Part 35 (1/2)
”Is that a poultice on your chest? I guess it's what you need. Now, if I have any influence with you, Gerald, if you love me one little bit, you'll promise to go right to bed, and you'll give me your doctor's address so that on my way home I can leave word for him to come.”
”You shall not take that trouble. I can send Gaetano.”
”You promise me you'll do it, then?”
”I seem to have been left no choice, dear lady.”
”That's real sweet of you. You'll go to bed the minute I've gone?”
”Yes. But don't go quite yet!”
”With that temperature, I don't see how you can care who stays or who goes, or anything in the world but to lay your head down on a pillow. I won't stay any longer now. Go to bed like a good boy. To-morrow I'll run in and see how you're getting along.”
His last word was, after a moment of seeming embarra.s.sment:
”I hope Miss Madison will be able to come with you next time.”
”Yes, yes,” said Aurora, lightly, taking it for a mere amiable message with which he was charging her for Estelle.
Fever no doubt colored all Gerald's dreams that night, and was in part responsible next day for his thoughts, as he pa.s.sed from languor to restlessness, and from impatience back to the peace of the certain knowledge that before evening he should have visitors--fair visitors.
When it seemed to him nearly time for them, he ordered Giovanna to make the room of a beautiful and perfect neatness, hiding all the medicine bottles and humble signs that one is mortal. She was directed to lay across his white counterpane that square of brocade which often formed a background for his portraits. She was asked to brush his hair and beard, and wrap his shoulders in an ivory-white shawl, thick with silk embroideries, which had been his mother's. In a little green bronze tripod a black pastille was set burning, which sent up, slow, thin, and wavering, a gray spiral of perfume.
Keenly as he was waiting, he yet did not know when the ladies arrived.
He opened his eyes, and they were there, shedding around them a beautiful freshness of health and the world outside. Estelle, in a soft green velvet edged with silver fur, held toward him an immense bunch of flowers. Aurora, in a wine-colored cloth bordered with bands of black fox, tendered a basket heaped with fruit. Both smiled, and had the kind look of angels.
They sat down beside his bed. They talked with him; all was just as usual. They asked the old questions pertinent to the case, he made the old answers, and by an effort kept up for some minutes a drawing-room conversation with them.
Then Aurora said:
”Hus.h.!.+ You mustn't talk any more!” And when he thought she was going away, he wondered to see her take off her gloves.
She stood over him; he wondered what she meant to do. She felt of his forehead with her cool hand. With her palms, which were like her voice, of a velvet not too soft, she smoothed his forehead and temples; she stroked them over and over in a way that seemed to draw the ache out of his brain. Her fingers moved soothingly, magnetically, all around his eye-sockets, pressing down the eyelids and comforting them.
At first he resisted. Perversely he frowned, as if the thing increased his pain, annoyed him beyond words. He all but cried out to the well-meaning hands to stop.
”Doesn't it feel good?” asked Aurora, anxiously.
He relaxed. Without opening his eyes, he nodded to thank her, and as he yielded himself up to the hands it seemed to him that those pa.s.ses drew his spirit after them quite out of his body.
”I don't think I'll go up with you,” Estelle said unexpectedly when on the next day they stopped before the narrow yellow door in Borgo Pinti.
”I'll wait here in the carriage. I'm nervous myself to-day. Give my best regards to Gerald. I hope you'll find him better.”
Aurora did not take time to examine into the possible reasons for her friend's choice. She climbed the long stairs st.u.r.dily, managing her breath so that she did not have to stop and rest on the way.
She followed the stern Giovanna, unsubdued by the latter's hard and jealous looks, to the door of her master's chamber.