CHAPTER XXII
AFTER wandering for two or three months abroad, Cecily and Diana discovered that all roads lead to Rome. In Rome, therefore, they had been established for a week, when Cecily strolled one day alone, towards the garden of the Villa Medici.
It was Rose Summers, with whom, after the night of the dinner-party, Cecily had spent some weeks, who had urged upon Cecily this plan of travel. For some time previous to the break between Cecily and her husband, Diana had not been strong; she was made the excuse for the closing of the Westminster flat in the following autumn. Rose arranged the explanation. For the sake of her sister’s health, Cecily must at once take her abroad, while her husband, who, for business reasons connected with his work, could not go so far afield, had decided to divide the period of her absence between the country and a stay in Paris.
It was thus that Mrs. Summers strove to put a screen between an inquisitive public and the ruins of one more domestic hearth.
“They’ll talk, of course,” she observed, “and try to look through the chinks in the boarding; but as long as they don’t see too plainly, their talk doesn’t matter much.”
Cecily had acquiesced indifferently. “Just as you please,” she said. “All I want is to get away—and I shall not come back. But I quite agree that there’s no need to provide entertainment for literary tea-parties by saying so.”
“All I ask,” returned Rose, “is that you shall give yourself time; that you shall take no irrevocable step.” To which Cecily had responded by a smile and a shrug of the shoulders.
She had Mayne’s letter. He had seen Mrs. Summers. He intended to be ostensibly busied in getting together funds and volunteers for a new exploring expedition, the progress of which was to be extensively paragraphed. In the meantime, he told her, he simply waited. He was in her hands. At any moment a summons would bring him to her. It was a characteristic letter—terse, restrained, almost laconic in tone. The letter of a man who would not plead, because, under the circumstances, pleading seemed unfair; yet, after reading it, Cecily had never so fully realized the strength and abidingness of his love for her. She took the letter with her on her journeyings, and carried it about with her. It was never absent from her thoughts. It was in the background of her consciousness on the quay at Genoa, while she watched the teams of white horses in their scarlet coats pulling lumbering wagons. In thought she considered it, while with Diana she admired the picturesqueness of the shuttered houses, festooned with fluttering washing, or stooped to look inside the cave-like, fourteenth-century shops, or climbed the many steep flights of steps to the upper town, whence they looked upon an enchanting sea of roofs; roofs the color of faded carnations, of orange lichen, of mushroom brown, each with its tiny pergola of vines, its tub of oleander, or its orange tree. It was with her in Florence, when she stood before the great pictures in gallery or palace, when, at the sunset hour, the cathedral and the exquisite campanile were suddenly turned to mother-of-pearl and roses against the violet sky. It was with her here in Rome. To think of it, to ponder over all that it implied, to force herself to come to some decision, she had wandered to-day into the garden of the villa, glad to be alone.
Diana, who had made friends with a lively party of American girls at the hotel, had joined one of their excursions to Tivoli, and would not be back till the evening. Cecily crossed the Piazza di Spagna, and paused to look at the banks of flowers which, piled up at the foot of the stately sweep of steps, make an exquisite foreground to one of the most charming pictures in Rome. Like bees, the flower-sellers instantly surrounded her, offering seashell-tinted and scarlet anemones, branches of deep orange-colored roses, sprays of feathery mimosa, violets, and quaint, flat little bouquets of pink rosebuds. She bought a bunch of the latter, and freeing herself from the buzzing crowd, began to mount the shallow, moss-grown steps, shaking her head smilingly at the little contadini models, with their elaborately picturesque rags, and their proffered nosegays. At the top, she paused as usual to glance over the beautiful ribbed roofs of the city, roofs which always made her think of brown shells cast up by the sea of time; shells that had suffered a sea-change.
Overhead in its blueness, was spread wide the “unattainable flower of the sky,” that Roman sky which blossoms like a flower of Paradise; and away to the right, as though floating in a blue ocean, stone pines lifted their islands of green, soft as velvet, into the clear air.