Aurora the Magnificent Part 53

"Gerald is good, too," said Leslie, with an effect of more impartiality but no less positiveness. "He would disdain to be anything else."

"What is wrong with me is that I'm selfish, I guess," said Estelle, looking contrite, "and don't like having to give her up to him, after all the beautiful things we'd planned together. What I ought to feel is nothing but thankfulness for her having such a chance of happiness, and then thankfulness for all she did, trying to make up for her desertion."

Without transition, Estelle went back to the story of the past night.

"You can imagine there wasn't any more sleep for that spell. I got up, and we went to her room, where she had all the lights lighted and was in the middle of packing her trunk. She only took one, and about a quarter of her things. Gerald's going to design wonderful costumes for her, the style he prefers. I could see she's ready to do just anything to please him. I'd already noticed how she'd altered her way of doing her hair, but wasn't smart enough to recognize the signs!... While she was at work packing she planned for my summer,--that I'm to invite Mademoiselle Durand to go traveling with me, so I can improve my French at the same time as give that poor hard-working creature a real vacation and treat.

Then when they go to Venice, she wants me to join them, and the three of us have a regular jamboree. Then next winter, after I've got home, she wants me to go to Colorado to visit the Grand Canon and see the great sights of my native country before settling down again in East Boston.

She made me a present of Ami."

"Ami?"

"I've changed his name from Busteretto. Don't you like it better? Little Tweetums! He's the only darling I've got left!" She pressed a kiss on the warm top of his head. "She made me a present of all the clothes and things she wasn't taking with her. She made me a present of everything in this house that we didn't find in it when we took it--turned it all over to me to do what I please with. And I'm sure I don't know what I shall do with it all unless I set up a store. Anything you see and think you'd like to have, please say so."

"She gave you all these things? Do you mean it?" asked Leslie, surprised despite what she had already known of Aurora.

"Yes, and along with the things, of course, the responsibility of settling up everything, dismissing the servants, sending Livvy back to New York. Such a job! Luckily, there's no hurry; the lease doesn't expire until October. When you came I'd been sort of looking round. I was just wondering what to do about this Fountain of Love. Nell paid a frightful lot for these four panels. I'd been trying to see if they could be carefully peeled off and the wall behind restored, and while I was looking the sight of that winter scene broke me all up. It doesn't tell a very cheerful tale, you know, this series of pictures. After what I'd just been through, saying good-by to them, it worked on me like a bad omen."

"Don't be foolish. Then you saw Gerald, too, before they left?"

"Yes. I could have done without, but she'd have been hurt. So I shook hands, and managed to wish him joy. He was nice, but, then, Gerald always is that. I've never for a moment said anything different. He said he wanted me to feel that I hadn't lost a sister, but acquired a brother. Just as they were driving off I remembered something, and called after Nell, 'What about your portrait?' for I couldn't think she meant to give me that along with the rest. Gerald said before she could speak, 'Take it away!' And Nell said right off, 'Oh, yes. Keep it, Hattie; keep it!' That lovely portrait he painted of her! I don't see how she could bear to part with it. But, of course, now she has him she can have as many portraits as she wants. Come and tell me what you think, whether it would be safe to pack it, frame and all, or better to unframe it, or, better still, to take the canvas off the stretcher and roll it."

Accordingly, they left the room of the cupids and garlands, traversed the vasty ball-room where the chandeliers, like two huge ear-rings, divided up the light into twinkling diamond and rainbow showers, entered the drawing-room of the dignified sixteenth-century chairs, which from the first had suffered an undeserved neglect, and pa.s.sed thence into the familiar parlor of the mult.i.tudinous baubles and the grand piano and the portrait; performing in the contrary direction the pilgrimage on which, at a period which seemed so immemorably far as to have become legendary, Gerald had followed Aurora walking before him with a light.

They stood beneath the portrait, and with the image present to their minds of painter and sitter hasting on their way to be wed, saw this equivocal masterpiece with a difference. Not Aurora alone looked forth from the canvas,--throat of lily, cheek of rose, heaven-blue eyes, smile and ringlets of immitigable sunniness. Gerald, self-depicted in every subtle brush-stroke, looked, too.

"It takes sober, solid, careful people to be interesting when they commit a rashness," thought Leslie. Then, with a little surge of envy in her well-regulated breast, "To be swept off one's feet," she thought, "how educative it must be, how enlarging."

But a doubt fell, shadow-like, across her vision of future fortunes. If a person never found it possible to fall in love with those who fell in love with her, would it necessarily follow that the Some One she should someday love would regard her with coldness?

Estelle gazed upward at the portrait with a wistful, well-nigh solemn look. Not being able, hampered by a dog in her arms, to clasp her hands, she expressed the same impulse by clasping the dog close to her breast in token that her wishes for her dearest friend's good were more than wishes, were a prayer.

She felt a hand laid lightly on her forearm.

"You needn't be afraid," said Leslie, "they'll be happy."

THE END