went on all the irritation had left her voice.
“Some one,” she confided, “and it doesn’t matter in the least who,
since he has gone from my life--I assure you I have absolutely put
every _thought_ of him away--intimated that I could do nothing but be a
butterfly. He was brutal, absolutely _brutal_!
“And I--perfectly enraged--said I could work, and I would show him
that I could. And that very night--Vi, are you sitting on my ostrich
feather fan?--oh, all right, I thought I saw something pink there; no,
I don’t mind the scarf--”
“Go on, dear,” said Viola, after her exploration and a wiggle that
settled her again.
“That very night,” Leslie continued, “I telephoned Aunt Sheila, who
happened to be in town and at the Plaza, and I told her I intended to
come here and study with Signor Paggi. She was just as _mean_ as she
could be. ‘Very well, Leslie,’ she said in that crisp way in which she
often speaks. ‘But he won’t keep pupils who don’t work--’ . . . ‘_He
will keep me_,’ I answered, and my voice shook. . . . I was fearfully
overwrought--my heart had already been _trampled upon_--”
I thought that sounded silly, but Viola didn’t, because she said, “My
_dear_!” rather breathed it out as if some one had taken her lungs and
squeezed them just as she began to speak.
Leslie looked up at the ceiling and swallowed hard, in a way she
considered tragic, and it was, but it also made me think of Roberta’s
canary when it drinks. Then she rubbed her brow, laughed mirthlessly,
and ended with, “_and here I am_!”
“The bath tub’s the worst,” said Viola, which sort of took the cream
off of Leslie’s tragic moment, and I could see that Leslie didn’t like
it, for she frowned.
“I don’t know what to do,” said Leslie after a small lull, “whether to
hunt some other place, or stand this--”
“Our trunks are all here,” Viola stated, “and it would be hard to
move--” (she had unpacked, and I found later she hated effort) “I
wondered whether we couldn’t get a few little extra things--curtains,
and cushions and so on? And the food we could supplement. I can make
fudge and chicken king.”
“I am certain I can make tea,” said Leslie, “it’s only a matter of the
proper pot and a spirit lamp and some water, and then throwing the
stuff in--I’ve seen it done dozens of times.”
“And we could buy rolls and things--”
Then they paused to consider it.
“Don’t most students do that sort of thing anyway?” I asked.
“It _would_ be Bohemian,” said Leslie, in a more energetic voice than
I’d heard her use before.
“And after we get famous they’ll photograph this ghastly hole, and say
_we lived here_--” Viola added, with a far-away, pleased look.
“I’m willing to try it,” agreed Leslie, in a dull tone I felt she put
on. “I don’t care much--what happens now, anyway!”
“Poor darling!” murmured Viola, and in that “Poor darling,” I saw the
shadow of a row, for I knew that Viola couldn’t keep that up all the
time, and I knew that when she stopped Leslie would be angry, and I
knew that they were too foolishly and sentimentally intimate to remain
good friends. However, I never dreamed for a second, then, that they
would come to _me_ to complain about each other! Which was just what
they did!
It was dreadful for me; there was a time when I never went into my room
without finding one or the other waiting to sniff out their tales,
tales which they almost always prefaced in this way: “I _never_ talk
about my friends--” (sniff) “You can ask” (gulp) “_any one_ where I
do--” (sniff) “but I want you to know that I have never been treated--”
(gulp-sniff) “as I have been treated since I came to this place in
company--” (real sob) “with that--that _creature_!”
When I think of it now, and then that first call, I could, as Viola
says, “Simply _scream_, my dear!”
But I’m getting ’way ahead of my own story.
At half past eight, I stood up.
“Well, I guess I’d better go now,” I said, but neither Leslie nor Viola
said, “Oh, _don’t_ hurry--” as I supposed people always did, and so I
did go. As I reached the door--alone--Leslie spoke:
“We go to see Signor Paggi to-morrow, don’t we?” she asked.
“Yes,” I answered, “at one.”
“We might as well go together,” she suggested, “although--” (her tone
was too careless, and she avoided looking at me) “we, of course, won’t
expect to act like Siamese triplets, will we?”
“I shall be busy a great deal,” I stated, as I felt myself flush, and
then I went out, and after a stiff good-night, went down the hall to my
own room. It did seem to me that Leslie had been unnecessarily unkind
in giving that hint, for I had only gone because I supposed it was
polite, and I certainly never would push in! Mother had never _let_ us
do that!
I was angry, and as I undressed, I vowed that I would let Leslie
entirely alone, and that she could make the first advances--if any at
all were ever made--and I wondered what kind of a man _could_ like a
girl of Leslie’s type, and what he had said that had made her do a
thing that was so evidently distasteful. I was really interested, and I
couldn’t help hoping that this man who had been “pushed from her life”
had socked it to her _hard_, (and I found later he had!) and I further
hoped--without even trying to help it--that I could squelch her some
day. Then I said my prayers and crawled into bed.
As I pulled up the blankets one of the _sounds_ that belong to Florence
tinkled in through my widely opened French windows. . . . Somewhere,
in some little church or convent, bells were ringing and sounding out
steps in mellow tones that floated softly through the air. . . . It
was very, very pretty. . . . And I closed my eyes, and I could see
lilies-of-the-valley and blue bells growing near ferns. . . . That
doesn’t seem very sensible unless you’ve _heard_ those bells, but
if you have--on a warm-aired, soft Italian night--you’ll probably
understand. Then the bells died gently down to nothing and I heard
another sound, and when I heard that I saw people clogging, for it
was a banjo, and I got out of bed in a hurry, and skipped over to the
window without even waiting to put on my slippers.
I couldn’t see much down in the court, because the wide banners of
light that floated out from the doorways only seemed to intensify the
shadows, and the banjo-player was sitting on a bench by the side of a
back door and not in the light.
But I could hear, and I heard, in a very pretty voice with the soft
strum of the banjo creeping through:
“Dozens and dozens of girls I have met,
Sisters and cousins of men in my set:
Tried to be cheerful and give them an earful
Of soft sort of talk, but, oh, gosh!
The strain was something fearful!
Always found after a minute or two
Just to be civil was all I could do.
Now I know why I could never be contented,
I was looking for a pal like you.”
And I knew the tune, and it is one I liked, and the singing in my own
language was cheering and rather jolly, and the feeling the man put
into the foolishly light words made me laugh, and I leaned far out and
listened.
Then I heard a snatch of a Neapolitan song that better fitted the look
of the court, and then a bit of opera. . . . The troubadour faltered
on that, and right in the middle of it he stopped, repeated one
phrase, and then called, “Hi, Gino, old Top! Ta tum, ta tum, ta ta, ta
tum--that _right_?”
And Gino echoed it in his voice, and answered excitedly, “Si, si,
Signor! Brava! Brava, Signor! Brrrava!”
And then, warmed and cheered and quite myself again, I went back to
bed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SIGNOR PAGGI’S COMPLIMENTS
Signor Paggi’s studio is high up in one of those old palaces that seem
to frown at you, and the palace is on the Via Tornabuoni, which is
a street where lots of the wealthy and great people of old Florence
lived, hundreds of years ago.
At that time of course--years back, in the middle ages--they knew
nothing of modern improvements like portable houses or the sort of
stucco bungalows that get full of cracks after the first frost, and so
they put their houses up in the old-fashioned way, which does seem to
wear well, for they stand to-day as they stood when they were built.
I liked looking at them; there is a great deal in my nature that
answers to a real fight, and those houses were built for convenient
fighting. Probably then, the architects were fussing over nice, little
windows through which the owner could pour hot oil on a passing enemy,
instead of the sun porches and breakfast rooms and the kind of truck
that now occupies them.
It gave me a romantic, chilly thrill to see the blank walls of the
first stories, which make the streets where the palaces exist look so
cold and stern, for I realized that they didn’t have low windows in
them because if they had had, people who felt like it could throw in
bricks and things of such forceful nature, too easily.
They needed this type of dwelling because they scrapped so much. The
Medicis, an old Florentine family, and all dead, but still somewhat
talked about, were always fighting somebody or other, and so were the
Strozzis and Tornabuonis, who were also prominent hundreds of years
ago, but still remembered, I found, by a good many. I, personally,
don’t wonder, and I must admit that more than once during my stay in
Florence I wished I could skip back into the Middle Ages for a day or
so, and root at just one good fight.
However, I realize that this is not a natural wish for “A young woman
of refinement,” as Leslie would say.
We reached Signor Michele Paggi’s studio at the time when we should,
in spite of the fact that Leslie kept every one waiting while she took
off a veil with brown speckles in it and put on one that had black dots
stuck on it and then, after that was done, went back to hunt a pair of
gloves with gray and white striped gauntlet tops.
“First impressions,” she said, and almost apologetically, “are
_everything_, don’t you know? And I’d hate my veil not being right
just this first time--”
“You have a perfect _genius_ for assembling the proper accessories,”
said Viola, who just a moment before had grumbled out, “_Heavens_, what
is she doing? I never knew any one who could _fuss_ so over nothing!”
And then we went down our long stairs, through the crowded heart of
Florence, up the four flights of stairs that took us to Signor Paggi’s
floor, and down the hall toward the only door that had a placard on it,
to find that the placard had Signor Michele Paggi’s name on it, and
a curt invitation to walk in scrawled below that. We did. And I knew
that my saying I was frightened reveals a yellow streak, but I _was_
frightened, so I might as well say it.
Mr. Paggi’s verdict meant a very great deal to me, and I had heard that
he sometimes refused to teach. And although I had tried not to remember
that, I did remember it as people do remember things they try to cover
in their minds. Those covered thoughts are always straying out! You
are forever seeing a corner of one trailing out from under the thing
you’ve thrown over it--or at least I am--and Mr. Paggi’s turning people
away was one of them. I didn’t know quite what I would do if he turned
me away, because of Miss Sheila and Mother and all the rest. They
expected so much of me and I felt as if I’d die if I couldn’t keep
them from disappointment. And of course I had my own dreams too.
Well, Leslie and Viola were entirely at ease, and somehow--I
can’t explain--it didn’t help me, in fact their ease made me more
uncomfortable. And while they walked around saying, “_Adorable_ place!”
“So much _atmosphere_!” and things like that, and wiggled their fingers
to limber them up, I sat in a chair that looked better than it felt and
swallowed and swallowed and swallowed, and almost wished that I had
been like Roberta who plays nothing but rag, and ukelele accompaniments.
After quite a little time of this I saw a copy of the Saturday Evening
Post on the table, and got it, and I was really beginning to be
absorbed in something by Ring Lardner when an Italian girl came in. She
was a sullen type, and she said “Good day,” without smiling.
“We are waiting for Signor Paggi,” Leslie said in her sweetest way, but
it didn’t melt the girl who answered in the short-clipped manner that
many Italians speak English, ending each word abruptly and completely
before she started another. And she spoke in a level too, which made
her seem most unsympathetic, and fussed over the leaves of a big ledger
as she answered.
“I don’t know whether he see you--” she stated.
“But--” (Leslie laughed in an irritated, tried way) “we have an
_appointment_!”
“He don’t care. When he have headache he don’t care for devil. You can
wait, you can go, it is the same.” And then she disdainfully fluttered
the big leaves she had been turning slowly.
“Will you be good enough to tell him,” said Leslie in a tight
controlled way, “that Miss _Parrish_, that Miss Leslie _Parrish_ is
here?”
The girl looked up.
“No,” she answered, “I do not wish to have the book push through the
air at me--so--” (she made a hitchy, overhead girl-gesture of throwing)
“and he do not care who you are. Why should he care who you are?” she
ended, her eyes now on Leslie and boring into Leslie. It was almost
like a movie!
“_Really_--” broke out Leslie, and then she stopped and shrugged her
shoulders and walked over to stand by a window that had a row of
century plants on its sill. And here she hummed to pretend that the
whole matter was beneath her notice, but she tapped her foot and _I_
knew that she was angry.
Then we waited, and I never felt as if I did so much waiting as I did
then, although the waiting wasn’t stretched across more than half an
hour. It was stretched tightly, and that makes all the difference!
At last the inner door opened--we came to call what lay behind that
door “The Torture Chamber”--and a woman came flouncing out. After her
passing, a little man with stiff, coarse hair which stood straight
up from his head, and a waxed mustache, paced up and down inside the
little room. He looked as if he should be wearing a red uniform trimmed
with gilt braid and snapping a short, limber whip at crouching lions;
I’ve seen dozens just like him in cages!
“_Temperamental!_” Leslie whispered, and she was right!
“_Fascinating_,” Viola answered, in the same kind of a low, highly
charged wheeze. Then we waited some more.
At last Signor Paggi came to the door and stared at us.
“Well?” he snapped, and I was glad to leave the business to Leslie, who
stood up and spoke.
“Signor Paggi,” she said, “we have been sent here, because in America
you are regarded as the most _marvelous_ person--”
“I do not make fools play,” he broke in, “_You remember that!_ You have
appointment?”
“Yes,” Leslie answered, and with a good deal of resentment in her tone,
“I told your office girl, but she--in a manner I must, in fairness to
your interests, Signor Paggi, tell you was _insolent_--told me--”
“Very good secretary,” (he again interrupted) “I can get many pupils,
but only in my life once have I found the good secretary. Come in--”
And, silent, we followed him.
The room was large and almost empty. It had a bench in it, a table on
which was some music, a piano, and near that the chair that Signor
Paggi sat in when he wasn’t too agitated to _sit_.
“You first,” he said, almost before we had crossed the threshold, and
he pointed at me. I went to the piano and sat down. “Well, play!” he
barked and I think I played something of MacDowell’s.
“Stop!” I heard. I stopped.
“What do you see?”
“Nothing,” I answered.
“It is very clear you see nothing. It is _awful_. You play like a
_peeg_! Toodle, toodle, toodle, SQUEAK! _Oh_--” and then he clasped his
hand to his forehead and glared up at the ceiling.
“You must see peecture,” he said after a moment of silence, “a pretty
peecture; I give you time to theenk.” (He did) “Now go!”
And I did.
I don’t know what I played, but I saw our living room; the lounge that
has grown lumpy from the twins jumping on it; the piles of popular
music on the piano; mother’s darning in a big basket by the table; the
Boston fern in the bay window; even a pan of fudge that didn’t harden,
with a knife in it, and Roberta’s knitting--always a tie--half poked
under a sofa cushion.
And I suppose that doesn’t _seem_ like a pretty picture, but it was
pretty to me, and it carried me through.
“You can take lessons from me,” Signor Paggi said, as I finished. I
thanked him in a little squeaky voice that must have sounded funny.
“And now,” he went on, “you can get up. You theenk you seet upon my
piano stool all day? You do _not_.”
And then I got up and went over to the bench, and my knees shook more
than they had as I went over to the piano, which was so silly that it
made me ashamed. Leslie took my place, and I don’t think she was much
frightened. She was pretty sure of her playing she told us later, and
she was used to playing for people, and her assurance I thought would
help her, but--it didn’t. Signor Paggi let her play all her selection,
before he spoke, and as he did he _cleaned his nails with a toothpick_.
“Are you deaf?” he asked in an interested, remote way.
“Certainly _not_,” Leslie answered haughtily.
“Ah, how greatly then do I pity you! To hear yourself _play_! Oh,
_my_!” (And again he clasped his forehead and rolled his eyes at the
ceiling) “And also, you improve on Mr. Bach,” he went on, after his
tragedy moment was past. “It is very _kind_ of you to show the master
how he should do. No doubt he is _grateful_! _I_ think he turn in the
grave. . . . Mr. Paderewski have great sense; to work for a country who
is lost is better than to teach some I have met. . . . Oh, _my_! Some
fool teach you that in girls’ school? _You will drop airs with me, and
play what is upon the sheet. You see?_”
Leslie, with scarlet cheeks, and bright, angry eyes, got up, and
nodded. Then Viola was summoned, and I felt most sorry for her because
she had no nerve and she wobbled all the way over to the piano, but she
did better than either Leslie or I, and she got off with “Skip that and
thanks to heaven it will be shorter!”
And so ended that hard half hour that seemed hours long, and started
all our winter’s work in Florence.
CHAPTER NINE
A STROLLING PICNIC
After we had made a slinking exit that took us into the outer room, and
the girl, at a nod from Signor Paggi, had put our names down in the
book and given us slips upon which were our names and lesson hours,
we started down stairs and no one said a word. I think we would have
kept quiet for a long, long time if I hadn’t started laughing, but I
did--very suddenly and without really knowing that I wanted to--and
Viola, after a moment, joined me in a weak, close-to-hysterical way.
Leslie didn’t laugh and her eyes were hard and her chin set, and she
was so angry that she walked as if she had been wound up too tightly.
She made me think of “Mr. Wog,” a mechanical toy man, that the twins
start into the living room from the dining room door sometimes when
Roberta has company. It makes her very angry, because she says it looks
_so_ silly, and she says that it naturally embarrasses a man to realize
that some one has been listening to _every_ word he said. The twins
told me that they wait around in the dark under the dining room table
until they hear the caller tell Roberta that she is so sympathetic, or
beautiful, or that they have _long_ admired her, and then they crawl
out with their wound toy and start it in. Louise, who is the elder by
two minutes, said that “Mr. Wog” almost always broke into Roberta’s
soft, “Oh, _do_ you think so?” and that they always had to stuff their
handkerchiefs right into their mouths to keep from screaming with
giggles.
But to get on, Leslie walked as Mr. Wog walks, and when she spoke she
did so between sharply indrawn breaths and in a way that told a lot she
didn’t trouble to put into words.
“Aunt Sheila _knew_ this old _devil_--” she said, “I make _no_
apologies for calling him that--and what she did was _vicious_,
positively _vicious_! She--she said I wouldn’t stick, _made_ me say
I _would_, in fact--” (she paused, and had to draw several quieting
breaths before she could go on) “in fact I wagered her a cottage that
father gave me last birthday, a _heavenly_ sweet place up on Lake
Placid, I wagered her _that_, that I would stick it out and study with
this horrible person! . . . And if I can ever punish Ben Forbes for
all this, I will consider that life has given me--_all the sweetness I
shall ever crave_!”
Then we stepped out into the street.
Of course it seemed about sixteen times as bright as it really was,
because both the halls and Mr. Paggi’s rooms had been dark, and it
seemed more good to be out than I can describe. After I blinked my eyes
into adjustment with the outdoor glare, I stole a side glance at Leslie
and wondered what sticking it out--if she _could_ stick it out--would
do for her? I knew that she would either flare up and leave it all,
or that she’d have to change, and I remembered how Howard McDonald,
who is Elaine’s brother, had learned to keep his temper by playing
baseball. The training, and the having to abide by decisions that he
thought unfair had been _fine_ for him, and after a season of playing
short-stop, everybody wondered whether he had changed, or whether
they’d been mean? “_Will you--can you stand it?_” I questioned inside,
and Leslie answered, almost immediately, quite as if I’d put my wonder
into words.
“I am going to go through with it,” she stated through set teeth. “If
I die of disease from living in that frightful hole, or from shocked,
shattered nerves after a lesson, perhaps Aunt Sheila _may_ have a
question or two to ask of herself!”
“He couldn’t have known who you _are_, dear,” said Viola, who was
groping around to find the right key.
Leslie laughed shortly.
“Aunt Sheila said I depended on that,” she confided. “That was during
one of her all-too-frequent moments of flattery. Sometimes I think I
have been the most misunderstood girl who has ever lived! And oh, how I
ache, alone, in my fumbling through the dark!”
She stared ahead like everything after that; I guess she was trying
to look dramatic. Viola said, “Poor _darling, I_ understand.” And
then Leslie said, “I--” (her voice dropped and broke) “I am close to
fainting--I need _tea_--” and so they went to Doney’s which is the
fanciest restaurant in Florence and marked “expensive” in Baedeker.
After the remark about Siamese triplets I didn’t intend to have her
think _I_ wanted to be asked to her party, so I said, “I must leave you
here--” although I had no idea where I was, or where I should be going.
“Must you, really?” Leslie asked so vaguely, that I got mad all over
again and answered with, “I generally say what I mean,” which of course
was _not_ polite. Then, feeling a little ashamed of myself, I turned
and left them and began to wonder which Italian I should ask where I
was and where I was going--in English; but I kept passing them, and
going farther and farther all the time because the doing it seemed hard.
Then suddenly I saw some one who was ahead of me, and I hurried, for I
knew the gray homespun coat and the swing of the gray hat brim.
“Wait!” I called, and he turned, and then he was laughing down at me,
and saying, “I just went up all those stairs that lead to the Pension
Dante to hunt you, and found you out--and found _where_ you were--now
tell me about it!”
“Oh, Mr. Wake!” I said, and I drew a deep breath because I was so glad
to see him, and so relieved over finding some one who could talk as I
did.
“Pretty bad?” he questioned, with a kind look.
“I’m _so_ glad to see you,” I stated, which wasn’t exactly an answer,
but it pleased Mr. Wake, for he said, “Why, dear child, how _mighty_
fine of you!” and pumped my hands up and down in his. Then he said,
“Look here, I’ve a plan. I say we go collect some food, spoil your
dinner, add another inch to my tummy, and have a picnic. Like ’em?”
“Love them!” I answered.
His eyes twinkled down at me, and all the little laugh wrinkles on his
temples stood out.
“_Good!_” he said, “I know a little shop down here, on a dark arched
street, where Dante may have passed his Beatrice, and in that little
shop there are cakes that must make the angels long to come down on
parole. And near this bake shop is a wine shop, where I shall buy you
either some vermouth, or some coffee, and my plan is to collect our
goods, assemble them, and then eat. Is it welcome?”
“That’s exactly the sort of thing that suits my temperament,” I
answered. “I can hardly forgive a person who uses a spoon on an ice
cream cone!”
That made him laugh, although I don’t know why, and he took my hand in
his, and drew it through his arm.