CHAPTER XXIV

The servant who opened the door for Leslie on this softly brilliant June morning, being well accustomed to admitting her, obligingly antic.i.p.ated her question, "Are the ladies at home?"

"The _signorina_ is in the _salottino_," he said. From which Leslie understood that the person whom she chiefly had come to see was out. It did not really matter, for she had time to wait. Aurora was likely to come back for lunch.

She released the man from attendance by a little wave of her hand, "Never mind announcing me!" and directed her footsteps toward the tall white-and-gold door standing partly open.

On her way to it she picked up off the floor a small lawn handkerchief.

The ball-room impressed her anew as being very vast, very empty, furnished almost solely as it was by the sparkling chandeliers, every pendant of which to-day was gay with reflections of the green and flowery and sun-washed outdoors.

She turned toward the _salottino_, remotely wondering by what chance Estelle was preferring it to the favorite red and green sitting-room upstairs. The _salottino_ had utility when a party was going on, but to sit and embroider or study French surrounded by all those fountains of love....

A sharp bark preceded the tumbling out through the _salottino_ door of a little white mop on feet. Upon recognizing Leslie, this performed evolutions expressive of great joy.

She had stopped to pat the excited little swirl of silk when Estelle came forward to see who was there.

With delighted good mornings the women exchanged the foreign salute, which Leslie had adopted and Estelle submitted to, a mere touching of cheeks while the lips kiss the air.

They sat down on the rococo settee to talk, Leslie, quick of eye, wondering what had happened to give Estelle that unusual air, an air of--no, it was indefinable. Excitement had a share in it, and possibly chagrin, and, it almost seemed, exaltation. The chief thing about it, however, was that she was trying to conceal it; doing her best, but it was a poor best, to appear natural. Leslie graciously allowed her to suppose she was succeeding, and entered at once upon the reason for her early call.

"I really think, Estelle, that the villa at Antiniano would suit Aurora.

As for you, I am positive, my dear, that you would adore it. It is a little out of the thick of things, but has a very fine view of the sea, also a very pretty garden. Certain conveniences, of course, it hasn't, but, then, you mustn't expect those of an Italian villa. I saw Madame Rossi yesterday, and she said she wished you would make an excursion to Antiniano to see for yourselves. She is sure you would be charmed. One request she would make: that the peasant family be allowed to continue in their little corner of the house, where they wouldn't be the least in your way, and then that the little donkey should be allowed to remain in the stable. But in return you could use him, she said."

"Ride him?"

"Yes, or harness him. For the country, why not, my dear? They are ever so strong little beasts."

Estelle began to laugh, presumably at the picture of Aurora on donkey-back, or, with herself, exhilarating the country-side by the vision of them drawn in a donkey-cart. Leslie joined in her merriment, but expostulatingly, and, warned by a note in Estelle's laugh, watched her with suspicion while it developed into a nervous cackle. She saw her cover her eyes with one hand, and with the other vainly feel in her pocket. She was crying. Leslie tendered the little handkerchief found on the floor, and knew then that it had dried tears before on that same day. She waited, tactfully silent, merely placing a condoling hand over her friend's.

"I might as well tell you," Estelle got out, when her crying fit permitted her to speak, "that Aurora isn't going to take any villa at Antiniano this summer.... She's gone away."

"Gone away? What do you mean?" asked Leslie, surprised into a very complete blankness of expression.

"What I say." And in her incalculable frame of mind Estelle again was laughing. "Oh, I don't know which to do, whether to laugh or cry!" she explained, with eyes bright at once from laughter and from tears. "One moment I laugh, next moment I cry. I feel as if I were walking in my sleep. I guess what I need is a nerve-pill."

"You say that Aurora has gone away. Where?"

"Where Gerald pleases, I guess. She's gone with him."

"With Gerald? Now, my dear friend, please explain. You laugh, you cry.

You say Aurora has gone away with Gerald. Please collect yourself and tell me what it means. 'Gone away with Gerald.' How do you mean gone away with him?"

"I mean they have eloped, or as good as."

"No, no; people don't elope when there is neither an inconvenient husband, nor unamenable parents, nor any possible reason why they should not have each other if they wish to."

"I wonder what you would call it, then. As late as twelve o'clock last night I didn't know a thing about it, and this morning early they left together in a carriage, with her trunk strapped on the back."

Leslie lifted her hands to her temples and pressed them as if to keep her head from a dangerous expansion with the size of the new idea that must find a home there.

"So it was in earnest!" she said aloud, yet as if speaking to herself.

"Mother has won her bet, and I have lost. Well,"--she tossed her head and faced Estelle,--"I am glad of it. We knew, of course, that there was something, and we felt that nothing nicer could happen than that they should make a match of it. Mother prophesied they would. But I did not believe it. I was afraid of Gerald--that disposition in him to consider too finely, to halt on the brink, that negative, renunciatory way he has settled into. I thought the thing would end in mere philandering. I am glad"--she threw the weight of conviction on the word,--"glad it hasn't!

I don't see, my dear Estelle, what you can find to cry about."

"Is that the way it strikes you?"

"My dear, I couldn't say which I thought the luckier, Gerald to get Aurora, or Aurora to get Gerald."

"You surprise me. To me it seems just about the riskiest combination that could be imagined. I have felt it all along. Those two have no more in common, I have said, than a bird and a fish."

"Nonsense, my dear girl! Nonsense!"

"I have heard him get so impatient with her because simply she didn't p.r.o.nounce a word right. I've seen him so annoyed he nearly trembled trying to choke it down."

"But did she mind? I mean, his impatience?"

"I can't say she did; but--"

"There you have it. They are marvelously suited. Listen and let me talk to you for your comfort. This, do you hear, is exactly the most delightful thing that could have happened. Haven't you noticed that complex natures are rather given to uniting with simple ones, and finding happiness with them? An artist--how often!--marries his model, a philosopher marries a peasant."

"Go on!" sighed Estelle. "Go on! I love you for making me feel better!"

Her eyes moistened again in an almost luxurious melancholy.

"One of the reasons for mother and me wishing for this consummation was the broadening of life it would afford Gerald. Gerald doesn't think about money. Aurora's money, all the same, will do a lot for him in making possible his getting away from here, where the truth is he stagnates. Then, too, she will cure him of his morbidness. He sees red if one so much as breathes the suggestion that his art is morbid. But of course it is."

"Aurora said they might go to live in Paris, because she thought it would be good for his art."

"Now that's what I want to hear about. Go on and tell me what Aurora said and what happened between midnight and their extraordinary elopement, as you call it. But, first of all, why, in the name of common sense, did they elope? From what did they elope?"

"From me, I guess. I don't see what else. Oh, yes, I do. From the talk there would be. But princ.i.p.ally, I suspect, he hurried her into it to make sure of her, for she, too, had her moments of doubting the wisdom of what she was doing. That much I know. They had only been engaged two weeks, and all that time I didn't even know they were engaged. I hadn't been nice about Gerald, I feel bound to confess, so she thought best not to tell me. She didn't want to hear how I would take it, we've been so used to speaking our minds to each other. He came oftener than ever and stayed longer, till it got so I made a point of getting up and making an excuse to leave the room. It was my way of being spiteful. But Nell didn't take it up with me in private, as I expected she would. They were tickled to death to have me leave the room, I can see now. She went around the house singing an Easter carol and fixing flowers in the vases, with a look of cheerfulness apart from me that made her seem like a stranger. I was pretty sore, I can tell you, but I wouldn't speak of it. I don't know how I thought it would end. Funny, I can't remember how everything looked so short a time ago as yesterday, but I know I was eaten up with mean thoughts. I went to bed last night thinking to myself, 'Well, Nell Goodwin, if you think I'm going to stand much more of this, you're mistaken. There'll be some plain talk before long.' And I fell asleep. First thing I knew I was awake, looking to see who'd come into my room. And there was Nell in her night-dress, holding her hand round the candle so it wouldn't shine in my eyes. I simply can't tell you what it was like,--the candle lighting nothing but her made her seem like a vision in the middle of a glory. n.o.body can know how fond I am of Nell, what friends we've been since little bits of girls. All I could think of was that she'd come to make up with me, she couldn't wait another minute. It would have been just like her. And while I waited for her to speak first, I thought with my heart just melting what a lovely big thing she is, with that sort of fair look to her neck, and those warm cheeks, and something so kind about her from head to foot. She put down the candle and, instead of going into explanations, bent over and gave me a good hug. And I said, hugging back: 'You better had, you horrid thing! You better had!' Then she sat down on the bed. 'Hat,' she said, 'I was going to do a mean thing, but I'm not going to do it. I was going to slip away without a word, but I'm going to tell you the whole story. I'm going to marry Gerald,' she said.

"Then she went on to tell me, and what do you think, I didn't say one word in objection, not one! Because I could see she was dead in love, and what was the use except to spoil her happiness, and I didn't want to. She told me how they'd decided it would be just as well not to wait, but take a short cut. If they stayed in Florence, she said, she'd feel they must have a big wedding and ask all their friends, and then she should have to have a trousseau; it would all take lots of time, and Gerald would so hate the fuss and the chatter. So they'd made up their minds to go off to Leghorn without a word to anybody,--whose business is it anyhow but their own?--and be married just as soon as it could be done, where they wouldn't get so much as the echo of any remarks on their haste or the way they preferred to do. She'll be staying with Mrs.

Johns till the ceremony. She said she should write your mother from there. Then she showed me Gerald's ring that she'd been wearing on a chain round her neck where I wouldn't see it, and she talked about Gerald's wonderfulness. She's perfectly wrapped up in him. All I hope is he appreciates it."

"His inducing her to elope with him would seem to indicate some warmth of feeling on his part. The suggestion can hardly have come from her."

"You're right. I guess it's as bad with him as with her. She talked about the wonderfulness of his love, such as she never could have believed, and never could deserve. She said she could be happy with Gerald in a garret that let the snow leak in. Oh, they're both crazy.

What do you think she gave as one reason for this haste? 'Life is short,' she said, 'and love is long!' Gerald must have said it to her before she said it to me, but what do you think of it? 'Life is short and love is long!'"

"Do you mean"--asked Leslie, with the least touch of severity,--"that I ought to share in a cynical view of that saying? I can't, my dear Estelle. There are my father and mother, you know. In their quiet way they bear out the idea that love may be as long as life."

"Yes, of course," said Estelle hurriedly, with a faint air of shame. "My father and mother, too, make a united couple."

"My belief is that when two people marry who are in love as they ought to be, and who in addition are good--By good I think I mean people--"

Leslie, with her look of wisdom beyond her years, paused to take a survey of life, "--people who have a sense of the other person's rights, and, as a matter of heart, not principle, feel the other's claims just a little more strongly than their own--in the case of such people, when the pa.s.sion they marry on dies out with their growing older, as we generally see it do, something takes its place that deserves the name of love every bit as much."

"Aurora is good," said Estelle, from her soul. "You would never know how good unless you had stood in need of kindness."