ROME
Christmas and New Year's passed, and the Sansevero household moved to
Rome. The princess was impatient to have Nina meet people, but from the
first glimpse of the domed City its immortal charm claimed the American
girl, and for a little while she had neither time nor inclination for
anything but sight-seeing. She fairly hungered for history and
tradition, and she soon made the discovery that if Don Giovanni _did_
nothing, he at least _knew_ a great deal.
She marveled at his memory. He seemed to have every name and date in the
history of Rome and Italian art at the tip of his tongue. One afternoon
they were going through the apartments of the Borgias; the princess,
tired out with sight-seeing, was sitting at the edge of the room, and
Giovanni was following Nina and pointing out the story illustrated in
the frescoes.
"I have found at least one thing you could do!" she laughed. "You'd make
a wonderful guide for Cook's."
But he was not at all amused by this sally; in fact, he let her see that
he was annoyed. This same sort of unexpected response had baffled her
several times before. Any American youth would have fallen into the
manner of a guide at once. She remembered that John Derby on one
occasion, at a County fair, had insisted upon climbing on the stand of a
barker and was the success of the show. On the other hand, this Italian
prince appreciated things which John Derby would have brushed aside. He
was a delightful companion, the most delightful she had ever known, but
every now and then he became suddenly and inexplicably offended--and
always over some stupid trifle, like this suggestion of hers about
Cook's.
"I only meant," she ventured appeasingly, "that you hold all of Rome's
history in the palm of your hand. Is there anything that you don't
know?"
His gesture was expressive. He raised his eyebrows and opened both hands
palms upward. "I am Roman--since a thousand years."
Nina changed the subject. "I wish," she said, "that they had wheeling
chairs with head rests. I have a crick in my neck and my eyes are going
crossed from looking so much at ceilings."
Giovanni's ill temper had been for a moment only. He smiled now and
whimsically suggested that they write to the director of the Vatican
asking that litters be provided. Why not? He grew quite enthusiastic
over his description of how charming she would look between tall negro
bearers, with a little black boy trotting beside her, carrying a long
fan--no, in place of the fan he should carry a little stove.
"My idea was not half so picturesque," she laughed in answer. "I think I
had a dentist's chair in mind--a red fuzzy plush one on wheels."
"And with me to push it?" He said it eagerly enough. Here was a
contradiction of his late irritation! She did not dare, as a matter of
fact, to answer; his melodies and his discords were too easily
transposed.
She turned her attention to the fresco before her; it was one with the
portrait of the kneeling Borgia.
"He looks like a burglar!" she exclaimed with a shudder. Then she
hesitated, but Giovanni's mood being too uncertain to take into
consideration she finished her sentence, "Do you know who he looks
like--? The Duke Scorpa."
Again he was angry. "Please, Miss Randolph, do not say anything of that
sort."
"But why shouldn't I?" She colored under his reproof, but held to her
point.
"Because you are of the household of the Sansevero. A little
remark--even so little as a tenth of that, might be imprudent. Rome is
to-day almost what it was. There still is a very frail bridge uniting
the Scorpas and the Sanseveros; the ravine is always there; a torrent
from the glacier may descend at any time."
"Then I shall say it in a whisper! He looks like a burglar, and like a
cut-throat and--like Scorpa!"
Giovanni scowled. "I warn you, Mademoiselle, be prudent!" A note of
tension in his voice brought Nina to a sudden halt.
"There is no one here but Aunt Eleanor--I doubt if even she can hear."
"In Rome it would not be the first time if walls had ears."
"I am sorry," she said so simply, so candidly, that Giovanni was
charmed. He became light and amusing. He elaborated the legends of the
frescoes with the lives of the painters' until she felt as though they
were yet living. Finally they reached the side of the room where the
princess was waiting. There was no impatience in her voice, but she
looked tired, and Nina cried penitently:
"Ah, Aunt Eleanor! Why did you not call me sooner? I get so carried away
by all the things I see, and the tales Don Giovanni tells me, that I
have no sense of time."
They descended the stairs to the inner court of the Vatican, where they
found their carriage, an old-fashioned C-spring landeau, all very
dignified and perfectly appointed, and in striking contrast to the
pony-cart in which the princess was trundled about at Torre Sansevero.
By the time they crossed the Ponte S. Angelo the color had come back a
little into the princess's face. Nina, with no sign of fatigue, sat
brightly alert, while Giovanni opposite, prattled ceaselessly, except
for the interruption necessitated by his constantly taking off his hat
as his sister-in-law bowed to passing acquaintances.
They had not far to go along the Corso Vittorio Emanuele before they
came to the dingy pile of yellow stone that for centuries had borne the
name of Palazzo Sansevero. The landeau turned under one of its three
broad archways, and entered the courtyard. A plain stone stairway, worn
and dingy like the rest of the façade, led into a vestibule of
unpromising darkness. The _portiere_, however, was very gorgeous and
imposing in his knee breeches, white silk stockings, gold-trimmed coat,
and his three-cornered hat with the prince's cockade at the side. He
moved majestically down the steps, carrying a silver-headed mace, like a
drum-major's, and saluted as the "nobilities" entered the palace. They
ascended to a vast stone hall with a grand stairway at its further end,
that quickly effaced the impression of the entrance. From an
antechamber, they passed through five or six rooms hung with tapestries
and paintings, and adorned with sculptures, until they arrived at the
one where the princess really lived. This last was a huge, dignified,
mellow, and splendid apartment, in every way worthy of the palace in
which it stood, and of the great lady who occupied it now, no less than
of all the great ladies who had occupied it in the past. In its present
furnishings there were deep sofas with light and table arrangement, so
that one might lounge and read and at the same time be near the great
open fire. Many bibelots of silver and porcelain made a contrast to the
other rooms, that were more like museum galleries; and everywhere--here
as in the country--were flowers and the army of autographed photographs
marching across tables and banked high against the walls.
As soon as the family had entered, the tea-tray was brought in and
placed near the fire. Following the Roman custom, according to which the
daughter of the house pours the tea, the princess motioned Nina to fill
the office, and she herself sat at her desk and began rapidly writing on
a pad of paper. Giovanni carried tea and muffins to her, while Nina
poured out her own cup and helped herself to a third cake.
"Are these really so good?" she asked half wistfully. "Or are even these
little cakes seemingly delicious only because they are in Rome? I am
sure the cook at home made plenty that were every bit as good!" She said
this last as though to convince herself.
"They are wonderful little cakes--they are very celebrated!" Giovanni
said it with an aggrieved air that made Nina laugh. As though wilfully
misunderstanding her, he turned to his sister-in-law.
"Such curious ideas Miss Randolph has about Rome! One would suppose, to
hear her, that it was a land of witchcraft--even our food is to be
taken with suspicion."
"Not at all," retorted Nina, with a turn of manner that would have done
credit to an Italian, "a land of enchantment, which makes ordinary
cakes--very ordinary little cakes, I tell you!--seem small squares and
rounds of ambrosia. And, furthermore--I can assure you it is much more
comfortable here than in the country."
If Giovanni thought she was going to stay sentimental very long, he did
not know the American temperament. For she now went into a long
dissertation upon the discomfort of Torre Sansevero, where she nearly
froze to death. Candle light she had not minded, though she much
preferred electricity.
"Have you entirely obliterated the gardens from your memory,
Mademoiselle?" Giovanni asked in an undertone, and with a romantic
inflection. But Nina's mood was not, at that moment, attuned to gardens.
"Ah, I love Rome--just Rome itself! There is no other such place in all
the world! I thought I loved Paris. Paris is gay and beautiful. But Rome
is glorious--splendid!"
Giovanni's chagrin at her apparent indifference to the gardens was
changed to enthusiasm at her appreciation of his beloved city, for to
have her love Rome was like having her love the greater portion of
himself--who was but part of Rome.
"The only detriment is," continued Nina, "that at night I dream of
marble statues parading against backgrounds of cobalt blue under groined
arches of gold--like the ceilings in the rooms of the Borgias and--this
one! Why this is exactly like them! There is the same face as the St.
Catherine----" then suddenly she sat up, leaning eagerly
forward--"Auntie Princess, I don't want to have a party at all! I don't
want to meet people! I like to think of Rome as inhabited with those of
long ago." Then with one of her sudden checks upon a tendency to become
over sentimental, she added gaily, "The little cakes of to-day, are good
at all events! Give me another, please!"
Giovanni slid out of the corner of the sofa like smooth steel springs
unfolding; neither hastily, nor with effort. She watched him; fascinated
by his grace and litheness. Suddenly, though, she felt uncomfortably
certain that he knew what was passing in her mind, and this conviction
immediately put her out of humor. For the space of a few minutes she
disliked him. He seemed to know that too, for his next sentence was:
"Are all young girls in America so unreasonably capricious, so
whimsically balanced mentally as--a young girl I once met?"
"How was she?" Nina's curiosity was aroused in spite of her.
"Very inexperienced, and therefore uncertain. Like the person who in
dancing counts one, two, three--one, two, three, for fear of losing
time--or like the inexperienced swimmer who measures constantly the
distance to shore."
"Children, you are chattering nonsense," the princess interfered. "Here,
you lazy ones, help me to write the invitations!"
Nina arose and went to look over her aunt's shoulder. "Oh, but it is for
day after to-morrow!" she exclaimed. "Do you mean to say that any one
will come at such short notice?" That the invitations were merely
visiting cards with "Informal Dance" written in the corner, and a date
not forty-eight hours ahead, astonished her. She asked about the
details. How could they arrange for the decorations, favors, supper? But
the princess smiled complacently. Candles were all the decoration
necessary! the favors would be trifles that could be bought in half an
hour; and as for supper--what could young people want more than lemonade
or tea, sandwiches, and cakes? The only question was where they should
dance.
The princess turned to Giovanni. "I think it is best in the picture
gallery, don't you?"
"The floor is not so smooth as in the Room of the Aenead, but come, let
us go and decide." He led the way, and they followed. The Room of the
Aenead was next that in which they were sitting. The portrait gallery,
filled with treasures from the days of Italy's grandeur, was still
beyond. It was this apartment of all others that most appealed to Nina.
For a moment she forgot why they had come into the gallery, and her
attention remained fixed upon the canvases. With the ever-vigilant
Giovanni at her side, she seemed to be walking in a day that was past,
to be enveloped in a fairy mantle! She put her hand on a group said to
be the work of Michelangelo, running her fingers over the face of one of
the figures with awe in her touch.
"To think," she said very softly, the wonder breaking through the low
tone of her voice, "to think that Michelangelo's own living hand has
been where mine is now--still more, he has been in this very room! Not
alone he, but Raphael, Correggio, and Pinturicchio! And all this is
called home by my own aunt. _Mine!_" A little quiver had come into her
throat. "It is too wonderful! Yet it gives me the strangest sensation--I
can't exactly explain it, but it is as though I were not born at all. Do
you know," she had turned to Giovanni wistfully, "I think I can
understand just a little of the way you feel--it is as though you were
securely planted like a tree. In the beginning, long ago, you were put
into the earth with the first things sown. I am merely a leaf, blown
from what branch I do not even know--belonging nowhere, coming from
nothing. I think I see for the first time what you mean, over here, but
just _being_ and not caring to do more than survive from the
gloriousness of all this." She spread her arms out as though
bewildered.
"Now you see," Giovanni answered her, as though there were a new and
strong bond of sympathy between them, "why decorations are unnecessary.
Can you imagine these walls, which for centuries have looked down upon
every great personage of Rome, being decked up like a Christmas tree
because a number of people whose achievements are in no way illustrious
are coming for an hour or two?"
"I think," said Nina, "that I shall dance like a wraith. It seems almost
a sacrilege to bob around and prattle in such surroundings. How silly
their sainted ghosts might think us!"
"I never thought of the old masters as saints exactly. But come,
Mademoiselle--let us pretend--in each of those chandeliers are burning a
hundred wax candles. It is the night of the ball--we open it so--will
you dance?"
Again there appeared a Giovanni that she had never seen before, his lazy
arrogance vanished, as, whisking a handkerchief out of his pocket to
wave in his hand, he became a sprite--a dancing faun, a reincarnation of
the spirit of Donatello.
Twice he traversed the length of the gallery, and then, with a vigor
added to his grace, he caught Nina and swung her with him into his
whirling dance. It had been perfectly done; even in his _abandon_ there
was no lack of ceremony. There was none of the "come along" spirit of
youth in America. He was in this, just as he was in everything else, a
remnant of a past age; he had merely been transformed into a Bacchant!
He was in no way a mere young man who had grabbed a young girl around
the waist and made her dance.
But as the princess watched them, her feelings were strongly at
variance. Admiration played the greater part. Even a much less biased
mind than hers could not have failed to appreciate the wonderful grace
of the man and the girl, for Nina was as graceful as he. Yet the
princess looked vaguely troubled, too, at the thought that Giovanni was
perhaps overstepping his privilege.
"Giovanni! Nina!" she called, but she might as well have appealed to the
wind that blew through the courtyard below, and instead of their heeding
she felt her own waist encircled as Sansevero, who had entered by the
door behind her, swept her into the dance with him. "But, Sandro!" she
exclaimed, resisting, "it is . . . not seemly! What if . . . the servants
. . . should . . . see us?" But, joining Giovanni in the tune he was
whistling, Sansevero seemed to have caught some of his brother's humor.
If Giovanni had become the spirit of grace, Alessandro had become the
spirit of recklessness, and Eleanor was whirled, breathless, not as one
dances usually, but madly, so that her feet barely touched the floor. To
add to the revelry of the scene, the Great Dane, who was never far from
Giovanni's side, now joined the general whirl and leaped round and round
as though he had but newly come from a bath, his deep bark punctuating
the valse the two men were whistling. The princess felt an apprehensive
dread of a servant's intrusion, and again a breathless "Sandro, stop!"
escaped her lips just as----
The portière was lifted and the footman announced, "_Suo Eccellenza il
Duca di Scorpa!_"
"Ah, I hope I do not intrude upon the family gaiety!" The duke's face
was insinuatingly bland and his manner smooth as an eel.
The dancers stopped instantly. The princess flushed, but otherwise only
one who knew her intimately might have guessed that she was conscious of
having been put in the position of a careless and undignified chaperon.
But she winced inwardly, and felt no reassurance in the knowledge that
the duke's tongue was known to be more skillful in the art of
embroidering than the fingers of the most expert needlewoman. Sansevero
followed his wife's cue, but without feeling her dismay, for he, it must
be remembered, liked Scorpa. He had the naïve manner of a child caught
doing something foolish, but that was all. Giovanni welcomed the duke
suavely, yet, as the princess led Scorpa into the living rooms, Nina had
an exhibition of a real side of Giovanni that she was destined to
remember ever after.
She never in her life had imagined that such fury could be depicted in
the human countenance. His nostrils dilated, and his jaw was squared.
"I'll kill that viper yet!" he muttered between his teeth, and, reaching
out for the first thing to hand, his long smooth fingers locked around
the neck of the Great Dane--so tight that the dog, half strangled and
snarling, lunged at his tormenter. Nina cried out in horror, but
instantly Giovanni's temper vanished as it had come. He relaxed his
fingers with a caress; and the animal fawned on him.
"Forgive me, Mademoiselle." He said it as lightly as though there had
been only some trivial inattention to overlook.
The whole scene had taken place in a moment--so quickly, in fact, that
as Nina and he followed the princess through the adjoining rooms, she
half wondered if her senses had deceived her. What manner of man was
this indolent, graceful descendant of a feudal race? As he approached
the duke, Nina unconsciously held her breath. Half expecting to see them
draw daggers then and there, she glanced fearfully from one to the
other; but Giovanni, smiling his sleepy-eyed smile, talked as though he
thought the duke the most charming man in the world.