Aurora, of the excellent three-times-a-day appetite, Aurora of the good
sound slumbers, picked at her food and slept brokenly for part of a week
at that period, such was her impatience at the dragging length of time,
the emptiness of time, undiversified and unenhanced by the presence in
her house of any man devoted to her. No odor of tobacco smoke in the
air, no cane in the corner; Tom on his way to America, Gerald hurt or
cross or both. But, the ladies agreed, when Aurora had told Estelle the
latest about Gerald, her refusal could not possibly occasion a cessation
of relations, since his offer, chivalrous and unpremeditated, had been
at most a cute and endearing exhibition of character. His sensitiveness
could not be long recovering, and everything would be as before.
Aurora had been half prepared for his staying away all Saturday; but
having been justified in that, she the more confidently looked for him
on Sunday. It is simply incredible, as almost everybody has felt at
least once in his life, how long the hours can be when you are waiting
for something.
At the end of a singularly unprofitable day, Aurora sat in the red and
green room with all the windows open to the sweet airs and odors of May,
and no lamp lighted that might attract night-moths, or, worse, the
thirsty, ferocious Florentine _zanzara_. She just sat, not doing a
thing. Estelle after a while left her, to retire to her own quarters,
close the windows and make a light.
Aurora watched the dark blue velvet sky over Bellosguardo, and thought.
A tinkling of mandolins, a thrumming of guitars, informed her of
street-singers stationed under her windows. A tenor voice rose in the
song she was so fond of, _La Luna Nova_, mingling at the end of the
verse with other male voices that repeated the second half of it. It
sounded infinitely sweet out in the warm spring night.
After _La Luna Nova_ they sang _Fra i rami_, _fulgida_,
and _Vedi_, _che bianca Luna_, and _Dormi pure_, all
things she particularly liked. The voices struck her as being nearer
than the garden railing; she thought the singers must have found the
carriage gate open and slipped in without noise. She bent forth a
little, and as she could not see them imagined them standing among the
shrubs. She propped her elbows on the window-rail and listened, grateful
for this bath of sweetness to her spirit after the day's profound ennui.
Estelle came softly into the dark room and joined her; they leaned side
by side.
_Mi sono innamorato d'una stella_, _Sognai_, _Io
t'amero_, one sweet and sentimental song succeeded the other.
Clotilde had entered too, on tiptoe, and stood listening, just behind
the others.
"It is a serenade," she whispered. "It is a compliment."
A serenade!... Aurora thrilled with a pleasant surmise. There was only
one person in Florence of whom she could conceive as offering her the
compliment of a serenade. She listened with a new keenness of pleasure.
After the concert had prolonged itself through some dozen pieces--
"You must invite them to enter," whispered Clotilde, presumably versed
in the ceremonial of such adventures, "and offer them something for
their tired throats, a little wine...."
"Oh, you think we ought...?"
"But yes, it would be courtesy."
"Go you, then, Clotilde, and show them in and order up the wine. We'll
be down in a minute."
As they entered the dining-room, Clotilde burst into a peal of delighted
laughter at the well-managed surprise, while Italo hastened forward to
take Aurora's hand and bow over it half way to the floor.
It was within Aurora's breast as if in the dark one had clasped as she
thought a sweetheart, to find when the light came that her arms were
entwined around the dancing-master, or the tailor. But only for an
instant. She was really touched and charmed. She became more and more
eloquent in expressing delight.
The singers were presented to her individually, dark-eyed and smiling
young Italians of the people, who knew no language but their own
Florentine and spoke to Aurora in that, not expecting to be understood
or to understand, except through smiles.
Clotilde, busy, bustling, poured for them wine which she knew to be
excellent, and there was a bright half hour for all. Italo wore an air
relating him to all the successful heroes that have been, to Caesar as
well as to Paganini, who also had a great nose. To manage a thing well
in small justifies pride, giving earnest as it does that a large thing,
such as a siege, or a symphony, would by the same capacity be managed
equally well. Italo that night carried his head like one who respects
the size of his nose. He was quick, he was witty, he was amiable. He had
about him something a little splendid, even, due to his feeling of
having been splendid--or nothing--in his tribute to the patroness from
whose horn of plenty so much had overflowed into his hands.
Aurora beckoned Clotilde aside to say in her ear, "Will you run upstairs
like a good girl and get my porte-monnaie?... Would it be all right, do
you think?"
Clotilde made the face and gesture of one in doubt, and if anything
averse, but not insuperably. The bounty of royalty, or of rich
Americans, is not felt as alms.
"Go, then," whispered Aurora, "and get the purse that you'll find under
some silk stockings in my second drawer, the little purse with gold in
it."
One of the petty difficulties of life to Aurora since she had lived in
foreign lands had been the so often arising necessity to think quickly
what it would be proper to give. As the amount of the gratuity did not
much matter to her she had felt a desperate wish often for the power of
divination, by which to know what would be expected. On some occasions
it had seemed to Aurora that it would be more delicate not to offer
money; but experience had taught her that if she offered enough no
offense would be taken. These singers were all poor young fellows,
Clotilde had told her, musically gifted, but plying ordinary trades.
This one was a wood-carver, that one a gilder. They had been taught by
her brother the fine songs composing that magnificent serenade.
The gold pieces distributed among them with words and smiles of thanks
were received with such charming manners that the giver--for the first
moment faintly embarrassed--was soon set at her ease. When it came to
the promoter and leader of the serenade, Aurora felt no more
uncertainty. Money had so often gone from her hand to his. She with
generous ease, as if passing a box of candy to children, tendered him
some three or four times as much as to the others.
But there Italo showed what he was made of. He took a step backward and
stood with soldierly rigidity, one hand held with the palm toward her,
like a shield and defense against her intention to belittle him and his
token of homage by a reward. His look said, and said dramatically, that
her thought of him did him wrong; it said that he was ashamed of her for
not knowing better. Yet there was no real dissatisfaction in it, since
her want of delicacy permitted the exhibition of his delicacy, and
afforded him the opportunity to make that gesture....
Her hand dropped, her whole being drooped and confusedly apologized.
Then the hand that had interposed between them, uncompromising as a hot
flat-iron, changed outline and pointed at a half faded rose pinned on
her breast. Quickly she unfastened it and held it toward the
outstretched hand. It was taken, it was held to Italo's lips while he
made one of those deep bows that bent him double; then the stem of the
rose was pulled through his buttonhole and secured with a pin from
Aurora's dress. The great little man shook his locks and went on to the
next subject.
Aurora was impressed. She was pleased with Italo in a new way, and said
to herself that she must make him some rich little, but unobjectionable
little, gift to remember this occasion by, a gold pencil, or a pearl
scarf-pin, or a cigar case to be proud of.
She went to bed with her head full of serenade and serenaders, her head
all lighted up inside with the glory of having been the object of a
tribute so flattering. When after reading her chapter she blew out the
candle, she knew that to-night she should sleep, and make up for the two
bad nights just passed. If Gerald were so foolish as to feel annoyed and
wish to stay away, he would just have to feel annoyed and stay away
until he felt different. His mood couldn't help wearing off in time. But
it did seem to her extraordinary that even now, after knowing him so
long, she could tell so little of the workings of Gerald's mind. All, of
course, because he was--such a considerable part of him--a foreigner.
* * * * *
Aurora was one of those healthy sleepers who have no care to guard
themselves against the morning light. Her windows stood open, her bed
was protected from winged intruders by a veil of white netting gathered
at the top into the great overshadowing coronet.
She was in the fine midst of those sweetest slumbers that come after a
pearly wash of dawn has cleaned sky and hilltops from the last
smoke-stain of the night, when a sense of some one else in the room
startled her awake. There stood near the door of her dressing-room an
unknown female, wearing intricate gold ear-pendants and a dingy cotton
dress without any collar.
"_Chi e voi?_" inquired Aurora, lifting her head.
"I am the Ildegonda," answered the woman, whose smile and everything
about her apologized, and deprecated displeasure. She must be the
kitchen-maid, fancied Aurora, engaged by Clotilde, and not supposed to
show her nose above the subterranean province of the kitchen.
"There is the _signorino_ down in the garden," Ildegonda acquitted
herself of the charge laid upon her by the donor of the silver franc
still rejoicing her folded fingers, "who says if you will have the
amiability to place yourself one moment at the window he would desire to
say a word to you."
The _signorino_. That had become the informal title by which the
servants announced a guest who was let in so very frequently. Aurora
understood _finestra_, window, and _dire una parola_, to say a
word, and then that the signorino was _giu in giardino_.
"All right." Aurora nodded to the Ildegonda, inviting her by a motion of
the hand to go away again.
Aurora rose and softly closed the door which, when open, made an avenue
for sound from her room to Estelle's. She slipped her arms into a
sky-blue dressing-gown, and with a heart spilling over with playful joy,
eyes spilling over with childish laughter, went to look out of the
window, the one farthest from Estelle's side of the house.
"Good morning! Good morning!" came on the instant from the waiting,
upturned face below. "Forgive me for rousing you so early," was said in
a voice subdued so as to reach, if possible, no other ears, "but you
promised you would go with me one day to Vallombrosa, and one has to
start early, for it is far. Will you come?"
"Will I come? Will I come? Wait and see! Got your horses and carriage?"
"Standing at the gate. How long will it take you to get ready?"
"Oh, I'll hurry like anything."
"'Wash, dress, be brief in praying.
Few beads are best when once we go a Maying.'"
"I won't pray, I won't put on beads. But, see here, what about what they
call in this country my collation? You know I'm a gump on an empty
stomach."
"We'll have our coffee on the road, at a little inn-table out of doors
in the sunrise."
"Fine! By-by. See you again in about twenty minutes."
Every fiber composing Aurora twittered with a distinct and separate glee
while she hurried through her toilet, a little breathless, a little
distracted, and mortally afraid Estelle would hear and come to ask
questions. From her wardrobe she drew the things best suited to the day
and her humor: a white India silk all softly spotted with appleblossoms,
of which she had said when she considered acquiring it that it was too
light-minded for her age and size, but yet, vaulting over those
objections, had bought and had made up according to its own merits and
not hers; a white straw hat with truncated steeple crown, the fashion of
that year, small brim faced with moss-green velvet, bunch of green
ostrich-tips, right at the front, held in place by band and buckle.
Her parasol was a thing of endless lace ruffles, her wrap a thing of
vanity.
She passed out through the dressing-room, she crept down the stairs,
laughing at her own remark that it was awfully like an elopement. The
house was not yet astir; only the Ildegonda sweeping out the kitchen,
and old Achille out in the garden picking early insects off his plants.
At the door she greeted Gerald with all the joy of meeting again a
playmate. He had on the right playmate's face. She gave him both hands,
and he clasped them to the elbow, shaking them with satisfactory fire,
while their eyes laughed a common recognition of the adventure as a
lark.
At the gate waited the open carriage, a city-square cabriolet, but clean
and in repair, drawn by two strong little brown horses, with rosettes
and feathers in their jingling bridles, ribbons in their whisking
braided tails, and driven by a brown young man of twenty, with a
feather, too, in his hat, which he wore aslant and crushed down over his
right ear. To make the excursion pleasanter to himself, he was by
permission taking along a companion of his own age, who occupied the low
seat beside his elevated one, and in contrast with his vividness, the
pride of life expressed by his cracking whip, the artistically singular
sounds he made in his throat to encourage the horses, was a washed-out
personality, good at most to do the jumping off and on, to readjust
harness, to investigate the brake, or to offer alms from the lady in the
carriage to the old man breaking stones in the roadside dust.
They were off; they sped through the gate of the Holy Cross, the fresh
young horses making excellent time. Out of the city, along the river,
across it, past hamlets, past villas, past churches and
_camposanti_, past vineyards and _poderi_ and peasants'
dwellings....
It seemed to Aurora that never had there been such a day, so fresh and
unstained and perfect, a day inspiring such gladness in being. The sense
of that priceless boon, the freedom of a whole long day together, elated
her with a joy that knew only one shadow, and that unremarked for the
first half of it--the shortness of the longest earthly day.
Now the horses slowed in their pace; the ascent had begun among the
shady chestnut-trees. The driver's friend scrambled down and plodded
alongside the horses; the driver himself descended and walked, cheering
on his beasts with noises that nearly killed Aurora, she declared.
As it took them between four and five hours to reach their destination,
and as Aurora chattered all the time, with little intervals of talk by
Gerald, to report their conversation is unfeasible. Aurora, wanting in
all that varied knowledge which those who are fond of reading get from
books, had yet a lot to say that some unprejudiced ears found worth
while. The dwellers upon earth and their ways had for her an immense and
piercing interest. In vain had circumstances circumscribed her early
life: neighbors, Sunday-school teacher, minister, village drunkard,
fourth of July orator, had furnished comedy for her every day. The human
happenings falling within her ken became good stories in their passage
through a mind quick in its perception of inconsequence, faulty logic,
pretense, all that constitutes the funny side of things. Aurora's love
of the funny story amounted to a fault. Aurora was not always above
promoting laughter by narratives no subtler than a poke in your ribs.
Aurora, in the vein of funny stories, could upon occasion be
Falstaffian. But only one half of humanity had a chance to find out the
latter. When in company of the other sex, by instinct and upbringing
alike she minded her Ps and Qs.
Gerald said that Aurora on that day regaled him with over a thousand
comic anecdotes, this being the expression of her frolicsome and
exuberant mood. He furnished her with a few to add to her store, Italian
ones, proving that he was not wholly without some share of her gift in
that line; but he now and then politely stopped her flow and led her to
admire with him the beauties of the road, natural or architectural, a
distant glimpse, a form, a fragrance. He would explain things to her,
impart scraps of pertinent history, which she would appear trying to
appreciate and imprint on her memory.
As he leaned back in the carriage at her side, bathed in the wavering
green and gold light of the chestnut-trees among which the road wended,
a recent description of him, which she had said over to herself, to
qualify it by mitigating adjectives, seemed to her to have become
altogether unfair. Gerald's face, beneath the brim of his pliable white
straw, bent down over the eyes and turned up at the back, Italian style,
did not look sickly. On the contrary, it looked better and stronger
since his illness; he even had a little color. He was not sad-eyed,
either, that she could see, though his eyes must always be the
thoughtful kind. As for spindle-shanked, he filled his loose woolen
clothes better than before.
He had made himself modestly fine for the day to be spent in company of
the fair: he had on a necktie which, if expressive of mood, declared his
outlook on life to be cheerfuller: it was a vibrant tone of violet that
accorded agreeably with his gray suit. A rose-geranium leaf and a stem
or two of rusty-gold _gaggia_, odors that he loved, occupied at his
buttonhole the place of those decorations which distinguished elderly
gentlemen are sometimes envied for, and which--it is a commonplace--are
not worthy to be exchanged for the flower Youth sticks at his coat to
aid him to charm.
It grew very warm; the way, though pleasant, was beginning to seem long
when they arrived. The old monastery, now a school of forestry; the
Cross of Savoy, where pilgrims rest and dine, gleamed white in the
cloudless noon, amid the century-old trees that long ago, before Dante's
time even, earned for the spot its beautiful name of Vallombrosa,
Umbrageous Vale.
Aurora was by this time starving again, and Gerald knew the pleasure of
purveying to the demands of a stomach as untroubled by any back-thought
relating to its functioning as that of a big bloomy goddess seated
before a meal of ambrosia. He suggested that she accompany her artichoke
omelet, her cutlet with the sauce of anchovy, parsley and mustard, by a
little red wine. But she would not, even to be companionable. She could
never bring herself to touch wine, any more than to use powder on her
cheeks, which in truth did not need it, or a pencil to her eyebrows,
which would have looked better for that accentuation.
In a state of physical and mental well-being such as can be bought only
by an early rising, an inconsiderable breakfast, a long ride in the
warmth of Tuscan mid-May, an abundant and repairing repast, taken, amid
sweet conventual coolness, in company which leaves nothing to wish for
beyond it, they went forth to spend the time that must be granted the
horses for rest before the return to Florence.
[Illustration: "Come, let us reason together, Aurora"]
After loitering in the inn garden, they went to look at the memorials
relating to Saint John Gualberto, founder of the monastery. She listened
to the picturesque history of his life, death, and miracles, but was not
to be rendered sober-minded by any such thing. In the midst of Gerald's
instructive account of the holy abbot's endeavors to purify the monastic
orders from the stain of simony, her hand clutched his, and doing a
delicate cake-walk she compelled him along with her, announcing, "The
Hornet and the Bumble-bee went walking hand in hand!" Fancying this
prank not to have been without success, she next performed an improvised
_pas seul_ illustrative of the text, "The mountains shall skip like
little lambs!"
There was artfulness, as has been suspected, in Aurora's frequent jests
upon her size. Their gross exaggeration was fondly counted upon to make
her appear sylphlike by comparison with the images she raised.
To relieve the seriousness of Short Lessons on Great Subjects she
presently invented interrupting them at intervals to introduce Gerald
and herself to some rock or tree or mountain, as if it had been a poor
person standing by neglected. "Jack Sprat," she said, "and The Fat!" "A
busted cream-puff," she said, "and a drink of water!" Further, "Dino and
Retta!" Finally, with imagination running dry, "Gerry and Rory!"
Yes, by such little jokes--what Leslie called Jokes of the First
Category, Aurora sought to enliven the hour for Gerald. He never omitted
to laugh, without being able to enter enough into her fun to join her in
the same species. An incapacity. Still, there was no disguising the
basking enjoyment possessing him, his love of her gaiety, if not at all
moments of the form it took.
Finding it entrancing up there, they decided not to start for home till
the last minute possible. A limit was set to the time they might linger
by the necessity for some degree of daylight in making the descent. From
the edge of the curving road the mountain dropped away without the
protection of any parapet.
When they had found their ideal place in which to sit on the warm earth
in the shade and look off over valleys and mountains into azure space,
Aurora at last consented to be still. She became dreamy, appeared
sweetly fatigued, and was for a long time mute.
Though the mere quality of her voice still had power to stir Gerald's
heart to pleasure, yet to be silent with Aurora was pleasure of a
different order from hearing her voice of rough velvet recount
preposterous events or propound humorous riddles.
* * * * *
It looked from where they sat as if the land had at some time been
fluid, and been tossing, green and purple, in a majestic storm, when
some great word of command had fixed it in the midst of motion, and the
waves became Apennines; then in an hour of peculiar affection for that
plot of the earth a faultless artist from the skies had been set to
oversee nature and man at their work there, and prevent the intrusion of
one note not in harmony with his most distinguished dream.
"If Italy should perish and all else remain," said Gerald, whose eyes
had been feasting on beauties of line and color such as he conceived
were not to be found outside this land of his idolatry, "the world would
be irreparably impoverished. If all the world besides should perish and
Italy remain, the world could still boast of infinite riches."
Aurora gave a nod of at least partial assent. She was growing accustomed
to the thought that Italy was the fairest of countries and Florence the
fairest of Italian cities. She found herself beginning to like this
creed.
In the quiet that descended upon them the native piety in each groped
for some acknowledgment to make of his consciousness at the moment of
unusual blessing. In him it took the form of a renewal, more devoted
perhaps than ever, of the determination to maintain an uncompromising
purity of aim in his work. The incomparable scene stimulated within him
a sense of power to produce things rivaling what lay under his eyes; he,
atom, rivaling his Maker in the creation of beauty. In her it was a
determination of greater loyalty toward the Provider of undeservedly
happy days to man, whose heart is wicked from his birth, as her mother
had been wont to tell her.
Hearing her hum very softly to herself, he asked what she sang. She
said, her mother's favorite hymn, and gave it aloud, with the words:
Father, what e'er of earthly bliss
Thy sovereign will denies,
Accepted at Thy throne of grace
Let this petition rise:
Give me a calm, a thankful heart,
From every murmur free;
The blessings of Thy grace impart
And make me live to Thee.
Like one with an impeccable ear, but with small esteem for his gifts as
a singer, Gerald murmured the melody after her, just audibly, to show he
cared to have his share in her memories.
But mainly the two of them thought of each other.
Gerald, regarding Aurora's hands as they lay in her
lap--innocent-looking, loyal-looking, rather large hands, which during
his illness he had liked to think were Madonna hands, but when seen in
health they were not, really--was amazed to remember the day when their
making passes over his face had filled him with perverse repugnance.
And Aurora, remembering the first time she had seen Gerald and nicknamed
him Stickly-prickly, while feeling him more than three thousand miles
removed from her, was amazed....
So they sat, two little dots, two trembling threads, against the screen
of the universe and eternity, and their two selves, under the spell of a
world-old enchantment, loomed so large to each that the universal and
the eternal were to them two little dots, two threads.
* * * * *
Gerald saw how the afternoon was mellowing toward sunset.... And the
important things of the day had not been touched upon.
Our hero had traversed great spaces in the region of sentiment during
the two days allowed the Hermitage to stand or crumble without him. The
first of them had been spent far from it, even as Aurora supposed, for
the sake of letting the impression of having been laughed at wear off a
little. Already for some time before that forced climax Gerald had been
haunted by the feeling that he ought to offer himself to Aurora, as it
were to regularize his status in her house. After hanging around as he
had been doing, one might almost say that good manners demanded it. Her
fashion, on that evening in the garden, of treating the idea that he
could be enamoured of her assured him that she would refuse. He would
have done his duty, and they would continue to drift, he shutting his
eyes to the penalty awaiting his self-indulgence, the taxes of pain
rolling up for the hour when her necessary departure would involve the
uprooting of every last little flower in that wretched garden of his
heart. With such a mental pattern of the future he had gone to bed at
the end of the first day.
On the next morning something perhaps in deep dreams which he did not
remember, or in the happy manner of the new day lighting a scarlet
geranium on the terrace ledge, or simply perhaps the whisper of an
angel, had effected a change. A heart-throb, a stroke of magic, had so
lifted him up that over the top of the wall edging the road of life for
him he had seen a thrilling garden outstretched, smiling in the sun, a
sight that so enkindled him with the witchery of its promises that he
felt he should seek for a way into that garden till he found it; should,
if necessary, demolish the wall.
That day he went walking on the hills beyond Settignano, and the new
light, the intoxication, persisted--the vision of himself as Aurora's
lover. Why not? An escape from the past, a different adventure from all
prefigured in his dull expectations before.... In his theory of living
Gerald had always admitted the gallant advisability of burning ships.
There was room in his theory of living for just such a divergence from
design as he now meditated. When the call comes, summon it to never so
improbable places, the poet and artist obeys. He had gone to bed on the
second night with these thoughts and a plan for the morrow.
Now that morrow was wearing to an end and all the floating splendid
courageous thoughts and feelings, brave in the assurance, along with the
determination, of victory, must be somehow caught and compressed and
turned into the language--how poverty-stricken, how stale!--of a
proposal of marriage; even as a great variegated, gold-shot,
butterfly-tinted, cloud-light tissue of the Orient is drawn into a
colorless whipcord twist that it may pass through a little ring.
As he revolved in his mind what he should say to start with, Gerald saw
appropriateness for the first time in the methods of the historic Gaul,
who seized by her hair the charming creature whom he felt allied to him
by deep things, seated her on the horse before him, and rode away. But
what he would have liked so much the best would have been to lay his
head in Aurora's willing lap, embrace her knees tenderly, and have her
understand all without a word being spoken.
Now he cleared his throat, took a reasonable air, a tone almost of
banter, to say what, influenced by the long precedent of their converse
together, he could say only in that manner, covering up as best he could
the fact that his heart trembled and burned.
"Shall we resume our conversation of last Friday?" he asked, with a fine
imitation of the comradely ease which had marked all their intercourse
that day.
He was looking over the valley, as if still preoccupied with its beauty
rather than with her.
Thus misled, she did not guess right. She said:
"About Charlie, you mean? Just fancy, I haven't thought of him once all
day! Little varmint! Don't I wish I had the spanking of him! But I guess
it would lame my arm."
"Not about Charlie. I asked would you marry me, and you said you would
not. Will you to-day?"
"Not for a farm!" she answered, with emphasis equal to her
precipitation.
"Why not?" he asked, undisconcerted.
"Because."
"Come, let us reason together, Aurora." He changed position, arranging
himself on his elbow so as to be able to look at her. His eyes were
steady. "For a man to ask a woman to marry him is of course the greatest
piece of impertinence of which he could be guilty. But from such
impertinences, Auroretta, has been derived every beautiful thing that
has blessed our poor world from the beginning. No man is good enough for
any woman, let that stand for an axiom. But there again, Auroretta, it's
not according to merit that those rewards, gentle and beautiful ladies,
are dispensed. I have rather less to offer than any man in the world,
but I am bold because you, dear, are just the one to be blind."
"Oh, it's not _that_, of course," said Aurora, hurriedly.
"Don't suppose for a moment that I am troubled by the size of your
fortune or the size of my own. You haven't any money, dear. Others have
your money. I have almost to laugh at the splendid speed with which that
open granary of yours will be eaten clean by all the birds coming to
pick one seed at a time."
"You needn't laugh, then. Some of it is going to be pinned to me solid,
so that nothing can get it away from me, not even I myself."
"I am sorry to hear it. The other was so complete. Well, if you had
nothing, I should still have just enough to keep us from hunger, though
perhaps not from cold in these dear old stone houses of Italy. And
you--I know you well enough to be sure of it--you are exactly the one to
learn how much there can be in life besides its luxuries. Since my
illness, too, Aurora, let me confide to you, there have been in me
reawakenings.... I have felt the beginning--I am speaking with reference
to my work,--I have felt intimations--No, it is too difficult to express
without seeming to boast, which is horribly unlucky. In short, I have
felt that I might do the turn still of forcing a careless generation to
pay attention."
"Oh, Gerald, how nice it is to have you say that!" she warmly rejoiced.
"I'm so glad to hear it!"
"Now tell me why it is you won't marry me. Stop, dear. Don't say because
you are not in love with me. I have difficulty in seeing how any one in
her right senses could be in love with me. It would be enough, dear,
that you should be to me as you were during those happy, happy days when
I was so beastly ill. You are so generous, it would be merely fulfilling
your nature. And I, upon my word, dear, would try to deserve it. I would
give you reason to be kind. I am not without scraps of honor--wholly; I
would do my best to make you happy."
"No,"--she shook her head decidedly,--"no, Gerry," she added, to take
the sharp edge off her refusal, "no, Gerry; Rory won't."
"You have only to lose by it, that is obvious, and I to gain, and
nothing could equal the indecency of insistence on my part; but I feel
that I am going to persist to the point of persecution. You are fond of
me, you know. I only dare to say you are fond of me because you have
said it yourself more than once. And you are always sincere, and I
wouldn't be likely to forget. Now, if you are fond of me,--very, very
fond, you have said repeatedly,--why do you refuse? I wouldn't be a bore
of a husband, I promise. I would leave you a great deal of liberty."
"No, Geraldino; no."
"You needn't tell me there's somebody else. I don't believe it. Though
you feel only fondness for me, I know that you are not in love with
anybody else. When one is in love, there is no room in life for such
warm and dear friendship as you have frankly shown me. It's that, after
all, which has given me courage."
"No, no; there's nobody else."
"Well, then, why can't you? Why won't you?"
"I--" She hesitated, as if to think. There was a silence. Then she asked
slowly, like one who finds some difficulty in laying her tongue on the
right words: "Do you remember all those things you said that evening in
the garden, the night you came in to meet Tom for the first time? How
you wouldn't for anything in the whole world let yourself get tangled up
again with caring for a person?"
"Perfectly. I could only picture it as meaning more of trouble and
unrest. But things change, dear. We change. There has taken place in me
since that, no matter for what reason, an increase of self-confidence
and confidence in fate such as turns men into nuisances or makes them
successful. In the last twenty-four hours particularly. Now, as I look
at the inconvenience of getting tangled up again with caring for a
person, I find I don't mean at all to suffer. I mean to bother you until
you say yes, and then to be happy. You could never wilfully torment me,
I know; you are incapable of it. Then, when you have graciously
consented to marry me, I feel as if I might build up my life on new
lines."
"I can't, Geraldino; I can't."
"You can't. So you have said. And I have asked you to tell me your
reasons, that I may combat them one by one."
"It's no use. We're too different."
"That we are different, thank God! is a reason for and not against."
"No, no; not when it's such a huge difference. We're like--a bird and a
fish."
"Don't call me a fish. I object."
"We don't think the same about hardly anything."
"But we feel alike on everything of importance."
"There's hardly a thing I do that's quite right as you see it. No, don't
take the trouble to contradict me; let me do the talking for a minute.
You're so critical and so conventional and so correct! No matter how
much you say you aren't, you _are_. And while we're like this I
don't have to care. I rather enjoy shocking you. And while I'm none of
your business, you don't have to care what I do or what I'm like. We can
have our fun and be awfully fond of each other, and it's all serene and
right. But if I were Mrs. Gerald Fane, all my faults and shortcomings,
my not knowing the things that everybody in your society knows, my not
having any elegant accomplishments, would show up so glaring that I
should know you must be mortified. You couldn't help it."
"Stop, dear! You enrage me. You put me beside myself. You are so
superficial. And dense. And you hold me up to myself in the features of
a beastly cad! I won't have it. For one thing, let me tell you that if I
were the Lord Ronald Macdonald of that song we've heard Miss Felixson
sing, and you were that canny lass Leezie Lindsay, I should know jolly
well that after I'd carried you off to the Hielands my bride and my
darling to be, it would be a very short time before Lady Ronald
Macdonald had all the airs and tricks of speech of my sisters and
cousins. That, however, is neither here nor there. Who wants you to be
different? Aurora, if you only knew yourself! Ceres, or Summer, or Peace
sitting among the wheat-sheaves, what would it matter that she had not
been educated at a fashionable boarding-school? Let her just breathe and
be,--beautiful, benign, and any man not utterly a fool will prefer to
lie at her knees, keeping still while her silence appeases and
reconciles him, to hearing the most brilliant conversation of a lady
novelist."
"You can talk beautifully, Gerald, that's one sure thing; but talk me
over you can't. Seems to me I should have to be crazy to forget all in a
moment what I've said over and over to myself, and drilled myself not to
lose sight of. After you asked me the other day, though I knew it was
just on the spur of the moment, I thought it all out in the night as
much as if it had been serious, and I saw what would be the one safe
course for little me. I mustn't; that's all there is to it. Everything
is wrong for it to turn out happy in the end. I'm terribly fond of you,
but I should be scared to death of you, simply scared to death, as a
husband. We're not the same kind. If I could forget it on my own
account, I have only to remember how it would strike Estelle. And
Estelle's got no end of horse sense. It's according to horse sense we
must act when it comes to settling the real things of life. I
expect"--she had the effect of turning a page or a corner; she dropped
from heights of argument to low plains--"I expect I shall be big as a
mountain by and by. I don't see any help for it. I starve myself, I
drink hot water, I take exercise,--nearly walk my legs off,--and the
next time I get weighed I've gained three pounds! What's the use? Then,
I'm older than you."
"Not at all. I'm older than the everlasting hills; you are the youngest
thing that lives."
"That's all right, but you were twenty-eight your last birthday, and I'm
thirty. I'm afraid my character's already pretty well fixed in its
present form. When it comes over me, for instance, to play the clown,
I've got to do it or burst. And you're naturally a tyrant, you know."
"I am. I am critical, carping, conventional, and a tyrant, everything
you say, but just because I am those things, you ought to be able to
see, dear Aurora--because I am those things and know it, they are the
things least to be feared in me. Do you suppose Marcus Aurelius was
really calm and philosophical? Because he, on the contrary, was anxious
and passionate, he wrote those maxims to try to live by. When you
_would_ go and be a negress, did I make a scene? I gnashed my teeth
and gnawed my knuckles, but when I saw you afterward, wasn't I decently
decent?"
"Yes, but you took to your bed. If I were Mrs. Gerald, and the Pope of
Rome sent for me to do Lew Dockstader for him and his cardinals, you
know you wouldn't let me go."
"You are wrong. I should make a point of it. I should only ask to be
permitted to retire into solitude until all the vulgar people had
stopped talking about it."
"Ah, you're a dear, funny boy; but put it out of your mind, Geraldino,
do, dear, when we're so happy as it is. Let's go on just as we've been
going; you know yourself that it's the wisest, and what really you would
prefer. If you've asked me to-day--mind, I don't say you _have_;
but if you have--to save my vanity and back up the proposal you didn't
really mean the other day,--because you're always such a gentleman;
you'd rather die than not behave like a gentleman,--let it go at that.
But if you should feel now that you've got to back up your declaration
that you're going to persist and follow this up, just ask me over again
every few days to show there's no unkind feeling, and I promise it will
be safe; I'll refuse you every time. It'll be our little standing joke.
For don't you go dreaming that I'm going to let go of you! You can call
me pudgy if I let you get away. I love you too dearly. Wasn't everything
all right and lovely until the other day when you came out with that
stilted speech, 'doing you the honor'? We'll take up again just where we
left off, and bimeby make fun of all this. You who've read all the books
ever written, don't you know of cases where two like us went on being
just friends, and taking comfort in each other on and on to the end of
the tale?"
"There have been examples, yes, a very few, and not on the whole
encouraging."
"You know we never thought of anything else until three days ago, and
were perfectly contented. Let's call all this in between a mistake, like
taking the wrong road and having to turn back to be where we were
before. Let's go back."
"Yes, let's go back. I won't bore you any more."
He had all in an instant changed to cool dryness. They would get no
further along with talk on this occasion, that was clear. And to clasp
her knees, laying his head on her lap, and penetrate her in silence with
the conviction that they belonged together in a manner that turned all
the sensible things she said into folly, could not be done outside the
world of dreams and fancies. He jumped to his feet.
"I meant, you know, let's go back to Florence. I'm afraid it's high
time. We ought to have daylight at least until we get to the foot of the
mountain."
"Cross, Geraldino?"
"Not at all."
"Good friends as ever?"
"Assuredly."
"Oh, I've had such a beautiful day!" she sighed, getting up by the help
of his two hands, and brushing down her dress. "I certainly do love to
be with you!"
With the inconsequence of a woman she wanted, in order to console him
for rejecting him, to make him sure she loved him deeply nevertheless;
and so she said, turning upon him eyes of sweetest, sincerest affection,
"I certainly do love to be with you!"
* * * * *
In the carriage they were silent, like people tired out by the long day,
talked out, and certain of each other's consent to be still.
The two young fellows on the box were quiet, too. The horses now needed
no encouragement to go; the scraping of the brake gave evidence rather
of the need to hold them back. The driver's friend, named appropriately
Pilade, sat hunched with chilly sleepiness; but Angelo, the driver, was
kept visibly alert by the responsibility of making a safe descent in the
fast-failing light. Owing to the dilatoriness of the _signori_ they
had been later in starting than was prudent.
When they emerged at last from the shadow of the chestnut-trees and the
brake blessedly was released, it was accomplished evening. The dome of
the firmament spread above them so wonderful for darkly luminous
serenity that the signori behind in the carriage arranged themselves to
contemplate it comfortably, with their feet on the forward bench, their
heads propped on the back of the seat.
Thus they passed through glimmering hamlets, between high walls of
orchards, past iron gates opening into cypress avenues with dim villas
at the other end, terraces of vine-garlanded olive-trees, all of a dark
silvery blue, and did not vouchsafe a look at anything but the inverted
cup of the nocturnal sky.
Even this they did not see more than in a secondary way, for the
interposing thoughts and images.
The eyes of both were wide, and in their fixity the lights of heaven
were glassed. The face of the one burned with a red spot on the
visibly-defined cheek-bone; the cheeks of the other were, for a marvel,
pale.
Aurora, uplifted on a great wonder and pride and illogical happiness,
was thinking of the days to come, the immediate to-morrows, rich in a
tenderness profounder still than that which had linked her before to the
companion staring at the stars beside her; she thought of how she should
through a wise firmness and God's help steer their course into ways of a
safer and longer happiness than that which he had tendered.
"It would seem rather unnecessary--" came from him through the
transparent darkness in what was to the young driver's ears a monotonous
bar of insignificant sound, "it would seem to me almost imbecile, to say
to you that I love you, when for months I have been hovering around you,
as must have been evident to the dullest, like the care-burthened
honey-fly, possessed with the fixed desire to hide his murmurs in the
rose. When for months I have been, in fact, like a dog with his nose on
your footprints, asking nothing but to lie down at your feet with his
muzzle on your shoe."
She impulsively felt for his hand, and pushed her own into it. "Don't
say another word, Gerald. I daresn't do what you wish, I just daresn't.
I'm plain scared to! And I'm such a fool that I'm nearer to it this
minute than I like to be by a long sight. I'm fond enough of you for
almost anything, and you know it, but I must keep my level head. It
can't be done--a greyhound tied down to a mudturtle. I know what I'm
like,--no disparagement meant, Mrs. Hawthorne,--and what you're like,
and I won't let myself forget. I'm looking out first of all for myself,
but I'm looking out for you, too, dear boy. Don't say any more about it
to-night, Gerald, please, with the stars shining like that, and the air
so sweet that all the fairy-tales you ever heard seem possible. I want
to keep solid earth under my feet."
Gerald was not so devoid of the right masculine spark as not to
recognize the moment for one of which advantage should be taken by any
creature capable of growing a mustache. The thing to be done was to put
his arms around her like a man, and lay his head on her shoulder like a
child, and treat as not existing the barriers which she described as
dividing them.
Often enough in his life Gerald had wished he might have been a
masterful man, capable of the like things. But already a vague sickness
of soul had succeeded his momentarily dominant mood. Distrust filled
him--of his own character, his aims, his talent, his health, and his
destiny. His dreams had but recently taken the form in which he had that
day expressed them; he had not grown into them. Under the depressing
effect of failure he was no more sure than she had professed to be that
the proposed union would not be a rash mistake. He saw the wisdom of a
return to his gray policy of wanting nothing, asking nothing. Heaviness
possessed him; he made no motion.
Signs of the nearing city came thicker and thicker; the street lamps
became frequent and consecutive. Aurora sat up and composed her
appearance. The lighted house-fronts threw back the skies to
inexpressible altitudes.
She continued aloud for Gerald to hear a conversation she had been
holding mentally:
"Estelle says we must go away somewhere for the summer, because it's
awfully hot down here in Florence, we're told. We're thinking of taking
some sort of place at the seashore for the bathing season. You'll be
coming down to visit us, won't you? Then by and by, when I've had pretty
near enough of the kind of life I'm leading, tell you what I'm thinking
I'll do. Give up the house I've got and take another, different, and fit
it up for a children's hospital, a small one, of course, to be within my
means, and run it myself, and do what I can of the nursing. I've been
thinking of it for some time as a good thing to do instead of spending
my money and nothing to show for it. It would be something to do for the
sake of little Dan, to make it so it wouldn't be the same as if he never
had passed through the world. Then I shall have my work just as you have
yours, Gerald. And so we'll live on, each so interested in all the other
does. And you'll come to see me, and I'll go to see you--chaperoned, if
you insist, though I understand a studio can be visited without
impropriety, and--"
"You can leave me out of your plans for the future. I am going away to
forget you."
"Oh, no, you're not. You're coming to see me to-morrow. Five o'clock at
the very latest, hear?"
"I'm afraid you will have to excuse me."
"You wouldn't break my heart like that for anything, Gerald Fane! You
wouldn't let the foolish doings of this day destroy all the months have
built up! You're not so mean. When I tell you it'll be all right and
just as it was before--"
But he stubbornly would not agree, and they quarreled, as so often, half
in play, half in real exasperation, each calling the other selfish.
But at her door, when he took her hands to thank her for the day she had
given him, he dropped quite naturally, "Until to-morrow, then," and she
entered her great white hall with a happy, shining face.
* * * * *
In the half-light of the solitary hall-lamp the white-and-gold door
between the curving halves of the stairway stood open on to the
blackness of the unlighted ball-room. At the threshold appeared Estelle,
and stood with folded arms until the servant who answered the bell had
been heard retreating down the back stairs. She came forward with a
tired, troubled, pallid, and severe face.
"Well, I'm glad you've got back!" she said, as much as to say that she
had given up looking for her. And as Aurora unexpectedly cast
mischievous, muscular arms around her and tried to squeeze the breath
out of her, she gasped amid spasms of resistance: "Stop! Don't try to
pacify me! I'm in no mood for fooling! I'm as cross with you as I can
be!"
"You little slate-pencil! You little lemon-drop, you!" said Aurora,
squeezing harder, then suddenly letting go.
"I'm in no mood to be funny, you--you county-fair prize punkin! I've
been worried half to death. Where've you been so long, 'way into the
night, long past eleven o'clock?"
"Didn't you find my note on the pin-cushion? That informed you where
I've been."
"I thought you must have met with an accident, to make you so terribly
late, or else made up your mind to go off with that young man for good
and all. Tell you the truth, I didn't quite know which I should prefer,
which would be better for you in the end."
"Do you mean to tell me you've been sitting here all day stewing and
fretting about that? Didn't you ever in your life go buggy-riding with a
feller, and did it always ends with the grand plunge? You know it
didn't. You know you could ride from Provincetown to Boston, with the
moon shining, too, and not even exchange a chaste salute."
"Nell, there's one thing I know, and it's that my scolding and warning
and beseeching will do exactly as much good as an old cow mooing with
her neck stretched over a stone wall. You know what I think. I've had
plenty of time for reflection, walking up and down the floor in there in
the dark; and long before you finally got home I'd made up my mind not
to be an idiot and make myself a nuisance trying to influence you. It's
your funeral. What you choose to do is none of my business. What I said
when you came in just escaped me.--Stand off and let me look at you."
While making the request, she herself drew off to get a more
comprehensive view of her friend.
Something of the sunshine, the mountain sweetness, the unpolluted
breezes and wide perspectives of the heights, the dreams of the starlit
homeward ride, the triumph in man's love, was shining forth from Aurora,
with her fresh sunburn, her untidied hair, and softly luminous eyes.
Estelle felt herself suddenly on the point of tears. But she stiffened.
"Well, you do look as if you'd had a good time, you crazy thing!" she
said dryly. "What made you put your best dress on if you were going to
sit round on the ground? You've got it all grass stains. Oh, Nell," she
melted, "while you've been off gallivanting, I've just about worried
myself sick over a paper Leslie left. I've been longing for you to get
back to see what you make of it."
"A paper? What do you mean?"
"A newspaper. Come on upstairs. I left it on the desk. Leslie called in
the forenoon, but I had gone out. Then she came again in the afternoon,
so I knew it must be something special. But I simply couldn't bring
myself to see her and let her know you'd gone off for the whole day with
Gerald Fane. So I got the maid to tell her we were both out. Everybody
does that over here. Anyhow, I went and stood on the terrace while the
maid was delivering my message. So Leslie went off, but she left this
Italian paper for the maid to give us. And, my dear,--now don't
faint,--there's a long piece in it about you."
"For goodness' sakes! About me? Why? Where?"
"There. It isn't marked, and I was the longest time trying to discover
why Leslie had left the paper. After I'd gone all over it hunting for a
marked passage, I thought it must be a mistake and that she'd simply
left it because she was tired of carrying it round, and the maid hadn't
understood. But going over it column by column, I at last saw the word
Hawthorne and those other names. '_Una Americana_'--'An
American'--the article is entitled. It looks to me, Nell, as if your
whole life's history might be printed there."
"For the land's sake! Now, who do you suppose can have done that? What
on earth would anybody want to--"
"I've been puzzling over it and puzzling over it till I'm about played
out trying to make sense of it, and my head aches like fury. Oh, never
mind my head! Now you've got back I don't care."
"And your French doesn't help you to translate it?"
"Yes, it does help--some. I can pick out lots of words, and here and
there a whole sentence; but what I can't get at is the spirit of the
whole, whether it's meant to be friendly or not."
"Have you tried with a dictionary? Where's the dictionary? Get it, and
we'll pick it out if it takes all night."
"Indeed, I wish I had a dictionary. Mine's French-English. I asked
Clotilde if she had an Italian-English or an Italian-French, and she
said yes, but at home. Isn't it provoking? I certainly wasn't going to
show this to her, and get her to translate it for me before I'd
consulted with you."
"Bother!" said Aurora, thoughtfully, with her eyes on the cryptic print.
Estelle sat close, examining the sheet over her shoulder. "_Elena_
means Helen, doesn't it? I guess it must, as it comes here before
Barton. They've got my old name. And there's Bewick--Bewick, and here's
Colorado. They've got the whole thing, fast enough. It's the doing of an
enemy; there can be no doubt of that."
"I know who you're thinking about."
"Charlie Hunt, of course. Scamp! Worm! Cockroach! Low down, ungrateful,
pop-eyed pig!" Nor did the reviling stop there. For the space of about
forty seconds Aurora was unpublishable.
"But how on earth did he get at it?" wondered Estelle.
"After he'd opened that letter of mine, he wrote to the amiable writer
thereof and asked for information."
"Honestly, Nell, I don't think he's had time."
"I guess he has--just time. The languishing Iona hurried for once. Well,
I don't care!" Aurora folded the paper tight and flung it from her.
"Enemies may do what they please; I've got friends. If everything comes
out as it really happened, I haven't anything to fear, except that it's
mighty unpleasant. It's only lies, and people believing them, that could
do me harm. I've got friends in Florence. Oh, not many true ones, I
don't suppose. It's paying my way that has made me popular, I'm not such
a gump as not to know that. But some true friends I've got, and their
backing will be my stay. One friend I've got--" Pride and a sudden
battle-light flashed in Aurora's eye. "One friend I've got, who if I
gave the word would kill Charlie Hunt for this, or put him in a fair way
to dying. I do believe, Hat, that Gerald Fane would call Charlie Hunt
out to fight a duel to punish him for a slur on me. Oh, he can fence
just as well as the Italians he was brought up with. I've seen the
fencing-swords in his studio. But"--she calmed down--"I wouldn't permit
that sort of thing. It's ridiculous. I don't believe in it."
Cooling to normal, she laughed, with a return to the light of reality.
"He doesn't believe in it, either, I shouldn't suppose."