Polly the Pagan Part 10

Charlton and I made an excursion to Lucca the other day and quite a success it proved. Off we drove in the early morning, with pheasant feathers and jangling bells on our horses, trotting by the trellised vineyards, the vines wreathing between trees of mulberry, and the great bunches of grapes beginning to grow purple, past brakes of cane, between the walls of villas, up and over bridges where the rivers run higher than the country, banked up by the levees, on through the plain. In the distance rose the hills, deep blue behind and pale blue in ranges beyond. We met the country people coming from the fair at Borgo Buggiano--the greatest cattle market in Tuscany--driving beautiful white and brindled cows. Soon we came to the town itself and rattled along its flag-paved streets, making a great noise with cracking whip and warning cries, and the _contadini_ crowded up against the wall and stopped their business to watch us as we pa.s.sed the gay booths with displays of many colored, mottled, glazed earthen ware, set forth, perilously near our wheels.

Then out into the country again, and on across flat green meadows from which rise the ancient walls of Lucca with shaded avenues of sycamores. We walked on the ramparts after luncheon and visited the gallery of the Palazzo Ducale with its good Fra Bartolomeos, and the cathedral filled with tinsel votive offerings of all kinds, and paper flowers. There were preparations for a pilgrimage which is to adore the Holy Image, a wooden likeness of the Saviour which Saint Somebody rescued in Palestine once on a time and placed in a s.h.i.+p without oar or rudder and set adrift. So the s.h.i.+p floated, miraculously directed by Providence, to the sh.o.r.es of Italy, and wonderment came over the people who saw the vessel mysteriously cruising up and down. They tried to catch it, but it fled from them until one Archbishop of Lucca, awakened from a warning dream, went out to find it. And the moment the boat saw the aforesaid archpriest upon the sh.o.r.e it sailed confidingly up to him and delivered its sacred image, which so came to Lucca. This is quite like the House of the Virgin at Loreto which was brought by a flight of angels through the air to that town--to be a fruitful source of income, for hundreds of thousands of pilgrims visit the place each year.

P. S. How I should like to run up to Paris, but the Amba.s.sador would not approve of my having leave again. I am more disappointed than you can know, but I still hope to see you in America before long--am returning to Rome.

A. D. TO POLLY

_Rome, September._

Think of it! The middle of September--and already it seems as if Rome were taking on its preparations and spinning its web for the catching of foreigners. One or two of the shops in the Via Condotti and the Piazza di Spagna have taken down the shutters, and visitors have already been seen looking into the windows. Next the antiquity dealers will open, then the hotels, and after that--hurrah! I shall hope to see you in New York.

The past day you have been constantly in my thoughts and my heart. Let me see, where have I taken you? To the Emba.s.sy in the morning, into the city to do some commissions, down the Quattro Fontane, down the steep hill past the Barberini, cutting the corner of the piazza with its glorious Triton blowing the fountain of spray high into the air, and into the narrow little Triton Street--the wretched artery that joins the two Romes--with its crowd of carriages and carts and people moving slowly, and then to the right along the Due Macelli, and so to the sunny Piazza di Spagna. Later in the afternoon while sitting in my rooms, Jonkheer Jan came to see me, looking the same as ever, thin, tall, and blonde, and stayed on till I was sure he would be late for his dinner. Do you remember how he would come in late to see you, always in a hurry, with smiles and excuses and profuse apologies, twisting his ring around his finger?

The British secretaries have gone to Frascati in a body to stay till repairs have been made on the Emba.s.sy. So I went out there "to dine and sleep" as they call it in England, and enjoyed the little outing very much. This morning I took an early train and came down the hillside, between the groves of grotesque olive trees and across the endless rolling Campagna half hidden in mauve-colored mist, with its unholy charm, its lonely skeletons of towers and procession of aqueducts, the great graveyard of the mighty Past.

How I should like to be in Leicesters.h.i.+re with you, though. You know I feel like saying that the trip through the Trossachs, the visits to Holland House and Knole Park, and the other things which you haven't been able to do this year, we can do some time together! I am almost afraid to add, "Can't we, shan't we?" for fear you may answer back at once "Indeed no! What _are_ you talking about?"

Isn't the way they do things in England funny? The conventions are amusing for a time--and pleasant too,--then they become chill and monotonous, like the endless green hedges and woods and parks of lovely England. But one gets tired, after seeing them day after day, year after year, and I used to ache for a patch of American landscape with its sunburnt yellow corn, its brown earth, its zigzag snake fences of the south, and its whitewashed shanties with the real good old-fas.h.i.+oned negro loafing about in tattered trousers and coat.

I have just received an amusing letter from Checkers in which he says; "Give up the diplomatic service, old boy. Come to America and go into business with me. You'll be as good at it as a gold fish, for you've been around the globe; you'll make money cabbage, for you've got a head."

Who knows, I may.

POLLY TO A. D.

_Leicesters.h.i.+re, October._

"Bye baby bunting--papa's gone a-hunting!" But I am letting the cat, or rather the fox out of the bag.

You know we're staying with friends at Kibworth. A carriage met us at the station and brought us to Carlton Curlieu Hall, a fascinating old house, part of it built in the fifteenth century and part Elizabethan, with a garden, great trees, and a little pond. Near by are the stables with nine hunters, and farther away is an old church with its vicarage, and the village--a few low houses of red brick, some with thatched roofs.

I had the bed-room Oliver Cromwell slept in the night before the battle of Naseby. Most of these old houses have a ghost, but Oliver, I'm sorry to say, didn't appear.

We are having a ripping time. The Honorable Violet somebody or other is here, among others. She is lady-in-waiting to the Queen, and a very charming person. But I don't know nearly so many Lords and Dukes and things as you do. I used to detest such people, being an American, but I find I have changed my mind. What few I have seen have been perfectly delightful.

Well, the meet yesterday was just like some hunting-pictures we have at home, with maybe two hundred people, the women and children mostly on ponies, or driving two-wheeled carts. Then came the ride to cover, and the drawing. The field was made up of all cla.s.ses, statesmen, parsons, peers, and farmers,--all the way from the d.u.c.h.ess of Hamilton, homely in a brown habit and riding as hard as a man, to a horse-dealer.

It was quite windy, and most of them said to each other as they pa.s.sed, "Good morning. It's a beastly windy day!"

The hounds rushed in and out of the covers in the hope of finding a fox, and the huntsmen hallooed and blew their horns. There wasn't any fox in the first cover, but at last one was discovered in the open, and so the pack went scurrying, the huntsmen after them, and the whips. To my surprise, instead of going straight over a hedge into the next field, most of the men went galloping off toward a gate. I didn't know before that it was bad form to jump unnecessarily. Quite different in America.

Helter-skelter through the back yards and gardens of the little cottages we rode, scattering chickens and pigs and children right and left, while the village people stood in their doorways and watched the hunters stream past.

Then there was a check--the fox had hidden in one of the barnyards, and the huntsmen, hounds, and all the small boys searched for him, while everybody else stood round or walked about in the square in front of the Bull Head Inn. Soon there was a halloo--the fox had been found hiding in a hay mow. He was driven out, "broken up" and the carca.s.s given to the dogs, who yelped and barked and fought for the pieces. The brush was given to me.

Now you can't say I haven't written you a long letter, dear old A.

D.,--but it was such a wonderful day that I just had to tell you all about it.

POLLY TO A. D.

_Leicesters.h.i.+re, October._

Now for a confession! There are two young men here at the house party.

One is big and homely and loose-jointed but a good sort, while the other is dark and very handsome and goes to Oxford. He gave me his picture and asked if he couldn't have mine for his watch. I told him I was surprised that he didn't have a girl's photograph for his already.

Before I knew it, he had opened my watch and seen you. I didn't know exactly what to do, so I said you were my older brother. He swallowed it all down seriously, and in fact remarked that he thought I looked very much like you. I feel immensely flattered and only wish it were true.

But I am not going to write you any more sweet letters. It isn't because I have changed one bit in my feelings toward you, but because variety is the spice of life, and if you have too many nice things written to you, you won't appreciate them, and I have been good for a long time now. Besides, you say you are not coming to Paris and I am very cross.

Aunt sends her best wishes and says, "Men are April when they woo, and December when they wed." I'm afraid that is true to life--don't you think so?

A. D. TO POLLY

_Rome, October._

Oh, little Polly the Pagan, you say that variety is the spice of life and accordingly you won't write any more sweet letters for a time, so I must hurry to tell you that spice is one of the things forbidden in the diet of my cure, and so I know you won't force me to take any. You must, you _must_ write me real love letters, or something fatal may happen to me.

Do you wish me to stop writing pretty things to you, now that you have stopped writing them to me? Because, if that is the case, I--I can't do it! So you see, I plan to keep on pestering you day after day, and you may say, oh, well, as long as it makes him happy, let him continue. The Frenchwoman's philosophy is that woman's greatest happiness is in making man happy. She may not really care for him, but she will pretend to, if it makes his heart glad. That is pretty good philosophy. Since you are soon to be in fair France, you should consider the French point of view!

As for your Aunt's quotation, "Men are April when they woo, December when they wed," why, that is easily explained. It means that fires burn more hotly in the cold month and more steadily than in flowery April.

Peppi and I had all yesterday evening together, and a very pleasant time of it, too. I went over to his studio and found him. He made a delightful picture, frowzy-haired but handsome in his bright blue blouse, with his pallet in his hand, and his pet white goose following him about, lifting her yellow beak to be fed, and spreading her snowy wings. He explained he had purchased her for her feathery plumage to help him in a picture he was painting of an angel. We dined at the Cambrinus in the garden with colored lights where it was cool and pretty. And then afterwards I took him to the circus. We meet there almost every night. It is an epidemic here.

Oh, a most excellent circus that puts on a lot of style! The band blared out the same old music, marches for the athletes to come stalking in by and polkas to mark time for the horses, and a really most beautiful creature, she looks a little like Mona Lisa, performed on the trapeze--it was great, great fun.

As I can't go up to Paris, isn't it possible for you to sail home by way of Naples so I can get a glimpse of you?

POLLY TO A. D.

_Leicesters.h.i.+re, October._

On coming back from a drive today, dear, we saw some gypsies camped by the roadside, so we stopped and gave them the remains of our picnic luncheon. They invited us into their tents and told our fortunes. An old gypsy declared the cards said a gray-eyed woman with a mysterious smile might give me trouble and that a handsome man in the south would disappoint me. Now what do you think of that?

Say to Peppi that I hope he is not falling in love with that trapeze girl for Aunt wouldn't like it. But how about you?