Olive in Italy Part 28

He was lighting a cigarette. "If I did?" The little momentary flame of the match was reflected in his blue eyes.

"I should go away and not come back again."

"Well, I do not," he said heartily. "I care for you as St Francis did for his pet sparrow. So now put your hat on and I will go down and get a _vettura_ with a good horse."

He was a creature of moods, and so young in many ways that he appealed to the girl as Astorre had done, by the queer, pathetic little flaws in his manhood. Some days he worked incessantly from early morning until the light failed at his picture, but there were times when he seemed unable even to look at it. He made several studies in charcoal for "Rosamund."

"It is an inspiration," he said excitedly more than once. "The rose of the world that can only be reached by love--or hate--holding the clue."

He had promised an American who had bought a picture of his the year before that he would do some work for him in Venice in the spring.

"Very rash of me," he said fractiously. "The 'Jeune Fille' would have been quite enough for me to show, and it is dreadful to have to leave it unfinished now." And when Gontrand tried to persuade him to let him have Olive during his absence he was, as the girl phrased it, quite cross. "I have seen enough of that. Last year in the Salon St Elizabeth of Hungary, and Clytemnestra, and Malesherbe's _vivandiere_ were one and the same woman. Besides, oreads are nearly related to Bacchantes, Gontrand, and I am not going to allow my little sewing-girl to be mixed up with people of that sort."

He made Olive promise not to sit for any of the other men at the Villa Medici.

"I shall work at Varini's in the evenings," she said. "And one of the men there wants me to come to his studio in the Via Margutta three mornings a week. He is a Baron von something."

The Frenchman's face lightened. "Oh, that German! I know him. I saw a landscape of his once. It looked as if several tubes of paint had got together and burst. What else will you do?"

"Rome, if you will lend me your Baedeker," she answered. "I shall begin with A and work my way through Beatrice Cenci and the Borgo Nuovo to the Corsini Gallery and the Corso. Some of the letters may be rather dull. I am so glad Apollo comes now."

He laughed. "M for Michelin. You will be sure to admire me when my turn comes."

Olive was living alone now in a tall old house in Ripetta. The two kind women who had been her friends had left Rome and gone to stay with their brother at Como. It was evidently the best thing they could do, and the girl had a.s.sured them that she was quite well able to look after herself, but they had been only half convinced by her reasoning.

She was English and she had done it before. "That is nothing," Ser Giulia said. "You may catch a ball once, and the second time it may slip through your fingers. And sometimes Life is like the importunate widow and goes on asking until one gives what one should not." She helped her to find a room, and eked out the furniture from her own little store. "Another saucepan, and a kettle, and a blanket. And if lessons fail you must come to us, _figliuola mia_. My brother's house is large."

The girl had answered her with a kiss, but though she loved them she was not altogether sorry to see them go. She could never tell them how she had earned the lire that paid the baker's bill. The truth would hurt them, and she would not give them a moment's pain if she could avoid it, but she was not good at lying. Even the very little white ones stuck in her throat, and she was relieved to be no longer under the necessity of uttering them.

The room she had taken was on the sixth floor, and from the one narrow window she could look across the yellow swirl of Tiber towards Monte Mario. She had set up her household G.o.ds. The plaster bust of Dante, and her books, on the rickety wooden table by her bedside, and, such as it was, this place was home.

Camille went by a night train, and Olive began to "see Rome" on the following morning. She took the tram to the Piazza Venezia and walked from thence to the church of Santa Maria Ara Coeli.

The flight of steps to the west door is very long, and she climbed slowly, stopping once or twice to take breath and look back at the crowded roofs and many church domes of Rome, and at the green heights of the Janiculan hill beyond, with the bronze figure of Garibaldi on his horse, dominant, and very clear against the sky.

The cripple at the door lifted the heavy leather curtain for her and she put a soldo into his outstretched hand as she went in. The church seemed very still, very quiet, after the clamour of the streets. The acrid scent of incense was as the breath of spent prayer. Little yellow flames flickered in the shrine lamps before each altar, but it was early yet and for the moment no ma.s.s was being said. An old, white-haired monk was sweeping the worn pavement. He was swathed in a blue linen ap.r.o.n, and his rusty brown frock was tucked up about his ankles. A lean black cat followed him, mewing, and now and then he stopped his work to stroke it. There was a great stack of chairs by the door, and a few were scattered about the aisles and occupied by stray wors.h.i.+ppers, women with handkerchiefs tied over their heads in deference to St Paul's expressed wishes, two or three old men, and some peasants with their market baskets. A be-ribboned nurse carrying a baby had just come in to see the Sacro Bambino, and Olive followed them into the sacristy and saw the child laid down before the bedizened, red-cheeked wooden doll in the gla.s.s case. As they pa.s.sed out again the monk who was in attendance gave Olive a coloured card with a prayer printed on the back. She heard him asking what was the matter with the little one. The woman lifted the lace veil from the tiny face and showed him the sightless eyes. He crossed himself.

"_Poveretto! Dio vi benedica!_"

As Olive left the sacristy a tall man came across the aisle towards her. It was Prince Tor di Rocca.

"This is a great pleasure," he said. "But not to you, I am afraid. You are not glad to see me."

"I am surprised. I--do you often come into churches?"

He laughed. "I sometimes follow women in. I saw you coming up the steps just now. You are right in supposing that I am not devout. I want to speak to you. Shall we go out?"

She looked for a way of escape but saw none.

"If--very well," she said rather helplessly.

The hunchback woman at the south door watched them expectantly as they came towards her, and she brightened as she saw the man's hand go to his pocket. He threw her a piece of silver as they pa.s.sed out. He was in a good humour, his fine lips smiling, a glinting zest in his insolent eyes. He thought he understood women, and he had in fact made a one-sided study of the s.e.x. He had seen their ways of loving, he had listened to the beating of their hearts; but of their endurance, their long patience, their daily life he knew nothing. He was like a man who often wears a bunch of violets in his coat until they fade, and yet has never seen, or cared to see them, growing spa.r.s.ely, small and sweet, half hidden in leaves on a mossy bank by the stream.

Women amused him. He was seldom much moved by them, and he pursued them without haste or flurry, treading delicately like Agag of old. He had little intrigues everywhere, in Florence, in Naples, in Rome.

Young married women, girls walking demurely with their mothers. He liked to know that it was he who brought the colour to their cheeks and that their eyes sought him among the crowd of men standing outside Aragno's in the Corso or on the steps of the club in the Via Tornabuoni. Very often the affair would be one of the eyes only, but sometimes it went farther. Filippo's procedure varied. Sometimes he put advertis.e.m.e.nts in the personal column of the Popolo Romano, and sometimes he wrote notes. It was always very interesting while it lasted. Occasionally affairs overlapped, as when an appeal to F. to meet Norina once more in the Borghese appeared in print above F.'s request that the signorina in the pink hat would write to him at the Poste Restante.

Olive had nearly yielded to him in Florence, and then she had run away, she had sought safety in flight. Evidently then his battle had been nearly won. But she had rea.s.sembled her forces, and he saw that it would be all to fight over again, and that the issue was doubtful.

As they came into the little square piazza of the Capitol she turned to him. "What have you to say? I--I am in a hurry."

"I am sorry for that, but if you are going anywhere I can walk with you, or we can take a _vettura_ and drive together."

She looked past him at the green s.h.i.+ning figure of Marcus Aurelius on his horse riding between her and the sun, and said nothing.

"I shall enjoy being with you even if you are inclined to be silent.

You are so good to look at."

His brazen stare gave point to his words. Her face was no longer childish in its charm. It had lost the first roundness of youth, but had gained in expression. A soul seemed to be s.h.i.+ning through the veil of flesh--white and rose-red flesh, divinely gilt with freckles--and fluttering in the troubled depths of her blue eyes. The nun-like simplicity of her grey dress pleased him: it did not detract from her; it left the eyes free to return to her face, to dwell upon her lips.

"Something has happened," he said. "There is another man. Are you married?"

"No."

"I only came to Rome yesterday. Strange that we should meet so soon.

It seems that there is a Destiny that shapes our ends after all."

"You do not believe in free will?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I do not think about such things."

"Well," she said impatiently. "Is that all you have to say? I suppose the Marchesa and Mamie are here too."

He hesitated and seemed to lose some of his a.s.surance. "No, we quarrelled. The girl is insupportable. She is engaged now to a lord of sorts, an Englishman, and they are still in Cairo."

"So you have lost her too."

"It was your fault that Edna gave me up. You owe me something for that. And you behaved badly to me again--afterwards."

"I did not."

He laughed enjoyingly. "I trusted you and you took advantage of a truce to run away."

She moved away from him, but he followed her and kept at her side.

"I never asked you to trust me. I asked you to come the next day for an answer. You came and you had it."

"I came and I had it," he repeated. "Did the old woman give you my message?"

"That we should meet again?"

"That was not all. I said you would come to me one day sooner or later."