“We didn’t; he was already named,” explained Mrs. Roscoe. “We bought him of an old lady in Rome, who had three; she had named them after Italian rivers: Mr. Arno, Mr. Tiber, and Miss Dora Riparia.”
“Miss Dora Riparia—well!” said Miss Spring. Then she turned to subjects more within her comprehension. “It is a pity I am going away, Maso, for I could have taught you arithmetic; I like to teach arithmetic.”
Maso made no answer save an imbecile grin. His mother gesticulated at him behind Miss Spring’s back. Then he muttered, “Thank you, ’m,” hoping fervently that the Munich plan was secure.
“I shall get a tutor for Maso before long,” remarked Mrs. Roscoe, as Miss Spring came back to the fire. “Later, my idea is to have him go to Oxford.”
Miss Spring looked as though she were uttering, mentally, another “well!” The lack of agreement in the various statements of her pretty little countrywoman always puzzled her; she could understand crime better than inconsistency.
“Shall you stay long in Munich?” Violet inquired.
“That depends.” Miss Spring had not seated herself. “Would you mind coming to my room for a few minutes?” she added.
“There’s no fire; I shall freeze to death!” thought Violet. “If you like,” she answered aloud. And together they ascended to the upper story, where, at the top of two unexpected steps, was Miss Spring’s door. This door was adorned with a large solidly fastened brass door-plate, bearing, in old-fashioned script, the name “Archibald Starr.” No one in the house, not even Madame Corti herself, had any idea who Archibald Starr had been in the flesh. At present he was nothing but a door-plate. His apartment within had been divided by partitions, so that his sitting-room was now a rain-water tank. Roberta Spring occupied his vestibule. The vestibule was small and bare; in the daytime it was lighted by two little windows, so high in the wall that they were opened and closed by means of long cords. A trunk, locked and strapped, stood in the centre of the floor; an open travelling-bag, placed on a chair, gaped for the toilet articles, which were ranged on the table together, so that nothing should be forgotten at the early morning start—a cheap hairbrush and stout comb, an unadorned wooden box containing hair-pins and a scissors, a particularly hideous travelling pin-cushion. Violet Roscoe gazed at these articles, fascinated by their ugliness; she herself possessed a long row of vials and brushes, boxes and mirrors, of silver, crystal, and ivory, and believed that she could not live without them.
“I thought I would not go into the subject before Maso,” began Miss Spring, as she closed her door. “Such explanations sometimes unsettle a boy; his may not be a mind to which inquiry is necessary. My visit to Munich has an object. I am going to study music.”
“Music?” repeated Mrs. Roscoe, surprised. “I didn’t know you cared for it.”
“But it remains to be seen whether I care, doesn’t it? One cannot tell until one has tried. This is the case: I am now thirty-seven years of age. I have given a good deal of attention to astronomy and to mathematics; I am an evolutionist, a realist, a member of the Society for Psychical Research; Herbert Spencer’s works always travel with me. These studies have been extremely interesting. And yet I find that I am not fully satisfied, Mrs. Roscoe. And it has been a disappointment. I am determined, therefore, to try some of those intellectual influences which do not appeal solely to reason. They appear to give pleasure to large numbers of mankind, so there must be something in them. What that is I resolved to find out. I began with sculpture. Then painting. But they have given me no pleasure whatever. Music is third on the list. So now I am going to try that.”
Mrs. Roscoe gave a spring, and seated herself on the bed with her feet under her, Turkish fashion; the floor was really too cold. “No use trying music unless you like it,” she said.
“I have never disliked it. My attitude will be that of an impartial investigator,” explained Miss Spring. “I have, of course, no expectation of becoming a performer; but I shall study the theory of harmony, the science of musical composition, its structure—”
“Structure! Stuff! You’ve got to feel it,” said Violet.
“Very well. I am perfectly willing to feel; that is, in fact, what I wish—let them make me feel. If it is an affair of the emotions, let them rouse my emotions,” answered Roberta.
“If you would swallow a marron occasionally, and drink a cup of good coffee with cream; if you would have some ivory brushes and crystal scent-bottles, instead of those hideous objects,” said Violet, glancing towards the table; “if you would get some pretty dresses once in a while—I think satisfaction would be nearer.”
Miss Spring looked up quickly. “You think I have been too ascetic? Is that what you mean?”
“Oh, I never mean anything,” answered Violet, hugging herself to keep down a shiver.
“In spite of your disclaimer, I catch your idea,” replied her hostess. “But if I should carry it out, Mrs. Roscoe, carry it out to its full extent, it would take me, you know, very far—into complex dissipations.”
Her voice took on no animation as she said this; it remained calm, as it always was. She was a tall woman with regular features, a clear white complexion, and striking gray eyes with long dark lashes; her abundant dark hair was drawn straight back from her face, and she carried her head remarkably well. She was what is called “fine-looking,” but from head to foot, though probably she did not know it, her appearance was austere.
Violet had given way to irresistible laughter over the “complex dissipations.” Miss Spring came out of what appeared to be a mental census of the various debaucheries that would be required, and laughed a little herself. She was not without a sense of humor. “To you it seems funny, no doubt,” she said, “for I have never been at all gay. Yet I think I could manage it.”
Violet, still laughing, climbed down from the bed; she was too cold to stay longer.
“I knew I should get a new idea out of you, Mrs. Roscoe. I always do,” said Roberta, frankly. “And this time it is an important one; it is a side-light which I had not thought of myself at all. I shall go to Munich to-morrow. But I will add this: if music is not a success, perhaps I may some time try your plan.”
“Plan? Horrible! I haven’t any,” said Violet, escaping towards the door.
“It is an unconscious one; it is, possibly, instinctive truth,” said Miss Spring, as she shook hands with her departing guest. “And instinctive truth is the most valuable.”
Violet ran back to her own warm quarters. “You don’t mean to say, Maso, that you’ve stopped studying already?” she said, as she entered and seated herself before her fire again, with a sigh of content. “Nice lessons you’ll have for me to-morrow.”
“They’re all O. K.,” responded the boy. He had his paint-box before him, and was painting the Indians in his History.
“Well, go to bed, then.”
“Yes, ’m.”
At half-past ten, happening to turn her head while she cut open the pages of her novel, she saw that he was still there. “Maso, do you hear me? Go to bed.”
“Yes, ’m.” He painted faster, making hideous grimaces with his protruded lips, which unconsciously followed the strokes of his brush up and down. The picture finished at last, he rose. “Mr. Tiber, pim.”
Mr. Tiber left the sofa, where he had been sleeping since the termination of the lessons, and hopped to the floor. Here he indulged in a stretch; first, hind legs; then fore legs; then a hunch of his back and a deep yawn. He was a very small black-and-tan terrier, with a pretty little head and face. Maso’s voice now gave a second summons from his bedroom, which was next to his mother’s, with a door between. “Are you coming, Mr. Tiber? Very well!” Mr. Tiber, hearing this, ran as fast as he could scamper into his master’s chamber. Here he had his own bed, composed of a flat basket containing what Maso called “a really mattress,” and a pillow with a pillow-case, a blanket, and red coverlid, e
ach article bearing an embroidered T in the corner, surmounted by a coronet; for Mr. Tiber was supposed to be a nobleman. The nobleman went to bed, and was tucked in with his head on the pillow. This was Maso’s rule; but very soon the head assumed its normal position, curled round on the little black tail.
At eleven, Mrs. Roscoe finished her novel and threw it down. “Women who write don’t know much about love-affairs,” was her reflection. “And those of us who have love-affairs don’t write!” She rose. “Maso, you here still? I thought you went to bed an hour ago!”
“Well, I did begin. I put my shoes outside.” He extended his shoeless feet in proof. “Then I just came back for a minute.”
His mother looked over his shoulder. “That same old fairy-book! Who would suppose you were twelve years old?”
“Thirteen,” said Maso, coloring.
“So you are. But only two weeks ago. Never mind; you’ll be a tall man yet—a great big thing striding about, whom I shall not care half so much for as I do for my little boy.” She kissed him. “All your father’s family are tall, and you look just like them.”
Maso nestled closer as she stood beside him. “How did father look? I don’t remember him much.”
“Much? You don’t remember him at all; he died when you were six months old—a little teenty baby.”
“I say, mother, how long have we been over here?”
“I came abroad when you were not quite two.”
“Aren’t we ever going back?”
“If you could once see Coesville!” was Mrs. Roscoe’s emphatic reply.
II
“Hist, Maso! Take this in to your lady mother,” said Giulio. “I made it myself, so it’s good.” Giulio, one of the dining-room waiters at Casa Corti, was devoted to the Roscoes. Though he was master of a mysterious French polyglot, he used at present his own tongue, for Maso spoke Italian as readily as he did, and in much the same fashion.
Maso took the cup, and Giulio disappeared. As the boy was carrying the broth carefully towards his mother’s door, Madame Corti passed him. She paused.
“Ah, Master Roscoe, I am relieved to learn that your mother is better. Will you tell her, with my compliments, that I advise her to go at once to the Bagni to make her recovery. She ought to go to-morrow. That is the air required for convalescence.”
Maso repeated this to his mother. “‘That is the air required for convalescence,’ she said.”
“And ‘this is the room required for spring tourists,’ she meant. Did she name a day—the angel?”
“Well, she did say to-morrow,” Maso admitted.
“Old cat! She is dying to turn me out; she is so dreadfully afraid that the word fever will hurt her house. All the servants are sworn to call it rheumatism.”
“See here, mother, Giulio sent you this.”
“I don’t want any of their messes.”
“But he made it himself, so it’s good.” He knelt down beside her sofa, holding up the cup coaxingly.
“Beef-tea,” said Mrs. Roscoe, drawing down her upper lip. But she took a little to please him.
“Just a little more.”
She took more.
“A little teenty more.”
“You scamp! You think it’s great fun to give directions, don’t you?”
Maso, who had put the emptied cup back on the table, gave a leap of glee because she had taken so much.
“Don’t walk on your hands,” said his mother, in alarm. “It makes me too nervous.”
It was the 12th of April, and she had been ill two weeks. An attack of bronchitis had prostrated her suddenly, and the bronchitis had been followed by an intermittent fever, which left her weak.
“I say, mother, let’s go,” said Maso. “It’s so nice at the Bagni—all trees and everything. Miss Anderson ’ll come and pack.”
Miss Anderson was one of Dr. Prior’s nurses. She had taken charge of Mrs. Roscoe during the worst days of her illness.
“If we do go to the Bagni we cannot stay at the hotel,” said Mrs. Roscoe, gloomily. “This year we shall have to find some cheaper place. I have been counting upon money from home that hasn’t come.”
“But it will come,” said Maso, with confidence.
“Have you much acquaintance with Reuben John?”
The tone of voice, bitterly sarcastic, in which his mother had from his earliest remembrance pronounced this name, had made the syllables eminently disagreeable to Maso. He had no very clear idea as to the identity of Reuben John, save that he was some sort of a dreadful relative in America.
“Well, the Bagni’s nice,” he answered, “no matter where we stay. And I know Miss Anderson ’ll come and pack.”
“You mustn’t say a word to her about it. I have got to write a note, as it is, and ask her to wait for her money until winter. Dr. Prior, too.”
“Well, they’ll do it; they’ll do it in a minute, and be glad to,” said Maso, still confident.
“I am sure I don’t know why,” commented his mother, turning her head upon the pillow fretfully.
“Why, mother, they’ll do it because it’s you. They think everything of you; everybody does,” said the boy, adoringly.
Violet Roscoe laughed. It took but little to cheer her. “If you don’t brush your hair more carefully they won’t think much of you,” she answered, setting his collar straight.
There was a knock at the door. “Letters,” said Maso, returning. He brought her a large envelope, adorned with Italian superlatives of honor and closed with a red seal. “Always so civil,” murmured Mrs. Roscoe, examining the decorated address with a pleased smile. Her letters came to a Pisan bank; the bankers re-enclosed them in this elaborate way, and sent them to her by their own gilt-buttoned messenger. There was only one letter to-day. She opened it, read the first page, turned the leaf, and then in her weakness she began to sob. Maso in great distress knelt beside her; he put his arm round her neck, and laid his cheek to hers; he did everything he could think of to comfort her. Mr. Tiber, who had been lying at her feet, walked up her back and gave an affectionate lick to her hair. “Mercy! the dog, too,” she said, drying her eyes. “Of course it was Reuben John,” she explained, shaking up her pillow.
Maso picked up the fallen letter.
“Don’t read it; burn it—horrid thing!” his mother commanded.
He obeyed, striking a match and lighting the edge of the page.
“Not only no money, but in its place a long, hateful, busybodying sermon,” continued Mrs. Roscoe, indignantly.
Maso came back from the hearth, and took up the envelope. “Mrs. Thomas R. Coe,” he read aloud. “Is our name really Coe, mother?”
“You know it is perfectly well.”
“Everybody says Roscoe.”
“I didn’t get it up; all I did was to call myself Mrs. Ross Coe, which is my name, isn’t it? I hate Thomas. Then these English got hold of it and made it Ross-Coe and Roscoe. I grew tired of correcting them long ago.”
“Then in America I should be Thom-as Ross Coe—Thom-as R. Coe,” pursued the boy, still scanning the envelope, and pronouncing the syllables slowly. He was more familiar with Italian names than with American.
“No such luck. Tommy Coe you’d be now. And as you grew older, Tom Coe—like your father before you.”
They went to the Bagni—that is, to the baths of Lucca. The journey, short as it was, tired Mrs. Roscoe greatly. They took up their abode in two small rooms in an Italian house which had an unswept stairway and a constantly open door. These quarters did not depress Violet; she had no strongly marked domestic tastes; she was indifferent as to her lodging, provided her clothes were delicately fresh and pretty. But her inability to go out to dinner took away her courage. She had intended to dine at the hotel where they had stayed in former years; for two or three hours each day she could then be herself. But after one or t
wo attempts she was obliged to give up the plan; she had not the strength to take the daily walk. It ended in food being sent in from a neighboring cook-shop, or trattoria, and served upon her bedroom table. Maso, disturbed by her illness, but by nothing else—for they had often followed a nomadic life for a while when funds were low—scoured the town. He bought cakes and fruit to tempt her appetite; he made coffee. He had no conception that these things were not proper food for a convalescent; his mother had always lived upon coffee and sweets.
On the first day of May, when they had been following this course for two weeks, they had a visitor. Dr. Prior, who had been called to the Bagni for a day, came to have a look at his former patient. He stayed fifteen minutes. When he took leave he asked Maso to show him the way to a certain house. This, however, was but a pretext, for when they reached the street he stopped.
“I dare say ye have friends here?”
“Well,” answered Maso, “mother generally knows a good many of the people in the hotel when we are staying there. But this year we ain’t.”
“Hum! And where are your relatives?”
“I don’t know as we’ve got any. Yes, there’s one,” pursued Maso, remembering Reuben John. “But he’s in America.”
The Scotch physician, who was by no means an amiable man, was bluntly honest. “How old are you?” he inquired.
“I’m going on fourteen.”
“Never should have supposed ye to be more than eleven. As there appears to be no one else, I must speak to you. Your mother must not stay in this house a day longer; she must have a better place—better air and better food.”
Maso’s heart gave a great throb. “Is she—is she very ill?”
“Not yet. But she is in a bad way; she coughs. She ought to leave Italy for a while; stay out of it for at least four months. If she doesn’t care to go far, Aix-les-Bains would do. Speak to her about it. I fancy ye can arrange it—hey? American boys have their own way, I hear.” This was meant as a joke; but as the grim face did not smile, the jocular intention failed to make itself apparent. The speaker nodded, and went down the street. The idea that Mrs. Roscoe might not have money enough to indulge herself with a journey to Aix-les-Bains, or to anywhere else, would never have occurred to him. He had seen her in Pisa off and on for years, one of the prettiest women there, and perhaps the most perfectly equipped as regarded what he called “furbelows”; that, with all her costly finery, she chose to stay in a high-up room at Casa Corti instead of having an apartment of her own, with the proper servants, was only another of those American eccentricities to which, after a long professional life in Italy, he was now well accustomed.
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