VII
I
The morning of Mario’s holiday ushered in the beginning of a heat wave. Rosa was up by five o’clock preparing the luncheon basket. A large panettone had arrived the previous evening, sent by a friend of Mario’s; it had to be cut into four fat quarters before it would fit into the hamper. Fabio had sent round a length of salame and a very ornate pork pie, while Nerone had made no less a contribution than two large bottles of Orvieto in honor of the occasion.
“For,” said Nerone—to console himself at parting with a wine of so excellent a vintage—“it is not very often that a holiday occurs, and when it does one should be generous.” Rosa, her fringe done up in curl papers, her nose already pink and shiny, rushed hither and thither in a flannel dressing-jacket worn over her petticoat.
“Via! Via!” she was always exclaiming, pushing Berta and Geppe out of her way: “Via! Via! Who told you to get up? I command you to go back to bed!”
But Berta and Geppe were not thus to be disposed of, nor for that matter was their father. Mario kept wandering in and out of the kitchen—he was bursting with foolish suggestions.
“I would pack the hard-boiled eggs at the bottom of the hamper; that way they will not get so cracked; they will be steady.”
“Via! Via, Mario!” cried Rosa, frowning. “I shall put all the eggs on the top of the hamper; the bottles of wine must go at the bottom, under the panettone.”
“I would like my tobacco put in the hamper, too, so that it will not bulge my pocket. I do not wish to spoil my best suit, and my rubber pouch has just split.”
“We do not wish to eat your tobacco,” Rosa snapped, “nor do we wish to have it as a flavoring. Can’t you go and will you get us our breakfast?”
“We are hungry! We are hungry!” chanted Berta and Geppe, beginning to jump up and down.
Then Mario laughed and went off to his bedroom; his face was beaming with pleasure. “What a day!” he exclaimed, throwing open the window. “Holy Mother of God, what sunshine!”
The hamper packed and their breakfast eaten, Rosa washed both children.
“Ow!” grumbled Geppe as Rosa’s large finger entered his ear with the washrag.
She shook him slightly and prodded again. Presently she oiled down his hair; when she had finished it looked like black paint, but Rosa was pleased with the effect. She dressed him with care in his best sailor suit, the one that was trimmed with white braid.
“If you dirty yourself I will beat you!” she lied. “Go and sit over there on that chair.”
Berta’s toilet was much more complicated; Berta herself saw to that. “I wish to wear my white muslin dress, the one that they gave me at the convent,” she stamped.
“That you shall not,” announced Rosa with decision.
“It was given you to honor Our Blessed Lord, when you take part in His procession.”
“Nevertheless, I will wear it,” said Berta, and she promptly sat down on the floor.
“Cattiva! You will wear your pink print.”
“I will wear my white muslin,” said Berta mulishly. “I will wear nothing else but that.”
“Mario!” called Rosa, “come and speak to this Berta; she refuses to put on her dress.”
“And what does she wish to wear?” inquired Mario, sauntering in from his bedroom.
“The muslin that the good nuns gave her last year for the Blessed Sacrament procession.”
“And why not?” smiled the father, filling his pipe. “Why may she not wear the muslin?”
Rosa looked shocked. “Because,” she said gravely, “it belongs to Our Blessed Lord.”
“He will not object, I am certain,” said Mario. “He would wish his little Berta to be happy.”
So Berta got her way and wore the white frock, blue bows, silver medal and all.
“And see that you do not lose the medal or soil the ribbon,” cautioned Rosa.
Mario retired to make his own toilet. He examined his clothes that lay ready on the chair; a dove-grey suit, a pink shirt and collar and a brand-new crimson silk necktie.
“Va bene,” said Mario, “but where are my boots? Where are my new brown boots? Rosa!” he bawled, “come and find me my boots—I have looked, but they are not here!”
Rosa came in with her mouth full of pins; she too had been dressing at that moment. “Here are your boots, cretino,” she said crossly, producing them from the wardrobe, “but I would not advise you to wear them; it is hot, they are certain to draw your feet.”
“That is nonsense!” he told her, “I wish to wear them; what one wishes to do never hurts.”
He fondled the yellowish leather with his hand, then he rubbed it on the bedspread.
“Magari!” sighed Rosa, “between you and the children, I think we shall never get off. I so carefully warned Geppe to keep himself clean, and now he has spilt coffee all down his blouse.”
At that moment Gian-Luca arrived, looking hot in a knickerbocker suit of brown tweed. He was wearing a spotlessly clean Eton collar and a ready-made blue satin bow.
“Ah! Gian-Luca!” exclaimed Mario, “you are fine this morning, almost as fine as I am!” and Mario surveyed himself in the glass, turning first this way, then that. “Now you have come, it is time we start,” he continued, straightening his necktie. “Let us go and collect the luncheon-basket, also Rosa and the children.”
II
They walked as far as Piccadilly Circus, Mario carrying the hamper. At the Circus they climbed to the top of a bus bound for Hammersmith Broadway.
“Be careful! Be careful!” shrieked Rosa to Geppe, who was trying to swing himself up by the handrail.
“He will hit me in the face with his heels,” fussed Berta; “I wish you would make him behave!”
Mario was stopped at the bottom of the steps by a kindly but firm conductor. “You must leave that ’amper with me,” said the conductor; “no ’ampers allowed on top.”
“Not so,” retorted Mario; “I will take him on my lap—I will nurse him—he cannot be left!”
The conductor pulled the cord and the bus moved off slowly behind the stout, sweating horses.
“I will not leave him!” cried Mario, still clutching his hamper; “you see, I take him on my lap.”
“Oh, all right.” The conductor stood aside for him to pass, and Mario struggled up the steps.
The bus was very full—Geppe sat on top of Rosa. “Here we are!” shrilled Berta from her seat beside Gian-Luca. “You will have to go over there and sit beside Mamma.” Mario squeezed in with the hamper on his knees; it grew heavier every moment. “Dio!” he groaned, “what is living in this hamper? Is it perchance a giant?”
“You take Geppe and give it to me,” suggested Rosa; “I will now hold it for a little.”
Their burdens exchanged, they began to mop their faces—it was growing exceedingly hot.
At Hammersmith Broadway the crowd was enormous, and most of it was waiting for the bus to Kew Gardens.
“You had better carry Geppe,” said Rosa to Mario; “I fear that he may get lost.”
Geppe objected, beginning to cry: “I want to walk with Gian-Luca!”
As his father picked him up, he beat with his heels: “Put me down, put me down, I tell you!”
Rosa dragged Berta along by the hand, while Gian-Luca struggled with the hamper.
“No more room on top!” yelled the harassed conductor. “Inside only, please.”
By dint of superhuman exertion, they managed at last to get in.
“Now then, young ’un, don’t gouge out my eyes with that basket!” protested a voice to Gian-Luca.
There were several other children on the knees of their parents, all fretful and on the verge of tears.
“It’s this terrible ’eat,” said a mother to Rosa; “it do try ’em, don’t it, the ’eat?”
The smell in the bus suggested that it did—the sun was blazing through the windows.
“Phew! Ain’t it awful!” a lady complained, clinking her black jet bugles.
Berta sat scratching her nettle-rash, and Geppe’s nose required attention. Gian-Luca peered over the top of the hamper, his collar was feeling rather tight.
“May I undo my collar?” he whispered to Rosa.
But Rosa shook her head: “No, no, caro, you look so nice as you are; you cannot undo your collar.”
He subsided behind the hamper again, so as not to see Berta who was making him itch. He wished that Mario would observe Geppe’s nose—it really did require blowing. Rosa’s fringe had begun to come out of curl—Gian-Luca noticed that too—one long, black strand was gradually uncoiling; very soon it would be in her eye. Her hat—last summer’s—looked rather jaded, the roses no longer very red; however, by contrast, Berta’s headgear was a triumph; a yellow poke bonnet trimmed with cornflowers and daisies and tied under the chin with white ribbon. Berta’s hair stuck out in a bush behind; her eyes stared, inquisitive and greedy. “I am hungry,” she was saying; “how long does it take?”
“We are nearly there,” consoled Rosa.
III
Kew Gardens lay like a jewel in the sun, the grass green and gleaming as an emerald.
“Ma guarda, guarda!” cried Mario in delight; “have we walked into Paradise?”
Gian-Luca paused to examine a magnolia that grew just inside the gate.
“Come on!” ordered Mario; “we have very much to see; we cannot waste time, we must hurry!” He was walking a little lopsidedly now, by reason of the hamper that he had taken from Gian-Luca. His boater straw hat had slipped back on his head, his shoulders were hunched with effort.
They passed a hothouse and a small museum. “Those are for later,” said Mario; “I think now we will make for the large museum; that is of interest, I remember.”
On the way Geppe spied some enticing-looking ducks, swimming on an artificial lake.
“Come on! Come on!” called Mario, sharply; “we have no time to play with ducks.”
The museum was stuffy and very dull, two cases only were amusing. These stood by the door; they contained little people—natives with carts and oxen. The children stopped in delight before them.
“What funny clothes!” remarked Berta.
Gian-Luca agreed.
“Oh, look, oxen!” piped Geppe, blurring the glass with his breath.
“Come, piccini!” came Mario’s voice in the distance. “Come, Rosa, there are two more floors.”
They turned reluctantly to follow the voice, which seemed always to soar on just ahead. At the foot of the stairs they caught it up.
“I think I will stay here,” said Rosa.
“As you please,” Mario smiled; “but we will see all. Come, children, come on, Gian-Luca!” And he and the children disappeared up the stairs, leaving Rosa to wait at the bottom.
The tour of the museum completed at last, Mario bethought him of luncheon. “I think we might go to the Pagoda,” he suggested; “do I not see its top across there?”
“It is such a long way off, and already it is late,” complained Rosa; “let us find a place nearer.”
In the end they sat down in the shade of a wood. It was only a small imitation wood, an incongruous and rather pathetic thing, trying to look wild and romantic and careless, a few hundred yards from a hothouse. However, there were beech trees and many sanguine birds—there were also bluebells in the grass.
“Look, Mario, are they not lovely?” exclaimed Rosa.
But Mario’s gaze was very far away. “We ought to have gone to that Pagoda—” he said slowly, “I can see it over there against the sky.”
Gian-Luca was staring intently at the bluebells; he stooped and touched them with his finger. They were cool and fine as though wrought in wax, their heads bent sideways a little. Something in the blueness and coolness of them reminded him of his pictures—the pictures that never came to him now when he lay between sleeping and waking—but something in this blueness and coolness made him sad, not happy like things seen in his pictures. He resented this sadness; he frowned at the bluebells and suddenly pushed them with his foot.
“Have I not got myself?” thought Gian-Luca; then wondered what that could have to do with bluebells.
Rosa was unpacking the luncheon-basket and Mario was opening a bottle of wine. Berta and Geppe were trying to quarrel, but they could not settle down to it, their attention kept on wandering in the direction of the food.
Gian-Luca accepted a large hunk of pie, and began to forget his depression; for after all, at eleven years old, many mysteries—like bluebells and sudden sadness and belonging to one’s self—seem much less disturbing once the cry of the stomach is appeased.
“Madonna! What excellent wine!” gurgled Mario, drinking his second glass. “Your father is as mean as a Genovese, Rosa, but today he has been generous like an emperor.” They gorged until Berta and Geppe grew sleepy, and Rosa’s head nodded on her bosom. But Mario was not sleepy; like a lion refreshed, he began to pace up and down.
“Come on! We must go to the Pagoda,” he urged. “Avanti! There is not much time.”
They struggled to their feet. Rosa repacked the hamper, then she wiped Geppe’s mouth and tied on Berta’s bonnet, after which they had to hurry to catch up with Mario, who was out of the wood already. On the way to the Pagoda there were prunias in blossom, a sight to rejoice sore eyes, but Mario stumped forward with never a glance.
“Come on, avanti!” he kept on saying.
However, when at last they reached the Pagoda, Mario’s thoughts appeared to stray. “We have not seen the hothouses yet,” he told them; “and they are not to be missed.” The first houses that he chose stood all in a row; five broiling, progressive hells. No need to go out into the air for a moment; you could pass from one to the other. At the fourth degree of torment, Rosa protested:
“I cannot support it,” she gasped.
“I feel sick,” put in Berta, hoping for attention.
“As for me, I like it!” bragged Geppe.
Gian-Luca was not sure that he himself did like it; he felt rather sorry for the trees. They were tall, anxious trees, always doomed to look through windows; and, moreover, they had grown and grown, until their heads were pressing against the glass roof. But Mario, once started on a quest for knowledge, was not at all easy to coerce; he might pause for a moment to read out a label, to elicit some scrap of information from a keeper; but before there was even time to draw breath, he would be off again, faster than ever.
There were many other houses, some cooler, some hotter, but all of great interest to Mario, it seemed.
“I know I am going to be sick!” announced Berta, punctually every five minutes.
At last Rosa struck; they had now reached a house that was tactlessly known as: “The Stove.”
“Into this, my friend, you shall penetrate alone; we will wait outside,” she said firmly.
Even Mario showed signs of wilting a little when he finally emerged from “The Stove,” but not for very long; having dried his drenched forehead, he suggested a tour of the gardens.
“I am told,” he remarked, in the pompous voice of one who imparts information, “that these wonderful gardens extend for many acres—two hundred and eighty-eight, I believe—and at every few yards there is something of interest; we missed a great deal when we came here last time.”
His eyes were so round and his face was so eager that Rosa forbore to protest; so once more he started his caravan in motion, and they went for a tour of the gardens. It would not have been so tiring had he been content to investigate objects of interest as they came, but his mind worked faster even than his legs; he was always breaking off in the middle of one thing in order to push on to the next. Then his conscience would smite him:
“Let us go back a minute to King William’s Temple, it is not very far.” Or: “Perhaps we should have gone to the other museums; up to now, we have seen only one.”
In the very middle of the Rhododendron Dell, he stood still abruptly and groaned.
“What is the matter?” inquired Rosa in alarm.
Mario did not answer, but when he walked on he was limping like a horse with a splint.
“Did I not tell you that those new boots would draw?” inquired his wife, almost crossly.
“You did,” he admitted, “and, as usual, you were right; they draw with the strength of the devil!”
Berta and Geppe began to hang back.
“I am tired and my head aches,” whined Berta.
“I have got a stone in my shoe,” whimpered Geppe, “and that hurts much more than a bunion!”
Gian-Luca’s collar got tighter and tighter; he felt as though he must burst. It was his turn to carry the hamper again, and his arm was beginning to grow stiff. Rosa’s hat had slipped to one side of her head, her fringe was completely out of curl; her kind, plump face looked dusty and sallow, there were rings of fatigue round her eyes. Berta’s white frock had a rent in the side—caught on a branch in passing. Geppe limped along in imitation of his father, and as he limped, he complained. But Mario, still happy in spite of his anguish, pushed on with the courage of an explorer.
“There are still some museums, and then the Kew Palace,” he smiled, taking Rosa’s arm.
“My dear,” she murmured; “my very dear Mario—are you not worn out, amore?”
“I am splendid,” he told her. “Just a little bit lame, but otherwise I am splendid.”
They were gentle with each other, the two of them, these days—now they seldom, if ever, quarreled. The passions of their youth were cooling a little, and with their passions, their tempers. Then the frequent quarrels between their offspring left little time for their own; they were too busy coping with Berta and Geppe to devote much thought to themselves.
Mario said: “It is very pleasant to get out of London for a little—even if one only comes to Kew Gardens; still, it is very pleasant.”
She nodded: “But I wish you had let me slit that boot, I cannot endure to see you hurt—”
He patted her hand: “Do not worry, donna mia; it would spoil the new boot to split it.”
They dragged themselves on through the last museums, and, finally, over the Palace; after which they found Rosa’s cheap little cake-shop, where Geppe once more ate jam tartlets.
IV
On the way home that evening Geppe fell asleep, leaning against his mother. His small hand was quite incredibly sticky, but Rosa held it in hers. Berta, very upright in the corner of the bus, blinked hard to keep herself awake.
“Look at that Geppe,” she whispered to Gian-Luca; “he sleeps—but then, he is so young!”
Having left Gian-Luca at Fabio’s side-door, they betook themselves slowly homeward. Rosa was carrying Geppe, still asleep, Mario was leading Berta; with his other hand he clung to the hamper, which bumped against his leg as he hobbled. A quiet May dusk, the friend of tired faces, went with them down the street.
V
“And have you enjoyed yourself?” inquired Rosa, when at last she and Mario lay side by side in bed.
“Ma sicuro,” he assured her; “oh, very much, my Rosa—only think of all that we have seen!”
Turning over he checked off the items on his fingers, calling them out one by one. There were not enough fingers, so he tapped on the bedspread, while she lay and watched him—smiling.