Aurora the Magnificent

by Gertrude Hall Brownell

Aurora, always simple-mindedly charmed with a compliment, paused long enough to investigate Gerald’s comparison, then resumed, with the effect of taking a plunge into deep waters:

“But it was there I met the fellow who did me the worst turn of any....

“They brought him in with broken ribs one rainy night, after he’d been knocked down in the street by a team and kicked by the horses. I wasn’t his regular nurse, but I was in and out of his room, and if he rang while his regular nurse was at her meals, I’d go. Everybody knows that when a man’s sick he’s liable to get sweet on this or that one of his nurses.

“How I could have been mistaken in Jim Barton I can’t see now. Since knowing him, if I ever see anybody that looks a bit like him, I shun them like poison, because I know as well as I need to that however nice they may appear, you can’t depend upon them. But before I knew him I’d never stop to distrust anybody.

“It began with our setting up jokes together; he could be awfully funny even when he was swearing like a pirate about his luck landing him in a hospital. Bad language didn’t seem so awful coming from him, because he was so light-complexioned and boyish-looking. He was only passing through the city, in an awful hurry to get West, when he got hurt, and he was madder than a hornet at 240the delay. But after a while he quieted down, because he’d got something else to think about, which was getting me to go along with him to California, where he’d bought a share in a mine. And me, star idiot of the world, it seemed the grandest thing that had ever happened. I’d never had anybody in love with me that way before. The boys had always liked me, but I’d been like another fellow among them, and I’d never more than just been silly for a week or two at a time over one fellow and another at a distance. And here was a solid offer from a perfectly splendid man who had everything, money included. They’d found several thousand dollars on him when he was picked up. And the yarns he told about gold-mines!... But it wasn’t that, it wasn’t the gold-mines, it was ‘the way with him’ that caught me. I guess when you’re in love you’re no judge of your man. We two, I tell you, seemed made for each other. He was as fond of a good time as I, and he loved fun, like me. We were going to California to make our everlasting fortune. You’d have thought there was no more doubt about it than the Gospels being true. And the good times we were going to have while doing it were nothing to the good times we’d have after, when I’d have my diamonds and he’d have his horses and things. As I said, the diamonds weren’t needed; I’d have gone with him anywhere just for the fun of being together. I couldn’t see what I’d done to deserve my blessings. I guess he was in love, too, as far as it was in him to be; I’ll do him that justice.

“Hattie and her ma, while they had nothing to say against Jim, wanted me to wait awhile. But Jim couldn’t wait. The moment he was well enough he wanted to be 241off. And I didn’t care much about waiting either. I felt as if I’d known him all my life. So they said nothing more and gave us a perfectly lovely wedding from their house. They didn’t see through him any more than I did, and in a way it wasn’t strange, because he wasn’t hiding anything in particular or misrepresenting anything. He believed all he said about the big money he was going to make and the grand times we should have. He was born with the sort of nature that always believes things are going to turn out right without labor and perseverance on your part. He wasn’t fond of work, that’s sure. What we ought to have done was find out something about his past; but even that, I guess, wouldn’t have opened our eyes, with him before us looking like one of ourselves. And it wasn’t a very long past; he was young. He came of good folks, I guess. I never saw them, but there are ways of telling. Good folks, but not wealthy, and so as to get rich easily he had tried one thing after another. He was quick’ discouraged, and the moment the thing didn’t look so big or easy he wanted to throw it over and try something else. Then I’ve come to the conclusion he loved change for its own sake–go somewhere else, take a new name, and start a new business, talking big. It came out after he died that he’d been known under half a dozen names in as many States. There simply wasn’t anything to him. I don’t believe he meant to act like a skunk, but, then, he hadn’t any principles either to keep him from acting like a skunk, or meaner than a skunk, when it came to getting himself out of difficulty. And I, for my sins, had to marry such a fellow as that! It was like there had stood the good times I’d always wanted, 242 right before me in the body, and I took them for better, for worse, and got what my ma said I deserved to get when she tried to cure me of my fancy for good times!”

“Don’t!” protested Gerald, softly. “Don’t regard as wrong what was so natural. All who have the benefit of knowing you must thank the stars which permitted your beautiful love of life to survive the dreadfulness of which you have given me a glimpse.”

“The dreadfulness, Geraldino! I haven’t told you anything yet of the dreadfulness. I haven’t come to it. I haven’t come to what makes her”–she nodded toward the portrait,–“look like that.”

“Then tell me!” he encouraged her.

“It isn’t Jim. When I think of Jim, it only makes me mad. My heart is hard as stone toward him.” She clenched her jaws and looked, in fact, rather grim. “That he’s dead doesn’t change it. I hope I forgive him as a Christian ought to who asks forgiveness for her own trespasses. I know I don’t feel revengeful. There wasn’t enough toJim for me to wish him punished in hell. But if you think I have any sentiment because I used to love him, or that I was sorry I woke up from my fool dream when I once had seen it was a dream–Not a bit of it. There was a time, though, when I first began to suspect and understand, that makes me rather sick to think of even now. I was so far from home, you see. I hadn’t a friend, and I wouldn’t for worlds have written back to my old friends that I’d made a bad bargain–not while I wasn’t dead sure. And I kept on hoping.