Olive in Italy Part 24

"Do you realise that when I brought her here it was from starvation in a garret? Where is she going? What will she do? Oh, G.o.d! The poor little slender body! Do you remember she said it was happiness just to be warm and have enough to eat?"

"That's all right," Hilaire said hastily. "She is going to a good woman, a friend she made in Siena. The letter you brought was from her, and she wrote to say she had been ill and wished Olive could come and be with her for a while."

"I see! And she was glad to get away."

"My dear man, did you really think she would be so easily won? She loves you, and you not only made love to her yesterday afternoon; you played to her--I heard you--and I knew she would have to say 'Yes' to everything. Now she says 'No,' but you must not think she does not care." Hilaire got up, came across to where his brother sat, and laid a caressing hand on his shoulder. "Dear Jean, will it comfort you to hear me swear she means every word of that letter? It's not all over.

You will come together in the end. Her poor blue eyes were drowned in tears--"

"Oh, don't," Jean said brokenly. The hard line of his lips relaxed. He hid his face in his hands.

Hilaire went out of the room.

BOOK III.--ROME

CHAPTER I

Olive was alone in the compartment of the train that bore her away from Florence and from Jean. She had a book; it lay open on her lap, and she had tried to read, but the lines all ran together and the effort to concentrate her thoughts made her head ache. She was very unhappy. It seemed to her that now indeed life was emptied of all sweets and the taste of it was as dust and ashes in her mouth. She was leaving youth and joy behind; or rather, she had killed them and left a man to bury them. At Orvieto she nearly broke down. It would be so easy to get out and cross over to the other platform and there await the next train back to Florence. She had her hand upon the handle of the door when a boy with little flasks of wine in a basket came up and asked her to buy, and as she answered him she heard the cry of "_Partenza!_" It was too late; the moment had pa.s.sed, and after a while she knew that she was glad she had not yielded. She was doing the right thing. What was the old French motto? "_Fais ce que doit, advienne que pourra._" The brave words comforted her a little. She was very tired, and presently she slept.

She was awakened by the discordant yells of the Roman _facchini_ on the station platform. One of them carried her box to the office of the Dogana, but a large party of Americans had come by the same train and the officials were too busily engaged in turning over the contents of their innumerable Saratogas to do more than scrabble in chalk on the side of her shabby leather trunk and shake their heads at the proffered key, and soon she was in a _vettura_ clattering down the wide new Via n.a.z.ionale.

Signora de Sanctis lived with her sister in one of the old streets in the lower part of the city near the Pantheon--the Via Arco della Ciambella. The houses there are built on the foundations of the Baths of Agrippa, and a brick arch, part of the great Tepidarium, remains to give the street its name. The poor fragment has been Christianised; a wayside altar sanctifies it, and a little painted shrine to the Madonna adorns the base. The buildings on that side are small and mean and overshadowed by the great yellow palace of the Spinola opposite.

Olive's friends lived over a wine shop, but the entrance was some way down the street.

"Fortunately, my dear," as they remarked, "though really the place is very quiet. People go outside the gates to get drunk."

Both the women seemed glad to see her. Her room was ready and a meal had been prepared and the cloth laid at one end of the work-table. The younger sister was a dressmaker too, and the floor was strewn with sc.r.a.ps of lining and silk. A white dress lay on the sofa, carefully folded and covered with a sheet of tissue paper.

"You look tired, Olive. Were you not happy in Florence?"

The girl admitted that the Lorenzoni had not been very kind to her.

She had left them and had been living on her savings. It had been hard to find other employment. "I want to work," she said. "You will let me help you, and I hope to get lessons."

She asked to be allowed to wash the plates and dishes and put them away in the tiny kitchen. She was in a mood to bear anything better than the idleness that left room for her own sad thoughts, and she wished that they would let her do some sewing. "I am not good at needlework, but I can hem and put on b.u.t.tons," she pleaded.

Signora Giulia smiled at her. She was small, and she had a pale, dragged look and many lines about her weak eyes. "No, thank you, my dear. I have a girl apprentice who comes during the day, and I do the cutting out and designing and the embroidery myself. You must not tire yourself in the kitchen either. We have an old woman in to do _mezzo servizio_."

It was nine o'clock, and the narrow streets were echoing now to the hoa.r.s.e cries of the newsvendors: "_Tribuna!_" "_Tribuna!_"

"I will go and unpack then, and to-morrow I shall find some registry offices and try to get English lessons."

"Yes, go, _nina_, and sleep well. You look tired. You must get stronger while you are with us."

For a long time she could not sleep. In the summer she had played with the thought of love, and then she had been able to close her eyes and feel Jean Avenel close beside her, leaning towards her, saying that she must not be afraid, that he would not hurt her. It had been a sort of game, a childish game of make-believe that seemed to hurt no one, not even herself. But now she was hurt indeed; the remembrance of his kisses ached upon her lips.

When Tor di Rocca had asked her to go away with him she had felt that it might be worth while, that it would be pleasant to be cared for and loved, to eat and drink and die on the morrow, but the man himself had been nothing to her. A means to an end.

She had been wholly a creature of blind instincts, the will to live, to creep out of the dark into the suns.h.i.+ne that is inherent in the animal, fighting against that other impulse, trying to root up that white fragile flower, watered throughout the centuries with blood and tears and rare and precious ointment, that thorn in some women's hearts, their pale ideal of inviolate purity.

The spirit had warred against the flesh, and the spirit had won then and now. It had won, but not finally. She was dismayed to find that temptation was a recurrent thing. Every morning when she woke it returned to her. It would be so easy to write "Dearest, come to me."

It would be so easy to make him happy. She thought little of herself now and much of Jean. Would he stay on with his brother or go away again? Had she hurt him very much? Would he forget her? Or hate her?

During the day she trudged the streets of Rome and grew to know them well. Here, as in Florence, no one wanted to pay for learning, no one wanted an English girl for anything apparently. If she had been Swiss, and so able to speak three languages incorrectly, she might have found a place as nursery-governess; as it was, the people in the registry offices grew tired of her and she was afraid to go to them too often.

There was little for her to do in the house. The old woman who came in did the cleaning, and they lived on bread and _ricotta_ cheese and a cabbage soup that was easily prepared, but sometimes she was able to help with the sewing, and now and then she was allowed to take the finished work home.

"It is not fit! They will take you for an apprentice, a _sartina_."

Olive laughed rather mirthlessly at that. "I am not proud," she said.

"I sat up until two last night to finish the Contessa's dress. She is always in a hurry. If only she would pay what she owes," sighed the dressmaker.

Olive promised to bring the money back with her, and she waited a long while in the stuffy pa.s.sage of the Contessa's flat. There were imitation Abyssinian trophies on the walls, lances and daggers and s.h.i.+elds of lathe and cardboard and painted paper. The husband was an artillery captain, and his sword stood with the umbrellas in the rack, the only real thing in that pretentious armoury.

The Contessa came out to her presently. She was a large woman, and as she was angry she seemed to swell and redden and gobble as turkeys do.

"Are you the _giovinetta_? You will take this dress away. It is not fit to put on." She held the bodice in her hand, and as she spoke she shook it in Olive's face. "The st.i.tches are all awry; they are enormous; and half the embroidery is blue and the other half green. I shall make her pay for the material. The dress is ruined, and it is the last she shall make for me. She must pay me, and you must tell her so."

Olive collected her scattered wits. "If the Signora Contessa would allow me to look," she said.

The st.i.tches were very large, and her heart sank as she examined them.

The poor women had toiled so over this work, stooping over it, straining their tired eyes. "I think we can alter it to your satisfaction, but I must ask you to be indulgent, signora. I will bring it back the day after to-morrow, if that will suit you." She folded the bodice carefully and wrapped it in the piece of paper she had brought it in, fastening the four corners with pins.

"The skirt goes well?"

"It will do," the Contessa admitted as she turned away. "Anacleto!"

A slender, dark-eyed youth emerged from the shadows at the far end of the pa.s.sage, bringing a sound and smell of frying with him. His bare brown arms were floury and he wiped them on his striped cotton ap.r.o.n as he came forward to open the door. He wore a white camellia thrust behind one ear.

"It would be convenient--Signora Manara would be glad if you could pay part of her account," faltered Olive.

The Contessa stopped short. "I could, but I will not," she said emphatically. "She does her work too badly."

The young servant grinned at the girl as she pa.s.sed out. She was half-way down the stairs when he came out on to the landing and leaned over the banisters.

"Never! Never!" he called down to her. "They never pay anyone. I am leaving to-morrow."

The white camellia dropped at her feet. She smiled involuntarily as she stooped to gather up the token. "Men are rather dears."

She met Ser Giulia coming down the stairs of their house. The little woman looked quickly at the bundle she carried as she asked why it had been brought back.

"She wants it altered! _Dio mio!_ And I worked so hard at it. How much of the money has she given you?"