“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 of359trying 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,360women 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,361unable 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!”
362“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, than363I’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 readusany 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.”
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 he365had 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.
366She 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 of367repressed 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 it368to 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 theveglione, 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 addressed369to 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’t370lying 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 theveglione. 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 theveglione.”
“It wasn’t very bad. It might provoke him for a minute371to 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 thatabsardAmerican? 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 end372of 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 insecten 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!”
373Both 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,374she 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, what375did 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 you376on 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 investigation377of 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 bewarthyof 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.”
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 Florentinezanzara. She just sat, not doing a thing. Estelle379after 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.
AfterLa Luna Novathey sangFra i rami,fulgida, andVedi,che bianca Luna, andDormi 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–
380“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,381he 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 the382promoter 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 and383serenaders, 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 thesignorinodown in the garden,” Ildegonda384acquitted 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.”
Thesignorino. That had become the informal title by which the servants announced a guest who was let in so very frequently. Aurora understoodfinestra, window, anddire una parola, to say a word, and then that the signorino wasgiù 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.”