Part 31 (2/2)
You've never seen, Geraldino, how funny I can be. You'll see that night.”
”The voice runs that you're going to appear as a n.i.g.g.e.r mammy and sing plantation songs.”
”Oh, does it? Well, that seems innocent. What objection do you see to that?”
”I did not call my request reasonable, dearest Aurora. I begged a personal favor. You know the sort of nerves I have. It is like pouring acid on them to think of you making a show of yourself.”
She laughed, but would not yield; she treated his proposition like a spoiled child's demand for the moon, and, after condescending to tease like a boy, he woke suddenly to the fact of being ridiculous. He dropped the subject with the abruptness that causes the opponent nearly to topple over in surprise.
He had sat for a long moment in silence when, realizing that this appeared ill-humored and a piece of effrontery, he started in haste to talk again, choosing the first subject that came into his mind, which was a thing he had meant to tell Aurora this evening, but had not remembered until this moment. The wide distance between the subject he dropped and the subject he took up would show, it was hoped, how definitely he washed his hands of her doings.
”If you have wished for revenge on our friend Antonia,” he said, ”you can be satisfied. She is in the most singular sort of difficulty.”
”Oh, is she? I'm sorry,” said Aurora. ”Bless you! I never wished her any harm.”
”I went to see her yesterday. I had saved up my grievance and felt the need to lay it before her. I think one should give an old friend who has behaved badly the chance to make reparation, don't you? After being angry as you saw me, I yet did not want to break with her. She was very kind to me when I was young. At the same time I could not let her rudeness to you pa.s.s. But I found her in such trouble already when I went to see her yesterday that I said not one word of my grievance. It will have to wait.”
”You needn't think you must pick her up on my account. I don't care. But what was the matter?”
”Two of her oldest friends, through an unaccountable mistake, turned into enemies. Both insist that under cover of a mask at the last _veglione_ she insulted them. Unfortunately, her best friends are not kept by their actual knowledge of her from thinking it just possible she might desire to amuse herself with getting a claw into them. She has more than once given offense to her friends by putting them into her books. But Antonia swore to me that she was innocent, and begged me to convince De Breze. The villa she lives in is his property, and he has requested her to vacate it. The other aggrieved one, General Costanzi, she fears may succeed in preventing the publication of her next novel by threat of a libel suit.”
”Well, that sounds bad. But what do they say she's done?”
”The poor woman doesn't even know what she is supposed to have said; insulted them is all she can gather. Both maintain that though she tried to alter her voice they recognized her, and will not accept her word for it that she wore no such disguise as they describe. Which reminds me that the offender, or the offender's double, for I have an idea there were two masked alike, came into your box early in the evening with a companion. You have not forgotten--that black domino with the crow's beak?”
Aurora jumped on her seat with a cry of ”Goodness gracious!”
”What is it?” he asked, looking at her more attentively. She appeared aghast.
She did not answer at once, tensely trying to think.
”Well,” she finally exclaimed, relaxing into limpness, ”I've been and gone and done it!”
And as he waited--
”I guess I did that insulting,” she added, and wiped her brow.
He thought for a moment that she might be acting out a joke, but in the next accepted her perturbation as genuine.
”Can't you see through it even now I've told you?” she asked.
He shook his head.
”Did you suppose I didn't really know those two who came into the box, the one who roared and the one who cawed? Well, I'm a better actress than I supposed.”
”But--”
”And did you really suppose I was going home to bed just as the fun was at its height? There again you're simpler than I thought. Land! Don't I wish now that I had gone home!”
”And you--”
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