"It was written in a mood--a perplexity, a despair, you have no means of understanding, dear Aurora. When your answer showed me what I had done, I could have cut my throat, but I could not have come to tell you I was not the monster of ingrat.i.tude I appeared to be. Not that a man can't get out of bed, if there is reason enough, and take himself somehow where he wants to be, but because of a sick man's unreasonable nerves, which can start him raving and make him a thing to laugh at. I had the common sense, thank Heaven! to see that I must wait. Then, as the days pa.s.sed, it all quieted down. Vincent was with me, a tranquilizing neighborhood.

"It seemed finally as if it might be almost better to let things rest as they were, to let that be the way of separating from you. I had almost made up my mind to do it, Aurora. Vincent has had me out for various airings, I have gone on several walks alone, but till to-day I avoided to take the road toward this house. I am so used to pain that I've grown stoical, you know, Aurora. I can stand any pain. I shut my teeth and say, 'It will have to stop some time.' But all at once it became too strong for me--not the pain, or the wish to see you, but the feeling that I could not bear to have you thinking me ungrateful. I, who hate ingrat.i.tude as the blackest thing in the wide world, to pa.s.s with you, with you, for an ungrateful beast!"

"Don't! don't, Gerald!" Aurora hushed him. "I can't let you talk like that. You know you couldn't be ungrateful, nor I couldn't think it of you."

"No, I'm not ungrateful. I'm not, dear," he caressingly a.s.severated, and closing her two hands between his treasured them against his cheek. "I want you to be altogether sure of it. If I did not recognize the enormity of my debt to you, Aurora, what a clod I must be! Not, mind you, because, it is just possible to think, I owe you my life. Not that, but because you were so kind. Because you were so kind, so kind--" he reiterated feelingly, "and I a troublesome, cantankerous, distinctly unappetizing object in his helpless bed. Don't think there was one touch or gesture of these dear hands that take away headaches that I do not remember with grat.i.tude."

"There was nothing to be grateful for, nothing at all," insisted Aurora.

"And so when I wrote you in that brutal manner, dear,--"

"That letter was all right," Aurora vigorously s.n.a.t.c.hed away from him the turn to talk, in order to defend him from this misery of compunction. "It was prompted by the most gentlemanly feelings, by real unselfishness and consideration for me. You didn't want me talked about on your account, and you put it as delicately as possible. Only I was a fool; I went off the handle, and wrote while I was mad and hurt and wanted to hurt back. But, bless you, I understand it all perfectly now.

You needn't say another word. I understand the letter, Gerald, and I understand you."

"I am afraid," he said, letting go her hands and drawing a little apart, as if the most complete misunderstanding, after all, separated them,--"I am afraid you do not entirely. But this much at least is clear to you, isn't it, dear, that whatever I may be, I am not ungrateful? Whatever I may do, you are to remember that I couldn't be ungrateful to you, Aurora. If I should seem to be behaving ever so, ever so shabbily, still you must know that behind it, under it, I am the very contrary of ungrateful." He pressed his hands to his eyes again, and was still for a minute, before announcing, "I shall not come to see you for a long time."

The astonished and acute attention of her whole being was indefinably expressed by the silence in which she now listened.

"I am going to keep away from you," he went on, "till I feel out of danger."

"Why, what's the matter now?" she asked, with the vehemence of her surprise and disappointment.

"A trifle, woman dear. Oh, Lord, I see I shall have to go into it!

Haven't you the imagination to see, you unaccountable person, how an unhappy mortal might be affected by such circ.u.mstances as destiny so lately prepared for your poor servant's trying? Day by day, night after night, that insidious kindness, that penetrating gentleness, that stupefying atmosphere of a woman's care and sympathy.... Didn't you tell me once yourself--" Gerald's voice stiffened, and he pulled himself up again, discarding weakness,--"Didn't you once tell me yourself--in your impossible English, almost as bad as mine--that a sick man is 'liable to fall in love with his nurse?' And, dear girl, I will not do it. I categorically refuse. It is too horrible. I have done with all that. I have just managed to creep up on to the dry sand, and you ask me to embark again on those same waters. I will not do it. It is finished.

That slavery! that unrest! and fever! and jealousy! No, not again. I have served my sentence. Too many times I have waked in the black of night and waited for daylight, wishing I had been dust for a hundred years. I know now that in order to have a little peace a person must not want anything. That is the price. We mustn't want anything, Aurora. We mustn't want anything, we mustn't mind anything, we mustn't care about anything, we must submit to everything!" This counsel of perfection came from Gerald almost in a sob. "We sha'n't be happy like that, naturally, but we sha'n't be too wretched for expression, either. It's the lesson of life. I have learned it, and I will not expose myself to the old chances again. 'He who loves for the first time is a G.o.d,' says the poet, 'but he who loves for the second time is a fool,' he goes on to say. And so, Aurora--"

"You make me laugh!" exclaimed Aurora in a snort of simple scorn.

"And so, Aurora, I am going to keep away from you for--I am not at the present moment quite able to say how long."

"You're going to do nothing of the sort! There now!" burst from Aurora.

"I'm not going to permit any such foolishness." She firmly proceeded to pile up a barricade against his preposterous intention. "Now, Gerald, you pay attention to what I say, child. Can't you see for yourself, now you've put it into words, what nonsense all this is? You could no more, in your sane and waking moments, be sentimentally in love with me, and you know it, than, I guess, I could with you, fond of you as I am. No, that isn't putting it strongly enough," she gallantly amended; "you couldn't do it, it stands to reason, even so easily as I could. What you felt was just the result of you being so weak, all full of fever dreams and delusions. And you still believe in it a little because you aren't yet good and strong. I thought you were, just at first, because you come so near looking it. But I know that condition. After a sickness you plump up, you get back your color, and all the while you can be so weak you could burst out crying if any one pointed a finger at you. You're trembling with nervousness this minute. You're all sunk together, as if your backbone couldn't hold you up. It's because the weakness of your illness is still on you, as anybody could see. Now you listen to what I've got to say. The wisest thing you can do, young man, instead of keeping away and having ideas and waiting till these gradually wear off--the best thing you can do, I say, is to stay right at my side and get sobered up by contact with things as they actually are. Not only the best thing, but a lot fairer to me, doesn't it seem so to you? How do you think I like to have you go kiting off the moment I've got you back again? When I've missed you so! Now, Geraldino, rely on Auroretta. Let her manage this case. Don't you be afraid; she'll cure you in two frisks."

"It just might be, you know, that you were right," said Gerald, dubiously, with the modesty of tone that would beseem a girl after a bucket of cold water had quelled her hysterics. "The truth is you do not appear to me this evening at all as I have been carrying you in my remembrance."

Aurora laughed and reinforced her expression of jolly matter-of-factness, looking into his eyes with eyes of sanative fun.

He looked back at her with meditative scrutiny, one eyebrow raised a little above the other.

She had reigned in his thoughts very largely in her appearance of his nurse, with her soft, loose robes, the blue of pensive twilights, her fair hair in easy-feeling braids, her white hands bare of ornaments. She sat near him now in a snug satin dinner-dress full of whalebones and hooks and eyes. It had elbow sleeves terminating in full frills of d.u.c.h.ess lace; a square-cut neck, likewise be-laced, framing an open s.p.a.ce in part obscured again by a jeweled medallion on a gold chain. She had on rings and bracelets, a bow-knot in her hair. She had in fact "dressed up" for Tom Bewick, wishing him to see with his eyes what good she got out of the fortune with whose origin he was acquainted.

"Gracious goodness!" She bounced to her feet. "Here I was forgetting!

Gerald," she said in haste, "I'm sorry, but we'll have to go indoors.

They'll be wondering where I am, and starting the hunt for me."

"They? You have guests?"

"Only one. Come in, Gerald. I want you to meet him. You've heard me speak of Judge Bewick in Denver, where I lived so long. Well, this is his son, Doctor Thomas Bewick. He's in Florence just for a visit. It's a wonder, come to think of it, that you haven't heard of his being here.

We've been going everywhere and seeing everything and giving dinner-parties. Well, never tell me again that news spreads so fast in Florence! Come on. I want you to know each other. You'll be sure to like him."

"I don't think I will. I mean that I don't think I will go into the house with you, Aurora."

"Now, Gerald," she said in a warning voice, at which black clouds of impending displeasure loomed over the horizon, "this isn't the way to begin. Don't be odd and trying. I should feel hurt, now truly, if I had to think your regard for me wasn't equal to doing such a little thing for me as this. Tom's one of my very best friends, and he's heard us talk so much of you. He's seen your painting of me. I do want you to know him, and I want him to know you. Then, too, Gerald dear, and this is the main reason, I want you to get good and rested, and to take a little wine before you start for home. Though you say the air is like a warm bath, your hands are cold, I notice."

Too tired from the emotions of the evening to make any valid resistance, emptied in fact of all feeling except a flat sort of bewilderment, Gerald followed, like a little boy in fear of rough-handling from his so much bigger nurse.

They found Estelle and Tom in the parlor.

"Well, I was wondering what had become of you!" cried Estelle as Aurora appeared in the doorway, and behind her shoulder the shadowy, unexpected face of Gerald.

"Tom," said Aurora, "this is my friend Mr. Fane that you've heard us talk so much about, the painter, you know, who painted that picture of me up there. And this is Doctor Bewick, Gerald, to whom I am under a thousand obligations, besides the obligation of his having probably saved my life out in Denver, not so many years ago, when I was dangerously ill."

Aurora was luminous with gladness. Aurora was so glad that she had not the concentration or the decency to attempt to hide it. She did not know of the flagrant betrayal of her feelings; she was not guarding against it, because her delight itself absorbed all her powers of thought. She stood there, a monument unveiled. And all the reason for it that one could see was that pindling, hollow-eyed young fellow who had entered the room in her wake.

Those who have not quarreled with a loved one, and known the pain of the fear that he may be lost to them, will surely never know the keenest joy. It takes the escape, the contrast, to make happiness shine out as brightly as it is capable of doing.

The two men, after conversation had engaged between them, promoted and helped along by the greater lingual readiness of the ladies, observed each other. This they did indirectly and as if doing nothing of the kind. But Estelle, as profoundly uneasy as if she had foreseen already the fate of the fat to end in the fire, was aware of it. She noted in Gerald's stiffly adjusted face the unself-conscious eyebrows, formidably different one from the other; she noted how Doctor Tom, st.u.r.dy and self-collected as he was, kept knocking the ashes of his cigar into an inkstand full of ink.

It struck her whimsically that she had seen before something kindred to what was taking place under her eyes: in a barnyard at home, two crimson-helmeted champions, with neck-feathers slightly risen on end, standing opposed, ocularly taking each other's measure.

CHAPTER XIX

The Brenda who came back from America was not quite the one who had gone there. Gerald saw it in the first instant. She had gained in definiteness, a.s.surance, even in beauty. But a silver haze, a fairy bloom, an aureole, was mysteriously departed from her. She had left her teens behind.

Yet in her stainless white, her bridal veil, a slender coronal of orange blossoms on her dark hair, and the light of love in her dark eyes, how wonderful she was! That Manlio, pale as a statue with the force of his emotion, should wear a look of almost superhuman beat.i.tude was only natural and proper. Of those who a.s.sisted at the ceremony many were deeply moved, and few altogether untouched: to be in the church at that moment gave one the importance of being accessory to a high romance.

At the wedding reception something of this quality of emotion continued still to possess the invited guests as long as Brenda and Manlio, beneath their arch of flowers, stood smiling response to congratulations and compliments.

It was in the general experience not unlike that part of the opera where, to a matchless music, the G.o.d of flame and the glowing hearth lauds the loveliness of woman and the strength of man's pursuit; and the other G.o.ds, uplifted, look at one another with washed eyes, feeling anew how wonderful they all are, how wonderful it all is.

The heart of Leslie, nevertheless, as she bustled about, seeing to it that every one was provided with refreshment, confessed a point of bitterness. In a way, it was envy of Brenda. Not of her happiness, or her husband, of course. But she did wish the man lived and would present himself who could inspire her with such feelings as Brenda's. The kind of man who cared for her she somehow never cared for--a serious barrier to experiencing a _grande pa.s.sion_. And on this day of wedding-bells it seemed a pity. The girl of many offers felt sad.

Mrs. Foss smiled a pleased, incessant smile, not "realizing" the thing which was happening, as she told her sister-in-law who had come over from America with the bride. Her chick had developed tendencies unknown among the breed, taken to the water and swum away with a swan. But the mother had confidence. She believed in marriage. The inst.i.tution had been justified by her example and Jerome's. Her eyes sought him out, a little anxiously, to peruse his face. The idea could not for a moment be admitted that he had a favorite among his children, but yet it was acknowledged that Brenda had always in a very special way been near to her father's heart. From his calm and serenity in conversation with that nice big Doctor Bewick, Mrs. Foss was able to hope that he too did not "realize."

Aurora watched the bride and groom with fairly fascinated eyes, but from a certain distance. They had been nice, they had thanked her handsomely for her handsome present, but nothing could modify her regretful cert.i.tude that Brenda did not care for her. And it might so easily have been she and not the good Aunt Brenda who secured for the _sposo_ his career of silver lace and sabre.... And Brenda, innocently unknowing, would just the same not have liked her. But there! Beautiful Brenda didn't go about loving everybody. She had the more glory to confer upon the one. Oh, harmoniously matched, high-removed pair! Oh, hymeneal crowning of tenderness and truth!... Aurora in a kind of awe wondered what elevated things those pale rose lips of the bride would say to the bridegroom when, the turmoil of festivity ended, they were in nuptial solitude. Impossible to imagine! It must be something altogether beyond other brides; and his words must make those of all other lovers sound common and poor.

When the arch of flowers was empty and the happy pair had left for the train, Lily and Gerald went strolling about the garden hand in hand.

Lily had been a bridesmaid, Gerald an usher. Both were in the fine apparel of their parts; thoughts of weddings hummed in both of their heads.

"Well, Lily," said the young man idly, in their walk between odorous lines of wall-flowers and heliotrope, "I suppose you too will soon be getting married."