a dancer +from one of the frescoes of Pompeii, wearing a mask--four inches of +black velvet--only for the form. Her bare shoulders and arms, of an +insolent beauty, forbade any mistake as to her identity. Gerald knew, +like the rest, that it was Castagnola's model. + +Charlie passed him, at a little distance, with a laughing lady hitched +to his elbow. Her mask swung from her hand--the ball was wearing to its +end, and masks are hot. The hood of her rose-colored domino had been +pushed back from a mass of ruffled black hair; her eyes and teeth +gleamed with equal brightness and directness of purpose. It was +suggested to Gerald by her air and manner that she had forgotten the +spectators. Her freedom from constraint was shared by Charlie. Seeing +them together reminded Gerald that Charlie was after all Italian,--one +forgot it sometimes. He tried to remember which of the bits of scandal +tossed on to the dust-heap at the back of his memory was the one fitting +this Signora Sartorio. + +They passed out of sight, and he forgot them in the interest of the next +thing. + +Carlo Guerra, like him alone, stopped to chat with him. Guerra, a +pleasant figure in Anglo-American as well as Florentine circles, with +his fine head of a monk whom circumstances have rendered worldly, had, +before inheriting his comfortable income, been a journalist. He still +enjoyed above all things the exercise of the critical faculty, and had +much to say this evening about a recent exhibition of paintings. + +Gerald was hearing it with proper interest when some part of his +attention was drawn away by a sound across the house. It was, softened +by distance, that species of lion's roar, incredibly large as issuing +from a human throat, and comical from such a disproportion, which had +startled the audience several times already that evening. Gerald turned, +without much thinking, to look off in the direction whence it came and +single out the figure with which it was associated, when he was +surprised to find the figure he sought almost under his nose. Not more +than six feet from him were to be seen the tattered mantle and ragged +plume of _Sparafucile_; likewise the thick crow's-beak of the black +domino. + +The two were looking at him and, his impression was, laughing. He +fancied they were on the point of speaking to him,--he had thought +earlier in the evening when they came into the box that they might be +acquaintances,--but the crow suddenly pressed tittering against the +bandit, pushing and pulling him away. In a moment they were lost among +the crowd. + +Who, then, had been accountable for the roar at the other end of the +house? An imitator? A double? Gerald suspected a masked-ball device +intended to intrigue. He gave it no more thought, but proceeded, started +on that line by the episode, to reflect on the singularity, yes, the +crassness, of Mrs. Hawthorne's determination to leave the ball early. +The secret of it was, of course, that she had no imagination, no +education of the imagination. A _veglione_ was caviar to her. This +wonderful scene, beheld for the first time, perhaps the only time in +life, and she had had to go to bed just as if they had been in Boston or +Charlestown! If one must go to church in such a case, it was Gerald's +opinion, one does not go to bed at all. But she belonged to the class of +people who would miss the last act of an opera rather than miss a train +or allow the beans to burn. A bread-and-butter person, a sluggish, +fat-brained person, elementary, not awakened and sharpened to +appreciation and wonder. If he had not been in such a good humor he +might have been cross, scornful of her; as it was, he indulgently +thought her merely too flatly healthy in every taste for anything but +the wilds of Cape Cod to which she sometimes playfully referred. + +He here perceived that he had entirely lost the thread of Guerra's talk, +and that Guerra, probably aware of it, had moved to another subject. It +was hearing the name Hawthorne that had startled him to attention. + +"I saw you earlier in the evening in a box with Mrs. Hawthorne," Guerra +said, "whom, you remember, I had the pleasure of meeting at Mrs. +Grangeon's." + +After considering a moment with a half-smile, he nodded and pronounced +in the tone of an impartial critic, "_Simpatica_!" Then, after +considering another moment, nodded again. "_Ha gli occhi di donna +buona._" Which means, or nearly, "She has good eyes." And Gerald's +esteem for Guerra was immensely raised, for while thinking very well of +him, he would yet not have expected a man like Guerra to discern so much +at a first meeting. A worldling like Guerra might so naturally have said +"_È bella_!" for Aurora that evening in her best frock, had been +_bella_--beautiful; or he might have said, "_Begli occhi_!" +for her shining blue eyes admitted of that description. That Guerra had +said what he said indicated finer feeling than Gerald had given him +credit for. + +Still lingering in desultory talk, the former journalist now asked: + +"Have you seen the Grangeon?" + +"No," said Gerald. "Is she here?" + +"Yes; she is with the Rostopchine, in a box of the third order." He +looked up and around to find the box with his eyes, and after a moment +indicated it to Gerald. "There! Do you see them? The Rostopchine in pale +purple, and the Grangeon in an Indian thing all incrusted with green +beetle-wings, a thing for a museum. They are talking with a uniform whom +I do not know. She was speaking of you this evening--Antonia, asking me +what you are doing. She has great faith in your talent." + +Gerald's lip curled a little sourly, and he stood looking upward without +reply. + +Turning to look down through her jeweled lorgnette and running her eyes +over the crowd, Antonia now saw him. Recognition lighted her face to +unexpected liveliness. She fluttered her hand to him demonstratively. + +After bowing and smiling, he stood quietly, with face upturned, +receiving her showered greetings. + +He had a certain knowledge of Antonia. She was capable of entirely +dropping the remembrance of her bad treatment of him; perhaps forgetting +it really, but likelier choosing merely that he should forget it. She +permitted herself the caprices of a spoiled beauty. + +A classic golden fillet this evening bound her gray locks; a jewel +depending from it sparkled upon the deeply lined forehead of a +brain-worker. Her irreparably withered neck was clasped by an Indian +necklace, showy as a piece of stage jewelry. Light-minded smiles +wreathed her heavy face. Where her sleeves stopped there began the soft +and serried wrinkles of those long, long buttonless gloves which Sarah +Bernhardt had brought into fashion. + +It was not difficult to see in what illusion Antonia chose to live +to-night. Her readers might even, perhaps, have determined which of her +own heroines she personated. + +For all these things Gerald liked his old friend the more. + +Her lips framed the words, "Come up! Come up!" while her hand made the +equivalent signs. + +He nodded assent, and with Guerra walking beside him started on his way. +Guerra under the central box excused himself and turned back, having +already paid his respects. Gerald, once out in the lobby, advanced more +uncertainly, finally hesitated and stopped. + +He was not sure he wished to see Antonia in circumstances which would +not allow him to express his resentment of her behavior toward the +friend whom with her formal permission he had brought to her house. It +was owed to Mrs. Hawthorne not to let the incident pass. He had ceased +to be furious at Antonia; he had not written in cold blood the wrathful, +finishing letter planned in heat of brain. That, after all, was Antonia +as he had always known her and been her friend: Antonia, capable of +heroisms and generosities, fineness and insight, density and petulance. +One could not drop the great woman into the waste-basket because on one +occasion more she had been perverse and the sufferer happened to be +oneself. But the great woman, thought Gerald, needed a sober word spoken +to her. In conclusion, he would not go to see her, no, until he could +have it out with her. + +And so instead of seeking Antonia in her box, Gerald cut short his +difficulty by going home. It was high time; it had been Lent for hours. +If Antonia were _intrigata_ at his failure to appear, it would only +be in keeping with the fanciful circumstances of the hour and place. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Early in Lent the weather treated Florence to what Aurora and Estelle +called a cold snap. Their surprise and indignation were extreme. That +Italy, sunny Italy, should feel herself free to have these alpine or +polar fancies! + +Estelle showed what she thought of it by taking cold. Aurora affected +wearing her furs in the house. To increase their sense of ill usage, +they would now and then turn their faces away from the fire and sigh, +admiring how the air was dimmed by a puff of silver smoke. These +pilgrims from a Northern climate, who knew so well the sensation of +breath freezing in the nostrils and numbness seizing the nose when on +certain winter days they stepped from their houses into the snow-piled +streets at home, could not admit that in the City of Flowers one should +catch sight of one's breath,--indoors, too. + +The little monthly roses, shivering but brave, blooming still, or +blooming already, out in the garden, bore witness, after all, to the +clemency of the winter, and upheld the city's title to its name. The +garden altogether was nearly as green as ever. Against alaternus, ivy, +myrtle, laurestine the season could not prevail. Aurora decided that the +blame for their discomfort rested with the house; she planned drastic +and fundamental improvements which it was quite certain the noble +landlord would not permit her to carry out. + +What with Estelle being half sick and herself, as she claimed, half +frozen, Aurora at the end of a day during which the sun had not lighted +the world by one feeblest ray, and the night had closed down thick and +damp, was just a little disposed to low spirits. She had not been out, +and nobody had come to see her. She felt the weariness that follows for +certain sociable natures upon a long stretch of hours without renewal +from outside. + +She sensibly reacted against it by making the sitting-room as cozy as +she could, drawing close the crushed-strawberry curtains, piling wood on +the fire, placing a screen so that it shielded her chair and table from +the draft; and, seated in her chimney-corner, took up a piece of +knitting. + +She was not very fond of reading, and she was fond of knitting large +soft woolly afghans, of which she made presents to her friends. Reading +seemed to her, anyhow, a rather idle thing to be doing. Knitting came +under the head of work. How often had her story-paper been snatched from +her when she was a girl, and a sock to knit thrust in her hand, with the +bidding to be about something useful. How she had hated it. But now that +she was free she still had a better conscience when she knit. + +To the click of her long wooden needles she thought, with more pleasure +than was afforded by any other vision at the moment, of a hot water +bottle gently warming the bed into which she meant to creep at exactly +nine o'clock. This hour she had set when at eight already the temptation +to go to bed and forget the unsatisfactory day in sound warm slumbers +had been so strong as to make yielding to it appear wrong. + +These vestiges of Puritanism Aurora did not recognize as such, but yet +her mind as she was practicing self-discipline turned, without seeking +for the reason, toward the person who had done most to inculcate in her +the doctrine that if you like to do a thing that itself is almost surely +a sign of the thing being wicked, and that if you dislike it it is very +probably your duty. + +While she continued to appear the signora to whom the servants' eyes +were accustomed, albeit a trifle more absent and unsmiling, she was to +herself a young girl in a far country, living and moving in scenes of +difficulty and misunderstanding with a sharp-chinned, narrow-chested, +timidly-beloved just woman--her mother, long since laid to rest.... + +There was nothing from outside to dispel the faint heartache +accompanying this retrospection; wind and rain against the windows were +more proper to increase the melancholy, and Aurora, suddenly sick of +staying up to be blue, wound her yarn to start for bed. But first, for +just a moment, she would go down-stairs, she thought, and have a look at +her portrait, for that was the most comforting thing to do that she +could think of. She loved her portrait as a child loves its favorite +toy. + +This she was intending when the sound of the door-bell at once stopped +and cheered her by the possibility it held out of some diversion. Vitale +entered with a package. + +Catching in what he said the name Gaetano, Aurora took it to mean that +Gaetano had brought the package. He was waiting below, she did not +doubt. Gaetano was Giovanna's nephew, and had more than once come on +errands from Gerald. Saying, "_Aspettare_!" she hastened into her +room for the porte-monnaie which resided in her top drawer. From this +she drew a reward that should make the journey through night and rain +from Gerald's house to hers seem no hardship. Her blues had vanished. + +Before removing the rain-splashed newspaper, she gazed for a moment at +the package, trying to guess what it could be. It was square, flat, +about a foot and a half one way by a foot the other. What was Gerald +Fane sending her like that without any enlightening missive? A note +might be inside. She cut the string, took off the newspaper, to find a +second wrapper of clean white drawing-paper. After touching and +pinching, she guessed the object to be a picture-frame and picture. +Filled with curiosity, she pulled off the last wrapping, and with a face +at first very blank stared before her.... + +It was a painting, one of the kind she had seen at Gerald's studio and +not liked. + +Different though it was from the portrait down-stairs,--as different as +poverty from riches, as twilight from day,--she could yet see that this +also was meant for a portrait of herself. She remembered tying that blue +neckerchief over her head and under her chin one evening, trying to look +like an Italian in her _pezzola_, to make the others laugh. + +She stood the picture on the chair which she had pulled up before her so +as to rest her feet on the rung, off the stone floor, still to be felt, +she imagined, through the rug. Of course it was herself, but how +disappointing--disappointing enough to shed tears over--to have this +held up to her after that lovely being down-stairs! How unkind of her +friend Gerald! + +Unfair, too, for although this, in not being a beauty, was obviously +more like her than the other, she could not admit that it was any truer. +She could not believe that she ever really looked like this, though she +knew that it was the way she sometimes felt. How had Gerald known she +ever felt like this? + +That she was a person who ate well, slept well, felt well, loved fun, +was giving and gay--that was all most people knew, or were entitled to +know, of her; all she knew of herself a good deal of the time. Such +things could never be the whole of any person, of course. Every one has +had something to overcome. Some persons have had to overcome and +overcome and overcome, one thing after another, one thing after another, +that has tried to drag and keep them down. She had had--probably +because, as her mother often told her, she was born with such a lot of +the devil in her--a great many trials sent to her, for her discipline, +no doubt, her cleansing; but she had come out of them still unreduced, +still eager for a good time. + +All persons are made up, in a way, of these experiences of the past, but +they don't expose them in their faces, they forget them as much as they +can. + +Yes, as much as they can. How much is that? The only true sorrows being +involved with one's affections, and the objects of one's love never far +from one's thoughts, how much could a person be said to forget her +sorrows, really? + +Aurora reflected upon this for some time, staring the while at her +portrait. The face looking back from the canvas was very like her, had +she but known it, at this exact moment, while the thoughts produced, the +memories wakened, by it substituted for her ordinary hardiness the +delicate look of a capacity for pain. + +As she gazed at the portrait longer she liked it better; from minute to +minute she became more reconciled, and found herself finally almost +attracted. Something from it penetrated her for which she had no +definition. It was perhaps the dignity of humanity confronting her in +that strong and simple face framed by the kerchief, like a woman of the +people's,--her own face, but not certainly as she saw it in the mirror; +a humanity that out of the common materials offered to it day by day had +rejected all that was mean and contrived to build up nobleness. + +Half perceiving that this portrait in its different way flattered her as +much if not more than the portrait down-stairs, she, while modestly +refusing to be fooled by the compliment, yet felt a motion of +affectionate gratitude toward Gerald for the sympathy which had enabled +him to pierce beneath the surface and see that Bouncing Betsy had her +feelings, too, her history; yes, her bitter tragedy. + +While continuing with her eyes on the picture, she from time to time +wiped them, and when the door-bell rang again, aware of being "a sight," +took the precaution of retiring to her bedroom, so that if Vitale should +come to announce a visit,--it was not yet nine o'clock,--she could the +better make him understand that he must excuse her to the visitor; she +was going to bed. + +But learning from the servant that Signor Fane was below, she changed +her mind, and chose unhesitatingly from her stock of useful infinitives +the appropriate two: "_Dire venire_." + +Gerald found her by the fire, her fur-cloak over her shoulders, her +woolly afghan in her hands, and the picture on the chair before her. + +"Well?" he asked expectantly, looking at it, too, after they had shaken +hands. + +"You've made me feel sorry for myself. What's the use?" she answered in +a little sigh, keeping her reddened eyes turned away from him. "Hush! +Wait a moment! I was forgetting," she added, in comedy anticlimax, like +a housewife who in the midst of a scene of sentiment should smell the +dinner scorching. She jumped up, and went without the least noise to +close the door to Estelle's room, returning from which she illogically +fell to talking in a whisper. + +"Estelle's gone to bed. She's got a snow-balling old cold. I've rubbed +her chest with liniment, and tied up her throat in a compress, and given +her hot lemonade, and she lies there with a hot water bottle at her feet +and grease on her nose, and let's hope she'll feel better in the +morning." + +"Let's hope, indeed. I'm very sorry to hear she's ill. But she's sure to +be better by to-morrow, isn't she, with all that care and those +remedies. I hope you haven't a cold, too, Mrs. Hawthorne. You almost +look," he said innocently, "as if you had. This weather is dreadful. You +haven't, have you, dear friend?" + +"No; I guess what you see is just that I've been crying. Don't say +anything about it. Don't notice it. Never mind. Come and sit down by the +fire and get warm. Your hand was like ice." + +"It's very bad out, and not much better in, except here by your generous +fireside. I haven't been warm all day." + +"Why didn't you come before? It isn't what I call balmy here, but I +expect it's balmier than at your place." + +With her kindly unconstraint she reached for one of his hands to test +its temperature. With a little cry of "Mercy me!" she closed his numb +fingers between her palms to warm them, as if the blaze could not have +accomplished this end so well as they. + +He let it be, not with the same unconsciousness in the matter as she, +but hoping that the soft, warm infolding would somehow do him good. He +had come in the rather desperate hope of being done good to. As he had +been about to start out, having intended, when he sent the portrait, to +follow close upon it, he had found himself feeling so ill--feeling, at +the end of the dismal day, so indescribably burdened and ill and +apprehensive of worse things--that he had been on the point of giving it +up. But then the wish itself to escape from his bad feelings had +impelled him forth toward the spot glowing warmer and cheerier in his +thoughts than any other, where, if he could forget how ill he felt, he +would naturally feel better. Aurora's house during the days of painting +the first portrait had come to feel remarkably like home to him. + +So when Aurora released his hand, saying, "Let's have the other," he +docilely gave it to her, though the fire had already partly thawed it. +Gratefully, with the hand set free, he covered both her kind hands, +which loved so much to warm things and feed things and pet things and +give away money. + +Overcoming his ordinary stiffness, he pressed them right manfully, to +signify that he would not speak of her tears if she wished him not to, +but here was his sympathy, and with it his penitence, if so were that, +as she intimated, he had had a share in making them flow. + +"So you are all alone this evening?" he asked in the voice that makes +whatever is said seem affectionate and comforting. + +"Yes. I haven't even Busteretto. I let Estelle keep him on the foot of +her bed. She's perfectly devoted to him. And Clotilde is busy in her own +corner of the house, going over the bills. It takes lots of time." + +"And where is the musician in ordinary, the gifted Italo?" he inquired, +with a smile meant to draw from her a smile. + +She was caught without difficulty. "The gifted Checkerberry hasn't been +round lately," she smiled. "He won't expose himself to the night air for +some time. He's got laryngitis so he can't talk above a whisper." Her +eye twinkled and she laughed, though what she communicated was not on +the face of it very funny. + +He was perhaps calling attention to this when he said, "Poor devil!" + +"Yes," she agreed, achieving sobriety, "it's bad weather for +laryngitis," and went on with the weather, dropping Italo. "It's been a +mean sort of day, hasn't it? I haven't set foot outside. I was already +feeling kind of blue and making up my mind to go to bed when Gaetano +came with your present." + +There was an intimation in her glance that this event had not made the +world appear any rosier. + +Both turned to look at the picture. Their hands loosened naturally; they +sat apart. + +"Can't you see why I had to paint it, Mrs. Hawthorne?" he asked, +speaking eagerly, and as if pressing his defense. + +"How could I endure to have that thing down-stairs stand as my idea, my +sole idea, of you? And how could I bear to make you a gift, a sole gift, +of a piece of work I do not respect? This may be worth no more,--I think +differently,--but it is at least the best I can produce. It has my +sanction. You, too, believe me, will prefer it to the other after a +while." + +She shook her head a little disconsolately. + +"The other you can, if you must, keep in your drawing-room to make an +agreeable spot of color," he went on, reversing their parts and trying +to induce in her a lighter humor; "it has that perfectly legitimate use. +In your drawing-room, you know, Auroretta, among the pictures of your +choosing, it does not, in our Italian idiom, altogether disappear. This +one you will keep out of sight, but will look at now and then, if you +please; and I quite trust you, with time, to recognize that it was +painted by some one who understood and honored you more than there was +any evidence of his doing when he perpetrated, for a joke, that +bonbon-box subject down-stairs." + +Mrs. Hawthorne, with soft and saddened eyes fixed on the portrait, again +shook her head, sighing, "Poor thing!" + +"Not at all!" he protested almost peevishly. "Please not to suggest by +pitying her that I have not represented there a fine, big, strong thing, +built to stand up under anything! I could slay, with pleasure, at any +time"--he diverged, carried away by a long-standing disgust,--"the +pestiferous asses who call my things morbid. I am too careful to keep +true to what I see. The difference between them--I mean the critics who +call me morbid--and myself, is in the degree of sight." + +"Don't get excited, Geraldino!" she checked fumings which she did not +entirely understand. "What I meant was that looking at her has made me +think of all the things that have gone wrong with me in my whole life. +Don't you call that a tribute? You couldn't have painted this picture if +you hadn't suspected those things, and, honest, I don't see how you +could suspect them. Ever since I came over here I've been so jolly. +Seems to me I've been nothing but jolly. I've been having such a good +time! How you could see under it, I don't know. As a matter of fact, +I've always been jolly between-times. Give me half a chance, let me get +out of the frying-pan, I'd be ready in a minute to go on a picnic. But +I've not been spared my troubles, Geraldino; you were right there." + +At this reference to many sorrows, he found a thing to do more +expressive than words. Sitting near each other as they were, he could +reach her without rising; he bent forward and touched his lips +commiseratingly to her hand. + +He might have known that it would bring her story, but he had not +schemed for this, and, unwilling, yet eager, to hear, was a prey to +compunctions on more than one ground when, after a little gulp and +sniff, she burst forth: + +"I've seen perfectly dreadful times, Geraldino. Some of them were the +sort of thing you can get over, but some of them--upon my word, I wonder +at myself how I've got over them as I have. The queer thing is--I +haven't, in a way. It will come over me sometimes, in the queerest +places, at the oddest moments, that I am still that woman to whom such +awful things happened, that I, playing my silly monkey-shines, am that +heart-broken woman." + +"I know," murmured Gerald, and took her plump hands steadyingly between +his hard, thin ones. + +"I've never had any sense," she let herself go. "Anybody can see that; +and when I was younger I had even less, naturally, than I have now. +Always, always, I wanted so to be happy! I wanted to have a good time. I +was born wanting to have a good time. And everything was against it. But +I managed somehow. One way or another, I got to the circus 'most every +time. My mother used to wonder what my finish would be, and try to lick +the Old Boy out of me. But it couldn't be done. I'm just like my father, +my dear old pa, who was a sinner. He let ma have her way in everything, +as he thought it right to do. Not, I guess, because he always liked her +way, but because after my sister, who was a beautiful child, died in +such a terrible way that I can't even bear to mention it,--she caught +fire,"--Aurora hurriedly interjected, "ma came so near going out of her +senses that pa humored her in everything. He thought the world of her; +so did we all, but it couldn't be called a happy home. There were three +boys, besides me,--I was the last,--and we were all such everlastingly +lively young ones, and ma was so strict! Pa was away most of the time +getting a living. My pa, you know, was a pilot. It wasn't a fat living +for so many of us, but that wouldn't have mattered long as we had enough +to eat. But ma, poor soul, because of that twist her mind had taken +through sorrow, was always seeing something wrong in everything we did; +she never could be quiet or contented. The boys didn't get so much of +it: they were off out of doors and later at their trades; but me, I was +kept in to help with the housework, and kept in for company, and kept in +for no other reason, I guess, than because my wicked heart longed so to +go out and play with the girls and boys. I dare say it was good for me. +Ma meant all right, that I know, but ma was all along a sick woman. We +realized later that though she was round and about, busy every minute, +she was sick for years with the trouble that finally took her away. I +don't want you to think I didn't have a real good mother, for I did--a +first-rate mother who did her honest best to make a good woman of me." + +"I know, I know." By a reminding pressure of her hands he begged she +would trust him not to misunderstand. + +"But my pa--you should have known my pa!" Aurora's face brightened +immensely, and Gerald suspected that it was like him she looked when she +screwed her lips to one side in a manner humorously suggesting a pipe at +the corner of her mouth, and said in a voice not her own, "Golly, Nell, +can't you whistle for a snifter?" He could almost see a sailor's +chin-whiskers. + +"He took me with him once in a while. Golly, those were good times, if +you please! Free as air, all the peanuts I could eat, out in the boat +with my pa, and catch fish, and catch a steamer if we could. We had an 8 +big as a house on our sail. He was as good a seaman, my pa was, as any +in East Boston, but he wasn't a hustler. But there, if he'd been a +hustler, he wouldn't have been my pa. Wouldn't for a house with a +brownstone front have had my pa any different from what he was. Grandma +was just the same sort, God bless her! easy-going, jolly, come a day, go +a day, do as she please and let you do as you please. I used to have +such lovely times at her house, summers, down on the Cape, before my +sister died! + +"It was there I first knew Hattie--Estelle. Her aunt's house was next to +my grandma's. I used to think her the luckiest child that ever was born. +Seemed to me she had just about everything--a gold locket and chain, +bronze boots, and paper dolls by the dozen. We used to play together, +day in day out, one of those plays that last all the time, where you +pretend you're some one else and act it out in all you do. We kept it up +for years. I don't see that we've changed much with growing up. Seems to +me we were pretty near the same then as we are now, having our spats, +but having lots of fun, and wanting to share everything. Estelle lived +in East Boston, too, and was going to be a school-teacher. It seemed to +me that to be a school-teacher was just about the finest thing anybody +could do. That would have been my ambition, to be a school-teacher. But +I never got beyond the grammar school, I was needed at home to help +mother. Then my poor pa died--an accident down in the docks,"--Aurora, +lowering her voice, began to hurry and condense,--"then Ben, then Joe, +then--will you believe it?--Charlie, that I loved best. They all had the +same delicate constitution as ma, it turned out, and a predisposition to +the same trouble. Then finally, after going through with so much, my +poor mother went, too, and for that I could only be thankful. And I had +taken care of them all. I wasn't twenty-three when I was the last left. +Doesn't it seem strange! I sometimes can't believe it even now." + +This rapid enumeration of calamities so great robbed them of terror and +pathos, yet Gerald had somewhat the startled, shocked feeling of a man +who knows he has been struck by a bullet, though his nerves have not yet +announced it by suffering. + +Aurora, who after the passing of years could think of these things +without tears, yet in speaking of them to a sympathetic hearer had +obvious difficulty in keeping a stiff upper lip. Gerald turned away his +eyes while with her hand she covered and tried to stop her mouth's +trembling. + +"Poor child!" he said, with a sincerity which saved the words from +insignificance. + +"Yes," she half laughed. "Wouldn't one think it enough to sort of subdue +anybody, take the starch out of them for some time? When I came out of +that house of sickness I couldn't think of anything else but sickness +and death. It stuck to me like the smell of disinfectants after you've +been in a hospital. I couldn't think of anything but that it would take +me next. I supposed I must be affected, too. But the doctor examined me, +and do you know what he said? 'Sound as a trout,' he said. 'You're so +sound,' he said, 'you're so healthy, that we'll have to shoot you to get +you to the resurrection.' Then I felt better. He was a new doctor that +we'd called in toward the end. He knew how I was situated, and as he +seemed to think I'd make a good nurse, he got me a chance in the City +Hospital, where I could get my training. And Hattie, dear Hattie, what a +friend she's been! She and her ma and pa made me come and make my home +with them. It's since then that we've been like sisters." + +At the sound, appositely occurring, of a cough in the neighboring room, +Aurora stopped and listened. + +"Dear me!" she whispered. "D'you suppose she's lying awake?" + +"She may be coughing in her sleep," he suggested. + +"Yes," Aurora said dubiously, after further listening, and hearing +nothing more. "And if I should go in to see, I might wake her. The +bell-rope is right at the head of her bed; all she has to do is pull it +if she wants somebody to come. I was entertaining you with the story of +my life, wasn't I? Where had I got to? Oh, yes. There in the hospital I +just loved it. Perhaps you can't see how I could. I just did. I had lots +of hard work. The training was sort of thrown in in my case with other +duties, but there were the other nurses and the house-doctors, I grew +chummy with them all. I had fun with the patients, too. You don't know +how much good it does you to watch anybody get well; the majority get +well. It's good for them, besides, to have you jolly." + +"Your gaiety of heart makes me think of the grass, Aurora, the blessed +ineradicable grass, that will grow anywhere, that you see pushing up +between the paving-stones of the hard city, and finding a foothold on +the blank of the rock, and fringing the top of the ruined castle, and +hiding the new-made graves." + +Aurora, always simple-mindedly charmed with a compliment, paused long +enough to investigate Gerald's comparison, then resumed, with the effect +of taking a plunge into deep waters: + +"But it was there I met the fellow who did me the worst turn of any.... + +"They brought him in with broken ribs one rainy night, after he'd been +knocked down in the street by a team and kicked by the horses. I wasn't +his regular nurse, but I was in and out of his room, and if he rang +while his regular nurse was at her meals, I'd go. Everybody knows that +when a man's sick he's liable to get sweet on this or that one of his +nurses. + +"How I could have been mistaken in Jim Barton I can't see now. Since +knowing him, if I ever see anybody that looks a bit like him, I shun +them like poison, because I know as well as I need to that however nice +they may appear, you can't depend upon them. But before I knew him I'd +never stop to distrust anybody. + +"It began with our setting up jokes together; he could be awfully funny +even when he was swearing like a pirate about his luck landing him in a +hospital. Bad language didn't seem so awful coming from him, because he +was so light-complexioned and boyish-looking. He was only passing +through the city, in an awful hurry to get West, when he got hurt, and +he was madder than a hornet at the delay. But after a while he quieted +down, because he'd got something else to think about, which was getting +me to go along with him to California, where he'd bought a share in a +mine. And me, star idiot of the world, it seemed the grandest thing that +had ever happened. I'd never had anybody in love with me that way +before. The boys had always liked me, but I'd been like another fellow +among them, and I'd never more than just been silly for a week or two at +a time over one fellow and another at a distance. And here was a solid +offer from a perfectly splendid man who had everything, money included. +They'd found several thousand dollars on him when he was picked up. And +the yarns he told about gold-mines!... But it wasn't that, it wasn't the +gold-mines, it was 'the way with him' that caught me. I guess when +you're in love you're no judge of your man. We two, I tell you, seemed +made for each other. He was as fond of a good time as I, and he loved +fun, like me. We were going to California to make our everlasting +fortune. You'd have thought there was no more doubt about it than the +Gospels being true. And the good times we were going to have while doing +it were nothing to the good times we'd have after, when I'd have my +diamonds and he'd have his horses and things. As I said, the diamonds +weren't needed; I'd have gone with him anywhere just for the fun of +being together. I couldn't see what I'd done to deserve my blessings. I +guess he was in love, too, as far as it was in him to be; I'll do him +that justice. + +"Hattie and her ma, while they had nothing to say against Jim, wanted me +to wait awhile. But Jim couldn't wait. The moment he was well enough he +wanted to be off. And I didn't care much about waiting either. I felt as +if I'd known him all my life. So they said nothing more and gave us a +perfectly lovely wedding from their house. They didn't see through him +any more than I did, and in a way it wasn't strange, because he wasn't +hiding anything in particular or misrepresenting anything. He believed +all he said about the big money he was going to make and the grand times +we should have. He was born with the sort of nature that always believes +things are going to turn out right without labor and perseverance on +your part. He wasn't fond of work, that's sure. What we ought to have +done was find out something about his past; but even that, I guess, +wouldn't have opened our eyes, with him before us looking like one of +ourselves. And it wasn't a very long past; he was young. He came of good +folks, I guess. I never saw them, but there are ways of telling. Good +folks, but not wealthy, and so as to get rich easily he had tried one +thing after another. He was quick' discouraged, and the moment the thing +didn't look so big or easy he wanted to throw it over and try something +else. Then I've come to the conclusion he loved change for its own +sake--go somewhere else, take a new name, and start a new business, +talking big. It came out after he died that he'd been known under half a +dozen names in as many States. There simply wasn't anything _to_ +him. I don't believe he meant to act like a skunk, but, then, he hadn't +any principles either to keep him from acting like a skunk, or meaner +than a skunk, when it came to getting himself out of difficulty. And I, +for my sins, had to marry such a fellow as that! It was like there had +stood the good times I'd always wanted, right before me in the body, and +I took them for better, for worse, and got what my ma said I deserved to +get when she tried to cure me of my fancy for good times!" + +"Don't!" protested Gerald, softly. "Don't regard as wrong what was so +natural. All who have the benefit of knowing you must thank the stars +which permitted your beautiful love of life to survive the dreadfulness +of which you have given me a glimpse." + +"The dreadfulness, Geraldino! I haven't told you anything yet of the +dreadfulness. I haven't come to it. I haven't come to what makes +her"--she nodded toward the portrait,--"look like that." + +"Then tell me!" he encouraged her. + +"It isn't Jim. When I think of Jim, it only makes me mad. My heart is +hard as stone toward him." She clenched her jaws and looked, in fact, +rather grim. "That he's dead doesn't change it. I hope I forgive him as +a Christian ought to who asks forgiveness for her own trespasses. I know +I don't feel revengeful. There wasn't enough _to_ Jim for me to +wish him punished in hell. But if you think I have any sentiment because +I used to love him, or that I was sorry I woke up from my fool dream +when I once had seen it was a dream--Not a bit of it. There was a time, +though, when I first began to suspect and understand, that makes me +rather sick to think of even now. I was so far from home, you see. I +hadn't a friend, and I wouldn't for worlds have written back to my old +friends that I'd made a bad bargain--not while I wasn't dead sure. And I +kept on hoping. + +"At first we had a real good time. We lived in a miner's cottage, but +that seemed sort of jolly. I'd been used to hard work all my life, so I +didn't mind that, and I wanted him to have as nice a home as any man +could on the same money. So I cleaned and contrived and baked and brewed +and fixed up. I wanted him to be pleased with me and proud among the +other men. But pretty soon I found I didn't care to make acquaintances, +because I was ashamed of the way Jim did. He kept putting all his money +into the mine, sending good money after bad, and let me keep house on +nothing, and then was in a worse and worse temper because the mine +didn't pan out and things weren't more comfortable at home. I began to +wake up in the night and lie there in a cold sweat, clean scairt. I +haven't told you that we were looking for an addition to the family. +That's one reason I was so scairt. But I shut my teeth, and said I to +myself, 'This baby's going to have a chance if his mother can give it to +him by not getting excited or letting things prey on her mind.' So I +kept a hold on myself and didn't let anything count except guarding that +baby. I seemed to care more about it than all the rest of the world put +together. Oh, I can't begin to tell you how much more than for all the +rest of the world put together. I don't know that a man would +understand." + +"Yes, he would; of course he would," spoke Gerald, gently reverent, yet +a little impatient; then he qualified his assertion: "He could imagine, +I mean to say, how you would have felt that way." + +"Well, that matter was going to be put safely through, no matter what. +The first mistake I made was not making friends with my women neighbors, +so that everybody in Elsinore supposed that Jim's wife was the same +stripe as he,--or that's what I thought they supposed,--and when I +needed friends I couldn't think of any to turn to except those at home. +The other mistake I made was not to write them at home and tell them the +truth and then wait for them to send me money to come. But I guess my +mind stopped working when the shock came." + +Aurora appeared to brace herself, while decently considering how to +minimize to her audience the brutality of her next revelation. + +"Jim cleared out one night while I was asleep, taking every cent we'd +got and every last thing he could hope to turn into a cent," she said, +hardening her voice and lips. Gerald was given a moment in which to +visualize the situation, before she went on: "I guess, as I said before, +that I wasn't in my right mind for a spell; all I could think of was +getting home to my own folks, and I was going to do it somehow, though I +hadn't a cent. I hadn't even my wedding-ring. I'd put it off because my +finger had grown fatter, and he'd taken even that to go and try his luck +somewhere else.--What do you think of it?" she mechanically added. + +She was pale, remembering these things. Gerald drew in a long, unsteady +breath, oppressed. + +"I was going to get home somehow," Aurora repeated, "and I wasn't going +to waste time waiting for anything. And how was I going to do it? I +don't suppose I really thought; I followed instinct like an animal. I +hid in a freight-car going East--" + +A definite difficulty here stopped Aurora. While she felt for words in +which to clothe what followed, the images in her mind made her eyes, +which were not seeing the things actually before them, more descriptive +of the anguish of remembered scenes than her words were likely to be. + +"I'm going to skip all that, Gerald." With a gesture, she suddenly +rolled up a part of her story and threw it aside. "But when I came to +see and understand rightly again, weeks after, in a hospital at Denver, +I cried, oh! how I cried, and didn't care what became of me. Because I'd +lost him; they hadn't succeeded in saving him. He had lived, mind you," +she emphasized with pride--"he had lived a little while, he was all +right, perfect in every way--a son." + +His due of tears was not withheld from the wee frustrated god. Aurora +gave up talking, so as to have her cry in quietness. + +Gerald, holding back a sound of distress, twisted on his chair, not +daring to recall himself to Aurora's notice either by speaking or +touching her. + +"I'm plain sorry for myself," she explained her tears while trying to +stop them. "You can't be sorry, for their own sakes, for the little +children who go back to God without knowing anything of this life's +troubles. It's for myself I'm sorry. I never can bring up those times +without the _feeling_ of them coming over me again, and then, as I +tell you, I'm sorry for that poor fool in her empty house, and then in +the thundering freight-car, and then in the hospital. I see her outside +of me just as plain as I would another person. Then, too"--she dried her +eyes as if this time for good--"I feel a burning here"--she touched her +breast--"like anger. Angry. I feel angry at being robbed, in a way I +never seem to get over. To think I might have had him all my life, like +millions of other women, and I never even saw him! And he was as real to +me all those months before!... I don't see how I could have loved him +more than I did. I'm hungry for him sometimes, just as I might be for +food. And then I'm angry and rebellious. But I couldn't tell you against +who. It isn't God, certainly. He's our best friend, all we've got to +rely on. And He's been mighty good to me. There in Denver, when I hadn't +a friend or a penny, He raised up friends for me and gave me the most +wonderful luck. + +"I stayed right there in Denver till less than a year ago. I guess +you've heard me speak of the Judge. The doctor in the hospital where +they carried me was his son; that's how it all came about--friends, good +luck, money, everything. When I say I found friends, let me mention that +I found enemies, too, the meanest, the bitterest! I--but there"--she +interrupted herself as, on the very verge of further confidences, a +change of mind was effected in her by sudden weariness or by a deterrent +thought, or both--"I guess I've talked enough about myself for one +evening. I didn't have a soft time of it there in Denver," she summed up +the remainder of her story, "but I'd got back to being my old self. +You'd never have known what I'd been through. I was just about as you've +known me here. Funny, isn't it,"--Aurora seemed almost ashamed, +apologetic,--"how the disposition you're born with hangs on?" + +"Golden disposition," Gerald commented soothingly. Timid about looking +directly at her just yet, he looked instead at the portrait, whereon lay +the shadow of the events just related. + +After a little period of thought in silence Aurora said, with the +shamefaced air she took when venturing to talk of high things: + +"I heard a sermon once on the text, 'Mary kept all these things in her +heart.' The minister said that it wasn't only Mary who did this, but +ordinary women, so often. And I know from myself how true it is. You see +a woman all dressed up at a party, laughing with the others, dancing +perhaps, and she'll be saying inside of herself, 'If baby had lived, +he'd have been three years old.' Or thirteen, or thirty. I've no doubt +it goes on as long as she lives. And she can see him before her just as +plain, as he would have been.... My baby would have been five last +October." + +Gerald remembered how sweet he had always thought it of her to wish to +stop and fondle little children, often wee beggars, stuffing little +grimy fists with pennies, not avoiding to touch soiled little cheeks +with her clean gloves. He had attributed this propensity to a simple +womanly talent for motherliness. + +"I've got this to be thankful for," she came out again from silence, +farther down along the line of her meditations, "that he did live for a +few hours. I've got a son, just as much as if he'd grown to be a man." +She was dry-eyed, almost joyful in this. + +"Yes, yes," hurried Gerald, consolingly; "that's what you must always +think of--that and not the other things. You must lay hold of that +thought and feel rich in it. But hear me, dear friend--me, trying to +suggest ways to you of being brave and cheerful! You, who do from +god-given temperament what I can only see as a right aim of aspiration, +by light of a certain philosophy arrived at in my own way, through my +own experiences. Philosophy is not the right word, either; the feeling I +have is mainly esthetic. In order not to be too unhappy in this world, +in order to have a little serenity, we must forgive everything, Aurora; +that is what I have clearly seen. It's the only way. We must forgive +events just as we forgive persons. And we must love life. I who so much +of the time hate life, yet know better. We must love it as we must love +our enemies. The wherefore is a mystery, but peace of heart and beauty +of life are involved with doing it. We mustn't mind being wounded, +crucified. We mustn't mind anything, Aurora! We mustn't be angry, the +gestures of it are ugly. I, who am always being angry, who sometimes +groan aloud my thoughts are so blasphemously bitter, I am telling you +what I at bottom know. The game is so unfair, it calls for magnanimity +on our part to stake handsomely and lose patiently. Patience, that's it! +We must be patient--patient as a cab-horse! Pride and dignity demand +that we be patient, absolutely. For the sake of certain beautiful things +and sweet people in the world, we must give it a good name. But hear me! +Hear me giving counsels to you--you who without formulating these ideas +act on them, whilst with me they are things which I see as fit to be +done but can never hope to do." + +"You, too, Gerald, poor boy," was Aurora's simple reply--"you, too, have +had lots to try you." + +He swept aside by a gesture the subject of his trials, removed it +altogether from the horizon, unwilling really that the interest be +shifted from her to him. She was equally determined, now that he had +sympathized with her, to sympathize with him. + +"I know you have," she insisted; "I know you've had lots to try you, +just as you knew that I'd had lots. And you're so high-strung, so +sensitive ... I never knew anybody like you. But there are good times +coming for you; I'm sure of it." + +"I don't in the least expect them." He laughed a little harshly. He had +winced at her description of him as sensitive, high-strung. "Dear +incurable optimist, I don't in the least expect them. It's not because +there will be compensation that I hold it the decentest thing to put up +with the _mechancetés_ of fate, fate's ingenious stabs in the +tender, as they come, without giving the exhibition of one's +vulnerability, or poisoning one's system with hate!" + +"But there will," she continued to insist, "there will be compensations. +I know it just as well.... You have so much talent, it's perfectly +wonderful, and it's only a question of time your having the success you +deserve. I, of course, am not educated up to your paintings, but even I +am beginning to see something more than I did at first. I can see, for +instance, that almost any fine painter, with a command of his colors, +could have done the picture down-stairs, but that only you in the whole +world could have done this one here. But, I say again, my opinion isn't +worth anything. But there's Leslie, who knows all about art and such +things, doesn't she? Well, she 's told me how wonderful you are. From +what she's told me I'm perfectly sure you'll make your mark in the +world." + +Again Gerald swept her words aside like noxious obscuring cobwebs. "What +is, few know, and what will be, nobody knows whatever," he said. "But of +all things, I beg, I beg you will not think of me as a misunderstood +genius! Art is not a passion with me, it is--an interest. And don't hold +out for a lure that will reconcile me, my dear friend, anything so +vulgar as success! The single hope I have, when I am the most hopeful, +is that simply my metal, my resistance, may never quite fail. I shall +not have success, dear lady, though in your kindness you predict it. I +shall go on and on seeing with different eyes from other people, carving +my cherry-stones in my own way, and made unsociable by the failure of +others to see how superior my way is. I shall go on growing more +eccentric and solitary, and call myself lucky quite beyond my merits if +those particular snares which the devil Melancholy sets for the solitary +may be escaped, that I may neither drink, nor drug myself, nor shoot +myself, nor marry the cook!" + +"Don't talk like that, Gerald!" cried Aurora. "Don't say anything so +awful! Now keep still while I talk, listen while I tell you. You're +going on painting in your own way, but some one--see?--some one is going +to arise bright enough to recognize how perfectly wonderful your +pictures are. Keep still. You mustn't despise success, you know, success +is what everybody needs and wants. You're going to succeed. Keep still. +Stupid people will want to buy your pictures because the people who know +about such things have told the public how wonderful they are. Then +you'll grow rich and famous. You won't be either eccentric or solitary. +You'll have hosts of admiring friends. I guess you could have them now, +if you wanted to. You won't be melancholy. You'll be happy. In your home +there will be a nice wife. Why are you supposing you'll never marry? A +dear true beautiful girl who thinks the world of you and that you think +the world of. And when you're an old gentleman with your grandchildren +playing at your knee, you'll say to yourself, 'Aurora told me so!'" + +She was all cheering smiles and dimples again. + +"Be sure you remember now," she said, holding up a finger and shaking it +to mark her bidding, "to say to yourself, 'Aurora told me so!'" + +It was a pity almost that Gerald should not have gone home at that +point. He would have left with undividedly fond and approving feelings; +he would have left tied to Aurora by a thousand sweet humanities in +common, as well as impressed afresh by the depth and mysteriousness of +woman. But he had either forgotten or was disregarding the hour--the +clock on the mantelpiece, like most ornamental clocks, was not going; +the bliss of being warm for the first time in days, warm through and +through, warm to the middle of his heart, made him careless of +correctness; and so he stayed on, to be rudely jarred by and by out of +his contentment, and take with him finally into the night a renewed, +even sharpened, perception of those exasperating faults which made Mrs. +Hawthorne, as he named it, impossible. + +Because they seemed to be on such solid terms of friendship after the +long evening before the fire, when they had sorrowed together and +sympathized; when he had been permitted to hold and press her hands; +when with a veritable mutual outgoing of the heart they had vied in +prophesying for each other fair and happy days, Gerald found the +boldness--and found it without much strain--the boldness to utter a +request which had burned on his lips before, but which he had repressed, +saying to himself that what Mrs. Hawthorne did was no affair of his. + +"Aurora," he said--she was after this evening Mrs. Hawthorne to him only +in the hearing of others,--"Aurora, I want to ask a favor, a great +favor." + +"Go ahead. I guess it's granted." + +"I wish I felt sure; but I'm afraid. Say you will not take part in the +amateur variety show at _mi-carême_." + +"Sakes!" cried Aurora, staring at him with round eyes. "Ask me something +easy! Ask me something else! I can't do that." + +"You can. Of course you can, if you wish to. You have only to give some +excuse." + +"An excuse? Not for a farm! I don't want to. I've bound myself. They +expect me as much as anything. I couldn't back out. It's so near the +time, too. Why, it's to make money for the Convalescents' Home. I'm a +big feature of the show." + +"I know you are, and I have a perfect horror of what you may do. I can't +bear to think of the public sitting there gaping at you and laughing." + +"The public will be composed of friends. It's all private. Give it up? +Not much! I tell you, it's nuts to me! I expect to have lots of fun. +You've never seen, Geraldino, how funny I can be. You'll see that +night." + +"The voice runs that you're going to appear as a nigger mammy and sing +plantation songs." + +"Oh, does it? Well, that seems innocent. What objection do you see to +that?" + +"I did not call my request reasonable, dearest Aurora. I begged a +personal favor. You know the sort of nerves I have. It is like pouring +acid on them to think of you making a show of yourself." + +She laughed, but would not yield; she treated his proposition like a +spoiled child's demand for the moon, and, after condescending to tease +like a boy, he woke suddenly to the fact of being ridiculous. He dropped +the subject with the abruptness that causes the opponent nearly to +topple over in surprise. + +He had sat for a long moment in silence when, realizing that this +appeared ill-humored and a piece of effrontery, he started in haste to +talk again, choosing the first subject that came into his mind, which +was a thing he had meant to tell Aurora this evening, but had not +remembered until this moment. The wide distance between the subject he +dropped and the subject he took up would show, it was hoped, how +definitely he washed his hands of her doings. + +"If you have wished for revenge on our friend Antonia," he said, "you +can be satisfied. She is in the most singular sort of difficulty." + +"Oh, is she? I'm sorry," said Aurora. "Bless you! I never wished her any +harm." + +"I went to see her yesterday. I had saved up my grievance and felt the +need to lay it before her. I think one should give an old friend who has +behaved badly the chance to make reparation, don't you? After being +angry as you saw me, I yet did not want to break with her. She was very +kind to me when I was young. At the same time I could not let her +rudeness to you pass. But I found her in such trouble already when I +went to see her yesterday that I said not one word of my grievance. It +will have to wait." + +"You needn't think you must pick her up on my account. I don't care. But +what was the matter?" + +"Two of her oldest friends, through an unaccountable mistake, turned +into enemies. Both insist that under cover of a mask at the last +_veglione_ she insulted them. Unfortunately, her best friends are +not kept by their actual knowledge of her from thinking it just possible +she might desire to amuse herself with getting a claw into them. She has +more than once given offense to her friends by putting them into her +books. But Antonia swore to me that she was innocent, and begged me to +convince De Brézé. The villa she lives in is his property, and he has +requested her to vacate it. The other aggrieved one, General Costanzi, +she fears may succeed in preventing the publication of her next novel by +threat of a libel suit." + +"Well, that sounds bad. But what do they say she's done?" + +"The poor woman doesn't even know what she is supposed to have said; +insulted them is all she can gather. Both maintain that though she tried +to alter her voice they recognized her, and will not accept her word for +it that she wore no such disguise as they describe. Which reminds me +that the offender, or the offender's double, for I have an idea there +were two masked alike, came into your box early in the evening with a +companion. You have not forgotten--that black domino with the crow's +beak?" + +Aurora jumped on her seat with a cry of "Goodness gracious!" + +"What is it?" he asked, looking at her more attentively. She appeared +aghast. + +She did not answer at once, tensely trying to think. + +"Well," she finally exclaimed, relaxing into limpness, "I've been and +gone and done it!" + +And as he waited-- + +"I guess I did that insulting," she added, and wiped her brow. + +He thought for a moment that she might be acting out a joke, but in the +next accepted her perturbation as genuine. + +"Can't you see through it even now I've told you?" she asked. + +He shook his head. + +"Did you suppose I didn't really know those two who came into the box, +the one who roared and the one who cawed? Well, I'm a better actress +than I supposed." + +"But--" + +"And did you really suppose I was going home to bed just as the fun was +at its height? There again you're simpler than I thought. Land! Don't I +wish now that I had gone home!" + +"And you--" + +"We'd heard so much from everybody of the pranks they play at these +vegliones of yours that we wanted to play one, too--we wanted to +intrigue you and a lot of other people. The trouble seems to be we did +it too well. Land! I wish I hadn't done it! I wish Heaven I'd consulted +you, or some one--We hatched it all up with Italo and Clotilde." + +"Italo and Clotilde!" + +"They were the two who came into the box and didn't say a word, for fear +of being known by their voices. Then, after you had so politely seen us +off, Estelle and I in the carriage put on black dominos and crows' +beaks, and after driving around a couple of blocks came back and found +Italo and Clotilde waiting for us. Clotilde had put off her black domino +in the dressing-room; she was dressed under it exactly like her brother. +D'you see now how we worked it? Estelle took Clotilde's arm, and I took +Italo's; we separated and kept apart, and it was as if there had only +been one couple, the same as there had been since the beginning of the +evening." + +"I see." + +"I've been dying to tell you about it ever since, but I just haven't +told you. I don't know what I was waiting for. I guess I was enjoying +letting you stay fooled. I had the greatest time, bad cess to it! +talking to some people I knew and to a lot that I didn't. Italo would +whisper to me beforehand what to say, and I'd say it. I didn't always +know what it was about, but nothing was further from my mind than to +wish to insult anybody. I was so excited I didn't always notice what I +did say, it just seemed playful and funny and in the spirit of the rest. +I went up to Charlie Hunt and spoke to him. I put a flea in his ear, and +I'm positive from his face that he didn't know me. I came near going up +to you when you were talking with that Mr. Guerra, but I was too much +afraid you'd recognize me; you're so sharp, and, then, you're the one +most particularly who has heard me talk with my English accent, which I +put on on the night of the _veglione_ so as not to be known." + +"Your English accent? That explains." + +"What?" + +"Your English accent is a caricature of Antonia's." + +"I don't have to tell you, I suppose, that I had no idea of personating +Antonia." + +"The very difference between the original and your imitation might seem +the result of an effort on her part to disguise her speech." + +"I've been a fool, of course, and some of the blame is mine, but just +let me get hold of Italo and watch me shake the teeth out of his +confounded little head. I remember perfectly speaking to the old general +that we saw at Antonia's that day and to the old viscount who came to my +ball." + +"Do you remember what you said?" + +"Not exactly, but in both cases it seemed harmless. I wouldn't have said +it if it hadn't seemed harmless. I couldn't have wished to insult them, +how could any one suppose it? To the general it was something about a +horse." + +Gerald gave a sound of raging disgust. + +Aurora waited, watching him. + +"Was it very bad?" she asked finally, and held her breath for his +answer. + +"Just as bad as possible. Ceccherelli deserves to be flayed. Is the man +mad? And what, may I ask, did you say to De Brézé?" + +"I only remember it was something about ermine. I forgot until this +moment that I meant to ask Italo what the joke was about ermine. Was +that too very bad?" + +"Just as bad as possible. No, rather worse. Both relate to ancient bits +of scandal that no one would dare refer to--that would place a man +referring to them in the necessity to fight a duel. Mind you, mean and +discredited scandal. I won't resurrect it to enlighten you. You can +interrogate Signor Ceccherelli, who has really distinguished himself in +his quality of habitué of this house and your particular friend." + +"I know you're angry, Gerald; I don't wonder you're ready to call names. +But the thing is simple, isn't it, after all, now that I understand. The +harm done isn't such as can never be mended. All I have to do is write +to Antonia and tell her I was the black crow, or, if you advise, write +to the two gentlemen I've offended." + +"Heavens, no! you can't do that!" + +"Why can't I?" + +"You can't; that's all. You can't admit that that little vermin is on +terms of intimacy with you permitting his prompting your Carnival +witticisms, and you can't hope to make any one in Florence believe you +didn't understand what you were saying." + +"Yes, I can, my friend; I can make them believe. I can speak the truth. +I can, at all events, prove that Antonia had nothing whatever to do with +it." + +"No, no, no, I tell you! You can do nothing whatever about it. Your name +must not be allowed to appear in the matter at all. It would serve +Ceccherelli right that his part in the disgraceful business should be +known, dangerous little beast that he is. He would receive a lesson, and +an excellent thing it would be; but that, again, might involve you. One +couldn't trust him to keep your name out of it. Besides, it would very +likely ruin him, disgusting little beggar." + +"You leave him to me! He roared his throat to a frazzle the other night, +and can't make a sound, but he'll come round as soon as he's better, and +then if I don't give it to him! Little cuss!... But I'm to blame, too, +Gerald. You told me over and over that I oughtn't to encourage him to +gossip as I did, but I went right on doing it because it was as good as +a play to hear him tell his queer stories in his queer English. It +amused me, I've no other excuse. I sort of knew all the time that it was +wrong. And so he got bolder and bolder and finally overstepped the line. +And now I've got my come-uppance. I'll settle him, trust _me_, and +I'll write to Antonia, and I'll write the two gentlemen, if you'll just +tell me where to write." + +"Must I tell you again that you are above all things to do nothing of +the kind? Not certainly if you think of continuing to live in Florence. +Leave the matter to me. I am well acquainted with everybody in question +and shall be able to satisfy them, I hope, while leaving them completely +in the dark as to the real culprit." + +Mrs. Hawthorne appeared to hesitate. + +"I really should feel better if I could confess," she said. "It would +take a whole load off my chest. You see, I don't know your ways of doing +over here; that would be my way. They might all forgive me and say I was +just a fool. But if they didn't, and, as you seem to fear, made Florence +too unpleasant to hold me, luckily I'm not tied down. I'm free. I can +pull up stakes when I please and go pitch my tent elsewhere." + +"The delightful independence of riches! The grandeur and detachment of +your point of view!" he spoke in a flare of excited bitterness. "What +you have said is equivalent to saying that your friends of Florence are +a matter of complete indifference to you!" + +"I _love_ my friends of Florence, and you know it, Gerald Fane! And +I don't believe they'd ever turn against me, no matter what trouble I'd +made for myself at that confounded veglione. So I don't look to leaving +Florence just yet a while. You know I was only talking. I felt perfectly +safe--But it's astonishing to me, dear boy, how ready you are to get mad +at me. When you know me so well, too. You ought to be ashamed." + +"I am, dear. It's my temper that's bad. And you're so kind," he meekly +subsided. "But you _are_ trying, you know," he added, after a +moment, with returning vivacity, "what with the extreme bad taste of +your masked ball adventures, and your obstinate determination to publish +them, and then your insane obstinacy to make a show of yourself as a +colored nurse in this vaudeville--But I forgot, I had sworn to myself +not to speak of that again. May I count upon you at least to leave +entirely to me the matter of exculpating Antonia to General Costanzi and +De Brézé?" + +"Oh, very well, if you think best." + +"Will you promise solemnly to be silent on the whole matter?" + +"All right. But I don't like it, Gerald. If I've done wrong, I should +feel lots easier in my mind if I could tell." + +"That feeling of yours is precisely what I wish to guard against. Do +believe that in this matter the old Florentine I am knows better than +you. Promise." + +"All right, I promise." + +After a moment, "There's no chance, is there, of your changing your mind +about the other matter"--he asked sheepishly,--"the matter which I must +not mention? No, I supposed not. I am perfectly aware of my presumption +in making any suggestion to you on the subject. But if you knew how the +thought of it torments me...." + +"You'll get over it when you see me. You'll just laugh with the rest." + +"Enough. Good night," he said stiffly, but it is doubtful that the word +of leave-taking was anything more than a mode of expressing displeasure, +or that departure would immediately have succeeded upon his rising from +his chair, had not a sound of coughing from the neighboring room called +up before him an image of Harriet Estelle, wide awake, with a stern and +feverish eye fixed on the clock. + +He was startled into a consciousness of the lateness of the hour. + +"Good night!" he repeated in a guilty whisper. "I daren't look at my +watch. I'm afraid I've kept you shockingly late." + + * * * * * + +The night, when Gerald went out into it, was quieter and dryer. The +streets were altogether empty. He had quite forgotten having felt ill +earlier in the evening, and did not remember it even when he found his +teeth chattering as a result of coming out into the penetrating night +air after sitting so close to the fire. A thing he did remember, as he +took out the large iron key to the door of home, was that after all +Helen Aurora telling him her story he did not know how she came to be +Mrs. Hawthorne. There must have been a second marriage there in Denver, +one of those little-considered episodes in American life, perhaps, that +are hardly thought worth mentioning. She sometimes spoke of "the judge." +She had spoken to-night of a doctor, son of the judge. No, he decided, +it could not be either of them. The second husband, whoever he had been, +had clearly not been important, and he was dead, for Mrs. Foss had told +him explicitly that Aurora was a real, and not what is called in America +a grass, widow. From this second husband it must have been that she +derived her wealth. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +Even had Aurora been able to apprehend the measure and quality, the fine +shades, of Gerald's dislike to the thought of her doing a turn in the +society variety-show, it is more than doubtful that she would have let +it weigh against her strong desire to take part. It is fine to have such +delicate sensibilities regarding the dignity of another, but it is +foolishness to entertain anything of the sort regarding your own. + +"If there's one thing I love, it's to dress up and play I'm somebody +else," Aurora had said when first the subject of the benefit performance +was discussed. + +Mrs. Hawthorne was so certain to give generously to the cause of the +convalescents that it was felt only fair to flatter her by seeking to +enlist the service of her talents; but apart from this, the promise of +her appearance was counted upon to create interest. She being obviously +less restricted by conventions than other people, there existed a +permanent curiosity as to what she might do next; and it could not be +denied that she could, when she chose, be funny. + +With the exception of one peculiar and superfastidious man, nobody had +the smallest objection to seeing her distort her fine mouth in comic +grimaces, or lend her fine figure to clownish acts. There were those, of +course, who called Mrs. Hawthorne vulgar; but too many persons liked her +for the charge of vulgarity to go undisputed or become loud. A good many +had reason to like her. + +Aurora felt so sure of the general friendliness that not the smallest +pang of doubt, of deterring nervousness, assailed her while preparing +her scene; and when she once occupied the center of the stage the spirit +of frolic so possessed, the laughter of the people so elated and +spurred, her, that she would have turned somersaults to amuse them, and +done it with success, no doubt, for all that Aurora did on this occasion +was funny and successful. Aurora, intoxicated with applause, was that +night in her simple way inspired. Her state was, in fact, dangerous, +discretion deserted her, and before the end, carried away by the desire +to please further, make laugh more, she had done a foolish thing--a +thing which she half knew, even while she did it, to be foolish, perhaps +wrong. But not having leisure to think, she took the risk, and in time +found herself, as a result of her mistake, to have made an enemy; yes, +changed her dear and helpful friend Charlie Hunt into a secret enemy. + +In an old palace on Via dei Bardi a stage had been set, filling one +fourth of the vast saloon. A goodly representation of Anglo-American +society in Florence crowded the rest. Beautifully hand-written programs +acquainted these, through thin disguises of name, with the personalities +of the performers. Only one name was really mysterious--Lew Dockstader. + +After a lively overture by piano, violin, and harp, the three Misses +Hunt, in Japanese costume, gave a prettily kittenish rendering of "Three +Little Maids from School," selection from one of those Gilbert and +Sullivan operettas latterly enchanting both England and America. The +tub-shaped Herr Spiegelmeyer, dressed like a little boy and announced as +an infant prodigy, played a concerto of prodigious difficulty and +length. Lavin, of the tenor voice rich in poetry and prospects, humbled +himself to sing, "There was a Lady Loved a Swine," with "Humph, quoth +he"--s almost too realistic. Then came Lew Dockstader. + +Now, report had spread that Mrs. Hawthorne was to appear as a negress; +no one was prepared to see her appear as a negro. The surprise, when it +dawned on this one and the other that that stove-black face with rolling +eyes and big red and white smile, that burly body incased in old, +bagging trousers, those shuffling feet shod in boots a mile too large +for them and curling up at the toe, belonged to Mrs. Hawthorne, the +surprise was in itself a success. Then, as has been said, Aurora was +undeniably in the vein that evening. + +She had seen Lew Dockstader, the negro minstrel, once in her life, but +at the impressionable age, when you see and remember for good. It had +been the great theatrical event of her life. "What, haven't seen Lew +Dockstader! Don't know who he is!" thus she still would measure a +person's ignorance of what is best in drama and song. She loved Lew. +When she impersonated him she did not try to imitate him, she simply +felt herself to be he. + +In this character she now told a string of those funny anecdotes which +Americans love to swap. She sang divers songs, pitched among her big, +velvety chest tones: "Children, Keep in de Middle ob de Road," "Fluey, +Fluey," "Come, Ride dat Golden Mule." With the clumsy nimbleness and +innocent love of play of a Newfoundland pup, she flung out her enormous +feet in the dance. + +The crimson curtains drew together upon her retreat amid unaffected +applause. Recalled, she gave the encore prepared for such an event. +Recalled over and over, like singers of topical songs, to hear what she +would say next, Aurora, a little off her head with the new wine of +glory, exhausted her bag of parlor tricks to satisfy an audience so +kind. Then it was that she made her mistake. Recalled still again, she +invented on the spot one last thing to do. She recited a poem indelibly +learned at public school, giving it first as a newly landed Jewish pupil +would pronounce it, then a small Irishman, then a small Italian, finally +an English child. To add the latter was her mistake, because her +caricature of the English speech was very special. + +The sound of it started an idea buzzing in the head of one of her +audience--Charlie Hunt, who sat well in front, and in applauding raised +his hands above the level of his head so that actors and audience alike +might be encouraged by seeing that he gave the patronage of his +approval. + +He did not immediately connect Aurora's English with a rankling +remembered episode, but the thing was burrowing in his subconsciousness, +and an arrow of light before long pierced his brain. He reconsidered the +conclusion upon which he had rested with regard to the black crow who at +the _veglione_ had put to him an impertinent question. Could it be +that not the particular lady whom he had fixed upon in his mind, as +being fond of Landini, consequently jealous of Mrs. Hawthorne, had by it +expressed her spite, but that--? He saw in a flash a different +possibility. + +When the show was over and the performers had issued from the +dressing-rooms in the clothes of saner moments, Charlie Hunt approached +Mrs. Hawthorne, who, flushed with excitement, was looking almost too +much like an American Beauty rose. He paid his compliments in a tone +tinged with irony, all the while watching her with a penetrating, +inquiring, ironical eye. But the irony was wasted. She was too +pleasantly engrossed to perceive it. + +"Has anybody here seen Mr. Fane?" she asked after a time, when her +glances had vainly sought him in every corner. + +Estelle told her that she had not set eyes on him the whole evening; +and, which was more conclusive, little Lily Foss said he had not been +there. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +Aurora, unable to see beyond the footlights, had never dreamed but +Gerald was among the audience. Her capers had at moments been definitely +directed at him. Discovering that he had kept away, she was not so much +hurt as puzzled. + +"Who'd have thought he cared enough about it to be so mean!" she said to +herself. "Well," she said further, "let him alone. He'll come round in a +day or two." + +She really expected him that same day. When he did not come, or the day +after, or the day after that, she tried to recall passage for passage +their talk on the subject of the show. She did not remember his saying +anything that amounted to giving her a choice between renouncing it or +renouncing his friendship. + +Then she reviewed all she knew of him; and his present conduct, if he +were by this avoidance trying to punish her for doing what it was the +prerogative of her native independence to do, did not seem in accordance +with his known regard for the rights of others. + +Aurora did not know what to think. From hour to hour she looked for a +call, a message, a letter, and because the time while waiting seemed +long, she neglected to note that the actual time elapsed was not more +than Gerald had sometimes allowed to pass without her attributing his +silence to offence. He had his work, he had other friends; Abbé Johns +might be in town again visiting him. This silence, however, had a +different value, she thought, from other silences. They had seemed so +much better friends after their confidences that long evening over the +fire; she expected more of him than she had done before it. + +At other moments she was disposed to find fault with herself. She +supposed she was a big coarse thing, unable to appreciate the feelings +of a man who apparently hadn't as many thicknesses of skin as other +folks. + +It was at such a moment, when she made allowances for him, that she +thought of writing, making it easy for him to drop his grouch and +return. But here Aurora felt a difficulty. Aurora thought well, in a +general way, of her powers as a letter-writer, and she was proud of her +beautifully legible Spencerian hand; but for such a letter as she wished +to send Gerald fine shades of expression were needed beyond what she +could compass. She was fond of Gerald; in this letter she must not be +too fond, yet she must be fond enough. What hope that a blockhead would +strike the exact middle of so fine a line? + +She could obviate the difficulty by sending him a formal invitation to +dinner. But suppose she should receive formal regrets? + +After that the whole thing must be left to him; the tactful letter meant +to hurry him back would no longer be possible. + +"Oh, bother!" said Aurora, and formed a better, bolder plan. + +Aurora had not seen the plays, had not read the books, where the going +of the heroine to visit the hero at his house for whatever good reason +under the sun has such damaging results for her fair fame. Aurora was +innocent of good society's hopeless narrowness on the subject. If she +made a secret of her plan to Estelle it was merely because Estelle had +permitted herself wise words one day, warnings, with regard to Gerald, +in whom she specifically did not wish her friend to "become interested." + +"You're too different," Estelle had said. "You're like a fish and a +bird. I won't say I don't like him. He's nice in a way, but it's not our +way, Nell. You'd be miserable with him, first or last." + +"My dear," Aurora had replied, "if you knew the sort of thing we talk +about when you're not there you wouldn't worry. If you can see Gerald +Fane in the part of my beau you must be cracked. And if you think I'm +soft on him, you're only a little bit less cracked. Can't you see we're +just friends? It's nice for him to come here and it's nice for us to +have him. We want friends, don't we?" + +"All I say is don't go ahead with your eyes shut till you find before +you know it that you're landed in a case of, 'Mother, I can't live +without him!' For, Nell, it won't do, you know it won't." + +"My dearest girl, of course I know, but not half so well as he knows! +Bless you, Hat, do you forget all Leslie told us about him and his +affair? And do you forget my little affair? Do you suppose either of us +wants to try again?" + +"Indeed, I hope you will try again, both of you. But not together, Nell. +I've got the man all picked out for you; you know perfectly I mean Tom +Bewick. There's the one for you, Nell. Big, healthy, kind. Good sense. +Good temper. Your own kind of person, Nell, and not a queer bird from a +menagerie. Don't go and spoil everything by getting tangled up over +here. You know as well as I do that Gerald Fane, take him just as a man, +can't hold a candle to Doctor Tom." + +"I've never thought of comparing them. I don't see any use in doing it. +Tom's Tom and Gerald's Gerald. So far as Gerald goes, you can set your +heart at rest and bank on this: I know just as well as you do, and he +knows just as well as I do, that we couldn't pull in harness together +any more than--just as you say, a fish and a bird. Neither of us is +thinking of such a thing. But why mustn't a fish and a bird have +anything to say to each other? He might like the cut of her fins and she +might fancy the color of his wings. They could sympathize together, +couldn't they, if nothing else?" Aurora's eyebrows had with this tried +to signify her entire capacity to take care of herself and her own +business. + +But not wishing to rouse any further uneasiness in her friend, she no +more after that spoke frankly of Gerald whenever he came into her mind. +And when she declined Estelle's invitation to go with her to Mlle. +Durand's, where she would hear the pupils of the latter recite Corneille +and Racine, she did not tell her what she had planned to do instead, +fully intending, however, to reveal it later. + + * * * * * + +Gerald meanwhile did not flatter himself imagining Aurora unhappy +because he stayed away longer than had lately been quite usual. Time +dragged with him, but the calendar told him that just so many days, no +more, had passed. He pictured her going her cheerful gait, occasionally +saying, perhaps, "I wonder what has become of Stickly-prickly?" + +He had not gone to the mid-Lent entertainment as a matter of course. +Aurora had shown small knowledge of him when she thought he would +consent to see her disport herself before the public as a negress. On +the day after, when he learned that she had been the star of the evening +as a negro, his frenzied disgust itself warned him of the injustice, the +impropriety, of exhibiting it to her. He chose to remain away until it +should have sufficiently worn down to be governable. By that time the +poor man had developed an illness, that cold of which for some weeks he +had been carrying around in his bones the premonition. + +With reddened eyelids and thickened nose, a sore throat and a cough, he +felt himself no fit object for a lady's sight. He stayed in to take care +of himself. + +Giovanna knew what to do for her _signorino_ when he was +_raffreddato_. She built a little fire in the studio; she brought +his light meals to him in his arm-chair before it. She administered +remedies. His bed was warmed at night by her _scaldino_. Gaetano +was sent to Vieusseux's for an armful of books. All day Gerald sat by +the fire and read, and sometimes dozed and dreamed, and read again. And +days passed, while his cold held on. + +He thought of writing Aurora to tell her. But if he told her, she would +at once come to see him; of so much one could be sure. And he did not +want her to come. The eccentric fellow did not want her to come +precisely because he wanted her to come so much. + +"This is the way it begins," he said to himself, with horror, when he +became fully aware that his nerves, now that he could not go to find +Aurora when he chose, were suggesting to him all the time that the +presence of Aurora was needed to quiet that sense of want, of +maladjustment to conditions, haunting him like the desire for sleep. + +At sight of his danger he became very clear-headed. The man who sees a +snare and walks into it deserves his fate, surely. + +"It is time to stop it," he said. And he laid down for himself new rules +of life. + +Fortunately, he had at hand some absorbing books. Dostoiewsky's "Crime +and Punishment" could effectively take him out of himself. + +But the print was fine and crowded, he was weakened by illness, he was +forced now and then to stop and rest with swimming head. Then at once +would return, like the demon in fair disguise tempting some hermit of +the desert, the thought, "What is Aurora doing? If Aurora knew I was +ill, she would come." And the imagination of her coming would shed a +feverish gladness all along those petulant, ill-treated, starved nerves. +"What have I to do with Aurora, or Aurora with me?" he would ask, +furiously, the incongruity of what had happened to him calling forth +sometimes a desperate laugh. But Nature laughs at man's ideas of +congruity; remembering that, he could only hold his hands against his +eyes and try to press the image of Aurora out of existence. + +Gerald, however, was much stronger than his nerves. He could see his own +case, even with a pulse at ninety, as well as another man's. And his +will was firmer than might have been thought. He knew something of a +human man's constitution, how it can circumvent a man, or how a man, +well on his guard, can circumvent it. He formed the project of +interrupting his visits to the Hermitage. + +After this resolution he regarded those returns of earth-born desire for +Aurora's balmy touch and tranquilizing neighborhood as a man who had +taken an heroic and sure remedy against ague might regard the +fluctuations in his body of heat and cold continuing still for a little +while. As to how Aurora would take his defection, all should be managed +with so much art and politeness that the most sensitive could not be +hurt. By the time the new important work which he would make his excuse +was accomplished, his cure would have been accomplished as well. + +Meanwhile, each time the door-bell rang--it was not often, +certainly--his attention was taken from his book, and he listened. And +so, on Mlle. Durand's French afternoon, Gerald, having heard the bell, +was listening, but with his face to the fire and his back to the door. +When Giovanna knocked, "Forward!" he said, without turning. The door +opened. + +"_C'è quella signora._" "There is that lady," dubiously announced +Giovanna. + +Gerald turned, and beheld that lady filling the doorway. + +Then it was as if a bright trumpet-blast of reality, breaking upon a bad +dream, dispelled it; or as if a fresh wind, blowing over stagnant water, +swept away the cloud of noxious gnats. All he had latterly been thinking +and feeling seemed to Gerald insane, sickly, the instant he beheld +Aurora's comradely smile. He was ashamed; he found himself on the verge +of stupid, unexplainable tears. + +"Well!" said Aurora. + +At the sound they were placed back on the exact footing of their last +meeting, before thinking and conjecturing about each other in absence +had built up between them barriers of illusion. + +"Well!" he said, but less pleasantly, because he was mortified by the +awareness of himself as an uninviting sight, with his old dressing-gown, +neglected beard, and the unpicturesque manifestations of a cold. + +But Aurora's face was reassuring; she did not confuse him with the +accidents of his dressing-gown and beard and cold. Aurora's face beamed, +so much was she rejoicing in her own excellent sense, which had told her +that one look at each other would do a thousand times more to make +things right between them than innumerable letters could have done. + +"I didn't know what to think," she said, "so I came to find out. First +I'd think you were mad at me, then I'd think you had gone away and +written me, and the letter hadn't reached me, Gaetano had lost it on the +road. Then I'd think you might be sick, and there was nobody to let your +friends know. I don't know what I didn't think of. What made you not +send me word?" + +"I did not know you would be uneasy. I did not rightly measure, it +seems, the depth of your kindness. I should certainly have written to +you before long in case I had continued unable to go to see you." + +"How long have you been sick?" + +"I am not sick, dearest lady. I only have a cold. In order to make it go +away more quickly I have to remain in the house. But how good, how very +good of you to come! Sit down, please do, and warm yourself. I will ring +for Giovanna, and she will make us some tea." + +[Illustration: Gerald turned, and beheld that lady] + +Aurora, smiling all the time with the pleasure she felt in not finding +him angry or estranged or in any way altered toward her, took the +arm-chair from which he had just risen, while he drew a lighter chair to +the other side of the chimney-place. His fires were not like hers. Two +half-burned sticks and a form of turf smoldered sparingly on a mound of +hot ashes; he eagerly cast on a fagot, and added wood with, for once, an +extravagant hand. Then, looking over at her, he smiled, too. + +"Now tell me all about yourself," she commanded. "I want to know what +you're doing for this cold of yours." + +"Please let us not talk about my cold," he at once refused. "Let us talk +about something agreeable. Tell me the news. I have not seen any one for +days. I have been living in Russia with a poor young man who had +committed a murder, also with a most sympathetic being who found the +world outside an institution for the feeble-minded too much for him." By +a gesture toward the books on the table he gave her a clue to his +meaning. + +"You say you haven't seen any one for days," she said. "Now the Fosses, +for instance, who are your best friends, don't you let them know when +you're shut in?" + +"You have no conception, evidently, of my bearishness, dear friend. They +have. They never wonder when they do not see me or hear from me for +weeks." + +"I know, and it seems funny; it seems sort of forlorn to me. I saw them +the other day and asked if any one had seen you since the night of the +show. They said no, but didn't seem to think anything about it." + +"It's not really long since then. How are they all?" + +"All right, and busy as bees. They've no time to come and see me, or +anybody else, I guess. Brenda's coming back to be married in May, and +they're flying round getting her things ready. All her linen is being +beautifully embroidered...." + +They went on talking, without much thought of what they said. It was +immaterial, really, what they said, or even whether they listened to +each other, while they had in common the comfort of sitting together in +front of the fire after a long separation filled with doubts and +dismays. She told him about the Convalescents' Home, the sum they had +raised for it. No word, prudently, was spoken by either of her share in +raising it. He told her about the Russian novels. A third person might +perfectly have been present, for anything intimate in their +conversation. Gerald was scrupulously careful, for his part, that this +should be so. The third person would never have divined how far for the +moment that chimney-corner transcended, in the sentiments of the parties +seated before it, any other corner of the earth. + +Aurora's attention became closer when Gerald related his interviews with +De Brézé and Costanzi, both of whom he had succeeded in convincing that +Antonia had had nothing to do with intriguing them at the +_veglione_, and had left to digest as best they could their +curiosity concerning the mysterious masker mistaken for her. He had been +obliged to give his word that he knew on absolutely good authority who +this person was. + +His attention, on the other hand, was complete when she told him how she +had dealt with Ceccherelli; she was considerate enough to-day to make +the effort to pronounce the gentleman's cognomen. + +"I was savage at him, you remember," she said. "I was going to take his +head off. Then when it came to it, and I had told him what I thought of +him and the whole disgraceful scrape he had got me into--Oh, I went for +him, hammer and tongs! Incidentally, I made him tell me what it was I +had said. Pretty bad, wasn't it!--Well, do you know, he cried, he felt +so. He just cried on his knees, and didn't try to get rid of any of the +blame. All he wanted was that I should forgive him. And what could I do? +As long, particularly, as I knew that a good deal of the fault was my +own.... So now he comes to the house with a look as if he'd just been +baptized. And he tells me only stories fit, he says, for a convent. Here +is a sample, if you'd like to hear. Mrs. X, as he called her, who lives +in a palace not a thousand miles, he said, from Piazza degli Anti-nory, +and who had given Mr. B. reasons for not liking her, was seen by him, in +a suspiciously simple dress, going suspiciously on foot, in a little +suspiciously out of the way street, at a considerable distance from +Piazza degli Anti-nory. The gentleman followed her stealthily into a +house he saw her enter, thinking, you know, he would find out something +to her discredit. And what did he find out but that she was secretly +visiting and relieving the poor! The brilliant society lady, whom he +wished to be revenged on because, as I gathered, she had scorned his +dishonorable love-making, was secretly the angel of the poor.... Don't +you think that's a nice story? He tells me nothing now that's less nice +than that. We're reformed characters. He has asked my permission to +dedicate to me a beautiful piece of music he has just composed, and +which is called--but in French--'Prayer of the Evening.'" + +Both of them were pleasantly aware of a tray placed on the table near +them, as if descended from heaven, laden with teapot, bread and butter, +jam. Neither of them really saw Giovanna, who brought it in, or was +struck by the stern expression of her face. + +Aurora, never sorry of something to eat, turned her attention to the +tray. Gerald wished to serve her, and she first noticed his weakness +when she saw the teapot tremble slightly in his hand. She went on +chattering, but she was observing him. + +"Is your carriage waiting before the door?" he suddenly asked, after a +space during which she had suspected that he was not properly attending +to what she said. Aurora's monogram, daintily executed, adorned the +door-panels of her carriage. + +"Yes," she answered. "Why?" + +As if he had not heard, he changed the subject. After a while he asked, +again irrelevantly: + +"How was it that Miss Madison did not come with you this afternoon?" + +"She was going to a different tea-party." Supposing that his question +was a way of politely desiring news of Miss Madison, she went on to talk +of her. + +"She was going to her French teacher's, who is having a French afternoon +where they're supposed to talk nothing but French. What would I have +been doing there? But Estelle is getting to talk the French language +exactly as well as her own.... That reminds me. A thing I've wanted to +tell you. If you should notice that Busteretto seems to be rather more +her dog than mine, don't you say anything, or care. The fact is Estelle +loves him more than I do. That's all there is about it. Which isn't +saying that I don't love him. But Estelle's silly over him, in the +regular old maid way, as I tell her. When he wouldn't eat his dinner +this noon, I had all I could do to make her eat hers, she was so +troubled. And nothing ailed him, I guess, but that he'd picked up +something in the kitchen. What I wanted to say was, don't you think it's +because I don't value your present, if you should notice by and by that +I seem to have given up my claims to Busteretto. That sort of alive +present has a will of its own. The little thing took to her from the +first more than he did to me. Shall I tell Estelle that you wished to be +remembered?" + +"Pray do." + +"She'll be sorry to hear you're sick. Don't say that again, Gerald," she +silenced him, letting her anxiety at last plainly appear. "Don't tell me +you aren't sick, for I know better. It's been taking away my appetite to +see you make believe to eat, and choke over it. Your cough is so tight +it sounds as if it tore your lungs. Give me your hand. It's as hot, dear +boy, and as dry!... Wait, let me feel your pulse." + +He knew that his pulse was high, that his temples ached, that a +disposition to shiver accompanied the volcanic heat of his blood. + +He laughed at her light-headedly while with serious concentration she +counted the beats in his wrist. + +"I'm going to stop at Doctor Gage's on my way home," she said, letting +go his hand, and not heeding what he said. "And I'm going to tell him to +come and see you." + +"Please do not! If I need a doctor, there is my own, an Italian, the +same for years." + +"An Italian? Do you think they're as good?" + +"Better for my own case." + +"Gerald, it's my advice to you to go right to bed and let your doctor +come and prescribe. A cold is nothing in a way, but a neglected cold can +grow into a mean sort of thing. Say you'll do it. Don't you know how +good it will feel to you just to give in and go to bed and let some one +else do all the looking after you? Oh, I wish I could speak Italian +enough to have a talk with your Giovanna." + +"Giovanna has taken care of me and my _malanni_ for years. She +gives me tar-water, and rice-water, and tamarind-water, and linden-tea, +and cassia. She threatened me this morning with a sinapism if I were not +better by evening. I shall be better. I do not wish for a sinapism." + +"Is that a poultice on your chest? I guess it's what you need. Now, if I +have any influence with you, Gerald, if you love me one little bit, +you'll promise to go right to bed, and you'll give me your doctor's +address so that on my way home I can leave word for him to come." + +"You shall not take that trouble. I can send Gaetano." + +"You promise me you'll do it, then?" + +"I seem to have been left no choice, dear lady." + +"That's real sweet of you. You'll go to bed the minute I've gone?" + +"Yes. But don't go quite yet!" + +"With that temperature, I don't see how you can care who stays or who +goes, or anything in the world but to lay your head down on a pillow. I +won't stay any longer now. Go to bed like a good boy. To-morrow I'll run +in and see how you're getting along." + +His last word was, after a moment of seeming embarrassment: + +"I hope Miss Madison will be able to come with you next time." + +"Yes, yes," said Aurora, lightly, taking it for a mere amiable message +with which he was charging her for Estelle. + + * * * * * + +Fever no doubt colored all Gerald's dreams that night, and was in part +responsible next day for his thoughts, as he passed from languor to +restlessness, and from impatience back to the peace of the certain +knowledge that before evening he should have visitors--fair visitors. + +When it seemed to him nearly time for them, he ordered Giovanna to make +the room of a beautiful and perfect neatness, hiding all the medicine +bottles and humble signs that one is mortal. She was directed to lay +across his white counterpane that square of brocade which often formed a +background for his portraits. She was asked to brush his hair and beard, +and wrap his shoulders in an ivory-white shawl, thick with silk +embroideries, which had been his mother's. In a little green bronze +tripod a black pastille was set burning, which sent up, slow, thin, and +wavering, a gray spiral of perfume. + +Keenly as he was waiting, he yet did not know when the ladies arrived. +He opened his eyes, and they were there, shedding around them a +beautiful freshness of health and the world outside. Estelle, in a soft +green velvet edged with silver fur, held toward him an immense bunch of +flowers. Aurora, in a wine-colored cloth bordered with bands of black +fox, tendered a basket heaped with fruit. Both smiled, and had the kind +look of angels. + +They sat down beside his bed. They talked with him; all was just as +usual. They asked the old questions pertinent to the case, he made the +old answers, and by an effort kept up for some minutes a drawing-room +conversation with them. + +Then Aurora said: + +"Hush! You mustn't talk any more!" And when he thought she was going +away, he wondered to see her take off her gloves. + +She stood over him; he wondered what she meant to do. She felt of his +forehead with her cool hand. With her palms, which were like her voice, +of a velvet not too soft, she smoothed his forehead and temples; she +stroked them over and over in a way that seemed to draw the ache out of +his brain. Her fingers moved soothingly, magnetically, all around his +eye-sockets, pressing down the eyelids and comforting them. + +At first he resisted. Perversely he frowned, as if the thing increased +his pain, annoyed him beyond words. He all but cried out to the +well-meaning hands to stop. + +"Doesn't it feel good?" asked Aurora, anxiously. + +He relaxed. Without opening his eyes, he nodded to thank her, and as he +yielded himself up to the hands it seemed to him that those passes drew +his spirit after them quite out of his body. + + * * * * * + +"I don't think I'll go up with you," Estelle said unexpectedly when on +the next day they stopped before the narrow yellow door in Borgo Pinti. +"I'll wait here in the carriage. I'm nervous myself to-day. Give my best +regards to Gerald. I hope you'll find him better." + +Aurora did not take time to examine into the possible reasons for her +friend's choice. She climbed the long stairs sturdily, managing her +breath so that she did not have to stop and rest on the way. + +She followed the stern Giovanna, unsubdued by the latter's hard and +jealous looks, to the door of her master's chamber. + +She went toward the bed, smiling at the sick man over an armful of white +lilacs. + +He half rose in his bed and quickly, disconnectedly, impetuously, said: + +"My dear friend, this is most good of you. I'm sure I thank you very +much. I'm very, very much better, as you can see. I shall be out again +in a day or two." He was visibly trembling; his eyes flared with +excitement. "That being the case, my dear lady, I earnestly beg you will +not trouble to come like this every day." He stopped to choke and cough, +then wrenching himself free from strangulation--"Aurora,"--he changed +his key and tune,--"do let me be ill in peace! Here I am on my back, +with a loosened grip on everything, and it's taking an unfair advantage +to invade my privacy as you do. Take away those lilacs with you, won't +you, please? We haven't any more vases to put them in; they'd have to be +stuck in a bedroom water-jug. Giovanna won't let me have flowers in my +room, anyhow; she says they are bad for me. Don't be offended! I know +you mean nothing but to be kind, but the thing you are doing is +devilish.... What do you think I am made of? I don't want you to be +offended, but I have got to say what I can to keep you from coming to +this house and troubling me in my illness. I have got to say it plainly +and fully because you, Aurora, never understand anything that is not +said to you in so many words. I might try and try my best to convey the +same idea to you in a gentle and gentlemanly way, and not a scrap of +good would be done. I've got to talk like a beast. I wish to be alone. +Is that clear? I've just struggled and waded my way out of one quagmire; +I do not wish to enter another. Is that plain? I wish to feel free to be +ill as much and as long as I choose. It concerns nobody. It concerns +nobody if I die. It would be an excellent thing, saving me the trouble +later of blowing out my brains.... My God, Aurora, have you understood?" +he almost shouted. + +"Yes," said Aurora in a voice that sounded pale, even as her face looked +pale. "I have understood, and I won't come again. Just one thing, +Gerald. Put your arms under the bed clothes and keep them there." + + * * * * * + +"Whether he's better or worse I truly couldn't tell you," Aurora said in +answer to Estelle's first question. After a moment she added, "I can't +make him out." + +Estelle saw that she was deeply troubled, and, herself troubled at the +sight, did not press her for explanations. + +During the drive home Aurora made only one other remark. It was +delivered with a certain emphasis. + +"_One_ thing I know: I sha'n't go _there_ again in a hurry!" + +Her lilacs, after wondering a moment what to do with them, she had +quietly deposited outside Gerald's entrance-door. + + * * * * * + +It was unimaginable, of course, that the childhood's friend should so +disregard the rules of the game as to leave her old playmate's curiosity +long unsatisfied. Estelle accordingly learned before evening that Gerald +had been guilty of an attack of nerves, in the course of which he had +said something which Aurora did not like. What this was Aurora would not +tell, saying it seemed unfair to repeat things Gerald had spoken while +he was not himself and which he perhaps did not mean. From which Estelle +judged that Aurora had already softened since she returned to the +carriage looking as grim as she was grieved. + +That Aurora had something on her mind no observant person could fail to +see, and Estelle was not unprepared to hear her say as she did on the +third morning at breakfast, after fidgeting a moment with a pinch of +bread: + +"I'm so uneasy I don't know what to do. That boy is much sicker than he +knows," she went on to justify her disquietude, "and he's in a bad mood +for getting well. I don't believe Italian doctors know much, anyhow. +I've heard that they still put leeches on you. All he has to take care +of him, day and night, is that old servant-woman What's-her-name, who, +he told me himself, doctors him with herb-tea. I'm so uneasy! The sort +of cold he has, I tell you, can turn any minute into something you don't +want. He's all run down and a bad subject for pneumonia. I'm thinking I +shall have to just go to the door and find out how he is." + +"You could send a servant to inquire," suggested Estelle. + +Aurora appeared to reflect; she might have been trying to find a reason +for not taking the hint, but she said, "No; I should feel better +satisfied to go myself." + +At the last moment, when they were ready to start, Estelle found +Busteretto's nose hot, and decided not to go. She stayed at home and +called a doctor. For some days the pet had not seemed to her in quite +his usual form. + +Aurora, climbing Gerald's stairs this time, felt very uncertain and +rather small. The street door, when she had pulled the bell-handle, had +unlatched with a click, but no voice had called down, and when she +reached the top landing the door in front of her stood forbiddingly +closed. She waited for some minutes, wondering whether she were doing +right. Suppose Gerald were enough better to be up again and, Giovanna +being out, should himself come to open the door. How would she feel, +caught slinking back, after she had been requested loudly and roundly to +stay away? + +Well, set aside how she felt, the object of her coming would have been +reached, wouldn't it? She would know that he was better. She rang and +listened. + +Certain, as soon as she heard them, whose footsteps were on the other +side of the door, she held in readiness her Italian. She counted on +understanding Giovanna's answer to her question, for she had, as she +boasted, "quite a vocabulary." But much more than to this she trusted to +the talent which Italians have for making their meaning clear through +pantomime and facial expression. + +As soon, in fact, as Giovanna opened the door, and before the woman had +said a word in reply to "_Come sta Signor Fane?_" Aurora had +understood. + +Giovanna's eyes, stained with recent weeping, looked up at the visitor +without severity or aversion, seeking for sympathy; the unintelligible +account she gave of her master's condition was broken up with sighs. + +Aurora felt her heart turn cold, and such agitation seize her as made +her reckless of all but one thing. + +"I shall have to see for myself," she thought. + +With the haste of fear, she flew before Giovanna down the long hallway, +around the dark corner, to the door of Gerald's room. It was half open. +Checking herself on the threshold, she thrust in her head. + +He was so lying in his bed that beyond the outlined shape under the +covers she could see of him only a dark spot of hair. And she felt she +must see his face, whether asleep or awake, to get some idea.... She +tiptoed in with the least possible noise. At once, without turning, he +asked something in Italian, and speaking forced him to cough; and after +he had finished coughing, Aurora, who was near, could hear his breathing +rustle within him like wind among dead leaves. + +Giovanna had gone to the head of his bed and whispered a communication. +Upon which he twisted sharply around, and Aurora, moved by an +overpowering impulse, rushed to his side. + +"Hush!" she said at once. "Don't try to talk; it makes you cough. I just +wanted to know how you were. It would be funny, now don't you think so +yourself, if, such friends as we've been, I should stop caring anything +about you because you were cross the other day? I had to come and see if +there wasn't something we could do for you." + +The attempt to speak choked him again; he had to lift himself finally +quite up from his pillow to get breath. Quicker than Giovanna, Aurora +snatched up a gray shawl from a chair to put over his shoulders. The +room felt to her stagnantly cold. He stopped her hand in the act of +folding him in, and she knew that it was not the Gerald of last time, +this one who, with an afflictive little moan, clasped and pressed her +hand. + +She hushed him, every time he tried to speak, until his breathing had +quieted down, when he came out despite her forbidding with a ragged, +interrupted, but obstinate eagerness: + +"How can I ever thank you enough for coming, dear, dear Aurora? I have +lived in one prolonged nightmare ever since I saw you, knowing I had +behaved like a blackguard, and fearing I should never have a chance to +beg your pardon. I thought I should never see you again. And here you +are, so generous, so kind!" + +"Hush, Gerald! Don't make anything of it. Of course I came. Keep quiet +now; you mustn't try to talk." + +"Dearest woman," he insisted, with his voice full of tears, "I don't +even know what I said to you, but I know that the whole thing was +atrocious. You standing there like a big angel, with your innocent arms +full of flowers, and I barking at you like a cur!" + +"Nothing of the sort. You were sick. Who lays up anything against a sick +man?" + +"Excuse it in me like this, Aurora, if you can: that having such regard +for you, I had pride before you and could not endure that you should see +me when I felt myself to be a disgusting object. So, mortified to the +point of torture, I lost my temper,--I've got that bad habit, you +know,--and insanely railed to keep you off." + +"And didn't succeed. Come, come; what nonsense all this is! Put it out +of your mind and think of nothing but getting well. Now you--" + +"It is not nearly so important that I should get well," he testily +persisted, "as that I should ask your forgiveness. It has been weighing +upon me and burning like bedclothes of hot iron, the horror of having so +meanly and ungratefully offended you." + +"Why should you feel so bad about it as long as I don't? Put it all out +of your mind, just as I do out of mine. There, it's all right. Now keep +still except to answer my questions. You've had the doctor?" + +"Yes, dear." + +"What's he giving you?" + +"You can see--there on the stand--those bottles." + +"And hot things on your chest?" + +"Yes; _semedilino_. I don't know what you call it in English." + +"Flaxseed, I guess. How can poor old Giovanna do everything for you?" + +"I don't know," he answered vaguely. "She does." + +Perceiving that by a reaction from his excitement he was suddenly +fatigued to the point of no longer being able to speak at all or even +keep his eyes open, she asked nothing more, but with a practised hand +straightened his bolster, smoothed his pillow and drew the covers evenly +and snugly up to his chin. + +"Don't you be afraid," he heard her say above him, as it seemed to him a +long time after, at the same moment that he felt her give his shoulder a +little squeeze to impress her saying: "I won't let anything happen to +you." + + * * * * * + +He entered a state which was neither quite sleep nor quite waking. He +was not dreaming, yet the world within his eyelids was peopled with +creatures and varied by incidents departing from the known and foreseen. +Something malevolent pertained to the personalities, something +disquieting to the actions; suffering and oppression resulted from his +inability to get away from them. They came and went, one scene melted +into another, sometimes beautiful, sometimes repulsive, a sickly +disagreeableness being common to all, and the fatigue involved with +watching the spectacle of them weighing like a physical burden. + +But yet beneath the unrest of fever dreams there was in Gerald, after +Aurora's visit, as if a substratum of quiet and content. As a good +Catholic, having confessed and received absolution, would be less +troubled by either his symptoms or any visions that might come of Satan +and his imps, so Gerald, with the weight of his sins of brutality and +ingratitude lifted off him, could feel almost passive with regard to the +rest. + +He had moments through the night of recognizing the deceptiveness of his +senses. He knew, for instance, that the solemn clerical gentleman in a +long black coat and tall hat whom he saw most tiresomely coming toward +him down the street every time he opened his eyes was only a medicine +bottle full of dark fluid, outlined against the dim candle-shine. And he +knew that the tower of ice, solitary amid snows, lighthouse or tower of +defense on some arctic coast, was nothing but a glass of water. And when +it seemed to him, late, late in the night, that Aurora was in the room, +he knew off and on that it was Giovanna, who through one of those +metamorphoses common in fever had taken the likeness of Aurora. She +lifted him to make him drink, and supported him while she held the glass +to his lips, then laid him easily back. The delusions of fever had the +sweet and foolish impossibility of fairy-stories: Aurora, as if it were +the most natural thing in the world, placing upon his stiff and +lacerated breast balsamic bandages of assuaging and beneficient +warmth!... + +The night was full of torrid heat and fiery light, in which everything +looked unnatural, shifting, uncertain, but daylight, when it finally +came, was of a crude coldness; under it everything returned to be +itself, meager and stationary, and he knew that it was no +phantasmagorical Aurora making preparations to wash his face. + +He spoke no word to signify either pleasure or displeasure. He let it +be, like a destiny too strong to withstand. With this acceptance there +took place in him, body and spirit, a relaxing, as when supporting arms +are felt by one who had been fearing a fall. + +In his not very clear-headed reflections upon himself and his state, he +had passed into a different category of men, where what he did, +particularly as regarded worldly proprieties, had little importance, +because, ill as he felt, there seemed to him such a strong probability +of his actions having no result. If, on the other hand, he could manage +to pull through--and he found he cared to do this, cared so much more +than he had supposed he ever could care, on such desperate days as those +which had sometimes seen him re-examining his revolver--if he should +recover, the gladness of his good fortune would outweigh any +inconvenience created by his weakness now. Life is, and should be, +dearer to man than anything else, except honor. He found it difficult to +separate the idea of honor from life, and make it oppose letting this +robust guardian angel fulfil her promise not to "let anything happen to +him." + + * * * * * + +Gerald had too often heard those well-meaning lies which friends and +nurses tell the sick, to place faith altogether in Aurora's cheerful +asseverations from day to day that he was getting better. + +Yet Aurora was not feigning. She entertained no doubt that with proper +care he would get well. And she was providing the care. Hence a +confidence which she did not allow any of those chilly creepy fears +which come at about three o'clock in the morning to undermine. She was +so strongly resolved to get him well, and felt so capable of doing it, +that it would not seem unlikely her very hands in touching him had +virtue and imparted health. + +He said very little, even when the exertion of talking had ceased to +make him cough. The fact that talk fatigued him was reinforced by his +old fancy that talk was superfluous. One lived, one looked, one felt.... + +She was glad he so willingly kept quiet, because as long as he had fever +it was so much the best thing he could do. He did not have to tell her +that he took comfort in having her there, that everything she did for +him was exactly right, that her touch was blessed and had no more +strangeness for him than that of a sister--nay, than his own. She too +understood those wordless things which are shed from one person, like a +radiance, and inhaled by another, like a scent. + +In the long silences, she sometimes read a little by the shaded +candle--she had chosen the night watch for her share and let his devoted +old Giovanna wait on her master during the day. But very often she sat +in her easy-chair near the bed doing nothing, just thinking her +thoughts, marveling at the queerness, the surprises of life. Who could +have dreamed that first time she entered this big brick-floored, +white-washed room, and nearly cried because she found it so dreary, that +she would come to feel at home in it; that by her doing the brown +earthenware stove in the corner, cold since Mrs. Fane's day, would again +glow and purr; that over and over she would watch the row of flower-pots +out on the terrace, with the stiff straw-colored remains in them of last +year's carnations, grow slowly visible in the dawn; that from their +pastel portrait the eyes of the mother would watch her placing +compresses on the brow of the son! + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: Aurora's eyes, fixed and starry, rested upon the little +flame] + +Before going for her rest, she always waited to see the doctor, who made +an early visit. After they had reissued together from the sickroom, he +was interviewed by her with the help of an interpreter, Clotilde, who +was in and out of the house during all that period, making herself +useful. Estelle instead came only for a moment daily, having a case of +her own to nurse, who was down, poor crumb, with those +measles-mumps-whooping cough of puppyhood, distemper. + +On the day when Doctor Batoni had agreed that with prudence there would +be nothing more to fear, the patient might be regarded as having entered +convalescence, Aurora covered him with a wide and warming smile. + +"_Je suis son bonne amie_," thus she translated the explanation of +her unconcealed happiness, "I'm a good friend of his," nodding at the +old man with the full sweetness of her dimples; blushing a little, too, +with the pride of addressing him directly in French. + +That morning Aurora was so happy she could not hurry; humming an old +psalm tune she dawdled about her room, the longer to enjoy her thoughts. + +When she finally slept it was more deeply than usual, and she woke with +a start of fear that it was past the time. The line of sky showing +between the curtains retained no remembrance of the day. It must be +late, certainly. Then she heard a faint stirring just outside her door, +the thing probably which had drawn her out of a sound sleep. It was the +rustle of some person listening at the crack. + +She bounced from bed and went to open. It was as she expected, Giovanna; +come, she supposed, to see if she were ready to go on duty. At +Giovanna's first words, though she did not entirely understand them, she +became uneasy, because Giovanna interspersed them with sighs. Her voice +sounded as if she might have been crying. + +Aurora had grown accustomed to the fact that those hard old eyes of +Giovanna's took easily to tears, and that she sighed by the thousand the +moment she was in anxiety over her _signorino_. She knew she must +not take Giovanna's fears at her own valuation. She gathered from her +gestures now, combined with her talk, that Gerald, so quiet until +to-day, had become restless. Giovanna impersonated him tossing and +throwing his arms out of the bed-covers. Aurora, though not permitting +herself to be alarmed, hurried with her dressing. + +"Ain't it always so," she questioned her own image in the glass, "that +the moment you feel safe something goes wrong?" + +When she tiptoed into the big dim room where Gerald lay, she could not +at first make out what it was that had troubled Giovanna to the point of +tears. He seemed quiet enough. After she had taken his pulse and +temperature, her heart subsided with a blessed relief. + +He could not tell her, because he did not himself know, that just +because he was better he, paradoxically, was worse. Thoughts and +responsibilities had begun to trouble him again. + +"Should you mind very much," he asked suddenly, "if I worked off my +nervousness by singing? I have kept still, so as not to worry you, +exactly as long as I can." + +"Certainly," she said, "go ahead. I never knew you were a singer. What +are you going to sing?" + +She waited with a certain curiosity. + +He began chanting. "B, a, ba; B, e, be--babe! B, i, bi--babebi! B, o, +bo--babebibo! B, u, bu--babebibobu!" Then he went on to the letter C, +"C, a, ca! C, e, ce--cace! C, i, ci--caceci!" and to D, and so on, one +after the other, through all the consonants in the alphabet. + +"The queerest rigmarole you ever heard!" Aurora called that simple +Italian spelling-exercise for little beginners. It might have been funny +to hear him, only it was disquieting, he did it so earnestly and so +obstinately kept it up. + +When he had finished, Aurora held a sedative powder all nicely wrapped +in a wet wafer ready for him. He knew what it was and gratefully gulped +it, composing himself after it to wait in patience and self-control for +its operation. Aurora, reposing on the magic of drugs like a witch on +the power of incantations, watched for the drooping of his eyelids and +relaxing of his frown. + +He had lain still for so long that she was congratulating herself upon +the result thus easily obtained, when he opened his eyes, twice as +wide-awake as before, and began to talk, as if really the object of an +opiate were not to stupefy a man, but to rouse him fully. Under its +influence he was almost garrulous. His vivacity partook of delirium. All +that passed through his mind pressed forward indiscriminately into +utterance, as if the sentinels placed on guard over his thoughts had +been taking an hour off. + +Aurora heard him in wonder and perplexity. He was not incoherent, he was +not extravagant. He was merely talkative, expansive, and this in his +case was obviously pathological. She wondered also to see how handsome +he could look, with his eyes alight; his cheek-bones burning, pink as +paint; his hair, grown long, lying in dark locks over a luminous +forehead. + +She tried to think of something that would abate all this. She was +searching her nurse's memory for some further sedative by which to +counteract a first one gone wrong, when the thread of her medical +meditation snapped, her attention fastened upon what Gerald was saying. +Because she had a suspicion that it was about Violet he was talking. And +she had from the first been curious about Violet and his feelings with +regard to her. As curious as if she had been jealous. + +"There is a person--" he said, in the suppressed voice of one +communicating a secret, "of whom I used to dream very often. Not because +I wished to. In the days when I wished to, she came seldom. But when I +dreaded it, she began to come, and do what I would, oppose to her what +hardness I could, she could be so sinisterly dreadful and unkind that it +was like a knife in me. Try to shut her out as I might, she would force +her way in and make me suffer. Why? Why did she want to?... I will tell +you what I believe. Some women feel their beauty to depend upon their +power to create suffering. If not happy suffering, then the other kind. +If men grow indifferent to it, they feel their beauty passing, and if it +goes there is nothing left that they care for. The unremitting quest of +their lives therefore is to feed the blood of men to their beauty, and +if they can not do it in any other manner they pick the locks of sleep +and get at them in that way. But the last time this person came, a +surprise awaited her. And the same, I will confess, awaited me. My heart +was like so much sawdust, so far as one drop of blood that she could +wring from it. And now she won't come again, I believe, for why should +she come? She will look a little anxiously in the glass, very likely, to +see if she has begun to fade. I should be sorry to know that the least +of her golden hairs had faded--they were so lovely. It's wrong all the +same to practise sorcery. You don't, Aurora, that is one reason why I +like to be with you. Women as God made them are strong enough, He knows! +It's unfair to use sorcery besides, to make themselves beautiful to the +point of distraction, and desired to the point of pain. And then their +barbarous methods! That low game of using a man's weakness for the +increase of their own glory, making a jealous fool wilfully out of a +decent fellow, and a baby out of a self-respecting man. You, Aurora, you +are good as good bread, you are restful as a bank of moss. You would +never do what the others do. Would you, Aurora? You needn't answer me. I +know." + +"If what you mean is that I'm not much of a co-quette," she came in +quickly, to prevent his continuing, "I guess you're right. Take it since +I was born, I've been called a good many things, but in all my life I +don't remember anybody calling me that,--a co-quette. But you're talking +lots more than is good for you, brother. Now I want you to quiet down +and give those sleepy-drops a chance to work. Here I've fixed you +something else that will help them. It's just a drink with nothing in it +but something nice and cooling. Smells pleasant, doesn't it? This'll do +the trick." + +Slipping an arm under his neck, she lifted him, propped him against +herself, and held the glass to his mouth. Instead of words pouring out, +the calming draught flowed in. It was a slow process; he drank by small +swallows and wished after each one to stop, but she gently forced him to +go on. When it was finished and he turned his head away from the glass, +he found it resting on her shoulder. He settled his cheek warmly against +it, like a child burying his face in the pillow. With a long sigh he +relaxed. + +"Now, Aurora," he said solemnly, "be per--fect--ly still." + +He was very still, too. After a long moment he half lifted his head and +with a long soft sigh replaced it, as if to renew his sense of a +resting-place so sweet. With all her heart Aurora lent herself to this, +glad to witness, as she thought, the belated effect of the soporific. In +a few minutes he would be asleep. + +"Aurora," he suddenly said, wakeful as earlier, but without moving his +heavy head or opening his eyes, "do you remember the first evening I +ever saw you? You came down the middle of the room all by yourself, like +something in the theater, where the stage has been cleared for the +principal character to make an effect. You were a fine large lady in a +sky-blue frock with bursts of pink, your hair spangled with diamonds, a +fan in one hand, a long pair of gloves in the other. That at least is +what everybody else saw that looked at you. But me, what I seemed to see +was America coming toward me draped in the stars and stripes. Now you +know how I feel about my dear country. If I loved it why should I have +fixed my abode once and for all over here? And yet when I saw it coming +toward me across the room, with your eyes and smile and look of Home, I +felt like the tiredest traveler and exile in the whole world, who wants +nothing, nothing, but to get Home again. It was like a moment's +insanity. I almost wonder that I resisted it, the desire to lay my head +on your shoulder and cry, Aurora, and tell you about it, then never move +again, or say another word." + +Aurora readjusted her position so as to make his leaning on her even +easier. She brought a warm cover safe-guardingly around him. + +"Poor Geraldino!" she pitied him in the lonely past. + +"Then do you remember the first time I went to see you," he asked, "and +you introduced me, dearest woman, room by room, to the somewhat gruesome +mysteries of your house? You walked before me holding a lamp. In the +ball-room, hazy with vastness, you held the lamp high, like a torch. And +I had a vision of you as America again, or Liberty, or Something, +lighting the way for me.... But I treated the fancy as one treats +fancies. I did not in the least intend to cultivate the acquaintance +begun with your picking me up by the loose skin of the neck and plumping +me down on the little seat of your victoria." + +"Why--Gerald!" she drawled in a tone of reproach purposely funny. +"Didn't you want to come?" + +"I wanted _not_ to come!" he answered, with normal spirit. "But you +kept saying Jump in. When a lady has said Jump in three times it acts +like a spell, a man has got to jump." + +"But when it came to the hot bread and syrup, brother, you know you were +glad to be there. You kept your superior look, but you ate all I +buttered for you. It did me good to see you." + +"Yes," he grew dreamy again, "it took me back. It took me back to so +many things I had nearly forgotten. And when at the end of the evening I +was leaving, do you remember, Aurora, wrapping in paper some pieces of +maple-sugar and forcing me to take them home in my pocket? I felt +absurdly like a little boy and again you seemed like big America; +something exhaled from you that made me think of slanting silver-gray +roofs and the New England spring of appleblossoms and warbling robins; +yes, and of October foliage intolerably bright, and Fourth of July +celebrations. Not things I dote on, exactly, but things I was born to, +and restful to me after my years of chasing what is not to be caught, +wanting what is not to be had, seeking all the time to adjust myself, to +adjust myself, to the harshness of life, the treachery, the +unaccountability, the relentlessness--restful as this heavenly shoulder, +on which I have wished how many hundred times to lay my head like this +and not move again, or speak again, or have anything ever change. +Aurora, don't say a word, dear. Particularly, kindest Aurora, don't make +any of your little jokes. Keep perfectly still, like a good darling, and +let me forget everything except where my head is, and be perfectly +happy." + +As seriously as if a god had commanded it, Aurora preserved the silence +and immobility requested of her, only making her shoulder as much wider +and softer and more comforting as she could by wanting it to be so. + +When by and by she felt him slip a little as he began to lose himself in +sleep, she clasped her hands around him supportingly and held him in +place. + +A single candle burned in the room, with a book to shade it. Aurora's +eyes, fixed and starry, rested upon the little flame where it was +reflected in a mirror on the wall opposite, but she did not see it at +all, so absorbed was she in her thoughts. In her feelings, too. In the +wonder of the hour. This remarkable Gerald, with his head packed full of +knowledge, with his speech that charmed you as whistling does an adder, +with his capacity to paint pictures that the rest could not even +understand, and then his rarity, the sweetness of his manners, the +fascination of all that unknown in him which came, she had concluded, +from his foreign bringing-up--he had wanted ever since he first saw her +just to lay his head on her shoulder and rest.... + +Her common ordinary shoulder. What did he see in her? Taking for granted +that he saw something, Aurora attributed this unknown quality in herself +to God, and thanked Him. She tightened her clasp about Gerald, the +better to feel him there. The power of the sleeping-potion had overtaken +him completely. Thoughts that moistened her eyes resulted from feeling +her arms full of the breathing warmth of a beloved form. Those defrauded +maternal arms! That other, who would have been five years old at this +time, and would have been called little Dan, after Dan, her big father, +how she would have nursed him through his childish ailments, how she +would have held him and rocked him! No, she would never stop yearning +over him. One must suppose that God knows best. + +Gerald's breathing was deep and quiet. When sure that it could be done +without waking him, she let him gently down on to the pillow. + +She stood beside the bed for a few minutes, in her soft garment of +cashmere and swansdown which made no more sound when she moved than did +her velvet shoes; she watched him sleep with emotions of gratitude +beyond possibility of expression to any one but that old intimate, God. +He was getting well so surely and fast. He would shortly be as well as +ever. + +Confident that he would want nothing more for the rest of the night, she +arranged herself in her easy-chair for a good sleep, too. + + * * * * * + +On the next day she divined from his half troubled look at her, and the +shy modesty of his manner, that he was wondering whether he had actually +babbled last night, or in a mild delirium dreamed the whole thing. Not +from her might he find out. Her easy, matter-of-fact way made any such +passage seem at least unlikely. + +Having slept during the night she did not retire to rest during the day, +but let Giovanna go about her long neglected affairs and in her place +looked after Gerald, who had waked from his deep sleep immensely +refreshed. He would not need a constant watcher beside him after this, +during night or day. + +"What shall I do to amuse you?" she asked him, to make an interruption +after she had felt him watching her through half closed lids for some +time. "Don't you want me to read to you?" + +"I think not, Aurora. Thank you just as much." + +"Well, then, how shall I entertain you? Do you want me to be a gold-fish +for you?" + +"How do you 'be a gold-fish,' Aurora?" + +"Look!" But the instant she changed her face into a gold-fish's and +waggled up through imaginary water, opening and shutting her mouth like +a rubber valve, he hid his eyes, crying sharply, "Please stop! I don't +want to see it." + +The gold-fish personality was dropped. + +"Very well, then," she said, with unimpaired serenity, "shall I do a +squirrel gnawing a nut? Every family its own circus." + +"If you do it, I will not look. How can you endure, lovely as you are, +to make yourself ugly--grotesque?" + +"Aren't you rather hard to suit to-day, mister? Shall I be a hen, then, +scratching for her chicks? That's mild." + +"No, no, no. Yes. No. I don't know about the hen. Let me have a sample." + +He watched her, critically and provisionally, while with comfortable, +motherly, half-suppressed chest-sounds, and a round eye cocked for finds +among the dirt, remarkably altogether the appearance of a pensive white +hen, she made believe to scratch up the earth with her feet. A rather +sympathetic performance, he allowed, her imitation of the hen, calling +up before one the vision of a farmyard, a brood of downy yellow chicks, +a duckpond, sunshine, green things. + +He let her do it as long as she would, or rather until to vary the thing +she increased the comic beyond the line he fixed. When midday found him +grudgingly laughing at her cackling, it seemed improbable certainly that +midnight had seen him sleeping in her arms. But underlying their +laughter was a consciousness in each that day of a thing uniting them +which had not been there before. + + * * * * * + +Sitting bolstered up in bed to eat his first real meal, he looked, with +his long hair parted in the middle and brushed down over his hollow +temples, like one of those old masters in the Ewe-fitsy, Aurora told +him. A St. John the Baptist, she specified. + +She chipped the top off his egg and cut finger sizes of bread for him, +so that he might have it in the foreign way he preferred. + +While he languidly ate, yet with pleasure, the door softly swung inward, +revealing faces of women,--Estelle, Clotilde, Livvy, Giovanna,--all +equally kind, all craning for the delight of a peep at him eating his +soft-boiled egg. + +Because he was still weak, tears came into his eyes, and because he +could not permit them to be seen, he waved and haggardly smiled toward +the smiling and nodding faces without inviting them nearer. + +Women! women!... What a great deal of room they had occupied in his +life! How much he owed them for affection,--mother, sister, +servant-girl, friends.... + + * * * * * + +He had known from whispers and rustlings, from a sort of instinct, +latterly from Giovanna's own lips, that his house since the coming of +"that lady" to undertake the government of his sickroom had been full of +people, making practical and easy the carrying out of her plots. +Abundance of people and abundance of money. Old Giovanna grumbled +bitterly at this invasion, but she did it inside of herself, sanely +recognizing that she had subject for gratitude. Her hot dark eye looked +all she thought, and her lips moved as she soundlessly said all she +felt; but when she dropped into the dark church of Santa Maria degli +Angeli for a moment's devotion she did not fail to ask Maria to bless +"that lady" and give her great good. After which she begged Her by the +seven swords of Her sorrow to hasten the day that should clear the house +of the whole horde of strangers, and permit her to resume the quiet life +with her signorino. + +Gerald, whose nature felt the oppression of material benefits as much as +Giovanna felt jealousy with regard to her rights and loves, resolved +that the sole seemly return for generosity in this case would be an +equal generosity, consisting in an acceptance pure of every shadow, +either of obligation, or reserve, or regret. + + * * * * * + +Since the doctor said it would do the invalid no harm to admit a visitor +or two, Aurora wrote to Mrs. Foss. She came at once with Leslie. Both on +the occasion of this call were perfect, in tact, in warmth, in +friendship. And yet with them, and the sense of the World and the +World's point of view which they inevitably brought, change entered the +house. + +The vacuous, almost happy languor of the sick was replaced in Gerald by +an irritable gloominess, decently repressed, but unconcealable. + +"There's no mistake; you're getting well," remarked Aurora, when the +unrest of a mind troubled by many things expressed itself in indignation +against innocent inanimate objects, a drop of candle wax for burning, an +ivory paper-cutter for snapping in his impatient hand. "You're getting +well. I guess I can go home and feel easy about you." + +And sooner than Giovanna had dared to hope when most fervently she +invoked the Holy Mother, lo! the intruders, mistress and maids, bag and +baggage, had left in their places room and silence. So much sooner than +expected that Giovanna, clasping in her hands an incredible fee, almost +found it in herself to feel regret. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +On their last day together Gerald had asked Aurora to find the key of a +certain desk-drawer and to bring him the miniature strong-box locked in +it. He had taken out one by one, to show her, the little store of +trinkets once belonging to his mother and given her from among them the +one he thought most charming, an old silver cross studded with amethysts +and pearls. + +Her own house, when she reëntered it, looked faintly unfamiliar, as if +she had been away much longer than she had by actual count. But her big +soft bed looked good to her, she told Estelle, after the bed of granite +framed in iron she had lately occupied. + +She was in high good spirits. Gerald out of the woods, the amethyst +cross, Estelle and her beautiful commodious house returned to, vistas +ahead of good times and heart satisfactions, a sense of success and the +richness of life--Aurora was in splendid spirits. + +Estelle and she slept together on the first night, so as to be able to +buzz until morning, as they had used to do in their young days, when one +of them was allowed to go on a visit to the other and stay overnight. +There ensued a very orgy of talk, a going over of all that had happened +since their separation, quite as if they had not once seen each other in +the interval. + +It might have been thought, when their remarks finally became far +spaced, as they did between two and three of the morning, that this +happened because the streams were running dry as well as because the +talkers were growing sleepy; but no such thing. Each had loads more that +she might have told; but each, as had not been the case in the old days, +was keeping back something from the other. Each locked in her breast a +secret. + +There had naturally been talk of Gerald. Estelle was immensely nice +about him, and Aurora appeared immensely frank, but yet both knew that +he was to be a delicate subject between them thenceforward, and that +thoughts relating to him could not be exchanged without reserve. + +There had been laughter over Estelle's subterfuges in order not to let +it be learned from her, and this without directly lying, that Aurora was +actually living at Gerald's. "It's a case of a cold," she had explained +her friend's non-appearance upon one occasion, without mentioning whose +cold. + +The details of Busteretto's illness and danger had caused him to be +reached for in the dark and kissed and cuddled anew. + +"My, but it's nice to have you back!" Estelle said in the morning, +fixing a bright, fond gaze upon her friend across the little table in +the bedroom, where they sat in their wrappers eating breakfast. "A penny +for your thoughts, Nell. What are you thinking about?" + +Nell smiled rather foolishly, then, putting Satan behind her in the +shape of a temptation to prevaricate, said: + +"I was thinking what they were doing over there. Whether Gerald has had +a good night, and about Giovanna, and what it's all like without me. +It's hard for me now to think of the place without me. I miss myself +there." + +"I suppose you'll be driving round to inquire sometime in the course of +the day," Estelle said, with true generosity; at which Aurora tried to +look as if she were not sure; she would think about it. + +With arms around each other's waists they went through all the rooms for +Aurora to renew her pleasure in them after absence. They came to a +standstill before her portrait in the drawing-room. + +"There's no mistake, he's talented," Estelle admitted good-humoredly, +after a considerable silence. "That's a fine portrait." + +Aurora did not say she thought so, too. Alone in her room later, while +Estelle was dressing to go out together, she looked at the other +portrait to see if she were "any nearer educated up to it." It seemed to +her she was, a little bit. + +She started to dress. Being given to homely rather than poetic fancies, +she subsequently thought of herself as having been, during the process +of making herself fine for the afternoon drive and call, like some Cape +Cod young one trotting happily along with her tin pail full of +blueberries, just before a big dog sprang out of the roadside tangle and +jostled the pail out of her hand, so that all the berries were +spilled.... + +Even as she was buttoning her gloves a letter came for her with a +parcel. All rosy with delight, she quickly found in her purse a reward +for Gaetano, the bringer. Without too much hurry, like a person not +eager to shorten a solid enjoyment, she opened the letter. It did not +strike her as surprising, certainly not as ominous, that Gerald should +write when he might expect to see her so soon. She read: + +This is the fourth letter, dearest Aurora, that I have written you since +waking, after a very bad night, in such a black humor that you would +know I am quite myself again and life has resumed for me its natural +colors. I destroyed those letters one after the other because, although +written with the effort of my whole being to be what you call sweet, +they sounded to me insufferably disagreeable. And now whatever I write I +shall have to send because if I destroy this letter also I shall not +have time to write another before you come to see me as you promised. +And the reason for my wretched night was that I was haunted by all the +reasons there are why you should not come. They are so difficult to put +into words that I despair, after three attempts, of doing it in any but +an offensive manner. Pity, Aurora, the plight of your poor patient; +permit him not to go into them. Just--don't come. + +Alas! that cannot be all. I have the vision of your puzzled face. Well, +then, it is for yourself, in part. I have no excuse for profiting by a +kindness that may be harmful to you. It is my duty to regard for you the +conventions you are big-heartedly willing to disregard. I deplore the +fact that I was ever so weak as to forget it. + +But it is also for myself, who must not further be demoralized and +spoiled. + +I must not, moreover, be laid further under obligations of gratitude, +the less, my dear Aurora, that gratitude is not precisely what I feel. +No. I so little dote upon life that I should be glad if a merciful +angel's attention had not been drawn to me, and I perhaps might have +escaped the dreary prolongation of years. I am sorry, but so it is. + +Pray do not conceive any relation between what I have just written and +the request that follows. Will you be so kind as to return the object +belonging to me which I miss from the little table-drawer at the head of +my bed? You had no right to take it. + +Vincent Johns is coming in a day or two. Do not think of me, therefore, +as lonely or neglected. + +I find I must hurry or be too late. This letter is beastly and ought to +be torn up like the others. It simply cannot; it must go. I can only +pray, Aurora, that you will understand. + + * * * * * + +Aurora went back to the beginning and read the letter a second time. +Then she turned to the accompanying parcel and noticed that it was done +up in a shabby piece of old newspaper. It contained a pair of fur-lined +velvet shoes, a bow-knot of blue satin ribbon, and a bottle of almond +milk, things of her own which through carelessness had been left behind. +She could not know that the honest Giovanna alone was responsible for +this return of her property. Coming at that moment, it formed the +occasion for two stinging tears rising to the edge of Aurora's eyes. She +swept them away with the back of her glove, and forbade any more to +follow. To prevent them she took her lips between her teeth, and with +all her strength called upon her pride. + +She read Gerald's letter over again, really trying to understand, to be +fair, to interpret it in the high-minded way he would wish. + +"When all is said, it amounts to this,"--she reached the end of that +exercise by a short cut,--"he wants to be let alone." + +And after every allowance had been made for him, and all due deference +paid to his excellent reasons, still it seemed to her what she couldn't +call anything but a poor return. Because his letter was bound to hurt +her, and he must have known it. His sending it, therefore, argued a lack +of any very deep affection for her. After she had come, just from his +own words and actions, to supposing.... + +"This is what you get for not remembering that if a person is +practically a foreigner you can never expect to know them except in +spots," she admonished herself. + + * * * * * + +After they had driven in the Cascine and around the Viali for the +sunshine and air, Aurora asked suddenly: + +"Haven't we had enough of this?" and ordered the coachman to go home. + +"Why!" exclaimed Estelle, astonished, "I thought we were going to Gerald +Fane's to see how he's getting along!" + +"No, I guess we won't. I think it's time, after living with him for +three weeks, that I began to look after my reputation, don't you?" said +Aurora, with a forced lightness of rather bitter effect. + +"I had a note from him, anyhow, just before we came out," she added +after a moment. "He's doing all right." + +Estelle understood that something was wrong. Aurora could not +successfully pretend with her. Aurora's transparent face, as she now +took note of it, betrayed hidden perplexity and chagrin. Estelle asked +no questions, not needing to be told that Gerald's note had worked the +change. Despite her affection for her friend, indeed, just because of +that affection, Estelle was quietly glad of it. Her thought caressed the +secret which has been referred to, a scheme which for some weeks had +given her an excited feeling of having between her fingers the thread of +the Fates. + +After Estelle had gone to her own room for the night, Aurora sat down to +compose an answer to Gerald's letter. She had reflected a good deal +since receiving it, and out of confusion and complexity singled one +clear and simple thought or two. + +Gerald had never said or intimated that she had forced herself upon him +when he was too ill to help it; but the truth was she had done that, +after all his shying rocks at her, too, to keep her off. Nor had Gerald +suggested that one of his reasons for wishing her not to haunt his +bedside was a fear of her becoming inconveniently fond of him. A hint +could be found, if one chose, that he feared becoming too fond of her, +but of the other no vestige, no shadow, or ghost of a shadow. Yet by +those two points the spirit of Aurora's reply must be inspired. +Centuries of civilization have ground into the female of the species one +particular lesson. + +So the irascible man's nervous, hurried and harried scrawl, written with +sputtering pen that at several places tore clean through the paper, and +written under the compulsion of his soul and his good sense, received +from the best of women an answer in her calmest hand, deliberately +calculated to give him pain, at the same time as to convey to him +unambiguously that, as far as she was concerned, he was freer than the +birds of the air. She wrote: + + My dear friend Gerald, + + What I want principally to say is just _don't worry_. Don't + worry for fear I'll come, and don't worry for fear I won't + understand, and don't worry because you think my feelings may be + hurt. And above all the rest, don't worry about + _gratitude_, for I don't feel you owe me any at all. Don't + you think for a moment that I saved your life. You were not as + sick as you imagine, I guess. It was a very light case, or how + would you have got over it so soon? You were not near as sick, + according to all accounts, as poor Busteretto, who has been + having what they call here the _cimurro_. I took you in + hand because _I am a nurse_ and I couldn't keep my hands + off, just as an old fire-engine horse will start to gallop when + he hears a fire-alarm even if he isn't on the job. If it had + been Italo Ceccherelli who was sick I would have been tempted in + just the same way; so you see there is no occasion for + gratitude. Put it out of your mind. + + Now about the thing I took from the drawer of your night-stand. + I am very sorry I can't give it back, because I flung it out in + the middle of the river. That is what I did with it, and I am + not sorry either. You know that we at home don't look upon + certain things as you apparently do over here. We think it a + disgrace for a man to kill himself. I myself am old-fashioned + enough to think that that door leads to hell. I have been + astonished to find that over here it is thought quite + respectable, that some Italians look upon it as an honorable + way, for instance, of paying their debts, and a natural way of + getting over an unhappy love-affair. As I know you have a good + many foreign ideas, and as you have once or twice made a remark + that showed me you thought of that solution of difficulties as a + possible one, I grabbed your nasty old pistol when I found it in + the little drawer, and it reposes now at the bottom of the Arno. + Don't get another, Gerald. No burglars are going to enter your + house to steal your Roman tear-bottle or your books. When you + are so blue you feel like killing yourself, say your prayers. I + am very glad your friend the abbé is going to come and stay with + you. He is a _good influence_, I feel sure, and a good + friend. + + I suppose I shall see you again some time, even if I don't do + the visiting. But don't be in any hurry, not on my account. I + hope that in the meantime you will get back your strength + quickly. Remember that you will have to be very careful for + quite a long time, because a relapse is _an awfully mean + thing_. + + Good-by, my dear Gerald. Please accept the very best wishes of + + Yours sincerely, + Aurora Hawthorne. + + P.S. I did not write four letters and tear three of them up, + like you. I wrote one and corrected it, and here I have copied + it out for you, hoping that in it I have made my meaning as + clear to you as you made yours clear to me in your letter. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +When the latter occurrences had shaken down in Aurora's mind, Gerald's +letter, which she from time to time re-read, impressed her as a most +gentle and reasonable production of his pen, while her own letter, +preserved in the original scribble, appeared to her horrid, cutting, and +uncalled for. + +But there was now nothing to do about it. The state of mind created in +her by the whole episode prepared her to welcome with open arms any +diversion, any event which would restore to her self-conceit a little +vitality or lay on her heart a little balm; and so when, at the +psychological moment, Doctor Thomas Bewick surprisingly turned up in +Florence,--it may be remembered that he was Estelle's choice for +Nell,--Nell fell on his neck quite literally, and gave him a full, +sonorous kiss. + +"Tom! Tom!" she cried in delight, "how good it is to see you!" + +This happened in her formal drawing-room, whither she had gone on the +servant's announcement that a gentleman from America, who had given no +card or name, asked to see her. + +Their greeting over, she ran out into the hall, screaming joyfully: + +"Hat! Hat! Come down this minute! Hurry up! You'll never guess who's +here!" + +In reply to which summons Estelle came hurrying down the stairs with an +innocent, expectant air. + +"If it isn't Doctor Bewick!" she exclaimed, without giving herself away +by one false inflection. "Why, Doctor Bewick, this is simply too awfully +nice! What _are_ you doing over here? Who _would_ have +expected to see _you_?" + +"Tom," said Aurora, "I was never in my life so glad to see any one. I +didn't know how much I'd missed you till I saw you. You good old thing! +You nice old boy! Aren't you a brick to have come! My soul, my soul! I +didn't know till this minute how tired I am of foreigners and +half-foreigners and quarter-foreigners and all their ways. I was hungry +for home-folks and didn't know it. Now, please God, we'll have some talk +where we know that when we use the same words we mean the same thing, +and aren't wondering all the time what's really in the other's mind!" + +The man to whom this was said absorbed it with a face fixed in smiles of +pleasure. He was a big blond man, disposed to corpulence, and looking +somewhat like a fresh-faced, gigantic boy until his eye met yours and +gave the note of a fine, mature intelligence, open on every side, and +unobtrusively gathering in what it had no strong impulse afterward to +give out again in any open form of self-expression. + +Tolerant, not from any vagueness of judgment; easy to get on with, but +not to drive or to deceive, he looked strikingly the good fellow, yet +kept you in respect. An air of capability, a consciousness of definite +achievements, went coupled in him with the humor that would prevent +bumptiousness however great the matter for pride. A quiet carelessness +of other people's opinions formed part of his effect of poise; the +opinions of dukes would have affected him as little as those of +rag-pickers, unless they recommended themselves to that judicial spot in +his brain at which he tried them. He was level-headed, unsentimental, +but kind, of a kindness that like good-humor seemed almost physical, and +made him stop to stroke the kitchen cat as well as see to it that the +negress's baby had the right milk for its orphaned stomach. + +He looked at Aurora with smiling scrutiny, and facially expressed a vast +appreciation. She looked back at him with eyes of laughing tenderness. +Avoiding to speak directly to her the compliments rising in his mind, he +turned to Estelle. + +"Hasn't she blossomed out!" + +"Isn't she wonderful?" chimed in that friend, enthusiastically. + +Aurora, with a comedy of pride, threw up her chin, lifted her arms, and +turned as if on a pivot, to show herself off in her elegance. She had on +the wine-colored street-dress bordered with black fox; over its white +satin waistcoat embroidered with gold hung in a splendid loop her pink +corals. The restraining Paris corset gave to her luxuriant form a +charming modish correctness of line. + +"Oh, Tom,"--she sank happily on the sofa beside him,--"we're having the +time of our lives! Just wait till you see me in company, and hear me put +on my good English, when, instead of calling things lovely or horrid, I +call them amusing or beastly or impossible. But your turn first. Give us +the Denver news." + + * * * * * + +After dinner that evening, in the midst of Italo's brilliant +performance, a caller came,--a thin, oldish, English-speaking lady whose +black dress made no pretense of following the fashion. + +Aurora had met her at Mrs. Satterlee's during a meeting appointed to +raise funds for the Protestant orphanage. When this philanthropist, +after a little talk of other things, mentioned the relict of a mason, +left with five young children, Estelle and Dr. Bewick took it as a hint +to withdraw beyond earshot. The two ladies were left talking in +undertones; after a minute they found themselves alone in the room. + +Estelle preceded Dr. Bewick across the hall to the dining-room, deserted +and orderly, where the drop-light rained its direct brightness only on +the rich and variegated tapestry cover of the table beneath it. From the +sideboard--whence the marble fruit had for some time been missing--she +brought a bottle of aërated water and a glass to set before him; she +found him an ash-tray, and seated herself beside the table near him in +such a way as to get, through the parted half-doors, a glimpse of the +visitor when she should leave. + +Before speaking, she exchanged with the doctor a look of intelligence. + +"You see what I mean?" she asked little above a whisper. + +[Illustration: Aurora, with a comedy of pride, threw up her chin, +lifted her arms, and turned as if on a pivot, to show herself off +in her elegance] + +Dr. Bewick looked all around the room with leisurely appraising eyes, +then nodded understanding. There was no intimation that he was not ready +to listen, but he did not seem quite ready to talk. His white +shirt-bosom was remarkably broad as he leaned back in his chair in the +slightly lolling fashion of large, good-humored men. For all the +nonchalance of his attitude, he looked, from evening tie to thin-soled +dress-boots, beautifully spruce, as Aurora had remarked, and made an +appropriate pendant to her in her Parisian finery. + +Approval of him was written large on Estelle's pleasant, alert +countenance; a quiet, comprehensive liking for her sat as plainly in the +eyes reflecting her slim person and evening-frock of beaded net. Being +Nell's friends made them friends, a thing not so common as one wishes. +Through her they felt almost on the familiar terms of old friendship, +although Estelle had never met Dr. Tom Bewick before he came to New York +to see them off on their great four-stacked ocean-steamer. + +"You see what I mean?" she asked, and, not expecting a regular answer, +did not wait for it. "Now that woman won't leave until she has secured +support for the mason's five children, and she'll do this without the +smallest difficulty. In a day or two some one else will come, with the +sad case of a poor father out of work who is going to have to sell his +blind daughter's canary unless Nell steps in to relieve their wants. And +Nell will step in. Word has been passed, just as they say a tramp at +home marks a house where he's been given a meal, and every case of want +in this town, it seems to me, is hopefully brought to Nell. And she +listens every time; she doesn't get sick of it. And you know, Doctor, +that her circumstances don't warrant it." + +Bewick, as Estelle stopped for some comment on his side, made a slight +motion of chin and eyelids that partly or deprecatingly agreed with her. +He took the cigar out of his mouth, but having knocked the ash off, +replaced it, to listen further and not for the moment speak. + +"It's positively funny, the things Nell has been doing with her money," +Estelle went on, in a tone that did not disguise the fact of her +glorying in this prodigality while being justly frightened by it. "It's +not just the ordinary charities, churches, hospitals, etc.,--all of +those send in their regular bills, as you might say. It's a Swiss +music-box for the crippled son of the _spazzaturaio_, or +street-cleaner; it's a marriage-portion for this one and funeral +expenses for that one; it's filling the mendicant nuns' coal-cellar, +it's clothing a whole orphan-school in a cheerfuller color! Clotilde and +Italo call her attention to every deserving case, and are guided in this +by the simple knowledge that Nell can't hold on to her money. Of course +it's her good heart. She's done a lot for them and their family, too, +I've discovered. I don't know just how much, but I can guess by their +look of licking their chops. I'm not saying they aren't all +right--honest, sincere, and so forth--or that I don't like them. It's +Nell's own fault that she's imposed on. I don't doubt that they're as +devoted as they seem, it's only right they should be. It's right the +whole city of Florence should be. I was thinking only the other day as +we drove through Viale Lorenzo the Magnificent that it would be +appropriate for a grateful city to rechristen our street Viale Aurora +the Magnificent." + +Tom Bewick laughed, nodding to himself with an effect of relish. He +murmured, "Aurora the Magnificent!" + +"Aurora the Magnificent--Aurora the Magnificent is all very well," +Estelle took up again with animation, "but she's already spending her +capital." + +Bewick did not allow himself to appear startled or troubled; still, he +was made pensive by this. His look at Estelle invited her to go on and +tell him the rest, just how bad it was. She was leaning forward, with +her elbows on the table, one hand slipping the rings on and off a finger +of the other, in her quick way. + +"You know what her income is. It would have provided for all this,"--she +took in the luxury around them by a gesture of the head,--"but no income +can suffice to set up in housekeeping all the picturesque paupers in +Florence. That's why I was so anxious for you to come, and wrote you as +I did. You can curb her; I can't. I have no influence with her in that +way, and I simply can't sit still and see her throw away all this good +money that was intended to provide her with comforts for the rest of her +life. Unless somebody looks after it, she won't have a penny left. You +must talk to her, Doctor Bewick. Don't let her know, though, that I put +you up to it. You can ask a plain question, as it's right and natural +for you to do, then when she answers you can lecture her. She'll take it +from you." + +Bewick, with his sensible face, looked as if he saw justice and reason +in all Miss Madison had said to him; yet he did not go on with the +subject. It might be that he felt delicate, in a masculine way, about +uttering to a lady's best friend any criticism of that lady's mode of +doing or being--criticism which he might feel no difficulty perhaps in +voicing to herself. Estelle took this into consideration and, his +reticence notwithstanding, relied on him to do his duty. + +A diversion occurred in the shape of a knock at the door--the door +leading to the kitchen-stairs. It was but the scratch of one fingernail +on the wood. Tiny as the sound was, it did not have to be repeated +before Estelle ran to open. A small four-footed person entered, the +bigness of a baby's muff and the whiteness of a marquis's powdered wig. +Estelle caught him up from the floor and with a coo of affection, "What +um doing in the kitchen, little rogums?" set him on the table, under the +lamp, for Doctor Tom to see how utterly beautiful he was and have the +points and characteristics of a Maltese terrier explained to him. + +Busteretto was reaching dog's estate, his shape had taken on a degree of +subtlety, his hair was growing long and straight and like leaves of the +weeping willow. Estelle lifted the white fringe depending from his brow, +and exposed to the light two great limpid brown eyes, incredibly sweet +and intelligent. It was as wonderful, in its way, as if a blind beggar, +insignificant and easy to pass by as he stood at the street-corner, +should take off black goggles suddenly, and you should perceive that he +was a masking angel come to test the hearts of men. + +"Did you ever see such a little sweetheart?" gasped Estelle. + +"A pretty little fellow," spoke the doctor commendingly. With the +instinct to relieve discomfort he raised the veil of hair again as soon +as Estelle had let it drop, and looking further into the beautiful eyes, +that with the neat nose made a triangle of dark spots effective as +mouches on Columbine's cheek,--"Why don't you tie up his hair like this +to keep it out of the way?" he asked. + +"We mustn't! Mr. Fane, who gave him to Nell, says it would be bad for +him, he might go blind. They're that kind of eyes and need the shield +from the light. Mr. Fane knows all about this Maltese breed of dogs." + +"Is he the same one who painted her portrait?" Dr. Tom deviated from the +subject of the dog, over whose eyes the curtain was allowed to drop +again. + +"Yes, he's an artist." + +"And the same one she nursed through an illness?" asked Dr. Tom after a +moment, with the mere amount of interest apparently of one asking for a +topographical detail, so that he may get his bearings. + +"Yes. You'd know, wouldn't you, that she'd have to, if she thought he +wasn't getting the right care and didn't see any other way of providing +it." + +"Well, Skip," Dr. Tom returned his attention to the dog, "you're a fine +little fellow. Yes, sir." He held out a large pink hand and received in +it immediately a wee gentlemanly hand of fur and horn, rather smaller +than any of his fingers. "Good dog," he said, and regarded their +friendship as sealed. But next minute, because Estelle had whispered to +him, "Make believe to strike me," he lifted his fist menacingly against +her, and on the instant, with the courage of a David, there dashed +against him a little wild white flurry, not to bite--the skin of man is +sacred--but by a show of pearly teeth and the growlings of a lion to +frighten the giant off. + +"Good dog!" cheered Tom and leaned back laughing, "Well done!" + + * * * * * + +Because it was very late when Dr. Bewick left the ladies to return to +his hotel they immediately repaired to their respective rooms; but +before Estelle had got to bed, Aurora, half undressed, came strolling +into her maidenly bower of temperate green and white. + +A vague depression of spirits had overtaken Aurora, reaction, perhaps, +from the excitements of the day, and she sought her friend with the +instinct to make herself feel better by talking it off. + +She dropped on a chair, and in silence continued to braid her hair for +the night. + +"Isn't he the nicest fellow!" began Estelle, setting the keynote for +joyous confidences. + +"Isn't he just!" replied Aurora. "I want him to have the best time in +the three weeks he's going to spend here. We've got to show him all the +beauties of Florence, and then I want him to know all our friends. We +must have some tea-parties and some dinners. I want it to be just as +gay. Who is there I ought to lay myself out for, if not Tom Bewick?" + +"I quite agree with you. Let's plan." + +"No, to-morrow'll do. It's too late. I'm tired." The motions of Aurora's +fingers were suspended among the strands of her hair. She fell into a +muse. "Seeing Tom"--she came out of it again, and went on braiding--"has +brought back, along with some things I never want to forget, such a lot +of things I don't want to think of!" + +"I suppose it would." + +"His sisters, for instance. He doesn't look a bit like them, +really--nasty bugs, godless, gutless pigs--but yet he brings them up +before me. Idell rather more than Cora, and Idell was the meanest of the +two, and her husband the miserablest, sneakingest cuss. Oh, how I hate +the bunch of them! And I oughtn't, you know. You oughtn't to go on +hating your enemies after you've got the better of them. But the moment +I think of that trio, Cora Bewick--sour-bellied old maid!--and Idell +Friebus, and her rotten little pea-green husband--pin-headed insect! +flap-eared fool!--I get mad. If you could really know, Hat, the +cold-heartedness and wicked-mindedness of those people! How they ever +happened in Tom's family Goodness only knows. And such a fine father! +The Judge was as good as any of those old fellows in the Bible, I do +believe. _That_ patient, _that_ considerate, and _that_ +just! More than just; what he did was more than just, and those girls of +his simply couldn't stand it. They couldn't stand it, after they had +neglected him all through his illness so that it was a scandal, that he +should treat the person who had done their daughters' duty for them the +same as he treated them, no better and no worse, but just the same. The +things those people did to me, Hat, the things they said about me--" + +"I know, I know; you've told me," said Hattie, soothingly and +deterringly. + +"The things those people did to me, and the things they said about +me,"--Nell, not to be deterred, repeated intensely,--"if I'd ever wanted +to give up my share, those things they did and said would have made me +hold on like grim death just to spite them. Oh,"--she broke off, and +flung her finished braids back over her shoulders,--"why do I let myself +think of them? I grow so hot! It's the sight of Tom that has started me +back to thinking of all that excitement and disgustingness. Dear good +Tom, who stood by me like a trump! I do wish, Hat, I didn't hate so hard +when I hate. We've taken pride in my family, I'm afraid, in being good +haters, as if it were part of the same trait that makes you loyal and +true to your friends. But perhaps it's a mistake. I know that Gerald +said once"--she yielded to the obscure desire to hear the air vibrate, +as it had not done for some time, with the syllables of his +name--"Gerald said once, when we were talking of things, 'We must +forgive everything,' he said; 'we must forgive happenings the same as we +must people.' And Gerald, you know, when he's in sober earnest, has some +good ideas." + +"Talking about Gerald," Estelle came in quickly, glad of a change from +the other subject, "did Livvy tell you that our cook met Giovanna at the +market, and Giovanna told her that her master was doing finely; that he +hadn't yet been out of doors, but that he sat at the open window in the +sunshine? I'd been meaning to ask you." + +"Oh." Aurora quietly took it, and thought it over a minute. "No, she +hadn't told me. I suppose those long stairs would keep him from going +out till he was good and strong. Did she say anything else?" + +"Only that Giovanna was buying a chicken, and the abbé, she said, was +still staying with them." + + * * * * * + +The ladies of the Hermitage did the honors of Florence with modest pride +and a certain glibness. Before the early old masters, Aurora said to +Tom: + +"At first I couldn't stand them. I guffawed at the idea of there being +anything to admire in them. Even now I can't pretend I like them; but I +keep still and pray for light. Isn't that the beginning of polish?" + +Tom was taken to make calls. Aurora took upon herself to explain +Florentine society to him. + +"There are little stories about most everybody," she said, "so you have +to be pretty careful. If a certain General is present, for instance, +whom I may have a chance to point out to you, you don't want to talk of +_horses_, because his fiery steed bolted with him during an +engagement once and his enemies caricatured him running away. Then if a +certain viscount is present, whom I may have a chance to introduce to +you, you don't want to talk of _ermine_, because that little animal +is a feature in his coat of arms, and his coat of arms along with his +title of nobility, scandal says, came as a reward from a royal personage +for marrying the lady who was his first wife. So you'll have to look +out, Tom, or you may be called upon to fight a duel." + +The most splendid dinner that could be planned in council with Clotilde +and the cook was prepared to honor the friend from home. To this were +bidden the Fosses, Aurora's best friends; the Hunts, her next best; +Manlio, whom she wished Tom to see as a truly beautiful specimen of +Italian; and Landini, because she was curious to know what Tom thought +of him. + +Aurora had not seen the latter since the night of the _veglione_. +Finding that he had not called during the interval, she had been glad to +hope that his suspected mysterious project for making her his own had +been dropped. That being the case, she was not at all averse to seeing +him. On the contrary. + +Charlie Hunt she had not seen since the variety-show. Learning that he +also had not once come during her absence, she thought that this +admitted of some simple explanation which he would give on the night of +the dinner. + +Charlie, receiving the invitation, pondered a while before accepting. He +considered himself to have been insulted, rather, by Mrs. Hawthorne. +Still, he could not be absolutely sure. If, anyhow, she did not know +that he knew the black crow to have been none other than herself there +would be nothing in his going to her dinner-party which laid him open to +scorn. And he felt more disposed to go than not. The dinner would be +festive, costly, succulent. Then he desired before breaking with her--if +breach there must be, which would depend upon the subtlest +circumstances--to persuade her that two enormous porcelain jars owned by +a dealer of his acquaintance were the very thing needed in that +bare-looking ball-room of hers. There was a third reason. A lady whose +friendship had latterly--since the night of the _veglione_, in +fact--taken on the glow of roses and the warmth of wine, had taken it +into her charming head to be jealous, fantastically, of Mrs. Hawthorne. +Charlie, whose manly vanity his good fortune had, not unnaturally, +reinforced; Charlie, who if he were loved much must always love less +than the other, felt a certain stimulation in exhibitions of jealousy +with regard to himself. He thought well of the results of saying, "I +cannot come this evening, _cara_, I am dining at the Hawthorne's." +So he accepted Aurora's invitation. + +The dinner was superlative, but it was written he should leave the house +finally in a bad humor. The feasted guest was a big Western American, of +the immensely rich and not very interesting type, whom he had seen once +or twice at the bank. Aurora's fond esteem for this man was open and +shameless. Whether he were a "has been," an "is," or a "to be," Charlie +could not determine, but only in the character of suitor could he see +him in the picture. + +The dark face of Landini, his Chief, across the dinner table, when his +eyes sought it was indecipherable to him; but, shut as it was, he was +reminded by it, not to the improvement of his spirits, of a little +personal hope, a just and rational hope, which might have to be +relinquished. After dinner he got his hostess into a quiet corner for a +chat. + +"Where's Gerald?" pure curiosity made him ask, with that impertinence +which his friends were accustomed to and took lightly, because curiosity +and impertinence were part and parcel of Charlie, and if you cared +sufficiently for his attractive smoothness and flashing smile to wish +them near you, you must put up with the bad breeding underlying his good +manners. "Where's Gerald?" he asked familiarly. + +"Gerald isn't well enough yet to be out," Aurora answered him, with +imperfect candor. "You didn't know he'd been ill? Why, how funny! He's +been having what you call here a 'fluxion of the chest.'" + +This ignorance of Charlie's comforted her by proving that the news of +her nursing Gerald had not spread over the town like wildfire, as she +had been warned it would. Florence was not so bad or nimble a gossip as +she had feared. + +"I was as nice to Charlie Hunt that last evening as ever in my life," +she afterward declared, "and I thought he seemed all right." + +When he spoke of the precious porcelain jars, however, she did cut short +his appetizing description with: + +"Don't speak of it. I daresn't, Charlie. I've been lectured so much for +extravagance, I daresn't buy a toothpick. If these jars you speak of +cost nine francs instead of nine hundred, I couldn't, I tell you. I +guess Florence has got all she's going to out of me. I've turned over a +new leaf." + +Aurora had all evening been so entirely her kind and jolly self that +Charlie had almost forgotten the black crow. At this check, and the +barren prospect opening out beyond, he remembered it, and felt a vicious +little desire to pay her back for the pin she had stuck into him under, +as she idiotically supposed, an impenetrable disguise. He went away, as +has been said, in a bad humor. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +The loveliness of Florence at this point of the year, while inspiring +poets, made the rest feel helpless before the task of finding words for +it. Even Aurora, who could not be called contemplative, or highly +susceptible to influences of form and color, was heard to heave an +occasional great sigh, so was her heart oppressed, she could not think +why, during their drives among the hills around Florence, by the sight +of the spring flowers,--tulips, narcissi, fleur-de-lys, imagine it, +growing wild, as if gold pieces should lie scattered in the road for +passers to pick up!--and by the sight of the warm and tender tones of +the sky, and by the silver sparks of windows flashing back the sun where +the hazy city houses huddled around the Duomo's brown head and +shoulders, majestically lifted above them. + +It was something in the air, Aurora thought, which forced her to sigh +with that half-sweet oppression and fatigue: the air was fragrant with a +scent which seemed to her upon sniffing it analytically to be the breath +of hyacinths; and the air was warm, it "let her down," she said. + +Why, instead of delicious contentment, is a sort of melancholy, of +unrest, created in us by the beauty of spring, will somebody tell? + +Aurora, when she thought she could do it without attracting the notice +of the other two, would slip from their presence sometimes, so as to +have a few minutes by herself and stop pretending to be so everlastingly +light of heart. For nothing in the world would she have had Tom know but +that his visit made her happy to the point of forgetting every subject +of care or annoyance. + +Estelle, too, she would have preferred to deceive. She did her best, and +for hours at a time appeared serene and merry. During these periods she +sometimes did actually lose the sense of anxious suspense; but it kept +itself alive as an undercurrent to her laughter. + +When she saw how well Tom and Estelle got along together, she became +less timid about arranging little absences from them; she even--such a +common feminine mind had Aurora--saw in the congeniality which permitted +them to remain for half an hour in each other's company without boredom +the foundation of a dream, dim and distant, it is true--the dream of +seeing Estelle one day settled in a fine home of her own. She feared, +though, there might be bridges to cross before that event. She dreaded +the bridges. She wished Tom might be diverted from what she feared was +his purpose. How satisfactory, if Estelle might prove the diversion. +Estelle would really have suited Tom much better than the person of, she +feared, his actual choice. + +Of all this she was somewhat disconnectedly thinking when she ran away +from them one evening after dinner, leaving him still at the table +smoking his cigar, while Estelle hunted up in a guide-book for his +benefit some little matter of altitudes. A flash of good sense showed +her the previousness of her calculations, and she mentally withdrew her +hand from meddling. Fate would take its own way, anyhow. + +She had gone upstairs with the excuse of wanting a fan. Her fan had +easily been found, but instead of returning to her guests, "They won't +miss me if I do stay away for ten minutes," she said, and walked to the +end of the broad hallway, out through the door that stood open on to the +portico roof--once glassed over for a party and dedicated to Flirtation. + +How long ago that seemed! Here Gerald, a quite new acquaintance, had +told her about Manlio and Brenda. Poor young things, so unhappy then, +and now exultant. Brenda was just back from America. The wedding was set +for the ninth of May. Only eight days more to wait. + +As Aurora, leaning over the balustrade and letting her eyes rest on the +garden, thought of their assured and perfect happiness, she remembered a +gross fly in the ointment. She had been told that Brenda would have to +agree to bring up her children in the Catholic church. The thing had +seemed to Aurora appalling. Upon her dropping some hint of her sentiment +to the caller who had communicated the fact, she had been further told +that very likely Brenda too would in time become a Catholic--as if that +made it any better. A descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers to become a +Roman Catholic! Any one but a heathen to change his religion!... + +The figure of Abbé Johns rose before her mind. She refrained from +judgment in his case. His case, for intangible reasons, seemed separate +and different. But fear, as of formless bugaboos in the dark, burned in +her heart at the idea of his influence perhaps being able, creepily, +stealthily, to convert Gerald. + +She turned her face upward to the sky of May and sent forth a little +prayer into the crystal clearness of the space lying between her and the +ear which she conceived of as receiving it, the ear of a Baptist God, as +opposed to a Roman Catholic God surrounded by saints and candles and +incense and tin flowers. + +As she did this a high pink cloud caught her eye. Embers of sunset were +glowing over the river at the other side of the house. The sight of the +pink cloud, so pretty and far away, comforted Aurora like a good omen. +She felt better and, her reverie borrowing a ray from the cloud, went on +to rejoice in the pleasantness of the garden which she might for the +time being call hers. So different from the gardens at home, but in its +set way how attractive it was, how suited to people with leisure, and a +certain stability of taste, and a liking for privacy! + +Why, in that garden--which wasn't very large, either--you could almost +get lost among narrow paths bordered with shrubs. Even if the wide +wrought-iron front-gate were open, and the carriage-gate at the side +open as at this moment, you could be just as much shut off from outside +as in your own room, if you took your sewing or your book to that little +open air round with walls of smooth-trimmed laurel, and a stone table in +the middle, and stone seats. + +Old Achille down there, still busy watering,--Achille who belonged to +the garden and was hired along with it, was a regular artist, thought +Aurora. The great oval bed in front of the house was at this season like +a huge bouquet, all arranged in a beautiful pattern. Then he had edged +every path with a band of pansies just inside the band of ivy +overrunning the mossy border stones--the sweetest thing. His pride was +pansies, he had planted them everywhere, the finest she had ever seen. +He had taken a prize once at a horticultural show, for his pansies. + +The light died out of the pink cloud, and Aurora's pleasure in her +garden gradually died out too, while the quality of irony in her many +blessings smote her. For what is the use of having everything money can +buy or the bounty of spring afford if you at the same time are troubled +with a toothache? All this, so grand in itself, was like a good gift +wasted, as long as she was in a state of quarrel with her friend. It was +full two weeks since their exchange of letters. Two weeks of absolute +silence. Could it be possible that she should never see or hear from +Gerald again? + +No, it could not, she said. It was part of having faith in him to deny +the possibility of his remaining furious forever at her hateful letter. +No, she would not believe it of him; she thought better of him. She was +much mistaken if he could be so mean. She would be willing to bet-- + +There, in fact, he was, at this very moment, entering the carriage-gate. + +After one mad throb of incredulous exultation, Aurora's thoughts and +feelings were for a long minute limited to an intense and immobile +watchfulness. He walked over the gravel with his eyes on the door under +the portico. You would have thought his purpose set, and that he would +not pause until he had rung the bell. + +But you would have thought wrong. Half-way between the gate and the +house he stood still and looked at the ground. He was holding the +slender cane one knew so well like a weapon of defense, as if ready to +make a resolute slash with it to vindicate his irresolution. + +After a moment he turned, grinding his heel into the earth. It was then +that a voice called out above him, "Hello, Gerald!" + +He turned again and removed his straw hat. He and the lady leaning from +the terrace looked at each other for the space of a few heart-beats with +mechanical, constrained smiles. Then she asked: + +"Aren't you going to come in?" + +Instead of making the obvious answer and setting about the obvious +thing, he appeared to be debating the point within himself. At the end +of his hesitation, he asked: + +"Could I prevail upon you to give me five minutes in the garden?" + +"Why, certainly," answered Aurora, appreciating the fact that Estelle +would be superfluous at the peace-making that must follow. + +She went very lightly down the stairs. She could hear Estelle's and +Tom's voices still in the dining-room. Instead of going out by the usual +door, too near to their sharp ears, she turned with soft foot into the +big ball-room and passed out through that. + +The great oval mound of flowers spread its odoriferous carpet before the +steps leading down from the house. She turned her back upon it and +followed a path bordered with pansies and ivy till Gerald saw her and +came to take her hand, saying: + +"How good of you!" + +"Well," she sighed, put by the bliss of her relief into a mood of +splendid carelessness as to how she, for her part, should carry off the +situation,--looking after her dignity and all that. "How jolly this is! +And you're all right again, Gerald. You're well enough to walk on your +legs and come and tell me so. Yes, you're looking quite yourself again. +Well,"--she sighed again heartily,--"it's good for sore eyes to see you. +You're sure now it's all right for you to be out of doors after sunset? +Hadn't we better go in?" + +"This air is like a warm bath. I must not keep you long, anyhow." + +"Oh, I haven't got a thing to do," she precipitately assured him. "Come, +we'll walk up and down the path,--hadn't we better?--so as not to be +standing still. Go ahead, now; tell me all about yourself. How do you +feel? Have you got entirely rid of your cough? And the stitch in your +side?" + +He would only speak to answer, she soon found; the moment she stopped +talking silence fell. Had he nothing to say to her, then? Or did he find +it difficult somehow to talk? She was so determined to make the +atmosphere cozy, friendly, happy--make the atmosphere as it had used to +be between them--so determined, that she jabbered on like a magpie, like +a mill, about this, that, and the other, sprinkling in little jokes in +her own manner, and little stories in her own taste, accompanied by her +rich--on this occasion slightly nervous gurgle. + +"Aurora dear," he said at last, with an effect of mournful patience as +much as of protest, "what makes you? I am here to beg your forgiveness, +and you put me off with what Mrs. Moriarty said to Mrs. O'Flynn. Do you +call it kind?" + +A knot tied itself in Aurora's throat, which she could not loosen so as +to go on. If she had tried to speak she would have betrayed the fact +that those simple words had, like a pump, fetched the tears up from her +heart into her throat. He had his chance now to do all the talking. + +"Couldn't we sit down somewhere for a minute? Should you mind?" His +gesture vaguely designated the green inclosure, where the stone table +stood, pale among the dark laurels. + +But when they were seated, he only pressed his hands into his +eye-sockets and kept them there. + +"I am ridiculous!" he muttered and shook himself straight. After an +ineffectual, suffocated attempt to begin, "I am ridiculous!" he said +again, and without further concession to weakness started in: "I ought +to have written you, Aurora. But I had seemed to be so unfortunate in +writing I did not dare to try it again. Heaven knows what I wrote. I +don't; but it must have been a prodigy of caddishness to offend you so +deeply. It doesn't do much good to say I am sorry." + +"Your letter was all right," broke in Aurora. "I only didn't understand +at first. Afterwards I did. I tell you, that letter _was all +right_." + +"It was written in a mood--a perplexity, a despair, you have no means of +understanding, dear Aurora. When your answer showed me what I had done, +I could have cut my throat, but I could not have come to tell you I was +not the monster of ingratitude I appeared to be. Not that a man can't +get out of bed, if there is reason enough, and take himself somehow +where he wants to be, but because of a sick man's unreasonable nerves, +which can start him raving and make him a thing to laugh at. I had the +common sense, thank Heaven! to see that I must wait. Then, as the days +passed, it all quieted down. Vincent was with me, a tranquilizing +neighborhood. + +"It seemed finally as if it might be almost better to let things rest as +they were, to let that be the way of separating from you. I had almost +made up my mind to do it, Aurora. Vincent has had me out for various +airings, I have gone on several walks alone, but till to-day I avoided +to take the road toward this house. I am so used to pain that I've grown +stoical, you know, Aurora. I can stand any pain. I shut my teeth and +say, 'It will have to stop some time.' But all at once it became too +strong for me--not the pain, or the wish to see you, but the feeling +that I could not bear to have you thinking me ungrateful. I, who hate +ingratitude as the blackest thing in the wide world, to pass with you, +with you, for an ungrateful beast!" + +"Don't! don't, Gerald!" Aurora hushed him. "I can't let you talk like +that. You know you couldn't be ungrateful, nor I couldn't think it of +you." + +"No, I'm not ungrateful. I'm not, dear," he caressingly asseverated, and +closing her two hands between his treasured them against his cheek. "I +want you to be altogether sure of it. If I did not recognize the +enormity of my debt to you, Aurora, what a clod I must be! Not, mind +you, because, it is just possible to think, I owe you my life. Not that, +but because you were so kind. Because you were so kind, so kind--" he +reiterated feelingly, "and I a troublesome, cantankerous, distinctly +unappetizing object in his helpless bed. Don't think there was one touch +or gesture of these dear hands that take away headaches that I do not +remember with gratitude." + +"There was nothing to be grateful for, nothing at all," insisted Aurora. + +"And so when I wrote you in that brutal manner, dear,--" + +"That letter was all right," Aurora vigorously snatched away from him +the turn to talk, in order to defend him from this misery of +compunction. "It was prompted by the most gentlemanly feelings, by real +unselfishness and consideration for me. You didn't want me talked about +on your account, and you put it as delicately as possible. Only I was a +fool; I went off the handle, and wrote while I was mad and hurt and +wanted to hurt back. But, bless you, I understand it all perfectly now. +You needn't say another word. I understand the letter, Gerald, and I +understand you." + +"I am afraid," he said, letting go her hands and drawing a little apart, +as if the most complete misunderstanding, after all, separated them,--"I +am afraid you do not entirely. But this much at least is clear to you, +isn't it, dear, that whatever I may be, I am not ungrateful? Whatever I +may do, you are to remember that I couldn't be ungrateful to you, +Aurora. If I should seem to be behaving ever so, ever so shabbily, still +you must know that behind it, under it, I am the very contrary of +ungrateful." He pressed his hands to his eyes again, and was still for a +minute, before announcing, "I shall not come to see you for a long +time." + +The astonished and acute attention of her whole being was indefinably +expressed by the silence in which she now listened. + +"I am going to keep away from you," he went on, "till I feel out of +danger." + +"Why, what's the matter now?" she asked, with the vehemence of her +surprise and disappointment. + +"A trifle, woman dear. Oh, Lord, I see I shall have to go into it! +Haven't you the imagination to see, you unaccountable person, how an +unhappy mortal might be affected by such circumstances as destiny so +lately prepared for your poor servant's trying? Day by day, night after +night, that insidious kindness, that penetrating gentleness, that +stupefying atmosphere of a woman's care and sympathy.... Didn't you tell +me once yourself--" Gerald's voice stiffened, and he pulled himself up +again, discarding weakness,--"Didn't you once tell me yourself--in your +impossible English, almost as bad as mine--that a sick man is 'liable to +fall in love with his nurse?' And, dear girl, I will not do it. I +categorically refuse. It is too horrible. I have done with all that. I +have just managed to creep up on to the dry sand, and you ask me to +embark again on those same waters. I will not do it. It is finished. +That slavery! that unrest! and fever! and jealousy! No, not again. I +have served my sentence. Too many times I have waked in the black of +night and waited for daylight, wishing I had been dust for a hundred +years. I know now that in order to have a little peace a person must not +want anything. That is the price. We mustn't want anything, Aurora. We +mustn't want anything, we mustn't mind anything, we mustn't care about +anything, we must submit to everything!" This counsel of perfection came +from Gerald almost in a sob. "We sha'n't be happy like that, naturally, +but we sha'n't be too wretched for expression, either. It's the lesson +of life. I have learned it, and I will not expose myself to the old +chances again. 'He who loves for the first time is a god,' says the +poet, 'but he who loves for the second time is a fool,' he goes on to +say. And so, Aurora--" + +"You make me laugh!" exclaimed Aurora in a snort of simple scorn. + +"And so, Aurora, I am going to keep away from you for--I am not at the +present moment quite able to say how long." + +"You're going to do nothing of the sort! There now!" burst from Aurora. +"I'm not going to permit any such foolishness." She firmly proceeded to +pile up a barricade against his preposterous intention. "Now, Gerald, +you pay attention to what I say, child. Can't you see for yourself, now +you've put it into words, what nonsense all this is? You could no more, +in your sane and waking moments, be sentimentally in love with me, and +you know it, than, I guess, I could with you, fond of you as I am. No, +that isn't putting it strongly enough," she gallantly amended; "you +couldn't do it, it stands to reason, even so easily as I could. What you +felt was just the result of you being so weak, all full of fever dreams +and delusions. And you still believe in it a little because you aren't +yet good and strong. I thought you were, just at first, because you come +so near looking it. But I know that condition. After a sickness you +plump up, you get back your color, and all the while you can be so weak +you could burst out crying if any one pointed a finger at you. You're +trembling with nervousness this minute. You're all sunk together, as if +your backbone couldn't hold you up. It's because the weakness of your +illness is still on you, as anybody could see. Now you listen to what +I've got to say. The wisest thing you can do, young man, instead of +keeping away and having ideas and waiting till these gradually wear +off--the best thing you can do, I say, is to stay right at my side and +get sobered up by contact with things as they actually are. Not only the +best thing, but a lot fairer to me, doesn't it seem so to you? How do +you think I like to have you go kiting off the moment I've got you back +again? When I've missed you so! Now, Geraldino, rely on Auroretta. Let +her manage this case. Don't you be afraid; she'll cure you in two +frisks." + +"It just might be, you know, that you were right," said Gerald, +dubiously, with the modesty of tone that would beseem a girl after a +bucket of cold water had quelled her hysterics. "The truth is you do not +appear to me this evening at all as I have been carrying you in my +remembrance." + +Aurora laughed and reinforced her expression of jolly +matter-of-factness, looking into his eyes with eyes of sanative fun. + +He looked back at her with meditative scrutiny, one eyebrow raised a +little above the other. + +She had reigned in his thoughts very largely in her appearance of his +nurse, with her soft, loose robes, the blue of pensive twilights, her +fair hair in easy-feeling braids, her white hands bare of ornaments. She +sat near him now in a snug satin dinner-dress full of whalebones and +hooks and eyes. It had elbow sleeves terminating in full frills of +Duchess lace; a square-cut neck, likewise be-laced, framing an open +space in part obscured again by a jeweled medallion on a gold chain. She +had on rings and bracelets, a bow-knot in her hair. She had in fact +"dressed up" for Tom Bewick, wishing him to see with his eyes what good +she got out of the fortune with whose origin he was acquainted. + +"Gracious goodness!" She bounced to her feet. "Here I was forgetting! +Gerald," she said in haste, "I'm sorry, but we'll have to go indoors. +They'll be wondering where I am, and starting the hunt for me." + +"They? You have guests?" + +"Only one. Come in, Gerald. I want you to meet him. You've heard me +speak of Judge Bewick in Denver, where I lived so long. Well, this is +his son, Doctor Thomas Bewick. He's in Florence just for a visit. It's a +wonder, come to think of it, that you haven't heard of his being here. +We've been going everywhere and seeing everything and giving +dinner-parties. Well, never tell me again that news spreads so fast in +Florence! Come on. I want you to know each other. You'll be sure to like +him." + +"I don't think I will. I mean that I don't think I will go into the +house with you, Aurora." + +"Now, Gerald," she said in a warning voice, at which black clouds of +impending displeasure loomed over the horizon, "this isn't the way to +begin. Don't be odd and trying. I should feel hurt, now truly, if I had +to think your regard for me wasn't equal to doing such a little thing +for me as this. Tom's one of my very best friends, and he's heard us +talk so much of you. He's seen your painting of me. I do want you to +know him, and I want him to know you. Then, too, Gerald dear, and this +is the main reason, I want you to get good and rested, and to take a +little wine before you start for home. Though you say the air is like a +warm bath, your hands are cold, I notice." + +Too tired from the emotions of the evening to make any valid resistance, +emptied in fact of all feeling except a flat sort of bewilderment, +Gerald followed, like a little boy in fear of rough-handling from his so +much bigger nurse. + +They found Estelle and Tom in the parlor. + +"Well, I was wondering what had become of you!" cried Estelle as Aurora +appeared in the doorway, and behind her shoulder the shadowy, unexpected +face of Gerald. + +"Tom," said Aurora, "this is my friend Mr. Fane that you've heard us +talk so much about, the painter, you know, who painted that picture of +me up there. And this is Doctor Bewick, Gerald, to whom I am under a +thousand obligations, besides the obligation of his having probably +saved my life out in Denver, not so many years ago, when I was +dangerously ill." + +Aurora was luminous with gladness. Aurora was so glad that she had not +the concentration or the decency to attempt to hide it. She did not know +of the flagrant betrayal of her feelings; she was not guarding against +it, because her delight itself absorbed all her powers of thought. She +stood there, a monument unveiled. And all the reason for it that one +could see was that pindling, hollow-eyed young fellow who had entered +the room in her wake. + +Those who have not quarreled with a loved one, and known the pain of the +fear that he may be lost to them, will surely never know the keenest +joy. It takes the escape, the contrast, to make happiness shine out as +brightly as it is capable of doing. + +The two men, after conversation had engaged between them, promoted and +helped along by the greater lingual readiness of the ladies, observed +each other. This they did indirectly and as if doing nothing of the +kind. But Estelle, as profoundly uneasy as if she had foreseen already +the fate of the fat to end in the fire, was aware of it. She noted in +Gerald's stiffly adjusted face the unself-conscious eyebrows, formidably +different one from the other; she noted how Doctor Tom, sturdy and +self-collected as he was, kept knocking the ashes of his cigar into an +inkstand full of ink. + +It struck her whimsically that she had seen before something kindred to +what was taking place under her eyes: in a barnyard at home, two +crimson-helmeted champions, with neck-feathers slightly risen on end, +standing opposed, ocularly taking each other's measure. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +The Brenda who came back from America was not quite the one who had gone +there. Gerald saw it in the first instant. She had gained in +definiteness, assurance, even in beauty. But a silver haze, a fairy +bloom, an aureole, was mysteriously departed from her. She had left her +teens behind. + +Yet in her stainless white, her bridal veil, a slender coronal of orange +blossoms on her dark hair, and the light of love in her dark eyes, how +wonderful she was! That Manlio, pale as a statue with the force of his +emotion, should wear a look of almost superhuman beatitude was only +natural and proper. Of those who assisted at the ceremony many were +deeply moved, and few altogether untouched: to be in the church at that +moment gave one the importance of being accessory to a high romance. + +At the wedding reception something of this quality of emotion continued +still to possess the invited guests as long as Brenda and Manlio, +beneath their arch of flowers, stood smiling response to congratulations +and compliments. + +It was in the general experience not unlike that part of the opera +where, to a matchless music, the god of flame and the glowing hearth +lauds the loveliness of woman and the strength of man's pursuit; and the +other gods, uplifted, look at one another with washed eyes, feeling anew +how wonderful they all are, how wonderful it all is. + +The heart of Leslie, nevertheless, as she bustled about, seeing to it +that every one was provided with refreshment, confessed a point of +bitterness. In a way, it was envy of Brenda. Not of her happiness, or +her husband, of course. But she did wish the man lived and would present +himself who could inspire her with such feelings as Brenda's. The kind +of man who cared for her she somehow never cared for--a serious barrier +to experiencing a _grande passion_. And on this day of +wedding-bells it seemed a pity. The girl of many offers felt sad. + +Mrs. Foss smiled a pleased, incessant smile, not "realizing" the thing +which was happening, as she told her sister-in-law who had come over +from America with the bride. Her chick had developed tendencies unknown +among the breed, taken to the water and swum away with a swan. But the +mother had confidence. She believed in marriage. The institution had +been justified by her example and Jerome's. Her eyes sought him out, a +little anxiously, to peruse his face. The idea could not for a moment be +admitted that he had a favorite among his children, but yet it was +acknowledged that Brenda had always in a very special way been near to +her father's heart. From his calm and serenity in conversation with that +nice big Doctor Bewick, Mrs. Foss was able to hope that he too did not +"realize." + +Aurora watched the bride and groom with fairly fascinated eyes, but from +a certain distance. They had been nice, they had thanked her handsomely +for her handsome present, but nothing could modify her regretful +certitude that Brenda did not care for her. And it might so easily have +been she and not the good Aunt Brenda who secured for the _sposo_ +his career of silver lace and sabre.... And Brenda, innocently +unknowing, would just the same not have liked her. But there! Beautiful +Brenda didn't go about loving everybody. She had the more glory to +confer upon the one. Oh, harmoniously matched, high-removed pair! Oh, +hymeneal crowning of tenderness and truth!... Aurora in a kind of awe +wondered what elevated things those pale rose lips of the bride would +say to the bridegroom when, the turmoil of festivity ended, they were in +nuptial solitude. Impossible to imagine! It must be something altogether +beyond other brides; and his words must make those of all other lovers +sound common and poor. + + * * * * * + +When the arch of flowers was empty and the happy pair had left for the +train, Lily and Gerald went strolling about the garden hand in hand. + +Lily had been a bridesmaid, Gerald an usher. Both were in the fine +apparel of their parts; thoughts of weddings hummed in both of their +heads. + +"Well, Lily," said the young man idly, in their walk between odorous +lines of wall-flowers and heliotrope, "I suppose you too will soon be +getting married." + +"Oh, no!" Lily shook her head. "There is nobody I could marry." + +"Why, I thought, Lily," he said, "that you were going to marry me!" + +"No, Gerald," she replied promptly, but with gentleness and regret, so +as not to hurt his feelings. + +"I might come and live with you," she added, after a second, "and keep +house for you. A cottage in the country, with beehives and ducks and a +little donkey.... Gerald, do you know about Sir William Wallace?" + +Though a chasm appeared to divide this subject from the last, Gerald +shrewdly supposed a connection between them. + +"Very little. You tell me." + +"You haven't read 'The Scottish Chiefs'? I took it without permission +and kept it out of Fräulein's sight. It grows light early now, you know, +and I read it for hours before getting up. Then whenever I could, I read +it in the daytime. And after they had left me at night, I read it with +the pink candles of my birthday cake. I cried so much that when I +finished I was ill with a fever and had to be kept in bed for three +days." + +"Why, when was this?" + +"Two weeks ago." + +"My poor little Lily, how came I not to be told of it? And you sent me +such a beautiful remembrance when I was ill!--Well, Lily, I know now why +you won't take me. I'm not much like Sir William Wallace, that's a fact. +I might grow like him in courage and prowess, perhaps, to please you, +but I know that I should never be beautiful in kilts. It shall be as you +say, dear. We'll be brother and sister instead. And now tell me more +about this book, these Scottish.... Lily, do you see Mrs. Hawthorne on +the doorstep? Do you gather that the signs she is making are meant for +us? We came up together and I think she may wish to say she is ready to +go, and will give me a lift back to town...." + + * * * * * + +"We came up together!" With great frequency in these days Gerald was +going somewhere with Mrs. Hawthorne, not alone with her, but making one +of four in an amiable party. Sometimes it was his fate to make +conversation by the hour with Estelle, while Doctor Tom monopolized +Aurora; on the other hand, he sometimes would succeed in getting his +fingers among Occasion's hair, and secure Aurora for his share, while +Dr. Tom was apportioned with the slenderer charmer. But the behavior of +all was civilized and urbane, and if a thorn pricked or nettle burned, +the sufferer concealed his pain and spoiled nobody's fun. + +Gerald would in reality have preferred to stay away, almost as much as +Estelle and possibly Doctor Tom would have preferred him to do so. But +just there the incalculable, the ungovernable, in human nature came into +play. A golden thread, a mere hair, strong as a steel cable, drew him to +the place where he could expect to find no comfort, and had no object to +accomplish except just to be there, with his eyebrows one higher than +the other. + +Either Estelle liked to annoy him, or she was unfortunate in doing it +without malice. + +"Don't they make a noble-looking couple?" she asked him, gazing at +Aurora and Tom outlined side by side against the light of the window. + +"Yes," he felt obliged to say, and followed it quickly, without apology +for the indiscretion of the question: "Are they going to marry?" + +"That remains to be seen," she said in a way which made one desire to +set the dog on her. "I cherish the hope. May I offer you another +cigarette?" + +He sometimes remained scandalously late in the evening after dining, in +spite of--oh, by so much!--knowing better. He would wait, with an +artist's beautiful air of time-forgetfulness, for Dr. Tom to get up to +go. He would instantly, as if remembering himself, get up to go, too, +and walk with the doctor as far as his hotel, they talking together like +men with respect for each other's brains, and appreciation of each +other's character and company, no subject of contention in the world. + +Gerald pushed courtesy so far as to go with the doctor, by themselves, +on certain visits to hospitals, to certain games of pallone, certain +monasteries which ladies are not permitted to enter, Aurora rejoicing in +the opportunities to "get good and acquainted" which she saw these two +dear friends of hers take. + + * * * * * + +After the drive back from the wedding, Gerald resisted Aurora's +suggestion that he enter the house with them and remain to dine. This he +did with well-masked resentfulness. As it was not Dr. Bewick's last +evening, but the evening before his last, Gerald did not see that +delicacy strictly demanded his sacrifice. But Estelle had without so +many compliments informed him that he was not to accept. She had +particular reasons, she darkly enlightened him, for the request. + +So, with a paltry excuse, he jumped out of the carriage before it +reached the gate, and stood looking after it, holding his hat--the +glossy _tuba_ which Giovanna had with her elbow stroked and stroked +the right way of the silk, when she laid out her signorino's outfit for +the wedding. + +Earlier than usual after dinner Estelle retired, "to write up her +diary," she said. Tom was left to have with Aurora that conversation +which Estelle had besought him to have, and of which by a significant +motion of the face she had reminded him before leaving the room. He came +to the point very soon, the sooner to get it over. + +"Nell," he said, and, leaning back, with one arm flung along the top of +the sofa, the other offering to his lips a thick cigar, waited long +enough for her to wonder what was coming, "you spend too much money." + +Without shadow of attempt at evasion, she said: + +"Tom, I do." + +"You've got to retrench, girl. You've got to be more careful." + +"Yes, I suppose I've got to." + +"Let's be practical. How are you going to do it?" + +"I don't know, Tom. It's so easy to spend and so hard to hold on to your +money! If any one had told me a year ago I could get rid of as much +money in one year as I have done, I shouldn't have known how I could do +it without opening the window and throwing it out." + +"Well, I'm glad you don't deny a bent toward extravagance." + +"I don't deny anything that means I spend a lot of money. I have more +sense. The facts are there." + +"You've already broken into your capital, haven't you?" + +"Did Hattie tell you that or did you guess? It's true, I have; but--" +she tried to place the harm done in a harmless light--"it isn't so bad +but that if I saved for a little while I could make it up again." + +"If! True; but are you going to, Nell? That's the question." + +"Oh, Tom, I never ought to have been given any money if I was to hold on +to it!" Aurora almost groaned. "I didn't know at first. I was pleased as +Punch. I lay awake nights just to gloat and feel grand. I tell +_you_, I meant to hold on to it! I tell _you_, it wasn't going +to get away from me after that good fight we made for it! But--" the +effect of a mental groan was repeated--"the whole thing isn't as I +thought it would be, not a bit." + +She stopped, and while she tried to coordinate her ideas, Dr. Tom +quietly waited for explanation or illustration of her meaning. + +"I don't like money, there's the whole of it!" she gave him the sum of +her attempt in one cast. + +Dr. Tom continued to wait, smoking. + +"In fact, I hate it." + +Dr. Tom continued to wait, without interrupting, or trying to help her +disentangle her thought, of which he had in truth no inkling. + +"I hate it, and I love it, both. That's truer, I suppose. But I can't be +at rest with it." + +"Never fear, girl,"--his tone was humorous,--"you'll get used to it. +Just from watching you, I should have fancied you were pretty well used +to it already." + +"When I was a child it was just the same way with candy," she went on +with her own train of thought, not minding his; "I loved it--and gobbled +it right up. Some of the girls made theirs last and last. I ate mine at +once. And it wasn't only because I was a pig with no self-control. I +wanted to have done with it and go back to a sensible life. With this +money I have the same feeling--and then another feeling that I sort of +can't account for, as if I wanted to get rid of it because there was +something wrong in me having it." + +"That money? You sure earned it!" he came out vigorously. "Don't be a +goose, Nell." + +"I wasn't thinking of what you think. But I'm afraid I am a goose, Tom, +an awful goose, and I'm ashamed of it. I somehow can't feel it +right--there!--to have more than the rest. Come right down to it, I feel +mean in having something the rest haven't got, and keeping it from them, +like a nasty fat boy stuffing pie with a lot of hungry ragamuffins +looking on. I know it isn't good common sense, or how could rich people +be so all right and calm in their minds as they are, and have +everybody's respect? Rich people are all right, I've always sort of +looked up to them, with their advantages and things. I haven't a bit of +fault to find. But Tom, I suppose the amount of it is I was born poor +and I go on having the feelings of the poor. If any one asks me for +anything and appears to need it, I've got to give it or feel too mean to +live. Me, Nell, who was poor myself for so long, how would I look +hardening my heart against any one who came and wanted to borrow? I'd be +ashamed to look them in the eye." + +"With that view of it, of course I can see why your money wouldn't last +long." + +"Oh, I'm extravagant besides, I'll own to that; that's the _real_ +trouble. I want to buy everything that takes my eye, I want to make +everything run smooth, like on greased wheels, and to have all the faces +around me look pleased, and everybody liking me. I love the feeling of +luxury and festivity, and oh, I just love a grand good time! That's what +the money was given to me for, wasn't it, so that I could have a grand +good time? But when I've indulged myself, Tom, I wouldn't have the face, +if I had the heart, to say no to anybody that came along and wanted me +to indulge them, too. Now, I don't want you to go thinking this is +generosity, Tom, or a good heart, or that I have any sneaking idea in my +own bosom that it's anything of the sort. I'd be a +regular--low-down--soggy--sinful sowbug, I'd be too dirt-mean to live, +if I pretended it was that. When I was poor I never was generous; I +never thought of it. I worked hard for what I got; and was in the same +boat exactly as the rest; I was entitled to the little bit I'd worked +for. But now it's different. It's like I'd won the big prize in the +lottery. I can't be stingy with it and not blush. I can't sit there like +a swollen wood-tick and be rich all by myself." + +"All right, Nell; all right. It's a perfectly understandable way of +looking at it, if it is rather far-fetched. But good-by to the +hard-earned thousands. You won't have a smitch of them left." + +"Good-by, then, and good riddance!" cried Aurora violently, almost +pettishly. "I don't really like them, anyhow. It's too easy just to +write your name on a check. At first I thought I was living in a +fairy-tale; but once you've got used to it, it doesn't compare with the +fun you get the old-fashioned way, working hard for a thing, and +planning, and going to price it, and saving, and finally getting it, and +that proud! People who haven't been poor simply don't know. Why, that +one poor little silver bangle I had when I was fifteen did more to give +me pure joy than any of the beautiful things I've bought this whole last +year. I'm sorry if it seems ungrateful to my bloated bank-account, but +it's true. Another thing, Tom. I was brought up to work. I won't say I +liked it. I don't think many people who've got to work do like it. But +since I gave it up, nothing I've found has really filled its place to +give me an appetite and the feeling I'd a right to a good time. To sit +back and let others work while you fan your face--I can't help it, I +feel a sort of disgrace in it. I know better, it's just the way I +_feel_. I know all the while that's the way the world was planned, +some to be rich and some to be poor--Think how rich King Solomon was! +And your dear father!--some to work and some not, with changes round +about once in a while, like in my case, and crosses and trials and +temptations belonging to every state, and the love of God and a quiet +heart possible in every state. And I've always had such respect for +moneyed people and their refined ways.... But if you want me to start in +now and do differently from what I've been doing, I tell you truly, I +don't know how I'm going to do it, Tom. I'd rather not have the money at +all." + +"You won't have it, Nell, dear. You've only to keep on, and you won't +have it." + +"All right. Then I'll go back to work and never happier in my life. I'm +strong and able, I've got years of work in me. And if you think I've +grown so devoted to all these frills that I couldn't give them up, +you'll see!" + +"Of course I haven't the faintest right to control your use of your +money--" + +"But of course you have, Tom,"--her tone changed at once, and was +eagerly humble,--"every right. You can take it away from me any moment +you please. Who has a right, I should like to know, if not you?" + +"Well, then, Nell, I'm going to make a suggestion. What you have said +shows me that simple advice would be of no use in this case. Don't +think, girl, that I don't get at your way of seeing the matter. If I +appear cold toward it, if I don't seem to sympathize, it's because the +logical results would land you in a hole from which I'd feel a call by +and by to try to pull you out. See?--As a promise to keep inside of your +income would apparently embitter life to you, I won't ask for it, merely +suggesting the fitness of trying to observe such a restriction. Even as +regards your power to throw it away, there'll be a lot more of it to +throw if you respect your capital. However, the money is yours, to do +exactly what you please with, but this I ask: empower me to turn some +part of it into an annuity, unalienable and modestly sufficient." + +"An annuity? What's that?" + +"A sum of money so fixed that you receive the interest as long as you +live and have no power over the sum itself. It's not yours to use, to +transfer or yet to bequeath. In your case the one safe investment, the +single way I see to keep you out of the poorhouse." + +"Do you say so! All right, Tom; do what you think best. But see here. +Whatever you arrange for me that way, you've got to arrange for Hattie, +too, or it wouldn't be fair. I won't think of it unless you'll do the +same for both. If I hadn't a penny left in the world, you know the +Carvers would take me in in a minute. Then if you do it, don't you see," +she brought in slyly, "when I've spent my money, there'll always be +Hattie's for me to fall back on. Don't let her know you're doing it, +Tom, but fix it." + +"All right. Two comfortable little annuities, enough to be independent +on, and be taken care of if you're sick." + +"That's it, Tom. Then everybody's mind will be set at rest. And this I +promise: I'll try to be a good girl." + +That subject being dropped, there was silence for a minute or two, while +Tom thoughtfully smoked. + +Aurora's face was a living rose with the excitement of their discussion. +She put her hands to her cheeks to feel how they burned, then turned to +Tom to laugh with him over it. The pink of her face enhanced the +blueness of her eyes. It was not unusual for persons sitting near +Aurora, women as well as men, to feel a sudden desire to squeeze her in +their arms and tell her how sweet she was. Tom found himself saying a +thing he had taken a solemn engagement with himself not to say. + +"I had hoped"--his utterance was slow and heavy--"to find a different +solution to the difficulty." + +Her face questioned him, and at once looked troubled. + +"I was going to try to take over all your difficulties and bundle them +up with my own; but," he continued, after a moment, with force, "I'm not +going to do it." + +"That's right, Tom," she came out eagerly, without pretending not to +understand. "If I know what you mean--don't do it! Oh, I'm so grateful, +I can't tell you, that you've made up your mind that way. Because, dear +Tom, whatever you wanted me to do, seems to me I'd have to do it. I +don't see how I could say no to anything you asked me. It would break my +heart, I guess, if I had to hold out against a real wish of yours. I +couldn't do it. All the same, I know we wouldn't make just the happiest +kind of couple--'cause why, we're too like brother and sister, Tom. It +would be unnatural. I feel toward you, Tom, just like an own, own +sister--not those mean old things, Idell and Cora, who are your +sisters--but I feel toward you as I would to my own brother Charlie. +There's nothing I wouldn't do for you. But if I had to marry you, +there'd be something about it--well, I don't know. I can't explain. +Haven't you seen how there are things that are perfect for one use and +no good at all for another? I'm a pretty good nurse, ain't I, Tom? But +what would I be as a bareback circus-rider?" + +"We aren't going to talk about it, Nell. I told you I had given it up. +But," he went on after a heavy moment, unable entirely to subjugate his +humanity--"but I wish now I had asked you before you left home." + +She was too oppressed with misery to speak at once, so he amplified. + +"But it seemed rather more--I don't want to call it by any such big word +as chivalrous,--it seemed rather whiter not to urge it, when +circumstances might have seemed to lay a compulsion on you. Then it +seemed better to let all the talk, the unpleasantness, in Denver die +down first. Then, too, I wanted you to see the world; I liked the +thought of you having your fling. But," he reiterated, "I can't help +wishing I had followed my instinct and asked you before I let you go. +Tell the truth, Nell. Wouldn't you have had me then?" + +"I suppose, Tom, that I should have you now if you asked me. But then or +now," she brought in quickly, "it would be a mistake. I couldn't love +you more dearly, Tom, than I do, good big brother that you've been. Dear +me, all we've been through together! Then all the fun we've had! We +couldn't change to something different without all being spoiled. You +don't seem to know, but I do, that I'm not the woman for you in that +way. We're too much alike, Tom. What you want is a little dainty woman, +delicate, quick, bright-minded, something, to find an example near at +hand, like Hattie Carver. A big fellow like you wants someone to cherish +and protect. How would any one go to work protecting and cherishing a +little darling big as a moose!" + +"I might have known"--Doctor Tom made his reflections aloud,--"that a +good big husky man wouldn't have a chance with a good big husky girl +while a sickly, sad-eyed, spindle-shanked son of a gun was hanging +round!" + +"There's nothing in that, I should think you'd know," said Aurora, +quickly. "I like him, of course, and I like to have him round. Haven't +you found him good company yourself? But that's just friendship. +Friendship like between a fish and a bird, and no more prospect of a +different ending than that. If that's troubling you, you can set your +mind at rest, Tom." + +"It's none of my business, anyhow," said the doctor, brusquely, flinging +down his cigar and walking away from her to the mantelpiece, where he +stood looking up at her portrait, but thinking of that other portrait of +her, with its wizardry and strange truth, which she had not failed to +show him. + +"Tom, if I thought you could feel bitter, I should die, that's all," +cried Aurora, jumping up and following. "You've been such a friend to +me! Do you suppose I forget? Never was there such a friend. And you +know, now don't you, Tom, that I think the whole, whole world of you?" +Arms were clasped around his neck,--large arms, solid and polished as +marble, but tender as mother birds; a head was pressed hard against his +shoulder. "There never could anybody take your place with me. You'd only +have to call over land and sea, and I'd come flying to serve you, to +nurse you in sickness or help you in sorrow. Give me a good hug, Tom. +Give me a good kiss, and say you know I mean every word!--Now, isn't +this better than to see me across the table at breakfast, with my hair +in curlers, and to have me snooping round being jealous of your female +patients?" + +"No, it's not better; but it's pretty good." + +"Do you mean to tell me, Tom, that you'd be any more likely to cut my +name in a tree, or kiss my stolen glove, than I'd be to wish on the +first star you loved me or write poetry about my feelin's?" + +"Nell, I'm not telling; the subject is closed. But any time there's +anything I can do for you, anything in this world, Nell, you know you've +only got to sing out." + +"You'll marry, Tom dear, by and by." + +"Very well. If you say so, I'll marry. But what I said will hold good if +I do. It will hold good, too, if you marry, Nell. Oh, let's talk about +something else." + +The change of subject could hardly be effected in less time than it +takes to reverse engines; a minute or two passed before Aurora inquired +concerning the number of hours' travel between Florence and Liverpool, +then about his steamer, his stateroom and the exact time of his +starting. + +"Nine o'clock in the evening. I see, so as to have daylight for the +Alps. You'll dine here of course and we'll take you to the station." + +He judged it more prudent to dine at his hotel and meet them afterwards +at the station near train-time. + +"Then--" sighed Aurora, sorrowfully, "this is our last evening! For I +heard you and the consul planning for to-morrow evening together, and he +to read you some chapters of his book. A compliment, Tom. He's never +offered to read _us_ any of it. I'm only sorry the idea didn't +ripen sooner, so that we needn't be robbed of your very last evening. We +must make the most of our time, then. Suppose we go into the garden, +Tom, and walk across the street to the river--I don't have to put +anything on for just that step. It's so pretty, looking upstream at the +bridges, and across at the hills your pa was so fond of. Wasn't the +Judge just crazy about Florence! For the longest time after I came I +couldn't see why, but I'm beginning." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +A tired look overspread Estelle's face, when, returning home after +seeing Dr. Bewick off on his way to Paris, they found Gerald waiting. + +She said to herself, in tempestuous inward irritation, that it was +inconceivable a young man so well up in the ways of the world shouldn't +know any better. + +It could not be said that Estelle did not like Gerald Fane. Considered +by himself, she did like him, much more, she believed, than he liked +her. His odd distinction, too subtle and complex to describe, aroused in +her a vague hunger of the mind. But considered in relation to Aurora, he +"was on her nerves," she said. + +"That he shouldn't know any better--" she mentally scolded, behind her +tired look, "than to obtrude himself the very first minute after Doctor +Tom's departure!" + +But Gerald was not thinking he showed a horrid want of tact. The other +way, rather. He saw himself as the intimate old friend who comes to call +right after the funeral, and by his presence console a little, and +brighten, the bereaved. + +Aurora's red eyes smote him at once. Aurora was still in tearful mood. +The sense not only of her dear friend going, but going with a secret +weight on his heart that it had been in her power to prevent, made her +own heart miserably heavy, too. For the moment Tom counted for her more +than all else, and she reproached herself that when he had done so much +for her she had not been willing to do such an ordinary little thing for +him as to marry him; and she reproached herself because it was a relief, +despite her great wish to be loyal, to think they should not meet again +until all that was well in the past. + +Estelle hoped to hear her friend say to Gerald something to the effect +that she was in no mood for a social call; but Aurora welcomed the +visitor with unaffected warmth and sat down in her hat to talk with him. +So Estelle said primly that it was late, and she was tired; if they +would excuse her, she would go to bed. + +Aurora talked about Tom and nothing but Tom. Sweetly, sighfully, she +spoke, as more than once before, of those many things he had done for +her, but spoke of them this evening more amply; his care of her, a +penniless patient, in that hospital where she woke up after a space of +unconsciousness; his unremitting kindness when she lived in his house +and took care of his father, the dear old judge, who was sick three long +years before he died; the proof of goodness more remarkable still which +he gave after that. + +A tremulous hope flickered up in Gerald that she would go on and tell +him about the latter, perhaps filling in some of the lacunæ which her +history had for him. Much had come out in their many hours of talk, but +he had found her circumspect with regard to certain parts of her life, +and had never put a question. In one so frank, her avoidance appeared a +result of dislike to remembering those unmentioned links in the chain of +events. + +But this evening again she stopped short of telling him what he would +have liked to know--how Bewick was connected with her wealth. For it had +come to her from no second husband: she had not been twice married. + +She broke off with the words, "Oh, some time I'll tell you the whole +story. I don't feel like it now. It always makes me so mad!" + +If Aurora had been pledged to Bewick, thought Gerald, the most natural +thing would have been to tell him of it this evening. In her expatiating +upon all she owed to Bewick, Gerald felt a wish to explain how it was +that without being engaged to him she could commit the impropriety of +publicly weeping over his departure. + +It seemed to Gerald rather late in the day for him to seek an excuse to +call at the Hermitage; yet on the afternoon following Dr. Bewick's +departure he sought for one--one having reference to Estelle. He took +with him a propitiatory little volume containing translations of +well-known poems by one Amiel. Estelle was regarded as being immensely +interested in French; she daily translated themes back and forth from +her own language into that of Molière. These singularly neat and exact +productions of Amiel's should delight--and disarm her. + +Gerald did not dislike Estelle, far from it. He did justice to her as a +good, true-hearted, self-improving American. Taken by herself, he felt +for her decided regard; but taken in connection with Aurora he would +sometimes have liked delicately to lift her between finger and thumb and +drop her into a well. + +When he entered the red-and-green room, the very least bit timidly, with +his book in his hand, he perceived almost at once that something unusual +was in the air, and the shades of feeling between himself and Estelle +became for the moment of no importance. + +Nothing was said at first of the cause for Aurora's air of repressed +excitement, as she knit on a pink and white baby-jacket, or the cloudy +annoyance puckering Estelle's brow as she stitched on her silk tapestry. +The ladies might merely have been quarrelling, thought the visitor, and +made himself as far as he could a soothing third, chatting with Estelle +about Amiel and with Aurora about young Mrs. Sebastian, whose baby was +to rejoice in the little garment half-finished between her hands. + +"Gerald," Aurora interrupted him in the middle of a sentence, letting +her hands and work drop in her lap, "something so queer and unpleasant +has happened!" + +He raised both eyebrows in solicitous participation, and mutely +questioned. + +"It's about Charlie Hunt. I never would have imagined--you wouldn't +either." + +"My imagination, dear friend, is more far-reaching in some ways than +yours," he quickly corrected her, "and has had more practice than yours +in ways of unpleasantness. But do tell me what it is that has happened." + +"Charlie Hunt! Charlie Hunt!" she repeated, like one unable to make +herself believe a thing. "Charlie Hunt to turn nasty like that from one +day to the next!" + +"To turn----" + +"He was here to dinner just two weeks ago and perfectly all right. We +had a nice, long chat together on the sofa. But he didn't make his +party-call quite as soon as he usually does, so when I saw him at +Brenda's wedding I thought of course he'd come up and tell me how busy +he'd been or some other taradiddle. But he didn't come near me. I was +sort of surprised,--still, there were so many people there that he knew, +and we didn't stay quite to the end, you remember. I didn't even think +enough about it to mention it to Estelle. Well, this forenoon I went to +the bank, and when I'd got my money, I happened to catch sight of +Charlie, in the side-room, you know, where his desk is. I thought I'd +like to speak to him. He's always wanted me to ask for him when I went +to the bank, and I've done it more than once, and we've had five +minutes' chat. I was just going to tease him a little bit about coming +to see me so seldom nowadays, when he used to come so often, and ask +about the lady in the case. There really is one, I guess. Italo told me. +So I asked the old boy--you know the one I mean, the old servant of the +bank, who's always there, to tell Mr. Hunt that Mrs. Hawthorne would +like to speak with him, and then I took a seat, and in a minute in came +Charlie, with just his usual look. + +"Now, I want to tell you that I've never had one unpleasant word with +Charlie Hunt; I've always liked him real well. I put down my foot +against letting him run me and my house, but there never was a word said +about it. I balked, but I didn't kick. All along I've been just as nice +to him as I know how, except just one moment, when I stuck a little pin +into him the night of the _veglione_, not supposing that he'd ever +know who did it. + +"Well, I was sitting there at the table with the newspapers, and he came +and stood near, without taking a chair, as if he hadn't much time to +spare. I began to talk and joke about his cutting me dead at the +wedding, and he listened and talked back in a common-enough way, only I +noticed that he once or twice called me Mrs. Barton instead of Mrs. +Hawthorne. Now I must go back and tell you that some time ago when I was +at the bank he casually asked me if I knew of any Mrs. Helen Barton in +Florence, and he showed me two letters in the same handwriting, one +addressed to the English bank, and the other to the American bank, +Florence, that had been there at Hunt & Landini's for some time, and no +one had called for and they didn't know what to do with. Now, the +instant my eye lit on those letters I knew who'd written them, what was +in them, and who they were meant for. All letters for Estelle and me, +you know, are first sent to Estelle's house in East Boston, to be +forwarded to us wherever we might be in Europe; but that letter had +escaped. That letter was from a queer kind of sour, unsuccessful woman +called Iona Allen, who boarded once at the same house with me on +Springfield Street,--the languishing kind of critter that I never could +stand, who hadn't the gumption of a half-drowned chicken, who'd never +stuck to anything or put any elbow-grease into the work on hand, and +whined all the time, and was looking out for some one to support her. I +guessed she'd heard of my money and was writing me a sweet letter of +congratulations, along with a hard-luck story. I'd have liked to get +hold of her letter, but didn't exactly see how I could. I said to +Charlie, 'Let me take it; perhaps I can find the one it's meant for +among my acquaintances.' But he didn't seem to think that could be done; +so there the matter dropped. I didn't care much. Iona Allen can look for +some one nearer home to support her. + +"Well, to go back. When Charlie Hunt had called me Mrs. Barton for the +third time I realized from his way of doing it that it wasn't a slip of +the tongue, and I stopped him short and said: + +"'What makes you call me Mrs. Barton all of a sudden?'" + +"'It's your name, isn't it?' he said, with a queer look. + +"'No,' I came right out strong and bold. And I wasn't lying either. It +isn't my name. I don't really know what my name is. It's Hawthorne as +much as it's anything. Jim changed his name half a dozen times, and the +name he married me under I found out wasn't his real name. + +"Charlie Hunt stood there a moment as if thinking it over, looking at me +with the meanest grin; then he said with that hateful, sarcastic look of +a person who thinks he's being smart in getting back at you: + +"'Is that as true,' he said, 'as that you never indulged in carnival +humor masked as a crow?' Then I knew he'd somehow got on to the truth +about that night at the _veglione_. But I wasn't going to give it +away. + +"'You know what you're driving at better than I do,' I said. And then I +said: 'What's it all about? What's your game?' And he said, as if I'd +been a common swindler that he'd found out: + +"'What's yours?' + +"Then I felt myself get mad. + +"'You're a mean little pest,' I said, but between my teeth, and not so +that any one but he could hear me. And 'You're an evil-minded little +scalawag,' I said. 'You certainly don't know me if you think I've done +anything in this world to be ashamed of. Go ahead,' I said; 'do what you +please. Don't for one single instant think that I'm afraid of you or +that you can do me any harm.' And I left him standing there, with his +grin, and flounced out. But what do you think of it, Gerald? Why should +Charlie Hunt behave like that to me?" + +"I could judge better if I knew what you said to him at the +_veglione_." + +"It wasn't very bad. It might provoke him for a minute to know that it +was I who said it, but it oughtn't to make him mad enough to bite. I +went up to him, and I said close to his ear, in my good English: + +"'You amusing little match-maker,' I said, 'what do you hope to get from +your dusky friend marrying that _absard_ American? How much do you +know about her?' I said. 'Are you even sure she's as rich as she seems?' +Then he said, polite but stiff: + +"'You have the advantage of me, madam, in knowing what you're talking +about. Pray go on with your tasteful pleasantries,' he said; 'I'm +thinking I've heard your voice before.' Upon which I shut my mouth and +dusted down the opera-house on Italo's arm. I was crazy that evening, I +guess, with the crowd and excitement and all. When I get to training, I +can't resist the impulse; I don't know where to stop. But that wasn't +enough to make him want to stick a knife in me, was it? It was only fun. +It was true. He had seemed to be trying to manage me so's I'd take a +fancy to Landini, and I couldn't for the life of me see what it mattered +to him." + +"I tell Aurora," came in Estelle, "that a little joke like that would +rankle terribly in any but a real goodnatured man." + +"My dear Aurora," said Gerald, excited and darkly flushed, "your little +joke would not have had to contain a sting nearly as sharp to rouse +against you such vanity as Hunt's, unless, let me add, there were some +counterweight of self-interest to keep him back. It is known that +Charlie has only some parts and habits of a human being, not all. One +almost, in pure justice, cannot blame him. But scorn him--oh, as for +that!... He could be with you day after day, and take all you would +give, and at the end of a year feel no tie; he could hear you slandered, +and not take your defence; he could make a joke at your expense, if one +came into his mind that he thought sufficiently witty, and never have a +sense of meanness! He would have had nothing to overcome. He would only +learn better if he perceived some loss of consideration, and consequent +advantage to himself. That would make him more cautious, but not make +him more aware. And you cannot call him wicked any more than upon any +occasion you could call him good. But he's damnable!" + +Consuming anger lighted up Gerald's face, his voice trembled with +intensity of feeling, his vehemence now and then by jerks lifted his +heels off the floor. "He is not properly a man at all," he went on to +characterize his old schoolmate; "he is just an insect _en grand_. +He satisfies his instincts precisely as an insectivorous insect +does--the rest are there to furnish something to his life. Nothing else, +he knows nothing outside. Now that you have offended him he probably +won't do you any great harm. He's not a devil, and the world he lives in +does not tolerate anything very black. He'd injure himself in trying to +injure you. But he'll do you what harm he easily and safely can. He's +nothing big, he could do nothing big, he hasn't a passion in him. He's +like this: from the moment he had ceased to get any good of frequenting +your house, even if you had not done the smallest thing to vex him, he +would pass on a bit of gossip harmful to you for the simple glory of +appearing for one moment a little better informed than the rest. No more +than that. He would be capable of that; he wouldn't even have to hate +you. For Charlie Hunt, as Leslie once perspicaciously said--Charlie Hunt +has no real inside!" + +Both women sat staring at Gerald, impressed by his heat. When he +stopped, they continued for a minute in blank silence, revolving his +words and readjusting their estimates, while their eyes traveled up and +down, up and down the room, drawn after his figure that wrathily paced +the floor. + +"How do you suppose he found out about the black crow? For I'm perfectly +sure he didn't know me at the time," said Aurora presently. + +"That might easily enough happen in some roundabout way," said Estelle, +"as long as Italo and Clotilde both knew it. They might let the cat out +of the bag without intending to. He talks so much. Never knew such a +talker. But what I want to know is how he knew your name was Barton." + +"I've told you what I think. He's heard you call me Nell. Tom, too, +called me Nell. That may have given him the hint. Then he simply opened +Iona Allen's letter and read it. Something was in it, no doubt, that +enabled him to put two and two together. Perhaps the name Bewick. Iona +would have heard of that. She would write to say now I'd climbed out of +poverty and hard work she knew I wouldn't mind lending a hand to an old +friend not so fortunate. Something like that. She'd be sure to whine and +beg. And Charlie Hunt, little bunch of meanness! would imagine he could +hold over me the fact that I was poor once and what he would think low +in the scale, because he thought I'd be ashamed of it. But no such +thing. If I changed my name coming here, it wasn't on any such account +as that. I'm gladder than ever now that I told Mrs. Foss all about it. I +did, Gerald, quite soon after we first came, and she said, though it was +in a way a mistake, she didn't see any real harm in it. As long as I'd +begun that way, she said, better not make a sensation by changing back +or saying anything about it. She thought my reasons were very natural. +It wasn't as if I were misleading anybody, or anybody were losing money +by me. I'd have told you too, Gerald, in a minute, as far as wanting +just to conceal anything goes. But Gerald and I"--she seemed to place +the matter before an invisible judge and jury--"never talk together of +ugly things, do we, Gerald? He's more delicate-minded by a good deal +than I am. With him particularly, though we've been such intimate +friends, I shrank from it. There's not much poetry about me, I know +that, but there'd be even less if I had to have it known all I've been +through. And since the first of our association we've always lived in a +sweet sort of world, haven't we, Gerald? I'd be ready, just the same, to +tell you the whole story any moment you wanted to hear...." + +At Gerald's swift instinctive gesture, she went on without further +considering the proposition she had made. "As I said before, I don't +know what my own real front-door name is. I was born Goodwin. I married +Barton, but Barton wasn't Jim's real name. Aurora Hawthorne is what I +called myself when we were young ones and played ladies, Hat and I. I +came over here to cut loose from all the bothers that had made the last +year in Denver a nightmare. I didn't want to be connected with that +dirty mess any more in anybody's mind or my own. I wanted it to be like +taking a bath and starting new, feeling clean. Then, if I was Aurora +Hawthorne, Hattie had to be Estelle Madison, which was her name in our +old play-days. Neither of us thought of anything when we planned it but +its being a grand lark. And at first, in hotels, what did it matter? But +since we've been here and had friends, we've felt sorry more than once, +because it seemed like telling a lie. And then we were afraid of things +that might come up--just like this that has, in fact. But there wasn't +anything to do about it. Because if we confessed now most anybody would +think our reason for changing names must have been something +disgraceful, just as it happens if a person who kills another by +accident goes and hides the corpse, everybody takes it for granted it +was murder. So, if Charlie Hunt tells--" + +"I'm not nearly as much afraid of his telling that you are here under an +assumed name," said Estelle, "as that you were the black crow, and it +getting to the ears of Antonia and Co." + +"Well, what could they do?" + +"Spoil Florence for us pretty thoroughly, I'm afraid, Nell." + +"Oh, nonsense!" cried Aurora, but after a moment added in a tone of +lessened assurance, "Bother!" and after another moment burst forth, with +one hand clapped to her curly front hair: "To think that Tom was here +yesterday, and this had to happen to-day, when he's half-way to Paris! I +wish he hadn't gone. I wish I had him here to back me up." + +"Why don't you telegraph for him?" suggested Estelle, eagerly. + +"Oh, no, I wouldn't do that,"--Aurora's vehemence subsided,--"it's not +important enough for that." + +"My dear Aurora," said Gerald, stopping in front of her, his whole +person expressing hurt and remonstrance little short of indignation, "if +your wishing for Doctor Bewick signifies that you do not feel you have +friends near you on whose attachment you can count, surely you do wrong +to some of us!" + +Though his tone scolded Aurora sharply for her lack of faith, Estelle's +ear caught a trembling edge to his voice expressive of deep feeling. +Estelle had the good sense to see that Gerald must inevitably desire to +make more exposition of his allegiance, and the good feeling to know +that this could be done better if she were not present. Gerald, with his +little peace-offering, was at the moment in favor with Estelle. His +explicitness, his righteous violence, his entire adequacy on the subject +of Charlie Hunt, had charmed her. She also wanted Aurora to have any +comfort the hour might afford. She on the spot feigned to understand +Busteretto's pawing of her dress as an expression of desire to go into +the garden and see the little sparrows. She swept him up from the floor +with one hand and, tucking him under her arm, slipped out of the room. + +Gerald stood grasping his elbows. He had a look like that of some man, +known so far as a harmless retiring burgher, about to make a public +confession which will change all, bringing his head perhaps to the +block; or the look of a man on the verge of a precipice, still half +resisting the desire to jump, yet knowing that he will jump, nothing can +save him from it; the look of a man, in fine, pregnant with intention, +but walking in a dream. + +There was silence for a minute after Estelle left the room. Then Gerald +said very stiffly, very formally: + +"If you would do me the honor, dearest Aurora, the very great honor, of +consenting to take my name, the right I should have to defend you would +be--would be--part of my great happiness." + +Aurora stared at him. Beneath the frank investigation of her eyes his +own dropped in modesty and insuperable embarrassment. + +There was another silence before he added: + +"I would try very much to make you happy." + +Aurora repressed the first words that came to her lips,--and set aside +the next ones that rose in her mind to say. Silence again reigned for a +moment. Then, with the serious face, almost invisibly rippling, that +betokened in her a secret and successful fight against laughter, she +said in what she called her good English, faintly reminiscent of +Antonia's: + +"I am aware, my dear Gerald, of the honor, the very great honor, you do +me. I thank you--for coming up to the scratch like a little man. But the +feeling I have that I could never be _warthy_ of so much honor +deceydes me to declane. Gerald," she went on, discarding her English, +"don't say another word! You dear, dear boy! The things you want to +defend me against don't amount to a row of pins when all I've got to do +if it comes to the pinch is pack my grip and clear out. Thank you all +the same, you pet, for your kindness. Don't think of it again. I am sort +of glad, though, you've got that proposal out of your system. Now we can +go back to a sensible life." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +Aurora, of the excellent three-times-a-day appetite, Aurora of the good +sound slumbers, picked at her food and slept brokenly for part of a week +at that period, such was her impatience at the dragging length of time, +the emptiness of time, undiversified and unenhanced by the presence in +her house of any man devoted to her. No odor of tobacco smoke in the +air, no cane in the corner; Tom on his way to America, Gerald hurt or +cross or both. But, the ladies agreed, when Aurora had told Estelle the +latest about Gerald, her refusal could not possibly occasion a cessation +of relations, since his offer, chivalrous and unpremeditated, had been +at most a cute and endearing exhibition of character. His sensitiveness +could not be long recovering, and everything would be as before. + +Aurora had been half prepared for his staying away all Saturday; but +having been justified in that, she the more confidently looked for him +on Sunday. It is simply incredible, as almost everybody has felt at +least once in his life, how long the hours can be when you are waiting +for something. + +At the end of a singularly unprofitable day, Aurora sat in the red and +green room with all the windows open to the sweet airs and odors of May, +and no lamp lighted that might attract night-moths, or, worse, the +thirsty, ferocious Florentine _zanzara_. She just sat, not doing a +thing. Estelle after a while left her, to retire to her own quarters, +close the windows and make a light. + +Aurora watched the dark blue velvet sky over Bellosguardo, and thought. + +A tinkling of mandolins, a thrumming of guitars, informed her of +street-singers stationed under her windows. A tenor voice rose in the +song she was so fond of, _La Luna Nova_, mingling at the end of the +verse with other male voices that repeated the second half of it. It +sounded infinitely sweet out in the warm spring night. + +After _La Luna Nova_ they sang _Fra i rami_, _fulgida_, +and _Vedi_, _che bianca Luna_, and _Dormi pure_, all +things she particularly liked. The voices struck her as being nearer +than the garden railing; she thought the singers must have found the +carriage gate open and slipped in without noise. She bent forth a +little, and as she could not see them imagined them standing among the +shrubs. She propped her elbows on the window-rail and listened, grateful +for this bath of sweetness to her spirit after the day's profound ennui. + +Estelle came softly into the dark room and joined her; they leaned side +by side. + +_Mi sono innamorato d'una stella_, _Sognai_, _Io +t'amerò_, one sweet and sentimental song succeeded the other. + +Clotilde had entered too, on tiptoe, and stood listening, just behind +the others. + +"It is a serenade," she whispered. "It is a compliment." + +A serenade!... Aurora thrilled with a pleasant surmise. There was only +one person in Florence of whom she could conceive as offering her the +compliment of a serenade. She listened with a new keenness of pleasure. + +After the concert had prolonged itself through some dozen pieces-- + +"You must invite them to enter," whispered Clotilde, presumably versed +in the ceremonial of such adventures, "and offer them something for +their tired throats, a little wine...." + +"Oh, you think we ought...?" + +"But yes, it would be courtesy." + +"Go you, then, Clotilde, and show them in and order up the wine. We'll +be down in a minute." + +As they entered the dining-room, Clotilde burst into a peal of delighted +laughter at the well-managed surprise, while Italo hastened forward to +take Aurora's hand and bow over it half way to the floor. + +It was within Aurora's breast as if in the dark one had clasped as she +thought a sweetheart, to find when the light came that her arms were +entwined around the dancing-master, or the tailor. But only for an +instant. She was really touched and charmed. She became more and more +eloquent in expressing delight. + +The singers were presented to her individually, dark-eyed and smiling +young Italians of the people, who knew no language but their own +Florentine and spoke to Aurora in that, not expecting to be understood +or to understand, except through smiles. + +Clotilde, busy, bustling, poured for them wine which she knew to be +excellent, and there was a bright half hour for all. Italo wore an air +relating him to all the successful heroes that have been, to Cæsar as +well as to Paganini, who also had a great nose. To manage a thing well +in small justifies pride, giving earnest as it does that a large thing, +such as a siege, or a symphony, would by the same capacity be managed +equally well. Italo that night carried his head like one who respects +the size of his nose. He was quick, he was witty, he was amiable. He had +about him something a little splendid, even, due to his feeling of +having been splendid--or nothing--in his tribute to the patroness from +whose horn of plenty so much had overflowed into his hands. + +Aurora beckoned Clotilde aside to say in her ear, "Will you run upstairs +like a good girl and get my porte-monnaie?... Would it be all right, do +you think?" + +Clotilde made the face and gesture of one in doubt, and if anything +averse, but not insuperably. The bounty of royalty, or of rich +Americans, is not felt as alms. + +"Go, then," whispered Aurora, "and get the purse that you'll find under +some silk stockings in my second drawer, the little purse with gold in +it." + +One of the petty difficulties of life to Aurora since she had lived in +foreign lands had been the so often arising necessity to think quickly +what it would be proper to give. As the amount of the gratuity did not +much matter to her she had felt a desperate wish often for the power of +divination, by which to know what would be expected. On some occasions +it had seemed to Aurora that it would be more delicate not to offer +money; but experience had taught her that if she offered enough no +offense would be taken. These singers were all poor young fellows, +Clotilde had told her, musically gifted, but plying ordinary trades. +This one was a wood-carver, that one a gilder. They had been taught by +her brother the fine songs composing that magnificent serenade. + +The gold pieces distributed among them with words and smiles of thanks +were received with such charming manners that the giver--for the first +moment faintly embarrassed--was soon set at her ease. When it came to +the promoter and leader of the serenade, Aurora felt no more +uncertainty. Money had so often gone from her hand to his. She with +generous ease, as if passing a box of candy to children, tendered him +some three or four times as much as to the others. + +But there Italo showed what he was made of. He took a step backward and +stood with soldierly rigidity, one hand held with the palm toward her, +like a shield and defense against her intention to belittle him and his +token of homage by a reward. His look said, and said dramatically, that +her thought of him did him wrong; it said that he was ashamed of her for +not knowing better. Yet there was no real dissatisfaction in it, since +her want of delicacy permitted the exhibition of his delicacy, and +afforded him the opportunity to make that gesture.... + +Her hand dropped, her whole being drooped and confusedly apologized. +Then the hand that had interposed between them, uncompromising as a hot +flat-iron, changed outline and pointed at a half faded rose pinned on +her breast. Quickly she unfastened it and held it toward the +outstretched hand. It was taken, it was held to Italo's lips while he +made one of those deep bows that bent him double; then the stem of the +rose was pulled through his buttonhole and secured with a pin from +Aurora's dress. The great little man shook his locks and went on to the +next subject. + +Aurora was impressed. She was pleased with Italo in a new way, and said +to herself that she must make him some rich little, but unobjectionable +little, gift to remember this occasion by, a gold pencil, or a pearl +scarf-pin, or a cigar case to be proud of. + +She went to bed with her head full of serenade and serenaders, her head +all lighted up inside with the glory of having been the object of a +tribute so flattering. When after reading her chapter she blew out the +candle, she knew that to-night she should sleep, and make up for the two +bad nights just passed. If Gerald were so foolish as to feel annoyed and +wish to stay away, he would just have to feel annoyed and stay away +until he felt different. His mood couldn't help wearing off in time. But +it did seem to her extraordinary that even now, after knowing him so +long, she could tell so little of the workings of Gerald's mind. All, of +course, because he was--such a considerable part of him--a foreigner. + + * * * * * + +Aurora was one of those healthy sleepers who have no care to guard +themselves against the morning light. Her windows stood open, her bed +was protected from winged intruders by a veil of white netting gathered +at the top into the great overshadowing coronet. + +She was in the fine midst of those sweetest slumbers that come after a +pearly wash of dawn has cleaned sky and hilltops from the last +smoke-stain of the night, when a sense of some one else in the room +startled her awake. There stood near the door of her dressing-room an +unknown female, wearing intricate gold ear-pendants and a dingy cotton +dress without any collar. + +"_Chi è voi?_" inquired Aurora, lifting her head. + +"I am the Ildegonda," answered the woman, whose smile and everything +about her apologized, and deprecated displeasure. She must be the +kitchen-maid, fancied Aurora, engaged by Clotilde, and not supposed to +show her nose above the subterranean province of the kitchen. + +"There is the _signorino_ down in the garden," Ildegonda acquitted +herself of the charge laid upon her by the donor of the silver franc +still rejoicing her folded fingers, "who says if you will have the +amiability to place yourself one moment at the window he would desire to +say a word to you." + +The _signorino_. That had become the informal title by which the +servants announced a guest who was let in so very frequently. Aurora +understood _finestra_, window, and _dire una parola_, to say a +word, and then that the signorino was _giù in giardino_. + +"All right." Aurora nodded to the Ildegonda, inviting her by a motion of +the hand to go away again. + +Aurora rose and softly closed the door which, when open, made an avenue +for sound from her room to Estelle's. She slipped her arms into a +sky-blue dressing-gown, and with a heart spilling over with playful joy, +eyes spilling over with childish laughter, went to look out of the +window, the one farthest from Estelle's side of the house. + +"Good morning! Good morning!" came on the instant from the waiting, +upturned face below. "Forgive me for rousing you so early," was said in +a voice subdued so as to reach, if possible, no other ears, "but you +promised you would go with me one day to Vallombrosa, and one has to +start early, for it is far. Will you come?" + +"Will I come? Will I come? Wait and see! Got your horses and carriage?" + +"Standing at the gate. How long will it take you to get ready?" + +"Oh, I'll hurry like anything." + + "'Wash, dress, be brief in praying. + Few beads are best when once we go a Maying.'" + +"I won't pray, I won't put on beads. But, see here, what about what they +call in this country my collation? You know I'm a gump on an empty +stomach." + +"We'll have our coffee on the road, at a little inn-table out of doors +in the sunrise." + +"Fine! By-by. See you again in about twenty minutes." + +Every fiber composing Aurora twittered with a distinct and separate glee +while she hurried through her toilet, a little breathless, a little +distracted, and mortally afraid Estelle would hear and come to ask +questions. From her wardrobe she drew the things best suited to the day +and her humor: a white India silk all softly spotted with appleblossoms, +of which she had said when she considered acquiring it that it was too +light-minded for her age and size, but yet, vaulting over those +objections, had bought and had made up according to its own merits and +not hers; a white straw hat with truncated steeple crown, the fashion of +that year, small brim faced with moss-green velvet, bunch of green +ostrich-tips, right at the front, held in place by band and buckle. + +Her parasol was a thing of endless lace ruffles, her wrap a thing of +vanity. + +She passed out through the dressing-room, she crept down the stairs, +laughing at her own remark that it was awfully like an elopement. The +house was not yet astir; only the Ildegonda sweeping out the kitchen, +and old Achille out in the garden picking early insects off his plants. + +At the door she greeted Gerald with all the joy of meeting again a +playmate. He had on the right playmate's face. She gave him both hands, +and he clasped them to the elbow, shaking them with satisfactory fire, +while their eyes laughed a common recognition of the adventure as a +lark. + +At the gate waited the open carriage, a city-square cabriolet, but clean +and in repair, drawn by two strong little brown horses, with rosettes +and feathers in their jingling bridles, ribbons in their whisking +braided tails, and driven by a brown young man of twenty, with a +feather, too, in his hat, which he wore aslant and crushed down over his +right ear. To make the excursion pleasanter to himself, he was by +permission taking along a companion of his own age, who occupied the low +seat beside his elevated one, and in contrast with his vividness, the +pride of life expressed by his cracking whip, the artistically singular +sounds he made in his throat to encourage the horses, was a washed-out +personality, good at most to do the jumping off and on, to readjust +harness, to investigate the brake, or to offer alms from the lady in the +carriage to the old man breaking stones in the roadside dust. + +They were off; they sped through the gate of the Holy Cross, the fresh +young horses making excellent time. Out of the city, along the river, +across it, past hamlets, past villas, past churches and +_camposanti_, past vineyards and _poderi_ and peasants' +dwellings.... + +It seemed to Aurora that never had there been such a day, so fresh and +unstained and perfect, a day inspiring such gladness in being. The sense +of that priceless boon, the freedom of a whole long day together, elated +her with a joy that knew only one shadow, and that unremarked for the +first half of it--the shortness of the longest earthly day. + +Now the horses slowed in their pace; the ascent had begun among the +shady chestnut-trees. The driver's friend scrambled down and plodded +alongside the horses; the driver himself descended and walked, cheering +on his beasts with noises that nearly killed Aurora, she declared. + +As it took them between four and five hours to reach their destination, +and as Aurora chattered all the time, with little intervals of talk by +Gerald, to report their conversation is unfeasible. Aurora, wanting in +all that varied knowledge which those who are fond of reading get from +books, had yet a lot to say that some unprejudiced ears found worth +while. The dwellers upon earth and their ways had for her an immense and +piercing interest. In vain had circumstances circumscribed her early +life: neighbors, Sunday-school teacher, minister, village drunkard, +fourth of July orator, had furnished comedy for her every day. The human +happenings falling within her ken became good stories in their passage +through a mind quick in its perception of inconsequence, faulty logic, +pretense, all that constitutes the funny side of things. Aurora's love +of the funny story amounted to a fault. Aurora was not always above +promoting laughter by narratives no subtler than a poke in your ribs. +Aurora, in the vein of funny stories, could upon occasion be +Falstaffian. But only one half of humanity had a chance to find out the +latter. When in company of the other sex, by instinct and upbringing +alike she minded her Ps and Qs. + +Gerald said that Aurora on that day regaled him with over a thousand +comic anecdotes, this being the expression of her frolicsome and +exuberant mood. He furnished her with a few to add to her store, Italian +ones, proving that he was not wholly without some share of her gift in +that line; but he now and then politely stopped her flow and led her to +admire with him the beauties of the road, natural or architectural, a +distant glimpse, a form, a fragrance. He would explain things to her, +impart scraps of pertinent history, which she would appear trying to +appreciate and imprint on her memory. + +As he leaned back in the carriage at her side, bathed in the wavering +green and gold light of the chestnut-trees among which the road wended, +a recent description of him, which she had said over to herself, to +qualify it by mitigating adjectives, seemed to her to have become +altogether unfair. Gerald's face, beneath the brim of his pliable white +straw, bent down over the eyes and turned up at the back, Italian style, +did not look sickly. On the contrary, it looked better and stronger +since his illness; he even had a little color. He was not sad-eyed, +either, that she could see, though his eyes must always be the +thoughtful kind. As for spindle-shanked, he filled his loose woolen +clothes better than before. + +He had made himself modestly fine for the day to be spent in company of +the fair: he had on a necktie which, if expressive of mood, declared his +outlook on life to be cheerfuller: it was a vibrant tone of violet that +accorded agreeably with his gray suit. A rose-geranium leaf and a stem +or two of rusty-gold _gaggia_, odors that he loved, occupied at his +buttonhole the place of those decorations which distinguished elderly +gentlemen are sometimes envied for, and which--it is a commonplace--are +not worthy to be exchanged for the flower Youth sticks at his coat to +aid him to charm. + +It grew very warm; the way, though pleasant, was beginning to seem long +when they arrived. The old monastery, now a school of forestry; the +Cross of Savoy, where pilgrims rest and dine, gleamed white in the +cloudless noon, amid the century-old trees that long ago, before Dante's +time even, earned for the spot its beautiful name of Vallombrosa, +Umbrageous Vale. + +Aurora was by this time starving again, and Gerald knew the pleasure of +purveying to the demands of a stomach as untroubled by any back-thought +relating to its functioning as that of a big bloomy goddess seated +before a meal of ambrosia. He suggested that she accompany her artichoke +omelet, her cutlet with the sauce of anchovy, parsley and mustard, by a +little red wine. But she would not, even to be companionable. She could +never bring herself to touch wine, any more than to use powder on her +cheeks, which in truth did not need it, or a pencil to her eyebrows, +which would have looked better for that accentuation. + +In a state of physical and mental well-being such as can be bought only +by an early rising, an inconsiderable breakfast, a long ride in the +warmth of Tuscan mid-May, an abundant and repairing repast, taken, amid +sweet conventual coolness, in company which leaves nothing to wish for +beyond it, they went forth to spend the time that must be granted the +horses for rest before the return to Florence. + +[Illustration: "Come, let us reason together, Aurora"] + +After loitering in the inn garden, they went to look at the memorials +relating to Saint John Gualberto, founder of the monastery. She listened +to the picturesque history of his life, death, and miracles, but was not +to be rendered sober-minded by any such thing. In the midst of Gerald's +instructive account of the holy abbot's endeavors to purify the monastic +orders from the stain of simony, her hand clutched his, and doing a +delicate cake-walk she compelled him along with her, announcing, "The +Hornet and the Bumble-bee went walking hand in hand!" Fancying this +prank not to have been without success, she next performed an improvised +_pas seul_ illustrative of the text, "The mountains shall skip like +little lambs!" + +There was artfulness, as has been suspected, in Aurora's frequent jests +upon her size. Their gross exaggeration was fondly counted upon to make +her appear sylphlike by comparison with the images she raised. + +To relieve the seriousness of Short Lessons on Great Subjects she +presently invented interrupting them at intervals to introduce Gerald +and herself to some rock or tree or mountain, as if it had been a poor +person standing by neglected. "Jack Sprat," she said, "and The Fat!" "A +busted cream-puff," she said, "and a drink of water!" Further, "Dino and +Retta!" Finally, with imagination running dry, "Gerry and Rory!" + +Yes, by such little jokes--what Leslie called Jokes of the First +Category, Aurora sought to enliven the hour for Gerald. He never omitted +to laugh, without being able to enter enough into her fun to join her in +the same species. An incapacity. Still, there was no disguising the +basking enjoyment possessing him, his love of her gaiety, if not at all +moments of the form it took. + +Finding it entrancing up there, they decided not to start for home till +the last minute possible. A limit was set to the time they might linger +by the necessity for some degree of daylight in making the descent. From +the edge of the curving road the mountain dropped away without the +protection of any parapet. + +When they had found their ideal place in which to sit on the warm earth +in the shade and look off over valleys and mountains into azure space, +Aurora at last consented to be still. She became dreamy, appeared +sweetly fatigued, and was for a long time mute. + +Though the mere quality of her voice still had power to stir Gerald's +heart to pleasure, yet to be silent with Aurora was pleasure of a +different order from hearing her voice of rough velvet recount +preposterous events or propound humorous riddles. + + * * * * * + +It looked from where they sat as if the land had at some time been +fluid, and been tossing, green and purple, in a majestic storm, when +some great word of command had fixed it in the midst of motion, and the +waves became Apennines; then in an hour of peculiar affection for that +plot of the earth a faultless artist from the skies had been set to +oversee nature and man at their work there, and prevent the intrusion of +one note not in harmony with his most distinguished dream. + +"If Italy should perish and all else remain," said Gerald, whose eyes +had been feasting on beauties of line and color such as he conceived +were not to be found outside this land of his idolatry, "the world would +be irreparably impoverished. If all the world besides should perish and +Italy remain, the world could still boast of infinite riches." + +Aurora gave a nod of at least partial assent. She was growing accustomed +to the thought that Italy was the fairest of countries and Florence the +fairest of Italian cities. She found herself beginning to like this +creed. + +In the quiet that descended upon them the native piety in each groped +for some acknowledgment to make of his consciousness at the moment of +unusual blessing. In him it took the form of a renewal, more devoted +perhaps than ever, of the determination to maintain an uncompromising +purity of aim in his work. The incomparable scene stimulated within him +a sense of power to produce things rivaling what lay under his eyes; he, +atom, rivaling his Maker in the creation of beauty. In her it was a +determination of greater loyalty toward the Provider of undeservedly +happy days to man, whose heart is wicked from his birth, as her mother +had been wont to tell her. + +Hearing her hum very softly to herself, he asked what she sang. She +said, her mother's favorite hymn, and gave it aloud, with the words: + + Father, what e'er of earthly bliss + Thy sovereign will denies, + Accepted at Thy throne of grace + Let this petition rise: + + Give me a calm, a thankful heart, + From every murmur free; + The blessings of Thy grace impart + And make me live to Thee. + +Like one with an impeccable ear, but with small esteem for his gifts as +a singer, Gerald murmured the melody after her, just audibly, to show he +cared to have his share in her memories. + +But mainly the two of them thought of each other. + +Gerald, regarding Aurora's hands as they lay in her +lap--innocent-looking, loyal-looking, rather large hands, which during +his illness he had liked to think were Madonna hands, but when seen in +health they were not, really--was amazed to remember the day when their +making passes over his face had filled him with perverse repugnance. + +And Aurora, remembering the first time she had seen Gerald and nicknamed +him Stickly-prickly, while feeling him more than three thousand miles +removed from her, was amazed.... + +So they sat, two little dots, two trembling threads, against the screen +of the universe and eternity, and their two selves, under the spell of a +world-old enchantment, loomed so large to each that the universal and +the eternal were to them two little dots, two threads. + + * * * * * + +Gerald saw how the afternoon was mellowing toward sunset.... And the +important things of the day had not been touched upon. + +Our hero had traversed great spaces in the region of sentiment during +the two days allowed the Hermitage to stand or crumble without him. The +first of them had been spent far from it, even as Aurora supposed, for +the sake of letting the impression of having been laughed at wear off a +little. Already for some time before that forced climax Gerald had been +haunted by the feeling that he ought to offer himself to Aurora, as it +were to regularize his status in her house. After hanging around as he +had been doing, one might almost say that good manners demanded it. Her +fashion, on that evening in the garden, of treating the idea that he +could be enamoured of her assured him that she would refuse. He would +have done his duty, and they would continue to drift, he shutting his +eyes to the penalty awaiting his self-indulgence, the taxes of pain +rolling up for the hour when her necessary departure would involve the +uprooting of every last little flower in that wretched garden of his +heart. With such a mental pattern of the future he had gone to bed at +the end of the first day. + +On the next morning something perhaps in deep dreams which he did not +remember, or in the happy manner of the new day lighting a scarlet +geranium on the terrace ledge, or simply perhaps the whisper of an +angel, had effected a change. A heart-throb, a stroke of magic, had so +lifted him up that over the top of the wall edging the road of life for +him he had seen a thrilling garden outstretched, smiling in the sun, a +sight that so enkindled him with the witchery of its promises that he +felt he should seek for a way into that garden till he found it; should, +if necessary, demolish the wall. + +That day he went walking on the hills beyond Settignano, and the new +light, the intoxication, persisted--the vision of himself as Aurora's +lover. Why not? An escape from the past, a different adventure from all +prefigured in his dull expectations before.... In his theory of living +Gerald had always admitted the gallant advisability of burning ships. +There was room in his theory of living for just such a divergence from +design as he now meditated. When the call comes, summon it to never so +improbable places, the poet and artist obeys. He had gone to bed on the +second night with these thoughts and a plan for the morrow. + +Now that morrow was wearing to an end and all the floating splendid +courageous thoughts and feelings, brave in the assurance, along with the +determination, of victory, must be somehow caught and compressed and +turned into the language--how poverty-stricken, how stale!--of a +proposal of marriage; even as a great variegated, gold-shot, +butterfly-tinted, cloud-light tissue of the Orient is drawn into a +colorless whipcord twist that it may pass through a little ring. + +As he revolved in his mind what he should say to start with, Gerald saw +appropriateness for the first time in the methods of the historic Gaul, +who seized by her hair the charming creature whom he felt allied to him +by deep things, seated her on the horse before him, and rode away. But +what he would have liked so much the best would have been to lay his +head in Aurora's willing lap, embrace her knees tenderly, and have her +understand all without a word being spoken. + +Now he cleared his throat, took a reasonable air, a tone almost of +banter, to say what, influenced by the long precedent of their converse +together, he could say only in that manner, covering up as best he could +the fact that his heart trembled and burned. + +"Shall we resume our conversation of last Friday?" he asked, with a fine +imitation of the comradely ease which had marked all their intercourse +that day. + +He was looking over the valley, as if still preoccupied with its beauty +rather than with her. + +Thus misled, she did not guess right. She said: + +"About Charlie, you mean? Just fancy, I haven't thought of him once all +day! Little varmint! Don't I wish I had the spanking of him! But I guess +it would lame my arm." + +"Not about Charlie. I asked would you marry me, and you said you would +not. Will you to-day?" + +"Not for a farm!" she answered, with emphasis equal to her +precipitation. + +"Why not?" he asked, undisconcerted. + +"Because." + +"Come, let us reason together, Aurora." He changed position, arranging +himself on his elbow so as to be able to look at her. His eyes were +steady. "For a man to ask a woman to marry him is of course the greatest +piece of impertinence of which he could be guilty. But from such +impertinences, Auroretta, has been derived every beautiful thing that +has blessed our poor world from the beginning. No man is good enough for +any woman, let that stand for an axiom. But there again, Auroretta, it's +not according to merit that those rewards, gentle and beautiful ladies, +are dispensed. I have rather less to offer than any man in the world, +but I am bold because you, dear, are just the one to be blind." + +"Oh, it's not _that_, of course," said Aurora, hurriedly. + +"Don't suppose for a moment that I am troubled by the size of your +fortune or the size of my own. You haven't any money, dear. Others have +your money. I have almost to laugh at the splendid speed with which that +open granary of yours will be eaten clean by all the birds coming to +pick one seed at a time." + +"You needn't laugh, then. Some of it is going to be pinned to me solid, +so that nothing can get it away from me, not even I myself." + +"I am sorry to hear it. The other was so complete. Well, if you had +nothing, I should still have just enough to keep us from hunger, though +perhaps not from cold in these dear old stone houses of Italy. And +you--I know you well enough to be sure of it--you are exactly the one to +learn how much there can be in life besides its luxuries. Since my +illness, too, Aurora, let me confide to you, there have been in me +reawakenings.... I have felt the beginning--I am speaking with reference +to my work,--I have felt intimations--No, it is too difficult to express +without seeming to boast, which is horribly unlucky. In short, I have +felt that I might do the turn still of forcing a careless generation to +pay attention." + +"Oh, Gerald, how nice it is to have you say that!" she warmly rejoiced. +"I'm so glad to hear it!" + +"Now tell me why it is you won't marry me. Stop, dear. Don't say because +you are not in love with me. I have difficulty in seeing how any one in +her right senses could be in love with me. It would be enough, dear, +that you should be to me as you were during those happy, happy days when +I was so beastly ill. You are so generous, it would be merely fulfilling +your nature. And I, upon my word, dear, would try to deserve it. I would +give you reason to be kind. I am not without scraps of honor--wholly; I +would do my best to make you happy." + +"No,"--she shook her head decidedly,--"no, Gerry," she added, to take +the sharp edge off her refusal, "no, Gerry; Rory won't." + +"You have only to lose by it, that is obvious, and I to gain, and +nothing could equal the indecency of insistence on my part; but I feel +that I am going to persist to the point of persecution. You are fond of +me, you know. I only dare to say you are fond of me because you have +said it yourself more than once. And you are always sincere, and I +wouldn't be likely to forget. Now, if you are fond of me,--very, very +fond, you have said repeatedly,--why do you refuse? I wouldn't be a bore +of a husband, I promise. I would leave you a great deal of liberty." + +"No, Geraldino; no." + +"You needn't tell me there's somebody else. I don't believe it. Though +you feel only fondness for me, I know that you are not in love with +anybody else. When one is in love, there is no room in life for such +warm and dear friendship as you have frankly shown me. It's that, after +all, which has given me courage." + +"No, no; there's nobody else." + +"Well, then, why can't you? Why won't you?" + +"I--" She hesitated, as if to think. There was a silence. Then she asked +slowly, like one who finds some difficulty in laying her tongue on the +right words: "Do you remember all those things you said that evening in +the garden, the night you came in to meet Tom for the first time? How +you wouldn't for anything in the whole world let yourself get tangled up +again with caring for a person?" + +"Perfectly. I could only picture it as meaning more of trouble and +unrest. But things change, dear. We change. There has taken place in me +since that, no matter for what reason, an increase of self-confidence +and confidence in fate such as turns men into nuisances or makes them +successful. In the last twenty-four hours particularly. Now, as I look +at the inconvenience of getting tangled up again with caring for a +person, I find I don't mean at all to suffer. I mean to bother you until +you say yes, and then to be happy. You could never wilfully torment me, +I know; you are incapable of it. Then, when you have graciously +consented to marry me, I feel as if I might build up my life on new +lines." + +"I can't, Geraldino; I can't." + +"You can't. So you have said. And I have asked you to tell me your +reasons, that I may combat them one by one." + +"It's no use. We're too different." + +"That we are different, thank God! is a reason for and not against." + +"No, no; not when it's such a huge difference. We're like--a bird and a +fish." + +"Don't call me a fish. I object." + +"We don't think the same about hardly anything." + +"But we feel alike on everything of importance." + +"There's hardly a thing I do that's quite right as you see it. No, don't +take the trouble to contradict me; let me do the talking for a minute. +You're so critical and so conventional and so correct! No matter how +much you say you aren't, you _are_. And while we're like this I +don't have to care. I rather enjoy shocking you. And while I'm none of +your business, you don't have to care what I do or what I'm like. We can +have our fun and be awfully fond of each other, and it's all serene and +right. But if I were Mrs. Gerald Fane, all my faults and shortcomings, +my not knowing the things that everybody in your society knows, my not +having any elegant accomplishments, would show up so glaring that I +should know you must be mortified. You couldn't help it." + +"Stop, dear! You enrage me. You put me beside myself. You are so +superficial. And dense. And you hold me up to myself in the features of +a beastly cad! I won't have it. For one thing, let me tell you that if I +were the Lord Ronald Macdonald of that song we've heard Miss Felixson +sing, and you were that canny lass Leezie Lindsay, I should know jolly +well that after I'd carried you off to the Hielands my bride and my +darling to be, it would be a very short time before Lady Ronald +Macdonald had all the airs and tricks of speech of my sisters and +cousins. That, however, is neither here nor there. Who wants you to be +different? Aurora, if you only knew yourself! Ceres, or Summer, or Peace +sitting among the wheat-sheaves, what would it matter that she had not +been educated at a fashionable boarding-school? Let her just breathe and +be,--beautiful, benign, and any man not utterly a fool will prefer to +lie at her knees, keeping still while her silence appeases and +reconciles him, to hearing the most brilliant conversation of a lady +novelist." + +"You can talk beautifully, Gerald, that's one sure thing; but talk me +over you can't. Seems to me I should have to be crazy to forget all in a +moment what I've said over and over to myself, and drilled myself not to +lose sight of. After you asked me the other day, though I knew it was +just on the spur of the moment, I thought it all out in the night as +much as if it had been serious, and I saw what would be the one safe +course for little me. I mustn't; that's all there is to it. Everything +is wrong for it to turn out happy in the end. I'm terribly fond of you, +but I should be scared to death of you, simply scared to death, as a +husband. We're not the same kind. If I could forget it on my own +account, I have only to remember how it would strike Estelle. And +Estelle's got no end of horse sense. It's according to horse sense we +must act when it comes to settling the real things of life. I +expect"--she had the effect of turning a page or a corner; she dropped +from heights of argument to low plains--"I expect I shall be big as a +mountain by and by. I don't see any help for it. I starve myself, I +drink hot water, I take exercise,--nearly walk my legs off,--and the +next time I get weighed I've gained three pounds! What's the use? Then, +I'm older than you." + +"Not at all. I'm older than the everlasting hills; you are the youngest +thing that lives." + +"That's all right, but you were twenty-eight your last birthday, and I'm +thirty. I'm afraid my character's already pretty well fixed in its +present form. When it comes over me, for instance, to play the clown, +I've got to do it or burst. And you're naturally a tyrant, you know." + +"I am. I am critical, carping, conventional, and a tyrant, everything +you say, but just because I am those things, you ought to be able to +see, dear Aurora--because I am those things and know it, they are the +things least to be feared in me. Do you suppose Marcus Aurelius was +really calm and philosophical? Because he, on the contrary, was anxious +and passionate, he wrote those maxims to try to live by. When you +_would_ go and be a negress, did I make a scene? I gnashed my teeth +and gnawed my knuckles, but when I saw you afterward, wasn't I decently +decent?" + +"Yes, but you took to your bed. If I were Mrs. Gerald, and the Pope of +Rome sent for me to do Lew Dockstader for him and his cardinals, you +know you wouldn't let me go." + +"You are wrong. I should make a point of it. I should only ask to be +permitted to retire into solitude until all the vulgar people had +stopped talking about it." + +"Ah, you're a dear, funny boy; but put it out of your mind, Geraldino, +do, dear, when we're so happy as it is. Let's go on just as we've been +going; you know yourself that it's the wisest, and what really you would +prefer. If you've asked me to-day--mind, I don't say you _have_; +but if you have--to save my vanity and back up the proposal you didn't +really mean the other day,--because you're always such a gentleman; +you'd rather die than not behave like a gentleman,--let it go at that. +But if you should feel now that you've got to back up your declaration +that you're going to persist and follow this up, just ask me over again +every few days to show there's no unkind feeling, and I promise it will +be safe; I'll refuse you every time. It'll be our little standing joke. +For don't you go dreaming that I'm going to let go of you! You can call +me pudgy if I let you get away. I love you too dearly. Wasn't everything +all right and lovely until the other day when you came out with that +stilted speech, 'doing you the honor'? We'll take up again just where we +left off, and bimeby make fun of all this. You who've read all the books +ever written, don't you know of cases where two like us went on being +just friends, and taking comfort in each other on and on to the end of +the tale?" + +"There have been examples, yes, a very few, and not on the whole +encouraging." + +"You know we never thought of anything else until three days ago, and +were perfectly contented. Let's call all this in between a mistake, like +taking the wrong road and having to turn back to be where we were +before. Let's go back." + +"Yes, let's go back. I won't bore you any more." + +He had all in an instant changed to cool dryness. They would get no +further along with talk on this occasion, that was clear. And to clasp +her knees, laying his head on her lap, and penetrate her in silence with +the conviction that they belonged together in a manner that turned all +the sensible things she said into folly, could not be done outside the +world of dreams and fancies. He jumped to his feet. + +"I meant, you know, let's go back to Florence. I'm afraid it's high +time. We ought to have daylight at least until we get to the foot of the +mountain." + +"Cross, Geraldino?" + +"Not at all." + +"Good friends as ever?" + +"Assuredly." + +"Oh, I've had such a beautiful day!" she sighed, getting up by the help +of his two hands, and brushing down her dress. "I certainly do love to +be with you!" + +With the inconsequence of a woman she wanted, in order to console him +for rejecting him, to make him sure she loved him deeply nevertheless; +and so she said, turning upon him eyes of sweetest, sincerest affection, +"I certainly do love to be with you!" + + * * * * * + +In the carriage they were silent, like people tired out by the long day, +talked out, and certain of each other's consent to be still. + +The two young fellows on the box were quiet, too. The horses now needed +no encouragement to go; the scraping of the brake gave evidence rather +of the need to hold them back. The driver's friend, named appropriately +Pilade, sat hunched with chilly sleepiness; but Angelo, the driver, was +kept visibly alert by the responsibility of making a safe descent in the +fast-failing light. Owing to the dilatoriness of the _signori_ they +had been later in starting than was prudent. + +When they emerged at last from the shadow of the chestnut-trees and the +brake blessedly was released, it was accomplished evening. The dome of +the firmament spread above them so wonderful for darkly luminous +serenity that the signori behind in the carriage arranged themselves to +contemplate it comfortably, with their feet on the forward bench, their +heads propped on the back of the seat. + +Thus they passed through glimmering hamlets, between high walls of +orchards, past iron gates opening into cypress avenues with dim villas +at the other end, terraces of vine-garlanded olive-trees, all of a dark +silvery blue, and did not vouchsafe a look at anything but the inverted +cup of the nocturnal sky. + +Even this they did not see more than in a secondary way, for the +interposing thoughts and images. + +The eyes of both were wide, and in their fixity the lights of heaven +were glassed. The face of the one burned with a red spot on the +visibly-defined cheek-bone; the cheeks of the other were, for a marvel, +pale. + +Aurora, uplifted on a great wonder and pride and illogical happiness, +was thinking of the days to come, the immediate to-morrows, rich in a +tenderness profounder still than that which had linked her before to the +companion staring at the stars beside her; she thought of how she should +through a wise firmness and God's help steer their course into ways of a +safer and longer happiness than that which he had tendered. + +"It would seem rather unnecessary--" came from him through the +transparent darkness in what was to the young driver's ears a monotonous +bar of insignificant sound, "it would seem to me almost imbecile, to say +to you that I love you, when for months I have been hovering around you, +as must have been evident to the dullest, like the care-burthened +honey-fly, possessed with the fixed desire to hide his murmurs in the +rose. When for months I have been, in fact, like a dog with his nose on +your footprints, asking nothing but to lie down at your feet with his +muzzle on your shoe." + +She impulsively felt for his hand, and pushed her own into it. "Don't +say another word, Gerald. I daresn't do what you wish, I just daresn't. +I'm plain scared to! And I'm such a fool that I'm nearer to it this +minute than I like to be by a long sight. I'm fond enough of you for +almost anything, and you know it, but I must keep my level head. It +can't be done--a greyhound tied down to a mudturtle. I know what I'm +like,--no disparagement meant, Mrs. Hawthorne,--and what you're like, +and I won't let myself forget. I'm looking out first of all for myself, +but I'm looking out for you, too, dear boy. Don't say any more about it +to-night, Gerald, please, with the stars shining like that, and the air +so sweet that all the fairy-tales you ever heard seem possible. I want +to keep solid earth under my feet." + +Gerald was not so devoid of the right masculine spark as not to +recognize the moment for one of which advantage should be taken by any +creature capable of growing a mustache. The thing to be done was to put +his arms around her like a man, and lay his head on her shoulder like a +child, and treat as not existing the barriers which she described as +dividing them. + +Often enough in his life Gerald had wished he might have been a +masterful man, capable of the like things. But already a vague sickness +of soul had succeeded his momentarily dominant mood. Distrust filled +him--of his own character, his aims, his talent, his health, and his +destiny. His dreams had but recently taken the form in which he had that +day expressed them; he had not grown into them. Under the depressing +effect of failure he was no more sure than she had professed to be that +the proposed union would not be a rash mistake. He saw the wisdom of a +return to his gray policy of wanting nothing, asking nothing. Heaviness +possessed him; he made no motion. + +Signs of the nearing city came thicker and thicker; the street lamps +became frequent and consecutive. Aurora sat up and composed her +appearance. The lighted house-fronts threw back the skies to +inexpressible altitudes. + +She continued aloud for Gerald to hear a conversation she had been +holding mentally: + +"Estelle says we must go away somewhere for the summer, because it's +awfully hot down here in Florence, we're told. We're thinking of taking +some sort of place at the seashore for the bathing season. You'll be +coming down to visit us, won't you? Then by and by, when I've had pretty +near enough of the kind of life I'm leading, tell you what I'm thinking +I'll do. Give up the house I've got and take another, different, and fit +it up for a children's hospital, a small one, of course, to be within my +means, and run it myself, and do what I can of the nursing. I've been +thinking of it for some time as a good thing to do instead of spending +my money and nothing to show for it. It would be something to do for the +sake of little Dan, to make it so it wouldn't be the same as if he never +had passed through the world. Then I shall have my work just as you have +yours, Gerald. And so we'll live on, each so interested in all the other +does. And you'll come to see me, and I'll go to see you--chaperoned, if +you insist, though I understand a studio can be visited without +impropriety, and--" + +"You can leave me out of your plans for the future. I am going away to +forget you." + +"Oh, no, you're not. You're coming to see me to-morrow. Five o'clock at +the very latest, hear?" + +"I'm afraid you will have to excuse me." + +"You wouldn't break my heart like that for anything, Gerald Fane! You +wouldn't let the foolish doings of this day destroy all the months have +built up! You're not so mean. When I tell you it'll be all right and +just as it was before--" + +But he stubbornly would not agree, and they quarreled, as so often, half +in play, half in real exasperation, each calling the other selfish. + +But at her door, when he took her hands to thank her for the day she had +given him, he dropped quite naturally, "Until to-morrow, then," and she +entered her great white hall with a happy, shining face. + + * * * * * + +In the half-light of the solitary hall-lamp the white-and-gold door +between the curving halves of the stairway stood open on to the +blackness of the unlighted ball-room. At the threshold appeared Estelle, +and stood with folded arms until the servant who answered the bell had +been heard retreating down the back stairs. She came forward with a +tired, troubled, pallid, and severe face. + +"Well, I'm glad you've got back!" she said, as much as to say that she +had given up looking for her. And as Aurora unexpectedly cast +mischievous, muscular arms around her and tried to squeeze the breath +out of her, she gasped amid spasms of resistance: "Stop! Don't try to +pacify me! I'm in no mood for fooling! I'm as cross with you as I can +be!" + +"You little slate-pencil! You little lemon-drop, you!" said Aurora, +squeezing harder, then suddenly letting go. + +"I'm in no mood to be funny, you--you county-fair prize punkin! I've +been worried half to death. Where've you been so long, 'way into the +night, long past eleven o'clock?" + +"Didn't you find my note on the pin-cushion? That informed you where +I've been." + +"I thought you must have met with an accident, to make you so terribly +late, or else made up your mind to go off with that young man for good +and all. Tell you the truth, I didn't quite know which I should prefer, +which would be better for you in the end." + +"Do you mean to tell me you've been sitting here all day stewing and +fretting about that? Didn't you ever in your life go buggy-riding with a +feller, and did it always ends with the grand plunge? You know it +didn't. You know you could ride from Provincetown to Boston, with the +moon shining, too, and not even exchange a chaste salute." + +"Nell, there's one thing I know, and it's that my scolding and warning +and beseeching will do exactly as much good as an old cow mooing with +her neck stretched over a stone wall. You know what I think. I've had +plenty of time for reflection, walking up and down the floor in there in +the dark; and long before you finally got home I'd made up my mind not +to be an idiot and make myself a nuisance trying to influence you. It's +your funeral. What you choose to do is none of my business. What I said +when you came in just escaped me.--Stand off and let me look at you." + +While making the request, she herself drew off to get a more +comprehensive view of her friend. + +Something of the sunshine, the mountain sweetness, the unpolluted +breezes and wide perspectives of the heights, the dreams of the starlit +homeward ride, the triumph in man's love, was shining forth from Aurora, +with her fresh sunburn, her untidied hair, and softly luminous eyes. +Estelle felt herself suddenly on the point of tears. But she stiffened. + +"Well, you do look as if you'd had a good time, you crazy thing!" she +said dryly. "What made you put your best dress on if you were going to +sit round on the ground? You've got it all grass stains. Oh, Nell," she +melted, "while you've been off gallivanting, I've just about worried +myself sick over a paper Leslie left. I've been longing for you to get +back to see what you make of it." + +"A paper? What do you mean?" + +"A newspaper. Come on upstairs. I left it on the desk. Leslie called in +the forenoon, but I had gone out. Then she came again in the afternoon, +so I knew it must be something special. But I simply couldn't bring +myself to see her and let her know you'd gone off for the whole day with +Gerald Fane. So I got the maid to tell her we were both out. Everybody +does that over here. Anyhow, I went and stood on the terrace while the +maid was delivering my message. So Leslie went off, but she left this +Italian paper for the maid to give us. And, my dear,--now don't +faint,--there's a long piece in it about you." + +"For goodness' sakes! About me? Why? Where?" + +"There. It isn't marked, and I was the longest time trying to discover +why Leslie had left the paper. After I'd gone all over it hunting for a +marked passage, I thought it must be a mistake and that she'd simply +left it because she was tired of carrying it round, and the maid hadn't +understood. But going over it column by column, I at last saw the word +Hawthorne and those other names. '_Una Americana_'--'An +American'--the article is entitled. It looks to me, Nell, as if your +whole life's history might be printed there." + +"For the land's sake! Now, who do you suppose can have done that? What +on earth would anybody want to--" + +"I've been puzzling over it and puzzling over it till I'm about played +out trying to make sense of it, and my head aches like fury. Oh, never +mind my head! Now you've got back I don't care." + +"And your French doesn't help you to translate it?" + +"Yes, it does help--some. I can pick out lots of words, and here and +there a whole sentence; but what I can't get at is the spirit of the +whole, whether it's meant to be friendly or not." + +"Have you tried with a dictionary? Where's the dictionary? Get it, and +we'll pick it out if it takes all night." + +"Indeed, I wish I had a dictionary. Mine's French-English. I asked +Clotilde if she had an Italian-English or an Italian-French, and she +said yes, but at home. Isn't it provoking? I certainly wasn't going to +show this to her, and get her to translate it for me before I'd +consulted with you." + +"Bother!" said Aurora, thoughtfully, with her eyes on the cryptic print. +Estelle sat close, examining the sheet over her shoulder. "_Elena_ +means Helen, doesn't it? I guess it must, as it comes here before +Barton. They've got my old name. And there's Bewick--Bewick, and here's +Colorado. They've got the whole thing, fast enough. It's the doing of an +enemy; there can be no doubt of that." + +"I know who you're thinking about." + +"Charlie Hunt, of course. Scamp! Worm! Cockroach! Low down, ungrateful, +pop-eyed pig!" Nor did the reviling stop there. For the space of about +forty seconds Aurora was unpublishable. + +"But how on earth did he get at it?" wondered Estelle. + +"After he'd opened that letter of mine, he wrote to the amiable writer +thereof and asked for information." + +"Honestly, Nell, I don't think he's had time." + +"I guess he has--just time. The languishing Iona hurried for once. Well, +I don't care!" Aurora folded the paper tight and flung it from her. +"Enemies may do what they please; I've got friends. If everything comes +out as it really happened, I haven't anything to fear, except that it's +mighty unpleasant. It's only lies, and people believing them, that could +do me harm. I've got friends in Florence. Oh, not many true ones, I +don't suppose. It's paying my way that has made me popular, I'm not such +a gump as not to know that. But some true friends I've got, and their +backing will be my stay. One friend I've got--" Pride and a sudden +battle-light flashed in Aurora's eye. "One friend I've got, who if I +gave the word would kill Charlie Hunt for this, or put him in a fair way +to dying. I do believe, Hat, that Gerald Fane would call Charlie Hunt +out to fight a duel to punish him for a slur on me. Oh, he can fence +just as well as the Italians he was brought up with. I've seen the +fencing-swords in his studio. But"--she calmed down--"I wouldn't permit +that sort of thing. It's ridiculous. I don't believe in it." + +Cooling to normal, she laughed, with a return to the light of reality. +"He doesn't believe in it, either, I shouldn't suppose." + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +Leslie, arriving early next day, read off the newspaper article, making +a free translation of it, as follows: + + * * * * * + +When a thing is too successful, it is seldom natural; and so when there +appeared in our city a _signora_, blond of hair, azure of eye, with +the complexion of delicate, luminous roses, red and white, whose name +was at once Aurora and _Albaspina_,--Hawthorne,--floral counterpart +of dawn, we should have had suspicions. That we had none does not +prevent our feeling no very great surprise when we learn that the bearer +of the poetic and more than appropriate name is called in sober truth +Elena Barton. The more beautiful name was adopted by a child acting out +its fairy-stories; it was remembered and re-adopted by a woman when she +wished to detach her life from a past which neither charity, fidelity, +nor devotion to a sacred duty had succeeded in keeping from sorrow and +the deadly aspersions of malignity. + +The _gentilissima_ person of the irradiating smile, which, however +briefly seen, must be long remembered, whom we have grown accustomed +this winter to meeting in the salons where assembles all that is most +distinguished among foreigners, whose name we have grown accustomed to +finding foremost in every work of charity, has a title to our esteem far +beyond the ordinary member of an indolent and favored class. To +alleviate suffering has been the chosen work of those hands that +Florence also has found ever open and ready with their help. It was in +effect the extent of their beneficence which brought about the black +imbroglio from which Elena Barton chose to flee and take refuge in the +City of Flowers under the _soave_ and harmonious name by which we +know her. + +Her life had been for several years devoted to the care of an old man +afflicted with a most malignant and terrible cancer in the face. She had +filled toward him so perfectly the part of a daughter that his gratitude +made her upon his death an equal sharer in his fortune with the children +of his blood. Thence the law-case Bewick _versus_ Barton, which for +a period filled the city of Denver in Colorado of the United States as +if with poisonous fumes. The literal daughters, two in number, who had +shown no filial love for the unfortunate old man, in trying to annul +their father's will, left nothing undone or unspoken that could help +their _turpe_, or evil, purpose, even attempting to prove that not +only had the devoted nurse been their father's _amante_--[You can +guess what that is, Aurora. They are much simpler here than we at home +about calling things by their names, and much more outspoken on all +subjects], but had likewise been the _amante_ of the son, sole +member of the family who supported her claim to the share of the fortune +appointed by the father. Justice in the event prevailed, but a tired and +broken woman emerged from the conflict. What to do to regain a little +of that pleasure in living which blackening calumnies and rodent +ill-will, even when not victorious, can destroy in the upright and +feeling nature? The imagination which had prompted in childhood the +acting out of fairy-stories here came into play: Leave behind the scene +of sorrows, take ship, and point the prow toward the land of orange and +myrtle, of golden marbles and wine-colored sunsets; change name, begin +again, do good under a beautiful appellation which the poor should learn +to love and speak in their prayers to the last of their days.... + + * * * * * + +"The rest, Aurora dear, is pure flattery, which it becomes me not to +speak nor you to hear. I won't read it." + +"Well, I never!" breathed Aurora. "Who did it?" + +"We did it! My father and your Doctor Bewick and Carlo Guerra and I. We +did it to be before anybody else, set the worst that could be brought up +against you in a light that explains and justifies. We did our best to +fix the public mind and show it what it should think. You know what the +mind of the public is. We've hypnotized the beast, I hope; it has taken +its bent from us." + +"But--" + +"This was the way of it, my dear. The day after Brenda's wedding I was +at the Fontanas,--she was a Miss Andrews, you know, of +Indianapolis,--and there was Charlie, too, and there was likewise Madame +Sartorio, who is Colonel Fontana's niece by his first marriage. We were +talking in a little group when something, I forget what, was said about +you, Aurora. Charlie--for what reason would be hard to think, unless one +had a sharp scent for what goes on under one's nose--Charlie +interrupted, to introduce as a sort of parenthesis, 'Mrs. Hawthorne, +whose real name, by the way, is Helen Barton.' The others were naturally +taken aback, except Madame Sartorio, who could not quite disguise a +cat-smile. For a moment none of us knew what to say, and Charlie went +on, with his air of knowing such a lot more than anybody else-- + +"'Yes. It seems that all winter we have been warming in our bosom, so to +speak, the heroine of a _cause célèbre_ at a place called Colorado +in America.'" + +"That was enough for me. I stopped him. + +"'Don't say any more, Charlie. All I wish to know about Mrs. Hawthorne +is what she cares to tell me herself,' and I insisted that the +conversation should return to other things. + +"When I got home I told mother, and she repeated to me what you, Aurora, +confided to her when we first knew you. We told father, and when Doctor +Bewick came that evening to say good-by we consulted, and here in this +newspaper you have the result, put into Italian journalese by Carlo +Guerra, whom we called in to aid us. He likes you so much, Aurora; did +you know it? He met you at Antonia's. So there you have the whole story. +I'm bitterly ashamed of Charlie, my dear, and I'm sorry about him, too. +One never looked upon him as a particularly fine fellow, still, one +liked him. He had never done anything that disqualified him for a sort +of liking, and we've all grown up together." Leslie wrinkled her +forehead in puzzlement. "It's curious, somehow, to think of him, who, we +have said so often, has no real inside, as being sufficiently under the +dominion of a passion to care to please his lady by offering up you, who +have, after all, been to him a source of a good many pleasures, with +your open house, invitations to dinner, and so on. I don't quite +understand it." + +"Never mind about him!" Aurora flicked him aside. "I don't care. And you +say Tom helped. And he never told me, or wrote me a word about it. I had +a letter from him this morning. Well, well. You certainly did make a +good-sounding story of it, among you. And the main facts are true, far +as they go; I can't say they aren't. But, oh, my dear Leslie, there was +a lot more to it than that. I've got to tell you, so's not to feel like +a fraud. You're so sharp; you know me pretty well by this time, and I +guess you don't suppose in me any of those awfully 'fine feelin's' that +could make a blighted flower of me because, while innocent as a babe +unborn, I'd been dragged through the courts by wicked enemies. My +enemies were pretty wicked; I stick to that. Cora Bewick, off living +abroad studying some strange religion, while her kind old pa was dying +at home, and she never once coming near him till he was under ground; +Idell Friebus, never coming into his room except with her nose wrinkled +up with disgust at the smell of disinfectants--or disgust at him, it was +none too plain which. They made a fine pair of daughters. But when it +came to fighting over the will, the lawyers on the Bewick side gave out +just what it was that a perfectly noble woman would have done in my +place of the old man's nurse. And my lawyers would have it that +everything that didn't accord with that ideal simply must be kept dark, +or public feeling would go against us. It's that that made it so +nasty--pretending, and avoiding this, and keeping off the other. It +amounted to lying, no matter what they said. But they told me if I +didn't do as my counsel instructed me, the result would be the worst lie +of all. I should be believed guilty of just that undue influence I was +accused of, and lose the money into the bargain. So I had to hedge and +shuffle and mislead.... And me under oath to tell the truth! You needn't +wonder if I'm sick still at the thought of it, or wonder that I'd like +to forget it. The truth was I _did_ know beforehand the Judge meant +to leave me one fourth of his money, and I was tickled to death. I +gloried in it. I loved to imagine the rage it would throw his wicked +daughters in, and his mean little miserable son-in-law. I was glad, +besides, out and out, to think I should have the money. I plain wanted +it, I did. Maybe a real noble woman wouldn't have. Maybe it showed a +degraded nature. Well, that's the way it was. Sometimes I feel disposed +to be ashamed of it, but mostly I don't. For one thing, I felt then and +I feel now, I deserved that money by a long sight more than those +bad-hearted girls of his. I was a comfort to Judge Bewick. I won't say I +earned the money, it was too much: but there were some hours of my +tending him, poor soul, when it did seem to me a nurse came pretty near +earning anything the patient could afford to pay. All the same, I would +have done what I did for the old boy if he hadn't had a cent, I had so +much respect for him, as much as for my own father, and I felt I owed so +much to his son. Then about his son, the doctor. If Cora's old +nurse-girl, who was kept on in the house as a servant, though she was +past her usefulness, lied in court when she said she saw Tom and me +kissing at such an hour, in such a place, still, the truth was that I +had at different times kissed Tom. You can't tell why it seems all right +to you to kiss one man when it would seem a very queer thing to do to +kiss another. When Tom had been away for any length of time, I always +kissed him when he came back; it seemed natural to both of us. But there +in court I had to try to appear as if I never could have descended to +committing such an immoral act, as well as to give the impression that +if I'd known the old man had any notion of making me co-heir with his +own children I would have strained every nerve to stop it, called them +all in to help me curb him if necessary. Pshaw! the humbug of it turns +my stomach now. Leslie, my verdict is, you can't come through a law-suit +_clean_. I'd give a good deal to cut that page out of my life." + +Aurora's eyes, filled with the shadows of the past, and her face, with +the dimples expunged, were to Leslie almost unfamiliar. Aurora, +oppressed in her moral nature, gave a glimpse of herself that would +change and enlarge the composite of her aspects carried in Leslie's +mind. + +"There, stop thinking of it!" said Estelle. "You always work yourself up +so." + +"The point of my coming bright and early like this," Leslie nimbly +managed a diversion, "was, as you have guessed, to catch you before you +could possibly go out. My mother desires you, dear ladies, to accompany +me back to lunch--a triumphal lunch, Aurora, to grace which she has +collected those special pillars of society whose countenance and support +ought to make you scornful of any little weed-like growth of gossip that +might sprout up from seed of Charlie's sowing. You know them all more or +less, having been associated with every one of them in some form of +beneficence. I might more accurately describe it: having donated largely +to each of their pet charities. It is not a very admirable world--" +Leslie's young face took that little air of knowing the world which +sometimes amused old gentlemen so much, "it is a selfish society, not +indisposed, or, I am afraid, altogether displeased, to believe evil of +its neighbor, and not always disinclined to turn and rend its favorites. +But it would be a pity, really, if you should have poured forth upon it +as you have done, Aurora, money and smiles, bouquets and banquets and +sunbeams, good-will and baby-socks and knitted afghans, and it did not +rise up when you are attacked and say, 'No. An exception has to be made +in this case. We have all been bought!'" + +Aurora, who had been listening with expanded, gathering-in eyes, cheeks +flushing deeper and deeper, turned her head sharply away to try to keep +from falling or being seen two unaccountable tears half blinding her. + +The sight of her, by infection, moistened the eyes of the other women. + +Estelle sought a quick way out of the emotional silence. + +"Nell," she said, albeit with cracked voice, "if we're going out to +lunch, I guess we ought to be dressing. Go along, child, put on your +best bib and tucker." + +"Oh, my best bib and tucker!" wailed Aurora. "Sent to the cleaner's this +morning, all green stains at the back!" + + * * * * * + +If Leslie had not called it a triumphal lunch, it might not have +appeared so very different from any other women's lunch at the season of +roses. Leslie herself, though, found in it the flavor of old-fashioned +romance, just faintly platitudinous, in which poetic justice is done. +Mrs. Foss, the more simple-minded organizer of it, felt that she should +remember it as an occasion when she had risen to the level, placed the +right cards in the fist of destiny, and created an event worthy to take +rank at least with those little triumphs of good housewives at whose +home the president of their husband's company arrived one night unlocked +for and was entertained with brilliant credit. + +To the heroine of the feast, no need to say it was an inexpressibly +exciting, grand, and memorable occasion. Aurora hardly knew herself, so +much the object of attention and graciousness. She was in the mood to +give half of her goods to the poor. After the hostess had risen and made +a little speech, Aurora, unexpectedly to herself, and as if under +inspiration, responded by a little speech of her own, composed on the +spot. It was drowned at the end by hand-clapping all around the table. +Aurora seemed to herself to be living in a fairy-story. + + * * * * * + +As it was after five o'clock when she reached home, she was sure she +would find Gerald waiting for her. She had the whole day long been +looking forward with a sweet agitation to the moment of being with him +and telling him all about it. + +She was more disappointed than she remembered ever being, even as a +child, not to find him or any word from him. She did not allow it to +become later by more than half an hour before she scratched a line and +sent the coachman to his house with it. + +The man came back with nothing but the barren information, received from +Giovanna, that the _signorino_ was absent, having gone to Leghorn. + +"Well, here's a pretty howdydo!" thought Aurora, sore with surprise and +the smart of injury. "If every time I refuse him he's going off like +this to stay away for days and days, what am I going to do?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +"If this is the way it was going to be, and I'd known it before, I'd +have kept better watch over my affections," said Aurora to herself, +reflecting upon Gerald in Leghorn, where he was bending his will +industriously, no doubt, to the work of forgetting her. + +Beside the large sharp thorn of this thought, she was troubled by what +was a small, merely uncomfortable thorn: the knowledge of Gerald exposed +so closely to the influence of Vincent, that persuasive young man of +God, who bowed to images and believed in the Pope. At the end of every +wearisome day she gave thanks that for still another twenty-four hours +she had by grace of strength from on high been able to fight off the +temptation to write to Gerald. + +This for nine days--the nine days it takes for a wonder to become a +commonplace or a scandal to lose its prominent place in conversation. +Then, in the way once sweetly habitual, there came a rapping at the +door, the entrance of a servant, and the announcement, "_C'è il +signorino_." + +Aurora for a second either did not really grasp the import of the words +or did not trust her senses. She asked: + +"What _signorino_? _Signorino_ What?" + +"The _signorino_ who has come back," said the servant, unable on +the instant to recall the foreign name. And if he had felt interest in +the complexion of one so far removed from him as his mistress, he might +have seen her turn the hue of a classic sunrise. + +On her way down the stairs Aurora rejected the idea of a tumultuous +reproachful greeting, such as, "Where have you been so long, you mean +thing?" Or of a cool and cutting one, such as, "You're quite a +stranger." She decided to behave like a nice person, and show respect +for her friend's freedom, after having so explicitly left it to him. + +The Italians performing the service of the house arranged it according +to their own ideas of fitness, and on this warm afternoon the +drawing-room was in soft-colored twilight, the Persian blinds being +clasped, and their lower panels pushed out a very little so as to let in +a modicum of the whiteness of day. + +Gerald stood, very collected, if a trifle pale, holding, like a proper +votary, a bouquet--starry handful of sweet white hedge-roses,--which he +offered as soon as Aurora entered, saying he had picked them for her +that morning in the country near Castel di Poggio. + +The meeting, in Aurora's jubilant sense of it, went off beautifully. She +said in a pleasant, easy tone and her company English, + +"So you've got back. It's awfully nice to see you again. How well you +are looking. I was sure a change would do you good." + +And Gerald said yes, he had found the sea air tonic. He had been staying +with the Johns, Vincent's mother lived in Leghorn. He had worked a +little, made a few drawings. Digressing, he mentioned a trifling gift he +had brought her, and produced a small brass vessel, fitted with two +hinged lids, meant to contain grains of incense for the altar. He said +he had found it in an antiquarian's shop and thought she might care for +it to drop her rings into; he supposed she took them off at night. Its +shape seemed to him to possess more than common elegance. + +Aurora called it adorable, and his giving it to her sweet. They talked +as if they had been making believe, for the benefit of an audience, to +be the most ordinary friends. + +And each of them meanwhile, with heart and head gone slightly insane in +secret, was considering a marvel. The long separation--it had been long +to them--had recreated for both something of the capacity to receive a +fresh impression of the other. The marvel to Aurora was that this choice +being, with his intellectual brow (that was her adjective for Gerald's +brow) his difference from others, all in the way of superiority to them, +the indescribable fascination residing in his every feature, mood, or +word, should be walking the world unclaimed and unattached, for her to +take if she were so minded. Her to take! It was vertiginous. + +And the marvel to him was, in beholding that bounteous temple of a soul, +with its radiance of life, its share, so rich, of the mysterious +something which made the earliest men care to build homes; its gifts, so +large, of comfort and warmth--the marvel was that he should have dared +aspire to conquer it, should have set that to himself as a thing he was +going to persevere in trying to do until--until he had done it, he, +puny, poor in inducements, light of weight. + +The two of them, there could be no doubt of it, had passed within the +portals after which a change comes over the eyes, and those who enter +see each other endowed with qualities raising the capacity for wonder to +an ecstasy: so much engaging beauty, so much dearness, are not to be +believed!... It can never be established whether the eyes only see truly +when under this charm, or whether then more than at other times illusion +makes of them its fool. + +If he had been analytical on the subject of his sentiment for Aurora, as +so often on other subjects, and said to himself that he saw this woman +in a golden transfiguring light because he was in good primordial +fashion in love with her--because, that is to say, obscure affinities of +flesh and blood united with the esteem created by her virtues to make of +him a candle which the touch of her finger-tip miraculously could +light--he would have felt it as a blessed and not a base secret at the +bottom of his attachment. + +While they talked of the weather, as they fell to doing when they had +disposed of the subject of the little incense-holder; and, after that, +while they talked of Leghorn and the various seaside places which Aurora +had to choose from for her summer sojourn, a vastly deep conversation +was taking place between them, which we think it not amiss to report, +because by the nature of things the words they would say aloud on this +occasion would be meager and colorless by comparison with the things +they would feel and to some extent convey to each other through mere +proximity. + +"O Aurora," exhaled from Gerald, while, looking not far from his usual +self, he said that Ardenza by the sea, a mere three miles from Leghorn, +was a very pretty place, "Aurora, you are warmth, you are shelter, you +are rest. I have no hearth or home except as you let me in out of the +desperate cold of loneliness, and grant me to warm myself at your big +heart. You should see, woman dear, that my thankfulness would make you +happy. Nature, the divine, so formed you that my love would kindle +yours. And when you had given your hand into mine I should find paths of +violets, enchanted paths, for us to walk in which you could never find +without me, nor I find for myself. Put up no petty shield against me, +Aurora; fight me with no petty lance, for I verily am that guest you +were awaiting when on balmy spring evenings you felt, and knew not why, +that your life was incomplete." + +And Aurora, mechanically pulling off her rings and putting them into the +brass receptacle, then taking them out of it and putting them back on +her fingers, while she chattered, describing the advantages of a +furnished villa at Antiniano, to be preferred because they were some +Italian friends of Leslie's who desired to let it, was in her inmost +speaking to the inmost of Gerald. The hardly self-conscious meanings +within her bosom made as if an extension of her in the air, comparable +to the halo around the moon on a misty night; and this atomized radiance +had language, it said: "Oh, to draw your head down where it desires to +be! To warm and comfort you! To be to you everything you need! I lean to +you, I cling to you like a vine with every winding tendril. But I am so +afraid of you! so afraid! I am of common, you of finest, clay. How can I +give into any hand so much power to hurt me? If I were to dare it, then +find I could not make you happy, your disappointment would be my +heart-break, and my tragedy might spoil your life. But this know, +Gerald, dearer to me for having been so unhappy, nothing my life could +contain without you would seem to me so good as life with you in a poor +workman's attic, under falling snow, and I to make it home for you!" + +While two souls thus trembled and gravitated toward each other, bathing +in each other's light, it is almost mortifying to have to show to what +degree that which took place at the surface was different and inferior; +to what degree the fine abandon of words spoken and actions performed in +thought was replaced by a shivering prudence keeping guard on one side, +and on the other a deplorable timidity trying awkwardly to be bold. + +Heard through the door, the scene that ensued between these two curious +lovers, when they had worked their way through preliminaries and come to +the point at which they had parted after the day at Vallombrosa, must +particularly have seemed lacking in purple and poetry; for then the soft +light in Aurora's eyes would not have been seen, nor the deep flash in +Gerald's, as he by a point scored felt himself nearer to the goal. + +"Now, what made you run off like that, I want to know," Aurora asked in +the flowing American which she reserved for real friends and sincere +moments, "after you'd said when you left me at the door, 'Good-by till +to-morrow'?" + +"My reasons were several, all simple," he replied, with a faun-look up +from the corner of his eye, which watched her expression. "First, I +wished to flee from that newspaper article--dreadful!--till the danger +of any reference to it in my hearing was greatly reduced. Then, aside +from a slight natural need to recover myself, I felt I must for manners' +sake allow a little time to pass before I approached you again on the +subject of marrying me. One scruples to make himself a bore. It +therefore would be better not to see you, and, in order not to see you, +better not to be in town. Lastly, Auroretta, I conceived the infernal +ambition to make you suffer from absence the minutest fraction of what I +should suffer myself." + +"Don't say a word! I've missed you so my bones felt hollowed out!" + +"Reflect then, my dearest, upon the sufferings you are preparing for +yourself if you haven't a kinder answer for me than the other day to the +same question. All the reasons you gave for saying no were such bad +ones, founded upon a bad opinion of me. I can't take your refusal for +final, don't you see, without first being sure I have convinced you at +least that you are wrong in thinking me a fish or a mudturtle, and wrong +in attributing a lack of intelligence to me which could betray me into +confusing great things with little, little with great." + +"Oh, Gerald, you oughtn't to keep on trying! I do wish you wouldn't! No! +Don't say any more about it!" she pleaded in weak anguish. "You oughtn't +to go on battering against the little bit of common sense I've got +left." + +"Common sense! I advise you to speak of it!" he affected to jeer, +remarkably braced by her misery. "Common sense, as represented by a +decent concern for your good name, ought to prompt you enter as quickly +as you can into an engagement with me. I met our dear Doctor Batoni in +the street yesterday on my way home from the station, and he amiably +asked how was my _fidanzata_, or betrothed? It was a difficult +moment for me, because he told me that _you_ had told him you were +that." + +"I told him nothing of the sort! I said I was your friend, in French." + +"A friend, in French, may mean a good deal. Save your reputation, dear; +I give you the chance." + +"What nonsense! I explained to him as well as I could, in French, that I +was there taking care of you because I was your friend." + +"You are hopelessly compromised. Look to me to set you right." + +"Gerald, I shall do nothing of the kind." + +"Ah, I see that your prejudices hold firm. I was afraid of it when I +came." His mask of flippancy slipped for a moment; deep feeling made his +voice uncertain. "I am not that hardy and masterful man, Aurora, who +could break them down and clutch you above their ruin. But you will find +me very faithful to a hope--which, in fact, to relinquish now would be +beyond what I can expect of my courage." He resumed bluffness. "I told +Vincent he might look for my return to-morrow." + +"No, sir!" she came out with lively directness. "You're not going back +to Leghorn if I can help it! I--I have a plan." + +"You have a plan? From your face I am afraid not a good one. You look so +dubious." + +"Perhaps it isn't a good one, but it's the only way I can see. Listen." +She looked down at her hands, and kept him waiting. "One evening last +winter at a party a young Italian naval officer got talking to me in a +green bower under a pink paper lantern away from the rest. Something in +the atmosphere, I guess, made him want to talk to somebody of his +love-affairs, and he chose me, though we scarcely knew each other. He +told me he had been very much in love with an American girl, but they +hadn't the money to marry on or the hope of ever having it--like Brenda +and Manlio at first. Yet they couldn't keep apart, and so they just +became engaged, knowing it couldn't end as an engagement is supposed to +do. In that way they could see each other all they wanted, and be seen +together without anybody making a remark. And then when she was obliged +to go home and it had to end, it looked merely like a broken +engagement." + +"And you propose--" + +"We might try it, Gerald. Then if it didn't work well, if I found I was +all the time outraging your sensibilities, and you hurting my feelings, +we'd call it off. In any case we'd give ourselves plenty of time to +realize our foolishness. And you'd promise that when the time came you'd +go like a lamb, with a pleasant face, not saving up anything against me. +Make up your mind, now, that it'll have to be a long, _long_ +engagement--if we don't repent and break it off inside a week. But as it +seems so likely we will, let's don't tell the others right off, Gerald; +not, anyhow, for a week or ten days." + +"Admired Aurora, it surely is the most immoral proposition that ever +came from fair lady so well brought up as you!" cried Gerald, in a +proper state of excitement. But yet, such were his limitations, nothing +in any proportion with the throbbing fire inside him, the immensity of +his incredulous joy, appeared on his outside, where merely the mollified +lines of his face gave him a look of greater youth, and his cool-colored +eyes let through a faint testimony of the inward light. "I accept +without hesitation. I promise whatever you ask. From this moment onward +we are _fidanzati_, then. And, my blessed Auroretta, you who are +such a hand at calling names, have your servant's permission to call him +all the names you can think of that signify an ineffable blunderer on +the day when you succeed in freeing yourself from him!" + +Many more things were said, not worth recording. But at last devout +silence reigned. In the twilight room, with all the bad pictures and +trivial ornamentation, to shut out the offense of which he had once +closed his eyes, Gerald now closed them again to concentrate more +perfectly upon the rapture of feeling Aurora's shoulder beneath his +cheek. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +The servant who opened the door for Leslie on this softly brilliant June +morning, being well accustomed to admitting her, obligingly anticipated +her question, "Are the ladies at home?" + +"The _signorina_ is in the _salottino_," he said. From which +Leslie understood that the person whom she chiefly had come to see was +out. It did not really matter, for she had time to wait. Aurora was +likely to come back for lunch. + +She released the man from attendance by a little wave of her hand, +"Never mind announcing me!" and directed her footsteps toward the tall +white-and-gold door standing partly open. + +On her way to it she picked up off the floor a small lawn handkerchief. + +The ball-room impressed her anew as being very vast, very empty, +furnished almost solely as it was by the sparkling chandeliers, every +pendant of which to-day was gay with reflections of the green and +flowery and sun-washed outdoors. + +She turned toward the _salottino_, remotely wondering by what +chance Estelle was preferring it to the favorite red and green +sitting-room upstairs. The _salottino_ had utility when a party was +going on, but to sit and embroider or study French surrounded by all +those fountains of love.... + +A sharp bark preceded the tumbling out through the _salottino_ door +of a little white mop on feet. Upon recognizing Leslie, this performed +evolutions expressive of great joy. + +She had stopped to pat the excited little swirl of silk when Estelle +came forward to see who was there. + +With delighted good mornings the women exchanged the foreign salute, +which Leslie had adopted and Estelle submitted to, a mere touching of +cheeks while the lips kiss the air. + +They sat down on the rococo settee to talk, Leslie, quick of eye, +wondering what had happened to give Estelle that unusual air, an air +of--no, it was indefinable. Excitement had a share in it, and possibly +chagrin, and, it almost seemed, exaltation. The chief thing about it, +however, was that she was trying to conceal it; doing her best, but it +was a poor best, to appear natural. Leslie graciously allowed her to +suppose she was succeeding, and entered at once upon the reason for her +early call. + +"I really think, Estelle, that the villa at Antiniano would suit Aurora. +As for you, I am positive, my dear, that you would adore it. It is a +little out of the thick of things, but has a very fine view of the sea, +also a very pretty garden. Certain conveniences, of course, it hasn't, +but, then, you mustn't expect those of an Italian villa. I saw Madame +Rossi yesterday, and she said she wished you would make an excursion to +Antiniano to see for yourselves. She is sure you would be charmed. One +request she would make: that the peasant family be allowed to continue +in their little corner of the house, where they wouldn't be the least in +your way, and then that the little donkey should be allowed to remain in +the stable. But in return you could use him, she said." + +"Ride him?" + +"Yes, or harness him. For the country, why not, my dear? They are ever +so strong little beasts." + +Estelle began to laugh, presumably at the picture of Aurora on +donkey-back, or, with herself, exhilarating the country-side by the +vision of them drawn in a donkey-cart. Leslie joined in her merriment, +but expostulatingly, and, warned by a note in Estelle's laugh, watched +her with suspicion while it developed into a nervous cackle. She saw her +cover her eyes with one hand, and with the other vainly feel in her +pocket. She was crying. Leslie tendered the little handkerchief found on +the floor, and knew then that it had dried tears before on that same +day. She waited, tactfully silent, merely placing a condoling hand over +her friend's. + +"I might as well tell you," Estelle got out, when her crying fit +permitted her to speak, "that Aurora isn't going to take any villa at +Antiniano this summer.... She's gone away." + +"Gone away? What do you mean?" asked Leslie, surprised into a very +complete blankness of expression. + +"What I say." And in her incalculable frame of mind Estelle again was +laughing. "Oh, I don't know which to do, whether to laugh or cry!" she +explained, with eyes bright at once from laughter and from tears. "One +moment I laugh, next moment I cry. I feel as if I were walking in my +sleep. I guess what I need is a nerve-pill." + +"You say that Aurora has gone away. Where?" + +"Where Gerald pleases, I guess. She's gone with him." + +"With Gerald? Now, my dear friend, please explain. You laugh, you cry. +You say Aurora has gone away with Gerald. Please collect yourself and +tell me what it means. 'Gone away with Gerald.' How do you mean gone +away with him?" + +"I mean they have eloped, or as good as." + +"No, no; people don't elope when there is neither an inconvenient +husband, nor unamenable parents, nor any possible reason why they should +not have each other if they wish to." + +"I wonder what you would call it, then. As late as twelve o'clock last +night I didn't know a thing about it, and this morning early they left +together in a carriage, with her trunk strapped on the back." + +Leslie lifted her hands to her temples and pressed them as if to keep +her head from a dangerous expansion with the size of the new idea that +must find a home there. + +"So it was in earnest!" she said aloud, yet as if speaking to herself. +"Mother has won her bet, and I have lost. Well,"--she tossed her head +and faced Estelle,--"I am glad of it. We knew, of course, that there was +something, and we felt that nothing nicer could happen than that they +should make a match of it. Mother prophesied they would. But I did not +believe it. I was afraid of Gerald--that disposition in him to consider +too finely, to halt on the brink, that negative, renunciatory way he has +settled into. I thought the thing would end in mere philandering. I am +glad"--she threw the weight of conviction on the word,--"glad it hasn't! +I don't see, my dear Estelle, what you can find to cry about." + +"Is that the way it strikes you?" + +"My dear, I couldn't say which I thought the luckier, Gerald to get +Aurora, or Aurora to get Gerald." + +"You surprise me. To me it seems just about the riskiest combination +that could be imagined. I have felt it all along. Those two have no more +in common, I have said, than a bird and a fish." + +"Nonsense, my dear girl! Nonsense!" + +"I have heard him get so impatient with her because simply she didn't +pronounce a word right. I've seen him so annoyed he nearly trembled +trying to choke it down." + +"But did she mind? I mean, his impatience?" + +"I can't say she did; but--" + +"There you have it. They are marvelously suited. Listen and let me talk +to you for your comfort. This, do you hear, is exactly the most +delightful thing that could have happened. Haven't you noticed that +complex natures are rather given to uniting with simple ones, and +finding happiness with them? An artist--how often!--marries his model, a +philosopher marries a peasant." + +"Go on!" sighed Estelle. "Go on! I love you for making me feel better!" +Her eyes moistened again in an almost luxurious melancholy. + +"One of the reasons for mother and me wishing for this consummation was +the broadening of life it would afford Gerald. Gerald doesn't think +about money. Aurora's money, all the same, will do a lot for him in +making possible his getting away from here, where the truth is he +stagnates. Then, too, she will cure him of his morbidness. He sees red +if one so much as breathes the suggestion that his art is morbid. But of +course it is." + +"Aurora said they might go to live in Paris, because she thought it +would be good for his art." + +"Now that's what I want to hear about. Go on and tell me what Aurora +said and what happened between midnight and their extraordinary +elopement, as you call it. But, first of all, why, in the name of common +sense, did they elope? From what did they elope?" + +"From me, I guess. I don't see what else. Oh, yes, I do. From the talk +there would be. But principally, I suspect, he hurried her into it to +make sure of her, for she, too, had her moments of doubting the wisdom +of what she was doing. That much I know. They had only been engaged two +weeks, and all that time I didn't even know they were engaged. I hadn't +been nice about Gerald, I feel bound to confess, so she thought best not +to tell me. She didn't want to hear how I would take it, we've been so +used to speaking our minds to each other. He came oftener than ever and +stayed longer, till it got so I made a point of getting up and making an +excuse to leave the room. It was my way of being spiteful. But Nell +didn't take it up with me in private, as I expected she would. They were +tickled to death to have me leave the room, I can see now. She went +around the house singing an Easter carol and fixing flowers in the +vases, with a look of cheerfulness apart from me that made her seem like +a stranger. I was pretty sore, I can tell you, but I wouldn't speak of +it. I don't know how I thought it would end. Funny, I can't remember how +everything looked so short a time ago as yesterday, but I know I was +eaten up with mean thoughts. I went to bed last night thinking to +myself, 'Well, Nell Goodwin, if you think I'm going to stand much more +of this, you're mistaken. There'll be some plain talk before long.' And +I fell asleep. First thing I knew I was awake, looking to see who'd come +into my room. And there was Nell in her night-dress, holding her hand +round the candle so it wouldn't shine in my eyes. I simply can't tell +you what it was like,--the candle lighting nothing but her made her seem +like a vision in the middle of a glory. Nobody can know how fond I am of +Nell, what friends we've been since little bits of girls. All I could +think of was that she'd come to make up with me, she couldn't wait +another minute. It would have been just like her. And while I waited for +her to speak first, I thought with my heart just melting what a lovely +big thing she is, with that sort of fair look to her neck, and those +warm cheeks, and something so kind about her from head to foot. She put +down the candle and, instead of going into explanations, bent over and +gave me a good hug. And I said, hugging back: 'You better had, you +horrid thing! You better had!' Then she sat down on the bed. 'Hat,' she +said, 'I was going to do a mean thing, but I'm not going to do it. I was +going to slip away without a word, but I'm going to tell you the whole +story. I'm going to marry Gerald,' she said. + +"Then she went on to tell me, and what do you think, I didn't say one +word in objection, not one! Because I could see she was dead in love, +and what was the use except to spoil her happiness, and I didn't want +to. She told me how they'd decided it would be just as well not to wait, +but take a short cut. If they stayed in Florence, she said, she'd feel +they must have a big wedding and ask all their friends, and then she +should have to have a trousseau; it would all take lots of time, and +Gerald would so hate the fuss and the chatter. So they'd made up their +minds to go off to Leghorn without a word to anybody,--whose business is +it anyhow but their own?--and be married just as soon as it could be +done, where they wouldn't get so much as the echo of any remarks on +their haste or the way they preferred to do. She'll be staying with Mrs. +Johns till the ceremony. She said she should write your mother from +there. Then she showed me Gerald's ring that she'd been wearing on a +chain round her neck where I wouldn't see it, and she talked about +Gerald's wonderfulness. She's perfectly wrapped up in him. All I hope is +he appreciates it." + +"His inducing her to elope with him would seem to indicate some warmth +of feeling on his part. The suggestion can hardly have come from her." + +"You're right. I guess it's as bad with him as with her. She talked +about the wonderfulness of his love, such as she never could have +believed, and never could deserve. She said she could be happy with +Gerald in a garret that let the snow leak in. Oh, they're both crazy. +What do you think she gave as one reason for this haste? 'Life is +short,' she said, 'and love is long!' Gerald must have said it to her +before she said it to me, but what do you think of it? 'Life is short +and love is long!'" + +"Do you mean"--asked Leslie, with the least touch of severity,--"that I +ought to share in a cynical view of that saying? I can't, my dear +Estelle. There are my father and mother, you know. In their quiet way +they bear out the idea that love may be as long as life." + +"Yes, of course," said Estelle hurriedly, with a faint air of shame. "My +father and mother, too, make a united couple." + +"My belief is that when two people marry who are in love as they ought +to be, and who in addition are good--By good I think I mean people--" +Leslie, with her look of wisdom beyond her years, paused to take a +survey of life, "--people who have a sense of the other person's rights, +and, as a matter of heart, not principle, feel the other's claims just a +little more strongly than their own--in the case of such people, when +the passion they marry on dies out with their growing older, as we +generally see it do, something takes its place that deserves the name of +love every bit as much." + +"Aurora is good," said Estelle, from her soul. "You would never know how +good unless you had stood in need of kindness." + +"Gerald is good, too," said Leslie, with an effect of more impartiality +but no less positiveness. "He would disdain to be anything else." + +"What is wrong with me is that I'm selfish, I guess," said Estelle, +looking contrite, "and don't like having to give her up to him, after +all the beautiful things we'd planned together. What I ought to feel is +nothing but thankfulness for her having such a chance of happiness, and +then thankfulness for all she did, trying to make up for her desertion." + +Without transition, Estelle went back to the story of the past night. +"You can imagine there wasn't any more sleep for that spell. I got up, +and we went to her room, where she had all the lights lighted and was in +the middle of packing her trunk. She only took one, and about a quarter +of her things. Gerald's going to design wonderful costumes for her, the +style he prefers. I could see she's ready to do just anything to please +him. I'd already noticed how she'd altered her way of doing her hair, +but wasn't smart enough to recognize the signs!... While she was at work +packing she planned for my summer,--that I'm to invite Mademoiselle +Durand to go traveling with me, so I can improve my French at the same +time as give that poor hard-working creature a real vacation and treat. +Then when they go to Venice, she wants me to join them, and the three of +us have a regular jamboree. Then next winter, after I've got home, she +wants me to go to Colorado to visit the Grand Cañon and see the great +sights of my native country before settling down again in East Boston. +She made me a present of Ami." + +"Ami?" + +"I've changed his name from Busteretto. Don't you like it better? Little +Tweetums! He's the only darling I've got left!" She pressed a kiss on +the warm top of his head. "She made me a present of all the clothes and +things she wasn't taking with her. She made me a present of everything +in this house that we didn't find in it when we took it--turned it all +over to me to do what I please with. And I'm sure I don't know what I +shall do with it all unless I set up a store. Anything you see and think +you'd like to have, please say so." + +"She gave you all these things? Do you mean it?" asked Leslie, surprised +despite what she had already known of Aurora. + +"Yes, and along with the things, of course, the responsibility of +settling up everything, dismissing the servants, sending Livvy back to +New York. Such a job! Luckily, there's no hurry; the lease doesn't +expire until October. When you came I'd been sort of looking round. I +was just wondering what to do about this Fountain of Love. Nell paid a +frightful lot for these four panels. I'd been trying to see if they +could be carefully peeled off and the wall behind restored, and while I +was looking the sight of that winter scene broke me all up. It doesn't +tell a very cheerful tale, you know, this series of pictures. After what +I'd just been through, saying good-by to them, it worked on me like a +bad omen." + +"Don't be foolish. Then you saw Gerald, too, before they left?" + +"Yes. I could have done without, but she'd have been hurt. So I shook +hands, and managed to wish him joy. He was nice, but, then, Gerald +always is that. I've never for a moment said anything different. He said +he wanted me to feel that I hadn't lost a sister, but acquired a +brother. Just as they were driving off I remembered something, and +called after Nell, 'What about your portrait?' for I couldn't think she +meant to give me that along with the rest. Gerald said before she could +speak, 'Take it away!' And Nell said right off, 'Oh, yes. Keep it, +Hattie; keep it!' That lovely portrait he painted of her! I don't see +how she could bear to part with it. But, of course, now she has him she +can have as many portraits as she wants. Come and tell me what you +think, whether it would be safe to pack it, frame and all, or better to +unframe it, or, better still, to take the canvas off the stretcher and +roll it." + +Accordingly, they left the room of the cupids and garlands, traversed +the vasty ball-room where the chandeliers, like two huge ear-rings, +divided up the light into twinkling diamond and rainbow showers, entered +the drawing-room of the dignified sixteenth-century chairs, which from +the first had suffered an undeserved neglect, and passed thence into the +familiar parlor of the multitudinous baubles and the grand piano and the +portrait; performing in the contrary direction the pilgrimage on which, +at a period which seemed so immemorably far as to have become legendary, +Gerald had followed Aurora walking before him with a light. + +They stood beneath the portrait, and with the image present to their +minds of painter and sitter hasting on their way to be wed, saw this +equivocal masterpiece with a difference. Not Aurora alone looked forth +from the canvas,--throat of lily, cheek of rose, heaven-blue eyes, smile +and ringlets of immitigable sunniness. Gerald, self-depicted in every +subtle brush-stroke, looked, too. + +"It takes sober, solid, careful people to be interesting when they +commit a rashness," thought Leslie. Then, with a little surge of envy in +her well-regulated breast, "To be swept off one's feet," she thought, +"how educative it must be, how enlarging." + +But a doubt fell, shadow-like, across her vision of future fortunes. If +a person never found it possible to fall in love with those who fell in +love with her, would it necessarily follow that the Some One she should +someday love would regard her with coldness? + +Estelle gazed upward at the portrait with a wistful, well-nigh solemn +look. Not being able, hampered by a dog in her arms, to clasp her hands, +she expressed the same impulse by clasping the dog close to her breast +in token that her wishes for her dearest friend's good were more than +wishes, were a prayer. + +She felt a hand laid lightly on her forearm. + +"You needn't be afraid," said Leslie, "they'll be happy." + +THE END + +[Transcriber's Note: As originally published, this book had two +consecutive chapters labeled as "CHAPTER XV." Chapter numbers have +been resequenced in this text.] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Aurora the Magnificent, by Gertrude Hall + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AURORA THE MAGNIFICENT *** + +***** This file should be named 30642-8.txt or 30642-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/6/4/30642/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/30642-8.zip b/30642-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..566b356 --- /dev/null +++ b/30642-8.zip diff --git a/30642-h.zip b/30642-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0998fde --- /dev/null +++ b/30642-h.zip diff --git a/30642-h/30642-h.htm b/30642-h/30642-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ff3cc24 --- /dev/null +++ b/30642-h/30642-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,14233 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" > +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> +<meta name="generator" content="eppg.py 0.35 (08-Dec-2009)" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Aurora the Magnificent, by Gertrude Hall</title> +<style type="text/css"> +body {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%;} +p {margin-top:1ex; margin-bottom:0; text-indent:0; text-align:justify; padding-left:2ex; padding-right:2ex;} +p + p {margin-top:0; text-indent:1em;} +div.bquote {font-size:1.0em; margin:5px 5%;} +div.bquote p {text-indent:0em; margin-bottom:4px; margin-top:4px;} +div.center {text-indent:0em; margin-bottom:4px; margin-top:4px;} +div.poetry {text-indent:0em; margin-left:2em; margin-bottom:4px; margin-top:4px;} +div.adpage {} +div.adpage p {text-indent:0em; margin-top:1ex;} +p.center {text-align:center; text-indent:0em;} +p.caption {font-size:smaller; text-indent:0em;} +p.tp {font-size:1em; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; text-align:center; text-indent:0em;} +h1,h2 {text-align:center; font-weight:normal;} +h1 {font-size:1.6em;} +h2 {font-size:1.4em; margin-top:4ex; margin-bottom:2ex;} +a {text-decoration:none;} +div.figcenter p {text-align:center;} +div.figcenter {text-align:center; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em;} +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; clear:both;} +td.tcol3 {text-align:right; padding-right:2ex; vertical-align:bottom;} +hr.tb {border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; height: 1px; width: 10em; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;} +hr.pb {border:none; page-break-after:always; margin-top:4em;} +hr.short {border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; height: 1px; width: 20%; text-align: center; margin-top:1ex; margin-bottom:1ex;} +.pagenum {display:none;} +.pncolor {color:inherit;} +p.ar {text-align:right;} + +div.tp {} +div.tp p {font-size:1em; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; text-align:center; text-indent:0em;} + +@media screen { +p {margin-top:1ex; margin-bottom:0; text-indent:0; text-align:justify; padding-left:0; padding-right:0;} +hr.pb {margin:30px 0; width:100%; border:none; border-top:thin dashed silver;} +.pagenum {display:inline; font-size:x-small; text-align:right; text-indent:0; + position:absolute; right:2%; padding:1px 3px; font-style:normal; + font-variant:normal; font-weight:normal; text-decoration:none; + background-color:inherit; border:1px solid #eee;} +.pncolor {color:silver;} +} +</style> +</head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Aurora the Magnificent, by Gertrude Hall + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Aurora the Magnificent + +Author: Gertrude Hall + +Release Date: December 10, 2009 [EBook #30642] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AURORA THE MAGNIFICENT *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class='figcenter'> +<img src='images/illus-fpc.jpg' id="img001" alt='' /> +<p class='center caption'> +Alone in her room later ... she looked at the other portrait +</p></div> + +<hr class='pb' /> + +<div class='tp'> +<p style='font-size:2.0em;'>AURORA</p> +<p style='font-size:1.7em;margin-bottom:30px;'>THE MAGNIFICENT</p> +<p style=''>BY</p> +<p style='font-size:1.2em;margin-bottom:10px;'>GERTRUDE HALL</p> +<p style='font-size:smaller;margin-bottom:30px;'>AUTHOR OF “THE TRUTH ABOUT CAMILLA,”<br />“THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY,” ETC.</p> +<p style=''><i>ILLUSTRATED BY</i></p> +<p style='font-size:1.2em;'><i>GERALD LEAKE</i></p> + +<div class='figcenter'> +<img src='images/illus-emb.png' id="none" alt='' /> +</div> + +<p style=''>NEW YORK</p> +<p style=''>THE CENTURY CO.</p> +<p style=''>1917</p> +</div> + +<hr class='pb' /> + +<div class='tp'> +<p style=''>Copyright, 1916, 1917, by</p> +<p style=''>The Century Co.</p> +<hr class='short' /> +<p style=''><i>Published, March, 1917</i></p> +</div> + +<hr class='pb' /> + +<div class='tp'> +<p>TO<br /> +MY SISTER GRACE<br /> +WITHOUT WHOM THIS BOOK<br /> +WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN.<br /> +AND TO<br /> +MY DEAR HELEN R─,<br /> +WITHOUT WHOM IT WOULD<br /> +HAVE BEEN<br /> +DIFFERENT</p> +</div> + +<hr class='pb' /> + +<p class='tp' style='font-size:1.2em;'>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</p> + +<table summary='loi'> +<tr><td>Alone in her room later ... she looked at the other portrait</td><td class='tcol3'><i><a href="#img001">Frontispiece</a></i></td></tr> +<tr><td class='tcol3' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:small'>FACING PAGE</span></td></tr> +<tr><td>After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the sanctuary</td><td class='tcol3'><a href="#img002">20</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>“I thought,” said Mrs. Hawthorne, “that you were going to come and take us sight-seeing“</td><td class='tcol3'><a href="#img003">82</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find no words to express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove</td><td class='tcol3'><a href="#img004">200</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>Gerald turned, and beheld that lady</td><td class='tcol3'><a href="#img005">272</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>Aurora’s eyes, fixed and starry, rested upon the little flame</td><td class='tcol3'><a href="#img006">290</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>Aurora, with a comedy of pride, threw up her chin, lifted her arms, and turned as if on a pivot</td><td class='tcol3'><a href="#img007">316</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>“Come, let us reason together, Aurora”</td><td class='tcol3'><a href="#img008">384</a></td></tr> +</table> + +<hr class='pb' /> + +<h1>AURORA THE MAGNIFICENT</h1> + +<hr class='pb' /> + +<p class='tp' style='font-size:1.6em;'><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_3'></a>3</span>AURORA<br /><span style='font-size:smaller'>THE MAGNIFICENT</span></p> + +<h2><a id='link_1'></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<p>Near sunset, one day in early October, not too long ago for some of us to +remember with distinctness, Mr. Foss, United States consul at Florence, Italy, +took a cab, as on other days, to the Porta Romana. Here, where the out-of-town +tariff comes into effect, he paid his man, and set out to walk the rest of the +way, thus meeting the various needs he felt: that for economy,–he was a +family man with daughters to clothe,–that for exercise,–his wife +told him he was growing fat,–and the need in general for an opportunity to +think. He had found that walking aided reflection, that walking in beautiful +places started the spring of apt and generous ideas. Though in his modest way a +scholar, he was not as yet an author, but Florence had inspired him with the +desire to write a book.</p> + +<p>Just beyond the Roman Gate begins the long Viale dei Colli,–Avenue of +the Hills,–which climbs and winds, broad, shady, quiet, between lines of +gardens and villas, occupied largely by foreigners, to the Piazzale, whence +Michelangelo’s boyish colossus gazes with a slight frown across Florence, +outspread at his feet. Mr. Foss, as he mounted the easy grade, and noted with a +liking unabated after years the pleasantness of each habitation glimpsed through +iron railings <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_4'></a>4</span>and +embowering green, thought how privileged a person should feel, after all, whose +affairs involved residence in Italy.</p> + +<p>This recognized good fortune had not been properly tasted before another +aspect of the thing presented itself for consideration....</p> + +<p>The consul felt a sigh trying to escape him, and turning from the images +whose obtrusion had called it up from the depths, directed his attention to a +different set of subjects, unwilling at the moment to be troubled.</p> + +<p>The glories and iniquities of that great family whose cannon-balls–or +pills?–adorn so many of the ’scutcheons on Florentine street-corners and +palace-fronts are what he selected as the theme for his meditations, a choice +which seems less odd when we know that his book, the labor and pleasure of his +spare hours, was a study of the Medici.</p> + +<p>He had not been busy many minutes with their supplanted policies and extinct +ambitions before these dropped back into the past whence he had drawn them, and +his mind gave itself over to an exercise more curious than reconstructing a dead +epoch. A shortish, stoutish man, with a beginning of baldness on his crown and +gray in his mustache, was trying by the whole force of a sympathetic imagination +to fit himself into the shoes, occupy the very skin, of a delicate young girl, +to look at the world through her eyes and feel life with her pulses.</p> + +<p>Thus absorbed, he hardly saw the posts of his own carriage gate; he passed +unnoticing between his flower-beds, up his stone steps and came to himself only +when, rubbing the hands he had just washed, he entered the dining-room and saw +his wife.</p> + +<p>“Where are the girls?” he asked even before kissing her, <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_5'></a>5</span>for the most casual eye must +be informed by the blank look of the table that instead of being laid for half a +dozen as usual, it was prepared for a meagre two.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Foss was fond of sitting in the dining-room, which had a glass door into +the garden on the side farthest from the road. There she read her book while +waiting for dinnertime and her husband. The good gentleman did not always come +directly home from his office. He had the love of dropping into dim churches, of +loitering on bridges, of fingering the junk in old shops, but he was +considerately never late for dinner.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Foss rose to receive her husband’s salutation, and while answering +his question settled herself at the table; for she had caught sight of a +domestic peeping in at the door to see if the masters were there to be +served.</p> + +<p>“Leslie and Brenda went to call on the Hunts,” she gave her +account, “and presently the Hunts’ man came with a note from Mrs. +Hunt, asking if the girls could stay to dine and go to the theater. A box had +just been sent them. I was very glad to give my consent. Charlie will probably +be one of the party and bring them home. Or perhaps Gerald. Or they will be put +in a cab. I was delighted of the diversion for Brenda.”</p> + +<p>“And where’s Lily?”</p> + +<p>“She, too, is off having a good time. Fräulein was invited by some +German friends who were giving a <i>Kinder-sinfonie</i>. Awful things, if you +want my opinion. She asked if she might go and take Lily, and the poor child was +so eager about it I thought I would just for once let her sit up late. She has +so few pleasures of the kind.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Foss had helped the soup, with a ladle, out of a tureen.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_6'></a>6</span>It was after her +husband and she had emptied their soup-plates in companionable silence that, +leaning back to wait for the next course, she asked her regular daily +question.</p> + +<p>“Well, anything new? Anything interesting at the consulate?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Foss seemed in good faith to be searching his mind. Then he answered +vaguely:</p> + +<p>“No; nothing in particular.” All at once he smiled a smile of +remembrance. “Yes, I saw some Americans to-day.” He nodded, after an +interval, with an appearance of relish. “The real thing.”</p> + +<p>“In what way, Jerome? But, first of all, who were they?”</p> + +<p>“Wait a moment. I stuck their cards in my pocket to show you. They came +to see me at the consulate. No, they are in my other coat. One of them was Mrs. +Something Hawthorne, the other Miss Estelle Something.”</p> + +<p>“What did they want?”</p> + +<p>“Everything–quite frankly everything. They have grown tired of +their hotel; they speak nothing but English and don’t know a soul. They +came to find out from me how to go about getting a house and servants, horses +and carriage.”</p> + +<p>“Did they think that was part of a consul’s duty?”</p> + +<p>“They didn’t think. They cast themselves on the breast of a +fellow-countryman. They caught at a plank.”</p> + +<p>“A house, horses. They are rich, then.”</p> + +<p>“So one would judge. Oh, yes, they’re rich in a jolly, shameless, +old-fashioned American way.”</p> + +<p>“Well, it’s a nice way.” Mrs. Foss added limitingly: +“When they’re also generous. One has noticed, however, hasn’t +one,”–she seemed on second thought to be taking <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_7'></a>7</span>back something of her +approval,–“a certain reticence, as a rule, with regard to the +display of wealth in people of any real culture?”</p> + +<p>“These aren’t, my dear. It’s as plain as that they’re +rich. And, for a change, let me whisper to you, I found it pleasant. Not one +tiresome word about art did they utter in connection with this, their first, +visit to Italy.”</p> + +<p>“I can see you liked them, but what you have so far said doesn’t +entirely help me to see why. Rich and ignorant Americans, unfortunately–A +light breaks upon me! They were pretty!”</p> + +<p>A twinkle came into the consul’s eyes, looking over at his wife, as one +is amused sometimes by a joke old and obvious.</p> + +<p>His pause before answering seemed filled with an effort to visualize the +persons in question.</p> + +<p>“Upon my word, Etta, I couldn’t tell you.” He laughed at +his inability.</p> + +<p>“By that token they were not beauties,” said the wife.</p> + +<p>“It seems likely you are right. At the same time”–he was +still mentally regarding his visitors–“one would never think of +wishing them other than they are.”</p> + +<p>“Describe them if you can. What age women?”</p> + +<p>“My dear, there again you have me. Let us say that they are in the +flower of life. One of them, so much I did remark, was rather more blooming than +the other. Perhaps she was younger.”</p> + +<p>“The miss?”</p> + +<p>“The married one. But perhaps it was only the difference between a rose +and–” he searched–“let us say a bunch of mignonette. The +rose–here I believe I tread safely on the road of description–had of +that flower the roundness and solidity, if nothing else.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_8'></a>8</span>“Stout?”</p> + +<p>“We will call it well developed, nobly planned. But what would be the +good of telling you the color of these ladies’ hair and eyes had I noticed +it? It will help you much more effectively to pick them out in a crowd to be +told they are very American.”</p> + +<p>“Voices, too, I suppose.”</p> + +<p>“Of course. You don’t strictly mean high and nasal, do you? All I +can say with any positiveness is that one of them had what I will call a warm +voice–a voice, to make my meaning quite clear, like the crimson heart on a +valentine.”</p> + +<p>“I am enlightened. Was it the mignonette one?”</p> + +<p>“No; the hardy-garden rose.”</p> + +<p>“And what did she say to you in her warm crimson voice?”</p> + +<p>“I have told you. She called for help.”</p> + +<p>“You said, I hope, that your wife and daughters would be very happy to +call on them and be of use if they could.”</p> + +<p>“I did.”</p> + +<p>The time-tried, well-mated friends were looking over at each other across the +table, not expressing any more than at all times the quiet, daily desire of each +to further the interests and comforts of the other.</p> + +<p>“Where are they staying?” the lady continued to question.</p> + +<p>“Hôtel de la Paix.”</p> + +<p>“And they haven’t any letters, introductions, addresses, +anything?”</p> + +<p>“Apparently not.”</p> + +<p>“Where are they from?”</p> + +<p>“Let me see. Did they mention it? My dear, if they did, I don’t +recall it.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9'></a>9</span>“New +York?”</p> + +<p>“No. If I am to guess, I shouldn’t guess that.”</p> + +<p>“Out West?”</p> + +<p>“H-m, they might be. No, I guess they’re Yankees.”</p> + +<p>“Boston?”</p> + +<p>“If so, not aggressively. Where do most people come from? There’s +nothing very distinctive about most.”</p> + +<p>“Perhaps it will be on their cards.”</p> + +<p>Then the Fosses talked of other things. But when Mrs. Foss, after dinner, +went upstairs for her scarf,–it was too cool now to sit out of doors in +the evening without a wrap,–she remembered the cards, and took them out of +her husband’s pocket.</p> + +<p>“Miss Estelle Madison,” she read. “Mrs. Aurora +Hawthorne.” There was nothing else. She continued a little longer to look +at the bits of pasteboard in her hand. “Well-sounding names, both of +them–like names in a play. Mrs. Aurora. She’s a widow, then.” +Mrs. Foss considered. “Or else divorced.”</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>Jerome Foss sat out in the garden on fine evenings with his cigar, and +watched the serene oncoming of the night, because he loved to do this. His wife +stayed with him to be company, when, without an old-fashioned ideal of married +life, her natural bent would have urged her indoors, where the lamps were, to +read or sew or even play patience. But she lingered contentedly and all seemed +to her as it should be, with the two of them sitting near each other in their +garden chairs before the family door-stone, he smoking, she getting the benefit +of it by now and then fanning his smoke toward her face. She liked the odor.</p> + +<p>They only spoke to each other, as is common with married <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_10'></a>10</span>people, when they had something to say, +and so were often silent for long spaces. That they had talked a great deal +lately in the seclusion of their bedroom, away from the ears of the children, +was a reason why they should not be very communicative to-night. They had +threshed out the matter foremost in their minds so thoroughly that there could +be little to add. Now and then, however, when they were alone, scraps of +conversation would occur, part of the long discussion continued from day to day; +which fragments, isolated from their context, might have sounded odd enough to +any one overhearing.</p> + +<p>Thus it was to-night. After half an hour without a syllable, Mrs. +Foss’s voice came out of the dark.</p> + +<p>“When I was a young girl, there was a music-master, Jerome,” she +opened, with no more preface than a shooting-star. “I don’t know +that he was particularly fascinating, but he seemed so to me. I suppose he was +thirty, I was seventeen or eighteen. It was during my year at Miss +Meiggs’s. Whether he really did anything to win my young affections I +can’t tell at this distance, but at the time I imagined all sorts of +things, that he looked at me differently from the other girls, that his voice +was different when he addressed me, that an extreme delicacy was all that kept +him from declaring his love. Oh, I used to wish on the first star, and I used to +pull daisies to pieces, and I practiced, how I practiced! Well, there was a rich +girl in the school, older than I and not nearly so good looking. The moment she +graduated he proposed to her. How did I feel? Jerome, the sun went out for good +and all the day I heard of their engagement. It was as serious as anything could +ever be in this world.–I’m sure I have told you about that +music-master before, Jerome.–Well, and what happened? At the <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11'></a>11</span>age of twenty-two I +cheerfully married you. And I was not a scarred and burnt-out crater either, was +I?... In the interval, let me not neglect to mention, there had been other +flirtations and minor affairs. Thank Heaven, those things pass,” the words +came out devoutly. “It seems at the time as if only death could end it, +but two or three years will do a lot. And it’s God’s mercy makes it +so. How else could life be carried on?”</p> + +<p>“In my case, Etta,” the consul followed her story, after an +interval, “it was a landlady’s daughter. I don’t believe I +have ever spoken of her to you. I was in college, but I boarded outside the +buildings. I wrote to my father and begged him to let me go into business so +that I could earlier support a wife and family. The wise man let me go down to a +fruit-farm in Florida. You have noticed that I know something about +orange-growing. It was not quite a year before the dear divinity whose name was +Lottie found it too long to wait. I posted home. The room I had once rented from +her mother was let to a handsomer man. I took up my studies where I had dropped +them, and to all appearance there was little harm done. But for a long time I +thought I should die a bachelor.”</p> + +<p>“I know. Your cousin Fannie told me about it in the early days, before +we were engaged. It all goes to show.... And there again was Selina Blackstone, +one of my girlhood friends. She had a cough and they thought her lungs affected +and sent her South. There she met an unhappy boy in the same case, only he, as +it proved, really was in a bad way with his lungs. The poor things fell +desperately in love with each other, but her parents wouldn’t hear of +their marrying, in which course they were right. Now you would have thought from +her face that the separation was going <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_12'></a>12</span>to kill her. It didn’t, that’s all. He +died, and she married. And it can’t be said of her that she was either +shallow, or fickle, or heartless. I knew her very well. Merely, time did the +work that time was set to do.”</p> + +<p>There was in the lady’s tone an effect of protest against any view, +determination against any theory, but her own.</p> + +<p>“There are the cases like Miss Seymour’s, however,” Mr. +Foss brought in softly, as one calls to another’s attention a lapse of +memory or a slip in logic.</p> + +<p>“Miss Seymour? Blanche? What about her?”</p> + +<p>“That she is Miss Seymour, my dear, and to my mind a melancholy lesson. +Because Nature so plainly had not planned her for an old maid. Her +mother–who told me? I think it was Miss Brown–interfered with her +marrying the man she wished to, and she has accepted nothing in his place. It +has been an empty life. And so it goes. One can’t be sure, +Etta.”</p> + +<p>“Jerome,” Mrs. Foss’s voice rose to a sharper protest and +firmer rejection, “those are the cases we simply must not allow ourselves +to think about. If we begin to think of cases like that....”</p> + +<p>She did not finish and he said no more, but in the darkness through which the +fiery point of his cigar continued for some time to glow, it is to be feared the +faces of both went on to reflect for nobody to see the working of those thoughts +precisely which Mrs. Foss had said with so much emphasis they must guard +against.</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13'></a>13</span><a id='link_2'></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<p>Upon a day not much later in the month–a goodly day which thousands +without a doubt were thinking all too short for the useful or merely delectable +things they wanted to do–a certain young man in Florence would, if he +could, have treated this mellow golden masterpiece of autumn’s like a bad +sketch, torn it across and dropped it into the waste-basket. What is one to do +with a day when nothing that has been invented seems enough fun to pay for the +bother? He did not wish to paint, he did not wish to read, or to play on the +piano, as he sometimes did in solitude, with one hand, to solace himself by +re-framing a remembered melody. He did not wish to go out, but was restless from +staying in. He did not want to see the face of friend or foe, but could no +longer endure to be alone.</p> + +<p>He stood for a moment in the middle of the floor, with his hands over his +face, the ends of his fingers pressing back his eyeballs, and got in his throat +a taste of the bitter waters which he felt as a perpetual pool in the center of +his heart. Next minute he sneered at himself, like a schoolmaster at a boy who +blubbers, and without further paltering put on his hat, took up a very slender +cane with a slender grasp of yellow ivory, and ran down the long stairs of his +house to the street.</p> + +<p>“Air and exercise, air and exercise!” This prescription he +repeated to himself, and, surely enough, in a quarter of an hour felt +better.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14'></a>14</span>He was on Via +Tornabuoni. Passing Giacosa’s, he glanced in to see if it were any one he +knew taking tea so early behind the great plate glass window. No, they were +chance English. He halted before a shop farther on to look at a display of +jewelry, wondering that there should be fools enough in the whole world to +support one such dealer in turquoise trinkets that at once drop out their +stones; crude, big mosaics, and everlasting little composition-silver copies of +the Strozzi lantern.</p> + +<p>He crossed the street and entered the bank, where he found the usual table +strewn with weeklies and monthlies for the advantage of those clients who must +be asked to wait. He seated himself with his face so directed that if an +acquaintance should enter, he need not bow, and turned over the magazines one +after the other. It hurt him like a direct personal injury to find these authors +all alike so shallow, dishonest, giving the public not their thought or their +experience, but something, anything, it would buy.</p> + +<p>“A little more air and exercise is what I evidently need,” said +the young man, and again went out into the streets.</p> + +<p>He turned toward the river, and had not followed the Lungarno for more than +ten yards before it was with him as when, looking out of the window in despair +at the weather, we see a break in the clouds. His step took on alertness; his +face lighted in the very nicest way.</p> + +<p>The young lady on whom his eyes were fastened from afar did not see him. She +came at her usual step, a happy mean between quick and slow, accompanied by a +hatless serving-woman carrying a music-roll. She looked straight before her, but +her glance was absent. The passers could not but notice her,–she had +beauty enough for that, and was besides conspicuous in wearing a costume +entirely white,–but <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_15'></a>15</span>she was not noticing them or the eyes that turned to +keep her a moment longer in sight. She looked rather shut in herself, rather +silent; not really proud and cold, but proud and cold as the feeling and modest +and young have to look if they are to keep their sacred precincts from the +intrusions of curiosity.</p> + +<p>The young man approaching questioned her face to see if it were sad. No, as +far as he could tell, she was not in any way troubled. At the same time he knew +that it was neither a face nor a nature to be easily read. Still, not to find +her visibly sad comforted him.</p> + +<p>She did not recognize the young man till he was almost near enough to touch +her, and she had heard her name called, “Brenda!”</p> + +<p>Then her face showed a genuine, if moderate, pleasure.</p> + +<p>“Gerald!”</p> + +<p>“What are you doing?” he asked, with the freedom of a familiarity +reaching back over long years. He shortened his step to keep time with hers, +which she at the same moment lengthened.</p> + +<p>“I have been for my singing-lesson.”</p> + +<p>“And where are you going?”</p> + +<p>“Home.”</p> + +<p>“I haven’t seen you for ages.”</p> + +<p>“You haven’t come. One never sees you, one never meets you +anywhere any more.”</p> + +<p>Her English was different from the ordinary in having occasional Italian +turns and intonations. His partook of the same defect, but in a lesser +degree.</p> + +<p>“But I have come,” he stood up for himself, “and you were +all out except Lily. Didn’t she tell you I was there? We had a long talk. +She told me her plans for the future. <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_16'></a>16</span>She is going to keep a school for poor children. We +discussed their diet and their flannels and every point of their bringing-up. We +invented things to do on holidays to give them a good time. There is only one +thing I can see leaving a doubt of this school coming into being. It is that +Lily has moments, she confessed to me, of thinking almost equally well of a +castle with a moat and drawbridge and a page to walk before her carrying her +prayer-book on a cushion. She’s a funny young one.”</p> + +<p>“It’s partly Fräulein.”</p> + +<p>“How are they all?”</p> + +<p>“Well, thank you. At least, I suppose they are well.” She gave a +slight laugh at the humor of this. “You could hardly imagine how little I +see of them.”</p> + +<p>“What has happened?”</p> + +<p>“They have been going around with some new people, some Americans. They +have been helping them to shop, and showing them the way one does things over +here. Mother, you know, is always so ready.”</p> + +<p>“Your mother is a dear.”</p> + +<p>“Leslie is just like her. But I am sure they both enjoy it, too. They +have not been home to lunch for a week.”</p> + +<p>“And you?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I am not needed where there are already two who do the thing so +much better than I could. I have not even seen the people. My day is very full, +you know. Piano and singing-lessons, and I am painting again this winter, with +Galletti, and I am going to a course of <i>conferenze</i> on Italian literature. +That involves a lot of reading. There are, besides, the other, the usual things, +the–” Her voice stuck; then, as she went on, deepened with the depth +of a suppressed impatience. “I wish one might be allowed not <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17'></a>17</span> to do what is meant for +pleasure unless one takes pleasure in it. But going to teas and parties is +apparently as much a duty as school or church. Mother and Leslie at least seem +to think it so for me.”</p> + +<p>“I see their point, Brenda dear, don’t you?” He was not +looking at her as with a gentle brotherliness he spoke this.</p> + +<p>“You don’t go to many parties yourself, Gerald.”</p> + +<p>“I am afraid nothing I do is fit to be an example to anybody. But it +doesn’t matter about me. About you it does. I can’t say to you all I +think. It would sound fulsome, and from such an old chum might make you laugh. +But, being as you are, Brenda, surely your mother is right in thinking of <i>le +monde</i> as the proper setting for you. You know I’m not fond of <i>le +monde</i>, but it’s because it hasn’t enough such ornaments as +yourself. With the life that lies before you–”</p> + +<p>“Who can possibly know what my life will be?” the girl asked +quickly, almost roughly.</p> + +<p>“True, Brenda. I dare say I am talking like a fool.” He left off, +wondering that for a moment he should actually have been speaking on the side of +convention.</p> + +<p>They walked a few rods in silence. They had crossed the bridge, and were +headed for Porta Romana, the handmaiden trotting in their tracks, when at a +corner Gerald stopped, and, as if to change the subject, or to regain favor by a +felicitous suggestion, said:</p> + +<p>“Do you remember my telling you of a painting I came upon in a little +old church on this street? <i>Scuola di Giotto</i>, they call it, but the thing +is undoubtedly Sienese. Have you the time? Shall we take a moment to see +it?”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18'></a>18</span>“I should be +glad. If you will walk home with me afterward, Gerald, I might tell Gemma she +can go.”</p> + +<p>There was an exchange of Italian between the young lady and the maid, after +which the latter turned, and with a busy, delighted effect about the rear view +of her walked back across the bridge to spend her gift of an hour in what +divertisements we shall never know.</p> + +<p>The church was closed. Gerald pulled the bell-handle of the next door. A +priest opened to them, and, seeing at a glance what was wanted, guided them +through a white-washed corridor to a living-room where a crucifix hung on the +wall and the table had a red cloth; by this into a dim and stony sacristy, +whence they emerged into the back of a darkling little church, with shadowy +candlesticks and kneeling-benches, the whole full of a cold, complex odor of old +incense and old humanity and, one could fancy, old prayers.</p> + +<p>The priest brought a lighted taper and, crossing to one of the side altars, +held it near the painting, which was all that well-dressed people ever came for +outside of hours.</p> + +<p>The reddish light trembled over the figure of a majestic virgin, in the +diadem and mantle of a princess, bearing the palm of martyrs in her hand. It was +a very simple and noble face, beautiful in a separate way, which not every one +would perceive, so little in common had it with the present-day fair ladies +whose photographs are sold.</p> + +<p>Gerald had taken the light from the priest’s hands and was lifting, +lowering, shading it, experimenting, to bring out all that might still be seen +of the withdrawn image on its faintly glinting field of gold. His face was keen +with interest; the love of beautiful things in this moment of satisfaction +smoothed away from it every line of dejection and irritability.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19'></a>19</span>Brenda was +examining the picture with an attention equal to his, but, if one might so +describe it, of a different color. Her admiration got its life largely from +Gerald’s, whose tastes in art she was in the habit of adopting blindfold. +Of this, however, she was not aware, and gazed doing good to her soul by the +conscious and deliberate contemplation of a masterpiece.</p> + +<p>“Do you remember a great calm, white figure in the communal palace at +Siena?” Gerald asked, “with other figures of Virtues on the same +wall? Doesn’t this remind you of them?”</p> + +<p>Brenda answered abstractedly:</p> + +<p>“Yes,” and continued to look. “How amazing they are!” +she fervently exclaimed. He supposed she meant the saint’s hands or eyes, +but she explained, “The Italians.”</p> + +<p>He did not take up the idea either to agree or to dispute; his mind was busy +with one Italian only, the painter of the picture before him.</p> + +<p>The young girl’s interest flagged sooner than his own; he felt her melt +from his side while he continued seeking proof in this detail and that of the +painter’s identity.</p> + +<p>When he turned to find her and to follow, she was kneeling on one of the +wooden forms, her gloved hands joined, her face toward the high altar.</p> + +<p>He approved the courtesy of it, done, as he knew, in order that the priest, +who stood aside, waiting for them to finish, should not think these barbarians +who came into his church to see a work of art had no respect for his shrines and +holies. Having returned the light to the priest Gerald himself, while waiting +for Brenda, took a melancholy religious attitude, his hat and cane held against +his breast, and sent his thoughts <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_20'></a>20</span>gropingly upward, where the solitary thing they +encountered was his poor mother in heaven. Heaven and the changes undergone by +those who enter there he could never make very real to himself. He thought of +her as she used to be, affectionate and ill.</p> + +<p>At the stir of Brenda rising from her knees he, too, stirred, ready to +depart. She was bowing to the altar, making an obeisance so deep, so beautifully +reverent, that the priest could never have guessed she was not a Catholic. After +it she still stood a moment, looking toward the sanctuary, like one with last +fond words to say after the farewell; and this excess of either regard for the +priest’s feelings or else a devoutness he had not suspected in her +quickened Gerald’s attention. And there in the dimness he saw what he had +not seen in the broad light of day, that his friend’s little face, which +had presented the effect of a house with all the blinds drawn down, was lighted +up behind the blinds–oh, lighted as if for a feast!</p> + +<p>He felt himself at sea. He had thought he knew the circumstances. Some part, +of course, nobody could know unless Brenda chose to tell them. But what reason +there should be for positive joy–</p> + +<p>A suspicion flashed across his mind. He looked at her more closely, and put +it away.</p> + +<p>She might have been the wisest of the virgins, the one who before any other +heard the music of the bridegroom and was first to light her lamp. She stood as +if listening to his footsteps.</p> + +<p>That such a simile should have been possible to Gerald shows how much the +expression of Brenda’s face centered attention on itself, for her white +serge dress was in the fashion of that year, and it was not a fashion to be +remembered with any artistic joy. Gerald was never reconciled to it.</p> + +<div class='figcenter'> +<img src='images/illus-020.jpg' id="img002" alt='' /> +<p class='center caption'> +After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the sanctuary +</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22'></a>22</span>He had the power +to detach himself and at will see persons as if he looked at them for the first +time. So for a moment he saw Brenda as a thing solely of form and color, a white +shape against a ground of gloom, and took new account of the fact that the +little girl who had had pigtails when he first knew her, and gone to the +<i>Diaconesse</i> with lunch-basket and satchel of books, had from one season to +the next, stealthily, as it were, and while his back was turned, become +beautiful.</p> + +<p>More than that. He was looking at Brenda–he recognized it with a pulse +of exquisite interest–in her exact and particular hour. He had surprised a +rose at its moment of transition from bud to bloom, that delicate and perfect +moment when the natural beauty which women and fruits and flowers have in +common, reaching its height, hangs poised–for such a pitifully short time, +alas!–before it changes, if not declines, to something less dewily fresh, +less heart-movingly untouched, less complete.</p> + +<p>The artist could not long in this case be regarding the girl as part of a +picture; his human relation to the owner of that lifted profile brought him back +to wondering in what the quiet ecstasy it breathed could have its source. He was +touched by it, by the whole character, at the moment, of her face, with its +strength so nullified by gentleness.</p> + +<p>When the will is strong and nature sensitive, what arms has youth with which +to prevail? What but the power to keep still and hold on? Nothing was in +Brenda’s face so marked as that power, except, in this moment of +undisguise, while she thought herself unwatched, its singular happiness, a +mingling of tenderness, dedication, hope.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23'></a>23</span>The genuine +sympathy he felt for her made Gerald deserving of the intuition that blessed him +while he stood there trying to divine. An interpretation of her secret offered +itself, worthier of him as of her than the suspicion of erewhile; one so +beautiful, indeed, that he felt uplifted by standing in its presence. All he had +most cared for in his life, the things that had touched and inspired +him,–visions of painters, dreams of poets, scenes of beauty, sweet of +human intercourse,–all the influences that make life dignified and fair, +seemed in their essence to be in the air around him, like scents of flowers in +the dark....</p> + +<p>The wish to pray came over him again, yet he wanted to weep, too, because as +soon as his heart expanded a little the rusty splinter of a knife corroding +there reminded him that lofty sentiments, sincerities, idealisms, have as their +fruit in this life–dust, derision! He wondered that without being any +older one could feel as old as he did while watching Brenda transfigured by her +poor young dream.</p> + +<p>Now for the second time she curtseyed to the altar. The priest moved, Gerald +moved, all three passed up the aisle, to a faint chink of coins in +Gerald’s pocket where he groped for a fee. At the main altar the priest +dipped a rapid genuflexion.</p> + +<p>As soon as they were outside Brenda began to talk about the picture, to ask +questions, as if the art of the Italians had been of all things nearest to her +heart, and Gerald was drawn into holding in the street while they walked a sort +of lecture on the primitives.</p> + +<p>All the while, in an independent corner of his brain he was reflecting upon +the absurdity of supposing that because he was an old familiar of the Fosses, +and so fond of them all, he knew anything of their affairs these days, when he +saw <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24'></a>24</span>them so seldom. +Ever so many things could have happened without his knowledge. The girls might +have new friends and admirers just as they had hats and dresses that he had +never seen.</p> + +<p>They were making their way while talking toward Porta Romana, and were often +obliged to step off the narrow sidewalk to make room for other passers, the +street being busy at that time of day.</p> + +<p>Brenda was in the midst of an entirely pertinent remark when her voice softly +died, like the flame of a candle sucked out by a draft or like a music-box run +down. Gerald, looking round for the end of her sentence, saw that she had +sighted an acquaintance on the other side of the street.</p> + +<p>She nodded, without a smile, slowly. Just so must Beatrice have bowed in +these same streets of Florence when she passed the dreamy passionate youth +through whom we are acquainted with her name.</p> + +<p>Gerald’s eyes traveled across the way to see who might be the recipient +of the lady’s most sweet salute, and hurriedly uncovered to an officer of +the Italian army who, holding his hand to his cap, stood at attention till the +two had passed.</p> + +<p>Was the man pale or was it that one had never before noticed, meeting him +indoors and at evening, how strongly the black of his mustache and brows +contrasted with his skin? The suspicion that had for a moment troubled Gerald in +church returned as a stronger infection. Had Brenda expected this? Did they +concert such meetings?</p> + +<p>He might have said to himself that a tryst which consisted in crossing +glances from opposite sides of the street was very innocent. In a moment he did +see that as the villas <i>fuori la porta</i> must be reached through the +<i>porta</i>, a lover <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_25'></a>25</span> whose lady lived on Vial dei Colli might without +previous arrangement hope for a glimpse of her by walking in its +neighborhood.</p> + +<p>As we have seen him doing more than once this afternoon, Gerald here tried to +get his clue from Brenda herself, her face, her atmosphere. Yet he knew, as has +already been said, that it was Brenda Foss’s way to keep these as much as +she could from telling anything to the world. This wariness notwithstanding a +tinge of unaccustomed rose had spread through the clear white of her cheek; her +eyes had in them noticeably more life. Emotion or mere self-consciousness?</p> + +<p>On one point only he was satisfied: Brenda had done nothing that involved +deceit. Into the very structure of her face, which had almost nothing left of +the American look, was built a certain Puritan truthfulness. She could conceal +if she must, but hated to shuffle, to prevaricate. She concealed exactly because +of that.</p> + +<p>“Go on with the Sienese masters, Gerald,” she bade him, +collectedly. “I am listening, and learning a lot.”</p> + +<p>As they passed under the great arch of the Roman Gate, Gerald was saying +modestly:</p> + +<p>“I don’t know anything about them, really. I’ve just been +impressed by a thing or two. This Lorenzetti, for instance–” And so +on up the <i>viale</i> to the house.</p> + +<p>In the drawing-room they found Mrs. Foss and Leslie, who, just home from +town, tired and thirsty, had had tea brought to them, and were strengthening +themselves before even taking off their hats.</p> + +<p>Their welcome to Gerald was mingled with reproaches of the sort that flatters +more than it hurts.</p> + +<p>“It’s perfect ages since we saw you. We thought you <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26'></a>26</span>had forgotten us. What have +you been doing this long, long time?”</p> + +<p>“It is you, who are never at home, my dear friends,” Gerald took +his turn. “I was here a fortnight or so ago. Didn’t Lily tell you? +Of course she told you, and you have forgotten, so it’s I, properly, who +should be calling names.”</p> + +<p>“Have you been quite well, Gerald?” Mrs. Foss asked in her +maternal voice, after a more careful look at him.</p> + +<p>“Certainly.”</p> + +<p>“I am glad you have come. I have been on the point more than once of +sending for you, but the days fly so! We have been busy, too.”</p> + +<p>She had poured cups of tea for Gerald and Brenda. All four were seated and +refreshing themselves.</p> + +<p>It was a very large room, but a corner had been so arranged as to look shut +in and cozy. There stood the tea-table convenient to the sofa and, surrounding +it, a few chosen chairs in which one could sink and lean back and be +comfortable.</p> + +<p>“Have you had a tiring day?” Brenda asked her mother, somewhat as +if she were tired herself at the mere thought of such a day as she supposed her +mother to have had.</p> + +<p>“No,” Mrs. Foss answered briskly; “it’s rather fun. I +don’t mean that one doesn’t get tired after a fashion. Has Brenda +told you, Gerald, how we have lately been occupied?”</p> + +<p>“Some new people, I think she said.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, some nice, funny Americans.”</p> + +<p>“Funny, you say?”</p> + +<p>“I say it fondly, Gerald. Let me tell you a little about them, and you +will see what I mean. They are going to <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_27'></a>27</span>spend the winter here and wanted a house. What house +do you think they selected?”</p> + +<p>“You really mustn’t set me riddles, Mrs. Foss.”</p> + +<p>“For years we have seen it every time we drive to the Cascine, and seen +it with a certain curiosity–always deserted, always with closed blinds, in +its way the most beautiful house in Florence.”</p> + +<p>“The most–I can’t think what house you mean.”</p> + +<p>“Of course not, with your tastes. But imagine some nice, rich +Americans, without either art education or the smallest affectation of such a +thing, and ask yourself what they would like. Why, a big, square, clean-looking, +new-looking, wealthy-looking house, of course, set in a nice garden, with, at +the end of the garden, a nice stable. I was thankful to find the place had been +kept up.”</p> + +<p>“But is there–on the Lungarno, did you say?”</p> + +<p>“It is that house we have called the Haughty Hermitage, Gerald,” +Brenda helped him.</p> + +<p>“Oh, that! But surely one doesn’t live in a house like +that!”</p> + +<p>“Your excellent reason?” inquired Leslie.</p> + +<p>“I don’t know,”–he hesitated,–“but surely +one doesn’t live in a house like that!”</p> + +<p>They had to laugh at the expression brought into his face by his sense of a +mysterious incongruity.</p> + +<p>“No,” he went on with knitted brows to reject the idea; “a +house like that–one doesn’t come all the way from America to live in +a house which has no more atmosphere than that!”</p> + +<p>“Ah, but that’s the point, Gerald,” said Mrs. Foss. +“What you call atmosphere these people avoid as they would an unsanitary +odor. Atmosphere! What would you say <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_28'></a>28</span>if you saw the things Leslie and I have been helping +them to buy and put into it! I love to buy, you know, even when not for myself. +I thought with joy, ‘Now I shall at least go through the form of acquiring +certain objects I have lusted after for years.’ Delightful old things +Jerome has discovered in antiquarians’ places, and that we shall never be +able to afford. Do you think I could persuade them to take one of these? I +represented that the worm-holes could be stopped up and varnished over, that the +missing bits of inlay, precious crumbs of pearl and ivory, could be replaced, +the tapestries renovated. In vain. They want everything new–hygienically +new, fresh, and shining. And, Gerald, prejudice apart, the idea is not without +its good side. The result is not so bad as you may think. Why, after all, should +my taste, your taste, prevail in their house, will you tell me?”</p> + +<p>“For no reason in the world. This liberal view comes the easier to me +that I do not expect ever to see the interesting treasures you may have +collected from Peyron’s and Janetti’s.”</p> + +<p>“If it were no worse than that!” put in Leslie, and laughed a +covered laugh.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Foss explained, after a like little laugh of her own.</p> + +<p>“You see, things that we have seen till we have utterly ceased to see +them, the things that nobody who really lives in Florence ever dreams of buying, +are new to these people. They <i>love</i> them. As a result, you can guess. There +will be in their apartments alabaster plates with profiles of Dante and +Michelangelo on a black center. There will be mosaic tables with magnolias and +irises. There will be Pliny’s doves. Think of it! There will be green +bronze lamps and lizards–”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29'></a>29</span>“And the +fruit–tell about that, Mother!” Leslie prompted.</p> + +<p>“There will be on the sideboard in the dining-room a perpetual dish of +magnificent fruit, marble, realistic to a degree. You know the kind.”</p> + +<p>“And you could stand by and let them–you and Leslie!” spoke +Brenda, in an astonishment almost seriously reproachful.</p> + +<p>“My dear,” Leslie took up their common defense, +“one’s feeling in this case is: What does it matter? A little more, +a little less.... It all goes together. When they have those curtains, they +might as well have that fruit.”</p> + +<p>“At the same time, my dear children, let me tell you that the effect is +not displeasing,” insisted Mrs. Foss. “Such at least is my humble +opinion. In its way it’s all right. They are people of a certain kind, and +they have bought what they like, not what they thought they ought to like. +Thousands of people, if it were not for you artists perverting them, would be +thinking a marble lemon that you can’t tell from a real one a rare and +dear possession. These people haven’t known any artists. They are +innocent.”</p> + +<p>“They’re awfully good fun,” Leslie started loyally in to +make up for anything she had said which might seem to savor of mockery or +dispraise. “One enjoys being with them, if they aren’t our usual +sort. They are in good spirits, really good–good spirits with roots to +them. And that’s such a treat these days!”</p> + +<p>From which it was supposable that Leslie had been living in circles where the +gaiety was hollow. The suggestion did not escape Gerald. But, then, Leslie, just +turned twenty-four, was rather given to judging <i>these days</i> as if she +remembered <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30'></a>30</span> something +less modern, an affectation found piquant by her friends in a particularly +young-looking, blond girl with a short nose. Gerald might have hoped that her +sigh meant nothing had not Leslie, awake to the implication of her remark as +soon as she had made it, gone hurriedly on to call attention away from it.</p> + +<p>“Yes, it’s pleasant to be with them. It’s a change. The +world seems simple and life easy. Life <i>is</i> easy, with all that money. +Besides, Mrs. Hawthorne really is something of a dear. After all, if people make +much of one, one is pretty sure to like them. Haven’t you found it so, +Gerald?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know. I am trying to remember if there is anybody who +has made much of me.”</p> + +<p>“<i>We</i> have made much of you.”</p> + +<p>“And don’t think I temperately like you. I adore you all, as you +well know. You’re the only people I do. By that sign there has been nobody +else kind enough to make much of me.”</p> + +<p>“You’re so bad lately, Gerald; that’s why,” Mrs. Foss +affectionately chide him. “You never go anywhere. You neglect your +friends. What have you been doing with yourself? Is it work?”</p> + +<p>“No; not more than usual. I work, but I’m not exactly +absorbed–obsessed by it. I don’t know–” He seemed to +search, and after a moment summed up his vague difficulties: “It seems a +case for quoting ‘Hamlet.’” He was bending forward, his elbows +resting on his knees, as they could do easily, his chair being low and his thin +legs long. His thin, long hands played with that slender cane of his, which he +had set down and taken up again, while he tried <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_31'></a>31</span>to recall the passage, and mumbled snatches of it: +“‘This goodly firmament–congregation of vapors–Man delights +not me–no, nor’–the rest of it.”</p> + +<p>“But it won’t do, Gerald dear; it won’t do at all,” +Mrs. Foss addressed him anxiously, between scolding and coaxing. “Shake +yourself, boy! Force yourself a little; it will be good for you. +<i>Make</i> yourself go to places till this mood is past. What is it? Bad humor, +spleen, hypochondria? It doesn’t belong with one of your age. We miss you +terribly, dear. Here we have had two of our Fridays, and you have not been. And +we have always counted on you. Charming men are scarce at parties the world +over. The Hunts have begun their little dances, too. One used to see you there. +And at Madame Bentivoglio’s. She was asking what had become of you. +Promise, Gerald, that we shall see you at our next Friday! We want to make it a +nice, gay season. Will you promise? Oh, here’s Lily. Why didn’t you +tell us, Lily, that Gerald had come to see us when we were out?”</p> + +<p>A long-legged, limp-looking little girl with spectacles had come in. A minute +before she had been passing the door on her way to walk, and catching the sound +of a male voice in the drawing-room, insisted upon listening till she had made +sure whose it was. At the name Gerald she had pulled away from her governess and +burst into the drawing-room.</p> + +<p>She stood still a moment after this impulsive entrance, and the governess +turned toward Mrs. Foss a face that, benign and enlightened though it was, +called up the memory of faces seen in good-humored German comic papers. The +expression of her smile said to the company that she was guiltless in the matter +of this invasion. Could one use <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_32'></a>32</span>severity toward a little girl who suffered from asthma +and weak eyes?</p> + +<p>Lily, after her pause, went half shyly, half boldly to Gerald. He did not +kiss her,–she was ten years old,–but placed an arm loosely around +her as she stood near his knee.</p> + +<p>“Did you forget it, Lily?”</p> + +<p>“No, Mother, I didn’t forget, but I never thought to speak of it. +You didn’t tell me to, did you, Gerald?”</p> + +<p>“No, we had so much else to talk about. Well, Lily, have you decided +what color the uniform must be for our orphanage? The thing is important. It +makes a great difference in an orphan’s disposition whether she goes +dressed in a dirty gray or a fine, bright apricot yellow.”</p> + +<p>“Gerald,”–Lily lowered her voice to make their conversation +more private,–“will you be the cuckoo?” As he gazed, she went +earnestly on: “We can’t find anybody to do the cuckoo. I am going to +be the nightingale. Fräulein is going to be the drum. Leslie is going to be the +<i>Wachtel</i>. Mother is going to be the triangle. Brenda will play the piano. +Papa says that if he is to take part he must be the one who sings on the comb +and tissue-paper. But I am afraid to let him. You know he hasn’t a good +ear. That leaves the cuckoo, the comb, and the rattle still to find before we +can have our <i>Kinder-sinfonie</i>. Which should you like to be, +Gerald?”</p> + +<p>“What an opening for musical talent! But, my dear little lady, +I’m not a bit of good. I can’t follow music by note any more than a +cuckoo. I am so sorry.”</p> + +<p>“But, Gerald, all you have to do is–”</p> + +<p>“I have told you, Lili,” said the governess in German, +“that we would take the gardener’s boy and drill him for <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33'></a>33</span>the cuckoo. Come now +quickly, dear child; we must go for our walk.”</p> + +<p>The casual, unimportant talk of ordinary occasions went on after the +interruption.</p> + +<p>“And what do you hear from that charming friend of yours, the abbé, +Gerald?” And, “I hope you have good news from your son, Mrs. +Foss.” And, “Do you know whether the Seymours have come back from +the country?”</p> + +<p>Gerald left the Fosses, warmed by his renewed sense of their friendship, and +believing that he would go very soon again to see them. But he did not, and his +feeling of shame was more definite than his gratitude when he in time received a +note from Mrs. Foss, kind as ever, asking him to dine.</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34'></a>34</span><a id='link_3'></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<p>There was dancing at the Fosses’ on two Fridays in the month. It was +their contribution toward the gaiety of the winter. They did not often give a +formal dinner, and when such an entertainment appeared to be called for from +them, planned it with forethought to make it serve as many ends as it would. +Every careful housewife will understand.</p> + +<p>It was with Leslie that Mrs. Foss talked such matters over. The eldest +daughter was so sufficient as adjutant that one did not inquire whether Brenda +would have been useful if needed. The latter took no part in the domestic +councils which had for object to decide who should be asked to dinner and of +what the dinner should consist.</p> + +<p>The question whom to invite to meet Professor Longstreet had taken Mrs. Foss +and Leslie time and reflection. The Fosses’ only son had a great regard +for this man, one of the faculty during his period at Harvard, and now that the +travels of the professor’s sabbatical year brought him to Florence, the +family was anxious to entertain him as dear John, studying medicine in far-off +Boston, would have wished.</p> + +<p>The professor was engaged upon a new translation of the “Divine +Comedy.” The guests had therefore better be chosen among their literary +acquaintance, thought Mrs. Foss. But Leslie was of the opinion that they would +do better to make the requisite just any gift or grace, and <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_35'></a>35</span>keep an eye on having the company compose +well and the table look beautiful.</p> + +<p>When she reminded her mother that a dinner was owing the Balm de Brézés, and +that this would be a chance to pay the debt, Mrs. Foss objected:</p> + +<p>“But I want to ask Gerald. I felt sorry for him last time he came. We +must look after him a little bit, you know.”</p> + +<p>Leslie did not show herself in any wise disposed to set aside Gerald’s +claim, but expressed the idea that Gerald probably would not mind meeting the De +Brézés now. After all, the memories sweet and sour associated with them had had +time to lose their edge. And they could be seated at the opposite end of the +table.</p> + +<p>It was finally decided to ask the Balm de Brézés, Gerald, the Felixsons, Miss +Cecilia Brown, and Gideon Hart, all intelligent, all people who could talk. It +was further frugally resolved to have the dinner on a Friday and let it be +followed by the usual evening party, thus making the same embellishment of the +house do for two occasions, as well as augmenting their visitor’s +opportunity to make acquaintance with the Anglo-American colony in Florence.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>All had been going so well, the guests were in such happy and talkative form, +that the minor matter of taking food had dragged, and the diners were not ready +to rise when a servant whispered to Mrs. Foss that the first evening guest had +arrived.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Foss’s eyes found those of Leslie, who understood the words +soundlessly framed, and excused herself from the table.</p> + +<p>In the garnished and waiting drawing-room, lighted with candles, like a +shrine, and looking vast, with the furniture <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_36'></a>36</span>taken out of the way, she found the Reverend Arthur +Spottiswood, of whom it was not easy to think that eagerness to dance had driven +him to come so sharply on time. He looked serious-minded, almost somber, and +Leslie, though prepared to be vivacious with peer or pauper, found it all duty +and little fun to make conversation with him until the next arrival should come +to her relief. The gentleman was Brenda’s adorer, but Brenda would never, +if she could help it, let him have one moment with her. His love-charged eye +inspired in her the simple desire to flee. Singularly, this was, with one +notable exception, beautiful Brenda’s only conquest, while Leslie, who was +just ordinarily pretty and wore a pince-nez, received tribute and proposals from +almost every unattached young fellow who drifted inside the circle of her wide +invisible net. Boys in particular had to pass through her hands, receive good +advice from her, be encouraged in their work, cheered in their distance from +home, and refused, and consoled for the refusal, and sent away finally rather +improved than otherwise. With very little sentiment, she had a kind and cozy +quality, like her mother.</p> + +<p>The Satterlees were next to arrive, mother with son and daughter, and Leslie +was warm as never before in her welcome to them. The Reverend Arthur was gently +shed from her and with pleasure picked up by Isabel Satterlee, who was charmed +to have any kind of man to talk with.</p> + +<p>Then arrived a group of unrelated people living for the moment at the same +pension in town and coming in the same conveyance. Among them was Percy Lavin, +who had the extraordinary tenor voice, and along with it an exuberance of +confidence in his future that made him as destructive of coherence in company as +a large frisking pup. Leslie <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_37'></a>37</span>had at the very first meeting felt that it would be +her sacred mission to attend to that young man.</p> + +<p>The hired pianist had come, he was unrolling his sheets of dance-music and +rolling them the contrary way. Mr. Hunt, the English banker, with his wife and +daughters, had come; and Maestro Vannuccini with his signora on his arm; and a +glittering young officer or two; and Landini, Hunt’s partner; and Charlie +Hunt, the banker’s nephew.</p> + +<p>Charlie, bold through long acquaintance, asked, “Where are the +others?”</p> + +<p>Leslie told him, whereupon the young man said “Oh!” and his +“Oh” sounded blank, whether because it was apparent to him through +her answer that there had been indiscretion in his question, or because he +wondered at there being a dinner-party in this house and he not asked to it. +Leslie paid no attention, for at that moment the diners were beginning to +appear.</p> + +<p>The drawing-room had two doors in the same wall: people coming from the +dining-room would enter by one of these, while those who came from the street +entered by the other, after passing through the small reception-room where they +left their things, and the larger reception-room intervening between this and +the drawing-room. Charlie Hunt, talking with Mrs. Satterlee, let a casual eye +roll away from her middle-aged agreeableness to see who was entering by that +different door from the one which had given him passage. Curiosity, pure and +simple.</p> + +<p>Ah, so. Madame Balm de Brézé, spare, sharp, high-nosed, beaked and clawed +like a bird–a picked bird. Very elegant. It was clear to Charlie Hunt why +with a dinner to give one should care to secure her and her husband. They looked +so fiendishly aristocratic.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38'></a>38</span>The Felixsons. +Naturally. Felixson had to be asked when the guest of honor was a scholar. Mrs. +Felixson’s warm brilliancy to-night bore testimony to a good dinner. +Abundance of meats and wines always turned her a burning pink. It looked to +Charlie like a new frock she was wearing; he did not remember seeing her in it +before.</p> + +<p>Gideon Hart, the old sculptor. It was his picturesque white hair and beard +that people liked to see at their tables, for the old fellow, thought Hunt, was +phenomenally a bore. In this case patriotism explained his presence. America +quaintly loved his name.</p> + +<p>And Cecilia Brown. But was it really Cecilia?... What had she been doing to +herself?... Oh. Her hair. Her hair was cropped and curled all over her head like +wicked Caracalla’s. That was the fashion in England, he had heard, where +she had been spending the summer.</p> + +<p>But who was this, at the end of the procession, after Mrs. Foss and Brenda +and the consul?</p> + +<p>Hunt had a genuine surprise. Gerald Fane.</p> + +<p>Now, wherefore Gerald Fane rather than Charlie Hunt?</p> + +<p>Mrs. Foss, coming into the drawing-room, felt a glow of pleasure at the scene +meeting her eyes. The occasion, the success of it, had lifted life for her above +its usual plane. She could feel how blessed she was in ways she did not +sufficiently consider on common days when common cares blinded her. It was a +beautiful home, this of hers; here was a beautiful room, with its mirrors and +flowers and candle-light and happy guests. She smiled at everybody and +everything with a brooding sweetness.</p> + +<p>Her sense of herself was satisfactory too at the moment. She felt her +dress–an old one, rejuvenated–to be becoming. She was young to have +grown children. Her blond <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_39'></a>39</span>hair did not show the silver threads among it. She was +as handsome in her older way as she had been when young, and she was sure she +was nicer. She had family and friends, all full of regard for her. Her smile +reflected the state of her mind and did one good to see.</p> + +<p>Her eyes resting upon Brenda–whom the reverend Arthur had tried to +capture the moment she appeared, and been baffled–Mrs. Foss in the +optimism of her mood said to herself that all would very likely go well in that +quarter; they ought not to worry as they did.</p> + +<p>The pianist had struck up a polka. One still danced the polka in those days, +and the schottische and the dear old lancers, though the waltz was already the +favorite.</p> + +<p>The floor was at first sparsely, then ever more thickly, sown with hopping +and revolving couples. Hunt, one arm curled around a young waist in pink muslin, +had enough of his mind to spare from the amount of talk one has breath for while +dancing to continue in a line of thought started by an annoying little smart +where a shred of skin had been rubbed off his vanity when he saw Gerald come +from the dining-room. He mentally looked at himself and looked at Gerald, and +after comparing the pictures felt his astonishment increase. He could admit, as +an excuse for inviting Gerald instead of himself, that Gerald was an artist, and +this dinner had presumably been planned with the idea of having it +literary-artistic. But then–an artist! Gerald was so little of one. One +never heard of his selling a painting. In the darkest corners of his +friends’ rooms you sometimes discovered one of his queer things–a +gift, hung there as a compliment. One might, furthermore, grant that it did not +matter that a man should be agreeable in appearance. But Gerald was not even +agreeable in disposition; <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_40'></a>40</span>he did not try to make himself agreeable. What did the +Fosses see in him?</p> + +<p>The music had worked through a mighty flourish to a banging final chord. Hunt +escorted his lady to a chair, took the fan from her hand to fan her +with,–himself a little, too,–and while talking let his dark eye +stray from her and go roving, as was the habit of his eye.</p> + +<p>It plunged through an open door into the quietly lighted library, where the +consul and his distinguished guest and a few more of the older or staider people +had withdrawn from the tumult and were having smokes and conversation. They were +considering a marble fragment, passing it from hand to hand.</p> + +<p>Hunt knew that fragment, and at sight of it looked cynical. The consul, who +had discovered it immured in an ancient garden-wall, believed it to have been +carved by Orcagna.</p> + +<p>Old Hart had it in his hand. What he said could hardly be heard at that +distance; he passed it to Gerald with a look that seemed to ask for +corroboration. Gerald held it long and gazed seriously, with that conceit in his +own judgment which made him sometimes dispute the attributions in no less a +gallery than the Uffizi–say that a Verocchio was not a Verocchio, a +Giorgione not a Giorgione.</p> + +<p>Charlie strained to catch some syllable of what he said. Vainly. The pianist +was preluding. Bertie Bentivoglio came to ask the girl in pink to dance with +him. From the chair she left empty Charlie moved nearer to the library door, of +half a mind to join the group in there. But Gerald, upon whom Leslie had +impressed it that he must do his duty and let there be no wall-flowers, when the +prelude had developed into a waltz returned the marble into Hart’s <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41'></a>41</span>hand and came to the door. +Whereupon Charlie changed his mind and after saying “Hello, Gerald!” +turned again, and the young men stood looking over the scene side by side, two +figures contrasting in reality nearly as much as they did in Charlie’s +mental image of them for purposes of comparison.</p> + +<p>Any Rosina who sold buttonhole bouquets at the theater door could have seen +that Charlie was handsome, with his pale brown smoothness and regularity of +feature; the pretty mustache accentuating and not concealing the neat and +agreeable mold of his lip; the fine whiteness of his teeth, his civilized and +silken look altogether. The defects of his face, if one could call them that, +did not appear at first glance or even at second. His forehead had begun to gain +on his hair,–it ran up at the sides in two points,–and his slightly +prominent eyes were brown in the same sense as a horn button or a bit of +chestnut-shell is brown,–while some eyes that we remember were brown like +woodland pools with autumn leaves at the bottom! He did not look English, yet +did not look quite Italian either. He was in fact both, and the thing evenly +balanced. The banker Hunt’s brother had married an Italian; Charlie had +been born in Italy and hardly ever stirred out of it; on the other hand he had +found his society largely among the English and Americans in Florence.</p> + +<p>As he stood there, conforming gracefully to a recognized canon of manly +beauty, his neighbor Gerald, who would not have been noticed one way or the +other for his looks, yet from being beside him took on an indescribable effect +of eccentricity. The bone showed plainly around his eye-sockets and at the +bridge of his nose. One eyebrow became different from the other the moment he +regarded a <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42'></a>42</span>thing +analytically; and when he smiled those who noticed such things could detect that +nature had marked him for recognition: there showed beneath his mustache three +of the broad front middle teeth whereof two are the common portion. For the +remainder, a slight beard veiled the character of his chin and jaw and a little +disguised the thinness of his throat. Above a large forehead his dark hair rose +on end in a bristling bank, like that of most Italian men at the time. He looked +solitary, unsociable, critical, but not altogether ungentle. His forehead was +full of the suggestion of thoughts, his gray-blue eyes were full of the +reflection of feelings, that you could be comfortably sure he would not trouble +you with.</p> + +<p>“Well, Gerald, what are you doing with yourself these days?” +asked Charlie as they stood looking on, delaying to seek partners for the dance. +“Immortal masterpieces?”</p> + +<p>This innocuous playfulness somehow jarred. Gerald looked down at Charlie from +the side of his eye,–he was by a couple of inches or so the +taller,–then asked in his turn, a little crustily:</p> + +<p>“Do you really want to know?”</p> + +<p>“Why, no, my dear fellow, I don’t, if that’s your reply. It +was not curiosity. I was only showing an amiable interest.” His tone +conveyed that he had intended no offense and refused to take any; the +disagreeableness should be all on the same side.</p> + +<p>“Thank you for the interest. I am doing much as usual,” Gerald +answered, placated.</p> + +<p>“Who is this professor from America whom the very select are invited to +meet?” Charlie asked after an interval, as if they had been on the best of +terms again.</p> + +<p>The playfulness again was innocent, again might have <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_43'></a>43</span>been regarded as almost an attempt to +flatter; nevertheless it again jarred upon Gerald. It was by an effort that he +answered soberly and literally, without betraying that the point of irony had +irritated him, as, he did not doubt, it was meant to irritate.</p> + +<p>“Another translation of Dante?” Charlie made merry, when Gerald +had finished telling as much as he knew about the professor. “I tell you +what–I will set myself to translating the ‘Divine Comedy’! It will +give me distinction, and then–it ’s very simple,–I will never +show my translation!”</p> + +<p>There was surely no harm in this. It was just stupid. Charlie’s +<i>esprit</i> was never of any fineness. He and Gerald had known each other from +the days when both went to M. Demonget’s school, whence, without having +been friends, they had emerged intimates. It would have been ridiculous for +either to try to impress the other by the profundity of his thoughts. Charlie +was right in thinking of himself as standing in a relation to Gerald that made +him free to expose ideas in their undress. And yet it was on this evening and +this occasion that Gerald said to himself for the first time definitely that he +did not like Charlie Hunt. An antipathy existing perhaps from the beginning had +risen to the point where it crossed the threshold of consciousness. No, he +neither liked nor thought well of him.</p> + +<p>Luckily, it did not much matter, their relations were superficial. Belonging +in the same circles they must meet from time to time; but if Gerald avoided him +whenever it was decently feasible, he need not often suffer as at this moment +from the repressed nervous need to repudiate in explicit terms his person, his +society, his manners, his morals, everything that was his. By way of beginning +this <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44'></a>44</span>avoidance, +Gerald cast his eyes more particularly about him in search of a partner. +Charlie’s eyes too were wandering over the small and scattered number of +ladies still available to late comers.</p> + +<p>Both of them knew every one present. Charlie had picked out with his eye a +still youthful mama, who would not, he believed, refuse to dance, but would jest +and appear flattered and, when after some hesitation she consented, lean in his +arms only a little more heavily than her daughter. Gerald had singled a slender, +faded woman in garments of ivory lace, who, seated near Mme. Vannuccini in the +far corner of the room, was devoting herself to conversation as if she really +had not cared to dance. Gerald was moved to go and give her the chance of +refusing, if she were in total earnest. He remembered Blanche Seymour as a +passionate dancer still when he began to go to grownup parties.</p> + +<p>Now her hair was gray, her face had lines, but she did not look accustomed to +them; there was plaintiveness in her expression, as if she had been a young +girl, really, made up for an elderly part in theatricals, and did not like her +part. It was some sense of this which was attracting Gerald to her across the +room. Leslie had ordered him to dance, so dance he must. But the glare of +festivity all around him did something to his inner self comparable to a light +too bright making the eyes ache. Leslie would have told him that he picked up +his party by the wrong end. The general gaiety instead of infecting him, +reinforced his feeling that everybody, beneath the surface, was perplexed, +bleeding, afraid of the future, and had good cause to be.</p> + +<p>The dinner had been interesting,–he had not been much affected, he was +glad to find, by the presence of the De <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_45'></a>45</span>Brézés,–but he had risen from it haunted by the +conviction that the Fosses were not happy. Nobody, if one examined into it, was +happy; all this pretense was pathetic to the point of dreariness. Gerald knew +everybody’s affairs to some extent, after spending most of his life in the +same community, and a little city where gossip is an elegant occupation. This +person had made bad investments; that one was crippled by the necessity to pay a +son’s debts; this couple did not live in harmony, the husband was said to +be infatuated with a dancer. The fact that so much of their own fault entered +into people’s misfortunes, while rousing rage, forced him to pity, because +the limitation of their intelligence had so much to do with people’s +faults. He was in fact oppressed by the sense of the limits set to all the lives +around him in this beautiful little Florence, his home, his love, sometimes his +despair: the narrow actual opportunities after the boundless illusions and hopes +of youth; the limited outlook, the limited breathing-room, the limited fortunes. +Bars at the windows, closed doors on every hand.</p> + +<p>It was with the feeling that Miss Seymour was no more truly in holiday +spirits than was he that he turned toward her, as toward a spot of shadow amid +too fervid sunshine. It would be more congenial, drifting with her to the +languid measure of this very modern, morbidly emotional waltz, knowing that, +whatever their light talk, they alike felt life to be a sad affair, than going +through livelier evolutions with a young person who would secretly desire him to +flatter and flirt. An instinct founded less upon male conceit than knowledge of +his world drove the young bachelor determined to remain unattached to seek in +preference women who would found no smallest hope upon his notice of them.</p> + +<p>So, keeping at the edge of the room in order to be out of <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46'></a>46</span>the way of the dancers, he +started on his way to Miss Seymour, while Charlie, whose mood was as different +from Gerald’s as was his eye,–that brown eye which looked upon the +world as a barrel of very passable oysters, of which he would open as many as he +could get hold of,–started after.</p> + +<p>The approach of a stormily whirling couple, waltzing +<i>all’</i><i>italiana</i>, and then another and still another following, +forced them to suspend their journey. While they prudently waited, “Who is +that?” came from Charlie in a voice of acute curiosity.</p> + +<p>Gerald, after half a glance at him, mechanically looked in the same +direction.</p> + +<p>There stood at the door opening from the reception-room an unknown.</p> + +<p>When it was said that our young men knew everybody at the Fosses’ +soirée, it was not strictly meant that there might not be a person or two whom +they had not seen before: a plain little visiting cousin whom the Bentivoglios +had begged permission to bring; a new face of a young Italian introduced by a +fellow officer. But at the door now, displacing a good deal of air, stood a real +and striking unknown, in a Paris dress and diamonds and a smile.</p> + +<p>Gerald did not take the trouble to answer Charlie; to himself he said that +this was perhaps Mrs. Hawthorne, the Fosses’ new friend.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Foss had hastened to meet her. Leslie, disengaging herself from a +partner, left him standing in the middle of the room while she hastened +likewise. It must be Mrs. Hawthorne.</p> + +<p>Gerald took back his eyes, and continued on his way to Miss Seymour. But +Charlie, always alive to the possibilities of a new acquaintance, always eager +to be first in the <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_47'></a>47</span>field, dropped his quest of the mama. With an air of +nonchalant abstraction he went to stand in the neighborhood of the new arrival, +conveniently at hand for an introduction. He saw then that there were two fine +new birds; the light and size of the one had at first obscured the other, though +she, too, had on a Paris dress and diamonds and a smile. But the +dress–though there could be little difference in the women’s age, +both were young, without being unripe girls,–was of soberer tones: a sage +green moire with pale coffee-colored lace; and the jewels were more modest, and +the smile was smaller, its beam did not carry so far, nor was perched on so +considerable an eminence.</p> + +<p>As he had known she would do, Mrs. Foss after a moment looked about her for +men to introduce. And there he was.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne. Miss Madison.</p> + +<p>Leslie had at the same moment brought up Captain Viviani, who spoke a little +English, and liked very much to practise it with the charming American ladies, +as he told them.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Foss lingered awhile, helping the progress of the acquaintance by bits +of elucidation and compliment, then, when the thing was under way, withdrew so +adroitly that she was not missed. A young man, coming up to importune Leslie for +a promised dance, was allowed to carry her off; Miss Madison, assured by the +<i>capitano</i> that he could dance the American waltz, trusted herself, though a +little doubtfully, to his arms; and Charlie was left with Mrs. Hawthorne.</p> + +<p>“Shall we take a turn?” he offered.</p> + +<p>“Me?” The lady gave him a look sidewise from dewy blue eyes, as +if to see whether he were serious. He perceived that she with effort kept her +dimples from denting in. <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_48'></a>48</span>He could not be sure what the joke was. But she went +on, as if there had been no joke: “I was brought up a Baptist. My pa and +ma considered it wicked to dance, so would never let me learn. It doesn’t +look very wicked to me.”</p> + +<p>She watched the dancers with an earnestly following eye, preoccupied, he +supposed, with the moral aspect of their embraces and gyrations.</p> + +<p>“It looks easy enough,” she said, with suppressed excitement, +immensely fascinated. “I should think anybody could do that. You hop on +this foot, you slide, you hop on that foot, you slide. I believe I could do it. +No, no, I mustn’t let myself be tempted. I don’t want to be a +sight.” Her voice had wavered; it suddenly came out bold. “My +land!” she exclaimed full-bloodedly, “there goes a woman who’s +not a bit slimmer than me! Look here, let’s try. Not right before +everybody. I see a side room where it’s nice and dark. Come on in +there.” As, hardly muffling a gleam of peculiar and novel amusement, he +escorted her toward the room indicated, she reassured him, “I’m big, +but I’m light on my feet.”</p> + +<p>Charlie was afterward fond of telling that he had taught Mrs. Hawthorne to +dance. But the single lesson he gave her did not of a truth take her beyond the +point where, holding hands with him, like children, and counting one-two-three, +she tried hopping on this foot, then on the other. For Mrs. Foss, who seemed to +have specially at heart that the new people should enjoy themselves, in her idea +of securing this end, brought one person after the other to be introduced.</p> + +<p>How carefully selected these were, or how diplomatically prepared, the good +hostess alone could know.</p> + +<p>“Oh, I’m having such a good time!” Mrs. Hawthorne <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49'></a>49</span>sighed from a full and +happy heart, later in the evening, having gone to sit beside her hostess on the +little corner sofa which that tired woman had selected for a moment’s +rest. The dancing was passing before them. “It’s the loveliest party +I ever was to. What delightful friends you have, Mrs. Foss, and what a lot of +them! I’ve made ever so many friends, too, this evening. Mrs. Satterlee +has told me about the Home she’s interested in, and Miss Seymour about the +church-fair, and I’ve had a good talk with the minister. Those are three +nice girls of the banker’s, aren’t they? Florence, Francesca, and +Beatrice, commonly known as Flick, Fran, and Trix, they told me. Mr. Hunt, the +nephew, is nice, too; we get on like sliding down-hill. They’re all going +to come and see me.–Mrs. Foss,”–her attention had +veered,–“do look at that little fellow playing the piano! +Isn’t he <i>great</i>! But isn’t he comical, too! I’ve been +noticing him all the evening. He fascinates me. I never heard such splendid +playing. The bouncing parts make my feet twitch to dance, but the sighful, +wind-in-the-willow parts make me want to just lean back and close my eyes. I +could listen till the cows come home. I call it a wonderful gift.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Foss looked over at the little Italian, the unpretentious musical hack +whom one sent for when there was to be dancing, and paid–it was all he +asked–so very little. Her eyebrows went up a point as she smiled. It was +true, she remarked it for the first time, that his hands flew over the keys with +an air of breezy virtuosity. He raised them from the keyboard and brought them +down again with the action of a snorting high-stepping horse. When the passage +was loud he nearly lifted himself off the stool with pounding; when it was soft +he tickled the ivories with the <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_50'></a>50</span>delicacy of raindrops, at the same time diminishing +his person till he seemed the size of a fairy. Now and then he tossed his head, +as if champing a bit, and the bunch of black frizz over his left temple +trembled. A decidedly comic figure he appeared to Mrs. Foss.</p> + +<p>“I will tell Signor Ceccherelli what you say,” she amiably +promised. “I am sure it will please him.”</p> + +<p>Leslie, whose responsibilities kept her from dancing her young fill at her +own parties, sought Mrs. Hawthorne still later in the evening, when she thought +that lady might have had enough of Mr. Hunt senior sitting beside her. The heavy +old banker was not considered very entertaining, and everybody in Florence knew +his way of sticking at the side of a good-looking woman. Lest this one, so +evidently making herself pleasant, should be unduly taxed, Leslie stepped in to +free her, tactfully interested the banker in a game of cards going on upstairs, +and took the place he vacated–took it for just a minute, as a bird +perches.</p> + +<p>“No, you don’t!” Mrs. Hawthorne laid a hand on her arm when +she seemed near dashing off to bring somebody else to present. +“You’ve done the social act till you ought to be tired, if you +aren’t. Sit here by me a moment and take it easy. This party doesn’t +need any nursing. It’s the loveliest party I ever was to.”</p> + +<p>Leslie looked off in front of her to verify the statement, and unreluctantly +settled down on the little sofa to rest awhile. She liked Mrs. Hawthorne. One +could not help liking her, as she had had occasion to assert and reassert in +defense against a vague body of reasons for not adopting the new-comer into the +sacred circle of friends, or launching her on the waters of their little world. +Now, as they chatted, she said to herself again that if Mrs. Hawthorne’s +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51'></a>51</span>homeliness of phrase +were not a simple thing of playfulness, a disclaimer of the affectation of +elegance in talk as stilted, bumptious, unsuited to a proper modesty, it could +very well pass for that. Mrs. Hawthorne seldom expressed herself quite +seriously. As she seldom looked serious either, one could hardly hear her say it +was the loveliest party she ever was to without suspecting her of a humorous +intention. By the sly gleam of her eye one should know she was doing it to amuse +you, imitating a child, a country-woman, a shop-girl, for the sake of promoting +an easy pleasantness. With her bearing of entire dignity, her honest +handsomeness, her air of secure and generous wealth, she was truly not one whom +the ordinary public would feel disposed to seek reasons for excluding. Leslie +and her mother had refrained from presenting to her particular persons in the +company. All remarks heard from those who had been presented led to an almost +certainty that the new Americans were a success.</p> + +<p>“Do look at Estelle!” exclaimed Mrs. Hawthorne. +“She’s been dancing one dance after the other, and sits there now +looking cool as a cucumber. I would have her life if it could make me into a +bone like her. Miss Foss,”–she was diverted from the envious +contemplation of Estelle,–“who is that lovely girl over +there?”</p> + +<p>“Which one? There are so many to-night!”</p> + +<p>“The white one with the knob of dark hair down in her neck. An Italian, +I guess. Rather small. See who I mean? There. She’s going to speak to the +little fellow at the piano.”</p> + +<p>Leslie looked, but did not at once answer. The girl in white was indeed +strangely, at this moment poignantly, lovely. Some intensity of repressed +feeling made her cheek <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_52'></a>52</span>of a white-rose pallor, and her dark eyes, those spots +of velvet shadow, mysteriously deep. She had gone where the piano stood in a +bower of palm and bamboo, with Signor Ceccherelli seated before it, busy wiping +the sweat of his brow. More than one had gone to him that evening to ask for +some favorite piece. She was perhaps just requesting him to play The Blue +Danube, or La Manola or Bavardage, and it was merely the romantic way of her +beauty to express a sense of doom. She spoke quietly to the pianist, who looked +at her while she spoke and when she ceased made with his head a motion of +assent. She turned and went from the room.</p> + +<p>“It is my sister Brenda,” said Leslie. “How singular you +should not recognize her!”</p> + +<p>“I’ve never met her, my dear. You don’t remember. The time +I came to tea she was in town taking a music lesson. The time I came to dinner +she was in bed with a headache. Well, well, she’s not a bit like the rest +of you, is she? I took her for an Italian.”</p> + +<p>“She was only twelve when we came over here, it has somehow molded her. +I was seventeen; too old, I fancy, to change. Brenda is going back to America +before long, to be with our aunt, father’s sister, for whom Brenda was +named. It was only decided a day or two ago, when we heard from some friends who +are going and will take her under their wing. And if she goes there’s no +telling when she will come back, you see, because with every change of +administration father may be recalled. And Italy has been her home so long, all +her friends are here. It’s no wonder she doesn’t look exactly light +of heart.”</p> + +<p>“No, poor child!”</p> + +<p>There was a sympathetic silence, after which, “Who is <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53'></a>53</span>that?” Mrs. Hawthorne +asked, to take their minds off the intrusive sadnesses of life. With her gaze +across the room she counted, “One, two, three, four, to the left of the +piano, with his hands behind him and a round glass in his eye.”</p> + +<p>Leslie looked over at a figure of whom it was natural to ask who that was, it +so surely looked like Somebody–though Mrs. Hawthorne had very likely asked +because, merely, in her eyes he was queer. It was an oldish man, dressed with +marked elegance, white tie, white waistcoat, white flower at his lapel. The +whole of worldly wisdom dwelt in his weary eye. He had yellow and withered +cheeks, black hair with a dash of white above the ears, and a mustache whose +thickest part curved over his mouth like a black lacquer box-lid, while its long +ends, stiff as thorns of a thorn-tree, projected on either side far beyond his +face.</p> + +<p>“His name is Balm de Brézé, vicomte. He is by birth a Belgian, I think; +the title, however, is French. He has lived mostly in Paris, but now spends +about half of his time here. He married a friend of ours, an American. There is +Amabel, in ruby velvet, just inside the library door. A good deal younger than +he, yet they seem appropriately matched, somehow.”</p> + +<p>“She looks about as foreign as he does. Who’s the one she’s +talking to, handsome, dark as night? Never saw such a dark skin before except on +a cullud puss’n.”</p> + +<p>“I know. He might be an Arab, only he’s very good Tuscan. +It’s Mr. Landini,–Hunt and Landini.”</p> + +<p>“Ah, the bankers. They do my business, but I’ve never seen the +heads before to-night.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne’s eyes wandered, as if she said, “Whom <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54'></a>54</span>else do I want to know +about?” and Leslie made internal comment upon the fact that Mrs. +Hawthorne’s interest was quickened by those individuals precisely whom +they had withheld, for reasons, from presenting to her.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne suddenly pressed closer, and with a little chuckle grasped +Leslie’s knee, by this affectionate touch to make herself forgiven for the +disrespect about to be shown.</p> + +<p>“And who’s Stickly-prickly?”</p> + +<p>Leslie had to laugh, too. Impossible not to know which one was meant of all +the people in the direction of Mrs. Hawthorne’s glance. He was leaning +against the wall between two chairs deserted by the fair, looking off with a +slightly mournful indifference at everything and at nothing. His mustache ended +in upturned points, his beard was pointed, his hair stood up in little points. +He gave the impression besides of one whose nervous temper put out porcupine +shafts to keep you off.</p> + +<p>“It’s one of our very best friends, Mrs. Hawthorne. Dear old +Gerald! Mr. Fane. Shall I go get him and bring him over?”</p> + +<p>“No, don’t. I should be scared of him.”</p> + +<p>“Let me! His prickles are harmless. He has heard us speak of you so +much! See, he is looking over at us wistfully, in a way that plainly suggests +our course. Here comes Charlie Hunt, who will keep you amused while I fetch +Gerald; then we will go in together and have an ice.”</p> + +<p>Charlie Hunt, modern moth without fear or shyness, but with a great deal of +caution, was indeed returning for the third or fourth time to Mrs. +Hawthorne’s side, drawn by the <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_55'></a>55</span>sparkle of eyes and tresses and smiles and diamonds. +Francesca had already described him that evening to another young lady as +dancing attendance on the new American. He dropped into the seat vacated by +Leslie, addressed Mrs. Hawthorne as if they had been friends for at least weeks, +and made conversation joyfully easy by getting at once on to a playful +footing.</p> + +<p>Leslie meanwhile steered her course toward Gerald. The music had started up +again, men were presenting themselves to maidens with their request for the +favor.... Leslie threaded her way between the first on the floor. Her eyes were +naturally turned toward the object of her search; some intention toward him was +probably apparent in her look. As if he had not seen it, or as if, having seen +it, he scented in her approach some conspiracy against his peace, Gerald in a +moment during which her eye was not on him quietly vanished.</p> + +<p>Missing him, Leslie looked about in some surprise, then entered the door by +which inevitably he must have passed. She gave a glance around the library; +Gerald did not seem to be there. Mystified, she looked more carefully at the +faces to be seen through the thin tobacco smoke. No, Gerald’s was not +among them. Gerald, acquainted with the house, knew the door, of course, of the +kind frequent in Italian houses, the little door indistinguishable from the +wall, by which one could leave the library, and after crossing the landing of +the kitchen stairs, reach the dining-room. From the dining-room, then, one could +come into the entrance hall, whence go upstairs, or out into the garden, or, as +one pleased, back into the drawing-room. Leslie did not think the matter of +sufficient importance to pursue the chase farther.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56'></a>56</span>The dancing was +suspended while the musician had sandwiches and glasses of a fragrant and +delicious-looking but weak punch. The Fosses’ waiter knew him well and +fraternally attended to his wants.</p> + +<p>The dining-room, though large, would not permit all the couples to enter at +once, so ices and cakes were borne from the table by cavaliers to expectant +ladies in the antechamber, on the stairs, and in the farther rooms.</p> + +<p>The musician after eating to his satisfaction took the time for a cigarette, +which he enjoyed, not in the library, but in cool and peaceful isolation on the +top step of the kitchen stairs. Refreshed, he briskly went back to his piano, +persuaded that the young people were sighing to see him there. With new vigor he +struck up a march. The crowd in the dining-room thinned.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne and Miss Madison, with Charlie Hunt and Doctor Chandler, one +of the Americans from the pension, lingered on in the corner where, with the +migration of so many to the ball-room, all four had been able to find chairs. +Mrs. Hawthorne, of the fair moon-face, was as a matter of course eating sweet +stuff; Miss Madison, contrariwise, sipped a small cup of black coffee. Miss +Madison, no need to say, had a neat jaw-bone to show–collarbones, too. She +was not pretty, her features were hardly worth describing, but yet it was an +attractive face, as merry as it was fundamentally shrewd, as sensible as it was +sprightly. The frank, almost business-like manner of her setting out to have a +good time at the party ensured her having at least a lively one, and her +partners not finding it slow. She at once and impartially interested herself in +the men brought up to her, and sought to interest them. Her flirtatiousness was, +however, sedate–in its way, <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_57'></a>57</span>moral–not intended to have any result beyond the +enlivenment of the hour.</p> + +<p>Miss Madison had been finding exhilaration and delight this evening in +dancing, and when presently the alluring strains of a waltz came floating to +their ears, she looked at Chandler, and he in the same manner looked at her; +whereupon she rose, as if words had been exchanged, took his arm, and they +deserted for the ball-room. Charlie Hunt was left ensconced in an intimate nook +alone with Mrs. Hawthorne.</p> + +<p>But he had hardly a moment in which to enjoy the feeling of advantage this +gave him before his cousin Francesca came looking for him. They were going, she +said. Father was sleepy, and mother said they must go. If he wanted a lift home, +he must hurry up. Charlie had come with them, on the box near the driver, there +being five already inside the landau. Gallantry should perhaps have made him +answer that rather than be dragged away at this moment he would walk. But +gallantry was dumb. Charlie was not fond of walking. It was a great convenience, +an economy as well, being permitted to make use of his aunt’s +carriage.</p> + +<p>Having delivered her message, Francesca had gone to put on her things, and +Charlie, after expressions of regret over the inevitable, asked Mrs. Hawthorne +whither she would wish to be taken before he left.</p> + +<p>Let him not bother, she answered; she could find her friends without +help.</p> + +<p>They separated. Walking slowly, she looked for faces of acquaintances. She +glanced in at the ball-room door. They were dancing still, but not nearly so +many. She turned into the reception-room, whence she could reënter the ball-room +at the other end without danger of collision, <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_58'></a>58</span>and reach that comfortable blue satin sofa, now +standing empty. There she would sit looking on till Estelle joined her, when +they would set about making their adieux. The carriage must have been waiting +for them ever so long.</p> + +<p>She had sat a minute, unconsciously smiling to herself, because the +sensations and impressions of the evening were all so pleasant, when something +occurred to her as desirable to be done. She rose to carry out her idea.</p> + +<p>The dancing had stopped; the floor was clear except in the neighborhood of +the walls, where couples stood or sat recovering breath and coolness. She +started to cross the long room. She did not skirt it because the direct line to +her destination was by the middle; she did not go fast because there was no +occasion, and it was not her way. She advanced like a goodly galleon pushing +along the sea with finely curved bows, all sails set to catch the breeze. Her +mind was entirely on her idea, and she did not at first feel herself to be +conspicuous. But all the eyes in the room, before she had gone half her way, +were fastened upon her, a natural and legitimate mark. One might now without +impertinence have the satisfaction of a good look at the newly come American who +had taken the big house on the Lungarno; the women might study the fashion of +her hair and dress.</p> + +<p>She was smiling faintly, but fixedly; she smiled, indeed, all the time, as if +smiles had been an indispensable article of wear at a party. The least of her +smiles brought dimples into view, and her dimples seemed multitudinous, though +there were really only three in her face and one of those irregular things +called apple-seeds. Her agreeably blunted features and peachy roundness of cheek +belonged to a good-humored, unimposing type, which took on a certain nobility +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59'></a>59</span>in her case from +being carried high on a strong, round neck over a splendid broad breast, partly +bare this evening, and seen to be white as milk, as swans’-down, as +pearl.</p> + +<p>If one had tried to define the look which left one so little doubt as to her +nationality, one would perhaps have said it was a combination of fearlessness +and accessibility. She feared not you, nor should you fear her; she counted on +your friendliness, you might count on hers.</p> + +<p>She was a person simple in the main. The colors she had selected to wear +accorded with the rest, showing little intricacy of taste. The two silks +composing her dress were respectively the blue of a summer morning and the pink +of a rose. From cushioned and dimpled shoulders the bodice tapered to as fine a +waist as a Paris dressmaker had found possible to bring about in a woman who, +despite a veritable yearning to look slender, cared also for freedom to breathe, +and, as she said with a sigh, guessed she must make up her mind to be happy +without looking like a toothpick. At the back of the waist, the dress leapt +suddenly out and away from the dorsal column–every lady’s dress did +that for a season or two at the time we are telling of, and at every step she +took the back of her skirt gave a bob, for the bustle was supplemented by three +or four concealed semi-circles of thin steel, reeds we called them, which hit +against you as you went and sprang lightly away from your heels.</p> + +<p>The arrangement of Mrs. Hawthorne’s hair equalled in artificiality the +mode of her dress: the front locks were clipped and twisted into little curls, +the back locks drawn to the top of the head, where they were disposed in silken +loops and rolls, at the top of which, like a flag planted on a hill, stood an +aigrette, a sparkle and two whiffs.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60'></a>60</span>It may not sound +pretty, it was not, but the eye of that day had become used to it, as eyes have +since become used to fashions no prettier, and as Mrs. Hawthorne’s hair +was of a soft sunny tint it was that evening admired by more than one, as was +her intrinsically ugly beautiful gown, which gave a little jerky rebound every +time she placed one of those neat solid satin-shod feet before the other in her +progress across the now attentive room.</p> + +<p>She had taken off her long white gloves to eat a cake–or cakes; she was +carrying them loosely swinging from one dimpled hand.</p> + +<p>In the middle of the room self-consciousness overtook her. With the awakening +sense of eyes upon her, she looked first to one side, then to the other. Her +smile broadened while growing by just a tinge sheepish; she seemed to waver and +consider turning from her course and finishing her journey close along the wall, +like a mouse....</p> + +<p>She finally did not, nor yet hurried. She made her smile explain to whoever +was looking on that a person was excusable for making this sort of mistake, that +it hurt nobody, that one need not and did not care; that she was sure they did +not like her any less for it; they would not if they knew how void of offense +toward them all was her heart; that having exposed herself to being looked at, +she hoped they liked her looks. Her dress was a very good dress, her laces were +very good lace, and the maid who had done her hair was considered a first-rate +hand at doing hair.</p> + +<p>So she was carrying it off, and her smile was only a little self-conscious, +only a shade embarrassed, when from among the men standing near the library +door, for which she was directly making, there stepped out one to meet her, not +unlike <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61'></a>61</span>a slender +needle darting toward a large, rounded magnet as it comes into due range.</p> + +<p>More sensitive than she, feeling the situation much more uncomfortably for +his countrywoman than she felt it for herself, a foreign-looking fellow, who had +not quite forgotten that he was an American, after a moment’s hard +struggle against his impulse, hastened forward to shorten for her that +uncompanioned course across the floor under ten thousand search-lights.</p> + +<p>“I’m looking for somebody,” said Mrs. Hawthorne, with the +smile of a child.</p> + +<p>The voice which had made one man think of the crimson heart on a valentine +reminded this other of rough velvet.</p> + +<p>He showed his eccentric three front teeth in a responding smile that had a +touch of the faun, and asked whimsically:</p> + +<p>“Will I do?”</p> + +<p>“Help me to find Mr. Foss, and you’ll do perfectly,” she +said merrily. “I haven’t seen him more than just to shake hands this +whole evening, and I do want to have a little talk before I go.”</p> + +<p>“If I am not mistaken, we shall find him in the library.” He +offered his arm.</p> + +<p>“I may have appeared to be doing something else, Mrs. Hawthorne, but I +have really been looking for you the last hour,” said the consul when he +had been found. “I wanted to have a little talk. How are you enjoying +Florence?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, we’re having an elegant time, thanks to that dear wife of +yours and that dear girl, Leslie. I don’t know what we should have done +without them and you.”</p> + +<p>“But the city itself, Florence, doesn’t it enchant +you?”</p> + +<p>“We–ell, yes. N-n-n-no. Yes and no. That’s it. You want me +to tell the truth, don’t you? Some of it does, <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_62'></a>62</span>and some of it doesn’t. Some of it, +I guess, will take me a long time to get used to. It’s terribly different +from what we expected–I, in particular. You see, I came here because an +old friend used to talk so much about it. Florence the Fair! The City of Lilies! +He said Italy was the most beautiful country in the world, and Florence the most +beautiful city in Italy. So my expectations were way up.–Oh, I don’t +know; it’s hard to tell. I don’t exactly remember now what I did +expect. I guess my picture of it was something like the New Jerusalem on an +Easter day. But I shall get used to this, like to the taste of olives. It must +be all right, for the friend I was speaking of had the finest mind I’ve +ever known. I’m green as turnip-tops, of course, but I shall get educated +up to it, I suppose. Give me time.”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne, hear me prophesy,” said Mr. Foss. “In six +months you will love it all. It’s the fate of us who come here from new +countries. It will steal in upon you, grow upon you, beset and besot you, till +you like no other place in the world so well.”</p> + +<p>“Will it? Well, if you say so. The Judge–the friend I was +speaking of,–said so much of the same kind that the minute I thought of +coming to Europe, right after I’d said, ‘I’ll go to Paris,’ I +said to myself, ‘I’ll go to Florence.’”</p> + +<p>“Your friend was a judge of places.”</p> + +<p>“It wasn’t he alone influenced me. He was sick a long time, and I +used to read aloud to him, and one spell, when his mind for some reason or other +was running on Italy, every book he chose had the scene laid here. There were +whole pages of description, and anything so lovely, so luscious, as the places +and people described I never did dream. I didn’t understand more than a +quarter, but I <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_63'></a>63</span>swallowed it all and gloated. The woman who wrote +those books certainly did have an imagination. O Antonia, let me meet you and +have a good look at you so I can tell a–hm, the owner of an imagination +when I see one again!”</p> + +<p>“Antonia, did you say?” The consul smiled.</p> + +<p>“That was the writer’s name. You know the books I +mean?”</p> + +<p>“I have read a work or two of Antonia’s, yes. She lives near +Florence, you know, on another of these little hills.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, does she!”</p> + +<p>“Her name is Mrs. Grangeon. She is an Englishwoman, with an +extraordinary sense of, and feeling for, Italy. She is, at her best, a poet; at +her worst, slightly deficient, perhaps, in humor. But her passion for Italy is +genuine, and I have no doubt she sees it as glowing as the pictures she makes of +it.”</p> + +<p>“Her books are ‘grand, John’! If I never had come here, I never +should have appreciated them or her–making up that wonderful world, all +pomegranates and jasmin-stars, and curls like clustering blue-black grapes, and +staturesque limbs, out of the back of her head. Yes, and the golden dust of +centuries, and time’s mellow caressing touch–oh, I wish I could +remember it all!”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne, we must take you in hand. Be it ours to initiate you. +Come, what have you been to see?”</p> + +<p>“Treasures of art? We haven’t had time yet. We’ve been +getting a house fit to live in. When you asked me how I liked Florence, I ought +to have begun by that end. I love my house, Mr. Foss. I love my garden. I love +the Lungarno. And the Casheeny. And Boboly. And the drive up here. And the +stores! I positively dote on those little bits of stores on the jewelers’ +bridge.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64'></a>64</span>“Well, well, +that’s quite enough to begin with.”</p> + +<p>“Now that we’re going to have some time to spare, we mean to go +sight-seeing like other folks.”</p> + +<p>“How I wish, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, that I were not such a busy man! +But”–Mr. Foss had a look of bright inspiration–“should I +on that account be dejected? Here is Mr. Fane–”</p> + +<p>He turned to Gerald, who, after bringing up Mrs. Hawthorne, had stood near, a +silent third, waiting to act further as her escort by and by. Meanwhile he had +been listening with a varied assortment of feelings and a boundless fatigue of +spirit.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Fane,” said the consul, “who is not nearly so busy a +man as I, and is the most sympathetic, well-informed cicerone you could find. +When we wish to be sure our visiting friends shall see Florence under the best +possible circumstances, we turn them over to Mr. Fane.”</p> + +<p>Gerald’s face struggled into a sourish smile, and he bowed ironical +thanks for the compliment. Lifting his head, he shot a glance of reproachful +interrogation at the consul. Was his friend doing this humorously, to tease him, +or was the man simply not thinking?</p> + +<p>The consul looked innocent of any sly intention; he was all of a jocund +smile; the consul, who should have known better, wore the air of doing him a +pleasure and her a pleasure and a pleasure to himself; the air of thinking that +any normally constituted young man would be grateful for such a chance.</p> + +<p>“I shall be most happy,” said Gerald, with irreproachable and +misleading politeness.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne turned to him readily.</p> + +<p>“Any time you say. Let me tell you where we live.”</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65'></a>65</span><a id='link_4'></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<p>The room in which Mrs. Hawthorne went to bed an hour or two after taking +leave of the dwindling company at Villa Foss was large and luxurious. Its +windows were enormous, arched at the top and reaching the floor. A wrought-iron +railing outside made them safe. In the angle of the wall between two of +them–it was a corner room–stood a mirror nearly the size of the +windows, in a broad frame of carved and gilt wood, resting on a marble shelf +that supported besides two alabaster vases holding bunches of roses.</p> + +<p>In the corner opposite to the mirror and placed “catty-corner,” +as the occupier worded it, stood the stateliest of beds, upholstered and draped +in heavy watered silk of a dull, even dingy, yellow. Its hangings were gathered +at the top into the hollow of a great gold coronet, whence they spread and fell +in folds that were looped back with silk cords. The walls were covered by that +same texture of dull gold, held in place by tarnished gilt moldings.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne had wanted all this dusty and faded splendor removed,–it +seemed to her the possible lurking-place of mice or worse,–but the agent +would not hear of it. The noble landlord was not really eager to let.</p> + +<p>So Mrs. Hawthorne, to brighten the room in spite of it, for she wished to +keep it for her own, having taken a fancy to the fresco overhead,–that +fascinating chariot driven <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_66'></a>66</span>among clouds by a radiant youth surrounded by smiling, +flower-scattering maidens,–Mrs. Hawthorne to “gay up” the +room, as she said, had hung windows and doors with draperies of her favorite +cornflower blue, and covered the chairs with the same. On the floor she had +stretched a pearl-gray carpet all aglow with wreaths of roses tied with ribbons +of blue; and over the carpet–at the bedside, before the dressing-table, in +front of the fireplace–laid down white bear-skins.</p> + +<p>To cover further the yellow silk, she had hung in one panel of it a painting +of the “Madonna della Seggiola,” in another, Carlo Dolci’s +“Angel of the Annunciation,” and in another, Carlo Dolci’s +Magdalen clasping the box of ointment–all works of art bought in Via dei +Fossi, framed in great gilt-wood frames, like the mirror.</p> + +<p>The lace curtains under the cornflower blue brocade were like Brussels +wedding veils seen through a magnifying glass.</p> + +<p>Yes, the room had been made to look bright. It had lamps of cream-colored +biscuit, painted with roses and crowned with pink shades; it had polished brass +fire-irons. But the point of supreme brightness was the dressing-table, where +glittered in orderly display Mrs. Hawthorne’s American toilet silver, +mirror, trays, brushes, boxes, bottles–solid, shining, richly +embossed.</p> + +<p>There was just one thing in all the room that looked poor, workaday. It was +on the small table at the head of the bed, beside the candle-stick and +match-safe, a black book, the commonest kind of Bible, such a Bible as is +dispensed by those who have to furnish the sacred writings in large +numbers–Sunday schools, for instance.</p> + +<p>It was in fact a Sunday-school prize that now lay on the night-stand, in what +the sober volume presented to a pious <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_67'></a>67</span>little girl must have thought strange company. Cover +to cover with it, cheek by jowl, lay a book on etiquette.</p> + +<p>It was for the Bible, however, that Mrs. Hawthorne reached after she had got +into bed. She found her place. She read in it every night before sleeping, to +keep a promise made long ago, and avoid the reproaches of a person gone from +this earth, but who still, she never questioned, could be pleased or displeased +with her actions.</p> + +<p>She did not always try to understand or follow; when she was sleepy she read +merely with her eyes. To-night her mind was too full of personal things to +permit of strict attention to the text. As she enumerated the wonders of the +House that Solomon built for the Lord, there formed no picture of it in her +mind.</p> + +<p>“I wonder what knops are,” she said to herself drowsily. “I +must remember to ask Hattie.”</p> + +<p>There was a stir. Both doors of her room were open; the little unobtrusive +one into the dressing-room for air,–the window there stood wide open +through the night,–the large one into the sitting-room so as to leave a +free road to Miss Madison’s room beyond. Through this now slipped a +slender form in a soft, fur-bordered wrapper, and with front locks done up in +curling-kids.</p> + +<p>“You in bed?”</p> + +<p>“Yes; I’m just reading my chapter.”</p> + +<p>“Livvy gone?”</p> + +<p>Livvy, or Miss Deliverance Jones, was the maid they had brought from America, +a New York negress of the most faintly colored complexion, with hair +mysteriously blond. Her head was egg-shaped, her nose slightly flat, her lip +voluptuous, her brown-black eye sad as a homesick monkey’s; but she could +wind a chocolate veil about her face <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_68'></a>68</span>and stylish hat, and walk forth happy in the fancy +that she passed for white. She was an accomplished dressmaker and hair-dresser; +she moreover had spent some time in the service of a beauty-doctor. The ladies +had secured her just before sailing, and liked her, but did not talk freely when +she was present.</p> + +<p>“Yes, she’s gone.”</p> + +<p>“I’m not a bit sleepy, are you? I’m too excited. +Let’s talk.”</p> + +<p>She climbed on to her friend’s bed, gathered her knees to her chin, and +hugged them, with the effect of hugging to herself a great happiness.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne closed her Bible and put it aside. The single candle by which +she had been reading showed the shining mirthfulness of the eyes with which the +two regarded each other.</p> + +<p>“Wasn’t it fun?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, wasn’t it!”</p> + +<p>They spoke softly, whether because the suggestion of the late hour was upon +them, or they thought, without thinking, that Livvy might still be near. They +whispered like school-girls who have come together in forbidden fun.</p> + +<p>“I never did have such a good time.”</p> + +<p>“Nor I, neither. Oh, Hat, <i>isn’t it</i> fun!”</p> + +<p>“<i>Isn’t it</i>, just!”</p> + +<p>“See here, Hat, you’ve got to teach me to dance. I was almost +crazy this evening, I wanted so to be dancing with the rest. Where d’you +learn?”</p> + +<p>“I went to dancing-school, my dear.”</p> + +<p>“No! Did you?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I did; all one winter. What are you thinking <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_69'></a>69</span>about? I’ve been to parties in my +life. Not many, but I’ve been. There was the Home Club +party─”</p> + +<p>“Yes, of course. I remember how I teased once to go to the Home Club +party; but ma wouldn’t let me. I hadn’t anything to put on, anyhow. +But I’d have gone in my shirt if they’d let me. The nearest to a +real party I’d been to before to-night was a clam-bake. I don’t +count church sociables. Out West there used to be celebrations in a sort of +bar-room place, but even I couldn’t stand those. To think I’ve +always yearned so to have a good time, and now I’m having it! Oh, Hat, +wasn’t it lovely! That’s a mighty nice house of the Fosses. How good +it looked, all fixed up! The flowers and candles, one room opening into the +other, everything just right. Hat, Mrs. Foss is the finest woman I ever knew, +and in my opinion makes the most elegant appearance. She’s the one +I’d choose to be like if I could. Just watch me copy-cat her. You’ll +see. ‘My dear Mrs. Hawthorne, pray don’t speak of the trouble! It’s +been nothing but a pleasure. Be sure you call upon us whenever we can be of the +smallest service.’”</p> + +<p>“You’ve caught her, Nell, you silly thing! Down to the +ground.”</p> + +<p>“I’m going to pattern after her till it comes natural. How sweet +they all are! How kind they’ve been!” Mrs. Hawthorne grew +dreamy.</p> + +<p>“Your dress, Nell, was a perfect success,” the other ran +on–“perfect. How did you think mine looked? I’ll tell you a +compliment I got for you, if you’ll tell me one you got for me. If not, +I’ll save it up in my secret breast till you’re ready to make a +trade.”</p> + +<p>“To think,” said Mrs. Hawthorne, still engrossed by her dream of +absent and bygone things, “that we’re the same <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_70'></a>70</span>little girls–and one of them +barefoot!–who used to play house together on a sand-heap of old Cape Cod +and pin on any old rag that would tail along the ground and play ladies! ‘My +dear Mrs. Madison, how do you do?’”</p> + +<p>“‘My dear Mrs. Hawthorne, my toes are just as sore as they can +be!’”</p> + +<p>“‘That comes, my dear Mrs. Madison, of you dancing like a crazy woman +from ten o’clock till one, in tight shoes!’–Mrs. Hawthorne! +Mrs. Madison! Aurora! Estelle! To think, after all these years, we should be +playing our old play that we played at Wellfleet and East Boston, only playing +it with real things, in Paris and Florence!”</p> + +<p>“Nell, I’m so afraid of forgetting and calling you Nell that +every time I catch myself near doing it I can feel the cold sweat break out on +my brow.”</p> + +<p>“What would it matter? We aren’t impostors, Hat. We’re just +having fun, and don’t want our real names to queer it. If they should slip +out when we aren’t thinking, they’d simply sound like nicknames +we’ve got for each other. But they won’t slip out. I’m too +fond of calling you Estelle. Don’t you <i>love</i> to call me Aurora? Hat, +how did I behave, far as you could see?”</p> + +<p>“Nell, if I hadn’t known you, and had just been seeing you for +the first time, I should have said to myself: ‘What a fine, good-looking, +beautifully dressed, refined, and ladylike woman that is! Wish t’ I might +make her acquaintance.’ And what would you have said, if you’d seen +me, never having met me before?”</p> + +<p>“I should have said: ‘What a bright, smart, intelligent, and rarely +beautiful girl! So well dressed, too, and slender as a worm! A queen of society. +I do like her looks! She’s the spittin’ image of my little friend +Hattie Carver, <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71'></a>71</span>the +schoolmarm in East Boston, that I used to know!’ Oh, Hat, the +<i>queerest</i> thing! What do you suppose I saw this evening at that lovely +house full of lovely people? I was in the library learning to dance. And I +looked up and there was what I took to be a young man smoking a cigarette. Next +thing, I saw that his dress was low-necked almost down to the waist. Hat, it was +a <i>woman</i> smoking! a woman with her hair cut short. I never saw anything +like it, except an old Irishwoman once, with her pipe.”</p> + +<p>“Seems to me I’ve heard of ladies in Europe doing it, and it +being considered all right. I <i>have</i> heard that some do it in New York, but +I guess they’re careful not to be seen.”</p> + +<p>“Well, it does seem a queer thing to do!–Go ahead, Hat; what was +the compliment?”</p> + +<p>“Sure, now, you’ve got one for me?”</p> + +<p>“Sure.”</p> + +<p>“It was What’s-his-name, the English fellow we see every time we +go in to Cook’s–Mr. Dysart. Leslie says he comes of a very good +family. He said to me, ‘How very charming Mrs. Hawthorne is looking this +evening!’”</p> + +<p>“Hattie, that man’s a humbug, that man’s leading a double +life. He said to me, ‘How very charming Miss Madison is looking this +evening!’ He did.”</p> + +<p>“Go ’way! You’re making it up to save trouble.”</p> + +<p>“No, I ain’t! Stop, Hattie! I know! I <i>am not</i>. Confusion +upon it! You’ve made me so nervous when I talk that I can’t say +ain’t without jumping as if I’d sat on a pin!”</p> + +<p>“Nell Goodwin, look me square in the eye. How many times did you say +ain’t at the party this evening?”</p> + +<p>“Not once; I swear it. I was looking out every minute. <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72'></a>72</span>‘I am not,’ I said; +‘We are not,’ I said; ‘He doesn’t,’ I said; ‘He +isn’t,’ I said. There! Between you’n’ I, Hat, it’s a +dreadful nuisance, keeping my mind on the way I talk. I hope I shall come in +time to talking lofty without thinking about it. Why do I have to, Hat, after +all? I’ve lived among educated people. Wasn’t the Judge highly +educated? And nobody ever found fault with my way of talking. My folks all had +been to school and read books. And didn’t I go to school till I was +fourteen? And didn’t I graduate from the grammar school with the rest? +What’s the matter with my natural way of talking?”</p> + +<p>“It’s all right at home, Nell, but it’s different over +here. They’re a different kind of people we’re thrown +with.”</p> + +<p>“This pernickety way of talking never sounds cozy or friendly one bit. +We’re as good as anybody, of course, but when I say ‘I am not, he does +not,’ I always feel as if I were setting up to be better than the +rest!–Oh, it isn’t, is it? Oh, do you say so? ‘Between you and +I’ isn’t correct? But I thought you told me.... To Jericho, Hattie! +How’s a feller ever going to get to know?”</p> + +<p>“Listen, Nell, while I go over it again. When you +say─”</p> + +<p>“Ah, no! Not at this time of night, Estelle! Let me live in ignorance +till morning! You know all those sorts of things, my dear Estelle, because +you’re paid by the government to know them. I don’t; but I know lots +and lots of things that are a sight funnier.”</p> + +<p>She grabbed one of the pillows and flung it at her friend, who flung it back +at her; and the simple creatures laughed.</p> + +<p>Aurora re-tied in a bow the blue ribbon that closed the collar of her +nightgown, and settled back again, with her <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_73'></a>73</span>arms out on the white satin quilt, flowered with roses +and lined with blue. The two braids of her fair hair lay, one on each side, down +her big, frank, undisguised bosom.</p> + +<p>“You heaping dish of vanilla ice-cream!” said Hattie.</p> + +<p>“You stick of rhubarb!” said Nell. “Stop, Hat! Behave! Do +you suppose all the people we’ve invited to come and see us will +come?”</p> + +<p>“Doctor Chandler will come. And the Hunt girls will come. And Madame +Bentivoglio I guess will come.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, and the Satterlees I’m sure will come. And Mrs. Seymour and +her daughter that I said I’d help with the church fair. And the minister; +what was it? Spottiswood.”</p> + +<p>“And won’t the Mr. Hunt come that you seemed to be having such a +good time with?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, he’ll come. He’ll come to-morrow, I shouldn’t +wonder. Then that thinnish fellow with the hair like a hearth-brush–did +you meet him? Mr. Fane, a great friend of the Fosses. He’s coming to take +us sight-seeing.” She yawned a wide, audible yawn. “I only hope +there’ll be some fun in it. Confound you, Hat, go to bed!”</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74'></a>74</span><a id='link_5'></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<p>After the Fosses had helped the lessees of the Haughty Hermitage to make it +habitable; found for them a coachman who had a little French and, when told what +they desired to buy, would take them to the proper shops; provided them with a +butler to the same extent a linguist, through whom Estelle, who in Paris had +ambitiously studied a manual of conversation, could give her orders, they not +unnaturally became less generous of their company.</p> + +<p>But they were not permitted to make the intervals long between visits. The +coachman wise in French was perpetually driving his spanking pair to their +gates, delivering a message, and waiting to take them down for lunch or dinner +with their joyfully welcoming and grateful friends. It was not at all +unpleasant. It was not prized preciously,–there was too much of it and too +urgently lavished,–but the lavishers were loved for it by two women +neither dry-hearted nor world-hardened. Leslie fell into the way, when she was +in town and had time, of running in to Aurora’s, where it would be +cheerful and she looked for a laugh.</p> + +<p>Leslie, having reached, as she considered, years of discretion, thought fit +to disregard the Florentine rule that young unmarried women must not walk in the +streets unattended. She had balanced the two inconveniences: that of staying at +home unless some one could go out with her, <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_75'></a>75</span>and that of being spoken to in the street, and decided +that it was less unpleasant to hear a strange young man murmur as she passed, +“Angel of paradise!” or “Beautiful eyes!”–no +grosser insult had ever been offered her,–than to be bothered by a servant +at her heels. The fact that she looked American and was understood to be +following the custom of her own country secured her against any real +misinterpretation.</p> + +<p>It was chilly, Novemberish, and within the doors of Florentine domiciles +rather colder, for some reason, than in the open air. The Fosses kept their +house at a more human temperature than most people, but yet after years of Italy +did not heat very thoroughly: one drops into the way of doing as others do, and +grows accustomed to putting up with cold in winter. Leslie often expressed the +opinion that in America people really exaggerate in the matter of heating their +houses. Nevertheless, just for the joy of the eyes and, through the eyes, of the +depressed spirit, she was glad to-day of the big fire dancing and crackling in +Aurora’s chimney-place.</p> + +<p>The upstairs sitting-room, where the ladies generally sat, might look rather +like a day nursery; yet after one had accepted it, with its chintz of big red +flowers and green foliage, its rich strawberry rug and new gold picture-frames, +it did seem to brighten one’s mood. How think grayly amid that dazzle and +glow any more than feel cold before that fire?</p> + +<p>Leslie held her hands to the blaze, and with an amiable display of interest +inquired of their affairs, the progress made in “getting settled.” +There was still a good deal to do of a minor sort.</p> + +<p>Accounts were given her in a merry duet; purchases were <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_76'></a>76</span>shown; she was told all that had happened +since they last saw her, who had called, whom they had been to see.</p> + +<p>Casting about in her mind for further things to communicate, Aurora was +reminded of a small grievance.</p> + +<p>“I thought your friend Mr. Fane was going to come and take us +sight-seeing,” she said.</p> + +<p>“Was it so arranged?”</p> + +<p>“So I supposed.”</p> + +<p>“And he hasn’t been?”</p> + +<p>“Hide nor hair of him have we seen.”</p> + +<p>“I meant, hasn’t he perhaps called while you were out?”</p> + +<p>“He hasn’t.”</p> + +<p>“Strange. It’s not like him to be rude. But, then, he’s not +like himself these days. You must excuse him.”</p> + +<p>“What’s the matter with him? Isn’t he well?”</p> + +<p>“He’s not ill in the usual sense. If he were, we should make him +have a doctor and hope to see him cured. It’s worse than an illness. He is +blue–chronically blue.”</p> + +<p>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, he has reasons. But the same reasons, of course, would not have +made a person of a different temperament change as he has changed.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t suppose you want to tell us what the reasons are?” +Very tentatively this was said.</p> + +<p>“Why ... ordinarily one would not feel free to do so, but you are sure +to hear about it before you have been here long. In Florence, you know, +everybody knows everything about everybody else. Not always the truth, but in +any case an interesting version. Oh, it behooves one to be careful in Florence +if one doesn’t wish one’s affairs known and talked about. But in the +case of Gerald there was nothing secret. Everybody knows him, everybody knew +when he was engaged <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_77'></a>77</span>to Violet Van Zandt, everybody knows that she married +some one else.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, the poor boy!”</p> + +<p>“It’s very simple, you see, commonplace as possible. But +it’s like the old story of the poem: an old story, yet forever new. And +the one to whom it happens has his heart broken, one way or the +other.”</p> + +<p>“And she married some one else?”</p> + +<p>Both Aurora and Estelle were craning toward the speaker in a curiosity full +of sympathy.</p> + +<p>Leslie was used to seeing them hang on her lips. “I do love to hear you +talk!” Aurora candidly said. “It doesn’t make any difference +whether I know what you’re talking about, it fascinates me, the way you +say things!” And the compliment disposed Leslie to talk to them no +otherwise than she talked with Lady Linbrook or Countess Costetti, leaving them +to grasp or not her allusions and fine shades. She was by a number of years the +youngest of the three drawn up to the fire; yet some advantage of fluency, +collectedness, habit of good society–a neat effect altogether of +authority, made her seem in a way the oldest.</p> + +<p>“Violet,” she began, like a grown person willing to indulge +children with a story, “is Madame Balm de Brézé’s sister. You saw +Madame de Brézé that Friday evening at our house. Violet is very like her, only +much younger and a blonde. Amabel is–let us call things by their names in +the seclusion of this snug fireside–Amabel is scrawny; Violet was +ethereal. Amabel is sharp-featured; Violet’s face was delicate and +clear-cut. I say <i>was</i>, because she has grown much stouter. We have known +them since they first came to Florence, and have been friends without being +passionately attached. They are Americans, but had lived in <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_78'></a>78</span>Paris since Violet was a baby. They came +here, orphans, because it is cheaper. They used to live on the top floor of a +stony old palace in Via de’ Servi, where they painted fans on silk, +sending them to a firm in Paris. Amabel did them exquisitely: shepherds and +shepherdesses, corners of old gardens, Cupids–Watteau effects, veritable +miniature work. The little sister was beginning to do them well, too; she +painted only flowers. Amabel had no objection to Violet marrying Gerald. He was +as far as possible from being a good match, but in those days both Amabel and +Violet seemed to live in an atmosphere that excluded the consideration of things +from a vulgar material point of view. Violet and Gerald were alike in that, and +so very much alike in their superfine tastes and ways of thinking. <i>Nous +autres</i> who live upon this earth wondered how they would keep the pot boiling +in case of ‘that not remote contingent, <i>la famille</i>.’ Gerald has an +income simply tiny. You would hardly believe how small. We supposed that now he +would paint a little more than he ever has done with the idea of pleasing the +general public and securing patronage. They were so much in love, anyhow, and +made such an interesting pair, that one’s old romantic feelings were +gratified by seeing them together. They were to wait until she was twenty-one, +when a crumb of money in trust for her would fall due. Then Amabel surprises us +all by marrying De Brézé. Violet of course lives with them, and with them goes +to Paris. And in Paris she becomes Madame Pfaffenheim. <i>Tout +bonnement!</i>”</p> + +<p>“Oh, the wretch, the bad-hearted minx!”</p> + +<p>“No,” said Leslie, reflectively. She turned from the warmth of +the fire and let her eyes rest on the gray sky seen in wide patches through the +three great windows, <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_79'></a>79</span>arched at the top and blocked at the bottom by +wrought-iron guards, that admitted into the red and green room such very floods +of light–“no,” Leslie repeated. “One is the sort of +person one is. The sin is to pretend. I don’t believe Violet knew the sort +of person she was until it came to the test. She thought, very likely, that she +was all composed of poetry and fine sentiments and eternal love. She +wasn’t; and there it is. When she had the chance actually to choose, she +preferred money, a fine establishment, luxury, and she took them. How ghastly +if, with that nature concealed in her behind the pearl and pale roses, she had +married poor Gerald! It’s much better as it is, don’t you agree with +me? I call him fortunate beyond words.”</p> + +<p>“Well, of course; that’s one way of looking at it.”</p> + +<p>“It’s his way. Gerald knows just how fortunate he has been, and +it’s exactly that which makes him so miserable. At first, you understand, +he could lay the entire blame on the De Brézés; he was sure they had in some +mysterious way constrained her, and though he was angrily, tragically, +suicidally wretched, it was one kind of woe–a clean, classic woe, I will +call it. He believed it shared by her in the secret of her uncongenial conjugal +life. ’<i>Ich grolle nicht</i>,’ he could say, and all that. But a +year or two ago she came to Florence with Pfaffenheim on a visit to her sister. +I don’t know how Gerald felt, whether he tried to avoid her or tried to +see her. That he saw her, however, is certain. She is perfectly happy, my dears, +in her marriage! And that she should love Pfaffenheim, or be proud of him, is +inconceivable. So her happiness rests entirely upon the fact of her riches and +worldly consequence.”</p> + +<p>“Say what you please, I call her a nasty, mean thing!” exclaimed +Aurora.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80'></a>80</span>Leslie shrugged +her shoulders, as if saying: “Have it your way; but a more philosophical +view is possible.”</p> + +<p>“She was looking very beautiful,” she went on. “Much more +beautiful than before, but in such a different way! From diaphanous she has +become opaque; from airy, solid. She brought a most wonderful wardrobe, and, +kept in the background with her husband, two fat babies.”</p> + +<p>“I should think she would have been ashamed to come back +here.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, no; not Violet. She was enchanted to show herself in her glory to +those who remembered her in the modest plumage of her girlhood. Florence did not +really like it, because she affected toward Florence the attitude of one who +comes to it from places immeasurably grander. You would have thought Florence an +amusing little hole where she long ago, by some accident, had spent a month or +two. She found us quaint, provincial, old-fashioned. She was witty about us. She +criticized us with a freedom and publicity that made her funnier to us than we +were funny to her. It was not an endearing thing to do or a very intelligent +one. It was, in fact, rather antipathetic.”</p> + +<p>“Antip–I call it the actions of a <i>bug!</i>”</p> + +<p>“You can see how it all left Gerald. The Violet he cared for was +obviously no more. Worse than that, she had probably never been. Comforting +knowledge, isn’t it, that for years you have treasured memories that had +no reality to start from; that you have suffered agonies of love without any +real object. Nauseous! Intolerable! A tragedy that is shown to have been all +along a farce! To a man of imagination, to a person as sincere as Gerald, you +can see what it would mean. You can see what it would leave behind +it.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81'></a>81</span>“I should +think he would just despise her, and shake it off, and forget her as she +deserves.”</p> + +<p>“Your simple device, dear Aurora, is the one he adopted. But to have an +empty hollow where your beautiful hoard of pure gold was stored is a thing it +takes time to grow used to. He is not an unhappy lover now, certainly; but he is +a man who has been robbed, and he has fallen into the habit of low spirits. It +is a thousand pities his poor mother and sister could not have been spared to +make a home for him. Being too much alone is bad for any one. He shuts himself +in with his blues, and they are growing more and more confirmed. Love is a +curious thing.” Leslie said the latter separately and after a pause, as if +from a particular case she had been led to reviewing the whole subject. +“It complicates life so,” she added, and rose to go.</p> + +<p>They teased her to remain and lunch with them. But Leslie was suddenly more +tired at the contemplation of life than she had been when she came. The total +result of her call had not been to cheer her, for by an uncomfortable stirring +within, as soon as she had finished, she was made to repent having talked to +outsiders about things so personal, so private, regarding Gerald–Gerald, +who was infinitely reserved. It seemed a crime against friendship. That somebody +else would have been sure to tell his story did not excuse her.</p> + +<p>Leslie’s mood to talk was over for that morning and she went home, but +not before she had been forced to take a bottle of perfume which she had +carelessly picked up off Aurora’s toilet-table, sniffed, and praised; +also, lifted out of their vase, a bunch of orchids for her mother; and for <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82'></a>82</span>Lily the box of sweets that +had stood invitingly open on the sitting-room table.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>Next time Aurora saw Gerald–it was on Viale Principe Amedeo–she +waved to him.</p> + +<p>He did not see it. He was just aware of a victoria coming down the middle of +the street he was preparing to cross and of something fluttering, but that it +concerned him he did not suspect.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly the victoria, like a huge Jack-in-the-box, shot up a figure, +and he recognized Mrs. Hawthorne standing at full height in the moving carriage, +and waving both hands, as he must suppose, nobody else being near,–to +him.</p> + +<p>He lifted his hat. He saw her reach for the coachman and by touch make him +aware that she wished to stop. The horses were pulled up. Mrs. Hawthorne, from +the seat into which the jerk had thrown her, made beckoning signs to him, +laughing the while, and calling, “Mr. Fane! Mr. Fane!”</p> + +<p>He went to stand at the carriage-step.</p> + +<p>“I thought,” said Mrs. Hawthorne, “that you were going to +come and take us sight-seeing.”</p> + +<p>“I thought I was,” said Gerald, with that scant smile of his; +“but I was not so fortunate as to find you at home.”</p> + +<p>It was true that he had gone to her door one afternoon, having previously +caught a glimpse of her in the heart of the city, shopping.</p> + +<p>“You mean to say you came?”</p> + +<p>“You did not find my card?”</p> + +<p>“No; but it’s all right. This is Miss Madison–Mr. Fane. We +are together. What have you got to do?”</p> + +<p>Gerald looked as if the question had not been quite clear, <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83'></a>83</span>and he waited for some +amplification of it before he could answer.</p> + +<p>“Have you got anything very important to do? Aren’t you lonesome? +Don’t you want to jump in and come home with us? Wish you +would.”</p> + +<p>Gerald smiled again in his remote way, and looked as if he knew, as any one +would know, that this was not meant to be taken seriously.</p> + +<p>“I have just seen a beautiful spectacle,” he said, after a vague +head-shake that thanked her shadowily for an unreal invitation. “A game of +<i>pallone</i>, which is the nearest to your football that boys have over here. +Beautiful bronzed athletes at exercise, a delightful sight, statues in motion. I +go to see them whenever I can.–The days are becoming very short, are they +not?”</p> + +<p>“Yes. Jump in and come home with us. Tell you what we’ll do. +I’ll go down into the kitchen and make some soda biscuits that we’ll +have hot for supper–with maple syrup. We’ve had a big box of sugar +come.”</p> + +<p>Gerald again smiled his civil, but joyless, smile, and after another vague +head-shake that thanked, but eluded the question, he said: “They are very +indigestible; hot bread is not good for the health. At least, that is what they +tell us over here. We keep our bread two days before eating it, or longer. But I +am afraid I am detaining you.”</p> + +<p>The horses were jingling their bits, frisking their docked tails. The driver, +checking their restless attempts to start, was giving them smothered thunder in +Italian. Gerald withdrew by a step from the danger to his shins.</p> + +<p>“Oh, jump in!” said Mrs. Hawthorne for the third time. And +because his choice lay between saying curtly, “Impossible!” and +letting the impatient horses proceed, or else obeying, Gerald, who hated being +rude to women, found himself irresolutely climbing in, just long enough, as he +intended, to explain that he could not and must not go home with them to the hot +biscuits and syrup.</p> + +<div class='figcenter'> +<img src='images/illus-082.jpg' id="img003" alt='' /> +<p class='center caption'> +“I thought,” said Mrs. Hawthorne, “that you were going to come and take us sight-seeing” +</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85'></a>85</span>The little third +seat had been let down for him; his knees were snugly wedged in between those of +the ladies. Aurora was beaming over at him; Estelle was beaming, too. +Aurora’s smile was a blandishment; Estelle’s was a light. The horses +were flying toward the Lungarno. And he gave up; he helplessly gave up trying to +find an excuse for asking to be set down again and allowed to go his lonely +way.</p> + +<p>It might be entertaining, he tried to think, to see what they had done to the +Hermitage. But no! That was very sure to be revolting. If the evening were to +afford entertainment, it must be found in watching this healthy and unhampered +being who, just as certain fishes color the water around them, seemed to affect +the air in such a way that, coming near enough, you were forced to like her, +without ceasing to think her the most impossible person that had ever found her +way into cultivated society.</p> + +<p>The carriage-wheels crunched gravel; the horses’ hoofs rang on the +pavement of a columned portico; the door was opened by a man in blue livery.</p> + +<p>Entering the wide hall, they faced an ample double staircase, between the +converging flights of which stood, closed, a great stately white-and-gold +door.</p> + +<p>Gerald, as bidden, followed the ladies up the stairs to the cozier +sitting-room, where a fire, they hoped, had been kept up. In the beginning +dimness of an early twilight he first saw the big red flowers and green, green +leaves. He was left a moment alone while the ladies took off their hats, and he +sent his eyes traveling around him, prepared really <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_86'></a>86</span>for something worse than they found, +though the pictures on the wall called from him the gesture of trying to sweep +away an unpleasant dream.</p> + +<p>Aurora reappeared from her room in a business-like white apron.</p> + +<p>“Now I’m going down to make the biscuit. Oh, no trouble. No +trouble at all. I want them myself. I’m homesick for some food that tastes +like home. Estelle will entertain you while I’m gone. I +sha’n’t be but a minute.”</p> + +<p>Estelle sat in a low arm-chair close to the fire.</p> + +<p>Gerald, to whom it did not seem cold enough for a fire, took a seat nearer +the windows, whence he could watch the fading sunset-end beyond garden and +street, river and hill.</p> + +<p>He would have cared less, no doubt, to make himself not too dull company for +this stranger, had he known that there, before that fireplace, a few days +before, she had been placed in possession of the most intimate facts of his +humiliating destiny. Unsuspecting, in a mood rather more amiable than usual, he +asked, by way of entering into conversation, whether she and her friend were not +New-Englanders. It established the sense of a bond, however light, to find that +they and he were almost townsmen. He had been born in Boston, or, at least, near +it. His parents had owned a house in Charlestown, where he had lived till he was +ten years old. They talked for a while of Boston.</p> + +<p>He had heard a singular thing, he said, she might be able to tell him how +true: that in Boston a new medical method had arisen by which the sick were said +to be made well without the help of drugs. Mind cure, he believed it was called. +It seemed very extraordinary, and rather interesting, if it were not all a fraud +or a fable, that persons of the most prosaic, as these had been described to +him, should go about <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_87'></a>87</span>professing to do for a fee the same thing that saints +of old are recorded to have done through their mysterious powers. The subject +had come into his mind–he went on making conversation–from recently +re-reading a book of George Sand’s, <i>La Petite Fadette</i>, in which a +cure is performed which seemed to him very similar. If she had not read the +book, she must permit him to bring it for her perusal. He talked about the +book.</p> + +<p>A maid brought in a lighted lamp, and, as is the pleasant custom of the +country, wished them a happy evening.</p> + +<p>Very soon after it came Aurora, with a dab of flour on one cheek, which the +kitchen fire had warmed to a deeper pink.</p> + +<p>“There,” she said, “they’re all ready for the oven. +When we took the house, all the stove we had was a big stone block thing with +little square holes. The cook fanned them with a turkey-wing. But now +we’ve got a range. Don’t you want me to show you over the house? +There’ll be just time before supper.”</p> + +<p>“I’m afraid it’s all dark,” said Estelle. “Let +me ring and have them light up. Think of a city house without gas!”</p> + +<p>“No, they’d be too long. I can take a lamp.”</p> + +<p>She went for it to her dressing-room, and came back with one easy to carry, +long in the stem and small in the tank, from which, to make it brighter, she had +lifted off the shade. Gerald reached to take it from her, but she refused his +help.</p> + +<p>“The weight’s nothing. I want you to be free to look around. +Coming, Estelle?”</p> + +<p>“I’ll join you in a minute.”</p> + +<p>They went down the wide stairs side by side. She led <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_88'></a>88</span>through a door, at the right, as you +entered the house, of the main door.</p> + +<p>“Here’s one of the parlors. We have four on this floor, between +big and little. Four parlors and a dining-room. Doesn’t that seem a good +many for two lone women?”</p> + +<p>The unshaded lamplight showed a crowd of furniture, modern, muffled, +expensive, the lack of simplicity in design of which was further rendered +dreadful to the artist by every device to make it still less simple, embroidered +scarfs thrown over chair-backs, varicolored textiles depending from the +mantel-shelf, drooping over the mirror, down pillows of every shape and tint +piled in sofa-corners. Nothing was left undecorated. The waste-basket even wore +a fat satin bow, like a pet poodle. Every horizontal surface was encumbered with +knick-knacks.</p> + +<p>“This is where we have people come when we don’t know them very +well,” said Mrs. Hawthorne, hardly concealing her pride. “We +couldn’t ask the minister to come right upstairs, as we did you. How do +you–”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne,” came hurriedly from Gerald, “I beg you +will not ask me how I like it! It is a peculiarity like–like not liking +oysters. I can’t bear to be asked how I like things.”</p> + +<p>“How funny! But, then, you’re different from other people, +aren’t you? That’s what makes you so interesting.”</p> + +<p>She preceded him into the next room, which was not so bad as the first for +the reason that, as she explained, “they hadn’t yet finished with +it.” He seized the occasion almost eagerly to praise the chairs.</p> + +<p>“We found them here when we came,” she informed him. “There +was a good lot of furniture of this big, bare sort; <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_89'></a>89</span>clumsy, I call it. We stored some of it in +the top rooms, but Leslie Foss begged me so to let these stay that we just had +the seats covered over with this new stuff and left them.”</p> + +<p>When she opened the next door and stepped into the space beyond it seemed as +if her lamp had dwindled to a taper, the room was so vast. It had nine great +windows, five in an unbroken row on the front of the house the entire width of +which it occupied. Aurora’s light was faintly reflected in a polished +floor; it twinkled in the myriad motionless drops of two great crystal +chandeliers.</p> + +<p>“Ah,” exclaimed Gerald in a long sigh. “This is +superb!”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” she said, “but you might as well try to furnish all +outdoors. You see that we haven’t done anything beyond putting up +curtains. We never use it. All those chairs along the walls are going to be +regilded when we can get them to come and fetch them. Things move awfully slowly +over here, don’t they, even if you’re willing to pay.”</p> + +<p>“What a ball-room!”</p> + +<p>“Yes. Wish we could give a ball; but we only know about a dozen people. +We’ve got to wait till we know enough at least for two sets of a +quadrille.”</p> + +<p>She was moving across the wide floor, holding her torch-like lamp high the +better to illumine the great pale, silent emptiness. No longer hearing his +footsteps echoing behind hers, she looked over her shoulder; whereupon he +hurriedly joined her, without explaining why he had lagged.</p> + +<p>“This,” she said, as turning to the left they passed from the +ball-room into a small oval room the domed ceiling of which was all tenderly +bepainted with Cupids and garlands–“this is almost my +favorite.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90'></a>90</span>She set down her +lamp on a table of rose-tinged marble, and dropped for a minute on to a little +rococo settee.</p> + +<p>“The things in here we found just as you see them.”</p> + +<p>“So I imagined.”</p> + +<p>“All but the ornaments on the mantel.”</p> + +<p>“Very astute in me; I divined that, too.”</p> + +<p>“We liked it, so we left it. Pretty, ain’t it? Oh, beg +pardon!” She blushed and looked at him sidelong, laughing. “That was +a bad break! That came mighty near to being the forbidden question how you like +it. All the same, it is pretty, <i>is it not</i>?”</p> + +<p>“Extremely. Extremely pretty.”</p> + +<p>“There are going to be some tapestries presently. Oh, don’t be +afraid! Not those old worsted things full of maggots, but beautiful new ones, +painted by hand, all in these same delicate colors. A story in four scenes, one +for each panel. The ‘Fountain of Love’ is the subject. It sounds to me +like something Biblical, Sunday-schoolish, but Mr. Hunt says, no, <i>it is +not</i>.”</p> + +<p>“Mr. Hunt–”</p> + +<p>“The nephew, Charlie. You know him, don’t you? He’s getting +them done for me. He’s a great friend of mine. He’s helped me a lot +to buy things.”</p> + +<p>“Did he help you to buy the pictures?”</p> + +<p>“Yes. He knows the dealers, and gets them to make fair prices. I think +it perfectly wonderful how cheap everything is over here. He helped me to buy +these, too.” She lifted the chain of pink corals, graduated from the size +of a pea to that of a hazelnut, which with their delicate living color +brightened her winter dress. “I can’t say, though,” she +dropped, “that I found these particularly cheap. Hush!” she broke +off. “It’s Hat! Quick!” she whispered, <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_91'></a>91</span>“let’s get behind the door and +say ‘Boo!’ as she comes in.”</p> + +<p>Amazingly, incredibly to him, this grown woman appeared about to ensconce +herself.</p> + +<p>“But won’t it make her jump?” he asked, supposing it to be +Miss Madison for whom the little surprise was intended.</p> + +<p>“Of course it’ll make her jump. No matter how often I do it, she +jumps. That’s the fun.”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne, please!” he begged nervously. “As a very +special favor to me, don’t! It would make me jump, +too–horribly.”</p> + +<p>She stood listening while the footsteps turned away and faded fruitlessly. +With a look of disappointment, as at opportunity missed, she took up her lamp +and moved on.</p> + +<p>“And here,” she said, leaving the oval room by the door opposite +to the one they had come through, “is the dining-room. Which takes us back +to the hall and completes the circle.”</p> + +<p>This room, of a fine new Pompeian red, was lighted. The table was set; a +butler busied himself at the sideboard. Gerald’s eye was caught by the +brightness of a china basket piled high with sumptuous fruit, and similarly +caught the next moment by the pattern of the curtains, in which the same rampant +red lion was innumerably repeated on a ground of wide-meshed lace.</p> + +<p>“Wouldn’t it be a lovely house to give a party in?” she +asked him. “Isn’t it exactly right to give a party in? There are two +big spare chambers upstairs at the back that would do, one for gentlemen, one +for ladies, to lay off their things in. No use; we shall have to give a +party.”</p> + +<p>Having returned upstairs, he was without any false delicacy shown her bedroom +and her friend’s bedroom and their <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_92'></a>92</span>dressing-rooms, as well as given a peep into the two +spare rooms, as yet incompletely furnished, that he might get an idea how +beautiful these were going to be when finally industry and good taste had been +brought to bear on them.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>At dinner, which Mrs. Hawthorne seemed to have a fixed preference for calling +supper, it was Gerald who did most of the talking. The ladies abandoned the lead +to him, and listened with flattering attention while he called into use his not +too sadly rusted social gifts. He related what he knew about the Indian Prince +whose monument at the far end of the Cascine had roused their interest. He +explained the Misericordia. He asked if they had noticed the wonderful figures +of babies over the colonnade of the Foundling Hospital, and told them how the +“infantile asylum,” as he rendered it, was managed. He tried to +amuse them by the episodes from which certain streets in Florence have derived +their names, Street of the Dead Woman, Street of the Dissatisfied, Burg of the +Blithe.</p> + +<p>Whenever he stopped there was silence, which he hastened again to break.</p> + +<p>“You talk like Leslie,” suddenly remarked Mrs. Hawthorne.</p> + +<p>But now came the hot biscuits and the syrup, borne in by the mystified butler +at the same time as the more conventional dessert prepared by the cook.</p> + +<p>Aurora smiled at the biscuits’ beautiful brown and, having broken one +to test its lightness, nodded in self-approval.</p> + +<p>“They’re all right. Now you want to put on lots of butter,” +she said. “Here, that’s not near enough,” she reproved him. +She reached over, took his biscuit, buttered it as she thought it should be +buttered, and returned it to his <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_93'></a>93</span>plate; then, while eating, watched him eat with eyes +that expressed her simple love of feeding up any one, man or animal, so lean as +he.</p> + +<p>There had been shining in Aurora’s eyes all this evening, when they +rested on him, a look of great kindness, the consequence of knowing how badly +life had treated him, and desiring that compensation should be made. He could +not fail to feel that warm ray playing over his bleak surface. He could not but +think what nice eyes Mrs. Hawthorne had.</p> + +<p>When he asked her if she knew how to make many other such delicious things it +became her turn to talk. Estelle here joined in, and they exalted the fare of +home, affecting the fiction of having found nothing but frogs’ legs, +cocks’ combs, and snails to feed upon since they struck Italy. +Blueberry-pie–did Mr. Fane remember it? Fried oysters! Buckwheat +cakes!</p> + +<p>He said he remembered, but did not confess to any great emotion.</p> + +<p>“You wait till Thursday,” said Aurora. “It’s +Thanksgiving. We’re going to have chicken-pie, roast turkey, mince-pie, +squash-pie, everything but cranberry sauce. We can’t get the cranberries. +Will you come?”</p> + +<p>In haste and confusion he said, alas! it would be impossible, wholly +impossible, intimating that he was a man of a thousand engagements and +occupations.</p> + +<p>But after an interval, and talk of other things, he inquired, with an effect +of enormous discretion, whether he might without too great impertinence ask who +was coming to eat that wonderful Thanksgiving dinner which her own hands, he +must suppose, would largely have to prepare.</p> + +<p>“Just the Fosses. All the Fosses.”</p> + +<p>“Ah, Mr. Foss will feel agreeably like the great Turk.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94'></a>94</span>“You mean +he’ll be the only man? I guess he can stand it. We thought of asking +Charlie Hunt, too, but he’s English and would seem an outsider at this +particular gathering. Wish you’d come. You’re such a friend of +theirs. Come on, come!”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne, you are so very unusually kind. If you would leave it +open, and then when the day arrives, if I should find I could do so +without–without–”</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes. Come if you can. And be sure, now, you come!”</p> + +<p>They were still sitting at the table–dinner had been retarded by the +circumstantial round of the house–when music resounding through the +echoing rooms stopped the talk.</p> + +<p>It was the piano across the hall that had been briskly and powerfully +attacked. The “Royal March” of Italy was played, first baldly, then +with manifold clinging and wreathing variations.</p> + +<p>Aurora signed to the servant to open the dining-room door. All three at the +table sat in silence till the end of the piece.</p> + +<p>Gerald wondered what the evening caller could be who made the moments of +waiting light to himself in this fanciful manner.</p> + +<p>“It’s Italo,” said Mrs. Hawthorne, rising. “I call +him Italo because I never can remember his other name. Come, let’s go into +the parlor.”</p> + +<p>It was all rosily lighted. Candles set on the piano at each side of the +music-rest enkindled glossy high lights on the nose-bump and forehead bosses of +Signor Ceccherelli, who at Mrs. Hawthorne’s appearance sprang up to +salute. She reached him her hand, over which he deeply bowed.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_95'></a>95</span>“You’re to play all those lovely things +I’m so fond of,” she directed him. “‘The Swallow and the +Prisoner,’ ‘The Butterflies,’ ‘The Cascade of Pearls.’ And +don’t forget the ‘Souvenir of Saint Helena.’ Then the one of the +soldiers marching off and the soldiers coming home again. All our favorites. Mr. +Fane– Are you acquainted with each other? Italo–you’ll have to +tell him your name yourself. All I can think of is Checkerberry.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, yes, we are acquainted,” said Gerald, hurriedly. “We +have seen each other many times. <i>Come sta?</i>”</p> + +<p>“Oh, he can speak English.”</p> + +<p>“A leetle,” Ceccherelli modestly admitted.</p> + +<p>“He understands everything I say. We have great conversations. He comes +every evening when he isn’t engaged to play somewhere else.”</p> + +<p>She went to sit on the gorgeous brocade sofa, arranging herself amid the +multitude of cushions so as to listen long and happily. Estelle preferring a +straight-backed chair, Gerald took the other corner of Aurora’s sofa. +Immediately Ceccherelli opened with “Souvenir de Sainte-Hélène.” +Aurora, respectful to the artist, talked in a whisper.</p> + +<p>“He’s so talented! You simply couldn’t count the pieces he +can play. We do enjoy it so! We haven’t anything in particular to do +evenings if no one calls. We don’t often go out. We haven’t been +here long enough to know many people. And aside from his magnificent playing, +the little man is such good company! We do have fun! There, I mustn’t +talk, I’m keeping you from listening.”</p> + +<p>Gerald settled back, too, as if to listen, but to do the contrary was his +fixed purpose, even though the pianist, at last appreciated, put into his +playing so much feeling and force. <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_96'></a>96</span>Gerald’s eyes went wandering among the clutter +of bric-à-brac, from a green bronze lizard to a mosaic picture of Roman +peasants, from a leaning tower of Pisa to a Sorrento box. Then they rose to the +paintings. He closed them.</p> + +<p>The music was describing a hero’s death-bed, besieged by dreams of +battle, at moments so noisy that Gerald had to open his eyes again for a look of +curiosity at the person who could produce so much sound. As he watched him and +his nose, like the magnified beak of a hen,–the nose of a man who loves to +talk,–he tried a little to imagine those merry evenings spoken of by +Aurora. The fellow looked almost ludicrously solemn at this moment. He took +himself and his art right seriously, there could be no doubt of it. His face was +a map of the emotions expressed by the music, and wore, besides, according to +his conception of the part, the look of a great man unacclaimed by his own +generation.</p> + +<p><i>Dio!</i> what an ugly little man!</p> + +<p>Gerald closed his eyes again.</p> + +<p>The last cannon was fired over the hero’s grave, the music stopped. The +ladies applauded. Gerald, smiling sickly, clapped his hands, too, without, it +might have been observed, making any noise to speak of. Estelle went to the +piano to compliment the player more articulately, and loitered there, practising +her French while he perfected himself in English, by mutual aid.</p> + +<p>“Italo,” Mrs. Hawthorne interrupted them, “play that lovely +thing of your own now–you know, the one we’re so crazy about, that +by and by turns into a waltz.”</p> + +<p>Without laying upon the ladies the tiresome necessity of pressing him, the +composer plunged into this masterpiece, and Gerald sat back again, wondering +what the little man thought of hearing himself called Italo by the fair +<i>forestiera</i>. <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97'></a>97</span>He +was dimly troubled, knowing that there is no hope of an Italian ever really +understanding the ways of being and doing of American women, and especially an +Italian of that class. But then it would be equally difficult to make this +American woman understand just how the Italian might misunderstand her.</p> + +<p>He permitted himself a direct look at her, where she rested among the +cushions, with eyes closed again and a smile diffused all over her face; her +whole person, indeed, permeated with the essence of a smile. Extraordinary that, +loving music so much, one could so much love such music.</p> + +<p>She surprised him by opening her eyes and whispering:</p> + +<p>“Don’t you want to smoke?” showing that for a moment at +least she had not been thinking of music. “You can, if you want to. Here, +we’ve got some. Don’t go and think, now, that Estelle and I have +taken to smoking. Heavens above! We sent out for them the other night when +Charlie Hunt was here.”</p> + +<p>She reached across the table near her and handed him a box of cigarettes.</p> + +<p>He was very glad to light one. To smoke is soothing, and he felt the need of +it. Added to his vague distress at the spectacle of such familiarity from these +ladies to that impossible little Italian, a ferment of resentment was +disquieting him apropos of Hunt–those works of art of which Hunt had +facilitated the purchase.</p> + +<p>Hunt, of a truth, ever since the first mention of him that evening had been +like a fish bone in Gerald’s throat.</p> + +<p>He checked his thoughts, recognizing that it is not sane or safe to permit +oneself to interpret the conduct of a person whom one does not like. The chances +of being misled are too great. He uprooted a suspicion dishonoring to both.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98'></a>98</span>Let it be taken +for assured, then, that Hunt had in this case no interest to forward beyond his +love for making himself important. After all, if the ladies liked bad +pictures!... Yet it was a shame that he should frequent their house, be accepted +as their friend, invited by them, made much of in their innocent and generous +way, then should make fun of them. Permissible, if you choose, to make fun of +funny people, but you must not at the same time make use of their kindness. A +precept for the perfect gentleman, in Florence or elsewhere: You can make fun of +persons, or you can cultivate their friendship, but not both things at once. And +Gerald, without proof, felt certain that Charlie Hunt spread good stories about +Aurora.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Innes, his mother’s old friend, meeting him at Vieusseux’s +reading-room a few days before, had detained him for a chat, and in the course +of it asked him if he knew this Mrs. Hawthorne of whom the Fosses appeared so +fond. An amusing type, she must be. Seeing that statue of the she-wolf and +little Romulus and Remus at the foot of Vial de’ Colli, it seemed she had +asked what it meant, and said she didn’t believe it.</p> + +<p>It indefinably hurt him, incommoded some nerve of envenomed +sensitiveness–yes, annoyed him like sand in his salad, to think of his +country-woman, with the good faith of a dog in her face, so quoted as to make +her ridiculous by a fellow wanting in human vitals, like Hunt.</p> + +<p>He would have liked, had it been possible, to ask a few frank questions of +Mrs. Hawthorne, and find out more certainly what he should think. He would have +liked to warn her against trusting her enormous ignorance to one who would have +so little good-humor and protectiveness toward that baby-eyed giant-child. +Really, instinct ought to teach <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_99'></a>99</span>her better whom to make her confident as respected +that grave affair.</p> + +<p>Singularly, when next the music stopped, Mrs. Hawthorne, after she with true +politeness had taken the box of cigarettes to the other of her guests, spoke of +Hunt. Perhaps her thoughts, too, had gone straying, and mysteriously encountered +some straying thought of his.</p> + +<p>“Charlie Hunt,” she said, “is coming on Sunday morning to +take us to the picture-galleries. We’re going to play hooky from church. +His work, don’t you see, keeps him at the bank on week days till +everything of that sort is closed.”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne,” cried Gerald and sat up in unaffected +indignation, while mustache, beard, hair, everything about him appeared to +bristle, “I thought <i>I</i> had been engaged to take you sight-seeing! I +thought it was to be <i>my</i> honor and privilege. Mrs. Hawthorne, my dear +friend, if you do not wish deeply to hurt me, deeply to hurt me, you will write +to Mr. Hunt at once, this evening, and I will post the letter, that you have +thought better of that immoral plan for Sunday morning, and are going to church +like a good Christian woman. And to-morrow, Mrs. Hawthorne, at whatever time +will be convenient for you, I will come and take you to the Uffizi.”</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_100'></a>100</span><a id='link_6'></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<p>And so because, in his uncalled-for chivalry, he had made himself guide to a +lady in a ball-room, Gerald, one thing leading to another, was once more +committed to serving as a guide in Florence.</p> + +<p>He had filled the part so often, at the appeal of one good friend and +another, that he had sworn never again to be caught, cajoled, or hired. He could +have hated the Ghiberti doors had such a thing not been impossible. He did +rather hate the Santissima Annunziata. And now it was all to do over again.</p> + +<p>It might be adduced, as a mitigation of his misfortune, that this was +different.</p> + +<p>This was sometimes very different.</p> + +<p>A singular thing about acquaintance with Mrs. Hawthorne was that it had in a +sense no beginning. One started fairly in the middle. No sooner did one meet her +than one seemed to have known her long and know her well. Most people found this +so. One therefore readily slid into speaking one’s mind to Mrs. Hawthorne, +dispensing with the formal affectation of a perfect respect for her every act +and opinion, secure in the recognition that anger, sulkiness, the self-love that +easily takes umbrage, were as far from her breezy sturdiness as the +scrupulosities of an anxious refinement.</p> + +<p>That one could say what one pleased to Mrs. Hawthorne put more life into +intercourse with her, naturally, than there <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_101'></a>101</span>would have been if, with her limitations, one had +been forced to be entirely and tamely circumspect.</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne,” cried Gerald, “do me the very real favor, +will you, like a dear good woman, of not calling the most venerable of the +primitives Simma Bewey!”</p> + +<p>It was astonishing what things Gerald Fane could say without losing his +effect of a complete, even considerate politeness.</p> + +<p>“But that’s the way it’s written,” said Mrs. +Hawthorne.</p> + +<p>“You will pardon the liberty I take of contradicting you; it is not. It +gives me goose-flesh. Cimabue!”</p> + +<p>“Very well. I’ll try to remember. But it doesn’t matter +what I call him; his Madonna is no beauty. Do you mean to tell me there was a +time when people admired faces like that? She gives me a pain.”</p> + +<p>“That is not the point; her beauty is not the point. Besides, she is +beautiful.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, very well. If you’d like to have me look like her, I +can.”</p> + +<p>She tipped her head to one side, lengthened her jaw, pointed her hand, and by +a knack she had for mimicry made herself vaguely resemble the large-eyed, +small-mouthed, pale and serious Lady of Heaven before whose portrait by the old +master this dialogue took place.</p> + +<p>“It is really a very poor joke, Mrs. Hawthorne,” Gerald said, +with mouth distorted by the conflict between laughter and disgust. “To +travesty a dignified and sacred thing is a very poor pastime. Of course I laugh. +Miss Madison laughs, and I laugh. I think very poorly of it, all the same. You +would do much better to frame your mind to an attitude of respect and try to +understand. I can’t say, though, that <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_102'></a>102</span>I think it unnatural you should not at first +appreciate the earliest old masters. We will go to look at something more +obvious.”</p> + +<p>“Wait a moment. These fascinate me, they’re so queer and so +awful. I tell you those old codgers of the time you say these belong to had +strong nerves and stomachs. All these wounds and dripping blood and hollow ribs +and criminals being boiled in caldrons, and having their heads cut off and +arrows shot into them!... I guess you’re right; we’d better move on +to something more cheerful.”</p> + +<p>Miss Madison was never guilty of the foolishness that fell from Mrs. +Hawthorne’s gross and unconcerned ignorance. Miss Madison took modesty and +tact with her, as well as keenness of eye, when she went to picture-galleries +and museums. But this, strange to say, did not make her the more acceptable +companion of the two to their guide. What Miss Madison did never seemed so +important as what her larger, weightier friend did. The one personality to a +singular extent eclipsed the other, who was accustomed to this to the point of +not feeling it. A laughing lack of conceit in both women marvelously simplified +their relation.</p> + +<p>Gerald, in choosing pictures for their enjoyment, avoided with a +conscientiousness of very special brand to halt with them before paintings fit +to please their unpracticed eyes but which he did not think worthy of +admiration. He likewise passed Venuses, Eves, Truths, all nudities, without +remark or pause, acquainted of old with the simple-minded prudery of certain +Americans, and not disrespectful to it.</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne,” he said, “to be ignorant is no sin. One +may have been doing beautiful, gracious, useful and merciful things while others +were cultivating the arts and sciences. But ignorance on any subject is not in +itself <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103'></a>103</span>beautiful or +desirable. One should therefore not be complacent in it, proud of it. With a +little humility, Mrs. Hawthorne, what can one not hope to accomplish? Now, +please, Mrs. Hawthorne, drop all preconception, and use your eyes. Look at that +angel.”</p> + +<p>“Do you mean to tell me I could live long enough to think that angel +beautiful? With those Chinese eyes?... Give it up, my friend, why do you want to +bother?”</p> + +<p>“Because, Mrs. Hawthorne, you have essentially a good brain. You are at +the back of all a very intelligent woman–”</p> + +<p>“Go ’way with you! You know that if you feed me taffy enough you can +make me see and say anything you want.”</p> + +<p>“–a very intelligent woman. And I am so constituted that I simply +cannot go on living in the same world with a really intelligent woman–my +friend, besides–who does not see the difference between Raphael and Guido +Reni, and likes one exactly as well as the other. I ache to change +it!”</p> + +<p>“Go ahead. We don’t want you to die. But I’m afraid +it’ll take surgery. You’ll have to drill a hole in my thick head to +get the things you mean into that good brain so full of real +intelligence.”</p> + +<p>“If you wouldn’t be flippant!”</p> + +<p>“What’s that?”</p> + +<p>“If you would bring reverence to the study of things done by great +people, and that people of great taste and learning have collected for our joy +and improvement!”</p> + +<p>“See here! Don’t you want me to have a little fun while we do +Florence? I don’t see how I can stand it, if we’re to be solemn as +those old saints with mouldy green complexions.”</p> + +<p>“We’re not to be solemn. I have done these galleries <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104'></a>104</span>solemnly times enough, +Heaven knows. But we’re to be attentive, respectful, of an open and +receptive mind. We’re not to say outrageous things in the mere desire to +shock our guide, or tease him.”</p> + +<p>“You don’t mean to say you think that I–?”</p> + +<p>“It’s not funny.”</p> + +<p>“It mayn’t be funny–but it’s fun! Go on and lecture. +You haven’t got a bit of fun in you.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I have!” said Gerald, and with a creeping +smile–grudging at first, then brighter–looked Mrs. Hawthorne in the +eye, while such fun as lived in him traveled over the bridge of their glances, +and she was permitted to get a glimpse of his underlying relish.</p> + +<p>“All I ask of you, Mrs. Hawthorne,” he said, finally, “is +that you will not let your innocence on these subjects appear when you are with +others. I don’t say pretend. Just keep still, be silent! It does not +matter when you are with me. When you are with me I beg of you to be yourself. +But with others.... You would become the talk of the town, and–” he +shuddered, “I should most horribly hate it!”</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne,” he said, with a quiver of annoyance in his +voice a few days later, “did I not implore you not to let it be known in +Florence how you are affected by the proudest treasures of her world-famous +collections?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, you told me. But I didn’t promise.”</p> + +<p>“And now I am asked–with laughter and mockery–whether I +have seen Mrs. Hawthorne giving an imitation of a Madonna by Simma Bewey, and +heard Mrs. Hawthorne on the subject of G. Ottow and Others.”</p> + +<p>“Didn’t you say–with laughter? Well, then, it’s all +right. Don’t you care. I just got to training and did it <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105'></a>105</span>to make them a little +sport. Didn’t they tell you about my Native of Italy eating +Macaroni?”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne, you are just a bad big school-girl–a bad big +school-girl–”</p> + +<p>“‘Hark, from the tomb!’” said Mrs. Hawthorne, in lieu of +anything more scintillating.</p> + +<p>“A bad big school-girl, and I will have nothing more to do with you. If +you delight in being the talk of the town, all you have to do is allow your +friend Mr. Hunt in his spare hours to take you to see such things as I have not +yet had the honor of showing you.”</p> + +<p>“Blessed if I–Look here, you aren’t mad in earnest? +Sooner’n lose you, I won’t say another word. There! I’ve been +Tchee-mah-boo-eh’s Madonna for the last time. Don’t be cross with +little T. T.–Talk of the Town!”</p> + +<p>“If you had any discrimination, any reticence ...”</p> + +<p>“No reticence? Does that mean can’t keep anything to myself? You +don’t know me!”</p> + +<p>“You even tell your age.”</p> + +<p>“You aren’t going to find fault with me for +<i>that</i>?”</p> + +<p>“Yes. At your age one should know better. It is part of your general +and too great frankness.”</p> + +<p>They upon occasions came near quarreling, but not seriously, her disposition +to quarrel was so small. Yet, two could not be outspoken and one of them +irritable, and those rocks never even be grazed.</p> + +<p>She unwarily enlarged to him one day upon her disappointment in Florence. By +this time, she said, she was growing used to it, she didn’t notice so much +the things she didn’t like. But at first, with her expectation high, her +imagination inflamed by the Judge’s and Antonia’s eloquence, the +narrow streets, in some of them no sidewalks <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_106'></a>106</span>even, the gloomy bars at the windows, the muddy +river with the dirty old houses huddled on the bank, the stuffy churches with +the average height of the Italian populace marked on the pillars by a dubious +grindy brown tint, the dreadful beggars, the black fingernails, the +smells....</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne!” came from Gerald, who with difficulty had let +her go on thus far, “those were all you noticed, were they? In the most +wonderful city in the whole world, those are all you find to talk about! The +narrow streets, the beggars, the smells. Mrs. Hawthorne–” he nearly +trembled with the effort to keep calm, “this is obviously not the place +for you. You should have gone to ... to Switzerland! Instead of a sunburned +hill-side, with sober silver olives and solemn black cypresses, and a pair of +beautiful calm white oxen plowing, you would have seen a nice grass-green +pasture, at the foot of blinding peaks, cut by an arsenic-green stream, on whose +bank a red and white cow feeding! Then among the habitations all would have been +well-regulated, the churches swept, perhaps even ventilated, the people washed, +clean aprons, clean caps, no beggars, no disorder, no crimes. And there would +have been no disturbing manifestations of genius, either; no troublesome +masterpieces or other evidences of a little fire in the blood. It would have +suited you perfectly.”</p> + +<p>“I guess you mean that to be cutting, don’t you?”</p> + +<p>“Let me try to tell you how much I liked New York, when I went back +there some years ago after an absence of ten or eleven years. I had some idea, +you know, of perhaps returning to live in America. Well, I shivered. I shut my +eyes. I held my ears. I fled. I remained just the time I was forced to by the +affairs of my poor mother and, as I tell you, I fled!”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107'></a>107</span>“Why, +what’s the matter with New York?”</p> + +<p>“I will tell you what is the matter with New York, with Boston, with +all the places in America that I have seen again since I was grown +up–”</p> + +<p>“No! Stop! Don’t say anything against America. It’s the one +way to make me mad.–I didn’t know you felt the same way about +Florence. You aren’t an Italian, are you? It’s because we’re +both alike Americans that we sit here fighting so chummily.”</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108'></a>108</span><a id='link_7'></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<p>Lending her spacious front room for the Christmas bazaar in aid of the +church, and beholding it full of bustle and brightness, was the thing that +brought to the acute stage Mrs. Hawthorne’s longing to see her whole house +the scene of some huge good time: she sent out innumerable invitations to a +ball. Mrs. Foss’s card was inclosed with hers. It was a farewell party +given for Brenda, whose day of sailing was very near. The frequent inquiry how +Brenda should be crossing the ocean so late in the year met with the answer that +her traveling companions had a brother whose wedding had been timed thus +awkwardly for them.</p> + +<p>On the morning of the day before the ball Gerald came to see Mrs. Hawthorne. +He was still intrusting the servant with his message when Aurora, leaning over +the railing of the hallway above, called down to him, “Come right +upstairs!”</p> + +<p>He was aware of unusual activities all around–workmen, the sound of +hammering, housemaids plying brooms and brushes. Leslie Foss, with her hat on, +looked from the dining-room and said, “Hello, Gerald!” too busy for +anything more. Fräulein seemed to be with her, helping at something.</p> + +<p>The great central white-and-gold door, to-day open, permitted a glimpse, as +he started up the stairs, of a man on a step-ladder fitting tall wax-candles +into one of the <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_109'></a>109</span>great chandeliers. From unseen quarters floated +Estelle’s voice, saying, “<i>Ploo bah! Nong, ploo +hoe!</i>”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne met him at the head of the stairs. The slight disorder of her +hair, usually so tidy, pointed to unusual exertions on her part, also. Her face +was flushed with excitement and, to judge by her wreathing smiles, with +happiness.</p> + +<p>“I saw you coming,” she greeted him. “<i>Riverisco! Beata +Lei! Mamma mia!</i>And do you know how I saw you? Come here.”</p> + +<p>She led the way to the back, where the window-door stood open on to the roof +of the portico, which formed a terrace.</p> + +<p>“See? I’ve had it glassed in for to-morrow night. We +couldn’t say we hadn’t plenty of rooms before, and plenty of room in +them. That’s just the trouble: there aren’t any nooks in this big, +square house. So I’ve made one. This is Flirtation Alcove. Here a loving +couple can come to cool off after dancing and look up at the stars together. Oh, +it’s going to be so pretty! You can’t tell anything about it as it +looks now; I’ve only got these few things in it. But the gardeners are +going to bring all sorts of tall plants and flowers in pots. Just wait till +to-morrow night!”</p> + +<p>“You are very busy, I am afraid, Mrs. Hawthorne. I ought not to take +your time.”</p> + +<p>“Can’t you sit down a minute?”</p> + +<p>“I have come to ask a favor.”</p> + +<p>“I guess I can say it’s granted even before you ask.”</p> + +<p>“I should like to retract my refusal of your very kind invitation for +to-morrow evening. I have explained to you my weak avoidance of crowds. I have +determined to <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_110'></a>110</span>overcome it in this case, and I want your permission +to bring a friend.”</p> + +<p>“That? How can you ask? Bring ten! Bring twenty! Bring as many as +you’ve got! As for coming yourself, I’m tickled to death that +you’ve reconsidered.”</p> + +<p>“It’s not quite as simple as it seems, Mrs. Hawthorne. I shall +have to tell you more.”</p> + +<p>At her indication, he took the other half of the little dumpling sofa which +had seemed to her an appropriate piece of furniture for Flirtation Alcove, and +which, with a rug on the floor, formed so far its only decoration. In the clear, +bare morning light of outdoors, which bathed them, she still looked triumphantly +fresh, but he looked tired.</p> + +<p>“It is Lieutenant Giglioli for whom I have come to beg an invitation. +You perhaps know whom I mean.”</p> + +<p>“Let me see. I can’t tell. Quite a few officers have been +introduced, but I never can get their names.”</p> + +<p>“Hasn’t Mrs. Foss or Leslie ever spoken of him?”</p> + +<p>“Not so far as I can remember. In what way do you mean?”</p> + +<p>“They evidently have not.” He seemed to be given pause by this +and need to gather force from reflection before going on, as he did after a +moment, overcoming his repugnance. “He is the reason for poor Brenda being +packed off to America.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, is that it?”</p> + +<p>“He came to see me last evening and spent most of the night talking of +her. We were barely acquainted before; but he knew I am a close friend of the +Fosses, and in that necessity to ease their hearts with talk which Italians seem +to feel he chose me. I felt sorry for him.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_111'></a>111</span>“She’s turned him down?”</p> + +<p>“No; she loves him.”</p> + +<p>Again Gerald stopped, as after making a communication of great gravity. Mrs. +Hawthorne, listening with breathless interest, made no sound that urged him to +go on. The fact he had announced seemed solemn to both alike, with the vision +floating between them of Brenda’s white-rose face and deer’s eyes, +the feeling they had in common that Brenda, for indefinable reasons, was not +like ordinary mortals, and that what she felt was more significant, more +important.</p> + +<p>“But he has nothing beside his officer’s pay,” Gerald went +on when the surprise of his revelation had been allowed time to pass, “and +she on her side has nothing but what her parents might give her, who, you +probably know, have no great abundance. His proposals were made to them, as is +the custom in this country, and have been formally declined.”</p> + +<p>He left it to her to appreciate the situation created by this, and, while +thinking on his side, ran the point of the slender cane which he had not +abandoned round and round the same figure of the rug-pattern at their feet.</p> + +<p>“They are both too poor. I see,” said Mrs. Hawthorne; but added +quickly, as if she had not really seen: “It seems sort of funny, though, +doesn’t it, to let that keep them, if they’re fond of each +other?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, it’s not that. However fond, they couldn’t marry +without her bringing her husband a fixed portion. It is the law in this country, +in the case of officers of the army,–to keep up the dignity of that +impressive body, you understand. In the case of a lieutenant the <i>dote</i>, or +dowry, <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112'></a>112</span>must be +forty thousand francs. I learned the exact sum for the first time last +night.”</p> + +<p>“How much is that? Let me see,”–Mrs. Hawthorne did mental +arithmetic, rather quickly for a woman,–“eight thousand dollars. And +the Fosses can’t give it.”</p> + +<p>“Of their ability to give it if they wished to I am no judge. I dare +say they could, though with their son John going before long to hang out his +shingle, as they call it, I doubt if it could be without bleeding themselves. +But they are not convinced that the sacrifice ought to be made.” He +frowned at the pattern on the rug, and suddenly cut at it impatiently with his +stick. “It is a singular story, in which everybody is right and the result +wrong, horribly wrong!”</p> + +<p>“Oh, dear me!” sighed Mrs. Hawthorne, feeling with him even +before understanding.</p> + +<p>“I ought perhaps to say,” he corrected, “everybody is good +and well-meaning, but has been unwise. And everybody now has to pay.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve thought right along that the Fosses had some reason for not +being very happy,” said Mrs. Hawthorne, “and I guessed it was +something about Brenda. But they never said anything, and I didn’t try to +make out. Brenda doesn’t take to me, somehow, as the others do. I’m +not her kind, of course; but I do adore her from afar. She’s so beautiful! +She’s like a person in a story-book, who at the end dies, looking at the +sunset over the sea, or else marries the prince.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, Brenda is wonderful.”</p> + +<p>“I never should take her for an American.”</p> + +<p>“She’s not like one, and yet she is. She has grown up in this +country and breathed in its ideas and feelings till <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_113'></a>113</span>she even looks Italian. Her parents are +the sort of Americans that fifty years of foreign countries wouldn’t +budge; but they began later. Still, it is because Brenda is American, after all, +that cruelties are being committed. Her family have taken it for granted that +one of them couldn’t really be in love with an Italian, least of all that +joke, a dapper and decorative Italian officer that a girl buys at a fixed price +for her husband. And Brenda can’t say to them: ‘But I am. I am in love +with just such a man. The happiness of my life depends upon your finding the +vulgar sum of money with which to buy him for me.’ Because of the +American-ness all round, Brenda can’t say that to them, and because she +doesn’t say it, they are in doubt, they only half apprehend, they +don’t understand. The one thing they are sure of is that to marry a +foreigner is a mistake. And the one safe thing they see to do, when +Brenda’s face, combined with her entire reserve toward them, has begun to +torment them seriously, is to send her away where, if the truth be that she +mysteriously is ‘interested in’ an Italian, the change of scene may help +to put him out of her head.”</p> + +<p>“So that’s why they’re sending her home!”</p> + +<p>“There are no better or dearer people in the world, kind, true, just; +but”–Gerald held in, and showed how much he hated to make any sort +of reservation–“in this they have been to blame. They bring growing +girls to Italy, where, such is their confidence in I don’t know what +quality supposed to be inherent and to produce immunity from love of Italian +men, they never dream that there might happen to them an Italian +son-in-law.”</p> + +<p>He gave her a moment to realize how rash this was; then hurried, as if +wishing to get through as quickly as possible <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_114'></a>114</span>with the disagreeable, if not disgraceful, task of +criticizing his friends and of gossiping:</p> + +<p>“During the progress of the affair Mrs. Foss lets all go on as the +little affairs and flirtations of her own youth were allowed to go on at home. +She likes her daughters to be admired. It is only proper they should make +conquests, have beaus. Leslie has had flirtations with Italians as well as with +others, and come out of them without impairing that sense of humor which permits +her to see as funny that one should succumb to the attractions of one of those +only half-understood men, who may either be playing a comedy of love while in +truth pursuing a fortune, or, if in earnest, are rather alarming, with the hint +of jealous ferocity in their eyes. With Mrs. Foss’s knowledge, Brenda, +during a whole summer at the seaside, receives Giglioli’s letters, written +at first, or partly, in English, which he is learning with her help. With this +excuse of English, it is a correspondence and courtship <i>dans toutes les +règles</i>. Brenda is not asked by an American mother to show her letters or +his. Giglioli, with his traditions, could not have imagined such a thing if the +parents were unwilling to receive him as a suitor. Brenda herself–one will +never know about Brenda, how it began, what she thought or hoped. She is very +young; no doubt she did hope. Children seldom know much about their +parents’ means. She very likely thought hers could make her the present of +a dowry, as they had made her other presents. But when she discovered their +attitude toward the whole matter, with dignity and delicacy she let all be as +they desired, incapable of pressing them to tax their resources to give her a +thing their prejudice is so <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_115'></a>115</span>strongly set against. They did what they thought +best, and have hung in doubt ever since as to whether it was best; for though +Brenda gives her confidence to none of them, and they do not press her to give +it, with that respect for a child’s liberty which is also American, they +are growing more and more uneasy with the suspicion that it was serious on her +part, too. They love her extraordinarily, and she has always dearly loved them. +They show their love by protecting her youth from a step she may repent. She +shows hers by being strong, poor love, and trying not to grieve them with the +revelation of her heart. And they are making one another wretched.”</p> + +<p>For a moment Mrs. Hawthorne had nothing to say, busy with pondering what she +had heard. “I don’t see how, if she really loves this Italian, she +could give him up so gracefully,” she finally said.</p> + +<p>“She has not given him up, Mrs. Hawthorne,” said Gerald. +“Believe me, she has not. She has some plan, some dream, for bringing +about the good end in time without aid from her parents. I am sure of it. No, +she has not given him up.” He had before him, vivid in memory, the image +of Brenda in the little church, and was looking at that, though his eyes were on +Mrs. Hawthorne’s friendly and attentive face. “She is at the +wonderful hour of her love,” he said, “when the world is +transfigured and life lifted above the every-day into regions of poetry; when +the simple fact of his existence justifies the plan of creation, when to wait a +hundred years for him would seem no more difficult than to wait a day, and to +perform the labors of Hercules no more than breaking off so many roses. She is +sure of him, the immortality of his passion, <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_116'></a>116</span>as she is sure of herself. So they are above +circumstances, and nothing that friend or foe can do should trouble their +essential serenity.”</p> + +<p>“How wonderful!” breathed Mrs. Hawthorne, after a little silence +in which Gerald had been thinking with a very sickness of sympathy of Brenda and +the sinister propensity of the Fates for bringing to nothing the most valiant +dreams and hopes; and Mrs. Hawthorne had been thinking entirely of Gerald, whose +own heart was so much more certainly revealed by what he said than could be +anybody else’s.</p> + +<p>“Unfortunately,”–he turned abruptly to another part of his +subject,–“he is not of the same temperament. She has some project, I +imagine, for earning the money for her dowry, poor child, by music, singing, +painting. But he does not know her vows of fidelity, because her parents did use +their authority so far as gently to request her not to write to him or see him; +and she promised, and a promise with Brenda is binding. And he has felt his +honor involved in not writing or meeting her. But, though separated, they have +been in the same city; they could hope to catch a glimpse of each other now and +then. Heaven only knows how often he has stood to see her pass, or watched her +window, and lived on such things as unhappy lovers find to live on. After all, +the faith that when he dreamed of her she dreamed of him, that as he kissed a +glove she kissed a silver button, was a life, something to go on with. I dare +say, too, he cherished the hope of some miracle,–it is so natural to +hope!... But now they are sending her away, and it seems to him the black end of +everything.”</p> + +<p>“I see. And what you want is–”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117'></a>117</span>“To be +driven half a world apart for indefinite periods, more than probably forever, +without one look, one word of leave-taking, is truly too much. Granted that they +are not to have each other, they ought not to be torn in two like a bleeding +body. Let them have to remember a few last beautiful moments!”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne had become pensive. He watched her sidewise, trying to divine +what turn her thoughts were taking. Her prolonged silence made him uneasy.</p> + +<p>“It wouldn’t be wrong, you think?” she asked finally. +“Mrs. Foss wouldn’t be cross with us?”</p> + +<p>“If it is wrong, my dear Mrs. Hawthorne, let it be wrong!” he +cried impetuously. “If any one is cross, we will bow our heads +meekly–after having done what we regarded as merciful. Let us not permit a +cruelty it was in our power to prevent!”</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Hawthorne continued to disquiet him by hesitating, while her face +suggested the travels of her thought all around and in and out of the question +under consideration.</p> + +<p>“You don’t think it would perhaps be cruel to Brenda?” she +laid before him another difficulty in the way of making up her mind. +“Mightn’t it just ruin the evening for her, with the painfulness of +good-bys? Or, if she doesn’t in the least expect him, the shock of the +surprise?”</p> + +<p>“If I know that beautiful girl, passionate as an Italian under her +American self-control, it will be the blessed shock of an answered prayer. She +prays nightly, never doubt it, that Heaven may manage for her just such a +surprise.”</p> + +<p>He was growing afraid of the calm common sense that tried to see the thing +from every side and weight the merits <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_118'></a>118</span>of each person’s point of view. Feeling it +intolerable to be refused, he suddenly appealed to her pity, away from her +justice.</p> + +<p>“Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, life is so unkind, and to be always wise simply +deadly! A few memories to treasure are all the good we finally have of our +miserable days, and to catch at a moment of gold without care that it will have +to be paid for is the only way to have in our hands in all our lives anything +but copper and lead; yes, dull lead, common copper.” He covered his face +and pressed his eyes, in a way he had when the world seemed too hopeless and +baffling; then as suddenly straightened up, remarking more quietly, “The +Fosses are too wise.”</p> + +<p>“They have my sympathy, I must say, Mr. Fane,” Mrs. Hawthorne +hurriedly defended herself against being moved. “I should be just as much +afraid as they to have my daughter marry a foreigner.”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne, you ought to be afraid to have your daughter marry +anybody.” He gathered heat again and vehemence. “As regards +Italians, we are all one mass of superstitions. We are always comparing our best +with their bad. As a matter of truth, our best and their best and the best the +world over are one as good as the other, and our worst can’t be exceeded +by anything Italy can show. If you make the difficulty that we are different, +our point of view different, I object that Brenda’s is not so different. +The international marriages that turn out well make no noise, but there are +plenty of them. I have seen any number in the ordinary middle classes. No, +parents are twice as old as their children; that is the trouble and always will +be. The older people by prudence secure a certain thing, but it’s not the +thing youth wanted. The <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_119'></a>119</span>older see a certain thing as preferable, because +they are old; but the young were right for themselves, for a time, at least, +until they, too, grew old and saw a long peace and comfort as superior to a +brief love and rapture. Brenda is not shallow or changeable; it may be her one +chance of happiness that her parents in their anxious affection are trying to +remove her from, and which she will cling to with every invisible fiber of her +being until she conquers, or turns into a dismal old maid. Brenda is not like +other girls. Love is serious to her. She never played with it as Leslie has +always done, and as American girls do, yes, in Massachusetts and Virginia alike. +She is an earnest, simple, sincere, constant nature, very much, in fact, like +him.”</p> + +<p>“You seem to like him. Is he such a fine man really?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know a finer, in his way.”</p> + +<p>“Good looking?”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne, what a frivolous question! But he is. He is one of the +most completely handsome men I know. Rather short, that’s all.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, what a pity!”</p> + +<p>“But, if you must insist on that sort of symmetry, Brenda is not tall. +He is a kind of Italian, more common than one thinks, that doesn’t get +into literature, having nothing exciting, mysterious, wicked, or even +conspicuously picturesque about him. After being a good son,–they are very +often good sons,–he will be a good husband and a good father, like his own +father before him. He is without vanity, while looking like a square-built, +stocky, responsible Romeo. Devoted to duty, passionate for order, absolutely +punctilious in matters of honor and courtesy, he is a good citizen, a good +soldier. He belongs to excellent people, I gathered, whose fortune, once larger, +is very <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120'></a>120</span>small. They +live in the Abruzzi, I think he said. He is the eldest son and hope of the +house. His gratitude to them comes first of all, he made me understand. He would +be an <i>indegno</i>, unworthy of esteem and love, if that were not so. He had +never cared for pleasures, he told me; even in the time not demanded by the +service he studied. He wished to be useful to his country; he looked for the +advancement to be gained by solid capacity in military things. He felt older +than his years, he said, from being the eldest of the family and always carrying +responsibilities. He committed no follies of youth, had no quarrels, made no +debts. His companions sometimes laughed at him for this prosaic seriousness. But +he had friends, for he is of a manly, modest sort. One evening during Carnival +last year certain of these friends dropped in on their way to a dance, a costume +party at the house of Americans, and seeing him so absorbed by duties and +studies, thought it a lark to tempt him from these and take him along. And he, +to astonish them for once, he says, let it happen, they assuring him that he +would be well received if presented as their friend. One of them had on two +costumes, one on top of the other, of which he lent him one, a monk’s +frock and cowl. So they went. At the ball was Brenda as the Snow-queen. And the +fatal thing happened at very first sight of her. It is a repetition of <i>Romeo +and Juliet</i>, as you see. He had shunned women as the rivals of duty and work. +He believes his instantaneous adoration owing to the fact that Brenda so far +surpassed all he had ever known,–a being entirely formed of light and snow +and fragrance.... I am using his words. Her very name is sweet to Italian lips. +He permitted himself the dreams of other men. He permitted himself to hope. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121'></a>121</span> And then!... These +things he told me with actual tears in the finest dark eyes I have perhaps ever +seen, and without seeming any the less manly for them. He told me, and I +believed him. He came to me, poor fellow, because it was the nearest he could +come to Brenda, and he trusted, I suppose, that I would tell her he had been. It +was a way of sending her a message. He talked more than half the night, walking +the floor, then throwing himself into a chair and grasping his head. I +can’t tell you all he said, but it filled me with pity and respect. It +made me his friend.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne looked soft and sympathetic, but far away, and when he stopped +did not speak, engrossed, it was to be hoped, by the story just told.</p> + +<p>He continued, though discouraged:</p> + +<p>“He wanted to know if I thought he would be guilty of an unpardonable +breach should he ask permission to write her one letter before she left. This +parting without farewell is the last bitter touch to his tragedy. Brenda, when +it had been decided that she should leave, sent word to him by that little +pianist who comes here. Again through the same channel he received word that the +day of departure was fixed. Can you think what it means, Mrs. Hawthorne? Have +you in your experience or imagination the wherewith to form any conception, dear +Mrs. Hawthorne, of what it means? The day of departure fixed! The day of +parting! Do you realize? No more sight or sound of each other! The end! The sea +between! Silence! And it is to befall on Saturday of this week, and we are at +Wednesday!”</p> + +<p>“All right, Mr. Fane; bring him!” she said in haste. +“You’ve made me want to cry. I mustn’t let myself <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122'></a>122</span>cry; it makes my nose +red. What did you say his name is?”</p> + +<p>“Giglioli.”</p> + +<p>“Spell it. Gig–no, it’s no use. What’s the other part +of his name?”</p> + +<p>“Manlio.”</p> + +<p>“That’s a little better. I guess he’ll have to be Manlio to +me. Bring him along, whatever happens, and then let’s pray hard to have +everything happen right.”</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>Not much later on the same day Mrs. Hawthorne’s brougham might have +been seen climbing Viale dei Colli, with the lady inside, alone, engaged in +meditation.</p> + +<p>“It would be a pity,” she was thinking, as she alighted before +Villa Foss, “that a little matter of eight thousand dollars should stand +in the way of perfect bliss!”</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123'></a>123</span><a id='link_8'></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<p>So many forces had been enlisted, into so many hands the white card given, to +make Mrs. Hawthorne’s ball a success, that it could hardly fail to be +somewhat splendid. On a platform raised in one corner of the ball-room sat the +little orchestra assembled and conducted by Signor Ceccherelli, who, from his +mien, might have been the creator of these musicians and originator of all +music.</p> + +<p>Charlie Hunt was floor-master, and busy enough. Another might perhaps have +done as much and not appeared so busy. The cotillion especially gave him a great +deal to do. Everybody understood that he had planned all the figures and bought +the favors. Some received an impression that the ball was entirely managed by +him, who was such a very great friend of the hostess’s. Some even carried +home an idea that the hostess never did anything without consulting him, and +more often than not besought him to do it for her.</p> + +<p>This sounds cruder than it actually was. Charlie was looking most handsome +and high-bred. Animation shone from his eyes, his teeth, his skin, over which he +now and then swept a fine white silk handkerchief. He danced devotedly every +minute during which he was not engaged in making others dance. Mrs. Hawthorne, +gazing after him with a benignant smile, was truly grateful to him for putting +into her party so much “go.” It was his atmosphere <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124'></a>124</span>rather than his +words–though he did drop words, but not many or really in bad +taste–that made him appear the one indispensable person in the house.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Foss stood near the central door with Mrs. Hawthorne, receiving. She had +not omitted from her list one acquaintance in Florence of the suitable class. +Everybody was there; the style of invitation-card sent had suggested a grand +occasion.</p> + +<p>All the persons she had seen at the Fosses on the first Friday evening at +their house Mrs. Hawthorne saw again, and many more. Balm de Brézé, with a +gallantry of old style, bent his black-lacquer mustache over her glove. The dark +Landini pressed her hand with a pinch the warmth of which pricked her attention, +and she found his eyes fixed on her with more the air of seeing her than is +common at a first meeting.</p> + +<p>Suddenly her heart thumped like a school-girl’s. Gerald was coming, and +with him an officer who must surely be Manlio. She tried to keep down her +emotion, but the pink of her face deepened, a trembling seized her smile.</p> + +<p>The Italian was as white as paper, his mustache and brows made spots of ink +on it; his eyes were as deep and still as wells in the night. She could hardly +doubt that his heart was in a tumult, but he spoke without disaster to his +voice, thanking her in a formal phrase. She perceived, from a distinct advantage +over him in height, how faultlessly handsome he was in a quiet, unmagnetic way. +Never had she seen anything to equal the whiteness of his teeth except her +pearls in their black velvet case.</p> + +<p>After having paid his duty to her, he remained for some minutes speaking with +Mrs. Foss, who appeared as kind, while he appeared as calm and natural, as if +time had <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125'></a>125</span>moved +back, and they were still at last spring and the beginning of his visits. Of all +concerned Aurora was the least collected.</p> + +<p>“I can’t help it!” she murmured to Gerald, while the other +two were talking together. “I’m all of a tremble. I feel as if I +were Brenda; and at the same time I feel as if I were him–or +he.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Foss turned to them to say she believed everybody had arrived, and with +Giglioli moved away from the door. Gerald asked Mrs. Hawthorne if they should +waltz, but she refused, because she ought to be looking after the people who +were not dancing and seeing that every one had a good time. She should dance +only once that evening, she told him, and it should be with Mr. Foss, who had +promised to dance at her party if she would promise to dance with him.</p> + +<p>Mr. Foss was seen approaching, and Mrs. Hawthorne smiled and sparkled in +anticipation of the jokes they would exchange on her fairy weight and his +youthful limberness.</p> + +<p>Gerald sent his eyes around the room to see if any one were free whom it +would be a sort of duty to ask to dance. He did not look for pleasure from +dancing, the less so that Charlie Hunt, on the perpetual jump, and dancing with +a perfection almost unmanly, had brought the exercise into temporary discredit +with him. Miss Madison was dancing, Miss Seymour was dancing, Leslie was +dancing, Brenda–his eyes were unable to find. In a doorway, and not quite +as festive in looks as the majority, which gave to the room the effect of an +animated flower-bed, he perceived a figure in snuff-brown silk, just in front of +which, soberly watching the dancers, was a little girl in a short dress of +embroidered white, a blue hair-ribbon and blue enamel locket. <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126'></a>126</span>At once dropping his +search for a partner, Gerald went to join this pair, thinking, as he approached, +that Lily without her spectacles was beginning to have a look of Brenda,–a +Brenda with less beauty, but more originality; more–what could one call +it?–geniality, perhaps.</p> + +<p>“Oh, Gerald!”–the little girl caught his hand without +ceasing for more than a second to watch the ball-room floor,–“I have +promised to go home willingly at ten o’clock!” It was spoken in a +gentle wail.</p> + +<p>“My child,” said Fräulein, “you must begin to prepare, for +I fear it cannot be far from ten.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Fräulein, don’t keep talking about it! +<i>Please!</i>”</p> + +<p>“When you leave this pleasure, Lili, remember, there will be still that +other pleasure of the long ride home in the night and the moonlight.”</p> + +<p>“Yes.” Lily, glad again, turned wholly to Gerald, the music +having stopped. “Mrs. Hawthorne told mother that if she would let me come +I should be taken home in her own carriage, with all the furs around us and a +hot water-box for our feet, so that we never could catch cold. Wasn’t it +sweet of her? And we’ve both already had ices and cakes, before anybody +else, because she said we must. Don’t you think she’s sweet, +Gerald?”</p> + +<p>“Sweet as honey,” he said.</p> + +<p>“Oh, Gerald,”–Lily’s tone was fairly +lamentable,–“have you seen the baskets of favors that are going to +be given away by and by? There are roses of red silk, and lilies of white +velvet, and chocolate cigars, and fans, and bonbonnières, and silver bangles! +Then funny ones of little monkeys and ducks and things. And I have to go home +willingly, cheerfully, promptly, at ten o’clock!”</p> + +<p>“Lily, if any lady is so good and so misguided as to <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127'></a>127</span>honor me with a favor, I +will bring it to you in my pocket to-morrow or soon after, I promise.”</p> + +<p>“What hour is it, Herr Fane?” asked Fräulein over Lily’s +head.</p> + +<p>Gerald drew out his watch and hesitated, sincerely sorry.</p> + +<p>“To be exact, it is three minutes and three quarters to ten,” he +said.</p> + +<p>Lily’s mouth dropped open, and out of the small dark hollow one could +fear for a second that a cry of protest or revolt might come; but the very next +moment it was seen that Lily had returned to be the best child in the world and +the most honorable.</p> + +<p>“Good night, Gerald!” she said, with a wistfully willing, +cheerful, ready face. “You won’t forget?”</p> + +<p>He was left in the oval room, and as the dancers who had come in to occupy +its seats seemed all to be in pairs, he remained aloof. He took the occasion to +have a look at the panels, which he had not before seen, the tapestries, which +were not tapestries, but paintings on rep. He remembered–the Fountain of +Love, not Biblical.</p> + +<p>The fountain, surely enough, spouted from a marble dolphin squeezed in the +chubby arms of a marble Love, and was four times repeated, at different hours of +the day and seasons of the year. In spring, at dawn, a maiden filled her cup at +it. At noon, in summer, the same maiden and a youth drank from it with cheeks +close together. In autumn, at sunset, the maiden, sadder of countenance, stared +at the fountain, visibly wrapped in memories. In winter the fountain stood +solitary and frozen, Cupid had a hood of snow, the purplish twilight landscape +was drowned in melancholy.</p> + +<p>Gerald’s mind made an excursion from the things before <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128'></a>128</span>him to the studio where +those facile works of art had been produced. The place was imaginary, and the +artist not altogether clear, but the features of the second figure which he saw, +the visitor at the studio, were well-known to him, and the sentiments of the +artist receiving the order to treat a subject in four large panels for a rich +<i>forestiera</i> not difficult to estimate.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>The ball had been raging, if one may so express it, for several hours, the +feast was at its height, when Aurora, confused with the richness and +multiplicity of her impressions, and aware of a happy fatigue, withdrew from her +guests to be for a few minutes just a quiet looker-on. She chose as her retreat +a spot at the curve of the stairs, where she felt herself in the midst of +everything and yet isolated. Her back was toward the persons going up and down; +she leaned on the sloping balustrade, and breathed and rested and hoped no one +would notice her for a little while, all being delightfully engaged.</p> + +<p>She could see a little way into the ball-room, where certain younger couples, +mad for dancing, were making the most of the time when the floor was relatively +empty, the supper-room being proportionately full. Supper over, the cotillion +would begin. She could see Leslie, in Nile-green crape, eating an ice out in the +hall with that American boy, the singer, whose conceit, by his looks, had not +yet been made to totter. She could hear the merry sound of spoons and glasses, +and knew what good things were being consumed. All the house was involved in +festivity, and resounding with it. In the upstairs sitting-room were +card-tables. In the improvised conservatory opposite one large dim lantern +glowed softly amid palms and flowers. <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_129'></a>129</span>To Aurora every goose present that evening was a +swan. There were frumpy dresses more than a few,–there always +are,–and there was the usual proportion of plain girls and uninteresting +men, but she did not see those. She saw a crowd more brilliant and beautiful and +fit to be loved than had ever before been assembled beneath one roof. Her heart +felt very large, very soft, very light.</p> + +<p>All evening it had seemed to her rather as if she walked in a dream. More +than ever now, as she stopped to take account of all the wonderfulness +surrounding her, it felt to her like a dream; so that she said to herself, +“This is I, Nell–is it possible? Is it possible that this is +I–Nell?”</p> + +<p>And no doubt because she had been too excitedly happy and was tired, and the +time had come for some degree of reaction, her joy fell, withered like a +child’s collapsing pink balloon, when, contrasting the present with the +past for the sake of seeing the things before her as more rarely full of wonder +and charm, she saw those other things. Memories she did not willingly call up +rose of themselves, and forced her to give them her attention in the midst of +that scene of flowers, light, music. The brightness, the flavor, went out of +these as if under an unkind magic.</p> + +<p>“It’s a wonder,” she thought, “that I can ever be as +happy as I am. I do wonder at myself how I can do it to rejoice.”</p> + +<p>But the next minute she was smiling again, sweetly, heart-wholly, +forgetfully. She had caught sight of Gerald looking at her as if about to +approach.</p> + +<p>“Who are you going to dance the cotillion with?” she asked +gaily.</p> + +<p>“You, Mrs. Hawthorne, with your kind consent.”</p> + +<p>“No, I couldn’t do it. I only dance a little bit, just <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130'></a>130</span>what Estelle has taught +me since we’ve been here. I don’t keep step very well; I walk all +over my partner’s feet. Besides, it wouldn’t do, because I’ve +already refused to dance with Mr. Landini.”</p> + +<p>“Sit it out with me, then, I implore you, if you positively do not wish +to dance.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, but you must dance! I want you to. I want to behold you all stuck +over with favors.”</p> + +<p>“It’s true that I must have a few favors for Lily; but +couldn’t a good fairy arrange it, and then we let the others heat +themselves while we keep cool and rest? I feared a moment ago that you were +feeling tired, Mrs. Hawthorne.”</p> + +<p>“Look!” she whispered, interrupting him.</p> + +<p>He imperceptibly turned in the direction of her stolen glance. Two figures +were ascending the opposite flight of stairs, looking at each other while they +inaudibly talked: Brenda, in filmy white diversified by a thread of silver; +Manlio, carrying over his arm, and in his absorption letting trail a little, a +white scarf beautiful with silver embroideries; in his hand a white pearl fan. +Brenda’s face was angelic, nothing less. When the young and rose-lipped +cherubim are full of celestial sensations and adoring, eternal thoughts, they +must look as Brenda did at that moment. Manlio’s head was so turned that +his night-black hair alone was presented to our friends. Slowly the pair mounted +and was lost to sight.</p> + +<p>Neither Gerald nor Mrs. Hawthorne made any comment. Gerald, after a silence, +spoke of Lily’s increasing resemblance to her sister. Mrs. Hawthorne was +reminded that they must go to select some favors for Lily, and led the way.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131'></a>131</span>They sat +together through the cotillion, and Gerald, because he had seen the shadow of +sadness on Mrs. Hawthorne’s face, tried more than usual to be a +sympathetic companion, easy to talk to, easy to get on with. He was always quick +to see such things.</p> + +<p>No trace of it remained. Her dimples were in full play, but he found it +according to his humor to continue uncritical, inexpressively tender, toward +this big, bonny child who never curbed the expression of a complete kindness +toward himself.</p> + +<p>More interesting to them than any other dancers were naturally Brenda and +Manlio, partners for the cotillion. Certainly the plot for giving those two a +few beautiful last hours together was proving a success. Brenda was calmly, +collectedly luminous; Manlio, uplifted to the point of not quite knowing what he +did. Radiant and desperate, he looked to Gerald, who found his state explained +by the facts as he knew them.</p> + +<p>“Poor things! Poor dears!” he thought, with the cold to-morrow in +view, yet retained his conviction of having done the unhappy lovers on the whole +a good turn.</p> + +<p>He had been glad to find the Fosses sharing his point of view that to forbid +Giglioli a sight of Brenda before the long parting would have been unnecessarily +cruel. Mrs. Hawthorne, it seemed to him, had lost sight of what was to follow. +She was exclusively delighted with their joy of the evening, she gave no thought +to their misery next day. It was amazing to him, the extent to which she had +forgotten.</p> + +<p>So he said aloud, “Poor things! Poor dears!” and discovered that +it was not forgetfulness exactly in Mrs. Hawthorne, <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_132'></a>132</span>but that general optimism which insists +on believing in a loophole of possibility through which things can slip and +somehow turn out right after all.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>The party was over. The musicians had laid their instruments in coffin-like +black boxes and were getting into their overcoats. The candles were burned to +the end, the flowers looked tired, the place all at once amazingly empty. The +last half dozen people were standing and laughing with Mrs. Hawthorne and Miss +Madison around Percy Lavin while he told a final good story when one of the +guests who had departed some time before returned.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne caught sight of the figure in closed coat, tall hat, and white +silk muffler as soon as it entered the house, for the group of laughers stood +near the ball-room door, and this was only separated from the inner house door +by the wide hall. Without waiting for the end of the comic story Mrs. Hawthorne +hurried to the guest, whose reason for returning she wished to know, though it +so easily might have been only his forgotten cane.</p> + +<p>That it was nothing of the kind she at once perceived. He looked upset.</p> + +<p>“May I speak with you a moment?” he asked at once.</p> + +<p>They stepped into the nearest room, still brightly lighted, but deserted.</p> + +<p>“What’s the matter?” she inquired, prepared by his face for +news of trouble.</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne, we’ve done it!” said Gerald. +“Giglioli tells me that he’s giving up the army, and Brenda has +promised to marry him!” He was on the verge of laughing hysterically.</p> + +<p>“Oh!” Mrs. Hawthorne paused to watch him, and wonder <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133'></a>133</span>why they should not +without further to-do rejoice and triumph. “Well? What’s wrong with +that?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, it’s deadly!” he exclaimed with +conviction. “If it were a simple solution, why shouldn’t it have +been suggested before?”</p> + +<p>“It did suggest itself to me, in the quiet of my inside, you +know.”</p> + +<p>“But you, dear lady, can’t be supposed to understand. Oh, +it’s either too, too beautiful, or else too, too bad! And in this dear +world of ours the probability is that it’s too bad. He was taken off his +feet by his emotion; he offered her what he will feel later he had no right to +offer–a good deal more than his life. But it shows, doesn’t it, that +he does immensely love her? To throw into the balance everything–his +career, his family, his country–and offer them up! To cut his throat for a +kiss.”</p> + +<p>“You’re quite right; I can’t understand,” she hurried +in. “What makes you say ‘cut his throat’? Couldn’t he go into +some other business just as well as the army?”</p> + +<p>“All in the world he’s fitted for is the army. Do you see that +beautiful fellow going to America, for instance, and earning a living as a +teacher of Italian, or as the representative of some tobacco interest? There is +no way of earning a proper living over here, you know. Oh, I’m afraid he +will feel, when he wakes up, like a deserter toward his country and an ingrate +toward his family and even toward Brenda like a misguider of her +youth.”</p> + +<p>“But, look here, isn’t there a chance that having each other will +make up to them for everything else?”</p> + +<p>“That of course was their sentiment at the moment of doing it. We did +the work so well, Mrs. Hawthorne, that their passion, raised to a beautiful +madness, would make <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_134'></a>134</span>them see anything as possible to be done so long as +it gave them to each other, obviated the horrible necessity to part. Oh, it is +touching, but dreadful! What were we dreaming? The thing I so greatly fear is +that when he comes to himself he will feel dishonored, and Italians do not bear +that easily, if at all.”</p> + +<p>“Now, see here, don’t you go imagining things and worry. And +don’t you let that young man worry. He isn’t leaving the army +to-morrow or the day after, is he?”</p> + +<p>“No. In the natural course of things, I suppose, it will take some +time.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I don’t at all relish, myself, the idea of seeing that +beautiful fellow, as you say, in every-day clothes–the sort they wear over +here–after seeing him all glorious in silver braid and stars. No. I just +can’t bear to think of him giving them up. At the same time I don’t +agree with you that he had better have given up his girl than them. And I +don’t believe she will mind about his clothes one way or the +other.”</p> + +<p>“But there is his family, a thousand obligations–he spoke of them +himself.”</p> + +<p>“Perhaps the Fosses, now this has happened and they see how much in +earnest the blessed creatures are, will sell some of their stock in California +gold-mines and afford the dowry you spoke of.”</p> + +<p>“But Giglioli will blush at this forcing of their hand.”</p> + +<p>“Now, see here, you keep that young man cool. He hasn’t done +anything to be ashamed of. Brenda knows her own mind, and I don’t believe +her father and mother would stand in the way of her marrying a tramp if he was +honest and her heart set on him. You tell that young man, <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_135'></a>135</span>in your own way, to sit tight and put +his trust in the Lord.”</p> + +<p>Gerald’s nervous laughter for a moment got the better of him. He +covered his face to check it, then, tearing away his hands, made the gesture of +releasing a pack of tugging hounds too strong for him to hold. Let them be off +and at the devil!</p> + +<p>“I didn’t come here looking for comfort, dear Mrs. Hawthorne. +Your optimism is constitutional, you know, rather than enlightened. I merely +came to tell my accomplice the result of our meddling with destiny. +‘Accomplice’ is a manner of speaking. Don’t suppose I forget that I +alone am to blame. Good night. I must go back to him where I left him, with his +head among the stars and clouds, and his feet perhaps beginning to burn already +with the heat of the nether fire. As you say, ‘let’s be cheerful, +let’s hope for the best!’ Ha!”</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136'></a>136</span><a id='link_9'></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<p>Brenda, reaching home after the ball, had asked her parents to hear a thing +she must tell them, and, very pale, informed them of the manner in which she had +taken the direction of her life into her own hands. At the sight of their faces +something had melted within her; she had trusted to them at last all that was in +her heart, so that father and mother, greatly moved, felt as if they had found +their child again rather than lost her. At the almost incredible spectacle of +tears in her father’s eyes Brenda had crept into his arms, against his +breast, and lain there so still, so silent, that it seemed unnatural. They +perceived that she had fainted.</p> + +<p>She left for America on the date that had been set, but a term was fixed for +her visit; April was to see her back in Florence.</p> + +<p>Her engagement was not announced. Mr. Foss, talking of it with his wife, +expressed liking and respect for their prospective son-in-law. His confidence in +the man had been increased by an action that seemed to him quite in the American +spirit. No doubt Giglioli would prove a good business man, just as he had been a +good soldier, the chief requisites in all walks of life being a clear head, a +heart in its place, and the will to work.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Foss was secretly unhappy during these conversations. The model wife had +never before kept anything from her husband nor taken any step without his +sanction, <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_137'></a>137</span>and she +was ashamed now of the duplicity she was forced to practice. She strengthened +herself by the assurance that in so doing she was really sparing Jerome, saving +him possible moments of indecision, or conflict with himself. She was saving +Brenda from the same troubles, if not worse: such perhaps as seeing her +brilliant hero made into an unsuccessful struggle-for-lifer. She, the mother, +would swallow by her single self all the mental discomforts that might have been +the general portion, and, nobody being any the wiser, shoulder hardily for their +sakes the consciousness of an obligation which might to the others have poisoned +a gift, if not made it impossible to accept. No member of her family, it seemed +to Mrs. Foss, knew quite as well as she how simple, native, and without +self-conceit was Aurora Hawthorne’s generosity; so that taking from her +was hardly different, in a sense, from giving her something. You did not have to +pay with gratitude. You paid, first and last and all the time, with +affection.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>Gerald, who had seen as beset with difficulty the rôle of friend which he +might be called upon to play, heard with relief that Giglioli had obtained leave +of absence and gone to see his family. With Brenda over the seas, and Manlio in +the Abruzzi, the subject of their attachment and future could fall a little into +the background, crowded out by the nearer things.</p> + +<p>The fact became of some consequence to Gerald that in his relation to Mrs. +Hawthorne he was so largely a taker. He did not count as any return for her +hospitalities the time he gave to sight-seeing with her and her friend; he was +modest with regard to his own contributions.</p> + +<p>He had in truth not desired to fall into Mrs. Hawthorne’s <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138'></a>138</span>debt. He would have liked +best to keep away from her; but fate, likewise character, set snares for him. +After he had stayed away for a certain length of time, the thought would rise to +trouble him, “She will feel hurt,” and all against the voice of good +sense, such a reason as that had power with Gerald. He would then call, and her +welcome would be so kind, her heartiness so warming, that he would stay to +dinner, and promise to go somewhere with them on the following day, after which +he would dine with them again.</p> + +<p>So now the gentlemanly wish defined itself in him to show by some token that +he did not take favors all as a matter of course.</p> + +<p>He would have liked to make her an offering a little exquisite, a little +rare, which she might recognize as possessing these points and accordingly +prize. To bestow anything concrete would have been folly. A few possessions he +had which he would have thought worthy of the acceptance of queens: a tear phial +of true Roman glass, a Japanese print or two, a few coins that were old already +when Christ was young. And he would have parted with any one of these treasures +to Mrs. Hawthorne, though not wholly without a pang: first, because he liked +her, and then because he had eaten as it seemed to him a good deal of her bread +and syrup. But she would not have cared for these things; while bereaving +himself, he would have enriched her not at all.</p> + +<p>The duty of doing something for Mrs. Hawthorne’s pleasure was felt even +by Charlie Hunt, who took her to a concert. When Gerald heard of it, he searched +more persistently and, fate aiding, found something which might give the lady +amusement, he thought, and would certainly <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_139'></a>139</span>afford an opportunity that would hardly have come +her way without his good offices.</p> + +<p>The morning mail brought him a note relating to his project; he did not wait +for afternoon to communicate its contents.</p> + +<p>It was eleven when he rang at Mrs. Hawthorne’s door. He had hardly +finished asking the servant whether the signora were at home when he heard her +voice upstairs, singing behind closed doors.</p> + +<p>She had said so many times, when he went through the formality of having +himself announced and waiting for permission to present himself, “Why +didn’t you come right up?” that this morning he said to the servant, +“It imports not to advise her. I shall mount.” Did the servant look +faintly ironical, or did Gerald mistakenly imagine it?</p> + +<p>The tune she sang sounded familiar. It must be a hymn, he decided, but could +not remember what hymn, or even be sure it was one he had heard before, hymns +are so much alike. He stopped at the sitting-room door and waited, listening to +the big, free, untrained velvet voice, true throughout the low and medium +registers, flat on the upper notes, the singer having carelessly pitched her +hymn too high. He could hear the lines now, given with a swing that made them +curl over at the ends, and with a punch on certain of the syllables, +irrespective of their meaning:</p> + +<div class='poetry'> +<p>“Feed me <i>with</i>–the heavenly manna<br />In this +<i>barr</i>–en wilder<i>ness</i>;<br /> Be my <i>shield</i>, my sword, +my banner,<br /> Be the Lord–my righteous<i>ness</i>!”</p> </div> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140'></a>140</span>When she came to +the words,</p> + +<div class='poetry'> +<p>“Death of death and hell’s destruction,”</p></div> + +<p>a bang and rattling ensued, as if some one were taking a practical hand in +that work. The heavenly ferryman was thereupon besought with vigor to land her +safe on Canaan’s side, and the singing ceased.</p> + +<p>Gerald stood waiting, if perchance there might be another verse, and +wondered, while waiting, at the sounds he heard in the room, easy to recognize, +but difficult to explain. When it seemed certain that the music was at an end, +he, after hesitating for some minutes longer, gently tapped.</p> + +<p>“Oh, come in!” was shouted from inside. “<i>Entrez</i>, +will you? <i>Avanti!</i>”</p> + +<p>He opened the door a little way, discreetly, and put in his head, ready to +draw it back at once should he see his morning call as befalling +inopportunely.</p> + +<p>Aurora was so far from expecting him that for a second or two she actually +did not recognize him, and waited to understand what was wanted of her. Her head +was tied in a white cloth, her sleeves were turned back, she had on an apron, +and she held a broom. The furniture was pushed together out of the corners, some +of it covered with sheets; the windows were open. No mistake possible. Aurora +was sweeping.</p> + +<p>A burst of laughter rang; the broom-handle knocked on the floor.</p> + +<p>“Yes, I’m sweeping,” she cried. “Come right in! You +find me practising one of my accomplishments. I can’t play the piano, I +can’t speak languages, I can’t paint bunches of flowers on black +velvet; but I can sweep, I can <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_141'></a>141</span>cook, I can wash dishes–or babies, one just as +well as the other, and I can nurse the sick.”</p> + +<p>“I am afraid I have come at an inconvenient moment.”</p> + +<p>“Not at all. I’m glad to see you. I was most through, +anyhow.”</p> + +<p>She had pulled the cloth off her head, and was patting her hair before the +glass. She turned down her cuffs, untied her apron, and came to shake hands, +smiling as usual.</p> + +<p>“You caught me,” she said. “When I feel a certain way, +I’ve got to work off steam, and there’s nothing that does it like +sweeping.”</p> + +<p>“I beg of you–I beg of you to let me close those windows for +you!”</p> + +<p>“All right. I’m awfully hot, but I guess the room’s cold. +We can have a fire in a minute. Everything’s there to make it.”</p> + +<p>“I beg you will not trouble! I shall only remain a moment and leave you +to finish.”</p> + +<p>“No, now, no; don’t go and leave me. I was only sweeping to be +doing something. To clean the room wasn’t my real object. I took their +work from Zaira and Vitale, who are the ones to do it usually, in a way +that’s new to me, with damp sawdust. It’s nearly finished, anyhow. +All I’ve got to do is fold the sheets and push things back into their +places.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, please, please, allow me–”</p> + +<p>He tried to help her, waking to the fact that she was as strong as he, if not +stronger.</p> + +<p>The room in a minute looked as usual, and she knelt in front of the hearth, +piling up a kindling of pine-cones and little fagots, on which she laid a +picturesque old root of olive-wood.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142'></a>142</span>“You seem +to be alone,” he remarked.</p> + +<p>“Yes; Estelle’s gone out.”</p> + +<p>He was not sorry to hear it. Miss Madison, whom he entirely liked, affected +him curiously, or, to express the matter more exactly, in a curious degree +failed to affect him at all. Her personality did not bite on his consciousness. +Unless some chance left them on each other’s hands, he had difficulty in +remembering her presence. It was not that she was colorless; not by any means. +She obviously had character, brightness, individuality, even charm; but so far +as he was concerned she might have had none of these. Particularly when her big +friend was by Gerald ceased to see her. He recognized the danger of her negative +effect on him, and often made a point of devoting to her a special amount of +attention, being toward her of an unnatural amiability, trying thus to keep her +ignorant of the extent to which she did not exist for him. Now he suddenly +remembered that from the choice little treat provided for Mrs. Hawthorne Miss +Madison had been left out–forgotten. He was dismayed. Then a pleasant side +to the affair revealed itself by a dim gleam. He was mortified by his +forgetfulness, but the ladies were after all not Siamese twins.</p> + +<p>“You must wonder what brought me at this unusual time of day,” he +said.</p> + +<p>“Any time’s good that brings you. But what in particular was +it?”</p> + +<p>“I wanted to ask you to keep free next Saturday afternoon and, if you +will be so good, spend it in part with me. I should like to take you to Mrs. +Grangeon’s.”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Grangeon’s...?”</p> + +<p>“Don’t you remember? Antonia! It is Antonia’s real <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143'></a>143</span>name. On the first +evening of our acquaintance you had a good deal to say about her. If I remember +rightly, you expressed then a desire to meet her–see her face.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, yes. Antonia, of course.”</p> + +<p>“She is a figure of importance here in Florence. She is in truth a very +gifted woman–in her way, great, and of wide reputation. And she is clever, +except in just some little spots. Geniuses, one has observed, are seldom quite +free from such spots. She has kept herself very much to herself now for several +years, so that an occasion to see her is grasped eagerly. This affair of hers on +Saturday is the first thing of the kind in an age. Her villa at Bellosguardo is +most interesting and full of interesting things. And the view from her terrace +is worthy of a pilgrimage. You perceive, Mrs. Hawthorne, that I am doing what I +can to <i>faire valoir</i> the scrap of entertainment I have to offer.”</p> + +<p>“I think it perfectly lovely of you! Of course I’ll go, and +delighted to. And see how it fits in–” She kindled to joyful +enthusiasm. “We’ve just bought a lot of her books. We realized +we’d got to have some books to make this room look finished off. We bought +hers in paper covers and have had them beautifully bound. Just look here.” +She went to take a specimen from the bookcase, a white parchment volume with +gold tooling, a crimson fleur-de-lys painted on the front cover. +“Aren’t they lovely? An idea! We’ll take some of them up to +her and ask her to write her name in them. Wouldn’t that be +flattering?”</p> + +<p>“Ye ... es.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve been trying to read some of it over since these came home +from the binder’s. My! Aren’t those people of hers +wonderful–where you’d think the ladies never <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_144'></a>144</span>could have a stomache-ache nor the +gentlemen a corn!”</p> + +<p>“I hope Miss Madison will not think I forgot her,” he +disingenuously said, “when in replying to Mrs. Grangeon’s invitation +I begged permission to bring you, and that she will do me the honor some day +very soon–”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Estelle won’t mind!”</p> + +<p>The mention of Estelle seemed to change the color of Mrs. Hawthorne’s +thoughts, casting a shadow over them.</p> + +<p>“Estelle and I had a spat this morning,” she told him.</p> + +<p>“Oh!”</p> + +<p>“That’s why I was sweeping and why she’s gone for a walk by +herself.”</p> + +<p>“I’m so sorry!” was all he found to say.</p> + +<p>“It doesn’t amount to anything,” she cheered him. +“We’ve had times of quarreling all our lives, and we’ve known +each other since we were children. Her aunt and my grandmother had houses side +by side in the country; there was just a fence between our yards. That’s +how we first came to be friends. All our lives we’ve had the way of +sometimes saying what the other doesn’t like. And do you know what’s +always at the bottom of it? That each one thinks she knows what would be most +for the other’s good to do, and we get so mad because the other +won’t do what we ourself think would be best for her! Just as some people +abuse you because you’re a pig, we as likely as not abuse the other +because she isn’t a pig. One of the biggest fights we ever had was because +once late at night, when she was dead tired, tired as a yellow dog, I wanted her +to sit still and let me pack for her, or, anyhow, let me help her pack. And she +said I was as tired as she,–as if that was possible!–and if I +didn’t go to bed and get some rest myself and let her alone to get through +her packing as <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145'></a>145</span>she +pleased if it was daylight before she finished she should have a fit. And from +one thing to another we went on getting madder and madder till we said things +you would have thought made it impossible for us ever to speak to each other +again. But the first thing next morning, when we opened our eyes, we just looked +at each other and began to laugh. Another time we fought like cats and dogs +because I wanted to give her something and she refused to take it.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t call those quarrels, Mrs. Hawthorne.”</p> + +<p>“You would if you could hear us; you would have if you could have heard +us this morning. And it was only a little one. You see, two people aren’t +best friends for nothing. It gives you a sort of freedom; you aren’t a bit +afraid. And when you know it’s only the other’s good you have at +heart, it makes you awfully firm and fast-set in your point of view. I +don’t mind telling you that I’m always the one in the +wrong.”</p> + +<p>“Are you?”</p> + +<p>“Of course I am. But I like to have my way, even if it’s wrong. +Hear me talk! How that does sound! And I was brought up so strict! But +it’s so. I want to do as I please. I want to have fun. It began this +morning with Hat saying I spent too much money.”</p> + +<p>“Did she say that? How unreasonable, how far-fetched!”</p> + +<p>“‘What’s the good of having it,’ I said, ‘if I can’t +spend it?’</p> + +<p>“‘You’d buy anything,’ she said, ‘that anybody wanted you +to buy, if it was a mangy stuffed monkey. It isn’t generosity,’ she +said; ‘it’s just weakness.’</p> + +<p>“‘Oh, suck an orange!’ I said, ‘Chew gum! It’s anything +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146'></a>146</span>you choose to call +it. But when a thing takes my fancy, I’m going right on to buy it. And if +it enables a greasy little Italian to buy himself and his children more +garlic,’ I said, ‘that’s not going to stop me,’ I said. I +don’t mind showing you”–she dropped her selections from the +morning’s dialogue–“the thing I bought which started our +little discussion. The artist who made it brought it himself to show +me.”</p> + +<p>She went to take the object referred to from her desk, and held it before +him, examining it at the same time as he did.</p> + +<p>“Do you see what it is? Can you tell at once?”</p> + +<p>“H-m, I’m not sure. Is it intended for a portrait of Queen +Margherita?”</p> + +<p>“Right you are! Of course that’s what it is. It’s a picture +of the queen, done by hand with pen and ink; but that’s not all. If you +should take a magnifying glass, you would see that every line is a line of +writing–fine, fine pen-writing, the very finest possible, and if you begin +reading at this pearl of her crown, and just follow through all the +quirligiggles and everything to the end, you will have read the whole history of +Italy in a condensed form! Isn’t it wonderful? Don’t you think it +extraordinary, a real curiosity? Don’t you think I was right to buy +it?”</p> + +<p>“My opinion on that point, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, would rather depend on +what you paid for it.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, would it?” She lost impetus, and gave a moment to +reflection. “Well, I shall never know, then, for I’m not going to +tell you. One’s enough blaming me for extravagance.”</p> + +<p>“My dear Mrs. Hawthorne, pray don’t suppose me bold enough +to–”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147'></a>147</span>“Oh, +you’re bold enough, my friend. But while I like my friends to speak their +minds, I’ve had just enough of it for one day, d’ you see? +I’ve had enough, in fact, to make me sort of homesick.”</p> + +<p>She looked it, and not as far as could be from tears. The small vexation of +his failure to think her treasure worth anything she might have paid for it, the +intimation that he might join the camp of the enemy in finding her extravagant, +had acted apparently as a last straw.</p> + +<p>“Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, I beg of you not to feel homesick!” he +cried, compunctious and really eager. “It’s such a poor compliment +to Florence and to us, you know, us Florentines, who owe you so much for +bringing among us this winter your splendid laughter and good spirits and the +dimples which it does us so much good to see.”</p> + +<p>“No,” she said ruefully, “you can’t rub me the right +way till I’m contented here as I was yesterday. Florence is all right, and +the Florentines are mighty polite; but–” She looked at the fire a +moment, while he tried, and failed, to find something effectively soothing to +say. “In the State of Massachusetts there’s a sort of spit running +into the sea, and on a sand hill of this there’s a little shingled house +that never had a drop of paint outside of it nor of plumbing inside; but +there’s an old well at the back, deep as they dig them, with, on the +hottest day, ice-water at the bottom. The yard is pretty well scratched up by +the hens, but there are a few things in it you can’t kill out–some +lilacs and some tiger-lilies and a darling, ragged, straggling old +strawberry-bush. Outside the fence, hosts of Bouncing Bets–you know what +they are, don’t you? The front door has some nice neat blinds, always +closed, like those of the best room, except for weddings and funerals; <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148'></a>148</span>but the back door is +open, and when you sit on the step you can look off down an old slope of +apple-orchard and over across it at the neighbors’ roofs and chimneys. And +there, Geraldino, is where Auroretta would like to be.”</p> + +<p>He had the impulse to reach out and touch the ends of his fingers to her +hand, fondly, as one might do to a child, but he prudently refrained. His eyes, +however, dwelled on her with a smile that conveyed sympathy. He said, after her, +amusedly:</p> + +<p>“Auroretta!”</p> + +<p>She brightened.</p> + +<p>“After I’ve been bad,” she said, “I always am +blue.”</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>But within the hour he had come near quarreling with her, he also, and on +more than one score.</p> + +<p>It began with his making a pleasant remark upon her voice, which seemed to +him worth cultivating. She brushed aside the idea of devoting study to the art +of singing.</p> + +<p>“But,” she said, “Italo has brought me some songs. He plays +them over and shows me how to sing them. We have lots of fun.” To give him +an example, she broke forth, adapting her peculiarly American pronunciation to +Ceccherelli’s peculiarly Italian intonations, “’<i>Non so +resistere, sei troppo bella!</i>’”</p> + +<p>Gerald winced and darkened.</p> + +<p>“Then there’s this one,” she went on, “’<i>Mia +piccirella, deh, vieni allo mare!</i>’ Do you want to hear me sing it like +Miss Felixson, together with her dog, which always bursts out howling before +she’s done? I’ve heard them three times, and can do the couple of +them to a T.”</p> + +<p>“Please don’t!” he hurriedly requested. “I +hope,” he added doubtfully, “that you won’t do it to amuse any +of <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149'></a>149</span>your other +friends, either.” As she did not quickly assure him that she neither had +done, nor ever would dream of doing, such a low thing, he went on, with the +liberty of speech that amazingly prevailed between them: “Extraordinary as +it seems, you would be perfectly capable of it. And it would be a grave +mistake.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve done it for Italo when he was playing my accompaniment. For +nobody else.”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne, if that little man has become your singing-master, +will you not intrust me with the honorable charge of likewise teaching you +something? No, not painting. I should like to drill you in the pronunciation of +that little man’s name. It is Ceccherelli. Cec-che-rel-li. +<i>Cec-che-rel-li.</i>”</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>“No use. I’ve got accustomed to the other now.”</p> + +<p>He felt a spark dropped among the recesses where his inflammable temper was +kept.</p> + +<p>“Before you know it the fellow will be calling you Aurora!” he +said, repressing the outburst of his wrath at this possibility.</p> + +<p>“He does, my friend,” she answered him quietly. “He +can’t say Hawthorne. Do you hear him saying Hawthorne? He calls me Signora +Aurora.”</p> + +<p>“Then why not call him Signor Italo?”</p> + +<p>“At this time of day? It would be too formal. He would wonder what +he’d done to offend me.”</p> + +<p>Gerald was reminded that since Christmas Ceccherelli had been wearing, +instead of his silver turnip, a fine gold watch, her overt gift and his frank +boast, which he conspicuously extracted from its chamois-skin case every time he +needed to know the hour.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150'></a>150</span>“Mrs. +Hawthorne,” said Gerald, “you have repeatedly said that you have +what you call lots of fun with Ceccherelli. Would you mind giving me an idea of +what the fun consists in? I wish to have light–that I may do the man +justice. Left to myself, I should judge him to be the dullest, commonest, +cheapest of inexpressibly vulgar, insignificant, pretentious, ugly, and probably +dishonest, little men.” The adjectives came rolling out irrepressibly.</p> + +<p>“Perhaps he is,” Aurora said serenely; “but haven’t +you noticed, Stickly-prickly, that about some things you and I don’t feel +alike? Italo plays the piano in a way that perfectly delights me, he’s +good-hearted, and he makes me laugh. Isn’t that enough?”</p> + +<p>“In short, you like him. You like so many people, Mrs. Hawthorne, and +of such various kinds, that though one is bound to be glad to be among your +friends, one needn’t–need one?–feel exactly +flattered.”</p> + +<p>She seemed to consider this, but instead of taking it up, went on with the +subject of Italo.</p> + +<p>“He entertains me. He knows all about everybody in Florence and tells +me.”</p> + +<p>“He gossips, you mean.”</p> + +<p>Again she considered a moment before going on.</p> + +<p>“Funny, when I don’t know the people, or just know them by sight, +and they and the life are all so foreign and apart from me, gossip about them +doesn’t seem the same as gossip at home. It’s more like +Antonia’s novels, condensed and told in the queerest English! It was some +time before I could make out what he meant when he said two gentlemen had fought +a duel because one of them had found the other nasconding in his garden-house. +The one thus found obstinated himself, says Italo, to maintain that <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151'></a>151</span>he had come to make a +copy of the architectural design over the door. But as he didn’t seem to +have any pencil–”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne, how can you be amused by such disgusting +stuff?”</p> + +<p>She gazed at him inquiringly, with very blue eyes and a look of innocence, +real or put on, then laughed.</p> + +<p>“I am, just. I can’t tell you the how of it. Do you know +Italo’s sister Clotilde?”</p> + +<p>“I have not that advantage, no.”</p> + +<p>“You soon will have, if you care for it, for she’s coming to live +with us.”</p> + +<p>He stared.</p> + +<p>“Yes, she’s coming to keep house. She speaks English quite well, +because she’s had so much to do with English and Americans, being a +teacher of Italian and French. It began with Italo wanting us to take lessons of +her. But, bless you, I don’t want to study! I can pick up all I need +without. We said, however, ‘Bring her to see us.’ And he did. She’s +real nice.”</p> + +<p>“Does she resemble her brother?”</p> + +<p>“In some ways. I’ve an idea, though, that you’d like her +better than you seem to do him. I believe we shall be very well satisfied with +her, and shall save money. Since we seem to have got on to the subject of money +to-day: Luigi, the butler, who has everything under him now, Estelle says is a +caution to snakes, the way he robs us. Now, we’re easy-going and, I dare +say, fools; but not darn, darn fools. It’s a mistake to think we +wouldn’t see a thing big’s a mountain, and that you could cheat us +the way that handsome, fine-mannered, dignified villain Loo-ee-gy thinks he can. +So we’re going to put in his place a nice woman <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_152'></a>152</span>who is, in part, our friend, and will +care to see that we’re dealt fairly with. Clotilde doesn’t seem to +mind giving up her lessons to come and be a sort of elegant housekeeper for +us.”</p> + +<p>“I understand.”</p> + +<p>“Charlie Hunt is disgusted about it, because when we complained of +Luigi before him, he said he would find us exactly the right person to take his +place. But, you see, we didn’t wait. I don’t see that we were bound +to. What do you think?”</p> + +<p>“It is a case, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, where I must not allow myself to +say what I think.”</p> + +<p>“Personally, I must say I was rather glad to have Clotilde step in as +she did, because I don’t mind telling you–you won’t tell +anybody else?–I find just the least little bit of a disposition in that +young man Charlie to run things in this house. D’you know what I mean? I suppose +it’s the way he’s made. He has been awfully kind, and helped a lot +in all sorts of ways, and I like him ever so much; but I was glad to check him +just a little, and put who I pleased over my own servants, and then go on just +as good friends with him as ever.”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne, why don’t you make Mrs. Foss your adviser in all +such matters? She is so kind always and of such good counsel. It would be so +much the safest thing.”</p> + +<p>“Of course; but it was she who found Luigi for us, you see. She +can’t always know. As far as Charlie Hunt is concerned, I don’t want +you to think that we think any less of him than before. He’s good and kind +as can be, and does ever so many nice things for us. We were at his apartment +the other day, where he had a tea-party expressly <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_153'></a>153</span>for us, with his cousins there, and Mr. +Landini and two or three others. And then when he heard me say I like dogs he +promised to give me a dog, one of those lovely clown +dogs,–poodles,–with their hair cut in a fancy pattern, when he can +lay his hand on a real beauty.”</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne”–Gerald almost lifted himself off his seat +with the emphasis of his cry,–“Don’t let him give you a +dog!”</p> + +<p>She looked at him in amazement.</p> + +<p>“Why, what’s wrong?”</p> + +<p>“Don’t! don’t! Can’t you see that you must not let +him give you a dog?”</p> + +<p>“No, I can’t. Why on earth?”</p> + +<p>“After what you said a few minutes ago,” he stammered, feeling +blindly for reasons, “which shows that you have something to complain of +in his conduct toward you, you ought not to allow him to give you a dog. A +dog–you don’t understand, and I can’t make you. It will be too +awful!”</p> + +<p>“You surely are the queerest man I have ever known,” she said +sincerely.</p> + +<p>To which he did not reply.</p> + +<p>He restrained himself from blurting out that Charlie Hunt, for such and such +reasons, could never deserve the extreme privilege of giving her a dog. Leslie +had once casually spoken the true word about Charlie. “Charlie has no real +inside,” she had said, and continued, nevertheless, to like him well +enough. He was young, handsome, in his way attractive. Most people liked him to +just that extent–well enough; few went beyond, unless early in the +acquaintance. He so systematically did what would be most useful to himself that +it was difficult to preserve illusions <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_154'></a>154</span>about his powers of devotion or unselfishness. He +had lived as one of the family with his aunt and cousins till he found himself +desiring an increase of personal liberty; then an occasion presenting itself to +make a really good arrangement with an Italian family of decent middle class +with their best rooms to let, he had set up bachelor quarters, and ceasing to be +an inmate of his aunt’s house, retained unusually little sense of tie with +it.</p> + +<p>“Charlie might be nicer about going to places with us,” Francesca +openly grumbled, “seeing he’s the nearest we’ve got to a +brother.”</p> + +<p>All this was formlessly in Gerald’s mind–this and much +more–when his spirit groaned that Charlie should be giving Aurora a +dog.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne was looking at him, trying to make him out. She could not. One +thing, however, was plain, and it being so plain simplified all. He felt actual +pain because Charlie Hunt was going to give her a dog. The wherefore it was vain +to seek. But she had no desire to give pain of any kind, even by way of teasing +him, to this funnily sensitive fellow whose shoulders looked so sharp under his +coat.</p> + +<p>“All right,” she said. “If he says anything more about it, +I’ll tell him I’ve changed my mind and don’t want a dog. Are +you satisfied? And then if you won’t tell me what the objection is to my +having one, I shall have to sit down and try to guess.”</p> + +<p>Gerald, upon obtaining so easily what he had wanted apparently to the point +of tragedy, looked sheepish, ashamed of himself. His thanks were given in a +slowly returning smile.</p> + +<p>“I shouldn’t think it would be so difficult,” he said.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155'></a>155</span>Antonia had been +very friendly to Gerald at the period of their first acquaintance. She had cared +for his painting, specimens of which had come to her notice through Amabel Van +Zandt, and distinguished the at that time very young artist to the extent of +inviting him to her villa, showing interest in his talent and future, making him +talk. From one year to the next, other things had taken up her mind to his +exclusion. He had continued, however, to pay his respects, if she were at home, +at least once in the season, and retained gratitude toward her, along with the +presumption that he could never be to her the same exactly as the first-come +outsider. He remembered At Homes of hers attended in the old days, and saw every +reason why Mrs. Hawthorne should enjoy one of these, none why it should not +enjoy her. On the contrary. Making full allowance for the fact that he had grown +accustomed to her manner and mode, Mrs. Hawthorne had yet seemed to him lately +of a circumspection not to be surpassed. When alone with him and Estelle, she +was one person; when in company, she was another, not a little like Mrs. Foss, +retaining enough of her own irrepressible self to seem just acceptably original. +Antonia, the novelist, declared a fondness for people out of the ordinary, the +conventional. Gerald thought the American might interest her. But if she did +not, little depends, at a reception, upon the hostess being charmed with +individual guests; he still believed that Aurora would have a good time–he +meant to ensure her doing this.</p> + +<p>Aurora had, as she described it, dressed herself to kill, and was looking, +Estelle told her, perfectly stunning. She had on velvets and furs, pearls and +plumes. She had <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_156'></a>156</span>wished at one and the same time to make Gerald Fane +proud of her and do honor to Antonia’s party. Concealed in her muff was a +white parchment volume–muffs were small in those days. A similar volume +had been stuffed into each of Gerald’s overcoat pockets.</p> + +<p>Gerald, as has been said, remembered At Homes of Antonia’s, and had in +mind an image of what he might expect to see.</p> + +<p>He perceived at once that to-day all was different. This was immensely +choice, the most so afforded by Florence. That he had been invited showed +Antonia’s estimate of him still as a person of artistic significance; +also, he modestly decided, the difficulty one had to make up an assemblage +solely of notabilities. Her permission to bring a friend showed flattering faith +in his taste.</p> + +<p>Persons were there whom one but seldom saw anywhere; the persons whom one saw +everywhere were conspicuously absent. Among a majority of English, there was a +sprinkling of Italian nobility, mostly older people. Antonia had lived for many +years in Florence. There was a very able historian, allied to the English +through his wife; there was an old General of the wars of liberation; there was +a Church dignitary of infinite elegance and high rank: all serious people who +did not go to teas, and whose coming to this one was a compliment to Antonia. +The exceptional woman’s right to the like homage was established; her +celebration of Italy was by Italy, in the persons of such sons of hers as got an +inkling of their debt, gracefully acknowledged.</p> + +<p>Gerald, entering the large drawing-room with Aurora, at first wondered, then +understood. The interesting Princess Rostopchine, on a visit to Florence, was +present–woman of accomplishments in every branch–painter, <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157'></a>157</span>sculptress, musician, +author; a beauty into the bargain, and lady-in-waiting for many years to a +queen.</p> + +<p>She was no longer in the freshness of youth; her beauty had been left a +little bony, a little fatigued and bloodless; her eyelids drooped over the +brilliant intelligence of her eyes. The poetry of her looks was increased by her +costume. In wise disdain of the fashion, she went robed rather than dressed; her +things clung and trailed and undulated; they were gray as cobwebs, dim as +pressed orchids. She was as fascinating as at any time in her life–perhaps +more so, because she cared to be.</p> + +<p>Antonia, who had made her acquaintance at Aix-les-bains, was under her spell. +The reception was given to honor her, rather than to enable Antonia, as Gerald +had at first supposed, to see her friends again after several years of absence +and neglect.</p> + +<p>A niece of Antonia’s received, and invited guests to be refreshed with +tea, while Antonia and the Princess sat side by side, and now talked together, +now with others, who of themselves approached, or whom Antonia invited to join +them. The conversation was part of the time in French, which Antonia spoke +fluently, but for the greater part in English, which the princess spoke well, as +Russians speak every language.</p> + +<p>Gerald was watching for the favorable moment to present Aurora; they +therefore stood within earshot. While he talked to keep her diverted, he was +aware that his companion less than half listened to him, absorbed in Antonia and +the princess.</p> + +<p>A princess and a famous writer! Aurora had never set eyes on a princess +before, nor, to her knowledge, on an author. They hypnotized her, those two. +Their conversation <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_158'></a>158</span>was far beyond Leslie’s, she did not +understand any of it, though every syllable reached her ear. The marked +Englishness of Antonia’s speech caused an almost necessity in Aurora to +say the words after her, echoing their peculiarity. Her lips unconsciously +moved.</p> + +<p>Aurora’s eyes were busy as well as her ears. Antonia was clad in a +tea-gown–Aurora thought it was a wrapper. The tea-gown had long lain in a +chest, while Antonia was on her travels, and the great woman’s eyes, fixed +on more important things, had not perceived when it was taken out for her wear +to-day that it was crushed and rumpled. Aurora believed it had been recovered +from the ash-can, and her breast was filled with awe. It was with unqualified +and childlike admiration that she gazed at the two women whose soaring +superiority she unenviously felt.</p> + +<p>As it seemed unbefitting as yet to interrupt their conversation, Gerald +looked around him in search of acquaintances whom to present to Aurora while +waiting.</p> + +<p>Balm de Brézé first met his eye–the vicomte was Antonia’s +landlord–but Gerald discriminated against him. He next spied Hamilton +Spencer and Carlo Guerra, both genial fellows, left Aurora’s side for an +instant and brought them up.</p> + +<p>Aurora called back her attention and gave it to them. A certain success of +smiles and bright eyes she was almost sure to have, with men. Gerald went off to +get her some tea, took it to her, and finding her in the midst of a sufficiently +lively time with her new acquaintances, returned to Antonia’s niece at the +tea-table for a chat and cup of tea. While hearing the news from this unassuming +elderly girl, he could keep an eye on Mrs. Hawthorne at a distance, and catch +any facial signal for help.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159'></a>159</span>Aurora was +drinking her tea, holding her cup like a real lady, with her little finger +delicately curled back. Aurora’s figure stood out from among those +surrounding her like a thing of a different make, an earthen jar among glass +vases, a Swede among Japanese.</p> + +<p>Aurora was out of place, it could not be blinked; and that she was so +visible, in her able-bodied comeliness, her supremacy of dimples, her extremely +good corset, increased the offense. So did also the native assurance of her +eye–which had something at all times of a jovial sea-captain, with his +foot on his own deck.</p> + +<p>Gerald looked from her to Antonia, slightly uneasy. Antonia’s face had +characteristics of a man’s, but along with them indications above all +feminine. Power and caprice in the great woman went linked. He saw her while +listening to the princess turn her head toward the quarter of the room tinctured +by Aurora’s unmodified presence, as if taking account of the voice and +accent of the stranger in her house.</p> + +<p>This seemed to him his opportunity, and excusing himself from Miss Grangeon, +he started toward Aurora.</p> + +<p>“There are more ways than one of skinning a cat!” came floating +to him in Aurora’s deep-piled voice, borne on her frank laugh, as he +approached.</p> + +<p>He found her having a very good time, but ready to call an end to it and go +to be presented.</p> + +<p>“I’m awfully nervous!” she whispered to Gerald, but that +was a manner of speech. Aurora’s nerves were author-proof. She meant that +she was impressed by the greatness of the moment. She picked up her three books +from the table near by, held them with her left arm so that her right hand might +be free to clasp Antonia’s, and, smiling as a <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_160'></a>160</span>basket of chips–thus did she later +describe herself–advanced toward the crowning honor of the day.</p> + +<p>Antonia saw her coming and narrowed her eyes the better to see. +Antonia’s face, at no time in her life soft, was as much like granite at +this moment as it had the moment before been like old white soap; her eyes, +fixed on the approaching pair, turned stonily unseeing.</p> + +<p>Gerald bravely went through with the introduction, and tried to warm the +atmosphere with winged words. Aurora’s hand was all ready to shake.</p> + +<p>Antonia’s hand did not go forth to meet it, but Aurora, elate and +overflowing, was not put off by this.</p> + +<p>“I can never tell you”–she gushed, “how pleased I am +to meet you–how honored I feel. Nor can I ever tell you how perfectly +wonderful I think your books. Perfectly wonderful.... Perfectly wond ... Perf +... See what I’ve brought. These three that I’m going to leave for +you to write in, if you’ll be so very kind. It would increase their value +for me I never can tell you how much.”</p> + +<p>“My dear Madam,” said Antonia, “I never inscribe a book +that I have not myself presented. I am not acquainted with the phrase in which +it is done. The value of my autograph will be enormously increased hereafter for +collectors by the fact that when I receive requests for it I drop them into the +waste-basket. Yes, I merely keep the stamps.”</p> + +<p>“Oh!”</p> + +<p>“Yes.”</p> + +<p>“Oh!” more faintly.</p> + +<p>“Yes!” more firmly.</p> + +<p>Turning her back to Aurora, Antonia once more addressed <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_161'></a>161</span>Princess Rostopchine. “Vera +Sergeievna, you were saying....”</p> + +<p>The only sign Aurora gave of being flabbergasted was forgetting the books she +held. They slid with noise to the floor. As Gerald picked them up, “Did I +ever tell you”–she asked him chattily, and leisurely moved +on,–“about the time I stood on the sidewalk to see the procession go +by, in Boston, when we commemorated Bunker Hill?” And she went on with a +favorite reminiscence: how she had held on to her inch of standing-room, in +spite of a fat and puffing man, a gimlet-elbowed woman, and a policeman.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>When they were in her coupé, smartly bowling toward town, silence fell. +Gerald’s brow was black, his eyes were steely.</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne,” he jerked out, “I am not going to express +myself on the experiences of this afternoon. Words could not do them justice, +and I am not cool enough to trust myself. But I wish to apologize to you most +humbly for my egregious, my imbecile mistake.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t you care, Geraldino! Don’t you care one bit! Bless +your dear heart, I’m not touchy!” Aurora said cheerily, and, not +resisting as he had recently done the impulse to comfort his friend by a +caressing touch, gave his hand as tight a squeeze as her snug new glove +permitted. “Nasty old thing! What does it matter? But”–her +eyes rounded at the amazed recollection,–“that I should have lived, +I–me–my size–to feel like a fly-speck on the wall! It did beat +everything! Yours truly, F. S. W.! Fly Speck on the Wall!”</p> + +<p>She was lost for a moment in the consideration of herself <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162'></a>162</span>reduced to a negligible +dot, and Gerald, too angry to talk, thought hydrophobia thoughts in silence. In +these he was disturbed by the sound of her trying in a murmur to speak like +Antonia, and hitting off the Englishwoman’s pronunciation rather +successfully.</p> + +<p>“Deah Madam! I nevah, nevah inscrrribe a book.... I drap them into the +baaahsket. Yesss. I marely keep the stamps.”</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163'></a>163</span><a id='link_10'></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<p>The house where Gerald lived was the same one he had lived in since the days +of Boston and Charlestown. His mother, coming to Florence with her two children, +a boy of ten, a girl of seven, had needed to look for a modest corner in which +to build their nest. The income of which she found herself possessed after +settling up her husband’s affairs, even when supplemented by the allowance +made her by his family, so little permitted of extravagance that she chose the +topmost story of the house in Borgo Pinti, with those long, long stairs that +perhaps had contributed to keep Gerald’s legs thin.</p> + +<p>Its street door was narrow, its entrance-hall dark; the stone stairs climbed +from darkness into semi-darkness, reaching the daylight when they likewise +reached the Fanes’ landing. But the old house was not without dignity; all +three loved it.</p> + +<p>As you entered the Fanes’, there was another dark hall, very long, +running to right and left. One small window opposite, on an inner court, was all +that lighted it. This hall grew darker still, as well as narrower, after turning +a corner to the left; then it turned to the right, and was lighter. At the end +of it was a window from which, if you bent out, you saw far below you a +garden.</p> + +<p>The rooms, without being lofty and vaulted, like those on the ground and +first floors, were pleasantly high, and paved with brick tiles. From the one +large interior room <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_164'></a>164</span>a window-door opened on to a terrace in the +court–a deep brick terrace with a broad ledge on which stood a row of +flower-pots. When water was wanted, you opened a little door in the kitchen wall +and let your copper urn down, down, down into mossy-smelling blackness; you +heard a splash and gurgle, and after proper exertions got it back brimming.</p> + +<p>The Italian-ness of it all captivated the mother, who had been drawn to this +dot on the map, where she was told one could live well at less expense than in +the United States, by the lure of the idea of Italy. She was very humbly an +artist. She had given drawing lessons to young ladies in an elegant seminary, +and, when approaching middle age, married the father of one of these, a +troubled, conscientious man whom the cares of an entangled and disintegrating +business kept awake at night. When his need for feminine sympathy ceased, and +administrators settled in their summary way the questions that had furrowed his +brow, his widow’s wish to start life anew far from the scene of her +worries had led to the balmy thought of Italy–Italy, where were all the +wonders which had most glamour for her fancy.</p> + +<p>She had loved it in an undiminished way to the end, had never really desired +to go home, though she spoke of it sometimes when the chill of the stone floors +and walls shook her fortitude, and the remembrance of furnace heat, gas-light, +hot water on tap, glowed rosy as a promise of eternal summer. The children, +however, were taught in their respective schools that artificial heat is +insalubrious; they had Italian ideas and chilblains; not on account of any +creature comfort that they missed would Florence have been changed back for +Charlestown.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165'></a>165</span>In her picturing +of days far ahead Mrs. Fane certainly saw Lucile, an accomplished young lady, +receiving tributes of attention in the drawing-rooms of home; and Gerald, a +young man of parts, finding recognition and fortune among his countrymen. To go +home eventually was among her cloudy plans.</p> + +<p>But Lucile died at sixteen, without adequate cause, one almost would have +said. She merely had not the ruggedness, the resistance, needed to go on living +among the rough winds of this world. The mother, a creature of old-fashioned +gentleness and profound affections, survived her by only a few years.</p> + +<p>A business matter then obliged Gerald to go to America, and had he liked the +place, he might have taken up his abode there. It affected him like vinegar +dropped in a wound, like street din heard from a hospital bed. He turned back, +and the long stairs to his empty dwelling were dear and sweet to him on the day +of his return.</p> + +<p>This, then, had remained his home. His needs were simple, and he could live +without applying himself to uncongenial work, though the allowance had been +stopped, and the income, as Leslie had said, was incredibly small. The good +Giovanna, who had been his mother’s servant, stayed on with her +<i>signorino</i>, and economized for him; the wages of an Italian servant were +in those days no extravagance. He had no pleasures that cost money; he neither +traveled nor went to fine restaurants. He wore neat, old well-brushed clothes, +went afoot, gave to the poor single coppers. But he had liberty, worked when he +pleased and as he pleased; he was content to be poor, so long as his poverty did +not reach the point where it involves cutting a poor figure. Giovanna, prouder +than her master, disliked <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_166'></a>166</span>the thought of <i>far cattiva figura</i> even more +than did he, and was careful in her household management to keep up a certain +style, never forgetting the sprig of parsley on the platter beside the single +<i>braciolina</i>.</p> + +<p>At one period he had contemplated a change in his mode of living, had dreamed +of entering the contest for laurels and gold, so as to afford a more appropriate +setting for the beauty of his charmer. The Charmer had attained without need of +him the setting she craved, and Gerald went on climbing his long stairs, +painting in his so personal and unpopular way, and at night reading by light of +a solitary lamp the choice and subtle masterpieces of many literatures.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>“My land! shall we <i>ever</i> get to the top?” whispered Aurora +to Estelle as, one behind the other, sliding their hands along the wall, they +felt with their feet for the steps that led to Gerald’s door. “He +told us they were long, and he warned us they were dark, but this!... I wonder +why they don’t have a lamp going, or something.”</p> + +<p>“Because there isn’t any image of the Virgin,” said +Estelle, lightly. “It’s our just having come in from the sunshine +makes it seem dark. It’s getting lighter. Cheer up! It’s good for +you.”</p> + +<p>“It’ll make me lose three pounds, I shouldn’t +wonder.”</p> + +<p>They spoke in whispers, because when they had pulled the bell-knob and the +door had swung open, a voice from incalculable altitudes had shouted, +“<i>Chi è?</i>” They had answered, as instructed, +“<i>Amici</i>,” and now they pictured somebody listening to their +shuffling ascent.</p> + +<p>At the top, in fact, stood Giovanna, who regarded them <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_167'></a>167</span>with an eye the color of strong black +coffee and said, “<i>Riverisco</i>!”</p> + +<p>The small old woman had a thin, bronze Dantesque face, molded by a thousand +indignations–all directed against proper objects of indignation–to a +settled severity; a face of narrow concentrated passions and perfect fidelity +and a preference for few words. The friendly smiles of Aurora and Estelle +produced in her a relenting. Courtesy here demanded a pleasant look, and +Giovanna was always courteous. She stood aside for Gerald, who came to the very +door to welcome these ladies.</p> + +<p>The guests were now assembled. One of them was staying with Gerald–Abbé +Johns, who had come for a few days from Leghorn, where he lived. The others were +Mrs. Foss and Miss Seymour.</p> + +<p>What had been in Mrs. Fane’s time the drawing-room had since become +also a studio. The landlord had permitted his tenant to increase the light by +extending the windows across the street-side wall. Beyond that, there were as +few signs about of the art-trade as Gerald had affectations of the artist. The +model-stand supporting books and things appeared like a low table; easel, +canvases, portfolios, all the littering properties of a painter, had been shoved +for the occasion into the next room, a spacious glory-hole which Giovanna did +not permit to become dusty beyond the decent.</p> + +<p>The result of removing, first, many of the things that made the room a +drawing-room, then, most of the things that made it a studio, left the place +rather bare. It was according to Gerald’s taste: few things in it, each +having the merit of either beauty or interest, else the excuse of utility.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168'></a>168</span>Mrs. Foss had +waited for Aurora’s arrival to make the tea. The feast was very simple. +Gerald offered what his mother had used to offer. Giovanna cut the +bread-and-butter as that genteel lady had taught her, and continued to buy the +plum-cake at the same confectioner’s.</p> + +<p>Aurora had come in from the sunshine and cold with January roses in her +cheeks and exhilaration in her blood. At sight of her beloved Mrs. Foss she +laughed for joy. She rejoiced also to see Miss Seymour, who was one of her +“likes,” and she was immensely interested to meet the abbé, whom she +knew to be Gerald’s best friend, even as Estelle was hers. She loved +Gerald for having just these people to meet them at tea, the ones he himself +thought most of. She felt sweetly flattered at being made one of a company so +choicely wise and good.</p> + +<p>But the result was not exactly fortunate for the gaiety of the little party, +if Aurora’s laugh had been counted upon to enliven it. Far from shy though +she was, she developed a disinclination to-day to speak. She was impressed by +the abbé, for whom her conversation did not seem to her good enough.</p> + +<p>The young priest, a convert to Catholicism, was Gerald’s age, and had +it not been for his collar, the cut of his coat, would have looked like a not at +all unusual Englishman with blue eyes, curly black hair, a touch of warm color +in his shaven cheeks. Unless you sat across the tea-table from him and now and +then, while he quietly and unassumingly talked, met his eyes.</p> + +<p>Some persons said that he looked ascetic, some austere, some angelic. Mrs. +Foss, not finding the right adjective for his mixture of poise and humanity, was +content to call him charming. Gerald, who had known him when they <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169'></a>169</span>were Vin and Raldi to +each other and equally far from entering the Church, regarded him as simply the +nicest fellow he knew. Aurora had no definition for him, but did not feel +disposed to ripple on as usual in his hearing. Yet she would have liked to make +friends with him, too. She would have said to him some such thing as, +“What are the thoughts you have, which make you so calm, deep inside? But +I know. We learned them at our mother’s knee, but in the fury of living, +having fun, getting on, we never revisit the chamber where they are kept. You +live in it.”</p> + +<p>He was talking with Estelle like any other man whose conversation should not +contain the faintest element of gallantry, and Estelle was talking to him with +an ease that Aurora marveled at. Aurora marveled how Estelle could know, or seem +to know, a lot of things which she had never before given sign of caring about. +If the two of them were not conversing upon the symbolism of religious art! +Having finished his tea, the abbé went to fetch a book from Gerald’s +shelves, which he knew as well as his own, and Estelle was shown reproductions +of carvings on old cathedrals.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Foss, who had been talking of the Carnival now beginning, telling Aurora +about corsi and coriandoli of the past as compared with the poor remnants of +these customs, and describing the still undiminished glories of a veglione, +perceiving finally that the usually merry lady was on her best behavior to the +point of almost complete taciturnity, from necessity addressed herself more +directly to Miss Seymour, who shared the sofa with her; and from talking of +<i>veglioni</i> the two slid into talking of Florentine affairs more +personal.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170'></a>170</span>The task of +entertaining Mrs. Hawthorne thus devolving upon Gerald, he took it up in a way +that flatteringly presupposed in her an interest in general questions. His +manner seemed to her very formal. She forgot that, innocent as their relations +were, he yet could not before people speak to her with the lack of ceremony that +in private made her feel they were such good friends. But even aside from this +cool and correct manner, Gerald seemed to her different to-day–calmer, +more serene, less needing sympathy, as if something of his friend the abbé had +rubbed off on to him.</p> + +<p>As he was going on, in language that reminded her of a book, she interrupted +him.</p> + +<p>“Don’t you want to show me your house?”</p> + +<p>“I was going to suggest it,” he said at once. “There are +several things I should like to show you. Will you come?”</p> + +<p>She rose to follow, losing some of her constraint.</p> + +<p>“It’s what we always do on the Cape. Any one comes for the first +time, we show them all over our house.”</p> + +<p>When they were outside the drawing-room door, she felt more like herself.</p> + +<p>“Oh, I’m so glad I can’t tell you to see the place where +you live!” she expanded.</p> + +<p>They went down the long corridor, past a closed door which he disappointingly +did not open.</p> + +<p>“It’s a dark room we use to store things,” he explained. +Neither did he open the door at the end of the hall. “It’s +Vincent’s room,” he said.</p> + +<p>They turned into the darker, narrower corridor, bent again, and went toward +the little window high over somebody else’s garden. He ushered Mrs. +Hawthorne into the kitchen, for here, near the ceiling, was the door-bell, and +on <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171'></a>171</span>it the +well-known coat of arms, crown and cannon-balls, which testified to the age and +aristocracy of the house.</p> + +<p>While he sought to interest her in this curiosity, Aurora was looking at +everything besides; for Giovanna was making preparations for dinner, and +Aurora’s thoughts were busy with the fowl she saw run on a long spit and +waiting to be roasted before a bundle of sticks at the back of the sort of +masonry counter that served as kitchen stove.</p> + +<p>“They do have the queerest ways of doing things!” she +murmured.</p> + +<p>He took her across the passage and into the dining-room. He wished to show +her an old china tea-set, quaintly embellished with noble palaces and parks, +that had been his great-grandmother’s. There again she looked but casually +at the thing he accounted fit for her examination, and carefully, if +surreptitiously, at all the rest.</p> + +<p>Last he showed her into the great square interior room with the glass door on +to the terrace over the court, the room which had been his mother’s and +was now his own, and where hung a portrait of his mother. On this Aurora fixed +attentive and serious eyes, and had no need to feign feeling, for appropriate +feelings welled in her heart.</p> + +<p>“How gentle she looks!” she said softly. “And how much you +must miss her!”</p> + +<p>She stood for some time really trying to make acquaintance with the vanished +woman through that faded pastel likeness of her in youth which Gerald kept where +it had hung in her day, the portrait of herself which she womanishly preferred +because, as she did not conceal, it flattered her.</p> + +<p>“She looks like one of those people you would have just loved to lift +the burdens off and make everything smooth <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_172'></a>172</span>for,” Aurora said; “and yet she looks +like one of those people who spend their whole lives trying to make things +smooth for others.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Gerald to that artless description of the feminine +woman his mother had been, and stood beside his guest, looking pensively up at +the portrait.</p> + +<p>All at once, Aurora felt like crying. It had been increasing, the oppression +to her spirits, ever since she entered this house to which she had come filled +with gay anticipation and innocent curiosity. It had struck her from the first +moment as gloomy, and it was undoubtedly cold, with its three sticks of wood +ceremoniously smoking in the unaccustomed chimney-place. Its esthetic bareness +had affected her like the meagerness of poverty. And now it seemed to her sad, +horribly so, haunted by the gentle ghosts of that mother and sister who had +known and touched all these things, sat in the chairs, looked through the +windows, and who conceivably came back in the twilight to flit over the +uncarpeted floor and peer in the dim mirrors to see how much the grave had +changed them. She shivered. Yes, cold and bare and sad seemed Gerald’s +dwelling. And Gerald, whose very bearing was a dignified denial that anything +about himself or his circumstances could call for compassion–Gerald, thin +and without color, looked to her cold-pinched and under-nourished. She had a +sense of his long evenings alone, drearily without fire, his solitary meals in +that dining-room so unsuggestive of good cheer; she thought of that single +candle on the night-table burning in this cold, large room where he went to bed +in that bed of iron, laying his head on that small hair pillow, to dream bitter +dreams of a fair girl’s treachery.</p> + +<p>She wanted to turn to him protesting:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173'></a>173</span>“Oh, I +can’t stand it! What makes you do it?”</p> + +<p>His next words changed the current of her thoughts.</p> + +<p>“I have another portrait of my mother,” he said; “one I +painted, which I will show you if you care to see it.”</p> + +<p>She cheered up.</p> + +<p>“Do! do!” she urged heartily. “I’m crazy to see +something you’ve painted.”</p> + +<p>“You won’t care for my painting,” he pronounced without +hesitation; “but the portrait gives a good idea of my mother, I think, +when she was older than this.”</p> + +<p>They returned to the drawing-room, where their friends were in the same way +engaged as when they left them. One pair was looking at a large illustrated +book; the other two sat leaning toward each other talking in undertones.</p> + +<p>“The bird which you see,” the abbé was saying, “with the +smaller birds crowding around him, is a pelican. The pelican, you know, who +opens his breast to feed his young, is a symbol of the Church.”</p> + +<p>“It’s not true, though, that the pelican does that,” +Estelle was on the point of saying with American freedom, “any more than +that a scorpion surrounded by fire commits suicide. I read it in a Sunday paper +where a lot of old superstitions were exploded.” But she tactfully did +nothing of the sort. She appeared instructed and impressed.</p> + +<p>What Miss Seymour was saying to Mrs. Foss would have sounded a little +singular to any one overhearing. The two women had been friends for years, but +never come so near to each other as, it chanced, they did that afternoon, when +all fell so favorably for a heart to heart talk.</p> + +<p>“I feel as if I had lost a key!” said Miss Seymour, and looked +like a bewildered princess turned old by a wicked <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_174'></a>174</span>fairy’s spell. “When I +possessed it I thought nothing of it. It opened all the doors, but I +didn’t know what it was made them so easy to open. Only now, when +it’s gone, I know the value of that little golden key.”</p> + +<p>“I know,” said Mrs. Foss, sympathetically. “There’s +no use in us women pretending we don’t mind! Those who really and truly +don’t must be great philosophers or great fools, or else selfless to a +degree that is rarer even than philosophy....”</p> + +<p>Gerald and Aurora crossed the room unhailed and entered the room beyond, +where dusty canvases, many deep, stood face to the wall.</p> + +<p>He found the unframed painting of his mother and placed it on the easel. The +short winter day was waning, but near the window where the easel stood there was +still light enough to see by.</p> + +<p>Aurora looked a long time without saying anything; Gerald did not speak +either. After the length of time one allows for the examination of a picture, he +took away that one and put another in its place; and so on until he had shown +her a dozen.</p> + +<p>“I don’t know what to say,” she finally got out, as if from +under a crushing burden of difficulty to express herself.</p> + +<p>“Please don’t try!” he begged quickly. “And please +not to care a bit if you don’t like them.”</p> + +<p>She let out her breath as at the easing of a strain. He heard it.</p> + +<p>“I won’t be so offensive,” he went on, “as to say +that in not liking them you merely add yourself to the majority, nor yet that my +feelings are in no wise hurt by your failure to like them. But I do wish you to +know that I think <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_175'></a>175</span>it a sin and a shame to get a person like you, who +can’t pretend a bit, before a lot of beastly canvases inevitably repugnant +to your mood and temperament, and make you uncomfortable with the feeling that +compliments are expected.”</p> + +<p>“All right, then; I won’t tell any lies.” She added in a +sigh, “I did want so much to like them!”</p> + +<p>And he would never know what shining bubble burst there. She had wanted so +much, as she said, to like them, and, as she did not say, to buy some of them, a +great many of them, and make him rich with her gold.</p> + +<p>He replied to her sigh:</p> + +<p>“You are very kind.”</p> + +<p>After a moment spent gazing at the last painting placed on the easel, as if +she hoped tardily to discover some merit in it, she said:</p> + +<p>“I don’t know a thing about painting, so nothing I could say +about your way of doing it could matter one way or the other. But I have eyes to +see the way things and people look. Tell me, now, honest Injun, do they look +that way to you–the way you paint them?”</p> + +<p>He laughed.</p> + +<p>“Mrs. Hawthorne, no! Emphatically, no. And emphatically yes. When I +look at them as you do, in the street, across the table, they look to me +probably just as they do to you; but when I sit down to paint them–yes, +they look to me as I have shown them looking in these portraits.”</p> + +<p>“But they’re so sad! So sad it’s cruel!” she +objected.</p> + +<p>“Oh, no,” he objected to her objection; “it’s not +quite as bad as that.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176'></a>176</span>“They make +me perfectly miserable.”</p> + +<p>He whipped the canvas off the easel, saying dryly:</p> + +<p>“Don’t think of them again!”</p> + +<p>It looked like impatience. With hands thrust in his pockets he took a +purposeless half-turn in the room, then came back to her side.</p> + +<p>“If you totally detest them, I am sorry,” he said mildly. +“I had wanted to offer you one, a little, unobtrusive one to stick in some +corner, a token of the artist’s regard.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, do! do!” she grasped at his friendly tender. “Find a +little cheerful one, if you can. I shall love to have it.”</p> + +<p>He selected a small panel of a single tall, palely expanding garden poppy, +more gray than violet, against a background of shade. Flower though it was, it +still affected one like the portrait of a lady wronged and suffering.</p> + +<p>In the drawing-room to which they returned Giovanna had lighted a lamp. The +fire had properly caught and was burning more brightly; the place looked rosy +and warm, after the winter twilight filling the other room and the chill that +reigned there.</p> + +<p>Aurora returned to the tea-table; with a disengaged air she reached for +plum-cake. She ascertained with comfort that Mrs. Foss did not look sad or +Estelle ill used; that the abbé was as serene as ever and Miss Seymour, after +her talk with Mrs. Foss, rather serener than usual. Gerald was far jollier than +any of his portraits. To make sure that she was no depressing object herself, +she smiled the warmest, sunniest smile she was capable of.</p> + +<p>“Do come and talk a little bit with me, before I have to go +home!” she unexpectedly called out to the abbé.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177'></a>177</span>When at the end +of the long evening spent together smoking and talking the two friends separated +for the night, Gerald went to his room as did Vincent to his. But Gerald had no +more than pulled off his necktie when he changed his mind, went back to the +drawing-room, crossed the tobacco-scented space where something seemed to linger +of the warmth of goodfellowship, and entered the farther room.</p> + +<p>A doubt had risen in his mind. He could not wait till morning to see his work +with a fresh eye, an eye as fresh as Mrs. Hawthorne’s, and satisfy himself +as to whether he, so careful of truth, had unconsciously come to exaggerating, +falsifying his impressions, grown guilty of hollow mannerisms.</p> + +<p>Whatever he had said, he had been stung by Mrs. Hawthorne’s liking his +paintings so little. It was easy to console oneself remembering the poor +lady’s ignorance of art. The truth might be that something was wrong with +the pictures, which suspicion had driven the artist to go and have a +dispassionate look at them in the frigid hour between twelve and one of the +night. If a person is on the way to becoming a morbid ass he cannot find it out +too soon.</p> + +<p>Gerald’s dogma was that the first duty of a picture is to be beautiful. +His critics did not give sufficient attention to that aspect of his work, he +privately thought; they were put off by what they mistakenly called its +queerness, its mere difference from the academic, the conventional. This was +bitter, because he had always so loved beautiful lines, beautiful tints, had +insisted that the very texture, of his painting should have the beauty of +fine-grained skin.</p> + +<p>He was no conspicuous colorist, of course, he did not by <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_178'></a>178</span>temperament revel in the glow of rich, +bold, endlessly varied tints. It was a limitation, which his work naturally +reflected. This was marked in fact by modesty and melancholy of color-scheme. +But that did not interfere with beauty, he maintained. He had been thrilled by +the discovery in the Siena gallery of an old master with the same predilections +as he, an antipathy apparently to the vivid, crying, self-assertive colors, +which he accordingly with admirable simplicity left out, and interpreted the +world all in blues and greens, grays and violets, whites of many degrees and +tones and meanings.</p> + +<p>“They’re so sad that it’s cruel!” Mrs. Hawthorne had +voiced the instinctive objection of her earth-loving, life-praising disposition +to the view he took of people and things. But what was there to do about it? +When he looked at a sitter to render his personality sincerely, that was the way +he saw him. If he had been limited to rendering a human being in the single +aspect he wore while walking from the drawing-room to the dinner-table with a +lady on his arm and a rich meal in prospect, he would have given up painting, it +interested him so little. Most of the portrait-painters in vogue did thus paint +the surface and nothing besides. Gerald had no envy of their large fees at the +price of such boredom as he would have suffered in their place.</p> + +<p>He held a canvas to the light of his candle. It was an old one of Amabel. She +had not been sitting for him, he had made this sketch from a distance while she +worked on her side. It was easy to see that the room was cold, that the woman +with the pinched aristocratic nose, the little shawl over her shoulders, was +poor, determined and anxious. If Mrs. Foss had said, “But Amabel never was +as <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179'></a>179</span>hollow-cheeked +as that, nor ever looked pathetic in the least,” Gerald could only have +answered, “I swear to you this is how she looked to me on that +day.”</p> + +<p>He studied the portrait of his mother, one of his earliest, bad in a way, but +excellent in the matter of likeness. His mother no more than Amabel had been a +pathetic person, Mrs. Foss would certainly have said. To which Gerald might have +answered that she was not so during an afternoon call; but that the most +characteristic thing about that gentle and delicate woman had been the fact of +her living so much in the life of others and being open to endless sorrows +through them. The dim affectionate eyes, the deprecating half-smile of his +mother, engaged sympathy for the unfair plight.</p> + +<p>Last, he took up a portrait of Violet. She had been in the perfection of +young beauty; she had had no capacity for deep feeling, really,–why did an +aroma of sadness escape from that dainty colored shadow of her? Why, but because +of the artist’s yearning sense that beauty is transitory, and the +loveliest girl subject to destiny, and the future full of pitfalls for the +fragility of all flesh!</p> + +<p>“Imagine a barnyard fowl, a common white hen pecking among the +gravel,” Gerald once illustrated his view-point, “and imagine +hovering over it a hawk, which it hasn’t seen. Does it make no difference +in your sense of the hen that <i>you</i> see the hawk?”</p> + +<p>“It comes to this,” Leslie on a certain occasion summed up +Gerald’s case: “Gerald isn’t satisfied to paint the thing +that’s before him. All he cares to paint is the soul of things, and what +you finally see expressed on the canvas is his pity for everything that has the +misfortune to be born into an unsatisfactory world. Gerald can’t see a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180'></a>180</span>thing as being +common: the moment he narrows his eyes to look for purposes of art, it becomes +to him exceptional, unique. I asked him once, as a joke, to paint me a simple, +large, bright orange squash, in a field. And he did. A masterpiece. One +can’t say that the squash isn’t large, orange, and true to life. But +what a squash! It has an amount of personal distinction, an air of rarity and +remoteness, that would make you think twice, nay, three times, before making +such a precious product of the sacred earth into pies!”</p> + +<p>When he was chilled through and his hands were numb, Gerald remembered to +pick up his candle and go to bed. No change of opinion, it is needless to say, +had resulted from his midnight inquiry.</p> + +<p>A point of natural spite made him say that he did not ask people to like his +pictures. All he asked was permission to go on painting as he pleased, obscure +and independent, the sincere apostle of a peculiar creed, working out his +problems with conscience and fidelity. If fate might send him critics whose +opinion he valued he would be properly grateful. He felt the need of criticism +and companionship, in his work, but had no regard for his fellow artists in +Florence. His thoughts turned sometimes with envy toward Paris, where modern art +had some vitality, and artist life the advantage of stimulating associations. +There was a good deal of talk at the time, and some derision, of a new phase +called impressionism, whose chief seat was Paris.</p> + +<p>As for the opinion of such a person as Mrs. Hawthorne, it obviously had no +value. But while the artist could brush her aside in the character of critic, it +remained a little <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_181'></a>181</span>galling to the man to know he figured in her mind as +a painter who did not know how to paint.</p> + +<p>“Can’t paint for sour apples!” he seemed to hear her +reporting to Estelle, and got in his mouth the taste of the apples.</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182'></a>182</span><a id='link_11'></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<p>When Gerald asked Mrs. Hawthorne to sit for him, she stared in his face +without a word.</p> + +<p>“Don’t be afraid,” he hastened to reassure her; “I +engage to paint a portrait you will like.”</p> + +<p>She felt herself blush for the dismay she had not been able to conceal, and +to hide this embarrassment she lifted to her face–not the handkerchief or +the bouquet with which beauty is wont to cover the telltale signal in the cheek, +but a wee dog, as white as a handkerchief and no less sweet than a bouquet. She +rubbed her nose fondlingly in the soft silk of his breast, while, tickled, he +tried, with baby growls and an exposure of sharp pin teeth, to get a bite at +it.</p> + +<p>Gerald looked on with simple pleasure. Because he had given Aurora that dog. +On the day of making a scene because she was to receive a dog from Hunt he had +set to work to find one for her himself, the prior possession of which would +make it natural to decline Charlie’s, if, as Gerald doubted, +Charlie’s offer had been anything more than facile compliment. And now, +instead of the torment to his nerves of seeing her fondle and kiss a brute of +Charlie’s, he had the not disagreeable spectacle of her pressing to her +warm and rosy face an animal that related her caresses, even if loosely and +distantly, to a less unworthy object. Sour and sad, dried up and done with +women, a man still has feelings.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183'></a>183</span>It would be +unfair not to add that something better than primeval jealousy actuated Gerald, +at the same time as, no doubt, some tincture of that. A sort of impersonal +delicacy made the idea disagreeable to him of a dear, nice woman cherishing with +the foolish fondness such persons bestow on their pets the gift of a friend whom +she, in taking his loyalty for granted, overrated, as he thought.</p> + +<p>The dog he had selected to present to her belonged to a breed for which he +had respect as well as affection, crediting to Maltese terriers, besides all the +sterling dog virtues, a discretion, a fineness of feeling, rare enough among +humans. That Gerald kept no dog was due to the fact that he was still under the +impression of the illness and death of his last, Lucile’s pet and his +mother’s, who had been his companion until a year or two before, a senile, +self-controlled little personage of the Maltese variety.</p> + +<p>Having decided to give Mrs. Hawthorne a dog, Gerald had spent some hours +watching the several components of one litter as they disported themselves in +the flagged court of a peasant house, and had fixed upon one dusty ball of fluff +rather than another upon solid indications of character.</p> + +<p>Snowy after strenuous purifications at the hands of Giovanna, sweet-smelling +from the pinch of orris powder rubbed in his fur, and brave with a cherry +ribbon, he was taken from the breast of Gerald’s overcoat and deposited in +the hands of Aurora, whose delight expressed itself in sounds suggestive of an +ogreish craving to eat the little beast, interspersed with endearments of dim +import, such as, “Diddums! Wasums! Tiddledewinkums!” Estelle’s +did the same. There was no difference in the affection the two instantly +bestowed on this dog. Aurora remarked <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_184'></a>184</span>later on that Busteretto couldn’t be blamed +for not knowing which was his mother.</p> + +<p>Sensitively timid, yet bold in his half dozen inches with curiosity of life +and the exuberant gladness of youth, Busteretto could frisk and he could +tremble. He was cowed by the sight of fearful things, beetles and big dogs, but +next moment, with budding valor, would dash to investigate them. He twinkled +when he ran, his bark lifted him off his four feet. Withal something exquisite +marked him even among Maltese puppies, which Aurora felt without art to define +it. She said he reminded her of the new moon when it is no bigger than a +fingernail. If with the tip of his rose-petal tongue he laid the lick of +fondness and approval on the end of your nose, you felt two things: that the +salute had come directed by the purest heart-guidance, and that the nose had +something about it subtly right. You were flattered.</p> + +<p>When Gerald encouraged Mrs. Hawthorne to decide for herself how she should +like to be painted, with what habiliments, appurtenances and surroundings, she +decided first of all to have Busteretto on her lap,–but that was afterward +given up: he wiggled. Then her white ostrich fan in her hand, her pearls around +her neck, her diamond stars in her hair, a cluster of roses at her corsage, her +best dress on, and an opera-cloak thrown over the back of her chair.</p> + +<p>Catching, as she thought, a look of irony on Gerald’s face, she had a +return of suspicion.</p> + +<p>“See here,” she said, observing him narrowly, +“there’s no trick about this, is there?”</p> + +<p>“Not the shadow of one. Please trust me, Mrs. Hawthorne. This is to be +a portrait entirely satisfactory as <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_185'></a>185</span>well as entirely resembling. It is like you to +desire to be painted with your plumes and pearls and roses, and they are very +becoming. I shall put them in with pleasure. I know you do not believe I can +paint a portrait to suit you. Very well. Grant me the favor of a chance to try. +We shall see.”</p> + +<p>It was true that she did not believe it, but she was so willing to hope. One +of the upstairs rooms at the back was chosen for the sittings because the light +through its windows was the least variable. The necessary artist’s baggage +was brought over from Gerald’s, and the work began.</p> + +<p>Charcoal in hand, he regarded Mrs. Hawthorne quietly and lengthily through +half-closed eyes.</p> + +<p>“You have not one good feature,” he said, as if thinking +aloud.</p> + +<p>“Oh!”–she started out of the pose they had after much +experimenting decided upon–“oh! is that the way you’re going +to pay me for keeping still on a chair by the hour?”</p> + +<p>“You have no eyebrows to speak of.”</p> + +<p>“What do you mean? Yes, I have, too; lots of them; lovely ones. Only +they don’t show up. They’re fair, to match my hair.”</p> + +<p>“You are undershot.”</p> + +<p>“What’s that?”</p> + +<p>“Your lower jaw closes outside of your upper.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, but so little! Just enough to take the curse off an otherwise too +perfect beauty.”</p> + +<p>As she curled up the corners of her mouth in an affected smirk, he quickly +shifted his glance, with a horrible suspicion that she was crossing her eyes. As +she had pronounced <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_186'></a>186</span>the word perfect “<i>parfect</i>,” he +presumed that she was making herself look, for the remainder, like Antonia. It +was her latest vaudeville turn, imitating Antonia. He was careful not to look +again in her direction until she had stopped doing what annoyed him furiously. +He could not hope to make her understand to what point the debasing of beauty to +brutal comic uses wounded him.</p> + +<p>“Faultless features,” he went on after a time, in commentary on +his earlier remark, “do not by any means always make a beautiful +face,” politely leading her to suppose he meant that to be without them +was no great misfortune.</p> + +<p>Estelle came into the room for company. She brought her sewing, one of those +elegant pieces of handiwork that give to idleness a good conscience. Gerald felt +her delicately try to get acquainted with him. She was not as altogether void of +intellectual curiosity as her friend. She would seem to care about discovering +further what sort of man he was mentally, what his ideas were on a variety of +subjects. Also, but even more delicately, to interest him, just a little bit, in +her own self and ideas.</p> + +<p>He was grateful to her, and did what he could to show himself responsive. +With the portrait began the period of a less perfunctory relation between them. +They had talks sometimes that Aurora declared, without trace of envy, were ’way +above her head.</p> + +<p>Estelle was waking to an interest in the art and history of the Old World. +She was “reading up” on these things. She was also “working +at” her French, and would in a little systematic way she had excuse +herself at the same hour daily, saying she must go and get her lessons. Not +feeling quite the enterprise to study two languages at one <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_187'></a>187</span>time, she had given the preference to +French, as being the more generally useful in Europe.</p> + +<p>Gerald now made the acquaintance of a new member of the household. She came +into the room bearing a small tray with a hot-water pot and a cup. She took this +to Aurora, who helped herself to plain hot water, explaining:</p> + +<p>“I am trying to ‘redooce.’ This is good for what ails me, they +say. But I could never in the world think of it. Clotilde thinks of it for me, +and she’s that punctual! Clotilde, you’re too punctual with this +stuff. You don’t suppose I like it?”</p> + +<p>“But think, Madame, of the sylph’s form that it will give +you!” replied Clotilde, in respectably good English.</p> + +<p>“I do think of it. Give me another cup. Mr. Fane, this is +Miss–no, I won’t launch on that name. It’s Italo’s +sister, who has saved our lives and become our greatest blessing.”</p> + +<p>Clotilde exposed in smiling a fine array of white teeth. She was not at all +like her brother, but well-grown, white and pink beneath her neat head-dress of +crisp black hair. She impressed Gerald as belonging to a different and better +class. If she were vulgar, it was at least not in the same way. She appeared +like that paradox, a lady of the working-class, with a distinguishing air of +capability, good humor, and openness. The latter Gerald was not disposed +absolutely to trust, but he was glad to trust all the rest.</p> + +<p>No sooner had she left the room than Aurora and Estelle in one voice started +telling him about her. He learned that she and Italo were not what they called +“own” brother and sister, but only half. Their father, being left by +the death of his wife with a young family on his hands, had in feeble despair +married the cook, become the father of <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_188'></a>188</span>one more child, and died. Italo was that latest +born. The children of the first wife had then been taken by her folks, while +their step-mother retained her own chick, assisted from a distance by the +prouder portion of the family to educate and give him a trade. He had chosen an +art instead, and by it was rising in the world. There had been published a waltz +of his composing, dedicated by permission to a name with a coronet over it. He +lived with and supported his good soul of a mother, and saw something of his +half-brethren, all of them through lack of fortune condemned to small ways of +life, like himself.</p> + +<p>Clotilde, the best-hearted, was his favorite and he hers. She recognized his +gifts, she further regarded him as a man of spirit, or wit.</p> + +<p>“It must be,” reflected Gerald, “that the fellow can stir +up a laugh.”</p> + +<p>He knew him only as a fixture at the piano, but could well accommodate the +idea of a species of buffoonery to that boldly jutting nose of his. He fancied +that <i>maldicenza</i>, gossip further spiced with backbiting, would form the +chief baggage of his wit. If he possessed sharp ears, his opportunities for +picking up knowledge of other people’s affairs were certainly unusual. He +passed from house to house, playing accompaniments, drumming for dancing, so +insignificant on his screw-stool that many no doubt talked before him as if +nobody had been there.</p> + +<p>Gerald did not dislike Ceccherelli, really, only had him on his nerves in +relation to Aurora. He felt him, indeed, rather likeable at a distance, as part +of a story; he had the good point of being an individual. Gerald was in general +touched to benevolence at sight of a poor devil elated by his little draught of +success. To Ceccherelli without a doubt <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_189'></a>189</span>the patronage of the wealthy American represented +success. Ceccherelli pulling out his gold watch was a disarming vision.</p> + +<p>Gerald cherished a hope, born of curiosity, that he might witness some +exhibition of Ceccherelli’s <i>spirito</i>, or wit, and upon an evening +when the pianist dropped in after dinner was on the alert for +manifestations....</p> + +<p>It may here be inserted that upon being asked to remain for dinner Gerald had +artfully delayed answering until he had made sure that Clotilde did not dine +with the ladies. Their familiarity had made him fear it. Highly as he was +prepared to esteem Clotilde, the meal would, with her making the fourth, have +lost for him those points on account of which he prized it. But he gathered that +she found it more convenient to take her meals in private. In rejoicing for +himself, he rejoiced also for her, eating in holy peace, as he pictured her +doing, the dishes of her country, cooked with oil and onion; pouring the wine of +her country from a good fat flask such as never found its place on the table of +the strangers.</p> + +<p>To go back: Gerald when after dinner the pianist came to make music for the +ladies, was hoping for some example of that brightness for which he had a +reputation with three persons, possibly more. But Ceccherelli remained on the +piano-stool and never once raised his voice. Estelle and Aurora went in turns to +chat with him there, but not one witty word reached Gerald. Then he had the +sense to see that it was he, Gerald, who acted as a spoil-feast, a dampener. He +got an outside view of himself, stiff, dry, critical, ungenial-looking. It was +not to be wondered at that the flow of spirits was dried up in the man of +temperament by his vicinity. He suspected, catching a side-look from the <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190'></a>190</span>pianist’s small +brown eye, that the little man who did not care to speak aloud in his hearing +yet had plenty to say on the subject of him in a different entourage.</p> + +<p>This notwithstanding, it was only when Gerald got whiffs and echoes of +Ceccherelli through Aurora that he called him a pest.</p> + +<p>“Italo says,” she began, after a silence such as often fell while +she posed and he painted, “that Mr. Landini has the evil eye.”</p> + +<p>“What rubbish!”</p> + +<p>“Glad to hear you say so. I don’t believe there’s any such +thing, myself. But Italo swears there is, and has told me story upon story to +prove it. He wants me to wear a coral horn and poke it at Mr. Landini whenever +he comes near me.”</p> + +<p>“Wherefore a coral horn? You can more cheaply, and quite as +effectually, make horns of your fingers, like this. I should strongly advise you +not to let the object of this precaution catch you doing it.... I should think, +Mrs. Hawthorne, you would be ashamed to let that inferior little individual +corrupt your mind.”</p> + +<p>Fancying it teased him, she pursued, “What do you think he says +besides? That Mr. Landini’s color isn’t natural, but a juice, he +says, a dye, that he stains himself with.”</p> + +<p>“For the love of Heaven, why?”</p> + +<p>“That’s what I wanted to know. Why go to all that trouble for the +sake of looking like a darkey? But Italo says, says Italo, that it gives him +more success with the ladies. His difference from other men obliges them to look +at him, then his eyes do the rest.”</p> + +<p>“I only hope your laugh is sincere, Mrs. Hawthorne, and <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191'></a>191</span>that you do not allow +this poisonous nonsense to affect your feelings towards–”</p> + +<p>“Don’t be afraid. If I did, I shouldn’t be having him to +dinner, should I? And he’s coming to-night.”</p> + +<p>“Oh.”</p> + +<p>“Yes. Quite a party. You weren’t asked, because we know you now. +You would have managed by sly questions to find out who else was coming and then +you wouldn’t have come.”</p> + +<p>“Well, who is coming? There is nothing sly about that.”</p> + +<p>“I sha’n’t tell you. This much I will tell you, +though–” she added with the frankness usual to her, “I +don’t look forward to it much.”</p> + +<p>It was on the end of his tongue to ask next morning how her dinner had gone +off, but on second thoughts he left it for her to speak of when she was +ready.</p> + +<p>She at first appeared much as on other days, but when she had lapsed into +silence and fallen into thought her expression became a shade gloomy. He had +noticed that when her eyes were rather more grey than blue it was the sign of a +cloud in her sky.</p> + +<p>“Might one ask the lady sitting for her picture to look +pleasant?” he said.</p> + +<p>“Yes, yes,” she remembered herself; “I will try to look +pleasant. But I feel cross.”</p> + +<p>“Well?... What went wrong with your dinner?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I made a fool of myself.”</p> + +<p>“That sounds serious. Was it?”</p> + +<p>“Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know. I don’t suppose it was really +serious.... But the whole thing has made me cross.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192'></a>192</span>She labored +under an urgent necessity to tell somebody all about it, that was evident.</p> + +<p>“You see,” she plunged without preamble into her confidence, +“from the beginning, I didn’t want that party! I love to have folks +to dinner, any number, all the time. You know I just love a jollification. But +this was different, as I knew it was going to be. It began with Charlie Hunt +telling me–or, not exactly telling, I forget how it came out–that +yesterday was his birthday. I said, ‘Come and celebrate with us!’ I was +thinking of making a big cake and sticking it full of pink candles. And from +that simple beginning, blessed if I know how it happened, except my always +wanting to say yes to anything anybody proposes, it came to be a regular +dinner-party, the kind they give over here, with courses and wines and +finger-bowls, all the frills, and twelve people, not friends of mine at all, +barely acquaintances, but people Charlie Hunt thought it would be nice to ask. +Well, it was my fault, every bit of it, and nobody else’s. I’ve no +business to say all those joyful yeses if I don’t mean them. Good enough +for me if I have to swallow my pill afterwards without so much as making a face. +It wasn’t so bad, after all, everything went all right, thanks to Clotilde +and Charlie. Only I wasn’t having much fun. Charlie had planned how people +should sit, and Mr. Landini was on one side of me, and he was making himself +terribly agreeable. He means all right, but his talk, as I guess you know, +isn’t a bit my kind. And last night, I don’t mind telling +you–” her voice dropped to a note confidentially low, “with +his compliments and incinerations, you’d almost have thought he was sweet +on me. Only I know better. And so, as I say, I wasn’t having much fun. +Then I don’t know what got <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_193'></a>193</span>into me. They were passing the fruit. I got up and +went to the sideboard and took one of those fine hot-house looking peaches out +of our permanent assortment that needs dusting every few days, and I came back +to my seat and offered that marble fruit with a fetching smile to Mr. Landini. +He looked as if he felt I was bestowing a very particular favor. He took +it–and it dropped out of his hand on to the plate with a crash that laid +it in smithereens.... You can see why I am cross.”</p> + +<p>“I shouldn’t be surprised, dear woman, if he were cross, +too.”</p> + +<p>“He was perfect! I respected him! Liked him better than I ever had +before! I never saw anything so well done as the way he carried it off! I was +never so uncomfortable in all my life, though we united in laughing, ha, ha.... +Charlie would have taken my head off, if he had dared, afterwards in a corner of +the parlor. But the first word he said, I cut in, short as pie-crust, ‘Young +man,’ I said, ‘if you aren’t careful I shall sit on you. Do you know +how much I weigh?’ And I meant it.”</p> + +<p>Gerald prudently placed a paint-brush across his mouth, and shut his teeth on +it as on a bridle-bit, to excuse his saying nothing in the way of comment on +what he had heard.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne told him next day at the first opportunity, like one eager to +make reparation for an injustice, “It’s all right now! A beautiful +plate came yesterday afternoon from Ginori’s where my dinner-set was +bought–a plate, you know, to match the one that got broken. As if I cared +anything about the old plate! And along with it Mr. Landini’s card, with +such a nice message written on it. Don’t you think it white in him? When +it was all my fault. And in the evening Charlie Hunt came and was <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194'></a>194</span>sweet as pie. We’re +just as good friends as ever. I’m ashamed of myself for having felt so put +out. Forget anything I said that didn’t seem quite kind. He’s all +right. It’s me that’s crochety.... Isn’t that picture far +enough along for you to let me see it?”</p> + +<p>“No, Mrs. Hawthorne.”</p> + +<p>“Will you let me see it when it’s far enough along?”</p> + +<p>“No.”</p> + +<p>“I think you’re real mean. How much longer will it take to finish +it?”</p> + +<p>“Does sitting bore you so much?”</p> + +<p>“Land, no! Bore me? I perfectly love it! It’s like taking a +sea-voyage with some one. You see more of them in a week or two than you would +in the same number of years on land. I’m getting to feel I know you quite +well.”</p> + +<p>“Wasn’t it clever of me to think of the portrait?”</p> + +<p>“Go ’way! D’you see anything green in my eye? As I was saying, +I’m getting to know you pretty well. You get mad awful’ easy, +don’t you? But you don’t hate people, really, nearly as much as I +do, that it takes a lot to make mad. There are people in this world that I +hate–oh, how I hate ’em! I hate ’em so I could almost put +their eyes out. But you, Stickly-prickly, when it comes right down to it, I +notice you make a lot of allowance for people. Do you know, when it comes right +down to it, you’re one of the patientest persons I know. I’d take my +chances with you for a judge a lot sooner than I’d like to with loads of +people who aren’t half so ready to call you a blame’ +fool.”</p> + +<p>“While you have been making these valuable discoveries in character, +what do you suppose I have been doing, Mrs. <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_195'></a>195</span>Hawthorne?” asked Gerald, after the time it +would take to bow ceremoniously in acknowledgement of a compliment.</p> + +<p>“Oh, finding out things about me, I suppose.”</p> + +<p>“Not things. One thing. I had known you for some length of time before +my felicitous invention of the portrait, you remember, and as you are barely +more elusive than the primary colors, or more intricate than the three virtues, +I did not suppose I had anything more to learn. But I had. It can’t be +said I didn’t suspect it. I had seen signs of it. I smelled it, as it +were. But I had no idea of its extent, its magnitude, its importance. It is +simply amazing, bewildering, funny.”</p> + +<p>“For goodness’ sake, what?” she cried, breathless with +interest.</p> + +<p>“I can’t tell you. It would ill become me to say. The least +mention of it on my part would be the height of impertinence. The thing is none +of my business. Be so kind as to resume the pose, Mrs. Hawthorne, and to keep +very, very still, like a good girl. Do not speak, please, for some time; I am +working on your mouth.”</p> + +<p>Gerald had indeed been astonished, amused, appalled. He had in a general way +known that Mrs. Hawthorne was prodigal, the impression one received of her at +first sight prepared one to find her generous; but he had formed no idea of the +ease and magnificence with which she got rid of money.</p> + +<p>In the time so far devoted to painting her he had grown quite accustomed to a +little scene that almost daily repeated itself–a scene which he, busy at +his side of the room, was presumably not supposed to see, or, if he saw it, to +think anything about.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_196'></a>196</span>Clotilde would +come in with a look of great discretion, a smile of great modesty, and stand +hesitating, like a person with a communication to make, but not sufficient +boldness to interrupt. Aurora, always glad to drop the pose, would excuse +herself to Gerald and ask what Clotilde wanted. Clotilde would then approach and +speak low,–not so low, however, but that in spite of him messages and +meanings were telegraphed to Gerald’s brain. The look itself of the +unsealed envelopes in Clotilde’s hand was to Gerald’s eye full of +information. She would sometimes extract and unfold a document for Aurora to +look at; but Aurora would wave it aside with a careless, “You know I +couldn’t read it if I wanted to.” At the end of the murmured +conference Aurora would say, “Will you go and get my porte-monnaie? +It’s in my top drawer,” and when this had been brought, her dimpled +hand would take from it and give to Clotilde bills of twenty, of fifty, of a +hundred francs, hardly appearing to count. Sometimes she would say: +“I’m afraid I haven’t enough. I shall have to make out a +check.”</p> + +<p>Gerald’s <i>flair</i>, and knowledge of his Florence, enabled him +perfectly to divine what was in question. He was only puzzled as to why these +transactions should not have taken place at a more private hour, and acutely +observed that they took place when they could, this being when Estelle was out +of the way. Clotilde also had <i>flair</i>.</p> + +<p>After Clotilde had retired, Aurora one morning, having imperfectly understood +what her money was wanted for, puckered her brows over the letters that, through +an oversight, had remained in her hands. She held one out to Gerald to +translate. It was from the united chorus-singers of Florence, a simple, direct, +and ingenuous appeal for a <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_197'></a>197</span>gratuity. Another letter was from a poor young girl +who wished for money to buy her wedding outfit. Another from a poor man out of +work.</p> + +<p>Gerald could have laughed. But he did not; nor made any remark. He did not +dislike seeing those voracious maws stuffed with a fat morsel. He knew as much +of the real poverty in Florence as of the innocent impudence of many poor, with +their lingering medieval outlook upon the relations of the poor and the rich. He +sided with those against these. Singularly, perhaps, he regarded himself as +belonging among the latter, the rich. He was glad the chorus-singers and the +<i>sposina</i> and the worried <i>padre di famiglia</i> were going to be made +glad by rich crumbs from Aurora’s board. But he could not help uneasiness +for the future, when the famished locusts, still approaching single scout, +should precipitate themselves in battalions, when the whole of Florence should +have got the glad tidings and gathered impetus....</p> + +<p>Well, Clotilde was there. Clotilde would know pertinent discourses to hold to +the brazen beggars when their shamelessness passed bounds. Meanwhile Gerald +could see that she enjoyed this distributing of good things among her +fellow-citizens. Not that she was strongly disposed to charity. He did not +believe she gave away anything of her own, but she loved to see Aurora give. +After a life spent in a home where the lumps of sugar were counted and the +coffee-beans kept under lock and key, it attracted her like wild, incredible +romance.</p> + +<p>It would have hurt her to behold this unproductive output, no doubt, had it +not been a mere foreigner who lost what her own people gained,–money, +besides, that could never have benefited her, and that came nearer to benefiting +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198'></a>198</span>her when spent in +that manner than in another. Clotilde, loyal in service, giving more than good +measure, offering all the pleasant fruits of a visible devotion, could yet not +be expected to have–or, to state it more fairly, was not supposed by +Gerald to have–any real bowels for this outsider, who might for one thing +be drawing from bottomless gold-mines, or, if she were not, would suffer a ruin +she had richly deserved. And might it not in aftertimes profit her, Clotilde, to +have been instrumental to this person and that in obtaining money from the +millionaire? The shops recognized such a title to reward, and offered it +regularly to such private middlemen as herself for a careful guiding of the +dispensing hand, and this without the feeling on any side that it was the +payment of the unjust steward.</p> + +<p>Gerald did not in the least despise Clotilde, poor Clotilde, with her nose +like a little white trumpet between her downy pink and white cheeks, for this +businesslike outlook and use of her position. It would have been different if +she had been a friend and gentleman.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>The portrait did not progress rapidly. Gerald was not hurrying. On +Gerald’s lips as he painted there played an ambiguous smile, privately +derisive of his work and the fun he was having.</p> + +<p>No problems, no effort, none of those searching doubts of oneself that +produce heart-sickness; nor yet any of those exaltations that cause one to +forget the hour of meals. Curious that it should have been fun all the same!... +His reply to which was that only a very poor observer could think it curious +that the lower man within a man should feel it fun to be indulged. Fortunately, +a natural limit was set to this Capuan period.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199'></a>199</span>He would come +from the winter world into the room which the American kept enervatingly warm, a +pernicious practice. One could not deny, however, that the body relaxed in it +with a sense of well-being, after steeling itself to resist the insidious +Italian cold, exuding from damp pavements and blown on the sharp tramontana; +that cold which is never, if measured by the thermometer, severe, but against +which clothing seems ineffectual. The blood does not react against it; the blood +shrinks away, and stagnates around the heart.</p> + +<p>He would change his coat for a velveteen jacket, not in order to be +picturesque, but to keep his coat-cuffs clean. He was as particular as an old +maid, Aurora told him, before he had been caught absentmindedly wiping paint off +on his hair.</p> + +<p>The fair model would get her chair-legs into correspondence with certain +chalk-marks on the carpet, be helped to find her pose, and having made herself +comfortable, turn on him blue eyes, with a faint brown shadow under +them–blue eyes that wore a sheepish look until she presently forgot she +was sitting for her picture. She was pressed to keep her opera-cloak over her +shoulders, lest she take cold in her décolleté; the high fur collar made an +effective background for her face. Then he would fall to painting, and the hours +of the forenoon would fly.</p> + +<p>An amiable woman would now and then make a remark, easily jocular. Another +amiable woman–soothing presences, both–would answer. Or he would +answer; there would be an interlude of familiar talk, rest, and laughing, and +throwing a ball for a scampering puppy. At noon an end to labor. He would remain +for lunch, that meal of cheery luxury, immorally abundant. After it he would +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200'></a>200</span>still linger in +this house, bright and warm with fires, smoking cigarettes in a chair as +luxuriously soft as those curling clouds on which are seen throning the gods in +ceiling frescos, and grow further day by day into the intimacy of the amiable +women. In full afternoon they would ask him if he would go out with them in +their carriage, take an airing, and return for dinner; or, if he obstinately +declined, might they set him down somewhere. He would make a point of not +accepting, and hurry off afoot with his damp umbrella.</p> + +<p>Although Gerald had enlightened contempt for the sensuous comfort he was +taking in the fleshpots of the Hermitage, there was in it one element which he +did not analyze merely to despise.</p> + +<p>He was aware of it most often after Estelle had left the room. He settled +down then for a time of heightened well-being. It was observable that the sitter +also took on a faintly different air. Often at that moment she would vaguely, +purposelessly, smile over to him, and he would smile in absolute reciprocity. +They would not seize the opportunity for more personal exchange of talk. All +would go on as before. He had nothing to say to Aurora or she to him that could +not have been said before an army of witnesses. Yet it was to him as if a touch +of magic had removed an impediment, and the mysterious effluvium which made the +vicinity of Mrs. Hawthorne calming, healing to him, had a chance to flow and +steep his nerves in a blessed quiet, a quiet which–one hardly knows how to +describe such a thing–was at the same time excitement.</p> + +<p>Gerald did not really care for talking. He could, it was true, sit up all +night with Vincent Johns, discussing this subject and that; he could split hairs +and wander into <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_201'></a>201</span>every intricacy of argument with men and artists; +with women too he could sometimes be litigious. The bottom truth was +nevertheless that he did not care for talking. It had happened to him to sigh +for a world where nobody talked forever and ever.</p> + +<p>What he cared for was faces. They were what discoursed to you, told the +veracious story of lives and emotions–not lamely, as words do, mingling +the trivial with the significant, but altogether perfectly. It rested with you +to understand.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne in talk was cheap as echoes of a traveling-circus tent: you +had the simple fooling of the clown, the plain good sense of the farmer’s +wife, the children’s ebullient joy in the show. But Mrs. Hawthorne in +silence and abstraction was allied to things august and mysterious, things far +removed from her own thoughts. These, while she sat in her foolish jewels, +unsuitable by day, were very likely busy with her house, her dressmaker, the +doings of her little set, gossip, the personal affairs–who knows?–of +the painter painting her. But, profounder than words or thoughts, Mrs. +Hawthorne’s essential manner of being related her to those forces of the +world which the ancient mind figured in the shapes of women. There was something +present in her of the basic kindness of old Earth, who wants to feed everybody, +is ready to give her breast to all the children. Her robust joyousness reposed, +one felt, on a reality, some great fact that made angers and anxieties +irrational.</p> + +<p>The student of faces could not have maintained that he got these impressions +of his sitter through his eyes. It was more, after all, like a reflection +received on the sensitive plate of his heart.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202'></a>202</span>One day Gerald +began to hurry. He had had enough of it. The portrait was finished in a few +hours. The ladies were not permitted to see it. They were made to wait until it +was varnished and framed in one of the great, bright Florentine frames of which +they were so fond.</p> + +<p>Gerald, while they took their first long, rapt look, stood at one side, with +a smile like a faun’s when a faun is Mephistophelian.</p> + +<p>Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find no words to express +it, made a sound like the coo of a dove.</p> + +<p>Estelle echoed this exclamation, but her charmed surprise did not ring so +true, if any one had been watchful enough to seize the shade of difference. +Because, not having been made to give a promise, she had from time to time taken +a look privately at the painting during its progress. Aurora had known of this +and been sorely tempted to do the same, but had resisted the temptation, afraid +of Gerald’s bad opinion.</p> + +<p>“My soul!” she murmured, really much moved.</p> + +<p>Of course she knew that the portrait flattered her; but she felt as Lauras +and Leonoras and Lucastas no doubt felt when their poets celebrated them under +ideal forms in which their friends and families may have had trouble to +recognize them. The pride of having inspired an immortal masterpiece must have +stirred their hearts to gratitude toward the gifted beings able to see them +disencumbered from their faults, and fix them for the contemplation of their own +eyes and their neighbors’ as they had been at the best moment of their +brightest hour.</p> + +<div class='figcenter'> +<img src='images/illus-200.jpg' id="img004" alt='' /> +<p class='center caption'> +Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find no words to express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove</p> +</div> + +<p>In the days when La Grande Mademoiselle was painted as Minerva, +Aurora’s portrait might have been called “Mrs. Hawthorne as +Venus.” The expression of her face <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_203'></a>203</span>was as void of history as the fair goddess’s. +The tender beam of pleasure lighting it suggested that she might that moment +have been awarded the apple. The portrait was, nevertheless, in a way, +“Aurora all over,” as Estelle pronounced it; but an Aurora whose +imperfections had been smoothed out of existence, and with them her humor; an +Aurora whose good working complexion, as she called it, had been turned to +lilies and roses, her hair of mortal gold to immortal sunshine, and those +sagacious orbs of blue, which made friends for her by their twinkle, into +melting azure stars.</p> + +<p>The painter had, besides, glorified every detail of the setting: the rich +fabric of the dress, the creamy feathers of the fan, even the roses of the +breast-knot. The pearls and diamonds he had amused himself with making larger +than they were, and filled these with a winking fire, those with a lambent +luster. But Gerald had no mind when he indulged in satire to be gross. The whole +was dainty, as shimmering as a soap-bubble, and of a fineness that rightly +commended it to lovers of beautiful surfaces.</p> + +<p>“I don’t care,” burst from Aurora, as if in reply to an +inaudible criticism, “I just love it! I don’t care if it is +flattered. I could hug you for it, Gerald Fane. I think it’s perfectly +lovely. It’s going to be a solid satisfaction. By and by, when my double +chin has caught up with me, and I’m a homely old thing, and nobody knows +what I did look like in my prime, I’ll have this to show them. By that +time, with my brain weakening, I hope I shall have come to thinking it was as +like me as two peas. There’s some reason for living now.”</p> + +<p>Every caller was taken to see the portrait, and heard Mrs. Hawthorne’s +opinion of the talented artist. The majority <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_204'></a>204</span>of visitors candidly shared her admiration, though +not one woman among them can have failed to say to herself that the portrait was +flattered. But with a portrait of oneself to have executed, who would not prefer +the brush that makes beautiful?</p> + +<p>Interest spread in the painter, whose work few even of the Florentines knew +except from hearsay. No one who saw Mrs. Hawthorne’s portrait was very +clearly aware–such is fame!–that it was for Fane a departure. Until +it came to Leslie. She stood a long time before the painting, then +exclaimed:</p> + +<p>“What a joke!”</p> + +<p>But she was inclined to take the same view as Mrs. Hawthorne, that when he +could paint like that it was a pity Gerald should not do it oftener, to build up +a reputation and fill his purse. She only would have advised him not to go quite +so far another time in the same direction.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>As Gerald, the portrait finished, came no more to the house, fairly as if +modesty could not have endured the compliments showered upon him, Aurora with a +communication to make had to square herself before her desk in the room of the +red flowers and painstakingly pen a note.</p> + +<p>Aurora, when taking pains, wrote the cleanest, clearest, most characterless +hand that was ever seen outside of a school copy-book, and took pride in it. +Aurora’s language, when she applied herself to composition, lost the last +vestige of color and life. She wrote:</p> + +<div class='bquote'> +<p>“My dear Mr. Fane:</p> + +<p>“You have not been to see us for a long time, and so I am obliged to +write what I have to say. It is that our <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_205'></a>205</span>friends <i>cannot say enough</i> in praise of your +portrait of me, and Mrs. Bixby, an American who is staying at the pension +Trollope, wants to have one just like it–one, of course, I mean, as much +like her as that is like me, but not a bit more. But before she decides she +wants to know what it will cost. And that brings me to the question, What is the +price of my picture? Please, let me beg you to make it <i>a figure I shall not +blush to pay</i> for such a <i>fine piece of work</i>. Make it a price that +agrees with my estimate of the picture rather than your <i>very modest</i> one. +I shall be glad, you ought to know, to pay anything you say. You couldn’t, +if you tried, make it seem too much for me to pay for <i>such a fine piece of +work</i>. I have got up in the middle of the night and gone down to look at it +with a candle, and stood till I began to sneeze, I like it so much, though I +know it’s too good-looking. So please set a good price on it and not +<i>make me feel mean</i> taking it. Then I’ll tell Mrs. Bixby what I paid. +She’s got plenty of money, and even if she beats you down, it will be +better if she knows I paid a big price. You have such a wonderful talent it +ought to make your fortune, and so it will by and by. Don’t forget that we +are always glad to see you and that you haven’t been for quite a +while.</p> + +<p class='ar' style='margin:0 8ex 0 auto;'>“Yours sincerely,</p> +<p class='ar' style='margin:0 0 0 auto;'>“Aurora Hawthorne.</p> + +<p>“P.S. What do you think Busteretto did? He saw me pouring some water +into a bowl and imagined I was going to give him a bath. So he went to hide +under the grate. Then of course he had to have a bath, which he wouldn’t +have had to otherwise. He sends much love.</p> + +<p>“Another P.S. I meant to tell you we have got a box <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_206'></a>206</span>for the veglione (I hope +that is the way to spell it) on the last night of the Carnival. We have only +asked the Fosses so far, and we want you to be sure to save that night to come +with us.”</p></div> + +<p>Gerald, having read, sat down and wrote, with a disregard to the delicacy of +his hair-lines and the shading of his down-strokes that would have furnished a +poor example to anybody:</p> + +<div class='bquote'> +<p>“The portrait, my dear Mrs. Hawthorne, is a gift, for which I will not +even accept thanks, as it is, your kind opinion notwithstanding, absolutely +without value. One sole point of interest it has, that of a future +curiosity–the only thing of the kind that will have been painted in his +whole lifetime by</p> + +<p class='ar' style='margin:0 8ex 0 auto;'>“Your devoted friend,</p> +<p class='ar' style='margin:0 0 0 auto;'>“G. F.</p> + +<p>“Shall I find you at home this evening?”</p></div> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_207'></a>207</span><a id='link_12'></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<p>No festivity has quite the vast and varied glitter of a <i>veglione</i>. It +takes a whole city to make a party so big and bright. And the last +<i>veglione</i> of the season is rather brighter than the rest, as if the spirit +of revelry, inexhausted at the end of Carnival, made haste to use itself up in +fireworks before the cold dawn of Ash Wednesday.</p> + +<p>The opera-house is cleared of its rows of seats, the stage united to the +parquet by a sloping floor. Every one of the boxes, rising tier above tier in a +jeweled horseshoe, offers the sight of a merry supper-party, with spread table, +twinkling candelabra, flowers, gala display.</p> + +<p>Crowding floor and stage and lobbies, swarm the maskers. In the center of the +great floor the <i>corps de ballet</i>, regiment of sylphs in tulle petticoats +and pale-pink tights, performs its characteristic evolutions to the pulsating +strains of the opera orchestra. The public dances in the remaining +space–dances, promenades, and plays pranks, the special diversion of the +evening being to “intrigue” some one. They are heard speaking in +high squeaks, in bass rumbles, in any way that may disguise the voice. Many are +in costume,–Mephistos, Pierrots, Figaros, Harlequins, but the most are in +simple domino.</p> + +<p>When a lady wishes to descend among the crowd she, in the darkness at the +back of the box, slips a domino over her <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_208'></a>208</span>ball-dress, a mask over her features, and goes forth +unknown to all save the cavalier on whose arm she leans.</p> + +<p>The only uncovered faces belong to gentlemen. These look often a little +foolish, a little bored, because the uncovered faces are the natural objects of +the maskers’ impertinences, their part the rather barren amusement of +trying to divine who it is endeavoring to intrigue, or puzzle, them, and wittily +to parry personalities often more pointed than the drawing-room permits.</p> + +<p>The party in Aurora’s box was large for the size of the box. She had +gone on inviting people, then brought hampers and hampers of good things with +which to feed them. There were the Fosses, Charlie with all the Hunt girls, +Landini, Lavin, the American doctor, the American dentist, and Gerald.</p> + +<p>Also Manlio. The Fosses had brought him. He had returned from furlough some +time before. It was known now to everybody that he was the <i>fidanzato</i> of +Brenda Foss. There was no talk of his leaving the army; on the contrary, he was +rumored to have prospects of early advancement to the grade of captain; +wherefore the general public took it for granted that the bride’s parents +were providing the indispensable marriage portion.</p> + +<p>Aurora’s eyes, at a moment when Manlio’s attention was elsewhere, +rested on him with a brooding, shining look. The symptoms of a great happiness, +though modestly muffled, were plain in his face. The Beautiful One was coming +back in the spring, already near, to marry him.</p> + +<p>Aurora’s affectionate look was just tinged with regret. She had +suffered a disappointment in connection with Manlio. An obstinate and +uncompromising woman beyond <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_209'></a>209</span>the ocean, when invited to join in a harmless +conspiracy, had preferred to do actually, to the tune of eight thousand dollars, +what the grasping creature should have been satisfied with merely appearing to +do. The happiness that pierced through Manlio’s calm, like a strong light +through pale marble, came to him from the bride elect’s aunt, and Aurora +felt robbed.</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Foss’s hand found hers under the table and gave it a warm +squeeze, whereupon Aurora’s heart swelled in a way it had of doing. When +such a dilation took place, something simultaneously happened to her eyes: the +surrounding world was revealed to them as “too lovely for anything.” +Dimples declared her joy.</p> + +<p>“Won’t somebody have something more?” she asked, with the +spoon in her hand poised over a bowl still half full of chicken mayonnaise.</p> + +<p>But every one was done with eating; all were in haste to go down on to the +floor and find amusement, perhaps adventure, amid the fluctuating, fascinating +crowd.</p> + +<p>The box was fairly deserted when the door opened again, and the eyes of those +left in it, turning to see who entered, were met by two unknown maskers.</p> + +<p>One wore the costume of a <i>bravo</i> of old times, picturesque, +disreputable, an operatic <i>Sparafucile</i> in tattered mantle and ragged +plume. The other was in a black satin domino, and had the face of a crow, a +great black beak projecting from a black mask.</p> + +<p>They stood a little way inside of the door as if waiting to be addressed. +There was silence for a moment, while the others waited likewise. Within the +eye-holes of their masks the eyes of the intruders glittered in the glassy, +baffling way of eyes behind masks.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_210'></a>210</span>Aurora, unused +to the mode of procedure at a <i>veglione</i>, asked helplessly in a whisper of +Landini:</p> + +<p>“What shall I say to them?”</p> + +<p>He spoke for her then, in Italian, because he thought it probable that these +were Florentines who had come into a strange box for a lark.</p> + +<p>“Good evening,” he said. “Will you speak, or sing, and let +us know what we can do for your service?”</p> + +<p>The bravo, lifting two long hands in loose and torn black gloves, rapidly +made signs, like the deaf and dumb.</p> + +<p>“You speak too loud,” said Gerald. “We are deafened. Let +the lady speak.”</p> + +<p>The black domino, with a shrug of the shoulders and a gesture of black-gloved +hands excusing the limitations of a bird, answered by a simple caw.</p> + +<p>Aurora now found her tongue and her cue:</p> + +<p>“And is it yourselves?” she burst in rollickingly. “Proud +to meet you! Will you partake?”</p> + +<p>With a hospitable sweep of the arm, intelligible to speakers of any language, +she made them free of her supper-table, where the candles still twinkled over an +appetizing abundance.</p> + +<p>Gerald watched sharply, saying to himself: “If they accept, we shall at +least see their chins.”</p> + +<p>But upon the invitation <i>Sparafucile</i>, with farcical demonstrations of +greed, reached forth his long fingers in the flapping gloves, seized cakes, +white grapes, mandarins, nuts, and stuffed them into his wide pockets; while the +black domino grasped the neck of a bottle of champagne and possessed herself of +a glass. A caw of thanks issued from the black beak, and from the bravo, as with +their booty the two retreated to the door, there proceeded, as unexpected <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_211'></a>211</span>as upsetting, a whoop of +rejoicing so loud that those near him fell back as if from the danger of an +explosion. In the midst of this consternation the maskers were gone.</p> + +<p>“My land! did you hear that?” cried Aurora, who had clapped both +hands over the pit of her stomach. “Goodness! he’s scared the +liver-pin out of me! Who d’you suppose they were?”</p> + +<p>Landini lost not another minute before asking Mrs. Hawthorne if they should +go down together for a turn.</p> + +<p>Gerald had been on the point of asking the same thing. He had almost uttered +the first word when Landini anticipated him. He felt a sharp prick of annoyance +with himself for not having been quicker as much as with Landini for having been +so quick. A little jealousy was quite in order with regard to Mrs. Hawthorne +now, on the simple ground of that more intimate footing of friendship +established between them by the portrait. With the expression of courteous +mournfulness proper in an outrivaled cavalier, he made the gesture silently of +having been at the lady’s service. Manlio did the same.</p> + +<p>The singular blonde, with Nubian lip and Parisian hair, Miss Deliverance +Jones, or, more commonly, Livvy, who spent this evening at the farther end of +the box making her own reflections on the European doings of which she got +glimpses, held up a white satin domino for her mistress’s arms. Gerald +precipitated himself, took it from the maid and held it in her place. He tried +to meet his friend’s glance, hoping for some faintest sign of +participation in his regret at not having been “spryer.” For the +space of a second, just before she fastened on her mask, he caught her eye. +Brief and bright as the illumination of <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_212'></a>212</span>summer lightning, a look of fun flashed over her +face. She winked at him.</p> + +<p>Landini ceremoniously held his arm for her and Gerald saw them leave together +with a lessened objection.</p> + +<p>Gerald had for some time past suspected that Landini was paying court to Mrs. +Hawthorne. Whether the lady were aware of it he could not tell. Gerald had not +believed the man had a chance, although, women being incalculable, one can never +feel quite easy. But now he could almost have found it in himself to pity the +somewhat singular man–Italian in fact, English in manner, Oriental in +looks,–if so were he had built up any little practical dream on the fair +widow’s acceptance of him. To the possibility of a sentimental dream +Gerald did not accord one single thought.</p> + +<p>He seated himself, to wait for their return. Only Manlio was left in the box +besides himself. Manlio, consecrated to the worship of one afar, cared little to +mix with the profane and noisy multitude. As Gerald leaned forth to see the +couple that had just left them reappear down-stairs, Manlio, whose eyes followed +his, remarked very sincerely, when the large easily-recognized white domino came +into sight “<i>È buona</i>!” which can be translated either, +“She is kind,” or “She is good.”</p> + +<p>Gerald felt the warmth of an increased liking for him, because of the +perspicacity he showed. They lighted cigarettes, and together looked over the +marvelous scene, so rich in color and life, while they talked of things that +bore no relation to it, serious things and manly–politics.</p> + +<p>Charlie came in with Francesca, who at the door doffed her domino and mask. +Both, heated from dancing, were ready for a rest and a little more of the +Champagne-cup.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_213'></a>213</span>“By the +way, Gerald,” said Charlie, “that’s a jolly good painting, old +chap, you made of our charming hostess.”</p> + +<p>“Glad you like it!” answered Gerald carelessly, without +irony.</p> + +<p>He did not at the moment dislike Charlie.</p> + +<p>He was genially inclined to-night toward all the world. While he had been +tying on his white cravat before the glass in preparation for the +<i>veglione</i>, it had dawned on him, to his surprise and glimmering relief, +that he felt something resembling pleasure in the prospect of the confused and +promiscuous affair he was enlisted for. He had constated that something like +normal responsiveness to the common exterior solicitations to enjoyment was +returning to his spirit, his nerves. The tang of life was pleasant to his +palate.</p> + +<p>A dim gladness moved him, as at coming across a precious thing one had +supposed lost, in remembering that he was young....</p> + +<p>He laid all this to the mere passage of time, and thanked the gods that +unless one dies of one’s hurts one finally recovers.</p> + +<p>Under these circumstances it is conceivable that he should not momentarily +feel hate or impatience toward any fellow-passenger on the amusing old Ship of +the World.</p> + +<p>Scraps of poetry stirred in the wells of memory where they are dropped and +lost sight of. “I feel peaceful as old age,” he quoted.</p> + +<p>But his eye falling on the white carnation which Giovanna, knowing her +signorino was going <i>in serata</i>, had provided for his buttonhole, lines +less grey came to his lips: “<i>Neque tu choreas</i>....” He fished +for the half-forgotten words. “<i>Donec virenti canities +abest....</i>”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_214'></a>214</span>Because a +positive sense of health pervaded him, he, with a philosophy founded upon +observation, remarked that by this sign no doubt he was on the verge of an +illness. But he absentmindedly neglected the practices preventive of misfortune, +believed in not solely by the <i>popolino</i> of Italy, but recommended to him in +boyhood by the excellent physician who after curing his mumps had taught him to +make horns with his fingers against calamity of any sort that might +threaten.</p> + +<p>So, being in a good humor, and made further contented by the uplifting +privilege of a broad unmistakable wink from a lady, he did not dislike Charlie +as usual; he even, as he looked at him, lustrous-eyed, clear-skinned, smooth, +lighting his cigarette at a candle, wondered why one should not like him. He had +his good qualities. Mere vitality is one. Those points of conduct that called +upon him the disdain of persons more fastidious with regard to their actions, +secret or revealed, than he, were not productive, after all, of much +harm....</p> + +<p>With eyes narrowed, as when he was examining a face to paint it, Gerald +watched the handsome fellow in an animated cousinly dispute with +Francesca–with the result, really against his hope, of finding himself, +instead of aided by his effort of good-will to discover new virtues, confirmed +in his previous disesteem. He could make himself almost love Charlie by +picturing him afflicted, humiliated, sorrowful. But he could not picture him +sorrowful except for narrowly personal misfortunes, such as poverty, sickness. +One could not even be sure, with a face of so little generosity or moral +consciousness as Charlie’s, that he would under all circumstances be +incapable of active malignity....</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_215'></a>215</span>The latter +thought Gerald had the justice to sweep aside with an unspoken apology.</p> + +<p>“Of course, you, Charlie, never could admit that a cousin and a female +might know better than you!” Francesca was contending noisily. “It +happens that I have lately looked up, with some care, the costumes of the +<i>trecento</i>....”</p> + +<p>“My dear girl!” interrupted Charlie. “You will be insisting +next that an <i>incroyable</i> is a Greek, or that creature, that sort of Italian +bandit who gave the disgusting roar, is a French marquis.... Lend me your glass, +will you? I think I see some one I know.”</p> + +<p>“It’s Trix,” he said after a moment, “making signs to +us from the Sartorio’s box. They want us to come over. Come on, +let’s go.”</p> + +<p>Manlio and Gerald were again left alone in the silent company of the pale +coffee-with-milk-colored maid, who unnoticed crept nearer and nearer the front +of the box to peep at the brilliant house.</p> + +<p>Gerald was beginning to think that Landini kept Mrs. Hawthorne rather longer +than was fair when the door opened to let them in, with Estelle and Leslie and +Percy and Doctor Baldwin, all laughing together.</p> + +<p>“Well, have you intrigued any one?” Gerald asked Aurora.</p> + +<p>“Me? Oh, <i>I</i> wouldn’t be up to any such pranks,” she +said. “Has any one been intriguing you?”</p> + +<p>“I haven’t been down, Mrs. Hawthorne. I have stayed quietly here, +hoping to go down with you, if you will be so good, merely intriguing myself +meanwhile–” he dropped his voice so as to be heard of her +only,–“with wondering what kept you so awfully long.”</p> + +<p>“Interesting company, funny sights.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_216'></a>216</span>“Are you +too tired to come down again and give me a dance?”</p> + +<p>“Bless your soul, I’m not tired, but I’m going +home.”</p> + +<p>“<i>Going home?</i>”</p> + +<p>“Man, do you know what time it is?”</p> + +<p>“I know, of course. But you can’t mean you are going home. You +only came at midnight, and it’s less than half-past two. Hosts of people +stay until the big chandelier goes out.”</p> + +<p>“Ah, don’t try to talk me over! It’s time I sought my +downy, if I want to get up in the morning. We’re going to begin Lent like +good girls, Estelle and I, by going to church.”</p> + +<p>Gerald was certain these excuses were hollow. It was obvious, at the same +time, that Mrs. Hawthorne was bent on leaving. He was vexed. He wondered what +her real reason was, as men so often do, after women have taken pains to give +them in detail their reasons, and tried, ignoring what she said, to get some +light from her face.</p> + +<p>It looked to him excited in a smothered way. He at once connected this +repressed excitement with Landini; but then, the face was mirthful, too, in the +same lurking manner, and the proposals of a serious man could hardly affect even +the most frivolous quite like a comic valentine.</p> + +<p>He finally preferred the simplest interpretation: she had seen as much as she +wanted to; she was prosaically sleepy and going home to bed.</p> + +<p>“Good night,” she said. “Come soon to see us! Adieu; no, +<i>ory-vwaw</i>.”</p> + +<p>“Am I not permitted to take you to your carriage?”</p> + +<p>After seeing them tucked in their snug coupé and hearing this wheel off, +Gerald returned to the great hall. He <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_217'></a>217</span>without question would remain until the big light +was extinguished. Colors, forms, sparkle, golden haze–a painter must be +dead or a duffer to leave before the gay glory of it faded and was dispersed in +the gray dawn.</p> + +<p>The scene viewed from near had its cheapness, its crudity, like those poor +painted faces of the dancers pirouetting in the midst of a public they can more +surely enchant from the distance of the stage. The costumes, so many of them, +came from humble costumers who let them from year to year without renewal of the +tinsel or freshening of the ribbons. But those very things gave to this page of +life its depth of interest, gave reality to this romance.</p> + +<p>The ball was taking a slightly rougher, noisier character as it approached +the end. Some of the boxes were darkened, but the floor was full, even after the +tired <i>ballerine</i> had been permitted by the management to go home.</p> + +<p>Gerald himself now became one of the slightly bored-looking men he had +observed earlier, strolling about, <i>claque</i> under arm, in the rigid black +and white which took on an effect of austerity amid the blossom-colors of the +costumes. He sincerely hoped no one would approach him to intrigue him, and the +hope found expression, more than he knew, in his countenance. He felt unable to +meet such an adventure in a manner that would satisfy his taste. It marked a +fundamental difference between him, at bottom a New-Englander, and his friends +of Latin blood, he thought, that he had not the limberness, the laisser-aller, +the lack of self-consciousness and stupid shame, which enables them so +good-humoredly to take the chance of appearing fools. And so before this romance +he was only a reader; they were it–the romance.</p> + +<p>He could deplore his own gray rôle, but not change it; he <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_218'></a>218</span>therefore wished anew, +every time a merry masker looked as though she might intend accosting him that +she would think better of it and leave him in deserved neglect. He had his wish; +he was in the whole evening teased by nobody whatever.</p> + +<p>His eyes, straying over the crowd, sought for known faces. All Florence had +turned out for the occasion, but some of it had by this time gone home. Most of +the men he knew had women on their arms, and from their silence or talkativeness +one might without undue cynicism determine whether these were their own wives +and daughters or wives and daughters of others.</p> + +<p>A tall, gray-whiskered old gentleman in uniform passed him–none other +than Antonia’s friend, General Costanzi–who was trying to retain all +his dignity while beset by two frolicsome little creatures looking like the +chorus in “Faust,” who, suspended one on each of his arms, were +trying to win from him a promise to take them to supper. He sent toward Gerald a +look of comical long-suffering, to which Gerald replied by a nod vaguely +congratulatory, and a smile that courteously wished him luck in that +lottery.</p> + +<p>The painter Castagnola, broad-blown, debonair, passed him, in a costume of +sterling and royal magnificence, copied from a portrait of Francis First whom he +in feature resembled. At his side, with gold cymbals in her hands, went a figure +in floating robes of daffodil gauze, a dancer from one of the frescoes of +Pompeii, wearing a mask–four inches of black velvet–only for the +form. Her bare shoulders and arms, of an insolent beauty, forbade any mistake as +to her identity. Gerald knew, like the rest, that it was Castagnola’s +model.</p> + +<p>Charlie passed him, at a little distance, with a laughing <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_219'></a>219</span>lady hitched to his +elbow. Her mask swung from her hand–the ball was wearing to its end, and +masks are hot. The hood of her rose-colored domino had been pushed back from a +mass of ruffled black hair; her eyes and teeth gleamed with equal brightness and +directness of purpose. It was suggested to Gerald by her air and manner that she +had forgotten the spectators. Her freedom from constraint was shared by Charlie. +Seeing them together reminded Gerald that Charlie was after all +Italian,–one forgot it sometimes. He tried to remember which of the bits +of scandal tossed on to the dust-heap at the back of his memory was the one +fitting this Signora Sartorio.</p> + +<p>They passed out of sight, and he forgot them in the interest of the next +thing.</p> + +<p>Carlo Guerra, like him alone, stopped to chat with him. Guerra, a pleasant +figure in Anglo-American as well as Florentine circles, with his fine head of a +monk whom circumstances have rendered worldly, had, before inheriting his +comfortable income, been a journalist. He still enjoyed above all things the +exercise of the critical faculty, and had much to say this evening about a +recent exhibition of paintings.</p> + +<p>Gerald was hearing it with proper interest when some part of his attention +was drawn away by a sound across the house. It was, softened by distance, that +species of lion’s roar, incredibly large as issuing from a human throat, +and comical from such a disproportion, which had startled the audience several +times already that evening. Gerald turned, without much thinking, to look off in +the direction whence it came and single out the figure with which it was +associated, when he was surprised to find the figure he sought almost under his +nose. Not more than six feet <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_220'></a>220</span>from him were to be seen the tattered mantle and +ragged plume of <i>Sparafucile</i>; likewise the thick crow’s-beak of the +black domino.</p> + +<p>The two were looking at him and, his impression was, laughing. He fancied +they were on the point of speaking to him,–he had thought earlier in the +evening when they came into the box that they might be acquaintances,–but +the crow suddenly pressed tittering against the bandit, pushing and pulling him +away. In a moment they were lost among the crowd.</p> + +<p>Who, then, had been accountable for the roar at the other end of the house? +An imitator? A double? Gerald suspected a masked-ball device intended to +intrigue. He gave it no more thought, but proceeded, started on that line by the +episode, to reflect on the singularity, yes, the crassness, of Mrs. +Hawthorne’s determination to leave the ball early. The secret of it was, +of course, that she had no imagination, no education of the imagination. A +<i>veglione</i> was caviar to her. This wonderful scene, beheld for the first +time, perhaps the only time in life, and she had had to go to bed just as if +they had been in Boston or Charlestown! If one must go to church in such a case, +it was Gerald’s opinion, one does not go to bed at all. But she belonged +to the class of people who would miss the last act of an opera rather than miss +a train or allow the beans to burn. A bread-and-butter person, a sluggish, +fat-brained person, elementary, not awakened and sharpened to appreciation and +wonder. If he had not been in such a good humor he might have been cross, +scornful of her; as it was, he indulgently thought her merely too flatly healthy +in every taste for anything but the wilds of Cape Cod to which she sometimes +playfully referred.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_221'></a>221</span>He here +perceived that he had entirely lost the thread of Guerra’s talk, and that +Guerra, probably aware of it, had moved to another subject. It was hearing the +name Hawthorne that had startled him to attention.</p> + +<p>“I saw you earlier in the evening in a box with Mrs. Hawthorne,” +Guerra said, “whom, you remember, I had the pleasure of meeting at Mrs. +Grangeon’s.”</p> + +<p>After considering a moment with a half-smile, he nodded and pronounced in the +tone of an impartial critic, “<i>Simpatica</i>!” Then, after +considering another moment, nodded again. “<i>Ha gli occhi di donna +buona.</i>” Which means, or nearly, “She has good eyes.” And +Gerald’s esteem for Guerra was immensely raised, for while thinking very +well of him, he would yet not have expected a man like Guerra to discern so much +at a first meeting. A worldling like Guerra might so naturally have said +“<i>È bella</i>!” for Aurora that evening in her best frock, had +been <i>bella</i>–beautiful; or he might have said, “<i>Begli +occhi</i>!” for her shining blue eyes admitted of that description. That +Guerra had said what he said indicated finer feeling than Gerald had given him +credit for.</p> + +<p>Still lingering in desultory talk, the former journalist now asked:</p> + +<p>“Have you seen the Grangeon?”</p> + +<p>“No,” said Gerald. “Is she here?”</p> + +<p>“Yes; she is with the Rostopchine, in a box of the third order.” +He looked up and around to find the box with his eyes, and after a moment +indicated it to Gerald. “There! Do you see them? The Rostopchine in pale +purple, and the Grangeon in an Indian thing all incrusted with green +beetle-wings, a thing for a museum. They are talking with a uniform whom I do +not know. She was <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_222'></a>222</span>speaking of you this evening–Antonia, asking +me what you are doing. She has great faith in your talent.”</p> + +<p>Gerald’s lip curled a little sourly, and he stood looking upward +without reply.</p> + +<p>Turning to look down through her jeweled lorgnette and running her eyes over +the crowd, Antonia now saw him. Recognition lighted her face to unexpected +liveliness. She fluttered her hand to him demonstratively.</p> + +<p>After bowing and smiling, he stood quietly, with face upturned, receiving her +showered greetings.</p> + +<p>He had a certain knowledge of Antonia. She was capable of entirely dropping +the remembrance of her bad treatment of him; perhaps forgetting it really, but +likelier choosing merely that he should forget it. She permitted herself the +caprices of a spoiled beauty.</p> + +<p>A classic golden fillet this evening bound her gray locks; a jewel depending +from it sparkled upon the deeply lined forehead of a brain-worker. Her +irreparably withered neck was clasped by an Indian necklace, showy as a piece of +stage jewelry. Light-minded smiles wreathed her heavy face. Where her sleeves +stopped there began the soft and serried wrinkles of those long, long buttonless +gloves which Sarah Bernhardt had brought into fashion.</p> + +<p>It was not difficult to see in what illusion Antonia chose to live to-night. +Her readers might even, perhaps, have determined which of her own heroines she +personated.</p> + +<p>For all these things Gerald liked his old friend the more.</p> + +<p>Her lips framed the words, “Come up! Come up!” while her hand +made the equivalent signs.</p> + +<p>He nodded assent, and with Guerra walking beside him started on his way. +Guerra under the central box excused himself and turned back, having already +paid his <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_223'></a>223</span>respects. +Gerald, once out in the lobby, advanced more uncertainly, finally hesitated and +stopped.</p> + +<p>He was not sure he wished to see Antonia in circumstances which would not +allow him to express his resentment of her behavior toward the friend whom with +her formal permission he had brought to her house. It was owed to Mrs. Hawthorne +not to let the incident pass. He had ceased to be furious at Antonia; he had not +written in cold blood the wrathful, finishing letter planned in heat of brain. +That, after all, was Antonia as he had always known her and been her friend: +Antonia, capable of heroisms and generosities, fineness and insight, density and +petulance. One could not drop the great woman into the waste-basket because on +one occasion more she had been perverse and the sufferer happened to be oneself. +But the great woman, thought Gerald, needed a sober word spoken to her. In +conclusion, he would not go to see her, no, until he could have it out with +her.</p> + +<p>And so instead of seeking Antonia in her box, Gerald cut short his difficulty +by going home. It was high time; it had been Lent for hours. If Antonia were +<i>intrigata</i> at his failure to appear, it would only be in keeping with the +fanciful circumstances of the hour and place.</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_224'></a>224</span><a id='link_13'></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<p>Early in Lent the weather treated Florence to what Aurora and Estelle called +a cold snap. Their surprise and indignation were extreme. That Italy, sunny +Italy, should feel herself free to have these alpine or polar fancies!</p> + +<p>Estelle showed what she thought of it by taking cold. Aurora affected wearing +her furs in the house. To increase their sense of ill usage, they would now and +then turn their faces away from the fire and sigh, admiring how the air was +dimmed by a puff of silver smoke. These pilgrims from a Northern climate, who +knew so well the sensation of breath freezing in the nostrils and numbness +seizing the nose when on certain winter days they stepped from their houses into +the snow-piled streets at home, could not admit that in the City of Flowers one +should catch sight of one’s breath,–indoors, too.</p> + +<p>The little monthly roses, shivering but brave, blooming still, or blooming +already, out in the garden, bore witness, after all, to the clemency of the +winter, and upheld the city’s title to its name. The garden altogether was +nearly as green as ever. Against alaternus, ivy, myrtle, laurestine the season +could not prevail. Aurora decided that the blame for their discomfort rested +with the house; she planned drastic and fundamental improvements which it was +quite certain the noble landlord would not permit her to carry out.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_225'></a>225</span>What with +Estelle being half sick and herself, as she claimed, half frozen, Aurora at the +end of a day during which the sun had not lighted the world by one feeblest ray, +and the night had closed down thick and damp, was just a little disposed to low +spirits. She had not been out, and nobody had come to see her. She felt the +weariness that follows for certain sociable natures upon a long stretch of hours +without renewal from outside.</p> + +<p>She sensibly reacted against it by making the sitting-room as cozy as she +could, drawing close the crushed-strawberry curtains, piling wood on the fire, +placing a screen so that it shielded her chair and table from the draft; and, +seated in her chimney-corner, took up a piece of knitting.</p> + +<p>She was not very fond of reading, and she was fond of knitting large soft +woolly afghans, of which she made presents to her friends. Reading seemed to +her, anyhow, a rather idle thing to be doing. Knitting came under the head of +work. How often had her story-paper been snatched from her when she was a girl, +and a sock to knit thrust in her hand, with the bidding to be about something +useful. How she had hated it. But now that she was free she still had a better +conscience when she knit.</p> + +<p>To the click of her long wooden needles she thought, with more pleasure than +was afforded by any other vision at the moment, of a hot water bottle gently +warming the bed into which she meant to creep at exactly nine o’clock. +This hour she had set when at eight already the temptation to go to bed and +forget the unsatisfactory day in sound warm slumbers had been so strong as to +make yielding to it appear wrong.</p> + +<p>These vestiges of Puritanism Aurora did not recognize <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_226'></a>226</span>as such, but yet her mind as she was +practicing self-discipline turned, without seeking for the reason, toward the +person who had done most to inculcate in her the doctrine that if you like to do +a thing that itself is almost surely a sign of the thing being wicked, and that +if you dislike it it is very probably your duty.</p> + +<p>While she continued to appear the signora to whom the servants’ eyes +were accustomed, albeit a trifle more absent and unsmiling, she was to herself a +young girl in a far country, living and moving in scenes of difficulty and +misunderstanding with a sharp-chinned, narrow-chested, timidly-beloved just +woman–her mother, long since laid to rest....</p> + +<p>There was nothing from outside to dispel the faint heartache accompanying +this retrospection; wind and rain against the windows were more proper to +increase the melancholy, and Aurora, suddenly sick of staying up to be blue, +wound her yarn to start for bed. But first, for just a moment, she would go +down-stairs, she thought, and have a look at her portrait, for that was the most +comforting thing to do that she could think of. She loved her portrait as a +child loves its favorite toy.</p> + +<p>This she was intending when the sound of the door-bell at once stopped and +cheered her by the possibility it held out of some diversion. Vitale entered +with a package.</p> + +<p>Catching in what he said the name Gaetano, Aurora took it to mean that +Gaetano had brought the package. He was waiting below, she did not doubt. +Gaetano was Giovanna’s nephew, and had more than once come on errands from +Gerald. Saying, “<i>Aspettare</i>!” she hastened into her room for +the porte-monnaie which resided in her top drawer. From this she drew a reward +that should make <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_227'></a>227</span>the journey through night and rain from +Gerald’s house to hers seem no hardship. Her blues had vanished.</p> + +<p>Before removing the rain-splashed newspaper, she gazed for a moment at the +package, trying to guess what it could be. It was square, flat, about a foot and +a half one way by a foot the other. What was Gerald Fane sending her like that +without any enlightening missive? A note might be inside. She cut the string, +took off the newspaper, to find a second wrapper of clean white drawing-paper. +After touching and pinching, she guessed the object to be a picture-frame and +picture. Filled with curiosity, she pulled off the last wrapping, and with a +face at first very blank stared before her....</p> + +<p>It was a painting, one of the kind she had seen at Gerald’s studio and +not liked.</p> + +<p>Different though it was from the portrait down-stairs,–as different as +poverty from riches, as twilight from day,–she could yet see that this +also was meant for a portrait of herself. She remembered tying that blue +neckerchief over her head and under her chin one evening, trying to look like an +Italian in her <i>pezzola</i>, to make the others laugh.</p> + +<p>She stood the picture on the chair which she had pulled up before her so as +to rest her feet on the rung, off the stone floor, still to be felt, she +imagined, through the rug. Of course it was herself, but how +disappointing–disappointing enough to shed tears over–to have this +held up to her after that lovely being down-stairs! How unkind of her friend +Gerald!</p> + +<p>Unfair, too, for although this, in not being a beauty, was obviously more +like her than the other, she could not admit that it was any truer. She could +not believe that she ever really looked like this, though she knew that it was +the <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_228'></a>228</span>way she +sometimes felt. How had Gerald known she ever felt like this?</p> + +<p>That she was a person who ate well, slept well, felt well, loved fun, was +giving and gay–that was all most people knew, or were entitled to know, of +her; all she knew of herself a good deal of the time. Such things could never be +the whole of any person, of course. Every one has had something to overcome. +Some persons have had to overcome and overcome and overcome, one thing after +another, one thing after another, that has tried to drag and keep them down. She +had had–probably because, as her mother often told her, she was born with +such a lot of the devil in her–a great many trials sent to her, for her +discipline, no doubt, her cleansing; but she had come out of them still +unreduced, still eager for a good time.</p> + +<p>All persons are made up, in a way, of these experiences of the past, but they +don’t expose them in their faces, they forget them as much as they +can.</p> + +<p>Yes, as much as they can. How much is that? The only true sorrows being +involved with one’s affections, and the objects of one’s love never +far from one’s thoughts, how much could a person be said to forget her +sorrows, really?</p> + +<p>Aurora reflected upon this for some time, staring the while at her portrait. +The face looking back from the canvas was very like her, had she but known it, +at this exact moment, while the thoughts produced, the memories wakened, by it +substituted for her ordinary hardiness the delicate look of a capacity for +pain.</p> + +<p>As she gazed at the portrait longer she liked it better; from minute to +minute she became more reconciled, and found herself finally almost attracted. +Something from it penetrated her for which she had no definition. It was <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_229'></a>229</span>perhaps the dignity of +humanity confronting her in that strong and simple face framed by the kerchief, +like a woman of the people’s,–her own face, but not certainly as she +saw it in the mirror; a humanity that out of the common materials offered to it +day by day had rejected all that was mean and contrived to build up +nobleness.</p> + +<p>Half perceiving that this portrait in its different way flattered her as much +if not more than the portrait down-stairs, she, while modestly refusing to be +fooled by the compliment, yet felt a motion of affectionate gratitude toward +Gerald for the sympathy which had enabled him to pierce beneath the surface and +see that Bouncing Betsy had her feelings, too, her history; yes, her bitter +tragedy.</p> + +<p>While continuing with her eyes on the picture, she from time to time wiped +them, and when the door-bell rang again, aware of being “a sight,” +took the precaution of retiring to her bedroom, so that if Vitale should come to +announce a visit,–it was not yet nine o’clock,–she could the +better make him understand that he must excuse her to the visitor; she was going +to bed.</p> + +<p>But learning from the servant that Signor Fane was below, she changed her +mind, and chose unhesitatingly from her stock of useful infinitives the +appropriate two: “<i>Dire venire</i>.”</p> + +<p>Gerald found her by the fire, her fur-cloak over her shoulders, her woolly +afghan in her hands, and the picture on the chair before her.</p> + +<p>“Well?” he asked expectantly, looking at it, too, after they had +shaken hands.</p> + +<p>“You’ve made me feel sorry for myself. What’s the +use?” she answered in a little sigh, keeping her reddened eyes turned away +from him. “Hush! Wait a moment! <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_230'></a>230</span>I was forgetting,” she added, in comedy +anticlimax, like a housewife who in the midst of a scene of sentiment should +smell the dinner scorching. She jumped up, and went without the least noise to +close the door to Estelle’s room, returning from which she illogically +fell to talking in a whisper.</p> + +<p>“Estelle’s gone to bed. She’s got a snow-balling old cold. +I’ve rubbed her chest with liniment, and tied up her throat in a compress, +and given her hot lemonade, and she lies there with a hot water bottle at her +feet and grease on her nose, and let’s hope she’ll feel better in +the morning.”</p> + +<p>“Let’s hope, indeed. I’m very sorry to hear she’s +ill. But she’s sure to be better by to-morrow, isn’t she, with all +that care and those remedies. I hope you haven’t a cold, too, Mrs. +Hawthorne. You almost look,” he said innocently, “as if you had. +This weather is dreadful. You haven’t, have you, dear friend?”</p> + +<p>“No; I guess what you see is just that I’ve been crying. +Don’t say anything about it. Don’t notice it. Never mind. Come and +sit down by the fire and get warm. Your hand was like ice.”</p> + +<p>“It’s very bad out, and not much better in, except here by your +generous fireside. I haven’t been warm all day.”</p> + +<p>“Why didn’t you come before? It isn’t what I call balmy +here, but I expect it’s balmier than at your place.”</p> + +<p>With her kindly unconstraint she reached for one of his hands to test its +temperature. With a little cry of “Mercy me!” she closed his numb +fingers between her palms to warm them, as if the blaze could not have +accomplished this end so well as they.</p> + +<p>He let it be, not with the same unconsciousness in the <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_231'></a>231</span>matter as she, but hoping that the soft, +warm infolding would somehow do him good. He had come in the rather desperate +hope of being done good to. As he had been about to start out, having intended, +when he sent the portrait, to follow close upon it, he had found himself feeling +so ill–feeling, at the end of the dismal day, so indescribably burdened +and ill and apprehensive of worse things–that he had been on the point of +giving it up. But then the wish itself to escape from his bad feelings had +impelled him forth toward the spot glowing warmer and cheerier in his thoughts +than any other, where, if he could forget how ill he felt, he would naturally +feel better. Aurora’s house during the days of painting the first portrait +had come to feel remarkably like home to him.</p> + +<p>So when Aurora released his hand, saying, “Let’s have the +other,” he docilely gave it to her, though the fire had already partly +thawed it. Gratefully, with the hand set free, he covered both her kind hands, +which loved so much to warm things and feed things and pet things and give away +money.</p> + +<p>Overcoming his ordinary stiffness, he pressed them right manfully, to signify +that he would not speak of her tears if she wished him not to, but here was his +sympathy, and with it his penitence, if so were that, as she intimated, he had +had a share in making them flow.</p> + +<p>“So you are all alone this evening?” he asked in the voice that +makes whatever is said seem affectionate and comforting.</p> + +<p>“Yes. I haven’t even Busteretto. I let Estelle keep him on the +foot of her bed. She’s perfectly devoted to him. And Clotilde is busy in +her own corner of the house, going over the bills. It takes lots of +time.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_232'></a>232</span>“And where +is the musician in ordinary, the gifted Italo?” he inquired, with a smile +meant to draw from her a smile.</p> + +<p>She was caught without difficulty. “The gifted Checkerberry +hasn’t been round lately,” she smiled. “He won’t expose +himself to the night air for some time. He’s got laryngitis so he +can’t talk above a whisper.” Her eye twinkled and she laughed, +though what she communicated was not on the face of it very funny.</p> + +<p>He was perhaps calling attention to this when he said, “Poor +devil!”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” she agreed, achieving sobriety, “it’s bad +weather for laryngitis,” and went on with the weather, dropping Italo. +“It’s been a mean sort of day, hasn’t it? I haven’t set +foot outside. I was already feeling kind of blue and making up my mind to go to +bed when Gaetano came with your present.”</p> + +<p>There was an intimation in her glance that this event had not made the world +appear any rosier.</p> + +<p>Both turned to look at the picture. Their hands loosened naturally; they sat +apart.</p> + +<p>“Can’t you see why I had to paint it, Mrs. Hawthorne?” he +asked, speaking eagerly, and as if pressing his defense.</p> + +<p>“How could I endure to have that thing down-stairs stand as my idea, my +sole idea, of you? And how could I bear to make you a gift, a sole gift, of a +piece of work I do not respect? This may be worth no more,–I think +differently,–but it is at least the best I can produce. It has my +sanction. You, too, believe me, will prefer it to the other after a +while.”</p> + +<p>She shook her head a little disconsolately.</p> + +<p>“The other you can, if you must, keep in your drawing-room <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_233'></a>233</span>to make an agreeable spot +of color,” he went on, reversing their parts and trying to induce in her a +lighter humor; “it has that perfectly legitimate use. In your +drawing-room, you know, Auroretta, among the pictures of your choosing, it does +not, in our Italian idiom, altogether disappear. This one you will keep out of +sight, but will look at now and then, if you please; and I quite trust you, with +time, to recognize that it was painted by some one who understood and honored +you more than there was any evidence of his doing when he perpetrated, for a +joke, that bonbon-box subject down-stairs.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne, with soft and saddened eyes fixed on the portrait, again +shook her head, sighing, “Poor thing!”</p> + +<p>“Not at all!” he protested almost peevishly. “Please not to +suggest by pitying her that I have not represented there a fine, big, strong +thing, built to stand up under anything! I could slay, with pleasure, at any +time”–he diverged, carried away by a long-standing +disgust,–“the pestiferous asses who call my things morbid. I am too +careful to keep true to what I see. The difference between them–I mean the +critics who call me morbid–and myself, is in the degree of +sight.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t get excited, Geraldino!” she checked fumings which +she did not entirely understand. “What I meant was that looking at her has +made me think of all the things that have gone wrong with me in my whole life. +Don’t you call that a tribute? You couldn’t have painted this +picture if you hadn’t suspected those things, and, honest, I don’t +see how you could suspect them. Ever since I came over here I’ve been so +jolly. Seems to me I’ve been nothing but jolly. I’ve been having +such a good time! How you could see under it, I don’t know. <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_234'></a>234</span>As a matter of fact, +I’ve always been jolly between-times. Give me half a chance, let me get +out of the frying-pan, I’d be ready in a minute to go on a picnic. But +I’ve not been spared my troubles, Geraldino; you were right +there.”</p> + +<p>At this reference to many sorrows, he found a thing to do more expressive +than words. Sitting near each other as they were, he could reach her without +rising; he bent forward and touched his lips commiseratingly to her hand.</p> + +<p>He might have known that it would bring her story, but he had not schemed for +this, and, unwilling, yet eager, to hear, was a prey to compunctions on more +than one ground when, after a little gulp and sniff, she burst forth:</p> + +<p>“I’ve seen perfectly dreadful times, Geraldino. Some of them were +the sort of thing you can get over, but some of them–upon my word, I +wonder at myself how I’ve got over them as I have. The queer thing +is–I haven’t, in a way. It will come over me sometimes, in the +queerest places, at the oddest moments, that I am still that woman to whom such +awful things happened, that I, playing my silly monkey-shines, am that +heart-broken woman.”</p> + +<p>“I know,” murmured Gerald, and took her plump hands steadyingly +between his hard, thin ones.</p> + +<p>“I’ve never had any sense,” she let herself go. +“Anybody can see that; and when I was younger I had even less, naturally, +than I have now. Always, always, I wanted so to be happy! I wanted to have a +good time. I was born wanting to have a good time. And everything was against +it. But I managed somehow. One way or another, I got to the circus ’most every +time. My mother used to wonder what my finish would be, and try to lick the Old +Boy out of me. But it couldn’t be done. I’m just like my father, my +dear old pa, who was a sinner. He let ma <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_235'></a>235</span>have her way in everything, as he thought it right +to do. Not, I guess, because he always liked her way, but because after my +sister, who was a beautiful child, died in such a terrible way that I +can’t even bear to mention it,–she caught fire,”–Aurora +hurriedly interjected, “ma came so near going out of her senses that pa +humored her in everything. He thought the world of her; so did we all, but it +couldn’t be called a happy home. There were three boys, besides +me,–I was the last,–and we were all such everlastingly lively young +ones, and ma was so strict! Pa was away most of the time getting a living. My +pa, you know, was a pilot. It wasn’t a fat living for so many of us, but +that wouldn’t have mattered long as we had enough to eat. But ma, poor +soul, because of that twist her mind had taken through sorrow, was always seeing +something wrong in everything we did; she never could be quiet or contented. The +boys didn’t get so much of it: they were off out of doors and later at +their trades; but me, I was kept in to help with the housework, and kept in for +company, and kept in for no other reason, I guess, than because my wicked heart +longed so to go out and play with the girls and boys. I dare say it was good for +me. Ma meant all right, that I know, but ma was all along a sick woman. We +realized later that though she was round and about, busy every minute, she was +sick for years with the trouble that finally took her away. I don’t want +you to think I didn’t have a real good mother, for I did–a +first-rate mother who did her honest best to make a good woman of me.”</p> + +<p>“I know, I know.” By a reminding pressure of her hands he begged +she would trust him not to misunderstand.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_236'></a>236</span>“But my +pa–you should have known my pa!” Aurora’s face brightened +immensely, and Gerald suspected that it was like him she looked when she screwed +her lips to one side in a manner humorously suggesting a pipe at the corner of +her mouth, and said in a voice not her own, “Golly, Nell, can’t you +whistle for a snifter?” He could almost see a sailor’s +chin-whiskers.</p> + +<p>“He took me with him once in a while. Golly, those were good times, if +you please! Free as air, all the peanuts I could eat, out in the boat with my +pa, and catch fish, and catch a steamer if we could. We had an 8 big as a house +on our sail. He was as good a seaman, my pa was, as any in East Boston, but he +wasn’t a hustler. But there, if he’d been a hustler, he +wouldn’t have been my pa. Wouldn’t for a house with a brownstone +front have had my pa any different from what he was. Grandma was just the same +sort, God bless her! easy-going, jolly, come a day, go a day, do as she please +and let you do as you please. I used to have such lovely times at her house, +summers, down on the Cape, before my sister died!</p> + +<p>“It was there I first knew Hattie–Estelle. Her aunt’s house +was next to my grandma’s. I used to think her the luckiest child that ever +was born. Seemed to me she had just about everything–a gold locket and +chain, bronze boots, and paper dolls by the dozen. We used to play together, day +in day out, one of those plays that last all the time, where you pretend +you’re some one else and act it out in all you do. We kept it up for +years. I don’t see that we’ve changed much with growing up. Seems to +me we were pretty near the same then as we are now, having our spats, but having +lots of fun, and wanting to share everything. Estelle lived in East Boston, too, +and <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_237'></a>237</span>was going to be +a school-teacher. It seemed to me that to be a school-teacher was just about the +finest thing anybody could do. That would have been my ambition, to be a +school-teacher. But I never got beyond the grammar school, I was needed at home +to help mother. Then my poor pa died–an accident down in the +docks,”–Aurora, lowering her voice, began to hurry and +condense,–“then Ben, then Joe, then–will you believe +it?–Charlie, that I loved best. They all had the same delicate +constitution as ma, it turned out, and a predisposition to the same trouble. +Then finally, after going through with so much, my poor mother went, too, and +for that I could only be thankful. And I had taken care of them all. I +wasn’t twenty-three when I was the last left. Doesn’t it seem +strange! I sometimes can’t believe it even now.”</p> + +<p>This rapid enumeration of calamities so great robbed them of terror and +pathos, yet Gerald had somewhat the startled, shocked feeling of a man who knows +he has been struck by a bullet, though his nerves have not yet announced it by +suffering.</p> + +<p>Aurora, who after the passing of years could think of these things without +tears, yet in speaking of them to a sympathetic hearer had obvious difficulty in +keeping a stiff upper lip. Gerald turned away his eyes while with her hand she +covered and tried to stop her mouth’s trembling.</p> + +<p>“Poor child!” he said, with a sincerity which saved the words +from insignificance.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” she half laughed. “Wouldn’t one think it +enough to sort of subdue anybody, take the starch out of them for some time? +When I came out of that house of sickness I couldn’t think of anything +else but sickness and death. It stuck to me like the smell of disinfectants +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_238'></a>238</span>after you’ve +been in a hospital. I couldn’t think of anything but that it would take me +next. I supposed I must be affected, too. But the doctor examined me, and do you +know what he said? ‘Sound as a trout,’ he said. ‘You’re so +sound,’ he said, ‘you’re so healthy, that we’ll have to shoot +you to get you to the resurrection.’ Then I felt better. He was a new +doctor that we’d called in toward the end. He knew how I was situated, and +as he seemed to think I’d make a good nurse, he got me a chance in the +City Hospital, where I could get my training. And Hattie, dear Hattie, what a +friend she’s been! She and her ma and pa made me come and make my home +with them. It’s since then that we’ve been like sisters.”</p> + +<p>At the sound, appositely occurring, of a cough in the neighboring room, +Aurora stopped and listened.</p> + +<p>“Dear me!” she whispered. “D’you suppose she’s lying +awake?”</p> + +<p>“She may be coughing in her sleep,” he suggested.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” Aurora said dubiously, after further listening, and +hearing nothing more. “And if I should go in to see, I might wake her. The +bell-rope is right at the head of her bed; all she has to do is pull it if she +wants somebody to come. I was entertaining you with the story of my life, +wasn’t I? Where had I got to? Oh, yes. There in the hospital I just loved +it. Perhaps you can’t see how I could. I just did. I had lots of hard +work. The training was sort of thrown in in my case with other duties, but there +were the other nurses and the house-doctors, I grew chummy with them all. I had +fun with the patients, too. You don’t know how much good it does you to +watch anybody get well; the majority get well. It’s good for them, +besides, to have you jolly.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_239'></a>239</span>“Your +gaiety of heart makes me think of the grass, Aurora, the blessed ineradicable +grass, that will grow anywhere, that you see pushing up between the +paving-stones of the hard city, and finding a foothold on the blank of the rock, +and fringing the top of the ruined castle, and hiding the new-made +graves.”</p> + +<p>Aurora, always simple-mindedly charmed with a compliment, paused long enough +to investigate Gerald’s comparison, then resumed, with the effect of +taking a plunge into deep waters:</p> + +<p>“But it was there I met the fellow who did me the worst turn of +any....</p> + +<p>“They brought him in with broken ribs one rainy night, after he’d +been knocked down in the street by a team and kicked by the horses. I +wasn’t his regular nurse, but I was in and out of his room, and if he rang +while his regular nurse was at her meals, I’d go. Everybody knows that +when a man’s sick he’s liable to get sweet on this or that one of +his nurses.</p> + +<p>“How I could have been mistaken in Jim Barton I can’t see now. +Since knowing him, if I ever see anybody that looks a bit like him, I shun them +like poison, because I know as well as I need to that however nice they may +appear, you can’t depend upon them. But before I knew him I’d never +stop to distrust anybody.</p> + +<p>“It began with our setting up jokes together; he could be awfully funny +even when he was swearing like a pirate about his luck landing him in a +hospital. Bad language didn’t seem so awful coming from him, because he +was so light-complexioned and boyish-looking. He was only passing through the +city, in an awful hurry to get West, when he got hurt, and he was madder than a +hornet at <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_240'></a>240</span>the +delay. But after a while he quieted down, because he’d got something else +to think about, which was getting me to go along with him to California, where +he’d bought a share in a mine. And me, star idiot of the world, it seemed +the grandest thing that had ever happened. I’d never had anybody in love +with me that way before. The boys had always liked me, but I’d been like +another fellow among them, and I’d never more than just been silly for a +week or two at a time over one fellow and another at a distance. And here was a +solid offer from a perfectly splendid man who had everything, money included. +They’d found several thousand dollars on him when he was picked up. And +the yarns he told about gold-mines!... But it wasn’t that, it wasn’t +the gold-mines, it was ‘the way with him’ that caught me. I guess when +you’re in love you’re no judge of your man. We two, I tell you, +seemed made for each other. He was as fond of a good time as I, and he loved +fun, like me. We were going to California to make our everlasting fortune. +You’d have thought there was no more doubt about it than the Gospels being +true. And the good times we were going to have while doing it were nothing to +the good times we’d have after, when I’d have my diamonds and +he’d have his horses and things. As I said, the diamonds weren’t +needed; I’d have gone with him anywhere just for the fun of being +together. I couldn’t see what I’d done to deserve my blessings. I +guess he was in love, too, as far as it was in him to be; I’ll do him that +justice.</p> + +<p>“Hattie and her ma, while they had nothing to say against Jim, wanted +me to wait awhile. But Jim couldn’t wait. The moment he was well enough he +wanted to be <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_241'></a>241</span>off. +And I didn’t care much about waiting either. I felt as if I’d known +him all my life. So they said nothing more and gave us a perfectly lovely +wedding from their house. They didn’t see through him any more than I did, +and in a way it wasn’t strange, because he wasn’t hiding anything in +particular or misrepresenting anything. He believed all he said about the big +money he was going to make and the grand times we should have. He was born with +the sort of nature that always believes things are going to turn out right +without labor and perseverance on your part. He wasn’t fond of work, +that’s sure. What we ought to have done was find out something about his +past; but even that, I guess, wouldn’t have opened our eyes, with him +before us looking like one of ourselves. And it wasn’t a very long past; +he was young. He came of good folks, I guess. I never saw them, but there are +ways of telling. Good folks, but not wealthy, and so as to get rich easily he +had tried one thing after another. He was quick’ discouraged, and the +moment the thing didn’t look so big or easy he wanted to throw it over and +try something else. Then I’ve come to the conclusion he loved change for +its own sake–go somewhere else, take a new name, and start a new business, +talking big. It came out after he died that he’d been known under half a +dozen names in as many States. There simply wasn’t anything <i>to</i> him. +I don’t believe he meant to act like a skunk, but, then, he hadn’t +any principles either to keep him from acting like a skunk, or meaner than a +skunk, when it came to getting himself out of difficulty. And I, for my sins, +had to marry such a fellow as that! It was like there had stood the good times +I’d always wanted, <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_242'></a>242</span> right before me in the body, and I took them for +better, for worse, and got what my ma said I deserved to get when she tried to +cure me of my fancy for good times!”</p> + +<p>“Don’t!” protested Gerald, softly. “Don’t +regard as wrong what was so natural. All who have the benefit of knowing you +must thank the stars which permitted your beautiful love of life to survive the +dreadfulness of which you have given me a glimpse.”</p> + +<p>“The dreadfulness, Geraldino! I haven’t told you anything yet of +the dreadfulness. I haven’t come to it. I haven’t come to what makes +her”–she nodded toward the portrait,–“look like +that.”</p> + +<p>“Then tell me!” he encouraged her.</p> + +<p>“It isn’t Jim. When I think of Jim, it only makes me mad. My +heart is hard as stone toward him.” She clenched her jaws and looked, in +fact, rather grim. “That he’s dead doesn’t change it. I hope I +forgive him as a Christian ought to who asks forgiveness for her own trespasses. +I know I don’t feel revengeful. There wasn’t enough <i>to</i>Jim for +me to wish him punished in hell. But if you think I have any sentiment because I +used to love him, or that I was sorry I woke up from my fool dream when I once +had seen it was a dream–Not a bit of it. There was a time, though, when I +first began to suspect and understand, that makes me rather sick to think of +even now. I was so far from home, you see. I hadn’t a friend, and I +wouldn’t for worlds have written back to my old friends that I’d +made a bad bargain–not while I wasn’t dead sure. And I kept on +hoping.</p> + +<p>“At first we had a real good time. We lived in a miner’s cottage, +but that seemed sort of jolly. I’d been used to hard work all my life, so +I didn’t mind that, and <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_243'></a>243</span>I wanted him to have as nice a home as any man could +on the same money. So I cleaned and contrived and baked and brewed and fixed up. +I wanted him to be pleased with me and proud among the other men. But pretty +soon I found I didn’t care to make acquaintances, because I was ashamed of +the way Jim did. He kept putting all his money into the mine, sending good money +after bad, and let me keep house on nothing, and then was in a worse and worse +temper because the mine didn’t pan out and things weren’t more +comfortable at home. I began to wake up in the night and lie there in a cold +sweat, clean scairt. I haven’t told you that we were looking for an +addition to the family. That’s one reason I was so scairt. But I shut my +teeth, and said I to myself, ‘This baby’s going to have a chance if his +mother can give it to him by not getting excited or letting things prey on her +mind.’ So I kept a hold on myself and didn’t let anything count +except guarding that baby. I seemed to care more about it than all the rest of +the world put together. Oh, I can’t begin to tell you how much more than +for all the rest of the world put together. I don’t know that a man would +understand.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, he would; of course he would,” spoke Gerald, gently +reverent, yet a little impatient; then he qualified his assertion: “He +could imagine, I mean to say, how you would have felt that way.”</p> + +<p>“Well, that matter was going to be put safely through, no matter what. +The first mistake I made was not making friends with my women neighbors, so that +everybody in Elsinore supposed that Jim’s wife was the same stripe as +he,–or that’s what I thought they supposed,–and when I needed +friends I couldn’t think of any to turn to except <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_244'></a>244</span>those at home. The other mistake I made +was not to write them at home and tell them the truth and then wait for them to +send me money to come. But I guess my mind stopped working when the shock +came.”</p> + +<p>Aurora appeared to brace herself, while decently considering how to minimize +to her audience the brutality of her next revelation.</p> + +<p>“Jim cleared out one night while I was asleep, taking every cent +we’d got and every last thing he could hope to turn into a cent,” +she said, hardening her voice and lips. Gerald was given a moment in which to +visualize the situation, before she went on: “I guess, as I said before, +that I wasn’t in my right mind for a spell; all I could think of was +getting home to my own folks, and I was going to do it somehow, though I +hadn’t a cent. I hadn’t even my wedding-ring. I’d put it off +because my finger had grown fatter, and he’d taken even that to go and try +his luck somewhere else.–What do you think of it?” she mechanically +added.</p> + +<p>She was pale, remembering these things. Gerald drew in a long, unsteady +breath, oppressed.</p> + +<p>“I was going to get home somehow,” Aurora repeated, “and I +wasn’t going to waste time waiting for anything. And how was I going to do +it? I don’t suppose I really thought; I followed instinct like an animal. +I hid in a freight-car going East–”</p> + +<p>A definite difficulty here stopped Aurora. While she felt for words in which +to clothe what followed, the images in her mind made her eyes, which were not +seeing the things actually before them, more descriptive of the anguish of +remembered scenes than her words were likely to be.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_245'></a>245</span>“I’m +going to skip all that, Gerald.” With a gesture, she suddenly rolled up a +part of her story and threw it aside. “But when I came to see and +understand rightly again, weeks after, in a hospital at Denver, I cried, oh! how +I cried, and didn’t care what became of me. Because I’d lost him; +they hadn’t succeeded in saving him. He had lived, mind you,” she +emphasized with pride–“he had lived a little while, he was all +right, perfect in every way–a son.”</p> + +<p>His due of tears was not withheld from the wee frustrated god. Aurora gave up +talking, so as to have her cry in quietness.</p> + +<p>Gerald, holding back a sound of distress, twisted on his chair, not daring to +recall himself to Aurora’s notice either by speaking or touching her.</p> + +<p>“I’m plain sorry for myself,” she explained her tears while +trying to stop them. “You can’t be sorry, for their own sakes, for +the little children who go back to God without knowing anything of this +life’s troubles. It’s for myself I’m sorry. I never can bring +up those times without the <i>feeling</i> of them coming over me again, and then, +as I tell you, I’m sorry for that poor fool in her empty house, and then +in the thundering freight-car, and then in the hospital. I see her outside of me +just as plain as I would another person. Then, too”–she dried her +eyes as if this time for good–“I feel a burning +here”–she touched her breast–“like anger. Angry. I feel +angry at being robbed, in a way I never seem to get over. To think I might have +had him all my life, like millions of other women, and I never even saw him! And +he was as real to me all those months before!... I don’t see how I could +have loved him more than I did. I’m hungry for him <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_246'></a>246</span> sometimes, just as I might be for food. +And then I’m angry and rebellious. But I couldn’t tell you against +who. It isn’t God, certainly. He’s our best friend, all we’ve +got to rely on. And He’s been mighty good to me. There in Denver, when I +hadn’t a friend or a penny, He raised up friends for me and gave me the +most wonderful luck.</p> + +<p>“I stayed right there in Denver till less than a year ago. I guess +you’ve heard me speak of the Judge. The doctor in the hospital where they +carried me was his son; that’s how it all came about–friends, good +luck, money, everything. When I say I found friends, let me mention that I found +enemies, too, the meanest, the bitterest! I–but there”–she +interrupted herself as, on the very verge of further confidences, a change of +mind was effected in her by sudden weariness or by a deterrent thought, or +both–“I guess I’ve talked enough about myself for one evening. +I didn’t have a soft time of it there in Denver,” she summed up the +remainder of her story, “but I’d got back to being my old self. +You’d never have known what I’d been through. I was just about as +you’ve known me here. Funny, isn’t it,”–Aurora seemed +almost ashamed, apologetic,–“how the disposition you’re born +with hangs on?”</p> + +<p>“Golden disposition,” Gerald commented soothingly. Timid about +looking directly at her just yet, he looked instead at the portrait, whereon lay +the shadow of the events just related.</p> + +<p>After a little period of thought in silence Aurora said, with the shamefaced +air she took when venturing to talk of high things:</p> + +<p>“I heard a sermon once on the text, ‘Mary kept all these things in her +heart.’ The minister said that it wasn’t only Mary who did this, but +ordinary women, so often. And <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_247'></a>247</span>I know from myself how true it is. You see a woman +all dressed up at a party, laughing with the others, dancing perhaps, and +she’ll be saying inside of herself, ‘If baby had lived, he’d have +been three years old.’ Or thirteen, or thirty. I’ve no doubt it goes +on as long as she lives. And she can see him before her just as plain, as he +would have been.... My baby would have been five last October.”</p> + +<p>Gerald remembered how sweet he had always thought it of her to wish to stop +and fondle little children, often wee beggars, stuffing little grimy fists with +pennies, not avoiding to touch soiled little cheeks with her clean gloves. He +had attributed this propensity to a simple womanly talent for motherliness.</p> + +<p>“I’ve got this to be thankful for,” she came out again from +silence, farther down along the line of her meditations, “that he did live +for a few hours. I’ve got a son, just as much as if he’d grown to be +a man.” She was dry-eyed, almost joyful in this.</p> + +<p>“Yes, yes,” hurried Gerald, consolingly; “that’s what +you must always think of–that and not the other things. You must lay hold +of that thought and feel rich in it. But hear me, dear friend–me, trying +to suggest ways to you of being brave and cheerful! You, who do from god-given +temperament what I can only see as a right aim of aspiration, by light of a +certain philosophy arrived at in my own way, through my own experiences. +Philosophy is not the right word, either; the feeling I have is mainly esthetic. +In order not to be too unhappy in this world, in order to have a little +serenity, we must forgive everything, Aurora; that is what I have clearly seen. +It’s the only way. We must forgive events just as we forgive persons. And +we <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_248'></a>248</span>must love life. +I who so much of the time hate life, yet know better. We must love it as we must +love our enemies. The wherefore is a mystery, but peace of heart and beauty of +life are involved with doing it. We mustn’t mind being wounded, crucified. +We mustn’t mind anything, Aurora! We mustn’t be angry, the gestures +of it are ugly. I, who am always being angry, who sometimes groan aloud my +thoughts are so blasphemously bitter, I am telling you what I at bottom know. +The game is so unfair, it calls for magnanimity on our part to stake handsomely +and lose patiently. Patience, that’s it! We must be patient–patient +as a cab-horse! Pride and dignity demand that we be patient, absolutely. For the +sake of certain beautiful things and sweet people in the world, we must give it +a good name. But hear me! Hear me giving counsels to you–you who without +formulating these ideas act on them, whilst with me they are things which I see +as fit to be done but can never hope to do.”</p> + +<p>“You, too, Gerald, poor boy,” was Aurora’s simple +reply–“you, too, have had lots to try you.”</p> + +<p>He swept aside by a gesture the subject of his trials, removed it altogether +from the horizon, unwilling really that the interest be shifted from her to him. +She was equally determined, now that he had sympathized with her, to sympathize +with him.</p> + +<p>“I know you have,” she insisted; “I know you’ve had +lots to try you, just as you knew that I’d had lots. And you’re so +high-strung, so sensitive ... I never knew anybody like you. But there are good +times coming for you; I’m sure of it.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t in the least expect them.” He laughed a little +harshly. He had winced at her description of him as sensitive, <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_249'></a>249</span>high-strung. “Dear +incurable optimist, I don’t in the least expect them. It’s not +because there will be compensation that I hold it the decentest thing to put up +with the <i>mechancetés</i> of fate, fate’s ingenious stabs in the tender, +as they come, without giving the exhibition of one’s vulnerability, or +poisoning one’s system with hate!”</p> + +<p>“But there will,” she continued to insist, “there will be +compensations. I know it just as well.... You have so much talent, it’s +perfectly wonderful, and it’s only a question of time your having the +success you deserve. I, of course, am not educated up to your paintings, but +even I am beginning to see something more than I did at first. I can see, for +instance, that almost any fine painter, with a command of his colors, could have +done the picture down-stairs, but that only you in the whole world could have +done this one here. But, I say again, my opinion isn’t worth anything. But +there’s Leslie, who knows all about art and such things, doesn’t +she? Well, she ’s told me how wonderful you are. From what she’s +told me I’m perfectly sure you’ll make your mark in the +world.”</p> + +<p>Again Gerald swept her words aside like noxious obscuring cobwebs. +“What is, few know, and what will be, nobody knows whatever,” he +said. “But of all things, I beg, I beg you will not think of me as a +misunderstood genius! Art is not a passion with me, it is–an interest. And +don’t hold out for a lure that will reconcile me, my dear friend, anything +so vulgar as success! The single hope I have, when I am the most hopeful, is +that simply my metal, my resistance, may never quite fail. I shall not have +success, dear lady, though in your kindness you predict it. I shall go on and on +seeing with different eyes from other people, carving my cherry-stones in my own +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_250'></a>250</span>way, and made +unsociable by the failure of others to see how superior my way is. I shall go on +growing more eccentric and solitary, and call myself lucky quite beyond my +merits if those particular snares which the devil Melancholy sets for the +solitary may be escaped, that I may neither drink, nor drug myself, nor shoot +myself, nor marry the cook!”</p> + +<p>“Don’t talk like that, Gerald!” cried Aurora. +“Don’t say anything so awful! Now keep still while I talk, listen +while I tell you. You’re going on painting in your own way, but some +one–see?–some one is going to arise bright enough to recognize how +perfectly wonderful your pictures are. Keep still. You mustn’t despise +success, you know, success is what everybody needs and wants. You’re going +to succeed. Keep still. Stupid people will want to buy your pictures because the +people who know about such things have told the public how wonderful they are. +Then you’ll grow rich and famous. You won’t be either eccentric or +solitary. You’ll have hosts of admiring friends. I guess you could have +them now, if you wanted to. You won’t be melancholy. You’ll be +happy. In your home there will be a nice wife. Why are you supposing +you’ll never marry? A dear true beautiful girl who thinks the world of you +and that you think the world of. And when you’re an old gentleman with +your grandchildren playing at your knee, you’ll say to yourself, ‘Aurora +told me so!’”</p> + +<p>She was all cheering smiles and dimples again.</p> + +<p>“Be sure you remember now,” she said, holding up a finger and +shaking it to mark her bidding, “to say to yourself, ‘Aurora told me +so!’”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_251'></a>251</span>It was a pity +almost that Gerald should not have gone home at that point. He would have left +with undividedly fond and approving feelings; he would have left tied to Aurora +by a thousand sweet humanities in common, as well as impressed afresh by the +depth and mysteriousness of woman. But he had either forgotten or was +disregarding the hour–the clock on the mantelpiece, like most ornamental +clocks, was not going; the bliss of being warm for the first time in days, warm +through and through, warm to the middle of his heart, made him careless of +correctness; and so he stayed on, to be rudely jarred by and by out of his +contentment, and take with him finally into the night a renewed, even sharpened, +perception of those exasperating faults which made Mrs. Hawthorne, as he named +it, impossible.</p> + +<p>Because they seemed to be on such solid terms of friendship after the long +evening before the fire, when they had sorrowed together and sympathized; when +he had been permitted to hold and press her hands; when with a veritable mutual +outgoing of the heart they had vied in prophesying for each other fair and happy +days, Gerald found the boldness–and found it without much strain–the +boldness to utter a request which had burned on his lips before, but which he +had repressed, saying to himself that what Mrs. Hawthorne did was no affair of +his.</p> + +<p>“Aurora,” he said–she was after this evening Mrs. Hawthorne +to him only in the hearing of others,–“Aurora, I want to ask a +favor, a great favor.”</p> + +<p>“Go ahead. I guess it’s granted.”</p> + +<p>“I wish I felt sure; but I’m afraid. Say you will not take part +in the amateur variety show at <i>mi-carême</i>.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_252'></a>252</span>“Sakes!” cried Aurora, staring at him +with round eyes. “Ask me something easy! Ask me something else! I +can’t do that.”</p> + +<p>“You can. Of course you can, if you wish to. You have only to give some +excuse.”</p> + +<p>“An excuse? Not for a farm! I don’t want to. I’ve bound +myself. They expect me as much as anything. I couldn’t back out. +It’s so near the time, too. Why, it’s to make money for the +Convalescents’ Home. I’m a big feature of the show.”</p> + +<p>“I know you are, and I have a perfect horror of what you may do. I +can’t bear to think of the public sitting there gaping at you and +laughing.”</p> + +<p>“The public will be composed of friends. It’s all private. Give +it up? Not much! I tell you, it’s nuts to me! I expect to have lots of +fun. You’ve never seen, Geraldino, how funny I can be. You’ll see +that night.”</p> + +<p>“The voice runs that you’re going to appear as a nigger mammy and +sing plantation songs.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, does it? Well, that seems innocent. What objection do you see to +that?”</p> + +<p>“I did not call my request reasonable, dearest Aurora. I begged a +personal favor. You know the sort of nerves I have. It is like pouring acid on +them to think of you making a show of yourself.”</p> + +<p>She laughed, but would not yield; she treated his proposition like a spoiled +child’s demand for the moon, and, after condescending to tease like a boy, +he woke suddenly to the fact of being ridiculous. He dropped the subject with +the abruptness that causes the opponent nearly to topple over in surprise.</p> + +<p>He had sat for a long moment in silence when, realizing <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_253'></a>253</span>that this appeared ill-humored and a +piece of effrontery, he started in haste to talk again, choosing the first +subject that came into his mind, which was a thing he had meant to tell Aurora +this evening, but had not remembered until this moment. The wide distance +between the subject he dropped and the subject he took up would show, it was +hoped, how definitely he washed his hands of her doings.</p> + +<p>“If you have wished for revenge on our friend Antonia,” he said, +“you can be satisfied. She is in the most singular sort of +difficulty.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, is she? I’m sorry,” said Aurora. “Bless you! I +never wished her any harm.”</p> + +<p>“I went to see her yesterday. I had saved up my grievance and felt the +need to lay it before her. I think one should give an old friend who has behaved +badly the chance to make reparation, don’t you? After being angry as you +saw me, I yet did not want to break with her. She was very kind to me when I was +young. At the same time I could not let her rudeness to you pass. But I found +her in such trouble already when I went to see her yesterday that I said not one +word of my grievance. It will have to wait.”</p> + +<p>“You needn’t think you must pick her up on my account. I +don’t care. But what was the matter?”</p> + +<p>“Two of her oldest friends, through an unaccountable mistake, turned +into enemies. Both insist that under cover of a mask at the last +<i>veglione</i> she insulted them. Unfortunately, her best friends are not kept +by their actual knowledge of her from thinking it just possible she might desire +to amuse herself with getting a claw into them. She has more than once given +offense to her friends by putting them into her books. But Antonia swore to me +that she <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_254'></a>254</span> was +innocent, and begged me to convince De Brézé. The villa she lives in is his +property, and he has requested her to vacate it. The other aggrieved one, +General Costanzi, she fears may succeed in preventing the publication of her +next novel by threat of a libel suit.”</p> + +<p>“Well, that sounds bad. But what do they say she’s +done?”</p> + +<p>“The poor woman doesn’t even know what she is supposed to have +said; insulted them is all she can gather. Both maintain that though she tried +to alter her voice they recognized her, and will not accept her word for it that +she wore no such disguise as they describe. Which reminds me that the offender, +or the offender’s double, for I have an idea there were two masked alike, +came into your box early in the evening with a companion. You have not +forgotten–that black domino with the crow’s beak?”</p> + +<p>Aurora jumped on her seat with a cry of “Goodness gracious!”</p> + +<p>“What is it?” he asked, looking at her more attentively. She +appeared aghast.</p> + +<p>She did not answer at once, tensely trying to think.</p> + +<p>“Well,” she finally exclaimed, relaxing into limpness, +“I’ve been and gone and done it!”</p> + +<p>And as he waited–</p> + +<p>“I guess I did that insulting,” she added, and wiped her +brow.</p> + +<p>He thought for a moment that she might be acting out a joke, but in the next +accepted her perturbation as genuine.</p> + +<p>“Can’t you see through it even now I’ve told you?” +she asked.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_255'></a>255</span>He shook his +head.</p> + +<p>“Did you suppose I didn’t really know those two who came into the +box, the one who roared and the one who cawed? Well, I’m a better actress +than I supposed.”</p> + +<p>“But–”</p> + +<p>“And did you really suppose I was going home to bed just as the fun was +at its height? There again you’re simpler than I thought. Land! +Don’t I wish now that I had gone home!”</p> + +<p>“And you–”</p> + +<p>“We’d heard so much from everybody of the pranks they play at +these vegliones of yours that we wanted to play one, too–we wanted to +intrigue you and a lot of other people. The trouble seems to be we did it too +well. Land! I wish I hadn’t done it! I wish Heaven I’d consulted +you, or some one–We hatched it all up with Italo and Clotilde.”</p> + +<p>“Italo and Clotilde!”</p> + +<p>“They were the two who came into the box and didn’t say a word, +for fear of being known by their voices. Then, after you had so politely seen us +off, Estelle and I in the carriage put on black dominos and crows’ beaks, +and after driving around a couple of blocks came back and found Italo and +Clotilde waiting for us. Clotilde had put off her black domino in the +dressing-room; she was dressed under it exactly like her brother. D’you see now +how we worked it? Estelle took Clotilde’s arm, and I took Italo’s; +we separated and kept apart, and it was as if there had only been one couple, +the same as there had been since the beginning of the evening.”</p> + +<p>“I see.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve been dying to tell you about it ever since, but I <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_256'></a>256</span>just haven’t told +you. I don’t know what I was waiting for. I guess I was enjoying letting +you stay fooled. I had the greatest time, bad cess to it! talking to some people +I knew and to a lot that I didn’t. Italo would whisper to me beforehand +what to say, and I’d say it. I didn’t always know what it was about, +but nothing was further from my mind than to wish to insult anybody. I was so +excited I didn’t always notice what I did say, it just seemed playful and +funny and in the spirit of the rest. I went up to Charlie Hunt and spoke to him. +I put a flea in his ear, and I’m positive from his face that he +didn’t know me. I came near going up to you when you were talking with +that Mr. Guerra, but I was too much afraid you’d recognize me; +you’re so sharp, and, then, you’re the one most particularly who has +heard me talk with my English accent, which I put on on the night of the +<i>veglione</i> so as not to be known.”</p> + +<p>“Your English accent? That explains.”</p> + +<p>“What?”</p> + +<p>“Your English accent is a caricature of Antonia’s.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t have to tell you, I suppose, that I had no idea of +personating Antonia.”</p> + +<p>“The very difference between the original and your imitation might seem +the result of an effort on her part to disguise her speech.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve been a fool, of course, and some of the blame is mine, but +just let me get hold of Italo and watch me shake the teeth out of his confounded +little head. I remember perfectly speaking to the old general that we saw at +Antonia’s that day and to the old viscount who came to my ball.”</p> + +<p>“Do you remember what you said?”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_257'></a>257</span>“Not +exactly, but in both cases it seemed harmless. I wouldn’t have said it if +it hadn’t seemed harmless. I couldn’t have wished to insult them, +how could any one suppose it? To the general it was something about a +horse.”</p> + +<p>Gerald gave a sound of raging disgust.</p> + +<p>Aurora waited, watching him.</p> + +<p>“Was it very bad?” she asked finally, and held her breath for his +answer.</p> + +<p>“Just as bad as possible. Ceccherelli deserves to be flayed. Is the man +mad? And what, may I ask, did you say to De Brézé?”</p> + +<p>“I only remember it was something about ermine. I forgot until this +moment that I meant to ask Italo what the joke was about ermine. Was that too +very bad?”</p> + +<p>“Just as bad as possible. No, rather worse. Both relate to ancient bits +of scandal that no one would dare refer to–that would place a man +referring to them in the necessity to fight a duel. Mind you, mean and +discredited scandal. I won’t resurrect it to enlighten you. You can +interrogate Signor Ceccherelli, who has really distinguished himself in his +quality of habitué of this house and your particular friend.”</p> + +<p>“I know you’re angry, Gerald; I don’t wonder you’re +ready to call names. But the thing is simple, isn’t it, after all, now +that I understand. The harm done isn’t such as can never be mended. All I +have to do is write to Antonia and tell her I was the black crow, or, if you +advise, write to the two gentlemen I’ve offended.”</p> + +<p>“Heavens, no! you can’t do that!”</p> + +<p>“Why can’t I?”</p> + +<p>“You can’t; that’s all. You can’t admit that that +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_258'></a>258</span>little vermin is on +terms of intimacy with you permitting his prompting your Carnival witticisms, +and you can’t hope to make any one in Florence believe you didn’t +understand what you were saying.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I can, my friend; I can make them believe. I can speak the truth. +I can, at all events, prove that Antonia had nothing whatever to do with +it.”</p> + +<p>“No, no, no, I tell you! You can do nothing whatever about it. Your +name must not be allowed to appear in the matter at all. It would serve +Ceccherelli right that his part in the disgraceful business should be known, +dangerous little beast that he is. He would receive a lesson, and an excellent +thing it would be; but that, again, might involve you. One couldn’t trust +him to keep your name out of it. Besides, it would very likely ruin him, +disgusting little beggar.”</p> + +<p>“You leave him to me! He roared his throat to a frazzle the other +night, and can’t make a sound, but he’ll come round as soon as +he’s better, and then if I don’t give it to him! Little cuss!... But +I’m to blame, too, Gerald. You told me over and over that I oughtn’t +to encourage him to gossip as I did, but I went right on doing it because it was +as good as a play to hear him tell his queer stories in his queer English. It +amused me, I’ve no other excuse. I sort of knew all the time that it was +wrong. And so he got bolder and bolder and finally overstepped the line. And now +I’ve got my come-uppance. I’ll settle him, trust <i>me</i>, and +I’ll write to Antonia, and I’ll write the two gentlemen, if +you’ll just tell me where to write.”</p> + +<p>“Must I tell you again that you are above all things to do nothing of +the kind? Not certainly if you think of continuing to live in Florence. Leave +the matter to me. <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_259'></a>259</span>I +am well acquainted with everybody in question and shall be able to satisfy them, +I hope, while leaving them completely in the dark as to the real +culprit.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne appeared to hesitate.</p> + +<p>“I really should feel better if I could confess,” she said. +“It would take a whole load off my chest. You see, I don’t know your +ways of doing over here; that would be my way. They might all forgive me and say +I was just a fool. But if they didn’t, and, as you seem to fear, made +Florence too unpleasant to hold me, luckily I’m not tied down. I’m +free. I can pull up stakes when I please and go pitch my tent +elsewhere.”</p> + +<p>“The delightful independence of riches! The grandeur and detachment of +your point of view!” he spoke in a flare of excited bitterness. +“What you have said is equivalent to saying that your friends of Florence +are a matter of complete indifference to you!”</p> + +<p>“I <i>love</i> my friends of Florence, and you know it, Gerald Fane! And +I don’t believe they’d ever turn against me, no matter what trouble +I’d made for myself at that confounded veglione. So I don’t look to +leaving Florence just yet a while. You know I was only talking. I felt perfectly +safe–But it’s astonishing to me, dear boy, how ready you are to get +mad at me. When you know me so well, too. You ought to be ashamed.”</p> + +<p>“I am, dear. It’s my temper that’s bad. And you’re so +kind,” he meekly subsided. “But you <i>are</i> trying, you +know,” he added, after a moment, with returning vivacity, “what with +the extreme bad taste of your masked ball adventures, and your obstinate +determination to publish them, and then your insane obstinacy to make a show of +yourself as a colored nurse in this vaudeville–But I <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_260'></a>260</span> forgot, I had sworn to myself not to +speak of that again. May I count upon you at least to leave entirely to me the +matter of exculpating Antonia to General Costanzi and De Brézé?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, very well, if you think best.”</p> + +<p>“Will you promise solemnly to be silent on the whole matter?”</p> + +<p>“All right. But I don’t like it, Gerald. If I’ve done +wrong, I should feel lots easier in my mind if I could tell.”</p> + +<p>“That feeling of yours is precisely what I wish to guard against. Do +believe that in this matter the old Florentine I am knows better than you. +Promise.”</p> + +<p>“All right, I promise.”</p> + +<p>After a moment, “There’s no chance, is there, of your changing +your mind about the other matter”–he asked +sheepishly,–“the matter which I must not mention? No, I supposed +not. I am perfectly aware of my presumption in making any suggestion to you on +the subject. But if you knew how the thought of it torments me....”</p> + +<p>“You’ll get over it when you see me. You’ll just laugh with +the rest.”</p> + +<p>“Enough. Good night,” he said stiffly, but it is doubtful that +the word of leave-taking was anything more than a mode of expressing +displeasure, or that departure would immediately have succeeded upon his rising +from his chair, had not a sound of coughing from the neighboring room called up +before him an image of Harriet Estelle, wide awake, with a stern and feverish +eye fixed on the clock.</p> + +<p>He was startled into a consciousness of the lateness of the hour.</p> + +<p>“Good night!” he repeated in a guilty whisper. “I <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_261'></a>261</span>daren’t look at my +watch. I’m afraid I’ve kept you shockingly late.”</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>The night, when Gerald went out into it, was quieter and dryer. The streets +were altogether empty. He had quite forgotten having felt ill earlier in the +evening, and did not remember it even when he found his teeth chattering as a +result of coming out into the penetrating night air after sitting so close to +the fire. A thing he did remember, as he took out the large iron key to the door +of home, was that after all Helen Aurora telling him her story he did not know +how she came to be Mrs. Hawthorne. There must have been a second marriage there +in Denver, one of those little-considered episodes in American life, perhaps, +that are hardly thought worth mentioning. She sometimes spoke of “the +judge.” She had spoken to-night of a doctor, son of the judge. No, he +decided, it could not be either of them. The second husband, whoever he had +been, had clearly not been important, and he was dead, for Mrs. Foss had told +him explicitly that Aurora was a real, and not what is called in America a +grass, widow. From this second husband it must have been that she derived her +wealth.</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_262'></a>262</span><a id='link_14'></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<p>Even had Aurora been able to apprehend the measure and quality, the fine +shades, of Gerald’s dislike to the thought of her doing a turn in the +society variety-show, it is more than doubtful that she would have let it weigh +against her strong desire to take part. It is fine to have such delicate +sensibilities regarding the dignity of another, but it is foolishness to +entertain anything of the sort regarding your own.</p> + +<p>“If there’s one thing I love, it’s to dress up and play +I’m somebody else,” Aurora had said when first the subject of the +benefit performance was discussed.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hawthorne was so certain to give generously to the cause of the +convalescents that it was felt only fair to flatter her by seeking to enlist the +service of her talents; but apart from this, the promise of her appearance was +counted upon to create interest. She being obviously less restricted by +conventions than other people, there existed a permanent curiosity as to what +she might do next; and it could not be denied that she could, when she chose, be +funny.</p> + +<p>With the exception of one peculiar and superfastidious man, nobody had the +smallest objection to seeing her distort her fine mouth in comic grimaces, or +lend her fine figure to clownish acts. There were those, of course, who called +Mrs. Hawthorne vulgar; but too many persons liked <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_263'></a>263</span>her for the charge of vulgarity to go +undisputed or become loud. A good many had reason to like her.</p> + +<p>Aurora felt so sure of the general friendliness that not the smallest pang of +doubt, of deterring nervousness, assailed her while preparing her scene; and +when she once occupied the center of the stage the spirit of frolic so +possessed, the laughter of the people so elated and spurred, her, that she would +have turned somersaults to amuse them, and done it with success, no doubt, for +all that Aurora did on this occasion was funny and successful. Aurora, +intoxicated with applause, was that night in her simple way inspired. Her state +was, in fact, dangerous, discretion deserted her, and before the end, carried +away by the desire to please further, make laugh more, she had done a foolish +thing–a thing which she half knew, even while she did it, to be foolish, +perhaps wrong. But not having leisure to think, she took the risk, and in time +found herself, as a result of her mistake, to have made an enemy; yes, changed +her dear and helpful friend Charlie Hunt into a secret enemy.</p> + +<p>In an old palace on Via dei Bardi a stage had been set, filling one fourth of +the vast saloon. A goodly representation of Anglo-American society in Florence +crowded the rest. Beautifully hand-written programs acquainted these, through +thin disguises of name, with the personalities of the performers. Only one name +was really mysterious–Lew Dockstader.</p> + +<p>After a lively overture by piano, violin, and harp, the three Misses Hunt, in +Japanese costume, gave a prettily kittenish rendering of “Three Little +Maids from School,” selection from one of those Gilbert and Sullivan +operettas latterly enchanting both England and America. The tub-shaped <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_264'></a>264</span>Herr Spiegelmeyer, +dressed like a little boy and announced as an infant prodigy, played a concerto +of prodigious difficulty and length. Lavin, of the tenor voice rich in poetry +and prospects, humbled himself to sing, “There was a Lady Loved a +Swine,” with “Humph, quoth he”–s almost too realistic. +Then came Lew Dockstader.</p> + +<p>Now, report had spread that Mrs. Hawthorne was to appear as a negress; no one +was prepared to see her appear as a negro. The surprise, when it dawned on this +one and the other that that stove-black face with rolling eyes and big red and +white smile, that burly body incased in old, bagging trousers, those shuffling +feet shod in boots a mile too large for them and curling up at the toe, belonged +to Mrs. Hawthorne, the surprise was in itself a success. Then, as has been said, +Aurora was undeniably in the vein that evening.</p> + +<p>She had seen Lew Dockstader, the negro minstrel, once in her life, but at the +impressionable age, when you see and remember for good. It had been the great +theatrical event of her life. “What, haven’t seen Lew Dockstader! +Don’t know who he is!” thus she still would measure a person’s +ignorance of what is best in drama and song. She loved Lew. When she +impersonated him she did not try to imitate him, she simply felt herself to be +he.</p> + +<p>In this character she now told a string of those funny anecdotes which +Americans love to swap. She sang divers songs, pitched among her big, velvety +chest tones: “Children, Keep in de Middle ob de Road,” “Fluey, +Fluey,” “Come, Ride dat Golden Mule.” With the clumsy +nimbleness and innocent love of play of a Newfoundland pup, she flung out her +enormous feet in the dance.</p> + +<p>The crimson curtains drew together upon her retreat <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_265'></a>265</span>amid unaffected applause. Recalled, she +gave the encore prepared for such an event. Recalled over and over, like singers +of topical songs, to hear what she would say next, Aurora, a little off her head +with the new wine of glory, exhausted her bag of parlor tricks to satisfy an +audience so kind. Then it was that she made her mistake. Recalled still again, +she invented on the spot one last thing to do. She recited a poem indelibly +learned at public school, giving it first as a newly landed Jewish pupil would +pronounce it, then a small Irishman, then a small Italian, finally an English +child. To add the latter was her mistake, because her caricature of the English +speech was very special.</p> + +<p>The sound of it started an idea buzzing in the head of one of her +audience–Charlie Hunt, who sat well in front, and in applauding raised his +hands above the level of his head so that actors and audience alike might be +encouraged by seeing that he gave the patronage of his approval.</p> + +<p>He did not immediately connect Aurora’s English with a rankling +remembered episode, but the thing was burrowing in his subconsciousness, and an +arrow of light before long pierced his brain. He reconsidered the conclusion +upon which he had rested with regard to the black crow who at the +<i>veglione</i> had put to him an impertinent question. Could it be that not the +particular lady whom he had fixed upon in his mind, as being fond of Landini, +consequently jealous of Mrs. Hawthorne, had by it expressed her spite, but +that–? He saw in a flash a different possibility.</p> + +<p>When the show was over and the performers had issued from the dressing-rooms +in the clothes of saner moments, Charlie Hunt approached Mrs. Hawthorne, who, +flushed <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_266'></a>266</span>with +excitement, was looking almost too much like an American Beauty rose. He paid +his compliments in a tone tinged with irony, all the while watching her with a +penetrating, inquiring, ironical eye. But the irony was wasted. She was too +pleasantly engrossed to perceive it.</p> + +<p>“Has anybody here seen Mr. Fane?” she asked after a time, when +her glances had vainly sought him in every corner.</p> + +<p>Estelle told her that she had not set eyes on him the whole evening; and, +which was more conclusive, little Lily Foss said he had not been there.</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_267'></a>267</span><a id='link_15'></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<p>Aurora, unable to see beyond the footlights, had never dreamed but Gerald was +among the audience. Her capers had at moments been definitely directed at him. +Discovering that he had kept away, she was not so much hurt as puzzled.</p> + +<p>“Who’d have thought he cared enough about it to be so +mean!” she said to herself. “Well,” she said further, +“let him alone. He’ll come round in a day or two.”</p> + +<p>She really expected him that same day. When he did not come, or the day +after, or the day after that, she tried to recall passage for passage their talk +on the subject of the show. She did not remember his saying anything that +amounted to giving her a choice between renouncing it or renouncing his +friendship.</p> + +<p>Then she reviewed all she knew of him; and his present conduct, if he were by +this avoidance trying to punish her for doing what it was the prerogative of her +native independence to do, did not seem in accordance with his known regard for +the rights of others.</p> + +<p>Aurora did not know what to think. From hour to hour she looked for a call, a +message, a letter, and because the time while waiting seemed long, she neglected +to note that the actual time elapsed was not more than Gerald had sometimes +allowed to pass without her attributing his silence to offence. He had his work, +he had other friends; Abbé Johns might be in town again visiting him. This +silence, <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_268'></a>268</span>however, +had a different value, she thought, from other silences. They had seemed so much +better friends after their confidences that long evening over the fire; she +expected more of him than she had done before it.</p> + +<p>At other moments she was disposed to find fault with herself. She supposed +she was a big coarse thing, unable to appreciate the feelings of a man who +apparently hadn’t as many thicknesses of skin as other folks.</p> + +<p>It was at such a moment, when she made allowances for him, that she thought +of writing, making it easy for him to drop his grouch and return. But here +Aurora felt a difficulty. Aurora thought well, in a general way, of her powers +as a letter-writer, and she was proud of her beautifully legible Spencerian +hand; but for such a letter as she wished to send Gerald fine shades of +expression were needed beyond what she could compass. She was fond of Gerald; in +this letter she must not be too fond, yet she must be fond enough. What hope +that a blockhead would strike the exact middle of so fine a line?</p> + +<p>She could obviate the difficulty by sending him a formal invitation to +dinner. But suppose she should receive formal regrets?</p> + +<p>After that the whole thing must be left to him; the tactful letter meant to +hurry him back would no longer be possible.</p> + +<p>“Oh, bother!” said Aurora, and formed a better, bolder plan.</p> + +<p>Aurora had not seen the plays, had not read the books, where the going of the +heroine to visit the hero at his house for whatever good reason under the sun +has such damaging results for her fair fame. Aurora was innocent of good +society’s hopeless narrowness on the subject. If she made <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_269'></a>269</span>a secret of her plan to +Estelle it was merely because Estelle had permitted herself wise words one day, +warnings, with regard to Gerald, in whom she specifically did not wish her +friend to “become interested.”</p> + +<p>“You’re too different,” Estelle had said. +“You’re like a fish and a bird. I won’t say I don’t like +him. He’s nice in a way, but it’s not our way, Nell. You’d be +miserable with him, first or last.”</p> + +<p>“My dear,” Aurora had replied, “if you knew the sort of +thing we talk about when you’re not there you wouldn’t worry. If you +can see Gerald Fane in the part of my beau you must be cracked. And if you think +I’m soft on him, you’re only a little bit less cracked. Can’t +you see we’re just friends? It’s nice for him to come here and +it’s nice for us to have him. We want friends, don’t we?”</p> + +<p>“All I say is don’t go ahead with your eyes shut till you find +before you know it that you’re landed in a case of, ‘Mother, I can’t +live without him!’ For, Nell, it won’t do, you know it +won’t.”</p> + +<p>“My dearest girl, of course I know, but not half so well as he knows! +Bless you, Hat, do you forget all Leslie told us about him and his affair? And +do you forget my little affair? Do you suppose either of us wants to try +again?”</p> + +<p>“Indeed, I hope you will try again, both of you. But not together, +Nell. I’ve got the man all picked out for you; you know perfectly I mean +Tom Bewick. There’s the one for you, Nell. Big, healthy, kind. Good sense. +Good temper. Your own kind of person, Nell, and not a queer bird from a +menagerie. Don’t go and spoil everything by getting tangled up over here. +You know as well <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_270'></a>270</span>as +I do that Gerald Fane, take him just as a man, can’t hold a candle to +Doctor Tom.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve never thought of comparing them. I don’t see any use +in doing it. Tom’s Tom and Gerald’s Gerald. So far as Gerald goes, +you can set your heart at rest and bank on this: I know just as well as you do, +and he knows just as well as I do, that we couldn’t pull in harness +together any more than–just as you say, a fish and a bird. Neither of us +is thinking of such a thing. But why mustn’t a fish and a bird have +anything to say to each other? He might like the cut of her fins and she might +fancy the color of his wings. They could sympathize together, couldn’t +they, if nothing else?” Aurora’s eyebrows had with this tried to +signify her entire capacity to take care of herself and her own business.</p> + +<p>But not wishing to rouse any further uneasiness in her friend, she no more +after that spoke frankly of Gerald whenever he came into her mind. And when she +declined Estelle’s invitation to go with her to Mlle. Durand’s, +where she would hear the pupils of the latter recite Corneille and Racine, she +did not tell her what she had planned to do instead, fully intending, however, +to reveal it later.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>Gerald meanwhile did not flatter himself imagining Aurora unhappy because he +stayed away longer than had lately been quite usual. Time dragged with him, but +the calendar told him that just so many days, no more, had passed. He pictured +her going her cheerful gait, occasionally saying, perhaps, “I wonder what +has become of Stickly-prickly?”</p> + +<p>He had not gone to the mid-Lent entertainment as a matter of course. Aurora +had shown small knowledge <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_271'></a>271</span>of him when she thought he would consent to see her +disport herself before the public as a negress. On the day after, when he +learned that she had been the star of the evening as a negro, his frenzied +disgust itself warned him of the injustice, the impropriety, of exhibiting it to +her. He chose to remain away until it should have sufficiently worn down to be +governable. By that time the poor man had developed an illness, that cold of +which for some weeks he had been carrying around in his bones the +premonition.</p> + +<p>With reddened eyelids and thickened nose, a sore throat and a cough, he felt +himself no fit object for a lady’s sight. He stayed in to take care of +himself.</p> + +<p>Giovanna knew what to do for her <i>signorino</i> when he was +<i>raffreddato</i>. She built a little fire in the studio; she brought his light +meals to him in his arm-chair before it. She administered remedies. His bed was +warmed at night by her <i>scaldino</i>. Gaetano was sent to Vieusseux’s +for an armful of books. All day Gerald sat by the fire and read, and sometimes +dozed and dreamed, and read again. And days passed, while his cold held on.</p> + +<p>He thought of writing Aurora to tell her. But if he told her, she would at +once come to see him; of so much one could be sure. And he did not want her to +come. The eccentric fellow did not want her to come precisely because he wanted +her to come so much.</p> + +<p>“This is the way it begins,” he said to himself, with horror, +when he became fully aware that his nerves, now that he could not go to find +Aurora when he chose, were suggesting to him all the time that the presence of +Aurora was needed to quiet that sense of want, of maladjustment to conditions, +haunting him like the desire for sleep.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_272'></a>272</span>At sight of his +danger he became very clear-headed. The man who sees a snare and walks into it +deserves his fate, surely.</p> + +<p>“It is time to stop it,” he said. And he laid down for himself +new rules of life.</p> + +<p>Fortunately, he had at hand some absorbing books. Dostoiewsky’s +“Crime and Punishment” could effectively take him out of +himself.</p> + +<p>But the print was fine and crowded, he was weakened by illness, he was forced +now and then to stop and rest with swimming head. Then at once would return, +like the demon in fair disguise tempting some hermit of the desert, the thought, +“What is Aurora doing? If Aurora knew I was ill, she would come.” +And the imagination of her coming would shed a feverish gladness all along +those petulant, ill-treated, starved nerves. “What have I to do with +Aurora, or Aurora with me?” he would ask, furiously, the incongruity of +what had happened to him calling forth sometimes a desperate laugh. But Nature +laughs at man’s ideas of congruity; remembering that, he could only hold +his hands against his eyes and try to press the image of Aurora out of +existence.</p> + +<p>Gerald, however, was much stronger than his nerves. He could see his own +case, even with a pulse at ninety, as well as another man’s. And his will +was firmer than might have been thought. He knew something of a human +man’s constitution, how it can circumvent a man, or how a man, well on his +guard, can circumvent it. He formed the project of interrupting his visits to +the Hermitage.</p> + +<p>After this resolution he regarded those returns of earth-born desire for +Aurora’s balmy touch and tranquilizing <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_273'></a>273</span>neighborhood as a man who had taken an heroic and +sure remedy against ague might regard the fluctuations in his body of heat and +cold continuing still for a little while. As to how Aurora would take his +defection, all should be managed with so much art and politeness that the most +sensitive could not be hurt. By the time the new important work which he would +make his excuse was accomplished, his cure would have been accomplished as +well.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, each time the door-bell rang–it was not often, +certainly–his attention was taken from his book, and he listened. And so, +on Mlle. Durand’s French afternoon, Gerald, having heard the bell, was +listening, but with his face to the fire and his back to the door. When Giovanna +knocked, “Forward!” he said, without turning. The door opened.</p> + +<p>“<i>C’è quella signora.</i>” “There is that +lady,” dubiously announced Giovanna.</p> + +<p>Gerald turned, and beheld that lady filling the doorway.</p> + +<p>Then it was as if a bright trumpet-blast of reality, breaking upon a bad +dream, dispelled it; or as if a fresh wind, blowing over stagnant water, swept +away the cloud of noxious gnats. All he had latterly been thinking and feeling +seemed to Gerald insane, sickly, the instant he beheld Aurora’s comradely +smile. He was ashamed; he found himself on the verge of stupid, unexplainable +tears.</p> + +<p>“Well!” said Aurora.</p> + +<p>At the sound they were placed back on the exact footing of their last +meeting, before thinking and conjecturing about each other in absence had built +up between them barriers of illusion.</p> + +<p>“Well!” he said, but less pleasantly, because he was mortified by +the awareness of himself as an uninviting <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_274'></a>274</span>sight, with his old dressing-gown, neglected beard, +and the unpicturesque manifestations of a cold.</p> + +<p>But Aurora’s face was reassuring; she did not confuse him with the +accidents of his dressing-gown and beard and cold. Aurora’s face beamed, +so much was she rejoicing in her own excellent sense, which had told her that +one look at each other would do a thousand times more to make things right +between them than innumerable letters could have done.</p> + +<p>“I didn’t know what to think,” she said, “so I came +to find out. First I’d think you were mad at me, then I’d think you +had gone away and written me, and the letter hadn’t reached me, Gaetano +had lost it on the road. Then I’d think you might be sick, and there was +nobody to let your friends know. I don’t know what I didn’t think +of. What made you not send me word?”</p> + +<p>“I did not know you would be uneasy. I did not rightly measure, it +seems, the depth of your kindness. I should certainly have written to you before +long in case I had continued unable to go to see you.”</p> + +<p>“How long have you been sick?”</p> + +<p>“I am not sick, dearest lady. I only have a cold. In order to make it +go away more quickly I have to remain in the house. But how good, how very good +of you to come! Sit down, please do, and warm yourself. I will ring for +Giovanna, and she will make us some tea.”</p> + +<p>Aurora, smiling all the time with the pleasure she felt in not finding him +angry or estranged or in any way altered toward her, took the arm-chair from +which he had just risen, while he drew a lighter chair to the other side of the +chimney-place. His fires were not like hers. Two half-burned sticks and a form +of turf smoldered sparingly on a mound of hot ashes; he eagerly cast on a fagot, +and added wood with, for once, an extravagant hand. Then, looking over at her, +he smiled, too.</p> + +<div class='figcenter'> +<img src='images/illus-272.jpg' id="img005" alt='' /> +<p class='center caption'> +Gerald turned, and beheld that lady +</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_276'></a>276</span>“Now tell +me all about yourself,” she commanded. “I want to know what +you’re doing for this cold of yours.”</p> + +<p>“Please let us not talk about my cold,” he at once refused. +“Let us talk about something agreeable. Tell me the news. I have not seen +any one for days. I have been living in Russia with a poor young man who had +committed a murder, also with a most sympathetic being who found the world +outside an institution for the feeble-minded too much for him.” By a +gesture toward the books on the table he gave her a clue to his meaning.</p> + +<p>“You say you haven’t seen any one for days,” she said. +“Now the Fosses, for instance, who are your best friends, don’t you +let them know when you’re shut in?”</p> + +<p>“You have no conception, evidently, of my bearishness, dear friend. +They have. They never wonder when they do not see me or hear from me for +weeks.”</p> + +<p>“I know, and it seems funny; it seems sort of forlorn to me. I saw them +the other day and asked if any one had seen you since the night of the show. +They said no, but didn’t seem to think anything about it.”</p> + +<p>“It’s not really long since then. How are they all?”</p> + +<p>“All right, and busy as bees. They’ve no time to come and see me, +or anybody else, I guess. Brenda’s coming back to be married in May, and +they’re flying round getting her things ready. All her linen is being +beautifully embroidered....”</p> + +<p>They went on talking, without much thought of what they said. It was +immaterial, really, what they said, or even whether they listened to each other, +while they had in <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_277'></a>277</span>common the comfort of sitting together in front of +the fire after a long separation filled with doubts and dismays. She told him +about the Convalescents’ Home, the sum they had raised for it. No word, +prudently, was spoken by either of her share in raising it. He told her about +the Russian novels. A third person might perfectly have been present, for +anything intimate in their conversation. Gerald was scrupulously careful, for +his part, that this should be so. The third person would never have divined how +far for the moment that chimney-corner transcended, in the sentiments of the +parties seated before it, any other corner of the earth.</p> + +<p>Aurora’s attention became closer when Gerald related his interviews +with De Brézé and Costanzi, both of whom he had succeeded in convincing that +Antonia had had nothing to do with intriguing them at the <i>veglione</i>, and +had left to digest as best they could their curiosity concerning the mysterious +masker mistaken for her. He had been obliged to give his word that he knew on +absolutely good authority who this person was.</p> + +<p>His attention, on the other hand, was complete when she told him how she had +dealt with Ceccherelli; she was considerate enough to-day to make the effort to +pronounce the gentleman’s cognomen.</p> + +<p>“I was savage at him, you remember,” she said. “I was going +to take his head off. Then when it came to it, and I had told him what I thought +of him and the whole disgraceful scrape he had got me into–Oh, I went for +him, hammer and tongs! Incidentally, I made him tell me what it was I had said. +Pretty bad, wasn’t it!–Well, do you know, he cried, he felt so. He +just cried on his knees, and didn’t try to get rid of any of the blame. +All <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_278'></a>278</span>he wanted was +that I should forgive him. And what could I do? As long, particularly, as I knew +that a good deal of the fault was my own.... So now he comes to the house with a +look as if he’d just been baptized. And he tells me only stories fit, he +says, for a convent. Here is a sample, if you’d like to hear. Mrs. X, as +he called her, who lives in a palace not a thousand miles, he said, from Piazza +degli Anti-nory, and who had given Mr. B. reasons for not liking her, was seen +by him, in a suspiciously simple dress, going suspiciously on foot, in a little +suspiciously out of the way street, at a considerable distance from Piazza degli +Anti-nory. The gentleman followed her stealthily into a house he saw her enter, +thinking, you know, he would find out something to her discredit. And what did +he find out but that she was secretly visiting and relieving the poor! The +brilliant society lady, whom he wished to be revenged on because, as I gathered, +she had scorned his dishonorable love-making, was secretly the angel of the +poor.... Don’t you think that’s a nice story? He tells me nothing +now that’s less nice than that. We’re reformed characters. He has +asked my permission to dedicate to me a beautiful piece of music he has just +composed, and which is called–but in French–‘Prayer of the +Evening.’”</p> + +<p>Both of them were pleasantly aware of a tray placed on the table near them, +as if descended from heaven, laden with teapot, bread and butter, jam. Neither +of them really saw Giovanna, who brought it in, or was struck by the stern +expression of her face.</p> + +<p>Aurora, never sorry of something to eat, turned her attention to the tray. +Gerald wished to serve her, and she first noticed his weakness when she saw the +teapot tremble <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_279'></a>279</span>slightly in his hand. She went on chattering, but +she was observing him.</p> + +<p>“Is your carriage waiting before the door?” he suddenly asked, +after a space during which she had suspected that he was not properly attending +to what she said. Aurora’s monogram, daintily executed, adorned the +door-panels of her carriage.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” she answered. “Why?”</p> + +<p>As if he had not heard, he changed the subject. After a while he asked, again +irrelevantly:</p> + +<p>“How was it that Miss Madison did not come with you this +afternoon?”</p> + +<p>“She was going to a different tea-party.” Supposing that his +question was a way of politely desiring news of Miss Madison, she went on to +talk of her.</p> + +<p>“She was going to her French teacher’s, who is having a French +afternoon where they’re supposed to talk nothing but French. What would I +have been doing there? But Estelle is getting to talk the French language +exactly as well as her own.... That reminds me. A thing I’ve wanted to +tell you. If you should notice that Busteretto seems to be rather more her dog +than mine, don’t you say anything, or care. The fact is Estelle loves him +more than I do. That’s all there is about it. Which isn’t saying +that I don’t love him. But Estelle’s silly over him, in the regular +old maid way, as I tell her. When he wouldn’t eat his dinner this noon, I +had all I could do to make her eat hers, she was so troubled. And nothing ailed +him, I guess, but that he’d picked up something in the kitchen. What I +wanted to say was, don’t you think it’s because I don’t value +your present, if you should notice by and by that I seem to have given up my +claims to <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_280'></a>280</span>Busteretto. That sort of alive present has a will of +its own. The little thing took to her from the first more than he did to me. +Shall I tell Estelle that you wished to be remembered?”</p> + +<p>“Pray do.”</p> + +<p>“She’ll be sorry to hear you’re sick. Don’t say that +again, Gerald,” she silenced him, letting her anxiety at last plainly +appear. “Don’t tell me you aren’t sick, for I know better. +It’s been taking away my appetite to see you make believe to eat, and +choke over it. Your cough is so tight it sounds as if it tore your lungs. Give +me your hand. It’s as hot, dear boy, and as dry!... Wait, let me feel your +pulse.”</p> + +<p>He knew that his pulse was high, that his temples ached, that a disposition +to shiver accompanied the volcanic heat of his blood.</p> + +<p>He laughed at her light-headedly while with serious concentration she counted +the beats in his wrist.</p> + +<p>“I’m going to stop at Doctor Gage’s on my way home,” +she said, letting go his hand, and not heeding what he said. “And +I’m going to tell him to come and see you.”</p> + +<p>“Please do not! If I need a doctor, there is my own, an Italian, the +same for years.”</p> + +<p>“An Italian? Do you think they’re as good?”</p> + +<p>“Better for my own case.”</p> + +<p>“Gerald, it’s my advice to you to go right to bed and let your +doctor come and prescribe. A cold is nothing in a way, but a neglected cold can +grow into a mean sort of thing. Say you’ll do it. Don’t you know how +good it will feel to you just to give in and go to bed and let some one else do +all the looking after you? Oh, I wish I could speak Italian enough to have a +talk with your Giovanna.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_281'></a>281</span>“Giovanna +has taken care of me and my <i>malanni</i> for years. She gives me tar-water, and +rice-water, and tamarind-water, and linden-tea, and cassia. She threatened me +this morning with a sinapism if I were not better by evening. I shall be better. +I do not wish for a sinapism.”</p> + +<p>“Is that a poultice on your chest? I guess it’s what you need. +Now, if I have any influence with you, Gerald, if you love me one little bit, +you’ll promise to go right to bed, and you’ll give me your +doctor’s address so that on my way home I can leave word for him to +come.”</p> + +<p>“You shall not take that trouble. I can send Gaetano.”</p> + +<p>“You promise me you’ll do it, then?”</p> + +<p>“I seem to have been left no choice, dear lady.”</p> + +<p>“That’s real sweet of you. You’ll go to bed the minute +I’ve gone?”</p> + +<p>“Yes. But don’t go quite yet!”</p> + +<p>“With that temperature, I don’t see how you can care who stays or +who goes, or anything in the world but to lay your head down on a pillow. I +won’t stay any longer now. Go to bed like a good boy. To-morrow I’ll +run in and see how you’re getting along.”</p> + +<p>His last word was, after a moment of seeming embarrassment:</p> + +<p>“I hope Miss Madison will be able to come with you next +time.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, yes,” said Aurora, lightly, taking it for a mere amiable +message with which he was charging her for Estelle.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>Fever no doubt colored all Gerald’s dreams that night, and was in part +responsible next day for his thoughts, as he passed from languor to +restlessness, and from impatience <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_282'></a>282</span>back to the peace of the certain knowledge that +before evening he should have visitors–fair visitors.</p> + +<p>When it seemed to him nearly time for them, he ordered Giovanna to make the +room of a beautiful and perfect neatness, hiding all the medicine bottles and +humble signs that one is mortal. She was directed to lay across his white +counterpane that square of brocade which often formed a background for his +portraits. She was asked to brush his hair and beard, and wrap his shoulders in +an ivory-white shawl, thick with silk embroideries, which had been his +mother’s. In a little green bronze tripod a black pastille was set +burning, which sent up, slow, thin, and wavering, a gray spiral of perfume.</p> + +<p>Keenly as he was waiting, he yet did not know when the ladies arrived. He +opened his eyes, and they were there, shedding around them a beautiful freshness +of health and the world outside. Estelle, in a soft green velvet edged with +silver fur, held toward him an immense bunch of flowers. Aurora, in a +wine-colored cloth bordered with bands of black fox, tendered a basket heaped +with fruit. Both smiled, and had the kind look of angels.</p> + +<p>They sat down beside his bed. They talked with him; all was just as usual. +They asked the old questions pertinent to the case, he made the old answers, and +by an effort kept up for some minutes a drawing-room conversation with them.</p> + +<p>Then Aurora said:</p> + +<p>“Hush! You mustn’t talk any more!” And when he thought she +was going away, he wondered to see her take off her gloves.</p> + +<p>She stood over him; he wondered what she meant to do. She felt of his +forehead with her cool hand. With her <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_283'></a>283</span>palms, which were like her voice, of a velvet not +too soft, she smoothed his forehead and temples; she stroked them over and over +in a way that seemed to draw the ache out of his brain. Her fingers moved +soothingly, magnetically, all around his eye-sockets, pressing down the eyelids +and comforting them.</p> + +<p>At first he resisted. Perversely he frowned, as if the thing increased his +pain, annoyed him beyond words. He all but cried out to the well-meaning hands +to stop.</p> + +<p>“Doesn’t it feel good?” asked Aurora, anxiously.</p> + +<p>He relaxed. Without opening his eyes, he nodded to thank her, and as he +yielded himself up to the hands it seemed to him that those passes drew his +spirit after them quite out of his body.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>“I don’t think I’ll go up with you,” Estelle said +unexpectedly when on the next day they stopped before the narrow yellow door in +Borgo Pinti. “I’ll wait here in the carriage. I’m nervous +myself to-day. Give my best regards to Gerald. I hope you’ll find him +better.”</p> + +<p>Aurora did not take time to examine into the possible reasons for her +friend’s choice. She climbed the long stairs sturdily, managing her breath +so that she did not have to stop and rest on the way.</p> + +<p>She followed the stern Giovanna, unsubdued by the latter’s hard and +jealous looks, to the door of her master’s chamber.</p> + +<p>She went toward the bed, smiling at the sick man over an armful of white +lilacs.</p> + +<p>He half rose in his bed and quickly, disconnectedly, impetuously, said:</p> + +<p>“My dear friend, this is most good of you. I’m sure I <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_284'></a>284</span>thank you very much. +I’m very, very much better, as you can see. I shall be out again in a day +or two.” He was visibly trembling; his eyes flared with excitement. +“That being the case, my dear lady, I earnestly beg you will not trouble +to come like this every day.” He stopped to choke and cough, then +wrenching himself free from strangulation–“Aurora,”–he +changed his key and tune,–“do let me be ill in peace! Here I am on +my back, with a loosened grip on everything, and it’s taking an unfair +advantage to invade my privacy as you do. Take away those lilacs with you, +won’t you, please? We haven’t any more vases to put them in; +they’d have to be stuck in a bedroom water-jug. Giovanna won’t let +me have flowers in my room, anyhow; she says they are bad for me. Don’t be +offended! I know you mean nothing but to be kind, but the thing you are doing is +devilish.... What do you think I am made of? I don’t want you to be +offended, but I have got to say what I can to keep you from coming to this house +and troubling me in my illness. I have got to say it plainly and fully because +you, Aurora, never understand anything that is not said to you in so many words. +I might try and try my best to convey the same idea to you in a gentle and +gentlemanly way, and not a scrap of good would be done. I’ve got to talk +like a beast. I wish to be alone. Is that clear? I’ve just struggled and +waded my way out of one quagmire; I do not wish to enter another. Is that plain? +I wish to feel free to be ill as much and as long as I choose. It concerns +nobody. It concerns nobody if I die. It would be an excellent thing, saving me +the trouble later of blowing out my brains.... My God, Aurora, have you +understood?” he almost shouted.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Aurora in a voice that sounded pale, even as <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_285'></a>285</span>her face looked pale. +“I have understood, and I won’t come again. Just one thing, Gerald. +Put your arms under the bed clothes and keep them there.”</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>“Whether he’s better or worse I truly couldn’t tell +you,” Aurora said in answer to Estelle’s first question. After a +moment she added, “I can’t make him out.”</p> + +<p>Estelle saw that she was deeply troubled, and, herself troubled at the sight, +did not press her for explanations.</p> + +<p>During the drive home Aurora made only one other remark. It was delivered +with a certain emphasis.</p> + +<p>“<i>One</i> thing I know: I sha’n’t go <i>there</i> again in +a hurry!”</p> + +<p>Her lilacs, after wondering a moment what to do with them, she had quietly +deposited outside Gerald’s entrance-door.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>It was unimaginable, of course, that the childhood’s friend should so +disregard the rules of the game as to leave her old playmate’s curiosity +long unsatisfied. Estelle accordingly learned before evening that Gerald had +been guilty of an attack of nerves, in the course of which he had said something +which Aurora did not like. What this was Aurora would not tell, saying it seemed +unfair to repeat things Gerald had spoken while he was not himself and which he +perhaps did not mean. From which Estelle judged that Aurora had already softened +since she returned to the carriage looking as grim as she was grieved.</p> + +<p>That Aurora had something on her mind no observant person could fail to see, +and Estelle was not unprepared to hear her say as she did on the third morning +at breakfast, after fidgeting a moment with a pinch of bread:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_286'></a>286</span>“I’m +so uneasy I don’t know what to do. That boy is much sicker than he +knows,” she went on to justify her disquietude, “and he’s in a +bad mood for getting well. I don’t believe Italian doctors know much, +anyhow. I’ve heard that they still put leeches on you. All he has to take +care of him, day and night, is that old servant-woman What’s-her-name, +who, he told me himself, doctors him with herb-tea. I’m so uneasy! The +sort of cold he has, I tell you, can turn any minute into something you +don’t want. He’s all run down and a bad subject for pneumonia. +I’m thinking I shall have to just go to the door and find out how he +is.”</p> + +<p>“You could send a servant to inquire,” suggested Estelle.</p> + +<p>Aurora appeared to reflect; she might have been trying to find a reason for +not taking the hint, but she said, “No; I should feel better satisfied to +go myself.”</p> + +<p>At the last moment, when they were ready to start, Estelle found +Busteretto’s nose hot, and decided not to go. She stayed at home and +called a doctor. For some days the pet had not seemed to her in quite his usual +form.</p> + +<p>Aurora, climbing Gerald’s stairs this time, felt very uncertain and +rather small. The street door, when she had pulled the bell-handle, had +unlatched with a click, but no voice had called down, and when she reached the +top landing the door in front of her stood forbiddingly closed. She waited for +some minutes, wondering whether she were doing right. Suppose Gerald were enough +better to be up again and, Giovanna being out, should himself come to open the +door. How would she feel, caught slinking back, after she had been requested +loudly and roundly to stay away?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_287'></a>287</span>Well, set aside +how she felt, the object of her coming would have been reached, wouldn’t +it? She would know that he was better. She rang and listened.</p> + +<p>Certain, as soon as she heard them, whose footsteps were on the other side of +the door, she held in readiness her Italian. She counted on understanding +Giovanna’s answer to her question, for she had, as she boasted, +“quite a vocabulary.” But much more than to this she trusted to the +talent which Italians have for making their meaning clear through pantomime and +facial expression.</p> + +<p>As soon, in fact, as Giovanna opened the door, and before the woman had said +a word in reply to “<i>Come sta Signor Fane?</i>” Aurora had +understood.</p> + +<p>Giovanna’s eyes, stained with recent weeping, looked up at the visitor +without severity or aversion, seeking for sympathy; the unintelligible account +she gave of her master’s condition was broken up with sighs.</p> + +<p>Aurora felt her heart turn cold, and such agitation seize her as made her +reckless of all but one thing.</p> + +<p>“I shall have to see for myself,” she thought.</p> + +<p>With the haste of fear, she flew before Giovanna down the long hallway, +around the dark corner, to the door of Gerald’s room. It was half open. +Checking herself on the threshold, she thrust in her head.</p> + +<p>He was so lying in his bed that beyond the outlined shape under the covers +she could see of him only a dark spot of hair. And she felt she must see his +face, whether asleep or awake, to get some idea.... She tiptoed in with the +least possible noise. At once, without turning, he asked something in Italian, +and speaking forced him to cough; and after he had finished coughing, Aurora, +who was near, <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_288'></a>288</span>could +hear his breathing rustle within him like wind among dead leaves.</p> + +<p>Giovanna had gone to the head of his bed and whispered a communication. Upon +which he twisted sharply around, and Aurora, moved by an overpowering impulse, +rushed to his side.</p> + +<p>“Hush!” she said at once. “Don’t try to talk; it +makes you cough. I just wanted to know how you were. It would be funny, now +don’t you think so yourself, if, such friends as we’ve been, I +should stop caring anything about you because you were cross the other day? I +had to come and see if there wasn’t something we could do for +you.”</p> + +<p>The attempt to speak choked him again; he had to lift himself finally quite +up from his pillow to get breath. Quicker than Giovanna, Aurora snatched up a +gray shawl from a chair to put over his shoulders. The room felt to her +stagnantly cold. He stopped her hand in the act of folding him in, and she knew +that it was not the Gerald of last time, this one who, with an afflictive little +moan, clasped and pressed her hand.</p> + +<p>She hushed him, every time he tried to speak, until his breathing had quieted +down, when he came out despite her forbidding with a ragged, interrupted, but +obstinate eagerness:</p> + +<p>“How can I ever thank you enough for coming, dear, dear Aurora? I have +lived in one prolonged nightmare ever since I saw you, knowing I had behaved +like a blackguard, and fearing I should never have a chance to beg your pardon. +I thought I should never see you again. And here you are, so generous, so +kind!”</p> + +<p>“Hush, Gerald! Don’t make anything of it. Of <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_289'></a>289</span>course I came. Keep quiet now; you +mustn’t try to talk.”</p> + +<p>“Dearest woman,” he insisted, with his voice full of tears, +“I don’t even know what I said to you, but I know that the whole +thing was atrocious. You standing there like a big angel, with your innocent +arms full of flowers, and I barking at you like a cur!”</p> + +<p>“Nothing of the sort. You were sick. Who lays up anything against a +sick man?”</p> + +<p>“Excuse it in me like this, Aurora, if you can: that having such regard +for you, I had pride before you and could not endure that you should see me when +I felt myself to be a disgusting object. So, mortified to the point of torture, +I lost my temper,–I’ve got that bad habit, you know,–and +insanely railed to keep you off.”</p> + +<p>“And didn’t succeed. Come, come; what nonsense all this is! Put +it out of your mind and think of nothing but getting well. Now +you–”</p> + +<p>“It is not nearly so important that I should get well,” he +testily persisted, “as that I should ask your forgiveness. It has been +weighing upon me and burning like bedclothes of hot iron, the horror of having +so meanly and ungratefully offended you.”</p> + +<p>“Why should you feel so bad about it as long as I don’t? Put it +all out of your mind, just as I do out of mine. There, it’s all right. Now +keep still except to answer my questions. You’ve had the +doctor?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, dear.”</p> + +<p>“What’s he giving you?”</p> + +<p>“You can see–there on the stand–those bottles.”</p> + +<p>“And hot things on your chest?”</p> + +<p>“Yes; <i>semedilino</i>. I don’t know what you call it in +English.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_290'></a>290</span>“Flaxseed, +I guess. How can poor old Giovanna do everything for you?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know,” he answered vaguely. “She +does.”</p> + +<p>Perceiving that by a reaction from his excitement he was suddenly fatigued to +the point of no longer being able to speak at all or even keep his eyes open, +she asked nothing more, but with a practised hand straightened his bolster, +smoothed his pillow and drew the covers evenly and snugly up to his chin.</p> + +<p>“Don’t you be afraid,” he heard her say above him, as it +seemed to him a long time after, at the same moment that he felt her give his +shoulder a little squeeze to impress her saying: “I won’t let +anything happen to you.”</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>He entered a state which was neither quite sleep nor quite waking. He was not +dreaming, yet the world within his eyelids was peopled with creatures and varied +by incidents departing from the known and foreseen. Something malevolent +pertained to the personalities, something disquieting to the actions; suffering +and oppression resulted from his inability to get away from them. They came and +went, one scene melted into another, sometimes beautiful, sometimes repulsive, a +sickly disagreeableness being common to all, and the fatigue involved with +watching the spectacle of them weighing like a physical burden.</p> + +<p>But yet beneath the unrest of fever dreams there was in Gerald, after +Aurora’s visit, as if a substratum of quiet and content. As a good +Catholic, having confessed and received absolution, would be less troubled by +either his symptoms or any visions that might come of Satan and his imps, so +Gerald, with the weight of his sins of brutality and <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_291'></a>291</span>ingratitude lifted off him, could feel +almost passive with regard to the rest.</p> + +<p>He had moments through the night of recognizing the deceptiveness of his +senses. He knew, for instance, that the solemn clerical gentleman in a long +black coat and tall hat whom he saw most tiresomely coming toward him down the +street every time he opened his eyes was only a medicine bottle full of dark +fluid, outlined against the dim candle-shine. And he knew that the tower of ice, +solitary amid snows, lighthouse or tower of defense on some arctic coast, was +nothing but a glass of water. And when it seemed to him, late, late in the +night, that Aurora was in the room, he knew off and on that it was Giovanna, who +through one of those metamorphoses common in fever had taken the likeness of +Aurora. She lifted him to make him drink, and supported him while she held the +glass to his lips, then laid him easily back. The delusions of fever had the +sweet and foolish impossibility of fairy-stories: Aurora, as if it were the most +natural thing in the world, placing upon his stiff and lacerated breast balsamic +bandages of assuaging and beneficient warmth!...</p> + +<p>The night was full of torrid heat and fiery light, in which everything looked +unnatural, shifting, uncertain, but daylight, when it finally came, was of a +crude coldness; under it everything returned to be itself, meager and +stationary, and he knew that it was no phantasmagorical Aurora making +preparations to wash his face.</p> + +<p>He spoke no word to signify either pleasure or displeasure. He let it be, +like a destiny too strong to withstand. With this acceptance there took place in +him, body and spirit, a relaxing, as when supporting arms are felt by one who +had been fearing a fall.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_292'></a>292</span>In his not very +clear-headed reflections upon himself and his state, he had passed into a +different category of men, where what he did, particularly as regarded worldly +proprieties, had little importance, because, ill as he felt, there seemed to him +such a strong probability of his actions having no result. If, on the other +hand, he could manage to pull through–and he found he cared to do this, +cared so much more than he had supposed he ever could care, on such desperate +days as those which had sometimes seen him re-examining his revolver–if he +should recover, the gladness of his good fortune would outweigh any +inconvenience created by his weakness now. Life is, and should be, dearer to man +than anything else, except honor. He found it difficult to separate the idea of +honor from life, and make it oppose letting this robust guardian angel fulfil +her promise not to “let anything happen to him.”</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>Gerald had too often heard those well-meaning lies which friends and nurses +tell the sick, to place faith altogether in Aurora’s cheerful +asseverations from day to day that he was getting better.</p> + +<p>Yet Aurora was not feigning. She entertained no doubt that with proper care +he would get well. And she was providing the care. Hence a confidence which she +did not allow any of those chilly creepy fears which come at about three +o’clock in the morning to undermine. She was so strongly resolved to get +him well, and felt so capable of doing it, that it would not seem unlikely her +very hands in touching him had virtue and imparted health.</p> + +<p>He said very little, even when the exertion of talking had ceased to make him +cough. The fact that talk fatigued <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_293'></a>293</span>him was reinforced by his old fancy that talk was +superfluous. One lived, one looked, one felt....</p> + +<p>She was glad he so willingly kept quiet, because as long as he had fever it +was so much the best thing he could do. He did not have to tell her that he took +comfort in having her there, that everything she did for him was exactly right, +that her touch was blessed and had no more strangeness for him than that of a +sister–nay, than his own. She too understood those wordless things which +are shed from one person, like a radiance, and inhaled by another, like a +scent.</p> + +<p>In the long silences, she sometimes read a little by the shaded +candle–she had chosen the night watch for her share and let his devoted +old Giovanna wait on her master during the day. But very often she sat in her +easy-chair near the bed doing nothing, just thinking her thoughts, marveling at +the queerness, the surprises of life. Who could have dreamed that first time she +entered this big brick-floored, white-washed room, and nearly cried because she +found it so dreary, that she would come to feel at home in it; that by her doing +the brown earthenware stove in the corner, cold since Mrs. Fane’s day, +would again glow and purr; that over and over she would watch the row of +flower-pots out on the terrace, with the stiff straw-colored remains in them of +last year’s carnations, grow slowly visible in the dawn; that from their +pastel portrait the eyes of the mother would watch her placing compresses on the +brow of the son!</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>Before going for her rest, she always waited to see the doctor, who made an +early visit. After they had reissued together from the sickroom, he was +interviewed by her with the help of an interpreter, Clotilde, who was in and out +of the house during all that period, making herself useful. Estelle instead came +only for a moment daily, having a case of her own to nurse, who was down, poor +crumb, with those measles-mumps-whooping cough of puppyhood, distemper.</p> + +<div class='figcenter'> +<img src='images/illus-290.jpg' id="img006" alt='' /> +<p class='center caption'> +Aurora’s eyes, fixed and starry, rested upon the little flame +</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_295'></a>295</span>On the day when +Doctor Batoni had agreed that with prudence there would be nothing more to fear, +the patient might be regarded as having entered convalescence, Aurora covered +him with a wide and warming smile.</p> + +<p>“<i>Je suis son bonne amie</i>,” thus she translated the +explanation of her unconcealed happiness, “I’m a good friend of +his,” nodding at the old man with the full sweetness of her dimples; +blushing a little, too, with the pride of addressing him directly in French.</p> + +<p>That morning Aurora was so happy she could not hurry; humming an old psalm +tune she dawdled about her room, the longer to enjoy her thoughts.</p> + +<p>When she finally slept it was more deeply than usual, and she woke with a +start of fear that it was past the time. The line of sky showing between the +curtains retained no remembrance of the day. It must be late, certainly. Then +she heard a faint stirring just outside her door, the thing probably which had +drawn her out of a sound sleep. It was the rustle of some person listening at +the crack.</p> + +<p>She bounced from bed and went to open. It was as she expected, Giovanna; +come, she supposed, to see if she were ready to go on duty. At Giovanna’s +first words, though she did not entirely understand them, she became uneasy, +because Giovanna interspersed them with sighs. Her voice sounded as if she might +have been crying.</p> + +<p>Aurora had grown accustomed to the fact that those hard old eyes of +Giovanna’s took easily to tears, and that she <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_296'></a>296</span>sighed by the thousand the moment she +was in anxiety over her <i>signorino</i>. She knew she must not take +Giovanna’s fears at her own valuation. She gathered from her gestures now, +combined with her talk, that Gerald, so quiet until to-day, had become restless. +Giovanna impersonated him tossing and throwing his arms out of the bed-covers. +Aurora, though not permitting herself to be alarmed, hurried with her +dressing.</p> + +<p>“Ain’t it always so,” she questioned her own image in the +glass, “that the moment you feel safe something goes wrong?”</p> + +<p>When she tiptoed into the big dim room where Gerald lay, she could not at +first make out what it was that had troubled Giovanna to the point of tears. He +seemed quiet enough. After she had taken his pulse and temperature, her heart +subsided with a blessed relief.</p> + +<p>He could not tell her, because he did not himself know, that just because he +was better he, paradoxically, was worse. Thoughts and responsibilities had begun +to trouble him again.</p> + +<p>“Should you mind very much,” he asked suddenly, “if I +worked off my nervousness by singing? I have kept still, so as not to worry you, +exactly as long as I can.”</p> + +<p>“Certainly,” she said, “go ahead. I never knew you were a +singer. What are you going to sing?”</p> + +<p>She waited with a certain curiosity.</p> + +<p>He began chanting. “B, a, ba; B, e, be–babe! B, i, +bi–babebi! B, o, bo–babebibo! B, u, bu–babebibobu!” Then +he went on to the letter C, “C, a, ca! C, e, ce–cace! C, i, +ci–caceci!” and to D, and so on, one after the other, through all +the consonants in the alphabet.</p> + +<p>“The queerest rigmarole you ever heard!” Aurora <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_297'></a>297</span>called that simple +Italian spelling-exercise for little beginners. It might have been funny to hear +him, only it was disquieting, he did it so earnestly and so obstinately kept it +up.</p> + +<p>When he had finished, Aurora held a sedative powder all nicely wrapped in a +wet wafer ready for him. He knew what it was and gratefully gulped it, composing +himself after it to wait in patience and self-control for its operation. Aurora, +reposing on the magic of drugs like a witch on the power of incantations, +watched for the drooping of his eyelids and relaxing of his frown.</p> + +<p>He had lain still for so long that she was congratulating herself upon the +result thus easily obtained, when he opened his eyes, twice as wide-awake as +before, and began to talk, as if really the object of an opiate were not to +stupefy a man, but to rouse him fully. Under its influence he was almost +garrulous. His vivacity partook of delirium. All that passed through his mind +pressed forward indiscriminately into utterance, as if the sentinels placed on +guard over his thoughts had been taking an hour off.</p> + +<p>Aurora heard him in wonder and perplexity. He was not incoherent, he was not +extravagant. He was merely talkative, expansive, and this in his case was +obviously pathological. She wondered also to see how handsome he could look, +with his eyes alight; his cheek-bones burning, pink as paint; his hair, grown +long, lying in dark locks over a luminous forehead.</p> + +<p>She tried to think of something that would abate all this. She was searching +her nurse’s memory for some further sedative by which to counteract a +first one gone wrong, when the thread of her medical meditation snapped, her +attention fastened upon what Gerald was saying. <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_298'></a>298</span>Because she had a suspicion that it was about Violet +he was talking. And she had from the first been curious about Violet and his +feelings with regard to her. As curious as if she had been jealous.</p> + +<p>“There is a person–” he said, in the suppressed voice of +one communicating a secret, “of whom I used to dream very often. Not +because I wished to. In the days when I wished to, she came seldom. But when I +dreaded it, she began to come, and do what I would, oppose to her what hardness +I could, she could be so sinisterly dreadful and unkind that it was like a knife +in me. Try to shut her out as I might, she would force her way in and make me +suffer. Why? Why did she want to?... I will tell you what I believe. Some women +feel their beauty to depend upon their power to create suffering. If not happy +suffering, then the other kind. If men grow indifferent to it, they feel their +beauty passing, and if it goes there is nothing left that they care for. The +unremitting quest of their lives therefore is to feed the blood of men to their +beauty, and if they can not do it in any other manner they pick the locks of +sleep and get at them in that way. But the last time this person came, a +surprise awaited her. And the same, I will confess, awaited me. My heart was +like so much sawdust, so far as one drop of blood that she could wring from it. +And now she won’t come again, I believe, for why should she come? She will +look a little anxiously in the glass, very likely, to see if she has begun to +fade. I should be sorry to know that the least of her golden hairs had +faded–they were so lovely. It’s wrong all the same to practise +sorcery. You don’t, Aurora, that is one reason why I like to be with you. +Women as God made them are strong enough, He knows! It’s unfair to <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_299'></a>299</span>use sorcery besides, to +make themselves beautiful to the point of distraction, and desired to the point +of pain. And then their barbarous methods! That low game of using a man’s +weakness for the increase of their own glory, making a jealous fool wilfully out +of a decent fellow, and a baby out of a self-respecting man. You, Aurora, you +are good as good bread, you are restful as a bank of moss. You would never do +what the others do. Would you, Aurora? You needn’t answer me. I +know.”</p> + +<p>“If what you mean is that I’m not much of a co-quette,” she +came in quickly, to prevent his continuing, “I guess you’re right. +Take it since I was born, I’ve been called a good many things, but in all +my life I don’t remember anybody calling me that,–a co-quette. But +you’re talking lots more than is good for you, brother. Now I want you to +quiet down and give those sleepy-drops a chance to work. Here I’ve fixed +you something else that will help them. It’s just a drink with nothing in +it but something nice and cooling. Smells pleasant, doesn’t it? +This’ll do the trick.”</p> + +<p>Slipping an arm under his neck, she lifted him, propped him against herself, +and held the glass to his mouth. Instead of words pouring out, the calming +draught flowed in. It was a slow process; he drank by small swallows and wished +after each one to stop, but she gently forced him to go on. When it was finished +and he turned his head away from the glass, he found it resting on her shoulder. +He settled his cheek warmly against it, like a child burying his face in the +pillow. With a long sigh he relaxed.</p> + +<p>“Now, Aurora,” he said solemnly, “be +per–fect–ly still.”</p> + +<p>He was very still, too. After a long moment he half <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_300'></a>300</span>lifted his head and with a long soft +sigh replaced it, as if to renew his sense of a resting-place so sweet. With all +her heart Aurora lent herself to this, glad to witness, as she thought, the +belated effect of the soporific. In a few minutes he would be asleep.</p> + +<p>“Aurora,” he suddenly said, wakeful as earlier, but without +moving his heavy head or opening his eyes, “do you remember the first +evening I ever saw you? You came down the middle of the room all by yourself, +like something in the theater, where the stage has been cleared for the +principal character to make an effect. You were a fine large lady in a sky-blue +frock with bursts of pink, your hair spangled with diamonds, a fan in one hand, +a long pair of gloves in the other. That at least is what everybody else saw +that looked at you. But me, what I seemed to see was America coming toward me +draped in the stars and stripes. Now you know how I feel about my dear country. +If I loved it why should I have fixed my abode once and for all over here? And +yet when I saw it coming toward me across the room, with your eyes and smile and +look of Home, I felt like the tiredest traveler and exile in the whole world, +who wants nothing, nothing, but to get Home again. It was like a moment’s +insanity. I almost wonder that I resisted it, the desire to lay my head on your +shoulder and cry, Aurora, and tell you about it, then never move again, or say +another word.”</p> + +<p>Aurora readjusted her position so as to make his leaning on her even easier. +She brought a warm cover safe-guardingly around him.</p> + +<p>“Poor Geraldino!” she pitied him in the lonely past.</p> + +<p>“Then do you remember the first time I went to see you,” he +asked, “and you introduced me, dearest woman, <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_301'></a>301</span>room by room, to the somewhat gruesome +mysteries of your house? You walked before me holding a lamp. In the ball-room, +hazy with vastness, you held the lamp high, like a torch. And I had a vision of +you as America again, or Liberty, or Something, lighting the way for me.... But +I treated the fancy as one treats fancies. I did not in the least intend to +cultivate the acquaintance begun with your picking me up by the loose skin of +the neck and plumping me down on the little seat of your victoria.”</p> + +<p>“Why–Gerald!” she drawled in a tone of reproach purposely +funny. “Didn’t you want to come?”</p> + +<p>“I wanted <i>not</i> to come!” he answered, with normal spirit. +“But you kept saying Jump in. When a lady has said Jump in three times it +acts like a spell, a man has got to jump.”</p> + +<p>“But when it came to the hot bread and syrup, brother, you know you +were glad to be there. You kept your superior look, but you ate all I buttered +for you. It did me good to see you.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” he grew dreamy again, “it took me back. It took me +back to so many things I had nearly forgotten. And when at the end of the +evening I was leaving, do you remember, Aurora, wrapping in paper some pieces of +maple-sugar and forcing me to take them home in my pocket? I felt absurdly like +a little boy and again you seemed like big America; something exhaled from you +that made me think of slanting silver-gray roofs and the New England spring of +appleblossoms and warbling robins; yes, and of October foliage intolerably +bright, and Fourth of July celebrations. Not things I dote on, exactly, but +things I was born to, and restful to me after my years of chasing <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_302'></a>302</span>what is not to be caught, +wanting what is not to be had, seeking all the time to adjust myself, to adjust +myself, to the harshness of life, the treachery, the unaccountability, the +relentlessness–restful as this heavenly shoulder, on which I have wished +how many hundred times to lay my head like this and not move again, or speak +again, or have anything ever change. Aurora, don’t say a word, dear. +Particularly, kindest Aurora, don’t make any of your little jokes. Keep +perfectly still, like a good darling, and let me forget everything except where +my head is, and be perfectly happy.”</p> + +<p>As seriously as if a god had commanded it, Aurora preserved the silence and +immobility requested of her, only making her shoulder as much wider and softer +and more comforting as she could by wanting it to be so.</p> + +<p>When by and by she felt him slip a little as he began to lose himself in +sleep, she clasped her hands around him supportingly and held him in place.</p> + +<p>A single candle burned in the room, with a book to shade it. Aurora’s +eyes, fixed and starry, rested upon the little flame where it was reflected in a +mirror on the wall opposite, but she did not see it at all, so absorbed was she +in her thoughts. In her feelings, too. In the wonder of the hour. This +remarkable Gerald, with his head packed full of knowledge, with his speech that +charmed you as whistling does an adder, with his capacity to paint pictures that +the rest could not even understand, and then his rarity, the sweetness of his +manners, the fascination of all that unknown in him which came, she had +concluded, from his foreign bringing-up–he had wanted ever since he first +saw her just to lay his head on her shoulder and rest....</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_303'></a>303</span>Her common +ordinary shoulder. What did he see in her? Taking for granted that he saw +something, Aurora attributed this unknown quality in herself to God, and thanked +Him. She tightened her clasp about Gerald, the better to feel him there. The +power of the sleeping-potion had overtaken him completely. Thoughts that +moistened her eyes resulted from feeling her arms full of the breathing warmth +of a beloved form. Those defrauded maternal arms! That other, who would have +been five years old at this time, and would have been called little Dan, after +Dan, her big father, how she would have nursed him through his childish +ailments, how she would have held him and rocked him! No, she would never stop +yearning over him. One must suppose that God knows best.</p> + +<p>Gerald’s breathing was deep and quiet. When sure that it could be done +without waking him, she let him gently down on to the pillow.</p> + +<p>She stood beside the bed for a few minutes, in her soft garment of cashmere +and swansdown which made no more sound when she moved than did her velvet shoes; +she watched him sleep with emotions of gratitude beyond possibility of +expression to any one but that old intimate, God. He was getting well so surely +and fast. He would shortly be as well as ever.</p> + +<p>Confident that he would want nothing more for the rest of the night, she +arranged herself in her easy-chair for a good sleep, too.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>On the next day she divined from his half troubled look at her, and the shy +modesty of his manner, that he was wondering whether he had actually babbled +last night, or in a mild delirium dreamed the whole thing. Not from <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_304'></a>304</span>her might he find out. +Her easy, matter-of-fact way made any such passage seem at least unlikely.</p> + +<p>Having slept during the night she did not retire to rest during the day, but +let Giovanna go about her long neglected affairs and in her place looked after +Gerald, who had waked from his deep sleep immensely refreshed. He would not need +a constant watcher beside him after this, during night or day.</p> + +<p>“What shall I do to amuse you?” she asked him, to make an +interruption after she had felt him watching her through half closed lids for +some time. “Don’t you want me to read to you?”</p> + +<p>“I think not, Aurora. Thank you just as much.”</p> + +<p>“Well, then, how shall I entertain you? Do you want me to be a +gold-fish for you?”</p> + +<p>“How do you ‘be a gold-fish,’ Aurora?”</p> + +<p>“Look!” But the instant she changed her face into a +gold-fish’s and waggled up through imaginary water, opening and shutting +her mouth like a rubber valve, he hid his eyes, crying sharply, “Please +stop! I don’t want to see it.”</p> + +<p>The gold-fish personality was dropped.</p> + +<p>“Very well, then,” she said, with unimpaired serenity, +“shall I do a squirrel gnawing a nut? Every family its own +circus.”</p> + +<p>“If you do it, I will not look. How can you endure, lovely as you are, +to make yourself ugly–grotesque?”</p> + +<p>“Aren’t you rather hard to suit to-day, mister? Shall I be a hen, +then, scratching for her chicks? That’s mild.”</p> + +<p>“No, no, no. Yes. No. I don’t know about the hen. Let me have a +sample.”</p> + +<p>He watched her, critically and provisionally, while with <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_305'></a>305</span>comfortable, motherly, half-suppressed +chest-sounds, and a round eye cocked for finds among the dirt, remarkably +altogether the appearance of a pensive white hen, she made believe to scratch up +the earth with her feet. A rather sympathetic performance, he allowed, her +imitation of the hen, calling up before one the vision of a farmyard, a brood of +downy yellow chicks, a duckpond, sunshine, green things.</p> + +<p>He let her do it as long as she would, or rather until to vary the thing she +increased the comic beyond the line he fixed. When midday found him grudgingly +laughing at her cackling, it seemed improbable certainly that midnight had seen +him sleeping in her arms. But underlying their laughter was a consciousness in +each that day of a thing uniting them which had not been there before.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>Sitting bolstered up in bed to eat his first real meal, he looked, with his +long hair parted in the middle and brushed down over his hollow temples, like +one of those old masters in the Ewe-fitsy, Aurora told him. A St. John the +Baptist, she specified.</p> + +<p>She chipped the top off his egg and cut finger sizes of bread for him, so +that he might have it in the foreign way he preferred.</p> + +<p>While he languidly ate, yet with pleasure, the door softly swung inward, +revealing faces of women,–Estelle, Clotilde, Livvy, Giovanna,–all +equally kind, all craning for the delight of a peep at him eating his +soft-boiled egg.</p> + +<p>Because he was still weak, tears came into his eyes, and because he could not +permit them to be seen, he waved and haggardly smiled toward the smiling and +nodding faces without inviting them nearer.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_306'></a>306</span>Women! women!... +What a great deal of room they had occupied in his life! How much he owed them +for affection,–mother, sister, servant-girl, friends....</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>He had known from whispers and rustlings, from a sort of instinct, latterly +from Giovanna’s own lips, that his house since the coming of “that +lady” to undertake the government of his sickroom had been full of people, +making practical and easy the carrying out of her plots. Abundance of people and +abundance of money. Old Giovanna grumbled bitterly at this invasion, but she did +it inside of herself, sanely recognizing that she had subject for gratitude. Her +hot dark eye looked all she thought, and her lips moved as she soundlessly said +all she felt; but when she dropped into the dark church of Santa Maria degli +Angeli for a moment’s devotion she did not fail to ask Maria to bless +“that lady” and give her great good. After which she begged Her by +the seven swords of Her sorrow to hasten the day that should clear the house of +the whole horde of strangers, and permit her to resume the quiet life with her +signorino.</p> + +<p>Gerald, whose nature felt the oppression of material benefits as much as +Giovanna felt jealousy with regard to her rights and loves, resolved that the +sole seemly return for generosity in this case would be an equal generosity, +consisting in an acceptance pure of every shadow, either of obligation, or +reserve, or regret.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>Since the doctor said it would do the invalid no harm to admit a visitor or +two, Aurora wrote to Mrs. Foss. She came at once with Leslie. Both on the +occasion of this call were perfect, in tact, in warmth, in friendship. And yet +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_307'></a>307</span>with them, and the +sense of the World and the World’s point of view which they inevitably +brought, change entered the house.</p> + +<p>The vacuous, almost happy languor of the sick was replaced in Gerald by an +irritable gloominess, decently repressed, but unconcealable.</p> + +<p>“There’s no mistake; you’re getting well,” remarked +Aurora, when the unrest of a mind troubled by many things expressed itself in +indignation against innocent inanimate objects, a drop of candle wax for +burning, an ivory paper-cutter for snapping in his impatient hand. +“You’re getting well. I guess I can go home and feel easy about +you.”</p> + +<p>And sooner than Giovanna had dared to hope when most fervently she invoked +the Holy Mother, lo! the intruders, mistress and maids, bag and baggage, had +left in their places room and silence. So much sooner than expected that +Giovanna, clasping in her hands an incredible fee, almost found it in herself to +feel regret.</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_308'></a>308</span><a id='link_16'></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + +<p>On their last day together Gerald had asked Aurora to find the key of a +certain desk-drawer and to bring him the miniature strong-box locked in it. He +had taken out one by one, to show her, the little store of trinkets once +belonging to his mother and given her from among them the one he thought most +charming, an old silver cross studded with amethysts and pearls.</p> + +<p>Her own house, when she reëntered it, looked faintly unfamiliar, as if she +had been away much longer than she had by actual count. But her big soft bed +looked good to her, she told Estelle, after the bed of granite framed in iron +she had lately occupied.</p> + +<p>She was in high good spirits. Gerald out of the woods, the amethyst cross, +Estelle and her beautiful commodious house returned to, vistas ahead of good +times and heart satisfactions, a sense of success and the richness of +life–Aurora was in splendid spirits.</p> + +<p>Estelle and she slept together on the first night, so as to be able to buzz +until morning, as they had used to do in their young days, when one of them was +allowed to go on a visit to the other and stay overnight. There ensued a very +orgy of talk, a going over of all that had happened since their separation, +quite as if they had not once seen each other in the interval.</p> + +<p>It might have been thought, when their remarks finally became far spaced, as +they did between two and three of <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_309'></a>309</span>the morning, that this happened because the streams +were running dry as well as because the talkers were growing sleepy; but no such +thing. Each had loads more that she might have told; but each, as had not been +the case in the old days, was keeping back something from the other. Each locked +in her breast a secret.</p> + +<p>There had naturally been talk of Gerald. Estelle was immensely nice about +him, and Aurora appeared immensely frank, but yet both knew that he was to be a +delicate subject between them thenceforward, and that thoughts relating to him +could not be exchanged without reserve.</p> + +<p>There had been laughter over Estelle’s subterfuges in order not to let +it be learned from her, and this without directly lying, that Aurora was +actually living at Gerald’s. “It’s a case of a cold,” +she had explained her friend’s non-appearance upon one occasion, without +mentioning whose cold.</p> + +<p>The details of Busteretto’s illness and danger had caused him to be +reached for in the dark and kissed and cuddled anew.</p> + +<p>“My, but it’s nice to have you back!” Estelle said in the +morning, fixing a bright, fond gaze upon her friend across the little table in +the bedroom, where they sat in their wrappers eating breakfast. “A penny +for your thoughts, Nell. What are you thinking about?”</p> + +<p>Nell smiled rather foolishly, then, putting Satan behind her in the shape of +a temptation to prevaricate, said:</p> + +<p>“I was thinking what they were doing over there. Whether Gerald has had +a good night, and about Giovanna, and what it’s all like without me. +It’s hard for me now to think of the place without me. I miss myself +there.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_310'></a>310</span>“I suppose +you’ll be driving round to inquire sometime in the course of the +day,” Estelle said, with true generosity; at which Aurora tried to look as +if she were not sure; she would think about it.</p> + +<p>With arms around each other’s waists they went through all the rooms +for Aurora to renew her pleasure in them after absence. They came to a +standstill before her portrait in the drawing-room.</p> + +<p>“There’s no mistake, he’s talented,” Estelle admitted +good-humoredly, after a considerable silence. “That’s a fine +portrait.”</p> + +<p>Aurora did not say she thought so, too. Alone in her room later, while +Estelle was dressing to go out together, she looked at the other portrait to see +if she were “any nearer educated up to it.” It seemed to her she +was, a little bit.</p> + +<p>She started to dress. Being given to homely rather than poetic fancies, she +subsequently thought of herself as having been, during the process of making +herself fine for the afternoon drive and call, like some Cape Cod young one +trotting happily along with her tin pail full of blueberries, just before a big +dog sprang out of the roadside tangle and jostled the pail out of her hand, so +that all the berries were spilled....</p> + +<p>Even as she was buttoning her gloves a letter came for her with a parcel. All +rosy with delight, she quickly found in her purse a reward for Gaetano, the +bringer. Without too much hurry, like a person not eager to shorten a solid +enjoyment, she opened the letter. It did not strike her as surprising, certainly +not as ominous, that Gerald should write when he might expect to see her so +soon. She read:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_311'></a>311</span>This is the +fourth letter, dearest Aurora, that I have written you since waking, after a +very bad night, in such a black humor that you would know I am quite myself +again and life has resumed for me its natural colors. I destroyed those letters +one after the other because, although written with the effort of my whole being +to be what you call sweet, they sounded to me insufferably disagreeable. And now +whatever I write I shall have to send because if I destroy this letter also I +shall not have time to write another before you come to see me as you promised. +And the reason for my wretched night was that I was haunted by all the reasons +there are why you should not come. They are so difficult to put into words that +I despair, after three attempts, of doing it in any but an offensive manner. +Pity, Aurora, the plight of your poor patient; permit him not to go into them. +Just–don’t come.</p> + +<p>Alas! that cannot be all. I have the vision of your puzzled face. Well, then, +it is for yourself, in part. I have no excuse for profiting by a kindness that +may be harmful to you. It is my duty to regard for you the conventions you are +big-heartedly willing to disregard. I deplore the fact that I was ever so weak +as to forget it.</p> + +<p>But it is also for myself, who must not further be demoralized and +spoiled.</p> + +<p>I must not, moreover, be laid further under obligations of gratitude, the +less, my dear Aurora, that gratitude is not precisely what I feel. No. I so +little dote upon life that I should be glad if a merciful angel’s +attention had not been drawn to me, and I perhaps might have escaped the dreary +prolongation of years. I am sorry, but so it is.</p> + +<p>Pray do not conceive any relation between what I have just written and the +request that follows. Will you be so <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_312'></a>312</span>kind as to return the object belonging to me which I +miss from the little table-drawer at the head of my bed? You had no right to +take it.</p> + +<p>Vincent Johns is coming in a day or two. Do not think of me, therefore, as +lonely or neglected.</p> + +<p>I find I must hurry or be too late. This letter is beastly and ought to be +torn up like the others. It simply cannot; it must go. I can only pray, Aurora, +that you will understand.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>Aurora went back to the beginning and read the letter a second time. Then she +turned to the accompanying parcel and noticed that it was done up in a shabby +piece of old newspaper. It contained a pair of fur-lined velvet shoes, a +bow-knot of blue satin ribbon, and a bottle of almond milk, things of her own +which through carelessness had been left behind. She could not know that the +honest Giovanna alone was responsible for this return of her property. Coming at +that moment, it formed the occasion for two stinging tears rising to the edge of +Aurora’s eyes. She swept them away with the back of her glove, and forbade +any more to follow. To prevent them she took her lips between her teeth, and +with all her strength called upon her pride.</p> + +<p>She read Gerald’s letter over again, really trying to understand, to be +fair, to interpret it in the high-minded way he would wish.</p> + +<p>“When all is said, it amounts to this,”–she reached the end +of that exercise by a short cut,–“he wants to be let +alone.”</p> + +<p>And after every allowance had been made for him, and all due deference paid +to his excellent reasons, still it <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_313'></a>313</span>seemed to her what she couldn’t call anything +but a poor return. Because his letter was bound to hurt her, and he must have +known it. His sending it, therefore, argued a lack of any very deep affection +for her. After she had come, just from his own words and actions, to +supposing....</p> + +<p>“This is what you get for not remembering that if a person is +practically a foreigner you can never expect to know them except in +spots,” she admonished herself.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>After they had driven in the Cascine and around the Viali for the sunshine +and air, Aurora asked suddenly:</p> + +<p>“Haven’t we had enough of this?” and ordered the coachman +to go home.</p> + +<p>“Why!” exclaimed Estelle, astonished, “I thought we were +going to Gerald Fane’s to see how he’s getting along!”</p> + +<p>“No, I guess we won’t. I think it’s time, after living with +him for three weeks, that I began to look after my reputation, don’t +you?” said Aurora, with a forced lightness of rather bitter effect.</p> + +<p>“I had a note from him, anyhow, just before we came out,” she +added after a moment. “He’s doing all right.”</p> + +<p>Estelle understood that something was wrong. Aurora could not successfully +pretend with her. Aurora’s transparent face, as she now took note of it, +betrayed hidden perplexity and chagrin. Estelle asked no questions, not needing +to be told that Gerald’s note had worked the change. Despite her affection +for her friend, indeed, just because of that affection, Estelle was quietly glad +of it. Her thought caressed the secret which has been referred to, a scheme +which for some weeks had given her an excited feeling of having between her +fingers the thread of the Fates.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_314'></a>314</span>After Estelle +had gone to her own room for the night, Aurora sat down to compose an answer to +Gerald’s letter. She had reflected a good deal since receiving it, and out +of confusion and complexity singled one clear and simple thought or two.</p> + +<p>Gerald had never said or intimated that she had forced herself upon him when +he was too ill to help it; but the truth was she had done that, after all his +shying rocks at her, too, to keep her off. Nor had Gerald suggested that one of +his reasons for wishing her not to haunt his bedside was a fear of her becoming +inconveniently fond of him. A hint could be found, if one chose, that he feared +becoming too fond of her, but of the other no vestige, no shadow, or ghost of a +shadow. Yet by those two points the spirit of Aurora’s reply must be +inspired. Centuries of civilization have ground into the female of the species +one particular lesson.</p> + +<p>So the irascible man’s nervous, hurried and harried scrawl, written +with sputtering pen that at several places tore clean through the paper, and +written under the compulsion of his soul and his good sense, received from the +best of women an answer in her calmest hand, deliberately calculated to give him +pain, at the same time as to convey to him unambiguously that, as far as she was +concerned, he was freer than the birds of the air. She wrote:</p> + +<div class='bquote'> +<p>My dear friend Gerald,</p> + +<p>What I want principally to say is just <i>don’t worry</i>. Don’t +worry for fear I’ll come, and don’t worry for fear I won’t +understand, and don’t worry because you think my feelings may be hurt. And +above all the rest, don’t worry about <i>gratitude</i>, for I don’t +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_315'></a>315</span>feel you owe me any +at all. Don’t you think for a moment that I saved your life. You were not +as sick as you imagine, I guess. It was a very light case, or how would you have +got over it so soon? You were not near as sick, according to all accounts, as +poor Busteretto, who has been having what they call here the <i>cimurro</i>. I +took you in hand because <i>I am a nurse</i> and I couldn’t keep my hands +off, just as an old fire-engine horse will start to gallop when he hears a +fire-alarm even if he isn’t on the job. If it had been Italo Ceccherelli +who was sick I would have been tempted in just the same way; so you see there is +no occasion for gratitude. Put it out of your mind.</p> + +<p>Now about the thing I took from the drawer of your night-stand. I am very +sorry I can’t give it back, because I flung it out in the middle of the +river. That is what I did with it, and I am not sorry either. You know that we +at home don’t look upon certain things as you apparently do over here. We +think it a disgrace for a man to kill himself. I myself am old-fashioned enough +to think that that door leads to hell. I have been astonished to find that over +here it is thought quite respectable, that some Italians look upon it as an +honorable way, for instance, of paying their debts, and a natural way of getting +over an unhappy love-affair. As I know you have a good many foreign ideas, and +as you have once or twice made a remark that showed me you thought of that +solution of difficulties as a possible one, I grabbed your nasty old pistol when +I found it in the little drawer, and it reposes now at the bottom of the Arno. +Don’t get another, Gerald. No burglars are going to enter your house to +steal your Roman tear-bottle or your books. When you are so blue you feel like +killing yourself, say your prayers. I am very glad <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_316'></a>316</span>your friend the abbé is going to come +and stay with you. He is a <i>good influence</i>, I feel sure, and a good +friend.</p> + +<p>I suppose I shall see you again some time, even if I don’t do the +visiting. But don’t be in any hurry, not on my account. I hope that in the +meantime you will get back your strength quickly. Remember that you will have to +be very careful for quite a long time, because a relapse is <i>an awfully mean +thing</i>.</p> + +<p>Good-by, my dear Gerald. Please accept the very best wishes of</p> + +<p class='ar' style='margin:0 8ex 0 auto;'>Yours sincerely,</p> +<p class='ar' style='margin:0 0 0 auto;'>Aurora Hawthorne.</p> + +<p>P.S. I did not write four letters and tear three of them up, like you. I +wrote one and corrected it, and here I have copied it out for you, hoping that +in it I have made my meaning as clear to you as you made yours clear to me in +your letter.</p></div> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_317'></a>317</span><a id='link_17'></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + +<p>When the latter occurrences had shaken down in Aurora’s mind, +Gerald’s letter, which she from time to time re-read, impressed her as a +most gentle and reasonable production of his pen, while her own letter, +preserved in the original scribble, appeared to her horrid, cutting, and +uncalled for.</p> + +<p>But there was now nothing to do about it. The state of mind created in her by +the whole episode prepared her to welcome with open arms any diversion, any +event which would restore to her self-conceit a little vitality or lay on her +heart a little balm; and so when, at the psychological moment, Doctor Thomas +Bewick surprisingly turned up in Florence,–it may be remembered that he +was Estelle’s choice for Nell,–Nell fell on his neck quite +literally, and gave him a full, sonorous kiss.</p> + +<p>“Tom! Tom!” she cried in delight, “how good it is to see +you!”</p> + +<p>This happened in her formal drawing-room, whither she had gone on the +servant’s announcement that a gentleman from America, who had given no +card or name, asked to see her.</p> + +<p>Their greeting over, she ran out into the hall, screaming joyfully:</p> + +<p>“Hat! Hat! Come down this minute! Hurry up! You’ll never guess +who’s here!”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_318'></a>318</span>In reply to +which summons Estelle came hurrying down the stairs with an innocent, expectant +air.</p> + +<p>“If it isn’t Doctor Bewick!” she exclaimed, without giving +herself away by one false inflection. “Why, Doctor Bewick, this is simply +too awfully nice! What <i>are</i> you doing over here? Who <i>would</i> have +expected to see <i>you</i>?”</p> + +<p>“Tom,” said Aurora, “I was never in my life so glad to see +any one. I didn’t know how much I’d missed you till I saw you. You +good old thing! You nice old boy! Aren’t you a brick to have come! My +soul, my soul! I didn’t know till this minute how tired I am of foreigners +and half-foreigners and quarter-foreigners and all their ways. I was hungry for +home-folks and didn’t know it. Now, please God, we’ll have some talk +where we know that when we use the same words we mean the same thing, and +aren’t wondering all the time what’s really in the other’s +mind!”</p> + +<p>The man to whom this was said absorbed it with a face fixed in smiles of +pleasure. He was a big blond man, disposed to corpulence, and looking somewhat +like a fresh-faced, gigantic boy until his eye met yours and gave the note of a +fine, mature intelligence, open on every side, and unobtrusively gathering in +what it had no strong impulse afterward to give out again in any open form of +self-expression.</p> + +<p>Tolerant, not from any vagueness of judgment; easy to get on with, but not to +drive or to deceive, he looked strikingly the good fellow, yet kept you in +respect. An air of capability, a consciousness of definite achievements, went +coupled in him with the humor that would prevent bumptiousness however great the +matter for pride. A quiet carelessness of other people’s opinions formed +part of his <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_319'></a>319</span>effect +of poise; the opinions of dukes would have affected him as little as those of +rag-pickers, unless they recommended themselves to that judicial spot in his +brain at which he tried them. He was level-headed, unsentimental, but kind, of a +kindness that like good-humor seemed almost physical, and made him stop to +stroke the kitchen cat as well as see to it that the negress’s baby had +the right milk for its orphaned stomach.</p> + +<p>He looked at Aurora with smiling scrutiny, and facially expressed a vast +appreciation. She looked back at him with eyes of laughing tenderness. Avoiding +to speak directly to her the compliments rising in his mind, he turned to +Estelle.</p> + +<p>“Hasn’t she blossomed out!”</p> + +<p>“Isn’t she wonderful?” chimed in that friend, +enthusiastically.</p> + +<p>Aurora, with a comedy of pride, threw up her chin, lifted her arms, and +turned as if on a pivot, to show herself off in her elegance. She had on the +wine-colored street-dress bordered with black fox; over its white satin +waistcoat embroidered with gold hung in a splendid loop her pink corals. The +restraining Paris corset gave to her luxuriant form a charming modish +correctness of line.</p> + +<p>“Oh, Tom,”–she sank happily on the sofa beside +him,–“we’re having the time of our lives! Just wait till you +see me in company, and hear me put on my good English, when, instead of calling +things lovely or horrid, I call them amusing or beastly or impossible. But your +turn first. Give us the Denver news.”</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>After dinner that evening, in the midst of Italo’s brilliant +performance, a caller came,–a thin, oldish, English-speaking <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_320'></a>320</span>lady whose black dress +made no pretense of following the fashion.</p> + +<p>Aurora had met her at Mrs. Satterlee’s during a meeting appointed to +raise funds for the Protestant orphanage. When this philanthropist, after a +little talk of other things, mentioned the relict of a mason, left with five +young children, Estelle and Dr. Bewick took it as a hint to withdraw beyond +earshot. The two ladies were left talking in undertones; after a minute they +found themselves alone in the room.</p> + +<p>Estelle preceded Dr. Bewick across the hall to the dining-room, deserted and +orderly, where the drop-light rained its direct brightness only on the rich and +variegated tapestry cover of the table beneath it. From the +sideboard–whence the marble fruit had for some time been missing–she +brought a bottle of aërated water and a glass to set before him; she found him +an ash-tray, and seated herself beside the table near him in such a way as to +get, through the parted half-doors, a glimpse of the visitor when she should +leave.</p> + +<p>Before speaking, she exchanged with the doctor a look of intelligence.</p> + +<p>“You see what I mean?” she asked little above a whisper.</p> + +<p>Dr. Bewick looked all around the room with leisurely appraising eyes, then +nodded understanding. There was no intimation that he was not ready to listen, +but he did not seem quite ready to talk. His white shirt-bosom was remarkably +broad as he leaned back in his chair in the slightly lolling fashion of large, +good-humored men. For all the nonchalance of his attitude, he looked, from +evening tie to thin-soled dress-boots, beautifully spruce, as Aurora had +remarked, and made an appropriate pendant to her in her Parisian finery.</p> + +<div class='figcenter'> +<img src='images/illus-316.jpg' id="img007" alt='' /> +<p class='center caption'> +Aurora, with a comedy of pride, threw up her chin, lifted her arms, and turned as if on a pivot, to show herself off in her elegance +</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_322'></a>322</span>Approval of him +was written large on Estelle’s pleasant, alert countenance; a quiet, +comprehensive liking for her sat as plainly in the eyes reflecting her slim +person and evening-frock of beaded net. Being Nell’s friends made them +friends, a thing not so common as one wishes. Through her they felt almost on +the familiar terms of old friendship, although Estelle had never met Dr. Tom +Bewick before he came to New York to see them off on their great four-stacked +ocean-steamer.</p> + +<p>“You see what I mean?” she asked, and, not expecting a regular +answer, did not wait for it. “Now that woman won’t leave until she +has secured support for the mason’s five children, and she’ll do +this without the smallest difficulty. In a day or two some one else will come, +with the sad case of a poor father out of work who is going to have to sell his +blind daughter’s canary unless Nell steps in to relieve their wants. And +Nell will step in. Word has been passed, just as they say a tramp at home marks +a house where he’s been given a meal, and every case of want in this town, +it seems to me, is hopefully brought to Nell. And she listens every time; she +doesn’t get sick of it. And you know, Doctor, that her circumstances +don’t warrant it.”</p> + +<p>Bewick, as Estelle stopped for some comment on his side, made a slight motion +of chin and eyelids that partly or deprecatingly agreed with her. He took the +cigar out of his mouth, but having knocked the ash off, replaced it, to listen +further and not for the moment speak.</p> + +<p>“It’s positively funny, the things Nell has been doing with her +money,” Estelle went on, in a tone that did not <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_323'></a>323</span>disguise the fact of her glorying in +this prodigality while being justly frightened by it. “It’s not just +the ordinary charities, churches, hospitals, etc.,–all of those send in +their regular bills, as you might say. It’s a Swiss music-box for the +crippled son of the <i>spazzaturaio</i>, or street-cleaner; it’s a +marriage-portion for this one and funeral expenses for that one; it’s +filling the mendicant nuns’ coal-cellar, it’s clothing a whole +orphan-school in a cheerfuller color! Clotilde and Italo call her attention to +every deserving case, and are guided in this by the simple knowledge that Nell +can’t hold on to her money. Of course it’s her good heart. +She’s done a lot for them and their family, too, I’ve discovered. I +don’t know just how much, but I can guess by their look of licking their +chops. I’m not saying they aren’t all right–honest, sincere, +and so forth–or that I don’t like them. It’s Nell’s own +fault that she’s imposed on. I don’t doubt that they’re as +devoted as they seem, it’s only right they should be. It’s right the +whole city of Florence should be. I was thinking only the other day as we drove +through Viale Lorenzo the Magnificent that it would be appropriate for a +grateful city to rechristen our street Viale Aurora the Magnificent.”</p> + +<p>Tom Bewick laughed, nodding to himself with an effect of relish. He murmured, +“Aurora the Magnificent!”</p> + +<p>“Aurora the Magnificent–Aurora the Magnificent is all very +well,” Estelle took up again with animation, “but she’s +already spending her capital.”</p> + +<p>Bewick did not allow himself to appear startled or troubled; still, he was +made pensive by this. His look at Estelle invited her to go on and tell him the +rest, just how bad it was. She was leaning forward, with her elbows on <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_324'></a>324</span>the table, one hand +slipping the rings on and off a finger of the other, in her quick way.</p> + +<p>“You know what her income is. It would have provided for all +this,”–she took in the luxury around them by a gesture of the +head,–“but no income can suffice to set up in housekeeping all the +picturesque paupers in Florence. That’s why I was so anxious for you to +come, and wrote you as I did. You can curb her; I can’t. I have no +influence with her in that way, and I simply can’t sit still and see her +throw away all this good money that was intended to provide her with comforts +for the rest of her life. Unless somebody looks after it, she won’t have a +penny left. You must talk to her, Doctor Bewick. Don’t let her know, +though, that I put you up to it. You can ask a plain question, as it’s +right and natural for you to do, then when she answers you can lecture her. +She’ll take it from you.”</p> + +<p>Bewick, with his sensible face, looked as if he saw justice and reason in all +Miss Madison had said to him; yet he did not go on with the subject. It might be +that he felt delicate, in a masculine way, about uttering to a lady’s best +friend any criticism of that lady’s mode of doing or being–criticism +which he might feel no difficulty perhaps in voicing to herself. Estelle took +this into consideration and, his reticence notwithstanding, relied on him to do +his duty.</p> + +<p>A diversion occurred in the shape of a knock at the door–the door +leading to the kitchen-stairs. It was but the scratch of one fingernail on the +wood. Tiny as the sound was, it did not have to be repeated before Estelle ran +to open. A small four-footed person entered, the bigness of <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_325'></a>325</span>a baby’s muff and the whiteness of +a marquis’s powdered wig. Estelle caught him up from the floor and with a +coo of affection, “What um doing in the kitchen, little rogums?” set +him on the table, under the lamp, for Doctor Tom to see how utterly beautiful he +was and have the points and characteristics of a Maltese terrier explained to +him.</p> + +<p>Busteretto was reaching dog’s estate, his shape had taken on a degree +of subtlety, his hair was growing long and straight and like leaves of the +weeping willow. Estelle lifted the white fringe depending from his brow, and +exposed to the light two great limpid brown eyes, incredibly sweet and +intelligent. It was as wonderful, in its way, as if a blind beggar, +insignificant and easy to pass by as he stood at the street-corner, should take +off black goggles suddenly, and you should perceive that he was a masking angel +come to test the hearts of men.</p> + +<p>“Did you ever see such a little sweetheart?” gasped Estelle.</p> + +<p>“A pretty little fellow,” spoke the doctor commendingly. With the +instinct to relieve discomfort he raised the veil of hair again as soon as +Estelle had let it drop, and looking further into the beautiful eyes, that with +the neat nose made a triangle of dark spots effective as mouches on +Columbine’s cheek,–“Why don’t you tie up his hair like +this to keep it out of the way?” he asked.</p> + +<p>“We mustn’t! Mr. Fane, who gave him to Nell, says it would be bad +for him, he might go blind. They’re that kind of eyes and need the shield +from the light. Mr. Fane knows all about this Maltese breed of dogs.”</p> + +<p>“Is he the same one who painted her portrait?” Dr. Tom deviated +from the subject of the dog, over whose eyes the curtain was allowed to drop +again.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_326'></a>326</span>“Yes, +he’s an artist.”</p> + +<p>“And the same one she nursed through an illness?” asked Dr. Tom +after a moment, with the mere amount of interest apparently of one asking for a +topographical detail, so that he may get his bearings.</p> + +<p>“Yes. You’d know, wouldn’t you, that she’d have to, +if she thought he wasn’t getting the right care and didn’t see any +other way of providing it.”</p> + +<p>“Well, Skip,” Dr. Tom returned his attention to the dog, +“you’re a fine little fellow. Yes, sir.” He held out a large +pink hand and received in it immediately a wee gentlemanly hand of fur and horn, +rather smaller than any of his fingers. “Good dog,” he said, and +regarded their friendship as sealed. But next minute, because Estelle had +whispered to him, “Make believe to strike me,” he lifted his fist +menacingly against her, and on the instant, with the courage of a David, there +dashed against him a little wild white flurry, not to bite–the skin of man +is sacred–but by a show of pearly teeth and the growlings of a lion to +frighten the giant off.</p> + +<p>“Good dog!” cheered Tom and leaned back laughing, “Well +done!”</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>Because it was very late when Dr. Bewick left the ladies to return to his +hotel they immediately repaired to their respective rooms; but before Estelle +had got to bed, Aurora, half undressed, came strolling into her maidenly bower +of temperate green and white.</p> + +<p>A vague depression of spirits had overtaken Aurora, reaction, perhaps, from +the excitements of the day, and she sought her friend with the instinct to make +herself feel better by talking it off.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_327'></a>327</span>She dropped on a +chair, and in silence continued to braid her hair for the night.</p> + +<p>“Isn’t he the nicest fellow!” began Estelle, setting the +keynote for joyous confidences.</p> + +<p>“Isn’t he just!” replied Aurora. “I want him to have +the best time in the three weeks he’s going to spend here. We’ve got +to show him all the beauties of Florence, and then I want him to know all our +friends. We must have some tea-parties and some dinners. I want it to be just as +gay. Who is there I ought to lay myself out for, if not Tom Bewick?”</p> + +<p>“I quite agree with you. Let’s plan.”</p> + +<p>“No, to-morrow’ll do. It’s too late. I’m +tired.” The motions of Aurora’s fingers were suspended among the +strands of her hair. She fell into a muse. “Seeing Tom”–she +came out of it again, and went on braiding–“has brought back, along +with some things I never want to forget, such a lot of things I don’t want +to think of!”</p> + +<p>“I suppose it would.”</p> + +<p>“His sisters, for instance. He doesn’t look a bit like them, +really–nasty bugs, godless, gutless pigs–but yet he brings them up +before me. Idell rather more than Cora, and Idell was the meanest of the two, +and her husband the miserablest, sneakingest cuss. Oh, how I hate the bunch of +them! And I oughtn’t, you know. You oughtn’t to go on hating your +enemies after you’ve got the better of them. But the moment I think of +that trio, Cora Bewick–sour-bellied old maid!–and Idell Friebus, and +her rotten little pea-green husband–pin-headed insect! flap-eared +fool!–I get mad. If you could really know, Hat, the cold-heartedness and +wicked-mindedness of those people! How they ever happened in Tom’s family +Goodness only knows. <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_328'></a>328</span>And such a fine father! The Judge was as good as any +of those old fellows in the Bible, I do believe. <i>That</i> patient, +<i>that</i> considerate, and <i>that</i> just! More than just; what he did was +more than just, and those girls of his simply couldn’t stand it. They +couldn’t stand it, after they had neglected him all through his illness so +that it was a scandal, that he should treat the person who had done their +daughters’ duty for them the same as he treated them, no better and no +worse, but just the same. The things those people did to me, Hat, the things +they said about me–”</p> + +<p>“I know, I know; you’ve told me,” said Hattie, soothingly +and deterringly.</p> + +<p>“The things those people did to me, and the things they said about +me,”–Nell, not to be deterred, repeated intensely,–“if +I’d ever wanted to give up my share, those things they did and said would +have made me hold on like grim death just to spite them. Oh,”–she +broke off, and flung her finished braids back over her +shoulders,–“why do I let myself think of them? I grow so hot! +It’s the sight of Tom that has started me back to thinking of all that +excitement and disgustingness. Dear good Tom, who stood by me like a trump! I do +wish, Hat, I didn’t hate so hard when I hate. We’ve taken pride in +my family, I’m afraid, in being good haters, as if it were part of the +same trait that makes you loyal and true to your friends. But perhaps it’s +a mistake. I know that Gerald said once”–she yielded to the obscure +desire to hear the air vibrate, as it had not done for some time, with the +syllables of his name–“Gerald said once, when we were talking of +things, ‘We must forgive everything,’ he said; ‘we must forgive happenings +the same as we must people.’ And Gerald, <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_329'></a>329</span>you know, when he’s in sober earnest, has some +good ideas.”</p> + +<p>“Talking about Gerald,” Estelle came in quickly, glad of a change +from the other subject, “did Livvy tell you that our cook met Giovanna at +the market, and Giovanna told her that her master was doing finely; that he +hadn’t yet been out of doors, but that he sat at the open window in the +sunshine? I’d been meaning to ask you.”</p> + +<p>“Oh.” Aurora quietly took it, and thought it over a minute. +“No, she hadn’t told me. I suppose those long stairs would keep him +from going out till he was good and strong. Did she say anything +else?”</p> + +<p>“Only that Giovanna was buying a chicken, and the abbé, she said, was +still staying with them.”</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>The ladies of the Hermitage did the honors of Florence with modest pride and +a certain glibness. Before the early old masters, Aurora said to Tom:</p> + +<p>“At first I couldn’t stand them. I guffawed at the idea of there +being anything to admire in them. Even now I can’t pretend I like them; +but I keep still and pray for light. Isn’t that the beginning of +polish?”</p> + +<p>Tom was taken to make calls. Aurora took upon herself to explain Florentine +society to him.</p> + +<p>“There are little stories about most everybody,” she said, +“so you have to be pretty careful. If a certain General is present, for +instance, whom I may have a chance to point out to you, you don’t want to +talk of <i>horses</i>, because his fiery steed bolted with him during an +engagement once and his enemies caricatured him running away. Then if a certain +viscount is present, whom I may have a chance to introduce to you, you +don’t want to talk of <i>ermine</i>, because <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_330'></a>330</span>that little animal is a feature in his +coat of arms, and his coat of arms along with his title of nobility, scandal +says, came as a reward from a royal personage for marrying the lady who was his +first wife. So you’ll have to look out, Tom, or you may be called upon to +fight a duel.”</p> + +<p>The most splendid dinner that could be planned in council with Clotilde and +the cook was prepared to honor the friend from home. To this were bidden the +Fosses, Aurora’s best friends; the Hunts, her next best; Manlio, whom she +wished Tom to see as a truly beautiful specimen of Italian; and Landini, because +she was curious to know what Tom thought of him.</p> + +<p>Aurora had not seen the latter since the night of the <i>veglione</i>. +Finding that he had not called during the interval, she had been glad to hope +that his suspected mysterious project for making her his own had been dropped. +That being the case, she was not at all averse to seeing him. On the +contrary.</p> + +<p>Charlie Hunt she had not seen since the variety-show. Learning that he also +had not once come during her absence, she thought that this admitted of some +simple explanation which he would give on the night of the dinner.</p> + +<p>Charlie, receiving the invitation, pondered a while before accepting. He +considered himself to have been insulted, rather, by Mrs. Hawthorne. Still, he +could not be absolutely sure. If, anyhow, she did not know that he knew the +black crow to have been none other than herself there would be nothing in his +going to her dinner-party which laid him open to scorn. And he felt more +disposed to go than not. The dinner would be festive, costly, succulent. Then he +desired before breaking with her–if breach there must be, <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_331'></a>331</span>which would depend upon +the subtlest circumstances–to persuade her that two enormous porcelain +jars owned by a dealer of his acquaintance were the very thing needed in that +bare-looking ball-room of hers. There was a third reason. A lady whose +friendship had latterly–since the night of the <i>veglione</i>, in +fact–taken on the glow of roses and the warmth of wine, had taken it into +her charming head to be jealous, fantastically, of Mrs. Hawthorne. Charlie, +whose manly vanity his good fortune had, not unnaturally, reinforced; Charlie, +who if he were loved much must always love less than the other, felt a certain +stimulation in exhibitions of jealousy with regard to himself. He thought well +of the results of saying, “I cannot come this evening, <i>cara</i>, I am +dining at the Hawthorne’s.” So he accepted Aurora’s +invitation.</p> + +<p>The dinner was superlative, but it was written he should leave the house +finally in a bad humor. The feasted guest was a big Western American, of the +immensely rich and not very interesting type, whom he had seen once or twice at +the bank. Aurora’s fond esteem for this man was open and shameless. +Whether he were a “has been,” an “is,” or a “to +be,” Charlie could not determine, but only in the character of suitor +could he see him in the picture.</p> + +<p>The dark face of Landini, his Chief, across the dinner table, when his eyes +sought it was indecipherable to him; but, shut as it was, he was reminded by it, +not to the improvement of his spirits, of a little personal hope, a just and +rational hope, which might have to be relinquished. After dinner he got his +hostess into a quiet corner for a chat.</p> + +<p>“Where’s Gerald?” pure curiosity made him ask, with that +impertinence which his friends were accustomed to and took lightly, because +curiosity and impertinence were <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_332'></a>332</span>part and parcel of Charlie, and if you cared +sufficiently for his attractive smoothness and flashing smile to wish them near +you, you must put up with the bad breeding underlying his good manners. +“Where’s Gerald?” he asked familiarly.</p> + +<p>“Gerald isn’t well enough yet to be out,” Aurora answered +him, with imperfect candor. “You didn’t know he’d been ill? +Why, how funny! He’s been having what you call here a ‘fluxion of the +chest.’”</p> + +<p>This ignorance of Charlie’s comforted her by proving that the news of +her nursing Gerald had not spread over the town like wildfire, as she had been +warned it would. Florence was not so bad or nimble a gossip as she had +feared.</p> + +<p>“I was as nice to Charlie Hunt that last evening as ever in my +life,” she afterward declared, “and I thought he seemed all +right.”</p> + +<p>When he spoke of the precious porcelain jars, however, she did cut short his +appetizing description with:</p> + +<p>“Don’t speak of it. I daresn’t, Charlie. I’ve been +lectured so much for extravagance, I daresn’t buy a toothpick. If these +jars you speak of cost nine francs instead of nine hundred, I couldn’t, I +tell you. I guess Florence has got all she’s going to out of me. +I’ve turned over a new leaf.”</p> + +<p>Aurora had all evening been so entirely her kind and jolly self that Charlie +had almost forgotten the black crow. At this check, and the barren prospect +opening out beyond, he remembered it, and felt a vicious little desire to pay +her back for the pin she had stuck into him under, as she idiotically supposed, +an impenetrable disguise. He went away, as has been said, in a bad humor.</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_333'></a>333</span><a id='link_18'></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> + +<p>The loveliness of Florence at this point of the year, while inspiring poets, +made the rest feel helpless before the task of finding words for it. Even +Aurora, who could not be called contemplative, or highly susceptible to +influences of form and color, was heard to heave an occasional great sigh, so +was her heart oppressed, she could not think why, during their drives among the +hills around Florence, by the sight of the spring flowers,–tulips, +narcissi, fleur-de-lys, imagine it, growing wild, as if gold pieces should lie +scattered in the road for passers to pick up!–and by the sight of the warm +and tender tones of the sky, and by the silver sparks of windows flashing back +the sun where the hazy city houses huddled around the Duomo’s brown head +and shoulders, majestically lifted above them.</p> + +<p>It was something in the air, Aurora thought, which forced her to sigh with +that half-sweet oppression and fatigue: the air was fragrant with a scent which +seemed to her upon sniffing it analytically to be the breath of hyacinths; and +the air was warm, it “let her down,” she said.</p> + +<p>Why, instead of delicious contentment, is a sort of melancholy, of unrest, +created in us by the beauty of spring, will somebody tell?</p> + +<p>Aurora, when she thought she could do it without attracting the notice of the +other two, would slip from their presence sometimes, so as to have a few minutes +by herself <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_334'></a>334</span>and stop +pretending to be so everlastingly light of heart. For nothing in the world would +she have had Tom know but that his visit made her happy to the point of +forgetting every subject of care or annoyance.</p> + +<p>Estelle, too, she would have preferred to deceive. She did her best, and for +hours at a time appeared serene and merry. During these periods she sometimes +did actually lose the sense of anxious suspense; but it kept itself alive as an +undercurrent to her laughter.</p> + +<p>When she saw how well Tom and Estelle got along together, she became less +timid about arranging little absences from them; she even–such a common +feminine mind had Aurora–saw in the congeniality which permitted them to +remain for half an hour in each other’s company without boredom the +foundation of a dream, dim and distant, it is true–the dream of seeing +Estelle one day settled in a fine home of her own. She feared, though, there +might be bridges to cross before that event. She dreaded the bridges. She wished +Tom might be diverted from what she feared was his purpose. How satisfactory, if +Estelle might prove the diversion. Estelle would really have suited Tom much +better than the person of, she feared, his actual choice.</p> + +<p>Of all this she was somewhat disconnectedly thinking when she ran away from +them one evening after dinner, leaving him still at the table smoking his cigar, +while Estelle hunted up in a guide-book for his benefit some little matter of +altitudes. A flash of good sense showed her the previousness of her +calculations, and she mentally withdrew her hand from meddling. Fate would take +its own way, anyhow.</p> + +<p>She had gone upstairs with the excuse of wanting a fan. <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_335'></a>335</span>Her fan had easily been found, but +instead of returning to her guests, “They won’t miss me if I do stay +away for ten minutes,” she said, and walked to the end of the broad +hallway, out through the door that stood open on to the portico roof–once +glassed over for a party and dedicated to Flirtation.</p> + +<p>How long ago that seemed! Here Gerald, a quite new acquaintance, had told her +about Manlio and Brenda. Poor young things, so unhappy then, and now exultant. +Brenda was just back from America. The wedding was set for the ninth of May. +Only eight days more to wait.</p> + +<p>As Aurora, leaning over the balustrade and letting her eyes rest on the +garden, thought of their assured and perfect happiness, she remembered a gross +fly in the ointment. She had been told that Brenda would have to agree to bring +up her children in the Catholic church. The thing had seemed to Aurora +appalling. Upon her dropping some hint of her sentiment to the caller who had +communicated the fact, she had been further told that very likely Brenda too +would in time become a Catholic–as if that made it any better. A +descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers to become a Roman Catholic! Any one but a +heathen to change his religion!...</p> + +<p>The figure of Abbé Johns rose before her mind. She refrained from judgment in +his case. His case, for intangible reasons, seemed separate and different. But +fear, as of formless bugaboos in the dark, burned in her heart at the idea of +his influence perhaps being able, creepily, stealthily, to convert Gerald.</p> + +<p>She turned her face upward to the sky of May and sent forth a little prayer +into the crystal clearness of the space lying between her and the ear which she +conceived of as <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_336'></a>336</span>receiving it, the ear of a Baptist God, as opposed +to a Roman Catholic God surrounded by saints and candles and incense and tin +flowers.</p> + +<p>As she did this a high pink cloud caught her eye. Embers of sunset were +glowing over the river at the other side of the house. The sight of the pink +cloud, so pretty and far away, comforted Aurora like a good omen. She felt +better and, her reverie borrowing a ray from the cloud, went on to rejoice in +the pleasantness of the garden which she might for the time being call hers. So +different from the gardens at home, but in its set way how attractive it was, +how suited to people with leisure, and a certain stability of taste, and a +liking for privacy!</p> + +<p>Why, in that garden–which wasn’t very large, either–you +could almost get lost among narrow paths bordered with shrubs. Even if the wide +wrought-iron front-gate were open, and the carriage-gate at the side open as at +this moment, you could be just as much shut off from outside as in your own +room, if you took your sewing or your book to that little open air round with +walls of smooth-trimmed laurel, and a stone table in the middle, and stone +seats.</p> + +<p>Old Achille down there, still busy watering,–Achille who belonged to +the garden and was hired along with it, was a regular artist, thought Aurora. +The great oval bed in front of the house was at this season like a huge bouquet, +all arranged in a beautiful pattern. Then he had edged every path with a band of +pansies just inside the band of ivy overrunning the mossy border +stones–the sweetest thing. His pride was pansies, he had planted them +everywhere, the finest she had ever seen. He had taken a prize once at a +horticultural show, for his pansies.</p> + +<p>The light died out of the pink cloud, and Aurora’s pleasure <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_337'></a>337</span>in her garden gradually +died out too, while the quality of irony in her many blessings smote her. For +what is the use of having everything money can buy or the bounty of spring +afford if you at the same time are troubled with a toothache? All this, so grand +in itself, was like a good gift wasted, as long as she was in a state of quarrel +with her friend. It was full two weeks since their exchange of letters. Two +weeks of absolute silence. Could it be possible that she should never see or +hear from Gerald again?</p> + +<p>No, it could not, she said. It was part of having faith in him to deny the +possibility of his remaining furious forever at her hateful letter. No, she +would not believe it of him; she thought better of him. She was much mistaken if +he could be so mean. She would be willing to bet–</p> + +<p>There, in fact, he was, at this very moment, entering the carriage-gate.</p> + +<p>After one mad throb of incredulous exultation, Aurora’s thoughts and +feelings were for a long minute limited to an intense and immobile watchfulness. +He walked over the gravel with his eyes on the door under the portico. You would +have thought his purpose set, and that he would not pause until he had rung the +bell.</p> + +<p>But you would have thought wrong. Half-way between the gate and the house he +stood still and looked at the ground. He was holding the slender cane one knew +so well like a weapon of defense, as if ready to make a resolute slash with it +to vindicate his irresolution.</p> + +<p>After a moment he turned, grinding his heel into the earth. It was then that +a voice called out above him, “Hello, Gerald!”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_338'></a>338</span>He turned again +and removed his straw hat. He and the lady leaning from the terrace looked at +each other for the space of a few heart-beats with mechanical, constrained +smiles. Then she asked:</p> + +<p>“Aren’t you going to come in?”</p> + +<p>Instead of making the obvious answer and setting about the obvious thing, he +appeared to be debating the point within himself. At the end of his hesitation, +he asked:</p> + +<p>“Could I prevail upon you to give me five minutes in the +garden?”</p> + +<p>“Why, certainly,” answered Aurora, appreciating the fact that +Estelle would be superfluous at the peace-making that must follow.</p> + +<p>She went very lightly down the stairs. She could hear Estelle’s and +Tom’s voices still in the dining-room. Instead of going out by the usual +door, too near to their sharp ears, she turned with soft foot into the big +ball-room and passed out through that.</p> + +<p>The great oval mound of flowers spread its odoriferous carpet before the +steps leading down from the house. She turned her back upon it and followed a +path bordered with pansies and ivy till Gerald saw her and came to take her +hand, saying:</p> + +<p>“How good of you!”</p> + +<p>“Well,” she sighed, put by the bliss of her relief into a mood of +splendid carelessness as to how she, for her part, should carry off the +situation,–looking after her dignity and all that. “How jolly this +is! And you’re all right again, Gerald. You’re well enough to walk +on your legs and come and tell me so. Yes, you’re looking quite yourself +again. Well,”–she sighed again heartily,–“it’s +good for sore eyes to see you. You’re sure now it’s all <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_339'></a>339</span>right for you to be out +of doors after sunset? Hadn’t we better go in?”</p> + +<p>“This air is like a warm bath. I must not keep you long, +anyhow.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I haven’t got a thing to do,” she precipitately +assured him. “Come, we’ll walk up and down the +path,–hadn’t we better?–so as not to be standing still. Go +ahead, now; tell me all about yourself. How do you feel? Have you got entirely +rid of your cough? And the stitch in your side?”</p> + +<p>He would only speak to answer, she soon found; the moment she stopped talking +silence fell. Had he nothing to say to her, then? Or did he find it difficult +somehow to talk? She was so determined to make the atmosphere cozy, friendly, +happy–make the atmosphere as it had used to be between them–so +determined, that she jabbered on like a magpie, like a mill, about this, that, +and the other, sprinkling in little jokes in her own manner, and little stories +in her own taste, accompanied by her rich–on this occasion slightly +nervous gurgle.</p> + +<p>“Aurora dear,” he said at last, with an effect of mournful +patience as much as of protest, “what makes you? I am here to beg your +forgiveness, and you put me off with what Mrs. Moriarty said to Mrs. O’Flynn. Do +you call it kind?”</p> + +<p>A knot tied itself in Aurora’s throat, which she could not loosen so as +to go on. If she had tried to speak she would have betrayed the fact that those +simple words had, like a pump, fetched the tears up from her heart into her +throat. He had his chance now to do all the talking.</p> + +<p>“Couldn’t we sit down somewhere for a minute? Should you +mind?” His gesture vaguely designated the <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_340'></a>340</span>green inclosure, where the stone table stood, pale +among the dark laurels.</p> + +<p>But when they were seated, he only pressed his hands into his eye-sockets and +kept them there.</p> + +<p>“I am ridiculous!” he muttered and shook himself straight. After +an ineffectual, suffocated attempt to begin, “I am ridiculous!” he +said again, and without further concession to weakness started in: “I +ought to have written you, Aurora. But I had seemed to be so unfortunate in +writing I did not dare to try it again. Heaven knows what I wrote. I +don’t; but it must have been a prodigy of caddishness to offend you so +deeply. It doesn’t do much good to say I am sorry.”</p> + +<p>“Your letter was all right,” broke in Aurora. “I only +didn’t understand at first. Afterwards I did. I tell you, that letter +<i>was all right</i>.”</p> + +<p>“It was written in a mood–a perplexity, a despair, you have no +means of understanding, dear Aurora. When your answer showed me what I had done, +I could have cut my throat, but I could not have come to tell you I was not the +monster of ingratitude I appeared to be. Not that a man can’t get out of +bed, if there is reason enough, and take himself somehow where he wants to be, +but because of a sick man’s unreasonable nerves, which can start him +raving and make him a thing to laugh at. I had the common sense, thank Heaven! +to see that I must wait. Then, as the days passed, it all quieted down. Vincent +was with me, a tranquilizing neighborhood.</p> + +<p>“It seemed finally as if it might be almost better to let things rest +as they were, to let that be the way of separating from you. I had almost made +up my mind to do it, Aurora. Vincent has had me out for various airings, I have +gone on <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_341'></a>341</span>several +walks alone, but till to-day I avoided to take the road toward this house. I am +so used to pain that I’ve grown stoical, you know, Aurora. I can stand any +pain. I shut my teeth and say, ‘It will have to stop some time.’ But all +at once it became too strong for me–not the pain, or the wish to see you, +but the feeling that I could not bear to have you thinking me ungrateful. I, who +hate ingratitude as the blackest thing in the wide world, to pass with you, with +you, for an ungrateful beast!”</p> + +<p>“Don’t! don’t, Gerald!” Aurora hushed him. “I +can’t let you talk like that. You know you couldn’t be ungrateful, +nor I couldn’t think it of you.”</p> + +<p>“No, I’m not ungrateful. I’m not, dear,” he +caressingly asseverated, and closing her two hands between his treasured them +against his cheek. “I want you to be altogether sure of it. If I did not +recognize the enormity of my debt to you, Aurora, what a clod I must be! Not, +mind you, because, it is just possible to think, I owe you my life. Not that, +but because you were so kind. Because you were so kind, so kind–” he +reiterated feelingly, “and I a troublesome, cantankerous, distinctly +unappetizing object in his helpless bed. Don’t think there was one touch +or gesture of these dear hands that take away headaches that I do not remember +with gratitude.”</p> + +<p>“There was nothing to be grateful for, nothing at all,” insisted +Aurora.</p> + +<p>“And so when I wrote you in that brutal manner, dear,–”</p> + +<p>“That letter was all right,” Aurora vigorously snatched away from +him the turn to talk, in order to defend him from this misery of compunction. +“It was prompted by the most gentlemanly feelings, by real unselfishness +and consideration <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_342'></a>342</span>for me. You didn’t want me talked about on +your account, and you put it as delicately as possible. Only I was a fool; I +went off the handle, and wrote while I was mad and hurt and wanted to hurt back. +But, bless you, I understand it all perfectly now. You needn’t say another +word. I understand the letter, Gerald, and I understand you.”</p> + +<p>“I am afraid,” he said, letting go her hands and drawing a little +apart, as if the most complete misunderstanding, after all, separated +them,–“I am afraid you do not entirely. But this much at least is +clear to you, isn’t it, dear, that whatever I may be, I am not ungrateful? +Whatever I may do, you are to remember that I couldn’t be ungrateful to +you, Aurora. If I should seem to be behaving ever so, ever so shabbily, still +you must know that behind it, under it, I am the very contrary of +ungrateful.” He pressed his hands to his eyes again, and was still for a +minute, before announcing, “I shall not come to see you for a long +time.”</p> + +<p>The astonished and acute attention of her whole being was indefinably +expressed by the silence in which she now listened.</p> + +<p>“I am going to keep away from you,” he went on, “till I +feel out of danger.”</p> + +<p>“Why, what’s the matter now?” she asked, with the vehemence +of her surprise and disappointment.</p> + +<p>“A trifle, woman dear. Oh, Lord, I see I shall have to go into it! +Haven’t you the imagination to see, you unaccountable person, how an +unhappy mortal might be affected by such circumstances as destiny so lately +prepared for your poor servant’s trying? Day by day, night after night, +that insidious kindness, that penetrating gentleness, <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_343'></a>343</span>that stupefying atmosphere of a +woman’s care and sympathy.... Didn’t you tell me once +yourself–” Gerald’s voice stiffened, and he pulled himself up +again, discarding weakness,–“Didn’t you once tell me +yourself–in your impossible English, almost as bad as mine–that a +sick man is ‘liable to fall in love with his nurse?’ And, dear girl, I +will not do it. I categorically refuse. It is too horrible. I have done with all +that. I have just managed to creep up on to the dry sand, and you ask me to +embark again on those same waters. I will not do it. It is finished. That +slavery! that unrest! and fever! and jealousy! No, not again. I have served my +sentence. Too many times I have waked in the black of night and waited for +daylight, wishing I had been dust for a hundred years. I know now that in order +to have a little peace a person must not want anything. That is the price. We +mustn’t want anything, Aurora. We mustn’t want anything, we +mustn’t mind anything, we mustn’t care about anything, we must +submit to everything!” This counsel of perfection came from Gerald almost +in a sob. “We sha’n’t be happy like that, naturally, but we +sha’n’t be too wretched for expression, either. It’s the +lesson of life. I have learned it, and I will not expose myself to the old +chances again. ‘He who loves for the first time is a god,’ says the poet, +‘but he who loves for the second time is a fool,’ he goes on to say. And +so, Aurora–”</p> + +<p>“You make me laugh!” exclaimed Aurora in a snort of simple +scorn.</p> + +<p>“And so, Aurora, I am going to keep away from you for–I am not at +the present moment quite able to say how long.”</p> + +<p>“You’re going to do nothing of the sort! There now!” <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_344'></a>344</span>burst from Aurora. +“I’m not going to permit any such foolishness.” She firmly +proceeded to pile up a barricade against his preposterous intention. “Now, +Gerald, you pay attention to what I say, child. Can’t you see for +yourself, now you’ve put it into words, what nonsense all this is? You +could no more, in your sane and waking moments, be sentimentally in love with +me, and you know it, than, I guess, I could with you, fond of you as I am. No, +that isn’t putting it strongly enough,” she gallantly amended; +“you couldn’t do it, it stands to reason, even so easily as I could. +What you felt was just the result of you being so weak, all full of fever dreams +and delusions. And you still believe in it a little because you aren’t yet +good and strong. I thought you were, just at first, because you come so near +looking it. But I know that condition. After a sickness you plump up, you get +back your color, and all the while you can be so weak you could burst out crying +if any one pointed a finger at you. You’re trembling with nervousness this +minute. You’re all sunk together, as if your backbone couldn’t hold +you up. It’s because the weakness of your illness is still on you, as +anybody could see. Now you listen to what I’ve got to say. The wisest +thing you can do, young man, instead of keeping away and having ideas and +waiting till these gradually wear off–the best thing you can do, I say, is +to stay right at my side and get sobered up by contact with things as they +actually are. Not only the best thing, but a lot fairer to me, doesn’t it +seem so to you? How do you think I like to have you go kiting off the moment +I’ve got you back again? When I’ve missed you so! Now, Geraldino, +rely on Auroretta. Let her manage this case. Don’t you be afraid; +she’ll cure you in two frisks.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_345'></a>345</span>“It just +might be, you know, that you were right,” said Gerald, dubiously, with the +modesty of tone that would beseem a girl after a bucket of cold water had +quelled her hysterics. “The truth is you do not appear to me this evening +at all as I have been carrying you in my remembrance.”</p> + +<p>Aurora laughed and reinforced her expression of jolly matter-of-factness, +looking into his eyes with eyes of sanative fun.</p> + +<p>He looked back at her with meditative scrutiny, one eyebrow raised a little +above the other.</p> + +<p>She had reigned in his thoughts very largely in her appearance of his nurse, +with her soft, loose robes, the blue of pensive twilights, her fair hair in +easy-feeling braids, her white hands bare of ornaments. She sat near him now in +a snug satin dinner-dress full of whalebones and hooks and eyes. It had elbow +sleeves terminating in full frills of Duchess lace; a square-cut neck, likewise +be-laced, framing an open space in part obscured again by a jeweled medallion on +a gold chain. She had on rings and bracelets, a bow-knot in her hair. She had in +fact “dressed up” for Tom Bewick, wishing him to see with his eyes +what good she got out of the fortune with whose origin he was acquainted.</p> + +<p>“Gracious goodness!” She bounced to her feet. “Here I was +forgetting! Gerald,” she said in haste, “I’m sorry, but +we’ll have to go indoors. They’ll be wondering where I am, and +starting the hunt for me.”</p> + +<p>“They? You have guests?”</p> + +<p>“Only one. Come in, Gerald. I want you to meet him. You’ve heard +me speak of Judge Bewick in Denver, where I lived so long. Well, this is his +son, Doctor Thomas Bewick. <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_346'></a>346</span>He’s in Florence just for a visit. It’s +a wonder, come to think of it, that you haven’t heard of his being here. +We’ve been going everywhere and seeing everything and giving +dinner-parties. Well, never tell me again that news spreads so fast in Florence! +Come on. I want you to know each other. You’ll be sure to like +him.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t think I will. I mean that I don’t think I will go +into the house with you, Aurora.”</p> + +<p>“Now, Gerald,” she said in a warning voice, at which black clouds +of impending displeasure loomed over the horizon, “this isn’t the +way to begin. Don’t be odd and trying. I should feel hurt, now truly, if I +had to think your regard for me wasn’t equal to doing such a little thing +for me as this. Tom’s one of my very best friends, and he’s heard us +talk so much of you. He’s seen your painting of me. I do want you to know +him, and I want him to know you. Then, too, Gerald dear, and this is the main +reason, I want you to get good and rested, and to take a little wine before you +start for home. Though you say the air is like a warm bath, your hands are cold, +I notice.”</p> + +<p>Too tired from the emotions of the evening to make any valid resistance, +emptied in fact of all feeling except a flat sort of bewilderment, Gerald +followed, like a little boy in fear of rough-handling from his so much bigger +nurse.</p> + +<p>They found Estelle and Tom in the parlor.</p> + +<p>“Well, I was wondering what had become of you!” cried Estelle as +Aurora appeared in the doorway, and behind her shoulder the shadowy, unexpected +face of Gerald.</p> + +<p>“Tom,” said Aurora, “this is my friend Mr. Fane that +you’ve heard us talk so much about, the painter, you know, who painted +that picture of me up there. And this is Doctor Bewick, Gerald, to whom I am +under a thousand <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_347'></a>347</span>obligations, besides the obligation of his having +probably saved my life out in Denver, not so many years ago, when I was +dangerously ill.”</p> + +<p>Aurora was luminous with gladness. Aurora was so glad that she had not the +concentration or the decency to attempt to hide it. She did not know of the +flagrant betrayal of her feelings; she was not guarding against it, because her +delight itself absorbed all her powers of thought. She stood there, a monument +unveiled. And all the reason for it that one could see was that pindling, +hollow-eyed young fellow who had entered the room in her wake.</p> + +<p>Those who have not quarreled with a loved one, and known the pain of the fear +that he may be lost to them, will surely never know the keenest joy. It takes +the escape, the contrast, to make happiness shine out as brightly as it is +capable of doing.</p> + +<p>The two men, after conversation had engaged between them, promoted and helped +along by the greater lingual readiness of the ladies, observed each other. This +they did indirectly and as if doing nothing of the kind. But Estelle, as +profoundly uneasy as if she had foreseen already the fate of the fat to end in +the fire, was aware of it. She noted in Gerald’s stiffly adjusted face the +unself-conscious eyebrows, formidably different one from the other; she noted +how Doctor Tom, sturdy and self-collected as he was, kept knocking the ashes of +his cigar into an inkstand full of ink.</p> + +<p>It struck her whimsically that she had seen before something kindred to what +was taking place under her eyes: in a barnyard at home, two crimson-helmeted +champions, with neck-feathers slightly risen on end, standing opposed, ocularly +taking each other’s measure.</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_348'></a>348</span><a id='link_19'></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> + +<p>The Brenda who came back from America was not quite the one who had gone +there. Gerald saw it in the first instant. She had gained in definiteness, +assurance, even in beauty. But a silver haze, a fairy bloom, an aureole, was +mysteriously departed from her. She had left her teens behind.</p> + +<p>Yet in her stainless white, her bridal veil, a slender coronal of orange +blossoms on her dark hair, and the light of love in her dark eyes, how wonderful +she was! That Manlio, pale as a statue with the force of his emotion, should +wear a look of almost superhuman beatitude was only natural and proper. Of those +who assisted at the ceremony many were deeply moved, and few altogether +untouched: to be in the church at that moment gave one the importance of being +accessory to a high romance.</p> + +<p>At the wedding reception something of this quality of emotion continued still +to possess the invited guests as long as Brenda and Manlio, beneath their arch +of flowers, stood smiling response to congratulations and compliments.</p> + +<p>It was in the general experience not unlike that part of the opera where, to +a matchless music, the god of flame and the glowing hearth lauds the loveliness +of woman and the strength of man’s pursuit; and the other gods, uplifted, +look at one another with washed eyes, feeling anew how wonderful they all are, +how wonderful it all is.</p> + +<p>The heart of Leslie, nevertheless, as she bustled about, <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_349'></a>349</span>seeing to it that every one was provided +with refreshment, confessed a point of bitterness. In a way, it was envy of +Brenda. Not of her happiness, or her husband, of course. But she did wish the +man lived and would present himself who could inspire her with such feelings as +Brenda’s. The kind of man who cared for her she somehow never cared +for–a serious barrier to experiencing a <i>grande passion</i>. And on this +day of wedding-bells it seemed a pity. The girl of many offers felt sad.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Foss smiled a pleased, incessant smile, not “realizing” the +thing which was happening, as she told her sister-in-law who had come over from +America with the bride. Her chick had developed tendencies unknown among the +breed, taken to the water and swum away with a swan. But the mother had +confidence. She believed in marriage. The institution had been justified by her +example and Jerome’s. Her eyes sought him out, a little anxiously, to +peruse his face. The idea could not for a moment be admitted that he had a +favorite among his children, but yet it was acknowledged that Brenda had always +in a very special way been near to her father’s heart. From his calm and +serenity in conversation with that nice big Doctor Bewick, Mrs. Foss was able to +hope that he too did not “realize.”</p> + +<p>Aurora watched the bride and groom with fairly fascinated eyes, but from a +certain distance. They had been nice, they had thanked her handsomely for her +handsome present, but nothing could modify her regretful certitude that Brenda +did not care for her. And it might so easily have been she and not the good Aunt +Brenda who secured for the <i>sposo</i> his career of silver lace and sabre.... +And <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_350'></a>350</span> Brenda, +innocently unknowing, would just the same not have liked her. But there! +Beautiful Brenda didn’t go about loving everybody. She had the more glory +to confer upon the one. Oh, harmoniously matched, high-removed pair! Oh, +hymeneal crowning of tenderness and truth!... Aurora in a kind of awe wondered +what elevated things those pale rose lips of the bride would say to the +bridegroom when, the turmoil of festivity ended, they were in nuptial solitude. +Impossible to imagine! It must be something altogether beyond other brides; and +his words must make those of all other lovers sound common and poor.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>When the arch of flowers was empty and the happy pair had left for the train, +Lily and Gerald went strolling about the garden hand in hand.</p> + +<p>Lily had been a bridesmaid, Gerald an usher. Both were in the fine apparel of +their parts; thoughts of weddings hummed in both of their heads.</p> + +<p>“Well, Lily,” said the young man idly, in their walk between +odorous lines of wall-flowers and heliotrope, “I suppose you too will soon +be getting married.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, no!” Lily shook her head. “There is nobody I could +marry.”</p> + +<p>“Why, I thought, Lily,” he said, “that you were going to +marry me!”</p> + +<p>“No, Gerald,” she replied promptly, but with gentleness and +regret, so as not to hurt his feelings.</p> + +<p>“I might come and live with you,” she added, after a second, +“and keep house for you. A cottage in the country, with beehives and ducks +and a little donkey.... Gerald, do you know about Sir William +Wallace?”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_351'></a>351</span>Though a chasm +appeared to divide this subject from the last, Gerald shrewdly supposed a +connection between them.</p> + +<p>“Very little. You tell me.”</p> + +<p>“You haven’t read ‘The Scottish Chiefs’? I took it without +permission and kept it out of Fräulein’s sight. It grows light early now, +you know, and I read it for hours before getting up. Then whenever I could, I +read it in the daytime. And after they had left me at night, I read it with the +pink candles of my birthday cake. I cried so much that when I finished I was ill +with a fever and had to be kept in bed for three days.”</p> + +<p>“Why, when was this?”</p> + +<p>“Two weeks ago.”</p> + +<p>“My poor little Lily, how came I not to be told of it? And you sent me +such a beautiful remembrance when I was ill!–Well, Lily, I know now why +you won’t take me. I’m not much like Sir William Wallace, +that’s a fact. I might grow like him in courage and prowess, perhaps, to +please you, but I know that I should never be beautiful in kilts. It shall be as +you say, dear. We’ll be brother and sister instead. And now tell me more +about this book, these Scottish.... Lily, do you see Mrs. Hawthorne on the +doorstep? Do you gather that the signs she is making are meant for us? We came +up together and I think she may wish to say she is ready to go, and will give me +a lift back to town....”</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>“We came up together!” With great frequency in these days Gerald +was going somewhere with Mrs. Hawthorne, not alone with her, but making one of +four in an amiable party. Sometimes it was his fate to make conversation by the +hour with Estelle, while Doctor Tom monopolized <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_352'></a>352</span>Aurora; on the other hand, he sometimes would +succeed in getting his fingers among Occasion’s hair, and secure Aurora +for his share, while Dr. Tom was apportioned with the slenderer charmer. But the +behavior of all was civilized and urbane, and if a thorn pricked or nettle +burned, the sufferer concealed his pain and spoiled nobody’s fun.</p> + +<p>Gerald would in reality have preferred to stay away, almost as much as +Estelle and possibly Doctor Tom would have preferred him to do so. But just +there the incalculable, the ungovernable, in human nature came into play. A +golden thread, a mere hair, strong as a steel cable, drew him to the place where +he could expect to find no comfort, and had no object to accomplish except just +to be there, with his eyebrows one higher than the other.</p> + +<p>Either Estelle liked to annoy him, or she was unfortunate in doing it without +malice.</p> + +<p>“Don’t they make a noble-looking couple?” she asked him, +gazing at Aurora and Tom outlined side by side against the light of the +window.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” he felt obliged to say, and followed it quickly, without +apology for the indiscretion of the question: “Are they going to +marry?”</p> + +<p>“That remains to be seen,” she said in a way which made one +desire to set the dog on her. “I cherish the hope. May I offer you another +cigarette?”</p> + +<p>He sometimes remained scandalously late in the evening after dining, in spite +of–oh, by so much!–knowing better. He would wait, with an +artist’s beautiful air of time-forgetfulness, for Dr. Tom to get up to go. +He would instantly, as if remembering himself, get up to go, too, and walk with +the doctor as far as his hotel, they talking together like men with respect for +each other’s brains, and appreciation of <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_353'></a>353</span>each other’s character and company, no subject +of contention in the world.</p> + +<p>Gerald pushed courtesy so far as to go with the doctor, by themselves, on +certain visits to hospitals, to certain games of pallone, certain monasteries +which ladies are not permitted to enter, Aurora rejoicing in the opportunities +to “get good and acquainted” which she saw these two dear friends of +hers take.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>After the drive back from the wedding, Gerald resisted Aurora’s +suggestion that he enter the house with them and remain to dine. This he did +with well-masked resentfulness. As it was not Dr. Bewick’s last evening, +but the evening before his last, Gerald did not see that delicacy strictly +demanded his sacrifice. But Estelle had without so many compliments informed him +that he was not to accept. She had particular reasons, she darkly enlightened +him, for the request.</p> + +<p>So, with a paltry excuse, he jumped out of the carriage before it reached the +gate, and stood looking after it, holding his hat–the glossy +<i>tuba</i> which Giovanna had with her elbow stroked and stroked the right way +of the silk, when she laid out her signorino’s outfit for the wedding.</p> + +<p>Earlier than usual after dinner Estelle retired, “to write up her +diary,” she said. Tom was left to have with Aurora that conversation which +Estelle had besought him to have, and of which by a significant motion of the +face she had reminded him before leaving the room. He came to the point very +soon, the sooner to get it over.</p> + +<p>“Nell,” he said, and, leaning back, with one arm flung along the +top of the sofa, the other offering to his lips a <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_354'></a>354</span>thick cigar, waited long enough for her +to wonder what was coming, “you spend too much money.”</p> + +<p>Without shadow of attempt at evasion, she said:</p> + +<p>“Tom, I do.”</p> + +<p>“You’ve got to retrench, girl. You’ve got to be more +careful.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I suppose I’ve got to.”</p> + +<p>“Let’s be practical. How are you going to do it?”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know, Tom. It’s so easy to spend and so hard to +hold on to your money! If any one had told me a year ago I could get rid of as +much money in one year as I have done, I shouldn’t have known how I could +do it without opening the window and throwing it out.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I’m glad you don’t deny a bent toward +extravagance.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t deny anything that means I spend a lot of money. I have +more sense. The facts are there.”</p> + +<p>“You’ve already broken into your capital, haven’t +you?”</p> + +<p>“Did Hattie tell you that or did you guess? It’s true, I have; +but–” she tried to place the harm done in a harmless +light–“it isn’t so bad but that if I saved for a little while +I could make it up again.”</p> + +<p>“If! True; but are you going to, Nell? That’s the +question.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Tom, I never ought to have been given any money if I was to hold +on to it!” Aurora almost groaned. “I didn’t know at first. I +was pleased as Punch. I lay awake nights just to gloat and feel grand. I tell +<i>you</i>, I meant to hold on to it! I tell <i>you</i>, it wasn’t going +to get away from me after that good fight we made for it! <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_355'></a>355</span>But–” the effect of a mental +groan was repeated–“the whole thing isn’t as I thought it +would be, not a bit.”</p> + +<p>She stopped, and while she tried to coordinate her ideas, Dr. Tom quietly +waited for explanation or illustration of her meaning.</p> + +<p>“I don’t like money, there’s the whole of it!” she +gave him the sum of her attempt in one cast.</p> + +<p>Dr. Tom continued to wait, smoking.</p> + +<p>“In fact, I hate it.”</p> + +<p>Dr. Tom continued to wait, without interrupting, or trying to help her +disentangle her thought, of which he had in truth no inkling.</p> + +<p>“I hate it, and I love it, both. That’s truer, I suppose. But I +can’t be at rest with it.”</p> + +<p>“Never fear, girl,”–his tone was +humorous,–“you’ll get used to it. Just from watching you, I +should have fancied you were pretty well used to it already.”</p> + +<p>“When I was a child it was just the same way with candy,” she +went on with her own train of thought, not minding his; “I loved +it–and gobbled it right up. Some of the girls made theirs last and last. I +ate mine at once. And it wasn’t only because I was a pig with no +self-control. I wanted to have done with it and go back to a sensible life. With +this money I have the same feeling–and then another feeling that I sort of +can’t account for, as if I wanted to get rid of it because there was +something wrong in me having it.”</p> + +<p>“That money? You sure earned it!” he came out vigorously. +“Don’t be a goose, Nell.”</p> + +<p>“I wasn’t thinking of what you think. But I’m afraid I am a +goose, Tom, an awful goose, and I’m ashamed of it. I somehow can’t +feel it right–there!–to have more <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_356'></a>356</span>than the rest. Come right down to it, I feel mean in +having something the rest haven’t got, and keeping it from them, like a +nasty fat boy stuffing pie with a lot of hungry ragamuffins looking on. I know +it isn’t good common sense, or how could rich people be so all right and +calm in their minds as they are, and have everybody’s respect? Rich people +are all right, I’ve always sort of looked up to them, with their +advantages and things. I haven’t a bit of fault to find. But Tom, I +suppose the amount of it is I was born poor and I go on having the feelings of +the poor. If any one asks me for anything and appears to need it, I’ve got +to give it or feel too mean to live. Me, Nell, who was poor myself for so long, +how would I look hardening my heart against any one who came and wanted to +borrow? I’d be ashamed to look them in the eye.”</p> + +<p>“With that view of it, of course I can see why your money +wouldn’t last long.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I’m extravagant besides, I’ll own to that; +that’s the <i>real</i> trouble. I want to buy everything that takes my eye, +I want to make everything run smooth, like on greased wheels, and to have all +the faces around me look pleased, and everybody liking me. I love the feeling of +luxury and festivity, and oh, I just love a grand good time! That’s what +the money was given to me for, wasn’t it, so that I could have a grand +good time? But when I’ve indulged myself, Tom, I wouldn’t have the +face, if I had the heart, to say no to anybody that came along and wanted me to +indulge them, too. Now, I don’t want you to go thinking this is +generosity, Tom, or a good heart, or that I have any sneaking idea in my own +bosom that it’s anything of the sort. I’d be a +regular–low-down–soggy–sinful sowbug, <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_357'></a>357</span> I’d be too dirt-mean to live, if +I pretended it was that. When I was poor I never was generous; I never thought +of it. I worked hard for what I got; and was in the same boat exactly as the +rest; I was entitled to the little bit I’d worked for. But now it’s +different. It’s like I’d won the big prize in the lottery. I +can’t be stingy with it and not blush. I can’t sit there like a +swollen wood-tick and be rich all by myself.”</p> + +<p>“All right, Nell; all right. It’s a perfectly understandable way +of looking at it, if it is rather far-fetched. But good-by to the hard-earned +thousands. You won’t have a smitch of them left.”</p> + +<p>“Good-by, then, and good riddance!” cried Aurora violently, +almost pettishly. “I don’t really like them, anyhow. It’s too +easy just to write your name on a check. At first I thought I was living in a +fairy-tale; but once you’ve got used to it, it doesn’t compare with +the fun you get the old-fashioned way, working hard for a thing, and planning, +and going to price it, and saving, and finally getting it, and that proud! +People who haven’t been poor simply don’t know. Why, that one poor +little silver bangle I had when I was fifteen did more to give me pure joy than +any of the beautiful things I’ve bought this whole last year. I’m +sorry if it seems ungrateful to my bloated bank-account, but it’s true. +Another thing, Tom. I was brought up to work. I won’t say I liked it. I +don’t think many people who’ve got to work do like it. But since I +gave it up, nothing I’ve found has really filled its place to give me an +appetite and the feeling I’d a right to a good time. To sit back and let +others work while you fan your face–I can’t help it, I feel a sort +of disgrace in it. I know better, it’s just the way I <i>feel</i>. I know +all the while that’s the way the world was <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_358'></a>358</span>planned, some to be rich and some to be +poor–Think how rich King Solomon was! And your dear father!–some to +work and some not, with changes round about once in a while, like in my case, +and crosses and trials and temptations belonging to every state, and the love of +God and a quiet heart possible in every state. And I’ve always had such +respect for moneyed people and their refined ways.... But if you want me to +start in now and do differently from what I’ve been doing, I tell you +truly, I don’t know how I’m going to do it, Tom. I’d rather +not have the money at all.”</p> + +<p>“You won’t have it, Nell, dear. You’ve only to keep on, and +you won’t have it.”</p> + +<p>“All right. Then I’ll go back to work and never happier in my +life. I’m strong and able, I’ve got years of work in me. And if you +think I’ve grown so devoted to all these frills that I couldn’t give +them up, you’ll see!”</p> + +<p>“Of course I haven’t the faintest right to control your use of +your money–”</p> + +<p>“But of course you have, Tom,”–her tone changed at once, +and was eagerly humble,–“every right. You can take it away from me +any moment you please. Who has a right, I should like to know, if not +you?”</p> + +<p>“Well, then, Nell, I’m going to make a suggestion. What you have +said shows me that simple advice would be of no use in this case. Don’t +think, girl, that I don’t get at your way of seeing the matter. If I +appear cold toward it, if I don’t seem to sympathize, it’s because +the logical results would land you in a hole from which I’d feel a call by +and by to try to pull you out. See?–As a promise to keep inside of your +income would apparently embitter life to you, I won’t ask for it, merely +suggesting the fitness of <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_359'></a>359</span>trying to observe such a restriction. Even as +regards your power to throw it away, there’ll be a lot more of it to throw +if you respect your capital. However, the money is yours, to do exactly what you +please with, but this I ask: empower me to turn some part of it into an annuity, +unalienable and modestly sufficient.”</p> + +<p>“An annuity? What’s that?”</p> + +<p>“A sum of money so fixed that you receive the interest as long as you +live and have no power over the sum itself. It’s not yours to use, to +transfer or yet to bequeath. In your case the one safe investment, the single +way I see to keep you out of the poorhouse.”</p> + +<p>“Do you say so! All right, Tom; do what you think best. But see here. +Whatever you arrange for me that way, you’ve got to arrange for Hattie, +too, or it wouldn’t be fair. I won’t think of it unless you’ll +do the same for both. If I hadn’t a penny left in the world, you know the +Carvers would take me in in a minute. Then if you do it, don’t you +see,” she brought in slyly, “when I’ve spent my money, +there’ll always be Hattie’s for me to fall back on. Don’t let +her know you’re doing it, Tom, but fix it.”</p> + +<p>“All right. Two comfortable little annuities, enough to be independent +on, and be taken care of if you’re sick.”</p> + +<p>“That’s it, Tom. Then everybody’s mind will be set at rest. +And this I promise: I’ll try to be a good girl.”</p> + +<p>That subject being dropped, there was silence for a minute or two, while Tom +thoughtfully smoked.</p> + +<p>Aurora’s face was a living rose with the excitement of their +discussion. She put her hands to her cheeks to feel how they burned, then turned +to Tom to laugh with him over it. The pink of her face enhanced the blueness of +her eyes. It was not unusual for persons sitting near Aurora, <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_360'></a>360</span>women as well as men, to +feel a sudden desire to squeeze her in their arms and tell her how sweet she +was. Tom found himself saying a thing he had taken a solemn engagement with +himself not to say.</p> + +<p>“I had hoped”–his utterance was slow and +heavy–“to find a different solution to the difficulty.”</p> + +<p>Her face questioned him, and at once looked troubled.</p> + +<p>“I was going to try to take over all your difficulties and bundle them +up with my own; but,” he continued, after a moment, with force, +“I’m not going to do it.”</p> + +<p>“That’s right, Tom,” she came out eagerly, without +pretending not to understand. “If I know what you mean–don’t +do it! Oh, I’m so grateful, I can’t tell you, that you’ve made +up your mind that way. Because, dear Tom, whatever you wanted me to do, seems to +me I’d have to do it. I don’t see how I could say no to anything you +asked me. It would break my heart, I guess, if I had to hold out against a real +wish of yours. I couldn’t do it. All the same, I know we wouldn’t +make just the happiest kind of couple–’cause why, we’re too like +brother and sister, Tom. It would be unnatural. I feel toward you, Tom, just +like an own, own sister–not those mean old things, Idell and Cora, who are +your sisters–but I feel toward you as I would to my own brother Charlie. +There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. But if I had to marry you, +there’d be something about it–well, I don’t know. I +can’t explain. Haven’t you seen how there are things that are +perfect for one use and no good at all for another? I’m a pretty good +nurse, ain’t I, Tom? But what would I be as a bareback +circus-rider?”</p> + +<p>“We aren’t going to talk about it, Nell. I told you I had given +it up. But,” he went on after a heavy moment, <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_361'></a>361</span>unable entirely to subjugate his +humanity–“but I wish now I had asked you before you left +home.”</p> + +<p>She was too oppressed with misery to speak at once, so he amplified.</p> + +<p>“But it seemed rather more–I don’t want to call it by any +such big word as chivalrous,–it seemed rather whiter not to urge it, when +circumstances might have seemed to lay a compulsion on you. Then it seemed +better to let all the talk, the unpleasantness, in Denver die down first. Then, +too, I wanted you to see the world; I liked the thought of you having your +fling. But,” he reiterated, “I can’t help wishing I had +followed my instinct and asked you before I let you go. Tell the truth, Nell. +Wouldn’t you have had me then?”</p> + +<p>“I suppose, Tom, that I should have you now if you asked me. But then +or now,” she brought in quickly, “it would be a mistake. I +couldn’t love you more dearly, Tom, than I do, good big brother that +you’ve been. Dear me, all we’ve been through together! Then all the +fun we’ve had! We couldn’t change to something different without all +being spoiled. You don’t seem to know, but I do, that I’m not the +woman for you in that way. We’re too much alike, Tom. What you want is a +little dainty woman, delicate, quick, bright-minded, something, to find an +example near at hand, like Hattie Carver. A big fellow like you wants someone to +cherish and protect. How would any one go to work protecting and cherishing a +little darling big as a moose!”</p> + +<p>“I might have known”–Doctor Tom made his reflections +aloud,–“that a good big husky man wouldn’t have a chance with +a good big husky girl while a sickly, sad-eyed, spindle-shanked son of a gun was +hanging round!”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_362'></a>362</span>“There’s nothing in that, I should think +you’d know,” said Aurora, quickly. “I like him, of course, and +I like to have him round. Haven’t you found him good company yourself? But +that’s just friendship. Friendship like between a fish and a bird, and no +more prospect of a different ending than that. If that’s troubling you, +you can set your mind at rest, Tom.”</p> + +<p>“It’s none of my business, anyhow,” said the doctor, +brusquely, flinging down his cigar and walking away from her to the mantelpiece, +where he stood looking up at her portrait, but thinking of that other portrait +of her, with its wizardry and strange truth, which she had not failed to show +him.</p> + +<p>“Tom, if I thought you could feel bitter, I should die, that’s +all,” cried Aurora, jumping up and following. “You’ve been +such a friend to me! Do you suppose I forget? Never was there such a friend. And +you know, now don’t you, Tom, that I think the whole, whole world of +you?” Arms were clasped around his neck,–large arms, solid and +polished as marble, but tender as mother birds; a head was pressed hard against +his shoulder. “There never could anybody take your place with me. +You’d only have to call over land and sea, and I’d come flying to +serve you, to nurse you in sickness or help you in sorrow. Give me a good hug, +Tom. Give me a good kiss, and say you know I mean every word!–Now, +isn’t this better than to see me across the table at breakfast, with my +hair in curlers, and to have me snooping round being jealous of your female +patients?”</p> + +<p>“No, it’s not better; but it’s pretty good.”</p> + +<p>“Do you mean to tell me, Tom, that you’d be any more likely to +cut my name in a tree, or kiss my stolen glove, than <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_363'></a>363</span>I’d be to wish on the first star +you loved me or write poetry about my feelin’s?”</p> + +<p>“Nell, I’m not telling; the subject is closed. But any time +there’s anything I can do for you, anything in this world, Nell, you know +you’ve only got to sing out.”</p> + +<p>“You’ll marry, Tom dear, by and by.”</p> + +<p>“Very well. If you say so, I’ll marry. But what I said will hold +good if I do. It will hold good, too, if you marry, Nell. Oh, let’s talk +about something else.”</p> + +<p>The change of subject could hardly be effected in less time than it takes to +reverse engines; a minute or two passed before Aurora inquired concerning the +number of hours’ travel between Florence and Liverpool, then about his +steamer, his stateroom and the exact time of his starting.</p> + +<p>“Nine o’clock in the evening. I see, so as to have daylight for +the Alps. You’ll dine here of course and we’ll take you to the +station.”</p> + +<p>He judged it more prudent to dine at his hotel and meet them afterwards at +the station near train-time.</p> + +<p>“Then–” sighed Aurora, sorrowfully, “this is our last +evening! For I heard you and the consul planning for to-morrow evening together, +and he to read you some chapters of his book. A compliment, Tom. He’s +never offered to read <i>us</i> any of it. I’m only sorry the idea +didn’t ripen sooner, so that we needn’t be robbed of your very last +evening. We must make the most of our time, then. Suppose we go into the garden, +Tom, and walk across the street to the river–I don’t have to put +anything on for just that step. It’s so pretty, looking upstream at the +bridges, and across at the hills your pa was so fond of. Wasn’t the Judge +just crazy about Florence! For the longest time after I came I couldn’t +see why, but I’m beginning.”</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_364'></a>364</span><a id='link_20'></a>CHAPTER XX</h2> + +<p>A tired look overspread Estelle’s face, when, returning home after +seeing Dr. Bewick off on his way to Paris, they found Gerald waiting.</p> + +<p>She said to herself, in tempestuous inward irritation, that it was +inconceivable a young man so well up in the ways of the world shouldn’t +know any better.</p> + +<p>It could not be said that Estelle did not like Gerald Fane. Considered by +himself, she did like him, much more, she believed, than he liked her. His odd +distinction, too subtle and complex to describe, aroused in her a vague hunger +of the mind. But considered in relation to Aurora, he “was on her +nerves,” she said.</p> + +<p>“That he shouldn’t know any better–” she mentally +scolded, behind her tired look, “than to obtrude himself the very first +minute after Doctor Tom’s departure!”</p> + +<p>But Gerald was not thinking he showed a horrid want of tact. The other way, +rather. He saw himself as the intimate old friend who comes to call right after +the funeral, and by his presence console a little, and brighten, the +bereaved.</p> + +<p>Aurora’s red eyes smote him at once. Aurora was still in tearful mood. +The sense not only of her dear friend going, but going with a secret weight on +his heart that it had been in her power to prevent, made her own heart miserably +heavy, too. For the moment Tom counted for her more than all else, and she +reproached herself that when he <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_365'></a>365</span>had done so much for her she had not been willing to +do such an ordinary little thing for him as to marry him; and she reproached +herself because it was a relief, despite her great wish to be loyal, to think +they should not meet again until all that was well in the past.</p> + +<p>Estelle hoped to hear her friend say to Gerald something to the effect that +she was in no mood for a social call; but Aurora welcomed the visitor with +unaffected warmth and sat down in her hat to talk with him. So Estelle said +primly that it was late, and she was tired; if they would excuse her, she would +go to bed.</p> + +<p>Aurora talked about Tom and nothing but Tom. Sweetly, sighfully, she spoke, +as more than once before, of those many things he had done for her, but spoke of +them this evening more amply; his care of her, a penniless patient, in that +hospital where she woke up after a space of unconsciousness; his unremitting +kindness when she lived in his house and took care of his father, the dear old +judge, who was sick three long years before he died; the proof of goodness more +remarkable still which he gave after that.</p> + +<p>A tremulous hope flickered up in Gerald that she would go on and tell him +about the latter, perhaps filling in some of the lacunæ which her history had +for him. Much had come out in their many hours of talk, but he had found her +circumspect with regard to certain parts of her life, and had never put a +question. In one so frank, her avoidance appeared a result of dislike to +remembering those unmentioned links in the chain of events.</p> + +<p>But this evening again she stopped short of telling him what he would have +liked to know–how Bewick was connected with her wealth. For it had come to +her from no second husband: she had not been twice married.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_366'></a>366</span>She broke off +with the words, “Oh, some time I’ll tell you the whole story. I +don’t feel like it now. It always makes me so mad!”</p> + +<p>If Aurora had been pledged to Bewick, thought Gerald, the most natural thing +would have been to tell him of it this evening. In her expatiating upon all she +owed to Bewick, Gerald felt a wish to explain how it was that without being +engaged to him she could commit the impropriety of publicly weeping over his +departure.</p> + +<p>It seemed to Gerald rather late in the day for him to seek an excuse to call +at the Hermitage; yet on the afternoon following Dr. Bewick’s departure he +sought for one–one having reference to Estelle. He took with him a +propitiatory little volume containing translations of well-known poems by one +Amiel. Estelle was regarded as being immensely interested in French; she daily +translated themes back and forth from her own language into that of Molière. +These singularly neat and exact productions of Amiel’s should +delight–and disarm her.</p> + +<p>Gerald did not dislike Estelle, far from it. He did justice to her as a good, +true-hearted, self-improving American. Taken by herself, he felt for her decided +regard; but taken in connection with Aurora he would sometimes have liked +delicately to lift her between finger and thumb and drop her into a well.</p> + +<p>When he entered the red-and-green room, the very least bit timidly, with his +book in his hand, he perceived almost at once that something unusual was in the +air, and the shades of feeling between himself and Estelle became for the moment +of no importance.</p> + +<p>Nothing was said at first of the cause for Aurora’s air of <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_367'></a>367</span>repressed excitement, as +she knit on a pink and white baby-jacket, or the cloudy annoyance puckering +Estelle’s brow as she stitched on her silk tapestry. The ladies might +merely have been quarrelling, thought the visitor, and made himself as far as he +could a soothing third, chatting with Estelle about Amiel and with Aurora about +young Mrs. Sebastian, whose baby was to rejoice in the little garment +half-finished between her hands.</p> + +<p>“Gerald,” Aurora interrupted him in the middle of a sentence, +letting her hands and work drop in her lap, “something so queer and +unpleasant has happened!”</p> + +<p>He raised both eyebrows in solicitous participation, and mutely +questioned.</p> + +<p>“It’s about Charlie Hunt. I never would have imagined–you +wouldn’t either.”</p> + +<p>“My imagination, dear friend, is more far-reaching in some ways than +yours,” he quickly corrected her, “and has had more practice than +yours in ways of unpleasantness. But do tell me what it is that has +happened.”</p> + +<p>“Charlie Hunt! Charlie Hunt!” she repeated, like one unable to +make herself believe a thing. “Charlie Hunt to turn nasty like that from +one day to the next!”</p> + +<p>“To turn─”</p> + +<p>“He was here to dinner just two weeks ago and perfectly all right. We +had a nice, long chat together on the sofa. But he didn’t make his +party-call quite as soon as he usually does, so when I saw him at Brenda’s +wedding I thought of course he’d come up and tell me how busy he’d +been or some other taradiddle. But he didn’t come near me. I was sort of +surprised,–still, there were so many people there that he knew, and we +didn’t stay quite to the end, you remember. I didn’t even think +enough about it <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_368'></a>368</span>to +mention it to Estelle. Well, this forenoon I went to the bank, and when +I’d got my money, I happened to catch sight of Charlie, in the side-room, +you know, where his desk is. I thought I’d like to speak to him. +He’s always wanted me to ask for him when I went to the bank, and +I’ve done it more than once, and we’ve had five minutes’ chat. +I was just going to tease him a little bit about coming to see me so seldom +nowadays, when he used to come so often, and ask about the lady in the case. +There really is one, I guess. Italo told me. So I asked the old boy–you +know the one I mean, the old servant of the bank, who’s always there, to +tell Mr. Hunt that Mrs. Hawthorne would like to speak with him, and then I took +a seat, and in a minute in came Charlie, with just his usual look.</p> + +<p>“Now, I want to tell you that I’ve never had one unpleasant word +with Charlie Hunt; I’ve always liked him real well. I put down my foot +against letting him run me and my house, but there never was a word said about +it. I balked, but I didn’t kick. All along I’ve been just as nice to +him as I know how, except just one moment, when I stuck a little pin into him +the night of the <i>veglione</i>, not supposing that he’d ever know who +did it.</p> + +<p>“Well, I was sitting there at the table with the newspapers, and he +came and stood near, without taking a chair, as if he hadn’t much time to +spare. I began to talk and joke about his cutting me dead at the wedding, and he +listened and talked back in a common-enough way, only I noticed that he once or +twice called me Mrs. Barton instead of Mrs. Hawthorne. Now I must go back and +tell you that some time ago when I was at the bank he casually asked me if I +knew of any Mrs. Helen Barton in Florence, and he showed me two letters in the +same handwriting, one addressed <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_369'></a>369</span>to the English bank, and the other to the American +bank, Florence, that had been there at Hunt & Landini’s for some time, +and no one had called for and they didn’t know what to do with. Now, the +instant my eye lit on those letters I knew who’d written them, what was in +them, and who they were meant for. All letters for Estelle and me, you know, are +first sent to Estelle’s house in East Boston, to be forwarded to us +wherever we might be in Europe; but that letter had escaped. That letter was +from a queer kind of sour, unsuccessful woman called Iona Allen, who boarded +once at the same house with me on Springfield Street,–the languishing kind +of critter that I never could stand, who hadn’t the gumption of a +half-drowned chicken, who’d never stuck to anything or put any +elbow-grease into the work on hand, and whined all the time, and was looking out +for some one to support her. I guessed she’d heard of my money and was +writing me a sweet letter of congratulations, along with a hard-luck story. +I’d have liked to get hold of her letter, but didn’t exactly see how +I could. I said to Charlie, ‘Let me take it; perhaps I can find the one +it’s meant for among my acquaintances.’ But he didn’t seem to +think that could be done; so there the matter dropped. I didn’t care much. +Iona Allen can look for some one nearer home to support her.</p> + +<p>“Well, to go back. When Charlie Hunt had called me Mrs. Barton for the +third time I realized from his way of doing it that it wasn’t a slip of +the tongue, and I stopped him short and said:</p> + +<p>“‘What makes you call me Mrs. Barton all of a sudden?’”</p> + +<p>“‘It’s your name, isn’t it?’ he said, with a queer +look.</p> + +<p>“‘No,’ I came right out strong and bold. And I wasn’t <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_370'></a>370</span>lying either. It +isn’t my name. I don’t really know what my name is. It’s +Hawthorne as much as it’s anything. Jim changed his name half a dozen +times, and the name he married me under I found out wasn’t his real +name.</p> + +<p>“Charlie Hunt stood there a moment as if thinking it over, looking at +me with the meanest grin; then he said with that hateful, sarcastic look of a +person who thinks he’s being smart in getting back at you:</p> + +<p>“‘Is that as true,’ he said, ‘as that you never indulged in +carnival humor masked as a crow?’ Then I knew he’d somehow got on to +the truth about that night at the <i>veglione</i>. But I wasn’t going to +give it away.</p> + +<p>“‘You know what you’re driving at better than I do,’ I +said. And then I said: ‘What’s it all about? What’s your +game?’ And he said, as if I’d been a common swindler that he’d +found out:</p> + +<p>“‘What’s yours?’</p> + +<p>“Then I felt myself get mad.</p> + +<p>“‘You’re a mean little pest,’ I said, but between my teeth, +and not so that any one but he could hear me. And ‘You’re an evil-minded +little scalawag,’ I said. ‘You certainly don’t know me if you think +I’ve done anything in this world to be ashamed of. Go ahead,’ I +said; ‘do what you please. Don’t for one single instant think that +I’m afraid of you or that you can do me any harm.’ And I left him +standing there, with his grin, and flounced out. But what do you think of it, +Gerald? Why should Charlie Hunt behave like that to me?”</p> + +<p>“I could judge better if I knew what you said to him at the +<i>veglione</i>.”</p> + +<p>“It wasn’t very bad. It might provoke him for a minute <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_371'></a>371</span>to know that it was I who +said it, but it oughtn’t to make him mad enough to bite. I went up to him, +and I said close to his ear, in my good English:</p> + +<p>“‘You amusing little match-maker,’ I said, ‘what do you hope to +get from your dusky friend marrying that <i>absard</i>American? How much do you +know about her?’ I said. ‘Are you even sure she’s as rich as she +seems?’ Then he said, polite but stiff:</p> + +<p>“‘You have the advantage of me, madam, in knowing what you’re +talking about. Pray go on with your tasteful pleasantries,’ he said; +‘I’m thinking I’ve heard your voice before.’ Upon which I shut +my mouth and dusted down the opera-house on Italo’s arm. I was crazy that +evening, I guess, with the crowd and excitement and all. When I get to training, +I can’t resist the impulse; I don’t know where to stop. But that +wasn’t enough to make him want to stick a knife in me, was it? It was only +fun. It was true. He had seemed to be trying to manage me so’s I’d +take a fancy to Landini, and I couldn’t for the life of me see what it +mattered to him.”</p> + +<p>“I tell Aurora,” came in Estelle, “that a little joke like +that would rankle terribly in any but a real goodnatured man.”</p> + +<p>“My dear Aurora,” said Gerald, excited and darkly flushed, +“your little joke would not have had to contain a sting nearly as sharp to +rouse against you such vanity as Hunt’s, unless, let me add, there were +some counterweight of self-interest to keep him back. It is known that Charlie +has only some parts and habits of a human being, not all. One almost, in pure +justice, cannot blame him. But scorn him–oh, as for that!... He could be +with you day after day, and take all you would give, and at the end <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_372'></a>372</span>of a year feel no tie; he +could hear you slandered, and not take your defence; he could make a joke at +your expense, if one came into his mind that he thought sufficiently witty, and +never have a sense of meanness! He would have had nothing to overcome. He would +only learn better if he perceived some loss of consideration, and consequent +advantage to himself. That would make him more cautious, but not make him more +aware. And you cannot call him wicked any more than upon any occasion you could +call him good. But he’s damnable!”</p> + +<p>Consuming anger lighted up Gerald’s face, his voice trembled with +intensity of feeling, his vehemence now and then by jerks lifted his heels off +the floor. “He is not properly a man at all,” he went on to +characterize his old schoolmate; “he is just an insect <i>en grand</i>. He +satisfies his instincts precisely as an insectivorous insect does–the rest +are there to furnish something to his life. Nothing else, he knows nothing +outside. Now that you have offended him he probably won’t do you any great +harm. He’s not a devil, and the world he lives in does not tolerate +anything very black. He’d injure himself in trying to injure you. But +he’ll do you what harm he easily and safely can. He’s nothing big, +he could do nothing big, he hasn’t a passion in him. He’s like this: +from the moment he had ceased to get any good of frequenting your house, even if +you had not done the smallest thing to vex him, he would pass on a bit of gossip +harmful to you for the simple glory of appearing for one moment a little better +informed than the rest. No more than that. He would be capable of that; he +wouldn’t even have to hate you. For Charlie Hunt, as Leslie once +perspicaciously said–Charlie Hunt has no real inside!”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_373'></a>373</span>Both women sat +staring at Gerald, impressed by his heat. When he stopped, they continued for a +minute in blank silence, revolving his words and readjusting their estimates, +while their eyes traveled up and down, up and down the room, drawn after his +figure that wrathily paced the floor.</p> + +<p>“How do you suppose he found out about the black crow? For I’m +perfectly sure he didn’t know me at the time,” said Aurora +presently.</p> + +<p>“That might easily enough happen in some roundabout way,” said +Estelle, “as long as Italo and Clotilde both knew it. They might let the +cat out of the bag without intending to. He talks so much. Never knew such a +talker. But what I want to know is how he knew your name was Barton.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve told you what I think. He’s heard you call me Nell. +Tom, too, called me Nell. That may have given him the hint. Then he simply +opened Iona Allen’s letter and read it. Something was in it, no doubt, +that enabled him to put two and two together. Perhaps the name Bewick. Iona +would have heard of that. She would write to say now I’d climbed out of +poverty and hard work she knew I wouldn’t mind lending a hand to an old +friend not so fortunate. Something like that. She’d be sure to whine and +beg. And Charlie Hunt, little bunch of meanness! would imagine he could hold +over me the fact that I was poor once and what he would think low in the scale, +because he thought I’d be ashamed of it. But no such thing. If I changed +my name coming here, it wasn’t on any such account as that. I’m +gladder than ever now that I told Mrs. Foss all about it. I did, Gerald, quite +soon after we first came, and she said, though it was in a way a mistake, <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_374'></a>374</span>she didn’t see any +real harm in it. As long as I’d begun that way, she said, better not make +a sensation by changing back or saying anything about it. She thought my reasons +were very natural. It wasn’t as if I were misleading anybody, or anybody +were losing money by me. I’d have told you too, Gerald, in a minute, as +far as wanting just to conceal anything goes. But Gerald and I”–she +seemed to place the matter before an invisible judge and jury–“never +talk together of ugly things, do we, Gerald? He’s more delicate-minded by +a good deal than I am. With him particularly, though we’ve been such +intimate friends, I shrank from it. There’s not much poetry about me, I +know that, but there’d be even less if I had to have it known all +I’ve been through. And since the first of our association we’ve +always lived in a sweet sort of world, haven’t we, Gerald? I’d be +ready, just the same, to tell you the whole story any moment you wanted to +hear....”</p> + +<p>At Gerald’s swift instinctive gesture, she went on without further +considering the proposition she had made. “As I said before, I don’t +know what my own real front-door name is. I was born Goodwin. I married Barton, +but Barton wasn’t Jim’s real name. Aurora Hawthorne is what I called +myself when we were young ones and played ladies, Hat and I. I came over here to +cut loose from all the bothers that had made the last year in Denver a +nightmare. I didn’t want to be connected with that dirty mess any more in +anybody’s mind or my own. I wanted it to be like taking a bath and +starting new, feeling clean. Then, if I was Aurora Hawthorne, Hattie had to be +Estelle Madison, which was her name in our old play-days. Neither of us thought +of anything when we planned it but its being a grand lark. And at first, in +hotels, what <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_375'></a>375</span>did it +matter? But since we’ve been here and had friends, we’ve felt sorry +more than once, because it seemed like telling a lie. And then we were afraid of +things that might come up–just like this that has, in fact. But there +wasn’t anything to do about it. Because if we confessed now most anybody +would think our reason for changing names must have been something disgraceful, +just as it happens if a person who kills another by accident goes and hides the +corpse, everybody takes it for granted it was murder. So, if Charlie Hunt +tells–”</p> + +<p>“I’m not nearly as much afraid of his telling that you are here +under an assumed name,” said Estelle, “as that you were the black +crow, and it getting to the ears of Antonia and Co.”</p> + +<p>“Well, what could they do?”</p> + +<p>“Spoil Florence for us pretty thoroughly, I’m afraid, +Nell.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, nonsense!” cried Aurora, but after a moment added in a tone +of lessened assurance, “Bother!” and after another moment burst +forth, with one hand clapped to her curly front hair: “To think that Tom +was here yesterday, and this had to happen to-day, when he’s half-way to +Paris! I wish he hadn’t gone. I wish I had him here to back me +up.”</p> + +<p>“Why don’t you telegraph for him?” suggested Estelle, +eagerly.</p> + +<p>“Oh, no, I wouldn’t do that,”–Aurora’s +vehemence subsided,–“it’s not important enough for +that.”</p> + +<p>“My dear Aurora,” said Gerald, stopping in front of her, his +whole person expressing hurt and remonstrance little short of indignation, +“if your wishing for Doctor Bewick signifies that you do not feel you have +friends near you <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_376'></a>376</span>on +whose attachment you can count, surely you do wrong to some of us!”</p> + +<p>Though his tone scolded Aurora sharply for her lack of faith, Estelle’s +ear caught a trembling edge to his voice expressive of deep feeling. Estelle had +the good sense to see that Gerald must inevitably desire to make more exposition +of his allegiance, and the good feeling to know that this could be done better +if she were not present. Gerald, with his little peace-offering, was at the +moment in favor with Estelle. His explicitness, his righteous violence, his +entire adequacy on the subject of Charlie Hunt, had charmed her. She also wanted +Aurora to have any comfort the hour might afford. She on the spot feigned to +understand Busteretto’s pawing of her dress as an expression of desire to +go into the garden and see the little sparrows. She swept him up from the floor +with one hand and, tucking him under her arm, slipped out of the room.</p> + +<p>Gerald stood grasping his elbows. He had a look like that of some man, known +so far as a harmless retiring burgher, about to make a public confession which +will change all, bringing his head perhaps to the block; or the look of a man on +the verge of a precipice, still half resisting the desire to jump, yet knowing +that he will jump, nothing can save him from it; the look of a man, in fine, +pregnant with intention, but walking in a dream.</p> + +<p>There was silence for a minute after Estelle left the room. Then Gerald said +very stiffly, very formally:</p> + +<p>“If you would do me the honor, dearest Aurora, the very great honor, of +consenting to take my name, the right I should have to defend you would +be–would be–part of my great happiness.”</p> + +<p>Aurora stared at him. Beneath the frank investigation <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_377'></a>377</span>of her eyes his own dropped in modesty +and insuperable embarrassment.</p> + +<p>There was another silence before he added:</p> + +<p>“I would try very much to make you happy.”</p> + +<p>Aurora repressed the first words that came to her lips,–and set aside +the next ones that rose in her mind to say. Silence again reigned for a moment. +Then, with the serious face, almost invisibly rippling, that betokened in her a +secret and successful fight against laughter, she said in what she called her +good English, faintly reminiscent of Antonia’s:</p> + +<p>“I am aware, my dear Gerald, of the honor, the very great honor, you do +me. I thank you–for coming up to the scratch like a little man. But the +feeling I have that I could never be <i>warthy</i> of so much honor deceydes me +to declane. Gerald,” she went on, discarding her English, +“don’t say another word! You dear, dear boy! The things you want to +defend me against don’t amount to a row of pins when all I’ve got to +do if it comes to the pinch is pack my grip and clear out. Thank you all the +same, you pet, for your kindness. Don’t think of it again. I am sort of +glad, though, you’ve got that proposal out of your system. Now we can go +back to a sensible life.”</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_378'></a>378</span><a id='link_21'></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2> + +<p>Aurora, of the excellent three-times-a-day appetite, Aurora of the good sound +slumbers, picked at her food and slept brokenly for part of a week at that +period, such was her impatience at the dragging length of time, the emptiness of +time, undiversified and unenhanced by the presence in her house of any man +devoted to her. No odor of tobacco smoke in the air, no cane in the corner; Tom +on his way to America, Gerald hurt or cross or both. But, the ladies agreed, +when Aurora had told Estelle the latest about Gerald, her refusal could not +possibly occasion a cessation of relations, since his offer, chivalrous and +unpremeditated, had been at most a cute and endearing exhibition of character. +His sensitiveness could not be long recovering, and everything would be as +before.</p> + +<p>Aurora had been half prepared for his staying away all Saturday; but having +been justified in that, she the more confidently looked for him on Sunday. It is +simply incredible, as almost everybody has felt at least once in his life, how +long the hours can be when you are waiting for something.</p> + +<p>At the end of a singularly unprofitable day, Aurora sat in the red and green +room with all the windows open to the sweet airs and odors of May, and no lamp +lighted that might attract night-moths, or, worse, the thirsty, ferocious +Florentine <i>zanzara</i>. She just sat, not doing a thing. Estelle <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_379'></a>379</span>after a while left her, +to retire to her own quarters, close the windows and make a light.</p> + +<p>Aurora watched the dark blue velvet sky over Bellosguardo, and thought.</p> + +<p>A tinkling of mandolins, a thrumming of guitars, informed her of +street-singers stationed under her windows. A tenor voice rose in the song she +was so fond of, <i>La Luna Nova</i>, mingling at the end of the verse with other +male voices that repeated the second half of it. It sounded infinitely sweet out +in the warm spring night.</p> + +<p>After <i>La Luna Nova</i> they sang <i>Fra i rami</i>, <i>fulgida</i>, and +<i>Vedi</i>, <i>che bianca Luna</i>, and <i>Dormi pure</i>, all things she +particularly liked. The voices struck her as being nearer than the garden +railing; she thought the singers must have found the carriage gate open and +slipped in without noise. She bent forth a little, and as she could not see them +imagined them standing among the shrubs. She propped her elbows on the +window-rail and listened, grateful for this bath of sweetness to her spirit +after the day’s profound ennui.</p> + +<p>Estelle came softly into the dark room and joined her; they leaned side by +side.</p> + +<p><i>Mi sono innamorato d’una stella</i>, <i>Sognai</i>, <i>Io t’amerò</i>, one +sweet and sentimental song succeeded the other.</p> + +<p>Clotilde had entered too, on tiptoe, and stood listening, just behind the +others.</p> + +<p>“It is a serenade,” she whispered. “It is a +compliment.”</p> + +<p>A serenade!... Aurora thrilled with a pleasant surmise. There was only one +person in Florence of whom she could conceive as offering her the compliment of +a serenade. She listened with a new keenness of pleasure.</p> + +<p>After the concert had prolonged itself through some dozen pieces–</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_380'></a>380</span>“You must +invite them to enter,” whispered Clotilde, presumably versed in the +ceremonial of such adventures, “and offer them something for their tired +throats, a little wine....”</p> + +<p>“Oh, you think we ought...?”</p> + +<p>“But yes, it would be courtesy.”</p> + +<p>“Go you, then, Clotilde, and show them in and order up the wine. +We’ll be down in a minute.”</p> + +<p>As they entered the dining-room, Clotilde burst into a peal of delighted +laughter at the well-managed surprise, while Italo hastened forward to take +Aurora’s hand and bow over it half way to the floor.</p> + +<p>It was within Aurora’s breast as if in the dark one had clasped as she +thought a sweetheart, to find when the light came that her arms were entwined +around the dancing-master, or the tailor. But only for an instant. She was +really touched and charmed. She became more and more eloquent in expressing +delight.</p> + +<p>The singers were presented to her individually, dark-eyed and smiling young +Italians of the people, who knew no language but their own Florentine and spoke +to Aurora in that, not expecting to be understood or to understand, except +through smiles.</p> + +<p>Clotilde, busy, bustling, poured for them wine which she knew to be +excellent, and there was a bright half hour for all. Italo wore an air relating +him to all the successful heroes that have been, to Cæsar as well as to +Paganini, who also had a great nose. To manage a thing well in small justifies +pride, giving earnest as it does that a large thing, such as a siege, or a +symphony, would by the same capacity be managed equally well. Italo that night +carried his head like one who respects the size of his nose. He was quick, <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_381'></a>381</span>he was witty, he was +amiable. He had about him something a little splendid, even, due to his feeling +of having been splendid–or nothing–in his tribute to the patroness +from whose horn of plenty so much had overflowed into his hands.</p> + +<p>Aurora beckoned Clotilde aside to say in her ear, “Will you run +upstairs like a good girl and get my porte-monnaie?... Would it be all right, do +you think?”</p> + +<p>Clotilde made the face and gesture of one in doubt, and if anything averse, +but not insuperably. The bounty of royalty, or of rich Americans, is not felt as +alms.</p> + +<p>“Go, then,” whispered Aurora, “and get the purse that +you’ll find under some silk stockings in my second drawer, the little +purse with gold in it.”</p> + +<p>One of the petty difficulties of life to Aurora since she had lived in +foreign lands had been the so often arising necessity to think quickly what it +would be proper to give. As the amount of the gratuity did not much matter to +her she had felt a desperate wish often for the power of divination, by which to +know what would be expected. On some occasions it had seemed to Aurora that it +would be more delicate not to offer money; but experience had taught her that if +she offered enough no offense would be taken. These singers were all poor young +fellows, Clotilde had told her, musically gifted, but plying ordinary trades. +This one was a wood-carver, that one a gilder. They had been taught by her +brother the fine songs composing that magnificent serenade.</p> + +<p>The gold pieces distributed among them with words and smiles of thanks were +received with such charming manners that the giver–for the first moment +faintly embarrassed–was soon set at her ease. When it came to the <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_382'></a>382</span>promoter and leader of +the serenade, Aurora felt no more uncertainty. Money had so often gone from her +hand to his. She with generous ease, as if passing a box of candy to children, +tendered him some three or four times as much as to the others.</p> + +<p>But there Italo showed what he was made of. He took a step backward and stood +with soldierly rigidity, one hand held with the palm toward her, like a shield +and defense against her intention to belittle him and his token of homage by a +reward. His look said, and said dramatically, that her thought of him did him +wrong; it said that he was ashamed of her for not knowing better. Yet there was +no real dissatisfaction in it, since her want of delicacy permitted the +exhibition of his delicacy, and afforded him the opportunity to make that +gesture....</p> + +<p>Her hand dropped, her whole being drooped and confusedly apologized. Then the +hand that had interposed between them, uncompromising as a hot flat-iron, +changed outline and pointed at a half faded rose pinned on her breast. Quickly +she unfastened it and held it toward the outstretched hand. It was taken, it was +held to Italo’s lips while he made one of those deep bows that bent him +double; then the stem of the rose was pulled through his buttonhole and secured +with a pin from Aurora’s dress. The great little man shook his locks and +went on to the next subject.</p> + +<p>Aurora was impressed. She was pleased with Italo in a new way, and said to +herself that she must make him some rich little, but unobjectionable little, +gift to remember this occasion by, a gold pencil, or a pearl scarf-pin, or a +cigar case to be proud of.</p> + +<p>She went to bed with her head full of serenade and <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_383'></a>383</span>serenaders, her head all lighted up +inside with the glory of having been the object of a tribute so flattering. When +after reading her chapter she blew out the candle, she knew that to-night she +should sleep, and make up for the two bad nights just passed. If Gerald were so +foolish as to feel annoyed and wish to stay away, he would just have to feel +annoyed and stay away until he felt different. His mood couldn’t help +wearing off in time. But it did seem to her extraordinary that even now, after +knowing him so long, she could tell so little of the workings of Gerald’s +mind. All, of course, because he was–such a considerable part of +him–a foreigner.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>Aurora was one of those healthy sleepers who have no care to guard themselves +against the morning light. Her windows stood open, her bed was protected from +winged intruders by a veil of white netting gathered at the top into the great +overshadowing coronet.</p> + +<p>She was in the fine midst of those sweetest slumbers that come after a pearly +wash of dawn has cleaned sky and hilltops from the last smoke-stain of the +night, when a sense of some one else in the room startled her awake. There stood +near the door of her dressing-room an unknown female, wearing intricate gold +ear-pendants and a dingy cotton dress without any collar.</p> + +<p>“<i>Chi è voi?</i>” inquired Aurora, lifting her head.</p> + +<p>“I am the Ildegonda,” answered the woman, whose smile and +everything about her apologized, and deprecated displeasure. She must be the +kitchen-maid, fancied Aurora, engaged by Clotilde, and not supposed to show her +nose above the subterranean province of the kitchen.</p> + +<p>“There is the <i>signorino</i> down in the garden,” Ildegonda +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_384'></a>384</span> acquitted herself +of the charge laid upon her by the donor of the silver franc still rejoicing her +folded fingers, “who says if you will have the amiability to place +yourself one moment at the window he would desire to say a word to +you.”</p> + +<p>The <i>signorino</i>. That had become the informal title by which the +servants announced a guest who was let in so very frequently. Aurora understood +<i>finestra</i>, window, and <i>dire una parola</i>, to say a word, and then +that the signorino was <i>giù in giardino</i>.</p> + +<p>“All right.” Aurora nodded to the Ildegonda, inviting her by a +motion of the hand to go away again.</p> + +<p>Aurora rose and softly closed the door which, when open, made an avenue for +sound from her room to Estelle’s. She slipped her arms into a sky-blue +dressing-gown, and with a heart spilling over with playful joy, eyes spilling +over with childish laughter, went to look out of the window, the one farthest +from Estelle’s side of the house.</p> + +<p>“Good morning! Good morning!” came on the instant from the +waiting, upturned face below. “Forgive me for rousing you so early,” +was said in a voice subdued so as to reach, if possible, no other ears, +“but you promised you would go with me one day to Vallombrosa, and one has +to start early, for it is far. Will you come?”</p> + +<p>“Will I come? Will I come? Wait and see! Got your horses and +carriage?”</p> + +<p>“Standing at the gate. How long will it take you to get +ready?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I’ll hurry like anything.”</p> + +<div class='poetry'> +<p>“‘Wash, dress, be brief in praying.<br />Few beads are best when once +we go a Maying.’”</p> </div> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_385'></a>385</span>“I +won’t pray, I won’t put on beads. But, see here, what about what +they call in this country my collation? You know I’m a gump on an empty +stomach.”</p> + +<p>“We’ll have our coffee on the road, at a little inn-table out of +doors in the sunrise.”</p> + +<p>“Fine! By-by. See you again in about twenty minutes.”</p> + +<p>Every fiber composing Aurora twittered with a distinct and separate glee +while she hurried through her toilet, a little breathless, a little distracted, +and mortally afraid Estelle would hear and come to ask questions. From her +wardrobe she drew the things best suited to the day and her humor: a white India +silk all softly spotted with appleblossoms, of which she had said when she +considered acquiring it that it was too light-minded for her age and size, but +yet, vaulting over those objections, had bought and had made up according to its +own merits and not hers; a white straw hat with truncated steeple crown, the +fashion of that year, small brim faced with moss-green velvet, bunch of green +ostrich-tips, right at the front, held in place by band and buckle.</p> + +<p>Her parasol was a thing of endless lace ruffles, her wrap a thing of +vanity.</p> + +<p>She passed out through the dressing-room, she crept down the stairs, laughing +at her own remark that it was awfully like an elopement. The house was not yet +astir; only the Ildegonda sweeping out the kitchen, and old Achille out in the +garden picking early insects off his plants.</p> + +<p>At the door she greeted Gerald with all the joy of meeting again a playmate. +He had on the right playmate’s face. She gave him both hands, and he +clasped them to <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_386'></a>386</span>the +elbow, shaking them with satisfactory fire, while their eyes laughed a common +recognition of the adventure as a lark.</p> + +<p>At the gate waited the open carriage, a city-square cabriolet, but clean and +in repair, drawn by two strong little brown horses, with rosettes and feathers +in their jingling bridles, ribbons in their whisking braided tails, and driven +by a brown young man of twenty, with a feather, too, in his hat, which he wore +aslant and crushed down over his right ear. To make the excursion pleasanter to +himself, he was by permission taking along a companion of his own age, who +occupied the low seat beside his elevated one, and in contrast with his +vividness, the pride of life expressed by his cracking whip, the artistically +singular sounds he made in his throat to encourage the horses, was a washed-out +personality, good at most to do the jumping off and on, to readjust harness, to +investigate the brake, or to offer alms from the lady in the carriage to the old +man breaking stones in the roadside dust.</p> + +<p>They were off; they sped through the gate of the Holy Cross, the fresh young +horses making excellent time. Out of the city, along the river, across it, past +hamlets, past villas, past churches and <i>camposanti</i>, past vineyards and +<i>poderi</i> and peasants’ dwellings....</p> + +<p>It seemed to Aurora that never had there been such a day, so fresh and +unstained and perfect, a day inspiring such gladness in being. The sense of that +priceless boon, the freedom of a whole long day together, elated her with a joy +that knew only one shadow, and that unremarked for the first half of +it–the shortness of the longest earthly day.</p> + +<p>Now the horses slowed in their pace; the ascent had begun among the shady +chestnut-trees. The driver’s friend <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_387'></a>387</span>scrambled down and plodded alongside the horses; the +driver himself descended and walked, cheering on his beasts with noises that +nearly killed Aurora, she declared.</p> + +<p>As it took them between four and five hours to reach their destination, and +as Aurora chattered all the time, with little intervals of talk by Gerald, to +report their conversation is unfeasible. Aurora, wanting in all that varied +knowledge which those who are fond of reading get from books, had yet a lot to +say that some unprejudiced ears found worth while. The dwellers upon earth and +their ways had for her an immense and piercing interest. In vain had +circumstances circumscribed her early life: neighbors, Sunday-school teacher, +minister, village drunkard, fourth of July orator, had furnished comedy for her +every day. The human happenings falling within her ken became good stories in +their passage through a mind quick in its perception of inconsequence, faulty +logic, pretense, all that constitutes the funny side of things. Aurora’s +love of the funny story amounted to a fault. Aurora was not always above +promoting laughter by narratives no subtler than a poke in your ribs. Aurora, in +the vein of funny stories, could upon occasion be Falstaffian. But only one half +of humanity had a chance to find out the latter. When in company of the other +sex, by instinct and upbringing alike she minded her Ps and Qs.</p> + +<p>Gerald said that Aurora on that day regaled him with over a thousand comic +anecdotes, this being the expression of her frolicsome and exuberant mood. He +furnished her with a few to add to her store, Italian ones, proving that he was +not wholly without some share of her gift in that line; but he now and then +politely stopped her flow and led her to admire with him the beauties of the +road, natural <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_388'></a>388</span>or +architectural, a distant glimpse, a form, a fragrance. He would explain things +to her, impart scraps of pertinent history, which she would appear trying to +appreciate and imprint on her memory.</p> + +<p>As he leaned back in the carriage at her side, bathed in the wavering green +and gold light of the chestnut-trees among which the road wended, a recent +description of him, which she had said over to herself, to qualify it by +mitigating adjectives, seemed to her to have become altogether unfair. +Gerald’s face, beneath the brim of his pliable white straw, bent down over +the eyes and turned up at the back, Italian style, did not look sickly. On the +contrary, it looked better and stronger since his illness; he even had a little +color. He was not sad-eyed, either, that she could see, though his eyes must +always be the thoughtful kind. As for spindle-shanked, he filled his loose +woolen clothes better than before.</p> + +<p>He had made himself modestly fine for the day to be spent in company of the +fair: he had on a necktie which, if expressive of mood, declared his outlook on +life to be cheerfuller: it was a vibrant tone of violet that accorded agreeably +with his gray suit. A rose-geranium leaf and a stem or two of rusty-gold +<i>gaggia</i>, odors that he loved, occupied at his buttonhole the place of +those decorations which distinguished elderly gentlemen are sometimes envied +for, and which–it is a commonplace–are not worthy to be exchanged +for the flower Youth sticks at his coat to aid him to charm.</p> + +<p>It grew very warm; the way, though pleasant, was beginning to seem long when +they arrived. The old monastery, now a school of forestry; the Cross of Savoy, +where pilgrims rest and dine, gleamed white in the cloudless <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_389'></a>389</span>noon, amid the +century-old trees that long ago, before Dante’s time even, earned for the +spot its beautiful name of Vallombrosa, Umbrageous Vale.</p> + +<p>Aurora was by this time starving again, and Gerald knew the pleasure of +purveying to the demands of a stomach as untroubled by any back-thought relating +to its functioning as that of a big bloomy goddess seated before a meal of +ambrosia. He suggested that she accompany her artichoke omelet, her cutlet with +the sauce of anchovy, parsley and mustard, by a little red wine. But she would +not, even to be companionable. She could never bring herself to touch wine, any +more than to use powder on her cheeks, which in truth did not need it, or a +pencil to her eyebrows, which would have looked better for that +accentuation.</p> + +<p>In a state of physical and mental well-being such as can be bought only by an +early rising, an inconsiderable breakfast, a long ride in the warmth of Tuscan +mid-May, an abundant and repairing repast, taken, amid sweet conventual +coolness, in company which leaves nothing to wish for beyond it, they went forth +to spend the time that must be granted the horses for rest before the return to +Florence.</p> + +<p>After loitering in the inn garden, they went to look at the memorials +relating to Saint John Gualberto, founder of the monastery. She listened to the +picturesque history of his life, death, and miracles, but was not to be rendered +sober-minded by any such thing. In the midst of Gerald’s instructive +account of the holy abbot’s endeavors to purify the monastic orders from +the stain of simony, her hand clutched his, and doing a delicate cake-walk she +compelled him along with her, announcing, “The Hornet and the Bumble-bee +went walking hand in hand!” Fancying this prank not to have been without +success, she next performed an improvised <i>pas seul</i> illustrative of the +text, “The mountains shall skip like little lambs!”</p> + +<div class='figcenter'> +<img src='images/illus-384.jpg' id="img008" alt='' /> +<p class='center caption'> +“Come, let us reason together, Aurora” +</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_391'></a>391</span>There was +artfulness, as has been suspected, in Aurora’s frequent jests upon her +size. Their gross exaggeration was fondly counted upon to make her appear +sylphlike by comparison with the images she raised.</p> + +<p>To relieve the seriousness of Short Lessons on Great Subjects she presently +invented interrupting them at intervals to introduce Gerald and herself to some +rock or tree or mountain, as if it had been a poor person standing by neglected. +“Jack Sprat,” she said, “and The Fat!” “A busted +cream-puff,” she said, “and a drink of water!” Further, +“Dino and Retta!” Finally, with imagination running dry, +“Gerry and Rory!”</p> + +<p>Yes, by such little jokes–what Leslie called Jokes of the First +Category, Aurora sought to enliven the hour for Gerald. He never omitted to +laugh, without being able to enter enough into her fun to join her in the same +species. An incapacity. Still, there was no disguising the basking enjoyment +possessing him, his love of her gaiety, if not at all moments of the form it +took.</p> + +<p>Finding it entrancing up there, they decided not to start for home till the +last minute possible. A limit was set to the time they might linger by the +necessity for some degree of daylight in making the descent. From the edge of +the curving road the mountain dropped away without the protection of any +parapet.</p> + +<p>When they had found their ideal place in which to sit on the warm earth in +the shade and look off over valleys and mountains into azure space, Aurora at +last consented <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_392'></a>392</span>to +be still. She became dreamy, appeared sweetly fatigued, and was for a long time +mute.</p> + +<p>Though the mere quality of her voice still had power to stir Gerald’s +heart to pleasure, yet to be silent with Aurora was pleasure of a different +order from hearing her voice of rough velvet recount preposterous events or +propound humorous riddles.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>It looked from where they sat as if the land had at some time been fluid, and +been tossing, green and purple, in a majestic storm, when some great word of +command had fixed it in the midst of motion, and the waves became Apennines; +then in an hour of peculiar affection for that plot of the earth a faultless +artist from the skies had been set to oversee nature and man at their work +there, and prevent the intrusion of one note not in harmony with his most +distinguished dream.</p> + +<p>“If Italy should perish and all else remain,” said Gerald, whose +eyes had been feasting on beauties of line and color such as he conceived were +not to be found outside this land of his idolatry, “the world would be +irreparably impoverished. If all the world besides should perish and Italy +remain, the world could still boast of infinite riches.”</p> + +<p>Aurora gave a nod of at least partial assent. She was growing accustomed to +the thought that Italy was the fairest of countries and Florence the fairest of +Italian cities. She found herself beginning to like this creed.</p> + +<p>In the quiet that descended upon them the native piety in each groped for +some acknowledgment to make of his consciousness at the moment of unusual +blessing. In him it took the form of a renewal, more devoted perhaps than ever, +of the determination to maintain an uncompromising <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_393'></a>393</span>purity of aim in his work. The +incomparable scene stimulated within him a sense of power to produce things +rivaling what lay under his eyes; he, atom, rivaling his Maker in the creation +of beauty. In her it was a determination of greater loyalty toward the Provider +of undeservedly happy days to man, whose heart is wicked from his birth, as her +mother had been wont to tell her.</p> + +<p>Hearing her hum very softly to herself, he asked what she sang. She said, her +mother’s favorite hymn, and gave it aloud, with the words:</p> + +<div class='poetry'> +<p>Father, what e’er of earthly bliss<br />Thy sovereign will denies,<br /> +Accepted at Thy throne of grace<br /> Let this petition rise:<br /> + <br /> Give me a calm, a thankful heart,<br /> From every murmur +free;<br /> The blessings of Thy grace impart<br /> And make me live to +Thee.</p> </div> + +<p>Like one with an impeccable ear, but with small esteem for his gifts as a +singer, Gerald murmured the melody after her, just audibly, to show he cared to +have his share in her memories.</p> + +<p>But mainly the two of them thought of each other.</p> + +<p>Gerald, regarding Aurora’s hands as they lay in her +lap–innocent-looking, loyal-looking, rather large hands, which during his +illness he had liked to think were Madonna hands, but when seen in health they +were not, really–was amazed to remember the day when their making passes +over his face had filled him with perverse repugnance.</p> + +<p>And Aurora, remembering the first time she had seen <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_394'></a>394</span>Gerald and nicknamed him +Stickly-prickly, while feeling him more than three thousand miles removed from +her, was amazed....</p> + +<p>So they sat, two little dots, two trembling threads, against the screen of +the universe and eternity, and their two selves, under the spell of a world-old +enchantment, loomed so large to each that the universal and the eternal were to +them two little dots, two threads.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>Gerald saw how the afternoon was mellowing toward sunset.... And the +important things of the day had not been touched upon.</p> + +<p>Our hero had traversed great spaces in the region of sentiment during the two +days allowed the Hermitage to stand or crumble without him. The first of them +had been spent far from it, even as Aurora supposed, for the sake of letting the +impression of having been laughed at wear off a little. Already for some time +before that forced climax Gerald had been haunted by the feeling that he ought +to offer himself to Aurora, as it were to regularize his status in her house. +After hanging around as he had been doing, one might almost say that good +manners demanded it. Her fashion, on that evening in the garden, of treating the +idea that he could be enamoured of her assured him that she would refuse. He +would have done his duty, and they would continue to drift, he shutting his eyes +to the penalty awaiting his self-indulgence, the taxes of pain rolling up for +the hour when her necessary departure would involve the uprooting of every last +little flower in that wretched garden of his heart. With such a mental pattern +of the future he had gone to bed at the end of the first day.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_395'></a>395</span>On the next +morning something perhaps in deep dreams which he did not remember, or in the +happy manner of the new day lighting a scarlet geranium on the terrace ledge, or +simply perhaps the whisper of an angel, had effected a change. A heart-throb, a +stroke of magic, had so lifted him up that over the top of the wall edging the +road of life for him he had seen a thrilling garden outstretched, smiling in the +sun, a sight that so enkindled him with the witchery of its promises that he +felt he should seek for a way into that garden till he found it; should, if +necessary, demolish the wall.</p> + +<p>That day he went walking on the hills beyond Settignano, and the new light, +the intoxication, persisted–the vision of himself as Aurora’s lover. +Why not? An escape from the past, a different adventure from all prefigured in +his dull expectations before.... In his theory of living Gerald had always +admitted the gallant advisability of burning ships. There was room in his theory +of living for just such a divergence from design as he now meditated. When the +call comes, summon it to never so improbable places, the poet and artist obeys. +He had gone to bed on the second night with these thoughts and a plan for the +morrow.</p> + +<p>Now that morrow was wearing to an end and all the floating splendid +courageous thoughts and feelings, brave in the assurance, along with the +determination, of victory, must be somehow caught and compressed and turned into +the language–how poverty-stricken, how stale!–of a proposal of +marriage; even as a great variegated, gold-shot, butterfly-tinted, cloud-light +tissue of the Orient is drawn into a colorless whipcord twist that it may pass +through a little ring.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_396'></a>396</span>As he revolved +in his mind what he should say to start with, Gerald saw appropriateness for the +first time in the methods of the historic Gaul, who seized by her hair the +charming creature whom he felt allied to him by deep things, seated her on the +horse before him, and rode away. But what he would have liked so much the best +would have been to lay his head in Aurora’s willing lap, embrace her knees +tenderly, and have her understand all without a word being spoken.</p> + +<p>Now he cleared his throat, took a reasonable air, a tone almost of banter, to +say what, influenced by the long precedent of their converse together, he could +say only in that manner, covering up as best he could the fact that his heart +trembled and burned.</p> + +<p>“Shall we resume our conversation of last Friday?” he asked, with +a fine imitation of the comradely ease which had marked all their intercourse +that day.</p> + +<p>He was looking over the valley, as if still preoccupied with its beauty +rather than with her.</p> + +<p>Thus misled, she did not guess right. She said:</p> + +<p>“About Charlie, you mean? Just fancy, I haven’t thought of him +once all day! Little varmint! Don’t I wish I had the spanking of him! But +I guess it would lame my arm.”</p> + +<p>“Not about Charlie. I asked would you marry me, and you said you would +not. Will you to-day?”</p> + +<p>“Not for a farm!” she answered, with emphasis equal to her +precipitation.</p> + +<p>“Why not?” he asked, undisconcerted.</p> + +<p>“Because.”</p> + +<p>“Come, let us reason together, Aurora.” He changed position, +arranging himself on his elbow so as to be able <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_397'></a>397</span>to look at her. His eyes were steady. “For a +man to ask a woman to marry him is of course the greatest piece of impertinence +of which he could be guilty. But from such impertinences, Auroretta, has been +derived every beautiful thing that has blessed our poor world from the +beginning. No man is good enough for any woman, let that stand for an axiom. But +there again, Auroretta, it’s not according to merit that those rewards, +gentle and beautiful ladies, are dispensed. I have rather less to offer than any +man in the world, but I am bold because you, dear, are just the one to be +blind.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, it’s not <i>that</i>, of course,” said Aurora, +hurriedly.</p> + +<p>“Don’t suppose for a moment that I am troubled by the size of +your fortune or the size of my own. You haven’t any money, dear. Others +have your money. I have almost to laugh at the splendid speed with which that +open granary of yours will be eaten clean by all the birds coming to pick one +seed at a time.”</p> + +<p>“You needn’t laugh, then. Some of it is going to be pinned to me +solid, so that nothing can get it away from me, not even I myself.”</p> + +<p>“I am sorry to hear it. The other was so complete. Well, if you had +nothing, I should still have just enough to keep us from hunger, though perhaps +not from cold in these dear old stone houses of Italy. And you–I know you +well enough to be sure of it–you are exactly the one to learn how much +there can be in life besides its luxuries. Since my illness, too, Aurora, let me +confide to you, there have been in me reawakenings.... I have felt the +beginning–I am speaking with reference to my work,–I have felt +intimations–No, it is too difficult to express without seeming to boast, +which is horribly unlucky. In <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_398'></a>398</span>short, I have felt that I might do the turn still of +forcing a careless generation to pay attention.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Gerald, how nice it is to have you say that!” she warmly +rejoiced. “I’m so glad to hear it!”</p> + +<p>“Now tell me why it is you won’t marry me. Stop, dear. +Don’t say because you are not in love with me. I have difficulty in seeing +how any one in her right senses could be in love with me. It would be enough, +dear, that you should be to me as you were during those happy, happy days when I +was so beastly ill. You are so generous, it would be merely fulfilling your +nature. And I, upon my word, dear, would try to deserve it. I would give you +reason to be kind. I am not without scraps of honor–wholly; I would do my +best to make you happy.”</p> + +<p>“No,”–she shook her head decidedly,–“no, +Gerry,” she added, to take the sharp edge off her refusal, “no, +Gerry; Rory won’t.”</p> + +<p>“You have only to lose by it, that is obvious, and I to gain, and +nothing could equal the indecency of insistence on my part; but I feel that I am +going to persist to the point of persecution. You are fond of me, you know. I +only dare to say you are fond of me because you have said it yourself more than +once. And you are always sincere, and I wouldn’t be likely to forget. Now, +if you are fond of me,–very, very fond, you have said +repeatedly,–why do you refuse? I wouldn’t be a bore of a husband, I +promise. I would leave you a great deal of liberty.”</p> + +<p>“No, Geraldino; no.”</p> + +<p>“You needn’t tell me there’s somebody else. I don’t +believe it. Though you feel only fondness for me, I know that you are not in +love with anybody else. When one is in love, there is no room in life for such +warm and dear <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_399'></a>399</span>friendship as you have frankly shown me. It’s +that, after all, which has given me courage.”</p> + +<p>“No, no; there’s nobody else.”</p> + +<p>“Well, then, why can’t you? Why won’t you?”</p> + +<p>“I–” She hesitated, as if to think. There was a silence. +Then she asked slowly, like one who finds some difficulty in laying her tongue +on the right words: “Do you remember all those things you said that +evening in the garden, the night you came in to meet Tom for the first time? How +you wouldn’t for anything in the whole world let yourself get tangled up +again with caring for a person?”</p> + +<p>“Perfectly. I could only picture it as meaning more of trouble and +unrest. But things change, dear. We change. There has taken place in me since +that, no matter for what reason, an increase of self-confidence and confidence +in fate such as turns men into nuisances or makes them successful. In the last +twenty-four hours particularly. Now, as I look at the inconvenience of getting +tangled up again with caring for a person, I find I don’t mean at all to +suffer. I mean to bother you until you say yes, and then to be happy. You could +never wilfully torment me, I know; you are incapable of it. Then, when you have +graciously consented to marry me, I feel as if I might build up my life on new +lines.”</p> + +<p>“I can’t, Geraldino; I can’t.”</p> + +<p>“You can’t. So you have said. And I have asked you to tell me +your reasons, that I may combat them one by one.”</p> + +<p>“It’s no use. We’re too different.”</p> + +<p>“That we are different, thank God! is a reason for and not +against.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_400'></a>400</span>“No, no; +not when it’s such a huge difference. We’re like–a bird and a +fish.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t call me a fish. I object.”</p> + +<p>“We don’t think the same about hardly anything.”</p> + +<p>“But we feel alike on everything of importance.”</p> + +<p>“There’s hardly a thing I do that’s quite right as you see +it. No, don’t take the trouble to contradict me; let me do the talking for +a minute. You’re so critical and so conventional and so correct! No matter +how much you say you aren’t, you <i>are</i>. And while we’re like +this I don’t have to care. I rather enjoy shocking you. And while +I’m none of your business, you don’t have to care what I do or what +I’m like. We can have our fun and be awfully fond of each other, and +it’s all serene and right. But if I were Mrs. Gerald Fane, all my faults +and shortcomings, my not knowing the things that everybody in your society +knows, my not having any elegant accomplishments, would show up so glaring that +I should know you must be mortified. You couldn’t help it.”</p> + +<p>“Stop, dear! You enrage me. You put me beside myself. You are so +superficial. And dense. And you hold me up to myself in the features of a +beastly cad! I won’t have it. For one thing, let me tell you that if I +were the Lord Ronald Macdonald of that song we’ve heard Miss Felixson +sing, and you were that canny lass Leezie Lindsay, I should know jolly well that +after I’d carried you off to the Hielands my bride and my darling to be, +it would be a very short time before Lady Ronald Macdonald had all the airs and +tricks of speech of my sisters and cousins. That, however, is neither here nor +there. Who wants you to be different? Aurora, if you only knew yourself! Ceres, +or Summer, or Peace sitting among the wheat-sheaves, <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_401'></a>401</span>what would it matter that she had not +been educated at a fashionable boarding-school? Let her just breathe and +be,–beautiful, benign, and any man not utterly a fool will prefer to lie +at her knees, keeping still while her silence appeases and reconciles him, to +hearing the most brilliant conversation of a lady novelist.”</p> + +<p>“You can talk beautifully, Gerald, that’s one sure thing; but +talk me over you can’t. Seems to me I should have to be crazy to forget +all in a moment what I’ve said over and over to myself, and drilled myself +not to lose sight of. After you asked me the other day, though I knew it was +just on the spur of the moment, I thought it all out in the night as much as if +it had been serious, and I saw what would be the one safe course for little me. +I mustn’t; that’s all there is to it. Everything is wrong for it to +turn out happy in the end. I’m terribly fond of you, but I should be +scared to death of you, simply scared to death, as a husband. We’re not +the same kind. If I could forget it on my own account, I have only to remember +how it would strike Estelle. And Estelle’s got no end of horse sense. +It’s according to horse sense we must act when it comes to settling the +real things of life. I expect”–she had the effect of turning a page +or a corner; she dropped from heights of argument to low plains–“I +expect I shall be big as a mountain by and by. I don’t see any help for +it. I starve myself, I drink hot water, I take exercise,–nearly walk my +legs off,–and the next time I get weighed I’ve gained three pounds! +What’s the use? Then, I’m older than you.”</p> + +<p>“Not at all. I’m older than the everlasting hills; you are the +youngest thing that lives.”</p> + +<p>“That’s all right, but you were twenty-eight your last <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_402'></a>402</span>birthday, and I’m +thirty. I’m afraid my character’s already pretty well fixed in its +present form. When it comes over me, for instance, to play the clown, I’ve +got to do it or burst. And you’re naturally a tyrant, you know.”</p> + +<p>“I am. I am critical, carping, conventional, and a tyrant, everything +you say, but just because I am those things, you ought to be able to see, dear +Aurora–because I am those things and know it, they are the things least to +be feared in me. Do you suppose Marcus Aurelius was really calm and +philosophical? Because he, on the contrary, was anxious and passionate, he wrote +those maxims to try to live by. When you <i>would</i> go and be a negress, did I +make a scene? I gnashed my teeth and gnawed my knuckles, but when I saw you +afterward, wasn’t I decently decent?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, but you took to your bed. If I were Mrs. Gerald, and the Pope of +Rome sent for me to do Lew Dockstader for him and his cardinals, you know you +wouldn’t let me go.”</p> + +<p>“You are wrong. I should make a point of it. I should only ask to be +permitted to retire into solitude until all the vulgar people had stopped +talking about it.”</p> + +<p>“Ah, you’re a dear, funny boy; but put it out of your mind, +Geraldino, do, dear, when we’re so happy as it is. Let’s go on just +as we’ve been going; you know yourself that it’s the wisest, and +what really you would prefer. If you’ve asked me to-day–mind, I +don’t say you <i>have</i>; but if you have–to save my vanity and +back up the proposal you didn’t really mean the other day,–because +you’re always such a gentleman; you’d rather die than not behave +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_403'></a>403</span>like a +gentleman,–let it go at that. But if you should feel now that you’ve +got to back up your declaration that you’re going to persist and follow +this up, just ask me over again every few days to show there’s no unkind +feeling, and I promise it will be safe; I’ll refuse you every time. +It’ll be our little standing joke. For don’t you go dreaming that +I’m going to let go of you! You can call me pudgy if I let you get away. I +love you too dearly. Wasn’t everything all right and lovely until the +other day when you came out with that stilted speech, ‘doing you the +honor’? We’ll take up again just where we left off, and bimeby make +fun of all this. You who’ve read all the books ever written, don’t +you know of cases where two like us went on being just friends, and taking +comfort in each other on and on to the end of the tale?”</p> + +<p>“There have been examples, yes, a very few, and not on the whole +encouraging.”</p> + +<p>“You know we never thought of anything else until three days ago, and +were perfectly contented. Let’s call all this in between a mistake, like +taking the wrong road and having to turn back to be where we were before. +Let’s go back.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, let’s go back. I won’t bore you any more.”</p> + +<p>He had all in an instant changed to cool dryness. They would get no further +along with talk on this occasion, that was clear. And to clasp her knees, laying +his head on her lap, and penetrate her in silence with the conviction that they +belonged together in a manner that turned all the sensible things she said into +folly, could not be done outside the world of dreams and fancies. He jumped to +his feet.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_404'></a>404</span>“I meant, +you know, let’s go back to Florence. I’m afraid it’s high +time. We ought to have daylight at least until we get to the foot of the +mountain.”</p> + +<p>“Cross, Geraldino?”</p> + +<p>“Not at all.”</p> + +<p>“Good friends as ever?”</p> + +<p>“Assuredly.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I’ve had such a beautiful day!” she sighed, getting up +by the help of his two hands, and brushing down her dress. “I certainly do +love to be with you!”</p> + +<p>With the inconsequence of a woman she wanted, in order to console him for +rejecting him, to make him sure she loved him deeply nevertheless; and so she +said, turning upon him eyes of sweetest, sincerest affection, “I certainly +do love to be with you!”</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>In the carriage they were silent, like people tired out by the long day, +talked out, and certain of each other’s consent to be still.</p> + +<p>The two young fellows on the box were quiet, too. The horses now needed no +encouragement to go; the scraping of the brake gave evidence rather of the need +to hold them back. The driver’s friend, named appropriately Pilade, sat +hunched with chilly sleepiness; but Angelo, the driver, was kept visibly alert +by the responsibility of making a safe descent in the fast-failing light. Owing +to the dilatoriness of the <i>signori</i> they had been later in starting than +was prudent.</p> + +<p>When they emerged at last from the shadow of the chestnut-trees and the brake +blessedly was released, it was accomplished evening. The dome of the firmament +spread above them so wonderful for darkly luminous serenity that <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_405'></a>405</span>the signori behind in the +carriage arranged themselves to contemplate it comfortably, with their feet on +the forward bench, their heads propped on the back of the seat.</p> + +<p>Thus they passed through glimmering hamlets, between high walls of orchards, +past iron gates opening into cypress avenues with dim villas at the other end, +terraces of vine-garlanded olive-trees, all of a dark silvery blue, and did not +vouchsafe a look at anything but the inverted cup of the nocturnal sky.</p> + +<p>Even this they did not see more than in a secondary way, for the interposing +thoughts and images.</p> + +<p>The eyes of both were wide, and in their fixity the lights of heaven were +glassed. The face of the one burned with a red spot on the visibly-defined +cheek-bone; the cheeks of the other were, for a marvel, pale.</p> + +<p>Aurora, uplifted on a great wonder and pride and illogical happiness, was +thinking of the days to come, the immediate to-morrows, rich in a tenderness +profounder still than that which had linked her before to the companion staring +at the stars beside her; she thought of how she should through a wise firmness +and God’s help steer their course into ways of a safer and longer +happiness than that which he had tendered.</p> + +<p>“It would seem rather unnecessary–” came from him through +the transparent darkness in what was to the young driver’s ears a +monotonous bar of insignificant sound, “it would seem to me almost +imbecile, to say to you that I love you, when for months I have been hovering +around you, as must have been evident to the dullest, like the care-burthened +honey-fly, possessed with the fixed desire to hide his murmurs in the rose. When +for months I have been, in fact, like a dog with his nose on your footprints, +asking <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_406'></a>406</span>nothing but +to lie down at your feet with his muzzle on your shoe.”</p> + +<p>She impulsively felt for his hand, and pushed her own into it. +“Don’t say another word, Gerald. I daresn’t do what you wish, +I just daresn’t. I’m plain scared to! And I’m such a fool that +I’m nearer to it this minute than I like to be by a long sight. I’m +fond enough of you for almost anything, and you know it, but I must keep my +level head. It can’t be done–a greyhound tied down to a mudturtle. I +know what I’m like,–no disparagement meant, Mrs. +Hawthorne,–and what you’re like, and I won’t let myself +forget. I’m looking out first of all for myself, but I’m looking out +for you, too, dear boy. Don’t say any more about it to-night, Gerald, +please, with the stars shining like that, and the air so sweet that all the +fairy-tales you ever heard seem possible. I want to keep solid earth under my +feet.”</p> + +<p>Gerald was not so devoid of the right masculine spark as not to recognize the +moment for one of which advantage should be taken by any creature capable of +growing a mustache. The thing to be done was to put his arms around her like a +man, and lay his head on her shoulder like a child, and treat as not existing +the barriers which she described as dividing them.</p> + +<p>Often enough in his life Gerald had wished he might have been a masterful +man, capable of the like things. But already a vague sickness of soul had +succeeded his momentarily dominant mood. Distrust filled him–of his own +character, his aims, his talent, his health, and his destiny. His dreams had but +recently taken the form in which he had that day expressed them; he had not +grown into them. Under the depressing effect of failure he was no more sure +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_407'></a>407</span>than she had +professed to be that the proposed union would not be a rash mistake. He saw the +wisdom of a return to his gray policy of wanting nothing, asking nothing. +Heaviness possessed him; he made no motion.</p> + +<p>Signs of the nearing city came thicker and thicker; the street lamps became +frequent and consecutive. Aurora sat up and composed her appearance. The lighted +house-fronts threw back the skies to inexpressible altitudes.</p> + +<p>She continued aloud for Gerald to hear a conversation she had been holding +mentally:</p> + +<p>“Estelle says we must go away somewhere for the summer, because +it’s awfully hot down here in Florence, we’re told. We’re +thinking of taking some sort of place at the seashore for the bathing season. +You’ll be coming down to visit us, won’t you? Then by and by, when +I’ve had pretty near enough of the kind of life I’m leading, tell +you what I’m thinking I’ll do. Give up the house I’ve got and +take another, different, and fit it up for a children’s hospital, a small +one, of course, to be within my means, and run it myself, and do what I can of +the nursing. I’ve been thinking of it for some time as a good thing to do +instead of spending my money and nothing to show for it. It would be something +to do for the sake of little Dan, to make it so it wouldn’t be the same as +if he never had passed through the world. Then I shall have my work just as you +have yours, Gerald. And so we’ll live on, each so interested in all the +other does. And you’ll come to see me, and I’ll go to see +you–chaperoned, if you insist, though I understand a studio can be visited +without impropriety, and–”</p> + +<p>“You can leave me out of your plans for the future. I am going away to +forget you.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_408'></a>408</span>“Oh, no, +you’re not. You’re coming to see me to-morrow. Five o’clock at +the very latest, hear?”</p> + +<p>“I’m afraid you will have to excuse me.”</p> + +<p>“You wouldn’t break my heart like that for anything, Gerald Fane! +You wouldn’t let the foolish doings of this day destroy all the months +have built up! You’re not so mean. When I tell you it’ll be all +right and just as it was before–”</p> + +<p>But he stubbornly would not agree, and they quarreled, as so often, half in +play, half in real exasperation, each calling the other selfish.</p> + +<p>But at her door, when he took her hands to thank her for the day she had +given him, he dropped quite naturally, “Until to-morrow, then,” and +she entered her great white hall with a happy, shining face.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>In the half-light of the solitary hall-lamp the white-and-gold door between +the curving halves of the stairway stood open on to the blackness of the +unlighted ball-room. At the threshold appeared Estelle, and stood with folded +arms until the servant who answered the bell had been heard retreating down the +back stairs. She came forward with a tired, troubled, pallid, and severe +face.</p> + +<p>“Well, I’m glad you’ve got back!” she said, as much +as to say that she had given up looking for her. And as Aurora unexpectedly cast +mischievous, muscular arms around her and tried to squeeze the breath out of +her, she gasped amid spasms of resistance: “Stop! Don’t try to +pacify me! I’m in no mood for fooling! I’m as cross with you as I +can be!”</p> + +<p>“You little slate-pencil! You little lemon-drop, you!” said +Aurora, squeezing harder, then suddenly letting go.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_409'></a>409</span>“I’m +in no mood to be funny, you–you county-fair prize punkin! I’ve been +worried half to death. Where’ve you been so long, ’way into the night, +long past eleven o’clock?”</p> + +<p>“Didn’t you find my note on the pin-cushion? That informed you +where I’ve been.”</p> + +<p>“I thought you must have met with an accident, to make you so terribly +late, or else made up your mind to go off with that young man for good and all. +Tell you the truth, I didn’t quite know which I should prefer, which would +be better for you in the end.”</p> + +<p>“Do you mean to tell me you’ve been sitting here all day stewing +and fretting about that? Didn’t you ever in your life go buggy-riding with +a feller, and did it always ends with the grand plunge? You know it +didn’t. You know you could ride from Provincetown to Boston, with the moon +shining, too, and not even exchange a chaste salute.”</p> + +<p>“Nell, there’s one thing I know, and it’s that my scolding +and warning and beseeching will do exactly as much good as an old cow mooing +with her neck stretched over a stone wall. You know what I think. I’ve had +plenty of time for reflection, walking up and down the floor in there in the +dark; and long before you finally got home I’d made up my mind not to be +an idiot and make myself a nuisance trying to influence you. It’s your +funeral. What you choose to do is none of my business. What I said when you came +in just escaped me.–Stand off and let me look at you.”</p> + +<p>While making the request, she herself drew off to get a more comprehensive +view of her friend.</p> + +<p>Something of the sunshine, the mountain sweetness, the <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_410'></a>410</span>unpolluted breezes and wide perspectives +of the heights, the dreams of the starlit homeward ride, the triumph in +man’s love, was shining forth from Aurora, with her fresh sunburn, her +untidied hair, and softly luminous eyes. Estelle felt herself suddenly on the +point of tears. But she stiffened.</p> + +<p>“Well, you do look as if you’d had a good time, you crazy +thing!” she said dryly. “What made you put your best dress on if you +were going to sit round on the ground? You’ve got it all grass stains. Oh, +Nell,” she melted, “while you’ve been off gallivanting, +I’ve just about worried myself sick over a paper Leslie left. I’ve +been longing for you to get back to see what you make of it.”</p> + +<p>“A paper? What do you mean?”</p> + +<p>“A newspaper. Come on upstairs. I left it on the desk. Leslie called in +the forenoon, but I had gone out. Then she came again in the afternoon, so I +knew it must be something special. But I simply couldn’t bring myself to +see her and let her know you’d gone off for the whole day with Gerald +Fane. So I got the maid to tell her we were both out. Everybody does that over +here. Anyhow, I went and stood on the terrace while the maid was delivering my +message. So Leslie went off, but she left this Italian paper for the maid to +give us. And, my dear,–now don’t faint,–there’s a long +piece in it about you.”</p> + +<p>“For goodness’ sakes! About me? Why? Where?”</p> + +<p>“There. It isn’t marked, and I was the longest time trying to +discover why Leslie had left the paper. After I’d gone all over it hunting +for a marked passage, I thought it must be a mistake and that she’d simply +left it because she was tired of carrying it round, and the maid hadn’t +understood. But going over it column by column, <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_411'></a>411</span>I at last saw the word Hawthorne and those other +names. ’<i>Una Americana</i>’–‘An American’–the +article is entitled. It looks to me, Nell, as if your whole life’s history +might be printed there.”</p> + +<p>“For the land’s sake! Now, who do you suppose can have done that? +What on earth would anybody want to–”</p> + +<p>“I’ve been puzzling over it and puzzling over it till I’m +about played out trying to make sense of it, and my head aches like fury. Oh, +never mind my head! Now you’ve got back I don’t care.”</p> + +<p>“And your French doesn’t help you to translate it?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, it does help–some. I can pick out lots of words, and here +and there a whole sentence; but what I can’t get at is the spirit of the +whole, whether it’s meant to be friendly or not.”</p> + +<p>“Have you tried with a dictionary? Where’s the dictionary? Get +it, and we’ll pick it out if it takes all night.”</p> + +<p>“Indeed, I wish I had a dictionary. Mine’s French-English. I +asked Clotilde if she had an Italian-English or an Italian-French, and she said +yes, but at home. Isn’t it provoking? I certainly wasn’t going to +show this to her, and get her to translate it for me before I’d consulted +with you.”</p> + +<p>“Bother!” said Aurora, thoughtfully, with her eyes on the cryptic +print. Estelle sat close, examining the sheet over her shoulder. +“<i>Elena</i> means Helen, doesn’t it? I guess it must, as it comes +here before Barton. They’ve got my old name. And there’s +Bewick–Bewick, and here’s Colorado. They’ve got the whole +thing, fast enough. It’s the doing of an enemy; there can be no doubt of +that.”</p> + +<p>“I know who you’re thinking about.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_412'></a>412</span>“Charlie +Hunt, of course. Scamp! Worm! Cockroach! Low down, ungrateful, pop-eyed +pig!” Nor did the reviling stop there. For the space of about forty +seconds Aurora was unpublishable.</p> + +<p>“But how on earth did he get at it?” wondered Estelle.</p> + +<p>“After he’d opened that letter of mine, he wrote to the amiable +writer thereof and asked for information.”</p> + +<p>“Honestly, Nell, I don’t think he’s had time.”</p> + +<p>“I guess he has–just time. The languishing Iona hurried for once. +Well, I don’t care!” Aurora folded the paper tight and flung it from +her. “Enemies may do what they please; I’ve got friends. If +everything comes out as it really happened, I haven’t anything to fear, +except that it’s mighty unpleasant. It’s only lies, and people +believing them, that could do me harm. I’ve got friends in Florence. Oh, +not many true ones, I don’t suppose. It’s paying my way that has +made me popular, I’m not such a gump as not to know that. But some true +friends I’ve got, and their backing will be my stay. One friend I’ve +got–” Pride and a sudden battle-light flashed in Aurora’s eye. +“One friend I’ve got, who if I gave the word would kill Charlie Hunt +for this, or put him in a fair way to dying. I do believe, Hat, that Gerald Fane +would call Charlie Hunt out to fight a duel to punish him for a slur on me. Oh, +he can fence just as well as the Italians he was brought up with. I’ve +seen the fencing-swords in his studio. But”–she calmed +down–“I wouldn’t permit that sort of thing. It’s +ridiculous. I don’t believe in it.”</p> + +<p>Cooling to normal, she laughed, with a return to the light of reality. +“He doesn’t believe in it, either, I shouldn’t +suppose.”</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_413'></a>413</span><a id='link_22'></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2> + +<p>Leslie, arriving early next day, read off the newspaper article, making a +free translation of it, as follows:</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>When a thing is too successful, it is seldom natural; and so when there +appeared in our city a <i>signora</i>, blond of hair, azure of eye, with the +complexion of delicate, luminous roses, red and white, whose name was at once +Aurora and <i>Albaspina</i>,–Hawthorne,–floral counterpart of dawn, +we should have had suspicions. That we had none does not prevent our feeling no +very great surprise when we learn that the bearer of the poetic and more than +appropriate name is called in sober truth Elena Barton. The more beautiful name +was adopted by a child acting out its fairy-stories; it was remembered and +re-adopted by a woman when she wished to detach her life from a past which +neither charity, fidelity, nor devotion to a sacred duty had succeeded in +keeping from sorrow and the deadly aspersions of malignity.</p> + +<p>The <i>gentilissima</i> person of the irradiating smile, which, however +briefly seen, must be long remembered, whom we have grown accustomed this winter +to meeting in the salons where assembles all that is most distinguished among +foreigners, whose name we have grown accustomed to finding foremost in every +work of charity, has a title to our esteem far beyond the ordinary member of an +indolent and favored <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_414'></a>414</span> class. To alleviate suffering has been the chosen +work of those hands that Florence also has found ever open and ready with their +help. It was in effect the extent of their beneficence which brought about the +black imbroglio from which Elena Barton chose to flee and take refuge in the +City of Flowers under the <i>soave</i> and harmonious name by which we know +her.</p> + +<p>Her life had been for several years devoted to the care of an old man +afflicted with a most malignant and terrible cancer in the face. She had filled +toward him so perfectly the part of a daughter that his gratitude made her upon +his death an equal sharer in his fortune with the children of his blood. Thence +the law-case Bewick <i>versus</i>Barton, which for a period filled the city of +Denver in Colorado of the United States as if with poisonous fumes. The literal +daughters, two in number, who had shown no filial love for the unfortunate old +man, in trying to annul their father’s will, left nothing undone or +unspoken that could help their <i>turpe</i>, or evil, purpose, even attempting +to prove that not only had the devoted nurse been their father’s +<i>amante</i>–[You can guess what that is, Aurora. They are much simpler +here than we at home about calling things by their names, and much more +outspoken on all subjects], but had likewise been the <i>amante</i> of the son, +sole member of the family who supported her claim to the share of the fortune +appointed by the father. Justice in the event prevailed, but a tired and broken +woman emerged from the conflict. What to do to regain a little of that +pleasure in living which blackening calumnies and rodent ill-will, even when not +victorious, can destroy in the upright and feeling nature? The imagination which +had prompted in childhood the acting out of fairy-stories here came into <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_415'></a>415</span> play: Leave behind the +scene of sorrows, take ship, and point the prow toward the land of orange and +myrtle, of golden marbles and wine-colored sunsets; change name, begin again, do +good under a beautiful appellation which the poor should learn to love and speak +in their prayers to the last of their days....</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>“The rest, Aurora dear, is pure flattery, which it becomes me not to +speak nor you to hear. I won’t read it.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I never!” breathed Aurora. “Who did it?”</p> + +<p>“We did it! My father and your Doctor Bewick and Carlo Guerra and I. We +did it to be before anybody else, set the worst that could be brought up against +you in a light that explains and justifies. We did our best to fix the public +mind and show it what it should think. You know what the mind of the public is. +We’ve hypnotized the beast, I hope; it has taken its bent from +us.”</p> + +<p>“But–”</p> + +<p>“This was the way of it, my dear. The day after Brenda’s wedding +I was at the Fontanas,–she was a Miss Andrews, you know, of +Indianapolis,–and there was Charlie, too, and there was likewise Madame +Sartorio, who is Colonel Fontana’s niece by his first marriage. We were +talking in a little group when something, I forget what, was said about you, +Aurora. Charlie–for what reason would be hard to think, unless one had a +sharp scent for what goes on under one’s nose–Charlie interrupted, +to introduce as a sort of parenthesis, ‘Mrs. Hawthorne, whose real name, by the +way, is Helen Barton.’ The others were naturally taken aback, except +Madame Sartorio, who could not quite disguise a cat-smile. For a moment none of +us <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_416'></a>416</span>knew what to +say, and Charlie went on, with his air of knowing such a lot more than anybody +else–</p> + +<p>“‘Yes. It seems that all winter we have been warming in our bosom, so +to speak, the heroine of a <i>cause célèbre</i> at a place called Colorado in +America.’”</p> + +<p>“That was enough for me. I stopped him.</p> + +<p>“‘Don’t say any more, Charlie. All I wish to know about Mrs. +Hawthorne is what she cares to tell me herself,’ and I insisted that the +conversation should return to other things.</p> + +<p>“When I got home I told mother, and she repeated to me what you, +Aurora, confided to her when we first knew you. We told father, and when Doctor +Bewick came that evening to say good-by we consulted, and here in this newspaper +you have the result, put into Italian journalese by Carlo Guerra, whom we called +in to aid us. He likes you so much, Aurora; did you know it? He met you at +Antonia’s. So there you have the whole story. I’m bitterly ashamed +of Charlie, my dear, and I’m sorry about him, too. One never looked upon +him as a particularly fine fellow, still, one liked him. He had never done +anything that disqualified him for a sort of liking, and we’ve all grown +up together.” Leslie wrinkled her forehead in puzzlement. +“It’s curious, somehow, to think of him, who, we have said so often, +has no real inside, as being sufficiently under the dominion of a passion to +care to please his lady by offering up you, who have, after all, been to him a +source of a good many pleasures, with your open house, invitations to dinner, +and so on. I don’t quite understand it.”</p> + +<p>“Never mind about him!” Aurora flicked him aside. “I +don’t care. And you say Tom helped. And he never <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_417'></a>417</span>told me, or wrote me a word about it. I +had a letter from him this morning. Well, well. You certainly did make a +good-sounding story of it, among you. And the main facts are true, far as they +go; I can’t say they aren’t. But, oh, my dear Leslie, there was a +lot more to it than that. I’ve got to tell you, so’s not to feel +like a fraud. You’re so sharp; you know me pretty well by this time, and I +guess you don’t suppose in me any of those awfully ‘fine +feelin’s’ that could make a blighted flower of me because, while +innocent as a babe unborn, I’d been dragged through the courts by wicked +enemies. My enemies were pretty wicked; I stick to that. Cora Bewick, off living +abroad studying some strange religion, while her kind old pa was dying at home, +and she never once coming near him till he was under ground; Idell Friebus, +never coming into his room except with her nose wrinkled up with disgust at the +smell of disinfectants–or disgust at him, it was none too plain which. +They made a fine pair of daughters. But when it came to fighting over the will, +the lawyers on the Bewick side gave out just what it was that a perfectly noble +woman would have done in my place of the old man’s nurse. And my lawyers +would have it that everything that didn’t accord with that ideal simply +must be kept dark, or public feeling would go against us. It’s that that +made it so nasty–pretending, and avoiding this, and keeping off the other. +It amounted to lying, no matter what they said. But they told me if I +didn’t do as my counsel instructed me, the result would be the worst lie +of all. I should be believed guilty of just that undue influence I was accused +of, and lose the money into the bargain. So I had to hedge and shuffle and +mislead.... And me under oath to tell the truth! You needn’t wonder <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_418'></a>418</span> if I’m sick still +at the thought of it, or wonder that I’d like to forget it. The truth was +I <i>did</i> know beforehand the Judge meant to leave me one fourth of his +money, and I was tickled to death. I gloried in it. I loved to imagine the rage +it would throw his wicked daughters in, and his mean little miserable +son-in-law. I was glad, besides, out and out, to think I should have the money. +I plain wanted it, I did. Maybe a real noble woman wouldn’t have. Maybe it +showed a degraded nature. Well, that’s the way it was. Sometimes I feel +disposed to be ashamed of it, but mostly I don’t. For one thing, I felt +then and I feel now, I deserved that money by a long sight more than those +bad-hearted girls of his. I was a comfort to Judge Bewick. I won’t say I +earned the money, it was too much: but there were some hours of my tending him, +poor soul, when it did seem to me a nurse came pretty near earning anything the +patient could afford to pay. All the same, I would have done what I did for the +old boy if he hadn’t had a cent, I had so much respect for him, as much as +for my own father, and I felt I owed so much to his son. Then about his son, the +doctor. If Cora’s old nurse-girl, who was kept on in the house as a +servant, though she was past her usefulness, lied in court when she said she saw +Tom and me kissing at such an hour, in such a place, still, the truth was that I +had at different times kissed Tom. You can’t tell why it seems all right +to you to kiss one man when it would seem a very queer thing to do to kiss +another. When Tom had been away for any length of time, I always kissed him when +he came back; it seemed natural to both of us. But there in court I had to try +to appear as if I never could have descended to committing such an immoral act, +as well as to give the impression that if I’d <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_419'></a>419</span> known the old man had any notion of +making me co-heir with his own children I would have strained every nerve to +stop it, called them all in to help me curb him if necessary. Pshaw! the humbug +of it turns my stomach now. Leslie, my verdict is, you can’t come through +a law-suit <i>clean</i>. I’d give a good deal to cut that page out of my +life.”</p> + +<p>Aurora’s eyes, filled with the shadows of the past, and her face, with +the dimples expunged, were to Leslie almost unfamiliar. Aurora, oppressed in her +moral nature, gave a glimpse of herself that would change and enlarge the +composite of her aspects carried in Leslie’s mind.</p> + +<p>“There, stop thinking of it!” said Estelle. “You always +work yourself up so.”</p> + +<p>“The point of my coming bright and early like this,” Leslie +nimbly managed a diversion, “was, as you have guessed, to catch you before +you could possibly go out. My mother desires you, dear ladies, to accompany me +back to lunch–a triumphal lunch, Aurora, to grace which she has collected +those special pillars of society whose countenance and support ought to make you +scornful of any little weed-like growth of gossip that might sprout up from seed +of Charlie’s sowing. You know them all more or less, having been +associated with every one of them in some form of beneficence. I might more +accurately describe it: having donated largely to each of their pet charities. +It is not a very admirable world–” Leslie’s young face took +that little air of knowing the world which sometimes amused old gentlemen so +much, “it is a selfish society, not indisposed, or, I am afraid, +altogether displeased, to believe evil of its neighbor, and not always +disinclined to turn and rend its favorites. But it would be a pity, really, if +you <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_420'></a>420</span>should have +poured forth upon it as you have done, Aurora, money and smiles, bouquets and +banquets and sunbeams, good-will and baby-socks and knitted afghans, and it did +not rise up when you are attacked and say, ‘No. An exception has to be made in +this case. We have all been bought!’”</p> + +<p>Aurora, who had been listening with expanded, gathering-in eyes, cheeks +flushing deeper and deeper, turned her head sharply away to try to keep from +falling or being seen two unaccountable tears half blinding her.</p> + +<p>The sight of her, by infection, moistened the eyes of the other women.</p> + +<p>Estelle sought a quick way out of the emotional silence.</p> + +<p>“Nell,” she said, albeit with cracked voice, “if +we’re going out to lunch, I guess we ought to be dressing. Go along, +child, put on your best bib and tucker.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, my best bib and tucker!” wailed Aurora. “Sent to the +cleaner’s this morning, all green stains at the back!”</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>If Leslie had not called it a triumphal lunch, it might not have appeared so +very different from any other women’s lunch at the season of roses. Leslie +herself, though, found in it the flavor of old-fashioned romance, just faintly +platitudinous, in which poetic justice is done. Mrs. Foss, the more +simple-minded organizer of it, felt that she should remember it as an occasion +when she had risen to the level, placed the right cards in the fist of destiny, +and created an event worthy to take rank at least with those little triumphs of +good housewives at whose home the president of their husband’s company +arrived one night unlocked for and was entertained with brilliant credit.</p> + +<p>To the heroine of the feast, no need to say it was an inexpressibly <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_421'></a>421</span>exciting, grand, and +memorable occasion. Aurora hardly knew herself, so much the object of attention +and graciousness. She was in the mood to give half of her goods to the poor. +After the hostess had risen and made a little speech, Aurora, unexpectedly to +herself, and as if under inspiration, responded by a little speech of her own, +composed on the spot. It was drowned at the end by hand-clapping all around the +table. Aurora seemed to herself to be living in a fairy-story.</p> + +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; height: 1px; width: 80%; text-align: center; margin: 10px auto;' /> + +<p>As it was after five o’clock when she reached home, she was sure she +would find Gerald waiting for her. She had the whole day long been looking +forward with a sweet agitation to the moment of being with him and telling him +all about it.</p> + +<p>She was more disappointed than she remembered ever being, even as a child, +not to find him or any word from him. She did not allow it to become later by +more than half an hour before she scratched a line and sent the coachman to his +house with it.</p> + +<p>The man came back with nothing but the barren information, received from +Giovanna, that the <i>signorino</i> was absent, having gone to Leghorn.</p> + +<p>“Well, here’s a pretty howdydo!” thought Aurora, sore with +surprise and the smart of injury. “If every time I refuse him he’s +going off like this to stay away for days and days, what am I going to +do?”</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_422'></a>422</span><a id='link_23'></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> + +<p>“If this is the way it was going to be, and I’d known it before, +I’d have kept better watch over my affections,” said Aurora to +herself, reflecting upon Gerald in Leghorn, where he was bending his will +industriously, no doubt, to the work of forgetting her.</p> + +<p>Beside the large sharp thorn of this thought, she was troubled by what was a +small, merely uncomfortable thorn: the knowledge of Gerald exposed so closely to +the influence of Vincent, that persuasive young man of God, who bowed to images +and believed in the Pope. At the end of every wearisome day she gave thanks that +for still another twenty-four hours she had by grace of strength from on high +been able to fight off the temptation to write to Gerald.</p> + +<p>This for nine days–the nine days it takes for a wonder to become a +commonplace or a scandal to lose its prominent place in conversation. Then, in +the way once sweetly habitual, there came a rapping at the door, the entrance of +a servant, and the announcement, “<i>C’è il +signorino</i>.”</p> + +<p>Aurora for a second either did not really grasp the import of the words or +did not trust her senses. She asked:</p> + +<p>“What <i>signorino</i>? <i>Signorino</i>What?”</p> + +<p>“The <i>signorino</i> who has come back,” said the servant, unable +on the instant to recall the foreign name. And if he had felt interest in the +complexion of one so far removed from him as his mistress, he might have seen +her turn the hue of a classic sunrise.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_423'></a>423</span>On her way down +the stairs Aurora rejected the idea of a tumultuous reproachful greeting, such +as, “Where have you been so long, you mean thing?” Or of a cool and +cutting one, such as, “You’re quite a stranger.” She decided +to behave like a nice person, and show respect for her friend’s freedom, +after having so explicitly left it to him.</p> + +<p>The Italians performing the service of the house arranged it according to +their own ideas of fitness, and on this warm afternoon the drawing-room was in +soft-colored twilight, the Persian blinds being clasped, and their lower panels +pushed out a very little so as to let in a modicum of the whiteness of day.</p> + +<p>Gerald stood, very collected, if a trifle pale, holding, like a proper +votary, a bouquet–starry handful of sweet white hedge-roses,–which +he offered as soon as Aurora entered, saying he had picked them for her that +morning in the country near Castel di Poggio.</p> + +<p>The meeting, in Aurora’s jubilant sense of it, went off beautifully. +She said in a pleasant, easy tone and her company English,</p> + +<p>“So you’ve got back. It’s awfully nice to see you again. +How well you are looking. I was sure a change would do you good.”</p> + +<p>And Gerald said yes, he had found the sea air tonic. He had been staying with +the Johns, Vincent’s mother lived in Leghorn. He had worked a little, made +a few drawings. Digressing, he mentioned a trifling gift he had brought her, and +produced a small brass vessel, fitted with two hinged lids, meant to contain +grains of incense for the altar. He said he had found it in an +antiquarian’s shop and thought she might care for it to drop her rings +into; <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_424'></a>424</span>he supposed +she took them off at night. Its shape seemed to him to possess more than common +elegance.</p> + +<p>Aurora called it adorable, and his giving it to her sweet. They talked as if +they had been making believe, for the benefit of an audience, to be the most +ordinary friends.</p> + +<p>And each of them meanwhile, with heart and head gone slightly insane in +secret, was considering a marvel. The long separation–it had been long to +them–had recreated for both something of the capacity to receive a fresh +impression of the other. The marvel to Aurora was that this choice being, with +his intellectual brow (that was her adjective for Gerald’s brow) his +difference from others, all in the way of superiority to them, the indescribable +fascination residing in his every feature, mood, or word, should be walking the +world unclaimed and unattached, for her to take if she were so minded. Her to +take! It was vertiginous.</p> + +<p>And the marvel to him was, in beholding that bounteous temple of a soul, with +its radiance of life, its share, so rich, of the mysterious something which made +the earliest men care to build homes; its gifts, so large, of comfort and +warmth–the marvel was that he should have dared aspire to conquer it, +should have set that to himself as a thing he was going to persevere in trying +to do until–until he had done it, he, puny, poor in inducements, light of +weight.</p> + +<p>The two of them, there could be no doubt of it, had passed within the portals +after which a change comes over the eyes, and those who enter see each other +endowed with qualities raising the capacity for wonder to an ecstasy: so much +engaging beauty, so much dearness, are not to be believed!... It can never be +established whether the <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_425'></a>425</span>eyes only see truly when under this charm, or +whether then more than at other times illusion makes of them its fool.</p> + +<p>If he had been analytical on the subject of his sentiment for Aurora, as so +often on other subjects, and said to himself that he saw this woman in a golden +transfiguring light because he was in good primordial fashion in love with +her–because, that is to say, obscure affinities of flesh and blood united +with the esteem created by her virtues to make of him a candle which the touch +of her finger-tip miraculously could light–he would have felt it as a +blessed and not a base secret at the bottom of his attachment.</p> + +<p>While they talked of the weather, as they fell to doing when they had +disposed of the subject of the little incense-holder; and, after that, while +they talked of Leghorn and the various seaside places which Aurora had to choose +from for her summer sojourn, a vastly deep conversation was taking place between +them, which we think it not amiss to report, because by the nature of things the +words they would say aloud on this occasion would be meager and colorless by +comparison with the things they would feel and to some extent convey to each +other through mere proximity.</p> + +<p>“O Aurora,” exhaled from Gerald, while, looking not far from his +usual self, he said that Ardenza by the sea, a mere three miles from Leghorn, +was a very pretty place, “Aurora, you are warmth, you are shelter, you are +rest. I have no hearth or home except as you let me in out of the desperate cold +of loneliness, and grant me to warm myself at your big heart. You should see, +woman dear, that my thankfulness would make you happy. Nature, the divine, so +formed you that my love would kindle yours. And when you had given your hand +into mine I should <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_426'></a>426</span>find paths of violets, enchanted paths, for us to +walk in which you could never find without me, nor I find for myself. Put up no +petty shield against me, Aurora; fight me with no petty lance, for I verily am +that guest you were awaiting when on balmy spring evenings you felt, and knew +not why, that your life was incomplete.”</p> + +<p>And Aurora, mechanically pulling off her rings and putting them into the +brass receptacle, then taking them out of it and putting them back on her +fingers, while she chattered, describing the advantages of a furnished villa at +Antiniano, to be preferred because they were some Italian friends of +Leslie’s who desired to let it, was in her inmost speaking to the inmost +of Gerald. The hardly self-conscious meanings within her bosom made as if an +extension of her in the air, comparable to the halo around the moon on a misty +night; and this atomized radiance had language, it said: “Oh, to draw your +head down where it desires to be! To warm and comfort you! To be to you +everything you need! I lean to you, I cling to you like a vine with every +winding tendril. But I am so afraid of you! so afraid! I am of common, you of +finest, clay. How can I give into any hand so much power to hurt me? If I were +to dare it, then find I could not make you happy, your disappointment would be +my heart-break, and my tragedy might spoil your life. But this know, Gerald, +dearer to me for having been so unhappy, nothing my life could contain without +you would seem to me so good as life with you in a poor workman’s attic, +under falling snow, and I to make it home for you!”</p> + +<p>While two souls thus trembled and gravitated toward each other, bathing in +each other’s light, it is almost mortifying to have to show to what degree +that which took <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_427'></a>427</span>place at the surface was different and inferior; to +what degree the fine abandon of words spoken and actions performed in thought +was replaced by a shivering prudence keeping guard on one side, and on the other +a deplorable timidity trying awkwardly to be bold.</p> + +<p>Heard through the door, the scene that ensued between these two curious +lovers, when they had worked their way through preliminaries and come to the +point at which they had parted after the day at Vallombrosa, must particularly +have seemed lacking in purple and poetry; for then the soft light in +Aurora’s eyes would not have been seen, nor the deep flash in +Gerald’s, as he by a point scored felt himself nearer to the goal.</p> + +<p>“Now, what made you run off like that, I want to know,” Aurora +asked in the flowing American which she reserved for real friends and sincere +moments, “after you’d said when you left me at the door, ‘Good-by +till to-morrow’?”</p> + +<p>“My reasons were several, all simple,” he replied, with a +faun-look up from the corner of his eye, which watched her expression. +“First, I wished to flee from that newspaper +article–dreadful!–till the danger of any reference to it in my +hearing was greatly reduced. Then, aside from a slight natural need to recover +myself, I felt I must for manners’ sake allow a little time to pass before +I approached you again on the subject of marrying me. One scruples to make +himself a bore. It therefore would be better not to see you, and, in order not +to see you, better not to be in town. Lastly, Auroretta, I conceived the +infernal ambition to make you suffer from absence the minutest fraction of what +I should suffer myself.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t say a word! I’ve missed you so my bones felt +hollowed out!”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_428'></a>428</span>“Reflect +then, my dearest, upon the sufferings you are preparing for yourself if you +haven’t a kinder answer for me than the other day to the same question. +All the reasons you gave for saying no were such bad ones, founded upon a bad +opinion of me. I can’t take your refusal for final, don’t you see, +without first being sure I have convinced you at least that you are wrong in +thinking me a fish or a mudturtle, and wrong in attributing a lack of +intelligence to me which could betray me into confusing great things with +little, little with great.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Gerald, you oughtn’t to keep on trying! I do wish you +wouldn’t! No! Don’t say any more about it!” she pleaded in +weak anguish. “You oughtn’t to go on battering against the little +bit of common sense I’ve got left.”</p> + +<p>“Common sense! I advise you to speak of it!” he affected to jeer, +remarkably braced by her misery. “Common sense, as represented by a decent +concern for your good name, ought to prompt you enter as quickly as you can into +an engagement with me. I met our dear Doctor Batoni in the street yesterday on +my way home from the station, and he amiably asked how was my <i>fidanzata</i>, +or betrothed? It was a difficult moment for me, because he told me that +<i>you</i> had told him you were that.”</p> + +<p>“I told him nothing of the sort! I said I was your friend, in +French.”</p> + +<p>“A friend, in French, may mean a good deal. Save your reputation, dear; +I give you the chance.”</p> + +<p>“What nonsense! I explained to him as well as I could, in French, that +I was there taking care of you because I was your friend.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_429'></a>429</span>“You are +hopelessly compromised. Look to me to set you right.”</p> + +<p>“Gerald, I shall do nothing of the kind.”</p> + +<p>“Ah, I see that your prejudices hold firm. I was afraid of it when I +came.” His mask of flippancy slipped for a moment; deep feeling made his +voice uncertain. “I am not that hardy and masterful man, Aurora, who could +break them down and clutch you above their ruin. But you will find me very +faithful to a hope–which, in fact, to relinquish now would be beyond what +I can expect of my courage.” He resumed bluffness. “I told Vincent +he might look for my return to-morrow.”</p> + +<p>“No, sir!” she came out with lively directness. +“You’re not going back to Leghorn if I can help it! I–I have a +plan.”</p> + +<p>“You have a plan? From your face I am afraid not a good one. You look +so dubious.”</p> + +<p>“Perhaps it isn’t a good one, but it’s the only way I can +see. Listen.” She looked down at her hands, and kept him waiting. +“One evening last winter at a party a young Italian naval officer got +talking to me in a green bower under a pink paper lantern away from the rest. +Something in the atmosphere, I guess, made him want to talk to somebody of his +love-affairs, and he chose me, though we scarcely knew each other. He told me he +had been very much in love with an American girl, but they hadn’t the +money to marry on or the hope of ever having it–like Brenda and Manlio at +first. Yet they couldn’t keep apart, and so they just became engaged, +knowing it couldn’t end as an engagement is supposed to do. In that way +they could see each other all they wanted, and be seen together <span +class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_430'></a>430</span>without anybody making a +remark. And then when she was obliged to go home and it had to end, it looked +merely like a broken engagement.”</p> + +<p>“And you propose–”</p> + +<p>“We might try it, Gerald. Then if it didn’t work well, if I found +I was all the time outraging your sensibilities, and you hurting my feelings, +we’d call it off. In any case we’d give ourselves plenty of time to +realize our foolishness. And you’d promise that when the time came +you’d go like a lamb, with a pleasant face, not saving up anything against +me. Make up your mind, now, that it’ll have to be a long, +<i>long</i> engagement–if we don’t repent and break it off inside a +week. But as it seems so likely we will, let’s don’t tell the others +right off, Gerald; not, anyhow, for a week or ten days.”</p> + +<p>“Admired Aurora, it surely is the most immoral proposition that ever +came from fair lady so well brought up as you!” cried Gerald, in a proper +state of excitement. But yet, such were his limitations, nothing in any +proportion with the throbbing fire inside him, the immensity of his incredulous +joy, appeared on his outside, where merely the mollified lines of his face gave +him a look of greater youth, and his cool-colored eyes let through a faint +testimony of the inward light. “I accept without hesitation. I promise +whatever you ask. From this moment onward we are <i>fidanzati</i>, then. And, my +blessed Auroretta, you who are such a hand at calling names, have your +servant’s permission to call him all the names you can think of that +signify an ineffable blunderer on the day when you succeed in freeing yourself +from him!”</p> + +<p>Many more things were said, not worth recording. But at last devout silence +reigned. In the twilight room, with <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_431'></a>431</span>all the bad pictures and trivial ornamentation, to +shut out the offense of which he had once closed his eyes, Gerald now closed +them again to concentrate more perfectly upon the rapture of feeling +Aurora’s shoulder beneath his cheek.</p> + +<hr class='pb' /> +<h2><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_432'></a>432</span><a id='link_24'></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> + +<p>The servant who opened the door for Leslie on this softly brilliant June +morning, being well accustomed to admitting her, obligingly anticipated her +question, “Are the ladies at home?”</p> + +<p>“The <i>signorina</i> is in the <i>salottino</i>,” he said. From +which Leslie understood that the person whom she chiefly had come to see was +out. It did not really matter, for she had time to wait. Aurora was likely to +come back for lunch.</p> + +<p>She released the man from attendance by a little wave of her hand, +“Never mind announcing me!” and directed her footsteps toward the +tall white-and-gold door standing partly open.</p> + +<p>On her way to it she picked up off the floor a small lawn handkerchief.</p> + +<p>The ball-room impressed her anew as being very vast, very empty, furnished +almost solely as it was by the sparkling chandeliers, every pendant of which +to-day was gay with reflections of the green and flowery and sun-washed +outdoors.</p> + +<p>She turned toward the <i>salottino</i>, remotely wondering by what chance +Estelle was preferring it to the favorite red and green sitting-room upstairs. +The <i>salottino</i> had utility when a party was going on, but to sit and +embroider or study French surrounded by all those fountains of love....</p> + +<p>A sharp bark preceded the tumbling out through the <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_433'></a>433</span><i>salottino</i> door of a little white +mop on feet. Upon recognizing Leslie, this performed evolutions expressive of +great joy.</p> + +<p>She had stopped to pat the excited little swirl of silk when Estelle came +forward to see who was there.</p> + +<p>With delighted good mornings the women exchanged the foreign salute, which +Leslie had adopted and Estelle submitted to, a mere touching of cheeks while the +lips kiss the air.</p> + +<p>They sat down on the rococo settee to talk, Leslie, quick of eye, wondering +what had happened to give Estelle that unusual air, an air of–no, it was +indefinable. Excitement had a share in it, and possibly chagrin, and, it almost +seemed, exaltation. The chief thing about it, however, was that she was trying +to conceal it; doing her best, but it was a poor best, to appear natural. Leslie +graciously allowed her to suppose she was succeeding, and entered at once upon +the reason for her early call.</p> + +<p>“I really think, Estelle, that the villa at Antiniano would suit +Aurora. As for you, I am positive, my dear, that you would adore it. It is a +little out of the thick of things, but has a very fine view of the sea, also a +very pretty garden. Certain conveniences, of course, it hasn’t, but, then, +you mustn’t expect those of an Italian villa. I saw Madame Rossi +yesterday, and she said she wished you would make an excursion to Antiniano to +see for yourselves. She is sure you would be charmed. One request she would +make: that the peasant family be allowed to continue in their little corner of +the house, where they wouldn’t be the least in your way, and then that the +little donkey should be allowed to remain in the stable. But in return you could +use him, she said.”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_434'></a>434</span>“Ride +him?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, or harness him. For the country, why not, my dear? They are ever +so strong little beasts.”</p> + +<p>Estelle began to laugh, presumably at the picture of Aurora on donkey-back, +or, with herself, exhilarating the country-side by the vision of them drawn in a +donkey-cart. Leslie joined in her merriment, but expostulatingly, and, warned by +a note in Estelle’s laugh, watched her with suspicion while it developed +into a nervous cackle. She saw her cover her eyes with one hand, and with the +other vainly feel in her pocket. She was crying. Leslie tendered the little +handkerchief found on the floor, and knew then that it had dried tears before on +that same day. She waited, tactfully silent, merely placing a condoling hand +over her friend’s.</p> + +<p>“I might as well tell you,” Estelle got out, when her crying fit +permitted her to speak, “that Aurora isn’t going to take any villa +at Antiniano this summer.... She’s gone away.”</p> + +<p>“Gone away? What do you mean?” asked Leslie, surprised into a +very complete blankness of expression.</p> + +<p>“What I say.” And in her incalculable frame of mind Estelle again +was laughing. “Oh, I don’t know which to do, whether to laugh or +cry!” she explained, with eyes bright at once from laughter and from +tears. “One moment I laugh, next moment I cry. I feel as if I were walking +in my sleep. I guess what I need is a nerve-pill.”</p> + +<p>“You say that Aurora has gone away. Where?”</p> + +<p>“Where Gerald pleases, I guess. She’s gone with him.”</p> + +<p>“With Gerald? Now, my dear friend, please explain. You laugh, you cry. +You say Aurora has gone away with Gerald. Please collect yourself and tell me +what it means. <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_435'></a>435</span>‘Gone away with Gerald.’ How do you mean gone +away with him?”</p> + +<p>“I mean they have eloped, or as good as.”</p> + +<p>“No, no; people don’t elope when there is neither an inconvenient +husband, nor unamenable parents, nor any possible reason why they should not +have each other if they wish to.”</p> + +<p>“I wonder what you would call it, then. As late as twelve o’clock +last night I didn’t know a thing about it, and this morning early they +left together in a carriage, with her trunk strapped on the back.”</p> + +<p>Leslie lifted her hands to her temples and pressed them as if to keep her +head from a dangerous expansion with the size of the new idea that must find a +home there.</p> + +<p>“So it was in earnest!” she said aloud, yet as if speaking to +herself. “Mother has won her bet, and I have lost. Well,”–she +tossed her head and faced Estelle,–“I am glad of it. We knew, of +course, that there was something, and we felt that nothing nicer could happen +than that they should make a match of it. Mother prophesied they would. But I +did not believe it. I was afraid of Gerald–that disposition in him to +consider too finely, to halt on the brink, that negative, renunciatory way he +has settled into. I thought the thing would end in mere philandering. I am +glad”–she threw the weight of conviction on the +word,–“glad it hasn’t! I don’t see, my dear Estelle, +what you can find to cry about.”</p> + +<p>“Is that the way it strikes you?”</p> + +<p>“My dear, I couldn’t say which I thought the luckier, Gerald to +get Aurora, or Aurora to get Gerald.”</p> + +<p>“You surprise me. To me it seems just about the riskiest combination +that could be imagined. I have felt it all <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_436'></a>436</span>along. Those two have no more in common, I have +said, than a bird and a fish.”</p> + +<p>“Nonsense, my dear girl! Nonsense!”</p> + +<p>“I have heard him get so impatient with her because simply she +didn’t pronounce a word right. I’ve seen him so annoyed he nearly +trembled trying to choke it down.”</p> + +<p>“But did she mind? I mean, his impatience?”</p> + +<p>“I can’t say she did; but–”</p> + +<p>“There you have it. They are marvelously suited. Listen and let me talk +to you for your comfort. This, do you hear, is exactly the most delightful thing +that could have happened. Haven’t you noticed that complex natures are +rather given to uniting with simple ones, and finding happiness with them? An +artist–how often!–marries his model, a philosopher marries a +peasant.”</p> + +<p>“Go on!” sighed Estelle. “Go on! I love you for making me +feel better!” Her eyes moistened again in an almost luxurious +melancholy.</p> + +<p>“One of the reasons for mother and me wishing for this consummation was +the broadening of life it would afford Gerald. Gerald doesn’t think about +money. Aurora’s money, all the same, will do a lot for him in making +possible his getting away from here, where the truth is he stagnates. Then, too, +she will cure him of his morbidness. He sees red if one so much as breathes the +suggestion that his art is morbid. But of course it is.”</p> + +<p>“Aurora said they might go to live in Paris, because she thought it +would be good for his art.”</p> + +<p>“Now that’s what I want to hear about. Go on and tell me what +Aurora said and what happened between midnight and their extraordinary +elopement, as you call it. But, <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_437'></a>437</span>first of all, why, in the name of common sense, did +they elope? From what did they elope?”</p> + +<p>“From me, I guess. I don’t see what else. Oh, yes, I do. From the +talk there would be. But principally, I suspect, he hurried her into it to make +sure of her, for she, too, had her moments of doubting the wisdom of what she +was doing. That much I know. They had only been engaged two weeks, and all that +time I didn’t even know they were engaged. I hadn’t been nice about +Gerald, I feel bound to confess, so she thought best not to tell me. She +didn’t want to hear how I would take it, we’ve been so used to +speaking our minds to each other. He came oftener than ever and stayed longer, +till it got so I made a point of getting up and making an excuse to leave the +room. It was my way of being spiteful. But Nell didn’t take it up with me +in private, as I expected she would. They were tickled to death to have me leave +the room, I can see now. She went around the house singing an Easter carol and +fixing flowers in the vases, with a look of cheerfulness apart from me that made +her seem like a stranger. I was pretty sore, I can tell you, but I +wouldn’t speak of it. I don’t know how I thought it would end. +Funny, I can’t remember how everything looked so short a time ago as +yesterday, but I know I was eaten up with mean thoughts. I went to bed last +night thinking to myself, ‘Well, Nell Goodwin, if you think I’m going to +stand much more of this, you’re mistaken. There’ll be some plain +talk before long.’ And I fell asleep. First thing I knew I was awake, +looking to see who’d come into my room. And there was Nell in her +night-dress, holding her hand round the candle so it wouldn’t shine in +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_438'></a>438</span>my eyes. I simply +can’t tell you what it was like,–the candle lighting nothing but her +made her seem like a vision in the middle of a glory. Nobody can know how fond I +am of Nell, what friends we’ve been since little bits of girls. All I +could think of was that she’d come to make up with me, she couldn’t +wait another minute. It would have been just like her. And while I waited for +her to speak first, I thought with my heart just melting what a lovely big thing +she is, with that sort of fair look to her neck, and those warm cheeks, and +something so kind about her from head to foot. She put down the candle and, +instead of going into explanations, bent over and gave me a good hug. And I +said, hugging back: ‘You better had, you horrid thing! You better had!’ +Then she sat down on the bed. ‘Hat,’ she said, ‘I was going to do a mean +thing, but I’m not going to do it. I was going to slip away without a +word, but I’m going to tell you the whole story. I’m going to marry +Gerald,’ she said.</p> + +<p>“Then she went on to tell me, and what do you think, I didn’t say +one word in objection, not one! Because I could see she was dead in love, and +what was the use except to spoil her happiness, and I didn’t want to. She +told me how they’d decided it would be just as well not to wait, but take +a short cut. If they stayed in Florence, she said, she’d feel they must +have a big wedding and ask all their friends, and then she should have to have a +trousseau; it would all take lots of time, and Gerald would so hate the fuss and +the chatter. So they’d made up their minds to go off to Leghorn without a +word to anybody,–whose business is it anyhow but their own?–and be +married just as soon as it could be done, where they wouldn’t get so much +as the echo of any remarks on their haste or the way they <span class='pagenum +pncolor'><a id='page_439'></a>439</span>preferred to do. She’ll be staying +with Mrs. Johns till the ceremony. She said she should write your mother from +there. Then she showed me Gerald’s ring that she’d been wearing on a +chain round her neck where I wouldn’t see it, and she talked about +Gerald’s wonderfulness. She’s perfectly wrapped up in him. All I +hope is he appreciates it.”</p> + +<p>“His inducing her to elope with him would seem to indicate some warmth +of feeling on his part. The suggestion can hardly have come from her.”</p> + +<p>“You’re right. I guess it’s as bad with him as with her. +She talked about the wonderfulness of his love, such as she never could have +believed, and never could deserve. She said she could be happy with Gerald in a +garret that let the snow leak in. Oh, they’re both crazy. What do you +think she gave as one reason for this haste? ‘Life is short,’ she said, +‘and love is long!’ Gerald must have said it to her before she said it to +me, but what do you think of it? ‘Life is short and love is +long!’”</p> + +<p>“Do you mean”–asked Leslie, with the least touch of +severity,–“that I ought to share in a cynical view of that saying? I +can’t, my dear Estelle. There are my father and mother, you know. In their +quiet way they bear out the idea that love may be as long as life.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, of course,” said Estelle hurriedly, with a faint air of +shame. “My father and mother, too, make a united couple.”</p> + +<p>“My belief is that when two people marry who are in love as they ought +to be, and who in addition are good–By good I think I mean +people–” Leslie, with her look of wisdom beyond her years, paused to +take a survey of life, “–people who have a sense of the other +person’s <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_440'></a>440</span>rights, and, as a matter of heart, not principle, +feel the other’s claims just a little more strongly than their +own–in the case of such people, when the passion they marry on dies out +with their growing older, as we generally see it do, something takes its place +that deserves the name of love every bit as much.”</p> + +<p>“Aurora is good,” said Estelle, from her soul. “You would +never know how good unless you had stood in need of kindness.”</p> + +<p>“Gerald is good, too,” said Leslie, with an effect of more +impartiality but no less positiveness. “He would disdain to be anything +else.”</p> + +<p>“What is wrong with me is that I’m selfish, I guess,” said +Estelle, looking contrite, “and don’t like having to give her up to +him, after all the beautiful things we’d planned together. What I ought to +feel is nothing but thankfulness for her having such a chance of happiness, and +then thankfulness for all she did, trying to make up for her +desertion.”</p> + +<p>Without transition, Estelle went back to the story of the past night. +“You can imagine there wasn’t any more sleep for that spell. I got +up, and we went to her room, where she had all the lights lighted and was in the +middle of packing her trunk. She only took one, and about a quarter of her +things. Gerald’s going to design wonderful costumes for her, the style he +prefers. I could see she’s ready to do just anything to please him. +I’d already noticed how she’d altered her way of doing her hair, but +wasn’t smart enough to recognize the signs!... While she was at work +packing she planned for my summer,–that I’m to invite Mademoiselle +Durand to go traveling with me, so I can improve my French at the same time as +give that <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_441'></a>441</span>poor +hard-working creature a real vacation and treat. Then when they go to Venice, +she wants me to join them, and the three of us have a regular jamboree. Then +next winter, after I’ve got home, she wants me to go to Colorado to visit +the Grand Cañon and see the great sights of my native country before settling +down again in East Boston. She made me a present of Ami.”</p> + +<p>“Ami?”</p> + +<p>“I’ve changed his name from Busteretto. Don’t you like it +better? Little Tweetums! He’s the only darling I’ve got left!” +She pressed a kiss on the warm top of his head. “She made me a present of +all the clothes and things she wasn’t taking with her. She made me a +present of everything in this house that we didn’t find in it when we took +it–turned it all over to me to do what I please with. And I’m sure I +don’t know what I shall do with it all unless I set up a store. Anything +you see and think you’d like to have, please say so.”</p> + +<p>“She gave you all these things? Do you mean it?” asked Leslie, +surprised despite what she had already known of Aurora.</p> + +<p>“Yes, and along with the things, of course, the responsibility of +settling up everything, dismissing the servants, sending Livvy back to New York. +Such a job! Luckily, there’s no hurry; the lease doesn’t expire +until October. When you came I’d been sort of looking round. I was just +wondering what to do about this Fountain of Love. Nell paid a frightful lot for +these four panels. I’d been trying to see if they could be carefully +peeled off and the wall behind restored, and while I was looking the sight of +that winter scene broke me all up. It doesn’t tell a very cheerful tale, +you know, this series of pictures. After what <span class='pagenum pncolor'><a +id='page_442'></a>442</span>I’d just been through, saying good-by to them, +it worked on me like a bad omen.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t be foolish. Then you saw Gerald, too, before they +left?”</p> + +<p>“Yes. I could have done without, but she’d have been hurt. So I +shook hands, and managed to wish him joy. He was nice, but, then, Gerald always +is that. I’ve never for a moment said anything different. He said he +wanted me to feel that I hadn’t lost a sister, but acquired a brother. +Just as they were driving off I remembered something, and called after Nell, +‘What about your portrait?’ for I couldn’t think she meant to give +me that along with the rest. Gerald said before she could speak, ‘Take it +away!’ And Nell said right off, ‘Oh, yes. Keep it, Hattie; keep it!’ +That lovely portrait he painted of her! I don’t see how she could bear to +part with it. But, of course, now she has him she can have as many portraits as +she wants. Come and tell me what you think, whether it would be safe to pack it, +frame and all, or better to unframe it, or, better still, to take the canvas off +the stretcher and roll it.”</p> + +<p>Accordingly, they left the room of the cupids and garlands, traversed the +vasty ballroom where the chandeliers, like two huge ear-rings, divided up the +light into twinkling diamond and rainbow showers, entered the drawing-room of +the dignified sixteenth-century chairs, which from the first had suffered an +undeserved neglect, and passed thence into the familiar parlor of the +multitudinous baubles and the grand piano and the portrait; performing in the +contrary direction the pilgrimage on which, at a period which seemed so +immemorably far as to have become legendary, Gerald had followed Aurora walking +before him with a light.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_443'></a>443</span>They stood +beneath the portrait, and with the image present to their minds of painter and +sitter hasting on their way to be wed, saw this equivocal masterpiece with a +difference. Not Aurora alone looked forth from the canvas,–throat of lily, +cheek of rose, heaven-blue eyes, smile and ringlets of immitigable sunniness. +Gerald, self-depicted in every subtle brush-stroke, looked, too.</p> + +<p>“It takes sober, solid, careful people to be interesting when they +commit a rashness,” thought Leslie. Then, with a little surge of envy in +her well-regulated breast, “To be swept off one’s feet,” she +thought, “how educative it must be, how enlarging.”</p> + +<p>But a doubt fell, shadow-like, across her vision of future fortunes. If a +person never found it possible to fall in love with those who fell in love with +her, would it necessarily follow that the Some One she should someday love would +regard her with coldness?</p> + +<p>Estelle gazed upward at the portrait with a wistful, well-nigh solemn look. +Not being able, hampered by a dog in her arms, to clasp her hands, she expressed +the same impulse by clasping the dog close to her breast in token that her +wishes for her dearest friend’s good were more than wishes, were a +prayer.</p> + +<p>She felt a hand laid lightly on her forearm.</p> + +<p>“You needn’t be afraid,” said Leslie, “they’ll +be happy.”</p> + +<p class='tp' style='margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:40px;'>THE END</p> + +<div class='adpage'> +<p>[Transcriber’s Note: As originally published, this book had two +consecutive chapters labeled as “CHAPTER XV.” Chapter numbers have +been resequenced in this text.]</p> +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Aurora the Magnificent, by Gertrude Hall + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AURORA THE MAGNIFICENT *** + +***** This file should be named 30642-h.htm or 30642-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/6/4/30642/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/30642-h/images/illus-020.jpg b/30642-h/images/illus-020.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..77464e7 --- /dev/null +++ b/30642-h/images/illus-020.jpg diff --git a/30642-h/images/illus-082.jpg b/30642-h/images/illus-082.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..bc3ca3a --- /dev/null +++ b/30642-h/images/illus-082.jpg diff --git a/30642-h/images/illus-200.jpg b/30642-h/images/illus-200.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..be4b7ef --- /dev/null +++ b/30642-h/images/illus-200.jpg diff --git a/30642-h/images/illus-272.jpg b/30642-h/images/illus-272.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2549ada --- /dev/null +++ b/30642-h/images/illus-272.jpg diff --git a/30642-h/images/illus-290.jpg b/30642-h/images/illus-290.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c0c8394 --- /dev/null +++ b/30642-h/images/illus-290.jpg diff --git a/30642-h/images/illus-316.jpg b/30642-h/images/illus-316.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ddc3517 --- /dev/null +++ b/30642-h/images/illus-316.jpg diff --git a/30642-h/images/illus-384.jpg b/30642-h/images/illus-384.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..fa5657e --- /dev/null +++ b/30642-h/images/illus-384.jpg diff --git a/30642-h/images/illus-emb.png b/30642-h/images/illus-emb.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c82a5b7 --- /dev/null +++ b/30642-h/images/illus-emb.png diff --git a/30642-h/images/illus-fpc.jpg b/30642-h/images/illus-fpc.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..008182e --- /dev/null +++ b/30642-h/images/illus-fpc.jpg diff --git a/30642.txt b/30642.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c76b72d --- /dev/null +++ b/30642.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14115 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Aurora the Magnificent, by Gertrude Hall + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Aurora the Magnificent + +Author: Gertrude Hall + +Release Date: December 10, 2009 [EBook #30642] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AURORA THE MAGNIFICENT *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[Illustration: Alone in her room later ... she looked at the other +portrait] + + + + +AURORA THE MAGNIFICENT + +BY + +GERTRUDE HALL + +AUTHOR OF "THE TRUTH ABOUT CAMILLA," "THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY," ETC. + +ILLUSTRATED BY GERALD LEAKE + + +NEW YORK + +THE CENTURY CO. + +1917 + + + + +Copyright, 1916, 1917, by + +The Century Co. + +Published, March, 1917 + + + + +TO + +MY SISTER GRACE + +WITHOUT WHOM THIS BOOK + +WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN. + +AND TO + +MY DEAR HELEN R----, + +WITHOUT WHOM IT WOULD + +HAVE BEEN + +DIFFERENT + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + +Alone in her room later ... she looked at the +other portrait Frontispiece + + FACING PAGE + +After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the sanctuary 20 + +"I thought," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "that you were going to +come and take us sight-seeing" 82 + +Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find no +words to express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove 200 + +Gerald turned, and beheld that lady 272 + +Aurora's eyes, fixed and starry, rested upon the little flame 290 + +Aurora, with a comedy of pride, threw up her chin, lifted +her arms, and turned as if on a pivot 316 + +"Come, let us reason together, Aurora" 384 + + + + +AURORA THE MAGNIFICENT + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +Near sunset, one day in early October, not too long ago for some of us +to remember with distinctness, Mr. Foss, United States consul at +Florence, Italy, took a cab, as on other days, to the Porta Romana. +Here, where the out-of-town tariff comes into effect, he paid his man, +and set out to walk the rest of the way, thus meeting the various needs +he felt: that for economy,--he was a family man with daughters to +clothe,--that for exercise,--his wife told him he was growing fat,--and +the need in general for an opportunity to think. He had found that +walking aided reflection, that walking in beautiful places started the +spring of apt and generous ideas. Though in his modest way a scholar, he +was not as yet an author, but Florence had inspired him with the desire +to write a book. + +Just beyond the Roman Gate begins the long Viale dei Colli,--Avenue of +the Hills,--which climbs and winds, broad, shady, quiet, between lines +of gardens and villas, occupied largely by foreigners, to the Piazzale, +whence Michelangelo's boyish colossus gazes with a slight frown across +Florence, outspread at his feet. Mr. Foss, as he mounted the easy grade, +and noted with a liking unabated after years the pleasantness of each +habitation glimpsed through iron railings and embowering green, thought +how privileged a person should feel, after all, whose affairs involved +residence in Italy. + +This recognized good fortune had not been properly tasted before another +aspect of the thing presented itself for consideration.... + +The consul felt a sigh trying to escape him, and turning from the images +whose obtrusion had called it up from the depths, directed his attention +to a different set of subjects, unwilling at the moment to be troubled. + +The glories and iniquities of that great family whose cannon-balls--or +pills?--adorn so many of the 'scutcheons on Florentine street-corners +and palace-fronts are what he selected as the theme for his meditations, +a choice which seems less odd when we know that his book, the labor and +pleasure of his spare hours, was a study of the Medici. + +He had not been busy many minutes with their supplanted policies and +extinct ambitions before these dropped back into the past whence he had +drawn them, and his mind gave itself over to an exercise more curious +than reconstructing a dead epoch. A shortish, stoutish man, with a +beginning of baldness on his crown and gray in his mustache, was trying +by the whole force of a sympathetic imagination to fit himself into the +shoes, occupy the very skin, of a delicate young girl, to look at the +world through her eyes and feel life with her pulses. + +Thus absorbed, he hardly saw the posts of his own carriage gate; he +passed unnoticing between his flower-beds, up his stone steps and came +to himself only when, rubbing the hands he had just washed, he entered +the dining-room and saw his wife. + +"Where are the girls?" he asked even before kissing her, for the most +casual eye must be informed by the blank look of the table that instead +of being laid for half a dozen as usual, it was prepared for a meagre +two. + +Mrs. Foss was fond of sitting in the dining-room, which had a glass door +into the garden on the side farthest from the road. There she read her +book while waiting for dinnertime and her husband. The good gentleman +did not always come directly home from his office. He had the love of +dropping into dim churches, of loitering on bridges, of fingering the +junk in old shops, but he was considerately never late for dinner. + +Mrs. Foss rose to receive her husband's salutation, and while answering +his question settled herself at the table; for she had caught sight of a +domestic peeping in at the door to see if the masters were there to be +served. + +"Leslie and Brenda went to call on the Hunts," she gave her account, +"and presently the Hunts' man came with a note from Mrs. Hunt, asking if +the girls could stay to dine and go to the theater. A box had just been +sent them. I was very glad to give my consent. Charlie will probably be +one of the party and bring them home. Or perhaps Gerald. Or they will be +put in a cab. I was delighted of the diversion for Brenda." + +"And where's Lily?" + +"She, too, is off having a good time. Fraeulein was invited by some +German friends who were giving a _Kinder-sinfonie_. Awful things, +if you want my opinion. She asked if she might go and take Lily, and the +poor child was so eager about it I thought I would just for once let her +sit up late. She has so few pleasures of the kind." + +Mrs. Foss had helped the soup, with a ladle, out of a tureen. + +It was after her husband and she had emptied their soup-plates in +companionable silence that, leaning back to wait for the next course, +she asked her regular daily question. + +"Well, anything new? Anything interesting at the consulate?" + +Mr. Foss seemed in good faith to be searching his mind. Then he answered +vaguely: + +"No; nothing in particular." All at once he smiled a smile of +remembrance. "Yes, I saw some Americans to-day." He nodded, after an +interval, with an appearance of relish. "The real thing." + +"In what way, Jerome? But, first of all, who were they?" + +"Wait a moment. I stuck their cards in my pocket to show you. They came +to see me at the consulate. No, they are in my other coat. One of them +was Mrs. Something Hawthorne, the other Miss Estelle Something." + +"What did they want?" + +"Everything--quite frankly everything. They have grown tired of their +hotel; they speak nothing but English and don't know a soul. They came +to find out from me how to go about getting a house and servants, horses +and carriage." + +"Did they think that was part of a consul's duty?" + +"They didn't think. They cast themselves on the breast of a +fellow-countryman. They caught at a plank." + +"A house, horses. They are rich, then." + +"So one would judge. Oh, yes, they're rich in a jolly, shameless, +old-fashioned American way." + +"Well, it's a nice way." Mrs. Foss added limitingly: "When they're also +generous. One has noticed, however, hasn't one,"--she seemed on second +thought to be taking back something of her approval,--"a certain +reticence, as a rule, with regard to the display of wealth in people of +any real culture?" + +"These aren't, my dear. It's as plain as that they're rich. And, for a +change, let me whisper to you, I found it pleasant. Not one tiresome +word about art did they utter in connection with this, their first, +visit to Italy." + +"I can see you liked them, but what you have so far said doesn't +entirely help me to see why. Rich and ignorant Americans, +unfortunately--A light breaks upon me! They were pretty!" + +A twinkle came into the consul's eyes, looking over at his wife, as one +is amused sometimes by a joke old and obvious. + +His pause before answering seemed filled with an effort to visualize the +persons in question. + +"Upon my word, Etta, I couldn't tell you." He laughed at his inability. + +"By that token they were not beauties," said the wife. + +"It seems likely you are right. At the same time"--he was still mentally +regarding his visitors--"one would never think of wishing them other +than they are." + +"Describe them if you can. What age women?" + +"My dear, there again you have me. Let us say that they are in the +flower of life. One of them, so much I did remark, was rather more +blooming than the other. Perhaps she was younger." + +"The miss?" + +"The married one. But perhaps it was only the difference between a rose +and--" he searched--"let us say a bunch of mignonette. The rose--here I +believe I tread safely on the road of description--had of that flower +the roundness and solidity, if nothing else." + +"Stout?" + +"We will call it well developed, nobly planned. But what would be the +good of telling you the color of these ladies' hair and eyes had I +noticed it? It will help you much more effectively to pick them out in a +crowd to be told they are very American." + +"Voices, too, I suppose." + +"Of course. You don't strictly mean high and nasal, do you? All I can +say with any positiveness is that one of them had what I will call a +warm voice--a voice, to make my meaning quite clear, like the crimson +heart on a valentine." + +"I am enlightened. Was it the mignonette one?" + +"No; the hardy-garden rose." + +"And what did she say to you in her warm crimson voice?" + +"I have told you. She called for help." + +"You said, I hope, that your wife and daughters would be very happy to +call on them and be of use if they could." + +"I did." + +The time-tried, well-mated friends were looking over at each other +across the table, not expressing any more than at all times the quiet, +daily desire of each to further the interests and comforts of the other. + +"Where are they staying?" the lady continued to question. + +"Hotel de la Paix." + +"And they haven't any letters, introductions, addresses, anything?" + +"Apparently not." + +"Where are they from?" + +"Let me see. Did they mention it? My dear, if they did, I don't recall +it." + +"New York?" + +"No. If I am to guess, I shouldn't guess that." + +"Out West?" + +"H-m, they might be. No, I guess they're Yankees." + +"Boston?" + +"If so, not aggressively. Where do most people come from? There's +nothing very distinctive about most." + +"Perhaps it will be on their cards." + +Then the Fosses talked of other things. But when Mrs. Foss, after +dinner, went upstairs for her scarf,--it was too cool now to sit out of +doors in the evening without a wrap,--she remembered the cards, and took +them out of her husband's pocket. + +"Miss Estelle Madison," she read. "Mrs. Aurora Hawthorne." There was +nothing else. She continued a little longer to look at the bits of +pasteboard in her hand. "Well-sounding names, both of them--like names +in a play. Mrs. Aurora. She's a widow, then." Mrs. Foss considered. "Or +else divorced." + + * * * * * + +Jerome Foss sat out in the garden on fine evenings with his cigar, and +watched the serene oncoming of the night, because he loved to do this. +His wife stayed with him to be company, when, without an old-fashioned +ideal of married life, her natural bent would have urged her indoors, +where the lamps were, to read or sew or even play patience. But she +lingered contentedly and all seemed to her as it should be, with the two +of them sitting near each other in their garden chairs before the family +door-stone, he smoking, she getting the benefit of it by now and then +fanning his smoke toward her face. She liked the odor. + +They only spoke to each other, as is common with married people, when +they had something to say, and so were often silent for long spaces. +That they had talked a great deal lately in the seclusion of their +bedroom, away from the ears of the children, was a reason why they +should not be very communicative to-night. They had threshed out the +matter foremost in their minds so thoroughly that there could be little +to add. Now and then, however, when they were alone, scraps of +conversation would occur, part of the long discussion continued from day +to day; which fragments, isolated from their context, might have sounded +odd enough to any one overhearing. + +Thus it was to-night. After half an hour without a syllable, Mrs. Foss's +voice came out of the dark. + +"When I was a young girl, there was a music-master, Jerome," she opened, +with no more preface than a shooting-star. "I don't know that he was +particularly fascinating, but he seemed so to me. I suppose he was +thirty, I was seventeen or eighteen. It was during my year at Miss +Meiggs's. Whether he really did anything to win my young affections I +can't tell at this distance, but at the time I imagined all sorts of +things, that he looked at me differently from the other girls, that his +voice was different when he addressed me, that an extreme delicacy was +all that kept him from declaring his love. Oh, I used to wish on the +first star, and I used to pull daisies to pieces, and I practiced, how I +practiced! Well, there was a rich girl in the school, older than I and +not nearly so good looking. The moment she graduated he proposed to her. +How did I feel? Jerome, the sun went out for good and all the day I +heard of their engagement. It was as serious as anything could ever be +in this world.--I'm sure I have told you about that music-master before, +Jerome.--Well, and what happened? At the age of twenty-two I cheerfully +married you. And I was not a scarred and burnt-out crater either, was +I?... In the interval, let me not neglect to mention, there had been +other flirtations and minor affairs. Thank Heaven, those things pass," +the words came out devoutly. "It seems at the time as if only death +could end it, but two or three years will do a lot. And it's God's mercy +makes it so. How else could life be carried on?" + +"In my case, Etta," the consul followed her story, after an interval, +"it was a landlady's daughter. I don't believe I have ever spoken of her +to you. I was in college, but I boarded outside the buildings. I wrote +to my father and begged him to let me go into business so that I could +earlier support a wife and family. The wise man let me go down to a +fruit-farm in Florida. You have noticed that I know something about +orange-growing. It was not quite a year before the dear divinity whose +name was Lottie found it too long to wait. I posted home. The room I had +once rented from her mother was let to a handsomer man. I took up my +studies where I had dropped them, and to all appearance there was little +harm done. But for a long time I thought I should die a bachelor." + +"I know. Your cousin Fannie told me about it in the early days, before +we were engaged. It all goes to show.... And there again was Selina +Blackstone, one of my girlhood friends. She had a cough and they thought +her lungs affected and sent her South. There she met an unhappy boy in +the same case, only he, as it proved, really was in a bad way with his +lungs. The poor things fell desperately in love with each other, but her +parents wouldn't hear of their marrying, in which course they were +right. Now you would have thought from her face that the separation was +going to kill her. It didn't, that's all. He died, and she married. And +it can't be said of her that she was either shallow, or fickle, or +heartless. I knew her very well. Merely, time did the work that time was +set to do." + +There was in the lady's tone an effect of protest against any view, +determination against any theory, but her own. + +"There are the cases like Miss Seymour's, however," Mr. Foss brought in +softly, as one calls to another's attention a lapse of memory or a slip +in logic. + +"Miss Seymour? Blanche? What about her?" + +"That she is Miss Seymour, my dear, and to my mind a melancholy lesson. +Because Nature so plainly had not planned her for an old maid. Her +mother--who told me? I think it was Miss Brown--interfered with her +marrying the man she wished to, and she has accepted nothing in his +place. It has been an empty life. And so it goes. One can't be sure, +Etta." + +"Jerome," Mrs. Foss's voice rose to a sharper protest and firmer +rejection, "those are the cases we simply must not allow ourselves to +think about. If we begin to think of cases like that...." + +She did not finish and he said no more, but in the darkness through +which the fiery point of his cigar continued for some time to glow, it +is to be feared the faces of both went on to reflect for nobody to see +the working of those thoughts precisely which Mrs. Foss had said with so +much emphasis they must guard against. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Upon a day not much later in the month--a goodly day which thousands +without a doubt were thinking all too short for the useful or merely +delectable things they wanted to do--a certain young man in Florence +would, if he could, have treated this mellow golden masterpiece of +autumn's like a bad sketch, torn it across and dropped it into the +waste-basket. What is one to do with a day when nothing that has been +invented seems enough fun to pay for the bother? He did not wish to +paint, he did not wish to read, or to play on the piano, as he sometimes +did in solitude, with one hand, to solace himself by re-framing a +remembered melody. He did not wish to go out, but was restless from +staying in. He did not want to see the face of friend or foe, but could +no longer endure to be alone. + +He stood for a moment in the middle of the floor, with his hands over +his face, the ends of his fingers pressing back his eyeballs, and got in +his throat a taste of the bitter waters which he felt as a perpetual +pool in the center of his heart. Next minute he sneered at himself, like +a schoolmaster at a boy who blubbers, and without further paltering put +on his hat, took up a very slender cane with a slender grasp of yellow +ivory, and ran down the long stairs of his house to the street. + +"Air and exercise, air and exercise!" This prescription he repeated to +himself, and, surely enough, in a quarter of an hour felt better. + +He was on Via Tornabuoni. Passing Giacosa's, he glanced in to see if it +were any one he knew taking tea so early behind the great plate glass +window. No, they were chance English. He halted before a shop farther on +to look at a display of jewelry, wondering that there should be fools +enough in the whole world to support one such dealer in turquoise +trinkets that at once drop out their stones; crude, big mosaics, and +everlasting little composition-silver copies of the Strozzi lantern. + +He crossed the street and entered the bank, where he found the usual +table strewn with weeklies and monthlies for the advantage of those +clients who must be asked to wait. He seated himself with his face so +directed that if an acquaintance should enter, he need not bow, and +turned over the magazines one after the other. It hurt him like a direct +personal injury to find these authors all alike so shallow, dishonest, +giving the public not their thought or their experience, but something, +anything, it would buy. + +"A little more air and exercise is what I evidently need," said the +young man, and again went out into the streets. + +He turned toward the river, and had not followed the Lungarno for more +than ten yards before it was with him as when, looking out of the window +in despair at the weather, we see a break in the clouds. His step took +on alertness; his face lighted in the very nicest way. + +The young lady on whom his eyes were fastened from afar did not see him. +She came at her usual step, a happy mean between quick and slow, +accompanied by a hatless serving-woman carrying a music-roll. She looked +straight before her, but her glance was absent. The passers could not +but notice her,--she had beauty enough for that, and was besides +conspicuous in wearing a costume entirely white,--but she was not +noticing them or the eyes that turned to keep her a moment longer in +sight. She looked rather shut in herself, rather silent; not really +proud and cold, but proud and cold as the feeling and modest and young +have to look if they are to keep their sacred precincts from the +intrusions of curiosity. + +The young man approaching questioned her face to see if it were sad. No, +as far as he could tell, she was not in any way troubled. At the same +time he knew that it was neither a face nor a nature to be easily read. +Still, not to find her visibly sad comforted him. + +She did not recognize the young man till he was almost near enough to +touch her, and she had heard her name called, "Brenda!" + +Then her face showed a genuine, if moderate, pleasure. + +"Gerald!" + +"What are you doing?" he asked, with the freedom of a familiarity +reaching back over long years. He shortened his step to keep time with +hers, which she at the same moment lengthened. + +"I have been for my singing-lesson." + +"And where are you going?" + +"Home." + +"I haven't seen you for ages." + +"You haven't come. One never sees you, one never meets you anywhere any +more." + +Her English was different from the ordinary in having occasional Italian +turns and intonations. His partook of the same defect, but in a lesser +degree. + +"But I have come," he stood up for himself, "and you were all out except +Lily. Didn't she tell you I was there? We had a long talk. She told me +her plans for the future. She is going to keep a school for poor +children. We discussed their diet and their flannels and every point of +their bringing-up. We invented things to do on holidays to give them a +good time. There is only one thing I can see leaving a doubt of this +school coming into being. It is that Lily has moments, she confessed to +me, of thinking almost equally well of a castle with a moat and +drawbridge and a page to walk before her carrying her prayer-book on a +cushion. She's a funny young one." + +"It's partly Fraeulein." + +"How are they all?" + +"Well, thank you. At least, I suppose they are well." She gave a slight +laugh at the humor of this. "You could hardly imagine how little I see +of them." + +"What has happened?" + +"They have been going around with some new people, some Americans. They +have been helping them to shop, and showing them the way one does things +over here. Mother, you know, is always so ready." + +"Your mother is a dear." + +"Leslie is just like her. But I am sure they both enjoy it, too. They +have not been home to lunch for a week." + +"And you?" + +"Oh, I am not needed where there are already two who do the thing so +much better than I could. I have not even seen the people. My day is +very full, you know. Piano and singing-lessons, and I am painting again +this winter, with Galletti, and I am going to a course of +_conferenze_ on Italian literature. That involves a lot of reading. +There are, besides, the other, the usual things, the--" Her voice stuck; +then, as she went on, deepened with the depth of a suppressed +impatience. "I wish one might be allowed not to do what is meant for +pleasure unless one takes pleasure in it. But going to teas and parties +is apparently as much a duty as school or church. Mother and Leslie at +least seem to think it so for me." + +"I see their point, Brenda dear, don't you?" He was not looking at her +as with a gentle brotherliness he spoke this. + +"You don't go to many parties yourself, Gerald." + +"I am afraid nothing I do is fit to be an example to anybody. But it +doesn't matter about me. About you it does. I can't say to you all I +think. It would sound fulsome, and from such an old chum might make you +laugh. But, being as you are, Brenda, surely your mother is right in +thinking of _le monde_ as the proper setting for you. You know I'm +not fond of _le monde_, but it's because it hasn't enough such +ornaments as yourself. With the life that lies before you--" + +"Who can possibly know what my life will be?" the girl asked quickly, +almost roughly. + +"True, Brenda. I dare say I am talking like a fool." He left off, +wondering that for a moment he should actually have been speaking on the +side of convention. + +They walked a few rods in silence. They had crossed the bridge, and were +headed for Porta Romana, the handmaiden trotting in their tracks, when +at a corner Gerald stopped, and, as if to change the subject, or to +regain favor by a felicitous suggestion, said: + +"Do you remember my telling you of a painting I came upon in a little +old church on this street? _Scuola di Giotto_, they call it, but +the thing is undoubtedly Sienese. Have you the time? Shall we take a +moment to see it?" + +"I should be glad. If you will walk home with me afterward, Gerald, I +might tell Gemma she can go." + +There was an exchange of Italian between the young lady and the maid, +after which the latter turned, and with a busy, delighted effect about +the rear view of her walked back across the bridge to spend her gift of +an hour in what divertisements we shall never know. + +The church was closed. Gerald pulled the bell-handle of the next door. A +priest opened to them, and, seeing at a glance what was wanted, guided +them through a white-washed corridor to a living-room where a crucifix +hung on the wall and the table had a red cloth; by this into a dim and +stony sacristy, whence they emerged into the back of a darkling little +church, with shadowy candlesticks and kneeling-benches, the whole full +of a cold, complex odor of old incense and old humanity and, one could +fancy, old prayers. + +The priest brought a lighted taper and, crossing to one of the side +altars, held it near the painting, which was all that well-dressed +people ever came for outside of hours. + +The reddish light trembled over the figure of a majestic virgin, in the +diadem and mantle of a princess, bearing the palm of martyrs in her +hand. It was a very simple and noble face, beautiful in a separate way, +which not every one would perceive, so little in common had it with the +present-day fair ladies whose photographs are sold. + +Gerald had taken the light from the priest's hands and was lifting, +lowering, shading it, experimenting, to bring out all that might still +be seen of the withdrawn image on its faintly glinting field of gold. +His face was keen with interest; the love of beautiful things in this +moment of satisfaction smoothed away from it every line of dejection and +irritability. + +Brenda was examining the picture with an attention equal to his, but, if +one might so describe it, of a different color. Her admiration got its +life largely from Gerald's, whose tastes in art she was in the habit of +adopting blindfold. Of this, however, she was not aware, and gazed doing +good to her soul by the conscious and deliberate contemplation of a +masterpiece. + +"Do you remember a great calm, white figure in the communal palace at +Siena?" Gerald asked, "with other figures of Virtues on the same wall? +Doesn't this remind you of them?" + +Brenda answered abstractedly: + +"Yes," and continued to look. "How amazing they are!" she fervently +exclaimed. He supposed she meant the saint's hands or eyes, but she +explained, "The Italians." + +He did not take up the idea either to agree or to dispute; his mind was +busy with one Italian only, the painter of the picture before him. + +The young girl's interest flagged sooner than his own; he felt her melt +from his side while he continued seeking proof in this detail and that +of the painter's identity. + +When he turned to find her and to follow, she was kneeling on one of the +wooden forms, her gloved hands joined, her face toward the high altar. + +He approved the courtesy of it, done, as he knew, in order that the +priest, who stood aside, waiting for them to finish, should not think +these barbarians who came into his church to see a work of art had no +respect for his shrines and holies. Having returned the light to the +priest Gerald himself, while waiting for Brenda, took a melancholy +religious attitude, his hat and cane held against his breast, and sent +his thoughts gropingly upward, where the solitary thing they encountered +was his poor mother in heaven. Heaven and the changes undergone by those +who enter there he could never make very real to himself. He thought of +her as she used to be, affectionate and ill. + +At the stir of Brenda rising from her knees he, too, stirred, ready to +depart. She was bowing to the altar, making an obeisance so deep, so +beautifully reverent, that the priest could never have guessed she was +not a Catholic. After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the +sanctuary, like one with last fond words to say after the farewell; and +this excess of either regard for the priest's feelings or else a +devoutness he had not suspected in her quickened Gerald's attention. And +there in the dimness he saw what he had not seen in the broad light of +day, that his friend's little face, which had presented the effect of a +house with all the blinds drawn down, was lighted up behind the +blinds--oh, lighted as if for a feast! + +He felt himself at sea. He had thought he knew the circumstances. Some +part, of course, nobody could know unless Brenda chose to tell them. But +what reason there should be for positive joy-- + +A suspicion flashed across his mind. He looked at her more closely, and +put it away. + +She might have been the wisest of the virgins, the one who before any +other heard the music of the bridegroom and was first to light her lamp. +She stood as if listening to his footsteps. + +[Illustration: After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the +sanctuary] + +That such a simile should have been possible to Gerald shows how much +the expression of Brenda's face centered attention on itself, for her +white serge dress was in the fashion of that year, and it was not a +fashion to be remembered with any artistic joy. Gerald was never +reconciled to it. + +He had the power to detach himself and at will see persons as if he +looked at them for the first time. So for a moment he saw Brenda as a +thing solely of form and color, a white shape against a ground of gloom, +and took new account of the fact that the little girl who had had +pigtails when he first knew her, and gone to the _Diaconesse_ with +lunch-basket and satchel of books, had from one season to the next, +stealthily, as it were, and while his back was turned, become beautiful. + +More than that. He was looking at Brenda--he recognized it with a pulse +of exquisite interest--in her exact and particular hour. He had +surprised a rose at its moment of transition from bud to bloom, that +delicate and perfect moment when the natural beauty which women and +fruits and flowers have in common, reaching its height, hangs +poised--for such a pitifully short time, alas!--before it changes, if +not declines, to something less dewily fresh, less heart-movingly +untouched, less complete. + +The artist could not long in this case be regarding the girl as part of +a picture; his human relation to the owner of that lifted profile +brought him back to wondering in what the quiet ecstasy it breathed +could have its source. He was touched by it, by the whole character, at +the moment, of her face, with its strength so nullified by gentleness. + +When the will is strong and nature sensitive, what arms has youth with +which to prevail? What but the power to keep still and hold on? Nothing +was in Brenda's face so marked as that power, except, in this moment of +undisguise, while she thought herself unwatched, its singular happiness, +a mingling of tenderness, dedication, hope. + +The genuine sympathy he felt for her made Gerald deserving of the +intuition that blessed him while he stood there trying to divine. An +interpretation of her secret offered itself, worthier of him as of her +than the suspicion of erewhile; one so beautiful, indeed, that he felt +uplifted by standing in its presence. All he had most cared for in his +life, the things that had touched and inspired him,--visions of +painters, dreams of poets, scenes of beauty, sweet of human +intercourse,--all the influences that make life dignified and fair, +seemed in their essence to be in the air around him, like scents of +flowers in the dark.... + +The wish to pray came over him again, yet he wanted to weep, too, +because as soon as his heart expanded a little the rusty splinter of a +knife corroding there reminded him that lofty sentiments, sincerities, +idealisms, have as their fruit in this life--dust, derision! He wondered +that without being any older one could feel as old as he did while +watching Brenda transfigured by her poor young dream. + +Now for the second time she curtseyed to the altar. The priest moved, +Gerald moved, all three passed up the aisle, to a faint chink of coins +in Gerald's pocket where he groped for a fee. At the main altar the +priest dipped a rapid genuflexion. + +As soon as they were outside Brenda began to talk about the picture, to +ask questions, as if the art of the Italians had been of all things +nearest to her heart, and Gerald was drawn into holding in the street +while they walked a sort of lecture on the primitives. + +All the while, in an independent corner of his brain he was reflecting +upon the absurdity of supposing that because he was an old familiar of +the Fosses, and so fond of them all, he knew anything of their affairs +these days, when he saw them so seldom. Ever so many things could have +happened without his knowledge. The girls might have new friends and +admirers just as they had hats and dresses that he had never seen. + +They were making their way while talking toward Porta Romana, and were +often obliged to step off the narrow sidewalk to make room for other +passers, the street being busy at that time of day. + +Brenda was in the midst of an entirely pertinent remark when her voice +softly died, like the flame of a candle sucked out by a draft or like a +music-box run down. Gerald, looking round for the end of her sentence, +saw that she had sighted an acquaintance on the other side of the +street. + +She nodded, without a smile, slowly. Just so must Beatrice have bowed in +these same streets of Florence when she passed the dreamy passionate +youth through whom we are acquainted with her name. + +Gerald's eyes traveled across the way to see who might be the recipient +of the lady's most sweet salute, and hurriedly uncovered to an officer +of the Italian army who, holding his hand to his cap, stood at attention +till the two had passed. + +Was the man pale or was it that one had never before noticed, meeting +him indoors and at evening, how strongly the black of his mustache and +brows contrasted with his skin? The suspicion that had for a moment +troubled Gerald in church returned as a stronger infection. Had Brenda +expected this? Did they concert such meetings? + +He might have said to himself that a tryst which consisted in crossing +glances from opposite sides of the street was very innocent. In a moment +he did see that as the villas _fuori la porta_ must be reached +through the _porta_, a lover whose lady lived on Vial dei Colli +might without previous arrangement hope for a glimpse of her by walking +in its neighborhood. + +As we have seen him doing more than once this afternoon, Gerald here +tried to get his clue from Brenda herself, her face, her atmosphere. Yet +he knew, as has already been said, that it was Brenda Foss's way to keep +these as much as she could from telling anything to the world. This +wariness notwithstanding a tinge of unaccustomed rose had spread through +the clear white of her cheek; her eyes had in them noticeably more life. +Emotion or mere self-consciousness? + +On one point only he was satisfied: Brenda had done nothing that +involved deceit. Into the very structure of her face, which had almost +nothing left of the American look, was built a certain Puritan +truthfulness. She could conceal if she must, but hated to shuffle, to +prevaricate. She concealed exactly because of that. + +"Go on with the Sienese masters, Gerald," she bade him, collectedly. "I +am listening, and learning a lot." + +As they passed under the great arch of the Roman Gate, Gerald was saying +modestly: + +"I don't know anything about them, really. I've just been impressed by a +thing or two. This Lorenzetti, for instance--" And so on up the +_viale_ to the house. + +In the drawing-room they found Mrs. Foss and Leslie, who, just home from +town, tired and thirsty, had had tea brought to them, and were +strengthening themselves before even taking off their hats. + +Their welcome to Gerald was mingled with reproaches of the sort that +flatters more than it hurts. + +"It's perfect ages since we saw you. We thought you had forgotten us. +What have you been doing this long, long time?" + +"It is you, who are never at home, my dear friends," Gerald took his +turn. "I was here a fortnight or so ago. Didn't Lily tell you? Of course +she told you, and you have forgotten, so it's I, properly, who should be +calling names." + +"Have you been quite well, Gerald?" Mrs. Foss asked in her maternal +voice, after a more careful look at him. + +"Certainly." + +"I am glad you have come. I have been on the point more than once of +sending for you, but the days fly so! We have been busy, too." + +She had poured cups of tea for Gerald and Brenda. All four were seated +and refreshing themselves. + +It was a very large room, but a corner had been so arranged as to look +shut in and cozy. There stood the tea-table convenient to the sofa and, +surrounding it, a few chosen chairs in which one could sink and lean +back and be comfortable. + +"Have you had a tiring day?" Brenda asked her mother, somewhat as if she +were tired herself at the mere thought of such a day as she supposed her +mother to have had. + +"No," Mrs. Foss answered briskly; "it's rather fun. I don't mean that +one doesn't get tired after a fashion. Has Brenda told you, Gerald, how +we have lately been occupied?" + +"Some new people, I think she said." + +"Yes, some nice, funny Americans." + +"Funny, you say?" + +"I say it fondly, Gerald. Let me tell you a little about them, and you +will see what I mean. They are going to spend the winter here and wanted +a house. What house do you think they selected?" + +"You really mustn't set me riddles, Mrs. Foss." + +"For years we have seen it every time we drive to the Cascine, and seen +it with a certain curiosity--always deserted, always with closed blinds, +in its way the most beautiful house in Florence." + +"The most--I can't think what house you mean." + +"Of course not, with your tastes. But imagine some nice, rich Americans, +without either art education or the smallest affectation of such a +thing, and ask yourself what they would like. Why, a big, square, +clean-looking, new-looking, wealthy-looking house, of course, set in a +nice garden, with, at the end of the garden, a nice stable. I was +thankful to find the place had been kept up." + +"But is there--on the Lungarno, did you say?" + +"It is that house we have called the Haughty Hermitage, Gerald," Brenda +helped him. + +"Oh, that! But surely one doesn't live in a house like that!" + +"Your excellent reason?" inquired Leslie. + +"I don't know,"--he hesitated,--"but surely one doesn't live in a house +like that!" + +They had to laugh at the expression brought into his face by his sense +of a mysterious incongruity. + +"No," he went on with knitted brows to reject the idea; "a house like +that--one doesn't come all the way from America to live in a house which +has no more atmosphere than that!" + +"Ah, but that's the point, Gerald," said Mrs. Foss. "What you call +atmosphere these people avoid as they would an unsanitary odor. +Atmosphere! What would you say if you saw the things Leslie and I have +been helping them to buy and put into it! I love to buy, you know, even +when not for myself. I thought with joy, 'Now I shall at least go +through the form of acquiring certain objects I have lusted after for +years.' Delightful old things Jerome has discovered in antiquarians' +places, and that we shall never be able to afford. Do you think I could +persuade them to take one of these? I represented that the worm-holes +could be stopped up and varnished over, that the missing bits of inlay, +precious crumbs of pearl and ivory, could be replaced, the tapestries +renovated. In vain. They want everything new--hygienically new, fresh, +and shining. And, Gerald, prejudice apart, the idea is not without its +good side. The result is not so bad as you may think. Why, after all, +should my taste, your taste, prevail in their house, will you tell me?" + +"For no reason in the world. This liberal view comes the easier to me +that I do not expect ever to see the interesting treasures you may have +collected from Peyron's and Janetti's." + +"If it were no worse than that!" put in Leslie, and laughed a covered +laugh. + +Mrs. Foss explained, after a like little laugh of her own. + +"You see, things that we have seen till we have utterly ceased to see +them, the things that nobody who really lives in Florence ever dreams of +buying, are new to these people. They _love_ them. As a result, you +can guess. There will be in their apartments alabaster plates with +profiles of Dante and Michelangelo on a black center. There will be +mosaic tables with magnolias and irises. There will be Pliny's doves. +Think of it! There will be green bronze lamps and lizards--" + +"And the fruit--tell about that, Mother!" Leslie prompted. + +"There will be on the sideboard in the dining-room a perpetual dish of +magnificent fruit, marble, realistic to a degree. You know the kind." + +"And you could stand by and let them--you and Leslie!" spoke Brenda, in +an astonishment almost seriously reproachful. + +"My dear," Leslie took up their common defense, "one's feeling in this +case is: What does it matter? A little more, a little less.... It all +goes together. When they have those curtains, they might as well have +that fruit." + +"At the same time, my dear children, let me tell you that the effect is +not displeasing," insisted Mrs. Foss. "Such at least is my humble +opinion. In its way it's all right. They are people of a certain kind, +and they have bought what they like, not what they thought they ought to +like. Thousands of people, if it were not for you artists perverting +them, would be thinking a marble lemon that you can't tell from a real +one a rare and dear possession. These people haven't known any artists. +They are innocent." + +"They're awfully good fun," Leslie started loyally in to make up for +anything she had said which might seem to savor of mockery or dispraise. +"One enjoys being with them, if they aren't our usual sort. They are in +good spirits, really good--good spirits with roots to them. And that's +such a treat these days!" + +From which it was supposable that Leslie had been living in circles +where the gaiety was hollow. The suggestion did not escape Gerald. But, +then, Leslie, just turned twenty-four, was rather given to judging +_these days_ as if she remembered something less modern, an +affectation found piquant by her friends in a particularly +young-looking, blond girl with a short nose. Gerald might have hoped +that her sigh meant nothing had not Leslie, awake to the implication of +her remark as soon as she had made it, gone hurriedly on to call +attention away from it. + +"Yes, it's pleasant to be with them. It's a change. The world seems +simple and life easy. Life _is_ easy, with all that money. Besides, +Mrs. Hawthorne really is something of a dear. After all, if people make +much of one, one is pretty sure to like them. Haven't you found it so, +Gerald?" + +"I don't know. I am trying to remember if there is anybody who has made +much of me." + +"_We_ have made much of you." + +"And don't think I temperately like you. I adore you all, as you well +know. You're the only people I do. By that sign there has been nobody +else kind enough to make much of me." + +"You're so bad lately, Gerald; that's why," Mrs. Foss affectionately +chide him. "You never go anywhere. You neglect your friends. What have +you been doing with yourself? Is it work?" + +"No; not more than usual. I work, but I'm not exactly absorbed--obsessed +by it. I don't know--" He seemed to search, and after a moment summed up +his vague difficulties: "It seems a case for quoting 'Hamlet.'" He was +bending forward, his elbows resting on his knees, as they could do +easily, his chair being low and his thin legs long. His thin, long hands +played with that slender cane of his, which he had set down and taken up +again, while he tried to recall the passage, and mumbled snatches of it: +"'This goodly firmament--congregation of vapors--Man delights not +me--no, nor'--the rest of it." + +"But it won't do, Gerald dear; it won't do at all," Mrs. Foss addressed +him anxiously, between scolding and coaxing. "Shake yourself, boy! Force +yourself a little; it will be good for you. _Make_ yourself go to +places till this mood is past. What is it? Bad humor, spleen, +hypochondria? It doesn't belong with one of your age. We miss you +terribly, dear. Here we have had two of our Fridays, and you have not +been. And we have always counted on you. Charming men are scarce at +parties the world over. The Hunts have begun their little dances, too. +One used to see you there. And at Madame Bentivoglio's. She was asking +what had become of you. Promise, Gerald, that we shall see you at our +next Friday! We want to make it a nice, gay season. Will you promise? +Oh, here's Lily. Why didn't you tell us, Lily, that Gerald had come to +see us when we were out?" + +A long-legged, limp-looking little girl with spectacles had come in. A +minute before she had been passing the door on her way to walk, and +catching the sound of a male voice in the drawing-room, insisted upon +listening till she had made sure whose it was. At the name Gerald she +had pulled away from her governess and burst into the drawing-room. + +She stood still a moment after this impulsive entrance, and the +governess turned toward Mrs. Foss a face that, benign and enlightened +though it was, called up the memory of faces seen in good-humored German +comic papers. The expression of her smile said to the company that she +was guiltless in the matter of this invasion. Could one use severity +toward a little girl who suffered from asthma and weak eyes? + +Lily, after her pause, went half shyly, half boldly to Gerald. He did +not kiss her,--she was ten years old,--but placed an arm loosely around +her as she stood near his knee. + +"Did you forget it, Lily?" + +"No, Mother, I didn't forget, but I never thought to speak of it. You +didn't tell me to, did you, Gerald?" + +"No, we had so much else to talk about. Well, Lily, have you decided +what color the uniform must be for our orphanage? The thing is +important. It makes a great difference in an orphan's disposition +whether she goes dressed in a dirty gray or a fine, bright apricot +yellow." + +"Gerald,"--Lily lowered her voice to make their conversation more +private,--"will you be the cuckoo?" As he gazed, she went earnestly on: +"We can't find anybody to do the cuckoo. I am going to be the +nightingale. Fraeulein is going to be the drum. Leslie is going to be the +_Wachtel_. Mother is going to be the triangle. Brenda will play the +piano. Papa says that if he is to take part he must be the one who sings +on the comb and tissue-paper. But I am afraid to let him. You know he +hasn't a good ear. That leaves the cuckoo, the comb, and the rattle +still to find before we can have our _Kinder-sinfonie_. Which +should you like to be, Gerald?" + +"What an opening for musical talent! But, my dear little lady, I'm not a +bit of good. I can't follow music by note any more than a cuckoo. I am +so sorry." + +"But, Gerald, all you have to do is--" + +"I have told you, Lili," said the governess in German, "that we would +take the gardener's boy and drill him for the cuckoo. Come now quickly, +dear child; we must go for our walk." + +The casual, unimportant talk of ordinary occasions went on after the +interruption. + +"And what do you hear from that charming friend of yours, the abbe, +Gerald?" And, "I hope you have good news from your son, Mrs. Foss." And, +"Do you know whether the Seymours have come back from the country?" + +Gerald left the Fosses, warmed by his renewed sense of their friendship, +and believing that he would go very soon again to see them. But he did +not, and his feeling of shame was more definite than his gratitude when +he in time received a note from Mrs. Foss, kind as ever, asking him to +dine. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +There was dancing at the Fosses' on two Fridays in the month. It was +their contribution toward the gaiety of the winter. They did not often +give a formal dinner, and when such an entertainment appeared to be +called for from them, planned it with forethought to make it serve as +many ends as it would. Every careful housewife will understand. + +It was with Leslie that Mrs. Foss talked such matters over. The eldest +daughter was so sufficient as adjutant that one did not inquire whether +Brenda would have been useful if needed. The latter took no part in the +domestic councils which had for object to decide who should be asked to +dinner and of what the dinner should consist. + +The question whom to invite to meet Professor Longstreet had taken Mrs. +Foss and Leslie time and reflection. The Fosses' only son had a great +regard for this man, one of the faculty during his period at Harvard, +and now that the travels of the professor's sabbatical year brought him +to Florence, the family was anxious to entertain him as dear John, +studying medicine in far-off Boston, would have wished. + +The professor was engaged upon a new translation of the "Divine Comedy." +The guests had therefore better be chosen among their literary +acquaintance, thought Mrs. Foss. But Leslie was of the opinion that they +would do better to make the requisite just any gift or grace, and keep +an eye on having the company compose well and the table look beautiful. + +When she reminded her mother that a dinner was owing the Balm de Brezes, +and that this would be a chance to pay the debt, Mrs. Foss objected: + +"But I want to ask Gerald. I felt sorry for him last time he came. We +must look after him a little bit, you know." + +Leslie did not show herself in any wise disposed to set aside Gerald's +claim, but expressed the idea that Gerald probably would not mind +meeting the De Brezes now. After all, the memories sweet and sour +associated with them had had time to lose their edge. And they could be +seated at the opposite end of the table. + +It was finally decided to ask the Balm de Brezes, Gerald, the Felixsons, +Miss Cecilia Brown, and Gideon Hart, all intelligent, all people who +could talk. It was further frugally resolved to have the dinner on a +Friday and let it be followed by the usual evening party, thus making +the same embellishment of the house do for two occasions, as well as +augmenting their visitor's opportunity to make acquaintance with the +Anglo-American colony in Florence. + + * * * * * + +All had been going so well, the guests were in such happy and talkative +form, that the minor matter of taking food had dragged, and the diners +were not ready to rise when a servant whispered to Mrs. Foss that the +first evening guest had arrived. + +Mrs. Foss's eyes found those of Leslie, who understood the words +soundlessly framed, and excused herself from the table. + +In the garnished and waiting drawing-room, lighted with candles, like a +shrine, and looking vast, with the furniture taken out of the way, she +found the Reverend Arthur Spottiswood, of whom it was not easy to think +that eagerness to dance had driven him to come so sharply on time. He +looked serious-minded, almost somber, and Leslie, though prepared to be +vivacious with peer or pauper, found it all duty and little fun to make +conversation with him until the next arrival should come to her relief. +The gentleman was Brenda's adorer, but Brenda would never, if she could +help it, let him have one moment with her. His love-charged eye inspired +in her the simple desire to flee. Singularly, this was, with one notable +exception, beautiful Brenda's only conquest, while Leslie, who was just +ordinarily pretty and wore a pince-nez, received tribute and proposals +from almost every unattached young fellow who drifted inside the circle +of her wide invisible net. Boys in particular had to pass through her +hands, receive good advice from her, be encouraged in their work, +cheered in their distance from home, and refused, and consoled for the +refusal, and sent away finally rather improved than otherwise. With very +little sentiment, she had a kind and cozy quality, like her mother. + +The Satterlees were next to arrive, mother with son and daughter, and +Leslie was warm as never before in her welcome to them. The Reverend +Arthur was gently shed from her and with pleasure picked up by Isabel +Satterlee, who was charmed to have any kind of man to talk with. + +Then arrived a group of unrelated people living for the moment at the +same pension in town and coming in the same conveyance. Among them was +Percy Lavin, who had the extraordinary tenor voice, and along with it an +exuberance of confidence in his future that made him as destructive of +coherence in company as a large frisking pup. Leslie had at the very +first meeting felt that it would be her sacred mission to attend to that +young man. + +The hired pianist had come, he was unrolling his sheets of dance-music +and rolling them the contrary way. Mr. Hunt, the English banker, with +his wife and daughters, had come; and Maestro Vannuccini with his +signora on his arm; and a glittering young officer or two; and Landini, +Hunt's partner; and Charlie Hunt, the banker's nephew. + +Charlie, bold through long acquaintance, asked, "Where are the others?" + +Leslie told him, whereupon the young man said "Oh!" and his "Oh" sounded +blank, whether because it was apparent to him through her answer that +there had been indiscretion in his question, or because he wondered at +there being a dinner-party in this house and he not asked to it. Leslie +paid no attention, for at that moment the diners were beginning to +appear. + +The drawing-room had two doors in the same wall: people coming from the +dining-room would enter by one of these, while those who came from the +street entered by the other, after passing through the small +reception-room where they left their things, and the larger +reception-room intervening between this and the drawing-room. Charlie +Hunt, talking with Mrs. Satterlee, let a casual eye roll away from her +middle-aged agreeableness to see who was entering by that different door +from the one which had given him passage. Curiosity, pure and simple. + +Ah, so. Madame Balm de Breze, spare, sharp, high-nosed, beaked and +clawed like a bird--a picked bird. Very elegant. It was clear to Charlie +Hunt why with a dinner to give one should care to secure her and her +husband. They looked so fiendishly aristocratic. + +The Felixsons. Naturally. Felixson had to be asked when the guest of +honor was a scholar. Mrs. Felixson's warm brilliancy to-night bore +testimony to a good dinner. Abundance of meats and wines always turned +her a burning pink. It looked to Charlie like a new frock she was +wearing; he did not remember seeing her in it before. + +Gideon Hart, the old sculptor. It was his picturesque white hair and +beard that people liked to see at their tables, for the old fellow, +thought Hunt, was phenomenally a bore. In this case patriotism explained +his presence. America quaintly loved his name. + +And Cecilia Brown. But was it really Cecilia?... What had she been doing +to herself?... Oh. Her hair. Her hair was cropped and curled all over +her head like wicked Caracalla's. That was the fashion in England, he +had heard, where she had been spending the summer. + +But who was this, at the end of the procession, after Mrs. Foss and +Brenda and the consul? + +Hunt had a genuine surprise. Gerald Fane. + +Now, wherefore Gerald Fane rather than Charlie Hunt? + +Mrs. Foss, coming into the drawing-room, felt a glow of pleasure at the +scene meeting her eyes. The occasion, the success of it, had lifted life +for her above its usual plane. She could feel how blessed she was in +ways she did not sufficiently consider on common days when common cares +blinded her. It was a beautiful home, this of hers; here was a beautiful +room, with its mirrors and flowers and candle-light and happy guests. +She smiled at everybody and everything with a brooding sweetness. + +Her sense of herself was satisfactory too at the moment. She felt her +dress--an old one, rejuvenated--to be becoming. She was young to have +grown children. Her blond hair did not show the silver threads among it. +She was as handsome in her older way as she had been when young, and she +was sure she was nicer. She had family and friends, all full of regard +for her. Her smile reflected the state of her mind and did one good to +see. + +Her eyes resting upon Brenda--whom the reverend Arthur had tried to +capture the moment she appeared, and been baffled--Mrs. Foss in the +optimism of her mood said to herself that all would very likely go well +in that quarter; they ought not to worry as they did. + +The pianist had struck up a polka. One still danced the polka in those +days, and the schottische and the dear old lancers, though the waltz was +already the favorite. + +The floor was at first sparsely, then ever more thickly, sown with +hopping and revolving couples. Hunt, one arm curled around a young waist +in pink muslin, had enough of his mind to spare from the amount of talk +one has breath for while dancing to continue in a line of thought +started by an annoying little smart where a shred of skin had been +rubbed off his vanity when he saw Gerald come from the dining-room. He +mentally looked at himself and looked at Gerald, and after comparing the +pictures felt his astonishment increase. He could admit, as an excuse +for inviting Gerald instead of himself, that Gerald was an artist, and +this dinner had presumably been planned with the idea of having it +literary-artistic. But then--an artist! Gerald was so little of one. One +never heard of his selling a painting. In the darkest corners of his +friends' rooms you sometimes discovered one of his queer things--a gift, +hung there as a compliment. One might, furthermore, grant that it did +not matter that a man should be agreeable in appearance. But Gerald was +not even agreeable in disposition; he did not try to make himself +agreeable. What did the Fosses see in him? + +The music had worked through a mighty flourish to a banging final chord. +Hunt escorted his lady to a chair, took the fan from her hand to fan her +with,--himself a little, too,--and while talking let his dark eye stray +from her and go roving, as was the habit of his eye. + +It plunged through an open door into the quietly lighted library, where +the consul and his distinguished guest and a few more of the older or +staider people had withdrawn from the tumult and were having smokes and +conversation. They were considering a marble fragment, passing it from +hand to hand. + +Hunt knew that fragment, and at sight of it looked cynical. The consul, +who had discovered it immured in an ancient garden-wall, believed it to +have been carved by Orcagna. + +Old Hart had it in his hand. What he said could hardly be heard at that +distance; he passed it to Gerald with a look that seemed to ask for +corroboration. Gerald held it long and gazed seriously, with that +conceit in his own judgment which made him sometimes dispute the +attributions in no less a gallery than the Uffizi--say that a Verocchio +was not a Verocchio, a Giorgione not a Giorgione. + +Charlie strained to catch some syllable of what he said. Vainly. The +pianist was preluding. Bertie Bentivoglio came to ask the girl in pink +to dance with him. From the chair she left empty Charlie moved nearer to +the library door, of half a mind to join the group in there. But Gerald, +upon whom Leslie had impressed it that he must do his duty and let there +be no wall-flowers, when the prelude had developed into a waltz returned +the marble into Hart's hand and came to the door. Whereupon Charlie +changed his mind and after saying "Hello, Gerald!" turned again, and the +young men stood looking over the scene side by side, two figures +contrasting in reality nearly as much as they did in Charlie's mental +image of them for purposes of comparison. + +Any Rosina who sold buttonhole bouquets at the theater door could have +seen that Charlie was handsome, with his pale brown smoothness and +regularity of feature; the pretty mustache accentuating and not +concealing the neat and agreeable mold of his lip; the fine whiteness of +his teeth, his civilized and silken look altogether. The defects of his +face, if one could call them that, did not appear at first glance or +even at second. His forehead had begun to gain on his hair,--it ran up +at the sides in two points,--and his slightly prominent eyes were brown +in the same sense as a horn button or a bit of chestnut-shell is +brown,--while some eyes that we remember were brown like woodland pools +with autumn leaves at the bottom! He did not look English, yet did not +look quite Italian either. He was in fact both, and the thing evenly +balanced. The banker Hunt's brother had married an Italian; Charlie had +been born in Italy and hardly ever stirred out of it; on the other hand +he had found his society largely among the English and Americans in +Florence. + +As he stood there, conforming gracefully to a recognized canon of manly +beauty, his neighbor Gerald, who would not have been noticed one way or +the other for his looks, yet from being beside him took on an +indescribable effect of eccentricity. The bone showed plainly around his +eye-sockets and at the bridge of his nose. One eyebrow became different +from the other the moment he regarded a thing analytically; and when he +smiled those who noticed such things could detect that nature had marked +him for recognition: there showed beneath his mustache three of the +broad front middle teeth whereof two are the common portion. For the +remainder, a slight beard veiled the character of his chin and jaw and a +little disguised the thinness of his throat. Above a large forehead his +dark hair rose on end in a bristling bank, like that of most Italian men +at the time. He looked solitary, unsociable, critical, but not +altogether ungentle. His forehead was full of the suggestion of +thoughts, his gray-blue eyes were full of the reflection of feelings, +that you could be comfortably sure he would not trouble you with. + +"Well, Gerald, what are you doing with yourself these days?" asked +Charlie as they stood looking on, delaying to seek partners for the +dance. "Immortal masterpieces?" + +This innocuous playfulness somehow jarred. Gerald looked down at Charlie +from the side of his eye,--he was by a couple of inches or so the +taller,--then asked in his turn, a little crustily: + +"Do you really want to know?" + +"Why, no, my dear fellow, I don't, if that's your reply. It was not +curiosity. I was only showing an amiable interest." His tone conveyed +that he had intended no offense and refused to take any; the +disagreeableness should be all on the same side. + +"Thank you for the interest. I am doing much as usual," Gerald answered, +placated. + +"Who is this professor from America whom the very select are invited to +meet?" Charlie asked after an interval, as if they had been on the best +of terms again. + +The playfulness again was innocent, again might have been regarded as +almost an attempt to flatter; nevertheless it again jarred upon Gerald. +It was by an effort that he answered soberly and literally, without +betraying that the point of irony had irritated him, as, he did not +doubt, it was meant to irritate. + +"Another translation of Dante?" Charlie made merry, when Gerald had +finished telling as much as he knew about the professor. "I tell you +what--I will set myself to translating the 'Divine Comedy'! It will give +me distinction, and then--it 's very simple,--I will never show my +translation!" + +There was surely no harm in this. It was just stupid. Charlie's +_esprit_ was never of any fineness. He and Gerald had known each +other from the days when both went to M. Demonget's school, whence, +without having been friends, they had emerged intimates. It would have +been ridiculous for either to try to impress the other by the profundity +of his thoughts. Charlie was right in thinking of himself as standing in +a relation to Gerald that made him free to expose ideas in their +undress. And yet it was on this evening and this occasion that Gerald +said to himself for the first time definitely that he did not like +Charlie Hunt. An antipathy existing perhaps from the beginning had risen +to the point where it crossed the threshold of consciousness. No, he +neither liked nor thought well of him. + +Luckily, it did not much matter, their relations were superficial. +Belonging in the same circles they must meet from time to time; but if +Gerald avoided him whenever it was decently feasible, he need not often +suffer as at this moment from the repressed nervous need to repudiate in +explicit terms his person, his society, his manners, his morals, +everything that was his. By way of beginning this avoidance, Gerald cast +his eyes more particularly about him in search of a partner. Charlie's +eyes too were wandering over the small and scattered number of ladies +still available to late comers. + +Both of them knew every one present. Charlie had picked out with his eye +a still youthful mama, who would not, he believed, refuse to dance, but +would jest and appear flattered and, when after some hesitation she +consented, lean in his arms only a little more heavily than her +daughter. Gerald had singled a slender, faded woman in garments of ivory +lace, who, seated near Mme. Vannuccini in the far corner of the room, +was devoting herself to conversation as if she really had not cared to +dance. Gerald was moved to go and give her the chance of refusing, if +she were in total earnest. He remembered Blanche Seymour as a passionate +dancer still when he began to go to grownup parties. + +Now her hair was gray, her face had lines, but she did not look +accustomed to them; there was plaintiveness in her expression, as if she +had been a young girl, really, made up for an elderly part in +theatricals, and did not like her part. It was some sense of this which +was attracting Gerald to her across the room. Leslie had ordered him to +dance, so dance he must. But the glare of festivity all around him did +something to his inner self comparable to a light too bright making the +eyes ache. Leslie would have told him that he picked up his party by the +wrong end. The general gaiety instead of infecting him, reinforced his +feeling that everybody, beneath the surface, was perplexed, bleeding, +afraid of the future, and had good cause to be. + +The dinner had been interesting,--he had not been much affected, he was +glad to find, by the presence of the De Brezes,--but he had risen from +it haunted by the conviction that the Fosses were not happy. Nobody, if +one examined into it, was happy; all this pretense was pathetic to the +point of dreariness. Gerald knew everybody's affairs to some extent, +after spending most of his life in the same community, and a little city +where gossip is an elegant occupation. This person had made bad +investments; that one was crippled by the necessity to pay a son's +debts; this couple did not live in harmony, the husband was said to be +infatuated with a dancer. The fact that so much of their own fault +entered into people's misfortunes, while rousing rage, forced him to +pity, because the limitation of their intelligence had so much to do +with people's faults. He was in fact oppressed by the sense of the +limits set to all the lives around him in this beautiful little +Florence, his home, his love, sometimes his despair: the narrow actual +opportunities after the boundless illusions and hopes of youth; the +limited outlook, the limited breathing-room, the limited fortunes. Bars +at the windows, closed doors on every hand. + +It was with the feeling that Miss Seymour was no more truly in holiday +spirits than was he that he turned toward her, as toward a spot of +shadow amid too fervid sunshine. It would be more congenial, drifting +with her to the languid measure of this very modern, morbidly emotional +waltz, knowing that, whatever their light talk, they alike felt life to +be a sad affair, than going through livelier evolutions with a young +person who would secretly desire him to flatter and flirt. An instinct +founded less upon male conceit than knowledge of his world drove the +young bachelor determined to remain unattached to seek in preference +women who would found no smallest hope upon his notice of them. + +So, keeping at the edge of the room in order to be out of the way of the +dancers, he started on his way to Miss Seymour, while Charlie, whose +mood was as different from Gerald's as was his eye,--that brown eye +which looked upon the world as a barrel of very passable oysters, of +which he would open as many as he could get hold of,--started after. + +The approach of a stormily whirling couple, waltzing _all'_ +_italiana_, and then another and still another following, forced +them to suspend their journey. While they prudently waited, "Who is +that?" came from Charlie in a voice of acute curiosity. + +Gerald, after half a glance at him, mechanically looked in the same +direction. + +There stood at the door opening from the reception-room an unknown. + +When it was said that our young men knew everybody at the Fosses' +soiree, it was not strictly meant that there might not be a person or +two whom they had not seen before: a plain little visiting cousin whom +the Bentivoglios had begged permission to bring; a new face of a young +Italian introduced by a fellow officer. But at the door now, displacing +a good deal of air, stood a real and striking unknown, in a Paris dress +and diamonds and a smile. + +Gerald did not take the trouble to answer Charlie; to himself he said +that this was perhaps Mrs. Hawthorne, the Fosses' new friend. + +Mrs. Foss had hastened to meet her. Leslie, disengaging herself from a +partner, left him standing in the middle of the room while she hastened +likewise. It must be Mrs. Hawthorne. + +Gerald took back his eyes, and continued on his way to Miss Seymour. But +Charlie, always alive to the possibilities of a new acquaintance, always +eager to be first in the field, dropped his quest of the mama. With an +air of nonchalant abstraction he went to stand in the neighborhood of +the new arrival, conveniently at hand for an introduction. He saw then +that there were two fine new birds; the light and size of the one had at +first obscured the other, though she, too, had on a Paris dress and +diamonds and a smile. But the dress--though there could be little +difference in the women's age, both were young, without being unripe +girls,--was of soberer tones: a sage green moire with pale +coffee-colored lace; and the jewels were more modest, and the smile was +smaller, its beam did not carry so far, nor was perched on so +considerable an eminence. + +As he had known she would do, Mrs. Foss after a moment looked about her +for men to introduce. And there he was. + +Mrs. Hawthorne. Miss Madison. + +Leslie had at the same moment brought up Captain Viviani, who spoke a +little English, and liked very much to practise it with the charming +American ladies, as he told them. + +Mrs. Foss lingered awhile, helping the progress of the acquaintance by +bits of elucidation and compliment, then, when the thing was under way, +withdrew so adroitly that she was not missed. A young man, coming up to +importune Leslie for a promised dance, was allowed to carry her off; +Miss Madison, assured by the _capitano_ that he could dance the +American waltz, trusted herself, though a little doubtfully, to his +arms; and Charlie was left with Mrs. Hawthorne. + +"Shall we take a turn?" he offered. + +"Me?" The lady gave him a look sidewise from dewy blue eyes, as if to +see whether he were serious. He perceived that she with effort kept her +dimples from denting in. He could not be sure what the joke was. But she +went on, as if there had been no joke: "I was brought up a Baptist. My +pa and ma considered it wicked to dance, so would never let me learn. It +doesn't look very wicked to me." + +She watched the dancers with an earnestly following eye, preoccupied, he +supposed, with the moral aspect of their embraces and gyrations. + +"It looks easy enough," she said, with suppressed excitement, immensely +fascinated. "I should think anybody could do that. You hop on this foot, +you slide, you hop on that foot, you slide. I believe I could do it. No, +no, I mustn't let myself be tempted. I don't want to be a sight." Her +voice had wavered; it suddenly came out bold. "My land!" she exclaimed +full-bloodedly, "there goes a woman who's not a bit slimmer than me! +Look here, let's try. Not right before everybody. I see a side room +where it's nice and dark. Come on in there." As, hardly muffling a gleam +of peculiar and novel amusement, he escorted her toward the room +indicated, she reassured him, "I'm big, but I'm light on my feet." + +Charlie was afterward fond of telling that he had taught Mrs. Hawthorne +to dance. But the single lesson he gave her did not of a truth take her +beyond the point where, holding hands with him, like children, and +counting one-two-three, she tried hopping on this foot, then on the +other. For Mrs. Foss, who seemed to have specially at heart that the new +people should enjoy themselves, in her idea of securing this end, +brought one person after the other to be introduced. + +How carefully selected these were, or how diplomatically prepared, the +good hostess alone could know. + +"Oh, I'm having such a good time!" Mrs. Hawthorne sighed from a full and +happy heart, later in the evening, having gone to sit beside her hostess +on the little corner sofa which that tired woman had selected for a +moment's rest. The dancing was passing before them. "It's the loveliest +party I ever was to. What delightful friends you have, Mrs. Foss, and +what a lot of them! I've made ever so many friends, too, this evening. +Mrs. Satterlee has told me about the Home she's interested in, and Miss +Seymour about the church-fair, and I've had a good talk with the +minister. Those are three nice girls of the banker's, aren't they? +Florence, Francesca, and Beatrice, commonly known as Flick, Fran, and +Trix, they told me. Mr. Hunt, the nephew, is nice, too; we get on like +sliding down-hill. They're all going to come and see me.--Mrs. +Foss,"--her attention had veered,--"do look at that little fellow +playing the piano! Isn't he _great_! But isn't he comical, too! +I've been noticing him all the evening. He fascinates me. I never heard +such splendid playing. The bouncing parts make my feet twitch to dance, +but the sighful, wind-in-the-willow parts make me want to just lean back +and close my eyes. I could listen till the cows come home. I call it a +wonderful gift." + +Mrs. Foss looked over at the little Italian, the unpretentious musical +hack whom one sent for when there was to be dancing, and paid--it was +all he asked--so very little. Her eyebrows went up a point as she +smiled. It was true, she remarked it for the first time, that his hands +flew over the keys with an air of breezy virtuosity. He raised them from +the keyboard and brought them down again with the action of a snorting +high-stepping horse. When the passage was loud he nearly lifted himself +off the stool with pounding; when it was soft he tickled the ivories +with the delicacy of raindrops, at the same time diminishing his person +till he seemed the size of a fairy. Now and then he tossed his head, as +if champing a bit, and the bunch of black frizz over his left temple +trembled. A decidedly comic figure he appeared to Mrs. Foss. + +"I will tell Signor Ceccherelli what you say," she amiably promised. "I +am sure it will please him." + +Leslie, whose responsibilities kept her from dancing her young fill at +her own parties, sought Mrs. Hawthorne still later in the evening, when +she thought that lady might have had enough of Mr. Hunt senior sitting +beside her. The heavy old banker was not considered very entertaining, +and everybody in Florence knew his way of sticking at the side of a +good-looking woman. Lest this one, so evidently making herself pleasant, +should be unduly taxed, Leslie stepped in to free her, tactfully +interested the banker in a game of cards going on upstairs, and took the +place he vacated--took it for just a minute, as a bird perches. + +"No, you don't!" Mrs. Hawthorne laid a hand on her arm when she seemed +near dashing off to bring somebody else to present. "You've done the +social act till you ought to be tired, if you aren't. Sit here by me a +moment and take it easy. This party doesn't need any nursing. It's the +loveliest party I ever was to." + +Leslie looked off in front of her to verify the statement, and +unreluctantly settled down on the little sofa to rest awhile. She liked +Mrs. Hawthorne. One could not help liking her, as she had had occasion +to assert and reassert in defense against a vague body of reasons for +not adopting the new-comer into the sacred circle of friends, or +launching her on the waters of their little world. Now, as they chatted, +she said to herself again that if Mrs. Hawthorne's homeliness of phrase +were not a simple thing of playfulness, a disclaimer of the affectation +of elegance in talk as stilted, bumptious, unsuited to a proper modesty, +it could very well pass for that. Mrs. Hawthorne seldom expressed +herself quite seriously. As she seldom looked serious either, one could +hardly hear her say it was the loveliest party she ever was to without +suspecting her of a humorous intention. By the sly gleam of her eye one +should know she was doing it to amuse you, imitating a child, a +country-woman, a shop-girl, for the sake of promoting an easy +pleasantness. With her bearing of entire dignity, her honest +handsomeness, her air of secure and generous wealth, she was truly not +one whom the ordinary public would feel disposed to seek reasons for +excluding. Leslie and her mother had refrained from presenting to her +particular persons in the company. All remarks heard from those who had +been presented led to an almost certainty that the new Americans were a +success. + +"Do look at Estelle!" exclaimed Mrs. Hawthorne. "She's been dancing one +dance after the other, and sits there now looking cool as a cucumber. I +would have her life if it could make me into a bone like her. Miss +Foss,"--she was diverted from the envious contemplation of +Estelle,--"who is that lovely girl over there?" + +"Which one? There are so many to-night!" + +"The white one with the knob of dark hair down in her neck. An Italian, +I guess. Rather small. See who I mean? There. She's going to speak to +the little fellow at the piano." + +Leslie looked, but did not at once answer. The girl in white was indeed +strangely, at this moment poignantly, lovely. Some intensity of +repressed feeling made her cheek of a white-rose pallor, and her dark +eyes, those spots of velvet shadow, mysteriously deep. She had gone +where the piano stood in a bower of palm and bamboo, with Signor +Ceccherelli seated before it, busy wiping the sweat of his brow. More +than one had gone to him that evening to ask for some favorite piece. +She was perhaps just requesting him to play The Blue Danube, or La +Manola or Bavardage, and it was merely the romantic way of her beauty to +express a sense of doom. She spoke quietly to the pianist, who looked at +her while she spoke and when she ceased made with his head a motion of +assent. She turned and went from the room. + +"It is my sister Brenda," said Leslie. "How singular you should not +recognize her!" + +"I've never met her, my dear. You don't remember. The time I came to tea +she was in town taking a music lesson. The time I came to dinner she was +in bed with a headache. Well, well, she's not a bit like the rest of +you, is she? I took her for an Italian." + +"She was only twelve when we came over here, it has somehow molded her. +I was seventeen; too old, I fancy, to change. Brenda is going back to +America before long, to be with our aunt, father's sister, for whom +Brenda was named. It was only decided a day or two ago, when we heard +from some friends who are going and will take her under their wing. And +if she goes there's no telling when she will come back, you see, because +with every change of administration father may be recalled. And Italy +has been her home so long, all her friends are here. It's no wonder she +doesn't look exactly light of heart." + +"No, poor child!" + +There was a sympathetic silence, after which, "Who is that?" Mrs. +Hawthorne asked, to take their minds off the intrusive sadnesses of +life. With her gaze across the room she counted, "One, two, three, four, +to the left of the piano, with his hands behind him and a round glass in +his eye." + +Leslie looked over at a figure of whom it was natural to ask who that +was, it so surely looked like Somebody--though Mrs. Hawthorne had very +likely asked because, merely, in her eyes he was queer. It was an oldish +man, dressed with marked elegance, white tie, white waistcoat, white +flower at his lapel. The whole of worldly wisdom dwelt in his weary eye. +He had yellow and withered cheeks, black hair with a dash of white above +the ears, and a mustache whose thickest part curved over his mouth like +a black lacquer box-lid, while its long ends, stiff as thorns of a +thorn-tree, projected on either side far beyond his face. + +"His name is Balm de Breze, vicomte. He is by birth a Belgian, I think; +the title, however, is French. He has lived mostly in Paris, but now +spends about half of his time here. He married a friend of ours, an +American. There is Amabel, in ruby velvet, just inside the library door. +A good deal younger than he, yet they seem appropriately matched, +somehow." + +"She looks about as foreign as he does. Who's the one she's talking to, +handsome, dark as night? Never saw such a dark skin before except on a +cullud puss'n." + +"I know. He might be an Arab, only he's very good Tuscan. It's Mr. +Landini,--Hunt and Landini." + +"Ah, the bankers. They do my business, but I've never seen the heads +before to-night." + +Mrs. Hawthorne's eyes wandered, as if she said, "Whom else do I want to +know about?" and Leslie made internal comment upon the fact that Mrs. +Hawthorne's interest was quickened by those individuals precisely whom +they had withheld, for reasons, from presenting to her. + +Mrs. Hawthorne suddenly pressed closer, and with a little chuckle +grasped Leslie's knee, by this affectionate touch to make herself +forgiven for the disrespect about to be shown. + +"And who's Stickly-prickly?" + +Leslie had to laugh, too. Impossible not to know which one was meant of +all the people in the direction of Mrs. Hawthorne's glance. He was +leaning against the wall between two chairs deserted by the fair, +looking off with a slightly mournful indifference at everything and at +nothing. His mustache ended in upturned points, his beard was pointed, +his hair stood up in little points. He gave the impression besides of +one whose nervous temper put out porcupine shafts to keep you off. + +"It's one of our very best friends, Mrs. Hawthorne. Dear old Gerald! Mr. +Fane. Shall I go get him and bring him over?" + +"No, don't. I should be scared of him." + +"Let me! His prickles are harmless. He has heard us speak of you so +much! See, he is looking over at us wistfully, in a way that plainly +suggests our course. Here comes Charlie Hunt, who will keep you amused +while I fetch Gerald; then we will go in together and have an ice." + +Charlie Hunt, modern moth without fear or shyness, but with a great deal +of caution, was indeed returning for the third or fourth time to Mrs. +Hawthorne's side, drawn by the sparkle of eyes and tresses and smiles +and diamonds. Francesca had already described him that evening to +another young lady as dancing attendance on the new American. He dropped +into the seat vacated by Leslie, addressed Mrs. Hawthorne as if they had +been friends for at least weeks, and made conversation joyfully easy by +getting at once on to a playful footing. + +Leslie meanwhile steered her course toward Gerald. The music had started +up again, men were presenting themselves to maidens with their request +for the favor.... Leslie threaded her way between the first on the +floor. Her eyes were naturally turned toward the object of her search; +some intention toward him was probably apparent in her look. As if he +had not seen it, or as if, having seen it, he scented in her approach +some conspiracy against his peace, Gerald in a moment during which her +eye was not on him quietly vanished. + +Missing him, Leslie looked about in some surprise, then entered the door +by which inevitably he must have passed. She gave a glance around the +library; Gerald did not seem to be there. Mystified, she looked more +carefully at the faces to be seen through the thin tobacco smoke. No, +Gerald's was not among them. Gerald, acquainted with the house, knew the +door, of course, of the kind frequent in Italian houses, the little door +indistinguishable from the wall, by which one could leave the library, +and after crossing the landing of the kitchen stairs, reach the +dining-room. From the dining-room, then, one could come into the +entrance hall, whence go upstairs, or out into the garden, or, as one +pleased, back into the drawing-room. Leslie did not think the matter of +sufficient importance to pursue the chase farther. + +The dancing was suspended while the musician had sandwiches and glasses +of a fragrant and delicious-looking but weak punch. The Fosses' waiter +knew him well and fraternally attended to his wants. + +The dining-room, though large, would not permit all the couples to enter +at once, so ices and cakes were borne from the table by cavaliers to +expectant ladies in the antechamber, on the stairs, and in the farther +rooms. + +The musician after eating to his satisfaction took the time for a +cigarette, which he enjoyed, not in the library, but in cool and +peaceful isolation on the top step of the kitchen stairs. Refreshed, he +briskly went back to his piano, persuaded that the young people were +sighing to see him there. With new vigor he struck up a march. The crowd +in the dining-room thinned. + +Mrs. Hawthorne and Miss Madison, with Charlie Hunt and Doctor Chandler, +one of the Americans from the pension, lingered on in the corner where, +with the migration of so many to the ball-room, all four had been able +to find chairs. Mrs. Hawthorne, of the fair moon-face, was as a matter +of course eating sweet stuff; Miss Madison, contrariwise, sipped a small +cup of black coffee. Miss Madison, no need to say, had a neat jaw-bone +to show--collarbones, too. She was not pretty, her features were hardly +worth describing, but yet it was an attractive face, as merry as it was +fundamentally shrewd, as sensible as it was sprightly. The frank, almost +business-like manner of her setting out to have a good time at the party +ensured her having at least a lively one, and her partners not finding +it slow. She at once and impartially interested herself in the men +brought up to her, and sought to interest them. Her flirtatiousness was, +however, sedate--in its way, moral--not intended to have any result +beyond the enlivenment of the hour. + +Miss Madison had been finding exhilaration and delight this evening in +dancing, and when presently the alluring strains of a waltz came +floating to their ears, she looked at Chandler, and he in the same +manner looked at her; whereupon she rose, as if words had been +exchanged, took his arm, and they deserted for the ball-room. Charlie +Hunt was left ensconced in an intimate nook alone with Mrs. Hawthorne. + +But he had hardly a moment in which to enjoy the feeling of advantage +this gave him before his cousin Francesca came looking for him. They +were going, she said. Father was sleepy, and mother said they must go. +If he wanted a lift home, he must hurry up. Charlie had come with them, +on the box near the driver, there being five already inside the landau. +Gallantry should perhaps have made him answer that rather than be +dragged away at this moment he would walk. But gallantry was dumb. +Charlie was not fond of walking. It was a great convenience, an economy +as well, being permitted to make use of his aunt's carriage. + +Having delivered her message, Francesca had gone to put on her things, +and Charlie, after expressions of regret over the inevitable, asked Mrs. +Hawthorne whither she would wish to be taken before he left. + +Let him not bother, she answered; she could find her friends without +help. + +They separated. Walking slowly, she looked for faces of acquaintances. +She glanced in at the ball-room door. They were dancing still, but not +nearly so many. She turned into the reception-room, whence she could +reenter the ball-room at the other end without danger of collision, and +reach that comfortable blue satin sofa, now standing empty. There she +would sit looking on till Estelle joined her, when they would set about +making their adieux. The carriage must have been waiting for them ever +so long. + +She had sat a minute, unconsciously smiling to herself, because the +sensations and impressions of the evening were all so pleasant, when +something occurred to her as desirable to be done. She rose to carry out +her idea. + +The dancing had stopped; the floor was clear except in the neighborhood +of the walls, where couples stood or sat recovering breath and coolness. +She started to cross the long room. She did not skirt it because the +direct line to her destination was by the middle; she did not go fast +because there was no occasion, and it was not her way. She advanced like +a goodly galleon pushing along the sea with finely curved bows, all +sails set to catch the breeze. Her mind was entirely on her idea, and +she did not at first feel herself to be conspicuous. But all the eyes in +the room, before she had gone half her way, were fastened upon her, a +natural and legitimate mark. One might now without impertinence have the +satisfaction of a good look at the newly come American who had taken the +big house on the Lungarno; the women might study the fashion of her hair +and dress. + +She was smiling faintly, but fixedly; she smiled, indeed, all the time, +as if smiles had been an indispensable article of wear at a party. The +least of her smiles brought dimples into view, and her dimples seemed +multitudinous, though there were really only three in her face and one +of those irregular things called apple-seeds. Her agreeably blunted +features and peachy roundness of cheek belonged to a good-humored, +unimposing type, which took on a certain nobility in her case from being +carried high on a strong, round neck over a splendid broad breast, +partly bare this evening, and seen to be white as milk, as swans'-down, +as pearl. + +If one had tried to define the look which left one so little doubt as to +her nationality, one would perhaps have said it was a combination of +fearlessness and accessibility. She feared not you, nor should you fear +her; she counted on your friendliness, you might count on hers. + +She was a person simple in the main. The colors she had selected to wear +accorded with the rest, showing little intricacy of taste. The two silks +composing her dress were respectively the blue of a summer morning and +the pink of a rose. From cushioned and dimpled shoulders the bodice +tapered to as fine a waist as a Paris dressmaker had found possible to +bring about in a woman who, despite a veritable yearning to look +slender, cared also for freedom to breathe, and, as she said with a +sigh, guessed she must make up her mind to be happy without looking like +a toothpick. At the back of the waist, the dress leapt suddenly out and +away from the dorsal column--every lady's dress did that for a season or +two at the time we are telling of, and at every step she took the back +of her skirt gave a bob, for the bustle was supplemented by three or +four concealed semi-circles of thin steel, reeds we called them, which +hit against you as you went and sprang lightly away from your heels. + +The arrangement of Mrs. Hawthorne's hair equalled in artificiality the +mode of her dress: the front locks were clipped and twisted into little +curls, the back locks drawn to the top of the head, where they were +disposed in silken loops and rolls, at the top of which, like a flag +planted on a hill, stood an aigrette, a sparkle and two whiffs. + +It may not sound pretty, it was not, but the eye of that day had become +used to it, as eyes have since become used to fashions no prettier, and +as Mrs. Hawthorne's hair was of a soft sunny tint it was that evening +admired by more than one, as was her intrinsically ugly beautiful gown, +which gave a little jerky rebound every time she placed one of those +neat solid satin-shod feet before the other in her progress across the +now attentive room. + +She had taken off her long white gloves to eat a cake--or cakes; she was +carrying them loosely swinging from one dimpled hand. + +In the middle of the room self-consciousness overtook her. With the +awakening sense of eyes upon her, she looked first to one side, then to +the other. Her smile broadened while growing by just a tinge sheepish; +she seemed to waver and consider turning from her course and finishing +her journey close along the wall, like a mouse.... + +She finally did not, nor yet hurried. She made her smile explain to +whoever was looking on that a person was excusable for making this sort +of mistake, that it hurt nobody, that one need not and did not care; +that she was sure they did not like her any less for it; they would not +if they knew how void of offense toward them all was her heart; that +having exposed herself to being looked at, she hoped they liked her +looks. Her dress was a very good dress, her laces were very good lace, +and the maid who had done her hair was considered a first-rate hand at +doing hair. + +So she was carrying it off, and her smile was only a little +self-conscious, only a shade embarrassed, when from among the men +standing near the library door, for which she was directly making, there +stepped out one to meet her, not unlike a slender needle darting toward +a large, rounded magnet as it comes into due range. + +More sensitive than she, feeling the situation much more uncomfortably +for his country-woman than she felt it for herself, a foreign-looking +fellow, who had not quite forgotten that he was an American, after a +moment's hard struggle against his impulse, hastened forward to shorten +for her that uncompanioned course across the floor under ten thousand +search-lights. + +"I'm looking for somebody," said Mrs. Hawthorne, with the smile of a +child. + +The voice which had made one man think of the crimson heart on a +valentine reminded this other of rough velvet. + +He showed his eccentric three front teeth in a responding smile that had +a touch of the faun, and asked whimsically: + +"Will I do?" + +"Help me to find Mr. Foss, and you'll do perfectly," she said merrily. +"I haven't seen him more than just to shake hands this whole evening, +and I do want to have a little talk before I go." + +"If I am not mistaken, we shall find him in the library." He offered his +arm. + +"I may have appeared to be doing something else, Mrs. Hawthorne, but I +have really been looking for you the last hour," said the consul when he +had been found. "I wanted to have a little talk. How are you enjoying +Florence?" + +"Oh, we're having an elegant time, thanks to that dear wife of yours and +that dear girl, Leslie. I don't know what we should have done without +them and you." + +"But the city itself, Florence, doesn't it enchant you?" + +"We--ell, yes. N-n-n-no. Yes and no. That's it. You want me to tell the +truth, don't you? Some of it does, and some of it doesn't. Some of it, I +guess, will take me a long time to get used to. It's terribly different +from what we expected--I, in particular. You see, I came here because an +old friend used to talk so much about it. Florence the Fair! The City of +Lilies! He said Italy was the most beautiful country in the world, and +Florence the most beautiful city in Italy. So my expectations were way +up.--Oh, I don't know; it's hard to tell. I don't exactly remember now +what I did expect. I guess my picture of it was something like the New +Jerusalem on an Easter day. But I shall get used to this, like to the +taste of olives. It must be all right, for the friend I was speaking of +had the finest mind I've ever known. I'm green as turnip-tops, of +course, but I shall get educated up to it, I suppose. Give me time." + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, hear me prophesy," said Mr. Foss. "In six months you +will love it all. It's the fate of us who come here from new countries. +It will steal in upon you, grow upon you, beset and besot you, till you +like no other place in the world so well." + +"Will it? Well, if you say so. The Judge--the friend I was speaking +of,--said so much of the same kind that the minute I thought of coming +to Europe, right after I'd said, 'I'll go to Paris,' I said to myself, +'I'll go to Florence.'" + +"Your friend was a judge of places." + +"It wasn't he alone influenced me. He was sick a long time, and I used +to read aloud to him, and one spell, when his mind for some reason or +other was running on Italy, every book he chose had the scene laid here. +There were whole pages of description, and anything so lovely, so +luscious, as the places and people described I never did dream. I didn't +understand more than a quarter, but I swallowed it all and gloated. The +woman who wrote those books certainly did have an imagination. O +Antonia, let me meet you and have a good look at you so I can tell +a--hm, the owner of an imagination when I see one again!" + +"Antonia, did you say?" The consul smiled. + +"That was the writer's name. You know the books I mean?" + +"I have read a work or two of Antonia's, yes. She lives near Florence, +you know, on another of these little hills." + +"Oh, does she!" + +"Her name is Mrs. Grangeon. She is an Englishwoman, with an +extraordinary sense of, and feeling for, Italy. She is, at her best, a +poet; at her worst, slightly deficient, perhaps, in humor. But her +passion for Italy is genuine, and I have no doubt she sees it as glowing +as the pictures she makes of it." + +"Her books are 'grand, John'! If I never had come here, I never should +have appreciated them or her--making up that wonderful world, all +pomegranates and jasmin-stars, and curls like clustering blue-black +grapes, and staturesque limbs, out of the back of her head. Yes, and the +golden dust of centuries, and time's mellow caressing touch--oh, I wish +I could remember it all!" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, we must take you in hand. Be it ours to initiate you. +Come, what have you been to see?" + +"Treasures of art? We haven't had time yet. We've been getting a house +fit to live in. When you asked me how I liked Florence, I ought to have +begun by that end. I love my house, Mr. Foss. I love my garden. I love +the Lungarno. And the Casheeny. And Boboly. And the drive up here. And +the stores! I positively dote on those little bits of stores on the +jewelers' bridge." + +"Well, well, that's quite enough to begin with." + +"Now that we're going to have some time to spare, we mean to go +sight-seeing like other folks." + +"How I wish, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, that I were not such a busy man! +But"--Mr. Foss had a look of bright inspiration--"should I on that +account be dejected? Here is Mr. Fane--" + +He turned to Gerald, who, after bringing up Mrs. Hawthorne, had stood +near, a silent third, waiting to act further as her escort by and by. +Meanwhile he had been listening with a varied assortment of feelings and +a boundless fatigue of spirit. + +"Mr. Fane," said the consul, "who is not nearly so busy a man as I, and +is the most sympathetic, well-informed cicerone you could find. When we +wish to be sure our visiting friends shall see Florence under the best +possible circumstances, we turn them over to Mr. Fane." + +Gerald's face struggled into a sourish smile, and he bowed ironical +thanks for the compliment. Lifting his head, he shot a glance of +reproachful interrogation at the consul. Was his friend doing this +humorously, to tease him, or was the man simply not thinking? + +The consul looked innocent of any sly intention; he was all of a jocund +smile; the consul, who should have known better, wore the air of doing +him a pleasure and her a pleasure and a pleasure to himself; the air of +thinking that any normally constituted young man would be grateful for +such a chance. + +"I shall be most happy," said Gerald, with irreproachable and misleading +politeness. + +Mrs. Hawthorne turned to him readily. + +"Any time you say. Let me tell you where we live." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +The room in which Mrs. Hawthorne went to bed an hour or two after taking +leave of the dwindling company at Villa Foss was large and luxurious. +Its windows were enormous, arched at the top and reaching the floor. A +wrought-iron railing outside made them safe. In the angle of the wall +between two of them--it was a corner room--stood a mirror nearly the +size of the windows, in a broad frame of carved and gilt wood, resting +on a marble shelf that supported besides two alabaster vases holding +bunches of roses. + +In the corner opposite to the mirror and placed "catty-corner," as the +occupier worded it, stood the stateliest of beds, upholstered and draped +in heavy watered silk of a dull, even dingy, yellow. Its hangings were +gathered at the top into the hollow of a great gold coronet, whence they +spread and fell in folds that were looped back with silk cords. The +walls were covered by that same texture of dull gold, held in place by +tarnished gilt moldings. + +Mrs. Hawthorne had wanted all this dusty and faded splendor removed,--it +seemed to her the possible lurking-place of mice or worse,--but the +agent would not hear of it. The noble landlord was not really eager to +let. + +So Mrs. Hawthorne, to brighten the room in spite of it, for she wished +to keep it for her own, having taken a fancy to the fresco +overhead,--that fascinating chariot driven among clouds by a radiant +youth surrounded by smiling, flower-scattering maidens,--Mrs. Hawthorne +to "gay up" the room, as she said, had hung windows and doors with +draperies of her favorite cornflower blue, and covered the chairs with +the same. On the floor she had stretched a pearl-gray carpet all aglow +with wreaths of roses tied with ribbons of blue; and over the carpet--at +the bedside, before the dressing-table, in front of the fireplace--laid +down white bear-skins. + +To cover further the yellow silk, she had hung in one panel of it a +painting of the "Madonna della Seggiola," in another, Carlo Dolci's +"Angel of the Annunciation," and in another, Carlo Dolci's Magdalen +clasping the box of ointment--all works of art bought in Via dei Fossi, +framed in great gilt-wood frames, like the mirror. + +The lace curtains under the cornflower blue brocade were like Brussels +wedding veils seen through a magnifying glass. + +Yes, the room had been made to look bright. It had lamps of +cream-colored biscuit, painted with roses and crowned with pink shades; +it had polished brass fire-irons. But the point of supreme brightness +was the dressing-table, where glittered in orderly display Mrs. +Hawthorne's American toilet silver, mirror, trays, brushes, boxes, +bottles--solid, shining, richly embossed. + +There was just one thing in all the room that looked poor, workaday. It +was on the small table at the head of the bed, beside the candle-stick +and match-safe, a black book, the commonest kind of Bible, such a Bible +as is dispensed by those who have to furnish the sacred writings in +large numbers--Sunday schools, for instance. + +It was in fact a Sunday-school prize that now lay on the night-stand, in +what the sober volume presented to a pious little girl must have thought +strange company. Cover to cover with it, cheek by jowl, lay a book on +etiquette. + +It was for the Bible, however, that Mrs. Hawthorne reached after she had +got into bed. She found her place. She read in it every night before +sleeping, to keep a promise made long ago, and avoid the reproaches of a +person gone from this earth, but who still, she never questioned, could +be pleased or displeased with her actions. + +She did not always try to understand or follow; when she was sleepy she +read merely with her eyes. To-night her mind was too full of personal +things to permit of strict attention to the text. As she enumerated the +wonders of the House that Solomon built for the Lord, there formed no +picture of it in her mind. + +"I wonder what knops are," she said to herself drowsily. "I must +remember to ask Hattie." + +There was a stir. Both doors of her room were open; the little +unobtrusive one into the dressing-room for air,--the window there stood +wide open through the night,--the large one into the sitting-room so as +to leave a free road to Miss Madison's room beyond. Through this now +slipped a slender form in a soft, fur-bordered wrapper, and with front +locks done up in curling-kids. + +"You in bed?" + +"Yes; I'm just reading my chapter." + +"Livvy gone?" + +Livvy, or Miss Deliverance Jones, was the maid they had brought from +America, a New York negress of the most faintly colored complexion, with +hair mysteriously blond. Her head was egg-shaped, her nose slightly +flat, her lip voluptuous, her brown-black eye sad as a homesick +monkey's; but she could wind a chocolate veil about her face and stylish +hat, and walk forth happy in the fancy that she passed for white. She +was an accomplished dressmaker and hair-dresser; she moreover had spent +some time in the service of a beauty-doctor. The ladies had secured her +just before sailing, and liked her, but did not talk freely when she was +present. + +"Yes, she's gone." + +"I'm not a bit sleepy, are you? I'm too excited. Let's talk." + +She climbed on to her friend's bed, gathered her knees to her chin, and +hugged them, with the effect of hugging to herself a great happiness. + +Mrs. Hawthorne closed her Bible and put it aside. The single candle by +which she had been reading showed the shining mirthfulness of the eyes +with which the two regarded each other. + +"Wasn't it fun?" + +"Oh, wasn't it!" + +They spoke softly, whether because the suggestion of the late hour was +upon them, or they thought, without thinking, that Livvy might still be +near. They whispered like school-girls who have come together in +forbidden fun. + +"I never did have such a good time." + +"Nor I, neither. Oh, Hat, _isn't it_ fun!" + +"_Isn't it_, just!" + +"See here, Hat, you've got to teach me to dance. I was almost crazy this +evening, I wanted so to be dancing with the rest. Where d'you learn?" + +"I went to dancing-school, my dear." + +"No! Did you?" + +"Yes, I did; all one winter. What are you thinking about? I've been to +parties in my life. Not many, but I've been. There was the Home Club +party----" + +"Yes, of course. I remember how I teased once to go to the Home Club +party; but ma wouldn't let me. I hadn't anything to put on, anyhow. But +I'd have gone in my shirt if they'd let me. The nearest to a real party +I'd been to before to-night was a clam-bake. I don't count church +sociables. Out West there used to be celebrations in a sort of bar-room +place, but even I couldn't stand those. To think I've always yearned so +to have a good time, and now I'm having it! Oh, Hat, wasn't it lovely! +That's a mighty nice house of the Fosses. How good it looked, all fixed +up! The flowers and candles, one room opening into the other, everything +just right. Hat, Mrs. Foss is the finest woman I ever knew, and in my +opinion makes the most elegant appearance. She's the one I'd choose to +be like if I could. Just watch me copy-cat her. You'll see. 'My dear +Mrs. Hawthorne, pray don't speak of the trouble! It's been nothing but a +pleasure. Be sure you call upon us whenever we can be of the smallest +service.'" + +"You've caught her, Nell, you silly thing! Down to the ground." + +"I'm going to pattern after her till it comes natural. How sweet they +all are! How kind they've been!" Mrs. Hawthorne grew dreamy. + +"Your dress, Nell, was a perfect success," the other ran on--"perfect. +How did you think mine looked? I'll tell you a compliment I got for you, +if you'll tell me one you got for me. If not, I'll save it up in my +secret breast till you're ready to make a trade." + +"To think," said Mrs. Hawthorne, still engrossed by her dream of absent +and bygone things, "that we're the same little girls--and one of them +barefoot!--who used to play house together on a sand-heap of old Cape +Cod and pin on any old rag that would tail along the ground and play +ladies! 'My dear Mrs. Madison, how do you do?'" + +"'My dear Mrs. Hawthorne, my toes are just as sore as they can be!'" + +"'That comes, my dear Mrs. Madison, of you dancing like a crazy woman +from ten o'clock till one, in tight shoes!'--Mrs. Hawthorne! Mrs. +Madison! Aurora! Estelle! To think, after all these years, we should be +playing our old play that we played at Wellfleet and East Boston, only +playing it with real things, in Paris and Florence!" + +"Nell, I'm so afraid of forgetting and calling you Nell that every time +I catch myself near doing it I can feel the cold sweat break out on my +brow." + +"What would it matter? We aren't impostors, Hat. We're just having fun, +and don't want our real names to queer it. If they should slip out when +we aren't thinking, they'd simply sound like nicknames we've got for +each other. But they won't slip out. I'm too fond of calling you +Estelle. Don't you _love_ to call me Aurora? Hat, how did I behave, +far as you could see?" + +"Nell, if I hadn't known you, and had just been seeing you for the first +time, I should have said to myself: 'What a fine, good-looking, +beautifully dressed, refined, and ladylike woman that is! Wish t' I +might make her acquaintance.' And what would you have said, if you'd +seen me, never having met me before?" + +"I should have said: 'What a bright, smart, intelligent, and rarely +beautiful girl! So well dressed, too, and slender as a worm! A queen of +society. I do like her looks! She's the spittin' image of my little +friend Hattie Carver, the schoolmarm in East Boston, that I used to +know!' Oh, Hat, the _queerest_ thing! What do you suppose I saw +this evening at that lovely house full of lovely people? I was in the +library learning to dance. And I looked up and there was what I took to +be a young man smoking a cigarette. Next thing, I saw that his dress was +low-necked almost down to the waist. Hat, it was a _woman_ smoking! +a woman with her hair cut short. I never saw anything like it, except an +old Irishwoman once, with her pipe." + +"Seems to me I've heard of ladies in Europe doing it, and it being +considered all right. I _have_ heard that some do it in New York, +but I guess they're careful not to be seen." + +"Well, it does seem a queer thing to do!--Go ahead, Hat; what was the +compliment?" + +"Sure, now, you've got one for me?" + +"Sure." + +"It was What's-his-name, the English fellow we see every time we go in +to Cook's--Mr. Dysart. Leslie says he comes of a very good family. He +said to me, 'How very charming Mrs. Hawthorne is looking this evening!'" + +"Hattie, that man's a humbug, that man's leading a double life. He said +to me, 'How very charming Miss Madison is looking this evening!' He +did." + +"Go 'way! You're making it up to save trouble." + +"No, I ain't! Stop, Hattie! I know! I _am not_. Confusion upon it! +You've made me so nervous when I talk that I can't say ain't without +jumping as if I'd sat on a pin!" + +"Nell Goodwin, look me square in the eye. How many times did you say +ain't at the party this evening?" + +"Not once; I swear it. I was looking out every minute. 'I am not,' I +said; 'We are not,' I said; 'He doesn't,' I said; 'He isn't,' I said. +There! Between you'n' I, Hat, it's a dreadful nuisance, keeping my mind +on the way I talk. I hope I shall come in time to talking lofty without +thinking about it. Why do I have to, Hat, after all? I've lived among +educated people. Wasn't the Judge highly educated? And nobody ever found +fault with my way of talking. My folks all had been to school and read +books. And didn't I go to school till I was fourteen? And didn't I +graduate from the grammar school with the rest? What's the matter with +my natural way of talking?" + +"It's all right at home, Nell, but it's different over here. They're a +different kind of people we're thrown with." + +"This pernickety way of talking never sounds cozy or friendly one bit. +We're as good as anybody, of course, but when I say 'I am not, he does +not,' I always feel as if I were setting up to be better than the +rest!--Oh, it isn't, is it? Oh, do you say so? 'Between you and I' isn't +correct? But I thought you told me.... To Jericho, Hattie! How's a +feller ever going to get to know?" + +"Listen, Nell, while I go over it again. When you say----" + +"Ah, no! Not at this time of night, Estelle! Let me live in ignorance +till morning! You know all those sorts of things, my dear Estelle, +because you're paid by the government to know them. I don't; but I know +lots and lots of things that are a sight funnier." + +She grabbed one of the pillows and flung it at her friend, who flung it +back at her; and the simple creatures laughed. + +Aurora re-tied in a bow the blue ribbon that closed the collar of her +nightgown, and settled back again, with her arms out on the white satin +quilt, flowered with roses and lined with blue. The two braids of her +fair hair lay, one on each side, down her big, frank, undisguised bosom. + +"You heaping dish of vanilla ice-cream!" said Hattie. + +"You stick of rhubarb!" said Nell. "Stop, Hat! Behave! Do you suppose +all the people we've invited to come and see us will come?" + +"Doctor Chandler will come. And the Hunt girls will come. And Madame +Bentivoglio I guess will come." + +"Yes, and the Satterlees I'm sure will come. And Mrs. Seymour and her +daughter that I said I'd help with the church fair. And the minister; +what was it? Spottiswood." + +"And won't the Mr. Hunt come that you seemed to be having such a good +time with?" + +"Yes, he'll come. He'll come to-morrow, I shouldn't wonder. Then that +thinnish fellow with the hair like a hearth-brush--did you meet him? Mr. +Fane, a great friend of the Fosses. He's coming to take us +sight-seeing." She yawned a wide, audible yawn. "I only hope there'll be +some fun in it. Confound you, Hat, go to bed!" + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +After the Fosses had helped the lessees of the Haughty Hermitage to make +it habitable; found for them a coachman who had a little French and, +when told what they desired to buy, would take them to the proper shops; +provided them with a butler to the same extent a linguist, through whom +Estelle, who in Paris had ambitiously studied a manual of conversation, +could give her orders, they not unnaturally became less generous of +their company. + +But they were not permitted to make the intervals long between visits. +The coachman wise in French was perpetually driving his spanking pair to +their gates, delivering a message, and waiting to take them down for +lunch or dinner with their joyfully welcoming and grateful friends. It +was not at all unpleasant. It was not prized preciously,--there was too +much of it and too urgently lavished,--but the lavishers were loved for +it by two women neither dry-hearted nor world-hardened. Leslie fell into +the way, when she was in town and had time, of running in to Aurora's, +where it would be cheerful and she looked for a laugh. + +Leslie, having reached, as she considered, years of discretion, thought +fit to disregard the Florentine rule that young unmarried women must not +walk in the streets unattended. She had balanced the two inconveniences: +that of staying at home unless some one could go out with her, and that +of being spoken to in the street, and decided that it was less +unpleasant to hear a strange young man murmur as she passed, "Angel of +paradise!" or "Beautiful eyes!"--no grosser insult had ever been offered +her,--than to be bothered by a servant at her heels. The fact that she +looked American and was understood to be following the custom of her own +country secured her against any real misinterpretation. + +It was chilly, Novemberish, and within the doors of Florentine domiciles +rather colder, for some reason, than in the open air. The Fosses kept +their house at a more human temperature than most people, but yet after +years of Italy did not heat very thoroughly: one drops into the way of +doing as others do, and grows accustomed to putting up with cold in +winter. Leslie often expressed the opinion that in America people really +exaggerate in the matter of heating their houses. Nevertheless, just for +the joy of the eyes and, through the eyes, of the depressed spirit, she +was glad to-day of the big fire dancing and crackling in Aurora's +chimney-place. + +The upstairs sitting-room, where the ladies generally sat, might look +rather like a day nursery; yet after one had accepted it, with its +chintz of big red flowers and green foliage, its rich strawberry rug and +new gold picture-frames, it did seem to brighten one's mood. How think +grayly amid that dazzle and glow any more than feel cold before that +fire? + +Leslie held her hands to the blaze, and with an amiable display of +interest inquired of their affairs, the progress made in "getting +settled." There was still a good deal to do of a minor sort. + +Accounts were given her in a merry duet; purchases were shown; she was +told all that had happened since they last saw her, who had called, whom +they had been to see. + +Casting about in her mind for further things to communicate, Aurora was +reminded of a small grievance. + +"I thought your friend Mr. Fane was going to come and take us +sight-seeing," she said. + +"Was it so arranged?" + +"So I supposed." + +"And he hasn't been?" + +"Hide nor hair of him have we seen." + +"I meant, hasn't he perhaps called while you were out?" + +"He hasn't." + +"Strange. It's not like him to be rude. But, then, he's not like himself +these days. You must excuse him." + +"What's the matter with him? Isn't he well?" + +"He's not ill in the usual sense. If he were, we should make him have a +doctor and hope to see him cured. It's worse than an illness. He is +blue--chronically blue." + +"Why?" + +"Oh, he has reasons. But the same reasons, of course, would not have +made a person of a different temperament change as he has changed." + +"I don't suppose you want to tell us what the reasons are?" Very +tentatively this was said. + +"Why ... ordinarily one would not feel free to do so, but you are sure +to hear about it before you have been here long. In Florence, you know, +everybody knows everything about everybody else. Not always the truth, +but in any case an interesting version. Oh, it behooves one to be +careful in Florence if one doesn't wish one's affairs known and talked +about. But in the case of Gerald there was nothing secret. Everybody +knows him, everybody knew when he was engaged to Violet Van Zandt, +everybody knows that she married some one else." + +"Oh, the poor boy!" + +"It's very simple, you see, commonplace as possible. But it's like the +old story of the poem: an old story, yet forever new. And the one to +whom it happens has his heart broken, one way or the other." + +"And she married some one else?" + +Both Aurora and Estelle were craning toward the speaker in a curiosity +full of sympathy. + +Leslie was used to seeing them hang on her lips. "I do love to hear you +talk!" Aurora candidly said. "It doesn't make any difference whether I +know what you're talking about, it fascinates me, the way you say +things!" And the compliment disposed Leslie to talk to them no otherwise +than she talked with Lady Linbrook or Countess Costetti, leaving them to +grasp or not her allusions and fine shades. She was by a number of years +the youngest of the three drawn up to the fire; yet some advantage of +fluency, collectedness, habit of good society--a neat effect altogether +of authority, made her seem in a way the oldest. + +"Violet," she began, like a grown person willing to indulge children +with a story, "is Madame Balm de Breze's sister. You saw Madame de Breze +that Friday evening at our house. Violet is very like her, only much +younger and a blonde. Amabel is--let us call things by their names in +the seclusion of this snug fireside--Amabel is scrawny; Violet was +ethereal. Amabel is sharp-featured; Violet's face was delicate and +clear-cut. I say _was_, because she has grown much stouter. We have +known them since they first came to Florence, and have been friends +without being passionately attached. They are Americans, but had lived +in Paris since Violet was a baby. They came here, orphans, because it is +cheaper. They used to live on the top floor of a stony old palace in Via +de' Servi, where they painted fans on silk, sending them to a firm in +Paris. Amabel did them exquisitely: shepherds and shepherdesses, corners +of old gardens, Cupids--Watteau effects, veritable miniature work. The +little sister was beginning to do them well, too; she painted only +flowers. Amabel had no objection to Violet marrying Gerald. He was as +far as possible from being a good match, but in those days both Amabel +and Violet seemed to live in an atmosphere that excluded the +consideration of things from a vulgar material point of view. Violet and +Gerald were alike in that, and so very much alike in their superfine +tastes and ways of thinking. _Nous autres_ who live upon this earth +wondered how they would keep the pot boiling in case of 'that not remote +contingent, _la famille_.' Gerald has an income simply tiny. You +would hardly believe how small. We supposed that now he would paint a +little more than he ever has done with the idea of pleasing the general +public and securing patronage. They were so much in love, anyhow, and +made such an interesting pair, that one's old romantic feelings were +gratified by seeing them together. They were to wait until she was +twenty-one, when a crumb of money in trust for her would fall due. Then +Amabel surprises us all by marrying De Breze. Violet of course lives +with them, and with them goes to Paris. And in Paris she becomes Madame +Pfaffenheim. _Tout bonnement!_" + +"Oh, the wretch, the bad-hearted minx!" + +"No," said Leslie, reflectively. She turned from the warmth of the fire +and let her eyes rest on the gray sky seen in wide patches through the +three great windows, arched at the top and blocked at the bottom by +wrought-iron guards, that admitted into the red and green room such very +floods of light--"no," Leslie repeated. "One is the sort of person one +is. The sin is to pretend. I don't believe Violet knew the sort of +person she was until it came to the test. She thought, very likely, that +she was all composed of poetry and fine sentiments and eternal love. She +wasn't; and there it is. When she had the chance actually to choose, she +preferred money, a fine establishment, luxury, and she took them. How +ghastly if, with that nature concealed in her behind the pearl and pale +roses, she had married poor Gerald! It's much better as it is, don't you +agree with me? I call him fortunate beyond words." + +"Well, of course; that's one way of looking at it." + +"It's his way. Gerald knows just how fortunate he has been, and it's +exactly that which makes him so miserable. At first, you understand, he +could lay the entire blame on the De Brezes; he was sure they had in +some mysterious way constrained her, and though he was angrily, +tragically, suicidally wretched, it was one kind of woe--a clean, +classic woe, I will call it. He believed it shared by her in the secret +of her uncongenial conjugal life. '_Ich grolle nicht_,' he could +say, and all that. But a year or two ago she came to Florence with +Pfaffenheim on a visit to her sister. I don't know how Gerald felt, +whether he tried to avoid her or tried to see her. That he saw her, +however, is certain. She is perfectly happy, my dears, in her marriage! +And that she should love Pfaffenheim, or be proud of him, is +inconceivable. So her happiness rests entirely upon the fact of her +riches and worldly consequence." + +"Say what you please, I call her a nasty, mean thing!" exclaimed Aurora. + +Leslie shrugged her shoulders, as if saying: "Have it your way; but a +more philosophical view is possible." + +"She was looking very beautiful," she went on. "Much more beautiful than +before, but in such a different way! From diaphanous she has become +opaque; from airy, solid. She brought a most wonderful wardrobe, and, +kept in the background with her husband, two fat babies." + +"I should think she would have been ashamed to come back here." + +"Oh, no; not Violet. She was enchanted to show herself in her glory to +those who remembered her in the modest plumage of her girlhood. Florence +did not really like it, because she affected toward Florence the +attitude of one who comes to it from places immeasurably grander. You +would have thought Florence an amusing little hole where she long ago, +by some accident, had spent a month or two. She found us quaint, +provincial, old-fashioned. She was witty about us. She criticized us +with a freedom and publicity that made her funnier to us than we were +funny to her. It was not an endearing thing to do or a very intelligent +one. It was, in fact, rather antipathetic." + +"Antip--I call it the actions of a _bug!_" + +"You can see how it all left Gerald. The Violet he cared for was +obviously no more. Worse than that, she had probably never been. +Comforting knowledge, isn't it, that for years you have treasured +memories that had no reality to start from; that you have suffered +agonies of love without any real object. Nauseous! Intolerable! A +tragedy that is shown to have been all along a farce! To a man of +imagination, to a person as sincere as Gerald, you can see what it would +mean. You can see what it would leave behind it." + +"I should think he would just despise her, and shake it off, and forget +her as she deserves." + +"Your simple device, dear Aurora, is the one he adopted. But to have an +empty hollow where your beautiful hoard of pure gold was stored is a +thing it takes time to grow used to. He is not an unhappy lover now, +certainly; but he is a man who has been robbed, and he has fallen into +the habit of low spirits. It is a thousand pities his poor mother and +sister could not have been spared to make a home for him. Being too much +alone is bad for any one. He shuts himself in with his blues, and they +are growing more and more confirmed. Love is a curious thing." Leslie +said the latter separately and after a pause, as if from a particular +case she had been led to reviewing the whole subject. "It complicates +life so," she added, and rose to go. + +They teased her to remain and lunch with them. But Leslie was suddenly +more tired at the contemplation of life than she had been when she came. +The total result of her call had not been to cheer her, for by an +uncomfortable stirring within, as soon as she had finished, she was made +to repent having talked to outsiders about things so personal, so +private, regarding Gerald--Gerald, who was infinitely reserved. It +seemed a crime against friendship. That somebody else would have been +sure to tell his story did not excuse her. + +Leslie's mood to talk was over for that morning and she went home, but +not before she had been forced to take a bottle of perfume which she had +carelessly picked up off Aurora's toilet-table, sniffed, and praised; +also, lifted out of their vase, a bunch of orchids for her mother; and +for Lily the box of sweets that had stood invitingly open on the +sitting-room table. + + * * * * * + +Next time Aurora saw Gerald--it was on Viale Principe Amedeo--she waved +to him. + +He did not see it. He was just aware of a victoria coming down the +middle of the street he was preparing to cross and of something +fluttering, but that it concerned him he did not suspect. + +Then suddenly the victoria, like a huge Jack-in-the-box, shot up a +figure, and he recognized Mrs. Hawthorne standing at full height in the +moving carriage, and waving both hands, as he must suppose, nobody else +being near,--to him. + +He lifted his hat. He saw her reach for the coachman and by touch make +him aware that she wished to stop. The horses were pulled up. Mrs. +Hawthorne, from the seat into which the jerk had thrown her, made +beckoning signs to him, laughing the while, and calling, "Mr. Fane! Mr. +Fane!" + +He went to stand at the carriage-step. + +"I thought," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "that you were going to come and take +us sight-seeing." + +"I thought I was," said Gerald, with that scant smile of his; "but I was +not so fortunate as to find you at home." + +It was true that he had gone to her door one afternoon, having +previously caught a glimpse of her in the heart of the city, shopping. + +"You mean to say you came?" + +"You did not find my card?" + +"No; but it's all right. This is Miss Madison--Mr. Fane. We are +together. What have you got to do?" + +Gerald looked as if the question had not been quite clear, and he waited +for some amplification of it before he could answer. + +"Have you got anything very important to do? Aren't you lonesome? Don't +you want to jump in and come home with us? Wish you would." + +Gerald smiled again in his remote way, and looked as if he knew, as any +one would know, that this was not meant to be taken seriously. + +"I have just seen a beautiful spectacle," he said, after a vague +head-shake that thanked her shadowily for an unreal invitation. "A game +of _pallone_, which is the nearest to your football that boys have +over here. Beautiful bronzed athletes at exercise, a delightful sight, +statues in motion. I go to see them whenever I can.--The days are +becoming very short, are they not?" + +"Yes. Jump in and come home with us. Tell you what we'll do. I'll go +down into the kitchen and make some soda biscuits that we'll have hot +for supper--with maple syrup. We've had a big box of sugar come." + +Gerald again smiled his civil, but joyless, smile, and after another +vague head-shake that thanked, but eluded the question, he said: "They +are very indigestible; hot bread is not good for the health. At least, +that is what they tell us over here. We keep our bread two days before +eating it, or longer. But I am afraid I am detaining you." + +The horses were jingling their bits, frisking their docked tails. The +driver, checking their restless attempts to start, was giving them +smothered thunder in Italian. Gerald withdrew by a step from the danger +to his shins. + +[Illustration: "I thought," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "that you were going +to come and take us sight-seeing"] + +"Oh, jump in!" said Mrs. Hawthorne for the third time. And because his +choice lay between saying curtly, "Impossible!" and letting the +impatient horses proceed, or else obeying, Gerald, who hated being rude +to women, found himself irresolutely climbing in, just long enough, as +he intended, to explain that he could not and must not go home with them +to the hot biscuits and syrup. + +The little third seat had been let down for him; his knees were snugly +wedged in between those of the ladies. Aurora was beaming over at him; +Estelle was beaming, too. Aurora's smile was a blandishment; Estelle's +was a light. The horses were flying toward the Lungarno. And he gave up; +he helplessly gave up trying to find an excuse for asking to be set down +again and allowed to go his lonely way. + +It might be entertaining, he tried to think, to see what they had done +to the Hermitage. But no! That was very sure to be revolting. If the +evening were to afford entertainment, it must be found in watching this +healthy and unhampered being who, just as certain fishes color the water +around them, seemed to affect the air in such a way that, coming near +enough, you were forced to like her, without ceasing to think her the +most impossible person that had ever found her way into cultivated +society. + +The carriage-wheels crunched gravel; the horses' hoofs rang on the +pavement of a columned portico; the door was opened by a man in blue +livery. + +Entering the wide hall, they faced an ample double staircase, between +the converging flights of which stood, closed, a great stately +white-and-gold door. + +Gerald, as bidden, followed the ladies up the stairs to the cozier +sitting-room, where a fire, they hoped, had been kept up. In the +beginning dimness of an early twilight he first saw the big red flowers +and green, green leaves. He was left a moment alone while the ladies +took off their hats, and he sent his eyes traveling around him, prepared +really for something worse than they found, though the pictures on the +wall called from him the gesture of trying to sweep away an unpleasant +dream. + +Aurora reappeared from her room in a business-like white apron. + +"Now I'm going down to make the biscuit. Oh, no trouble. No trouble at +all. I want them myself. I'm homesick for some food that tastes like +home. Estelle will entertain you while I'm gone. I sha'n't be but a +minute." + +Estelle sat in a low arm-chair close to the fire. + +Gerald, to whom it did not seem cold enough for a fire, took a seat +nearer the windows, whence he could watch the fading sunset-end beyond +garden and street, river and hill. + +He would have cared less, no doubt, to make himself not too dull company +for this stranger, had he known that there, before that fireplace, a few +days before, she had been placed in possession of the most intimate +facts of his humiliating destiny. Unsuspecting, in a mood rather more +amiable than usual, he asked, by way of entering into conversation, +whether she and her friend were not New-Englanders. It established the +sense of a bond, however light, to find that they and he were almost +townsmen. He had been born in Boston, or, at least, near it. His parents +had owned a house in Charlestown, where he had lived till he was ten +years old. They talked for a while of Boston. + +He had heard a singular thing, he said, she might be able to tell him +how true: that in Boston a new medical method had arisen by which the +sick were said to be made well without the help of drugs. Mind cure, he +believed it was called. It seemed very extraordinary, and rather +interesting, if it were not all a fraud or a fable, that persons of the +most prosaic, as these had been described to him, should go about +professing to do for a fee the same thing that saints of old are +recorded to have done through their mysterious powers. The subject had +come into his mind--he went on making conversation--from recently +re-reading a book of George Sand's, _La Petite Fadette_, in which a +cure is performed which seemed to him very similar. If she had not read +the book, she must permit him to bring it for her perusal. He talked +about the book. + +A maid brought in a lighted lamp, and, as is the pleasant custom of the +country, wished them a happy evening. + +Very soon after it came Aurora, with a dab of flour on one cheek, which +the kitchen fire had warmed to a deeper pink. + +"There," she said, "they're all ready for the oven. When we took the +house, all the stove we had was a big stone block thing with little +square holes. The cook fanned them with a turkey-wing. But now we've got +a range. Don't you want me to show you over the house? There'll be just +time before supper." + +"I'm afraid it's all dark," said Estelle. "Let me ring and have them +light up. Think of a city house without gas!" + +"No, they'd be too long. I can take a lamp." + +She went for it to her dressing-room, and came back with one easy to +carry, long in the stem and small in the tank, from which, to make it +brighter, she had lifted off the shade. Gerald reached to take it from +her, but she refused his help. + +"The weight's nothing. I want you to be free to look around. Coming, +Estelle?" + +"I'll join you in a minute." + +They went down the wide stairs side by side. She led through a door, at +the right, as you entered the house, of the main door. + +"Here's one of the parlors. We have four on this floor, between big and +little. Four parlors and a dining-room. Doesn't that seem a good many +for two lone women?" + +The unshaded lamplight showed a crowd of furniture, modern, muffled, +expensive, the lack of simplicity in design of which was further +rendered dreadful to the artist by every device to make it still less +simple, embroidered scarfs thrown over chair-backs, varicolored textiles +depending from the mantel-shelf, drooping over the mirror, down pillows +of every shape and tint piled in sofa-corners. Nothing was left +undecorated. The waste-basket even wore a fat satin bow, like a pet +poodle. Every horizontal surface was encumbered with knick-knacks. + +"This is where we have people come when we don't know them very well," +said Mrs. Hawthorne, hardly concealing her pride. "We couldn't ask the +minister to come right upstairs, as we did you. How do you--" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne," came hurriedly from Gerald, "I beg you will not ask me +how I like it! It is a peculiarity like--like not liking oysters. I +can't bear to be asked how I like things." + +"How funny! But, then, you're different from other people, aren't you? +That's what makes you so interesting." + +She preceded him into the next room, which was not so bad as the first +for the reason that, as she explained, "they hadn't yet finished with +it." He seized the occasion almost eagerly to praise the chairs. + +"We found them here when we came," she informed him. "There was a good +lot of furniture of this big, bare sort; clumsy, I call it. We stored +some of it in the top rooms, but Leslie Foss begged me so to let these +stay that we just had the seats covered over with this new stuff and +left them." + +When she opened the next door and stepped into the space beyond it +seemed as if her lamp had dwindled to a taper, the room was so vast. It +had nine great windows, five in an unbroken row on the front of the +house the entire width of which it occupied. Aurora's light was faintly +reflected in a polished floor; it twinkled in the myriad motionless +drops of two great crystal chandeliers. + +"Ah," exclaimed Gerald in a long sigh. "This is superb!" + +"Yes," she said, "but you might as well try to furnish all outdoors. You +see that we haven't done anything beyond putting up curtains. We never +use it. All those chairs along the walls are going to be regilded when +we can get them to come and fetch them. Things move awfully slowly over +here, don't they, even if you're willing to pay." + +"What a ball-room!" + +"Yes. Wish we could give a ball; but we only know about a dozen people. +We've got to wait till we know enough at least for two sets of a +quadrille." + +She was moving across the wide floor, holding her torch-like lamp high +the better to illumine the great pale, silent emptiness. No longer +hearing his footsteps echoing behind hers, she looked over her shoulder; +whereupon he hurriedly joined her, without explaining why he had lagged. + +"This," she said, as turning to the left they passed from the ball-room +into a small oval room the domed ceiling of which was all tenderly +bepainted with Cupids and garlands--"this is almost my favorite." + +She set down her lamp on a table of rose-tinged marble, and dropped for +a minute on to a little rococo settee. + +"The things in here we found just as you see them." + +"So I imagined." + +"All but the ornaments on the mantel." + +"Very astute in me; I divined that, too." + +"We liked it, so we left it. Pretty, ain't it? Oh, beg pardon!" She +blushed and looked at him sidelong, laughing. "That was a bad break! +That came mighty near to being the forbidden question how you like it. +All the same, it is pretty, _is it not_?" + +"Extremely. Extremely pretty." + +"There are going to be some tapestries presently. Oh, don't be afraid! +Not those old worsted things full of maggots, but beautiful new ones, +painted by hand, all in these same delicate colors. A story in four +scenes, one for each panel. The 'Fountain of Love' is the subject. It +sounds to me like something Biblical, Sunday-schoolish, but Mr. Hunt +says, no, _it is not_." + +"Mr. Hunt--" + +"The nephew, Charlie. You know him, don't you? He's getting them done +for me. He's a great friend of mine. He's helped me a lot to buy +things." + +"Did he help you to buy the pictures?" + +"Yes. He knows the dealers, and gets them to make fair prices. I think +it perfectly wonderful how cheap everything is over here. He helped me +to buy these, too." She lifted the chain of pink corals, graduated from +the size of a pea to that of a hazelnut, which with their delicate +living color brightened her winter dress. "I can't say, though," she +dropped, "that I found these particularly cheap. Hush!" she broke off. +"It's Hat! Quick!" she whispered, "let's get behind the door and say +'Boo!' as she comes in." + +Amazingly, incredibly to him, this grown woman appeared about to +ensconce herself. + +"But won't it make her jump?" he asked, supposing it to be Miss Madison +for whom the little surprise was intended. + +"Of course it'll make her jump. No matter how often I do it, she jumps. +That's the fun." + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, please!" he begged nervously. "As a very special favor +to me, don't! It would make me jump, too--horribly." + +She stood listening while the footsteps turned away and faded +fruitlessly. With a look of disappointment, as at opportunity missed, +she took up her lamp and moved on. + +"And here," she said, leaving the oval room by the door opposite to the +one they had come through, "is the dining-room. Which takes us back to +the hall and completes the circle." + +This room, of a fine new Pompeian red, was lighted. The table was set; a +butler busied himself at the sideboard. Gerald's eye was caught by the +brightness of a china basket piled high with sumptuous fruit, and +similarly caught the next moment by the pattern of the curtains, in +which the same rampant red lion was innumerably repeated on a ground of +wide-meshed lace. + +"Wouldn't it be a lovely house to give a party in?" she asked him. +"Isn't it exactly right to give a party in? There are two big spare +chambers upstairs at the back that would do, one for gentlemen, one for +ladies, to lay off their things in. No use; we shall have to give a +party." + +Having returned upstairs, he was without any false delicacy shown her +bedroom and her friend's bedroom and their dressing-rooms, as well as +given a peep into the two spare rooms, as yet incompletely furnished, +that he might get an idea how beautiful these were going to be when +finally industry and good taste had been brought to bear on them. + + * * * * * + +At dinner, which Mrs. Hawthorne seemed to have a fixed preference for +calling supper, it was Gerald who did most of the talking. The ladies +abandoned the lead to him, and listened with flattering attention while +he called into use his not too sadly rusted social gifts. He related +what he knew about the Indian Prince whose monument at the far end of +the Cascine had roused their interest. He explained the Misericordia. He +asked if they had noticed the wonderful figures of babies over the +colonnade of the Foundling Hospital, and told them how the "infantile +asylum," as he rendered it, was managed. He tried to amuse them by the +episodes from which certain streets in Florence have derived their +names, Street of the Dead Woman, Street of the Dissatisfied, Burg of the +Blithe. + +Whenever he stopped there was silence, which he hastened again to break. + +"You talk like Leslie," suddenly remarked Mrs. Hawthorne. + +But now came the hot biscuits and the syrup, borne in by the mystified +butler at the same time as the more conventional dessert prepared by the +cook. + +Aurora smiled at the biscuits' beautiful brown and, having broken one to +test its lightness, nodded in self-approval. + +"They're all right. Now you want to put on lots of butter," she said. +"Here, that's not near enough," she reproved him. She reached over, took +his biscuit, buttered it as she thought it should be buttered, and +returned it to his plate; then, while eating, watched him eat with eyes +that expressed her simple love of feeding up any one, man or animal, so +lean as he. + +There had been shining in Aurora's eyes all this evening, when they +rested on him, a look of great kindness, the consequence of knowing how +badly life had treated him, and desiring that compensation should be +made. He could not fail to feel that warm ray playing over his bleak +surface. He could not but think what nice eyes Mrs. Hawthorne had. + +When he asked her if she knew how to make many other such delicious +things it became her turn to talk. Estelle here joined in, and they +exalted the fare of home, affecting the fiction of having found nothing +but frogs' legs, cocks' combs, and snails to feed upon since they struck +Italy. Blueberry-pie--did Mr. Fane remember it? Fried oysters! Buckwheat +cakes! + +He said he remembered, but did not confess to any great emotion. + +"You wait till Thursday," said Aurora. "It's Thanksgiving. We're going +to have chicken-pie, roast turkey, mince-pie, squash-pie, everything but +cranberry sauce. We can't get the cranberries. Will you come?" + +In haste and confusion he said, alas! it would be impossible, wholly +impossible, intimating that he was a man of a thousand engagements and +occupations. + +But after an interval, and talk of other things, he inquired, with an +effect of enormous discretion, whether he might without too great +impertinence ask who was coming to eat that wonderful Thanksgiving +dinner which her own hands, he must suppose, would largely have to +prepare. + +"Just the Fosses. All the Fosses." + +"Ah, Mr. Foss will feel agreeably like the great Turk." + +"You mean he'll be the only man? I guess he can stand it. We thought of +asking Charlie Hunt, too, but he's English and would seem an outsider at +this particular gathering. Wish you'd come. You're such a friend of +theirs. Come on, come!" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, you are so very unusually kind. If you would leave it +open, and then when the day arrives, if I should find I could do so +without--without--" + +"Oh, yes. Come if you can. And be sure, now, you come!" + +They were still sitting at the table--dinner had been retarded by the +circumstantial round of the house--when music resounding through the +echoing rooms stopped the talk. + +It was the piano across the hall that had been briskly and powerfully +attacked. The "Royal March" of Italy was played, first baldly, then with +manifold clinging and wreathing variations. + +Aurora signed to the servant to open the dining-room door. All three at +the table sat in silence till the end of the piece. + +Gerald wondered what the evening caller could be who made the moments of +waiting light to himself in this fanciful manner. + +"It's Italo," said Mrs. Hawthorne, rising. "I call him Italo because I +never can remember his other name. Come, let's go into the parlor." + +It was all rosily lighted. Candles set on the piano at each side of the +music-rest enkindled glossy high lights on the nose-bump and forehead +bosses of Signor Ceccherelli, who at Mrs. Hawthorne's appearance sprang +up to salute. She reached him her hand, over which he deeply bowed. + +"You're to play all those lovely things I'm so fond of," she directed +him. "'The Swallow and the Prisoner,' 'The Butterflies,' 'The Cascade of +Pearls.' And don't forget the 'Souvenir of Saint Helena.' Then the one +of the soldiers marching off and the soldiers coming home again. All our +favorites. Mr. Fane-- Are you acquainted with each other? Italo--you'll +have to tell him your name yourself. All I can think of is +Checkerberry." + +"Yes, yes, we are acquainted," said Gerald, hurriedly. "We have seen +each other many times. _Come sta?_" + +"Oh, he can speak English." + +"A leetle," Ceccherelli modestly admitted. + +"He understands everything I say. We have great conversations. He comes +every evening when he isn't engaged to play somewhere else." + +She went to sit on the gorgeous brocade sofa, arranging herself amid the +multitude of cushions so as to listen long and happily. Estelle +preferring a straight-backed chair, Gerald took the other corner of +Aurora's sofa. Immediately Ceccherelli opened with "Souvenir de +Sainte-Helene." Aurora, respectful to the artist, talked in a whisper. + +"He's so talented! You simply couldn't count the pieces he can play. We +do enjoy it so! We haven't anything in particular to do evenings if no +one calls. We don't often go out. We haven't been here long enough to +know many people. And aside from his magnificent playing, the little man +is such good company! We do have fun! There, I mustn't talk, I'm keeping +you from listening." + +Gerald settled back, too, as if to listen, but to do the contrary was +his fixed purpose, even though the pianist, at last appreciated, put +into his playing so much feeling and force. Gerald's eyes went wandering +among the clutter of bric-a-brac, from a green bronze lizard to a mosaic +picture of Roman peasants, from a leaning tower of Pisa to a Sorrento +box. Then they rose to the paintings. He closed them. + +The music was describing a hero's death-bed, besieged by dreams of +battle, at moments so noisy that Gerald had to open his eyes again for a +look of curiosity at the person who could produce so much sound. As he +watched him and his nose, like the magnified beak of a hen,--the nose of +a man who loves to talk,--he tried a little to imagine those merry +evenings spoken of by Aurora. The fellow looked almost ludicrously +solemn at this moment. He took himself and his art right seriously, +there could be no doubt of it. His face was a map of the emotions +expressed by the music, and wore, besides, according to his conception +of the part, the look of a great man unacclaimed by his own generation. + +_Dio!_ what an ugly little man! + +Gerald closed his eyes again. + +The last cannon was fired over the hero's grave, the music stopped. The +ladies applauded. Gerald, smiling sickly, clapped his hands, too, +without, it might have been observed, making any noise to speak of. +Estelle went to the piano to compliment the player more articulately, +and loitered there, practising her French while he perfected himself in +English, by mutual aid. + +"Italo," Mrs. Hawthorne interrupted them, "play that lovely thing of +your own now--you know, the one we're so crazy about, that by and by +turns into a waltz." + +Without laying upon the ladies the tiresome necessity of pressing him, +the composer plunged into this masterpiece, and Gerald sat back again, +wondering what the little man thought of hearing himself called Italo by +the fair _forestiera_. He was dimly troubled, knowing that there is +no hope of an Italian ever really understanding the ways of being and +doing of American women, and especially an Italian of that class. But +then it would be equally difficult to make this American woman +understand just how the Italian might misunderstand her. + +He permitted himself a direct look at her, where she rested among the +cushions, with eyes closed again and a smile diffused all over her face; +her whole person, indeed, permeated with the essence of a smile. +Extraordinary that, loving music so much, one could so much love such +music. + +She surprised him by opening her eyes and whispering: + +"Don't you want to smoke?" showing that for a moment at least she had +not been thinking of music. "You can, if you want to. Here, we've got +some. Don't go and think, now, that Estelle and I have taken to smoking. +Heavens above! We sent out for them the other night when Charlie Hunt +was here." + +She reached across the table near her and handed him a box of +cigarettes. + +He was very glad to light one. To smoke is soothing, and he felt the +need of it. Added to his vague distress at the spectacle of such +familiarity from these ladies to that impossible little Italian, a +ferment of resentment was disquieting him apropos of Hunt--those works +of art of which Hunt had facilitated the purchase. + +Hunt, of a truth, ever since the first mention of him that evening had +been like a fish bone in Gerald's throat. + +He checked his thoughts, recognizing that it is not sane or safe to +permit oneself to interpret the conduct of a person whom one does not +like. The chances of being misled are too great. He uprooted a suspicion +dishonoring to both. + +Let it be taken for assured, then, that Hunt had in this case no +interest to forward beyond his love for making himself important. After +all, if the ladies liked bad pictures!... Yet it was a shame that he +should frequent their house, be accepted as their friend, invited by +them, made much of in their innocent and generous way, then should make +fun of them. Permissible, if you choose, to make fun of funny people, +but you must not at the same time make use of their kindness. A precept +for the perfect gentleman, in Florence or elsewhere: You can make fun of +persons, or you can cultivate their friendship, but not both things at +once. And Gerald, without proof, felt certain that Charlie Hunt spread +good stories about Aurora. + +Mrs. Innes, his mother's old friend, meeting him at Vieusseux's +reading-room a few days before, had detained him for a chat, and in the +course of it asked him if he knew this Mrs. Hawthorne of whom the Fosses +appeared so fond. An amusing type, she must be. Seeing that statue of +the she-wolf and little Romulus and Remus at the foot of Vial de' Colli, +it seemed she had asked what it meant, and said she didn't believe it. + +It indefinably hurt him, incommoded some nerve of envenomed +sensitiveness--yes, annoyed him like sand in his salad, to think of his +country-woman, with the good faith of a dog in her face, so quoted as to +make her ridiculous by a fellow wanting in human vitals, like Hunt. + +He would have liked, had it been possible, to ask a few frank questions +of Mrs. Hawthorne, and find out more certainly what he should think. He +would have liked to warn her against trusting her enormous ignorance to +one who would have so little good-humor and protectiveness toward that +baby-eyed giant-child. Really, instinct ought to teach her better whom +to make her confident as respected that grave affair. + +Singularly, when next the music stopped, Mrs. Hawthorne, after she with +true politeness had taken the box of cigarettes to the other of her +guests, spoke of Hunt. Perhaps her thoughts, too, had gone straying, and +mysteriously encountered some straying thought of his. + +"Charlie Hunt," she said, "is coming on Sunday morning to take us to the +picture-galleries. We're going to play hooky from church. His work, +don't you see, keeps him at the bank on week days till everything of +that sort is closed." + +"Mrs. Hawthorne," cried Gerald and sat up in unaffected indignation, +while mustache, beard, hair, everything about him appeared to bristle, +"I thought _I_ had been engaged to take you sight-seeing! I thought +it was to be _my_ honor and privilege. Mrs. Hawthorne, my dear +friend, if you do not wish deeply to hurt me, deeply to hurt me, you +will write to Mr. Hunt at once, this evening, and I will post the +letter, that you have thought better of that immoral plan for Sunday +morning, and are going to church like a good Christian woman. And +to-morrow, Mrs. Hawthorne, at whatever time will be convenient for you, +I will come and take you to the Uffizi." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +And so because, in his uncalled-for chivalry, he had made himself guide +to a lady in a ball-room, Gerald, one thing leading to another, was once +more committed to serving as a guide in Florence. + +He had filled the part so often, at the appeal of one good friend and +another, that he had sworn never again to be caught, cajoled, or hired. +He could have hated the Ghiberti doors had such a thing not been +impossible. He did rather hate the Santissima Annunziata. And now it was +all to do over again. + +It might be adduced, as a mitigation of his misfortune, that this was +different. + +This was sometimes very different. + +A singular thing about acquaintance with Mrs. Hawthorne was that it had +in a sense no beginning. One started fairly in the middle. No sooner did +one meet her than one seemed to have known her long and know her well. +Most people found this so. One therefore readily slid into speaking +one's mind to Mrs. Hawthorne, dispensing with the formal affectation of +a perfect respect for her every act and opinion, secure in the +recognition that anger, sulkiness, the self-love that easily takes +umbrage, were as far from her breezy sturdiness as the scrupulosities of +an anxious refinement. + +That one could say what one pleased to Mrs. Hawthorne put more life into +intercourse with her, naturally, than there would have been if, with her +limitations, one had been forced to be entirely and tamely circumspect. + +"Mrs. Hawthorne," cried Gerald, "do me the very real favor, will you, +like a dear good woman, of not calling the most venerable of the +primitives Simma Bewey!" + +It was astonishing what things Gerald Fane could say without losing his +effect of a complete, even considerate politeness. + +"But that's the way it's written," said Mrs. Hawthorne. + +"You will pardon the liberty I take of contradicting you; it is not. It +gives me goose-flesh. Cimabue!" + +"Very well. I'll try to remember. But it doesn't matter what I call him; +his Madonna is no beauty. Do you mean to tell me there was a time when +people admired faces like that? She gives me a pain." + +"That is not the point; her beauty is not the point. Besides, she is +beautiful." + +"Oh, very well. If you'd like to have me look like her, I can." + +She tipped her head to one side, lengthened her jaw, pointed her hand, +and by a knack she had for mimicry made herself vaguely resemble the +large-eyed, small-mouthed, pale and serious Lady of Heaven before whose +portrait by the old master this dialogue took place. + +"It is really a very poor joke, Mrs. Hawthorne," Gerald said, with mouth +distorted by the conflict between laughter and disgust. "To travesty a +dignified and sacred thing is a very poor pastime. Of course I laugh. +Miss Madison laughs, and I laugh. I think very poorly of it, all the +same. You would do much better to frame your mind to an attitude of +respect and try to understand. I can't say, though, that I think it +unnatural you should not at first appreciate the earliest old masters. +We will go to look at something more obvious." + +"Wait a moment. These fascinate me, they're so queer and so awful. I +tell you those old codgers of the time you say these belong to had +strong nerves and stomachs. All these wounds and dripping blood and +hollow ribs and criminals being boiled in caldrons, and having their +heads cut off and arrows shot into them!... I guess you're right; we'd +better move on to something more cheerful." + +Miss Madison was never guilty of the foolishness that fell from Mrs. +Hawthorne's gross and unconcerned ignorance. Miss Madison took modesty +and tact with her, as well as keenness of eye, when she went to +picture-galleries and museums. But this, strange to say, did not make +her the more acceptable companion of the two to their guide. What Miss +Madison did never seemed so important as what her larger, weightier +friend did. The one personality to a singular extent eclipsed the other, +who was accustomed to this to the point of not feeling it. A laughing +lack of conceit in both women marvelously simplified their relation. + +Gerald, in choosing pictures for their enjoyment, avoided with a +conscientiousness of very special brand to halt with them before +paintings fit to please their unpracticed eyes but which he did not +think worthy of admiration. He likewise passed Venuses, Eves, Truths, +all nudities, without remark or pause, acquainted of old with the +simple-minded prudery of certain Americans, and not disrespectful to it. + +"Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, "to be ignorant is no sin. One may have been +doing beautiful, gracious, useful and merciful things while others were +cultivating the arts and sciences. But ignorance on any subject is not +in itself beautiful or desirable. One should therefore not be complacent +in it, proud of it. With a little humility, Mrs. Hawthorne, what can one +not hope to accomplish? Now, please, Mrs. Hawthorne, drop all +preconception, and use your eyes. Look at that angel." + +"Do you mean to tell me I could live long enough to think that angel +beautiful? With those Chinese eyes?... Give it up, my friend, why do you +want to bother?" + +"Because, Mrs. Hawthorne, you have essentially a good brain. You are at +the back of all a very intelligent woman--" + +"Go 'way with you! You know that if you feed me taffy enough you can +make me see and say anything you want." + +"--a very intelligent woman. And I am so constituted that I simply +cannot go on living in the same world with a really intelligent +woman--my friend, besides--who does not see the difference between +Raphael and Guido Reni, and likes one exactly as well as the other. I +ache to change it!" + +"Go ahead. We don't want you to die. But I'm afraid it'll take surgery. +You'll have to drill a hole in my thick head to get the things you mean +into that good brain so full of real intelligence." + +"If you wouldn't be flippant!" + +"What's that?" + +"If you would bring reverence to the study of things done by great +people, and that people of great taste and learning have collected for +our joy and improvement!" + +"See here! Don't you want me to have a little fun while we do Florence? +I don't see how I can stand it, if we're to be solemn as those old +saints with mouldy green complexions." + +"We're not to be solemn. I have done these galleries solemnly times +enough, Heaven knows. But we're to be attentive, respectful, of an open +and receptive mind. We're not to say outrageous things in the mere +desire to shock our guide, or tease him." + +"You don't mean to say you think that I--?" + +"It's not funny." + +"It mayn't be funny--but it's fun! Go on and lecture. You haven't got a +bit of fun in you." + +"Yes, I have!" said Gerald, and with a creeping smile--grudging at +first, then brighter--looked Mrs. Hawthorne in the eye, while such fun +as lived in him traveled over the bridge of their glances, and she was +permitted to get a glimpse of his underlying relish. + +"All I ask of you, Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, finally, "is that you will +not let your innocence on these subjects appear when you are with +others. I don't say pretend. Just keep still, be silent! It does not +matter when you are with me. When you are with me I beg of you to be +yourself. But with others.... You would become the talk of the town, +and--" he shuddered, "I should most horribly hate it!" + + * * * * * + +"Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, with a quiver of annoyance in his voice a few +days later, "did I not implore you not to let it be known in Florence +how you are affected by the proudest treasures of her world-famous +collections?" + +"Yes, you told me. But I didn't promise." + +"And now I am asked--with laughter and mockery--whether I have seen Mrs. +Hawthorne giving an imitation of a Madonna by Simma Bewey, and heard +Mrs. Hawthorne on the subject of G. Ottow and Others." + +"Didn't you say--with laughter? Well, then, it's all right. Don't you +care. I just got to training and did it to make them a little sport. +Didn't they tell you about my Native of Italy eating Macaroni?" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, you are just a bad big school-girl--a bad big +school-girl--" + +"'Hark, from the tomb!'" said Mrs. Hawthorne, in lieu of anything more +scintillating. + +"A bad big school-girl, and I will have nothing more to do with you. If +you delight in being the talk of the town, all you have to do is allow +your friend Mr. Hunt in his spare hours to take you to see such things +as I have not yet had the honor of showing you." + +"Blessed if I--Look here, you aren't mad in earnest? Sooner'n lose you, +I won't say another word. There! I've been Tchee-mah-boo-eh's Madonna +for the last time. Don't be cross with little T. T.--Talk of the Town!" + +"If you had any discrimination, any reticence ..." + +"No reticence? Does that mean can't keep anything to myself? You don't +know me!" + +"You even tell your age." + +"You aren't going to find fault with me for _that_?" + +"Yes. At your age one should know better. It is part of your general and +too great frankness." + +They upon occasions came near quarreling, but not seriously, her +disposition to quarrel was so small. Yet, two could not be outspoken and +one of them irritable, and those rocks never even be grazed. + +She unwarily enlarged to him one day upon her disappointment in +Florence. By this time, she said, she was growing used to it, she didn't +notice so much the things she didn't like. But at first, with her +expectation high, her imagination inflamed by the Judge's and Antonia's +eloquence, the narrow streets, in some of them no sidewalks even, the +gloomy bars at the windows, the muddy river with the dirty old houses +huddled on the bank, the stuffy churches with the average height of the +Italian populace marked on the pillars by a dubious grindy brown tint, +the dreadful beggars, the black fingernails, the smells.... + +"Mrs. Hawthorne!" came from Gerald, who with difficulty had let her go +on thus far, "those were all you noticed, were they? In the most +wonderful city in the whole world, those are all you find to talk about! +The narrow streets, the beggars, the smells. Mrs. Hawthorne--" he nearly +trembled with the effort to keep calm, "this is obviously not the place +for you. You should have gone to ... to Switzerland! Instead of a +sunburned hill-side, with sober silver olives and solemn black +cypresses, and a pair of beautiful calm white oxen plowing, you would +have seen a nice grass-green pasture, at the foot of blinding peaks, cut +by an arsenic-green stream, on whose bank a red and white cow feeding! +Then among the habitations all would have been well-regulated, the +churches swept, perhaps even ventilated, the people washed, clean +aprons, clean caps, no beggars, no disorder, no crimes. And there would +have been no disturbing manifestations of genius, either; no troublesome +masterpieces or other evidences of a little fire in the blood. It would +have suited you perfectly." + +"I guess you mean that to be cutting, don't you?" + +"Let me try to tell you how much I liked New York, when I went back +there some years ago after an absence of ten or eleven years. I had some +idea, you know, of perhaps returning to live in America. Well, I +shivered. I shut my eyes. I held my ears. I fled. I remained just the +time I was forced to by the affairs of my poor mother and, as I tell +you, I fled!" + +"Why, what's the matter with New York?" + +"I will tell you what is the matter with New York, with Boston, with all +the places in America that I have seen again since I was grown up--" + +"No! Stop! Don't say anything against America. It's the one way to make +me mad.--I didn't know you felt the same way about Florence. You aren't +an Italian, are you? It's because we're both alike Americans that we sit +here fighting so chummily." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +Lending her spacious front room for the Christmas bazaar in aid of the +church, and beholding it full of bustle and brightness, was the thing +that brought to the acute stage Mrs. Hawthorne's longing to see her +whole house the scene of some huge good time: she sent out innumerable +invitations to a ball. Mrs. Foss's card was inclosed with hers. It was a +farewell party given for Brenda, whose day of sailing was very near. The +frequent inquiry how Brenda should be crossing the ocean so late in the +year met with the answer that her traveling companions had a brother +whose wedding had been timed thus awkwardly for them. + +On the morning of the day before the ball Gerald came to see Mrs. +Hawthorne. He was still intrusting the servant with his message when +Aurora, leaning over the railing of the hallway above, called down to +him, "Come right upstairs!" + +He was aware of unusual activities all around--workmen, the sound of +hammering, housemaids plying brooms and brushes. Leslie Foss, with her +hat on, looked from the dining-room and said, "Hello, Gerald!" too busy +for anything more. Fraeulein seemed to be with her, helping at something. + +The great central white-and-gold door, to-day open, permitted a glimpse, +as he started up the stairs, of a man on a step-ladder fitting tall +wax-candles into one of the great chandeliers. From unseen quarters +floated Estelle's voice, saying, "_Ploo bah! Nong, ploo hoe!_" + +Mrs. Hawthorne met him at the head of the stairs. The slight disorder of +her hair, usually so tidy, pointed to unusual exertions on her part, +also. Her face was flushed with excitement and, to judge by her +wreathing smiles, with happiness. + +"I saw you coming," she greeted him. "_Riverisco! Beata Lei! Mamma +mia!_ And do you know how I saw you? Come here." + +She led the way to the back, where the window-door stood open on to the +roof of the portico, which formed a terrace. + +"See? I've had it glassed in for to-morrow night. We couldn't say we +hadn't plenty of rooms before, and plenty of room in them. That's just +the trouble: there aren't any nooks in this big, square house. So I've +made one. This is Flirtation Alcove. Here a loving couple can come to +cool off after dancing and look up at the stars together. Oh, it's going +to be so pretty! You can't tell anything about it as it looks now; I've +only got these few things in it. But the gardeners are going to bring +all sorts of tall plants and flowers in pots. Just wait till to-morrow +night!" + +"You are very busy, I am afraid, Mrs. Hawthorne. I ought not to take +your time." + +"Can't you sit down a minute?" + +"I have come to ask a favor." + +"I guess I can say it's granted even before you ask." + +"I should like to retract my refusal of your very kind invitation for +to-morrow evening. I have explained to you my weak avoidance of crowds. +I have determined to overcome it in this case, and I want your +permission to bring a friend." + +"That? How can you ask? Bring ten! Bring twenty! Bring as many as you've +got! As for coming yourself, I'm tickled to death that you've +reconsidered." + +"It's not quite as simple as it seems, Mrs. Hawthorne. I shall have to +tell you more." + +At her indication, he took the other half of the little dumpling sofa +which had seemed to her an appropriate piece of furniture for Flirtation +Alcove, and which, with a rug on the floor, formed so far its only +decoration. In the clear, bare morning light of outdoors, which bathed +them, she still looked triumphantly fresh, but he looked tired. + +"It is Lieutenant Giglioli for whom I have come to beg an invitation. +You perhaps know whom I mean." + +"Let me see. I can't tell. Quite a few officers have been introduced, +but I never can get their names." + +"Hasn't Mrs. Foss or Leslie ever spoken of him?" + +"Not so far as I can remember. In what way do you mean?" + +"They evidently have not." He seemed to be given pause by this and need +to gather force from reflection before going on, as he did after a +moment, overcoming his repugnance. "He is the reason for poor Brenda +being packed off to America." + +"Oh, is that it?" + +"He came to see me last evening and spent most of the night talking of +her. We were barely acquainted before; but he knew I am a close friend +of the Fosses, and in that necessity to ease their hearts with talk +which Italians seem to feel he chose me. I felt sorry for him." + +"She's turned him down?" + +"No; she loves him." + +Again Gerald stopped, as after making a communication of great gravity. +Mrs. Hawthorne, listening with breathless interest, made no sound that +urged him to go on. The fact he had announced seemed solemn to both +alike, with the vision floating between them of Brenda's white-rose face +and deer's eyes, the feeling they had in common that Brenda, for +indefinable reasons, was not like ordinary mortals, and that what she +felt was more significant, more important. + +"But he has nothing beside his officer's pay," Gerald went on when the +surprise of his revelation had been allowed time to pass, "and she on +her side has nothing but what her parents might give her, who, you +probably know, have no great abundance. His proposals were made to them, +as is the custom in this country, and have been formally declined." + +He left it to her to appreciate the situation created by this, and, +while thinking on his side, ran the point of the slender cane which he +had not abandoned round and round the same figure of the rug-pattern at +their feet. + +"They are both too poor. I see," said Mrs. Hawthorne; but added quickly, +as if she had not really seen: "It seems sort of funny, though, doesn't +it, to let that keep them, if they're fond of each other?" + +"Oh, it's not that. However fond, they couldn't marry without her +bringing her husband a fixed portion. It is the law in this country, in +the case of officers of the army,--to keep up the dignity of that +impressive body, you understand. In the case of a lieutenant the +_dote_, or dowry, must be forty thousand francs. I learned the +exact sum for the first time last night." + +"How much is that? Let me see,"--Mrs. Hawthorne did mental arithmetic, +rather quickly for a woman,--"eight thousand dollars. And the Fosses +can't give it." + +"Of their ability to give it if they wished to I am no judge. I dare say +they could, though with their son John going before long to hang out his +shingle, as they call it, I doubt if it could be without bleeding +themselves. But they are not convinced that the sacrifice ought to be +made." He frowned at the pattern on the rug, and suddenly cut at it +impatiently with his stick. "It is a singular story, in which everybody +is right and the result wrong, horribly wrong!" + +"Oh, dear me!" sighed Mrs. Hawthorne, feeling with him even before +understanding. + +"I ought perhaps to say," he corrected, "everybody is good and +well-meaning, but has been unwise. And everybody now has to pay." + +"I've thought right along that the Fosses had some reason for not being +very happy," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "and I guessed it was something about +Brenda. But they never said anything, and I didn't try to make out. +Brenda doesn't take to me, somehow, as the others do. I'm not her kind, +of course; but I do adore her from afar. She's so beautiful! She's like +a person in a story-book, who at the end dies, looking at the sunset +over the sea, or else marries the prince." + +"Yes, Brenda is wonderful." + +"I never should take her for an American." + +"She's not like one, and yet she is. She has grown up in this country +and breathed in its ideas and feelings till she even looks Italian. Her +parents are the sort of Americans that fifty years of foreign countries +wouldn't budge; but they began later. Still, it is because Brenda is +American, after all, that cruelties are being committed. Her family have +taken it for granted that one of them couldn't really be in love with an +Italian, least of all that joke, a dapper and decorative Italian officer +that a girl buys at a fixed price for her husband. And Brenda can't say +to them: 'But I am. I am in love with just such a man. The happiness of +my life depends upon your finding the vulgar sum of money with which to +buy him for me.' Because of the American-ness all round, Brenda can't +say that to them, and because she doesn't say it, they are in doubt, +they only half apprehend, they don't understand. The one thing they are +sure of is that to marry a foreigner is a mistake. And the one safe +thing they see to do, when Brenda's face, combined with her entire +reserve toward them, has begun to torment them seriously, is to send her +away where, if the truth be that she mysteriously is 'interested in' an +Italian, the change of scene may help to put him out of her head." + +"So that's why they're sending her home!" + +"There are no better or dearer people in the world, kind, true, just; +but"--Gerald held in, and showed how much he hated to make any sort of +reservation--"in this they have been to blame. They bring growing girls +to Italy, where, such is their confidence in I don't know what quality +supposed to be inherent and to produce immunity from love of Italian +men, they never dream that there might happen to them an Italian +son-in-law." + +He gave her a moment to realize how rash this was; then hurried, as if +wishing to get through as quickly as possible with the disagreeable, if +not disgraceful, task of criticizing his friends and of gossiping: + +"During the progress of the affair Mrs. Foss lets all go on as the +little affairs and flirtations of her own youth were allowed to go on at +home. She likes her daughters to be admired. It is only proper they +should make conquests, have beaus. Leslie has had flirtations with +Italians as well as with others, and come out of them without impairing +that sense of humor which permits her to see as funny that one should +succumb to the attractions of one of those only half-understood men, who +may either be playing a comedy of love while in truth pursuing a +fortune, or, if in earnest, are rather alarming, with the hint of +jealous ferocity in their eyes. With Mrs. Foss's knowledge, Brenda, +during a whole summer at the seaside, receives Giglioli's letters, +written at first, or partly, in English, which he is learning with her +help. With this excuse of English, it is a correspondence and courtship +_dans toutes les regles_. Brenda is not asked by an American mother +to show her letters or his. Giglioli, with his traditions, could not +have imagined such a thing if the parents were unwilling to receive him +as a suitor. Brenda herself--one will never know about Brenda, how it +began, what she thought or hoped. She is very young; no doubt she did +hope. Children seldom know much about their parents' means. She very +likely thought hers could make her the present of a dowry, as they had +made her other presents. But when she discovered their attitude toward +the whole matter, with dignity and delicacy she let all be as they +desired, incapable of pressing them to tax their resources to give her a +thing their prejudice is so strongly set against. They did what they +thought best, and have hung in doubt ever since as to whether it was +best; for though Brenda gives her confidence to none of them, and they +do not press her to give it, with that respect for a child's liberty +which is also American, they are growing more and more uneasy with the +suspicion that it was serious on her part, too. They love her +extraordinarily, and she has always dearly loved them. They show their +love by protecting her youth from a step she may repent. She shows hers +by being strong, poor love, and trying not to grieve them with the +revelation of her heart. And they are making one another wretched." + +For a moment Mrs. Hawthorne had nothing to say, busy with pondering what +she had heard. "I don't see how, if she really loves this Italian, she +could give him up so gracefully," she finally said. + +"She has not given him up, Mrs. Hawthorne," said Gerald. "Believe me, +she has not. She has some plan, some dream, for bringing about the good +end in time without aid from her parents. I am sure of it. No, she has +not given him up." He had before him, vivid in memory, the image of +Brenda in the little church, and was looking at that, though his eyes +were on Mrs. Hawthorne's friendly and attentive face. "She is at the +wonderful hour of her love," he said, "when the world is transfigured +and life lifted above the every-day into regions of poetry; when the +simple fact of his existence justifies the plan of creation, when to +wait a hundred years for him would seem no more difficult than to wait a +day, and to perform the labors of Hercules no more than breaking off so +many roses. She is sure of him, the immortality of his passion, as she +is sure of herself. So they are above circumstances, and nothing that +friend or foe can do should trouble their essential serenity." + +"How wonderful!" breathed Mrs. Hawthorne, after a little silence in +which Gerald had been thinking with a very sickness of sympathy of +Brenda and the sinister propensity of the Fates for bringing to nothing +the most valiant dreams and hopes; and Mrs. Hawthorne had been thinking +entirely of Gerald, whose own heart was so much more certainly revealed +by what he said than could be anybody else's. + +"Unfortunately,"--he turned abruptly to another part of his +subject,--"he is not of the same temperament. She has some project, I +imagine, for earning the money for her dowry, poor child, by music, +singing, painting. But he does not know her vows of fidelity, because +her parents did use their authority so far as gently to request her not +to write to him or see him; and she promised, and a promise with Brenda +is binding. And he has felt his honor involved in not writing or meeting +her. But, though separated, they have been in the same city; they could +hope to catch a glimpse of each other now and then. Heaven only knows +how often he has stood to see her pass, or watched her window, and lived +on such things as unhappy lovers find to live on. After all, the faith +that when he dreamed of her she dreamed of him, that as he kissed a +glove she kissed a silver button, was a life, something to go on with. I +dare say, too, he cherished the hope of some miracle,--it is so natural +to hope!... But now they are sending her away, and it seems to him the +black end of everything." + +"I see. And what you want is--" + +"To be driven half a world apart for indefinite periods, more than +probably forever, without one look, one word of leave-taking, is truly +too much. Granted that they are not to have each other, they ought not +to be torn in two like a bleeding body. Let them have to remember a few +last beautiful moments!" + +Mrs. Hawthorne had become pensive. He watched her sidewise, trying to +divine what turn her thoughts were taking. Her prolonged silence made +him uneasy. + +"It wouldn't be wrong, you think?" she asked finally. "Mrs. Foss +wouldn't be cross with us?" + +"If it is wrong, my dear Mrs. Hawthorne, let it be wrong!" he cried +impetuously. "If any one is cross, we will bow our heads meekly--after +having done what we regarded as merciful. Let us not permit a cruelty it +was in our power to prevent!" + +But Mrs. Hawthorne continued to disquiet him by hesitating, while her +face suggested the travels of her thought all around and in and out of +the question under consideration. + +"You don't think it would perhaps be cruel to Brenda?" she laid before +him another difficulty in the way of making up her mind. "Mightn't it +just ruin the evening for her, with the painfulness of good-bys? Or, if +she doesn't in the least expect him, the shock of the surprise?" + +"If I know that beautiful girl, passionate as an Italian under her +American self-control, it will be the blessed shock of an answered +prayer. She prays nightly, never doubt it, that Heaven may manage for +her just such a surprise." + +He was growing afraid of the calm common sense that tried to see the +thing from every side and weight the merits of each person's point of +view. Feeling it intolerable to be refused, he suddenly appealed to her +pity, away from her justice. + +"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, life is so unkind, and to be always wise simply +deadly! A few memories to treasure are all the good we finally have of +our miserable days, and to catch at a moment of gold without care that +it will have to be paid for is the only way to have in our hands in all +our lives anything but copper and lead; yes, dull lead, common copper." +He covered his face and pressed his eyes, in a way he had when the world +seemed too hopeless and baffling; then as suddenly straightened up, +remarking more quietly, "The Fosses are too wise." + +"They have my sympathy, I must say, Mr. Fane," Mrs. Hawthorne hurriedly +defended herself against being moved. "I should be just as much afraid +as they to have my daughter marry a foreigner." + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, you ought to be afraid to have your daughter marry +anybody." He gathered heat again and vehemence. "As regards Italians, we +are all one mass of superstitions. We are always comparing our best with +their bad. As a matter of truth, our best and their best and the best +the world over are one as good as the other, and our worst can't be +exceeded by anything Italy can show. If you make the difficulty that we +are different, our point of view different, I object that Brenda's is +not so different. The international marriages that turn out well make no +noise, but there are plenty of them. I have seen any number in the +ordinary middle classes. No, parents are twice as old as their children; +that is the trouble and always will be. The older people by prudence +secure a certain thing, but it's not the thing youth wanted. The older +see a certain thing as preferable, because they are old; but the young +were right for themselves, for a time, at least, until they, too, grew +old and saw a long peace and comfort as superior to a brief love and +rapture. Brenda is not shallow or changeable; it may be her one chance +of happiness that her parents in their anxious affection are trying to +remove her from, and which she will cling to with every invisible fiber +of her being until she conquers, or turns into a dismal old maid. Brenda +is not like other girls. Love is serious to her. She never played with +it as Leslie has always done, and as American girls do, yes, in +Massachusetts and Virginia alike. She is an earnest, simple, sincere, +constant nature, very much, in fact, like him." + +"You seem to like him. Is he such a fine man really?" + +"I don't know a finer, in his way." + +"Good looking?" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, what a frivolous question! But he is. He is one of the +most completely handsome men I know. Rather short, that's all." + +"Oh, what a pity!" + +"But, if you must insist on that sort of symmetry, Brenda is not tall. +He is a kind of Italian, more common than one thinks, that doesn't get +into literature, having nothing exciting, mysterious, wicked, or even +conspicuously picturesque about him. After being a good son,--they are +very often good sons,--he will be a good husband and a good father, like +his own father before him. He is without vanity, while looking like a +square-built, stocky, responsible Romeo. Devoted to duty, passionate for +order, absolutely punctilious in matters of honor and courtesy, he is a +good citizen, a good soldier. He belongs to excellent people, I +gathered, whose fortune, once larger, is very small. They live in the +Abruzzi, I think he said. He is the eldest son and hope of the house. +His gratitude to them comes first of all, he made me understand. He +would be an _indegno_, unworthy of esteem and love, if that were +not so. He had never cared for pleasures, he told me; even in the time +not demanded by the service he studied. He wished to be useful to his +country; he looked for the advancement to be gained by solid capacity in +military things. He felt older than his years, he said, from being the +eldest of the family and always carrying responsibilities. He committed +no follies of youth, had no quarrels, made no debts. His companions +sometimes laughed at him for this prosaic seriousness. But he had +friends, for he is of a manly, modest sort. One evening during Carnival +last year certain of these friends dropped in on their way to a dance, a +costume party at the house of Americans, and seeing him so absorbed by +duties and studies, thought it a lark to tempt him from these and take +him along. And he, to astonish them for once, he says, let it happen, +they assuring him that he would be well received if presented as their +friend. One of them had on two costumes, one on top of the other, of +which he lent him one, a monk's frock and cowl. So they went. At the +ball was Brenda as the Snow-queen. And the fatal thing happened at very +first sight of her. It is a repetition of _Romeo and Juliet_, as +you see. He had shunned women as the rivals of duty and work. He +believes his instantaneous adoration owing to the fact that Brenda so +far surpassed all he had ever known,--a being entirely formed of light +and snow and fragrance.... I am using his words. Her very name is sweet +to Italian lips. He permitted himself the dreams of other men. He +permitted himself to hope. And then!... These things he told me with +actual tears in the finest dark eyes I have perhaps ever seen, and +without seeming any the less manly for them. He told me, and I believed +him. He came to me, poor fellow, because it was the nearest he could +come to Brenda, and he trusted, I suppose, that I would tell her he had +been. It was a way of sending her a message. He talked more than half +the night, walking the floor, then throwing himself into a chair and +grasping his head. I can't tell you all he said, but it filled me with +pity and respect. It made me his friend." + +Mrs. Hawthorne looked soft and sympathetic, but far away, and when he +stopped did not speak, engrossed, it was to be hoped, by the story just +told. + +He continued, though discouraged: + +"He wanted to know if I thought he would be guilty of an unpardonable +breach should he ask permission to write her one letter before she left. +This parting without farewell is the last bitter touch to his tragedy. +Brenda, when it had been decided that she should leave, sent word to him +by that little pianist who comes here. Again through the same channel he +received word that the day of departure was fixed. Can you think what it +means, Mrs. Hawthorne? Have you in your experience or imagination the +wherewith to form any conception, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, of what it means? +The day of departure fixed! The day of parting! Do you realize? No more +sight or sound of each other! The end! The sea between! Silence! And it +is to befall on Saturday of this week, and we are at Wednesday!" + +"All right, Mr. Fane; bring him!" she said in haste. "You've made me +want to cry. I mustn't let myself cry; it makes my nose red. What did +you say his name is?" + +"Giglioli." + +"Spell it. Gig--no, it's no use. What's the other part of his name?" + +"Manlio." + +"That's a little better. I guess he'll have to be Manlio to me. Bring +him along, whatever happens, and then let's pray hard to have everything +happen right." + + * * * * * + +Not much later on the same day Mrs. Hawthorne's brougham might have been +seen climbing Viale dei Colli, with the lady inside, alone, engaged in +meditation. + +"It would be a pity," she was thinking, as she alighted before Villa +Foss, "that a little matter of eight thousand dollars should stand in +the way of perfect bliss!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +So many forces had been enlisted, into so many hands the white card +given, to make Mrs. Hawthorne's ball a success, that it could hardly +fail to be somewhat splendid. On a platform raised in one corner of the +ball-room sat the little orchestra assembled and conducted by Signor +Ceccherelli, who, from his mien, might have been the creator of these +musicians and originator of all music. + +Charlie Hunt was floor-master, and busy enough. Another might perhaps +have done as much and not appeared so busy. The cotillion especially +gave him a great deal to do. Everybody understood that he had planned +all the figures and bought the favors. Some received an impression that +the ball was entirely managed by him, who was such a very great friend +of the hostess's. Some even carried home an idea that the hostess never +did anything without consulting him, and more often than not besought +him to do it for her. + +This sounds cruder than it actually was. Charlie was looking most +handsome and high-bred. Animation shone from his eyes, his teeth, his +skin, over which he now and then swept a fine white silk handkerchief. +He danced devotedly every minute during which he was not engaged in +making others dance. Mrs. Hawthorne, gazing after him with a benignant +smile, was truly grateful to him for putting into her party so much +"go." It was his atmosphere rather than his words--though he did drop +words, but not many or really in bad taste--that made him appear the one +indispensable person in the house. + +Mrs. Foss stood near the central door with Mrs. Hawthorne, receiving. +She had not omitted from her list one acquaintance in Florence of the +suitable class. Everybody was there; the style of invitation-card sent +had suggested a grand occasion. + +All the persons she had seen at the Fosses on the first Friday evening +at their house Mrs. Hawthorne saw again, and many more. Balm de Breze, +with a gallantry of old style, bent his black-lacquer mustache over her +glove. The dark Landini pressed her hand with a pinch the warmth of +which pricked her attention, and she found his eyes fixed on her with +more the air of seeing her than is common at a first meeting. + +Suddenly her heart thumped like a school-girl's. Gerald was coming, and +with him an officer who must surely be Manlio. She tried to keep down +her emotion, but the pink of her face deepened, a trembling seized her +smile. + +The Italian was as white as paper, his mustache and brows made spots of +ink on it; his eyes were as deep and still as wells in the night. She +could hardly doubt that his heart was in a tumult, but he spoke without +disaster to his voice, thanking her in a formal phrase. She perceived, +from a distinct advantage over him in height, how faultlessly handsome +he was in a quiet, unmagnetic way. Never had she seen anything to equal +the whiteness of his teeth except her pearls in their black velvet case. + +After having paid his duty to her, he remained for some minutes speaking +with Mrs. Foss, who appeared as kind, while he appeared as calm and +natural, as if time had moved back, and they were still at last spring +and the beginning of his visits. Of all concerned Aurora was the least +collected. + +"I can't help it!" she murmured to Gerald, while the other two were +talking together. "I'm all of a tremble. I feel as if I were Brenda; and +at the same time I feel as if I were him--or he." + +Mrs. Foss turned to them to say she believed everybody had arrived, and +with Giglioli moved away from the door. Gerald asked Mrs. Hawthorne if +they should waltz, but she refused, because she ought to be looking +after the people who were not dancing and seeing that every one had a +good time. She should dance only once that evening, she told him, and it +should be with Mr. Foss, who had promised to dance at her party if she +would promise to dance with him. + +Mr. Foss was seen approaching, and Mrs. Hawthorne smiled and sparkled in +anticipation of the jokes they would exchange on her fairy weight and +his youthful limberness. + +Gerald sent his eyes around the room to see if any one were free whom it +would be a sort of duty to ask to dance. He did not look for pleasure +from dancing, the less so that Charlie Hunt, on the perpetual jump, and +dancing with a perfection almost unmanly, had brought the exercise into +temporary discredit with him. Miss Madison was dancing, Miss Seymour was +dancing, Leslie was dancing, Brenda--his eyes were unable to find. In a +doorway, and not quite as festive in looks as the majority, which gave +to the room the effect of an animated flower-bed, he perceived a figure +in snuff-brown silk, just in front of which, soberly watching the +dancers, was a little girl in a short dress of embroidered white, a blue +hair-ribbon and blue enamel locket. At once dropping his search for a +partner, Gerald went to join this pair, thinking, as he approached, that +Lily without her spectacles was beginning to have a look of Brenda,--a +Brenda with less beauty, but more originality; more--what could one call +it?--geniality, perhaps. + +"Oh, Gerald!"--the little girl caught his hand without ceasing for more +than a second to watch the ball-room floor,--"I have promised to go home +willingly at ten o'clock!" It was spoken in a gentle wail. + +"My child," said Fraeulein, "you must begin to prepare, for I fear it +cannot be far from ten." + +"Oh, Fraeulein, don't keep talking about it! _Please!_" + +"When you leave this pleasure, Lili, remember, there will be still that +other pleasure of the long ride home in the night and the moonlight." + +"Yes." Lily, glad again, turned wholly to Gerald, the music having +stopped. "Mrs. Hawthorne told mother that if she would let me come I +should be taken home in her own carriage, with all the furs around us +and a hot water-box for our feet, so that we never could catch cold. +Wasn't it sweet of her? And we've both already had ices and cakes, +before anybody else, because she said we must. Don't you think she's +sweet, Gerald?" + +"Sweet as honey," he said. + +"Oh, Gerald,"--Lily's tone was fairly lamentable,--"have you seen the +baskets of favors that are going to be given away by and by? There are +roses of red silk, and lilies of white velvet, and chocolate cigars, and +fans, and bonbonnieres, and silver bangles! Then funny ones of little +monkeys and ducks and things. And I have to go home willingly, +cheerfully, promptly, at ten o'clock!" + +"Lily, if any lady is so good and so misguided as to honor me with a +favor, I will bring it to you in my pocket to-morrow or soon after, I +promise." + +"What hour is it, Herr Fane?" asked Fraeulein over Lily's head. + +Gerald drew out his watch and hesitated, sincerely sorry. + +"To be exact, it is three minutes and three quarters to ten," he said. + +Lily's mouth dropped open, and out of the small dark hollow one could +fear for a second that a cry of protest or revolt might come; but the +very next moment it was seen that Lily had returned to be the best child +in the world and the most honorable. + +"Good night, Gerald!" she said, with a wistfully willing, cheerful, +ready face. "You won't forget?" + +He was left in the oval room, and as the dancers who had come in to +occupy its seats seemed all to be in pairs, he remained aloof. He took +the occasion to have a look at the panels, which he had not before seen, +the tapestries, which were not tapestries, but paintings on rep. He +remembered--the Fountain of Love, not Biblical. + +The fountain, surely enough, spouted from a marble dolphin squeezed in +the chubby arms of a marble Love, and was four times repeated, at +different hours of the day and seasons of the year. In spring, at dawn, +a maiden filled her cup at it. At noon, in summer, the same maiden and a +youth drank from it with cheeks close together. In autumn, at sunset, +the maiden, sadder of countenance, stared at the fountain, visibly +wrapped in memories. In winter the fountain stood solitary and frozen, +Cupid had a hood of snow, the purplish twilight landscape was drowned in +melancholy. + +Gerald's mind made an excursion from the things before him to the studio +where those facile works of art had been produced. The place was +imaginary, and the artist not altogether clear, but the features of the +second figure which he saw, the visitor at the studio, were well-known +to him, and the sentiments of the artist receiving the order to treat a +subject in four large panels for a rich _forestiera_ not difficult +to estimate. + + * * * * * + +The ball had been raging, if one may so express it, for several hours, +the feast was at its height, when Aurora, confused with the richness and +multiplicity of her impressions, and aware of a happy fatigue, withdrew +from her guests to be for a few minutes just a quiet looker-on. She +chose as her retreat a spot at the curve of the stairs, where she felt +herself in the midst of everything and yet isolated. Her back was toward +the persons going up and down; she leaned on the sloping balustrade, and +breathed and rested and hoped no one would notice her for a little +while, all being delightfully engaged. + +She could see a little way into the ball-room, where certain younger +couples, mad for dancing, were making the most of the time when the +floor was relatively empty, the supper-room being proportionately full. +Supper over, the cotillion would begin. She could see Leslie, in +Nile-green crape, eating an ice out in the hall with that American boy, +the singer, whose conceit, by his looks, had not yet been made to +totter. She could hear the merry sound of spoons and glasses, and knew +what good things were being consumed. All the house was involved in +festivity, and resounding with it. In the upstairs sitting-room were +card-tables. In the improvised conservatory opposite one large dim +lantern glowed softly amid palms and flowers. To Aurora every goose +present that evening was a swan. There were frumpy dresses more than a +few,--there always are,--and there was the usual proportion of plain +girls and uninteresting men, but she did not see those. She saw a crowd +more brilliant and beautiful and fit to be loved than had ever before +been assembled beneath one roof. Her heart felt very large, very soft, +very light. + +All evening it had seemed to her rather as if she walked in a dream. +More than ever now, as she stopped to take account of all the +wonderfulness surrounding her, it felt to her like a dream; so that she +said to herself, "This is I, Nell--is it possible? Is it possible that +this is I--Nell?" + +And no doubt because she had been too excitedly happy and was tired, and +the time had come for some degree of reaction, her joy fell, withered +like a child's collapsing pink balloon, when, contrasting the present +with the past for the sake of seeing the things before her as more +rarely full of wonder and charm, she saw those other things. Memories +she did not willingly call up rose of themselves, and forced her to give +them her attention in the midst of that scene of flowers, light, music. +The brightness, the flavor, went out of these as if under an unkind +magic. + +"It's a wonder," she thought, "that I can ever be as happy as I am. I do +wonder at myself how I can do it to rejoice." + +But the next minute she was smiling again, sweetly, heart-wholly, +forgetfully. She had caught sight of Gerald looking at her as if about +to approach. + +"Who are you going to dance the cotillion with?" she asked gaily. + +"You, Mrs. Hawthorne, with your kind consent." + +"No, I couldn't do it. I only dance a little bit, just what Estelle has +taught me since we've been here. I don't keep step very well; I walk all +over my partner's feet. Besides, it wouldn't do, because I've already +refused to dance with Mr. Landini." + +"Sit it out with me, then, I implore you, if you positively do not wish +to dance." + +"Oh, but you must dance! I want you to. I want to behold you all stuck +over with favors." + +"It's true that I must have a few favors for Lily; but couldn't a good +fairy arrange it, and then we let the others heat themselves while we +keep cool and rest? I feared a moment ago that you were feeling tired, +Mrs. Hawthorne." + +"Look!" she whispered, interrupting him. + +He imperceptibly turned in the direction of her stolen glance. Two +figures were ascending the opposite flight of stairs, looking at each +other while they inaudibly talked: Brenda, in filmy white diversified by +a thread of silver; Manlio, carrying over his arm, and in his absorption +letting trail a little, a white scarf beautiful with silver +embroideries; in his hand a white pearl fan. Brenda's face was angelic, +nothing less. When the young and rose-lipped cherubim are full of +celestial sensations and adoring, eternal thoughts, they must look as +Brenda did at that moment. Manlio's head was so turned that his +night-black hair alone was presented to our friends. Slowly the pair +mounted and was lost to sight. + +Neither Gerald nor Mrs. Hawthorne made any comment. Gerald, after a +silence, spoke of Lily's increasing resemblance to her sister. Mrs. +Hawthorne was reminded that they must go to select some favors for Lily, +and led the way. + +They sat together through the cotillion, and Gerald, because he had seen +the shadow of sadness on Mrs. Hawthorne's face, tried more than usual to +be a sympathetic companion, easy to talk to, easy to get on with. He was +always quick to see such things. + +No trace of it remained. Her dimples were in full play, but he found it +according to his humor to continue uncritical, inexpressively tender, +toward this big, bonny child who never curbed the expression of a +complete kindness toward himself. + +More interesting to them than any other dancers were naturally Brenda +and Manlio, partners for the cotillion. Certainly the plot for giving +those two a few beautiful last hours together was proving a success. +Brenda was calmly, collectedly luminous; Manlio, uplifted to the point +of not quite knowing what he did. Radiant and desperate, he looked to +Gerald, who found his state explained by the facts as he knew them. + +"Poor things! Poor dears!" he thought, with the cold to-morrow in view, +yet retained his conviction of having done the unhappy lovers on the +whole a good turn. + +He had been glad to find the Fosses sharing his point of view that to +forbid Giglioli a sight of Brenda before the long parting would have +been unnecessarily cruel. Mrs. Hawthorne, it seemed to him, had lost +sight of what was to follow. She was exclusively delighted with their +joy of the evening, she gave no thought to their misery next day. It was +amazing to him, the extent to which she had forgotten. + +So he said aloud, "Poor things! Poor dears!" and discovered that it was +not forgetfulness exactly in Mrs. Hawthorne, but that general optimism +which insists on believing in a loophole of possibility through which +things can slip and somehow turn out right after all. + + * * * * * + +The party was over. The musicians had laid their instruments in +coffin-like black boxes and were getting into their overcoats. The +candles were burned to the end, the flowers looked tired, the place all +at once amazingly empty. The last half dozen people were standing and +laughing with Mrs. Hawthorne and Miss Madison around Percy Lavin while +he told a final good story when one of the guests who had departed some +time before returned. + +Mrs. Hawthorne caught sight of the figure in closed coat, tall hat, and +white silk muffler as soon as it entered the house, for the group of +laughers stood near the ball-room door, and this was only separated from +the inner house door by the wide hall. Without waiting for the end of +the comic story Mrs. Hawthorne hurried to the guest, whose reason for +returning she wished to know, though it so easily might have been only +his forgotten cane. + +That it was nothing of the kind she at once perceived. He looked upset. + +"May I speak with you a moment?" he asked at once. + +They stepped into the nearest room, still brightly lighted, but +deserted. + +"What's the matter?" she inquired, prepared by his face for news of +trouble. + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, we've done it!" said Gerald. "Giglioli tells me that +he's giving up the army, and Brenda has promised to marry him!" He was +on the verge of laughing hysterically. + +"Oh!" Mrs. Hawthorne paused to watch him, and wonder why they should not +without further to-do rejoice and triumph. "Well? What's wrong with +that?" + +"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, it's deadly!" he exclaimed with conviction. "If it +were a simple solution, why shouldn't it have been suggested before?" + +"It did suggest itself to me, in the quiet of my inside, you know." + +"But you, dear lady, can't be supposed to understand. Oh, it's either +too, too beautiful, or else too, too bad! And in this dear world of ours +the probability is that it's too bad. He was taken off his feet by his +emotion; he offered her what he will feel later he had no right to +offer--a good deal more than his life. But it shows, doesn't it, that he +does immensely love her? To throw into the balance everything--his +career, his family, his country--and offer them up! To cut his throat +for a kiss." + +"You're quite right; I can't understand," she hurried in. "What makes +you say 'cut his throat'? Couldn't he go into some other business just +as well as the army?" + +"All in the world he's fitted for is the army. Do you see that beautiful +fellow going to America, for instance, and earning a living as a teacher +of Italian, or as the representative of some tobacco interest? There is +no way of earning a proper living over here, you know. Oh, I'm afraid he +will feel, when he wakes up, like a deserter toward his country and an +ingrate toward his family and even toward Brenda like a misguider of her +youth." + +"But, look here, isn't there a chance that having each other will make +up to them for everything else?" + +"That of course was their sentiment at the moment of doing it. We did +the work so well, Mrs. Hawthorne, that their passion, raised to a +beautiful madness, would make them see anything as possible to be done +so long as it gave them to each other, obviated the horrible necessity +to part. Oh, it is touching, but dreadful! What were we dreaming? The +thing I so greatly fear is that when he comes to himself he will feel +dishonored, and Italians do not bear that easily, if at all." + +"Now, see here, don't you go imagining things and worry. And don't you +let that young man worry. He isn't leaving the army to-morrow or the day +after, is he?" + +"No. In the natural course of things, I suppose, it will take some +time." + +"Well, I don't at all relish, myself, the idea of seeing that beautiful +fellow, as you say, in every-day clothes--the sort they wear over +here--after seeing him all glorious in silver braid and stars. No. I +just can't bear to think of him giving them up. At the same time I don't +agree with you that he had better have given up his girl than them. And +I don't believe she will mind about his clothes one way or the other." + +"But there is his family, a thousand obligations--he spoke of them +himself." + +"Perhaps the Fosses, now this has happened and they see how much in +earnest the blessed creatures are, will sell some of their stock in +California gold-mines and afford the dowry you spoke of." + +"But Giglioli will blush at this forcing of their hand." + +"Now, see here, you keep that young man cool. He hasn't done anything to +be ashamed of. Brenda knows her own mind, and I don't believe her father +and mother would stand in the way of her marrying a tramp if he was +honest and her heart set on him. You tell that young man, in your own +way, to sit tight and put his trust in the Lord." + +Gerald's nervous laughter for a moment got the better of him. He covered +his face to check it, then, tearing away his hands, made the gesture of +releasing a pack of tugging hounds too strong for him to hold. Let them +be off and at the devil! + +"I didn't come here looking for comfort, dear Mrs. Hawthorne. Your +optimism is constitutional, you know, rather than enlightened. I merely +came to tell my accomplice the result of our meddling with destiny. +'Accomplice' is a manner of speaking. Don't suppose I forget that I +alone am to blame. Good night. I must go back to him where I left him, +with his head among the stars and clouds, and his feet perhaps beginning +to burn already with the heat of the nether fire. As you say, 'let's be +cheerful, let's hope for the best!' Ha!" + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +Brenda, reaching home after the ball, had asked her parents to hear a +thing she must tell them, and, very pale, informed them of the manner in +which she had taken the direction of her life into her own hands. At the +sight of their faces something had melted within her; she had trusted to +them at last all that was in her heart, so that father and mother, +greatly moved, felt as if they had found their child again rather than +lost her. At the almost incredible spectacle of tears in her father's +eyes Brenda had crept into his arms, against his breast, and lain there +so still, so silent, that it seemed unnatural. They perceived that she +had fainted. + +She left for America on the date that had been set, but a term was fixed +for her visit; April was to see her back in Florence. + +Her engagement was not announced. Mr. Foss, talking of it with his wife, +expressed liking and respect for their prospective son-in-law. His +confidence in the man had been increased by an action that seemed to him +quite in the American spirit. No doubt Giglioli would prove a good +business man, just as he had been a good soldier, the chief requisites +in all walks of life being a clear head, a heart in its place, and the +will to work. + +Mrs. Foss was secretly unhappy during these conversations. The model +wife had never before kept anything from her husband nor taken any step +without his sanction, and she was ashamed now of the duplicity she was +forced to practice. She strengthened herself by the assurance that in so +doing she was really sparing Jerome, saving him possible moments of +indecision, or conflict with himself. She was saving Brenda from the +same troubles, if not worse: such perhaps as seeing her brilliant hero +made into an unsuccessful struggle-for-lifer. She, the mother, would +swallow by her single self all the mental discomforts that might have +been the general portion, and, nobody being any the wiser, shoulder +hardily for their sakes the consciousness of an obligation which might +to the others have poisoned a gift, if not made it impossible to accept. +No member of her family, it seemed to Mrs. Foss, knew quite as well as +she how simple, native, and without self-conceit was Aurora Hawthorne's +generosity; so that taking from her was hardly different, in a sense, +from giving her something. You did not have to pay with gratitude. You +paid, first and last and all the time, with affection. + + * * * * * + +Gerald, who had seen as beset with difficulty the role of friend which +he might be called upon to play, heard with relief that Giglioli had +obtained leave of absence and gone to see his family. With Brenda over +the seas, and Manlio in the Abruzzi, the subject of their attachment and +future could fall a little into the background, crowded out by the +nearer things. + +The fact became of some consequence to Gerald that in his relation to +Mrs. Hawthorne he was so largely a taker. He did not count as any return +for her hospitalities the time he gave to sight-seeing with her and her +friend; he was modest with regard to his own contributions. + +He had in truth not desired to fall into Mrs. Hawthorne's debt. He would +have liked best to keep away from her; but fate, likewise character, set +snares for him. After he had stayed away for a certain length of time, +the thought would rise to trouble him, "She will feel hurt," and all +against the voice of good sense, such a reason as that had power with +Gerald. He would then call, and her welcome would be so kind, her +heartiness so warming, that he would stay to dinner, and promise to go +somewhere with them on the following day, after which he would dine with +them again. + +So now the gentlemanly wish defined itself in him to show by some token +that he did not take favors all as a matter of course. + +He would have liked to make her an offering a little exquisite, a little +rare, which she might recognize as possessing these points and +accordingly prize. To bestow anything concrete would have been folly. A +few possessions he had which he would have thought worthy of the +acceptance of queens: a tear phial of true Roman glass, a Japanese print +or two, a few coins that were old already when Christ was young. And he +would have parted with any one of these treasures to Mrs. Hawthorne, +though not wholly without a pang: first, because he liked her, and then +because he had eaten as it seemed to him a good deal of her bread and +syrup. But she would not have cared for these things; while bereaving +himself, he would have enriched her not at all. + +The duty of doing something for Mrs. Hawthorne's pleasure was felt even +by Charlie Hunt, who took her to a concert. When Gerald heard of it, he +searched more persistently and, fate aiding, found something which might +give the lady amusement, he thought, and would certainly afford an +opportunity that would hardly have come her way without his good +offices. + +The morning mail brought him a note relating to his project; he did not +wait for afternoon to communicate its contents. + +It was eleven when he rang at Mrs. Hawthorne's door. He had hardly +finished asking the servant whether the signora were at home when he +heard her voice upstairs, singing behind closed doors. + +She had said so many times, when he went through the formality of having +himself announced and waiting for permission to present himself, "Why +didn't you come right up?" that this morning he said to the servant, "It +imports not to advise her. I shall mount." Did the servant look faintly +ironical, or did Gerald mistakenly imagine it? + +The tune she sang sounded familiar. It must be a hymn, he decided, but +could not remember what hymn, or even be sure it was one he had heard +before, hymns are so much alike. He stopped at the sitting-room door and +waited, listening to the big, free, untrained velvet voice, true +throughout the low and medium registers, flat on the upper notes, the +singer having carelessly pitched her hymn too high. He could hear the +lines now, given with a swing that made them curl over at the ends, and +with a punch on certain of the syllables, irrespective of their meaning: + + "Feed me _with_--the heavenly manna + In this _barr_--en wilder_ness_; + Be my _shield_, my sword, my banner, + Be the Lord--my righteous_ness_!" + +When she came to the words, + + "Death of death and hell's destruction," + +a bang and rattling ensued, as if some one were taking a practical hand +in that work. The heavenly ferryman was thereupon besought with vigor to +land her safe on Canaan's side, and the singing ceased. + +Gerald stood waiting, if perchance there might be another verse, and +wondered, while waiting, at the sounds he heard in the room, easy to +recognize, but difficult to explain. When it seemed certain that the +music was at an end, he, after hesitating for some minutes longer, +gently tapped. + +"Oh, come in!" was shouted from inside. "_Entrez_, will you? +_Avanti!_" + +He opened the door a little way, discreetly, and put in his head, ready +to draw it back at once should he see his morning call as befalling +inopportunely. + +Aurora was so far from expecting him that for a second or two she +actually did not recognize him, and waited to understand what was wanted +of her. Her head was tied in a white cloth, her sleeves were turned +back, she had on an apron, and she held a broom. The furniture was +pushed together out of the corners, some of it covered with sheets; the +windows were open. No mistake possible. Aurora was sweeping. + +A burst of laughter rang; the broom-handle knocked on the floor. + +"Yes, I'm sweeping," she cried. "Come right in! You find me practising +one of my accomplishments. I can't play the piano, I can't speak +languages, I can't paint bunches of flowers on black velvet; but I can +sweep, I can cook, I can wash dishes--or babies, one just as well as the +other, and I can nurse the sick." + +"I am afraid I have come at an inconvenient moment." + +"Not at all. I'm glad to see you. I was most through, anyhow." + +She had pulled the cloth off her head, and was patting her hair before +the glass. She turned down her cuffs, untied her apron, and came to +shake hands, smiling as usual. + +"You caught me," she said. "When I feel a certain way, I've got to work +off steam, and there's nothing that does it like sweeping." + +"I beg of you--I beg of you to let me close those windows for you!" + +"All right. I'm awfully hot, but I guess the room's cold. We can have a +fire in a minute. Everything's there to make it." + +"I beg you will not trouble! I shall only remain a moment and leave you +to finish." + +"No, now, no; don't go and leave me. I was only sweeping to be doing +something. To clean the room wasn't my real object. I took their work +from Zaira and Vitale, who are the ones to do it usually, in a way +that's new to me, with damp sawdust. It's nearly finished, anyhow. All +I've got to do is fold the sheets and push things back into their +places." + +"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, please, please, allow me--" + +He tried to help her, waking to the fact that she was as strong as he, +if not stronger. + +The room in a minute looked as usual, and she knelt in front of the +hearth, piling up a kindling of pine-cones and little fagots, on which +she laid a picturesque old root of olive-wood. + +"You seem to be alone," he remarked. + +"Yes; Estelle's gone out." + +He was not sorry to hear it. Miss Madison, whom he entirely liked, +affected him curiously, or, to express the matter more exactly, in a +curious degree failed to affect him at all. Her personality did not bite +on his consciousness. Unless some chance left them on each other's +hands, he had difficulty in remembering her presence. It was not that +she was colorless; not by any means. She obviously had character, +brightness, individuality, even charm; but so far as he was concerned +she might have had none of these. Particularly when her big friend was +by Gerald ceased to see her. He recognized the danger of her negative +effect on him, and often made a point of devoting to her a special +amount of attention, being toward her of an unnatural amiability, trying +thus to keep her ignorant of the extent to which she did not exist for +him. Now he suddenly remembered that from the choice little treat +provided for Mrs. Hawthorne Miss Madison had been left out--forgotten. +He was dismayed. Then a pleasant side to the affair revealed itself by a +dim gleam. He was mortified by his forgetfulness, but the ladies were +after all not Siamese twins. + +"You must wonder what brought me at this unusual time of day," he said. + +"Any time's good that brings you. But what in particular was it?" + +"I wanted to ask you to keep free next Saturday afternoon and, if you +will be so good, spend it in part with me. I should like to take you to +Mrs. Grangeon's." + +"Mrs. Grangeon's...?" + +"Don't you remember? Antonia! It is Antonia's real name. On the first +evening of our acquaintance you had a good deal to say about her. If I +remember rightly, you expressed then a desire to meet her--see her +face." + +"Yes, yes. Antonia, of course." + +"She is a figure of importance here in Florence. She is in truth a very +gifted woman--in her way, great, and of wide reputation. And she is +clever, except in just some little spots. Geniuses, one has observed, +are seldom quite free from such spots. She has kept herself very much to +herself now for several years, so that an occasion to see her is grasped +eagerly. This affair of hers on Saturday is the first thing of the kind +in an age. Her villa at Bellosguardo is most interesting and full of +interesting things. And the view from her terrace is worthy of a +pilgrimage. You perceive, Mrs. Hawthorne, that I am doing what I can to +_faire valoir_ the scrap of entertainment I have to offer." + +"I think it perfectly lovely of you! Of course I'll go, and delighted +to. And see how it fits in--" She kindled to joyful enthusiasm. "We've +just bought a lot of her books. We realized we'd got to have some books +to make this room look finished off. We bought hers in paper covers and +have had them beautifully bound. Just look here." She went to take a +specimen from the bookcase, a white parchment volume with gold tooling, +a crimson fleur-de-lys painted on the front cover. "Aren't they lovely? +An idea! We'll take some of them up to her and ask her to write her name +in them. Wouldn't that be flattering?" + +"Ye ... es." + +"I've been trying to read some of it over since these came home from the +binder's. My! Aren't those people of hers wonderful--where you'd think +the ladies never could have a stomache-ache nor the gentlemen a corn!" + +"I hope Miss Madison will not think I forgot her," he disingenuously +said, "when in replying to Mrs. Grangeon's invitation I begged +permission to bring you, and that she will do me the honor some day very +soon--" + +"Oh, Estelle won't mind!" + +The mention of Estelle seemed to change the color of Mrs. Hawthorne's +thoughts, casting a shadow over them. + +"Estelle and I had a spat this morning," she told him. + +"Oh!" + +"That's why I was sweeping and why she's gone for a walk by herself." + +"I'm so sorry!" was all he found to say. + +"It doesn't amount to anything," she cheered him. "We've had times of +quarreling all our lives, and we've known each other since we were +children. Her aunt and my grandmother had houses side by side in the +country; there was just a fence between our yards. That's how we first +came to be friends. All our lives we've had the way of sometimes saying +what the other doesn't like. And do you know what's always at the bottom +of it? That each one thinks she knows what would be most for the other's +good to do, and we get so mad because the other won't do what we ourself +think would be best for her! Just as some people abuse you because +you're a pig, we as likely as not abuse the other because she isn't a +pig. One of the biggest fights we ever had was because once late at +night, when she was dead tired, tired as a yellow dog, I wanted her to +sit still and let me pack for her, or, anyhow, let me help her pack. And +she said I was as tired as she,--as if that was possible!--and if I +didn't go to bed and get some rest myself and let her alone to get +through her packing as she pleased if it was daylight before she +finished she should have a fit. And from one thing to another we went on +getting madder and madder till we said things you would have thought +made it impossible for us ever to speak to each other again. But the +first thing next morning, when we opened our eyes, we just looked at +each other and began to laugh. Another time we fought like cats and dogs +because I wanted to give her something and she refused to take it." + +"I don't call those quarrels, Mrs. Hawthorne." + +"You would if you could hear us; you would have if you could have heard +us this morning. And it was only a little one. You see, two people +aren't best friends for nothing. It gives you a sort of freedom; you +aren't a bit afraid. And when you know it's only the other's good you +have at heart, it makes you awfully firm and fast-set in your point of +view. I don't mind telling you that I'm always the one in the wrong." + +"Are you?" + +"Of course I am. But I like to have my way, even if it's wrong. Hear me +talk! How that does sound! And I was brought up so strict! But it's so. +I want to do as I please. I want to have fun. It began this morning with +Hat saying I spent too much money." + +"Did she say that? How unreasonable, how far-fetched!" + +"'What's the good of having it,' I said, 'if I can't spend it?' + +"'You'd buy anything,' she said, 'that anybody wanted you to buy, if it +was a mangy stuffed monkey. It isn't generosity,' she said; 'it's just +weakness.' + +"'Oh, suck an orange!' I said, 'Chew gum! It's anything you choose to +call it. But when a thing takes my fancy, I'm going right on to buy it. +And if it enables a greasy little Italian to buy himself and his +children more garlic,' I said, 'that's not going to stop me,' I said. I +don't mind showing you"--she dropped her selections from the morning's +dialogue--"the thing I bought which started our little discussion. The +artist who made it brought it himself to show me." + +She went to take the object referred to from her desk, and held it +before him, examining it at the same time as he did. + +"Do you see what it is? Can you tell at once?" + +"H-m, I'm not sure. Is it intended for a portrait of Queen Margherita?" + +"Right you are! Of course that's what it is. It's a picture of the +queen, done by hand with pen and ink; but that's not all. If you should +take a magnifying glass, you would see that every line is a line of +writing--fine, fine pen-writing, the very finest possible, and if you +begin reading at this pearl of her crown, and just follow through all +the quirligiggles and everything to the end, you will have read the +whole history of Italy in a condensed form! Isn't it wonderful? Don't +you think it extraordinary, a real curiosity? Don't you think I was +right to buy it?" + +"My opinion on that point, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, would rather depend on +what you paid for it." + +"Oh, would it?" She lost impetus, and gave a moment to reflection. +"Well, I shall never know, then, for I'm not going to tell you. One's +enough blaming me for extravagance." + +"My dear Mrs. Hawthorne, pray don't suppose me bold enough to--" + +"Oh, you're bold enough, my friend. But while I like my friends to speak +their minds, I've had just enough of it for one day, d' you see? I've +had enough, in fact, to make me sort of homesick." + +She looked it, and not as far as could be from tears. The small vexation +of his failure to think her treasure worth anything she might have paid +for it, the intimation that he might join the camp of the enemy in +finding her extravagant, had acted apparently as a last straw. + +"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, I beg of you not to feel homesick!" he cried, +compunctious and really eager. "It's such a poor compliment to Florence +and to us, you know, us Florentines, who owe you so much for bringing +among us this winter your splendid laughter and good spirits and the +dimples which it does us so much good to see." + +"No," she said ruefully, "you can't rub me the right way till I'm +contented here as I was yesterday. Florence is all right, and the +Florentines are mighty polite; but--" She looked at the fire a moment, +while he tried, and failed, to find something effectively soothing to +say. "In the State of Massachusetts there's a sort of spit running into +the sea, and on a sand hill of this there's a little shingled house that +never had a drop of paint outside of it nor of plumbing inside; but +there's an old well at the back, deep as they dig them, with, on the +hottest day, ice-water at the bottom. The yard is pretty well scratched +up by the hens, but there are a few things in it you can't kill +out--some lilacs and some tiger-lilies and a darling, ragged, straggling +old strawberry-bush. Outside the fence, hosts of Bouncing Bets--you know +what they are, don't you? The front door has some nice neat blinds, +always closed, like those of the best room, except for weddings and +funerals; but the back door is open, and when you sit on the step you +can look off down an old slope of apple-orchard and over across it at +the neighbors' roofs and chimneys. And there, Geraldino, is where +Auroretta would like to be." + +He had the impulse to reach out and touch the ends of his fingers to her +hand, fondly, as one might do to a child, but he prudently refrained. +His eyes, however, dwelled on her with a smile that conveyed sympathy. +He said, after her, amusedly: + +"Auroretta!" + +She brightened. + +"After I've been bad," she said, "I always am blue." + + * * * * * + +But within the hour he had come near quarreling with her, he also, and +on more than one score. + +It began with his making a pleasant remark upon her voice, which seemed +to him worth cultivating. She brushed aside the idea of devoting study +to the art of singing. + +"But," she said, "Italo has brought me some songs. He plays them over +and shows me how to sing them. We have lots of fun." To give him an +example, she broke forth, adapting her peculiarly American pronunciation +to Ceccherelli's peculiarly Italian intonations, "'_Non so resistere, +sei troppo bella!_'" + +Gerald winced and darkened. + +"Then there's this one," she went on, "'_Mia piccirella, deh, vieni +allo mare!_' Do you want to hear me sing it like Miss Felixson, +together with her dog, which always bursts out howling before she's +done? I've heard them three times, and can do the couple of them to a +T." + +"Please don't!" he hurriedly requested. "I hope," he added doubtfully, +"that you won't do it to amuse any of your other friends, either." As +she did not quickly assure him that she neither had done, nor ever would +dream of doing, such a low thing, he went on, with the liberty of speech +that amazingly prevailed between them: "Extraordinary as it seems, you +would be perfectly capable of it. And it would be a grave mistake." + +"I've done it for Italo when he was playing my accompaniment. For nobody +else." + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, if that little man has become your singing-master, will +you not intrust me with the honorable charge of likewise teaching you +something? No, not painting. I should like to drill you in the +pronunciation of that little man's name. It is Ceccherelli. +Cec-che-rel-li. _Cec-che-rel-li._" + +She shook her head. + +"No use. I've got accustomed to the other now." + +He felt a spark dropped among the recesses where his inflammable temper +was kept. + +"Before you know it the fellow will be calling you Aurora!" he said, +repressing the outburst of his wrath at this possibility. + +"He does, my friend," she answered him quietly. "He can't say Hawthorne. +Do you hear him saying Hawthorne? He calls me Signora Aurora." + +"Then why not call him Signor Italo?" + +"At this time of day? It would be too formal. He would wonder what he'd +done to offend me." + +Gerald was reminded that since Christmas Ceccherelli had been wearing, +instead of his silver turnip, a fine gold watch, her overt gift and his +frank boast, which he conspicuously extracted from its chamois-skin case +every time he needed to know the hour. + +"Mrs. Hawthorne," said Gerald, "you have repeatedly said that you have +what you call lots of fun with Ceccherelli. Would you mind giving me an +idea of what the fun consists in? I wish to have light--that I may do +the man justice. Left to myself, I should judge him to be the dullest, +commonest, cheapest of inexpressibly vulgar, insignificant, pretentious, +ugly, and probably dishonest, little men." The adjectives came rolling +out irrepressibly. + +"Perhaps he is," Aurora said serenely; "but haven't you noticed, +Stickly-prickly, that about some things you and I don't feel alike? +Italo plays the piano in a way that perfectly delights me, he's +good-hearted, and he makes me laugh. Isn't that enough?" + +"In short, you like him. You like so many people, Mrs. Hawthorne, and of +such various kinds, that though one is bound to be glad to be among your +friends, one needn't--need one?--feel exactly flattered." + +She seemed to consider this, but instead of taking it up, went on with +the subject of Italo. + +"He entertains me. He knows all about everybody in Florence and tells +me." + +"He gossips, you mean." + +Again she considered a moment before going on. + +"Funny, when I don't know the people, or just know them by sight, and +they and the life are all so foreign and apart from me, gossip about +them doesn't seem the same as gossip at home. It's more like Antonia's +novels, condensed and told in the queerest English! It was some time +before I could make out what he meant when he said two gentlemen had +fought a duel because one of them had found the other nasconding in his +garden-house. The one thus found obstinated himself, says Italo, to +maintain that he had come to make a copy of the architectural design +over the door. But as he didn't seem to have any pencil--" + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, how can you be amused by such disgusting stuff?" + +She gazed at him inquiringly, with very blue eyes and a look of +innocence, real or put on, then laughed. + +"I am, just. I can't tell you the how of it. Do you know Italo's sister +Clotilde?" + +"I have not that advantage, no." + +"You soon will have, if you care for it, for she's coming to live with +us." + +He stared. + +"Yes, she's coming to keep house. She speaks English quite well, because +she's had so much to do with English and Americans, being a teacher of +Italian and French. It began with Italo wanting us to take lessons of +her. But, bless you, I don't want to study! I can pick up all I need +without. We said, however, 'Bring her to see us.' And he did. She's real +nice." + +"Does she resemble her brother?" + +"In some ways. I've an idea, though, that you'd like her better than you +seem to do him. I believe we shall be very well satisfied with her, and +shall save money. Since we seem to have got on to the subject of money +to-day: Luigi, the butler, who has everything under him now, Estelle +says is a caution to snakes, the way he robs us. Now, we're easy-going +and, I dare say, fools; but not darn, darn fools. It's a mistake to +think we wouldn't see a thing big's a mountain, and that you could cheat +us the way that handsome, fine-mannered, dignified villain Loo-ee-gy +thinks he can. So we're going to put in his place a nice woman who is, +in part, our friend, and will care to see that we're dealt fairly with. +Clotilde doesn't seem to mind giving up her lessons to come and be a +sort of elegant housekeeper for us." + +"I understand." + +"Charlie Hunt is disgusted about it, because when we complained of Luigi +before him, he said he would find us exactly the right person to take +his place. But, you see, we didn't wait. I don't see that we were bound +to. What do you think?" + +"It is a case, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, where I must not allow myself to say +what I think." + +"Personally, I must say I was rather glad to have Clotilde step in as +she did, because I don't mind telling you--you won't tell anybody +else?--I find just the least little bit of a disposition in that young +man Charlie to run things in this house. D'you know what I mean? I +suppose it's the way he's made. He has been awfully kind, and helped a +lot in all sorts of ways, and I like him ever so much; but I was glad to +check him just a little, and put who I pleased over my own servants, and +then go on just as good friends with him as ever." + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, why don't you make Mrs. Foss your adviser in all such +matters? She is so kind always and of such good counsel. It would be so +much the safest thing." + +"Of course; but it was she who found Luigi for us, you see. She can't +always know. As far as Charlie Hunt is concerned, I don't want you to +think that we think any less of him than before. He's good and kind as +can be, and does ever so many nice things for us. We were at his +apartment the other day, where he had a tea-party expressly for us, with +his cousins there, and Mr. Landini and two or three others. And then +when he heard me say I like dogs he promised to give me a dog, one of +those lovely clown dogs,--poodles,--with their hair cut in a fancy +pattern, when he can lay his hand on a real beauty." + +"Mrs. Hawthorne"--Gerald almost lifted himself off his seat with the +emphasis of his cry,--"Don't let him give you a dog!" + +She looked at him in amazement. + +"Why, what's wrong?" + +"Don't! don't! Can't you see that you must not let him give you a dog?" + +"No, I can't. Why on earth?" + +"After what you said a few minutes ago," he stammered, feeling blindly +for reasons, "which shows that you have something to complain of in his +conduct toward you, you ought not to allow him to give you a dog. A +dog--you don't understand, and I can't make you. It will be too awful!" + +"You surely are the queerest man I have ever known," she said sincerely. + +To which he did not reply. + +He restrained himself from blurting out that Charlie Hunt, for such and +such reasons, could never deserve the extreme privilege of giving her a +dog. Leslie had once casually spoken the true word about Charlie. +"Charlie has no real inside," she had said, and continued, nevertheless, +to like him well enough. He was young, handsome, in his way attractive. +Most people liked him to just that extent--well enough; few went beyond, +unless early in the acquaintance. He so systematically did what would be +most useful to himself that it was difficult to preserve illusions about +his powers of devotion or unselfishness. He had lived as one of the +family with his aunt and cousins till he found himself desiring an +increase of personal liberty; then an occasion presenting itself to make +a really good arrangement with an Italian family of decent middle class +with their best rooms to let, he had set up bachelor quarters, and +ceasing to be an inmate of his aunt's house, retained unusually little +sense of tie with it. + +"Charlie might be nicer about going to places with us," Francesca openly +grumbled, "seeing he's the nearest we've got to a brother." + +All this was formlessly in Gerald's mind--this and much more--when his +spirit groaned that Charlie should be giving Aurora a dog. + +Mrs. Hawthorne was looking at him, trying to make him out. She could +not. One thing, however, was plain, and it being so plain simplified +all. He felt actual pain because Charlie Hunt was going to give her a +dog. The wherefore it was vain to seek. But she had no desire to give +pain of any kind, even by way of teasing him, to this funnily sensitive +fellow whose shoulders looked so sharp under his coat. + +"All right," she said. "If he says anything more about it, I'll tell him +I've changed my mind and don't want a dog. Are you satisfied? And then +if you won't tell me what the objection is to my having one, I shall +have to sit down and try to guess." + +Gerald, upon obtaining so easily what he had wanted apparently to the +point of tragedy, looked sheepish, ashamed of himself. His thanks were +given in a slowly returning smile. + +"I shouldn't think it would be so difficult," he said. + +Antonia had been very friendly to Gerald at the period of their first +acquaintance. She had cared for his painting, specimens of which had +come to her notice through Amabel Van Zandt, and distinguished the at +that time very young artist to the extent of inviting him to her villa, +showing interest in his talent and future, making him talk. From one +year to the next, other things had taken up her mind to his exclusion. +He had continued, however, to pay his respects, if she were at home, at +least once in the season, and retained gratitude toward her, along with +the presumption that he could never be to her the same exactly as the +first-come outsider. He remembered At Homes of hers attended in the old +days, and saw every reason why Mrs. Hawthorne should enjoy one of these, +none why it should not enjoy her. On the contrary. Making full allowance +for the fact that he had grown accustomed to her manner and mode, Mrs. +Hawthorne had yet seemed to him lately of a circumspection not to be +surpassed. When alone with him and Estelle, she was one person; when in +company, she was another, not a little like Mrs. Foss, retaining enough +of her own irrepressible self to seem just acceptably original. Antonia, +the novelist, declared a fondness for people out of the ordinary, the +conventional. Gerald thought the American might interest her. But if she +did not, little depends, at a reception, upon the hostess being charmed +with individual guests; he still believed that Aurora would have a good +time--he meant to ensure her doing this. + +Aurora had, as she described it, dressed herself to kill, and was +looking, Estelle told her, perfectly stunning. She had on velvets and +furs, pearls and plumes. She had wished at one and the same time to make +Gerald Fane proud of her and do honor to Antonia's party. Concealed in +her muff was a white parchment volume--muffs were small in those days. A +similar volume had been stuffed into each of Gerald's overcoat pockets. + +Gerald, as has been said, remembered At Homes of Antonia's, and had in +mind an image of what he might expect to see. + +He perceived at once that to-day all was different. This was immensely +choice, the most so afforded by Florence. That he had been invited +showed Antonia's estimate of him still as a person of artistic +significance; also, he modestly decided, the difficulty one had to make +up an assemblage solely of notabilities. Her permission to bring a +friend showed flattering faith in his taste. + +Persons were there whom one but seldom saw anywhere; the persons whom +one saw everywhere were conspicuously absent. Among a majority of +English, there was a sprinkling of Italian nobility, mostly older +people. Antonia had lived for many years in Florence. There was a very +able historian, allied to the English through his wife; there was an old +General of the wars of liberation; there was a Church dignitary of +infinite elegance and high rank: all serious people who did not go to +teas, and whose coming to this one was a compliment to Antonia. The +exceptional woman's right to the like homage was established; her +celebration of Italy was by Italy, in the persons of such sons of hers +as got an inkling of their debt, gracefully acknowledged. + +Gerald, entering the large drawing-room with Aurora, at first wondered, +then understood. The interesting Princess Rostopchine, on a visit to +Florence, was present--woman of accomplishments in every +branch--painter, sculptress, musician, author; a beauty into the +bargain, and lady-in-waiting for many years to a queen. + +She was no longer in the freshness of youth; her beauty had been left a +little bony, a little fatigued and bloodless; her eyelids drooped over +the brilliant intelligence of her eyes. The poetry of her looks was +increased by her costume. In wise disdain of the fashion, she went robed +rather than dressed; her things clung and trailed and undulated; they +were gray as cobwebs, dim as pressed orchids. She was as fascinating as +at any time in her life--perhaps more so, because she cared to be. + +Antonia, who had made her acquaintance at Aix-les-bains, was under her +spell. The reception was given to honor her, rather than to enable +Antonia, as Gerald had at first supposed, to see her friends again after +several years of absence and neglect. + +A niece of Antonia's received, and invited guests to be refreshed with +tea, while Antonia and the Princess sat side by side, and now talked +together, now with others, who of themselves approached, or whom Antonia +invited to join them. The conversation was part of the time in French, +which Antonia spoke fluently, but for the greater part in English, which +the princess spoke well, as Russians speak every language. + +Gerald was watching for the favorable moment to present Aurora; they +therefore stood within earshot. While he talked to keep her diverted, he +was aware that his companion less than half listened to him, absorbed in +Antonia and the princess. + +A princess and a famous writer! Aurora had never set eyes on a princess +before, nor, to her knowledge, on an author. They hypnotized her, those +two. Their conversation was far beyond Leslie's, she did not understand +any of it, though every syllable reached her ear. The marked Englishness +of Antonia's speech caused an almost necessity in Aurora to say the +words after her, echoing their peculiarity. Her lips unconsciously +moved. + +Aurora's eyes were busy as well as her ears. Antonia was clad in a +tea-gown--Aurora thought it was a wrapper. The tea-gown had long lain in +a chest, while Antonia was on her travels, and the great woman's eyes, +fixed on more important things, had not perceived when it was taken out +for her wear to-day that it was crushed and rumpled. Aurora believed it +had been recovered from the ash-can, and her breast was filled with awe. +It was with unqualified and childlike admiration that she gazed at the +two women whose soaring superiority she unenviously felt. + +As it seemed unbefitting as yet to interrupt their conversation, Gerald +looked around him in search of acquaintances whom to present to Aurora +while waiting. + +Balm de Breze first met his eye--the vicomte was Antonia's landlord--but +Gerald discriminated against him. He next spied Hamilton Spencer and +Carlo Guerra, both genial fellows, left Aurora's side for an instant and +brought them up. + +Aurora called back her attention and gave it to them. A certain success +of smiles and bright eyes she was almost sure to have, with men. Gerald +went off to get her some tea, took it to her, and finding her in the +midst of a sufficiently lively time with her new acquaintances, returned +to Antonia's niece at the tea-table for a chat and cup of tea. While +hearing the news from this unassuming elderly girl, he could keep an eye +on Mrs. Hawthorne at a distance, and catch any facial signal for help. + +Aurora was drinking her tea, holding her cup like a real lady, with her +little finger delicately curled back. Aurora's figure stood out from +among those surrounding her like a thing of a different make, an earthen +jar among glass vases, a Swede among Japanese. + +Aurora was out of place, it could not be blinked; and that she was so +visible, in her able-bodied comeliness, her supremacy of dimples, her +extremely good corset, increased the offense. So did also the native +assurance of her eye--which had something at all times of a jovial +sea-captain, with his foot on his own deck. + +Gerald looked from her to Antonia, slightly uneasy. Antonia's face had +characteristics of a man's, but along with them indications above all +feminine. Power and caprice in the great woman went linked. He saw her +while listening to the princess turn her head toward the quarter of the +room tinctured by Aurora's unmodified presence, as if taking account of +the voice and accent of the stranger in her house. + +This seemed to him his opportunity, and excusing himself from Miss +Grangeon, he started toward Aurora. + +"There are more ways than one of skinning a cat!" came floating to him +in Aurora's deep-piled voice, borne on her frank laugh, as he +approached. + +He found her having a very good time, but ready to call an end to it and +go to be presented. + +"I'm awfully nervous!" she whispered to Gerald, but that was a manner of +speech. Aurora's nerves were author-proof. She meant that she was +impressed by the greatness of the moment. She picked up her three books +from the table near by, held them with her left arm so that her right +hand might be free to clasp Antonia's, and, smiling as a basket of +chips--thus did she later describe herself--advanced toward the crowning +honor of the day. + +Antonia saw her coming and narrowed her eyes the better to see. +Antonia's face, at no time in her life soft, was as much like granite at +this moment as it had the moment before been like old white soap; her +eyes, fixed on the approaching pair, turned stonily unseeing. + +Gerald bravely went through with the introduction, and tried to warm the +atmosphere with winged words. Aurora's hand was all ready to shake. + +Antonia's hand did not go forth to meet it, but Aurora, elate and +overflowing, was not put off by this. + +"I can never tell you"--she gushed, "how pleased I am to meet you--how +honored I feel. Nor can I ever tell you how perfectly wonderful I think +your books. Perfectly wonderful.... Perfectly wond ... Perf ... See what +I've brought. These three that I'm going to leave for you to write in, +if you'll be so very kind. It would increase their value for me I never +can tell you how much." + +"My dear Madam," said Antonia, "I never inscribe a book that I have not +myself presented. I am not acquainted with the phrase in which it is +done. The value of my autograph will be enormously increased hereafter +for collectors by the fact that when I receive requests for it I drop +them into the waste-basket. Yes, I merely keep the stamps." + +"Oh!" + +"Yes." + +"Oh!" more faintly. + +"Yes!" more firmly. + +Turning her back to Aurora, Antonia once more addressed Princess +Rostopchine. "Vera Sergeievna, you were saying...." + +The only sign Aurora gave of being flabbergasted was forgetting the +books she held. They slid with noise to the floor. As Gerald picked them +up, "Did I ever tell you"--she asked him chattily, and leisurely moved +on,--"about the time I stood on the sidewalk to see the procession go +by, in Boston, when we commemorated Bunker Hill?" And she went on with a +favorite reminiscence: how she had held on to her inch of standing-room, +in spite of a fat and puffing man, a gimlet-elbowed woman, and a +policeman. + + * * * * * + +When they were in her coupe, smartly bowling toward town, silence fell. +Gerald's brow was black, his eyes were steely. + +"Mrs. Hawthorne," he jerked out, "I am not going to express myself on +the experiences of this afternoon. Words could not do them justice, and +I am not cool enough to trust myself. But I wish to apologize to you +most humbly for my egregious, my imbecile mistake." + +"Don't you care, Geraldino! Don't you care one bit! Bless your dear +heart, I'm not touchy!" Aurora said cheerily, and, not resisting as he +had recently done the impulse to comfort his friend by a caressing +touch, gave his hand as tight a squeeze as her snug new glove permitted. +"Nasty old thing! What does it matter? But"--her eyes rounded at the +amazed recollection,--"that I should have lived, I--me--my size--to feel +like a fly-speck on the wall! It did beat everything! Yours truly, F. S. +W.! Fly Speck on the Wall!" + +She was lost for a moment in the consideration of herself reduced to a +negligible dot, and Gerald, too angry to talk, thought hydrophobia +thoughts in silence. In these he was disturbed by the sound of her +trying in a murmur to speak like Antonia, and hitting off the +Englishwoman's pronunciation rather successfully. + +"Deah Madam! I nevah, nevah inscrrribe a book.... I drap them into the +baaahsket. Yesss. I marely keep the stamps." + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +The house where Gerald lived was the same one he had lived in since the +days of Boston and Charlestown. His mother, coming to Florence with her +two children, a boy of ten, a girl of seven, had needed to look for a +modest corner in which to build their nest. The income of which she +found herself possessed after settling up her husband's affairs, even +when supplemented by the allowance made her by his family, so little +permitted of extravagance that she chose the topmost story of the house +in Borgo Pinti, with those long, long stairs that perhaps had +contributed to keep Gerald's legs thin. + +Its street door was narrow, its entrance-hall dark; the stone stairs +climbed from darkness into semi-darkness, reaching the daylight when +they likewise reached the Fanes' landing. But the old house was not +without dignity; all three loved it. + +As you entered the Fanes', there was another dark hall, very long, +running to right and left. One small window opposite, on an inner court, +was all that lighted it. This hall grew darker still, as well as +narrower, after turning a corner to the left; then it turned to the +right, and was lighter. At the end of it was a window from which, if you +bent out, you saw far below you a garden. + +The rooms, without being lofty and vaulted, like those on the ground and +first floors, were pleasantly high, and paved with brick tiles. From the +one large interior room a window-door opened on to a terrace in the +court--a deep brick terrace with a broad ledge on which stood a row of +flower-pots. When water was wanted, you opened a little door in the +kitchen wall and let your copper urn down, down, down into +mossy-smelling blackness; you heard a splash and gurgle, and after +proper exertions got it back brimming. + +The Italian-ness of it all captivated the mother, who had been drawn to +this dot on the map, where she was told one could live well at less +expense than in the United States, by the lure of the idea of Italy. She +was very humbly an artist. She had given drawing lessons to young ladies +in an elegant seminary, and, when approaching middle age, married the +father of one of these, a troubled, conscientious man whom the cares of +an entangled and disintegrating business kept awake at night. When his +need for feminine sympathy ceased, and administrators settled in their +summary way the questions that had furrowed his brow, his widow's wish +to start life anew far from the scene of her worries had led to the +balmy thought of Italy--Italy, where were all the wonders which had most +glamour for her fancy. + +She had loved it in an undiminished way to the end, had never really +desired to go home, though she spoke of it sometimes when the chill of +the stone floors and walls shook her fortitude, and the remembrance of +furnace heat, gas-light, hot water on tap, glowed rosy as a promise of +eternal summer. The children, however, were taught in their respective +schools that artificial heat is insalubrious; they had Italian ideas and +chilblains; not on account of any creature comfort that they missed +would Florence have been changed back for Charlestown. + +In her picturing of days far ahead Mrs. Fane certainly saw Lucile, an +accomplished young lady, receiving tributes of attention in the +drawing-rooms of home; and Gerald, a young man of parts, finding +recognition and fortune among his countrymen. To go home eventually was +among her cloudy plans. + +But Lucile died at sixteen, without adequate cause, one almost would +have said. She merely had not the ruggedness, the resistance, needed to +go on living among the rough winds of this world. The mother, a creature +of old-fashioned gentleness and profound affections, survived her by +only a few years. + +A business matter then obliged Gerald to go to America, and had he liked +the place, he might have taken up his abode there. It affected him like +vinegar dropped in a wound, like street din heard from a hospital bed. +He turned back, and the long stairs to his empty dwelling were dear and +sweet to him on the day of his return. + +This, then, had remained his home. His needs were simple, and he could +live without applying himself to uncongenial work, though the allowance +had been stopped, and the income, as Leslie had said, was incredibly +small. The good Giovanna, who had been his mother's servant, stayed on +with her _signorino_, and economized for him; the wages of an +Italian servant were in those days no extravagance. He had no pleasures +that cost money; he neither traveled nor went to fine restaurants. He +wore neat, old well-brushed clothes, went afoot, gave to the poor single +coppers. But he had liberty, worked when he pleased and as he pleased; +he was content to be poor, so long as his poverty did not reach the +point where it involves cutting a poor figure. Giovanna, prouder than +her master, disliked the thought of _far cattiva figura_ even more +than did he, and was careful in her household management to keep up a +certain style, never forgetting the sprig of parsley on the platter +beside the single _braciolina_. + +At one period he had contemplated a change in his mode of living, had +dreamed of entering the contest for laurels and gold, so as to afford a +more appropriate setting for the beauty of his charmer. The Charmer had +attained without need of him the setting she craved, and Gerald went on +climbing his long stairs, painting in his so personal and unpopular way, +and at night reading by light of a solitary lamp the choice and subtle +masterpieces of many literatures. + + * * * * * + +"My land! shall we _ever_ get to the top?" whispered Aurora to +Estelle as, one behind the other, sliding their hands along the wall, +they felt with their feet for the steps that led to Gerald's door. "He +told us they were long, and he warned us they were dark, but this!... I +wonder why they don't have a lamp going, or something." + +"Because there isn't any image of the Virgin," said Estelle, lightly. +"It's our just having come in from the sunshine makes it seem dark. It's +getting lighter. Cheer up! It's good for you." + +"It'll make me lose three pounds, I shouldn't wonder." + +They spoke in whispers, because when they had pulled the bell-knob and +the door had swung open, a voice from incalculable altitudes had shouted, +"_Chi e?_" They had answered, as instructed, "_Amici_," and now they +pictured somebody listening to their shuffling ascent. + +At the top, in fact, stood Giovanna, who regarded them with an eye the +color of strong black coffee and said, "_Riverisco_!" + +The small old woman had a thin, bronze Dantesque face, molded by a +thousand indignations--all directed against proper objects of +indignation--to a settled severity; a face of narrow concentrated +passions and perfect fidelity and a preference for few words. The +friendly smiles of Aurora and Estelle produced in her a relenting. +Courtesy here demanded a pleasant look, and Giovanna was always +courteous. She stood aside for Gerald, who came to the very door to +welcome these ladies. + +The guests were now assembled. One of them was staying with Gerald--Abbe +Johns, who had come for a few days from Leghorn, where he lived. The +others were Mrs. Foss and Miss Seymour. + +What had been in Mrs. Fane's time the drawing-room had since become also +a studio. The landlord had permitted his tenant to increase the light by +extending the windows across the street-side wall. Beyond that, there +were as few signs about of the art-trade as Gerald had affectations of +the artist. The model-stand supporting books and things appeared like a +low table; easel, canvases, portfolios, all the littering properties of +a painter, had been shoved for the occasion into the next room, a +spacious glory-hole which Giovanna did not permit to become dusty beyond +the decent. + +The result of removing, first, many of the things that made the room a +drawing-room, then, most of the things that made it a studio, left the +place rather bare. It was according to Gerald's taste: few things in it, +each having the merit of either beauty or interest, else the excuse of +utility. + +Mrs. Foss had waited for Aurora's arrival to make the tea. The feast was +very simple. Gerald offered what his mother had used to offer. Giovanna +cut the bread-and-butter as that genteel lady had taught her, and +continued to buy the plum-cake at the same confectioner's. + +Aurora had come in from the sunshine and cold with January roses in her +cheeks and exhilaration in her blood. At sight of her beloved Mrs. Foss +she laughed for joy. She rejoiced also to see Miss Seymour, who was one +of her "likes," and she was immensely interested to meet the abbe, whom +she knew to be Gerald's best friend, even as Estelle was hers. She loved +Gerald for having just these people to meet them at tea, the ones he +himself thought most of. She felt sweetly flattered at being made one of +a company so choicely wise and good. + +But the result was not exactly fortunate for the gaiety of the little +party, if Aurora's laugh had been counted upon to enliven it. Far from +shy though she was, she developed a disinclination to-day to speak. She +was impressed by the abbe, for whom her conversation did not seem to her +good enough. + +The young priest, a convert to Catholicism, was Gerald's age, and had it +not been for his collar, the cut of his coat, would have looked like a +not at all unusual Englishman with blue eyes, curly black hair, a touch +of warm color in his shaven cheeks. Unless you sat across the tea-table +from him and now and then, while he quietly and unassumingly talked, met +his eyes. + +Some persons said that he looked ascetic, some austere, some angelic. +Mrs. Foss, not finding the right adjective for his mixture of poise and +humanity, was content to call him charming. Gerald, who had known him +when they were Vin and Raldi to each other and equally far from entering +the Church, regarded him as simply the nicest fellow he knew. Aurora had +no definition for him, but did not feel disposed to ripple on as usual +in his hearing. Yet she would have liked to make friends with him, too. +She would have said to him some such thing as, "What are the thoughts +you have, which make you so calm, deep inside? But I know. We learned +them at our mother's knee, but in the fury of living, having fun, +getting on, we never revisit the chamber where they are kept. You live +in it." + +He was talking with Estelle like any other man whose conversation should +not contain the faintest element of gallantry, and Estelle was talking +to him with an ease that Aurora marveled at. Aurora marveled how Estelle +could know, or seem to know, a lot of things which she had never before +given sign of caring about. If the two of them were not conversing upon +the symbolism of religious art! Having finished his tea, the abbe went +to fetch a book from Gerald's shelves, which he knew as well as his own, +and Estelle was shown reproductions of carvings on old cathedrals. + +Mrs. Foss, who had been talking of the Carnival now beginning, telling +Aurora about corsi and coriandoli of the past as compared with the poor +remnants of these customs, and describing the still undiminished glories +of a veglione, perceiving finally that the usually merry lady was on her +best behavior to the point of almost complete taciturnity, from +necessity addressed herself more directly to Miss Seymour, who shared +the sofa with her; and from talking of _veglioni_ the two slid into +talking of Florentine affairs more personal. + +The task of entertaining Mrs. Hawthorne thus devolving upon Gerald, he +took it up in a way that flatteringly presupposed in her an interest in +general questions. His manner seemed to her very formal. She forgot +that, innocent as their relations were, he yet could not before people +speak to her with the lack of ceremony that in private made her feel +they were such good friends. But even aside from this cool and correct +manner, Gerald seemed to her different to-day--calmer, more serene, less +needing sympathy, as if something of his friend the abbe had rubbed off +on to him. + +As he was going on, in language that reminded her of a book, she +interrupted him. + +"Don't you want to show me your house?" + +"I was going to suggest it," he said at once. "There are several things +I should like to show you. Will you come?" + +She rose to follow, losing some of her constraint. + +"It's what we always do on the Cape. Any one comes for the first time, +we show them all over our house." + +When they were outside the drawing-room door, she felt more like +herself. + +"Oh, I'm so glad I can't tell you to see the place where you live!" she +expanded. + +They went down the long corridor, past a closed door which he +disappointingly did not open. + +"It's a dark room we use to store things," he explained. Neither did he +open the door at the end of the hall. "It's Vincent's room," he said. + +They turned into the darker, narrower corridor, bent again, and went +toward the little window high over somebody else's garden. He ushered +Mrs. Hawthorne into the kitchen, for here, near the ceiling, was the +door-bell, and on it the well-known coat of arms, crown and +cannon-balls, which testified to the age and aristocracy of the house. + +While he sought to interest her in this curiosity, Aurora was looking at +everything besides; for Giovanna was making preparations for dinner, and +Aurora's thoughts were busy with the fowl she saw run on a long spit and +waiting to be roasted before a bundle of sticks at the back of the sort +of masonry counter that served as kitchen stove. + +"They do have the queerest ways of doing things!" she murmured. + +He took her across the passage and into the dining-room. He wished to +show her an old china tea-set, quaintly embellished with noble palaces +and parks, that had been his great-grandmother's. There again she looked +but casually at the thing he accounted fit for her examination, and +carefully, if surreptitiously, at all the rest. + +Last he showed her into the great square interior room with the glass +door on to the terrace over the court, the room which had been his +mother's and was now his own, and where hung a portrait of his mother. +On this Aurora fixed attentive and serious eyes, and had no need to +feign feeling, for appropriate feelings welled in her heart. + +"How gentle she looks!" she said softly. "And how much you must miss +her!" + +She stood for some time really trying to make acquaintance with the +vanished woman through that faded pastel likeness of her in youth which +Gerald kept where it had hung in her day, the portrait of herself which +she womanishly preferred because, as she did not conceal, it flattered +her. + +"She looks like one of those people you would have just loved to lift +the burdens off and make everything smooth for," Aurora said; "and yet +she looks like one of those people who spend their whole lives trying to +make things smooth for others." + +"Yes," said Gerald to that artless description of the feminine woman his +mother had been, and stood beside his guest, looking pensively up at the +portrait. + +All at once, Aurora felt like crying. It had been increasing, the +oppression to her spirits, ever since she entered this house to which +she had come filled with gay anticipation and innocent curiosity. It had +struck her from the first moment as gloomy, and it was undoubtedly cold, +with its three sticks of wood ceremoniously smoking in the unaccustomed +chimney-place. Its esthetic bareness had affected her like the +meagerness of poverty. And now it seemed to her sad, horribly so, +haunted by the gentle ghosts of that mother and sister who had known and +touched all these things, sat in the chairs, looked through the windows, +and who conceivably came back in the twilight to flit over the +uncarpeted floor and peer in the dim mirrors to see how much the grave +had changed them. She shivered. Yes, cold and bare and sad seemed +Gerald's dwelling. And Gerald, whose very bearing was a dignified denial +that anything about himself or his circumstances could call for +compassion--Gerald, thin and without color, looked to her cold-pinched +and under-nourished. She had a sense of his long evenings alone, +drearily without fire, his solitary meals in that dining-room so +unsuggestive of good cheer; she thought of that single candle on the +night-table burning in this cold, large room where he went to bed in +that bed of iron, laying his head on that small hair pillow, to dream +bitter dreams of a fair girl's treachery. + +She wanted to turn to him protesting: + +"Oh, I can't stand it! What makes you do it?" + +His next words changed the current of her thoughts. + +"I have another portrait of my mother," he said; "one I painted, which I +will show you if you care to see it." + +She cheered up. + +"Do! do!" she urged heartily. "I'm crazy to see something you've +painted." + +"You won't care for my painting," he pronounced without hesitation; "but +the portrait gives a good idea of my mother, I think, when she was older +than this." + +They returned to the drawing-room, where their friends were in the same +way engaged as when they left them. One pair was looking at a large +illustrated book; the other two sat leaning toward each other talking in +undertones. + +"The bird which you see," the abbe was saying, "with the smaller birds +crowding around him, is a pelican. The pelican, you know, who opens his +breast to feed his young, is a symbol of the Church." + +"It's not true, though, that the pelican does that," Estelle was on the +point of saying with American freedom, "any more than that a scorpion +surrounded by fire commits suicide. I read it in a Sunday paper where a +lot of old superstitions were exploded." But she tactfully did nothing +of the sort. She appeared instructed and impressed. + +What Miss Seymour was saying to Mrs. Foss would have sounded a little +singular to any one overhearing. The two women had been friends for +years, but never come so near to each other as, it chanced, they did +that afternoon, when all fell so favorably for a heart to heart talk. + +"I feel as if I had lost a key!" said Miss Seymour, and looked like a +bewildered princess turned old by a wicked fairy's spell. "When I +possessed it I thought nothing of it. It opened all the doors, but I +didn't know what it was made them so easy to open. Only now, when it's +gone, I know the value of that little golden key." + +"I know," said Mrs. Foss, sympathetically. "There's no use in us women +pretending we don't mind! Those who really and truly don't must be great +philosophers or great fools, or else selfless to a degree that is rarer +even than philosophy...." + +Gerald and Aurora crossed the room unhailed and entered the room beyond, +where dusty canvases, many deep, stood face to the wall. + +He found the unframed painting of his mother and placed it on the easel. +The short winter day was waning, but near the window where the easel +stood there was still light enough to see by. + +Aurora looked a long time without saying anything; Gerald did not speak +either. After the length of time one allows for the examination of a +picture, he took away that one and put another in its place; and so on +until he had shown her a dozen. + +"I don't know what to say," she finally got out, as if from under a +crushing burden of difficulty to express herself. + +"Please don't try!" he begged quickly. "And please not to care a bit if +you don't like them." + +She let out her breath as at the easing of a strain. He heard it. + +"I won't be so offensive," he went on, "as to say that in not liking +them you merely add yourself to the majority, nor yet that my feelings +are in no wise hurt by your failure to like them. But I do wish you to +know that I think it a sin and a shame to get a person like you, who +can't pretend a bit, before a lot of beastly canvases inevitably +repugnant to your mood and temperament, and make you uncomfortable with +the feeling that compliments are expected." + +"All right, then; I won't tell any lies." She added in a sigh, "I did +want so much to like them!" + +And he would never know what shining bubble burst there. She had wanted +so much, as she said, to like them, and, as she did not say, to buy some +of them, a great many of them, and make him rich with her gold. + +He replied to her sigh: + +"You are very kind." + +After a moment spent gazing at the last painting placed on the easel, as +if she hoped tardily to discover some merit in it, she said: + +"I don't know a thing about painting, so nothing I could say about your +way of doing it could matter one way or the other. But I have eyes to +see the way things and people look. Tell me, now, honest Injun, do they +look that way to you--the way you paint them?" + +He laughed. + +"Mrs. Hawthorne, no! Emphatically, no. And emphatically yes. When I look +at them as you do, in the street, across the table, they look to me +probably just as they do to you; but when I sit down to paint them--yes, +they look to me as I have shown them looking in these portraits." + +"But they're so sad! So sad it's cruel!" she objected. + +"Oh, no," he objected to her objection; "it's not quite as bad as that." + +"They make me perfectly miserable." + +He whipped the canvas off the easel, saying dryly: + +"Don't think of them again!" + +It looked like impatience. With hands thrust in his pockets he took a +purposeless half-turn in the room, then came back to her side. + +"If you totally detest them, I am sorry," he said mildly. "I had wanted +to offer you one, a little, unobtrusive one to stick in some corner, a +token of the artist's regard." + +"Oh, do! do!" she grasped at his friendly tender. "Find a little +cheerful one, if you can. I shall love to have it." + +He selected a small panel of a single tall, palely expanding garden +poppy, more gray than violet, against a background of shade. Flower +though it was, it still affected one like the portrait of a lady wronged +and suffering. + +In the drawing-room to which they returned Giovanna had lighted a lamp. +The fire had properly caught and was burning more brightly; the place +looked rosy and warm, after the winter twilight filling the other room +and the chill that reigned there. + +Aurora returned to the tea-table; with a disengaged air she reached for +plum-cake. She ascertained with comfort that Mrs. Foss did not look sad +or Estelle ill used; that the abbe was as serene as ever and Miss +Seymour, after her talk with Mrs. Foss, rather serener than usual. +Gerald was far jollier than any of his portraits. To make sure that she +was no depressing object herself, she smiled the warmest, sunniest smile +she was capable of. + +"Do come and talk a little bit with me, before I have to go home!" she +unexpectedly called out to the abbe. + +When at the end of the long evening spent together smoking and talking +the two friends separated for the night, Gerald went to his room as did +Vincent to his. But Gerald had no more than pulled off his necktie when +he changed his mind, went back to the drawing-room, crossed the +tobacco-scented space where something seemed to linger of the warmth of +goodfellowship, and entered the farther room. + +A doubt had risen in his mind. He could not wait till morning to see his +work with a fresh eye, an eye as fresh as Mrs. Hawthorne's, and satisfy +himself as to whether he, so careful of truth, had unconsciously come to +exaggerating, falsifying his impressions, grown guilty of hollow +mannerisms. + +Whatever he had said, he had been stung by Mrs. Hawthorne's liking his +paintings so little. It was easy to console oneself remembering the poor +lady's ignorance of art. The truth might be that something was wrong +with the pictures, which suspicion had driven the artist to go and have +a dispassionate look at them in the frigid hour between twelve and one +of the night. If a person is on the way to becoming a morbid ass he +cannot find it out too soon. + +Gerald's dogma was that the first duty of a picture is to be beautiful. +His critics did not give sufficient attention to that aspect of his +work, he privately thought; they were put off by what they mistakenly +called its queerness, its mere difference from the academic, the +conventional. This was bitter, because he had always so loved beautiful +lines, beautiful tints, had insisted that the very texture, of his +painting should have the beauty of fine-grained skin. + +He was no conspicuous colorist, of course, he did not by temperament +revel in the glow of rich, bold, endlessly varied tints. It was a +limitation, which his work naturally reflected. This was marked in fact +by modesty and melancholy of color-scheme. But that did not interfere +with beauty, he maintained. He had been thrilled by the discovery in the +Siena gallery of an old master with the same predilections as he, an +antipathy apparently to the vivid, crying, self-assertive colors, which +he accordingly with admirable simplicity left out, and interpreted the +world all in blues and greens, grays and violets, whites of many degrees +and tones and meanings. + +"They're so sad that it's cruel!" Mrs. Hawthorne had voiced the +instinctive objection of her earth-loving, life-praising disposition to +the view he took of people and things. But what was there to do about +it? When he looked at a sitter to render his personality sincerely, that +was the way he saw him. If he had been limited to rendering a human +being in the single aspect he wore while walking from the drawing-room +to the dinner-table with a lady on his arm and a rich meal in prospect, +he would have given up painting, it interested him so little. Most of +the portrait-painters in vogue did thus paint the surface and nothing +besides. Gerald had no envy of their large fees at the price of such +boredom as he would have suffered in their place. + +He held a canvas to the light of his candle. It was an old one of +Amabel. She had not been sitting for him, he had made this sketch from a +distance while she worked on her side. It was easy to see that the room +was cold, that the woman with the pinched aristocratic nose, the little +shawl over her shoulders, was poor, determined and anxious. If Mrs. Foss +had said, "But Amabel never was as hollow-cheeked as that, nor ever +looked pathetic in the least," Gerald could only have answered, "I swear +to you this is how she looked to me on that day." + +He studied the portrait of his mother, one of his earliest, bad in a +way, but excellent in the matter of likeness. His mother no more than +Amabel had been a pathetic person, Mrs. Foss would certainly have said. +To which Gerald might have answered that she was not so during an +afternoon call; but that the most characteristic thing about that gentle +and delicate woman had been the fact of her living so much in the life +of others and being open to endless sorrows through them. The dim +affectionate eyes, the deprecating half-smile of his mother, engaged +sympathy for the unfair plight. + +Last, he took up a portrait of Violet. She had been in the perfection of +young beauty; she had had no capacity for deep feeling, really,--why did +an aroma of sadness escape from that dainty colored shadow of her? Why, +but because of the artist's yearning sense that beauty is transitory, +and the loveliest girl subject to destiny, and the future full of +pitfalls for the fragility of all flesh! + +"Imagine a barnyard fowl, a common white hen pecking among the gravel," +Gerald once illustrated his view-point, "and imagine hovering over it a +hawk, which it hasn't seen. Does it make no difference in your sense of +the hen that _you_ see the hawk?" + +"It comes to this," Leslie on a certain occasion summed up Gerald's +case: "Gerald isn't satisfied to paint the thing that's before him. All +he cares to paint is the soul of things, and what you finally see +expressed on the canvas is his pity for everything that has the +misfortune to be born into an unsatisfactory world. Gerald can't see a +thing as being common: the moment he narrows his eyes to look for +purposes of art, it becomes to him exceptional, unique. I asked him +once, as a joke, to paint me a simple, large, bright orange squash, in a +field. And he did. A masterpiece. One can't say that the squash isn't +large, orange, and true to life. But what a squash! It has an amount of +personal distinction, an air of rarity and remoteness, that would make +you think twice, nay, three times, before making such a precious product +of the sacred earth into pies!" + +When he was chilled through and his hands were numb, Gerald remembered +to pick up his candle and go to bed. No change of opinion, it is +needless to say, had resulted from his midnight inquiry. + +A point of natural spite made him say that he did not ask people to like +his pictures. All he asked was permission to go on painting as he +pleased, obscure and independent, the sincere apostle of a peculiar +creed, working out his problems with conscience and fidelity. If fate +might send him critics whose opinion he valued he would be properly +grateful. He felt the need of criticism and companionship, in his work, +but had no regard for his fellow artists in Florence. His thoughts +turned sometimes with envy toward Paris, where modern art had some +vitality, and artist life the advantage of stimulating associations. +There was a good deal of talk at the time, and some derision, of a new +phase called impressionism, whose chief seat was Paris. + +As for the opinion of such a person as Mrs. Hawthorne, it obviously had +no value. But while the artist could brush her aside in the character of +critic, it remained a little galling to the man to know he figured in +her mind as a painter who did not know how to paint. + +"Can't paint for sour apples!" he seemed to hear her reporting to +Estelle, and got in his mouth the taste of the apples. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +When Gerald asked Mrs. Hawthorne to sit for him, she stared in his face +without a word. + +"Don't be afraid," he hastened to reassure her; "I engage to paint a +portrait you will like." + +She felt herself blush for the dismay she had not been able to conceal, +and to hide this embarrassment she lifted to her face--not the +handkerchief or the bouquet with which beauty is wont to cover the +telltale signal in the cheek, but a wee dog, as white as a handkerchief +and no less sweet than a bouquet. She rubbed her nose fondlingly in the +soft silk of his breast, while, tickled, he tried, with baby growls and +an exposure of sharp pin teeth, to get a bite at it. + +Gerald looked on with simple pleasure. Because he had given Aurora that +dog. On the day of making a scene because she was to receive a dog from +Hunt he had set to work to find one for her himself, the prior +possession of which would make it natural to decline Charlie's, if, as +Gerald doubted, Charlie's offer had been anything more than facile +compliment. And now, instead of the torment to his nerves of seeing her +fondle and kiss a brute of Charlie's, he had the not disagreeable +spectacle of her pressing to her warm and rosy face an animal that +related her caresses, even if loosely and distantly, to a less unworthy +object. Sour and sad, dried up and done with women, a man still has +feelings. + +It would be unfair not to add that something better than primeval +jealousy actuated Gerald, at the same time as, no doubt, some tincture +of that. A sort of impersonal delicacy made the idea disagreeable to him +of a dear, nice woman cherishing with the foolish fondness such persons +bestow on their pets the gift of a friend whom she, in taking his +loyalty for granted, overrated, as he thought. + +The dog he had selected to present to her belonged to a breed for which +he had respect as well as affection, crediting to Maltese terriers, +besides all the sterling dog virtues, a discretion, a fineness of +feeling, rare enough among humans. That Gerald kept no dog was due to +the fact that he was still under the impression of the illness and death +of his last, Lucile's pet and his mother's, who had been his companion +until a year or two before, a senile, self-controlled little personage +of the Maltese variety. + +Having decided to give Mrs. Hawthorne a dog, Gerald had spent some hours +watching the several components of one litter as they disported +themselves in the flagged court of a peasant house, and had fixed upon +one dusty ball of fluff rather than another upon solid indications of +character. + +Snowy after strenuous purifications at the hands of Giovanna, +sweet-smelling from the pinch of orris powder rubbed in his fur, and +brave with a cherry ribbon, he was taken from the breast of Gerald's +overcoat and deposited in the hands of Aurora, whose delight expressed +itself in sounds suggestive of an ogreish craving to eat the little +beast, interspersed with endearments of dim import, such as, "Diddums! +Wasums! Tiddledewinkums!" Estelle's did the same. There was no +difference in the affection the two instantly bestowed on this dog. +Aurora remarked later on that Busteretto couldn't be blamed for not +knowing which was his mother. + +Sensitively timid, yet bold in his half dozen inches with curiosity of +life and the exuberant gladness of youth, Busteretto could frisk and he +could tremble. He was cowed by the sight of fearful things, beetles and +big dogs, but next moment, with budding valor, would dash to investigate +them. He twinkled when he ran, his bark lifted him off his four feet. +Withal something exquisite marked him even among Maltese puppies, which +Aurora felt without art to define it. She said he reminded her of the +new moon when it is no bigger than a fingernail. If with the tip of his +rose-petal tongue he laid the lick of fondness and approval on the end +of your nose, you felt two things: that the salute had come directed by +the purest heart-guidance, and that the nose had something about it +subtly right. You were flattered. + +When Gerald encouraged Mrs. Hawthorne to decide for herself how she +should like to be painted, with what habiliments, appurtenances and +surroundings, she decided first of all to have Busteretto on her +lap,--but that was afterward given up: he wiggled. Then her white +ostrich fan in her hand, her pearls around her neck, her diamond stars +in her hair, a cluster of roses at her corsage, her best dress on, and +an opera-cloak thrown over the back of her chair. + +Catching, as she thought, a look of irony on Gerald's face, she had a +return of suspicion. + +"See here," she said, observing him narrowly, "there's no trick about +this, is there?" + +"Not the shadow of one. Please trust me, Mrs. Hawthorne. This is to be a +portrait entirely satisfactory as well as entirely resembling. It is +like you to desire to be painted with your plumes and pearls and roses, +and they are very becoming. I shall put them in with pleasure. I know +you do not believe I can paint a portrait to suit you. Very well. Grant +me the favor of a chance to try. We shall see." + +It was true that she did not believe it, but she was so willing to hope. +One of the upstairs rooms at the back was chosen for the sittings +because the light through its windows was the least variable. The +necessary artist's baggage was brought over from Gerald's, and the work +began. + +Charcoal in hand, he regarded Mrs. Hawthorne quietly and lengthily +through half-closed eyes. + +"You have not one good feature," he said, as if thinking aloud. + +"Oh!"--she started out of the pose they had after much experimenting +decided upon--"oh! is that the way you're going to pay me for keeping +still on a chair by the hour?" + +"You have no eyebrows to speak of." + +"What do you mean? Yes, I have, too; lots of them; lovely ones. Only +they don't show up. They're fair, to match my hair." + +"You are undershot." + +"What's that?" + +"Your lower jaw closes outside of your upper." + +"Oh, but so little! Just enough to take the curse off an otherwise too +perfect beauty." + +As she curled up the corners of her mouth in an affected smirk, he +quickly shifted his glance, with a horrible suspicion that she was +crossing her eyes. As she had pronounced the word perfect +"_parfect_," he presumed that she was making herself look, for the +remainder, like Antonia. It was her latest vaudeville turn, imitating +Antonia. He was careful not to look again in her direction until she had +stopped doing what annoyed him furiously. He could not hope to make her +understand to what point the debasing of beauty to brutal comic uses +wounded him. + +"Faultless features," he went on after a time, in commentary on his +earlier remark, "do not by any means always make a beautiful face," +politely leading her to suppose he meant that to be without them was no +great misfortune. + +Estelle came into the room for company. She brought her sewing, one of +those elegant pieces of handiwork that give to idleness a good +conscience. Gerald felt her delicately try to get acquainted with him. +She was not as altogether void of intellectual curiosity as her friend. +She would seem to care about discovering further what sort of man he was +mentally, what his ideas were on a variety of subjects. Also, but even +more delicately, to interest him, just a little bit, in her own self and +ideas. + +He was grateful to her, and did what he could to show himself +responsive. With the portrait began the period of a less perfunctory +relation between them. They had talks sometimes that Aurora declared, +without trace of envy, were 'way above her head. + +Estelle was waking to an interest in the art and history of the Old +World. She was "reading up" on these things. She was also "working at" +her French, and would in a little systematic way she had excuse herself +at the same hour daily, saying she must go and get her lessons. Not +feeling quite the enterprise to study two languages at one time, she had +given the preference to French, as being the more generally useful in +Europe. + +Gerald now made the acquaintance of a new member of the household. She +came into the room bearing a small tray with a hot-water pot and a cup. +She took this to Aurora, who helped herself to plain hot water, +explaining: + +"I am trying to 'redooce.' This is good for what ails me, they say. But +I could never in the world think of it. Clotilde thinks of it for me, +and she's that punctual! Clotilde, you're too punctual with this stuff. +You don't suppose I like it?" + +"But think, Madame, of the sylph's form that it will give you!" replied +Clotilde, in respectably good English. + +"I do think of it. Give me another cup. Mr. Fane, this is Miss--no, I +won't launch on that name. It's Italo's sister, who has saved our lives +and become our greatest blessing." + +Clotilde exposed in smiling a fine array of white teeth. She was not at +all like her brother, but well-grown, white and pink beneath her neat +head-dress of crisp black hair. She impressed Gerald as belonging to a +different and better class. If she were vulgar, it was at least not in +the same way. She appeared like that paradox, a lady of the +working-class, with a distinguishing air of capability, good humor, and +openness. The latter Gerald was not disposed absolutely to trust, but he +was glad to trust all the rest. + +No sooner had she left the room than Aurora and Estelle in one voice +started telling him about her. He learned that she and Italo were not +what they called "own" brother and sister, but only half. Their father, +being left by the death of his wife with a young family on his hands, +had in feeble despair married the cook, become the father of one more +child, and died. Italo was that latest born. The children of the first +wife had then been taken by her folks, while their step-mother retained +her own chick, assisted from a distance by the prouder portion of the +family to educate and give him a trade. He had chosen an art instead, +and by it was rising in the world. There had been published a waltz of +his composing, dedicated by permission to a name with a coronet over it. +He lived with and supported his good soul of a mother, and saw something +of his half-brethren, all of them through lack of fortune condemned to +small ways of life, like himself. + +Clotilde, the best-hearted, was his favorite and he hers. She recognized +his gifts, she further regarded him as a man of spirit, or wit. + +"It must be," reflected Gerald, "that the fellow can stir up a laugh." + +He knew him only as a fixture at the piano, but could well accommodate +the idea of a species of buffoonery to that boldly jutting nose of his. +He fancied that _maldicenza_, gossip further spiced with +backbiting, would form the chief baggage of his wit. If he possessed +sharp ears, his opportunities for picking up knowledge of other people's +affairs were certainly unusual. He passed from house to house, playing +accompaniments, drumming for dancing, so insignificant on his +screw-stool that many no doubt talked before him as if nobody had been +there. + +Gerald did not dislike Ceccherelli, really, only had him on his nerves +in relation to Aurora. He felt him, indeed, rather likeable at a +distance, as part of a story; he had the good point of being an +individual. Gerald was in general touched to benevolence at sight of a +poor devil elated by his little draught of success. To Ceccherelli +without a doubt the patronage of the wealthy American represented +success. Ceccherelli pulling out his gold watch was a disarming vision. + +Gerald cherished a hope, born of curiosity, that he might witness some +exhibition of Ceccherelli's _spirito_, or wit, and upon an evening +when the pianist dropped in after dinner was on the alert for +manifestations.... + +It may here be inserted that upon being asked to remain for dinner +Gerald had artfully delayed answering until he had made sure that +Clotilde did not dine with the ladies. Their familiarity had made him +fear it. Highly as he was prepared to esteem Clotilde, the meal would, +with her making the fourth, have lost for him those points on account of +which he prized it. But he gathered that she found it more convenient to +take her meals in private. In rejoicing for himself, he rejoiced also +for her, eating in holy peace, as he pictured her doing, the dishes of +her country, cooked with oil and onion; pouring the wine of her country +from a good fat flask such as never found its place on the table of the +strangers. + +To go back: Gerald when after dinner the pianist came to make music for +the ladies, was hoping for some example of that brightness for which he +had a reputation with three persons, possibly more. But Ceccherelli +remained on the piano-stool and never once raised his voice. Estelle and +Aurora went in turns to chat with him there, but not one witty word +reached Gerald. Then he had the sense to see that it was he, Gerald, who +acted as a spoil-feast, a dampener. He got an outside view of himself, +stiff, dry, critical, ungenial-looking. It was not to be wondered at +that the flow of spirits was dried up in the man of temperament by his +vicinity. He suspected, catching a side-look from the pianist's small +brown eye, that the little man who did not care to speak aloud in his +hearing yet had plenty to say on the subject of him in a different +entourage. + +This notwithstanding, it was only when Gerald got whiffs and echoes of +Ceccherelli through Aurora that he called him a pest. + +"Italo says," she began, after a silence such as often fell while she +posed and he painted, "that Mr. Landini has the evil eye." + +"What rubbish!" + +"Glad to hear you say so. I don't believe there's any such thing, +myself. But Italo swears there is, and has told me story upon story to +prove it. He wants me to wear a coral horn and poke it at Mr. Landini +whenever he comes near me." + +"Wherefore a coral horn? You can more cheaply, and quite as effectually, +make horns of your fingers, like this. I should strongly advise you not +to let the object of this precaution catch you doing it.... I should +think, Mrs. Hawthorne, you would be ashamed to let that inferior little +individual corrupt your mind." + +Fancying it teased him, she pursued, "What do you think he says besides? +That Mr. Landini's color isn't natural, but a juice, he says, a dye, +that he stains himself with." + +"For the love of Heaven, why?" + +"That's what I wanted to know. Why go to all that trouble for the sake +of looking like a darkey? But Italo says, says Italo, that it gives him +more success with the ladies. His difference from other men obliges them +to look at him, then his eyes do the rest." + +"I only hope your laugh is sincere, Mrs. Hawthorne, and that you do not +allow this poisonous nonsense to affect your feelings towards--" + +"Don't be afraid. If I did, I shouldn't be having him to dinner, should +I? And he's coming to-night." + +"Oh." + +"Yes. Quite a party. You weren't asked, because we know you now. You +would have managed by sly questions to find out who else was coming and +then you wouldn't have come." + +"Well, who is coming? There is nothing sly about that." + +"I sha'n't tell you. This much I will tell you, though--" she added with +the frankness usual to her, "I don't look forward to it much." + +It was on the end of his tongue to ask next morning how her dinner had +gone off, but on second thoughts he left it for her to speak of when she +was ready. + +She at first appeared much as on other days, but when she had lapsed +into silence and fallen into thought her expression became a shade +gloomy. He had noticed that when her eyes were rather more grey than +blue it was the sign of a cloud in her sky. + +"Might one ask the lady sitting for her picture to look pleasant?" he +said. + +"Yes, yes," she remembered herself; "I will try to look pleasant. But I +feel cross." + +"Well?... What went wrong with your dinner?" + +"Oh, I made a fool of myself." + +"That sounds serious. Was it?" + +"Yes. No. Oh, I don't know. I don't suppose it was really serious.... +But the whole thing has made me cross." + +She labored under an urgent necessity to tell somebody all about it, +that was evident. + +"You see," she plunged without preamble into her confidence, "from the +beginning, I didn't want that party! I love to have folks to dinner, any +number, all the time. You know I just love a jollification. But this was +different, as I knew it was going to be. It began with Charlie Hunt +telling me--or, not exactly telling, I forget how it came out--that +yesterday was his birthday. I said, 'Come and celebrate with us!' I was +thinking of making a big cake and sticking it full of pink candles. And +from that simple beginning, blessed if I know how it happened, except my +always wanting to say yes to anything anybody proposes, it came to be a +regular dinner-party, the kind they give over here, with courses and +wines and finger-bowls, all the frills, and twelve people, not friends +of mine at all, barely acquaintances, but people Charlie Hunt thought it +would be nice to ask. Well, it was my fault, every bit of it, and nobody +else's. I've no business to say all those joyful yeses if I don't mean +them. Good enough for me if I have to swallow my pill afterwards without +so much as making a face. It wasn't so bad, after all, everything went +all right, thanks to Clotilde and Charlie. Only I wasn't having much +fun. Charlie had planned how people should sit, and Mr. Landini was on +one side of me, and he was making himself terribly agreeable. He means +all right, but his talk, as I guess you know, isn't a bit my kind. And +last night, I don't mind telling you--" her voice dropped to a note +confidentially low, "with his compliments and incinerations, you'd +almost have thought he was sweet on me. Only I know better. And so, as I +say, I wasn't having much fun. Then I don't know what got into me. They +were passing the fruit. I got up and went to the sideboard and took one +of those fine hot-house looking peaches out of our permanent assortment +that needs dusting every few days, and I came back to my seat and +offered that marble fruit with a fetching smile to Mr. Landini. He +looked as if he felt I was bestowing a very particular favor. He took +it--and it dropped out of his hand on to the plate with a crash that +laid it in smithereens.... You can see why I am cross." + +"I shouldn't be surprised, dear woman, if he were cross, too." + +"He was perfect! I respected him! Liked him better than I ever had +before! I never saw anything so well done as the way he carried it off! +I was never so uncomfortable in all my life, though we united in +laughing, ha, ha.... Charlie would have taken my head off, if he had +dared, afterwards in a corner of the parlor. But the first word he said, +I cut in, short as pie-crust, 'Young man,' I said, 'if you aren't +careful I shall sit on you. Do you know how much I weigh?' And I meant +it." + +Gerald prudently placed a paint-brush across his mouth, and shut his +teeth on it as on a bridle-bit, to excuse his saying nothing in the way +of comment on what he had heard. + +Mrs. Hawthorne told him next day at the first opportunity, like one +eager to make reparation for an injustice, "It's all right now! A +beautiful plate came yesterday afternoon from Ginori's where my +dinner-set was bought--a plate, you know, to match the one that got +broken. As if I cared anything about the old plate! And along with it +Mr. Landini's card, with such a nice message written on it. Don't you +think it white in him? When it was all my fault. And in the evening +Charlie Hunt came and was sweet as pie. We're just as good friends as +ever. I'm ashamed of myself for having felt so put out. Forget anything +I said that didn't seem quite kind. He's all right. It's me that's +crochety.... Isn't that picture far enough along for you to let me see +it?" + +"No, Mrs. Hawthorne." + +"Will you let me see it when it's far enough along?" + +"No." + +"I think you're real mean. How much longer will it take to finish it?" + +"Does sitting bore you so much?" + +"Land, no! Bore me? I perfectly love it! It's like taking a sea-voyage +with some one. You see more of them in a week or two than you would in +the same number of years on land. I'm getting to feel I know you quite +well." + +"Wasn't it clever of me to think of the portrait?" + +"Go 'way! D'you see anything green in my eye? As I was saying, I'm +getting to know you pretty well. You get mad awful' easy, don't you? But +you don't hate people, really, nearly as much as I do, that it takes a +lot to make mad. There are people in this world that I hate--oh, how I +hate 'em! I hate 'em so I could almost put their eyes out. But you, +Stickly-prickly, when it comes right down to it, I notice you make a lot +of allowance for people. Do you know, when it comes right down to it, +you're one of the patientest persons I know. I'd take my chances with +you for a judge a lot sooner than I'd like to with loads of people who +aren't half so ready to call you a blame' fool." + +"While you have been making these valuable discoveries in character, +what do you suppose I have been doing, Mrs. Hawthorne?" asked Gerald, +after the time it would take to bow ceremoniously in acknowledgement of +a compliment. + +"Oh, finding out things about me, I suppose." + +"Not things. One thing. I had known you for some length of time before +my felicitous invention of the portrait, you remember, and as you are +barely more elusive than the primary colors, or more intricate than the +three virtues, I did not suppose I had anything more to learn. But I +had. It can't be said I didn't suspect it. I had seen signs of it. I +smelled it, as it were. But I had no idea of its extent, its magnitude, +its importance. It is simply amazing, bewildering, funny." + +"For goodness' sake, what?" she cried, breathless with interest. + +"I can't tell you. It would ill become me to say. The least mention of +it on my part would be the height of impertinence. The thing is none of +my business. Be so kind as to resume the pose, Mrs. Hawthorne, and to +keep very, very still, like a good girl. Do not speak, please, for some +time; I am working on your mouth." + +Gerald had indeed been astonished, amused, appalled. He had in a general +way known that Mrs. Hawthorne was prodigal, the impression one received +of her at first sight prepared one to find her generous; but he had +formed no idea of the ease and magnificence with which she got rid of +money. + +In the time so far devoted to painting her he had grown quite accustomed +to a little scene that almost daily repeated itself--a scene which he, +busy at his side of the room, was presumably not supposed to see, or, if +he saw it, to think anything about. + +Clotilde would come in with a look of great discretion, a smile of great +modesty, and stand hesitating, like a person with a communication to +make, but not sufficient boldness to interrupt. Aurora, always glad to +drop the pose, would excuse herself to Gerald and ask what Clotilde +wanted. Clotilde would then approach and speak low,--not so low, +however, but that in spite of him messages and meanings were telegraphed +to Gerald's brain. The look itself of the unsealed envelopes in +Clotilde's hand was to Gerald's eye full of information. She would +sometimes extract and unfold a document for Aurora to look at; but +Aurora would wave it aside with a careless, "You know I couldn't read it +if I wanted to." At the end of the murmured conference Aurora would say, +"Will you go and get my porte-monnaie? It's in my top drawer," and when +this had been brought, her dimpled hand would take from it and give to +Clotilde bills of twenty, of fifty, of a hundred francs, hardly +appearing to count. Sometimes she would say: "I'm afraid I haven't +enough. I shall have to make out a check." + +Gerald's _flair_, and knowledge of his Florence, enabled him +perfectly to divine what was in question. He was only puzzled as to why +these transactions should not have taken place at a more private hour, +and acutely observed that they took place when they could, this being +when Estelle was out of the way. Clotilde also had _flair_. + +After Clotilde had retired, Aurora one morning, having imperfectly +understood what her money was wanted for, puckered her brows over the +letters that, through an oversight, had remained in her hands. She held +one out to Gerald to translate. It was from the united chorus-singers of +Florence, a simple, direct, and ingenuous appeal for a gratuity. Another +letter was from a poor young girl who wished for money to buy her +wedding outfit. Another from a poor man out of work. + +Gerald could have laughed. But he did not; nor made any remark. He did +not dislike seeing those voracious maws stuffed with a fat morsel. He +knew as much of the real poverty in Florence as of the innocent +impudence of many poor, with their lingering medieval outlook upon the +relations of the poor and the rich. He sided with those against these. +Singularly, perhaps, he regarded himself as belonging among the latter, +the rich. He was glad the chorus-singers and the _sposina_ and the +worried _padre di famiglia_ were going to be made glad by rich +crumbs from Aurora's board. But he could not help uneasiness for the +future, when the famished locusts, still approaching single scout, +should precipitate themselves in battalions, when the whole of Florence +should have got the glad tidings and gathered impetus.... + +Well, Clotilde was there. Clotilde would know pertinent discourses to +hold to the brazen beggars when their shamelessness passed bounds. +Meanwhile Gerald could see that she enjoyed this distributing of good +things among her fellow-citizens. Not that she was strongly disposed to +charity. He did not believe she gave away anything of her own, but she +loved to see Aurora give. After a life spent in a home where the lumps +of sugar were counted and the coffee-beans kept under lock and key, it +attracted her like wild, incredible romance. + +It would have hurt her to behold this unproductive output, no doubt, had +it not been a mere foreigner who lost what her own people +gained,--money, besides, that could never have benefited her, and that +came nearer to benefiting her when spent in that manner than in another. +Clotilde, loyal in service, giving more than good measure, offering all +the pleasant fruits of a visible devotion, could yet not be expected to +have--or, to state it more fairly, was not supposed by Gerald to +have--any real bowels for this outsider, who might for one thing be +drawing from bottomless gold-mines, or, if she were not, would suffer a +ruin she had richly deserved. And might it not in aftertimes profit her, +Clotilde, to have been instrumental to this person and that in obtaining +money from the millionaire? The shops recognized such a title to reward, +and offered it regularly to such private middlemen as herself for a +careful guiding of the dispensing hand, and this without the feeling on +any side that it was the payment of the unjust steward. + +Gerald did not in the least despise Clotilde, poor Clotilde, with her +nose like a little white trumpet between her downy pink and white +cheeks, for this business-like outlook and use of her position. It would +have been different if she had been a friend and gentleman. + + * * * * * + +The portrait did not progress rapidly. Gerald was not hurrying. On +Gerald's lips as he painted there played an ambiguous smile, privately +derisive of his work and the fun he was having. + +No problems, no effort, none of those searching doubts of oneself that +produce heart-sickness; nor yet any of those exaltations that cause one +to forget the hour of meals. Curious that it should have been fun all +the same!... His reply to which was that only a very poor observer could +think it curious that the lower man within a man should feel it fun to +be indulged. Fortunately, a natural limit was set to this Capuan period. + +He would come from the winter world into the room which the American +kept enervatingly warm, a pernicious practice. One could not deny, +however, that the body relaxed in it with a sense of well-being, after +steeling itself to resist the insidious Italian cold, exuding from damp +pavements and blown on the sharp tramontana; that cold which is never, +if measured by the thermometer, severe, but against which clothing seems +ineffectual. The blood does not react against it; the blood shrinks +away, and stagnates around the heart. + +He would change his coat for a velveteen jacket, not in order to be +picturesque, but to keep his coat-cuffs clean. He was as particular as +an old maid, Aurora told him, before he had been caught absentmindedly +wiping paint off on his hair. + +The fair model would get her chair-legs into correspondence with certain +chalk-marks on the carpet, be helped to find her pose, and having made +herself comfortable, turn on him blue eyes, with a faint brown shadow +under them--blue eyes that wore a sheepish look until she presently +forgot she was sitting for her picture. She was pressed to keep her +opera-cloak over her shoulders, lest she take cold in her decollete; the +high fur collar made an effective background for her face. Then he would +fall to painting, and the hours of the forenoon would fly. + +An amiable woman would now and then make a remark, easily jocular. +Another amiable woman--soothing presences, both--would answer. Or he +would answer; there would be an interlude of familiar talk, rest, and +laughing, and throwing a ball for a scampering puppy. At noon an end to +labor. He would remain for lunch, that meal of cheery luxury, immorally +abundant. After it he would still linger in this house, bright and warm +with fires, smoking cigarettes in a chair as luxuriously soft as those +curling clouds on which are seen throning the gods in ceiling frescos, +and grow further day by day into the intimacy of the amiable women. In +full afternoon they would ask him if he would go out with them in their +carriage, take an airing, and return for dinner; or, if he obstinately +declined, might they set him down somewhere. He would make a point of +not accepting, and hurry off afoot with his damp umbrella. + +Although Gerald had enlightened contempt for the sensuous comfort he was +taking in the fleshpots of the Hermitage, there was in it one element +which he did not analyze merely to despise. + +He was aware of it most often after Estelle had left the room. He +settled down then for a time of heightened well-being. It was observable +that the sitter also took on a faintly different air. Often at that +moment she would vaguely, purposelessly, smile over to him, and he would +smile in absolute reciprocity. They would not seize the opportunity for +more personal exchange of talk. All would go on as before. He had +nothing to say to Aurora or she to him that could not have been said +before an army of witnesses. Yet it was to him as if a touch of magic +had removed an impediment, and the mysterious effluvium which made the +vicinity of Mrs. Hawthorne calming, healing to him, had a chance to flow +and steep his nerves in a blessed quiet, a quiet which--one hardly knows +how to describe such a thing--was at the same time excitement. + +Gerald did not really care for talking. He could, it was true, sit up +all night with Vincent Johns, discussing this subject and that; he could +split hairs and wander into every intricacy of argument with men and +artists; with women too he could sometimes be litigious. The bottom +truth was nevertheless that he did not care for talking. It had happened +to him to sigh for a world where nobody talked forever and ever. + +What he cared for was faces. They were what discoursed to you, told the +veracious story of lives and emotions--not lamely, as words do, mingling +the trivial with the significant, but altogether perfectly. It rested +with you to understand. + +Mrs. Hawthorne in talk was cheap as echoes of a traveling-circus tent: +you had the simple fooling of the clown, the plain good sense of the +farmer's wife, the children's ebullient joy in the show. But Mrs. +Hawthorne in silence and abstraction was allied to things august and +mysterious, things far removed from her own thoughts. These, while she +sat in her foolish jewels, unsuitable by day, were very likely busy with +her house, her dressmaker, the doings of her little set, gossip, the +personal affairs--who knows?--of the painter painting her. But, +profounder than words or thoughts, Mrs. Hawthorne's essential manner of +being related her to those forces of the world which the ancient mind +figured in the shapes of women. There was something present in her of +the basic kindness of old Earth, who wants to feed everybody, is ready +to give her breast to all the children. Her robust joyousness reposed, +one felt, on a reality, some great fact that made angers and anxieties +irrational. + +The student of faces could not have maintained that he got these +impressions of his sitter through his eyes. It was more, after all, like +a reflection received on the sensitive plate of his heart. + +One day Gerald began to hurry. He had had enough of it. The portrait was +finished in a few hours. The ladies were not permitted to see it. They +were made to wait until it was varnished and framed in one of the great, +bright Florentine frames of which they were so fond. + +Gerald, while they took their first long, rapt look, stood at one side, +with a smile like a faun's when a faun is Mephistophelian. + +Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find no words to +express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove. + +Estelle echoed this exclamation, but her charmed surprise did not ring +so true, if any one had been watchful enough to seize the shade of +difference. Because, not having been made to give a promise, she had +from time to time taken a look privately at the painting during its +progress. Aurora had known of this and been sorely tempted to do the +same, but had resisted the temptation, afraid of Gerald's bad opinion. + +"My soul!" she murmured, really much moved. + +Of course she knew that the portrait flattered her; but she felt as +Lauras and Leonoras and Lucastas no doubt felt when their poets +celebrated them under ideal forms in which their friends and families +may have had trouble to recognize them. The pride of having inspired an +immortal masterpiece must have stirred their hearts to gratitude toward +the gifted beings able to see them disencumbered from their faults, and +fix them for the contemplation of their own eyes and their neighbors' as +they had been at the best moment of their brightest hour. + +[Illustration: Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find +no words to express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove] + +In the days when La Grande Mademoiselle was painted as Minerva, Aurora's +portrait might have been called "Mrs. Hawthorne as Venus." The +expression of her face was as void of history as the fair goddess's. The +tender beam of pleasure lighting it suggested that she might that moment +have been awarded the apple. The portrait was, nevertheless, in a way, +"Aurora all over," as Estelle pronounced it; but an Aurora whose +imperfections had been smoothed out of existence, and with them her +humor; an Aurora whose good working complexion, as she called it, had +been turned to lilies and roses, her hair of mortal gold to immortal +sunshine, and those sagacious orbs of blue, which made friends for her +by their twinkle, into melting azure stars. + +The painter had, besides, glorified every detail of the setting: the +rich fabric of the dress, the creamy feathers of the fan, even the roses +of the breast-knot. The pearls and diamonds he had amused himself with +making larger than they were, and filled these with a winking fire, +those with a lambent luster. But Gerald had no mind when he indulged in +satire to be gross. The whole was dainty, as shimmering as a +soap-bubble, and of a fineness that rightly commended it to lovers of +beautiful surfaces. + +"I don't care," burst from Aurora, as if in reply to an inaudible +criticism, "I just love it! I don't care if it is flattered. I could hug +you for it, Gerald Fane. I think it's perfectly lovely. It's going to be +a solid satisfaction. By and by, when my double chin has caught up with +me, and I'm a homely old thing, and nobody knows what I did look like in +my prime, I'll have this to show them. By that time, with my brain +weakening, I hope I shall have come to thinking it was as like me as two +peas. There's some reason for living now." + +Every caller was taken to see the portrait, and heard Mrs. Hawthorne's +opinion of the talented artist. The majority of visitors candidly shared +her admiration, though not one woman among them can have failed to say +to herself that the portrait was flattered. But with a portrait of +oneself to have executed, who would not prefer the brush that makes +beautiful? + +Interest spread in the painter, whose work few even of the Florentines +knew except from hearsay. No one who saw Mrs. Hawthorne's portrait was +very clearly aware--such is fame!--that it was for Fane a departure. +Until it came to Leslie. She stood a long time before the painting, then +exclaimed: + +"What a joke!" + +But she was inclined to take the same view as Mrs. Hawthorne, that when +he could paint like that it was a pity Gerald should not do it oftener, +to build up a reputation and fill his purse. She only would have advised +him not to go quite so far another time in the same direction. + + * * * * * + +As Gerald, the portrait finished, came no more to the house, fairly as +if modesty could not have endured the compliments showered upon him, +Aurora with a communication to make had to square herself before her +desk in the room of the red flowers and painstakingly pen a note. + +Aurora, when taking pains, wrote the cleanest, clearest, most +characterless hand that was ever seen outside of a school copy-book, and +took pride in it. Aurora's language, when she applied herself to +composition, lost the last vestige of color and life. She wrote: + + "My dear Mr. Fane: + + "You have not been to see us for a long time, and so I am + obliged to write what I have to say. It is that our friends + _cannot say enough_ in praise of your portrait of me, and + Mrs. Bixby, an American who is staying at the pension Trollope, + wants to have one just like it--one, of course, I mean, as much + like her as that is like me, but not a bit more. But before she + decides she wants to know what it will cost. And that brings me + to the question, What is the price of my picture? Please, let me + beg you to make it _a figure I shall not blush to pay_ for + such a _fine piece of work_. Make it a price that agrees + with my estimate of the picture rather than your _very + modest_ one. I shall be glad, you ought to know, to pay + anything you say. You couldn't, if you tried, make it seem too + much for me to pay for _such a fine piece of work_. I have + got up in the middle of the night and gone down to look at it + with a candle, and stood till I began to sneeze, I like it so + much, though I know it's too good-looking. So please set a good + price on it and not _make me feel mean_ taking it. Then + I'll tell Mrs. Bixby what I paid. She's got plenty of money, and + even if she beats you down, it will be better if she knows I + paid a big price. You have such a wonderful talent it ought to + make your fortune, and so it will by and by. Don't forget that + we are always glad to see you and that you haven't been for + quite a while. + + "Yours sincerely, + "Aurora Hawthorne. + + "P.S. What do you think Busteretto did? He saw me pouring some + water into a bowl and imagined I was going to give him a bath. + So he went to hide under the grate. Then of course he had to + have a bath, which he wouldn't have had to otherwise. He sends + much love. + + "Another P.S. I meant to tell you we have got a box for the + veglione (I hope that is the way to spell it) on the last night + of the Carnival. We have only asked the Fosses so far, and we + want you to be sure to save that night to come with us." + +Gerald, having read, sat down and wrote, with a disregard to the +delicacy of his hair-lines and the shading of his down-strokes that +would have furnished a poor example to anybody: + + "The portrait, my dear Mrs. Hawthorne, is a gift, for which I + will not even accept thanks, as it is, your kind opinion + notwithstanding, absolutely without value. One sole point of + interest it has, that of a future curiosity--the only thing of + the kind that will have been painted in his whole lifetime by + + "Your devoted friend, + "G. F. + + "Shall I find you at home this evening?" + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +No festivity has quite the vast and varied glitter of a _veglione_. +It takes a whole city to make a party so big and bright. And the last +_veglione_ of the season is rather brighter than the rest, as if +the spirit of revelry, inexhausted at the end of Carnival, made haste to +use itself up in fireworks before the cold dawn of Ash Wednesday. + +The opera-house is cleared of its rows of seats, the stage united to the +parquet by a sloping floor. Every one of the boxes, rising tier above +tier in a jeweled horseshoe, offers the sight of a merry supper-party, +with spread table, twinkling candelabra, flowers, gala display. + +Crowding floor and stage and lobbies, swarm the maskers. In the center +of the great floor the _corps de ballet_, regiment of sylphs in +tulle petticoats and pale-pink tights, performs its characteristic +evolutions to the pulsating strains of the opera orchestra. The public +dances in the remaining space--dances, promenades, and plays pranks, the +special diversion of the evening being to "intrigue" some one. They are +heard speaking in high squeaks, in bass rumbles, in any way that may +disguise the voice. Many are in costume,--Mephistos, Pierrots, Figaros, +Harlequins, but the most are in simple domino. + +When a lady wishes to descend among the crowd she, in the darkness at +the back of the box, slips a domino over her ball-dress, a mask over her +features, and goes forth unknown to all save the cavalier on whose arm +she leans. + +The only uncovered faces belong to gentlemen. These look often a little +foolish, a little bored, because the uncovered faces are the natural +objects of the maskers' impertinences, their part the rather barren +amusement of trying to divine who it is endeavoring to intrigue, or +puzzle, them, and wittily to parry personalities often more pointed than +the drawing-room permits. + +The party in Aurora's box was large for the size of the box. She had +gone on inviting people, then brought hampers and hampers of good things +with which to feed them. There were the Fosses, Charlie with all the +Hunt girls, Landini, Lavin, the American doctor, the American dentist, +and Gerald. + +Also Manlio. The Fosses had brought him. He had returned from furlough +some time before. It was known now to everybody that he was the +_fidanzato_ of Brenda Foss. There was no talk of his leaving the +army; on the contrary, he was rumored to have prospects of early +advancement to the grade of captain; wherefore the general public took +it for granted that the bride's parents were providing the indispensable +marriage portion. + +Aurora's eyes, at a moment when Manlio's attention was elsewhere, rested +on him with a brooding, shining look. The symptoms of a great happiness, +though modestly muffled, were plain in his face. The Beautiful One was +coming back in the spring, already near, to marry him. + +Aurora's affectionate look was just tinged with regret. She had suffered +a disappointment in connection with Manlio. An obstinate and +uncompromising woman beyond the ocean, when invited to join in a +harmless conspiracy, had preferred to do actually, to the tune of eight +thousand dollars, what the grasping creature should have been satisfied +with merely appearing to do. The happiness that pierced through Manlio's +calm, like a strong light through pale marble, came to him from the +bride elect's aunt, and Aurora felt robbed. + +But Mrs. Foss's hand found hers under the table and gave it a warm +squeeze, whereupon Aurora's heart swelled in a way it had of doing. When +such a dilation took place, something simultaneously happened to her +eyes: the surrounding world was revealed to them as "too lovely for +anything." Dimples declared her joy. + +"Won't somebody have something more?" she asked, with the spoon in her +hand poised over a bowl still half full of chicken mayonnaise. + +But every one was done with eating; all were in haste to go down on to +the floor and find amusement, perhaps adventure, amid the fluctuating, +fascinating crowd. + +The box was fairly deserted when the door opened again, and the eyes of +those left in it, turning to see who entered, were met by two unknown +maskers. + +One wore the costume of a _bravo_ of old times, picturesque, +disreputable, an operatic _Sparafucile_ in tattered mantle and +ragged plume. The other was in a black satin domino, and had the face of +a crow, a great black beak projecting from a black mask. + +They stood a little way inside of the door as if waiting to be +addressed. There was silence for a moment, while the others waited +likewise. Within the eye-holes of their masks the eyes of the intruders +glittered in the glassy, baffling way of eyes behind masks. + +Aurora, unused to the mode of procedure at a _veglione_, asked +helplessly in a whisper of Landini: + +"What shall I say to them?" + +He spoke for her then, in Italian, because he thought it probable that +these were Florentines who had come into a strange box for a lark. + +"Good evening," he said. "Will you speak, or sing, and let us know what +we can do for your service?" + +The bravo, lifting two long hands in loose and torn black gloves, +rapidly made signs, like the deaf and dumb. + +"You speak too loud," said Gerald. "We are deafened. Let the lady +speak." + +The black domino, with a shrug of the shoulders and a gesture of +black-gloved hands excusing the limitations of a bird, answered by a +simple caw. + +Aurora now found her tongue and her cue: + +"And is it yourselves?" she burst in rollickingly. "Proud to meet you! +Will you partake?" + +With a hospitable sweep of the arm, intelligible to speakers of any +language, she made them free of her supper-table, where the candles +still twinkled over an appetizing abundance. + +Gerald watched sharply, saying to himself: "If they accept, we shall at +least see their chins." + +But upon the invitation _Sparafucile_, with farcical demonstrations +of greed, reached forth his long fingers in the flapping gloves, seized +cakes, white grapes, mandarins, nuts, and stuffed them into his wide +pockets; while the black domino grasped the neck of a bottle of +champagne and possessed herself of a glass. A caw of thanks issued from +the black beak, and from the bravo, as with their booty the two +retreated to the door, there proceeded, as unexpected as upsetting, a +whoop of rejoicing so loud that those near him fell back as if from the +danger of an explosion. In the midst of this consternation the maskers +were gone. + +"My land! did you hear that?" cried Aurora, who had clapped both hands +over the pit of her stomach. "Goodness! he's scared the liver-pin out of +me! Who d'you suppose they were?" + +Landini lost not another minute before asking Mrs. Hawthorne if they +should go down together for a turn. + +Gerald had been on the point of asking the same thing. He had almost +uttered the first word when Landini anticipated him. He felt a sharp +prick of annoyance with himself for not having been quicker as much as +with Landini for having been so quick. A little jealousy was quite in +order with regard to Mrs. Hawthorne now, on the simple ground of that +more intimate footing of friendship established between them by the +portrait. With the expression of courteous mournfulness proper in an +outrivaled cavalier, he made the gesture silently of having been at the +lady's service. Manlio did the same. + +The singular blonde, with Nubian lip and Parisian hair, Miss Deliverance +Jones, or, more commonly, Livvy, who spent this evening at the farther +end of the box making her own reflections on the European doings of +which she got glimpses, held up a white satin domino for her mistress's +arms. Gerald precipitated himself, took it from the maid and held it in +her place. He tried to meet his friend's glance, hoping for some +faintest sign of participation in his regret at not having been +"spryer." For the space of a second, just before she fastened on her +mask, he caught her eye. Brief and bright as the illumination of summer +lightning, a look of fun flashed over her face. She winked at him. + +Landini ceremoniously held his arm for her and Gerald saw them leave +together with a lessened objection. + +Gerald had for some time past suspected that Landini was paying court to +Mrs. Hawthorne. Whether the lady were aware of it he could not tell. +Gerald had not believed the man had a chance, although, women being +incalculable, one can never feel quite easy. But now he could almost +have found it in himself to pity the somewhat singular man--Italian in +fact, English in manner, Oriental in looks,--if so were he had built up +any little practical dream on the fair widow's acceptance of him. To the +possibility of a sentimental dream Gerald did not accord one single +thought. + +He seated himself, to wait for their return. Only Manlio was left in the +box besides himself. Manlio, consecrated to the worship of one afar, +cared little to mix with the profane and noisy multitude. As Gerald +leaned forth to see the couple that had just left them reappear +down-stairs, Manlio, whose eyes followed his, remarked very sincerely, +when the large easily-recognized white domino came into sight "_E +buona_!" which can be translated either, "She is kind," or "She is +good." + +Gerald felt the warmth of an increased liking for him, because of the +perspicacity he showed. They lighted cigarettes, and together looked +over the marvelous scene, so rich in color and life, while they talked +of things that bore no relation to it, serious things and +manly--politics. + +Charlie came in with Francesca, who at the door doffed her domino and +mask. Both, heated from dancing, were ready for a rest and a little more +of the Champagne-cup. + +"By the way, Gerald," said Charlie, "that's a jolly good painting, old +chap, you made of our charming hostess." + +"Glad you like it!" answered Gerald carelessly, without irony. + +He did not at the moment dislike Charlie. + +He was genially inclined to-night toward all the world. While he had +been tying on his white cravat before the glass in preparation for the +_veglione_, it had dawned on him, to his surprise and glimmering +relief, that he felt something resembling pleasure in the prospect of +the confused and promiscuous affair he was enlisted for. He had +constated that something like normal responsiveness to the common +exterior solicitations to enjoyment was returning to his spirit, his +nerves. The tang of life was pleasant to his palate. + +A dim gladness moved him, as at coming across a precious thing one had +supposed lost, in remembering that he was young.... + +He laid all this to the mere passage of time, and thanked the gods that +unless one dies of one's hurts one finally recovers. + +Under these circumstances it is conceivable that he should not +momentarily feel hate or impatience toward any fellow-passenger on the +amusing old Ship of the World. + +Scraps of poetry stirred in the wells of memory where they are dropped +and lost sight of. "I feel peaceful as old age," he quoted. + +But his eye falling on the white carnation which Giovanna, knowing her +signorino was going _in serata_, had provided for his buttonhole, +lines less grey came to his lips: "_Neque tu choreas_...." He +fished for the half-forgotten words. "_Donec virenti canities +abest...._" + +Because a positive sense of health pervaded him, he, with a philosophy +founded upon observation, remarked that by this sign no doubt he was on +the verge of an illness. But he absentmindedly neglected the practices +preventive of misfortune, believed in not solely by the _popolino_ +of Italy, but recommended to him in boyhood by the excellent physician +who after curing his mumps had taught him to make horns with his fingers +against calamity of any sort that might threaten. + +So, being in a good humor, and made further contented by the uplifting +privilege of a broad unmistakable wink from a lady, he did not dislike +Charlie as usual; he even, as he looked at him, lustrous-eyed, +clear-skinned, smooth, lighting his cigarette at a candle, wondered why +one should not like him. He had his good qualities. Mere vitality is +one. Those points of conduct that called upon him the disdain of persons +more fastidious with regard to their actions, secret or revealed, than +he, were not productive, after all, of much harm.... + +With eyes narrowed, as when he was examining a face to paint it, Gerald +watched the handsome fellow in an animated cousinly dispute with +Francesca--with the result, really against his hope, of finding himself, +instead of aided by his effort of good-will to discover new virtues, +confirmed in his previous disesteem. He could make himself almost love +Charlie by picturing him afflicted, humiliated, sorrowful. But he could +not picture him sorrowful except for narrowly personal misfortunes, such +as poverty, sickness. One could not even be sure, with a face of so +little generosity or moral consciousness as Charlie's, that he would +under all circumstances be incapable of active malignity.... + +The latter thought Gerald had the justice to sweep aside with an +unspoken apology. + +"Of course, you, Charlie, never could admit that a cousin and a female +might know better than you!" Francesca was contending noisily. "It +happens that I have lately looked up, with some care, the costumes of +the _trecento_...." + +"My dear girl!" interrupted Charlie. "You will be insisting next that an +_incroyable_ is a Greek, or that creature, that sort of Italian +bandit who gave the disgusting roar, is a French marquis.... Lend me +your glass, will you? I think I see some one I know." + +"It's Trix," he said after a moment, "making signs to us from the +Sartorio's box. They want us to come over. Come on, let's go." + +Manlio and Gerald were again left alone in the silent company of the +pale coffee-with-milk-colored maid, who unnoticed crept nearer and +nearer the front of the box to peep at the brilliant house. + +Gerald was beginning to think that Landini kept Mrs. Hawthorne rather +longer than was fair when the door opened to let them in, with Estelle +and Leslie and Percy and Doctor Baldwin, all laughing together. + +"Well, have you intrigued any one?" Gerald asked Aurora. + +"Me? Oh, _I_ wouldn't be up to any such pranks," she said. "Has any +one been intriguing you?" + +"I haven't been down, Mrs. Hawthorne. I have stayed quietly here, hoping +to go down with you, if you will be so good, merely intriguing myself +meanwhile--" he dropped his voice so as to be heard of her only,--"with +wondering what kept you so awfully long." + +"Interesting company, funny sights." + +"Are you too tired to come down again and give me a dance?" + +"Bless your soul, I'm not tired, but I'm going home." + +"_Going home?_" + +"Man, do you know what time it is?" + +"I know, of course. But you can't mean you are going home. You only came +at midnight, and it's less than half-past two. Hosts of people stay +until the big chandelier goes out." + +"Ah, don't try to talk me over! It's time I sought my downy, if I want +to get up in the morning. We're going to begin Lent like good girls, +Estelle and I, by going to church." + +Gerald was certain these excuses were hollow. It was obvious, at the +same time, that Mrs. Hawthorne was bent on leaving. He was vexed. He +wondered what her real reason was, as men so often do, after women have +taken pains to give them in detail their reasons, and tried, ignoring +what she said, to get some light from her face. + +It looked to him excited in a smothered way. He at once connected this +repressed excitement with Landini; but then, the face was mirthful, too, +in the same lurking manner, and the proposals of a serious man could +hardly affect even the most frivolous quite like a comic valentine. + +He finally preferred the simplest interpretation: she had seen as much +as she wanted to; she was prosaically sleepy and going home to bed. + +"Good night," she said. "Come soon to see us! Adieu; no, +_ory-vwaw_." + +"Am I not permitted to take you to your carriage?" + +After seeing them tucked in their snug coupe and hearing this wheel off, +Gerald returned to the great hall. He without question would remain +until the big light was extinguished. Colors, forms, sparkle, golden +haze--a painter must be dead or a duffer to leave before the gay glory +of it faded and was dispersed in the gray dawn. + +The scene viewed from near had its cheapness, its crudity, like those +poor painted faces of the dancers pirouetting in the midst of a public +they can more surely enchant from the distance of the stage. The +costumes, so many of them, came from humble costumers who let them from +year to year without renewal of the tinsel or freshening of the ribbons. +But those very things gave to this page of life its depth of interest, +gave reality to this romance. + +The ball was taking a slightly rougher, noisier character as it +approached the end. Some of the boxes were darkened, but the floor was +full, even after the tired _ballerine_ had been permitted by the +management to go home. + +Gerald himself now became one of the slightly bored-looking men he had +observed earlier, strolling about, _claque_ under arm, in the rigid +black and white which took on an effect of austerity amid the +blossom-colors of the costumes. He sincerely hoped no one would approach +him to intrigue him, and the hope found expression, more than he knew, +in his countenance. He felt unable to meet such an adventure in a manner +that would satisfy his taste. It marked a fundamental difference between +him, at bottom a New-Englander, and his friends of Latin blood, he +thought, that he had not the limberness, the laisser-aller, the lack of +self-consciousness and stupid shame, which enables them so +good-humoredly to take the chance of appearing fools. And so before this +romance he was only a reader; they were it--the romance. + +He could deplore his own gray role, but not change it; he therefore +wished anew, every time a merry masker looked as though she might intend +accosting him that she would think better of it and leave him in +deserved neglect. He had his wish; he was in the whole evening teased by +nobody whatever. + +His eyes, straying over the crowd, sought for known faces. All Florence +had turned out for the occasion, but some of it had by this time gone +home. Most of the men he knew had women on their arms, and from their +silence or talkativeness one might without undue cynicism determine +whether these were their own wives and daughters or wives and daughters +of others. + +A tall, gray-whiskered old gentleman in uniform passed him--none other +than Antonia's friend, General Costanzi--who was trying to retain all +his dignity while beset by two frolicsome little creatures looking like +the chorus in "Faust," who, suspended one on each of his arms, were +trying to win from him a promise to take them to supper. He sent toward +Gerald a look of comical long-suffering, to which Gerald replied by a +nod vaguely congratulatory, and a smile that courteously wished him luck +in that lottery. + +The painter Castagnola, broad-blown, debonair, passed him, in a costume +of sterling and royal magnificence, copied from a portrait of Francis +First whom he in feature resembled. At his side, with gold cymbals in +her hands, went a figure in floating robes of daffodil gauze, a dancer +from one of the frescoes of Pompeii, wearing a mask--four inches of +black velvet--only for the form. Her bare shoulders and arms, of an +insolent beauty, forbade any mistake as to her identity. Gerald knew, +like the rest, that it was Castagnola's model. + +Charlie passed him, at a little distance, with a laughing lady hitched +to his elbow. Her mask swung from her hand--the ball was wearing to its +end, and masks are hot. The hood of her rose-colored domino had been +pushed back from a mass of ruffled black hair; her eyes and teeth +gleamed with equal brightness and directness of purpose. It was +suggested to Gerald by her air and manner that she had forgotten the +spectators. Her freedom from constraint was shared by Charlie. Seeing +them together reminded Gerald that Charlie was after all Italian,--one +forgot it sometimes. He tried to remember which of the bits of scandal +tossed on to the dust-heap at the back of his memory was the one fitting +this Signora Sartorio. + +They passed out of sight, and he forgot them in the interest of the next +thing. + +Carlo Guerra, like him alone, stopped to chat with him. Guerra, a +pleasant figure in Anglo-American as well as Florentine circles, with +his fine head of a monk whom circumstances have rendered worldly, had, +before inheriting his comfortable income, been a journalist. He still +enjoyed above all things the exercise of the critical faculty, and had +much to say this evening about a recent exhibition of paintings. + +Gerald was hearing it with proper interest when some part of his +attention was drawn away by a sound across the house. It was, softened +by distance, that species of lion's roar, incredibly large as issuing +from a human throat, and comical from such a disproportion, which had +startled the audience several times already that evening. Gerald turned, +without much thinking, to look off in the direction whence it came and +single out the figure with which it was associated, when he was +surprised to find the figure he sought almost under his nose. Not more +than six feet from him were to be seen the tattered mantle and ragged +plume of _Sparafucile_; likewise the thick crow's-beak of the black +domino. + +The two were looking at him and, his impression was, laughing. He +fancied they were on the point of speaking to him,--he had thought +earlier in the evening when they came into the box that they might be +acquaintances,--but the crow suddenly pressed tittering against the +bandit, pushing and pulling him away. In a moment they were lost among +the crowd. + +Who, then, had been accountable for the roar at the other end of the +house? An imitator? A double? Gerald suspected a masked-ball device +intended to intrigue. He gave it no more thought, but proceeded, started +on that line by the episode, to reflect on the singularity, yes, the +crassness, of Mrs. Hawthorne's determination to leave the ball early. +The secret of it was, of course, that she had no imagination, no +education of the imagination. A _veglione_ was caviar to her. This +wonderful scene, beheld for the first time, perhaps the only time in +life, and she had had to go to bed just as if they had been in Boston or +Charlestown! If one must go to church in such a case, it was Gerald's +opinion, one does not go to bed at all. But she belonged to the class of +people who would miss the last act of an opera rather than miss a train +or allow the beans to burn. A bread-and-butter person, a sluggish, +fat-brained person, elementary, not awakened and sharpened to +appreciation and wonder. If he had not been in such a good humor he +might have been cross, scornful of her; as it was, he indulgently +thought her merely too flatly healthy in every taste for anything but +the wilds of Cape Cod to which she sometimes playfully referred. + +He here perceived that he had entirely lost the thread of Guerra's talk, +and that Guerra, probably aware of it, had moved to another subject. It +was hearing the name Hawthorne that had startled him to attention. + +"I saw you earlier in the evening in a box with Mrs. Hawthorne," Guerra +said, "whom, you remember, I had the pleasure of meeting at Mrs. +Grangeon's." + +After considering a moment with a half-smile, he nodded and pronounced +in the tone of an impartial critic, "_Simpatica_!" Then, after +considering another moment, nodded again. "_Ha gli occhi di donna +buona._" Which means, or nearly, "She has good eyes." And Gerald's +esteem for Guerra was immensely raised, for while thinking very well of +him, he would yet not have expected a man like Guerra to discern so much +at a first meeting. A worldling like Guerra might so naturally have said +"_E bella_!" for Aurora that evening in her best frock, had been +_bella_--beautiful; or he might have said, "_Begli occhi_!" +for her shining blue eyes admitted of that description. That Guerra had +said what he said indicated finer feeling than Gerald had given him +credit for. + +Still lingering in desultory talk, the former journalist now asked: + +"Have you seen the Grangeon?" + +"No," said Gerald. "Is she here?" + +"Yes; she is with the Rostopchine, in a box of the third order." He +looked up and around to find the box with his eyes, and after a moment +indicated it to Gerald. "There! Do you see them? The Rostopchine in pale +purple, and the Grangeon in an Indian thing all incrusted with green +beetle-wings, a thing for a museum. They are talking with a uniform whom +I do not know. She was speaking of you this evening--Antonia, asking me +what you are doing. She has great faith in your talent." + +Gerald's lip curled a little sourly, and he stood looking upward without +reply. + +Turning to look down through her jeweled lorgnette and running her eyes +over the crowd, Antonia now saw him. Recognition lighted her face to +unexpected liveliness. She fluttered her hand to him demonstratively. + +After bowing and smiling, he stood quietly, with face upturned, +receiving her showered greetings. + +He had a certain knowledge of Antonia. She was capable of entirely +dropping the remembrance of her bad treatment of him; perhaps forgetting +it really, but likelier choosing merely that he should forget it. She +permitted herself the caprices of a spoiled beauty. + +A classic golden fillet this evening bound her gray locks; a jewel +depending from it sparkled upon the deeply lined forehead of a +brain-worker. Her irreparably withered neck was clasped by an Indian +necklace, showy as a piece of stage jewelry. Light-minded smiles +wreathed her heavy face. Where her sleeves stopped there began the soft +and serried wrinkles of those long, long buttonless gloves which Sarah +Bernhardt had brought into fashion. + +It was not difficult to see in what illusion Antonia chose to live +to-night. Her readers might even, perhaps, have determined which of her +own heroines she personated. + +For all these things Gerald liked his old friend the more. + +Her lips framed the words, "Come up! Come up!" while her hand made the +equivalent signs. + +He nodded assent, and with Guerra walking beside him started on his way. +Guerra under the central box excused himself and turned back, having +already paid his respects. Gerald, once out in the lobby, advanced more +uncertainly, finally hesitated and stopped. + +He was not sure he wished to see Antonia in circumstances which would +not allow him to express his resentment of her behavior toward the +friend whom with her formal permission he had brought to her house. It +was owed to Mrs. Hawthorne not to let the incident pass. He had ceased +to be furious at Antonia; he had not written in cold blood the wrathful, +finishing letter planned in heat of brain. That, after all, was Antonia +as he had always known her and been her friend: Antonia, capable of +heroisms and generosities, fineness and insight, density and petulance. +One could not drop the great woman into the waste-basket because on one +occasion more she had been perverse and the sufferer happened to be +oneself. But the great woman, thought Gerald, needed a sober word spoken +to her. In conclusion, he would not go to see her, no, until he could +have it out with her. + +And so instead of seeking Antonia in her box, Gerald cut short his +difficulty by going home. It was high time; it had been Lent for hours. +If Antonia were _intrigata_ at his failure to appear, it would only +be in keeping with the fanciful circumstances of the hour and place. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Early in Lent the weather treated Florence to what Aurora and Estelle +called a cold snap. Their surprise and indignation were extreme. That +Italy, sunny Italy, should feel herself free to have these alpine or +polar fancies! + +Estelle showed what she thought of it by taking cold. Aurora affected +wearing her furs in the house. To increase their sense of ill usage, +they would now and then turn their faces away from the fire and sigh, +admiring how the air was dimmed by a puff of silver smoke. These +pilgrims from a Northern climate, who knew so well the sensation of +breath freezing in the nostrils and numbness seizing the nose when on +certain winter days they stepped from their houses into the snow-piled +streets at home, could not admit that in the City of Flowers one should +catch sight of one's breath,--indoors, too. + +The little monthly roses, shivering but brave, blooming still, or +blooming already, out in the garden, bore witness, after all, to the +clemency of the winter, and upheld the city's title to its name. The +garden altogether was nearly as green as ever. Against alaternus, ivy, +myrtle, laurestine the season could not prevail. Aurora decided that the +blame for their discomfort rested with the house; she planned drastic +and fundamental improvements which it was quite certain the noble +landlord would not permit her to carry out. + +What with Estelle being half sick and herself, as she claimed, half +frozen, Aurora at the end of a day during which the sun had not lighted +the world by one feeblest ray, and the night had closed down thick and +damp, was just a little disposed to low spirits. She had not been out, +and nobody had come to see her. She felt the weariness that follows for +certain sociable natures upon a long stretch of hours without renewal +from outside. + +She sensibly reacted against it by making the sitting-room as cozy as +she could, drawing close the crushed-strawberry curtains, piling wood on +the fire, placing a screen so that it shielded her chair and table from +the draft; and, seated in her chimney-corner, took up a piece of +knitting. + +She was not very fond of reading, and she was fond of knitting large +soft woolly afghans, of which she made presents to her friends. Reading +seemed to her, anyhow, a rather idle thing to be doing. Knitting came +under the head of work. How often had her story-paper been snatched from +her when she was a girl, and a sock to knit thrust in her hand, with the +bidding to be about something useful. How she had hated it. But now that +she was free she still had a better conscience when she knit. + +To the click of her long wooden needles she thought, with more pleasure +than was afforded by any other vision at the moment, of a hot water +bottle gently warming the bed into which she meant to creep at exactly +nine o'clock. This hour she had set when at eight already the temptation +to go to bed and forget the unsatisfactory day in sound warm slumbers +had been so strong as to make yielding to it appear wrong. + +These vestiges of Puritanism Aurora did not recognize as such, but yet +her mind as she was practicing self-discipline turned, without seeking +for the reason, toward the person who had done most to inculcate in her +the doctrine that if you like to do a thing that itself is almost surely +a sign of the thing being wicked, and that if you dislike it it is very +probably your duty. + +While she continued to appear the signora to whom the servants' eyes +were accustomed, albeit a trifle more absent and unsmiling, she was to +herself a young girl in a far country, living and moving in scenes of +difficulty and misunderstanding with a sharp-chinned, narrow-chested, +timidly-beloved just woman--her mother, long since laid to rest.... + +There was nothing from outside to dispel the faint heartache +accompanying this retrospection; wind and rain against the windows were +more proper to increase the melancholy, and Aurora, suddenly sick of +staying up to be blue, wound her yarn to start for bed. But first, for +just a moment, she would go down-stairs, she thought, and have a look at +her portrait, for that was the most comforting thing to do that she +could think of. She loved her portrait as a child loves its favorite +toy. + +This she was intending when the sound of the door-bell at once stopped +and cheered her by the possibility it held out of some diversion. Vitale +entered with a package. + +Catching in what he said the name Gaetano, Aurora took it to mean that +Gaetano had brought the package. He was waiting below, she did not +doubt. Gaetano was Giovanna's nephew, and had more than once come on +errands from Gerald. Saying, "_Aspettare_!" she hastened into her +room for the porte-monnaie which resided in her top drawer. From this +she drew a reward that should make the journey through night and rain +from Gerald's house to hers seem no hardship. Her blues had vanished. + +Before removing the rain-splashed newspaper, she gazed for a moment at +the package, trying to guess what it could be. It was square, flat, +about a foot and a half one way by a foot the other. What was Gerald +Fane sending her like that without any enlightening missive? A note +might be inside. She cut the string, took off the newspaper, to find a +second wrapper of clean white drawing-paper. After touching and +pinching, she guessed the object to be a picture-frame and picture. +Filled with curiosity, she pulled off the last wrapping, and with a face +at first very blank stared before her.... + +It was a painting, one of the kind she had seen at Gerald's studio and +not liked. + +Different though it was from the portrait down-stairs,--as different as +poverty from riches, as twilight from day,--she could yet see that this +also was meant for a portrait of herself. She remembered tying that blue +neckerchief over her head and under her chin one evening, trying to look +like an Italian in her _pezzola_, to make the others laugh. + +She stood the picture on the chair which she had pulled up before her so +as to rest her feet on the rung, off the stone floor, still to be felt, +she imagined, through the rug. Of course it was herself, but how +disappointing--disappointing enough to shed tears over--to have this +held up to her after that lovely being down-stairs! How unkind of her +friend Gerald! + +Unfair, too, for although this, in not being a beauty, was obviously +more like her than the other, she could not admit that it was any truer. +She could not believe that she ever really looked like this, though she +knew that it was the way she sometimes felt. How had Gerald known she +ever felt like this? + +That she was a person who ate well, slept well, felt well, loved fun, +was giving and gay--that was all most people knew, or were entitled to +know, of her; all she knew of herself a good deal of the time. Such +things could never be the whole of any person, of course. Every one has +had something to overcome. Some persons have had to overcome and +overcome and overcome, one thing after another, one thing after another, +that has tried to drag and keep them down. She had had--probably +because, as her mother often told her, she was born with such a lot of +the devil in her--a great many trials sent to her, for her discipline, +no doubt, her cleansing; but she had come out of them still unreduced, +still eager for a good time. + +All persons are made up, in a way, of these experiences of the past, but +they don't expose them in their faces, they forget them as much as they +can. + +Yes, as much as they can. How much is that? The only true sorrows being +involved with one's affections, and the objects of one's love never far +from one's thoughts, how much could a person be said to forget her +sorrows, really? + +Aurora reflected upon this for some time, staring the while at her +portrait. The face looking back from the canvas was very like her, had +she but known it, at this exact moment, while the thoughts produced, the +memories wakened, by it substituted for her ordinary hardiness the +delicate look of a capacity for pain. + +As she gazed at the portrait longer she liked it better; from minute to +minute she became more reconciled, and found herself finally almost +attracted. Something from it penetrated her for which she had no +definition. It was perhaps the dignity of humanity confronting her in +that strong and simple face framed by the kerchief, like a woman of the +people's,--her own face, but not certainly as she saw it in the mirror; +a humanity that out of the common materials offered to it day by day had +rejected all that was mean and contrived to build up nobleness. + +Half perceiving that this portrait in its different way flattered her as +much if not more than the portrait down-stairs, she, while modestly +refusing to be fooled by the compliment, yet felt a motion of +affectionate gratitude toward Gerald for the sympathy which had enabled +him to pierce beneath the surface and see that Bouncing Betsy had her +feelings, too, her history; yes, her bitter tragedy. + +While continuing with her eyes on the picture, she from time to time +wiped them, and when the door-bell rang again, aware of being "a sight," +took the precaution of retiring to her bedroom, so that if Vitale should +come to announce a visit,--it was not yet nine o'clock,--she could the +better make him understand that he must excuse her to the visitor; she +was going to bed. + +But learning from the servant that Signor Fane was below, she changed +her mind, and chose unhesitatingly from her stock of useful infinitives +the appropriate two: "_Dire venire_." + +Gerald found her by the fire, her fur-cloak over her shoulders, her +woolly afghan in her hands, and the picture on the chair before her. + +"Well?" he asked expectantly, looking at it, too, after they had shaken +hands. + +"You've made me feel sorry for myself. What's the use?" she answered in +a little sigh, keeping her reddened eyes turned away from him. "Hush! +Wait a moment! I was forgetting," she added, in comedy anticlimax, like +a housewife who in the midst of a scene of sentiment should smell the +dinner scorching. She jumped up, and went without the least noise to +close the door to Estelle's room, returning from which she illogically +fell to talking in a whisper. + +"Estelle's gone to bed. She's got a snow-balling old cold. I've rubbed +her chest with liniment, and tied up her throat in a compress, and given +her hot lemonade, and she lies there with a hot water bottle at her feet +and grease on her nose, and let's hope she'll feel better in the +morning." + +"Let's hope, indeed. I'm very sorry to hear she's ill. But she's sure to +be better by to-morrow, isn't she, with all that care and those +remedies. I hope you haven't a cold, too, Mrs. Hawthorne. You almost +look," he said innocently, "as if you had. This weather is dreadful. You +haven't, have you, dear friend?" + +"No; I guess what you see is just that I've been crying. Don't say +anything about it. Don't notice it. Never mind. Come and sit down by the +fire and get warm. Your hand was like ice." + +"It's very bad out, and not much better in, except here by your generous +fireside. I haven't been warm all day." + +"Why didn't you come before? It isn't what I call balmy here, but I +expect it's balmier than at your place." + +With her kindly unconstraint she reached for one of his hands to test +its temperature. With a little cry of "Mercy me!" she closed his numb +fingers between her palms to warm them, as if the blaze could not have +accomplished this end so well as they. + +He let it be, not with the same unconsciousness in the matter as she, +but hoping that the soft, warm infolding would somehow do him good. He +had come in the rather desperate hope of being done good to. As he had +been about to start out, having intended, when he sent the portrait, to +follow close upon it, he had found himself feeling so ill--feeling, at +the end of the dismal day, so indescribably burdened and ill and +apprehensive of worse things--that he had been on the point of giving it +up. But then the wish itself to escape from his bad feelings had +impelled him forth toward the spot glowing warmer and cheerier in his +thoughts than any other, where, if he could forget how ill he felt, he +would naturally feel better. Aurora's house during the days of painting +the first portrait had come to feel remarkably like home to him. + +So when Aurora released his hand, saying, "Let's have the other," he +docilely gave it to her, though the fire had already partly thawed it. +Gratefully, with the hand set free, he covered both her kind hands, +which loved so much to warm things and feed things and pet things and +give away money. + +Overcoming his ordinary stiffness, he pressed them right manfully, to +signify that he would not speak of her tears if she wished him not to, +but here was his sympathy, and with it his penitence, if so were that, +as she intimated, he had had a share in making them flow. + +"So you are all alone this evening?" he asked in the voice that makes +whatever is said seem affectionate and comforting. + +"Yes. I haven't even Busteretto. I let Estelle keep him on the foot of +her bed. She's perfectly devoted to him. And Clotilde is busy in her own +corner of the house, going over the bills. It takes lots of time." + +"And where is the musician in ordinary, the gifted Italo?" he inquired, +with a smile meant to draw from her a smile. + +She was caught without difficulty. "The gifted Checkerberry hasn't been +round lately," she smiled. "He won't expose himself to the night air for +some time. He's got laryngitis so he can't talk above a whisper." Her +eye twinkled and she laughed, though what she communicated was not on +the face of it very funny. + +He was perhaps calling attention to this when he said, "Poor devil!" + +"Yes," she agreed, achieving sobriety, "it's bad weather for +laryngitis," and went on with the weather, dropping Italo. "It's been a +mean sort of day, hasn't it? I haven't set foot outside. I was already +feeling kind of blue and making up my mind to go to bed when Gaetano +came with your present." + +There was an intimation in her glance that this event had not made the +world appear any rosier. + +Both turned to look at the picture. Their hands loosened naturally; they +sat apart. + +"Can't you see why I had to paint it, Mrs. Hawthorne?" he asked, +speaking eagerly, and as if pressing his defense. + +"How could I endure to have that thing down-stairs stand as my idea, my +sole idea, of you? And how could I bear to make you a gift, a sole gift, +of a piece of work I do not respect? This may be worth no more,--I think +differently,--but it is at least the best I can produce. It has my +sanction. You, too, believe me, will prefer it to the other after a +while." + +She shook her head a little disconsolately. + +"The other you can, if you must, keep in your drawing-room to make an +agreeable spot of color," he went on, reversing their parts and trying +to induce in her a lighter humor; "it has that perfectly legitimate use. +In your drawing-room, you know, Auroretta, among the pictures of your +choosing, it does not, in our Italian idiom, altogether disappear. This +one you will keep out of sight, but will look at now and then, if you +please; and I quite trust you, with time, to recognize that it was +painted by some one who understood and honored you more than there was +any evidence of his doing when he perpetrated, for a joke, that +bonbon-box subject down-stairs." + +Mrs. Hawthorne, with soft and saddened eyes fixed on the portrait, again +shook her head, sighing, "Poor thing!" + +"Not at all!" he protested almost peevishly. "Please not to suggest by +pitying her that I have not represented there a fine, big, strong thing, +built to stand up under anything! I could slay, with pleasure, at any +time"--he diverged, carried away by a long-standing disgust,--"the +pestiferous asses who call my things morbid. I am too careful to keep +true to what I see. The difference between them--I mean the critics who +call me morbid--and myself, is in the degree of sight." + +"Don't get excited, Geraldino!" she checked fumings which she did not +entirely understand. "What I meant was that looking at her has made me +think of all the things that have gone wrong with me in my whole life. +Don't you call that a tribute? You couldn't have painted this picture if +you hadn't suspected those things, and, honest, I don't see how you +could suspect them. Ever since I came over here I've been so jolly. +Seems to me I've been nothing but jolly. I've been having such a good +time! How you could see under it, I don't know. As a matter of fact, +I've always been jolly between-times. Give me half a chance, let me get +out of the frying-pan, I'd be ready in a minute to go on a picnic. But +I've not been spared my troubles, Geraldino; you were right there." + +At this reference to many sorrows, he found a thing to do more +expressive than words. Sitting near each other as they were, he could +reach her without rising; he bent forward and touched his lips +commiseratingly to her hand. + +He might have known that it would bring her story, but he had not +schemed for this, and, unwilling, yet eager, to hear, was a prey to +compunctions on more than one ground when, after a little gulp and +sniff, she burst forth: + +"I've seen perfectly dreadful times, Geraldino. Some of them were the +sort of thing you can get over, but some of them--upon my word, I wonder +at myself how I've got over them as I have. The queer thing is--I +haven't, in a way. It will come over me sometimes, in the queerest +places, at the oddest moments, that I am still that woman to whom such +awful things happened, that I, playing my silly monkey-shines, am that +heart-broken woman." + +"I know," murmured Gerald, and took her plump hands steadyingly between +his hard, thin ones. + +"I've never had any sense," she let herself go. "Anybody can see that; +and when I was younger I had even less, naturally, than I have now. +Always, always, I wanted so to be happy! I wanted to have a good time. I +was born wanting to have a good time. And everything was against it. But +I managed somehow. One way or another, I got to the circus 'most every +time. My mother used to wonder what my finish would be, and try to lick +the Old Boy out of me. But it couldn't be done. I'm just like my father, +my dear old pa, who was a sinner. He let ma have her way in everything, +as he thought it right to do. Not, I guess, because he always liked her +way, but because after my sister, who was a beautiful child, died in +such a terrible way that I can't even bear to mention it,--she caught +fire,"--Aurora hurriedly interjected, "ma came so near going out of her +senses that pa humored her in everything. He thought the world of her; +so did we all, but it couldn't be called a happy home. There were three +boys, besides me,--I was the last,--and we were all such everlastingly +lively young ones, and ma was so strict! Pa was away most of the time +getting a living. My pa, you know, was a pilot. It wasn't a fat living +for so many of us, but that wouldn't have mattered long as we had enough +to eat. But ma, poor soul, because of that twist her mind had taken +through sorrow, was always seeing something wrong in everything we did; +she never could be quiet or contented. The boys didn't get so much of +it: they were off out of doors and later at their trades; but me, I was +kept in to help with the housework, and kept in for company, and kept in +for no other reason, I guess, than because my wicked heart longed so to +go out and play with the girls and boys. I dare say it was good for me. +Ma meant all right, that I know, but ma was all along a sick woman. We +realized later that though she was round and about, busy every minute, +she was sick for years with the trouble that finally took her away. I +don't want you to think I didn't have a real good mother, for I did--a +first-rate mother who did her honest best to make a good woman of me." + +"I know, I know." By a reminding pressure of her hands he begged she +would trust him not to misunderstand. + +"But my pa--you should have known my pa!" Aurora's face brightened +immensely, and Gerald suspected that it was like him she looked when she +screwed her lips to one side in a manner humorously suggesting a pipe at +the corner of her mouth, and said in a voice not her own, "Golly, Nell, +can't you whistle for a snifter?" He could almost see a sailor's +chin-whiskers. + +"He took me with him once in a while. Golly, those were good times, if +you please! Free as air, all the peanuts I could eat, out in the boat +with my pa, and catch fish, and catch a steamer if we could. We had an 8 +big as a house on our sail. He was as good a seaman, my pa was, as any +in East Boston, but he wasn't a hustler. But there, if he'd been a +hustler, he wouldn't have been my pa. Wouldn't for a house with a +brownstone front have had my pa any different from what he was. Grandma +was just the same sort, God bless her! easy-going, jolly, come a day, go +a day, do as she please and let you do as you please. I used to have +such lovely times at her house, summers, down on the Cape, before my +sister died! + +"It was there I first knew Hattie--Estelle. Her aunt's house was next to +my grandma's. I used to think her the luckiest child that ever was born. +Seemed to me she had just about everything--a gold locket and chain, +bronze boots, and paper dolls by the dozen. We used to play together, +day in day out, one of those plays that last all the time, where you +pretend you're some one else and act it out in all you do. We kept it up +for years. I don't see that we've changed much with growing up. Seems to +me we were pretty near the same then as we are now, having our spats, +but having lots of fun, and wanting to share everything. Estelle lived +in East Boston, too, and was going to be a school-teacher. It seemed to +me that to be a school-teacher was just about the finest thing anybody +could do. That would have been my ambition, to be a school-teacher. But +I never got beyond the grammar school, I was needed at home to help +mother. Then my poor pa died--an accident down in the docks,"--Aurora, +lowering her voice, began to hurry and condense,--"then Ben, then Joe, +then--will you believe it?--Charlie, that I loved best. They all had the +same delicate constitution as ma, it turned out, and a predisposition to +the same trouble. Then finally, after going through with so much, my +poor mother went, too, and for that I could only be thankful. And I had +taken care of them all. I wasn't twenty-three when I was the last left. +Doesn't it seem strange! I sometimes can't believe it even now." + +This rapid enumeration of calamities so great robbed them of terror and +pathos, yet Gerald had somewhat the startled, shocked feeling of a man +who knows he has been struck by a bullet, though his nerves have not yet +announced it by suffering. + +Aurora, who after the passing of years could think of these things +without tears, yet in speaking of them to a sympathetic hearer had +obvious difficulty in keeping a stiff upper lip. Gerald turned away his +eyes while with her hand she covered and tried to stop her mouth's +trembling. + +"Poor child!" he said, with a sincerity which saved the words from +insignificance. + +"Yes," she half laughed. "Wouldn't one think it enough to sort of subdue +anybody, take the starch out of them for some time? When I came out of +that house of sickness I couldn't think of anything else but sickness +and death. It stuck to me like the smell of disinfectants after you've +been in a hospital. I couldn't think of anything but that it would take +me next. I supposed I must be affected, too. But the doctor examined me, +and do you know what he said? 'Sound as a trout,' he said. 'You're so +sound,' he said, 'you're so healthy, that we'll have to shoot you to get +you to the resurrection.' Then I felt better. He was a new doctor that +we'd called in toward the end. He knew how I was situated, and as he +seemed to think I'd make a good nurse, he got me a chance in the City +Hospital, where I could get my training. And Hattie, dear Hattie, what a +friend she's been! She and her ma and pa made me come and make my home +with them. It's since then that we've been like sisters." + +At the sound, appositely occurring, of a cough in the neighboring room, +Aurora stopped and listened. + +"Dear me!" she whispered. "D'you suppose she's lying awake?" + +"She may be coughing in her sleep," he suggested. + +"Yes," Aurora said dubiously, after further listening, and hearing +nothing more. "And if I should go in to see, I might wake her. The +bell-rope is right at the head of her bed; all she has to do is pull it +if she wants somebody to come. I was entertaining you with the story of +my life, wasn't I? Where had I got to? Oh, yes. There in the hospital I +just loved it. Perhaps you can't see how I could. I just did. I had lots +of hard work. The training was sort of thrown in in my case with other +duties, but there were the other nurses and the house-doctors, I grew +chummy with them all. I had fun with the patients, too. You don't know +how much good it does you to watch anybody get well; the majority get +well. It's good for them, besides, to have you jolly." + +"Your gaiety of heart makes me think of the grass, Aurora, the blessed +ineradicable grass, that will grow anywhere, that you see pushing up +between the paving-stones of the hard city, and finding a foothold on +the blank of the rock, and fringing the top of the ruined castle, and +hiding the new-made graves." + +Aurora, always simple-mindedly charmed with a compliment, paused long +enough to investigate Gerald's comparison, then resumed, with the effect +of taking a plunge into deep waters: + +"But it was there I met the fellow who did me the worst turn of any.... + +"They brought him in with broken ribs one rainy night, after he'd been +knocked down in the street by a team and kicked by the horses. I wasn't +his regular nurse, but I was in and out of his room, and if he rang +while his regular nurse was at her meals, I'd go. Everybody knows that +when a man's sick he's liable to get sweet on this or that one of his +nurses. + +"How I could have been mistaken in Jim Barton I can't see now. Since +knowing him, if I ever see anybody that looks a bit like him, I shun +them like poison, because I know as well as I need to that however nice +they may appear, you can't depend upon them. But before I knew him I'd +never stop to distrust anybody. + +"It began with our setting up jokes together; he could be awfully funny +even when he was swearing like a pirate about his luck landing him in a +hospital. Bad language didn't seem so awful coming from him, because he +was so light-complexioned and boyish-looking. He was only passing +through the city, in an awful hurry to get West, when he got hurt, and +he was madder than a hornet at the delay. But after a while he quieted +down, because he'd got something else to think about, which was getting +me to go along with him to California, where he'd bought a share in a +mine. And me, star idiot of the world, it seemed the grandest thing that +had ever happened. I'd never had anybody in love with me that way +before. The boys had always liked me, but I'd been like another fellow +among them, and I'd never more than just been silly for a week or two at +a time over one fellow and another at a distance. And here was a solid +offer from a perfectly splendid man who had everything, money included. +They'd found several thousand dollars on him when he was picked up. And +the yarns he told about gold-mines!... But it wasn't that, it wasn't the +gold-mines, it was 'the way with him' that caught me. I guess when +you're in love you're no judge of your man. We two, I tell you, seemed +made for each other. He was as fond of a good time as I, and he loved +fun, like me. We were going to California to make our everlasting +fortune. You'd have thought there was no more doubt about it than the +Gospels being true. And the good times we were going to have while doing +it were nothing to the good times we'd have after, when I'd have my +diamonds and he'd have his horses and things. As I said, the diamonds +weren't needed; I'd have gone with him anywhere just for the fun of +being together. I couldn't see what I'd done to deserve my blessings. I +guess he was in love, too, as far as it was in him to be; I'll do him +that justice. + +"Hattie and her ma, while they had nothing to say against Jim, wanted me +to wait awhile. But Jim couldn't wait. The moment he was well enough he +wanted to be off. And I didn't care much about waiting either. I felt as +if I'd known him all my life. So they said nothing more and gave us a +perfectly lovely wedding from their house. They didn't see through him +any more than I did, and in a way it wasn't strange, because he wasn't +hiding anything in particular or misrepresenting anything. He believed +all he said about the big money he was going to make and the grand times +we should have. He was born with the sort of nature that always believes +things are going to turn out right without labor and perseverance on +your part. He wasn't fond of work, that's sure. What we ought to have +done was find out something about his past; but even that, I guess, +wouldn't have opened our eyes, with him before us looking like one of +ourselves. And it wasn't a very long past; he was young. He came of good +folks, I guess. I never saw them, but there are ways of telling. Good +folks, but not wealthy, and so as to get rich easily he had tried one +thing after another. He was quick' discouraged, and the moment the thing +didn't look so big or easy he wanted to throw it over and try something +else. Then I've come to the conclusion he loved change for its own +sake--go somewhere else, take a new name, and start a new business, +talking big. It came out after he died that he'd been known under half a +dozen names in as many States. There simply wasn't anything _to_ +him. I don't believe he meant to act like a skunk, but, then, he hadn't +any principles either to keep him from acting like a skunk, or meaner +than a skunk, when it came to getting himself out of difficulty. And I, +for my sins, had to marry such a fellow as that! It was like there had +stood the good times I'd always wanted, right before me in the body, and +I took them for better, for worse, and got what my ma said I deserved to +get when she tried to cure me of my fancy for good times!" + +"Don't!" protested Gerald, softly. "Don't regard as wrong what was so +natural. All who have the benefit of knowing you must thank the stars +which permitted your beautiful love of life to survive the dreadfulness +of which you have given me a glimpse." + +"The dreadfulness, Geraldino! I haven't told you anything yet of the +dreadfulness. I haven't come to it. I haven't come to what makes +her"--she nodded toward the portrait,--"look like that." + +"Then tell me!" he encouraged her. + +"It isn't Jim. When I think of Jim, it only makes me mad. My heart is +hard as stone toward him." She clenched her jaws and looked, in fact, +rather grim. "That he's dead doesn't change it. I hope I forgive him as +a Christian ought to who asks forgiveness for her own trespasses. I know +I don't feel revengeful. There wasn't enough _to_ Jim for me to +wish him punished in hell. But if you think I have any sentiment because +I used to love him, or that I was sorry I woke up from my fool dream +when I once had seen it was a dream--Not a bit of it. There was a time, +though, when I first began to suspect and understand, that makes me +rather sick to think of even now. I was so far from home, you see. I +hadn't a friend, and I wouldn't for worlds have written back to my old +friends that I'd made a bad bargain--not while I wasn't dead sure. And I +kept on hoping. + +"At first we had a real good time. We lived in a miner's cottage, but +that seemed sort of jolly. I'd been used to hard work all my life, so I +didn't mind that, and I wanted him to have as nice a home as any man +could on the same money. So I cleaned and contrived and baked and brewed +and fixed up. I wanted him to be pleased with me and proud among the +other men. But pretty soon I found I didn't care to make acquaintances, +because I was ashamed of the way Jim did. He kept putting all his money +into the mine, sending good money after bad, and let me keep house on +nothing, and then was in a worse and worse temper because the mine +didn't pan out and things weren't more comfortable at home. I began to +wake up in the night and lie there in a cold sweat, clean scairt. I +haven't told you that we were looking for an addition to the family. +That's one reason I was so scairt. But I shut my teeth, and said I to +myself, 'This baby's going to have a chance if his mother can give it to +him by not getting excited or letting things prey on her mind.' So I +kept a hold on myself and didn't let anything count except guarding that +baby. I seemed to care more about it than all the rest of the world put +together. Oh, I can't begin to tell you how much more than for all the +rest of the world put together. I don't know that a man would +understand." + +"Yes, he would; of course he would," spoke Gerald, gently reverent, yet +a little impatient; then he qualified his assertion: "He could imagine, +I mean to say, how you would have felt that way." + +"Well, that matter was going to be put safely through, no matter what. +The first mistake I made was not making friends with my women neighbors, +so that everybody in Elsinore supposed that Jim's wife was the same +stripe as he,--or that's what I thought they supposed,--and when I +needed friends I couldn't think of any to turn to except those at home. +The other mistake I made was not to write them at home and tell them the +truth and then wait for them to send me money to come. But I guess my +mind stopped working when the shock came." + +Aurora appeared to brace herself, while decently considering how to +minimize to her audience the brutality of her next revelation. + +"Jim cleared out one night while I was asleep, taking every cent we'd +got and every last thing he could hope to turn into a cent," she said, +hardening her voice and lips. Gerald was given a moment in which to +visualize the situation, before she went on: "I guess, as I said before, +that I wasn't in my right mind for a spell; all I could think of was +getting home to my own folks, and I was going to do it somehow, though I +hadn't a cent. I hadn't even my wedding-ring. I'd put it off because my +finger had grown fatter, and he'd taken even that to go and try his luck +somewhere else.--What do you think of it?" she mechanically added. + +She was pale, remembering these things. Gerald drew in a long, unsteady +breath, oppressed. + +"I was going to get home somehow," Aurora repeated, "and I wasn't going +to waste time waiting for anything. And how was I going to do it? I +don't suppose I really thought; I followed instinct like an animal. I +hid in a freight-car going East--" + +A definite difficulty here stopped Aurora. While she felt for words in +which to clothe what followed, the images in her mind made her eyes, +which were not seeing the things actually before them, more descriptive +of the anguish of remembered scenes than her words were likely to be. + +"I'm going to skip all that, Gerald." With a gesture, she suddenly +rolled up a part of her story and threw it aside. "But when I came to +see and understand rightly again, weeks after, in a hospital at Denver, +I cried, oh! how I cried, and didn't care what became of me. Because I'd +lost him; they hadn't succeeded in saving him. He had lived, mind you," +she emphasized with pride--"he had lived a little while, he was all +right, perfect in every way--a son." + +His due of tears was not withheld from the wee frustrated god. Aurora +gave up talking, so as to have her cry in quietness. + +Gerald, holding back a sound of distress, twisted on his chair, not +daring to recall himself to Aurora's notice either by speaking or +touching her. + +"I'm plain sorry for myself," she explained her tears while trying to +stop them. "You can't be sorry, for their own sakes, for the little +children who go back to God without knowing anything of this life's +troubles. It's for myself I'm sorry. I never can bring up those times +without the _feeling_ of them coming over me again, and then, as I +tell you, I'm sorry for that poor fool in her empty house, and then in +the thundering freight-car, and then in the hospital. I see her outside +of me just as plain as I would another person. Then, too"--she dried her +eyes as if this time for good--"I feel a burning here"--she touched her +breast--"like anger. Angry. I feel angry at being robbed, in a way I +never seem to get over. To think I might have had him all my life, like +millions of other women, and I never even saw him! And he was as real to +me all those months before!... I don't see how I could have loved him +more than I did. I'm hungry for him sometimes, just as I might be for +food. And then I'm angry and rebellious. But I couldn't tell you against +who. It isn't God, certainly. He's our best friend, all we've got to +rely on. And He's been mighty good to me. There in Denver, when I hadn't +a friend or a penny, He raised up friends for me and gave me the most +wonderful luck. + +"I stayed right there in Denver till less than a year ago. I guess +you've heard me speak of the Judge. The doctor in the hospital where +they carried me was his son; that's how it all came about--friends, good +luck, money, everything. When I say I found friends, let me mention that +I found enemies, too, the meanest, the bitterest! I--but there"--she +interrupted herself as, on the very verge of further confidences, a +change of mind was effected in her by sudden weariness or by a deterrent +thought, or both--"I guess I've talked enough about myself for one +evening. I didn't have a soft time of it there in Denver," she summed up +the remainder of her story, "but I'd got back to being my old self. +You'd never have known what I'd been through. I was just about as you've +known me here. Funny, isn't it,"--Aurora seemed almost ashamed, +apologetic,--"how the disposition you're born with hangs on?" + +"Golden disposition," Gerald commented soothingly. Timid about looking +directly at her just yet, he looked instead at the portrait, whereon lay +the shadow of the events just related. + +After a little period of thought in silence Aurora said, with the +shamefaced air she took when venturing to talk of high things: + +"I heard a sermon once on the text, 'Mary kept all these things in her +heart.' The minister said that it wasn't only Mary who did this, but +ordinary women, so often. And I know from myself how true it is. You see +a woman all dressed up at a party, laughing with the others, dancing +perhaps, and she'll be saying inside of herself, 'If baby had lived, +he'd have been three years old.' Or thirteen, or thirty. I've no doubt +it goes on as long as she lives. And she can see him before her just as +plain, as he would have been.... My baby would have been five last +October." + +Gerald remembered how sweet he had always thought it of her to wish to +stop and fondle little children, often wee beggars, stuffing little +grimy fists with pennies, not avoiding to touch soiled little cheeks +with her clean gloves. He had attributed this propensity to a simple +womanly talent for motherliness. + +"I've got this to be thankful for," she came out again from silence, +farther down along the line of her meditations, "that he did live for a +few hours. I've got a son, just as much as if he'd grown to be a man." +She was dry-eyed, almost joyful in this. + +"Yes, yes," hurried Gerald, consolingly; "that's what you must always +think of--that and not the other things. You must lay hold of that +thought and feel rich in it. But hear me, dear friend--me, trying to +suggest ways to you of being brave and cheerful! You, who do from +god-given temperament what I can only see as a right aim of aspiration, +by light of a certain philosophy arrived at in my own way, through my +own experiences. Philosophy is not the right word, either; the feeling I +have is mainly esthetic. In order not to be too unhappy in this world, +in order to have a little serenity, we must forgive everything, Aurora; +that is what I have clearly seen. It's the only way. We must forgive +events just as we forgive persons. And we must love life. I who so much +of the time hate life, yet know better. We must love it as we must love +our enemies. The wherefore is a mystery, but peace of heart and beauty +of life are involved with doing it. We mustn't mind being wounded, +crucified. We mustn't mind anything, Aurora! We mustn't be angry, the +gestures of it are ugly. I, who am always being angry, who sometimes +groan aloud my thoughts are so blasphemously bitter, I am telling you +what I at bottom know. The game is so unfair, it calls for magnanimity +on our part to stake handsomely and lose patiently. Patience, that's it! +We must be patient--patient as a cab-horse! Pride and dignity demand +that we be patient, absolutely. For the sake of certain beautiful things +and sweet people in the world, we must give it a good name. But hear me! +Hear me giving counsels to you--you who without formulating these ideas +act on them, whilst with me they are things which I see as fit to be +done but can never hope to do." + +"You, too, Gerald, poor boy," was Aurora's simple reply--"you, too, have +had lots to try you." + +He swept aside by a gesture the subject of his trials, removed it +altogether from the horizon, unwilling really that the interest be +shifted from her to him. She was equally determined, now that he had +sympathized with her, to sympathize with him. + +"I know you have," she insisted; "I know you've had lots to try you, +just as you knew that I'd had lots. And you're so high-strung, so +sensitive ... I never knew anybody like you. But there are good times +coming for you; I'm sure of it." + +"I don't in the least expect them." He laughed a little harshly. He had +winced at her description of him as sensitive, high-strung. "Dear +incurable optimist, I don't in the least expect them. It's not because +there will be compensation that I hold it the decentest thing to put up +with the _mechancetes_ of fate, fate's ingenious stabs in the +tender, as they come, without giving the exhibition of one's +vulnerability, or poisoning one's system with hate!" + +"But there will," she continued to insist, "there will be compensations. +I know it just as well.... You have so much talent, it's perfectly +wonderful, and it's only a question of time your having the success you +deserve. I, of course, am not educated up to your paintings, but even I +am beginning to see something more than I did at first. I can see, for +instance, that almost any fine painter, with a command of his colors, +could have done the picture down-stairs, but that only you in the whole +world could have done this one here. But, I say again, my opinion isn't +worth anything. But there's Leslie, who knows all about art and such +things, doesn't she? Well, she 's told me how wonderful you are. From +what she's told me I'm perfectly sure you'll make your mark in the +world." + +Again Gerald swept her words aside like noxious obscuring cobwebs. "What +is, few know, and what will be, nobody knows whatever," he said. "But of +all things, I beg, I beg you will not think of me as a misunderstood +genius! Art is not a passion with me, it is--an interest. And don't hold +out for a lure that will reconcile me, my dear friend, anything so +vulgar as success! The single hope I have, when I am the most hopeful, +is that simply my metal, my resistance, may never quite fail. I shall +not have success, dear lady, though in your kindness you predict it. I +shall go on and on seeing with different eyes from other people, carving +my cherry-stones in my own way, and made unsociable by the failure of +others to see how superior my way is. I shall go on growing more +eccentric and solitary, and call myself lucky quite beyond my merits if +those particular snares which the devil Melancholy sets for the solitary +may be escaped, that I may neither drink, nor drug myself, nor shoot +myself, nor marry the cook!" + +"Don't talk like that, Gerald!" cried Aurora. "Don't say anything so +awful! Now keep still while I talk, listen while I tell you. You're +going on painting in your own way, but some one--see?--some one is going +to arise bright enough to recognize how perfectly wonderful your +pictures are. Keep still. You mustn't despise success, you know, success +is what everybody needs and wants. You're going to succeed. Keep still. +Stupid people will want to buy your pictures because the people who know +about such things have told the public how wonderful they are. Then +you'll grow rich and famous. You won't be either eccentric or solitary. +You'll have hosts of admiring friends. I guess you could have them now, +if you wanted to. You won't be melancholy. You'll be happy. In your home +there will be a nice wife. Why are you supposing you'll never marry? A +dear true beautiful girl who thinks the world of you and that you think +the world of. And when you're an old gentleman with your grandchildren +playing at your knee, you'll say to yourself, 'Aurora told me so!'" + +She was all cheering smiles and dimples again. + +"Be sure you remember now," she said, holding up a finger and shaking it +to mark her bidding, "to say to yourself, 'Aurora told me so!'" + +It was a pity almost that Gerald should not have gone home at that +point. He would have left with undividedly fond and approving feelings; +he would have left tied to Aurora by a thousand sweet humanities in +common, as well as impressed afresh by the depth and mysteriousness of +woman. But he had either forgotten or was disregarding the hour--the +clock on the mantelpiece, like most ornamental clocks, was not going; +the bliss of being warm for the first time in days, warm through and +through, warm to the middle of his heart, made him careless of +correctness; and so he stayed on, to be rudely jarred by and by out of +his contentment, and take with him finally into the night a renewed, +even sharpened, perception of those exasperating faults which made Mrs. +Hawthorne, as he named it, impossible. + +Because they seemed to be on such solid terms of friendship after the +long evening before the fire, when they had sorrowed together and +sympathized; when he had been permitted to hold and press her hands; +when with a veritable mutual outgoing of the heart they had vied in +prophesying for each other fair and happy days, Gerald found the +boldness--and found it without much strain--the boldness to utter a +request which had burned on his lips before, but which he had repressed, +saying to himself that what Mrs. Hawthorne did was no affair of his. + +"Aurora," he said--she was after this evening Mrs. Hawthorne to him only +in the hearing of others,--"Aurora, I want to ask a favor, a great +favor." + +"Go ahead. I guess it's granted." + +"I wish I felt sure; but I'm afraid. Say you will not take part in the +amateur variety show at _mi-careme_." + +"Sakes!" cried Aurora, staring at him with round eyes. "Ask me something +easy! Ask me something else! I can't do that." + +"You can. Of course you can, if you wish to. You have only to give some +excuse." + +"An excuse? Not for a farm! I don't want to. I've bound myself. They +expect me as much as anything. I couldn't back out. It's so near the +time, too. Why, it's to make money for the Convalescents' Home. I'm a +big feature of the show." + +"I know you are, and I have a perfect horror of what you may do. I can't +bear to think of the public sitting there gaping at you and laughing." + +"The public will be composed of friends. It's all private. Give it up? +Not much! I tell you, it's nuts to me! I expect to have lots of fun. +You've never seen, Geraldino, how funny I can be. You'll see that +night." + +"The voice runs that you're going to appear as a nigger mammy and sing +plantation songs." + +"Oh, does it? Well, that seems innocent. What objection do you see to +that?" + +"I did not call my request reasonable, dearest Aurora. I begged a +personal favor. You know the sort of nerves I have. It is like pouring +acid on them to think of you making a show of yourself." + +She laughed, but would not yield; she treated his proposition like a +spoiled child's demand for the moon, and, after condescending to tease +like a boy, he woke suddenly to the fact of being ridiculous. He dropped +the subject with the abruptness that causes the opponent nearly to +topple over in surprise. + +He had sat for a long moment in silence when, realizing that this +appeared ill-humored and a piece of effrontery, he started in haste to +talk again, choosing the first subject that came into his mind, which +was a thing he had meant to tell Aurora this evening, but had not +remembered until this moment. The wide distance between the subject he +dropped and the subject he took up would show, it was hoped, how +definitely he washed his hands of her doings. + +"If you have wished for revenge on our friend Antonia," he said, "you +can be satisfied. She is in the most singular sort of difficulty." + +"Oh, is she? I'm sorry," said Aurora. "Bless you! I never wished her any +harm." + +"I went to see her yesterday. I had saved up my grievance and felt the +need to lay it before her. I think one should give an old friend who has +behaved badly the chance to make reparation, don't you? After being +angry as you saw me, I yet did not want to break with her. She was very +kind to me when I was young. At the same time I could not let her +rudeness to you pass. But I found her in such trouble already when I +went to see her yesterday that I said not one word of my grievance. It +will have to wait." + +"You needn't think you must pick her up on my account. I don't care. But +what was the matter?" + +"Two of her oldest friends, through an unaccountable mistake, turned +into enemies. Both insist that under cover of a mask at the last +_veglione_ she insulted them. Unfortunately, her best friends are +not kept by their actual knowledge of her from thinking it just possible +she might desire to amuse herself with getting a claw into them. She has +more than once given offense to her friends by putting them into her +books. But Antonia swore to me that she was innocent, and begged me to +convince De Breze. The villa she lives in is his property, and he has +requested her to vacate it. The other aggrieved one, General Costanzi, +she fears may succeed in preventing the publication of her next novel by +threat of a libel suit." + +"Well, that sounds bad. But what do they say she's done?" + +"The poor woman doesn't even know what she is supposed to have said; +insulted them is all she can gather. Both maintain that though she tried +to alter her voice they recognized her, and will not accept her word for +it that she wore no such disguise as they describe. Which reminds me +that the offender, or the offender's double, for I have an idea there +were two masked alike, came into your box early in the evening with a +companion. You have not forgotten--that black domino with the crow's +beak?" + +Aurora jumped on her seat with a cry of "Goodness gracious!" + +"What is it?" he asked, looking at her more attentively. She appeared +aghast. + +She did not answer at once, tensely trying to think. + +"Well," she finally exclaimed, relaxing into limpness, "I've been and +gone and done it!" + +And as he waited-- + +"I guess I did that insulting," she added, and wiped her brow. + +He thought for a moment that she might be acting out a joke, but in the +next accepted her perturbation as genuine. + +"Can't you see through it even now I've told you?" she asked. + +He shook his head. + +"Did you suppose I didn't really know those two who came into the box, +the one who roared and the one who cawed? Well, I'm a better actress +than I supposed." + +"But--" + +"And did you really suppose I was going home to bed just as the fun was +at its height? There again you're simpler than I thought. Land! Don't I +wish now that I had gone home!" + +"And you--" + +"We'd heard so much from everybody of the pranks they play at these +vegliones of yours that we wanted to play one, too--we wanted to +intrigue you and a lot of other people. The trouble seems to be we did +it too well. Land! I wish I hadn't done it! I wish Heaven I'd consulted +you, or some one--We hatched it all up with Italo and Clotilde." + +"Italo and Clotilde!" + +"They were the two who came into the box and didn't say a word, for fear +of being known by their voices. Then, after you had so politely seen us +off, Estelle and I in the carriage put on black dominos and crows' +beaks, and after driving around a couple of blocks came back and found +Italo and Clotilde waiting for us. Clotilde had put off her black domino +in the dressing-room; she was dressed under it exactly like her brother. +D'you see now how we worked it? Estelle took Clotilde's arm, and I took +Italo's; we separated and kept apart, and it was as if there had only +been one couple, the same as there had been since the beginning of the +evening." + +"I see." + +"I've been dying to tell you about it ever since, but I just haven't +told you. I don't know what I was waiting for. I guess I was enjoying +letting you stay fooled. I had the greatest time, bad cess to it! +talking to some people I knew and to a lot that I didn't. Italo would +whisper to me beforehand what to say, and I'd say it. I didn't always +know what it was about, but nothing was further from my mind than to +wish to insult anybody. I was so excited I didn't always notice what I +did say, it just seemed playful and funny and in the spirit of the rest. +I went up to Charlie Hunt and spoke to him. I put a flea in his ear, and +I'm positive from his face that he didn't know me. I came near going up +to you when you were talking with that Mr. Guerra, but I was too much +afraid you'd recognize me; you're so sharp, and, then, you're the one +most particularly who has heard me talk with my English accent, which I +put on on the night of the _veglione_ so as not to be known." + +"Your English accent? That explains." + +"What?" + +"Your English accent is a caricature of Antonia's." + +"I don't have to tell you, I suppose, that I had no idea of personating +Antonia." + +"The very difference between the original and your imitation might seem +the result of an effort on her part to disguise her speech." + +"I've been a fool, of course, and some of the blame is mine, but just +let me get hold of Italo and watch me shake the teeth out of his +confounded little head. I remember perfectly speaking to the old general +that we saw at Antonia's that day and to the old viscount who came to my +ball." + +"Do you remember what you said?" + +"Not exactly, but in both cases it seemed harmless. I wouldn't have said +it if it hadn't seemed harmless. I couldn't have wished to insult them, +how could any one suppose it? To the general it was something about a +horse." + +Gerald gave a sound of raging disgust. + +Aurora waited, watching him. + +"Was it very bad?" she asked finally, and held her breath for his +answer. + +"Just as bad as possible. Ceccherelli deserves to be flayed. Is the man +mad? And what, may I ask, did you say to De Breze?" + +"I only remember it was something about ermine. I forgot until this +moment that I meant to ask Italo what the joke was about ermine. Was +that too very bad?" + +"Just as bad as possible. No, rather worse. Both relate to ancient bits +of scandal that no one would dare refer to--that would place a man +referring to them in the necessity to fight a duel. Mind you, mean and +discredited scandal. I won't resurrect it to enlighten you. You can +interrogate Signor Ceccherelli, who has really distinguished himself in +his quality of habitue of this house and your particular friend." + +"I know you're angry, Gerald; I don't wonder you're ready to call names. +But the thing is simple, isn't it, after all, now that I understand. The +harm done isn't such as can never be mended. All I have to do is write +to Antonia and tell her I was the black crow, or, if you advise, write +to the two gentlemen I've offended." + +"Heavens, no! you can't do that!" + +"Why can't I?" + +"You can't; that's all. You can't admit that that little vermin is on +terms of intimacy with you permitting his prompting your Carnival +witticisms, and you can't hope to make any one in Florence believe you +didn't understand what you were saying." + +"Yes, I can, my friend; I can make them believe. I can speak the truth. +I can, at all events, prove that Antonia had nothing whatever to do with +it." + +"No, no, no, I tell you! You can do nothing whatever about it. Your name +must not be allowed to appear in the matter at all. It would serve +Ceccherelli right that his part in the disgraceful business should be +known, dangerous little beast that he is. He would receive a lesson, and +an excellent thing it would be; but that, again, might involve you. One +couldn't trust him to keep your name out of it. Besides, it would very +likely ruin him, disgusting little beggar." + +"You leave him to me! He roared his throat to a frazzle the other night, +and can't make a sound, but he'll come round as soon as he's better, and +then if I don't give it to him! Little cuss!... But I'm to blame, too, +Gerald. You told me over and over that I oughtn't to encourage him to +gossip as I did, but I went right on doing it because it was as good as +a play to hear him tell his queer stories in his queer English. It +amused me, I've no other excuse. I sort of knew all the time that it was +wrong. And so he got bolder and bolder and finally overstepped the line. +And now I've got my come-uppance. I'll settle him, trust _me_, and +I'll write to Antonia, and I'll write the two gentlemen, if you'll just +tell me where to write." + +"Must I tell you again that you are above all things to do nothing of +the kind? Not certainly if you think of continuing to live in Florence. +Leave the matter to me. I am well acquainted with everybody in question +and shall be able to satisfy them, I hope, while leaving them completely +in the dark as to the real culprit." + +Mrs. Hawthorne appeared to hesitate. + +"I really should feel better if I could confess," she said. "It would +take a whole load off my chest. You see, I don't know your ways of doing +over here; that would be my way. They might all forgive me and say I was +just a fool. But if they didn't, and, as you seem to fear, made Florence +too unpleasant to hold me, luckily I'm not tied down. I'm free. I can +pull up stakes when I please and go pitch my tent elsewhere." + +"The delightful independence of riches! The grandeur and detachment of +your point of view!" he spoke in a flare of excited bitterness. "What +you have said is equivalent to saying that your friends of Florence are +a matter of complete indifference to you!" + +"I _love_ my friends of Florence, and you know it, Gerald Fane! And +I don't believe they'd ever turn against me, no matter what trouble I'd +made for myself at that confounded veglione. So I don't look to leaving +Florence just yet a while. You know I was only talking. I felt perfectly +safe--But it's astonishing to me, dear boy, how ready you are to get mad +at me. When you know me so well, too. You ought to be ashamed." + +"I am, dear. It's my temper that's bad. And you're so kind," he meekly +subsided. "But you _are_ trying, you know," he added, after a +moment, with returning vivacity, "what with the extreme bad taste of +your masked ball adventures, and your obstinate determination to publish +them, and then your insane obstinacy to make a show of yourself as a +colored nurse in this vaudeville--But I forgot, I had sworn to myself +not to speak of that again. May I count upon you at least to leave +entirely to me the matter of exculpating Antonia to General Costanzi and +De Breze?" + +"Oh, very well, if you think best." + +"Will you promise solemnly to be silent on the whole matter?" + +"All right. But I don't like it, Gerald. If I've done wrong, I should +feel lots easier in my mind if I could tell." + +"That feeling of yours is precisely what I wish to guard against. Do +believe that in this matter the old Florentine I am knows better than +you. Promise." + +"All right, I promise." + +After a moment, "There's no chance, is there, of your changing your mind +about the other matter"--he asked sheepishly,--"the matter which I must +not mention? No, I supposed not. I am perfectly aware of my presumption +in making any suggestion to you on the subject. But if you knew how the +thought of it torments me...." + +"You'll get over it when you see me. You'll just laugh with the rest." + +"Enough. Good night," he said stiffly, but it is doubtful that the word +of leave-taking was anything more than a mode of expressing displeasure, +or that departure would immediately have succeeded upon his rising from +his chair, had not a sound of coughing from the neighboring room called +up before him an image of Harriet Estelle, wide awake, with a stern and +feverish eye fixed on the clock. + +He was startled into a consciousness of the lateness of the hour. + +"Good night!" he repeated in a guilty whisper. "I daren't look at my +watch. I'm afraid I've kept you shockingly late." + + * * * * * + +The night, when Gerald went out into it, was quieter and dryer. The +streets were altogether empty. He had quite forgotten having felt ill +earlier in the evening, and did not remember it even when he found his +teeth chattering as a result of coming out into the penetrating night +air after sitting so close to the fire. A thing he did remember, as he +took out the large iron key to the door of home, was that after all +Helen Aurora telling him her story he did not know how she came to be +Mrs. Hawthorne. There must have been a second marriage there in Denver, +one of those little-considered episodes in American life, perhaps, that +are hardly thought worth mentioning. She sometimes spoke of "the judge." +She had spoken to-night of a doctor, son of the judge. No, he decided, +it could not be either of them. The second husband, whoever he had been, +had clearly not been important, and he was dead, for Mrs. Foss had told +him explicitly that Aurora was a real, and not what is called in America +a grass, widow. From this second husband it must have been that she +derived her wealth. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +Even had Aurora been able to apprehend the measure and quality, the fine +shades, of Gerald's dislike to the thought of her doing a turn in the +society variety-show, it is more than doubtful that she would have let +it weigh against her strong desire to take part. It is fine to have such +delicate sensibilities regarding the dignity of another, but it is +foolishness to entertain anything of the sort regarding your own. + +"If there's one thing I love, it's to dress up and play I'm somebody +else," Aurora had said when first the subject of the benefit performance +was discussed. + +Mrs. Hawthorne was so certain to give generously to the cause of the +convalescents that it was felt only fair to flatter her by seeking to +enlist the service of her talents; but apart from this, the promise of +her appearance was counted upon to create interest. She being obviously +less restricted by conventions than other people, there existed a +permanent curiosity as to what she might do next; and it could not be +denied that she could, when she chose, be funny. + +With the exception of one peculiar and superfastidious man, nobody had +the smallest objection to seeing her distort her fine mouth in comic +grimaces, or lend her fine figure to clownish acts. There were those, of +course, who called Mrs. Hawthorne vulgar; but too many persons liked her +for the charge of vulgarity to go undisputed or become loud. A good many +had reason to like her. + +Aurora felt so sure of the general friendliness that not the smallest +pang of doubt, of deterring nervousness, assailed her while preparing +her scene; and when she once occupied the center of the stage the spirit +of frolic so possessed, the laughter of the people so elated and +spurred, her, that she would have turned somersaults to amuse them, and +done it with success, no doubt, for all that Aurora did on this occasion +was funny and successful. Aurora, intoxicated with applause, was that +night in her simple way inspired. Her state was, in fact, dangerous, +discretion deserted her, and before the end, carried away by the desire +to please further, make laugh more, she had done a foolish thing--a +thing which she half knew, even while she did it, to be foolish, perhaps +wrong. But not having leisure to think, she took the risk, and in time +found herself, as a result of her mistake, to have made an enemy; yes, +changed her dear and helpful friend Charlie Hunt into a secret enemy. + +In an old palace on Via dei Bardi a stage had been set, filling one +fourth of the vast saloon. A goodly representation of Anglo-American +society in Florence crowded the rest. Beautifully hand-written programs +acquainted these, through thin disguises of name, with the personalities +of the performers. Only one name was really mysterious--Lew Dockstader. + +After a lively overture by piano, violin, and harp, the three Misses +Hunt, in Japanese costume, gave a prettily kittenish rendering of "Three +Little Maids from School," selection from one of those Gilbert and +Sullivan operettas latterly enchanting both England and America. The +tub-shaped Herr Spiegelmeyer, dressed like a little boy and announced as +an infant prodigy, played a concerto of prodigious difficulty and +length. Lavin, of the tenor voice rich in poetry and prospects, humbled +himself to sing, "There was a Lady Loved a Swine," with "Humph, quoth +he"--s almost too realistic. Then came Lew Dockstader. + +Now, report had spread that Mrs. Hawthorne was to appear as a negress; +no one was prepared to see her appear as a negro. The surprise, when it +dawned on this one and the other that that stove-black face with rolling +eyes and big red and white smile, that burly body incased in old, +bagging trousers, those shuffling feet shod in boots a mile too large +for them and curling up at the toe, belonged to Mrs. Hawthorne, the +surprise was in itself a success. Then, as has been said, Aurora was +undeniably in the vein that evening. + +She had seen Lew Dockstader, the negro minstrel, once in her life, but +at the impressionable age, when you see and remember for good. It had +been the great theatrical event of her life. "What, haven't seen Lew +Dockstader! Don't know who he is!" thus she still would measure a +person's ignorance of what is best in drama and song. She loved Lew. +When she impersonated him she did not try to imitate him, she simply +felt herself to be he. + +In this character she now told a string of those funny anecdotes which +Americans love to swap. She sang divers songs, pitched among her big, +velvety chest tones: "Children, Keep in de Middle ob de Road," "Fluey, +Fluey," "Come, Ride dat Golden Mule." With the clumsy nimbleness and +innocent love of play of a Newfoundland pup, she flung out her enormous +feet in the dance. + +The crimson curtains drew together upon her retreat amid unaffected +applause. Recalled, she gave the encore prepared for such an event. +Recalled over and over, like singers of topical songs, to hear what she +would say next, Aurora, a little off her head with the new wine of +glory, exhausted her bag of parlor tricks to satisfy an audience so +kind. Then it was that she made her mistake. Recalled still again, she +invented on the spot one last thing to do. She recited a poem indelibly +learned at public school, giving it first as a newly landed Jewish pupil +would pronounce it, then a small Irishman, then a small Italian, finally +an English child. To add the latter was her mistake, because her +caricature of the English speech was very special. + +The sound of it started an idea buzzing in the head of one of her +audience--Charlie Hunt, who sat well in front, and in applauding raised +his hands above the level of his head so that actors and audience alike +might be encouraged by seeing that he gave the patronage of his +approval. + +He did not immediately connect Aurora's English with a rankling +remembered episode, but the thing was burrowing in his subconsciousness, +and an arrow of light before long pierced his brain. He reconsidered the +conclusion upon which he had rested with regard to the black crow who at +the _veglione_ had put to him an impertinent question. Could it be +that not the particular lady whom he had fixed upon in his mind, as +being fond of Landini, consequently jealous of Mrs. Hawthorne, had by it +expressed her spite, but that--? He saw in a flash a different +possibility. + +When the show was over and the performers had issued from the +dressing-rooms in the clothes of saner moments, Charlie Hunt approached +Mrs. Hawthorne, who, flushed with excitement, was looking almost too +much like an American Beauty rose. He paid his compliments in a tone +tinged with irony, all the while watching her with a penetrating, +inquiring, ironical eye. But the irony was wasted. She was too +pleasantly engrossed to perceive it. + +"Has anybody here seen Mr. Fane?" she asked after a time, when her +glances had vainly sought him in every corner. + +Estelle told her that she had not set eyes on him the whole evening; +and, which was more conclusive, little Lily Foss said he had not been +there. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +Aurora, unable to see beyond the footlights, had never dreamed but +Gerald was among the audience. Her capers had at moments been definitely +directed at him. Discovering that he had kept away, she was not so much +hurt as puzzled. + +"Who'd have thought he cared enough about it to be so mean!" she said to +herself. "Well," she said further, "let him alone. He'll come round in a +day or two." + +She really expected him that same day. When he did not come, or the day +after, or the day after that, she tried to recall passage for passage +their talk on the subject of the show. She did not remember his saying +anything that amounted to giving her a choice between renouncing it or +renouncing his friendship. + +Then she reviewed all she knew of him; and his present conduct, if he +were by this avoidance trying to punish her for doing what it was the +prerogative of her native independence to do, did not seem in accordance +with his known regard for the rights of others. + +Aurora did not know what to think. From hour to hour she looked for a +call, a message, a letter, and because the time while waiting seemed +long, she neglected to note that the actual time elapsed was not more +than Gerald had sometimes allowed to pass without her attributing his +silence to offence. He had his work, he had other friends; Abbe Johns +might be in town again visiting him. This silence, however, had a +different value, she thought, from other silences. They had seemed so +much better friends after their confidences that long evening over the +fire; she expected more of him than she had done before it. + +At other moments she was disposed to find fault with herself. She +supposed she was a big coarse thing, unable to appreciate the feelings +of a man who apparently hadn't as many thicknesses of skin as other +folks. + +It was at such a moment, when she made allowances for him, that she +thought of writing, making it easy for him to drop his grouch and +return. But here Aurora felt a difficulty. Aurora thought well, in a +general way, of her powers as a letter-writer, and she was proud of her +beautifully legible Spencerian hand; but for such a letter as she wished +to send Gerald fine shades of expression were needed beyond what she +could compass. She was fond of Gerald; in this letter she must not be +too fond, yet she must be fond enough. What hope that a blockhead would +strike the exact middle of so fine a line? + +She could obviate the difficulty by sending him a formal invitation to +dinner. But suppose she should receive formal regrets? + +After that the whole thing must be left to him; the tactful letter meant +to hurry him back would no longer be possible. + +"Oh, bother!" said Aurora, and formed a better, bolder plan. + +Aurora had not seen the plays, had not read the books, where the going +of the heroine to visit the hero at his house for whatever good reason +under the sun has such damaging results for her fair fame. Aurora was +innocent of good society's hopeless narrowness on the subject. If she +made a secret of her plan to Estelle it was merely because Estelle had +permitted herself wise words one day, warnings, with regard to Gerald, +in whom she specifically did not wish her friend to "become interested." + +"You're too different," Estelle had said. "You're like a fish and a +bird. I won't say I don't like him. He's nice in a way, but it's not our +way, Nell. You'd be miserable with him, first or last." + +"My dear," Aurora had replied, "if you knew the sort of thing we talk +about when you're not there you wouldn't worry. If you can see Gerald +Fane in the part of my beau you must be cracked. And if you think I'm +soft on him, you're only a little bit less cracked. Can't you see we're +just friends? It's nice for him to come here and it's nice for us to +have him. We want friends, don't we?" + +"All I say is don't go ahead with your eyes shut till you find before +you know it that you're landed in a case of, 'Mother, I can't live +without him!' For, Nell, it won't do, you know it won't." + +"My dearest girl, of course I know, but not half so well as he knows! +Bless you, Hat, do you forget all Leslie told us about him and his +affair? And do you forget my little affair? Do you suppose either of us +wants to try again?" + +"Indeed, I hope you will try again, both of you. But not together, Nell. +I've got the man all picked out for you; you know perfectly I mean Tom +Bewick. There's the one for you, Nell. Big, healthy, kind. Good sense. +Good temper. Your own kind of person, Nell, and not a queer bird from a +menagerie. Don't go and spoil everything by getting tangled up over +here. You know as well as I do that Gerald Fane, take him just as a man, +can't hold a candle to Doctor Tom." + +"I've never thought of comparing them. I don't see any use in doing it. +Tom's Tom and Gerald's Gerald. So far as Gerald goes, you can set your +heart at rest and bank on this: I know just as well as you do, and he +knows just as well as I do, that we couldn't pull in harness together +any more than--just as you say, a fish and a bird. Neither of us is +thinking of such a thing. But why mustn't a fish and a bird have +anything to say to each other? He might like the cut of her fins and she +might fancy the color of his wings. They could sympathize together, +couldn't they, if nothing else?" Aurora's eyebrows had with this tried +to signify her entire capacity to take care of herself and her own +business. + +But not wishing to rouse any further uneasiness in her friend, she no +more after that spoke frankly of Gerald whenever he came into her mind. +And when she declined Estelle's invitation to go with her to Mlle. +Durand's, where she would hear the pupils of the latter recite Corneille +and Racine, she did not tell her what she had planned to do instead, +fully intending, however, to reveal it later. + + * * * * * + +Gerald meanwhile did not flatter himself imagining Aurora unhappy +because he stayed away longer than had lately been quite usual. Time +dragged with him, but the calendar told him that just so many days, no +more, had passed. He pictured her going her cheerful gait, occasionally +saying, perhaps, "I wonder what has become of Stickly-prickly?" + +He had not gone to the mid-Lent entertainment as a matter of course. +Aurora had shown small knowledge of him when she thought he would +consent to see her disport herself before the public as a negress. On +the day after, when he learned that she had been the star of the evening +as a negro, his frenzied disgust itself warned him of the injustice, the +impropriety, of exhibiting it to her. He chose to remain away until it +should have sufficiently worn down to be governable. By that time the +poor man had developed an illness, that cold of which for some weeks he +had been carrying around in his bones the premonition. + +With reddened eyelids and thickened nose, a sore throat and a cough, he +felt himself no fit object for a lady's sight. He stayed in to take care +of himself. + +Giovanna knew what to do for her _signorino_ when he was +_raffreddato_. She built a little fire in the studio; she brought +his light meals to him in his arm-chair before it. She administered +remedies. His bed was warmed at night by her _scaldino_. Gaetano +was sent to Vieusseux's for an armful of books. All day Gerald sat by +the fire and read, and sometimes dozed and dreamed, and read again. And +days passed, while his cold held on. + +He thought of writing Aurora to tell her. But if he told her, she would +at once come to see him; of so much one could be sure. And he did not +want her to come. The eccentric fellow did not want her to come +precisely because he wanted her to come so much. + +"This is the way it begins," he said to himself, with horror, when he +became fully aware that his nerves, now that he could not go to find +Aurora when he chose, were suggesting to him all the time that the +presence of Aurora was needed to quiet that sense of want, of +maladjustment to conditions, haunting him like the desire for sleep. + +At sight of his danger he became very clear-headed. The man who sees a +snare and walks into it deserves his fate, surely. + +"It is time to stop it," he said. And he laid down for himself new rules +of life. + +Fortunately, he had at hand some absorbing books. Dostoiewsky's "Crime +and Punishment" could effectively take him out of himself. + +But the print was fine and crowded, he was weakened by illness, he was +forced now and then to stop and rest with swimming head. Then at once +would return, like the demon in fair disguise tempting some hermit of +the desert, the thought, "What is Aurora doing? If Aurora knew I was +ill, she would come." And the imagination of her coming would shed a +feverish gladness all along those petulant, ill-treated, starved nerves. +"What have I to do with Aurora, or Aurora with me?" he would ask, +furiously, the incongruity of what had happened to him calling forth +sometimes a desperate laugh. But Nature laughs at man's ideas of +congruity; remembering that, he could only hold his hands against his +eyes and try to press the image of Aurora out of existence. + +Gerald, however, was much stronger than his nerves. He could see his own +case, even with a pulse at ninety, as well as another man's. And his +will was firmer than might have been thought. He knew something of a +human man's constitution, how it can circumvent a man, or how a man, +well on his guard, can circumvent it. He formed the project of +interrupting his visits to the Hermitage. + +After this resolution he regarded those returns of earth-born desire for +Aurora's balmy touch and tranquilizing neighborhood as a man who had +taken an heroic and sure remedy against ague might regard the +fluctuations in his body of heat and cold continuing still for a little +while. As to how Aurora would take his defection, all should be managed +with so much art and politeness that the most sensitive could not be +hurt. By the time the new important work which he would make his excuse +was accomplished, his cure would have been accomplished as well. + +Meanwhile, each time the door-bell rang--it was not often, +certainly--his attention was taken from his book, and he listened. And +so, on Mlle. Durand's French afternoon, Gerald, having heard the bell, +was listening, but with his face to the fire and his back to the door. +When Giovanna knocked, "Forward!" he said, without turning. The door +opened. + +"_C'e quella signora._" "There is that lady," dubiously announced +Giovanna. + +Gerald turned, and beheld that lady filling the doorway. + +Then it was as if a bright trumpet-blast of reality, breaking upon a bad +dream, dispelled it; or as if a fresh wind, blowing over stagnant water, +swept away the cloud of noxious gnats. All he had latterly been thinking +and feeling seemed to Gerald insane, sickly, the instant he beheld +Aurora's comradely smile. He was ashamed; he found himself on the verge +of stupid, unexplainable tears. + +"Well!" said Aurora. + +At the sound they were placed back on the exact footing of their last +meeting, before thinking and conjecturing about each other in absence +had built up between them barriers of illusion. + +"Well!" he said, but less pleasantly, because he was mortified by the +awareness of himself as an uninviting sight, with his old dressing-gown, +neglected beard, and the unpicturesque manifestations of a cold. + +But Aurora's face was reassuring; she did not confuse him with the +accidents of his dressing-gown and beard and cold. Aurora's face beamed, +so much was she rejoicing in her own excellent sense, which had told her +that one look at each other would do a thousand times more to make +things right between them than innumerable letters could have done. + +"I didn't know what to think," she said, "so I came to find out. First +I'd think you were mad at me, then I'd think you had gone away and +written me, and the letter hadn't reached me, Gaetano had lost it on the +road. Then I'd think you might be sick, and there was nobody to let your +friends know. I don't know what I didn't think of. What made you not +send me word?" + +"I did not know you would be uneasy. I did not rightly measure, it +seems, the depth of your kindness. I should certainly have written to +you before long in case I had continued unable to go to see you." + +"How long have you been sick?" + +"I am not sick, dearest lady. I only have a cold. In order to make it go +away more quickly I have to remain in the house. But how good, how very +good of you to come! Sit down, please do, and warm yourself. I will ring +for Giovanna, and she will make us some tea." + +[Illustration: Gerald turned, and beheld that lady] + +Aurora, smiling all the time with the pleasure she felt in not finding +him angry or estranged or in any way altered toward her, took the +arm-chair from which he had just risen, while he drew a lighter chair to +the other side of the chimney-place. His fires were not like hers. Two +half-burned sticks and a form of turf smoldered sparingly on a mound of +hot ashes; he eagerly cast on a fagot, and added wood with, for once, an +extravagant hand. Then, looking over at her, he smiled, too. + +"Now tell me all about yourself," she commanded. "I want to know what +you're doing for this cold of yours." + +"Please let us not talk about my cold," he at once refused. "Let us talk +about something agreeable. Tell me the news. I have not seen any one for +days. I have been living in Russia with a poor young man who had +committed a murder, also with a most sympathetic being who found the +world outside an institution for the feeble-minded too much for him." By +a gesture toward the books on the table he gave her a clue to his +meaning. + +"You say you haven't seen any one for days," she said. "Now the Fosses, +for instance, who are your best friends, don't you let them know when +you're shut in?" + +"You have no conception, evidently, of my bearishness, dear friend. They +have. They never wonder when they do not see me or hear from me for +weeks." + +"I know, and it seems funny; it seems sort of forlorn to me. I saw them +the other day and asked if any one had seen you since the night of the +show. They said no, but didn't seem to think anything about it." + +"It's not really long since then. How are they all?" + +"All right, and busy as bees. They've no time to come and see me, or +anybody else, I guess. Brenda's coming back to be married in May, and +they're flying round getting her things ready. All her linen is being +beautifully embroidered...." + +They went on talking, without much thought of what they said. It was +immaterial, really, what they said, or even whether they listened to +each other, while they had in common the comfort of sitting together in +front of the fire after a long separation filled with doubts and +dismays. She told him about the Convalescents' Home, the sum they had +raised for it. No word, prudently, was spoken by either of her share in +raising it. He told her about the Russian novels. A third person might +perfectly have been present, for anything intimate in their +conversation. Gerald was scrupulously careful, for his part, that this +should be so. The third person would never have divined how far for the +moment that chimney-corner transcended, in the sentiments of the parties +seated before it, any other corner of the earth. + +Aurora's attention became closer when Gerald related his interviews with +De Breze and Costanzi, both of whom he had succeeded in convincing that +Antonia had had nothing to do with intriguing them at the +_veglione_, and had left to digest as best they could their +curiosity concerning the mysterious masker mistaken for her. He had been +obliged to give his word that he knew on absolutely good authority who +this person was. + +His attention, on the other hand, was complete when she told him how she +had dealt with Ceccherelli; she was considerate enough to-day to make +the effort to pronounce the gentleman's cognomen. + +"I was savage at him, you remember," she said. "I was going to take his +head off. Then when it came to it, and I had told him what I thought of +him and the whole disgraceful scrape he had got me into--Oh, I went for +him, hammer and tongs! Incidentally, I made him tell me what it was I +had said. Pretty bad, wasn't it!--Well, do you know, he cried, he felt +so. He just cried on his knees, and didn't try to get rid of any of the +blame. All he wanted was that I should forgive him. And what could I do? +As long, particularly, as I knew that a good deal of the fault was my +own.... So now he comes to the house with a look as if he'd just been +baptized. And he tells me only stories fit, he says, for a convent. Here +is a sample, if you'd like to hear. Mrs. X, as he called her, who lives +in a palace not a thousand miles, he said, from Piazza degli Anti-nory, +and who had given Mr. B. reasons for not liking her, was seen by him, in +a suspiciously simple dress, going suspiciously on foot, in a little +suspiciously out of the way street, at a considerable distance from +Piazza degli Anti-nory. The gentleman followed her stealthily into a +house he saw her enter, thinking, you know, he would find out something +to her discredit. And what did he find out but that she was secretly +visiting and relieving the poor! The brilliant society lady, whom he +wished to be revenged on because, as I gathered, she had scorned his +dishonorable love-making, was secretly the angel of the poor.... Don't +you think that's a nice story? He tells me nothing now that's less nice +than that. We're reformed characters. He has asked my permission to +dedicate to me a beautiful piece of music he has just composed, and +which is called--but in French--'Prayer of the Evening.'" + +Both of them were pleasantly aware of a tray placed on the table near +them, as if descended from heaven, laden with teapot, bread and butter, +jam. Neither of them really saw Giovanna, who brought it in, or was +struck by the stern expression of her face. + +Aurora, never sorry of something to eat, turned her attention to the +tray. Gerald wished to serve her, and she first noticed his weakness +when she saw the teapot tremble slightly in his hand. She went on +chattering, but she was observing him. + +"Is your carriage waiting before the door?" he suddenly asked, after a +space during which she had suspected that he was not properly attending +to what she said. Aurora's monogram, daintily executed, adorned the +door-panels of her carriage. + +"Yes," she answered. "Why?" + +As if he had not heard, he changed the subject. After a while he asked, +again irrelevantly: + +"How was it that Miss Madison did not come with you this afternoon?" + +"She was going to a different tea-party." Supposing that his question +was a way of politely desiring news of Miss Madison, she went on to talk +of her. + +"She was going to her French teacher's, who is having a French afternoon +where they're supposed to talk nothing but French. What would I have +been doing there? But Estelle is getting to talk the French language +exactly as well as her own.... That reminds me. A thing I've wanted to +tell you. If you should notice that Busteretto seems to be rather more +her dog than mine, don't you say anything, or care. The fact is Estelle +loves him more than I do. That's all there is about it. Which isn't +saying that I don't love him. But Estelle's silly over him, in the +regular old maid way, as I tell her. When he wouldn't eat his dinner +this noon, I had all I could do to make her eat hers, she was so +troubled. And nothing ailed him, I guess, but that he'd picked up +something in the kitchen. What I wanted to say was, don't you think it's +because I don't value your present, if you should notice by and by that +I seem to have given up my claims to Busteretto. That sort of alive +present has a will of its own. The little thing took to her from the +first more than he did to me. Shall I tell Estelle that you wished to be +remembered?" + +"Pray do." + +"She'll be sorry to hear you're sick. Don't say that again, Gerald," she +silenced him, letting her anxiety at last plainly appear. "Don't tell me +you aren't sick, for I know better. It's been taking away my appetite to +see you make believe to eat, and choke over it. Your cough is so tight +it sounds as if it tore your lungs. Give me your hand. It's as hot, dear +boy, and as dry!... Wait, let me feel your pulse." + +He knew that his pulse was high, that his temples ached, that a +disposition to shiver accompanied the volcanic heat of his blood. + +He laughed at her light-headedly while with serious concentration she +counted the beats in his wrist. + +"I'm going to stop at Doctor Gage's on my way home," she said, letting +go his hand, and not heeding what he said. "And I'm going to tell him to +come and see you." + +"Please do not! If I need a doctor, there is my own, an Italian, the +same for years." + +"An Italian? Do you think they're as good?" + +"Better for my own case." + +"Gerald, it's my advice to you to go right to bed and let your doctor +come and prescribe. A cold is nothing in a way, but a neglected cold can +grow into a mean sort of thing. Say you'll do it. Don't you know how +good it will feel to you just to give in and go to bed and let some one +else do all the looking after you? Oh, I wish I could speak Italian +enough to have a talk with your Giovanna." + +"Giovanna has taken care of me and my _malanni_ for years. She +gives me tar-water, and rice-water, and tamarind-water, and linden-tea, +and cassia. She threatened me this morning with a sinapism if I were not +better by evening. I shall be better. I do not wish for a sinapism." + +"Is that a poultice on your chest? I guess it's what you need. Now, if I +have any influence with you, Gerald, if you love me one little bit, +you'll promise to go right to bed, and you'll give me your doctor's +address so that on my way home I can leave word for him to come." + +"You shall not take that trouble. I can send Gaetano." + +"You promise me you'll do it, then?" + +"I seem to have been left no choice, dear lady." + +"That's real sweet of you. You'll go to bed the minute I've gone?" + +"Yes. But don't go quite yet!" + +"With that temperature, I don't see how you can care who stays or who +goes, or anything in the world but to lay your head down on a pillow. I +won't stay any longer now. Go to bed like a good boy. To-morrow I'll run +in and see how you're getting along." + +His last word was, after a moment of seeming embarrassment: + +"I hope Miss Madison will be able to come with you next time." + +"Yes, yes," said Aurora, lightly, taking it for a mere amiable message +with which he was charging her for Estelle. + + * * * * * + +Fever no doubt colored all Gerald's dreams that night, and was in part +responsible next day for his thoughts, as he passed from languor to +restlessness, and from impatience back to the peace of the certain +knowledge that before evening he should have visitors--fair visitors. + +When it seemed to him nearly time for them, he ordered Giovanna to make +the room of a beautiful and perfect neatness, hiding all the medicine +bottles and humble signs that one is mortal. She was directed to lay +across his white counterpane that square of brocade which often formed a +background for his portraits. She was asked to brush his hair and beard, +and wrap his shoulders in an ivory-white shawl, thick with silk +embroideries, which had been his mother's. In a little green bronze +tripod a black pastille was set burning, which sent up, slow, thin, and +wavering, a gray spiral of perfume. + +Keenly as he was waiting, he yet did not know when the ladies arrived. +He opened his eyes, and they were there, shedding around them a +beautiful freshness of health and the world outside. Estelle, in a soft +green velvet edged with silver fur, held toward him an immense bunch of +flowers. Aurora, in a wine-colored cloth bordered with bands of black +fox, tendered a basket heaped with fruit. Both smiled, and had the kind +look of angels. + +They sat down beside his bed. They talked with him; all was just as +usual. They asked the old questions pertinent to the case, he made the +old answers, and by an effort kept up for some minutes a drawing-room +conversation with them. + +Then Aurora said: + +"Hush! You mustn't talk any more!" And when he thought she was going +away, he wondered to see her take off her gloves. + +She stood over him; he wondered what she meant to do. She felt of his +forehead with her cool hand. With her palms, which were like her voice, +of a velvet not too soft, she smoothed his forehead and temples; she +stroked them over and over in a way that seemed to draw the ache out of +his brain. Her fingers moved soothingly, magnetically, all around his +eye-sockets, pressing down the eyelids and comforting them. + +At first he resisted. Perversely he frowned, as if the thing increased +his pain, annoyed him beyond words. He all but cried out to the +well-meaning hands to stop. + +"Doesn't it feel good?" asked Aurora, anxiously. + +He relaxed. Without opening his eyes, he nodded to thank her, and as he +yielded himself up to the hands it seemed to him that those passes drew +his spirit after them quite out of his body. + + * * * * * + +"I don't think I'll go up with you," Estelle said unexpectedly when on +the next day they stopped before the narrow yellow door in Borgo Pinti. +"I'll wait here in the carriage. I'm nervous myself to-day. Give my best +regards to Gerald. I hope you'll find him better." + +Aurora did not take time to examine into the possible reasons for her +friend's choice. She climbed the long stairs sturdily, managing her +breath so that she did not have to stop and rest on the way. + +She followed the stern Giovanna, unsubdued by the latter's hard and +jealous looks, to the door of her master's chamber. + +She went toward the bed, smiling at the sick man over an armful of white +lilacs. + +He half rose in his bed and quickly, disconnectedly, impetuously, said: + +"My dear friend, this is most good of you. I'm sure I thank you very +much. I'm very, very much better, as you can see. I shall be out again +in a day or two." He was visibly trembling; his eyes flared with +excitement. "That being the case, my dear lady, I earnestly beg you will +not trouble to come like this every day." He stopped to choke and cough, +then wrenching himself free from strangulation--"Aurora,"--he changed +his key and tune,--"do let me be ill in peace! Here I am on my back, +with a loosened grip on everything, and it's taking an unfair advantage +to invade my privacy as you do. Take away those lilacs with you, won't +you, please? We haven't any more vases to put them in; they'd have to be +stuck in a bedroom water-jug. Giovanna won't let me have flowers in my +room, anyhow; she says they are bad for me. Don't be offended! I know +you mean nothing but to be kind, but the thing you are doing is +devilish.... What do you think I am made of? I don't want you to be +offended, but I have got to say what I can to keep you from coming to +this house and troubling me in my illness. I have got to say it plainly +and fully because you, Aurora, never understand anything that is not +said to you in so many words. I might try and try my best to convey the +same idea to you in a gentle and gentlemanly way, and not a scrap of +good would be done. I've got to talk like a beast. I wish to be alone. +Is that clear? I've just struggled and waded my way out of one quagmire; +I do not wish to enter another. Is that plain? I wish to feel free to be +ill as much and as long as I choose. It concerns nobody. It concerns +nobody if I die. It would be an excellent thing, saving me the trouble +later of blowing out my brains.... My God, Aurora, have you understood?" +he almost shouted. + +"Yes," said Aurora in a voice that sounded pale, even as her face looked +pale. "I have understood, and I won't come again. Just one thing, +Gerald. Put your arms under the bed clothes and keep them there." + + * * * * * + +"Whether he's better or worse I truly couldn't tell you," Aurora said in +answer to Estelle's first question. After a moment she added, "I can't +make him out." + +Estelle saw that she was deeply troubled, and, herself troubled at the +sight, did not press her for explanations. + +During the drive home Aurora made only one other remark. It was +delivered with a certain emphasis. + +"_One_ thing I know: I sha'n't go _there_ again in a hurry!" + +Her lilacs, after wondering a moment what to do with them, she had +quietly deposited outside Gerald's entrance-door. + + * * * * * + +It was unimaginable, of course, that the childhood's friend should so +disregard the rules of the game as to leave her old playmate's curiosity +long unsatisfied. Estelle accordingly learned before evening that Gerald +had been guilty of an attack of nerves, in the course of which he had +said something which Aurora did not like. What this was Aurora would not +tell, saying it seemed unfair to repeat things Gerald had spoken while +he was not himself and which he perhaps did not mean. From which Estelle +judged that Aurora had already softened since she returned to the +carriage looking as grim as she was grieved. + +That Aurora had something on her mind no observant person could fail to +see, and Estelle was not unprepared to hear her say as she did on the +third morning at breakfast, after fidgeting a moment with a pinch of +bread: + +"I'm so uneasy I don't know what to do. That boy is much sicker than he +knows," she went on to justify her disquietude, "and he's in a bad mood +for getting well. I don't believe Italian doctors know much, anyhow. +I've heard that they still put leeches on you. All he has to take care +of him, day and night, is that old servant-woman What's-her-name, who, +he told me himself, doctors him with herb-tea. I'm so uneasy! The sort +of cold he has, I tell you, can turn any minute into something you don't +want. He's all run down and a bad subject for pneumonia. I'm thinking I +shall have to just go to the door and find out how he is." + +"You could send a servant to inquire," suggested Estelle. + +Aurora appeared to reflect; she might have been trying to find a reason +for not taking the hint, but she said, "No; I should feel better +satisfied to go myself." + +At the last moment, when they were ready to start, Estelle found +Busteretto's nose hot, and decided not to go. She stayed at home and +called a doctor. For some days the pet had not seemed to her in quite +his usual form. + +Aurora, climbing Gerald's stairs this time, felt very uncertain and +rather small. The street door, when she had pulled the bell-handle, had +unlatched with a click, but no voice had called down, and when she +reached the top landing the door in front of her stood forbiddingly +closed. She waited for some minutes, wondering whether she were doing +right. Suppose Gerald were enough better to be up again and, Giovanna +being out, should himself come to open the door. How would she feel, +caught slinking back, after she had been requested loudly and roundly to +stay away? + +Well, set aside how she felt, the object of her coming would have been +reached, wouldn't it? She would know that he was better. She rang and +listened. + +Certain, as soon as she heard them, whose footsteps were on the other +side of the door, she held in readiness her Italian. She counted on +understanding Giovanna's answer to her question, for she had, as she +boasted, "quite a vocabulary." But much more than to this she trusted to +the talent which Italians have for making their meaning clear through +pantomime and facial expression. + +As soon, in fact, as Giovanna opened the door, and before the woman had +said a word in reply to "_Come sta Signor Fane?_" Aurora had +understood. + +Giovanna's eyes, stained with recent weeping, looked up at the visitor +without severity or aversion, seeking for sympathy; the unintelligible +account she gave of her master's condition was broken up with sighs. + +Aurora felt her heart turn cold, and such agitation seize her as made +her reckless of all but one thing. + +"I shall have to see for myself," she thought. + +With the haste of fear, she flew before Giovanna down the long hallway, +around the dark corner, to the door of Gerald's room. It was half open. +Checking herself on the threshold, she thrust in her head. + +He was so lying in his bed that beyond the outlined shape under the +covers she could see of him only a dark spot of hair. And she felt she +must see his face, whether asleep or awake, to get some idea.... She +tiptoed in with the least possible noise. At once, without turning, he +asked something in Italian, and speaking forced him to cough; and after +he had finished coughing, Aurora, who was near, could hear his breathing +rustle within him like wind among dead leaves. + +Giovanna had gone to the head of his bed and whispered a communication. +Upon which he twisted sharply around, and Aurora, moved by an +overpowering impulse, rushed to his side. + +"Hush!" she said at once. "Don't try to talk; it makes you cough. I just +wanted to know how you were. It would be funny, now don't you think so +yourself, if, such friends as we've been, I should stop caring anything +about you because you were cross the other day? I had to come and see if +there wasn't something we could do for you." + +The attempt to speak choked him again; he had to lift himself finally +quite up from his pillow to get breath. Quicker than Giovanna, Aurora +snatched up a gray shawl from a chair to put over his shoulders. The +room felt to her stagnantly cold. He stopped her hand in the act of +folding him in, and she knew that it was not the Gerald of last time, +this one who, with an afflictive little moan, clasped and pressed her +hand. + +She hushed him, every time he tried to speak, until his breathing had +quieted down, when he came out despite her forbidding with a ragged, +interrupted, but obstinate eagerness: + +"How can I ever thank you enough for coming, dear, dear Aurora? I have +lived in one prolonged nightmare ever since I saw you, knowing I had +behaved like a blackguard, and fearing I should never have a chance to +beg your pardon. I thought I should never see you again. And here you +are, so generous, so kind!" + +"Hush, Gerald! Don't make anything of it. Of course I came. Keep quiet +now; you mustn't try to talk." + +"Dearest woman," he insisted, with his voice full of tears, "I don't +even know what I said to you, but I know that the whole thing was +atrocious. You standing there like a big angel, with your innocent arms +full of flowers, and I barking at you like a cur!" + +"Nothing of the sort. You were sick. Who lays up anything against a sick +man?" + +"Excuse it in me like this, Aurora, if you can: that having such regard +for you, I had pride before you and could not endure that you should see +me when I felt myself to be a disgusting object. So, mortified to the +point of torture, I lost my temper,--I've got that bad habit, you +know,--and insanely railed to keep you off." + +"And didn't succeed. Come, come; what nonsense all this is! Put it out +of your mind and think of nothing but getting well. Now you--" + +"It is not nearly so important that I should get well," he testily +persisted, "as that I should ask your forgiveness. It has been weighing +upon me and burning like bedclothes of hot iron, the horror of having so +meanly and ungratefully offended you." + +"Why should you feel so bad about it as long as I don't? Put it all out +of your mind, just as I do out of mine. There, it's all right. Now keep +still except to answer my questions. You've had the doctor?" + +"Yes, dear." + +"What's he giving you?" + +"You can see--there on the stand--those bottles." + +"And hot things on your chest?" + +"Yes; _semedilino_. I don't know what you call it in English." + +"Flaxseed, I guess. How can poor old Giovanna do everything for you?" + +"I don't know," he answered vaguely. "She does." + +Perceiving that by a reaction from his excitement he was suddenly +fatigued to the point of no longer being able to speak at all or even +keep his eyes open, she asked nothing more, but with a practised hand +straightened his bolster, smoothed his pillow and drew the covers evenly +and snugly up to his chin. + +"Don't you be afraid," he heard her say above him, as it seemed to him a +long time after, at the same moment that he felt her give his shoulder a +little squeeze to impress her saying: "I won't let anything happen to +you." + + * * * * * + +He entered a state which was neither quite sleep nor quite waking. He +was not dreaming, yet the world within his eyelids was peopled with +creatures and varied by incidents departing from the known and foreseen. +Something malevolent pertained to the personalities, something +disquieting to the actions; suffering and oppression resulted from his +inability to get away from them. They came and went, one scene melted +into another, sometimes beautiful, sometimes repulsive, a sickly +disagreeableness being common to all, and the fatigue involved with +watching the spectacle of them weighing like a physical burden. + +But yet beneath the unrest of fever dreams there was in Gerald, after +Aurora's visit, as if a substratum of quiet and content. As a good +Catholic, having confessed and received absolution, would be less +troubled by either his symptoms or any visions that might come of Satan +and his imps, so Gerald, with the weight of his sins of brutality and +ingratitude lifted off him, could feel almost passive with regard to the +rest. + +He had moments through the night of recognizing the deceptiveness of his +senses. He knew, for instance, that the solemn clerical gentleman in a +long black coat and tall hat whom he saw most tiresomely coming toward +him down the street every time he opened his eyes was only a medicine +bottle full of dark fluid, outlined against the dim candle-shine. And he +knew that the tower of ice, solitary amid snows, lighthouse or tower of +defense on some arctic coast, was nothing but a glass of water. And when +it seemed to him, late, late in the night, that Aurora was in the room, +he knew off and on that it was Giovanna, who through one of those +metamorphoses common in fever had taken the likeness of Aurora. She +lifted him to make him drink, and supported him while she held the glass +to his lips, then laid him easily back. The delusions of fever had the +sweet and foolish impossibility of fairy-stories: Aurora, as if it were +the most natural thing in the world, placing upon his stiff and +lacerated breast balsamic bandages of assuaging and beneficient +warmth!... + +The night was full of torrid heat and fiery light, in which everything +looked unnatural, shifting, uncertain, but daylight, when it finally +came, was of a crude coldness; under it everything returned to be +itself, meager and stationary, and he knew that it was no +phantasmagorical Aurora making preparations to wash his face. + +He spoke no word to signify either pleasure or displeasure. He let it +be, like a destiny too strong to withstand. With this acceptance there +took place in him, body and spirit, a relaxing, as when supporting arms +are felt by one who had been fearing a fall. + +In his not very clear-headed reflections upon himself and his state, he +had passed into a different category of men, where what he did, +particularly as regarded worldly proprieties, had little importance, +because, ill as he felt, there seemed to him such a strong probability +of his actions having no result. If, on the other hand, he could manage +to pull through--and he found he cared to do this, cared so much more +than he had supposed he ever could care, on such desperate days as those +which had sometimes seen him re-examining his revolver--if he should +recover, the gladness of his good fortune would outweigh any +inconvenience created by his weakness now. Life is, and should be, +dearer to man than anything else, except honor. He found it difficult to +separate the idea of honor from life, and make it oppose letting this +robust guardian angel fulfil her promise not to "let anything happen to +him." + + * * * * * + +Gerald had too often heard those well-meaning lies which friends and +nurses tell the sick, to place faith altogether in Aurora's cheerful +asseverations from day to day that he was getting better. + +Yet Aurora was not feigning. She entertained no doubt that with proper +care he would get well. And she was providing the care. Hence a +confidence which she did not allow any of those chilly creepy fears +which come at about three o'clock in the morning to undermine. She was +so strongly resolved to get him well, and felt so capable of doing it, +that it would not seem unlikely her very hands in touching him had +virtue and imparted health. + +He said very little, even when the exertion of talking had ceased to +make him cough. The fact that talk fatigued him was reinforced by his +old fancy that talk was superfluous. One lived, one looked, one felt.... + +She was glad he so willingly kept quiet, because as long as he had fever +it was so much the best thing he could do. He did not have to tell her +that he took comfort in having her there, that everything she did for +him was exactly right, that her touch was blessed and had no more +strangeness for him than that of a sister--nay, than his own. She too +understood those wordless things which are shed from one person, like a +radiance, and inhaled by another, like a scent. + +In the long silences, she sometimes read a little by the shaded +candle--she had chosen the night watch for her share and let his devoted +old Giovanna wait on her master during the day. But very often she sat +in her easy-chair near the bed doing nothing, just thinking her +thoughts, marveling at the queerness, the surprises of life. Who could +have dreamed that first time she entered this big brick-floored, +white-washed room, and nearly cried because she found it so dreary, that +she would come to feel at home in it; that by her doing the brown +earthenware stove in the corner, cold since Mrs. Fane's day, would again +glow and purr; that over and over she would watch the row of flower-pots +out on the terrace, with the stiff straw-colored remains in them of last +year's carnations, grow slowly visible in the dawn; that from their +pastel portrait the eyes of the mother would watch her placing +compresses on the brow of the son! + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: Aurora's eyes, fixed and starry, rested upon the little +flame] + +Before going for her rest, she always waited to see the doctor, who made +an early visit. After they had reissued together from the sickroom, he +was interviewed by her with the help of an interpreter, Clotilde, who +was in and out of the house during all that period, making herself +useful. Estelle instead came only for a moment daily, having a case of +her own to nurse, who was down, poor crumb, with those +measles-mumps-whooping cough of puppyhood, distemper. + +On the day when Doctor Batoni had agreed that with prudence there would +be nothing more to fear, the patient might be regarded as having entered +convalescence, Aurora covered him with a wide and warming smile. + +"_Je suis son bonne amie_," thus she translated the explanation of +her unconcealed happiness, "I'm a good friend of his," nodding at the +old man with the full sweetness of her dimples; blushing a little, too, +with the pride of addressing him directly in French. + +That morning Aurora was so happy she could not hurry; humming an old +psalm tune she dawdled about her room, the longer to enjoy her thoughts. + +When she finally slept it was more deeply than usual, and she woke with +a start of fear that it was past the time. The line of sky showing +between the curtains retained no remembrance of the day. It must be +late, certainly. Then she heard a faint stirring just outside her door, +the thing probably which had drawn her out of a sound sleep. It was the +rustle of some person listening at the crack. + +She bounced from bed and went to open. It was as she expected, Giovanna; +come, she supposed, to see if she were ready to go on duty. At +Giovanna's first words, though she did not entirely understand them, she +became uneasy, because Giovanna interspersed them with sighs. Her voice +sounded as if she might have been crying. + +Aurora had grown accustomed to the fact that those hard old eyes of +Giovanna's took easily to tears, and that she sighed by the thousand the +moment she was in anxiety over her _signorino_. She knew she must +not take Giovanna's fears at her own valuation. She gathered from her +gestures now, combined with her talk, that Gerald, so quiet until +to-day, had become restless. Giovanna impersonated him tossing and +throwing his arms out of the bed-covers. Aurora, though not permitting +herself to be alarmed, hurried with her dressing. + +"Ain't it always so," she questioned her own image in the glass, "that +the moment you feel safe something goes wrong?" + +When she tiptoed into the big dim room where Gerald lay, she could not +at first make out what it was that had troubled Giovanna to the point of +tears. He seemed quiet enough. After she had taken his pulse and +temperature, her heart subsided with a blessed relief. + +He could not tell her, because he did not himself know, that just +because he was better he, paradoxically, was worse. Thoughts and +responsibilities had begun to trouble him again. + +"Should you mind very much," he asked suddenly, "if I worked off my +nervousness by singing? I have kept still, so as not to worry you, +exactly as long as I can." + +"Certainly," she said, "go ahead. I never knew you were a singer. What +are you going to sing?" + +She waited with a certain curiosity. + +He began chanting. "B, a, ba; B, e, be--babe! B, i, bi--babebi! B, o, +bo--babebibo! B, u, bu--babebibobu!" Then he went on to the letter C, +"C, a, ca! C, e, ce--cace! C, i, ci--caceci!" and to D, and so on, one +after the other, through all the consonants in the alphabet. + +"The queerest rigmarole you ever heard!" Aurora called that simple +Italian spelling-exercise for little beginners. It might have been funny +to hear him, only it was disquieting, he did it so earnestly and so +obstinately kept it up. + +When he had finished, Aurora held a sedative powder all nicely wrapped +in a wet wafer ready for him. He knew what it was and gratefully gulped +it, composing himself after it to wait in patience and self-control for +its operation. Aurora, reposing on the magic of drugs like a witch on +the power of incantations, watched for the drooping of his eyelids and +relaxing of his frown. + +He had lain still for so long that she was congratulating herself upon +the result thus easily obtained, when he opened his eyes, twice as +wide-awake as before, and began to talk, as if really the object of an +opiate were not to stupefy a man, but to rouse him fully. Under its +influence he was almost garrulous. His vivacity partook of delirium. All +that passed through his mind pressed forward indiscriminately into +utterance, as if the sentinels placed on guard over his thoughts had +been taking an hour off. + +Aurora heard him in wonder and perplexity. He was not incoherent, he was +not extravagant. He was merely talkative, expansive, and this in his +case was obviously pathological. She wondered also to see how handsome +he could look, with his eyes alight; his cheek-bones burning, pink as +paint; his hair, grown long, lying in dark locks over a luminous +forehead. + +She tried to think of something that would abate all this. She was +searching her nurse's memory for some further sedative by which to +counteract a first one gone wrong, when the thread of her medical +meditation snapped, her attention fastened upon what Gerald was saying. +Because she had a suspicion that it was about Violet he was talking. And +she had from the first been curious about Violet and his feelings with +regard to her. As curious as if she had been jealous. + +"There is a person--" he said, in the suppressed voice of one +communicating a secret, "of whom I used to dream very often. Not because +I wished to. In the days when I wished to, she came seldom. But when I +dreaded it, she began to come, and do what I would, oppose to her what +hardness I could, she could be so sinisterly dreadful and unkind that it +was like a knife in me. Try to shut her out as I might, she would force +her way in and make me suffer. Why? Why did she want to?... I will tell +you what I believe. Some women feel their beauty to depend upon their +power to create suffering. If not happy suffering, then the other kind. +If men grow indifferent to it, they feel their beauty passing, and if it +goes there is nothing left that they care for. The unremitting quest of +their lives therefore is to feed the blood of men to their beauty, and +if they can not do it in any other manner they pick the locks of sleep +and get at them in that way. But the last time this person came, a +surprise awaited her. And the same, I will confess, awaited me. My heart +was like so much sawdust, so far as one drop of blood that she could +wring from it. And now she won't come again, I believe, for why should +she come? She will look a little anxiously in the glass, very likely, to +see if she has begun to fade. I should be sorry to know that the least +of her golden hairs had faded--they were so lovely. It's wrong all the +same to practise sorcery. You don't, Aurora, that is one reason why I +like to be with you. Women as God made them are strong enough, He knows! +It's unfair to use sorcery besides, to make themselves beautiful to the +point of distraction, and desired to the point of pain. And then their +barbarous methods! That low game of using a man's weakness for the +increase of their own glory, making a jealous fool wilfully out of a +decent fellow, and a baby out of a self-respecting man. You, Aurora, you +are good as good bread, you are restful as a bank of moss. You would +never do what the others do. Would you, Aurora? You needn't answer me. I +know." + +"If what you mean is that I'm not much of a co-quette," she came in +quickly, to prevent his continuing, "I guess you're right. Take it since +I was born, I've been called a good many things, but in all my life I +don't remember anybody calling me that,--a co-quette. But you're talking +lots more than is good for you, brother. Now I want you to quiet down +and give those sleepy-drops a chance to work. Here I've fixed you +something else that will help them. It's just a drink with nothing in it +but something nice and cooling. Smells pleasant, doesn't it? This'll do +the trick." + +Slipping an arm under his neck, she lifted him, propped him against +herself, and held the glass to his mouth. Instead of words pouring out, +the calming draught flowed in. It was a slow process; he drank by small +swallows and wished after each one to stop, but she gently forced him to +go on. When it was finished and he turned his head away from the glass, +he found it resting on her shoulder. He settled his cheek warmly against +it, like a child burying his face in the pillow. With a long sigh he +relaxed. + +"Now, Aurora," he said solemnly, "be per--fect--ly still." + +He was very still, too. After a long moment he half lifted his head and +with a long soft sigh replaced it, as if to renew his sense of a +resting-place so sweet. With all her heart Aurora lent herself to this, +glad to witness, as she thought, the belated effect of the soporific. In +a few minutes he would be asleep. + +"Aurora," he suddenly said, wakeful as earlier, but without moving his +heavy head or opening his eyes, "do you remember the first evening I +ever saw you? You came down the middle of the room all by yourself, like +something in the theater, where the stage has been cleared for the +principal character to make an effect. You were a fine large lady in a +sky-blue frock with bursts of pink, your hair spangled with diamonds, a +fan in one hand, a long pair of gloves in the other. That at least is +what everybody else saw that looked at you. But me, what I seemed to see +was America coming toward me draped in the stars and stripes. Now you +know how I feel about my dear country. If I loved it why should I have +fixed my abode once and for all over here? And yet when I saw it coming +toward me across the room, with your eyes and smile and look of Home, I +felt like the tiredest traveler and exile in the whole world, who wants +nothing, nothing, but to get Home again. It was like a moment's +insanity. I almost wonder that I resisted it, the desire to lay my head +on your shoulder and cry, Aurora, and tell you about it, then never move +again, or say another word." + +Aurora readjusted her position so as to make his leaning on her even +easier. She brought a warm cover safe-guardingly around him. + +"Poor Geraldino!" she pitied him in the lonely past. + +"Then do you remember the first time I went to see you," he asked, "and +you introduced me, dearest woman, room by room, to the somewhat gruesome +mysteries of your house? You walked before me holding a lamp. In the +ball-room, hazy with vastness, you held the lamp high, like a torch. And +I had a vision of you as America again, or Liberty, or Something, +lighting the way for me.... But I treated the fancy as one treats +fancies. I did not in the least intend to cultivate the acquaintance +begun with your picking me up by the loose skin of the neck and plumping +me down on the little seat of your victoria." + +"Why--Gerald!" she drawled in a tone of reproach purposely funny. +"Didn't you want to come?" + +"I wanted _not_ to come!" he answered, with normal spirit. "But you +kept saying Jump in. When a lady has said Jump in three times it acts +like a spell, a man has got to jump." + +"But when it came to the hot bread and syrup, brother, you know you were +glad to be there. You kept your superior look, but you ate all I +buttered for you. It did me good to see you." + +"Yes," he grew dreamy again, "it took me back. It took me back to so +many things I had nearly forgotten. And when at the end of the evening I +was leaving, do you remember, Aurora, wrapping in paper some pieces of +maple-sugar and forcing me to take them home in my pocket? I felt +absurdly like a little boy and again you seemed like big America; +something exhaled from you that made me think of slanting silver-gray +roofs and the New England spring of appleblossoms and warbling robins; +yes, and of October foliage intolerably bright, and Fourth of July +celebrations. Not things I dote on, exactly, but things I was born to, +and restful to me after my years of chasing what is not to be caught, +wanting what is not to be had, seeking all the time to adjust myself, to +adjust myself, to the harshness of life, the treachery, the +unaccountability, the relentlessness--restful as this heavenly shoulder, +on which I have wished how many hundred times to lay my head like this +and not move again, or speak again, or have anything ever change. +Aurora, don't say a word, dear. Particularly, kindest Aurora, don't make +any of your little jokes. Keep perfectly still, like a good darling, and +let me forget everything except where my head is, and be perfectly +happy." + +As seriously as if a god had commanded it, Aurora preserved the silence +and immobility requested of her, only making her shoulder as much wider +and softer and more comforting as she could by wanting it to be so. + +When by and by she felt him slip a little as he began to lose himself in +sleep, she clasped her hands around him supportingly and held him in +place. + +A single candle burned in the room, with a book to shade it. Aurora's +eyes, fixed and starry, rested upon the little flame where it was +reflected in a mirror on the wall opposite, but she did not see it at +all, so absorbed was she in her thoughts. In her feelings, too. In the +wonder of the hour. This remarkable Gerald, with his head packed full of +knowledge, with his speech that charmed you as whistling does an adder, +with his capacity to paint pictures that the rest could not even +understand, and then his rarity, the sweetness of his manners, the +fascination of all that unknown in him which came, she had concluded, +from his foreign bringing-up--he had wanted ever since he first saw her +just to lay his head on her shoulder and rest.... + +Her common ordinary shoulder. What did he see in her? Taking for granted +that he saw something, Aurora attributed this unknown quality in herself +to God, and thanked Him. She tightened her clasp about Gerald, the +better to feel him there. The power of the sleeping-potion had overtaken +him completely. Thoughts that moistened her eyes resulted from feeling +her arms full of the breathing warmth of a beloved form. Those defrauded +maternal arms! That other, who would have been five years old at this +time, and would have been called little Dan, after Dan, her big father, +how she would have nursed him through his childish ailments, how she +would have held him and rocked him! No, she would never stop yearning +over him. One must suppose that God knows best. + +Gerald's breathing was deep and quiet. When sure that it could be done +without waking him, she let him gently down on to the pillow. + +She stood beside the bed for a few minutes, in her soft garment of +cashmere and swansdown which made no more sound when she moved than did +her velvet shoes; she watched him sleep with emotions of gratitude +beyond possibility of expression to any one but that old intimate, God. +He was getting well so surely and fast. He would shortly be as well as +ever. + +Confident that he would want nothing more for the rest of the night, she +arranged herself in her easy-chair for a good sleep, too. + + * * * * * + +On the next day she divined from his half troubled look at her, and the +shy modesty of his manner, that he was wondering whether he had actually +babbled last night, or in a mild delirium dreamed the whole thing. Not +from her might he find out. Her easy, matter-of-fact way made any such +passage seem at least unlikely. + +Having slept during the night she did not retire to rest during the day, +but let Giovanna go about her long neglected affairs and in her place +looked after Gerald, who had waked from his deep sleep immensely +refreshed. He would not need a constant watcher beside him after this, +during night or day. + +"What shall I do to amuse you?" she asked him, to make an interruption +after she had felt him watching her through half closed lids for some +time. "Don't you want me to read to you?" + +"I think not, Aurora. Thank you just as much." + +"Well, then, how shall I entertain you? Do you want me to be a gold-fish +for you?" + +"How do you 'be a gold-fish,' Aurora?" + +"Look!" But the instant she changed her face into a gold-fish's and +waggled up through imaginary water, opening and shutting her mouth like +a rubber valve, he hid his eyes, crying sharply, "Please stop! I don't +want to see it." + +The gold-fish personality was dropped. + +"Very well, then," she said, with unimpaired serenity, "shall I do a +squirrel gnawing a nut? Every family its own circus." + +"If you do it, I will not look. How can you endure, lovely as you are, +to make yourself ugly--grotesque?" + +"Aren't you rather hard to suit to-day, mister? Shall I be a hen, then, +scratching for her chicks? That's mild." + +"No, no, no. Yes. No. I don't know about the hen. Let me have a sample." + +He watched her, critically and provisionally, while with comfortable, +motherly, half-suppressed chest-sounds, and a round eye cocked for finds +among the dirt, remarkably altogether the appearance of a pensive white +hen, she made believe to scratch up the earth with her feet. A rather +sympathetic performance, he allowed, her imitation of the hen, calling +up before one the vision of a farmyard, a brood of downy yellow chicks, +a duckpond, sunshine, green things. + +He let her do it as long as she would, or rather until to vary the thing +she increased the comic beyond the line he fixed. When midday found him +grudgingly laughing at her cackling, it seemed improbable certainly that +midnight had seen him sleeping in her arms. But underlying their +laughter was a consciousness in each that day of a thing uniting them +which had not been there before. + + * * * * * + +Sitting bolstered up in bed to eat his first real meal, he looked, with +his long hair parted in the middle and brushed down over his hollow +temples, like one of those old masters in the Ewe-fitsy, Aurora told +him. A St. John the Baptist, she specified. + +She chipped the top off his egg and cut finger sizes of bread for him, +so that he might have it in the foreign way he preferred. + +While he languidly ate, yet with pleasure, the door softly swung inward, +revealing faces of women,--Estelle, Clotilde, Livvy, Giovanna,--all +equally kind, all craning for the delight of a peep at him eating his +soft-boiled egg. + +Because he was still weak, tears came into his eyes, and because he +could not permit them to be seen, he waved and haggardly smiled toward +the smiling and nodding faces without inviting them nearer. + +Women! women!... What a great deal of room they had occupied in his +life! How much he owed them for affection,--mother, sister, +servant-girl, friends.... + + * * * * * + +He had known from whispers and rustlings, from a sort of instinct, +latterly from Giovanna's own lips, that his house since the coming of +"that lady" to undertake the government of his sickroom had been full of +people, making practical and easy the carrying out of her plots. +Abundance of people and abundance of money. Old Giovanna grumbled +bitterly at this invasion, but she did it inside of herself, sanely +recognizing that she had subject for gratitude. Her hot dark eye looked +all she thought, and her lips moved as she soundlessly said all she +felt; but when she dropped into the dark church of Santa Maria degli +Angeli for a moment's devotion she did not fail to ask Maria to bless +"that lady" and give her great good. After which she begged Her by the +seven swords of Her sorrow to hasten the day that should clear the house +of the whole horde of strangers, and permit her to resume the quiet life +with her signorino. + +Gerald, whose nature felt the oppression of material benefits as much as +Giovanna felt jealousy with regard to her rights and loves, resolved +that the sole seemly return for generosity in this case would be an +equal generosity, consisting in an acceptance pure of every shadow, +either of obligation, or reserve, or regret. + + * * * * * + +Since the doctor said it would do the invalid no harm to admit a visitor +or two, Aurora wrote to Mrs. Foss. She came at once with Leslie. Both on +the occasion of this call were perfect, in tact, in warmth, in +friendship. And yet with them, and the sense of the World and the +World's point of view which they inevitably brought, change entered the +house. + +The vacuous, almost happy languor of the sick was replaced in Gerald by +an irritable gloominess, decently repressed, but unconcealable. + +"There's no mistake; you're getting well," remarked Aurora, when the +unrest of a mind troubled by many things expressed itself in indignation +against innocent inanimate objects, a drop of candle wax for burning, an +ivory paper-cutter for snapping in his impatient hand. "You're getting +well. I guess I can go home and feel easy about you." + +And sooner than Giovanna had dared to hope when most fervently she +invoked the Holy Mother, lo! the intruders, mistress and maids, bag and +baggage, had left in their places room and silence. So much sooner than +expected that Giovanna, clasping in her hands an incredible fee, almost +found it in herself to feel regret. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +On their last day together Gerald had asked Aurora to find the key of a +certain desk-drawer and to bring him the miniature strong-box locked in +it. He had taken out one by one, to show her, the little store of +trinkets once belonging to his mother and given her from among them the +one he thought most charming, an old silver cross studded with amethysts +and pearls. + +Her own house, when she reentered it, looked faintly unfamiliar, as if +she had been away much longer than she had by actual count. But her big +soft bed looked good to her, she told Estelle, after the bed of granite +framed in iron she had lately occupied. + +She was in high good spirits. Gerald out of the woods, the amethyst +cross, Estelle and her beautiful commodious house returned to, vistas +ahead of good times and heart satisfactions, a sense of success and the +richness of life--Aurora was in splendid spirits. + +Estelle and she slept together on the first night, so as to be able to +buzz until morning, as they had used to do in their young days, when one +of them was allowed to go on a visit to the other and stay overnight. +There ensued a very orgy of talk, a going over of all that had happened +since their separation, quite as if they had not once seen each other in +the interval. + +It might have been thought, when their remarks finally became far +spaced, as they did between two and three of the morning, that this +happened because the streams were running dry as well as because the +talkers were growing sleepy; but no such thing. Each had loads more that +she might have told; but each, as had not been the case in the old days, +was keeping back something from the other. Each locked in her breast a +secret. + +There had naturally been talk of Gerald. Estelle was immensely nice +about him, and Aurora appeared immensely frank, but yet both knew that +he was to be a delicate subject between them thenceforward, and that +thoughts relating to him could not be exchanged without reserve. + +There had been laughter over Estelle's subterfuges in order not to let +it be learned from her, and this without directly lying, that Aurora was +actually living at Gerald's. "It's a case of a cold," she had explained +her friend's non-appearance upon one occasion, without mentioning whose +cold. + +The details of Busteretto's illness and danger had caused him to be +reached for in the dark and kissed and cuddled anew. + +"My, but it's nice to have you back!" Estelle said in the morning, +fixing a bright, fond gaze upon her friend across the little table in +the bedroom, where they sat in their wrappers eating breakfast. "A penny +for your thoughts, Nell. What are you thinking about?" + +Nell smiled rather foolishly, then, putting Satan behind her in the +shape of a temptation to prevaricate, said: + +"I was thinking what they were doing over there. Whether Gerald has had +a good night, and about Giovanna, and what it's all like without me. +It's hard for me now to think of the place without me. I miss myself +there." + +"I suppose you'll be driving round to inquire sometime in the course of +the day," Estelle said, with true generosity; at which Aurora tried to +look as if she were not sure; she would think about it. + +With arms around each other's waists they went through all the rooms for +Aurora to renew her pleasure in them after absence. They came to a +standstill before her portrait in the drawing-room. + +"There's no mistake, he's talented," Estelle admitted good-humoredly, +after a considerable silence. "That's a fine portrait." + +Aurora did not say she thought so, too. Alone in her room later, while +Estelle was dressing to go out together, she looked at the other +portrait to see if she were "any nearer educated up to it." It seemed to +her she was, a little bit. + +She started to dress. Being given to homely rather than poetic fancies, +she subsequently thought of herself as having been, during the process +of making herself fine for the afternoon drive and call, like some Cape +Cod young one trotting happily along with her tin pail full of +blueberries, just before a big dog sprang out of the roadside tangle and +jostled the pail out of her hand, so that all the berries were +spilled.... + +Even as she was buttoning her gloves a letter came for her with a +parcel. All rosy with delight, she quickly found in her purse a reward +for Gaetano, the bringer. Without too much hurry, like a person not +eager to shorten a solid enjoyment, she opened the letter. It did not +strike her as surprising, certainly not as ominous, that Gerald should +write when he might expect to see her so soon. She read: + +This is the fourth letter, dearest Aurora, that I have written you since +waking, after a very bad night, in such a black humor that you would +know I am quite myself again and life has resumed for me its natural +colors. I destroyed those letters one after the other because, although +written with the effort of my whole being to be what you call sweet, +they sounded to me insufferably disagreeable. And now whatever I write I +shall have to send because if I destroy this letter also I shall not +have time to write another before you come to see me as you promised. +And the reason for my wretched night was that I was haunted by all the +reasons there are why you should not come. They are so difficult to put +into words that I despair, after three attempts, of doing it in any but +an offensive manner. Pity, Aurora, the plight of your poor patient; +permit him not to go into them. Just--don't come. + +Alas! that cannot be all. I have the vision of your puzzled face. Well, +then, it is for yourself, in part. I have no excuse for profiting by a +kindness that may be harmful to you. It is my duty to regard for you the +conventions you are big-heartedly willing to disregard. I deplore the +fact that I was ever so weak as to forget it. + +But it is also for myself, who must not further be demoralized and +spoiled. + +I must not, moreover, be laid further under obligations of gratitude, +the less, my dear Aurora, that gratitude is not precisely what I feel. +No. I so little dote upon life that I should be glad if a merciful +angel's attention had not been drawn to me, and I perhaps might have +escaped the dreary prolongation of years. I am sorry, but so it is. + +Pray do not conceive any relation between what I have just written and +the request that follows. Will you be so kind as to return the object +belonging to me which I miss from the little table-drawer at the head of +my bed? You had no right to take it. + +Vincent Johns is coming in a day or two. Do not think of me, therefore, +as lonely or neglected. + +I find I must hurry or be too late. This letter is beastly and ought to +be torn up like the others. It simply cannot; it must go. I can only +pray, Aurora, that you will understand. + + * * * * * + +Aurora went back to the beginning and read the letter a second time. +Then she turned to the accompanying parcel and noticed that it was done +up in a shabby piece of old newspaper. It contained a pair of fur-lined +velvet shoes, a bow-knot of blue satin ribbon, and a bottle of almond +milk, things of her own which through carelessness had been left behind. +She could not know that the honest Giovanna alone was responsible for +this return of her property. Coming at that moment, it formed the +occasion for two stinging tears rising to the edge of Aurora's eyes. She +swept them away with the back of her glove, and forbade any more to +follow. To prevent them she took her lips between her teeth, and with +all her strength called upon her pride. + +She read Gerald's letter over again, really trying to understand, to be +fair, to interpret it in the high-minded way he would wish. + +"When all is said, it amounts to this,"--she reached the end of that +exercise by a short cut,--"he wants to be let alone." + +And after every allowance had been made for him, and all due deference +paid to his excellent reasons, still it seemed to her what she couldn't +call anything but a poor return. Because his letter was bound to hurt +her, and he must have known it. His sending it, therefore, argued a lack +of any very deep affection for her. After she had come, just from his +own words and actions, to supposing.... + +"This is what you get for not remembering that if a person is +practically a foreigner you can never expect to know them except in +spots," she admonished herself. + + * * * * * + +After they had driven in the Cascine and around the Viali for the +sunshine and air, Aurora asked suddenly: + +"Haven't we had enough of this?" and ordered the coachman to go home. + +"Why!" exclaimed Estelle, astonished, "I thought we were going to Gerald +Fane's to see how he's getting along!" + +"No, I guess we won't. I think it's time, after living with him for +three weeks, that I began to look after my reputation, don't you?" said +Aurora, with a forced lightness of rather bitter effect. + +"I had a note from him, anyhow, just before we came out," she added +after a moment. "He's doing all right." + +Estelle understood that something was wrong. Aurora could not +successfully pretend with her. Aurora's transparent face, as she now +took note of it, betrayed hidden perplexity and chagrin. Estelle asked +no questions, not needing to be told that Gerald's note had worked the +change. Despite her affection for her friend, indeed, just because of +that affection, Estelle was quietly glad of it. Her thought caressed the +secret which has been referred to, a scheme which for some weeks had +given her an excited feeling of having between her fingers the thread of +the Fates. + +After Estelle had gone to her own room for the night, Aurora sat down to +compose an answer to Gerald's letter. She had reflected a good deal +since receiving it, and out of confusion and complexity singled one +clear and simple thought or two. + +Gerald had never said or intimated that she had forced herself upon him +when he was too ill to help it; but the truth was she had done that, +after all his shying rocks at her, too, to keep her off. Nor had Gerald +suggested that one of his reasons for wishing her not to haunt his +bedside was a fear of her becoming inconveniently fond of him. A hint +could be found, if one chose, that he feared becoming too fond of her, +but of the other no vestige, no shadow, or ghost of a shadow. Yet by +those two points the spirit of Aurora's reply must be inspired. +Centuries of civilization have ground into the female of the species one +particular lesson. + +So the irascible man's nervous, hurried and harried scrawl, written with +sputtering pen that at several places tore clean through the paper, and +written under the compulsion of his soul and his good sense, received +from the best of women an answer in her calmest hand, deliberately +calculated to give him pain, at the same time as to convey to him +unambiguously that, as far as she was concerned, he was freer than the +birds of the air. She wrote: + + My dear friend Gerald, + + What I want principally to say is just _don't worry_. Don't + worry for fear I'll come, and don't worry for fear I won't + understand, and don't worry because you think my feelings may be + hurt. And above all the rest, don't worry about + _gratitude_, for I don't feel you owe me any at all. Don't + you think for a moment that I saved your life. You were not as + sick as you imagine, I guess. It was a very light case, or how + would you have got over it so soon? You were not near as sick, + according to all accounts, as poor Busteretto, who has been + having what they call here the _cimurro_. I took you in + hand because _I am a nurse_ and I couldn't keep my hands + off, just as an old fire-engine horse will start to gallop when + he hears a fire-alarm even if he isn't on the job. If it had + been Italo Ceccherelli who was sick I would have been tempted in + just the same way; so you see there is no occasion for + gratitude. Put it out of your mind. + + Now about the thing I took from the drawer of your night-stand. + I am very sorry I can't give it back, because I flung it out in + the middle of the river. That is what I did with it, and I am + not sorry either. You know that we at home don't look upon + certain things as you apparently do over here. We think it a + disgrace for a man to kill himself. I myself am old-fashioned + enough to think that that door leads to hell. I have been + astonished to find that over here it is thought quite + respectable, that some Italians look upon it as an honorable + way, for instance, of paying their debts, and a natural way of + getting over an unhappy love-affair. As I know you have a good + many foreign ideas, and as you have once or twice made a remark + that showed me you thought of that solution of difficulties as a + possible one, I grabbed your nasty old pistol when I found it in + the little drawer, and it reposes now at the bottom of the Arno. + Don't get another, Gerald. No burglars are going to enter your + house to steal your Roman tear-bottle or your books. When you + are so blue you feel like killing yourself, say your prayers. I + am very glad your friend the abbe is going to come and stay with + you. He is a _good influence_, I feel sure, and a good + friend. + + I suppose I shall see you again some time, even if I don't do + the visiting. But don't be in any hurry, not on my account. I + hope that in the meantime you will get back your strength + quickly. Remember that you will have to be very careful for + quite a long time, because a relapse is _an awfully mean + thing_. + + Good-by, my dear Gerald. Please accept the very best wishes of + + Yours sincerely, + Aurora Hawthorne. + + P.S. I did not write four letters and tear three of them up, + like you. I wrote one and corrected it, and here I have copied + it out for you, hoping that in it I have made my meaning as + clear to you as you made yours clear to me in your letter. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +When the latter occurrences had shaken down in Aurora's mind, Gerald's +letter, which she from time to time re-read, impressed her as a most +gentle and reasonable production of his pen, while her own letter, +preserved in the original scribble, appeared to her horrid, cutting, and +uncalled for. + +But there was now nothing to do about it. The state of mind created in +her by the whole episode prepared her to welcome with open arms any +diversion, any event which would restore to her self-conceit a little +vitality or lay on her heart a little balm; and so when, at the +psychological moment, Doctor Thomas Bewick surprisingly turned up in +Florence,--it may be remembered that he was Estelle's choice for +Nell,--Nell fell on his neck quite literally, and gave him a full, +sonorous kiss. + +"Tom! Tom!" she cried in delight, "how good it is to see you!" + +This happened in her formal drawing-room, whither she had gone on the +servant's announcement that a gentleman from America, who had given no +card or name, asked to see her. + +Their greeting over, she ran out into the hall, screaming joyfully: + +"Hat! Hat! Come down this minute! Hurry up! You'll never guess who's +here!" + +In reply to which summons Estelle came hurrying down the stairs with an +innocent, expectant air. + +"If it isn't Doctor Bewick!" she exclaimed, without giving herself away +by one false inflection. "Why, Doctor Bewick, this is simply too awfully +nice! What _are_ you doing over here? Who _would_ have +expected to see _you_?" + +"Tom," said Aurora, "I was never in my life so glad to see any one. I +didn't know how much I'd missed you till I saw you. You good old thing! +You nice old boy! Aren't you a brick to have come! My soul, my soul! I +didn't know till this minute how tired I am of foreigners and +half-foreigners and quarter-foreigners and all their ways. I was hungry +for home-folks and didn't know it. Now, please God, we'll have some talk +where we know that when we use the same words we mean the same thing, +and aren't wondering all the time what's really in the other's mind!" + +The man to whom this was said absorbed it with a face fixed in smiles of +pleasure. He was a big blond man, disposed to corpulence, and looking +somewhat like a fresh-faced, gigantic boy until his eye met yours and +gave the note of a fine, mature intelligence, open on every side, and +unobtrusively gathering in what it had no strong impulse afterward to +give out again in any open form of self-expression. + +Tolerant, not from any vagueness of judgment; easy to get on with, but +not to drive or to deceive, he looked strikingly the good fellow, yet +kept you in respect. An air of capability, a consciousness of definite +achievements, went coupled in him with the humor that would prevent +bumptiousness however great the matter for pride. A quiet carelessness +of other people's opinions formed part of his effect of poise; the +opinions of dukes would have affected him as little as those of +rag-pickers, unless they recommended themselves to that judicial spot in +his brain at which he tried them. He was level-headed, unsentimental, +but kind, of a kindness that like good-humor seemed almost physical, and +made him stop to stroke the kitchen cat as well as see to it that the +negress's baby had the right milk for its orphaned stomach. + +He looked at Aurora with smiling scrutiny, and facially expressed a vast +appreciation. She looked back at him with eyes of laughing tenderness. +Avoiding to speak directly to her the compliments rising in his mind, he +turned to Estelle. + +"Hasn't she blossomed out!" + +"Isn't she wonderful?" chimed in that friend, enthusiastically. + +Aurora, with a comedy of pride, threw up her chin, lifted her arms, and +turned as if on a pivot, to show herself off in her elegance. She had on +the wine-colored street-dress bordered with black fox; over its white +satin waistcoat embroidered with gold hung in a splendid loop her pink +corals. The restraining Paris corset gave to her luxuriant form a +charming modish correctness of line. + +"Oh, Tom,"--she sank happily on the sofa beside him,--"we're having the +time of our lives! Just wait till you see me in company, and hear me put +on my good English, when, instead of calling things lovely or horrid, I +call them amusing or beastly or impossible. But your turn first. Give us +the Denver news." + + * * * * * + +After dinner that evening, in the midst of Italo's brilliant +performance, a caller came,--a thin, oldish, English-speaking lady whose +black dress made no pretense of following the fashion. + +Aurora had met her at Mrs. Satterlee's during a meeting appointed to +raise funds for the Protestant orphanage. When this philanthropist, +after a little talk of other things, mentioned the relict of a mason, +left with five young children, Estelle and Dr. Bewick took it as a hint +to withdraw beyond earshot. The two ladies were left talking in +undertones; after a minute they found themselves alone in the room. + +Estelle preceded Dr. Bewick across the hall to the dining-room, deserted +and orderly, where the drop-light rained its direct brightness only on +the rich and variegated tapestry cover of the table beneath it. From the +sideboard--whence the marble fruit had for some time been missing--she +brought a bottle of aerated water and a glass to set before him; she +found him an ash-tray, and seated herself beside the table near him in +such a way as to get, through the parted half-doors, a glimpse of the +visitor when she should leave. + +Before speaking, she exchanged with the doctor a look of intelligence. + +"You see what I mean?" she asked little above a whisper. + +[Illustration: Aurora, with a comedy of pride, threw up her chin, +lifted her arms, and turned as if on a pivot, to show herself off +in her elegance] + +Dr. Bewick looked all around the room with leisurely appraising eyes, +then nodded understanding. There was no intimation that he was not ready +to listen, but he did not seem quite ready to talk. His white +shirt-bosom was remarkably broad as he leaned back in his chair in the +slightly lolling fashion of large, good-humored men. For all the +nonchalance of his attitude, he looked, from evening tie to thin-soled +dress-boots, beautifully spruce, as Aurora had remarked, and made an +appropriate pendant to her in her Parisian finery. + +Approval of him was written large on Estelle's pleasant, alert +countenance; a quiet, comprehensive liking for her sat as plainly in the +eyes reflecting her slim person and evening-frock of beaded net. Being +Nell's friends made them friends, a thing not so common as one wishes. +Through her they felt almost on the familiar terms of old friendship, +although Estelle had never met Dr. Tom Bewick before he came to New York +to see them off on their great four-stacked ocean-steamer. + +"You see what I mean?" she asked, and, not expecting a regular answer, +did not wait for it. "Now that woman won't leave until she has secured +support for the mason's five children, and she'll do this without the +smallest difficulty. In a day or two some one else will come, with the +sad case of a poor father out of work who is going to have to sell his +blind daughter's canary unless Nell steps in to relieve their wants. And +Nell will step in. Word has been passed, just as they say a tramp at +home marks a house where he's been given a meal, and every case of want +in this town, it seems to me, is hopefully brought to Nell. And she +listens every time; she doesn't get sick of it. And you know, Doctor, +that her circumstances don't warrant it." + +Bewick, as Estelle stopped for some comment on his side, made a slight +motion of chin and eyelids that partly or deprecatingly agreed with her. +He took the cigar out of his mouth, but having knocked the ash off, +replaced it, to listen further and not for the moment speak. + +"It's positively funny, the things Nell has been doing with her money," +Estelle went on, in a tone that did not disguise the fact of her +glorying in this prodigality while being justly frightened by it. "It's +not just the ordinary charities, churches, hospitals, etc.,--all of +those send in their regular bills, as you might say. It's a Swiss +music-box for the crippled son of the _spazzaturaio_, or +street-cleaner; it's a marriage-portion for this one and funeral +expenses for that one; it's filling the mendicant nuns' coal-cellar, +it's clothing a whole orphan-school in a cheerfuller color! Clotilde and +Italo call her attention to every deserving case, and are guided in this +by the simple knowledge that Nell can't hold on to her money. Of course +it's her good heart. She's done a lot for them and their family, too, +I've discovered. I don't know just how much, but I can guess by their +look of licking their chops. I'm not saying they aren't all +right--honest, sincere, and so forth--or that I don't like them. It's +Nell's own fault that she's imposed on. I don't doubt that they're as +devoted as they seem, it's only right they should be. It's right the +whole city of Florence should be. I was thinking only the other day as +we drove through Viale Lorenzo the Magnificent that it would be +appropriate for a grateful city to rechristen our street Viale Aurora +the Magnificent." + +Tom Bewick laughed, nodding to himself with an effect of relish. He +murmured, "Aurora the Magnificent!" + +"Aurora the Magnificent--Aurora the Magnificent is all very well," +Estelle took up again with animation, "but she's already spending her +capital." + +Bewick did not allow himself to appear startled or troubled; still, he +was made pensive by this. His look at Estelle invited her to go on and +tell him the rest, just how bad it was. She was leaning forward, with +her elbows on the table, one hand slipping the rings on and off a finger +of the other, in her quick way. + +"You know what her income is. It would have provided for all this,"--she +took in the luxury around them by a gesture of the head,--"but no income +can suffice to set up in housekeeping all the picturesque paupers in +Florence. That's why I was so anxious for you to come, and wrote you as +I did. You can curb her; I can't. I have no influence with her in that +way, and I simply can't sit still and see her throw away all this good +money that was intended to provide her with comforts for the rest of her +life. Unless somebody looks after it, she won't have a penny left. You +must talk to her, Doctor Bewick. Don't let her know, though, that I put +you up to it. You can ask a plain question, as it's right and natural +for you to do, then when she answers you can lecture her. She'll take it +from you." + +Bewick, with his sensible face, looked as if he saw justice and reason +in all Miss Madison had said to him; yet he did not go on with the +subject. It might be that he felt delicate, in a masculine way, about +uttering to a lady's best friend any criticism of that lady's mode of +doing or being--criticism which he might feel no difficulty perhaps in +voicing to herself. Estelle took this into consideration and, his +reticence notwithstanding, relied on him to do his duty. + +A diversion occurred in the shape of a knock at the door--the door +leading to the kitchen-stairs. It was but the scratch of one fingernail +on the wood. Tiny as the sound was, it did not have to be repeated +before Estelle ran to open. A small four-footed person entered, the +bigness of a baby's muff and the whiteness of a marquis's powdered wig. +Estelle caught him up from the floor and with a coo of affection, "What +um doing in the kitchen, little rogums?" set him on the table, under the +lamp, for Doctor Tom to see how utterly beautiful he was and have the +points and characteristics of a Maltese terrier explained to him. + +Busteretto was reaching dog's estate, his shape had taken on a degree of +subtlety, his hair was growing long and straight and like leaves of the +weeping willow. Estelle lifted the white fringe depending from his brow, +and exposed to the light two great limpid brown eyes, incredibly sweet +and intelligent. It was as wonderful, in its way, as if a blind beggar, +insignificant and easy to pass by as he stood at the street-corner, +should take off black goggles suddenly, and you should perceive that he +was a masking angel come to test the hearts of men. + +"Did you ever see such a little sweetheart?" gasped Estelle. + +"A pretty little fellow," spoke the doctor commendingly. With the +instinct to relieve discomfort he raised the veil of hair again as soon +as Estelle had let it drop, and looking further into the beautiful eyes, +that with the neat nose made a triangle of dark spots effective as +mouches on Columbine's cheek,--"Why don't you tie up his hair like this +to keep it out of the way?" he asked. + +"We mustn't! Mr. Fane, who gave him to Nell, says it would be bad for +him, he might go blind. They're that kind of eyes and need the shield +from the light. Mr. Fane knows all about this Maltese breed of dogs." + +"Is he the same one who painted her portrait?" Dr. Tom deviated from the +subject of the dog, over whose eyes the curtain was allowed to drop +again. + +"Yes, he's an artist." + +"And the same one she nursed through an illness?" asked Dr. Tom after a +moment, with the mere amount of interest apparently of one asking for a +topographical detail, so that he may get his bearings. + +"Yes. You'd know, wouldn't you, that she'd have to, if she thought he +wasn't getting the right care and didn't see any other way of providing +it." + +"Well, Skip," Dr. Tom returned his attention to the dog, "you're a fine +little fellow. Yes, sir." He held out a large pink hand and received in +it immediately a wee gentlemanly hand of fur and horn, rather smaller +than any of his fingers. "Good dog," he said, and regarded their +friendship as sealed. But next minute, because Estelle had whispered to +him, "Make believe to strike me," he lifted his fist menacingly against +her, and on the instant, with the courage of a David, there dashed +against him a little wild white flurry, not to bite--the skin of man is +sacred--but by a show of pearly teeth and the growlings of a lion to +frighten the giant off. + +"Good dog!" cheered Tom and leaned back laughing, "Well done!" + + * * * * * + +Because it was very late when Dr. Bewick left the ladies to return to +his hotel they immediately repaired to their respective rooms; but +before Estelle had got to bed, Aurora, half undressed, came strolling +into her maidenly bower of temperate green and white. + +A vague depression of spirits had overtaken Aurora, reaction, perhaps, +from the excitements of the day, and she sought her friend with the +instinct to make herself feel better by talking it off. + +She dropped on a chair, and in silence continued to braid her hair for +the night. + +"Isn't he the nicest fellow!" began Estelle, setting the keynote for +joyous confidences. + +"Isn't he just!" replied Aurora. "I want him to have the best time in +the three weeks he's going to spend here. We've got to show him all the +beauties of Florence, and then I want him to know all our friends. We +must have some tea-parties and some dinners. I want it to be just as +gay. Who is there I ought to lay myself out for, if not Tom Bewick?" + +"I quite agree with you. Let's plan." + +"No, to-morrow'll do. It's too late. I'm tired." The motions of Aurora's +fingers were suspended among the strands of her hair. She fell into a +muse. "Seeing Tom"--she came out of it again, and went on braiding--"has +brought back, along with some things I never want to forget, such a lot +of things I don't want to think of!" + +"I suppose it would." + +"His sisters, for instance. He doesn't look a bit like them, +really--nasty bugs, godless, gutless pigs--but yet he brings them up +before me. Idell rather more than Cora, and Idell was the meanest of the +two, and her husband the miserablest, sneakingest cuss. Oh, how I hate +the bunch of them! And I oughtn't, you know. You oughtn't to go on +hating your enemies after you've got the better of them. But the moment +I think of that trio, Cora Bewick--sour-bellied old maid!--and Idell +Friebus, and her rotten little pea-green husband--pin-headed insect! +flap-eared fool!--I get mad. If you could really know, Hat, the +cold-heartedness and wicked-mindedness of those people! How they ever +happened in Tom's family Goodness only knows. And such a fine father! +The Judge was as good as any of those old fellows in the Bible, I do +believe. _That_ patient, _that_ considerate, and _that_ +just! More than just; what he did was more than just, and those girls of +his simply couldn't stand it. They couldn't stand it, after they had +neglected him all through his illness so that it was a scandal, that he +should treat the person who had done their daughters' duty for them the +same as he treated them, no better and no worse, but just the same. The +things those people did to me, Hat, the things they said about me--" + +"I know, I know; you've told me," said Hattie, soothingly and +deterringly. + +"The things those people did to me, and the things they said about +me,"--Nell, not to be deterred, repeated intensely,--"if I'd ever wanted +to give up my share, those things they did and said would have made me +hold on like grim death just to spite them. Oh,"--she broke off, and +flung her finished braids back over her shoulders,--"why do I let myself +think of them? I grow so hot! It's the sight of Tom that has started me +back to thinking of all that excitement and disgustingness. Dear good +Tom, who stood by me like a trump! I do wish, Hat, I didn't hate so hard +when I hate. We've taken pride in my family, I'm afraid, in being good +haters, as if it were part of the same trait that makes you loyal and +true to your friends. But perhaps it's a mistake. I know that Gerald +said once"--she yielded to the obscure desire to hear the air vibrate, +as it had not done for some time, with the syllables of his +name--"Gerald said once, when we were talking of things, 'We must +forgive everything,' he said; 'we must forgive happenings the same as we +must people.' And Gerald, you know, when he's in sober earnest, has some +good ideas." + +"Talking about Gerald," Estelle came in quickly, glad of a change from +the other subject, "did Livvy tell you that our cook met Giovanna at the +market, and Giovanna told her that her master was doing finely; that he +hadn't yet been out of doors, but that he sat at the open window in the +sunshine? I'd been meaning to ask you." + +"Oh." Aurora quietly took it, and thought it over a minute. "No, she +hadn't told me. I suppose those long stairs would keep him from going +out till he was good and strong. Did she say anything else?" + +"Only that Giovanna was buying a chicken, and the abbe, she said, was +still staying with them." + + * * * * * + +The ladies of the Hermitage did the honors of Florence with modest pride +and a certain glibness. Before the early old masters, Aurora said to +Tom: + +"At first I couldn't stand them. I guffawed at the idea of there being +anything to admire in them. Even now I can't pretend I like them; but I +keep still and pray for light. Isn't that the beginning of polish?" + +Tom was taken to make calls. Aurora took upon herself to explain +Florentine society to him. + +"There are little stories about most everybody," she said, "so you have +to be pretty careful. If a certain General is present, for instance, +whom I may have a chance to point out to you, you don't want to talk of +_horses_, because his fiery steed bolted with him during an +engagement once and his enemies caricatured him running away. Then if a +certain viscount is present, whom I may have a chance to introduce to +you, you don't want to talk of _ermine_, because that little animal +is a feature in his coat of arms, and his coat of arms along with his +title of nobility, scandal says, came as a reward from a royal personage +for marrying the lady who was his first wife. So you'll have to look +out, Tom, or you may be called upon to fight a duel." + +The most splendid dinner that could be planned in council with Clotilde +and the cook was prepared to honor the friend from home. To this were +bidden the Fosses, Aurora's best friends; the Hunts, her next best; +Manlio, whom she wished Tom to see as a truly beautiful specimen of +Italian; and Landini, because she was curious to know what Tom thought +of him. + +Aurora had not seen the latter since the night of the _veglione_. +Finding that he had not called during the interval, she had been glad to +hope that his suspected mysterious project for making her his own had +been dropped. That being the case, she was not at all averse to seeing +him. On the contrary. + +Charlie Hunt she had not seen since the variety-show. Learning that he +also had not once come during her absence, she thought that this +admitted of some simple explanation which he would give on the night of +the dinner. + +Charlie, receiving the invitation, pondered a while before accepting. He +considered himself to have been insulted, rather, by Mrs. Hawthorne. +Still, he could not be absolutely sure. If, anyhow, she did not know +that he knew the black crow to have been none other than herself there +would be nothing in his going to her dinner-party which laid him open to +scorn. And he felt more disposed to go than not. The dinner would be +festive, costly, succulent. Then he desired before breaking with her--if +breach there must be, which would depend upon the subtlest +circumstances--to persuade her that two enormous porcelain jars owned by +a dealer of his acquaintance were the very thing needed in that +bare-looking ball-room of hers. There was a third reason. A lady whose +friendship had latterly--since the night of the _veglione_, in +fact--taken on the glow of roses and the warmth of wine, had taken it +into her charming head to be jealous, fantastically, of Mrs. Hawthorne. +Charlie, whose manly vanity his good fortune had, not unnaturally, +reinforced; Charlie, who if he were loved much must always love less +than the other, felt a certain stimulation in exhibitions of jealousy +with regard to himself. He thought well of the results of saying, "I +cannot come this evening, _cara_, I am dining at the Hawthorne's." +So he accepted Aurora's invitation. + +The dinner was superlative, but it was written he should leave the house +finally in a bad humor. The feasted guest was a big Western American, of +the immensely rich and not very interesting type, whom he had seen once +or twice at the bank. Aurora's fond esteem for this man was open and +shameless. Whether he were a "has been," an "is," or a "to be," Charlie +could not determine, but only in the character of suitor could he see +him in the picture. + +The dark face of Landini, his Chief, across the dinner table, when his +eyes sought it was indecipherable to him; but, shut as it was, he was +reminded by it, not to the improvement of his spirits, of a little +personal hope, a just and rational hope, which might have to be +relinquished. After dinner he got his hostess into a quiet corner for a +chat. + +"Where's Gerald?" pure curiosity made him ask, with that impertinence +which his friends were accustomed to and took lightly, because curiosity +and impertinence were part and parcel of Charlie, and if you cared +sufficiently for his attractive smoothness and flashing smile to wish +them near you, you must put up with the bad breeding underlying his good +manners. "Where's Gerald?" he asked familiarly. + +"Gerald isn't well enough yet to be out," Aurora answered him, with +imperfect candor. "You didn't know he'd been ill? Why, how funny! He's +been having what you call here a 'fluxion of the chest.'" + +This ignorance of Charlie's comforted her by proving that the news of +her nursing Gerald had not spread over the town like wildfire, as she +had been warned it would. Florence was not so bad or nimble a gossip as +she had feared. + +"I was as nice to Charlie Hunt that last evening as ever in my life," +she afterward declared, "and I thought he seemed all right." + +When he spoke of the precious porcelain jars, however, she did cut short +his appetizing description with: + +"Don't speak of it. I daresn't, Charlie. I've been lectured so much for +extravagance, I daresn't buy a toothpick. If these jars you speak of +cost nine francs instead of nine hundred, I couldn't, I tell you. I +guess Florence has got all she's going to out of me. I've turned over a +new leaf." + +Aurora had all evening been so entirely her kind and jolly self that +Charlie had almost forgotten the black crow. At this check, and the +barren prospect opening out beyond, he remembered it, and felt a vicious +little desire to pay her back for the pin she had stuck into him under, +as she idiotically supposed, an impenetrable disguise. He went away, as +has been said, in a bad humor. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +The loveliness of Florence at this point of the year, while inspiring +poets, made the rest feel helpless before the task of finding words for +it. Even Aurora, who could not be called contemplative, or highly +susceptible to influences of form and color, was heard to heave an +occasional great sigh, so was her heart oppressed, she could not think +why, during their drives among the hills around Florence, by the sight +of the spring flowers,--tulips, narcissi, fleur-de-lys, imagine it, +growing wild, as if gold pieces should lie scattered in the road for +passers to pick up!--and by the sight of the warm and tender tones of +the sky, and by the silver sparks of windows flashing back the sun where +the hazy city houses huddled around the Duomo's brown head and +shoulders, majestically lifted above them. + +It was something in the air, Aurora thought, which forced her to sigh +with that half-sweet oppression and fatigue: the air was fragrant with a +scent which seemed to her upon sniffing it analytically to be the breath +of hyacinths; and the air was warm, it "let her down," she said. + +Why, instead of delicious contentment, is a sort of melancholy, of +unrest, created in us by the beauty of spring, will somebody tell? + +Aurora, when she thought she could do it without attracting the notice +of the other two, would slip from their presence sometimes, so as to +have a few minutes by herself and stop pretending to be so everlastingly +light of heart. For nothing in the world would she have had Tom know but +that his visit made her happy to the point of forgetting every subject +of care or annoyance. + +Estelle, too, she would have preferred to deceive. She did her best, and +for hours at a time appeared serene and merry. During these periods she +sometimes did actually lose the sense of anxious suspense; but it kept +itself alive as an undercurrent to her laughter. + +When she saw how well Tom and Estelle got along together, she became +less timid about arranging little absences from them; she even--such a +common feminine mind had Aurora--saw in the congeniality which permitted +them to remain for half an hour in each other's company without boredom +the foundation of a dream, dim and distant, it is true--the dream of +seeing Estelle one day settled in a fine home of her own. She feared, +though, there might be bridges to cross before that event. She dreaded +the bridges. She wished Tom might be diverted from what she feared was +his purpose. How satisfactory, if Estelle might prove the diversion. +Estelle would really have suited Tom much better than the person of, she +feared, his actual choice. + +Of all this she was somewhat disconnectedly thinking when she ran away +from them one evening after dinner, leaving him still at the table +smoking his cigar, while Estelle hunted up in a guide-book for his +benefit some little matter of altitudes. A flash of good sense showed +her the previousness of her calculations, and she mentally withdrew her +hand from meddling. Fate would take its own way, anyhow. + +She had gone upstairs with the excuse of wanting a fan. Her fan had +easily been found, but instead of returning to her guests, "They won't +miss me if I do stay away for ten minutes," she said, and walked to the +end of the broad hallway, out through the door that stood open on to the +portico roof--once glassed over for a party and dedicated to Flirtation. + +How long ago that seemed! Here Gerald, a quite new acquaintance, had +told her about Manlio and Brenda. Poor young things, so unhappy then, +and now exultant. Brenda was just back from America. The wedding was set +for the ninth of May. Only eight days more to wait. + +As Aurora, leaning over the balustrade and letting her eyes rest on the +garden, thought of their assured and perfect happiness, she remembered a +gross fly in the ointment. She had been told that Brenda would have to +agree to bring up her children in the Catholic church. The thing had +seemed to Aurora appalling. Upon her dropping some hint of her sentiment +to the caller who had communicated the fact, she had been further told +that very likely Brenda too would in time become a Catholic--as if that +made it any better. A descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers to become a +Roman Catholic! Any one but a heathen to change his religion!... + +The figure of Abbe Johns rose before her mind. She refrained from +judgment in his case. His case, for intangible reasons, seemed separate +and different. But fear, as of formless bugaboos in the dark, burned in +her heart at the idea of his influence perhaps being able, creepily, +stealthily, to convert Gerald. + +She turned her face upward to the sky of May and sent forth a little +prayer into the crystal clearness of the space lying between her and the +ear which she conceived of as receiving it, the ear of a Baptist God, as +opposed to a Roman Catholic God surrounded by saints and candles and +incense and tin flowers. + +As she did this a high pink cloud caught her eye. Embers of sunset were +glowing over the river at the other side of the house. The sight of the +pink cloud, so pretty and far away, comforted Aurora like a good omen. +She felt better and, her reverie borrowing a ray from the cloud, went on +to rejoice in the pleasantness of the garden which she might for the +time being call hers. So different from the gardens at home, but in its +set way how attractive it was, how suited to people with leisure, and a +certain stability of taste, and a liking for privacy! + +Why, in that garden--which wasn't very large, either--you could almost +get lost among narrow paths bordered with shrubs. Even if the wide +wrought-iron front-gate were open, and the carriage-gate at the side +open as at this moment, you could be just as much shut off from outside +as in your own room, if you took your sewing or your book to that little +open air round with walls of smooth-trimmed laurel, and a stone table in +the middle, and stone seats. + +Old Achille down there, still busy watering,--Achille who belonged to +the garden and was hired along with it, was a regular artist, thought +Aurora. The great oval bed in front of the house was at this season like +a huge bouquet, all arranged in a beautiful pattern. Then he had edged +every path with a band of pansies just inside the band of ivy +overrunning the mossy border stones--the sweetest thing. His pride was +pansies, he had planted them everywhere, the finest she had ever seen. +He had taken a prize once at a horticultural show, for his pansies. + +The light died out of the pink cloud, and Aurora's pleasure in her +garden gradually died out too, while the quality of irony in her many +blessings smote her. For what is the use of having everything money can +buy or the bounty of spring afford if you at the same time are troubled +with a toothache? All this, so grand in itself, was like a good gift +wasted, as long as she was in a state of quarrel with her friend. It was +full two weeks since their exchange of letters. Two weeks of absolute +silence. Could it be possible that she should never see or hear from +Gerald again? + +No, it could not, she said. It was part of having faith in him to deny +the possibility of his remaining furious forever at her hateful letter. +No, she would not believe it of him; she thought better of him. She was +much mistaken if he could be so mean. She would be willing to bet-- + +There, in fact, he was, at this very moment, entering the carriage-gate. + +After one mad throb of incredulous exultation, Aurora's thoughts and +feelings were for a long minute limited to an intense and immobile +watchfulness. He walked over the gravel with his eyes on the door under +the portico. You would have thought his purpose set, and that he would +not pause until he had rung the bell. + +But you would have thought wrong. Half-way between the gate and the +house he stood still and looked at the ground. He was holding the +slender cane one knew so well like a weapon of defense, as if ready to +make a resolute slash with it to vindicate his irresolution. + +After a moment he turned, grinding his heel into the earth. It was then +that a voice called out above him, "Hello, Gerald!" + +He turned again and removed his straw hat. He and the lady leaning from +the terrace looked at each other for the space of a few heart-beats with +mechanical, constrained smiles. Then she asked: + +"Aren't you going to come in?" + +Instead of making the obvious answer and setting about the obvious +thing, he appeared to be debating the point within himself. At the end +of his hesitation, he asked: + +"Could I prevail upon you to give me five minutes in the garden?" + +"Why, certainly," answered Aurora, appreciating the fact that Estelle +would be superfluous at the peace-making that must follow. + +She went very lightly down the stairs. She could hear Estelle's and +Tom's voices still in the dining-room. Instead of going out by the usual +door, too near to their sharp ears, she turned with soft foot into the +big ball-room and passed out through that. + +The great oval mound of flowers spread its odoriferous carpet before the +steps leading down from the house. She turned her back upon it and +followed a path bordered with pansies and ivy till Gerald saw her and +came to take her hand, saying: + +"How good of you!" + +"Well," she sighed, put by the bliss of her relief into a mood of +splendid carelessness as to how she, for her part, should carry off the +situation,--looking after her dignity and all that. "How jolly this is! +And you're all right again, Gerald. You're well enough to walk on your +legs and come and tell me so. Yes, you're looking quite yourself again. +Well,"--she sighed again heartily,--"it's good for sore eyes to see you. +You're sure now it's all right for you to be out of doors after sunset? +Hadn't we better go in?" + +"This air is like a warm bath. I must not keep you long, anyhow." + +"Oh, I haven't got a thing to do," she precipitately assured him. "Come, +we'll walk up and down the path,--hadn't we better?--so as not to be +standing still. Go ahead, now; tell me all about yourself. How do you +feel? Have you got entirely rid of your cough? And the stitch in your +side?" + +He would only speak to answer, she soon found; the moment she stopped +talking silence fell. Had he nothing to say to her, then? Or did he find +it difficult somehow to talk? She was so determined to make the +atmosphere cozy, friendly, happy--make the atmosphere as it had used to +be between them--so determined, that she jabbered on like a magpie, like +a mill, about this, that, and the other, sprinkling in little jokes in +her own manner, and little stories in her own taste, accompanied by her +rich--on this occasion slightly nervous gurgle. + +"Aurora dear," he said at last, with an effect of mournful patience as +much as of protest, "what makes you? I am here to beg your forgiveness, +and you put me off with what Mrs. Moriarty said to Mrs. O'Flynn. Do you +call it kind?" + +A knot tied itself in Aurora's throat, which she could not loosen so as +to go on. If she had tried to speak she would have betrayed the fact +that those simple words had, like a pump, fetched the tears up from her +heart into her throat. He had his chance now to do all the talking. + +"Couldn't we sit down somewhere for a minute? Should you mind?" His +gesture vaguely designated the green inclosure, where the stone table +stood, pale among the dark laurels. + +But when they were seated, he only pressed his hands into his +eye-sockets and kept them there. + +"I am ridiculous!" he muttered and shook himself straight. After an +ineffectual, suffocated attempt to begin, "I am ridiculous!" he said +again, and without further concession to weakness started in: "I ought +to have written you, Aurora. But I had seemed to be so unfortunate in +writing I did not dare to try it again. Heaven knows what I wrote. I +don't; but it must have been a prodigy of caddishness to offend you so +deeply. It doesn't do much good to say I am sorry." + +"Your letter was all right," broke in Aurora. "I only didn't understand +at first. Afterwards I did. I tell you, that letter _was all +right_." + +"It was written in a mood--a perplexity, a despair, you have no means of +understanding, dear Aurora. When your answer showed me what I had done, +I could have cut my throat, but I could not have come to tell you I was +not the monster of ingratitude I appeared to be. Not that a man can't +get out of bed, if there is reason enough, and take himself somehow +where he wants to be, but because of a sick man's unreasonable nerves, +which can start him raving and make him a thing to laugh at. I had the +common sense, thank Heaven! to see that I must wait. Then, as the days +passed, it all quieted down. Vincent was with me, a tranquilizing +neighborhood. + +"It seemed finally as if it might be almost better to let things rest as +they were, to let that be the way of separating from you. I had almost +made up my mind to do it, Aurora. Vincent has had me out for various +airings, I have gone on several walks alone, but till to-day I avoided +to take the road toward this house. I am so used to pain that I've grown +stoical, you know, Aurora. I can stand any pain. I shut my teeth and +say, 'It will have to stop some time.' But all at once it became too +strong for me--not the pain, or the wish to see you, but the feeling +that I could not bear to have you thinking me ungrateful. I, who hate +ingratitude as the blackest thing in the wide world, to pass with you, +with you, for an ungrateful beast!" + +"Don't! don't, Gerald!" Aurora hushed him. "I can't let you talk like +that. You know you couldn't be ungrateful, nor I couldn't think it of +you." + +"No, I'm not ungrateful. I'm not, dear," he caressingly asseverated, and +closing her two hands between his treasured them against his cheek. "I +want you to be altogether sure of it. If I did not recognize the +enormity of my debt to you, Aurora, what a clod I must be! Not, mind +you, because, it is just possible to think, I owe you my life. Not that, +but because you were so kind. Because you were so kind, so kind--" he +reiterated feelingly, "and I a troublesome, cantankerous, distinctly +unappetizing object in his helpless bed. Don't think there was one touch +or gesture of these dear hands that take away headaches that I do not +remember with gratitude." + +"There was nothing to be grateful for, nothing at all," insisted Aurora. + +"And so when I wrote you in that brutal manner, dear,--" + +"That letter was all right," Aurora vigorously snatched away from him +the turn to talk, in order to defend him from this misery of +compunction. "It was prompted by the most gentlemanly feelings, by real +unselfishness and consideration for me. You didn't want me talked about +on your account, and you put it as delicately as possible. Only I was a +fool; I went off the handle, and wrote while I was mad and hurt and +wanted to hurt back. But, bless you, I understand it all perfectly now. +You needn't say another word. I understand the letter, Gerald, and I +understand you." + +"I am afraid," he said, letting go her hands and drawing a little apart, +as if the most complete misunderstanding, after all, separated them,--"I +am afraid you do not entirely. But this much at least is clear to you, +isn't it, dear, that whatever I may be, I am not ungrateful? Whatever I +may do, you are to remember that I couldn't be ungrateful to you, +Aurora. If I should seem to be behaving ever so, ever so shabbily, still +you must know that behind it, under it, I am the very contrary of +ungrateful." He pressed his hands to his eyes again, and was still for a +minute, before announcing, "I shall not come to see you for a long +time." + +The astonished and acute attention of her whole being was indefinably +expressed by the silence in which she now listened. + +"I am going to keep away from you," he went on, "till I feel out of +danger." + +"Why, what's the matter now?" she asked, with the vehemence of her +surprise and disappointment. + +"A trifle, woman dear. Oh, Lord, I see I shall have to go into it! +Haven't you the imagination to see, you unaccountable person, how an +unhappy mortal might be affected by such circumstances as destiny so +lately prepared for your poor servant's trying? Day by day, night after +night, that insidious kindness, that penetrating gentleness, that +stupefying atmosphere of a woman's care and sympathy.... Didn't you tell +me once yourself--" Gerald's voice stiffened, and he pulled himself up +again, discarding weakness,--"Didn't you once tell me yourself--in your +impossible English, almost as bad as mine--that a sick man is 'liable to +fall in love with his nurse?' And, dear girl, I will not do it. I +categorically refuse. It is too horrible. I have done with all that. I +have just managed to creep up on to the dry sand, and you ask me to +embark again on those same waters. I will not do it. It is finished. +That slavery! that unrest! and fever! and jealousy! No, not again. I +have served my sentence. Too many times I have waked in the black of +night and waited for daylight, wishing I had been dust for a hundred +years. I know now that in order to have a little peace a person must not +want anything. That is the price. We mustn't want anything, Aurora. We +mustn't want anything, we mustn't mind anything, we mustn't care about +anything, we must submit to everything!" This counsel of perfection came +from Gerald almost in a sob. "We sha'n't be happy like that, naturally, +but we sha'n't be too wretched for expression, either. It's the lesson +of life. I have learned it, and I will not expose myself to the old +chances again. 'He who loves for the first time is a god,' says the +poet, 'but he who loves for the second time is a fool,' he goes on to +say. And so, Aurora--" + +"You make me laugh!" exclaimed Aurora in a snort of simple scorn. + +"And so, Aurora, I am going to keep away from you for--I am not at the +present moment quite able to say how long." + +"You're going to do nothing of the sort! There now!" burst from Aurora. +"I'm not going to permit any such foolishness." She firmly proceeded to +pile up a barricade against his preposterous intention. "Now, Gerald, +you pay attention to what I say, child. Can't you see for yourself, now +you've put it into words, what nonsense all this is? You could no more, +in your sane and waking moments, be sentimentally in love with me, and +you know it, than, I guess, I could with you, fond of you as I am. No, +that isn't putting it strongly enough," she gallantly amended; "you +couldn't do it, it stands to reason, even so easily as I could. What you +felt was just the result of you being so weak, all full of fever dreams +and delusions. And you still believe in it a little because you aren't +yet good and strong. I thought you were, just at first, because you come +so near looking it. But I know that condition. After a sickness you +plump up, you get back your color, and all the while you can be so weak +you could burst out crying if any one pointed a finger at you. You're +trembling with nervousness this minute. You're all sunk together, as if +your backbone couldn't hold you up. It's because the weakness of your +illness is still on you, as anybody could see. Now you listen to what +I've got to say. The wisest thing you can do, young man, instead of +keeping away and having ideas and waiting till these gradually wear +off--the best thing you can do, I say, is to stay right at my side and +get sobered up by contact with things as they actually are. Not only the +best thing, but a lot fairer to me, doesn't it seem so to you? How do +you think I like to have you go kiting off the moment I've got you back +again? When I've missed you so! Now, Geraldino, rely on Auroretta. Let +her manage this case. Don't you be afraid; she'll cure you in two +frisks." + +"It just might be, you know, that you were right," said Gerald, +dubiously, with the modesty of tone that would beseem a girl after a +bucket of cold water had quelled her hysterics. "The truth is you do not +appear to me this evening at all as I have been carrying you in my +remembrance." + +Aurora laughed and reinforced her expression of jolly +matter-of-factness, looking into his eyes with eyes of sanative fun. + +He looked back at her with meditative scrutiny, one eyebrow raised a +little above the other. + +She had reigned in his thoughts very largely in her appearance of his +nurse, with her soft, loose robes, the blue of pensive twilights, her +fair hair in easy-feeling braids, her white hands bare of ornaments. She +sat near him now in a snug satin dinner-dress full of whalebones and +hooks and eyes. It had elbow sleeves terminating in full frills of +Duchess lace; a square-cut neck, likewise be-laced, framing an open +space in part obscured again by a jeweled medallion on a gold chain. She +had on rings and bracelets, a bow-knot in her hair. She had in fact +"dressed up" for Tom Bewick, wishing him to see with his eyes what good +she got out of the fortune with whose origin he was acquainted. + +"Gracious goodness!" She bounced to her feet. "Here I was forgetting! +Gerald," she said in haste, "I'm sorry, but we'll have to go indoors. +They'll be wondering where I am, and starting the hunt for me." + +"They? You have guests?" + +"Only one. Come in, Gerald. I want you to meet him. You've heard me +speak of Judge Bewick in Denver, where I lived so long. Well, this is +his son, Doctor Thomas Bewick. He's in Florence just for a visit. It's a +wonder, come to think of it, that you haven't heard of his being here. +We've been going everywhere and seeing everything and giving +dinner-parties. Well, never tell me again that news spreads so fast in +Florence! Come on. I want you to know each other. You'll be sure to like +him." + +"I don't think I will. I mean that I don't think I will go into the +house with you, Aurora." + +"Now, Gerald," she said in a warning voice, at which black clouds of +impending displeasure loomed over the horizon, "this isn't the way to +begin. Don't be odd and trying. I should feel hurt, now truly, if I had +to think your regard for me wasn't equal to doing such a little thing +for me as this. Tom's one of my very best friends, and he's heard us +talk so much of you. He's seen your painting of me. I do want you to +know him, and I want him to know you. Then, too, Gerald dear, and this +is the main reason, I want you to get good and rested, and to take a +little wine before you start for home. Though you say the air is like a +warm bath, your hands are cold, I notice." + +Too tired from the emotions of the evening to make any valid resistance, +emptied in fact of all feeling except a flat sort of bewilderment, +Gerald followed, like a little boy in fear of rough-handling from his so +much bigger nurse. + +They found Estelle and Tom in the parlor. + +"Well, I was wondering what had become of you!" cried Estelle as Aurora +appeared in the doorway, and behind her shoulder the shadowy, unexpected +face of Gerald. + +"Tom," said Aurora, "this is my friend Mr. Fane that you've heard us +talk so much about, the painter, you know, who painted that picture of +me up there. And this is Doctor Bewick, Gerald, to whom I am under a +thousand obligations, besides the obligation of his having probably +saved my life out in Denver, not so many years ago, when I was +dangerously ill." + +Aurora was luminous with gladness. Aurora was so glad that she had not +the concentration or the decency to attempt to hide it. She did not know +of the flagrant betrayal of her feelings; she was not guarding against +it, because her delight itself absorbed all her powers of thought. She +stood there, a monument unveiled. And all the reason for it that one +could see was that pindling, hollow-eyed young fellow who had entered +the room in her wake. + +Those who have not quarreled with a loved one, and known the pain of the +fear that he may be lost to them, will surely never know the keenest +joy. It takes the escape, the contrast, to make happiness shine out as +brightly as it is capable of doing. + +The two men, after conversation had engaged between them, promoted and +helped along by the greater lingual readiness of the ladies, observed +each other. This they did indirectly and as if doing nothing of the +kind. But Estelle, as profoundly uneasy as if she had foreseen already +the fate of the fat to end in the fire, was aware of it. She noted in +Gerald's stiffly adjusted face the unself-conscious eyebrows, formidably +different one from the other; she noted how Doctor Tom, sturdy and +self-collected as he was, kept knocking the ashes of his cigar into an +inkstand full of ink. + +It struck her whimsically that she had seen before something kindred to +what was taking place under her eyes: in a barnyard at home, two +crimson-helmeted champions, with neck-feathers slightly risen on end, +standing opposed, ocularly taking each other's measure. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +The Brenda who came back from America was not quite the one who had gone +there. Gerald saw it in the first instant. She had gained in +definiteness, assurance, even in beauty. But a silver haze, a fairy +bloom, an aureole, was mysteriously departed from her. She had left her +teens behind. + +Yet in her stainless white, her bridal veil, a slender coronal of orange +blossoms on her dark hair, and the light of love in her dark eyes, how +wonderful she was! That Manlio, pale as a statue with the force of his +emotion, should wear a look of almost superhuman beatitude was only +natural and proper. Of those who assisted at the ceremony many were +deeply moved, and few altogether untouched: to be in the church at that +moment gave one the importance of being accessory to a high romance. + +At the wedding reception something of this quality of emotion continued +still to possess the invited guests as long as Brenda and Manlio, +beneath their arch of flowers, stood smiling response to congratulations +and compliments. + +It was in the general experience not unlike that part of the opera +where, to a matchless music, the god of flame and the glowing hearth +lauds the loveliness of woman and the strength of man's pursuit; and the +other gods, uplifted, look at one another with washed eyes, feeling anew +how wonderful they all are, how wonderful it all is. + +The heart of Leslie, nevertheless, as she bustled about, seeing to it +that every one was provided with refreshment, confessed a point of +bitterness. In a way, it was envy of Brenda. Not of her happiness, or +her husband, of course. But she did wish the man lived and would present +himself who could inspire her with such feelings as Brenda's. The kind +of man who cared for her she somehow never cared for--a serious barrier +to experiencing a _grande passion_. And on this day of +wedding-bells it seemed a pity. The girl of many offers felt sad. + +Mrs. Foss smiled a pleased, incessant smile, not "realizing" the thing +which was happening, as she told her sister-in-law who had come over +from America with the bride. Her chick had developed tendencies unknown +among the breed, taken to the water and swum away with a swan. But the +mother had confidence. She believed in marriage. The institution had +been justified by her example and Jerome's. Her eyes sought him out, a +little anxiously, to peruse his face. The idea could not for a moment be +admitted that he had a favorite among his children, but yet it was +acknowledged that Brenda had always in a very special way been near to +her father's heart. From his calm and serenity in conversation with that +nice big Doctor Bewick, Mrs. Foss was able to hope that he too did not +"realize." + +Aurora watched the bride and groom with fairly fascinated eyes, but from +a certain distance. They had been nice, they had thanked her handsomely +for her handsome present, but nothing could modify her regretful +certitude that Brenda did not care for her. And it might so easily have +been she and not the good Aunt Brenda who secured for the _sposo_ +his career of silver lace and sabre.... And Brenda, innocently +unknowing, would just the same not have liked her. But there! Beautiful +Brenda didn't go about loving everybody. She had the more glory to +confer upon the one. Oh, harmoniously matched, high-removed pair! Oh, +hymeneal crowning of tenderness and truth!... Aurora in a kind of awe +wondered what elevated things those pale rose lips of the bride would +say to the bridegroom when, the turmoil of festivity ended, they were in +nuptial solitude. Impossible to imagine! It must be something altogether +beyond other brides; and his words must make those of all other lovers +sound common and poor. + + * * * * * + +When the arch of flowers was empty and the happy pair had left for the +train, Lily and Gerald went strolling about the garden hand in hand. + +Lily had been a bridesmaid, Gerald an usher. Both were in the fine +apparel of their parts; thoughts of weddings hummed in both of their +heads. + +"Well, Lily," said the young man idly, in their walk between odorous +lines of wall-flowers and heliotrope, "I suppose you too will soon be +getting married." + +"Oh, no!" Lily shook her head. "There is nobody I could marry." + +"Why, I thought, Lily," he said, "that you were going to marry me!" + +"No, Gerald," she replied promptly, but with gentleness and regret, so +as not to hurt his feelings. + +"I might come and live with you," she added, after a second, "and keep +house for you. A cottage in the country, with beehives and ducks and a +little donkey.... Gerald, do you know about Sir William Wallace?" + +Though a chasm appeared to divide this subject from the last, Gerald +shrewdly supposed a connection between them. + +"Very little. You tell me." + +"You haven't read 'The Scottish Chiefs'? I took it without permission +and kept it out of Fraeulein's sight. It grows light early now, you know, +and I read it for hours before getting up. Then whenever I could, I read +it in the daytime. And after they had left me at night, I read it with +the pink candles of my birthday cake. I cried so much that when I +finished I was ill with a fever and had to be kept in bed for three +days." + +"Why, when was this?" + +"Two weeks ago." + +"My poor little Lily, how came I not to be told of it? And you sent me +such a beautiful remembrance when I was ill!--Well, Lily, I know now why +you won't take me. I'm not much like Sir William Wallace, that's a fact. +I might grow like him in courage and prowess, perhaps, to please you, +but I know that I should never be beautiful in kilts. It shall be as you +say, dear. We'll be brother and sister instead. And now tell me more +about this book, these Scottish.... Lily, do you see Mrs. Hawthorne on +the doorstep? Do you gather that the signs she is making are meant for +us? We came up together and I think she may wish to say she is ready to +go, and will give me a lift back to town...." + + * * * * * + +"We came up together!" With great frequency in these days Gerald was +going somewhere with Mrs. Hawthorne, not alone with her, but making one +of four in an amiable party. Sometimes it was his fate to make +conversation by the hour with Estelle, while Doctor Tom monopolized +Aurora; on the other hand, he sometimes would succeed in getting his +fingers among Occasion's hair, and secure Aurora for his share, while +Dr. Tom was apportioned with the slenderer charmer. But the behavior of +all was civilized and urbane, and if a thorn pricked or nettle burned, +the sufferer concealed his pain and spoiled nobody's fun. + +Gerald would in reality have preferred to stay away, almost as much as +Estelle and possibly Doctor Tom would have preferred him to do so. But +just there the incalculable, the ungovernable, in human nature came into +play. A golden thread, a mere hair, strong as a steel cable, drew him to +the place where he could expect to find no comfort, and had no object to +accomplish except just to be there, with his eyebrows one higher than +the other. + +Either Estelle liked to annoy him, or she was unfortunate in doing it +without malice. + +"Don't they make a noble-looking couple?" she asked him, gazing at +Aurora and Tom outlined side by side against the light of the window. + +"Yes," he felt obliged to say, and followed it quickly, without apology +for the indiscretion of the question: "Are they going to marry?" + +"That remains to be seen," she said in a way which made one desire to +set the dog on her. "I cherish the hope. May I offer you another +cigarette?" + +He sometimes remained scandalously late in the evening after dining, in +spite of--oh, by so much!--knowing better. He would wait, with an +artist's beautiful air of time-forgetfulness, for Dr. Tom to get up to +go. He would instantly, as if remembering himself, get up to go, too, +and walk with the doctor as far as his hotel, they talking together like +men with respect for each other's brains, and appreciation of each +other's character and company, no subject of contention in the world. + +Gerald pushed courtesy so far as to go with the doctor, by themselves, +on certain visits to hospitals, to certain games of pallone, certain +monasteries which ladies are not permitted to enter, Aurora rejoicing in +the opportunities to "get good and acquainted" which she saw these two +dear friends of hers take. + + * * * * * + +After the drive back from the wedding, Gerald resisted Aurora's +suggestion that he enter the house with them and remain to dine. This he +did with well-masked resentfulness. As it was not Dr. Bewick's last +evening, but the evening before his last, Gerald did not see that +delicacy strictly demanded his sacrifice. But Estelle had without so +many compliments informed him that he was not to accept. She had +particular reasons, she darkly enlightened him, for the request. + +So, with a paltry excuse, he jumped out of the carriage before it +reached the gate, and stood looking after it, holding his hat--the +glossy _tuba_ which Giovanna had with her elbow stroked and stroked +the right way of the silk, when she laid out her signorino's outfit for +the wedding. + +Earlier than usual after dinner Estelle retired, "to write up her +diary," she said. Tom was left to have with Aurora that conversation +which Estelle had besought him to have, and of which by a significant +motion of the face she had reminded him before leaving the room. He came +to the point very soon, the sooner to get it over. + +"Nell," he said, and, leaning back, with one arm flung along the top of +the sofa, the other offering to his lips a thick cigar, waited long +enough for her to wonder what was coming, "you spend too much money." + +Without shadow of attempt at evasion, she said: + +"Tom, I do." + +"You've got to retrench, girl. You've got to be more careful." + +"Yes, I suppose I've got to." + +"Let's be practical. How are you going to do it?" + +"I don't know, Tom. It's so easy to spend and so hard to hold on to your +money! If any one had told me a year ago I could get rid of as much +money in one year as I have done, I shouldn't have known how I could do +it without opening the window and throwing it out." + +"Well, I'm glad you don't deny a bent toward extravagance." + +"I don't deny anything that means I spend a lot of money. I have more +sense. The facts are there." + +"You've already broken into your capital, haven't you?" + +"Did Hattie tell you that or did you guess? It's true, I have; but--" +she tried to place the harm done in a harmless light--"it isn't so bad +but that if I saved for a little while I could make it up again." + +"If! True; but are you going to, Nell? That's the question." + +"Oh, Tom, I never ought to have been given any money if I was to hold on +to it!" Aurora almost groaned. "I didn't know at first. I was pleased as +Punch. I lay awake nights just to gloat and feel grand. I tell +_you_, I meant to hold on to it! I tell _you_, it wasn't going +to get away from me after that good fight we made for it! But--" the +effect of a mental groan was repeated--"the whole thing isn't as I +thought it would be, not a bit." + +She stopped, and while she tried to coordinate her ideas, Dr. Tom +quietly waited for explanation or illustration of her meaning. + +"I don't like money, there's the whole of it!" she gave him the sum of +her attempt in one cast. + +Dr. Tom continued to wait, smoking. + +"In fact, I hate it." + +Dr. Tom continued to wait, without interrupting, or trying to help her +disentangle her thought, of which he had in truth no inkling. + +"I hate it, and I love it, both. That's truer, I suppose. But I can't be +at rest with it." + +"Never fear, girl,"--his tone was humorous,--"you'll get used to it. +Just from watching you, I should have fancied you were pretty well used +to it already." + +"When I was a child it was just the same way with candy," she went on +with her own train of thought, not minding his; "I loved it--and gobbled +it right up. Some of the girls made theirs last and last. I ate mine at +once. And it wasn't only because I was a pig with no self-control. I +wanted to have done with it and go back to a sensible life. With this +money I have the same feeling--and then another feeling that I sort of +can't account for, as if I wanted to get rid of it because there was +something wrong in me having it." + +"That money? You sure earned it!" he came out vigorously. "Don't be a +goose, Nell." + +"I wasn't thinking of what you think. But I'm afraid I am a goose, Tom, +an awful goose, and I'm ashamed of it. I somehow can't feel it +right--there!--to have more than the rest. Come right down to it, I feel +mean in having something the rest haven't got, and keeping it from them, +like a nasty fat boy stuffing pie with a lot of hungry ragamuffins +looking on. I know it isn't good common sense, or how could rich people +be so all right and calm in their minds as they are, and have +everybody's respect? Rich people are all right, I've always sort of +looked up to them, with their advantages and things. I haven't a bit of +fault to find. But Tom, I suppose the amount of it is I was born poor +and I go on having the feelings of the poor. If any one asks me for +anything and appears to need it, I've got to give it or feel too mean to +live. Me, Nell, who was poor myself for so long, how would I look +hardening my heart against any one who came and wanted to borrow? I'd be +ashamed to look them in the eye." + +"With that view of it, of course I can see why your money wouldn't last +long." + +"Oh, I'm extravagant besides, I'll own to that; that's the _real_ +trouble. I want to buy everything that takes my eye, I want to make +everything run smooth, like on greased wheels, and to have all the faces +around me look pleased, and everybody liking me. I love the feeling of +luxury and festivity, and oh, I just love a grand good time! That's what +the money was given to me for, wasn't it, so that I could have a grand +good time? But when I've indulged myself, Tom, I wouldn't have the face, +if I had the heart, to say no to anybody that came along and wanted me +to indulge them, too. Now, I don't want you to go thinking this is +generosity, Tom, or a good heart, or that I have any sneaking idea in my +own bosom that it's anything of the sort. I'd be a +regular--low-down--soggy--sinful sowbug, I'd be too dirt-mean to live, +if I pretended it was that. When I was poor I never was generous; I +never thought of it. I worked hard for what I got; and was in the same +boat exactly as the rest; I was entitled to the little bit I'd worked +for. But now it's different. It's like I'd won the big prize in the +lottery. I can't be stingy with it and not blush. I can't sit there like +a swollen wood-tick and be rich all by myself." + +"All right, Nell; all right. It's a perfectly understandable way of +looking at it, if it is rather far-fetched. But good-by to the +hard-earned thousands. You won't have a smitch of them left." + +"Good-by, then, and good riddance!" cried Aurora violently, almost +pettishly. "I don't really like them, anyhow. It's too easy just to +write your name on a check. At first I thought I was living in a +fairy-tale; but once you've got used to it, it doesn't compare with the +fun you get the old-fashioned way, working hard for a thing, and +planning, and going to price it, and saving, and finally getting it, and +that proud! People who haven't been poor simply don't know. Why, that +one poor little silver bangle I had when I was fifteen did more to give +me pure joy than any of the beautiful things I've bought this whole last +year. I'm sorry if it seems ungrateful to my bloated bank-account, but +it's true. Another thing, Tom. I was brought up to work. I won't say I +liked it. I don't think many people who've got to work do like it. But +since I gave it up, nothing I've found has really filled its place to +give me an appetite and the feeling I'd a right to a good time. To sit +back and let others work while you fan your face--I can't help it, I +feel a sort of disgrace in it. I know better, it's just the way I +_feel_. I know all the while that's the way the world was planned, +some to be rich and some to be poor--Think how rich King Solomon was! +And your dear father!--some to work and some not, with changes round +about once in a while, like in my case, and crosses and trials and +temptations belonging to every state, and the love of God and a quiet +heart possible in every state. And I've always had such respect for +moneyed people and their refined ways.... But if you want me to start in +now and do differently from what I've been doing, I tell you truly, I +don't know how I'm going to do it, Tom. I'd rather not have the money at +all." + +"You won't have it, Nell, dear. You've only to keep on, and you won't +have it." + +"All right. Then I'll go back to work and never happier in my life. I'm +strong and able, I've got years of work in me. And if you think I've +grown so devoted to all these frills that I couldn't give them up, +you'll see!" + +"Of course I haven't the faintest right to control your use of your +money--" + +"But of course you have, Tom,"--her tone changed at once, and was +eagerly humble,--"every right. You can take it away from me any moment +you please. Who has a right, I should like to know, if not you?" + +"Well, then, Nell, I'm going to make a suggestion. What you have said +shows me that simple advice would be of no use in this case. Don't +think, girl, that I don't get at your way of seeing the matter. If I +appear cold toward it, if I don't seem to sympathize, it's because the +logical results would land you in a hole from which I'd feel a call by +and by to try to pull you out. See?--As a promise to keep inside of your +income would apparently embitter life to you, I won't ask for it, merely +suggesting the fitness of trying to observe such a restriction. Even as +regards your power to throw it away, there'll be a lot more of it to +throw if you respect your capital. However, the money is yours, to do +exactly what you please with, but this I ask: empower me to turn some +part of it into an annuity, unalienable and modestly sufficient." + +"An annuity? What's that?" + +"A sum of money so fixed that you receive the interest as long as you +live and have no power over the sum itself. It's not yours to use, to +transfer or yet to bequeath. In your case the one safe investment, the +single way I see to keep you out of the poorhouse." + +"Do you say so! All right, Tom; do what you think best. But see here. +Whatever you arrange for me that way, you've got to arrange for Hattie, +too, or it wouldn't be fair. I won't think of it unless you'll do the +same for both. If I hadn't a penny left in the world, you know the +Carvers would take me in in a minute. Then if you do it, don't you see," +she brought in slyly, "when I've spent my money, there'll always be +Hattie's for me to fall back on. Don't let her know you're doing it, +Tom, but fix it." + +"All right. Two comfortable little annuities, enough to be independent +on, and be taken care of if you're sick." + +"That's it, Tom. Then everybody's mind will be set at rest. And this I +promise: I'll try to be a good girl." + +That subject being dropped, there was silence for a minute or two, while +Tom thoughtfully smoked. + +Aurora's face was a living rose with the excitement of their discussion. +She put her hands to her cheeks to feel how they burned, then turned to +Tom to laugh with him over it. The pink of her face enhanced the +blueness of her eyes. It was not unusual for persons sitting near +Aurora, women as well as men, to feel a sudden desire to squeeze her in +their arms and tell her how sweet she was. Tom found himself saying a +thing he had taken a solemn engagement with himself not to say. + +"I had hoped"--his utterance was slow and heavy--"to find a different +solution to the difficulty." + +Her face questioned him, and at once looked troubled. + +"I was going to try to take over all your difficulties and bundle them +up with my own; but," he continued, after a moment, with force, "I'm not +going to do it." + +"That's right, Tom," she came out eagerly, without pretending not to +understand. "If I know what you mean--don't do it! Oh, I'm so grateful, +I can't tell you, that you've made up your mind that way. Because, dear +Tom, whatever you wanted me to do, seems to me I'd have to do it. I +don't see how I could say no to anything you asked me. It would break my +heart, I guess, if I had to hold out against a real wish of yours. I +couldn't do it. All the same, I know we wouldn't make just the happiest +kind of couple--'cause why, we're too like brother and sister, Tom. It +would be unnatural. I feel toward you, Tom, just like an own, own +sister--not those mean old things, Idell and Cora, who are your +sisters--but I feel toward you as I would to my own brother Charlie. +There's nothing I wouldn't do for you. But if I had to marry you, +there'd be something about it--well, I don't know. I can't explain. +Haven't you seen how there are things that are perfect for one use and +no good at all for another? I'm a pretty good nurse, ain't I, Tom? But +what would I be as a bareback circus-rider?" + +"We aren't going to talk about it, Nell. I told you I had given it up. +But," he went on after a heavy moment, unable entirely to subjugate his +humanity--"but I wish now I had asked you before you left home." + +She was too oppressed with misery to speak at once, so he amplified. + +"But it seemed rather more--I don't want to call it by any such big word +as chivalrous,--it seemed rather whiter not to urge it, when +circumstances might have seemed to lay a compulsion on you. Then it +seemed better to let all the talk, the unpleasantness, in Denver die +down first. Then, too, I wanted you to see the world; I liked the +thought of you having your fling. But," he reiterated, "I can't help +wishing I had followed my instinct and asked you before I let you go. +Tell the truth, Nell. Wouldn't you have had me then?" + +"I suppose, Tom, that I should have you now if you asked me. But then or +now," she brought in quickly, "it would be a mistake. I couldn't love +you more dearly, Tom, than I do, good big brother that you've been. Dear +me, all we've been through together! Then all the fun we've had! We +couldn't change to something different without all being spoiled. You +don't seem to know, but I do, that I'm not the woman for you in that +way. We're too much alike, Tom. What you want is a little dainty woman, +delicate, quick, bright-minded, something, to find an example near at +hand, like Hattie Carver. A big fellow like you wants someone to cherish +and protect. How would any one go to work protecting and cherishing a +little darling big as a moose!" + +"I might have known"--Doctor Tom made his reflections aloud,--"that a +good big husky man wouldn't have a chance with a good big husky girl +while a sickly, sad-eyed, spindle-shanked son of a gun was hanging +round!" + +"There's nothing in that, I should think you'd know," said Aurora, +quickly. "I like him, of course, and I like to have him round. Haven't +you found him good company yourself? But that's just friendship. +Friendship like between a fish and a bird, and no more prospect of a +different ending than that. If that's troubling you, you can set your +mind at rest, Tom." + +"It's none of my business, anyhow," said the doctor, brusquely, flinging +down his cigar and walking away from her to the mantelpiece, where he +stood looking up at her portrait, but thinking of that other portrait of +her, with its wizardry and strange truth, which she had not failed to +show him. + +"Tom, if I thought you could feel bitter, I should die, that's all," +cried Aurora, jumping up and following. "You've been such a friend to +me! Do you suppose I forget? Never was there such a friend. And you +know, now don't you, Tom, that I think the whole, whole world of you?" +Arms were clasped around his neck,--large arms, solid and polished as +marble, but tender as mother birds; a head was pressed hard against his +shoulder. "There never could anybody take your place with me. You'd only +have to call over land and sea, and I'd come flying to serve you, to +nurse you in sickness or help you in sorrow. Give me a good hug, Tom. +Give me a good kiss, and say you know I mean every word!--Now, isn't +this better than to see me across the table at breakfast, with my hair +in curlers, and to have me snooping round being jealous of your female +patients?" + +"No, it's not better; but it's pretty good." + +"Do you mean to tell me, Tom, that you'd be any more likely to cut my +name in a tree, or kiss my stolen glove, than I'd be to wish on the +first star you loved me or write poetry about my feelin's?" + +"Nell, I'm not telling; the subject is closed. But any time there's +anything I can do for you, anything in this world, Nell, you know you've +only got to sing out." + +"You'll marry, Tom dear, by and by." + +"Very well. If you say so, I'll marry. But what I said will hold good if +I do. It will hold good, too, if you marry, Nell. Oh, let's talk about +something else." + +The change of subject could hardly be effected in less time than it +takes to reverse engines; a minute or two passed before Aurora inquired +concerning the number of hours' travel between Florence and Liverpool, +then about his steamer, his stateroom and the exact time of his +starting. + +"Nine o'clock in the evening. I see, so as to have daylight for the +Alps. You'll dine here of course and we'll take you to the station." + +He judged it more prudent to dine at his hotel and meet them afterwards +at the station near train-time. + +"Then--" sighed Aurora, sorrowfully, "this is our last evening! For I +heard you and the consul planning for to-morrow evening together, and he +to read you some chapters of his book. A compliment, Tom. He's never +offered to read _us_ any of it. I'm only sorry the idea didn't +ripen sooner, so that we needn't be robbed of your very last evening. We +must make the most of our time, then. Suppose we go into the garden, +Tom, and walk across the street to the river--I don't have to put +anything on for just that step. It's so pretty, looking upstream at the +bridges, and across at the hills your pa was so fond of. Wasn't the +Judge just crazy about Florence! For the longest time after I came I +couldn't see why, but I'm beginning." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +A tired look overspread Estelle's face, when, returning home after +seeing Dr. Bewick off on his way to Paris, they found Gerald waiting. + +She said to herself, in tempestuous inward irritation, that it was +inconceivable a young man so well up in the ways of the world shouldn't +know any better. + +It could not be said that Estelle did not like Gerald Fane. Considered +by himself, she did like him, much more, she believed, than he liked +her. His odd distinction, too subtle and complex to describe, aroused in +her a vague hunger of the mind. But considered in relation to Aurora, he +"was on her nerves," she said. + +"That he shouldn't know any better--" she mentally scolded, behind her +tired look, "than to obtrude himself the very first minute after Doctor +Tom's departure!" + +But Gerald was not thinking he showed a horrid want of tact. The other +way, rather. He saw himself as the intimate old friend who comes to call +right after the funeral, and by his presence console a little, and +brighten, the bereaved. + +Aurora's red eyes smote him at once. Aurora was still in tearful mood. +The sense not only of her dear friend going, but going with a secret +weight on his heart that it had been in her power to prevent, made her +own heart miserably heavy, too. For the moment Tom counted for her more +than all else, and she reproached herself that when he had done so much +for her she had not been willing to do such an ordinary little thing for +him as to marry him; and she reproached herself because it was a relief, +despite her great wish to be loyal, to think they should not meet again +until all that was well in the past. + +Estelle hoped to hear her friend say to Gerald something to the effect +that she was in no mood for a social call; but Aurora welcomed the +visitor with unaffected warmth and sat down in her hat to talk with him. +So Estelle said primly that it was late, and she was tired; if they +would excuse her, she would go to bed. + +Aurora talked about Tom and nothing but Tom. Sweetly, sighfully, she +spoke, as more than once before, of those many things he had done for +her, but spoke of them this evening more amply; his care of her, a +penniless patient, in that hospital where she woke up after a space of +unconsciousness; his unremitting kindness when she lived in his house +and took care of his father, the dear old judge, who was sick three long +years before he died; the proof of goodness more remarkable still which +he gave after that. + +A tremulous hope flickered up in Gerald that she would go on and tell +him about the latter, perhaps filling in some of the lacunae which her +history had for him. Much had come out in their many hours of talk, but +he had found her circumspect with regard to certain parts of her life, +and had never put a question. In one so frank, her avoidance appeared a +result of dislike to remembering those unmentioned links in the chain of +events. + +But this evening again she stopped short of telling him what he would +have liked to know--how Bewick was connected with her wealth. For it had +come to her from no second husband: she had not been twice married. + +She broke off with the words, "Oh, some time I'll tell you the whole +story. I don't feel like it now. It always makes me so mad!" + +If Aurora had been pledged to Bewick, thought Gerald, the most natural +thing would have been to tell him of it this evening. In her expatiating +upon all she owed to Bewick, Gerald felt a wish to explain how it was +that without being engaged to him she could commit the impropriety of +publicly weeping over his departure. + +It seemed to Gerald rather late in the day for him to seek an excuse to +call at the Hermitage; yet on the afternoon following Dr. Bewick's +departure he sought for one--one having reference to Estelle. He took +with him a propitiatory little volume containing translations of +well-known poems by one Amiel. Estelle was regarded as being immensely +interested in French; she daily translated themes back and forth from +her own language into that of Moliere. These singularly neat and exact +productions of Amiel's should delight--and disarm her. + +Gerald did not dislike Estelle, far from it. He did justice to her as a +good, true-hearted, self-improving American. Taken by herself, he felt +for her decided regard; but taken in connection with Aurora he would +sometimes have liked delicately to lift her between finger and thumb and +drop her into a well. + +When he entered the red-and-green room, the very least bit timidly, with +his book in his hand, he perceived almost at once that something unusual +was in the air, and the shades of feeling between himself and Estelle +became for the moment of no importance. + +Nothing was said at first of the cause for Aurora's air of repressed +excitement, as she knit on a pink and white baby-jacket, or the cloudy +annoyance puckering Estelle's brow as she stitched on her silk tapestry. +The ladies might merely have been quarrelling, thought the visitor, and +made himself as far as he could a soothing third, chatting with Estelle +about Amiel and with Aurora about young Mrs. Sebastian, whose baby was +to rejoice in the little garment half-finished between her hands. + +"Gerald," Aurora interrupted him in the middle of a sentence, letting +her hands and work drop in her lap, "something so queer and unpleasant +has happened!" + +He raised both eyebrows in solicitous participation, and mutely +questioned. + +"It's about Charlie Hunt. I never would have imagined--you wouldn't +either." + +"My imagination, dear friend, is more far-reaching in some ways than +yours," he quickly corrected her, "and has had more practice than yours +in ways of unpleasantness. But do tell me what it is that has happened." + +"Charlie Hunt! Charlie Hunt!" she repeated, like one unable to make +herself believe a thing. "Charlie Hunt to turn nasty like that from one +day to the next!" + +"To turn----" + +"He was here to dinner just two weeks ago and perfectly all right. We +had a nice, long chat together on the sofa. But he didn't make his +party-call quite as soon as he usually does, so when I saw him at +Brenda's wedding I thought of course he'd come up and tell me how busy +he'd been or some other taradiddle. But he didn't come near me. I was +sort of surprised,--still, there were so many people there that he knew, +and we didn't stay quite to the end, you remember. I didn't even think +enough about it to mention it to Estelle. Well, this forenoon I went to +the bank, and when I'd got my money, I happened to catch sight of +Charlie, in the side-room, you know, where his desk is. I thought I'd +like to speak to him. He's always wanted me to ask for him when I went +to the bank, and I've done it more than once, and we've had five +minutes' chat. I was just going to tease him a little bit about coming +to see me so seldom nowadays, when he used to come so often, and ask +about the lady in the case. There really is one, I guess. Italo told me. +So I asked the old boy--you know the one I mean, the old servant of the +bank, who's always there, to tell Mr. Hunt that Mrs. Hawthorne would +like to speak with him, and then I took a seat, and in a minute in came +Charlie, with just his usual look. + +"Now, I want to tell you that I've never had one unpleasant word with +Charlie Hunt; I've always liked him real well. I put down my foot +against letting him run me and my house, but there never was a word said +about it. I balked, but I didn't kick. All along I've been just as nice +to him as I know how, except just one moment, when I stuck a little pin +into him the night of the _veglione_, not supposing that he'd ever +know who did it. + +"Well, I was sitting there at the table with the newspapers, and he came +and stood near, without taking a chair, as if he hadn't much time to +spare. I began to talk and joke about his cutting me dead at the +wedding, and he listened and talked back in a common-enough way, only I +noticed that he once or twice called me Mrs. Barton instead of Mrs. +Hawthorne. Now I must go back and tell you that some time ago when I was +at the bank he casually asked me if I knew of any Mrs. Helen Barton in +Florence, and he showed me two letters in the same handwriting, one +addressed to the English bank, and the other to the American bank, +Florence, that had been there at Hunt & Landini's for some time, and no +one had called for and they didn't know what to do with. Now, the +instant my eye lit on those letters I knew who'd written them, what was +in them, and who they were meant for. All letters for Estelle and me, +you know, are first sent to Estelle's house in East Boston, to be +forwarded to us wherever we might be in Europe; but that letter had +escaped. That letter was from a queer kind of sour, unsuccessful woman +called Iona Allen, who boarded once at the same house with me on +Springfield Street,--the languishing kind of critter that I never could +stand, who hadn't the gumption of a half-drowned chicken, who'd never +stuck to anything or put any elbow-grease into the work on hand, and +whined all the time, and was looking out for some one to support her. I +guessed she'd heard of my money and was writing me a sweet letter of +congratulations, along with a hard-luck story. I'd have liked to get +hold of her letter, but didn't exactly see how I could. I said to +Charlie, 'Let me take it; perhaps I can find the one it's meant for +among my acquaintances.' But he didn't seem to think that could be done; +so there the matter dropped. I didn't care much. Iona Allen can look for +some one nearer home to support her. + +"Well, to go back. When Charlie Hunt had called me Mrs. Barton for the +third time I realized from his way of doing it that it wasn't a slip of +the tongue, and I stopped him short and said: + +"'What makes you call me Mrs. Barton all of a sudden?'" + +"'It's your name, isn't it?' he said, with a queer look. + +"'No,' I came right out strong and bold. And I wasn't lying either. It +isn't my name. I don't really know what my name is. It's Hawthorne as +much as it's anything. Jim changed his name half a dozen times, and the +name he married me under I found out wasn't his real name. + +"Charlie Hunt stood there a moment as if thinking it over, looking at me +with the meanest grin; then he said with that hateful, sarcastic look of +a person who thinks he's being smart in getting back at you: + +"'Is that as true,' he said, 'as that you never indulged in carnival +humor masked as a crow?' Then I knew he'd somehow got on to the truth +about that night at the _veglione_. But I wasn't going to give it +away. + +"'You know what you're driving at better than I do,' I said. And then I +said: 'What's it all about? What's your game?' And he said, as if I'd +been a common swindler that he'd found out: + +"'What's yours?' + +"Then I felt myself get mad. + +"'You're a mean little pest,' I said, but between my teeth, and not so +that any one but he could hear me. And 'You're an evil-minded little +scalawag,' I said. 'You certainly don't know me if you think I've done +anything in this world to be ashamed of. Go ahead,' I said; 'do what you +please. Don't for one single instant think that I'm afraid of you or +that you can do me any harm.' And I left him standing there, with his +grin, and flounced out. But what do you think of it, Gerald? Why should +Charlie Hunt behave like that to me?" + +"I could judge better if I knew what you said to him at the +_veglione_." + +"It wasn't very bad. It might provoke him for a minute to know that it +was I who said it, but it oughtn't to make him mad enough to bite. I +went up to him, and I said close to his ear, in my good English: + +"'You amusing little match-maker,' I said, 'what do you hope to get from +your dusky friend marrying that _absard_ American? How much do you +know about her?' I said. 'Are you even sure she's as rich as she seems?' +Then he said, polite but stiff: + +"'You have the advantage of me, madam, in knowing what you're talking +about. Pray go on with your tasteful pleasantries,' he said; 'I'm +thinking I've heard your voice before.' Upon which I shut my mouth and +dusted down the opera-house on Italo's arm. I was crazy that evening, I +guess, with the crowd and excitement and all. When I get to training, I +can't resist the impulse; I don't know where to stop. But that wasn't +enough to make him want to stick a knife in me, was it? It was only fun. +It was true. He had seemed to be trying to manage me so's I'd take a +fancy to Landini, and I couldn't for the life of me see what it mattered +to him." + +"I tell Aurora," came in Estelle, "that a little joke like that would +rankle terribly in any but a real goodnatured man." + +"My dear Aurora," said Gerald, excited and darkly flushed, "your little +joke would not have had to contain a sting nearly as sharp to rouse +against you such vanity as Hunt's, unless, let me add, there were some +counterweight of self-interest to keep him back. It is known that +Charlie has only some parts and habits of a human being, not all. One +almost, in pure justice, cannot blame him. But scorn him--oh, as for +that!... He could be with you day after day, and take all you would +give, and at the end of a year feel no tie; he could hear you slandered, +and not take your defence; he could make a joke at your expense, if one +came into his mind that he thought sufficiently witty, and never have a +sense of meanness! He would have had nothing to overcome. He would only +learn better if he perceived some loss of consideration, and consequent +advantage to himself. That would make him more cautious, but not make +him more aware. And you cannot call him wicked any more than upon any +occasion you could call him good. But he's damnable!" + +Consuming anger lighted up Gerald's face, his voice trembled with +intensity of feeling, his vehemence now and then by jerks lifted his +heels off the floor. "He is not properly a man at all," he went on to +characterize his old schoolmate; "he is just an insect _en grand_. +He satisfies his instincts precisely as an insectivorous insect +does--the rest are there to furnish something to his life. Nothing else, +he knows nothing outside. Now that you have offended him he probably +won't do you any great harm. He's not a devil, and the world he lives in +does not tolerate anything very black. He'd injure himself in trying to +injure you. But he'll do you what harm he easily and safely can. He's +nothing big, he could do nothing big, he hasn't a passion in him. He's +like this: from the moment he had ceased to get any good of frequenting +your house, even if you had not done the smallest thing to vex him, he +would pass on a bit of gossip harmful to you for the simple glory of +appearing for one moment a little better informed than the rest. No more +than that. He would be capable of that; he wouldn't even have to hate +you. For Charlie Hunt, as Leslie once perspicaciously said--Charlie Hunt +has no real inside!" + +Both women sat staring at Gerald, impressed by his heat. When he +stopped, they continued for a minute in blank silence, revolving his +words and readjusting their estimates, while their eyes traveled up and +down, up and down the room, drawn after his figure that wrathily paced +the floor. + +"How do you suppose he found out about the black crow? For I'm perfectly +sure he didn't know me at the time," said Aurora presently. + +"That might easily enough happen in some roundabout way," said Estelle, +"as long as Italo and Clotilde both knew it. They might let the cat out +of the bag without intending to. He talks so much. Never knew such a +talker. But what I want to know is how he knew your name was Barton." + +"I've told you what I think. He's heard you call me Nell. Tom, too, +called me Nell. That may have given him the hint. Then he simply opened +Iona Allen's letter and read it. Something was in it, no doubt, that +enabled him to put two and two together. Perhaps the name Bewick. Iona +would have heard of that. She would write to say now I'd climbed out of +poverty and hard work she knew I wouldn't mind lending a hand to an old +friend not so fortunate. Something like that. She'd be sure to whine and +beg. And Charlie Hunt, little bunch of meanness! would imagine he could +hold over me the fact that I was poor once and what he would think low +in the scale, because he thought I'd be ashamed of it. But no such +thing. If I changed my name coming here, it wasn't on any such account +as that. I'm gladder than ever now that I told Mrs. Foss all about it. I +did, Gerald, quite soon after we first came, and she said, though it was +in a way a mistake, she didn't see any real harm in it. As long as I'd +begun that way, she said, better not make a sensation by changing back +or saying anything about it. She thought my reasons were very natural. +It wasn't as if I were misleading anybody, or anybody were losing money +by me. I'd have told you too, Gerald, in a minute, as far as wanting +just to conceal anything goes. But Gerald and I"--she seemed to place +the matter before an invisible judge and jury--"never talk together of +ugly things, do we, Gerald? He's more delicate-minded by a good deal +than I am. With him particularly, though we've been such intimate +friends, I shrank from it. There's not much poetry about me, I know +that, but there'd be even less if I had to have it known all I've been +through. And since the first of our association we've always lived in a +sweet sort of world, haven't we, Gerald? I'd be ready, just the same, to +tell you the whole story any moment you wanted to hear...." + +At Gerald's swift instinctive gesture, she went on without further +considering the proposition she had made. "As I said before, I don't +know what my own real front-door name is. I was born Goodwin. I married +Barton, but Barton wasn't Jim's real name. Aurora Hawthorne is what I +called myself when we were young ones and played ladies, Hat and I. I +came over here to cut loose from all the bothers that had made the last +year in Denver a nightmare. I didn't want to be connected with that +dirty mess any more in anybody's mind or my own. I wanted it to be like +taking a bath and starting new, feeling clean. Then, if I was Aurora +Hawthorne, Hattie had to be Estelle Madison, which was her name in our +old play-days. Neither of us thought of anything when we planned it but +its being a grand lark. And at first, in hotels, what did it matter? But +since we've been here and had friends, we've felt sorry more than once, +because it seemed like telling a lie. And then we were afraid of things +that might come up--just like this that has, in fact. But there wasn't +anything to do about it. Because if we confessed now most anybody would +think our reason for changing names must have been something +disgraceful, just as it happens if a person who kills another by +accident goes and hides the corpse, everybody takes it for granted it +was murder. So, if Charlie Hunt tells--" + +"I'm not nearly as much afraid of his telling that you are here under an +assumed name," said Estelle, "as that you were the black crow, and it +getting to the ears of Antonia and Co." + +"Well, what could they do?" + +"Spoil Florence for us pretty thoroughly, I'm afraid, Nell." + +"Oh, nonsense!" cried Aurora, but after a moment added in a tone of +lessened assurance, "Bother!" and after another moment burst forth, with +one hand clapped to her curly front hair: "To think that Tom was here +yesterday, and this had to happen to-day, when he's half-way to Paris! I +wish he hadn't gone. I wish I had him here to back me up." + +"Why don't you telegraph for him?" suggested Estelle, eagerly. + +"Oh, no, I wouldn't do that,"--Aurora's vehemence subsided,--"it's not +important enough for that." + +"My dear Aurora," said Gerald, stopping in front of her, his whole +person expressing hurt and remonstrance little short of indignation, "if +your wishing for Doctor Bewick signifies that you do not feel you have +friends near you on whose attachment you can count, surely you do wrong +to some of us!" + +Though his tone scolded Aurora sharply for her lack of faith, Estelle's +ear caught a trembling edge to his voice expressive of deep feeling. +Estelle had the good sense to see that Gerald must inevitably desire to +make more exposition of his allegiance, and the good feeling to know +that this could be done better if she were not present. Gerald, with his +little peace-offering, was at the moment in favor with Estelle. His +explicitness, his righteous violence, his entire adequacy on the subject +of Charlie Hunt, had charmed her. She also wanted Aurora to have any +comfort the hour might afford. She on the spot feigned to understand +Busteretto's pawing of her dress as an expression of desire to go into +the garden and see the little sparrows. She swept him up from the floor +with one hand and, tucking him under her arm, slipped out of the room. + +Gerald stood grasping his elbows. He had a look like that of some man, +known so far as a harmless retiring burgher, about to make a public +confession which will change all, bringing his head perhaps to the +block; or the look of a man on the verge of a precipice, still half +resisting the desire to jump, yet knowing that he will jump, nothing can +save him from it; the look of a man, in fine, pregnant with intention, +but walking in a dream. + +There was silence for a minute after Estelle left the room. Then Gerald +said very stiffly, very formally: + +"If you would do me the honor, dearest Aurora, the very great honor, of +consenting to take my name, the right I should have to defend you would +be--would be--part of my great happiness." + +Aurora stared at him. Beneath the frank investigation of her eyes his +own dropped in modesty and insuperable embarrassment. + +There was another silence before he added: + +"I would try very much to make you happy." + +Aurora repressed the first words that came to her lips,--and set aside +the next ones that rose in her mind to say. Silence again reigned for a +moment. Then, with the serious face, almost invisibly rippling, that +betokened in her a secret and successful fight against laughter, she +said in what she called her good English, faintly reminiscent of +Antonia's: + +"I am aware, my dear Gerald, of the honor, the very great honor, you do +me. I thank you--for coming up to the scratch like a little man. But the +feeling I have that I could never be _warthy_ of so much honor +deceydes me to declane. Gerald," she went on, discarding her English, +"don't say another word! You dear, dear boy! The things you want to +defend me against don't amount to a row of pins when all I've got to do +if it comes to the pinch is pack my grip and clear out. Thank you all +the same, you pet, for your kindness. Don't think of it again. I am sort +of glad, though, you've got that proposal out of your system. Now we can +go back to a sensible life." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +Aurora, of the excellent three-times-a-day appetite, Aurora of the good +sound slumbers, picked at her food and slept brokenly for part of a week +at that period, such was her impatience at the dragging length of time, +the emptiness of time, undiversified and unenhanced by the presence in +her house of any man devoted to her. No odor of tobacco smoke in the +air, no cane in the corner; Tom on his way to America, Gerald hurt or +cross or both. But, the ladies agreed, when Aurora had told Estelle the +latest about Gerald, her refusal could not possibly occasion a cessation +of relations, since his offer, chivalrous and unpremeditated, had been +at most a cute and endearing exhibition of character. His sensitiveness +could not be long recovering, and everything would be as before. + +Aurora had been half prepared for his staying away all Saturday; but +having been justified in that, she the more confidently looked for him +on Sunday. It is simply incredible, as almost everybody has felt at +least once in his life, how long the hours can be when you are waiting +for something. + +At the end of a singularly unprofitable day, Aurora sat in the red and +green room with all the windows open to the sweet airs and odors of May, +and no lamp lighted that might attract night-moths, or, worse, the +thirsty, ferocious Florentine _zanzara_. She just sat, not doing a +thing. Estelle after a while left her, to retire to her own quarters, +close the windows and make a light. + +Aurora watched the dark blue velvet sky over Bellosguardo, and thought. + +A tinkling of mandolins, a thrumming of guitars, informed her of +street-singers stationed under her windows. A tenor voice rose in the +song she was so fond of, _La Luna Nova_, mingling at the end of the +verse with other male voices that repeated the second half of it. It +sounded infinitely sweet out in the warm spring night. + +After _La Luna Nova_ they sang _Fra i rami_, _fulgida_, +and _Vedi_, _che bianca Luna_, and _Dormi pure_, all +things she particularly liked. The voices struck her as being nearer +than the garden railing; she thought the singers must have found the +carriage gate open and slipped in without noise. She bent forth a +little, and as she could not see them imagined them standing among the +shrubs. She propped her elbows on the window-rail and listened, grateful +for this bath of sweetness to her spirit after the day's profound ennui. + +Estelle came softly into the dark room and joined her; they leaned side +by side. + +_Mi sono innamorato d'una stella_, _Sognai_, _Io +t'amero_, one sweet and sentimental song succeeded the other. + +Clotilde had entered too, on tiptoe, and stood listening, just behind +the others. + +"It is a serenade," she whispered. "It is a compliment." + +A serenade!... Aurora thrilled with a pleasant surmise. There was only +one person in Florence of whom she could conceive as offering her the +compliment of a serenade. She listened with a new keenness of pleasure. + +After the concert had prolonged itself through some dozen pieces-- + +"You must invite them to enter," whispered Clotilde, presumably versed +in the ceremonial of such adventures, "and offer them something for +their tired throats, a little wine...." + +"Oh, you think we ought...?" + +"But yes, it would be courtesy." + +"Go you, then, Clotilde, and show them in and order up the wine. We'll +be down in a minute." + +As they entered the dining-room, Clotilde burst into a peal of delighted +laughter at the well-managed surprise, while Italo hastened forward to +take Aurora's hand and bow over it half way to the floor. + +It was within Aurora's breast as if in the dark one had clasped as she +thought a sweetheart, to find when the light came that her arms were +entwined around the dancing-master, or the tailor. But only for an +instant. She was really touched and charmed. She became more and more +eloquent in expressing delight. + +The singers were presented to her individually, dark-eyed and smiling +young Italians of the people, who knew no language but their own +Florentine and spoke to Aurora in that, not expecting to be understood +or to understand, except through smiles. + +Clotilde, busy, bustling, poured for them wine which she knew to be +excellent, and there was a bright half hour for all. Italo wore an air +relating him to all the successful heroes that have been, to Caesar as +well as to Paganini, who also had a great nose. To manage a thing well +in small justifies pride, giving earnest as it does that a large thing, +such as a siege, or a symphony, would by the same capacity be managed +equally well. Italo that night carried his head like one who respects +the size of his nose. He was quick, he was witty, he was amiable. He had +about him something a little splendid, even, due to his feeling of +having been splendid--or nothing--in his tribute to the patroness from +whose horn of plenty so much had overflowed into his hands. + +Aurora beckoned Clotilde aside to say in her ear, "Will you run upstairs +like a good girl and get my porte-monnaie?... Would it be all right, do +you think?" + +Clotilde made the face and gesture of one in doubt, and if anything +averse, but not insuperably. The bounty of royalty, or of rich +Americans, is not felt as alms. + +"Go, then," whispered Aurora, "and get the purse that you'll find under +some silk stockings in my second drawer, the little purse with gold in +it." + +One of the petty difficulties of life to Aurora since she had lived in +foreign lands had been the so often arising necessity to think quickly +what it would be proper to give. As the amount of the gratuity did not +much matter to her she had felt a desperate wish often for the power of +divination, by which to know what would be expected. On some occasions +it had seemed to Aurora that it would be more delicate not to offer +money; but experience had taught her that if she offered enough no +offense would be taken. These singers were all poor young fellows, +Clotilde had told her, musically gifted, but plying ordinary trades. +This one was a wood-carver, that one a gilder. They had been taught by +her brother the fine songs composing that magnificent serenade. + +The gold pieces distributed among them with words and smiles of thanks +were received with such charming manners that the giver--for the first +moment faintly embarrassed--was soon set at her ease. When it came to +the promoter and leader of the serenade, Aurora felt no more +uncertainty. Money had so often gone from her hand to his. She with +generous ease, as if passing a box of candy to children, tendered him +some three or four times as much as to the others. + +But there Italo showed what he was made of. He took a step backward and +stood with soldierly rigidity, one hand held with the palm toward her, +like a shield and defense against her intention to belittle him and his +token of homage by a reward. His look said, and said dramatically, that +her thought of him did him wrong; it said that he was ashamed of her for +not knowing better. Yet there was no real dissatisfaction in it, since +her want of delicacy permitted the exhibition of his delicacy, and +afforded him the opportunity to make that gesture.... + +Her hand dropped, her whole being drooped and confusedly apologized. +Then the hand that had interposed between them, uncompromising as a hot +flat-iron, changed outline and pointed at a half faded rose pinned on +her breast. Quickly she unfastened it and held it toward the +outstretched hand. It was taken, it was held to Italo's lips while he +made one of those deep bows that bent him double; then the stem of the +rose was pulled through his buttonhole and secured with a pin from +Aurora's dress. The great little man shook his locks and went on to the +next subject. + +Aurora was impressed. She was pleased with Italo in a new way, and said +to herself that she must make him some rich little, but unobjectionable +little, gift to remember this occasion by, a gold pencil, or a pearl +scarf-pin, or a cigar case to be proud of. + +She went to bed with her head full of serenade and serenaders, her head +all lighted up inside with the glory of having been the object of a +tribute so flattering. When after reading her chapter she blew out the +candle, she knew that to-night she should sleep, and make up for the two +bad nights just passed. If Gerald were so foolish as to feel annoyed and +wish to stay away, he would just have to feel annoyed and stay away +until he felt different. His mood couldn't help wearing off in time. But +it did seem to her extraordinary that even now, after knowing him so +long, she could tell so little of the workings of Gerald's mind. All, of +course, because he was--such a considerable part of him--a foreigner. + + * * * * * + +Aurora was one of those healthy sleepers who have no care to guard +themselves against the morning light. Her windows stood open, her bed +was protected from winged intruders by a veil of white netting gathered +at the top into the great overshadowing coronet. + +She was in the fine midst of those sweetest slumbers that come after a +pearly wash of dawn has cleaned sky and hilltops from the last +smoke-stain of the night, when a sense of some one else in the room +startled her awake. There stood near the door of her dressing-room an +unknown female, wearing intricate gold ear-pendants and a dingy cotton +dress without any collar. + +"_Chi e voi?_" inquired Aurora, lifting her head. + +"I am the Ildegonda," answered the woman, whose smile and everything +about her apologized, and deprecated displeasure. She must be the +kitchen-maid, fancied Aurora, engaged by Clotilde, and not supposed to +show her nose above the subterranean province of the kitchen. + +"There is the _signorino_ down in the garden," Ildegonda acquitted +herself of the charge laid upon her by the donor of the silver franc +still rejoicing her folded fingers, "who says if you will have the +amiability to place yourself one moment at the window he would desire to +say a word to you." + +The _signorino_. That had become the informal title by which the +servants announced a guest who was let in so very frequently. Aurora +understood _finestra_, window, and _dire una parola_, to say a +word, and then that the signorino was _giu in giardino_. + +"All right." Aurora nodded to the Ildegonda, inviting her by a motion of +the hand to go away again. + +Aurora rose and softly closed the door which, when open, made an avenue +for sound from her room to Estelle's. She slipped her arms into a +sky-blue dressing-gown, and with a heart spilling over with playful joy, +eyes spilling over with childish laughter, went to look out of the +window, the one farthest from Estelle's side of the house. + +"Good morning! Good morning!" came on the instant from the waiting, +upturned face below. "Forgive me for rousing you so early," was said in +a voice subdued so as to reach, if possible, no other ears, "but you +promised you would go with me one day to Vallombrosa, and one has to +start early, for it is far. Will you come?" + +"Will I come? Will I come? Wait and see! Got your horses and carriage?" + +"Standing at the gate. How long will it take you to get ready?" + +"Oh, I'll hurry like anything." + + "'Wash, dress, be brief in praying. + Few beads are best when once we go a Maying.'" + +"I won't pray, I won't put on beads. But, see here, what about what they +call in this country my collation? You know I'm a gump on an empty +stomach." + +"We'll have our coffee on the road, at a little inn-table out of doors +in the sunrise." + +"Fine! By-by. See you again in about twenty minutes." + +Every fiber composing Aurora twittered with a distinct and separate glee +while she hurried through her toilet, a little breathless, a little +distracted, and mortally afraid Estelle would hear and come to ask +questions. From her wardrobe she drew the things best suited to the day +and her humor: a white India silk all softly spotted with appleblossoms, +of which she had said when she considered acquiring it that it was too +light-minded for her age and size, but yet, vaulting over those +objections, had bought and had made up according to its own merits and +not hers; a white straw hat with truncated steeple crown, the fashion of +that year, small brim faced with moss-green velvet, bunch of green +ostrich-tips, right at the front, held in place by band and buckle. + +Her parasol was a thing of endless lace ruffles, her wrap a thing of +vanity. + +She passed out through the dressing-room, she crept down the stairs, +laughing at her own remark that it was awfully like an elopement. The +house was not yet astir; only the Ildegonda sweeping out the kitchen, +and old Achille out in the garden picking early insects off his plants. + +At the door she greeted Gerald with all the joy of meeting again a +playmate. He had on the right playmate's face. She gave him both hands, +and he clasped them to the elbow, shaking them with satisfactory fire, +while their eyes laughed a common recognition of the adventure as a +lark. + +At the gate waited the open carriage, a city-square cabriolet, but clean +and in repair, drawn by two strong little brown horses, with rosettes +and feathers in their jingling bridles, ribbons in their whisking +braided tails, and driven by a brown young man of twenty, with a +feather, too, in his hat, which he wore aslant and crushed down over his +right ear. To make the excursion pleasanter to himself, he was by +permission taking along a companion of his own age, who occupied the low +seat beside his elevated one, and in contrast with his vividness, the +pride of life expressed by his cracking whip, the artistically singular +sounds he made in his throat to encourage the horses, was a washed-out +personality, good at most to do the jumping off and on, to readjust +harness, to investigate the brake, or to offer alms from the lady in the +carriage to the old man breaking stones in the roadside dust. + +They were off; they sped through the gate of the Holy Cross, the fresh +young horses making excellent time. Out of the city, along the river, +across it, past hamlets, past villas, past churches and +_camposanti_, past vineyards and _poderi_ and peasants' +dwellings.... + +It seemed to Aurora that never had there been such a day, so fresh and +unstained and perfect, a day inspiring such gladness in being. The sense +of that priceless boon, the freedom of a whole long day together, elated +her with a joy that knew only one shadow, and that unremarked for the +first half of it--the shortness of the longest earthly day. + +Now the horses slowed in their pace; the ascent had begun among the +shady chestnut-trees. The driver's friend scrambled down and plodded +alongside the horses; the driver himself descended and walked, cheering +on his beasts with noises that nearly killed Aurora, she declared. + +As it took them between four and five hours to reach their destination, +and as Aurora chattered all the time, with little intervals of talk by +Gerald, to report their conversation is unfeasible. Aurora, wanting in +all that varied knowledge which those who are fond of reading get from +books, had yet a lot to say that some unprejudiced ears found worth +while. The dwellers upon earth and their ways had for her an immense and +piercing interest. In vain had circumstances circumscribed her early +life: neighbors, Sunday-school teacher, minister, village drunkard, +fourth of July orator, had furnished comedy for her every day. The human +happenings falling within her ken became good stories in their passage +through a mind quick in its perception of inconsequence, faulty logic, +pretense, all that constitutes the funny side of things. Aurora's love +of the funny story amounted to a fault. Aurora was not always above +promoting laughter by narratives no subtler than a poke in your ribs. +Aurora, in the vein of funny stories, could upon occasion be +Falstaffian. But only one half of humanity had a chance to find out the +latter. When in company of the other sex, by instinct and upbringing +alike she minded her Ps and Qs. + +Gerald said that Aurora on that day regaled him with over a thousand +comic anecdotes, this being the expression of her frolicsome and +exuberant mood. He furnished her with a few to add to her store, Italian +ones, proving that he was not wholly without some share of her gift in +that line; but he now and then politely stopped her flow and led her to +admire with him the beauties of the road, natural or architectural, a +distant glimpse, a form, a fragrance. He would explain things to her, +impart scraps of pertinent history, which she would appear trying to +appreciate and imprint on her memory. + +As he leaned back in the carriage at her side, bathed in the wavering +green and gold light of the chestnut-trees among which the road wended, +a recent description of him, which she had said over to herself, to +qualify it by mitigating adjectives, seemed to her to have become +altogether unfair. Gerald's face, beneath the brim of his pliable white +straw, bent down over the eyes and turned up at the back, Italian style, +did not look sickly. On the contrary, it looked better and stronger +since his illness; he even had a little color. He was not sad-eyed, +either, that she could see, though his eyes must always be the +thoughtful kind. As for spindle-shanked, he filled his loose woolen +clothes better than before. + +He had made himself modestly fine for the day to be spent in company of +the fair: he had on a necktie which, if expressive of mood, declared his +outlook on life to be cheerfuller: it was a vibrant tone of violet that +accorded agreeably with his gray suit. A rose-geranium leaf and a stem +or two of rusty-gold _gaggia_, odors that he loved, occupied at his +buttonhole the place of those decorations which distinguished elderly +gentlemen are sometimes envied for, and which--it is a commonplace--are +not worthy to be exchanged for the flower Youth sticks at his coat to +aid him to charm. + +It grew very warm; the way, though pleasant, was beginning to seem long +when they arrived. The old monastery, now a school of forestry; the +Cross of Savoy, where pilgrims rest and dine, gleamed white in the +cloudless noon, amid the century-old trees that long ago, before Dante's +time even, earned for the spot its beautiful name of Vallombrosa, +Umbrageous Vale. + +Aurora was by this time starving again, and Gerald knew the pleasure of +purveying to the demands of a stomach as untroubled by any back-thought +relating to its functioning as that of a big bloomy goddess seated +before a meal of ambrosia. He suggested that she accompany her artichoke +omelet, her cutlet with the sauce of anchovy, parsley and mustard, by a +little red wine. But she would not, even to be companionable. She could +never bring herself to touch wine, any more than to use powder on her +cheeks, which in truth did not need it, or a pencil to her eyebrows, +which would have looked better for that accentuation. + +In a state of physical and mental well-being such as can be bought only +by an early rising, an inconsiderable breakfast, a long ride in the +warmth of Tuscan mid-May, an abundant and repairing repast, taken, amid +sweet conventual coolness, in company which leaves nothing to wish for +beyond it, they went forth to spend the time that must be granted the +horses for rest before the return to Florence. + +[Illustration: "Come, let us reason together, Aurora"] + +After loitering in the inn garden, they went to look at the memorials +relating to Saint John Gualberto, founder of the monastery. She listened +to the picturesque history of his life, death, and miracles, but was not +to be rendered sober-minded by any such thing. In the midst of Gerald's +instructive account of the holy abbot's endeavors to purify the monastic +orders from the stain of simony, her hand clutched his, and doing a +delicate cake-walk she compelled him along with her, announcing, "The +Hornet and the Bumble-bee went walking hand in hand!" Fancying this +prank not to have been without success, she next performed an improvised +_pas seul_ illustrative of the text, "The mountains shall skip like +little lambs!" + +There was artfulness, as has been suspected, in Aurora's frequent jests +upon her size. Their gross exaggeration was fondly counted upon to make +her appear sylphlike by comparison with the images she raised. + +To relieve the seriousness of Short Lessons on Great Subjects she +presently invented interrupting them at intervals to introduce Gerald +and herself to some rock or tree or mountain, as if it had been a poor +person standing by neglected. "Jack Sprat," she said, "and The Fat!" "A +busted cream-puff," she said, "and a drink of water!" Further, "Dino and +Retta!" Finally, with imagination running dry, "Gerry and Rory!" + +Yes, by such little jokes--what Leslie called Jokes of the First +Category, Aurora sought to enliven the hour for Gerald. He never omitted +to laugh, without being able to enter enough into her fun to join her in +the same species. An incapacity. Still, there was no disguising the +basking enjoyment possessing him, his love of her gaiety, if not at all +moments of the form it took. + +Finding it entrancing up there, they decided not to start for home till +the last minute possible. A limit was set to the time they might linger +by the necessity for some degree of daylight in making the descent. From +the edge of the curving road the mountain dropped away without the +protection of any parapet. + +When they had found their ideal place in which to sit on the warm earth +in the shade and look off over valleys and mountains into azure space, +Aurora at last consented to be still. She became dreamy, appeared +sweetly fatigued, and was for a long time mute. + +Though the mere quality of her voice still had power to stir Gerald's +heart to pleasure, yet to be silent with Aurora was pleasure of a +different order from hearing her voice of rough velvet recount +preposterous events or propound humorous riddles. + + * * * * * + +It looked from where they sat as if the land had at some time been +fluid, and been tossing, green and purple, in a majestic storm, when +some great word of command had fixed it in the midst of motion, and the +waves became Apennines; then in an hour of peculiar affection for that +plot of the earth a faultless artist from the skies had been set to +oversee nature and man at their work there, and prevent the intrusion of +one note not in harmony with his most distinguished dream. + +"If Italy should perish and all else remain," said Gerald, whose eyes +had been feasting on beauties of line and color such as he conceived +were not to be found outside this land of his idolatry, "the world would +be irreparably impoverished. If all the world besides should perish and +Italy remain, the world could still boast of infinite riches." + +Aurora gave a nod of at least partial assent. She was growing accustomed +to the thought that Italy was the fairest of countries and Florence the +fairest of Italian cities. She found herself beginning to like this +creed. + +In the quiet that descended upon them the native piety in each groped +for some acknowledgment to make of his consciousness at the moment of +unusual blessing. In him it took the form of a renewal, more devoted +perhaps than ever, of the determination to maintain an uncompromising +purity of aim in his work. The incomparable scene stimulated within him +a sense of power to produce things rivaling what lay under his eyes; he, +atom, rivaling his Maker in the creation of beauty. In her it was a +determination of greater loyalty toward the Provider of undeservedly +happy days to man, whose heart is wicked from his birth, as her mother +had been wont to tell her. + +Hearing her hum very softly to herself, he asked what she sang. She +said, her mother's favorite hymn, and gave it aloud, with the words: + + Father, what e'er of earthly bliss + Thy sovereign will denies, + Accepted at Thy throne of grace + Let this petition rise: + + Give me a calm, a thankful heart, + From every murmur free; + The blessings of Thy grace impart + And make me live to Thee. + +Like one with an impeccable ear, but with small esteem for his gifts as +a singer, Gerald murmured the melody after her, just audibly, to show he +cared to have his share in her memories. + +But mainly the two of them thought of each other. + +Gerald, regarding Aurora's hands as they lay in her +lap--innocent-looking, loyal-looking, rather large hands, which during +his illness he had liked to think were Madonna hands, but when seen in +health they were not, really--was amazed to remember the day when their +making passes over his face had filled him with perverse repugnance. + +And Aurora, remembering the first time she had seen Gerald and nicknamed +him Stickly-prickly, while feeling him more than three thousand miles +removed from her, was amazed.... + +So they sat, two little dots, two trembling threads, against the screen +of the universe and eternity, and their two selves, under the spell of a +world-old enchantment, loomed so large to each that the universal and +the eternal were to them two little dots, two threads. + + * * * * * + +Gerald saw how the afternoon was mellowing toward sunset.... And the +important things of the day had not been touched upon. + +Our hero had traversed great spaces in the region of sentiment during +the two days allowed the Hermitage to stand or crumble without him. The +first of them had been spent far from it, even as Aurora supposed, for +the sake of letting the impression of having been laughed at wear off a +little. Already for some time before that forced climax Gerald had been +haunted by the feeling that he ought to offer himself to Aurora, as it +were to regularize his status in her house. After hanging around as he +had been doing, one might almost say that good manners demanded it. Her +fashion, on that evening in the garden, of treating the idea that he +could be enamoured of her assured him that she would refuse. He would +have done his duty, and they would continue to drift, he shutting his +eyes to the penalty awaiting his self-indulgence, the taxes of pain +rolling up for the hour when her necessary departure would involve the +uprooting of every last little flower in that wretched garden of his +heart. With such a mental pattern of the future he had gone to bed at +the end of the first day. + +On the next morning something perhaps in deep dreams which he did not +remember, or in the happy manner of the new day lighting a scarlet +geranium on the terrace ledge, or simply perhaps the whisper of an +angel, had effected a change. A heart-throb, a stroke of magic, had so +lifted him up that over the top of the wall edging the road of life for +him he had seen a thrilling garden outstretched, smiling in the sun, a +sight that so enkindled him with the witchery of its promises that he +felt he should seek for a way into that garden till he found it; should, +if necessary, demolish the wall. + +That day he went walking on the hills beyond Settignano, and the new +light, the intoxication, persisted--the vision of himself as Aurora's +lover. Why not? An escape from the past, a different adventure from all +prefigured in his dull expectations before.... In his theory of living +Gerald had always admitted the gallant advisability of burning ships. +There was room in his theory of living for just such a divergence from +design as he now meditated. When the call comes, summon it to never so +improbable places, the poet and artist obeys. He had gone to bed on the +second night with these thoughts and a plan for the morrow. + +Now that morrow was wearing to an end and all the floating splendid +courageous thoughts and feelings, brave in the assurance, along with the +determination, of victory, must be somehow caught and compressed and +turned into the language--how poverty-stricken, how stale!--of a +proposal of marriage; even as a great variegated, gold-shot, +butterfly-tinted, cloud-light tissue of the Orient is drawn into a +colorless whipcord twist that it may pass through a little ring. + +As he revolved in his mind what he should say to start with, Gerald saw +appropriateness for the first time in the methods of the historic Gaul, +who seized by her hair the charming creature whom he felt allied to him +by deep things, seated her on the horse before him, and rode away. But +what he would have liked so much the best would have been to lay his +head in Aurora's willing lap, embrace her knees tenderly, and have her +understand all without a word being spoken. + +Now he cleared his throat, took a reasonable air, a tone almost of +banter, to say what, influenced by the long precedent of their converse +together, he could say only in that manner, covering up as best he could +the fact that his heart trembled and burned. + +"Shall we resume our conversation of last Friday?" he asked, with a fine +imitation of the comradely ease which had marked all their intercourse +that day. + +He was looking over the valley, as if still preoccupied with its beauty +rather than with her. + +Thus misled, she did not guess right. She said: + +"About Charlie, you mean? Just fancy, I haven't thought of him once all +day! Little varmint! Don't I wish I had the spanking of him! But I guess +it would lame my arm." + +"Not about Charlie. I asked would you marry me, and you said you would +not. Will you to-day?" + +"Not for a farm!" she answered, with emphasis equal to her +precipitation. + +"Why not?" he asked, undisconcerted. + +"Because." + +"Come, let us reason together, Aurora." He changed position, arranging +himself on his elbow so as to be able to look at her. His eyes were +steady. "For a man to ask a woman to marry him is of course the greatest +piece of impertinence of which he could be guilty. But from such +impertinences, Auroretta, has been derived every beautiful thing that +has blessed our poor world from the beginning. No man is good enough for +any woman, let that stand for an axiom. But there again, Auroretta, it's +not according to merit that those rewards, gentle and beautiful ladies, +are dispensed. I have rather less to offer than any man in the world, +but I am bold because you, dear, are just the one to be blind." + +"Oh, it's not _that_, of course," said Aurora, hurriedly. + +"Don't suppose for a moment that I am troubled by the size of your +fortune or the size of my own. You haven't any money, dear. Others have +your money. I have almost to laugh at the splendid speed with which that +open granary of yours will be eaten clean by all the birds coming to +pick one seed at a time." + +"You needn't laugh, then. Some of it is going to be pinned to me solid, +so that nothing can get it away from me, not even I myself." + +"I am sorry to hear it. The other was so complete. Well, if you had +nothing, I should still have just enough to keep us from hunger, though +perhaps not from cold in these dear old stone houses of Italy. And +you--I know you well enough to be sure of it--you are exactly the one to +learn how much there can be in life besides its luxuries. Since my +illness, too, Aurora, let me confide to you, there have been in me +reawakenings.... I have felt the beginning--I am speaking with reference +to my work,--I have felt intimations--No, it is too difficult to express +without seeming to boast, which is horribly unlucky. In short, I have +felt that I might do the turn still of forcing a careless generation to +pay attention." + +"Oh, Gerald, how nice it is to have you say that!" she warmly rejoiced. +"I'm so glad to hear it!" + +"Now tell me why it is you won't marry me. Stop, dear. Don't say because +you are not in love with me. I have difficulty in seeing how any one in +her right senses could be in love with me. It would be enough, dear, +that you should be to me as you were during those happy, happy days when +I was so beastly ill. You are so generous, it would be merely fulfilling +your nature. And I, upon my word, dear, would try to deserve it. I would +give you reason to be kind. I am not without scraps of honor--wholly; I +would do my best to make you happy." + +"No,"--she shook her head decidedly,--"no, Gerry," she added, to take +the sharp edge off her refusal, "no, Gerry; Rory won't." + +"You have only to lose by it, that is obvious, and I to gain, and +nothing could equal the indecency of insistence on my part; but I feel +that I am going to persist to the point of persecution. You are fond of +me, you know. I only dare to say you are fond of me because you have +said it yourself more than once. And you are always sincere, and I +wouldn't be likely to forget. Now, if you are fond of me,--very, very +fond, you have said repeatedly,--why do you refuse? I wouldn't be a bore +of a husband, I promise. I would leave you a great deal of liberty." + +"No, Geraldino; no." + +"You needn't tell me there's somebody else. I don't believe it. Though +you feel only fondness for me, I know that you are not in love with +anybody else. When one is in love, there is no room in life for such +warm and dear friendship as you have frankly shown me. It's that, after +all, which has given me courage." + +"No, no; there's nobody else." + +"Well, then, why can't you? Why won't you?" + +"I--" She hesitated, as if to think. There was a silence. Then she asked +slowly, like one who finds some difficulty in laying her tongue on the +right words: "Do you remember all those things you said that evening in +the garden, the night you came in to meet Tom for the first time? How +you wouldn't for anything in the whole world let yourself get tangled up +again with caring for a person?" + +"Perfectly. I could only picture it as meaning more of trouble and +unrest. But things change, dear. We change. There has taken place in me +since that, no matter for what reason, an increase of self-confidence +and confidence in fate such as turns men into nuisances or makes them +successful. In the last twenty-four hours particularly. Now, as I look +at the inconvenience of getting tangled up again with caring for a +person, I find I don't mean at all to suffer. I mean to bother you until +you say yes, and then to be happy. You could never wilfully torment me, +I know; you are incapable of it. Then, when you have graciously +consented to marry me, I feel as if I might build up my life on new +lines." + +"I can't, Geraldino; I can't." + +"You can't. So you have said. And I have asked you to tell me your +reasons, that I may combat them one by one." + +"It's no use. We're too different." + +"That we are different, thank God! is a reason for and not against." + +"No, no; not when it's such a huge difference. We're like--a bird and a +fish." + +"Don't call me a fish. I object." + +"We don't think the same about hardly anything." + +"But we feel alike on everything of importance." + +"There's hardly a thing I do that's quite right as you see it. No, don't +take the trouble to contradict me; let me do the talking for a minute. +You're so critical and so conventional and so correct! No matter how +much you say you aren't, you _are_. And while we're like this I +don't have to care. I rather enjoy shocking you. And while I'm none of +your business, you don't have to care what I do or what I'm like. We can +have our fun and be awfully fond of each other, and it's all serene and +right. But if I were Mrs. Gerald Fane, all my faults and shortcomings, +my not knowing the things that everybody in your society knows, my not +having any elegant accomplishments, would show up so glaring that I +should know you must be mortified. You couldn't help it." + +"Stop, dear! You enrage me. You put me beside myself. You are so +superficial. And dense. And you hold me up to myself in the features of +a beastly cad! I won't have it. For one thing, let me tell you that if I +were the Lord Ronald Macdonald of that song we've heard Miss Felixson +sing, and you were that canny lass Leezie Lindsay, I should know jolly +well that after I'd carried you off to the Hielands my bride and my +darling to be, it would be a very short time before Lady Ronald +Macdonald had all the airs and tricks of speech of my sisters and +cousins. That, however, is neither here nor there. Who wants you to be +different? Aurora, if you only knew yourself! Ceres, or Summer, or Peace +sitting among the wheat-sheaves, what would it matter that she had not +been educated at a fashionable boarding-school? Let her just breathe and +be,--beautiful, benign, and any man not utterly a fool will prefer to +lie at her knees, keeping still while her silence appeases and +reconciles him, to hearing the most brilliant conversation of a lady +novelist." + +"You can talk beautifully, Gerald, that's one sure thing; but talk me +over you can't. Seems to me I should have to be crazy to forget all in a +moment what I've said over and over to myself, and drilled myself not to +lose sight of. After you asked me the other day, though I knew it was +just on the spur of the moment, I thought it all out in the night as +much as if it had been serious, and I saw what would be the one safe +course for little me. I mustn't; that's all there is to it. Everything +is wrong for it to turn out happy in the end. I'm terribly fond of you, +but I should be scared to death of you, simply scared to death, as a +husband. We're not the same kind. If I could forget it on my own +account, I have only to remember how it would strike Estelle. And +Estelle's got no end of horse sense. It's according to horse sense we +must act when it comes to settling the real things of life. I +expect"--she had the effect of turning a page or a corner; she dropped +from heights of argument to low plains--"I expect I shall be big as a +mountain by and by. I don't see any help for it. I starve myself, I +drink hot water, I take exercise,--nearly walk my legs off,--and the +next time I get weighed I've gained three pounds! What's the use? Then, +I'm older than you." + +"Not at all. I'm older than the everlasting hills; you are the youngest +thing that lives." + +"That's all right, but you were twenty-eight your last birthday, and I'm +thirty. I'm afraid my character's already pretty well fixed in its +present form. When it comes over me, for instance, to play the clown, +I've got to do it or burst. And you're naturally a tyrant, you know." + +"I am. I am critical, carping, conventional, and a tyrant, everything +you say, but just because I am those things, you ought to be able to +see, dear Aurora--because I am those things and know it, they are the +things least to be feared in me. Do you suppose Marcus Aurelius was +really calm and philosophical? Because he, on the contrary, was anxious +and passionate, he wrote those maxims to try to live by. When you +_would_ go and be a negress, did I make a scene? I gnashed my teeth +and gnawed my knuckles, but when I saw you afterward, wasn't I decently +decent?" + +"Yes, but you took to your bed. If I were Mrs. Gerald, and the Pope of +Rome sent for me to do Lew Dockstader for him and his cardinals, you +know you wouldn't let me go." + +"You are wrong. I should make a point of it. I should only ask to be +permitted to retire into solitude until all the vulgar people had +stopped talking about it." + +"Ah, you're a dear, funny boy; but put it out of your mind, Geraldino, +do, dear, when we're so happy as it is. Let's go on just as we've been +going; you know yourself that it's the wisest, and what really you would +prefer. If you've asked me to-day--mind, I don't say you _have_; +but if you have--to save my vanity and back up the proposal you didn't +really mean the other day,--because you're always such a gentleman; +you'd rather die than not behave like a gentleman,--let it go at that. +But if you should feel now that you've got to back up your declaration +that you're going to persist and follow this up, just ask me over again +every few days to show there's no unkind feeling, and I promise it will +be safe; I'll refuse you every time. It'll be our little standing joke. +For don't you go dreaming that I'm going to let go of you! You can call +me pudgy if I let you get away. I love you too dearly. Wasn't everything +all right and lovely until the other day when you came out with that +stilted speech, 'doing you the honor'? We'll take up again just where we +left off, and bimeby make fun of all this. You who've read all the books +ever written, don't you know of cases where two like us went on being +just friends, and taking comfort in each other on and on to the end of +the tale?" + +"There have been examples, yes, a very few, and not on the whole +encouraging." + +"You know we never thought of anything else until three days ago, and +were perfectly contented. Let's call all this in between a mistake, like +taking the wrong road and having to turn back to be where we were +before. Let's go back." + +"Yes, let's go back. I won't bore you any more." + +He had all in an instant changed to cool dryness. They would get no +further along with talk on this occasion, that was clear. And to clasp +her knees, laying his head on her lap, and penetrate her in silence with +the conviction that they belonged together in a manner that turned all +the sensible things she said into folly, could not be done outside the +world of dreams and fancies. He jumped to his feet. + +"I meant, you know, let's go back to Florence. I'm afraid it's high +time. We ought to have daylight at least until we get to the foot of the +mountain." + +"Cross, Geraldino?" + +"Not at all." + +"Good friends as ever?" + +"Assuredly." + +"Oh, I've had such a beautiful day!" she sighed, getting up by the help +of his two hands, and brushing down her dress. "I certainly do love to +be with you!" + +With the inconsequence of a woman she wanted, in order to console him +for rejecting him, to make him sure she loved him deeply nevertheless; +and so she said, turning upon him eyes of sweetest, sincerest affection, +"I certainly do love to be with you!" + + * * * * * + +In the carriage they were silent, like people tired out by the long day, +talked out, and certain of each other's consent to be still. + +The two young fellows on the box were quiet, too. The horses now needed +no encouragement to go; the scraping of the brake gave evidence rather +of the need to hold them back. The driver's friend, named appropriately +Pilade, sat hunched with chilly sleepiness; but Angelo, the driver, was +kept visibly alert by the responsibility of making a safe descent in the +fast-failing light. Owing to the dilatoriness of the _signori_ they +had been later in starting than was prudent. + +When they emerged at last from the shadow of the chestnut-trees and the +brake blessedly was released, it was accomplished evening. The dome of +the firmament spread above them so wonderful for darkly luminous +serenity that the signori behind in the carriage arranged themselves to +contemplate it comfortably, with their feet on the forward bench, their +heads propped on the back of the seat. + +Thus they passed through glimmering hamlets, between high walls of +orchards, past iron gates opening into cypress avenues with dim villas +at the other end, terraces of vine-garlanded olive-trees, all of a dark +silvery blue, and did not vouchsafe a look at anything but the inverted +cup of the nocturnal sky. + +Even this they did not see more than in a secondary way, for the +interposing thoughts and images. + +The eyes of both were wide, and in their fixity the lights of heaven +were glassed. The face of the one burned with a red spot on the +visibly-defined cheek-bone; the cheeks of the other were, for a marvel, +pale. + +Aurora, uplifted on a great wonder and pride and illogical happiness, +was thinking of the days to come, the immediate to-morrows, rich in a +tenderness profounder still than that which had linked her before to the +companion staring at the stars beside her; she thought of how she should +through a wise firmness and God's help steer their course into ways of a +safer and longer happiness than that which he had tendered. + +"It would seem rather unnecessary--" came from him through the +transparent darkness in what was to the young driver's ears a monotonous +bar of insignificant sound, "it would seem to me almost imbecile, to say +to you that I love you, when for months I have been hovering around you, +as must have been evident to the dullest, like the care-burthened +honey-fly, possessed with the fixed desire to hide his murmurs in the +rose. When for months I have been, in fact, like a dog with his nose on +your footprints, asking nothing but to lie down at your feet with his +muzzle on your shoe." + +She impulsively felt for his hand, and pushed her own into it. "Don't +say another word, Gerald. I daresn't do what you wish, I just daresn't. +I'm plain scared to! And I'm such a fool that I'm nearer to it this +minute than I like to be by a long sight. I'm fond enough of you for +almost anything, and you know it, but I must keep my level head. It +can't be done--a greyhound tied down to a mudturtle. I know what I'm +like,--no disparagement meant, Mrs. Hawthorne,--and what you're like, +and I won't let myself forget. I'm looking out first of all for myself, +but I'm looking out for you, too, dear boy. Don't say any more about it +to-night, Gerald, please, with the stars shining like that, and the air +so sweet that all the fairy-tales you ever heard seem possible. I want +to keep solid earth under my feet." + +Gerald was not so devoid of the right masculine spark as not to +recognize the moment for one of which advantage should be taken by any +creature capable of growing a mustache. The thing to be done was to put +his arms around her like a man, and lay his head on her shoulder like a +child, and treat as not existing the barriers which she described as +dividing them. + +Often enough in his life Gerald had wished he might have been a +masterful man, capable of the like things. But already a vague sickness +of soul had succeeded his momentarily dominant mood. Distrust filled +him--of his own character, his aims, his talent, his health, and his +destiny. His dreams had but recently taken the form in which he had that +day expressed them; he had not grown into them. Under the depressing +effect of failure he was no more sure than she had professed to be that +the proposed union would not be a rash mistake. He saw the wisdom of a +return to his gray policy of wanting nothing, asking nothing. Heaviness +possessed him; he made no motion. + +Signs of the nearing city came thicker and thicker; the street lamps +became frequent and consecutive. Aurora sat up and composed her +appearance. The lighted house-fronts threw back the skies to +inexpressible altitudes. + +She continued aloud for Gerald to hear a conversation she had been +holding mentally: + +"Estelle says we must go away somewhere for the summer, because it's +awfully hot down here in Florence, we're told. We're thinking of taking +some sort of place at the seashore for the bathing season. You'll be +coming down to visit us, won't you? Then by and by, when I've had pretty +near enough of the kind of life I'm leading, tell you what I'm thinking +I'll do. Give up the house I've got and take another, different, and fit +it up for a children's hospital, a small one, of course, to be within my +means, and run it myself, and do what I can of the nursing. I've been +thinking of it for some time as a good thing to do instead of spending +my money and nothing to show for it. It would be something to do for the +sake of little Dan, to make it so it wouldn't be the same as if he never +had passed through the world. Then I shall have my work just as you have +yours, Gerald. And so we'll live on, each so interested in all the other +does. And you'll come to see me, and I'll go to see you--chaperoned, if +you insist, though I understand a studio can be visited without +impropriety, and--" + +"You can leave me out of your plans for the future. I am going away to +forget you." + +"Oh, no, you're not. You're coming to see me to-morrow. Five o'clock at +the very latest, hear?" + +"I'm afraid you will have to excuse me." + +"You wouldn't break my heart like that for anything, Gerald Fane! You +wouldn't let the foolish doings of this day destroy all the months have +built up! You're not so mean. When I tell you it'll be all right and +just as it was before--" + +But he stubbornly would not agree, and they quarreled, as so often, half +in play, half in real exasperation, each calling the other selfish. + +But at her door, when he took her hands to thank her for the day she had +given him, he dropped quite naturally, "Until to-morrow, then," and she +entered her great white hall with a happy, shining face. + + * * * * * + +In the half-light of the solitary hall-lamp the white-and-gold door +between the curving halves of the stairway stood open on to the +blackness of the unlighted ball-room. At the threshold appeared Estelle, +and stood with folded arms until the servant who answered the bell had +been heard retreating down the back stairs. She came forward with a +tired, troubled, pallid, and severe face. + +"Well, I'm glad you've got back!" she said, as much as to say that she +had given up looking for her. And as Aurora unexpectedly cast +mischievous, muscular arms around her and tried to squeeze the breath +out of her, she gasped amid spasms of resistance: "Stop! Don't try to +pacify me! I'm in no mood for fooling! I'm as cross with you as I can +be!" + +"You little slate-pencil! You little lemon-drop, you!" said Aurora, +squeezing harder, then suddenly letting go. + +"I'm in no mood to be funny, you--you county-fair prize punkin! I've +been worried half to death. Where've you been so long, 'way into the +night, long past eleven o'clock?" + +"Didn't you find my note on the pin-cushion? That informed you where +I've been." + +"I thought you must have met with an accident, to make you so terribly +late, or else made up your mind to go off with that young man for good +and all. Tell you the truth, I didn't quite know which I should prefer, +which would be better for you in the end." + +"Do you mean to tell me you've been sitting here all day stewing and +fretting about that? Didn't you ever in your life go buggy-riding with a +feller, and did it always ends with the grand plunge? You know it +didn't. You know you could ride from Provincetown to Boston, with the +moon shining, too, and not even exchange a chaste salute." + +"Nell, there's one thing I know, and it's that my scolding and warning +and beseeching will do exactly as much good as an old cow mooing with +her neck stretched over a stone wall. You know what I think. I've had +plenty of time for reflection, walking up and down the floor in there in +the dark; and long before you finally got home I'd made up my mind not +to be an idiot and make myself a nuisance trying to influence you. It's +your funeral. What you choose to do is none of my business. What I said +when you came in just escaped me.--Stand off and let me look at you." + +While making the request, she herself drew off to get a more +comprehensive view of her friend. + +Something of the sunshine, the mountain sweetness, the unpolluted +breezes and wide perspectives of the heights, the dreams of the starlit +homeward ride, the triumph in man's love, was shining forth from Aurora, +with her fresh sunburn, her untidied hair, and softly luminous eyes. +Estelle felt herself suddenly on the point of tears. But she stiffened. + +"Well, you do look as if you'd had a good time, you crazy thing!" she +said dryly. "What made you put your best dress on if you were going to +sit round on the ground? You've got it all grass stains. Oh, Nell," she +melted, "while you've been off gallivanting, I've just about worried +myself sick over a paper Leslie left. I've been longing for you to get +back to see what you make of it." + +"A paper? What do you mean?" + +"A newspaper. Come on upstairs. I left it on the desk. Leslie called in +the forenoon, but I had gone out. Then she came again in the afternoon, +so I knew it must be something special. But I simply couldn't bring +myself to see her and let her know you'd gone off for the whole day with +Gerald Fane. So I got the maid to tell her we were both out. Everybody +does that over here. Anyhow, I went and stood on the terrace while the +maid was delivering my message. So Leslie went off, but she left this +Italian paper for the maid to give us. And, my dear,--now don't +faint,--there's a long piece in it about you." + +"For goodness' sakes! About me? Why? Where?" + +"There. It isn't marked, and I was the longest time trying to discover +why Leslie had left the paper. After I'd gone all over it hunting for a +marked passage, I thought it must be a mistake and that she'd simply +left it because she was tired of carrying it round, and the maid hadn't +understood. But going over it column by column, I at last saw the word +Hawthorne and those other names. '_Una Americana_'--'An +American'--the article is entitled. It looks to me, Nell, as if your +whole life's history might be printed there." + +"For the land's sake! Now, who do you suppose can have done that? What +on earth would anybody want to--" + +"I've been puzzling over it and puzzling over it till I'm about played +out trying to make sense of it, and my head aches like fury. Oh, never +mind my head! Now you've got back I don't care." + +"And your French doesn't help you to translate it?" + +"Yes, it does help--some. I can pick out lots of words, and here and +there a whole sentence; but what I can't get at is the spirit of the +whole, whether it's meant to be friendly or not." + +"Have you tried with a dictionary? Where's the dictionary? Get it, and +we'll pick it out if it takes all night." + +"Indeed, I wish I had a dictionary. Mine's French-English. I asked +Clotilde if she had an Italian-English or an Italian-French, and she +said yes, but at home. Isn't it provoking? I certainly wasn't going to +show this to her, and get her to translate it for me before I'd +consulted with you." + +"Bother!" said Aurora, thoughtfully, with her eyes on the cryptic print. +Estelle sat close, examining the sheet over her shoulder. "_Elena_ +means Helen, doesn't it? I guess it must, as it comes here before +Barton. They've got my old name. And there's Bewick--Bewick, and here's +Colorado. They've got the whole thing, fast enough. It's the doing of an +enemy; there can be no doubt of that." + +"I know who you're thinking about." + +"Charlie Hunt, of course. Scamp! Worm! Cockroach! Low down, ungrateful, +pop-eyed pig!" Nor did the reviling stop there. For the space of about +forty seconds Aurora was unpublishable. + +"But how on earth did he get at it?" wondered Estelle. + +"After he'd opened that letter of mine, he wrote to the amiable writer +thereof and asked for information." + +"Honestly, Nell, I don't think he's had time." + +"I guess he has--just time. The languishing Iona hurried for once. Well, +I don't care!" Aurora folded the paper tight and flung it from her. +"Enemies may do what they please; I've got friends. If everything comes +out as it really happened, I haven't anything to fear, except that it's +mighty unpleasant. It's only lies, and people believing them, that could +do me harm. I've got friends in Florence. Oh, not many true ones, I +don't suppose. It's paying my way that has made me popular, I'm not such +a gump as not to know that. But some true friends I've got, and their +backing will be my stay. One friend I've got--" Pride and a sudden +battle-light flashed in Aurora's eye. "One friend I've got, who if I +gave the word would kill Charlie Hunt for this, or put him in a fair way +to dying. I do believe, Hat, that Gerald Fane would call Charlie Hunt +out to fight a duel to punish him for a slur on me. Oh, he can fence +just as well as the Italians he was brought up with. I've seen the +fencing-swords in his studio. But"--she calmed down--"I wouldn't permit +that sort of thing. It's ridiculous. I don't believe in it." + +Cooling to normal, she laughed, with a return to the light of reality. +"He doesn't believe in it, either, I shouldn't suppose." + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +Leslie, arriving early next day, read off the newspaper article, making +a free translation of it, as follows: + + * * * * * + +When a thing is too successful, it is seldom natural; and so when there +appeared in our city a _signora_, blond of hair, azure of eye, with +the complexion of delicate, luminous roses, red and white, whose name +was at once Aurora and _Albaspina_,--Hawthorne,--floral counterpart +of dawn, we should have had suspicions. That we had none does not +prevent our feeling no very great surprise when we learn that the bearer +of the poetic and more than appropriate name is called in sober truth +Elena Barton. The more beautiful name was adopted by a child acting out +its fairy-stories; it was remembered and re-adopted by a woman when she +wished to detach her life from a past which neither charity, fidelity, +nor devotion to a sacred duty had succeeded in keeping from sorrow and +the deadly aspersions of malignity. + +The _gentilissima_ person of the irradiating smile, which, however +briefly seen, must be long remembered, whom we have grown accustomed +this winter to meeting in the salons where assembles all that is most +distinguished among foreigners, whose name we have grown accustomed to +finding foremost in every work of charity, has a title to our esteem far +beyond the ordinary member of an indolent and favored class. To +alleviate suffering has been the chosen work of those hands that +Florence also has found ever open and ready with their help. It was in +effect the extent of their beneficence which brought about the black +imbroglio from which Elena Barton chose to flee and take refuge in the +City of Flowers under the _soave_ and harmonious name by which we +know her. + +Her life had been for several years devoted to the care of an old man +afflicted with a most malignant and terrible cancer in the face. She had +filled toward him so perfectly the part of a daughter that his gratitude +made her upon his death an equal sharer in his fortune with the children +of his blood. Thence the law-case Bewick _versus_ Barton, which for +a period filled the city of Denver in Colorado of the United States as +if with poisonous fumes. The literal daughters, two in number, who had +shown no filial love for the unfortunate old man, in trying to annul +their father's will, left nothing undone or unspoken that could help +their _turpe_, or evil, purpose, even attempting to prove that not +only had the devoted nurse been their father's _amante_--[You can +guess what that is, Aurora. They are much simpler here than we at home +about calling things by their names, and much more outspoken on all +subjects], but had likewise been the _amante_ of the son, sole +member of the family who supported her claim to the share of the fortune +appointed by the father. Justice in the event prevailed, but a tired and +broken woman emerged from the conflict. What to do to regain a little +of that pleasure in living which blackening calumnies and rodent +ill-will, even when not victorious, can destroy in the upright and +feeling nature? The imagination which had prompted in childhood the +acting out of fairy-stories here came into play: Leave behind the scene +of sorrows, take ship, and point the prow toward the land of orange and +myrtle, of golden marbles and wine-colored sunsets; change name, begin +again, do good under a beautiful appellation which the poor should learn +to love and speak in their prayers to the last of their days.... + + * * * * * + +"The rest, Aurora dear, is pure flattery, which it becomes me not to +speak nor you to hear. I won't read it." + +"Well, I never!" breathed Aurora. "Who did it?" + +"We did it! My father and your Doctor Bewick and Carlo Guerra and I. We +did it to be before anybody else, set the worst that could be brought up +against you in a light that explains and justifies. We did our best to +fix the public mind and show it what it should think. You know what the +mind of the public is. We've hypnotized the beast, I hope; it has taken +its bent from us." + +"But--" + +"This was the way of it, my dear. The day after Brenda's wedding I was +at the Fontanas,--she was a Miss Andrews, you know, of +Indianapolis,--and there was Charlie, too, and there was likewise Madame +Sartorio, who is Colonel Fontana's niece by his first marriage. We were +talking in a little group when something, I forget what, was said about +you, Aurora. Charlie--for what reason would be hard to think, unless one +had a sharp scent for what goes on under one's nose--Charlie +interrupted, to introduce as a sort of parenthesis, 'Mrs. Hawthorne, +whose real name, by the way, is Helen Barton.' The others were naturally +taken aback, except Madame Sartorio, who could not quite disguise a +cat-smile. For a moment none of us knew what to say, and Charlie went +on, with his air of knowing such a lot more than anybody else-- + +"'Yes. It seems that all winter we have been warming in our bosom, so to +speak, the heroine of a _cause celebre_ at a place called Colorado +in America.'" + +"That was enough for me. I stopped him. + +"'Don't say any more, Charlie. All I wish to know about Mrs. Hawthorne +is what she cares to tell me herself,' and I insisted that the +conversation should return to other things. + +"When I got home I told mother, and she repeated to me what you, Aurora, +confided to her when we first knew you. We told father, and when Doctor +Bewick came that evening to say good-by we consulted, and here in this +newspaper you have the result, put into Italian journalese by Carlo +Guerra, whom we called in to aid us. He likes you so much, Aurora; did +you know it? He met you at Antonia's. So there you have the whole story. +I'm bitterly ashamed of Charlie, my dear, and I'm sorry about him, too. +One never looked upon him as a particularly fine fellow, still, one +liked him. He had never done anything that disqualified him for a sort +of liking, and we've all grown up together." Leslie wrinkled her +forehead in puzzlement. "It's curious, somehow, to think of him, who, we +have said so often, has no real inside, as being sufficiently under the +dominion of a passion to care to please his lady by offering up you, who +have, after all, been to him a source of a good many pleasures, with +your open house, invitations to dinner, and so on. I don't quite +understand it." + +"Never mind about him!" Aurora flicked him aside. "I don't care. And you +say Tom helped. And he never told me, or wrote me a word about it. I had +a letter from him this morning. Well, well. You certainly did make a +good-sounding story of it, among you. And the main facts are true, far +as they go; I can't say they aren't. But, oh, my dear Leslie, there was +a lot more to it than that. I've got to tell you, so's not to feel like +a fraud. You're so sharp; you know me pretty well by this time, and I +guess you don't suppose in me any of those awfully 'fine feelin's' that +could make a blighted flower of me because, while innocent as a babe +unborn, I'd been dragged through the courts by wicked enemies. My +enemies were pretty wicked; I stick to that. Cora Bewick, off living +abroad studying some strange religion, while her kind old pa was dying +at home, and she never once coming near him till he was under ground; +Idell Friebus, never coming into his room except with her nose wrinkled +up with disgust at the smell of disinfectants--or disgust at him, it was +none too plain which. They made a fine pair of daughters. But when it +came to fighting over the will, the lawyers on the Bewick side gave out +just what it was that a perfectly noble woman would have done in my +place of the old man's nurse. And my lawyers would have it that +everything that didn't accord with that ideal simply must be kept dark, +or public feeling would go against us. It's that that made it so +nasty--pretending, and avoiding this, and keeping off the other. It +amounted to lying, no matter what they said. But they told me if I +didn't do as my counsel instructed me, the result would be the worst lie +of all. I should be believed guilty of just that undue influence I was +accused of, and lose the money into the bargain. So I had to hedge and +shuffle and mislead.... And me under oath to tell the truth! You needn't +wonder if I'm sick still at the thought of it, or wonder that I'd like +to forget it. The truth was I _did_ know beforehand the Judge meant +to leave me one fourth of his money, and I was tickled to death. I +gloried in it. I loved to imagine the rage it would throw his wicked +daughters in, and his mean little miserable son-in-law. I was glad, +besides, out and out, to think I should have the money. I plain wanted +it, I did. Maybe a real noble woman wouldn't have. Maybe it showed a +degraded nature. Well, that's the way it was. Sometimes I feel disposed +to be ashamed of it, but mostly I don't. For one thing, I felt then and +I feel now, I deserved that money by a long sight more than those +bad-hearted girls of his. I was a comfort to Judge Bewick. I won't say I +earned the money, it was too much: but there were some hours of my +tending him, poor soul, when it did seem to me a nurse came pretty near +earning anything the patient could afford to pay. All the same, I would +have done what I did for the old boy if he hadn't had a cent, I had so +much respect for him, as much as for my own father, and I felt I owed so +much to his son. Then about his son, the doctor. If Cora's old +nurse-girl, who was kept on in the house as a servant, though she was +past her usefulness, lied in court when she said she saw Tom and me +kissing at such an hour, in such a place, still, the truth was that I +had at different times kissed Tom. You can't tell why it seems all right +to you to kiss one man when it would seem a very queer thing to do to +kiss another. When Tom had been away for any length of time, I always +kissed him when he came back; it seemed natural to both of us. But there +in court I had to try to appear as if I never could have descended to +committing such an immoral act, as well as to give the impression that +if I'd known the old man had any notion of making me co-heir with his +own children I would have strained every nerve to stop it, called them +all in to help me curb him if necessary. Pshaw! the humbug of it turns +my stomach now. Leslie, my verdict is, you can't come through a law-suit +_clean_. I'd give a good deal to cut that page out of my life." + +Aurora's eyes, filled with the shadows of the past, and her face, with +the dimples expunged, were to Leslie almost unfamiliar. Aurora, +oppressed in her moral nature, gave a glimpse of herself that would +change and enlarge the composite of her aspects carried in Leslie's +mind. + +"There, stop thinking of it!" said Estelle. "You always work yourself up +so." + +"The point of my coming bright and early like this," Leslie nimbly +managed a diversion, "was, as you have guessed, to catch you before you +could possibly go out. My mother desires you, dear ladies, to accompany +me back to lunch--a triumphal lunch, Aurora, to grace which she has +collected those special pillars of society whose countenance and support +ought to make you scornful of any little weed-like growth of gossip that +might sprout up from seed of Charlie's sowing. You know them all more or +less, having been associated with every one of them in some form of +beneficence. I might more accurately describe it: having donated largely +to each of their pet charities. It is not a very admirable world--" +Leslie's young face took that little air of knowing the world which +sometimes amused old gentlemen so much, "it is a selfish society, not +indisposed, or, I am afraid, altogether displeased, to believe evil of +its neighbor, and not always disinclined to turn and rend its favorites. +But it would be a pity, really, if you should have poured forth upon it +as you have done, Aurora, money and smiles, bouquets and banquets and +sunbeams, good-will and baby-socks and knitted afghans, and it did not +rise up when you are attacked and say, 'No. An exception has to be made +in this case. We have all been bought!'" + +Aurora, who had been listening with expanded, gathering-in eyes, cheeks +flushing deeper and deeper, turned her head sharply away to try to keep +from falling or being seen two unaccountable tears half blinding her. + +The sight of her, by infection, moistened the eyes of the other women. + +Estelle sought a quick way out of the emotional silence. + +"Nell," she said, albeit with cracked voice, "if we're going out to +lunch, I guess we ought to be dressing. Go along, child, put on your +best bib and tucker." + +"Oh, my best bib and tucker!" wailed Aurora. "Sent to the cleaner's this +morning, all green stains at the back!" + + * * * * * + +If Leslie had not called it a triumphal lunch, it might not have +appeared so very different from any other women's lunch at the season of +roses. Leslie herself, though, found in it the flavor of old-fashioned +romance, just faintly platitudinous, in which poetic justice is done. +Mrs. Foss, the more simple-minded organizer of it, felt that she should +remember it as an occasion when she had risen to the level, placed the +right cards in the fist of destiny, and created an event worthy to take +rank at least with those little triumphs of good housewives at whose +home the president of their husband's company arrived one night unlocked +for and was entertained with brilliant credit. + +To the heroine of the feast, no need to say it was an inexpressibly +exciting, grand, and memorable occasion. Aurora hardly knew herself, so +much the object of attention and graciousness. She was in the mood to +give half of her goods to the poor. After the hostess had risen and made +a little speech, Aurora, unexpectedly to herself, and as if under +inspiration, responded by a little speech of her own, composed on the +spot. It was drowned at the end by hand-clapping all around the table. +Aurora seemed to herself to be living in a fairy-story. + + * * * * * + +As it was after five o'clock when she reached home, she was sure she +would find Gerald waiting for her. She had the whole day long been +looking forward with a sweet agitation to the moment of being with him +and telling him all about it. + +She was more disappointed than she remembered ever being, even as a +child, not to find him or any word from him. She did not allow it to +become later by more than half an hour before she scratched a line and +sent the coachman to his house with it. + +The man came back with nothing but the barren information, received from +Giovanna, that the _signorino_ was absent, having gone to Leghorn. + +"Well, here's a pretty howdydo!" thought Aurora, sore with surprise and +the smart of injury. "If every time I refuse him he's going off like +this to stay away for days and days, what am I going to do?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +"If this is the way it was going to be, and I'd known it before, I'd +have kept better watch over my affections," said Aurora to herself, +reflecting upon Gerald in Leghorn, where he was bending his will +industriously, no doubt, to the work of forgetting her. + +Beside the large sharp thorn of this thought, she was troubled by what +was a small, merely uncomfortable thorn: the knowledge of Gerald exposed +so closely to the influence of Vincent, that persuasive young man of +God, who bowed to images and believed in the Pope. At the end of every +wearisome day she gave thanks that for still another twenty-four hours +she had by grace of strength from on high been able to fight off the +temptation to write to Gerald. + +This for nine days--the nine days it takes for a wonder to become a +commonplace or a scandal to lose its prominent place in conversation. +Then, in the way once sweetly habitual, there came a rapping at the +door, the entrance of a servant, and the announcement, "_C'e il +signorino_." + +Aurora for a second either did not really grasp the import of the words +or did not trust her senses. She asked: + +"What _signorino_? _Signorino_ What?" + +"The _signorino_ who has come back," said the servant, unable on +the instant to recall the foreign name. And if he had felt interest in +the complexion of one so far removed from him as his mistress, he might +have seen her turn the hue of a classic sunrise. + +On her way down the stairs Aurora rejected the idea of a tumultuous +reproachful greeting, such as, "Where have you been so long, you mean +thing?" Or of a cool and cutting one, such as, "You're quite a +stranger." She decided to behave like a nice person, and show respect +for her friend's freedom, after having so explicitly left it to him. + +The Italians performing the service of the house arranged it according +to their own ideas of fitness, and on this warm afternoon the +drawing-room was in soft-colored twilight, the Persian blinds being +clasped, and their lower panels pushed out a very little so as to let in +a modicum of the whiteness of day. + +Gerald stood, very collected, if a trifle pale, holding, like a proper +votary, a bouquet--starry handful of sweet white hedge-roses,--which he +offered as soon as Aurora entered, saying he had picked them for her +that morning in the country near Castel di Poggio. + +The meeting, in Aurora's jubilant sense of it, went off beautifully. She +said in a pleasant, easy tone and her company English, + +"So you've got back. It's awfully nice to see you again. How well you +are looking. I was sure a change would do you good." + +And Gerald said yes, he had found the sea air tonic. He had been staying +with the Johns, Vincent's mother lived in Leghorn. He had worked a +little, made a few drawings. Digressing, he mentioned a trifling gift he +had brought her, and produced a small brass vessel, fitted with two +hinged lids, meant to contain grains of incense for the altar. He said +he had found it in an antiquarian's shop and thought she might care for +it to drop her rings into; he supposed she took them off at night. Its +shape seemed to him to possess more than common elegance. + +Aurora called it adorable, and his giving it to her sweet. They talked +as if they had been making believe, for the benefit of an audience, to +be the most ordinary friends. + +And each of them meanwhile, with heart and head gone slightly insane in +secret, was considering a marvel. The long separation--it had been long +to them--had recreated for both something of the capacity to receive a +fresh impression of the other. The marvel to Aurora was that this choice +being, with his intellectual brow (that was her adjective for Gerald's +brow) his difference from others, all in the way of superiority to them, +the indescribable fascination residing in his every feature, mood, or +word, should be walking the world unclaimed and unattached, for her to +take if she were so minded. Her to take! It was vertiginous. + +And the marvel to him was, in beholding that bounteous temple of a soul, +with its radiance of life, its share, so rich, of the mysterious +something which made the earliest men care to build homes; its gifts, so +large, of comfort and warmth--the marvel was that he should have dared +aspire to conquer it, should have set that to himself as a thing he was +going to persevere in trying to do until--until he had done it, he, +puny, poor in inducements, light of weight. + +The two of them, there could be no doubt of it, had passed within the +portals after which a change comes over the eyes, and those who enter +see each other endowed with qualities raising the capacity for wonder to +an ecstasy: so much engaging beauty, so much dearness, are not to be +believed!... It can never be established whether the eyes only see truly +when under this charm, or whether then more than at other times illusion +makes of them its fool. + +If he had been analytical on the subject of his sentiment for Aurora, as +so often on other subjects, and said to himself that he saw this woman +in a golden transfiguring light because he was in good primordial +fashion in love with her--because, that is to say, obscure affinities of +flesh and blood united with the esteem created by her virtues to make of +him a candle which the touch of her finger-tip miraculously could +light--he would have felt it as a blessed and not a base secret at the +bottom of his attachment. + +While they talked of the weather, as they fell to doing when they had +disposed of the subject of the little incense-holder; and, after that, +while they talked of Leghorn and the various seaside places which Aurora +had to choose from for her summer sojourn, a vastly deep conversation +was taking place between them, which we think it not amiss to report, +because by the nature of things the words they would say aloud on this +occasion would be meager and colorless by comparison with the things +they would feel and to some extent convey to each other through mere +proximity. + +"O Aurora," exhaled from Gerald, while, looking not far from his usual +self, he said that Ardenza by the sea, a mere three miles from Leghorn, +was a very pretty place, "Aurora, you are warmth, you are shelter, you +are rest. I have no hearth or home except as you let me in out of the +desperate cold of loneliness, and grant me to warm myself at your big +heart. You should see, woman dear, that my thankfulness would make you +happy. Nature, the divine, so formed you that my love would kindle +yours. And when you had given your hand into mine I should find paths of +violets, enchanted paths, for us to walk in which you could never find +without me, nor I find for myself. Put up no petty shield against me, +Aurora; fight me with no petty lance, for I verily am that guest you +were awaiting when on balmy spring evenings you felt, and knew not why, +that your life was incomplete." + +And Aurora, mechanically pulling off her rings and putting them into the +brass receptacle, then taking them out of it and putting them back on +her fingers, while she chattered, describing the advantages of a +furnished villa at Antiniano, to be preferred because they were some +Italian friends of Leslie's who desired to let it, was in her inmost +speaking to the inmost of Gerald. The hardly self-conscious meanings +within her bosom made as if an extension of her in the air, comparable +to the halo around the moon on a misty night; and this atomized radiance +had language, it said: "Oh, to draw your head down where it desires to +be! To warm and comfort you! To be to you everything you need! I lean to +you, I cling to you like a vine with every winding tendril. But I am so +afraid of you! so afraid! I am of common, you of finest, clay. How can I +give into any hand so much power to hurt me? If I were to dare it, then +find I could not make you happy, your disappointment would be my +heart-break, and my tragedy might spoil your life. But this know, +Gerald, dearer to me for having been so unhappy, nothing my life could +contain without you would seem to me so good as life with you in a poor +workman's attic, under falling snow, and I to make it home for you!" + +While two souls thus trembled and gravitated toward each other, bathing +in each other's light, it is almost mortifying to have to show to what +degree that which took place at the surface was different and inferior; +to what degree the fine abandon of words spoken and actions performed in +thought was replaced by a shivering prudence keeping guard on one side, +and on the other a deplorable timidity trying awkwardly to be bold. + +Heard through the door, the scene that ensued between these two curious +lovers, when they had worked their way through preliminaries and come to +the point at which they had parted after the day at Vallombrosa, must +particularly have seemed lacking in purple and poetry; for then the soft +light in Aurora's eyes would not have been seen, nor the deep flash in +Gerald's, as he by a point scored felt himself nearer to the goal. + +"Now, what made you run off like that, I want to know," Aurora asked in +the flowing American which she reserved for real friends and sincere +moments, "after you'd said when you left me at the door, 'Good-by till +to-morrow'?" + +"My reasons were several, all simple," he replied, with a faun-look up +from the corner of his eye, which watched her expression. "First, I +wished to flee from that newspaper article--dreadful!--till the danger +of any reference to it in my hearing was greatly reduced. Then, aside +from a slight natural need to recover myself, I felt I must for manners' +sake allow a little time to pass before I approached you again on the +subject of marrying me. One scruples to make himself a bore. It +therefore would be better not to see you, and, in order not to see you, +better not to be in town. Lastly, Auroretta, I conceived the infernal +ambition to make you suffer from absence the minutest fraction of what I +should suffer myself." + +"Don't say a word! I've missed you so my bones felt hollowed out!" + +"Reflect then, my dearest, upon the sufferings you are preparing for +yourself if you haven't a kinder answer for me than the other day to the +same question. All the reasons you gave for saying no were such bad +ones, founded upon a bad opinion of me. I can't take your refusal for +final, don't you see, without first being sure I have convinced you at +least that you are wrong in thinking me a fish or a mudturtle, and wrong +in attributing a lack of intelligence to me which could betray me into +confusing great things with little, little with great." + +"Oh, Gerald, you oughtn't to keep on trying! I do wish you wouldn't! No! +Don't say any more about it!" she pleaded in weak anguish. "You oughtn't +to go on battering against the little bit of common sense I've got +left." + +"Common sense! I advise you to speak of it!" he affected to jeer, +remarkably braced by her misery. "Common sense, as represented by a +decent concern for your good name, ought to prompt you enter as quickly +as you can into an engagement with me. I met our dear Doctor Batoni in +the street yesterday on my way home from the station, and he amiably +asked how was my _fidanzata_, or betrothed? It was a difficult +moment for me, because he told me that _you_ had told him you were +that." + +"I told him nothing of the sort! I said I was your friend, in French." + +"A friend, in French, may mean a good deal. Save your reputation, dear; +I give you the chance." + +"What nonsense! I explained to him as well as I could, in French, that I +was there taking care of you because I was your friend." + +"You are hopelessly compromised. Look to me to set you right." + +"Gerald, I shall do nothing of the kind." + +"Ah, I see that your prejudices hold firm. I was afraid of it when I +came." His mask of flippancy slipped for a moment; deep feeling made his +voice uncertain. "I am not that hardy and masterful man, Aurora, who +could break them down and clutch you above their ruin. But you will find +me very faithful to a hope--which, in fact, to relinquish now would be +beyond what I can expect of my courage." He resumed bluffness. "I told +Vincent he might look for my return to-morrow." + +"No, sir!" she came out with lively directness. "You're not going back +to Leghorn if I can help it! I--I have a plan." + +"You have a plan? From your face I am afraid not a good one. You look so +dubious." + +"Perhaps it isn't a good one, but it's the only way I can see. Listen." +She looked down at her hands, and kept him waiting. "One evening last +winter at a party a young Italian naval officer got talking to me in a +green bower under a pink paper lantern away from the rest. Something in +the atmosphere, I guess, made him want to talk to somebody of his +love-affairs, and he chose me, though we scarcely knew each other. He +told me he had been very much in love with an American girl, but they +hadn't the money to marry on or the hope of ever having it--like Brenda +and Manlio at first. Yet they couldn't keep apart, and so they just +became engaged, knowing it couldn't end as an engagement is supposed to +do. In that way they could see each other all they wanted, and be seen +together without anybody making a remark. And then when she was obliged +to go home and it had to end, it looked merely like a broken +engagement." + +"And you propose--" + +"We might try it, Gerald. Then if it didn't work well, if I found I was +all the time outraging your sensibilities, and you hurting my feelings, +we'd call it off. In any case we'd give ourselves plenty of time to +realize our foolishness. And you'd promise that when the time came you'd +go like a lamb, with a pleasant face, not saving up anything against me. +Make up your mind, now, that it'll have to be a long, _long_ +engagement--if we don't repent and break it off inside a week. But as it +seems so likely we will, let's don't tell the others right off, Gerald; +not, anyhow, for a week or ten days." + +"Admired Aurora, it surely is the most immoral proposition that ever +came from fair lady so well brought up as you!" cried Gerald, in a +proper state of excitement. But yet, such were his limitations, nothing +in any proportion with the throbbing fire inside him, the immensity of +his incredulous joy, appeared on his outside, where merely the mollified +lines of his face gave him a look of greater youth, and his cool-colored +eyes let through a faint testimony of the inward light. "I accept +without hesitation. I promise whatever you ask. From this moment onward +we are _fidanzati_, then. And, my blessed Auroretta, you who are +such a hand at calling names, have your servant's permission to call him +all the names you can think of that signify an ineffable blunderer on +the day when you succeed in freeing yourself from him!" + +Many more things were said, not worth recording. But at last devout +silence reigned. In the twilight room, with all the bad pictures and +trivial ornamentation, to shut out the offense of which he had once +closed his eyes, Gerald now closed them again to concentrate more +perfectly upon the rapture of feeling Aurora's shoulder beneath his +cheek. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +The servant who opened the door for Leslie on this softly brilliant June +morning, being well accustomed to admitting her, obligingly anticipated +her question, "Are the ladies at home?" + +"The _signorina_ is in the _salottino_," he said. From which +Leslie understood that the person whom she chiefly had come to see was +out. It did not really matter, for she had time to wait. Aurora was +likely to come back for lunch. + +She released the man from attendance by a little wave of her hand, +"Never mind announcing me!" and directed her footsteps toward the tall +white-and-gold door standing partly open. + +On her way to it she picked up off the floor a small lawn handkerchief. + +The ball-room impressed her anew as being very vast, very empty, +furnished almost solely as it was by the sparkling chandeliers, every +pendant of which to-day was gay with reflections of the green and +flowery and sun-washed outdoors. + +She turned toward the _salottino_, remotely wondering by what +chance Estelle was preferring it to the favorite red and green +sitting-room upstairs. The _salottino_ had utility when a party was +going on, but to sit and embroider or study French surrounded by all +those fountains of love.... + +A sharp bark preceded the tumbling out through the _salottino_ door +of a little white mop on feet. Upon recognizing Leslie, this performed +evolutions expressive of great joy. + +She had stopped to pat the excited little swirl of silk when Estelle +came forward to see who was there. + +With delighted good mornings the women exchanged the foreign salute, +which Leslie had adopted and Estelle submitted to, a mere touching of +cheeks while the lips kiss the air. + +They sat down on the rococo settee to talk, Leslie, quick of eye, +wondering what had happened to give Estelle that unusual air, an air +of--no, it was indefinable. Excitement had a share in it, and possibly +chagrin, and, it almost seemed, exaltation. The chief thing about it, +however, was that she was trying to conceal it; doing her best, but it +was a poor best, to appear natural. Leslie graciously allowed her to +suppose she was succeeding, and entered at once upon the reason for her +early call. + +"I really think, Estelle, that the villa at Antiniano would suit Aurora. +As for you, I am positive, my dear, that you would adore it. It is a +little out of the thick of things, but has a very fine view of the sea, +also a very pretty garden. Certain conveniences, of course, it hasn't, +but, then, you mustn't expect those of an Italian villa. I saw Madame +Rossi yesterday, and she said she wished you would make an excursion to +Antiniano to see for yourselves. She is sure you would be charmed. One +request she would make: that the peasant family be allowed to continue +in their little corner of the house, where they wouldn't be the least in +your way, and then that the little donkey should be allowed to remain in +the stable. But in return you could use him, she said." + +"Ride him?" + +"Yes, or harness him. For the country, why not, my dear? They are ever +so strong little beasts." + +Estelle began to laugh, presumably at the picture of Aurora on +donkey-back, or, with herself, exhilarating the country-side by the +vision of them drawn in a donkey-cart. Leslie joined in her merriment, +but expostulatingly, and, warned by a note in Estelle's laugh, watched +her with suspicion while it developed into a nervous cackle. She saw her +cover her eyes with one hand, and with the other vainly feel in her +pocket. She was crying. Leslie tendered the little handkerchief found on +the floor, and knew then that it had dried tears before on that same +day. She waited, tactfully silent, merely placing a condoling hand over +her friend's. + +"I might as well tell you," Estelle got out, when her crying fit +permitted her to speak, "that Aurora isn't going to take any villa at +Antiniano this summer.... She's gone away." + +"Gone away? What do you mean?" asked Leslie, surprised into a very +complete blankness of expression. + +"What I say." And in her incalculable frame of mind Estelle again was +laughing. "Oh, I don't know which to do, whether to laugh or cry!" she +explained, with eyes bright at once from laughter and from tears. "One +moment I laugh, next moment I cry. I feel as if I were walking in my +sleep. I guess what I need is a nerve-pill." + +"You say that Aurora has gone away. Where?" + +"Where Gerald pleases, I guess. She's gone with him." + +"With Gerald? Now, my dear friend, please explain. You laugh, you cry. +You say Aurora has gone away with Gerald. Please collect yourself and +tell me what it means. 'Gone away with Gerald.' How do you mean gone +away with him?" + +"I mean they have eloped, or as good as." + +"No, no; people don't elope when there is neither an inconvenient +husband, nor unamenable parents, nor any possible reason why they should +not have each other if they wish to." + +"I wonder what you would call it, then. As late as twelve o'clock last +night I didn't know a thing about it, and this morning early they left +together in a carriage, with her trunk strapped on the back." + +Leslie lifted her hands to her temples and pressed them as if to keep +her head from a dangerous expansion with the size of the new idea that +must find a home there. + +"So it was in earnest!" she said aloud, yet as if speaking to herself. +"Mother has won her bet, and I have lost. Well,"--she tossed her head +and faced Estelle,--"I am glad of it. We knew, of course, that there was +something, and we felt that nothing nicer could happen than that they +should make a match of it. Mother prophesied they would. But I did not +believe it. I was afraid of Gerald--that disposition in him to consider +too finely, to halt on the brink, that negative, renunciatory way he has +settled into. I thought the thing would end in mere philandering. I am +glad"--she threw the weight of conviction on the word,--"glad it hasn't! +I don't see, my dear Estelle, what you can find to cry about." + +"Is that the way it strikes you?" + +"My dear, I couldn't say which I thought the luckier, Gerald to get +Aurora, or Aurora to get Gerald." + +"You surprise me. To me it seems just about the riskiest combination +that could be imagined. I have felt it all along. Those two have no more +in common, I have said, than a bird and a fish." + +"Nonsense, my dear girl! Nonsense!" + +"I have heard him get so impatient with her because simply she didn't +pronounce a word right. I've seen him so annoyed he nearly trembled +trying to choke it down." + +"But did she mind? I mean, his impatience?" + +"I can't say she did; but--" + +"There you have it. They are marvelously suited. Listen and let me talk +to you for your comfort. This, do you hear, is exactly the most +delightful thing that could have happened. Haven't you noticed that +complex natures are rather given to uniting with simple ones, and +finding happiness with them? An artist--how often!--marries his model, a +philosopher marries a peasant." + +"Go on!" sighed Estelle. "Go on! I love you for making me feel better!" +Her eyes moistened again in an almost luxurious melancholy. + +"One of the reasons for mother and me wishing for this consummation was +the broadening of life it would afford Gerald. Gerald doesn't think +about money. Aurora's money, all the same, will do a lot for him in +making possible his getting away from here, where the truth is he +stagnates. Then, too, she will cure him of his morbidness. He sees red +if one so much as breathes the suggestion that his art is morbid. But of +course it is." + +"Aurora said they might go to live in Paris, because she thought it +would be good for his art." + +"Now that's what I want to hear about. Go on and tell me what Aurora +said and what happened between midnight and their extraordinary +elopement, as you call it. But, first of all, why, in the name of common +sense, did they elope? From what did they elope?" + +"From me, I guess. I don't see what else. Oh, yes, I do. From the talk +there would be. But principally, I suspect, he hurried her into it to +make sure of her, for she, too, had her moments of doubting the wisdom +of what she was doing. That much I know. They had only been engaged two +weeks, and all that time I didn't even know they were engaged. I hadn't +been nice about Gerald, I feel bound to confess, so she thought best not +to tell me. She didn't want to hear how I would take it, we've been so +used to speaking our minds to each other. He came oftener than ever and +stayed longer, till it got so I made a point of getting up and making an +excuse to leave the room. It was my way of being spiteful. But Nell +didn't take it up with me in private, as I expected she would. They were +tickled to death to have me leave the room, I can see now. She went +around the house singing an Easter carol and fixing flowers in the +vases, with a look of cheerfulness apart from me that made her seem like +a stranger. I was pretty sore, I can tell you, but I wouldn't speak of +it. I don't know how I thought it would end. Funny, I can't remember how +everything looked so short a time ago as yesterday, but I know I was +eaten up with mean thoughts. I went to bed last night thinking to +myself, 'Well, Nell Goodwin, if you think I'm going to stand much more +of this, you're mistaken. There'll be some plain talk before long.' And +I fell asleep. First thing I knew I was awake, looking to see who'd come +into my room. And there was Nell in her night-dress, holding her hand +round the candle so it wouldn't shine in my eyes. I simply can't tell +you what it was like,--the candle lighting nothing but her made her seem +like a vision in the middle of a glory. Nobody can know how fond I am of +Nell, what friends we've been since little bits of girls. All I could +think of was that she'd come to make up with me, she couldn't wait +another minute. It would have been just like her. And while I waited for +her to speak first, I thought with my heart just melting what a lovely +big thing she is, with that sort of fair look to her neck, and those +warm cheeks, and something so kind about her from head to foot. She put +down the candle and, instead of going into explanations, bent over and +gave me a good hug. And I said, hugging back: 'You better had, you +horrid thing! You better had!' Then she sat down on the bed. 'Hat,' she +said, 'I was going to do a mean thing, but I'm not going to do it. I was +going to slip away without a word, but I'm going to tell you the whole +story. I'm going to marry Gerald,' she said. + +"Then she went on to tell me, and what do you think, I didn't say one +word in objection, not one! Because I could see she was dead in love, +and what was the use except to spoil her happiness, and I didn't want +to. She told me how they'd decided it would be just as well not to wait, +but take a short cut. If they stayed in Florence, she said, she'd feel +they must have a big wedding and ask all their friends, and then she +should have to have a trousseau; it would all take lots of time, and +Gerald would so hate the fuss and the chatter. So they'd made up their +minds to go off to Leghorn without a word to anybody,--whose business is +it anyhow but their own?--and be married just as soon as it could be +done, where they wouldn't get so much as the echo of any remarks on +their haste or the way they preferred to do. She'll be staying with Mrs. +Johns till the ceremony. She said she should write your mother from +there. Then she showed me Gerald's ring that she'd been wearing on a +chain round her neck where I wouldn't see it, and she talked about +Gerald's wonderfulness. She's perfectly wrapped up in him. All I hope is +he appreciates it." + +"His inducing her to elope with him would seem to indicate some warmth +of feeling on his part. The suggestion can hardly have come from her." + +"You're right. I guess it's as bad with him as with her. She talked +about the wonderfulness of his love, such as she never could have +believed, and never could deserve. She said she could be happy with +Gerald in a garret that let the snow leak in. Oh, they're both crazy. +What do you think she gave as one reason for this haste? 'Life is +short,' she said, 'and love is long!' Gerald must have said it to her +before she said it to me, but what do you think of it? 'Life is short +and love is long!'" + +"Do you mean"--asked Leslie, with the least touch of severity,--"that I +ought to share in a cynical view of that saying? I can't, my dear +Estelle. There are my father and mother, you know. In their quiet way +they bear out the idea that love may be as long as life." + +"Yes, of course," said Estelle hurriedly, with a faint air of shame. "My +father and mother, too, make a united couple." + +"My belief is that when two people marry who are in love as they ought +to be, and who in addition are good--By good I think I mean people--" +Leslie, with her look of wisdom beyond her years, paused to take a +survey of life, "--people who have a sense of the other person's rights, +and, as a matter of heart, not principle, feel the other's claims just a +little more strongly than their own--in the case of such people, when +the passion they marry on dies out with their growing older, as we +generally see it do, something takes its place that deserves the name of +love every bit as much." + +"Aurora is good," said Estelle, from her soul. "You would never know how +good unless you had stood in need of kindness." + +"Gerald is good, too," said Leslie, with an effect of more impartiality +but no less positiveness. "He would disdain to be anything else." + +"What is wrong with me is that I'm selfish, I guess," said Estelle, +looking contrite, "and don't like having to give her up to him, after +all the beautiful things we'd planned together. What I ought to feel is +nothing but thankfulness for her having such a chance of happiness, and +then thankfulness for all she did, trying to make up for her desertion." + +Without transition, Estelle went back to the story of the past night. +"You can imagine there wasn't any more sleep for that spell. I got up, +and we went to her room, where she had all the lights lighted and was in +the middle of packing her trunk. She only took one, and about a quarter +of her things. Gerald's going to design wonderful costumes for her, the +style he prefers. I could see she's ready to do just anything to please +him. I'd already noticed how she'd altered her way of doing her hair, +but wasn't smart enough to recognize the signs!... While she was at work +packing she planned for my summer,--that I'm to invite Mademoiselle +Durand to go traveling with me, so I can improve my French at the same +time as give that poor hard-working creature a real vacation and treat. +Then when they go to Venice, she wants me to join them, and the three of +us have a regular jamboree. Then next winter, after I've got home, she +wants me to go to Colorado to visit the Grand Canyon and see the great +sights of my native country before settling down again in East Boston. +She made me a present of Ami." + +"Ami?" + +"I've changed his name from Busteretto. Don't you like it better? Little +Tweetums! He's the only darling I've got left!" She pressed a kiss on +the warm top of his head. "She made me a present of all the clothes and +things she wasn't taking with her. She made me a present of everything +in this house that we didn't find in it when we took it--turned it all +over to me to do what I please with. And I'm sure I don't know what I +shall do with it all unless I set up a store. Anything you see and think +you'd like to have, please say so." + +"She gave you all these things? Do you mean it?" asked Leslie, surprised +despite what she had already known of Aurora. + +"Yes, and along with the things, of course, the responsibility of +settling up everything, dismissing the servants, sending Livvy back to +New York. Such a job! Luckily, there's no hurry; the lease doesn't +expire until October. When you came I'd been sort of looking round. I +was just wondering what to do about this Fountain of Love. Nell paid a +frightful lot for these four panels. I'd been trying to see if they +could be carefully peeled off and the wall behind restored, and while I +was looking the sight of that winter scene broke me all up. It doesn't +tell a very cheerful tale, you know, this series of pictures. After what +I'd just been through, saying good-by to them, it worked on me like a +bad omen." + +"Don't be foolish. Then you saw Gerald, too, before they left?" + +"Yes. I could have done without, but she'd have been hurt. So I shook +hands, and managed to wish him joy. He was nice, but, then, Gerald +always is that. I've never for a moment said anything different. He said +he wanted me to feel that I hadn't lost a sister, but acquired a +brother. Just as they were driving off I remembered something, and +called after Nell, 'What about your portrait?' for I couldn't think she +meant to give me that along with the rest. Gerald said before she could +speak, 'Take it away!' And Nell said right off, 'Oh, yes. Keep it, +Hattie; keep it!' That lovely portrait he painted of her! I don't see +how she could bear to part with it. But, of course, now she has him she +can have as many portraits as she wants. Come and tell me what you +think, whether it would be safe to pack it, frame and all, or better to +unframe it, or, better still, to take the canvas off the stretcher and +roll it." + +Accordingly, they left the room of the cupids and garlands, traversed +the vasty ball-room where the chandeliers, like two huge ear-rings, +divided up the light into twinkling diamond and rainbow showers, entered +the drawing-room of the dignified sixteenth-century chairs, which from +the first had suffered an undeserved neglect, and passed thence into the +familiar parlor of the multitudinous baubles and the grand piano and the +portrait; performing in the contrary direction the pilgrimage on which, +at a period which seemed so immemorably far as to have become legendary, +Gerald had followed Aurora walking before him with a light. + +They stood beneath the portrait, and with the image present to their +minds of painter and sitter hasting on their way to be wed, saw this +equivocal masterpiece with a difference. Not Aurora alone looked forth +from the canvas,--throat of lily, cheek of rose, heaven-blue eyes, smile +and ringlets of immitigable sunniness. Gerald, self-depicted in every +subtle brush-stroke, looked, too. + +"It takes sober, solid, careful people to be interesting when they +commit a rashness," thought Leslie. Then, with a little surge of envy in +her well-regulated breast, "To be swept off one's feet," she thought, +"how educative it must be, how enlarging." + +But a doubt fell, shadow-like, across her vision of future fortunes. If +a person never found it possible to fall in love with those who fell in +love with her, would it necessarily follow that the Some One she should +someday love would regard her with coldness? + +Estelle gazed upward at the portrait with a wistful, well-nigh solemn +look. Not being able, hampered by a dog in her arms, to clasp her hands, +she expressed the same impulse by clasping the dog close to her breast +in token that her wishes for her dearest friend's good were more than +wishes, were a prayer. + +She felt a hand laid lightly on her forearm. + +"You needn't be afraid," said Leslie, "they'll be happy." + +THE END + +[Transcriber's Note: As originally published, this book had two +consecutive chapters labeled as "CHAPTER XV." Chapter numbers have +been resequenced in this text.] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Aurora the Magnificent, by Gertrude Hall + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AURORA THE MAGNIFICENT *** + +***** This file should be named 30642.txt or 30642.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/6/4/30642/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/30642.zip b/30642.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..04a6171 --- /dev/null +++ b/30642.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..91963b1 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #30642 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30642) |
