source of mirth. The fair Simonetta, making the mistake of swallowing a mouthful in the midst of one of his remarks, had to have her back pounded by the friar who had married her to Raniero. Tears ran down the cheeks of the faithful maid Ginevra, and a stout old woman, attired like the nurse of Juliet, began to utter barking cries of anguish: "Enough! Enough! This is killing me! I've burst my bodice-strings!" The waiters brought in candles and fresh bottles of Chianti. Simonetta, after her fit of choking, had the hiccoughs. Raniero proposed, as a friendly act, to slip the door-key down her back. Ginevra, with a tightening lip, suggested that ten swallows of water was a better remedy. This raised another laugh. Raniero and Ginevra, it appeared, were contemplating marriage. They were waiting only till they had put aside a little money: in matrimony a time might easily be foreseen when Ginevra could not act. Still, it was hard to wait. One learned, indeed, that among the knights and ladies high odds were offered that one of these fine days Ginevra and Raniero, forgetting all prudent maxims, would run off to a priest like mad. Somehow the autumn in Italy affected one very much in the same manner as the spring. "And the summer and the winter seem to have similar properties!" vouchsafed the friar, waggling his tonsured pate satirically. So they fell to discussing love, and there was no doubt that they approved of that phenomenon. Even Oddo di Vespaione had a word of commendation for it, while the fat old dame attired like the nurse of Juliet wheezed forth, "Madonnina! yes, it is good!" And she fixed her eyes with a sort of anile rapture on the chromo of King Victor Emmanuel II. Meanwhile Raniero and Ginevra sat listening, hand in hand, he, with his olive cheeks and velvet eyes, so richly dark, she, with her creamy skin and yellow Lombard locks, so delicately blonde. Simonetta, on the other hand, was a willowy brunette, with ripe, red cheeks, snapping eyes, and a mouth like a poppy. Turning to Thallie solicitously, she asked: "You are not feeling well, Signora?" "It 's nothing," said Thallie, nervously raising her left hand to her cheek. And all at once the company perceived that the third finger of her left hand lacked a wedding-ring. For a moment, even among these Latins, instinctively so tactful, there fell a silence of surprise. Thallie, for her part, did not understand the reason for this hush till John remarked: "Ah, my friends, at last you have seen something, or, rather, nothing!" Simonetta quickly replied: "It is no less a pleasure to find that our hostess is the sister, instead of the wife, of the signore." "No," said John, "we are not related in that way, either." And as every one sat motionless, trying to smile in an encouraging way, he added quietly, "But in such good and sympathetic company I don't mind telling the secret. It is this, that we are in just about the same position as Ginevra and Raniero." There was no doubt that for a second or two Thallie's heart stopped beating. Attempting to move, she found herself paralyzed by what seemed fright, yet could hardly be that emotion. She discovered that her mouth was open, and tried her best to close it: but it twisted into all sorts of curious shapes. She was vaguely aware of a clatter of applause, of graceful speeches flung at her like garlands, of a large, firm hand that closed on hers under the ragged table-cloth. She heard John saying: "At first we hesitated on account of a certain disparity of age. When one is twenty and the other forty, one is likely to be only thirty when the other is all of fifty." "You, Signore?" cried Ginevra, indignantly. "Bah! You will be young at sixty! You have the very complexion of my father, who was sixty-one when I was born. Do I look as if that marriage had been a failure?" And, indeed, Ginevra was what might be called a personal success. "Ages!" echoed Simonetta. “I was married at fifteen; my husband was forty. To-day I am twenty-two and happier than ever." Whereupon, springing to her feet, she sped down the room, to throw her arms round that wicked knight, the long-nosed Oddo di l'espaione. All the troupe clapped their hands, like an audience applauding a fine scene at the play. "So you see, Signore!" "Oh, yes," John assented, "in the end we, too, concluded that the present was worth as much attention as the future. For, after all, in life we are sure only of to-day." And turning to Thallie, he whispered, "Is n't it so, that we 're reasonably sure of to-day?" She lowered her head till her widebrimmed hat was all that could be seen. But presently her hat bobbed up and down once, twice, in timid assent. The rest was like a dream. The dinner over, the steamboat nearly due, it was time for these characters out of the fifteenth century to melt away. Their brocades and armor shimmering in the candle-light, their teeth flashing in sympathetic and admiring smiles, they crowded forward to utter, in soft, musical tones, their thanks for this entertainment. Then a shout from the doorway, "The steamer's in sight!" sent them flying up the stairs to change their costumes. The dining-room was empty except for John and Thallie and the draggle-tail waiters. "See," said John, "they 've vanished into thin air. They were wraiths; they came and are gone; they've ceased to exist already except in our memories. You don't mind my having taken a lot of jolly phantoms into our confidence?" But outside the Grand Hotel of the Lake a shower of daisies fell round Thallie. From a window overhead leaned the fair Simonetta. "Good-by! May you be glad forever!" And with that wish was mingled the voice of the wicked Oddo: "Good-by! It was only in the play, you know, that she preferred that young rascal Raniero!" The motor-launch had returned; John and Thallie embarked in it. The lights of Varenna receded, the obscurity of the lake stole forth to embrace the throbbing boat; but a pale sheen began to spread above the mountains, heralding the moon. A strong arm encircled Thallie's shoulder, the same arm that had caught her fast, one day long ago, as she tumbled down the last flight of steps in Via de' Bardi. With a sob she pressed her face against the breast-pocket of his coat, which smelled faintly of cigars and toilet-water. But the old fellow who drove the motorlaunch gave scarcely a glance to those two heretics. He had lived all his life on the lakes, and it was not the first time that he had witnessed such a tableau, in the evening, when the moon was rising over the hills. "No," she quavered at last, "it won't do! There's something I 've got to say." And in some way or other she managed to tell him of the carnival ball at the Politeama Fiorentino. His arm did not relax its hold around her shoulder. "Feel better now?" he asked. She was trembling like a leaf. He said, "Then let 's forget it." The lights of Cadenabbia drew near; but Thallie, with a long sigh, nestled closer. She felt so grateful, and so safe in that embrace! Indeed, she had never felt like this before. All the rest of her life she was going to be protected. She would go with him into the deserts, yes, and into many of those fashionable restaurants as well; and a little of his celebrity would be refracted upon her. She would have all the fame she needed; this was better than becoming a great painter. This was what she had been made forto be loved, to be guarded, to adore somebody who was stronger than she. Was it not really more than she deserved? "What did you ever see in me?" she faltered. "I suppose," he replied, "living with yourself as you do, you 've never indeed realized that there are very few of your kind left?" They ascended the terraced staircase to the villa. Dinner was over; the others were in the music-room; the door was shut. Thallie remembered Bertha. "What will she say!" "Who?" "Madame Linkow." "Probably sing some nice, foolish little song to indicate delight. She 's had time to think of one. She congratulated me this morning when we were going down the steps below Frossie's open window. Good old Bertha! The world's full of excellent people, is n't it?" signalize that parting with some tearsthe Goodchilds and John Holland embarked for America. A call at Naples, a swift tour of the city, from which they brought back a jumbled recollection of much grace and squalor, and they were off in earnest on their ten-day voyage to New York. The rounded slopes of the Campanian coast faded at last in a cerulean haze. And so no more of Italy. All the same, that was a pleasant voyage. The Mediterranean and the Atlantic, putting their heads together between the pillars of Hercules, connived at waves unusually placid for the time of year. Thallie, who had anticipated all the humiliating agonies of seasickness, found He swept her through the hall to the that she could appear every day before pergola. The garden, inclosed by great trees, was not yet illumined by the moon. The cascade rippled behind a veil of shadows; the boxwood bushes eccentrically clipped, the circles and triangles of intertwining roses, the borders of pansies pruned like processions of tortoises, were as ambiguous as the dreams of other days, or the whimsical expectations of a long-lingering, but finally retreating, childhood. Yet in the midst of that place, on the pedestal, shone forth in the first moonbeam the bust of Demeter, sister of Zeus and protectress of the fruits of the earth, mother of Persephone, that unfortunate maiden who, while plucking flowers on the Nysian plain, had been drawn down by a young lover into the lower world. And at last the marble face of Demeter seemed to smile in the moonlight. CHAPTER XXI AURELIUS JOYFULLY OBEYS A PRESIDENTIAL PROCLAMATION And now no one could give Mr. Goodchild any sensible reason why they should n't all return to the United States. They bade Lake Como good-by. They stayed in Genoa only long enough to see the house where Christopher Columbus was supposed to have been born. On a gray morning-the skies were inclined to John with healthy cheeks and sparkling eyes. What a load off her mind! Suppose she had been forced to show him the face that she had worn for a while on the voyage from New York to Cherbourg! She knew that all her life she would remember these nights on deck when he and she, of equal age at last, sat side by side, wrapped in their steamer-rugs. They were often alone, for Frossie had a way of strolling toward the stern, to stare out over the dim track of foam toward vanished Italy. Mr. Goodchild, on the contrary, found his way forward, to peer through the shadows by the hour, as if at any moment he might glimpse the torch of Liberty. Finally he did so, or, at any rate, he marked the light of Sandy Hook. And next morning the steamship crept into the harbor of New York. For the girls, first of all, there were the department stores, so spacious and magnificent in comparison with the shops of Italy. Thallie learned, with a momentary dismay, that a sudden change of styles had caught her unawares: everything was now being made with a flavor of the seventies, the seventies having by this time receded sufficiently into the past to be no longer dowdy. One also observed that wider skirts were in vogue; there was, indeed, a "wide-skirt walk," a kind of sidewise sway, which had to be acquired. "But basques!" exclaimed Frossie. "And buttons all down the front! And little perked-up hats! I suppose the next thing will be those dinky carriage-sunshades!" "Why not, if it 's the fashion?" retorted Thallie, with a pirouette. "At least you might take that nice black dress we saw in Schubert's." "I can't afford it. For you, about to get married, it 's a different matter." But Thallie refused to buy as much as a ribbon till Frossie consented to invest in one new hat and gown. She argued: "Those things you 've got on were obsolete in New York six months ago. Surely, Lovins, you don't want to look like an old maid?" "That 's just what I'm going to be." They heard Bertha Linkow sing Gilda at the Metropolitan. Afterward they went round to the stage-door to bear her off to supper. Their table in the supperroom was the same that they had occupied one night, eighteen months before, when they had first laid eyes on John. He, leaning closer to Thallie, said: costume reminiscent of the seventies, Aurelius looked at Thallie wildly. And he groaned in a breaking voice: "John! John! Be good to her! Oh, how like her mother to-day!" That same night Mr. Goodchild set out with Frossie for Zenasville, Ohio. Frossie lay for a long while awake. Her adventure into the world was finished; a year and a half had brought her back to Zenasville. The others had escaped; she alone was destined to resume the old, restricted life. But the others had failed to realize their dreams of art, while she was some day going to be at least a writer of renown. This was her recompense. Apparently one could not have everything one wished for. Still, she had memories. In her spinsterhood, to which she was looking forward with an almost monastic courage, she would be sustained by the knowledge that a well-beloved man had loved her in return till his last mortal breath. In retrospect that passion took on an awesome splendor: if it had been fine in life, it had risen to sublimity at the moment of death. Gradually she had perceived, since hearts do not need extraordinary sur famous of their kind, that she, too, had "Do I know what you 're thinking of?" roundings to gain kinship with the most "It seems so strange!" "How well I remember my feelings lived a great tragedy, intrinsically as mem when I saw you!" "Even then?" "From that very night." And now it was she, not he, as at Varenna, who reached a hand beneath the table-cloth. Then one day, with just such an impulse as had been predicted of those two amiable young phantoms Raniero and Ginevra, John and Thallie decided that they could not exist any longer without being married. It was a quiet wedding, almost as unpretentious as a runaway-match; it was over in five minutes. This time, when the minister inquired, "Who giveth this woman?" Mr. Goodchild did not miss his cue. But afterward, as he was about to kiss his daughter, blushing in her street orable as any storied one. Yes, she, who had always felt herself inferior to her sisters in attractiveness, had played the most poignantly beautiful drama of them all. And this drama had changed her; she emerged from that furnace of tragic circumstance with all the dross in her consumed. Her youthful solidity of temperament had been welded into strength; her one-time primness had been refined into a wholesome comprehension of humanity's impulses. And if there remained in her a certain romanticism due to her heredity, that trait was now so well fused with experience as to be perceptible only as a sane idealism. Fortune, in short, while laying on her shoulders a heavy burden, had largely smoothed for her the way that led to fame. She fell asleep dreaming that in some shadowy Italian place, set round with cypresses, she held up her first successful novel toward the stars, with the declaration, "We 've made this, at least, together, the corridor covered with tar-paper, and gained the studio. He saw the pine walls decorated with sketches and mechanical diagrams, the fat cast-iron stove, the win you and I!" Early next morning they arrived in Zenasville. Selina and Ira Inchkin were waiting for them on the station platform. Selina's trivial blonde prettiness was not a bit more faded; Ira's back was as stiff as ever in the business suit. The hardware-merchant, perhaps in celebration of this return, had the back of his neck freshly shaved. His wife bore two bunches of poppy-mallows, which, in her onslaught upon Frossie, she crushed against the bosom of her gray silk dress, that historic costume for ceremonial occasions. There was Maple Lane, its double row of trees denuded of their leaves, its dirt roadway cut into ruts by the wheels of wagons that had passed the week before; and there, at last, was the broken picketfence! And now one actually saw the little yellowish house, the shingles slipping from its roof, the slats of its shutters tilted at all angles, the bell-knob of white china glistening beside the door of home! Mr. Goodchild rushed up the path, between the plats of the old-fashioned garden, which, instead of showing the neglect one had expected, displayed in wellordered clumps the lingering gayness of aster, leadwort, phlox, and red-hot-poker plant. "We kept it up for you, all the flowers in their turn," Selina told Frossie, while pressing her handkerchief against her eyelids. "We knew you could n't stay away forever." But Aurelius had burst into the house. The odor of the ancient sofas, lambrequins, and tidies was like an elixir in his nostrils. He did not notice, as did Frossie, that these little rooms full of gimcracks were strangely aged and shrunken. He stood still, in his wrinkled, long-tailed coat of broadcloth, the black felt hat pressed tightly to his breast, his fragilelooking, sanguine face a-gleam with rapture. Suddenly, as if stung, he leaped through the kitchen, the kitchen-porch, dow-boxes where geraniums had bloomed. He fed his hungry eyes on the camera, the head-rest, the photographic screens bedaubed in gouache with elegiac landscapes. He touched piano and writing-desk and easel, all the precious emblems of the past. Of the past? Of the future also! "It is here that I shall make my mark even yet!" Thereafter he grew younger day by day. He regained a sprightliness which he had never shown abroad. There came from his lips the quaint songs of past decades; he often treated Frossie to a seriocomic declamation that brought back her childhood to her. Then, sometimes, he would pause in the midst of a ridiculous gesture at the recollection of his other daughters. Alas! at the lamplight hour in the studio there were no more catches sung; there was no chiming of four voices to the tunes of "Three Blind Mice" and "London 's Burning." "But they 'll all be here for Thanksgiving!" And why should a congenital optimist look farther ahead than that? However, still another literary labor was foisted upon him. Dr. Numble had left a memorandum saying, "In case of my demise, I wish that my learned friend Mr. A. Goodchild shall see to the publication of my magnum opus; viz., 'A Proof of the Soul's Immortality, by One who Remembers his Previous Existences." Aurelius, running over that bale of frowzy manuscript, computed that it would take a year or two merely to decipher Dr. Numble's script. "Land sakes!" cried Selina Inchkin, "you 're not going to take that seriously!" "Yes, it must be done; for it 's a sacred charge." Ira Inchkin vouchsafed the opinion: "You 'd much better spend your time writing Selina a play. Something foreign and catchy, such as you must 'a' got the hang of from your travels." |