Olive in Italy Part 29

They had paused at the top of the steps that lead down from the Capitol into the streets and are guarded by the gigantic figures of Castor and Pollux, great ma.s.ses of discoloured marble set on pedestals on either side. It was twelve o'clock, and a black stream of hungry, desk-weary men poured out of the Capitoline offices. Many turned to look at the English girl as they hurried by, and one pa.s.sing close to her muttered "bella" in her ear. She drew back as though she had been stung. Filippo laughed again.

"I only ask to be let alone," she said. "Can't you understand that you remind me of things I want to forget. I am ashamed, oh, can't you understand!"

She left him and went to stand on the outskirts of the crowd that had collected in front of the cage in which the wolves are kept. Evidently she hoped that he would go on, but he meant to disappoint her, and when she went down the steps he was close beside her.

"Why are you so unkind to me?" he said, and as they crossed the road he held her arm.

She wrenched herself away, went up to the _carabiniere_, who stood at the corner, and spoke to him. The man smiled tolerantly as he glanced from her to Filippo. "Signorina, I cannot help you."

She pa.s.sed on down the street, knowing that she was being followed, crossed the Corso Vittorio Emanuele and took a tram in the Piazza della Minerva. Tor di Rocca got in too and sat down opposite to her.

The conductor turned to him first, and when she proffered her four soldi she found that he had paid for both. Her hand shook as she put the money back in her purse, and her colour rose. Filippo, quite at his ease, leisurely, openly observant of her, whistled "Lucia" softly to himself. Roses, roses all the way, and all for him, he thought amusedly. And yet she bore the ordeal well, betraying no restlessness, keeping her eyes unswervingly fixed on the two lions of the advertis.e.m.e.nt of Chinina Migone pasted on the gla.s.s over his head. At the Ripetta bridge she got out. He followed, saw her go into a house farther down the street, and paused on the threshold to take the number before he went up the stairs after her. She heard him coming.

He turned the handle of the door, but she had locked it and it held fast. He knocked once and called to her. Evidently he was not sure of her being within. There was another room on the same landing, and after a while he tried that.

"Are you in there? _Carissima_, you are wasting time. To-day or to-morrow, sooner or later. Why not to-day, and soon?"

A silence ensued. The girl had taken off her hat and thrown it down upon the table. She stood very still in the middle of the room listening, waiting for him to go away again. Her breath came quickly, and little pearls of sweat broke out upon her forehead. His persistence frightened her.

He waited for an answer, and receiving none, added, "Well, I will come again," and so went away.

She stayed in until it was time to go to Varini's. It was not far, but she was flushed and panting with the haste that she had made as she put on the faded blue silk dress that had been laid out ready for her on the one broken chair in the dressing-room. Rosina came in to her presently from the professor's studio. She wore a man's tweed coat and a striped blanket wrapped about her, and she was smoking a cigarette.

"So you have come back to work here. Your signorino at the Villa Medici is away?"

"Only for a few days. He will not be gone long. The picture is not finished. How is Pasquina?"

Rosina had come over to her and was fastening the hooks of her bodice.

"She is very well. How pretty you are." She rearranged the laces at the girl's breast and caught up a torn piece of the silk with a pin.

"That is better. Have you been running? You seem hot."

"Oh, Rosina, I have been frightened. A man followed me. I shall be afraid to go home to-night."

The yellow-haired Trasteverina looked at her shrewdly. "He knows where you live? Have you only seen him once?"

"He--he came and tried my door. I am afraid of him."

Rosina nodded. "_Si capisce!_ I will take care of you. I have met so many _mascalzoni_ in twenty years that I have grown used to them. I will come home with you, and if any man so much as looks at us I will scratch his eyes out."

Through the thin part.i.tion wall they heard the professor calling for his model. "I must go," she said hurriedly, but as she pa.s.sed out Olive caught at a fold of the enveloping blanket.

"Come here, I want you." She flung her arms about the other girl's neck and kissed her. "You are good! You are good!"

She went into the cla.s.s room and climbed the throne as the men came clattering in to take their places. The professor posed her.

"So you have come back to us. Do not let them spoil you at the Villa Medici--your head a little higher--so."

The first drawing in of the figure is not a thing to be taken lightly, and the silence was seldom broken at Varini's on Monday evenings. The two boys, however, found it hard to repress the natural loquacity of their extreme youth.

"_Al lavoro_, Mario! What are you whispering about? Cesare, _zitto_!"

Bembi stared at them. "Their chins are disappearing," he said. "See their collars. Every day an inch higher. _Dio mio!_ Is that the way to please women? I wear a flannel s.h.i.+rt and my neck is as bare as a plucked chicken, and yet I--" he stopped short.

Mario laughed. "Women are strange," he admitted.

"Mad!" cried Cesare, and then as Bembi still smirked ineffably he appealed to Olive. "Do you admire fowls wrapped in flannel or _in arrosto_?"

When she came out she found Rosina waiting for her in the courtyard, a grey shadow with smooth fair hair s.h.i.+ning in the moonlight. "The professor let me go at eight so I dressed and came out here," she explained. "The dressing-room is full of dust and spider's webs. I told the porter the other day that he ought to sweep it, but he only laughed at me and said Domeniddio made spiders long before he took a rib out of Adam's side to whip a naughty world."

"Who is the man?" she asked presently as they walked along together.

"Do I know him?"

"I do not think so. He is not an artist."

Rosina laid a hand upon her arm. "Is that he?" she said.

They had pa.s.sed through one of the narrow streets that lead from the Corso towards the river and were come into the Ripetta.

A tall man was walking slowly along on the other side of the road. He did not seem to have noticed the two girls, and yet as he stopped to light a cigarette he was looking towards them. A tram came clanging up, the overhead wires emitting strange noises peculiar to themselves, the gong ringing sharply. Olive glanced up at the red painted triangle fixed to the lamp-post at the corner. "It will stop here. Quick! while it is between us. Perhaps he has not seen--"

They ran to her door and up the stairs together. "It has only just gone on," cried Rosina. "Have you got your key?"

She stayed on the landing while Olive went into the room and lit her candle. There was no sound in the house at all, no step upon the stair. As she peered down over the banisters into the darkness below she listened intently. The rustling of her skirt sounded loud in the stillness, but there was nothing else.

"He did not see us," she said. "I shall go now. Lock your door.

_Felice notte, piccina._"

CHAPTER V

Camille, loitering on the terrace of the old garden of the Villa Medici, was quick to hear the creaking of the iron gate upon its hinges. His pale face brightened as he threw away his cigarette and he went down the path between the ilex trees to meet his model.

"You have come. Oh, I seem to have been years away."

They went up the hill together. It was early yet, and the city was veiled in fine mist through which the river gleamed here and there with a sharpness of steel. The dome of St Peter's was still dark against the greenish pallor of the morning sky.

"I am glad to be in Rome again. Venice is beautiful, but it does not inspire me. It has no a.s.sociations for me. What do I care for the Doges, or for t.i.tian's fat, golden-haired women with their sore eyes--Caterina Cornaro and the rest. Rome is a crystal in which I seem to see faces of dear women, women who lived and loved and saw the sun set behind that rampart of low hills--Virginia, the Greek slave Acte, Agnes, Cecilia, who sang as she lay dying in her house over there in the Trasteverine quarter. Ah, I shall go away and have the nostalgia of Rome to the end of my life." He paused to light another cigarette.

"Come and look at the picture. I have not dared to see it again myself since I came back last night."

The door of his _atelier_ was open; he clattered up the steep wooden stairs and she followed him. The canvas was set up on an easel facing the great north light. Camille went up to it and then backed away.

"Well?"

He was smiling. "It is good," he said. "I shall work on it to-day and to-morrow. Get ready now while I prepare my palette."

He looked at her critically as she took her place. The change in her was indefinable, but he was aware of it. She seemed to be listening.

"Do you feel a draught from the door?" he asked presently.