"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 flashing 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--

There, in fact, he was, at this very moment, entering the carriage-gate.

After one mad throb of incredulous exultation, Aurora's thoughts and feelings were for a long minute limited to an intense and immobile watchfulness. He walked over the gravel with his eyes on the door under the portico. You would have thought his purpose set, and that he would not pause until he had rung the bell.

But you would have thought wrong. Half-way between the gate and the house he stood still and looked at the ground. He was holding the slender cane one knew so well like a weapon of defense, as if ready to make a resolute slash with it to vindicate his irresolution.

After a moment he turned, grinding his heel into the earth. It was then that a voice called out above him, "h.e.l.lo, Gerald!"

He turned again and removed his straw hat. He and the lady leaning from the terrace looked at each other for the s.p.a.ce of a few heart-beats with mechanical, constrained smiles. Then she asked:

"Aren't you going to come in?"

Instead of making the obvious answer and setting about the obvious thing, he appeared to be debating the point within himself. At the end of his hesitation, he asked:

"Could I prevail upon you to give me five minutes in the garden?"

"Why, certainly," answered Aurora, appreciating the fact that Estelle would be superfluous at the peace-making that must follow.

She went very lightly down the stairs. She could hear Estelle's and Tom's voices still in the dining-room. Instead of going out by the usual door, too near to their sharp ears, she turned with soft foot into the big ball-room and pa.s.sed out through that.

The great oval mound of flowers spread its odoriferous carpet before the steps leading down from the house. She turned her back upon it and followed a path bordered with pansies and ivy till Gerald saw her and came to take her hand, saying:

"How good of you!"

"Well," she sighed, put by the bliss of her relief into a mood of splendid carelessness as to how she, for her part, should carry off the situation,--looking after her dignity and all that. "How jolly this is!

And you're all right again, Gerald. You're well enough to walk on your legs and come and tell me so. Yes, you're looking quite yourself again.

Well,"--she sighed again heartily,--"it's good for sore eyes to see you.

You're sure now it's all right for you to be out of doors after sunset?

Hadn't we better go in?"

"This air is like a warm bath. I must not keep you long, anyhow."

"Oh, I haven't got a thing to do," she precipitately a.s.sured him. "Come, we'll walk up and down the path,--hadn't we better?--so as not to be standing still. Go ahead, now; tell me all about yourself. How do you feel? Have you got entirely rid of your cough? And the st.i.tch in your side?"

He would only speak to answer, she soon found; the moment she stopped talking silence fell. Had he nothing to say to her, then? Or did he find it difficult somehow to talk? She was so determined to make the atmosphere cozy, friendly, happy--make the atmosphere as it had used to be between them--so determined, that she jabbered on like a magpie, like a mill, about this, that, and the other, sprinkling in little jokes in her own manner, and little stories in her own taste, accompanied by her rich--on this occasion slightly nervous gurgle.

"Aurora dear," he said at last, with an effect of mournful patience as much as of protest, "what makes you? I am here to beg your forgiveness, and you put me off with what Mrs. Moriarty said to Mrs. O'Flynn. Do you call it kind?"

A knot tied itself in Aurora's throat, which she could not loosen so as to go on. If she had tried to speak she would have betrayed the fact that those simple words had, like a pump, fetched the tears up from her heart into her throat. He had his chance now to do all the talking.

"Couldn't we sit down somewhere for a minute? Should you mind?" His gesture vaguely designated the green inclosure, where the stone table stood, pale among the dark laurels.

But when they were seated, he only pressed his hands into his eye-sockets and kept them there.

"I am ridiculous!" he muttered and shook himself straight. After an ineffectual, suffocated attempt to begin, "I am ridiculous!" he said again, and without further concession to weakness started in: "I ought to have written you, Aurora. But I had seemed to be so unfortunate in writing I did not dare to try it again. Heaven knows what I wrote. I don't; but it must have been a prodigy of caddishness to offend you so deeply. It doesn't do much good to say I am sorry."

"Your letter was all right," broke in Aurora. "I only didn't understand at first. Afterwards I did. I tell you, that letter _was all right_."