Donna Teresa passed before his mental vision more than once as he walked away from the Porta Pinciana, but he dismissed her image almost angrily. Sylvia, however, Sylvia? She was pretty, and somehow or other he felt grateful to Sylvia. If she were not very wise, it just crossed his mind that he had wisdom enough for two. His shadowy She had never been extraordinarily wise.
Chapter Four.
The misery, want, and degradation of Rome have this advantage over that of other cities, that they are lodged almost sumptuously in what should have been palaces. Those huge and hideous blocks of building which rear themselves in what are called the new quarters are no tumble-down age-stricken rabbit-warrens; they have marble staircases, airy rooms, balconies, ornamental ironwork, lofty doorways. Built for riches, they have never represented anything beyond rags, dirt, loathsome crowding, and, for their owners, bankruptcy; but they are better than dark cellars and fetid streets; and air, light, and sun, at least, visit their inhabitants. Moreover, blots as they are upon the old beauty of Rome, it is noticeable already from distant points, such as the front of Sant’ Onofrio, or farther along the Janiculum drive, where form is scarcely to be distinguished, that in colour, at least, they begin to harmonise better with their surroundings, and that the sun, the great alchemist of the South, is turning raw whites and greys into tawny gold and amber, and that soft indescribable tone which is at once the joy and the despair of the painter.
Seen more closely, however, their aggressive ugliness is appalling, and Teresa, as she walked along certain streets which lay below the ascent to San Pietro in Montorio, glanced at the overgrown blocks with extreme distaste. She could see something of the emptiness and dirt of the houses, the strings of ragged clothes fluttering from balconies, the evil-looking old hags stretching out skinny hands and muttering curses on her as she passed, the children with pinched and hungry faces, bare-footed, scantily clothed, with touzled hair and a smile which belongs to Italy, and Italy only. “Un soldo, signorina, un soldo! Ho fame!” Heaven help them; it was probably true; but Teresa, though she had soup tickets in her pocket, dared not give them yet, because she knew the word would pass from street to street, and that when she reappeared she would be surrounded, almost torn to pieces, by struggling claimants.
She found the number she was looking for, and picked her way up a broad staircase thick with accumulations of dirt. A ragged boy guided her to a door, at which she knocked. Another boy opened it, small, sickly, and lame. The two children stared at Donna Teresa, and she looked into the room with interest. It was fairly clean, miserably bare, and empty as to the man she wanted. In answer to her question, the lame boy shook his head. Cesare was his brother, he was out, he did not know when he would return. Teresa was unconsciously annoyed by a whine in his voice of the same kind as that which she had just passed through. She sent away the first boy, who peeped and listened from round a corner, and asked questions, getting, oddly enough, exactly the answers she expected. Cesare was long absent. Angelino, his brother, was often hungry—oh, often, and his back hurt him, but, certainly, that often, too. With easiest flexibility of conscience he was prepared to admit all suggested evils and to invent any others which might affect this signora in a benevolent direction, so soon as he caught a hint of what would best serve his purpose. Teresa was shrewd enough at last to find this out, and it changed her plan. Without giving a name she told the cripple that she would write to his brother, presented him with a lira for his own amusement, and fled. On her way home she reflected, with the result that in the evening a letter went to Cesare Bandinelli, enclosing five hundred lire and a few words: “Will you remember that I owe you a reparation, and accept this for Angelo.—T. di Sant’ E.”
She drew a sigh of relief when it was out of the house.
The next day was yet early when Nina, dumb but expressive, brought her a packet, which she recognised with a sinking heart. The money and her own letter were crammed into an envelope, as if thrust there by trembling and furious fingers. Not a word came with them, and Teresa’s face tingled as if she had been struck. After she had thought about it all day, she felt there was nothing to do except to accept defeat and to tell Wilbraham, hating the telling as we hate to repeat an insult, but forcing herself, under the impression that the incident counted better for Cesare than for herself.
“I ought not to have done it,” she owned.