The Marchesa Belloni's boarding-house was situated in one of the
healthiest, if not one of the most romantic quarters of Rome. One
half of the house had formed part of a _villino_ of the old Ludovisi
Gardens, those beautiful old gardens regretted by everybody who knew
them before the new barrack-quarters were built on the site of the old
Roman park, with its border of villas. The entrance to the _pension_
was in the Via Lombardia. The older or _villino_ portion of the house
retained a certain antique charm for the marchesa's boarders, while the
new premises built on to it offered the advantages of spacious rooms,
modern sanitation and electric light. The _pension_ boasted a certain
reputation for comfort, cheapness and a pleasant situation: it stood at
a few minutes' walk from the Pincio, on high ground, and there was no
need to fear malaria; and the price charged for a long stay, amounting
to hardly more than eight lire a day, was exceptionally low for Rome,
which was known to be more expensive than any other town in Italy. The
boarding-house therefore was generally full. The visitors began to
arrive as soon as October: those who came earliest in the season paid
least; and, with the exception of a few hurrying tourists, they nearly
all remained until Easter, going south-ward to Naples after the great
church festivals.
Some English travelling-acquaintances had strongly recommended the
_pension_ to Cornélie de Retz van Loo, who was travelling in Italy by
herself; and she had written to the Marchesa Belloni from Florence.
It was her first visit to Italy; it was the first time that she had
alighted at the great cavernous station near the Baths of Diocletian;
and, standing in the square, in the golden Roman sunlight, while
the great fountain of the Acqua Marcia gushed and rippled and the
cab-drivers clicked with their whips and their tongues to attract her
attention, she was conscious of her "nice Italian sensation," as she
called it, and felt glad to be in Rome.
She saw a little old man limping towards her with the instinct of a
veteran porter who recognizes his travellers at once; and she read
"Hotel Belloni" on his cap and beckoned to him with a smile. He saluted
her with respectful familiarity, as though she were an old acquaintance
and he glad to see her; asked if she had had a pleasant journey, if she
was not over-tired; led her to the victoria; put in her rug and her
handbag; asked for the tickets of her trunks; and said that she had
better go on ahead: he would follow in ten minutes with the luggage.
She received an impression of cosiness, of being well cared for by the
little old lame man; and she gave him a friendly nod as the coachman
drove away. She felt happy and careless, though she had just the
faintest foreboding of something unhappy and unknown that was going to
come to her; and she looked to right and left to take in the streets
of Rome. But she saw only houses upon houses, like so many barracks;
then a great white palace, the new Palazzo Piombino, which she knew to
contain the Juno Ludovisi; and then the _vettura_ stopped and a boy
in buttons came out to meet her. He showed her into the drawing-room,
a gloomy apartment, in the middle of which was a table covered with
periodicals, arranged in a regular and unbroken circle. Two ladies,
obviously English and of the æsthetic type, with loose-fitting blouses
and grimy hair, sat in a corner studying their Baedekers before going
out. Cornélie bowed slightly, but received no bow in return; she did
not take offence, being familiar with the manners of the travelling
Briton. She sat down at the table and took up the Roman _Herald_, the
paper which appears once a fortnight and tells you what there is to do
in Rome during the next two weeks.
Thereupon one of the ladies asked her, from the corner, in an
aggressive tone:
"I beg your pardon, but would you please not take the _Herald_ to your
room?"
Cornélie raised her head very haughtily and languidly in the direction
where the ladies were sitting, looked vaguely above their grimy heads,
said nothing and glanced down at the _Herald_ again; and she thought
herself a very experienced traveller and smiled inwardly because she
knew how to deal with that type of Englishwoman.
The marchesa entered and welcomed Cornélie in Italian and French. She
was a large, fat matron, vulgarly fat; her ample bosom was contained in
a silk cuirass or spencer, shiny at the seams and bursting under the
arms; her grey frizzled hair gave her a somewhat leonine appearance;
her great yellow and blue eyes, with bistre shadows beneath them, wore
a strained expression, the pupils unnaturally dilated by belladonna;
a pair of immense crystals sparkled in her ears; and her fat, greasy
fingers were covered with nameless jewels. She talked very fast; and
Cornélie thought her sentences as pleasant and homely as the welcome of
the lame porter in the square outside the station. The marchesa led her
to the hydraulic lift and stepped in with her; the lift, a railed-in
cage, running up the well of the staircase, rose solemnly and suddenly
stopped, motionless, between the second and the third floor.
"Third floor!" cried the marchesa to some one below.
"Non c'e acqua!" the boy in buttons calmly called back, meaning thereby
to convey that--as seemed natural--there was not enough water to move
the lift.
The marchesa screamed out some orders in a shrill voice; two _facchini_
came running up and hung on to the cable of the lift, together with the
ostensibly zealous boy in buttons; and by fits and starts the cage rose
higher and higher, until at last it almost reached the third storey.
"A little higher!" ordered the marchesa.
But the _facchini_ strained their muscles in vain: the lift refused to
stir.
"We can manage!" said the marchesa. "Wait a bit."
Taking a great stride, which revealed the enormous white-stockinged
calf of her leg, she stepped on to the floor, smiled and gave her hand
to Cornélie, who imitated her gymnastics.
"Here we are!" sighed the marchesa, with a smile of satisfaction. "This
is your room."
She opened a door and showed Cornélie a bedroom. Though the sun was
shining brightly out of doors, the room was as damp and chilly as a
cellar.
"Marchesa," Cornélie said, without hesitation, "I wrote to you for two
rooms facing south."
"Did you?" asked the marchesa, plausibly and ingeniously. "I really
didn't remember. Yes, that is one of those foreigners' ideas: rooms
facing south.... This is really a beautiful room."
"I'm sorry, but I can't accept this room, marchesa."
La Belloni grumbled a bit, went down the corridor and opened the door
of another room:
"And this one, signora?... How do you like this?"
"Is it south?"
"Almost."
"I want it full south."
"This looks west: you see the most splendid sunsets from your window."
"I absolutely must have a south room, marchesa."
"I also have the most charming little apartments looking east: you get
the most picturesque sunrises there."
"No, marchesa."
"Don't you appreciate the beauties of nature?"
"Just a little, but I put my health first."
"I sleep in a north room myself."
"You are an Italian, marchesa, and you're used to it."
"I'm very sorry, but I have no rooms facing south."
"Then I'm sorry too, marchesa, but I must look out somewhere else."
Cornélie turned as though to go away. The choice of a room sometimes
means the choice of a life.
The marchesa caught hold of her hand and smiled. She had abandoned her
cool tone and her voice was all honey:
"_Davvero_, that's one of those foreigners' ideas: rooms facing south!
But I have two little kennels left. Here...."
And she quickly opened two doors, two snug little cupboards of rooms,
displaying through the open casements a lofty and spacious view of the
sky, out-spread above the streets and roofs below, with the blue dome
of St. Peter's in the distance.
"These are the only rooms I have left facing south," said the marchesa,
plaintively.
"I shall be glad to have these, marchesa."
"Sixteen lire," smiled la Belloni.
"Ten, as you wrote."
"I could put two persons in here."
"I shall stay all the winter, if I am satisfied."
"You must have your way!" the marchesa exclaimed, suddenly, in her
sweetest voice, a voice of graceful surrender. "You shall have the
rooms for twelve lire. Don't let us discuss it any more. The rooms are
yours. You are Dutch, are you not? We have a Dutch family staying here:
a mother with two daughters and a son. Would you like to sit next to
them at table?"
"No, I'd rather you put me somewhere else; I don't care for my
fellow-countrymen when travelling."
The marchesa left Cornélie to herself. She looked out of the window,
absent-mindedly, glad to be in Rome, yet faintly conscious of the
something unhappy and unknown that was about to come. There was a tap
at her door; the men carried in her luggage. She saw that it was eleven
o'clock and began to unpack. One of her rooms was a small sitting-room,
like a bird-cage in the air, looking out over Rome. She altered the
position of the furniture, draped the faded sofa with a shawl from the
Abruzzi and fixed a few portraits and photographs with drawing-pins to
the wall, whose white-washed surface was broken up by rudely-painted
arabesques. And she smiled at the border of purple hearts transfixed
with arrows, which surrounded the decorated panels of the wall.
After an hour's work, her sitting-room was settled: she had a home of
her own, with a few of her own shawls and rugs, a screen here, a little
table there, cushions on the sofa, books within easy reach. When she
had finished and had sat down and looked around her, she suddenly felt
very lonely. She began to think of the Hague and of what she had left
behind her. But she did not want to think and picked up her Baedeker
and read about the Vatican. She was unable to concentrate her thoughts
and turned to Hare's _Walks in Rome_. A bell sounded. She was tired
and her nerves were on edge. She looked in the glass, saw that her
hair was out of curl, her blouse soiled with coal and dust, unlocked a
second trunk and changed her things. She cried and sobbed while she was
curling her hair. The second bell rang; and, after powdering her face,
she went downstairs.
She expected to be late, but there was no one in the dining-room and
she had to wait before she was served. She resolved not to come down so
very punctually in future. A few boarders looked in through the open
door, saw that there was no one sitting at table yet, except a new
lady, and disappeared again.
Cornélie looked around her and waited.
The dining-room was the original dining-room of the old villa, with a
ceiling by Guercina. The waiters loitered about. An old grey major-domo
cast a distant glance over the table, to see if everything was in
order. He grew impatient when nobody came and told them to serve the
macaroni to Cornélie. It struck Cornélie that he too limped with one
leg, like the porter. But the waiters were very young, hardly more than
sixteen to eighteen, and lacked the usual self-possession of the waiter.
A stout gentleman, vivacious, consequential, pock-marked, ill-shaven,
in a shabby black coat which showed but little linen, entered, rubbing
his hands, and took his seat opposite Cornélie.
He bowed politely and began to eat his macaroni.
And this seemed to be the signal for the others to begin eating,
for a number of boarders, mostly ladies, now came in, sat down and
helped themselves to the macaroni, which was handed round by the
youthful waiters under the watchful eye of the grey-haired major-domo.
Cornélie smiled at the oddity of these travelling types; and, when she
involuntarily glanced at the pock-marked gentleman opposite, she saw
that he too was smiling.
He hurriedly mopped up his tornato-sauce with his bread, bent a little
way across the table and almost whispered, in French:
"It's amusing, isn't it?"
Cornélie raised her eyebrows:
"What do you mean?"
"A cosmopolitan company like this."
"Oh, yes!"
"You are Dutch?"
"How do you know?"
"I saw your name in the visitors' book, with '_la Haye_' after it."
"I am Dutch, yes."
"There are some more Dutch ladies here, sitting over there: they are
charming."
Cornélie asked the major-domo for some _vin ordinaire._
"The wine is no good," said the stout gentleman, vivaciously. "This is
Genzano," pointing to his _fiasco_. "I pay a small corkage and drink my
own wine."
The major-domo put a pint bottle in front of Cornélie: it was included
in her _pension_ without extra charge.
"If you like, I will give you the address where I get my wine. Via
della Croce, 67."
Cornélie thanked him. The pock-marked gentleman's uncommon ease and
vivacity diverted her.
"You're looking at the major-domo?" he asked.
"You are a keen observer," she smiled in reply.
"He's a type, our major-domo, Giuseppe. He used to be major-domo in
the palace of an Austrian archduke. He did I don't know what. Stole
something, perhaps. Or was impertinent. Or dropped a spoon on the
floor. He has come down in the world. Now you behold him in the Pension
Belloni. But the dignity of the man!"
He leant forward:
"The marchesa is economical. All the servants here are either old or
very young. It's cheaper."
He bowed to two German ladies, a mother and daughter, who had come in
and sat down beside him:
"I have the permit which I promised you, to see the Palazzo Rospigliosi
and Guido Reni's _Aurora_," he said, speaking in German.
"Is the prince back then?"
"No, the prince is in Paris. The palace is not open to visitors, except
yourselves."
This was said with a gallant bow.
The German ladies exclaimed how kind he was, how he was able to do
anything, to find a way out of every difficulty. They had taken endless
trouble to bribe the Rospigliosi porter and they had not succeeded.
A little thin Englishwoman had taken her seat beside Cornélie.
"And for you, Miss Taylor, I have a card for a low mass in His
Holiness' private chapel."
Miss Taylor was radiant with delight.
"Have you been sight-seeing again?" the pock-marked gentleman
continued.
"Yes, Museo Kircheriano," said Miss Taylor. "But I am tired out. It was
most exquisite."
"My prescription, Miss Taylor, is that you stay at home this afternoon
and rest."
"I have an engagement to go to the Aventino...."
"You mustn't. You're tired. You look worse every day and you're losing
flesh. You must rest, or you sha'n't have the card for the low mass."
The German ladies laughed. Miss Taylor, flattered, in an ecstasy of
delight, gave her promise. She looked at the pock-marked gentleman as
though she expected to hear the judgement of Solomon fall from his lips.
Lunch was over: the rump-steak, the pudding, the dried figs. Cornélie
rose:
"May I give you a glass out of my bottle?" asked the stout gentleman.
"Do taste my wine and tell me if you like it. If so, I'll order a
_fiasco_ for you in the Via della Croce."
Cornélie did not like to refuse. She sipped the wine. It was
deliciously pure. She reflected that it would be a good thing to drink
a pure wine in Rome; and, as she did so, the stout gentleman seemed to
read her quick thought:
"It is a good thing," he said, "to drink a strengthening wine while you
are in Rome, where life is so tiring."
Cornélie agreed.
"This is Genzano, at two lire seventy-five the _fiasco_. It will last
you a long time: the wine keeps. So I'll order you a _fiasco_."
He bowed to the ladies around and left the room.
The German ladies bowed to Cornélie:
"Such an amiable man, that Mr. Rudyard!"
"What can he be?" Cornélie wondered. "French, German, English,
American?"