The table was set for lunch out on the terrace where Astorre lay
gazing upon his Tuscany, veiled in a shimmering haze of heat and
crowned with August blue. The best coffee cups of majolica ware had
been set out, and signora had made a _zabajone_ in honour of
_Ferragosto_. It was meant to please Olive, who was childishly fond of
its thick yellow sweetness, but she seemed restless and depressed;
Astorre looked ill, and his mother's eyes were anxious as they dwelt
on him, and so the dainty was eaten in silence, and passed away
unhonoured and unsung as though it were humble pie or a funeral baked
meat.
Later in the afternoon, when the signora had gone to lie down, Astorre
began to ask questions.
"Is your face hot?"
"Yes--no--what makes you think--"
"You are flushed," he said bluntly, "and you will not meet my eyes.
Why? Why?"
"Don't ask," she answered. "I cannot tell you."
The haggard, aquiline face changed and hardened. "Someone has been
rude to you, or has frightened you."
"No." She moved away to escape the inquisition of his eyes. "Some of
these plants want water. I shall fetch some." She was going in when
he called to her.
"Olive," he said haltingly. "Perhaps we ought to have told you before.
My mother heard of some people who want an English governess from a
friend of hers who is a music mistress in Florence. They are rich and
would pay well, and we should have told you when we heard of it, three
days ago, but I could not bear the thought of your leaving Siena
while--while I am still here. But if those people in the Piazza
Tolomei are unkind--"
She came back then and sat down beside him. "I do not want to leave
Siena," she said gently.
"Thank you," he answered, and added: "It will not be for long. Why
should I pretend to you?" he went on. "I have suffered, but now I have
no pain at all, only I am very weak. Look!"
He held up his hand; it was yellowish white and so thin as to be
almost transparent, and it seemed to Olive to be most pathetic because
it was not very small or very finely made. It held the broken promise
of power, she thought sorrowfully, and she stroked the outstretched
palm gently as though it were a half-frozen bird that she would bring
to life again.
He closed his eyes, smiling. "Ah, your little fingers are soft and
warm."
"You were at the theatre last night," he said presently. "Fausto saw
you. How do you like your cousin's _fidanzato_?"
"Not at all."
"Olive, do you know that they say strange things about the Odalisque?
I am afraid there will be trouble if her Lucchese hears--"
"I do not care to hear that nickname," she said coldly. "It is
impertinent and absurd."
"Oh, do not let go of my hand," he implored. "Keep on stroking it. I
love it! I love it! If I were a cat you would hear me purring. Tell me
about England and Shakespeare and Shelley. Anything. I will be good."
"I--I have not brought the book I promised you. I would have fetched
it on my way here, but--but I had not the key. I am sorry, _nino_.
Yes, let us talk of nice things."
She was quick to relent, and soon seemed to be herself again, and he
kept his fever-bright eyes on her, watching her as in the old days men
may have watched the stars as they waited for the dawn that was to see
them pass by the Vicolo dei Moribondi.
Soon, very soon, Signora Aurelia would come out to them, and she would
stay beside her son while Olive went to put on her hat, and then they
would say "_Addio_" and leave him. And perhaps he would indeed go to
God, or to some place where he would see the dear ones no more. The
boy's beautiful lips were shut close, but the grey eyes darkened and
dilated painfully.
"Astorre! Are you ill? Do not look so. Oh, I will not go to the
Palio. I will stay with you."
"No, you must go, and to-morrow you can tell me all about it. But will
you kiss me now? Do."
"You need not ask twice, dear Astorre," she whispered, as she leant
over him and touched his forehead with her lips.
"_Ma che!_" he said ungratefully. "That's nothing. Kiss me properly
and at once."
When the boy's mother came out on to the terrace a moment later
Olive's blue eyes were full of tears and the rose flush of her cheeks
had deepened, but she looked at her friend very kindly as she uttered
the word he had been afraid to hear.
"_Addio!_"
The Piazza del Campo was crowded as the Signora Aurelia and Olive
passed through it to their seats on the second best stand, and the
_carabinieri_ were clearing the course. The thousands of people in the
central space, who had been chewing melon seeds, fanning themselves,
and talking vociferously as they waited, grew quieter, and all began
to look one way towards the narrow street from whence the procession
should appear.
Olive sat wedged between Signora Aurelia and an old country priest
whose shabby soutane was stained with the mud his housekeeper should
have brushed off after the last rains, a fortnight before. He had a
kind, worn face that smiled when Olive helped him put his cotton
umbrella in a safe place between them.
"I shall not need it yet," he said. "But there is a storm coming. Do
you not feel the heaviness of the air, and the heat, _Dio mio_!"
The deep bell of the Mangia tower tolled, and then the signal was
given, _un colpo di mortaletto_, and the pageant began.
Slowly they came, the grave, armoured knights riding with their visors
up that all might see how well the tanner, Giovanni, and Enrico Lupi
of the wine-shop, looked in chain mail; gay, velvet-clad pages
carrying the silk-embroidered standards of their _contrade_ with all
the fine airs of the lads who stand about the bier of Saint Catherine
in Ghirlandaio's fresco in the Duomo; lithe, slender _alfieri_ tossing
their flags, twisting them about in the carefully-concerted movements
that look so easy and are so difficult, until the whole great Piazza
was girdled with fluttering light and colour, while it echoed to the
thrilling and disquieting beat of the drums. Each _contrada_ had its
_tamburino_, and each _tamburino_ beat upon his drum incessantly until
his arms tired and the sweat poured down his face.
Olive's head began to ache, but she was excited and happy, enjoying
the spectacle as a child enjoys its first pantomime, not thinking but
feeling, and steeping her senses in the southern glow and gaiety that
was all about her. For the moment her cousin's shame and sorrow, and
her friend's pain seemed old, unhappy, far-off things, and she could
not realise them here.
The _contrada_ of the Oca was the last to go by; it was a favourite
with the people because its colours were those of the Italian flag,
red, white and green, and the Evvivas broke out as it passed. Olive's
page, her cobbler's son, looked gravely up at her as he went by, and
she smiled at him and was glad to see that he still wore the magnolia
bud she had thrown him in his hood of parti-coloured silk.
Presently they were all seated--the knights and pages with their
standard-bearers and esquires--on their own stand in the place of
honour before the great central gates of the Palazzo Pubblico.
"Now the horses will run," explained the signora. "Many people like
this part best, but I do not. Poor beasts! They are half drunk, and
they are often hurt or killed. The _fantini_ lash at each other with
their hide whips. Once I saw the _Montone_ strike the _Lupa_ just as
they passed here; the crimson flashed out across his face, and in his
pain he pulled his horse aside, and it fell heavily against the
palings and threw him so that the horse of the _Bruco_ coming on
behind could not avoid going over him. They said it was terrible to
see that livid weal across his mouth as he lay in his coffin."
"He died then?"
"_Ma! Sicuro!_"
Olive looked up at the window where the Menotti should have been, and
saw strange faces there. They had not come then. They had not, and
Astorre could not. Astorre was very ill ... the times were out of
joint. Her cousin's shame and sorrow and her friend's pain seemed to
come near again, and to be once more a part of her life, and she saw
"gold tarnished, and the grey above the green." When the horses came
clattering by, urged by their riders, maddened by the roar of the
crowd, she tried to shut her eyes, but she could not. The horse of the
_Dragone_ stumbled at the turn by San Martino and the rider was
thrown, and another fell by the Chigi palace as they came round the
second time. Olive covered her face with her hands. The thin, panting
flanks, marked with half-healed scars and stained with sweat, the poor
broken knees, the strained, suffering eyes ...
"Are you ill, signorina?" the old priest asked kindly.
"No, but the poor horses--I cannot look. Who has won?"
He rose to his feet. "The _Oca_!" he cried excitedly. A great roar of
voices acclaimed the favourite's victory, and when the spent horse
came to a standstill the _fantino_ slipped off its back and was
instantly surrounded by men and boys of his _contrada_, dancing and
shouting with joy, kissing him on both cheeks, pulling him this way
and that, until the _carabinieri_ came up and took him away amongst
them.
"The _Bruco_ hoped to win," the priest said, "and the _Oca's fantino_
might get a knife in his back if he were not taken care of."
Already the crowd was dispersing. The victorious _contrada_ had been
given the painted standard of the Palio, and were bearing it in
triumph to the parish church, where it would remain until the next
_Ferragosto_. The others were going their separate ways, pages and
_alfieri_ in silk doublets and parti-coloured hosen arm-in-arm with
their friends in black broadcloth, standard-bearers smoking
cigarettes, knights unhelmed and wiping heated brows with red cotton
handkerchiefs.
"I will go down the Via Ricasoli with you," Olive said.
"It is I who should take you home."
"Oh, I do not mind the crowd, and I know you are anxious to get back
to Astorre."
"Astorre--yes. Olive, you don't think he looks more delicate, do you?"
The girl felt that she could not have answered truly if her life had
depended on her veracity.
"Oh, no," she said. "He is rather tired, I think. The heat tries him.
He will be better later on."
The poor mother seemed relieved.
"You are right; he is always pale in the summer," she said, trying to
persuade herself that it was so. "You will come to-morrow to tell him
about the Palio?"
"Yes, surely."
There were to be fireworks later on at the Fortezza and illuminations
of the Lizza gardens, so the human tide set that way and left the
outlying parts of the city altogether. The quiet, tree-shadowed
piazzetta before the church of Santa Maria dei Servi was quite
deserted. Children played there in the mornings, and old men and women
lingered there and sat on the wooden benches in the sun, but they were
all away now; the bells had rung for the Ave Maria, the church doors
were closed, and the sacristan had gone to his supper.
A little mist had crept up from the valley; steep red roofs and old
walls that had glowed in the sun's last rays were shadowed as the
light waned, and black clouds came up from the horizon and blotted out
the stars.
"Go home quickly now, Olive. There will be a storm. The poor mad
people will howl to-night in the Manicomio. I hear them sometimes when
I am lying awake. Good-night, my dear."
"Good-night."