Part 12 (2/2)
”You're to play all those lovely things I'm so fond of,” she directed him. ”'The Swallow and the Prisoner,' 'The b.u.t.terflies,' 'The Cascade of Pearls.' And don't forget the 'Souvenir of Saint Helena.' Then the one of the soldiers marching off and the soldiers coming home again. All our favorites. Mr. Fane-- Are you acquainted with each other? Italo--you'll have to tell him your name yourself. All I can think of is Checkerberry.”
”Yes, yes, we are acquainted,” said Gerald, hurriedly. ”We have seen each other many times. _Come sta?_”
”Oh, he can speak English.”
”A leetle,” Ceccherelli modestly admitted.
”He understands everything I say. We have great conversations. He comes every evening when he isn't engaged to play somewhere else.”
She went to sit on the gorgeous brocade sofa, arranging herself amid the mult.i.tude of cus.h.i.+ons so as to listen long and happily. Estelle preferring a straight-backed chair, Gerald took the other corner of Aurora's sofa. Immediately Ceccherelli opened with ”Souvenir de Sainte-Helene.” Aurora, respectful to the artist, talked in a whisper.
”He's so talented! You simply couldn't count the pieces he can play. We do enjoy it so! We haven't anything in particular to do evenings if no one calls. We don't often go out. We haven't been here long enough to know many people. And aside from his magnificent playing, the little man is such good company! We do have fun! There, I mustn't talk, I'm keeping you from listening.”
Gerald settled back, too, as if to listen, but to do the contrary was his fixed purpose, even though the pianist, at last appreciated, put into his playing so much feeling and force. Gerald's eyes went wandering among the clutter of bric-a-brac, from a green bronze lizard to a mosaic picture of Roman peasants, from a leaning tower of Pisa to a Sorrento box. Then they rose to the paintings. He closed them.
The music was describing a hero's death-bed, besieged by dreams of battle, at moments so noisy that Gerald had to open his eyes again for a look of curiosity at the person who could produce so much sound. As he watched him and his nose, like the magnified beak of a hen,--the nose of a man who loves to talk,--he tried a little to imagine those merry evenings spoken of by Aurora. The fellow looked almost ludicrously solemn at this moment. He took himself and his art right seriously, there could be no doubt of it. His face was a map of the emotions expressed by the music, and wore, besides, according to his conception of the part, the look of a great man unacclaimed by his own generation.
_Dio!_ what an ugly little man!
Gerald closed his eyes again.
The last cannon was fired over the hero's grave, the music stopped. The ladies applauded. Gerald, smiling sickly, clapped his hands, too, without, it might have been observed, making any noise to speak of.
Estelle went to the piano to compliment the player more articulately, and loitered there, practising her French while he perfected himself in English, by mutual aid.
”Italo,” Mrs. Hawthorne interrupted them, ”play that lovely thing of your own now--you know, the one we're so crazy about, that by and by turns into a waltz.”
Without laying upon the ladies the tiresome necessity of pressing him, the composer plunged into this masterpiece, and Gerald sat back again, wondering what the little man thought of hearing himself called Italo by the fair _forestiera_. He was dimly troubled, knowing that there is no hope of an Italian ever really understanding the ways of being and doing of American women, and especially an Italian of that cla.s.s. But then it would be equally difficult to make this American woman understand just how the Italian might misunderstand her.
He permitted himself a direct look at her, where she rested among the cus.h.i.+ons, with eyes closed again and a smile diffused all over her face; her whole person, indeed, permeated with the essence of a smile.
Extraordinary that, loving music so much, one could so much love such music.
She surprised him by opening her eyes and whispering:
”Don't you want to smoke?” showing that for a moment at least she had not been thinking of music. ”You can, if you want to. Here, we've got some. Don't go and think, now, that Estelle and I have taken to smoking.
Heavens above! We sent out for them the other night when Charlie Hunt was here.”
She reached across the table near her and handed him a box of cigarettes.
He was very glad to light one. To smoke is soothing, and he felt the need of it. Added to his vague distress at the spectacle of such familiarity from these ladies to that impossible little Italian, a ferment of resentment was disquieting him apropos of Hunt--those works of art of which Hunt had facilitated the purchase.
Hunt, of a truth, ever since the first mention of him that evening had been like a fish bone in Gerald's throat.
He checked his thoughts, recognizing that it is not sane or safe to permit oneself to interpret the conduct of a person whom one does not like. The chances of being misled are too great. He uprooted a suspicion dishonoring to both.
Let it be taken for a.s.sured, then, that Hunt had in this case no interest to forward beyond his love for making himself important. After all, if the ladies liked bad pictures!... Yet it was a shame that he should frequent their house, be accepted as their friend, invited by them, made much of in their innocent and generous way, then should make fun of them. Permissible, if you choose, to make fun of funny people, but you must not at the same time make use of their kindness. A precept for the perfect gentleman, in Florence or elsewhere: You can make fun of persons, or you can cultivate their friends.h.i.+p, but not both things at once. And Gerald, without proof, felt certain that Charlie Hunt spread good stories about Aurora.
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