Olive in Italy

by Moray Dalton

“Find out what she is going to do to-day,” she whispered.

Carolina nodded and her shrivelled monkey face was puckered into a smile. She came back presently. “She is going to the Duomo and then to colazione with the De Sancti. She will go with Signora Aurelia to see the Palio and only come back here to supper.”

Gemma went back to her room to finish her dressing. She put on a pink muslin frock and a hat of white straw wreathed with roses and leaves. Surely her beauty should avail to give her all she desired, light and warmth always, diamonds and fine laces, and silks to clothe her and give her grace, and the possession of the one man’s heart, with his name and a place in the world beside him. Surely she was not destined to live with Orazio and his tiresome mother, penned up in a shabby little house in Lucca, and there growing old and hideous. She sat before her glass thinking these thoughts and waiting until she heard Olive’s quick, light step in the passage and then the opening and shutting of the front door. Carolina was in the kitchen and the others had gone to lie down, but she went into the dining-room and listened for a moment there before she ventured into her cousin’s room. She had often been in to pry when alone in the flat, and she knew where to look for the key of the attic in the Vicolo. Olive always kept it in a corner of the table drawer and it was there now. Gemma smiled her rare slow smile as she put it in her purse. There was a photograph of her aunt—Olive’s mother—on the dressing-table, and a Tauchnitz edition of Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon lay beside it, the embroidered tassel of the marker being one of Astorre’s pitiful little gifts. She swept them off on to the floor and poured the contents of the ink-stand over them. She had acted on a spiteful impulse, and she was half afraid when she saw the black stream trickling over the book and blotting out the face of the woman who had been of her kin. It seemed unlucky, a malore, and she was vexed with herself. She looked into the kitchen on her way out. “Carolina, if they ask where I am I have gone to church.”

The old woman nodded. “Very well, signorina, but you are becoming too devout. Bada, figlia mia!”

Siena is a city dedicated to the Virgin, and the feast of her Assumption is the greatest of all her red-letter days. The streets had echoed at dawn to the feet of contadini coming in by the Porta Romana, the Porta Camollia, the Porta Pespini. The oxen had been fed and left in their stalls; there was no ploughing in the fields on this day, no gathering of figs, no sound of singing voices and laughter in the vineyards. The brown wrinkled old men and women, the lithe, slender youths in their suits of black broadcloth—wood gods disguised by cheap tailoring—all had left their work and come many a mile along the dusty roads and across fields to the town for the dear Madonna’s sake, and to see the Palio. The country girls had all new dresses for the Ferragosto and they strutted in the Via Cavour like little pigeons pluming themselves in the sunshine. They were nearly all pretty, and the flapping hats of Tuscan straw half hid and half revealed charming curves of cheek and chin, little tip-tilted noses, soft brown eyes. Many of the townsfolk were out too on this day of days and the streets were crowded with gay, vociferous people. There was so much to see. The old picture-gallery was free to all, and the very beggars might go in to see the sly, pale, almond-eyed Byzantine Madonne in their gilt frames, and Sodoma’s tormented Christ at the Pillar with the marks of French bullets in the plaster. All the palaces too were hung with arras, flags fluttered everywhere, church bells were ringing.

Gemma passed down a side street and went a little out of her way to avoid the Piazza del Campo, but she had to cross the Via Ricasoli, and the crowd was so dense there that she was forced to stand on a doorstep for a while before she could get by.

“What are they all staring at?” she asked impatiently of a woman near her.

“It is the horse of the Montone! They are taking him to be blessed at the parish church.”

The poor animal was led by the fantino who was to ride him in the race, and followed by the page. He was small and lean and grey, with outstanding ribs and the dry scar of an old wound on his flank. The people eyed him curiously. “An ugly beast!” “Yes, but you should see him run when the cognac is in him.”

Gemma began to be afraid that she would be late, and that He might find the door shut and go away again, and she pushed her way through the crowd and hurried down the Vicolo and into the house numbered thirteen. She was very breathless, being tightly laced and unused to so many stairs, and she stumbled a little as she crossed the threshold. She was glad to sit down on one of the chairs by the open window. The bare room no longer seemed conventual now that its unaccustomed air was stirred by the movement of her fan and tainted by the faint scent of her violet powder.