Aurora the Magnificent Part 44

"Good-by, then, and good riddance!" cried Aurora violently, almost pettishly. "I don't really like them, anyhow. It's too easy just to write your name on a check. At first I thought I was living in a fairy-tale; but once you've got used to it, it doesn't compare with the fun you get the old-fashioned way, working hard for a thing, and planning, and going to price it, and saving, and finally getting it, and that proud! People who haven't been poor simply don't know. Why, that one poor little silver bangle I had when I was fifteen did more to give me pure joy than any of the beautiful things I've bought this whole last year. I'm sorry if it seems ungrateful to my bloated bank-account, but it's true. Another thing, Tom. I was brought up to work. I won't say I liked it. I don't think many people who've got to work do like it. But since I gave it up, nothing I've found has really filled its place to give me an appet.i.te and the feeling I'd a right to a good time. To sit back and let others work while you fan your face--I can't help it, I feel a sort of disgrace in it. I know better, it's just the way I _feel_. I know all the while that's the way the world was planned, some to be rich and some to be poor--Think how rich King Solomon was!

And your dear father!--some to work and some not, with changes round about once in a while, like in my case, and crosses and trials and temptations belonging to every state, and the love of G.o.d and a quiet heart possible in every state. And I've always had such respect for moneyed people and their refined ways.... But if you want me to start in now and do differently from what I've been doing, I tell you truly, I don't know how I'm going to do it, Tom. I'd rather not have the money at all."

"You won't have it, Nell, dear. You've only to keep on, and you won't have it."

"All right. Then I'll go back to work and never happier in my life. I'm strong and able, I've got years of work in me. And if you think I've grown so devoted to all these frills that I couldn't give them up, you'll see!"

"Of course I haven't the faintest right to control your use of your money--"

"But of course you have, Tom,"--her tone changed at once, and was eagerly humble,--"every right. You can take it away from me any moment you please. Who has a right, I should like to know, if not you?"

"Well, then, Nell, I'm going to make a suggestion. What you have said shows me that simple advice would be of no use in this case. Don't think, girl, that I don't get at your way of seeing the matter. If I appear cold toward it, if I don't seem to sympathize, it's because the logical results would land you in a hole from which I'd feel a call by and by to try to pull you out. See?--As a promise to keep inside of your income would apparently embitter life to you, I won't ask for it, merely suggesting the fitness of trying to observe such a restriction. Even as regards your power to throw it away, there'll be a lot more of it to throw if you respect your capital. However, the money is yours, to do exactly what you please with, but this I ask: empower me to turn some part of it into an annuity, unalienable and modestly sufficient."

"An annuity? What's that?"

"A sum of money so fixed that you receive the interest as long as you live and have no power over the sum itself. It's not yours to use, to transfer or yet to bequeath. In your case the one safe investment, the single way I see to keep you out of the poorhouse."

"Do you say so! All right, Tom; do what you think best. But see here.

Whatever you arrange for me that way, you've got to arrange for Hattie, too, or it wouldn't be fair. I won't think of it unless you'll do the same for both. If I hadn't a penny left in the world, you know the Carvers would take me in in a minute. Then if you do it, don't you see,"

she brought in slyly, "when I've spent my money, there'll always be Hattie's for me to fall back on. Don't let her know you're doing it, Tom, but fix it."

"All right. Two comfortable little annuities, enough to be independent on, and be taken care of if you're sick."

"That's it, Tom. Then everybody's mind will be set at rest. And this I promise: I'll try to be a good girl."

That subject being dropped, there was silence for a minute or two, while Tom thoughtfully smoked.

Aurora's face was a living rose with the excitement of their discussion.

She put her hands to her cheeks to feel how they burned, then turned to Tom to laugh with him over it. The pink of her face enhanced the blueness of her eyes. It was not unusual for persons sitting near Aurora, women as well as men, to feel a sudden desire to squeeze her in their arms and tell her how sweet she was. Tom found himself saying a thing he had taken a solemn engagement with himself not to say.

"I had hoped"--his utterance was slow and heavy--"to find a different solution to the difficulty."

Her face questioned him, and at once looked troubled.

"I was going to try to take over all your difficulties and bundle them up with my own; but," he continued, after a moment, with force, "I'm not going to do it."

"That's right, Tom," she came out eagerly, without pretending not to understand. "If I know what you mean--don't do it! Oh, I'm so grateful, I can't tell you, that you've made up your mind that way. Because, dear Tom, whatever you wanted me to do, seems to me I'd have to do it. I don't see how I could say no to anything you asked me. It would break my heart, I guess, if I had to hold out against a real wish of yours. I couldn't do it. All the same, I know we wouldn't make just the happiest kind of couple--'cause why, we're too like brother and sister, Tom. It would be unnatural. I feel toward you, Tom, just like an own, own sister--not those mean old things, Idell and Cora, who are your sisters--but I feel toward you as I would to my own brother Charlie.

There's nothing I wouldn't do for you. But if I had to marry you, there'd be something about it--well, I don't know. I can't explain.

Haven't you seen how there are things that are perfect for one use and no good at all for another? I'm a pretty good nurse, ain't I, Tom? But what would I be as a bareback circus-rider?"

"We aren't going to talk about it, Nell. I told you I had given it up.

But," he went on after a heavy moment, unable entirely to subjugate his humanity--"but I wish now I had asked you before you left home."

She was too oppressed with misery to speak at once, so he amplified.

"But it seemed rather more--I don't want to call it by any such big word as chivalrous,--it seemed rather whiter not to urge it, when circ.u.mstances might have seemed to lay a compulsion on you. Then it seemed better to let all the talk, the unpleasantness, in Denver die down first. Then, too, I wanted you to see the world; I liked the thought of you having your fling. But," he reiterated, "I can't help wishing I had followed my instinct and asked you before I let you go.

Tell the truth, Nell. Wouldn't you have had me then?"

"I suppose, Tom, that I should have you now if you asked me. But then or now," she brought in quickly, "it would be a mistake. I couldn't love you more dearly, Tom, than I do, good big brother that you've been. Dear me, all we've been through together! Then all the fun we've had! We couldn't change to something different without all being spoiled. You don't seem to know, but I do, that I'm not the woman for you in that way. We're too much alike, Tom. What you want is a little dainty woman, delicate, quick, bright-minded, something, to find an example near at hand, like Hattie Carver. A big fellow like you wants someone to cherish and protect. How would any one go to work protecting and cherishing a little darling big as a moose!"

"I might have known"--Doctor Tom made his reflections aloud,--"that a good big husky man wouldn't have a chance with a good big husky girl while a sickly, sad-eyed, spindle-shanked son of a gun was hanging round!"

"There's nothing in that, I should think you'd know," said Aurora, quickly. "I like him, of course, and I like to have him round. Haven't you found him good company yourself? But that's just friendship.

Friendship like between a fish and a bird, and no more prospect of a different ending than that. If that's troubling you, you can set your mind at rest, Tom."

"It's none of my business, anyhow," said the doctor, brusquely, flinging down his cigar and walking away from her to the mantelpiece, where he stood looking up at her portrait, but thinking of that other portrait of her, with its wizardry and strange truth, which she had not failed to show him.

"Tom, if I thought you could feel bitter, I should die, that's all,"

cried Aurora, jumping up and following. "You've been such a friend to me! Do you suppose I forget? Never was there such a friend. And you know, now don't you, Tom, that I think the whole, whole world of you?"

Arms were clasped around his neck,--large arms, solid and polished as marble, but tender as mother birds; a head was pressed hard against his shoulder. "There never could anybody take your place with me. You'd only have to call over land and sea, and I'd come flying to serve you, to nurse you in sickness or help you in sorrow. Give me a good hug, Tom.

Give me a good kiss, and say you know I mean every word!--Now, isn't this better than to see me across the table at breakfast, with my hair in curlers, and to have me snooping round being jealous of your female patients?"

"No, it's not better; but it's pretty good."

"Do you mean to tell me, Tom, that you'd be any more likely to cut my name in a tree, or kiss my stolen glove, than I'd be to wish on the first star you loved me or write poetry about my feelin's?"

"Nell, I'm not telling; the subject is closed. But any time there's anything I can do for you, anything in this world, Nell, you know you've only got to sing out."

"You'll marry, Tom dear, by and by."

"Very well. If you say so, I'll marry. But what I said will hold good if I do. It will hold good, too, if you marry, Nell. Oh, let's talk about something else."

The change of subject could hardly be effected in less time than it takes to reverse engines; a minute or two pa.s.sed before Aurora inquired concerning the number of hours' travel between Florence and Liverpool, then about his steamer, his stateroom and the exact time of his starting.

"Nine o'clock in the evening. I see, so as to have daylight for the Alps. You'll dine here of course and we'll take you to the station."

He judged it more prudent to dine at his hotel and meet them afterwards at the station near train-time.

"Then--" sighed Aurora, sorrowfully, "this is our last evening! For I heard you and the consul planning for to-morrow evening together, and he to read you some chapters of his book. A compliment, Tom. He's never offered to read _us_ any of it. I'm only sorry the idea didn't ripen sooner, so that we needn't be robbed of your very last evening. We must make the most of our time, then. Suppose we go into the garden, Tom, and walk across the street to the river--I don't have to put anything on for just that step. It's so pretty, looking upstream at the bridges, and across at the hills your pa was so fond of. Wasn't the Judge just crazy about Florence! For the longest time after I came I couldn't see why, but I'm beginning."

CHAPTER XX

A tired look overspread Estelle's face, when, returning home after seeing Dr. Bewick off on his way to Paris, they found Gerald waiting.

She said to herself, in tempestuous inward irritation, that it was inconceivable a young man so well up in the ways of the world shouldn't know any better.

It could not be said that Estelle did not like Gerald Fane. Considered by himself, she did like him, much more, she believed, than he liked her. His odd distinction, too subtle and complex to describe, aroused in her a vague hunger of the mind. But considered in relation to Aurora, he "was on her nerves," she said.

"That he shouldn't know any better--" she mentally scolded, behind her tired look, "than to obtrude himself the very first minute after Doctor Tom's departure!"

But Gerald was not thinking he showed a horrid want of tact. The other way, rather. He saw himself as the intimate old friend who comes to call right after the funeral, and by his presence console a little, and brighten, the bereaved.

Aurora's red eyes smote him at once. Aurora was still in tearful mood.

The sense not only of her dear friend going, but going with a secret weight on his heart that it had been in her power to prevent, made her own heart miserably heavy, too. For the moment Tom counted for her more than all else, and she reproached herself that when he had done so much for her she had not been willing to do such an ordinary little thing for him as to marry him; and she reproached herself because it was a relief, despite her great wish to be loyal, to think they should not meet again until all that was well in the past.