Chapter VI
The Land of the Cosmopolite
To Anne the first few weeks of this Roman winter moved almost breathlessly. She was entering a social world more full of color and event than any she had ever known, and for the moment it absorbed her attention more than the city itself. It was also a world which she was conscious of charming easily; and whether in the salons of the Whites, where she met a liberal, spirited, and intelligent company, the men and women who are forming the national life of modern Italy, or in the ancient and more sombre palaces of the Blacks, where scholarly and subtle prelates showed her their ability to pay charming compliments, and gentle mannered, high-bred women of the old régime received her with delicate reserve, the girl felt herself happily, easily at home. She met a great number of ideas, and an equal eagerness to impart them. Conversational ardor was something for which social life in her own country had not prepared her, but among the Latins and most of those people who for reasons temperamental or otherwise have elected to live among Latins, she found it to a degree that amazed and delighted her.
“People are more interested in each other here than they are at home,” Anne admitted to Lady Fitz-Smith; “and there is such a great variety of people to be interested in.”
“It is probably true,” said the Englishwoman, “but Roman society is fairly ‘dégringolé’ these days. It does not talk so well or dress so well or eat so well as Paris, it lacks the intellect and power of London, it has no solidarity whatever; the Americans have spoiled that. But famous men and women pass through it now and again, and a small part of it is what all society should be: the recreation of the worker, instead of the work of the idle, which is, I believe, the case in America. Your scholars now, your professionals, your men and women of power and culture—I understand that it is impossible to get them to pay a call, and difficult to persuade them even to dine.”
“They are too busy,” said Anne.
“How very odd!” was Lady Fitz-Smith’s comment. “You must come to London, my dear. Why don’t you marry there and make your home there? It would suit you better than America.”
“I love America. I would never marry out of it.”
“Tut! tut! my dear! You Americans are so sensitive to criticism. I hope you won’t marry a Latin, whatever you do; and be careful also how you flirt with them. When they are hurt they strike. I say this because I hear you have walked in the Borghese Gardens alone with Gino Curatulo, and he is not one to be played with. Indeed, if it came to that, I think it would be safer to marry him than to play with him. There are two classes of Latin husbands. One of them marries to have a family and his wife is just the one woman in the world he would never dream of being in love with. To the other, his wife is the centre of the universe, and he will be nothing else but the centre of hers. If she walks out in the morning, he walks with her; if she is ill, he does not leave the house, and despairs, which is charming of him; if she buys a new dress, he must choose it with her, which would be a bore besides an inconvenience; if she talks to another man twice the same evening, ho thinks she is allowing him to make love to her, and is jealous. It becomes a question,” Lady Fitz-Smith chuckled, “it becomes a question which of the two husbands is to be preferred; but there is n’t, I think, any question of which kind Gino Curatulo would make. Now I must go to my ‘bridge’; but remember, my dear, don’t flirt with him.” And the Englishwoman went off on the arm of the Spanish Ambassador.
In the distance Anne could see Gino Curatulo, who had just come in, and been taken possession of by a woman who seemed determined not to let him go. He was facing Anne and looking at her so persistently that she felt sure of his seeking her as soon as it was decently possible for him to do so. She had no intention of giving up seeing him as much as she chose, even if by doing so she should cause him to fall in love with her, for she could not bring herself to regard the love of an Italian as a matter that would injure him seriously, and in spite of her friend’s warning she did not see how it could injure her.
A distinguished Russian occupied her attention while she waited for Gino. The stranger was a brilliant talker who had traveled much, and penetrated to little known and uncomfortable regions in search of worshipers and shrines of strange gods. He was especially attached to the Sun-God, who had his devotees to this day, as he explained to Anne, and always would have, so long as there was light and life—which were the same things—on this planet. The Russian talked fluently and eagerly, and the girl was a sympathetic listener. She did not wonder at his enthusiasm for the Sun-God, though it passed through her mind that at home such enthusiasm would have seemed a petty thing when there were such problems as the “living wage” and the high cost of living to grapple with. He told her of traces of sun-worship he was discovering in the museums of Rome, and of statues hitherto misnamed and misunderstood which he could prove to have been taken from the temples of his favorite heathen worship. He could show them to her if she wished; he would consider it a pleasure, an honor, a deep interest to do so. From the heathen god he was led to speak of his own, the God of the Universe, and he explained that he could not conceive of Him as other than the Three in One, the point of the triangle. It was not until he had studied geometry that he had been able to reach the understanding of a geometric God, and he found in the conception a highly satisfactory reconciliation of orthodoxy with exact science.
“God —the point of a triangle! A geometric God!” repeated the American girl, amazed.
“How else would you define Him, mademoiselle?”
“I cannot define Him at all,” she said. “If I could, I should not be able to feel that He was so much greater than myself.”
At this moment Curatulo joined her, and after a few perfunctory words he led her away to supper. For the first time she thought his expression an unpleasant one, and wondered what had happened to transform him so.
“It is fortunate that I am not jealous,” he said, without looking at her, as they walked through the crowded rooms.
“Jealous?” she repeated, in some bewilderment.
“Yes, or I should n’t have liked the way that Russian talked to you.”
Anne was amused. “He was telling me that he conceives of God as the point of a triangle,” she said.
“He didn’t look as though he was talking of God,” answered Curatulo, with a smile that was unpleasantly dry.
“He conceives of God geometrically,” continued the girl.
“He did not look as though he were talking of geometry.”
“What did he look as if he were talking of?”
“What does a man usually talk of to a girl with whom he is evidently so much charmed that all the room can see it?”
“Let us hope that he was as much charmed as he looked,” said Anne gayly.
But Curatulo was not gay.
“It is indeed fortunate that I am not a jealous man,” he repeated.
She saw that he was actually jealous, which diverted her more than the Russian traveler’s idea of God. Never in her own social world could she have found two such picturesque episodes in one evening. Had Gino been an American she would have amused herself with teasing him further; but some instinct warned her not to do so, and here she was right, for jealousy, which often draws and holds the Northern man, is equally likely to repel and ultimately drive away the Latin.
Gino inquired with gloomy punctiliousness what she would have for supper; but when he brought it to her he found so much sweetness and humor in her candid eyes, and so evident a request to be friends again, that his ill-temper vanished.
On this evening, however, fate was unfriendly to his desire to be with her alone, and they were immediately interrupted by an Englishman who had been at a dinner-party with Anne the day before. He was a writer of extravagantly romantic fiction, being himself a stout and middle-aged person, of the kind whom one would imagine to be sitting constantly in armchairs. He asked Anne how she was enjoying the sights of Rome, and she told him tranquilly that she did not enjoy them. She cared more for Florence.
“Too many churches here, eh?” he asked, with the indulgent twinkle in his eyes of one who is glad to be amused and friendly with the very young.
“I have only seen two,” answered Anne, who understood the twinkle perfectly. “I saw St. Peter’s and the Gesù, and I do not think I shall visit any more.”
“You do not like St. Peter’s?”
Anne answered calmly that she thought it nouveau riche, and the Englishman fixed a monocle in his eye and stared at the American girl.
“St. Peter’s nouveau riche!” he repeated, as though stupefied.
“We should call it so in America,” said Anne with apparent carelessness, though she was fully aware of the effect the words must produce.
“In America—but, my dear young lady!—”
“They tell me that the Gesù is the largest of the little churches,” she continued, “so I went there next. It is a gorgeous and ugly place, and so I did n’t see any more.”
“Perhaps you have also seen and disapproved of the Sistine Chapel?” suggested the Englishman.
“I could not enjoy that terrible battle of arms and legs and torsos which is called the Last Judgment, and I think the color of it is the ugliest color in the whole world,” she answered; and then, turning to Gino, she added: “I feel as though I must apologize to Signor Curatulo for abusing the city.”
But he shrugged his shoulders. “You may say what you like,” he said, “though I could tell you something better than what you say.”
The Englishman turned a vacant stare upon the Italian. It was also a brief stare, for though he did not intend to be rude, it was obviously not worth while to be aware for any length of time of so very foreign a person, who wore a colored stone instead of a pearl or gold stud in his shirt front, and more vests than was compatible with the British idea of simplicity or manhood.
Gino fixed a monocle firmly in his eye and looked at the Englishman haughtily; but Anne felt that the Anglo-Saxon’s sublime unconsciousness of either giving or taking offense gave him an advantage over her friend which she resented.
She did not speak of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or the impression of splendor and overwhelming majesty which she had received from it, because it amused her to startle the writer of romance. He was sitting now with his hands on his knees, looking at a spot above her head and chuckling in a kindly way to himself.
“St. Peter’s nouveau riche!” he murmured. “It is astounding, and the astounding part of it, my dear young lady, the astounding part of it, is that it is true.”
Anne laughed suddenly. “Ah, Sir Arthur, Sir Arthur!” she cried.
“But you are so young,” he continued, “and coming from a country which is certainly considered to be new, and—er—rich.”
“I know,” she said, “but we are being educated quite nicely. You old nations are educating us. Every year we buy your precious manuscripts, your pictures, your mantelpieces, parts even of your palaces, and there doesn’t seem any way for you to stop us.”
The Englishman was conscious through his rather thick skin that he had been hit, and he looked at the young girl with something of bewilderment at finding her so fair and fragile; but he was a kindly gentleman with the English instinct for fair play, and the girl was very fair and sweet to look upon, so he only shook his head at her with friendly reproach.
“The retort is just,” he said, “but you are a very formidable young person, very formidable indeed, and I see that it is not such as I, but a younger generation that must do battle with you.”
He made a bow and left her.
“How rude he was,” commented Anne, “and how nice! It is the same with Lady Fitz-Smith. Americans cannot be as rude as that and still be nice. I am beginning to understand now,” she cried, eager in her pursuit of national classifications. “Roughly speaking, the English one meets traveling are rude. The Americans are common. I think,” she added regretfully, “that I would rather be rude.”
“You think too much of international differences,” said Curatulo; “I wish you would think rather of the things which are alike. I wish you would think that a man is a man, and a woman a woman, never mind what side of an ocean they come from. And there is another thing—why must we always meet in salons where there are people about—annoying people who interrupt? You have reproached me with being frivolous, but is it not rather you who are frivolous? What do you see of Rome?” He began to speak rapidly, bending toward her with his elbows on his knees and his firm brown hands clasped between. “What do you know of its grave and spacious charm, which is so much deeper a thing than the decorative loveliness of Florence. Let me be your guide. You will find me a good one. I will show you some of the greatest statues in the world. I will show you a Greek vase three thousand years old and so beautiful that one could say one’s prayers before it. Or I will show you bits of stucco, fine and chaste as frost, and more lovely,—or we will go to visit a palace built by Michael Angelo, which has a grave beauty that rests one like quiet music.”
His voice, warm and vibrating, was in itself a definite wooing, and the room and the people in it did not exist for her while she listened to this man of another race,—a race more vivid, expressive, and eloquent than her own. She felt the man was calling her, not to see vases and statues, but to partake, with him, of the raptures and mysteries of life.
There was a slight pause; then, “Will you let me be your guide?” he asked.
Anne hesitated, thinking what this might mean, and while she sought to think clearly she was disturbingly conscious of the vitality and charm of the Italian as he bent his dark head and waited for her answer. She gave it almost involuntarily:—
“I should like to see Rome in that way—with you. Of course, I will let you show it to me.”
Curatulo did not lift his head at once.
“When can we start?” he asked.
“You know,” she said, “that we cannot go alone.”
He looked at her with quick reproach.
“Surely you did not expect that,” she added.
“I hoped.”
“But I told you only a few days ago in the Borghese Garden—”
“That was, as you say, a few days ago. Things can change—”
“But this has not changed.”
He leaned back in his chair and surveyed her with some bitterness.
“It was not my plan to go with you—and others,” he said. “I ask you to reconsider your decision.”
Anne laughed. “Signor Curatulo,” she said, “you are a very tyrannical person.”
“That may be,” he answered. “It is certain that I want what I want.”
“I see my aunt coming this way, and I imagine that she is going to take me home,” continued Anne. “Shall I ask her when she can find a day for us all three to begin to see Rome?”
“It becomes a question, then, whether I would rather go with you and a chaperone or not at all.”
She assented. “Why should it annoy you?” she asked. “You are an Italian, who are never permitted to see the girls of your own race alone.”
“You forget that I have been in England. So I know what is expected— and not expected!” His sudden and delightful smile broke the gloom of his face. “I know what is not expected, and I will be very good,” he said. “You can trust me.”
“You have a way of making it hard to refuse you what you want,” she answered.
“That is as it should be,” he said eagerly, bending closer to her; “please, ah please, signorina, do not, in this case, what you find it hard to do. You will find me so grateful and so good and restrained that a puritan parson born in a cold climate could not be more so.”
Anne blushed and laughed. This childlike eagerness combined with a very masculine determination, was unknown in the girl’s experience, and the childlikeness held a powerful charm for her because it was combined with such a vital manhood. She felt that to see anything in his company, whether it was a Grecian vase or St. Peter’s itself, would be a delight to her; but she made an effort and continued to deny him.
“It is not that I do not trust you,” she said, “and it is not that I do not want to go, but I am not willing that the kind of thing should be said of me that would be said if I went with you alone as you ask me to do.”
She rose hastily and advanced to meet her aunt.
“I am dreadfully sleepy,” said Margaret, “so I hope you are ready to go. It has seemed to me a dull evening.”
“Dull!” Anne could have laughed aloud.
Curatulo had followed the girl, and without looking at her he addressed Mrs. Garrison.
“Miss Warren has been good enough to say that you might find me useful as a guide to Rome,” he said. “Please consider me at your service for almost any day and hour you may wish. I can recommend myself as knowing almost anything the custode could tell you, and I have the added advantage of not costing a cent.”
Anne sent Curatulo an approving and delighted smile.
“Could we not go somewhere next Thursday, early in the afternoon?” she said, wishing to make his capitulation easy; and Thursday was arranged as a convenient day for all of them. They took leave of their hostess together, and he walked by Anne to that part of the large ante-chamber where an unnecessary number of maids and flunkies were waiting to hand them their wraps.
“I have yielded,” he said, “and I hope you enjoy your victory. Do not imagine, however, that all the victories are to be yours.”
The moment Margaret found herself closed in the automobile with Anne, she turned to her with some excitement.
“Anne,” she cried, “from the moment that I gave him permission to take us to the Diocletian next Thursday, until the door of the car shut him out, Curatulo never saw me. He never saw me in spite of his excellent European manners, and I am not small. It seemed as if he hardly knew where to put his feet, he was so occupied with you. Why have n’t you told me this?”
“Aunt Margaret! Didn’t you see, long ago?”
“Long ago!”
“Since that first afternoon he called.”
“And you knew it then?”
“Yes,” said the girl in a small voice.
Her aunt was silent for a while. “I must think what I ought to do about it.”
“Why should you do anything?”
“Will you promise me not to like him?”
“No, indeed, I will not, for I like him very much already. I like his brown hair and skin, and his brown small hands. And though he is small, I am sure he is also strong, and his shoulders are as broad as Jack’s. Sometimes he is eager and irrational as a child, and I like that, too, because he is always a man. So you see it is too late to promise not to like him. But you know that I do not love easily, and the Latin man has always seemed a being belonging not merely to another hemisphere, but another world. Moreover, he has not yet spoken to me of love.”
“In this country it would be exceedingly improper to speak to you before coming to me.”
“Nevertheless, if he speaks I think it will be to me, and not to you,” said Anne thoughtfully.