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.