Part 45 (1/2)
Estelle hoped to hear her friend say to Gerald something to the effect that she was in no mood for a social call; but Aurora welcomed the visitor with unaffected warmth and sat down in her hat to talk with him.
So Estelle said primly that it was late, and she was tired; if they would excuse her, she would go to bed.
Aurora talked about Tom and nothing but Tom. Sweetly, sighfully, she spoke, as more than once before, of those many things he had done for her, but spoke of them this evening more amply; his care of her, a penniless patient, in that hospital where she woke up after a s.p.a.ce of unconsciousness; his unremitting kindness when she lived in his house and took care of his father, the dear old judge, who was sick three long years before he died; the proof of goodness more remarkable still which he gave after that.
A tremulous hope flickered up in Gerald that she would go on and tell him about the latter, perhaps filling in some of the lacunae which her history had for him. Much had come out in their many hours of talk, but he had found her circ.u.mspect with regard to certain parts of her life, and had never put a question. In one so frank, her avoidance appeared a result of dislike to remembering those unmentioned links in the chain of events.
But this evening again she stopped short of telling him what he would have liked to know--how Bewick was connected with her wealth. For it had come to her from no second husband: she had not been twice married.
She broke off with the words, ”Oh, some time I'll tell you the whole story. I don't feel like it now. It always makes me so mad!”
If Aurora had been pledged to Bewick, thought Gerald, the most natural thing would have been to tell him of it this evening. In her expatiating upon all she owed to Bewick, Gerald felt a wish to explain how it was that without being engaged to him she could commit the impropriety of publicly weeping over his departure.
It seemed to Gerald rather late in the day for him to seek an excuse to call at the Hermitage; yet on the afternoon following Dr. Bewick's departure he sought for one--one having reference to Estelle. He took with him a propitiatory little volume containing translations of well-known poems by one Amiel. Estelle was regarded as being immensely interested in French; she daily translated themes back and forth from her own language into that of Moliere. These singularly neat and exact productions of Amiel's should delight--and disarm her.
Gerald did not dislike Estelle, far from it. He did justice to her as a good, true-hearted, self-improving American. Taken by herself, he felt for her decided regard; but taken in connection with Aurora he would sometimes have liked delicately to lift her between finger and thumb and drop her into a well.
When he entered the red-and-green room, the very least bit timidly, with his book in his hand, he perceived almost at once that something unusual was in the air, and the shades of feeling between himself and Estelle became for the moment of no importance.
Nothing was said at first of the cause for Aurora's air of repressed excitement, as she knit on a pink and white baby-jacket, or the cloudy annoyance puckering Estelle's brow as she st.i.tched on her silk tapestry.
The ladies might merely have been quarrelling, thought the visitor, and made himself as far as he could a soothing third, chatting with Estelle about Amiel and with Aurora about young Mrs. Sebastian, whose baby was to rejoice in the little garment half-finished between her hands.
”Gerald,” Aurora interrupted him in the middle of a sentence, letting her hands and work drop in her lap, ”something so queer and unpleasant has happened!”
He raised both eyebrows in solicitous partic.i.p.ation, and mutely questioned.
”It's about Charlie Hunt. I never would have imagined--you wouldn't either.”
”My imagination, dear friend, is more far-reaching in some ways than yours,” he quickly corrected her, ”and has had more practice than yours in ways of unpleasantness. But do tell me what it is that has happened.”
”Charlie Hunt! Charlie Hunt!” she repeated, like one unable to make herself believe a thing. ”Charlie Hunt to turn nasty like that from one day to the next!”
”To turn----”
”He was here to dinner just two weeks ago and perfectly all right. We had a nice, long chat together on the sofa. But he didn't make his party-call quite as soon as he usually does, so when I saw him at Brenda's wedding I thought of course he'd come up and tell me how busy he'd been or some other taradiddle. But he didn't come near me. I was sort of surprised,--still, there were so many people there that he knew, and we didn't stay quite to the end, you remember. I didn't even think enough about it to mention it to Estelle. Well, this forenoon I went to the bank, and when I'd got my money, I happened to catch sight of Charlie, in the side-room, you know, where his desk is. I thought I'd like to speak to him. He's always wanted me to ask for him when I went to the bank, and I've done it more than once, and we've had five minutes' chat. I was just going to tease him a little bit about coming to see me so seldom nowadays, when he used to come so often, and ask about the lady in the case. There really is one, I guess. Italo told me.
So I asked the old boy--you know the one I mean, the old servant of the bank, who's always there, to tell Mr. Hunt that Mrs. Hawthorne would like to speak with him, and then I took a seat, and in a minute in came Charlie, with just his usual look.
”Now, I want to tell you that I've never had one unpleasant word with Charlie Hunt; I've always liked him real well. I put down my foot against letting him run me and my house, but there never was a word said about it. I balked, but I didn't kick. All along I've been just as nice to him as I know how, except just one moment, when I stuck a little pin into him the night of the _veglione_, not supposing that he'd ever know who did it.
”Well, I was sitting there at the table with the newspapers, and he came and stood near, without taking a chair, as if he hadn't much time to spare. I began to talk and joke about his cutting me dead at the wedding, and he listened and talked back in a common-enough way, only I noticed that he once or twice called me Mrs. Barton instead of Mrs.
Hawthorne. Now I must go back and tell you that some time ago when I was at the bank he casually asked me if I knew of any Mrs. Helen Barton in Florence, and he showed me two letters in the same handwriting, one addressed to the English bank, and the other to the American bank, Florence, that had been there at Hunt & Landini's for some time, and no one had called for and they didn't know what to do with. Now, the instant my eye lit on those letters I knew who'd written them, what was in them, and who they were meant for. All letters for Estelle and me, you know, are first sent to Estelle's house in East Boston, to be forwarded to us wherever we might be in Europe; but that letter had escaped. That letter was from a queer kind of sour, unsuccessful woman called Iona Allen, who boarded once at the same house with me on Springfield Street,--the languis.h.i.+ng kind of critter that I never could stand, who hadn't the gumption of a half-drowned chicken, who'd never stuck to anything or put any elbow-grease into the work on hand, and whined all the time, and was looking out for some one to support her. I guessed she'd heard of my money and was writing me a sweet letter of congratulations, along with a hard-luck story. I'd have liked to get hold of her letter, but didn't exactly see how I could. I said to Charlie, 'Let me take it; perhaps I can find the one it's meant for among my acquaintances.' But he didn't seem to think that could be done; so there the matter dropped. I didn't care much. Iona Allen can look for some one nearer home to support her.
”Well, to go back. When Charlie Hunt had called me Mrs. Barton for the third time I realized from his way of doing it that it wasn't a slip of the tongue, and I stopped him short and said:
”'What makes you call me Mrs. Barton all of a sudden?'”
”'It's your name, isn't it?' he said, with a queer look.
”'No,' I came right out strong and bold. And I wasn't lying either. It isn't my name. I don't really know what my name is. It's Hawthorne as much as it's anything. Jim changed his name half a dozen times, and the name he married me under I found out wasn't his real name.
”Charlie Hunt stood there a moment as if thinking it over, looking at me with the meanest grin; then he said with that hateful, sarcastic look of a person who thinks he's being smart in getting back at you: