Dorothy, and Other Italian Stories
by Constance Fenimore Woolson · English · Gutenberg #39170 · 474,716 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Dorothy, and Other Italian Stories
Author: Constance Fenimore Woolson
Release date: March 16, 2012 [eBook #39170]
Language: English
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[Illustration: DOROTHY]
DOROTHY
AND
OTHER ITALIAN STORIES
BY
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1896
By CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.
MENTONE, CAIRO, AND
CORFU. Ill'd. $1 75.
ANNE. Illustrated. $1 25.
EAST ANGELS. $1 25.
JUPITER LIGHTS. $1 25.
THE FRONT YARD, Etc. Illustrated. $1 25.
HORACE CHASE. $1 25.
CASTLE NOWHERE. $1 00.
RODMAN THE KEEPER. $1 00.
FOR THE MAJOR. Illustrated. $1 00.
PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.
Copyright, 1895, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All rights reserved.
NOTE
Of the stories contained in this volume, "A Florentine Experiment" was
originally published in the _Atlantic Monthly_, and the others in
HARPER'S MAGAZINE.
CONTENTS PAGE
DOROTHY 1
A TRANSPLANTED BOY 60
A FLORENTINE EXPERIMENT 122
A WAITRESS 187
AT THE CHÂTEAU OF CORINNE 237
ILLUSTRATIONS
DOROTHY _Frontispiece_
THE VILLA DORIO _Facing page_ 4
"AND AGAIN SHE LOOKED UP AT HIM" " " 22
"'I MEAN THAT I SHALL SEE HIM VERY SOON NOW'" " " 56
"'OH, HOW EARLY YOU'VE COME UP!' SAID MASO" " " 70
"'MR. TIBER, BEG!'" " " 72
"WE MUST SINK OR SWIM TOGETHER, MASO" " " 90
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WATERHOUSE " " 96
TEA IN THE GARDEN " " 188
"THE DOG WAS FOLLOWING AT THE EXTREME LENGTH
OF HIS CORD" " " 218
DOROTHY
I
As it was Saturday, many visitors came to the villa, Giuseppe receiving
them at the open door, and waving them across the court or up the stone
stairway, according to their apparent inclination, murmuring as he did
so: "To the garden; the Signora North!" "To the salon; the Signora
Tracy!" with his most inviting smiles. Dorothy probably was with Mrs.
North in the garden. And everybody knew that the tea and the comfortable
chairs were up-stairs. The company therefore divided itself, the young
people as far as possible, the men who like to appear young, and the
mothers who have heavier cares than the effects of open-air light on a
middle-aged complexion, crossing the paved quadrangle to the north hall,
while the old ladies and the ladies (not so old) who detest gardens
ascended the stairs, accompanied by, first, the contented husbands;
second, the well-trained husbands; third, other men, bond or free, who
cherish no fondness for damp belvederes, for grassy mounds, or for
poising themselves on a parapet which has a yawning abyss below.
Giuseppe was the gardener; he became a footman once a week, that is, on
Saturday afternoons, when the American ladies of the Villa Dorio
received those of their friends who cared to come to their hill-top
above the Roman Gate of Florence--a hill-top bearing the appropriate
name of Bellosguardo. For fair indeed is the outlook from that supremely
blessed plateau, whether towards the north, south, east, or west, with
perhaps an especial loveliness towards the west, where the Arno winds
down to the sea. Enchanting as is this Occidental landscape, Mrs. Tracy
had ended by escaping from it.
"When each new person begins: 'Oh, what lovely shadows!' 'Oh, the
Carrara Mountains!' we cannot look at each other, Laura and I," she
explained; "it's like the two Roman what-do-you-call-ems--augurs. I'm
incapable of saying another word about the Carrara Mountains, Laura; and
so, after this, I shall leave them to you."
This was the cause of Giuseppe's indicating the drawing-room, and not
the garden, as Mrs. Tracy's domain.
It was not difficult for Giuseppe to turn himself into a footman;
Raffaello, the butler (or cameriere), could have turned himself into a
coachman, a cook, a laundress, a gardener, or even a parlor-maid, if
occasion had so required; for Italian servants can do anything. And if
Mrs. Sebright sighed, "Ah, but so badly!" (which was partly true from
the English point of view) the Americans at least could respond, "Yes,
but so easily!" In truth, it was not precisely in accordance with the
English standard to be welcomed by smiles of personal recognition from
the footman at the door, nor to have the tea offered by the butler with
an urgent hospitality which was almost tender. But Italy is not England;
radiant smiles from the servants accord perhaps with radiant sunshine
from the sky, both things being unknown at home. As for the American
standard, it does not exist, save as a vacillating pennon.
The Villa Dorio is a large, ancient structure of pale yellow hue; as is
often the case in Tuscany, its façade rises directly from the roadway,
so that any one can drive to the door, and knock by simply leaning from
the carriage. But privacy is preserved all the same by the massive
thickness of the stone walls, by the stern iron cages over the lofty
lower windows, and by an entrance portal which resembles the gateway of
a fortress. The villa, which, in the shape of a parallelogram, extends
round an open court within, is large enough for five or six families;
for in the old days, according to the patriarchal Italian custom, the
married sons of the house, with their wives and children, were all
gathered under its roof. In these later years its tenants have been
foreigners, for the most part people of English and American
birth--members of that band of pilgrims from the land of fog and the
land of haste, who, having once fallen under the spell of Italy, the
sorcery of that loveliest of countries, return thither again and yet
again, sometimes unconscious of their thraldom, sometimes calling it
staying for the education of the children, but seldom pronouncing the
frank word "living." Americans who have stayed in this way for twenty
years or more are heard remarking, in solemn tones, "In case I die over
here, I am to be taken home to my own country for burial; nothing less
could content me." This post-mortem patriotism probably soothes the
conscience.
Upon the Saturday already mentioned the Villa Dorio had but one tenant;
for Mrs. Tracy had taken the entire place for a year--the year 1881.
She could not occupy it all, even with the assistance of Mrs. North and
Dorothy, for there were fifty rooms, besides five kitchens, a chapel,
and an orange-house; she had selected, therefore, the range of
apartments up-stairs which looked towards the south and west, and the
long, frescoed, echoing spaces that remained were left to the ghosts.
For there was a ghost, who clanked chains. The spectre of Belmonte,
another villa near by, was more interesting; he was a monk in a brown
gown, who glided at midnight up the great stairway without a sound, on
his way to the tower. The American ladies had chosen for their use the
northwestern garden. For the Villa Dorio has more than one garden; and
it has also vineyards, olive groves, and the fields of the podere, or
farm, in the valley below, with their two fountains, and the little
chapel of the Holy Well. The northwestern garden is an enchanting spot.
It is not large, and that adds to the charm, for its secluded nearness,
so purely personal to the occupier, yet overhangs, or seems to, a full
half of Tuscany; from the parapet the vast landscape below rolls towards
the sunset as wide and far-stretching as the hidden shelf, one's
standing-point, is private and small. When one ceases to look at the
view--if one ever does cease--one perceives that the nook has no formal
flower-beds; grass, dotted with the pink daisies of Italy, stretches
from the house walls to the edge; here and there are rose-bushes,
pomegranates, oleanders, and laurel, but all are half wild. The
encircling parapet is breast-high; but, by leaning over, one sees that
on the outside the ancient stones go plunging down, in course after
course, to a second level far below, the parapet being in reality the
top of a massive retaining-wall. At the corner where this rampart turns
northward is perched a little belvedere, or arbor, with vines clambering
over it. It was upon this parapet, with its dizzy outer descent, that
the younger visitors were accustomed to perch themselves when they came
to Villa Dorio. And Dorothy herself generally led them in the dangerous
experiment. But one could never think of Dorothy as falling; her supple
figure conveyed the idea that she could fly--almost--so lightly was it
poised upon her little feet; in any case, one felt sure that even if she
should take the fancy to throw herself off, she would float to the lower
slope as lightly as thistle-down. The case was different regarding the
Misses Sebright; they, too, were handsome girls, but they would
certainly go down like rocks. And as for Rose Hatherbury, attenuated
though she was, there would be, one felt certain, no floating; Rose
would cut the air like a needle in her swift descent. Rose was thin (her
aunts, the Misses Wood, called it slender); she was a tall girl of
twenty-five, who ought to have been beautiful, for her features were
well cut and her blue eyes lustrous, while her complexion was delicately
fair. Yet somehow all this was without charm. People who liked her said
that the charm would come. The Misses Wood, however, spent no time in
anticipation; to them the charm was already there; they had always
believed that their niece was without a fault. These ladies had come to
Florence twenty years before from Providence, Rhode Island; and they had
remained, as they said, "for art" (they copied as amateurs in the Uffizi
Gallery). Of late they had begun to ask themselves whether art would be
enough for Rose.
At five o'clock on this April afternoon the three Misses Sebright, Rose,
Owen Charrington--a pink-cheeked young Englishman, long and
strong--Wadsworth Brunetti, and Dorothy were all perched upon the
parapet, while Miss Maria Wood hovered near, pretending to look for
daisies, but in reality ready to catch Rose by the ankles in case she
should lose her balance. Miss Jane Wood was sitting with Mrs. North in
the aguish belvedere. With remarkable unanimity, the group of men near
by had declared that, in order to see the view, one must stand.
"Your garden is like an opera-box, Mrs. North," said Stephen Lefevre;
"you sit here at your ease, and see the whole play of morning, noon, and
night sweeping over Tuscany."
"A view like this is such a humanizer!" remarked Julian Grimston,
thoughtfully. "One might indeed call it a hauberk."
To this mysterious comparison Miss Jane Wood responded, cheerfully,
"Quite so." She did not ask for explanations (Julian's explanations were
serious affairs); she spoke merely on general principles; for the Misses
Wood considered Julian "such an earnest creature!" Julian, a wizened
little American of uncertain age, was protected by a handsome mother,
who possessed a firm eye and a man-like mouth; this lady had almost
secured for her son an Italian countess of large circumference and
ancient name. Julian so far held back; but he would yet go forward.
"Its most admirable quality, to my mind, is that it's here," Mr.
Illingsworth remarked, after Julian's "hauberk." "Generally, when there
is a noble view, one has to go noble miles to see it; one has to be out
all day, and eat hard-boiled eggs on the grass. You can't think how I
loathe hard-boiled eggs! Or else one has to sleep in some impossible
place, and be routed out at dawn. _Can_ any one admire anything at
dawn?"
[Illustration: THE VILLA DORIO]
"There isn't much dawn in this," answered Daniel Ashcraft. "Up to noon
the view's all mist, and at noon everything looks too near. It doesn't
amount to much before four o'clock, and only shows out all its points as
the sun goes down."
"And have you discovered that, Mr. Ashcraft, on your third day in
Florence?" demanded Illingsworth, with admiration. "But it's only
another instance of the quick intelligence of your wonderful nation. Now
I have lived in the town for twenty-five years, and have never noticed
that this Carrara view was an afternoon affair. Yet so it is--so it is!"
Daniel Ashcraft surveyed the Englishman for a moment. "Oh yes--our quick
intelligence. It makes us feel as though we were being exhibited.
Sixpence a head."
More visitors appeared; by half-past five there were forty persons in
the garden. Mrs. North received them all very graciously without
stirring from her belvedere. Dorothy, however, was everywhere, like a
sprite; and wherever Dorothy was Owen Charrington soon appeared. As for
Wadsworth Brunetti, his method was more direct--he never left her side.
"They are both her _shadows_," said Beatrice Sebright, in an undertone,
to Rose Hatherbury, as they sat perched side by side on the parapet.
"She is welcome to them," answered Rose. "A burly creature like Owen;
and that Waddy!"
"Waddy?" repeated Beatrice, inquiringly.
"A simpleton," pronounced Rose, with decision.
Honest Beatrice surveyed her companion with wonder, into which crept
something almost like envy; if she, Beatrice, could only think that Owen
was burly; and if it were but possible, by trying hard, to regard
Wadsworth Brunetti as a simpleton, how much easier life would be! As it
was, she was convinced that Owen was not burly at all, but only
athletic. And as to Waddy Brunetti, he was simply Raphael's young St.
John in the Tribune of the Uffizi--the St. John at twenty-two, and in
the attire of to-day. Wadsworth Brunetti's American mother had done her
best to make an American of her only child; Waddy could speak the
language of New York (when he chose); but in all other respects--his
ideas, his manner, his intonations, his hair arranged after the fashion
of King Humbert's, his shoes, his collar and gloves--he was as much a
Florentine as his father. The Misses Sebright were not mistaken in their
estimation of his appearance; he was exceedingly handsome. And the
adverb is used advisedly, for his beauty exceeded that degree of good
looks which is, on the whole, the best for every-day use; one hardly
knew what to do with young Brunetti in any company, for he was always so
much handsomer than the other guests, whether women or men.
"Isn't it enough that he allows himself to be called Waddy?" Rose had
demanded in the same contemptuous undertone. "Waddy--wadding. What a
name!"
"But Madame Brunetti tells us that Wadsworth is one of the very best of
American names?" objected Beatrice, timidly, still clinging to her idol.
"She's mad; there are no best American names--unless one cares for those
attached to the Declaration of Independence. The thing is, the best
American men; and do you call Waddy that?"
Beatrice did. But she dared not confess it.
"Dorothy, I have forgotten my shawl," said Mrs. North, as Dorothy
happened to pass the arbor.
"I'll go for it," said Charrington.
"Is it in the drawing-room?" inquired Julian Grimston. "A blue and
white, with knotted fringe?"
Dorothy, meanwhile, was crossing the grass towards the house; Lefevre
followed her; Waddy accompanied her.
"Nobody can get it but Dorothy--thanks; it is in my own room," said Mrs.
North.
Charrington and Julian paused; Lefevre came back. Mrs. North said to
Lefevre, "Praise my prudence in sending for a shawl." Then she added,
laughing, "You dare not; prudence is so elderly!"
She could afford to make a joke of age; tall, thin, with abundant
drab-colored hair and a smooth complexion, she did not look more than
thirty-five, though she was in reality ten years older. She was a widow;
her husband, Richard North, had been an officer in the American navy,
and Dorothy was her step-daughter.
Dorothy and Waddy had gone on, and were now entering the north hall.
This vacant stone-floored apartment, as large as a ball-room, with a
vaulted ceiling twenty-four feet high, was the home of an energetic
echo; spoken words were repeated with unexpected force, in accents
musical but mocking. It was one thing for Waddy to murmur, "Give me but
a grain of hope, only a grain," in pleading tones, and another to have
the murmur come back like an opera chorus. Dorothy paused demurely, as
if waiting for the conclusion of the sentence. But her picturesque
suitor, still hearing his own roaring "grrrrain," bit his lips and tried
to hasten their steps towards the other door.
"Oh, I thought you had something to say!" remarked Dorothy, innocently,
when they reached the arcade within. "But you never have, have you."
And with this she crossed the quadrangle to welcome four new guests who
were about to ascend the stairway in answer to Giuseppe's "The salon!
Signora Tracy!" Waddy went up the stairs also. But he could not hope to
follow to the remote region of Mrs. North's chamber, so he accompanied
the new guests through the anterooms to the drawing-room at the end of
the suite, where Mrs. Tracy, the second hostess, received them all with
cordial greetings. Mrs. Tracy's years were fifty. She hoped that she was
fine-looking, that epithet being sometimes applied to tall persons who
hold up their heads, even if they are stout; even, too, if their noses
are not long enough for classical requirements. She certainly held up
her head. And she was always very well dressed; so well that it was too
well. After saying a few words to Waddy, she passed him on to Miss
Philipps, who stood near her. Felicia Philipps despised the beautiful
youth. But she was willing to look at him for a few minutes as one looks
at--a statue? Oh no, that would never have been Felicia's word; at
wax-works, that was more like it; Felicia had a sharp tongue. She now
chaffed the wax-works a little, pretending to compliment its voice; for
Waddy could sing.
"As I sing too, Mr. Brunetti, we're companions in soul," she said. "But,
unfortunately, when _I_ sing, my soul does not come to my eyes, as yours
does."
"The comfort of Waddy is that you can make mince-meat of him to his
face, when you feel savage, and he never knows it," she had once
remarked.
There was, however, another side to this: Waddy did not know, very
possibly, but the reason was that he never paid sufficient heed to Miss
Felicia Philipps to comprehend what she might be saying, good or bad; to
his mind, Felicia was only "that old maid." Mrs. Tracy, for the moment
not called upon to extend her tightly gloved hand to either arriving or
departing guests, expanded her fingers furtively, in order to rest them,
and glanced about her. Her rooms were full; there was a steady murmur of
conversation; the air was filled with the perfume of flowers and the
aroma of tea, and there were suggestions also of the _petits fours_, the
_bouchées aux confitures_, and the delicate Italian sandwiches which
Raffaello was carrying about with the air of an affectionate younger
brother. Waddy, who cherished a vision of Dorothy coming to get a cup of
tea for her mother (Waddy had noticed upon other Saturdays that "my
shawl" meant tea), detached himself as soon as he could from Felicia,
and made his way towards the tea-table in the opposite corner. Here Nora
Sebright was standing behind a resplendent samovar. Mrs. Tracy had
purchased this decorative steam-engine in Russia; but she had not dared
to use it until Nora, seeing it at the villa one day, had offered to
teach her its mysteries. Mrs. Tracy never learned them; but Nora came up
every Saturday, and made the tea in her neat, exact way. She was number
one of the Misses Sebright. Six sisters followed her. But this need not
have meant that Nora was very mature, because hardly more than a year
separated the majority of the Sebright girls (one could say the
majority of them or the minority, there were so many). As it happened,
however, Nora was twenty-nine, although Peggy, the next one, was barely
twenty-five; for the six younger sisters were between that age and
sixteen. These younger girls were tall, blooming, and handsome. Nora was
small, insignificant, and pale; but her eyes were charming, if one took
the trouble to look at them, and there was something pretty in her soft,
dark hair, put back plainly and primly behind her ears, with a smooth
parting in front; one felt sure that she did not arrange it in that way
from a pious contentment with her own appearance, but rather from some
shy little ideal of her own, which she would never tell.
"Do you think they have all had tea?" she was saying anxiously as Waddy
came up. She addressed a gentleman by her side who had evidently been
acting as her assistant.
"I think so," he answered, looking about the room with almost as much
solicitude as her own.
Her face cleared; she laughed. "It's so kind of you! You have carried
cups all the afternoon."
"I only hope I haven't broken any," responded her companion, still with
a trace of responsibility in his tone.
"It is terribly dangerous, with so many people pushing against one. How
you can do it so cleverly, I can't think. But indeed, Mr. Mackenzie, I
do not believe you _could_ let anything drop," Nora went on, paying him
her highest compliment. "This is the fourth Saturday you have given to
these teacups; I am afraid it has been tiresome. Raffaello ought to do
it all; but Italian servants--"
"They are not like yours in England; I can understand that. But
Raffaello, now-- Raffaello has seemed to me rather a good fellow," said
Mackenzie.
At this moment Dorothy, carrying a shawl, appeared at the door; she made
her way to the table. "May I have some tea, Miss Sebright, please, for
mamma?"
"I will carry it for you," said Waddy, eagerly.
"Won't you take some tea yourself, Miss Dorothy, before you go back to
the garden?" suggested Mackenzie, in his deferential tones.
"I? Do you think I take tea? And how can you like it, Mr. Mackenzie?
You're not an Englishman."
Waddy thanked fate that his mother had entered human existence in New
York. Charrington, who was now near the table also, only laughed
good-naturedly. On the whole he was of the opinion that Dorothy liked
him. Her ideas about tea, or about other English customs, were not
important; he could alter them.
"I am afraid I must acknowledge that I do like it," Mackenzie had
answered.
"Do you take it in the morning--for breakfast?" inquired Dorothy, with
the air of a judge.
Mackenzie confessed that he did.
"Then you are lost. Oh, coffee, lovely coffee of home!" Dorothy went on.
"Coffee that fills the house at breakfast-time with its delicious
fragrance. Not black, as the Italians make it. Not drowned in boiled
milk, as the French drink it. As for the English beverage-- But ours, the
American--brown, strong, and with real cream! I wish I had a cup of it
now--three cups--and six buckwheat cakes with maple syrup!"
The contrast between this evoked repast and the girl herself was so
comical that the Americans who heard her broke into a laugh. Dorothy
was very slight; there was something ethereal in her appearance,
although the color in her cheeks, the brilliancy of her hazel eyes, and
the bright hue of her chestnut hair indicated a vivid vitality. As a
whole, she was charmingly pretty. The Americans who had laughed were but
two-- Mackenzie himself and Stephen Lefevre, who had now joined the
group. Lefevre wished that his adorable little countrywoman would not
say "lovely coffee." But Lefevre was, no doubt, a purist.
Felicia Philipps now came to the table with out-stretched hands. "_Poor_
Nora, I have only just observed how tired you are! You must have one of
your fearful headaches?"
"Oh dear, no," answered Nora, surprised. "I haven't a headache in the
least."
"Fancy! But you are overtired without knowing it; you must be, or you
would not look so pale. I am sure Mr. Mackenzie sees it. Don't you
think, Mr. Mackenzie, that Miss Sebright has been here quite long
enough? I'm so anxious to relieve her."
"It's very good of you, I'm sure," replied Mackenzie.
And then Felicia, pulling off her gloves, came round behind the table
and took possession of the place with an amiability and a rearrangement
of the cups that defied opposition.
"I am afraid this tea will be cold," Waddy meanwhile had suggested to
Dorothy.
"Yes, do take it down to mamma, Mr. Brunetti. And take this shawl too,
won't you?"
"Aren't you coming?" said Waddy, in a discomfited voice, as, shawl in
one hand and teacup in the other, he stood waiting.
"In five minutes; I have taken a fancy for spending just five minutes in
that big yellow chair."
"That is wise; I'm very pleased to hear you say it," remarked Nora, who,
though dispossessed, still lingered near. "We come up here, stay awhile,
and then go away; but you are kept on your feet for three or four hours
at a time."
"_You_ don't go away, do you, Nora?" said Felicia. "You are so kind. I
dare say you have been here since noon?"
"The samovar--" began Nora.
"Dear samovar!" commented Felicia, smiling.
And then Nora, at last understanding the sarcasm of the tone, left the
table and crossed the room, her cheeks no longer colorless. Alan
Mackenzie, who had heard this little dialogue, thought that the two
ladies had been very kind to each other.
Mrs. Tracy, on her way back from the anteroom, whither she had gone to
escort Julian Grimston's mother, who was taking leave, now stopped at
the tea-table. She drew Felicia aside. "Stay and dine with us, won't
you? We are always tired on Saturday evenings, and it will be delightful
to hear you sing. The carriage shall take you home."
"You're awfully good," Felicia answered. "But don't trouble to send out
the carriage. Ask Mr. Mackenzie too. He will be enchanted to stay, and
then we can go down together on foot, and nobody need be bothered."
"You don't mind?"
"At _my_ age!" answered Felicia, smiling. Felicia's smile always had a
slightly hungry look.
"_We_ shouldn't think of it. But then we're Americans," responded Mrs.
Tracy. "Over here no woman seems to be safely old."
"Is that why so many of you come over?" demanded Felicia, who at heart
detested all American women, especially those who, like the tenants of
Villa Dorio, had plenty of money at their disposal. Then curbing her
tongue, she added, "What you say is true of wives and widows. But I
assure you that old maids are shelved over here as soon and as
completely as they are with you in Oregon."
"In Oregon!" repeated Mrs. Tracy. "You English are too extraordinary."
And she went away, laughing.
During this conversation Dorothy was leaning back in the gold-colored
easy-chair; Charrington and Stephen Lefevre were standing beside her,
and presently Julian Grimston joined the group, rubbing his dry little
hands together gleefully, and murmuring to himself something that
sounded like "Aha! aha!"
"Is it the pure joy of living, Mr. Grimston?" Dorothy inquired. For this
was said to have been Julian's answer when an acquaintance, upon passing
him in the street one day and overhearing him ahaing, had asked what it
meant.
At this moment Waddy came from the anteroom. "And mamma's tea?" Dorothy
asked.
"Raffaello was just going down; I gave it to him."
"Oh, thanks. I'm thinking how little mamma will like that." And Dorothy
played thoughtfully a soundless tune with her right hand upon the arm of
the easy-chair.
Waddy pursed up his lips in an inaudible whistle. Then with swift step
he left the room.
Five minutes later he was back again. "It's all right. I caught up with
him," he said, briefly.
"Now mark that," began Charrington. "This impostor gave those things to
Mrs. North, I'll warrant, with rolling eyes that seemed to say that even
to have touched them had been a huge joy." Waddy did not defend himself.
"I wouldn't be a cherub, as you are, even if I could," went on
Charrington. "You belong to Christmas-cards--your chin on your clasped
hands. What is a cherub out of business--a cherub going about clothed,
and with an umbrella? It's ghastly."
Mrs. Tracy to Miss Jane Wood: "How do you do, Miss Wood?"
To Miss Maria: "_How_ do you do?"
Behind the Misses Wood came Rose Hatherbury and three of the Misses
Sebright, who were tired of sitting on the wall. Felicia, very busy,
sent tea to them all, Mackenzie carrying the cups. Raffaello presented
himself at the table to assist. Felicia did not know much Italian, but
she did know her own mind, and she wished for no second assistant; she
therefore said to Raffaello, in an undertone, but with decision, "Andate
via!" Raffaello, astounded by this unexpected "Clear out!" gazed at her
for a moment with wild eyes, and then escaped from the room.
The tea was not good--so the Misses Wood thought as they tried to sip
it; Nora Sebright, who was now walking with quick steps through the Via
Romana on her way home, would have been distressed to see how bad it
was.
"I wonder if there is any one in the garden now?" said Dorothy.
"There are fifty-seven persons," answered Rose, who had seated herself
on a sofa near. "I know, because I counted them."
"Then I must go down," said Dorothy, rising.
She nodded to Rose and to the others and left the room, Waddy following
as usual. Two minutes later, Charrington, Julian Grimston, and Stephen
Lefevre had also disappeared.
Miss Jane Wood (having given up the tea) now began, graciously, "Did you
get your ride this morning, Mr. Charrington?"
"Aunt Jane, Mr. Charrington is not here now," said Rose, in her distinct
tones.
"Oh," said Miss Jane, bewildered, and fumbling quickly for her
eye-glasses, which she had removed when she took her teacup. "He was
here a moment ago; I saw him."
"What wonderful elocutionary powers Miss Hatherbury has!" said Felicia,
in an aside, to Mackenzie. "I really think she could be heard in the
largest hall."
"Upon my word, now that you mention it, I believe she could," answered
Mackenzie, admiringly.
Rose divined that she was the subject of Felicia's aside. She said to
her aunt, in an interested tone, "How well one sees the Belmonte tower
from here!"
Miss Jane came to look, and then (in order that she should see to
advantage) her niece pulled the cord and rolled the window-shade up to
the top, letting in a broad shaft of sunset light, which fell directly
across the tea-table and the persons in attendance there. Rose took this
moment to carry her aunt's cup back to the table; and, having put it
down, she remained standing by Felicia's side while she began,
composedly, a conversation with Alan Mackenzie. Mackenzie responded:
his head immediately assumed the little bend which with him signified
devoted listening; he stood, meanwhile, exactly where Rose had intended
that he should stand--namely, in front of the two ladies, facing them.
Felicia, even in her youth, had had no beauty; now all the faults of her
sharp features were pitilessly magnified by the same clear light which
brought out the fine-grained purity of Rose's complexion and turned her
golden hair into glittering glory. Felicia was too intelligent to
cherish illusions about her appearance; she quivered under the radiance
in which the golden motes danced; she too had color now, but it was an
ugly vermilion in spots and streaks. She glanced at Mackenzie; he was
listening to Rose; now he was offering one of his civil little
questions--those attentive, never-failing small interrogatories for
which he was celebrated.
"I should like to strangle him!" thought the older woman, bitterly. "I
believe he would keep up those everlasting little questions on his
death-bed. In reality, he doesn't care the turn of his finger for that
screaming popinjay. Yet he stands there and listens to her, and will do
it unflinchingly as long as she talks, if it's all night."
The popinjay at this moment turned, and fired back at Felicia her own
gun. "You are tired, Miss Philipps. Doesn't she look tired, Mr.
Mackenzie?"
Mackenzie turned obediently; he inspected Felicia's flushed face.
"Yes--ah, really, I am afraid you are tired," he said, kindly.
Felicia, unable to bear his gaze, seized her gloves and fled.
But the popinjay could not sing, and had no invitation to stay. Alan
Mackenzie loved music. As he never spoke of the love, but few persons
had discovered it; Felicia was one of the few.
It was nearly eleven o'clock before the song began. They had gone out,
after dinner, to the small stone terrace that opened from the
drawing-room, in order to look at the valley by the light of the moon.
"For we really like our view when we don't have to talk about it," Mrs.
Tracy explained. After a while, "Come, Felicia," she said.
Felicia went within and opened the piano; Mrs. Tracy, following, sank
into the easiest chair; Mrs. North placed herself in the doorway, with
her face towards the moonlight. Dorothy remained outside, using the
hammock as a swing, pushing herself to and fro slowly by a touch on the
parapet now and then. On the other side of the terrace, in a
garden-chair, sat the second guest.
Felicia's voice was a contralto which had not a range of many notes, but
each one of the notes was perfect. Her singing was for a room only; it
was intimate, personal; perhaps too personal sometimes. The words were,
for her, a part of it as much as the melody.
"Through the long days and years
What will my loved one be,
Parted from me.
Through the long days and years?"
The music upon which these words were borne was indescribably sweet.
Dorothy had stopped swinging. But it was the melody that held her
vaguely given attention; she paid no heed to the spoken syllables.
"Never on earth again
Shall I before her stand,
Touch lip or hand,
Never on earth again,"
sang the voice, the strains floating out to the moonlight in a passion
of sorrow. Dorothy was now looking at the tower of Belmonte, near by. "I
wish our villa had a tower," was the thought in her mind. As her gaze
turned, she saw that Mackenzie's eyes were resting upon her, and she
smiled back at him, making a mute little gesture of applause.
"But while my darling lives,
Peaceful I journey on,
Not quite alone,
Not while my darling lives."
And now the music rose to that last courage, that acceptance of grief as
the daily portion of one's life, which is the highest pathos. Then there
was a silence.
Dorothy made her little motion of applause again, save that this time
the applause was audible; the words on her lips, ready to utter, were,
"How pretty that is!" Perhaps Mackenzie divined what these words would
be, for, with a quick movement, he rose and went to the end of the
terrace, where he stood with his back towards her, looking down the
valley. But Dorothy had accomplished her duty; she was perfectly willing
to be silent; she sank lazily back in the hammock again, and resumed her
swinging.
"Mr. Mackenzie, wasn't that exquisite?" said Mrs. Tracy's voice within.
Mackenzie, thus summoned, crossed the terrace and re-entered the
drawing-room. Felicia kept her seat at the piano; as Mrs. Tracy was
standing behind her, and as Mrs. North's head was turned away, she was
freed for the moment from feminine observation, and she therefore gave
herself the luxury of letting all the pathos and passion with which she
had sung remain unsubdued in her eyes, which, met his as he came up.
"Lovely, wasn't it? But so sad," continued Mrs. Tracy.
"Yes," Mackenzie answered; "it _is_ rather sad." Then, "What song is it,
Miss Philipps?" he inquired. "I do not remember having heard it before."
"'Through the long days,'" answered Felicia, who was now looking at the
piano keys.
"Ah! And the composer?"
"Francis Boott."
"Ah! Francis Boott, yes. And the words?" His head had now its attentive
little bend.
"They are by John Hay." To herself she added: "You _shall_ stop your
little questions; you _shall_ say something different!" And again she
looked up at him, her eyes strangely lustrous.
And then at last he did say, "May I take the music home with me? You
shall have it again to-morrow. It is a very beautiful song."
Felicia rolled up the sheet and gave it to him, her hand slightly rigid
as she did so from repressed emotion.
At midnight the two guests took leave, Mrs. Tracy accompanying them down
to the entrance portal. The irregular open space, or piazza, before the
house had a weird appearance; the roadway looked like beaten silver; the
short grass had the hue and gleam of new tin; the atmosphere all about
was as visibly white as it is visibly black on a dark night.
[Illustration: "AND AGAIN SHE LOOKED UP AT HIM"]
"It's the moment exactly for our ghost to come out and clank his
chains," said the lady of the house. "This intensely white moonlight is
positively creepy; it is made for hobgoblins and sheeted spectres; the
Belmonte monk must certainly be dancing on the top of his tower."
"Oh no," said Felicia; "it's St. Mark's eve, so we're all under good
protection. Hear the nightingales."
She was in high spirits; her words came out between little laughs like
giggles. Mrs. Tracy watched the two figures cross the grass and turn
down the narrow passage whence the road descends in zigzags to Florence.
"Poor Felicia," she said, when she had returned up the stairs to the
drawing-room; "she is talking about St. Mark's eve, in order, I suppose,
to bring up the idea of St. Agnes's. It's late, isn't it? They must want
to walk!"
"They?" said Mrs. North. "_She._"
"Well, then, I wish she could," responded Mrs. Tracy. Going to the
terrace door, she looked out. "Where is Dorothy?"
"I sent her to bed; she was almost asleep in the hammock. If there is
one thing she likes better than another, it is to curl herself up in
some impossible place and fall asleep. Would you mind closing the glass
doors? The nightingales hoot so."
Mrs. Tracy closed and fastened the terrace entrance for the night.
"What do you mean by saying that you wish she could?" Mrs. North went
on. "You wouldn't have Alan Mackenzie marry that plain-looking,
ill-tempered old maid, would you?"
"Perhaps she is ill-tempered just because she is an old maid, Laura. And
as to looks--if she were happy--"
"Mercy! Are the Mackenzie millions to be devoted to the public charity
of making a Felicia Philipps happy?"
"Why, isn't it as good an object as a picture-gallery? Or even an orphan
asylum? Felicia would be a great deal happier than all the happiness
combined of the whole three hundred orphans out at St. Martin's at a
Christmas dinner," suggested Charlotte Tracy, laughing.
"Absurd! Rose Hatherbury is the one--if it's any one in Florence."
"Oh, Rose is too young for him."
"In years, yes. But Rose's heart can be any age she pleases. Alan isn't
really old in the least; but he was born middle-aged; he is the essence
of middle-age and mediocrity; one always knows beforehand what he will
say, for it will simply be, on every occasion, the most polite and the
most commonplace thing that could possibly be devised under the
circumstances. How came you to ask him to stay to dinner?"
"Felicia made me. Funny, wasn't it, to see Waddy hang on, hoping for an
invitation too."
"You might have given him one. It would have entertained Dorothy."
"Well, to tell the truth, Laura, I am a little afraid of Waddy; he _is_
so handsome!"
"She doesn't care for him."
"She likes him."
"Yes, as she likes a dozen more. If she has a fancy for one over
another, it is, I think, for Owen Charrington," continued the mother.
"She would have to live in England. But I dare say his people would take
to her; they are very nice, you know--his people."
"How can you talk so! Dorothy is thoroughly American; she would be
wretched in England. When she marries--which I hope won't be for five or
six years more--she must marry one of our own countrymen, of course. The
idea!"
"Very well; I've no objection. But in that case we must take her home
again before long," said Laura North, rising. As she spoke she indulged
in a stretch, with her long arms extended first horizontally, and then
slowly raised until they were perpendicular above her head, the very
finger-tips taking part in the satisfactory elongation.
"How I wish _I_ could do that!" said Charlotte Tracy, enviously. "But
you don't say 'Ye-ough' at the end, as you ought to."
They put out the wax-candles and left the room together, Mrs. Tracy
lighting the way with a Tuscan lamp, its long chains dangling. "By this
time Felicia, 'delicately treading the clear pellucid air,' is going
through the Porta Romana," she suggested.
"Never in the world! She has taken him round by the Viale dei Colli; she
won't let him off for two good hours yet," responded Mrs. North.
II
"On Thursday, January 8th, at the English church, Florence, by the
Reverend J. Chaloner-Bouverie, Alan Mackenzie, to Dorothy, daughter of
the late Captain Richard North, United States Navy."--_Galignani's
Messenger_ of January 10, 1882.
III
It was St. Mark's eve again, April 24th, and again there were many
visitors at Bellosguardo. Upon this occasion they were assembled at
Belmonte, the villa with the old battlemented tower, where Mr. and Mrs.
Alan Mackenzie were receiving their Florentine friends for the first
time since their marriage; they had been travelling in Sicily and
southern Italy through the winter months.
"We shall be going home in 1883, I suppose," Mackenzie had said to the
ladies of Villa Dorio; "I shall be obliged to go then; or at least it
would be better to go. In the meanwhile, as Dorothy appears to be rather
fond of Bellosguardo--don't you think so?-- I have had the idea of taking
Belmonte for a time. That is, if you yourselves intend to continue
here?"
"Oh, we shall continue, we shall continue," Mrs. Tracy had answered,
laughing. "For detached American ladies, who haven't yet come to calling
themselves old--for the cultivated superfluous and the intelligent
remainders--there is nothing like Europe!"
The flat highways down in the Arno Valley, west of Bellosguardo, are
deep in dust even as early as April; the villages, consisting for the
most part of a shallow line of houses on each side of the road, almost
join hands, so that it is not the dust alone that afflicts the
pedestrian, but children, dogs, the rinds of fruit and vegetables--all
the far-reaching untidiness of a Southern race that lives in the street.
The black-eyed women sit in chairs at the edge of the dry gutter,
plaiting straw; up to middle-age they are all handsome, with thick hair
and soft, dark eyes. On this April afternoon they laughed (waiting with
Italian politeness until she had passed) as an Englishwoman trudged by
them on her way back to Florence. Her plain dress was short, revealing
long shoes white with dust; her unbeautiful face was mottled by the
heat; she looked tired enough to lie down and die. But to the
straw-plaiting matrons she was simply ridiculous, or else mad; for how
otherwise should a foreigner be toiling along their plebeian highway on
foot, when she could so easily have a carriage? Felicia was finishing
her daily walk of miles--a walk without an object save to tire herself.
As she passed the olive-crowned heights of Bellosguardo rising on the
right, she lifted her eyes.
"He is there, seeing everybody. All the same people who were there a
year ago to-day. And what are they thinking--perhaps saying? 'See this
dull, middle-aged man, with that flighty little creature for a wife! She
cares nothing for him; she turns him round her finger, and always will.'
O fool! fool too noble to see or to doubt; simple, generous nature,
never asserting itself, always repressed, that _I_ understood, while all
these other people, that girl at the head of them, only laughed at it!"
She hastened on, passed through the city gate, and made her way down the
dirty, evil-smelling Borgo San Frediano to San Spirito beyond, where,
high up in an old palace, she had a small apartment crowded with
artistic trumpery. After climbing the long stairs, and letting herself
in with a latch-key, she entered her minute drawing-room, and sank into
a chair, her feet, in their dusty shoes, like two blocks of wood on the
matting before her. And the plates and the plaques and the pots, the
bits of silk and tapestry and embroidery, the old sketches and old busts
and old shrines that adorned the walls, looked down upon her with their
usual heterogeneous glimmer. This time the glimmer seemed personally
sarcastic, seemed inhuman.
While she sat there, the people at Belmonte were beginning to take
leave. Rose was to remain (with Miss Jane Wood). As Waddy Brunetti was
to remain also, the Misses Sebright looked at Rose with envy. Six of the
sisters were now united in a single admiration. For Owen Charrington had
gone to Australia before Christmas--it was about the time that Dorothy's
engagement had been announced--and he had not returned; admiration could
not stretch to the antipodes. Waddy, too, had been absent through
January, February, and March; but he was now at home again, so there was
some use in going once more to teas and receptions.
"How lovely Mrs. Mackenzie is looking!" said Miss Maria Wood on the way
down to Florence.
She had accepted a seat in Mrs. Grimston's carriage, and it was that
lady who answered her.
"Yes--fairly; it's her youth more than anything else. Strictly speaking,
there are but two kinds of beauty--dimpled youth like that, and the
noble outline and bearing that come from distinguished birth."
This was a double shot. For Rose certainly had no dimples, and the birth
of distinction pointed of course to the widowed countess. But Julian,
who sat facing his mother, had no longer any courage to resist; his poor
little eyes, like those of a sick monkey, had shed their two slow tears
on Christmas eve, when, at last allowed to retreat to his own (cold)
room, he had accepted drearily the tidings of Dorothy's engagement, and
had given up his struggle against fate.
Mr. Illingsworth walked down the hill with Mrs. Sebright, her girls
following at a little distance, two and two. "Don't I miss one of your
charming daughters?" he said, gallantly, as, happening to look back at
the turn of a zigzag, he caught sight of the procession coming round the
higher bend.
"Dear me! I wish he might miss three or four!" thought the mother. But
this was nothing worse on her part than a natural desire to translate
three or four of them to richer atmospheres--a Yorkshire country-house,
for instance, or a good vicarage; even army life in India would do.
Meanwhile she was replying, "Yes--Nora; Nora has been at St. Martin's
Orphan House, out in the country, since Christmas. She is greatly
interested in the work there; so much so that I have consented to let
her remain."
Nora's secret only one person had discovered, and this one was the
benevolent stranger, Charlotte Tracy, who had happened to see the
expression in the girl's eyes for one instant, when the news of Alan
Mackenzie's engagement had come upon her suddenly, and taken her (as it
took all Florence) by surprise. The American lady, instantly
comprehending, had (while her own face showed nothing) screened Nora
skilfully from observation for several minutes. And ever since she had
kept her knowledge hidden away very closely in a shaded corner of her
heart.
"A true Sister of Charity," Mr. Illingsworth had responded to the
mother's reply about the orphan house. But as he said this he was
thinking, "And if _I_ had married, as I came so near doing, I, too,
might have had at my heels this moment--great heavens!--just such
another red-cheeked, affectionate train!"
That evening the ladies who had dined at Belmonte were taking their
coffee in the garden; there was no moon, but the splendid stars gave a
light of their own as they spangled the dark-blue sky. From the open
door of the boudoir at this end of the house, the light, streaming
forth, fell upon Dorothy as she sat talking to Rose. After a while the
gentlemen joined the ladies; and then Waddy talked to Rose. But while he
talked, his eyes followed the hostess, who was now strolling up and down
the honeysuckle path with one of her guests. Some one asked Waddy to
sing. Nothing loath, he went within, brought out Dorothy's guitar, and
sang one of Tosti's serenades. The song and his voice, a melodious
tenor, accorded so perfectly with the old Italian garden that there was
much applause. And then Waddy, having moved his chair into the shadow of
the trees, sent forth after a while from the darkness, unasked, a second
song, and this time the words were English:
"Through the long days, the long days and the years,
What will my loved one be,
Parted from me, parted from me,
Through the long days and years?"
The lady who had been strolling with Dorothy had stopped to speak to
some one, and for the moment the young wife, who had reached the end of
the honeysuckle path, was alone. Mackenzie came up quietly and stood
beside her as the song went on. When it had ended, she looked up at
him.
"Do you like it so much?" she asked, in surprise, as she saw, in the
starlight, the expression of his face.
"It's because I have so much more than I ever dreamed of having,
Dorothy," he answered, in a low tone, just touching her hair in the
shadow. "A year ago--do you remember? That same song, on the terrace? It
expressed what I felt; for then I had no hope. But now--"
Here a voice from the group of ladies said, "Mr. Mackenzie will know;
ask him." And Mackenzie, returning to the light, was the attentive host
again. Waddy, meanwhile, crossed the grass quickly to the honeysuckle
path.
He was the last to take leave; when Mackenzie returned, after escorting
Mrs. North and Mrs. Tracy to the Villa Dorio, he was still in the garden
with Dorothy.
Fifteen minutes later, through the open windows of Mrs. North's chamber
there came the sound of steps.
"Waddy," said Charlotte Tracy, peeping through the closed blinds, and
recognizing his figure. "He has outstayed everybody."
"You are no longer afraid of him, I trust?" inquired Mrs. North.
"Certainly not," said the older lady with decision. After a moment she
added, "She must always amuse herself, I suppose."
"She has the very best of safeguards."
"Now there you go, with your cold-blooded judgments, Laura! Dorothy has
as deep feelings as anybody. I don't know where you get your knowledge
of her; you are her step-mother, it is true; but I have been with her as
constantly as you have for years."
"Quite so. May I ask how well you knew her father?"
"I don't care!" was Charlotte's reply. She left the room with majesty.
The majesty lasted through the hall, and into her own chamber, as she
reflected, "_I_ have feelings. And Dorothy has feelings. But Laura is a
stone!" At this moment she caught a glimpse of herself in the
full-length mirror, and majesty collapsed. "Do I look like that? Do I?
Stout, short-nosed?" And she sank down on a sofa overwhelmed. But
presently a laugh broke through her discomfiture. "The very next
crumpled little old man I see, I'll be nice to him! I'll ask who is his
favorite poet, and I'll get him to quote--yes, even if it's Byron!" Mrs.
Tracy's favorite author was Ibsen.
"You will do it if I wish, won't you, Alan?" said Dorothy the next day.
"Why, if you really wish it--if you think it best--" began Mackenzie.
"She doesn't in the least," interposed Mrs. North. "Don't indulge her
so; you will spoil her."
Mackenzie's eyes turned towards his wife.
"Don't look at me to see whether mamma is right," said Dorothy,
laughing; "invent an opinion of your own about me--do! But let us have
something striking; consider me capable of murder, for instance, not of
mere commonplace selfishness. Every woman is capable of murder once; I
am perfectly sure of it."
"My dear," said Mackenzie, expostulatingly.
"I don't know whether I could quite do it with my own hands," Dorothy
went on, stretching out her palms and looking at them. "But Felicia
Philipps could; yes, with her long fingers. Brrrr!" And she rushed to
her husband and hid her face on his arm.
She had her way, which was not a murder, but a ball. Soon afterwards
there was a summer-night party at Belmonte, with music and dancing; the
tower and the garden, illuminated, were visible for miles roundabout,
like a fairy-land on the dark hill. Then followed excursions, long
drives, and, more frequently, long rides; for Dorothy had taken to
riding. Mackenzie accompanied the riding-parties cheerfully. But Dorothy
was often far in advance with one of the younger cavaliers.
"I believe I should come back from the dead, Alan, to see you pounding
along, always at the very end of the procession, with Miss Jane Wood,"
said the young wife one day. "I know you don't care much about riding.
But why do you always escort Miss Jane? She must weigh one hundred and
eighty."
"She is a little timid, I think," answered Mackenzie; "at least, I have
fancied so. She only goes to see to Miss Hatherbury."
"As you see to me?"
Mackenzie liked long walks.
"But walking is so dull. And the people who take long walks have such an
insufferable air of superiority," commented Dorothy. "Not that you have
come to that, Alan; with you it's just simple vanity."
And making the motion of turning up trousers at the bottom, she crossed
the garden, holding her riding-whip like a cane, with her shoulders put
back, her head run out a little, and a long step with a dip in the
middle of it--the whole an amusing caricature of her husband's gait when
starting on a long excursion. Mackenzie had taught himself that gait; he
had even been a little proud of it. But now he joined irrepressibly in
his wife's merriment, as she loped down the broad walk, and then came
running back to him with her own light swiftness.
Occasionally, however, she went with him for a stroll. One day late in
the afternoon they passed Villa Dorio together. The sun, low in the
west, was shining on all the square Tuscan towers that dot the hill-tops
in every direction. May was now more than half spent, and the air was
like that of July in Northern countries. The ladies of Villa Dorio saw
them go by; Dorothy's straw hat was hanging by its ribbons from her arm.
"He hates to have her out without her hat," remarked Mrs. Tracy, leaning
forward to watch them for a moment.
"Well, in that dress, she doesn't look more than fourteen," answered
Mrs. North.
Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie went on down the hill. When they came to the
first zigzag, they left the main road, and, turning, crossed a grassy
little piazza; beyond, clinging to the side of the hill, with a cluster
of cypresses before it like tall green candles, is the small church of
San Vito, commanding a magnificent sweep of the valley below. As they
passed, San Vito's chimes rang the Angelus, swinging far out from the
open belfry against the sky with all the abandon of Italian bells, which
seem forever joyous--almost intoxicated--even for the dead. San Vito's
has a path of its own which follows a narrow shelf overhanging the
valley; the two pedestrians turned down this path. As the bells ceased,
Dorothy began to sing:
"Ring out across the sunset sky, Angelus--"
"Go on; go on," said Mackenzie, delightedly. "Oh, _I_ can't sing."
"Dear, I think you could; your voice is so sweet. If you would take
lessons--"
"Well, by-and-by. We have lots of time for everything, Alan." When they
came to the turn where there is a rustic shrine she paused. "I won't go
any farther, I think. But don't stop because I do; you like your walk.
Go on, and come back through the olive groves just beyond Belmonte; I
will be waiting for you at our wall."
"I don't like to leave you here alone."
"Not under the shrine? What's more, here is the priest."
The priest of San Vito's was coming down the path. He was an old man,
with a large, sensible face, and a somewhat portly person dressed in
well-brushed black. He aided his steps with a cane. His bearing was
serene and dignified. As he passed, Mackenzie saluted him, raising his
hat.
"For a Unitarian," said Dorothy, after the worthy man had gone by,
"aren't you showing a good deal of courtesy? But you would be courteous
to any religion; you would respect the fetish of a South Sea Islander.
Do you know, Alan, that you have too many respects? Please go now, so
that you can be back the sooner." Mackenzie, who had been leaning
against the parapet, turned and began to go down the descent. His wife
followed him for a step or two, in order to brush some mortar from his
sleeve. "You see it is I that must keep you respectable--in spite of
your respects."
How pretty she was! They were alone under the high wall. "My darling,"
he murmured. And Dorothy, laughing, raised herself on tiptoe to kiss
him.
Half an hour later, when he reached the wall near Belmonte, there was
no Dorothy. He went within. The signora had gone to Villa Dorio, the
servant said. He came out and followed her thither. Yes, Dorothy had
been there; but Waddy Brunetti had happened in, and they had strolled
down as far as San Vito's.
Mackenzie did not say, "But she has just been to San Vito's." He sat
talking with the ladies for twenty minutes or more; then he remarked,
offering it as a suggestion for their approval, "I think I will walk on
to San Vito's and meet them."
"Yes, do," said Mrs. North. "And make that foolish Dorothy put on her
hat."
"It is as warm as midsummer. And the air is perfectly dry, I think; no
dew," Mackenzie answered.
"He defends her even when she vexes him," commented Charlotte Tracy,
after he had gone.
"He might as well be amiable, seeing that he cannot be interesting,"
Mrs. North responded.
Dorothy was not at San Vito's. And she had not gone down the zigzags of
the carriage-road; he went down to see. He returned to Belmonte. It was
now late twilight. But there was still a band of orange light in the
west, and, outlined against it, on the top of the tower, were two
figures. He recognized them instantly--Dorothy and young Brunetti.
Dorothy waved her hand to him through one of the embrasures. "Send up
some one with candles," she called.
"With what?"
"Can-dles; it's too dark now to come down without lights. But don't send
immediately; wait fifteen minutes more, so that we can see the moon
rise. And, Alan!"
"Yes?"
"Please tell them that Mr. Brunetti will stay and dine with us."
IV
On the 29th of December of this same year, 1882, Reginald Illingsworth
was paying a visit to Mrs. Sebright.
"What a career that little girl will have!" he said, with deep gustatory
appreciation.
Before this, for half an hour, he had been making remarks of a nature
best described by the following examples: "That excellent fellow,
Mackenzie! You can't think how I miss him!" "There is something so
tragic in such a death--a man who had everything to live for!" "How
could they go to Rome! That pernicious Roman fever is the curse of
Italy." "Those poor ladies! Directly I heard they had returned to
Belmonte, I went up at once to inquire and to leave cards; it is a
stricken house!" Having said everything that decorum required, he now
finally allowed himself to bring out the thought which was in reality
filling his mind: "What a career that little girl will have! Only
nineteen, and so very pretty, so charming. He has left her everything
without a condition (save in the event--most improbable at her age--of
her dying without children, in which case it goes back to his own
relatives), and I am told that he had nearly eight millions of dollars;
that is, one million six hundred thousand pounds! They are shrewd in
their American way--those ladies; Mrs. North is very shrewd. And mark my
words, madam, that little girl will make one of the great matches yet;
not pinchbeck; something really good!" (His "good" had a deeply solid
sound.)
This same afternoon the following words were exchanged in another
quarter of Florence:
"Rose, dear," said Miss Jane Wood, "you will go up again to-morrow,
won't you, to see poor Dorothy?"
"I have been twice--all that is necessary for appearances, Aunt Jane.
Why should I bother Dorothy now?"
"Sympathy--" began Miss Jane.
"Sympathy! She is in a position to extend it to me. I think she is the
very luckiest girl I have ever heard of in my life. All another girl can
do in the face of such luck as that is to keep away from it, and not
think about it--if she can."
Miss Jane Wood: "I am _astonished_!"
Miss Maria: "!!!!"
That evening, at Belmonte, Dorothy walked and walked about the
drawing-room; now she stopped at a table, took up something and put it
down again; now she moved a statuette to another position; now she gazed
at the etchings on the wall as though she had never seen them before;
now she added pine-cones to the already blazing fire, kneeling on the
rug with the hot flame scorching her face; finally she went to the
window, and, parting the curtains, stood looking out. It was a dark
night without stars; in addition to the freezing temperature, the wind
was fierce; it drove furiously against the windows of the villa, it came
round the corner of the tower with a shriek like that of a banshee.
"It's dreadfully cold," said the girl at last, as if speaking to
herself.
"Surely not here?" replied Mrs. Tracy. Dorothy came wandering back to
the fire, and then the aunt drew her down by her side. "Dear child,
don't keep thinking of Rome," she whispered. "He is not there; there is
nothing there but the lifeless clay." And she kissed her.
"Try not to be so restless, Dorothy," said Mrs. North, from her warm
corner. "You have walked about this room all day."
"It's because I'm so tired; I am so tired that I cannot keep still,"
Dorothy answered.
"I think a change would be a good thing for all of us," Mrs. North went
on. "We could go to Cannes for two months; we could be as quiet at
Cannes as here."
Dorothy looked at her with vague eyes, as if waiting to hear more.
"It is warmer there. And then there is the sea--to look at, you know,"
pursued Mrs. North, seeing that she was called upon to exhibit
attractions.
"Egypt would be my idea," said Mrs. Tracy. "A dahabeeyah on the Nile,
Dorothy. Camels; temples."
Dorothy listened, as if rather struck by this idea also.
"But Egypt would be a fearful trouble, Charlotte," objected Mrs. North.
"Who is going to get a good dahabeeyah for us at this time of year?"
"Don't spoil it. I'll get twenty," responded the other lady.
And then there was a silence.
"Well, Dorothy, are you going to leave it to us to decide?"
"Yes, mamma," Dorothy answered. Her eyes had grown dull again; she sat
listening to the wind as if she had forgotten what they were talking
about.
"It's decided, then. We will go to Cannes," remarked Mrs. North,
serenely.
Her Aunt Charlotte's discomfited face drew a sudden laugh from the
niece. And this laughter, once begun, did not cease; peal succeeded
peal, and Dorothy threw herself back on the cushions of the sofa,
overcome with merriment. Mrs. North glanced towards the doors to see if
they were well closed. But Charlotte Tracy was so glad to hear the sound
again that she did not care about comments from the servants; Dorothy's
face, dull and tired, above the dead black of the widow's attire, had
been like a nightmare to her.
They went to Cannes. And Mrs. North's suggested "two months" had now
lengthened, in her plans, to three. But before two weeks, had passed
they were again at Belmonte.
"Now that we have made one fiasco, Charlotte, and taken that horrible
journey, all tunnels, twice within twenty days, we must not make
another; we must decide to remain where we are for the present. If
Dorothy grows restless again, be firm. Be firm, as I shall be."
"Surely we ought to be indulgent to her now, Laura?"
"Not too much so. Otherwise we shall be laying up endless bother for
ourselves. For we have a year of hourly employment before us, day by
day. In the way of seeing to her, I mean."
"She will not make us the least trouble," said Mrs. Tracy, indignantly.
"I am not finding fault with her. But she cannot help her age, can she?
She is exceedingly young to be a widow, and she has a large fortune; but
for a year, at any rate, if I know myself, gossip shall not touch my
daughter."
"A year? I'll guarantee ten," said Mrs. Tracy, still indignant.
"I don't care about ten; three will do. Yes, I see you looking at me
with outraged eyes. But there's no need. I liked Alan as much as you
did; I appreciated every one of his good points. With all that, you
cannot pretend to say that you believe Dorothy really loved him. She was
too young to love anybody. The love was on his side, and you were as
much surprised as I was when she took a fancy to accept it."
Mrs. Tracy could not deny this. But she belonged to that large class of
women who, from benevolent motives, never acknowledge unwelcome facts.
"I think you are perfectly horrid!" she said.
Dorothy, back at Belmonte, was troublesome only in the sense of being
always in motion. Having exhausted the garden, she began to explore the
country. She went to Galileo's tower; to the lonely little church of
Santa Margherita; the valley of the Ema knew her slender black figure.
Once she crossed the Greve, and, following the old Etruscan road,
climbed to the top of the height beyond, where stands the long, blank
Shameless Villa outlined against the sky.
"Do you know, I am afraid I am lame," said Mrs. Tracy, the morning after
this long tramp to the Shameless.
"Well, why do you go? One of us is enough," answered Mrs. North.
To the walks Dorothy now added lessons in German and Italian. Mrs. North
drove down to Florence and engaged Fräulein Bernstein and Mademoiselle
Scarletti. Next, Dorothy said that she wished to take lessons in music.
"A good idea. You ought to play much better than you do," said her
mother.
"Piano; but singing too, please," Dorothy answered.
Again Mrs. North descended to Florence; Fräulein Lundborg was engaged
for instrumental music, and Madame Farinelli for vocal. Dorothy wished
to have a lesson each day from each of her teachers. "It's a perfect
procession up and down this hill!" thought Mrs. Tracy. There was a piano
in the billiard-room, and another in the drawing-room; but now Dorothy
wished to have a third piano in her own sitting-room up-stairs.
"But, my dear, what an odd fancy! Are you going to sing there by
yourself?" her mother inquired.
"Yes!" said Dorothy.
"Do you think she is well?" asked Mrs. Tracy, confidentially, with some
anxiety.
"Perfectly well. It is the repressed life she is leading," Mrs. North
answered. "But we must make the best of it. This is as good a place as
any for the next three months."
But again this skilful directress was forced to abandon the "good
place." Early in March, when the almond-trees were in bloom, Dorothy,
coming in from the garden, announced, "I _hate_ Belmonte! Let us go
away, mamma--anywhere. Let us start to-morrow."
"We took you to Cannes, and you did not wish to stay. We shall be
leaving Belmonte in any case in June; that isn't long to wait."
"You like Paris; will you go to Paris?" the girl went on.
"What can you do in Paris more than you do here?"
"I love the streets, they are so bright--so many people. Oh, mamma, if
you could only know how dull I am!" And sinking down on the rug, Dorothy
laid her face on the sofa-cushion at her mother's side.
Mrs. Tracy coming in and finding her thus, bent and felt her pulse.
"Yes, one hundred and fifty!" said Dorothy, laughing. "Take me to Paris,
and to the opera or theatre every night, and it will go down."
"Oh, you don't mean that," said the aunt, assuringly.
"Yes, but I do," Dorothy answered. And then, with her cheek still
resting on the cushion, she looked up at her mother. "You will take me,
mamma, won't you? If I tell you that I _must_?"
"Yes," replies Mrs. North, coldly.
They went to Paris. And then, for four weeks, almost every night at the
back of a box at the opera or at one of the theatres were three ladies
in mourning attire, the youngest of the three in widow's weeds. Mrs.
Tracy was so perturbed during these weeks that her face was constantly
red.
"Why are you so worried?" Mrs. North inquired. "I manage it perfectly;
people don't in the least know."
"Do I care for 'people'? It's--it's--" But she would not say "It's
Dorothy." "It's ourselves," she finally ended.
"Always sentimental," said Laura.
Midway in the first week of April, Dorothy suddenly changed again. "I
can't stay here a moment longer!" she said.
"Perhaps you would like to take a trip round the world?" suggested Mrs.
North, with a touch of sarcasm.
"No. I don't know what you will say, mamma, but I should like to go back
to Belmonte."
"I have a good deal of patience, my dear, but I must say that you wear
it out."
"I know I do; but if you will take me back, I promise to stay there this
time as long as you like."
"_I_ like--" began Mrs. North; but Dorothy, with a frown, had rushed out
of the room.
"What shall we do now?" said the aunt.
"Go back, I suppose; I have always thought Belmonte the best place up to
really hot weather. One good thing: if we do go back we can take the
opportunity to rid ourselves definitely of both of those villas. My idea
is the Black Forest country for August and September. Then we could come
here again for a few weeks. For the winter, what do you say to a long
cruise towards the South somewhere, in a yacht of our own? We could
select the right people to go with us."
They returned to Italy, reaching Bellosguardo again on the 11th of
April.
On the 6th of May Charlotte Tracy said, "Laura, to me this is dreadful!
Waddy is here morning, noon, and night."
"So many people have left Florence that it hardly matters; nobody knows
what is going on up here. He amuses her, and that is something gained."
"I wish he wouldn't be forever singing!" said the aunt, irritably.
"He sings very well. And Dorothy has shown a new interest in singing
lately. Don't you remember that she took lessons herself before we went
to Paris?"
"You don't mean to intimate that Waddy had anything to do with that?"
"Why not? A girl of that age has all sorts of changing interests and
tastes; there will be something new every month or two, probably, for a
long time yet."
In June, Mrs. Tracy demanded, "Is Owen Charrington one of your
something-news?"
"I dare say he is," Mrs. North answered, smiling.
For Owen Charrington had come back from Australia. He found the zigzags
which led to Belmonte very hot and very solitary; there was no Waddy
going up or coming down, either on foot or in a carriage, although his
ascents and descents had been as regular as those of the postman during
the six preceding weeks. Shortly before Charrington's return, Dorothy,
entering the boudoir one evening at ten o'clock, said:
"Mamma--Aunt Charlotte--will you tell the servants, please, that
whenever Mr. Brunetti calls, after this, they are to say that we are
engaged, or not at home? I don't suppose _you_ care to see him?"
"What can have happened?" said Mrs. Tracy, when the girl had gone out
again without explanation.
"There hasn't been time for much to happen. I have been out there with
them all the evening; I only came in for my tea," answered Mrs. North,
sipping that beverage.
"Since then he has been singing. At least, I thought I heard his
voice--not very loud."
"Perhaps she is tired of his voice--not very loud."
Mrs. Tracy threw a lace scarf over her head and went out to the garden.
The long aisles under the trees were flooded with moonlight, the air was
perfumed with the fragrance of the many flowers; but there was no
Dorothy. She entered the house by another door, and, going softly up the
great stairway, turned towards Dorothy's rooms at the south end of the
long villa. Here a light was visible, coming under the door of the
sitting-room; the aunt did not lift the latch, she stood outside
listening. Yes, Dorothy was there, and she was singing to herself in a
low tone, playing the accompaniment with the soft pedal down:
"Through the long days, the long days and the years,
What will my loved one be,
Parted from me, parted from me,
Through the long days and years?"
"She is up there singing; singing all alone," reported the aunt, when
she came back to the boudoir down-stairs.
"I suppose you like that better than not alone?" suggested Mrs. North.
Waddy came to Belmonte five times without success. Then he left
Florence.
Dorothy did not stroll in the garden with Owen Charrington. If her
mother and aunt were outside when he came, she remained with them there;
but if they were in the drawing-room or the boudoir, she immediately led
her guest within; then she sat looking at him while he talked.
Charrington talked well; all he said was amusing. Dorothy listened and
laughed. If he paused, she urged him on again. This urgency of hers
became so apparent that at last it embarrassed him. To carry it off he
attacked her:
"You force me to chatter, Mrs. Mackenzie--to chatter like a parrot!"
"Yes," answered Dorothy, "you must talk; you must talk all the time."
"'All the time'--awfully funny Americanism!"
"And the French 'tout le temps'?"
"Oh, French; I don't know about French."
"Of course you don't. We are willing to be funny with the French. Are
you 'very pleased' to be here to-day? Answer."
"Of course I am very pleased."
"And you would say, wouldn't you, 'Directly I returned to Florence, I
bought a horse'?"
"But I didn't," said Charrington, laughing; "I only hired one. And that
reminds me, Mrs. Mackenzie; you can't think how divine it is now at four
o'clock in the morning. Won't you go for a ride at that hour some day
soon? Mrs. North and Mrs. Tracy could follow in the carriage" (with a
look towards those ladies).
"Ride?" repeated Dorothy. A flush rose in her cheeks. "No," she
answered, in an altered voice--"no!"
She said nothing more, and she did not speak again; she sat looking at
the floor. Mrs. North filled the pause with her placid sentences. But
Dorothy's manner was so changed and constrained that the young
Englishman soon went away. The girl had taken something into her head.
But it would not last long; nothing ever did last long with Dorothy.
This belief of his was soon jostled by the fact that Dorothy would not
see him. Mrs. North covered the refusal as well as she could by saying
that her daughter was not well; that she was not seeing any visitors at
present. But Florence was empty; there were no visitors to come; it
simply meant, therefore, that she was not seeing Owen Charrington. He
lingered on through the month, coming every day to Belmonte. Mrs. North
received him graciously. But he was obliged to content himself with a
close investigation of their plans for the summer. At last, on the 2d of
July, unable any longer to endure the burning, glaring Lung' Arno and
the furnace-like atmosphere of the Hôtel d'Italie, he took his
departure. He went to Baden-Baden, writing home to his family that he
should probably spend the summer in the Black Forest country with
friends.
The morning after Charrington's departure, illness (real illness this
time) seized Dorothy. For a week she remained motionless on a couch, her
face white, her eyes closed.
"We must take her to Switzerland; we must go straight up to the snow,"
said Charlotte Tracy. "When she sees the glacier water she will revive
at once. The gray glacier water, you know; one begins to meet it at
Chiomonte; it comes rushing over the rocks, gray and cool, with
sometimes a little foam; but gray, always gray--a sort of leady gray."
She said gray so many times that Mrs. North cried out at last, "Oh, do
call it green!"
Speedy preparations were made for departure; the trunks were packed and
sent down to the railway station. Dorothy remained passive, making no
objection to their plans, but showing no interest in them. Caroline, her
maid, dressed her for the journey. But when the little black bonnet with
its long black veil had been put on, and the black gloves, and the young
mistress of the house rose to walk to the carriage, after a few steps
her figure swayed, and she sank to the floor; she had fainted. She
remained unconscious for so long a time that it was evident there could
be no travelling that day; they must wait until she was stronger. They
waited, therefore, from one day to the next, each morning expecting to
start, and each morning postponing departure. The 15th of July found
them still at Belmonte. The thick stone walls of the majestic old house
kept out the burning sunshine, and Dorothy appeared to like the warm air
that came in through the shaded windows; she lay breathing it quietly,
with her eyes closed. The American physician of Florence had gone to New
York for six months. An English doctor came up daily. But there was
nothing to combat. There was no fever, no malady save this sudden
physical weakness. Everything possible was done for this, but with small
results. At last Dr. Hotham advised them to attempt the journey in any
case. A nurse was engaged; Dorothy was to be carried on a couch to the
station, where a railway carriage, provided with an invalid's bed, was
waiting. But before they had traversed a quarter of the length of the
Via dei Serragli, the clatter of the carriage wheels and the other
noises of the street threw the girl into a delirium, and they returned
hastily to Bellosguardo. The delirium passed away and they made another
attempt. This time they were to cross Florence in the middle of the
night, and a special train was to take them northward. But the paroxysm
came on again, and with greater violence. Before they reached the bottom
of the Bellosguardo hill Dorothy threw up her arms like a wild creature;
the nurse could scarcely hold her. This time high fever followed; the
girl, now in bed, lay with scarlet cheeks and glassy eyes, knowing
nobody. Dr. Hotham conquered the fever. Then she was as she had been
before, save that the weakness was increased.
With the exception of Dr. Hotham, there was now no one in Florence whom
they knew. Nora Sebright remained at St. Martin's Orphan House out in
the country; but she knew nothing of events in town. One day Dr. Hotham,
having been called to the orphan house to see a child, spoke to Nora of
the puzzling illness of Mrs. Mackenzie; he knew that the Sebrights were
among the acquaintances of these American ladies. Nora hurried to town,
and, although it was evening, drove up to Belmonte without delay. There
were now two nurses at the villa. But Nora was the best nurse; and,
after seeing Dorothy for a moment, she begged the mother and aunt to
allow her to remain and assist.
"You are extremely kind, Miss Sebright. But I do not think you ought to
give yourself so much trouble," said Mrs. North. "Dorothy will soon be
stronger; the fever, as you see, has entirely disappeared, and in a few
days we shall go to Switzerland."
But Nora followed Mrs. Tracy into the next room. "Dear Mrs. Tracy, do
let me stay. I am such a good nurse--you can't think. And I am so fond
of Dorothy. And I really think she ought to be amused, if possible. Not
that I am very amusing; but at least it makes one more."
There was no lamp in this room, but, all the same, Charlotte Tracy
seemed to read an expression in the face she could not see. "What has
Dr. Hotham said to you?" she asked.
"Indeed, nothing; he never talks. It is only that Dorothy has always
been so well; she was well all winter, you know. Even now (for the fever
was only the effort of the journey) there seems to be nothing one can
take hold of. And so the question came up, as it always does in such a
case, could she have anything weighing upon her mind--weighing too
much, I mean? But I am sure," continued Nora, her voice calm as usual
(but her face, in the darkness, quivering for an instant), "that we need
apprehend no danger of that sort; Dorothy's mind is perfectly healthy.
And she has been from the very first so brave, you know--so wonderfully
brave."
Charlotte Tracy, a prey to conflicting feelings, bent and kissed Nora
without a word. Grief for Alan Mackenzie had indeed been more deeply
felt at the dreary orphan house down in the dusty valley than in his own
home on this beautiful hill. Nora stayed.
August burned itself out. At Belmonte the heavy outer portals were kept
closed; within, all the doors stood open in order to create, if
possible, a current of air through the darkened rooms. Once in two
hours, night and day, Nora came to Dorothy's bedside and offered some
delicate nourishment; Dorothy took it unobjectingly. She seldom spoke,
but she appeared to like Nora's presence and her gentle ministrations.
Mrs. Tracy had forced herself to speak to Laura about the doctor's
question. Some force was necessary, for she was always exasperated by
Laura's replies. "I am beginning to be a little frightened about
Dorothy, Laura; she doesn't gain. It is no time to mince matters; such
things have happened before, and will happen again as long as the world
lasts, and it seems that even Dr. Hotham has asked whether there could
be anything weighing upon her mind. Now what I want to know is, do you
think she is brooding about something?"
"Brooding?"
"Yes. I mean, do you think she is interested in somebody?--Owen
Charrington, if I must name him. You used to think that she liked him?
And that she cannot bear the separation? Yet thinks it too soon? And
that that was the reason she refused to see him again? And now it is
weighing upon her?"
"Mercy, what theories! You have always saddled Dorothy with deeper
feelings than she has ever possessed. Do leave the poor child alone;
don't make her out so unusual and unpleasant; she is like any other girl
of nineteen. She is interested in Owen--yes; but not in that exaggerated
way; she isn't pining herself ill about him. And let me tell you, too,
that if he were to her at this moment all you are imagining him to be,
she wouldn't in the least be deterred by considerations of its being
'too soon,' as you call it; she would not even remember that it _was_
soon."
Mrs. Tracy's eyes filled.
"Well, what now? Do you wish her to be breaking her heart for Alan? I
thought you came in to suggest sending post-haste for Owen Charrington!
Do you know really what you want yourself? Dorothy will grow stronger in
time. A hot summer in Italy has pulled her down, but with the first cool
weather she will revive, and then we can carry out our plans."
Towards the middle of September the rains came, the great heat ended.
With the return of the fresh breeze Dorothy left her bed, and lay on the
broad divan among its large, cool cushions; she even walked about the
room a little, once or twice a day. The first time she walked they saw
how thin she was; the black dressing-gown hung about her like a pall.
"Take it off," said Mrs. Tracy, when she had beckoned Caroline into the
next room. "Never let her wear it again."
"But I have fear that madame is not enough strong yet to wear a
costume," suggested the maid, respectfully.
Mrs. Tracy unlocked a wardrobe and took out a pile of folded draperies.
They were white morning dresses, long and loose, covered with beautiful
laces and knots of ribbon; they had formed part of Dorothy's trousseau.
"Let her wear these," she said, briefly.
Dorothy made no objection to the change. Occasionally she looked at her
new attire, and smoothed out the ribbons and lace. Throughout her
illness she had scarcely spoken. They had supposed that this silence
came from her weakness--the weakness which had made it an effort
sometimes for her to lift her hand. But now that she was up again, and
walking about the room, the muteness continued. She answered their
questions, but it seemed necessary for her to recall her thoughts from
some distant place in order to answer. She lived in a reverie, and her
eyes had a far-off expression. But these were slight things. When ten
days had slowly passed without any relapse, Charlotte Tracy, who had
counted the hours, exclaimed, with joy, "Now we can go!" Dr. Hotham was
to accompany them as far as Vevey. Nothing was to be said to Dorothy, in
order that she should not have even a feather's weight of excitement;
but the preparations were swiftly made. On the afternoon before the day
appointed for the start, Dorothy suddenly left her easy-chair, crossed
the room, opened a door, and looked down a corridor. At the end of the
corridor she saw Caroline kneeling before open trunks.
"What are you doing, Caroline? Those are my trunks, aren't they? You may
stop; I shall not leave Belmonte."
Nora, who had followed, led her back. "Your mother and aunt are so very
anxious to go north, dear," she explained. "Come and lie down; you must
not tire yourself before the journey."
But Dorothy resisted. "Please call them, Nora; call them both; I must
tell them. I know mamma; she will have me carried. But that is because
she does not understand. When I tell her, it will be different. Please
call them both."
When they came in--Mrs. Tracy alarmed, Mrs. North smiling as if prepared
to be, outwardly, very indulgent--Dorothy was still standing in the
centre of the room, the laces of her white dress fluttering in the soft
breeze.
"Mamma," she said, "I must tell you. Aunt Charlotte, you have always
been kind to me. I cannot go away; do not ask me."
"Sit down, Dorothy. Nora, make her sit down. You will not be asked to
take a step, my daughter; everything is arranged; don't trouble yourself
even to think."
"You do not understand, mamma. But I myself have not understood until
lately. I cannot leave Belmonte."
"But Dr. Hotham thinks you can," interposed Mrs. Tracy, soothingly; "he
knows how much strength you have. We are all going with you, and the
journey will be very easy. You used to like Vevey."
"Let me stay here; I wish to stay here."
"But we have never intended to spend our lives at Bellosguardo,"
answered Mrs. North, drawing her towards the divan and making her sit
down.
"Let me stay a little while longer, mamma."
"You mean that you will be willing to go later? But, we think that now
is the time. You have nothing to do save to rest here quietly, and then
go to sleep; you will open your eyes in Vevey."
Dorothy, seated, her hands extended on her knees, looked up at her
mother. "Mamma, you don't know. There's an ache that will not leave me.
I haven't told you about it. But I'm _so_ unhappy!"
Mrs. Tracy, hurrying forward, put her arm round the girl protectingly.
Mrs. North, her face slightly flushed, whispered to Nora:
"She is wandering. Please go and send some one immediately for the
doctor. Write a note for the man to take with him."
In this way she got rid of Nora.
Dorothy, alone with her mother and aunt, went on talking: "I didn't know
what it meant myself for ever so long. But now I do, and it's all
simple. I shall just stay quietly here. This is the best place. And you
mustn't mind, for it makes _me_ very happy."
"My darling, have you written? What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Tracy.
"What do I mean?" Dorothy repeated. She smiled; into her white face came
a flush of color. "I mean that I shall see him very soon now. It won't
be long to wait."
"She has sent for him," thought the aunt. "I was right; it is Owen."
"That is why I wish to stay here," Dorothy went on. "Everything here is
associated with Alan; he liked Belmonte so much."
"Alan?" breathed the aunt, amazed, but instantly concealing her
amazement. Mrs. North quickly measured some drops from a phial
containing a sedative.
Dorothy let her head sink back against the cushions. "In the beginning
I didn't in the least know that I was going to feel it so. But that ache
came, and it wouldn't stop. I tried all sorts of things--don't you
remember? I tried studying. I tried music lessons. He used to urge me to
sing. He liked long walks, and I never would go; so then I took long
walks. You haven't forgotten them, have you? But the ache went on, and I
could not stand it. So I asked you to go to Paris. Paris has always been
so funny and amusing. But it wasn't funny any more. When we came back
here I thought that perhaps some one coming up every day and staying a
long time would make me forget. But having Waddy was worse than being
alone, and at last I hated him. Owen Charrington, too! Owen used to make
me laugh; I thought he would make me laugh again. But he didn't at all.
And when he asked me that last day to ride it was like a knife; for Alan
always went with me, and would never say anything to spoil my pleasure.
Yet he did not care about it really, though I insisted upon going day
after day. That is the way it was about everything. But I'm paying for
it now; I miss him so--I miss him so! Alan! Alan!--" And putting her
thin hands over her face, Dorothy burst into miserable heart-broken
sobs.
Nora came running in; Mrs. North handed her the medicine glass.
"Hysterics," she said. "Give her those drops as soon as you can."
"I look to you, doctor, to get us out of this new difficulty," said this
lady the next day to Dr. Hotham. "She has taken this fixed idea that she
does not wish to leave Belmonte. But the fixed idea of a girl of
nineteen ought not to be a trouble to you. Can't you suggest
something? Has science no resources for such a case?"
[Illustration: "'I MEAN THAT I SHALL SEE HIM VERY SOON NOW'"]
Dr. Hotham's resource was to send to Rome for a colleague. The most
distinguished English physician in Italy was called to Florence, and
there was a consultation at Bellosguardo. When it was over Mrs. North
came in to see the great man.
His sentences were agreeable; they were also encouraging. After a time
he spoke of the varying forms of nervous prostration; then he asked
whether this very interesting young lady could have, by any possibility,
something weighing upon her mind?
"No, nothing," replied the mother.
"Ah! In that case time, I trust, is all that is necessary for a complete
recovery."
"My own idea would be to take her north in spite of her disinclination
to go," Mrs. North went on. "A disinclination ought not to be important.
The journey would soon be over. She could be kept under the influence of
sedatives. But Dr. Hotham will not give his consent."
"I agree with him, madam. Do not force her; the effect upon the nervous
system might be bad. Let her do whatever she fancies. Amuse her. What a
pity there is no Corney Grain in Italy!"
"Everything in the way of amusement has been tried. That is why I wish
to take her away."
"Ah! I understood you to say, I think, that there is no hidden cause, no
wish, no mental--ah--err--strain?"
"Nothing of any consequence. She is hysterical sometimes; but that is
owing to her physical weakness," Mrs. North answered. And she said what
she believed.
A month later Dorothy, lying on a couch in her room, put out her hand to
Nora. "I must give you some of my money, Nora, for your poor
people--your orphans and the school and the hospital. I will give it to
you to-morrow."
"You can help Nora to distribute it," said Mrs. Tracy.
"Dear Aunt Charlotte, how you hate to hear me speak of it! But I talk to
Nora, you know, just as I please in the night."
"No; talk to me, too. Say whatever you like," answered Mrs. Tracy,
quickly.
[Illustration: BELMONTE]
"It is so warm this evening that I can have all the windows open,"
Dorothy went on. "Take the lamp out, Nora, please, and let in the
moonlight; I like to see it shining across the floor." She lay in
silence for some minutes looking at the radiance. They had cut off her
hair, thinking that its length and thickness might be taking something
from her small store of strength. Her face, with the boyish locks,
looked very childlike. "Do you remember that song, Aunt
Charlotte,'Through the long days'? The moonlight makes me think of it.
First, Felicia Philipps sang it one moonlight evening over at Villa
Dorio. Then, after we were married, some one sang it here in the garden,
and Alan said, when it was over-- Oh, if I could only tell him once, just
once, that I _did_ love him! He never believed it--he never knew--"
"Don't cry, dear. _Don't._"
"No; I don't cry very often now," Dorothy answered, her breast rising in
one or two long sobs. "Last spring Waddy dared to sing that song
again--Alan's song! I could not see him after that.
"Through the long days, the long days and the years--"
"It will tire you to sing, dear."
"No; I like it." And then, in a faint little thread of a voice, barely
audible, but very sweet, she sang, lying there in the moonlight, the
beautiful song:
"Through the long days, the long days and the years,
What will my loved one be,
Parted from me, parted from me,
Through the long days and years?
"Never, ah, never on earth again--"
It was her last song. Three days later she died. She passed away so
quietly that they did not know it was death; they thought she was
asleep.
When at last they learned what it was, Mrs. North, standing beside the
couch, white and stern, said, with rigid lips, "The doctors did not tell
us."
But the doctors did not know.
A TRANSPLANTED BOY
I
Lorenzo came into the hall, bell in hand.
Putting down his white gloves at the feet of the goddess Flora, he began
his promenade: ding-dong past Jupiter and Juno; ding-dong past Mars and
Venus, Neptune and Diana, Minerva and Apollo, until the last pedestal on
the east was reached; here there was no goddess, only a leaping flame.
There was a corresponding tongue of fire on the last pedestal of the
west side opposite, and both of these architectural ornaments were made
of wood, painted scarlet. On the north side there towered six windows as
high as those of a church. These windows faced a flight of stone steps
that went down in a dignified sweep, eighteen feet wide, to a landing
adorned with a Muse; here, dividing into two wings, the staircase turned
to the right and the left in noble curves, and descended to the square
hall below. The massive iron-clamped portals of this lower hall were
open; they were swung back early in the morning, in order that the
horses might pass through on their way to the street; for there were
horses in the stables of the court-yard within. They did pass through,
making with the carts to which they were harnessed a thundering clatter
which would have deafened the inmates of an American dwelling. But the
old Pisan palace had been built in another fashion. This lower hall with
its heavy pavement and great doors, the gallery above with the rows of
life-sized statues, the broad sweep of the stone stairways--all these, a
space that could have swallowed many modern houses entire, were but its
entrance; and so massive were the floors that no one in the long ranges
of rooms above had any intimation of the moment when their hallway was
turned into a street. The outer portals remained swung back all day; but
the light inner doors were opened and closed on demand by old Bianca,
the portress, who lived in a dusky den under the staircase. This evening
the sunset was so brilliant that even these inner doors stood open, and
Bianca herself had come to the threshold, blinking a little as the
radiance fell upon her patient, cloistered face.
She was looking at a boy who was leaning over the parapet opposite. This
boy, with one arm round a small dog whom he had lifted to the top of the
wall by his side, was gazing at the tawny water of the Arno as it glided
past the house; for the old palace was in the Lung' Arno of Pisa, the
sunny street that follows the river like a quay, its water-side lying
open to the stream, protected by a low wall. Bianca was evidently
thinking of this boy and the summons of the clanging bell above; whether
he cared for the bell or not, he seemed to feel at last the power of her
mild gaze directed upon his back, for, swinging himself down from the
parapet, he crossed the street, and with his dog at his heels, entered
the palace. He went up the right-hand stairway, glancing as he passed at
the two stone caryatides which upheld the balustrade at the landing;
these were girls who had probably been intended for mermaids; but their
fish endings were vague compared with the vividly human expression of
their anxious young countenances--an anxiety oddly insisted upon by the
unknown house-sculptor who had chiselled them according to his fantasy
hundreds of years before. Freshly arrived Americans, not yet broken in
to the light foreign breakfast, and frozen from January to March, were
accustomed to declare that the faces of these caryatides reflected in
advance all the miseries of the _pension_, that is, all the hardship of
winter life in Italy which assails the surprised and undefended pilgrim
from the United States. But the boy who was coming up the stairs, though
American, was not freshly arrived; in his mind the caryatides
illustrated, more or less, a charming story which his mother had told
him--the story of the Little Mermaid; he was fond of their anxious stone
cheeks on that account.
The Casa Corti was not an ordinary pension. In the first place, it had
the distinction of occupying the whole of the Rondinelli palace, with
the great shield of the Rondinellis (showing their six heraldic swallows
sitting on their tails) over its door; in the second, it had been in the
hands of one family for four generations, and was to go down in the same
line. The establishment could accommodate seventy persons. Three-fourths
of the seventy were always English, drawn hither by the fact that Madame
Corti was of English descent. A few Americans were allowed to enter, and
an occasional foreigner was received as a favor. In the _pension_
phraseology the English were "we," their transatlantic cousins "the
Americans," and all the rest "foreigners." As Lorenzo's bell ceased many
doors opened, and from the various quarters into which the old
Ghibelline residence had for its present purposes been divided--from
high rooms overlooking the river and adorned with frescos to low-browed
cells in the attic under the eaves; from apartments that looked upon
small inner courts like yellow wells, wells that resounded with the
jingle of dish-washing from morning till night; from short staircases
descending at unexpected points, and from others equally unlocked for
which mounted from secret chambers in the half-story (chambers whose
exact situation always remained a mystery to the rest of the
house)--from all of these, and from two far-off little dwellings perched
like tents on the roof, came the guests of the _pension_ on their way to
the dining-room and dinner. For they were all guests: the word patron or
boarder was unknown. In the same way the head of the establishment was
not by any means the boarding-house-keeper or the landlady: she was the
proprietress. She had inherited her _pension_ as other people inherit an
estate, and she managed it in much the same autocratic fashion.
When all her guests were seated, this proprietress herself rustled in, a
little late. Her attire was elaborate: a velvet gown made with a train,
an amber star in the hair, and a chain of large amber beads wound three
times round the throat, and falling in a long loop to the belt. She
entered with a gliding step, pressing her dimpled hands together as she
advanced, and giving a series of little bends from the waist upward,
which were intended as general salutation to the company; her smile
meanwhile gradually extended itself, until, as her chair was drawn out
with a flourish by Lorenzo, it became broad enough to display her teeth
as she sank gracefully into her place at the head of her table, and,
with a final bow to the right and the left, unfolded her napkin. Her
duty as regarded civility being now done, she broke off a morsel of
bread, and took a rapid survey of her seventy, with the mixture of sharp
personal dislike and the business views which forced her to accept them
visible as usual in her eyes behind her smile.
Her seventy appeared, as they always did, eminently respectable. There
were three English curates; there were English husbands and wives of the
travelling and the invalid varieties; there were four or five blooming
English girls with pink cheeks and very straight backs; and there were
dozens of English old maids, and of that species of relict that returns
naturally to spinsterhood after the funeral, without having acquired,
from passing through it, any of the richer tints and more ample outlines
that belong to the married state. In addition there were several
Americans, and a few "foreigners."
Lorenzo and his assistants were carrying away the soup-plates when two
more guests entered late. This was high crime. Madame's eyes, looking
smaller than ever, gleamed like two sparks as they passed. For if one
were so unfortunate as to be late for dinner at Casa Corti the custom
was to make an apologetic little bow to madame as one entered--entered
with hasty, repentant step (having passed, outside the door, the whole
miscellaneous force of the establishment gathered together with cans of
hot water to wash the forks). But these two had made no bow, and madame
had known that they would not; so she talked to her right-hand neighbor,
Captain Sholto Fraser, R.N., and carefully pretended not to see them.
The delinquents were Americans (madame would have said "Of course!"), a
pretty little woman who looked much younger than her age (which was
thirty-three), and the boy who had adorned the parapet with his
sprawling person--a mother and son. They found their empty chairs
waiting for them at the far end of the room. The boy's place was at his
mother's left hand; on her right she had one of the curates.
"Late again!" began this gentleman. "We shall have to impose a fine upon
you, Mrs. Roscoe; we shall indeed." And he made, playfully, a menacing
gesture with his large, very well kept hand.
"Ought I to come for the soup?" inquired the lady, surveying the
plateful before her with a slight curl of her lip.
"Nay; when it is cold!" remonstrated her neighbor. "Be more reasonable,
pray." He regarded her smilingly.
"Oh, reasonable women are horrid!" responded Mrs. Roscoe. "I should
never think of coming down until later," she went on, "only Maso--he
likes the soup." The boy was eating rapidly. She watched him for a
moment. "I don't see how he can!" she added.
"Perhaps Tommaso is hungry," suggested an English lady who sat opposite.
"Maso, please," corrected Mrs. Roscoe; "Tommaso is as ugly as Thomas."
"I dare say he has not nourishment enough," continued the first speaker;
"at his age that is so important. Why not order for him an extra chop at
luncheon?"
"Thank Mrs. Goldsworthy for her interest in you, Maso," said his
mother.
Maso grew red, and hastily crammed so much bread into his mouth that
both of his cheeks were widely distended at the same time.
"I have read in the journal, Madame Roscoe, of a gerate fire in your
countree--a town entire! I hope you lose not by it?" This inquirer was a
grave little woman from Lausanne, the widow of a Swiss pastor.
Mrs. Roscoe gave a shrug. "My interests are not of that kind. Where was
the fire, may I ask?"
"But in your countree, Amereekar. Voyons: the citee of Tam-Tampico."
Mrs. Roscoe laughed as she helped herself to fish--a fish tied with
yellow ribbons, and carrying a yellow lily in his mouth. "When we were
at Mentone an old lady informed me one day of the arrival of some of my
'countrypeople.' 'Now,' she said, 'you will not be the only Americans in
the house.' At dinner they appeared. They were Chilians. I said to my
friend, 'They are not my countrypeople; they are South Americans.' She
answered, severely: 'I suppose you say that because they are
Southerners! But now that so many years have passed since that dreadful
war of yours was brought to a close, I should think it would be far
wiser to drop such animosities.'" No one laughed over this story save an
American who was within hearing.
This American, a Vermont man, had arrived at the _pension_ several days
before, and already he had formed a close and even desperate friendship
with Mrs. Roscoe, pursuing her, accompanied by his depressed wife, to
her bedroom (she had no sitting-room), where, while trying to find a
level place on her slippery yellow sofa, he had delivered himself as
follows: "Wife--she kept saying, 'You ought to go abroad; you aren't
well, and it'll do you good; they say it's very sociable over there if
you stay at the _pensions_.'" (He gave this word a political
pronunciation.) "All I can say is--if _this_ is their _pension_!" And he
slapped his thigh with a resounding whack, and laughed sarcastically.
The beef now came round, a long slab of mahogany color, invisibly
divided into thin slices, the whole decked with a thick dark sauce which
contained currants, citron, and raisins.
"We miss Mr. Willoughby sadly," observed Mrs. Goldsworthy, with a sigh,
as she detached a slice. "Only last night he was here."
"I cannot say _I_ miss him," remarked Mrs. Roscoe.
"You do not? Pray tell us why?" suggested the curate, eagerly.
"Well, he's so black-letter; so early-English; so 'Merrily sungen the
monks of Ely.' In Baedeker, you know."
"He is very deep, if you mean that," said Mrs. Goldsworthy, reprovingly.
"Deep? I should call him wide; he is all over the place. If you speak of
a cat, he replies with a cataract; of a plate, with Plato; of the cream,
with cremation. I don't see how he manages to live in England at all;
there isn't standing-room there for his feet. But perhaps he soars; he
is a sort of a Cupid, you know. What will become of him if they make him
a bishop? For how can a bishop flirt? The utmost he can do is to say, 'I
will see you after service in the vestry.'"
The curate was laughing in gentlemanlike gulps. He was extremely happy.
The Rev. Algernon Willoughby, of Ely, had been admired, not to say
adored, in that _pension_ for seven long weeks.
The dinner went on through its courses, and by degrees the red wine flew
from the glasses to the faces. For as wine of the country in abundance,
without extra charge, was one of the attractions of Casa Corti, people
took rather more of it than they cared for, on the thoroughly human
principle of getting something for nothing. At length came a pudding,
violently pink in hue, and reposing on a bed of rose-leaves.
"Why, the pudding's redder than we are!" remarked Mrs. Roscoe, with
innocent surprise.
Her own cheeks, however, looked very cool in the universal flush; her
smooth complexion had no rose tints. This lack of pink was, in truth,
one of the faults of a face which had many beauties. She was small and
fair; her delicately cut features were extremely pretty--"pretty enough
to be copied as models for drawing-classes," some one had once said. Her
golden hair, which fell over her forehead in a soft, rippled wave, was
drawn up behind after the latest fashion of Paris; her eyes were blue,
and often they had a merry expression; her little mouth was almost like
that of a child, with its pretty lips and infantile, pearly teeth. In
addition, her figure was slender and graceful; her hands and feet and
ears were noticeably small. To men Violet Roscoe's attire always
appeared simple; the curate, for instance, if obliged to bear witness,
would have said that the costume of each and every other lady in the
room appeared to him more ornamented than that of his immediate
neighbor. A woman, however, could have told this misled male that the
apparently simple dress had cost more, probably, than the combined
attire of all the other ladies, save perhaps the rich velvet of Madame
Corti.
After nuts and figs, and a final draining of glasses, Madame Corti gave
the signal (no one would have dared to leave the table before that
sign), and her seventy rose. Smiling, talking, and fanning themselves,
they passed across the hall to the salon, where presently tea was served
in large gold-banded coffee-cups, most of which were chipped at the
edges. The ladies took tea, and chatted with each other; they stood by
the piano, and walked up and down, before beginning the regular
occupations of the evening--namely, whist, chess, the reading of the
best authorities on art, or doing something in the way of embroidery and
wool-work, or a complicated construction with bobbins that looked like a
horse-net. There were jokes; occasionally there was a ripple of mild
laughter. Madame Corti, intrenched behind her own particular table, read
the London _Times_ with the aid of a long-handled eye-glass. How she did
despise all these old maids, with their silver ornaments, and their
small economies, with their unmounted photographs pinned on the walls of
their bedrooms, and their talk of Benozzo, and Nicolo the Pisan! She
hated the very way they held their teacups after dinner, poised
delicately, almost gayly, with the little finger extended, as if to give
an air of festal lightness to the scene. Promptly at nine o'clock she
disappeared; an hour later her brougham was taking her to an Italian
gathering, where there would also be conversation, but conversation of a
very different nature. Teresa Corti, when she had escaped from her
_pension_, was one of the wittiest women in Pisa; her wit was audacious,
ample, and thoroughly Italian. There was, indeed, nothing English about
her save her knowledge of the language, and the trace of descent from
an English great-grandfather in her green eyes and crinkled yellow
hair.
Mrs. Roscoe did not remain in the drawing-room five minutes; she never
took tea, she did not play whist or chess, and she detested fancy-work.
She was followed to the stairway by her curate, who was urging her to
remain and play backgammon. "It's not such a bad game; really it's not,"
he pleaded, in his agreeable voice.
"Nothing is a bad game if one is amused," answered Mrs. Roscoe,
severely. She was seldom severe. But this evening she was tired.
"Oh, how early you've come up! I'm awful glad," said Maso, as she
entered her bedroom on the third floor. It was a large room, shabbily
furnished in yellow, the frescoed walls representing the Bay of Naples.
Maso was lying on the rug, with his dog by his side.
"Why are you in the dark?" said his mother. There was a smouldering fire
on the hearth; for though the day had been fine (it was the 15th of
March), the old palace had a way of developing unexpected shivers in the
evening. In spite of these shivers, however, this was the only room
where there was a fire. Mrs. Roscoe lighted the lamp and put on the pink
shade; then she drew the small Italian sticks together on the hearth,
threw on a dozen pine cones, and with the bellows blew the whole into a
brilliant blaze. Next she put a key into the Bay of Naples, unlocked a
wave, and drew out a small Vienna coffee-pot.
"Are we going to have coffee? Jolly!" said the boy.
[Illustration: "'OH, HOW EARLY YOU'VE COME UP!' SAID MASO"]
His mother made the coffee; then she took from the same concealed
cupboard, which had been drilled in the solid stone of the wall, a
little glass jug shaped like a lachrymal from the catacombs, which
contained cream; sugar in a bowl; cakes, and a box of marrons glacés.
Maso gave a Hi! of delight as each dainty appeared, and made his dog sit
on his hind legs. "I say, mother, what were they all laughing about at
dinner? Something you said?"
"They always laugh; they appear never to have heard a joke before. That
about the bishops, now, that is as old as the hills." Leaning back in
her easy-chair before the fire, with Maso established at her feet,
enjoying his cake and coffee, she gave a long yawn. "Oh, what a stupid
life!"
Maso was well accustomed to this exclamation. But when he had his mother
to himself, and when the room was so bright and so full of fragrant
aromas, he saw no reason to echo it. "Well, _I_ think it's just gay!" he
answered. "Mr. Tiber, beg!" Mr. Tiber begged, and received a morsel of
cake.
Mrs. Roscoe, after drinking her coffee, had taken up a new novel.
"Perhaps you had better study a little," she suggested.
Maso made a grimace. But as the coffee was gone and the cakes were
eaten, he complied--that is, he complied after he had made Mr. Tiber go
through his tricks. This took time; for Mr. Tiber, having swallowed a
good deal of cake himself, was lazy. At last, after he had been
persuaded to show to the world the excellent education he had received,
his master decided to go on with his own, and went to get his books,
which were on the shelf at the other end of the long room. It pleased
him to make this little journey on his heels, with his toes sharply
upturned in the air--a feat which required much balancing.
"That is the way you run down the heels of your shoes so," his mother
remarked, glancing at his contortions.
"It doesn't hurt them much on the _carpet_," replied the boy.
"Mercy! You don't go staggering through the streets in that way, do
you?"
"Only back streets."
[Illustration: "'MR. TIBER, BEG!'"]
He was now returning in the same obstructed manner, carrying his books.
He placed them upon the table where the lamp was standing; then he
lifted Mr. Tiber to the top of the same table and made him lie down;
next, seating himself, he opened a battered school-book, a United States
History, and, after looking at the pictures for a while, he began at
last to repeat two dates to himself in a singsong whisper. Maso was
passing through the period when a boy can be very plain, even hideous,
in appearance, without any perception of the fact in the minds of his
relatives, who see in him the little toddler still, or else the future
man; other persons, however, are apt to see a creature all hands and
feet, with a big uncertain mouth and an omnipresent awkwardness. Maso,
in addition to this, was short and ill developed, with inexpressive eyes
and many large freckles. His features were not well cut; his complexion
was pale; his straight hair was of a reddish hue. None of the mother's
beauties were repeated in the child. Such as he was, however, she loved
him, and he repaid her love by a deep adoration; to him, besides being
"mother," she was the most beautiful being in the whole world, and also
the cleverest. He was intensely proud of the admiration she excited, and
was always on the watch for it; at the table, awkward, constrained,
with downcast eyes, he yet saw every glance that was directed towards
her, and enjoyed each laugh which her words created. Mrs. Roscoe's purse
was a light one; worse than that, an uncertain one; but Maso,
personally, had known nothing but indulgence and ease all his life.
While he was vaguely murmuring his dates, and rocking himself backward
and forward in time with the murmur, there came a tap at the door. It
was Miss Spring. "I have looked in to bid you good-bye," she said,
entering. "I am going to Munich to-morrow."
"Isn't that sudden?" said Mrs. Roscoe. "The torn chair is the most
comfortable. Have a marron?"
"Thank you; I seldom eat sweets. No, it is not sudden."
"Shall I make you a cup of coffee?"
"Thank you; I don't take coffee."
Mrs. Roscoe pushed a footstool across the rug.
"Thank you; I never need footstools."
"Superior to all the delights of womankind!"
Miss Spring came out of her abstraction and laughed. "Not superior; only
bilious and long-legged." Then her face grew grave again. "Do you
consider Pisa an attractive place for a permanent residence?" she
inquired, fixing her eyes upon her hostess, who, having offered all the
hospitable attentions in her power, was now leaning back again, her feet
on a hassock.
"Attractive? Heavens! no."
"Yet you stay here? I think I have seen you here, at intervals, for
something like seven years?"
"Don't count them; I hate the sound," said Mrs. Roscoe. "My wish is--my
hope is--to live in Paris. I get there once in a while, and then I
always have to give it up and come away. Italy is cheap, and Pisa is
the cheapest place in Italy."
"So that is your reason for remaining," said Miss Spring, reflectively.
"What other reason on earth _could_ there be?"
"The equable climate."
"I hate equable climates. No, we're not here for climates. Nor for
Benozzo; nor for Nicolo the Pisan, and that everlasting old sarcophagus
that they are always talking about; nor for the Leaning Tower, either. I
perfectly hate the Leaning Tower!"
Miss Spring now undertook a joke herself. "It is for the moderns, then.
You are evidently a Shelley worshipper."
"Do I look like one?" demanded Violet Roscoe, extending her arms a
little, with the palms of the hands displayed, as if to call attention
to her entire person.
"I cannot say that you do," replied Miss Spring, after surveying her. "I
should think New York would please you as a place of residence," she
went on, after a moment. "If you do not like Italy, why do you not go
home?"
"Why don't you?" retorted Violet, taking a marron and crunching it.
"Well answered. But Newburyport is not to me what I should think New
York might be to you; Newburyport has much to learn. However, we all
have our reasons, I suppose."
"Mine are not mysterious," said Violet, continuing to crunch. "I have a
better time abroad than I do at home; that's all."
Miss Spring gazed at the fire. "I may as well acknowledge that it was
those very things that brought me here in the beginning, the things you
don't care for; Nicolo and the revival of sculpture; the early masters.
But I have not found them satisfying. I have tried to care for that
sarcophagus; but the truth is that I remain perfectly cold before it.
And the Campo Santo frescos seem to me out of drawing. As to the Shelley
memories, do you know what I thought of the other day? Suppose that
Shelley and Byron were residing here at this moment-- Shelley with that
queerness about his first wife hanging over him, and Byron living as we
know he lived in the Toscanelli palace--do you think that these ladies
in the pension who now sketch the Toscanelli and sketch Shelley's
windows, who go to Lerici and rave over Casa Magni, who make pilgrimages
to the very spot on the beach where Byron and Trelawny built the funeral
pyre--do you think that a single one of them would call, if it were
to-day, upon Mary Shelley? Or like to have Shelley and Byron dropping in
here for afternoon tea, with the chance of meeting the curates?"
"If they met them, they couldn't out-talk them," answered Violet,
laughing. "Curates always want to explain something they said the day
before. As to the calling and the tea, what would _you_ do?"
"I should be consistent," responded Miss Spring, with dignity. "I should
call. And I should be happy to see them here in return."
"Well, you'd be safe," said Violet. "Shelley, Byron, Trelawny, all
together, would never dare to flirt with Roberta Spring!" She could say
this without malice, for her visitor was undeniably a handsome woman.
Miss Spring, meanwhile, had risen; going to the table, she put on her
glasses and bent over Maso's book. "History?"
"Yes, 'm. I haven't got very far yet," Maso answered.
"Reader. Copy-book. Geography. Spelling-book. Arithmetic," said Miss
Spring, turning the books over one by one. "The Arithmetic appears to be
the cleanest."
"Disuse," said Mrs. Roscoe, from her easy-chair. "As I am Maso's
teacher, and as I hate arithmetic, we have never gone very far. I don't
know what we shall do when we get to fractions!"
"And what is your dog doing on the table, may I ask?" inquired the
visitor, surveying Mr. Tiber coldly.
"Oh, he helps lots. I couldn't study at all without him," explained
Maso, with eagerness.
"Indeed?" said Miss Spring, turning the gaze of her glasses from the dog
to his master. "How's that?"
Maso was always rather afraid of the tall Roberta; he curled the pages
of his History with stubby fingers and made no reply.
"If you won't tell, Maso, I shall," said his mother; "I shall do it to
make you ashamed of your baby ways. He divides each lesson, Miss Spring,
into four parts, if you please; then, as each part is learned (or
supposed to be learned), Mr. Tiber has to sit on his hind legs and wave
a paw. Then, when all four parts are done, Mr. Tiber has to lie on the
book. Book after book is added to the pile, and finally Mr. Tiber is on
top of a monument. But he is so used to it that he does not mind it
much. After the last lesson is learned, then Mr. Tiber, as a
celebration, has to go through all the tricks. And there are
twenty-two."
"Well!" said Miss Spring. She never could comprehend what she called
"all this dog business" of the Roscoes. And their dog language (they had
one) routed her completely. "Twenty-two!"
"An' _gherry_ kinnin, idn't they?" Maso was whispering to his pet.
"Why did you name him Mr. Tiber?" pursued the visitor, in her grave
voice.
"We didn't; he was already named," explained Mrs. Roscoe. "We bought him
of an old lady in Rome, who had three; she had named them after Italian
rivers: Mr. Arno, Mr. Tiber, and Miss Dora Riparia."
"Miss Dora Riparia--well!" said Miss Spring. Then she turned to subjects
more within her comprehension. "It is a pity I am going away, Maso, for
I could have taught you arithmetic; I like to teach arithmetic."
Maso made no answer save an imbecile grin. His mother gesticulated at
him behind Miss Spring's back. Then he muttered, "Thank you, 'm," hoping
fervently that the Munich plan was secure.
"I shall get a tutor for Maso before long," remarked Mrs. Roscoe, as
Miss Spring came back to the fire. "Later, my idea is to have him go to
Oxford."
Miss Spring looked as though she were uttering, mentally, another
"well!" The lack of agreement in the various statements of her pretty
little countrywoman always puzzled her; she could understand crime
better than inconsistency.
"Shall you stay long in Munich?" Violet inquired.
"That depends." Miss Spring had not seated herself. "Would you mind
coming to my room for a few minutes?" she added.
"There's no fire; I shall freeze to death!" thought Violet. "If you
like," she answered aloud. And together they ascended to the upper
story, where, at the top of two unexpected steps, was Miss Spring's
door. This door was adorned with a large solidly fastened brass
door-plate, bearing, in old-fashioned script, the name "Archibald
Starr." No one in the house, not even Madame Corti herself, had any idea
who Archibald Starr had been in the flesh. At present he was nothing but
a door-plate. His apartment within had been divided by partitions, so
that his sitting-room was now a rain-water tank. Roberta Spring occupied
his vestibule. The vestibule was small and bare; in the daytime it was
lighted by two little windows, so high in the wall that they were opened
and closed by means of long cords. A trunk, locked and strapped, stood
in the centre of the floor; an open travelling-bag, placed on a chair,
gaped for the toilet articles, which were ranged on the table together,
so that nothing should be forgotten at the early morning start--a cheap
hair-brush and stout comb, an unadorned wooden box containing hair-pins
and a scissors, a particularly hideous travelling pin-cushion. Violet
Roscoe gazed at these articles, fascinated by their ugliness; she
herself possessed a long row of vials and brushes, boxes and mirrors, of
silver, crystal, and ivory, and believed that she could not live without
them.
"I thought I would not go into the subject before Maso," began Miss
Spring, as she closed her door. "Such explanations sometimes unsettle a
boy; his may not be a mind to which inquiry is necessary. My visit to
Munich has an object. I am going to study music."
"Music?" repeated Mrs. Roscoe, surprised. "I didn't know you cared for
it."
"But it remains to be seen whether I care, doesn't it? One cannot tell
until one has tried. This is the case: I am now thirty-seven years of
age. I have given a good deal of attention to astronomy and to
mathematics; I am an evolutionist, a realist, a member of the Society
for Psychical Research; Herbert Spencer's works always travel with me.
These studies have been extremely interesting. And yet I find that I am
not fully satisfied, Mrs. Roscoe. And it has been a disappointment. I am
determined, therefore, to try some of those intellectual influences
which do not appeal solely to reason. They appear to give pleasure to
large numbers of mankind, so there must be something in them. What that
is I resolved to find out. I began with sculpture. Then painting. But
they have given me no pleasure whatever. Music is third on the list. So
now I am going to try that."
Mrs. Roscoe gave a spring, and seated herself on the bed with her feet
under her, Turkish fashion; the floor was really too cold. "No use
trying music unless you like it," she said.
"I have never _dis_liked it. My attitude will be that of an impartial
investigator," explained Miss Spring. "I have, of course, no expectation
of becoming a performer; but I shall study the theory of harmony, the
science of musical composition, its structure--"
"Structure! Stuff! You've got to _feel_ it," said Violet.
"Very well. I am perfectly willing to feel; that is, in fact, what I
wish--let them _make_ me feel. If it is an affair of the emotions, let
them rouse _my_ emotions," answered Roberta.
"If you would swallow a marron occasionally, and drink a cup of good
coffee with cream; if you would have some ivory brushes and crystal
scent-bottles, instead of those hideous objects," said Violet, glancing
towards the table; "if you would get some pretty dresses once in a
while--I think satisfaction would be nearer."
Miss Spring looked up quickly. "You think I have been too ascetic? Is
that what you mean?"
"Oh, I never mean anything," answered Violet, hugging herself to keep
down a shiver.
"In spite of your disclaimer, I catch your idea," replied her hostess.
"But if I should carry it out, Mrs. Roscoe, carry it out to its full
extent, it would take me, you know, very far--into complex
dissipations."
Her voice took on no animation as she said this; it remained calm, as it
always was. She was a tall woman with regular features, a clear white
complexion, and striking gray eyes with long dark lashes; her abundant
dark hair was drawn straight back from her face, and she carried her
head remarkably well. She was what is called "fine-looking," but from
head to foot, though probably she did not know it, her appearance was
austere.
Violet had given way to irresistible laughter over the "complex
dissipations." Miss Spring came out of what appeared to be a mental
census of the various debaucheries that would be required, and laughed a
little herself. She was not without a sense of humor. "To you it seems
funny, no doubt," she said, "for I have never been at all gay. Yet I
think I could manage it."
Violet, still laughing, climbed down from the bed; she was too cold to
stay longer.
"I knew I should get a new idea out of you, Mrs. Roscoe. I always do,"
said Roberta, frankly. "And this time it is an important one; it is a
side-light which I had not thought of myself at all. I shall go to
Munich to-morrow. But I will add this: if music is not a success,
perhaps I may some time try your plan."
"Plan? Horrible! I haven't any," said Violet, escaping towards the door.
"It is an unconscious one; it is, possibly, instinctive truth," said
Miss Spring, as she shook hands with her departing guest. "And
instinctive truth is the most valuable."
Violet ran back to her own warm quarters. "You don't mean to say, Maso,
that you've stopped studying already?" she said, as she entered and
seated herself before her fire again, with a sigh of content. "Nice
lessons you'll have for me to-morrow."
"They're all O.K.," responded the boy. He had his paint-box before him,
and was painting the Indians in his History.
"Well, go to bed, then."
"Yes, 'm."
At half-past ten, happening to turn her head while she cut open the
pages of her novel, she saw that he was still there. "Maso, do you hear
me? Go to bed."
"Yes, 'm." He painted faster, making hideous grimaces with his protruded
lips, which unconsciously followed the strokes of his brush up and down.
The picture finished at last, he rose. "Mr. Tiber, pim."
Mr. Tiber left the sofa, where he had been sleeping since the
termination of the lessons, and hopped to the floor. Here he indulged in
a stretch; first, hind legs; then fore legs; then a hunch of his back
and a deep yawn. He was a very small black-and-tan terrier, with a
pretty little head and face. Maso's voice now gave a second summons from
his bedroom, which was next to his mother's, with a door between. "Are
you coming, Mr. Tiber? _Very_ well!" Mr. Tiber, hearing this, ran as
fast as he could scamper into his master's chamber. Here he had his own
bed, composed of a flat basket containing what Maso called "a really
mattress," and a pillow with a pillow-case, a blanket, and red coverlid,
each article bearing an embroidered T in the corner, surmounted by a
coronet; for Mr. Tiber was supposed to be a nobleman. The nobleman went
to bed, and was tucked in with his head on the pillow. This was Maso's
rule; but very soon the head assumed its normal position, curled round
on the little black tail.
At eleven, Mrs. Roscoe finished her novel and threw it down. "Women who
write don't know much about love-affairs," was her reflection. "And
those of us who have love-affairs don't write!" She rose. "Maso, you
here still? I thought you went to bed an hour ago!"
"Well, I did begin. I put my shoes outside." He extended his shoeless
feet in proof. "Then I just came back for a minute."
His mother looked over his shoulder. "That same old fairy-book! Who
would suppose you were twelve years old?"
"Thirteen," said Maso, coloring.
"So you are. But only two weeks ago. Never mind; you'll be a tall man
yet--a great big thing striding about, whom I shall not care half so
much for as I do for my little boy." She kissed him. "All your father's
family are tall, and you look just like them."
Maso nestled closer as she stood beside him. "How did father look? I
don't remember him much."
"Much? You don't remember him at all; he died when you were six months
old--a little teenty baby."
"I say, mother, how long have we been over here?"
"I came abroad when you were not quite two."
"Aren't we ever going back?"
"If you could once see Coesville!" was Mrs. Roscoe's emphatic reply.
II
"Hist, Maso! Take this in to your lady mother," said Giulio. "I made it
myself, so it's good." Giulio, one of the dining-room waiters at Casa
Corti, was devoted to the Roscoes. Though he was master of a mysterious
French polyglot, he used at present his own tongue, for Maso spoke
Italian as readily as he did, and in much the same fashion.
Maso took the cup, and Giulio disappeared. As the boy was carrying the
broth carefully towards his mother's door, Madame Corti passed him. She
paused.
"Ah, Master Roscoe, I am relieved to learn that your mother is better.
Will you tell her, with my compliments, that I advise her to go at once
to the Bagni to make her recovery. She ought to go to-morrow. That is
the air required for convalescence."
Maso repeated this to his mother. "'That is the air required for
convalescence,' she said."
"And 'this is the room required for spring tourists,' she meant. Did she
name a day--the angel?"
"Well, she did say to-morrow," Maso admitted.
"Old cat! She is dying to turn me out; she is so dreadfully afraid that
the word fever will hurt her house. All the servants are sworn to call
it rheumatism."
"See here, mother, Giulio sent you this."
"I don't want any of their messes."
"But he made it himself, so it's good." He knelt down beside her sofa,
holding up the cup coaxingly.
"Beef-tea," said Mrs. Roscoe, drawing down her upper lip. But she took a
little to please him.
"Just a little more."
She took more.
"A little _teenty_ more."
"You scamp! You think it's great fun to give directions, don't you?"
Maso, who had put the emptied cup back on the table, gave a leap of glee
because she had taken so much.
"Don't walk on your hands," said his mother, in alarm, "It makes me too
nervous."
It was the 12th of April, and she had been ill two weeks. An attack of
bronchitis had prostrated her suddenly, and the bronchitis had been
followed by an intermittent fever, which left her weak.
"I say, mother, let's go," said Maso. "It's so nice at the Bagni--all
trees and everything. Miss Anderson'll come and pack."
Miss Anderson was one of Dr. Prior's nurses. She had taken charge of
Mrs. Roscoe during the worst days of her illness.
"If we do go to the Bagni we cannot stay at the hotel," said Mrs.
Roscoe, gloomily. "This year we shall have to find some cheaper place. I
have been counting upon money from home that hasn't come."
"But it _will_ come," said Maso, with confidence.
"Have you much acquaintance with Reuben John?"
The tone of voice, bitterly sarcastic, in which his mother had from his
earliest remembrance pronounced this name, had made the syllables
eminently disagreeable to Maso. He had no very clear idea as to the
identity of Reuben John, save that he was some sort of a dreadful
relative in America.
"Well, the Bagni's nice," he answered, "no matter where we stay. And I
know Miss Anderson'll come and pack."
"You mustn't say a word to her about it. I have got to write a note, as
it is, and ask her to wait for her money until winter. Dr. Prior, too."
"Well, they'll do it; they'll do it in a minute, and be glad to," said
Maso, still confident.
"I am sure I don't know why," commented his mother, turning her head
upon the pillow fretfully.
"Why, mother, they'll do it because it's you. They think everything of
you; everybody does," said the boy, adoringly.
Violet Roscoe laughed. It took but little to cheer her. "If you don't
brush your hair more carefully they won't think much of _you_," she
answered, setting his collar straight.
There was a knock at the door. "Letters," said Maso, returning. He
brought her a large envelope, adorned with Italian superlatives of honor
and closed with a red seal. "Always so civil," murmured Mrs. Roscoe,
examining the decorated address with a pleased smile. Her letters came
to a Pisan bank; the bankers re-enclosed them in this elaborate way, and
sent them to her by their own gilt-buttoned messenger. There was only
one letter to-day. She opened it, read the first page, turned the leaf,
and then in her weakness she began to sob. Maso in great distress knelt
beside her; he put his arm round her neck, and laid his cheek to hers;
he did everything he could think of to comfort her. Mr. Tiber, who had
been lying at her feet, walked up her back and gave an affectionate lick
to her hair. "Mercy! the dog, too," she said, drying her eyes. "_Of
course_ it was Reuben John," she explained, shaking up her pillow.
Maso picked up the fallen letter.
"Don't read it; burn it--horrid thing!" his mother commanded.
He obeyed, striking a match and lighting the edge of the page.
"Not only no money, but in its place a long, hateful, busybodying
sermon," continued Mrs. Roscoe, indignantly.
Maso came back from the hearth, and took up the envelope. "Mrs. Thomas
R. Coe," he read aloud. "Is our name really Coe, mother?"
"You know it is perfectly well."
"Everybody says Roscoe."
"_I_ didn't get it up; all I did was to call myself Mrs. Ross Coe, which
is my name, isn't it? I hate Thomas. Then these English got hold of it
and made it Ross-Coe and Roscoe. I grew tired of correcting them long
ago."
"Then in America I should be Thom-as Ross Coe--Thom-as R. Coe," pursued
the boy, still scanning the envelope, and pronouncing the syllables
slowly. He was more familiar with Italian names than with American.
"No such luck. Tommy Coe you'd be now. And as you grew older, Tom
Coe--like your father before you."
They went to the Bagni--that is, to the baths of Lucca. The journey,
short as it was, tired Mrs. Roscoe greatly. They took up their abode in
two small rooms in an Italian house which had an unswept stairway and a
constantly open door. These quarters did not depress Violet; she had no
strongly marked domestic tastes; she was indifferent as to her lodging,
provided her clothes were delicately fresh and pretty. But her inability
to go out to dinner took away her courage. She had intended to dine at
the hotel where they had stayed in former years; for two or three hours
each day she could then be herself. But after one or two attempts she
was obliged to give up the plan; she had not the strength to take the
daily walk. It ended in food being sent in from a neighboring cook-shop,
or _trattoria_, and served upon her bedroom table. Maso, disturbed by
her illness, but by nothing else--for they had often followed a nomadic
life for a while when funds were low--scoured the town. He bought cakes
and fruit to tempt her appetite; he made coffee. He had no conception
that these things were not proper food for a convalescent; his mother
had always lived upon coffee and sweets.
On the first day of May, when they had been following this course for
two weeks, they had a visitor. Dr. Prior, who had been called to the
Bagni for a day, came to have a look at his former patient. He stayed
fifteen minutes. When he took leave he asked Maso to show him the way to
a certain house. This, however, was but a pretext, for when they reached
the street he stopped.
"I dare say ye have friends here?"
"Well," answered Maso, "mother generally knows a good many of the people
in the hotel when we are staying there. But this year we ain't."
"Hum! And where are your relatives?"
"I don't know as we've got any. Yes, there's one," pursued Maso,
remembering Reuben John. "But he's in America."
The Scotch physician, who was by no means an amiable man, was bluntly
honest. "How old are you?" he inquired.
"I'm going on fourteen."
"Never should have supposed ye to be more than eleven. As there appears
to be no one else, I must speak to you. Your mother must not stay in
this house a day longer; she must have a better place--better air and
better food."
Maso's heart gave a great throb. "Is she--is she very ill?"
"Not yet. But she is in a bad way; she coughs. She ought to leave Italy,
for a while; stay out of it for at least four months. If she doesn't
care to go far, Aix-les-Bains would do. Speak to her about it. I fancy
ye can arrange it--hey? American boys have their own way, I hear." This
was meant as a joke; but as the grim face did not smile, the jocular
intention failed to make itself apparent. The speaker nodded, and went
down the street. The idea that Mrs. Roscoe might not have money enough
to indulge herself with a journey to Aix-les-Bains, or to anywhere else,
would never have occurred to him. He had seen her in Pisa off and on for
years, one of the prettiest women there, and perhaps the most perfectly
equipped as regarded what he called "furbelows"; that, with all her
costly finery, she chose to stay in a high-up room at Casa Corti instead
of having an apartment of her own, with the proper servants, was only
another of those American eccentricities to which, after a long
professional life in Italy, he was now well accustomed.
Maso went back to his mother's room with his heart in his mouth. When he
came in she was asleep; her face looked wan. The boy, cold all over with
the new fear, sat down quietly by the window with Mr. Tiber on his lap,
and fell into anxious thought. After a while his mother woke. The greasy
dinner, packed in greasy tins, came and went. When the room was quiet
again he began, tremulously, "How much money have we got, mother?"
"Precious little."
"Mayn't I see how much it is?"
"No; don't bother."
She had eaten nothing.
"Mother, won't you please take that money, even if it's little, and go
straight off north somewhere? To Aix-les-Bains."
"What are you talking about? Aix-les-Bains? What do you know of
Aix-les-Bains?"
"Well, I've heard about it. Say, mother, do go. And Mr. Tiber and me'll
stay here. We'll have lots of fun," added the boy, bravely.
"Is that all you care about me?" demanded his mother. Then seeing his
face change, "Come here, you silly child," she said. She made him sit
down on the rug beside her sofa. "We must sink or swim together, Maso
(dear me! we're not much in the swim now); we can't go anywhere, either
of us; we can only just manage to live as we're living now. And there
won't be any more money until November." She stroked his hair
caressingly. His new fear made him notice how thin her wrist had grown.
III
"You will mail these three letters immediately," said Mr. Waterhouse, in
Italian, to the hotel porter.
"Si, signore," answered the man, with the national sunny smile, although
Waterhouse's final gratuity had been but a franc.
"Now, Tommaso, I must be off; long drive. Sorry it has happened so.
Crazy idea her coming at all, as she has enjoyed bad health for years,
poor old thing! She may be dead at this moment, and probably, in fact,
she is dead; but I shall have to go, all the same, in spite of the great
expense; she ought to have thought of that. I have explained everything
to your mother in that letter; the money is at her own bank in Pisa, and
I have sent her the receipt. You have fifty francs with you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Fifty francs--that is ten dollars. More than enough, much more; be
careful of it, Tommaso. You will hear from your mother in two days, or
sooner, if she telegraphs; in the meanwhile you will stay quietly where
you are."
"Yes, sir."
Mr. Waterhouse shook hands with his pupil, and, stepping into the
waiting carriage, was driven away.
[Illustration: "'WE MUST SINK OR SWIM TOGETHER, MASO'"]
Benjamin F. Waterhouse, as he signed himself (of course the full name
was Benjamin Franklin), was an American who had lived in Europe for
nearly half a century, always expecting to go home "next summer." He was
very tall, with a face that resembled a damaged portrait of Emerson, and
he had been engaged for many years in writing a great work, a Life of
Christopher Columbus, which was to supersede all other Lives. As his
purse was a light one, he occasionally took pupils, and it was in this
way that he had taken Maso, or, as he called him (giving him all the
syllables of the Italian Thomas), Tommaso. Only three weeks, however, of
his tutorship had passed when he had received a letter announcing that
his sister, his only remaining relative, despairing of his return, was
coming abroad to see him, in spite of her age and infirmities; she was
the "poor old thing" of her dry brother's description, and the voyage
apparently had been too great an exertion, for she was lying dangerously
ill at Liverpool, and the physician in attendance had telegraphed to
Waterhouse to come immediately.
The history of the tutorship was as follows: Money had come from
America, after all. Mrs. Roscoe (as everybody called her) had been
trying for some time, so she told Maso, "to circumvent Reuben John," and
sell a piece of land which she owned in Indiana. Now, unexpectedly, a
purchaser had turned up. While she was relating this it seemed to her
that her little boy changed into a young man before her eyes. "You've
just got to take that money, mother, and go straight up to
Aix-les-Bains," said Maso, planting himself before her. "I sha'n't go a
single step; I ain't sick, and you are; it's cheaper for me to stay
here. There isn't money enough to take us both, for I want you to stay
up there ever so long--four whole months."
This was the first of many discussions, or rather of astonished
exclamations from the mother, met by a stubborn and at last a silent
obstinacy on the part of the boy. For of late he had scarcely slept, he
had been so anxious; he had discovered that the people in the house,
with the usual Italian dread of a cough, believed that "the beautiful
little American," as they called his mother, was doomed. Mother and son
had never been separated; the mother shed tears over the idea of a
separation now; and then a few more because Maso did not "care." "It
doesn't seem to be anything to _you_," she declared, reproachfully.
But Maso, grim-faced and wretched, held firm.
In this dead-lock, Mrs. Roscoe at last had the inspiration of asking
Benjamin Waterhouse, who was spending the summer at the Bagni, and whom
she knew to be a frugal man, to take charge of Maso during her absence.
Maso, who under other circumstances would have fought the idea of a
tutor with all his strength, now yielded without a word. And then the
mother, unwillingly and in a flood of tears, departed. She went by slow
stages to Aix-les-Bains; even her first letter, however, much more the
later ones, exhaled from each line her pleasure in the cooler air and in
her returning health. She sent to Maso, after a while, a colored
photograph of herself, taken on the shore of Lake Bourget, and the
picture was to the lonely boy the most precious thing he had ever
possessed; for it showed that the alarming languor had gone; she was no
longer thin and wan. He carried the photograph with him, and when he was
alone he took it out. For he was suffering from the deepest pangs of
homesickness. He was homesick for his mother, for his mother's room (the
only home he had ever known), with all its attractions and indulgences;
he could always play his games there; she was never tired of them nor of
the noise and disorder which they might occasion; she was never tired
of Mr. Tiber; she was never tired of Indians and war-whoops, nor of
tents made of her shawls. She always petted him and made much of him;
she was so little serious herself that she had unconsciously kept him
childlike; in many things they had been like two children together. In
the life they led he had but small opportunity to make friendships with
other lads. He had played with the American boys of his age whom he had
met here and there, but they were always travellers; they never stayed
long. His only comrade had been a lad in Pisa named Luigi. But even
Luigi could not play games half as well as his mother could, nor live in
the tent half as satisfactorily. He said nothing of his homesickness to
his tutor; Waterhouse thought him a dull, hangdog sort of boy, and also
a boy incredibly, monstrously ignorant. "What can that feather-brained
little woman have been about not to have sent him to school long ago!"
was his thought.
But now Maso was left alone, not only schoolless but tutorless. When the
carriage bearing the biographer of Columbus had disappeared down the
road leading to Lucca, the boy went back to the porter, who, wearing his
stiff official cap adorned with the name of the hotel, stood airing his
corpulent person in the doorway. "Say, Gregorio, I'll take those letters
to the post-office if you like; I'm going right by there."
Gregorio liked Maso; all Italian servants liked the boy and his clever
dog. In addition, the sunshine was hot, and Gregorio was not fond of
pedestrian exercise; so he gave the letters to Maso willingly enough.
Maso went briskly to the post-office. Here he put two of the letters
into the box, but the third, which bore his mother's address, remained
hidden under his jacket. Returning to the hotel, he went up to his room,
placed this letter in his trunk, and locked the trunk carefully; then,
accompanied by Mr. Tiber, he went off for a walk. The change had been so
sudden that he had hardly had time to think; the telegram to Mr.
Waterhouse had come only the day before, and until its arrival he had
supposed that his life was definitely arranged for several months. Now,
suddenly, everything was upheaved. After walking a mile, he sat down in
a shady place and took off his hat. His thoughts ran something as
follows: "'T any rate, mother sha'n't know; _that's_ settled; I ain't
going to let her come back here and get sick again; no, sir! She's
getting all well up there, and she's _got_ to stay four whole months.
There's no way she can hear that old Longlegs" (this was his name for
the historical Benjamin) "has gone, now that I've hooked his letter. The
people she knows here at the Bagni never write; besides, they don't know
where she's staying, and I won't let 'em know. If they see me here alone
they'll suppose Longlegs has arranged it. I've got to tell lies some;
I've got to pretend, when I write to her, that Longlegs has sprained his
wrist or his leg or something, and that's why he can't write himself.
I've got to be awful careful about what I put in my letters, so that
they'll sound all right; but I guess I can do it bully. And I'll spend
mighty little (only I'm going to have ices); I'll quit the hotel, and go
back to that house where we stayed before the money came. I've got fifty
francs--that's lots; when that's gone, I'll go down to Pisa and get some
more; they know me at the bank; I've been there with mother; they'll
give me some. But I won't take much. Then, as old Longlegs hasn't got
to be paid, there'll be stacks left when mother comes back, and she'll
be so surprised! That'll be jolly fun--just elegant fun! Mr. Tiber, pim
here."
Mr. Tiber was pursuing investigations by the side of a small
watercourse; nothing was visible of him but the tip of a tail.
"_Very_ well!"
Mr. Tiber came with a rush. Maso took him up, and confided to him, in
the dog language, all his profound plan. Mr. Tiber approved of it
highly.
The fifty francs carried the two through a good many days. Mr. Tiber,
indeed, knew no change, for he had his coroneted bed, and the same fare
was provided for him daily--a small piece of meat, plenty of hot
macaroni, followed by a bit of cake and several lumps of sugar. When
there were but eight francs left Maso went to Pisa. Mr. Waterhouse, who
was very careful about money affairs, had paid all his pupil's bills up
to the date of his own departure, and had then sent the remainder of the
money which Mrs. Roscoe had left with him for the summer to her bankers
at Pisa. Maso, as a precaution, carried with him the unmailed letter
which contained the receipt for this sum. But he hoped that he should
not be obliged to open the letter; he thought that they would give him a
little money without that, as they knew him well. When he reached Pisa
he found that the bank had closed its doors. It had failed.
Apparently it was a bad failure. Nobody (he inquired here and there)
gave him a hopeful word. At the English bookseller's an assistant whom
he knew said: "Even if something is recovered after a while, I am sure
that nothing will be paid out for a long time yet. They have always
been shaky; in my opinion, they are rascals." The bank, in truth, had
never been a solid establishment; during its brief existence its
standing had been dubious. But Violet Roscoe had her own ideas about
banks, and one of the first was that she should be treated "with
civility"; she was immensely indignant if her personality was not
immediately recognized. Generally it was; she was such a charmingly
pretty woman that bankers' clerks all over Europe remembered that
personality without trouble, and handed out her letters eagerly through
the windows of their caged retreats, stretching their heads through as
far as possible to anticipate her slightest wish. But once, at one of
the old banks in Pisa, she had presented a check on Paris, and had been
asked to bring some one to identify her.
"Such a thing has never happened to me before!" she said, throwing back
her head proudly.
This was true. But, again, it was her appearance, her beauty, and
personal elegance which had helped her; risks had been assumed now and
then simply from these. "She goes it on her face, doesn't she?" had been
the private comment of one clerk to another in a bank at Rome. Upon this
occasion at Pisa Violet had swept out of the place before the older
official had time to find out what the new man was doing at the outer
counter. Soon after this Mrs. Roscoe had selected this smaller
establishment as "much nicer." "The office is so handsome, and they have
such nice chairs, and all the illustrated papers. And then they are
polite; they know their business, which is to be civil; there they see
what I am!" They did see, indeed.
[Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WATERHOUSE]
Maso went back to the Bagni. In the bewilderment of his thoughts
there was but one clear idea: "'T any rate, mother _sha'n't_ know; she's
got to stay away four whole months; the doctor said so."
IV
After a day of thought, Maso decided that he would leave the Bagni and
go down to Pisa, and stay at Casa Corti. Madame Corti would not be there
(she spent her summers at Sorrento), and officially the _pension_ was
closed; but Giulio would let him remain, knowing that his mother would
pay for it when she returned; he had even a vision of the very room at
the top of the house where Giulio would probably put him--a
brick-floored cell next to the linen-room, adorned with an ancient
shrine, and pervaded by the odor of freshly ironed towels. It would be
no end of a lark to spend the summer in Pisa. Luigi would be there; and
the puppet-shows. And perhaps Giulio would take him up on Sundays to the
house on the hill-side where his wife and children lived; he had taken
him once, and Maso had always longed to go again. But when he reached
Pisa with his dog and his trunk he found the Palazzo Rondinelli wearing
the aspect of a deserted fortress; the immense outer doors were swung to
and locked; there was no sign of life anywhere. It had not been closed
for twenty years. It was the unexpected which had happened. Maso went
round to the stone lane behind the palace to see Luigi. It was then that
he learned that his friend had gone to live in Leghorn; he learned,
also, that the Casa Corti servants, having an opportunity to earn full
wages at Abetone for two months, had been permitted by Madame Corti to
accept this rare good-fortune; the house, therefore, had been closed.
Maso, thus adrift, was still confident that the summer was going to be
"huge," a free, banditlike existence, with many enjoyments; pictures of
going swimming, and staying in as long as he liked, were in his mind;
also the privilege of having his hair shaved close to his head, of
eating melons at his pleasure, and of drinking lemonade in oceans from
the gayly adorned, jingling carts. Of course he should have to get
something to do, as his money was almost gone. Still, it would not take
much to support him, and there was going to be an exciting joy in
independence, in living in "bachelor quarters." He found his bachelor
quarters in the Street of the Lily, a narrow passage that went burrowing
along between two continuous rows of high old houses. The Lily's
pavement was slimy with immemorial filth, and, in spite of the heat, the
damp atmosphere was like that of an ill-kept refrigerator. At the top of
one of the houses he established himself, with Mr. Tiber, in a bare room
which contained not much more than a chair and a bed. Nevertheless, the
first time he came out, locked his door, and descended the stairs with
the key in his pocket he felt like a man; and he carried himself like
one, with a swagger. The room had one advantage, it contained a
trap-door to the roof, and there was a ladder tied up to the high
ceiling, its rope secured by a padlock; the boy soon contrived means
(this must have been his Yankee blood) to get the ladder down when he
chose; then at night he went up and cooled himself off on the roof,
under the stars. There were two broken statues there, for the old house
had had its day of grandeur; he made a seat, or rather a bed, at their
feet. Mr. Tiber was so unhappy down below that he invented a way to get
him up also. He spread his jacket on the floor, made Mr. Tiber lie down
upon it, and then, fastening the sleeves together with a cord, he swung
the jacket round his neck and ascended with his burden. Mr. Tiber
enjoyed the roof very much.
Having established himself, selected his trattoria, and imbibed a good
deal of lemonade as a beginning, the occupant of the bachelor quarters
visited the business streets of Pisa in search of employment. But it was
the dullest season in a place always dull, and no one wished for a new
boy. At the Anglo-American Agency the clerk, languid from the heat,
motioned him away without a word; at the Forwarding and Commission
Office no one looked at him or spoke to him; so it was everywhere. His
friend, the bookseller's assistant, had gone for the summer to the
branch establishment at Como.
Mrs. Roscoe, who detested Pisa, had established no relations there save
at the confectioner's, and at the agreeable bank where they saw what she
was. But the bank continued closed, and the confectioner objected to
boys of thirteen as helpers. In this emergency Maso wrote to Luigi,
asking if there was any hope of a place in Leghorn.
"There is sure to be a demand at the large establishments for a talented
North American," Luigi had answered, with confidence.
But Maso went up and down the streets of Leghorn in vain; the large
establishments demanded nothing.
The boys now came down in their expectations. Upon Maso's second visit
to the seaport of Tuscany it was agreed that he should take any
employment that was offered; "for of course it is but a temporary
thing," said Luigi, grandly. He remembered Maso's mother, and to him
Casa Corti, at whose heels, as it were, he had lived, was a highly
aristocratic place of abode. Luigi was assistant in a shop where
glass-ware was sold; for an hour this morning he was free to accompany
his friend in his quest, and together they edged their way along in the
narrow line of shade on one side of the hot, white streets. But it made
no difference whether Luigi went in first and offered his North American
candidate, Maso following a few minutes afterwards, or whether Maso made
his demand in person, Luigi entering later, with his best smile, to
serve as backer; no one showed any eagerness to secure the services of
the small, narrow-chested boy. "Say, Maso, couldn't you _look_ a little
different?" suggested Luigi, anxiously, as they came out of an office,
where, as he was last, he had overheard the epithet "sullen-faced"
applied to his American friend.
The two boys spoke Italian; Luigi knew no English.
"Why, I look as I'm made. Everybody looks as they're made, don't they?"
said Maso, surprised.
"Ah, but expression is a beautiful thing--a sympathetic countenance,"
said Luigi, waving his hand. "Now you--you might smile more. Promise me
to try a smile at the next place where we go in to ask."
"Like this?" said Maso. And stopping, he slapped his leg violently, and
gave a deep, long, sardonic laugh. "I saw a man once who did it like
that," he explained.
"Well! If you should go in and ask for a place and do that--well, I
don't know _what_ they would do to you!" said Luigi, standing still,
amazed.
"I didn't want to do it; you made me," answered Maso, nettled.
"I told you to smile with an amiability--a sweetness; I didn't tell you
to slap your leg and yell out like that," Luigi remonstrated, taking off
his hat and wiping his hot forehead. "Come; here's a window with nice
looking-glasses; practice a little, and I'll stand behind and tell you
when it's right."
And Maso, standing close to the window, smiled with an amiability--a
sweetness. The reflection of his freckled face in the tilted mirror,
giving back these grins, was something unearthly. But both of the boys
were far too much in earnest to notice that.
"This one will do, I think," said Luigi, doubtfully--"at least, it's the
best. I've got to go now, but look in at the shop before you take the
train back. Are you hungry? I know a place where things are good and not
dear; I'll take you there myself."
This was Luigi's Italian hospitality; he would show Maso his own
particular _trattoria_. But Maso was not hungry.
At three o'clock he appeared at Luigi's shop. Luigi was dusting goblets.
"Well?" he said, inquiringly.
Maso shook his head.
"Didn't you smile?"
"Yes, I did it as I took off my hat. And every time they seemed so
surprised."
"I've a new idea, Maso; behold it: the consul of your country!"
"Is there one in Leghorn?" asked Maso, vaguely.
"Of course there is; I have seen the sign many a time." And Luigi
mentioned the street and the number.
The proprietor of the shop, who was packing a case of the slender
Epiphany trumpets, now broke one by accident, and immediately scolded
Luigi in a loud voice; Maso was obliged to make a hasty departure.
The office of the representative of the United States government was
indicated by a painted shield bearing the insignia of the republic, and
a brass plate below, with the following notification: "Consolato degli
Stati-Uniti d'America." The first word of this inscription rouses
sometimes a vague thrill in the minds of homesick Americans in Italy
coming to pay a visit to their flag and the eagle. The thrill, however,
is immediately followed by a conviction that whatever the syllables may
mean (in an unintelligible land), they do not foreshadow, probably,
anything so solacing as they appear at first to indicate. Consolato--a
consoling-place; if it were indeed that, the bare room would soon be as
celebrated as is in Jerusalem the Wailing-place of the Jews. To Maso,
however, there was no double meaning. He glanced at the flag; then he
went up the stairs and knocked at the door.
As it happened, the consul himself was there alone. Maso, upon entering,
took off his hat and tried his smile, then he began: "If you please, I
am trying to get a place--something to do. I thought perhaps, sir, that
you might--"
He stopped, and in his embarrassment put the toe of his shoe into a hole
in the matting, and moved it about industriously.
"Don't spoil my matting," said the consul. "You're a very young boy to
be looking for a place."
"I'm going on fourteen."
"And of what nation are you?" demanded the consul, after another
survey.
"Why, I'm American," said Maso, surprised.
"I shouldn't have taken you for one. What is your name?"
"Maso--I mean Thom-as Ross Coe," replied the boy, bringing out the
syllables with something of an Italian pronunciation.
"Tummarse Errosco? Do you call that an American name?"
"I'll write it," said Maso, blushing. He wrote it in large letters on
the edge of a newspaper that was near him.
"Thomas R. Coe," read the consul. "Coe is your name, then?"
"Yes, sir."
"You want something to do, eh? What do you want, and why do you come
here for it?"
Maso told his story, or rather a tale which he had prepared on his way
to the consulate. It was a confused narrative, because he did not wish
to betray anything that could give a clew to his mother's address.
The consul asked questions. "A failure, eh? What failure?"
"It--it wasn't in Leghorn."
"And your mother will be back in September? Where is she at present?"
"She--she is north; she isn't very well, and--" But he could not think
of anything that he could safely add, so he stopped.
"We haven't any places for boys. Did you expect me to take you in here?"
"No, sir. I thought perhaps you'd recommend me."
"On general principles, I suppose, as an American, seeing that I don't
know anything else about you. And you selected the Fourth as a nice,
good, patriotic day for it?"
"The Fourth?"
"I suppose you know what day it is?"
"Yes, sir--Tuesday."
The consul looked at him, and saw that he spoke in good faith. "_You_ an
American boy? I guess not! You may go." And dipping his pen in the ink,
he resumed his writing.
Maso, though disturbed and bewildered, held his ground. He certainly was
an American boy. What could the man mean?
The consul, whose name was Maclean, was a lawyer from Michigan; a short,
stout man of sixty, with a yellow skin, bright black eyes, and an
old-fashioned black wig with a curled edge all round. "No use waiting,
my friend," he said, without looking up; "frauds don't go down here."
"I'm American. True as you live, I am," said Maso, earnestly.
Something in his face made the consul relent a little. "Perhaps you've
got some American blood hidden in you somewhere. But it must be pretty
well thinned out not to know the Fourth of July! I suppose you've never
heard of the Declaration of Independence either?"
A gleam of light now illumined the darkness of Maso's mind. "Oh yes; I
know now; in the History." He rallied. "The Indians took a _very_ bloody
part in it," he added, with confidence.
"Oh, they did, did they? Where were you brought up?"
"In Italy, most; a little in other places. I came abroad before I was
two."
"I see--one of the expatriated class," said Maclean, contemptuously. He
had a great contempt for Americans who leave their own country and
reside abroad. The dialogue ended, after a little more talk, in his
saying: "Well, you get me a note from your mother (I suppose you write
to her?) telling me something more about you. Then I'll see what I can
do." For the boy's story had been a very vague one.
As Maso, heavy-hearted, turned towards the door, Maclean suddenly felt
sorry for him. He was such a little fellow, and somehow his back looked
so tired. "See here, my son," he said, "here's something for the
present. No use telling you to buy fire-crackers with it, for they
haven't got 'em here. But you might buy rockets; can't look out of the
window summer nights in this place without seeing a lonely rocket
shooting up somewhere." He held out two francs.
Maso's face grew scarlet. "I'd rather not, unless I can work for it," he
muttered. It was a new feeling to be taken for a beggar.
"You can work enough for that if you want to. There is a printed list on
that desk, and a pile of circulars; you can direct them. Show me the
first dozen, so that I can see if they'll pass."
Maso sat down at the desk. He put his hat in six different places before
he could collect his wits and get to work. When he brought the dozen
envelopes for inspection, Maclean said:
"You seem to know Eyetalian well, with all these Eyetalian names. _I_
can't make head or tail of 'em. But as to handwriting, it's about the
worst I ever saw."
"Yes, I know," said Maso, ashamed. "I've never had regular lessons,
'cepting this summer, when--" He stopped; Mr. Waterhouse's name would
be, perhaps, a clew. He finished the circulars; it took an hour and a
half.
The consul shook hands with him, the mechanical hand-shake of the public
functionary. "You get me that note, and I'll see."
Maso went back to Pisa. When he arrived at his door in the Street of the
Lily, the wife of the cobbler who lived on the ground-floor handed him a
letter which the postman had left. The sight of it made the boy's heart
light; he forgot his weariness, and, climbing the stairs quickly, he
unlocked his door and entered his room, Mr. Tiber barking a joyous
welcome. Mr. Tiber had been locked in all day; but he had had a walk in
the early morning, and his solitude had been tempered by plenty of food
on a plate, a bowl of fresh water, and a rubber ball to play with. Maso
sat down, and, with the dog on his knees, tore open his letter. It was
directed to him at Pisa, in a rough handwriting, but within there was a
second envelope, a letter from his mother, which bore the address of the
hotel at the Bagni di Lucca, where she supposed that her son was staying
with his tutor. She wrote regularly, and she sent polite messages to
Waterhouse, regretting so much that his severe sprain prevented him from
writing to her in reply. Maso, in his answers, represented himself as
the most hopelessly stupid pupil old Longlegs had ever been cursed with;
in the network of deception in which he was now involved he felt this
somehow to be a relief. He had once heard an American boy call out to
another who was slow in understanding something, "You're an old gumpy;"
so he wrote, "Longlegs yells out every day your an old gumpy," which
greatly astonished Mrs. Roscoe. The boy exerted every power he had to
make his letters appear natural. But the task was so difficult that each
missive read a good deal like a ball discharged from a cannon; there was
always a singularly abrupt statement regarding the weather, and another
about the food at the hotel; then followed two or three sentences about
Longlegs; and he was her "affecshionate son Maso. P.S.--Mr. Tiber is
very well." He sent these replies to the Bagni; here his friend, the
porter, taking off the outer envelope, which was directed to himself,
put the letter within with the others to go to the post-office; in this
way Maso's epistles bore the postmark "Bagni di Lucca." For these
services Maso had given his second-best suit of clothes, with shoes and
hat, to the porter's young son, who had aspirations.
The present letter from Mrs. Roscoe was full of joyousness and jokes.
But the great news was that she intended to make a tour in Switzerland
in August, and as she missed her little boy too much to enjoy it without
him, she had written urgently to America about money, and she hoped that
before long (she had told them to cable) she could send for him to join
her. Maso was wildly happy; to be with his mother again, and yet not to
have her return to Italy before the important four months were over,
that was perfect; he got up, opened his trunk, and refolded his best
jacket and trousers with greater care, even before he finished the
letter. For he wore now continuously his third-best suit, as the
second-best had been left at the Bagni. At last, when he knew the letter
by heart, he washed his face and hands, and, accompanied by Mr. Tiber,
tail-wagging and expectant, he went down to get supper at the
_trattoria_ near by.
The next day he tried Pisa again, searching for employment through
street after street. His mother had written that she hoped to send for
him early in August. It was now the 5th of July, so that there were only
four or five weeks to provide for; and then there would be his fare back
to the Bagni. But his second quest was hardly more fortunate than the
first. The only person who did not wave a forefinger in perspiring
negative even before he had opened his lips was a desiccated youth, who,
sitting in his shirt-sleeves, with his feet up and a tumbler beside him,
gave something of an American air (although Maso did not know that) to a
frescoed apartment in which Singer sewing-machines were offered for
sale. This exile told him to add up a column of figures, to show what he
could do. But when he saw that the boy was doing his counting with his
fingers, he nodded him towards the door. "Better learn to play the
flute," he suggested, sarcastically.
Maso was aware that accountants are not in the habit of running a scale
with the fingers of their left hand on the edge of their desks, or of
saying aloud, "six and three are nine," "seven and five are eleven," and
"nought's nought." He had caught these methods from his mother, who
always counted in that way. He clinched his fingers into his palm as he
went down the stairs; he would never count with them again. But no one
asked him to count, or to do anything else. In the afternoon he sought
the poorer streets; here he tried shop after shop. The atmosphere was
like that of a vapor bath; he felt tired and dull. At last, late in the
day, a cheese-seller gave him a hope of employment at the end of the
week. The wages were very small; still, it was something; and refreshed
by the thought, he went home (as he called it), released Mr. Tiber,
and, as the sun was low, took him off for a walk. By hazard he turned
towards the part of the town which is best known to travellers, that
outlying quarter where the small cathedral, the circular baptistery, and
the Leaning Tower keep each other company, folded in a protecting corner
of the crenellated city wall. The Arno was flowing slowly, as if tired
and hot, under its bridges; Pisa looked deserted; the pavements were
scorching under the feet.
As the boy came up the broad paved walk that leads to the cathedral, he
saw two ladies leaving the doorway at the base of the Leaning Tower;
evidently they had been making the ascent. They went across to the
baptistery to see the pulpit of Nicolo the Pisan. "Now they're going to
make the old shed howl," he said to himself. This was the disrespectful
way in which he thought of the famous echo.
At Pisa the atmosphere clothes the cathedral with a softness which no
Northern marbles can ever hope to attain. The façade, perfect in
proportion and beauty, rises with its columns and galleries from the
greensward, facing the sculptured baptistery; on the other side the
celebrated and fantastic tower for the bells stands, like a tree which
has been made to slant by the furious wind, looking across the plain
towards the sea.
Maso stretched himself on the grass under the façade of the cathedral.
After a while the ladies came from the baptistery, and crossed to the
Campo Santo. In the relaxation of the dull season the portal had been
left open behind them, and the boy went over and wandered about within,
carrying Mr. Tiber under his jacket, half concealed, as dogs are not
allowed in the sacred enclosure. He looked at the frescos of Benozzo,
at the "Last Judgment" and the "Triumph of Death." He passed the
celebrated sarcophagus without knowing what it was, his attention being
more attracted by the modern monuments, the large marble figures, seated
and standing, that stared down upon him with their unmoving white eyes.
At last he sat down at the base of one of these figures to rest, for the
air here was cool compared with the atmosphere outside. The two
strangers, in their slow progress, looking at everything, guide-book in
hand, had passed him once; now on their second round they stopped near
him at the doorway, preparing for departure. "Well, there is nothing
more to see in Pisa," said one. "Thank Heaven! Pisa's done. Now we can
go on to Lerici."
"We haven't found those plates yet," objected the other.
"What plates?"
"Why, don't you remember? They say there are old majolica plates set in
one of the campaniles here--trophies taken from the Moors ages ago. I've
stared up at every campanile, and haven't seen a sign. I wonder if that
boy would know? What a forlorn-looking creature!"
Maso, in truth, in his third-best suit, and obliged to be economical
regarding the bills of the cobbler's wife, who acted as his laundress,
did not present an attractive appearance.
The lady, turning towards him, had begun, "Sapete uno posata in
campanile--" But resenting her comment, Maso had risen and walked away.
"Evidently he isn't Italian, for he doesn't understand," said the
questioner, who was accustomed to declare that it was very easy for her
to travel abroad, as she spoke "five languages equally well." "Perhaps
he is German--with that light hair." She ran after him. "Tisch," she
called, "in thurm. Haben-sie gesehn ein?"
"I speak English," said Maso, stopping.
"You're never English, surely!"
"I'm American."
"American? We are Americans; but I should never have taken _you_ for
one!" Then she asked her question about the plates. Maso had never heard
of them; he told her so, and made his escape, going back to the grass
under the façade. "Ugly old things," he thought, "both of them! I just
wish they could see _mother_." And forgetting his own mortification, his
heart swelled with pride as he recalled her pretty face and pretty step,
and the general perfection of her appearance. Only four weeks or so and
he should be with her! "Mr. Tiber, pim here. We're going to Switzerland.
Do you hear that? I shall take you in a basket and pretend you's lunch.
The nobil empress" (this character, in the dog language, was Mrs.
Roscoe) "says you mut promit not to bark. But you can bark now. Hi! Mr.
Tiber. Hi!"
And Mr. Tiber hied. And then, at the word of command, performed every
trick he knew.
V
The cheese-shop was blazing with the light of four flaring gas-burners;
the floor had been watered a short time before, and this made the
atmosphere reek more strongly than ever with the odors of the smoked
fish and sausages, caviare and oil, which, with the cheese, formed the
principal part of the merchandise offered for sale. There was no current
of air passing through from the open door, for the atmosphere outside
was perfectly still. Tranquilly hovering mosquitoes were everywhere, but
Maso did not mind these much; he objected more to the large black
beetles that came noiselessly out at night; he hated the way they stood
on the shelves as if staring at him, motionless save for the waving to
and fro of their long antennæ. A boy came in to buy cheese. It was soft
cheese; Maso weighed it, and put it upon a grape leaf. "It just gets
hotter and hotter!" he remarked, indignantly. The Italian lad did not
seem to mind the heat much; he was buttery with perspiration from
morning until night, but as he had known no other atmosphere than that
of Pisa, he supposed that this was the normal summer condition of the
entire world. It was the 27th of August.
On the last day of July, when Maso's every breath was accompanied by an
anticipation of Switzerland, there had arrived a long disappointed
letter from his mother; the hoped-for money had not come, and would not
come: "Reuben John again!" The Swiss trip must be given up, and now the
question was, could Mr. Waterhouse keep him awhile longer? "Because if
he cannot, I shall return to the Bagni next week." Maso, though choked
with the disappointment, composed a letter in which he said that old
Longlegs was delighted to keep him, and was sorry he could not write
himself, but his arm continued stiff; "probly heel never be able to
write agane," he added, darkly, so as to make an end, once for all, of
that complicated subject. There was no need of her return, not the
least; he and Mr. Tiber were well, "and having loads of fun"; and,
besides, there was not a single empty room in the hotel or anywhere
else, and would not be until the 6th of September; there had never been
such a crowd at the Bagni before. He read over what he had written, and
perceiving that he had given an impression of great gayety at the
Italian watering-place, he added, "P.S. peple all cooks turists." (For
Mrs. Roscoe was accustomed to declare that she hated these inoffensive
travellers.) Then he signed his name in the usual way: "your
affecshionate son, Maso." He never could help blotting when he wrote his
name--probably because he was trying to write particularly well. Mrs.
Roscoe once said that it was always either blot "so," or "Ma" blot; this
time it was "Ma" blot.
This letter despatched, the boy's steadiness broke down. He did not go
back to the cheese-seller's shop; he lived upon the money he had earned,
and when that was gone he sold his clothes, keeping only those he wore
and his best suit, with a change of under-clothing. Next he sold his
trunk; then his school-books, though they brought but a few centimes.
The old fairy-book he kept; he read it during the hot noon-times, lying
on the floor, with Mr. Tiber by his side. The rest of the day he devoted
to those pleasures of which he had dreamed. He went swimming, and stayed
in for hours; and he made Mr. Tiber swim. He indulged himself as
regarded melons; he went to the puppet-show accompanied by Mr. Tiber; he
had had his hair cut so closely that it was hardly more than yellow
down; and he swaggered about the town in the evening smoking cigarettes.
After three weeks of this vagabond existence he went back to the
cheese-seller, offering to work for half-wages. His idea was to earn
money enough for his fare to the Bagni, and also to pay for the washing
of his few clothes, so that he might be in respectable condition to meet
his mother on the 6th of September; for on the 6th the four months would
be up, and she could safely return. This was his constant thought. Of
late he had spoken of the 6th in his letters, and she had agreed to it,
so there was no doubt of her coming. To-day, August 27th, he had been at
work for a week at the cheese-seller's, and the beetles were blacker and
more crafty than ever.
It was Saturday night, and the shop was kept open late; but at last he
was released, and went home. The cobbler's wife handed him his letter,
and he stopped to read it by the light of the strongly smelling
petroleum lamp. For he had only a short end of a candle up-stairs; and,
besides, he could not wait, he was so sure that he should find, within,
the magic words, "I shall come by the train that reaches Lucca at--" and
then a fixed date and hour written down in actual figures on the page.
The letter announced that his mother had put off her return for three
weeks: she was going to Paris. "As you are having such a wonderfully
good time at the Bagni this summer, you won't mind this short delay. If
by any chance Mr. Waterhouse cannot keep you so long, let him telegraph
me. No telegram will mean that he can." She spoke of the things she
should bring to him from Paris, and the letter closed with the sentence,
"I am so glad I have thought of this delightful idea before settling
down again in that deadly Casa Corti for the winter." (But the idea had
a human shape. Violet Roscoe's ideas were often personified; they took
the form of agreeable men.)
"Evil news? Tell me not so!" said the cobbler's wife, who had noticed
the boy's face as he read.
"Pooh! no," answered Maso, stoutly. He put the letter into his pocket
and went up to his room. As he unlocked his door, there was not the
usual joyful rush of Mr. Tiber against his legs; the silence was
undisturbed. He struck a match on the wall and lighted his candle-end.
There, in the corner, on his little red coverlid, lay Mr. Tiber asleep.
Then, as the candle burned more brightly, it could be seen that it was
not sleep. There was food on the tin plate and water in the bowl; he had
not needed anything. There was no sign of suffering in the attitude, or
on the little black face with its closed eyes (to Maso that face had
always been as clearly intelligible as a human countenance); the
appearance was as if the dog had sought his own corner and his coverlid,
and had laid himself down to die very peacefully without a pain or a
struggle.
The candle-end had long burned itself out, and the boy still lay on the
floor with his arm round his pet. It seemed to him that his heart would
break. "Mr. Tiber, dear little Tiber, my own little doggie--dying here
all alone!--kinnin little chellow!" Thus he sobbed and sobbed until he
was worn out. Towards dawn came the thought of what must follow. But no;
Mr. Tiber should not be taken away and thrown into some horrible place!
If he wished to prevent it, however, he must be very quick. He had one
of the large colored handkerchiefs which Italians use instead of
baskets; as the dawn grew brighter he spread it out, laid his pet
carefully in the centre, and knotted the corners together tightly;
then, after bathing his face to conceal as much as possible the traces
of his tears, he stole down the stairs, and, passing through the town,
carrying his burden in the native fashion, he took a road which led
towards the hills.
It was a long walk. The little body which had been so light in life
weighed now like lead; but it might have been twice as heavy, he would
not have been conscious of it. He reached the place at last, the house
where Giulio's wife lived, with her five children, near one of the
hill-side villages which, as seen from Pisa, shine like white spots on
the verdure. Paola came out from her dark dwelling, and listened to his
brief explanation with wonder. To take so much trouble for a dog! But
she was a mild creature, her ample form cowlike, her eyes cowlike also,
and therefore beautiful; she accompanied him, and she kept the curious
crowding children in some kind of order while the boy, with her spade,
dug a grave in the corner of a field which she pointed out. Maso dug and
dug in the heat. He was so afraid of the peasant cupidity that he did
not dare to leave the dog wrapped in the cotton handkerchief, lest the
poor little tomb should be rifled to obtain it; he gave it, therefore,
to one of the children, and, gathering fresh leaves, he made a bed of
them at the bottom of the hole; then leaning down, he laid his pet
tenderly on the green, and covered him thickly with more foliage, the
softest he could find. When the last trace of the little black head had
disappeared he took up the spade, and with eyes freshly wet again in
spite of his efforts to prevent it, he filled up the grave as quickly as
he could, levelling the ground smoothly above it. He had made his
excavation very deep, in order that no one should meddle with the place
later: it would be too much trouble.
It was now nearly noon. He gave Paola three francs, which was half of
all he possessed. Then, with one quick glance towards the corner of the
field, he started on his long walk back to Pisa.
VI
"Do you know where you'll end, Roberta! You'll end with us," said Mrs.
Harrowby.
"With you?"
"Yes; in the Church. You've tried everything, beginning with geology and
ending with music (I can't help laughing at the last; you never had any
ear), and you have found no satisfaction. You are the very kind to come
to us; they always do."
The speaker, an American who lived in Naples, had entered the Roman
Catholic Church ten years before; in Boston she had been a Unitarian. It
was the 10th of September, and she was staying for a day in Pisa on her
way southward; she had encountered Miss Spring by chance in the piazza
of Santa Caterina at sunset, and the two had had a long talk with the
familiarity which an acquaintance in childhood carries with it, though
years of total separation may have intervened.
"There is one other alternative," answered Miss Spring; "it was
suggested by a pretty little woman who used to be here. She advised me
to try crystal scent-bottles and dissipation." This being a joke, Miss
Spring had intended to smile; but at this instant her attention was
attracted by something on the other side of the street, and her face
remained serious.
"Crystal scent-bottles? Dissipation? Mercy!" exclaimed Mrs. Harrowby.
"What _do_ you mean?"
But her companion had gone; she was hurrying across the street. "It
isn't possible, Maso, that this is _you!_" She spoke to a ragged,
sick-looking boy.
Two hours after her question Maso was in bed in the Palazzo Rondinelli.
Madame Corti never came back till October, and the _pension_ was not
open, but servants were there. The house-keeper went through the form of
making protest: "The signora has always such great alarm about fever."
"You will refer Madame Corti to me; I will pay for her alarm," answered
Roberta, marching past her to direct the driver of the carriage, who was
assisting Maso up the stairs. "It's not infectious fever. Only
malarial." Roberta was something of a doctor herself. She superintended
in person the opening of a large, cool room on the second floor, the
making of the bed, and then the installation of Maso between linen
sheets. The servants were all fond of the boy; in addition, Madame Corti
was in Sorrento, and Miss Spring's francs were here. Her francs were
few, but she spent them for Maso as generously as though they had been
many.
The boy, as soon as he was in bed, whispered to Giulio, "Pencil--paper."
Then when Miss Spring had left the room, he scrawled on the page, Giulio
holding a book under it, "My dog is ded," and signed his name. He told
Giulio to give this to her when she came in; then, as he heard her step,
he quickly closed his eyes.
Miss Spring read, and understood. "He was afraid I would ask. And he
could not speak of it. He remembers, poor little fellow, that I did not
care for the dog."
Maso had refused to tell her where his mother was. "She's coming, on the
22d, to the Bagni di Lucca"; this was all he would say. The next morning
at daylight she left him with the nurse (for she had sent immediately
for Dr. Prior and for one of the best nurses in Pisa), and, driving to
the Street of the Lily, she ascended the unclean stairs, with her skirts
held high and her glasses on, to the room at the top of the house. Maso
had himself gathered his few possessions together after his meeting with
her in the piazza of Santa Caterina, but he had not had the strength to
carry them down to the lower door. Miss Spring took the two parcels,
which were tied up in newspapers, and after looking about to see that
there was nothing left, she descended in the same gingerly way, and
re-entered the carriage which was waiting at the door, its wheels
grazing the opposite house. "Yes, he is ill; malarial fever. But we hope
he will recover," she said to the cobbler's wife, who inquired with
grief and affection, and a very dirty face.
To find Mrs. Roscoe's address, so that she could telegraph to her, Miss
Spring was obliged to look through Maso's parcels. She could not ask his
permission, for he recognized no one now; his mind wandered. One of the
bundles contained the best suit, still carefully saved for his mother's
arrival. The other held his few treasures: his mother's letters, with
paper and envelopes for his own replies; the old fairy-book; and Mr.
Tiber's blanket, coverlid, and little collar, wrapped in a clean
handkerchief. The latest letter gave the Paris address.
* * * * *
"My dear little boy! If I could only have known!" moaned Violet Roscoe,
sitting on the edge of the bed with her child in her arms. She had just
arrived; her gloves were still on. "Oh, Maso, why didn't you tell me?"
Maso's face, gaunt and brown, lay on her shoulder; his eyes were
strange, but he knew her. "You mustn't get sick again, mother," he
murmured, anxiously, the fixed idea of the summer asserting itself. Then
a wider recollection dawned. "Oh, mother," he whispered with his dry
lips, "Mr. Tiber's dead. Little Tiber!"
His fever-hot eyes could not shed tears, but his mother cried for him,
overwhelmed by the thought of his lonely sorrow. Then she tried to
comfort him: "Tiber was an old dog, Maso; he was not young when we
bought him, and we have had him many years. Dogs do not live very long,
even the oldest; he had to die some time. And he had a very happy little
life with you, always; you loved him, and gave him everything, and he
loved you. No dog could have had more."
Roberta overheard this attempt; she came to the bedside to add her item
also to the consolation. "Perhaps you will see your pet again, Maso. For
he had his vital spark as well as we have, though in a less degree. If
ours is to reappear in a future existence, I am inclined to think that
his will also. Why not?"
Maso did not understand her; his mother's voice alone reached his dulled
intelligence. But at least Roberta had done her best.
A month later Mr. Reuben J. Coe, of Coesville, New Hampshire, said to
his brother David: "That foolish wife of Tom's is coming home at last.
In spite of every effort on my part, she has made ducks and drakes of
almost all her money."
"Is that why she is coming back?"
"No; thinks it will be better for the boy. But I'm afraid it's too late
for that."
A FLORENTINE EXPERIMENT
One afternoon, three years ago, two ladies were talking together on the
heights of Fiesole overlooking Florence. They occupied the stone bench
which bears the inscription of its donor, an appreciative Englishman,
who in a philanthropical spirit has had it placed there for the benefit
of the pilgrims from all nations who come to these heights to see the
enchanting view. The two ladies were not speaking of the view, however,
but of something more personal. It seemed to be interesting.
"He is certainly much in love with you," said one, who was taller and
darker than her companion. As she spoke, she gave back a letter which
she had been reading.
"Yes, I think he is," said the other, reflectively, replacing it in its
envelope.
"I suppose you are so accustomed to it, Beatrice, that it does not make
much impression upon you," continued the first speaker, her glance as
she spoke resting not upon her companion, but upon the lovely levels
beneath, with the violet-hued mountains rising softly up round about
them, so softly that one forgot they were mountains until the eye caught
the gleam of snow on the summits towards the east. There was a pause
after this question, and it lasted so long that the questioner at
length removed her eyes from the landscape and turned them upon her
friend; to her surprise she saw that the friend was blushing.
"Why, Beatrice!" she exclaimed, "is it possible--"
"No," said Beatrice, "it is not possible. I know that I am blushing; but
you must not think too much of that. I am not as strong as I was, and
blush at everything; I am taking iron for it. In the present case, it
only means that--" She paused.
"That you like him," suggested the other, smiling.
"I like a number of persons," said Mrs. Lovell, tranquilly, gazing in
her turn down the broad, slightly winding valley, dotted with its little
white villages, and ending in a soft blue haze, through which the tawny
Arno, its course marked by a line of tall, slender, lightly foliaged,
seemingly branchless trees, like tall rods in leaf, went onward towards
the west.
"I know you do," said the first speaker. "And I really wish," she added,
with a slight touch of vehemence, "that your time would come--that I
should see you at last liking some one person really and deeply and
jealously, and to the exclusion of all the rest."
"I don't know why you should wish me unhappiness, Margaret. You have
beautiful theories, I know; but in my _experience_" (Mrs. Lovell
slightly underlined this word as if in opposition to the "theories" of
her friend) "the people who have those deeper sort of feelings you
describe are almost always very unhappy."
Margaret turned her head, and looked towards the waving line of the
Carrara mountains; in her eyes there was the reflection of a sudden
inward pain. But she knew that she could indulge in this momentary
expression of feeling; the mountains would not betray her, and the
friend by her side did not realize that anything especial could have
happened to "Margaret." In excuse for Mrs. Lovell it may be said that so
much that was very especial had always happened, and still continued to
happen, to her, that she had not much time for the more faintly colored
episodes of other people.
Beatrice Lovell was an unusually lovely woman. The adjective is here
used to signify that she inspired love. Not by an effort, word, action,
or hardly interest of her own; but simply because she was what she was.
Her beauty was not what is called striking; it touched the eye gently at
first, but always grew. People who liked to analyze said that the secret
lay in the fact that she had the sweetness, the tints, the surface
texture as it were, and even sometimes the expression, of childhood
still; and then, when you came to look deeper, you found underneath all
the richer bloom of the woman. Her golden hair, not thick or long, but
growing in little soft wavelets upon her small head; her delicate
rose-leaf skin, showing the blue veins; her little teeth and the shape
of her sweet mouth--all these were like childhood. In addition, she was
dimpled and round, with delicately cut features, and long-lashed violet
eyes, in whose soft depths lay always an expression of gentle trust.
This beautiful creature was robed to-day in widow's mourning-garb made
in the severest fashion, without one attempt to decorate or lighten it.
But the straight-skirted, untrimmed garments, the little close bonnet,
and the heavy veil pinned over it with straight crape-pins, only brought
out more vividly the tints of her beauty.
"No," she continued, as her companion did not speak, "I by no means wish
for the feelings you invoke for me. I am better off as I am; I keep my
self-possession. For instance, I told this Sicily person that it was in
very bad taste to speak to me in that way at such a time--so soon after
Mr. Lovell's death; and that I was much annoyed by it."
"It has not prevented his writing," said Margaret, coming back slowly
from the Carrara mountains, and letting her eyes rest upon the tower of
the Palazzo Vecchio below, springing above the city roofs like the stem
of a flower.
"They always write, I think," said Mrs. Lovell, simply.
"I know they do--to _you_," said Margaret. She turned as she spoke, and
looked at her friend with the same old affection and admiration which
she had felt for her from childhood, but now with a sort of speculative
curiosity added. How must it feel to live such a life--to be constantly
surrounded and accompanied by an atmosphere of devotion and enthralment
such as that letter had expressed? Beatrice seemed to divine something
of her friend's thought, and answered it after her fashion.
"It is such a comfort to be with you, Margaret," she said,
affectionately; "it has always been a comfort, ever since we were
children. I can talk freely to you, and as I can talk to no one else.
You understand; you do not misunderstand. But all the other women I meet
invariably do; or, at least, pretend to enough to excuse their being
horribly disagreeable."
Margaret took her hand. They had taken off their gloves, as the
afternoon was warm, and they had the heights to themselves; it was early
in March, and the crowd of tourists who come in the spring to Italy, and
those more loitering travellers who had spent the winter in Naples or
Rome, had not yet reached Florence, although it may be said that they
were at the door. Mrs. Lovell's hands, now destitute of ornament save
the plain band of the wedding-ring, were small, dimpled, very white; her
friend Miss Stowe had hands equally small, but darker and more slender.
"You have been happy all your life, have you not, Beatrice?" said
Margaret, not questioningly so much as assertively.
"Yes," answered Mrs. Lovell, "I think I have. Of course I was much
shocked by Mr. Lovell's death; he was very kind to me."
"Mr. Lovell," as his wife always called him, had died four months
previously. He was fifty-six years of age, and Beatrice had been his
wife for a little more than a year. He had been very happy with her, and
had left her his fortune and his blessing; with these, and his memory,
she had come abroad, and had been for six weeks in Sicily, with some
elderly friends. She had stopped in Florence to see Miss Stowe, who was
spending the winter there with an aunt; but she was not to remain. In
her present state of seclusion she was to visit Venice and the Lakes in
advance of the season, and spend the summer in "the most quiet village"
which could be discovered for her especial benefit on the Brittany
coast. The friends had not met for two years, and there had been much to
tell--that is, for Beatrice to tell. Her always personal narratives were
saved from tediousness, however, because they we
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