Upon a day not much later in the month--a goodly day which thousands
without a doubt were thinking all too short for the useful or merely
delectable things they wanted to do--a certain young man in Florence
would, if he could, have treated this mellow golden masterpiece of
autumn's like a bad sketch, torn it across and dropped it into the
waste-basket. What is one to do with a day when nothing that has been
invented seems enough fun to pay for the bother? He did not wish to
paint, he did not wish to read, or to play on the piano, as he sometimes
did in solitude, with one hand, to solace himself by re-framing a
remembered melody. He did not wish to go out, but was restless from
staying in. He did not want to see the face of friend or foe, but could
no longer endure to be alone.
He stood for a moment in the middle of the floor, with his hands over
his face, the ends of his fingers pressing back his eyeballs, and got in
his throat a taste of the bitter waters which he felt as a perpetual
pool in the center of his heart. Next minute he sneered at himself, like
a schoolmaster at a boy who blubbers, and without further paltering put
on his hat, took up a very slender cane with a slender grasp of yellow
ivory, and ran down the long stairs of his house to the street.
"Air and exercise, air and exercise!" This prescription he repeated to
himself, and, surely enough, in a quarter of an hour felt better.
He was on Via Tornabuoni. Passing Giacosa's, he glanced in to see if it
were any one he knew taking tea so early behind the great plate glass
window. No, they were chance English. He halted before a shop farther on
to look at a display of jewelry, wondering that there should be fools
enough in the whole world to support one such dealer in turquoise
trinkets that at once drop out their stones; crude, big mosaics, and
everlasting little composition-silver copies of the Strozzi lantern.
He crossed the street and entered the bank, where he found the usual
table strewn with weeklies and monthlies for the advantage of those
clients who must be asked to wait. He seated himself with his face so
directed that if an acquaintance should enter, he need not bow, and
turned over the magazines one after the other. It hurt him like a direct
personal injury to find these authors all alike so shallow, dishonest,
giving the public not their thought or their experience, but something,
anything, it would buy.
"A little more air and exercise is what I evidently need," said the
young man, and again went out into the streets.
He turned toward the river, and had not followed the Lungarno for more
than ten yards before it was with him as when, looking out of the window
in despair at the weather, we see a break in the clouds. His step took
on alertness; his face lighted in the very nicest way.
The young lady on whom his eyes were fastened from afar did not see him.
She came at her usual step, a happy mean between quick and slow,
accompanied by a hatless serving-woman carrying a music-roll. She looked
straight before her, but her glance was absent. The passers could not
but notice her,--she had beauty enough for that, and was besides
conspicuous in wearing a costume entirely white,--but she was not
noticing them or the eyes that turned to keep her a moment longer in
sight. She looked rather shut in herself, rather silent; not really
proud and cold, but proud and cold as the feeling and modest and young
have to look if they are to keep their sacred precincts from the
intrusions of curiosity.
The young man approaching questioned her face to see if it were sad. No,
as far as he could tell, she was not in any way troubled. At the same
time he knew that it was neither a face nor a nature to be easily read.
Still, not to find her visibly sad comforted him.
She did not recognize the young man till he was almost near enough to
touch her, and she had heard her name called, "Brenda!"
Then her face showed a genuine, if moderate, pleasure.
"Gerald!"
"What are you doing?" he asked, with the freedom of a familiarity
reaching back over long years. He shortened his step to keep time with
hers, which she at the same moment lengthened.
"I have been for my singing-lesson."
"And where are you going?"
"Home."
"I haven't seen you for ages."
"You haven't come. One never sees you, one never meets you anywhere any
more."
Her English was different from the ordinary in having occasional Italian
turns and intonations. His partook of the same defect, but in a lesser
degree.
"But I have come," he stood up for himself, "and you were all out except
Lily. Didn't she tell you I was there? We had a long talk. She told me
her plans for the future. She is going to keep a school for poor
children. We discussed their diet and their flannels and every point of
their bringing-up. We invented things to do on holidays to give them a
good time. There is only one thing I can see leaving a doubt of this
school coming into being. It is that Lily has moments, she confessed to
me, of thinking almost equally well of a castle with a moat and
drawbridge and a page to walk before her carrying her prayer-book on a
cushion. She's a funny young one."
"It's partly Fraeulein."
"How are they all?"
"Well, thank you. At least, I suppose they are well." She gave a slight
laugh at the humor of this. "You could hardly imagine how little I see
of them."
"What has happened?"
"They have been going around with some new people, some Americans. They
have been helping them to shop, and showing them the way one does things
over here. Mother, you know, is always so ready."
"Your mother is a dear."
"Leslie is just like her. But I am sure they both enjoy it, too. They
have not been home to lunch for a week."
"And you?"
"Oh, I am not needed where there are already two who do the thing so
much better than I could. I have not even seen the people. My day is
very full, you know. Piano and singing-lessons, and I am painting again
this winter, with Galletti, and I am going to a course of
_conferenze_ on Italian literature. That involves a lot of reading.
There are, besides, the other, the usual things, the--" Her voice stuck;
then, as she went on, deepened with the depth of a suppressed
impatience. "I wish one might be allowed not to do what is meant for
pleasure unless one takes pleasure in it. But going to teas and parties
is apparently as much a duty as school or church. Mother and Leslie at
least seem to think it so for me."
"I see their point, Brenda dear, don't you?" He was not looking at her
as with a gentle brotherliness he spoke this.
"You don't go to many parties yourself, Gerald."
"I am afraid nothing I do is fit to be an example to anybody. But it
doesn't matter about me. About you it does. I can't say to you all I
think. It would sound fulsome, and from such an old chum might make you
laugh. But, being as you are, Brenda, surely your mother is right in
thinking of _le monde_ as the proper setting for you. You know I'm
not fond of _le monde_, but it's because it hasn't enough such
ornaments as yourself. With the life that lies before you--"
"Who can possibly know what my life will be?" the girl asked quickly,
almost roughly.
"True, Brenda. I dare say I am talking like a fool." He left off,
wondering that for a moment he should actually have been speaking on the
side of convention.
They walked a few rods in silence. They had crossed the bridge, and were
headed for Porta Romana, the handmaiden trotting in their tracks, when
at a corner Gerald stopped, and, as if to change the subject, or to
regain favor by a felicitous suggestion, said:
"Do you remember my telling you of a painting I came upon in a little
old church on this street? _Scuola di Giotto_, they call it, but
the thing is undoubtedly Sienese. Have you the time? Shall we take a
moment to see it?"
"I should be glad. If you will walk home with me afterward, Gerald, I
might tell Gemma she can go."
There was an exchange of Italian between the young lady and the maid,
after which the latter turned, and with a busy, delighted effect about
the rear view of her walked back across the bridge to spend her gift of
an hour in what divertisements we shall never know.
The church was closed. Gerald pulled the bell-handle of the next door. A
priest opened to them, and, seeing at a glance what was wanted, guided
them through a white-washed corridor to a living-room where a crucifix
hung on the wall and the table had a red cloth; by this into a dim and
stony sacristy, whence they emerged into the back of a darkling little
church, with shadowy candlesticks and kneeling-benches, the whole full
of a cold, complex odor of old incense and old humanity and, one could
fancy, old prayers.
The priest brought a lighted taper and, crossing to one of the side
altars, held it near the painting, which was all that well-dressed
people ever came for outside of hours.
The reddish light trembled over the figure of a majestic virgin, in the
diadem and mantle of a princess, bearing the palm of martyrs in her
hand. It was a very simple and noble face, beautiful in a separate way,
which not every one would perceive, so little in common had it with the
present-day fair ladies whose photographs are sold.
Gerald had taken the light from the priest's hands and was lifting,
lowering, shading it, experimenting, to bring out all that might still
be seen of the withdrawn image on its faintly glinting field of gold.
His face was keen with interest; the love of beautiful things in this
moment of satisfaction smoothed away from it every line of dejection and
irritability.
Brenda was examining the picture with an attention equal to his, but, if
one might so describe it, of a different color. Her admiration got its
life largely from Gerald's, whose tastes in art she was in the habit of
adopting blindfold. Of this, however, she was not aware, and gazed doing
good to her soul by the conscious and deliberate contemplation of a
masterpiece.
"Do you remember a great calm, white figure in the communal palace at
Siena?" Gerald asked, "with other figures of Virtues on the same wall?
Doesn't this remind you of them?"
Brenda answered abstractedly:
"Yes," and continued to look. "How amazing they are!" she fervently
exclaimed. He supposed she meant the saint's hands or eyes, but she
explained, "The Italians."
He did not take up the idea either to agree or to dispute; his mind was
busy with one Italian only, the painter of the picture before him.
The young girl's interest flagged sooner than his own; he felt her melt
from his side while he continued seeking proof in this detail and that
of the painter's identity.
When he turned to find her and to follow, she was kneeling on one of the
wooden forms, her gloved hands joined, her face toward the high altar.
He approved the courtesy of it, done, as he knew, in order that the
priest, who stood aside, waiting for them to finish, should not think
these barbarians who came into his church to see a work of art had no
respect for his shrines and holies. Having returned the light to the
priest Gerald himself, while waiting for Brenda, took a melancholy
religious attitude, his hat and cane held against his breast, and sent
his thoughts gropingly upward, where the solitary thing they encountered
was his poor mother in heaven. Heaven and the changes undergone by those
who enter there he could never make very real to himself. He thought of
her as she used to be, affectionate and ill.
At the stir of Brenda rising from her knees he, too, stirred, ready to
depart. She was bowing to the altar, making an obeisance so deep, so
beautifully reverent, that the priest could never have guessed she was
not a Catholic. After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the
sanctuary, like one with last fond words to say after the farewell; and
this excess of either regard for the priest's feelings or else a
devoutness he had not suspected in her quickened Gerald's attention. And
there in the dimness he saw what he had not seen in the broad light of
day, that his friend's little face, which had presented the effect of a
house with all the blinds drawn down, was lighted up behind the
blinds--oh, lighted as if for a feast!
He felt himself at sea. He had thought he knew the circumstances. Some
part, of course, nobody could know unless Brenda chose to tell them. But
what reason there should be for positive joy--
A suspicion flashed across his mind. He looked at her more closely, and
put it away.
She might have been the wisest of the virgins, the one who before any
other heard the music of the bridegroom and was first to light her lamp.
She stood as if listening to his footsteps.
[Illustration: After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the
sanctuary]
That such a simile should have been possible to Gerald shows how much
the expression of Brenda's face centered attention on itself, for her
white serge dress was in the fashion of that year, and it was not a
fashion to be remembered with any artistic joy. Gerald was never
reconciled to it.
He had the power to detach himself and at will see persons as if he
looked at them for the first time. So for a moment he saw Brenda as a
thing solely of form and color, a white shape against a ground of gloom,
and took new account of the fact that the little girl who had had
pigtails when he first knew her, and gone to the _Diaconesse_ with
lunch-basket and satchel of books, had from one season to the next,
stealthily, as it were, and while his back was turned, become beautiful.
More than that. He was looking at Brenda--he recognized it with a pulse
of exquisite interest--in her exact and particular hour. He had
surprised a rose at its moment of transition from bud to bloom, that
delicate and perfect moment when the natural beauty which women and
fruits and flowers have in common, reaching its height, hangs
poised--for such a pitifully short time, alas!--before it changes, if
not declines, to something less dewily fresh, less heart-movingly
untouched, less complete.
The artist could not long in this case be regarding the girl as part of
a picture; his human relation to the owner of that lifted profile
brought him back to wondering in what the quiet ecstasy it breathed
could have its source. He was touched by it, by the whole character, at
the moment, of her face, with its strength so nullified by gentleness.
When the will is strong and nature sensitive, what arms has youth with
which to prevail? What but the power to keep still and hold on? Nothing
was in Brenda's face so marked as that power, except, in this moment of
undisguise, while she thought herself unwatched, its singular happiness,
a mingling of tenderness, dedication, hope.
The genuine sympathy he felt for her made Gerald deserving of the
intuition that blessed him while he stood there trying to divine. An
interpretation of her secret offered itself, worthier of him as of her
than the suspicion of erewhile; one so beautiful, indeed, that he felt
uplifted by standing in its presence. All he had most cared for in his
life, the things that had touched and inspired him,--visions of
painters, dreams of poets, scenes of beauty, sweet of human
intercourse,--all the influences that make life dignified and fair,
seemed in their essence to be in the air around him, like scents of
flowers in the dark....
The wish to pray came over him again, yet he wanted to weep, too,
because as soon as his heart expanded a little the rusty splinter of a
knife corroding there reminded him that lofty sentiments, sincerities,
idealisms, have as their fruit in this life--dust, derision! He wondered
that without being any older one could feel as old as he did while
watching Brenda transfigured by her poor young dream.
Now for the second time she curtseyed to the altar. The priest moved,
Gerald moved, all three passed up the aisle, to a faint chink of coins
in Gerald's pocket where he groped for a fee. At the main altar the
priest dipped a rapid genuflexion.
As soon as they were outside Brenda began to talk about the picture, to
ask questions, as if the art of the Italians had been of all things
nearest to her heart, and Gerald was drawn into holding in the street
while they walked a sort of lecture on the primitives.
All the while, in an independent corner of his brain he was reflecting
upon the absurdity of supposing that because he was an old familiar of
the Fosses, and so fond of them all, he knew anything of their affairs
these days, when he saw them so seldom. Ever so many things could have
happened without his knowledge. The girls might have new friends and
admirers just as they had hats and dresses that he had never seen.
They were making their way while talking toward Porta Romana, and were
often obliged to step off the narrow sidewalk to make room for other
passers, the street being busy at that time of day.
Brenda was in the midst of an entirely pertinent remark when her voice
softly died, like the flame of a candle sucked out by a draft or like a
music-box run down. Gerald, looking round for the end of her sentence,
saw that she had sighted an acquaintance on the other side of the
street.
She nodded, without a smile, slowly. Just so must Beatrice have bowed in
these same streets of Florence when she passed the dreamy passionate
youth through whom we are acquainted with her name.
Gerald's eyes traveled across the way to see who might be the recipient
of the lady's most sweet salute, and hurriedly uncovered to an officer
of the Italian army who, holding his hand to his cap, stood at attention
till the two had passed.
Was the man pale or was it that one had never before noticed, meeting
him indoors and at evening, how strongly the black of his mustache and
brows contrasted with his skin? The suspicion that had for a moment
troubled Gerald in church returned as a stronger infection. Had Brenda
expected this? Did they concert such meetings?
He might have said to himself that a tryst which consisted in crossing
glances from opposite sides of the street was very innocent. In a moment
he did see that as the villas _fuori la porta_ must be reached
through the _porta_, a lover whose lady lived on Vial dei Colli
might without previous arrangement hope for a glimpse of her by walking
in its neighborhood.
As we have seen him doing more than once this afternoon, Gerald here
tried to get his clue from Brenda herself, her face, her atmosphere. Yet
he knew, as has already been said, that it was Brenda Foss's way to keep
these as much as she could from telling anything to the world. This
wariness notwithstanding a tinge of unaccustomed rose had spread through
the clear white of her cheek; her eyes had in them noticeably more life.
Emotion or mere self-consciousness?
On one point only he was satisfied: Brenda had done nothing that
involved deceit. Into the very structure of her face, which had almost
nothing left of the American look, was built a certain Puritan
truthfulness. She could conceal if she must, but hated to shuffle, to
prevaricate. She concealed exactly because of that.
"Go on with the Sienese masters, Gerald," she bade him, collectedly. "I
am listening, and learning a lot."
As they passed under the great arch of the Roman Gate, Gerald was saying
modestly:
"I don't know anything about them, really. I've just been impressed by a
thing or two. This Lorenzetti, for instance--" And so on up the
_viale_ to the house.
In the drawing-room they found Mrs. Foss and Leslie, who, just home from
town, tired and thirsty, had had tea brought to them, and were
strengthening themselves before even taking off their hats.
Their welcome to Gerald was mingled with reproaches of the sort that
flatters more than it hurts.
"It's perfect ages since we saw you. We thought you had forgotten us.
What have you been doing this long, long time?"
"It is you, who are never at home, my dear friends," Gerald took his
turn. "I was here a fortnight or so ago. Didn't Lily tell you? Of course
she told you, and you have forgotten, so it's I, properly, who should be
calling names."
"Have you been quite well, Gerald?" Mrs. Foss asked in her maternal
voice, after a more careful look at him.
"Certainly."
"I am glad you have come. I have been on the point more than once of
sending for you, but the days fly so! We have been busy, too."
She had poured cups of tea for Gerald and Brenda. All four were seated
and refreshing themselves.
It was a very large room, but a corner had been so arranged as to look
shut in and cozy. There stood the tea-table convenient to the sofa and,
surrounding it, a few chosen chairs in which one could sink and lean
back and be comfortable.
"Have you had a tiring day?" Brenda asked her mother, somewhat as if she
were tired herself at the mere thought of such a day as she supposed her
mother to have had.
"No," Mrs. Foss answered briskly; "it's rather fun. I don't mean that
one doesn't get tired after a fashion. Has Brenda told you, Gerald, how
we have lately been occupied?"
"Some new people, I think she said."
"Yes, some nice, funny Americans."
"Funny, you say?"
"I say it fondly, Gerald. Let me tell you a little about them, and you
will see what I mean. They are going to spend the winter here and wanted
a house. What house do you think they selected?"
"You really mustn't set me riddles, Mrs. Foss."
"For years we have seen it every time we drive to the Cascine, and seen
it with a certain curiosity--always deserted, always with closed blinds,
in its way the most beautiful house in Florence."
"The most--I can't think what house you mean."
"Of course not, with your tastes. But imagine some nice, rich Americans,
without either art education or the smallest affectation of such a
thing, and ask yourself what they would like. Why, a big, square,
clean-looking, new-looking, wealthy-looking house, of course, set in a
nice garden, with, at the end of the garden, a nice stable. I was
thankful to find the place had been kept up."
"But is there--on the Lungarno, did you say?"
"It is that house we have called the Haughty Hermitage, Gerald," Brenda
helped him.
"Oh, that! But surely one doesn't live in a house like that!"
"Your excellent reason?" inquired Leslie.
"I don't know,"--he hesitated,--"but surely one doesn't live in a house
like that!"
They had to laugh at the expression brought into his face by his sense
of a mysterious incongruity.
"No," he went on with knitted brows to reject the idea; "a house like
that--one doesn't come all the way from America to live in a house which
has no more atmosphere than that!"
"Ah, but that's the point, Gerald," said Mrs. Foss. "What you call
atmosphere these people avoid as they would an unsanitary odor.
Atmosphere! What would you say if you saw the things Leslie and I have
been helping them to buy and put into it! I love to buy, you know, even
when not for myself. I thought with joy, 'Now I shall at least go
through the form of acquiring certain objects I have lusted after for
years.' Delightful old things Jerome has discovered in antiquarians'
places, and that we shall never be able to afford. Do you think I could
persuade them to take one of these? I represented that the worm-holes
could be stopped up and varnished over, that the missing bits of inlay,
precious crumbs of pearl and ivory, could be replaced, the tapestries
renovated. In vain. They want everything new--hygienically new, fresh,
and shining. And, Gerald, prejudice apart, the idea is not without its
good side. The result is not so bad as you may think. Why, after all,
should my taste, your taste, prevail in their house, will you tell me?"
"For no reason in the world. This liberal view comes the easier to me
that I do not expect ever to see the interesting treasures you may have
collected from Peyron's and Janetti's."
"If it were no worse than that!" put in Leslie, and laughed a covered
laugh.
Mrs. Foss explained, after a like little laugh of her own.
"You see, things that we have seen till we have utterly ceased to see
them, the things that nobody who really lives in Florence ever dreams of
buying, are new to these people. They _love_ them. As a result, you
can guess. There will be in their apartments alabaster plates with
profiles of Dante and Michelangelo on a black center. There will be
mosaic tables with magnolias and irises. There will be Pliny's doves.
Think of it! There will be green bronze lamps and lizards--"
"And the fruit--tell about that, Mother!" Leslie prompted.
"There will be on the sideboard in the dining-room a perpetual dish of
magnificent fruit, marble, realistic to a degree. You know the kind."
"And you could stand by and let them--you and Leslie!" spoke Brenda, in
an astonishment almost seriously reproachful.
"My dear," Leslie took up their common defense, "one's feeling in this
case is: What does it matter? A little more, a little less.... It all
goes together. When they have those curtains, they might as well have
that fruit."
"At the same time, my dear children, let me tell you that the effect is
not displeasing," insisted Mrs. Foss. "Such at least is my humble
opinion. In its way it's all right. They are people of a certain kind,
and they have bought what they like, not what they thought they ought to
like. Thousands of people, if it were not for you artists perverting
them, would be thinking a marble lemon that you can't tell from a real
one a rare and dear possession. These people haven't known any artists.
They are innocent."
"They're awfully good fun," Leslie started loyally in to make up for
anything she had said which might seem to savor of mockery or dispraise.
"One enjoys being with them, if they aren't our usual sort. They are in
good spirits, really good--good spirits with roots to them. And that's
such a treat these days!"
From which it was supposable that Leslie had been living in circles
where the gaiety was hollow. The suggestion did not escape Gerald. But,
then, Leslie, just turned twenty-four, was rather given to judging
_these days_ as if she remembered something less modern, an
affectation found piquant by her friends in a particularly
young-looking, blond girl with a short nose. Gerald might have hoped
that her sigh meant nothing had not Leslie, awake to the implication of
her remark as soon as she had made it, gone hurriedly on to call
attention away from it.
"Yes, it's pleasant to be with them. It's a change. The world seems
simple and life easy. Life _is_ easy, with all that money. Besides,
Mrs. Hawthorne really is something of a dear. After all, if people make
much of one, one is pretty sure to like them. Haven't you found it so,
Gerald?"
"I don't know. I am trying to remember if there is anybody who has made
much of me."
"_We_ have made much of you."
"And don't think I temperately like you. I adore you all, as you well
know. You're the only people I do. By that sign there has been nobody
else kind enough to make much of me."
"You're so bad lately, Gerald; that's why," Mrs. Foss affectionately
chide him. "You never go anywhere. You neglect your friends. What have
you been doing with yourself? Is it work?"
"No; not more than usual. I work, but I'm not exactly absorbed--obsessed
by it. I don't know--" He seemed to search, and after a moment summed up
his vague difficulties: "It seems a case for quoting 'Hamlet.'" He was
bending forward, his elbows resting on his knees, as they could do
easily, his chair being low and his thin legs long. His thin, long hands
played with that slender cane of his, which he had set down and taken up
again, while he tried to recall the passage, and mumbled snatches of it:
"'This goodly firmament--congregation of vapors--Man delights not
me--no, nor'--the rest of it."
"But it won't do, Gerald dear; it won't do at all," Mrs. Foss addressed
him anxiously, between scolding and coaxing. "Shake yourself, boy! Force
yourself a little; it will be good for you. _Make_ yourself go to
places till this mood is past. What is it? Bad humor, spleen,
hypochondria? It doesn't belong with one of your age. We miss you
terribly, dear. Here we have had two of our Fridays, and you have not
been. And we have always counted on you. Charming men are scarce at
parties the world over. The Hunts have begun their little dances, too.
One used to see you there. And at Madame Bentivoglio's. She was asking
what had become of you. Promise, Gerald, that we shall see you at our
next Friday! We want to make it a nice, gay season. Will you promise?
Oh, here's Lily. Why didn't you tell us, Lily, that Gerald had come to
see us when we were out?"
A long-legged, limp-looking little girl with spectacles had come in. A
minute before she had been passing the door on her way to walk, and
catching the sound of a male voice in the drawing-room, insisted upon
listening till she had made sure whose it was. At the name Gerald she
had pulled away from her governess and burst into the drawing-room.
She stood still a moment after this impulsive entrance, and the
governess turned toward Mrs. Foss a face that, benign and enlightened
though it was, called up the memory of faces seen in good-humored German
comic papers. The expression of her smile said to the company that she
was guiltless in the matter of this invasion. Could one use severity
toward a little girl who suffered from asthma and weak eyes?
Lily, after her pause, went half shyly, half boldly to Gerald. He did
not kiss her,--she was ten years old,--but placed an arm loosely around
her as she stood near his knee.
"Did you forget it, Lily?"
"No, Mother, I didn't forget, but I never thought to speak of it. You
didn't tell me to, did you, Gerald?"
"No, we had so much else to talk about. Well, Lily, have you decided
what color the uniform must be for our orphanage? The thing is
important. It makes a great difference in an orphan's disposition
whether she goes dressed in a dirty gray or a fine, bright apricot
yellow."
"Gerald,"--Lily lowered her voice to make their conversation more
private,--"will you be the cuckoo?" As he gazed, she went earnestly on:
"We can't find anybody to do the cuckoo. I am going to be the
nightingale. Fraeulein is going to be the drum. Leslie is going to be the
_Wachtel_. Mother is going to be the triangle. Brenda will play the
piano. Papa says that if he is to take part he must be the one who sings
on the comb and tissue-paper. But I am afraid to let him. You know he
hasn't a good ear. That leaves the cuckoo, the comb, and the rattle
still to find before we can have our _Kinder-sinfonie_. Which
should you like to be, Gerald?"
"What an opening for musical talent! But, my dear little lady, I'm not a
bit of good. I can't follow music by note any more than a cuckoo. I am
so sorry."
"But, Gerald, all you have to do is--"
"I have told you, Lili," said the governess in German, "that we would
take the gardener's boy and drill him for the cuckoo. Come now quickly,
dear child; we must go for our walk."
The casual, unimportant talk of ordinary occasions went on after the
interruption.
"And what do you hear from that charming friend of yours, the abbe,
Gerald?" And, "I hope you have good news from your son, Mrs. Foss." And,
"Do you know whether the Seymours have come back from the country?"
Gerald left the Fosses, warmed by his renewed sense of their friendship,
and believing that he would go very soon again to see them. But he did
not, and his feeling of shame was more definite than his gratitude when
he in time received a note from Mrs. Foss, kind as ever, asking him to
dine.