Part 10 (2/2)

Hawthorne, from the seat into which the jerk had thrown her, made beckoning signs to him, laughing the while, and calling, ”Mr. Fane! Mr.

Fane!”

He went to stand at the carriage-step.

”I thought,” said Mrs. Hawthorne, ”that you were going to come and take us sight-seeing.”

”I thought I was,” said Gerald, with that scant smile of his; ”but I was not so fortunate as to find you at home.”

It was true that he had gone to her door one afternoon, having previously caught a glimpse of her in the heart of the city, shopping.

”You mean to say you came?”

”You did not find my card?”

”No; but it's all right. This is Miss Madison--Mr. Fane. We are together. What have you got to do?”

Gerald looked as if the question had not been quite clear, and he waited for some amplification of it before he could answer.

”Have you got anything very important to do? Aren't you lonesome? Don't you want to jump in and come home with us? Wish you would.”

Gerald smiled again in his remote way, and looked as if he knew, as any one would know, that this was not meant to be taken seriously.

”I have just seen a beautiful spectacle,” he said, after a vague head-shake that thanked her shadowily for an unreal invitation. ”A game of _pallone_, which is the nearest to your football that boys have over here. Beautiful bronzed athletes at exercise, a delightful sight, statues in motion. I go to see them whenever I can.--The days are becoming very short, are they not?”

”Yes. Jump in and come home with us. Tell you what we'll do. I'll go down into the kitchen and make some soda biscuits that we'll have hot for supper--with maple syrup. We've had a big box of sugar come.”

Gerald again smiled his civil, but joyless, smile, and after another vague head-shake that thanked, but eluded the question, he said: ”They are very indigestible; hot bread is not good for the health. At least, that is what they tell us over here. We keep our bread two days before eating it, or longer. But I am afraid I am detaining you.”

The horses were jingling their bits, frisking their docked tails. The driver, checking their restless attempts to start, was giving them smothered thunder in Italian. Gerald withdrew by a step from the danger to his s.h.i.+ns.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”I thought,” said Mrs. Hawthorne, ”that you were going to come and take us sight-seeing”]

”Oh, jump in!” said Mrs. Hawthorne for the third time. And because his choice lay between saying curtly, ”Impossible!” and letting the impatient horses proceed, or else obeying, Gerald, who hated being rude to women, found himself irresolutely climbing in, just long enough, as he intended, to explain that he could not and must not go home with them to the hot biscuits and syrup.

The little third seat had been let down for him; his knees were snugly wedged in between those of the ladies. Aurora was beaming over at him; Estelle was beaming, too. Aurora's smile was a blandishment; Estelle's was a light. The horses were flying toward the Lungarno. And he gave up; he helplessly gave up trying to find an excuse for asking to be set down again and allowed to go his lonely way.

It might be entertaining, he tried to think, to see what they had done to the Hermitage. But no! That was very sure to be revolting. If the evening were to afford entertainment, it must be found in watching this healthy and unhampered being who, just as certain fishes color the water around them, seemed to affect the air in such a way that, coming near enough, you were forced to like her, without ceasing to think her the most impossible person that had ever found her way into cultivated society.

The carriage-wheels crunched gravel; the horses' hoofs rang on the pavement of a columned portico; the door was opened by a man in blue livery.

Entering the wide hall, they faced an ample double staircase, between the converging flights of which stood, closed, a great stately white-and-gold door.

Gerald, as bidden, followed the ladies up the stairs to the cozier sitting-room, where a fire, they hoped, had been kept up. In the beginning dimness of an early twilight he first saw the big red flowers and green, green leaves. He was left a moment alone while the ladies took off their hats, and he sent his eyes traveling around him, prepared really for something worse than they found, though the pictures on the wall called from him the gesture of trying to sweep away an unpleasant dream.

Aurora reappeared from her room in a business-like white ap.r.o.n.

”Now I'm going down to make the biscuit. Oh, no trouble. No trouble at all. I want them myself. I'm homesick for some food that tastes like home. Estelle will entertain you while I'm gone. I sha'n't be but a minute.”

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