He would have liked to make her an offering a little exquisite, a little rare, which she might recognize as possessing these points and accordingly prize. To bestow anything concrete would have been folly. A few possessions he had which he would have thought worthy of the acceptance of queens: a tear phial of true Roman glass, a Japanese print or two, a few coins that were old already when Christ was young. And he would have parted with any one of these treasures to Mrs. Hawthorne, though not wholly without a pang: first, because he liked her, and then because he had eaten as it seemed to him a good deal of her bread and syrup. But she would not have cared for these things; while bereaving himself, he would have enriched her not at all.
The duty of doing something for Mrs. Hawthorne’s pleasure was felt even by Charlie Hunt, who took her to a concert. When Gerald heard of it, he searched more persistently and, fate aiding, found something which might give the lady amusement, he thought, and would certainly 139afford an opportunity that would hardly have come her way without his good offices.
The morning mail brought him a note relating to his project; he did not wait for afternoon to communicate its contents.
It was eleven when he rang at Mrs. Hawthorne’s door. He had hardly finished asking the servant whether the signora were at home when he heard her voice upstairs, singing behind closed doors.
She had said so many times, when he went through the formality of having himself announced and waiting for permission to present himself, “Why didn’t you come right up?” that this morning he said to the servant, “It imports not to advise her. I shall mount.” Did the servant look faintly ironical, or did Gerald mistakenly imagine it?
The tune she sang sounded familiar. It must be a hymn, he decided, but could not remember what hymn, or even be sure it was one he had heard before, hymns are so much alike. He stopped at the sitting-room door and waited, listening to the big, free, untrained velvet voice, true throughout the low and medium registers, flat on the upper notes, the singer having carelessly pitched her hymn too high. He could hear the lines now, given with a swing that made them curl over at the ends, and with a punch on certain of the syllables, irrespective of their meaning:
“Feed me with–the heavenly manna
In this barr–en wilderness;
Be my shield, my sword, my banner,
Be the Lord–my righteousness!”
140When she came to the words,
“Death of death and hell’s destruction,”
a bang and rattling ensued, as if some one were taking a practical hand in that work. The heavenly ferryman was thereupon besought with vigor to land her safe on Canaan’s side, and the singing ceased.