"Has anyone seen our cousin?" asked Gemma as she helped herself to
_spaghetti_.
Her aunt shrugged her fat shoulders. "No! The _donna di servizio_ is
mistress here, and she has ordained that the cousin shall not be
disturbed. She has even locked the door, and she carries the key in
her pocket."
"It is true," old Carolina said placidly. She was accustomed to join
in the conversation at table when she chose, and Italian servants are
allowed great freedom of speech. "You were all in your beds when
Giovanni Scampo drove her here in his cab this morning or you would
have seen her then. The poor child is half dead with fatigue. Let her
sleep, I say. There are veal cutlets to come, Signorina Maria; will
you have more _spaghetti_?"
"A little more."
The old woman shook her head. "You eat too much."
The Menotti lived in a small stuffy flat on the third floor of 25,
Piazza Tolomei. It had the one advantage of being central, but was
otherwise extremely inconvenient. The kitchen was hot and airless, and
the servant had to sleep in a dark cupboard adjoining, in an
atmosphere compounded of the scent of cheese, black beetles and old
boots. There were four bedrooms besides, all opening on to the
dining-room; and a tiny drawing-room, seldom used and never dusted,
was filled to overflowing with gilt furniture and decorative fantasies
in wool work.
The Menotti did not entertain. They met their friends at church, or at
the theatre, or in the Lizza gardens, where they walked every evening
in the summer. No man had ever seen them other than well dressed, but
in the house they wore loose white cotton jackets and old skirts. They
were _en deshabille_ now, though their heads were elaborately dressed
and their faces powdered, and Maria's waist was considerably larger
than it appeared to be when she was socially "visible."
"I must breathe sometimes," she said.
The three girls were inclined to stoutness, but Gemma drank vinegar
and ate sparingly, and so had succeeded in keeping herself slim
hitherto, though she was only three years younger than Maria, who was
twenty-nine and looked forty.
Carmela was podgy, but she might lace or not just as she pleased. No
one would look at her in any case since her kind, good-humoured, silly
face was marked with smallpox.
Gemma was the pride of her aunt and the hope of the family. The girls
were poor, and it is hard for such to find husbands, but she had
recently become engaged to a young lawyer from Lucca, who had been
staying with friends in Siena when he saw and fell in love with the
girl whom the students at the University named the "Odalisque."
Hers was the strange, boding loveliness of a pale orchid. She had no
colour, but her curved lips were faintly pink, as were the palms of
her soft, idle hands. "I shall be glad when she is married," her aunt
said often. "It is very well for Maria or Carmela to go through the
streets alone, but Gemma is otherwise, and I cannot be always running
after her. Then her temper ... _Dio mio!_"
"Perhaps it is the vinegar," suggested Carolina rather spitefully.
"No. She wants a husband."
When the dinner was over Signora Carosi went to her room to lie down,
and her two elder nieces followed her example, but Carmela passed into
the kitchen with Carolina.
"You will let me see the cousin," she said, wheedling. "Gemma thinks
she will be ugly, with great teeth and a red face like the
Englishwomen in the Asino, but I do not believe it."
"If the signorina is hoping for a miracle of plainness she will be
unpleasantly surprised," said the old woman, and her shrivelled face
was as mischievous as a monkey's as she drew the key of Olive's room
from her pocket. "I am going to take her some soup now, and you shall
come with me."
It is quite impossible to be retiring, or even modest, in the
mid-Victorian sense, in flats. A bedroom cannot remain an inviolate
sanctuary when it affords the only means of access to the bathroom or
is a short cut to the kitchen. Olive had had some experience of
suburban flats during holidays spent with school friends, and had
suffered the familiarity that breeds weariness in such close quarters.
As she woke now she was unpleasantly aware of strangers in the room.
"Only a lover or a nurse may look at a woman while she sleeps without
offence," she said drowsily. "It is an unpardonable liberty in all
other classes of the population. Are you swains, or sisters of mercy?"
She opened her eyes and met Carmela's puzzled stare with laughter. "I
was saying that when one is ill or in love one can endure many
things," she explained in halting Italian.
"Ah," Carmela said uncomprehendingly, "I am never ill, _grazia a Dio_,
but when Maria has an indigestion she is cross, and when Gemma is in
love her temper is dreadful. Perhaps, being a foreigner, you are
different. Are you tired?"
"Yes, I am, rather, but go on talking to me. I am not sleepy."
Carmela, nothing loth, drew a chair to the bedside. "You need not get
up yet," she said comfortably. "We always lie down after dinner until
five, and later we go for a walk. You will see the Via Cavour full of
people in the evening, officers and students, and mothers with
daughters to be married, all walking up and down and looking at each
other. Orazio Lucis first saw Gemma like that, and he followed us
home, and then found out who we were and asked questions about us.
Every day we saw him in the Piazza, smoking cigarettes, and waiting
for us to go out that he might follow us, and Gemma would give him one
look, and then cast down her eyes ... so!" Carmela caricatured her
sister's affectation of unconsciousness very successfully, and looked
to Olive and Carolina for applause.
The servant grinned appreciation. "Yes, the signorina is very
_civetta_. I, also, have seen her simpering when the _avvocato_ has
been here, but she soon gets tired of him, and then her face is as God
made it."
Olive dressed herself leisurely when they had left her, and unpacked
her clothes and her little store of books. Her cousins, coming to
fetch her soon after six o'clock, found her ready to go out, but so
absorbed in a guide-book of Siena that she did not hear Maria's knock
at the door.
She had resolved that she would apply art and archaeology as plasters
to the wound life had given her already. She would stay her heart's
hunger with moods and tenses, but not of the verb "_amare_." Learning
and teaching, she might make her mind lord of her emotions.
She came forward rather shyly to meet her cousins. The three together
were somewhat overpowering, flounced and frilled alike, and highly
scented. Maria and Carmela fat, pleasant and profuse; Gemma silent,
with dark resentful eyes and scornful lips that never smiled at other
women.
"You will show me the best things?" Olive said eagerly when they had
all kissed her. "I want to see the Duomo first, and then the Palazzo
Vecchio--but that is only open in the mornings, is it? And this is the
Piazza Tolomei, so the house where Pia lived must be quite near."
Gemma stared, but made no attempt to answer, and Maria looked
confused.
"I am afraid you will find us all very stupid, _cara_," said Carmela,
apologetically. "We only go to the Duomo to pray, and as to museums
and picture-galleries-- And perhaps I had better tell you now, at
once, that we do not want to learn English. We have got you several
lessons through friends, but Maria and Carmela say they will not
fatigue themselves over a foreign language, and I--"
"Oh," began Olive, "I thought--"
Gemma interrupted her. "A thousand thanks," she said rudely. "We are
not school children; we read about Pia dei Tolomei years ago at the
_Scuola Normale_, but we do not consider her an amusing subject of
conversation now."
The rose in Olive's cheeks deepened. "I shall soon learn to know your
likes and dislikes," she said, "and to understand your manners."
"I hope so," answered Gemma as she left the room. Maria hurried after
her, but the younger sister caught at Olive's hand.
"You must not listen to Gemma. Come, we will walk together. Let her go
on; she cannot forgive your nose for being straight."