(TO Y. DE LA P.)
I
The first time that I saw her was in Rome. I was governess to the
children at the British Embassy, and every morning before breakfast I
took them out into the Borghese Gardens.
They were very good, insignificant little children, and never gave
me any trouble. Whilst they played tame little games between the
grey-green olive trees, I used to watch the more amusing Italian
children in the Gardens, the biggest groups consisting of pupils from
the great white Convento dell’ Assunzione, on the corner of the Pincio.
But the little girl in whom I took the greatest interest was always by
herself. An enormous grey limousine would leave her at the entrance
to the Gardens, and fetch her away again at the end of an hour.
Sometimes the limousine, which was always empty except for a liveried
chauffeur, appeared to have forgotten her, and then I was obliged to
take my children away, leaving her serious and solitary, and quite
undisconcerted, sitting on her bench. I judged her to be about eight
years old, and the child of rich people. Her white embroidered dresses,
far too elaborate, were expensive, and she always wore white shoes and
stockings.
At first, her nationality puzzled me. Her quite straight hair was
black, cropped short round her beautifully shaped little head in a
fashion that was then very unusual, and her lashes were as long and
as black as those of any Roman-born child. But her grave eyes were
of a deep grey, and her skin, fine and colourless. Perhaps she was
scarcely pretty, but her poise, her erect gracefulness, above all,
her unmistakable air of breeding, made her remarkable. It was that
air of aristocracy that made me feel sure that, in spite of her
independence, she was not American. One gets to know, after seven years
spent in the best families. The American children are well-drilled,
well-dressed, well-behaved--sometimes--but they never achieve that look
of distinction. Some of the French ones have it, but then those are
the children of the old Catholic families, and so they are poor, and
generally badly dressed. On the whole, it is to be seen amongst the
English as often as anywhere--and then, it is almost always accompanied
by the expression that denotes, to an experienced governess, either
stupidity or adenoids--and sometimes, indeed, both.
My little aristocrat of the Borghese Gardens spoke Italian perfectly. I
heard her greet the chauffeur when he came for her, and those were the
times when she was most childlike. The man very often let her take the
wheel, after he had started the car, and I used to watch, not without
misgivings, the great car sliding away, with the small erect figure
in the driving-seat, her straight black fringe blowing back from her
forehead, her tiny hands gripping the big wheel.
My charges, it need hardly be said, might never speak to strange
children, but one day the unknown little girl restored to me a toy that
one of them had dropped the day before.
“I found it, after you’d gone,” she said very politely and distinctly.