back of the sort of masonry counter that served as kitchen stove. "They do have the queerest ways of doing things!" she murmured. He took her across the passage and into the dining-room. He wished to show her an old china tea-set, quaintly embellished with noble palaces and parks, that had been his great-grandmother's. There again she looked but casually at the thing he accounted fit for her examination, and carefully, if surreptitiously, at all the rest. Last he showed her into the great, square interior room with the glass door on to the terrace over the court, the room which had been his mother's and was now his own, and where hung a portrait of his mother. On this Aurora fixed attentive and serious eyes, and had no need to feign feeling, for appropriate feelings welled in her heart. "How gentle she looks!" she said softly. "And how much you must miss her!" She stood for some time really trying to make acquaintance with the vanished woman through that faded pastel likeness of her in youth which Gerald kept where it had hung in her day, the portrait of herself which she womanishly preferred because, as she did not conceal, it flattered her. it seemed to her sad, horribly so, haunted by the gentle ghosts of that mother and sister who had known and touched all these things, sat in the chairs, looked through the windows, and who conceivably came back in the twilight to flit over the uncarpeted floor and peer in the dim mirrors to see how much the grave had changed them. She shivered. Yes, cold and bare and sad seemed Gerald's dwelling. And Gerald, whose very bearing was a dignified denial that anything about himself or his circumstances could call for compassion-Gerald, thin and without color, looked to her cold-pinched and un- . der-nourished. She had a sense of his long evenings alone, drearily without. fire, his solitary meals in that dining-room so unsuggestive of good cheer; she thought of that single candle on the night-table burning in this cold, large room where he went to bed in that bed of iron, laying his head on that small hair pillow, to dream bitter dreams of a fair girl's treachery. She wanted to turn to him protesting: "Oh, I can't stand it! What makes you do it?" His next words changed the current of her thoughts. "I have another portrait of my mother," he said; "one I painted, which I will show if you care to see it." you She cheered up. "Do! do!" she urged heartily. "I'm crazy to see something you 've painted." "You won't care for my painting," he pronounced without hesitation; "but the "She looks like one of those persons you would have just loved to lift the burdens off and make everything smooth for," Aurora said; "and yet she looks like one of those persons who spend their whole lives trying to make things smooth for others." "Yes," said Gerald to that artless de-portrait gives a good idea of my mother, scription of the feminine woman his mother had been, and stood beside his guest, looking pensively up at the portrait. All at once Aurora felt like crying. It had been increasing, the oppression to her spirits, ever since she entered this house. to which she had come filled with gay anticipation and innocent curiosity. It had struck her from the first moment as gloomy, and it was undoubtedly cold, with its three sticks of wood ceremoniously smoking in the unaccustomed chimneyplace. Its esthetic bareness had affected her like the meagerness of poverty. And now I think, when she was older than this." They returned to the drawing-room, where their friends were in the same way engaged as when they left them. One pair was looking at a large illustrated book; the other two sat leaning toward each other talking in undertones. Gerald and Aurora crossed the room unhailed and entered the room beyond, where dusty canvases, many deep, stood face to the wall. He found the unframed painting of his mother and placed it on the easel. The short winter day was waning, but near the window where the easel stood there was still light enough to see by. Aurora looked a long time without saying anything; neither did Gerald speak. After the length of time one allows for the examination of a picture, he took away that one and put another in its place; and so on until he had shown her a dozen. "I don't know what to say," she finally got out, as if from under a crushing burden of difficulty to express herself. "Please don't try!" he begged quickly. "And please don't care a bit if you don't like them." She let out her breath as at the easing of a strain. He heard it. "I won't be so offensive," he went on, "as to say that in not liking them you merely add yourself to the majority, nor yet that my feelings are in no wise hurt by your failure to like them. But I do wish you to know that I think it a sin and a shame to get a person like you, who can't pretend a bit, before a lot of beastly canvases inevitably repugnant to your mood and temperament, and make you uncomfortable with the feeling that compliments are expected." "All right, then; I won't tell any lies." She added in a sigh, “I did want so much to like them!" And he would never know what shining bubble burst there. She had wanted so much, as she said, to like them, and, as she did not say, to buy some of them, a great many of them, and make him rich with her gold. He replied to her sigh: After a moment spent gazing at the last painting placed on the easel, as if she hoped tardily to discover some merit in it, she said: "I don't know a thing about painting, so nothing I could say about your way of doing it could matter one way or the other. But I have eyes to see the way things and people look. Tell me, now, honest Injun, do they look that way to you-the way you paint them?" He laughed. "Mrs. Hawthorne, no! Emphatically no. And emphatically yes. When I look at them as you do, in the street, across the table, they look to me probably just as they do to you; but when I sit down to paint them-yes, they look to me as I have shown them looking in these portraits." "But they're so sad! So sad it 's cruel!" she objected. "Oh, no," he objected to her objection; "it's not quite as bad as that." "They make me perfectly miserable." He whipped the canvas off the easel, saying dryly: "Don't think of them again!" It looked like impatience. With hands thrust in his pockets he took a purposeless half-turn in the room, then came back to her side. "If you totally detest them, I am sorry," he said mildly. "I had wanted to offer you one, a little, unobtrusive one to stick in some corner, a token of the artist's regard." "Oh, do! do!" she grasped at his friendly tender. "Find a cheerful little one, if you can. I shall love to have it." He selected a small panel of a single tall, palely expanding garden poppy, more gray than violet, against a background of shade. Flower though it was, it still affected one like the portrait of a lady wronged and suffering. In the drawing-room to which they returned Giovanna had lighted a lamp. The fire had properly caught and was burning more brightly; the place looked rosy and warm, after the winter twilight filling the other room and the chill that reigned there. Aurora returned to the tea-table; with a disengaged air she reached for plumcake. She ascertained with comfort that Mrs. Foss did not look sad or Estelle ill used; that the abbé was as serene as ever and Miss Seymour, after her talk with Mrs. Foss, rather serener than usual. Gerald was far jollier than any of his portraits. To make sure that she was no depressing object herself, she smiled the warmest, sunniest smile she was capable of. "Do come and talk a little bit with me before I have to go home!" she unexpectedly called out to the abbé. CHAPTER X WHEN Gerald asked Mrs. Hawthorne to sit for him, she stared in his face without a word. "Don't be afraid," he hastened to reassure her; "I engage to paint a portrait you will like." She felt herself blush for the dismay she had not been able to conceal, and to hide this embarrassment she lifted to her face not the handkerchief or the bouquet with which beauty is wont to cover the telltale signal in the cheek, but a wee dog, as white as a handkerchief and no less sweet than a bouquet. She rubbed her nose fondlingly in the soft silk of his breast, while, tickled, he tried, with baby growls and an exposure of sharp pin teeth, to get a bite at it. Gerald looked on with simple pleasure. Because he had given Aurora that dog. On the day of making a scene because she was to receive a dog from Hunt he had set to work to find one for her himself, the prior possession of which would make it natural to decline Charlie's, if, as Gerald doubted, Charlie's offer had been anything more than facile compliment. And now, instead of the torment to his nerves of seeing her fondle and kiss a brute of Charlie's, he had the not disagreeable spectacle of her pressing to her warm. and rosy face an animal that related her caresses, even if loosely and distantly, to a less unworthy object. Sour and sad, dried up and done with women, a man still has feelings. It would be unfair not to add that something better than primeval jealousy actuated Gerald, at the same time as, no doubt, some tincture of that. A sort of impersonal delicacy made the idea disagreeable to him of a dear, nice woman cherishing with the foolish fondness such persons bestow on their pets the gift of afriend whom she, in taking his loyalty for granted, overrated, as he thought. The dog he had selected to present to her belonged to a breed for which he had respect as well as affection, crediting to Maltese terriers, besides all the sterling dog virtues, a discretion, a fineness of feeling rare enough among humans. That Gerald kept no dog was due to the fact that he was still under the impression of the illness and death of his last, Lucile's pet and his mother's, who had been his companion until a year or two before, a senile, self-controlled little personage of the Maltese variety. Having decided to give Mrs. Hawthorne a dog, Gerald had spent some hours watching the several components of one litter as they disported themselves in the flagged court of a peasant house, and had fixed upon one dusty ball of fluff rather than another upon solid indications of character. Snowy after strenuous purifications at the hands of Giovanna, sweet-smelling from the pinch of orris powder rubbed in his fur, and brave with a cherry ribbon, he was taken from the breast of Gerald's overcoat and deposited in the hands of Aurora, whose delight expressed itself in sounds suggestive of an ogreish craving to eat the little beast. Estelle did the same. There was no difference in the affection the two instantly bestowed on this dog. When Gerald encouraged Mrs. Hawthorne to decide for herself how she should like to be painted, she decided first of all to have Busteretto on her lap; but that was afterward given up: he wiggled. Then her white ostrich fan in her hand, her pearls around her neck, her diamond stars in her hair, a cluster of roses at her corsage, her best dress on, and an operacloak thrown over the back of her chair. Catching, as she thought, a look of irony on Gerald's face, she had a return of suspicion. "See here," she said, observing him narrowly, "there's no trick about this, is there?" sire to be painted with your plumes and pearls and roses, and they are very becoming. I shall put them in with pleasure. I know you do not believe I can paint a portrait to suit you. Very well. Grant me the favor of a chance to try. We shall see." It was true that she did not believe it, but she was so willing to hope. One of the up-stairs rooms at the back was chosen for the sittings because the light through its windows was less variable. The necessary artist's baggage was brought over from Gerald's, and the work began. Charcoal in hand, he regarded Mrs. Hawthorne quietly and lengthily through half-closed eyes. "You have not one good feature," he said, as if thinking aloud. "Oh!"-she started out of the pose they had after much experimenting decided upon-"oh! is that the way you 're going to pay me for keeping still on a chair by the hour?" "You have no eyebrows to speak of." "What do you mean? Yes, I have, too; lots of them; lovely ones. Only they don't show. They're fair, to match my hair." "You are undershot." "What's that?" "Your lower jaw closes outside of your upper." "Oh, but so little! Just enough to take the curse off an otherwise too perfect beauty." As she curled up the corners of her mouth in an affected smirk, he quickly shifted his glance, with a horrible suspicion that she was crossing her eyes. "Faultless features," he went on after a time, in commentary on his earlier remark, "do not by any means always make a beautiful face," politely leading her to suppose he meant that to be without them was no great misfortune. Estelle came into the room for company. She brought her sewing, one of those elegant pieces of handiwork that give to idleness a good conscience. Gerald felt her delicately try to get acquainted with him. She was not as altogether void of intellectual curiosity as her friend. She would seem to care about discovering further what sort of man he was mentally, what his ideas were on a variety of subjects. Also, but even more delicately, to interest him, just a little bit, in her own self and ideas. He was grateful to her, and did what he could to show himself responsive. With the portrait began the period of a less perfunctory relation between them. They had talks sometimes that Aurora declared, without trace of envy, were 'way above her head. Gerald now made the acquaintance of a new member of the household. She came into the room bearing a small tray with a hot-water pot and a cup. She took this to Aurora, who helped herself to plain hot water, explaining: This is good But I could it. Clotilde "I am trying to 'redooce.' for what ails me, they say. never in the world think of thinks of it for me, and she 's that punctual! Clotilde, you 're too punctual with this stuff. You don't suppose I like it?" "But think, Madame, of the sylph's form that it will give you!" replied Clotilde, in respectably good English. "I do think of it. Give me another cup. Mr. Fane, this is Miss-no, I won't launch on that name. It's Italo's sister, who has saved our lives and become our greatest blessing." Clotilde exposed in smiling a fine array of white teeth. She was not at all like her brother, but well-grown, white and pink beneath her neat head-dress of crisp black hair. She impressed Gerald as belonging to a different and better class. If she was vulgar, it was at least not in the same way. She appeared like that paradox, a lady of the working-class, with a distinguishing air of capability, good humor, and openness. The latter Gerald was not disposed absolutely to trust, but he was glad to trust all the rest. One day Mrs. Hawthorne asked: "Is n't that picture far enough along for you to let me see it?" "No, Mrs. Hawthorne." "Will you let me see it when it's far enough along?" |