Part 21 (1/2)
Aurora was out of place, it could not be blinked; and that she was so visible, in her able-bodied comeliness, her supremacy of dimples, her extremely good corset, increased the offense. So did also the native a.s.surance of her eye--which had something at all times of a jovial sea-captain, with his foot on his own deck.
Gerald looked from her to Antonia, slightly uneasy. Antonia's face had characteristics of a man's, but along with them indications above all feminine. Power and caprice in the great woman went linked. He saw her while listening to the princess turn her head toward the quarter of the room tinctured by Aurora's unmodified presence, as if taking account of the voice and accent of the stranger in her house.
This seemed to him his opportunity, and excusing himself from Miss Grangeon, he started toward Aurora.
”There are more ways than one of skinning a cat!” came floating to him in Aurora's deep-piled voice, borne on her frank laugh, as he approached.
He found her having a very good time, but ready to call an end to it and go to be presented.
”I'm awfully nervous!” she whispered to Gerald, but that was a manner of speech. Aurora's nerves were author-proof. She meant that she was impressed by the greatness of the moment. She picked up her three books from the table near by, held them with her left arm so that her right hand might be free to clasp Antonia's, and, smiling as a basket of chips--thus did she later describe herself--advanced toward the crowning honor of the day.
Antonia saw her coming and narrowed her eyes the better to see.
Antonia's face, at no time in her life soft, was as much like granite at this moment as it had the moment before been like old white soap; her eyes, fixed on the approaching pair, turned stonily unseeing.
Gerald bravely went through with the introduction, and tried to warm the atmosphere with winged words. Aurora's hand was all ready to shake.
Antonia's hand did not go forth to meet it, but Aurora, elate and overflowing, was not put off by this.
”I can never tell you”--she gushed, ”how pleased I am to meet you--how honored I feel. Nor can I ever tell you how perfectly wonderful I think your books. Perfectly wonderful.... Perfectly wond ... Perf ... See what I've brought. These three that I'm going to leave for you to write in, if you'll be so very kind. It would increase their value for me I never can tell you how much.”
”My dear Madam,” said Antonia, ”I never inscribe a book that I have not myself presented. I am not acquainted with the phrase in which it is done. The value of my autograph will be enormously increased hereafter for collectors by the fact that when I receive requests for it I drop them into the waste-basket. Yes, I merely keep the stamps.”
”Oh!”
”Yes.”
”Oh!” more faintly.
”Yes!” more firmly.
Turning her back to Aurora, Antonia once more addressed Princess Rostopchine. ”Vera Sergeievna, you were saying....”
The only sign Aurora gave of being flabbergasted was forgetting the books she held. They slid with noise to the floor. As Gerald picked them up, ”Did I ever tell you”--she asked him chattily, and leisurely moved on,--”about the time I stood on the sidewalk to see the procession go by, in Boston, when we commemorated Bunker Hill?” And she went on with a favorite reminiscence: how she had held on to her inch of standing-room, in spite of a fat and puffing man, a gimlet-elbowed woman, and a policeman.
When they were in her coupe, smartly bowling toward town, silence fell.
Gerald's brow was black, his eyes were steely.
”Mrs. Hawthorne,” he jerked out, ”I am not going to express myself on the experiences of this afternoon. Words could not do them justice, and I am not cool enough to trust myself. But I wish to apologize to you most humbly for my egregious, my imbecile mistake.”
”Don't you care, Geraldino! Don't you care one bit! Bless your dear heart, I'm not touchy!” Aurora said cheerily, and, not resisting as he had recently done the impulse to comfort his friend by a caressing touch, gave his hand as tight a squeeze as her snug new glove permitted.
”Nasty old thing! What does it matter? But”--her eyes rounded at the amazed recollection,--”that I should have lived, I--me--my size--to feel like a fly-speck on the wall! It did beat everything! Yours truly, F. S.
W.! Fly Speck on the Wall!”
She was lost for a moment in the consideration of herself reduced to a negligible dot, and Gerald, too angry to talk, thought hydrophobia thoughts in silence. In these he was disturbed by the sound of her trying in a murmur to speak like Antonia, and hitting off the Englishwoman's p.r.o.nunciation rather successfully.
”Deah Madam! I nevah, nevah inscrrribe a book.... I drap them into the baaahsket. Yesss. I marely keep the stamps.”