Chapter 28

After the first week Olive went only to Camille's _atelier_. He was working hard at his "_étude blanche_," but no one had been allowed to see it, except, of course, M'sieur le Directeur.

"I almost wish I had asked you to come always heavily veiled. The other men are all mad about you, and Gontrand tells me he wants you to give him sittings for the head of an oread, but he cannot have you. You are mine."

"Is he a lean, black-bearded man?"

"Yes."

"He spoke to me the other day as I was coming through the garden, and asked me if you were really painting a '_jeune fille_' picture. I said you were painting a picture, and he would probably see it when you had your show in April."

Camille laughed. "Good child! We must keep up the mystery." He flung down his brushes. "I cannot work any more to-day. Will you come with me for a drive into the Campagna?"

She hesitated. "I am not sure--"

"Come as my little brother." He took off his linen painting sleeves, and began to dabble his fingers in a pan of turpentine. "My little brother! Do you know that the Directeur thinks you are charming, and he wonders that I do not love you."

"I am glad you do not," she said, colouring. "If you did--"

He was lighting a cigarette. "If I did?" The little momentary flame of the match was reflected in his blue eyes.

"I should go away and not come back again."

"Well, I do not," he said heartily. "I care for you as St Francis did for his pet sparrow. So now put your hat on and I will go down and get a _vettura_ with a good horse."

He was a creature of moods, and so young in many ways that he appealed to the girl as Astorre had done, by the queer, pathetic little flaws in his manhood. Some days he worked incessantly from early morning until the light failed at his picture, but there were times when he seemed unable even to look at it. He made several studies in charcoal for "Rosamund."

"It is an inspiration," he said excitedly more than once. "The rose of the world that can only be reached by love--or hate--holding the clue."

He had promised an American who had bought a picture of his the year before that he would do some work for him in Venice in the spring. "Very rash of me," he said fractiously. "The 'Jeune Fille' would have been quite enough for me to show, and it is dreadful to have to leave it unfinished now." And when Gontrand tried to persuade him to let him have Olive during his absence he was, as the girl phrased it, quite cross. "I have seen enough of that. Last year in the Salon St Elizabeth of Hungary, and Clytemnestra, and Malesherbe's _vivandière_ were one and the same woman. Besides, oreads are nearly related to Bacchantes, Gontrand, and I am not going to allow my little sewing-girl to be mixed up with people of that sort."

He made Olive promise not to sit for any of the other men at the Villa Medici.

"I shall work at Varini's in the evenings," she said. "And one of the men there wants me to come to his studio in the Via Margutta three mornings a week. He is a Baron von something."

The Frenchman's face lightened. "Oh, that German! I know him. I saw a landscape of his once. It looked as if several tubes of paint had got together and burst. What else will you do?"

"Rome, if you will lend me your Bædeker," she answered. "I shall begin with A and work my way through Beatrice Cenci and the Borgo Nuovo to the Corsini Gallery and the Corso. Some of the letters may be rather dull. I am so glad Apollo comes now."

He laughed. "M for Michelin. You will be sure to admire me when my turn comes."

Olive was living alone now in a tall old house in Ripetta. The two kind women who had been her friends had left Rome and gone to stay with their brother at Como. It was evidently the best thing they could do, and the girl had assured them that she was quite well able to look after herself, but they had been only half convinced by her reasoning. She was English and she had done it before. "That is nothing," Ser Giulia said. "You may catch a ball once, and the second time it may slip through your fingers. And sometimes Life is like the importunate widow and goes on asking until one gives what one should not." She helped her to find a room, and eked out the furniture from her own little store. "Another saucepan, and a kettle, and a blanket. And if lessons fail you must come to us, _figliuola mia_. My brother's house is large."

The girl had answered her with a kiss, but though she loved them she was not altogether sorry to see them go. She could never tell them how she had earned the lire that paid the baker's bill. The truth would hurt them, and she would not give them a moment's pain if she could avoid it, but she was not good at lying. Even the very little white ones stuck in her throat, and she was relieved to be no longer under the necessity of uttering them.

The room she had taken was on the sixth floor, and from the one narrow window she could look across the yellow swirl of Tiber towards Monte Mario. She had set up her household gods. The plaster bust of Dante, and her books, on the rickety wooden table by her bedside, and, such as it was, this place was home.

Camille went by a night train, and Olive began to "see Rome" on the following morning. She took the tram to the Piazza Venezia and walked from thence to the church of Santa Maria Ara Coeli.

The flight of steps to the west door is very long, and she climbed slowly, stopping once or twice to take breath and look back at the crowded roofs and many church domes of Rome, and at the green heights of the Janiculan hill beyond, with the bronze figure of Garibaldi on his horse, dominant, and very clear against the sky.

The cripple at the door lifted the heavy leather curtain for her and she put a soldo into his outstretched hand as she went in. The church seemed very still, very quiet, after the clamour of the streets. The acrid scent of incense was as the breath of spent prayer. Little yellow flames flickered in the shrine lamps before each altar, but it was early yet and for the moment no mass was being said. An old, white-haired monk was sweeping the worn pavement. He was swathed in a blue linen apron, and his rusty brown frock was tucked up about his ankles. A lean black cat followed him, mewing, and now and then he stopped his work to stroke it. There was a great stack of chairs by the door, and a few were scattered about the aisles and occupied by stray worshippers, women with handkerchiefs tied over their heads in deference to St Paul's expressed wishes, two or three old men, and some peasants with their market baskets. A be-ribboned nurse carrying a baby had just come in to see the Sacro Bambino, and Olive followed them into the sacristy and saw the child laid down before the bedizened, red-cheeked wooden doll in the glass case. As they passed out again the monk who was in attendance gave Olive a coloured card with a prayer printed on the back. She heard him asking what was the matter with the little one. The woman lifted the lace veil from the tiny face and showed him the sightless eyes. He crossed himself. "_Poveretto! Dio vi benedica!_"

As Olive left the sacristy a tall man came across the aisle towards her. It was Prince Tor di Rocca.

"This is a great pleasure," he said. "But not to you, I am afraid. You are not glad to see me."

"I am surprised. I--do you often come into churches?"

He laughed. "I sometimes follow women in. I saw you coming up the steps just now. You are right in supposing that I am not devout. I want to speak to you. Shall we go out?"

She looked for a way of escape but saw none.

"If--very well," she said rather helplessly.

The hunchback woman at the south door watched them expectantly as they came towards her, and she brightened as she saw the man's hand go to his pocket. He threw her a piece of silver as they passed out. He was in a good humour, his fine lips smiling, a glinting zest in his insolent eyes. He thought he understood women, and he had in fact made a one-sided study of the sex. He had seen their ways of loving, he had listened to the beating of their hearts; but of their endurance, their long patience, their daily life he knew nothing. He was like a man who often wears a bunch of violets in his coat until they fade, and yet has never seen, or cared to see them, growing sparsely, small and sweet, half hidden in leaves on a mossy bank by the stream.

Women amused him. He was seldom much moved by them, and he pursued them without haste or flurry, treading delicately like Agag of old. He had little intrigues everywhere, in Florence, in Naples, in Rome. Young married women, girls walking demurely with their mothers. He liked to know that it was he who brought the colour to their cheeks and that their eyes sought him among the crowd of men standing outside Aragno's in the Corso or on the steps of the club in the Via Tornabuoni. Very often the affair would be one of the eyes only, but sometimes it went farther. Filippo's procedure varied. Sometimes he put advertisements in the personal column of the Popolo Romano, and sometimes he wrote notes. It was always very interesting while it lasted. Occasionally affairs overlapped, as when an appeal to F. to meet Norina once more in the Borghese appeared in print above F.'s request that the signorina in the pink hat would write to him at the Poste Restante.

Olive had nearly yielded to him in Florence, and then she had run away, she had sought safety in flight. Evidently then his battle had been nearly won. But she had reassembled her forces, and he saw that it would be all to fight over again, and that the issue was doubtful.

As they came into the little square piazza of the Capitol she turned to him. "What have you to say? I--I am in a hurry."

"I am sorry for that, but if you are going anywhere I can walk with you, or we can take a _vettura_ and drive together."

She looked past him at the green shining figure of Marcus Aurelius on his horse riding between her and the sun, and said nothing.

"I shall enjoy being with you even if you are inclined to be silent. You are so good to look at."

His brazen stare gave point to his words. Her face was no longer childish in its charm. It had lost the first roundness of youth, but had gained in expression. A soul seemed to be shining through the veil of flesh--white and rose-red flesh, divinely gilt with freckles--and fluttering in the troubled depths of her blue eyes. The nun-like simplicity of her grey dress pleased him: it did not detract from her; it left the eyes free to return to her face, to dwell upon her lips.

"Something has happened," he said. "There is another man. Are you married?"

"No."

"I only came to Rome yesterday. Strange that we should meet so soon. It seems that there is a Destiny that shapes our ends after all."

"You do not believe in free will?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I do not think about such things."

"Well," she said impatiently. "Is that all you have to say? I suppose the Marchesa and Mamie are here too."

He hesitated and seemed to lose some of his assurance. "No, we quarrelled. The girl is insupportable. She is engaged now to a lord of sorts, an Englishman, and they are still in Cairo."

"So you have lost her too."

"It was your fault that Edna gave me up. You owe me something for that. And you behaved badly to me again--afterwards."

"I did not."

He laughed enjoyingly. "I trusted you and you took advantage of a truce to run away."

She moved away from him, but he followed her and kept at her side.

"I never asked you to trust me. I asked you to come the next day for an answer. You came and you had it."

"I came and I had it," he repeated. "Did the old woman give you my message?"

"That we should meet again?"

"That was not all. I said you would come to me one day sooner or later."

They had paused at the top of the steps that lead down from the Capitol into the streets and are guarded by the gigantic figures of Castor and Pollux, great masses of discoloured marble set on pedestals on either side. It was twelve o'clock, and a black stream of hungry, desk-weary men poured out of the Capitoline offices. Many turned to look at the English girl as they hurried by, and one passing close to her muttered "bella" in her ear. She drew back as though she had been stung. Filippo laughed again.

"I only ask to be let alone," she said. "Can't you understand that you remind me of things I want to forget. I am ashamed, oh, can't you understand!"

She left him and went to stand on the outskirts of the crowd that had collected in front of the cage in which the wolves are kept. Evidently she hoped that he would go on, but he meant to disappoint her, and when she went down the steps he was close beside her.

"Why are you so unkind to me?" he said, and as they crossed the road he held her arm.

She wrenched herself away, went up to the _carabiniere_, who stood at the corner, and spoke to him. The man smiled tolerantly as he glanced from her to Filippo. "Signorina, I cannot help you."

She passed on down the street, knowing that she was being followed, crossed the Corso Vittorio Emanuele and took a tram in the Piazza della Minerva. Tor di Rocca got in too and sat down opposite to her. The conductor turned to him first, and when she proffered her four soldi she found that he had paid for both. Her hand shook as she put the money back in her purse, and her colour rose. Filippo, quite at his ease, leisurely, openly observant of her, whistled "Lucia" softly to himself. Roses, roses all the way, and all for him, he thought amusedly. And yet she bore the ordeal well, betraying no restlessness, keeping her eyes unswervingly fixed on the two lions of the advertisement of Chinina Migone pasted on the glass over his head. At the Ripetta bridge she got out. He followed, saw her go into a house farther down the street, and paused on the threshold to take the number before he went up the stairs after her. She heard him coming. He turned the handle of the door, but she had locked it and it held fast. He knocked once and called to her. Evidently he was not sure of her being within. There was another room on the same landing, and after a while he tried that.

"Are you in there? _Carissima_, you are wasting time. To-day or to-morrow, sooner or later. Why not to-day, and soon?"

A silence ensued. The girl had taken off her hat and thrown it down upon the table. She stood very still in the middle of the room listening, waiting for him to go away again. Her breath came quickly, and little pearls of sweat broke out upon her forehead. His persistence frightened her.

He waited for an answer, and receiving none, added, "Well, I will come again," and so went away.

She stayed in until it was time to go to Varini's. It was not far, but she was flushed and panting with the haste that she had made as she put on the faded blue silk dress that had been laid out ready for her on the one broken chair in the dressing-room. Rosina came in to her presently from the professor's studio. She wore a man's tweed coat and a striped blanket wrapped about her, and she was smoking a cigarette.

"So you have come back to work here. Your signorino at the Villa Medici is away?"

"Only for a few days. He will not be gone long. The picture is not finished. How is Pasquina?"

Rosina had come over to her and was fastening the hooks of her bodice. "She is very well. How pretty you are." She rearranged the laces at the girl's breast and caught up a torn piece of the silk with a pin. "That is better. Have you been running? You seem hot."

"Oh, Rosina, I have been frightened. A man followed me. I shall be afraid to go home to-night."

The yellow-haired Trasteverina looked at her shrewdly. "He knows where you live? Have you only seen him once?"

"He--he came and tried my door. I am afraid of him."

Rosina nodded. "_Si capisce!_ I will take care of you. I have met so many _mascalzoni_ in twenty years that I have grown used to them. I will come home with you, and if any man so much as looks at us I will scratch his eyes out."

Through the thin partition wall they heard the professor calling for his model. "I must go," she said hurriedly, but as she passed out Olive caught at a fold of the enveloping blanket.

"Come here, I want you." She flung her arms about the other girl's neck and kissed her. "You are good! You are good!"

She went into the class room and climbed the throne as the men came clattering in to take their places. The professor posed her.

"So you have come back to us. Do not let them spoil you at the Villa Medici--your head a little higher--so."

The first drawing in of the figure is not a thing to be taken lightly, and the silence was seldom broken at Varini's on Monday evenings. The two boys, however, found it hard to repress the natural loquacity of their extreme youth.

"_Al lavoro_, Mario! What are you whispering about? Cesare, _zitto_!" Bembi stared at them. "Their chins are disappearing," he said. "See their collars. Every day an inch higher. _Dio mio!_ Is that the way to please women? I wear a flannel shirt and my neck is as bare as a plucked chicken, and yet I--" he stopped short.

Mario laughed. "Women are strange," he admitted.

"Mad!" cried Cesare, and then as Bembi still smirked ineffably he appealed to Olive. "Do you admire fowls wrapped in flannel or _in arrosto_?"

When she came out she found Rosina waiting for her in the courtyard, a grey shadow with smooth fair hair shining in the moonlight. "The professor let me go at eight so I dressed and came out here," she explained. "The dressing-room is full of dust and spider's webs. I told the porter the other day that he ought to sweep it, but he only laughed at me and said Domeniddio made spiders long before he took a rib out of Adam's side to whip a naughty world."

"Who is the man?" she asked presently as they walked along together. "Do I know him?"

"I do not think so. He is not an artist."

Rosina laid a hand upon her arm. "Is that he?" she said.

They had passed through one of the narrow streets that lead from the Corso towards the river and were come into the Ripetta.

A tall man was walking slowly along on the other side of the road. He did not seem to have noticed the two girls, and yet as he stopped to light a cigarette he was looking towards them. A tram came clanging up, the overhead wires emitting strange noises peculiar to themselves, the gong ringing sharply. Olive glanced up at the red painted triangle fixed to the lamp-post at the corner. "It will stop here. Quick! while it is between us. Perhaps he has not seen--"

They ran to her door and up the stairs together. "It has only just gone on," cried Rosina. "Have you got your key?"

She stayed on the landing while Olive went into the room and lit her candle. There was no sound in the house at all, no step upon the stair. As she peered down over the banisters into the darkness below she listened intently. The rustling of her skirt sounded loud in the stillness, but there was nothing else.

"He did not see us," she said. "I shall go now. Lock your door. _Felice notte, piccina._"