They were all poor together, and their apartment had no pretensions to grandeur; but Teresa, whose artistic longings had been cramped and even smothered in her Florentine rooms, was wild with joy at finding herself able to pull the furniture about as she pleased, and to surround herself with flowers, books, and pictures at will. Her energy leapt to life again, and her companions were content to allow her to exercise it as actively as she chose. She was a beneficent housekeeper, for she walked long distances to get the best salad, the best cream, or the best maritozzi. She scolded Nina, the good-natured careless untidy servant, who adored her; she dusted books, bargained, painted, and insisted upon her sister seeing Rome and Roman functions conscientiously. It was with this aim that she was conducting her to the church of San Martino in Monte, that day in festa.
The difference between the two sisters became more marked as they walked along the pavement, and now it was to the advantage of Teresa, for she carried herself with a light grace which was yet firm and decided, while Sylvia wavered, and seldom knew on which side to pass the people she met. Teresa’s face, again, changed expression rapidly, and when she spoke was lit with eager interest, while Sylvia’s remained placid, and if at times her eye became anxious, it never brightened. Still, she was unusually pretty. She adored Teresa without in the least understanding her, and her mind lumbered heavily after the freakish darts of imagination in which this other—who had suffered enough to crush a less elastic nature—revelled. Generally Sylvia was unconscious that she did not understand, but there were times when a remark of Teresa’s, flung and forgotten, would leave her painfully struggling to catch its hidden meaning, so that her very affection kept her as it were on the strain of tiptoe.
When they had passed the heavy leathern curtain at the door of San Martino, raised for them by one of the many clamorous beggars who rattled their tins outside, they saw the large church crowded with such a shuffling and shifting throng, that it was difficult to find standing-room except at the back or in the aisles, and Donna Teresa was obliged to skirt the congregation and pilot her less capable sister until they reached the steps leading to the choir, where, although there was no seat, they could lean against a pillar for support, and, as Sylvia thankfully reflected, thus avoid contact with the children, whose dirt and rags left her quite indifferent to the splendour of their eyes, and to a certain unkempt artistic force. Such a crowd as filled San Martino was incomparably more picturesque than the straight rows of worshippers in an English church. Some stood, some sat, at intervals all knelt; and the broken headline, the strong contrasts, the columns and dim distances, the splashes of vivid colour sharply accentuated against a somewhat misty background, the faces, often remarkable and seldom insignificant, gave Donna Teresa, well accustomed as she was to such sights, an immediate gratification. Sylvia, meanwhile, concentrated her full attention upon the function. A cardinal officiated, and a group of priests were assisting under the direction of a short fat man, whose duty it was to instruct each what he should do—to pull one and push another into place, to whisper how the book was to be held, to indicate to the cardinal where he should read, to show the boy-server where to stand for the censing, and when to hand the censer to the cardinal; at all these varied movements Sylvia Brodrick stared with a riveted attention which assured her sister that she was interested. She was, therefore, the more amazed when Sylvia turned upon her with a whisper which was almost a cry—
“Let us go! Please let us go! I can’t bear it!”
Donna Teresa was always prompt. She immediately edged her way out, asking no questions until they reached more open space at the end of the church, where her quick eye caught sight of a vacant chair.
“Sit down, Sylvia. What is the matter? Are you ill?”
The other shook her head.
“I couldn’t stay, it was too dreadful!”
She spoke in a frightened voice, and Teresa flung a hasty glance round to see what had alarmed her.
“Do tell me,” she said encouragingly.