Part 41 (1/2)
”I was as nice to Charlie Hunt that last evening as ever in my life,”
she afterward declared, ”and I thought he seemed all right.”
When he spoke of the precious porcelain jars, however, she did cut short his appetizing description with:
”Don't speak of it. I daresn't, Charlie. I've been lectured so much for extravagance, I daresn't buy a toothpick. If these jars you speak of cost nine francs instead of nine hundred, I couldn't, I tell you. I guess Florence has got all she's going to out of me. I've turned over a new leaf.”
Aurora had all evening been so entirely her kind and jolly self that Charlie had almost forgotten the black crow. At this check, and the barren prospect opening out beyond, he remembered it, and felt a vicious little desire to pay her back for the pin she had stuck into him under, as she idiotically supposed, an impenetrable disguise. He went away, as has been said, in a bad humor.
CHAPTER XVIII
The loveliness of Florence at this point of the year, while inspiring poets, made the rest feel helpless before the task of finding words for it. Even Aurora, who could not be called contemplative, or highly susceptible to influences of form and color, was heard to heave an occasional great sigh, so was her heart oppressed, she could not think why, during their drives among the hills around Florence, by the sight of the spring flowers,--tulips, narcissi, fleur-de-lys, imagine it, growing wild, as if gold pieces should lie scattered in the road for pa.s.sers to pick up!--and by the sight of the warm and tender tones of the sky, and by the silver sparks of windows flas.h.i.+ng back the sun where the hazy city houses huddled around the Duomo's brown head and shoulders, majestically lifted above them.
It was something in the air, Aurora thought, which forced her to sigh with that half-sweet oppression and fatigue: the air was fragrant with a scent which seemed to her upon sniffing it a.n.a.lytically to be the breath of hyacinths; and the air was warm, it ”let her down,” she said.
Why, instead of delicious contentment, is a sort of melancholy, of unrest, created in us by the beauty of spring, will somebody tell?
Aurora, when she thought she could do it without attracting the notice of the other two, would slip from their presence sometimes, so as to have a few minutes by herself and stop pretending to be so everlastingly light of heart. For nothing in the world would she have had Tom know but that his visit made her happy to the point of forgetting every subject of care or annoyance.
Estelle, too, she would have preferred to deceive. She did her best, and for hours at a time appeared serene and merry. During these periods she sometimes did actually lose the sense of anxious suspense; but it kept itself alive as an undercurrent to her laughter.
When she saw how well Tom and Estelle got along together, she became less timid about arranging little absences from them; she even--such a common feminine mind had Aurora--saw in the congeniality which permitted them to remain for half an hour in each other's company without boredom the foundation of a dream, dim and distant, it is true--the dream of seeing Estelle one day settled in a fine home of her own. She feared, though, there might be bridges to cross before that event. She dreaded the bridges. She wished Tom might be diverted from what she feared was his purpose. How satisfactory, if Estelle might prove the diversion.
Estelle would really have suited Tom much better than the person of, she feared, his actual choice.
Of all this she was somewhat disconnectedly thinking when she ran away from them one evening after dinner, leaving him still at the table smoking his cigar, while Estelle hunted up in a guide-book for his benefit some little matter of alt.i.tudes. A flash of good sense showed her the previousness of her calculations, and she mentally withdrew her hand from meddling. Fate would take its own way, anyhow.
She had gone upstairs with the excuse of wanting a fan. Her fan had easily been found, but instead of returning to her guests, ”They won't miss me if I do stay away for ten minutes,” she said, and walked to the end of the broad hallway, out through the door that stood open on to the portico roof--once gla.s.sed over for a party and dedicated to Flirtation.
How long ago that seemed! Here Gerald, a quite new acquaintance, had told her about Manlio and Brenda. Poor young things, so unhappy then, and now exultant. Brenda was just back from America. The wedding was set for the ninth of May. Only eight days more to wait.
As Aurora, leaning over the bal.u.s.trade and letting her eyes rest on the garden, thought of their a.s.sured and perfect happiness, she remembered a gross fly in the ointment. She had been told that Brenda would have to agree to bring up her children in the Catholic church. The thing had seemed to Aurora appalling. Upon her dropping some hint of her sentiment to the caller who had communicated the fact, she had been further told that very likely Brenda too would in time become a Catholic--as if that made it any better. A descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers to become a Roman Catholic! Any one but a heathen to change his religion!...
The figure of Abbe Johns rose before her mind. She refrained from judgment in his case. His case, for intangible reasons, seemed separate and different. But fear, as of formless bugaboos in the dark, burned in her heart at the idea of his influence perhaps being able, creepily, stealthily, to convert Gerald.
She turned her face upward to the sky of May and sent forth a little prayer into the crystal clearness of the s.p.a.ce lying between her and the ear which she conceived of as receiving it, the ear of a Baptist G.o.d, as opposed to a Roman Catholic G.o.d surrounded by saints and candles and incense and tin flowers.
As she did this a high pink cloud caught her eye. Embers of sunset were glowing over the river at the other side of the house. The sight of the pink cloud, so pretty and far away, comforted Aurora like a good omen.
She felt better and, her reverie borrowing a ray from the cloud, went on to rejoice in the pleasantness of the garden which she might for the time being call hers. So different from the gardens at home, but in its set way how attractive it was, how suited to people with leisure, and a certain stability of taste, and a liking for privacy!
Why, in that garden--which wasn't very large, either--you could almost get lost among narrow paths bordered with shrubs. Even if the wide wrought-iron front-gate were open, and the carriage-gate at the side open as at this moment, you could be just as much shut off from outside as in your own room, if you took your sewing or your book to that little open air round with walls of smooth-trimmed laurel, and a stone table in the middle, and stone seats.
Old Achille down there, still busy watering,--Achille who belonged to the garden and was hired along with it, was a regular artist, thought Aurora. The great oval bed in front of the house was at this season like a huge bouquet, all arranged in a beautiful pattern. Then he had edged every path with a band of pansies just inside the band of ivy overrunning the mossy border stones--the sweetest thing. His pride was pansies, he had planted them everywhere, the finest she had ever seen.
He had taken a prize once at a horticultural show, for his pansies.
The light died out of the pink cloud, and Aurora's pleasure in her garden gradually died out too, while the quality of irony in her many blessings smote her. For what is the use of having everything money can buy or the bounty of spring afford if you at the same time are troubled with a toothache? All this, so grand in itself, was like a good gift wasted, as long as she was in a state of quarrel with her friend. It was full two weeks since their exchange of letters. Two weeks of absolute silence. Could it be possible that she should never see or hear from Gerald again?
No, it could not, she said. It was part of having faith in him to deny the possibility of his remaining furious forever at her hateful letter.
No, she would not believe it of him; she thought better of him. She was much mistaken if he could be so mean. She would be willing to bet--