There was dancing at the Fosses' on two Fridays in the month. It was
their contribution toward the gaiety of the winter. They did not often
give a formal dinner, and when such an entertainment appeared to be
called for from them, planned it with forethought to make it serve as
many ends as it would. Every careful housewife will understand.
It was with Leslie that Mrs. Foss talked such matters over. The eldest
daughter was so sufficient as adjutant that one did not inquire whether
Brenda would have been useful if needed. The latter took no part in the
domestic councils which had for object to decide who should be asked to
dinner and of what the dinner should consist.
The question whom to invite to meet Professor Longstreet had taken Mrs.
Foss and Leslie time and reflection. The Fosses' only son had a great
regard for this man, one of the faculty during his period at Harvard,
and now that the travels of the professor's sabbatical year brought him
to Florence, the family was anxious to entertain him as dear John,
studying medicine in far-off Boston, would have wished.
The professor was engaged upon a new translation of the "Divine Comedy."
The guests had therefore better be chosen among their literary
acquaintance, thought Mrs. Foss. But Leslie was of the opinion that they
would do better to make the requisite just any gift or grace, and keep
an eye on having the company compose well and the table look beautiful.
When she reminded her mother that a dinner was owing the Balm de Brezes,
and that this would be a chance to pay the debt, Mrs. Foss objected:
"But I want to ask Gerald. I felt sorry for him last time he came. We
must look after him a little bit, you know."
Leslie did not show herself in any wise disposed to set aside Gerald's
claim, but expressed the idea that Gerald probably would not mind
meeting the De Brezes now. After all, the memories sweet and sour
associated with them had had time to lose their edge. And they could be
seated at the opposite end of the table.
It was finally decided to ask the Balm de Brezes, Gerald, the Felixsons,
Miss Cecilia Brown, and Gideon Hart, all intelligent, all people who
could talk. It was further frugally resolved to have the dinner on a
Friday and let it be followed by the usual evening party, thus making
the same embellishment of the house do for two occasions, as well as
augmenting their visitor's opportunity to make acquaintance with the
Anglo-American colony in Florence.
* * * * *
All had been going so well, the guests were in such happy and talkative
form, that the minor matter of taking food had dragged, and the diners
were not ready to rise when a servant whispered to Mrs. Foss that the
first evening guest had arrived.
Mrs. Foss's eyes found those of Leslie, who understood the words
soundlessly framed, and excused herself from the table.
In the garnished and waiting drawing-room, lighted with candles, like a
shrine, and looking vast, with the furniture taken out of the way, she
found the Reverend Arthur Spottiswood, of whom it was not easy to think
that eagerness to dance had driven him to come so sharply on time. He
looked serious-minded, almost somber, and Leslie, though prepared to be
vivacious with peer or pauper, found it all duty and little fun to make
conversation with him until the next arrival should come to her relief.
The gentleman was Brenda's adorer, but Brenda would never, if she could
help it, let him have one moment with her. His love-charged eye inspired
in her the simple desire to flee. Singularly, this was, with one notable
exception, beautiful Brenda's only conquest, while Leslie, who was just
ordinarily pretty and wore a pince-nez, received tribute and proposals
from almost every unattached young fellow who drifted inside the circle
of her wide invisible net. Boys in particular had to pass through her
hands, receive good advice from her, be encouraged in their work,
cheered in their distance from home, and refused, and consoled for the
refusal, and sent away finally rather improved than otherwise. With very
little sentiment, she had a kind and cozy quality, like her mother.
The Satterlees were next to arrive, mother with son and daughter, and
Leslie was warm as never before in her welcome to them. The Reverend
Arthur was gently shed from her and with pleasure picked up by Isabel
Satterlee, who was charmed to have any kind of man to talk with.
Then arrived a group of unrelated people living for the moment at the
same pension in town and coming in the same conveyance. Among them was
Percy Lavin, who had the extraordinary tenor voice, and along with it an
exuberance of confidence in his future that made him as destructive of
coherence in company as a large frisking pup. Leslie had at the very
first meeting felt that it would be her sacred mission to attend to that
young man.
The hired pianist had come, he was unrolling his sheets of dance-music
and rolling them the contrary way. Mr. Hunt, the English banker, with
his wife and daughters, had come; and Maestro Vannuccini with his
signora on his arm; and a glittering young officer or two; and Landini,
Hunt's partner; and Charlie Hunt, the banker's nephew.
Charlie, bold through long acquaintance, asked, "Where are the others?"
Leslie told him, whereupon the young man said "Oh!" and his "Oh" sounded
blank, whether because it was apparent to him through her answer that
there had been indiscretion in his question, or because he wondered at
there being a dinner-party in this house and he not asked to it. Leslie
paid no attention, for at that moment the diners were beginning to
appear.
The drawing-room had two doors in the same wall: people coming from the
dining-room would enter by one of these, while those who came from the
street entered by the other, after passing through the small
reception-room where they left their things, and the larger
reception-room intervening between this and the drawing-room. Charlie
Hunt, talking with Mrs. Satterlee, let a casual eye roll away from her
middle-aged agreeableness to see who was entering by that different door
from the one which had given him passage. Curiosity, pure and simple.
Ah, so. Madame Balm de Breze, spare, sharp, high-nosed, beaked and
clawed like a bird--a picked bird. Very elegant. It was clear to Charlie
Hunt why with a dinner to give one should care to secure her and her
husband. They looked so fiendishly aristocratic.
The Felixsons. Naturally. Felixson had to be asked when the guest of
honor was a scholar. Mrs. Felixson's warm brilliancy to-night bore
testimony to a good dinner. Abundance of meats and wines always turned
her a burning pink. It looked to Charlie like a new frock she was
wearing; he did not remember seeing her in it before.
Gideon Hart, the old sculptor. It was his picturesque white hair and
beard that people liked to see at their tables, for the old fellow,
thought Hunt, was phenomenally a bore. In this case patriotism explained
his presence. America quaintly loved his name.
And Cecilia Brown. But was it really Cecilia?... What had she been doing
to herself?... Oh. Her hair. Her hair was cropped and curled all over
her head like wicked Caracalla's. That was the fashion in England, he
had heard, where she had been spending the summer.
But who was this, at the end of the procession, after Mrs. Foss and
Brenda and the consul?
Hunt had a genuine surprise. Gerald Fane.
Now, wherefore Gerald Fane rather than Charlie Hunt?
Mrs. Foss, coming into the drawing-room, felt a glow of pleasure at the
scene meeting her eyes. The occasion, the success of it, had lifted life
for her above its usual plane. She could feel how blessed she was in
ways she did not sufficiently consider on common days when common cares
blinded her. It was a beautiful home, this of hers; here was a beautiful
room, with its mirrors and flowers and candle-light and happy guests.
She smiled at everybody and everything with a brooding sweetness.
Her sense of herself was satisfactory too at the moment. She felt her
dress--an old one, rejuvenated--to be becoming. She was young to have
grown children. Her blond hair did not show the silver threads among it.
She was as handsome in her older way as she had been when young, and she
was sure she was nicer. She had family and friends, all full of regard
for her. Her smile reflected the state of her mind and did one good to
see.
Her eyes resting upon Brenda--whom the reverend Arthur had tried to
capture the moment she appeared, and been baffled--Mrs. Foss in the
optimism of her mood said to herself that all would very likely go well
in that quarter; they ought not to worry as they did.
The pianist had struck up a polka. One still danced the polka in those
days, and the schottische and the dear old lancers, though the waltz was
already the favorite.
The floor was at first sparsely, then ever more thickly, sown with
hopping and revolving couples. Hunt, one arm curled around a young waist
in pink muslin, had enough of his mind to spare from the amount of talk
one has breath for while dancing to continue in a line of thought
started by an annoying little smart where a shred of skin had been
rubbed off his vanity when he saw Gerald come from the dining-room. He
mentally looked at himself and looked at Gerald, and after comparing the
pictures felt his astonishment increase. He could admit, as an excuse
for inviting Gerald instead of himself, that Gerald was an artist, and
this dinner had presumably been planned with the idea of having it
literary-artistic. But then--an artist! Gerald was so little of one. One
never heard of his selling a painting. In the darkest corners of his
friends' rooms you sometimes discovered one of his queer things--a gift,
hung there as a compliment. One might, furthermore, grant that it did
not matter that a man should be agreeable in appearance. But Gerald was
not even agreeable in disposition; he did not try to make himself
agreeable. What did the Fosses see in him?
The music had worked through a mighty flourish to a banging final chord.
Hunt escorted his lady to a chair, took the fan from her hand to fan her
with,--himself a little, too,--and while talking let his dark eye stray
from her and go roving, as was the habit of his eye.
It plunged through an open door into the quietly lighted library, where
the consul and his distinguished guest and a few more of the older or
staider people had withdrawn from the tumult and were having smokes and
conversation. They were considering a marble fragment, passing it from
hand to hand.
Hunt knew that fragment, and at sight of it looked cynical. The consul,
who had discovered it immured in an ancient garden-wall, believed it to
have been carved by Orcagna.
Old Hart had it in his hand. What he said could hardly be heard at that
distance; he passed it to Gerald with a look that seemed to ask for
corroboration. Gerald held it long and gazed seriously, with that
conceit in his own judgment which made him sometimes dispute the
attributions in no less a gallery than the Uffizi--say that a Verocchio
was not a Verocchio, a Giorgione not a Giorgione.
Charlie strained to catch some syllable of what he said. Vainly. The
pianist was preluding. Bertie Bentivoglio came to ask the girl in pink
to dance with him. From the chair she left empty Charlie moved nearer to
the library door, of half a mind to join the group in there. But Gerald,
upon whom Leslie had impressed it that he must do his duty and let there
be no wall-flowers, when the prelude had developed into a waltz returned
the marble into Hart's hand and came to the door. Whereupon Charlie
changed his mind and after saying "Hello, Gerald!" turned again, and the
young men stood looking over the scene side by side, two figures
contrasting in reality nearly as much as they did in Charlie's mental
image of them for purposes of comparison.
Any Rosina who sold buttonhole bouquets at the theater door could have
seen that Charlie was handsome, with his pale brown smoothness and
regularity of feature; the pretty mustache accentuating and not
concealing the neat and agreeable mold of his lip; the fine whiteness of
his teeth, his civilized and silken look altogether. The defects of his
face, if one could call them that, did not appear at first glance or
even at second. His forehead had begun to gain on his hair,--it ran up
at the sides in two points,--and his slightly prominent eyes were brown
in the same sense as a horn button or a bit of chestnut-shell is
brown,--while some eyes that we remember were brown like woodland pools
with autumn leaves at the bottom! He did not look English, yet did not
look quite Italian either. He was in fact both, and the thing evenly
balanced. The banker Hunt's brother had married an Italian; Charlie had
been born in Italy and hardly ever stirred out of it; on the other hand
he had found his society largely among the English and Americans in
Florence.
As he stood there, conforming gracefully to a recognized canon of manly
beauty, his neighbor Gerald, who would not have been noticed one way or
the other for his looks, yet from being beside him took on an
indescribable effect of eccentricity. The bone showed plainly around his
eye-sockets and at the bridge of his nose. One eyebrow became different
from the other the moment he regarded a thing analytically; and when he
smiled those who noticed such things could detect that nature had marked
him for recognition: there showed beneath his mustache three of the
broad front middle teeth whereof two are the common portion. For the
remainder, a slight beard veiled the character of his chin and jaw and a
little disguised the thinness of his throat. Above a large forehead his
dark hair rose on end in a bristling bank, like that of most Italian men
at the time. He looked solitary, unsociable, critical, but not
altogether ungentle. His forehead was full of the suggestion of
thoughts, his gray-blue eyes were full of the reflection of feelings,
that you could be comfortably sure he would not trouble you with.
"Well, Gerald, what are you doing with yourself these days?" asked
Charlie as they stood looking on, delaying to seek partners for the
dance. "Immortal masterpieces?"
This innocuous playfulness somehow jarred. Gerald looked down at Charlie
from the side of his eye,--he was by a couple of inches or so the
taller,--then asked in his turn, a little crustily:
"Do you really want to know?"
"Why, no, my dear fellow, I don't, if that's your reply. It was not
curiosity. I was only showing an amiable interest." His tone conveyed
that he had intended no offense and refused to take any; the
disagreeableness should be all on the same side.
"Thank you for the interest. I am doing much as usual," Gerald answered,
placated.
"Who is this professor from America whom the very select are invited to
meet?" Charlie asked after an interval, as if they had been on the best
of terms again.
The playfulness again was innocent, again might have been regarded as
almost an attempt to flatter; nevertheless it again jarred upon Gerald.
It was by an effort that he answered soberly and literally, without
betraying that the point of irony had irritated him, as, he did not
doubt, it was meant to irritate.
"Another translation of Dante?" Charlie made merry, when Gerald had
finished telling as much as he knew about the professor. "I tell you
what--I will set myself to translating the 'Divine Comedy'! It will give
me distinction, and then--it 's very simple,--I will never show my
translation!"
There was surely no harm in this. It was just stupid. Charlie's
_esprit_ was never of any fineness. He and Gerald had known each
other from the days when both went to M. Demonget's school, whence,
without having been friends, they had emerged intimates. It would have
been ridiculous for either to try to impress the other by the profundity
of his thoughts. Charlie was right in thinking of himself as standing in
a relation to Gerald that made him free to expose ideas in their
undress. And yet it was on this evening and this occasion that Gerald
said to himself for the first time definitely that he did not like
Charlie Hunt. An antipathy existing perhaps from the beginning had risen
to the point where it crossed the threshold of consciousness. No, he
neither liked nor thought well of him.
Luckily, it did not much matter, their relations were superficial.
Belonging in the same circles they must meet from time to time; but if
Gerald avoided him whenever it was decently feasible, he need not often
suffer as at this moment from the repressed nervous need to repudiate in
explicit terms his person, his society, his manners, his morals,
everything that was his. By way of beginning this avoidance, Gerald cast
his eyes more particularly about him in search of a partner. Charlie's
eyes too were wandering over the small and scattered number of ladies
still available to late comers.
Both of them knew every one present. Charlie had picked out with his eye
a still youthful mama, who would not, he believed, refuse to dance, but
would jest and appear flattered and, when after some hesitation she
consented, lean in his arms only a little more heavily than her
daughter. Gerald had singled a slender, faded woman in garments of ivory
lace, who, seated near Mme. Vannuccini in the far corner of the room,
was devoting herself to conversation as if she really had not cared to
dance. Gerald was moved to go and give her the chance of refusing, if
she were in total earnest. He remembered Blanche Seymour as a passionate
dancer still when he began to go to grownup parties.
Now her hair was gray, her face had lines, but she did not look
accustomed to them; there was plaintiveness in her expression, as if she
had been a young girl, really, made up for an elderly part in
theatricals, and did not like her part. It was some sense of this which
was attracting Gerald to her across the room. Leslie had ordered him to
dance, so dance he must. But the glare of festivity all around him did
something to his inner self comparable to a light too bright making the
eyes ache. Leslie would have told him that he picked up his party by the
wrong end. The general gaiety instead of infecting him, reinforced his
feeling that everybody, beneath the surface, was perplexed, bleeding,
afraid of the future, and had good cause to be.
The dinner had been interesting,--he had not been much affected, he was
glad to find, by the presence of the De Brezes,--but he had risen from
it haunted by the conviction that the Fosses were not happy. Nobody, if
one examined into it, was happy; all this pretense was pathetic to the
point of dreariness. Gerald knew everybody's affairs to some extent,
after spending most of his life in the same community, and a little city
where gossip is an elegant occupation. This person had made bad
investments; that one was crippled by the necessity to pay a son's
debts; this couple did not live in harmony, the husband was said to be
infatuated with a dancer. The fact that so much of their own fault
entered into people's misfortunes, while rousing rage, forced him to
pity, because the limitation of their intelligence had so much to do
with people's faults. He was in fact oppressed by the sense of the
limits set to all the lives around him in this beautiful little
Florence, his home, his love, sometimes his despair: the narrow actual
opportunities after the boundless illusions and hopes of youth; the
limited outlook, the limited breathing-room, the limited fortunes. Bars
at the windows, closed doors on every hand.
It was with the feeling that Miss Seymour was no more truly in holiday
spirits than was he that he turned toward her, as toward a spot of
shadow amid too fervid sunshine. It would be more congenial, drifting
with her to the languid measure of this very modern, morbidly emotional
waltz, knowing that, whatever their light talk, they alike felt life to
be a sad affair, than going through livelier evolutions with a young
person who would secretly desire him to flatter and flirt. An instinct
founded less upon male conceit than knowledge of his world drove the
young bachelor determined to remain unattached to seek in preference
women who would found no smallest hope upon his notice of them.
So, keeping at the edge of the room in order to be out of the way of the
dancers, he started on his way to Miss Seymour, while Charlie, whose
mood was as different from Gerald's as was his eye,--that brown eye
which looked upon the world as a barrel of very passable oysters, of
which he would open as many as he could get hold of,--started after.
The approach of a stormily whirling couple, waltzing _all'_
_italiana_, and then another and still another following, forced
them to suspend their journey. While they prudently waited, "Who is
that?" came from Charlie in a voice of acute curiosity.
Gerald, after half a glance at him, mechanically looked in the same
direction.
There stood at the door opening from the reception-room an unknown.
When it was said that our young men knew everybody at the Fosses'
soiree, it was not strictly meant that there might not be a person or
two whom they had not seen before: a plain little visiting cousin whom
the Bentivoglios had begged permission to bring; a new face of a young
Italian introduced by a fellow officer. But at the door now, displacing
a good deal of air, stood a real and striking unknown, in a Paris dress
and diamonds and a smile.
Gerald did not take the trouble to answer Charlie; to himself he said
that this was perhaps Mrs. Hawthorne, the Fosses' new friend.
Mrs. Foss had hastened to meet her. Leslie, disengaging herself from a
partner, left him standing in the middle of the room while she hastened
likewise. It must be Mrs. Hawthorne.
Gerald took back his eyes, and continued on his way to Miss Seymour. But
Charlie, always alive to the possibilities of a new acquaintance, always
eager to be first in the field, dropped his quest of the mama. With an
air of nonchalant abstraction he went to stand in the neighborhood of
the new arrival, conveniently at hand for an introduction. He saw then
that there were two fine new birds; the light and size of the one had at
first obscured the other, though she, too, had on a Paris dress and
diamonds and a smile. But the dress--though there could be little
difference in the women's age, both were young, without being unripe
girls,--was of soberer tones: a sage green moire with pale
coffee-colored lace; and the jewels were more modest, and the smile was
smaller, its beam did not carry so far, nor was perched on so
considerable an eminence.
As he had known she would do, Mrs. Foss after a moment looked about her
for men to introduce. And there he was.
Mrs. Hawthorne. Miss Madison.
Leslie had at the same moment brought up Captain Viviani, who spoke a
little English, and liked very much to practise it with the charming
American ladies, as he told them.
Mrs. Foss lingered awhile, helping the progress of the acquaintance by
bits of elucidation and compliment, then, when the thing was under way,
withdrew so adroitly that she was not missed. A young man, coming up to
importune Leslie for a promised dance, was allowed to carry her off;
Miss Madison, assured by the _capitano_ that he could dance the
American waltz, trusted herself, though a little doubtfully, to his
arms; and Charlie was left with Mrs. Hawthorne.
"Shall we take a turn?" he offered.
"Me?" The lady gave him a look sidewise from dewy blue eyes, as if to
see whether he were serious. He perceived that she with effort kept her
dimples from denting in. He could not be sure what the joke was. But she
went on, as if there had been no joke: "I was brought up a Baptist. My
pa and ma considered it wicked to dance, so would never let me learn. It
doesn't look very wicked to me."
She watched the dancers with an earnestly following eye, preoccupied, he
supposed, with the moral aspect of their embraces and gyrations.
"It looks easy enough," she said, with suppressed excitement, immensely
fascinated. "I should think anybody could do that. You hop on this foot,
you slide, you hop on that foot, you slide. I believe I could do it. No,
no, I mustn't let myself be tempted. I don't want to be a sight." Her
voice had wavered; it suddenly came out bold. "My land!" she exclaimed
full-bloodedly, "there goes a woman who's not a bit slimmer than me!
Look here, let's try. Not right before everybody. I see a side room
where it's nice and dark. Come on in there." As, hardly muffling a gleam
of peculiar and novel amusement, he escorted her toward the room
indicated, she reassured him, "I'm big, but I'm light on my feet."
Charlie was afterward fond of telling that he had taught Mrs. Hawthorne
to dance. But the single lesson he gave her did not of a truth take her
beyond the point where, holding hands with him, like children, and
counting one-two-three, she tried hopping on this foot, then on the
other. For Mrs. Foss, who seemed to have specially at heart that the new
people should enjoy themselves, in her idea of securing this end,
brought one person after the other to be introduced.
How carefully selected these were, or how diplomatically prepared, the
good hostess alone could know.
"Oh, I'm having such a good time!" Mrs. Hawthorne sighed from a full and
happy heart, later in the evening, having gone to sit beside her hostess
on the little corner sofa which that tired woman had selected for a
moment's rest. The dancing was passing before them. "It's the loveliest
party I ever was to. What delightful friends you have, Mrs. Foss, and
what a lot of them! I've made ever so many friends, too, this evening.
Mrs. Satterlee has told me about the Home she's interested in, and Miss
Seymour about the church-fair, and I've had a good talk with the
minister. Those are three nice girls of the banker's, aren't they?
Florence, Francesca, and Beatrice, commonly known as Flick, Fran, and
Trix, they told me. Mr. Hunt, the nephew, is nice, too; we get on like
sliding down-hill. They're all going to come and see me.--Mrs.
Foss,"--her attention had veered,--"do look at that little fellow
playing the piano! Isn't he _great_! But isn't he comical, too!
I've been noticing him all the evening. He fascinates me. I never heard
such splendid playing. The bouncing parts make my feet twitch to dance,
but the sighful, wind-in-the-willow parts make me want to just lean back
and close my eyes. I could listen till the cows come home. I call it a
wonderful gift."
Mrs. Foss looked over at the little Italian, the unpretentious musical
hack whom one sent for when there was to be dancing, and paid--it was
all he asked--so very little. Her eyebrows went up a point as she
smiled. It was true, she remarked it for the first time, that his hands
flew over the keys with an air of breezy virtuosity. He raised them from
the keyboard and brought them down again with the action of a snorting
high-stepping horse. When the passage was loud he nearly lifted himself
off the stool with pounding; when it was soft he tickled the ivories
with the delicacy of raindrops, at the same time diminishing his person
till he seemed the size of a fairy. Now and then he tossed his head, as
if champing a bit, and the bunch of black frizz over his left temple
trembled. A decidedly comic figure he appeared to Mrs. Foss.
"I will tell Signor Ceccherelli what you say," she amiably promised. "I
am sure it will please him."
Leslie, whose responsibilities kept her from dancing her young fill at
her own parties, sought Mrs. Hawthorne still later in the evening, when
she thought that lady might have had enough of Mr. Hunt senior sitting
beside her. The heavy old banker was not considered very entertaining,
and everybody in Florence knew his way of sticking at the side of a
good-looking woman. Lest this one, so evidently making herself pleasant,
should be unduly taxed, Leslie stepped in to free her, tactfully
interested the banker in a game of cards going on upstairs, and took the
place he vacated--took it for just a minute, as a bird perches.
"No, you don't!" Mrs. Hawthorne laid a hand on her arm when she seemed
near dashing off to bring somebody else to present. "You've done the
social act till you ought to be tired, if you aren't. Sit here by me a
moment and take it easy. This party doesn't need any nursing. It's the
loveliest party I ever was to."
Leslie looked off in front of her to verify the statement, and
unreluctantly settled down on the little sofa to rest awhile. She liked
Mrs. Hawthorne. One could not help liking her, as she had had occasion
to assert and reassert in defense against a vague body of reasons for
not adopting the new-comer into the sacred circle of friends, or
launching her on the waters of their little world. Now, as they chatted,
she said to herself again that if Mrs. Hawthorne's homeliness of phrase
were not a simple thing of playfulness, a disclaimer of the affectation
of elegance in talk as stilted, bumptious, unsuited to a proper modesty,
it could very well pass for that. Mrs. Hawthorne seldom expressed
herself quite seriously. As she seldom looked serious either, one could
hardly hear her say it was the loveliest party she ever was to without
suspecting her of a humorous intention. By the sly gleam of her eye one
should know she was doing it to amuse you, imitating a child, a
country-woman, a shop-girl, for the sake of promoting an easy
pleasantness. With her bearing of entire dignity, her honest
handsomeness, her air of secure and generous wealth, she was truly not
one whom the ordinary public would feel disposed to seek reasons for
excluding. Leslie and her mother had refrained from presenting to her
particular persons in the company. All remarks heard from those who had
been presented led to an almost certainty that the new Americans were a
success.
"Do look at Estelle!" exclaimed Mrs. Hawthorne. "She's been dancing one
dance after the other, and sits there now looking cool as a cucumber. I
would have her life if it could make me into a bone like her. Miss
Foss,"--she was diverted from the envious contemplation of
Estelle,--"who is that lovely girl over there?"
"Which one? There are so many to-night!"
"The white one with the knob of dark hair down in her neck. An Italian,
I guess. Rather small. See who I mean? There. She's going to speak to
the little fellow at the piano."
Leslie looked, but did not at once answer. The girl in white was indeed
strangely, at this moment poignantly, lovely. Some intensity of
repressed feeling made her cheek of a white-rose pallor, and her dark
eyes, those spots of velvet shadow, mysteriously deep. She had gone
where the piano stood in a bower of palm and bamboo, with Signor
Ceccherelli seated before it, busy wiping the sweat of his brow. More
than one had gone to him that evening to ask for some favorite piece.
She was perhaps just requesting him to play The Blue Danube, or La
Manola or Bavardage, and it was merely the romantic way of her beauty to
express a sense of doom. She spoke quietly to the pianist, who looked at
her while she spoke and when she ceased made with his head a motion of
assent. She turned and went from the room.
"It is my sister Brenda," said Leslie. "How singular you should not
recognize her!"
"I've never met her, my dear. You don't remember. The time I came to tea
she was in town taking a music lesson. The time I came to dinner she was
in bed with a headache. Well, well, she's not a bit like the rest of
you, is she? I took her for an Italian."
"She was only twelve when we came over here, it has somehow molded her.
I was seventeen; too old, I fancy, to change. Brenda is going back to
America before long, to be with our aunt, father's sister, for whom
Brenda was named. It was only decided a day or two ago, when we heard
from some friends who are going and will take her under their wing. And
if she goes there's no telling when she will come back, you see, because
with every change of administration father may be recalled. And Italy
has been her home so long, all her friends are here. It's no wonder she
doesn't look exactly light of heart."
"No, poor child!"
There was a sympathetic silence, after which, "Who is that?" Mrs.
Hawthorne asked, to take their minds off the intrusive sadnesses of
life. With her gaze across the room she counted, "One, two, three, four,
to the left of the piano, with his hands behind him and a round glass in
his eye."
Leslie looked over at a figure of whom it was natural to ask who that
was, it so surely looked like Somebody--though Mrs. Hawthorne had very
likely asked because, merely, in her eyes he was queer. It was an oldish
man, dressed with marked elegance, white tie, white waistcoat, white
flower at his lapel. The whole of worldly wisdom dwelt in his weary eye.
He had yellow and withered cheeks, black hair with a dash of white above
the ears, and a mustache whose thickest part curved over his mouth like
a black lacquer box-lid, while its long ends, stiff as thorns of a
thorn-tree, projected on either side far beyond his face.
"His name is Balm de Breze, vicomte. He is by birth a Belgian, I think;
the title, however, is French. He has lived mostly in Paris, but now
spends about half of his time here. He married a friend of ours, an
American. There is Amabel, in ruby velvet, just inside the library door.
A good deal younger than he, yet they seem appropriately matched,
somehow."
"She looks about as foreign as he does. Who's the one she's talking to,
handsome, dark as night? Never saw such a dark skin before except on a
cullud puss'n."
"I know. He might be an Arab, only he's very good Tuscan. It's Mr.
Landini,--Hunt and Landini."
"Ah, the bankers. They do my business, but I've never seen the heads
before to-night."
Mrs. Hawthorne's eyes wandered, as if she said, "Whom else do I want to
know about?" and Leslie made internal comment upon the fact that Mrs.
Hawthorne's interest was quickened by those individuals precisely whom
they had withheld, for reasons, from presenting to her.
Mrs. Hawthorne suddenly pressed closer, and with a little chuckle
grasped Leslie's knee, by this affectionate touch to make herself
forgiven for the disrespect about to be shown.
"And who's Stickly-prickly?"
Leslie had to laugh, too. Impossible not to know which one was meant of
all the people in the direction of Mrs. Hawthorne's glance. He was
leaning against the wall between two chairs deserted by the fair,
looking off with a slightly mournful indifference at everything and at
nothing. His mustache ended in upturned points, his beard was pointed,
his hair stood up in little points. He gave the impression besides of
one whose nervous temper put out porcupine shafts to keep you off.
"It's one of our very best friends, Mrs. Hawthorne. Dear old Gerald! Mr.
Fane. Shall I go get him and bring him over?"
"No, don't. I should be scared of him."
"Let me! His prickles are harmless. He has heard us speak of you so
much! See, he is looking over at us wistfully, in a way that plainly
suggests our course. Here comes Charlie Hunt, who will keep you amused
while I fetch Gerald; then we will go in together and have an ice."
Charlie Hunt, modern moth without fear or shyness, but with a great deal
of caution, was indeed returning for the third or fourth time to Mrs.
Hawthorne's side, drawn by the sparkle of eyes and tresses and smiles
and diamonds. Francesca had already described him that evening to
another young lady as dancing attendance on the new American. He dropped
into the seat vacated by Leslie, addressed Mrs. Hawthorne as if they had
been friends for at least weeks, and made conversation joyfully easy by
getting at once on to a playful footing.
Leslie meanwhile steered her course toward Gerald. The music had started
up again, men were presenting themselves to maidens with their request
for the favor.... Leslie threaded her way between the first on the
floor. Her eyes were naturally turned toward the object of her search;
some intention toward him was probably apparent in her look. As if he
had not seen it, or as if, having seen it, he scented in her approach
some conspiracy against his peace, Gerald in a moment during which her
eye was not on him quietly vanished.
Missing him, Leslie looked about in some surprise, then entered the door
by which inevitably he must have passed. She gave a glance around the
library; Gerald did not seem to be there. Mystified, she looked more
carefully at the faces to be seen through the thin tobacco smoke. No,
Gerald's was not among them. Gerald, acquainted with the house, knew the
door, of course, of the kind frequent in Italian houses, the little door
indistinguishable from the wall, by which one could leave the library,
and after crossing the landing of the kitchen stairs, reach the
dining-room. From the dining-room, then, one could come into the
entrance hall, whence go upstairs, or out into the garden, or, as one
pleased, back into the drawing-room. Leslie did not think the matter of
sufficient importance to pursue the chase farther.
The dancing was suspended while the musician had sandwiches and glasses
of a fragrant and delicious-looking but weak punch. The Fosses' waiter
knew him well and fraternally attended to his wants.
The dining-room, though large, would not permit all the couples to enter
at once, so ices and cakes were borne from the table by cavaliers to
expectant ladies in the antechamber, on the stairs, and in the farther
rooms.
The musician after eating to his satisfaction took the time for a
cigarette, which he enjoyed, not in the library, but in cool and
peaceful isolation on the top step of the kitchen stairs. Refreshed, he
briskly went back to his piano, persuaded that the young people were
sighing to see him there. With new vigor he struck up a march. The crowd
in the dining-room thinned.
Mrs. Hawthorne and Miss Madison, with Charlie Hunt and Doctor Chandler,
one of the Americans from the pension, lingered on in the corner where,
with the migration of so many to the ball-room, all four had been able
to find chairs. Mrs. Hawthorne, of the fair moon-face, was as a matter
of course eating sweet stuff; Miss Madison, contrariwise, sipped a small
cup of black coffee. Miss Madison, no need to say, had a neat jaw-bone
to show--collarbones, too. She was not pretty, her features were hardly
worth describing, but yet it was an attractive face, as merry as it was
fundamentally shrewd, as sensible as it was sprightly. The frank, almost
business-like manner of her setting out to have a good time at the party
ensured her having at least a lively one, and her partners not finding
it slow. She at once and impartially interested herself in the men
brought up to her, and sought to interest them. Her flirtatiousness was,
however, sedate--in its way, moral--not intended to have any result
beyond the enlivenment of the hour.
Miss Madison had been finding exhilaration and delight this evening in
dancing, and when presently the alluring strains of a waltz came
floating to their ears, she looked at Chandler, and he in the same
manner looked at her; whereupon she rose, as if words had been
exchanged, took his arm, and they deserted for the ball-room. Charlie
Hunt was left ensconced in an intimate nook alone with Mrs. Hawthorne.
But he had hardly a moment in which to enjoy the feeling of advantage
this gave him before his cousin Francesca came looking for him. They
were going, she said. Father was sleepy, and mother said they must go.
If he wanted a lift home, he must hurry up. Charlie had come with them,
on the box near the driver, there being five already inside the landau.
Gallantry should perhaps have made him answer that rather than be
dragged away at this moment he would walk. But gallantry was dumb.
Charlie was not fond of walking. It was a great convenience, an economy
as well, being permitted to make use of his aunt's carriage.
Having delivered her message, Francesca had gone to put on her things,
and Charlie, after expressions of regret over the inevitable, asked Mrs.
Hawthorne whither she would wish to be taken before he left.
Let him not bother, she answered; she could find her friends without
help.
They separated. Walking slowly, she looked for faces of acquaintances.
She glanced in at the ball-room door. They were dancing still, but not
nearly so many. She turned into the reception-room, whence she could
reenter the ball-room at the other end without danger of collision, and
reach that comfortable blue satin sofa, now standing empty. There she
would sit looking on till Estelle joined her, when they would set about
making their adieux. The carriage must have been waiting for them ever
so long.
She had sat a minute, unconsciously smiling to herself, because the
sensations and impressions of the evening were all so pleasant, when
something occurred to her as desirable to be done. She rose to carry out
her idea.
The dancing had stopped; the floor was clear except in the neighborhood
of the walls, where couples stood or sat recovering breath and coolness.
She started to cross the long room. She did not skirt it because the
direct line to her destination was by the middle; she did not go fast
because there was no occasion, and it was not her way. She advanced like
a goodly galleon pushing along the sea with finely curved bows, all
sails set to catch the breeze. Her mind was entirely on her idea, and
she did not at first feel herself to be conspicuous. But all the eyes in
the room, before she had gone half her way, were fastened upon her, a
natural and legitimate mark. One might now without impertinence have the
satisfaction of a good look at the newly come American who had taken the
big house on the Lungarno; the women might study the fashion of her hair
and dress.
She was smiling faintly, but fixedly; she smiled, indeed, all the time,
as if smiles had been an indispensable article of wear at a party. The
least of her smiles brought dimples into view, and her dimples seemed
multitudinous, though there were really only three in her face and one
of those irregular things called apple-seeds. Her agreeably blunted
features and peachy roundness of cheek belonged to a good-humored,
unimposing type, which took on a certain nobility in her case from being
carried high on a strong, round neck over a splendid broad breast,
partly bare this evening, and seen to be white as milk, as swans'-down,
as pearl.
If one had tried to define the look which left one so little doubt as to
her nationality, one would perhaps have said it was a combination of
fearlessness and accessibility. She feared not you, nor should you fear
her; she counted on your friendliness, you might count on hers.
She was a person simple in the main. The colors she had selected to wear
accorded with the rest, showing little intricacy of taste. The two silks
composing her dress were respectively the blue of a summer morning and
the pink of a rose. From cushioned and dimpled shoulders the bodice
tapered to as fine a waist as a Paris dressmaker had found possible to
bring about in a woman who, despite a veritable yearning to look
slender, cared also for freedom to breathe, and, as she said with a
sigh, guessed she must make up her mind to be happy without looking like
a toothpick. At the back of the waist, the dress leapt suddenly out and
away from the dorsal column--every lady's dress did that for a season or
two at the time we are telling of, and at every step she took the back
of her skirt gave a bob, for the bustle was supplemented by three or
four concealed semi-circles of thin steel, reeds we called them, which
hit against you as you went and sprang lightly away from your heels.
The arrangement of Mrs. Hawthorne's hair equalled in artificiality the
mode of her dress: the front locks were clipped and twisted into little
curls, the back locks drawn to the top of the head, where they were
disposed in silken loops and rolls, at the top of which, like a flag
planted on a hill, stood an aigrette, a sparkle and two whiffs.
It may not sound pretty, it was not, but the eye of that day had become
used to it, as eyes have since become used to fashions no prettier, and
as Mrs. Hawthorne's hair was of a soft sunny tint it was that evening
admired by more than one, as was her intrinsically ugly beautiful gown,
which gave a little jerky rebound every time she placed one of those
neat solid satin-shod feet before the other in her progress across the
now attentive room.
She had taken off her long white gloves to eat a cake--or cakes; she was
carrying them loosely swinging from one dimpled hand.
In the middle of the room self-consciousness overtook her. With the
awakening sense of eyes upon her, she looked first to one side, then to
the other. Her smile broadened while growing by just a tinge sheepish;
she seemed to waver and consider turning from her course and finishing
her journey close along the wall, like a mouse....
She finally did not, nor yet hurried. She made her smile explain to
whoever was looking on that a person was excusable for making this sort
of mistake, that it hurt nobody, that one need not and did not care;
that she was sure they did not like her any less for it; they would not
if they knew how void of offense toward them all was her heart; that
having exposed herself to being looked at, she hoped they liked her
looks. Her dress was a very good dress, her laces were very good lace,
and the maid who had done her hair was considered a first-rate hand at
doing hair.
So she was carrying it off, and her smile was only a little
self-conscious, only a shade embarrassed, when from among the men
standing near the library door, for which she was directly making, there
stepped out one to meet her, not unlike a slender needle darting toward
a large, rounded magnet as it comes into due range.
More sensitive than she, feeling the situation much more uncomfortably
for his country-woman than she felt it for herself, a foreign-looking
fellow, who had not quite forgotten that he was an American, after a
moment's hard struggle against his impulse, hastened forward to shorten
for her that uncompanioned course across the floor under ten thousand
search-lights.
"I'm looking for somebody," said Mrs. Hawthorne, with the smile of a
child.
The voice which had made one man think of the crimson heart on a
valentine reminded this other of rough velvet.
He showed his eccentric three front teeth in a responding smile that had
a touch of the faun, and asked whimsically:
"Will I do?"
"Help me to find Mr. Foss, and you'll do perfectly," she said merrily.
"I haven't seen him more than just to shake hands this whole evening,
and I do want to have a little talk before I go."
"If I am not mistaken, we shall find him in the library." He offered his
arm.
"I may have appeared to be doing something else, Mrs. Hawthorne, but I
have really been looking for you the last hour," said the consul when he
had been found. "I wanted to have a little talk. How are you enjoying
Florence?"
"Oh, we're having an elegant time, thanks to that dear wife of yours and
that dear girl, Leslie. I don't know what we should have done without
them and you."
"But the city itself, Florence, doesn't it enchant you?"
"We--ell, yes. N-n-n-no. Yes and no. That's it. You want me to tell the
truth, don't you? Some of it does, and some of it doesn't. Some of it, I
guess, will take me a long time to get used to. It's terribly different
from what we expected--I, in particular. You see, I came here because an
old friend used to talk so much about it. Florence the Fair! The City of
Lilies! He said Italy was the most beautiful country in the world, and
Florence the most beautiful city in Italy. So my expectations were way
up.--Oh, I don't know; it's hard to tell. I don't exactly remember now
what I did expect. I guess my picture of it was something like the New
Jerusalem on an Easter day. But I shall get used to this, like to the
taste of olives. It must be all right, for the friend I was speaking of
had the finest mind I've ever known. I'm green as turnip-tops, of
course, but I shall get educated up to it, I suppose. Give me time."
"Mrs. Hawthorne, hear me prophesy," said Mr. Foss. "In six months you
will love it all. It's the fate of us who come here from new countries.
It will steal in upon you, grow upon you, beset and besot you, till you
like no other place in the world so well."
"Will it? Well, if you say so. The Judge--the friend I was speaking
of,--said so much of the same kind that the minute I thought of coming
to Europe, right after I'd said, 'I'll go to Paris,' I said to myself,
'I'll go to Florence.'"
"Your friend was a judge of places."
"It wasn't he alone influenced me. He was sick a long time, and I used
to read aloud to him, and one spell, when his mind for some reason or
other was running on Italy, every book he chose had the scene laid here.
There were whole pages of description, and anything so lovely, so
luscious, as the places and people described I never did dream. I didn't
understand more than a quarter, but I swallowed it all and gloated. The
woman who wrote those books certainly did have an imagination. O
Antonia, let me meet you and have a good look at you so I can tell
a--hm, the owner of an imagination when I see one again!"
"Antonia, did you say?" The consul smiled.
"That was the writer's name. You know the books I mean?"
"I have read a work or two of Antonia's, yes. She lives near Florence,
you know, on another of these little hills."
"Oh, does she!"
"Her name is Mrs. Grangeon. She is an Englishwoman, with an
extraordinary sense of, and feeling for, Italy. She is, at her best, a
poet; at her worst, slightly deficient, perhaps, in humor. But her
passion for Italy is genuine, and I have no doubt she sees it as glowing
as the pictures she makes of it."
"Her books are 'grand, John'! If I never had come here, I never should
have appreciated them or her--making up that wonderful world, all
pomegranates and jasmin-stars, and curls like clustering blue-black
grapes, and staturesque limbs, out of the back of her head. Yes, and the
golden dust of centuries, and time's mellow caressing touch--oh, I wish
I could remember it all!"
"Mrs. Hawthorne, we must take you in hand. Be it ours to initiate you.
Come, what have you been to see?"
"Treasures of art? We haven't had time yet. We've been getting a house
fit to live in. When you asked me how I liked Florence, I ought to have
begun by that end. I love my house, Mr. Foss. I love my garden. I love
the Lungarno. And the Casheeny. And Boboly. And the drive up here. And
the stores! I positively dote on those little bits of stores on the
jewelers' bridge."
"Well, well, that's quite enough to begin with."
"Now that we're going to have some time to spare, we mean to go
sight-seeing like other folks."
"How I wish, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, that I were not such a busy man!
But"--Mr. Foss had a look of bright inspiration--"should I on that
account be dejected? Here is Mr. Fane--"
He turned to Gerald, who, after bringing up Mrs. Hawthorne, had stood
near, a silent third, waiting to act further as her escort by and by.
Meanwhile he had been listening with a varied assortment of feelings and
a boundless fatigue of spirit.
"Mr. Fane," said the consul, "who is not nearly so busy a man as I, and
is the most sympathetic, well-informed cicerone you could find. When we
wish to be sure our visiting friends shall see Florence under the best
possible circumstances, we turn them over to Mr. Fane."
Gerald's face struggled into a sourish smile, and he bowed ironical
thanks for the compliment. Lifting his head, he shot a glance of
reproachful interrogation at the consul. Was his friend doing this
humorously, to tease him, or was the man simply not thinking?
The consul looked innocent of any sly intention; he was all of a jocund
smile; the consul, who should have known better, wore the air of doing
him a pleasure and her a pleasure and a pleasure to himself; the air of
thinking that any normally constituted young man would be grateful for
such a chance.
"I shall be most happy," said Gerald, with irreproachable and misleading
politeness.
Mrs. Hawthorne turned to him readily.
"Any time you say. Let me tell you where we live."