Part 34 (1/2)
At sight of his danger he became very clear-headed. The man who sees a snare and walks into it deserves his fate, surely.
”It is time to stop it,” he said. And he laid down for himself new rules of life.
Fortunately, he had at hand some absorbing books. Dostoiewsky's ”Crime and Punishment” could effectively take him out of himself.
But the print was fine and crowded, he was weakened by illness, he was forced now and then to stop and rest with swimming head. Then at once would return, like the demon in fair disguise tempting some hermit of the desert, the thought, ”What is Aurora doing? If Aurora knew I was ill, she would come.” And the imagination of her coming would shed a feverish gladness all along those petulant, ill-treated, starved nerves.
”What have I to do with Aurora, or Aurora with me?” he would ask, furiously, the incongruity of what had happened to him calling forth sometimes a desperate laugh. But Nature laughs at man's ideas of congruity; remembering that, he could only hold his hands against his eyes and try to press the image of Aurora out of existence.
Gerald, however, was much stronger than his nerves. He could see his own case, even with a pulse at ninety, as well as another man's. And his will was firmer than might have been thought. He knew something of a human man's const.i.tution, how it can circ.u.mvent a man, or how a man, well on his guard, can circ.u.mvent it. He formed the project of interrupting his visits to the Hermitage.
After this resolution he regarded those returns of earth-born desire for Aurora's balmy touch and tranquilizing neighborhood as a man who had taken an heroic and sure remedy against ague might regard the fluctuations in his body of heat and cold continuing still for a little while. As to how Aurora would take his defection, all should be managed with so much art and politeness that the most sensitive could not be hurt. By the time the new important work which he would make his excuse was accomplished, his cure would have been accomplished as well.
Meanwhile, each time the door-bell rang--it was not often, certainly--his attention was taken from his book, and he listened. And so, on Mlle. Durand's French afternoon, Gerald, having heard the bell, was listening, but with his face to the fire and his back to the door.
When Giovanna knocked, ”Forward!” he said, without turning. The door opened.
”_C'e quella signora._” ”There is that lady,” dubiously announced Giovanna.
Gerald turned, and beheld that lady filling the doorway.
Then it was as if a bright trumpet-blast of reality, breaking upon a bad dream, dispelled it; or as if a fresh wind, blowing over stagnant water, swept away the cloud of noxious gnats. All he had latterly been thinking and feeling seemed to Gerald insane, sickly, the instant he beheld Aurora's comradely smile. He was ashamed; he found himself on the verge of stupid, unexplainable tears.
”Well!” said Aurora.
At the sound they were placed back on the exact footing of their last meeting, before thinking and conjecturing about each other in absence had built up between them barriers of illusion.
”Well!” he said, but less pleasantly, because he was mortified by the awareness of himself as an uninviting sight, with his old dressing-gown, neglected beard, and the unpicturesque manifestations of a cold.
But Aurora's face was rea.s.suring; she did not confuse him with the accidents of his dressing-gown and beard and cold. Aurora's face beamed, so much was she rejoicing in her own excellent sense, which had told her that one look at each other would do a thousand times more to make things right between them than innumerable letters could have done.
”I didn't know what to think,” she said, ”so I came to find out. First I'd think you were mad at me, then I'd think you had gone away and written me, and the letter hadn't reached me, Gaetano had lost it on the road. Then I'd think you might be sick, and there was n.o.body to let your friends know. I don't know what I didn't think of. What made you not send me word?”
”I did not know you would be uneasy. I did not rightly measure, it seems, the depth of your kindness. I should certainly have written to you before long in case I had continued unable to go to see you.”
”How long have you been sick?”
”I am not sick, dearest lady. I only have a cold. In order to make it go away more quickly I have to remain in the house. But how good, how very good of you to come! Sit down, please do, and warm yourself. I will ring for Giovanna, and she will make us some tea.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Gerald turned, and beheld that lady]
Aurora, smiling all the time with the pleasure she felt in not finding him angry or estranged or in any way altered toward her, took the arm-chair from which he had just risen, while he drew a lighter chair to the other side of the chimney-place. His fires were not like hers. Two half-burned sticks and a form of turf smoldered sparingly on a mound of hot ashes; he eagerly cast on a f.a.got, and added wood with, for once, an extravagant hand. Then, looking over at her, he smiled, too.
”Now tell me all about yourself,” she commanded. ”I want to know what you're doing for this cold of yours.”
”Please let us not talk about my cold,” he at once refused. ”Let us talk about something agreeable. Tell me the news. I have not seen any one for days. I have been living in Russia with a poor young man who had committed a murder, also with a most sympathetic being who found the world outside an inst.i.tution for the feeble-minded too much for him.” By a gesture toward the books on the table he gave her a clue to his meaning.
”You say you haven't seen any one for days,” she said. ”Now the Fosses, for instance, who are your best friends, don't you let them know when you're shut in?”
”You have no conception, evidently, of my bearishness, dear friend. They have. They never wonder when they do not see me or hear from me for weeks.”
”I know, and it seems funny; it seems sort of forlorn to me. I saw them the other day and asked if any one had seen you since the night of the show. They said no, but didn't seem to think anything about it.”