Aurora the Magnificent.

by Gertrude Hall.

CHAPTER I

Near sunset, one day in early October, not too long ago for some of us to remember with distinctness, Mr. Foss, United States consul at Florence, Italy, took a cab, as on other days, to the Porta Romana.

Here, where the out-of-town tariff comes into effect, he paid his man, and set out to walk the rest of the way, thus meeting the various needs he felt: that for economy,--he was a family man with daughters to clothe,--that for exercise,--his wife told him he was growing fat,--and the need in general for an opportunity to think. He had found that walking aided reflection, that walking in beautiful places started the spring of apt and generous ideas. Though in his modest way a scholar, he was not as yet an author, but Florence had inspired him with the desire to write a book.

Just beyond the Roman Gate begins the long Viale dei Colli,--Avenue of the Hills,--which climbs and winds, broad, shady, quiet, between lines of gardens and villas, occupied largely by foreigners, to the Piazzale, whence Michelangelo's boyish colossus gazes with a slight frown across Florence, outspread at his feet. Mr. Foss, as he mounted the easy grade, and noted with a liking unabated after years the pleasantness of each habitation glimpsed through iron railings and embowering green, thought how privileged a person should feel, after all, whose affairs involved residence in Italy.

This recognized good fortune had not been properly tasted before another aspect of the thing presented itself for consideration....

The consul felt a sigh trying to escape him, and turning from the images whose obtrusion had called it up from the depths, directed his attention to a different set of subjects, unwilling at the moment to be troubled.

The glories and iniquities of that great family whose cannon-b.a.l.l.s--or pills?--adorn so many of the 'scutcheons on Florentine street-corners and palace-fronts are what he selected as the theme for his meditations, a choice which seems less odd when we know that his book, the labor and pleasure of his spare hours, was a study of the Medici.

He had not been busy many minutes with their supplanted policies and extinct ambitions before these dropped back into the past whence he had drawn them, and his mind gave itself over to an exercise more curious than reconstructing a dead epoch. A shortish, stoutish man, with a beginning of baldness on his crown and gray in his mustache, was trying by the whole force of a sympathetic imagination to fit himself into the shoes, occupy the very skin, of a delicate young girl, to look at the world through her eyes and feel life with her pulses.

Thus absorbed, he hardly saw the posts of his own carriage gate; he pa.s.sed unnoticing between his flower-beds, up his stone steps and came to himself only when, rubbing the hands he had just washed, he entered the dining-room and saw his wife.

"Where are the girls?" he asked even before kissing her, for the most casual eye must be informed by the blank look of the table that instead of being laid for half a dozen as usual, it was prepared for a meagre two.

Mrs. Foss was fond of sitting in the dining-room, which had a gla.s.s door into the garden on the side farthest from the road. There she read her book while waiting for dinnertime and her husband. The good gentleman did not always come directly home from his office. He had the love of dropping into dim churches, of loitering on bridges, of fingering the junk in old shops, but he was considerately never late for dinner.

Mrs. Foss rose to receive her husband's salutation, and while answering his question settled herself at the table; for she had caught sight of a domestic peeping in at the door to see if the masters were there to be served.

"Leslie and Brenda went to call on the Hunts," she gave her account, "and presently the Hunts' man came with a note from Mrs. Hunt, asking if the girls could stay to dine and go to the theater. A box had just been sent them. I was very glad to give my consent. Charlie will probably be one of the party and bring them home. Or perhaps Gerald. Or they will be put in a cab. I was delighted of the diversion for Brenda."

"And where's Lily?"

"She, too, is off having a good time. Fraulein was invited by some German friends who were giving a _Kinder-sinfonie_. Awful things, if you want my opinion. She asked if she might go and take Lily, and the poor child was so eager about it I thought I would just for once let her sit up late. She has so few pleasures of the kind."

Mrs. Foss had helped the soup, with a ladle, out of a tureen.

It was after her husband and she had emptied their soup-plates in companionable silence that, leaning back to wait for the next course, she asked her regular daily question.

"Well, anything new? Anything interesting at the consulate?"

Mr. Foss seemed in good faith to be searching his mind. Then he answered vaguely:

"No; nothing in particular." All at once he smiled a smile of remembrance. "Yes, I saw some Americans to-day." He nodded, after an interval, with an appearance of relish. "The real thing."

"In what way, Jerome? But, first of all, who were they?"

"Wait a moment. I stuck their cards in my pocket to show you. They came to see me at the consulate. No, they are in my other coat. One of them was Mrs. Something Hawthorne, the other Miss Estelle Something."

"What did they want?"

"Everything--quite frankly everything. They have grown tired of their hotel; they speak nothing but English and don't know a soul. They came to find out from me how to go about getting a house and servants, horses and carriage."

"Did they think that was part of a consul's duty?"

"They didn't think. They cast themselves on the breast of a fellow-countryman. They caught at a plank."

"A house, horses. They are rich, then."

"So one would judge. Oh, yes, they're rich in a jolly, shameless, old-fashioned American way."

"Well, it's a nice way." Mrs. Foss added limitingly: "When they're also generous. One has noticed, however, hasn't one,"--she seemed on second thought to be taking back something of her approval,--"a certain reticence, as a rule, with regard to the display of wealth in people of any real culture?"

"These aren't, my dear. It's as plain as that they're rich. And, for a change, let me whisper to you, I found it pleasant. Not one tiresome word about art did they utter in connection with this, their first, visit to Italy."

"I can see you liked them, but what you have so far said doesn't entirely help me to see why. Rich and ignorant Americans, unfortunately--A light breaks upon me! They were pretty!"

A twinkle came into the consul's eyes, looking over at his wife, as one is amused sometimes by a joke old and obvious.

His pause before answering seemed filled with an effort to visualize the persons in question.

"Upon my word, Etta, I couldn't tell you." He laughed at his inability.

"By that token they were not beauties," said the wife.

"It seems likely you are right. At the same time"--he was still mentally regarding his visitors--"one would never think of wishing them other than they are."

"Describe them if you can. What age women?"

"My dear, there again you have me. Let us say that they are in the flower of life. One of them, so much I did remark, was rather more blooming than the other. Perhaps she was younger."

"The miss?"

"The married one. But perhaps it was only the difference between a rose and--" he searched--"let us say a bunch of mignonette. The rose--here I believe I tread safely on the road of description--had of that flower the roundness and solidity, if nothing else."

"Stout?"

"We will call it well developed, n.o.bly planned. But what would be the good of telling you the color of these ladies' hair and eyes had I noticed it? It will help you much more effectively to pick them out in a crowd to be told they are very American."

"Voices, too, I suppose."

"Of course. You don't strictly mean high and nasal, do you? All I can say with any positiveness is that one of them had what I will call a warm voice--a voice, to make my meaning quite clear, like the crimson heart on a valentine."

"I am enlightened. Was it the mignonette one?"

"No; the hardy-garden rose."

"And what did she say to you in her warm crimson voice?"

"I have told you. She called for help."