"You have been crying," Astorre said abruptly.
Olive leant against the balustrade of the little terrace. She was
watching the fireflies that sparkled in the dusk of the vineyards in
the valley below. A breeze had risen from the sea at sunset, and it
stirred the leaves of the climbing roses and brought a faint sound of
convent bells far away. Some stars shone in the clear pale sky.
Dinner had been cleared away, and Signora Aurelia had gone in to
finish a white dress she was making for a bride. Olive had offered to
help her. "I would rather you amused yourself with Astorre. I can see
you are tired," she had answered as she left them together.
"You have been crying," the boy repeated insistently.
She smiled at him then. "May I not shed tears if I choose?"
"I must know why," he answered.
"Oh, a castle in Spain."
He looked at her searchingly. "And a castellan?"
"Yes. I want a man, and I cannot have him. _Ecco!_"
She did not expect him to take her seriously, but he was often
perversely inclined. "Of course," he said in a matter-of-fact tone,
"all women want a man or men. Do you think I have been lying here all
these years without finding that out? That need is the mainspring of
life, the key to heaven, and the root of all evil. If--if I were
different someone would want me--" His voice broke.
Olive looked away from him. "How still the night is," she said. "The
nightingales are singing in the woods below, Astorre. Do you hear
them?"
"I am not deaf," he answered in a muffled voice, "I hear them. Will
you hear me?"
Watching her closely he saw that she shrank from him. "Do not be
afraid," he said gruffly. "I am not going to be a fool. No man on
earth is worth your tears. That is all I wanted to say."
"Ah, child, you are young for all your wisdom. I was not sorry for him
but for myself."
"Liar!" he cried petulantly, and then caught at her hand. "Forgive me!
Come now and read me a sonnet of your Keats and then translate it to
me."
Obediently she stooped to pick up the book. The flame of the little
lamp on the table at his side burned steadily.
He lay with closed eyes and lips that moved, repeating the words after
her. "It is very good to listen to your voice while you are here with
me alone under the stars," he said presently. "Tell me, does this man
love you?"
She was silent.
"Does he love you?"
"I think he did, but perhaps he has forgotten me now."
"I love you," the boy said deliberately.
"I cannot come again if you talk like this, Astorre."
"I shall never say it again," he answered, "but I want you to remember
that it is so, because it may comfort you. Such words never come amiss
to women. They feed on the hunger of our hearts."
"Don't say that!" she cried. "It is true that I like you to be fond of
me, and I love you. In the best way, Astorre--oh, do believe that it
is the best way!"
"With your soul, I suppose? Do you think I am an angel because I am a
cripple?" he asked bitterly.
"I am sorry--"
"Poor little girl," he said more gently, "I have hurt you instead of
comforting you, as I meant to do. But how can I give what is not mine?
How can I cry 'Peace,' when there is no peace? You will suffer still
when I am at rest."
The boy's mother put down her work presently and came out to them, and
the three sat silently watching the moon rise beyond the hills. It was
as though a veil had been withdrawn to show the glimmer of distant
streams, the white walls of peasant dwellings set among their vines,
the belfry tower of an old Carthusian monastery belted in by tall dark
cypresses, and the twisted shadows thrown by the gnarled trunks and
outstanding roots of the olive trees.
"All blue and silver," cried the girl after a while. "Thank God for
Italy!"
"She has cost her children dear," the elder woman answered, sighing.
"Beyond that rampart of hills lies the Maremma, and swamps, marshes,
forests are to be drained now, they say, and made profitable. You will
see some peasants from over there in our streets at the time of the
Palio. Poor souls! They are so lean and haggard and yellow that their
bones seem to be piercing through their discoloured skins."
"The Palio! I think Signor Lucis is coming to Siena to see it," Olive
said.
"Is that the man your cousin Gemma is to marry?" the dressmaker asked
curiously. "I had heard that she was engaged, but one hears so many
things. Do you like her?"
"Not very much, but really I see very little of her. I am out all day
teaching."
The door-bell clanged as the girl rose to go. "That is Carolina come
for her stray sheep," she said, smiling. "They will not believe that I
can come home by myself at night."
"They are quite right. If your aunt's servant did not come for you I
should take you back to the Piazza Tolomei myself."
"You forget that I am English."
Olive never attempted to explain her code; she stated her nationality
and went on her way. Her first pupils had all been young girls, but as
it became known that she was really English her circle widened. The
prior of a Dominican convent near San Giorgio, and two privates from a
regiment of Lancers stationed in the Fortezza, came to her to be
taught, and some of Astorre's friends, students at the University,
were very anxious for lessons, and as the Menotti refused to have them
in their house Olive had to hire a room to receive them.
The aunt disapproved. "It is not right," she said, and when Olive
assured her that she could not afford to lose good pupils she shook
her large head.
"You will go your own way, I suppose, but do not bring your men here.
I cannot have soldiers scratching up the carpet with their spurs, or
monks dropping snuff on it."
Olive's days were filled, and she, having no time for the
self-tormentings of idle women, was content to be not quite unhappy.
She needed love and could not rest without it, and she was at least
partially satisfied. Astorre and his mother adored her, thought her
perfect, held her dear. All her pupils seemed to like her, and some of
the students brought her little gifts of flowers, and packets of
chocolate and almond-rock that Maria ate for her. The prior gave her a
plaster statuette of St Catherine. "She was clever, and so are you,"
he said.
"Carmela, I am not really _antipatica_?"
"What foolishness! No."
"Why does Gemma hate me then? No one else does, or if they do they
hide it, but she looks daggers at me always."
Carmela had been invited to tea in her cousin's bedroom. The water did
not boil yet, but her mouth was already full of cake.
"What happened the other night when Gemma let you in?" she mumbled.
"Did she say anything to you?"
"No, but I am not blind or deaf. You have not spoken to each other
since."
Olive lifted the kettle off the spirit lamp. "You like it weak, I
know."
"Yes, and three lumps of sugar. Tell me what happened, _cara_."
"Well, as I came up the stairs that night I noticed a strong scent of
tobacco--good tobacco. Sienese boys smoke cheap cigarettes, and the
older men get black Tuscan cigars, but this was different. It reminded
me of-- Oh, well, never mind. When I came to the first landing I felt
sure there was someone standing close against the wall waiting for me
to go by, and yet when I spoke no one answered. You know how dark it
is on the stairs at night. I could not see anything, but I listened,
and, Carmela, a watch was ticking quite near me, by my ear. I could
not move for a moment, and then I heard Carolina calling--she was
with me, you know, but she had gone up first--and I got up somehow.
Gemma let us in. She said she had been asleep, and I noticed that her
hair was all loose and tumbled. I told her I fancied there was someone
lurking on the stairs, and she said it must have been the cat, but I
knew from the way she said it that she was angry. She lit her candle
and marched off into her own room without saying good-night, and I was
sorry because I have always wanted to be friends with her. I thought I
would try to say something about it, so I went to her door and
knocked. She opened it directly. 'Go away, spy,' she said very
distinctly, and then I grew angry too. I laughed. 'So there was a man
on the stairs,' I said."
Carmela stirred her tea thoughtfully. "Ah!" she said. "How nice these
spoons are. I wish you would tell me who gave them to you."
She helped herself to another cake. "Gemma is difficult, and we shall
all be glad when September comes and she is safely married. She is
lazy. You have seen us of a morning, cutting out, basting, stitching
at her wedding clothes, while she sits with her hands folded. Are you
coming out with us this evening?"
The Menotti strolled down to the Lizza nearly every day after the
_siesta_, and Carmela often persuaded her cousin to accompany them.
The gardens were set on an outlying spur of the hill on which the
wolf's foster son, Remus, built the city that was to be fairer than
Rome. The winter winds, coming swiftly from the sea, whipped the
laurels into strange shapes, shook the brown seed pods from the bare
boughs of the acacias, and froze the water that dripped from the
Medicean balls on the old wall of the Fortezza. Even in summer a
little breeze would spring up towards sunset, and the leaves that had
hung heavy and flaccid on the trees in the blazing heat of noon would
be stirred by it to some semblance of life, while the shadows
lengthened, and the incessant maddening scream of the locusts died
down into silence. The gardens were a favourite resort. As the church
bells rang the Ave Maria the people came to them by Camollia and San
Domenico, to see each other and to talk over the news of the day.
Smart be-ribboned nurses carrying babies on white silk cushions tied
with pink or blue rosettes, young married women with their children,
stout mothers chaperoning the elaborate vivacity of their daughters,
occupied seats near the bandstand, or lingered about the paths as they
chattered and fanned themselves incessantly to the strains of the
Intermezzo from _Cavalleria Rusticana_ or some march of Verdi's. A
great gulf was fixed between the sexes on these occasions. The young
men congregated about the base of Garibaldi's statue; more or less
gilded youths devoted to "le Sport," wearing black woollen jerseys
and perforated cycling shoes, while lady-killers braved strangulation
in four-inch collars. There were soldiers too, cavalry lieutenants,
slender, erect, and very conscious of their charms, and dark-faced
priests, who listened to the music carefully with their eyes fixed on
the ground, as being in the crowd but not of it. Olive watched them
all with mingled amusement and impatience. If only the boys would talk
to their friends' sisters instead of eyeing them furtively from afar;
if only the girls would refrain from useless needlework and empty
laughter. They talked incessantly and called every mortal--and
immortal--thing _carina_. Queen Margherita was _carina_, and so was
the new cross-stitch, and so was this blue-eyed Olive. Yes, they
admitted her alien charm. She was _strana_, too, but they did not use
that word when she was there or she would have rejoiced over such an
enlargement of their vocabulary.
"They are amiable," she told Astorre, "but we have not one idea in
common."
"Ah," he said, "can one woman ever praise another without that 'but'?
Do you think them pretty?" he asked.
"Yes, but one does not notice them when Gemma is there."
"That is the pale one, isn't it? I have heard of her from the
students, and also from the professors of the University. One of my
friends raves about her Greek profile and her straight black brows. He
calls her his silent Sappho, but I fancy Odalisque is a better name
for her. There is no brain or heart, is there?"
"I don't know," she answered uncertainly. "She seldom speaks to
anyone, never to me."
"She is jealous of you probably."
The heats of July tried the boy. He was not so well as he had been in
the spring, and lately he had not been able to help his mother with
her needlework. The hours of enforced idleness seemed very long, and
he watched for Olive's coming with pathetic eagerness. She never
failed to appear on Tuesdays and Saturdays, though the lessons had
been given up since his head ached when he tried to learn. Signora
Aurelia met her always at the door with protestations of gratitude.
"You amuse him and make him laugh, my dear, because you are so fresh,
and you do not mind what you say. It is good of you to come so far in
the sun."
The girl's heart ached to see the haggard young face so white against
the dark velvet of the piled-up cushions. The deep grey eyes lit up
with pleasure at the sight of her, but she found it hard to meet their
yearning with a smile.
Sometimes she found old men sitting with him, grave and potent
signiors, professors from the University, who, on being introduced,
beamed paternally and asked her questions about Oxford and Cambridge.
There were bashful youths too, who blushed when she entered and rose
hurriedly with muttered excuses. If they could be induced to stay,
Olive, seeing that it pleased Astorre to see them shuffling their feet
and writhing on their chairs in an agony of embarrassment before her,
did her best to make them uncomfortable.
"Your friends are all so timid," she said. He looked at her with a
kind of triumph, a pride of possession.
"They do not understand you as I do. Fausto admires you, but you
frighten him."
"Is he Gemma's adorer?" she asked with a careful display of
indifference.
"Yes, he is always _amoroso_."
"Ah! Does he smoke?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Oh, nothing," she said. She did not really believe that the man on
the stairs could have been Fausto. Gemma would not look twice at such
a harmless infant now. When she was forty-five, perhaps, she might
smile on boys, but at twenty-six--