In a week from that day Minna Hastings left her lodgings and removed to
Casa Dietrich. She had stored her superfluous furniture in her studio
and the sitting-room belonging to it, and had taken possession of two
of the best rooms at Casa Dietrich, on the express understanding that
the arrangement was a temporary one, to be terminated by a week’s
notice on either side. She was persuaded that she would find it very
uncomfortable at the establishment in Piazza Bocca della Verità, and
that she should not stay there a day longer than was necessary for her
to find another private apartment which should suit her thoroughly. She
told her cousin Hans so, and he only laughed and hoped she might be
‘agreeably disappointed.’
As a matter of fact, at the end of that week, when she had been at
considerable trouble in settling herself into her rooms, had made
them look homelike and comfortable, and had begun to fall into the
routine of the house, she felt very unwilling to begin the onerous
work of searching for an apartment. Minna was naturally of a somewhat
indolent temperament. When roused or interested she was capable both
of vigorous thought and vigorous action, but she was not very easy to
be roused. She found Casa Dietrich amusing--at first, mildly so; then
more strongly fascinating and she could always, if amusement began to
pass subtly into ennui, leave the general company and retire to the
privacy of her own room, and as she was also much at her studio, she
had begun already to think that it might not be a bad plan to remain
all the winter where she was. So she appeared pretty regularly at
the principal meal--dinner--breakfasting in her own room, and often
lunching in her studio; and from her place at table in the evening she
surveyed the scene with a placid, good-humoured, impersonal kind of
amusement, which showed in her face more perhaps than she was aware,
and produced upon one or two persons an effect of which she was utterly
unconscious.
Signora Dietrich, with her daughter, continued to be away, visiting
relations of her late husband at Milan. She was seldom mentioned, but
there was a young Italian man who sometimes asked if good news had been
received of la signorina Fulvia.
When Minna had studied the entire company of the guests, and
then turned to the sole representative of the house itself, if
representative he were, who was not even a relation, she decided that
he was quite the most interesting person under that roof, the person
whose acquaintance was assuredly best worth having--and this even after
the wretched contretemps (whether his fault or hers she never could
decide) which had taken place on her arrival at the house.
She had come, soon after lunch one day, with a great deal of
luggage: two or three large trunks, and the usual accompaniment of
travelling-bags, hold-alls, umbrellas, sunshades, and cloaks. She was
received on the threshold by Signor Oriole, who opened the door wide,
as wide as it would go, and, smiling upon her, bade her welcome. He was
attired, as she perceived, in the same rusty black as on the day she
had first seen him; there was ever about him the same appearance of a
gentleman, and the bow he made her was a courtly one. All this Minna
saw vaguely, but her thoughts were taken up with her luggage, which was
being borne upstairs by two stout _facchini_. She had not the faintest
idea that Signor Giuseppe attached any importance to her coming, and
she replied to his greeting with a comprehensive, vague kind of bow,
and an absent expression, while she said quickly:
‘Oh, will you tell them into which room to put the luggage? It must all
go into the bedroom for the present, and I will decide afterwards what
to do with it.’
So engrossed was she with this important question, that she did not
clearly see--though she had a general impression to that effect--the
sudden violent change which came over Signor Giuseppe’s countenance.
The smile--the genial smile of welcome--faded from it; it flushed
angrily. His figure became stiff and rigid. Without bestowing another
look on Minna, he cried out in a sharp harsh tone:
‘Ettore!’
Ettore quickly appeared, running and attentive, in answer to this
summons. Signor Giuseppe waved his hand with an imperial gesture
towards the group near the door--the lady, the luggage, the
_facchini_--and in a commanding tone said:
‘Send the people here to take the orders of the signora about her
luggage. At once, do you hear?--at once!’ His voice trembled with
excitement.
‘Si, signore,’ replied the imperturbable one, with a glance from
his liquid eyes towards the arrival. ‘At once,’ he added, after a
thoughtful pause of some duration.
Before he could persuade himself to go and summon ‘the people,’ so
magnificently spoken of, and who consisted of a porter, a kitchen
boy, and a housemaid, Signor Giuseppe, flashing one fiery, withering
look towards Minna, and with a little bend of the head, as stiff and
scornful as his first had been gracious and benignant, had turned on
his heel and was gone. She saw his figure disappearing, head erect,
shoulders squared, rusty coat-tails flying behind him. But she was too
much concerned about the disposition of her luggage to pay much heed
to it all. At last everything was safely placed, and she, once in her
rooms, did not emerge from them again till Ettore had thumped upon her
door with the brief announcement ‘Pronto,’ much past the time at which
she had been told dinner was served.
When she went into the dining-room, she found her place to be, as
before, between Hans Riemann and the German lady, and opposite Signor
Giuseppe. She made a general bow to the company as she took her place,
and Signor Giuseppe was included in that bow. The merest movement of
his head returned her greeting, and as he ostentatiously went out of
his way not to speak to her during the entire repast, she decided
that he was a very rude person, and a foolish one to boot, since such
treatment was not exactly calculated to attract visitors to the house
which was under his management. It did not occur to her for a moment
to trouble herself, or to feel concerned about it. She conversed with
her neighbours on either hand, and saw incidentally that the same
pantomime went on between Signor Giuseppe and Ettore which she had
observed when she had lunched there a week before. Had she not been an
old Roman, and accustomed to Italian ways, she might have found the
whole repast a somewhat extraordinary affair, and she noticed that some
inexperienced English and American visitors had hard work not to break
into loud exclamations over the food which was offered to them, and the
profuse use of the toothpick, and the _degagés_ attitudes practised by
the Italian part of the company.
There was first of all a soup, of a somewhat thin and watery
consistency. This was followed by some roast meat, surrounded by
chopped-up vegetables of different kinds--_finocchi_, little hard
potatoes and small onions--savoury, perhaps, but scarcely tempting to
those accustomed to other things. It disappeared quickly, nevertheless.
The third course was tiny birds dexterously chopped in halves, very
hard, very spare in proportions, bearing, in fact, a suspicious
likeness to starving sparrows, caught unawares and sacrificed to make
a feast for Lucullus. Salad accompanied this dish. After it had been
eaten a long pause followed, during which the members of the company
entertained each other with conversation--conversation of a polyglot
description. The Americans, with nasal, unabashed and unabashable
distinctness, gave their views on the subject of Italy in general
and the Eternal City in particular. Rome did not please them--that
particular set of them--and they said so with characteristic courage.
They had been there nearly three weeks, and they guessed they were
almost through now, and should be ready to go in a few days. The
antiquities were interesting, they admitted, but the streets would be
a disgrace to the latest Western city in America; and the beggars were
a scourge. The ancient Roman didn’t know everything, and, for their
part, they thought Canova’s statue of the Princess Pauline Borghese
and the Carlo Dolcis in one or two of the picture-galleries were just
lovely--sweet, they were; and they were going to take home copies of
several of them.
‘Canova’s things,’ said one portly matron, ‘were beautiful--so soft;
they couldn’t be softer if they were cut out of butter or blanc-mange.’
‘Butter!’ murmured Hans Riemann, in an ecstasy; ‘dear woman, I thank
thee for that epithet! “The Butterman.” It supplies a long-felt want in
my vocabulary--a descriptive epithet for Canova. Do you call this feast
of reason nothing, Minna?’
‘I call it delightful,’ said Minna, whose eyes were brimming over
with laughter, and her cup of pleasure was now filled to the brim by
the spectacle of an American citizen refusing butter to his cheese,
remarking with closed eyes and an ineffable expression to his neighbour:
‘Butter, sir; no. I never touch butter outside Philadelphia.’
While this discourse was going on in a loud voice at the other end
of the table, an English party at the other extremity of it were
discreetly muttering their commonplaces beneath their breath. When any
of their remarks did rise to the surface, they were usually to the
effect that they thought the Pope ought to be made to show himself more
to the people; they believed they would have to go away without seeing
him at all. The Queen they had seen that afternoon driving on the
Pincio--such shabby liveries, such a poor turn-out altogether! Why, an
English squire would be ashamed--and so forth. Some Germans, in another
quarter, were exhausting themselves in delighted recollections of what
they had seen. As usual, they were far more thoroughly instructed than
either the English or the Americans of the same class in life, and had
gone about their sight-seeing in a methodical, systematic manner worthy
of all praise. They knew what they had seen. They knew what they wanted
to see. They were full of statistics and gutturals and enthusiasm; they
discussed ‘der Nero,’ ‘der August,’ and ‘der Hadrian’ with solid good
sense and deep interest, the while they valiantly struggled with the
tough roast-beef, and devoured bones and all the hapless sparrow-like
creatures which have been already described. The Italians, who were
exclusively men, some of them youths in business houses or professional
offices, and one or two older ones, appeared to be in their way decent
fellows enough. They spoke with the rapidity of lightning; their
dark eyes gleamed and their white teeth flashed. They were full of
_cortesia_, and at the same time brimming over with amusement and a
keen sense of the ridiculous. Nothing that was absurd in the rest of
the company escaped the piercing eyes of these young men.
Minna, who understood all about it, and was well acquainted with the
Italian quickness at grasping all that went on around them, admired
more than ever their presence of mind and unvarying politeness to
those who caused them so much amusement. With patient, polite gravity
they listened to the well-meant efforts of some English and Germans to
converse with them in their own language; nothing but an irrepressible
gleam in their eyes betrayed that they were secretly convulsed with
laughter at some of the wild mistakes and extraordinary turns of
expression of their interlocutors.
‘I dare say,’ thought Minna to herself, ‘that some of those
stupid-looking English and Germans, and those self-conceited
Americans, are thinking to themselves that “these foreigners” are a
set of chattering, grinning apes; I have so often heard them express
that discriminating opinion. Little do they think that to the apes they
appear more like clumsy clowns in a pantomime than anything else.’
There was only one Italian member of the company who seemed more
irritated than amused at the proceedings, and that member was,
of course, Signor Giuseppe, who, in a very bad temper, listened
nevertheless with avidity to what was going on around him, and, though
understanding very little English, or perhaps because he understood
very little English, still grasped enough of what was going on to
whet his impatience and anger, and who kept muttering uncomplimentary
remarks in idiomatic Roman to a young Italian who sat at his right
hand. One of these remarks came clearly to Minna’s ears.
‘Listen to that English girl,’ hissed Signor Giuseppe, in a fury, into
his neighbour’s ear, ‘with her _grécié_. Why do English people never
succeed in pronouncing _grazie_ as it ought to be spoken? _Grécié_,
_grécié_, between their clipped-in lips, as if they were afraid that
something bad would happen if they let the sound flow out. What a
language is theirs!--and they have voices, too, from whose sound cats
would fly in terror.’
Minna heard it all, and, resolved to bring him to book, fixed her eyes
calmly upon his face, and waited till he should look at her, as she was
convinced he would sooner or later. His neighbour laughed a little, in
some embarrassment, with a side-glance at Minna, whose blonde beauty
he admired extremely. He fully agreed with all that Signor Giuseppe
had said, and often had hard work himself not to laugh at that English
_grécié_, but he would have preferred to reserve the expression of
his amusement till later, when he could have made a good story of it
at the Circolo, and sent half a dozen fellows into fits of laughter by
his clever mimicry of the foreigners’ pronunciation of that important
little word.
Just then Signor Giuseppe lifted his head, and his eyes fell full upon
Minna’s face. He still looked angry and perturbed, but embarrassed,
repentant--not a jot.
She smiled, and, to let him know she had heard his complimentary
speech, said:
‘_Grazie_, signore.’
He reddened, looked angrily at her, and said ill-temperedly, and with a
shrug expressive of whole volumes of comments on the situation:
‘Già! You, signora, speak Italian like a Roman. What can I say more?
That very fact must make you aware of the shortcomings of most of your
compatriots in that respect.’
‘At least, they try to learn to speak your beautiful language with
their cat-like voices, poor things!’ said Minna quietly, but with an
ambiguous smile, all of which evidently irritated this very irritable
gentleman almost to madness. What might have happened next, in the
wordy war, who shall say?
At that moment Ettore, consciously or unconsciously, came to the
rescue, by appearing with the dish for which they had been waiting
so long--the most important dish of the feast, at any rate to a true
Italian--the sweet, the _dolce_.
‘May it sweeten some of our tempers!’ thought Minna to herself, with
a furtive smile, as she saw it borne round, and all eyes anxiously
fixed upon it. Unfortunately for her, it was a dish of which she had
never been able to overcome her dislike--a kind of heavy pastry in
the shape of a great tart, filled with an equally heavy, rich, creamy
mixture, yellow in colour, and containing chopped-up almonds, sweet to
sickliness.
It went its round, and met with various receptions as it slowly
proceeded. By the Italians it was greeted with acclamation, with
gleaming eyes, and only half-suppressed murmurs of delighted
appreciation; by the English with some distrust. They looked at it
suspiciously; they paused, they hesitated; finally, they cut off a
small piece and put it on their plates with an expression which said
plainly:
‘I don’t know what you are, but I’m hungry, and I’m going to try you,
at any rate.’
It had a warmer welcome from the Americans--themselves ardent lovers
of ‘candies’ and pastries. The Germans took it as a matter of
course--whether they liked it or not, it was part of the repast, which
would have to be paid for; and a repast was needed, and must be fully
discussed, in order that they might have strength for the next day’s
work. They ate it, and said nothing. When it was offered to Minna,
she simply refused it, and thought no more about it. She had seen it
before; she had tried it, and she disliked it. In a few moments a voice
from the other side of the table accosted her:
‘Signora!’
She looked up. The dish was now being handed to Signor Giuseppe.
His right hand held a knife suspended over it; his eyes were fixed
inquiringly upon Minna.
‘Can I not persuade you to change your mind?’ he said with dignified,
old-fashioned courtesy; ‘or do you dislike sweets?’
‘I do not like that sweet, signore,’ she replied, with an unguarded
candour for which a moment afterwards she could have bitten out her
tongue.
‘You do not like this sweet?’ he echoed, plunging the knife into
it, and cutting off an inordinately large slice, as if to show how
right-minded persons prized it. ‘Yet it is a distinctly Roman _plat_.
It is celebrated.’
‘I know,’ said Minna apologetically. ‘I am very sorry. I do not like
it, and never eat it.’
‘Dio mio!’ ejaculated Giuseppe, with another shrug, as he conveyed
the huge cutlet of paste and cream to his own plate with a look of
displeasure.
‘Another piece of English stupidity,’ observed Minna, smiling again.
But the _dolce_ seemed to have the wished-for effect on Signor
Giuseppe’s humour. He smiled benevolently, shook his head, and
responded:
‘Ah yes, there are so many of them! What is one amongst the rest?’
It was, intrinsically considered, an excessively rude remark, but Minna
felt it implied that her want of taste and Englishness were pardoned,
and, strange to say, the conviction was quite soothing to her.
Later in the evening she sat in the room she had made into a
sitting-room talking to Hans Riemann, whom she had invited in to hang
up some little pictures for her.
‘Hans,’ she asked suddenly, ‘what is Signor Giuseppe? Has he a business
outside, or does he devote his whole time to the management of this
extraordinary establishment?’
‘Oh, he has a place in some lawyer’s office I believe--something
very small! He gets about eighty pounds a year from it, all told, I
fancy. The hours are not long, and that gives him leisure to boss this
concern, do you see.’
‘Oh ... well, it seems odd to me! I am sure he is not a stupid man----’
‘Stupid? I should rather think not,’ cried Hans; ‘the very reverse.
There’s hardly a thing you can mention that old Giuseppe can’t tell you
something about: art, architecture, archæology, Church history, and
other history. Politics, philosophy, religion--he has studied them all.
Yes, he’s a first-rate all-round man is Giuseppe. If you ever want to
know anything about the ruins, you know, or the excavations--anything
about any of these old mosaics or wall-paintings, or about mythology,
or about Roman history, from the time of Romulus and Remus, or whatever
the creatures were, downwards, go to Signor Oriole and he’ll tell you.
I once went with him, I and another fellow, to the Palatine Hill,
and I can tell you I never heard anything so interesting in my life.
He made it all live again, beginning with those old walls, don’t you
know--those made of the big blocks of tufa when Rome was on the top
of the Palatine and nowhere else, and he pointed to Villa Mills and
shook his finger at it and said he had seen things beneath the convent
which would have raised ghosts--awful ghosts--before the eyes of any
but a set of cabbage-headed nuns: he swore he had seen the altar of the
Pelasgic Roma Quadrata there. He took us round the whole thing--what
one is allowed to see of it. It lasted for hours. We didn’t get back to
lunch; we never missed it,’ said Hans in an almost awestruck tone, and,
indeed, the fact was one worthy to be recorded in letters of gold. ‘All
through those palaces he took us, and into Livia’s house and all the
rest of it, and we followed him like lambs. I can tell you, if they had
made our Roman history as interesting as that when we were at school I
should have known more than I do now.’
‘And do you think Signor Oriole’s history was made very interesting for
him when he was at school?’ asked Minna with a touch of malice.
‘Now, Minna, that’s too bad of you! Am I not just trying to show that
he’s a genius and not an ordinary man? I believe he knows just as much
about it as any of these celebrated fellows, Lanciani or Roissieof,
or any of them. He’s immensely learned,’ Hans went on with youthful
enthusiasm. ‘He can always tell me everything I want to know.’
‘An infallible gauge to the depths of his learning,’ murmured Minna to
herself.
Hans went on:
‘He is a republican, you know, at heart. He has fought for his country.
He helped to plant the tricolour on Castel Sant’Angelo. He was in it
on that twentieth day of September. Yes, he has fought in the red
shirt. He has given up all he had. He comes of an awfully good Southern
Italian family with a title, duke or prince, but he won’t use it, and
gets very angry if anyone speaks to him about it. Says he is plain
citizen Giuseppe Oriole, and basta cosi! He’s a gentleman is Giuseppe,
if ever there was one.’
‘Then why does he waste his time and his powers and his brains and
irritate himself to madness, as I can see he does, by undertaking
the petty cares of the management of a second-class _pensione_ in
Rome--for that’s what it is, when all is said and done. For a small
salary a dozen men could be found to do it, and to do it better than he
does. Does Signora Dietrich pay him?’ she added suddenly.
Hans laughed, somewhat uncomfortably.
‘Pay him!’ he ejaculated; ‘not she. He does it to save her from having
to pay someone else, because she is poor and extravagant, and he
is--well, he is a very old and intimate friend of hers,’ he concluded
lamely.
There was a pause; then Minna said, in the tone of one to whom a single
word has cleared up a mystery.
‘Oh, I see ... and Signora Dietrich--what is she like?’
‘I decline to attempt any description of Signora Dietrich,’ replied
Hans. ‘I suppose she will be home before long, and then you can judge
for yourself.’
‘I don’t want a description,’ said Minna resolutely. ‘I only want a
word. Tell me--yes or no--do you like her?’
‘No,’ replied Hans.
‘Ah!’ said Minna, slowly moving her head once or twice, and then, in a
different tone, as of one who would say ‘Let this be forgotten,’ she
said, pointing to the wall: ‘That print of the “Gioconda” does not hang
quite straight; one touch to the left will make it right, if you don’t
mind.’
Hans rose to fulfil her behest, and, having put the picture straight,
observed that he had an appointment at Ronzi’s with two other fellows,
and wished her good-night. Perhaps he had quite forgotten, as Minna
assuredly had, that Signora Dietrich was not alone in her absence. Her
daughter Fulvia was with her.