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. Fraeulein 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 regles_. 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!"