Olive in Italy.
by Moray Dalton.
BOOK I.--SIENA
CHAPTER I
"I believe that Olive Agar is going to tell you that she can"t pay her bill," said the landlady"s daughter as she set the breakfast tray down on the kitchen table.
"Good gracious, Gwen, how you do startle one! Why?"
"She began again about the toast, and I told her straight that you always set yourself against any unnecessary cooking. Meat and vegetables must be done, I said, but those who can"t relish bread as it comes from the baker"s, and plain boiled potatoes, can go without, I said. Then she says, of course I must do as my mother tells me, and would I ask you to step up and see her presently."
"Perhaps you were a bit too sharp with her."
The girl sniffed resentfully. "Good riddance if she goes," she called after her mother.
Mrs Simons knocked perfunctorily at the dining-room door.
A young voice bade her come in. "I wanted to tell you that I heard from my cousins in Italy this morning. I am going to stay with them for a little, so I shall be leaving you at the end of the week."
The landlady"s cold stare was disconcerting. There was a distinct note of disapproval in her voice as she answered, "I do not know much about Italy." She seemed to think it not quite a seemly subject, yet she pursued it. "I should have thought it was better for a young lady without parents or friends to find some occupation in her own country."
Olive smiled. "Ah, but I hate boiled potatoes, and I think I shall love Italy and Italian cooking. You remember the Athenians who were always seeking some new thing? They had a good time, Mrs Simons."
"I hope you may not live to wish those words unsaid, miss," the woman answered primly. "You have as good as sold your birthright, as Esau did, in that speech."
"He was much nicer than Jacob."
"Oh, miss, how can you! But, after all, I suppose you are not altogether one of us since you have foreign cousins. What"s bred in the bone comes out in the flesh they say."
"I am quite English, if that is what you mean. My aunt married an Italian."
Mrs Simons"s eyes had wandered from the girl"s face to the heavy chandelier tied up in yellow muslin, and thence, by way of "Bubbles,"
framed in tarnished gilt, to the door. "Ah, well, I shall take your notice," she said finally.
She went down again into the kitchen. "I never know where to have her," she complained. "There"s something queer and foreign about her for all she says. What"s bred in the bone! I said that to her face, and I repeat it to you, Gwendolen."
Mrs Simons might have added that adventures are to the adventurous.
Olive"s father was Jack Agar, of the Agars of Lyme, and he married his cousin. If Mrs Simons had known all that must be implied in this statement she might have held forth at some length on the subject of heredity, and have traced the girl"s dislike of boiled potatoes to her great-great-uncle"s friendship with Lord Byron, and her longing for sunshine to a still more remote ancestress, lady-in-waiting to a princess at the court of Le Roi Soleil.
Adventures to the adventurous! The Agars were always aware of the magnificent possibilities of life and love, and inclined to ignore the unpleasant actualities of existence and the married state; hence some remarkable histories, and, in the end, ruin. Olive was the last of the old name. Jack Agar had died at thirty, leaving his wife and child totally unprovided for but for the little annuity that had sufficed for dress in the far-off salad days, and that now must be made to maintain them. Olive was sent to a cheap boarding-school, where she proved herself a fool at arithmetic; history, very good; conduct, fair; according to her reports. She was not happy there. She hated muddy walks and ink-stained desks and plain dumpling, and all these things seemed to be an essential part of life at Miss Blake"s.
She left at eighteen, and thereafter she and her mother lived together in lodgings at various seaside resorts within their means, practising a strict economy, improving their minds at the free library, doing their own dressmaking, and keeping body and soul together on potted meats, cocoa and patent cereals. Mary Agar rebelled sometimes in secret, regretting the lack of "opportunities," _i.e._, of possible husbands. She would have been glad to see her daughter settled. The Agars never used commonsense in affairs of the heart. Her own marriage had been very foolish from a worldly point of view, and her sister Alice had run away with her music-master.
"In those days girls had a governess at home and finished with masters, and young Signor Menotti came twice a week to our house in Russell Square to teach Alice the guitar and mandoline. We shared singing and French lessons, but she had him to herself. He was very good-looking, dark, and rather haggard, and just shabby enough to make one sorry for him. When Alice said she would marry him mamma was furious, but she was just of age, and she had a little money of her own, an annuity as I have, and she went her own way. They were married at a registry office, I think, and soon afterwards they went to his home in Italy. Mamma never forgave, but Alice and I used to write to each other, and her eldest child was called after me. I don"t know how it turned out. She never said she was unhappy, but she died after eight years, leaving her three little girls to be brought up by their father"s sister."
Olive knew little more than this of her aunt. Further questioning elicited the fact that Signor Menotti"s name was Ernesto.
"The girls are your cousins, Olive dear, and you have no other relations. I should like to see them."
"So should I."
Olive knew all about the annuity, but she had not realised until her mother died quite suddenly, of heart failure after influenza, what it means to have no money at all. She was dazed with grief at first, and Mrs Simons was as kind as could be expected and did not thrust the weekly bill upon her on the morning after the funeral, though it was due on that day. But lodgers are not supposed to give much trouble, and though death is not quite so heinous as infectious disease or ink spilt on the carpet it is still distinctly not a thing to be encouraged by too great a display of sympathy, and Olive was soon made to understand that it behoved her to seek some means of livelihood, some way out into the world.
No proverb is too hackneyed to be comforting at times, and the girl reminded herself that blood is thicker than water as she looked among her mother"s papers for the Menotti address. They were her cousins, birds of a feather. She wrote them a queer, shy, charming letter in strange Italian, laboriously learnt out of a grammar, and then--since some days must elapse before she could get any answer--she conscientiously studied the advertis.e.m.e.nt columns of the papers. She might be a nursery governess if only she could be sure of herself at long division, or--horrid alternative--a useful help. Mrs Simons suggested a shop.
"You have a nice appearance, miss. Perhaps you would do as one of the young ladies in the drapery department, beginning with the tapes and thread and ribbon counter, you know, and working your way up to the showroom."
But Olive altogether declined to be a young lady.
She waited anxiously for her cousins" letter, and it meant so much to her that when it came she was half afraid to open it.
It was grotesquely addressed to the
Genteel Miss Agar Olive, Marsden Street, 159, Brighton, Provincia di Suss.e.x, Inghilterra.
The post-mark was Siena. It was stamped on the flap, which was also decorated with a blue bird carrying a rose in its beak, and was rather strongly scented.
"DEAR COUSIN,--We were so pleased and interested to hear from you, though we greatly regret to have the news of our aunt"s death. Our father"s sister lives with us since we are orphans. She is a widow and has no children of her own. If you can pay us fifteen lire a week we shall be satisfied, and we will try to get you pupils for English. Kindly let us know the date and hour of your arrival.--Believe us, yours devotedly,
"MARIA, GEMMA and CARMELA."
Olive read it carefully twice over, and then sat down at the table and began to scribble on the back of the envelope. She convinced herself that three times fifteen was forty-five, and that so many lire amounted to not quite two pounds. Then there was the fare out to be reckoned. Finally, she decided that she would be able to get out to Italy and to live there for three weeks before she need call herself penniless.
She went to the window and stood for a while looking out. The houses opposite and all down the road were exactly alike, all featureless and grey, roofed with slate, three-storied, with bas.e.m.e.nt kitchens. Nearly every one of them had "Apartments" in gilt letters on the fanlight over the front door. It was raining. The pavements were wet and there was mud on the roadway. The woman who lived in the corner house was spring-cleaning. Olive saw her helping the servant to take down the curtains in the front room. Dust and tea-leaves and last year"s cobwebs. It occurred to her that spring would bring a recurrence of these things only if she became a useful help, as she must if she stayed in England and earned her living as best she could--only these and nothing more. The idea was horrible and she shuddered at it. "I shall go," she said aloud. "I shall go."
CHAPTER II
Olive, advised by a clerk in Cook"s office, had taken a through ticket to Siena, third cla.s.s to Dover, first on the boat, second in France and Italy. She got to Victoria in good time, had her luggage labelled, secured a corner seat, and, having twenty minutes to spare, strolled round the bookstall, eyeing the ill.u.s.trated weeklies and the cheap reprints. The blue and gold of a shilling edition of Keats lay ready to her hand and she picked it up and opened it.
The girl, true lover of all beauty, flushed with pleasure at the dear, familiar word music, the sound of Arcadian pipes heard faintly for a moment above the harsh roar of London. For her the dead poet"s voice rose clearly through the clamour of the living; it was like the silver wailing of a violin in a blaring discord of bra.s.s instruments.
She laid down the book reluctantly, and turning, met the eager eyes of the man who stood beside her. He had just bought an armful of current literature, and his business at the bookstall was evidently done, yet he lingered for an appreciable instant. He, too, was a lover of beauty, and in his heart he was saying, "Oh, English rose!"
He did not look English himself. He wore his black hair rather longer than is usual in this country, and there was a curiously vivid look, a suggestion of fire about him, which is conspicuously lacking in the average Briton, whose ambition it is to look as cool as possible. His face was thin and his eyes were deep set, like those of Julius Caesar--in fact, the girl was strongly reminded of the emperor"s bust in the British Museum. He looked about thirty-five, but might have been older.
All this Olive saw in the brief instant during which they stood there together and aware of each other. When he turned away she bought some magazines, without any great regard for their interest or suitability, and went to take her place in the third-cla.s.s compartment she had selected.
He would travel first, of course. She watched his leisurely progress along the platform, and noted that he was taller than any of the other men there, and better-looking. His thin, clean-shaven face compelled attention; she saw some women looking at him, and was pleased to observe that he did not even glance at them. Then people came hurrying up to the door of her compartment to say good-bye to some of her fellow-travellers, and she lost sight of him.
The train started and pa.s.sed through the arid wilderness of backyards that lies between each one of the London termini and the clean green country.