to go through the revolving doors of our First National Bank with her
umbrella up, and it impressed me with the fact that you can’t use
umbrellas very skilfully if you are trying, with both hands, to do
something else. And I got it down _just in time_, for the tall man was
swaying, and he needed all the help I gave him and--more!
“Sit down on this step,” I said, and I put my hand under his arm to
guide him.
After he was down, his head rolled limply to one side and then dropped
back against the wall, his eyes closed, and when I spoke to him he
didn’t answer.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ENTER--SAM DEANE!
I knew he had fainted, but I spoke to him again to make sure, and I
even laid my hand on his shoulder and shook him a little. Then I put
my umbrella on the step, and my bag of cream puffs on that, and began
to sop my handkerchief in the least dirty looking puddle that I could
find. And all the time I did this I frowned just as hard as I could at
two little Italian boys who had paused to look on, and I said “Basta!”
very fiercely, but they didn’t go on; instead they stood eating their
chestnut paste and chattering with the greatest excitement. And soon
their lingering proved a help to me, for their noise made an old lady
pause. She had a tray of combs and hairpins, that were studded with
rhinestones and red glass, hung from her shoulder by a wide tape, and
after she had studied the situation, she slipped the tape down over
her arm, set her tray on the dryest spot she could find, and squatted
before my charge and began to rub his hands. And while she did this she
talked loudly and quickly at me until I was so confused that I lost all
the use and understanding of the thirty or forty Italian words that I
really _did_ know.
Then a shopkeeper who wore a long, once white apron and who was chewing
a toothpick came along and stopped, and _he_ asked questions, and the
old lady and the little boys all answered at once, and made their arms
go like hard-working, energetic windmills as they answered. Then two
soldiers in their olive drab came along, and _they_ paused and wanted
to know what was wrong, and the little boys and the old lady _and_
the shopkeeper answered _them_, and they stood talking. And then a
well dressed man of, I should say, the middle class, saw our group,
and joined it, and _he_ wanted to know what was up, and when he was
answered it sounded exactly like the point in a ball game where the
home team makes the first run made, in the last half of the tenth
inning.
And I suppose it must have been funny, but it didn’t seem so to me
then. The man had been unconscious for so long that I was very, very
much worried, and I didn’t know _what_ to do!
And when still another man paused and asked _the_ important question,
and the whole thing was enacted again with even more enthusiasm,
and more noise, I felt as if I were absolutely marooned. There was
something very dreadful about those few moments during which I needed
help so badly and had no way of asking for it.
The last man to join the volunteers stepped forward and I saw that he
was an officer of the Infantry, and he looked as dapper as they always
do in spite of the fact that mud was on his gleaming boots and that
some passing cart or motor had evidently splashed mud up on a corner of
his wide blue cape.
He bared his head and bowed to me, and then held out a little coral
charm that looked like a horn, and which I found later are carried by
millions of Italians as talismans against all sorts of evil.
He waved this and just at that moment the tall thin man happened to
open his eyes; I heard the little crowd gasp, and then I saw them bow
their heads and cross themselves quickly--and the little boys got
chestnut paste on their blouses by their doing this--and then there was
even higher, shriller, faster chatter, and through this my charge spoke.
“What’s--the row?” he asked weakly.
“You fainted,” I answered.
“Fool thing to do,” he said, and he tried to get up, but the trying
made him so dizzy that he had to sink back again, and then he closed
his eyes as people do when they are confronted by a whirling world that
has black spots before it.
“We have lots of time,” I assured him, and just as gently as I could,
for I did feel _so_ sorry for him. And then I turned to the Italians,
and said “Grazie, _grazie_!” as hard as I could, and bowed as if the
affair were quite over, and all of them except the little boys drifted
away. After that I reached down and put my fingers on the sick man’s
wrist, and when I located his pulse I found that it was pretty slow and
that made me ask the elder of the two boys--in two languages, and five
waves--if he could get a glass of water. And that made _him_ nod and
lay down his slab of chestnut paste by my patient on the step, and that
told me a story. And I never in my life have felt so badly, or so sorry
for any one, as I did when I began to understand.
For the sick man looked at that nibbled little slab, and moistened his
lips, and then he looked away. And then he looked at it again, and
shifted his position, and once he even reached out toward it, and then
he sat back and for a moment covered his eyes.
And I knew _right then_ why those cream puffs had beckoned me from the
window of the gay pastry shop! I opened the bag.
“Sometimes,” I said, “when I’m faint, I eat; it takes the blood away
from your stomach or puts it there, or something.” And honestly,
Roberta _couldn’t have said it any better_!
Well, he took one, and he tried to eat it slowly, but he couldn’t.
After he finished it, he said, “Thank you ever so much--I believe I
must have missed my lunch--I sometimes get interested in work--” and
then he paused and looked down at the bag.
“It’ll take more than one to help you,” I said, “you were _awfully_
faint--”
But he shook his head. “No,” he answered, decidedly, “but thank
you--and so much--you got those for yourself, and I’m afraid I’ve
spoiled your party now--you have been _most kind_--” and then he drank
the water the little boy had brought, said a few words of thanks in
Italian, and sat looking before him. I had settled by him on the step,
and sitting there wasn’t bad, for the rain had turned to so gentle a
mist that it was little more than a fog, and it was getting so dark
that the passing venders thought we were only natives, and so they
didn’t bother us to buy lumpy looking statuettes or postcards or
rhinestone combs. The open-faced shops sent out shafts of light that
were so dulled by the haze that they looked strained, and I can’t
exactly explain but it was sort of cozy and nice in spite of the
dampness, and pretty too.
After a little time my sick friend turned. “You must get on,” he stated.
“I’m not in any hurry,” I answered.
“But it’s getting late for you,” he said as he looked down. I liked his
face even then. Later, Leslie said he wasn’t handsome, and she said
that the only two really handsome men she had ever seen were Ben Forbes
(_and he has a pink wart on his chin!_) and Wallace Reid; but I think
that kind eyes and a good mouth and a firm chin make a man handsome,
and I stick to it that Sam _is_.
“I’m going to take you home,” I stated, very seriously, and my friend
laughed and then I knew him; for I had heard him laugh in that happy,
quick way as he leaned out of a studio window that looked into our
court and answered the sallies of Gino, who was rubbing his brasses
down below.
“You are a dear and kind little soul,” he said after the laugh faded,
“but that tickled me; you are about four feet long, aren’t you? And
I’m a perfect telegraph pole, and pretty heavy. Anyway--” he had grown
very serious, “do you think I am going to let you bother any more with
me? You’ve wasted too much time now, and--what’s more important--one of
your lovely cream puffs--” and after he said that he looked at the bag
again, looked away quickly, and swallowed hard.
I knew I had to do _something_ to make him let me help him, because
I could see that he was stiff-necked, and that he intended to
be independent, and so I said--and rather softly because I was
embarrassed--“But I owe you _lots_--”
He said, “How come?” and turned again to look down at me, and I told
him, and as I told him he listened hard, and once--of course I must
have been mistaken--I thought his eyes filled.
“Well,” he said, after I finished, “_Well_,” and then, “_You poor
little chap!_”
“Oh,” I said, “I’m all right now, but you see you helped me when I was
unhappy and so it’s no more than fair that I should take you home,
and--and--share my cream puffs--”
Then an old lady who carried a scaldino--which is a funny little stove
that stands on legs and looks like a stewpot--came out of the door, and
we stood up.
“Can you move?” I asked anxiously.
“You bet I _can_,” I heard, “I feel _great_! Come on, little friend--”
“You take my arm,” I ordered, and he did. And he insisted upon carrying
the umbrella too, which we didn’t open, and every once in a while he
leaned down so he could look under my hat, and then he would say, “You
say you _aren’t_ homesick any more?”
And I’d say, “No, not any more--”
And he’d answer with, “That’s right. . . . You mustn’t be unhappy, you
know! You just mustn’t be _that_!”
We walked in an awfully funny way, because his stride was miles long,
and of course mine had to be short. And when he tried to shorten his
stride, it made him teeter like a Japanese official--I know about these
because our choral society gave _The Mikado_ two years ago--while if
I tried to accommodate my step to his I looked as if I were doing the
bent knee walk the twins do, that lowers their bodies and shortens
their legs and looks _awfully_ funny; and they always do it back of
Roberta when she is all dressed up and starts out to do her fancy
calling.
So we hobbled and hitched along, and suddenly I laughed, and he laughed
too, and then we were even better friends. It is strange, and very
nice, I think, how laughter does this.
[Illustration: “My name is Sam Deane,” he announced.]
“My name is Sam Deane,” he announced, after our laughter had trailed
off into a silence that had lasted past two fruit stores and a wine
shop, “what is yours, if I may be so bold as to ask?”
“Plain Jane Jones,” I answered. “I think yours is a really _nice_
name!” And then he told me that his wasn’t half as nice as mine, which
was mere kindness, because there is nothing romantic or fancy about
Jane or Jones; but, as Father said, there could be no Clytemnestras in
a flock that was handicapped by the last name _he_ gave us!
Then we reached the corner that would take us to the row of houses that
backed on our court, and here we turned, and as we neared his house I
kept getting more and more nervous, because I wanted to say something,
and I didn’t know how to say it. That is a feeling that most women do
not understand, but it comes to me often.
Mr. Sam Deane helped me, because I think _he_ wanted to say something
that _he_ couldn’t say; anyway, we stood for quite a few minutes before
his door, and then suddenly he said, “I _am_ a dolt; I intend to see
you around the block, of course; it’s much too late for you to walk
alone.”
“You _are_ just what you said you were,” I interrupted. “I’ve spent an
hour getting you here; it would be too silly for you to try that! I’m
going to take you up to your room, too--”
“No,” he answered, “really, Little Miss Jane Jones, you’re _not_. I’ll
call Gino. The other wouldn’t do at _all_!” Then his tone changed and
he ended with, “How am I ever going to thank you?”
“Oh, it was nothing,” I answered, and I looked down at the spot between
the bricks that I was poking with the umbrella I had just recaptured.
He laughed, but not as I had ever heard him laugh before; this was a
tight, short laugh that didn’t seem as if it had much mirth in it.
“Well, just as you will have it,” he stated, “but--_I know_.”
“Mr. Deane,” I said, “will you _please_ take my cream puffs?”
He said, “_No_, my dear.” Said it with his chin set and his head high.
I waited for a moment, looking up at him. “Won’t you _please_?” I said,
and I was perfectly amazed; my voice shook.
“You know I’m hungry, don’t you?” he asked stiffly.
I nodded, “That’s the reason I’m trying to give them to you,” I
explained. “I don’t need them; Miss Julianna always gives us nice
meals, and I only got them for diversion. I thought I’d eat them coming
home because Mr. Paggi makes me nervous, but I’d forgotten my best
suit, and that I had to carry an umbrella--and that made eating them
difficult--” I paused, and looked up to see that my new friend wasn’t
looking over my head any more, but down at me.
“It’s a devil of an agent who is making my trouble,” he confided, “he
gave me an order, and now--try as hard as I may--I can’t make the thing
suit him; and I can’t tell now whether he’s right, or whether he wants
to revoke the order and is doing it by finding fault. You see, I can’t
see the thing straight any more--”
Suddenly I thought of Mr. Wake, who knows a great deal about pictures,
and I felt that he would help Sam Deane; I was _sure_ of it. It made me
smile. “I _know_,” I said, “that things will change soon--”
Then Sam Deane said something that was kind, but of course nonsense. He
said, “They have changed; you--you’ve made them--”
I poked the hole between the bricks after I said thank you, and then
I realized that it must be getting late, and that I would be late for
dinner if I didn’t hurry, so I held out the bag.
“_I would take them from you_,” I said, and after a second of
hesitation he took them. He didn’t thank me at all; but he clamped the
bag of cream puffs under his arm--he must have had to scrape them off
the paper when he came to eat them--and then he put both his hands
around my un-umbrellaed hand, and for a minute held it very tightly.
“I--can’t say anything,” he said in a funny, jerky way.
“Oh, that’s all right,” I answered. And he laughed a little, and he did
that in a jerky way too. Then he said, “You turn on your light, and
switch it on and off three or four times, will you, when you get in?
I’ll want to know that you’re all right.”
“I will,” I promised.
“And look here, you won’t be homesick, will you?”
“No,” I promised. Then I said “Good-night,” and he said “Good-night,”
and I went off down the street. At the corner I looked back to see him
still on the step and watching me, and that made me nervous, because
people catch cold easily when they aren’t well, and he should have
known it. And furthermore, there wasn’t the least necessity of his
watching me, because I had often been out later than that by myself and
I was quite safe.
In the Pension I hurried to my room, and took off my hat and coat and
switched my light off and on several times as I had promised, and from
across the court I had a fast-flashed answer.
Then I went out to dinner where Mr. Hemmingway was telling of his first
trip in a yawl--whatever that is--which had been in the spring of
1871, or 1872, he had a fearful time remembering which; and where Miss
Bannister was telling of the crumpets that they had had for tea when
the gentry came during the years of her girlhood; and where Miss Meek
was making sniff-prefaced remarks about people who made their money
overnight in America--this was for Leslie’s benefit--and where Beata
was to be seen, again with eyelids that were puffed from tears.
After dinner as I played Canfield in the dining room with Miss Meek
looking on and saying, “That’s the way to it! Now smack the queen on
the king jolly quick!” I thought of all the unfinished stories I had
around me.
First there was Miss Sheila, whose love story had been unhappy.
Then there was Mr. Wake, and I felt certain that he had a long story
tangled in the years that he had passed.
Leslie came next; Leslie who had cared enough for this Ben Forbes man
to come to Florence in order to show him that she was _not_ what he had
said she was.
And Viola, who for some reason was making a pretense of studying when
she really hated work.
Beata followed, Beata whose tie-knitting had ceased, and who cried as
she did her dusting or scraped the carrots.
And I had added, just that evening, another one, and that was Sam
Deane, who was hungry, and who was fighting, and who needed help.
All of them had stories and all of the stories seemed most interesting,
to me. I, I realized, hadn’t any story, but I didn’t really need it,
while there was so much activity and romance for every one around me.
Before I undressed, I wrote Mr. Wake a long letter about Sam Deane, and
I said that I was sorry to trouble him, but that I did want his help,
and that Sam Deane lived on the third floor of the building that backed
ours, which would be good for reducing Mr. Wake’s stomach. And then I
signed myself most affectionately and admiringly his, and closed and
addressed and stamped my letter.
Then I got Beata to take it out. I found her sitting before the wall
shrine and looking at it dully.
“It must go _quickly_--” I said. And she said something of sweethearts
and love, which was, of course, all off, but I hadn’t the time nor
ability to explain and so I let it go; and then I went back to my room
and undressed and went to bed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DARK CLOUDS
The days that followed were dark and gloomy; the cold crept inside and
every one was uncomfortable and almost every one cross. Sometimes I
think that the weather really makes all the history, and certainly if
it hadn’t been damp Leslie wouldn’t have been sick with a cold; and if
she hadn’t had a cold she wouldn’t have quarreled with Viola; and if
Viola and she hadn’t quarreled, Viola wouldn’t have told Miss Meek all
about Leslie’s heart affair; and if Viola hadn’t confided it to Miss
Meek, then Viola and Leslie might have patched up their difference
long before they did. All this happened in the course of two dragging,
rough-surfaced days, during which no one was happy. And I contend that
the strain started from the clouded skies, and the chill which crept in
to cling to the floors and live boldly in the passages.
Friday afternoon I slipped a slicker over my everyday suit, which is a
belted tweed, and pulled a plain little felt hat low, and started out.
It was raining miserably, but I thought that I could shake off the
queer, unpleasant weight that I felt inside, if I walked hard, for I
had done that before. But everything conspired to hinder me.
I suppose every one has pictures that they collect without meaning to;
funny, little pictures that live in their minds and spring up at odd
moments; and pictures that sometimes come, with time, to bring back no
more than the _feeling_ of the long forgotten day when the particular
picture hung itself up inside.
Cats that step reluctantly and pick up their feet in their wet-hating,
curly way, will, I know, always take me back to the damp air of that
afternoon when I walked down past the fish market to the Piazza del
Duomo, where the cobbles shone in the wet and reflected the bobbing
umbrellas, and where, instead of the usual chattering crowds, there
were empty spaces, which was bound to give a feeling of loneliness to
any one who knew and loved the Florence of sunny days.
I went through this and down past the Loggia dei Lanzi, where there
were no stalls or no hand trucks heaped with flowers, and then through
the court-like street that divides the two upper floors of the big
Uffizi Gallery, on under the little passageway that connects these, and
then along the balustraded walk that overlooks the Arno.
It is lovely to walk by this river in the sunlight, because then there
are women down below, on the shallow strips of beach that crop up here
and there, who wash clothes by beating them on stones _with_ stones,
and who sing and joke, or call scornful taunts at each other, as they
work. But this day it was empty save for a little boy who sat in the
stern of a moored boat and fished--I suppose with a bent pin on his
string--just as his little American brother might do in my own land.
After I had walked toward the Grazia Bridge, and crossed the street
to see something I thought pretty in one of the windows of the shops,
I turned and went back toward the Ponte Vecchio, which means “The Old
Bridge,” and as I walked across this I considered what I would buy to
take home to Mother, Father, Roberta and the twins.
I did this because the bridge is lined with little shops that have
windows that twinkle from the gold and silver they hold and the
gleaming of all the stones I had ever heard of and many, many more.
Then--and with the weighted, unpleasant feeling still with me--I turned
in the direction that would take me home, and hurried as quickly as I
could because the rain was coming down faster and it was coming on the
slant.
The people in the shops I passed were idle, and the women huddled up
with the stewpot little stoves they call scaldinoes tucked under their
feet and skirts. They still sat in their doorways although a real
storm raged, and I learned that day, truly, that most of Italy does
live in the street.
As I turned in the Via Nazionale, which is our street and becomes the
Piazza Indipendenza as soon as it reaches the park, I saw, through an
open door, a piece of stove pipe that stood on four legs and had a
curling little chimney at one end, and that made me smile a little,
for the original pattern was invented by an American sea captain who
wintered in Florence and almost died of the cold; and the stoves--which
Mr. Wake says get much hotter than the infernal regions ever
_could_--are called “American pigs.”
I found the hall very, very dark, and after I had climbed the stairs
and got in the Pension corridor I found that that also was dark, and
then Miss Julianna came along, switched on the lights, and through that
I heard Beata’s story.
“She is ashamed,” said Miss Julianna, “to have you see the _cry on her
cheek_.”
I said I was sorry, as Beata, who had been sitting in the half light by
a table, lowered her head and looked away.
“It is sad,” Miss Julianna agreed, “the good girl, Beata! She loves
very much, and also has love give to her, but has not the dowry! And
you know here it is necessary.”
“Can’t she earn it?” I asked.
“She had save some, but her small brother, Giuseppe, walks of the
crutch, and could be made well; for him she give her money that was
saved. No, Beata?” she ended, after adding a string of Italian that was
too quickly spoken for me to follow.
Beata nodded, and _she_ spoke quickly, and then she sobbed.
“She say,” said Miss Julianna, “that she is happy and would do again,
but her heart, poor little foolish one! Her heart go on loving when it
should now _stop_! It is _sad_! No, Signorina?”
I thought it was! And I went over by Beata and patted her shoulder.
It did seem unfair for her to be unhappy, because she was always _so_
pleasant and kind.
“The Signorina Par_reesh_ is more bad of the throat,” went on Miss
Julianna; “I went in; she say, ‘How glad to die, I would be!’ also you
have the letter--_here_--”
I took the letter with a good deal of hope that trickled off into
nothing as I saw dear Miss Sheila’s writing. It had been over a week
since I had heard from home, and it seemed much longer than it was.
Of course I was glad to hear from Miss Sheila, but I needed a letter
from Mother, all full of an account of the things the twins had done,
and who was calling on Roberta that night, and who was sick, and how
many appendixes Daddy had taken out, and what they’d had for dinner,
and how the geraniums were doing, and how Marshal Foch--who is our
canary--was almost through molting.
That was what I _needed_ and so I had to swallow hard several times
before I opened Miss Sheila’s letter--I had thought _surely_ the letter
was from Mother--and after I opened it I swallowed harder, for the
twins had contracted diphtheria--as they did everything, together--and
Miss Sheila said that Mother wouldn’t be able to write for some time.
Mother had telegraphed her and asked her to write me and to keep me
informed.
Well, after I stood around a minute looking down at the page the way
you do when it holds something you’d rather not see, I went along the
corridor to my room, and in there, I sat down in the cold, and wondered
whether the twins were very sick, and then I thought of the times
I’d been cross to them, and then I wondered whether Mother could get
it--and I had to swallow _awfully_ hard over that, and then--I thought
of Father. And I got up very quickly and squared my shoulders, and took
off my coat, and put it over a chair to dry, and hung my hat on the bed
post, and went off down the corridor to Leslie’s room, for Father had
_no use for people who are not sports_. It helped me to remember that.
Leslie was sitting up with her feet in a tub of hot water, and she had
on a chin strap that tied on top of her head in a funny little bow, and
she was crying. I was sorry for her, and sorrier for myself, and we
were both miserable, but she looked funny. I saw it even then.