Aurora the Magnificent Part 13

Mrs. Innes, his mother's old friend, meeting him at Vieusseux's reading-room a few days before, had detained him for a chat, and in the course of it asked him if he knew this Mrs. Hawthorne of whom the Fosses appeared so fond. An amusing type, she must be. Seeing that statue of the she-wolf and little Romulus and Remus at the foot of Vial de' Colli, it seemed she had asked what it meant, and said she didn't believe it.

It indefinably hurt him, incommoded some nerve of envenomed sensitiveness--yes, annoyed him like sand in his salad, to think of his country-woman, with the good faith of a dog in her face, so quoted as to make her ridiculous by a fellow wanting in human vitals, like Hunt.

He would have liked, had it been possible, to ask a few frank questions of Mrs. Hawthorne, and find out more certainly what he should think. He would have liked to warn her against trusting her enormous ignorance to one who would have so little good-humor and protectiveness toward that baby-eyed giant-child. Really, instinct ought to teach her better whom to make her confident as respected that grave affair.

Singularly, when next the music stopped, Mrs. Hawthorne, after she with true politeness had taken the box of cigarettes to the other of her guests, spoke of Hunt. Perhaps her thoughts, too, had gone straying, and mysteriously encountered some straying thought of his.

"Charlie Hunt," she said, "is coming on Sunday morning to take us to the picture-galleries. We're going to play hooky from church. His work, don't you see, keeps him at the bank on week days till everything of that sort is closed."

"Mrs. Hawthorne," cried Gerald and sat up in unaffected indignation, while mustache, beard, hair, everything about him appeared to bristle, "I thought _I_ had been engaged to take you sight-seeing! I thought it was to be _my_ honor and privilege. Mrs. Hawthorne, my dear friend, if you do not wish deeply to hurt me, deeply to hurt me, you will write to Mr. Hunt at once, this evening, and I will post the letter, that you have thought better of that immoral plan for Sunday morning, and are going to church like a good Christian woman. And to-morrow, Mrs. Hawthorne, at whatever time will be convenient for you, I will come and take you to the Uffizi."

CHAPTER VI

And so because, in his uncalled-for chivalry, he had made himself guide to a lady in a ball-room, Gerald, one thing leading to another, was once more committed to serving as a guide in Florence.

He had filled the part so often, at the appeal of one good friend and another, that he had sworn never again to be caught, cajoled, or hired.

He could have hated the Ghiberti doors had such a thing not been impossible. He did rather hate the Santissima Annunziata. And now it was all to do over again.

It might be adduced, as a mitigation of his misfortune, that this was different.

This was sometimes very different.

A singular thing about acquaintance with Mrs. Hawthorne was that it had in a sense no beginning. One started fairly in the middle. No sooner did one meet her than one seemed to have known her long and know her well.

Most people found this so. One therefore readily slid into speaking one's mind to Mrs. Hawthorne, dispensing with the formal affectation of a perfect respect for her every act and opinion, secure in the recognition that anger, sulkiness, the self-love that easily takes umbrage, were as far from her breezy st.u.r.diness as the scrupulosities of an anxious refinement.

That one could say what one pleased to Mrs. Hawthorne put more life into intercourse with her, naturally, than there would have been if, with her limitations, one had been forced to be entirely and tamely circ.u.mspect.

"Mrs. Hawthorne," cried Gerald, "do me the very real favor, will you, like a dear good woman, of not calling the most venerable of the primitives Simma Bewey!"

It was astonis.h.i.+ng what things Gerald Fane could say without losing his effect of a complete, even considerate politeness.

"But that's the way it's written," said Mrs. Hawthorne.

"You will pardon the liberty I take of contradicting you; it is not. It gives me goose-flesh. Cimabue!"

"Very well. I'll try to remember. But it doesn't matter what I call him; his Madonna is no beauty. Do you mean to tell me there was a time when people admired faces like that? She gives me a pain."

"That is not the point; her beauty is not the point. Besides, she is beautiful."

"Oh, very well. If you'd like to have me look like her, I can."

She tipped her head to one side, lengthened her jaw, pointed her hand, and by a knack she had for mimicry made herself vaguely resemble the large-eyed, small-mouthed, pale and serious Lady of Heaven before whose portrait by the old master this dialogue took place.

"It is really a very poor joke, Mrs. Hawthorne," Gerald said, with mouth distorted by the conflict between laughter and disgust. "To travesty a dignified and sacred thing is a very poor pastime. Of course I laugh.

Miss Madison laughs, and I laugh. I think very poorly of it, all the same. You would do much better to frame your mind to an att.i.tude of respect and try to understand. I can't say, though, that I think it unnatural you should not at first appreciate the earliest old masters.

We will go to look at something more obvious."

"Wait a moment. These fascinate me, they're so queer and so awful. I tell you those old codgers of the time you say these belong to had strong nerves and stomachs. All these wounds and dripping blood and hollow ribs and criminals being boiled in caldrons, and having their heads cut off and arrows shot into them!... I guess you're right; we'd better move on to something more cheerful."

Miss Madison was never guilty of the foolishness that fell from Mrs.

Hawthorne's gross and unconcerned ignorance. Miss Madison took modesty and tact with her, as well as keenness of eye, when she went to picture-galleries and museums. But this, strange to say, did not make her the more acceptable companion of the two to their guide. What Miss Madison did never seemed so important as what her larger, weightier friend did. The one personality to a singular extent eclipsed the other, who was accustomed to this to the point of not feeling it. A laughing lack of conceit in both women marvelously simplified their relation.

Gerald, in choosing pictures for their enjoyment, avoided with a conscientiousness of very special brand to halt with them before paintings fit to please their unpracticed eyes but which he did not think worthy of admiration. He likewise pa.s.sed Venuses, Eves, Truths, all nudities, without remark or pause, acquainted of old with the simple-minded prudery of certain Americans, and not disrespectful to it.

"Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, "to be ignorant is no sin. One may have been doing beautiful, gracious, useful and merciful things while others were cultivating the arts and sciences. But ignorance on any subject is not in itself beautiful or desirable. One should therefore not be complacent in it, proud of it. With a little humility, Mrs. Hawthorne, what can one not hope to accomplish? Now, please, Mrs. Hawthorne, drop all preconception, and use your eyes. Look at that angel."

"Do you mean to tell me I could live long enough to think that angel beautiful? With those Chinese eyes?... Give it up, my friend, why do you want to bother?"

"Because, Mrs. Hawthorne, you have essentially a good brain. You are at the back of all a very intelligent woman--"

"Go 'way with you! You know that if you feed me taffy enough you can make me see and say anything you want."

"--a very intelligent woman. And I am so const.i.tuted that I simply cannot go on living in the same world with a really intelligent woman--my friend, besides--who does not see the difference between Raphael and Guido Reni, and likes one exactly as well as the other. I ache to change it!"

"Go ahead. We don't want you to die. But I'm afraid it'll take surgery.

You'll have to drill a hole in my thick head to get the things you mean into that good brain so full of real intelligence."

"If you wouldn't be flippant!"

"What's that?"

"If you would bring reverence to the study of things done by great people, and that people of great taste and learning have collected for our joy and improvement!"

"See here! Don't you want me to have a little fun while we do Florence?

I don't see how I can stand it, if we're to be solemn as those old saints with mouldy green complexions."

"We're not to be solemn. I have done these galleries solemnly times enough, Heaven knows. But we're to be attentive, respectful, of an open and receptive mind. We're not to say outrageous things in the mere desire to shock our guide, or tease him."

"You don't mean to say you think that I--?"

"It's not funny."

"It mayn't be funny--but it's fun! Go on and lecture. You haven't got a bit of fun in you."

"Yes, I have!" said Gerald, and with a creeping smile--grudging at first, then brighter--looked Mrs. Hawthorne in the eye, while such fun as lived in him traveled over the bridge of their glances, and she was permitted to get a glimpse of his underlying relish.

"All I ask of you, Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, finally, "is that you will not let your innocence on these subjects appear when you are with others. I don't say pretend. Just keep still, be silent! It does not matter when you are with me. When you are with me I beg of you to be yourself. But with others.... You would become the talk of the town, and--" he shuddered, "I should most horribly hate it!"

"Mrs. Hawthorne," he said, with a quiver of annoyance in his voice a few days later, "did I not implore you not to let it be known in Florence how you are affected by the proudest treasures of her world-famous collections?"

"Yes, you told me. But I didn't promise."