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[Illustration: Alone in her room later ... she looked at the other
portrait]




AURORA THE MAGNIFICENT

BY

GERTRUDE HALL

AUTHOR OF "THE TRUTH ABOUT CAMILLA," "THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY," ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY GERALD LEAKE


NEW YORK

THE CENTURY CO.

1917




Copyright, 1916, 1917, by

The Century Co.

Published, March, 1917




TO

MY SISTER GRACE

WITHOUT WHOM THIS BOOK

WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN.

AND TO

MY DEAR HELEN R----,

WITHOUT WHOM IT WOULD

HAVE BEEN

DIFFERENT




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Alone in her room later ... she looked at the
other portrait                                             Frontispiece

                                                            FACING PAGE

After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the sanctuary      20

"I thought," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "that you were going to
come and take us sight-seeing"                                       82

Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find no
words to express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove            200

Gerald turned, and beheld that lady                                 272

Aurora's eyes, fixed and starry, rested upon the little flame       290

Aurora, with a comedy of pride, threw up her chin, lifted
her arms, and turned as if on a pivot                               316

"Come, let us reason together, Aurora"                              384




AURORA THE MAGNIFICENT




CHAPTER I


Near sunset, one day in early October, not too long ago for some of us
to remember with distinctness, Mr. Foss, United States consul at
Florence, Italy, took a cab, as on other days, to the Porta Romana.
Here, where the out-of-town tariff comes into effect, he paid his man,
and set out to walk the rest of the way, thus meeting the various needs
he felt: that for economy,--he was a family man with daughters to
clothe,--that for exercise,--his wife told him he was growing fat,--and
the need in general for an opportunity to think. He had found that
walking aided reflection, that walking in beautiful places started the
spring of apt and generous ideas. Though in his modest way a scholar, he
was not as yet an author, but Florence had inspired him with the desire
to write a book.

Just beyond the Roman Gate begins the long Viale dei Colli,--Avenue of
the Hills,--which climbs and winds, broad, shady, quiet, between lines
of gardens and villas, occupied largely by foreigners, to the Piazzale,
whence Michelangelo's boyish colossus gazes with a slight frown across
Florence, outspread at his feet. Mr. Foss, as he mounted the easy grade,
and noted with a liking unabated after years the pleasantness of each
habitation glimpsed through iron railings and embowering green, thought
how privileged a person should feel, after all, whose affairs involved
residence in Italy.

This recognized good fortune had not been properly tasted before another
aspect of the thing presented itself for consideration....

The consul felt a sigh trying to escape him, and turning from the images
whose obtrusion had called it up from the depths, directed his attention
to a different set of subjects, unwilling at the moment to be troubled.

The glories and iniquities of that great family whose cannon-balls--or
pills?--adorn so many of the 'scutcheons on Florentine street-corners
and palace-fronts are what he selected as the theme for his meditations,
a choice which seems less odd when we know that his book, the labor and
pleasure of his spare hours, was a study of the Medici.

He had not been busy many minutes with their supplanted policies and
extinct ambitions before these dropped back into the past whence he had
drawn them, and his mind gave itself over to an exercise more curious
than reconstructing a dead epoch. A shortish, stoutish man, with a
beginning of baldness on his crown and gray in his mustache, was trying
by the whole force of a sympathetic imagination to fit himself into the
shoes, occupy the very skin, of a delicate young girl, to look at the
world through her eyes and feel life with her pulses.

Thus absorbed, he hardly saw the posts of his own carriage gate; he
passed unnoticing between his flower-beds, up his stone steps and came
to himself only when, rubbing the hands he had just washed, he entered
the dining-room and saw his wife.

"Where are the girls?" he asked even before kissing her, for the most
casual eye must be informed by the blank look of the table that instead
of being laid for half a dozen as usual, it was prepared for a meagre
two.

Mrs. Foss was fond of sitting in the dining-room, which had a glass door
into the garden on the side farthest from the road. There she read her
book while waiting for dinnertime and her husband. The good gentleman
did not always come directly home from his office. He had the love of
dropping into dim churches, of loitering on bridges, of fingering the
junk in old shops, but he was considerately never late for dinner.

Mrs. Foss rose to receive her husband's salutation, and while answering
his question settled herself at the table; for she had caught sight of a
domestic peeping in at the door to see if the masters were there to be
served.

"Leslie and Brenda went to call on the Hunts," she gave her account,
"and presently the Hunts' man came with a note from Mrs. Hunt, asking if
the girls could stay to dine and go to the theater. A box had just been
sent them. I was very glad to give my consent. Charlie will probably be
one of the party and bring them home. Or perhaps Gerald. Or they will be
put in a cab. I was delighted of the diversion for Brenda."

"And where's Lily?"

"She, too, is off having a good time. Fräulein was invited by some
German friends who were giving a _Kinder-sinfonie_. Awful things,
if you want my opinion. She asked if she might go and take Lily, and the
poor child was so eager about it I thought I would just for once let her
sit up late. She has so few pleasures of the kind."

Mrs. Foss had helped the soup, with a ladle, out of a tureen.

It was after her husband and she had emptied their soup-plates in
companionable silence that, leaning back to wait for the next course,
she asked her regular daily question.

"Well, anything new? Anything interesting at the consulate?"

Mr. Foss seemed in good faith to be searching his mind. Then he answered
vaguely:

"No; nothing in particular." All at once he smiled a smile of
remembrance. "Yes, I saw some Americans to-day." He nodded, after an
interval, with an appearance of relish. "The real thing."

"In what way, Jerome? But, first of all, who were they?"

"Wait a moment. I stuck their cards in my pocket to show you. They came
to see me at the consulate. No, they are in my other coat. One of them
was Mrs. Something Hawthorne, the other Miss Estelle Something."

"What did they want?"

"Everything--quite frankly everything. They have grown tired of their
hotel; they speak nothing but English and don't know a soul. They came
to find out from me how to go about getting a house and servants, horses
and carriage."

"Did they think that was part of a consul's duty?"

"They didn't think. They cast themselves on the breast of a
fellow-countryman. They caught at a plank."

"A house, horses. They are rich, then."

"So one would judge. Oh, yes, they're rich in a jolly, shameless,
old-fashioned American way."

"Well, it's a nice way." Mrs. Foss added limitingly: "When they're also
generous. One has noticed, however, hasn't one,"--she seemed on second
thought to be taking back something of her approval,--"a certain
reticence, as a rule, with regard to the display of wealth in people of
any real culture?"

"These aren't, my dear. It's as plain as that they're rich. And, for a
change, let me whisper to you, I found it pleasant. Not one tiresome
word about art did they utter in connection with this, their first,
visit to Italy."

"I can see you liked them, but what you have so far said doesn't
entirely help me to see why. Rich and ignorant Americans,
unfortunately--A light breaks upon me! They were pretty!"

A twinkle came into the consul's eyes, looking over at his wife, as one
is amused sometimes by a joke old and obvious.

His pause before answering seemed filled with an effort to visualize the
persons in question.

"Upon my word, Etta, I couldn't tell you." He laughed at his inability.

"By that token they were not beauties," said the wife.

"It seems likely you are right. At the same time"--he was still mentally
regarding his visitors--"one would never think of wishing them other
than they are."

"Describe them if you can. What age women?"

"My dear, there again you have me. Let us say that they are in the
flower of life. One of them, so much I did remark, was rather more
blooming than the other. Perhaps she was younger."

"The miss?"

"The married one. But perhaps it was only the difference between a rose
and--" he searched--"let us say a bunch of mignonette. The rose--here I
believe I tread safely on the road of description--had of that flower
the roundness and solidity, if nothing else."

"Stout?"

"We will call it well developed, nobly planned. But what would be the
good of telling you the color of these ladies' hair and eyes had I
noticed it? It will help you much more effectively to pick them out in a
crowd to be told they are very American."

"Voices, too, I suppose."

"Of course. You don't strictly mean high and nasal, do you? All I can
say with any positiveness is that one of them had what I will call a
warm voice--a voice, to make my meaning quite clear, like the crimson
heart on a valentine."

"I am enlightened. Was it the mignonette one?"

"No; the hardy-garden rose."

"And what did she say to you in her warm crimson voice?"

"I have told you. She called for help."

"You said, I hope, that your wife and daughters would be very happy to
call on them and be of use if they could."

"I did."

The time-tried, well-mated friends were looking over at each other
across the table, not expressing any more than at all times the quiet,
daily desire of each to further the interests and comforts of the other.

"Where are they staying?" the lady continued to question.

"Hôtel de la Paix."

"And they haven't any letters, introductions, addresses, anything?"

"Apparently not."

"Where are they from?"

"Let me see. Did they mention it? My dear, if they did, I don't recall
it."

"New York?"

"No. If I am to guess, I shouldn't guess that."

"Out West?"

"H-m, they might be. No, I guess they're Yankees."

"Boston?"

"If so, not aggressively. Where do most people come from? There's
nothing very distinctive about most."

"Perhaps it will be on their cards."

Then the Fosses talked of other things. But when Mrs. Foss, after
dinner, went upstairs for her scarf,--it was too cool now to sit out of
doors in the evening without a wrap,--she remembered the cards, and took
them out of her husband's pocket.

"Miss Estelle Madison," she read. "Mrs. Aurora Hawthorne." There was
nothing else. She continued a little longer to look at the bits of
pasteboard in her hand. "Well-sounding names, both of them--like names
in a play. Mrs. Aurora. She's a widow, then." Mrs. Foss considered. "Or
else divorced."

                   *       *       *       *       *

Jerome Foss sat out in the garden on fine evenings with his cigar, and
watched the serene oncoming of the night, because he loved to do this.
His wife stayed with him to be company, when, without an old-fashioned
ideal of married life, her natural bent would have urged her indoors,
where the lamps were, to read or sew or even play patience. But she
lingered contentedly and all seemed to her as it should be, with the two
of them sitting near each other in their garden chairs before the family
door-stone, he smoking, she getting the benefit of it by now and then
fanning his smoke toward her face. She liked the odor.

They only spoke to each other, as is common with married people, when
they had something to say, and so were often silent for long spaces.
That they had talked a great deal lately in the seclusion of their
bedroom, away from the ears of the children, was a reason why they
should not be very communicative to-night. They had threshed out the
matter foremost in their minds so thoroughly that there could be little
to add. Now and then, however, when they were alone, scraps of
conversation would occur, part of the long discussion continued from day
to day; which fragments, isolated from their context, might have sounded
odd enough to any one overhearing.

Thus it was to-night. After half an hour without a syllable, Mrs. Foss's
voice came out of the dark.

"When I was a young girl, there was a music-master, Jerome," she opened,
with no more preface than a shooting-star. "I don't know that he was
particularly fascinating, but he seemed so to me. I suppose he was
thirty, I was seventeen or eighteen. It was during my year at Miss
Meiggs's. Whether he really did anything to win my young affections I
can't tell at this distance, but at the time I imagined all sorts of
things, that he looked at me differently from the other girls, that his
voice was different when he addressed me, that an extreme delicacy was
all that kept him from declaring his love. Oh, I used to wish on the
first star, and I used to pull daisies to pieces, and I practiced, how I
practiced! Well, there was a rich girl in the school, older than I and
not nearly so good looking. The moment she graduated he proposed to her.
How did I feel? Jerome, the sun went out for good and all the day I
heard of their engagement. It was as serious as anything could ever be
in this world.--I'm sure I have told you about that music-master before,
Jerome.--Well, and what happened? At the age of twenty-two I cheerfully
married you. And I was not a scarred and burnt-out crater either, was
I?... In the interval, let me not neglect to mention, there had been
other flirtations and minor affairs. Thank Heaven, those things pass,"
the words came out devoutly. "It seems at the time as if only death
could end it, but two or three years will do a lot. And it's God's mercy
makes it so. How else could life be carried on?"

"In my case, Etta," the consul followed her story, after an interval,
"it was a landlady's daughter. I don't believe I have ever spoken of her
to you. I was in college, but I boarded outside the buildings. I wrote
to my father and begged him to let me go into business so that I could
earlier support a wife and family. The wise man let me go down to a
fruit-farm in Florida. You have noticed that I know something about
orange-growing. It was not quite a year before the dear divinity whose
name was Lottie found it too long to wait. I posted home. The room I had
once rented from her mother was let to a handsomer man. I took up my
studies where I had dropped them, and to all appearance there was little
harm done. But for a long time I thought I should die a bachelor."

"I know. Your cousin Fannie told me about it in the early days, before
we were engaged. It all goes to show.... And there again was Selina
Blackstone, one of my girlhood friends. She had a cough and they thought
her lungs affected and sent her South. There she met an unhappy boy in
the same case, only he, as it proved, really was in a bad way with his
lungs. The poor things fell desperately in love with each other, but her
parents wouldn't hear of their marrying, in which course they were
right. Now you would have thought from her face that the separation was
going to kill her. It didn't, that's all. He died, and she married. And
it can't be said of her that she was either shallow, or fickle, or
heartless. I knew her very well. Merely, time did the work that time was
set to do."

There was in the lady's tone an effect of protest against any view,
determination against any theory, but her own.

"There are the cases like Miss Seymour's, however," Mr. Foss brought in
softly, as one calls to another's attention a lapse of memory or a slip
in logic.

"Miss Seymour? Blanche? What about her?"

"That she is Miss Seymour, my dear, and to my mind a melancholy lesson.
Because Nature so plainly had not planned her for an old maid. Her
mother--who told me? I think it was Miss Brown--interfered with her
marrying the man she wished to, and she has accepted nothing in his
place. It has been an empty life. And so it goes. One can't be sure,
Etta."

"Jerome," Mrs. Foss's voice rose to a sharper protest and firmer
rejection, "those are the cases we simply must not allow ourselves to
think about. If we begin to think of cases like that...."

She did not finish and he said no more, but in the darkness through
which the fiery point of his cigar continued for some time to glow, it
is to be feared the faces of both went on to reflect for nobody to see
the working of those thoughts precisely which Mrs. Foss had said with so
much emphasis they must guard against.




CHAPTER II


Upon a day not much later in the month--a goodly day which thousands
without a doubt were thinking all too short for the useful or merely
delectable things they wanted to do--a certain young man in Florence
would, if he could, have treated this mellow golden masterpiece of
autumn's like a bad sketch, torn it across and dropped it into the
waste-basket. What is one to do with a day when nothing that has been
invented seems enough fun to pay for the bother? He did not wish to
paint, he did not wish to read, or to play on the piano, as he sometimes
did in solitude, with one hand, to solace himself by re-framing a
remembered melody. He did not wish to go out, but was restless from
staying in. He did not want to see the face of friend or foe, but could
no longer endure to be alone.

He stood for a moment in the middle of the floor, with his hands over
his face, the ends of his fingers pressing back his eyeballs, and got in
his throat a taste of the bitter waters which he felt as a perpetual
pool in the center of his heart. Next minute he sneered at himself, like
a schoolmaster at a boy who blubbers, and without further paltering put
on his hat, took up a very slender cane with a slender grasp of yellow
ivory, and ran down the long stairs of his house to the street.

"Air and exercise, air and exercise!" This prescription he repeated to
himself, and, surely enough, in a quarter of an hour felt better.

He was on Via Tornabuoni. Passing Giacosa's, he glanced in to see if it
were any one he knew taking tea so early behind the great plate glass
window. No, they were chance English. He halted before a shop farther on
to look at a display of jewelry, wondering that there should be fools
enough in the whole world to support one such dealer in turquoise
trinkets that at once drop out their stones; crude, big mosaics, and
everlasting little composition-silver copies of the Strozzi lantern.

He crossed the street and entered the bank, where he found the usual
table strewn with weeklies and monthlies for the advantage of those
clients who must be asked to wait. He seated himself with his face so
directed that if an acquaintance should enter, he need not bow, and
turned over the magazines one after the other. It hurt him like a direct
personal injury to find these authors all alike so shallow, dishonest,
giving the public not their thought or their experience, but something,
anything, it would buy.

"A little more air and exercise is what I evidently need," said the
young man, and again went out into the streets.

He turned toward the river, and had not followed the Lungarno for more
than ten yards before it was with him as when, looking out of the window
in despair at the weather, we see a break in the clouds. His step took
on alertness; his face lighted in the very nicest way.

The young lady on whom his eyes were fastened from afar did not see him.
She came at her usual step, a happy mean between quick and slow,
accompanied by a hatless serving-woman carrying a music-roll. She looked
straight before her, but her glance was absent. The passers could not
but notice her,--she had beauty enough for that, and was besides
conspicuous in wearing a costume entirely white,--but she was not
noticing them or the eyes that turned to keep her a moment longer in
sight. She looked rather shut in herself, rather silent; not really
proud and cold, but proud and cold as the feeling and modest and young
have to look if they are to keep their sacred precincts from the
intrusions of curiosity.

The young man approaching questioned her face to see if it were sad. No,
as far as he could tell, she was not in any way troubled. At the same
time he knew that it was neither a face nor a nature to be easily read.
Still, not to find her visibly sad comforted him.

She did not recognize the young man till he was almost near enough to
touch her, and she had heard her name called, "Brenda!"

Then her face showed a genuine, if moderate, pleasure.

"Gerald!"

"What are you doing?" he asked, with the freedom of a familiarity
reaching back over long years. He shortened his step to keep time with
hers, which she at the same moment lengthened.

"I have been for my singing-lesson."

"And where are you going?"

"Home."

"I haven't seen you for ages."

"You haven't come. One never sees you, one never meets you anywhere any
more."

Her English was different from the ordinary in having occasional Italian
turns and intonations. His partook of the same defect, but in a lesser
degree.

"But I have come," he stood up for himself, "and you were all out except
Lily. Didn't she tell you I was there? We had a long talk. She told me
her plans for the future. She is going to keep a school for poor
children. We discussed their diet and their flannels and every point of
their bringing-up. We invented things to do on holidays to give them a
good time. There is only one thing I can see leaving a doubt of this
school coming into being. It is that Lily has moments, she confessed to
me, of thinking almost equally well of a castle with a moat and
drawbridge and a page to walk before her carrying her prayer-book on a
cushion. She's a funny young one."

"It's partly Fräulein."

"How are they all?"

"Well, thank you. At least, I suppose they are well." She gave a slight
laugh at the humor of this. "You could hardly imagine how little I see
of them."

"What has happened?"

"They have been going around with some new people, some Americans. They
have been helping them to shop, and showing them the way one does things
over here. Mother, you know, is always so ready."

"Your mother is a dear."

"Leslie is just like her. But I am sure they both enjoy it, too. They
have not been home to lunch for a week."

"And you?"

"Oh, I am not needed where there are already two who do the thing so
much better than I could. I have not even seen the people. My day is
very full, you know. Piano and singing-lessons, and I am painting again
this winter, with Galletti, and I am going to a course of
_conferenze_ on Italian literature. That involves a lot of reading.
There are, besides, the other, the usual things, the--" Her voice stuck;
then, as she went on, deepened with the depth of a suppressed
impatience. "I wish one might be allowed not to do what is meant for
pleasure unless one takes pleasure in it. But going to teas and parties
is apparently as much a duty as school or church. Mother and Leslie at
least seem to think it so for me."

"I see their point, Brenda dear, don't you?" He was not looking at her
as with a gentle brotherliness he spoke this.

"You don't go to many parties yourself, Gerald."

"I am afraid nothing I do is fit to be an example to anybody. But it
doesn't matter about me. About you it does. I can't say to you all I
think. It would sound fulsome, and from such an old chum might make you
laugh. But, being as you are, Brenda, surely your mother is right in
thinking of _le monde_ as the proper setting for you. You know I'm
not fond of _le monde_, but it's because it hasn't enough such
ornaments as yourself. With the life that lies before you--"

"Who can possibly know what my life will be?" the girl asked quickly,
almost roughly.

"True, Brenda. I dare say I am talking like a fool." He left off,
wondering that for a moment he should actually have been speaking on the
side of convention.

They walked a few rods in silence. They had crossed the bridge, and were
headed for Porta Romana, the handmaiden trotting in their tracks, when
at a corner Gerald stopped, and, as if to change the subject, or to
regain favor by a felicitous suggestion, said:

"Do you remember my telling you of a painting I came upon in a little
old church on this street? _Scuola di Giotto_, they call it, but
the thing is undoubtedly Sienese. Have you the time? Shall we take a
moment to see it?"

"I should be glad. If you will walk home with me afterward, Gerald, I
might tell Gemma she can go."

There was an exchange of Italian between the young lady and the maid,
after which the latter turned, and with a busy, delighted effect about
the rear view of her walked back across the bridge to spend her gift of
an hour in what divertisements we shall never know.

The church was closed. Gerald pulled the bell-handle of the next door. A
priest opened to them, and, seeing at a glance what was wanted, guided
them through a white-washed corridor to a living-room where a crucifix
hung on the wall and the table had a red cloth; by this into a dim and
stony sacristy, whence they emerged into the back of a darkling little
church, with shadowy candlesticks and kneeling-benches, the whole full
of a cold, complex odor of old incense and old humanity and, one could
fancy, old prayers.

The priest brought a lighted taper and, crossing to one of the side
altars, held it near the painting, which was all that well-dressed
people ever came for outside of hours.

The reddish light trembled over the figure of a majestic virgin, in the
diadem and mantle of a princess, bearing the palm of martyrs in her
hand. It was a very simple and noble face, beautiful in a separate way,
which not every one would perceive, so little in common had it with the
present-day fair ladies whose photographs are sold.

Gerald had taken the light from the priest's hands and was lifting,
lowering, shading it, experimenting, to bring out all that might still
be seen of the withdrawn image on its faintly glinting field of gold.
His face was keen with interest; the love of beautiful things in this
moment of satisfaction smoothed away from it every line of dejection and
irritability.

Brenda was examining the picture with an attention equal to his, but, if
one might so describe it, of a different color. Her admiration got its
life largely from Gerald's, whose tastes in art she was in the habit of
adopting blindfold. Of this, however, she was not aware, and gazed doing
good to her soul by the conscious and deliberate contemplation of a
masterpiece.

"Do you remember a great calm, white figure in the communal palace at
Siena?" Gerald asked, "with other figures of Virtues on the same wall?
Doesn't this remind you of them?"

Brenda answered abstractedly:

"Yes," and continued to look. "How amazing they are!" she fervently
exclaimed. He supposed she meant the saint's hands or eyes, but she
explained, "The Italians."

He did not take up the idea either to agree or to dispute; his mind was
busy with one Italian only, the painter of the picture before him.

The young girl's interest flagged sooner than his own; he felt her melt
from his side while he continued seeking proof in this detail and that
of the painter's identity.

When he turned to find her and to follow, she was kneeling on one of the
wooden forms, her gloved hands joined, her face toward the high altar.

He approved the courtesy of it, done, as he knew, in order that the
priest, who stood aside, waiting for them to finish, should not think
these barbarians who came into his church to see a work of art had no
respect for his shrines and holies. Having returned the light to the
priest Gerald himself, while waiting for Brenda, took a melancholy
religious attitude, his hat and cane held against his breast, and sent
his thoughts gropingly upward, where the solitary thing they encountered
was his poor mother in heaven. Heaven and the changes undergone by those
who enter there he could never make very real to himself. He thought of
her as she used to be, affectionate and ill.

At the stir of Brenda rising from her knees he, too, stirred, ready to
depart. She was bowing to the altar, making an obeisance so deep, so
beautifully reverent, that the priest could never have guessed she was
not a Catholic. After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the
sanctuary, like one with last fond words to say after the farewell; and
this excess of either regard for the priest's feelings or else a
devoutness he had not suspected in her quickened Gerald's attention. And
there in the dimness he saw what he had not seen in the broad light of
day, that his friend's little face, which had presented the effect of a
house with all the blinds drawn down, was lighted up behind the
blinds--oh, lighted as if for a feast!

He felt himself at sea. He had thought he knew the circumstances. Some
part, of course, nobody could know unless Brenda chose to tell them. But
what reason there should be for positive joy--

A suspicion flashed across his mind. He looked at her more closely, and
put it away.

She might have been the wisest of the virgins, the one who before any
other heard the music of the bridegroom and was first to light her lamp.
She stood as if listening to his footsteps.

[Illustration: After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the
sanctuary]

That such a simile should have been possible to Gerald shows how much
the expression of Brenda's face centered attention on itself, for her
white serge dress was in the fashion of that year, and it was not a
fashion to be remembered with any artistic joy. Gerald was never
reconciled to it.

He had the power to detach himself and at will see persons as if he
looked at them for the first time. So for a moment he saw Brenda as a
thing solely of form and color, a white shape against a ground of gloom,
and took new account of the fact that the little girl who had had
pigtails when he first knew her, and gone to the _Diaconesse_ with
lunch-basket and satchel of books, had from one season to the next,
stealthily, as it were, and while his back was turned, become beautiful.

More than that. He was looking at Brenda--he recognized it with a pulse
of exquisite interest--in her exact and particular hour. He had
surprised a rose at its moment of transition from bud to bloom, that
delicate and perfect moment when the natural beauty which women and
fruits and flowers have in common, reaching its height, hangs
poised--for such a pitifully short time, alas!--before it changes, if
not declines, to something less dewily fresh, less heart-movingly
untouched, less complete.

The artist could not long in this case be regarding the girl as part of
a picture; his human relation to the owner of that lifted profile
brought him back to wondering in what the quiet ecstasy it breathed
could have its source. He was touched by it, by the whole character, at
the moment, of her face, with its strength so nullified by gentleness.

When the will is strong and nature sensitive, what arms has youth with
which to prevail? What but the power to keep still and hold on? Nothing
was in Brenda's face so marked as that power, except, in this moment of
undisguise, while she thought herself unwatched, its singular happiness,
a mingling of tenderness, dedication, hope.

The genuine sympathy he felt for her made Gerald deserving of the
intuition that blessed him while he stood there trying to divine. An
interpretation of her secret offered itself, worthier of him as of her
than the suspicion of erewhile; one so beautiful, indeed, that he felt
uplifted by standing in its presence. All he had most cared for in his
life, the things that had touched and inspired him,--visions of
painters, dreams of poets, scenes of beauty, sweet of human
intercourse,--all the influences that make life dignified and fair,
seemed in their essence to be in the air around him, like scents of
flowers in the dark....

The wish to pray came over him again, yet he wanted to weep, too,
because as soon as his heart expanded a little the rusty splinter of a
knife corroding there reminded him that lofty sentiments, sincerities,
idealisms, have as their fruit in this life--dust, derision! He wondered
that without being any older one could feel as old as he did while
watching Brenda transfigured by her poor young dream.

Now for the second time she curtseyed to the altar. The priest moved,
Gerald moved, all three passed up the aisle, to a faint chink of coins
in Gerald's pocket where he groped for a fee. At the main altar the
priest dipped a rapid genuflexion.

As soon as they were outside Brenda began to talk about the picture, to
ask questions, as if the art of the Italians had been of all things
nearest to her heart, and Gerald was drawn into holding in the street
while they walked a sort of lecture on the primitives.

All the while, in an independent corner of his brain he was reflecting
upon the absurdity of supposing that because he was an old familiar of
the Fosses, and so fond of them all, he knew anything of their affairs
these days, when he saw them so seldom. Ever so many things could have
happened without his knowledge. The girls might have new friends and
admirers just as they had hats and dresses that he had never seen.

They were making their way while talking toward Porta Romana, and were
often obliged to step off the narrow sidewalk to make room for other
passers, the street being busy at that time of day.

Brenda was in the midst of an entirely pertinent remark when her voice
softly died, like the flame of a candle sucked out by a draft or like a
music-box run down. Gerald, looking round for the end of her sentence,
saw that she had sighted an acquaintance on the other side of the
street.

She nodded, without a smile, slowly. Just so must Beatrice have bowed in
these same streets of Florence when she passed the dreamy passionate
youth through whom we are acquainted with her name.

Gerald's eyes traveled across the way to see who might be the recipient
of the lady's most sweet salute, and hurriedly uncovered to an officer
of the Italian army who, holding his hand to his cap, stood at attention
till the two had passed.

Was the man pale or was it that one had never before noticed, meeting
him indoors and at evening, how strongly the black of his mustache and
brows contrasted with his skin? The suspicion that had for a moment
troubled Gerald in church returned as a stronger infection. Had Brenda
expected this? Did they concert such meetings?

He might have said to himself that a tryst which consisted in crossing
glances from opposite sides of the street was very innocent. In a moment
he did see that as the villas _fuori la porta_ must be reached
through the _porta_, a lover whose lady lived on Vial dei Colli
might without previous arrangement hope for a glimpse of her by walking
in its neighborhood.

As we have seen him doing more than once this afternoon, Gerald here
tried to get his clue from Brenda herself, her face, her atmosphere. Yet
he knew, as has already been said, that it was Brenda Foss's way to keep
these as much as she could from telling anything to the world. This
wariness notwithstanding a tinge of unaccustomed rose had spread through
the clear white of her cheek; her eyes had in them noticeably more life.
Emotion or mere self-consciousness?

On one point only he was satisfied: Brenda had done nothing that
involved deceit. Into the very structure of her face, which had almost
nothing left of the American look, was built a certain Puritan
truthfulness. She could conceal if she must, but hated to shuffle, to
prevaricate. She concealed exactly because of that.

"Go on with the Sienese masters, Gerald," she bade him, collectedly. "I
am listening, and learning a lot."

As they passed under the great arch of the Roman Gate, Gerald was saying
modestly:

"I don't know anything about them, really. I've just been impressed by a
thing or two. This Lorenzetti, for instance--" And so on up the
_viale_ to the house.

In the drawing-room they found Mrs. Foss and Leslie, who, just home from
town, tired and thirsty, had had tea brought to them, and were
strengthening themselves before even taking off their hats.

Their welcome to Gerald was mingled with reproaches of the sort that
flatters more than it hurts.

"It's perfect ages since we saw you. We thought you had forgotten us.
What have you been doing this long, long time?"

"It is you, who are never at home, my dear friends," Gerald took his
turn. "I was here a fortnight or so ago. Didn't Lily tell you? Of course
she told you, and you have forgotten, so it's I, properly, who should be
calling names."

"Have you been quite well, Gerald?" Mrs. Foss asked in her maternal
voice, after a more careful look at him.

"Certainly."

"I am glad you have come. I have been on the point more than once of
sending for you, but the days fly so! We have been busy, too."

She had poured cups of tea for Gerald and Brenda. All four were seated
and refreshing themselves.

It was a very large room, but a corner had been so arranged as to look
shut in and cozy. There stood the tea-table convenient to the sofa and,
surrounding it, a few chosen chairs in which one could sink and lean
back and be comfortable.

"Have you had a tiring day?" Brenda asked her mother, somewhat as if she
were tired herself at the mere thought of such a day as she supposed her
mother to have had.

"No," Mrs. Foss answered briskly; "it's rather fun. I don't mean that
one doesn't get tired after a fashion. Has Brenda told you, Gerald, how
we have lately been occupied?"

"Some new people, I think she said."

"Yes, some nice, funny Americans."

"Funny, you say?"

"I say it fondly, Gerald. Let me tell you a little about them, and you
will see what I mean. They are going to spend the winter here and wanted
a house. What house do you think they selected?"

"You really mustn't set me riddles, Mrs. Foss."

"For years we have seen it every time we drive to the Cascine, and seen
it with a certain curiosity--always deserted, always with closed blinds,
in its way the most beautiful house in Florence."

"The most--I can't think what house you mean."

"Of course not, with your tastes. But imagine some nice, rich Americans,
without either art education or the smallest affectation of such a
thing, and ask yourself what they would like. Why, a big, square,
clean-looking, new-looking, wealthy-looking house, of course, set in a
nice garden, with, at the end of the garden, a nice stable. I was
thankful to find the place had been kept up."

"But is there--on the Lungarno, did you say?"

"It is that house we have called the Haughty Hermitage, Gerald," Brenda
helped him.

"Oh, that! But surely one doesn't live in a house like that!"

"Your excellent reason?" inquired Leslie.

"I don't know,"--he hesitated,--"but surely one doesn't live in a house
like that!"

They had to laugh at the expression brought into his face by his sense
of a mysterious incongruity.

"No," he went on with knitted brows to reject the idea; "a house like
that--one doesn't come all the way from America to live in a house which
has no more atmosphere than that!"

"Ah, but that's the point, Gerald," said Mrs. Foss. "What you call
atmosphere these people avoid as they would an unsanitary odor.
Atmosphere! What would you say if you saw the things Leslie and I have
been helping them to buy and put into it! I love to buy, you know, even
when not for myself. I thought with joy, 'Now I shall at least go
through the form of acquiring certain objects I have lusted after for
years.' Delightful old things Jerome has discovered in antiquarians'
places, and that we shall never be able to afford. Do you think I could
persuade them to take one of these? I represented that the worm-holes
could be stopped up and varnished over, that the missing bits of inlay,
precious crumbs of pearl and ivory, could be replaced, the tapestries
renovated. In vain. They want everything new--hygienically new, fresh,
and shining. And, Gerald, prejudice apart, the idea is not without its
good side. The result is not so bad as you may think. Why, after all,
should my taste, your taste, prevail in their house, will you tell me?"

"For no reason in the world. This liberal view comes the easier to me
that I do not expect ever to see the interesting treasures you may have
collected from Peyron's and Janetti's."

"If it were no worse than that!" put in Leslie, and laughed a covered
laugh.

Mrs. Foss explained, after a like little laugh of her own.

"You see, things that we have seen till we have utterly ceased to see
them, the things that nobody who really lives in Florence ever dreams of
buying, are new to these people. They _love_ them. As a result, you
can guess. There will be in their apartments alabaster plates with
profiles of Dante and Michelangelo on a black center. There will be
mosaic tables with magnolias and irises. There will be Pliny's doves.
Think of it! There will be green bronze lamps and lizards--"

"And the fruit--tell about that, Mother!" Leslie prompted.

"There will be on the sideboard in the dining-room a perpetual dish of
magnificent fruit, marble, realistic to a degree. You know the kind."

"And you could stand by and let them--you and Leslie!" spoke Brenda, in
an astonishment almost seriously reproachful.

"My dear," Leslie took up their common defense, "one's feeling in this
case is: What does it matter? A little more, a little less.... It all
goes together. When they have those curtains, they might as well have
that fruit."

"At the same time, my dear children, let me tell you that the effect is
not displeasing," insisted Mrs. Foss. "Such at least is my humble
opinion. In its way it's all right. They are people of a certain kind,
and they have bought what they like, not what they thought they ought to
like. Thousands of people, if it were not for you artists perverting
them, would be thinking a marble lemon that you can't tell from a real
one a rare and dear possession. These people haven't known any artists.
They are innocent."

"They're awfully good fun," Leslie started loyally in to make up for
anything she had said which might seem to savor of mockery or dispraise.
"One enjoys being with them, if they aren't our usual sort. They are in
good spirits, really good--good spirits with roots to them. And that's
such a treat these days!"

From which it was supposable that Leslie had been living in circles
where the gaiety was hollow. The suggestion did not escape Gerald. But,
then, Leslie, just turned twenty-four, was rather given to judging
_these days_ as if she remembered something less modern, an
affectation found piquant by her friends in a particularly
young-looking, blond girl with a short nose. Gerald might have hoped
that her sigh meant nothing had not Leslie, awake to the implication of
her remark as soon as she had made it, gone hurriedly on to call
attention away from it.

"Yes, it's pleasant to be with them. It's a change. The world seems
simple and life easy. Life _is_ easy, with all that money. Besides,
Mrs. Hawthorne really is something of a dear. After all, if people make
much of one, one is pretty sure to like them. Haven't you found it so,
Gerald?"

"I don't know. I am trying to remember if there is anybody who has made
much of me."

"_We_ have made much of you."

"And don't think I temperately like you. I adore you all, as you well
know. You're the only people I do. By that sign there has been nobody
else kind enough to make much of me."

"You're so bad lately, Gerald; that's why," Mrs. Foss affectionately
chide him. "You never go anywhere. You neglect your friends. What have
you been doing with yourself? Is it work?"

"No; not more than usual. I work, but I'm not exactly absorbed--obsessed
by it. I don't know--" He seemed to search, and after a moment summed up
his vague difficulties: "It seems a case for quoting 'Hamlet.'" He was
bending forward, his elbows resting on his knees, as they could do
easily, his chair being low and his thin legs long. His thin, long hands
played with that slender cane of his, which he had set down and taken up
again, while he tried to recall the passage, and mumbled snatches of it:
"'This goodly firmament--congregation of vapors--Man delights not
me--no, nor'--the rest of it."

"But it won't do, Gerald dear; it won't do at all," Mrs. Foss addressed
him anxiously, between scolding and coaxing. "Shake yourself, boy! Force
yourself a little; it will be good for you. _Make_ yourself go to
places till this mood is past. What is it? Bad humor, spleen,
hypochondria? It doesn't belong with one of your age. We miss you
terribly, dear. Here we have had two of our Fridays, and you have not
been. And we have always counted on you. Charming men are scarce at
parties the world over. The Hunts have begun their little dances, too.
One used to see you there. And at Madame Bentivoglio's. She was asking
what had become of you. Promise, Gerald, that we shall see you at our
next Friday! We want to make it a nice, gay season. Will you promise?
Oh, here's Lily. Why didn't you tell us, Lily, that Gerald had come to
see us when we were out?"

A long-legged, limp-looking little girl with spectacles had come in. A
minute before she had been passing the door on her way to walk, and
catching the sound of a male voice in the drawing-room, insisted upon
listening till she had made sure whose it was. At the name Gerald she
had pulled away from her governess and burst into the drawing-room.

She stood still a moment after this impulsive entrance, and the
governess turned toward Mrs. Foss a face that, benign and enlightened
though it was, called up the memory of faces seen in good-humored German
comic papers. The expression of her smile said to the company that she
was guiltless in the matter of this invasion. Could one use severity
toward a little girl who suffered from asthma and weak eyes?

Lily, after her pause, went half shyly, half boldly to Gerald. He did
not kiss her,--she was ten years old,--but placed an arm loosely around
her as she stood near his knee.

"Did you forget it, Lily?"

"No, Mother, I didn't forget, but I never thought to speak of it. You
didn't tell me to, did you, Gerald?"

"No, we had so much else to talk about. Well, Lily, have you decided
what color the uniform must be for our orphanage? The thing is
important. It makes a great difference in an orphan's disposition
whether she goes dressed in a dirty gray or a fine, bright apricot
yellow."

"Gerald,"--Lily lowered her voice to make their conversation more
private,--"will you be the cuckoo?" As he gazed, she went earnestly on:
"We can't find anybody to do the cuckoo. I am going to be the
nightingale. Fräulein is going to be the drum. Leslie is going to be the
_Wachtel_. Mother is going to be the triangle. Brenda will play the
piano. Papa says that if he is to take part he must be the one who sings
on the comb and tissue-paper. But I am afraid to let him. You know he
hasn't a good ear. That leaves the cuckoo, the comb, and the rattle
still to find before we can have our _Kinder-sinfonie_. Which
should you like to be, Gerald?"

"What an opening for musical talent! But, my dear little lady, I'm not a
bit of good. I can't follow music by note any more than a cuckoo. I am
so sorry."

"But, Gerald, all you have to do is--"

"I have told you, Lili," said the governess in German, "that we would
take the gardener's boy and drill him for the cuckoo. Come now quickly,
dear child; we must go for our walk."

The casual, unimportant talk of ordinary occasions went on after the
interruption.

"And what do you hear from that charming friend of yours, the abbé,
Gerald?" And, "I hope you have good news from your son, Mrs. Foss." And,
"Do you know whether the Seymours have come back from the country?"

Gerald left the Fosses, warmed by his renewed sense of their friendship,
and believing that he would go very soon again to see them. But he did
not, and his feeling of shame was more definite than his gratitude when
he in time received a note from Mrs. Foss, kind as ever, asking him to
dine.




CHAPTER III


There was dancing at the Fosses' on two Fridays in the month. It was
their contribution toward the gaiety of the winter. They did not often
give a formal dinner, and when such an entertainment appeared to be
called for from them, planned it with forethought to make it serve as
many ends as it would. Every careful housewife will understand.

It was with Leslie that Mrs. Foss talked such matters over. The eldest
daughter was so sufficient as adjutant that one did not inquire whether
Brenda would have been useful if needed. The latter took no part in the
domestic councils which had for object to decide who should be asked to
dinner and of what the dinner should consist.

The question whom to invite to meet Professor Longstreet had taken Mrs.
Foss and Leslie time and reflection. The Fosses' only son had a great
regard for this man, one of the faculty during his period at Harvard,
and now that the travels of the professor's sabbatical year brought him
to Florence, the family was anxious to entertain him as dear John,
studying medicine in far-off Boston, would have wished.

The professor was engaged upon a new translation of the "Divine Comedy."
The guests had therefore better be chosen among their literary
acquaintance, thought Mrs. Foss. But Leslie was of the opinion that they
would do better to make the requisite just any gift or grace, and keep
an eye on having the company compose well and the table look beautiful.

When she reminded her mother that a dinner was owing the Balm de Brézés,
and that this would be a chance to pay the debt, Mrs. Foss objected:

"But I want to ask Gerald. I felt sorry for him last time he came. We
must look after him a little bit, you know."

Leslie did not show herself in any wise disposed to set aside Gerald's
claim, but expressed the idea that Gerald probably would not mind
meeting the De Brézés now. After all, the memories sweet and sour
associated with them had had time to lose their edge. And they could be
seated at the opposite end of the table.

It was finally decided to ask the Balm de Brézés, Gerald, the Felixsons,
Miss Cecilia Brown, and Gideon Hart, all intelligent, all people who
could talk. It was further frugally resolved to have the dinner on a
Friday and let it be followed by the usual evening party, thus making
the same embellishment of the house do for two occasions, as well as
augmenting their visitor's opportunity to make acquaintance with the
Anglo-American colony in Florence.

                   *       *       *       *       *

All had been going so well, the guests were in such happy and talkative
form, that the minor matter of taking food had dragged, and the diners
were not ready to rise when a servant whispered to Mrs. Foss that the
first evening guest had arrived.

Mrs. Foss's eyes found those of Leslie, who understood the words
soundlessly framed, and excused herself from the table.

In the garnished and waiting drawing-room, lighted with candles, like a
shrine, and looking vast, with the furniture taken out of the way, she
found the Reverend Arthur Spottiswood, of whom it was not easy to think
that eagerness to dance had driven him to come so sharply on time. He
looked serious-minded, almost somber, and Leslie, though prepared to be
vivacious with peer or pauper, found it all duty and little fun to make
conversation with him until the next arrival should come to her relief.
The gentleman was Brenda's adorer, but Brenda would never, if she could
help it, let him have one moment with her. His love-charged eye inspired
in her the simple desire to flee. Singularly, this was, with one notable
exception, beautiful Brenda's only conquest, while Leslie, who was just
ordinarily pretty and wore a pince-nez, received tribute and proposals
from almost every unattached young fellow who drifted inside the circle
of her wide invisible net. Boys in particular had to pass through her
hands, receive good advice from her, be encouraged in their work,
cheered in their distance from home, and refused, and consoled for the
refusal, and sent away finally rather improved than otherwise. With very
little sentiment, she had a kind and cozy quality, like her mother.

The Satterlees were next to arrive, mother with son and daughter, and
Leslie was warm as never before in her welcome to them. The Reverend
Arthur was gently shed from her and with pleasure picked up by Isabel
Satterlee, who was charmed to have any kind of man to talk with.

Then arrived a group of unrelated people living for the moment at the
same pension in town and coming in the same conveyance. Among them was
Percy Lavin, who had the extraordinary tenor voice, and along with it an
exuberance of confidence in his future that made him as destructive of
coherence in company as a large frisking pup. Leslie had at the very
first meeting felt that it would be her sacred mission to attend to that
young man.

The hired pianist had come, he was unrolling his sheets of dance-music
and rolling them the contrary way. Mr. Hunt, the English banker, with
his wife and daughters, had come; and Maestro Vannuccini with his
signora on his arm; and a glittering young officer or two; and Landini,
Hunt's partner; and Charlie Hunt, the banker's nephew.

Charlie, bold through long acquaintance, asked, "Where are the others?"

Leslie told him, whereupon the young man said "Oh!" and his "Oh" sounded
blank, whether because it was apparent to him through her answer that
there had been indiscretion in his question, or because he wondered at
there being a dinner-party in this house and he not asked to it. Leslie
paid no attention, for at that moment the diners were beginning to
appear.

The drawing-room had two doors in the same wall: people coming from the
dining-room would enter by one of these, while those who came from the
street entered by the other, after passing through the small
reception-room where they left their things, and the larger
reception-room intervening between this and the drawing-room. Charlie
Hunt, talking with Mrs. Satterlee, let a casual eye roll away from her
middle-aged agreeableness to see who was entering by that different door
from the one which had given him passage. Curiosity, pure and simple.

Ah, so. Madame Balm de Brézé, spare, sharp, high-nosed, beaked and
clawed like a bird--a picked bird. Very elegant. It was clear to Charlie
Hunt why with a dinner to give one should care to secure her and her
husband. They looked so fiendishly aristocratic.

The Felixsons. Naturally. Felixson had to be asked when the guest of
honor was a scholar. Mrs. Felixson's warm brilliancy to-night bore
testimony to a good dinner. Abundance of meats and wines always turned
her a burning pink. It looked to Charlie like a new frock she was
wearing; he did not remember seeing her in it before.

Gideon Hart, the old sculptor. It was his picturesque white hair and
beard that people liked to see at their tables, for the old fellow,
thought Hunt, was phenomenally a bore. In this case patriotism explained
his presence. America quaintly loved his name.

And Cecilia Brown. But was it really Cecilia?... What had she been doing
to herself?... Oh. Her hair. Her hair was cropped and curled all over
her head like wicked Caracalla's. That was the fashion in England, he
had heard, where she had been spending the summer.

But who was this, at the end of the procession, after Mrs. Foss and
Brenda and the consul?

Hunt had a genuine surprise. Gerald Fane.

Now, wherefore Gerald Fane rather than Charlie Hunt?

Mrs. Foss, coming into the drawing-room, felt a glow of pleasure at the
scene meeting her eyes. The occasion, the success of it, had lifted life
for her above its usual plane. She could feel how blessed she was in
ways she did not sufficiently consider on common days when common cares
blinded her. It was a beautiful home, this of hers; here was a beautiful
room, with its mirrors and flowers and candle-light and happy guests.
She smiled at everybody and everything with a brooding sweetness.

Her sense of herself was satisfactory too at the moment. She felt her
dress--an old one, rejuvenated--to be becoming. She was young to have
grown children. Her blond hair did not show the silver threads among it.
She was as handsome in her older way as she had been when young, and she
was sure she was nicer. She had family and friends, all full of regard
for her. Her smile reflected the state of her mind and did one good to
see.

Her eyes resting upon Brenda--whom the reverend Arthur had tried to
capture the moment she appeared, and been baffled--Mrs. Foss in the
optimism of her mood said to herself that all would very likely go well
in that quarter; they ought not to worry as they did.

The pianist had struck up a polka. One still danced the polka in those
days, and the schottische and the dear old lancers, though the waltz was
already the favorite.

The floor was at first sparsely, then ever more thickly, sown with
hopping and revolving couples. Hunt, one arm curled around a young waist
in pink muslin, had enough of his mind to spare from the amount of talk
one has breath for while dancing to continue in a line of thought
started by an annoying little smart where a shred of skin had been
rubbed off his vanity when he saw Gerald come from the dining-room. He
mentally looked at himself and looked at Gerald, and after comparing the
pictures felt his astonishment increase. He could admit, as an excuse
for inviting Gerald instead of himself, that Gerald was an artist, and
this dinner had presumably been planned with the idea of having it
literary-artistic. But then--an artist! Gerald was so little of one. One
never heard of his selling a painting. In the darkest corners of his
friends' rooms you sometimes discovered one of his queer things--a gift,
hung there as a compliment. One might, furthermore, grant that it did
not matter that a man should be agreeable in appearance. But Gerald was
not even agreeable in disposition; he did not try to make himself
agreeable. What did the Fosses see in him?

The music had worked through a mighty flourish to a banging final chord.
Hunt escorted his lady to a chair, took the fan from her hand to fan her
with,--himself a little, too,--and while talking let his dark eye stray
from her and go roving, as was the habit of his eye.

It plunged through an open door into the quietly lighted library, where
the consul and his distinguished guest and a few more of the older or
staider people had withdrawn from the tumult and were having smokes and
conversation. They were considering a marble fragment, passing it from
hand to hand.

Hunt knew that fragment, and at sight of it looked cynical. The consul,
who had discovered it immured in an ancient garden-wall, believed it to
have been carved by Orcagna.

Old Hart had it in his hand. What he said could hardly be heard at that
distance; he passed it to Gerald with a look that seemed to ask for
corroboration. Gerald held it long and gazed seriously, with that
conceit in his own judgment which made him sometimes dispute the
attributions in no less a gallery than the Uffizi--say that a Verocchio
was not a Verocchio, a Giorgione not a Giorgione.

Charlie strained to catch some syllable of what he said. Vainly. The
pianist was preluding. Bertie Bentivoglio came to ask the girl in pink
to dance with him. From the chair she left empty Charlie moved nearer to
the library door, of half a mind to join the group in there. But Gerald,
upon whom Leslie had impressed it that he must do his duty and let there
be no wall-flowers, when the prelude had developed into a waltz returned
the marble into Hart's hand and came to the door. Whereupon Charlie
changed his mind and after saying "Hello, Gerald!" turned again, and the
young men stood looking over the scene side by side, two figures
contrasting in reality nearly as much as they did in Charlie's mental
image of them for purposes of comparison.

Any Rosina who sold buttonhole bouquets at the theater door could have
seen that Charlie was handsome, with his pale brown smoothness and
regularity of feature; the pretty mustache accentuating and not
concealing the neat and agreeable mold of his lip; the fine whiteness of
his teeth, his civilized and silken look altogether. The defects of his
face, if one could call them that, did not appear at first glance or
even at second. His forehead had begun to gain on his hair,--it ran up
at the sides in two points,--and his slightly prominent eyes were brown
in the same sense as a horn button or a bit of chestnut-shell is
brown,--while some eyes that we remember were brown like woodland pools
with autumn leaves at the bottom! He did not look English, yet did not
look quite Italian either. He was in fact both, and the thing evenly
balanced. The banker Hunt's brother had married an Italian; Charlie had
been born in Italy and hardly ever stirred out of it; on the other hand
he had found his society largely among the English and Americans in
Florence.

As he stood there, conforming gracefully to a recognized canon of manly
beauty, his neighbor Gerald, who would not have been noticed one way or
the other for his looks, yet from being beside him took on an
indescribable effect of eccentricity. The bone showed plainly around his
eye-sockets and at the bridge of his nose. One eyebrow became different
from the other the moment he regarded a thing analytically; and when he
smiled those who noticed such things could detect that nature had marked
him for recognition: there showed beneath his mustache three of the
broad front middle teeth whereof two are the common portion. For the
remainder, a slight beard veiled the character of his chin and jaw and a
little disguised the thinness of his throat. Above a large forehead his
dark hair rose on end in a bristling bank, like that of most Italian men
at the time. He looked solitary, unsociable, critical, but not
altogether ungentle. His forehead was full of the suggestion of
thoughts, his gray-blue eyes were full of the reflection of feelings,
that you could be comfortably sure he would not trouble you with.

"Well, Gerald, what are you doing with yourself these days?" asked
Charlie as they stood looking on, delaying to seek partners for the
dance. "Immortal masterpieces?"

This innocuous playfulness somehow jarred. Gerald looked down at Charlie
from the side of his eye,--he was by a couple of inches or so the
taller,--then asked in his turn, a little crustily:

"Do you really want to know?"

"Why, no, my dear fellow, I don't, if that's your reply. It was not
curiosity. I was only showing an amiable interest." His tone conveyed
that he had intended no offense and refused to take any; the
disagreeableness should be all on the same side.

"Thank you for the interest. I am doing much as usual," Gerald answered,
placated.

"Who is this professor from America whom the very select are invited to
meet?" Charlie asked after an interval, as if they had been on the best
of terms again.

The playfulness again was innocent, again might have been regarded as
almost an attempt to flatter; nevertheless it again jarred upon Gerald.
It was by an effort that he answered soberly and literally, without
betraying that the point of irony had irritated him, as, he did not
doubt, it was meant to irritate.

"Another translation of Dante?" Charlie made merry, when Gerald had
finished telling as much as he knew about the professor. "I tell you
what--I will set myself to translating the 'Divine Comedy'! It will give
me distinction, and then--it 's very simple,--I will never show my
translation!"

There was surely no harm in this. It was just stupid. Charlie's
_esprit_ was never of any fineness. He and Gerald had known each
other from the days when both went to M. Demonget's school, whence,
without having been friends, they had emerged intimates. It would have
been ridiculous for either to try to impress the other by the profundity
of his thoughts. Charlie was right in thinking of himself as standing in
a relation to Gerald that made him free to expose ideas in their
undress. And yet it was on this evening and this occasion that Gerald
said to himself for the first time definitely that he did not like
Charlie Hunt. An antipathy existing perhaps from the beginning had risen
to the point where it crossed the threshold of consciousness. No, he
neither liked nor thought well of him.

Luckily, it did not much matter, their relations were superficial.
Belonging in the same circles they must meet from time to time; but if
Gerald avoided him whenever it was decently feasible, he need not often
suffer as at this moment from the repressed nervous need to repudiate in
explicit terms his person, his society, his manners, his morals,
everything that was his. By way of beginning this avoidance, Gerald cast
his eyes more particularly about him in search of a partner. Charlie's
eyes too were wandering over the small and scattered number of ladies
still available to late comers.

Both of them knew every one present. Charlie had picked out with his eye
a still youthful mama, who would not, he believed, refuse to dance, but
would jest and appear flattered and, when after some hesitation she
consented, lean in his arms only a little more heavily than her
daughter. Gerald had singled a slender, faded woman in garments of ivory
lace, who, seated near Mme. Vannuccini in the far corner of the room,
was devoting herself to conversation as if she really had not cared to
dance. Gerald was moved to go and give her the chance of refusing, if
she were in total earnest. He remembered Blanche Seymour as a passionate
dancer still when he began to go to grownup parties.

Now her hair was gray, her face had lines, but she did not look
accustomed to them; there was plaintiveness in her expression, as if she
had been a young girl, really, made up for an elderly part in
theatricals, and did not like her part. It was some sense of this which
was attracting Gerald to her across the room. Leslie had ordered him to
dance, so dance he must. But the glare of festivity all around him did
something to his inner self comparable to a light too bright making the
eyes ache. Leslie would have told him that he picked up his party by the
wrong end. The general gaiety instead of infecting him, reinforced his
feeling that everybody, beneath the surface, was perplexed, bleeding,
afraid of the future, and had good cause to be.

The dinner had been interesting,--he had not been much affected, he was
glad to find, by the presence of the De Brézés,--but he had risen from
it haunted by the conviction that the Fosses were not happy. Nobody, if
one examined into it, was happy; all this pretense was pathetic to the
point of dreariness. Gerald knew everybody's affairs to some extent,
after spending most of his life in the same community, and a little city
where gossip is an elegant occupation. This person had made bad
investments; that one was crippled by the necessity to pay a son's
debts; this couple did not live in harmony, the husband was said to be
infatuated with a dancer. The fact that so much of their own fault
entered into people's misfortunes, while rousing rage, forced him to
pity, because the limitation of their intelligence had so much to do
with people's faults. He was in fact oppressed by the sense of the
limits set to all the lives around him in this beautiful little
Florence, his home, his love, sometimes his despair: the narrow actual
opportunities after the boundless illusions and hopes of youth; the
limited outlook, the limited breathing-room, the limited fortunes. Bars
at the windows, closed doors on every hand.

It was with the feeling that Miss Seymour was no more truly in holiday
spirits than was he that he turned toward her, as toward a spot of
shadow amid too fervid sunshine. It would be more congenial, drifting
with her to the languid measure of this very modern, morbidly emotional
waltz, knowing that, whatever their light talk, they alike felt life to
be a sad affair, than going through livelier evolutions with a young
person who would secretly desire him to flatter and flirt. An instinct
founded less upon male conceit than knowledge of his world drove the
young bachelor determined to remain unattached to seek in preference
women who would found no smallest hope upon his notice of them.

So, keeping at the edge of the room in order to be out of the way of the
dancers, he started on his way to Miss Seymour, while Charlie, whose
mood was as different from Gerald's as was his eye,--that brown eye
which looked upon the world as a barrel of very passable oysters, of
which he would open as many as he could get hold of,--started after.

The approach of a stormily whirling couple, waltzing _all'_
_italiana_, and then another and still another following, forced
them to suspend their journey. While they prudently waited, "Who is
that?" came from Charlie in a voice of acute curiosity.

Gerald, after half a glance at him, mechanically looked in the same
direction.

There stood at the door opening from the reception-room an unknown.

When it was said that our young men knew everybody at the Fosses'
soirée, it was not strictly meant that there might not be a person or
two whom they had not seen before: a plain little visiting cousin whom
the Bentivoglios had begged permission to bring; a new face of a young
Italian introduced by a fellow officer. But at the door now, displacing
a good deal of air, stood a real and striking unknown, in a Paris dress
and diamonds and a smile.

Gerald did not take the trouble to answer Charlie; to himself he said
that this was perhaps Mrs. Hawthorne, the Fosses' new friend.

Mrs. Foss had hastened to meet her. Leslie, disengaging herself from a
partner, left him standing in the middle of the room while she hastened
likewise. It must be Mrs. Hawthorne.

Gerald took back his eyes, and continued on his way to Miss Seymour. But
Charlie, always alive to the possibilities of a new acquaintance, always
eager to be first in the field, dropped his quest of the mama. With an
air of nonchalant abstraction he went to stand in the neighborhood of
the new arrival, conveniently at hand for an introduction. He saw then
that there were two fine new birds; the light and size of the one had at
first obscured the other, though she, too, had on a Paris dress and
diamonds and a smile. But the dress--though there could be little
difference in the women's age, both were young, without being unripe
girls,--was of soberer tones: a sage green moire with pale
coffee-colored lace; and the jewels were more modest, and the smile was
smaller, its beam did not carry so far, nor was perched on so
considerable an eminence.

As he had known she would do, Mrs. Foss after a moment looked about her
for men to introduce. And there he was.

Mrs. Hawthorne. Miss Madison.

Leslie had at the same moment brought up Captain Viviani, who spoke a
little English, and liked very much to practise it with the charming
American ladies, as he told them.

Mrs. Foss lingered awhile, helping the progress of the acquaintance by
bits of elucidation and compliment, then, when the thing was under way,
withdrew so adroitly that she was not missed. A young man, coming up to
importune Leslie for a promised dance, was allowed to carry her off;
Miss Madison, assured by the _capitano_ that he could dance the
American waltz, trusted herself, though a little doubtfully, to his
arms; and Charlie was left with Mrs. Hawthorne.

"Shall we take a turn?" he offered.

"Me?" The lady gave him a look sidewise from dewy blue eyes, as if to
see whether he were serious. He perceived that she with effort kept her
dimples from denting in. He could not be sure what the joke was. But she
went on, as if there had been no joke: "I was brought up a Baptist. My
pa and ma considered it wicked to dance, so would never let me learn. It
doesn't look very wicked to me."

She watched the dancers with an earnestly following eye, preoccupied, he
supposed, with the moral aspect of their embraces and gyrations.

"It looks easy enough," she said, with suppressed excitement, immensely
fascinated. "I should think anybody could do that. You hop on this foot,
you slide, you hop on that foot, you slide. I believe I could do it. No,
no, I mustn't let myself be tempted. I don't want to be a sight." Her
voice had wavered; it suddenly came out bold. "My land!" she exclaimed
full-bloodedly, "there goes a woman who's not a bit slimmer than me!
Look here, let's try. Not right before everybody. I see a side room
where it's nice and dark. Come on in there." As, hardly muffling a gleam
of peculiar and novel amusement, he escorted her toward the room
indicated, she reassured him, "I'm big, but I'm light on my feet."

Charlie was afterward fond of telling that he had taught Mrs. Hawthorne
to dance. But the single lesson he gave her did not of a truth take her
beyond the point where, holding hands with him, like children, and
counting one-two-three, she tried hopping on this foot, then on the
other. For Mrs. Foss, who seemed to have specially at heart that the new
people should enjoy themselves, in her idea of securing this end,
brought one person after the other to be introduced.

How carefully selected these were, or how diplomatically prepared, the
good hostess alone could know.

"Oh, I'm having such a good time!" Mrs. Hawthorne sighed from a full and
happy heart, later in the evening, having gone to sit beside her hostess
on the little corner sofa which that tired woman had selected for a
moment's rest. The dancing was passing before them. "It's the loveliest
party I ever was to. What delightful friends you have, Mrs. Foss, and
what a lot of them! I've made ever so many friends, too, this evening.
Mrs. Satterlee has told me about the Home she's interested in, and Miss
Seymour about the church-fair, and I've had a good talk with the
minister. Those are three nice girls of the banker's, aren't they?
Florence, Francesca, and Beatrice, commonly known as Flick, Fran, and
Trix, they told me. Mr. Hunt, the nephew, is nice, too; we get on like
sliding down-hill. They're all going to come and see me.--Mrs.
Foss,"--her attention had veered,--"do look at that little fellow
playing the piano! Isn't he _great_! But isn't he comical, too!
I've been noticing him all the evening. He fascinates me. I never heard
such splendid playing. The bouncing parts make my feet twitch to dance,
but the sighful, wind-in-the-willow parts make me want to just lean back
and close my eyes. I could listen till the cows come home. I call it a
wonderful gift."

Mrs. Foss looked over at the little Italian, the unpretentious musical
hack whom one sent for when there was to be dancing, and paid--it was
all he asked--so very little. Her eyebrows went up a point as she
smiled. It was true, she remarked it for the first time, that his hands
flew over the keys with an air of breezy virtuosity. He raised them from
the keyboard and brought them down again with the action of a snorting
high-stepping horse. When the passage was loud he nearly lifted himself
off the stool with pounding; when it was soft he tickled the ivories
with the delicacy of raindrops, at the same time diminishing his person
till he seemed the size of a fairy. Now and then he tossed his head, as
if champing a bit, and the bunch of black frizz over his left temple
trembled. A decidedly comic figure he appeared to Mrs. Foss.

"I will tell Signor Ceccherelli what you say," she amiably promised. "I
am sure it will please him."

Leslie, whose responsibilities kept her from dancing her young fill at
her own parties, sought Mrs. Hawthorne still later in the evening, when
she thought that lady might have had enough of Mr. Hunt senior sitting
beside her. The heavy old banker was not considered very entertaining,
and everybody in Florence knew his way of sticking at the side of a
good-looking woman. Lest this one, so evidently making herself pleasant,
should be unduly taxed, Leslie stepped in to free her, tactfully
interested the banker in a game of cards going on upstairs, and took the
place he vacated--took it for just a minute, as a bird perches.

"No, you don't!" Mrs. Hawthorne laid a hand on her arm when she seemed
near dashing off to bring somebody else to present. "You've done the
social act till you ought to be tired, if you aren't. Sit here by me a
moment and take it easy. This party doesn't need any nursing. It's the
loveliest party I ever was to."

Leslie looked off in front of her to verify the statement, and
unreluctantly settled down on the little sofa to rest awhile. She liked
Mrs. Hawthorne. One could not help liking her, as she had had occasion
to assert and reassert in defense against a vague body of reasons for
not adopting the new-comer into the sacred circle of friends, or
launching her on the waters of their little world. Now, as they chatted,
she said to herself again that if Mrs. Hawthorne's homeliness of phrase
were not a simple thing of playfulness, a disclaimer of the affectation
of elegance in talk as stilted, bumptious, unsuited to a proper modesty,
it could very well pass for that. Mrs. Hawthorne seldom expressed
herself quite seriously. As she seldom looked serious either, one could
hardly hear her say it was the loveliest party she ever was to without
suspecting her of a humorous intention. By the sly gleam of her eye one
should know she was doing it to amuse you, imitating a child, a
country-woman, a shop-girl, for the sake of promoting an easy
pleasantness. With her bearing of entire dignity, her honest
handsomeness, her air of secure and generous wealth, she was truly not
one whom the ordinary public would feel disposed to seek reasons for
excluding. Leslie and her mother had refrained from presenting to her
particular persons in the company. All remarks heard from those who had
been presented led to an almost certainty that the new Americans were a
success.

"Do look at Estelle!" exclaimed Mrs. Hawthorne. "She's been dancing one
dance after the other, and sits there now looking cool as a cucumber. I
would have her life if it could make me into a bone like her. Miss
Foss,"--she was diverted from the envious contemplation of
Estelle,--"who is that lovely girl over there?"

"Which one? There are so many to-night!"

"The white one with the knob of dark hair down in her neck. An Italian,
I guess. Rather small. See who I mean? There. She's going to speak to
the little fellow at the piano."

Leslie looked, but did not at once answer. The girl in white was indeed
strangely, at this moment poignantly, lovely. Some intensity of
repressed feeling made her cheek of a white-rose pallor, and her dark
eyes, those spots of velvet shadow, mysteriously deep. She had gone
where the piano stood in a bower of palm and bamboo, with Signor
Ceccherelli seated before it, busy wiping the sweat of his brow. More
than one had gone to him that evening to ask for some favorite piece.
She was perhaps just requesting him to play The Blue Danube, or La
Manola or Bavardage, and it was merely the romantic way of her beauty to
express a sense of doom. She spoke quietly to the pianist, who looked at
her while she spoke and when she ceased made with his head a motion of
assent. She turned and went from the room.

"It is my sister Brenda," said Leslie. "How singular you should not
recognize her!"

"I've never met her, my dear. You don't remember. The time I came to tea
she was in town taking a music lesson. The time I came to dinner she was
in bed with a headache. Well, well, she's not a bit like the rest of
you, is she? I took her for an Italian."

"She was only twelve when we came over here, it has somehow molded her.
I was seventeen; too old, I fancy, to change. Brenda is going back to
America before long, to be with our aunt, father's sister, for whom
Brenda was named. It was only decided a day or two ago, when we heard
from some friends who are going and will take her under their wing. And
if she goes there's no telling when she will come back, you see, because
with every change of administration father may be recalled. And Italy
has been her home so long, all her friends are here. It's no wonder she
doesn't look exactly light of heart."

"No, poor child!"

There was a sympathetic silence, after which, "Who is that?" Mrs.
Hawthorne asked, to take their minds off the intrusive sadnesses of
life. With her gaze across the room she counted, "One, two, three, four,
to the left of the piano, with his hands behind him and a round glass in
his eye."

Leslie looked over at a figure of whom it was natural to ask who that
was, it so surely looked like Somebody--though Mrs. Hawthorne had very
likely asked because, merely, in her eyes he was queer. It was an oldish
man, dressed with marked elegance, white tie, white waistcoat, white
flower at his lapel. The whole of worldly wisdom dwelt in his weary eye.
He had yellow and withered cheeks, black hair with a dash of white above
the ears, and a mustache whose thickest part curved over his mouth like
a black lacquer box-lid, while its long ends, stiff as thorns of a
thorn-tree, projected on either side far beyond his face.

"His name is Balm de Brézé, vicomte. He is by birth a Belgian, I think;
the title, however, is French. He has lived mostly in Paris, but now
spends about half of his time here. He married a friend of ours, an
American. There is Amabel, in ruby velvet, just inside the library door.
A good deal younger than he, yet they seem appropriately matched,
somehow."

"She looks about as foreign as he does. Who's the one she's talking to,
handsome, dark as night? Never saw such a dark skin before except on a
cullud puss'n."

"I know. He might be an Arab, only he's very good Tuscan. It's Mr.
Landini,--Hunt and Landini."

"Ah, the bankers. They do my business, but I've never seen the heads
before to-night."

Mrs. Hawthorne's eyes wandered, as if she said, "Whom else do I want to
know about?" and Leslie made internal comment upon the fact that Mrs.
Hawthorne's interest was quickened by those individuals precisely whom
they had withheld, for reasons, from presenting to her.

Mrs. Hawthorne suddenly pressed closer, and with a little chuckle
grasped Leslie's knee, by this affectionate touch to make herself
forgiven for the disrespect about to be shown.

"And who's Stickly-prickly?"

Leslie had to laugh, too. Impossible not to know which one was meant of
all the people in the direction of Mrs. Hawthorne's glance. He was
leaning against the wall between two chairs deserted by the fair,
looking off with a slightly mournful indifference at everything and at
nothing. His mustache ended in upturned points, his beard was pointed,
his hair stood up in little points. He gave the impression besides of
one whose nervous temper put out porcupine shafts to keep you off.

"It's one of our very best friends, Mrs. Hawthorne. Dear old Gerald! Mr.
Fane. Shall I go get him and bring him over?"

"No, don't. I should be scared of him."

"Let me! His prickles are harmless. He has heard us speak of you so
much! See, he is looking over at us wistfully, in a way that plainly
suggests our course. Here comes Charlie Hunt, who will keep you amused
while I fetch Gerald; then we will go in together and have an ice."

Charlie Hunt, modern moth without fear or shyness, but with a great deal
of caution, was indeed returning for the third or fourth time to Mrs.
Hawthorne's side, drawn by the sparkle of eyes and tresses and smiles
and diamonds. Francesca had already described him that evening to
another young lady as dancing attendance on the new American. He dropped
into the seat vacated by Leslie, addressed Mrs. Hawthorne as if they had
been friends for at least weeks, and made conversation joyfully easy by
getting at once on to a playful footing.

Leslie meanwhile steered her course toward Gerald. The music had started
up again, men were presenting themselves to maidens with their request
for the favor.... Leslie threaded her way between the first on the
floor. Her eyes were naturally turned toward the object of her search;
some intention toward him was probably apparent in her look. As if he
had not seen it, or as if, having seen it, he scented in her approach
some conspiracy against his peace, Gerald in a moment during which her
eye was not on him quietly vanished.

Missing him, Leslie looked about in some surprise, then entered the door
by which inevitably he must have passed. She gave a glance around the
library; Gerald did not seem to be there. Mystified, she looked more
carefully at the faces to be seen through the thin tobacco smoke. No,
Gerald's was not among them. Gerald, acquainted with the house, knew the
door, of course, of the kind frequent in Italian houses, the little door
indistinguishable from the wall, by which one could leave the library,
and after crossing the landing of the kitchen stairs, reach the
dining-room. From the dining-room, then, one could come into the
entrance hall, whence go upstairs, or out into the garden, or, as one
pleased, back into the drawing-room. Leslie did not think the matter of
sufficient importance to pursue the chase farther.

The dancing was suspended while the musician had sandwiches and glasses
of a fragrant and delicious-looking but weak punch. The Fosses' waiter
knew him well and fraternally attended to his wants.

The dining-room, though large, would not permit all the couples to enter
at once, so ices and cakes were borne from the table by cavaliers to
expectant ladies in the antechamber, on the stairs, and in the farther
rooms.

The musician after eating to his satisfaction took the time for a
cigarette, which he enjoyed, not in the library, but in cool and
peaceful isolation on the top step of the kitchen stairs. Refreshed, he
briskly went back to his piano, persuaded that the young people were
sighing to see him there. With new vigor he struck up a march. The crowd
in the dining-room thinned.

Mrs. Hawthorne and Miss Madison, with Charlie Hunt and Doctor Chandler,
one of the Americans from the pension, lingered on in the corner where,
with the migration of so many to the ball-room, all four had been able
to find chairs. Mrs. Hawthorne, of the fair moon-face, was as a matter
of course eating sweet stuff; Miss Madison, contrariwise, sipped a small
cup of black coffee. Miss Madison, no need to say, had a neat jaw-bone
to show--collarbones, too. She was not pretty, her features were hardly
worth describing, but yet it was an attractive face, as merry as it was
fundamentally shrewd, as sensible as it was sprightly. The frank, almost
business-like manner of her setting out to have a good time at the party
ensured her having at least a lively one, and her partners not finding
it slow. She at once and impartially interested herself in the men
brought up to her, and sought to interest them. Her flirtatiousness was,
however, sedate--in its way, moral--not intended to have any result
beyond the enlivenment of the hour.

Miss Madison had been finding exhilaration and delight this evening in
dancing, and when presently the alluring strains of a waltz came
floating to their ears, she looked at Chandler, and he in the same
manner looked at her; whereupon she rose, as if words had been
exchanged, took his arm, and they deserted for the ball-room. Charlie
Hunt was left ensconced in an intimate nook alone with Mrs. Hawthorne.

But he had hardly a moment in which to enjoy the feeling of advantage
this gave him before his cousin Francesca came looking for him. They
were going, she said. Father was sleepy, and mother said they must go.
If he wanted a lift home, he must hurry up. Charlie had come with them,
on the box near the driver, there being five already inside the landau.
Gallantry should perhaps have made him answer that rather than be
dragged away at this moment he would walk. But gallantry was dumb.
Charlie was not fond of walking. It was a great convenience, an economy
as well, being permitted to make use of his aunt's carriage.

Having delivered her message, Francesca had gone to put on her things,
and Charlie, after expressions of regret over the inevitable, asked Mrs.
Hawthorne whither she would wish to be taken before he left.

Let him not bother, she answered; she could find her friends without
help.

They separated. Walking slowly, she looked for faces of acquaintances.
She glanced in at the ball-room door. They were dancing still, but not
nearly so many. She turned into the reception-room, whence she could
reënter the ball-room at the other end without danger of collision, and
reach that comfortable blue satin sofa, now standing empty. There she
would sit looking on till Estelle joined her, when they would set about
making their adieux. The carriage must have been waiting for them ever
so long.

She had sat a minute, unconsciously smiling to herself, because the
sensations and impressions of the evening were all so pleasant, when
something occurred to her as desirable to be done. She rose to carry out
her idea.

The dancing had stopped; the floor was clear except in the neighborhood
of the walls, where couples stood or sat recovering breath and coolness.
She started to cross the long room. She did not skirt it because the
direct line to her destination was by the middle; she did not go fast
because there was no occasion, and it was not her way. She advanced like
a goodly galleon pushing along the sea with finely curved bows, all
sails set to catch the breeze. Her mind was entirely on her idea, and
she did not at first feel herself to be conspicuous. But all the eyes in
the room, before she had gone half her way, were fastened upon her, a
natural and legitimate mark. One might now without impertinence have the
satisfaction of a good look at the newly come American who had taken the
big house on the Lungarno; the women might study the fashion of her hair
and dress.

She was smiling faintly, but fixedly; she smiled, indeed, all the time,
as if smiles had been an indispensable article of wear at a party. The
least of her smiles brought dimples into view, and her dimples seemed
multitudinous, though there were really only three in her face and one
of those irregular things called apple-seeds. Her agreeably blunted
features and peachy roundness of cheek belonged to a good-humored,
unimposing type, which took on a certain nobility in her case from being
carried high on a strong, round neck over a splendid broad breast,
partly bare this evening, and seen to be white as milk, as swans'-down,
as pearl.

If one had tried to define the look which left one so little doubt as to
her nationality, one would perhaps have said it was a combination of
fearlessness and accessibility. She feared not you, nor should you fear
her; she counted on your friendliness, you might count on hers.

She was a person simple in the main. The colors she had selected to wear
accorded with the rest, showing little intricacy of taste. The two silks
composing her dress were respectively the blue of a summer morning and
the pink of a rose. From cushioned and dimpled shoulders the bodice
tapered to as fine a waist as a Paris dressmaker had found possible to
bring about in a woman who, despite a veritable yearning to look
slender, cared also for freedom to breathe, and, as she said with a
sigh, guessed she must make up her mind to be happy without looking like
a toothpick. At the back of the waist, the dress leapt suddenly out and
away from the dorsal column--every lady's dress did that for a season or
two at the time we are telling of, and at every step she took the back
of her skirt gave a bob, for the bustle was supplemented by three or
four concealed semi-circles of thin steel, reeds we called them, which
hit against you as you went and sprang lightly away from your heels.

The arrangement of Mrs. Hawthorne's hair equalled in artificiality the
mode of her dress: the front locks were clipped and twisted into little
curls, the back locks drawn to the top of the head, where they were
disposed in silken loops and rolls, at the top of which, like a flag
planted on a hill, stood an aigrette, a sparkle and two whiffs.

It may not sound pretty, it was not, but the eye of that day had become
used to it, as eyes have since become used to fashions no prettier, and
as Mrs. Hawthorne's hair was of a soft sunny tint it was that evening
admired by more than one, as was her intrinsically ugly beautiful gown,
which gave a little jerky rebound every time she placed one of those
neat solid satin-shod feet before the other in her progress across the
now attentive room.

She had taken off her long white gloves to eat a cake--or cakes; she was
carrying them loosely swinging from one dimpled hand.

In the middle of the room self-consciousness overtook her. With the
awakening sense of eyes upon her, she looked first to one side, then to
the other. Her smile broadened while growing by just a tinge sheepish;
she seemed to waver and consider turning from her course and finishing
her journey close along the wall, like a mouse....

She finally did not, nor yet hurried. She made her smile explain to
whoever was looking on that a person was excusable for making this sort
of mistake, that it hurt nobody, that one need not and did not care;
that she was sure they did not like her any less for it; they would not
if they knew how void of offense toward them all was her heart; that
having exposed herself to being looked at, she hoped they liked her
looks. Her dress was a very good dress, her laces were very good lace,
and the maid who had done her hair was considered a first-rate hand at
doing hair.

So she was carrying it off, and her smile was only a little
self-conscious, only a shade embarrassed, when from among the men
standing near the library door, for which she was directly making, there
stepped out one to meet her, not unlike a slender needle darting toward
a large, rounded magnet as it comes into due range.

More sensitive than she, feeling the situation much more uncomfortably
for his country-woman than she felt it for herself, a foreign-looking
fellow, who had not quite forgotten that he was an American, after a
moment's hard struggle against his impulse, hastened forward to shorten
for her that uncompanioned course across the floor under ten thousand
search-lights.

"I'm looking for somebody," said Mrs. Hawthorne, with the smile of a
child.

The voice which had made one man think of the crimson heart on a
valentine reminded this other of rough velvet.

He showed his eccentric three front teeth in a responding smile that had
a touch of the faun, and asked whimsically:

"Will I do?"

"Help me to find Mr. Foss, and you'll do perfectly," she said merrily.
"I haven't seen him more than just to shake hands this whole evening,
and I do want to have a little talk before I go."

"If I am not mistaken, we shall find him in the library." He offered his
arm.

"I may have appeared to be doing something else, Mrs. Hawthorne, but I
have really been looking for you the last hour," said the consul when he
had been found. "I wanted to have a little talk. How are you enjoying
Florence?"

"Oh, we're having an elegant time, thanks to that dear wife of yours and
that dear girl, Leslie. I don't know what we should have done without
them and you."

"But the city itself, Florence, doesn't it enchant you?"

"We--ell, yes. N-n-n-no. Yes and no. That's it. You want me to tell the
truth, don't you? Some of it does, and some of it doesn't. Some of it, I
guess, will take me a long time to get used to. It's terribly different
from what we expected--I, in particular. You see, I came here because an
old friend used to talk so much about it. Florence the Fair! The City of
Lilies! He said Italy was the most beautiful country in the world, and
Florence the most beautiful city in Italy. So my expectations were way
up.--Oh, I don't know; it's hard to tell. I don't exactly remember now
what I did expect. I guess my picture of it was something like the New
Jerusalem on an Easter day. But I shall get used to this, like to the
taste of olives. It must be all right, for the friend I was speaking of
had the finest mind I've ever known. I'm green as turnip-tops, of
course, but I shall get educated up to it, I suppose. Give me time."

"Mrs. Hawthorne, hear me prophesy," said Mr. Foss. "In six months you
will love it all. It's the fate of us who come here from new countries.
It will steal in upon you, grow upon you, beset and besot you, till you
like no other place in the world so well."

"Will it? Well, if you say so. The Judge--the friend I was speaking
of,--said so much of the same kind that the minute I thought of coming
to Europe, right after I'd said, 'I'll go to Paris,' I said to myself,
'I'll go to Florence.'"

"Your friend was a judge of places."

"It wasn't he alone influenced me. He was sick a long time, and I used
to read aloud to him, and one spell, when his mind for some reason or
other was running on Italy, every book he chose had the scene laid here.
There were whole pages of description, and anything so lovely, so
luscious, as the places and people described I never did dream. I didn't
understand more than a quarter, but I swallowed it all and gloated. The
woman who wrote those books certainly did have an imagination. O
Antonia, let me meet you and have a good look at you so I can tell
a--hm, the owner of an imagination when I see one again!"

"Antonia, did you say?" The consul smiled.

"That was the writer's name. You know the books I mean?"

"I have read a work or two of Antonia's, yes. She lives near Florence,
you know, on another of these little hills."

"Oh, does she!"

"Her name is Mrs. Grangeon. She is an Englishwoman, with an
extraordinary sense of, and feeling for, Italy. She is, at her best, a
poet; at her worst, slightly deficient, perhaps, in humor. But her
passion for Italy is genuine, and I have no doubt she sees it as glowing
as the pictures she makes of it."

"Her books are 'grand, John'! If I never had come here, I never should
have appreciated them or her--making up that wonderful world, all
pomegranates and jasmin-stars, and curls like clustering blue-black
grapes, and staturesque limbs, out of the back of her head. Yes, and the
golden dust of centuries, and time's mellow caressing touch--oh, I wish
I could remember it all!"

"Mrs. Hawthorne, we must take you in hand. Be it ours to initiate you.
Come, what have you been to see?"

"Treasures of art? We haven't had time yet. We've been getting a house
fit to live in. When you asked me how I liked Florence, I ought to have
begun by that end. I love my house, Mr. Foss. I love my garden. I love
the Lungarno. And the Casheeny. And Boboly. And the drive up here. And
the stores! I positively dote on those little bits of stores on the
jewelers' bridge."

"Well, well, that's quite enough to begin with."

"Now that we're going to have some time to spare, we mean to go
sight-seeing like other folks."

"How I wish, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, that I were not such a busy man!
But"--Mr. Foss had a look of bright inspiration--"should I on that
account be dejected? Here is Mr. Fane--"

He turned to Gerald, who, after bringing up Mrs. Hawthorne, had stood
near, a silent third, waiting to act further as her escort by and by.
Meanwhile he had been listening with a varied assortment of feelings and
a boundless fatigue of spirit.

"Mr. Fane," said the consul, "who is not nearly so busy a man as I, and
is the most sympathetic, well-informed cicerone you could find. When we
wish to be sure our visiting friends shall see Florence under the best
possible circumstances, we turn them over to Mr. Fane."

Gerald's face struggled into a sourish smile, and he bowed ironical
thanks for the compliment. Lifting his head, he shot a glance of
reproachful interrogation at the consul. Was his friend doing this
humorously, to tease him, or was the man simply not thinking?

The consul looked innocent of any sly intention; he was all of a jocund
smile; the consul, who should have known better, wore the air of doing
him a pleasure and her a pleasure and a pleasure to himself; the air of
thinking that any normally constituted young man would be grateful for
such a chance.

"I shall be most happy," said Gerald, with irreproachable and misleading
politeness.

Mrs. Hawthorne turned to him readily.

"Any time you say. Let me tell you where we live."




CHAPTER IV


The room in which Mrs. Hawthorne went to bed an hour or two after taking
leave of the dwindling company at Villa Foss was large and luxurious.
Its windows were enormous, arched at the top and reaching the floor. A
wrought-iron railing outside made them safe. In the angle of the wall
between two of them--it was a corner room--stood a mirror nearly the
size of the windows, in a broad frame of carved and gilt wood, resting
on a marble shelf that supported besides two alabaster vases holding
bunches of roses.

In the corner opposite to the mirror and placed "catty-corner," as the
occupier worded it, stood the stateliest of beds, upholstered and draped
in heavy watered silk of a dull, even dingy, yellow. Its hangings were
gathered at the top into the hollow of a great gold coronet, whence they
spread and fell in folds that were looped back with silk cords. The
walls were covered by that same texture of dull gold, held in place by
tarnished gilt moldings.

Mrs. Hawthorne had wanted all this dusty and faded splendor removed,--it
seemed to her the possible lurking-place of mice or worse,--but the
agent would not hear of it. The noble landlord was not really eager to
let.

So Mrs. Hawthorne, to brighten the room in spite of it, for she wished
to keep it for her own, having taken a fancy to the fresco
overhead,--that fascinating chariot driven among clouds by a radiant
youth surrounded by smiling, flower-scattering maidens,--Mrs. Hawthorne
to "gay up" the room, as she said, had hung windows and doors with
draperies of her favorite cornflower blue, and covered the chairs with
the same. On the floor she had stretched a pearl-gray carpet all aglow
with wreaths of roses tied with ribbons of blue; and over the carpet--at
the bedside, before the dressing-table, in front of the fireplace--laid
down white bear-skins.

To cover further the yellow silk, she had hung in one panel of it a
painting of the "Madonna della Seggiola," in another, Carlo Dolci's
"Angel of the Annunciation," and in another, Carlo Dolci's Magdalen
clasping the box of ointment--all works of art bought in Via dei Fossi,
framed in great gilt-wood frames, like the mirror.

The lace curtains under the cornflower blue brocade were like Brussels
wedding veils seen through a magnifying glass.

Yes, the room had been made to look bright. It had lamps of
cream-colored biscuit, painted with roses and crowned with pink shades;
it had polished brass fire-irons. But the point of supreme brightness
was the dressing-table, where glittered in orderly display Mrs.
Hawthorne's American toilet silver, mirror, trays, brushes, boxes,
bottles--solid, shining, richly embossed.

There was just one thing in all the room that looked poor, workaday. It
was on the small table at the head of the bed, beside the candle-stick
and match-safe, a black book, the commonest kind of Bible, such a Bible
as is dispensed by those who have to furnish the sacred writings in
large numbers--Sunday schools, for instance.

It was in fact a Sunday-school prize that now lay on the night-stand, in
what the sober volume presented to a pious little girl must have thought
strange company. Cover to cover with it, cheek by jowl, lay a book on
etiquette.

It was for the Bible, however, that Mrs. Hawthorne reached after she had
got into bed. She found her place. She read in it every night before
sleeping, to keep a promise made long ago, and avoid the reproaches of a
person gone from this earth, but who still, she never questioned, could
be pleased or displeased with her actions.

She did not always try to understand or follow; when she was sleepy she
read merely with her eyes. To-night her mind was too full of personal
things to permit of strict attention to the text. As she enumerated the
wonders of the House that Solomon built for the Lord, there formed no
picture of it in her mind.

"I wonder what knops are," she said to herself drowsily. "I must
remember to ask Hattie."

There was a stir. Both doors of her room were open; the little
unobtrusive one into the dressing-room for air,--the window there stood
wide open through the night,--the large one into the sitting-room so as
to leave a free road to Miss Madison's room beyond. Through this now
slipped a slender form in a soft, fur-bordered wrapper, and with front
locks done up in curling-kids.

"You in bed?"

"Yes; I'm just reading my chapter."

"Livvy gone?"

Livvy, or Miss Deliverance Jones, was the maid they had brought from
America, a New York negress of the most faintly colored complexion, with
hair mysteriously blond. Her head was egg-shaped, her nose slightly
flat, her lip voluptuous, her brown-black eye sad as a homesick
monkey's; but she could wind a chocolate veil about her face and stylish
hat, and walk forth happy in the fancy that she passed for white. She
was an accomplished dressmaker and hair-dresser; she moreover had spent
some time in the service of a beauty-doctor. The ladies had secured her
just before sailing, and liked her, but did not talk freely when she was
present.

"Yes, she's gone."

"I'm not a bit sleepy, are you? I'm too excited. Let's talk."

She climbed on to her friend's bed, gathered her knees to her chin, and
hugged them, with the effect of hugging to herself a great happiness.

Mrs. Hawthorne closed her Bible and put it aside. The single candle by
which she had been reading showed the shining mirthfulness of the eyes
with which the two regarded each other.

"Wasn't it fun?"

"Oh, wasn't it!"

They spoke softly, whether because the suggestion of the late hour was
upon them, or they thought, without thinking, that Livvy might still be
near. They whispered like school-girls who have come together in
forbidden fun.

"I never did have such a good time."

"Nor I, neither. Oh, Hat, _isn't it_ fun!"

"_Isn't it_, just!"

"See here, Hat, you've got to teach me to dance. I was almost crazy this
evening, I wanted so to be dancing with the rest. Where d'you learn?"

"I went to dancing-school, my dear."

"No! Did you?"

"Yes, I did; all one winter. What are you thinking about? I've been to
parties in my life. Not many, but I've been. There was the Home Club
party----"

"Yes, of course. I remember how I teased once to go to the Home Club
party; but ma wouldn't let me. I hadn't anything to put on, anyhow. But
I'd have gone in my shirt if they'd let me. The nearest to a real party
I'd been to before to-night was a clam-bake. I don't count church
sociables. Out West there used to be celebrations in a sort of bar-room
place, but even I couldn't stand those. To think I've always yearned so
to have a good time, and now I'm having it! Oh, Hat, wasn't it lovely!
That's a mighty nice house of the Fosses. How good it looked, all fixed
up! The flowers and candles, one room opening into the other, everything
just right. Hat, Mrs. Foss is the finest woman I ever knew, and in my
opinion makes the most elegant appearance. She's the one I'd choose to
be like if I could. Just watch me copy-cat her. You'll see. 'My dear
Mrs. Hawthorne, pray don't speak of the trouble! It's been nothing but a
pleasure. Be sure you call upon us whenever we can be of the smallest
service.'"

"You've caught her, Nell, you silly thing! Down to the ground."

"I'm going to pattern after her till it comes natural. How sweet they
all are! How kind they've been!" Mrs. Hawthorne grew dreamy.

"Your dress, Nell, was a perfect success," the other ran on--"perfect.
How did you think mine looked? I'll tell you a compliment I got for you,
if you'll tell me one you got for me. If not, I'll save it up in my
secret breast till you're ready to make a trade."

"To think," said Mrs. Hawthorne, still engrossed by her dream of absent
and bygone things, "that we're the same little girls--and one of them
barefoot!--who used to play house together on a sand-heap of old Cape
Cod and pin on any old rag that would tail along the ground and play
ladies! 'My dear Mrs. Madison, how do you do?'"

"'My dear Mrs. Hawthorne, my toes are just as sore as they can be!'"

"'That comes, my dear Mrs. Madison, of you dancing like a crazy woman
from ten o'clock till one, in tight shoes!'--Mrs. Hawthorne! Mrs.
Madison! Aurora! Estelle! To think, after all these years, we should be
playing our old play that we played at Wellfleet and East Boston, only
playing it with real things, in Paris and Florence!"

"Nell, I'm so afraid of forgetting and calling you Nell that every time
I catch myself near doing it I can feel the cold sweat break out on my
brow."

"What would it matter? We aren't impostors, Hat. We're just having fun,
and don't want our real names to queer it. If they should slip out when
we aren't thinking, they'd simply sound like nicknames we've got for
each other. But they won't slip out. I'm too fond of calling you
Estelle. Don't you _love_ to call me Aurora? Hat, how did I behave,
far as you could see?"

"Nell, if I hadn't known you, and had just been seeing you for the first
time, I should have said to myself: 'What a fine, good-looking,
beautifully dressed, refined, and ladylike woman that is! Wish t' I
might make her acquaintance.' And what would you have said, if you'd
seen me, never having met me before?"

"I should have said: 'What a bright, smart, intelligent, and rarely
beautiful girl! So well dressed, too, and slender as a worm! A queen of
society. I do like her looks! She's the spittin' image of my little
friend Hattie Carver, the schoolmarm in East Boston, that I used to
know!' Oh, Hat, the _queerest_ thing! What do you suppose I saw
this evening at that lovely house full of lovely people? I was in the
library learning to dance. And I looked up and there was what I took to
be a young man smoking a cigarette. Next thing, I saw that his dress was
low-necked almost down to the waist. Hat, it was a _woman_ smoking!
a woman with her hair cut short. I never saw anything like it, except an
old Irishwoman once, with her pipe."

"Seems to me I've heard of ladies in Europe doing it, and it being
considered all right. I _have_ heard that some do it in New York,
but I guess they're careful not to be seen."

"Well, it does seem a queer thing to do!--Go ahead, Hat; what was the
compliment?"

"Sure, now, you've got one for me?"

"Sure."

"It was What's-his-name, the English fellow we see every time we go in
to Cook's--Mr. Dysart. Leslie says he comes of a very good family. He
said to me, 'How very charming Mrs. Hawthorne is looking this evening!'"

"Hattie, that man's a humbug, that man's leading a double life. He said
to me, 'How very charming Miss Madison is looking this evening!' He
did."

"Go 'way! You're making it up to save trouble."

"No, I ain't! Stop, Hattie! I know! I _am not_. Confusion upon it!
You've made me so nervous when I talk that I can't say ain't without
jumping as if I'd sat on a pin!"

"Nell Goodwin, look me square in the eye. How many times did you say
ain't at the party this evening?"

"Not once; I swear it. I was looking out every minute. 'I am not,' I
said; 'We are not,' I said; 'He doesn't,' I said; 'He isn't,' I said.
There! Between you'n' I, Hat, it's a dreadful nuisance, keeping my mind
on the way I talk. I hope I shall come in time to talking lofty without
thinking about it. Why do I have to, Hat, after all? I've lived among
educated people. Wasn't the Judge highly educated? And nobody ever found
fault with my way of talking. My folks all had been to school and read
books. And didn't I go to school till I was fourteen? And didn't I
graduate from the grammar school with the rest? What's the matter with
my natural way of talking?"

"It's all right at home, Nell, but it's different over here. They're a
different kind of people we're thrown with."

"This pernickety way of talking never sounds cozy or friendly one bit.
We're as good as anybody, of course, but when I say 'I am not, he does
not,' I always feel as if I were setting up to be better than the
rest!--Oh, it isn't, is it? Oh, do you say so? 'Between you and I' isn't
correct? But I thought you told me.... To Jericho, Hattie! How's a
feller ever going to get to know?"

"Listen, Nell, while I go over it again. When you say----"

"Ah, no! Not at this time of night, Estelle! Let me live in ignorance
till morning! You know all those sorts of things, my dear Estelle,
because you're paid by the government to know them. I don't; but I know
lots and lots of things that are a sight funnier."

She grabbed one of the pillows and flung it at her friend, who flung it
back at her; and the simple creatures laughed.

Aurora re-tied in a bow the blue ribbon that closed the collar of her
nightgown, and settled back again, with her arms out on the white satin
quilt, flowered with roses and lined with blue. The two braids of her
fair hair lay, one on each side, down her big, frank, undisguised bosom.

"You heaping dish of vanilla ice-cream!" said Hattie.

"You stick of rhubarb!" said Nell. "Stop, Hat! Behave! Do you suppose
all the people we've invited to come and see us will come?"

"Doctor Chandler will come. And the Hunt girls will come. And Madame
Bentivoglio I guess will come."

"Yes, and the Satterlees I'm sure will come. And Mrs. Seymour and her
daughter that I said I'd help with the church fair. And the minister;
what was it? Spottiswood."

"And won't the Mr. Hunt come that you seemed to be having such a good
time with?"

"Yes, he'll come. He'll come to-morrow, I shouldn't wonder. Then that
thinnish fellow with the hair like a hearth-brush--did you meet him? Mr.
Fane, a great friend of the Fosses. He's coming to take us
sight-seeing." She yawned a wide, audible yawn. "I only hope there'll be
some fun in it. Confound you, Hat, go to bed!"




CHAPTER V


After the Fosses had helped the lessees of the Haughty Hermitage to make
it habitable; found for them a coachman who had a little French and,
when told what they desired to buy, would take them to the proper shops;
provided them with a butler to the same extent a linguist, through whom
Estelle, who in Paris had ambitiously studied a manual of conversation,
could give her orders, they not unnaturally became less generous of
their company.

But they were not permitted to make the intervals long between visits.
The coachman wise in French was perpetually driving his spanking pair to
their gates, delivering a message, and waiting to take them down for
lunch or dinner with their joyfully welcoming and grateful friends. It
was not at all unpleasant. It was not prized preciously,--there was too
much of it and too urgently lavished,--but the lavishers were loved for
it by two women neither dry-hearted nor world-hardened. Leslie fell into
the way, when she was in town and had time, of running in to Aurora's,
where it would be cheerful and she looked for a laugh.

Leslie, having reached, as she considered, years of discretion, thought
fit to disregard the Florentine rule that young unmarried women must not
walk in the streets unattended. She had balanced the two inconveniences:
that of staying at home unless some one could go out with her, and that
of being spoken to in the street, and decided that it was less
unpleasant to hear a strange young man murmur as she passed, "Angel of
paradise!" or "Beautiful eyes!"--no grosser insult had ever been offered
her,--than to be bothered by a servant at her heels. The fact that she
looked American and was understood to be following the custom of her own
country secured her against any real misinterpretation.

It was chilly, Novemberish, and within the doors of Florentine domiciles
rather colder, for some reason, than in the open air. The Fosses kept
their house at a more human temperature than most people, but yet after
years of Italy did not heat very thoroughly: one drops into the way of
doing as others do, and grows accustomed to putting up with cold in
winter. Leslie often expressed the opinion that in America people really
exaggerate in the matter of heating their houses. Nevertheless, just for
the joy of the eyes and, through the eyes, of the depressed spirit, she
was glad to-day of the big fire dancing and crackling in Aurora's
chimney-place.

The upstairs sitting-room, where the ladies generally sat, might look
rather like a day nursery; yet after one had accepted it, with its
chintz of big red flowers and green foliage, its rich strawberry rug and
new gold picture-frames, it did seem to brighten one's mood. How think
grayly amid that dazzle and glow any more than feel cold before that
fire?

Leslie held her hands to the blaze, and with an amiable display of
interest inquired of their affairs, the progress made in "getting
settled." There was still a good deal to do of a minor sort.

Accounts were given her in a merry duet; purchases were shown; she was
told all that had happened since they last saw her, who had called, whom
they had been to see.

Casting about in her mind for further things to communicate, Aurora was
reminded of a small grievance.

"I thought your friend Mr. Fane was going to come and take us
sight-seeing," she said.

"Was it so arranged?"

"So I supposed."

"And he hasn't been?"

"Hide nor hair of him have we seen."

"I meant, hasn't he perhaps called while you were out?"

"He hasn't."

"Strange. It's not like him to be rude. But, then, he's not like himself
these days. You must excuse him."

"What's the matter with him? Isn't he well?"

"He's not ill in the usual sense. If he were, we should make him have a
doctor and hope to see him cured. It's worse than an illness. He is
blue--chronically blue."

"Why?"

"Oh, he has reasons. But the same reasons, of course, would not have
made a person of a different temperament change as he has changed."

"I don't suppose you want to tell us what the reasons are?" Very
tentatively this was said.

"Why ... ordinarily one would not feel free to do so, but you are sure
to hear about it before you have been here long. In Florence, you know,
everybody knows everything about everybody else. Not always the truth,
but in any case an interesting version. Oh, it behooves one to be
careful in Florence if one doesn't wish one's affairs known and talked
about. But in the case of Gerald there was nothing secret. Everybody
knows him, everybody knew when he was engaged to Violet Van Zandt,
everybody knows that she married some one else."

"Oh, the poor boy!"

"It's very simple, you see, commonplace as possible. But it's like the
old story of the poem: an old story, yet forever new. And the one to
whom it happens has his heart broken, one way or the other."

"And she married some one else?"

Both Aurora and Estelle were craning toward the speaker in a curiosity
full of sympathy.

Leslie was used to seeing them hang on her lips. "I do love to hear you
talk!" Aurora candidly said. "It doesn't make any difference whether I
know what you're talking about, it fascinates me, the way you say
things!" And the compliment disposed Leslie to talk to them no otherwise
than she talked with Lady Linbrook or Countess Costetti, leaving them to
grasp or not her allusions and fine shades. She was by a number of years
the youngest of the three drawn up to the fire; yet some advantage of
fluency, collectedness, habit of good society--a neat effect altogether
of authority, made her seem in a way the oldest.

"Violet," she began, like a grown person willing to indulge children
with a story, "is Madame Balm de Brézé's sister. You saw Madame de Brézé
that Friday evening at our house. Violet is very like her, only much
younger and a blonde. Amabel is--let us call things by their names in
the seclusion of this snug fireside--Amabel is scrawny; Violet was
ethereal. Amabel is sharp-featured; Violet's face was delicate and
clear-cut. I say _was_, because she has grown much stouter. We have
known them since they first came to Florence, and have been friends
without being passionately attached. They are Americans, but had lived
in Paris since Violet was a baby. They came here, orphans, because it is
cheaper. They used to live on the top floor of a stony old palace in Via
de' Servi, where they painted fans on silk, sending them to a firm in
Paris. Amabel did them exquisitely: shepherds and shepherdesses, corners
of old gardens, Cupids--Watteau effects, veritable miniature work. The
little sister was beginning to do them well, too; she painted only
flowers. Amabel had no objection to Violet marrying Gerald. He was as
far as possible from being a good match, but in those days both Amabel
and Violet seemed to live in an atmosphere that excluded the
consideration of things from a vulgar material point of view. Violet and
Gerald were alike in that, and so very much alike in their superfine
tastes and ways of thinking. _Nous autres_ who live upon this earth
wondered how they would keep the pot boiling in case of 'that not remote
contingent, _la famille_.' Gerald has an income simply tiny. You
would hardly believe how small. We supposed that now he would paint a
little more than he ever has done with the idea of pleasing the general
public and securing patronage. They were so much in love, anyhow, and
made such an interesting pair, that one's old romantic feelings were
gratified by seeing them together. They were to wait until she was
twenty-one, when a crumb of money in trust for her would fall due. Then
Amabel surprises us all by marrying De Brézé. Violet of course lives
with them, and with them goes to Paris. And in Paris she becomes Madame
Pfaffenheim. _Tout bonnement!_"

"Oh, the wretch, the bad-hearted minx!"

"No," said Leslie, reflectively. She turned from the warmth of the fire
and let her eyes rest on the gray sky seen in wide patches through the
three great windows, arched at the top and blocked at the bottom by
wrought-iron guards, that admitted into the red and green room such very
floods of light--"no," Leslie repeated. "One is the sort of person one
is. The sin is to pretend. I don't believe Violet knew the sort of
person she was until it came to the test. She thought, very likely, that
she was all composed of poetry and fine sentiments and eternal love. She
wasn't; and there it is. When she had the chance actually to choose, she
preferred money, a fine establishment, luxury, and she took them. How
ghastly if, with that nature concealed in her behind the pearl and pale
roses, she had married poor Gerald! It's much better as it is, don't you
agree with me? I call him fortunate beyond words."

"Well, of course; that's one way of looking at it."

"It's his way. Gerald knows just how fortunate he has been, and it's
exactly that which makes him so miserable. At first, you understand, he
could lay the entire blame on the De Brézés; he was sure they had in
some mysterious way constrained her, and though he was angrily,
tragically, suicidally wretched, it was one kind of woe--a clean,
classic woe, I will call it. He believed it shared by her in the secret
of her uncongenial conjugal life. '_Ich grolle nicht_,' he could
say, and all that. But a year or two ago she came to Florence with
Pfaffenheim on a visit to her sister. I don't know how Gerald felt,
whether he tried to avoid her or tried to see her. That he saw her,
however, is certain. She is perfectly happy, my dears, in her marriage!
And that she should love Pfaffenheim, or be proud of him, is
inconceivable. So her happiness rests entirely upon the fact of her
riches and worldly consequence."

"Say what you please, I call her a nasty, mean thing!" exclaimed Aurora.

Leslie shrugged her shoulders, as if saying: "Have it your way; but a
more philosophical view is possible."

"She was looking very beautiful," she went on. "Much more beautiful than
before, but in such a different way! From diaphanous she has become
opaque; from airy, solid. She brought a most wonderful wardrobe, and,
kept in the background with her husband, two fat babies."

"I should think she would have been ashamed to come back here."

"Oh, no; not Violet. She was enchanted to show herself in her glory to
those who remembered her in the modest plumage of her girlhood. Florence
did not really like it, because she affected toward Florence the
attitude of one who comes to it from places immeasurably grander. You
would have thought Florence an amusing little hole where she long ago,
by some accident, had spent a month or two. She found us quaint,
provincial, old-fashioned. She was witty about us. She criticized us
with a freedom and publicity that made her funnier to us than we were
funny to her. It was not an endearing thing to do or a very intelligent
one. It was, in fact, rather antipathetic."

"Antip--I call it the actions of a _bug!_"

"You can see how it all left Gerald. The Violet he cared for was
obviously no more. Worse than that, she had probably never been.
Comforting knowledge, isn't it, that for years you have treasured
memories that had no reality to start from; that you have suffered
agonies of love without any real object. Nauseous! Intolerable! A
tragedy that is shown to have been all along a farce! To a man of
imagination, to a person as sincere as Gerald, you can see what it would
mean. You can see what it would leave behind it."

"I should think he would just despise her, and shake it off, and forget
her as she deserves."

"Your simple device, dear Aurora, is the one he adopted. But to have an
empty hollow where your beautiful hoard of pure gold was stored is a
thing it takes time to grow used to. He is not an unhappy lover now,
certainly; but he is a man who has been robbed, and he has fallen into
the habit of low spirits. It is a thousand pities his poor mother and
sister could not have been spared to make a home for him. Being too much
alone is bad for any one. He shuts himself in with his blues, and they
are growing more and more confirmed. Love is a curious thing." Leslie
said the latter separately and after a pause, as if from a particular
case she had been led to reviewing the whole subject. "It complicates
life so," she added, and rose to go.

They teased her to remain and lunch with them. But Leslie was suddenly
more tired at the contemplation of life than she had been when she came.
The total result of her call had not been to cheer her, for by an
uncomfortable stirring within, as soon as she had finished, she was made
to repent having talked to outsiders about things so personal, so
private, regarding Gerald--Gerald, who was infinitely reserved. It
seemed a crime against friendship. That somebody else would have been
sure to tell his story did not excuse her.

Leslie's mood to talk was over for that morning and she went home, but
not before she had been forced to take a bottle of perfume which she had
carelessly picked up off Aurora's toilet-table, sniffed, and praised;
also, lifted out of their vase, a bunch of orchids for her mother; and
for Lily the box of sweets that had stood invitingly open on the
sitting-room table.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Next time Aurora saw Gerald--it was on Viale Principe Amedeo--she waved
to him.

He did not see it. He was just aware of a victoria coming down the
middle of the street he was preparing to cross and of something
fluttering, but that it concerned him he did not suspect.

Then suddenly the victoria, like a huge Jack-in-the-box, shot up a
figure, and he recognized Mrs. Hawthorne standing at full height in the
moving carriage, and waving both hands, as he must suppose, nobody else
being near,--to him.

He lifted his hat. He saw her reach for the coachman and by touch make
him aware that she wished to stop. The horses were pulled up. Mrs.
Hawthorne, from the seat into which the jerk had thrown her, made
beckoning signs to him, laughing the while, and calling, "Mr. Fane! Mr.
Fane!"

He went to stand at the carriage-step.

"I thought," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "that you were going to come and take
us sight-seeing."

"I thought I was," said Gerald, with that scant smile of his; "but I was
not so fortunate as to find you at home."

It was true that he had gone to her door one afternoon, having
previously caught a glimpse of her in the heart of the city, shopping.

"You mean to say you came?"

"You did not find my card?"

"No; but it's all right. This is Miss Madison--Mr. Fane. We are
together. What have you got to do?"

Gerald looked as if the question had not been quite clear, and he waited
for some amplification of it before he could answer.

"Have you got anything very important to do? Aren't you lonesome? Don't
you want to jump in and come home with us? Wish you would."

Gerald smiled again in his remote way, and looked as if he knew, as any
one would know, that this was not meant to be taken seriously.

"I have just seen a beautiful spectacle," he said, after a vague
head-shake that thanked her shadowily for an unreal invitation. "A game
of _pallone_, which is the nearest to your football that boys have
over here. Beautiful bronzed athletes at exercise, a delightful sight,
statues in motion. I go to see them whenever I can.--The days are
becoming very short, are they not?"

"Yes. Jump in and come home with us. Tell you what we'll do. I'll go
down into the kitchen and make some soda biscuits that we'll have hot
for supper--with maple syrup. We've had a big box of sugar come."

Gerald again smiled his civil, but joyless, smile, and after another
vague head-shake that thanked, but eluded the question, he said: "They
are very indigestible; hot bread is not good for the health. At least,
that is what they tell us over here. We keep our bread two days before
eating it, or longer. But I am afraid I am detaining you."

The horses were jingling their bits, frisking their docked tails. The
driver, checking their restless attempts to start, was giving them
smothered thunder in Italian. Gerald withdrew by a step from the danger
to his shins.

[Illustration: "I thought," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "that you were going
to come and take us sight-seeing"]

"Oh, jump in!" said Mrs. Hawthorne for the third time. And because his
choice lay between saying curtly, "Impossible!" and letting the
impatient horses proceed, or else obeying, Gerald, who hated being rude
to women, found himself irresolutely climbing in, just long enough, as
he intended, to explain that he could not and must not go home with them
to the hot biscuits and syrup.

The little third seat had been let down for him; his knees were snugly
wedged in between those of the ladies. Aurora was beaming over at him;
Estelle was beaming, too. Aurora's smile was a blandishment; Estelle's
was a light. The horses were flying toward the Lungarno. And he gave up;
he helplessly gave up trying to find an excuse for asking to be set down
again and allowed to go his lonely way.

It might be entertaining, he tried to think, to see what they had done
to the Hermitage. But no! That was very sure to be revolting. If the
evening were to afford entertainment, it must be found in watching this
healthy and unhampered being who, just as certain fishes color the water
around them, seemed to affect the air in such a way that, coming near
enough, you were forced to like her, without ceasing to think her the
most impossible person that had ever found her way into cultivated
society.

The carriage-wheels crunched gravel; the horses' hoofs rang on the
pavement of a columned portico; the door was opened by a man in blue
livery.

Entering the wide hall, they faced an ample double staircase, between
the converging flights of which stood, closed, a great stately
white-and-gold door.

Gerald, as bidden, followed the ladies up the stairs to the cozier
sitting-room, where a fire, they hoped, had been kept up. In the
beginning dimness of an early twilight he first saw the big red flowers
and green, green leaves. He was left a moment alone while the ladies
took off their hats, and he sent his eyes traveling around him, prepared
really for something worse than they found, though the pictures on the
wall called from him the gesture of trying to sweep away an unpleasant
dream.

Aurora reappeared from her room in a business-like white apron.

"Now I'm going down to make the biscuit. Oh, no trouble. No trouble at
all. I want them myself. I'm homesick for some food that tastes like
home. Estelle will entertain you while I'm gone. I sha'n't be but a
minute."

Estelle sat in a low arm-chair close to the fire.

Gerald, to whom it did not seem cold enough for a fire, took a seat
nearer the windows, whence he could watch the fading sunset-end beyond
garden and street, river and hill.

He would have cared less, no doubt, to make himself not too dull company
for this stranger, had he known that there, before that fireplace, a few
days before, she had been placed in possession of the most intimate
facts of his humiliating destiny. Unsuspecting, in a mood rather more
amiable than usual, he asked, by way of entering into conversation,
whether she and her friend were not New-Englanders. It established the
sense of a bond, however light, to find that they and he were almost
townsmen. He had been born in Boston, or, at least, near it. His parents
had owned a house in Charlestown, where he had lived till he was ten
years old. They talked for a while of Boston.

He had heard a singular thing, he said, she might be able to tell him
how true: that in Boston a new medical method had arisen by which the
sick were said to be made well without the help of drugs. Mind cure, he
believed it was called. It seemed very extraordinary, and rather
interesting, if it were not all a fraud or a fable, that persons of the
most prosaic, as these had been described to him, should go about
professing to do for a fee the same thing that saints of old are
recorded to have done through their mysterious powers. The subject had
come into his mind--he went on making conversation--from recently
re-reading a book of George Sand's, _La Petite Fadette_, in which a
cure is performed which seemed to him very similar. If she had not read
the book, she must permit him to bring it for her perusal. He talked
about the book.

A maid brought in a lighted lamp, and, as is the pleasant custom of the
country, wished them a happy evening.

Very soon after it came Aurora, with a dab of flour on one cheek, which
the kitchen fire had warmed to a deeper pink.

"There," she said, "they're all ready for the oven. When we took the
house, all the stove we had was a big stone block thing with little
square holes. The cook fanned them with a turkey-wing. But now we've got
a range. Don't you want me to show you over the house? There'll be just
time before supper."

"I'm afraid it's all dark," said Estelle. "Let me ring and have them
light up. Think of a city house without gas!"

"No, they'd be too long. I can take a lamp."

She went for it to her dressing-room, and came back with one easy to
carry, long in the stem and small in the tank, from which, to make it
brighter, she had lifted off the shade. Gerald reached to take it from
her, but she refused his help.

"The weight's nothing. I want you to be free to look around. Coming,
Estelle?"

"I'll join you in a minute."

They went down the wide stairs side by side. She led through a door, at
the right, as you entered the house, of the main door.

"Here's one of the parlors. We have four on this floor, between big and
little. Four parlors and a dining-room. Doesn't that seem a good many
for two lone women?"

The unshaded lamplight showed a crowd of furniture, modern, muffled,
expensive, the lack of simplicity in design of which was further
rendered dreadful to the artist by every device to make it still less
simple, embroidered scarfs thrown over chair-backs, varicolored textiles
depending from the mantel-shelf, drooping over the mirror, down pillows
of every shape and tint piled in sofa-corners. Nothing was left
undecorated. The waste-basket even wore a fat satin bow, like a pet
poodle. Every horizontal surface was encumbered with knick-knacks.

"This is where we have people come when we don't know them very well,"
said Mrs. Hawthorne, hardly concealing her pride. "We couldn't ask the
minister to come right upstairs, as we did you. How do you--"

"Mrs. Hawthorne," came hurriedly from Gerald, "I beg you will not ask me
how I like it! It is a peculiarity like--like not liking oysters. I
can't bear to be asked how I like things."

"How funny! But, then, you're different from other people, aren't you?
That's what makes you so interesting."

She preceded him into the next room, which was not so bad as the first
for the reason that, as she explained, "they hadn't yet finished with
it." He seized the occasion almost eagerly to praise the chairs.

"We found them here when we came," she informed him. "There was a good
lot of furniture of this big, bare sort; clumsy, I call it. We stored
some of it in the top rooms, but Leslie Foss begged me so to let these
stay that we just had the seats covered over with this new stuff and
left them."

When she opened the next door and stepped into the space beyond it
seemed as if her lamp had dwindled to a taper, the room was so vast. It
had nine great windows, five in an unbroken row on the front of the
house the entire width of which it occupied. Aurora's light was faintly
reflected in a polished floor; it twinkled in the myriad motionless
drops of two great crystal chandeliers.

"Ah," exclaimed Gerald in a long sigh. "This is superb!"

"Yes," she said, "but you might as well try to furnish all outdoors. You
see that we haven't done anything beyond putting up curtains. We never
use it. All those chairs along the walls are going to be regilded when
we can get them to come and fetch them. Things move awfully slowly over
here, don't they, even if you're willing to pay."

"What a ball-room!"

"Yes. Wish we could give a ball; but we only know about a dozen people.
We've got to wait till we know enough at least for two sets of a
quadrille."

She was moving across the wide floor, holding her torch-like lamp high
the better to illumine the great pale, silent emptiness. No longer
hearing his footsteps echoing behind hers, she looked over her shoulder;
whereupon he hurriedly joined her, without explaining why he had lagged.

"This," she said, as turning to the left they passed from the ball-room
into a small oval room the domed ceiling of which was all tenderly
bepainted with Cupids and garlands--"this is almost my favorite."

She set down her lamp on a table of rose-tinged marble, and dropped for
a minute on to a little rococo settee.

"The things in here we found just as you see them."

"So I imagined."

"All but the ornaments on the mantel."

"Very astute in me; I divined that, too."

"We liked it, so we left it. Pretty, ain't it? Oh, beg pardon!" She
blushed and looked at him sidelong, laughing. "That was a bad break!
That came mighty near to being the forbidden question how you like it.
All the same, it is pretty, _is it not_?"

"Extremely. Extremely pretty."

"There are going to be some tapestries presently. Oh, don't be afraid!
Not those old worsted things full of maggots, but beautiful new ones,
painted by hand, all in these same delicate colors. A story in four
scenes, one for each panel. The 'Fountain of Love' is the subject. It
sounds to me like something Biblical, Sunday-schoolish, but Mr. Hunt
says, no, _it is not_."

"Mr. Hunt--"

"The nephew, Charlie. You know him, don't you? He's getting them done
for me. He's a great friend of mine. He's helped me a lot to buy
things."

"Did he help you to buy the pictures?"

"Yes. He knows the dealers, and gets them to make fair prices. I think
it perfectly wonderful how cheap everything is over here. He helped me
to buy these, too." She lifted the chain of pink corals, graduated from
the size of a pea to that of a hazelnut, which with their delicate
living color brightened her winter dress. "I can't say, though," she
dropped, "that I found these particularly cheap. Hush!" she broke off.
"It's Hat! Quick!" she whispered, "let's get behind the door and say
'Boo!' as she comes in."

Amazingly, incredibly to him, this grown woman appeared about to
ensconce herself.

"But won't it make her jump?" he asked, supposing it to be Miss Madison
for whom the little surprise was intended.

"Of course it'll make her jump. No matter how often I do it, she jumps.
That's the fun."

"Mrs. Hawthorne, please!" he begged nervously. "As a very special favor
to me, don't! It would make me jump, too--horribly."

She stood listening while the footsteps turned away and faded
fruitlessly. With a look of disappointment, as at opportunity missed,
she took up her lamp and moved on.

"And here," she said, leaving the oval room by the door opposite to the
one they had come through, "is the dining-room. Which takes us back to
the hall and completes the circle."

This room, of a fine new Pompeian red, was lighted. The table was set; a
butler busied himself at the sideboard. Gerald's eye was caught by the
brightness of a china basket piled high with sumptuous fruit, and
similarly caught the next moment by the pattern of the curtains, in
which the same rampant red lion was innumerably repeated on a ground of
wide-meshed lace.

"Wouldn't it be a lovely house to give a party in?" she asked him.
"Isn't it exactly right to give a party in? There are two big spare
chambers upstairs at the back that would do, one for gentlemen, one for
ladies, to lay off their things in. No use; we shall have to give a
party."

Having returned upstairs, he was without any false delicacy shown her
bedroom and her friend's bedroom and their dressing-rooms, as well as
given a peep into the two spare rooms, as yet incompletely furnished,
that he might get an idea how beautiful these were going to be when
finally industry and good taste had been brought to bear on them.

                   *       *       *       *       *

At dinner, which Mrs. Hawthorne seemed to have a fixed preference for
calling supper, it was Gerald who did most of the talking. The ladies
abandoned the lead to him, and listened with flattering attention while
he called into use his not too sadly rusted social gifts. He related
what he knew about the Indian Prince whose monument at the far end of
the Cascine had roused their interest. He explained the Misericordia. He
asked if they had noticed the wonderful figures of babies over the
colonnade of the Foundling Hospital, and told them how the "infantile
asylum," as he rendered it, was managed. He tried to amuse them by the
episodes from which certain streets in Florence have derived their
names, Street of the Dead Woman, Street of the Dissatisfied, Burg of the
Blithe.

Whenever he stopped there was silence, which he hastened again to break.

"You talk like Leslie," suddenly remarked Mrs. Hawthorne.

But now came the hot biscuits and the syrup, borne in by the mystified
butler at the same time as the more conventional dessert prepared by the
cook.

Aurora smiled at the biscuits' beautiful brown and, having broken one to
test its lightness, nodded in self-approval.

"They're all right. Now you want to put on lots of butter," she said.
"Here, that's not near enough," she reproved him. She reached over, took
his biscuit, buttered it as she thought it should be buttered, and
returned it to his plate; then, while eating, watched him eat with eyes
that expressed her simple love of feeding up any one, man or animal, so
lean as he.

There had been shining in Aurora's eyes all this evening, when they
rested on him, a look of great kindness, the consequence of knowing how
badly life had treated him, and desiring that compensation should be
made. He could not fail to feel that warm ray playing over his bleak
surface. He could not but think what nice eyes Mrs. Hawthorne had.

When he asked her if she knew how to make many other such delicious
things it became her turn to talk. Estelle here joined in, and they
exalted the fare of home, affecting the fiction of having found nothing
but frogs' legs, cocks' combs, and snails to feed upon since they struck
Italy. Blueberry-pie--did Mr. Fane remember it? Fried oysters! Buckwheat
cakes!

He said he remembered, but did not confess to any great emotion.

"You wait till Thursday," said Aurora. "It's Thanksgiving. We're going
to have chicken-pie, roast turkey, mince-pie, squash-pie, everything but
cranberry sauce. We can't get the cranberries. Will you come?"

In haste and confusion he said, alas! it would be impossible, wholly
impossible, intimating that he was a man of a thousand engagements and
occupations.

But after an interval, and talk of other things, he inquired, with an
effect of enormous discretion, whether he might without too great
impertinence ask who was coming to eat that wonderful Thanksgiving
dinner which her own hands, he must suppose, would largely have to
prepare.

"Just the Fosses. All the Fosses."

"Ah, Mr. Foss will feel agreeably like the great Turk."

"You mean he'll be the only man? I guess he can stand it. We thought of
asking Charlie Hunt, too, but he's English and would seem an outsider at
this particular gathering. Wish you'd come. You're such a friend of
theirs. Come on, come!"

"Mrs. Hawthorne, you are so very unusually kind. If you would leave it
open, and then when the day arrives, if I should find I could do so
without--without--"

"Oh, yes. Come if you can. And be sure, now, you come!"

They were still sitting at the table--dinner had been retarded by the
circumstantial round of the house--when music resounding through the
echoing rooms stopped the talk.

It was the piano across the hall that had been briskly and powerfully
attacked. The "Royal March" of Italy was played, first baldly, then with
manifold clinging and wreathing variations.

Aurora signed to the servant to open the dining-room door. All three at
the table sat in silence till the end of the piece.

Gerald wondered what the evening caller could be who made the moments of
waiting light to himself in this fanciful manner.

"It's Italo," said Mrs. Hawthorne, rising. "I call him Italo because I
never can remember his other name. Come, let's go into the parlor."

It was all rosily lighted. Candles set on the piano at each side of the
music-rest enkindled glossy high lights on the nose-bump and forehead
bosses of Signor Ceccherelli, who at Mrs. Hawthorne's appearance sprang
up to salute. She reached him her hand, over which he deeply bowed.

"You're to play all those lovely things I'm so fond of," she directed
him. "'The Swallow and the Prisoner,' 'The Butterflies,' 'The Cascade of
Pearls.' And don't forget the 'Souvenir of Saint Helena.' Then the one
of the soldiers marching off and the soldiers coming home again. All our
favorites. Mr. Fane-- Are you acquainted with each other? Italo--you'll
have to tell him your name yourself. All I can think of is
Checkerberry."

"Yes, yes, we are acquainted," said Gerald, hurriedly. "We have seen
each other many times. _Come sta?_"

"Oh, he can speak English."

"A leetle," Ceccherelli modestly admitted.

"He understands everything I say. We have great conversations. He comes
every evening when he isn't engaged to play somewhere else."

She went to sit on the gorgeous brocade sofa, arranging herself amid the
multitude of cushions so as to listen long and happily. Estelle
preferring a straight-backed chair, Gerald took the other corner of
Aurora's sofa. Immediately Ceccherelli opened with "Souvenir de
Sainte-Hélène." Aurora, respectful to the artist, talked in a whisper.

"He's so talented! You simply couldn't count the pieces he can play. We
do enjoy it so! We haven't anything in particular to do evenings if no
one calls. We don't often go out. We haven't been here long enough to
know many people. And aside from his magnificent playing, the little man
is such good company! We do have fun! There, I mustn't talk, I'm keeping
you from listening."

Gerald settled back, too, as if to listen, but to do the contrary was
his fixed purpose, even though the pianist, at last appreciated, put
into his playing so much feeling and force. Gerald's eyes went wandering
among the clutter of bric-à-brac, from a green bronze lizard to a mosaic
picture of Roman peasants, from a leaning tower of Pisa to a Sorrento
box. Then they rose to the paintings. He closed them.

The music was describing a hero's death-bed, besieged by dreams of
battle, at moments so noisy that Gerald had to open his eyes again for a
look of curiosity at the person who could produce so much sound. As he
watched him and his nose, like the magnified beak of a hen,--the nose of
a man who loves to talk,--he tried a little to imagine those merry
evenings spoken of by Aurora. The fellow looked almost ludicrously
solemn at this moment. He took himself and his art right seriously,
there could be no doubt of it. His face was a map of the emotions
expressed by the music, and wore, besides, according to his conception
of the part, the look of a great man unacclaimed by his own generation.

_Dio!_ what an ugly little man!

Gerald closed his eyes again.

The last cannon was fired over the hero's grave, the music stopped. The
ladies applauded. Gerald, smiling sickly, clapped his hands, too,
without, it might have been observed, making any noise to speak of.
Estelle went to the piano to compliment the player more articulately,
and loitered there, practising her French while he perfected himself in
English, by mutual aid.

"Italo," Mrs. Hawthorne interrupted them, "play that lovely thing of
your own now--you know, the one we're so crazy about, that by and by
turns into a waltz."

Without laying upon the ladies the tiresome necessity of pressing him,
the composer plunged into this masterpiece, and Gerald sat back again,
wondering what the little man thought of hearing himself called Italo by
the fair _forestiera_. He was dimly troubled, knowing that there is
no hope of an Italian ever really understanding the ways of being and
doing of American women, and especially an Italian of that class. But
then it would be equally difficult to make this American woman
understand just how the Italian might misunderstand her.

He permitted himself a direct look at her, where she rested among the
cushions, with eyes closed again and a smile diffused all over her face;
her whole person, indeed, permeated with the essence of a smile.
Extraordinary that, loving music so much, one could so much love such
music.

She surprised him by opening her eyes and whispering:

"Don't you want to smoke?" showing that for a moment at least she had
not been thinking of music. "You can, if you want to. Here, we've got
some. Don't go and think, now, that Estelle and I have taken to smoking.
Heavens above! We sent out for them the other night when Charlie Hunt
was here."

She reached across the table near her and handed him a box of
cigarettes.

He was very glad to light one. To smoke is soothing, and he felt the
need of it. Added to his vague distress at the spectacle of such
familiarity from these ladies to that impossible little Italian, a
ferment of resentment was disquieting him apropos of Hunt--those works
of art of which Hunt had facilitated the purchase.

Hunt, of a truth, ever since the first mention of him that evening had
been like a fish bone in Gerald's throat.

He checked his thoughts, recognizing that it is not sane or safe to
permit oneself to interpret the conduct of a person whom one does not
like. The chances of being misled are too great. He uprooted a suspicion
dishonoring to both.

Let it be taken for assured, then, that Hunt had in this case no
interest to forward beyond his love for making himself important. After
all, if the ladies liked bad pictures!... Yet it was a shame that he
should frequent their house, be accepted as their friend, invited by
them, made much of in their innocent and generous way, then should make
fun of them. Permissible, if you choose, to make fun of funny people,
but you must not at the same time make use of their kindness. A precept
for the perfect gentleman, in Florence or elsewhere: You can make fun of
persons, or you can cultivate their friendship, but not both things at
once. And Gerald, without proof, felt certain that Charlie Hunt spread
good stories about Aurora.

Mrs. Innes, his mother's old friend, meeting him at Vieusseux's
reading-room a few days before, had detained him for a chat, and in the
course of it asked him if he knew this Mrs. Hawthorne of whom the Fosses
appeared so fond. An amusing type, she must be. Seeing that statue of
the she-wolf and little Romulus and Remus at the foot of Vial de' Colli,
it seemed she had asked what it meant, and said she didn't believe it.

It indefinably hurt him, incommoded some nerve of envenomed
sensitiveness--yes, annoyed him like sand in his salad, to think of his
country-woman, with the good faith of a dog in her face, so quoted as to
make her ridiculous by a fellow wanting in human vitals, like Hunt.

He would have liked, had it been possible, to ask a few frank questions
of Mrs. Hawthorne, and find out more certainly what he should think. He
would have liked to warn her against trusting her enormous ignorance to
one who would have so little good-humor and protectiveness toward that
baby-eyed giant-child. Really, instinct ought to teach her better whom
to make her confident as respected that grave affair.

Singularly, when next the music stopped, Mrs. Hawthorne, after she with
true politeness had taken the box of cigarettes to the other of her
guests, spoke of Hunt. Perhaps her thoughts, too, had gone straying, and
mysteriously encountered some straying thought of his.

"Charlie Hunt," she said, "is coming on Sunday morning to take us to the
picture-galleries. We're going to play hooky from church. His work,
don't you see, keeps him at the bank on week days till everything of
that sort is closed."

"Mrs. Hawthorne," cried Gerald and sat up in unaffected indignation,
while mustache, beard, hair, everything about him appeared to bristle,
"I thought _I_ had been engaged to take you sight-seeing! I thought
it was to be _my_ honor and privilege. Mrs. Hawthorne, my dear
friend, if you do not wish deeply to hurt me, deeply to hurt me, you
will write to Mr. Hunt at once, this evening, and I will post the
letter, that you have thought better of that immoral plan for Sunday
morning, and are going to church like a good Christian woman. And
to-morrow, Mrs. Hawthorne, at whatever time will be convenient for you,
I will come and take you to the Uffizi."




CHAPTER VI


And so because, in his uncalled-for chivalry, he had made himself guide
to a lady in a ball-room, Gerald, one thing leading to another, was once
more committed to serving as a guide in Florence.

He had filled the part so often, at the appeal of one good friend and
another, that he had sworn never again to be caught, cajoled, or hired.
He could have hated the Ghiberti doors had such a thing not been
impossible. He did rather hate the Santissima Annunziata. And now it was
all to do over again.

It might be adduced, as a mitigation of his misfortune, that this was
different.

This was sometimes very different.

A singular thing about acquaintance with Mrs. Hawthorne was that it had
in a sense no beginning. One started fairly in the middle. No sooner did
one meet her than one seemed to have known her long and know her well.
Most people found this so. One therefore readily slid into speaking
one's mind to Mrs. Hawthorne, dispensing with the formal affectation of
a perfect respect for her every act and opinion, secure in the
recognition that anger, sulkiness, the self-love that easily takes
umbrage, were as far from her breezy sturdiness as the scrupulosities of
an anxious refinement.

That one could say what one pleased to Mrs. Hawthorne put more life into
intercourse with her, naturally, than there would have been if, with her
limitations, one had been forced to be entirely and tamely circumspect.

"Mrs. Hawthorne," cried Gerald, "do me the very real favor, will you,
like a dear good woman, of not calling the most venerable of the
primitives Simma Bewey!"

It was astonishing what things Gerald Fane could say without losing his
effect of a complete, even considerate politeness.

"But that's the way it's written," said Mrs. Hawthorne.

"You will pardon the liberty I take of contradicting you; it is not. It
gives me goose-flesh. Cimabue!"

"Very well. I'll try to remember. But it doesn't matter what I call him;
his Madonna is no beauty. Do you mean to tell me there was a time when
people admired faces like that? She gives me a pain."

"That is not the point; her beauty is not the point. Besides, she is
beautiful."

"Oh, very well. If you'd like to have me look like her, I can."

She tipped her head to one side, lengthened her jaw, pointed her hand,
and by a knack she had for mimicry made herself vaguely resemble the
large-eyed, small-mouthed, pale and serious Lady of Heaven before whose
portrait by the old master this dialogue took place.

"It is really a very poor joke, Mrs. Hawthorne," Gerald said, with mouth
distorted by the conflict between laughter and disgust. "To travesty a
dignified and sacred thing is a very poor pastime. Of course I laugh.
Miss Madison laughs, and I laugh. I think very poorly of it, all the
same. You would do much better to frame your mind to an attitude of
respect and try to understand. I can't say, though, that I think it
unnatural you should not at first appreciate the earliest old masters.
We will go to look at something more obvious."

"Wait a moment. These fascinate me, they're so queer and so awful. I
tell you those old codgers of the time you say these belong to had
strong nerves and stomachs. All these wounds and dripping blood and
hollow ribs and criminals being boiled in caldrons, and having their
heads cut off and arrows shot into them!... I guess you're right; we'd
better move on to something more cheerful."

Miss Madison was never guilty of the foolishness that fell from Mrs.
Hawthorne's gross and unconcerned ignorance. Miss Madison took modesty
and tact with her, as well as keenness of eye, when she went to
picture-galleries and museums. But this, strange to say, did not make
her the more acceptable companion of the two to their guide. What Miss
Madison did never seemed so important as what her larger, weightier
friend did. The one personality to a singular extent eclipsed the other,
who was accustomed to this to the point of not feeling it. A laughing
lack of conceit in both women marvelously simplified their relation.

Gerald, in choosing pictures for their enjoyment, avoided with a
conscientiousness of very special brand to halt with them before
paintings fit to please their unpracticed eyes but which he did not
think worthy of admiration. He likewise passed Venuses, Eves, Truths,
all nudities, without remark or pause, acquainted of old with the
simple-minded prudery of certain Americans, and not disrespectful to it.

"Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, "to be ignorant is no sin. One may have been
doing beautiful, gracious, useful and merciful things while others were
cultivating the arts and sciences. But ignorance on any subject is not
in itself beautiful or desirable. One should therefore not be complacent
in it, proud of it. With a little humility, Mrs. Hawthorne, what can one
not hope to accomplish? Now, please, Mrs. Hawthorne, drop all
preconception, and use your eyes. Look at that angel."

"Do you mean to tell me I could live long enough to think that angel
beautiful? With those Chinese eyes?... Give it up, my friend, why do you
want to bother?"

"Because, Mrs. Hawthorne, you have essentially a good brain. You are at
the back of all a very intelligent woman--"

"Go 'way with you! You know that if you feed me taffy enough you can
make me see and say anything you want."

"--a very intelligent woman. And I am so constituted that I simply
cannot go on living in the same world with a really intelligent
woman--my friend, besides--who does not see the difference between
Raphael and Guido Reni, and likes one exactly as well as the other. I
ache to change it!"

"Go ahead. We don't want you to die. But I'm afraid it'll take surgery.
You'll have to drill a hole in my thick head to get the things you mean
into that good brain so full of real intelligence."

"If you wouldn't be flippant!"

"What's that?"

"If you would bring reverence to the study of things done by great
people, and that people of great taste and learning have collected for
our joy and improvement!"

"See here! Don't you want me to have a little fun while we do Florence?
I don't see how I can stand it, if we're to be solemn as those old
saints with mouldy green complexions."

"We're not to be solemn. I have done these galleries solemnly times
enough, Heaven knows. But we're to be attentive, respectful, of an open
and receptive mind. We're not to say outrageous things in the mere
desire to shock our guide, or tease him."

"You don't mean to say you think that I--?"

"It's not funny."

"It mayn't be funny--but it's fun! Go on and lecture. You haven't got a
bit of fun in you."

"Yes, I have!" said Gerald, and with a creeping smile--grudging at
first, then brighter--looked Mrs. Hawthorne in the eye, while such fun
as lived in him traveled over the bridge of their glances, and she was
permitted to get a glimpse of his underlying relish.

"All I ask of you, Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, finally, "is that you will
not let your innocence on these subjects appear when you are with
others. I don't say pretend. Just keep still, be silent! It does not
matter when you are with me. When you are with me I beg of you to be
yourself. But with others.... You would become the talk of the town,
and--" he shuddered, "I should most horribly hate it!"

                   *       *       *       *       *

"Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, with a quiver of annoyance in his voice a few
days later, "did I not implore you not to let it be known in Florence
how you are affected by the proudest treasures of her world-famous
collections?"

"Yes, you told me. But I didn't promise."

"And now I am asked--with laughter and mockery--whether I have seen Mrs.
Hawthorne giving an imitation of a Madonna by Simma Bewey, and heard
Mrs. Hawthorne on the subject of G. Ottow and Others."

"Didn't you say--with laughter? Well, then, it's all right. Don't you
care. I just got to training and did it to make them a little sport.
Didn't they tell you about my Native of Italy eating Macaroni?"

"Mrs. Hawthorne, you are just a bad big school-girl--a bad big
school-girl--"

"'Hark, from the tomb!'" said Mrs. Hawthorne, in lieu of anything more
scintillating.

"A bad big school-girl, and I will have nothing more to do with you. If
you delight in being the talk of the town, all you have to do is allow
your friend Mr. Hunt in his spare hours to take you to see such things
as I have not yet had the honor of showing you."

"Blessed if I--Look here, you aren't mad in earnest? Sooner'n lose you,
I won't say another word. There! I've been Tchee-mah-boo-eh's Madonna
for the last time. Don't be cross with little T. T.--Talk of the Town!"

"If you had any discrimination, any reticence ..."

"No reticence? Does that mean can't keep anything to myself? You don't
know me!"

"You even tell your age."

"You aren't going to find fault with me for _that_?"

"Yes. At your age one should know better. It is part of your general and
too great frankness."

They upon occasions came near quarreling, but not seriously, her
disposition to quarrel was so small. Yet, two could not be outspoken and
one of them irritable, and those rocks never even be grazed.

She unwarily enlarged to him one day upon her disappointment in
Florence. By this time, she said, she was growing used to it, she didn't
notice so much the things she didn't like. But at first, with her
expectation high, her imagination inflamed by the Judge's and Antonia's
eloquence, the narrow streets, in some of them no sidewalks even, the
gloomy bars at the windows, the muddy river with the dirty old houses
huddled on the bank, the stuffy churches with the average height of the
Italian populace marked on the pillars by a dubious grindy brown tint,
the dreadful beggars, the black fingernails, the smells....

"Mrs. Hawthorne!" came from Gerald, who with difficulty had let her go
on thus far, "those were all you noticed, were they? In the most
wonderful city in the whole world, those are all you find to talk about!
The narrow streets, the beggars, the smells. Mrs. Hawthorne--" he nearly
trembled with the effort to keep calm, "this is obviously not the place
for you. You should have gone to ... to Switzerland! Instead of a
sunburned hill-side, with sober silver olives and solemn black
cypresses, and a pair of beautiful calm white oxen plowing, you would
have seen a nice grass-green pasture, at the foot of blinding peaks, cut
by an arsenic-green stream, on whose bank a red and white cow feeding!
Then among the habitations all would have been well-regulated, the
churches swept, perhaps even ventilated, the people washed, clean
aprons, clean caps, no beggars, no disorder, no crimes. And there would
have been no disturbing manifestations of genius, either; no troublesome
masterpieces or other evidences of a little fire in the blood. It would
have suited you perfectly."

"I guess you mean that to be cutting, don't you?"

"Let me try to tell you how much I liked New York, when I went back
there some years ago after an absence of ten or eleven years. I had some
idea, you know, of perhaps returning to live in America. Well, I
shivered. I shut my eyes. I held my ears. I fled. I remained just the
time I was forced to by the affairs of my poor mother and, as I tell
you, I fled!"

"Why, what's the matter with New York?"

"I will tell you what is the matter with New York, with Boston, with all
the places in America that I have seen again since I was grown up--"

"No! Stop! Don't say anything against America. It's the one way to make
me mad.--I didn't know you felt the same way about Florence. You aren't
an Italian, are you? It's because we're both alike Americans that we sit
here fighting so chummily."




CHAPTER VII


Lending her spacious front room for the Christmas bazaar in aid of the
church, and beholding it full of bustle and brightness, was the thing
that brought to the acute stage Mrs. Hawthorne's longing to see her
whole house the scene of some huge good time: she sent out innumerable
invitations to a ball. Mrs. Foss's card was inclosed with hers. It was a
farewell party given for Brenda, whose day of sailing was very near. The
frequent inquiry how Brenda should be crossing the ocean so late in the
year met with the answer that her traveling companions had a brother
whose wedding had been timed thus awkwardly for them.

On the morning of the day before the ball Gerald came to see Mrs.
Hawthorne. He was still intrusting the servant with his message when
Aurora, leaning over the railing of the hallway above, called down to
him, "Come right upstairs!"

He was aware of unusual activities all around--workmen, the sound of
hammering, housemaids plying brooms and brushes. Leslie Foss, with her
hat on, looked from the dining-room and said, "Hello, Gerald!" too busy
for anything more. Fräulein seemed to be with her, helping at something.

The great central white-and-gold door, to-day open, permitted a glimpse,
as he started up the stairs, of a man on a step-ladder fitting tall
wax-candles into one of the great chandeliers. From unseen quarters
floated Estelle's voice, saying, "_Ploo bah! Nong, ploo hoe!_"

Mrs. Hawthorne met him at the head of the stairs. The slight disorder of
her hair, usually so tidy, pointed to unusual exertions on her part,
also. Her face was flushed with excitement and, to judge by her
wreathing smiles, with happiness.

"I saw you coming," she greeted him. "_Riverisco! Beata Lei! Mamma
mia!_ And do you know how I saw you? Come here."

She led the way to the back, where the window-door stood open on to the
roof of the portico, which formed a terrace.

"See? I've had it glassed in for to-morrow night. We couldn't say we
hadn't plenty of rooms before, and plenty of room in them. That's just
the trouble: there aren't any nooks in this big, square house. So I've
made one. This is Flirtation Alcove. Here a loving couple can come to
cool off after dancing and look up at the stars together. Oh, it's going
to be so pretty! You can't tell anything about it as it looks now; I've
only got these few things in it. But the gardeners are going to bring
all sorts of tall plants and flowers in pots. Just wait till to-morrow
night!"

"You are very busy, I am afraid, Mrs. Hawthorne. I ought not to take
your time."

"Can't you sit down a minute?"

"I have come to ask a favor."

"I guess I can say it's granted even before you ask."

"I should like to retract my refusal of your very kind invitation for
to-morrow evening. I have explained to you my weak avoidance of crowds.
I have determined to overcome it in this case, and I want your
permission to bring a friend."

"That? How can you ask? Bring ten! Bring twenty! Bring as many as you've
got! As for coming yourself, I'm tickled to death that you've
reconsidered."

"It's not quite as simple as it seems, Mrs. Hawthorne. I shall have to
tell you more."

At her indication, he took the other half of the little dumpling sofa
which had seemed to her an appropriate piece of furniture for Flirtation
Alcove, and which, with a rug on the floor, formed so far its only
decoration. In the clear, bare morning light of outdoors, which bathed
them, she still looked triumphantly fresh, but he looked tired.

"It is Lieutenant Giglioli for whom I have come to beg an invitation.
You perhaps know whom I mean."

"Let me see. I can't tell. Quite a few officers have been introduced,
but I never can get their names."

"Hasn't Mrs. Foss or Leslie ever spoken of him?"

"Not so far as I can remember. In what way do you mean?"

"They evidently have not." He seemed to be given pause by this and need
to gather force from reflection before going on, as he did after a
moment, overcoming his repugnance. "He is the reason for poor Brenda
being packed off to America."

"Oh, is that it?"

"He came to see me last evening and spent most of the night talking of
her. We were barely acquainted before; but he knew I am a close friend
of the Fosses, and in that necessity to ease their hearts with talk
which Italians seem to feel he chose me. I felt sorry for him."

"She's turned him down?"

"No; she loves him."

Again Gerald stopped, as after making a communication of great gravity.
Mrs. Hawthorne, listening with breathless interest, made no sound that
urged him to go on. The fact he had announced seemed solemn to both
alike, with the vision floating between them of Brenda's white-rose face
and deer's eyes, the feeling they had in common that Brenda, for
indefinable reasons, was not like ordinary mortals, and that what she
felt was more significant, more important.

"But he has nothing beside his officer's pay," Gerald went on when the
surprise of his revelation had been allowed time to pass, "and she on
her side has nothing but what her parents might give her, who, you
probably know, have no great abundance. His proposals were made to them,
as is the custom in this country, and have been formally declined."

He left it to her to appreciate the situation created by this, and,
while thinking on his side, ran the point of the slender cane which he
had not abandoned round and round the same figure of the rug-pattern at
their feet.

"They are both too poor. I see," said Mrs. Hawthorne; but added quickly,
as if she had not really seen: "It seems sort of funny, though, doesn't
it, to let that keep them, if they're fond of each other?"

"Oh, it's not that. However fond, they couldn't marry without her
bringing her husband a fixed portion. It is the law in this country, in
the case of officers of the army,--to keep up the dignity of that
impressive body, you understand. In the case of a lieutenant the
_dote_, or dowry, must be forty thousand francs. I learned the
exact sum for the first time last night."

"How much is that? Let me see,"--Mrs. Hawthorne did mental arithmetic,
rather quickly for a woman,--"eight thousand dollars. And the Fosses
can't give it."

"Of their ability to give it if they wished to I am no judge. I dare say
they could, though with their son John going before long to hang out his
shingle, as they call it, I doubt if it could be without bleeding
themselves. But they are not convinced that the sacrifice ought to be
made." He frowned at the pattern on the rug, and suddenly cut at it
impatiently with his stick. "It is a singular story, in which everybody
is right and the result wrong, horribly wrong!"

"Oh, dear me!" sighed Mrs. Hawthorne, feeling with him even before
understanding.

"I ought perhaps to say," he corrected, "everybody is good and
well-meaning, but has been unwise. And everybody now has to pay."

"I've thought right along that the Fosses had some reason for not being
very happy," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "and I guessed it was something about
Brenda. But they never said anything, and I didn't try to make out.
Brenda doesn't take to me, somehow, as the others do. I'm not her kind,
of course; but I do adore her from afar. She's so beautiful! She's like
a person in a story-book, who at the end dies, looking at the sunset
over the sea, or else marries the prince."

"Yes, Brenda is wonderful."

"I never should take her for an American."

"She's not like one, and yet she is. She has grown up in this country
and breathed in its ideas and feelings till she even looks Italian. Her
parents are the sort of Americans that fifty years of foreign countries
wouldn't budge; but they began later. Still, it is because Brenda is
American, after all, that cruelties are being committed. Her family have
taken it for granted that one of them couldn't really be in love with an
Italian, least of all that joke, a dapper and decorative Italian officer
that a girl buys at a fixed price for her husband. And Brenda can't say
to them: 'But I am. I am in love with just such a man. The happiness of
my life depends upon your finding the vulgar sum of money with which to
buy him for me.' Because of the American-ness all round, Brenda can't
say that to them, and because she doesn't say it, they are in doubt,
they only half apprehend, they don't understand. The one thing they are
sure of is that to marry a foreigner is a mistake. And the one safe
thing they see to do, when Brenda's face, combined with her entire
reserve toward them, has begun to torment them seriously, is to send her
away where, if the truth be that she mysteriously is 'interested in' an
Italian, the change of scene may help to put him out of her head."

"So that's why they're sending her home!"

"There are no better or dearer people in the world, kind, true, just;
but"--Gerald held in, and showed how much he hated to make any sort of
reservation--"in this they have been to blame. They bring growing girls
to Italy, where, such is their confidence in I don't know what quality
supposed to be inherent and to produce immunity from love of Italian
men, they never dream that there might happen to them an Italian
son-in-law."

He gave her a moment to realize how rash this was; then hurried, as if
wishing to get through as quickly as possible with the disagreeable, if
not disgraceful, task of criticizing his friends and of gossiping:

"During the progress of the affair Mrs. Foss lets all go on as the
little affairs and flirtations of her own youth were allowed to go on at
home. She likes her daughters to be admired. It is only proper they
should make conquests, have beaus. Leslie has had flirtations with
Italians as well as with others, and come out of them without impairing
that sense of humor which permits her to see as funny that one should
succumb to the attractions of one of those only half-understood men, who
may either be playing a comedy of love while in truth pursuing a
fortune, or, if in earnest, are rather alarming, with the hint of
jealous ferocity in their eyes. With Mrs. Foss's knowledge, Brenda,
during a whole summer at the seaside, receives Giglioli's letters,
written at first, or partly, in English, which he is learning with her
help. With this excuse of English, it is a correspondence and courtship
_dans toutes les règles_. Brenda is not asked by an American mother
to show her letters or his. Giglioli, with his traditions, could not
have imagined such a thing if the parents were unwilling to receive him
as a suitor. Brenda herself--one will never know about Brenda, how it
began, what she thought or hoped. She is very young; no doubt she did
hope. Children seldom know much about their parents' means. She very
likely thought hers could make her the present of a dowry, as they had
made her other presents. But when she discovered their attitude toward
the whole matter, with dignity and delicacy she let all be as they
desired, incapable of pressing them to tax their resources to give her a
thing their prejudice is so strongly set against. They did what they
thought best, and have hung in doubt ever since as to whether it was
best; for though Brenda gives her confidence to none of them, and they
do not press her to give it, with that respect for a child's liberty
which is also American, they are growing more and more uneasy with the
suspicion that it was serious on her part, too. They love her
extraordinarily, and she has always dearly loved them. They show their
love by protecting her youth from a step she may repent. She shows hers
by being strong, poor love, and trying not to grieve them with the
revelation of her heart. And they are making one another wretched."

For a moment Mrs. Hawthorne had nothing to say, busy with pondering what
she had heard. "I don't see how, if she really loves this Italian, she
could give him up so gracefully," she finally said.

"She has not given him up, Mrs. Hawthorne," said Gerald. "Believe me,
she has not. She has some plan, some dream, for bringing about the good
end in time without aid from her parents. I am sure of it. No, she has
not given him up." He had before him, vivid in memory, the image of
Brenda in the little church, and was looking at that, though his eyes
were on Mrs. Hawthorne's friendly and attentive face. "She is at the
wonderful hour of her love," he said, "when the world is transfigured
and life lifted above the every-day into regions of poetry; when the
simple fact of his existence justifies the plan of creation, when to
wait a hundred years for him would seem no more difficult than to wait a
day, and to perform the labors of Hercules no more than breaking off so
many roses. She is sure of him, the immortality of his passion, as she
is sure of herself. So they are above circumstances, and nothing that
friend or foe can do should trouble their essential serenity."

"How wonderful!" breathed Mrs. Hawthorne, after a little silence in
which Gerald had been thinking with a very sickness of sympathy of
Brenda and the sinister propensity of the Fates for bringing to nothing
the most valiant dreams and hopes; and Mrs. Hawthorne had been thinking
entirely of Gerald, whose own heart was so much more certainly revealed
by what he said than could be anybody else's.

"Unfortunately,"--he turned abruptly to another part of his
subject,--"he is not of the same temperament. She has some project, I
imagine, for earning the money for her dowry, poor child, by music,
singing, painting. But he does not know her vows of fidelity, because
her parents did use their authority so far as gently to request her not
to write to him or see him; and she promised, and a promise with Brenda
is binding. And he has felt his honor involved in not writing or meeting
her. But, though separated, they have been in the same city; they could
hope to catch a glimpse of each other now and then. Heaven only knows
how often he has stood to see her pass, or watched her window, and lived
on such things as unhappy lovers find to live on. After all, the faith
that when he dreamed of her she dreamed of him, that as he kissed a
glove she kissed a silver button, was a life, something to go on with. I
dare say, too, he cherished the hope of some miracle,--it is so natural
to hope!... But now they are sending her away, and it seems to him the
black end of everything."

"I see. And what you want is--"

"To be driven half a world apart for indefinite periods, more than
probably forever, without one look, one word of leave-taking, is truly
too much. Granted that they are not to have each other, they ought not
to be torn in two like a bleeding body. Let them have to remember a few
last beautiful moments!"

Mrs. Hawthorne had become pensive. He watched her sidewise, trying to
divine what turn her thoughts were taking. Her prolonged silence made
him uneasy.

"It wouldn't be wrong, you think?" she asked finally. "Mrs. Foss
wouldn't be cross with us?"

"If it is wrong, my dear Mrs. Hawthorne, let it be wrong!" he cried
impetuously. "If any one is cross, we will bow our heads meekly--after
having done what we regarded as merciful. Let us not permit a cruelty it
was in our power to prevent!"

But Mrs. Hawthorne continued to disquiet him by hesitating, while her
face suggested the travels of her thought all around and in and out of
the question under consideration.

"You don't think it would perhaps be cruel to Brenda?" she laid before
him another difficulty in the way of making up her mind. "Mightn't it
just ruin the evening for her, with the painfulness of good-bys? Or, if
she doesn't in the least expect him, the shock of the surprise?"

"If I know that beautiful girl, passionate as an Italian under her
American self-control, it will be the blessed shock of an answered
prayer. She prays nightly, never doubt it, that Heaven may manage for
her just such a surprise."

He was growing afraid of the calm common sense that tried to see the
thing from every side and weight the merits of each person's point of
view. Feeling it intolerable to be refused, he suddenly appealed to her
pity, away from her justice.

"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, life is so unkind, and to be always wise simply
deadly! A few memories to treasure are all the good we finally have of
our miserable days, and to catch at a moment of gold without care that
it will have to be paid for is the only way to have in our hands in all
our lives anything but copper and lead; yes, dull lead, common copper."
He covered his face and pressed his eyes, in a way he had when the world
seemed too hopeless and baffling; then as suddenly straightened up,
remarking more quietly, "The Fosses are too wise."

"They have my sympathy, I must say, Mr. Fane," Mrs. Hawthorne hurriedly
defended herself against being moved. "I should be just as much afraid
as they to have my daughter marry a foreigner."

"Mrs. Hawthorne, you ought to be afraid to have your daughter marry
anybody." He gathered heat again and vehemence. "As regards Italians, we
are all one mass of superstitions. We are always comparing our best with
their bad. As a matter of truth, our best and their best and the best
the world over are one as good as the other, and our worst can't be
exceeded by anything Italy can show. If you make the difficulty that we
are different, our point of view different, I object that Brenda's is
not so different. The international marriages that turn out well make no
noise, but there are plenty of them. I have seen any number in the
ordinary middle classes. No, parents are twice as old as their children;
that is the trouble and always will be. The older people by prudence
secure a certain thing, but it's not the thing youth wanted. The older
see a certain thing as preferable, because they are old; but the young
were right for themselves, for a time, at least, until they, too, grew
old and saw a long peace and comfort as superior to a brief love and
rapture. Brenda is not shallow or changeable; it may be her one chance
of happiness that her parents in their anxious affection are trying to
remove her from, and which she will cling to with every invisible fiber
of her being until she conquers, or turns into a dismal old maid. Brenda
is not like other girls. Love is serious to her. She never played with
it as Leslie has always done, and as American girls do, yes, in
Massachusetts and Virginia alike. She is an earnest, simple, sincere,
constant nature, very much, in fact, like him."

"You seem to like him. Is he such a fine man really?"

"I don't know a finer, in his way."

"Good looking?"

"Mrs. Hawthorne, what a frivolous question! But he is. He is one of the
most completely handsome men I know. Rather short, that's all."

"Oh, what a pity!"

"But, if you must insist on that sort of symmetry, Brenda is not tall.
He is a kind of Italian, more common than one thinks, that doesn't get
into literature, having nothing exciting, mysterious, wicked, or even
conspicuously picturesque about him. After being a good son,--they are
very often good sons,--he will be a good husband and a good father, like
his own father before him. He is without vanity, while looking like a
square-built, stocky, responsible Romeo. Devoted to duty, passionate for
order, absolutely punctilious in matters of honor and courtesy, he is a
good citizen, a good soldier. He belongs to excellent people, I
gathered, whose fortune, once larger, is very small. They live in the
Abruzzi, I think he said. He is the eldest son and hope of the house.
His gratitude to them comes first of all, he made me understand. He
would be an _indegno_, unworthy of esteem and love, if that were
not so. He had never cared for pleasures, he told me; even in the time
not demanded by the service he studied. He wished to be useful to his
country; he looked for the advancement to be gained by solid capacity in
military things. He felt older than his years, he said, from being the
eldest of the family and always carrying responsibilities. He committed
no follies of youth, had no quarrels, made no debts. His companions
sometimes laughed at him for this prosaic seriousness. But he had
friends, for he is of a manly, modest sort. One evening during Carnival
last year certain of these friends dropped in on their way to a dance, a
costume party at the house of Americans, and seeing him so absorbed by
duties and studies, thought it a lark to tempt him from these and take
him along. And he, to astonish them for once, he says, let it happen,
they assuring him that he would be well received if presented as their
friend. One of them had on two costumes, one on top of the other, of
which he lent him one, a monk's frock and cowl. So they went. At the
ball was Brenda as the Snow-queen. And the fatal thing happened at very
first sight of her. It is a repetition of _Romeo and Juliet_, as
you see. He had shunned women as the rivals of duty and work. He
believes his instantaneous adoration owing to the fact that Brenda so
far surpassed all he had ever known,--a being entirely formed of light
and snow and fragrance.... I am using his words. Her very name is sweet
to Italian lips. He permitted himself the dreams of other men. He
permitted himself to hope. And then!... These things he told me with
actual tears in the finest dark eyes I have perhaps ever seen, and
without seeming any the less manly for them. He told me, and I believed
him. He came to me, poor fellow, because it was the nearest he could
come to Brenda, and he trusted, I suppose, that I would tell her he had
been. It was a way of sending her a message. He talked more than half
the night, walking the floor, then throwing himself into a chair and
grasping his head. I can't tell you all he said, but it filled me with
pity and respect. It made me his friend."

Mrs. Hawthorne looked soft and sympathetic, but far away, and when he
stopped did not speak, engrossed, it was to be hoped, by the story just
told.

He continued, though discouraged:

"He wanted to know if I thought he would be guilty of an unpardonable
breach should he ask permission to write her one letter before she left.
This parting without farewell is the last bitter touch to his tragedy.
Brenda, when it had been decided that she should leave, sent word to him
by that little pianist who comes here. Again through the same channel he
received word that the day of departure was fixed. Can you think what it
means, Mrs. Hawthorne? Have you in your experience or imagination the
wherewith to form any conception, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, of what it means?
The day of departure fixed! The day of parting! Do you realize? No more
sight or sound of each other! The end! The sea between! Silence! And it
is to befall on Saturday of this week, and we are at Wednesday!"

"All right, Mr. Fane; bring him!" she said in haste. "You've made me
want to cry. I mustn't let myself cry; it makes my nose red. What did
you say his name is?"

"Giglioli."

"Spell it. Gig--no, it's no use. What's the other part of his name?"

"Manlio."

"That's a little better. I guess he'll have to be Manlio to me. Bring
him along, whatever happens, and then let's pray hard to have everything
happen right."

                   *       *       *       *       *

Not much later on the same day Mrs. Hawthorne's brougham might have been
seen climbing Viale dei Colli, with the lady inside, alone, engaged in
meditation.

"It would be a pity," she was thinking, as she alighted before Villa
Foss, "that a little matter of eight thousand dollars should stand in
the way of perfect bliss!"




CHAPTER VIII


So many forces had been enlisted, into so many hands the white card
given, to make Mrs. Hawthorne's ball a success, that it could hardly
fail to be somewhat splendid. On a platform raised in one corner of the
ball-room sat the little orchestra assembled and conducted by Signor
Ceccherelli, who, from his mien, might have been the creator of these
musicians and originator of all music.

Charlie Hunt was floor-master, and busy enough. Another might perhaps
have done as much and not appeared so busy. The cotillion especially
gave him a great deal to do. Everybody understood that he had planned
all the figures and bought the favors. Some received an impression that
the ball was entirely managed by him, who was such a very great friend
of the hostess's. Some even carried home an idea that the hostess never
did anything without consulting him, and more often than not besought
him to do it for her.

This sounds cruder than it actually was. Charlie was looking most
handsome and high-bred. Animation shone from his eyes, his teeth, his
skin, over which he now and then swept a fine white silk handkerchief.
He danced devotedly every minute during which he was not engaged in
making others dance. Mrs. Hawthorne, gazing after him with a benignant
smile, was truly grateful to him for putting into her party so much
"go." It was his atmosphere rather than his words--though he did drop
words, but not many or really in bad taste--that made him appear the one
indispensable person in the house.

Mrs. Foss stood near the central door with Mrs. Hawthorne, receiving.
She had not omitted from her list one acquaintance in Florence of the
suitable class. Everybody was there; the style of invitation-card sent
had suggested a grand occasion.

All the persons she had seen at the Fosses on the first Friday evening
at their house Mrs. Hawthorne saw again, and many more. Balm de Brézé,
with a gallantry of old style, bent his black-lacquer mustache over her
glove. The dark Landini pressed her hand with a pinch the warmth of
which pricked her attention, and she found his eyes fixed on her with
more the air of seeing her than is common at a first meeting.

Suddenly her heart thumped like a school-girl's. Gerald was coming, and
with him an officer who must surely be Manlio. She tried to keep down
her emotion, but the pink of her face deepened, a trembling seized her
smile.

The Italian was as white as paper, his mustache and brows made spots of
ink on it; his eyes were as deep and still as wells in the night. She
could hardly doubt that his heart was in a tumult, but he spoke without
disaster to his voice, thanking her in a formal phrase. She perceived,
from a distinct advantage over him in height, how faultlessly handsome
he was in a quiet, unmagnetic way. Never had she seen anything to equal
the whiteness of his teeth except her pearls in their black velvet case.

After having paid his duty to her, he remained for some minutes speaking
with Mrs. Foss, who appeared as kind, while he appeared as calm and
natural, as if time had moved back, and they were still at last spring
and the beginning of his visits. Of all concerned Aurora was the least
collected.

"I can't help it!" she murmured to Gerald, while the other two were
talking together. "I'm all of a tremble. I feel as if I were Brenda; and
at the same time I feel as if I were him--or he."

Mrs. Foss turned to them to say she believed everybody had arrived, and
with Giglioli moved away from the door. Gerald asked Mrs. Hawthorne if
they should waltz, but she refused, because she ought to be looking
after the people who were not dancing and seeing that every one had a
good time. She should dance only once that evening, she told him, and it
should be with Mr. Foss, who had promised to dance at her party if she
would promise to dance with him.

Mr. Foss was seen approaching, and Mrs. Hawthorne smiled and sparkled in
anticipation of the jokes they would exchange on her fairy weight and
his youthful limberness.

Gerald sent his eyes around the room to see if any one were free whom it
would be a sort of duty to ask to dance. He did not look for pleasure
from dancing, the less so that Charlie Hunt, on the perpetual jump, and
dancing with a perfection almost unmanly, had brought the exercise into
temporary discredit with him. Miss Madison was dancing, Miss Seymour was
dancing, Leslie was dancing, Brenda--his eyes were unable to find. In a
doorway, and not quite as festive in looks as the majority, which gave
to the room the effect of an animated flower-bed, he perceived a figure
in snuff-brown silk, just in front of which, soberly watching the
dancers, was a little girl in a short dress of embroidered white, a blue
hair-ribbon and blue enamel locket. At once dropping his search for a
partner, Gerald went to join this pair, thinking, as he approached, that
Lily without her spectacles was beginning to have a look of Brenda,--a
Brenda with less beauty, but more originality; more--what could one call
it?--geniality, perhaps.

"Oh, Gerald!"--the little girl caught his hand without ceasing for more
than a second to watch the ball-room floor,--"I have promised to go home
willingly at ten o'clock!" It was spoken in a gentle wail.

"My child," said Fräulein, "you must begin to prepare, for I fear it
cannot be far from ten."

"Oh, Fräulein, don't keep talking about it! _Please!_"

"When you leave this pleasure, Lili, remember, there will be still that
other pleasure of the long ride home in the night and the moonlight."

"Yes." Lily, glad again, turned wholly to Gerald, the music having
stopped. "Mrs. Hawthorne told mother that if she would let me come I
should be taken home in her own carriage, with all the furs around us
and a hot water-box for our feet, so that we never could catch cold.
Wasn't it sweet of her? And we've both already had ices and cakes,
before anybody else, because she said we must. Don't you think she's
sweet, Gerald?"

"Sweet as honey," he said.

"Oh, Gerald,"--Lily's tone was fairly lamentable,--"have you seen the
baskets of favors that are going to be given away by and by? There are
roses of red silk, and lilies of white velvet, and chocolate cigars, and
fans, and bonbonnières, and silver bangles! Then funny ones of little
monkeys and ducks and things. And I have to go home willingly,
cheerfully, promptly, at ten o'clock!"

"Lily, if any lady is so good and so misguided as to honor me with a
favor, I will bring it to you in my pocket to-morrow or soon after, I
promise."

"What hour is it, Herr Fane?" asked Fräulein over Lily's head.

Gerald drew out his watch and hesitated, sincerely sorry.

"To be exact, it is three minutes and three quarters to ten," he said.

Lily's mouth dropped open, and out of the small dark hollow one could
fear for a second that a cry of protest or revolt might come; but the
very next moment it was seen that Lily had returned to be the best child
in the world and the most honorable.

"Good night, Gerald!" she said, with a wistfully willing, cheerful,
ready face. "You won't forget?"

He was left in the oval room, and as the dancers who had come in to
occupy its seats seemed all to be in pairs, he remained aloof. He took
the occasion to have a look at the panels, which he had not before seen,
the tapestries, which were not tapestries, but paintings on rep. He
remembered--the Fountain of Love, not Biblical.

The fountain, surely enough, spouted from a marble dolphin squeezed in
the chubby arms of a marble Love, and was four times repeated, at
different hours of the day and seasons of the year. In spring, at dawn,
a maiden filled her cup at it. At noon, in summer, the same maiden and a
youth drank from it with cheeks close together. In autumn, at sunset,
the maiden, sadder of countenance, stared at the fountain, visibly
wrapped in memories. In winter the fountain stood solitary and frozen,
Cupid had a hood of snow, the purplish twilight landscape was drowned in
melancholy.

Gerald's mind made an excursion from the things before him to the studio
where those facile works of art had been produced. The place was
imaginary, and the artist not altogether clear, but the features of the
second figure which he saw, the visitor at the studio, were well-known
to him, and the sentiments of the artist receiving the order to treat a
subject in four large panels for a rich _forestiera_ not difficult
to estimate.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The ball had been raging, if one may so express it, for several hours,
the feast was at its height, when Aurora, confused with the richness and
multiplicity of her impressions, and aware of a happy fatigue, withdrew
from her guests to be for a few minutes just a quiet looker-on. She
chose as her retreat a spot at the curve of the stairs, where she felt
herself in the midst of everything and yet isolated. Her back was toward
the persons going up and down; she leaned on the sloping balustrade, and
breathed and rested and hoped no one would notice her for a little
while, all being delightfully engaged.

She could see a little way into the ball-room, where certain younger
couples, mad for dancing, were making the most of the time when the
floor was relatively empty, the supper-room being proportionately full.
Supper over, the cotillion would begin. She could see Leslie, in
Nile-green crape, eating an ice out in the hall with that American boy,
the singer, whose conceit, by his looks, had not yet been made to
totter. She could hear the merry sound of spoons and glasses, and knew
what good things were being consumed. All the house was involved in
festivity, and resounding with it. In the upstairs sitting-room were
card-tables. In the improvised conservatory opposite one large dim
lantern glowed softly amid palms and flowers. To Aurora every goose
present that evening was a swan. There were frumpy dresses more than a
few,--there always are,--and there was the usual proportion of plain
girls and uninteresting men, but she did not see those. She saw a crowd
more brilliant and beautiful and fit to be loved than had ever before
been assembled beneath one roof. Her heart felt very large, very soft,
very light.

All evening it had seemed to her rather as if she walked in a dream.
More than ever now, as she stopped to take account of all the
wonderfulness surrounding her, it felt to her like a dream; so that she
said to herself, "This is I, Nell--is it possible? Is it possible that
this is I--Nell?"

And no doubt because she had been too excitedly happy and was tired, and
the time had come for some degree of reaction, her joy fell, withered
like a child's collapsing pink balloon, when, contrasting the present
with the past for the sake of seeing the things before her as more
rarely full of wonder and charm, she saw those other things. Memories
she did not willingly call up rose of themselves, and forced her to give
them her attention in the midst of that scene of flowers, light, music.
The brightness, the flavor, went out of these as if under an unkind
magic.

"It's a wonder," she thought, "that I can ever be as happy as I am. I do
wonder at myself how I can do it to rejoice."

But the next minute she was smiling again, sweetly, heart-wholly,
forgetfully. She had caught sight of Gerald looking at her as if about
to approach.

"Who are you going to dance the cotillion with?" she asked gaily.

"You, Mrs. Hawthorne, with your kind consent."

"No, I couldn't do it. I only dance a little bit, just what Estelle has
taught me since we've been here. I don't keep step very well; I walk all
over my partner's feet. Besides, it wouldn't do, because I've already
refused to dance with Mr. Landini."

"Sit it out with me, then, I implore you, if you positively do not wish
to dance."

"Oh, but you must dance! I want you to. I want to behold you all stuck
over with favors."

"It's true that I must have a few favors for Lily; but couldn't a good
fairy arrange it, and then we let the others heat themselves while we
keep cool and rest? I feared a moment ago that you were feeling tired,
Mrs. Hawthorne."

"Look!" she whispered, interrupting him.

He imperceptibly turned in the direction of her stolen glance. Two
figures were ascending the opposite flight of stairs, looking at each
other while they inaudibly talked: Brenda, in filmy white diversified by
a thread of silver; Manlio, carrying over his arm, and in his absorption
letting trail a little, a white scarf beautiful with silver
embroideries; in his hand a white pearl fan. Brenda's face was angelic,
nothing less. When the young and rose-lipped cherubim are full of
celestial sensations and adoring, eternal thoughts, they must look as
Brenda did at that moment. Manlio's head was so turned that his
night-black hair alone was presented to our friends. Slowly the pair
mounted and was lost to sight.

Neither Gerald nor Mrs. Hawthorne made any comment. Gerald, after a
silence, spoke of Lily's increasing resemblance to her sister. Mrs.
Hawthorne was reminded that they must go to select some favors for Lily,
and led the way.

They sat together through the cotillion, and Gerald, because he had seen
the shadow of sadness on Mrs. Hawthorne's face, tried more than usual to
be a sympathetic companion, easy to talk to, easy to get on with. He was
always quick to see such things.

No trace of it remained. Her dimples were in full play, but he found it
according to his humor to continue uncritical, inexpressively tender,
toward this big, bonny child who never curbed the expression of a
complete kindness toward himself.

More interesting to them than any other dancers were naturally Brenda
and Manlio, partners for the cotillion. Certainly the plot for giving
those two a few beautiful last hours together was proving a success.
Brenda was calmly, collectedly luminous; Manlio, uplifted to the point
of not quite knowing what he did. Radiant and desperate, he looked to
Gerald, who found his state explained by the facts as he knew them.

"Poor things! Poor dears!" he thought, with the cold to-morrow in view,
yet retained his conviction of having done the unhappy lovers on the
whole a good turn.

He had been glad to find the Fosses sharing his point of view that to
forbid Giglioli a sight of Brenda before the long parting would have
been unnecessarily cruel. Mrs. Hawthorne, it seemed to him, had lost
sight of what was to follow. She was exclusively delighted with their
joy of the evening, she gave no thought to their misery next day. It was
amazing to him, the extent to which she had forgotten.

So he said aloud, "Poor things! Poor dears!" and discovered that it was
not forgetfulness exactly in Mrs. Hawthorne, but that general optimism
which insists on believing in a loophole of possibility through which
things can slip and somehow turn out right after all.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The party was over. The musicians had laid their instruments in
coffin-like black boxes and were getting into their overcoats. The
candles were burned to the end, the flowers looked tired, the place all
at once amazingly empty. The last half dozen people were standing and
laughing with Mrs. Hawthorne and Miss Madison around Percy Lavin while
he told a final good story when one of the guests who had departed some
time before returned.

Mrs. Hawthorne caught sight of the figure in closed coat, tall hat, and
white silk muffler as soon as it entered the house, for the group of
laughers stood near the ball-room door, and this was only separated from
the inner house door by the wide hall. Without waiting for the end of
the comic story Mrs. Hawthorne hurried to the guest, whose reason for
returning she wished to know, though it so easily might have been only
his forgotten cane.

That it was nothing of the kind she at once perceived. He looked upset.

"May I speak with you a moment?" he asked at once.

They stepped into the nearest room, still brightly lighted, but
deserted.

"What's the matter?" she inquired, prepared by his face for news of
trouble.

"Mrs. Hawthorne, we've done it!" said Gerald. "Giglioli tells me that
he's giving up the army, and Brenda has promised to marry him!" He was
on the verge of laughing hysterically.

"Oh!" Mrs. Hawthorne paused to watch him, and wonder why they should not
without further to-do rejoice and triumph. "Well? What's wrong with
that?"

"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, it's deadly!" he exclaimed with conviction. "If it
were a simple solution, why shouldn't it have been suggested before?"

"It did suggest itself to me, in the quiet of my inside, you know."

"But you, dear lady, can't be supposed to understand. Oh, it's either
too, too beautiful, or else too, too bad! And in this dear world of ours
the probability is that it's too bad. He was taken off his feet by his
emotion; he offered her what he will feel later he had no right to
offer--a good deal more than his life. But it shows, doesn't it, that he
does immensely love her? To throw into the balance everything--his
career, his family, his country--and offer them up! To cut his throat
for a kiss."

"You're quite right; I can't understand," she hurried in. "What makes
you say 'cut his throat'? Couldn't he go into some other business just
as well as the army?"

"All in the world he's fitted for is the army. Do you see that beautiful
fellow going to America, for instance, and earning a living as a teacher
of Italian, or as the representative of some tobacco interest? There is
no way of earning a proper living over here, you know. Oh, I'm afraid he
will feel, when he wakes up, like a deserter toward his country and an
ingrate toward his family and even toward Brenda like a misguider of her
youth."

"But, look here, isn't there a chance that having each other will make
up to them for everything else?"

"That of course was their sentiment at the moment of doing it. We did
the work so well, Mrs. Hawthorne, that their passion, raised to a
beautiful madness, would make them see anything as possible to be done
so long as it gave them to each other, obviated the horrible necessity
to part. Oh, it is touching, but dreadful! What were we dreaming? The
thing I so greatly fear is that when he comes to himself he will feel
dishonored, and Italians do not bear that easily, if at all."

"Now, see here, don't you go imagining things and worry. And don't you
let that young man worry. He isn't leaving the army to-morrow or the day
after, is he?"

"No. In the natural course of things, I suppose, it will take some
time."

"Well, I don't at all relish, myself, the idea of seeing that beautiful
fellow, as you say, in every-day clothes--the sort they wear over
here--after seeing him all glorious in silver braid and stars. No. I
just can't bear to think of him giving them up. At the same time I don't
agree with you that he had better have given up his girl than them. And
I don't believe she will mind about his clothes one way or the other."

"But there is his family, a thousand obligations--he spoke of them
himself."

"Perhaps the Fosses, now this has happened and they see how much in
earnest the blessed creatures are, will sell some of their stock in
California gold-mines and afford the dowry you spoke of."

"But Giglioli will blush at this forcing of their hand."

"Now, see here, you keep that young man cool. He hasn't done anything to
be ashamed of. Brenda knows her own mind, and I don't believe her father
and mother would stand in the way of her marrying a tramp if he was
honest and her heart set on him. You tell that young man, in your own
way, to sit tight and put his trust in the Lord."

Gerald's nervous laughter for a moment got the better of him. He covered
his face to check it, then, tearing away his hands, made the gesture of
releasing a pack of tugging hounds too strong for him to hold. Let them
be off and at the devil!

"I didn't come here looking for comfort, dear Mrs. Hawthorne. Your
optimism is constitutional, you know, rather than enlightened. I merely
came to tell my accomplice the result of our meddling with destiny.
'Accomplice' is a manner of speaking. Don't suppose I forget that I
alone am to blame. Good night. I must go back to him where I left him,
with his head among the stars and clouds, and his feet perhaps beginning
to burn already with the heat of the nether fire. As you say, 'let's be
cheerful, let's hope for the best!' Ha!"




CHAPTER IX


Brenda, reaching home after the ball, had asked her parents to hear a
thing she must tell them, and, very pale, informed them of the manner in
which she had taken the direction of her life into her own hands. At the
sight of their faces something had melted within her; she had trusted to
them at last all that was in her heart, so that father and mother,
greatly moved, felt as if they had found their child again rather than
lost her. At the almost incredible spectacle of tears in her father's
eyes Brenda had crept into his arms, against his breast, and lain there
so still, so silent, that it seemed unnatural. They perceived that she
had fainted.

She left for America on the date that had been set, but a term was fixed
for her visit; April was to see her back in Florence.

Her engagement was not announced. Mr. Foss, talking of it with his wife,
expressed liking and respect for their prospective son-in-law. His
confidence in the man had been increased by an action that seemed to him
quite in the American spirit. No doubt Giglioli would prove a good
business man, just as he had been a good soldier, the chief requisites
in all walks of life being a clear head, a heart in its place, and the
will to work.

Mrs. Foss was secretly unhappy during these conversations. The model
wife had never before kept anything from her husband nor taken any step
without his sanction, and she was ashamed now of the duplicity she was
forced to practice. She strengthened herself by the assurance that in so
doing she was really sparing Jerome, saving him possible moments of
indecision, or conflict with himself. She was saving Brenda from the
same troubles, if not worse: such perhaps as seeing her brilliant hero
made into an unsuccessful struggle-for-lifer. She, the mother, would
swallow by her single self all the mental discomforts that might have
been the general portion, and, nobody being any the wiser, shoulder
hardily for their sakes the consciousness of an obligation which might
to the others have poisoned a gift, if not made it impossible to accept.
No member of her family, it seemed to Mrs. Foss, knew quite as well as
she how simple, native, and without self-conceit was Aurora Hawthorne's
generosity; so that taking from her was hardly different, in a sense,
from giving her something. You did not have to pay with gratitude. You
paid, first and last and all the time, with affection.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Gerald, who had seen as beset with difficulty the rôle of friend which
he might be called upon to play, heard with relief that Giglioli had
obtained leave of absence and gone to see his family. With Brenda over
the seas, and Manlio in the Abruzzi, the subject of their attachment and
future could fall a little into the background, crowded out by the
nearer things.

The fact became of some consequence to Gerald that in his relation to
Mrs. Hawthorne he was so largely a taker. He did not count as any return
for her hospitalities the time he gave to sight-seeing with her and her
friend; he was modest with regard to his own contributions.

He had in truth not desired to fall into Mrs. Hawthorne's debt. He would
have liked best to keep away from her; but fate, likewise character, set
snares for him. After he had stayed away for a certain length of time,
the thought would rise to trouble him, "She will feel hurt," and all
against the voice of good sense, such a reason as that had power with
Gerald. He would then call, and her welcome would be so kind, her
heartiness so warming, that he would stay to dinner, and promise to go
somewhere with them on the following day, after which he would dine with
them again.

So now the gentlemanly wish defined itself in him to show by some token
that he did not take favors all as a matter of course.

He would have liked to make her an offering a little exquisite, a little
rare, which she might recognize as possessing these points and
accordingly prize. To bestow anything concrete would have been folly. A
few possessions he had which he would have thought worthy of the
acceptance of queens: a tear phial of true Roman glass, a Japanese print
or two, a few coins that were old already when Christ was young. And he
would have parted with any one of these treasures to Mrs. Hawthorne,
though not wholly without a pang: first, because he liked her, and then
because he had eaten as it seemed to him a good deal of her bread and
syrup. But she would not have cared for these things; while bereaving
himself, he would have enriched her not at all.

The duty of doing something for Mrs. Hawthorne's pleasure was felt even
by Charlie Hunt, who took her to a concert. When Gerald heard of it, he
searched more persistently and, fate aiding, found something which might
give the lady amusement, he thought, and would certainly afford an
opportunity that would hardly have come her way without his good
offices.

The morning mail brought him a note relating to his project; he did not
wait for afternoon to communicate its contents.

It was eleven when he rang at Mrs. Hawthorne's door. He had hardly
finished asking the servant whether the signora were at home when he
heard her voice upstairs, singing behind closed doors.

She had said so many times, when he went through the formality of having
himself announced and waiting for permission to present himself, "Why
didn't you come right up?" that this morning he said to the servant, "It
imports not to advise her. I shall mount." Did the servant look faintly
ironical, or did Gerald mistakenly imagine it?

The tune she sang sounded familiar. It must be a hymn, he decided, but
could not remember what hymn, or even be sure it was one he had heard
before, hymns are so much alike. He stopped at the sitting-room door and
waited, listening to the big, free, untrained velvet voice, true
throughout the low and medium registers, flat on the upper notes, the
singer having carelessly pitched her hymn too high. He could hear the
lines now, given with a swing that made them curl over at the ends, and
with a punch on certain of the syllables, irrespective of their meaning:

    "Feed me _with_--the heavenly manna
    In this _barr_--en wilder_ness_;
    Be my _shield_, my sword, my banner,
    Be the Lord--my righteous_ness_!"

When she came to the words,

    "Death of death and hell's destruction,"

a bang and rattling ensued, as if some one were taking a practical hand
in that work. The heavenly ferryman was thereupon besought with vigor to
land her safe on Canaan's side, and the singing ceased.

Gerald stood waiting, if perchance there might be another verse, and
wondered, while waiting, at the sounds he heard in the room, easy to
recognize, but difficult to explain. When it seemed certain that the
music was at an end, he, after hesitating for some minutes longer,
gently tapped.

"Oh, come in!" was shouted from inside. "_Entrez_, will you?
_Avanti!_"

He opened the door a little way, discreetly, and put in his head, ready
to draw it back at once should he see his morning call as befalling
inopportunely.

Aurora was so far from expecting him that for a second or two she
actually did not recognize him, and waited to understand what was wanted
of her. Her head was tied in a white cloth, her sleeves were turned
back, she had on an apron, and she held a broom. The furniture was
pushed together out of the corners, some of it covered with sheets; the
windows were open. No mistake possible. Aurora was sweeping.

A burst of laughter rang; the broom-handle knocked on the floor.

"Yes, I'm sweeping," she cried. "Come right in! You find me practising
one of my accomplishments. I can't play the piano, I can't speak
languages, I can't paint bunches of flowers on black velvet; but I can
sweep, I can cook, I can wash dishes--or babies, one just as well as the
other, and I can nurse the sick."

"I am afraid I have come at an inconvenient moment."

"Not at all. I'm glad to see you. I was most through, anyhow."

She had pulled the cloth off her head, and was patting her hair before
the glass. She turned down her cuffs, untied her apron, and came to
shake hands, smiling as usual.

"You caught me," she said. "When I feel a certain way, I've got to work
off steam, and there's nothing that does it like sweeping."

"I beg of you--I beg of you to let me close those windows for you!"

"All right. I'm awfully hot, but I guess the room's cold. We can have a
fire in a minute. Everything's there to make it."

"I beg you will not trouble! I shall only remain a moment and leave you
to finish."

"No, now, no; don't go and leave me. I was only sweeping to be doing
something. To clean the room wasn't my real object. I took their work
from Zaira and Vitale, who are the ones to do it usually, in a way
that's new to me, with damp sawdust. It's nearly finished, anyhow. All
I've got to do is fold the sheets and push things back into their
places."

"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, please, please, allow me--"

He tried to help her, waking to the fact that she was as strong as he,
if not stronger.

The room in a minute looked as usual, and she knelt in front of the
hearth, piling up a kindling of pine-cones and little fagots, on which
she laid a picturesque old root of olive-wood.

"You seem to be alone," he remarked.

"Yes; Estelle's gone out."

He was not sorry to hear it. Miss Madison, whom he entirely liked,
affected him curiously, or, to express the matter more exactly, in a
curious degree failed to affect him at all. Her personality did not bite
on his consciousness. Unless some chance left them on each other's
hands, he had difficulty in remembering her presence. It was not that
she was colorless; not by any means. She obviously had character,
brightness, individuality, even charm; but so far as he was concerned
she might have had none of these. Particularly when her big friend was
by Gerald ceased to see her. He recognized the danger of her negative
effect on him, and often made a point of devoting to her a special
amount of attention, being toward her of an unnatural amiability, trying
thus to keep her ignorant of the extent to which she did not exist for
him. Now he suddenly remembered that from the choice little treat
provided for Mrs. Hawthorne Miss Madison had been left out--forgotten.
He was dismayed. Then a pleasant side to the affair revealed itself by a
dim gleam. He was mortified by his forgetfulness, but the ladies were
after all not Siamese twins.

"You must wonder what brought me at this unusual time of day," he said.

"Any time's good that brings you. But what in particular was it?"

"I wanted to ask you to keep free next Saturday afternoon and, if you
will be so good, spend it in part with me. I should like to take you to
Mrs. Grangeon's."

"Mrs. Grangeon's...?"

"Don't you remember? Antonia! It is Antonia's real name. On the first
evening of our acquaintance you had a good deal to say about her. If I
remember rightly, you expressed then a desire to meet her--see her
face."

"Yes, yes. Antonia, of course."

"She is a figure of importance here in Florence. She is in truth a very
gifted woman--in her way, great, and of wide reputation. And she is
clever, except in just some little spots. Geniuses, one has observed,
are seldom quite free from such spots. She has kept herself very much to
herself now for several years, so that an occasion to see her is grasped
eagerly. This affair of hers on Saturday is the first thing of the kind
in an age. Her villa at Bellosguardo is most interesting and full of
interesting things. And the view from her terrace is worthy of a
pilgrimage. You perceive, Mrs. Hawthorne, that I am doing what I can to
_faire valoir_ the scrap of entertainment I have to offer."

"I think it perfectly lovely of you! Of course I'll go, and delighted
to. And see how it fits in--" She kindled to joyful enthusiasm. "We've
just bought a lot of her books. We realized we'd got to have some books
to make this room look finished off. We bought hers in paper covers and
have had them beautifully bound. Just look here." She went to take a
specimen from the bookcase, a white parchment volume with gold tooling,
a crimson fleur-de-lys painted on the front cover. "Aren't they lovely?
An idea! We'll take some of them up to her and ask her to write her name
in them. Wouldn't that be flattering?"

"Ye ... es."

"I've been trying to read some of it over since these came home from the
binder's. My! Aren't those people of hers wonderful--where you'd think
the ladies never could have a stomache-ache nor the gentlemen a corn!"

"I hope Miss Madison will not think I forgot her," he disingenuously
said, "when in replying to Mrs. Grangeon's invitation I begged
permission to bring you, and that she will do me the honor some day very
soon--"

"Oh, Estelle won't mind!"

The mention of Estelle seemed to change the color of Mrs. Hawthorne's
thoughts, casting a shadow over them.

"Estelle and I had a spat this morning," she told him.

"Oh!"

"That's why I was sweeping and why she's gone for a walk by herself."

"I'm so sorry!" was all he found to say.

"It doesn't amount to anything," she cheered him. "We've had times of
quarreling all our lives, and we've known each other since we were
children. Her aunt and my grandmother had houses side by side in the
country; there was just a fence between our yards. That's how we first
came to be friends. All our lives we've had the way of sometimes saying
what the other doesn't like. And do you know what's always at the bottom
of it? That each one thinks she knows what would be most for the other's
good to do, and we get so mad because the other won't do what we ourself
think would be best for her! Just as some people abuse you because
you're a pig, we as likely as not abuse the other because she isn't a
pig. One of the biggest fights we ever had was because once late at
night, when she was dead tired, tired as a yellow dog, I wanted her to
sit still and let me pack for her, or, anyhow, let me help her pack. And
she said I was as tired as she,--as if that was possible!--and if I
didn't go to bed and get some rest myself and let her alone to get
through her packing as she pleased if it was daylight before she
finished she should have a fit. And from one thing to another we went on
getting madder and madder till we said things you would have thought
made it impossible for us ever to speak to each other again. But the
first thing next morning, when we opened our eyes, we just looked at
each other and began to laugh. Another time we fought like cats and dogs
because I wanted to give her something and she refused to take it."

"I don't call those quarrels, Mrs. Hawthorne."

"You would if you could hear us; you would have if you could have heard
us this morning. And it was only a little one. You see, two people
aren't best friends for nothing. It gives you a sort of freedom; you
aren't a bit afraid. And when you know it's only the other's good you
have at heart, it makes you awfully firm and fast-set in your point of
view. I don't mind telling you that I'm always the one in the wrong."

"Are you?"

"Of course I am. But I like to have my way, even if it's wrong. Hear me
talk! How that does sound! And I was brought up so strict! But it's so.
I want to do as I please. I want to have fun. It began this morning with
Hat saying I spent too much money."

"Did she say that? How unreasonable, how far-fetched!"

"'What's the good of having it,' I said, 'if I can't spend it?'

"'You'd buy anything,' she said, 'that anybody wanted you to buy, if it
was a mangy stuffed monkey. It isn't generosity,' she said; 'it's just
weakness.'

"'Oh, suck an orange!' I said, 'Chew gum! It's anything you choose to
call it. But when a thing takes my fancy, I'm going right on to buy it.
And if it enables a greasy little Italian to buy himself and his
children more garlic,' I said, 'that's not going to stop me,' I said. I
don't mind showing you"--she dropped her selections from the morning's
dialogue--"the thing I bought which started our little discussion. The
artist who made it brought it himself to show me."

She went to take the object referred to from her desk, and held it
before him, examining it at the same time as he did.

"Do you see what it is? Can you tell at once?"

"H-m, I'm not sure. Is it intended for a portrait of Queen Margherita?"

"Right you are! Of course that's what it is. It's a picture of the
queen, done by hand with pen and ink; but that's not all. If you should
take a magnifying glass, you would see that every line is a line of
writing--fine, fine pen-writing, the very finest possible, and if you
begin reading at this pearl of her crown, and just follow through all
the quirligiggles and everything to the end, you will have read the
whole history of Italy in a condensed form! Isn't it wonderful? Don't
you think it extraordinary, a real curiosity? Don't you think I was
right to buy it?"

"My opinion on that point, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, would rather depend on
what you paid for it."

"Oh, would it?" She lost impetus, and gave a moment to reflection.
"Well, I shall never know, then, for I'm not going to tell you. One's
enough blaming me for extravagance."

"My dear Mrs. Hawthorne, pray don't suppose me bold enough to--"

"Oh, you're bold enough, my friend. But while I like my friends to speak
their minds, I've had just enough of it for one day, d' you see? I've
had enough, in fact, to make me sort of homesick."

She looked it, and not as far as could be from tears. The small vexation
of his failure to think her treasure worth anything she might have paid
for it, the intimation that he might join the camp of the enemy in
finding her extravagant, had acted apparently as a last straw.

"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, I beg of you not to feel homesick!" he cried,
compunctious and really eager. "It's such a poor compliment to Florence
and to us, you know, us Florentines, who owe you so much for bringing
among us this winter your splendid laughter and good spirits and the
dimples which it does us so much good to see."

"No," she said ruefully, "you can't rub me the right way till I'm
contented here as I was yesterday. Florence is all right, and the
Florentines are mighty polite; but--" She looked at the fire a moment,
while he tried, and failed, to find something effectively soothing to
say. "In the State of Massachusetts there's a sort of spit running into
the sea, and on a sand hill of this there's a little shingled house that
never had a drop of paint outside of it nor of plumbing inside; but
there's an old well at the back, deep as they dig them, with, on the
hottest day, ice-water at the bottom. The yard is pretty well scratched
up by the hens, but there are a few things in it you can't kill
out--some lilacs and some tiger-lilies and a darling, ragged, straggling
old strawberry-bush. Outside the fence, hosts of Bouncing Bets--you know
what they are, don't you? The front door has some nice neat blinds,
always closed, like those of the best room, except for weddings and
funerals; but the back door is open, and when you sit on the step you
can look off down an old slope of apple-orchard and over across it at
the neighbors' roofs and chimneys. And there, Geraldino, is where
Auroretta would like to be."

He had the impulse to reach out and touch the ends of his fingers to her
hand, fondly, as one might do to a child, but he prudently refrained.
His eyes, however, dwelled on her with a smile that conveyed sympathy.
He said, after her, amusedly:

"Auroretta!"

She brightened.

"After I've been bad," she said, "I always am blue."

                   *       *       *       *       *

But within the hour he had come near quarreling with her, he also, and
on more than one score.

It began with his making a pleasant remark upon her voice, which seemed
to him worth cultivating. She brushed aside the idea of devoting study
to the art of singing.

"But," she said, "Italo has brought me some songs. He plays them over
and shows me how to sing them. We have lots of fun." To give him an
example, she broke forth, adapting her peculiarly American pronunciation
to Ceccherelli's peculiarly Italian intonations, "'_Non so resistere,
sei troppo bella!_'"

Gerald winced and darkened.

"Then there's this one," she went on, "'_Mia piccirella, deh, vieni
allo mare!_' Do you want to hear me sing it like Miss Felixson,
together with her dog, which always bursts out howling before she's
done? I've heard them three times, and can do the couple of them to a
T."

"Please don't!" he hurriedly requested. "I hope," he added doubtfully,
"that you won't do it to amuse any of your other friends, either." As
she did not quickly assure him that she neither had done, nor ever would
dream of doing, such a low thing, he went on, with the liberty of speech
that amazingly prevailed between them: "Extraordinary as it seems, you
would be perfectly capable of it. And it would be a grave mistake."

"I've done it for Italo when he was playing my accompaniment. For nobody
else."

"Mrs. Hawthorne, if that little man has become your singing-master, will
you not intrust me with the honorable charge of likewise teaching you
something? No, not painting. I should like to drill you in the
pronunciation of that little man's name. It is Ceccherelli.
Cec-che-rel-li. _Cec-che-rel-li._"

She shook her head.

"No use. I've got accustomed to the other now."

He felt a spark dropped among the recesses where his inflammable temper
was kept.

"Before you know it the fellow will be calling you Aurora!" he said,
repressing the outburst of his wrath at this possibility.

"He does, my friend," she answered him quietly. "He can't say Hawthorne.
Do you hear him saying Hawthorne? He calls me Signora Aurora."

"Then why not call him Signor Italo?"

"At this time of day? It would be too formal. He would wonder what he'd
done to offend me."

Gerald was reminded that since Christmas Ceccherelli had been wearing,
instead of his silver turnip, a fine gold watch, her overt gift and his
frank boast, which he conspicuously extracted from its chamois-skin case
every time he needed to know the hour.

"Mrs. Hawthorne," said Gerald, "you have repeatedly said that you have
what you call lots of fun with Ceccherelli. Would you mind giving me an
idea of what the fun consists in? I wish to have light--that I may do
the man justice. Left to myself, I should judge him to be the dullest,
commonest, cheapest of inexpressibly vulgar, insignificant, pretentious,
ugly, and probably dishonest, little men." The adjectives came rolling
out irrepressibly.

"Perhaps he is," Aurora said serenely; "but haven't you noticed,
Stickly-prickly, that about some things you and I don't feel alike?
Italo plays the piano in a way that perfectly delights me, he's
good-hearted, and he makes me laugh. Isn't that enough?"

"In short, you like him. You like so many people, Mrs. Hawthorne, and of
such various kinds, that though one is bound to be glad to be among your
friends, one needn't--need one?--feel exactly flattered."

She seemed to consider this, but instead of taking it up, went on with
the subject of Italo.

"He entertains me. He knows all about everybody in Florence and tells
me."

"He gossips, you mean."

Again she considered a moment before going on.

"Funny, when I don't know the people, or just know them by sight, and
they and the life are all so foreign and apart from me, gossip about
them doesn't seem the same as gossip at home. It's more like Antonia's
novels, condensed and told in the queerest English! It was some time
before I could make out what he meant when he said two gentlemen had
fought a duel because one of them had found the other nasconding in his
garden-house. The one thus found obstinated himself, says Italo, to
maintain that he had come to make a copy of the architectural design
over the door. But as he didn't seem to have any pencil--"

"Mrs. Hawthorne, how can you be amused by such disgusting stuff?"

She gazed at him inquiringly, with very blue eyes and a look of
innocence, real or put on, then laughed.

"I am, just. I can't tell you the how of it. Do you know Italo's sister
Clotilde?"

"I have not that advantage, no."

"You soon will have, if you care for it, for she's coming to live with
us."

He stared.

"Yes, she's coming to keep house. She speaks English quite well, because
she's had so much to do with English and Americans, being a teacher of
Italian and French. It began with Italo wanting us to take lessons of
her. But, bless you, I don't want to study! I can pick up all I need
without. We said, however, 'Bring her to see us.' And he did. She's real
nice."

"Does she resemble her brother?"

"In some ways. I've an idea, though, that you'd like her better than you
seem to do him. I believe we shall be very well satisfied with her, and
shall save money. Since we seem to have got on to the subject of money
to-day: Luigi, the butler, who has everything under him now, Estelle
says is a caution to snakes, the way he robs us. Now, we're easy-going
and, I dare say, fools; but not darn, darn fools. It's a mistake to
think we wouldn't see a thing big's a mountain, and that you could cheat
us the way that handsome, fine-mannered, dignified villain Loo-ee-gy
thinks he can. So we're going to put in his place a nice woman who is,
in part, our friend, and will care to see that we're dealt fairly with.
Clotilde doesn't seem to mind giving up her lessons to come and be a
sort of elegant housekeeper for us."

"I understand."

"Charlie Hunt is disgusted about it, because when we complained of Luigi
before him, he said he would find us exactly the right person to take
his place. But, you see, we didn't wait. I don't see that we were bound
to. What do you think?"

"It is a case, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, where I must not allow myself to say
what I think."

"Personally, I must say I was rather glad to have Clotilde step in as
she did, because I don't mind telling you--you won't tell anybody
else?--I find just the least little bit of a disposition in that young
man Charlie to run things in this house. D'you know what I mean? I
suppose it's the way he's made. He has been awfully kind, and helped a
lot in all sorts of ways, and I like him ever so much; but I was glad to
check him just a little, and put who I pleased over my own servants, and
then go on just as good friends with him as ever."

"Mrs. Hawthorne, why don't you make Mrs. Foss your adviser in all such
matters? She is so kind always and of such good counsel. It would be so
much the safest thing."

"Of course; but it was she who found Luigi for us, you see. She can't
always know. As far as Charlie Hunt is concerned, I don't want you to
think that we think any less of him than before. He's good and kind as
can be, and does ever so many nice things for us. We were at his
apartment the other day, where he had a tea-party expressly for us, with
his cousins there, and Mr. Landini and two or three others. And then
when he heard me say I like dogs he promised to give me a dog, one of
those lovely clown dogs,--poodles,--with their hair cut in a fancy
pattern, when he can lay his hand on a real beauty."

"Mrs. Hawthorne"--Gerald almost lifted himself off his seat with the
emphasis of his cry,--"Don't let him give you a dog!"

She looked at him in amazement.

"Why, what's wrong?"

"Don't! don't! Can't you see that you must not let him give you a dog?"

"No, I can't. Why on earth?"

"After what you said a few minutes ago," he stammered, feeling blindly
for reasons, "which shows that you have something to complain of in his
conduct toward you, you ought not to allow him to give you a dog. A
dog--you don't understand, and I can't make you. It will be too awful!"

"You surely are the queerest man I have ever known," she said sincerely.

To which he did not reply.

He restrained himself from blurting out that Charlie Hunt, for such and
such reasons, could never deserve the extreme privilege of giving her a
dog. Leslie had once casually spoken the true word about Charlie.
"Charlie has no real inside," she had said, and continued, nevertheless,
to like him well enough. He was young, handsome, in his way attractive.
Most people liked him to just that extent--well enough; few went beyond,
unless early in the acquaintance. He so systematically did what would be
most useful to himself that it was difficult to preserve illusions about
his powers of devotion or unselfishness. He had lived as one of the
family with his aunt and cousins till he found himself desiring an
increase of personal liberty; then an occasion presenting itself to make
a really good arrangement with an Italian family of decent middle class
with their best rooms to let, he had set up bachelor quarters, and
ceasing to be an inmate of his aunt's house, retained unusually little
sense of tie with it.

"Charlie might be nicer about going to places with us," Francesca openly
grumbled, "seeing he's the nearest we've got to a brother."

All this was formlessly in Gerald's mind--this and much more--when his
spirit groaned that Charlie should be giving Aurora a dog.

Mrs. Hawthorne was looking at him, trying to make him out. She could
not. One thing, however, was plain, and it being so plain simplified
all. He felt actual pain because Charlie Hunt was going to give her a
dog. The wherefore it was vain to seek. But she had no desire to give
pain of any kind, even by way of teasing him, to this funnily sensitive
fellow whose shoulders looked so sharp under his coat.

"All right," she said. "If he says anything more about it, I'll tell him
I've changed my mind and don't want a dog. Are you satisfied? And then
if you won't tell me what the objection is to my having one, I shall
have to sit down and try to guess."

Gerald, upon obtaining so easily what he had wanted apparently to the
point of tragedy, looked sheepish, ashamed of himself. His thanks were
given in a slowly returning smile.

"I shouldn't think it would be so difficult," he said.

Antonia had been very friendly to Gerald at the period of their first
acquaintance. She had cared for his painting, specimens of which had
come to her notice through Amabel Van Zandt, and distinguished the at
that time very young artist to the extent of inviting him to her villa,
showing interest in his talent and future, making him talk. From one
year to the next, other things had taken up her mind to his exclusion.
He had continued, however, to pay his respects, if she were at home, at
least once in the season, and retained gratitude toward her, along with
the presumption that he could never be to her the same exactly as the
first-come outsider. He remembered At Homes of hers attended in the old
days, and saw every reason why Mrs. Hawthorne should enjoy one of these,
none why it should not enjoy her. On the contrary. Making full allowance
for the fact that he had grown accustomed to her manner and mode, Mrs.
Hawthorne had yet seemed to him lately of a circumspection not to be
surpassed. When alone with him and Estelle, she was one person; when in
company, she was another, not a little like Mrs. Foss, retaining enough
of her own irrepressible self to seem just acceptably original. Antonia,
the novelist, declared a fondness for people out of the ordinary, the
conventional. Gerald thought the American might interest her. But if she
did not, little depends, at a reception, upon the hostess being charmed
with individual guests; he still believed that Aurora would have a good
time--he meant to ensure her doing this.

Aurora had, as she described it, dressed herself to kill, and was
looking, Estelle told her, perfectly stunning. She had on velvets and
furs, pearls and plumes. She had wished at one and the same time to make
Gerald Fane proud of her and do honor to Antonia's party. Concealed in
her muff was a white parchment volume--muffs were small in those days. A
similar volume had been stuffed into each of Gerald's overcoat pockets.

Gerald, as has been said, remembered At Homes of Antonia's, and had in
mind an image of what he might expect to see.

He perceived at once that to-day all was different. This was immensely
choice, the most so afforded by Florence. That he had been invited
showed Antonia's estimate of him still as a person of artistic
significance; also, he modestly decided, the difficulty one had to make
up an assemblage solely of notabilities. Her permission to bring a
friend showed flattering faith in his taste.

Persons were there whom one but seldom saw anywhere; the persons whom
one saw everywhere were conspicuously absent. Among a majority of
English, there was a sprinkling of Italian nobility, mostly older
people. Antonia had lived for many years in Florence. There was a very
able historian, allied to the English through his wife; there was an old
General of the wars of liberation; there was a Church dignitary of
infinite elegance and high rank: all serious people who did not go to
teas, and whose coming to this one was a compliment to Antonia. The
exceptional woman's right to the like homage was established; her
celebration of Italy was by Italy, in the persons of such sons of hers
as got an inkling of their debt, gracefully acknowledged.

Gerald, entering the large drawing-room with Aurora, at first wondered,
then understood. The interesting Princess Rostopchine, on a visit to
Florence, was present--woman of accomplishments in every
branch--painter, sculptress, musician, author; a beauty into the
bargain, and lady-in-waiting for many years to a queen.

She was no longer in the freshness of youth; her beauty had been left a
little bony, a little fatigued and bloodless; her eyelids drooped over
the brilliant intelligence of her eyes. The poetry of her looks was
increased by her costume. In wise disdain of the fashion, she went robed
rather than dressed; her things clung and trailed and undulated; they
were gray as cobwebs, dim as pressed orchids. She was as fascinating as
at any time in her life--perhaps more so, because she cared to be.

Antonia, who had made her acquaintance at Aix-les-bains, was under her
spell. The reception was given to honor her, rather than to enable
Antonia, as Gerald had at first supposed, to see her friends again after
several years of absence and neglect.

A niece of Antonia's received, and invited guests to be refreshed with
tea, while Antonia and the Princess sat side by side, and now talked
together, now with others, who of themselves approached, or whom Antonia
invited to join them. The conversation was part of the time in French,
which Antonia spoke fluently, but for the greater part in English, which
the princess spoke well, as Russians speak every language.

Gerald was watching for the favorable moment to present Aurora; they
therefore stood within earshot. While he talked to keep her diverted, he
was aware that his companion less than half listened to him, absorbed in
Antonia and the princess.

A princess and a famous writer! Aurora had never set eyes on a princess
before, nor, to her knowledge, on an author. They hypnotized her, those
two. Their conversation was far beyond Leslie's, she did not understand
any of it, though every syllable reached her ear. The marked Englishness
of Antonia's speech caused an almost necessity in Aurora to say the
words after her, echoing their peculiarity. Her lips unconsciously
moved.

Aurora's eyes were busy as well as her ears. Antonia was clad in a
tea-gown--Aurora thought it was a wrapper. The tea-gown had long lain in
a chest, while Antonia was on her travels, and the great woman's eyes,
fixed on more important things, had not perceived when it was taken out
for her wear to-day that it was crushed and rumpled. Aurora believed it
had been recovered from the ash-can, and her breast was filled with awe.
It was with unqualified and childlike admiration that she gazed at the
two women whose soaring superiority she unenviously felt.

As it seemed unbefitting as yet to interrupt their conversation, Gerald
looked around him in search of acquaintances whom to present to Aurora
while waiting.

Balm de Brézé first met his eye--the vicomte was Antonia's landlord--but
Gerald discriminated against him. He next spied Hamilton Spencer and
Carlo Guerra, both genial fellows, left Aurora's side for an instant and
brought them up.

Aurora called back her attention and gave it to them. A certain success
of smiles and bright eyes she was almost sure to have, with men. Gerald
went off to get her some tea, took it to her, and finding her in the
midst of a sufficiently lively time with her new acquaintances, returned
to Antonia's niece at the tea-table for a chat and cup of tea. While
hearing the news from this unassuming elderly girl, he could keep an eye
on Mrs. Hawthorne at a distance, and catch any facial signal for help.

Aurora was drinking her tea, holding her cup like a real lady, with her
little finger delicately curled back. Aurora's figure stood out from
among those surrounding her like a thing of a different make, an earthen
jar among glass vases, a Swede among Japanese.

Aurora was out of place, it could not be blinked; and that she was so
visible, in her able-bodied comeliness, her supremacy of dimples, her
extremely good corset, increased the offense. So did also the native
assurance of her eye--which had something at all times of a jovial
sea-captain, with his foot on his own deck.

Gerald looked from her to Antonia, slightly uneasy. Antonia's face had
characteristics of a man's, but along with them indications above all
feminine. Power and caprice in the great woman went linked. He saw her
while listening to the princess turn her head toward the quarter of the
room tinctured by Aurora's unmodified presence, as if taking account of
the voice and accent of the stranger in her house.

This seemed to him his opportunity, and excusing himself from Miss
Grangeon, he started toward Aurora.

"There are more ways than one of skinning a cat!" came floating to him
in Aurora's deep-piled voice, borne on her frank laugh, as he
approached.

He found her having a very good time, but ready to call an end to it and
go to be presented.

"I'm awfully nervous!" she whispered to Gerald, but that was a manner of
speech. Aurora's nerves were author-proof. She meant that she was
impressed by the greatness of the moment. She picked up her three books
from the table near by, held them with her left arm so that her right
hand might be free to clasp Antonia's, and, smiling as a basket of
chips--thus did she later describe herself--advanced toward the crowning
honor of the day.

Antonia saw her coming and narrowed her eyes the better to see.
Antonia's face, at no time in her life soft, was as much like granite at
this moment as it had the moment before been like old white soap; her
eyes, fixed on the approaching pair, turned stonily unseeing.

Gerald bravely went through with the introduction, and tried to warm the
atmosphere with winged words. Aurora's hand was all ready to shake.

Antonia's hand did not go forth to meet it, but Aurora, elate and
overflowing, was not put off by this.

"I can never tell you"--she gushed, "how pleased I am to meet you--how
honored I feel. Nor can I ever tell you how perfectly wonderful I think
your books. Perfectly wonderful.... Perfectly wond ... Perf ... See what
I've brought. These three that I'm going to leave for you to write in,
if you'll be so very kind. It would increase their value for me I never
can tell you how much."

"My dear Madam," said Antonia, "I never inscribe a book that I have not
myself presented. I am not acquainted with the phrase in which it is
done. The value of my autograph will be enormously increased hereafter
for collectors by the fact that when I receive requests for it I drop
them into the waste-basket. Yes, I merely keep the stamps."

"Oh!"

"Yes."

"Oh!" more faintly.

"Yes!" more firmly.

Turning her back to Aurora, Antonia once more addressed Princess
Rostopchine. "Vera Sergeievna, you were saying...."

The only sign Aurora gave of being flabbergasted was forgetting the
books she held. They slid with noise to the floor. As Gerald picked them
up, "Did I ever tell you"--she asked him chattily, and leisurely moved
on,--"about the time I stood on the sidewalk to see the procession go
by, in Boston, when we commemorated Bunker Hill?" And she went on with a
favorite reminiscence: how she had held on to her inch of standing-room,
in spite of a fat and puffing man, a gimlet-elbowed woman, and a
policeman.

                   *       *       *       *       *

When they were in her coupé, smartly bowling toward town, silence fell.
Gerald's brow was black, his eyes were steely.

"Mrs. Hawthorne," he jerked out, "I am not going to express myself on
the experiences of this afternoon. Words could not do them justice, and
I am not cool enough to trust myself. But I wish to apologize to you
most humbly for my egregious, my imbecile mistake."

"Don't you care, Geraldino! Don't you care one bit! Bless your dear
heart, I'm not touchy!" Aurora said cheerily, and, not resisting as he
had recently done the impulse to comfort his friend by a caressing
touch, gave his hand as tight a squeeze as her snug new glove permitted.
"Nasty old thing! What does it matter? But"--her eyes rounded at the
amazed recollection,--"that I should have lived, I--me--my size--to feel
like a fly-speck on the wall! It did beat everything! Yours truly, F. S.
W.! Fly Speck on the Wall!"

She was lost for a moment in the consideration of herself reduced to a
negligible dot, and Gerald, too angry to talk, thought hydrophobia
thoughts in silence. In these he was disturbed by the sound of her
trying in a murmur to speak like Antonia, and hitting off the
Englishwoman's pronunciation rather successfully.

"Deah Madam! I nevah, nevah inscrrribe a book.... I drap them into the
baaahsket. Yesss. I marely keep the stamps."




CHAPTER X


The house where Gerald lived was the same one he had lived in since the
days of Boston and Charlestown. His mother, coming to Florence with her
two children, a boy of ten, a girl of seven, had needed to look for a
modest corner in which to build their nest. The income of which she
found herself possessed after settling up her husband's affairs, even
when supplemented by the allowance made her by his family, so little
permitted of extravagance that she chose the topmost story of the house
in Borgo Pinti, with those long, long stairs that perhaps had
contributed to keep Gerald's legs thin.

Its street door was narrow, its entrance-hall dark; the stone stairs
climbed from darkness into semi-darkness, reaching the daylight when
they likewise reached the Fanes' landing. But the old house was not
without dignity; all three loved it.

As you entered the Fanes', there was another dark hall, very long,
running to right and left. One small window opposite, on an inner court,
was all that lighted it. This hall grew darker still, as well as
narrower, after turning a corner to the left; then it turned to the
right, and was lighter. At the end of it was a window from which, if you
bent out, you saw far below you a garden.

The rooms, without being lofty and vaulted, like those on the ground and
first floors, were pleasantly high, and paved with brick tiles. From the
one large interior room a window-door opened on to a terrace in the
court--a deep brick terrace with a broad ledge on which stood a row of
flower-pots. When water was wanted, you opened a little door in the
kitchen wall and let your copper urn down, down, down into
mossy-smelling blackness; you heard a splash and gurgle, and after
proper exertions got it back brimming.

The Italian-ness of it all captivated the mother, who had been drawn to
this dot on the map, where she was told one could live well at less
expense than in the United States, by the lure of the idea of Italy. She
was very humbly an artist. She had given drawing lessons to young ladies
in an elegant seminary, and, when approaching middle age, married the
father of one of these, a troubled, conscientious man whom the cares of
an entangled and disintegrating business kept awake at night. When his
need for feminine sympathy ceased, and administrators settled in their
summary way the questions that had furrowed his brow, his widow's wish
to start life anew far from the scene of her worries had led to the
balmy thought of Italy--Italy, where were all the wonders which had most
glamour for her fancy.

She had loved it in an undiminished way to the end, had never really
desired to go home, though she spoke of it sometimes when the chill of
the stone floors and walls shook her fortitude, and the remembrance of
furnace heat, gas-light, hot water on tap, glowed rosy as a promise of
eternal summer. The children, however, were taught in their respective
schools that artificial heat is insalubrious; they had Italian ideas and
chilblains; not on account of any creature comfort that they missed
would Florence have been changed back for Charlestown.

In her picturing of days far ahead Mrs. Fane certainly saw Lucile, an
accomplished young lady, receiving tributes of attention in the
drawing-rooms of home; and Gerald, a young man of parts, finding
recognition and fortune among his countrymen. To go home eventually was
among her cloudy plans.

But Lucile died at sixteen, without adequate cause, one almost would
have said. She merely had not the ruggedness, the resistance, needed to
go on living among the rough winds of this world. The mother, a creature
of old-fashioned gentleness and profound affections, survived her by
only a few years.

A business matter then obliged Gerald to go to America, and had he liked
the place, he might have taken up his abode there. It affected him like
vinegar dropped in a wound, like street din heard from a hospital bed.
He turned back, and the long stairs to his empty dwelling were dear and
sweet to him on the day of his return.

This, then, had remained his home. His needs were simple, and he could
live without applying himself to uncongenial work, though the allowance
had been stopped, and the income, as Leslie had said, was incredibly
small. The good Giovanna, who had been his mother's servant, stayed on
with her _signorino_, and economized for him; the wages of an
Italian servant were in those days no extravagance. He had no pleasures
that cost money; he neither traveled nor went to fine restaurants. He
wore neat, old well-brushed clothes, went afoot, gave to the poor single
coppers. But he had liberty, worked when he pleased and as he pleased;
he was content to be poor, so long as his poverty did not reach the
point where it involves cutting a poor figure. Giovanna, prouder than
her master, disliked the thought of _far cattiva figura_ even more
than did he, and was careful in her household management to keep up a
certain style, never forgetting the sprig of parsley on the platter
beside the single _braciolina_.

At one period he had contemplated a change in his mode of living, had
dreamed of entering the contest for laurels and gold, so as to afford a
more appropriate setting for the beauty of his charmer. The Charmer had
attained without need of him the setting she craved, and Gerald went on
climbing his long stairs, painting in his so personal and unpopular way,
and at night reading by light of a solitary lamp the choice and subtle
masterpieces of many literatures.

                   *       *       *       *       *

"My land! shall we _ever_ get to the top?" whispered Aurora to
Estelle as, one behind the other, sliding their hands along the wall,
they felt with their feet for the steps that led to Gerald's door. "He
told us they were long, and he warned us they were dark, but this!... I
wonder why they don't have a lamp going, or something."

"Because there isn't any image of the Virgin," said Estelle, lightly.
"It's our just having come in from the sunshine makes it seem dark. It's
getting lighter. Cheer up! It's good for you."

"It'll make me lose three pounds, I shouldn't wonder."

They spoke in whispers, because when they had pulled the bell-knob and
the door had swung open, a voice from incalculable altitudes had shouted,
"_Chi è?_" They had answered, as instructed, "_Amici_," and now they
pictured somebody listening to their shuffling ascent.

At the top, in fact, stood Giovanna, who regarded them with an eye the
color of strong black coffee and said, "_Riverisco_!"

The small old woman had a thin, bronze Dantesque face, molded by a
thousand indignations--all directed against proper objects of
indignation--to a settled severity; a face of narrow concentrated
passions and perfect fidelity and a preference for few words. The
friendly smiles of Aurora and Estelle produced in her a relenting.
Courtesy here demanded a pleasant look, and Giovanna was always
courteous. She stood aside for Gerald, who came to the very door to
welcome these ladies.

The guests were now assembled. One of them was staying with Gerald--Abbé
Johns, who had come for a few days from Leghorn, where he lived. The
others were Mrs. Foss and Miss Seymour.

What had been in Mrs. Fane's time the drawing-room had since become also
a studio. The landlord had permitted his tenant to increase the light by
extending the windows across the street-side wall. Beyond that, there
were as few signs about of the art-trade as Gerald had affectations of
the artist. The model-stand supporting books and things appeared like a
low table; easel, canvases, portfolios, all the littering properties of
a painter, had been shoved for the occasion into the next room, a
spacious glory-hole which Giovanna did not permit to become dusty beyond
the decent.

The result of removing, first, many of the things that made the room a
drawing-room, then, most of the things that made it a studio, left the
place rather bare. It was according to Gerald's taste: few things in it,
each having the merit of either beauty or interest, else the excuse of
utility.

Mrs. Foss had waited for Aurora's arrival to make the tea. The feast was
very simple. Gerald offered what his mother had used to offer. Giovanna
cut the bread-and-butter as that genteel lady had taught her, and
continued to buy the plum-cake at the same confectioner's.

Aurora had come in from the sunshine and cold with January roses in her
cheeks and exhilaration in her blood. At sight of her beloved Mrs. Foss
she laughed for joy. She rejoiced also to see Miss Seymour, who was one
of her "likes," and she was immensely interested to meet the abbé, whom
she knew to be Gerald's best friend, even as Estelle was hers. She loved
Gerald for having just these people to meet them at tea, the ones he
himself thought most of. She felt sweetly flattered at being made one of
a company so choicely wise and good.

But the result was not exactly fortunate for the gaiety of the little
party, if Aurora's laugh had been counted upon to enliven it. Far from
shy though she was, she developed a disinclination to-day to speak. She
was impressed by the abbé, for whom her conversation did not seem to her
good enough.

The young priest, a convert to Catholicism, was Gerald's age, and had it
not been for his collar, the cut of his coat, would have looked like a
not at all unusual Englishman with blue eyes, curly black hair, a touch
of warm color in his shaven cheeks. Unless you sat across the tea-table
from him and now and then, while he quietly and unassumingly talked, met
his eyes.

Some persons said that he looked ascetic, some austere, some angelic.
Mrs. Foss, not finding the right adjective for his mixture of poise and
humanity, was content to call him charming. Gerald, who had known him
when they were Vin and Raldi to each other and equally far from entering
the Church, regarded him as simply the nicest fellow he knew. Aurora had
no definition for him, but did not feel disposed to ripple on as usual
in his hearing. Yet she would have liked to make friends with him, too.
She would have said to him some such thing as, "What are the thoughts
you have, which make you so calm, deep inside? But I know. We learned
them at our mother's knee, but in the fury of living, having fun,
getting on, we never revisit the chamber where they are kept. You live
in it."

He was talking with Estelle like any other man whose conversation should
not contain the faintest element of gallantry, and Estelle was talking
to him with an ease that Aurora marveled at. Aurora marveled how Estelle
could know, or seem to know, a lot of things which she had never before
given sign of caring about. If the two of them were not conversing upon
the symbolism of religious art! Having finished his tea, the abbé went
to fetch a book from Gerald's shelves, which he knew as well as his own,
and Estelle was shown reproductions of carvings on old cathedrals.

Mrs. Foss, who had been talking of the Carnival now beginning, telling
Aurora about corsi and coriandoli of the past as compared with the poor
remnants of these customs, and describing the still undiminished glories
of a veglione, perceiving finally that the usually merry lady was on her
best behavior to the point of almost complete taciturnity, from
necessity addressed herself more directly to Miss Seymour, who shared
the sofa with her; and from talking of _veglioni_ the two slid into
talking of Florentine affairs more personal.

The task of entertaining Mrs. Hawthorne thus devolving upon Gerald, he
took it up in a way that flatteringly presupposed in her an interest in
general questions. His manner seemed to her very formal. She forgot
that, innocent as their relations were, he yet could not before people
speak to her with the lack of ceremony that in private made her feel
they were such good friends. But even aside from this cool and correct
manner, Gerald seemed to her different to-day--calmer, more serene, less
needing sympathy, as if something of his friend the abbé had rubbed off
on to him.

As he was going on, in language that reminded her of a book, she
interrupted him.

"Don't you want to show me your house?"

"I was going to suggest it," he said at once. "There are several things
I should like to show you. Will you come?"

She rose to follow, losing some of her constraint.

"It's what we always do on the Cape. Any one comes for the first time,
we show them all over our house."

When they were outside the drawing-room door, she felt more like
herself.

"Oh, I'm so glad I can't tell you to see the place where you live!" she
expanded.

They went down the long corridor, past a closed door which he
disappointingly did not open.

"It's a dark room we use to store things," he explained. Neither did he
open the door at the end of the hall. "It's Vincent's room," he said.

They turned into the darker, narrower corridor, bent again, and went
toward the little window high over somebody else's garden. He ushered
Mrs. Hawthorne into the kitchen, for here, near the ceiling, was the
door-bell, and on it the well-known coat of arms, crown and
cannon-balls, which testified to the age and aristocracy of the house.

While he sought to interest her in this curiosity, Aurora was looking at
everything besides; for Giovanna was making preparations for dinner, and
Aurora's thoughts were busy with the fowl she saw run on a long spit and
waiting to be roasted before a bundle of sticks at the back of the sort
of masonry counter that served as kitchen stove.

"They do have the queerest ways of doing things!" she murmured.

He took her across the passage and into the dining-room. He wished to
show her an old china tea-set, quaintly embellished with noble palaces
and parks, that had been his great-grandmother's. There again she looked
but casually at the thing he accounted fit for her examination, and
carefully, if surreptitiously, at all the rest.

Last he showed her into the great square interior room with the glass
door on to the terrace over the court, the room which had been his
mother's and was now his own, and where hung a portrait of his mother.
On this Aurora fixed attentive and serious eyes, and had no need to
feign feeling, for appropriate feelings welled in her heart.

"How gentle she looks!" she said softly. "And how much you must miss
her!"

She stood for some time really trying to make acquaintance with the
vanished woman through that faded pastel likeness of her in youth which
Gerald kept where it had hung in her day, the portrait of herself which
she womanishly preferred because, as she did not conceal, it flattered
her.

"She looks like one of those people you would have just loved to lift
the burdens off and make everything smooth for," Aurora said; "and yet
she looks like one of those people who spend their whole lives trying to
make things smooth for others."

"Yes," said Gerald to that artless description of the feminine woman his
mother had been, and stood beside his guest, looking pensively up at the
portrait.

All at once, Aurora felt like crying. It had been increasing, the
oppression to her spirits, ever since she entered this house to which
she had come filled with gay anticipation and innocent curiosity. It had
struck her from the first moment as gloomy, and it was undoubtedly cold,
with its three sticks of wood ceremoniously smoking in the unaccustomed
chimney-place. Its esthetic bareness had affected her like the
meagerness of poverty. And now it seemed to her sad, horribly so,
haunted by the gentle ghosts of that mother and sister who had known and
touched all these things, sat in the chairs, looked through the windows,
and who conceivably came back in the twilight to flit over the
uncarpeted floor and peer in the dim mirrors to see how much the grave
had changed them. She shivered. Yes, cold and bare and sad seemed
Gerald's dwelling. And Gerald, whose very bearing was a dignified denial
that anything about himself or his circumstances could call for
compassion--Gerald, thin and without color, looked to her cold-pinched
and under-nourished. She had a sense of his long evenings alone,
drearily without fire, his solitary meals in that dining-room so
unsuggestive of good cheer; she thought of that single candle on the
night-table burning in this cold, large room where he went to bed in
that bed of iron, laying his head on that small hair pillow, to dream
bitter dreams of a fair girl's treachery.

She wanted to turn to him protesting:

"Oh, I can't stand it! What makes you do it?"

His next words changed the current of her thoughts.

"I have another portrait of my mother," he said; "one I painted, which I
will show you if you care to see it."

She cheered up.

"Do! do!" she urged heartily. "I'm crazy to see something you've
painted."

"You won't care for my painting," he pronounced without hesitation; "but
the portrait gives a good idea of my mother, I think, when she was older
than this."

They returned to the drawing-room, where their friends were in the same
way engaged as when they left them. One pair was looking at a large
illustrated book; the other two sat leaning toward each other talking in
undertones.

"The bird which you see," the abbé was saying, "with the smaller birds
crowding around him, is a pelican. The pelican, you know, who opens his
breast to feed his young, is a symbol of the Church."

"It's not true, though, that the pelican does that," Estelle was on the
point of saying with American freedom, "any more than that a scorpion
surrounded by fire commits suicide. I read it in a Sunday paper where a
lot of old superstitions were exploded." But she tactfully did nothing
of the sort. She appeared instructed and impressed.

What Miss Seymour was saying to Mrs. Foss would have sounded a little
singular to any one overhearing. The two women had been friends for
years, but never come so near to each other as, it chanced, they did
that afternoon, when all fell so favorably for a heart to heart talk.

"I feel as if I had lost a key!" said Miss Seymour, and looked like a
bewildered princess turned old by a wicked fairy's spell. "When I
possessed it I thought nothing of it. It opened all the doors, but I
didn't know what it was made them so easy to open. Only now, when it's
gone, I know the value of that little golden key."

"I know," said Mrs. Foss, sympathetically. "There's no use in us women
pretending we don't mind! Those who really and truly don't must be great
philosophers or great fools, or else selfless to a degree that is rarer
even than philosophy...."

Gerald and Aurora crossed the room unhailed and entered the room beyond,
where dusty canvases, many deep, stood face to the wall.

He found the unframed painting of his mother and placed it on the easel.
The short winter day was waning, but near the window where the easel
stood there was still light enough to see by.

Aurora looked a long time without saying anything; Gerald did not speak
either. After the length of time one allows for the examination of a
picture, he took away that one and put another in its place; and so on
until he had shown her a dozen.

"I don't know what to say," she finally got out, as if from under a
crushing burden of difficulty to express herself.

"Please don't try!" he begged quickly. "And please not to care a bit if
you don't like them."

She let out her breath as at the easing of a strain. He heard it.

"I won't be so offensive," he went on, "as to say that in not liking
them you merely add yourself to the majority, nor yet that my feelings
are in no wise hurt by your failure to like them. But I do wish you to
know that I think it a sin and a shame to get a person like you, who
can't pretend a bit, before a lot of beastly canvases inevitably
repugnant to your mood and temperament, and make you uncomfortable with
the feeling that compliments are expected."

"All right, then; I won't tell any lies." She added in a sigh, "I did
want so much to like them!"

And he would never know what shining bubble burst there. She had wanted
so much, as she said, to like them, and, as she did not say, to buy some
of them, a great many of them, and make him rich with her gold.

He replied to her sigh:

"You are very kind."

After a moment spent gazing at the last painting placed on the easel, as
if she hoped tardily to discover some merit in it, she said:

"I don't know a thing about painting, so nothing I could say about your
way of doing it could matter one way or the other. But I have eyes to
see the way things and people look. Tell me, now, honest Injun, do they
look that way to you--the way you paint them?"

He laughed.

"Mrs. Hawthorne, no! Emphatically, no. And emphatically yes. When I look
at them as you do, in the street, across the table, they look to me
probably just as they do to you; but when I sit down to paint them--yes,
they look to me as I have shown them looking in these portraits."

"But they're so sad! So sad it's cruel!" she objected.

"Oh, no," he objected to her objection; "it's not quite as bad as that."

"They make me perfectly miserable."

He whipped the canvas off the easel, saying dryly:

"Don't think of them again!"

It looked like impatience. With hands thrust in his pockets he took a
purposeless half-turn in the room, then came back to her side.

"If you totally detest them, I am sorry," he said mildly. "I had wanted
to offer you one, a little, unobtrusive one to stick in some corner, a
token of the artist's regard."

"Oh, do! do!" she grasped at his friendly tender. "Find a little
cheerful one, if you can. I shall love to have it."

He selected a small panel of a single tall, palely expanding garden
poppy, more gray than violet, against a background of shade. Flower
though it was, it still affected one like the portrait of a lady wronged
and suffering.

In the drawing-room to which they returned Giovanna had lighted a lamp.
The fire had properly caught and was burning more brightly; the place
looked rosy and warm, after the winter twilight filling the other room
and the chill that reigned there.

Aurora returned to the tea-table; with a disengaged air she reached for
plum-cake. She ascertained with comfort that Mrs. Foss did not look sad
or Estelle ill used; that the abbé was as serene as ever and Miss
Seymour, after her talk with Mrs. Foss, rather serener than usual.
Gerald was far jollier than any of his portraits. To make sure that she
was no depressing object herself, she smiled the warmest, sunniest smile
she was capable of.

"Do come and talk a little bit with me, before I have to go home!" she
unexpectedly called out to the abbé.

When at the end of the long evening spent together smoking and talking
the two friends separated for the night, Gerald went to his room as did
Vincent to his. But Gerald had no more than pulled off his necktie when
he changed his mind, went back to the drawing-room, crossed the
tobacco-scented space where something seemed to linger of the warmth of
goodfellowship, and entered the farther room.

A doubt had risen in his mind. He could not wait till morning to see his
work with a fresh eye, an eye as fresh as Mrs. Hawthorne's, and satisfy
himself as to whether he, so careful of truth, had unconsciously come to
exaggerating, falsifying his impressions, grown guilty of hollow
mannerisms.

Whatever he had said, he had been stung by Mrs. Hawthorne's liking his
paintings so little. It was easy to console oneself remembering the poor
lady's ignorance of art. The truth might be that something was wrong
with the pictures, which suspicion had driven the artist to go and have
a dispassionate look at them in the frigid hour between twelve and one
of the night. If a person is on the way to becoming a morbid ass he
cannot find it out too soon.

Gerald's dogma was that the first duty of a picture is to be beautiful.
His critics did not give sufficient attention to that aspect of his
work, he privately thought; they were put off by what they mistakenly
called its queerness, its mere difference from the academic, the
conventional. This was bitter, because he had always so loved beautiful
lines, beautiful tints, had insisted that the very texture, of his
painting should have the beauty of fine-grained skin.

He was no conspicuous colorist, of course, he did not by temperament
revel in the glow of rich, bold, endlessly varied tints. It was a
limitation, which his work naturally reflected. This was marked in fact
by modesty and melancholy of color-scheme. But that did not interfere
with beauty, he maintained. He had been thrilled by the discovery in the
Siena gallery of an old master with the same predilections as he, an
antipathy apparently to the vivid, crying, self-assertive colors, which
he accordingly with admirable simplicity left out, and interpreted the
world all in blues and greens, grays and violets, whites of many degrees
and tones and meanings.

"They're so sad that it's cruel!" Mrs. Hawthorne had voiced the
instinctive objection of her earth-loving, life-praising disposition to
the view he took of people and things. But what was there to do about
it? When he looked at a sitter to render his personality sincerely, that
was the way he saw him. If he had been limited to rendering a human
being in the single aspect he wore while walking from the drawing-room
to the dinner-table with a lady on his arm and a rich meal in prospect,
he would have given up painting, it interested him so little. Most of
the portrait-painters in vogue did thus paint the surface and nothing
besides. Gerald had no envy of their large fees at the price of such
boredom as he would have suffered in their place.

He held a canvas to the light of his candle. It was an old one of
Amabel. She had not been sitting for him, he had made this sketch from a
distance while she worked on her side. It was easy to see that the room
was cold, that the woman with the pinched aristocratic nose, the little
shawl over her shoulders, was poor, determined and anxious. If Mrs. Foss
had said, "But Amabel never was as hollow-cheeked as that, nor ever
looked pathetic in the least," Gerald could only have answered, "I swear
to you this is how she looked to me on that day."

He studied the portrait of his mother, one of his earliest, bad in a
way, but excellent in the matter of likeness. His mother no more than
Amabel had been a pathetic person, Mrs. Foss would certainly have said.
To which Gerald might have answered that she was not so during an
afternoon call; but that the most characteristic thing about that gentle
and delicate woman had been the fact of her living so much in the life
of others and being open to endless sorrows through them. The dim
affectionate eyes, the deprecating half-smile of his mother, engaged
sympathy for the unfair plight.

Last, he took up a portrait of Violet. She had been in the perfection of
young beauty; she had had no capacity for deep feeling, really,--why did
an aroma of sadness escape from that dainty colored shadow of her? Why,
but because of the artist's yearning sense that beauty is transitory,
and the loveliest girl subject to destiny, and the future full of
pitfalls for the fragility of all flesh!

"Imagine a barnyard fowl, a common white hen pecking among the gravel,"
Gerald once illustrated his view-point, "and imagine hovering over it a
hawk, which it hasn't seen. Does it make no difference in your sense of
the hen that _you_ see the hawk?"

"It comes to this," Leslie on a certain occasion summed up Gerald's
case: "Gerald isn't satisfied to paint the thing that's before him. All
he cares to paint is the soul of things, and what you finally see
expressed on the canvas is his pity for everything that has the
misfortune to be born into an unsatisfactory world. Gerald can't see a
thing as being common: the moment he narrows his eyes to look for
purposes of art, it becomes to him exceptional, unique. I asked him
once, as a joke, to paint me a simple, large, bright orange squash, in a
field. And he did. A masterpiece. One can't say that the squash isn't
large, orange, and true to life. But what a squash! It has an amount of
personal distinction, an air of rarity and remoteness, that would make
you think twice, nay, three times, before making such a precious product
of the sacred earth into pies!"

When he was chilled through and his hands were numb, Gerald remembered
to pick up his candle and go to bed. No change of opinion, it is
needless to say, had resulted from his midnight inquiry.

A point of natural spite made him say that he did not ask people to like
his pictures. All he asked was permission to go on painting as he
pleased, obscure and independent, the sincere apostle of a peculiar
creed, working out his problems with conscience and fidelity. If fate
might send him critics whose opinion he valued he would be properly
grateful. He felt the need of criticism and companionship, in his work,
but had no regard for his fellow artists in Florence. His thoughts
turned sometimes with envy toward Paris, where modern art had some
vitality, and artist life the advantage of stimulating associations.
There was a good deal of talk at the time, and some derision, of a new
phase called impressionism, whose chief seat was Paris.

As for the opinion of such a person as Mrs. Hawthorne, it obviously had
no value. But while the artist could brush her aside in the character of
critic, it remained a little galling to the man to know he figured in
her mind as a painter who did not know how to paint.

"Can't paint for sour apples!" he seemed to hear her reporting to
Estelle, and got in his mouth the taste of the apples.




CHAPTER XI


When Gerald asked Mrs. Hawthorne to sit for him, she stared in his face
without a word.

"Don't be afraid," he hastened to reassure her; "I engage to paint a
portrait you will like."

She felt herself blush for the dismay she had not been able to conceal,
and to hide this embarrassment she lifted to her face--not the
handkerchief or the bouquet with which beauty is wont to cover the
telltale signal in the cheek, but a wee dog, as white as a handkerchief
and no less sweet than a bouquet. She rubbed her nose fondlingly in the
soft silk of his breast, while, tickled, he tried, with baby growls and
an exposure of sharp pin teeth, to get a bite at it.

Gerald looked on with simple pleasure. Because he had given Aurora that
dog. On the day of making a scene because she was to receive a dog from
Hunt he had set to work to find one for her himself, the prior
possession of which would make it natural to decline Charlie's, if, as
Gerald doubted, Charlie's offer had been anything more than facile
compliment. And now, instead of the torment to his nerves of seeing her
fondle and kiss a brute of Charlie's, he had the not disagreeable
spectacle of her pressing to her warm and rosy face an animal that
related her caresses, even if loosely and distantly, to a less unworthy
object. Sour and sad, dried up and done with women, a man still has
feelings.

It would be unfair not to add that something better than primeval
jealousy actuated Gerald, at the same time as, no doubt, some tincture
of that. A sort of impersonal delicacy made the idea disagreeable to him
of a dear, nice woman cherishing with the foolish fondness such persons
bestow on their pets the gift of a friend whom she, in taking his
loyalty for granted, overrated, as he thought.

The dog he had selected to present to her belonged to a breed for which
he had respect as well as affection, crediting to Maltese terriers,
besides all the sterling dog virtues, a discretion, a fineness of
feeling, rare enough among humans. That Gerald kept no dog was due to
the fact that he was still under the impression of the illness and death
of his last, Lucile's pet and his mother's, who had been his companion
until a year or two before, a senile, self-controlled little personage
of the Maltese variety.

Having decided to give Mrs. Hawthorne a dog, Gerald had spent some hours
watching the several components of one litter as they disported
themselves in the flagged court of a peasant house, and had fixed upon
one dusty ball of fluff rather than another upon solid indications of
character.

Snowy after strenuous purifications at the hands of Giovanna,
sweet-smelling from the pinch of orris powder rubbed in his fur, and
brave with a cherry ribbon, he was taken from the breast of Gerald's
overcoat and deposited in the hands of Aurora, whose delight expressed
itself in sounds suggestive of an ogreish craving to eat the little
beast, interspersed with endearments of dim import, such as, "Diddums!
Wasums! Tiddledewinkums!" Estelle's did the same. There was no
difference in the affection the two instantly bestowed on this dog.
Aurora remarked later on that Busteretto couldn't be blamed for not
knowing which was his mother.

Sensitively timid, yet bold in his half dozen inches with curiosity of
life and the exuberant gladness of youth, Busteretto could frisk and he
could tremble. He was cowed by the sight of fearful things, beetles and
big dogs, but next moment, with budding valor, would dash to investigate
them. He twinkled when he ran, his bark lifted him off his four feet.
Withal something exquisite marked him even among Maltese puppies, which
Aurora felt without art to define it. She said he reminded her of the
new moon when it is no bigger than a fingernail. If with the tip of his
rose-petal tongue he laid the lick of fondness and approval on the end
of your nose, you felt two things: that the salute had come directed by
the purest heart-guidance, and that the nose had something about it
subtly right. You were flattered.

When Gerald encouraged Mrs. Hawthorne to decide for herself how she
should like to be painted, with what habiliments, appurtenances and
surroundings, she decided first of all to have Busteretto on her
lap,--but that was afterward given up: he wiggled. Then her white
ostrich fan in her hand, her pearls around her neck, her diamond stars
in her hair, a cluster of roses at her corsage, her best dress on, and
an opera-cloak thrown over the back of her chair.

Catching, as she thought, a look of irony on Gerald's face, she had a
return of suspicion.

"See here," she said, observing him narrowly, "there's no trick about
this, is there?"

"Not the shadow of one. Please trust me, Mrs. Hawthorne. This is to be a
portrait entirely satisfactory as well as entirely resembling. It is
like you to desire to be painted with your plumes and pearls and roses,
and they are very becoming. I shall put them in with pleasure. I know
you do not believe I can paint a portrait to suit you. Very well. Grant
me the favor of a chance to try. We shall see."

It was true that she did not believe it, but she was so willing to hope.
One of the upstairs rooms at the back was chosen for the sittings
because the light through its windows was the least variable. The
necessary artist's baggage was brought over from Gerald's, and the work
began.

Charcoal in hand, he regarded Mrs. Hawthorne quietly and lengthily
through half-closed eyes.

"You have not one good feature," he said, as if thinking aloud.

"Oh!"--she started out of the pose they had after much experimenting
decided upon--"oh! is that the way you're going to pay me for keeping
still on a chair by the hour?"

"You have no eyebrows to speak of."

"What do you mean? Yes, I have, too; lots of them; lovely ones. Only
they don't show up. They're fair, to match my hair."

"You are undershot."

"What's that?"

"Your lower jaw closes outside of your upper."

"Oh, but so little! Just enough to take the curse off an otherwise too
perfect beauty."

As she curled up the corners of her mouth in an affected smirk, he
quickly shifted his glance, with a horrible suspicion that she was
crossing her eyes. As she had pronounced the word perfect
"_parfect_," he presumed that she was making herself look, for the
remainder, like Antonia. It was her latest vaudeville turn, imitating
Antonia. He was careful not to look again in her direction until she had
stopped doing what annoyed him furiously. He could not hope to make her
understand to what point the debasing of beauty to brutal comic uses
wounded him.

"Faultless features," he went on after a time, in commentary on his
earlier remark, "do not by any means always make a beautiful face,"
politely leading her to suppose he meant that to be without them was no
great misfortune.

Estelle came into the room for company. She brought her sewing, one of
those elegant pieces of handiwork that give to idleness a good
conscience. Gerald felt her delicately try to get acquainted with him.
She was not as altogether void of intellectual curiosity as her friend.
She would seem to care about discovering further what sort of man he was
mentally, what his ideas were on a variety of subjects. Also, but even
more delicately, to interest him, just a little bit, in her own self and
ideas.

He was grateful to her, and did what he could to show himself
responsive. With the portrait began the period of a less perfunctory
relation between them. They had talks sometimes that Aurora declared,
without trace of envy, were 'way above her head.

Estelle was waking to an interest in the art and history of the Old
World. She was "reading up" on these things. She was also "working at"
her French, and would in a little systematic way she had excuse herself
at the same hour daily, saying she must go and get her lessons. Not
feeling quite the enterprise to study two languages at one time, she had
given the preference to French, as being the more generally useful in
Europe.

Gerald now made the acquaintance of a new member of the household. She
came into the room bearing a small tray with a hot-water pot and a cup.
She took this to Aurora, who helped herself to plain hot water,
explaining:

"I am trying to 'redooce.' This is good for what ails me, they say. But
I could never in the world think of it. Clotilde thinks of it for me,
and she's that punctual! Clotilde, you're too punctual with this stuff.
You don't suppose I like it?"

"But think, Madame, of the sylph's form that it will give you!" replied
Clotilde, in respectably good English.

"I do think of it. Give me another cup. Mr. Fane, this is Miss--no, I
won't launch on that name. It's Italo's sister, who has saved our lives
and become our greatest blessing."

Clotilde exposed in smiling a fine array of white teeth. She was not at
all like her brother, but well-grown, white and pink beneath her neat
head-dress of crisp black hair. She impressed Gerald as belonging to a
different and better class. If she were vulgar, it was at least not in
the same way. She appeared like that paradox, a lady of the
working-class, with a distinguishing air of capability, good humor, and
openness. The latter Gerald was not disposed absolutely to trust, but he
was glad to trust all the rest.

No sooner had she left the room than Aurora and Estelle in one voice
started telling him about her. He learned that she and Italo were not
what they called "own" brother and sister, but only half. Their father,
being left by the death of his wife with a young family on his hands,
had in feeble despair married the cook, become the father of one more
child, and died. Italo was that latest born. The children of the first
wife had then been taken by her folks, while their step-mother retained
her own chick, assisted from a distance by the prouder portion of the
family to educate and give him a trade. He had chosen an art instead,
and by it was rising in the world. There had been published a waltz of
his composing, dedicated by permission to a name with a coronet over it.
He lived with and supported his good soul of a mother, and saw something
of his half-brethren, all of them through lack of fortune condemned to
small ways of life, like himself.

Clotilde, the best-hearted, was his favorite and he hers. She recognized
his gifts, she further regarded him as a man of spirit, or wit.

"It must be," reflected Gerald, "that the fellow can stir up a laugh."

He knew him only as a fixture at the piano, but could well accommodate
the idea of a species of buffoonery to that boldly jutting nose of his.
He fancied that _maldicenza_, gossip further spiced with
backbiting, would form the chief baggage of his wit. If he possessed
sharp ears, his opportunities for picking up knowledge of other people's
affairs were certainly unusual. He passed from house to house, playing
accompaniments, drumming for dancing, so insignificant on his
screw-stool that many no doubt talked before him as if nobody had been
there.

Gerald did not dislike Ceccherelli, really, only had him on his nerves
in relation to Aurora. He felt him, indeed, rather likeable at a
distance, as part of a story; he had the good point of being an
individual. Gerald was in general touched to benevolence at sight of a
poor devil elated by his little draught of success. To Ceccherelli
without a doubt the patronage of the wealthy American represented
success. Ceccherelli pulling out his gold watch was a disarming vision.

Gerald cherished a hope, born of curiosity, that he might witness some
exhibition of Ceccherelli's _spirito_, or wit, and upon an evening
when the pianist dropped in after dinner was on the alert for
manifestations....

It may here be inserted that upon being asked to remain for dinner
Gerald had artfully delayed answering until he had made sure that
Clotilde did not dine with the ladies. Their familiarity had made him
fear it. Highly as he was prepared to esteem Clotilde, the meal would,
with her making the fourth, have lost for him those points on account of
which he prized it. But he gathered that she found it more convenient to
take her meals in private. In rejoicing for himself, he rejoiced also
for her, eating in holy peace, as he pictured her doing, the dishes of
her country, cooked with oil and onion; pouring the wine of her country
from a good fat flask such as never found its place on the table of the
strangers.

To go back: Gerald when after dinner the pianist came to make music for
the ladies, was hoping for some example of that brightness for which he
had a reputation with three persons, possibly more. But Ceccherelli
remained on the piano-stool and never once raised his voice. Estelle and
Aurora went in turns to chat with him there, but not one witty word
reached Gerald. Then he had the sense to see that it was he, Gerald, who
acted as a spoil-feast, a dampener. He got an outside view of himself,
stiff, dry, critical, ungenial-looking. It was not to be wondered at
that the flow of spirits was dried up in the man of temperament by his
vicinity. He suspected, catching a side-look from the pianist's small
brown eye, that the little man who did not care to speak aloud in his
hearing yet had plenty to say on the subject of him in a different
entourage.

This notwithstanding, it was only when Gerald got whiffs and echoes of
Ceccherelli through Aurora that he called him a pest.

"Italo says," she began, after a silence such as often fell while she
posed and he painted, "that Mr. Landini has the evil eye."

"What rubbish!"

"Glad to hear you say so. I don't believe there's any such thing,
myself. But Italo swears there is, and has told me story upon story to
prove it. He wants me to wear a coral horn and poke it at Mr. Landini
whenever he comes near me."

"Wherefore a coral horn? You can more cheaply, and quite as effectually,
make horns of your fingers, like this. I should strongly advise you not
to let the object of this precaution catch you doing it.... I should
think, Mrs. Hawthorne, you would be ashamed to let that inferior little
individual corrupt your mind."

Fancying it teased him, she pursued, "What do you think he says besides?
That Mr. Landini's color isn't natural, but a juice, he says, a dye,
that he stains himself with."

"For the love of Heaven, why?"

"That's what I wanted to know. Why go to all that trouble for the sake
of looking like a darkey? But Italo says, says Italo, that it gives him
more success with the ladies. His difference from other men obliges them
to look at him, then his eyes do the rest."

"I only hope your laugh is sincere, Mrs. Hawthorne, and that you do not
allow this poisonous nonsense to affect your feelings towards--"

"Don't be afraid. If I did, I shouldn't be having him to dinner, should
I? And he's coming to-night."

"Oh."

"Yes. Quite a party. You weren't asked, because we know you now. You
would have managed by sly questions to find out who else was coming and
then you wouldn't have come."

"Well, who is coming? There is nothing sly about that."

"I sha'n't tell you. This much I will tell you, though--" she added with
the frankness usual to her, "I don't look forward to it much."

It was on the end of his tongue to ask next morning how her dinner had
gone off, but on second thoughts he left it for her to speak of when she
was ready.

She at first appeared much as on other days, but when she had lapsed
into silence and fallen into thought her expression became a shade
gloomy. He had noticed that when her eyes were rather more grey than
blue it was the sign of a cloud in her sky.

"Might one ask the lady sitting for her picture to look pleasant?" he
said.

"Yes, yes," she remembered herself; "I will try to look pleasant. But I
feel cross."

"Well?... What went wrong with your dinner?"

"Oh, I made a fool of myself."

"That sounds serious. Was it?"

"Yes. No. Oh, I don't know. I don't suppose it was really serious....
But the whole thing has made me cross."

She labored under an urgent necessity to tell somebody all about it,
that was evident.

"You see," she plunged without preamble into her confidence, "from the
beginning, I didn't want that party! I love to have folks to dinner, any
number, all the time. You know I just love a jollification. But this was
different, as I knew it was going to be. It began with Charlie Hunt
telling me--or, not exactly telling, I forget how it came out--that
yesterday was his birthday. I said, 'Come and celebrate with us!' I was
thinking of making a big cake and sticking it full of pink candles. And
from that simple beginning, blessed if I know how it happened, except my
always wanting to say yes to anything anybody proposes, it came to be a
regular dinner-party, the kind they give over here, with courses and
wines and finger-bowls, all the frills, and twelve people, not friends
of mine at all, barely acquaintances, but people Charlie Hunt thought it
would be nice to ask. Well, it was my fault, every bit of it, and nobody
else's. I've no business to say all those joyful yeses if I don't mean
them. Good enough for me if I have to swallow my pill afterwards without
so much as making a face. It wasn't so bad, after all, everything went
all right, thanks to Clotilde and Charlie. Only I wasn't having much
fun. Charlie had planned how people should sit, and Mr. Landini was on
one side of me, and he was making himself terribly agreeable. He means
all right, but his talk, as I guess you know, isn't a bit my kind. And
last night, I don't mind telling you--" her voice dropped to a note
confidentially low, "with his compliments and incinerations, you'd
almost have thought he was sweet on me. Only I know better. And so, as I
say, I wasn't having much fun. Then I don't know what got into me. They
were passing the fruit. I got up and went to the sideboard and took one
of those fine hot-house looking peaches out of our permanent assortment
that needs dusting every few days, and I came back to my seat and
offered that marble fruit with a fetching smile to Mr. Landini. He
looked as if he felt I was bestowing a very particular favor. He took
it--and it dropped out of his hand on to the plate with a crash that
laid it in smithereens.... You can see why I am cross."

"I shouldn't be surprised, dear woman, if he were cross, too."

"He was perfect! I respected him! Liked him better than I ever had
before! I never saw anything so well done as the way he carried it off!
I was never so uncomfortable in all my life, though we united in
laughing, ha, ha.... Charlie would have taken my head off, if he had
dared, afterwards in a corner of the parlor. But the first word he said,
I cut in, short as pie-crust, 'Young man,' I said, 'if you aren't
careful I shall sit on you. Do you know how much I weigh?' And I meant
it."

Gerald prudently placed a paint-brush across his mouth, and shut his
teeth on it as on a bridle-bit, to excuse his saying nothing in the way
of comment on what he had heard.

Mrs. Hawthorne told him next day at the first opportunity, like one
eager to make reparation for an injustice, "It's all right now! A
beautiful plate came yesterday afternoon from Ginori's where my
dinner-set was bought--a plate, you know, to match the one that got
broken. As if I cared anything about the old plate! And along with it
Mr. Landini's card, with such a nice message written on it. Don't you
think it white in him? When it was all my fault. And in the evening
Charlie Hunt came and was sweet as pie. We're just as good friends as
ever. I'm ashamed of myself for having felt so put out. Forget anything
I said that didn't seem quite kind. He's all right. It's me that's
crochety.... Isn't that picture far enough along for you to let me see
it?"

"No, Mrs. Hawthorne."

"Will you let me see it when it's far enough along?"

"No."

"I think you're real mean. How much longer will it take to finish it?"

"Does sitting bore you so much?"

"Land, no! Bore me? I perfectly love it! It's like taking a sea-voyage
with some one. You see more of them in a week or two than you would in
the same number of years on land. I'm getting to feel I know you quite
well."

"Wasn't it clever of me to think of the portrait?"

"Go 'way! D'you see anything green in my eye? As I was saying, I'm
getting to know you pretty well. You get mad awful' easy, don't you? But
you don't hate people, really, nearly as much as I do, that it takes a
lot to make mad. There are people in this world that I hate--oh, how I
hate 'em! I hate 'em so I could almost put their eyes out. But you,
Stickly-prickly, when it comes right down to it, I notice you make a lot
of allowance for people. Do you know, when it comes right down to it,
you're one of the patientest persons I know. I'd take my chances with
you for a judge a lot sooner than I'd like to with loads of people who
aren't half so ready to call you a blame' fool."

"While you have been making these valuable discoveries in character,
what do you suppose I have been doing, Mrs. Hawthorne?" asked Gerald,
after the time it would take to bow ceremoniously in acknowledgement of
a compliment.

"Oh, finding out things about me, I suppose."

"Not things. One thing. I had known you for some length of time before
my felicitous invention of the portrait, you remember, and as you are
barely more elusive than the primary colors, or more intricate than the
three virtues, I did not suppose I had anything more to learn. But I
had. It can't be said I didn't suspect it. I had seen signs of it. I
smelled it, as it were. But I had no idea of its extent, its magnitude,
its importance. It is simply amazing, bewildering, funny."

"For goodness' sake, what?" she cried, breathless with interest.

"I can't tell you. It would ill become me to say. The least mention of
it on my part would be the height of impertinence. The thing is none of
my business. Be so kind as to resume the pose, Mrs. Hawthorne, and to
keep very, very still, like a good girl. Do not speak, please, for some
time; I am working on your mouth."

Gerald had indeed been astonished, amused, appalled. He had in a general
way known that Mrs. Hawthorne was prodigal, the impression one received
of her at first sight prepared one to find her generous; but he had
formed no idea of the ease and magnificence with which she got rid of
money.

In the time so far devoted to painting her he had grown quite accustomed
to a little scene that almost daily repeated itself--a scene which he,
busy at his side of the room, was presumably not supposed to see, or, if
he saw it, to think anything about.

Clotilde would come in with a look of great discretion, a smile of great
modesty, and stand hesitating, like a person with a communication to
make, but not sufficient boldness to interrupt. Aurora, always glad to
drop the pose, would excuse herself to Gerald and ask what Clotilde
wanted. Clotilde would then approach and speak low,--not so low,
however, but that in spite of him messages and meanings were telegraphed
to Gerald's brain. The look itself of the unsealed envelopes in
Clotilde's hand was to Gerald's eye full of information. She would
sometimes extract and unfold a document for Aurora to look at; but
Aurora would wave it aside with a careless, "You know I couldn't read it
if I wanted to." At the end of the murmured conference Aurora would say,
"Will you go and get my porte-monnaie? It's in my top drawer," and when
this had been brought, her dimpled hand would take from it and give to
Clotilde bills of twenty, of fifty, of a hundred francs, hardly
appearing to count. Sometimes she would say: "I'm afraid I haven't
enough. I shall have to make out a check."

Gerald's _flair_, and knowledge of his Florence, enabled him
perfectly to divine what was in question. He was only puzzled as to why
these transactions should not have taken place at a more private hour,
and acutely observed that they took place when they could, this being
when Estelle was out of the way. Clotilde also had _flair_.

After Clotilde had retired, Aurora one morning, having imperfectly
understood what her money was wanted for, puckered her brows over the
letters that, through an oversight, had remained in her hands. She held
one out to Gerald to translate. It was from the united chorus-singers of
Florence, a simple, direct, and ingenuous appeal for a gratuity. Another
letter was from a poor young girl who wished for money to buy her
wedding outfit. Another from a poor man out of work.

Gerald could have laughed. But he did not; nor made any remark. He did
not dislike seeing those voracious maws stuffed with a fat morsel. He
knew as much of the real poverty in Florence as of the innocent
impudence of many poor, with their lingering medieval outlook upon the
relations of the poor and the rich. He sided with those against these.
Singularly, perhaps, he regarded himself as belonging among the latter,
the rich. He was glad the chorus-singers and the _sposina_ and the
worried _padre di famiglia_ were going to be made glad by rich
crumbs from Aurora's board. But he could not help uneasiness for the
future, when the famished locusts, still approaching single scout,
should precipitate themselves in battalions, when the whole of Florence
should have got the glad tidings and gathered impetus....

Well, Clotilde was there. Clotilde would know pertinent discourses to
hold to the brazen beggars when their shamelessness passed bounds.
Meanwhile Gerald could see that she enjoyed this distributing of good
things among her fellow-citizens. Not that she was strongly disposed to
charity. He did not believe she gave away anything of her own, but she
loved to see Aurora give. After a life spent in a home where the lumps
of sugar were counted and the coffee-beans kept under lock and key, it
attracted her like wild, incredible romance.

It would have hurt her to behold this unproductive output, no doubt, had
it not been a mere foreigner who lost what her own people
gained,--money, besides, that could never have benefited her, and that
came nearer to benefiting her when spent in that manner than in another.
Clotilde, loyal in service, giving more than good measure, offering all
the pleasant fruits of a visible devotion, could yet not be expected to
have--or, to state it more fairly, was not supposed by Gerald to
have--any real bowels for this outsider, who might for one thing be
drawing from bottomless gold-mines, or, if she were not, would suffer a
ruin she had richly deserved. And might it not in aftertimes profit her,
Clotilde, to have been instrumental to this person and that in obtaining
money from the millionaire? The shops recognized such a title to reward,
and offered it regularly to such private middlemen as herself for a
careful guiding of the dispensing hand, and this without the feeling on
any side that it was the payment of the unjust steward.

Gerald did not in the least despise Clotilde, poor Clotilde, with her
nose like a little white trumpet between her downy pink and white
cheeks, for this business-like outlook and use of her position. It would
have been different if she had been a friend and gentleman.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The portrait did not progress rapidly. Gerald was not hurrying. On
Gerald's lips as he painted there played an ambiguous smile, privately
derisive of his work and the fun he was having.

No problems, no effort, none of those searching doubts of oneself that
produce heart-sickness; nor yet any of those exaltations that cause one
to forget the hour of meals. Curious that it should have been fun all
the same!... His reply to which was that only a very poor observer could
think it curious that the lower man within a man should feel it fun to
be indulged. Fortunately, a natural limit was set to this Capuan period.

He would come from the winter world into the room which the American
kept enervatingly warm, a pernicious practice. One could not deny,
however, that the body relaxed in it with a sense of well-being, after
steeling itself to resist the insidious Italian cold, exuding from damp
pavements and blown on the sharp tramontana; that cold which is never,
if measured by the thermometer, severe, but against which clothing seems
ineffectual. The blood does not react against it; the blood shrinks
away, and stagnates around the heart.

He would change his coat for a velveteen jacket, not in order to be
picturesque, but to keep his coat-cuffs clean. He was as particular as
an old maid, Aurora told him, before he had been caught absentmindedly
wiping paint off on his hair.

The fair model would get her chair-legs into correspondence with certain
chalk-marks on the carpet, be helped to find her pose, and having made
herself comfortable, turn on him blue eyes, with a faint brown shadow
under them--blue eyes that wore a sheepish look until she presently
forgot she was sitting for her picture. She was pressed to keep her
opera-cloak over her shoulders, lest she take cold in her décolleté; the
high fur collar made an effective background for her face. Then he would
fall to painting, and the hours of the forenoon would fly.

An amiable woman would now and then make a remark, easily jocular.
Another amiable woman--soothing presences, both--would answer. Or he
would answer; there would be an interlude of familiar talk, rest, and
laughing, and throwing a ball for a scampering puppy. At noon an end to
labor. He would remain for lunch, that meal of cheery luxury, immorally
abundant. After it he would still linger in this house, bright and warm
with fires, smoking cigarettes in a chair as luxuriously soft as those
curling clouds on which are seen throning the gods in ceiling frescos,
and grow further day by day into the intimacy of the amiable women. In
full afternoon they would ask him if he would go out with them in their
carriage, take an airing, and return for dinner; or, if he obstinately
declined, might they set him down somewhere. He would make a point of
not accepting, and hurry off afoot with his damp umbrella.

Although Gerald had enlightened contempt for the sensuous comfort he was
taking in the fleshpots of the Hermitage, there was in it one element
which he did not analyze merely to despise.

He was aware of it most often after Estelle had left the room. He
settled down then for a time of heightened well-being. It was observable
that the sitter also took on a faintly different air. Often at that
moment she would vaguely, purposelessly, smile over to him, and he would
smile in absolute reciprocity. They would not seize the opportunity for
more personal exchange of talk. All would go on as before. He had
nothing to say to Aurora or she to him that could not have been said
before an army of witnesses. Yet it was to him as if a touch of magic
had removed an impediment, and the mysterious effluvium which made the
vicinity of Mrs. Hawthorne calming, healing to him, had a chance to flow
and steep his nerves in a blessed quiet, a quiet which--one hardly knows
how to describe such a thing--was at the same time excitement.

Gerald did not really care for talking. He could, it was true, sit up
all night with Vincent Johns, discussing this subject and that; he could
split hairs and wander into every intricacy of argument with men and
artists; with women too he could sometimes be litigious. The bottom
truth was nevertheless that he did not care for talking. It had happened
to him to sigh for a world where nobody talked forever and ever.

What he cared for was faces. They were what discoursed to you, told the
veracious story of lives and emotions--not lamely, as words do, mingling
the trivial with the significant, but altogether perfectly. It rested
with you to understand.

Mrs. Hawthorne in talk was cheap as echoes of a traveling-circus tent:
you had the simple fooling of the clown, the plain good sense of the
farmer's wife, the children's ebullient joy in the show. But Mrs.
Hawthorne in silence and abstraction was allied to things august and
mysterious, things far removed from her own thoughts. These, while she
sat in her foolish jewels, unsuitable by day, were very likely busy with
her house, her dressmaker, the doings of her little set, gossip, the
personal affairs--who knows?--of the painter painting her. But,
profounder than words or thoughts, Mrs. Hawthorne's essential manner of
being related her to those forces of the world which the ancient mind
figured in the shapes of women. There was something present in her of
the basic kindness of old Earth, who wants to feed everybody, is ready
to give her breast to all the children. Her robust joyousness reposed,
one felt, on a reality, some great fact that made angers and anxieties
irrational.

The student of faces could not have maintained that he got these
impressions of his sitter through his eyes. It was more, after all, like
a reflection received on the sensitive plate of his heart.

One day Gerald began to hurry. He had had enough of it. The portrait was
finished in a few hours. The ladies were not permitted to see it. They
were made to wait until it was varnished and framed in one of the great,
bright Florentine frames of which they were so fond.

Gerald, while they took their first long, rapt look, stood at one side,
with a smile like a faun's when a faun is Mephistophelian.

Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find no words to
express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove.

Estelle echoed this exclamation, but her charmed surprise did not ring
so true, if any one had been watchful enough to seize the shade of
difference. Because, not having been made to give a promise, she had
from time to time taken a look privately at the painting during its
progress. Aurora had known of this and been sorely tempted to do the
same, but had resisted the temptation, afraid of Gerald's bad opinion.

"My soul!" she murmured, really much moved.

Of course she knew that the portrait flattered her; but she felt as
Lauras and Leonoras and Lucastas no doubt felt when their poets
celebrated them under ideal forms in which their friends and families
may have had trouble to recognize them. The pride of having inspired an
immortal masterpiece must have stirred their hearts to gratitude toward
the gifted beings able to see them disencumbered from their faults, and
fix them for the contemplation of their own eyes and their neighbors' as
they had been at the best moment of their brightest hour.

[Illustration: Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find
no words to express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove]

In the days when La Grande Mademoiselle was painted as Minerva, Aurora's
portrait might have been called "Mrs. Hawthorne as Venus." The
expression of her face was as void of history as the fair goddess's. The
tender beam of pleasure lighting it suggested that she might that moment
have been awarded the apple. The portrait was, nevertheless, in a way,
"Aurora all over," as Estelle pronounced it; but an Aurora whose
imperfections had been smoothed out of existence, and with them her
humor; an Aurora whose good working complexion, as she called it, had
been turned to lilies and roses, her hair of mortal gold to immortal
sunshine, and those sagacious orbs of blue, which made friends for her
by their twinkle, into melting azure stars.

The painter had, besides, glorified every detail of the setting: the
rich fabric of the dress, the creamy feathers of the fan, even the roses
of the breast-knot. The pearls and diamonds he had amused himself with
making larger than they were, and filled these with a winking fire,
those with a lambent luster. But Gerald had no mind when he indulged in
satire to be gross. The whole was dainty, as shimmering as a
soap-bubble, and of a fineness that rightly commended it to lovers of
beautiful surfaces.

"I don't care," burst from Aurora, as if in reply to an inaudible
criticism, "I just love it! I don't care if it is flattered. I could hug
you for it, Gerald Fane. I think it's perfectly lovely. It's going to be
a solid satisfaction. By and by, when my double chin has caught up with
me, and I'm a homely old thing, and nobody knows what I did look like in
my prime, I'll have this to show them. By that time, with my brain
weakening, I hope I shall have come to thinking it was as like me as two
peas. There's some reason for living now."

Every caller was taken to see the portrait, and heard Mrs. Hawthorne's
opinion of the talented artist. The majority of visitors candidly shared
her admiration, though not one woman among them can have failed to say
to herself that the portrait was flattered. But with a portrait of
oneself to have executed, who would not prefer the brush that makes
beautiful?

Interest spread in the painter, whose work few even of the Florentines
knew except from hearsay. No one who saw Mrs. Hawthorne's portrait was
very clearly aware--such is fame!--that it was for Fane a departure.
Until it came to Leslie. She stood a long time before the painting, then
exclaimed:

"What a joke!"

But she was inclined to take the same view as Mrs. Hawthorne, that when
he could paint like that it was a pity Gerald should not do it oftener,
to build up a reputation and fill his purse. She only would have advised
him not to go quite so far another time in the same direction.

                   *       *       *       *       *

As Gerald, the portrait finished, came no more to the house, fairly as
if modesty could not have endured the compliments showered upon him,
Aurora with a communication to make had to square herself before her
desk in the room of the red flowers and painstakingly pen a note.

Aurora, when taking pains, wrote the cleanest, clearest, most
characterless hand that was ever seen outside of a school copy-book, and
took pride in it. Aurora's language, when she applied herself to
composition, lost the last vestige of color and life. She wrote:

    "My dear Mr. Fane:

    "You have not been to see us for a long time, and so I am
    obliged to write what I have to say. It is that our friends
    _cannot say enough_ in praise of your portrait of me, and
    Mrs. Bixby, an American who is staying at the pension Trollope,
    wants to have one just like it--one, of course, I mean, as much
    like her as that is like me, but not a bit more. But before she
    decides she wants to know what it will cost. And that brings me
    to the question, What is the price of my picture? Please, let me
    beg you to make it _a figure I shall not blush to pay_ for
    such a _fine piece of work_. Make it a price that agrees
    with my estimate of the picture rather than your _very
    modest_ one. I shall be glad, you ought to know, to pay
    anything you say. You couldn't, if you tried, make it seem too
    much for me to pay for _such a fine piece of work_. I have
    got up in the middle of the night and gone down to look at it
    with a candle, and stood till I began to sneeze, I like it so
    much, though I know it's too good-looking. So please set a good
    price on it and not _make me feel mean_ taking it. Then
    I'll tell Mrs. Bixby what I paid. She's got plenty of money, and
    even if she beats you down, it will be better if she knows I
    paid a big price. You have such a wonderful talent it ought to
    make your fortune, and so it will by and by. Don't forget that
    we are always glad to see you and that you haven't been for
    quite a while.

                                        "Yours sincerely,
                                            "Aurora Hawthorne.

    "P.S. What do you think Busteretto did? He saw me pouring some
    water into a bowl and imagined I was going to give him a bath.
    So he went to hide under the grate. Then of course he had to
    have a bath, which he wouldn't have had to otherwise. He sends
    much love.

    "Another P.S. I meant to tell you we have got a box for the
    veglione (I hope that is the way to spell it) on the last night
    of the Carnival. We have only asked the Fosses so far, and we
    want you to be sure to save that night to come with us."

Gerald, having read, sat down and wrote, with a disregard to the
delicacy of his hair-lines and the shading of his down-strokes that
would have furnished a poor example to anybody:

    "The portrait, my dear Mrs. Hawthorne, is a gift, for which I
    will not even accept thanks, as it is, your kind opinion
    notwithstanding, absolutely without value. One sole point of
    interest it has, that of a future curiosity--the only thing of
    the kind that will have been painted in his whole lifetime by

                                        "Your devoted friend,
                                                         "G. F.

    "Shall I find you at home this evening?"




CHAPTER XII


No festivity has quite the vast and varied glitter of a _veglione_.
It takes a whole city to make a party so big and bright. And the last
_veglione_ of the season is rather brighter than the rest, as if
the spirit of revelry, inexhausted at the end of Carnival, made haste to
use itself up in fireworks before the cold dawn of Ash Wednesday.

The opera-house is cleared of its rows of seats, the stage united to the
parquet by a sloping floor. Every one of the boxes, rising tier above
tier in a jeweled horseshoe, offers the sight of a merry supper-party,
with spread table, twinkling candelabra, flowers, gala display.

Crowding floor and stage and lobbies, swarm the maskers. In the center
of the great floor the _corps de ballet_, regiment of sylphs in
tulle petticoats and pale-pink tights, performs its characteristic
evolutions to the pulsating strains of the opera orchestra. The public
dances in the remaining space--dances, promenades, and plays pranks, the
special diversion of the evening being to "intrigue" some one. They are
heard speaking in high squeaks, in bass rumbles, in any way that may
disguise the voice. Many are in costume,--Mephistos, Pierrots, Figaros,
Harlequins, but the most are in simple domino.

When a lady wishes to descend among the crowd she, in the darkness at
the back of the box, slips a domino over her ball-dress, a mask over her
features, and goes forth unknown to all save the cavalier on whose arm
she leans.

The only uncovered faces belong to gentlemen. These look often a little
foolish, a little bored, because the uncovered faces are the natural
objects of the maskers' impertinences, their part the rather barren
amusement of trying to divine who it is endeavoring to intrigue, or
puzzle, them, and wittily to parry personalities often more pointed than
the drawing-room permits.

The party in Aurora's box was large for the size of the box. She had
gone on inviting people, then brought hampers and hampers of good things
with which to feed them. There were the Fosses, Charlie with all the
Hunt girls, Landini, Lavin, the American doctor, the American dentist,
and Gerald.

Also Manlio. The Fosses had brought him. He had returned from furlough
some time before. It was known now to everybody that he was the
_fidanzato_ of Brenda Foss. There was no talk of his leaving the
army; on the contrary, he was rumored to have prospects of early
advancement to the grade of captain; wherefore the general public took
it for granted that the bride's parents were providing the indispensable
marriage portion.

Aurora's eyes, at a moment when Manlio's attention was elsewhere, rested
on him with a brooding, shining look. The symptoms of a great happiness,
though modestly muffled, were plain in his face. The Beautiful One was
coming back in the spring, already near, to marry him.

Aurora's affectionate look was just tinged with regret. She had suffered
a disappointment in connection with Manlio. An obstinate and
uncompromising woman beyond the ocean, when invited to join in a
harmless conspiracy, had preferred to do actually, to the tune of eight
thousand dollars, what the grasping creature should have been satisfied
with merely appearing to do. The happiness that pierced through Manlio's
calm, like a strong light through pale marble, came to him from the
bride elect's aunt, and Aurora felt robbed.

But Mrs. Foss's hand found hers under the table and gave it a warm
squeeze, whereupon Aurora's heart swelled in a way it had of doing. When
such a dilation took place, something simultaneously happened to her
eyes: the surrounding world was revealed to them as "too lovely for
anything." Dimples declared her joy.

"Won't somebody have something more?" she asked, with the spoon in her
hand poised over a bowl still half full of chicken mayonnaise.

But every one was done with eating; all were in haste to go down on to
the floor and find amusement, perhaps adventure, amid the fluctuating,
fascinating crowd.

The box was fairly deserted when the door opened again, and the eyes of
those left in it, turning to see who entered, were met by two unknown
maskers.

One wore the costume of a _bravo_ of old times, picturesque,
disreputable, an operatic _Sparafucile_ in tattered mantle and
ragged plume. The other was in a black satin domino, and had the face of
a crow, a great black beak projecting from a black mask.

They stood a little way inside of the door as if waiting to be
addressed. There was silence for a moment, while the others waited
likewise. Within the eye-holes of their masks the eyes of the intruders
glittered in the glassy, baffling way of eyes behind masks.

Aurora, unused to the mode of procedure at a _veglione_, asked
helplessly in a whisper of Landini:

"What shall I say to them?"

He spoke for her then, in Italian, because he thought it probable that
these were Florentines who had come into a strange box for a lark.

"Good evening," he said. "Will you speak, or sing, and let us know what
we can do for your service?"

The bravo, lifting two long hands in loose and torn black gloves,
rapidly made signs, like the deaf and dumb.

"You speak too loud," said Gerald. "We are deafened. Let the lady
speak."

The black domino, with a shrug of the shoulders and a gesture of
black-gloved hands excusing the limitations of a bird, answered by a
simple caw.

Aurora now found her tongue and her cue:

"And is it yourselves?" she burst in rollickingly. "Proud to meet you!
Will you partake?"

With a hospitable sweep of the arm, intelligible to speakers of any
language, she made them free of her supper-table, where the candles
still twinkled over an appetizing abundance.

Gerald watched sharply, saying to himself: "If they accept, we shall at
least see their chins."

But upon the invitation _Sparafucile_, with farcical demonstrations
of greed, reached forth his long fingers in the flapping gloves, seized
cakes, white grapes, mandarins, nuts, and stuffed them into his wide
pockets; while the black domino grasped the neck of a bottle of
champagne and possessed herself of a glass. A caw of thanks issued from
the black beak, and from the bravo, as with their booty the two
retreated to the door, there proceeded, as unexpected as upsetting, a
whoop of rejoicing so loud that those near him fell back as if from the
danger of an explosion. In the midst of this consternation the maskers
were gone.

"My land! did you hear that?" cried Aurora, who had clapped both hands
over the pit of her stomach. "Goodness! he's scared the liver-pin out of
me! Who d'you suppose they were?"

Landini lost not another minute before asking Mrs. Hawthorne if they
should go down together for a turn.

Gerald had been on the point of asking the same thing. He had almost
uttered the first word when Landini anticipated him. He felt a sharp
prick of annoyance with himself for not having been quicker as much as
with Landini for having been so quick. A little jealousy was quite in
order with regard to Mrs. Hawthorne now, on the simple ground of that
more intimate footing of friendship established between them by the
portrait. With the expression of courteous mournfulness proper in an
outrivaled cavalier, he made the gesture silently of having been at the
lady's service. Manlio did the same.

The singular blonde, with Nubian lip and Parisian hair, Miss Deliverance
Jones, or, more commonly, Livvy, who spent this evening at the farther
end of the box making her own reflections on the European doings of
which she got glimpses, held up a white satin domino for her mistress's
arms. Gerald precipitated himself, took it from the maid and held it in
her place. He tried to meet his friend's glance, hoping for some
faintest sign of participation in his regret at not having been
"spryer." For the space of a second, just before she fastened on her
mask, he caught her eye. Brief and bright as the illumination of summer
lightning, a look of fun flashed over her face. She winked at him.

Landini ceremoniously held his arm for her and Gerald saw them leave
together with a lessened objection.

Gerald had for some time past suspected that Landini was paying court to
Mrs. Hawthorne. Whether the lady were aware of it he could not tell.
Gerald had not believed the man had a chance, although, women being
incalculable, one can never feel quite easy. But now he could almost
have found it in himself to pity the somewhat singular man--Italian in
fact, English in manner, Oriental in looks,--if so were he had built up
any little practical dream on the fair widow's acceptance of him. To the
possibility of a sentimental dream Gerald did not accord one single
thought.

He seated himself, to wait for their return. Only Manlio was left in the
box besides himself. Manlio, consecrated to the worship of one afar,
cared little to mix with the profane and noisy multitude. As Gerald
leaned forth to see the couple that had just left them reappear
down-stairs, Manlio, whose eyes followed his, remarked very sincerely,
when the large easily-recognized white domino came into sight "_È
buona_!" which can be translated either, "She is kind," or "She is
good."

Gerald felt the warmth of an increased liking for him, because of the
perspicacity he showed. They lighted cigarettes, and together looked
over the marvelous scene, so rich in color and life, while they talked
of things that bore no relation to it, serious things and
manly--politics.

Charlie came in with Francesca, who at the door doffed her domino and
mask. Both, heated from dancing, were ready for a rest and a little more
of the Champagne-cup.

"By the way, Gerald," said Charlie, "that's a jolly good painting, old
chap, you made of our charming hostess."

"Glad you like it!" answered Gerald carelessly, without irony.

He did not at the moment dislike Charlie.

He was genially inclined to-night toward all the world. While he had
been tying on his white cravat before the glass in preparation for the
_veglione_, it had dawned on him, to his surprise and glimmering
relief, that he felt something resembling pleasure in the prospect of
the confused and promiscuous affair he was enlisted for. He had
constated that something like normal responsiveness to the common
exterior solicitations to enjoyment was returning to his spirit, his
nerves. The tang of life was pleasant to his palate.

A dim gladness moved him, as at coming across a precious thing one had
supposed lost, in remembering that he was young....

He laid all this to the mere passage of time, and thanked the gods that
unless one dies of one's hurts one finally recovers.

Under these circumstances it is conceivable that he should not
momentarily feel hate or impatience toward any fellow-passenger on the
amusing old Ship of the World.

Scraps of poetry stirred in the wells of memory where they are dropped
and lost sight of. "I feel peaceful as old age," he quoted.

But his eye falling on the white carnation which Giovanna, knowing her
signorino was going _in serata_, had provided for his buttonhole,
lines less grey came to his lips: "_Neque tu choreas_...." He
fished for the half-forgotten words. "_Donec virenti canities
abest...._"

Because a positive sense of health pervaded him, he, with a philosophy
founded upon observation, remarked that by this sign no doubt he was on
the verge of an illness. But he absentmindedly neglected the practices
preventive of misfortune, believed in not solely by the _popolino_
of Italy, but recommended to him in boyhood by the excellent physician
who after curing his mumps had taught him to make horns with his fingers
against calamity of any sort that might threaten.

So, being in a good humor, and made further contented by the uplifting
privilege of a broad unmistakable wink from a lady, he did not dislike
Charlie as usual; he even, as he looked at him, lustrous-eyed,
clear-skinned, smooth, lighting his cigarette at a candle, wondered why
one should not like him. He had his good qualities. Mere vitality is
one. Those points of conduct that called upon him the disdain of persons
more fastidious with regard to their actions, secret or revealed, than
he, were not productive, after all, of much harm....

With eyes narrowed, as when he was examining a face to paint it, Gerald
watched the handsome fellow in an animated cousinly dispute with
Francesca--with the result, really against his hope, of finding himself,
instead of aided by his effort of good-will to discover new virtues,
confirmed in his previous disesteem. He could make himself almost love
Charlie by picturing him afflicted, humiliated, sorrowful. But he could
not picture him sorrowful except for narrowly personal misfortunes, such
as poverty, sickness. One could not even be sure, with a face of so
little generosity or moral consciousness as Charlie's, that he would
under all circumstances be incapable of active malignity....

The latter thought Gerald had the justice to sweep aside with an
unspoken apology.

"Of course, you, Charlie, never could admit that a cousin and a female
might know better than you!" Francesca was contending noisily. "It
happens that I have lately looked up, with some care, the costumes of
the _trecento_...."

"My dear girl!" interrupted Charlie. "You will be insisting next that an
_incroyable_ is a Greek, or that creature, that sort of Italian
bandit who gave the disgusting roar, is a French marquis.... Lend me
your glass, will you? I think I see some one I know."

"It's Trix," he said after a moment, "making signs to us from the
Sartorio's box. They want us to come over. Come on, let's go."

Manlio and Gerald were again left alone in the silent company of the
pale coffee-with-milk-colored maid, who unnoticed crept nearer and
nearer the front of the box to peep at the brilliant house.

Gerald was beginning to think that Landini kept Mrs. Hawthorne rather
longer than was fair when the door opened to let them in, with Estelle
and Leslie and Percy and Doctor Baldwin, all laughing together.

"Well, have you intrigued any one?" Gerald asked Aurora.

"Me? Oh, _I_ wouldn't be up to any such pranks," she said. "Has any
one been intriguing you?"

"I haven't been down, Mrs. Hawthorne. I have stayed quietly here, hoping
to go down with you, if you will be so good, merely intriguing myself
meanwhile--" he dropped his voice so as to be heard of her only,--"with
wondering what kept you so awfully long."

"Interesting company, funny sights."

"Are you too tired to come down again and give me a dance?"

"Bless your soul, I'm not tired, but I'm going home."

"_Going home?_"

"Man, do you know what time it is?"

"I know, of course. But you can't mean you are going home. You only came
at midnight, and it's less than half-past two. Hosts of people stay
until the big chandelier goes out."

"Ah, don't try to talk me over! It's time I sought my downy, if I want
to get up in the morning. We're going to begin Lent like good girls,
Estelle and I, by going to church."

Gerald was certain these excuses were hollow. It was obvious, at the
same time, that Mrs. Hawthorne was bent on leaving. He was vexed. He
wondered what her real reason was, as men so often do, after women have
taken pains to give them in detail their reasons, and tried, ignoring
what she said, to get some light from her face.

It looked to him excited in a smothered way. He at once connected this
repressed excitement with Landini; but then, the face was mirthful, too,
in the same lurking manner, and the proposals of a serious man could
hardly affect even the most frivolous quite like a comic valentine.

He finally preferred the simplest interpretation: she had seen as much
as she wanted to; she was prosaically sleepy and going home to bed.

"Good night," she said. "Come soon to see us! Adieu; no,
_ory-vwaw_."

"Am I not permitted to take you to your carriage?"

After seeing them tucked in their snug coupé and hearing this wheel off,
Gerald returned to the great hall. He without question would remain
until the big light was extinguished. Colors, forms, sparkle, golden
haze--a painter must be dead or a duffer to leave before the gay glory
of it faded and was dispersed in the gray dawn.

The scene viewed from near had its cheapness, its crudity, like those
poor painted faces of the dancers pirouetting in the midst of a public
they can more surely enchant from the distance of the stage. The
costumes, so many of them, came from humble costumers who let them from
year to year without renewal of the tinsel or freshening of the ribbons.
But those very things gave to this page of life its depth of interest,
gave reality to this romance.

The ball was taking a slightly rougher, noisier character as it
approached the end. Some of the boxes were darkened, but the floor was
full, even after the tired _ballerine_ had been permitted by the
management to go home.

Gerald himself now became one of the slightly bored-looking men he had
observed earlier, strolling about, _claque_ under arm, in the rigid
black and white which took on an effect of austerity amid the
blossom-colors of the costumes. He sincerely hoped no one would approach
him to intrigue him, and the hope found expression, more than he knew,
in his countenance. He felt unable to meet such an adventure in a manner
that would satisfy his taste. It marked a fundamental difference between
him, at bottom a New-Englander, and his friends of Latin blood, he
thought, that he had not the limberness, the laisser-aller, the lack of
self-consciousness and stupid shame, which enables them so
good-humoredly to take the chance of appearing fools. And so before this
romance he was only a reader; they were it--the romance.

He could deplore his own gray rôle, but not change it; he therefore
wished anew, every time a merry masker looked as though she might intend
accosting him that she would think better of it and leave him in
deserved neglect. He had his wish; he was in the whole evening teased by
nobody whatever.

His eyes, straying over the crowd, sought for known faces. All Florence
had turned out for the occasion, but some of it had by this time gone
home. Most of the men he knew had women on their arms, and from their
silence or talkativeness one might without undue cynicism determine
whether these were their own wives and daughters or wives and daughters
of others.

A tall, gray-whiskered old gentleman in uniform passed him--none other
than Antonia's friend, General Costanzi--who was trying to retain all
his dignity while beset by two frolicsome little creatures looking like
the chorus in "Faust," who, suspended one on each of his arms, were
trying to win from him a promise to take them to supper. He sent toward
Gerald a look of comical long-suffering, to which Gerald replied by a
nod vaguely congratulatory, and a smile that courteously wished him luck
in that lottery.

The painter Castagnola, broad-blown, debonair, passed him, in a costume
of sterling and royal magnificence, copied from a portrait of Francis
First whom he in feature resembled. At his side, with gold cymbals in
her hands, went a figure in floating robes of daffodil gauze, a dancer
from one of the frescoes of Pompeii, wearing a mask--four inches of
black velvet--only for the form. Her bare shoulders and arms, of an
insolent beauty, forbade any mistake as to her identity. Gerald knew,
like the rest, that it was Castagnola's model.

Charlie passed him, at a little distance, with a laughing lady hitched
to his elbow. Her mask swung from her hand--the ball was wearing to its
end, and masks are hot. The hood of her rose-colored domino had been
pushed back from a mass of ruffled black hair; her eyes and teeth
gleamed with equal brightness and directness of purpose. It was
suggested to Gerald by her air and manner that she had forgotten the
spectators. Her freedom from constraint was shared by Charlie. Seeing
them together reminded Gerald that Charlie was after all Italian,--one
forgot it sometimes. He tried to remember which of the bits of scandal
tossed on to the dust-heap at the back of his memory was the one fitting
this Signora Sartorio.

They passed out of sight, and he forgot them in the interest of the next
thing.

Carlo Guerra, like him alone, stopped to chat with him. Guerra, a
pleasant figure in Anglo-American as well as Florentine circles, with
his fine head of a monk whom circumstances have rendered worldly, had,
before inheriting his comfortable income, been a journalist. He still
enjoyed above all things the exercise of the critical faculty, and had
much to say this evening about a recent exhibition of paintings.

Gerald was hearing it with proper interest when some part of his
attention was drawn away by a sound across the house. It was, softened
by distance, that species of lion's roar, incredibly large as issuing
from a human throat, and comical from such a disproportion, which had
startled the audience several times already that evening. Gerald turned,
without much thinking, to look off in the direction whence it came and
single out the figure with which it was associated, when he was
surprised to find the figure he sought almost under his nose. Not more
than six feet from him were to be seen the tattered mantle and ragged
plume of _Sparafucile_; likewise the thick crow's-beak of the black
domino.

The two were looking at him and, his impression was, laughing. He
fancied they were on the point of speaking to him,--he had thought
earlier in the evening when they came into the box that they might be
acquaintances,--but the crow suddenly pressed tittering against the
bandit, pushing and pulling him away. In a moment they were lost among
the crowd.

Who, then, had been accountable for the roar at the other end of the
house? An imitator? A double? Gerald suspected a masked-ball device
intended to intrigue. He gave it no more thought, but proceeded, started
on that line by the episode, to reflect on the singularity, yes, the
crassness, of Mrs. Hawthorne's determination to leave the ball early.
The secret of it was, of course, that she had no imagination, no
education of the imagination. A _veglione_ was caviar to her. This
wonderful scene, beheld for the first time, perhaps the only time in
life, and she had had to go to bed just as if they had been in Boston or
Charlestown! If one must go to church in such a case, it was Gerald's
opinion, one does not go to bed at all. But she belonged to the class of
people who would miss the last act of an opera rather than miss a train
or allow the beans to burn. A bread-and-butter person, a sluggish,
fat-brained person, elementary, not awakened and sharpened to
appreciation and wonder. If he had not been in such a good humor he
might have been cross, scornful of her; as it was, he indulgently
thought her merely too flatly healthy in every taste for anything but
the wilds of Cape Cod to which she sometimes playfully referred.

He here perceived that he had entirely lost the thread of Guerra's talk,
and that Guerra, probably aware of it, had moved to another subject. It
was hearing the name Hawthorne that had startled him to attention.

"I saw you earlier in the evening in a box with Mrs. Hawthorne," Guerra
said, "whom, you remember, I had the pleasure of meeting at Mrs.
Grangeon's."

After considering a moment with a half-smile, he nodded and pronounced
in the tone of an impartial critic, "_Simpatica_!" Then, after
considering another moment, nodded again. "_Ha gli occhi di donna
buona._" Which means, or nearly, "She has good eyes." And Gerald's
esteem for Guerra was immensely raised, for while thinking very well of
him, he would yet not have expected a man like Guerra to discern so much
at a first meeting. A worldling like Guerra might so naturally have said
"_È bella_!" for Aurora that evening in her best frock, had been
_bella_--beautiful; or he might have said, "_Begli occhi_!"
for her shining blue eyes admitted of that description. That Guerra had
said what he said indicated finer feeling than Gerald had given him
credit for.

Still lingering in desultory talk, the former journalist now asked:

"Have you seen the Grangeon?"

"No," said Gerald. "Is she here?"

"Yes; she is with the Rostopchine, in a box of the third order." He
looked up and around to find the box with his eyes, and after a moment
indicated it to Gerald. "There! Do you see them? The Rostopchine in pale
purple, and the Grangeon in an Indian thing all incrusted with green
beetle-wings, a thing for a museum. They are talking with a uniform whom
I do not know. She was speaking of you this evening--Antonia, asking me
what you are doing. She has great faith in your talent."

Gerald's lip curled a little sourly, and he stood looking upward without
reply.

Turning to look down through her jeweled lorgnette and running her eyes
over the crowd, Antonia now saw him. Recognition lighted her face to
unexpected liveliness. She fluttered her hand to him demonstratively.

After bowing and smiling, he stood quietly, with face upturned,
receiving her showered greetings.

He had a certain knowledge of Antonia. She was capable of entirely
dropping the remembrance of her bad treatment of him; perhaps forgetting
it really, but likelier choosing merely that he should forget it. She
permitted herself the caprices of a spoiled beauty.

A classic golden fillet this evening bound her gray locks; a jewel
depending from it sparkled upon the deeply lined forehead of a
brain-worker. Her irreparably withered neck was clasped by an Indian
necklace, showy as a piece of stage jewelry. Light-minded smiles
wreathed her heavy face. Where her sleeves stopped there began the soft
and serried wrinkles of those long, long buttonless gloves which Sarah
Bernhardt had brought into fashion.

It was not difficult to see in what illusion Antonia chose to live
to-night. Her readers might even, perhaps, have determined which of her
own heroines she personated.

For all these things Gerald liked his old friend the more.

Her lips framed the words, "Come up! Come up!" while her hand made the
equivalent signs.

He nodded assent, and with Guerra walking beside him started on his way.
Guerra under the central box excused himself and turned back, having
already paid his respects. Gerald, once out in the lobby, advanced more
uncertainly, finally hesitated and stopped.

He was not sure he wished to see Antonia in circumstances which would
not allow him to express his resentment of her behavior toward the
friend whom with her formal permission he had brought to her house. It
was owed to Mrs. Hawthorne not to let the incident pass. He had ceased
to be furious at Antonia; he had not written in cold blood the wrathful,
finishing letter planned in heat of brain. That, after all, was Antonia
as he had always known her and been her friend: Antonia, capable of
heroisms and generosities, fineness and insight, density and petulance.
One could not drop the great woman into the waste-basket because on one
occasion more she had been perverse and the sufferer happened to be
oneself. But the great woman, thought Gerald, needed a sober word spoken
to her. In conclusion, he would not go to see her, no, until he could
have it out with her.

And so instead of seeking Antonia in her box, Gerald cut short his
difficulty by going home. It was high time; it had been Lent for hours.
If Antonia were _intrigata_ at his failure to appear, it would only
be in keeping with the fanciful circumstances of the hour and place.




CHAPTER XIII


Early in Lent the weather treated Florence to what Aurora and Estelle
called a cold snap. Their surprise and indignation were extreme. That
Italy, sunny Italy, should feel herself free to have these alpine or
polar fancies!

Estelle showed what she thought of it by taking cold. Aurora affected
wearing her furs in the house. To increase their sense of ill usage,
they would now and then turn their faces away from the fire and sigh,
admiring how the air was dimmed by a puff of silver smoke. These
pilgrims from a Northern climate, who knew so well the sensation of
breath freezing in the nostrils and numbness seizing the nose when on
certain winter days they stepped from their houses into the snow-piled
streets at home, could not admit that in the City of Flowers one should
catch sight of one's breath,--indoors, too.

The little monthly roses, shivering but brave, blooming still, or
blooming already, out in the garden, bore witness, after all, to the
clemency of the winter, and upheld the city's title to its name. The
garden altogether was nearly as green as ever. Against alaternus, ivy,
myrtle, laurestine the season could not prevail. Aurora decided that the
blame for their discomfort rested with the house; she planned drastic
and fundamental improvements which it was quite certain the noble
landlord would not permit her to carry out.

What with Estelle being half sick and herself, as she claimed, half
frozen, Aurora at the end of a day during which the sun had not lighted
the world by one feeblest ray, and the night had closed down thick and
damp, was just a little disposed to low spirits. She had not been out,
and nobody had come to see her. She felt the weariness that follows for
certain sociable natures upon a long stretch of hours without renewal
from outside.

She sensibly reacted against it by making the sitting-room as cozy as
she could, drawing close the crushed-strawberry curtains, piling wood on
the fire, placing a screen so that it shielded her chair and table from
the draft; and, seated in her chimney-corner, took up a piece of
knitting.

She was not very fond of reading, and she was fond of knitting large
soft woolly afghans, of which she made presents to her friends. Reading
seemed to her, anyhow, a rather idle thing to be doing. Knitting came
under the head of work. How often had her story-paper been snatched from
her when she was a girl, and a sock to knit thrust in her hand, with the
bidding to be about something useful. How she had hated it. But now that
she was free she still had a better conscience when she knit.

To the click of her long wooden needles she thought, with more pleasure
than was afforded by any other vision at the moment, of a hot water
bottle gently warming the bed into which she meant to creep at exactly
nine o'clock. This hour she had set when at eight already the temptation
to go to bed and forget the unsatisfactory day in sound warm slumbers
had been so strong as to make yielding to it appear wrong.

These vestiges of Puritanism Aurora did not recognize as such, but yet
her mind as she was practicing self-discipline turned, without seeking
for the reason, toward the person who had done most to inculcate in her
the doctrine that if you like to do a thing that itself is almost surely
a sign of the thing being wicked, and that if you dislike it it is very
probably your duty.

While she continued to appear the signora to whom the servants' eyes
were accustomed, albeit a trifle more absent and unsmiling, she was to
herself a young girl in a far country, living and moving in scenes of
difficulty and misunderstanding with a sharp-chinned, narrow-chested,
timidly-beloved just woman--her mother, long since laid to rest....

There was nothing from outside to dispel the faint heartache
accompanying this retrospection; wind and rain against the windows were
more proper to increase the melancholy, and Aurora, suddenly sick of
staying up to be blue, wound her yarn to start for bed. But first, for
just a moment, she would go down-stairs, she thought, and have a look at
her portrait, for that was the most comforting thing to do that she
could think of. She loved her portrait as a child loves its favorite
toy.

This she was intending when the sound of the door-bell at once stopped
and cheered her by the possibility it held out of some diversion. Vitale
entered with a package.

Catching in what he said the name Gaetano, Aurora took it to mean that
Gaetano had brought the package. He was waiting below, she did not
doubt. Gaetano was Giovanna's nephew, and had more than once come on
errands from Gerald. Saying, "_Aspettare_!" she hastened into her
room for the porte-monnaie which resided in her top drawer. From this
she drew a reward that should make the journey through night and rain
from Gerald's house to hers seem no hardship. Her blues had vanished.

Before removing the rain-splashed newspaper, she gazed for a moment at
the package, trying to guess what it could be. It was square, flat,
about a foot and a half one way by a foot the other. What was Gerald
Fane sending her like that without any enlightening missive? A note
might be inside. She cut the string, took off the newspaper, to find a
second wrapper of clean white drawing-paper. After touching and
pinching, she guessed the object to be a picture-frame and picture.
Filled with curiosity, she pulled off the last wrapping, and with a face
at first very blank stared before her....

It was a painting, one of the kind she had seen at Gerald's studio and
not liked.

Different though it was from the portrait down-stairs,--as different as
poverty from riches, as twilight from day,--she could yet see that this
also was meant for a portrait of herself. She remembered tying that blue
neckerchief over her head and under her chin one evening, trying to look
like an Italian in her _pezzola_, to make the others laugh.

She stood the picture on the chair which she had pulled up before her so
as to rest her feet on the rung, off the stone floor, still to be felt,
she imagined, through the rug. Of course it was herself, but how
disappointing--disappointing enough to shed tears over--to have this
held up to her after that lovely being down-stairs! How unkind of her
friend Gerald!

Unfair, too, for although this, in not being a beauty, was obviously
more like her than the other, she could not admit that it was any truer.
She could not believe that she ever really looked like this, though she
knew that it was the way she sometimes felt. How had Gerald known she
ever felt like this?

That she was a person who ate well, slept well, felt well, loved fun,
was giving and gay--that was all most people knew, or were entitled to
know, of her; all she knew of herself a good deal of the time. Such
things could never be the whole of any person, of course. Every one has
had something to overcome. Some persons have had to overcome and
overcome and overcome, one thing after another, one thing after another,
that has tried to drag and keep them down. She had had--probably
because, as her mother often told her, she was born with such a lot of
the devil in her--a great many trials sent to her, for her discipline,
no doubt, her cleansing; but she had come out of them still unreduced,
still eager for a good time.

All persons are made up, in a way, of these experiences of the past, but
they don't expose them in their faces, they forget them as much as they
can.

Yes, as much as they can. How much is that? The only true sorrows being
involved with one's affections, and the objects of one's love never far
from one's thoughts, how much could a person be said to forget her
sorrows, really?

Aurora reflected upon this for some time, staring the while at her
portrait. The face looking back from the canvas was very like her, had
she but known it, at this exact moment, while the thoughts produced, the
memories wakened, by it substituted for her ordinary hardiness the
delicate look of a capacity for pain.

As she gazed at the portrait longer she liked it better; from minute to
minute she became more reconciled, and found herself finally almost
attracted. Something from it penetrated her for which she had no
definition. It was perhaps the dignity of humanity confronting her in
that strong and simple face framed by the kerchief, like a woman of the
people's,--her own face, but not certainly as she saw it in the mirror;
a humanity that out of the common materials offered to it day by day had
rejected all that was mean and contrived to build up nobleness.

Half perceiving that this portrait in its different way flattered her as
much if not more than the portrait down-stairs, she, while modestly
refusing to be fooled by the compliment, yet felt a motion of
affectionate gratitude toward Gerald for the sympathy which had enabled
him to pierce beneath the surface and see that Bouncing Betsy had her
feelings, too, her history; yes, her bitter tragedy.

While continuing with her eyes on the picture, she from time to time
wiped them, and when the door-bell rang again, aware of being "a sight,"
took the precaution of retiring to her bedroom, so that if Vitale should
come to announce a visit,--it was not yet nine o'clock,--she could the
better make him understand that he must excuse her to the visitor; she
was going to bed.

But learning from the servant that Signor Fane was below, she changed
her mind, and chose unhesitatingly from her stock of useful infinitives
the appropriate two: "_Dire venire_."

Gerald found her by the fire, her fur-cloak over her shoulders, her
woolly afghan in her hands, and the picture on the chair before her.

"Well?" he asked expectantly, looking at it, too, after they had shaken
hands.

"You've made me feel sorry for myself. What's the use?" she answered in
a little sigh, keeping her reddened eyes turned away from him. "Hush!
Wait a moment! I was forgetting," she added, in comedy anticlimax, like
a housewife who in the midst of a scene of sentiment should smell the
dinner scorching. She jumped up, and went without the least noise to
close the door to Estelle's room, returning from which she illogically
fell to talking in a whisper.

"Estelle's gone to bed. She's got a snow-balling old cold. I've rubbed
her chest with liniment, and tied up her throat in a compress, and given
her hot lemonade, and she lies there with a hot water bottle at her feet
and grease on her nose, and let's hope she'll feel better in the
morning."

"Let's hope, indeed. I'm very sorry to hear she's ill. But she's sure to
be better by to-morrow, isn't she, with all that care and those
remedies. I hope you haven't a cold, too, Mrs. Hawthorne. You almost
look," he said innocently, "as if you had. This weather is dreadful. You
haven't, have you, dear friend?"

"No; I guess what you see is just that I've been crying. Don't say
anything about it. Don't notice it. Never mind. Come and sit down by the
fire and get warm. Your hand was like ice."

"It's very bad out, and not much better in, except here by your generous
fireside. I haven't been warm all day."

"Why didn't you come before? It isn't what I call balmy here, but I
expect it's balmier than at your place."

With her kindly unconstraint she reached for one of his hands to test
its temperature. With a little cry of "Mercy me!" she closed his numb
fingers between her palms to warm them, as if the blaze could not have
accomplished this end so well as they.

He let it be, not with the same unconsciousness in the matter as she,
but hoping that the soft, warm infolding would somehow do him good. He
had come in the rather desperate hope of being done good to. As he had
been about to start out, having intended, when he sent the portrait, to
follow close upon it, he had found himself feeling so ill--feeling, at
the end of the dismal day, so indescribably burdened and ill and
apprehensive of worse things--that he had been on the point of giving it
up. But then the wish itself to escape from his bad feelings had
impelled him forth toward the spot glowing warmer and cheerier in his
thoughts than any other, where, if he could forget how ill he felt, he
would naturally feel better. Aurora's house during the days of painting
the first portrait had come to feel remarkably like home to him.

So when Aurora released his hand, saying, "Let's have the other," he
docilely gave it to her, though the fire had already partly thawed it.
Gratefully, with the hand set free, he covered both her kind hands,
which loved so much to warm things and feed things and pet things and
give away money.

Overcoming his ordinary stiffness, he pressed them right manfully, to
signify that he would not speak of her tears if she wished him not to,
but here was his sympathy, and with it his penitence, if so were that,
as she intimated, he had had a share in making them flow.

"So you are all alone this evening?" he asked in the voice that makes
whatever is said seem affectionate and comforting.

"Yes. I haven't even Busteretto. I let Estelle keep him on the foot of
her bed. She's perfectly devoted to him. And Clotilde is busy in her own
corner of the house, going over the bills. It takes lots of time."

"And where is the musician in ordinary, the gifted Italo?" he inquired,
with a smile meant to draw from her a smile.

She was caught without difficulty. "The gifted Checkerberry hasn't been
round lately," she smiled. "He won't expose himself to the night air for
some time. He's got laryngitis so he can't talk above a whisper." Her
eye twinkled and she laughed, though what she communicated was not on
the face of it very funny.

He was perhaps calling attention to this when he said, "Poor devil!"

"Yes," she agreed, achieving sobriety, "it's bad weather for
laryngitis," and went on with the weather, dropping Italo. "It's been a
mean sort of day, hasn't it? I haven't set foot outside. I was already
feeling kind of blue and making up my mind to go to bed when Gaetano
came with your present."

There was an intimation in her glance that this event had not made the
world appear any rosier.

Both turned to look at the picture. Their hands loosened naturally; they
sat apart.

"Can't you see why I had to paint it, Mrs. Hawthorne?" he asked,
speaking eagerly, and as if pressing his defense.

"How could I endure to have that thing down-stairs stand as my idea, my
sole idea, of you? And how could I bear to make you a gift, a sole gift,
of a piece of work I do not respect? This may be worth no more,--I think
differently,--but it is at least the best I can produce. It has my
sanction. You, too, believe me, will prefer it to the other after a
while."

She shook her head a little disconsolately.

"The other you can, if you must, keep in your drawing-room to make an
agreeable spot of color," he went on, reversing their parts and trying
to induce in her a lighter humor; "it has that perfectly legitimate use.
In your drawing-room, you know, Auroretta, among the pictures of your
choosing, it does not, in our Italian idiom, altogether disappear. This
one you will keep out of sight, but will look at now and then, if you
please; and I quite trust you, with time, to recognize that it was
painted by some one who understood and honored you more than there was
any evidence of his doing when he perpetrated, for a joke, that
bonbon-box subject down-stairs."

Mrs. Hawthorne, with soft and saddened eyes fixed on the portrait, again
shook her head, sighing, "Poor thing!"

"Not at all!" he protested almost peevishly. "Please not to suggest by
pitying her that I have not represented there a fine, big, strong thing,
built to stand up under anything! I could slay, with pleasure, at any
time"--he diverged, carried away by a long-standing disgust,--"the
pestiferous asses who call my things morbid. I am too careful to keep
true to what I see. The difference between them--I mean the critics who
call me morbid--and myself, is in the degree of sight."

"Don't get excited, Geraldino!" she checked fumings which she did not
entirely understand. "What I meant was that looking at her has made me
think of all the things that have gone wrong with me in my whole life.
Don't you call that a tribute? You couldn't have painted this picture if
you hadn't suspected those things, and, honest, I don't see how you
could suspect them. Ever since I came over here I've been so jolly.
Seems to me I've been nothing but jolly. I've been having such a good
time! How you could see under it, I don't know. As a matter of fact,
I've always been jolly between-times. Give me half a chance, let me get
out of the frying-pan, I'd be ready in a minute to go on a picnic. But
I've not been spared my troubles, Geraldino; you were right there."

At this reference to many sorrows, he found a thing to do more
expressive than words. Sitting near each other as they were, he could
reach her without rising; he bent forward and touched his lips
commiseratingly to her hand.

He might have known that it would bring her story, but he had not
schemed for this, and, unwilling, yet eager, to hear, was a prey to
compunctions on more than one ground when, after a little gulp and
sniff, she burst forth:

"I've seen perfectly dreadful times, Geraldino. Some of them were the
sort of thing you can get over, but some of them--upon my word, I wonder
at myself how I've got over them as I have. The queer thing is--I
haven't, in a way. It will come over me sometimes, in the queerest
places, at the oddest moments, that I am still that woman to whom such
awful things happened, that I, playing my silly monkey-shines, am that
heart-broken woman."

"I know," murmured Gerald, and took her plump hands steadyingly between
his hard, thin ones.

"I've never had any sense," she let herself go. "Anybody can see that;
and when I was younger I had even less, naturally, than I have now.
Always, always, I wanted so to be happy! I wanted to have a good time. I
was born wanting to have a good time. And everything was against it. But
I managed somehow. One way or another, I got to the circus 'most every
time. My mother used to wonder what my finish would be, and try to lick
the Old Boy out of me. But it couldn't be done. I'm just like my father,
my dear old pa, who was a sinner. He let ma have her way in everything,
as he thought it right to do. Not, I guess, because he always liked her
way, but because after my sister, who was a beautiful child, died in
such a terrible way that I can't even bear to mention it,--she caught
fire,"--Aurora hurriedly interjected, "ma came so near going out of her
senses that pa humored her in everything. He thought the world of her;
so did we all, but it couldn't be called a happy home. There were three
boys, besides me,--I was the last,--and we were all such everlastingly
lively young ones, and ma was so strict! Pa was away most of the time
getting a living. My pa, you know, was a pilot. It wasn't a fat living
for so many of us, but that wouldn't have mattered long as we had enough
to eat. But ma, poor soul, because of that twist her mind had taken
through sorrow, was always seeing something wrong in everything we did;
she never could be quiet or contented. The boys didn't get so much of
it: they were off out of doors and later at their trades; but me, I was
kept in to help with the housework, and kept in for company, and kept in
for no other reason, I guess, than because my wicked heart longed so to
go out and play with the girls and boys. I dare say it was good for me.
Ma meant all right, that I know, but ma was all along a sick woman. We
realized later that though she was round and about, busy every minute,
she was sick for years with the trouble that finally took her away. I
don't want you to think I didn't have a real good mother, for I did--a
first-rate mother who did her honest best to make a good woman of me."

"I know, I know." By a reminding pressure of her hands he begged she
would trust him not to misunderstand.

"But my pa--you should have known my pa!" Aurora's face brightened
immensely, and Gerald suspected that it was like him she looked when she
screwed her lips to one side in a manner humorously suggesting a pipe at
the corner of her mouth, and said in a voice not her own, "Golly, Nell,
can't you whistle for a snifter?" He could almost see a sailor's
chin-whiskers.

"He took me with him once in a while. Golly, those were good times, if
you please! Free as air, all the peanuts I could eat, out in the boat
with my pa, and catch fish, and catch a steamer if we could. We had an 8
big as a house on our sail. He was as good a seaman, my pa was, as any
in East Boston, but he wasn't a hustler. But there, if he'd been a
hustler, he wouldn't have been my pa. Wouldn't for a house with a
brownstone front have had my pa any different from what he was. Grandma
was just the same sort, God bless her! easy-going, jolly, come a day, go
a day, do as she please and let you do as you please. I used to have
such lovely times at her house, summers, down on the Cape, before my
sister died!

"It was there I first knew Hattie--Estelle. Her aunt's house was next to
my grandma's. I used to think her the luckiest child that ever was born.
Seemed to me she had just about everything--a gold locket and chain,
bronze boots, and paper dolls by the dozen. We used to play together,
day in day out, one of those plays that last all the time, where you
pretend you're some one else and act it out in all you do. We kept it up
for years. I don't see that we've changed much with growing up. Seems to
me we were pretty near the same then as we are now, having our spats,
but having lots of fun, and wanting to share everything. Estelle lived
in East Boston, too, and was going to be a school-teacher. It seemed to
me that to be a school-teacher was just about the finest thing anybody
could do. That would have been my ambition, to be a school-teacher. But
I never got beyond the grammar school, I was needed at home to help
mother. Then my poor pa died--an accident down in the docks,"--Aurora,
lowering her voice, began to hurry and condense,--"then Ben, then Joe,
then--will you believe it?--Charlie, that I loved best. They all had the
same delicate constitution as ma, it turned out, and a predisposition to
the same trouble. Then finally, after going through with so much, my
poor mother went, too, and for that I could only be thankful. And I had
taken care of them all. I wasn't twenty-three when I was the last left.
Doesn't it seem strange! I sometimes can't believe it even now."

This rapid enumeration of calamities so great robbed them of terror and
pathos, yet Gerald had somewhat the startled, shocked feeling of a man
who knows he has been struck by a bullet, though his nerves have not yet
announced it by suffering.

Aurora, who after the passing of years could think of these things
without tears, yet in speaking of them to a sympathetic hearer had
obvious difficulty in keeping a stiff upper lip. Gerald turned away his
eyes while with her hand she covered and tried to stop her mouth's
trembling.

"Poor child!" he said, with a sincerity which saved the words from
insignificance.

"Yes," she half laughed. "Wouldn't one think it enough to sort of subdue
anybody, take the starch out of them for some time? When I came out of
that house of sickness I couldn't think of anything else but sickness
and death. It stuck to me like the smell of disinfectants after you've
been in a hospital. I couldn't think of anything but that it would take
me next. I supposed I must be affected, too. But the doctor examined me,
and do you know what he said? 'Sound as a trout,' he said. 'You're so
sound,' he said, 'you're so healthy, that we'll have to shoot you to get
you to the resurrection.' Then I felt better. He was a new doctor that
we'd called in toward the end. He knew how I was situated, and as he
seemed to think I'd make a good nurse, he got me a chance in the City
Hospital, where I could get my training. And Hattie, dear Hattie, what a
friend she's been! She and her ma and pa made me come and make my home
with them. It's since then that we've been like sisters."

At the sound, appositely occurring, of a cough in the neighboring room,
Aurora stopped and listened.

"Dear me!" she whispered. "D'you suppose she's lying awake?"

"She may be coughing in her sleep," he suggested.

"Yes," Aurora said dubiously, after further listening, and hearing
nothing more. "And if I should go in to see, I might wake her. The
bell-rope is right at the head of her bed; all she has to do is pull it
if she wants somebody to come. I was entertaining you with the story of
my life, wasn't I? Where had I got to? Oh, yes. There in the hospital I
just loved it. Perhaps you can't see how I could. I just did. I had lots
of hard work. The training was sort of thrown in in my case with other
duties, but there were the other nurses and the house-doctors, I grew
chummy with them all. I had fun with the patients, too. You don't know
how much good it does you to watch anybody get well; the majority get
well. It's good for them, besides, to have you jolly."

"Your gaiety of heart makes me think of the grass, Aurora, the blessed
ineradicable grass, that will grow anywhere, that you see pushing up
between the paving-stones of the hard city, and finding a foothold on
the blank of the rock, and fringing the top of the ruined castle, and
hiding the new-made graves."

Aurora, always simple-mindedly charmed with a compliment, paused long
enough to investigate Gerald's comparison, then resumed, with the effect
of taking a plunge into deep waters:

"But it was there I met the fellow who did me the worst turn of any....

"They brought him in with broken ribs one rainy night, after he'd been
knocked down in the street by a team and kicked by the horses. I wasn't
his regular nurse, but I was in and out of his room, and if he rang
while his regular nurse was at her meals, I'd go. Everybody knows that
when a man's sick he's liable to get sweet on this or that one of his
nurses.

"How I could have been mistaken in Jim Barton I can't see now. Since
knowing him, if I ever see anybody that looks a bit like him, I shun
them like poison, because I know as well as I need to that however nice
they may appear, you can't depend upon them. But before I knew him I'd
never stop to distrust anybody.

"It began with our setting up jokes together; he could be awfully funny
even when he was swearing like a pirate about his luck landing him in a
hospital. Bad language didn't seem so awful coming from him, because he
was so light-complexioned and boyish-looking. He was only passing
through the city, in an awful hurry to get West, when he got hurt, and
he was madder than a hornet at the delay. But after a while he quieted
down, because he'd got something else to think about, which was getting
me to go along with him to California, where he'd bought a share in a
mine. And me, star idiot of the world, it seemed the grandest thing that
had ever happened. I'd never had anybody in love with me that way
before. The boys had always liked me, but I'd been like another fellow
among them, and I'd never more than just been silly for a week or two at
a time over one fellow and another at a distance. And here was a solid
offer from a perfectly splendid man who had everything, money included.
They'd found several thousand dollars on him when he was picked up. And
the yarns he told about gold-mines!... But it wasn't that, it wasn't the
gold-mines, it was 'the way with him' that caught me. I guess when
you're in love you're no judge of your man. We two, I tell you, seemed
made for each other. He was as fond of a good time as I, and he loved
fun, like me. We were going to California to make our everlasting
fortune. You'd have thought there was no more doubt about it than the
Gospels being true. And the good times we were going to have while doing
it were nothing to the good times we'd have after, when I'd have my
diamonds and he'd have his horses and things. As I said, the diamonds
weren't needed; I'd have gone with him anywhere just for the fun of
being together. I couldn't see what I'd done to deserve my blessings. I
guess he was in love, too, as far as it was in him to be; I'll do him
that justice.

"Hattie and her ma, while they had nothing to say against Jim, wanted me
to wait awhile. But Jim couldn't wait. The moment he was well enough he
wanted to be off. And I didn't care much about waiting either. I felt as
if I'd known him all my life. So they said nothing more and gave us a
perfectly lovely wedding from their house. They didn't see through him
any more than I did, and in a way it wasn't strange, because he wasn't
hiding anything in particular or misrepresenting anything. He believed
all he said about the big money he was going to make and the grand times
we should have. He was born with the sort of nature that always believes
things are going to turn out right without labor and perseverance on
your part. He wasn't fond of work, that's sure. What we ought to have
done was find out something about his past; but even that, I guess,
wouldn't have opened our eyes, with him before us looking like one of
ourselves. And it wasn't a very long past; he was young. He came of good
folks, I guess. I never saw them, but there are ways of telling. Good
folks, but not wealthy, and so as to get rich easily he had tried one
thing after another. He was quick' discouraged, and the moment the thing
didn't look so big or easy he wanted to throw it over and try something
else. Then I've come to the conclusion he loved change for its own
sake--go somewhere else, take a new name, and start a new business,
talking big. It came out after he died that he'd been known under half a
dozen names in as many States. There simply wasn't anything _to_
him. I don't believe he meant to act like a skunk, but, then, he hadn't
any principles either to keep him from acting like a skunk, or meaner
than a skunk, when it came to getting himself out of difficulty. And I,
for my sins, had to marry such a fellow as that! It was like there had
stood the good times I'd always wanted, right before me in the body, and
I took them for better, for worse, and got what my ma said I deserved to
get when she tried to cure me of my fancy for good times!"

"Don't!" protested Gerald, softly. "Don't regard as wrong what was so
natural. All who have the benefit of knowing you must thank the stars
which permitted your beautiful love of life to survive the dreadfulness
of which you have given me a glimpse."

"The dreadfulness, Geraldino! I haven't told you anything yet of the
dreadfulness. I haven't come to it. I haven't come to what makes
her"--she nodded toward the portrait,--"look like that."

"Then tell me!" he encouraged her.

"It isn't Jim. When I think of Jim, it only makes me mad. My heart is
hard as stone toward him." She clenched her jaws and looked, in fact,
rather grim. "That he's dead doesn't change it. I hope I forgive him as
a Christian ought to who asks forgiveness for her own trespasses. I know
I don't feel revengeful. There wasn't enough _to_ Jim for me to
wish him punished in hell. But if you think I have any sentiment because
I used to love him, or that I was sorry I woke up from my fool dream
when I once had seen it was a dream--Not a bit of it. There was a time,
though, when I first began to suspect and understand, that makes me
rather sick to think of even now. I was so far from home, you see. I
hadn't a friend, and I wouldn't for worlds have written back to my old
friends that I'd made a bad bargain--not while I wasn't dead sure. And I
kept on hoping.

"At first we had a real good time. We lived in a miner's cottage, but
that seemed sort of jolly. I'd been used to hard work all my life, so I
didn't mind that, and I wanted him to have as nice a home as any man
could on the same money. So I cleaned and contrived and baked and brewed
and fixed up. I wanted him to be pleased with me and proud among the
other men. But pretty soon I found I didn't care to make acquaintances,
because I was ashamed of the way Jim did. He kept putting all his money
into the mine, sending good money after bad, and let me keep house on
nothing, and then was in a worse and worse temper because the mine
didn't pan out and things weren't more comfortable at home. I began to
wake up in the night and lie there in a cold sweat, clean scairt. I
haven't told you that we were looking for an addition to the family.
That's one reason I was so scairt. But I shut my teeth, and said I to
myself, 'This baby's going to have a chance if his mother can give it to
him by not getting excited or letting things prey on her mind.' So I
kept a hold on myself and didn't let anything count except guarding that
baby. I seemed to care more about it than all the rest of the world put
together. Oh, I can't begin to tell you how much more than for all the
rest of the world put together. I don't know that a man would
understand."

"Yes, he would; of course he would," spoke Gerald, gently reverent, yet
a little impatient; then he qualified his assertion: "He could imagine,
I mean to say, how you would have felt that way."

"Well, that matter was going to be put safely through, no matter what.
The first mistake I made was not making friends with my women neighbors,
so that everybody in Elsinore supposed that Jim's wife was the same
stripe as he,--or that's what I thought they supposed,--and when I
needed friends I couldn't think of any to turn to except those at home.
The other mistake I made was not to write them at home and tell them the
truth and then wait for them to send me money to come. But I guess my
mind stopped working when the shock came."

Aurora appeared to brace herself, while decently considering how to
minimize to her audience the brutality of her next revelation.

"Jim cleared out one night while I was asleep, taking every cent we'd
got and every last thing he could hope to turn into a cent," she said,
hardening her voice and lips. Gerald was given a moment in which to
visualize the situation, before she went on: "I guess, as I said before,
that I wasn't in my right mind for a spell; all I could think of was
getting home to my own folks, and I was going to do it somehow, though I
hadn't a cent. I hadn't even my wedding-ring. I'd put it off because my
finger had grown fatter, and he'd taken even that to go and try his luck
somewhere else.--What do you think of it?" she mechanically added.

She was pale, remembering these things. Gerald drew in a long, unsteady
breath, oppressed.

"I was going to get home somehow," Aurora repeated, "and I wasn't going
to waste time waiting for anything. And how was I going to do it? I
don't suppose I really thought; I followed instinct like an animal. I
hid in a freight-car going East--"

A definite difficulty here stopped Aurora. While she felt for words in
which to clothe what followed, the images in her mind made her eyes,
which were not seeing the things actually before them, more descriptive
of the anguish of remembered scenes than her words were likely to be.

"I'm going to skip all that, Gerald." With a gesture, she suddenly
rolled up a part of her story and threw it aside. "But when I came to
see and understand rightly again, weeks after, in a hospital at Denver,
I cried, oh! how I cried, and didn't care what became of me. Because I'd
lost him; they hadn't succeeded in saving him. He had lived, mind you,"
she emphasized with pride--"he had lived a little while, he was all
right, perfect in every way--a son."

His due of tears was not withheld from the wee frustrated god. Aurora
gave up talking, so as to have her cry in quietness.

Gerald, holding back a sound of distress, twisted on his chair, not
daring to recall himself to Aurora's notice either by speaking or
touching her.

"I'm plain sorry for myself," she explained her tears while trying to
stop them. "You can't be sorry, for their own sakes, for the little
children who go back to God without knowing anything of this life's
troubles. It's for myself I'm sorry. I never can bring up those times
without the _feeling_ of them coming over me again, and then, as I
tell you, I'm sorry for that poor fool in her empty house, and then in
the thundering freight-car, and then in the hospital. I see her outside
of me just as plain as I would another person. Then, too"--she dried her
eyes as if this time for good--"I feel a burning here"--she touched her
breast--"like anger. Angry. I feel angry at being robbed, in a way I
never seem to get over. To think I might have had him all my life, like
millions of other women, and I never even saw him! And he was as real to
me all those months before!... I don't see how I could have loved him
more than I did. I'm hungry for him sometimes, just as I might be for
food. And then I'm angry and rebellious. But I couldn't tell you against
who. It isn't God, certainly. He's our best friend, all we've got to
rely on. And He's been mighty good to me. There in Denver, when I hadn't
a friend or a penny, He raised up friends for me and gave me the most
wonderful luck.

"I stayed right there in Denver till less than a year ago. I guess
you've heard me speak of the Judge. The doctor in the hospital where
they carried me was his son; that's how it all came about--friends, good
luck, money, everything. When I say I found friends, let me mention that
I found enemies, too, the meanest, the bitterest! I--but there"--she
interrupted herself as, on the very verge of further confidences, a
change of mind was effected in her by sudden weariness or by a deterrent
thought, or both--"I guess I've talked enough about myself for one
evening. I didn't have a soft time of it there in Denver," she summed up
the remainder of her story, "but I'd got back to being my old self.
You'd never have known what I'd been through. I was just about as you've
known me here. Funny, isn't it,"--Aurora seemed almost ashamed,
apologetic,--"how the disposition you're born with hangs on?"

"Golden disposition," Gerald commented soothingly. Timid about looking
directly at her just yet, he looked instead at the portrait, whereon lay
the shadow of the events just related.

After a little period of thought in silence Aurora said, with the
shamefaced air she took when venturing to talk of high things:

"I heard a sermon once on the text, 'Mary kept all these things in her
heart.' The minister said that it wasn't only Mary who did this, but
ordinary women, so often. And I know from myself how true it is. You see
a woman all dressed up at a party, laughing with the others, dancing
perhaps, and she'll be saying inside of herself, 'If baby had lived,
he'd have been three years old.' Or thirteen, or thirty. I've no doubt
it goes on as long as she lives. And she can see him before her just as
plain, as he would have been.... My baby would have been five last
October."

Gerald remembered how sweet he had always thought it of her to wish to
stop and fondle little children, often wee beggars, stuffing little
grimy fists with pennies, not avoiding to touch soiled little cheeks
with her clean gloves. He had attributed this propensity to a simple
womanly talent for motherliness.

"I've got this to be thankful for," she came out again from silence,
farther down along the line of her meditations, "that he did live for a
few hours. I've got a son, just as much as if he'd grown to be a man."
She was dry-eyed, almost joyful in this.

"Yes, yes," hurried Gerald, consolingly; "that's what you must always
think of--that and not the other things. You must lay hold of that
thought and feel rich in it. But hear me, dear friend--me, trying to
suggest ways to you of being brave and cheerful! You, who do from
god-given temperament what I can only see as a right aim of aspiration,
by light of a certain philosophy arrived at in my own way, through my
own experiences. Philosophy is not the right word, either; the feeling I
have is mainly esthetic. In order not to be too unhappy in this world,
in order to have a little serenity, we must forgive everything, Aurora;
that is what I have clearly seen. It's the only way. We must forgive
events just as we forgive persons. And we must love life. I who so much
of the time hate life, yet know better. We must love it as we must love
our enemies. The wherefore is a mystery, but peace of heart and beauty
of life are involved with doing it. We mustn't mind being wounded,
crucified. We mustn't mind anything, Aurora! We mustn't be angry, the
gestures of it are ugly. I, who am always being angry, who sometimes
groan aloud my thoughts are so blasphemously bitter, I am telling you
what I at bottom know. The game is so unfair, it calls for magnanimity
on our part to stake handsomely and lose patiently. Patience, that's it!
We must be patient--patient as a cab-horse! Pride and dignity demand
that we be patient, absolutely. For the sake of certain beautiful things
and sweet people in the world, we must give it a good name. But hear me!
Hear me giving counsels to you--you who without formulating these ideas
act on them, whilst with me they are things which I see as fit to be
done but can never hope to do."

"You, too, Gerald, poor boy," was Aurora's simple reply--"you, too, have
had lots to try you."

He swept aside by a gesture the subject of his trials, removed it
altogether from the horizon, unwilling really that the interest be
shifted from her to him. She was equally determined, now that he had
sympathized with her, to sympathize with him.

"I know you have," she insisted; "I know you've had lots to try you,
just as you knew that I'd had lots. And you're so high-strung, so
sensitive ... I never knew anybody like you. But there are good times
coming for you; I'm sure of it."

"I don't in the least expect them." He laughed a little harshly. He had
winced at her description of him as sensitive, high-strung. "Dear
incurable optimist, I don't in the least expect them. It's not because
there will be compensation that I hold it the decentest thing to put up
with the _mechancetés_ of fate, fate's ingenious stabs in the
tender, as they come, without giving the exhibition of one's
vulnerability, or poisoning one's system with hate!"

"But there will," she continued to insist, "there will be compensations.
I know it just as well.... You have so much talent, it's perfectly
wonderful, and it's only a question of time your having the success you
deserve. I, of course, am not educated up to your paintings, but even I
am beginning to see something more than I did at first. I can see, for
instance, that almost any fine painter, with a command of his colors,
could have done the picture down-stairs, but that only you in the whole
world could have done this one here. But, I say again, my opinion isn't
worth anything. But there's Leslie, who knows all about art and such
things, doesn't she? Well, she 's told me how wonderful you are. From
what she's told me I'm perfectly sure you'll make your mark in the
world."

Again Gerald swept her words aside like noxious obscuring cobwebs. "What
is, few know, and what will be, nobody knows whatever," he said. "But of
all things, I beg, I beg you will not think of me as a misunderstood
genius! Art is not a passion with me, it is--an interest. And don't hold
out for a lure that will reconcile me, my dear friend, anything so
vulgar as success! The single hope I have, when I am the most hopeful,
is that simply my metal, my resistance, may never quite fail. I shall
not have success, dear lady, though in your kindness you predict it. I
shall go on and on seeing with different eyes from other people, carving
my cherry-stones in my own way, and made unsociable by the failure of
others to see how superior my way is. I shall go on growing more
eccentric and solitary, and call myself lucky quite beyond my merits if
those particular snares which the devil Melancholy sets for the solitary
may be escaped, that I may neither drink, nor drug myself, nor shoot
myself, nor marry the cook!"

"Don't talk like that, Gerald!" cried Aurora. "Don't say anything so
awful! Now keep still while I talk, listen while I tell you. You're
going on painting in your own way, but some one--see?--some one is going
to arise bright enough to recognize how perfectly wonderful your
pictures are. Keep still. You mustn't despise success, you know, success
is what everybody needs and wants. You're going to succeed. Keep still.
Stupid people will want to buy your pictures because the people who know
about such things have told the public how wonderful they are. Then
you'll grow rich and famous. You won't be either eccentric or solitary.
You'll have hosts of admiring friends. I guess you could have them now,
if you wanted to. You won't be melancholy. You'll be happy. In your home
there will be a nice wife. Why are you supposing you'll never marry? A
dear true beautiful girl who thinks the world of you and that you think
the world of. And when you're an old gentleman with your grandchildren
playing at your knee, you'll say to yourself, 'Aurora told me so!'"

She was all cheering smiles and dimples again.

"Be sure you remember now," she said, holding up a finger and shaking it
to mark her bidding, "to say to yourself, 'Aurora told me so!'"

It was a pity almost that Gerald should not have gone home at that
point. He would have left with undividedly fond and approving feelings;
he would have left tied to Aurora by a thousand sweet humanities in
common, as well as impressed afresh by the depth and mysteriousness of
woman. But he had either forgotten or was disregarding the hour--the
clock on the mantelpiece, like most ornamental clocks, was not going;
the bliss of being warm for the first time in days, warm through and
through, warm to the middle of his heart, made him careless of
correctness; and so he stayed on, to be rudely jarred by and by out of
his contentment, and take with him finally into the night a renewed,
even sharpened, perception of those exasperating faults which made Mrs.
Hawthorne, as he named it, impossible.

Because they seemed to be on such solid terms of friendship after the
long evening before the fire, when they had sorrowed together and
sympathized; when he had been permitted to hold and press her hands;
when with a veritable mutual outgoing of the heart they had vied in
prophesying for each other fair and happy days, Gerald found the
boldness--and found it without much strain--the boldness to utter a
request which had burned on his lips before, but which he had repressed,
saying to himself that what Mrs. Hawthorne did was no affair of his.

"Aurora," he said--she was after this evening Mrs. Hawthorne to him only
in the hearing of others,--"Aurora, I want to ask a favor, a great
favor."

"Go ahead. I guess it's granted."

"I wish I felt sure; but I'm afraid. Say you will not take part in the
amateur variety show at _mi-carême_."

"Sakes!" cried Aurora, staring at him with round eyes. "Ask me something
easy! Ask me something else! I can't do that."

"You can. Of course you can, if you wish to. You have only to give some
excuse."

"An excuse? Not for a farm! I don't want to. I've bound myself. They
expect me as much as anything. I couldn't back out. It's so near the
time, too. Why, it's to make money for the Convalescents' Home. I'm a
big feature of the show."

"I know you are, and I have a perfect horror of what you may do. I can't
bear to think of the public sitting there gaping at you and laughing."

"The public will be composed of friends. It's all private. Give it up?
Not much! I tell you, it's nuts to me! I expect to have lots of fun.
You've never seen, Geraldino, how funny I can be. You'll see that
night."

"The voice runs that you're going to appear as a nigger mammy and sing
plantation songs."

"Oh, does it? Well, that seems innocent. What objection do you see to
that?"

"I did not call my request reasonable, dearest Aurora. I begged a
personal favor. You know the sort of nerves I have. It is like pouring
acid on them to think of you making a show of yourself."

She laughed, but would not yield; she treated his proposition like a
spoiled child's demand for the moon, and, after condescending to tease
like a boy, he woke suddenly to the fact of being ridiculous. He dropped
the subject with the abruptness that causes the opponent nearly to
topple over in surprise.

He had sat for a long moment in silence when, realizing that this
appeared ill-humored and a piece of effrontery, he started in haste to
talk again, choosing the first subject that came into his mind, which
was a thing he had meant to tell Aurora this evening, but had not
remembered until this moment. The wide distance between the subject he
dropped and the subject he took up would show, it was hoped, how
definitely he washed his hands of her doings.

"If you have wished for revenge on our friend Antonia," he said, "you
can be satisfied. She is in the most singular sort of difficulty."

"Oh, is she? I'm sorry," said Aurora. "Bless you! I never wished her any
harm."

"I went to see her yesterday. I had saved up my grievance and felt the
need to lay it before her. I think one should give an old friend who has
behaved badly the chance to make reparation, don't you? After being
angry as you saw me, I yet did not want to break with her. She was very
kind to me when I was young. At the same time I could not let her
rudeness to you pass. But I found her in such trouble already when I
went to see her yesterday that I said not one word of my grievance. It
will have to wait."

"You needn't think you must pick her up on my account. I don't care. But
what was the matter?"

"Two of her oldest friends, through an unaccountable mistake, turned
into enemies. Both insist that under cover of a mask at the last
_veglione_ she insulted them. Unfortunately, her best friends are
not kept by their actual knowledge of her from thinking it just possible
she might desire to amuse herself with getting a claw into them. She has
more than once given offense to her friends by putting them into her
books. But Antonia swore to me that she was innocent, and begged me to
convince De Brézé. The villa she lives in is his property, and he has
requested her to vacate it. The other aggrieved one, General Costanzi,
she fears may succeed in preventing the publication of her next novel by
threat of a libel suit."

"Well, that sounds bad. But what do they say she's done?"

"The poor woman doesn't even know what she is supposed to have said;
insulted them is all she can gather. Both maintain that though she tried
to alter her voice they recognized her, and will not accept her word for
it that she wore no such disguise as they describe. Which reminds me
that the offender, or the offender's double, for I have an idea there
were two masked alike, came into your box early in the evening with a
companion. You have not forgotten--that black domino with the crow's
beak?"

Aurora jumped on her seat with a cry of "Goodness gracious!"

"What is it?" he asked, looking at her more attentively. She appeared
aghast.

She did not answer at once, tensely trying to think.

"Well," she finally exclaimed, relaxing into limpness, "I've been and
gone and done it!"

And as he waited--

"I guess I did that insulting," she added, and wiped her brow.

He thought for a moment that she might be acting out a joke, but in the
next accepted her perturbation as genuine.

"Can't you see through it even now I've told you?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"Did you suppose I didn't really know those two who came into the box,
the one who roared and the one who cawed? Well, I'm a better actress
than I supposed."

"But--"

"And did you really suppose I was going home to bed just as the fun was
at its height? There again you're simpler than I thought. Land! Don't I
wish now that I had gone home!"

"And you--"

"We'd heard so much from everybody of the pranks they play at these
vegliones of yours that we wanted to play one, too--we wanted to
intrigue you and a lot of other people. The trouble seems to be we did
it too well. Land! I wish I hadn't done it! I wish Heaven I'd consulted
you, or some one--We hatched it all up with Italo and Clotilde."

"Italo and Clotilde!"

"They were the two who came into the box and didn't say a word, for fear
of being known by their voices. Then, after you had so politely seen us
off, Estelle and I in the carriage put on black dominos and crows'
beaks, and after driving around a couple of blocks came back and found
Italo and Clotilde waiting for us. Clotilde had put off her black domino
in the dressing-room; she was dressed under it exactly like her brother.
D'you see now how we worked it? Estelle took Clotilde's arm, and I took
Italo's; we separated and kept apart, and it was as if there had only
been one couple, the same as there had been since the beginning of the
evening."

"I see."

"I've been dying to tell you about it ever since, but I just haven't
told you. I don't know what I was waiting for. I guess I was enjoying
letting you stay fooled. I had the greatest time, bad cess to it!
talking to some people I knew and to a lot that I didn't. Italo would
whisper to me beforehand what to say, and I'd say it. I didn't always
know what it was about, but nothing was further from my mind than to
wish to insult anybody. I was so excited I didn't always notice what I
did say, it just seemed playful and funny and in the spirit of the rest.
I went up to Charlie Hunt and spoke to him. I put a flea in his ear, and
I'm positive from his face that he didn't know me. I came near going up
to you when you were talking with that Mr. Guerra, but I was too much
afraid you'd recognize me; you're so sharp, and, then, you're the one
most particularly who has heard me talk with my English accent, which I
put on on the night of the _veglione_ so as not to be known."

"Your English accent? That explains."

"What?"

"Your English accent is a caricature of Antonia's."

"I don't have to tell you, I suppose, that I had no idea of personating
Antonia."

"The very difference between the original and your imitation might seem
the result of an effort on her part to disguise her speech."

"I've been a fool, of course, and some of the blame is mine, but just
let me get hold of Italo and watch me shake the teeth out of his
confounded little head. I remember perfectly speaking to the old general
that we saw at Antonia's that day and to the old viscount who came to my
ball."

"Do you remember what you said?"

"Not exactly, but in both cases it seemed harmless. I wouldn't have said
it if it hadn't seemed harmless. I couldn't have wished to insult them,
how could any one suppose it? To the general it was something about a
horse."

Gerald gave a sound of raging disgust.

Aurora waited, watching him.

"Was it very bad?" she asked finally, and held her breath for his
answer.

"Just as bad as possible. Ceccherelli deserves to be flayed. Is the man
mad? And what, may I ask, did you say to De Brézé?"

"I only remember it was something about ermine. I forgot until this
moment that I meant to ask Italo what the joke was about ermine. Was
that too very bad?"

"Just as bad as possible. No, rather worse. Both relate to ancient bits
of scandal that no one would dare refer to--that would place a man
referring to them in the necessity to fight a duel. Mind you, mean and
discredited scandal. I won't resurrect it to enlighten you. You can
interrogate Signor Ceccherelli, who has really distinguished himself in
his quality of habitué of this house and your particular friend."

"I know you're angry, Gerald; I don't wonder you're ready to call names.
But the thing is simple, isn't it, after all, now that I understand. The
harm done isn't such as can never be mended. All I have to do is write
to Antonia and tell her I was the black crow, or, if you advise, write
to the two gentlemen I've offended."

"Heavens, no! you can't do that!"

"Why can't I?"

"You can't; that's all. You can't admit that that little vermin is on
terms of intimacy with you permitting his prompting your Carnival
witticisms, and you can't hope to make any one in Florence believe you
didn't understand what you were saying."

"Yes, I can, my friend; I can make them believe. I can speak the truth.
I can, at all events, prove that Antonia had nothing whatever to do with
it."

"No, no, no, I tell you! You can do nothing whatever about it. Your name
must not be allowed to appear in the matter at all. It would serve
Ceccherelli right that his part in the disgraceful business should be
known, dangerous little beast that he is. He would receive a lesson, and
an excellent thing it would be; but that, again, might involve you. One
couldn't trust him to keep your name out of it. Besides, it would very
likely ruin him, disgusting little beggar."

"You leave him to me! He roared his throat to a frazzle the other night,
and can't make a sound, but he'll come round as soon as he's better, and
then if I don't give it to him! Little cuss!... But I'm to blame, too,
Gerald. You told me over and over that I oughtn't to encourage him to
gossip as I did, but I went right on doing it because it was as good as
a play to hear him tell his queer stories in his queer English. It
amused me, I've no other excuse. I sort of knew all the time that it was
wrong. And so he got bolder and bolder and finally overstepped the line.
And now I've got my come-uppance. I'll settle him, trust _me_, and
I'll write to Antonia, and I'll write the two gentlemen, if you'll just
tell me where to write."

"Must I tell you again that you are above all things to do nothing of
the kind? Not certainly if you think of continuing to live in Florence.
Leave the matter to me. I am well acquainted with everybody in question
and shall be able to satisfy them, I hope, while leaving them completely
in the dark as to the real culprit."

Mrs. Hawthorne appeared to hesitate.

"I really should feel better if I could confess," she said. "It would
take a whole load off my chest. You see, I don't know your ways of doing
over here; that would be my way. They might all forgive me and say I was
just a fool. But if they didn't, and, as you seem to fear, made Florence
too unpleasant to hold me, luckily I'm not tied down. I'm free. I can
pull up stakes when I please and go pitch my tent elsewhere."

"The delightful independence of riches! The grandeur and detachment of
your point of view!" he spoke in a flare of excited bitterness. "What
you have said is equivalent to saying that your friends of Florence are
a matter of complete indifference to you!"

"I _love_ my friends of Florence, and you know it, Gerald Fane! And
I don't believe they'd ever turn against me, no matter what trouble I'd
made for myself at that confounded veglione. So I don't look to leaving
Florence just yet a while. You know I was only talking. I felt perfectly
safe--But it's astonishing to me, dear boy, how ready you are to get mad
at me. When you know me so well, too. You ought to be ashamed."

"I am, dear. It's my temper that's bad. And you're so kind," he meekly
subsided. "But you _are_ trying, you know," he added, after a
moment, with returning vivacity, "what with the extreme bad taste of
your masked ball adventures, and your obstinate determination to publish
them, and then your insane obstinacy to make a show of yourself as a
colored nurse in this vaudeville--But I forgot, I had sworn to myself
not to speak of that again. May I count upon you at least to leave
entirely to me the matter of exculpating Antonia to General Costanzi and
De Brézé?"

"Oh, very well, if you think best."

"Will you promise solemnly to be silent on the whole matter?"

"All right. But I don't like it, Gerald. If I've done wrong, I should
feel lots easier in my mind if I could tell."

"That feeling of yours is precisely what I wish to guard against. Do
believe that in this matter the old Florentine I am knows better than
you. Promise."

"All right, I promise."

After a moment, "There's no chance, is there, of your changing your mind
about the other matter"--he asked sheepishly,--"the matter which I must
not mention? No, I supposed not. I am perfectly aware of my presumption
in making any suggestion to you on the subject. But if you knew how the
thought of it torments me...."

"You'll get over it when you see me. You'll just laugh with the rest."

"Enough. Good night," he said stiffly, but it is doubtful that the word
of leave-taking was anything more than a mode of expressing displeasure,
or that departure would immediately have succeeded upon his rising from
his chair, had not a sound of coughing from the neighboring room called
up before him an image of Harriet Estelle, wide awake, with a stern and
feverish eye fixed on the clock.

He was startled into a consciousness of the lateness of the hour.

"Good night!" he repeated in a guilty whisper. "I daren't look at my
watch. I'm afraid I've kept you shockingly late."

                   *       *       *       *       *

The night, when Gerald went out into it, was quieter and dryer. The
streets were altogether empty. He had quite forgotten having felt ill
earlier in the evening, and did not remember it even when he found his
teeth chattering as a result of coming out into the penetrating night
air after sitting so close to the fire. A thing he did remember, as he
took out the large iron key to the door of home, was that after all
Helen Aurora telling him her story he did not know how she came to be
Mrs. Hawthorne. There must have been a second marriage there in Denver,
one of those little-considered episodes in American life, perhaps, that
are hardly thought worth mentioning. She sometimes spoke of "the judge."
She had spoken to-night of a doctor, son of the judge. No, he decided,
it could not be either of them. The second husband, whoever he had been,
had clearly not been important, and he was dead, for Mrs. Foss had told
him explicitly that Aurora was a real, and not what is called in America
a grass, widow. From this second husband it must have been that she
derived her wealth.




CHAPTER XIV


Even had Aurora been able to apprehend the measure and quality, the fine
shades, of Gerald's dislike to the thought of her doing a turn in the
society variety-show, it is more than doubtful that she would have let
it weigh against her strong desire to take part. It is fine to have such
delicate sensibilities regarding the dignity of another, but it is
foolishness to entertain anything of the sort regarding your own.

"If there's one thing I love, it's to dress up and play I'm somebody
else," Aurora had said when first the subject of the benefit performance
was discussed.

Mrs. Hawthorne was so certain to give generously to the cause of the
convalescents that it was felt only fair to flatter her by seeking to
enlist the service of her talents; but apart from this, the promise of
her appearance was counted upon to create interest. She being obviously
less restricted by conventions than other people, there existed a
permanent curiosity as to what she might do next; and it could not be
denied that she could, when she chose, be funny.

With the exception of one peculiar and superfastidious man, nobody had
the smallest objection to seeing her distort her fine mouth in comic
grimaces, or lend her fine figure to clownish acts. There were those, of
course, who called Mrs. Hawthorne vulgar; but too many persons liked her
for the charge of vulgarity to go undisputed or become loud. A good many
had reason to like her.

Aurora felt so sure of the general friendliness that not the smallest
pang of doubt, of deterring nervousness, assailed her while preparing
her scene; and when she once occupied the center of the stage the spirit
of frolic so possessed, the laughter of the people so elated and
spurred, her, that she would have turned somersaults to amuse them, and
done it with success, no doubt, for all that Aurora did on this occasion
was funny and successful. Aurora, intoxicated with applause, was that
night in her simple way inspired. Her state was, in fact, dangerous,
discretion deserted her, and before the end, carried away by the desire
to please further, make laugh more, she had done a foolish thing--a
thing which she half knew, even while she did it, to be foolish, perhaps
wrong. But not having leisure to think, she took the risk, and in time
found herself, as a result of her mistake, to have made an enemy; yes,
changed her dear and helpful friend Charlie Hunt into a secret enemy.

In an old palace on Via dei Bardi a stage had been set, filling one
fourth of the vast saloon. A goodly representation of Anglo-American
society in Florence crowded the rest. Beautifully hand-written programs
acquainted these, through thin disguises of name, with the personalities
of the performers. Only one name was really mysterious--Lew Dockstader.

After a lively overture by piano, violin, and harp, the three Misses
Hunt, in Japanese costume, gave a prettily kittenish rendering of "Three
Little Maids from School," selection from one of those Gilbert and
Sullivan operettas latterly enchanting both England and America. The
tub-shaped Herr Spiegelmeyer, dressed like a little boy and announced as
an infant prodigy, played a concerto of prodigious difficulty and
length. Lavin, of the tenor voice rich in poetry and prospects, humbled
himself to sing, "There was a Lady Loved a Swine," with "Humph, quoth
he"--s almost too realistic. Then came Lew Dockstader.

Now, report had spread that Mrs. Hawthorne was to appear as a negress;
no one was prepared to see her appear as a negro. The surprise, when it
dawned on this one and the other that that stove-black face with rolling
eyes and big red and white smile, that burly body incased in old,
bagging trousers, those shuffling feet shod in boots a mile too large
for them and curling up at the toe, belonged to Mrs. Hawthorne, the
surprise was in itself a success. Then, as has been said, Aurora was
undeniably in the vein that evening.

She had seen Lew Dockstader, the negro minstrel, once in her life, but
at the impressionable age, when you see and remember for good. It had
been the great theatrical event of her life. "What, haven't seen Lew
Dockstader! Don't know who he is!" thus she still would measure a
person's ignorance of what is best in drama and song. She loved Lew.
When she impersonated him she did not try to imitate him, she simply
felt herself to be he.

In this character she now told a string of those funny anecdotes which
Americans love to swap. She sang divers songs, pitched among her big,
velvety chest tones: "Children, Keep in de Middle ob de Road," "Fluey,
Fluey," "Come, Ride dat Golden Mule." With the clumsy nimbleness and
innocent love of play of a Newfoundland pup, she flung out her enormous
feet in the dance.

The crimson curtains drew together upon her retreat amid unaffected
applause. Recalled, she gave the encore prepared for such an event.
Recalled over and over, like singers of topical songs, to hear what she
would say next, Aurora, a little off her head with the new wine of
glory, exhausted her bag of parlor tricks to satisfy an audience so
kind. Then it was that she made her mistake. Recalled still again, she
invented on the spot one last thing to do. She recited a poem indelibly
learned at public school, giving it first as a newly landed Jewish pupil
would pronounce it, then a small Irishman, then a small Italian, finally
an English child. To add the latter was her mistake, because her
caricature of the English speech was very special.

The sound of it started an idea buzzing in the head of one of her
audience--Charlie Hunt, who sat well in front, and in applauding raised
his hands above the level of his head so that actors and audience alike
might be encouraged by seeing that he gave the patronage of his
approval.

He did not immediately connect Aurora's English with a rankling
remembered episode, but the thing was burrowing in his subconsciousness,
and an arrow of light before long pierced his brain. He reconsidered the
conclusion upon which he had rested with regard to the black crow who at
the _veglione_ had put to him an impertinent question. Could it be
that not the particular lady whom he had fixed upon in his mind, as
being fond of Landini, consequently jealous of Mrs. Hawthorne, had by it
expressed her spite, but that--? He saw in a flash a different
possibility.

When the show was over and the performers had issued from the
dressing-rooms in the clothes of saner moments, Charlie Hunt approached
Mrs. Hawthorne, who, flushed with excitement, was looking almost too
much like an American Beauty rose. He paid his compliments in a tone
tinged with irony, all the while watching her with a penetrating,
inquiring, ironical eye. But the irony was wasted. She was too
pleasantly engrossed to perceive it.

"Has anybody here seen Mr. Fane?" she asked after a time, when her
glances had vainly sought him in every corner.

Estelle told her that she had not set eyes on him the whole evening;
and, which was more conclusive, little Lily Foss said he had not been
there.




CHAPTER XV


Aurora, unable to see beyond the footlights, had never dreamed but
Gerald was among the audience. Her capers had at moments been definitely
directed at him. Discovering that he had kept away, she was not so much
hurt as puzzled.

"Who'd have thought he cared enough about it to be so mean!" she said to
herself. "Well," she said further, "let him alone. He'll come round in a
day or two."

She really expected him that same day. When he did not come, or the day
after, or the day after that, she tried to recall passage for passage
their talk on the subject of the show. She did not remember his saying
anything that amounted to giving her a choice between renouncing it or
renouncing his friendship.

Then she reviewed all she knew of him; and his present conduct, if he
were by this avoidance trying to punish her for doing what it was the
prerogative of her native independence to do, did not seem in accordance
with his known regard for the rights of others.

Aurora did not know what to think. From hour to hour she looked for a
call, a message, a letter, and because the time while waiting seemed
long, she neglected to note that the actual time elapsed was not more
than Gerald had sometimes allowed to pass without her attributing his
silence to offence. He had his work, he had other friends; Abbé Johns
might be in town again visiting him. This silence, however, had a
different value, she thought, from other silences. They had seemed so
much better friends after their confidences that long evening over the
fire; she expected more of him than she had done before it.

At other moments she was disposed to find fault with herself. She
supposed she was a big coarse thing, unable to appreciate the feelings
of a man who apparently hadn't as many thicknesses of skin as other
folks.

It was at such a moment, when she made allowances for him, that she
thought of writing, making it easy for him to drop his grouch and
return. But here Aurora felt a difficulty. Aurora thought well, in a
general way, of her powers as a letter-writer, and she was proud of her
beautifully legible Spencerian hand; but for such a letter as she wished
to send Gerald fine shades of expression were needed beyond what she
could compass. She was fond of Gerald; in this letter she must not be
too fond, yet she must be fond enough. What hope that a blockhead would
strike the exact middle of so fine a line?

She could obviate the difficulty by sending him a formal invitation to
dinner. But suppose she should receive formal regrets?

After that the whole thing must be left to him; the tactful letter meant
to hurry him back would no longer be possible.

"Oh, bother!" said Aurora, and formed a better, bolder plan.

Aurora had not seen the plays, had not read the books, where the going
of the heroine to visit the hero at his house for whatever good reason
under the sun has such damaging results for her fair fame. Aurora was
innocent of good society's hopeless narrowness on the subject. If she
made a secret of her plan to Estelle it was merely because Estelle had
permitted herself wise words one day, warnings, with regard to Gerald,
in whom she specifically did not wish her friend to "become interested."

"You're too different," Estelle had said. "You're like a fish and a
bird. I won't say I don't like him. He's nice in a way, but it's not our
way, Nell. You'd be miserable with him, first or last."

"My dear," Aurora had replied, "if you knew the sort of thing we talk
about when you're not there you wouldn't worry. If you can see Gerald
Fane in the part of my beau you must be cracked. And if you think I'm
soft on him, you're only a little bit less cracked. Can't you see we're
just friends? It's nice for him to come here and it's nice for us to
have him. We want friends, don't we?"

"All I say is don't go ahead with your eyes shut till you find before
you know it that you're landed in a case of, 'Mother, I can't live
without him!' For, Nell, it won't do, you know it won't."

"My dearest girl, of course I know, but not half so well as he knows!
Bless you, Hat, do you forget all Leslie told us about him and his
affair? And do you forget my little affair? Do you suppose either of us
wants to try again?"

"Indeed, I hope you will try again, both of you. But not together, Nell.
I've got the man all picked out for you; you know perfectly I mean Tom
Bewick. There's the one for you, Nell. Big, healthy, kind. Good sense.
Good temper. Your own kind of person, Nell, and not a queer bird from a
menagerie. Don't go and spoil everything by getting tangled up over
here. You know as well as I do that Gerald Fane, take him just as a man,
can't hold a candle to Doctor Tom."

"I've never thought of comparing them. I don't see any use in doing it.
Tom's Tom and Gerald's Gerald. So far as Gerald goes, you can set your
heart at rest and bank on this: I know just as well as you do, and he
knows just as well as I do, that we couldn't pull in harness together
any more than--just as you say, a fish and a bird. Neither of us is
thinking of such a thing. But why mustn't a fish and a bird have
anything to say to each other? He might like the cut of her fins and she
might fancy the color of his wings. They could sympathize together,
couldn't they, if nothing else?" Aurora's eyebrows had with this tried
to signify her entire capacity to take care of herself and her own
business.

But not wishing to rouse any further uneasiness in her friend, she no
more after that spoke frankly of Gerald whenever he came into her mind.
And when she declined Estelle's invitation to go with her to Mlle.
Durand's, where she would hear the pupils of the latter recite Corneille
and Racine, she did not tell her what she had planned to do instead,
fully intending, however, to reveal it later.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Gerald meanwhile did not flatter himself imagining Aurora unhappy
because he stayed away longer than had lately been quite usual. Time
dragged with him, but the calendar told him that just so many days, no
more, had passed. He pictured her going her cheerful gait, occasionally
saying, perhaps, "I wonder what has become of Stickly-prickly?"

He had not gone to the mid-Lent entertainment as a matter of course.
Aurora had shown small knowledge of him when she thought he would
consent to see her disport herself before the public as a negress. On
the day after, when he learned that she had been the star of the evening
as a negro, his frenzied disgust itself warned him of the injustice, the
impropriety, of exhibiting it to her. He chose to remain away until it
should have sufficiently worn down to be governable. By that time the
poor man had developed an illness, that cold of which for some weeks he
had been carrying around in his bones the premonition.

With reddened eyelids and thickened nose, a sore throat and a cough, he
felt himself no fit object for a lady's sight. He stayed in to take care
of himself.

Giovanna knew what to do for her _signorino_ when he was
_raffreddato_. She built a little fire in the studio; she brought
his light meals to him in his arm-chair before it. She administered
remedies. His bed was warmed at night by her _scaldino_. Gaetano
was sent to Vieusseux's for an armful of books. All day Gerald sat by
the fire and read, and sometimes dozed and dreamed, and read again. And
days passed, while his cold held on.

He thought of writing Aurora to tell her. But if he told her, she would
at once come to see him; of so much one could be sure. And he did not
want her to come. The eccentric fellow did not want her to come
precisely because he wanted her to come so much.

"This is the way it begins," he said to himself, with horror, when he
became fully aware that his nerves, now that he could not go to find
Aurora when he chose, were suggesting to him all the time that the
presence of Aurora was needed to quiet that sense of want, of
maladjustment to conditions, haunting him like the desire for sleep.

At sight of his danger he became very clear-headed. The man who sees a
snare and walks into it deserves his fate, surely.

"It is time to stop it," he said. And he laid down for himself new rules
of life.

Fortunately, he had at hand some absorbing books. Dostoiewsky's "Crime
and Punishment" could effectively take him out of himself.

But the print was fine and crowded, he was weakened by illness, he was
forced now and then to stop and rest with swimming head. Then at once
would return, like the demon in fair disguise tempting some hermit of
the desert, the thought, "What is Aurora doing? If Aurora knew I was
ill, she would come." And the imagination of her coming would shed a
feverish gladness all along those petulant, ill-treated, starved nerves.
"What have I to do with Aurora, or Aurora with me?" he would ask,
furiously, the incongruity of what had happened to him calling forth
sometimes a desperate laugh. But Nature laughs at man's ideas of
congruity; remembering that, he could only hold his hands against his
eyes and try to press the image of Aurora out of existence.

Gerald, however, was much stronger than his nerves. He could see his own
case, even with a pulse at ninety, as well as another man's. And his
will was firmer than might have been thought. He knew something of a
human man's constitution, how it can circumvent a man, or how a man,
well on his guard, can circumvent it. He formed the project of
interrupting his visits to the Hermitage.

After this resolution he regarded those returns of earth-born desire for
Aurora's balmy touch and tranquilizing neighborhood as a man who had
taken an heroic and sure remedy against ague might regard the
fluctuations in his body of heat and cold continuing still for a little
while. As to how Aurora would take his defection, all should be managed
with so much art and politeness that the most sensitive could not be
hurt. By the time the new important work which he would make his excuse
was accomplished, his cure would have been accomplished as well.

Meanwhile, each time the door-bell rang--it was not often,
certainly--his attention was taken from his book, and he listened. And
so, on Mlle. Durand's French afternoon, Gerald, having heard the bell,
was listening, but with his face to the fire and his back to the door.
When Giovanna knocked, "Forward!" he said, without turning. The door
opened.

"_C'è quella signora._" "There is that lady," dubiously announced
Giovanna.

Gerald turned, and beheld that lady filling the doorway.

Then it was as if a bright trumpet-blast of reality, breaking upon a bad
dream, dispelled it; or as if a fresh wind, blowing over stagnant water,
swept away the cloud of noxious gnats. All he had latterly been thinking
and feeling seemed to Gerald insane, sickly, the instant he beheld
Aurora's comradely smile. He was ashamed; he found himself on the verge
of stupid, unexplainable tears.

"Well!" said Aurora.

At the sound they were placed back on the exact footing of their last
meeting, before thinking and conjecturing about each other in absence
had built up between them barriers of illusion.

"Well!" he said, but less pleasantly, because he was mortified by the
awareness of himself as an uninviting sight, with his old dressing-gown,
neglected beard, and the unpicturesque manifestations of a cold.

But Aurora's face was reassuring; she did not confuse him with the
accidents of his dressing-gown and beard and cold. Aurora's face beamed,
so much was she rejoicing in her own excellent sense, which had told her
that one look at each other would do a thousand times more to make
things right between them than innumerable letters could have done.

"I didn't know what to think," she said, "so I came to find out. First
I'd think you were mad at me, then I'd think you had gone away and
written me, and the letter hadn't reached me, Gaetano had lost it on the
road. Then I'd think you might be sick, and there was nobody to let your
friends know. I don't know what I didn't think of. What made you not
send me word?"

"I did not know you would be uneasy. I did not rightly measure, it
seems, the depth of your kindness. I should certainly have written to
you before long in case I had continued unable to go to see you."

"How long have you been sick?"

"I am not sick, dearest lady. I only have a cold. In order to make it go
away more quickly I have to remain in the house. But how good, how very
good of you to come! Sit down, please do, and warm yourself. I will ring
for Giovanna, and she will make us some tea."

[Illustration: Gerald turned, and beheld that lady]

Aurora, smiling all the time with the pleasure she felt in not finding
him angry or estranged or in any way altered toward her, took the
arm-chair from which he had just risen, while he drew a lighter chair to
the other side of the chimney-place. His fires were not like hers. Two
half-burned sticks and a form of turf smoldered sparingly on a mound of
hot ashes; he eagerly cast on a fagot, and added wood with, for once, an
extravagant hand. Then, looking over at her, he smiled, too.

"Now tell me all about yourself," she commanded. "I want to know what
you're doing for this cold of yours."

"Please let us not talk about my cold," he at once refused. "Let us talk
about something agreeable. Tell me the news. I have not seen any one for
days. I have been living in Russia with a poor young man who had
committed a murder, also with a most sympathetic being who found the
world outside an institution for the feeble-minded too much for him." By
a gesture toward the books on the table he gave her a clue to his
meaning.

"You say you haven't seen any one for days," she said. "Now the Fosses,
for instance, who are your best friends, don't you let them know when
you're shut in?"

"You have no conception, evidently, of my bearishness, dear friend. They
have. They never wonder when they do not see me or hear from me for
weeks."

"I know, and it seems funny; it seems sort of forlorn to me. I saw them
the other day and asked if any one had seen you since the night of the
show. They said no, but didn't seem to think anything about it."

"It's not really long since then. How are they all?"

"All right, and busy as bees. They've no time to come and see me, or
anybody else, I guess. Brenda's coming back to be married in May, and
they're flying round getting her things ready. All her linen is being
beautifully embroidered...."

They went on talking, without much thought of what they said. It was
immaterial, really, what they said, or even whether they listened to
each other, while they had in common the comfort of sitting together in
front of the fire after a long separation filled with doubts and
dismays. She told him about the Convalescents' Home, the sum they had
raised for it. No word, prudently, was spoken by either of her share in
raising it. He told her about the Russian novels. A third person might
perfectly have been present, for anything intimate in their
conversation. Gerald was scrupulously careful, for his part, that this
should be so. The third person would never have divined how far for the
moment that chimney-corner transcended, in the sentiments of the parties
seated before it, any other corner of the earth.

Aurora's attention became closer when Gerald related his interviews with
De Brézé and Costanzi, both of whom he had succeeded in convincing that
Antonia had had nothing to do with intriguing them at the
_veglione_, and had left to digest as best they could their
curiosity concerning the mysterious masker mistaken for her. He had been
obliged to give his word that he knew on absolutely good authority who
this person was.

His attention, on the other hand, was complete when she told him how she
had dealt with Ceccherelli; she was considerate enough to-day to make
the effort to pronounce the gentleman's cognomen.

"I was savage at him, you remember," she said. "I was going to take his
head off. Then when it came to it, and I had told him what I thought of
him and the whole disgraceful scrape he had got me into--Oh, I went for
him, hammer and tongs! Incidentally, I made him tell me what it was I
had said. Pretty bad, wasn't it!--Well, do you know, he cried, he felt
so. He just cried on his knees, and didn't try to get rid of any of the
blame. All he wanted was that I should forgive him. And what could I do?
As long, particularly, as I knew that a good deal of the fault was my
own.... So now he comes to the house with a look as if he'd just been
baptized. And he tells me only stories fit, he says, for a convent. Here
is a sample, if you'd like to hear. Mrs. X, as he called her, who lives
in a palace not a thousand miles, he said, from Piazza degli Anti-nory,
and who had given Mr. B. reasons for not liking her, was seen by him, in
a suspiciously simple dress, going suspiciously on foot, in a little
suspiciously out of the way street, at a considerable distance from
Piazza degli Anti-nory. The gentleman followed her stealthily into a
house he saw her enter, thinking, you know, he would find out something
to her discredit. And what did he find out but that she was secretly
visiting and relieving the poor! The brilliant society lady, whom he
wished to be revenged on because, as I gathered, she had scorned his
dishonorable love-making, was secretly the angel of the poor.... Don't
you think that's a nice story? He tells me nothing now that's less nice
than that. We're reformed characters. He has asked my permission to
dedicate to me a beautiful piece of music he has just composed, and
which is called--but in French--'Prayer of the Evening.'"

Both of them were pleasantly aware of a tray placed on the table near
them, as if descended from heaven, laden with teapot, bread and butter,
jam. Neither of them really saw Giovanna, who brought it in, or was
struck by the stern expression of her face.

Aurora, never sorry of something to eat, turned her attention to the
tray. Gerald wished to serve her, and she first noticed his weakness
when she saw the teapot tremble slightly in his hand. She went on
chattering, but she was observing him.

"Is your carriage waiting before the door?" he suddenly asked, after a
space during which she had suspected that he was not properly attending
to what she said. Aurora's monogram, daintily executed, adorned the
door-panels of her carriage.

"Yes," she answered. "Why?"

As if he had not heard, he changed the subject. After a while he asked,
again irrelevantly:

"How was it that Miss Madison did not come with you this afternoon?"

"She was going to a different tea-party." Supposing that his question
was a way of politely desiring news of Miss Madison, she went on to talk
of her.

"She was going to her French teacher's, who is having a French afternoon
where they're supposed to talk nothing but French. What would I have
been doing there? But Estelle is getting to talk the French language
exactly as well as her own.... That reminds me. A thing I've wanted to
tell you. If you should notice that Busteretto seems to be rather more
her dog than mine, don't you say anything, or care. The fact is Estelle
loves him more than I do. That's all there is about it. Which isn't
saying that I don't love him. But Estelle's silly over him, in the
regular old maid way, as I tell her. When he wouldn't eat his dinner
this noon, I had all I could do to make her eat hers, she was so
troubled. And nothing ailed him, I guess, but that he'd picked up
something in the kitchen. What I wanted to say was, don't you think it's
because I don't value your present, if you should notice by and by that
I seem to have given up my claims to Busteretto. That sort of alive
present has a will of its own. The little thing took to her from the
first more than he did to me. Shall I tell Estelle that you wished to be
remembered?"

"Pray do."

"She'll be sorry to hear you're sick. Don't say that again, Gerald," she
silenced him, letting her anxiety at last plainly appear. "Don't tell me
you aren't sick, for I know better. It's been taking away my appetite to
see you make believe to eat, and choke over it. Your cough is so tight
it sounds as if it tore your lungs. Give me your hand. It's as hot, dear
boy, and as dry!... Wait, let me feel your pulse."

He knew that his pulse was high, that his temples ached, that a
disposition to shiver accompanied the volcanic heat of his blood.

He laughed at her light-headedly while with serious concentration she
counted the beats in his wrist.

"I'm going to stop at Doctor Gage's on my way home," she said, letting
go his hand, and not heeding what he said. "And I'm going to tell him to
come and see you."

"Please do not! If I need a doctor, there is my own, an Italian, the
same for years."

"An Italian? Do you think they're as good?"

"Better for my own case."

"Gerald, it's my advice to you to go right to bed and let your doctor
come and prescribe. A cold is nothing in a way, but a neglected cold can
grow into a mean sort of thing. Say you'll do it. Don't you know how
good it will feel to you just to give in and go to bed and let some one
else do all the looking after you? Oh, I wish I could speak Italian
enough to have a talk with your Giovanna."

"Giovanna has taken care of me and my _malanni_ for years. She
gives me tar-water, and rice-water, and tamarind-water, and linden-tea,
and cassia. She threatened me this morning with a sinapism if I were not
better by evening. I shall be better. I do not wish for a sinapism."

"Is that a poultice on your chest? I guess it's what you need. Now, if I
have any influence with you, Gerald, if you love me one little bit,
you'll promise to go right to bed, and you'll give me your doctor's
address so that on my way home I can leave word for him to come."

"You shall not take that trouble. I can send Gaetano."

"You promise me you'll do it, then?"

"I seem to have been left no choice, dear lady."

"That's real sweet of you. You'll go to bed the minute I've gone?"

"Yes. But don't go quite yet!"

"With that temperature, I don't see how you can care who stays or who
goes, or anything in the world but to lay your head down on a pillow. I
won't stay any longer now. Go to bed like a good boy. To-morrow I'll run
in and see how you're getting along."

His last word was, after a moment of seeming embarrassment:

"I hope Miss Madison will be able to come with you next time."

"Yes, yes," said Aurora, lightly, taking it for a mere amiable message
with which he was charging her for Estelle.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Fever no doubt colored all Gerald's dreams that night, and was in part
responsible next day for his thoughts, as he passed from languor to
restlessness, and from impatience back to the peace of the certain
knowledge that before evening he should have visitors--fair visitors.

When it seemed to him nearly time for them, he ordered Giovanna to make
the room of a beautiful and perfect neatness, hiding all the medicine
bottles and humble signs that one is mortal. She was directed to lay
across his white counterpane that square of brocade which often formed a
background for his portraits. She was asked to brush his hair and beard,
and wrap his shoulders in an ivory-white shawl, thick with silk
embroideries, which had been his mother's. In a little green bronze
tripod a black pastille was set burning, which sent up, slow, thin, and
wavering, a gray spiral of perfume.

Keenly as he was waiting, he yet did not know when the ladies arrived.
He opened his eyes, and they were there, shedding around them a
beautiful freshness of health and the world outside. Estelle, in a soft
green velvet edged with silver fur, held toward him an immense bunch of
flowers. Aurora, in a wine-colored cloth bordered with bands of black
fox, tendered a basket heaped with fruit. Both smiled, and had the kind
look of angels.

They sat down beside his bed. They talked with him; all was just as
usual. They asked the old questions pertinent to the case, he made the
old answers, and by an effort kept up for some minutes a drawing-room
conversation with them.

Then Aurora said:

"Hush! You mustn't talk any more!" And when he thought she was going
away, he wondered to see her take off her gloves.

She stood over him; he wondered what she meant to do. She felt of his
forehead with her cool hand. With her palms, which were like her voice,
of a velvet not too soft, she smoothed his forehead and temples; she
stroked them over and over in a way that seemed to draw the ache out of
his brain. Her fingers moved soothingly, magnetically, all around his
eye-sockets, pressing down the eyelids and comforting them.

At first he resisted. Perversely he frowned, as if the thing increased
his pain, annoyed him beyond words. He all but cried out to the
well-meaning hands to stop.

"Doesn't it feel good?" asked Aurora, anxiously.

He relaxed. Without opening his eyes, he nodded to thank her, and as he
yielded himself up to the hands it seemed to him that those passes drew
his spirit after them quite out of his body.

                   *       *       *       *       *

"I don't think I'll go up with you," Estelle said unexpectedly when on
the next day they stopped before the narrow yellow door in Borgo Pinti.
"I'll wait here in the carriage. I'm nervous myself to-day. Give my best
regards to Gerald. I hope you'll find him better."

Aurora did not take time to examine into the possible reasons for her
friend's choice. She climbed the long stairs sturdily, managing her
breath so that she did not have to stop and rest on the way.

She followed the stern Giovanna, unsubdued by the latter's hard and
jealous looks, to the door of her master's chamber.

She went toward the bed, smiling at the sick man over an armful of white
lilacs.

He half rose in his bed and quickly, disconnectedly, impetuously, said:

"My dear friend, this is most good of you. I'm sure I thank you very
much. I'm very, very much better, as you can see. I shall be out again
in a day or two." He was visibly trembling; his eyes flared with
excitement. "That being the case, my dear lady, I earnestly beg you will
not trouble to come like this every day." He stopped to choke and cough,
then wrenching himself free from strangulation--"Aurora,"--he changed
his key and tune,--"do let me be ill in peace! Here I am on my back,
with a loosened grip on everything, and it's taking an unfair advantage
to invade my privacy as you do. Take away those lilacs with you, won't
you, please? We haven't any more vases to put them in; they'd have to be
stuck in a bedroom water-jug. Giovanna won't let me have flowers in my
room, anyhow; she says they are bad for me. Don't be offended! I know
you mean nothing but to be kind, but the thing you are doing is
devilish.... What do you think I am made of? I don't want you to be
offended, but I have got to say what I can to keep you from coming to
this house and troubling me in my illness. I have got to say it plainly
and fully because you, Aurora, never understand anything that is not
said to you in so many words. I might try and try my best to convey the
same idea to you in a gentle and gentlemanly way, and not a scrap of
good would be done. I've got to talk like a beast. I wish to be alone.
Is that clear? I've just struggled and waded my way out of one quagmire;
I do not wish to enter another. Is that plain? I wish to feel free to be
ill as much and as long as I choose. It concerns nobody. It concerns
nobody if I die. It would be an excellent thing, saving me the trouble
later of blowing out my brains.... My God, Aurora, have you understood?"
he almost shouted.

"Yes," said Aurora in a voice that sounded pale, even as her face looked
pale. "I have understood, and I won't come again. Just one thing,
Gerald. Put your arms under the bed clothes and keep them there."

                   *       *       *       *       *

"Whether he's better or worse I truly couldn't tell you," Aurora said in
answer to Estelle's first question. After a moment she added, "I can't
make him out."

Estelle saw that she was deeply troubled, and, herself troubled at the
sight, did not press her for explanations.

During the drive home Aurora made only one other remark. It was
delivered with a certain emphasis.

"_One_ thing I know: I sha'n't go _there_ again in a hurry!"

Her lilacs, after wondering a moment what to do with them, she had
quietly deposited outside Gerald's entrance-door.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It was unimaginable, of course, that the childhood's friend should so
disregard the rules of the game as to leave her old playmate's curiosity
long unsatisfied. Estelle accordingly learned before evening that Gerald
had been guilty of an attack of nerves, in the course of which he had
said something which Aurora did not like. What this was Aurora would not
tell, saying it seemed unfair to repeat things Gerald had spoken while
he was not himself and which he perhaps did not mean. From which Estelle
judged that Aurora had already softened since she returned to the
carriage looking as grim as she was grieved.

That Aurora had something on her mind no observant person could fail to
see, and Estelle was not unprepared to hear her say as she did on the
third morning at breakfast, after fidgeting a moment with a pinch of
bread:

"I'm so uneasy I don't know what to do. That boy is much sicker than he
knows," she went on to justify her disquietude, "and he's in a bad mood
for getting well. I don't believe Italian doctors know much, anyhow.
I've heard that they still put leeches on you. All he has to take care
of him, day and night, is that old servant-woman What's-her-name, who,
he told me himself, doctors him with herb-tea. I'm so uneasy! The sort
of cold he has, I tell you, can turn any minute into something you don't
want. He's all run down and a bad subject for pneumonia. I'm thinking I
shall have to just go to the door and find out how he is."

"You could send a servant to inquire," suggested Estelle.

Aurora appeared to reflect; she might have been trying to find a reason
for not taking the hint, but she said, "No; I should feel better
satisfied to go myself."

At the last moment, when they were ready to start, Estelle found
Busteretto's nose hot, and decided not to go. She stayed at home and
called a doctor. For some days the pet had not seemed to her in quite
his usual form.

Aurora, climbing Gerald's stairs this time, felt very uncertain and
rather small. The street door, when she had pulled the bell-handle, had
unlatched with a click, but no voice had called down, and when she
reached the top landing the door in front of her stood forbiddingly
closed. She waited for some minutes, wondering whether she were doing
right. Suppose Gerald were enough better to be up again and, Giovanna
being out, should himself come to open the door. How would she feel,
caught slinking back, after she had been requested loudly and roundly to
stay away?

Well, set aside how she felt, the object of her coming would have been
reached, wouldn't it? She would know that he was better. She rang and
listened.

Certain, as soon as she heard them, whose footsteps were on the other
side of the door, she held in readiness her Italian. She counted on
understanding Giovanna's answer to her question, for she had, as she
boasted, "quite a vocabulary." But much more than to this she trusted to
the talent which Italians have for making their meaning clear through
pantomime and facial expression.

As soon, in fact, as Giovanna opened the door, and before the woman had
said a word in reply to "_Come sta Signor Fane?_" Aurora had
understood.

Giovanna's eyes, stained with recent weeping, looked up at the visitor
without severity or aversion, seeking for sympathy; the unintelligible
account she gave of her master's condition was broken up with sighs.

Aurora felt her heart turn cold, and such agitation seize her as made
her reckless of all but one thing.

"I shall have to see for myself," she thought.

With the haste of fear, she flew before Giovanna down the long hallway,
around the dark corner, to the door of Gerald's room. It was half open.
Checking herself on the threshold, she thrust in her head.

He was so lying in his bed that beyond the outlined shape under the
covers she could see of him only a dark spot of hair. And she felt she
must see his face, whether asleep or awake, to get some idea.... She
tiptoed in with the least possible noise. At once, without turning, he
asked something in Italian, and speaking forced him to cough; and after
he had finished coughing, Aurora, who was near, could hear his breathing
rustle within him like wind among dead leaves.

Giovanna had gone to the head of his bed and whispered a communication.
Upon which he twisted sharply around, and Aurora, moved by an
overpowering impulse, rushed to his side.

"Hush!" she said at once. "Don't try to talk; it makes you cough. I just
wanted to know how you were. It would be funny, now don't you think so
yourself, if, such friends as we've been, I should stop caring anything
about you because you were cross the other day? I had to come and see if
there wasn't something we could do for you."

The attempt to speak choked him again; he had to lift himself finally
quite up from his pillow to get breath. Quicker than Giovanna, Aurora
snatched up a gray shawl from a chair to put over his shoulders. The
room felt to her stagnantly cold. He stopped her hand in the act of
folding him in, and she knew that it was not the Gerald of last time,
this one who, with an afflictive little moan, clasped and pressed her
hand.

She hushed him, every time he tried to speak, until his breathing had
quieted down, when he came out despite her forbidding with a ragged,
interrupted, but obstinate eagerness:

"How can I ever thank you enough for coming, dear, dear Aurora? I have
lived in one prolonged nightmare ever since I saw you, knowing I had
behaved like a blackguard, and fearing I should never have a chance to
beg your pardon. I thought I should never see you again. And here you
are, so generous, so kind!"

"Hush, Gerald! Don't make anything of it. Of course I came. Keep quiet
now; you mustn't try to talk."

"Dearest woman," he insisted, with his voice full of tears, "I don't
even know what I said to you, but I know that the whole thing was
atrocious. You standing there like a big angel, with your innocent arms
full of flowers, and I barking at you like a cur!"

"Nothing of the sort. You were sick. Who lays up anything against a sick
man?"

"Excuse it in me like this, Aurora, if you can: that having such regard
for you, I had pride before you and could not endure that you should see
me when I felt myself to be a disgusting object. So, mortified to the
point of torture, I lost my temper,--I've got that bad habit, you
know,--and insanely railed to keep you off."

"And didn't succeed. Come, come; what nonsense all this is! Put it out
of your mind and think of nothing but getting well. Now you--"

"It is not nearly so important that I should get well," he testily
persisted, "as that I should ask your forgiveness. It has been weighing
upon me and burning like bedclothes of hot iron, the horror of having so
meanly and ungratefully offended you."

"Why should you feel so bad about it as long as I don't? Put it all out
of your mind, just as I do out of mine. There, it's all right. Now keep
still except to answer my questions. You've had the doctor?"

"Yes, dear."

"What's he giving you?"

"You can see--there on the stand--those bottles."

"And hot things on your chest?"

"Yes; _semedilino_. I don't know what you call it in English."

"Flaxseed, I guess. How can poor old Giovanna do everything for you?"

"I don't know," he answered vaguely. "She does."

Perceiving that by a reaction from his excitement he was suddenly
fatigued to the point of no longer being able to speak at all or even
keep his eyes open, she asked nothing more, but with a practised hand
straightened his bolster, smoothed his pillow and drew the covers evenly
and snugly up to his chin.

"Don't you be afraid," he heard her say above him, as it seemed to him a
long time after, at the same moment that he felt her give his shoulder a
little squeeze to impress her saying: "I won't let anything happen to
you."

                   *       *       *       *       *

He entered a state which was neither quite sleep nor quite waking. He
was not dreaming, yet the world within his eyelids was peopled with
creatures and varied by incidents departing from the known and foreseen.
Something malevolent pertained to the personalities, something
disquieting to the actions; suffering and oppression resulted from his
inability to get away from them. They came and went, one scene melted
into another, sometimes beautiful, sometimes repulsive, a sickly
disagreeableness being common to all, and the fatigue involved with
watching the spectacle of them weighing like a physical burden.

But yet beneath the unrest of fever dreams there was in Gerald, after
Aurora's visit, as if a substratum of quiet and content. As a good
Catholic, having confessed and received absolution, would be less
troubled by either his symptoms or any visions that might come of Satan
and his imps, so Gerald, with the weight of his sins of brutality and
ingratitude lifted off him, could feel almost passive with regard to the
rest.

He had moments through the night of recognizing the deceptiveness of his
senses. He knew, for instance, that the solemn clerical gentleman in a
long black coat and tall hat whom he saw most tiresomely coming toward
him down the street every time he opened his eyes was only a medicine
bottle full of dark fluid, outlined against the dim candle-shine. And he
knew that the tower of ice, solitary amid snows, lighthouse or tower of
defense on some arctic coast, was nothing but a glass of water. And when
it seemed to him, late, late in the night, that Aurora was in the room,
he knew off and on that it was Giovanna, who through one of those
metamorphoses common in fever had taken the likeness of Aurora. She
lifted him to make him drink, and supported him while she held the glass
to his lips, then laid him easily back. The delusions of fever had the
sweet and foolish impossibility of fairy-stories: Aurora, as if it were
the most natural thing in the world, placing upon his stiff and
lacerated breast balsamic bandages of assuaging and beneficient
warmth!...

The night was full of torrid heat and fiery light, in which everything
looked unnatural, shifting, uncertain, but daylight, when it finally
came, was of a crude coldness; under it everything returned to be
itself, meager and stationary, and he knew that it was no
phantasmagorical Aurora making preparations to wash his face.

He spoke no word to signify either pleasure or displeasure. He let it
be, like a destiny too strong to withstand. With this acceptance there
took place in him, body and spirit, a relaxing, as when supporting arms
are felt by one who had been fearing a fall.

In his not very clear-headed reflections upon himself and his state, he
had passed into a different category of men, where what he did,
particularly as regarded worldly proprieties, had little importance,
because, ill as he felt, there seemed to him such a strong probability
of his actions having no result. If, on the other hand, he could manage
to pull through--and he found he cared to do this, cared so much more
than he had supposed he ever could care, on such desperate days as those
which had sometimes seen him re-examining his revolver--if he should
recover, the gladness of his good fortune would outweigh any
inconvenience created by his weakness now. Life is, and should be,
dearer to man than anything else, except honor. He found it difficult to
separate the idea of honor from life, and make it oppose letting this
robust guardian angel fulfil her promise not to "let anything happen to
him."

                   *       *       *       *       *

Gerald had too often heard those well-meaning lies which friends and
nurses tell the sick, to place faith altogether in Aurora's cheerful
asseverations from day to day that he was getting better.

Yet Aurora was not feigning. She entertained no doubt that with proper
care he would get well. And she was providing the care. Hence a
confidence which she did not allow any of those chilly creepy fears
which come at about three o'clock in the morning to undermine. She was
so strongly resolved to get him well, and felt so capable of doing it,
that it would not seem unlikely her very hands in touching him had
virtue and imparted health.

He said very little, even when the exertion of talking had ceased to
make him cough. The fact that talk fatigued him was reinforced by his
old fancy that talk was superfluous. One lived, one looked, one felt....

She was glad he so willingly kept quiet, because as long as he had fever
it was so much the best thing he could do. He did not have to tell her
that he took comfort in having her there, that everything she did for
him was exactly right, that her touch was blessed and had no more
strangeness for him than that of a sister--nay, than his own. She too
understood those wordless things which are shed from one person, like a
radiance, and inhaled by another, like a scent.

In the long silences, she sometimes read a little by the shaded
candle--she had chosen the night watch for her share and let his devoted
old Giovanna wait on her master during the day. But very often she sat
in her easy-chair near the bed doing nothing, just thinking her
thoughts, marveling at the queerness, the surprises of life. Who could
have dreamed that first time she entered this big brick-floored,
white-washed room, and nearly cried because she found it so dreary, that
she would come to feel at home in it; that by her doing the brown
earthenware stove in the corner, cold since Mrs. Fane's day, would again
glow and purr; that over and over she would watch the row of flower-pots
out on the terrace, with the stiff straw-colored remains in them of last
year's carnations, grow slowly visible in the dawn; that from their
pastel portrait the eyes of the mother would watch her placing
compresses on the brow of the son!

                   *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: Aurora's eyes, fixed and starry, rested upon the little
flame]

Before going for her rest, she always waited to see the doctor, who made
an early visit. After they had reissued together from the sickroom, he
was interviewed by her with the help of an interpreter, Clotilde, who
was in and out of the house during all that period, making herself
useful. Estelle instead came only for a moment daily, having a case of
her own to nurse, who was down, poor crumb, with those
measles-mumps-whooping cough of puppyhood, distemper.

On the day when Doctor Batoni had agreed that with prudence there would
be nothing more to fear, the patient might be regarded as having entered
convalescence, Aurora covered him with a wide and warming smile.

"_Je suis son bonne amie_," thus she translated the explanation of
her unconcealed happiness, "I'm a good friend of his," nodding at the
old man with the full sweetness of her dimples; blushing a little, too,
with the pride of addressing him directly in French.

That morning Aurora was so happy she could not hurry; humming an old
psalm tune she dawdled about her room, the longer to enjoy her thoughts.

When she finally slept it was more deeply than usual, and she woke with
a start of fear that it was past the time. The line of sky showing
between the curtains retained no remembrance of the day. It must be
late, certainly. Then she heard a faint stirring just outside her door,
the thing probably which had drawn her out of a sound sleep. It was the
rustle of some person listening at the crack.

She bounced from bed and went to open. It was as she expected, Giovanna;
come, she supposed, to see if she were ready to go on duty. At
Giovanna's first words, though she did not entirely understand them, she
became uneasy, because Giovanna interspersed them with sighs. Her voice
sounded as if she might have been crying.

Aurora had grown accustomed to the fact that those hard old eyes of
Giovanna's took easily to tears, and that she sighed by the thousand the
moment she was in anxiety over her _signorino_. She knew she must
not take Giovanna's fears at her own valuation. She gathered from her
gestures now, combined with her talk, that Gerald, so quiet until
to-day, had become restless. Giovanna impersonated him tossing and
throwing his arms out of the bed-covers. Aurora, though not permitting
herself to be alarmed, hurried with her dressing.

"Ain't it always so," she questioned her own image in the glass, "that
the moment you feel safe something goes wrong?"

When she tiptoed into the big dim room where Gerald lay, she could not
at first make out what it was that had troubled Giovanna to the point of
tears. He seemed quiet enough. After she had taken his pulse and
temperature, her heart subsided with a blessed relief.

He could not tell her, because he did not himself know, that just
because he was better he, paradoxically, was worse. Thoughts and
responsibilities had begun to trouble him again.

"Should you mind very much," he asked suddenly, "if I worked off my
nervousness by singing? I have kept still, so as not to worry you,
exactly as long as I can."

"Certainly," she said, "go ahead. I never knew you were a singer. What
are you going to sing?"

She waited with a certain curiosity.

He began chanting. "B, a, ba; B, e, be--babe! B, i, bi--babebi! B, o,
bo--babebibo! B, u, bu--babebibobu!" Then he went on to the letter C,
"C, a, ca! C, e, ce--cace! C, i, ci--caceci!" and to D, and so on, one
after the other, through all the consonants in the alphabet.

"The queerest rigmarole you ever heard!" Aurora called that simple
Italian spelling-exercise for little beginners. It might have been funny
to hear him, only it was disquieting, he did it so earnestly and so
obstinately kept it up.

When he had finished, Aurora held a sedative powder all nicely wrapped
in a wet wafer ready for him. He knew what it was and gratefully gulped
it, composing himself after it to wait in patience and self-control for
its operation. Aurora, reposing on the magic of drugs like a witch on
the power of incantations, watched for the drooping of his eyelids and
relaxing of his frown.

He had lain still for so long that she was congratulating herself upon
the result thus easily obtained, when he opened his eyes, twice as
wide-awake as before, and began to talk, as if really the object of an
opiate were not to stupefy a man, but to rouse him fully. Under its
influence he was almost garrulous. His vivacity partook of delirium. All
that passed through his mind pressed forward indiscriminately into
utterance, as if the sentinels placed on guard over his thoughts had
been taking an hour off.

Aurora heard him in wonder and perplexity. He was not incoherent, he was
not extravagant. He was merely talkative, expansive, and this in his
case was obviously pathological. She wondered also to see how handsome
he could look, with his eyes alight; his cheek-bones burning, pink as
paint; his hair, grown long, lying in dark locks over a luminous
forehead.

She tried to think of something that would abate all this. She was
searching her nurse's memory for some further sedative by which to
counteract a first one gone wrong, when the thread of her medical
meditation snapped, her attention fastened upon what Gerald was saying.
Because she had a suspicion that it was about Violet he was talking. And
she had from the first been curious about Violet and his feelings with
regard to her. As curious as if she had been jealous.

"There is a person--" he said, in the suppressed voice of one
communicating a secret, "of whom I used to dream very often. Not because
I wished to. In the days when I wished to, she came seldom. But when I
dreaded it, she began to come, and do what I would, oppose to her what
hardness I could, she could be so sinisterly dreadful and unkind that it
was like a knife in me. Try to shut her out as I might, she would force
her way in and make me suffer. Why? Why did she want to?... I will tell
you what I believe. Some women feel their beauty to depend upon their
power to create suffering. If not happy suffering, then the other kind.
If men grow indifferent to it, they feel their beauty passing, and if it
goes there is nothing left that they care for. The unremitting quest of
their lives therefore is to feed the blood of men to their beauty, and
if they can not do it in any other manner they pick the locks of sleep
and get at them in that way. But the last time this person came, a
surprise awaited her. And the same, I will confess, awaited me. My heart
was like so much sawdust, so far as one drop of blood that she could
wring from it. And now she won't come again, I believe, for why should
she come? She will look a little anxiously in the glass, very likely, to
see if she has begun to fade. I should be sorry to know that the least
of her golden hairs had faded--they were so lovely. It's wrong all the
same to practise sorcery. You don't, Aurora, that is one reason why I
like to be with you. Women as God made them are strong enough, He knows!
It's unfair to use sorcery besides, to make themselves beautiful to the
point of distraction, and desired to the point of pain. And then their
barbarous methods! That low game of using a man's weakness for the
increase of their own glory, making a jealous fool wilfully out of a
decent fellow, and a baby out of a self-respecting man. You, Aurora, you
are good as good bread, you are restful as a bank of moss. You would
never do what the others do. Would you, Aurora? You needn't answer me. I
know."

"If what you mean is that I'm not much of a co-quette," she came in
quickly, to prevent his continuing, "I guess you're right. Take it since
I was born, I've been called a good many things, but in all my life I
don't remember anybody calling me that,--a co-quette. But you're talking
lots more than is good for you, brother. Now I want you to quiet down
and give those sleepy-drops a chance to work. Here I've fixed you
something else that will help them. It's just a drink with nothing in it
but something nice and cooling. Smells pleasant, doesn't it? This'll do
the trick."

Slipping an arm under his neck, she lifted him, propped him against
herself, and held the glass to his mouth. Instead of words pouring out,
the calming draught flowed in. It was a slow process; he drank by small
swallows and wished after each one to stop, but she gently forced him to
go on. When it was finished and he turned his head away from the glass,
he found it resting on her shoulder. He settled his cheek warmly against
it, like a child burying his face in the pillow. With a long sigh he
relaxed.

"Now, Aurora," he said solemnly, "be per--fect--ly still."

He was very still, too. After a long moment he half lifted his head and
with a long soft sigh replaced it, as if to renew his sense of a
resting-place so sweet. With all her heart Aurora lent herself to this,
glad to witness, as she thought, the belated effect of the soporific. In
a few minutes he would be asleep.

"Aurora," he suddenly said, wakeful as earlier, but without moving his
heavy head or opening his eyes, "do you remember the first evening I
ever saw you? You came down the middle of the room all by yourself, like
something in the theater, where the stage has been cleared for the
principal character to make an effect. You were a fine large lady in a
sky-blue frock with bursts of pink, your hair spangled with diamonds, a
fan in one hand, a long pair of gloves in the other. That at least is
what everybody else saw that looked at you. But me, what I seemed to see
was America coming toward me draped in the stars and stripes. Now you
know how I feel about my dear country. If I loved it why should I have
fixed my abode once and for all over here? And yet when I saw it coming
toward me across the room, with your eyes and smile and look of Home, I
felt like the tiredest traveler and exile in the whole world, who wants
nothing, nothing, but to get Home again. It was like a moment's
insanity. I almost wonder that I resisted it, the desire to lay my head
on your shoulder and cry, Aurora, and tell you about it, then never move
again, or say another word."

Aurora readjusted her position so as to make his leaning on her even
easier. She brought a warm cover safe-guardingly around him.

"Poor Geraldino!" she pitied him in the lonely past.

"Then do you remember the first time I went to see you," he asked, "and
you introduced me, dearest woman, room by room, to the somewhat gruesome
mysteries of your house? You walked before me holding a lamp. In the
ball-room, hazy with vastness, you held the lamp high, like a torch. And
I had a vision of you as America again, or Liberty, or Something,
lighting the way for me.... But I treated the fancy as one treats
fancies. I did not in the least intend to cultivate the acquaintance
begun with your picking me up by the loose skin of the neck and plumping
me down on the little seat of your victoria."

"Why--Gerald!" she drawled in a tone of reproach purposely funny.
"Didn't you want to come?"

"I wanted _not_ to come!" he answered, with normal spirit. "But you
kept saying Jump in. When a lady has said Jump in three times it acts
like a spell, a man has got to jump."

"But when it came to the hot bread and syrup, brother, you know you were
glad to be there. You kept your superior look, but you ate all I
buttered for you. It did me good to see you."

"Yes," he grew dreamy again, "it took me back. It took me back to so
many things I had nearly forgotten. And when at the end of the evening I
was leaving, do you remember, Aurora, wrapping in paper some pieces of
maple-sugar and forcing me to take them home in my pocket? I felt
absurdly like a little boy and again you seemed like big America;
something exhaled from you that made me think of slanting silver-gray
roofs and the New England spring of appleblossoms and warbling robins;
yes, and of October foliage intolerably bright, and Fourth of July
celebrations. Not things I dote on, exactly, but things I was born to,
and restful to me after my years of chasing what is not to be caught,
wanting what is not to be had, seeking all the time to adjust myself, to
adjust myself, to the harshness of life, the treachery, the
unaccountability, the relentlessness--restful as this heavenly shoulder,
on which I have wished how many hundred times to lay my head like this
and not move again, or speak again, or have anything ever change.
Aurora, don't say a word, dear. Particularly, kindest Aurora, don't make
any of your little jokes. Keep perfectly still, like a good darling, and
let me forget everything except where my head is, and be perfectly
happy."

As seriously as if a god had commanded it, Aurora preserved the silence
and immobility requested of her, only making her shoulder as much wider
and softer and more comforting as she could by wanting it to be so.

When by and by she felt him slip a little as he began to lose himself in
sleep, she clasped her hands around him supportingly and held him in
place.

A single candle burned in the room, with a book to shade it. Aurora's
eyes, fixed and starry, rested upon the little flame where it was
reflected in a mirror on the wall opposite, but she did not see it at
all, so absorbed was she in her thoughts. In her feelings, too. In the
wonder of the hour. This remarkable Gerald, with his head packed full of
knowledge, with his speech that charmed you as whistling does an adder,
with his capacity to paint pictures that the rest could not even
understand, and then his rarity, the sweetness of his manners, the
fascination of all that unknown in him which came, she had concluded,
from his foreign bringing-up--he had wanted ever since he first saw her
just to lay his head on her shoulder and rest....

Her common ordinary shoulder. What did he see in her? Taking for granted
that he saw something, Aurora attributed this unknown quality in herself
to God, and thanked Him. She tightened her clasp about Gerald, the
better to feel him there. The power of the sleeping-potion had overtaken
him completely. Thoughts that moistened her eyes resulted from feeling
her arms full of the breathing warmth of a beloved form. Those defrauded
maternal arms! That other, who would have been five years old at this
time, and would have been called little Dan, after Dan, her big father,
how she would have nursed him through his childish ailments, how she
would have held him and rocked him! No, she would never stop yearning
over him. One must suppose that God knows best.

Gerald's breathing was deep and quiet. When sure that it could be done
without waking him, she let him gently down on to the pillow.

She stood beside the bed for a few minutes, in her soft garment of
cashmere and swansdown which made no more sound when she moved than did
her velvet shoes; she watched him sleep with emotions of gratitude
beyond possibility of expression to any one but that old intimate, God.
He was getting well so surely and fast. He would shortly be as well as
ever.

Confident that he would want nothing more for the rest of the night, she
arranged herself in her easy-chair for a good sleep, too.

                   *       *       *       *       *

On the next day she divined from his half troubled look at her, and the
shy modesty of his manner, that he was wondering whether he had actually
babbled last night, or in a mild delirium dreamed the whole thing. Not
from her might he find out. Her easy, matter-of-fact way made any such
passage seem at least unlikely.

Having slept during the night she did not retire to rest during the day,
but let Giovanna go about her long neglected affairs and in her place
looked after Gerald, who had waked from his deep sleep immensely
refreshed. He would not need a constant watcher beside him after this,
during night or day.

"What shall I do to amuse you?" she asked him, to make an interruption
after she had felt him watching her through half closed lids for some
time. "Don't you want me to read to you?"

"I think not, Aurora. Thank you just as much."

"Well, then, how shall I entertain you? Do you want me to be a gold-fish
for you?"

"How do you 'be a gold-fish,' Aurora?"

"Look!" But the instant she changed her face into a gold-fish's and
waggled up through imaginary water, opening and shutting her mouth like
a rubber valve, he hid his eyes, crying sharply, "Please stop! I don't
want to see it."

The gold-fish personality was dropped.

"Very well, then," she said, with unimpaired serenity, "shall I do a
squirrel gnawing a nut? Every family its own circus."

"If you do it, I will not look. How can you endure, lovely as you are,
to make yourself ugly--grotesque?"

"Aren't you rather hard to suit to-day, mister? Shall I be a hen, then,
scratching for her chicks? That's mild."

"No, no, no. Yes. No. I don't know about the hen. Let me have a sample."

He watched her, critically and provisionally, while with comfortable,
motherly, half-suppressed chest-sounds, and a round eye cocked for finds
among the dirt, remarkably altogether the appearance of a pensive white
hen, she made believe to scratch up the earth with her feet. A rather
sympathetic performance, he allowed, her imitation of the hen, calling
up before one the vision of a farmyard, a brood of downy yellow chicks,
a duckpond, sunshine, green things.

He let her do it as long as she would, or rather until to vary the thing
she increased the comic beyond the line he fixed. When midday found him
grudgingly laughing at her cackling, it seemed improbable certainly that
midnight had seen him sleeping in her arms. But underlying their
laughter was a consciousness in each that day of a thing uniting them
which had not been there before.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Sitting bolstered up in bed to eat his first real meal, he looked, with
his long hair parted in the middle and brushed down over his hollow
temples, like one of those old masters in the Ewe-fitsy, Aurora told
him. A St. John the Baptist, she specified.

She chipped the top off his egg and cut finger sizes of bread for him,
so that he might have it in the foreign way he preferred.

While he languidly ate, yet with pleasure, the door softly swung inward,
revealing faces of women,--Estelle, Clotilde, Livvy, Giovanna,--all
equally kind, all craning for the delight of a peep at him eating his
soft-boiled egg.

Because he was still weak, tears came into his eyes, and because he
could not permit them to be seen, he waved and haggardly smiled toward
the smiling and nodding faces without inviting them nearer.

Women! women!... What a great deal of room they had occupied in his
life! How much he owed them for affection,--mother, sister,
servant-girl, friends....

                   *       *       *       *       *

He had known from whispers and rustlings, from a sort of instinct,
latterly from Giovanna's own lips, that his house since the coming of
"that lady" to undertake the government of his sickroom had been full of
people, making practical and easy the carrying out of her plots.
Abundance of people and abundance of money. Old Giovanna grumbled
bitterly at this invasion, but she did it inside of herself, sanely
recognizing that she had subject for gratitude. Her hot dark eye looked
all she thought, and her lips moved as she soundlessly said all she
felt; but when she dropped into the dark church of Santa Maria degli
Angeli for a moment's devotion she did not fail to ask Maria to bless
"that lady" and give her great good. After which she begged Her by the
seven swords of Her sorrow to hasten the day that should clear the house
of the whole horde of strangers, and permit her to resume the quiet life
with her signorino.

Gerald, whose nature felt the oppression of material benefits as much as
Giovanna felt jealousy with regard to her rights and loves, resolved
that the sole seemly return for generosity in this case would be an
equal generosity, consisting in an acceptance pure of every shadow,
either of obligation, or reserve, or regret.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Since the doctor said it would do the invalid no harm to admit a visitor
or two, Aurora wrote to Mrs. Foss. She came at once with Leslie. Both on
the occasion of this call were perfect, in tact, in warmth, in
friendship. And yet with them, and the sense of the World and the
World's point of view which they inevitably brought, change entered the
house.

The vacuous, almost happy languor of the sick was replaced in Gerald by
an irritable gloominess, decently repressed, but unconcealable.

"There's no mistake; you're getting well," remarked Aurora, when the
unrest of a mind troubled by many things expressed itself in indignation
against innocent inanimate objects, a drop of candle wax for burning, an
ivory paper-cutter for snapping in his impatient hand. "You're getting
well. I guess I can go home and feel easy about you."

And sooner than Giovanna had dared to hope when most fervently she
invoked the Holy Mother, lo! the intruders, mistress and maids, bag and
baggage, had left in their places room and silence. So much sooner than
expected that Giovanna, clasping in her hands an incredible fee, almost
found it in herself to feel regret.




CHAPTER XVI


On their last day together Gerald had asked Aurora to find the key of a
certain desk-drawer and to bring him the miniature strong-box locked in
it. He had taken out one by one, to show her, the little store of
trinkets once belonging to his mother and given her from among them the
one he thought most charming, an old silver cross studded with amethysts
and pearls.

Her own house, when she reëntered it, looked faintly unfamiliar, as if
she had been away much longer than she had by actual count. But her big
soft bed looked good to her, she told Estelle, after the bed of granite
framed in iron she had lately occupied.

She was in high good spirits. Gerald out of the woods, the amethyst
cross, Estelle and her beautiful commodious house returned to, vistas
ahead of good times and heart satisfactions, a sense of success and the
richness of life--Aurora was in splendid spirits.

Estelle and she slept together on the first night, so as to be able to
buzz until morning, as they had used to do in their young days, when one
of them was allowed to go on a visit to the other and stay overnight.
There ensued a very orgy of talk, a going over of all that had happened
since their separation, quite as if they had not once seen each other in
the interval.

It might have been thought, when their remarks finally became far
spaced, as they did between two and three of the morning, that this
happened because the streams were running dry as well as because the
talkers were growing sleepy; but no such thing. Each had loads more that
she might have told; but each, as had not been the case in the old days,
was keeping back something from the other. Each locked in her breast a
secret.

There had naturally been talk of Gerald. Estelle was immensely nice
about him, and Aurora appeared immensely frank, but yet both knew that
he was to be a delicate subject between them thenceforward, and that
thoughts relating to him could not be exchanged without reserve.

There had been laughter over Estelle's subterfuges in order not to let
it be learned from her, and this without directly lying, that Aurora was
actually living at Gerald's. "It's a case of a cold," she had explained
her friend's non-appearance upon one occasion, without mentioning whose
cold.

The details of Busteretto's illness and danger had caused him to be
reached for in the dark and kissed and cuddled anew.

"My, but it's nice to have you back!" Estelle said in the morning,
fixing a bright, fond gaze upon her friend across the little table in
the bedroom, where they sat in their wrappers eating breakfast. "A penny
for your thoughts, Nell. What are you thinking about?"

Nell smiled rather foolishly, then, putting Satan behind her in the
shape of a temptation to prevaricate, said:

"I was thinking what they were doing over there. Whether Gerald has had
a good night, and about Giovanna, and what it's all like without me.
It's hard for me now to think of the place without me. I miss myself
there."

"I suppose you'll be driving round to inquire sometime in the course of
the day," Estelle said, with true generosity; at which Aurora tried to
look as if she were not sure; she would think about it.

With arms around each other's waists they went through all the rooms for
Aurora to renew her pleasure in them after absence. They came to a
standstill before her portrait in the drawing-room.

"There's no mistake, he's talented," Estelle admitted good-humoredly,
after a considerable silence. "That's a fine portrait."

Aurora did not say she thought so, too. Alone in her room later, while
Estelle was dressing to go out together, she looked at the other
portrait to see if she were "any nearer educated up to it." It seemed to
her she was, a little bit.

She started to dress. Being given to homely rather than poetic fancies,
she subsequently thought of herself as having been, during the process
of making herself fine for the afternoon drive and call, like some Cape
Cod young one trotting happily along with her tin pail full of
blueberries, just before a big dog sprang out of the roadside tangle and
jostled the pail out of her hand, so that all the berries were
spilled....

Even as she was buttoning her gloves a letter came for her with a
parcel. All rosy with delight, she quickly found in her purse a reward
for Gaetano, the bringer. Without too much hurry, like a person not
eager to shorten a solid enjoyment, she opened the letter. It did not
strike her as surprising, certainly not as ominous, that Gerald should
write when he might expect to see her so soon. She read:

This is the fourth letter, dearest Aurora, that I have written you since
waking, after a very bad night, in such a black humor that you would
know I am quite myself again and life has resumed for me its natural
colors. I destroyed those letters one after the other because, although
written with the effort of my whole being to be what you call sweet,
they sounded to me insufferably disagreeable. And now whatever I write I
shall have to send because if I destroy this letter also I shall not
have time to write another before you come to see me as you promised.
And the reason for my wretched night was that I was haunted by all the
reasons there are why you should not come. They are so difficult to put
into words that I despair, after three attempts, of doing it in any but
an offensive manner. Pity, Aurora, the plight of your poor patient;
permit him not to go into them. Just--don't come.

Alas! that cannot be all. I have the vision of your puzzled face. Well,
then, it is for yourself, in part. I have no excuse for profiting by a
kindness that may be harmful to you. It is my duty to regard for you the
conventions you are big-heartedly willing to disregard. I deplore the
fact that I was ever so weak as to forget it.

But it is also for myself, who must not further be demoralized and
spoiled.

I must not, moreover, be laid further under obligations of gratitude,
the less, my dear Aurora, that gratitude is not precisely what I feel.
No. I so little dote upon life that I should be glad if a merciful
angel's attention had not been drawn to me, and I perhaps might have
escaped the dreary prolongation of years. I am sorry, but so it is.

Pray do not conceive any relation between what I have just written and
the request that follows. Will you be so kind as to return the object
belonging to me which I miss from the little table-drawer at the head of
my bed? You had no right to take it.

Vincent Johns is coming in a day or two. Do not think of me, therefore,
as lonely or neglected.

I find I must hurry or be too late. This letter is beastly and ought to
be torn up like the others. It simply cannot; it must go. I can only
pray, Aurora, that you will understand.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Aurora went back to the beginning and read the letter a second time.
Then she turned to the accompanying parcel and noticed that it was done
up in a shabby piece of old newspaper. It contained a pair of fur-lined
velvet shoes, a bow-knot of blue satin ribbon, and a bottle of almond
milk, things of her own which through carelessness had been left behind.
She could not know that the honest Giovanna alone was responsible for
this return of her property. Coming at that moment, it formed the
occasion for two stinging tears rising to the edge of Aurora's eyes. She
swept them away with the back of her glove, and forbade any more to
follow. To prevent them she took her lips between her teeth, and with
all her strength called upon her pride.

She read Gerald's letter over again, really trying to understand, to be
fair, to interpret it in the high-minded way he would wish.

"When all is said, it amounts to this,"--she reached the end of that
exercise by a short cut,--"he wants to be let alone."

And after every allowance had been made for him, and all due deference
paid to his excellent reasons, still it seemed to her what she couldn't
call anything but a poor return. Because his letter was bound to hurt
her, and he must have known it. His sending it, therefore, argued a lack
of any very deep affection for her. After she had come, just from his
own words and actions, to supposing....

"This is what you get for not remembering that if a person is
practically a foreigner you can never expect to know them except in
spots," she admonished herself.

                   *       *       *       *       *

After they had driven in the Cascine and around the Viali for the
sunshine and air, Aurora asked suddenly:

"Haven't we had enough of this?" and ordered the coachman to go home.

"Why!" exclaimed Estelle, astonished, "I thought we were going to Gerald
Fane's to see how he's getting along!"

"No, I guess we won't. I think it's time, after living with him for
three weeks, that I began to look after my reputation, don't you?" said
Aurora, with a forced lightness of rather bitter effect.

"I had a note from him, anyhow, just before we came out," she added
after a moment. "He's doing all right."

Estelle understood that something was wrong. Aurora could not
successfully pretend with her. Aurora's transparent face, as she now
took note of it, betrayed hidden perplexity and chagrin. Estelle asked
no questions, not needing to be told that Gerald's note had worked the
change. Despite her affection for her friend, indeed, just because of
that affection, Estelle was quietly glad of it. Her thought caressed the
secret which has been referred to, a scheme which for some weeks had
given her an excited feeling of having between her fingers the thread of
the Fates.

After Estelle had gone to her own room for the night, Aurora sat down to
compose an answer to Gerald's letter. She had reflected a good deal
since receiving it, and out of confusion and complexity singled one
clear and simple thought or two.

Gerald had never said or intimated that she had forced herself upon him
when he was too ill to help it; but the truth was she had done that,
after all his shying rocks at her, too, to keep her off. Nor had Gerald
suggested that one of his reasons for wishing her not to haunt his
bedside was a fear of her becoming inconveniently fond of him. A hint
could be found, if one chose, that he feared becoming too fond of her,
but of the other no vestige, no shadow, or ghost of a shadow. Yet by
those two points the spirit of Aurora's reply must be inspired.
Centuries of civilization have ground into the female of the species one
particular lesson.

So the irascible man's nervous, hurried and harried scrawl, written with
sputtering pen that at several places tore clean through the paper, and
written under the compulsion of his soul and his good sense, received
from the best of women an answer in her calmest hand, deliberately
calculated to give him pain, at the same time as to convey to him
unambiguously that, as far as she was concerned, he was freer than the
birds of the air. She wrote:

    My dear friend Gerald,

    What I want principally to say is just _don't worry_. Don't
    worry for fear I'll come, and don't worry for fear I won't
    understand, and don't worry because you think my feelings may be
    hurt. And above all the rest, don't worry about
    _gratitude_, for I don't feel you owe me any at all. Don't
    you think for a moment that I saved your life. You were not as
    sick as you imagine, I guess. It was a very light case, or how
    would you have got over it so soon? You were not near as sick,
    according to all accounts, as poor Busteretto, who has been
    having what they call here the _cimurro_. I took you in
    hand because _I am a nurse_ and I couldn't keep my hands
    off, just as an old fire-engine horse will start to gallop when
    he hears a fire-alarm even if he isn't on the job. If it had
    been Italo Ceccherelli who was sick I would have been tempted in
    just the same way; so you see there is no occasion for
    gratitude. Put it out of your mind.

    Now about the thing I took from the drawer of your night-stand.
    I am very sorry I can't give it back, because I flung it out in
    the middle of the river. That is what I did with it, and I am
    not sorry either. You know that we at home don't look upon
    certain things as you apparently do over here. We think it a
    disgrace for a man to kill himself. I myself am old-fashioned
    enough to think that that door leads to hell. I have been
    astonished to find that over here it is thought quite
    respectable, that some Italians look upon it as an honorable
    way, for instance, of paying their debts, and a natural way of
    getting over an unhappy love-affair. As I know you have a good
    many foreign ideas, and as you have once or twice made a remark
    that showed me you thought of that solution of difficulties as a
    possible one, I grabbed your nasty old pistol when I found it in
    the little drawer, and it reposes now at the bottom of the Arno.
    Don't get another, Gerald. No burglars are going to enter your
    house to steal your Roman tear-bottle or your books. When you
    are so blue you feel like killing yourself, say your prayers. I
    am very glad your friend the abbé is going to come and stay with
    you. He is a _good influence_, I feel sure, and a good
    friend.

    I suppose I shall see you again some time, even if I don't do
    the visiting. But don't be in any hurry, not on my account. I
    hope that in the meantime you will get back your strength
    quickly. Remember that you will have to be very careful for
    quite a long time, because a relapse is _an awfully mean
    thing_.

    Good-by, my dear Gerald. Please accept the very best wishes of

                                        Yours sincerely,
                                                Aurora Hawthorne.

    P.S. I did not write four letters and tear three of them up,
    like you. I wrote one and corrected it, and here I have copied
    it out for you, hoping that in it I have made my meaning as
    clear to you as you made yours clear to me in your letter.




CHAPTER XVII


When the latter occurrences had shaken down in Aurora's mind, Gerald's
letter, which she from time to time re-read, impressed her as a most
gentle and reasonable production of his pen, while her own letter,
preserved in the original scribble, appeared to her horrid, cutting, and
uncalled for.

But there was now nothing to do about it. The state of mind created in
her by the whole episode prepared her to welcome with open arms any
diversion, any event which would restore to her self-conceit a little
vitality or lay on her heart a little balm; and so when, at the
psychological moment, Doctor Thomas Bewick surprisingly turned up in
Florence,--it may be remembered that he was Estelle's choice for
Nell,--Nell fell on his neck quite literally, and gave him a full,
sonorous kiss.

"Tom! Tom!" she cried in delight, "how good it is to see you!"

This happened in her formal drawing-room, whither she had gone on the
servant's announcement that a gentleman from America, who had given no
card or name, asked to see her.

Their greeting over, she ran out into the hall, screaming joyfully:

"Hat! Hat! Come down this minute! Hurry up! You'll never guess who's
here!"

In reply to which summons Estelle came hurrying down the stairs with an
innocent, expectant air.

"If it isn't Doctor Bewick!" she exclaimed, without giving herself away
by one false inflection. "Why, Doctor Bewick, this is simply too awfully
nice! What _are_ you doing over here? Who _would_ have
expected to see _you_?"

"Tom," said Aurora, "I was never in my life so glad to see any one. I
didn't know how much I'd missed you till I saw you. You good old thing!
You nice old boy! Aren't you a brick to have come! My soul, my soul! I
didn't know till this minute how tired I am of foreigners and
half-foreigners and quarter-foreigners and all their ways. I was hungry
for home-folks and didn't know it. Now, please God, we'll have some talk
where we know that when we use the same words we mean the same thing,
and aren't wondering all the time what's really in the other's mind!"

The man to whom this was said absorbed it with a face fixed in smiles of
pleasure. He was a big blond man, disposed to corpulence, and looking
somewhat like a fresh-faced, gigantic boy until his eye met yours and
gave the note of a fine, mature intelligence, open on every side, and
unobtrusively gathering in what it had no strong impulse afterward to
give out again in any open form of self-expression.

Tolerant, not from any vagueness of judgment; easy to get on with, but
not to drive or to deceive, he looked strikingly the good fellow, yet
kept you in respect. An air of capability, a consciousness of definite
achievements, went coupled in him with the humor that would prevent
bumptiousness however great the matter for pride. A quiet carelessness
of other people's opinions formed part of his effect of poise; the
opinions of dukes would have affected him as little as those of
rag-pickers, unless they recommended themselves to that judicial spot in
his brain at which he tried them. He was level-headed, unsentimental,
but kind, of a kindness that like good-humor seemed almost physical, and
made him stop to stroke the kitchen cat as well as see to it that the
negress's baby had the right milk for its orphaned stomach.

He looked at Aurora with smiling scrutiny, and facially expressed a vast
appreciation. She looked back at him with eyes of laughing tenderness.
Avoiding to speak directly to her the compliments rising in his mind, he
turned to Estelle.

"Hasn't she blossomed out!"

"Isn't she wonderful?" chimed in that friend, enthusiastically.

Aurora, with a comedy of pride, threw up her chin, lifted her arms, and
turned as if on a pivot, to show herself off in her elegance. She had on
the wine-colored street-dress bordered with black fox; over its white
satin waistcoat embroidered with gold hung in a splendid loop her pink
corals. The restraining Paris corset gave to her luxuriant form a
charming modish correctness of line.

"Oh, Tom,"--she sank happily on the sofa beside him,--"we're having the
time of our lives! Just wait till you see me in company, and hear me put
on my good English, when, instead of calling things lovely or horrid, I
call them amusing or beastly or impossible. But your turn first. Give us
the Denver news."

                   *       *       *       *       *

After dinner that evening, in the midst of Italo's brilliant
performance, a caller came,--a thin, oldish, English-speaking lady whose
black dress made no pretense of following the fashion.

Aurora had met her at Mrs. Satterlee's during a meeting appointed to
raise funds for the Protestant orphanage. When this philanthropist,
after a little talk of other things, mentioned the relict of a mason,
left with five young children, Estelle and Dr. Bewick took it as a hint
to withdraw beyond earshot. The two ladies were left talking in
undertones; after a minute they found themselves alone in the room.

Estelle preceded Dr. Bewick across the hall to the dining-room, deserted
and orderly, where the drop-light rained its direct brightness only on
the rich and variegated tapestry cover of the table beneath it. From the
sideboard--whence the marble fruit had for some time been missing--she
brought a bottle of aërated water and a glass to set before him; she
found him an ash-tray, and seated herself beside the table near him in
such a way as to get, through the parted half-doors, a glimpse of the
visitor when she should leave.

Before speaking, she exchanged with the doctor a look of intelligence.

"You see what I mean?" she asked little above a whisper.

[Illustration: Aurora, with a comedy of pride, threw up her chin,
lifted her arms, and turned as if on a pivot, to show herself off
in her elegance]

Dr. Bewick looked all around the room with leisurely appraising eyes,
then nodded understanding. There was no intimation that he was not ready
to listen, but he did not seem quite ready to talk. His white
shirt-bosom was remarkably broad as he leaned back in his chair in the
slightly lolling fashion of large, good-humored men. For all the
nonchalance of his attitude, he looked, from evening tie to thin-soled
dress-boots, beautifully spruce, as Aurora had remarked, and made an
appropriate pendant to her in her Parisian finery.

Approval of him was written large on Estelle's pleasant, alert
countenance; a quiet, comprehensive liking for her sat as plainly in the
eyes reflecting her slim person and evening-frock of beaded net. Being
Nell's friends made them friends, a thing not so common as one wishes.
Through her they felt almost on the familiar terms of old friendship,
although Estelle had never met Dr. Tom Bewick before he came to New York
to see them off on their great four-stacked ocean-steamer.

"You see what I mean?" she asked, and, not expecting a regular answer,
did not wait for it. "Now that woman won't leave until she has secured
support for the mason's five children, and she'll do this without the
smallest difficulty. In a day or two some one else will come, with the
sad case of a poor father out of work who is going to have to sell his
blind daughter's canary unless Nell steps in to relieve their wants. And
Nell will step in. Word has been passed, just as they say a tramp at
home marks a house where he's been given a meal, and every case of want
in this town, it seems to me, is hopefully brought to Nell. And she
listens every time; she doesn't get sick of it. And you know, Doctor,
that her circumstances don't warrant it."

Bewick, as Estelle stopped for some comment on his side, made a slight
motion of chin and eyelids that partly or deprecatingly agreed with her.
He took the cigar out of his mouth, but having knocked the ash off,
replaced it, to listen further and not for the moment speak.

"It's positively funny, the things Nell has been doing with her money,"
Estelle went on, in a tone that did not disguise the fact of her
glorying in this prodigality while being justly frightened by it. "It's
not just the ordinary charities, churches, hospitals, etc.,--all of
those send in their regular bills, as you might say. It's a Swiss
music-box for the crippled son of the _spazzaturaio_, or
street-cleaner; it's a marriage-portion for this one and funeral
expenses for that one; it's filling the mendicant nuns' coal-cellar,
it's clothing a whole orphan-school in a cheerfuller color! Clotilde and
Italo call her attention to every deserving case, and are guided in this
by the simple knowledge that Nell can't hold on to her money. Of course
it's her good heart. She's done a lot for them and their family, too,
I've discovered. I don't know just how much, but I can guess by their
look of licking their chops. I'm not saying they aren't all
right--honest, sincere, and so forth--or that I don't like them. It's
Nell's own fault that she's imposed on. I don't doubt that they're as
devoted as they seem, it's only right they should be. It's right the
whole city of Florence should be. I was thinking only the other day as
we drove through Viale Lorenzo the Magnificent that it would be
appropriate for a grateful city to rechristen our street Viale Aurora
the Magnificent."

Tom Bewick laughed, nodding to himself with an effect of relish. He
murmured, "Aurora the Magnificent!"

"Aurora the Magnificent--Aurora the Magnificent is all very well,"
Estelle took up again with animation, "but she's already spending her
capital."

Bewick did not allow himself to appear startled or troubled; still, he
was made pensive by this. His look at Estelle invited her to go on and
tell him the rest, just how bad it was. She was leaning forward, with
her elbows on the table, one hand slipping the rings on and off a finger
of the other, in her quick way.

"You know what her income is. It would have provided for all this,"--she
took in the luxury around them by a gesture of the head,--"but no income
can suffice to set up in housekeeping all the picturesque paupers in
Florence. That's why I was so anxious for you to come, and wrote you as
I did. You can curb her; I can't. I have no influence with her in that
way, and I simply can't sit still and see her throw away all this good
money that was intended to provide her with comforts for the rest of her
life. Unless somebody looks after it, she won't have a penny left. You
must talk to her, Doctor Bewick. Don't let her know, though, that I put
you up to it. You can ask a plain question, as it's right and natural
for you to do, then when she answers you can lecture her. She'll take it
from you."

Bewick, with his sensible face, looked as if he saw justice and reason
in all Miss Madison had said to him; yet he did not go on with the
subject. It might be that he felt delicate, in a masculine way, about
uttering to a lady's best friend any criticism of that lady's mode of
doing or being--criticism which he might feel no difficulty perhaps in
voicing to herself. Estelle took this into consideration and, his
reticence notwithstanding, relied on him to do his duty.

A diversion occurred in the shape of a knock at the door--the door
leading to the kitchen-stairs. It was but the scratch of one fingernail
on the wood. Tiny as the sound was, it did not have to be repeated
before Estelle ran to open. A small four-footed person entered, the
bigness of a baby's muff and the whiteness of a marquis's powdered wig.
Estelle caught him up from the floor and with a coo of affection, "What
um doing in the kitchen, little rogums?" set him on the table, under the
lamp, for Doctor Tom to see how utterly beautiful he was and have the
points and characteristics of a Maltese terrier explained to him.

Busteretto was reaching dog's estate, his shape had taken on a degree of
subtlety, his hair was growing long and straight and like leaves of the
weeping willow. Estelle lifted the white fringe depending from his brow,
and exposed to the light two great limpid brown eyes, incredibly sweet
and intelligent. It was as wonderful, in its way, as if a blind beggar,
insignificant and easy to pass by as he stood at the street-corner,
should take off black goggles suddenly, and you should perceive that he
was a masking angel come to test the hearts of men.

"Did you ever see such a little sweetheart?" gasped Estelle.

"A pretty little fellow," spoke the doctor commendingly. With the
instinct to relieve discomfort he raised the veil of hair again as soon
as Estelle had let it drop, and looking further into the beautiful eyes,
that with the neat nose made a triangle of dark spots effective as
mouches on Columbine's cheek,--"Why don't you tie up his hair like this
to keep it out of the way?" he asked.

"We mustn't! Mr. Fane, who gave him to Nell, says it would be bad for
him, he might go blind. They're that kind of eyes and need the shield
from the light. Mr. Fane knows all about this Maltese breed of dogs."

"Is he the same one who painted her portrait?" Dr. Tom deviated from the
subject of the dog, over whose eyes the curtain was allowed to drop
again.

"Yes, he's an artist."

"And the same one she nursed through an illness?" asked Dr. Tom after a
moment, with the mere amount of interest apparently of one asking for a
topographical detail, so that he may get his bearings.

"Yes. You'd know, wouldn't you, that she'd have to, if she thought he
wasn't getting the right care and didn't see any other way of providing
it."

"Well, Skip," Dr. Tom returned his attention to the dog, "you're a fine
little fellow. Yes, sir." He held out a large pink hand and received in
it immediately a wee gentlemanly hand of fur and horn, rather smaller
than any of his fingers. "Good dog," he said, and regarded their
friendship as sealed. But next minute, because Estelle had whispered to
him, "Make believe to strike me," he lifted his fist menacingly against
her, and on the instant, with the courage of a David, there dashed
against him a little wild white flurry, not to bite--the skin of man is
sacred--but by a show of pearly teeth and the growlings of a lion to
frighten the giant off.

"Good dog!" cheered Tom and leaned back laughing, "Well done!"

                   *       *       *       *       *

Because it was very late when Dr. Bewick left the ladies to return to
his hotel they immediately repaired to their respective rooms; but
before Estelle had got to bed, Aurora, half undressed, came strolling
into her maidenly bower of temperate green and white.

A vague depression of spirits had overtaken Aurora, reaction, perhaps,
from the excitements of the day, and she sought her friend with the
instinct to make herself feel better by talking it off.

She dropped on a chair, and in silence continued to braid her hair for
the night.

"Isn't he the nicest fellow!" began Estelle, setting the keynote for
joyous confidences.

"Isn't he just!" replied Aurora. "I want him to have the best time in
the three weeks he's going to spend here. We've got to show him all the
beauties of Florence, and then I want him to know all our friends. We
must have some tea-parties and some dinners. I want it to be just as
gay. Who is there I ought to lay myself out for, if not Tom Bewick?"

"I quite agree with you. Let's plan."

"No, to-morrow'll do. It's too late. I'm tired." The motions of Aurora's
fingers were suspended among the strands of her hair. She fell into a
muse. "Seeing Tom"--she came out of it again, and went on braiding--"has
brought back, along with some things I never want to forget, such a lot
of things I don't want to think of!"

"I suppose it would."

"His sisters, for instance. He doesn't look a bit like them,
really--nasty bugs, godless, gutless pigs--but yet he brings them up
before me. Idell rather more than Cora, and Idell was the meanest of the
two, and her husband the miserablest, sneakingest cuss. Oh, how I hate
the bunch of them! And I oughtn't, you know. You oughtn't to go on
hating your enemies after you've got the better of them. But the moment
I think of that trio, Cora Bewick--sour-bellied old maid!--and Idell
Friebus, and her rotten little pea-green husband--pin-headed insect!
flap-eared fool!--I get mad. If you could really know, Hat, the
cold-heartedness and wicked-mindedness of those people! How they ever
happened in Tom's family Goodness only knows. And such a fine father!
The Judge was as good as any of those old fellows in the Bible, I do
believe. _That_ patient, _that_ considerate, and _that_
just! More than just; what he did was more than just, and those girls of
his simply couldn't stand it. They couldn't stand it, after they had
neglected him all through his illness so that it was a scandal, that he
should treat the person who had done their daughters' duty for them the
same as he treated them, no better and no worse, but just the same. The
things those people did to me, Hat, the things they said about me--"

"I know, I know; you've told me," said Hattie, soothingly and
deterringly.

"The things those people did to me, and the things they said about
me,"--Nell, not to be deterred, repeated intensely,--"if I'd ever wanted
to give up my share, those things they did and said would have made me
hold on like grim death just to spite them. Oh,"--she broke off, and
flung her finished braids back over her shoulders,--"why do I let myself
think of them? I grow so hot! It's the sight of Tom that has started me
back to thinking of all that excitement and disgustingness. Dear good
Tom, who stood by me like a trump! I do wish, Hat, I didn't hate so hard
when I hate. We've taken pride in my family, I'm afraid, in being good
haters, as if it were part of the same trait that makes you loyal and
true to your friends. But perhaps it's a mistake. I know that Gerald
said once"--she yielded to the obscure desire to hear the air vibrate,
as it had not done for some time, with the syllables of his
name--"Gerald said once, when we were talking of things, 'We must
forgive everything,' he said; 'we must forgive happenings the same as we
must people.' And Gerald, you know, when he's in sober earnest, has some
good ideas."

"Talking about Gerald," Estelle came in quickly, glad of a change from
the other subject, "did Livvy tell you that our cook met Giovanna at the
market, and Giovanna told her that her master was doing finely; that he
hadn't yet been out of doors, but that he sat at the open window in the
sunshine? I'd been meaning to ask you."

"Oh." Aurora quietly took it, and thought it over a minute. "No, she
hadn't told me. I suppose those long stairs would keep him from going
out till he was good and strong. Did she say anything else?"

"Only that Giovanna was buying a chicken, and the abbé, she said, was
still staying with them."

                   *       *       *       *       *

The ladies of the Hermitage did the honors of Florence with modest pride
and a certain glibness. Before the early old masters, Aurora said to
Tom:

"At first I couldn't stand them. I guffawed at the idea of there being
anything to admire in them. Even now I can't pretend I like them; but I
keep still and pray for light. Isn't that the beginning of polish?"

Tom was taken to make calls. Aurora took upon herself to explain
Florentine society to him.

"There are little stories about most everybody," she said, "so you have
to be pretty careful. If a certain General is present, for instance,
whom I may have a chance to point out to you, you don't want to talk of
_horses_, because his fiery steed bolted with him during an
engagement once and his enemies caricatured him running away. Then if a
certain viscount is present, whom I may have a chance to introduce to
you, you don't want to talk of _ermine_, because that little animal
is a feature in his coat of arms, and his coat of arms along with his
title of nobility, scandal says, came as a reward from a royal personage
for marrying the lady who was his first wife. So you'll have to look
out, Tom, or you may be called upon to fight a duel."

The most splendid dinner that could be planned in council with Clotilde
and the cook was prepared to honor the friend from home. To this were
bidden the Fosses, Aurora's best friends; the Hunts, her next best;
Manlio, whom she wished Tom to see as a truly beautiful specimen of
Italian; and Landini, because she was curious to know what Tom thought
of him.

Aurora had not seen the latter since the night of the _veglione_.
Finding that he had not called during the interval, she had been glad to
hope that his suspected mysterious project for making her his own had
been dropped. That being the case, she was not at all averse to seeing
him. On the contrary.

Charlie Hunt she had not seen since the variety-show. Learning that he
also had not once come during her absence, she thought that this
admitted of some simple explanation which he would give on the night of
the dinner.

Charlie, receiving the invitation, pondered a while before accepting. He
considered himself to have been insulted, rather, by Mrs. Hawthorne.
Still, he could not be absolutely sure. If, anyhow, she did not know
that he knew the black crow to have been none other than herself there
would be nothing in his going to her dinner-party which laid him open to
scorn. And he felt more disposed to go than not. The dinner would be
festive, costly, succulent. Then he desired before breaking with her--if
breach there must be, which would depend upon the subtlest
circumstances--to persuade her that two enormous porcelain jars owned by
a dealer of his acquaintance were the very thing needed in that
bare-looking ball-room of hers. There was a third reason. A lady whose
friendship had latterly--since the night of the _veglione_, in
fact--taken on the glow of roses and the warmth of wine, had taken it
into her charming head to be jealous, fantastically, of Mrs. Hawthorne.
Charlie, whose manly vanity his good fortune had, not unnaturally,
reinforced; Charlie, who if he were loved much must always love less
than the other, felt a certain stimulation in exhibitions of jealousy
with regard to himself. He thought well of the results of saying, "I
cannot come this evening, _cara_, I am dining at the Hawthorne's."
So he accepted Aurora's invitation.

The dinner was superlative, but it was written he should leave the house
finally in a bad humor. The feasted guest was a big Western American, of
the immensely rich and not very interesting type, whom he had seen once
or twice at the bank. Aurora's fond esteem for this man was open and
shameless. Whether he were a "has been," an "is," or a "to be," Charlie
could not determine, but only in the character of suitor could he see
him in the picture.

The dark face of Landini, his Chief, across the dinner table, when his
eyes sought it was indecipherable to him; but, shut as it was, he was
reminded by it, not to the improvement of his spirits, of a little
personal hope, a just and rational hope, which might have to be
relinquished. After dinner he got his hostess into a quiet corner for a
chat.

"Where's Gerald?" pure curiosity made him ask, with that impertinence
which his friends were accustomed to and took lightly, because curiosity
and impertinence were part and parcel of Charlie, and if you cared
sufficiently for his attractive smoothness and flashing smile to wish
them near you, you must put up with the bad breeding underlying his good
manners. "Where's Gerald?" he asked familiarly.

"Gerald isn't well enough yet to be out," Aurora answered him, with
imperfect candor. "You didn't know he'd been ill? Why, how funny! He's
been having what you call here a 'fluxion of the chest.'"

This ignorance of Charlie's comforted her by proving that the news of
her nursing Gerald had not spread over the town like wildfire, as she
had been warned it would. Florence was not so bad or nimble a gossip as
she had feared.

"I was as nice to Charlie Hunt that last evening as ever in my life,"
she afterward declared, "and I thought he seemed all right."

When he spoke of the precious porcelain jars, however, she did cut short
his appetizing description with:

"Don't speak of it. I daresn't, Charlie. I've been lectured so much for
extravagance, I daresn't buy a toothpick. If these jars you speak of
cost nine francs instead of nine hundred, I couldn't, I tell you. I
guess Florence has got all she's going to out of me. I've turned over a
new leaf."

Aurora had all evening been so entirely her kind and jolly self that
Charlie had almost forgotten the black crow. At this check, and the
barren prospect opening out beyond, he remembered it, and felt a vicious
little desire to pay her back for the pin she had stuck into him under,
as she idiotically supposed, an impenetrable disguise. He went away, as
has been said, in a bad humor.




CHAPTER XVIII


The loveliness of Florence at this point of the year, while inspiring
poets, made the rest feel helpless before the task of finding words for
it. Even Aurora, who could not be called contemplative, or highly
susceptible to influences of form and color, was heard to heave an
occasional great sigh, so was her heart oppressed, she could not think
why, during their drives among the hills around Florence, by the sight
of the spring flowers,--tulips, narcissi, fleur-de-lys, imagine it,
growing wild, as if gold pieces should lie scattered in the road for
passers to pick up!--and by the sight of the warm and tender tones of
the sky, and by the silver sparks of windows flashing back the sun where
the hazy city houses huddled around the Duomo's brown head and
shoulders, majestically lifted above them.

It was something in the air, Aurora thought, which forced her to sigh
with that half-sweet oppression and fatigue: the air was fragrant with a
scent which seemed to her upon sniffing it analytically to be the breath
of hyacinths; and the air was warm, it "let her down," she said.

Why, instead of delicious contentment, is a sort of melancholy, of
unrest, created in us by the beauty of spring, will somebody tell?

Aurora, when she thought she could do it without attracting the notice
of the other two, would slip from their presence sometimes, so as to
have a few minutes by herself and stop pretending to be so everlastingly
light of heart. For nothing in the world would she have had Tom know but
that his visit made her happy to the point of forgetting every subject
of care or annoyance.

Estelle, too, she would have preferred to deceive. She did her best, and
for hours at a time appeared serene and merry. During these periods she
sometimes did actually lose the sense of anxious suspense; but it kept
itself alive as an undercurrent to her laughter.

When she saw how well Tom and Estelle got along together, she became
less timid about arranging little absences from them; she even--such a
common feminine mind had Aurora--saw in the congeniality which permitted
them to remain for half an hour in each other's company without boredom
the foundation of a dream, dim and distant, it is true--the dream of
seeing Estelle one day settled in a fine home of her own. She feared,
though, there might be bridges to cross before that event. She dreaded
the bridges. She wished Tom might be diverted from what she feared was
his purpose. How satisfactory, if Estelle might prove the diversion.
Estelle would really have suited Tom much better than the person of, she
feared, his actual choice.

Of all this she was somewhat disconnectedly thinking when she ran away
from them one evening after dinner, leaving him still at the table
smoking his cigar, while Estelle hunted up in a guide-book for his
benefit some little matter of altitudes. A flash of good sense showed
her the previousness of her calculations, and she mentally withdrew her
hand from meddling. Fate would take its own way, anyhow.

She had gone upstairs with the excuse of wanting a fan. Her fan had
easily been found, but instead of returning to her guests, "They won't
miss me if I do stay away for ten minutes," she said, and walked to the
end of the broad hallway, out through the door that stood open on to the
portico roof--once glassed over for a party and dedicated to Flirtation.

How long ago that seemed! Here Gerald, a quite new acquaintance, had
told her about Manlio and Brenda. Poor young things, so unhappy then,
and now exultant. Brenda was just back from America. The wedding was set
for the ninth of May. Only eight days more to wait.

As Aurora, leaning over the balustrade and letting her eyes rest on the
garden, thought of their assured and perfect happiness, she remembered a
gross fly in the ointment. She had been told that Brenda would have to
agree to bring up her children in the Catholic church. The thing had
seemed to Aurora appalling. Upon her dropping some hint of her sentiment
to the caller who had communicated the fact, she had been further told
that very likely Brenda too would in time become a Catholic--as if that
made it any better. A descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers to become a
Roman Catholic! Any one but a heathen to change his religion!...

The figure of Abbé Johns rose before her mind. She refrained from
judgment in his case. His case, for intangible reasons, seemed separate
and different. But fear, as of formless bugaboos in the dark, burned in
her heart at the idea of his influence perhaps being able, creepily,
stealthily, to convert Gerald.

She turned her face upward to the sky of May and sent forth a little
prayer into the crystal clearness of the space lying between her and the
ear which she conceived of as receiving it, the ear of a Baptist God, as
opposed to a Roman Catholic God surrounded by saints and candles and
incense and tin flowers.

As she did this a high pink cloud caught her eye. Embers of sunset were
glowing over the river at the other side of the house. The sight of the
pink cloud, so pretty and far away, comforted Aurora like a good omen.
She felt better and, her reverie borrowing a ray from the cloud, went on
to rejoice in the pleasantness of the garden which she might for the
time being call hers. So different from the gardens at home, but in its
set way how attractive it was, how suited to people with leisure, and a
certain stability of taste, and a liking for privacy!

Why, in that garden--which wasn't very large, either--you could almost
get lost among narrow paths bordered with shrubs. Even if the wide
wrought-iron front-gate were open, and the carriage-gate at the side
open as at this moment, you could be just as much shut off from outside
as in your own room, if you took your sewing or your book to that little
open air round with walls of smooth-trimmed laurel, and a stone table in
the middle, and stone seats.

Old Achille down there, still busy watering,--Achille who belonged to
the garden and was hired along with it, was a regular artist, thought
Aurora. The great oval bed in front of the house was at this season like
a huge bouquet, all arranged in a beautiful pattern. Then he had edged
every path with a band of pansies just inside the band of ivy
overrunning the mossy border stones--the sweetest thing. His pride was
pansies, he had planted them everywhere, the finest she had ever seen.
He had taken a prize once at a horticultural show, for his pansies.

The light died out of the pink cloud, and Aurora's pleasure in her
garden gradually died out too, while the quality of irony in her many
blessings smote her. For what is the use of having everything money can
buy or the bounty of spring afford if you at the same time are troubled
with a toothache? All this, so grand in itself, was like a good gift
wasted, as long as she was in a state of quarrel with her friend. It was
full two weeks since their exchange of letters. Two weeks of absolute
silence. Could it be possible that she should never see or hear from
Gerald again?

No, it could not, she said. It was part of having faith in him to deny
the possibility of his remaining furious forever at her hateful letter.
No, she would not believe it of him; she thought better of him. She was
much mistaken if he could be so mean. She would be willing to bet--

There, in fact, he was, at this very moment, entering the carriage-gate.

After one mad throb of incredulous exultation, Aurora's thoughts and
feelings were for a long minute limited to an intense and immobile
watchfulness. He walked over the gravel with his eyes on the door under
the portico. You would have thought his purpose set, and that he would
not pause until he had rung the bell.

But you would have thought wrong. Half-way between the gate and the
house he stood still and looked at the ground. He was holding the
slender cane one knew so well like a weapon of defense, as if ready to
make a resolute slash with it to vindicate his irresolution.

After a moment he turned, grinding his heel into the earth. It was then
that a voice called out above him, "Hello, Gerald!"

He turned again and removed his straw hat. He and the lady leaning from
the terrace looked at each other for the space of a few heart-beats with
mechanical, constrained smiles. Then she asked:

"Aren't you going to come in?"

Instead of making the obvious answer and setting about the obvious
thing, he appeared to be debating the point within himself. At the end
of his hesitation, he asked:

"Could I prevail upon you to give me five minutes in the garden?"

"Why, certainly," answered Aurora, appreciating the fact that Estelle
would be superfluous at the peace-making that must follow.

She went very lightly down the stairs. She could hear Estelle's and
Tom's voices still in the dining-room. Instead of going out by the usual
door, too near to their sharp ears, she turned with soft foot into the
big ball-room and passed out through that.

The great oval mound of flowers spread its odoriferous carpet before the
steps leading down from the house. She turned her back upon it and
followed a path bordered with pansies and ivy till Gerald saw her and
came to take her hand, saying:

"How good of you!"

"Well," she sighed, put by the bliss of her relief into a mood of
splendid carelessness as to how she, for her part, should carry off the
situation,--looking after her dignity and all that. "How jolly this is!
And you're all right again, Gerald. You're well enough to walk on your
legs and come and tell me so. Yes, you're looking quite yourself again.
Well,"--she sighed again heartily,--"it's good for sore eyes to see you.
You're sure now it's all right for you to be out of doors after sunset?
Hadn't we better go in?"

"This air is like a warm bath. I must not keep you long, anyhow."

"Oh, I haven't got a thing to do," she precipitately assured him. "Come,
we'll walk up and down the path,--hadn't we better?--so as not to be
standing still. Go ahead, now; tell me all about yourself. How do you
feel? Have you got entirely rid of your cough? And the stitch in your
side?"

He would only speak to answer, she soon found; the moment she stopped
talking silence fell. Had he nothing to say to her, then? Or did he find
it difficult somehow to talk? She was so determined to make the
atmosphere cozy, friendly, happy--make the atmosphere as it had used to
be between them--so determined, that she jabbered on like a magpie, like
a mill, about this, that, and the other, sprinkling in little jokes in
her own manner, and little stories in her own taste, accompanied by her
rich--on this occasion slightly nervous gurgle.

"Aurora dear," he said at last, with an effect of mournful patience as
much as of protest, "what makes you? I am here to beg your forgiveness,
and you put me off with what Mrs. Moriarty said to Mrs. O'Flynn. Do you
call it kind?"

A knot tied itself in Aurora's throat, which she could not loosen so as
to go on. If she had tried to speak she would have betrayed the fact
that those simple words had, like a pump, fetched the tears up from her
heart into her throat. He had his chance now to do all the talking.

"Couldn't we sit down somewhere for a minute? Should you mind?" His
gesture vaguely designated the green inclosure, where the stone table
stood, pale among the dark laurels.

But when they were seated, he only pressed his hands into his
eye-sockets and kept them there.

"I am ridiculous!" he muttered and shook himself straight. After an
ineffectual, suffocated attempt to begin, "I am ridiculous!" he said
again, and without further concession to weakness started in: "I ought
to have written you, Aurora. But I had seemed to be so unfortunate in
writing I did not dare to try it again. Heaven knows what I wrote. I
don't; but it must have been a prodigy of caddishness to offend you so
deeply. It doesn't do much good to say I am sorry."

"Your letter was all right," broke in Aurora. "I only didn't understand
at first. Afterwards I did. I tell you, that letter _was all
right_."

"It was written in a mood--a perplexity, a despair, you have no means of
understanding, dear Aurora. When your answer showed me what I had done,
I could have cut my throat, but I could not have come to tell you I was
not the monster of ingratitude I appeared to be. Not that a man can't
get out of bed, if there is reason enough, and take himself somehow
where he wants to be, but because of a sick man's unreasonable nerves,
which can start him raving and make him a thing to laugh at. I had the
common sense, thank Heaven! to see that I must wait. Then, as the days
passed, it all quieted down. Vincent was with me, a tranquilizing
neighborhood.

"It seemed finally as if it might be almost better to let things rest as
they were, to let that be the way of separating from you. I had almost
made up my mind to do it, Aurora. Vincent has had me out for various
airings, I have gone on several walks alone, but till to-day I avoided
to take the road toward this house. I am so used to pain that I've grown
stoical, you know, Aurora. I can stand any pain. I shut my teeth and
say, 'It will have to stop some time.' But all at once it became too
strong for me--not the pain, or the wish to see you, but the feeling
that I could not bear to have you thinking me ungrateful. I, who hate
ingratitude as the blackest thing in the wide world, to pass with you,
with you, for an ungrateful beast!"

"Don't! don't, Gerald!" Aurora hushed him. "I can't let you talk like
that. You know you couldn't be ungrateful, nor I couldn't think it of
you."

"No, I'm not ungrateful. I'm not, dear," he caressingly asseverated, and
closing her two hands between his treasured them against his cheek. "I
want you to be altogether sure of it. If I did not recognize the
enormity of my debt to you, Aurora, what a clod I must be! Not, mind
you, because, it is just possible to think, I owe you my life. Not that,
but because you were so kind. Because you were so kind, so kind--" he
reiterated feelingly, "and I a troublesome, cantankerous, distinctly
unappetizing object in his helpless bed. Don't think there was one touch
or gesture of these dear hands that take away headaches that I do not
remember with gratitude."

"There was nothing to be grateful for, nothing at all," insisted Aurora.

"And so when I wrote you in that brutal manner, dear,--"

"That letter was all right," Aurora vigorously snatched away from him
the turn to talk, in order to defend him from this misery of
compunction. "It was prompted by the most gentlemanly feelings, by real
unselfishness and consideration for me. You didn't want me talked about
on your account, and you put it as delicately as possible. Only I was a
fool; I went off the handle, and wrote while I was mad and hurt and
wanted to hurt back. But, bless you, I understand it all perfectly now.
You needn't say another word. I understand the letter, Gerald, and I
understand you."

"I am afraid," he said, letting go her hands and drawing a little apart,
as if the most complete misunderstanding, after all, separated them,--"I
am afraid you do not entirely. But this much at least is clear to you,
isn't it, dear, that whatever I may be, I am not ungrateful? Whatever I
may do, you are to remember that I couldn't be ungrateful to you,
Aurora. If I should seem to be behaving ever so, ever so shabbily, still
you must know that behind it, under it, I am the very contrary of
ungrateful." He pressed his hands to his eyes again, and was still for a
minute, before announcing, "I shall not come to see you for a long
time."

The astonished and acute attention of her whole being was indefinably
expressed by the silence in which she now listened.

"I am going to keep away from you," he went on, "till I feel out of
danger."

"Why, what's the matter now?" she asked, with the vehemence of her
surprise and disappointment.

"A trifle, woman dear. Oh, Lord, I see I shall have to go into it!
Haven't you the imagination to see, you unaccountable person, how an
unhappy mortal might be affected by such circumstances as destiny so
lately prepared for your poor servant's trying? Day by day, night after
night, that insidious kindness, that penetrating gentleness, that
stupefying atmosphere of a woman's care and sympathy.... Didn't you tell
me once yourself--" Gerald's voice stiffened, and he pulled himself up
again, discarding weakness,--"Didn't you once tell me yourself--in your
impossible English, almost as bad as mine--that a sick man is 'liable to
fall in love with his nurse?' And, dear girl, I will not do it. I
categorically refuse. It is too horrible. I have done with all that. I
have just managed to creep up on to the dry sand, and you ask me to
embark again on those same waters. I will not do it. It is finished.
That slavery! that unrest! and fever! and jealousy! No, not again. I
have served my sentence. Too many times I have waked in the black of
night and waited for daylight, wishing I had been dust for a hundred
years. I know now that in order to have a little peace a person must not
want anything. That is the price. We mustn't want anything, Aurora. We
mustn't want anything, we mustn't mind anything, we mustn't care about
anything, we must submit to everything!" This counsel of perfection came
from Gerald almost in a sob. "We sha'n't be happy like that, naturally,
but we sha'n't be too wretched for expression, either. It's the lesson
of life. I have learned it, and I will not expose myself to the old
chances again. 'He who loves for the first time is a god,' says the
poet, 'but he who loves for the second time is a fool,' he goes on to
say. And so, Aurora--"

"You make me laugh!" exclaimed Aurora in a snort of simple scorn.

"And so, Aurora, I am going to keep away from you for--I am not at the
present moment quite able to say how long."

"You're going to do nothing of the sort! There now!" burst from Aurora.
"I'm not going to permit any such foolishness." She firmly proceeded to
pile up a barricade against his preposterous intention. "Now, Gerald,
you pay attention to what I say, child. Can't you see for yourself, now
you've put it into words, what nonsense all this is? You could no more,
in your sane and waking moments, be sentimentally in love with me, and
you know it, than, I guess, I could with you, fond of you as I am. No,
that isn't putting it strongly enough," she gallantly amended; "you
couldn't do it, it stands to reason, even so easily as I could. What you
felt was just the result of you being so weak, all full of fever dreams
and delusions. And you still believe in it a little because you aren't
yet good and strong. I thought you were, just at first, because you come
so near looking it. But I know that condition. After a sickness you
plump up, you get back your color, and all the while you can be so weak
you could burst out crying if any one pointed a finger at you. You're
trembling with nervousness this minute. You're all sunk together, as if
your backbone couldn't hold you up. It's because the weakness of your
illness is still on you, as anybody could see. Now you listen to what
I've got to say. The wisest thing you can do, young man, instead of
keeping away and having ideas and waiting till these gradually wear
off--the best thing you can do, I say, is to stay right at my side and
get sobered up by contact with things as they actually are. Not only the
best thing, but a lot fairer to me, doesn't it seem so to you? How do
you think I like to have you go kiting off the moment I've got you back
again? When I've missed you so! Now, Geraldino, rely on Auroretta. Let
her manage this case. Don't you be afraid; she'll cure you in two
frisks."

"It just might be, you know, that you were right," said Gerald,
dubiously, with the modesty of tone that would beseem a girl after a
bucket of cold water had quelled her hysterics. "The truth is you do not
appear to me this evening at all as I have been carrying you in my
remembrance."

Aurora laughed and reinforced her expression of jolly
matter-of-factness, looking into his eyes with eyes of sanative fun.

He looked back at her with meditative scrutiny, one eyebrow raised a
little above the other.

She had reigned in his thoughts very largely in her appearance of his
nurse, with her soft, loose robes, the blue of pensive twilights, her
fair hair in easy-feeling braids, her white hands bare of ornaments. She
sat near him now in a snug satin dinner-dress full of whalebones and
hooks and eyes. It had elbow sleeves terminating in full frills of
Duchess lace; a square-cut neck, likewise be-laced, framing an open
space in part obscured again by a jeweled medallion on a gold chain. She
had on rings and bracelets, a bow-knot in her hair. She had in fact
"dressed up" for Tom Bewick, wishing him to see with his eyes what good
she got out of the fortune with whose origin he was acquainted.

"Gracious goodness!" She bounced to her feet. "Here I was forgetting!
Gerald," she said in haste, "I'm sorry, but we'll have to go indoors.
They'll be wondering where I am, and starting the hunt for me."

"They? You have guests?"

"Only one. Come in, Gerald. I want you to meet him. You've heard me
speak of Judge Bewick in Denver, where I lived so long. Well, this is
his son, Doctor Thomas Bewick. He's in Florence just for a visit. It's a
wonder, come to think of it, that you haven't heard of his being here.
We've been going everywhere and seeing everything and giving
dinner-parties. Well, never tell me again that news spreads so fast in
Florence! Come on. I want you to know each other. You'll be sure to like
him."

"I don't think I will. I mean that I don't think I will go into the
house with you, Aurora."

"Now, Gerald," she said in a warning voice, at which black clouds of
impending displeasure loomed over the horizon, "this isn't the way to
begin. Don't be odd and trying. I should feel hurt, now truly, if I had
to think your regard for me wasn't equal to doing such a little thing
for me as this. Tom's one of my very best friends, and he's heard us
talk so much of you. He's seen your painting of me. I do want you to
know him, and I want him to know you. Then, too, Gerald dear, and this
is the main reason, I want you to get good and rested, and to take a
little wine before you start for home. Though you say the air is like a
warm bath, your hands are cold, I notice."

Too tired from the emotions of the evening to make any valid resistance,
emptied in fact of all feeling except a flat sort of bewilderment,
Gerald followed, like a little boy in fear of rough-handling from his so
much bigger nurse.

They found Estelle and Tom in the parlor.

"Well, I was wondering what had become of you!" cried Estelle as Aurora
appeared in the doorway, and behind her shoulder the shadowy, unexpected
face of Gerald.

"Tom," said Aurora, "this is my friend Mr. Fane that you've heard us
talk so much about, the painter, you know, who painted that picture of
me up there. And this is Doctor Bewick, Gerald, to whom I am under a
thousand obligations, besides the obligation of his having probably
saved my life out in Denver, not so many years ago, when I was
dangerously ill."

Aurora was luminous with gladness. Aurora was so glad that she had not
the concentration or the decency to attempt to hide it. She did not know
of the flagrant betrayal of her feelings; she was not guarding against
it, because her delight itself absorbed all her powers of thought. She
stood there, a monument unveiled. And all the reason for it that one
could see was that pindling, hollow-eyed young fellow who had entered
the room in her wake.

Those who have not quarreled with a loved one, and known the pain of the
fear that he may be lost to them, will surely never know the keenest
joy. It takes the escape, the contrast, to make happiness shine out as
brightly as it is capable of doing.

The two men, after conversation had engaged between them, promoted and
helped along by the greater lingual readiness of the ladies, observed
each other. This they did indirectly and as if doing nothing of the
kind. But Estelle, as profoundly uneasy as if she had foreseen already
the fate of the fat to end in the fire, was aware of it. She noted in
Gerald's stiffly adjusted face the unself-conscious eyebrows, formidably
different one from the other; she noted how Doctor Tom, sturdy and
self-collected as he was, kept knocking the ashes of his cigar into an
inkstand full of ink.

It struck her whimsically that she had seen before something kindred to
what was taking place under her eyes: in a barnyard at home, two
crimson-helmeted champions, with neck-feathers slightly risen on end,
standing opposed, ocularly taking each other's measure.




CHAPTER XIX


The Brenda who came back from America was not quite the one who had gone
there. Gerald saw it in the first instant. She had gained in
definiteness, assurance, even in beauty. But a silver haze, a fairy
bloom, an aureole, was mysteriously departed from her. She had left her
teens behind.

Yet in her stainless white, her bridal veil, a slender coronal of orange
blossoms on her dark hair, and the light of love in her dark eyes, how
wonderful she was! That Manlio, pale as a statue with the force of his
emotion, should wear a look of almost superhuman beatitude was only
natural and proper. Of those who assisted at the ceremony many were
deeply moved, and few altogether untouched: to be in the church at that
moment gave one the importance of being accessory to a high romance.

At the wedding reception something of this quality of emotion continued
still to possess the invited guests as long as Brenda and Manlio,
beneath their arch of flowers, stood smiling response to congratulations
and compliments.

It was in the general experience not unlike that part of the opera
where, to a matchless music, the god of flame and the glowing hearth
lauds the loveliness of woman and the strength of man's pursuit; and the
other gods, uplifted, look at one another with washed eyes, feeling anew
how wonderful they all are, how wonderful it all is.

The heart of Leslie, nevertheless, as she bustled about, seeing to it
that every one was provided with refreshment, confessed a point of
bitterness. In a way, it was envy of Brenda. Not of her happiness, or
her husband, of course. But she did wish the man lived and would present
himself who could inspire her with such feelings as Brenda's. The kind
of man who cared for her she somehow never cared for--a serious barrier
to experiencing a _grande passion_. And on this day of
wedding-bells it seemed a pity. The girl of many offers felt sad.

Mrs. Foss smiled a pleased, incessant smile, not "realizing" the thing
which was happening, as she told her sister-in-law who had come over
from America with the bride. Her chick had developed tendencies unknown
among the breed, taken to the water and swum away with a swan. But the
mother had confidence. She believed in marriage. The institution had
been justified by her example and Jerome's. Her eyes sought him out, a
little anxiously, to peruse his face. The idea could not for a moment be
admitted that he had a favorite among his children, but yet it was
acknowledged that Brenda had always in a very special way been near to
her father's heart. From his calm and serenity in conversation with that
nice big Doctor Bewick, Mrs. Foss was able to hope that he too did not
"realize."

Aurora watched the bride and groom with fairly fascinated eyes, but from
a certain distance. They had been nice, they had thanked her handsomely
for her handsome present, but nothing could modify her regretful
certitude that Brenda did not care for her. And it might so easily have
been she and not the good Aunt Brenda who secured for the _sposo_
his career of silver lace and sabre.... And Brenda, innocently
unknowing, would just the same not have liked her. But there! Beautiful
Brenda didn't go about loving everybody. She had the more glory to
confer upon the one. Oh, harmoniously matched, high-removed pair! Oh,
hymeneal crowning of tenderness and truth!... Aurora in a kind of awe
wondered what elevated things those pale rose lips of the bride would
say to the bridegroom when, the turmoil of festivity ended, they were in
nuptial solitude. Impossible to imagine! It must be something altogether
beyond other brides; and his words must make those of all other lovers
sound common and poor.

                   *       *       *       *       *

When the arch of flowers was empty and the happy pair had left for the
train, Lily and Gerald went strolling about the garden hand in hand.

Lily had been a bridesmaid, Gerald an usher. Both were in the fine
apparel of their parts; thoughts of weddings hummed in both of their
heads.

"Well, Lily," said the young man idly, in their walk between odorous
lines of wall-flowers and heliotrope, "I suppose you too will soon be
getting married."

"Oh, no!" Lily shook her head. "There is nobody I could marry."

"Why, I thought, Lily," he said, "that you were going to marry me!"

"No, Gerald," she replied promptly, but with gentleness and regret, so
as not to hurt his feelings.

"I might come and live with you," she added, after a second, "and keep
house for you. A cottage in the country, with beehives and ducks and a
little donkey.... Gerald, do you know about Sir William Wallace?"

Though a chasm appeared to divide this subject from the last, Gerald
shrewdly supposed a connection between them.

"Very little. You tell me."

"You haven't read 'The Scottish Chiefs'? I took it without permission
and kept it out of Fräulein's sight. It grows light early now, you know,
and I read it for hours before getting up. Then whenever I could, I read
it in the daytime. And after they had left me at night, I read it with
the pink candles of my birthday cake. I cried so much that when I
finished I was ill with a fever and had to be kept in bed for three
days."

"Why, when was this?"

"Two weeks ago."

"My poor little Lily, how came I not to be told of it? And you sent me
such a beautiful remembrance when I was ill!--Well, Lily, I know now why
you won't take me. I'm not much like Sir William Wallace, that's a fact.
I might grow like him in courage and prowess, perhaps, to please you,
but I know that I should never be beautiful in kilts. It shall be as you
say, dear. We'll be brother and sister instead. And now tell me more
about this book, these Scottish.... Lily, do you see Mrs. Hawthorne on
the doorstep? Do you gather that the signs she is making are meant for
us? We came up together and I think she may wish to say she is ready to
go, and will give me a lift back to town...."

                   *       *       *       *       *

"We came up together!" With great frequency in these days Gerald was
going somewhere with Mrs. Hawthorne, not alone with her, but making one
of four in an amiable party. Sometimes it was his fate to make
conversation by the hour with Estelle, while Doctor Tom monopolized
Aurora; on the other hand, he sometimes would succeed in getting his
fingers among Occasion's hair, and secure Aurora for his share, while
Dr. Tom was apportioned with the slenderer charmer. But the behavior of
all was civilized and urbane, and if a thorn pricked or nettle burned,
the sufferer concealed his pain and spoiled nobody's fun.

Gerald would in reality have preferred to stay away, almost as much as
Estelle and possibly Doctor Tom would have preferred him to do so. But
just there the incalculable, the ungovernable, in human nature came into
play. A golden thread, a mere hair, strong as a steel cable, drew him to
the place where he could expect to find no comfort, and had no object to
accomplish except just to be there, with his eyebrows one higher than
the other.

Either Estelle liked to annoy him, or she was unfortunate in doing it
without malice.

"Don't they make a noble-looking couple?" she asked him, gazing at
Aurora and Tom outlined side by side against the light of the window.

"Yes," he felt obliged to say, and followed it quickly, without apology
for the indiscretion of the question: "Are they going to marry?"

"That remains to be seen," she said in a way which made one desire to
set the dog on her. "I cherish the hope. May I offer you another
cigarette?"

He sometimes remained scandalously late in the evening after dining, in
spite of--oh, by so much!--knowing better. He would wait, with an
artist's beautiful air of time-forgetfulness, for Dr. Tom to get up to
go. He would instantly, as if remembering himself, get up to go, too,
and walk with the doctor as far as his hotel, they talking together like
men with respect for each other's brains, and appreciation of each
other's character and company, no subject of contention in the world.

Gerald pushed courtesy so far as to go with the doctor, by themselves,
on certain visits to hospitals, to certain games of pallone, certain
monasteries which ladies are not permitted to enter, Aurora rejoicing in
the opportunities to "get good and acquainted" which she saw these two
dear friends of hers take.

                   *       *       *       *       *

After the drive back from the wedding, Gerald resisted Aurora's
suggestion that he enter the house with them and remain to dine. This he
did with well-masked resentfulness. As it was not Dr. Bewick's last
evening, but the evening before his last, Gerald did not see that
delicacy strictly demanded his sacrifice. But Estelle had without so
many compliments informed him that he was not to accept. She had
particular reasons, she darkly enlightened him, for the request.

So, with a paltry excuse, he jumped out of the carriage before it
reached the gate, and stood looking after it, holding his hat--the
glossy _tuba_ which Giovanna had with her elbow stroked and stroked
the right way of the silk, when she laid out her signorino's outfit for
the wedding.

Earlier than usual after dinner Estelle retired, "to write up her
diary," she said. Tom was left to have with Aurora that conversation
which Estelle had besought him to have, and of which by a significant
motion of the face she had reminded him before leaving the room. He came
to the point very soon, the sooner to get it over.

"Nell," he said, and, leaning back, with one arm flung along the top of
the sofa, the other offering to his lips a thick cigar, waited long
enough for her to wonder what was coming, "you spend too much money."

Without shadow of attempt at evasion, she said:

"Tom, I do."

"You've got to retrench, girl. You've got to be more careful."

"Yes, I suppose I've got to."

"Let's be practical. How are you going to do it?"

"I don't know, Tom. It's so easy to spend and so hard to hold on to your
money! If any one had told me a year ago I could get rid of as much
money in one year as I have done, I shouldn't have known how I could do
it without opening the window and throwing it out."

"Well, I'm glad you don't deny a bent toward extravagance."

"I don't deny anything that means I spend a lot of money. I have more
sense. The facts are there."

"You've already broken into your capital, haven't you?"

"Did Hattie tell you that or did you guess? It's true, I have; but--"
she tried to place the harm done in a harmless light--"it isn't so bad
but that if I saved for a little while I could make it up again."

"If! True; but are you going to, Nell? That's the question."

"Oh, Tom, I never ought to have been given any money if I was to hold on
to it!" Aurora almost groaned. "I didn't know at first. I was pleased as
Punch. I lay awake nights just to gloat and feel grand. I tell
_you_, I meant to hold on to it! I tell _you_, it wasn't going
to get away from me after that good fight we made for it! But--" the
effect of a mental groan was repeated--"the whole thing isn't as I
thought it would be, not a bit."

She stopped, and while she tried to coordinate her ideas, Dr. Tom
quietly waited for explanation or illustration of her meaning.

"I don't like money, there's the whole of it!" she gave him the sum of
her attempt in one cast.

Dr. Tom continued to wait, smoking.

"In fact, I hate it."

Dr. Tom continued to wait, without interrupting, or trying to help her
disentangle her thought, of which he had in truth no inkling.

"I hate it, and I love it, both. That's truer, I suppose. But I can't be
at rest with it."

"Never fear, girl,"--his tone was humorous,--"you'll get used to it.
Just from watching you, I should have fancied you were pretty well used
to it already."

"When I was a child it was just the same way with candy," she went on
with her own train of thought, not minding his; "I loved it--and gobbled
it right up. Some of the girls made theirs last and last. I ate mine at
once. And it wasn't only because I was a pig with no self-control. I
wanted to have done with it and go back to a sensible life. With this
money I have the same feeling--and then another feeling that I sort of
can't account for, as if I wanted to get rid of it because there was
something wrong in me having it."

"That money? You sure earned it!" he came out vigorously. "Don't be a
goose, Nell."

"I wasn't thinking of what you think. But I'm afraid I am a goose, Tom,
an awful goose, and I'm ashamed of it. I somehow can't feel it
right--there!--to have more than the rest. Come right down to it, I feel
mean in having something the rest haven't got, and keeping it from them,
like a nasty fat boy stuffing pie with a lot of hungry ragamuffins
looking on. I know it isn't good common sense, or how could rich people
be so all right and calm in their minds as they are, and have
everybody's respect? Rich people are all right, I've always sort of
looked up to them, with their advantages and things. I haven't a bit of
fault to find. But Tom, I suppose the amount of it is I was born poor
and I go on having the feelings of the poor. If any one asks me for
anything and appears to need it, I've got to give it or feel too mean to
live. Me, Nell, who was poor myself for so long, how would I look
hardening my heart against any one who came and wanted to borrow? I'd be
ashamed to look them in the eye."

"With that view of it, of course I can see why your money wouldn't last
long."

"Oh, I'm extravagant besides, I'll own to that; that's the _real_
trouble. I want to buy everything that takes my eye, I want to make
everything run smooth, like on greased wheels, and to have all the faces
around me look pleased, and everybody liking me. I love the feeling of
luxury and festivity, and oh, I just love a grand good time! That's what
the money was given to me for, wasn't it, so that I could have a grand
good time? But when I've indulged myself, Tom, I wouldn't have the face,
if I had the heart, to say no to anybody that came along and wanted me
to indulge them, too. Now, I don't want you to go thinking this is
generosity, Tom, or a good heart, or that I have any sneaking idea in my
own bosom that it's anything of the sort. I'd be a
regular--low-down--soggy--sinful sowbug, I'd be too dirt-mean to live,
if I pretended it was that. When I was poor I never was generous; I
never thought of it. I worked hard for what I got; and was in the same
boat exactly as the rest; I was entitled to the little bit I'd worked
for. But now it's different. It's like I'd won the big prize in the
lottery. I can't be stingy with it and not blush. I can't sit there like
a swollen wood-tick and be rich all by myself."

"All right, Nell; all right. It's a perfectly understandable way of
looking at it, if it is rather far-fetched. But good-by to the
hard-earned thousands. You won't have a smitch of them left."

"Good-by, then, and good riddance!" cried Aurora violently, almost
pettishly. "I don't really like them, anyhow. It's too easy just to
write your name on a check. At first I thought I was living in a
fairy-tale; but once you've got used to it, it doesn't compare with the
fun you get the old-fashioned way, working hard for a thing, and
planning, and going to price it, and saving, and finally getting it, and
that proud! People who haven't been poor simply don't know. Why, that
one poor little silver bangle I had when I was fifteen did more to give
me pure joy than any of the beautiful things I've bought this whole last
year. I'm sorry if it seems ungrateful to my bloated bank-account, but
it's true. Another thing, Tom. I was brought up to work. I won't say I
liked it. I don't think many people who've got to work do like it. But
since I gave it up, nothing I've found has really filled its place to
give me an appetite and the feeling I'd a right to a good time. To sit
back and let others work while you fan your face--I can't help it, I
feel a sort of disgrace in it. I know better, it's just the way I
_feel_. I know all the while that's the way the world was planned,
some to be rich and some to be poor--Think how rich King Solomon was!
And your dear father!--some to work and some not, with changes round
about once in a while, like in my case, and crosses and trials and
temptations belonging to every state, and the love of God and a quiet
heart possible in every state. And I've always had such respect for
moneyed people and their refined ways.... But if you want me to start in
now and do differently from what I've been doing, I tell you truly, I
don't know how I'm going to do it, Tom. I'd rather not have the money at
all."

"You won't have it, Nell, dear. You've only to keep on, and you won't
have it."

"All right. Then I'll go back to work and never happier in my life. I'm
strong and able, I've got years of work in me. And if you think I've
grown so devoted to all these frills that I couldn't give them up,
you'll see!"

"Of course I haven't the faintest right to control your use of your
money--"

"But of course you have, Tom,"--her tone changed at once, and was
eagerly humble,--"every right. You can take it away from me any moment
you please. Who has a right, I should like to know, if not you?"

"Well, then, Nell, I'm going to make a suggestion. What you have said
shows me that simple advice would be of no use in this case. Don't
think, girl, that I don't get at your way of seeing the matter. If I
appear cold toward it, if I don't seem to sympathize, it's because the
logical results would land you in a hole from which I'd feel a call by
and by to try to pull you out. See?--As a promise to keep inside of your
income would apparently embitter life to you, I won't ask for it, merely
suggesting the fitness of trying to observe such a restriction. Even as
regards your power to throw it away, there'll be a lot more of it to
throw if you respect your capital. However, the money is yours, to do
exactly what you please with, but this I ask: empower me to turn some
part of it into an annuity, unalienable and modestly sufficient."

"An annuity? What's that?"

"A sum of money so fixed that you receive the interest as long as you
live and have no power over the sum itself. It's not yours to use, to
transfer or yet to bequeath. In your case the one safe investment, the
single way I see to keep you out of the poorhouse."

"Do you say so! All right, Tom; do what you think best. But see here.
Whatever you arrange for me that way, you've got to arrange for Hattie,
too, or it wouldn't be fair. I won't think of it unless you'll do the
same for both. If I hadn't a penny left in the world, you know the
Carvers would take me in in a minute. Then if you do it, don't you see,"
she brought in slyly, "when I've spent my money, there'll always be
Hattie's for me to fall back on. Don't let her know you're doing it,
Tom, but fix it."

"All right. Two comfortable little annuities, enough to be independent
on, and be taken care of if you're sick."

"That's it, Tom. Then everybody's mind will be set at rest. And this I
promise: I'll try to be a good girl."

That subject being dropped, there was silence for a minute or two, while
Tom thoughtfully smoked.

Aurora's face was a living rose with the excitement of their discussion.
She put her hands to her cheeks to feel how they burned, then turned to
Tom to laugh with him over it. The pink of her face enhanced the
blueness of her eyes. It was not unusual for persons sitting near
Aurora, women as well as men, to feel a sudden desire to squeeze her in
their arms and tell her how sweet she was. Tom found himself saying a
thing he had taken a solemn engagement with himself not to say.

"I had hoped"--his utterance was slow and heavy--"to find a different
solution to the difficulty."

Her face questioned him, and at once looked troubled.

"I was going to try to take over all your difficulties and bundle them
up with my own; but," he continued, after a moment, with force, "I'm not
going to do it."

"That's right, Tom," she came out eagerly, without pretending not to
understand. "If I know what you mean--don't do it! Oh, I'm so grateful,
I can't tell you, that you've made up your mind that way. Because, dear
Tom, whatever you wanted me to do, seems to me I'd have to do it. I
don't see how I could say no to anything you asked me. It would break my
heart, I guess, if I had to hold out against a real wish of yours. I
couldn't do it. All the same, I know we wouldn't make just the happiest
kind of couple--'cause why, we're too like brother and sister, Tom. It
would be unnatural. I feel toward you, Tom, just like an own, own
sister--not those mean old things, Idell and Cora, who are your
sisters--but I feel toward you as I would to my own brother Charlie.
There's nothing I wouldn't do for you. But if I had to marry you,
there'd be something about it--well, I don't know. I can't explain.
Haven't you seen how there are things that are perfect for one use and
no good at all for another? I'm a pretty good nurse, ain't I, Tom? But
what would I be as a bareback circus-rider?"

"We aren't going to talk about it, Nell. I told you I had given it up.
But," he went on after a heavy moment, unable entirely to subjugate his
humanity--"but I wish now I had asked you before you left home."

She was too oppressed with misery to speak at once, so he amplified.

"But it seemed rather more--I don't want to call it by any such big word
as chivalrous,--it seemed rather whiter not to urge it, when
circumstances might have seemed to lay a compulsion on you. Then it
seemed better to let all the talk, the unpleasantness, in Denver die
down first. Then, too, I wanted you to see the world; I liked the
thought of you having your fling. But," he reiterated, "I can't help
wishing I had followed my instinct and asked you before I let you go.
Tell the truth, Nell. Wouldn't you have had me then?"

"I suppose, Tom, that I should have you now if you asked me. But then or
now," she brought in quickly, "it would be a mistake. I couldn't love
you more dearly, Tom, than I do, good big brother that you've been. Dear
me, all we've been through together! Then all the fun we've had! We
couldn't change to something different without all being spoiled. You
don't seem to know, but I do, that I'm not the woman for you in that
way. We're too much alike, Tom. What you want is a little dainty woman,
delicate, quick, bright-minded, something, to find an example near at
hand, like Hattie Carver. A big fellow like you wants someone to cherish
and protect. How would any one go to work protecting and cherishing a
little darling big as a moose!"

"I might have known"--Doctor Tom made his reflections aloud,--"that a
good big husky man wouldn't have a chance with a good big husky girl
while a sickly, sad-eyed, spindle-shanked son of a gun was hanging
round!"

"There's nothing in that, I should think you'd know," said Aurora,
quickly. "I like him, of course, and I like to have him round. Haven't
you found him good company yourself? But that's just friendship.
Friendship like between a fish and a bird, and no more prospect of a
different ending than that. If that's troubling you, you can set your
mind at rest, Tom."

"It's none of my business, anyhow," said the doctor, brusquely, flinging
down his cigar and walking away from her to the mantelpiece, where he
stood looking up at her portrait, but thinking of that other portrait of
her, with its wizardry and strange truth, which she had not failed to
show him.

"Tom, if I thought you could feel bitter, I should die, that's all,"
cried Aurora, jumping up and following. "You've been such a friend to
me! Do you suppose I forget? Never was there such a friend. And you
know, now don't you, Tom, that I think the whole, whole world of you?"
Arms were clasped around his neck,--large arms, solid and polished as
marble, but tender as mother birds; a head was pressed hard against his
shoulder. "There never could anybody take your place with me. You'd only
have to call over land and sea, and I'd come flying to serve you, to
nurse you in sickness or help you in sorrow. Give me a good hug, Tom.
Give me a good kiss, and say you know I mean every word!--Now, isn't
this better than to see me across the table at breakfast, with my hair
in curlers, and to have me snooping round being jealous of your female
patients?"

"No, it's not better; but it's pretty good."

"Do you mean to tell me, Tom, that you'd be any more likely to cut my
name in a tree, or kiss my stolen glove, than I'd be to wish on the
first star you loved me or write poetry about my feelin's?"

"Nell, I'm not telling; the subject is closed. But any time there's
anything I can do for you, anything in this world, Nell, you know you've
only got to sing out."

"You'll marry, Tom dear, by and by."

"Very well. If you say so, I'll marry. But what I said will hold good if
I do. It will hold good, too, if you marry, Nell. Oh, let's talk about
something else."

The change of subject could hardly be effected in less time than it
takes to reverse engines; a minute or two passed before Aurora inquired
concerning the number of hours' travel between Florence and Liverpool,
then about his steamer, his stateroom and the exact time of his
starting.

"Nine o'clock in the evening. I see, so as to have daylight for the
Alps. You'll dine here of course and we'll take you to the station."

He judged it more prudent to dine at his hotel and meet them afterwards
at the station near train-time.

"Then--" sighed Aurora, sorrowfully, "this is our last evening! For I
heard you and the consul planning for to-morrow evening together, and he
to read you some chapters of his book. A compliment, Tom. He's never
offered to read _us_ any of it. I'm only sorry the idea didn't
ripen sooner, so that we needn't be robbed of your very last evening. We
must make the most of our time, then. Suppose we go into the garden,
Tom, and walk across the street to the river--I don't have to put
anything on for just that step. It's so pretty, looking upstream at the
bridges, and across at the hills your pa was so fond of. Wasn't the
Judge just crazy about Florence! For the longest time after I came I
couldn't see why, but I'm beginning."




CHAPTER XX


A tired look overspread Estelle's face, when, returning home after
seeing Dr. Bewick off on his way to Paris, they found Gerald waiting.

She said to herself, in tempestuous inward irritation, that it was
inconceivable a young man so well up in the ways of the world shouldn't
know any better.

It could not be said that Estelle did not like Gerald Fane. Considered
by himself, she did like him, much more, she believed, than he liked
her. His odd distinction, too subtle and complex to describe, aroused in
her a vague hunger of the mind. But considered in relation to Aurora, he
"was on her nerves," she said.

"That he shouldn't know any better--" she mentally scolded, behind her
tired look, "than to obtrude himself the very first minute after Doctor
Tom's departure!"

But Gerald was not thinking he showed a horrid want of tact. The other
way, rather. He saw himself as the intimate old friend who comes to call
right after the funeral, and by his presence console a little, and
brighten, the bereaved.

Aurora's red eyes smote him at once. Aurora was still in tearful mood.
The sense not only of her dear friend going, but going with a secret
weight on his heart that it had been in her power to prevent, made her
own heart miserably heavy, too. For the moment Tom counted for her more
than all else, and she reproached herself that when he had done so much
for her she had not been willing to do such an ordinary little thing for
him as to marry him; and she reproached herself because it was a relief,
despite her great wish to be loyal, to think they should not meet again
until all that was well in the past.

Estelle hoped to hear her friend say to Gerald something to the effect
that she was in no mood for a social call; but Aurora welcomed the
visitor with unaffected warmth and sat down in her hat to talk with him.
So Estelle said primly that it was late, and she was tired; if they
would excuse her, she would go to bed.

Aurora talked about Tom and nothing but Tom. Sweetly, sighfully, she
spoke, as more than once before, of those many things he had done for
her, but spoke of them this evening more amply; his care of her, a
penniless patient, in that hospital where she woke up after a space of
unconsciousness; his unremitting kindness when she lived in his house
and took care of his father, the dear old judge, who was sick three long
years before he died; the proof of goodness more remarkable still which
he gave after that.

A tremulous hope flickered up in Gerald that she would go on and tell
him about the latter, perhaps filling in some of the lacunæ which her
history had for him. Much had come out in their many hours of talk, but
he had found her circumspect with regard to certain parts of her life,
and had never put a question. In one so frank, her avoidance appeared a
result of dislike to remembering those unmentioned links in the chain of
events.

But this evening again she stopped short of telling him what he would
have liked to know--how Bewick was connected with her wealth. For it had
come to her from no second husband: she had not been twice married.

She broke off with the words, "Oh, some time I'll tell you the whole
story. I don't feel like it now. It always makes me so mad!"

If Aurora had been pledged to Bewick, thought Gerald, the most natural
thing would have been to tell him of it this evening. In her expatiating
upon all she owed to Bewick, Gerald felt a wish to explain how it was
that without being engaged to him she could commit the impropriety of
publicly weeping over his departure.

It seemed to Gerald rather late in the day for him to seek an excuse to
call at the Hermitage; yet on the afternoon following Dr. Bewick's
departure he sought for one--one having reference to Estelle. He took
with him a propitiatory little volume containing translations of
well-known poems by one Amiel. Estelle was regarded as being immensely
interested in French; she daily translated themes back and forth from
her own language into that of Molière. These singularly neat and exact
productions of Amiel's should delight--and disarm her.

Gerald did not dislike Estelle, far from it. He did justice to her as a
good, true-hearted, self-improving American. Taken by herself, he felt
for her decided regard; but taken in connection with Aurora he would
sometimes have liked delicately to lift her between finger and thumb and
drop her into a well.

When he entered the red-and-green room, the very least bit timidly, with
his book in his hand, he perceived almost at once that something unusual
was in the air, and the shades of feeling between himself and Estelle
became for the moment of no importance.

Nothing was said at first of the cause for Aurora's air of repressed
excitement, as she knit on a pink and white baby-jacket, or the cloudy
annoyance puckering Estelle's brow as she stitched on her silk tapestry.
The ladies might merely have been quarrelling, thought the visitor, and
made himself as far as he could a soothing third, chatting with Estelle
about Amiel and with Aurora about young Mrs. Sebastian, whose baby was
to rejoice in the little garment half-finished between her hands.

"Gerald," Aurora interrupted him in the middle of a sentence, letting
her hands and work drop in her lap, "something so queer and unpleasant
has happened!"

He raised both eyebrows in solicitous participation, and mutely
questioned.

"It's about Charlie Hunt. I never would have imagined--you wouldn't
either."

"My imagination, dear friend, is more far-reaching in some ways than
yours," he quickly corrected her, "and has had more practice than yours
in ways of unpleasantness. But do tell me what it is that has happened."

"Charlie Hunt! Charlie Hunt!" she repeated, like one unable to make
herself believe a thing. "Charlie Hunt to turn nasty like that from one
day to the next!"

"To turn----"

"He was here to dinner just two weeks ago and perfectly all right. We
had a nice, long chat together on the sofa. But he didn't make his
party-call quite as soon as he usually does, so when I saw him at
Brenda's wedding I thought of course he'd come up and tell me how busy
he'd been or some other taradiddle. But he didn't come near me. I was
sort of surprised,--still, there were so many people there that he knew,
and we didn't stay quite to the end, you remember. I didn't even think
enough about it to mention it to Estelle. Well, this forenoon I went to
the bank, and when I'd got my money, I happened to catch sight of
Charlie, in the side-room, you know, where his desk is. I thought I'd
like to speak to him. He's always wanted me to ask for him when I went
to the bank, and I've done it more than once, and we've had five
minutes' chat. I was just going to tease him a little bit about coming
to see me so seldom nowadays, when he used to come so often, and ask
about the lady in the case. There really is one, I guess. Italo told me.
So I asked the old boy--you know the one I mean, the old servant of the
bank, who's always there, to tell Mr. Hunt that Mrs. Hawthorne would
like to speak with him, and then I took a seat, and in a minute in came
Charlie, with just his usual look.

"Now, I want to tell you that I've never had one unpleasant word with
Charlie Hunt; I've always liked him real well. I put down my foot
against letting him run me and my house, but there never was a word said
about it. I balked, but I didn't kick. All along I've been just as nice
to him as I know how, except just one moment, when I stuck a little pin
into him the night of the _veglione_, not supposing that he'd ever
know who did it.

"Well, I was sitting there at the table with the newspapers, and he came
and stood near, without taking a chair, as if he hadn't much time to
spare. I began to talk and joke about his cutting me dead at the
wedding, and he listened and talked back in a common-enough way, only I
noticed that he once or twice called me Mrs. Barton instead of Mrs.
Hawthorne. Now I must go back and tell you that some time ago when I was
at the bank he casually asked me if I knew of any Mrs. Helen Barton in
Florence, and he showed me two letters in the same handwriting, one
addressed to the English bank, and the other to the American bank,
Florence, that had been there at Hunt & Landini's for some time, and no
one had called for and they didn't know what to do with. Now, the
instant my eye lit on those letters I knew who'd written them, what was
in them, and who they were meant for. All letters for Estelle and me,
you know, are first sent to Estelle's house in East Boston, to be
forwarded to us wherever we might be in Europe; but that letter had
escaped. That letter was from a queer kind of sour, unsuccessful woman
called Iona Allen, who boarded once at the same house with me on
Springfield Street,--the languishing kind of critter that I never could
stand, who hadn't the gumption of a half-drowned chicken, who'd never
stuck to anything or put any elbow-grease into the work on hand, and
whined all the time, and was looking out for some one to support her. I
guessed she'd heard of my money and was writing me a sweet letter of
congratulations, along with a hard-luck story. I'd have liked to get
hold of her letter, but didn't exactly see how I could. I said to
Charlie, 'Let me take it; perhaps I can find the one it's meant for
among my acquaintances.' But he didn't seem to think that could be done;
so there the matter dropped. I didn't care much. Iona Allen can look for
some one nearer home to support her.

"Well, to go back. When Charlie Hunt had called me Mrs. Barton for the
third time I realized from his way of doing it that it wasn't a slip of
the tongue, and I stopped him short and said:

"'What makes you call me Mrs. Barton all of a sudden?'"

"'It's your name, isn't it?' he said, with a queer look.

"'No,' I came right out strong and bold. And I wasn't lying either. It
isn't my name. I don't really know what my name is. It's Hawthorne as
much as it's anything. Jim changed his name half a dozen times, and the
name he married me under I found out wasn't his real name.

"Charlie Hunt stood there a moment as if thinking it over, looking at me
with the meanest grin; then he said with that hateful, sarcastic look of
a person who thinks he's being smart in getting back at you:

"'Is that as true,' he said, 'as that you never indulged in carnival
humor masked as a crow?' Then I knew he'd somehow got on to the truth
about that night at the _veglione_. But I wasn't going to give it
away.

"'You know what you're driving at better than I do,' I said. And then I
said: 'What's it all about? What's your game?' And he said, as if I'd
been a common swindler that he'd found out:

"'What's yours?'

"Then I felt myself get mad.

"'You're a mean little pest,' I said, but between my teeth, and not so
that any one but he could hear me. And 'You're an evil-minded little
scalawag,' I said. 'You certainly don't know me if you think I've done
anything in this world to be ashamed of. Go ahead,' I said; 'do what you
please. Don't for one single instant think that I'm afraid of you or
that you can do me any harm.' And I left him standing there, with his
grin, and flounced out. But what do you think of it, Gerald? Why should
Charlie Hunt behave like that to me?"

"I could judge better if I knew what you said to him at the
_veglione_."

"It wasn't very bad. It might provoke him for a minute to know that it
was I who said it, but it oughtn't to make him mad enough to bite. I
went up to him, and I said close to his ear, in my good English:

"'You amusing little match-maker,' I said, 'what do you hope to get from
your dusky friend marrying that _absard_ American? How much do you
know about her?' I said. 'Are you even sure she's as rich as she seems?'
Then he said, polite but stiff:

"'You have the advantage of me, madam, in knowing what you're talking
about. Pray go on with your tasteful pleasantries,' he said; 'I'm
thinking I've heard your voice before.' Upon which I shut my mouth and
dusted down the opera-house on Italo's arm. I was crazy that evening, I
guess, with the crowd and excitement and all. When I get to training, I
can't resist the impulse; I don't know where to stop. But that wasn't
enough to make him want to stick a knife in me, was it? It was only fun.
It was true. He had seemed to be trying to manage me so's I'd take a
fancy to Landini, and I couldn't for the life of me see what it mattered
to him."

"I tell Aurora," came in Estelle, "that a little joke like that would
rankle terribly in any but a real goodnatured man."

"My dear Aurora," said Gerald, excited and darkly flushed, "your little
joke would not have had to contain a sting nearly as sharp to rouse
against you such vanity as Hunt's, unless, let me add, there were some
counterweight of self-interest to keep him back. It is known that
Charlie has only some parts and habits of a human being, not all. One
almost, in pure justice, cannot blame him. But scorn him--oh, as for
that!... He could be with you day after day, and take all you would
give, and at the end of a year feel no tie; he could hear you slandered,
and not take your defence; he could make a joke at your expense, if one
came into his mind that he thought sufficiently witty, and never have a
sense of meanness! He would have had nothing to overcome. He would only
learn better if he perceived some loss of consideration, and consequent
advantage to himself. That would make him more cautious, but not make
him more aware. And you cannot call him wicked any more than upon any
occasion you could call him good. But he's damnable!"

Consuming anger lighted up Gerald's face, his voice trembled with
intensity of feeling, his vehemence now and then by jerks lifted his
heels off the floor. "He is not properly a man at all," he went on to
characterize his old schoolmate; "he is just an insect _en grand_.
He satisfies his instincts precisely as an insectivorous insect
does--the rest are there to furnish something to his life. Nothing else,
he knows nothing outside. Now that you have offended him he probably
won't do you any great harm. He's not a devil, and the world he lives in
does not tolerate anything very black. He'd injure himself in trying to
injure you. But he'll do you what harm he easily and safely can. He's
nothing big, he could do nothing big, he hasn't a passion in him. He's
like this: from the moment he had ceased to get any good of frequenting
your house, even if you had not done the smallest thing to vex him, he
would pass on a bit of gossip harmful to you for the simple glory of
appearing for one moment a little better informed than the rest. No more
than that. He would be capable of that; he wouldn't even have to hate
you. For Charlie Hunt, as Leslie once perspicaciously said--Charlie Hunt
has no real inside!"

Both women sat staring at Gerald, impressed by his heat. When he
stopped, they continued for a minute in blank silence, revolving his
words and readjusting their estimates, while their eyes traveled up and
down, up and down the room, drawn after his figure that wrathily paced
the floor.

"How do you suppose he found out about the black crow? For I'm perfectly
sure he didn't know me at the time," said Aurora presently.

"That might easily enough happen in some roundabout way," said Estelle,
"as long as Italo and Clotilde both knew it. They might let the cat out
of the bag without intending to. He talks so much. Never knew such a
talker. But what I want to know is how he knew your name was Barton."

"I've told you what I think. He's heard you call me Nell. Tom, too,
called me Nell. That may have given him the hint. Then he simply opened
Iona Allen's letter and read it. Something was in it, no doubt, that
enabled him to put two and two together. Perhaps the name Bewick. Iona
would have heard of that. She would write to say now I'd climbed out of
poverty and hard work she knew I wouldn't mind lending a hand to an old
friend not so fortunate. Something like that. She'd be sure to whine and
beg. And Charlie Hunt, little bunch of meanness! would imagine he could
hold over me the fact that I was poor once and what he would think low
in the scale, because he thought I'd be ashamed of it. But no such
thing. If I changed my name coming here, it wasn't on any such account
as that. I'm gladder than ever now that I told Mrs. Foss all about it. I
did, Gerald, quite soon after we first came, and she said, though it was
in a way a mistake, she didn't see any real harm in it. As long as I'd
begun that way, she said, better not make a sensation by changing back
or saying anything about it. She thought my reasons were very natural.
It wasn't as if I were misleading anybody, or anybody were losing money
by me. I'd have told you too, Gerald, in a minute, as far as wanting
just to conceal anything goes. But Gerald and I"--she seemed to place
the matter before an invisible judge and jury--"never talk together of
ugly things, do we, Gerald? He's more delicate-minded by a good deal
than I am. With him particularly, though we've been such intimate
friends, I shrank from it. There's not much poetry about me, I know
that, but there'd be even less if I had to have it known all I've been
through. And since the first of our association we've always lived in a
sweet sort of world, haven't we, Gerald? I'd be ready, just the same, to
tell you the whole story any moment you wanted to hear...."

At Gerald's swift instinctive gesture, she went on without further
considering the proposition she had made. "As I said before, I don't
know what my own real front-door name is. I was born Goodwin. I married
Barton, but Barton wasn't Jim's real name. Aurora Hawthorne is what I
called myself when we were young ones and played ladies, Hat and I. I
came over here to cut loose from all the bothers that had made the last
year in Denver a nightmare. I didn't want to be connected with that
dirty mess any more in anybody's mind or my own. I wanted it to be like
taking a bath and starting new, feeling clean. Then, if I was Aurora
Hawthorne, Hattie had to be Estelle Madison, which was her name in our
old play-days. Neither of us thought of anything when we planned it but
its being a grand lark. And at first, in hotels, what did it matter? But
since we've been here and had friends, we've felt sorry more than once,
because it seemed like telling a lie. And then we were afraid of things
that might come up--just like this that has, in fact. But there wasn't
anything to do about it. Because if we confessed now most anybody would
think our reason for changing names must have been something
disgraceful, just as it happens if a person who kills another by
accident goes and hides the corpse, everybody takes it for granted it
was murder. So, if Charlie Hunt tells--"

"I'm not nearly as much afraid of his telling that you are here under an
assumed name," said Estelle, "as that you were the black crow, and it
getting to the ears of Antonia and Co."

"Well, what could they do?"

"Spoil Florence for us pretty thoroughly, I'm afraid, Nell."

"Oh, nonsense!" cried Aurora, but after a moment added in a tone of
lessened assurance, "Bother!" and after another moment burst forth, with
one hand clapped to her curly front hair: "To think that Tom was here
yesterday, and this had to happen to-day, when he's half-way to Paris! I
wish he hadn't gone. I wish I had him here to back me up."

"Why don't you telegraph for him?" suggested Estelle, eagerly.

"Oh, no, I wouldn't do that,"--Aurora's vehemence subsided,--"it's not
important enough for that."

"My dear Aurora," said Gerald, stopping in front of her, his whole
person expressing hurt and remonstrance little short of indignation, "if
your wishing for Doctor Bewick signifies that you do not feel you have
friends near you on whose attachment you can count, surely you do wrong
to some of us!"

Though his tone scolded Aurora sharply for her lack of faith, Estelle's
ear caught a trembling edge to his voice expressive of deep feeling.
Estelle had the good sense to see that Gerald must inevitably desire to
make more exposition of his allegiance, and the good feeling to know
that this could be done better if she were not present. Gerald, with his
little peace-offering, was at the moment in favor with Estelle. His
explicitness, his righteous violence, his entire adequacy on the subject
of Charlie Hunt, had charmed her. She also wanted Aurora to have any
comfort the hour might afford. She on the spot feigned to understand
Busteretto's pawing of her dress as an expression of desire to go into
the garden and see the little sparrows. She swept him up from the floor
with one hand and, tucking him under her arm, slipped out of the room.

Gerald stood grasping his elbows. He had a look like that of some man,
known so far as a harmless retiring burgher, about to make a public
confession which will change all, bringing his head perhaps to the
block; or the look of a man on the verge of a precipice, still half
resisting the desire to jump, yet knowing that he will jump, nothing can
save him from it; the look of a man, in fine, pregnant with intention,
but walking in a dream.

There was silence for a minute after Estelle left the room. Then Gerald
said very stiffly, very formally:

"If you would do me the honor, dearest Aurora, the very great honor, of
consenting to take my name, the right I should have to defend you would
be--would be--part of my great happiness."

Aurora stared at him. Beneath the frank investigation of her eyes his
own dropped in modesty and insuperable embarrassment.

There was another silence before he added:

"I would try very much to make you happy."

Aurora repressed the first words that came to her lips,--and set aside
the next ones that rose in her mind to say. Silence again reigned for a
moment. Then, with the serious face, almost invisibly rippling, that
betokened in her a secret and successful fight against laughter, she
said in what she called her good English, faintly reminiscent of
Antonia's:

"I am aware, my dear Gerald, of the honor, the very great honor, you do
me. I thank you--for coming up to the scratch like a little man. But the
feeling I have that I could never be _warthy_ of so much honor
deceydes me to declane. Gerald," she went on, discarding her English,
"don't say another word! You dear, dear boy! The things you want to
defend me against don't amount to a row of pins when all I've got to do
if it comes to the pinch is pack my grip and clear out. Thank you all
the same, you pet, for your kindness. Don't think of it again. I am sort
of glad, though, you've got that proposal out of your system. Now we can
go back to a sensible life."




CHAPTER XXI


Aurora, of the excellent three-times-a-day appetite, Aurora of the good
sound slumbers, picked at her food and slept brokenly for part of a week
at that period, such was her impatience at the dragging length of time,
the emptiness of time, undiversified and unenhanced by the presence in
her house of any man devoted to her. No odor of tobacco smoke in the
air, no cane in the corner; Tom on his way to America, Gerald hurt or
cross or both. But, the ladies agreed, when Aurora had told Estelle the
latest about Gerald, her refusal could not possibly occasion a cessation
of relations, since his offer, chivalrous and unpremeditated, had been
at most a cute and endearing exhibition of character. His sensitiveness
could not be long recovering, and everything would be as before.

Aurora had been half prepared for his staying away all Saturday; but
having been justified in that, she the more confidently looked for him
on Sunday. It is simply incredible, as almost everybody has felt at
least once in his life, how long the hours can be when you are waiting
for something.

At the end of a singularly unprofitable day, Aurora sat in the red and
green room with all the windows open to the sweet airs and odors of May,
and no lamp lighted that might attract night-moths, or, worse, the
thirsty, ferocious Florentine _zanzara_. She just sat, not doing a
thing. Estelle after a while left her, to retire to her own quarters,
close the windows and make a light.

Aurora watched the dark blue velvet sky over Bellosguardo, and thought.

A tinkling of mandolins, a thrumming of guitars, informed her of
street-singers stationed under her windows. A tenor voice rose in the
song she was so fond of, _La Luna Nova_, mingling at the end of the
verse with other male voices that repeated the second half of it. It
sounded infinitely sweet out in the warm spring night.

After _La Luna Nova_ they sang _Fra i rami_, _fulgida_,
and _Vedi_, _che bianca Luna_, and _Dormi pure_, all
things she particularly liked. The voices struck her as being nearer
than the garden railing; she thought the singers must have found the
carriage gate open and slipped in without noise. She bent forth a
little, and as she could not see them imagined them standing among the
shrubs. She propped her elbows on the window-rail and listened, grateful
for this bath of sweetness to her spirit after the day's profound ennui.

Estelle came softly into the dark room and joined her; they leaned side
by side.

_Mi sono innamorato d'una stella_, _Sognai_, _Io
t'amerò_, one sweet and sentimental song succeeded the other.

Clotilde had entered too, on tiptoe, and stood listening, just behind
the others.

"It is a serenade," she whispered. "It is a compliment."

A serenade!... Aurora thrilled with a pleasant surmise. There was only
one person in Florence of whom she could conceive as offering her the
compliment of a serenade. She listened with a new keenness of pleasure.

After the concert had prolonged itself through some dozen pieces--

"You must invite them to enter," whispered Clotilde, presumably versed
in the ceremonial of such adventures, "and offer them something for
their tired throats, a little wine...."

"Oh, you think we ought...?"

"But yes, it would be courtesy."

"Go you, then, Clotilde, and show them in and order up the wine. We'll
be down in a minute."

As they entered the dining-room, Clotilde burst into a peal of delighted
laughter at the well-managed surprise, while Italo hastened forward to
take Aurora's hand and bow over it half way to the floor.

It was within Aurora's breast as if in the dark one had clasped as she
thought a sweetheart, to find when the light came that her arms were
entwined around the dancing-master, or the tailor. But only for an
instant. She was really touched and charmed. She became more and more
eloquent in expressing delight.

The singers were presented to her individually, dark-eyed and smiling
young Italians of the people, who knew no language but their own
Florentine and spoke to Aurora in that, not expecting to be understood
or to understand, except through smiles.

Clotilde, busy, bustling, poured for them wine which she knew to be
excellent, and there was a bright half hour for all. Italo wore an air
relating him to all the successful heroes that have been, to Cæsar as
well as to Paganini, who also had a great nose. To manage a thing well
in small justifies pride, giving earnest as it does that a large thing,
such as a siege, or a symphony, would by the same capacity be managed
equally well. Italo that night carried his head like one who respects
the size of his nose. He was quick, he was witty, he was amiable. He had
about him something a little splendid, even, due to his feeling of
having been splendid--or nothing--in his tribute to the patroness from
whose horn of plenty so much had overflowed into his hands.

Aurora beckoned Clotilde aside to say in her ear, "Will you run upstairs
like a good girl and get my porte-monnaie?... Would it be all right, do
you think?"

Clotilde made the face and gesture of one in doubt, and if anything
averse, but not insuperably. The bounty of royalty, or of rich
Americans, is not felt as alms.

"Go, then," whispered Aurora, "and get the purse that you'll find under
some silk stockings in my second drawer, the little purse with gold in
it."

One of the petty difficulties of life to Aurora since she had lived in
foreign lands had been the so often arising necessity to think quickly
what it would be proper to give. As the amount of the gratuity did not
much matter to her she had felt a desperate wish often for the power of
divination, by which to know what would be expected. On some occasions
it had seemed to Aurora that it would be more delicate not to offer
money; but experience had taught her that if she offered enough no
offense would be taken. These singers were all poor young fellows,
Clotilde had told her, musically gifted, but plying ordinary trades.
This one was a wood-carver, that one a gilder. They had been taught by
her brother the fine songs composing that magnificent serenade.

The gold pieces distributed among them with words and smiles of thanks
were received with such charming manners that the giver--for the first
moment faintly embarrassed--was soon set at her ease. When it came to
the promoter and leader of the serenade, Aurora felt no more
uncertainty. Money had so often gone from her hand to his. She with
generous ease, as if passing a box of candy to children, tendered him
some three or four times as much as to the others.

But there Italo showed what he was made of. He took a step backward and
stood with soldierly rigidity, one hand held with the palm toward her,
like a shield and defense against her intention to belittle him and his
token of homage by a reward. His look said, and said dramatically, that
her thought of him did him wrong; it said that he was ashamed of her for
not knowing better. Yet there was no real dissatisfaction in it, since
her want of delicacy permitted the exhibition of his delicacy, and
afforded him the opportunity to make that gesture....

Her hand dropped, her whole being drooped and confusedly apologized.
Then the hand that had interposed between them, uncompromising as a hot
flat-iron, changed outline and pointed at a half faded rose pinned on
her breast. Quickly she unfastened it and held it toward the
outstretched hand. It was taken, it was held to Italo's lips while he
made one of those deep bows that bent him double; then the stem of the
rose was pulled through his buttonhole and secured with a pin from
Aurora's dress. The great little man shook his locks and went on to the
next subject.

Aurora was impressed. She was pleased with Italo in a new way, and said
to herself that she must make him some rich little, but unobjectionable
little, gift to remember this occasion by, a gold pencil, or a pearl
scarf-pin, or a cigar case to be proud of.

She went to bed with her head full of serenade and serenaders, her head
all lighted up inside with the glory of having been the object of a
tribute so flattering. When after reading her chapter she blew out the
candle, she knew that to-night she should sleep, and make up for the two
bad nights just passed. If Gerald were so foolish as to feel annoyed and
wish to stay away, he would just have to feel annoyed and stay away
until he felt different. His mood couldn't help wearing off in time. But
it did seem to her extraordinary that even now, after knowing him so
long, she could tell so little of the workings of Gerald's mind. All, of
course, because he was--such a considerable part of him--a foreigner.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Aurora was one of those healthy sleepers who have no care to guard
themselves against the morning light. Her windows stood open, her bed
was protected from winged intruders by a veil of white netting gathered
at the top into the great overshadowing coronet.

She was in the fine midst of those sweetest slumbers that come after a
pearly wash of dawn has cleaned sky and hilltops from the last
smoke-stain of the night, when a sense of some one else in the room
startled her awake. There stood near the door of her dressing-room an
unknown female, wearing intricate gold ear-pendants and a dingy cotton
dress without any collar.

"_Chi è voi?_" inquired Aurora, lifting her head.

"I am the Ildegonda," answered the woman, whose smile and everything
about her apologized, and deprecated displeasure. She must be the
kitchen-maid, fancied Aurora, engaged by Clotilde, and not supposed to
show her nose above the subterranean province of the kitchen.

"There is the _signorino_ down in the garden," Ildegonda acquitted
herself of the charge laid upon her by the donor of the silver franc
still rejoicing her folded fingers, "who says if you will have the
amiability to place yourself one moment at the window he would desire to
say a word to you."

The _signorino_. That had become the informal title by which the
servants announced a guest who was let in so very frequently. Aurora
understood _finestra_, window, and _dire una parola_, to say a
word, and then that the signorino was _giù in giardino_.

"All right." Aurora nodded to the Ildegonda, inviting her by a motion of
the hand to go away again.

Aurora rose and softly closed the door which, when open, made an avenue
for sound from her room to Estelle's. She slipped her arms into a
sky-blue dressing-gown, and with a heart spilling over with playful joy,
eyes spilling over with childish laughter, went to look out of the
window, the one farthest from Estelle's side of the house.

"Good morning! Good morning!" came on the instant from the waiting,
upturned face below. "Forgive me for rousing you so early," was said in
a voice subdued so as to reach, if possible, no other ears, "but you
promised you would go with me one day to Vallombrosa, and one has to
start early, for it is far. Will you come?"

"Will I come? Will I come? Wait and see! Got your horses and carriage?"

"Standing at the gate. How long will it take you to get ready?"

"Oh, I'll hurry like anything."

    "'Wash, dress, be brief in praying.
    Few beads are best when once we go a Maying.'"

"I won't pray, I won't put on beads. But, see here, what about what they
call in this country my collation? You know I'm a gump on an empty
stomach."

"We'll have our coffee on the road, at a little inn-table out of doors
in the sunrise."

"Fine! By-by. See you again in about twenty minutes."

Every fiber composing Aurora twittered with a distinct and separate glee
while she hurried through her toilet, a little breathless, a little
distracted, and mortally afraid Estelle would hear and come to ask
questions. From her wardrobe she drew the things best suited to the day
and her humor: a white India silk all softly spotted with appleblossoms,
of which she had said when she considered acquiring it that it was too
light-minded for her age and size, but yet, vaulting over those
objections, had bought and had made up according to its own merits and
not hers; a white straw hat with truncated steeple crown, the fashion of
that year, small brim faced with moss-green velvet, bunch of green
ostrich-tips, right at the front, held in place by band and buckle.

Her parasol was a thing of endless lace ruffles, her wrap a thing of
vanity.

She passed out through the dressing-room, she crept down the stairs,
laughing at her own remark that it was awfully like an elopement. The
house was not yet astir; only the Ildegonda sweeping out the kitchen,
and old Achille out in the garden picking early insects off his plants.

At the door she greeted Gerald with all the joy of meeting again a
playmate. He had on the right playmate's face. She gave him both hands,
and he clasped them to the elbow, shaking them with satisfactory fire,
while their eyes laughed a common recognition of the adventure as a
lark.

At the gate waited the open carriage, a city-square cabriolet, but clean
and in repair, drawn by two strong little brown horses, with rosettes
and feathers in their jingling bridles, ribbons in their whisking
braided tails, and driven by a brown young man of twenty, with a
feather, too, in his hat, which he wore aslant and crushed down over his
right ear. To make the excursion pleasanter to himself, he was by
permission taking along a companion of his own age, who occupied the low
seat beside his elevated one, and in contrast with his vividness, the
pride of life expressed by his cracking whip, the artistically singular
sounds he made in his throat to encourage the horses, was a washed-out
personality, good at most to do the jumping off and on, to readjust
harness, to investigate the brake, or to offer alms from the lady in the
carriage to the old man breaking stones in the roadside dust.

They were off; they sped through the gate of the Holy Cross, the fresh
young horses making excellent time. Out of the city, along the river,
across it, past hamlets, past villas, past churches and
_camposanti_, past vineyards and _poderi_ and peasants'
dwellings....

It seemed to Aurora that never had there been such a day, so fresh and
unstained and perfect, a day inspiring such gladness in being. The sense
of that priceless boon, the freedom of a whole long day together, elated
her with a joy that knew only one shadow, and that unremarked for the
first half of it--the shortness of the longest earthly day.

Now the horses slowed in their pace; the ascent had begun among the
shady chestnut-trees. The driver's friend scrambled down and plodded
alongside the horses; the driver himself descended and walked, cheering
on his beasts with noises that nearly killed Aurora, she declared.

As it took them between four and five hours to reach their destination,
and as Aurora chattered all the time, with little intervals of talk by
Gerald, to report their conversation is unfeasible. Aurora, wanting in
all that varied knowledge which those who are fond of reading get from
books, had yet a lot to say that some unprejudiced ears found worth
while. The dwellers upon earth and their ways had for her an immense and
piercing interest. In vain had circumstances circumscribed her early
life: neighbors, Sunday-school teacher, minister, village drunkard,
fourth of July orator, had furnished comedy for her every day. The human
happenings falling within her ken became good stories in their passage
through a mind quick in its perception of inconsequence, faulty logic,
pretense, all that constitutes the funny side of things. Aurora's love
of the funny story amounted to a fault. Aurora was not always above
promoting laughter by narratives no subtler than a poke in your ribs.
Aurora, in the vein of funny stories, could upon occasion be
Falstaffian. But only one half of humanity had a chance to find out the
latter. When in company of the other sex, by instinct and upbringing
alike she minded her Ps and Qs.

Gerald said that Aurora on that day regaled him with over a thousand
comic anecdotes, this being the expression of her frolicsome and
exuberant mood. He furnished her with a few to add to her store, Italian
ones, proving that he was not wholly without some share of her gift in
that line; but he now and then politely stopped her flow and led her to
admire with him the beauties of the road, natural or architectural, a
distant glimpse, a form, a fragrance. He would explain things to her,
impart scraps of pertinent history, which she would appear trying to
appreciate and imprint on her memory.

As he leaned back in the carriage at her side, bathed in the wavering
green and gold light of the chestnut-trees among which the road wended,
a recent description of him, which she had said over to herself, to
qualify it by mitigating adjectives, seemed to her to have become
altogether unfair. Gerald's face, beneath the brim of his pliable white
straw, bent down over the eyes and turned up at the back, Italian style,
did not look sickly. On the contrary, it looked better and stronger
since his illness; he even had a little color. He was not sad-eyed,
either, that she could see, though his eyes must always be the
thoughtful kind. As for spindle-shanked, he filled his loose woolen
clothes better than before.

He had made himself modestly fine for the day to be spent in company of
the fair: he had on a necktie which, if expressive of mood, declared his
outlook on life to be cheerfuller: it was a vibrant tone of violet that
accorded agreeably with his gray suit. A rose-geranium leaf and a stem
or two of rusty-gold _gaggia_, odors that he loved, occupied at his
buttonhole the place of those decorations which distinguished elderly
gentlemen are sometimes envied for, and which--it is a commonplace--are
not worthy to be exchanged for the flower Youth sticks at his coat to
aid him to charm.

It grew very warm; the way, though pleasant, was beginning to seem long
when they arrived. The old monastery, now a school of forestry; the
Cross of Savoy, where pilgrims rest and dine, gleamed white in the
cloudless noon, amid the century-old trees that long ago, before Dante's
time even, earned for the spot its beautiful name of Vallombrosa,
Umbrageous Vale.

Aurora was by this time starving again, and Gerald knew the pleasure of
purveying to the demands of a stomach as untroubled by any back-thought
relating to its functioning as that of a big bloomy goddess seated
before a meal of ambrosia. He suggested that she accompany her artichoke
omelet, her cutlet with the sauce of anchovy, parsley and mustard, by a
little red wine. But she would not, even to be companionable. She could
never bring herself to touch wine, any more than to use powder on her
cheeks, which in truth did not need it, or a pencil to her eyebrows,
which would have looked better for that accentuation.

In a state of physical and mental well-being such as can be bought only
by an early rising, an inconsiderable breakfast, a long ride in the
warmth of Tuscan mid-May, an abundant and repairing repast, taken, amid
sweet conventual coolness, in company which leaves nothing to wish for
beyond it, they went forth to spend the time that must be granted the
horses for rest before the return to Florence.

[Illustration: "Come, let us reason together, Aurora"]

After loitering in the inn garden, they went to look at the memorials
relating to Saint John Gualberto, founder of the monastery. She listened
to the picturesque history of his life, death, and miracles, but was not
to be rendered sober-minded by any such thing. In the midst of Gerald's
instructive account of the holy abbot's endeavors to purify the monastic
orders from the stain of simony, her hand clutched his, and doing a
delicate cake-walk she compelled him along with her, announcing, "The
Hornet and the Bumble-bee went walking hand in hand!" Fancying this
prank not to have been without success, she next performed an improvised
_pas seul_ illustrative of the text, "The mountains shall skip like
little lambs!"

There was artfulness, as has been suspected, in Aurora's frequent jests
upon her size. Their gross exaggeration was fondly counted upon to make
her appear sylphlike by comparison with the images she raised.

To relieve the seriousness of Short Lessons on Great Subjects she
presently invented interrupting them at intervals to introduce Gerald
and herself to some rock or tree or mountain, as if it had been a poor
person standing by neglected. "Jack Sprat," she said, "and The Fat!" "A
busted cream-puff," she said, "and a drink of water!" Further, "Dino and
Retta!" Finally, with imagination running dry, "Gerry and Rory!"

Yes, by such little jokes--what Leslie called Jokes of the First
Category, Aurora sought to enliven the hour for Gerald. He never omitted
to laugh, without being able to enter enough into her fun to join her in
the same species. An incapacity. Still, there was no disguising the
basking enjoyment possessing him, his love of her gaiety, if not at all
moments of the form it took.

Finding it entrancing up there, they decided not to start for home till
the last minute possible. A limit was set to the time they might linger
by the necessity for some degree of daylight in making the descent. From
the edge of the curving road the mountain dropped away without the
protection of any parapet.

When they had found their ideal place in which to sit on the warm earth
in the shade and look off over valleys and mountains into azure space,
Aurora at last consented to be still. She became dreamy, appeared
sweetly fatigued, and was for a long time mute.

Though the mere quality of her voice still had power to stir Gerald's
heart to pleasure, yet to be silent with Aurora was pleasure of a
different order from hearing her voice of rough velvet recount
preposterous events or propound humorous riddles.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It looked from where they sat as if the land had at some time been
fluid, and been tossing, green and purple, in a majestic storm, when
some great word of command had fixed it in the midst of motion, and the
waves became Apennines; then in an hour of peculiar affection for that
plot of the earth a faultless artist from the skies had been set to
oversee nature and man at their work there, and prevent the intrusion of
one note not in harmony with his most distinguished dream.

"If Italy should perish and all else remain," said Gerald, whose eyes
had been feasting on beauties of line and color such as he conceived
were not to be found outside this land of his idolatry, "the world would
be irreparably impoverished. If all the world besides should perish and
Italy remain, the world could still boast of infinite riches."

Aurora gave a nod of at least partial assent. She was growing accustomed
to the thought that Italy was the fairest of countries and Florence the
fairest of Italian cities. She found herself beginning to like this
creed.

In the quiet that descended upon them the native piety in each groped
for some acknowledgment to make of his consciousness at the moment of
unusual blessing. In him it took the form of a renewal, more devoted
perhaps than ever, of the determination to maintain an uncompromising
purity of aim in his work. The incomparable scene stimulated within him
a sense of power to produce things rivaling what lay under his eyes; he,
atom, rivaling his Maker in the creation of beauty. In her it was a
determination of greater loyalty toward the Provider of undeservedly
happy days to man, whose heart is wicked from his birth, as her mother
had been wont to tell her.

Hearing her hum very softly to herself, he asked what she sang. She
said, her mother's favorite hymn, and gave it aloud, with the words:

    Father, what e'er of earthly bliss
    Thy sovereign will denies,
    Accepted at Thy throne of grace
    Let this petition rise:

    Give me a calm, a thankful heart,
    From every murmur free;
    The blessings of Thy grace impart
    And make me live to Thee.

Like one with an impeccable ear, but with small esteem for his gifts as
a singer, Gerald murmured the melody after her, just audibly, to show he
cared to have his share in her memories.

But mainly the two of them thought of each other.

Gerald, regarding Aurora's hands as they lay in her
lap--innocent-looking, loyal-looking, rather large hands, which during
his illness he had liked to think were Madonna hands, but when seen in
health they were not, really--was amazed to remember the day when their
making passes over his face had filled him with perverse repugnance.

And Aurora, remembering the first time she had seen Gerald and nicknamed
him Stickly-prickly, while feeling him more than three thousand miles
removed from her, was amazed....

So they sat, two little dots, two trembling threads, against the screen
of the universe and eternity, and their two selves, under the spell of a
world-old enchantment, loomed so large to each that the universal and
the eternal were to them two little dots, two threads.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Gerald saw how the afternoon was mellowing toward sunset.... And the
important things of the day had not been touched upon.

Our hero had traversed great spaces in the region of sentiment during
the two days allowed the Hermitage to stand or crumble without him. The
first of them had been spent far from it, even as Aurora supposed, for
the sake of letting the impression of having been laughed at wear off a
little. Already for some time before that forced climax Gerald had been
haunted by the feeling that he ought to offer himself to Aurora, as it
were to regularize his status in her house. After hanging around as he
had been doing, one might almost say that good manners demanded it. Her
fashion, on that evening in the garden, of treating the idea that he
could be enamoured of her assured him that she would refuse. He would
have done his duty, and they would continue to drift, he shutting his
eyes to the penalty awaiting his self-indulgence, the taxes of pain
rolling up for the hour when her necessary departure would involve the
uprooting of every last little flower in that wretched garden of his
heart. With such a mental pattern of the future he had gone to bed at
the end of the first day.

On the next morning something perhaps in deep dreams which he did not
remember, or in the happy manner of the new day lighting a scarlet
geranium on the terrace ledge, or simply perhaps the whisper of an
angel, had effected a change. A heart-throb, a stroke of magic, had so
lifted him up that over the top of the wall edging the road of life for
him he had seen a thrilling garden outstretched, smiling in the sun, a
sight that so enkindled him with the witchery of its promises that he
felt he should seek for a way into that garden till he found it; should,
if necessary, demolish the wall.

That day he went walking on the hills beyond Settignano, and the new
light, the intoxication, persisted--the vision of himself as Aurora's
lover. Why not? An escape from the past, a different adventure from all
prefigured in his dull expectations before.... In his theory of living
Gerald had always admitted the gallant advisability of burning ships.
There was room in his theory of living for just such a divergence from
design as he now meditated. When the call comes, summon it to never so
improbable places, the poet and artist obeys. He had gone to bed on the
second night with these thoughts and a plan for the morrow.

Now that morrow was wearing to an end and all the floating splendid
courageous thoughts and feelings, brave in the assurance, along with the
determination, of victory, must be somehow caught and compressed and
turned into the language--how poverty-stricken, how stale!--of a
proposal of marriage; even as a great variegated, gold-shot,
butterfly-tinted, cloud-light tissue of the Orient is drawn into a
colorless whipcord twist that it may pass through a little ring.

As he revolved in his mind what he should say to start with, Gerald saw
appropriateness for the first time in the methods of the historic Gaul,
who seized by her hair the charming creature whom he felt allied to him
by deep things, seated her on the horse before him, and rode away. But
what he would have liked so much the best would have been to lay his
head in Aurora's willing lap, embrace her knees tenderly, and have her
understand all without a word being spoken.

Now he cleared his throat, took a reasonable air, a tone almost of
banter, to say what, influenced by the long precedent of their converse
together, he could say only in that manner, covering up as best he could
the fact that his heart trembled and burned.

"Shall we resume our conversation of last Friday?" he asked, with a fine
imitation of the comradely ease which had marked all their intercourse
that day.

He was looking over the valley, as if still preoccupied with its beauty
rather than with her.

Thus misled, she did not guess right. She said:

"About Charlie, you mean? Just fancy, I haven't thought of him once all
day! Little varmint! Don't I wish I had the spanking of him! But I guess
it would lame my arm."

"Not about Charlie. I asked would you marry me, and you said you would
not. Will you to-day?"

"Not for a farm!" she answered, with emphasis equal to her
precipitation.

"Why not?" he asked, undisconcerted.

"Because."

"Come, let us reason together, Aurora." He changed position, arranging
himself on his elbow so as to be able to look at her. His eyes were
steady. "For a man to ask a woman to marry him is of course the greatest
piece of impertinence of which he could be guilty. But from such
impertinences, Auroretta, has been derived every beautiful thing that
has blessed our poor world from the beginning. No man is good enough for
any woman, let that stand for an axiom. But there again, Auroretta, it's
not according to merit that those rewards, gentle and beautiful ladies,
are dispensed. I have rather less to offer than any man in the world,
but I am bold because you, dear, are just the one to be blind."

"Oh, it's not _that_, of course," said Aurora, hurriedly.

"Don't suppose for a moment that I am troubled by the size of your
fortune or the size of my own. You haven't any money, dear. Others have
your money. I have almost to laugh at the splendid speed with which that
open granary of yours will be eaten clean by all the birds coming to
pick one seed at a time."

"You needn't laugh, then. Some of it is going to be pinned to me solid,
so that nothing can get it away from me, not even I myself."

"I am sorry to hear it. The other was so complete. Well, if you had
nothing, I should still have just enough to keep us from hunger, though
perhaps not from cold in these dear old stone houses of Italy. And
you--I know you well enough to be sure of it--you are exactly the one to
learn how much there can be in life besides its luxuries. Since my
illness, too, Aurora, let me confide to you, there have been in me
reawakenings.... I have felt the beginning--I am speaking with reference
to my work,--I have felt intimations--No, it is too difficult to express
without seeming to boast, which is horribly unlucky. In short, I have
felt that I might do the turn still of forcing a careless generation to
pay attention."

"Oh, Gerald, how nice it is to have you say that!" she warmly rejoiced.
"I'm so glad to hear it!"

"Now tell me why it is you won't marry me. Stop, dear. Don't say because
you are not in love with me. I have difficulty in seeing how any one in
her right senses could be in love with me. It would be enough, dear,
that you should be to me as you were during those happy, happy days when
I was so beastly ill. You are so generous, it would be merely fulfilling
your nature. And I, upon my word, dear, would try to deserve it. I would
give you reason to be kind. I am not without scraps of honor--wholly; I
would do my best to make you happy."

"No,"--she shook her head decidedly,--"no, Gerry," she added, to take
the sharp edge off her refusal, "no, Gerry; Rory won't."

"You have only to lose by it, that is obvious, and I to gain, and
nothing could equal the indecency of insistence on my part; but I feel
that I am going to persist to the point of persecution. You are fond of
me, you know. I only dare to say you are fond of me because you have
said it yourself more than once. And you are always sincere, and I
wouldn't be likely to forget. Now, if you are fond of me,--very, very
fond, you have said repeatedly,--why do you refuse? I wouldn't be a bore
of a husband, I promise. I would leave you a great deal of liberty."

"No, Geraldino; no."

"You needn't tell me there's somebody else. I don't believe it. Though
you feel only fondness for me, I know that you are not in love with
anybody else. When one is in love, there is no room in life for such
warm and dear friendship as you have frankly shown me. It's that, after
all, which has given me courage."

"No, no; there's nobody else."

"Well, then, why can't you? Why won't you?"

"I--" She hesitated, as if to think. There was a silence. Then she asked
slowly, like one who finds some difficulty in laying her tongue on the
right words: "Do you remember all those things you said that evening in
the garden, the night you came in to meet Tom for the first time? How
you wouldn't for anything in the whole world let yourself get tangled up
again with caring for a person?"

"Perfectly. I could only picture it as meaning more of trouble and
unrest. But things change, dear. We change. There has taken place in me
since that, no matter for what reason, an increase of self-confidence
and confidence in fate such as turns men into nuisances or makes them
successful. In the last twenty-four hours particularly. Now, as I look
at the inconvenience of getting tangled up again with caring for a
person, I find I don't mean at all to suffer. I mean to bother you until
you say yes, and then to be happy. You could never wilfully torment me,
I know; you are incapable of it. Then, when you have graciously
consented to marry me, I feel as if I might build up my life on new
lines."

"I can't, Geraldino; I can't."

"You can't. So you have said. And I have asked you to tell me your
reasons, that I may combat them one by one."

"It's no use. We're too different."

"That we are different, thank God! is a reason for and not against."

"No, no; not when it's such a huge difference. We're like--a bird and a
fish."

"Don't call me a fish. I object."

"We don't think the same about hardly anything."

"But we feel alike on everything of importance."

"There's hardly a thing I do that's quite right as you see it. No, don't
take the trouble to contradict me; let me do the talking for a minute.
You're so critical and so conventional and so correct! No matter how
much you say you aren't, you _are_. And while we're like this I
don't have to care. I rather enjoy shocking you. And while I'm none of
your business, you don't have to care what I do or what I'm like. We can
have our fun and be awfully fond of each other, and it's all serene and
right. But if I were Mrs. Gerald Fane, all my faults and shortcomings,
my not knowing the things that everybody in your society knows, my not
having any elegant accomplishments, would show up so glaring that I
should know you must be mortified. You couldn't help it."

"Stop, dear! You enrage me. You put me beside myself. You are so
superficial. And dense. And you hold me up to myself in the features of
a beastly cad! I won't have it. For one thing, let me tell you that if I
were the Lord Ronald Macdonald of that song we've heard Miss Felixson
sing, and you were that canny lass Leezie Lindsay, I should know jolly
well that after I'd carried you off to the Hielands my bride and my
darling to be, it would be a very short time before Lady Ronald
Macdonald had all the airs and tricks of speech of my sisters and
cousins. That, however, is neither here nor there. Who wants you to be
different? Aurora, if you only knew yourself! Ceres, or Summer, or Peace
sitting among the wheat-sheaves, what would it matter that she had not
been educated at a fashionable boarding-school? Let her just breathe and
be,--beautiful, benign, and any man not utterly a fool will prefer to
lie at her knees, keeping still while her silence appeases and
reconciles him, to hearing the most brilliant conversation of a lady
novelist."

"You can talk beautifully, Gerald, that's one sure thing; but talk me
over you can't. Seems to me I should have to be crazy to forget all in a
moment what I've said over and over to myself, and drilled myself not to
lose sight of. After you asked me the other day, though I knew it was
just on the spur of the moment, I thought it all out in the night as
much as if it had been serious, and I saw what would be the one safe
course for little me. I mustn't; that's all there is to it. Everything
is wrong for it to turn out happy in the end. I'm terribly fond of you,
but I should be scared to death of you, simply scared to death, as a
husband. We're not the same kind. If I could forget it on my own
account, I have only to remember how it would strike Estelle. And
Estelle's got no end of horse sense. It's according to horse sense we
must act when it comes to settling the real things of life. I
expect"--she had the effect of turning a page or a corner; she dropped
from heights of argument to low plains--"I expect I shall be big as a
mountain by and by. I don't see any help for it. I starve myself, I
drink hot water, I take exercise,--nearly walk my legs off,--and the
next time I get weighed I've gained three pounds! What's the use? Then,
I'm older than you."

"Not at all. I'm older than the everlasting hills; you are the youngest
thing that lives."

"That's all right, but you were twenty-eight your last birthday, and I'm
thirty. I'm afraid my character's already pretty well fixed in its
present form. When it comes over me, for instance, to play the clown,
I've got to do it or burst. And you're naturally a tyrant, you know."

"I am. I am critical, carping, conventional, and a tyrant, everything
you say, but just because I am those things, you ought to be able to
see, dear Aurora--because I am those things and know it, they are the
things least to be feared in me. Do you suppose Marcus Aurelius was
really calm and philosophical? Because he, on the contrary, was anxious
and passionate, he wrote those maxims to try to live by. When you
_would_ go and be a negress, did I make a scene? I gnashed my teeth
and gnawed my knuckles, but when I saw you afterward, wasn't I decently
decent?"

"Yes, but you took to your bed. If I were Mrs. Gerald, and the Pope of
Rome sent for me to do Lew Dockstader for him and his cardinals, you
know you wouldn't let me go."

"You are wrong. I should make a point of it. I should only ask to be
permitted to retire into solitude until all the vulgar people had
stopped talking about it."

"Ah, you're a dear, funny boy; but put it out of your mind, Geraldino,
do, dear, when we're so happy as it is. Let's go on just as we've been
going; you know yourself that it's the wisest, and what really you would
prefer. If you've asked me to-day--mind, I don't say you _have_;
but if you have--to save my vanity and back up the proposal you didn't
really mean the other day,--because you're always such a gentleman;
you'd rather die than not behave like a gentleman,--let it go at that.
But if you should feel now that you've got to back up your declaration
that you're going to persist and follow this up, just ask me over again
every few days to show there's no unkind feeling, and I promise it will
be safe; I'll refuse you every time. It'll be our little standing joke.
For don't you go dreaming that I'm going to let go of you! You can call
me pudgy if I let you get away. I love you too dearly. Wasn't everything
all right and lovely until the other day when you came out with that
stilted speech, 'doing you the honor'? We'll take up again just where we
left off, and bimeby make fun of all this. You who've read all the books
ever written, don't you know of cases where two like us went on being
just friends, and taking comfort in each other on and on to the end of
the tale?"

"There have been examples, yes, a very few, and not on the whole
encouraging."

"You know we never thought of anything else until three days ago, and
were perfectly contented. Let's call all this in between a mistake, like
taking the wrong road and having to turn back to be where we were
before. Let's go back."

"Yes, let's go back. I won't bore you any more."

He had all in an instant changed to cool dryness. They would get no
further along with talk on this occasion, that was clear. And to clasp
her knees, laying his head on her lap, and penetrate her in silence with
the conviction that they belonged together in a manner that turned all
the sensible things she said into folly, could not be done outside the
world of dreams and fancies. He jumped to his feet.

"I meant, you know, let's go back to Florence. I'm afraid it's high
time. We ought to have daylight at least until we get to the foot of the
mountain."

"Cross, Geraldino?"

"Not at all."

"Good friends as ever?"

"Assuredly."

"Oh, I've had such a beautiful day!" she sighed, getting up by the help
of his two hands, and brushing down her dress. "I certainly do love to
be with you!"

With the inconsequence of a woman she wanted, in order to console him
for rejecting him, to make him sure she loved him deeply nevertheless;
and so she said, turning upon him eyes of sweetest, sincerest affection,
"I certainly do love to be with you!"

                   *       *       *       *       *

In the carriage they were silent, like people tired out by the long day,
talked out, and certain of each other's consent to be still.

The two young fellows on the box were quiet, too. The horses now needed
no encouragement to go; the scraping of the brake gave evidence rather
of the need to hold them back. The driver's friend, named appropriately
Pilade, sat hunched with chilly sleepiness; but Angelo, the driver, was
kept visibly alert by the responsibility of making a safe descent in the
fast-failing light. Owing to the dilatoriness of the _signori_ they
had been later in starting than was prudent.

When they emerged at last from the shadow of the chestnut-trees and the
brake blessedly was released, it was accomplished evening. The dome of
the firmament spread above them so wonderful for darkly luminous
serenity that the signori behind in the carriage arranged themselves to
contemplate it comfortably, with their feet on the forward bench, their
heads propped on the back of the seat.

Thus they passed through glimmering hamlets, between high walls of
orchards, past iron gates opening into cypress avenues with dim villas
at the other end, terraces of vine-garlanded olive-trees, all of a dark
silvery blue, and did not vouchsafe a look at anything but the inverted
cup of the nocturnal sky.

Even this they did not see more than in a secondary way, for the
interposing thoughts and images.

The eyes of both were wide, and in their fixity the lights of heaven
were glassed. The face of the one burned with a red spot on the
visibly-defined cheek-bone; the cheeks of the other were, for a marvel,
pale.

Aurora, uplifted on a great wonder and pride and illogical happiness,
was thinking of the days to come, the immediate to-morrows, rich in a
tenderness profounder still than that which had linked her before to the
companion staring at the stars beside her; she thought of how she should
through a wise firmness and God's help steer their course into ways of a
safer and longer happiness than that which he had tendered.

"It would seem rather unnecessary--" came from him through the
transparent darkness in what was to the young driver's ears a monotonous
bar of insignificant sound, "it would seem to me almost imbecile, to say
to you that I love you, when for months I have been hovering around you,
as must have been evident to the dullest, like the care-burthened
honey-fly, possessed with the fixed desire to hide his murmurs in the
rose. When for months I have been, in fact, like a dog with his nose on
your footprints, asking nothing but to lie down at your feet with his
muzzle on your shoe."

She impulsively felt for his hand, and pushed her own into it. "Don't
say another word, Gerald. I daresn't do what you wish, I just daresn't.
I'm plain scared to! And I'm such a fool that I'm nearer to it this
minute than I like to be by a long sight. I'm fond enough of you for
almost anything, and you know it, but I must keep my level head. It
can't be done--a greyhound tied down to a mudturtle. I know what I'm
like,--no disparagement meant, Mrs. Hawthorne,--and what you're like,
and I won't let myself forget. I'm looking out first of all for myself,
but I'm looking out for you, too, dear boy. Don't say any more about it
to-night, Gerald, please, with the stars shining like that, and the air
so sweet that all the fairy-tales you ever heard seem possible. I want
to keep solid earth under my feet."

Gerald was not so devoid of the right masculine spark as not to
recognize the moment for one of which advantage should be taken by any
creature capable of growing a mustache. The thing to be done was to put
his arms around her like a man, and lay his head on her shoulder like a
child, and treat as not existing the barriers which she described as
dividing them.

Often enough in his life Gerald had wished he might have been a
masterful man, capable of the like things. But already a vague sickness
of soul had succeeded his momentarily dominant mood. Distrust filled
him--of his own character, his aims, his talent, his health, and his
destiny. His dreams had but recently taken the form in which he had that
day expressed them; he had not grown into them. Under the depressing
effect of failure he was no more sure than she had professed to be that
the proposed union would not be a rash mistake. He saw the wisdom of a
return to his gray policy of wanting nothing, asking nothing. Heaviness
possessed him; he made no motion.

Signs of the nearing city came thicker and thicker; the street lamps
became frequent and consecutive. Aurora sat up and composed her
appearance. The lighted house-fronts threw back the skies to
inexpressible altitudes.

She continued aloud for Gerald to hear a conversation she had been
holding mentally:

"Estelle says we must go away somewhere for the summer, because it's
awfully hot down here in Florence, we're told. We're thinking of taking
some sort of place at the seashore for the bathing season. You'll be
coming down to visit us, won't you? Then by and by, when I've had pretty
near enough of the kind of life I'm leading, tell you what I'm thinking
I'll do. Give up the house I've got and take another, different, and fit
it up for a children's hospital, a small one, of course, to be within my
means, and run it myself, and do what I can of the nursing. I've been
thinking of it for some time as a good thing to do instead of spending
my money and nothing to show for it. It would be something to do for the
sake of little Dan, to make it so it wouldn't be the same as if he never
had passed through the world. Then I shall have my work just as you have
yours, Gerald. And so we'll live on, each so interested in all the other
does. And you'll come to see me, and I'll go to see you--chaperoned, if
you insist, though I understand a studio can be visited without
impropriety, and--"

"You can leave me out of your plans for the future. I am going away to
forget you."

"Oh, no, you're not. You're coming to see me to-morrow. Five o'clock at
the very latest, hear?"

"I'm afraid you will have to excuse me."

"You wouldn't break my heart like that for anything, Gerald Fane! You
wouldn't let the foolish doings of this day destroy all the months have
built up! You're not so mean. When I tell you it'll be all right and
just as it was before--"

But he stubbornly would not agree, and they quarreled, as so often, half
in play, half in real exasperation, each calling the other selfish.

But at her door, when he took her hands to thank her for the day she had
given him, he dropped quite naturally, "Until to-morrow, then," and she
entered her great white hall with a happy, shining face.

                   *       *       *       *       *

In the half-light of the solitary hall-lamp the white-and-gold door
between the curving halves of the stairway stood open on to the
blackness of the unlighted ball-room. At the threshold appeared Estelle,
and stood with folded arms until the servant who answered the bell had
been heard retreating down the back stairs. She came forward with a
tired, troubled, pallid, and severe face.

"Well, I'm glad you've got back!" she said, as much as to say that she
had given up looking for her. And as Aurora unexpectedly cast
mischievous, muscular arms around her and tried to squeeze the breath
out of her, she gasped amid spasms of resistance: "Stop! Don't try to
pacify me! I'm in no mood for fooling! I'm as cross with you as I can
be!"

"You little slate-pencil! You little lemon-drop, you!" said Aurora,
squeezing harder, then suddenly letting go.

"I'm in no mood to be funny, you--you county-fair prize punkin! I've
been worried half to death. Where've you been so long, 'way into the
night, long past eleven o'clock?"

"Didn't you find my note on the pin-cushion? That informed you where
I've been."

"I thought you must have met with an accident, to make you so terribly
late, or else made up your mind to go off with that young man for good
and all. Tell you the truth, I didn't quite know which I should prefer,
which would be better for you in the end."

"Do you mean to tell me you've been sitting here all day stewing and
fretting about that? Didn't you ever in your life go buggy-riding with a
feller, and did it always ends with the grand plunge? You know it
didn't. You know you could ride from Provincetown to Boston, with the
moon shining, too, and not even exchange a chaste salute."

"Nell, there's one thing I know, and it's that my scolding and warning
and beseeching will do exactly as much good as an old cow mooing with
her neck stretched over a stone wall. You know what I think. I've had
plenty of time for reflection, walking up and down the floor in there in
the dark; and long before you finally got home I'd made up my mind not
to be an idiot and make myself a nuisance trying to influence you. It's
your funeral. What you choose to do is none of my business. What I said
when you came in just escaped me.--Stand off and let me look at you."

While making the request, she herself drew off to get a more
comprehensive view of her friend.

Something of the sunshine, the mountain sweetness, the unpolluted
breezes and wide perspectives of the heights, the dreams of the starlit
homeward ride, the triumph in man's love, was shining forth from Aurora,
with her fresh sunburn, her untidied hair, and softly luminous eyes.
Estelle felt herself suddenly on the point of tears. But she stiffened.

"Well, you do look as if you'd had a good time, you crazy thing!" she
said dryly. "What made you put your best dress on if you were going to
sit round on the ground? You've got it all grass stains. Oh, Nell," she
melted, "while you've been off gallivanting, I've just about worried
myself sick over a paper Leslie left. I've been longing for you to get
back to see what you make of it."

"A paper? What do you mean?"

"A newspaper. Come on upstairs. I left it on the desk. Leslie called in
the forenoon, but I had gone out. Then she came again in the afternoon,
so I knew it must be something special. But I simply couldn't bring
myself to see her and let her know you'd gone off for the whole day with
Gerald Fane. So I got the maid to tell her we were both out. Everybody
does that over here. Anyhow, I went and stood on the terrace while the
maid was delivering my message. So Leslie went off, but she left this
Italian paper for the maid to give us. And, my dear,--now don't
faint,--there's a long piece in it about you."

"For goodness' sakes! About me? Why? Where?"

"There. It isn't marked, and I was the longest time trying to discover
why Leslie had left the paper. After I'd gone all over it hunting for a
marked passage, I thought it must be a mistake and that she'd simply
left it because she was tired of carrying it round, and the maid hadn't
understood. But going over it column by column, I at last saw the word
Hawthorne and those other names. '_Una Americana_'--'An
American'--the article is entitled. It looks to me, Nell, as if your
whole life's history might be printed there."

"For the land's sake! Now, who do you suppose can have done that? What
on earth would anybody want to--"

"I've been puzzling over it and puzzling over it till I'm about played
out trying to make sense of it, and my head aches like fury. Oh, never
mind my head! Now you've got back I don't care."

"And your French doesn't help you to translate it?"

"Yes, it does help--some. I can pick out lots of words, and here and
there a whole sentence; but what I can't get at is the spirit of the
whole, whether it's meant to be friendly or not."

"Have you tried with a dictionary? Where's the dictionary? Get it, and
we'll pick it out if it takes all night."

"Indeed, I wish I had a dictionary. Mine's French-English. I asked
Clotilde if she had an Italian-English or an Italian-French, and she
said yes, but at home. Isn't it provoking? I certainly wasn't going to
show this to her, and get her to translate it for me before I'd
consulted with you."

"Bother!" said Aurora, thoughtfully, with her eyes on the cryptic print.
Estelle sat close, examining the sheet over her shoulder. "_Elena_
means Helen, doesn't it? I guess it must, as it comes here before
Barton. They've got my old name. And there's Bewick--Bewick, and here's
Colorado. They've got the whole thing, fast enough. It's the doing of an
enemy; there can be no doubt of that."

"I know who you're thinking about."

"Charlie Hunt, of course. Scamp! Worm! Cockroach! Low down, ungrateful,
pop-eyed pig!" Nor did the reviling stop there. For the space of about
forty seconds Aurora was unpublishable.

"But how on earth did he get at it?" wondered Estelle.

"After he'd opened that letter of mine, he wrote to the amiable writer
thereof and asked for information."

"Honestly, Nell, I don't think he's had time."

"I guess he has--just time. The languishing Iona hurried for once. Well,
I don't care!" Aurora folded the paper tight and flung it from her.
"Enemies may do what they please; I've got friends. If everything comes
out as it really happened, I haven't anything to fear, except that it's
mighty unpleasant. It's only lies, and people believing them, that could
do me harm. I've got friends in Florence. Oh, not many true ones, I
don't suppose. It's paying my way that has made me popular, I'm not such
a gump as not to know that. But some true friends I've got, and their
backing will be my stay. One friend I've got--" Pride and a sudden
battle-light flashed in Aurora's eye. "One friend I've got, who if I
gave the word would kill Charlie Hunt for this, or put him in a fair way
to dying. I do believe, Hat, that Gerald Fane would call Charlie Hunt
out to fight a duel to punish him for a slur on me. Oh, he can fence
just as well as the Italians he was brought up with. I've seen the
fencing-swords in his studio. But"--she calmed down--"I wouldn't permit
that sort of thing. It's ridiculous. I don't believe in it."

Cooling to normal, she laughed, with a return to the light of reality.
"He doesn't believe in it, either, I shouldn't suppose."




CHAPTER XXII


Leslie, arriving early next day, read off the newspaper article, making
a free translation of it, as follows:

                   *       *       *       *       *

When a thing is too successful, it is seldom natural; and so when there
appeared in our city a _signora_, blond of hair, azure of eye, with
the complexion of delicate, luminous roses, red and white, whose name
was at once Aurora and _Albaspina_,--Hawthorne,--floral counterpart
of dawn, we should have had suspicions. That we had none does not
prevent our feeling no very great surprise when we learn that the bearer
of the poetic and more than appropriate name is called in sober truth
Elena Barton. The more beautiful name was adopted by a child acting out
its fairy-stories; it was remembered and re-adopted by a woman when she
wished to detach her life from a past which neither charity, fidelity,
nor devotion to a sacred duty had succeeded in keeping from sorrow and
the deadly aspersions of malignity.

The _gentilissima_ person of the irradiating smile, which, however
briefly seen, must be long remembered, whom we have grown accustomed
this winter to meeting in the salons where assembles all that is most
distinguished among foreigners, whose name we have grown accustomed to
finding foremost in every work of charity, has a title to our esteem far
beyond the ordinary member of an indolent and favored class. To
alleviate suffering has been the chosen work of those hands that
Florence also has found ever open and ready with their help. It was in
effect the extent of their beneficence which brought about the black
imbroglio from which Elena Barton chose to flee and take refuge in the
City of Flowers under the _soave_ and harmonious name by which we
know her.

Her life had been for several years devoted to the care of an old man
afflicted with a most malignant and terrible cancer in the face. She had
filled toward him so perfectly the part of a daughter that his gratitude
made her upon his death an equal sharer in his fortune with the children
of his blood. Thence the law-case Bewick _versus_ Barton, which for
a period filled the city of Denver in Colorado of the United States as
if with poisonous fumes. The literal daughters, two in number, who had
shown no filial love for the unfortunate old man, in trying to annul
their father's will, left nothing undone or unspoken that could help
their _turpe_, or evil, purpose, even attempting to prove that not
only had the devoted nurse been their father's _amante_--[You can
guess what that is, Aurora. They are much simpler here than we at home
about calling things by their names, and much more outspoken on all
subjects], but had likewise been the _amante_ of the son, sole
member of the family who supported her claim to the share of the fortune
appointed by the father. Justice in the event prevailed, but a tired and
broken woman emerged from the conflict. What to do to regain a little
of that pleasure in living which blackening calumnies and rodent
ill-will, even when not victorious, can destroy in the upright and
feeling nature? The imagination which had prompted in childhood the
acting out of fairy-stories here came into play: Leave behind the scene
of sorrows, take ship, and point the prow toward the land of orange and
myrtle, of golden marbles and wine-colored sunsets; change name, begin
again, do good under a beautiful appellation which the poor should learn
to love and speak in their prayers to the last of their days....

                   *       *       *       *       *

"The rest, Aurora dear, is pure flattery, which it becomes me not to
speak nor you to hear. I won't read it."

"Well, I never!" breathed Aurora. "Who did it?"

"We did it! My father and your Doctor Bewick and Carlo Guerra and I. We
did it to be before anybody else, set the worst that could be brought up
against you in a light that explains and justifies. We did our best to
fix the public mind and show it what it should think. You know what the
mind of the public is. We've hypnotized the beast, I hope; it has taken
its bent from us."

"But--"

"This was the way of it, my dear. The day after Brenda's wedding I was
at the Fontanas,--she was a Miss Andrews, you know, of
Indianapolis,--and there was Charlie, too, and there was likewise Madame
Sartorio, who is Colonel Fontana's niece by his first marriage. We were
talking in a little group when something, I forget what, was said about
you, Aurora. Charlie--for what reason would be hard to think, unless one
had a sharp scent for what goes on under one's nose--Charlie
interrupted, to introduce as a sort of parenthesis, 'Mrs. Hawthorne,
whose real name, by the way, is Helen Barton.' The others were naturally
taken aback, except Madame Sartorio, who could not quite disguise a
cat-smile. For a moment none of us knew what to say, and Charlie went
on, with his air of knowing such a lot more than anybody else--

"'Yes. It seems that all winter we have been warming in our bosom, so to
speak, the heroine of a _cause célèbre_ at a place called Colorado
in America.'"

"That was enough for me. I stopped him.

"'Don't say any more, Charlie. All I wish to know about Mrs. Hawthorne
is what she cares to tell me herself,' and I insisted that the
conversation should return to other things.

"When I got home I told mother, and she repeated to me what you, Aurora,
confided to her when we first knew you. We told father, and when Doctor
Bewick came that evening to say good-by we consulted, and here in this
newspaper you have the result, put into Italian journalese by Carlo
Guerra, whom we called in to aid us. He likes you so much, Aurora; did
you know it? He met you at Antonia's. So there you have the whole story.
I'm bitterly ashamed of Charlie, my dear, and I'm sorry about him, too.
One never looked upon him as a particularly fine fellow, still, one
liked him. He had never done anything that disqualified him for a sort
of liking, and we've all grown up together." Leslie wrinkled her
forehead in puzzlement. "It's curious, somehow, to think of him, who, we
have said so often, has no real inside, as being sufficiently under the
dominion of a passion to care to please his lady by offering up you, who
have, after all, been to him a source of a good many pleasures, with
your open house, invitations to dinner, and so on. I don't quite
understand it."

"Never mind about him!" Aurora flicked him aside. "I don't care. And you
say Tom helped. And he never told me, or wrote me a word about it. I had
a letter from him this morning. Well, well. You certainly did make a
good-sounding story of it, among you. And the main facts are true, far
as they go; I can't say they aren't. But, oh, my dear Leslie, there was
a lot more to it than that. I've got to tell you, so's not to feel like
a fraud. You're so sharp; you know me pretty well by this time, and I
guess you don't suppose in me any of those awfully 'fine feelin's' that
could make a blighted flower of me because, while innocent as a babe
unborn, I'd been dragged through the courts by wicked enemies. My
enemies were pretty wicked; I stick to that. Cora Bewick, off living
abroad studying some strange religion, while her kind old pa was dying
at home, and she never once coming near him till he was under ground;
Idell Friebus, never coming into his room except with her nose wrinkled
up with disgust at the smell of disinfectants--or disgust at him, it was
none too plain which. They made a fine pair of daughters. But when it
came to fighting over the will, the lawyers on the Bewick side gave out
just what it was that a perfectly noble woman would have done in my
place of the old man's nurse. And my lawyers would have it that
everything that didn't accord with that ideal simply must be kept dark,
or public feeling would go against us. It's that that made it so
nasty--pretending, and avoiding this, and keeping off the other. It
amounted to lying, no matter what they said. But they told me if I
didn't do as my counsel instructed me, the result would be the worst lie
of all. I should be believed guilty of just that undue influence I was
accused of, and lose the money into the bargain. So I had to hedge and
shuffle and mislead.... And me under oath to tell the truth! You needn't
wonder if I'm sick still at the thought of it, or wonder that I'd like
to forget it. The truth was I _did_ know beforehand the Judge meant
to leave me one fourth of his money, and I was tickled to death. I
gloried in it. I loved to imagine the rage it would throw his wicked
daughters in, and his mean little miserable son-in-law. I was glad,
besides, out and out, to think I should have the money. I plain wanted
it, I did. Maybe a real noble woman wouldn't have. Maybe it showed a
degraded nature. Well, that's the way it was. Sometimes I feel disposed
to be ashamed of it, but mostly I don't. For one thing, I felt then and
I feel now, I deserved that money by a long sight more than those
bad-hearted girls of his. I was a comfort to Judge Bewick. I won't say I
earned the money, it was too much: but there were some hours of my
tending him, poor soul, when it did seem to me a nurse came pretty near
earning anything the patient could afford to pay. All the same, I would
have done what I did for the old boy if he hadn't had a cent, I had so
much respect for him, as much as for my own father, and I felt I owed so
much to his son. Then about his son, the doctor. If Cora's old
nurse-girl, who was kept on in the house as a servant, though she was
past her usefulness, lied in court when she said she saw Tom and me
kissing at such an hour, in such a place, still, the truth was that I
had at different times kissed Tom. You can't tell why it seems all right
to you to kiss one man when it would seem a very queer thing to do to
kiss another. When Tom had been away for any length of time, I always
kissed him when he came back; it seemed natural to both of us. But there
in court I had to try to appear as if I never could have descended to
committing such an immoral act, as well as to give the impression that
if I'd known the old man had any notion of making me co-heir with his
own children I would have strained every nerve to stop it, called them
all in to help me curb him if necessary. Pshaw! the humbug of it turns
my stomach now. Leslie, my verdict is, you can't come through a law-suit
_clean_. I'd give a good deal to cut that page out of my life."

Aurora's eyes, filled with the shadows of the past, and her face, with
the dimples expunged, were to Leslie almost unfamiliar. Aurora,
oppressed in her moral nature, gave a glimpse of herself that would
change and enlarge the composite of her aspects carried in Leslie's
mind.

"There, stop thinking of it!" said Estelle. "You always work yourself up
so."

"The point of my coming bright and early like this," Leslie nimbly
managed a diversion, "was, as you have guessed, to catch you before you
could possibly go out. My mother desires you, dear ladies, to accompany
me back to lunch--a triumphal lunch, Aurora, to grace which she has
collected those special pillars of society whose countenance and support
ought to make you scornful of any little weed-like growth of gossip that
might sprout up from seed of Charlie's sowing. You know them all more or
less, having been associated with every one of them in some form of
beneficence. I might more accurately describe it: having donated largely
to each of their pet charities. It is not a very admirable world--"
Leslie's young face took that little air of knowing the world which
sometimes amused old gentlemen so much, "it is a selfish society, not
indisposed, or, I am afraid, altogether displeased, to believe evil of
its neighbor, and not always disinclined to turn and rend its favorites.
But it would be a pity, really, if you should have poured forth upon it
as you have done, Aurora, money and smiles, bouquets and banquets and
sunbeams, good-will and baby-socks and knitted afghans, and it did not
rise up when you are attacked and say, 'No. An exception has to be made
in this case. We have all been bought!'"

Aurora, who had been listening with expanded, gathering-in eyes, cheeks
flushing deeper and deeper, turned her head sharply away to try to keep
from falling or being seen two unaccountable tears half blinding her.

The sight of her, by infection, moistened the eyes of the other women.

Estelle sought a quick way out of the emotional silence.

"Nell," she said, albeit with cracked voice, "if we're going out to
lunch, I guess we ought to be dressing. Go along, child, put on your
best bib and tucker."

"Oh, my best bib and tucker!" wailed Aurora. "Sent to the cleaner's this
morning, all green stains at the back!"

                   *       *       *       *       *

If Leslie had not called it a triumphal lunch, it might not have
appeared so very different from any other women's lunch at the season of
roses. Leslie herself, though, found in it the flavor of old-fashioned
romance, just faintly platitudinous, in which poetic justice is done.
Mrs. Foss, the more simple-minded organizer of it, felt that she should
remember it as an occasion when she had risen to the level, placed the
right cards in the fist of destiny, and created an event worthy to take
rank at least with those little triumphs of good housewives at whose
home the president of their husband's company arrived one night unlocked
for and was entertained with brilliant credit.

To the heroine of the feast, no need to say it was an inexpressibly
exciting, grand, and memorable occasion. Aurora hardly knew herself, so
much the object of attention and graciousness. She was in the mood to
give half of her goods to the poor. After the hostess had risen and made
a little speech, Aurora, unexpectedly to herself, and as if under
inspiration, responded by a little speech of her own, composed on the
spot. It was drowned at the end by hand-clapping all around the table.
Aurora seemed to herself to be living in a fairy-story.

                   *       *       *       *       *

As it was after five o'clock when she reached home, she was sure she
would find Gerald waiting for her. She had the whole day long been
looking forward with a sweet agitation to the moment of being with him
and telling him all about it.

She was more disappointed than she remembered ever being, even as a
child, not to find him or any word from him. She did not allow it to
become later by more than half an hour before she scratched a line and
sent the coachman to his house with it.

The man came back with nothing but the barren information, received from
Giovanna, that the _signorino_ was absent, having gone to Leghorn.

"Well, here's a pretty howdydo!" thought Aurora, sore with surprise and
the smart of injury. "If every time I refuse him he's going off like
this to stay away for days and days, what am I going to do?"




CHAPTER XXIII


"If this is the way it was going to be, and I'd known it before, I'd
have kept better watch over my affections," said Aurora to herself,
reflecting upon Gerald in Leghorn, where he was bending his will
industriously, no doubt, to the work of forgetting her.

Beside the large sharp thorn of this thought, she was troubled by what
was a small, merely uncomfortable thorn: the knowledge of Gerald exposed
so closely to the influence of Vincent, that persuasive young man of
God, who bowed to images and believed in the Pope. At the end of every
wearisome day she gave thanks that for still another twenty-four hours
she had by grace of strength from on high been able to fight off the
temptation to write to Gerald.

This for nine days--the nine days it takes for a wonder to become a
commonplace or a scandal to lose its prominent place in conversation.
Then, in the way once sweetly habitual, there came a rapping at the
door, the entrance of a servant, and the announcement, "_C'è il
signorino_."

Aurora for a second either did not really grasp the import of the words
or did not trust her senses. She asked:

"What _signorino_? _Signorino_ What?"

"The _signorino_ who has come back," said the servant, unable on
the instant to recall the foreign name. And if he had felt interest in
the complexion of one so far removed from him as his mistress, he might
have seen her turn the hue of a classic sunrise.

On her way down the stairs Aurora rejected the idea of a tumultuous
reproachful greeting, such as, "Where have you been so long, you mean
thing?" Or of a cool and cutting one, such as, "You're quite a
stranger." She decided to behave like a nice person, and show respect
for her friend's freedom, after having so explicitly left it to him.

The Italians performing the service of the house arranged it according
to their own ideas of fitness, and on this warm afternoon the
drawing-room was in soft-colored twilight, the Persian blinds being
clasped, and their lower panels pushed out a very little so as to let in
a modicum of the whiteness of day.

Gerald stood, very collected, if a trifle pale, holding, like a proper
votary, a bouquet--starry handful of sweet white hedge-roses,--which he
offered as soon as Aurora entered, saying he had picked them for her
that morning in the country near Castel di Poggio.

The meeting, in Aurora's jubilant sense of it, went off beautifully. She
said in a pleasant, easy tone and her company English,

"So you've got back. It's awfully nice to see you again. How well you
are looking. I was sure a change would do you good."

And Gerald said yes, he had found the sea air tonic. He had been staying
with the Johns, Vincent's mother lived in Leghorn. He had worked a
little, made a few drawings. Digressing, he mentioned a trifling gift he
had brought her, and produced a small brass vessel, fitted with two
hinged lids, meant to contain grains of incense for the altar. He said
he had found it in an antiquarian's shop and thought she might care for
it to drop her rings into; he supposed she took them off at night. Its
shape seemed to him to possess more than common elegance.

Aurora called it adorable, and his giving it to her sweet. They talked
as if they had been making believe, for the benefit of an audience, to
be the most ordinary friends.

And each of them meanwhile, with heart and head gone slightly insane in
secret, was considering a marvel. The long separation--it had been long
to them--had recreated for both something of the capacity to receive a
fresh impression of the other. The marvel to Aurora was that this choice
being, with his intellectual brow (that was her adjective for Gerald's
brow) his difference from others, all in the way of superiority to them,
the indescribable fascination residing in his every feature, mood, or
word, should be walking the world unclaimed and unattached, for her to
take if she were so minded. Her to take! It was vertiginous.

And the marvel to him was, in beholding that bounteous temple of a soul,
with its radiance of life, its share, so rich, of the mysterious
something which made the earliest men care to build homes; its gifts, so
large, of comfort and warmth--the marvel was that he should have dared
aspire to conquer it, should have set that to himself as a thing he was
going to persevere in trying to do until--until he had done it, he,
puny, poor in inducements, light of weight.

The two of them, there could be no doubt of it, had passed within the
portals after which a change comes over the eyes, and those who enter
see each other endowed with qualities raising the capacity for wonder to
an ecstasy: so much engaging beauty, so much dearness, are not to be
believed!... It can never be established whether the eyes only see truly
when under this charm, or whether then more than at other times illusion
makes of them its fool.

If he had been analytical on the subject of his sentiment for Aurora, as
so often on other subjects, and said to himself that he saw this woman
in a golden transfiguring light because he was in good primordial
fashion in love with her--because, that is to say, obscure affinities of
flesh and blood united with the esteem created by her virtues to make of
him a candle which the touch of her finger-tip miraculously could
light--he would have felt it as a blessed and not a base secret at the
bottom of his attachment.

While they talked of the weather, as they fell to doing when they had
disposed of the subject of the little incense-holder; and, after that,
while they talked of Leghorn and the various seaside places which Aurora
had to choose from for her summer sojourn, a vastly deep conversation
was taking place between them, which we think it not amiss to report,
because by the nature of things the words they would say aloud on this
occasion would be meager and colorless by comparison with the things
they would feel and to some extent convey to each other through mere
proximity.

"O Aurora," exhaled from Gerald, while, looking not far from his usual
self, he said that Ardenza by the sea, a mere three miles from Leghorn,
was a very pretty place, "Aurora, you are warmth, you are shelter, you
are rest. I have no hearth or home except as you let me in out of the
desperate cold of loneliness, and grant me to warm myself at your big
heart. You should see, woman dear, that my thankfulness would make you
happy. Nature, the divine, so formed you that my love would kindle
yours. And when you had given your hand into mine I should find paths of
violets, enchanted paths, for us to walk in which you could never find
without me, nor I find for myself. Put up no petty shield against me,
Aurora; fight me with no petty lance, for I verily am that guest you
were awaiting when on balmy spring evenings you felt, and knew not why,
that your life was incomplete."

And Aurora, mechanically pulling off her rings and putting them into the
brass receptacle, then taking them out of it and putting them back on
her fingers, while she chattered, describing the advantages of a
furnished villa at Antiniano, to be preferred because they were some
Italian friends of Leslie's who desired to let it, was in her inmost
speaking to the inmost of Gerald. The hardly self-conscious meanings
within her bosom made as if an extension of her in the air, comparable
to the halo around the moon on a misty night; and this atomized radiance
had language, it said: "Oh, to draw your head down where it desires to
be! To warm and comfort you! To be to you everything you need! I lean to
you, I cling to you like a vine with every winding tendril. But I am so
afraid of you! so afraid! I am of common, you of finest, clay. How can I
give into any hand so much power to hurt me? If I were to dare it, then
find I could not make you happy, your disappointment would be my
heart-break, and my tragedy might spoil your life. But this know,
Gerald, dearer to me for having been so unhappy, nothing my life could
contain without you would seem to me so good as life with you in a poor
workman's attic, under falling snow, and I to make it home for you!"

While two souls thus trembled and gravitated toward each other, bathing
in each other's light, it is almost mortifying to have to show to what
degree that which took place at the surface was different and inferior;
to what degree the fine abandon of words spoken and actions performed in
thought was replaced by a shivering prudence keeping guard on one side,
and on the other a deplorable timidity trying awkwardly to be bold.

Heard through the door, the scene that ensued between these two curious
lovers, when they had worked their way through preliminaries and come to
the point at which they had parted after the day at Vallombrosa, must
particularly have seemed lacking in purple and poetry; for then the soft
light in Aurora's eyes would not have been seen, nor the deep flash in
Gerald's, as he by a point scored felt himself nearer to the goal.

"Now, what made you run off like that, I want to know," Aurora asked in
the flowing American which she reserved for real friends and sincere
moments, "after you'd said when you left me at the door, 'Good-by till
to-morrow'?"

"My reasons were several, all simple," he replied, with a faun-look up
from the corner of his eye, which watched her expression. "First, I
wished to flee from that newspaper article--dreadful!--till the danger
of any reference to it in my hearing was greatly reduced. Then, aside
from a slight natural need to recover myself, I felt I must for manners'
sake allow a little time to pass before I approached you again on the
subject of marrying me. One scruples to make himself a bore. It
therefore would be better not to see you, and, in order not to see you,
better not to be in town. Lastly, Auroretta, I conceived the infernal
ambition to make you suffer from absence the minutest fraction of what I
should suffer myself."

"Don't say a word! I've missed you so my bones felt hollowed out!"

"Reflect then, my dearest, upon the sufferings you are preparing for
yourself if you haven't a kinder answer for me than the other day to the
same question. All the reasons you gave for saying no were such bad
ones, founded upon a bad opinion of me. I can't take your refusal for
final, don't you see, without first being sure I have convinced you at
least that you are wrong in thinking me a fish or a mudturtle, and wrong
in attributing a lack of intelligence to me which could betray me into
confusing great things with little, little with great."

"Oh, Gerald, you oughtn't to keep on trying! I do wish you wouldn't! No!
Don't say any more about it!" she pleaded in weak anguish. "You oughtn't
to go on battering against the little bit of common sense I've got
left."

"Common sense! I advise you to speak of it!" he affected to jeer,
remarkably braced by her misery. "Common sense, as represented by a
decent concern for your good name, ought to prompt you enter as quickly
as you can into an engagement with me. I met our dear Doctor Batoni in
the street yesterday on my way home from the station, and he amiably
asked how was my _fidanzata_, or betrothed? It was a difficult
moment for me, because he told me that _you_ had told him you were
that."

"I told him nothing of the sort! I said I was your friend, in French."

"A friend, in French, may mean a good deal. Save your reputation, dear;
I give you the chance."

"What nonsense! I explained to him as well as I could, in French, that I
was there taking care of you because I was your friend."

"You are hopelessly compromised. Look to me to set you right."

"Gerald, I shall do nothing of the kind."

"Ah, I see that your prejudices hold firm. I was afraid of it when I
came." His mask of flippancy slipped for a moment; deep feeling made his
voice uncertain. "I am not that hardy and masterful man, Aurora, who
could break them down and clutch you above their ruin. But you will find
me very faithful to a hope--which, in fact, to relinquish now would be
beyond what I can expect of my courage." He resumed bluffness. "I told
Vincent he might look for my return to-morrow."

"No, sir!" she came out with lively directness. "You're not going back
to Leghorn if I can help it! I--I have a plan."

"You have a plan? From your face I am afraid not a good one. You look so
dubious."

"Perhaps it isn't a good one, but it's the only way I can see. Listen."
She looked down at her hands, and kept him waiting. "One evening last
winter at a party a young Italian naval officer got talking to me in a
green bower under a pink paper lantern away from the rest. Something in
the atmosphere, I guess, made him want to talk to somebody of his
love-affairs, and he chose me, though we scarcely knew each other. He
told me he had been very much in love with an American girl, but they
hadn't the money to marry on or the hope of ever having it--like Brenda
and Manlio at first. Yet they couldn't keep apart, and so they just
became engaged, knowing it couldn't end as an engagement is supposed to
do. In that way they could see each other all they wanted, and be seen
together without anybody making a remark. And then when she was obliged
to go home and it had to end, it looked merely like a broken
engagement."

"And you propose--"

"We might try it, Gerald. Then if it didn't work well, if I found I was
all the time outraging your sensibilities, and you hurting my feelings,
we'd call it off. In any case we'd give ourselves plenty of time to
realize our foolishness. And you'd promise that when the time came you'd
go like a lamb, with a pleasant face, not saving up anything against me.
Make up your mind, now, that it'll have to be a long, _long_
engagement--if we don't repent and break it off inside a week. But as it
seems so likely we will, let's don't tell the others right off, Gerald;
not, anyhow, for a week or ten days."

"Admired Aurora, it surely is the most immoral proposition that ever
came from fair lady so well brought up as you!" cried Gerald, in a
proper state of excitement. But yet, such were his limitations, nothing
in any proportion with the throbbing fire inside him, the immensity of
his incredulous joy, appeared on his outside, where merely the mollified
lines of his face gave him a look of greater youth, and his cool-colored
eyes let through a faint testimony of the inward light. "I accept
without hesitation. I promise whatever you ask. From this moment onward
we are _fidanzati_, then. And, my blessed Auroretta, you who are
such a hand at calling names, have your servant's permission to call him
all the names you can think of that signify an ineffable blunderer on
the day when you succeed in freeing yourself from him!"

Many more things were said, not worth recording. But at last devout
silence reigned. In the twilight room, with all the bad pictures and
trivial ornamentation, to shut out the offense of which he had once
closed his eyes, Gerald now closed them again to concentrate more
perfectly upon the rapture of feeling Aurora's shoulder beneath his
cheek.




CHAPTER XXIV


The servant who opened the door for Leslie on this softly brilliant June
morning, being well accustomed to admitting her, obligingly anticipated
her question, "Are the ladies at home?"

"The _signorina_ is in the _salottino_," he said. From which
Leslie understood that the person whom she chiefly had come to see was
out. It did not really matter, for she had time to wait. Aurora was
likely to come back for lunch.

She released the man from attendance by a little wave of her hand,
"Never mind announcing me!" and directed her footsteps toward the tall
white-and-gold door standing partly open.

On her way to it she picked up off the floor a small lawn handkerchief.

The ball-room impressed her anew as being very vast, very empty,
furnished almost solely as it was by the sparkling chandeliers, every
pendant of which to-day was gay with reflections of the green and
flowery and sun-washed outdoors.

She turned toward the _salottino_, remotely wondering by what
chance Estelle was preferring it to the favorite red and green
sitting-room upstairs. The _salottino_ had utility when a party was
going on, but to sit and embroider or study French surrounded by all
those fountains of love....

A sharp bark preceded the tumbling out through the _salottino_ door
of a little white mop on feet. Upon recognizing Leslie, this performed
evolutions expressive of great joy.

She had stopped to pat the excited little swirl of silk when Estelle
came forward to see who was there.

With delighted good mornings the women exchanged the foreign salute,
which Leslie had adopted and Estelle submitted to, a mere touching of
cheeks while the lips kiss the air.

They sat down on the rococo settee to talk, Leslie, quick of eye,
wondering what had happened to give Estelle that unusual air, an air
of--no, it was indefinable. Excitement had a share in it, and possibly
chagrin, and, it almost seemed, exaltation. The chief thing about it,
however, was that she was trying to conceal it; doing her best, but it
was a poor best, to appear natural. Leslie graciously allowed her to
suppose she was succeeding, and entered at once upon the reason for her
early call.

"I really think, Estelle, that the villa at Antiniano would suit Aurora.
As for you, I am positive, my dear, that you would adore it. It is a
little out of the thick of things, but has a very fine view of the sea,
also a very pretty garden. Certain conveniences, of course, it hasn't,
but, then, you mustn't expect those of an Italian villa. I saw Madame
Rossi yesterday, and she said she wished you would make an excursion to
Antiniano to see for yourselves. She is sure you would be charmed. One
request she would make: that the peasant family be allowed to continue
in their little corner of the house, where they wouldn't be the least in
your way, and then that the little donkey should be allowed to remain in
the stable. But in return you could use him, she said."

"Ride him?"

"Yes, or harness him. For the country, why not, my dear? They are ever
so strong little beasts."

Estelle began to laugh, presumably at the picture of Aurora on
donkey-back, or, with herself, exhilarating the country-side by the
vision of them drawn in a donkey-cart. Leslie joined in her merriment,
but expostulatingly, and, warned by a note in Estelle's laugh, watched
her with suspicion while it developed into a nervous cackle. She saw her
cover her eyes with one hand, and with the other vainly feel in her
pocket. She was crying. Leslie tendered the little handkerchief found on
the floor, and knew then that it had dried tears before on that same
day. She waited, tactfully silent, merely placing a condoling hand over
her friend's.

"I might as well tell you," Estelle got out, when her crying fit
permitted her to speak, "that Aurora isn't going to take any villa at
Antiniano this summer.... She's gone away."

"Gone away? What do you mean?" asked Leslie, surprised into a very
complete blankness of expression.

"What I say." And in her incalculable frame of mind Estelle again was
laughing. "Oh, I don't know which to do, whether to laugh or cry!" she
explained, with eyes bright at once from laughter and from tears. "One
moment I laugh, next moment I cry. I feel as if I were walking in my
sleep. I guess what I need is a nerve-pill."

"You say that Aurora has gone away. Where?"

"Where Gerald pleases, I guess. She's gone with him."

"With Gerald? Now, my dear friend, please explain. You laugh, you cry.
You say Aurora has gone away with Gerald. Please collect yourself and
tell me what it means. 'Gone away with Gerald.' How do you mean gone
away with him?"

"I mean they have eloped, or as good as."

"No, no; people don't elope when there is neither an inconvenient
husband, nor unamenable parents, nor any possible reason why they should
not have each other if they wish to."

"I wonder what you would call it, then. As late as twelve o'clock last
night I didn't know a thing about it, and this morning early they left
together in a carriage, with her trunk strapped on the back."

Leslie lifted her hands to her temples and pressed them as if to keep
her head from a dangerous expansion with the size of the new idea that
must find a home there.

"So it was in earnest!" she said aloud, yet as if speaking to herself.
"Mother has won her bet, and I have lost. Well,"--she tossed her head
and faced Estelle,--"I am glad of it. We knew, of course, that there was
something, and we felt that nothing nicer could happen than that they
should make a match of it. Mother prophesied they would. But I did not
believe it. I was afraid of Gerald--that disposition in him to consider
too finely, to halt on the brink, that negative, renunciatory way he has
settled into. I thought the thing would end in mere philandering. I am
glad"--she threw the weight of conviction on the word,--"glad it hasn't!
I don't see, my dear Estelle, what you can find to cry about."

"Is that the way it strikes you?"

"My dear, I couldn't say which I thought the luckier, Gerald to get
Aurora, or Aurora to get Gerald."

"You surprise me. To me it seems just about the riskiest combination
that could be imagined. I have felt it all along. Those two have no more
in common, I have said, than a bird and a fish."

"Nonsense, my dear girl! Nonsense!"

"I have heard him get so impatient with her because simply she didn't
pronounce a word right. I've seen him so annoyed he nearly trembled
trying to choke it down."

"But did she mind? I mean, his impatience?"

"I can't say she did; but--"

"There you have it. They are marvelously suited. Listen and let me talk
to you for your comfort. This, do you hear, is exactly the most
delightful thing that could have happened. Haven't you noticed that
complex natures are rather given to uniting with simple ones, and
finding happiness with them? An artist--how often!--marries his model, a
philosopher marries a peasant."

"Go on!" sighed Estelle. "Go on! I love you for making me feel better!"
Her eyes moistened again in an almost luxurious melancholy.

"One of the reasons for mother and me wishing for this consummation was
the broadening of life it would afford Gerald. Gerald doesn't think
about money. Aurora's money, all the same, will do a lot for him in
making possible his getting away from here, where the truth is he
stagnates. Then, too, she will cure him of his morbidness. He sees red
if one so much as breathes the suggestion that his art is morbid. But of
course it is."

"Aurora said they might go to live in Paris, because she thought it
would be good for his art."

"Now that's what I want to hear about. Go on and tell me what Aurora
said and what happened between midnight and their extraordinary
elopement, as you call it. But, first of all, why, in the name of common
sense, did they elope? From what did they elope?"

"From me, I guess. I don't see what else. Oh, yes, I do. From the talk
there would be. But principally, I suspect, he hurried her into it to
make sure of her, for she, too, had her moments of doubting the wisdom
of what she was doing. That much I know. They had only been engaged two
weeks, and all that time I didn't even know they were engaged. I hadn't
been nice about Gerald, I feel bound to confess, so she thought best not
to tell me. She didn't want to hear how I would take it, we've been so
used to speaking our minds to each other. He came oftener than ever and
stayed longer, till it got so I made a point of getting up and making an
excuse to leave the room. It was my way of being spiteful. But Nell
didn't take it up with me in private, as I expected she would. They were
tickled to death to have me leave the room, I can see now. She went
around the house singing an Easter carol and fixing flowers in the
vases, with a look of cheerfulness apart from me that made her seem like
a stranger. I was pretty sore, I can tell you, but I wouldn't speak of
it. I don't know how I thought it would end. Funny, I can't remember how
everything looked so short a time ago as yesterday, but I know I was
eaten up with mean thoughts. I went to bed last night thinking to
myself, 'Well, Nell Goodwin, if you think I'm going to stand much more
of this, you're mistaken. There'll be some plain talk before long.' And
I fell asleep. First thing I knew I was awake, looking to see who'd come
into my room. And there was Nell in her night-dress, holding her hand
round the candle so it wouldn't shine in my eyes. I simply can't tell
you what it was like,--the candle lighting nothing but her made her seem
like a vision in the middle of a glory. Nobody can know how fond I am of
Nell, what friends we've been since little bits of girls. All I could
think of was that she'd come to make up with me, she couldn't wait
another minute. It would have been just like her. And while I waited for
her to speak first, I thought with my heart just melting what a lovely
big thing she is, with that sort of fair look to her neck, and those
warm cheeks, and something so kind about her from head to foot. She put
down the candle and, instead of going into explanations, bent over and
gave me a good hug. And I said, hugging back: 'You better had, you
horrid thing! You better had!' Then she sat down on the bed. 'Hat,' she
said, 'I was going to do a mean thing, but I'm not going to do it. I was
going to slip away without a word, but I'm going to tell you the whole
story. I'm going to marry Gerald,' she said.

"Then she went on to tell me, and what do you think, I didn't say one
word in objection, not one! Because I could see she was dead in love,
and what was the use except to spoil her happiness, and I didn't want
to. She told me how they'd decided it would be just as well not to wait,
but take a short cut. If they stayed in Florence, she said, she'd feel
they must have a big wedding and ask all their friends, and then she
should have to have a trousseau; it would all take lots of time, and
Gerald would so hate the fuss and the chatter. So they'd made up their
minds to go off to Leghorn without a word to anybody,--whose business is
it anyhow but their own?--and be married just as soon as it could be
done, where they wouldn't get so much as the echo of any remarks on
their haste or the way they preferred to do. She'll be staying with Mrs.
Johns till the ceremony. She said she should write your mother from
there. Then she showed me Gerald's ring that she'd been wearing on a
chain round her neck where I wouldn't see it, and she talked about
Gerald's wonderfulness. She's perfectly wrapped up in him. All I hope is
he appreciates it."

"His inducing her to elope with him would seem to indicate some warmth
of feeling on his part. The suggestion can hardly have come from her."

"You're right. I guess it's as bad with him as with her. She talked
about the wonderfulness of his love, such as she never could have
believed, and never could deserve. She said she could be happy with
Gerald in a garret that let the snow leak in. Oh, they're both crazy.
What do you think she gave as one reason for this haste? 'Life is
short,' she said, 'and love is long!' Gerald must have said it to her
before she said it to me, but what do you think of it? 'Life is short
and love is long!'"

"Do you mean"--asked Leslie, with the least touch of severity,--"that I
ought to share in a cynical view of that saying? I can't, my dear
Estelle. There are my father and mother, you know. In their quiet way
they bear out the idea that love may be as long as life."

"Yes, of course," said Estelle hurriedly, with a faint air of shame. "My
father and mother, too, make a united couple."

"My belief is that when two people marry who are in love as they ought
to be, and who in addition are good--By good I think I mean people--"
Leslie, with her look of wisdom beyond her years, paused to take a
survey of life, "--people who have a sense of the other person's rights,
and, as a matter of heart, not principle, feel the other's claims just a
little more strongly than their own--in the case of such people, when
the passion they marry on dies out with their growing older, as we
generally see it do, something takes its place that deserves the name of
love every bit as much."

"Aurora is good," said Estelle, from her soul. "You would never know how
good unless you had stood in need of kindness."

"Gerald is good, too," said Leslie, with an effect of more impartiality
but no less positiveness. "He would disdain to be anything else."

"What is wrong with me is that I'm selfish, I guess," said Estelle,
looking contrite, "and don't like having to give her up to him, after
all the beautiful things we'd planned together. What I ought to feel is
nothing but thankfulness for her having such a chance of happiness, and
then thankfulness for all she did, trying to make up for her desertion."

Without transition, Estelle went back to the story of the past night.
"You can imagine there wasn't any more sleep for that spell. I got up,
and we went to her room, where she had all the lights lighted and was in
the middle of packing her trunk. She only took one, and about a quarter
of her things. Gerald's going to design wonderful costumes for her, the
style he prefers. I could see she's ready to do just anything to please
him. I'd already noticed how she'd altered her way of doing her hair,
but wasn't smart enough to recognize the signs!... While she was at work
packing she planned for my summer,--that I'm to invite Mademoiselle
Durand to go traveling with me, so I can improve my French at the same
time as give that poor hard-working creature a real vacation and treat.
Then when they go to Venice, she wants me to join them, and the three of
us have a regular jamboree. Then next winter, after I've got home, she
wants me to go to Colorado to visit the Grand Cañon and see the great
sights of my native country before settling down again in East Boston.
She made me a present of Ami."

"Ami?"

"I've changed his name from Busteretto. Don't you like it better? Little
Tweetums! He's the only darling I've got left!" She pressed a kiss on
the warm top of his head. "She made me a present of all the clothes and
things she wasn't taking with her. She made me a present of everything
in this house that we didn't find in it when we took it--turned it all
over to me to do what I please with. And I'm sure I don't know what I
shall do with it all unless I set up a store. Anything you see and think
you'd like to have, please say so."

"She gave you all these things? Do you mean it?" asked Leslie, surprised
despite what she had already known of Aurora.

"Yes, and along with the things, of course, the responsibility of
settling up everything, dismissing the servants, sending Livvy back to
New York. Such a job! Luckily, there's no hurry; the lease doesn't
expire until October. When you came I'd been sort of looking round. I
was just wondering what to do about this Fountain of Love. Nell paid a
frightful lot for these four panels. I'd been trying to see if they
could be carefully peeled off and the wall behind restored, and while I
was looking the sight of that winter scene broke me all up. It doesn't
tell a very cheerful tale, you know, this series of pictures. After what
I'd just been through, saying good-by to them, it worked on me like a
bad omen."

"Don't be foolish. Then you saw Gerald, too, before they left?"

"Yes. I could have done without, but she'd have been hurt. So I shook
hands, and managed to wish him joy. He was nice, but, then, Gerald
always is that. I've never for a moment said anything different. He said
he wanted me to feel that I hadn't lost a sister, but acquired a
brother. Just as they were driving off I remembered something, and
called after Nell, 'What about your portrait?' for I couldn't think she
meant to give me that along with the rest. Gerald said before she could
speak, 'Take it away!' And Nell said right off, 'Oh, yes. Keep it,
Hattie; keep it!' That lovely portrait he painted of her! I don't see
how she could bear to part with it. But, of course, now she has him she
can have as many portraits as she wants. Come and tell me what you
think, whether it would be safe to pack it, frame and all, or better to
unframe it, or, better still, to take the canvas off the stretcher and
roll it."

Accordingly, they left the room of the cupids and garlands, traversed
the vasty ball-room where the chandeliers, like two huge ear-rings,
divided up the light into twinkling diamond and rainbow showers, entered
the drawing-room of the dignified sixteenth-century chairs, which from
the first had suffered an undeserved neglect, and passed thence into the
familiar parlor of the multitudinous baubles and the grand piano and the
portrait; performing in the contrary direction the pilgrimage on which,
at a period which seemed so immemorably far as to have become legendary,
Gerald had followed Aurora walking before him with a light.

They stood beneath the portrait, and with the image present to their
minds of painter and sitter hasting on their way to be wed, saw this
equivocal masterpiece with a difference. Not Aurora alone looked forth
from the canvas,--throat of lily, cheek of rose, heaven-blue eyes, smile
and ringlets of immitigable sunniness. Gerald, self-depicted in every
subtle brush-stroke, looked, too.

"It takes sober, solid, careful people to be interesting when they
commit a rashness," thought Leslie. Then, with a little surge of envy in
her well-regulated breast, "To be swept off one's feet," she thought,
"how educative it must be, how enlarging."

But a doubt fell, shadow-like, across her vision of future fortunes. If
a person never found it possible to fall in love with those who fell in
love with her, would it necessarily follow that the Some One she should
someday love would regard her with coldness?

Estelle gazed upward at the portrait with a wistful, well-nigh solemn
look. Not being able, hampered by a dog in her arms, to clasp her hands,
she expressed the same impulse by clasping the dog close to her breast
in token that her wishes for her dearest friend's good were more than
wishes, were a prayer.

She felt a hand laid lightly on her forearm.

"You needn't be afraid," said Leslie, "they'll be happy."

THE END

[Transcriber's Note: As originally published, this book had two
consecutive chapters labeled as "CHAPTER XV." Chapter numbers have
been resequenced in this text.]