Irma in Italy Part 30

Of course Irma remembered. This was the girl upon whom she had so often looked from the deck above the steerage, the girl for whose family Marion had raised the subscription.

When the girl's words at last came to an end, Marion tore a leaf from his notebook and gave it to her, after he had written something upon it.

"_Grazie, grazie_," she cried, and then, when he shook his head to some request of hers, "_A rivederci_, signor and signorina," she cried, as they stepped toward the approaching car on which they were to return to the city.

"Now, I will explain," said Marion, as they rode toward Florence.

"Luisa hopes some time to return to America, and I have given her my mother's address, in case she should need advice from us." ("The second time," Irma thought, "I have heard Marion speak of his mother.")

"She was greatly disappointed," continued Marion, "that we could not go up to see the family. They have a little house back there on the hills, and with the subscription raised on the s.h.i.+p they could lease it for five years, and they have a little besides to keep them going until their garden is grown. The grandmother hopes to sell enough flowers and vegetables in Florence to pay for clothes and things they can't raise on the farm. It's surprising, though, how little it takes for people to live on over here. Luisa says she earns something by working for a cousin who has one of those little shops at the terminus, two days in the week."

While Marion talked, Irma longed to ask why he had been unwilling to add her little gift to the money he had raised for Luisa's family on the _Ariadne_. But, in spite of his being so friendly now, she did not quite dare question him. Later in the day, however, when alone with Aunt Caroline, she told her about Luisa, and brought up the matter of the subscription.

"Oh," said Aunt Caroline, "I can partly explain that subscription to you. Marion told me little at the time, but since then we have had a talk. Indeed he is much more inclined to confide in me than when we first left New York. He says that he spent more or less time among the steerage pa.s.sengers coming over, and when he found money did not come in readily for Luisa's family, he decided to make up the whole amount himself.

"He seldom changes his mind, when once he has decided upon a certain thing, and so when you offered your money he did not think it right to take it. You know Marion has a great deal of money of his own, and he could afford to do all that was necessary for this poor Italian family.

I am sorry, however, that he hurt your feelings, for really Marion is goodhearted. Of course he has had a particularly hard time this year, and has not yet got over the effects of all he has been through."

"Now," thought Irma, "I will ask Aunt Caroline to tell me all about Marion. Every one else seems to know, and I hate mysteries." But before she had a chance to ask the question, Marion and Uncle Jim appeared on the scene, and the opportunity was lost.

After this the days at Florence pa.s.sed swiftly. Aunt Caroline was absorbed in the galleries, and Uncle Jim or Mrs. Sanford spent much time there with her. The young people did their sightseeing by themselves, Richard, Ellen, Irma, and Marion, at least. Katie seemed, as Richard put it, "disaffected." She said she had been in Europe too long to care to spend much time over galleries and historical places.

"Shopping is much more necessary now, as I am to sail so soon, and grandmamma is willing to pay duty on any amount of things."

So, while Katie bought embroidered dresses, and spent hours over fittings, the others made what Ellen called "pilgrimages." Once it was to the old palace that had been Michelangelo's home, lately presented to Florence by a descendant of his brother. There they saw furniture and smaller belongings of the great man, ma.n.u.scripts and sketches and plans of some of his great works, and on the walls of one room a series of paintings representing dramatic incidents in his life.

"And yet he died almost a century before Plymouth was settled," said Irma, returning to the historical comparisons of the first part of her trip.

Again, one day, rambling through a narrow street, they came to the so-called "house of Dante," a tiny dwelling with small rooms and steep stairs, and though Marion tried to throw cold water on the enthusiasm of the girls by telling them that no one now really believed this to be the house where Dante had lived, they only laughed at him.

"No one can prove that it is _not_ the house where he was born; and every one knows that it belonged to his father. But at any rate it's a charming little museum, and since I have seen all the interesting ma.n.u.scripts and books there, I am more anxious than ever to read Dante,"

and Ellen patted her brother's arm, adding, "No, Richard, what we wish to believe we will believe, especially when it's true."

"Just like a girl," responded Richard, smiling.

One other day they made a pilgrimage to the Protestant cemetery, chiefly to please Ellen, who wished to see the grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. They found it without trouble, a plain marble sarcophagus on Corinthian columns, with no inscription except the initials of the poet and the date of her death. Near the sarcophagus a few pink roses were in bloom.

"How I wish I dared pick one," sighed Ellen.

"Why not?" asked Richard. "There's no one but us to see, and we won't tell."

Irma was not sure how much in earnest Richard was, but she believed he was only in fun, for he made no reply to Ellen's, "Oh, I think there's nothing worse than carrying away flowers and stones as souvenirs. I have known people to do such silly things. Surely you remember Hadrian's villa."

Now Irma, although she had no clue to Ellen's reference, at once recalled her own success in securing a fragment of marble from this same villa of Hadrian's, and what it had almost cost her. Even while she recalled it, it seemed to her that Marion glanced significantly toward her, yet she was sure she had never told him what had caused her to miss her train on that eventful evening.

One never to be forgotten day, Irma, Uncle Jim, and Aunt Caroline went down to Perugia. Mrs. Sanford and her party had been there before their arrival in Siena, and Marion, who said he hadn't time for both, preferred a trip to Pisa. But to Irma, the railway journey itself, through tunnels, past mountain towns, around the lovely sh.o.r.es of Lake Thrasymene, was something long to be remembered.

"If I hadn't come to Perugia," she said to Uncle Jim, "I suppose I shouldn't have known what I had missed, but now it seems as if I shouldn't have really known Italy without coming here. It is so much larger than Orvieto, and brighter, and yet it is a hill town with streets that tumble into one another, and picturesque arches, and though it hasn't an Orvieto Cathedral, it has more beautiful churches than one expects to find in a place of its size. Then that perfect little Merchants' Exchange! One could spend a day there studying the frescoes.

There are more quaint carvings on the outside of the buildings than in most places we have seen, and in spite of this broad main street, with the trolley cars running through it, it seems still a mediaeval town, a cheerful one, not a melancholy one like San Gimignano. Then I shall be very proud when I go home to say that I have actually been in the house where Raphael lived and taught before the world knew how great he really was."

"A long speech for a little girl," said Uncle Jim, "but it doesn't explain your unwillingness to stay with your aunt this morning while she makes a careful study of the exhibition of Umbrian art."

"Why, I think it _does_ explain it. I was there long enough to learn Perugino by heart, his funny little bodyless angels, and his young men with thin, graceful legs and small skull caps, and of course his beautiful color."

Uncle Jim laughed at Irma's characterization of Perugino. "And is that all you remember of that great building with its treasures of art, as the books might say?"

"Of course not," said Irma indignantly. "I remember quant.i.ties of other things. Raphael, and all those strange, pious Umbrian painters, and the beautiful silver chalices from the churches, and all the carved crucifixes. On the s.h.i.+p going home Aunt Caroline will be able to talk to us for hours about these things, describing them exactly. Isn't it much better for a girl of my age to enjoy this lovely view? Come, let us sit down on a bench in the little piazza in front of the hotel. As we look off to the valley, so far below, we seem to be on the edge of a high mountain. Every one in Perugia seems to enjoy the view. See, there are two soldiers strolling about; a group of priests; well to do children riding around in that donkey cart; half a dozen others who are almost in rags watching them; several strangers besides ourselves; two or three dignitaries of the town. So it's a very popular place."

Again Uncle Jim smiled at Irma's astuteness. Then he left her to enjoy the view still longer, while he went down to the Munic.i.p.al Building, to "rescue" Aunt Caroline, as he expressed it, from too long a stay at the exhibition of Umbrian art.

On her return to Florence the next evening, Irma wrote Lucy about her visit to a.s.sisi. She had promised this before she left home, as Lucy had especially asked her to see for herself the thornless roses growing in St. Francis's Garden.

"I have seen the garden," she wrote, "in the cloister back of the church, and here is a leaf from the thornless rosebushes. The good brothers have these leaves already pressed on little cards, as souvenirs of the visit to St. Mary of the Angels, St. Francis's church. Inside the great church they have preserved the tiny church in which St. Francis preached, and also the cell in which he died. The great church of San Francesco on the hill above where St. Francis was buried was built in his memory. His body was finally buried there. It is an enormous building, and I will try to tell you here about the beautiful frescoes describing his life. But I have some photographs for you, and they show all his great deeds told in pictures.

"I wish I had time to tell you about Florence. But in six weeks I shall be at home again, and then how much I shall have to say! It seems to me that all the paintings you and I like best are here, and in color they are so beautiful. The Pitti Gallery is wonderful. It is in a great palace where the de Medicis (of course) once lived. It now belongs to the king, and his rooms are most beautiful. But the gallery is quite apart from the rest of the palace, and filled with the greatest paintings, t.i.tian and Raphael and Andrea del Sarto and Botticelli and Bronzino, and some time, when I am older, I hope to come back and study them and criticise them just as I hear people doing now. Now I simply enjoy them.

"There are always many people copying in the galleries, especially in the Uffizi, and the other day we saw two sisters in their convent dress at work at easels. I suppose they were painting for their convents.

There are so many things in Florence I wish we could look at together, the cathedral and Giotto's tower, and the wonderful della Robbia reliefs; you know the small cast of the singing boys that your mother gave you Christmas. Then, though this is different, I wish you could see the green, pointed hills that are outside of Florence on two sides. When I first saw them they seemed like old friends, I had seen them in so many paintings by the old painters who worked in Florence. I thought they put them in just for ornament, but now I know they couldn't help it. This was the background they were most used to here.

"But there! I have seen so many things besides pictures--the old palaces, like fortresses, and the people who seem so gentle, though they are descendants of all those old fighters who thought nothing of killing one another when they had had the slightest disagreement (or often when they hadn't had any) just because their ancestors were enemies. Yet in some ways they were very good to one another. Yesterday we met a queer-looking procession, hardly a procession, for there were not more than a dozen men, but they wore long black robes, with hoods, and black masks over their faces, and holes cut for their eyes, and, really, they were terrifying.

"Uncle Jim explained that they were the Misericordia, or Brothers of Mercy. Rich and poor belong to it, and have for centuries, and when a man is on duty, when he hears a certain bell ring--I think it's in the Campanile--he stops whatever he is doing and goes to the headquarters of the brothers to learn whether he is to watch with some sick man, or help bury some dead person with no friends to follow him to the grave.

"I have been disappointed not to see more picturesque costumes here, but in the cities they are never seen, and seldom in the country. The apprentice boys in different trades wear big ap.r.o.ns, and the nursemaids have great caps with long, colored streamers, but that is all.

"I feel rather mean, sometimes, when I think how hard you all are working now, and I am just amusing myself. When you get this, examinations will be about over, and I do wonder if George Belman will be at the head of the cla.s.s.

"Well, even if I am idle now, I may have to study hard enough in August.

I won't be able to make the excuse that I am not well.

"Hastily,

"Irma."

CHAPTER XVII

IN VENICE

"I wouldn't have missed Bologna for anything," said Ellen, one very warm June morning, as Mrs. Sanford and Mr. and Mrs. Curtin and the young people in their care found themselves on the train between Bologna and Ravenna. "If every Italian city would have arcades over the sidewalks like those in almost every street of Bologna, life would be better worth living."

"So the arcades made the most impression on you," said Uncle Jim smiling. "And what have you to say of Bologna, Mrs. Sanford?"

"Well I am glad to have found that it is really true that there were learned women in Italy in the Middle Ages. I certainly cannot forget that I have seen a statue to a woman professor of the fourteenth century, who used to lecture in this university at Bologna. If there were women professors, there must have been women students."

"Ellen thinks the little tombs on pillars outside the churches were the strangest things she saw," cried Katie.