Aurora the Magnificent Part 8

"Any time you say. Let me tell you where we live."

CHAPTER IV

The room in which Mrs. Hawthorne went to bed an hour or two after taking leave of the dwindling company at Villa Foss was large and luxurious.

Its windows were enormous, arched at the top and reaching the floor. A wrought-iron railing outside made them safe. In the angle of the wall between two of them--it was a corner room--stood a mirror nearly the size of the windows, in a broad frame of carved and gilt wood, resting on a marble shelf that supported besides two alabaster vases holding bunches of roses.

In the corner opposite to the mirror and placed "catty-corner," as the occupier worded it, stood the stateliest of beds, upholstered and draped in heavy watered silk of a dull, even dingy, yellow. Its hangings were gathered at the top into the hollow of a great gold coronet, whence they spread and fell in folds that were looped back with silk cords. The walls were covered by that same texture of dull gold, held in place by tarnished gilt moldings.

Mrs. Hawthorne had wanted all this dusty and faded splendor removed,--it seemed to her the possible lurking-place of mice or worse,--but the agent would not hear of it. The n.o.ble landlord was not really eager to let.

So Mrs. Hawthorne, to brighten the room in spite of it, for she wished to keep it for her own, having taken a fancy to the fresco overhead,--that fascinating chariot driven among clouds by a radiant youth surrounded by smiling, flower-scattering maidens,--Mrs. Hawthorne to "gay up" the room, as she said, had hung windows and doors with draperies of her favorite cornflower blue, and covered the chairs with the same. On the floor she had stretched a pearl-gray carpet all aglow with wreaths of roses tied with ribbons of blue; and over the carpet--at the bedside, before the dressing-table, in front of the fireplace--laid down white bear-skins.

To cover further the yellow silk, she had hung in one panel of it a painting of the "Madonna della Seggiola," in another, Carlo Dolci's "Angel of the Annunciation," and in another, Carlo Dolci's Magdalen clasping the box of ointment--all works of art bought in Via dei Fossi, framed in great gilt-wood frames, like the mirror.

The lace curtains under the cornflower blue brocade were like Brussels wedding veils seen through a magnifying gla.s.s.

Yes, the room had been made to look bright. It had lamps of cream-colored biscuit, painted with roses and crowned with pink shades; it had polished bra.s.s fire-irons. But the point of supreme brightness was the dressing-table, where glittered in orderly display Mrs.

Hawthorne's American toilet silver, mirror, trays, brushes, boxes, bottles--solid, shining, richly embossed.

There was just one thing in all the room that looked poor, workaday. It was on the small table at the head of the bed, beside the candle-stick and match-safe, a black book, the commonest kind of Bible, such a Bible as is dispensed by those who have to furnish the sacred writings in large numbers--Sunday schools, for instance.

It was in fact a Sunday-school prize that now lay on the night-stand, in what the sober volume presented to a pious little girl must have thought strange company. Cover to cover with it, cheek by jowl, lay a book on etiquette.

It was for the Bible, however, that Mrs. Hawthorne reached after she had got into bed. She found her place. She read in it every night before sleeping, to keep a promise made long ago, and avoid the reproaches of a person gone from this earth, but who still, she never questioned, could be pleased or displeased with her actions.

She did not always try to understand or follow; when she was sleepy she read merely with her eyes. To-night her mind was too full of personal things to permit of strict attention to the text. As she enumerated the wonders of the House that Solomon built for the Lord, there formed no picture of it in her mind.

"I wonder what knops are," she said to herself drowsily. "I must remember to ask Hattie."

There was a stir. Both doors of her room were open; the little un.o.btrusive one into the dressing-room for air,--the window there stood wide open through the night,--the large one into the sitting-room so as to leave a free road to Miss Madison's room beyond. Through this now slipped a slender form in a soft, fur-bordered wrapper, and with front locks done up in curling-kids.

"You in bed?"

"Yes; I'm just reading my chapter."

"Livvy gone?"

Livvy, or Miss Deliverance Jones, was the maid they had brought from America, a New York negress of the most faintly colored complexion, with hair mysteriously blond. Her head was egg-shaped, her nose slightly flat, her lip voluptuous, her brown-black eye sad as a homesick monkey's; but she could wind a chocolate veil about her face and stylish hat, and walk forth happy in the fancy that she pa.s.sed for white. She was an accomplished dressmaker and hair-dresser; she moreover had spent some time in the service of a beauty-doctor. The ladies had secured her just before sailing, and liked her, but did not talk freely when she was present.

"Yes, she's gone."

"I'm not a bit sleepy, are you? I'm too excited. Let's talk."

She climbed on to her friend's bed, gathered her knees to her chin, and hugged them, with the effect of hugging to herself a great happiness.

Mrs. Hawthorne closed her Bible and put it aside. The single candle by which she had been reading showed the shining mirthfulness of the eyes with which the two regarded each other.

"Wasn't it fun?"

"Oh, wasn't it!"

They spoke softly, whether because the suggestion of the late hour was upon them, or they thought, without thinking, that Livvy might still be near. They whispered like school-girls who have come together in forbidden fun.

"I never did have such a good time."

"Nor I, neither. Oh, Hat, _isn't it_ fun!"

"_Isn't it_, just!"

"See here, Hat, you've got to teach me to dance. I was almost crazy this evening, I wanted so to be dancing with the rest. Where d'you learn?"

"I went to dancing-school, my dear."

"No! Did you?"

"Yes, I did; all one winter. What are you thinking about? I've been to parties in my life. Not many, but I've been. There was the Home Club party----"

"Yes, of course. I remember how I teased once to go to the Home Club party; but ma wouldn't let me. I hadn't anything to put on, anyhow. But I'd have gone in my shirt if they'd let me. The nearest to a real party I'd been to before to-night was a clam-bake. I don't count church sociables. Out West there used to be celebrations in a sort of bar-room place, but even I couldn't stand those. To think I've always yearned so to have a good time, and now I'm having it! Oh, Hat, wasn't it lovely!

That's a mighty nice house of the Fosses. How good it looked, all fixed up! The flowers and candles, one room opening into the other, everything just right. Hat, Mrs. Foss is the finest woman I ever knew, and in my opinion makes the most elegant appearance. She's the one I'd choose to be like if I could. Just watch me copy-cat her. You'll see. 'My dear Mrs. Hawthorne, pray don't speak of the trouble! It's been nothing but a pleasure. Be sure you call upon us whenever we can be of the smallest service.'"

"You've caught her, Nell, you silly thing! Down to the ground."

"I'm going to pattern after her till it comes natural. How sweet they all are! How kind they've been!" Mrs. Hawthorne grew dreamy.

"Your dress, Nell, was a perfect success," the other ran on--"perfect.

How did you think mine looked? I'll tell you a compliment I got for you, if you'll tell me one you got for me. If not, I'll save it up in my secret breast till you're ready to make a trade."

"To think," said Mrs. Hawthorne, still engrossed by her dream of absent and bygone things, "that we're the same little girls--and one of them barefoot!--who used to play house together on a sand-heap of old Cape Cod and pin on any old rag that would tail along the ground and play ladies! 'My dear Mrs. Madison, how do you do?'"

"'My dear Mrs. Hawthorne, my toes are just as sore as they can be!'"

"'That comes, my dear Mrs. Madison, of you dancing like a crazy woman from ten o'clock till one, in tight shoes!'--Mrs. Hawthorne! Mrs.

Madison! Aurora! Estelle! To think, after all these years, we should be playing our old play that we played at Wellfleet and East Boston, only playing it with real things, in Paris and Florence!"

"Nell, I'm so afraid of forgetting and calling you Nell that every time I catch myself near doing it I can feel the cold sweat break out on my brow."

"What would it matter? We aren't impostors, Hat. We're just having fun, and don't want our real names to queer it. If they should slip out when we aren't thinking, they'd simply sound like nicknames we've got for each other. But they won't slip out. I'm too fond of calling you Estelle. Don't you _love_ to call me Aurora? Hat, how did I behave, far as you could see?"

"Nell, if I hadn't known you, and had just been seeing you for the first time, I should have said to myself: 'What a fine, good-looking, beautifully dressed, refined, and ladylike woman that is! Wish t' I might make her acquaintance.' And what would you have said, if you'd seen me, never having met me before?"

"I should have said: 'What a bright, smart, intelligent, and rarely beautiful girl! So well dressed, too, and slender as a worm! A queen of society. I do like her looks! She's the spittin' image of my little friend Hattie Carver, the schoolmarm in East Boston, that I used to know!' Oh, Hat, the _queerest_ thing! What do you suppose I saw this evening at that lovely house full of lovely people? I was in the library learning to dance. And I looked up and there was what I took to be a young man smoking a cigarette. Next thing, I saw that his dress was low-necked almost down to the waist. Hat, it was a _woman_ smoking!

a woman with her hair cut short. I never saw anything like it, except an old Irishwoman once, with her pipe."

"Seems to me I've heard of ladies in Europe doing it, and it being considered all right. I _have_ heard that some do it in New York, but I guess they're careful not to be seen."