“And have you discovered that, Mr. Ashcraft, on your third day in Florence?” demanded Illingsworth, with admiration. “But it’s only another instance of the quick intelligence of your wonderful nation. Now I have lived in the town for twenty-five years, and have never noticed that this Carrara view was an afternoon affair. Yet so it is—so it is!”
Daniel Ashcraft surveyed the Englishman for a moment. “Oh yes—our quick intelligence. It makes us feel as though we were being exhibited. Sixpence a head.”
More visitors appeared; by half-past five there were forty persons in the garden. Mrs. North received them all very graciously without stirring from her belvedere. Dorothy, however, was everywhere, like a sprite; and wherever Dorothy was Owen Charrington soon appeared. As for Wadsworth Brunetti, his method was more direct—he never left her side.
“They are both her shadows,” said Beatrice Sebright, in an undertone, to Rose Hatherbury, as they sat perched side by side on the parapet.
“She is welcome to them,” answered Rose. “A burly creature like Owen; and that Waddy!”
“Waddy?” repeated Beatrice, inquiringly.
“A simpleton,” pronounced Rose, with decision.
Honest Beatrice surveyed her companion with wonder, into which crept something almost like envy; if she, Beatrice, could only think that Owen was burly; and if it were but possible, by trying hard, to regard Wadsworth Brunetti as a simpleton, how much easier life would be! As it was, she was convinced that Owen was not burly at all, but only athletic. And as to Waddy Brunetti, he was simply Raphael’s young St. John in the Tribune of the Uffizi—the St. John at twenty-two, and in the attire of to-day. Wadsworth Brunetti’s American mother had done her best to make an American of her only child; Waddy could speak the language of New York (when he chose); but in all other respects—his ideas, his manner, his intonations, his hair arranged after the fashion of King Humbert’s, his shoes, his collar and gloves—he was as much a Florentine as his father. The Misses Sebright were not mistaken in their estimation of his appearance; he was exceedingly handsome. And the adverb is used advisedly, for his beauty exceeded that degree of good looks which is, on the whole, the best for every-day use; one hardly knew what to do with young Brunetti in any company, for he was always so much handsomer than the other guests, whether women or men.
“Isn’t it enough that he allows himself to be called Waddy?” Rose had demanded in the same contemptuous undertone. “Waddy—wadding. What a name!”
“But Madame Brunetti tells us that Wadsworth is one of the very best of American names?” objected Beatrice, timidly, still clinging to her idol.
“She’s mad; there are no best American names—unless one cares for those attached to the Declaration of Independence. The thing is, the best American men; and do you call Waddy that?”
Beatrice did. But she dared not confess it.
“Dorothy, I have forgotten my shawl,” said Mrs. North, as Dorothy happened to pass the arbor.
“I’ll go for it,” said Charrington.
“Is it in the drawing-room?” inquired Julian Grimston. “A blue and white, with knotted fringe?”
Dorothy, meanwhile, was crossing the grass towards the house; Lefevre followed her; Waddy accompanied her.
“Nobody can get it but Dorothy—thanks; it is in my own room,” said Mrs. North.
Charrington and Julian paused; Lefevre came back. Mrs. North said to Lefevre, “Praise my prudence in sending for a shawl.” Then she added, laughing, “You dare not; prudence is so elderly!”
She could afford to make a joke of age; tall, thin, with abundant drab-colored hair and a smooth complexion, she did not look more than thirty-five, though she was in reality ten years older. She was a widow; her husband, Richard North, had been an officer in the American navy, and Dorothy was her step-daughter.
Dorothy and Waddy had gone on, and were now entering the north hall. This vacant stone-floored apartment, as large as a ball-room, with a vaulted ceiling twenty-four feet high, was the home of an energetic echo; spoken words were repeated with unexpected force, in accents musical but mocking. It was one thing for Waddy to murmur, “Give me but a grain of hope, only a grain,” in pleading tones, and another to have the murmur come back like an opera chorus. Dorothy paused demurely, as if waiting for the conclusion of the sentence. But her picturesque suitor, still hearing his own roaring “grrrrain,” bit his lips and tried to hasten their steps towards the other door.
“Oh, I thought you had something to say!” remarked Dorothy, innocently, when they reached the arcade within. “But you never have, have you.”
And with this she crossed the quadrangle to welcome four new guests who were about to ascend the stairway in answer to Giuseppe’s “The salon! Signora Tracy!” Waddy went up the stairs also. But he could not hope to follow to the remote region of Mrs. North’s chamber, so he accompanied the new guests through the anterooms to the drawing-room at the end of the suite, where Mrs. Tracy, the second hostess, received them all with cordial greetings. Mrs. Tracy’s years were fifty. She hoped that she was fine-looking, that epithet being sometimes applied to tall persons who hold up their heads, even if they are stout; even, too, if their noses are not long enough for classical requirements. She certainly held up her head. And she was always very well dressed; so well that it was too well. After saying a few words to Waddy, she passed him on to Miss Philipps, who stood near her. Felicia Philipps despised the beautiful youth. But she was willing to look at him for a few minutes as one looks at—a statue? Oh no, that would never have been Felicia’s word; at wax-works, that was more like it; Felicia had a sharp tongue. She now chaffed the wax-works a little, pretending to compliment its voice; for Waddy could sing.
“As I sing too, Mr. Brunetti, we’re companions in soul,” she said. “But, unfortunately, when I sing, my soul does not come to my eyes, as yours does.”
“The comfort of Waddy is that you can make mincemeat of him to his face, when you feel savage, and he never knows it,” she had once remarked.
There was, however, another side to this: Waddy did not know, very possibly, but the reason was that he never paid sufficient heed to Miss Felicia Philipps to comprehend what she might be saying, good or bad; to his mind, Felicia was only “that old maid.” Mrs. Tracy, for the moment not called upon to extend her tightly gloved hand to either arriving or departing guests, expanded her fingers furtively, in order to rest them, and glanced about her. Her rooms were full; there was a steady murmur of conversation; the air was filled with the perfume of flowers and the aroma of tea, and there were suggestions also of the petits fours, the bouchées aux confitures, and the delicate Italian sandwiches which Raffaello was carrying about with the air of an affectionate younger brother. Waddy, who cherished a vision of Dorothy coming to get a cup of tea for her mother (Waddy had noticed upon other Saturdays that “my shawl” meant tea), detached himself as soon as he could from Felicia, and made his way towards the tea-table in the opposite corner. Here Nora Sebright was standing behind a resplendent samovar. Mrs. Tracy had purchased this decorative steam-engine in Russia; but she had not dared to use it until Nora, seeing it at the villa one day, had offered to teach her its mysteries. Mrs. Tracy never learned them; but Nora came up every Saturday, and made the tea in her neat, exact way. She was number one of the Misses Sebright. Six sisters followed her. But this need not have meant that Nora was very mature, because hardly more than a year separated the majority of the Sebright girls (one could say the majority of them or the minority, there were so many). As it happened, however, Nora was twenty-nine, although Peggy, the next one, was barely twenty-five; for the six younger sisters were between that age and sixteen. These younger girls were tall, blooming, and handsome. Nora was small, insignificant, and pale; but her eyes were charming, if one took the trouble to look at them, and there was something pretty in her soft, dark hair, put back plainly and primly behind her ears, with a smooth
parting in front; one felt sure that she did not arrange it in that way from a pious contentment with her own appearance, but rather from some shy little ideal of her own, which she would never tell.
“Do you think they have all had tea?” she was saying anxiously as Waddy came up. She addressed a gentleman by her side who had evidently been acting as her assistant.
“I think so,” he answered, looking about the room with almost as much solicitude as her own.
Her face cleared; she laughed. “It’s so kind of you! You have carried cups all the afternoon.”
“I only hope I haven’t broken any,” responded her companion, still with a trace of responsibility in his tone.
“It is terribly dangerous, with so many people pushing against one. How you can do it so cleverly, I can’t think. But indeed, Mr. Mackenzie, I do not believe you could let anything drop,” Nora went on, paying him her highest compliment. “This is the fourth Saturday you have given to these teacups; I am afraid it has been tiresome. Raffaello ought to do it all; but Italian servants—”
“They are not like yours in England; I can understand that. But Raffaello, now—Raffaello has seemed to me rather a good fellow,” said Mackenzie.
At this moment Dorothy, carrying a shawl, appeared at the door; she made her way to the table. “May I have some tea, Miss Sebright, please, for mamma?”
“I will carry it for you,” said Waddy, eagerly.
“Won’t you take some tea yourself, Miss Dorothy, before you go back to the garden?” suggested Mackenzie, in his deferential tones.
“I? Do you think I take tea? And how can you like it, Mr. Mackenzie? You’re not an Englishman.”
Waddy thanked fate that his mother had entered human existence in New York. Charrington, who was now near the table also, only laughed good-naturedly. On the whole he was of the opinion that Dorothy liked him. Her ideas about tea, or about other English customs, were not important; he could alter them.
“I am afraid I must acknowledge that I do like it,” Mackenzie had answered.
“Do you take it in the morning—for breakfast?” inquired Dorothy, with the air of a judge.
Mackenzie confessed that he did.
“Then you are lost. Oh, coffee, lovely coffee of home!” Dorothy went on. “Coffee that fills the house at breakfast-time with its delicious fragrance. Not black, as the Italians make it. Not drowned in boiled milk, as the French drink it. As for the English beverage— But ours, the American—brown, strong, and with real cream! I wish I had a cup of it now—three cups—and six buckwheat cakes with maple syrup!”
The contrast between this evoked repast and the girl herself was so comical that the Americans who heard her broke into a laugh. Dorothy was very slight; there was something ethereal in her appearance, although the color in her cheeks, the brilliancy of her hazel eyes, and the bright hue of her chestnut hair indicated a vivid vitality. As a whole, she was charmingly pretty. The Americans who had laughed were but two—Mackenzie himself and Stephen Lefevre, who had now joined the group. Lefevre wished that his adorable little countrywoman would not say “lovely coffee.” But Lefevre was, no doubt, a purist.
Felicia Philipps now came to the table with outstretched hands. “Poor Nora, I have only just observed how tired you are! You must have one of your fearful headaches?”
“Oh dear, no,” answered Nora, surprised. “I haven’t a headache in the least.”
“Fancy! But you are overtired without knowing it; you must be, or you would not look so pale. I am sure Mr. Mackenzie sees it. Don’t you think, Mr. Mackenzie, that Miss Sebright has been here quite long enough? I’m so anxious to relieve her.”
“It’s very good of you, I’m sure,” replied Mackenzie.
And then Felicia, pulling off her gloves, came round behind the table and took possession of the place with an amiability and a rearrangement of the cups that defied opposition.
“I am afraid this tea will be cold,” Waddy meanwhile had suggested to Dorothy.
“Yes, do take it down to mamma, Mr. Brunetti. And take this shawl too, won’t you?”
“Aren’t you coming?” said Waddy, in a discomfited voice, as, shawl in one hand and teacup in the other, he stood waiting.
“In five minutes; I have taken a fancy for spending just five minutes in that big yellow chair.”
“That is wise; I’m very pleased to hear you say it,” remarked Nora, who, though dispossessed, still lingered near. “We come up here, stay awhile, and then go away; but you are kept on your feet for three or four hours at a time.”
“You don’t go away, do you, Nora?” said Felicia. “You are so kind. I dare say you have been here since noon?”
“The samovar—” began Nora.
“Dear samovar!” commented Felicia, smiling.
And then Nora, at last understanding the sarcasm of the tone, left the table and crossed the room, her cheeks no longer colorless. Alan Mackenzie, who had heard this little dialogue, thought that the two ladies had been very kind to each other.
Mrs. Tracy, on her way back from the anteroom, whither she had gone to escort Julian Grimston’s mother, who was taking leave, now stopped at the tea-table. She drew Felicia aside. “Stay and dine with us, won’t you? We are always tired on Saturday evenings, and it will be delightful to hear you sing. The carriage shall take you home.”
“You’re awfully good,” Felicia answered. “But don’t trouble to send out the carriage. Ask Mr. Mackenzie too. He will be enchanted to stay, and then we can go down together on foot, and nobody need be bothered.”
“You don’t mind?”
“At my age!” answered Felicia, smiling. Felicia’s smile always had a slightly hungry look.
“We shouldn’t think of it. But then we’re Americans,” responded Mrs. Tracy. “Over here no woman seems to be safely old.”
“Is that why so many of you come over?” demanded Felicia, who at heart detested all American women, especially those who, like the tenants of Villa Dorio, had plenty of money at their disposal. Then curbing her tongue, she added, “What you say is true of wives and widows. But I assure you that old maids are shelved over here as soon and as completely as they are with you in Oregon.”
“In Oregon!” repeated Mrs. Tracy. “You English are too extraordinary.” And she went away, laughing.
During this conversation Dorothy was leaning back in the gold-colored easy-chair; Charrington and Stephen Lefevre were standing beside her, and presently Julian Grimston joined the group, rubbing his dry little hands together gleefully, and murmuring to himself something that sounded like “Aha! aha!”
“Is it the pure joy of living, Mr. Grimston?” Dorothy inquired. For this was said to have been Julian’s answer when an acquaintance, upon passing him in the street one day and overhearing him ahaing, had asked what it meant.
At this moment Waddy came from the anteroom. “And mamma’s tea?” Dorothy asked.
“Raffaello was just going down; I gave it to him.”
“Oh, thanks. I’m thinking how little mamma will like that.” And Dorothy played thoughtfully a soundless tune with her right hand upon the arm of the easy-chair.
Waddy pursed up his lips in an inaudible whistle. Then with swift step he left the room.
Five minutes later he was back again. “It’s all right. I caught up with him,” he said, briefly.
“Now mark that,” began Charrington. “This impostor gave those things to Mrs. North, I’ll warrant, with rolling eyes that seemed to say that even to have touched them had been a huge joy.” Waddy did not defend himself. “I wouldn’t be a cherub, as you are, even if I could,” went on Charrington. “You belong to Christmas-cards—your chin on your clasped hands. What is a cherub out of business—a cherub going about clothed, and with an umbrella? It’s ghastly.”
Mrs. Tracy to Miss Jane Wood: “How do you do, Miss Wood?”
To Miss Maria: “How do you do?”
Behind the Misses Wood came Rose Hatherbury and three of the Misses Sebright, who were tired of sitting on the wall. Felicia, very busy, sent tea to them all, Mackenzie carrying the cups. Raffaello presented himself at the table to assist. Felicia did not know much Italian, but she did know her own mind, and she wished for no second assistant; she therefore said to Raffaello, in an undertone, but with decision, “Andate via!” Raffaello, astounded by this unexpected “Clear out!” gazed at her for a moment with wild eyes, and then escaped from the room.
The tea was not good—so the Misses Wood thought as they tried to sip it; Nora Sebright, who was now walking with quick steps through the Via Romana on her way home, would have been distressed to see how bad it was.
“I wonder if there is any one in the garden now?” said Dorothy.
“There are fifty-seven persons,” answered Rose, who had seated herself on a sofa near. “I know, because I counted them.”
“Then I must go down,” said Dorothy, rising.
She nodded to Rose and to the others and left the room, Waddy following as usual. Two minutes later, Charrington, Julian Grimston, and Stephen Lefevre had also disappeared.
Miss Jane Wood (having given up the tea) now began, graciously, “Did you get your ride this morning, Mr. Charrington?”
“Aunt Jane, Mr. Charrington is not here now,” said Rose, in her distinct tones.
“Oh,” said Miss Jane, bewildered, and fumbling quickly for her eye-glasses, which she had removed when she took her teacup. “He was here a moment ago; I saw him.”
“What wonderful elocutionary powers Miss Hatherbury has!” said Felicia, in an aside, to Mackenzie. “I really think she could be heard in the largest hall.”
“Upon my word, now that you mention it, I believe she could,” answered Mackenzie, admiringly.
Rose divined that she was the subject of Felicia’s aside. She said to her aunt, in an interested tone, “How well one sees the Belmonte tower from here!”
Constance Fenimore Woolson Page 55
