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.