CHAPTER XXXIV.
ROSE AND GOLD.
Aurora wrote to the address given her by the Duke of Sassovivo, and received an immediate reply. The tone of her letter might be described as dutiful. She could assume no other. That pale face and weary voice were ever before her. She wrote much as she might have written to Fra Antonio, though with less ease; and the reply was not calculated to change this new position in which the two stood to each other. D'Rubiera wrote freely of his movements and plans, and of his son, but made no reference to his feelings, and did not mention the past, or any future beyond his travels.
"I trust that you will not leave me in ignorance of any contemplated change in your mode of life," he concluded, "and that you will come to no decision on any subject of importance without giving me the privilege of offering my advice, even if you should think best not to follow it."
The letter included a note to Mrs. Lindsay, which she answered; and her answer called forth a letter addressed to herself. There seemed to be no reason why Aurora should write again, and, by the tacit consent of all, the correspondence fell into Mrs. Lindsay's hands. Sometimes Aurora did not see these letters, or saw but a part of them,—though her friend always told her the duke's movements and plans and read her out some message from him to herself.
Possibly the reason of this reserve lay in the fact that Mrs. Lindsay made Aurora the principal theme of her letters. Her triumphs, her beauty, her goodness, her admirers, her acts, her sayings, even her little whims, were all recounted.
The lady was a good letter-writer. She wrote in a simple, self-colored way a clear narrative of their life in Venice, ignoring sentiment and reflections; yet the many little incidents and phrases which she set down were like so many touches with a full brush, and gave life to what she told.
The duke remained in England but a short time. Robertino was perfectly contented, he wrote, and better without him. He crossed the ocean, and threw himself into the life of the New World, going east, west, north, and south, glancing at the agriculture, commerce, and manufactures of that prodigious country, which astonished him. The magnificent strength and vitality of it all braced him, waked him up, and dispelled his miasmas. Back to England; and, before they knew that he was there, off to Spain; and when they thought of him as in Spain, he had returned to England.
And here at length he took a brief repose. He began to go into society, and wrote Mrs. Lindsay the names of persons he met and whom she might know. Among those whom he saw constantly was Lady Maud Churchill, whom he pronounced exquisitely beautiful.
Mr. Edward Churchill was with them when the letters were brought, and
Mrs. Lindsay read out this compliment to him.
"Lady Maud is my cousin," he said. "She is a woman carved in alabaster."
Mrs. Lindsay gave Aurora the letter to read when she went to her room, and she sat there by her window after having read it, the open sheet in her lap.
"Exquisitely beautiful," she repeated, looking down at the words. "He will marry her. I am glad that he is going to marry an Englishwoman. She must be good, if she is like her cousin."
She looked out at the bright April sunlight dreamily, and for a long time without stirring. She was considering if she had not better accept Mrs. Lindsay's invitation to accompany them to America in June. She would like to see that wonderful golden land where nobody is ragged and nobody poor, —to see its prairies and forests, its cities sprung up since yesterday, its wide, clean streets with trees in them, its people, unresting, truth-telling, generous and courageous, if not always polite.
"Fancy a country where the people drink water!" exclaimed a Frenchman, on seeing water sold in the streets of Seville.
"Fancy a nation where the people are for the most part truthful!" thought this Italian, sitting in the window of a Venetian palace and looking out into the Canal Grande.
"I had better go," she said. "I shall never again have so good an opportunity. And I really do not know what else to do. There is nothing to keep me here."
And then, with the thought that she might indeed go to the ends of the earth and never come back, for any tie that held her, came the bitter remembrance of her losses.
"Oh, mamma!" she whispered, and began to cry,—not with the passion of her first sorrow, but piteously and low, with a sense of desolation.
The next day Mrs. Lindsay wrote the duke, "A name you mention in your letter opens the way to a story I have to tell you. Lady Maud Churchill has a cousin in Venice who is a frequent visitor of ours, and more than an admirer of Aurora's. It has been on my mind, to write you of this gentleman, but I always put off doing so with the expectation of having something of importance to communicate concerning him the next time. Last evening he confided to me that he offered himself to Aurora a month ago, and was refused, but so kindly that he could not give up all hope. She told him that she was free, and had a sincere regard for him, but that she did not mean to marry any one.
"Of course no man would believe his case hopeless with such a reply; and Mr. Churchill seems to think that Aurora is softening toward him. It really seems so to me also. Last evening she sat apart and talked with him nearly two hours; and this morning, as we sat alone, she suddenly exclaimed, 'I wish that Mr. Churchill would come in!'
"It is true that, having refused him once, she may feel free to show that she likes him as a friend. However it may turn out, I hope that she may be as happy as she deserves. For my part, I could not wish her a more honorable and devoted lover. He is a man calculated to win affection and esteem."
This letter was brought to the duke just as he was going out to a ball. He went back to his room to read it; and, having read it, he flung it angrily into the lighted grate.
"What does the woman mean! I'll shoot the fellow if he dares to wring a promise out of Aurora. And this stuff about Lady Maud. What did I write? Do they fancy that I care for her? I like her as I like Wenham ice. Aurora 'softening' toward this impudent Englishman! She would soften toward a cat if it cried. Mr. Edward Churchill her devoted lover! Arcidiavolo!"
With this growl of rage, rolling and deep-drawn, the Italian went to his escritori, and wrote, "Aurora should not think of marrying an Englishman. Sooner or later he is sure to return to England; and what would she do here? I do not at all approve of the match; and I hope that you will do all that you can to prevent it. Above all, do not let anything be concluded in haste."
An event of importance in Mrs. Lindsay's family prevented her replying to this note. Shortly after its reception her first child was laid in her arms. Nor did she show the note to Aurora, though she requested her to write a line to the duke, informing him that a young lady of the most tender age but obstinate will had placed a veto on her writing at present.
It would be impossible to say whether father or mother was more happy and proud over the advent of this little girl, but there could be no doubt that the mother was the more peremptory and authoritative concerning it. If Mrs. Lindsay had been queen of the household before, she was empress now, and that in her own right.
"You are only prince consort, John," she remarked to her husband, when he suggested that the child might be baptized in the house by the resident Protestant minister. "I am regnant. My daughter may be baptized by a Protestant minister, and welcome, if—but she is going to be baptized in San Marco, and Aurora Coronari is to be her godmother and Prince P—— her godfather. If you can reconcile that with your minister, do so."
The prince consort bowed his head meekly. "I have no particular objection that a priest should baptize her," he said. "I am very much pleased to have the prince and Aurora stand sponsors for her. Of course it doesn't make any difference what they promise for her now. She will be sure to do as she pleases when she grows up,—if she should turn out to be like her mother."
The baptism took place on the first day of May, in the morning; and the company invited to assist were to return to Palazzo Pesaro to breakfast in honor of the event.
Mrs. Lindsay had her gondola—the baby's gondola pro tem..—decorated for the occasion. An immense white umbrella, lined with gold-colored silk, was fixed to cover the seats, and the whole gondola was lined and carpeted with white and pale blue. A blue fringe fell over the edge almost to the water, and bouquets of flowers were bespoken.
Not only this: she had made a pact with Aurora, who declared that a girl baptized in the month of May should have Mary for one of her names. Mrs. Lindsay would include the name if Aurora would attend the ceremony dressed like the Madonna of an ancient picture of hers, she herself to furnish the dress; and Aurora consented.
This Madonna on a sparkling gold ground had a long veil of dim blue falling over her head and shoulders, and wore a dress of dull-red wool with faint golden reflection. It was a Raphael dress, and had a band of fine gold embroidery across the neck and round the wrists.
The dress came home the evening before, and was tried on and displayed to the family, with whom was Mr. Edward Churchill.
"There! wasn't I right?" exclaimed Mrs. Lindsay in triumph.
"Suppose we should scrape out the Madonna and have Aurora painted in her place," Mr. Lindsay proposed, with perfect seriousness.
"The Madonna is an antiquity," his wife said, with dignity.
"But her eyes are turned like a Chinese's," the gentleman persisted.
"And her expression is cross."
"I wouldn't do it for the world," Aurora declared. "I feel almost wicked in assuming her dress."
"Well," Mr. Lindsay sighed. "Only don't assume her squint, and I think you will be forgiven the clothes."
Every night when Aurora went to her room she extinguished her candle and sat awhile by the open window. The custom had at first been a poetical one, it was now a sign of trouble. She had seen that evening but too clearly that one refusal was not enough for Mr. Edward Churchill.
"It is another reason for going away," she thought. "I must take myself out of his sight. And yet I like him so! Why cannot he be friendly and nothing more?"
The canal was almost deserted, though the Lagoon below was alive with boats. The water was a dark mirror below. She could see the stars in it, and the sound of its liquid touch to step and mooring-post was almost inaudible.
As she sat there, a gondola slid along inside the posts and stopped under her window. A moment after, a chord was struck on the strings of a mandolin.
Ah! a serenade! It was not her first one by far, and she leaned forward with pleasure to hear it. The scene was well set for music. But as the first words fell on her ear she shrank back again. It was Edward Churchill's mellow voice, and he sang a serenade of Mrs. Norton's, in English:
Soft o'er the fountain,
Lingering, shines the southern moon;
Far o'er the mountain
Breaks the day,—too soon.
In thy dark eyes' splendor,
Where the warm light loves to dwell,
Weary looks, yet tender,
Speak their fond farewell.
Nita, Juanita, ask thy soul if we should part!
Nita, Juanita, lean thou on my heart!
When, in thy dreaming,
Hours li'ke these shall shine again,
And morning beaming
Prove thy dream is vain,
Wilt thou not, relenting,
For thine absent lover sigh,
In thy heart consenting
To a prayer gone by?
Nita, Juanita, let me linger by thy side!
Nita, Juanita, be my own dear bride!
Silence fell, continued, and pressed. There was no note of music from below, no response from above. Then there was a stroke of oars lightly falling, then ceasing, and again silence. Not a sign of response. Slowly the gondola glided away and disappeared in the night.
"I am so sorry for him!" Aurora murmured, and softly closed her window.
"So sorry!"
She recollected what Mrs. Lindsay had said of the fascination of this serenade: "If the woman who hears this sung to her—well sung—on a beautiful night does not at once accept the singer, it is because she is in love with some one else."
"I am in love with freedom and with poetry," Aurora exclaimed, and hastily put the subject away.
The cortège that accompanied the babe to church the next morning was a picturesque one. A dozen gondolas brought their loads to the palace steps, and the company entered and paid their respects to the mother while waiting for the procession from the nursery.
Mrs. Lindsay, on this her first appearance, received in one of the front salons,—a room lined with gold-colored satin, with sofas and chairs covered with maroon velvet flowers on a gold satin ground. She wore a marvellous toilet, which looked like sea-foam, so covered was it with laces.
"The difficulty with these rooms is that they extinguish almost anything that you can wear," she said. "Nothing looks well against these draperies but old point-lace. That asserts itself anywhere."
She certainly contrived to make herself a very lovely and interesting object seen against those rich cushions. No color reflected upon her but light, in her slight languor and pallor of convalescence, her cheeks delicately thinned, she was like a white rose drooping in the heat of noonday.
The nursery sent down its treasure. First came Aurora in her Madonna dress, and was received with acclamations. Then came a footman, then two wondrously-dressed nurses, with their heads a halo of silver filigree pins, one of the nurses bearing the lace-wrapped infant in a white embroidered mantle that fell almost to the floor. Two maids followed.
This little company filled the babe's gondola, that swept out, the others following and surrounding it as they glided down to San Marco. The place of honor was the infant's, and Aurora sat at her left hand, and bent to talk to her and keep her in good humor.
"She looks at you, Donna Aurora," the nurse said. "And, see! she smiles."
In fact, it had been found that Aurora had the right magic "Coo-coo!" and the cunning hand and soothing cheek which babies require.
At starting, she had observed a covered gondola at rest opposite the house, and saw that some one was watching them from its curtained window. It was not surprising, for their little pageant was pretty. But she was surprised when the gondola slipped forward beside her own and became almost entangled with their followers. For a moment she thought that it might be Mr. Churchill, but a swift, stolen glance showed her that the arm which rested by the window wore a military sleeve.
"Some officer who knows the family," she concluded. They knew a good many officers.
The entanglement was but momentary, and might have been accidental, the person inside having evidently given orders to let them pass. Leaning on his oar against the out-flowing tide, the gondolier took his hat off and bowed lowly, smiling at the babe.
"E riverita, Madama Innocenza!" he said.
Aurora gave him a kind glance. "But you will be more innocent still in a few minutes," she said to the infant.
They reached the landing, and walked across the piazza to Saint Mark's, and entered the baptistery. A good many people gathered about the door during the ceremony, and among them Aurora was aware of a military officer who stood leaning against the grating. She did not look at him, or she would have known that his eyes were fixed on her alone.
When, after holding the infant at the font, and giving it a string of names as long as a rosary, she turned to restore it to its nurse, and bent to kiss its rosy face as she released it, the officer smiled, gazing earnestly at her downcast eyes. He saw her lips move in a whisper.
She was repeating the gondolier's salutation: "E riverita, Madama
Innocenza!"
As they went out, her veil brushed the gold-banded sleeve, and she heard a faint sigh from the wearer. It required a force not to look at him, not to show that she was conscious of his presence and pleased by it. Any one who wore a soldier's dress touched her heart, from general down to orderly.
Home through the sunshine, in through the shaded court, up the stair with its painted lords and ladies looking down upon them from the painted arcade.
Mrs. Lindsay came out to the stair to receive them, and to embrace her infant before dismissing it to the nursery.
Mr. Churchill had joined them at Saint Mark's, and returned with them, sitting beside Aurora at breakfast. Both ignored the serenade as if it had never been.
"My cousin Edith and Mrs. Graham arrived last evening," he said. "They will stop here a week or two before returning to England."
"Oh, I should like to see them!" Aurora said cordially. "Tell me where they are, and I will leave a card today. I am sure, too, that Mrs. Lindsay will wish to make their acquaintance."
The breakfast ended with coffee in the beautiful garden the dining-room windows looked into; then one by one the company departed. Mr. Churchill lingered a few minutes after the others, then went, seeing no hope of an interview with Aurora.
As soon as he had left the room, Mr. Lindsay accompanying him, Mrs. Lindsay turned with an almost impatient vivacity to Aurora. "At last I can tell you!" she exclaimed. "Do you know who is in Venice, who sent me a note while you were at church, and who will dine with us this evening?"
She looked triumphant and joyful.
Aurora was silent a moment. "I can guess," she said. "And yet—"
"D'Rubiera has come!" Madama announced. "What other coming could be so joyful to us? He has left the boy in England, has himself been to Rome on a flying visit for business purposes, and is come back to see us. Is it not delightful? That was all I needed to make this the loveliest day of my life."
"Did you see him?" Aurora asked.
"Why, no! His note was left immediately after you started. I sent a reply instantly to his hotel, asking him to dine with us. His acceptance was handed me while we were taking coffee. Did you not see Febiano present the note? It was a comedy. That man cannot resign the idea that we are official people, I and John both, and he never lets a note wait, whoever may be with me. He comes with a solemn, gliding discretion, a sort of secret-stairway manner, and half presents, half slides the note to me, as if it were a call to a council of inquisitors in the ducal palace."
"I hope that the duke is not so unhappy as he was when last I saw him,"
Aurora said gravely.
"What should he be unhappy about?" demanded Madama, who seemed indeed to be in the highest of spirits. "He has youth, health, wealth, rank, a character worthy all these blessings, and a beautiful boy. Do you imagine that he is going to mourn forever for a woman whom he never really loved, and who disgraced and tormented him? Poor thing! let her rest. It is almost a year since she died, and he has paid sufficient respect to her memory. I take it for granted that the duke is as full of life and spirit and joy as a man can be."
"Madama Teresa mia," said Aurora, "whom are you scolding? Allow me to remind you that I expressed a wish that the duke would not prove to be unhappy."
"And the wish implied a doubt," her friend retorted. "And your reference to the past was a shadow. And I will have no shadows to-day. Now I am going to have my repose, and I advise you to do the same. And you will wear the same dress at dinner, will you not? It is so pretty. Besides, you are looking rather pale, and it gives you a glow."
She went; and Aurora, instead of following her advice to go to rest, took refuge in the ball-room, which was her in-door promenade. She was never interrupted there. When she was in the ball-room, and they heard her light step going to and fro, it was taken for granted that she was composing, and the room became a sanctuary. No profane foot must cross the threshold.
She was very far from composing verses on this May afternoon. She was trying to tranquillize her mind, which Mrs. Lindsay's news had disturbed. She would be glad to see the duke, surely, dear kind friend that he was! Yet what meant the shrinking which accompanied that pleasant anticipation? She felt that she should tremble at his approach, and that her voice would falter. It would be a strange folly; and yet she feared that it would be impossible to control herself.
"It is because of all that happened before I left Sassovivo," she murmured to herself. "I have got him tangled up in my mind with those miserable affairs. I am certainly growing nervous, and it will never do. Away with all that has passed since he became Duke of Sassovivo! Su, Rubiera, whom I knew a soldier years ago, who bade me sing, and laid your drawn sword across the keys of my piano-forte for a motive, —Rubiera, who came across a chasm to me as I stood clinging to the broken wall, and smiled courage into my sinking heart. Su, Rubiera, who divided the olive-twig with me, promising to challenge me when we met again with Fuori il verde! It was I who showed the green and gave the challenge when we met, and I have the three leaves yet." She drew a locket from her breast, and opened it to look at the memento, and at her mother's miniature enclosed with it.
She was smiling now. That bright past had thrust aside all painful recollections, and the old cordial, loving confidence was coming up again.
The sun, declining to the palace roofs opposite, flooded the room with light. It made Aurora's red dress brilliant, and played and sparkled on the gold she wore. Twenty little golden chains of Venice hung around her neck, slender thread after thread from throat to girdle, invisible now with fineness, and now showing a misty flash in the sun. There was a gold filigree rose in her hair, which at certain movements changed to a red rose, and then to a pallid flame, and in the shadow it had all the softness of a yellow rose just blown.
Aurora walked to and fro in the light, a brilliant figure, counting over the treasures of her memory.
"I wonder what I sang that night!" she murmured. "I never copied it. It was something about my country. When I ended they crossed their swords above my head, D'Rubiera and General Pampara. What did I sing? I wish I could remember."
She was so absorbed that a step crossing the next room failed to attract her attention. She did not even hear the light tap at the door. But when it opened, and some one entered, closing the door behind him, she turned abruptly and faced the intruder, fully conscious now.
He was an officer, who tossed his cap away at sight of her, and he had the face she had been thinking of,—the same face, full of life, and more full of joyous excitement than she had ever seen it.
They stood so for a moment, the length of the room between them, gazing at each other, with some sense of floating in all that light, as if they were far up in the sky, they two alone, on their way to heaven.
Then the soldier held up some tiny object in his hand, and came rapidly forward.
"Fuori il verde!!" he cried out.
As in a dream, as though they were indeed being sucked up through the blue unsteady air, Aurora tried to pull the locket from her bosom, and desisted, for, throwing aside the faded leaf, D'Rubiera extended his arms with an "Aurora!" which held all pleading and all command, all passion and all delight, that love can give to the human voice.
Light as a gazelle she rushed into his embrace, pressing her cheek to his.
"Oh, my soldier! my soldier!" she murmured. "My soldier and my Love!"
"What a circuit I have made to reach you!" D'Rubiera said at length, holding her back at arm's length to look at her. "Are you glad to have me back, signora duchessa? Are you happy, my red rose?"
"And to think that you have entered the army again!" she said, drawing a caressing finger-tip along the gold-work on his sleeve.
"I did it to please you," he declared.
The sudden tide of joy and surprise made speech and thought almost impossible.
"I do not believe it all," Aurora said. "It is a dream I have been conjuring up." She withdrew from him. "Stay here, vision of a soldier. Do not stir. I am going to get my reason back." She turned, and walked slowly away the length of the room. "He is not here: it was a dream," she said, then turned again, uttered a sweet cry of joy, and, holding her arms out, met him half-way, and dropped against his breast again.
"I feel the motions of the earth as it flies around the sun and turns on itself," she said,—"two dizzinesses in one. As at first, so now, and so forever, without you I fall, D'Rubiera."