Part 39 (1/2)

After they had driven in the Cascine and around the Viali for the suns.h.i.+ne and air, Aurora asked suddenly:

”Haven't we had enough of this?” and ordered the coachman to go home.

”Why!” exclaimed Estelle, astonished, ”I thought we were going to Gerald Fane's to see how he's getting along!”

”No, I guess we won't. I think it's time, after living with him for three weeks, that I began to look after my reputation, don't you?” said Aurora, with a forced lightness of rather bitter effect.

”I had a note from him, anyhow, just before we came out,” she added after a moment. ”He's doing all right.”

Estelle understood that something was wrong. Aurora could not successfully pretend with her. Aurora's transparent face, as she now took note of it, betrayed hidden perplexity and chagrin. Estelle asked no questions, not needing to be told that Gerald's note had worked the change. Despite her affection for her friend, indeed, just because of that affection, Estelle was quietly glad of it. Her thought caressed the secret which has been referred to, a scheme which for some weeks had given her an excited feeling of having between her fingers the thread of the Fates.

After Estelle had gone to her own room for the night, Aurora sat down to compose an answer to Gerald's letter. She had reflected a good deal since receiving it, and out of confusion and complexity singled one clear and simple thought or two.

Gerald had never said or intimated that she had forced herself upon him when he was too ill to help it; but the truth was she had done that, after all his shying rocks at her, too, to keep her off. Nor had Gerald suggested that one of his reasons for wis.h.i.+ng her not to haunt his bedside was a fear of her becoming inconveniently fond of him. A hint could be found, if one chose, that he feared becoming too fond of her, but of the other no vestige, no shadow, or ghost of a shadow. Yet by those two points the spirit of Aurora's reply must be inspired.

Centuries of civilization have ground into the female of the species one particular lesson.

So the irascible man's nervous, hurried and harried scrawl, written with sputtering pen that at several places tore clean through the paper, and written under the compulsion of his soul and his good sense, received from the best of women an answer in her calmest hand, deliberately calculated to give him pain, at the same time as to convey to him unambiguously that, as far as she was concerned, he was freer than the birds of the air. She wrote:

My dear friend Gerald,

What I want princ.i.p.ally to say is just _don't worry_. Don't worry for fear I'll come, and don't worry for fear I won't understand, and don't worry because you think my feelings may be hurt. And above all the rest, don't worry about _grat.i.tude_, for I don't feel you owe me any at all. Don't you think for a moment that I saved your life. You were not as sick as you imagine, I guess. It was a very light case, or how would you have got over it so soon? You were not near as sick, according to all accounts, as poor Busteretto, who has been having what they call here the _cimurro_. I took you in hand because _I am a nurse_ and I couldn't keep my hands off, just as an old fire-engine horse will start to gallop when he hears a fire-alarm even if he isn't on the job. If it had been Italo Ceccherelli who was sick I would have been tempted in just the same way; so you see there is no occasion for grat.i.tude. Put it out of your mind.

Now about the thing I took from the drawer of your night-stand.

I am very sorry I can't give it back, because I flung it out in the middle of the river. That is what I did with it, and I am not sorry either. You know that we at home don't look upon certain things as you apparently do over here. We think it a disgrace for a man to kill himself. I myself am old-fas.h.i.+oned enough to think that that door leads to h.e.l.l. I have been astonished to find that over here it is thought quite respectable, that some Italians look upon it as an honorable way, for instance, of paying their debts, and a natural way of getting over an unhappy love-affair. As I know you have a good many foreign ideas, and as you have once or twice made a remark that showed me you thought of that solution of difficulties as a possible one, I grabbed your nasty old pistol when I found it in the little drawer, and it reposes now at the bottom of the Arno.

Don't get another, Gerald. No burglars are going to enter your house to steal your Roman tear-bottle or your books. When you are so blue you feel like killing yourself, say your prayers. I am very glad your friend the abbe is going to come and stay with you. He is a _good influence_, I feel sure, and a good friend.

I suppose I shall see you again some time, even if I don't do the visiting. But don't be in any hurry, not on my account. I hope that in the meantime you will get back your strength quickly. Remember that you will have to be very careful for quite a long time, because a relapse is _an awfully mean thing_.

Good-by, my dear Gerald. Please accept the very best wishes of

Yours sincerely, Aurora Hawthorne.

P.S. I did not write four letters and tear three of them up, like you. I wrote one and corrected it, and here I have copied it out for you, hoping that in it I have made my meaning as clear to you as you made yours clear to me in your letter.

CHAPTER XVII

When the latter occurrences had shaken down in Aurora's mind, Gerald's letter, which she from time to time re-read, impressed her as a most gentle and reasonable production of his pen, while her own letter, preserved in the original scribble, appeared to her horrid, cutting, and uncalled for.

But there was now nothing to do about it. The state of mind created in her by the whole episode prepared her to welcome with open arms any diversion, any event which would restore to her self-conceit a little vitality or lay on her heart a little balm; and so when, at the psychological moment, Doctor Thomas Bewick surprisingly turned up in Florence,--it may be remembered that he was Estelle's choice for Nell,--Nell fell on his neck quite literally, and gave him a full, sonorous kiss.

”Tom! Tom!” she cried in delight, ”how good it is to see you!”

This happened in her formal drawing-room, whither she had gone on the servant's announcement that a gentleman from America, who had given no card or name, asked to see her.

Their greeting over, she ran out into the hall, screaming joyfully:

”Hat! Hat! Come down this minute! Hurry up! You'll never guess who's here!”