When a thing is too successful, it is seldom natural; and so when there appeared in our city a signora, blond of hair, azure of eye, with the complexion of delicate, luminous roses, red and white, whose name was at once Aurora and Albaspina,–Hawthorne,–floral counterpart of dawn, we should have had suspicions. That we had none does not prevent our feeling no very great surprise when we learn that the bearer of the poetic and more than appropriate name is called in sober truth Elena Barton. The more beautiful name was adopted by a child acting out its fairy-stories; it was remembered and re-adopted by a woman when she wished to detach her life from a past which neither charity, fidelity, nor devotion to a sacred duty had succeeded in keeping from sorrow and the deadly aspersions of malignity.
The gentilissima person of the irradiating smile, which, however briefly seen, must be long remembered, whom we have grown accustomed this winter to meeting in the salons where assembles all that is most distinguished among foreigners, whose name we have grown accustomed to finding foremost in every work of charity, has a title to our esteem far beyond the ordinary member of an indolent and favored 414 class. To alleviate suffering has been the chosen work of those hands that Florence also has found ever open and ready with their help. It was in effect the extent of their beneficence which brought about the black imbroglio from which Elena Barton chose to flee and take refuge in the City of Flowers under the soave and harmonious name by which we know her.
Her life had been for several years devoted to the care of an old man afflicted with a most malignant and terrible cancer in the face. She had filled toward him so perfectly the part of a daughter that his gratitude made her upon his death an equal sharer in his fortune with the children of his blood. Thence the law-case Bewick versusBarton, which for a period filled the city of Denver in Colorado of the United States as if with poisonous fumes. The literal daughters, two in number, who had shown no filial love for the unfortunate old man, in trying to annul their father’s will, left nothing undone or unspoken that could help their turpe, or evil, purpose, even attempting to prove that not only had the devoted nurse been their father’s amante–[You can guess what that is, Aurora. They are much simpler here than we at home about calling things by their names, and much more outspoken on all subjects], but had likewise been the amante of the son, sole member of the family who supported her claim to the share of the fortune appointed by the father. Justice in the event prevailed, but a tired and broken woman emerged from the conflict. What to do to regain a little of that pleasure in living which blackening calumnies and rodent ill-will, even when not victorious, can destroy in the upright and feeling nature? The imagination which had prompted in childhood the acting out of fairy-stories here came into 415 play: Leave behind the scene of sorrows, take ship, and point the prow toward the land of orange and myrtle, of golden marbles and wine-colored sunsets; change name, begin again, do good under a beautiful appellation which the poor should learn to love and speak in their prayers to the last of their days....
“The rest, Aurora dear, is pure flattery, which it becomes me not to speak nor you to hear. I won’t read it.”
“Well, I never!” breathed Aurora. “Who did it?”
“We did it! My father and your Doctor Bewick and Carlo Guerra and I. We did it to be before anybody else, set the worst that could be brought up against you in a light that explains and justifies. We did our best to fix the public mind and show it what it should think. You know what the mind of the public is. We’ve hypnotized the beast, I hope; it has taken its bent from us.”
“But–”
“This was the way of it, my dear. The day after Brenda’s wedding I was at the Fontanas,–she was a Miss Andrews, you know, of Indianapolis,–and there was Charlie, too, and there was likewise Madame Sartorio, who is Colonel Fontana’s niece by his first marriage. We were talking in a little group when something, I forget what, was said about you, Aurora. Charlie–for what reason would be hard to think, unless one had a sharp scent for what goes on under one’s nose–Charlie interrupted, to introduce as a sort of parenthesis, ‘Mrs. Hawthorne, whose real name, by the way, is Helen Barton.’ The others were naturally taken aback, except Madame Sartorio, who could not quite disguise a cat-smile. For a moment none of us 416knew what to say, and Charlie went on, with his air of knowing such a lot more than anybody else–
“‘Yes. It seems that all winter we have been warming in our bosom, so to speak, the heroine of a cause célèbre at a place called Colorado in America.’”