When the latter occurrences had shaken down in Aurora's mind, Gerald's
letter, which she from time to time re-read, impressed her as a most
gentle and reasonable production of his pen, while her own letter,
preserved in the original scribble, appeared to her horrid, cutting, and
uncalled for.
But there was now nothing to do about it. The state of mind created in
her by the whole episode prepared her to welcome with open arms any
diversion, any event which would restore to her self-conceit a little
vitality or lay on her heart a little balm; and so when, at the
psychological moment, Doctor Thomas Bewick surprisingly turned up in
Florence,--it may be remembered that he was Estelle's choice for
Nell,--Nell fell on his neck quite literally, and gave him a full,
sonorous kiss.
"Tom! Tom!" she cried in delight, "how good it is to see you!"
This happened in her formal drawing-room, whither she had gone on the
servant's announcement that a gentleman from America, who had given no
card or name, asked to see her.
Their greeting over, she ran out into the hall, screaming joyfully:
"Hat! Hat! Come down this minute! Hurry up! You'll never guess who's
here!"
In reply to which summons Estelle came hurrying down the stairs with an
innocent, expectant air.
"If it isn't Doctor Bewick!" she exclaimed, without giving herself away
by one false inflection. "Why, Doctor Bewick, this is simply too awfully
nice! What _are_ you doing over here? Who _would_ have
expected to see _you_?"
"Tom," said Aurora, "I was never in my life so glad to see any one. I
didn't know how much I'd missed you till I saw you. You good old thing!
You nice old boy! Aren't you a brick to have come! My soul, my soul! I
didn't know till this minute how tired I am of foreigners and
half-foreigners and quarter-foreigners and all their ways. I was hungry
for home-folks and didn't know it. Now, please God, we'll have some talk
where we know that when we use the same words we mean the same thing,
and aren't wondering all the time what's really in the other's mind!"
The man to whom this was said absorbed it with a face fixed in smiles of
pleasure. He was a big blond man, disposed to corpulence, and looking
somewhat like a fresh-faced, gigantic boy until his eye met yours and
gave the note of a fine, mature intelligence, open on every side, and
unobtrusively gathering in what it had no strong impulse afterward to
give out again in any open form of self-expression.
Tolerant, not from any vagueness of judgment; easy to get on with, but
not to drive or to deceive, he looked strikingly the good fellow, yet
kept you in respect. An air of capability, a consciousness of definite
achievements, went coupled in him with the humor that would prevent
bumptiousness however great the matter for pride. A quiet carelessness
of other people's opinions formed part of his effect of poise; the
opinions of dukes would have affected him as little as those of
rag-pickers, unless they recommended themselves to that judicial spot in
his brain at which he tried them. He was level-headed, unsentimental,
but kind, of a kindness that like good-humor seemed almost physical, and
made him stop to stroke the kitchen cat as well as see to it that the
negress's baby had the right milk for its orphaned stomach.
He looked at Aurora with smiling scrutiny, and facially expressed a vast
appreciation. She looked back at him with eyes of laughing tenderness.
Avoiding to speak directly to her the compliments rising in his mind, he
turned to Estelle.
"Hasn't she blossomed out!"
"Isn't she wonderful?" chimed in that friend, enthusiastically.
Aurora, with a comedy of pride, threw up her chin, lifted her arms, and
turned as if on a pivot, to show herself off in her elegance. She had on
the wine-colored street-dress bordered with black fox; over its white
satin waistcoat embroidered with gold hung in a splendid loop her pink
corals. The restraining Paris corset gave to her luxuriant form a
charming modish correctness of line.
"Oh, Tom,"--she sank happily on the sofa beside him,--"we're having the
time of our lives! Just wait till you see me in company, and hear me put
on my good English, when, instead of calling things lovely or horrid, I
call them amusing or beastly or impossible. But your turn first. Give us
the Denver news."
* * * * *
After dinner that evening, in the midst of Italo's brilliant
performance, a caller came,--a thin, oldish, English-speaking lady whose
black dress made no pretense of following the fashion.
Aurora had met her at Mrs. Satterlee's during a meeting appointed to
raise funds for the Protestant orphanage. When this philanthropist,
after a little talk of other things, mentioned the relict of a mason,
left with five young children, Estelle and Dr. Bewick took it as a hint
to withdraw beyond earshot. The two ladies were left talking in
undertones; after a minute they found themselves alone in the room.
Estelle preceded Dr. Bewick across the hall to the dining-room, deserted
and orderly, where the drop-light rained its direct brightness only on
the rich and variegated tapestry cover of the table beneath it. From the
sideboard--whence the marble fruit had for some time been missing--she
brought a bottle of aerated water and a glass to set before him; she
found him an ash-tray, and seated herself beside the table near him in
such a way as to get, through the parted half-doors, a glimpse of the
visitor when she should leave.
Before speaking, she exchanged with the doctor a look of intelligence.
"You see what I mean?" she asked little above a whisper.
[Illustration: Aurora, with a comedy of pride, threw up her chin,
lifted her arms, and turned as if on a pivot, to show herself off
in her elegance]
Dr. Bewick looked all around the room with leisurely appraising eyes,
then nodded understanding. There was no intimation that he was not ready
to listen, but he did not seem quite ready to talk. His white
shirt-bosom was remarkably broad as he leaned back in his chair in the
slightly lolling fashion of large, good-humored men. For all the
nonchalance of his attitude, he looked, from evening tie to thin-soled
dress-boots, beautifully spruce, as Aurora had remarked, and made an
appropriate pendant to her in her Parisian finery.
Approval of him was written large on Estelle's pleasant, alert
countenance; a quiet, comprehensive liking for her sat as plainly in the
eyes reflecting her slim person and evening-frock of beaded net. Being
Nell's friends made them friends, a thing not so common as one wishes.
Through her they felt almost on the familiar terms of old friendship,
although Estelle had never met Dr. Tom Bewick before he came to New York
to see them off on their great four-stacked ocean-steamer.
"You see what I mean?" she asked, and, not expecting a regular answer,
did not wait for it. "Now that woman won't leave until she has secured
support for the mason's five children, and she'll do this without the
smallest difficulty. In a day or two some one else will come, with the
sad case of a poor father out of work who is going to have to sell his
blind daughter's canary unless Nell steps in to relieve their wants. And
Nell will step in. Word has been passed, just as they say a tramp at
home marks a house where he's been given a meal, and every case of want
in this town, it seems to me, is hopefully brought to Nell. And she
listens every time; she doesn't get sick of it. And you know, Doctor,
that her circumstances don't warrant it."
Bewick, as Estelle stopped for some comment on his side, made a slight
motion of chin and eyelids that partly or deprecatingly agreed with her.
He took the cigar out of his mouth, but having knocked the ash off,
replaced it, to listen further and not for the moment speak.
"It's positively funny, the things Nell has been doing with her money,"
Estelle went on, in a tone that did not disguise the fact of her
glorying in this prodigality while being justly frightened by it. "It's
not just the ordinary charities, churches, hospitals, etc.,--all of
those send in their regular bills, as you might say. It's a Swiss
music-box for the crippled son of the _spazzaturaio_, or
street-cleaner; it's a marriage-portion for this one and funeral
expenses for that one; it's filling the mendicant nuns' coal-cellar,
it's clothing a whole orphan-school in a cheerfuller color! Clotilde and
Italo call her attention to every deserving case, and are guided in this
by the simple knowledge that Nell can't hold on to her money. Of course
it's her good heart. She's done a lot for them and their family, too,
I've discovered. I don't know just how much, but I can guess by their
look of licking their chops. I'm not saying they aren't all
right--honest, sincere, and so forth--or that I don't like them. It's
Nell's own fault that she's imposed on. I don't doubt that they're as
devoted as they seem, it's only right they should be. It's right the
whole city of Florence should be. I was thinking only the other day as
we drove through Viale Lorenzo the Magnificent that it would be
appropriate for a grateful city to rechristen our street Viale Aurora
the Magnificent."
Tom Bewick laughed, nodding to himself with an effect of relish. He
murmured, "Aurora the Magnificent!"
"Aurora the Magnificent--Aurora the Magnificent is all very well,"
Estelle took up again with animation, "but she's already spending her
capital."
Bewick did not allow himself to appear startled or troubled; still, he
was made pensive by this. His look at Estelle invited her to go on and
tell him the rest, just how bad it was. She was leaning forward, with
her elbows on the table, one hand slipping the rings on and off a finger
of the other, in her quick way.
"You know what her income is. It would have provided for all this,"--she
took in the luxury around them by a gesture of the head,--"but no income
can suffice to set up in housekeeping all the picturesque paupers in
Florence. That's why I was so anxious for you to come, and wrote you as
I did. You can curb her; I can't. I have no influence with her in that
way, and I simply can't sit still and see her throw away all this good
money that was intended to provide her with comforts for the rest of her
life. Unless somebody looks after it, she won't have a penny left. You
must talk to her, Doctor Bewick. Don't let her know, though, that I put
you up to it. You can ask a plain question, as it's right and natural
for you to do, then when she answers you can lecture her. She'll take it
from you."
Bewick, with his sensible face, looked as if he saw justice and reason
in all Miss Madison had said to him; yet he did not go on with the
subject. It might be that he felt delicate, in a masculine way, about
uttering to a lady's best friend any criticism of that lady's mode of
doing or being--criticism which he might feel no difficulty perhaps in
voicing to herself. Estelle took this into consideration and, his
reticence notwithstanding, relied on him to do his duty.
A diversion occurred in the shape of a knock at the door--the door
leading to the kitchen-stairs. It was but the scratch of one fingernail
on the wood. Tiny as the sound was, it did not have to be repeated
before Estelle ran to open. A small four-footed person entered, the
bigness of a baby's muff and the whiteness of a marquis's powdered wig.
Estelle caught him up from the floor and with a coo of affection, "What
um doing in the kitchen, little rogums?" set him on the table, under the
lamp, for Doctor Tom to see how utterly beautiful he was and have the
points and characteristics of a Maltese terrier explained to him.
Busteretto was reaching dog's estate, his shape had taken on a degree of
subtlety, his hair was growing long and straight and like leaves of the
weeping willow. Estelle lifted the white fringe depending from his brow,
and exposed to the light two great limpid brown eyes, incredibly sweet
and intelligent. It was as wonderful, in its way, as if a blind beggar,
insignificant and easy to pass by as he stood at the street-corner,
should take off black goggles suddenly, and you should perceive that he
was a masking angel come to test the hearts of men.
"Did you ever see such a little sweetheart?" gasped Estelle.
"A pretty little fellow," spoke the doctor commendingly. With the
instinct to relieve discomfort he raised the veil of hair again as soon
as Estelle had let it drop, and looking further into the beautiful eyes,
that with the neat nose made a triangle of dark spots effective as
mouches on Columbine's cheek,--"Why don't you tie up his hair like this
to keep it out of the way?" he asked.
"We mustn't! Mr. Fane, who gave him to Nell, says it would be bad for
him, he might go blind. They're that kind of eyes and need the shield
from the light. Mr. Fane knows all about this Maltese breed of dogs."
"Is he the same one who painted her portrait?" Dr. Tom deviated from the
subject of the dog, over whose eyes the curtain was allowed to drop
again.
"Yes, he's an artist."
"And the same one she nursed through an illness?" asked Dr. Tom after a
moment, with the mere amount of interest apparently of one asking for a
topographical detail, so that he may get his bearings.
"Yes. You'd know, wouldn't you, that she'd have to, if she thought he
wasn't getting the right care and didn't see any other way of providing
it."
"Well, Skip," Dr. Tom returned his attention to the dog, "you're a fine
little fellow. Yes, sir." He held out a large pink hand and received in
it immediately a wee gentlemanly hand of fur and horn, rather smaller
than any of his fingers. "Good dog," he said, and regarded their
friendship as sealed. But next minute, because Estelle had whispered to
him, "Make believe to strike me," he lifted his fist menacingly against
her, and on the instant, with the courage of a David, there dashed
against him a little wild white flurry, not to bite--the skin of man is
sacred--but by a show of pearly teeth and the growlings of a lion to
frighten the giant off.
"Good dog!" cheered Tom and leaned back laughing, "Well done!"
* * * * *
Because it was very late when Dr. Bewick left the ladies to return to
his hotel they immediately repaired to their respective rooms; but
before Estelle had got to bed, Aurora, half undressed, came strolling
into her maidenly bower of temperate green and white.
A vague depression of spirits had overtaken Aurora, reaction, perhaps,
from the excitements of the day, and she sought her friend with the
instinct to make herself feel better by talking it off.
She dropped on a chair, and in silence continued to braid her hair for
the night.
"Isn't he the nicest fellow!" began Estelle, setting the keynote for
joyous confidences.
"Isn't he just!" replied Aurora. "I want him to have the best time in
the three weeks he's going to spend here. We've got to show him all the
beauties of Florence, and then I want him to know all our friends. We
must have some tea-parties and some dinners. I want it to be just as
gay. Who is there I ought to lay myself out for, if not Tom Bewick?"
"I quite agree with you. Let's plan."
"No, to-morrow'll do. It's too late. I'm tired." The motions of Aurora's
fingers were suspended among the strands of her hair. She fell into a
muse. "Seeing Tom"--she came out of it again, and went on braiding--"has
brought back, along with some things I never want to forget, such a lot
of things I don't want to think of!"
"I suppose it would."
"His sisters, for instance. He doesn't look a bit like them,
really--nasty bugs, godless, gutless pigs--but yet he brings them up
before me. Idell rather more than Cora, and Idell was the meanest of the
two, and her husband the miserablest, sneakingest cuss. Oh, how I hate
the bunch of them! And I oughtn't, you know. You oughtn't to go on
hating your enemies after you've got the better of them. But the moment
I think of that trio, Cora Bewick--sour-bellied old maid!--and Idell
Friebus, and her rotten little pea-green husband--pin-headed insect!
flap-eared fool!--I get mad. If you could really know, Hat, the
cold-heartedness and wicked-mindedness of those people! How they ever
happened in Tom's family Goodness only knows. And such a fine father!
The Judge was as good as any of those old fellows in the Bible, I do
believe. _That_ patient, _that_ considerate, and _that_
just! More than just; what he did was more than just, and those girls of
his simply couldn't stand it. They couldn't stand it, after they had
neglected him all through his illness so that it was a scandal, that he
should treat the person who had done their daughters' duty for them the
same as he treated them, no better and no worse, but just the same. The
things those people did to me, Hat, the things they said about me--"
"I know, I know; you've told me," said Hattie, soothingly and
deterringly.
"The things those people did to me, and the things they said about
me,"--Nell, not to be deterred, repeated intensely,--"if I'd ever wanted
to give up my share, those things they did and said would have made me
hold on like grim death just to spite them. Oh,"--she broke off, and
flung her finished braids back over her shoulders,--"why do I let myself
think of them? I grow so hot! It's the sight of Tom that has started me
back to thinking of all that excitement and disgustingness. Dear good
Tom, who stood by me like a trump! I do wish, Hat, I didn't hate so hard
when I hate. We've taken pride in my family, I'm afraid, in being good
haters, as if it were part of the same trait that makes you loyal and
true to your friends. But perhaps it's a mistake. I know that Gerald
said once"--she yielded to the obscure desire to hear the air vibrate,
as it had not done for some time, with the syllables of his
name--"Gerald said once, when we were talking of things, 'We must
forgive everything,' he said; 'we must forgive happenings the same as we
must people.' And Gerald, you know, when he's in sober earnest, has some
good ideas."
"Talking about Gerald," Estelle came in quickly, glad of a change from
the other subject, "did Livvy tell you that our cook met Giovanna at the
market, and Giovanna told her that her master was doing finely; that he
hadn't yet been out of doors, but that he sat at the open window in the
sunshine? I'd been meaning to ask you."
"Oh." Aurora quietly took it, and thought it over a minute. "No, she
hadn't told me. I suppose those long stairs would keep him from going
out till he was good and strong. Did she say anything else?"
"Only that Giovanna was buying a chicken, and the abbe, she said, was
still staying with them."
* * * * *
The ladies of the Hermitage did the honors of Florence with modest pride
and a certain glibness. Before the early old masters, Aurora said to
Tom:
"At first I couldn't stand them. I guffawed at the idea of there being
anything to admire in them. Even now I can't pretend I like them; but I
keep still and pray for light. Isn't that the beginning of polish?"
Tom was taken to make calls. Aurora took upon herself to explain
Florentine society to him.
"There are little stories about most everybody," she said, "so you have
to be pretty careful. If a certain General is present, for instance,
whom I may have a chance to point out to you, you don't want to talk of
_horses_, because his fiery steed bolted with him during an
engagement once and his enemies caricatured him running away. Then if a
certain viscount is present, whom I may have a chance to introduce to
you, you don't want to talk of _ermine_, because that little animal
is a feature in his coat of arms, and his coat of arms along with his
title of nobility, scandal says, came as a reward from a royal personage
for marrying the lady who was his first wife. So you'll have to look
out, Tom, or you may be called upon to fight a duel."
The most splendid dinner that could be planned in council with Clotilde
and the cook was prepared to honor the friend from home. To this were
bidden the Fosses, Aurora's best friends; the Hunts, her next best;
Manlio, whom she wished Tom to see as a truly beautiful specimen of
Italian; and Landini, because she was curious to know what Tom thought
of him.
Aurora had not seen the latter since the night of the _veglione_.
Finding that he had not called during the interval, she had been glad to
hope that his suspected mysterious project for making her his own had
been dropped. That being the case, she was not at all averse to seeing
him. On the contrary.
Charlie Hunt she had not seen since the variety-show. Learning that he
also had not once come during her absence, she thought that this
admitted of some simple explanation which he would give on the night of
the dinner.
Charlie, receiving the invitation, pondered a while before accepting. He
considered himself to have been insulted, rather, by Mrs. Hawthorne.
Still, he could not be absolutely sure. If, anyhow, she did not know
that he knew the black crow to have been none other than herself there
would be nothing in his going to her dinner-party which laid him open to
scorn. And he felt more disposed to go than not. The dinner would be
festive, costly, succulent. Then he desired before breaking with her--if
breach there must be, which would depend upon the subtlest
circumstances--to persuade her that two enormous porcelain jars owned by
a dealer of his acquaintance were the very thing needed in that
bare-looking ball-room of hers. There was a third reason. A lady whose
friendship had latterly--since the night of the _veglione_, in
fact--taken on the glow of roses and the warmth of wine, had taken it
into her charming head to be jealous, fantastically, of Mrs. Hawthorne.
Charlie, whose manly vanity his good fortune had, not unnaturally,
reinforced; Charlie, who if he were loved much must always love less
than the other, felt a certain stimulation in exhibitions of jealousy
with regard to himself. He thought well of the results of saying, "I
cannot come this evening, _cara_, I am dining at the Hawthorne's."
So he accepted Aurora's invitation.
The dinner was superlative, but it was written he should leave the house
finally in a bad humor. The feasted guest was a big Western American, of
the immensely rich and not very interesting type, whom he had seen once
or twice at the bank. Aurora's fond esteem for this man was open and
shameless. Whether he were a "has been," an "is," or a "to be," Charlie
could not determine, but only in the character of suitor could he see
him in the picture.
The dark face of Landini, his Chief, across the dinner table, when his
eyes sought it was indecipherable to him; but, shut as it was, he was
reminded by it, not to the improvement of his spirits, of a little
personal hope, a just and rational hope, which might have to be
relinquished. After dinner he got his hostess into a quiet corner for a
chat.
"Where's Gerald?" pure curiosity made him ask, with that impertinence
which his friends were accustomed to and took lightly, because curiosity
and impertinence were part and parcel of Charlie, and if you cared
sufficiently for his attractive smoothness and flashing smile to wish
them near you, you must put up with the bad breeding underlying his good
manners. "Where's Gerald?" he asked familiarly.
"Gerald isn't well enough yet to be out," Aurora answered him, with
imperfect candor. "You didn't know he'd been ill? Why, how funny! He's
been having what you call here a 'fluxion of the chest.'"
This ignorance of Charlie's comforted her by proving that the news of
her nursing Gerald had not spread over the town like wildfire, as she
had been warned it would. Florence was not so bad or nimble a gossip as
she had feared.
"I was as nice to Charlie Hunt that last evening as ever in my life,"
she afterward declared, "and I thought he seemed all right."
When he spoke of the precious porcelain jars, however, she did cut short
his appetizing description with:
"Don't speak of it. I daresn't, Charlie. I've been lectured so much for
extravagance, I daresn't buy a toothpick. If these jars you speak of
cost nine francs instead of nine hundred, I couldn't, I tell you. I
guess Florence has got all she's going to out of me. I've turned over a
new leaf."
Aurora had all evening been so entirely her kind and jolly self that
Charlie had almost forgotten the black crow. At this check, and the
barren prospect opening out beyond, he remembered it, and felt a vicious
little desire to pay her back for the pin she had stuck into him under,
as she idiotically supposed, an impenetrable disguise. He went away, as
has been said, in a bad humor.