Olive in Italy Part 13

The governess was expected to appear at luncheon, but dinner was served to her in her own room, where she must sit in solitary state, dressed in her best and waiting for a summons, until eleven o'clock, when she might a.s.sume that she would not be wanted and go to bed. This evening Olive lingered rather anxiously over her dressing, trying to make the best of herself, since it seemed that she was really to come down to-night into the yellow drawing-room where she spent so many weary hours of a morning listening to Mamie sc.r.a.ping her Strad while the German who was supposed to teach her possessed his soul in patience. She put on her black silk dress. It was a guinea robe bought at a sale in Oxford Street the year before, a reach-me-down garment for women to sneer at and men to describe vaguely as something dark, and she hated the poor thing.

Most women believe that the men who like them in cotton frocks would adore them in cloth of gold, and are convinced that the secret of Cleopatra's charm lay in her extensive wardrobe.

Avenel. It had shocked Olive to hear his name uttered by alien lips, as it hurt her to suppose that he came often to the Palazzo Lorenzoni.

She would not suppose it, and, indeed, nothing that Mamie had said could lead her to think that he was a friend of the family. They had clutched at him greedily, and he had repaid with an impertinence. That was all.

The third footman, whose duty it was to attend upon her, brought two covered dishes on a tray at eight o'clock, and soon after nine he came again to fetch her.

There was a superabundance of gorgeous lackeys in the corridors that had been dusty and deserted five years before, and a gigantic _Suisse_ stood always on guard now outside the palace gates. The Marchesa would have liked to have had outriders in her scarlet livery when she went out driving in the streets of Florence, but her husband warned her that some mad anarchist might take her for the Queen, and so she contented herself with a red racing motor. The millions old Whittaker had made availed to keep his widow and the man who had given her a t.i.tle in almost regal state. They entertained largely, and the Via Tornabuoni was often blocked with the carriages and motors that brought their guests. Olive, sitting alone in her chilly bedroom, mending her stockings or trying to read, heard voices and laughter as the doors opened--harsh Florentine and high English voices, and the shrill sounds of American mirth--night after night. But the Lorenzoni dined _en famille_ sometimes, as even marquises and millionaires may do, and there were but two s.h.i.+rt-fronts and comparatively few diamonds in the great golden s.h.i.+ning room when she entered it.

The Marchesa, handsome, hard-featured, gorgeous in grey and silver, did not choose to notice her daughter's governess; she was deep in talk with her brother-in-law; but men could not help looking at Olive.

Mr Marvel stood up and bowed as she pa.s.sed, and the silent, saturnine Marchese stared. His black eyes were intent upon her as she came to the piano where Mamie was restlessly turning over the music, and no one watching him could fail to see that he was making comparisons that were probably to the disadvantage of his step-daughter.

Fast men are not necessarily fond of the patchouli atmosphere in their own homes, and somehow Mamie seemed to reek of that scent, though in fact she never used it. She was clever and fairly well educated, and she had always been sheltered and cared for, but she was born to the scarlet, and everything she said and did, her way of walking, the use she made already of her black eyes, proclaimed it. To-night, though she wore the red she loved--a wonderful, flaring frock of chiffon frills and flounces--she looked ill, and her dark face was sullen.

"The beastly wind has given me a stiff neck," she complained. "Here, I want to have this."

She chose a c.o.o.n's lullaby out of the pile of songs, and Olive sat down obediently and began the accompaniment. It was a pretty little ditty of the usual moony order, and Mamie sang it well enough. Mr Marvel looked up when it was over to say, "Thank you, my dear. Very nice."

"It is a silly thing," Mamie answered ungraciously. "I'll sing you a _canzonetta_ now."

She turned over the music, scattering marches and sonatas, and throwing some of them on the floor in her impatience. Olive, wondering at her temper, presently divined the cause of it. The folding doors that led into the library were half closed. No lamps, but a flicker of firelight and the hush of lowered voices, Edna's pleasant little pipe and a man's brief, murmured answers, and there were short s.p.a.ces of silence too. The American girl and her prince were there.

The Marchese had raised his eyebrows at the first words of the _canzonetta_, and at the end of the second verse he was smiling broadly.

"Little devil!" he said.

No one heard him. His wife was showing her brother-in-law some of her most treasured bits of china. She was quite calm, as though her knowledge of Italian was fair the Neapolitan dialect was beyond her.

Mr Marvel, of course, knew not a syllable of any language but his own, and the slang of Southern gutters was as Greek to Olive. Their placidity amused the Marchese, and so did the thought of the little scene that he knew was being enacted in the library.

"Shall we join the others now, Edna, _carissima_?"

"If--if you like."

He nearly laughed aloud as he saw the silk curtains drawn. The Prince stood aside to allow Edna to pa.s.s in first, and Olive, glancing up momentarily from the unfamiliar notes, saw the green gleam of an emerald on the strong brown hand as the brocaded folds were lifted up. Her own hands swerved, blundered, and she perpetrated a hopeless discord.

"I beg your pardon," she said confusedly.

Mamie shrugged her shoulders. "Never mind," she answered lightly. "The last verse don't matter anyway. Come to here, Edna. Momma wants to hear your fiddle-playing."

"Yes, play us something, my dear."

The little girl came forward shyly.

As the Prince and the Marchese stood together by the fireplace at the other end of the long room Mamie joined them. "You sang that devil's nocturne inimitably," observed her stepfather, drily. "I am quite sorry to have to ask you not to do it again."

"Not again? Why not?"

She perched herself on the arm of one of the great gilt chairs. The Prince raised his eyes from the thoughtful contemplation of her ankles to stare at her impudent red parted lips.

"Why not! Need I explain, _cara_? It was delicious; I enjoyed it, but, alas!" He heaved an exaggerated sigh and then laughed, and the young man and the girl shared in his merriment.

"I am sorry to make so many mistakes," Olive said apologetically as she laboured away at her part of an easy piece arranged for violin and piano.

"Oh, it is nothing. I have made ever so many myself, and I ought to have turned the page for you."

The gentle voice was rather tremulous.

"That was charming," p.r.o.nounced the Marchesa. "Now that sonata, Edna.

I am so fond of it."

"Very well, auntie."

The Prince had gone into the billiard-room with his host, and Mamie was with them. They were knocking the b.a.l.l.s about and laughing ...

laughing.

CHAPTER II

In the Cascine gardens the lush green gra.s.s of the glades was strewn with leaves; soon the branches would be bare, or veiled only in winter mists, and the Arno, swollen with rain, ran yellow as Tiber. It was not a day for music, but the sun shone, and many idle Florentines drove, or rode, or walked by the Lung'Arno to the Rajah's monument, pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing the bench where Olive sat with Madame de Sariviere's stout and elderly German Fraulein. Mamie was not far away; flamboyant as ever in her frock of crimson serge, her black curls tied with ribbon and streaming in the wind, she was the loud centre of a group of girls who played some running game to an accompaniment of shrill cries and little screams of laughter.

"Do you like young girls?" Olive asked the question impulsively, after a long silence.

"I am fond of my pupils; they are good little things, rather foolish, but amiable. But I understand your feeling, my poor Miss Agar. Your charge is--"

Olive hesitated. "It is a difficult age; and she has the body of twenty and the sense of ten. I am putting it very badly, but--but I was hateful years ago too. I think one always is, perhaps. I remember at school there were self-righteous little girls; they were narrow and intolerant, easily shocked, and rather bad-tempered. The others were absurdly vain, sentimental, sly. All that comes away afterwards if one is going to be nice."

"They are female but not yet womanly. The newly-awakened instincts clamour at first for a hearing; later they learn to wait in silence, to efface themselves, to die, even," answered the Fraulein, gravely.

A victoria pa.s.sed, then some youths on bicycles, shouting to each other and ringing their bells. They were riding all together, but they scattered to let Prince Tor di Rocca go by. He was driving tandem, and his horses were very fresh. Edna was with him, her small wan face rather set in its halo of ashen blonde hair and pale against the rich brown of her sables.

When they came by the second time Mamie called to her cousin. The Prince drew rein, and the groom sprang down and ran to the leader's head.

"My, Edna, how cold you look! It's three days since I saw you, but I guess Don Filippo has been doing the honours. Have you seen all the old galleries and things? Momma said she noticed you and uncle in a box at the Pergola last night."

She stood by the wheel, and as she looked up, not at Edna but at the Prince, he glanced smilingly down at her and then away again.

"We are going back to the hotel now," Edna said. "Will you come and have tea, Mamie? Is that Miss Agar over there? Ask her if you may, and if she will come too."

"I don't need to ask her," the girl answered, but she went back nevertheless and spoke to Olive.

"Can the groom take the cart home, Filippo? We will walk back with them."

"Yes, Bellina is in spirits, but she will not run away from Giovanni,"

he said, trying not to seem surprised that she should curtail their drive.