Part 9 (2/2)
After the Fosses had helped the lessees of the Haughty Hermitage to make it habitable; found for them a coachman who had a little French and, when told what they desired to buy, would take them to the proper shops; provided them with a butler to the same extent a linguist, through whom Estelle, who in Paris had ambitiously studied a manual of conversation, could give her orders, they not unnaturally became less generous of their company.
But they were not permitted to make the intervals long between visits.
The coachman wise in French was perpetually driving his spanking pair to their gates, delivering a message, and waiting to take them down for lunch or dinner with their joyfully welcoming and grateful friends. It was not at all unpleasant. It was not prized preciously,--there was too much of it and too urgently lavished,--but the lavishers were loved for it by two women neither dry-hearted nor world-hardened. Leslie fell into the way, when she was in town and had time, of running in to Aurora's, where it would be cheerful and she looked for a laugh.
Leslie, having reached, as she considered, years of discretion, thought fit to disregard the Florentine rule that young unmarried women must not walk in the streets unattended. She had balanced the two inconveniences: that of staying at home unless some one could go out with her, and that of being spoken to in the street, and decided that it was less unpleasant to hear a strange young man murmur as she pa.s.sed, ”Angel of paradise!” or ”Beautiful eyes!”--no grosser insult had ever been offered her,--than to be bothered by a servant at her heels. The fact that she looked American and was understood to be following the custom of her own country secured her against any real misinterpretation.
It was chilly, Novemberish, and within the doors of Florentine domiciles rather colder, for some reason, than in the open air. The Fosses kept their house at a more human temperature than most people, but yet after years of Italy did not heat very thoroughly: one drops into the way of doing as others do, and grows accustomed to putting up with cold in winter. Leslie often expressed the opinion that in America people really exaggerate in the matter of heating their houses. Nevertheless, just for the joy of the eyes and, through the eyes, of the depressed spirit, she was glad to-day of the big fire dancing and crackling in Aurora's chimney-place.
The upstairs sitting-room, where the ladies generally sat, might look rather like a day nursery; yet after one had accepted it, with its chintz of big red flowers and green foliage, its rich strawberry rug and new gold picture-frames, it did seem to brighten one's mood. How think grayly amid that dazzle and glow any more than feel cold before that fire?
Leslie held her hands to the blaze, and with an amiable display of interest inquired of their affairs, the progress made in ”getting settled.” There was still a good deal to do of a minor sort.
Accounts were given her in a merry duet; purchases were shown; she was told all that had happened since they last saw her, who had called, whom they had been to see.
Casting about in her mind for further things to communicate, Aurora was reminded of a small grievance.
”I thought your friend Mr. Fane was going to come and take us sight-seeing,” she said.
”Was it so arranged?”
”So I supposed.”
”And he hasn't been?”
”Hide nor hair of him have we seen.”
”I meant, hasn't he perhaps called while you were out?”
”He hasn't.”
”Strange. It's not like him to be rude. But, then, he's not like himself these days. You must excuse him.”
”What's the matter with him? Isn't he well?”
”He's not ill in the usual sense. If he were, we should make him have a doctor and hope to see him cured. It's worse than an illness. He is blue--chronically blue.”
”Why?”
”Oh, he has reasons. But the same reasons, of course, would not have made a person of a different temperament change as he has changed.”
”I don't suppose you want to tell us what the reasons are?” Very tentatively this was said.
”Why ... ordinarily one would not feel free to do so, but you are sure to hear about it before you have been here long. In Florence, you know, everybody knows everything about everybody else. Not always the truth, but in any case an interesting version. Oh, it behooves one to be careful in Florence if one doesn't wish one's affairs known and talked about. But in the case of Gerald there was nothing secret. Everybody knows him, everybody knew when he was engaged to Violet Van Zandt, everybody knows that she married some one else.”
”Oh, the poor boy!”
”It's very simple, you see, commonplace as possible. But it's like the old story of the poem: an old story, yet forever new. And the one to whom it happens has his heart broken, one way or the other.”
<script>