Part 34 (2/2)

”It's not really long since then. How are they all?”

”All right, and busy as bees. They've no time to come and see me, or anybody else, I guess. Brenda's coming back to be married in May, and they're flying round getting her things ready. All her linen is being beautifully embroidered....”

They went on talking, without much thought of what they said. It was immaterial, really, what they said, or even whether they listened to each other, while they had in common the comfort of sitting together in front of the fire after a long separation filled with doubts and dismays. She told him about the Convalescents' Home, the sum they had raised for it. No word, prudently, was spoken by either of her share in raising it. He told her about the Russian novels. A third person might perfectly have been present, for anything intimate in their conversation. Gerald was scrupulously careful, for his part, that this should be so. The third person would never have divined how far for the moment that chimney-corner transcended, in the sentiments of the parties seated before it, any other corner of the earth.

Aurora's attention became closer when Gerald related his interviews with De Breze and Costanzi, both of whom he had succeeded in convincing that Antonia had had nothing to do with intriguing them at the _veglione_, and had left to digest as best they could their curiosity concerning the mysterious masker mistaken for her. He had been obliged to give his word that he knew on absolutely good authority who this person was.

His attention, on the other hand, was complete when she told him how she had dealt with Ceccherelli; she was considerate enough to-day to make the effort to p.r.o.nounce the gentleman's cognomen.

”I was savage at him, you remember,” she said. ”I was going to take his head off. Then when it came to it, and I had told him what I thought of him and the whole disgraceful sc.r.a.pe he had got me into--Oh, I went for him, hammer and tongs! Incidentally, I made him tell me what it was I had said. Pretty bad, wasn't it!--Well, do you know, he cried, he felt so. He just cried on his knees, and didn't try to get rid of any of the blame. All he wanted was that I should forgive him. And what could I do?

As long, particularly, as I knew that a good deal of the fault was my own.... So now he comes to the house with a look as if he'd just been baptized. And he tells me only stories fit, he says, for a convent. Here is a sample, if you'd like to hear. Mrs. X, as he called her, who lives in a palace not a thousand miles, he said, from Piazza degli Anti-nory, and who had given Mr. B. reasons for not liking her, was seen by him, in a suspiciously simple dress, going suspiciously on foot, in a little suspiciously out of the way street, at a considerable distance from Piazza degli Anti-nory. The gentleman followed her stealthily into a house he saw her enter, thinking, you know, he would find out something to her discredit. And what did he find out but that she was secretly visiting and relieving the poor! The brilliant society lady, whom he wished to be revenged on because, as I gathered, she had scorned his dishonorable love-making, was secretly the angel of the poor.... Don't you think that's a nice story? He tells me nothing now that's less nice than that. We're reformed characters. He has asked my permission to dedicate to me a beautiful piece of music he has just composed, and which is called--but in French--'Prayer of the Evening.'”

Both of them were pleasantly aware of a tray placed on the table near them, as if descended from heaven, laden with teapot, bread and b.u.t.ter, jam. Neither of them really saw Giovanna, who brought it in, or was struck by the stern expression of her face.

Aurora, never sorry of something to eat, turned her attention to the tray. Gerald wished to serve her, and she first noticed his weakness when she saw the teapot tremble slightly in his hand. She went on chattering, but she was observing him.

”Is your carriage waiting before the door?” he suddenly asked, after a s.p.a.ce during which she had suspected that he was not properly attending to what she said. Aurora's monogram, daintily executed, adorned the door-panels of her carriage.

”Yes,” she answered. ”Why?”

As if he had not heard, he changed the subject. After a while he asked, again irrelevantly:

”How was it that Miss Madison did not come with you this afternoon?”

”She was going to a different tea-party.” Supposing that his question was a way of politely desiring news of Miss Madison, she went on to talk of her.

”She was going to her French teacher's, who is having a French afternoon where they're supposed to talk nothing but French. What would I have been doing there? But Estelle is getting to talk the French language exactly as well as her own.... That reminds me. A thing I've wanted to tell you. If you should notice that Busteretto seems to be rather more her dog than mine, don't you say anything, or care. The fact is Estelle loves him more than I do. That's all there is about it. Which isn't saying that I don't love him. But Estelle's silly over him, in the regular old maid way, as I tell her. When he wouldn't eat his dinner this noon, I had all I could do to make her eat hers, she was so troubled. And nothing ailed him, I guess, but that he'd picked up something in the kitchen. What I wanted to say was, don't you think it's because I don't value your present, if you should notice by and by that I seem to have given up my claims to Busteretto. That sort of alive present has a will of its own. The little thing took to her from the first more than he did to me. Shall I tell Estelle that you wished to be remembered?”

”Pray do.”

”She'll be sorry to hear you're sick. Don't say that again, Gerald,” she silenced him, letting her anxiety at last plainly appear. ”Don't tell me you aren't sick, for I know better. It's been taking away my appet.i.te to see you make believe to eat, and choke over it. Your cough is so tight it sounds as if it tore your lungs. Give me your hand. It's as hot, dear boy, and as dry!... Wait, let me feel your pulse.”

He knew that his pulse was high, that his temples ached, that a disposition to s.h.i.+ver accompanied the volcanic heat of his blood.

He laughed at her light-headedly while with serious concentration she counted the beats in his wrist.

”I'm going to stop at Doctor Gage's on my way home,” she said, letting go his hand, and not heeding what he said. ”And I'm going to tell him to come and see you.”

”Please do not! If I need a doctor, there is my own, an Italian, the same for years.”

”An Italian? Do you think they're as good?”

”Better for my own case.”

”Gerald, it's my advice to you to go right to bed and let your doctor come and prescribe. A cold is nothing in a way, but a neglected cold can grow into a mean sort of thing. Say you'll do it. Don't you know how good it will feel to you just to give in and go to bed and let some one else do all the looking after you? Oh, I wish I could speak Italian enough to have a talk with your Giovanna.”

”Giovanna has taken care of me and my _malanni_ for years. She gives me tar-water, and rice-water, and tamarind-water, and linden-tea, and ca.s.sia. She threatened me this morning with a sinapism if I were not better by evening. I shall be better. I do not wish for a sinapism.”

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