The _signorino_. That had become the informal t.i.tle by which the servants announced a guest who was let in so very frequently. Aurora understood _finestra_, window, and _dire una parola_, to say a word, and then that the signorino was _giu in giardino_.

"All right." Aurora nodded to the Ildegonda, inviting her by a motion of the hand to go away again.

Aurora rose and softly closed the door which, when open, made an avenue for sound from her room to Estelle's. She slipped her arms into a sky-blue dressing-gown, and with a heart spilling over with playful joy, eyes spilling over with childish laughter, went to look out of the window, the one farthest from Estelle's side of the house.

"Good morning! Good morning!" came on the instant from the waiting, upturned face below. "Forgive me for rousing you so early," was said in a voice subdued so as to reach, if possible, no other ears, "but you promised you would go with me one day to Vallombrosa, and one has to start early, for it is far. Will you come?"

"Will I come? Will I come? Wait and see! Got your horses and carriage?"

"Standing at the gate. How long will it take you to get ready?"

"Oh, I'll hurry like anything."

"'Wash, dress, be brief in praying.

Few beads are best when once we go a Maying.'"

"I won't pray, I won't put on beads. But, see here, what about what they call in this country my collation? You know I'm a gump on an empty stomach."

"We'll have our coffee on the road, at a little inn-table out of doors in the sunrise."

"Fine! By-by. See you again in about twenty minutes."

Every fiber composing Aurora twittered with a distinct and separate glee while she hurried through her toilet, a little breathless, a little distracted, and mortally afraid Estelle would hear and come to ask questions. From her wardrobe she drew the things best suited to the day and her humor: a white India silk all softly spotted with appleblossoms, of which she had said when she considered acquiring it that it was too light-minded for her age and size, but yet, vaulting over those objections, had bought and had made up according to its own merits and not hers; a white straw hat with truncated steeple crown, the fashion of that year, small brim faced with moss-green velvet, bunch of green ostrich-tips, right at the front, held in place by band and buckle.

Her parasol was a thing of endless lace ruffles, her wrap a thing of vanity.

She pa.s.sed out through the dressing-room, she crept down the stairs, laughing at her own remark that it was awfully like an elopement. The house was not yet astir; only the Ildegonda sweeping out the kitchen, and old Achille out in the garden picking early insects off his plants.

At the door she greeted Gerald with all the joy of meeting again a playmate. He had on the right playmate's face. She gave him both hands, and he clasped them to the elbow, shaking them with satisfactory fire, while their eyes laughed a common recognition of the adventure as a lark.

At the gate waited the open carriage, a city-square cabriolet, but clean and in repair, drawn by two strong little brown horses, with rosettes and feathers in their jingling bridles, ribbons in their whisking braided tails, and driven by a brown young man of twenty, with a feather, too, in his hat, which he wore aslant and crushed down over his right ear. To make the excursion pleasanter to himself, he was by permission taking along a companion of his own age, who occupied the low seat beside his elevated one, and in contrast with his vividness, the pride of life expressed by his cracking whip, the artistically singular sounds he made in his throat to encourage the horses, was a washed-out personality, good at most to do the jumping off and on, to readjust harness, to investigate the brake, or to offer alms from the lady in the carriage to the old man breaking stones in the roadside dust.

They were off; they sped through the gate of the Holy Cross, the fresh young horses making excellent time. Out of the city, along the river, across it, past hamlets, past villas, past churches and _camposanti_, past vineyards and _poderi_ and peasants'

dwellings....

It seemed to Aurora that never had there been such a day, so fresh and unstained and perfect, a day inspiring such gladness in being. The sense of that priceless boon, the freedom of a whole long day together, elated her with a joy that knew only one shadow, and that unremarked for the first half of it--the shortness of the longest earthly day.

Now the horses slowed in their pace; the ascent had begun among the shady chestnut-trees. The driver's friend scrambled down and plodded alongside the horses; the driver himself descended and walked, cheering on his beasts with noises that nearly killed Aurora, she declared.

As it took them between four and five hours to reach their destination, and as Aurora chattered all the time, with little intervals of talk by Gerald, to report their conversation is unfeasible. Aurora, wanting in all that varied knowledge which those who are fond of reading get from books, had yet a lot to say that some unprejudiced ears found worth while. The dwellers upon earth and their ways had for her an immense and piercing interest. In vain had circ.u.mstances circ.u.mscribed her early life: neighbors, Sunday-school teacher, minister, village drunkard, fourth of July orator, had furnished comedy for her every day. The human happenings falling within her ken became good stories in their pa.s.sage through a mind quick in its perception of inconsequence, faulty logic, pretense, all that const.i.tutes the funny side of things. Aurora's love of the funny story amounted to a fault. Aurora was not always above promoting laughter by narratives no subtler than a poke in your ribs.

Aurora, in the vein of funny stories, could upon occasion be Falstaffian. But only one half of humanity had a chance to find out the latter. When in company of the other s.e.x, by instinct and upbringing alike she minded her Ps and Qs.

Gerald said that Aurora on that day regaled him with over a thousand comic anecdotes, this being the expression of her frolicsome and exuberant mood. He furnished her with a few to add to her store, Italian ones, proving that he was not wholly without some share of her gift in that line; but he now and then politely stopped her flow and led her to admire with him the beauties of the road, natural or architectural, a distant glimpse, a form, a fragrance. He would explain things to her, impart sc.r.a.ps of pertinent history, which she would appear trying to appreciate and imprint on her memory.

As he leaned back in the carriage at her side, bathed in the wavering green and gold light of the chestnut-trees among which the road wended, a recent description of him, which she had said over to herself, to qualify it by mitigating adjectives, seemed to her to have become altogether unfair. Gerald's face, beneath the brim of his pliable white straw, bent down over the eyes and turned up at the back, Italian style, did not look sickly. On the contrary, it looked better and stronger since his illness; he even had a little color. He was not sad-eyed, either, that she could see, though his eyes must always be the thoughtful kind. As for spindle-shanked, he filled his loose woolen clothes better than before.

He had made himself modestly fine for the day to be spent in company of the fair: he had on a necktie which, if expressive of mood, declared his outlook on life to be cheerfuller: it was a vibrant tone of violet that accorded agreeably with his gray suit. A rose-geranium leaf and a stem or two of rusty-gold _gaggia_, odors that he loved, occupied at his b.u.t.tonhole the place of those decorations which distinguished elderly gentlemen are sometimes envied for, and which--it is a commonplace--are not worthy to be exchanged for the flower Youth sticks at his coat to aid him to charm.

It grew very warm; the way, though pleasant, was beginning to seem long when they arrived. The old monastery, now a school of forestry; the Cross of Savoy, where pilgrims rest and dine, gleamed white in the cloudless noon, amid the century-old trees that long ago, before Dante's time even, earned for the spot its beautiful name of Vallombrosa, Umbrageous Vale.

Aurora was by this time starving again, and Gerald knew the pleasure of purveying to the demands of a stomach as untroubled by any back-thought relating to its functioning as that of a big bloomy G.o.ddess seated before a meal of ambrosia. He suggested that she accompany her artichoke omelet, her cutlet with the sauce of anchovy, parsley and mustard, by a little red wine. But she would not, even to be companionable. She could never bring herself to touch wine, any more than to use powder on her cheeks, which in truth did not need it, or a pencil to her eyebrows, which would have looked better for that accentuation.

In a state of physical and mental well-being such as can be bought only by an early rising, an inconsiderable breakfast, a long ride in the warmth of Tuscan mid-May, an abundant and repairing repast, taken, amid sweet conventual coolness, in company which leaves nothing to wish for beyond it, they went forth to spend the time that must be granted the horses for rest before the return to Florence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Come, let us reason together, Aurora"]

After loitering in the inn garden, they went to look at the memorials relating to Saint John Gualberto, founder of the monastery. She listened to the picturesque history of his life, death, and miracles, but was not to be rendered sober-minded by any such thing. In the midst of Gerald's instructive account of the holy abbot's endeavors to purify the monastic orders from the stain of simony, her hand clutched his, and doing a delicate cake-walk she compelled him along with her, announcing, "The Hornet and the b.u.mble-bee went walking hand in hand!" Fancying this prank not to have been without success, she next performed an improvised _pas seul_ ill.u.s.trative of the text, "The mountains shall skip like little lambs!"

There was artfulness, as has been suspected, in Aurora's frequent jests upon her size. Their gross exaggeration was fondly counted upon to make her appear sylphlike by comparison with the images she raised.

To relieve the seriousness of Short Lessons on Great Subjects she presently invented interrupting them at intervals to introduce Gerald and herself to some rock or tree or mountain, as if it had been a poor person standing by neglected. "Jack Sprat," she said, "and The Fat!" "A busted cream-puff," she said, "and a drink of water!" Further, "Dino and Retta!" Finally, with imagination running dry, "Gerry and Rory!"

Yes, by such little jokes--what Leslie called Jokes of the First Category, Aurora sought to enliven the hour for Gerald. He never omitted to laugh, without being able to enter enough into her fun to join her in the same species. An incapacity. Still, there was no disguising the basking enjoyment possessing him, his love of her gaiety, if not at all moments of the form it took.

Finding it entrancing up there, they decided not to start for home till the last minute possible. A limit was set to the time they might linger by the necessity for some degree of daylight in making the descent. From the edge of the curving road the mountain dropped away without the protection of any parapet.

When they had found their ideal place in which to sit on the warm earth in the shade and look off over valleys and mountains into azure s.p.a.ce, Aurora at last consented to be still. She became dreamy, appeared sweetly fatigued, and was for a long time mute.

Though the mere quality of her voice still had power to stir Gerald's heart to pleasure, yet to be silent with Aurora was pleasure of a different order from hearing her voice of rough velvet recount preposterous events or propound humorous riddles.

It looked from where they sat as if the land had at some time been fluid, and been tossing, green and purple, in a majestic storm, when some great word of command had fixed it in the midst of motion, and the waves became Apennines; then in an hour of peculiar affection for that plot of the earth a faultless artist from the skies had been set to oversee nature and man at their work there, and prevent the intrusion of one note not in harmony with his most distinguished dream.

"If Italy should perish and all else remain," said Gerald, whose eyes had been feasting on beauties of line and color such as he conceived were not to be found outside this land of his idolatry, "the world would be irreparably impoverished. If all the world besides should perish and Italy remain, the world could still boast of infinite riches."

Aurora gave a nod of at least partial a.s.sent. She was growing accustomed to the thought that Italy was the fairest of countries and Florence the fairest of Italian cities. She found herself beginning to like this creed.

In the quiet that descended upon them the native piety in each groped for some acknowledgment to make of his consciousness at the moment of unusual blessing. In him it took the form of a renewal, more devoted perhaps than ever, of the determination to maintain an uncompromising purity of aim in his work. The incomparable scene stimulated within him a sense of power to produce things rivaling what lay under his eyes; he, atom, rivaling his Maker in the creation of beauty. In her it was a determination of greater loyalty toward the Provider of undeservedly happy days to man, whose heart is wicked from his birth, as her mother had been wont to tell her.

Hearing her hum very softly to herself, he asked what she sang. She said, her mother's favorite hymn, and gave it aloud, with the words:

Father, what e'er of earthly bliss Thy sovereign will denies, Accepted at Thy throne of grace Let this pet.i.tion rise:

Give me a calm, a thankful heart, From every murmur free; The blessings of Thy grace impart And make me live to Thee.

Like one with an impeccable ear, but with small esteem for his gifts as a singer, Gerald murmured the melody after her, just audibly, to show he cared to have his share in her memories.

But mainly the two of them thought of each other.

Gerald, regarding Aurora's hands as they lay in her lap--innocent-looking, loyal-looking, rather large hands, which during his illness he had liked to think were Madonna hands, but when seen in health they were not, really--was amazed to remember the day when their making pa.s.ses over his face had filled him with perverse repugnance.

And Aurora, remembering the first time she had seen Gerald and nicknamed him Stickly-p.r.i.c.kly, while feeling him more than three thousand miles removed from her, was amazed....

So they sat, two little dots, two trembling threads, against the screen of the universe and eternity, and their two selves, under the spell of a world-old enchantment, loomed so large to each that the universal and the eternal were to them two little dots, two threads.