A large parcel addressed to Miss Agar was brought to the house a few
weeks later. Olive was out giving a lesson when it came, and Gemma
turned it over, examining the post-mark and the writing.
"Shall I open it and see what is inside? She would never know."
Carmela was horrified. "How can you think of such a thing!"
"Besides, it is sealed," added Maria.
These two liked their cousin well enough, and when they wished to
tease the Odalisque they called her "_carina_" and praised her fresh
prettiness. It was always so easy to make Gemma angry, and lately she
had been more capricious and difficult than ever. Her sisters were
continually trying to excuse her.
"She is so nervous," Maria said loyally, but her paraphrase availed
nothing. Olive understood her cousin and disliked her extremely,
though she accorded her a reluctant admiration.
She came in now with her books--an English grammar and a volume of
translations--under her arm, and seeing that Gemma was watching her,
she took her parcel with a carefully expressionless phrase of thanks
to Carmela, who was anxious to cut the string, and carried it into her
room unopened. It was the tea-basket Jean Avenel had promised her. She
read the enclosed note, however, before she looked at it.
"I am going to America and then to Russia. Do not quite
forget me. If ever you need anything write to my
brother, Hilaire Avenel, Villa Fiorelli, Settignano,
near Florence, and he will serve you for my sake as he
would for your own if he knew you. I think I have played
better since I have known you, my rose. One must suffer
much before one can express the divine sorrow of Chopin.
I said I would not write, but some promises are made to
be broken. Can you forgive me?
"JEAN AVENEL."
America and Russia ... the divine sorrow of Chopin ... I have played
better.... He was a pianist then, and surely a great one. Olive
remembered the slender brown hands that had seemed to her so supple
and so strong. But the name of Avenel was strange to her, and she was
sure she had never seen it on posters, or in the papers and magazines
that chronicle the doings of musical celebrities.
She took the tea-things out of the basket one by one and looked at
them with pleasure. The sugar box and the caddy and the spoon were
all of silver, and engraved with her initials, and the cup and saucer
were painted with garlands of pale roses.
Tears filled her eyes as she sat down at the little table in the
window and began to write.
"You have sent me a tea equipage fit for an empress! It
is perfect, and I do not know how to thank you. Yes. I
forgive you for writing. Have I really helped you to
play? I am so glad. You say Chopin, so I suppose it is
the piano? I must tell you that I remember all the
stories you told me of Siena, and they add to the
interest of my days. I give English lessons, and am
making enough money to keep myself, but in the intervals
of grammar and '_I Promessi Sposi_' (no less than three
of my pupils are translating that interminable romance
into so-called English) I study the architecture of the
early Renaissance in the old narrow streets, and gaze
upon Byzantine Madonnas in the churches. The Duomo is an
archangel's dream, and I like to go there with my
cousins and steep my soul in its beauty while they say
their prayers and fan themselves. One of them is pretty
and she hates me; the other two are stout and kind and
empty-headed, and their aunt is nothing--a large, heavy
nothing--"
Olive laid down her pen. "What will he think if I write him eight
pages? That I want to begin a correspondence? I do, but he must not
know it."
She tore her letter up into small pieces and wrote two lines on a
sheet of note-paper.
"Thank you very much for your kind present and for what
you say. Of course I forgive you ... and I shall not
forget.--Yours sincerely, OLIVE AGAR."
She went to the window and threw the torn scraps of the first letter
out into the street, and then she sat down again and began to cry; not
for long. Women who know how precious youth is understand that tears
are an expensive luxury, and they are sparing of them accordingly.
They suffer more in the stern repression of their emotions than do
those who yield easily to grief, but they keep their eyelashes and
their complexions.
Olive bathed her eyes presently and smoked a cigarette to calm her
nerves. She was going out that evening to dine with her favourite
pupil and his mother, and she knew they would be distressed if she
looked ill or sad.
Aurelia de Sanctis had had troubles enough of her own. She had married
a patriot, a man with a beautiful eager face and a body spent with
disease, and a fever that never left him since the days when he lurked
in the marshes of the Maremma, crouched in a tangle of wet reeds and
rushes, and watching for the flash of steel in the sunshine.
Austrian bayonets ... he raved of them in his dreams, and called upon
the names of comrades who had rotted in prisons or died in exile. His
young wife nursed him devotedly until he died, leaving her a widow at
twenty-seven. She had a small pension from the Government, and she
worked at dressmaking to eke it out.
Her only child had grown up to be a hopeless invalid. He could not go
to school, so he lay all day on the sofa by the window in the tiny
sitting-room and helped his mother with her sewing. His poor little
bony hands were very quick and dexterous.
In the evenings he read everything he could get hold of, books and
newspapers. The professors from the University, who came to see him
and were kind to him for his father's sake, told each other that he
was a genius and that his soul was eating up his frail body. They
wondered, pitifully, what poor Signora Aurelia would do when--
The mother was hopeful, however. "He takes such an interest in
everything that I think he must have a strong vitality though he seems
delicate," she said.
He had expressed a wish to learn English, and when Signora Aurelia
first heard of Olive she wrote asking her to come and see her. The De
Sancti lived a little way outside the Porta Romana, on the edge of the
hill and outside the town, and Maria advised her cousin not to go
there.
"It is so far out on a hot dusty road, and you will grow as thin and
dry as an old hen's drumstick if you walk so much. And I know the
signora is poor and will not be able to pay well."
Olive went, nevertheless. Signora Aurelia herself opened the door to
her and showed evident pleasure at seeing her. The poor woman had been
beautiful, and now that she was worn by time and sorrow she still
looked like a goddess, exiled to earth, and altogether shabby--a deity
in reduced circumstances--but none the less divinely fair and kind.
Her great love for her child had so moulded her that she seemed the
very incarnation of motherhood. So might Ceres have appeared as she
wandered forlornly in search of her lost Persephone, gentle, weary,
her fineness a little blunted by her woes.
"Are you the English signorina? Come in! My son will be so pleased,"
she said as she led the girl into the room where Astorre was working
at embroidery.
Olive saw a boy of seventeen sewing as he lay on the sofa. There were
some books on the floor within his reach, and a glass of lemonade was
set upon the window-sill, but he seemed quite absorbed in making fine
stitches. He looked up, however, as they came in and smiled at his
mother.
"I have nearly finished," he said. "Presently I shall read the
sonnet, '_Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra_,' to refresh
myself."
"This is the signorina who teaches English, _nino mio_."
His face lit up at once and he held out his hand. "I have already
studied the grammar, but the pronunciation ... ah! that will be hard
to learn. Will you help me, signorina?"
"Yes, indeed I will. We will read and talk together, and soon you will
speak English better than I can Italian."
As she spoke and smiled her heart ached to see the hollowness of his
cheeks and the lines of pain about his young mouth. She guessed that
his poor body was all twisted and deformed under the rug that covered
it. Signora Aurelia took her out on to their little terrace garden
before she left. Twenty miles and more of fair Tuscan earth lay at
their feet, grey olive groves and green vineyards, and the hills
beyond all shimmering in the first heat of spring. Olive exclaimed at
the beauty of the world.
"Yes. On summer evenings Astorre can lie here and watch what he calls
the pageant of the skies. The poor child is so fond of colour. I know
you will be very patient with him, signorina. He is so clever, but
some days he is in pain, and then he gets tired and so cannot learn so
well. You have kindly promised to come twice a week, but I must tell
you that I am not rich--" She looked at Olive wistfully.
The girl dared not offer to teach Astorre for nothing. "I can see your
son will be a very good pupil," she said hastily. "Would one lire the
lesson suit you?"
"Oh, yes," the signora said with evident relief. "But are you sure
that is enough? You must not sacrifice yourself, my dear--"
"It will be a pleasure to come," Olive said very sincerely.
The acquaintance soon ripened into a triangular friendship. The
signora grew to love the girl because she amused Astorre and was never
obviously sorry for him, or too gentle with him, as were some of the
well-meaning people who came to see the boy. "An overflow of pity is
like grease exuding," he said once. "I hate it."
He was very old for his years. He had read everything apparently, and
he discussed problems of life and death with the air of a man of
forty. He had no illusions about himself. "I shall die," he said once
to Olive when his mother was not in the room. "My father gave me a
spirit that burns like Greek fire and a body like--like a spent
shell."
The easy, desultory lessons were often prolonged, and then the girl
stayed to dinner and played dominoes afterwards with him or with his
mother until ten o'clock, when old Carolina came to fetch her home.
The withered little serving-woman was voluble, and always cheerfully
ready to lighten the way with descriptions of the last moments of her
children. She had had thirteen, and two were still surviving. "One
grows accustomed, _signorina mia_--"