Aurora the Magnificent Part 15

Again Gerald stopped, as after making a communication of great gravity.

Mrs. Hawthorne, listening with breathless interest, made no sound that urged him to go on. The fact he had announced seemed solemn to both alike, with the vision floating between them of Brenda's white-rose face and deer's eyes, the feeling they had in common that Brenda, for indefinable reasons, was not like ordinary mortals, and that what she felt was more significant, more important.

"But he has nothing beside his officer's pay," Gerald went on when the surprise of his revelation had been allowed time to pa.s.s, "and she on her side has nothing but what her parents might give her, who, you probably know, have no great abundance. His proposals were made to them, as is the custom in this country, and have been formally declined."

He left it to her to appreciate the situation created by this, and, while thinking on his side, ran the point of the slender cane which he had not abandoned round and round the same figure of the rug-pattern at their feet.

"They are both too poor. I see," said Mrs. Hawthorne; but added quickly, as if she had not really seen: "It seems sort of funny, though, doesn't it, to let that keep them, if they're fond of each other?"

"Oh, it's not that. However fond, they couldn't marry without her bringing her husband a fixed portion. It is the law in this country, in the case of officers of the army,--to keep up the dignity of that impressive body, you understand. In the case of a lieutenant the _dote_, or dowry, must be forty thousand francs. I learned the exact sum for the first time last night."

"How much is that? Let me see,"--Mrs. Hawthorne did mental arithmetic, rather quickly for a woman,--"eight thousand dollars. And the Fosses can't give it."

"Of their ability to give it if they wished to I am no judge. I dare say they could, though with their son John going before long to hang out his s.h.i.+ngle, as they call it, I doubt if it could be without bleeding themselves. But they are not convinced that the sacrifice ought to be made." He frowned at the pattern on the rug, and suddenly cut at it impatiently with his stick. "It is a singular story, in which everybody is right and the result wrong, horribly wrong!"

"Oh, dear me!" sighed Mrs. Hawthorne, feeling with him even before understanding.

"I ought perhaps to say," he corrected, "everybody is good and well-meaning, but has been unwise. And everybody now has to pay."

"I've thought right along that the Fosses had some reason for not being very happy," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "and I guessed it was something about Brenda. But they never said anything, and I didn't try to make out.

Brenda doesn't take to me, somehow, as the others do. I'm not her kind, of course; but I do adore her from afar. She's so beautiful! She's like a person in a story-book, who at the end dies, looking at the sunset over the sea, or else marries the prince."

"Yes, Brenda is wonderful."

"I never should take her for an American."

"She's not like one, and yet she is. She has grown up in this country and breathed in its ideas and feelings till she even looks Italian. Her parents are the sort of Americans that fifty years of foreign countries wouldn't budge; but they began later. Still, it is because Brenda is American, after all, that cruelties are being committed. Her family have taken it for granted that one of them couldn't really be in love with an Italian, least of all that joke, a dapper and decorative Italian officer that a girl buys at a fixed price for her husband. And Brenda can't say to them: 'But I am. I am in love with just such a man. The happiness of my life depends upon your finding the vulgar sum of money with which to buy him for me.' Because of the American-ness all round, Brenda can't say that to them, and because she doesn't say it, they are in doubt, they only half apprehend, they don't understand. The one thing they are sure of is that to marry a foreigner is a mistake. And the one safe thing they see to do, when Brenda's face, combined with her entire reserve toward them, has begun to torment them seriously, is to send her away where, if the truth be that she mysteriously is 'interested in' an Italian, the change of scene may help to put him out of her head."

"So that's why they're sending her home!"

"There are no better or dearer people in the world, kind, true, just; but"--Gerald held in, and showed how much he hated to make any sort of reservation--"in this they have been to blame. They bring growing girls to Italy, where, such is their confidence in I don't know what quality supposed to be inherent and to produce immunity from love of Italian men, they never dream that there might happen to them an Italian son-in-law."

He gave her a moment to realize how rash this was; then hurried, as if wis.h.i.+ng to get through as quickly as possible with the disagreeable, if not disgraceful, task of criticizing his friends and of gossiping:

"During the progress of the affair Mrs. Foss lets all go on as the little affairs and flirtations of her own youth were allowed to go on at home. She likes her daughters to be admired. It is only proper they should make conquests, have beaus. Leslie has had flirtations with Italians as well as with others, and come out of them without impairing that sense of humor which permits her to see as funny that one should succ.u.mb to the attractions of one of those only half-understood men, who may either be playing a comedy of love while in truth pursuing a fortune, or, if in earnest, are rather alarming, with the hint of jealous ferocity in their eyes. With Mrs. Foss's knowledge, Brenda, during a whole summer at the seaside, receives Giglioli's letters, written at first, or partly, in English, which he is learning with her help. With this excuse of English, it is a correspondence and courts.h.i.+p _dans toutes les regles_. Brenda is not asked by an American mother to show her letters or his. Giglioli, with his traditions, could not have imagined such a thing if the parents were unwilling to receive him as a suitor. Brenda herself--one will never know about Brenda, how it began, what she thought or hoped. She is very young; no doubt she did hope. Children seldom know much about their parents' means. She very likely thought hers could make her the present of a dowry, as they had made her other presents. But when she discovered their att.i.tude toward the whole matter, with dignity and delicacy she let all be as they desired, incapable of pressing them to tax their resources to give her a thing their prejudice is so strongly set against. They did what they thought best, and have hung in doubt ever since as to whether it was best; for though Brenda gives her confidence to none of them, and they do not press her to give it, with that respect for a child's liberty which is also American, they are growing more and more uneasy with the suspicion that it was serious on her part, too. They love her extraordinarily, and she has always dearly loved them. They show their love by protecting her youth from a step she may repent. She shows hers by being strong, poor love, and trying not to grieve them with the revelation of her heart. And they are making one another wretched."

For a moment Mrs. Hawthorne had nothing to say, busy with pondering what she had heard. "I don't see how, if she really loves this Italian, she could give him up so gracefully," she finally said.

"She has not given him up, Mrs. Hawthorne," said Gerald. "Believe me, she has not. She has some plan, some dream, for bringing about the good end in time without aid from her parents. I am sure of it. No, she has not given him up." He had before him, vivid in memory, the image of Brenda in the little church, and was looking at that, though his eyes were on Mrs. Hawthorne's friendly and attentive face. "She is at the wonderful hour of her love," he said, "when the world is transfigured and life lifted above the every-day into regions of poetry; when the simple fact of his existence justifies the plan of creation, when to wait a hundred years for him would seem no more difficult than to wait a day, and to perform the labors of Hercules no more than breaking off so many roses. She is sure of him, the immortality of his pa.s.sion, as she is sure of herself. So they are above circ.u.mstances, and nothing that friend or foe can do should trouble their essential serenity."

"How wonderful!" breathed Mrs. Hawthorne, after a little silence in which Gerald had been thinking with a very sickness of sympathy of Brenda and the sinister propensity of the Fates for bringing to nothing the most valiant dreams and hopes; and Mrs. Hawthorne had been thinking entirely of Gerald, whose own heart was so much more certainly revealed by what he said than could be anybody else's.

"Unfortunately,"--he turned abruptly to another part of his subject,--"he is not of the same temperament. She has some project, I imagine, for earning the money for her dowry, poor child, by music, singing, painting. But he does not know her vows of fidelity, because her parents did use their authority so far as gently to request her not to write to him or see him; and she promised, and a promise with Brenda is binding. And he has felt his honor involved in not writing or meeting her. But, though separated, they have been in the same city; they could hope to catch a glimpse of each other now and then. Heaven only knows how often he has stood to see her pa.s.s, or watched her window, and lived on such things as unhappy lovers find to live on. After all, the faith that when he dreamed of her she dreamed of him, that as he kissed a glove she kissed a silver b.u.t.ton, was a life, something to go on with. I dare say, too, he cherished the hope of some miracle,--it is so natural to hope!... But now they are sending her away, and it seems to him the black end of everything."

"I see. And what you want is--"

"To be driven half a world apart for indefinite periods, more than probably forever, without one look, one word of leave-taking, is truly too much. Granted that they are not to have each other, they ought not to be torn in two like a bleeding body. Let them have to remember a few last beautiful moments!"

Mrs. Hawthorne had become pensive. He watched her sidewise, trying to divine what turn her thoughts were taking. Her prolonged silence made him uneasy.

"It wouldn't be wrong, you think?" she asked finally. "Mrs. Foss wouldn't be cross with us?"

"If it is wrong, my dear Mrs. Hawthorne, let it be wrong!" he cried impetuously. "If any one is cross, we will bow our heads meekly--after having done what we regarded as merciful. Let us not permit a cruelty it was in our power to prevent!"

But Mrs. Hawthorne continued to disquiet him by hesitating, while her face suggested the travels of her thought all around and in and out of the question under consideration.

"You don't think it would perhaps be cruel to Brenda?" she laid before him another difficulty in the way of making up her mind. "Mightn't it just ruin the evening for her, with the painfulness of good-bys? Or, if she doesn't in the least expect him, the shock of the surprise?"

"If I know that beautiful girl, pa.s.sionate as an Italian under her American self-control, it will be the blessed shock of an answered prayer. She prays nightly, never doubt it, that Heaven may manage for her just such a surprise."

He was growing afraid of the calm common sense that tried to see the thing from every side and weight the merits of each person's point of view. Feeling it intolerable to be refused, he suddenly appealed to her pity, away from her justice.

"Oh, Mrs. Hawthorne, life is so unkind, and to be always wise simply deadly! A few memories to treasure are all the good we finally have of our miserable days, and to catch at a moment of gold without care that it will have to be paid for is the only way to have in our hands in all our lives anything but copper and lead; yes, dull lead, common copper."

He covered his face and pressed his eyes, in a way he had when the world seemed too hopeless and baffling; then as suddenly straightened up, remarking more quietly, "The Fosses are too wise."

"They have my sympathy, I must say, Mr. Fane," Mrs. Hawthorne hurriedly defended herself against being moved. "I should be just as much afraid as they to have my daughter marry a foreigner."

"Mrs. Hawthorne, you ought to be afraid to have your daughter marry anybody." He gathered heat again and vehemence. "As regards Italians, we are all one ma.s.s of superst.i.tions. We are always comparing our best with their bad. As a matter of truth, our best and their best and the best the world over are one as good as the other, and our worst can't be exceeded by anything Italy can show. If you make the difficulty that we are different, our point of view different, I object that Brenda's is not so different. The international marriages that turn out well make no noise, but there are plenty of them. I have seen any number in the ordinary middle cla.s.ses. No, parents are twice as old as their children; that is the trouble and always will be. The older people by prudence secure a certain thing, but it's not the thing youth wanted. The older see a certain thing as preferable, because they are old; but the young were right for themselves, for a time, at least, until they, too, grew old and saw a long peace and comfort as superior to a brief love and rapture. Brenda is not shallow or changeable; it may be her one chance of happiness that her parents in their anxious affection are trying to remove her from, and which she will cling to with every invisible fiber of her being until she conquers, or turns into a dismal old maid. Brenda is not like other girls. Love is serious to her. She never played with it as Leslie has always done, and as American girls do, yes, in Ma.s.sachusetts and Virginia alike. She is an earnest, simple, sincere, constant nature, very much, in fact, like him."

"You seem to like him. Is he such a fine man really?"

"I don't know a finer, in his way."

"Good looking?"

"Mrs. Hawthorne, what a frivolous question! But he is. He is one of the most completely handsome men I know. Rather short, that's all."

"Oh, what a pity!"

"But, if you must insist on that sort of symmetry, Brenda is not tall.

He is a kind of Italian, more common than one thinks, that doesn't get into literature, having nothing exciting, mysterious, wicked, or even conspicuously picturesque about him. After being a good son,--they are very often good sons,--he will be a good husband and a good father, like his own father before him. He is without vanity, while looking like a square-built, stocky, responsible Romeo. Devoted to duty, pa.s.sionate for order, absolutely punctilious in matters of honor and courtesy, he is a good citizen, a good soldier. He belongs to excellent people, I gathered, whose fortune, once larger, is very small. They live in the Abruzzi, I think he said. He is the eldest son and hope of the house.

His grat.i.tude to them comes first of all, he made me understand. He would be an _indegno_, unworthy of esteem and love, if that were not so. He had never cared for pleasures, he told me; even in the time not demanded by the service he studied. He wished to be useful to his country; he looked for the advancement to be gained by solid capacity in military things. He felt older than his years, he said, from being the eldest of the family and always carrying responsibilities. He committed no follies of youth, had no quarrels, made no debts. His companions sometimes laughed at him for this prosaic seriousness. But he had friends, for he is of a manly, modest sort. One evening during Carnival last year certain of these friends dropped in on their way to a dance, a costume party at the house of Americans, and seeing him so absorbed by duties and studies, thought it a lark to tempt him from these and take him along. And he, to astonish them for once, he says, let it happen, they a.s.suring him that he would be well received if presented as their friend. One of them had on two costumes, one on top of the other, of which he lent him one, a monk's frock and cowl. So they went. At the ball was Brenda as the Snow-queen. And the fatal thing happened at very first sight of her. It is a repet.i.tion of _Romeo and Juliet_, as you see. He had shunned women as the rivals of duty and work. He believes his instantaneous adoration owing to the fact that Brenda so far surpa.s.sed all he had ever known,--a being entirely formed of light and snow and fragrance.... I am using his words. Her very name is sweet to Italian lips. He permitted himself the dreams of other men. He permitted himself to hope. And then!... These things he told me with actual tears in the finest dark eyes I have perhaps ever seen, and without seeming any the less manly for them. He told me, and I believed him. He came to me, poor fellow, because it was the nearest he could come to Brenda, and he trusted, I suppose, that I would tell her he had been. It was a way of sending her a message. He talked more than half the night, walking the floor, then throwing himself into a chair and grasping his head. I can't tell you all he said, but it filled me with pity and respect. It made me his friend."

Mrs. Hawthorne looked soft and sympathetic, but far away, and when he stopped did not speak, engrossed, it was to be hoped, by the story just told.

He continued, though discouraged:

"He wanted to know if I thought he would be guilty of an unpardonable breach should he ask permission to write her one letter before she left.

This parting without farewell is the last bitter touch to his tragedy.

Brenda, when it had been decided that she should leave, sent word to him by that little pianist who comes here. Again through the same channel he received word that the day of departure was fixed. Can you think what it means, Mrs. Hawthorne? Have you in your experience or imagination the wherewith to form any conception, dear Mrs. Hawthorne, of what it means?

The day of departure fixed! The day of parting! Do you realize? No more sight or sound of each other! The end! The sea between! Silence! And it is to befall on Sat.u.r.day of this week, and we are at Wednesday!"

"All right, Mr. Fane; bring him!" she said in haste. "You've made me want to cry. I mustn't let myself cry; it makes my nose red. What did you say his name is?"

"Giglioli."

"Spell it. Gig--no, it's no use. What's the other part of his name?"

"Manlio."