hall near the entrance door, “Viola had a letter from her mother, and
her father hasn’t left much--”
“How ghastly!”
“Well,” I said, “I don’t know. . . . It may help Viola--”
“I’ll lend her anything she needs--any amount,” said Leslie, and then I
spoke.
“Please _don’t_,” I begged. She drew herself up.
“Will you be good enough to explain?” she said frigidly, and I did. I
said that, unless she intended to support Viola all her life, she had
no business to get Viola into the habit of taking and expecting, and I
went on to say that it was the one chance for Viola to learn to work,
and that she would be helped through her trouble _by_ work. I was sure
she would, and I was sure that Leslie oughtn’t to help her, and I spoke
with a lot of energy.
Leslie didn’t like it--Rome wasn’t built in a day!--and then she said
that when she needed my expert advice she’d call for it, and that she
didn’t intend to see Viola starve; and after that, we parted.
At dinner that night she was frosty as James Whitcomb Riley’s famed
pumpkins, but I could see by Viola’s careless manner (Viola always paid
a great deal of attention to Leslie _after_ she borrowed money) that
Leslie hadn’t spoken to her of her willingness to help.
For a couple of days Leslie avoided making real conversation with me,
and then one morning while I was practising I looked up to see Leslie
in the doorway.
She had on a French blue negligee that had pale two-toned pink ribbons
on it, and her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright, and she carried
a tray on which was a pot of tea, some little cakes that she knows I
like, and some biscuits. She always got her own breakfast because the
pension allowance was small, and she knew that I was always hungry
until after lunch.
“Here!” she said, as she set it down on a chair by me. “Suppose you’re
starved as usual. I, myself, am entirely certain that the scant
breakfasts stunt the race--I’m _certain_ that it makes them short--I
want to say several things--”
I began to eat. “Go ahead,” I said, in a tone that I must confess was
muffled.
“In the first place--you, ah, you were right about Viola.” (I almost
fainted, but I bit into a biscuit and held on to consciousness) “I see
it now. Then--this afternoon I am going out to buy a wedding present
for Beata, and I want you to go with me; can you?”
“If you’ll wait till I get through practising--” I answered.
“Certainly, that’s understood. _Have_ to with you--” (She always
resented and never understood why my first thought _had_ to be music)
“And another thing,” she went on, and she fumbled in the front of her
negligee to find a cablegram, “I’ve heard from him--”
I took it and read it.
“He must have cared a lot to write those two pleases in a cablegram,” I
said.
She nodded and tried not to smile, but the inclination was so much
stronger than her ability to hold it in check, that she smiled in a
silly, ashamed sort of way, and she avoided meeting my eyes.
Ben Forbes had cabled, “Thank you. Letter follows. Please please write
me again.”
“I thought I’d get Beata a silver coffee service,” said Leslie, who
can’t seem to accommodate to other people’s circumstances.
“She’d never use that,” I said. “You might as well get her a wooden leg
or a pair of stilts! I’d get her some horrible picture, or candlesticks
for their front room, or a lamp with a funny, warty, red and green
shade--”
“You’re right,” she said, and then she went off. She kissed her fingers
to me from the doorway, and again she smiled in that misty, vacant way.
I practised hard, for that afternoon I had a lesson, and it was that
afternoon that Signor Paggi began to be most kind to me.
“You have more _feel_ in the tune,” he said. (I was very happy) “I
think Cu_peed_ have come to make you _see_--” he went on.
“Not to me,” I said, “but to some one I like--”
“Have as you will,” he stated, “but play again, for me--”
And I did. And as I did, I thought of how Sam had looked when he heard
me practise that very same music at the Pension Dante. He had said it
was beautiful, and it had helped me.
Friendship is a wonderful thing!
CHAPTER TWENTY
A COUNTRY WEDDING AND THE COMING OF SPRING
A great deal happened in that slice of time which carried us from
January into spring, although during that interval we felt as if we
were going along almost entirely on the level. You never really do see
the things that happen--not well--until you can look at them over your
shoulder. I realize now that there was lots of excitement, and that
there was really a good deal of abrupt change, but I didn’t see it then.
In the first place, we all went to Beata’s wedding in February, and I
never did have a better time.
Her family, who numbered fourteen--with her father and mother, and
Grandmother and Grandfather, and nine brothers and sisters--lived in
a four room house out in the country past the Cascine, which is the
Park in Florence where fashionable people and those who are trying very
hard to become fashionable, drive each afternoon. I didn’t like it;
it didn’t seem very foreign or Italian. But to go on with my story,
an American--or most Americans--would have hesitated about inviting
people to a wedding party in a four room house that was simply crammed
with children, not to mention the sick hen and the sheep with a broken
leg, but it didn’t bother Beata! No, sir, she meant to have a party,
and she had it, and I thought her asking every one she wanted _fine_.
She said, through Miss Julianna, who interpreted, “You know we are
poor, but we have great love in our hearts for you, and would like to
share what we have with you. And will you do us the great honor to come
to my wedding, hear the mass that will follow, and then eat with us the
grand dinner at the house of my dearly loved father?”
Every one accepted, and on the morning of the fourteenth--which was
the date Leslie had chosen for Beata’s wedding in honor of a certain
Saint who swells the mails on this day each year--we all started out
toward Beata’s home. Leslie, who was increasingly kind and thoughtful,
had hired a big motor which would, with a little squeezing, hold us
all; and into this piled Miss Julianna, Miss Meek (she wore the purple
velvet with the green buttons again) Miss Bannister who had never set
foot in a motor before and was pale from fear (her fright lasted about
a block, and then she got so jazzy that we almost had to tell her not
to rock the boat) Viola, with a wide black band around her arm (Leslie
had suggested that to save Viola’s buying new black clothes) and
Leslie, Mr. Hemmingway and myself.
The riding out was great fun, for the day was fine, and Miss Meek and
Miss Bannister and Mr. Hemmingway were having such a good time that we
were all infected with it.
Mr. Hemmingway talked _every_ second about the first time he had ever
seen a motor, which was in Australia, he _thought_ in Sidney, although
oddly enough he could, in retrospect, only see the corner where the
motor stood; and, all corners being pretty much the same, it _might_
have been in Melbourne. And he thought it was in 1889, although it
might have been in 1888--and so on!
Miss Meek kept saying, “My _eye_, how _jolly_!” and Miss Bannister,
who, as I said, lost all fear after a block of going, kept asking if
the chauffeur couldn’t “speed it up a bit.” She admitted that she was
“no end keen for going, don’t you know!”
When we reached the little house, I was so glad that Beata had asked
us, because we saw, through her doing so, a side of life that we hadn’t
come across before.
The house, which was of tan stucco with the usual, red tiled roof,
stood on a tiny plot of ground over which were strewn all sorts of
things. A broken cart, with one wheel gone, sagged in a corner,
and near the tiny, shed-like barn, through the window of which an
interested horse stuck its head, was a grindstone. Ground-scratching
hens, who chattered in gentle clucks to their puffy, soft broods,
walked in the house and out again as they pleased, and a red rooster
stood on a crumbling stucco wall that was topped with broken glass,
to flap his wings and crow. . . . Down back of the house every inch
of ground was terraced, for it seems that it is best used that way on
hillsides, and because of this the Italian country, in most places,
looks like unending flights of green-grown steps. Up under the eaves
was a really beautiful figure of Christ nailed on the cross, and when
people passed below that they bowed and crossed themselves.
Of course the sun was over everything, and there were some smells that
weren’t exactly pleasant, but the whole place was pleasing, and a lot
of its picturesque look came from the disorder and dirt.
And the guests! They were all dressed in their peasant best, and were
laughing and joking, and telling Beata that they wished her many,
strong children--this is quite a proper wish in Italy, and I really
don’t know why it shouldn’t be anywhere; but people _would_ think it
queer, I suppose, if you said it at a wedding in Pennsylvania, or in
New York--and before we started for the church, which was down in the
valley below us, we all joined hands and circled Beata and Pietro who
stood in the center, holding hands and smiling at each other shyly.
Then every one sung while we did this and it was very pretty to hear
and to see and to join in.
Then we went, arm in arm, down a winding way, over slopes that were
grown with small, gently green olive trees, or between fields of green
that were already beginning to show the brightest growing hue; past
a high-walled villa, and several tumbling houses of the poor. And
whenever we met a person, or a group of them, they--knowing Beata or
not--would call out a blessing upon the pair, and then stand, heads
uncovered, until we had gone from sight. . . . There is something very
warming in the frankness of the Italians’ hearts; I think perhaps, in
the United States, we keep our hearts too heavily covered.
In the church many candles were burning, and there was a little boy
swinging an incense pot, and it was dark and cool and mysterious, after
all the blaze of the sunshine outdoors. I liked the service--in spite
of the fact that it was very long--and I enjoyed seeing how it was done.
After it was over, we went back to Beata’s father’s house to find the
little lame brother (who was getting better all the time) waiting for
us at the gate--he had seemed glad to stay with the Grandmother--and
Beata kissed him first, and then her Grandmother, and every one talked
and laughed and joked. And then the refreshments, which were black
bread, bright orange cheese, figs, and wine, were passed, and they did
taste good.
Just before we left a new guest came, and she carried the tiniest baby
I had ever seen, which was only three days old, and I was very much
surprised when I found out it was hers; because Daddy always makes the
mothers of babies stay in bed at least two weeks, and sometimes much
longer. But it seems that all the peasants get up after two or three
days, and when this woman said she had had to miss the wedding because
of doing a big wash, I was more surprised, but very glad she came, for
she let me hold the baby, who was named Leo Paolo Giovanni Battista
Vincenzo Negri, and was _so_ cunning.
When the shadows were beginning to grow long and turn purple, we
started back toward Florence, which lay before us in its valley cup,
with all its spires and towers gilded by the last, yellow-gold sunlight.
I felt a little sad, going in; I don’t know why, unless perhaps it was
because Miss Bannister and Miss Meek and Mr. Hemmingway had had so fine
a time, and I kept wondering, as they talked--excitedly and as fast as
they could and all at once--what they would do after we left.
But Fate and Mr. Wake helped them.
Early in March I heard from Miss Sheila that she would be in Florence
some time during April, but I didn’t tell Mr. Wake of this, for since
that day at Certosa we hadn’t talked much of Miss Sheila. And the very
same day that I heard that, Leslie came to me, with one of the big,
square envelopes in her hand that came so often since she had written
Ben Forbes.
“Ben Forbes is coming over,” she stated.
“Isn’t that _dandy_?” I answered. I had been practising; I had added an
hour and was doing five a day, at that time.
“I think so,” she said, looking down.
“Has he ever been here before?” I asked, and she responded quickly and
with a little remnant of her old irritation in her voice.
“Heavens, _yes_, child!” she replied, “_dozens_ of times, of course!
But not lately. He says he realizes that he has been keeping himself
too tightly moored, and that he wants a few weeks of real play. . . .
He wants me to plan the whole time for him--”
“Well,” I said, “I think that’s _great_! What are you going to do?”
“Oh, take him to the Boboli Gardens, and that sort of thing--he likes
outdoors and isn’t too keen for pictures--and we’ll walk. . . . Where
is that little place where you buy cakes, down in that covered street
near the Arno?”
It seemed queer to have her ask that--I remembered so clearly her
saying that she thought _eating in alleys_ odd--but I didn’t remind
her, and I told her about that, and about a place where you could get
the best white wine, and then of a restaurant where Sam had taken me
that was always full of Italian artists, and writers and poets, and
where you never saw the gleam of a red Baedeker.
“He likes that sort of thing,” Leslie confided, “and I want him to have
a good time--”
“Of course,” I answered.
She sighed, and then smiled in a sort of a foolish way. “It’ll be nice
to see him,” she said weakly.
“I should think it would be,” I answered.
“He’s thirty-three,” she said, “but what’s ten years?” (Leslie is
twenty-three)
“Nothing,” I stated. It was easy to say the right thing to her that
day, for she put up a sign post at every turn.
“I think a man should be older than a woman--” said Leslie. I suppose
she meant husband and wife.
“I do too,” I agreed, and did an arpeggio.
“Hear about Viola?” she asked, as she leaned against the piano.
“No.” I stopped and looked up as she spoke.
“Paggi had a note from a German contralto--she’s pretty well known
too--Madame Heilbig; and she wants a young accompanist, and Signor P.
has recommended Vi. . . . Viola’s to try out with the lady next week
when she goes through here, and I believe Madame Heilbig will tour the
States next year. . . . Viola will _love_ that. She’s already planning
what she will wear. . . . Do you remember how she expected to accompany
a slim tenor with pretty brown eyes?”
I did, and I laughed.
Leslie laughed too, but not as kindly as I had--really she didn’t--for
she and Viola, in spite of being friends again, still held a scratchy
feeling toward each other.
“Nothing ever turns out as I expect it to,” said Leslie, “I’m beginning
to get over being surprised about anything. . . . Do you think a man
would like that flower toque of mine?”
“He will unless he’s blind,” I replied, and then I told her to get out,
because I had to go on with my work, but I didn’t have much time alone,
for in a second Viola appeared.
“_Darling_,” she called from the doorway, “have you _heard_ the _news_?”
I gave up then; I had to.
“Not your version of it,” I answered; and she came skipping across
the room to drop on a chair near me, and babble. There is no other
description of it! She was so excited that she hardly stopped for
breath.
“I’m going to get that position!” she announced, “it’ll do me _worlds_
of good--” (It did!) “And mother is satisfied to stay with Aunt
Clarice--she entertains all the time, you know--and I am going to wear
an orchid chiffon frock, made up over silver cloth, perhaps, and Signor
Paggi says I will sometimes be expected to bow too, and that Madame
Heilbig will pay me well, and I mean to save--because Leslie says all
her income comes from money her father saved--it is the only safety
for a single woman, and capital is really the husband of an old maid,
don’t you know? Or would you wear lavender? I thought of a brocade,
and I could wear artificial violets because they would look like real
ones back of the footlights, and with my name, they might be sort of
romantic, and I can wear violet too, and--”
I sat and listened, and honestly she went on for a half hour like that.
Then she said, “Hear about Ben Forbes?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Simply _romantic_!”
“Um hum--”
“Taking him to the Boboli Gardens, and all that--_artful_, you
know. . . . _Think_ of having a proposal in one of those arched-over
pathways in that heavenly place! _Oh!_”
“Probably won’t,” I said.
“He will too,” Viola disagreed, “_she’ll fix it_! . . . Look here, did
you hear about his cook!”
I hadn’t, and I said so quickly, because I was interested.
“In the letter before this last one,” said Viola, “I think it came
yesterday, he told Leslie--oh, in detail, my dear!--about his ranch,
and the way the ranch house looked and all that. Made it _frightfully_
attractive, told her about the patio, what is a patio, anyway?”
“Enclosed court,” I answered, “I think they have them in some of the
ranch houses in the southwest. They are sort of Mexican--”
“I see; well, he told her about that, and about how the sunsets looked
on the mountains, it was a perfect _love_ of a letter, but what I was
getting at was this--he said he had a one-eyed Chinese cook who could
spit eight feet. Can you imagine Leslie with _that_?”
I laughed. It did seem awfully funny.
Viola laughed too, but as Leslie had, which was not in an entirely kind
way, and then she went on to say almost exactly what Leslie had said
about her.
“It’ll be the _making_ of her,” she said (and it was!), “but I never
would have believed she would allow herself to care for a man who lives
in the middle of nowhere. However, _nothing_ turns out as one expects
it to. I guess I ought to leave you?”
“You ought to,” I agreed, “but I don’t suppose you will--”
“Oh, do come have tea with me,” said Leslie from the doorway, and I
gave up. We went to her room to find her bed covered with the veils
which she had been trying on over her flowered toque.
“A woman _should_ look her best,” she said, but she flushed and avoided
looking at us as she said it.
“When will he be here?” asked Viola.
“Who?” asked Leslie coolly, but something made her drop the shoe horn
with which she was measuring out the tea, and then knock a cream puff
from a heavy piece of china that had been designed to hold soap.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
FIESOLE, A CLEAR HOT DAY AND A COOL GARDEN
April came in as gently and softly as a month could possibly come, and
it held more loveliness than I had ever dreamed could be. The sun was
growing too warm and, some days, the heat was oppressive and going out
unwise; but most of the days were flawless jewels that began with brown
which merged into green, topped and finished with the blue, blue sky.
It was in the second week in April that we went up to Fiesole, that
proud little town that perches on a high hill, and looks down so
scornfully on the Florence that has always made war upon her.
I had been there before with Sam, and we had gone up the winding road,
to the place where there are relics of Roman baths and the remains of a
Roman Temple and an open, half-circled Roman theater. But that had been
in the winter, and now it was spring!
Viola and I went up alone, for Leslie was out somewhere with Ben
Forbes, who had arrived the night before. And all the way up Viola
talked of Leslie’s getting married--and she wasn’t even engaged
then--and of what she, Viola, would wear while _en tour_, which was
what she called her traveling with Madame Heilbig--who had liked her
playing, and instantly engaged her--and of how she, Viola, intended to
go on and some day accompany some one who was really great, while I
looked out at the country which was _so_ beautiful.
I didn’t mind Viola’s talking very much, although I would have been
glad to look on all that loveliness in silence, but I was glad, when we
reached Fiesole--which is so high that it seems to cling uncertainly to
the top of the hill--and found on reaching there that Viola went off
with Mr. Wake, and that I walked with Sam.
“And how’s everything?” he asked, after he had smiled down at me in the
kindest way, and told me that he liked my broad hat which I had bought
at the Mercato Nuovo for five lire which is now about twenty-five cents.
“Better and better,” I answered, and then I told him all the news, as I
always did when we met. We met a good deal too, but there always seemed
to be a lot to say. It is like that when you are real friends.
“Miss Bannister,” I said, “has had luck. A nephew of hers has lost
his wife, which is hard on him, but fine for Miss Bannister, because
he wants her to come to Devonshire and live in his house, and attend
to giving the cook and what Miss Bannister calls ‘the scullery maid’
their orders. And he sent her ten pounds--how much is that, Sam?”
“About fifty hard bones, dear,” he answered. (I was quite used to his
calling me “dear,” and I liked it)
“Well, that is all for clothes,” I stated, “and I’m going to help her
buy them.”
“Can you get more than one frock with that?” asked Sam, and I told him
that she certainly could, for only the day before Leslie and I had
shopped. She had helped me to buy the things I was going to take home
to Mother, Roberta, the twins, and Daddy, and we had got lovely things
at most reasonable prices. Hand-embroidered, hand-made night dresses
could be bought for a dollar and a half; waist patterns wonderfully
embroidered, for two dollars; laces (and the laces were _beautiful_),
for about half what one would pay at home--I had bought Mother a set
of broad Irish lace collars and cuffs for four dollars--and quite
everything was like that, one paid less, and got more.
“Leslie got uncurled ostrich feather fans for some of her friends,” I
went on, “she said for half what she would have to pay for the cheapest
at home--they were twelve and fifteen dollars, I think--and she got
leather frames and hand-bound books too, that were beautiful.” Then I
told Sam that I had found for Father a handtooled card case that I
wanted him to see, and he said he wanted to, and then he said he was
miserable.
“Why?” I asked, and he told me because I was going away.
“That won’t stop our being friends,” I answered, and I pretended a
cheerfulness that I really didn’t feel.
“No,” he answered, “it mustn’t. I’m going to work hard,” he continued,
“and I’m coming over to New York in a year or so for a one man show--”
(I suppose I looked as if I didn’t understand--for I didn’t--and he
explained) “That means,” he said, “an exhibition of my work, all by
itself--Mr. Wake, bless him, thinks I can swing it, and when I come
over I’ll come to see you. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
“Will you _really_?” I questioned, because I did want to be very sure,
and he said he really would.
“But then,” I said, “you’ll probably go again--”
“Um, probably. . . . I used to travel with a banjo tucked under one
arm, and a palette under the other. . . . But I see where, in a couple
of years, things are going to be more complicated, _if I can manage
what I want to_--”
I didn’t understand him, but I let it go, because Mr. Wake and Viola
had come out of the Cathedral which dominates the wind-swept Piazza
at Fiesole, and Mr. Wake came over to tell Sam to take me in and show
me the bust of a Bishop and his monument that were made by Mino da
Fiesole, and that Mr. Wake liked very much.
We went in, past the beggars who sat on the steps with open, upturned
palms, past an old lady who was selling baskets, and swore at us
dreadfully when we refused to buy them--among her swearing was a curse
which consists of “Darn the fishes,” and that is very, very wicked in
Italian!--and then, inside we saw the--Sarcophagus, Sam called it, and
loitered around, and then went back out into the glare and stifling
heat that was over everything outside.
We found Mr. Wake and Viola across the big Piazza, loitering in the
shade, and Mr. Wake said that it was too hot for anything but his own
shady garden and iced tea, and so we left the funny, pretty little
town and started down a narrow roadway that ran between high walls, or
slopes that were covered with olive trees.
Every color was accentuated. . . . Houses that were faint pink,
seemed salmon; greens almost clashed; the dust of the roadway was a
vivid yellow, and down in the hollow below us, Florence spread out, a
steaming, gleaming mass of tightly packed palaces, shining spires, and
gleaming towers.