Читать книгу Aurora the Magnificent - Gertrude Hall Brownell - Страница 4

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Upon a day not much later in the month–a goodly day which thousands without a doubt were thinking all too short for the useful or merely delectable things they wanted to do–a certain young man in Florence would, if he could, have treated this mellow golden masterpiece of autumn’s like a bad sketch, torn it across and dropped it into the waste-basket. What is one to do with a day when nothing that has been invented seems enough fun to pay for the bother? He did not wish to paint, he did not wish to read, or to play on the piano, as he sometimes did in solitude, with one hand, to solace himself by re-framing a remembered melody. He did not wish to go out, but was restless from staying in. He did not want to see the face of friend or foe, but could no longer endure to be alone.

He stood for a moment in the middle of the floor, with his hands over his face, the ends of his fingers pressing back his eyeballs, and got in his throat a taste of the bitter waters which he felt as a perpetual pool in the center of his heart. Next minute he sneered at himself, like a schoolmaster at a boy who blubbers, and without further paltering put on his hat, took up a very slender cane with a slender grasp of yellow ivory, and ran down the long stairs of his house to the street.

“Air and exercise, air and exercise!” This prescription he repeated to himself, and, surely enough, in a quarter of an hour felt better.

14He was on Via Tornabuoni. Passing Giacosa’s, he glanced in to see if it were any one he knew taking tea so early behind the great plate glass window. No, they were chance English. He halted before a shop farther on to look at a display of jewelry, wondering that there should be fools enough in the whole world to support one such dealer in turquoise trinkets that at once drop out their stones; crude, big mosaics, and everlasting little composition-silver copies of the Strozzi lantern.

He crossed the street and entered the bank, where he found the usual table strewn with weeklies and monthlies for the advantage of those clients who must be asked to wait. He seated himself with his face so directed that if an acquaintance should enter, he need not bow, and turned over the magazines one after the other. It hurt him like a direct personal injury to find these authors all alike so shallow, dishonest, giving the public not their thought or their experience, but something, anything, it would buy.

“A little more air and exercise is what I evidently need,” said the young man, and again went out into the streets.

He turned toward the river, and had not followed the Lungarno for more than ten yards before it was with him as when, looking out of the window in despair at the weather, we see a break in the clouds. His step took on alertness; his face lighted in the very nicest way.

The young lady on whom his eyes were fastened from afar did not see him. She came at her usual step, a happy mean between quick and slow, accompanied by a hatless serving-woman carrying a music-roll. She looked straight before her, but her glance was absent. The passers could not but notice her,–she had beauty enough for that, and was besides conspicuous in wearing a costume entirely white,–but 15she was not noticing them or the eyes that turned to keep her a moment longer in sight. She looked rather shut in herself, rather silent; not really proud and cold, but proud and cold as the feeling and modest and young have to look if they are to keep their sacred precincts from the intrusions of curiosity.

The young man approaching questioned her face to see if it were sad. No, as far as he could tell, she was not in any way troubled. At the same time he knew that it was neither a face nor a nature to be easily read. Still, not to find her visibly sad comforted him.

She did not recognize the young man till he was almost near enough to touch her, and she had heard her name called, “Brenda!”

Then her face showed a genuine, if moderate, pleasure.

“Gerald!”

“What are you doing?” he asked, with the freedom of a familiarity reaching back over long years. He shortened his step to keep time with hers, which she at the same moment lengthened.

“I have been for my singing-lesson.”

“And where are you going?”

“Home.”

“I haven’t seen you for ages.”

“You haven’t come. One never sees you, one never meets you anywhere any more.”

Her English was different from the ordinary in having occasional Italian turns and intonations. His partook of the same defect, but in a lesser degree.

“But I have come,” he stood up for himself, “and you were all out except Lily. Didn’t she tell you I was there? We had a long talk. She told me her plans for the future. 16She is going to keep a school for poor children. We discussed their diet and their flannels and every point of their bringing-up. We invented things to do on holidays to give them a good time. There is only one thing I can see leaving a doubt of this school coming into being. It is that Lily has moments, she confessed to me, of thinking almost equally well of a castle with a moat and drawbridge and a page to walk before her carrying her prayer-book on a cushion. She’s a funny young one.”

“It’s partly Fräulein.”

“How are they all?”

“Well, thank you. At least, I suppose they are well.” She gave a slight laugh at the humor of this. “You could hardly imagine how little I see of them.”

“What has happened?”

“They have been going around with some new people, some Americans. They have been helping them to shop, and showing them the way one does things over here. Mother, you know, is always so ready.”

“Your mother is a dear.”

“Leslie is just like her. But I am sure they both enjoy it, too. They have not been home to lunch for a week.”

“And you?”

“Oh, I am not needed where there are already two who do the thing so much better than I could. I have not even seen the people. My day is very full, you know. Piano and singing-lessons, and I am painting again this winter, with Galletti, and I am going to a course of conferenze on Italian literature. That involves a lot of reading. There are, besides, the other, the usual things, the–” Her voice stuck; then, as she went on, deepened with the depth of a suppressed impatience. “I wish one might be allowed not 17 to do what is meant for pleasure unless one takes pleasure in it. But going to teas and parties is apparently as much a duty as school or church. Mother and Leslie at least seem to think it so for me.”

“I see their point, Brenda dear, don’t you?” He was not looking at her as with a gentle brotherliness he spoke this.

“You don’t go to many parties yourself, Gerald.”

“I am afraid nothing I do is fit to be an example to anybody. But it doesn’t matter about me. About you it does. I can’t say to you all I think. It would sound fulsome, and from such an old chum might make you laugh. But, being as you are, Brenda, surely your mother is right in thinking of le monde as the proper setting for you. You know I’m not fond of le monde, but it’s because it hasn’t enough such ornaments as yourself. With the life that lies before you–”

“Who can possibly know what my life will be?” the girl asked quickly, almost roughly.

“True, Brenda. I dare say I am talking like a fool.” He left off, wondering that for a moment he should actually have been speaking on the side of convention.

They walked a few rods in silence. They had crossed the bridge, and were headed for Porta Romana, the handmaiden trotting in their tracks, when at a corner Gerald stopped, and, as if to change the subject, or to regain favor by a felicitous suggestion, said:

“Do you remember my telling you of a painting I came upon in a little old church on this street? Scuola di Giotto, they call it, but the thing is undoubtedly Sienese. Have you the time? Shall we take a moment to see it?”

18“I should be glad. If you will walk home with me afterward, Gerald, I might tell Gemma she can go.”

There was an exchange of Italian between the young lady and the maid, after which the latter turned, and with a busy, delighted effect about the rear view of her walked back across the bridge to spend her gift of an hour in what divertisements we shall never know.

The church was closed. Gerald pulled the bell-handle of the next door. A priest opened to them, and, seeing at a glance what was wanted, guided them through a white-washed corridor to a living-room where a crucifix hung on the wall and the table had a red cloth; by this into a dim and stony sacristy, whence they emerged into the back of a darkling little church, with shadowy candlesticks and kneeling-benches, the whole full of a cold, complex odor of old incense and old humanity and, one could fancy, old prayers.

The priest brought a lighted taper and, crossing to one of the side altars, held it near the painting, which was all that well-dressed people ever came for outside of hours.

The reddish light trembled over the figure of a majestic virgin, in the diadem and mantle of a princess, bearing the palm of martyrs in her hand. It was a very simple and noble face, beautiful in a separate way, which not every one would perceive, so little in common had it with the present-day fair ladies whose photographs are sold.

Gerald had taken the light from the priest’s hands and was lifting, lowering, shading it, experimenting, to bring out all that might still be seen of the withdrawn image on its faintly glinting field of gold. His face was keen with interest; the love of beautiful things in this moment of satisfaction smoothed away from it every line of dejection and irritability.

19Brenda was examining the picture with an attention equal to his, but, if one might so describe it, of a different color. Her admiration got its life largely from Gerald’s, whose tastes in art she was in the habit of adopting blindfold. Of this, however, she was not aware, and gazed doing good to her soul by the conscious and deliberate contemplation of a masterpiece.

“Do you remember a great calm, white figure in the communal palace at Siena?” Gerald asked, “with other figures of Virtues on the same wall? Doesn’t this remind you of them?”

Brenda answered abstractedly:

“Yes,” and continued to look. “How amazing they are!” she fervently exclaimed. He supposed she meant the saint’s hands or eyes, but she explained, “The Italians.”

He did not take up the idea either to agree or to dispute; his mind was busy with one Italian only, the painter of the picture before him.

The young girl’s interest flagged sooner than his own; he felt her melt from his side while he continued seeking proof in this detail and that of the painter’s identity.

When he turned to find her and to follow, she was kneeling on one of the wooden forms, her gloved hands joined, her face toward the high altar.

He approved the courtesy of it, done, as he knew, in order that the priest, who stood aside, waiting for them to finish, should not think these barbarians who came into his church to see a work of art had no respect for his shrines and holies. Having returned the light to the priest Gerald himself, while waiting for Brenda, took a melancholy religious attitude, his hat and cane held against his breast, and sent his thoughts 20gropingly upward, where the solitary thing they encountered was his poor mother in heaven. Heaven and the changes undergone by those who enter there he could never make very real to himself. He thought of her as she used to be, affectionate and ill.

At the stir of Brenda rising from her knees he, too, stirred, ready to depart. She was bowing to the altar, making an obeisance so deep, so beautifully reverent, that the priest could never have guessed she was not a Catholic. After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the sanctuary, like one with last fond words to say after the farewell; and this excess of either regard for the priest’s feelings or else a devoutness he had not suspected in her quickened Gerald’s attention. And there in the dimness he saw what he had not seen in the broad light of day, that his friend’s little face, which had presented the effect of a house with all the blinds drawn down, was lighted up behind the blinds–oh, lighted as if for a feast!

He felt himself at sea. He had thought he knew the circumstances. Some part, of course, nobody could know unless Brenda chose to tell them. But what reason there should be for positive joy–

A suspicion flashed across his mind. He looked at her more closely, and put it away.

She might have been the wisest of the virgins, the one who before any other heard the music of the bridegroom and was first to light her lamp. She stood as if listening to his footsteps.

That such a simile should have been possible to Gerald shows how much the expression of Brenda’s face centered attention on itself, for her white serge dress was in the fashion of that year, and it was not a fashion to be remembered with any artistic joy. Gerald was never reconciled to it.

After it she still stood a moment, looking toward the sanctuary

22He had the power to detach himself and at will see persons as if he looked at them for the first time. So for a moment he saw Brenda as a thing solely of form and color, a white shape against a ground of gloom, and took new account of the fact that the little girl who had had pigtails when he first knew her, and gone to the Diaconesse with lunch-basket and satchel of books, had from one season to the next, stealthily, as it were, and while his back was turned, become beautiful.

More than that. He was looking at Brenda–he recognized it with a pulse of exquisite interest–in her exact and particular hour. He had surprised a rose at its moment of transition from bud to bloom, that delicate and perfect moment when the natural beauty which women and fruits and flowers have in common, reaching its height, hangs poised–for such a pitifully short time, alas!–before it changes, if not declines, to something less dewily fresh, less heart-movingly untouched, less complete.

The artist could not long in this case be regarding the girl as part of a picture; his human relation to the owner of that lifted profile brought him back to wondering in what the quiet ecstasy it breathed could have its source. He was touched by it, by the whole character, at the moment, of her face, with its strength so nullified by gentleness.

When the will is strong and nature sensitive, what arms has youth with which to prevail? What but the power to keep still and hold on? Nothing was in Brenda’s face so marked as that power, except, in this moment of undisguise, while she thought herself unwatched, its singular happiness, a mingling of tenderness, dedication, hope.

23The genuine sympathy he felt for her made Gerald deserving of the intuition that blessed him while he stood there trying to divine. An interpretation of her secret offered itself, worthier of him as of her than the suspicion of erewhile; one so beautiful, indeed, that he felt uplifted by standing in its presence. All he had most cared for in his life, the things that had touched and inspired him,–visions of painters, dreams of poets, scenes of beauty, sweet of human intercourse,–all the influences that make life dignified and fair, seemed in their essence to be in the air around him, like scents of flowers in the dark....

The wish to pray came over him again, yet he wanted to weep, too, because as soon as his heart expanded a little the rusty splinter of a knife corroding there reminded him that lofty sentiments, sincerities, idealisms, have as their fruit in this life–dust, derision! He wondered that without being any older one could feel as old as he did while watching Brenda transfigured by her poor young dream.

Now for the second time she curtseyed to the altar. The priest moved, Gerald moved, all three passed up the aisle, to a faint chink of coins in Gerald’s pocket where he groped for a fee. At the main altar the priest dipped a rapid genuflexion.

As soon as they were outside Brenda began to talk about the picture, to ask questions, as if the art of the Italians had been of all things nearest to her heart, and Gerald was drawn into holding in the street while they walked a sort of lecture on the primitives.

All the while, in an independent corner of his brain he was reflecting upon the absurdity of supposing that because he was an old familiar of the Fosses, and so fond of them all, he knew anything of their affairs these days, when he saw 24them so seldom. Ever so many things could have happened without his knowledge. The girls might have new friends and admirers just as they had hats and dresses that he had never seen.

They were making their way while talking toward Porta Romana, and were often obliged to step off the narrow sidewalk to make room for other passers, the street being busy at that time of day.

Brenda was in the midst of an entirely pertinent remark when her voice softly died, like the flame of a candle sucked out by a draft or like a music-box run down. Gerald, looking round for the end of her sentence, saw that she had sighted an acquaintance on the other side of the street.

She nodded, without a smile, slowly. Just so must Beatrice have bowed in these same streets of Florence when she passed the dreamy passionate youth through whom we are acquainted with her name.

Gerald’s eyes traveled across the way to see who might be the recipient of the lady’s most sweet salute, and hurriedly uncovered to an officer of the Italian army who, holding his hand to his cap, stood at attention till the two had passed.

Was the man pale or was it that one had never before noticed, meeting him indoors and at evening, how strongly the black of his mustache and brows contrasted with his skin? The suspicion that had for a moment troubled Gerald in church returned as a stronger infection. Had Brenda expected this? Did they concert such meetings?

He might have said to himself that a tryst which consisted in crossing glances from opposite sides of the street was very innocent. In a moment he did see that as the villas fuori la porta must be reached through the porta, a lover 25 whose lady lived on Vial dei Colli might without previous arrangement hope for a glimpse of her by walking in its neighborhood.

As we have seen him doing more than once this afternoon, Gerald here tried to get his clue from Brenda herself, her face, her atmosphere. Yet he knew, as has already been said, that it was Brenda Foss’s way to keep these as much as she could from telling anything to the world. This wariness notwithstanding a tinge of unaccustomed rose had spread through the clear white of her cheek; her eyes had in them noticeably more life. Emotion or mere self-consciousness?

On one point only he was satisfied: Brenda had done nothing that involved deceit. Into the very structure of her face, which had almost nothing left of the American look, was built a certain Puritan truthfulness. She could conceal if she must, but hated to shuffle, to prevaricate. She concealed exactly because of that.

“Go on with the Sienese masters, Gerald,” she bade him, collectedly. “I am listening, and learning a lot.”

As they passed under the great arch of the Roman Gate, Gerald was saying modestly:

“I don’t know anything about them, really. I’ve just been impressed by a thing or two. This Lorenzetti, for instance–” And so on up the viale to the house.

In the drawing-room they found Mrs. Foss and Leslie, who, just home from town, tired and thirsty, had had tea brought to them, and were strengthening themselves before even taking off their hats.

Their welcome to Gerald was mingled with reproaches of the sort that flatters more than it hurts.

“It’s perfect ages since we saw you. We thought you 26had forgotten us. What have you been doing this long, long time?”

“It is you, who are never at home, my dear friends,” Gerald took his turn. “I was here a fortnight or so ago. Didn’t Lily tell you? Of course she told you, and you have forgotten, so it’s I, properly, who should be calling names.”

“Have you been quite well, Gerald?” Mrs. Foss asked in her maternal voice, after a more careful look at him.

“Certainly.”

“I am glad you have come. I have been on the point more than once of sending for you, but the days fly so! We have been busy, too.”

She had poured cups of tea for Gerald and Brenda. All four were seated and refreshing themselves.

It was a very large room, but a corner had been so arranged as to look shut in and cozy. There stood the tea-table convenient to the sofa and, surrounding it, a few chosen chairs in which one could sink and lean back and be comfortable.

“Have you had a tiring day?” Brenda asked her mother, somewhat as if she were tired herself at the mere thought of such a day as she supposed her mother to have had.

“No,” Mrs. Foss answered briskly; “it’s rather fun. I don’t mean that one doesn’t get tired after a fashion. Has Brenda told you, Gerald, how we have lately been occupied?”

“Some new people, I think she said.”

“Yes, some nice, funny Americans.”

“Funny, you say?”

“I say it fondly, Gerald. Let me tell you a little about them, and you will see what I mean. They are going to 27spend the winter here and wanted a house. What house do you think they selected?”

“You really mustn’t set me riddles, Mrs. Foss.”

“For years we have seen it every time we drive to the Cascine, and seen it with a certain curiosity–always deserted, always with closed blinds, in its way the most beautiful house in Florence.”

“The most–I can’t think what house you mean.”

“Of course not, with your tastes. But imagine some nice, rich Americans, without either art education or the smallest affectation of such a thing, and ask yourself what they would like. Why, a big, square, clean-looking, new-looking, wealthy-looking house, of course, set in a nice garden, with, at the end of the garden, a nice stable. I was thankful to find the place had been kept up.”

“But is there–on the Lungarno, did you say?”

“It is that house we have called the Haughty Hermitage, Gerald,” Brenda helped him.

“Oh, that! But surely one doesn’t live in a house like that!”

“Your excellent reason?” inquired Leslie.

“I don’t know,”–he hesitated,–“but surely one doesn’t live in a house like that!”

They had to laugh at the expression brought into his face by his sense of a mysterious incongruity.

“No,” he went on with knitted brows to reject the idea; “a house like that–one doesn’t come all the way from America to live in a house which has no more atmosphere than that!”

“Ah, but that’s the point, Gerald,” said Mrs. Foss. “What you call atmosphere these people avoid as they would an unsanitary odor. Atmosphere! What would you say 28if you saw the things Leslie and I have been helping them to buy and put into it! I love to buy, you know, even when not for myself. I thought with joy, ‘Now I shall at least go through the form of acquiring certain objects I have lusted after for years.’ Delightful old things Jerome has discovered in antiquarians’ places, and that we shall never be able to afford. Do you think I could persuade them to take one of these? I represented that the worm-holes could be stopped up and varnished over, that the missing bits of inlay, precious crumbs of pearl and ivory, could be replaced, the tapestries renovated. In vain. They want everything new–hygienically new, fresh, and shining. And, Gerald, prejudice apart, the idea is not without its good side. The result is not so bad as you may think. Why, after all, should my taste, your taste, prevail in their house, will you tell me?”

“For no reason in the world. This liberal view comes the easier to me that I do not expect ever to see the interesting treasures you may have collected from Peyron’s and Janetti’s.”

“If it were no worse than that!” put in Leslie, and laughed a covered laugh.

Mrs. Foss explained, after a like little laugh of her own.

“You see, things that we have seen till we have utterly ceased to see them, the things that nobody who really lives in Florence ever dreams of buying, are new to these people. They love them. As a result, you can guess. There will be in their apartments alabaster plates with profiles of Dante and Michelangelo on a black center. There will be mosaic tables with magnolias and irises. There will be Pliny’s doves. Think of it! There will be green bronze lamps and lizards–”

29“And the fruit–tell about that, Mother!” Leslie prompted.

“There will be on the sideboard in the dining-room a perpetual dish of magnificent fruit, marble, realistic to a degree. You know the kind.”

“And you could stand by and let them–you and Leslie!” spoke Brenda, in an astonishment almost seriously reproachful.

“My dear,” Leslie took up their common defense, “one’s feeling in this case is: What does it matter? A little more, a little less.... It all goes together. When they have those curtains, they might as well have that fruit.”

“At the same time, my dear children, let me tell you that the effect is not displeasing,” insisted Mrs. Foss. “Such at least is my humble opinion. In its way it’s all right. They are people of a certain kind, and they have bought what they like, not what they thought they ought to like. Thousands of people, if it were not for you artists perverting them, would be thinking a marble lemon that you can’t tell from a real one a rare and dear possession. These people haven’t known any artists. They are innocent.”

“They’re awfully good fun,” Leslie started loyally in to make up for anything she had said which might seem to savor of mockery or dispraise. “One enjoys being with them, if they aren’t our usual sort. They are in good spirits, really good–good spirits with roots to them. And that’s such a treat these days!”

From which it was supposable that Leslie had been living in circles where the gaiety was hollow. The suggestion did not escape Gerald. But, then, Leslie, just turned twenty-four, was rather given to judging these days as if she remembered 30 something less modern, an affectation found piquant by her friends in a particularly young-looking, blond girl with a short nose. Gerald might have hoped that her sigh meant nothing had not Leslie, awake to the implication of her remark as soon as she had made it, gone hurriedly on to call attention away from it.

“Yes, it’s pleasant to be with them. It’s a change. The world seems simple and life easy. Life is easy, with all that money. Besides, Mrs. Hawthorne really is something of a dear. After all, if people make much of one, one is pretty sure to like them. Haven’t you found it so, Gerald?”

“I don’t know. I am trying to remember if there is anybody who has made much of me.”

“We have made much of you.”

“And don’t think I temperately like you. I adore you all, as you well know. You’re the only people I do. By that sign there has been nobody else kind enough to make much of me.”

“You’re so bad lately, Gerald; that’s why,” Mrs. Foss affectionately chide him. “You never go anywhere. You neglect your friends. What have you been doing with yourself? Is it work?”

“No; not more than usual. I work, but I’m not exactly absorbed–obsessed by it. I don’t know–” He seemed to search, and after a moment summed up his vague difficulties: “It seems a case for quoting ‘Hamlet.’” He was bending forward, his elbows resting on his knees, as they could do easily, his chair being low and his thin legs long. His thin, long hands played with that slender cane of his, which he had set down and taken up again, while he tried 31to recall the passage, and mumbled snatches of it: “‘This goodly firmament–congregation of vapors–Man delights not me–no, nor’–the rest of it.”

“But it won’t do, Gerald dear; it won’t do at all,” Mrs. Foss addressed him anxiously, between scolding and coaxing. “Shake yourself, boy! Force yourself a little; it will be good for you. Make yourself go to places till this mood is past. What is it? Bad humor, spleen, hypochondria? It doesn’t belong with one of your age. We miss you terribly, dear. Here we have had two of our Fridays, and you have not been. And we have always counted on you. Charming men are scarce at parties the world over. The Hunts have begun their little dances, too. One used to see you there. And at Madame Bentivoglio’s. She was asking what had become of you. Promise, Gerald, that we shall see you at our next Friday! We want to make it a nice, gay season. Will you promise? Oh, here’s Lily. Why didn’t you tell us, Lily, that Gerald had come to see us when we were out?”

A long-legged, limp-looking little girl with spectacles had come in. A minute before she had been passing the door on her way to walk, and catching the sound of a male voice in the drawing-room, insisted upon listening till she had made sure whose it was. At the name Gerald she had pulled away from her governess and burst into the drawing-room.

She stood still a moment after this impulsive entrance, and the governess turned toward Mrs. Foss a face that, benign and enlightened though it was, called up the memory of faces seen in good-humored German comic papers. The expression of her smile said to the company that she was guiltless in the matter of this invasion. Could one use 32severity toward a little girl who suffered from asthma and weak eyes?

Lily, after her pause, went half shyly, half boldly to Gerald. He did not kiss her,–she was ten years old,–but placed an arm loosely around her as she stood near his knee.

“Did you forget it, Lily?”

“No, Mother, I didn’t forget, but I never thought to speak of it. You didn’t tell me to, did you, Gerald?”

“No, we had so much else to talk about. Well, Lily, have you decided what color the uniform must be for our orphanage? The thing is important. It makes a great difference in an orphan’s disposition whether she goes dressed in a dirty gray or a fine, bright apricot yellow.”

“Gerald,”–Lily lowered her voice to make their conversation more private,–“will you be the cuckoo?” As he gazed, she went earnestly on: “We can’t find anybody to do the cuckoo. I am going to be the nightingale. Fräulein is going to be the drum. Leslie is going to be the Wachtel. Mother is going to be the triangle. Brenda will play the piano. Papa says that if he is to take part he must be the one who sings on the comb and tissue-paper. But I am afraid to let him. You know he hasn’t a good ear. That leaves the cuckoo, the comb, and the rattle still to find before we can have our Kinder-sinfonie. Which should you like to be, Gerald?”

“What an opening for musical talent! But, my dear little lady, I’m not a bit of good. I can’t follow music by note any more than a cuckoo. I am so sorry.”

“But, Gerald, all you have to do is–”

“I have told you, Lili,” said the governess in German, “that we would take the gardener’s boy and drill him for 33the cuckoo. Come now quickly, dear child; we must go for our walk.”

The casual, unimportant talk of ordinary occasions went on after the interruption.

“And what do you hear from that charming friend of yours, the abbé, Gerald?” And, “I hope you have good news from your son, Mrs. Foss.” And, “Do you know whether the Seymours have come back from the country?”

Gerald left the Fosses, warmed by his renewed sense of their friendship, and believing that he would go very soon again to see them. But he did not, and his feeling of shame was more definite than his gratitude when he in time received a note from Mrs. Foss, kind as ever, asking him to dine.