Chapter 13

October can be cold enough sometimes in the Val d'Arno when the snow falls on the Apennines, and the woods of Vallombrosa are sere, and Florence, the flower city, lies then at the mercy of the winds. Mamie Whittaker, who, in her own phrase, "hated to be blown about anyhow," had not been out all day. She lolled in an armchair before a crackling fire of olive wood in the room that she "lit with herself when alone," though scarcely in the Tennysonian sense. Hers was a vivid personality, and older women who disliked her called her flamboyant, and referred to an evident touch of the tar-brush that would make her socially impossible in America though it passed unnoticed in Italy. Her age was seventeen, and she dressed after Carmen to please herself, and read Gyp with the same intention. She was absorbed now in _Les Amoureux_, and had to be told twice that her cousin had come before she would look up.

"Miss Marvel? Show her in."

She rose and went forward to greet her relative, whom she had not seen for some years, and the two met at the door and kissed each other with enthusiasm.

"Edna! My! Well, you have not grown anyway. What a tiny thing! Come and sit down right here." She rang for tea while her visitor slowly and rather shyly divested herself of her sables and laid them on a side table. Edna Marvel was the elder of the two by three years, but she was so small that she seemed a mere child. Her sallow little face resembled that of a tired monkey, yet it had an elfin charm, and her hands were beautiful as carved toys of ivory made in the East for a king's son to play with. They might hold a man's heart perhaps, but Mamie did not notice them, her own allurements being of more obvious description.

She thought Edna was real homely, and her spirits rose accordingly. "Where are you staying?"

"At the Bristol. Poppa guessed we would take a villa later on if we felt like it."

Mamie rang again. "Bring some more cakes, and tell Miss Agar to come and pour out the tea."

"Who is Miss Agar?"

"My companion, a sort of governess person. She takes me out walks, and sits by when my music-master comes, and so forth. She is new, and she won't do, but I may as well make her useful while she stays."

"Why won't she do?"

"Oh, she just won't. Momma don't like her much, and I'm not singing her praises."

Edna looked curiously at the slender girl in the black dress who came in and took her place at the table.

She said "Good afternoon" in her pleasant little voice.

The governess person seemed rather surprised that she should address her.

"Good afternoon," she replied. "Do you take milk and sugar?"

"Bring them round for us to help ourselves," dictated Mamie.

Olive only smiled as she repeated her question, but Edna was distressed at her cousin's rudeness, and her sensitive face was quite pink as she hurriedly declined sugar. She came to the table to fetch her cup, but Miss Whittaker waited for hers to be brought to her.

"How do you like this room, Edna? I had it fixed up for myself, and everything in it is mine." She looked complacently up at the hangings of primrose silk that hid the fifteenth century frescoes on the walls.

Her cousin hesitated. "I guess it must have cost some."

"Yes. The Marchese does not like it. He is so set on his worm-eaten old tapestries and carved chairs, and he wanted momma to refurnish the palace to match, but not she! Louis Quinze, she said, and Louis Quinze it is, more or less. I tell the Marchese that if he is so fond of the musty Middle Ages he ought to go about in armour himself by rights. But the old sinner is not really a bit romantic."

It occurred to Olive that the right kind of governess would utter a word in season. "It is not usual for young girls to refer to their stepfathers as you do," she said drily.

"Wait until you know mine better," Mamie answered unabashed. "Last night he said your complexion was miraculous. Next thing he'll try if it comes off. Are you coming to dinner to-night, Edna?"

"Yes, auntie asked us. The--the Prince will be here, won't he?"

Mamie looked down her nose. "Oh, yes," she said carelessly. "Your beau will come. People generally do when we ask them. The food is all right, and we have real good music afterwards sometimes. You know Avenel stays in Florence whiles because his brother has a Villa at Settignano. Well, momma guessed she would get him to play here for nothing once. Of course she was willing to pay any money for him really, but she just thought she would try it on. She asked him to dinner with a lot of other people, and made him take her in, though there were two Neapolitan dukes among the guests. The food was first-rate; she had told the cook to do his best, and she really thought the _entrée_ would have made Vitellius sit up. It was perfect. Well, afterwards she asked Avenel to play, and he just smiled and said he could not. Why, she said, he gave a recital the day before for nothing, for a charity, and played the people's souls out of their bodies, made them act crazy, as he always does. Couldn't he play for friendship? No, he said, he couldn't just then because one must be filled with sorrow oneself before one can make others feel, and he inferred that he had no room even for regret. 'I play Chopin on a biscuit,' he said."

"He must be rather a pig," was Edna's comment.

"Not a bit of it. Momma said he really had not eaten much; in fact she had noticed that he left a bit of that lovely _entrée_. Perhaps he is afraid of getting fat. Momma was real mad with him."

Olive's cheeks were flushed and her hands trembled as she arranged the cups on the tray. She was thankful for the shelter afforded by the great silver tea-pot. Mamie's back was turned to her, but Edna seemed desirous of including her in the conversation.

"Have you heard Avenel, Miss Agar?" she asked presently in her gentle, drawling way.

"No. Is he very famous? I have never heard of him as a pianist."

"Oh, his professional name is Meryon, of course. He is billed as that and known all the world over, though he only began to play in public three years ago when his wife left him. She was always a horrid woman, and she made him marry her when he was quite a boy, they say. They say he plays to forget things as other men take to drink. He has been twice to New York, and I know a girl who says he gave her a lock of his hair, but I don't believe her. It is dark brown, almost black, but I guess she cut it off a switch. He's not that kind."

Olive said nothing.

"You need not stay if you don't want to," Mamie said unceremoniously. "Be ready to come down after dinner. I might want you to play my accompaniments."

"I can't think why you say she won't do," cried Edna when she was gone out of the room. "I call her perfectly sweet. Rather sad-looking, but just lovely."

Mamie sniffed. "Glad you admire her," she said.

The governess was expected to appear at luncheon, but dinner was served to her in her own room, where she must sit in solitary state, dressed in her best and waiting for a summons, until eleven o'clock, when she might assume that she would not be wanted and go to bed. This evening Olive lingered rather anxiously over her dressing, trying to make the best of herself, since it seemed that she was really to come down to-night into the yellow drawing-room where she spent so many weary hours of a morning listening to Mamie scraping her Strad while the German who was supposed to teach her possessed his soul in patience. She put on her black silk dress. It was a guinea robe bought at a sale in Oxford Street the year before, a reach-me-down garment for women to sneer at and men to describe vaguely as something dark, and she hated the poor thing.

Most women believe that the men who like them in cotton frocks would adore them in cloth of gold, and are convinced that the secret of Cleopatra's charm lay in her extensive wardrobe.

Avenel. It had shocked Olive to hear his name uttered by alien lips, as it hurt her to suppose that he came often to the Palazzo Lorenzoni. She would not suppose it, and, indeed, nothing that Mamie had said could lead her to think that he was a friend of the family. They had clutched at him greedily, and he had repaid with an impertinence. That was all.

The third footman, whose duty it was to attend upon her, brought two covered dishes on a tray at eight o'clock, and soon after nine he came again to fetch her.

There was a superabundance of gorgeous lackeys in the corridors that had been dusty and deserted five years before, and a gigantic _Suisse_ stood always on guard now outside the palace gates. The Marchesa would have liked to have had outriders in her scarlet livery when she went out driving in the streets of Florence, but her husband warned her that some mad anarchist might take her for the Queen, and so she contented herself with a red racing motor. The millions old Whittaker had made availed to keep his widow and the man who had given her a title in almost regal state. They entertained largely, and the Via Tornabuoni was often blocked with the carriages and motors that brought their guests. Olive, sitting alone in her chilly bedroom, mending her stockings or trying to read, heard voices and laughter as the doors opened--harsh Florentine and high English voices, and the shrill sounds of American mirth--night after night. But the Lorenzoni dined _en famille_ sometimes, as even marquises and millionaires may do, and there were but two shirt-fronts and comparatively few diamonds in the great golden shining room when she entered it.

The Marchesa, handsome, hard-featured, gorgeous in grey and silver, did not choose to notice her daughter's governess; she was deep in talk with her brother-in-law; but men could not help looking at Olive. Mr Marvel stood up and bowed as she passed, and the silent, saturnine Marchese stared. His black eyes were intent upon her as she came to the piano where Mamie was restlessly turning over the music, and no one watching him could fail to see that he was making comparisons that were probably to the disadvantage of his step-daughter.

Fast men are not necessarily fond of the patchouli atmosphere in their own homes, and somehow Mamie seemed to reek of that scent, though in fact she never used it. She was clever and fairly well educated, and she had always been sheltered and cared for, but she was born to the scarlet, and everything she said and did, her way of walking, the use she made already of her black eyes, proclaimed it. To-night, though she wore the red she loved--a wonderful, flaring frock of chiffon frills and flounces--she looked ill, and her dark face was sullen.

"The beastly wind has given me a stiff neck," she complained. "Here, I want to have this."

She chose a coon's lullaby out of the pile of songs, and Olive sat down obediently and began the accompaniment. It was a pretty little ditty of the usual moony order, and Mamie sang it well enough. Mr Marvel looked up when it was over to say, "Thank you, my dear. Very nice."

"It is a silly thing," Mamie answered ungraciously. "I'll sing you a _canzonetta_ now."

She turned over the music, scattering marches and sonatas, and throwing some of them on the floor in her impatience. Olive, wondering at her temper, presently divined the cause of it. The folding doors that led into the library were half closed. No lamps, but a flicker of firelight and the hush of lowered voices, Edna's pleasant little pipe and a man's brief, murmured answers, and there were short spaces of silence too. The American girl and her prince were there.

The Marchese had raised his eyebrows at the first words of the _canzonetta_, and at the end of the second verse he was smiling broadly.

"Little devil!" he said.

No one heard him. His wife was showing her brother-in-law some of her most treasured bits of china. She was quite calm, as though her knowledge of Italian was fair the Neapolitan dialect was beyond her. Mr Marvel, of course, knew not a syllable of any language but his own, and the slang of Southern gutters was as Greek to Olive. Their placidity amused the Marchese, and so did the thought of the little scene that he knew was being enacted in the library.

"Shall we join the others now, Edna, _carissima_?"

"If--if you like."

He nearly laughed aloud as he saw the silk curtains drawn. The Prince stood aside to allow Edna to pass in first, and Olive, glancing up momentarily from the unfamiliar notes, saw the green gleam of an emerald on the strong brown hand as the brocaded folds were lifted up. Her own hands swerved, blundered, and she perpetrated a hopeless discord.

"I beg your pardon," she said confusedly.

Mamie shrugged her shoulders. "Never mind," she answered lightly. "The last verse don't matter anyway. Come to here, Edna. Momma wants to hear your fiddle-playing."

"Yes, play us something, my dear."

The little girl came forward shyly.

As the Prince and the Marchese stood together by the fireplace at the other end of the long room Mamie joined them. "You sang that devil's nocturne inimitably," observed her stepfather, drily. "I am quite sorry to have to ask you not to do it again."

"Not again? Why not?"

She perched herself on the arm of one of the great gilt chairs. The Prince raised his eyes from the thoughtful contemplation of her ankles to stare at her impudent red parted lips.

"Why not! Need I explain, _cara_? It was delicious; I enjoyed it, but, alas!" He heaved an exaggerated sigh and then laughed, and the young man and the girl shared in his merriment.

"I am sorry to make so many mistakes," Olive said apologetically as she laboured away at her part of an easy piece arranged for violin and piano.

"Oh, it is nothing. I have made ever so many myself, and I ought to have turned the page for you."

The gentle voice was rather tremulous.

"That was charming," pronounced the Marchesa. "Now that sonata, Edna. I am so fond of it."

"Very well, auntie."

The Prince had gone into the billiard-room with his host, and Mamie was with them. They were knocking the balls about and laughing ... laughing.