Olive in Italy Part 10

The Piazza del Campo was crowded as the Signora Aurelia and Olive pa.s.sed through it to their seats on the second best stand, and the _carabinieri_ were clearing the course. The thousands of people in the central s.p.a.ce, 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 pa.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sed 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."

CHAPTER XII

Olive was tired, and now that she was alone she knew that she was also a little afraid, so that she lingered on the way and went slowly up the stairs of the house in the Piazza Tolomei. Carmela answered her ring at the bell; her face was swollen and her eyes were red with crying, and the little lamp she carried shook in her hand.

"Oh, Olive," she said, "Orazio says he will not marry her. He has heard such things about her from his friends, and even in the Cafe Greco.... It is a scandal."

She put her lamp down on the floor, and took out her handkerchief to wipe away the tears that were running down her cheeks.

Olive came in and shut the door after her.

"Where is he?"

"They are all in the dining-room. Aunt sent Carolina out for the evening, and it is a good thing, because of course in the kitchen she could hear everything. He sent a message to say he could not go to the Palio, and Gemma's head ached when she came back from church, so we all stayed in. He came half an hour ago--"

"What does Gemma say?"

"Nothing. She looks like a stone."

"I must go through the dining-room to get to my room," Olive said uncertainly. "What shall I do? Pa.s.s through very quickly or wait here in the pa.s.sage?"

"Better go in," advised Carmela. "They may not even notice you. He keeps on talking so loudly, and aunt and Maria are crying."

"Poor things! I am so sorry!"

The two girls clung together for a moment, and Olive's eyes filled with tears as she kissed her cousin's poor trembling lips. Then Carmela stooped to pick up her lamp and put it out, and they went on together down the pa.s.sage.

The lamp was lit on the table that Carolina had laid for supper before she went out, and the Menotti sat in their accustomed places as though they were at a meal. Orazio Lucis was walking to and fro and gesticulating. His boots creaked, and the noise they made grated on the women's nerves as he talked loudly and incessantly, and they listened. Maria kept her face hidden in her hands, but Gemma held herself erect as ever, and she did not move when the two girls came in, though her sombre eyes were full of shame.

"What shall I say to my friends in Lucca?" raved Orazio. "What shall I say to my mother? Even if I still consented to marry you she would not permit it; she would refuse to live in the same house with such a person--and she would be right. _Mamma mia!_ She is always right. She said, 'The girl is beautiful, but she has no money, and I tell you to think twice.' I have been trapped here by all you women. You all knew."

He pointed an accusing finger at Signora Carosi. She sobbed helplessly, bitterly, as she tried to answer him, and Olive, who had waited in the shadow by the door, hoping that he would move on and enable her to pa.s.s into her own room, came forward and stood beside her aunt. She had thought she would feel abashed before this man who had been wronged, but he had made her angry instead, and now she would not have left the room if he had asked her, or have told him the truth if he had begged for it.

"Many girls have been offered me," he went on excitedly, "but I would not hear of them because you were beautiful, and I thought you would make a good wife. There was Annina Giannini; she had five thousand lire, and more to come, and now she is married to a doctor in Lucca. I gave her up for you, and you are dust of the streets."