Part 14 (1/2)
”And now I am asked--with laughter and mockery--whether I have seen Mrs.
Hawthorne giving an imitation of a Madonna by Simma Bewey, and heard Mrs. Hawthorne on the subject of G. Ottow and Others.”
”Didn't you say--with laughter? Well, then, it's all right. Don't you care. I just got to training and did it to make them a little sport.
Didn't they tell you about my Native of Italy eating Macaroni?”
”Mrs. Hawthorne, you are just a bad big school-girl--a bad big school-girl--”
”'Hark, from the tomb!'” said Mrs. Hawthorne, in lieu of anything more scintillating.
”A bad big school-girl, and I will have nothing more to do with you. If you delight in being the talk of the town, all you have to do is allow your friend Mr. Hunt in his spare hours to take you to see such things as I have not yet had the honor of showing you.”
”Blessed if I--Look here, you aren't mad in earnest? Sooner'n lose you, I won't say another word. There! I've been Tchee-mah-boo-eh's Madonna for the last time. Don't be cross with little T. T.--Talk of the Town!”
”If you had any discrimination, any reticence ...”
”No reticence? Does that mean can't keep anything to myself? You don't know me!”
”You even tell your age.”
”You aren't going to find fault with me for _that_?”
”Yes. At your age one should know better. It is part of your general and too great frankness.”
They upon occasions came near quarreling, but not seriously, her disposition to quarrel was so small. Yet, two could not be outspoken and one of them irritable, and those rocks never even be grazed.
She unwarily enlarged to him one day upon her disappointment in Florence. By this time, she said, she was growing used to it, she didn't notice so much the things she didn't like. But at first, with her expectation high, her imagination inflamed by the Judge's and Antonia's eloquence, the narrow streets, in some of them no sidewalks even, the gloomy bars at the windows, the muddy river with the dirty old houses huddled on the bank, the stuffy churches with the average height of the Italian populace marked on the pillars by a dubious grindy brown tint, the dreadful beggars, the black fingernails, the smells....
”Mrs. Hawthorne!” came from Gerald, who with difficulty had let her go on thus far, ”those were all you noticed, were they? In the most wonderful city in the whole world, those are all you find to talk about!
The narrow streets, the beggars, the smells. Mrs. Hawthorne--” he nearly trembled with the effort to keep calm, ”this is obviously not the place for you. You should have gone to ... to Switzerland! Instead of a sunburned hill-side, with sober silver olives and solemn black cypresses, and a pair of beautiful calm white oxen plowing, you would have seen a nice gra.s.s-green pasture, at the foot of blinding peaks, cut by an a.r.s.enic-green stream, on whose bank a red and white cow feeding!
Then among the habitations all would have been well-regulated, the churches swept, perhaps even ventilated, the people washed, clean ap.r.o.ns, clean caps, no beggars, no disorder, no crimes. And there would have been no disturbing manifestations of genius, either; no troublesome masterpieces or other evidences of a little fire in the blood. It would have suited you perfectly.”
”I guess you mean that to be cutting, don't you?”
”Let me try to tell you how much I liked New York, when I went back there some years ago after an absence of ten or eleven years. I had some idea, you know, of perhaps returning to live in America. Well, I s.h.i.+vered. I shut my eyes. I held my ears. I fled. I remained just the time I was forced to by the affairs of my poor mother and, as I tell you, I fled!”
”Why, what's the matter with New York?”
”I will tell you what is the matter with New York, with Boston, with all the places in America that I have seen again since I was grown up--”
”No! Stop! Don't say anything against America. It's the one way to make me mad.--I didn't know you felt the same way about Florence. You aren't an Italian, are you? It's because we're both alike Americans that we sit here fighting so chummily.”
CHAPTER VII
Lending her s.p.a.cious front room for the Christmas bazaar in aid of the church, and beholding it full of bustle and brightness, was the thing that brought to the acute stage Mrs. Hawthorne's longing to see her whole house the scene of some huge good time: she sent out innumerable invitations to a ball. Mrs. Foss's card was inclosed with hers. It was a farewell party given for Brenda, whose day of sailing was very near. The frequent inquiry how Brenda should be crossing the ocean so late in the year met with the answer that her traveling companions had a brother whose wedding had been timed thus awkwardly for them.
On the morning of the day before the ball Gerald came to see Mrs.
Hawthorne. He was still intrusting the servant with his message when Aurora, leaning over the railing of the hallway above, called down to him, ”Come right upstairs!”