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."