So many forces had been enlisted, into so many hands the white card
given, to make Mrs. Hawthorne's ball a success, that it could hardly
fail to be somewhat splendid. On a platform raised in one corner of the
ball-room sat the little orchestra assembled and conducted by Signor
Ceccherelli, who, from his mien, might have been the creator of these
musicians and originator of all music.
Charlie Hunt was floor-master, and busy enough. Another might perhaps
have done as much and not appeared so busy. The cotillion especially
gave him a great deal to do. Everybody understood that he had planned
all the figures and bought the favors. Some received an impression that
the ball was entirely managed by him, who was such a very great friend
of the hostess's. Some even carried home an idea that the hostess never
did anything without consulting him, and more often than not besought
him to do it for her.
This sounds cruder than it actually was. Charlie was looking most
handsome and high-bred. Animation shone from his eyes, his teeth, his
skin, over which he now and then swept a fine white silk handkerchief.
He danced devotedly every minute during which he was not engaged in
making others dance. Mrs. Hawthorne, gazing after him with a benignant
smile, was truly grateful to him for putting into her party so much
"go." It was his atmosphere rather than his words--though he did drop
words, but not many or really in bad taste--that made him appear the one
indispensable person in the house.
Mrs. Foss stood near the central door with Mrs. Hawthorne, receiving.
She had not omitted from her list one acquaintance in Florence of the
suitable class. Everybody was there; the style of invitation-card sent
had suggested a grand occasion.
All the persons she had seen at the Fosses on the first Friday evening
at their house Mrs. Hawthorne saw again, and many more. Balm de Breze,
with a gallantry of old style, bent his black-lacquer mustache over her
glove. The dark Landini pressed her hand with a pinch the warmth of
which pricked her attention, and she found his eyes fixed on her with
more the air of seeing her than is common at a first meeting.
Suddenly her heart thumped like a school-girl's. Gerald was coming, and
with him an officer who must surely be Manlio. She tried to keep down
her emotion, but the pink of her face deepened, a trembling seized her
smile.
The Italian was as white as paper, his mustache and brows made spots of
ink on it; his eyes were as deep and still as wells in the night. She
could hardly doubt that his heart was in a tumult, but he spoke without
disaster to his voice, thanking her in a formal phrase. She perceived,
from a distinct advantage over him in height, how faultlessly handsome
he was in a quiet, unmagnetic way. Never had she seen anything to equal
the whiteness of his teeth except her pearls in their black velvet case.
After having paid his duty to her, he remained for some minutes speaking
with Mrs. Foss, who appeared as kind, while he appeared as calm and
natural, as if time had moved back, and they were still at last spring
and the beginning of his visits. Of all concerned Aurora was the least
collected.
"I can't help it!" she murmured to Gerald, while the other two were
talking together. "I'm all of a tremble. I feel as if I were Brenda; and
at the same time I feel as if I were him--or he."
Mrs. Foss turned to them to say she believed everybody had arrived, and
with Giglioli moved away from the door. Gerald asked Mrs. Hawthorne if
they should waltz, but she refused, because she ought to be looking
after the people who were not dancing and seeing that every one had a
good time. She should dance only once that evening, she told him, and it
should be with Mr. Foss, who had promised to dance at her party if she
would promise to dance with him.
Mr. Foss was seen approaching, and Mrs. Hawthorne smiled and sparkled in
anticipation of the jokes they would exchange on her fairy weight and
his youthful limberness.
Gerald sent his eyes around the room to see if any one were free whom it
would be a sort of duty to ask to dance. He did not look for pleasure
from dancing, the less so that Charlie Hunt, on the perpetual jump, and
dancing with a perfection almost unmanly, had brought the exercise into
temporary discredit with him. Miss Madison was dancing, Miss Seymour was
dancing, Leslie was dancing, Brenda--his eyes were unable to find. In a
doorway, and not quite as festive in looks as the majority, which gave
to the room the effect of an animated flower-bed, he perceived a figure
in snuff-brown silk, just in front of which, soberly watching the
dancers, was a little girl in a short dress of embroidered white, a blue
hair-ribbon and blue enamel locket. At once dropping his search for a
partner, Gerald went to join this pair, thinking, as he approached, that
Lily without her spectacles was beginning to have a look of Brenda,--a
Brenda with less beauty, but more originality; more--what could one call
it?--geniality, perhaps.
"Oh, Gerald!"--the little girl caught his hand without ceasing for more
than a second to watch the ball-room floor,--"I have promised to go home
willingly at ten o'clock!" It was spoken in a gentle wail.
"My child," said Fraeulein, "you must begin to prepare, for I fear it
cannot be far from ten."
"Oh, Fraeulein, don't keep talking about it! _Please!_"
"When you leave this pleasure, Lili, remember, there will be still that
other pleasure of the long ride home in the night and the moonlight."
"Yes." Lily, glad again, turned wholly to Gerald, the music having
stopped. "Mrs. Hawthorne told mother that if she would let me come I
should be taken home in her own carriage, with all the furs around us
and a hot water-box for our feet, so that we never could catch cold.
Wasn't it sweet of her? And we've both already had ices and cakes,
before anybody else, because she said we must. Don't you think she's
sweet, Gerald?"
"Sweet as honey," he said.
"Oh, Gerald,"--Lily's tone was fairly lamentable,--"have you seen the
baskets of favors that are going to be given away by and by? There are
roses of red silk, and lilies of white velvet, and chocolate cigars, and
fans, and bonbonnieres, and silver bangles! Then funny ones of little
monkeys and ducks and things. And I have to go home willingly,
cheerfully, promptly, at ten o'clock!"
"Lily, if any lady is so good and so misguided as to honor me with a
favor, I will bring it to you in my pocket to-morrow or soon after, I
promise."
"What hour is it, Herr Fane?" asked Fraeulein over Lily's head.
Gerald drew out his watch and hesitated, sincerely sorry.
"To be exact, it is three minutes and three quarters to ten," he said.
Lily's mouth dropped open, and out of the small dark hollow one could
fear for a second that a cry of protest or revolt might come; but the
very next moment it was seen that Lily had returned to be the best child
in the world and the most honorable.
"Good night, Gerald!" she said, with a wistfully willing, cheerful,
ready face. "You won't forget?"
He was left in the oval room, and as the dancers who had come in to
occupy its seats seemed all to be in pairs, he remained aloof. He took
the occasion to have a look at the panels, which he had not before seen,
the tapestries, which were not tapestries, but paintings on rep. He
remembered--the Fountain of Love, not Biblical.
The fountain, surely enough, spouted from a marble dolphin squeezed in
the chubby arms of a marble Love, and was four times repeated, at
different hours of the day and seasons of the year. In spring, at dawn,
a maiden filled her cup at it. At noon, in summer, the same maiden and a
youth drank from it with cheeks close together. In autumn, at sunset,
the maiden, sadder of countenance, stared at the fountain, visibly
wrapped in memories. In winter the fountain stood solitary and frozen,
Cupid had a hood of snow, the purplish twilight landscape was drowned in
melancholy.
Gerald's mind made an excursion from the things before him to the studio
where those facile works of art had been produced. The place was
imaginary, and the artist not altogether clear, but the features of the
second figure which he saw, the visitor at the studio, were well-known
to him, and the sentiments of the artist receiving the order to treat a
subject in four large panels for a rich _forestiera_ not difficult
to estimate.
* * * * *
The ball had been raging, if one may so express it, for several hours,
the feast was at its height, when Aurora, confused with the richness and
multiplicity of her impressions, and aware of a happy fatigue, withdrew
from her guests to be for a few minutes just a quiet looker-on. She
chose as her retreat a spot at the curve of the stairs, where she felt
herself in the midst of everything and yet isolated. Her back was toward
the persons going up and down; she leaned on the sloping balustrade, and
breathed and rested and hoped no one would notice her for a little
while, all being delightfully engaged.
She could see a little way into the ball-room, where certain younger
couples, mad for dancing, were making the most of the time when the
floor was relatively empty, the supper-room being proportionately full.
Supper over, the cotillion would begin. She could see Leslie, in
Nile-green crape, eating an ice out in the hall with that American boy,
the singer, whose conceit, by his looks, had not yet been made to
totter. She could hear the merry sound of spoons and glasses, and knew
what good things were being consumed. All the house was involved in
festivity, and resounding with it. In the upstairs sitting-room were
card-tables. In the improvised conservatory opposite one large dim
lantern glowed softly amid palms and flowers. To Aurora every goose
present that evening was a swan. There were frumpy dresses more than a
few,--there always are,--and there was the usual proportion of plain
girls and uninteresting men, but she did not see those. She saw a crowd
more brilliant and beautiful and fit to be loved than had ever before
been assembled beneath one roof. Her heart felt very large, very soft,
very light.
All evening it had seemed to her rather as if she walked in a dream.
More than ever now, as she stopped to take account of all the
wonderfulness surrounding her, it felt to her like a dream; so that she
said to herself, "This is I, Nell--is it possible? Is it possible that
this is I--Nell?"
And no doubt because she had been too excitedly happy and was tired, and
the time had come for some degree of reaction, her joy fell, withered
like a child's collapsing pink balloon, when, contrasting the present
with the past for the sake of seeing the things before her as more
rarely full of wonder and charm, she saw those other things. Memories
she did not willingly call up rose of themselves, and forced her to give
them her attention in the midst of that scene of flowers, light, music.
The brightness, the flavor, went out of these as if under an unkind
magic.
"It's a wonder," she thought, "that I can ever be as happy as I am. I do
wonder at myself how I can do it to rejoice."
But the next minute she was smiling again, sweetly, heart-wholly,
forgetfully. She had caught sight of Gerald looking at her as if about
to approach.
"Who are you going to dance the cotillion with?" she asked gaily.
"You, Mrs. Hawthorne, with your kind consent."
"No, I couldn't do it. I only dance a little bit, just what Estelle has
taught me since we've been here. I don't keep step very well; I walk all
over my partner's feet. Besides, it wouldn't do, because I've already
refused to dance with Mr. Landini."
"Sit it out with me, then, I implore you, if you positively do not wish
to dance."
"Oh, but you must dance! I want you to. I want to behold you all stuck
over with favors."
"It's true that I must have a few favors for Lily; but couldn't a good
fairy arrange it, and then we let the others heat themselves while we
keep cool and rest? I feared a moment ago that you were feeling tired,
Mrs. Hawthorne."
"Look!" she whispered, interrupting him.
He imperceptibly turned in the direction of her stolen glance. Two
figures were ascending the opposite flight of stairs, looking at each
other while they inaudibly talked: Brenda, in filmy white diversified by
a thread of silver; Manlio, carrying over his arm, and in his absorption
letting trail a little, a white scarf beautiful with silver
embroideries; in his hand a white pearl fan. Brenda's face was angelic,
nothing less. When the young and rose-lipped cherubim are full of
celestial sensations and adoring, eternal thoughts, they must look as
Brenda did at that moment. Manlio's head was so turned that his
night-black hair alone was presented to our friends. Slowly the pair
mounted and was lost to sight.
Neither Gerald nor Mrs. Hawthorne made any comment. Gerald, after a
silence, spoke of Lily's increasing resemblance to her sister. Mrs.
Hawthorne was reminded that they must go to select some favors for Lily,
and led the way.
They sat together through the cotillion, and Gerald, because he had seen
the shadow of sadness on Mrs. Hawthorne's face, tried more than usual to
be a sympathetic companion, easy to talk to, easy to get on with. He was
always quick to see such things.
No trace of it remained. Her dimples were in full play, but he found it
according to his humor to continue uncritical, inexpressively tender,
toward this big, bonny child who never curbed the expression of a
complete kindness toward himself.
More interesting to them than any other dancers were naturally Brenda
and Manlio, partners for the cotillion. Certainly the plot for giving
those two a few beautiful last hours together was proving a success.
Brenda was calmly, collectedly luminous; Manlio, uplifted to the point
of not quite knowing what he did. Radiant and desperate, he looked to
Gerald, who found his state explained by the facts as he knew them.
"Poor things! Poor dears!" he thought, with the cold to-morrow in view,
yet retained his conviction of having done the unhappy lovers on the
whole a good turn.
He had been glad to find the Fosses sharing his point of view that to
forbid Giglioli a sight of Brenda before the long parting would have
been unnecessarily cruel. Mrs. Hawthorne, it seemed to him, had lost
sight of what was to follow. She was exclusively delighted with their
joy of the evening, she gave no thought to their misery next day. It was
amazing to him, the extent to which she had forgotten.
So he said aloud, "Poor things! Poor dears!" and discovered that it was
not forgetfulness exactly in Mrs. Hawthorne, but that general optimism
which insists on believing in a loophole of possibility through which
things can slip and somehow turn out right after all.
* * * * *
The party was over. The musicians had laid their instruments in
coffin-like black boxes and were getting into their overcoats. The
candles were burned to the end, the flowers looked tired, the place all
at once amazingly empty. The last half dozen people were standing and
laughing with Mrs. Hawthorne and Miss Madison around Percy Lavin while
he told a final good story when one of the guests who had departed some
time before returned.
Mrs. Hawthorne caught sight of the figure in closed coat, tall hat, and
white silk muffler as soon as it entered the house, for the group of
laughers stood near the ball-room door, and this was only separated from
the inner house door by the wide hall. Without waiting for the end of
the comic story Mrs. Hawthorne hurried to the guest, whose reason for
returning she wished to know, though it so easily might have been only
his forgotten cane.
That it was nothing of the kind she at once perceived. He looked upset.
"May I speak with you a moment?" he asked at once.
They stepped into the nearest room, still brightly lighted, but
deserted.
"What's the matter?" she inquired, prepared by his face for news of
trouble.
"Mrs. Hawthorne, we've done it!" said Gerald. "Giglioli tells me that
he's giving up the army, and Brenda has promised to marry him!" He was
on the verge of laughing hysterically.
"Oh!" Mrs. Hawthorne paused to watch him, and wonder why they should not
without further to-do rejoice and triumph. "Well? What's wrong with
that?"
"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, it's deadly!" he exclaimed with conviction. "If it
were a simple solution, why shouldn't it have been suggested before?"
"It did suggest itself to me, in the quiet of my inside, you know."
"But you, dear lady, can't be supposed to understand. Oh, it's either
too, too beautiful, or else too, too bad! And in this dear world of ours
the probability is that it's too bad. He was taken off his feet by his
emotion; he offered her what he will feel later he had no right to
offer--a good deal more than his life. But it shows, doesn't it, that he
does immensely love her? To throw into the balance everything--his
career, his family, his country--and offer them up! To cut his throat
for a kiss."
"You're quite right; I can't understand," she hurried in. "What makes
you say 'cut his throat'? Couldn't he go into some other business just
as well as the army?"
"All in the world he's fitted for is the army. Do you see that beautiful
fellow going to America, for instance, and earning a living as a teacher
of Italian, or as the representative of some tobacco interest? There is
no way of earning a proper living over here, you know. Oh, I'm afraid he
will feel, when he wakes up, like a deserter toward his country and an
ingrate toward his family and even toward Brenda like a misguider of her
youth."
"But, look here, isn't there a chance that having each other will make
up to them for everything else?"
"That of course was their sentiment at the moment of doing it. We did
the work so well, Mrs. Hawthorne, that their passion, raised to a
beautiful madness, would make them see anything as possible to be done
so long as it gave them to each other, obviated the horrible necessity
to part. Oh, it is touching, but dreadful! What were we dreaming? The
thing I so greatly fear is that when he comes to himself he will feel
dishonored, and Italians do not bear that easily, if at all."
"Now, see here, don't you go imagining things and worry. And don't you
let that young man worry. He isn't leaving the army to-morrow or the day
after, is he?"
"No. In the natural course of things, I suppose, it will take some
time."
"Well, I don't at all relish, myself, the idea of seeing that beautiful
fellow, as you say, in every-day clothes--the sort they wear over
here--after seeing him all glorious in silver braid and stars. No. I
just can't bear to think of him giving them up. At the same time I don't
agree with you that he had better have given up his girl than them. And
I don't believe she will mind about his clothes one way or the other."
"But there is his family, a thousand obligations--he spoke of them
himself."
"Perhaps the Fosses, now this has happened and they see how much in
earnest the blessed creatures are, will sell some of their stock in
California gold-mines and afford the dowry you spoke of."
"But Giglioli will blush at this forcing of their hand."
"Now, see here, you keep that young man cool. He hasn't done anything to
be ashamed of. Brenda knows her own mind, and I don't believe her father
and mother would stand in the way of her marrying a tramp if he was
honest and her heart set on him. You tell that young man, in your own
way, to sit tight and put his trust in the Lord."
Gerald's nervous laughter for a moment got the better of him. He covered
his face to check it, then, tearing away his hands, made the gesture of
releasing a pack of tugging hounds too strong for him to hold. Let them
be off and at the devil!
"I didn't come here looking for comfort, dear Mrs. Hawthorne. Your
optimism is constitutional, you know, rather than enlightened. I merely
came to tell my accomplice the result of our meddling with destiny.
'Accomplice' is a manner of speaking. Don't suppose I forget that I
alone am to blame. Good night. I must go back to him where I left him,
with his head among the stars and clouds, and his feet perhaps beginning
to burn already with the heat of the nether fire. As you say, 'let's be
cheerful, let's hope for the best!' Ha!"