Cheerful-By Request Part 29

IX

THE GUIDING MISS GOWD

It has long been the canny custom of writers on travel bent to defray the expense of their journeyings by das.h.i.+ng off tales filled with foreign flavour. d.i.c.kens did it, and Dante. It has been tried all the way from Ta.s.so to Twain; from Raskin to Roosevelt. A pleasing custom it is and thrifty withal, and one that has saved many a one but poorly prepared for the European robber in uniform the moist and unpleasant task of swimming home.

Your writer spends seven days, say, in Paris. Result? The Latin Quarter story. _Oh, mes enfants!_ That Parisian student-life story! There is the beautiful young American girl--beautiful, but as earnest and good as she is beautiful, and as talented as she is earnest and good. And wedded, be it understood, to her art--preferably painting or singing. From New York! Her name must be something prim, yet winsome. Lois will do--Lois, _la belle Americaine_. Then the hero--American too. Madly in love with Lois. Tall he is and always clean-limbed--not handsome, but with one of those strong, rugged faces. His name, too, must be strong and plain, yet snappy. David is always good. The villain is French, fascinating, and wears a tiny black moustache to hide his mouth, which is cruel.

The rest is simple. A little French restaurant--Henri's. Know you not Henri's? _Tiens!_ But Henri's is not for the tourist. A dim little shop and shabby, modestly tucked away in the shadows of the Rue Brie. But the food! Ah, the--whadd'you-call'ems--in the savoury sauce, that is Henri's secret! The tender, broiled _poularde_, done to a turn! The bottle of red wine! _Mais oui_; there one can dine under the watchful glare of Rosa, the plump, black-eyed wife of the _concierge_. With a snowy ap.r.o.n about her buxom waist, and a pot of red geraniums somewhere, and a sleek, lazy cat contentedly purring in the sunny window!

Then Lois starving in a garret. Temptation! _Sacre bleu! Zut!_ Also _nom d'un nom!_ Enter David. _Bon!_ Oh, David, take me away! Take me back to dear old Schenectady. Love is more than all else, especially when no one will buy your pictures.

The Italian story recipe is even simpler. A pearl necklace; a low, clear whistle. Was it the call of a bird or a signal? His-s-s-st! Again! A black cape; the flash of steel in the moonlight; the sound of a splash in the water; a sickening gurgle; a stifled cry! Silence! His-st!

_Vendetta!_

There is the story made in Germany, filled with students and steins and scars; with beer and blonde, blue-eyed _Madchen_ garbed--the _Madchen_, that is--in black velvet bodice, white chemisette, scarlet skirt with two rows of black ribbon at the bottom, and one yellow braid over the shoulder. Especially is this easily accomplished if actually written in the _Vaterland_, German typewriting machines being equipped with _umlauts_.

And yet not one of these formulas would seem to fit the story of Mary Gowd. Mary Gowd, with her frumpy English hat and her dreadful English fringe, and her brick-red English cheeks, which not even the enervating Italian sun, the years of bad Italian food or the damp and dim little Roman room had been able to sallow. Mary Gowd, with her shabby blue suit and her mangy bit of fur, and the glint of humour in her pale blue eyes.

Many, many times that same glint of humour had saved English Mary Gowd from seeking peace in the muddy old Tiber.

Her card read imposingly thus: Mary M. Gowd, Cicerone. Certificated and Licensed Lecturer on Art and Archaeology. Via del Babbuino, Roma.

In plain language Mary Gowd was a guide. Now, Rome is swarming with guides; but they are men guides. They besiege you in front of Cook's.

They perch at the top of the Capitoline Hill, ready to pounce on you when you arrive panting from your climb up the shallow steps. They lie in wait in the doorway of St. Peter's. Bland, suave, smiling, quiet, but insistent, they dog you from the Vatican to the Catacombs.

Hundreds there are of these little men--undersized, even in this land of small men--dapper, agile, low-voiced, crafty. In his inner coat pocket each carries his credentials, greasy, thumb-worn doc.u.ments, but precious. He glances at your shoes--this insinuating one--or at your hat, or at any of those myriad signs by which he marks you for his own.

Then up he steps and speaks to you in the language of your country, be you French, German, English, Spanish or American.

And each one of this clan--each slim, feline little man in blue serge, white-toothed, gimlet-eyed, smooth-tongued, brisk--hated Mary Gowd. They hated her with the hate of an Italian for an outlander--with the hate of an Italian for a woman who works with her brain--with the hate of an Italian who sees another taking the bread out of his mouth. All this, coupled with the fact that your Italian is a natural-born hater, may indicate that the life of Mary Gowd had not the lyric lilt that life is commonly reputed to have in sunny Italy.

Oh, there is no formula for Mary Gowd's story. In the first place, the tale of how Mary Gowd came to be the one woman guide in Rome runs like melodrama. And Mary herself, from her white cotton gloves, darned at the fingers, to her figure, which mysteriously remained the same in spite of fifteen years of scant Italian fare, does not fit gracefully into the role of heroine.

Perhaps that story, sc.r.a.ped to bedrock, shorn of all floral features, may gain in force what it loses in artistry.

She was twenty-two when she came to Rome--twenty-two and art-mad. She had been pretty, with that pink-cheesecloth prettiness of the provincial English girl, who degenerates into blowsiness at thirty. Since seventeen she had saved and scrimped and contrived for this modest Roman holiday.

She had given painting lessons--even painted on loathsome china--that the little h.o.a.rd might grow. And when at last there was enough she had come to this Rome against the protests of the fussy English father and the spinster English sister.

The man she met quite casually one morning in the Sistine Chapel--perhaps he b.u.mped her elbow as they stood staring up at the glorious ceiling. A thousand pardons! Ah, an artist too? In five minutes they were chattering like mad--she in bad French and exquisite English; he in bad English and exquisite French. He knew Rome--its pictures, its glories, its history--as only an Italian can. And he taught her art, and he taught her Italian, and he taught her love.

And so they were married, or ostensibly married, though Mary did not know the truth until three months later when he left her quite as casually as he had met her, taking with him the little h.o.a.rd, and Mary's English trinkets, and Mary's English roses, and Mary's broken pride.

So! There was no going back to the fussy father or the spinster sister.

She came very near resting her head on Father Tiber's breast in those days. She would sit in the great galleries for hours, staring at the wonder-works. Then, one day, again in the Sistine Chapel, a fussy little American woman had approached her, her eyes snapping. Mary was sketching, or trying to.

"Do you speak English?"

"I am English," said Mary.

The feathers in the hat of the fussy little woman quivered.

"Then tell me, is this ceiling by Raphael?"

"Ceiling!" gasped Mary Gowd. "Raphael!"

Then, very gently, she gave the master's name.

"Of course!" snapped the excited little American. "I'm one of a party of eight. We're all school-teachers And this guide"--she waved a hand in the direction of a rapt little group standing in the agonising position the ceiling demands--"just informed us that the ceiling is by Raphael.

And we're paying him ten lire!"

"Won't you sit here?" Mary Gowd made a place for her. "I'll tell you."

And she did tell her, finding a certain relief from her pain in unfolding to this commonplace little woman the glory of the masterpiece among masterpieces.

"Why--why," gasped her listener, who had long since beckoned the other seven with frantic finger, "how beautifully you explain it! How much you know! Oh, why can't they talk as you do?" she wailed, her eyes full of contempt for the despised guide.

"I am happy to have helped you," said Mary Gowd.

"Helped! Why, there are hundreds of Americans who would give anything to have some one like you to be with them in Rome."

Mary Gowd's whole body stiffened. She stared fixedly at the grateful little American school-teacher.

"Some one like me--"

The little teacher blushed very red.

"I beg your pardon. I wasn't thinking. Of course you don't need to do any such work, but I just couldn't help saying--"

"But I do need work," interrupted Mary Gowd. She stood up, her cheeks pink again for the moment, her eyes bright. "I thank you. Oh, I thank you!"

"You thank me!" faltered the American.

But Mary Gowd had folded her sketchbook and was off, through the vestibule, down the splendid corridor, past the giant Swiss guard, to the noisy, sunny Piazza di San Pietro.

That had been fifteen years ago. She had taken her guide's examinations and pa.s.sed them. She knew her Rome from the crypt of St. Peter's to the top of the Janiculum Hill; from the Campagna to Tivoli. She read and studied and learned. She delved into the past and brought up strange and interesting truths. She could tell you weird stories of those white marble men who lay so peacefully beneath St. Peter's dome, their ringed hands crossed on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She learned to juggle dates with an ease that brought gasps from her American clients, with their history that went back little more than one hundred years.

She learned to designate as new anything that failed to have its origin stamped B.C.; and the Magnificent Augustus, he who boasted of finding Rome brick and leaving it marble, was a mere _nouveau riche_ with his miserable A.D. 14.

She was as much at home in the Thermae of Caracalla as you in your white-and-blue-tiled bath. She could juggle the history of emperors with one hand and the scandals of half a dozen kings with the other. No ruin was too unimportant for her attention--no picture too faded for her research. She had the centuries at her tongue's end. Michelangelo and Canova were her brothers in art, and Rome was to her as your back-garden patch is to you.

Mary Gowd hated this Rome as only an English woman can who has spent fifteen years in that nest of intrigue. She fought the whole race of Roman guides day after day. She no longer turned sick and faint when they hissed after her vile Italian epithets that her American or English clients quite failed to understand. Quite unconcernedly she would jam down the lever of the taximeter the wily Italian cabby had pulled only halfway so that the meter might register double. And when that foul-mouthed one crowned his heap of abuse by screaming "_Camorrista!

Camor-r-rista!_" at her, she would merely shrug her shoulders and say "_Andate presto!_" to show him she was above quarrelling with a cabman.

She ate eggs and bread, and drank the red wine, never having conquered her disgust for Italian meat since first she saw the filthy carca.s.ses, fly-infested, dust-covered, loathsome, being carted through the swarming streets.

It was six o'clock of an evening early in March when Mary Gowd went home to the murky little room in the Via Babbuino. She was too tired to notice the sunset. She was too tired to smile at the red-eyed baby of the cobbler's wife, who lived in the rear. She was too tired to ask Tina for the letters that seldom came. It had been a particularly trying day, spent with a party of twenty Germans, who had said "_Herrlich!_" when she showed them the marvels of the Vatican and "_Kolossal!_" at the grandeur of the Colosseum and, for the rest, had kept their noses buried in their Baedekers.