Part 2 (1/2)
”What are you doing?” he asked, with the freedom of a familiarity reaching back over long years. He shortened his step to keep time with hers, which she at the same moment lengthened.
”I have been for my singing-lesson.”
”And where are you going?”
”Home.”
”I haven't seen you for ages.”
”You haven't come. One never sees you, one never meets you anywhere any more.”
Her English was different from the ordinary in having occasional Italian turns and intonations. His partook of the same defect, but in a lesser degree.
”But I have come,” he stood up for himself, ”and you were all out except Lily. Didn't she tell you I was there? We had a long talk. She told me her plans for the future. She is going to keep a school for poor children. We discussed their diet and their flannels and every point of their bringing-up. We invented things to do on holidays to give them a good time. There is only one thing I can see leaving a doubt of this school coming into being. It is that Lily has moments, she confessed to me, of thinking almost equally well of a castle with a moat and drawbridge and a page to walk before her carrying her prayer-book on a cus.h.i.+on. She's a funny young one.”
”It's partly Fraulein.”
”How are they all?”
”Well, thank you. At least, I suppose they are well.” She gave a slight laugh at the humor of this. ”You could hardly imagine how little I see of them.”
”What has happened?”
”They have been going around with some new people, some Americans. They have been helping them to shop, and showing them the way one does things over here. Mother, you know, is always so ready.”
”Your mother is a dear.”
”Leslie is just like her. But I am sure they both enjoy it, too. They have not been home to lunch for a week.”
”And you?”
”Oh, I am not needed where there are already two who do the thing so much better than I could. I have not even seen the people. My day is very full, you know. Piano and singing-lessons, and I am painting again this winter, with Galletti, and I am going to a course of _conferenze_ on Italian literature. That involves a lot of reading.
There are, besides, the other, the usual things, the--” Her voice stuck; then, as she went on, deepened with the depth of a suppressed impatience. ”I wish one might be allowed not to do what is meant for pleasure unless one takes pleasure in it. But going to teas and parties is apparently as much a duty as school or church. Mother and Leslie at least seem to think it so for me.”
”I see their point, Brenda dear, don't you?” He was not looking at her as with a gentle brotherliness he spoke this.
”You don't go to many parties yourself, Gerald.”
”I am afraid nothing I do is fit to be an example to anybody. But it doesn't matter about me. About you it does. I can't say to you all I think. It would sound fulsome, and from such an old chum might make you laugh. But, being as you are, Brenda, surely your mother is right in thinking of _le monde_ as the proper setting for you. You know I'm not fond of _le monde_, but it's because it hasn't enough such ornaments as yourself. With the life that lies before you--”
”Who can possibly know what my life will be?” the girl asked quickly, almost roughly.
”True, Brenda. I dare say I am talking like a fool.” He left off, wondering that for a moment he should actually have been speaking on the side of convention.
They walked a few rods in silence. They had crossed the bridge, and were headed for Porta Romana, the handmaiden trotting in their tracks, when at a corner Gerald stopped, and, as if to change the subject, or to regain favor by a felicitous suggestion, said:
”Do you remember my telling you of a painting I came upon in a little old church on this street? _Scuola di Giotto_, they call it, but the thing is undoubtedly Sienese. Have you the time? Shall we take a moment to see it?”
”I should be glad. If you will walk home with me afterward, Gerald, I might tell Gemma she can go.”
There was an exchange of Italian between the young lady and the maid, after which the latter turned, and with a busy, delighted effect about the rear view of her walked back across the bridge to spend her gift of an hour in what divertis.e.m.e.nts we shall never know.