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.