Aurora the Magnificent Part 18

The duty of doing something for Mrs. Hawthorne's pleasure was felt even by Charlie Hunt, who took her to a concert. When Gerald heard of it, he searched more persistently and, fate aiding, found something which might give the lady amus.e.m.e.nt, he thought, and would certainly afford an opportunity that would hardly have come her way without his good offices.

The morning mail brought him a note relating to his project; he did not wait for afternoon to communicate its contents.

It was eleven when he rang at Mrs. Hawthorne's door. He had hardly finished asking the servant whether the signora were at home when he heard her voice upstairs, singing behind closed doors.

She had said so many times, when he went through the formality of having himself announced and waiting for permission to present himself, "Why didn't you come right up?" that this morning he said to the servant, "It imports not to advise her. I shall mount." Did the servant look faintly ironical, or did Gerald mistakenly imagine it?

The tune she sang sounded familiar. It must be a hymn, he decided, but could not remember what hymn, or even be sure it was one he had heard before, hymns are so much alike. He stopped at the sitting-room door and waited, listening to the big, free, untrained velvet voice, true throughout the low and medium registers, flat on the upper notes, the singer having carelessly pitched her hymn too high. He could hear the lines now, given with a swing that made them curl over at the ends, and with a punch on certain of the syllables, irrespective of their meaning:

"Feed me _with_--the heavenly manna In this _barr_--en wilder_ness_; Be my _shield_, my sword, my banner, Be the Lord--my righteous_ness_!"

When she came to the words,

"Death of death and h.e.l.l's destruction,"

a bang and rattling ensued, as if some one were taking a practical hand in that work. The heavenly ferryman was thereupon besought with vigor to land her safe on Canaan's side, and the singing ceased.

Gerald stood waiting, if perchance there might be another verse, and wondered, while waiting, at the sounds he heard in the room, easy to recognize, but difficult to explain. When it seemed certain that the music was at an end, he, after hesitating for some minutes longer, gently tapped.

"Oh, come in!" was shouted from inside. "_Entrez_, will you?

_Avanti!_"

He opened the door a little way, discreetly, and put in his head, ready to draw it back at once should he see his morning call as befalling inopportunely.

Aurora was so far from expecting him that for a second or two she actually did not recognize him, and waited to understand what was wanted of her. Her head was tied in a white cloth, her sleeves were turned back, she had on an ap.r.o.n, and she held a broom. The furniture was pushed together out of the corners, some of it covered with sheets; the windows were open. No mistake possible. Aurora was sweeping.

A burst of laughter rang; the broom-handle knocked on the floor.

"Yes, I'm sweeping," she cried. "Come right in! You find me practising one of my accomplishments. I can't play the piano, I can't speak languages, I can't paint bunches of flowers on black velvet; but I can sweep, I can cook, I can wash dishes--or babies, one just as well as the other, and I can nurse the sick."

"I am afraid I have come at an inconvenient moment."

"Not at all. I'm glad to see you. I was most through, anyhow."

She had pulled the cloth off her head, and was patting her hair before the gla.s.s. She turned down her cuffs, untied her ap.r.o.n, and came to shake hands, smiling as usual.

"You caught me," she said. "When I feel a certain way, I've got to work off steam, and there's nothing that does it like sweeping."

"I beg of you--I beg of you to let me close those windows for you!"

"All right. I'm awfully hot, but I guess the room's cold. We can have a fire in a minute. Everything's there to make it."

"I beg you will not trouble! I shall only remain a moment and leave you to finish."

"No, now, no; don't go and leave me. I was only sweeping to be doing something. To clean the room wasn't my real object. I took their work from Zaira and Vitale, who are the ones to do it usually, in a way that's new to me, with damp sawdust. It's nearly finished, anyhow. All I've got to do is fold the sheets and push things back into their places."

"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, please, please, allow me--"

He tried to help her, waking to the fact that she was as strong as he, if not stronger.

The room in a minute looked as usual, and she knelt in front of the hearth, piling up a kindling of pine-cones and little f.a.gots, on which she laid a picturesque old root of olive-wood.

"You seem to be alone," he remarked.

"Yes; Estelle's gone out."

He was not sorry to hear it. Miss Madison, whom he entirely liked, affected him curiously, or, to express the matter more exactly, in a curious degree failed to affect him at all. Her personality did not bite on his consciousness. Unless some chance left them on each other's hands, he had difficulty in remembering her presence. It was not that she was colorless; not by any means. She obviously had character, brightness, individuality, even charm; but so far as he was concerned she might have had none of these. Particularly when her big friend was by Gerald ceased to see her. He recognized the danger of her negative effect on him, and often made a point of devoting to her a special amount of attention, being toward her of an unnatural amiability, trying thus to keep her ignorant of the extent to which she did not exist for him. Now he suddenly remembered that from the choice little treat provided for Mrs. Hawthorne Miss Madison had been left out--forgotten.

He was dismayed. Then a pleasant side to the affair revealed itself by a dim gleam. He was mortified by his forgetfulness, but the ladies were after all not Siamese twins.

"You must wonder what brought me at this unusual time of day," he said.

"Any time's good that brings you. But what in particular was it?"

"I wanted to ask you to keep free next Sat.u.r.day afternoon and, if you will be so good, spend it in part with me. I should like to take you to Mrs. Grangeon's."

"Mrs. Grangeon's...?"

"Don't you remember? Antonia! It is Antonia's real name. On the first evening of our acquaintance you had a good deal to say about her. If I remember rightly, you expressed then a desire to meet her--see her face."

"Yes, yes. Antonia, of course."

"She is a figure of importance here in Florence. She is in truth a very gifted woman--in her way, great, and of wide reputation. And she is clever, except in just some little spots. Geniuses, one has observed, are seldom quite free from such spots. She has kept herself very much to herself now for several years, so that an occasion to see her is grasped eagerly. This affair of hers on Sat.u.r.day is the first thing of the kind in an age. Her villa at Bellosguardo is most interesting and full of interesting things. And the view from her terrace is worthy of a pilgrimage. You perceive, Mrs. Hawthorne, that I am doing what I can to _faire valoir_ the sc.r.a.p of entertainment I have to offer."

"I think it perfectly lovely of you! Of course I'll go, and delighted to. And see how it fits in--" She kindled to joyful enthusiasm. "We've just bought a lot of her books. We realized we'd got to have some books to make this room look finished off. We bought hers in paper covers and have had them beautifully bound. Just look here." She went to take a specimen from the bookcase, a white parchment volume with gold tooling, a crimson fleur-de-lys painted on the front cover. "Aren't they lovely?

An idea! We'll take some of them up to her and ask her to write her name in them. Wouldn't that be flattering?"

"Ye ... es."

"I've been trying to read some of it over since these came home from the binder's. My! Aren't those people of hers wonderful--where you'd think the ladies never could have a stomache-ache nor the gentlemen a corn!"

"I hope Miss Madison will not think I forgot her," he disingenuously said, "when in replying to Mrs. Grangeon's invitation I begged permission to bring you, and that she will do me the honor some day very soon--"

"Oh, Estelle won't mind!"

The mention of Estelle seemed to change the color of Mrs. Hawthorne's thoughts, casting a shadow over them.

"Estelle and I had a spat this morning," she told him.

"Oh!"

"That's why I was sweeping and why she's gone for a walk by herself."

"I'm so sorry!" was all he found to say.

"It doesn't amount to anything," she cheered him. "We've had times of quarreling all our lives, and we've known each other since we were children. Her aunt and my grandmother had houses side by side in the country; there was just a fence between our yards. That's how we first came to be friends. All our lives we've had the way of sometimes saying what the other doesn't like. And do you know what's always at the bottom of it? That each one thinks she knows what would be most for the other's good to do, and we get so mad because the other won't do what we ourself think would be best for her! Just as some people abuse you because you're a pig, we as likely as not abuse the other because she isn't a pig. One of the biggest fights we ever had was because once late at night, when she was dead tired, tired as a yellow dog, I wanted her to sit still and let me pack for her, or, anyhow, let me help her pack. And she said I was as tired as she,--as if that was possible!--and if I didn't go to bed and get some rest myself and let her alone to get through her packing as she pleased if it was daylight before she finished she should have a fit. And from one thing to another we went on getting madder and madder till we said things you would have thought made it impossible for us ever to speak to each other again. But the first thing next morning, when we opened our eyes, we just looked at each other and began to laugh. Another time we fought like cats and dogs because I wanted to give her something and she refused to take it."

"I don't call those quarrels, Mrs. Hawthorne."