Part 47 (1/2)
The _signorino_. That had become the informal t.i.tle by which the servants announced a guest who was let in so very frequently. Aurora understood _finestra_, window, and _dire una parola_, to say a word, and then that the signorino was _giu in giardino_.
”All right.” Aurora nodded to the Ildegonda, inviting her by a motion of the hand to go away again.
Aurora rose and softly closed the door which, when open, made an avenue for sound from her room to Estelle's. She slipped her arms into a sky-blue dressing-gown, and with a heart spilling over with playful joy, eyes spilling over with childish laughter, went to look out of the window, the one farthest from Estelle's side of the house.
”Good morning! Good morning!” came on the instant from the waiting, upturned face below. ”Forgive me for rousing you so early,” was said in a voice subdued so as to reach, if possible, no other ears, ”but you promised you would go with me one day to Vallombrosa, and one has to start early, for it is far. Will you come?”
”Will I come? Will I come? Wait and see! Got your horses and carriage?”
”Standing at the gate. How long will it take you to get ready?”
”Oh, I'll hurry like anything.”
”'Wash, dress, be brief in praying.
Few beads are best when once we go a Maying.'”
”I won't pray, I won't put on beads. But, see here, what about what they call in this country my collation? You know I'm a gump on an empty stomach.”
”We'll have our coffee on the road, at a little inn-table out of doors in the sunrise.”
”Fine! By-by. See you again in about twenty minutes.”
Every fiber composing Aurora twittered with a distinct and separate glee while she hurried through her toilet, a little breathless, a little distracted, and mortally afraid Estelle would hear and come to ask questions. From her wardrobe she drew the things best suited to the day and her humor: a white India silk all softly spotted with appleblossoms, of which she had said when she considered acquiring it that it was too light-minded for her age and size, but yet, vaulting over those objections, had bought and had made up according to its own merits and not hers; a white straw hat with truncated steeple crown, the fas.h.i.+on of that year, small brim faced with moss-green velvet, bunch of green ostrich-tips, right at the front, held in place by band and buckle.
Her parasol was a thing of endless lace ruffles, her wrap a thing of vanity.
She pa.s.sed out through the dressing-room, she crept down the stairs, laughing at her own remark that it was awfully like an elopement. The house was not yet astir; only the Ildegonda sweeping out the kitchen, and old Achille out in the garden picking early insects off his plants.
At the door she greeted Gerald with all the joy of meeting again a playmate. He had on the right playmate's face. She gave him both hands, and he clasped them to the elbow, shaking them with satisfactory fire, while their eyes laughed a common recognition of the adventure as a lark.
At the gate waited the open carriage, a city-square cabriolet, but clean and in repair, drawn by two strong little brown horses, with rosettes and feathers in their jingling bridles, ribbons in their whisking braided tails, and driven by a brown young man of twenty, with a feather, too, in his hat, which he wore aslant and crushed down over his right ear. To make the excursion pleasanter to himself, he was by permission taking along a companion of his own age, who occupied the low seat beside his elevated one, and in contrast with his vividness, the pride of life expressed by his cracking whip, the artistically singular sounds he made in his throat to encourage the horses, was a washed-out personality, good at most to do the jumping off and on, to readjust harness, to investigate the brake, or to offer alms from the lady in the carriage to the old man breaking stones in the roadside dust.
They were off; they sped through the gate of the Holy Cross, the fresh young horses making excellent time. Out of the city, along the river, across it, past hamlets, past villas, past churches and _camposanti_, past vineyards and _poderi_ and peasants'
dwellings....
It seemed to Aurora that never had there been such a day, so fresh and unstained and perfect, a day inspiring such gladness in being. The sense of that priceless boon, the freedom of a whole long day together, elated her with a joy that knew only one shadow, and that unremarked for the first half of it--the shortness of the longest earthly day.
Now the horses slowed in their pace; the ascent had begun among the shady chestnut-trees. The driver's friend scrambled down and plodded alongside the horses; the driver himself descended and walked, cheering on his beasts with noises that nearly killed Aurora, she declared.
As it took them between four and five hours to reach their destination, and as Aurora chattered all the time, with little intervals of talk by Gerald, to report their conversation is unfeasible. Aurora, wanting in all that varied knowledge which those who are fond of reading get from books, had yet a lot to say that some unprejudiced ears found worth while. The dwellers upon earth and their ways had for her an immense and piercing interest. In vain had circ.u.mstances circ.u.mscribed her early life: neighbors, Sunday-school teacher, minister, village drunkard, fourth of July orator, had furnished comedy for her every day. The human happenings falling within her ken became good stories in their pa.s.sage through a mind quick in its perception of inconsequence, faulty logic, pretense, all that const.i.tutes the funny side of things. Aurora's love of the funny story amounted to a fault. Aurora was not always above promoting laughter by narratives no subtler than a poke in your ribs.
Aurora, in the vein of funny stories, could upon occasion be Falstaffian. But only one half of humanity had a chance to find out the latter. When in company of the other s.e.x, by instinct and upbringing alike she minded her Ps and Qs.
Gerald said that Aurora on that day regaled him with over a thousand comic anecdotes, this being the expression of her frolicsome and exuberant mood. He furnished her with a few to add to her store, Italian ones, proving that he was not wholly without some share of her gift in that line; but he now and then politely stopped her flow and led her to admire with him the beauties of the road, natural or architectural, a distant glimpse, a form, a fragrance. He would explain things to her, impart sc.r.a.ps of pertinent history, which she would appear trying to appreciate and imprint on her memory.
As he leaned back in the carriage at her side, bathed in the wavering green and gold light of the chestnut-trees among which the road wended, a recent description of him, which she had said over to herself, to qualify it by mitigating adjectives, seemed to her to have become altogether unfair. Gerald's face, beneath the brim of his pliable white straw, bent down over the eyes and turned up at the back, Italian style, did not look sickly. On the contrary, it looked better and stronger since his illness; he even had a little color. He was not sad-eyed, either, that she could see, though his eyes must always be the thoughtful kind. As for spindle-shanked, he filled his loose woolen clothes better than before.