Aurora the Magnificent Part 40

Estelle went on, in a tone that did not disguise the fact of her glorying in this prodigality while being justly frightened by it. "It's not just the ordinary charities, churches, hospitals, etc.,--all of those send in their regular bills, as you might say. It's a Swiss music-box for the crippled son of the _spazzaturaio_, or street-cleaner; it's a marriage-portion for this one and funeral expenses for that one; it's filling the mendicant nuns' coal-cellar, it's clothing a whole orphan-school in a cheerfuller color! Clotilde and Italo call her attention to every deserving case, and are guided in this by the simple knowledge that Nell can't hold on to her money. Of course it's her good heart. She's done a lot for them and their family, too, I've discovered. I don't know just how much, but I can guess by their look of licking their chops. I'm not saying they aren't all right--honest, sincere, and so forth--or that I don't like them. It's Nell's own fault that she's imposed on. I don't doubt that they're as devoted as they seem, it's only right they should be. It's right the whole city of Florence should be. I was thinking only the other day as we drove through Viale Lorenzo the Magnificent that it would be appropriate for a grateful city to rechristen our street Viale Aurora the Magnificent."

Tom Bewick laughed, nodding to himself with an effect of relish. He murmured, "Aurora the Magnificent!"

"Aurora the Magnificent--Aurora the Magnificent is all very well,"

Estelle took up again with animation, "but she's already spending her capital."

Bewick did not allow himself to appear startled or troubled; still, he was made pensive by this. His look at Estelle invited her to go on and tell him the rest, just how bad it was. She was leaning forward, with her elbows on the table, one hand slipping the rings on and off a finger of the other, in her quick way.

"You know what her income is. It would have provided for all this,"--she took in the luxury around them by a gesture of the head,--"but no income can suffice to set up in housekeeping all the picturesque paupers in Florence. That's why I was so anxious for you to come, and wrote you as I did. You can curb her; I can't. I have no influence with her in that way, and I simply can't sit still and see her throw away all this good money that was intended to provide her with comforts for the rest of her life. Unless somebody looks after it, she won't have a penny left. You must talk to her, Doctor Bewick. Don't let her know, though, that I put you up to it. You can ask a plain question, as it's right and natural for you to do, then when she answers you can lecture her. She'll take it from you."

Bewick, with his sensible face, looked as if he saw justice and reason in all Miss Madison had said to him; yet he did not go on with the subject. It might be that he felt delicate, in a masculine way, about uttering to a lady's best friend any criticism of that lady's mode of doing or being--criticism which he might feel no difficulty perhaps in voicing to herself. Estelle took this into consideration and, his reticence notwithstanding, relied on him to do his duty.

A diversion occurred in the shape of a knock at the door--the door leading to the kitchen-stairs. It was but the scratch of one fingernail on the wood. Tiny as the sound was, it did not have to be repeated before Estelle ran to open. A small four-footed person entered, the bigness of a baby's m.u.f.f and the whiteness of a marquis's powdered wig.

Estelle caught him up from the floor and with a coo of affection, "What um doing in the kitchen, little rogums?" set him on the table, under the lamp, for Doctor Tom to see how utterly beautiful he was and have the points and characteristics of a Maltese terrier explained to him.

Busteretto was reaching dog's estate, his shape had taken on a degree of subtlety, his hair was growing long and straight and like leaves of the weeping willow. Estelle lifted the white fringe depending from his brow, and exposed to the light two great limpid brown eyes, incredibly sweet and intelligent. It was as wonderful, in its way, as if a blind beggar, insignificant and easy to pa.s.s by as he stood at the street-corner, should take off black goggles suddenly, and you should perceive that he was a masking angel come to test the hearts of men.

"Did you ever see such a little sweetheart?" gasped Estelle.

"A pretty little fellow," spoke the doctor commendingly. With the instinct to relieve discomfort he raised the veil of hair again as soon as Estelle had let it drop, and looking further into the beautiful eyes, that with the neat nose made a triangle of dark spots effective as mouches on Columbine's cheek,--"Why don't you tie up his hair like this to keep it out of the way?" he asked.

"We mustn't! Mr. Fane, who gave him to Nell, says it would be bad for him, he might go blind. They're that kind of eyes and need the shield from the light. Mr. Fane knows all about this Maltese breed of dogs."

"Is he the same one who painted her portrait?" Dr. Tom deviated from the subject of the dog, over whose eyes the curtain was allowed to drop again.

"Yes, he's an artist."

"And the same one she nursed through an illness?" asked Dr. Tom after a moment, with the mere amount of interest apparently of one asking for a topographical detail, so that he may get his bearings.

"Yes. You'd know, wouldn't you, that she'd have to, if she thought he wasn't getting the right care and didn't see any other way of providing it."

"Well, Skip," Dr. Tom returned his attention to the dog, "you're a fine little fellow. Yes, sir." He held out a large pink hand and received in it immediately a wee gentlemanly hand of fur and horn, rather smaller than any of his fingers. "Good dog," he said, and regarded their friendship as sealed. But next minute, because Estelle had whispered to him, "Make believe to strike me," he lifted his fist menacingly against her, and on the instant, with the courage of a David, there dashed against him a little wild white flurry, not to bite--the skin of man is sacred--but by a show of pearly teeth and the growlings of a lion to frighten the giant off.

"Good dog!" cheered Tom and leaned back laughing, "Well done!"

Because it was very late when Dr. Bewick left the ladies to return to his hotel they immediately repaired to their respective rooms; but before Estelle had got to bed, Aurora, half undressed, came strolling into her maidenly bower of temperate green and white.

A vague depression of spirits had overtaken Aurora, reaction, perhaps, from the excitements of the day, and she sought her friend with the instinct to make herself feel better by talking it off.

She dropped on a chair, and in silence continued to braid her hair for the night.

"Isn't he the nicest fellow!" began Estelle, setting the keynote for joyous confidences.

"Isn't he just!" replied Aurora. "I want him to have the best time in the three weeks he's going to spend here. We've got to show him all the beauties of Florence, and then I want him to know all our friends. We must have some tea-parties and some dinners. I want it to be just as gay. Who is there I ought to lay myself out for, if not Tom Bewick?"

"I quite agree with you. Let's plan."

"No, to-morrow'll do. It's too late. I'm tired." The motions of Aurora's fingers were suspended among the strands of her hair. She fell into a muse. "Seeing Tom"--she came out of it again, and went on braiding--"has brought back, along with some things I never want to forget, such a lot of things I don't want to think of!"

"I suppose it would."

"His sisters, for instance. He doesn't look a bit like them, really--nasty bugs, G.o.dless, gutless pigs--but yet he brings them up before me. Idell rather more than Cora, and Idell was the meanest of the two, and her husband the miserablest, sneakingest cuss. Oh, how I hate the bunch of them! And I oughtn't, you know. You oughtn't to go on hating your enemies after you've got the better of them. But the moment I think of that trio, Cora Bewick--sour-bellied old maid!--and Idell Friebus, and her rotten little pea-green husband--pin-headed insect!

flap-eared fool!--I get mad. If you could really know, Hat, the cold-heartedness and wicked-mindedness of those people! How they ever happened in Tom's family Goodness only knows. And such a fine father!

The Judge was as good as any of those old fellows in the Bible, I do believe. _That_ patient, _that_ considerate, and _that_ just! More than just; what he did was more than just, and those girls of his simply couldn't stand it. They couldn't stand it, after they had neglected him all through his illness so that it was a scandal, that he should treat the person who had done their daughters' duty for them the same as he treated them, no better and no worse, but just the same. The things those people did to me, Hat, the things they said about me--"

"I know, I know; you've told me," said Hattie, soothingly and deterringly.

"The things those people did to me, and the things they said about me,"--Nell, not to be deterred, repeated intensely,--"if I'd ever wanted to give up my share, those things they did and said would have made me hold on like grim death just to spite them. Oh,"--she broke off, and flung her finished braids back over her shoulders,--"why do I let myself think of them? I grow so hot! It's the sight of Tom that has started me back to thinking of all that excitement and disgustingness. Dear good Tom, who stood by me like a trump! I do wish, Hat, I didn't hate so hard when I hate. We've taken pride in my family, I'm afraid, in being good haters, as if it were part of the same trait that makes you loyal and true to your friends. But perhaps it's a mistake. I know that Gerald said once"--she yielded to the obscure desire to hear the air vibrate, as it had not done for some time, with the syllables of his name--"Gerald said once, when we were talking of things, 'We must forgive everything,' he said; 'we must forgive happenings the same as we must people.' And Gerald, you know, when he's in sober earnest, has some good ideas."

"Talking about Gerald," Estelle came in quickly, glad of a change from the other subject, "did Livvy tell you that our cook met Giovanna at the market, and Giovanna told her that her master was doing finely; that he hadn't yet been out of doors, but that he sat at the open window in the sunshine? I'd been meaning to ask you."

"Oh." Aurora quietly took it, and thought it over a minute. "No, she hadn't told me. I suppose those long stairs would keep him from going out till he was good and strong. Did she say anything else?"

"Only that Giovanna was buying a chicken, and the abbe, she said, was still staying with them."

The ladies of the Hermitage did the honors of Florence with modest pride and a certain glibness. Before the early old masters, Aurora said to Tom:

"At first I couldn't stand them. I guffawed at the idea of there being anything to admire in them. Even now I can't pretend I like them; but I keep still and pray for light. Isn't that the beginning of polish?"

Tom was taken to make calls. Aurora took upon herself to explain Florentine society to him.

"There are little stories about most everybody," she said, "so you have to be pretty careful. If a certain General is present, for instance, whom I may have a chance to point out to you, you don't want to talk of _horses_, because his fiery steed bolted with him during an engagement once and his enemies caricatured him running away. Then if a certain viscount is present, whom I may have a chance to introduce to you, you don't want to talk of _ermine_, because that little animal is a feature in his coat of arms, and his coat of arms along with his t.i.tle of n.o.bility, scandal says, came as a reward from a royal personage for marrying the lady who was his first wife. So you'll have to look out, Tom, or you may be called upon to fight a duel."

The most splendid dinner that could be planned in council with Clotilde and the cook was prepared to honor the friend from home. To this were bidden the Fosses, Aurora's best friends; the Hunts, her next best; Manlio, whom she wished Tom to see as a truly beautiful specimen of Italian; and Landini, because she was curious to know what Tom thought of him.

Aurora had not seen the latter since the night of the _veglione_.

Finding that he had not called during the interval, she had been glad to hope that his suspected mysterious project for making her his own had been dropped. That being the case, she was not at all averse to seeing him. On the contrary.

Charlie Hunt she had not seen since the variety-show. Learning that he also had not once come during her absence, she thought that this admitted of some simple explanation which he would give on the night of the dinner.

Charlie, receiving the invitation, pondered a while before accepting. He considered himself to have been insulted, rather, by Mrs. Hawthorne.

Still, he could not be absolutely sure. If, anyhow, she did not know that he knew the black crow to have been none other than herself there would be nothing in his going to her dinner-party which laid him open to scorn. And he felt more disposed to go than not. The dinner would be festive, costly, succulent. Then he desired before breaking with her--if breach there must be, which would depend upon the subtlest circ.u.mstances--to persuade her that two enormous porcelain jars owned by a dealer of his acquaintance were the very thing needed in that bare-looking ball-room of hers. There was a third reason. A lady whose friendship had latterly--since the night of the _veglione_, in fact--taken on the glow of roses and the warmth of wine, had taken it into her charming head to be jealous, fantastically, of Mrs. Hawthorne.

Charlie, whose manly vanity his good fortune had, not unnaturally, reinforced; Charlie, who if he were loved much must always love less than the other, felt a certain stimulation in exhibitions of jealousy with regard to himself. He thought well of the results of saying, "I cannot come this evening, _cara_, I am dining at the Hawthorne's."

So he accepted Aurora's invitation.

The dinner was superlative, but it was written he should leave the house finally in a bad humor. The feasted guest was a big Western American, of the immensely rich and not very interesting type, whom he had seen once or twice at the bank. Aurora's fond esteem for this man was open and shameless. Whether he were a "has been," an "is," or a "to be," Charlie could not determine, but only in the character of suitor could he see him in the picture.

The dark face of Landini, his Chief, across the dinner table, when his eyes sought it was indecipherable to him; but, shut as it was, he was reminded by it, not to the improvement of his spirits, of a little personal hope, a just and rational hope, which might have to be relinquished. After dinner he got his hostess into a quiet corner for a chat.

"Where's Gerald?" pure curiosity made him ask, with that impertinence which his friends were accustomed to and took lightly, because curiosity and impertinence were part and parcel of Charlie, and if you cared sufficiently for his attractive smoothness and flashing smile to wish them near you, you must put up with the bad breeding underlying his good manners. "Where's Gerald?" he asked familiarly.

"Gerald isn't well enough yet to be out," Aurora answered him, with imperfect candor. "You didn't know he'd been ill? Why, how funny! He's been having what you call here a 'fluxion of the chest.'"

This ignorance of Charlie's comforted her by proving that the news of her nursing Gerald had not spread over the town like wildfire, as she had been warned it would. Florence was not so bad or nimble a gossip as she had feared.