LIVORNO.
Photo by Brogi.
After that, as I grew older, Leghorn meant just the sea in some of its most enchanting aspects, for it was very rarely that we missed our few weeks of bathing there in September, if we had spent the summer in the north. It was the beginning of the autumn homecoming; we took an apartment on the long, bright boulevard that faces the sea, the cook and one or two of the servants came up from Rome to look after us, and, always, we had a royally good time. The last, I think, was the best of all, happening after a memorable summer in the Bagni de Lucca, which I have described elsewhere. My sister had just become engaged, and her fiancé, Erich von Rabe, of course followed us to Leghorn. Hugh Fraser was there, occupied mostly, it seemed to me, in saving the Paget children from getting drowned, since they would attempt to follow their indomitable young mother in her long swims out into the deep.
Lady Paget did everything beautifully; she was built like a goddess and could not do anything else, whether she rode or danced or glided about in great old rooms or flowery gardens; but she never seemed more of a goddess than when she stood for an instant in her clinging draperies with her arms above her head and then leapt, like a curved arrow, out and down into the sun-kissed waves. One held one’s breath while they engulfed her—and then, yards beyond, up came that proud, small head, and away she would go, with long, easy strokes, a being at one with the sun and the sea—a joy to behold.
All that was in the morning when the spaces under the big tents on the outrunning piers of the stabilimenti were crowded to the very edge with cheery, chattering groups, the ladies embroidering as fast as they talked, the children romping, the young men making love, and the old people, who would not face the cold joy of a plunge, smiling benignly on it all. The piers were low, and a sudden gust of wind would fling the salt water up without warning; then there were shrieks mingled with laughter, flurrying of skirts and scraping of chairs and snatching up of babies, and all the fun of settling down again, only to renew the game at the next shower. This gathering only took place in the morning. As soon as the sun was right overhead, the ladies packed their fancy-work into their reticules, wiped the remains of ciambelle from the children’s mouths, straightened their hats—all with an incessant fire of chatter like that of a tree full of roosting sparrows suddenly disturbed—and away everybody trailed along the blazing white boulevard for home, midday dinner, and the rapturous quiet of the siesta afterwards.
I believe I was a little jealous, even then, of the kind of official ownership which the Ambassador and his family seemed to claim in the man who, though neither of us dreamed it yet, was very soon to be my husband. Anyway, I permitted myself an occasional mood of pleasant melancholy towards evening when my own dear people, like all the others who had any deference at all for public opinion, were driving round and round the public gardens, listening to the band. Two of our party had agreed to slap public opinion quite brutally in the face; these were my erratic sister and her equally erratic fiancé. They hired a little sailing boat, and day after day, towards 4 o’clock, went off by themselves, unchaperoned save by the boatman, for long expeditions, whence they returned, gloriously happy and hungry, just in time for a very late dinner.
Once and once only they lured me out, why, I could not imagine at the moment, as I was a bad sailor in those days and did not in the least want to go. But I soon found out their wicked motive. I had taken it upon myself to order the meals while we were at Leghorn, as my mother thought it would be good practice for me. Now there was one dish which we all, except Annie and Erich, particularly disliked, a fry of very bony, very rank-smelling crayfish, called spannocchi. After one trial I had steadily refused to have it brought to the table. But those two young monsters liked spannocchi, and they laid their plot quite cleverly, and everything turned out just as they intended. We beat out to sea, the weather was squally, and in a short time I was lying, a sea-sick heap, in the bottom of the boat, begging with tears to be taken home. This was what they had been waiting for. “Not unless you promise us spannocchi for dinner to-morrow!” they exclaimed in a breath, grinning down at me in my misery. They looked as big and wicked as the pictures of the demon lover in our old ballad book, when he is sailing the faithless wife to hell!
Of course I promised—and was a most unpopular person with the rest of the family at dinner time the next night. But their boatman avenged me in the end. The day before we returned to Rome they took leave of him with a little present, and he, who had all along imagined them to be a young married couple, because they came unaccompanied, testified his gratitude and goodwill in true Italian fashion, by crying enthusiastically, “Heaven bless you, my good Signori, and may it be a fine boy!”
Annie put her head down and ran for home, and Erich was not allowed to come to dinner that night.