Cheerful-By Request Part 30

She groped her way cautiously down the black hall. Tina had a habit of leaving sundry brushes, pans or babies lying about. After the warmth of the March sun outdoors the house was cold with that clammy, penetrating, tomblike chill of the Italian home.

"Tina!" she called.

From the rear of the house came a cackle of voices. Tina was gossiping.

There was no smell of supper in the air. Mary Gowd shrugged patient shoulders. Then, before taking off the dowdy hat, before removing the white cotton gloves, she went to the window that overlooked the noisy Via Babbuino, closed the ma.s.sive wooden shutters, fastened the heavy windows and drew the thick curtains. Then she stood a moment, eyes shut.

In that little room the roar of Rome was tamed to a dull humming. Mary Gowd, born and bred amid the green of Northern England, had never become hardened to the maddening noises of the Via Babbuino: The rattle and clatter of cab wheels; the clack-clack of thousands of iron-shod hoofs; the shrill, high cry of the street venders; the blasts of motor horns that seemed to rend the narrow street; the roar and rumble of the electric trams; the wail of fretful babies; the chatter of gossiping women; and above and through and below it all the cracking of the cabman's whip--that sceptre of the Roman cabby, that wand which is one part whip and nine parts crack. Sometimes it seemed to Mary Gowd that her brain was seared and welted by the pistol-shot reports of those eternal whips.

She came forward now and lighted a candle that stood on the table and another on the dresser. Their dim light seemed to make dimmer the dark little room. She looked about with a little s.h.i.+ver. Then she sank into the chintz-covered chair that was the one bit of England in the sombre chamber. She took off the dusty black velvet hat, pa.s.sed a hand over her hair with a gesture that was more tired than tidy, and sat back, her eyes shut, her body inert, her head sagging on her breast.

The voices in the back of the house had ceased. From the kitchen came the slipslop of Tina's slovenly feet. Mary Gowd opened her eyes and sat up very straight as Tina stood in the doorway. There was nothing picturesque about Tina. Tina was not one of those olive-tinted, melting-eyed daughters of Italy that one meets in fiction. Looking at her yellow skin and her wrinkles and her coa.r.s.e hands, one wondered whether she was fifty, or sixty, or one hundred, as is the way with Italian women of Tina's cla.s.s at thirty-five.

Ah, the signora was tired! She smiled pityingly. Tired! Not at all, Mary Gowd a.s.sured her briskly. She knew that Tina despised her because she worked like a man.

"Something fine for supper?" Mary Gowd asked mockingly. Her Italian was like that of the Romans themselves, so soft, so liquid, so perfect.

Tina nodded vigorously, her long earrings shaking.

"_Vitello_"--she began, her tongue clinging lovingly to the double _l_ sound--"_Vee-tail-loh_--"

"Ugh!" shuddered Mary Gowd. That eternal veal and mutton, pinkish, flabby, sickening!

"What then?" demanded the outraged Tina.

Mary Gowd stood up, making gestures, hat in hand.

"Clotted cream, with strawberries," she said in English, an unknown language, which always roused Tina to fury. "And a steak--a real steak of real beef, three inches thick and covered with onions fried in b.u.t.ter. And creamed chicken, and English hothouse tomatoes, and fresh peaches and little hot rolls, and coffee that isn't licorice and ink, and--and--"

Tina's dangling earrings disappeared in her shoulders. Her outspread palms were eloquent.

"Crazy, these Englis.h.!.+" said the shoulders and palms. "Mad!"

Mary Gowd threw her hat on the bed, pushed aside a screen and busied herself with a little alcohol stove.

"I shall prepare an omelet," she said over her shoulder in Italian.

"Also, I have here bread and wine."

"Ugh!" granted Tina.

"Ugh, veal!" grunted Mary Gowd. Then, as Tina's flapping feet turned away: "Oh, Tina! Letters?"

Tina fumbled at the bosom of her gown, thought deeply and drew out a crumpled envelope. It had been opened and clumsily closed again. Fifteen years ago Mary Gowd would have raged. Now she shrugged philosophic shoulders. Tina stole hairpins, opened letters that she could not hope to decipher, rummaged bureau drawers, rifled cupboards and fingered books; but then, so did most of the other Tinas in Rome. What use to complain?

Mary Gowd opened the thumb-marked letter, bringing it close to the candlelight. As she read, a smile appeared.

"Huh! Gregg," she said, "Americans!" She glanced again at the hotel letterhead on the stationery--the best hotel in Naples. "Americans--and rich!"

The pleased little smile lingered as she beat the omelet briskly for her supper.

The Henry D. Greggs arrived in Rome on the two o'clock train from Naples. And all the Roman knights of the waving palm espied them from afar and hailed them with whoops of joy. The season was still young and the Henry D. Greggs looked like money--not Italian money, which is reckoned in lire, but American money, which mounts grandly to dollars.

The postcard men in the Piazza delle Terme sped after their motor taxi.

The swarthy brigand, with his wooden box of tawdry souvenirs, marked them as they rode past. The cripple who lurked behind a pillar in the colonnade threw aside his coat with a practised hitch of his shoulder to reveal the sickeningly maimed arm that was his stock in trade.

Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Gregg had left their comfortable home in Batavia, Illinois, with its sleeping porch, veranda and lawn, and seven-pa.s.senger car; with its two glistening bathrooms, and its Oriental rugs, and its laundry in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and its Sunday fried chicken and ice cream, because they felt that Miss Eleanora Gregg ought to have the benefit of foreign travel. Miss Eleanora Gregg thought so too: in fact, she had thought so first.

Her name was Eleanora, but her parents called her Tweetie, which really did not sound so bad as it might if Tweetie had been one whit less pretty. Tweetie was so amazingly, Americanly pretty that she could have triumphed over a pet name twice as absurd.

The Greggs came to Rome, as has been stated, at two P.M. Wednesday. By two P.M. Thursday Tweetie had bought a pair of long, dangling earrings, a costume with a Roman striped collar and sash, and had learned to loll back in her cab in imitation of the das.h.i.+ng, black-eyed, sallow women she had seen driving on the Pincio. By Thursday evening she was teasing Papa Gregg for a spray of white aigrets, such as those same languorous ladies wore in feathery mists atop their hats.

"But, Tweet," argued Papa Gregg, "what's the use? You can't take them back with you. Custom-house regulations forbid it."

The rather faded but smartly dressed Mrs. Gregg a.s.serted herself:

"They're barbarous! We had moving pictures at the club showing how they're torn from the mother birds. No daughter of mine--"

"I don't care!" retorted Tweetie. "They're perfectly stunning; and I'm going to have them."

And she had them--not that the aigret incident is important; but it may serve to place the Greggs in their respective niches.

At eleven o'clock Friday morning Mary Gowd called at the Gregg's hotel, according to appointment. In far-away Batavia, Illinois, Mrs. Gregg had heard of Mary Gowd. And Mary Gowd, with her knowledge of everything Roman--from the Forum to the best place at which to buy pearls--was to be the staff on which the Greggs were to lean.

"My husband," said Mrs. Gregg; "my daughter Twee--er--Eleanora. We've heard such wonderful things of you from my dear friend Mrs. Melville Peters, of Batavia."

"Ah, yes!" exclaimed Mary Gowd. "A most charming person, Mrs. Peters."

"After she came home from Europe she read the most wonderful paper on Rome before the Women's West End Culture Club, of Batavia. We're affiliated with the National Federation of Women's Clubs, as you probably know; and--"

"Now, Mother," interrupted Henry Gregg, "the lady can't be interested in your club."

"Oh, but I am!" exclaimed Mary Gowd very vivaciously. "Enormously!"

Henry Gregg eyed her through his cigar smoke with suddenly narrowed lids.

"M-m-m! Well, let's get to the point anyway. I know Tweetie here is dying to see St. Peter's, and all that."

Tweetie had settled back inscrutably after one comprehensive, disdainful look at Mary Gowd's suit, hat, gloves and shoes. Now she sat up, her bewitching face glowing with interest.

"Tell me," she said, "what do they call those officers with the long pale-blue capes and the silver helmets and the swords? And the ones in dark-blue uniform with the maroon stripe at the side of the trousers?

And do they ever mingle with the--that is, there was one of the blue capes here at tea yesterday--"

Papa Gregg laughed a great, comfortable laugh.

"Oh, so that's where you were staring yesterday, young lady! I thought you acted kind of absent-minded." He got up to walk over and pinch Tweetie's blus.h.i.+ng cheek.

So it was that Mary Gowd began the process of pouring the b.l.o.o.d.y, religious, wanton, pious, thrilling, dreadful history of Rome into the pretty and unheeding ear of Tweetie Gregg.

On the fourth morning after that introductory meeting Mary Gowd arrived at the hotel at ten, as usual, to take charge of her party for the day.

She encountered them in the hotel foyer, an animated little group centred about a very tall, very das.h.i.+ng, very black-mustachioed figure who wore a long pale blue cape thrown gracefully over one shoulder as only an Italian officer can wear such a garment. He was looking down into the brilliantly glowing face of the pretty Eleanora, and the pretty Eleanora was looking up at him; and Pa and Ma Gregg were standing by, placidly pleased.

A grim little line appeared about Miss Gowd's mouth. Blue Cape's black eyes saw it, even as he bent low over Mary Gowd's hand at the words of introduction.