Part 48 (1/2)
Gerald saw how the afternoon was mellowing toward sunset.... And the important things of the day had not been touched upon.
Our hero had traversed great s.p.a.ces in the region of sentiment during the two days allowed the Hermitage to stand or crumble without him. The first of them had been spent far from it, even as Aurora supposed, for the sake of letting the impression of having been laughed at wear off a little. Already for some time before that forced climax Gerald had been haunted by the feeling that he ought to offer himself to Aurora, as it were to regularize his status in her house. After hanging around as he had been doing, one might almost say that good manners demanded it. Her fas.h.i.+on, on that evening in the garden, of treating the idea that he could be enamoured of her a.s.sured him that she would refuse. He would have done his duty, and they would continue to drift, he shutting his eyes to the penalty awaiting his self-indulgence, the taxes of pain rolling up for the hour when her necessary departure would involve the uprooting of every last little flower in that wretched garden of his heart. With such a mental pattern of the future he had gone to bed at the end of the first day.
On the next morning something perhaps in deep dreams which he did not remember, or in the happy manner of the new day lighting a scarlet geranium on the terrace ledge, or simply perhaps the whisper of an angel, had effected a change. A heart-throb, a stroke of magic, had so lifted him up that over the top of the wall edging the road of life for him he had seen a thrilling garden outstretched, smiling in the sun, a sight that so enkindled him with the witchery of its promises that he felt he should seek for a way into that garden till he found it; should, if necessary, demolish the wall.
That day he went walking on the hills beyond Settignano, and the new light, the intoxication, persisted--the vision of himself as Aurora's lover. Why not? An escape from the past, a different adventure from all prefigured in his dull expectations before.... In his theory of living Gerald had always admitted the gallant advisability of burning s.h.i.+ps.
There was room in his theory of living for just such a divergence from design as he now meditated. When the call comes, summon it to never so improbable places, the poet and artist obeys. He had gone to bed on the second night with these thoughts and a plan for the morrow.
Now that morrow was wearing to an end and all the floating splendid courageous thoughts and feelings, brave in the a.s.surance, along with the determination, of victory, must be somehow caught and compressed and turned into the language--how poverty-stricken, how stale!--of a proposal of marriage; even as a great variegated, gold-shot, b.u.t.terfly-tinted, cloud-light tissue of the Orient is drawn into a colorless whipcord twist that it may pa.s.s through a little ring.
As he revolved in his mind what he should say to start with, Gerald saw appropriateness for the first time in the methods of the historic Gaul, who seized by her hair the charming creature whom he felt allied to him by deep things, seated her on the horse before him, and rode away. But what he would have liked so much the best would have been to lay his head in Aurora's willing lap, embrace her knees tenderly, and have her understand all without a word being spoken.
Now he cleared his throat, took a reasonable air, a tone almost of banter, to say what, influenced by the long precedent of their converse together, he could say only in that manner, covering up as best he could the fact that his heart trembled and burned.
”Shall we resume our conversation of last Friday?” he asked, with a fine imitation of the comradely ease which had marked all their intercourse that day.
He was looking over the valley, as if still preoccupied with its beauty rather than with her.
Thus misled, she did not guess right. She said:
”About Charlie, you mean? Just fancy, I haven't thought of him once all day! Little varmint! Don't I wish I had the spanking of him! But I guess it would lame my arm.”
”Not about Charlie. I asked would you marry me, and you said you would not. Will you to-day?”
”Not for a farm!” she answered, with emphasis equal to her precipitation.
”Why not?” he asked, undisconcerted.
”Because.”
”Come, let us reason together, Aurora.” He changed position, arranging himself on his elbow so as to be able to look at her. His eyes were steady. ”For a man to ask a woman to marry him is of course the greatest piece of impertinence of which he could be guilty. But from such impertinences, Auroretta, has been derived every beautiful thing that has blessed our poor world from the beginning. No man is good enough for any woman, let that stand for an axiom. But there again, Auroretta, it's not according to merit that those rewards, gentle and beautiful ladies, are dispensed. I have rather less to offer than any man in the world, but I am bold because you, dear, are just the one to be blind.”
”Oh, it's not _that_, of course,” said Aurora, hurriedly.
”Don't suppose for a moment that I am troubled by the size of your fortune or the size of my own. You haven't any money, dear. Others have your money. I have almost to laugh at the splendid speed with which that open granary of yours will be eaten clean by all the birds coming to pick one seed at a time.”
”You needn't laugh, then. Some of it is going to be pinned to me solid, so that nothing can get it away from me, not even I myself.”
”I am sorry to hear it. The other was so complete. Well, if you had nothing, I should still have just enough to keep us from hunger, though perhaps not from cold in these dear old stone houses of Italy. And you--I know you well enough to be sure of it--you are exactly the one to learn how much there can be in life besides its luxuries. Since my illness, too, Aurora, let me confide to you, there have been in me reawakenings.... I have felt the beginning--I am speaking with reference to my work,--I have felt intimations--No, it is too difficult to express without seeming to boast, which is horribly unlucky. In short, I have felt that I might do the turn still of forcing a careless generation to pay attention.”
”Oh, Gerald, how nice it is to have you say that!” she warmly rejoiced.
”I'm so glad to hear it!”
”Now tell me why it is you won't marry me. Stop, dear. Don't say because you are not in love with me. I have difficulty in seeing how any one in her right senses could be in love with me. It would be enough, dear, that you should be to me as you were during those happy, happy days when I was so beastly ill. You are so generous, it would be merely fulfilling your nature. And I, upon my word, dear, would try to deserve it. I would give you reason to be kind. I am not without sc.r.a.ps of honor--wholly; I would do my best to make you happy.”
”No,”--she shook her head decidedly,--”no, Gerry,” she added, to take the sharp edge off her refusal, ”no, Gerry; Rory won't.”
”You have only to lose by it, that is obvious, and I to gain, and nothing could equal the indecency of insistence on my part; but I feel that I am going to persist to the point of persecution. You are fond of me, you know. I only dare to say you are fond of me because you have said it yourself more than once. And you are always sincere, and I wouldn't be likely to forget. Now, if you are fond of me,--very, very fond, you have said repeatedly,--why do you refuse? I wouldn't be a bore of a husband, I promise. I would leave you a great deal of liberty.”
”No, Geraldino; no.”