Part 26 (2/2)
”P.S. What do you think Busteretto did? He saw me pouring some water into a bowl and imagined I was going to give him a bath.
So he went to hide under the grate. Then of course he had to have a bath, which he wouldn't have had to otherwise. He sends much love.
”Another P.S. I meant to tell you we have got a box for the veglione (I hope that is the way to spell it) on the last night of the Carnival. We have only asked the Fosses so far, and we want you to be sure to save that night to come with us.”
Gerald, having read, sat down and wrote, with a disregard to the delicacy of his hair-lines and the shading of his down-strokes that would have furnished a poor example to anybody:
”The portrait, my dear Mrs. Hawthorne, is a gift, for which I will not even accept thanks, as it is, your kind opinion notwithstanding, absolutely without value. One sole point of interest it has, that of a future curiosity--the only thing of the kind that will have been painted in his whole lifetime by
”Your devoted friend, ”G. F.
”Shall I find you at home this evening?”
CHAPTER XII
No festivity has quite the vast and varied glitter of a _veglione_.
It takes a whole city to make a party so big and bright. And the last _veglione_ of the season is rather brighter than the rest, as if the spirit of revelry, inexhausted at the end of Carnival, made haste to use itself up in fireworks before the cold dawn of Ash Wednesday.
The opera-house is cleared of its rows of seats, the stage united to the parquet by a sloping floor. Every one of the boxes, rising tier above tier in a jeweled horseshoe, offers the sight of a merry supper-party, with spread table, twinkling candelabra, flowers, gala display.
Crowding floor and stage and lobbies, swarm the maskers. In the center of the great floor the _corps de ballet_, regiment of sylphs in tulle petticoats and pale-pink tights, performs its characteristic evolutions to the pulsating strains of the opera orchestra. The public dances in the remaining s.p.a.ce--dances, promenades, and plays pranks, the special diversion of the evening being to ”intrigue” some one. They are heard speaking in high squeaks, in ba.s.s rumbles, in any way that may disguise the voice. Many are in costume,--Mephistos, Pierrots, Figaros, Harlequins, but the most are in simple domino.
When a lady wishes to descend among the crowd she, in the darkness at the back of the box, slips a domino over her ball-dress, a mask over her features, and goes forth unknown to all save the cavalier on whose arm she leans.
The only uncovered faces belong to gentlemen. These look often a little foolish, a little bored, because the uncovered faces are the natural objects of the maskers' impertinences, their part the rather barren amus.e.m.e.nt of trying to divine who it is endeavoring to intrigue, or puzzle, them, and wittily to parry personalities often more pointed than the drawing-room permits.
The party in Aurora's box was large for the size of the box. She had gone on inviting people, then brought hampers and hampers of good things with which to feed them. There were the Fosses, Charlie with all the Hunt girls, Landini, Lavin, the American doctor, the American dentist, and Gerald.
Also Manlio. The Fosses had brought him. He had returned from furlough some time before. It was known now to everybody that he was the _fidanzato_ of Brenda Foss. There was no talk of his leaving the army; on the contrary, he was rumored to have prospects of early advancement to the grade of captain; wherefore the general public took it for granted that the bride's parents were providing the indispensable marriage portion.
Aurora's eyes, at a moment when Manlio's attention was elsewhere, rested on him with a brooding, s.h.i.+ning look. The symptoms of a great happiness, though modestly m.u.f.fled, were plain in his face. The Beautiful One was coming back in the spring, already near, to marry him.
Aurora's affectionate look was just tinged with regret. She had suffered a disappointment in connection with Manlio. An obstinate and uncompromising woman beyond the ocean, when invited to join in a harmless conspiracy, had preferred to do actually, to the tune of eight thousand dollars, what the grasping creature should have been satisfied with merely appearing to do. The happiness that pierced through Manlio's calm, like a strong light through pale marble, came to him from the bride elect's aunt, and Aurora felt robbed.
But Mrs. Foss's hand found hers under the table and gave it a warm squeeze, whereupon Aurora's heart swelled in a way it had of doing. When such a dilation took place, something simultaneously happened to her eyes: the surrounding world was revealed to them as ”too lovely for anything.” Dimples declared her joy.
”Won't somebody have something more?” she asked, with the spoon in her hand poised over a bowl still half full of chicken mayonnaise.
But every one was done with eating; all were in haste to go down on to the floor and find amus.e.m.e.nt, perhaps adventure, amid the fluctuating, fascinating crowd.
The box was fairly deserted when the door opened again, and the eyes of those left in it, turning to see who entered, were met by two unknown maskers.
One wore the costume of a _bravo_ of old times, picturesque, disreputable, an operatic _Sparafucile_ in tattered mantle and ragged plume. The other was in a black satin domino, and had the face of a crow, a great black beak projecting from a black mask.
They stood a little way inside of the door as if waiting to be addressed. There was silence for a moment, while the others waited likewise. Within the eye-holes of their masks the eyes of the intruders glittered in the gla.s.sy, baffling way of eyes behind masks.
<script>