Part 19 (1/2)
”You would if you could hear us; you would have if you could have heard us this morning. And it was only a little one. You see, two people aren't best friends for nothing. It gives you a sort of freedom; you aren't a bit afraid. And when you know it's only the other's good you have at heart, it makes you awfully firm and fast-set in your point of view. I don't mind telling you that I'm always the one in the wrong.”
”Are you?”
”Of course I am. But I like to have my way, even if it's wrong. Hear me talk! How that does sound! And I was brought up so strict! But it's so.
I want to do as I please. I want to have fun. It began this morning with Hat saying I spent too much money.”
”Did she say that? How unreasonable, how far-fetched!”
”'What's the good of having it,' I said, 'if I can't spend it?'
”'You'd buy anything,' she said, 'that anybody wanted you to buy, if it was a mangy stuffed monkey. It isn't generosity,' she said; 'it's just weakness.'
”'Oh, suck an orange!' I said, 'Chew gum! It's anything you choose to call it. But when a thing takes my fancy, I'm going right on to buy it.
And if it enables a greasy little Italian to buy himself and his children more garlic,' I said, 'that's not going to stop me,' I said. I don't mind showing you”--she dropped her selections from the morning's dialogue--”the thing I bought which started our little discussion. The artist who made it brought it himself to show me.”
She went to take the object referred to from her desk, and held it before him, examining it at the same time as he did.
”Do you see what it is? Can you tell at once?”
”H-m, I'm not sure. Is it intended for a portrait of Queen Margherita?”
”Right you are! Of course that's what it is. It's a picture of the queen, done by hand with pen and ink; but that's not all. If you should take a magnifying gla.s.s, you would see that every line is a line of writing--fine, fine pen-writing, the very finest possible, and if you begin reading at this pearl of her crown, and just follow through all the quirligiggles and everything to the end, you will have read the whole history of Italy in a condensed form! Isn't it wonderful? Don't you think it extraordinary, a real curiosity? Don't you think I was right to buy it?”
”My opinion on that point, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, would rather depend on what you paid for it.”
”Oh, would it?” She lost impetus, and gave a moment to reflection.
”Well, I shall never know, then, for I'm not going to tell you. One's enough blaming me for extravagance.”
”My dear Mrs. Hawthorne, pray don't suppose me bold enough to--”
”Oh, you're bold enough, my friend. But while I like my friends to speak their minds, I've had just enough of it for one day, d' you see? I've had enough, in fact, to make me sort of homesick.”
She looked it, and not as far as could be from tears. The small vexation of his failure to think her treasure worth anything she might have paid for it, the intimation that he might join the camp of the enemy in finding her extravagant, had acted apparently as a last straw.
”Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, I beg of you not to feel homesick!” he cried, compunctious and really eager. ”It's such a poor compliment to Florence and to us, you know, us Florentines, who owe you so much for bringing among us this winter your splendid laughter and good spirits and the dimples which it does us so much good to see.”
”No,” she said ruefully, ”you can't rub me the right way till I'm contented here as I was yesterday. Florence is all right, and the Florentines are mighty polite; but--” She looked at the fire a moment, while he tried, and failed, to find something effectively soothing to say. ”In the State of Ma.s.sachusetts there's a sort of spit running into the sea, and on a sand hill of this there's a little s.h.i.+ngled house that never had a drop of paint outside of it nor of plumbing inside; but there's an old well at the back, deep as they dig them, with, on the hottest day, ice-water at the bottom. The yard is pretty well scratched up by the hens, but there are a few things in it you can't kill out--some lilacs and some tiger-lilies and a darling, ragged, straggling old strawberry-bush. Outside the fence, hosts of Bouncing Bets--you know what they are, don't you? The front door has some nice neat blinds, always closed, like those of the best room, except for weddings and funerals; but the back door is open, and when you sit on the step you can look off down an old slope of apple-orchard and over across it at the neighbors' roofs and chimneys. And there, Geraldino, is where Auroretta would like to be.”
He had the impulse to reach out and touch the ends of his fingers to her hand, fondly, as one might do to a child, but he prudently refrained.
His eyes, however, dwelled on her with a smile that conveyed sympathy.
He said, after her, amusedly:
”Auroretta!”
She brightened.
”After I've been bad,” she said, ”I always am blue.”