"Oh, no, I wouldn't do that,"--Aurora's vehemence subsided,--"it's not important enough for that."

"My dear Aurora," said Gerald, stopping in front of her, his whole person expressing hurt and remonstrance little short of indignation, "if your wishing for Doctor Bewick signifies that you do not feel you have friends near you on whose attachment you can count, surely you do wrong to some of us!"

Though his tone scolded Aurora sharply for her lack of faith, Estelle's ear caught a trembling edge to his voice expressive of deep feeling.

Estelle had the good sense to see that Gerald must inevitably desire to make more exposition of his allegiance, and the good feeling to know that this could be done better if she were not present. Gerald, with his little peace-offering, was at the moment in favor with Estelle. His explicitness, his righteous violence, his entire adequacy on the subject of Charlie Hunt, had charmed her. She also wanted Aurora to have any comfort the hour might afford. She on the spot feigned to understand Busteretto's pawing of her dress as an expression of desire to go into the garden and see the little sparrows. She swept him up from the floor with one hand and, tucking him under her arm, slipped out of the room.

Gerald stood grasping his elbows. He had a look like that of some man, known so far as a harmless retiring burgher, about to make a public confession which will change all, bringing his head perhaps to the block; or the look of a man on the verge of a precipice, still half resisting the desire to jump, yet knowing that he will jump, nothing can save him from it; the look of a man, in fine, pregnant with intention, but walking in a dream.

There was silence for a minute after Estelle left the room. Then Gerald said very stiffly, very formally:

"If you would do me the honor, dearest Aurora, the very great honor, of consenting to take my name, the right I should have to defend you would be--would be--part of my great happiness."

Aurora stared at him. Beneath the frank investigation of her eyes his own dropped in modesty and insuperable embarra.s.sment.

There was another silence before he added:

"I would try very much to make you happy."

Aurora repressed the first words that came to her lips,--and set aside the next ones that rose in her mind to say. Silence again reigned for a moment. Then, with the serious face, almost invisibly rippling, that betokened in her a secret and successful fight against laughter, she said in what she called her good English, faintly reminiscent of Antonia's:

"I am aware, my dear Gerald, of the honor, the very great honor, you do me. I thank you--for coming up to the scratch like a little man. But the feeling I have that I could never be _warthy_ of so much honor deceydes me to declane. Gerald," she went on, discarding her English, "don't say another word! You dear, dear boy! The things you want to defend me against don't amount to a row of pins when all I've got to do if it comes to the pinch is pack my grip and clear out. Thank you all the same, you pet, for your kindness. Don't think of it again. I am sort of glad, though, you've got that proposal out of your system. Now we can go back to a sensible life."

CHAPTER XXI

Aurora, of the excellent three-times-a-day appet.i.te, Aurora of the good sound slumbers, picked at her food and slept brokenly for part of a week at that period, such was her impatience at the dragging length of time, the emptiness of time, undiversified and unenhanced by the presence in her house of any man devoted to her. No odor of tobacco smoke in the air, no cane in the corner; Tom on his way to America, Gerald hurt or cross or both. But, the ladies agreed, when Aurora had told Estelle the latest about Gerald, her refusal could not possibly occasion a cessation of relations, since his offer, chivalrous and unpremeditated, had been at most a cute and endearing exhibition of character. His sensitiveness could not be long recovering, and everything would be as before.

Aurora had been half prepared for his staying away all Sat.u.r.day; but having been justified in that, she the more confidently looked for him on Sunday. It is simply incredible, as almost everybody has felt at least once in his life, how long the hours can be when you are waiting for something.

At the end of a singularly unprofitable day, Aurora sat in the red and green room with all the windows open to the sweet airs and odors of May, and no lamp lighted that might attract night-moths, or, worse, the thirsty, ferocious Florentine _zanzara_. She just sat, not doing a thing. Estelle after a while left her, to retire to her own quarters, close the windows and make a light.

Aurora watched the dark blue velvet sky over Bellosguardo, and thought.

A tinkling of mandolins, a thrumming of guitars, informed her of street-singers stationed under her windows. A tenor voice rose in the song she was so fond of, _La Luna Nova_, mingling at the end of the verse with other male voices that repeated the second half of it. It sounded infinitely sweet out in the warm spring night.

After _La Luna Nova_ they sang _Fra i rami_, _fulgida_, and _Vedi_, _che bianca Luna_, and _Dormi pure_, all things she particularly liked. The voices struck her as being nearer than the garden railing; she thought the singers must have found the carriage gate open and slipped in without noise. She bent forth a little, and as she could not see them imagined them standing among the shrubs. She propped her elbows on the window-rail and listened, grateful for this bath of sweetness to her spirit after the day's profound ennui.

Estelle came softly into the dark room and joined her; they leaned side by side.

_Mi sono innamorato d'una stella_, _Sognai_, _Io t'amer_, one sweet and sentimental song succeeded the other.

Clotilde had entered too, on tiptoe, and stood listening, just behind the others.

"It is a serenade," she whispered. "It is a compliment."

A serenade!... Aurora thrilled with a pleasant surmise. There was only one person in Florence of whom she could conceive as offering her the compliment of a serenade. She listened with a new keenness of pleasure.

After the concert had prolonged itself through some dozen pieces--

"You must invite them to enter," whispered Clotilde, presumably versed in the ceremonial of such adventures, "and offer them something for their tired throats, a little wine...."

"Oh, you think we ought...?"

"But yes, it would be courtesy."

"Go you, then, Clotilde, and show them in and order up the wine. We'll be down in a minute."

As they entered the dining-room, Clotilde burst into a peal of delighted laughter at the well-managed surprise, while Italo hastened forward to take Aurora's hand and bow over it half way to the floor.

It was within Aurora's breast as if in the dark one had clasped as she thought a sweetheart, to find when the light came that her arms were entwined around the dancing-master, or the tailor. But only for an instant. She was really touched and charmed. She became more and more eloquent in expressing delight.

The singers were presented to her individually, dark-eyed and smiling young Italians of the people, who knew no language but their own Florentine and spoke to Aurora in that, not expecting to be understood or to understand, except through smiles.

Clotilde, busy, bustling, poured for them wine which she knew to be excellent, and there was a bright half hour for all. Italo wore an air relating him to all the successful heroes that have been, to Caesar as well as to Paganini, who also had a great nose. To manage a thing well in small justifies pride, giving earnest as it does that a large thing, such as a siege, or a symphony, would by the same capacity be managed equally well. Italo that night carried his head like one who respects the size of his nose. He was quick, he was witty, he was amiable. He had about him something a little splendid, even, due to his feeling of having been splendid--or nothing--in his tribute to the patroness from whose horn of plenty so much had overflowed into his hands.

Aurora beckoned Clotilde aside to say in her ear, "Will you run upstairs like a good girl and get my porte-monnaie?... Would it be all right, do you think?"

Clotilde made the face and gesture of one in doubt, and if anything averse, but not insuperably. The bounty of royalty, or of rich Americans, is not felt as alms.

"Go, then," whispered Aurora, "and get the purse that you'll find under some silk stockings in my second drawer, the little purse with gold in it."

One of the petty difficulties of life to Aurora since she had lived in foreign lands had been the so often arising necessity to think quickly what it would be proper to give. As the amount of the gratuity did not much matter to her she had felt a desperate wish often for the power of divination, by which to know what would be expected. On some occasions it had seemed to Aurora that it would be more delicate not to offer money; but experience had taught her that if she offered enough no offense would be taken. These singers were all poor young fellows, Clotilde had told her, musically gifted, but plying ordinary trades.

This one was a wood-carver, that one a gilder. They had been taught by her brother the fine songs composing that magnificent serenade.

The gold pieces distributed among them with words and smiles of thanks were received with such charming manners that the giver--for the first moment faintly embarra.s.sed--was soon set at her ease. When it came to the promoter and leader of the serenade, Aurora felt no more uncertainty. Money had so often gone from her hand to his. She with generous ease, as if pa.s.sing a box of candy to children, tendered him some three or four times as much as to the others.

But there Italo showed what he was made of. He took a step backward and stood with soldierly rigidity, one hand held with the palm toward her, like a shield and defense against her intention to belittle him and his token of homage by a reward. His look said, and said dramatically, that her thought of him did him wrong; it said that he was ashamed of her for not knowing better. Yet there was no real dissatisfaction in it, since her want of delicacy permitted the exhibition of his delicacy, and afforded him the opportunity to make that gesture....

Her hand dropped, her whole being drooped and confusedly apologized.

Then the hand that had interposed between them, uncompromising as a hot flat-iron, changed outline and pointed at a half faded rose pinned on her breast. Quickly she unfastened it and held it toward the outstretched hand. It was taken, it was held to Italo's lips while he made one of those deep bows that bent him double; then the stem of the rose was pulled through his b.u.t.tonhole and secured with a pin from Aurora's dress. The great little man shook his locks and went on to the next subject.

Aurora was impressed. She was pleased with Italo in a new way, and said to herself that she must make him some rich little, but un.o.bjectionable little, gift to remember this occasion by, a gold pencil, or a pearl scarf-pin, or a cigar case to be proud of.

She went to bed with her head full of serenade and serenaders, her head all lighted up inside with the glory of having been the object of a tribute so flattering. When after reading her chapter she blew out the candle, she knew that to-night she should sleep, and make up for the two bad nights just pa.s.sed. If Gerald were so foolish as to feel annoyed and wish to stay away, he would just have to feel annoyed and stay away until he felt different. His mood couldn't help wearing off in time. But it did seem to her extraordinary that even now, after knowing him so long, she could tell so little of the workings of Gerald's mind. All, of course, because he was--such a considerable part of him--a foreigner.

Aurora was one of those healthy sleepers who have no care to guard themselves against the morning light. Her windows stood open, her bed was protected from winged intruders by a veil of white netting gathered at the top into the great overshadowing coronet.

She was in the fine midst of those sweetest slumbers that come after a pearly wash of dawn has cleaned sky and hilltops from the last smoke-stain of the night, when a sense of some one else in the room startled her awake. There stood near the door of her dressing-room an unknown female, wearing intricate gold ear-pendants and a dingy cotton dress without any collar.

"_Chi e voi?_" inquired Aurora, lifting her head.

"I am the Ildegonda," answered the woman, whose smile and everything about her apologized, and deprecated displeasure. She must be the kitchen-maid, fancied Aurora, engaged by Clotilde, and not supposed to show her nose above the subterranean province of the kitchen.

"There is the _signorino_ down in the garden," Ildegonda acquitted herself of the charge laid upon her by the donor of the silver franc still rejoicing her folded fingers, "who says if you will have the amiability to place yourself one moment at the window he would desire to say a word to you."