about not having meant that she did, but that I was interested.
“Mees Leslie Parrish,” said Miss Julianna, who came in at the moment,
after Beata who carried a big platter upon which were rounds of meat
all wrapped in overcoats of cabbage leaves in which they had been
baked, “and Mees Viola Harris-Clarke--”
I was surprised, and I couldn’t quite believe it, because Leslie
Parrish was Miss Sheila’s niece, and I couldn’t see quite why she was
coming to study.
Miss Sheila told me a good deal about Leslie while she visited us. I
remember one day, while I sat on the guest room bed and helped Miss
Sheila run two-toned ribbon--wonderfully lovely ribbon which was
faint lavender on one side and pale peach pink on the other--into her
beautiful under-things, that she, Miss Sheila, said her own niece
_would_ have played well if she had ever learned to work. And I
remember just how she looked as she tossed a chemise to a chair and
said, “But unhappily, the child has been frightfully, and wrongly
indulged--”
It made me wonder a lot!
I knew that Leslie Parrish’s father had lots of money, all the Parrish
family are wealthy, and I knew that she spent her time going to
parties and making visits, and entertaining, for Miss Sheila had told
me that too. So I thought Miss Julianna must be mistaken, because, for
Leslie, the Pension Dante would be very simple.
“When did you hear this?” I asked.
“A week, ten days past,” she answered, “in the cable. You did not know?”
“No,” I answered, “I didn’t.”
“I suppose you did. Miss Parrish also write for you--”
“When are they to arrive?” asked Miss Meek.
“To-morrow, or day after,” Miss Julianna answered, as Beata took away
the plates that had had the meat on them and substituted some plates on
which were lettuce and red cheese.
After this came a pastry, and that made Miss Bannister say, “Tart
again!” in a high, querulous voice.
“Bally things!” said Miss Meek, who, I soon found, loved to be thought
a sport and used lots of English slang, I think, because she had been a
governess and still taught English to a few Italians, and was afraid of
being considered school-teachery or prim.
They both ate their tarts just as if they enjoyed them, while Mr.
Hemmingway began to tell about how the first tart was made in England,
and was side tracked by the reason that had made the man who had told
it to him, _tell_ it to him. I began to see that he was really ever so
funny, and to feel like smiling each time he said, “Now let me see,
it was raining that day _if_ I recall correctly, or was it the day
before that day when it rained so heavily? It seems to me it was _that_
day, because I remember I had some new galoshes which I had gotten in
East London at one of the curb stalls, and I recall the getting them,
because--”
And on and on! His mind was full of little paths that led him away
from the main road, which even a clever person could only occasionally
glimpse through the haze Mr. Hemmingway made by details.
After we had finished the “tart,” Miss Meek pushed back her chair,
and boomed out “Draughts?” to which Miss Bannister, who still seemed
querulous, answered, “If you like--”
And they got out a checker board from behind a bookcase that was by
a window; Beata cleared one corner of the table, and they began. Mr.
Hemmingway stood looking on, rocking back and forth, first on his heels
and then on his toes, and as he did this he tried, I think, to tell
of a game of checkers he had seen played between experts somewhere in
Brazil, but of course I couldn’t really tell.
“When I was a youngster--” he began, “now _was_ I twenty-three or was I
twenty-four? It seems to me I was twenty-four, because the year before
I had typhus, and I am certain that that happened in my twenty-third
year, and directly after my convalescence I took passage for South
America which would make me twenty-four at that time, since my birthday
is in November, (_the year’s saddest month_) and having gone directly
after that, I must, therefore, have passed my twenty-fourth birthday--”
“Ho hum--” grunted out Miss Meek.
“However, no matter,” said Mr. Hemmingway quickly, “What I was about
to entertain with is the history of my witnessing a match of draughts
played between experts in San Paola. . . . And how keenly I remember
it! The day was fine--”
“Ho hum!” groaned Miss Meek.
“What’s he saying?” asked Miss Bannister.
“Not a bally thing! getting ready, don’t you know!” Miss Meek shouted
in answer, and I did feel sorry for him, but my sympathy wasn’t needed,
for Miss Meek’s attitude, I soon learned, made no impression.
“I think,” I put in, “I must go to my room; I am so sorry, for I would
love to hear about the match, but I must finish a letter to my family--”
Which wasn’t true, but didn’t know how to get off without some excuse!
I went to bed early, but again I didn’t sleep early, and I think it was
fully a half hour before my eyelids closed. A cat down in the court
had made all the screeching, whining, sizzling, hissing noises one cat
can make, and big mosquitos had hummed around to disturb me, too. But
at last I burrowed under the covers, and then I forgot, and when I
woke, the sun was spread out across the square tiled floor in a wide,
blazing streak. And the sky looked flat, as if some giant had stretched
gleaming blue satin all over space; there wasn’t a cloud, nor a feeling
of movement, outside my window, but only the brightness of the keen,
strong sun, and that deep, thick blue. . . . I lay looking out until
some one tapped, and after my answer I heard Beata’s singing voice,
saying: “Buon giorno, Signorina! Acqua calda!”
And I got up to take in a tall, slender necked brass pitcher which was
filled with water that sent up a cloud of steam.
CHAPTER SIX
MISS PARRISH AND MISS HARRIS-CLARKE
After I had breakfast, I went back to my room, and tried to forget that
I was almost hungrier than I had been before, and I did this by looking
out into the court, which I found had a morning flavor that differed
from its mood of the afternoon. For instance the little man, instead
of slowly polishing brass and stopping his polishing now and again as
he raised his head and lingered on a particularly nice note in his
singing, swept energetically around the back door of his shop with a
broom that looked as if it belonged in a picture of some witch. And as
he swept he chattered shrilly at a boy who was riveting something on a
bench near the door.
And there were children chasing each other around the paths, and my
artist wasn’t at work. . . . I realize now--Leslie has taught me many
things--that it wasn’t nice to spy on him, but at that time he seemed
only part of a play I was witnessing, and when I saw what he was doing,
I hadn’t the slightest consciousness about leaning right out of my
window and looking across at his.
He was cooking his breakfast, in front of an open window that was next
to the big studio window which so lit the room that one could see in
pretty well, and I did wonder what he was eating! I had the greatest
interest in watching him dump it out of the frying-pan on his plate,
and when he leaned out of his window, to wave his frying-pan, and call,
“Gino, buon giorno!” at the little man with the broom, and he, in
turn, waved his broom as he answered, I felt as if the play was really
started.
Then I watched him eat and of course that wasn’t nice but, as Leslie
said, later, I “lack even a rudimentary knowledge of social graces,”
(and I wanted to punch her for saying so) and so I could frankly enjoy
a lot of things a really polished person would have to pretend they
weren’t watching.
After my artist had had his breakfast he threw a piece of something
that was left at a cat, and said--so loudly that it floated across the
court to me--“Scat, you green-eyed instrument of Satan!” which led me
to think that he had heard the cat concert, too.
“American,” I said half aloud, for two things had told me so; one was
his voice, and the other was his dandy throw, for it was a peach. It
took the cat right on the nose. It must have been soft, for, after
the cat had jumped it came crawling back to the bouquet that had been
hurled at it and sniffed at it as cats do, and then it turned around
and sat down and washed its ears and whiskers. That made me like him,
for I like cats, and a great many men don’t hunt things that are
exactly _soft_ to throw at cats who sing all night!
Then he went to work--I saw him slip into his big, long apron, and take
his brushes out of a mason jar in which they were standing--and I left
the window and opened my steamer trunk, which I had only unlocked the
night before, and did my unpacking.
At about ten Beata came in, pointed at my made up bed, and said, “No,
_no_, Signorina!” by which I suppose she meant she would do it, and
then she said, “Oh!” in a way that told me she had suddenly remembered
something, and fumbled in her pocket.
There was a letter in it for me from Miss Sheila, and I opened it with
a great deal of interest, for I imagined that it would have something
in it about Leslie and this Miss Harris-Clarke, and it did.
“DEAR CHILD:”
she wrote, in her funny, curly writing which I like so much!
“I am in receipt of rather astounding news, and news that
does not entirely please me, however, it is news that must be
accepted, and perhaps everything that comes of it will be good;
I am afraid I am often a most apprehensive old maiden lady!
“Leslie last night telephoned me that she intends to spend
the winter in Florence and study with Signor Paggi, and that
with her will go a young friend who is--only temporarily, I am
afraid--in Leslie’s complete favor.
“What led to this impulsive plan, I have only a faint notion,
but that makes no difference; it is the work out of it that
bothers me.
“Because you will be involved, I shall have to be more frank
about Leslie than I like; and I think I shall do it through
rules.
“You are not to play maid to Leslie; run ribbons in her
clothes, errands for her, or answer her many and various
whims. No doubt this particular interest will last about two
or three weeks, and during that time I insist that you go your
own way in complete independence and remember you are under no
obligation to a girl who is--I am sorry to say--both spoiled
and lazy.
“Love to you, dear child, and the best of luck with Signor
Paggi; I--I know--am going to live to be even more proud of you
than I am at this moment!
“Always affectionately and devotedly your friend,
“SHEILA PARRISH.”
and then the date. I thought it was a nice letter and I read it several
times and then I tore it up in tiny pieces and sat down to answer
it, and to assure Miss Sheila, without rapping on wood--and it never
_hurts_ to rap on wood!--that I knew that everything would be all right.
Lunch came right in the middle of my writing, and after lunch I went
to one of the practice rooms--which were way down the hall--and played
for a while. Then I finished my letter, and decided I would go out and
post it, which worried Miss Julianna, whom I met in the hall.
“No,” she said, shaking her head hard, “You get lost.”
“But the Italians are awfully easy pointers,” I said--I had learned
even then that they wave their hands a lot--“and as long as they can do
that, and I can say ‘Piazza Indipendenza’ and ‘Pension Dante’ I guess
I’ll get along all right; you see how it would work--”
“Yes,” she answered, “may-_be_, but thees Meester Wake, he take you
soon? I theenk better to take the small walk first--please?”
And because she looked anxious, I said, “All right,” and smiled at her
and then said, “Good-by,” and started down the stairs.
These were of stone, and the banisters made of twisted iron, and the
walls were, like most of the other walls, of painted or frescoed
plaster. The hall was cold and draughty as well as dark, and so quiet
that every step I took echoed loudly, and so, when I stepped out into
the warmth and light and noise of the street, the contrast was complete.
I blinked a moment before I started, and then I drew a deep breath
because--well, it made you _feel_ that way!
As in Genoa, I don’t remember half I saw, but I do remember the
_different_ things, and the sort of things that I never could have seen
in a Pennsylvania town of fifteen thousand people that is surrounded
by hills with oil wells on them.
The first one that struck in was two officers who looked as if they had
just been painted, and wound up somewhere between the shoulder-blades,
although they were much handsomer than any toys I’d ever seen. One of
them had a mustache that tilted up, and he twirled this; the other
flung his wide blue cloak back over his shoulder as he passed me, with
a gesture that _looked_ careless, but couldn’t have been so, because it
was so packed with grace! I walked behind them, looking at their high,
shining boots, and their broad, light blue capes and the gilt braid and
the clanking swords. And I did wonder how they ever could win if they
got mixed up in a real fight, and I knew that they did, for Father had
said they were fine and gallant soldiers.
Then they turned a corner, and I was ever so sorry until I was diverted
by a man who was sprinkling his pavement with water that he had in a
chianti bottle; he wanted the dust kept down in front of his shop,
which was an antique place, but that quart bottle full of water was all
that he dared use!
By that time the Park--I mean the Piazza Indipendenza--was behind me,
houses and shops were on the other side instead of green, and the way
was narrow.
After I walked two blocks on this I saw a fountain that was on the
side of a building opposite, and it was made of blue and white china,
with green leaves and gold oranges and yellow lemons all around it. I
thought it was so wonderful, and for once in my life I thought right,
because even the critics seemed to half enjoy it. I found it was made
by a fellow named della Robbia who had been dead hundreds of years, and
that his work was fairly well known in Italy. Well, I looked at it a
while, and then I remembered my letter, and went up to two old ladies
who were sitting on a doorstep eating some funny little birds that had
been _cooked with the heads and feet still on them_.
I smiled, stuck out my letter, and said, “Where?”
And I never heard anything like the outburst that followed! They both
got up and clutched my sleeves, and pointed their hands that were full
of bird-lunch, and nodded their heads and patted my back, and kept
explaining--in forty-seven ways--where the mail box was. It was really
very funny, and I thought I was never going to get away!
After I did--and I hadn’t half as much idea of where the box was as I
had when I stopped--I went on, and after while I saw something that
looked suspicious, and after I saw a woman drop a postcard in it, I
dropped my letter, and then turned.
Going back, I waved at the old ladies, and said “Grazie,” which I
had learned meant thank you, and they bobbed their heads and called,
“Niente, niente, Signorina!”
Then a group of soldiers from the ranks clattered past me in their
olive drab and the heavy shoes that announce their coming, and again
I was at the doorway through which I could reach the Pension Dante,
wondering whether it was really true, or whether my program had slipped
to the floor during the first act?
And then I rang the pension bell and went in and up.
Going in, and away from all the shrill, staccato street noises, and the
smells--which sometimes aren’t nice, but are always different--going in
and away from all this seemed tame, but after I got up and Beata had
opened the door, I was glad I had been decent enough to consider Miss
Julianna’s feelings because--
Miss Leslie Parrish, of Oyster Bay, Long Island, and Miss Viola
Harris-Clarke, of Ossining, New York, had arrived! I heard them before
they heard me, which is, perhaps, unfair, but it is sometimes also a
decided advantage, and I _needed_ all the advantages on my side! I
knew it as soon as I heard them speak, and that they would probably
consider me countrified and make fun of me. I didn’t care, but I was
glad to get used to the idea of our being so different, before we met
and I was plumped up against all that manner at one time.
It didn’t take a Signorina Sherlock Holmes to know that they had come,
and I didn’t need Beata’s wild pointing, for I heard their voices
immediately although they were in a room that was well down the hall.
The first thing I heard was, “Simply _impossible_!” (I knew in a second
that it was Leslie, and that it was her comment about the room) “You
mean to say,” she went on, “that my aunt has _seen_ this?”
“Si, Signorina,” Miss Julianna answered, and she didn’t sound as if she
were smiling.
“Well,” I heard in Leslie’s pretty, carefully used voice, “that is very
_strange_! What do you _think_, Viola?”
“I don’t know, dear,” came in a higher, and a little more artificial
voice, and then there was a silence.
A short, baffled kind of laugh, prefaced Leslie’s “I’m absolutely at
sea! I don’t know whether to stay or not--but I--vowed I _would_--”
“We might get a few things,” suggested Viola.
“_Yes_--” (doubtfully) “but the walls--streaks and soil--I _don’t_
know!”
Again there was a silence.
“You do as you like,” said Miss Julianna quickly and in a rather
brittle way. “I have keep the rooms at order of Mees Parrish, but you
do not haf to stay--”
And then she came out of the room, and down the hall toward me.
“_Insolent!_” I heard in Leslie’s voice, and I wasn’t much impressed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
GETTING ACQUAINTED
That night, after a dinner during which Leslie and Viola looked as if
they were chewing lemons, I went to call on them because I thought it
was the polite thing to do. Goodness knows, I didn’t want to! I was
afraid that they would purr along about the weather, and that I would
have to bob my head and smirk and say, “Yes, isn’t it _charmingly_ warm
for this time of year?” and that kind of stuff which certainly bores
me! But they didn’t even bother to do that! They talked across me, and,
although it wasn’t comfortable, I will admit that it was instructive.
I think one can learn so _much_ about people when they don’t think it
is worth while to be polite, or think they are alone in the bosom of
their family.
I remember one time I walked home with Elaine McDonald from the Crystal
Emporium where we had had a banana split, and her father, who thought
she had come in alone, barked down at her as if she were a member of a
section gang and he were the boss.
The thing that made it funny was the fact that he is a purry man,
and always wears a swallow-tail coat on Sunday, and passes the plate,
and stands around after church bobbing and smirking over people, and
saying, “It is a _real_ pleasure to see _you_ here, Mrs. Smith!” (or
Mrs. Jones, or whoever it happened to be) He has a Bible class, too,
and is the President of the Shakespeare Club, and I was surprised
to hear him bawl out--bawl is a crude word, but it does belong
here!--“Elaine, you left the fire on under the boiler and there’s
enough hot water here to scald a hog! You and your mother don’t care
how you run the gas and the bills--”
And then Elaine said, and, oh, so sweetly, “Papa, dear, Jane Jones is
with me--”
And he said, “Ahem--how-a--how-a _nice_,” and then sneaked back into
the bathroom and shut the door quietly and finished his shaving in deep
silence. Which just shows--or should, because I am using it for the
express purpose of illustration--how different people may be in public
and while shaving. Of course Leslie and Viola didn’t syrup up in a
hurry as Mr. McDonald did, because they didn’t consider me worth while,
but I knew that they were capable of slapping on a sugar coating if
they’d _wanted_ to.
But, to get on, after dinner I waited around until half past seven,
because the best people in our town never start out to make calls
before that hour, and I wanted to be correct. Then I went down the
hall and tapped on Leslie’s door because I heard a steady buzzing back
of that and it intimated that the newcomers were together and inside.
After I tapped I waited. Then some one slammed a trunk lid, and I heard
an impatient, “What _is_ it?”
“It’s me,” I answered, and realized too late that I shouldn’t have said
that. I should have said, “It is I,” but I am always making mistakes.
Then I heard, “Vi, open the door--”
And Viola Harris-Clarke let me in.
Leslie, who was leaning over a trunk fishing things out of it, only
looked over her shoulder inquiringly for a second, and then turned back
after a “Hello,” that had a question mark after it.
“I thought I’d come over and see how you were getting on,” I said.
“Well, sit down--” said Leslie, “that is, if you can find a place!”
And I pushed aside a pile of silk under-things that was on the end of
a lounge, and roosted there. And then I waited to have Leslie ask how
I was, because at home that always comes first. People usually sit in
rocking chairs, and the called on person will say, as they rock, “Well,
now Mrs. Jones, how are _you_?” And after the caller answers, they get
along to the children and then ask about the father, and next about how
the canning is getting on, or the housecleaning, or the particular
activity that belongs to the season. It is _always_ like that in our
town with any one who calls, which I consider polite and interested
and nice; but I didn’t get it with Leslie; instead she went right on
unpacking.
I looked at her with a good deal of interest, and I decided that she
was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. Her hair is very light in shade
and texture, and she wears it straight off her forehead, flat at the
sides, and in a psyche knot. (I learned later that Paris is through
with the puffs) She is tall and thin and graceful, and her skin is
fair and it flushes easily. Her lashes and brows are dark, and her
lashes curl up, (a few days later I saw her help them curl up with a
little brush) and she has a classic profile, slender hands and feet,
and a languorous, slow way of looking at a person that can be either
flattering or--flatt_en_ing.
Viola was another story, and just the way she looked explained every
single thing about her.
You could see that she was a _follower_.
Her hair had been bobbed, and she had had to bob it, not because it was
becoming to her, but because every one was bobbing it. Now she wore it
as nearly as Leslie wore hers as she could, with a net over it, and
millions of pins to keep the short ends of the slowly lengthening hair
from flying. Her eyebrows were what she called “Frenched” which meant
that she pulled them out and screeched terribly while doing it, and
her finger nails were too pointed and too shiny. Her mouth was too big,
and her chin receded a little, but she might have been nice looking
if she hadn’t made such a freak of herself. She didn’t look _natural_
at all, and she wasn’t pretty enough to justify all the fuss that the
stupidest person could see she made over every detail.
She sat on a corner of the table, swinging her legs and humming.
[Illustration: “Isn’t this simply ghastly?”]
“Isn’t this simply ghastly?” Leslie asked of me, after an interval of
some minutes’ quiet.
“What?” I asked.
“Why, this _place_. I don’t know _what_ Aunt Sheila was _thinking_ of!”
then she dumped dozens of pairs of colored silk stockings out on the
floor, and began to take out more and prettier dresses than I had ever
seen before in all my life.
“How’d your frocks stand the crossing, dear?” asked Viola lazily.
“Oh, fairly. . . . Old rags anyway. . . . I didn’t get a new _thing_!”
Then she leaned down again and began to take out perhaps a dozen
petticoats that shone in the light, and silk night-dresses and bloomers
and a pink satin corset, and gray suède shoes with cut-steel buckles,
and some gold shoes with straps and _ostrich_ feather rosettes on the
ankles, and some dark blue patent leather shoes with _red stitching_,
and _red heels_!
And as she did, she and Viola talked of people and places I had never
_met_, and of how _frightful_ the dinner had been, and of the “utterly
hideous rooms!”
After quite a little time of this--although I suppose it seemed longer
to me than it really was--Leslie sagged down on the corner of a trunk
she had not yet opened, and hinted about some past chapters of her
story that interested me and that was to have its love scene added in
Florence, which I then, of course, didn’t know.
“I came here,” she stated, as she looked straight and hard ahead of
her, “on pique.”
“I _knew_ it!” murmured Viola.
“Nonsense!” Leslie answered, sharply. “Why how would _you_ know?”
“Dear, I saw you were _suffering_--”