“Oh, not that way back. We can never have too much of the dear Piazza Signoria.”
“They’re nice people, the Vyses. So clever—my idea of what’s really clever. Don’t you long to be in Rome?”
“I die for it!”
The Piazza Signoria is too stony to be brilliant. It has no grass, no flowers, no frescoes, no glittering walls of marble or comforting patches of ruddy brick. By an odd chance—unless we believe in a presiding genius of places—the statues that relieve its severity suggest, not the innocence of childhood, nor the glorious bewilderment of youth, but the conscious achievements of maturity. Perseus and Judith, Hercules and Thusnelda, they have done or suffered something, and though they are immortal, immortality has come to them after experience, not before. Here, not only in the solitude of Nature, might a hero meet a goddess, or a heroine a god.
“Charlotte!” cried the girl suddenly. “Here’s an idea. What if we popped off to Rome to-morrow—straight to the Vyses’ hotel? For I do know what I want. I’m sick of Florence. No, you said you’d go to the ends of the earth! Do! Do!”
Miss Bartlett, with equal vivacity, replied:
“Oh, you droll person! Pray, what would become of your drive in the hills?”
They passed together through the gaunt beauty of the square, laughing over the unpractical suggestion.
Chapter VI
The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert Eager, Mr. Emerson, Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive Out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them.
It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a youth all irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his master’s horses up the stony hill. Mr. Beebe recognized him at once. Neither the Ages of Faith nor the Age of Doubt had touched him; he was Phaethon in Tuscany driving a cab. And it was Persephone whom he asked leave to pick up on the way, saying that she was his sister—Persephone, tall and slender and pale, returning with the Spring to her mother’s cottage, and still shading her eyes from the unaccustomed light. To her Mr. Eager objected, saying that here was the thin edge of the wedge, and one must guard against imposition. But the ladies interceded, and when it had been made clear that it was a very great favour, the goddess was allowed to mount beside the god.