“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 have43been 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’sespritwas 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 this44avoidance, 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 De45Brézés,–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 of46the 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, waltzingall’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 the47field, 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 thecapitanothat 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.48He 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. Hawthorne49sighed 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 hegreat! 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 the50delicacy 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’s51homeliness 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 cheek52of 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 is53that?” 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, “Whom54else 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 the55sparkle 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.
56The 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,57moral–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,58and 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 nobility59in 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.
60It 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 unlike61a 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 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.
“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,62and 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 I63swallowed 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.”
64“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.”
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 driven66among 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 pious67little 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 face68and 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 itfun!”
“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 thinking69about? 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 same70little 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 youloveto 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,71the schoolmarm in East Boston, that I used to know!’ Oh, Hat, thequeerestthing! 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 awomansmoking! 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. Ihaveheard 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! Iam 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.72‘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 her73arms 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!”
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,75and 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 were76shown; 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 engaged77to 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 saywas, 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 in78Paris 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 autreswho 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,79arched 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.
80Leslie 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 abug!”
“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.”
81“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 for82Lily 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,83and 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 ofpallone, 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.
“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.