Italian Days and Ways

by Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

Via Sistina, Rome, March 22d.

Your letter in answer to mine written from San Remo reached me to-day. It really seems a year since I wrote you that letter, instead of one month. So many impressions have come crowding one upon another since then that I cannot quite recall what I said of a personal nature. The meeting with Genevra brought back the old familiar associations so vividly that we sometimes forgot all that had happened since we had parted, and lived over our early, happy days. If you read into my letter more than was meant, it is because some of the glamour of that time caused will-o'-the-wisps to mislead you. No, "gang your ain gait, Allan," as your mother's old Scotch maid used to say. You have a great future before you in your profession, and I—it seems to me sometimes that I have only a past, and a present which I live day by day, with no plans for the years to come. It is so difficult to readjust one's life to new standards, and those who stake much lose heavily. We both loved Headley too well to say one harsh word about him. I could not talk to you thus freely were it not so; indeed, I never could speak to you at all about Headley—writing is easier, across the great expanse of waters. Now that I have broken the silence, let me say to you, best of friends, that I have in this sunny land and among these changing scenes found content, which may in time reach the measure of happiness. Do not disturb this peace, I beg of you, but be satisfied with our good old friendship, which is so safe and sane.

I shall really be afraid to tell you of any of our contretemps, you take them so seriously, and yet you wish to know of all our wanderings and of just how certain things impress us. I had forgotten about that absurd homesickness in Genoa, until you spoke of it. It was an acute attack, I assure you, and, like the proverbial grief of the widower, violent while it lasted, but soon well over and done with. Now we wonder how any one could possibly be homesick in this Italy which we love so much, above all in Rome, which seems each day more and more the mother of us all. Zelphine and Angela will tell you that Margaret is the gayest of the party. You know that I never would be a kill-joy, and here there is so much to interest one on all sides.

So you are glad that there is one good English name in the party, and are pleased to like the sound of my homespun baptismal? Angela is of the same mind; she says that my sensible "Margaret" strikes a happy balance between Zelphine's romantic name, which she feels it her duty to live up to, and her own, equally fanciful, which she takes pleasure in defying. By way of adapting herself gracefully to the situation, Angela has fallen into the habit of calling Zelphine "Z." This is all very well, but I am thankful that she does not insist upon being called "A.," as the constant turning from A. to Z. would be unpleasantly suggestive of algebraic formulæ, which were the bane of my school-days.

We laugh at Zelphine and chaff her continually about her flights of fancy; but no person could travel with her without realizing what a pleasure it is to be with a woman whose mind is so stored with the poetry and history of these old cities, one who enters so heart and soul into every interesting association. I said something of this to Angela one morning as we turned from the Via Condotti into the Corso, feeling that she might not appreciate all her privileges.

"Zelphine is," I said, "steeped in the lore of the past."

"Yes, up to the neck!" replied Angela, with emphasis. "I feel that I am now enjoying that liberal education that I have heard about all my life."

"The education is not liberal in including your expressions," I said, with an attempt at severity.

"Don't you understand, Margaret? Must I always explain?" said Angela, lifting her innocent blue eyes to mine. "I mean that Z. swims in learning, and one must be in up to one's neck to swim comfortably!"

Angela is quite hopeless, and by way of punishing her I stopped to buy her some of the delicious red roses that make me think of June days at home, especially of the roses in your mother's garden, which were always the reddest. Zelphine having stepped on in advance of us to attend to a commission at the cleaner's, where they "gar auld claes look amaist as weel's the new," we sauntered on along what one of your favorite writers describes so enthusiastically as "that world-famous avenue, the Corso."