Leslie, arriving early next day, read off the newspaper article, making
a free translation of it, as follows:
* * * * *
When a thing is too successful, it is seldom natural; and so when there
appeared in our city a _signora_, blond of hair, azure of eye, with
the complexion of delicate, luminous roses, red and white, whose name
was at once Aurora and _Albaspina_,--Hawthorne,--floral counterpart
of dawn, we should have had suspicions. That we had none does not
prevent our feeling no very great surprise when we learn that the bearer
of the poetic and more than appropriate name is called in sober truth
Elena Barton. The more beautiful name was adopted by a child acting out
its fairy-stories; it was remembered and re-adopted by a woman when she
wished to detach her life from a past which neither charity, fidelity,
nor devotion to a sacred duty had succeeded in keeping from sorrow and
the deadly aspersions of malignity.
The _gentilissima_ person of the irradiating smile, which, however
briefly seen, must be long remembered, whom we have grown accustomed
this winter to meeting in the salons where assembles all that is most
distinguished among foreigners, whose name we have grown accustomed to
finding foremost in every work of charity, has a title to our esteem far
beyond the ordinary member of an indolent and favored class. To
alleviate suffering has been the chosen work of those hands that
Florence also has found ever open and ready with their help. It was in
effect the extent of their beneficence which brought about the black
imbroglio from which Elena Barton chose to flee and take refuge in the
City of Flowers under the _soave_ and harmonious name by which we
know her.
Her life had been for several years devoted to the care of an old man
afflicted with a most malignant and terrible cancer in the face. She had
filled toward him so perfectly the part of a daughter that his gratitude
made her upon his death an equal sharer in his fortune with the children
of his blood. Thence the law-case Bewick _versus_ Barton, which for
a period filled the city of Denver in Colorado of the United States as
if with poisonous fumes. The literal daughters, two in number, who had
shown no filial love for the unfortunate old man, in trying to annul
their father's will, left nothing undone or unspoken that could help
their _turpe_, or evil, purpose, even attempting to prove that not
only had the devoted nurse been their father's _amante_--[You can
guess what that is, Aurora. They are much simpler here than we at home
about calling things by their names, and much more outspoken on all
subjects], but had likewise been the _amante_ of the son, sole
member of the family who supported her claim to the share of the fortune
appointed by the father. Justice in the event prevailed, but a tired and
broken woman emerged from the conflict. What to do to regain a little
of that pleasure in living which blackening calumnies and rodent
ill-will, even when not victorious, can destroy in the upright and
feeling nature? The imagination which had prompted in childhood the
acting out of fairy-stories here came into play: Leave behind the scene
of sorrows, take ship, and point the prow toward the land of orange and
myrtle, of golden marbles and wine-colored sunsets; change name, begin
again, do good under a beautiful appellation which the poor should learn
to love and speak in their prayers to the last of their days....
* * * * *
"The rest, Aurora dear, is pure flattery, which it becomes me not to
speak nor you to hear. I won't read it."
"Well, I never!" breathed Aurora. "Who did it?"
"We did it! My father and your Doctor Bewick and Carlo Guerra and I. We
did it to be before anybody else, set the worst that could be brought up
against you in a light that explains and justifies. We did our best to
fix the public mind and show it what it should think. You know what the
mind of the public is. We've hypnotized the beast, I hope; it has taken
its bent from us."
"But--"
"This was the way of it, my dear. The day after Brenda's wedding I was
at the Fontanas,--she was a Miss Andrews, you know, of
Indianapolis,--and there was Charlie, too, and there was likewise Madame
Sartorio, who is Colonel Fontana's niece by his first marriage. We were
talking in a little group when something, I forget what, was said about
you, Aurora. Charlie--for what reason would be hard to think, unless one
had a sharp scent for what goes on under one's nose--Charlie
interrupted, to introduce as a sort of parenthesis, 'Mrs. Hawthorne,
whose real name, by the way, is Helen Barton.' The others were naturally
taken aback, except Madame Sartorio, who could not quite disguise a
cat-smile. For a moment none of us knew what to say, and Charlie went
on, with his air of knowing such a lot more than anybody else--
"'Yes. It seems that all winter we have been warming in our bosom, so to
speak, the heroine of a _cause celebre_ at a place called Colorado
in America.'"
"That was enough for me. I stopped him.
"'Don't say any more, Charlie. All I wish to know about Mrs. Hawthorne
is what she cares to tell me herself,' and I insisted that the
conversation should return to other things.
"When I got home I told mother, and she repeated to me what you, Aurora,
confided to her when we first knew you. We told father, and when Doctor
Bewick came that evening to say good-by we consulted, and here in this
newspaper you have the result, put into Italian journalese by Carlo
Guerra, whom we called in to aid us. He likes you so much, Aurora; did
you know it? He met you at Antonia's. So there you have the whole story.
I'm bitterly ashamed of Charlie, my dear, and I'm sorry about him, too.
One never looked upon him as a particularly fine fellow, still, one
liked him. He had never done anything that disqualified him for a sort
of liking, and we've all grown up together." Leslie wrinkled her
forehead in puzzlement. "It's curious, somehow, to think of him, who, we
have said so often, has no real inside, as being sufficiently under the
dominion of a passion to care to please his lady by offering up you, who
have, after all, been to him a source of a good many pleasures, with
your open house, invitations to dinner, and so on. I don't quite
understand it."
"Never mind about him!" Aurora flicked him aside. "I don't care. And you
say Tom helped. And he never told me, or wrote me a word about it. I had
a letter from him this morning. Well, well. You certainly did make a
good-sounding story of it, among you. And the main facts are true, far
as they go; I can't say they aren't. But, oh, my dear Leslie, there was
a lot more to it than that. I've got to tell you, so's not to feel like
a fraud. You're so sharp; you know me pretty well by this time, and I
guess you don't suppose in me any of those awfully 'fine feelin's' that
could make a blighted flower of me because, while innocent as a babe
unborn, I'd been dragged through the courts by wicked enemies. My
enemies were pretty wicked; I stick to that. Cora Bewick, off living
abroad studying some strange religion, while her kind old pa was dying
at home, and she never once coming near him till he was under ground;
Idell Friebus, never coming into his room except with her nose wrinkled
up with disgust at the smell of disinfectants--or disgust at him, it was
none too plain which. They made a fine pair of daughters. But when it
came to fighting over the will, the lawyers on the Bewick side gave out
just what it was that a perfectly noble woman would have done in my
place of the old man's nurse. And my lawyers would have it that
everything that didn't accord with that ideal simply must be kept dark,
or public feeling would go against us. It's that that made it so
nasty--pretending, and avoiding this, and keeping off the other. It
amounted to lying, no matter what they said. But they told me if I
didn't do as my counsel instructed me, the result would be the worst lie
of all. I should be believed guilty of just that undue influence I was
accused of, and lose the money into the bargain. So I had to hedge and
shuffle and mislead.... And me under oath to tell the truth! You needn't
wonder if I'm sick still at the thought of it, or wonder that I'd like
to forget it. The truth was I _did_ know beforehand the Judge meant
to leave me one fourth of his money, and I was tickled to death. I
gloried in it. I loved to imagine the rage it would throw his wicked
daughters in, and his mean little miserable son-in-law. I was glad,
besides, out and out, to think I should have the money. I plain wanted
it, I did. Maybe a real noble woman wouldn't have. Maybe it showed a
degraded nature. Well, that's the way it was. Sometimes I feel disposed
to be ashamed of it, but mostly I don't. For one thing, I felt then and
I feel now, I deserved that money by a long sight more than those
bad-hearted girls of his. I was a comfort to Judge Bewick. I won't say I
earned the money, it was too much: but there were some hours of my
tending him, poor soul, when it did seem to me a nurse came pretty near
earning anything the patient could afford to pay. All the same, I would
have done what I did for the old boy if he hadn't had a cent, I had so
much respect for him, as much as for my own father, and I felt I owed so
much to his son. Then about his son, the doctor. If Cora's old
nurse-girl, who was kept on in the house as a servant, though she was
past her usefulness, lied in court when she said she saw Tom and me
kissing at such an hour, in such a place, still, the truth was that I
had at different times kissed Tom. You can't tell why it seems all right
to you to kiss one man when it would seem a very queer thing to do to
kiss another. When Tom had been away for any length of time, I always
kissed him when he came back; it seemed natural to both of us. But there
in court I had to try to appear as if I never could have descended to
committing such an immoral act, as well as to give the impression that
if I'd known the old man had any notion of making me co-heir with his
own children I would have strained every nerve to stop it, called them
all in to help me curb him if necessary. Pshaw! the humbug of it turns
my stomach now. Leslie, my verdict is, you can't come through a law-suit
_clean_. I'd give a good deal to cut that page out of my life."
Aurora's eyes, filled with the shadows of the past, and her face, with
the dimples expunged, were to Leslie almost unfamiliar. Aurora,
oppressed in her moral nature, gave a glimpse of herself that would
change and enlarge the composite of her aspects carried in Leslie's
mind.
"There, stop thinking of it!" said Estelle. "You always work yourself up
so."
"The point of my coming bright and early like this," Leslie nimbly
managed a diversion, "was, as you have guessed, to catch you before you
could possibly go out. My mother desires you, dear ladies, to accompany
me back to lunch--a triumphal lunch, Aurora, to grace which she has
collected those special pillars of society whose countenance and support
ought to make you scornful of any little weed-like growth of gossip that
might sprout up from seed of Charlie's sowing. You know them all more or
less, having been associated with every one of them in some form of
beneficence. I might more accurately describe it: having donated largely
to each of their pet charities. It is not a very admirable world--"
Leslie's young face took that little air of knowing the world which
sometimes amused old gentlemen so much, "it is a selfish society, not
indisposed, or, I am afraid, altogether displeased, to believe evil of
its neighbor, and not always disinclined to turn and rend its favorites.
But it would be a pity, really, if you should have poured forth upon it
as you have done, Aurora, money and smiles, bouquets and banquets and
sunbeams, good-will and baby-socks and knitted afghans, and it did not
rise up when you are attacked and say, 'No. An exception has to be made
in this case. We have all been bought!'"
Aurora, who had been listening with expanded, gathering-in eyes, cheeks
flushing deeper and deeper, turned her head sharply away to try to keep
from falling or being seen two unaccountable tears half blinding her.
The sight of her, by infection, moistened the eyes of the other women.
Estelle sought a quick way out of the emotional silence.
"Nell," she said, albeit with cracked voice, "if we're going out to
lunch, I guess we ought to be dressing. Go along, child, put on your
best bib and tucker."
"Oh, my best bib and tucker!" wailed Aurora. "Sent to the cleaner's this
morning, all green stains at the back!"
* * * * *
If Leslie had not called it a triumphal lunch, it might not have
appeared so very different from any other women's lunch at the season of
roses. Leslie herself, though, found in it the flavor of old-fashioned
romance, just faintly platitudinous, in which poetic justice is done.
Mrs. Foss, the more simple-minded organizer of it, felt that she should
remember it as an occasion when she had risen to the level, placed the
right cards in the fist of destiny, and created an event worthy to take
rank at least with those little triumphs of good housewives at whose
home the president of their husband's company arrived one night unlocked
for and was entertained with brilliant credit.
To the heroine of the feast, no need to say it was an inexpressibly
exciting, grand, and memorable occasion. Aurora hardly knew herself, so
much the object of attention and graciousness. She was in the mood to
give half of her goods to the poor. After the hostess had risen and made
a little speech, Aurora, unexpectedly to herself, and as if under
inspiration, responded by a little speech of her own, composed on the
spot. It was drowned at the end by hand-clapping all around the table.
Aurora seemed to herself to be living in a fairy-story.
* * * * *
As it was after five o'clock when she reached home, she was sure she
would find Gerald waiting for her. She had the whole day long been
looking forward with a sweet agitation to the moment of being with him
and telling him all about it.
She was more disappointed than she remembered ever being, even as a
child, not to find him or any word from him. She did not allow it to
become later by more than half an hour before she scratched a line and
sent the coachman to his house with it.
The man came back with nothing but the barren information, received from
Giovanna, that the _signorino_ was absent, having gone to Leghorn.
"Well, here's a pretty howdydo!" thought Aurora, sore with surprise and
the smart of injury. "If every time I refuse him he's going off like
this to stay away for days and days, what am I going to do?"