Chapter 20

Florence, in the great days of the Renaissance, bore many men whom now she delights to honour, and Ugo Manelli was one of these. He helped to build a bridge over the Arno, he had his palace in the Corso frescoed by Masaccio, he framed sumptuary laws, and he wrote sonnets, charming sonnets that are still read by the people who care for such things. The fifth centenary of his birthday, on the twenty-eighth of November, was to be kept with great rejoicings therefore. There were to be fireworks and illuminations of the streets for the people, and a _Trecento_ costume ball at the Palazzo Vecchio for those who had influence to procure tickets and money to pay for them.

Mamie, greatly daring, proclaimed her intention of wearing the "_umile ed onesto sanguigno_" of Beatrice.

"You will be my Dante, Don Filippo? Momma is going in cloth of gold as Giovanna degli Albizzi."

The Marchese looked inquiringly at the Prince. "Shall you add to the gaiety of nations, or at least of Florence?"

The young man shrugged his broad shoulders. "I suppose so." He was well established as _cavalier servente_ now in the Lorenzoni household, and it was understood that Mamie would be a princess some day. The girl was so young that the engagement could scarcely be announced yet.

"I guess we must wait until you are eighteen, Mamie," her mother said. "Keep him amused and don't be exacting or he'll quit. He is still sore from his jilting."

"I can manage him," the girl boasted, but she had no real influence over him now. The forbidden fruit had allured him, but since it was his for the gathering it seemed sour--as indeed it was, and he was not the man to allow himself to be tied to the apron-strings of a child. When he was in a good humour he watched his future wife amusedly as she metaphorically and sometimes literally danced before him, but he discouraged the excess of audacity that had attracted him formerly, perhaps because he scarcely relished the idea of a Princess Tor di Rocca singing, "_O che la gioia mi fè morir_."

Probably he regretted gentle, amenable Edna. At times he was grimly, impenetrably silent, and often he said things that would have wounded a tender heart past healing. Fortunately there were none such in the Palazzo Lorenzoni.

"I shall be ridiculous as the Alighieri, and you must forgive me, Mamie, if I say that one scarcely sees in you a reincarnation of Monna Beatrice."

"Red is my colour," the girl answered rather defiantly.

The Marchese laughed gratingly.

Filippo dined with the Lorenzoni on the night of the ball. He wore the red _lucco_, but had declined to crown himself with laurel. His gaudy Muse, however, had no such scruples, and her black curls were wreathed with silver leaves. The Prince was not the only guest; there was a slender, flaxen-haired girl from New York dressed after Botticelli's Judith, an artillery captain as Lorenzo dei Medici, and another man, a Roman, in the grey of the order of San Francesco.

"Poppa left for Monte this morning," Mamie explained over the soup. "He reckoned dressing up was just foolishness, but the fact is armour is hot and heavy, and he would have had to pass from trousers into greaves. He has not got the right kind of legs for parti-coloured hosen, someway."

The Piazza della Signoria was crowded as it had been on that dreadful May day when Girolamo's broken body was burnt to ashes there; as it was on the afternoon of the Pazzi conspiracy, when a bishop was hanged from one of the windows of the old Palazzo. But the old order had changed, giving place to new even here, and the people had come now merely to see the fine dresses; there was no thought of murder, though there might be some picking of pockets. The night was still and cold, and the white, round moon that had risen above the roof of the Loggia dei Lanzi shone, unclouded, upon the restless human sea that divided here and there to let the carriages and motors pass. The guests entered by the side door nearest the Uffizi, and _carabinieri_ kept the way clear. The crowd was dense thereabouts, and the people pushed and jostled one another, leaned forward, and stood on tiptoe to see the brocaded ladies in their jewelled coifs and the men, hooded and strange, in their gay mediæval garb.

The Marchesa's cloth of gold drew the prolonged "Oh!" of admiration that is only accorded to the better kind of fireworks, and hearing it, she smiled, well satisfied. Mamie followed with Filippo. Her dress of rose-coloured brocade was exquisite. It clung to her and seemed to be her one and only garment; one could almost see the throb of her heart through the thin stuff. She let her furred cloak fall as she got out of the car and then drew it up again about her bare arms and shoulders.

"Who is the black-curled scarlet thing?"

"Beatrice."

"What! half naked! She is more like one of the _donnine_ in the _Decameron_."

Her Dante, overhearing, hurried her up the steps. His eyes were bright with anger in the shadow of his hood, but they changed and darkened as he caught sight of one girl's face in the crowd. At the foot of the grand staircase he turned, muttering some excuse and leaving Mamie and her mother to go up alone, and hurried back and out into the street. He stood aside as though to allow some newcomers to pass in. The girl he had come to see was close to him, but she was half hidden behind a _carabiniere's_ broad epauletted shoulders.

"_Scusi_," murmured the Prince as he leant across the man to pull at her sleeve. "I must see you," he said urgently. "When? Where?"

"When you like," she answered, but her eyes were startled as they met his. "No. 27 Borgo San Jacopo. The only door on the sixth landing."

"Very well. To-night, then, and in an hour's time."

The press of incoming masqueraders screened them. The _carabiniere_ knew the Prince by sight, and he listened with all his might, but they spoke English, and he dared not turn to stare at the girl until the tall figure in the red _lucco_ had passed up the steps and gone in again, and by that time she had slipped away out of sight.

Filippo came to the Borgo a little before midnight and crossed the dingy threshold of No. 27 as the bells of the churches rang out the hour. The old street was quiet enough now but for the wailing of some strayed and starving cats that crept about the shadowed courts and under the crumbling archways, and the departing cab woke strange echoes as it rattled away over the cobble stones.

The only door on the sixth landing was open.

"What are you doing here?" Filippo said, wonderingly, as he groped his way in. The room was in utter darkness but for one ray of moonlight athwart it and the faint light of the stars, by which he saw Olive leaning against the sill of one of the unshuttered windows, and looking, as it seemed, towards him.

"Come in," she said. "You need not be afraid of falling over the furniture. There is not much."

"You seem partial to bare attics."

"Ah! you are thinking of my room in the Vicolo dei Moribondi."

"Yes!" he said as he came towards her from the door. "I cannot rest, I cannot forget. For God's sake tell me about the end! I have been to Siena since I heard, but I dared not ask too many questions. Was she--did she suffer very much before she died? Answer me quickly."

"Throw back your hood," she said. "Let me see your face."

Impatiently he thrust the folds of white and scarlet away and stood bare-headed. She saw that his strong lips quivered and that his eyes were contracted with pain.

"No, she died instantly. They said at the inquest that it must have been so."

"Her face--was she--" his voice broke.

"I did not see it. It was covered by a handkerchief," she said gently. "Don't! Don't! I did not think you would suffer so much."

"I suffer horribly day and night. Love is the scourge of the world in the hands of the devil. That is certain. She is buried near the south wall of the Campo Santo. Oh, God! when I think of her sweet flesh decaying--"

Olive, scarcely knowing what she did, caught at his hand and held it tightly.

"Hush, oh, hush!" she said tremulously. She felt as though she were seeing him racked. "I do believe that her soul was borne into heaven, God's heaven, on the day she died. She was forgiven."

"Heaven!" he cried. "Where is heaven? I am not guilty of her death. She was a fool to die, and I shall not soon forgive her for leaving me so. If she came back I would punish her, torment her, make her scream with pain--if she came back--oh, Gemma!--_carissima_--"

The hard, hot eyes filled with tears. He tried to drag his hand away, but the girl held it fast.

"You are kind and good," he said presently in a changed voice. "I am sorry if I did you any harm with the Lorenzoni, but the woman told me she meant to send you away in any case because of the Marchese."

Then, as he felt the clasp of her fingers loosening about his wrist, "Don't let go," he said quickly. "Is he really going to take you to Monte Carlo with him?"

"Does his wife say so? Do you believe it?"

He answered deliberately. "No, not now. But you cannot go on living like this."

"No."

He was right. She could not go on. Her little store of coppers was dwindling fast, so fast that the beggars at the church doors would soon be richer than she was. And she was tired of her straits, tired of coarse food and a bare lodging, and of the harsh, clamorous life of the streets. The yoke of poverty was very heavy.

Filippo drew a little nearer to her. "I could make you love me."

"Never."

He made no answer in words but he caught her to him. She lay for a moment close in his arms, her heart beating on his, before she cried to him to let her go.

He released her instantly. "Well?"

"I must light the lamp," she said unsteadily. She was afraid now to be alone with him in the dim, starlit room, and she fumbled for the matches. He stood still by the window waiting until the little yellow flame of the _lucerna_ burnt brightly on the floor between them, then he smiled at her, well pleased at her pallor. "You see it would be easy," he said.

She answered nothing.

"I am going to Naples to-morrow by the afternoon train. Will you come with me? We will go where you like from there, to Capri, or to Sicily; and you will help me to forget, and I will teach you to live."

There was silence between them for a while. Olive stared with fascinated eyes at this tall, lithe man whose red _lucco_, falling in straight folds to his feet, became him well. The upper part of his face was in shadow, and she saw only the strong lines of the cleft chin, and the beautiful cruel lips that smiled at her as though they knew what her answer must be.

She was of those who are apt to prefer one hour of troubled joy to the long, grey, eventless years of the women who are said to be happy because they have no history, and it seemed to her that the moment had come when she must make a choice. This love was not what she had dreamed of, longed for; other lips, kinder and more true, should have set their seal on her accomplished womanhood. She knew that this that was offered was a perilous and sharp-edged thing, a bright sheath that held a sword for her heart, and yet that heart sang exultantly as it fluttered like a wild bird against the bars of its cage. It sang of youth and life and joy that cares not for the morrow.

It sang.

Filippo watched her closely and he saw that she was yielding. Her lips parted, and instinctively as he came towards her she closed her eyes so nearly that he saw only a narrow line of blue gleaming between her lashes. But as he laid his hands upon her shoulders something awoke within her, a terror that screamed in her ears.

"I am afraid," she said brokenly. "Leave me and come back to-morrow morning if you will. I cannot answer you now."

As he still held her she spoke again. "If I come to you willingly I shall be more worth having, and if you do not go now I will never come. I will drown myself in the Arno."

"Very well. I will come to-morrow."

When he was gone she went stumblingly across the room to the mattress on the floor in the farthest corner, and threw herself down upon it, dressed as she was.

There was no more oil in the little lamp, and its flame flickered and went out after a while, leaving her in the dark. The clocks were striking two. Long since the moon had set behind the hills and now the stars were fading, or so it seemed. There was no light anywhere.

Olive did not sleep. Her frightened thoughts ran to and fro busily, aimlessly, like ants disturbed, hither and thither, this way and that. He could give her so much. Nothing real, indeed, but many bright counterfeits. For a while she would seem to be cared for and beloved. Yes, but if the true love came she would be shamed. She knew that her faith in Dante's Amor, his lord of terrible aspect, made his coming possible. The men and women who go about proclaiming that there is no such person because they have never seen him were born blind. Like those prosy souls who call the poets mad, they mistake impotence for common sense.

Besides, the first step always costs so dear, and now that he was gone and she could think of him calmly she knew that she was afraid of Filippo Tor di Rocca. He was cruel. Then among the forces arrayed against him there was the desire of that she called her soul to mortify her flesh, to beckon, to lead by stony ways to the heights of sacrifice. She could not be sure where that first step would lead her, she could not be sure of herself or gauge the depths to which she might fall.

"Oh, God!" she said aloud. "Help me! Don't let things be too difficult."

The hours of darkness were long, but the grey glimmering dawn came at last with a pattering of rain against the uncurtained window. Olive rose as soon as it was light, and before eight she had eaten the crust of bread she had saved for her breakfast and was gone out. On her way down the stairs she met her landlady and spoke to her.

"If anyone comes to see me will you tell them that I have gone out, and that I do not know when I shall come in again. And if anything is said about my going away you can say that I have changed my mind and that I shall not leave Florence."

She would not cross the river for fear of meeting Filippo in any of the more-frequented streets on the other side, so she went down the Via della Porta Romana and out by the gates into the open country beyond. She walked for a long time along muddy roads between the high walls of vineyards and olive orchards. She had an umbrella, but her skirts were draggled and splashed with mire and the water came through the worn soles of her thin shoes. She had nothing to eat and no money to buy food. There were some coppers in her purse, but she had forgotten to bring that. It was windy, and as she was toiling up the steep hill to Bellosguardo her umbrella blew inside out. She threw it down by the side of the road and went on, rather glad to be rid of it and to feel the rain on her face. She had two hands now to hold her skirt and that was better. Soon after noon she knocked at the door of a gardener's cottage and asked for something to eat; she was given a yellow lump of _polenta_ and a handful of roast chestnuts and she sat down on a low wall by the roadside to devour them. She did not think much about anything now, she could not even feel that she cared what happened to her, but she adhered to the resolution she had made to keep out of the way until Tor di Rocca had left Florence. She could not sit long. It was cold and she was poorly clad, so poorly that the woman in the cottage had believed her to be a beggar. The Prince would have had to buy her clothes before he could take her away with him.

She wandered about until nightfall and then made her way back to the house in the Borgo, footsore and cold and wretched, but still the captain of her soul; ragged, but free and in no man's livery.

The landlady heard her coming slowly up the stairs and came out of her room to speak to her.

"A gentleman called for you this morning. I told him you were gone out and that you had changed your mind about leaving Florence, and at first he seemed angry, and then he laughed. 'Tell her we shall meet again,' he said. Then another came this afternoon in an automobile and asked if you lived here, and when I said you were out he said he would come again this evening. He left his card."

Olive looked at it with dazed eyes. Her pale face flushed, but as she went on up the stairs the colour ebbed away until even her lips were white. She had to rest twice before she could reach her own landing, and when she had entered her room she could go no farther than the door. She fell, and it was some time before she could get up again, but she still held the card crumpled in her hand.

"Jean Avenel."