because it was no time to quibble. Mr. Wake was taking me out
_primarily for his stomach_, and because he wanted to _reduce it_, and
I didn’t think it would be fair to sit and eat and tempt him.
After Viola said “My _dear_!” Mr. Wake laughed, and patted my shoulder.
“Always beginning to reduce _next week_,” he said; “like _Alice in
Wonderland_, ‘jam to-morrow and jam yesterday, but _never jam to-day_!’
And don’t you think a little fat softens age? Suits my type?--There’s
a table ahead of us, grab it, Jane, before the gentleman with the many
whiskers sits down and pretends he is a piece of sage brush--”
He did look like sage brush, but the wind blew me to the table Mr. Wake
wanted before it landed the rough, hairy looking person there, and
Viola and Mr. Wake followed and settled. And then I had my first taste
of outdoor eating, which is very foreign, and which I like _so_ much!
Viola and I had strong, bitter chocolate with whipped cream on it and
French pastries and little cakes with nuts in them, and Mr. Wake had
wine and crackers. And just as our waiter brought the order to us, the
band struck up “Pizzicato Sylvia” and unless you have heard an Italian
band play something shortly and sharply, with a snapping, staccato
touch, you have yet to hear _music_--real _music_--
Oh, how I came to love those concerts that were scheduled twice a week,
all winter long, in one or another of the public squares!
I couldn’t eat, I could just _listen_. And Mr. Wake smiled at me, and
once he put his hand over mine, and I turned my hand until my fingers
could squeeze his. And then I drew a deep breath and shook my head
because the music made me feel that way. And then the band stopped, and
every one was very quiet for a second, and then they clapped and after
that laughter and talk rose with a perfect whir.
“Wasn’t that _fine_?” I said, as Viola said, “_Enchanting_,” and some
one who had been standing back of me for some moments, leaned down and
said softly, “How do you do, to-day, little Miss Jones?”
It was my Sam Deane!
I was startled, but awfully glad to see him, although the idea of
thanking him for those violets before every one made me feel cold and
frightened and stiff.
“Miss Harris-Clarke, this is Mr. Sam Deane,” said Mr. Wake, “whom I am
proud to present to you--”
“Delightful,” Viola murmured in her smooth way, and then Sam bowed and
drew up a chair.
“Will the bottomless pit have something to eat?” asked Mr. Wake. And
Sam Deane grinned at him, and then he said he might _consider_ it.
“What did you draw?” he asked of me, and I told him, and he ordered
what I had had.
“I want to write you a little note,” I said.
“By jings, I _want_ you to,” he answered, and he looked at me and
smiled in a very kind way. I don’t believe there is a nicer man than
Sam Deane! I liked him right off, and I’ve never stopped once since.
“No one ever sent me any before,” I said in an aside, which was easy,
because Mr. Wake had begun to talk to Viola about the Uffizi Gallery
and the Belli Arti, which is another gallery.
“What was the matter with the boys?” Sam asked.
“My sister,” I said, “is _really_ attractive, and _she_ always gets
them. I like them _very_ much, and I was so _excited_ I could hardly
get the box open. And I’d just heard that the twins were sick too, and
the violets helped me a _lot_.”
He didn’t answer, but he sat looking down at me and smiling, and I felt
as if he would understand my clumsy thanking him. “I thank you _ever_
so much!” I ended.
He shook his head, “Nothing,” he answered, “it was absolutely nothing.
I wanted to buy the Pitti Palace and the Boboli gardens and give them
to you, and throw in the Piazzale Michael Angelo for good measure. . . .
Are you--are you going to let me be your good friend?”
“If you really _want_ to be,” I responded, and I meant it.
“I want it more than anything,” he said, in an undertone, and then we
were quiet.
“How are you?” I asked, after the silence had begun to seem strained.
“Never have been better,” he answered. “Did you know Mr. Wake got me a
sale for my boy picture straight off? He brought another agent in to
see it and he took it. We broke the contract with my old agent. Mr.
Wake said I could with safety. I don’t know what to say to you. . . .
Think of what you’ve _done_ for me.”
“Oh, no,” I disagreed.
“Oh, _yes_!” he stated. Then the band began to play “the Blue
Danube” and when I heard it I thought I had never heard waltz time
before. . . . It rose and fell in the softest waves, with the first
beat accented, until one felt as if one _must_ sway with it.
It was a moment that I shall never forget. I don’t know quite why it
was so vivid. . . . But the great hushed crowd which was pierced by
blue uniforms, and the three-cornered hats of the carabinieri, and the
look on the dark-skinned faces and in the deep brown eyes, and the sun
that slanted across all this to cover an old stone building with gold,
and the people around the little tables, and Viola talking with Mr.
Wake, and Sam Deane, looking at me in a kind way, struck into my heart
to make a picture that will always be remembered.
When the music stopped, I said, “I don’t know why I am so happy
to-day--”
And Sam Deane said he was too, but he did know why, which of course was
natural, for he had been close to starving and worried over work, and
all his skies were cleared.
“I can’t tell you,” I said, “how glad I am that everything is all right
for _you_.”
He didn’t answer immediately, and he really didn’t answer at all. He
said, “Please keep _on_ feeling that way,” and I promised I would, and
then we stood up, and made our way through the crowd to stand at the
edge of it, and listen to a few more numbers before we went home.
And on the way--we loitered a little, for we were on the sunny side
of the street, and that makes loitering easy--Mr. Wake told us about
how Mr. Robert Browning had picked up a little yellow book, in one of
the stalls outside of San Lorenzo--which was a church we passed--and
how this book made him write “The Ring and the Book.” Viola said that
she knew it almost word for word, but when Mr. Wake asked her how it
started she couldn’t seem to remember.
“If I recall,” said Mr. Wake--and it was almost the last information he
imparted, and after that we began to have a _fine_ time--“if I recall
correctly it started out with a very careless sounding few words; they
are, I think, ‘Do you see this ring?’ And then, in the next paragraph,
‘Do you see this little yellow book I hold in my hand?’ . . . And the
poem has lived! The artificial fades and drops away; the real and
simple _roots_.” (He looked at Viola then; I don’t know why) “There is
another poem,” he went on, “that starts in somewhat the same manner and
Jane will know it. That one begins with, ‘Oh, say, can you see by the
dawn’s early light,’ both of them intimately in the vernacular--”
I didn’t know what “vernacular” meant, but I didn’t have to admit it,
because Viola put in one of her low-breathed, “_Fas_cinatings,” and
after that Mr. Wake was quiet until we reached the twisting stairs that
led to the Pension Dante, when he and Sam Deane said good-by to us.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FLORENTINE WINTER
After that first real walk and our outdoor tea, Viola, Mr. Wake, Sam
Deane and I took a great many walks--always two a week--and I came to
enjoy seeing the things I should see, and hearing about people whom I
had considered of little importance because they were so dead. But Mr.
Wake woke everything up, and shook the dust from all the old stories
and made them live.
For instance, when we passed Dante’s house he would say, “No use of
stopping; Dante is over at the Pitti Palace talking to Cosimo de Medici
this morning, and I see Gemma” (she was Dante’s wife) “is busy in the
back yard hanging up the wash,” and then we’d all pretend we saw her,
and walk on deciding as we walked, that it would be kinder to slip our
cards under the door without ringing, and that we hadn’t wanted to find
them in, anyway. Mr. Wake made everything modern and _natural_, just
like that!
He took us to the Pitti Palace, which, in 1440, Luca Pitti commissioned
Brunelleschi to build for him. It was to be a palace more magnificent
than the Riccardi Palace which belonged to the Medici; and the
citizens and Florentine corporations were so much interested that they
aided him. It was so fine that it took years to build, which Mr. Wake
proved when he said that in 1549 it was sold, without its roof, to
Eleanor of Toledo, who was the wife of Cosimo.
From the Pitti Palace we went to the Uffizi Gallery; through a little
narrow passage that runs from the Pitti across the upper story of the
Ponte Vecchio--the old bridge--along the Arno for a block, and then
turns into the great Uffizi that was built by Vasari in 1560 to ’74
for the municipal government, and by the order of Cosimo I because
he wanted to use the Palazzo Vecchio, which was then the municipal
building, for his own home.
Mr. Wake said that a good many people try to look up the history of the
Uffizi family, but he advised me not to try, and when I asked why not
he told me that “Uffizi” means offices.
All this information was given in a way that made it seem quite
palatable, and not at all like the information that one usually gets.
I enjoyed even the history of the erecting of those great, strong
buildings, and when it came to the families, I loved it. It was truly
interesting to hear of the wars of the blacks and the whites, who
were the opposed and warring factions in Florence of the Middle Ages,
and Mr. Wake told of how they planned their conquests in hidden
ways or under the cover of black night; and of how the Medici power
was overthrown; of a priest who was made so deep a sympathizer of
the oppressed that he tried to stab Cosimo de Medici while he was at
Mass, then of how Cosimo escaped this, and finally died in one of his
peaceful country palaces which stands to-day just as it did then.
In the Uffizi, Mr. Wake asked me what I would look at if I were alone,
and I said the pictures of wars and animals, and Sam took me around
hunting these, while Viola stuck to Mr. Wake and admired the things
that every one should admire.
One sunny day, we went to the Piazzale Michelangelo, which is a great,
cleared space on the top of a hill on the south side of the Arno,
riding up in a _tram_ and walking slowly down a cypress shaded path
upon which, at intervals, were the stations of the cross. At another
time we walked out to see Andrea Del Sarto’s last supper, which is in a
tiny church way out in the outskirts of Florence, and is not often seen
by the hurried kind of tourist who uses a guide.
Then we saw where well-known people had lived--Thomas Hardy, (and he
had had rooms right up near us) and so had George Eliot and Walter
Savage Landor and the Brownings and dozens of others I have forgotten.
And of course we saw a little house where Boccaccio was supposed to
have lived, and the place in front of Santa Maria Novella (a church)
where he, Boccaccio, met seven lovely ladies, one morning in 1348, just
after Mass, when the city lay stricken under the horror of the plague.
Mr. Wake pointed Boccaccio out to us as we were coming home past the
church, one bleak November afternoon, after a walk that had taken us to
the churches on the South Side of the Arno.
“There,” he said, “in claret colored doublet and hose is my friend
Boccaccio! He swings a silken purse that has in it many ducats, and he
tries with nonchalance to hide the horror and fear that lurk within his
heart. . . . A serving man whines behind him. ‘Master, master, we had
best be going. . . . Two more have fallen in the way not a disc’s throw
from your excellency, and the streets are filled with death!’. . . But
now--_now!_--Who are these, seven of them, coming out from Mass! Lovely
ladies who greet Boccaccio as a friend, and whose eyes lose their look
of fright for the fleeting second when first Boccaccio comes into
vision and to mind--”
And then Mr. Wake--in his _seeing_ way told us how that group and two
more youths planned to go up to Boccaccio’s villa which some think was
close to Fiesole--the town that Florence warred upon so often--the
proud, small town that frowned and sneered on Florence from her high
seat upon the hill. And Mr. Wake said that the next day--early--when
the dew was on the grass and the sun yet gentle, Boccaccio’s party
started off, and made their trip in a short two hours; found the villa
more charming than their modest host had promised and that there they
settled.
And to fill time they told stories, which are, after all this time,
being read. But Mr. Wake said--when _I_ said that I’d like to read
them, that the stories would be the kind of stories that would be told
by people who evaded duty, and kited off by themselves to look out
_for_ themselves. And he said they were not exactly the reading he
would recommend for _me_.
Viola had read them and so had Leslie. Both of those girls often made
me feel very ignorant, but Sam said he liked me as I was, and that
helped a great deal.
Leslie went with us only a few times, although I always asked her.
But her quarrel with Viola was as intense as it had been the day when
it started--although they did speak to each other, very coldly--and
I think that kept Leslie from going, as well as the fact that she
was irritated into disliking Mr. Wake by Viola’s and my enthusiasm
over him just at that time. She was nervous and edgy and unhappy,
and disappointed from the toppling of her friendship with Mr. Ben
Forbes. The Florence winter months, which are filled with fog and
a damp, increeping cold, left her physically uncomfortable too, and
she had no real companion and the hard application to work was new to
her; altogether now that I look back, I pity her. But all that came
to Leslie did help her; I know that, and so I suppose that I am only
wasting pity.
The second time we went walking, Leslie went with us, and she was very
cool and crisp in her greeting to Mr. Wake, and she disagreed with him
about his opinion of the Fra Angelico frescoes in a Monastery called
San Marco, in a sharp way that wasn’t at all nice.
After we got back from our walk and were settled at dinner, Viola, with
a circumspect look at Leslie, said something about Mr. Wake’s books,
and I saw Leslie look up at her suddenly and piercingly. And before
I went to bed she called me over to her room. She had on a layer of
mud--it was some kind of Russian stuff that she put on to cleanse the
pores--and it made her look like a mummy. I _had_ to giggle.
“What is the cause of your mirth?” she asked coldly as she stopped
brushing her hair.
“Well,” I answered, “you look kind of funny.”
She elevated her chin, and I think she gave me that cool stare with
which she even occasionally subdues Miss Meek, but of course it
couldn’t get through her mud-pie finish.
“I want to know,” she said after a second of comparative silence,
during which she had slammed her little jars around on her bureau,
and brushed her hair so hard that I thought she’d brush it all out,
“whether it is true that Mr. Wake is a writer?”
“Why, yes,” I answered, “‘Beautiful Tuscany,’ ‘Hill Roads,’ ‘Old Roman
Byways’ and lots more were written by him.”
It seemed to irritate her. “It would _seem_ to me,” she confided, “that
you would naturally _mention_ it!”
I didn’t see why, but I didn’t say so. I just picked up a button hook
and wiggled it around in my hands, the way you do when you have nothing
to do but feel uncomfortable.
“You lack finish, and are as gauche as any one I _ever_ knew,” she went
on. I didn’t know just what she meant by that, but I knew I didn’t like
it.
“Don’t you know that when you introduce people,” she questioned, “you
should give some idea of the--the standing of each person so that--that
they may know whom they shall be _nice_ to?”
I shook my head.
“Well, you _do_,” she snapped, “and if you have any more people to
present to me, I want to _know_ about them. . . . I positively snapped
at this Mr. Wake--I am fearfully humiliated over it!--and just a
_word_ from you would have saved me.” (She slammed a bureau drawer
shut until everything on the bureau top rattled), “I didn’t imagine he
_could_ be anybody, because Viola Harris-Clarke raved so--”
“He was my friend in any case,” I said, because I was getting mad, “and
if you’d remembered that and been kind, you’d have spared both of us. I
was ashamed of you--Mr. Wake was being kind to us, and you were rude to
him without any reason for being so.”
“_You_ ashamed of me?” she echoed, and wheeled on me, to stand looking
at me in a dreadful way.
“Yes,” I said, “I _was_,” and I said it hard.
She drew a deep breath, and was about to start in when I decided
I would go. I only heard her say, “You come from the backwoods of
Pennsylvania, and so you cannot understand the--_the infamy of your
statement_, but in New York _I_--my _family_--”
And into this I broke in with something that was horrible to say, I
know it, but it was a satisfaction. I said, “Good-night old mud-hen,”
and then shut the door. But before I had my own opened, she had jerked
through hers, to stand in the corridor and wave her brush at me,
“Never,” she called loudly, “_Never call me ‘Mud-hen’ again!_”
“I will if I want to,” I said. “You may count in New York, but I come
from Pennsylvania.” And then I went in my room and felt ashamed.
For two days after that Leslie cut me out of her talking list, too, and
the only words I had from her were icicle-hung requests to pass things.
On the third, I went into the practice room that was farthest down the
hall--my afternoon hours followed hers that day--and I found her with
her head in her arms, crying.
I felt very sorry for her, and I put my hand on her shoulder, and I
said, “Leslie,” quite softly, and she turned away from me for a moment,
and then turned to me and clung to my arm. I patted her and smoothed
her hair, and I think I made her feel a little better.
Anyway, she stopped crying, and wiped her eyes, and asked me to go to
Doney’s with her for tea. But I said I wouldn’t do that.
“Why not?” she asked in her old, cool, lofty manner and she raised
her brows in a way that confessed she was surprised over my daring to
refuse her invitation.
“Because,” I answered, “you took Viola, and now you’re mad at her, and
you’re telling every one how _often_ you took her out, and how _much_
you did for her.”
She grew red. I think she didn’t like it, but I had to say it.
“I’ll take a walk,” I said. She didn’t answer that, but, head high,
collected her music and flounced off. After I had practised about an
hour I heard a noise at the doorway, and I looked up to see Leslie
standing in it.
“You were quite right,” she stated, in the stiffest voice I had ever
heard, and she looked right over my head. “I know it. I will be glad to
walk with you if you like--”
“All right,” I answered, after a look at the little wrist watch father
had given to me, before I left, “I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes;
fourteen and a half more here, and a half to get into my things--”
And I think that day started our real friendship.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PLANS FOR A PARTY
By Christmas time I was so well acquainted with both Leslie and Viola,
that when, a week before Christmas, Viola called me in her room and
told me what she was writing, I told her that I thought she was foolish.
“Why?” she asked, as she looked at the envelope that was addressed to
her father.
“Doesn’t he send you all the money he can?” I questioned in turn.
“Probably,” (she jabbed holes in the blotter with her pen) “but I need
more. You see early in the game--when _Miss_ Parrish _deigned_ to
notice me, I borrowed money of her, she was always pressing it upon
me--one of her _sweet_ ways of impressing people with her _wealth
importance_--” (I didn’t say anything, but I thought Viola was mean)
“and I need to repay that, and then--my clothes are in _rags_,” (which
was nonsense, for they weren’t) “and I always do ask father for extra
money at Christmas time,” she continued, “because he softens then--or
is in so deep that he thinks a little more won’t matter--anyway, since
I always do ask him, there’s no reason for you to be so shocked--”
“He’s your father,” I stated, “but I’ll tell _you_, I’d hate to send
_my_ father a letter like that to get around Christmas time!”
Viola shrugged her shoulders. Then she grew haughty. “As you say,” she
said, “he _is_ my father, and it is _my_ affair--”
“You asked me about it,” I put in sharply, “I was going by, and you
called me in and said you were writing your father for money, and asked
me what I thought would come of it--”
“I meant how _much_ would come of it.”
“Oh.”
“He’s quite used to it, Jane,” she went on, and almost apologetically,
“Mother has to ask him for extra money _all the time_. . . . We simply
_struggle_, and _pinch_ at every point, but even then we can’t put
up half the appearance that we should, and we never have what _every
one_ around us has--and takes for granted. Did you hear Miss Meek say
‘I’ll wager it’s jolly slummish around the jail!’ yesterday when I was
describing our breakfast room? _Horrid old thing!_”
I didn’t say so, but Viola had made Miss Meek hazard this opinion
about Ossining because she, Viola, had put on so many unnecessary and
silly airs about her home. Miss Meek added, after her first remark,
that of course she knew nothing whatsoever about it, since she
never had visited such low places. The moment that followed had been
strained--and funny!
“It does seem,” Viola went on, after she had wiped her pen on her
stocking, and then said something vigorous because she had forgotten
that she wore a brown pair, “it does _seem_ as if Father might _try_
to do better. It makes it very hard for a girl of my type. . . . It
doesn’t agree with me to accommodate to poverty, or to pinch and scrape
as I have to _all the time_!”
That was nonsense, but I didn’t say so, because with Leslie and Viola
my opinion about money and things didn’t count.
So I only stood there a minute, feeling a little sorry for Viola and
very sorry for her father, and wondering why people felt so about that
which Viola called “Appearance,” and then I decided I’d go to my room
and finish a letter I’d started to Mother, who would, Miss Sheila had
stated, write me herself, very soon.
“Where are you going?” asked Viola after I had said I must hurry on.
“My room,” I answered, as I turned the door knob.
“How’d your lesson go?”
“Pretty well.”
“If _Miss_ Parrish doesn’t join you, I will later.”
“All right,” I responded, “but I won’t have a fire--”
“I should think you’d _die_ without one,” said Viola, pityingly.
“I get along all right,” I answered, shortly, because it seemed to
me that Viola had better get along without a fire herself--a scuttle
of coal cost about thirty cents, and the kindling that started it,
ten--instead of shivering for me, _while_ she badgered her father for
money that she confessed wouldn’t be easy for him to spare.
“Don’t be angry,” she called after me.
“I’m not angry,” I replied.
“Well, you acted it. . . . Funny holiday, isn’t it? Just sitting in our
rooms. No parties or anything--”
“We could have one if you and Leslie wouldn’t hitch at it, and spoil
everything,” I responded. “We could get a nice one up--”
“Well, I’m willing to fly the white flag that evening,” she stated with
an indifference I felt that she put on.
But that made the party possible, for I saw how it might be managed and
I hurried right on to Leslie’s room to find her lying down on her bed
and staring up at a sky blue ceiling that had gilt stars painted on it.
“Look here,” I said, as I shut the door after myself, “I think we ought
to have a party, a Christmas party, but we can’t unless you and Viola
stop scrapping for the evening. She said she would; will you?”
Leslie sat up and drew her padded silk dressing gown around her, and
then answered. “I am sure,” she said, “that I would act as I _always_
do. One’s personal feelings dare not be aired; I _assure_ you I
_invariably_ exercise restraint--”
“All right,” I answered and then I sat down on the edge of her bed, and
we planned it.
“Mr. Wake and Sam will come,” I said, after we had decided to buy those
cracker things that pop and have paper caps in them, and Leslie had
said she would donate some pastries and some French chocolates.
“Mr. Wake would be fearfully bored,” she objected.
“I don’t believe it,” I disagreed.
“But with Miss Meek and Miss Bannister and Mr. Hemmingway? For of
course if we have it here we’ll have to ask the old things!”
“Probably it’ll be the first party they’ve been to in years,” I stated,
and I saw that Leslie felt a little mean.
“Well, I’d tell him that the whole institution will be on board,” she
advised, and I said I would.