Part 36 (1/2)
Aurora felt her heart turn cold, and such agitation seize her as made her reckless of all but one thing.
”I shall have to see for myself,” she thought.
With the haste of fear, she flew before Giovanna down the long hallway, around the dark corner, to the door of Gerald's room. It was half open.
Checking herself on the threshold, she thrust in her head.
He was so lying in his bed that beyond the outlined shape under the covers she could see of him only a dark spot of hair. And she felt she must see his face, whether asleep or awake, to get some idea.... She tiptoed in with the least possible noise. At once, without turning, he asked something in Italian, and speaking forced him to cough; and after he had finished coughing, Aurora, who was near, could hear his breathing rustle within him like wind among dead leaves.
Giovanna had gone to the head of his bed and whispered a communication.
Upon which he twisted sharply around, and Aurora, moved by an overpowering impulse, rushed to his side.
”Hus.h.!.+” she said at once. ”Don't try to talk; it makes you cough. I just wanted to know how you were. It would be funny, now don't you think so yourself, if, such friends as we've been, I should stop caring anything about you because you were cross the other day? I had to come and see if there wasn't something we could do for you.”
The attempt to speak choked him again; he had to lift himself finally quite up from his pillow to get breath. Quicker than Giovanna, Aurora s.n.a.t.c.hed up a gray shawl from a chair to put over his shoulders. The room felt to her stagnantly cold. He stopped her hand in the act of folding him in, and she knew that it was not the Gerald of last time, this one who, with an afflictive little moan, clasped and pressed her hand.
She hushed him, every time he tried to speak, until his breathing had quieted down, when he came out despite her forbidding with a ragged, interrupted, but obstinate eagerness:
”How can I ever thank you enough for coming, dear, dear Aurora? I have lived in one prolonged nightmare ever since I saw you, knowing I had behaved like a blackguard, and fearing I should never have a chance to beg your pardon. I thought I should never see you again. And here you are, so generous, so kind!”
”Hush, Gerald! Don't make anything of it. Of course I came. Keep quiet now; you mustn't try to talk.”
”Dearest woman,” he insisted, with his voice full of tears, ”I don't even know what I said to you, but I know that the whole thing was atrocious. You standing there like a big angel, with your innocent arms full of flowers, and I barking at you like a cur!”
”Nothing of the sort. You were sick. Who lays up anything against a sick man?”
”Excuse it in me like this, Aurora, if you can: that having such regard for you, I had pride before you and could not endure that you should see me when I felt myself to be a disgusting object. So, mortified to the point of torture, I lost my temper,--I've got that bad habit, you know,--and insanely railed to keep you off.”
”And didn't succeed. Come, come; what nonsense all this is! Put it out of your mind and think of nothing but getting well. Now you--”
”It is not nearly so important that I should get well,” he testily persisted, ”as that I should ask your forgiveness. It has been weighing upon me and burning like bedclothes of hot iron, the horror of having so meanly and ungratefully offended you.”
”Why should you feel so bad about it as long as I don't? Put it all out of your mind, just as I do out of mine. There, it's all right. Now keep still except to answer my questions. You've had the doctor?”
”Yes, dear.”
”What's he giving you?”
”You can see--there on the stand--those bottles.”
”And hot things on your chest?”
”Yes; _semedilino_. I don't know what you call it in English.”
”Flaxseed, I guess. How can poor old Giovanna do everything for you?”
”I don't know,” he answered vaguely. ”She does.”