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OLIVE ...
IN ITALY
BY MORAY DALTON
[Illustration]
London
T. FISHER UNWIN
MCMIX
[_All Rights Reserved_]
"For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the
wine is red; it is full mixed, and He poureth out of the
same. As for the dregs thereof: all the ungodly of the
earth shall drink them...."
CONTENTS
BOOK I. PAGE
SIENA 17
BOOK II.
FLORENCE 115
BOOK III.
ROME 213
OLIVE IN ITALY
BOOK I.--SIENA
CHAPTER I
"I believe that Olive Agar is going to tell you that she can't pay her
bill," said the landlady's daughter as she set the breakfast tray down
on the kitchen table.
"Good gracious, Gwen, how you do startle one! Why?"
"She began again about the toast, and I told her straight that you
always set yourself against any unnecessary cooking. Meat and
vegetables must be done, I said, but those who can't relish bread as
it comes from the baker's, and plain boiled potatoes, can go without,
I said. Then she says, of course I must do as my mother tells me, and
would I ask you to step up and see her presently."
"Perhaps you were a bit too sharp with her."
The girl sniffed resentfully. "Good riddance if she goes," she called
after her mother.
Mrs Simons knocked perfunctorily at the dining-room door.
A young voice bade her come in. "I wanted to tell you that I heard
from my cousins in Italy this morning. I am going to stay with them
for a little, so I shall be leaving you at the end of the week."
The landlady's cold stare was disconcerting. There was a distinct note
of disapproval in her voice as she answered, "I do not know much about
Italy." She seemed to think it not quite a seemly subject, yet she
pursued it. "I should have thought it was better for a young lady
without parents or friends to find some occupation in her own
country."
Olive smiled. "Ah, but I hate boiled potatoes, and I think I shall
love Italy and Italian cooking. You remember the Athenians who were
always seeking some new thing? They had a good time, Mrs Simons."
"I hope you may not live to wish those words unsaid, miss," the woman
answered primly. "You have as good as sold your birthright, as Esau
did, in that speech."
"He was much nicer than Jacob."
"Oh, miss, how can you! But, after all, I suppose you are not
altogether one of us since you have foreign cousins. What's bred in
the bone comes out in the flesh they say."
"I am quite English, if that is what you mean. My aunt married an
Italian."
Mrs Simons's eyes had wandered from the girl's face to the heavy
chandelier tied up in yellow muslin, and thence, by way of "Bubbles,"
framed in tarnished gilt, to the door. "Ah, well, I shall take your
notice," she said finally.
She went down again into the kitchen. "I never know where to have
her," she complained. "There's something queer and foreign about her
for all she says. What's bred in the bone! I said that to her face,
and I repeat it to you, Gwendolen."
Mrs Simons might have added that adventures are to the adventurous.
Olive's father was Jack Agar, of the Agars of Lyme, and he married his
cousin. If Mrs Simons had known all that must be implied in this
statement she might have held forth at some length on the subject of
heredity, and have traced the girl's dislike of boiled potatoes to her
great-great-uncle's friendship with Lord Byron, and her longing for
sunshine to a still more remote ancestress, lady-in-waiting to a
princess at the court of Le Roi Soleil.
Adventures to the adventurous! The Agars were always aware of the
magnificent possibilities of life and love, and inclined to ignore the
unpleasant actualities of existence and the married state; hence some
remarkable histories, and, in the end, ruin. Olive was the last of the
old name. Jack Agar had died at thirty, leaving his wife and child
totally unprovided for but for the little annuity that had sufficed
for dress in the far-off salad days, and that now must be made to
maintain them. Olive was sent to a cheap boarding-school, where she
proved herself a fool at arithmetic; history, very good; conduct,
fair; according to her reports. She was not happy there. She hated
muddy walks and ink-stained desks and plain dumpling, and all these
things seemed to be an essential part of life at Miss Blake's.
She left at eighteen, and thereafter she and her mother lived together
in lodgings at various seaside resorts within their means, practising
a strict economy, improving their minds at the free library, doing
their own dressmaking, and keeping body and soul together on potted
meats, cocoa and patent cereals. Mary Agar rebelled sometimes in
secret, regretting the lack of "opportunities," _i.e._, of possible
husbands. She would have been glad to see her daughter settled. The
Agars never used commonsense in affairs of the heart. Her own marriage
had been very foolish from a worldly point of view, and her sister
Alice had run away with her music-master.
"In those days girls had a governess at home and finished with
masters, and young Signor Menotti came twice a week to our house in
Russell Square to teach Alice the guitar and mandoline. We shared
singing and French lessons, but she had him to herself. He was very
good-looking, dark, and rather haggard, and just shabby enough to make
one sorry for him. When Alice said she would marry him mamma was
furious, but she was just of age, and she had a little money of her
own, an annuity as I have, and she went her own way. They were
married at a registry office, I think, and soon afterwards they went
to his home in Italy. Mamma never forgave, but Alice and I used to
write to each other, and her eldest child was called after me. I don't
know how it turned out. She never said she was unhappy, but she died
after eight years, leaving her three little girls to be brought up by
their father's sister."
Olive knew little more than this of her aunt. Further questioning
elicited the fact that Signor Menotti's name was Ernesto.
"The girls are your cousins, Olive dear, and you have no other
relations. I should like to see them."
"So should I."
Olive knew all about the annuity, but she had not realised until her
mother died quite suddenly, of heart failure after influenza, what it
means to have no money at all. She was dazed with grief at first, and
Mrs Simons was as kind as could be expected and did not thrust the
weekly bill upon her on the morning after the funeral, though it was
due on that day. But lodgers are not supposed to give much trouble,
and though death is not quite so heinous as infectious disease or ink
spilt on the carpet it is still distinctly not a thing to be
encouraged by too great a display of sympathy, and Olive was soon made
to understand that it behoved her to seek some means of livelihood,
some way out into the world.
No proverb is too hackneyed to be comforting at times, and the girl
reminded herself that blood is thicker than water as she looked among
her mother's papers for the Menotti address. They were her cousins,
birds of a feather. She wrote them a queer, shy, charming letter in
strange Italian, laboriously learnt out of a grammar, and then--since
some days must elapse before she could get any answer--she
conscientiously studied the advertisement columns of the papers. She
might be a nursery governess if only she could be sure of herself at
long division, or--horrid alternative--a useful help. Mrs Simons
suggested a shop.
"You have a nice appearance, miss. Perhaps you would do as one of the
young ladies in the drapery department, beginning with the tapes and
thread and ribbon counter, you know, and working your way up to the
showroom."
But Olive altogether declined to be a young lady.
She waited anxiously for her cousins' letter, and it meant so much to
her that when it came she was half afraid to open it.
It was grotesquely addressed to the
Genteel Miss Agar Olive,
Marsden Street, 159,
Brighton,
Provincia di Sussex,
Inghilterra.
The post-mark was Siena. It was stamped on the flap, which was also
decorated with a blue bird carrying a rose in its beak, and was rather
strongly scented.
"DEAR COUSIN,--We were so pleased and interested to hear
from you, though we greatly regret to have the news of
our aunt's death. Our father's sister lives with us
since we are orphans. She is a widow and has no children
of her own. If you can pay us fifteen lire a week we
shall be satisfied, and we will try to get you pupils
for English. Kindly let us know the date and hour of
your arrival.--Believe us, yours devotedly,
"MARIA, GEMMA and CARMELA."
Olive read it carefully twice over, and then sat down at the table and
began to scribble on the back of the envelope. She convinced herself
that three times fifteen was forty-five, and that so many lire
amounted to not quite two pounds. Then there was the fare out to be
reckoned. Finally, she decided that she would be able to get out to
Italy and to live there for three weeks before she need call herself
penniless.
She went to the window and stood for a while looking out. The houses
opposite and all down the road were exactly alike, all featureless and
grey, roofed with slate, three-storied, with basement kitchens. Nearly
every one of them had "Apartments" in gilt letters on the fanlight
over the front door. It was raining. The pavements were wet and there
was mud on the roadway. The woman who lived in the corner house was
spring-cleaning. Olive saw her helping the servant to take down the
curtains in the front room. Dust and tea-leaves and last year's
cobwebs. It occurred to her that spring would bring a recurrence of
these things only if she became a useful help, as she must if she
stayed in England and earned her living as best she could--only these
and nothing more. The idea was horrible and she shuddered at it. "I
shall go," she said aloud. "I shall go."