Part 17

It was Fioravanti whom we loved the most, and whom we did really try to get over to us later. But it was a case of binding engagements on one side and the other. He had given his word, as a man of honour, to remain a year with his new family, and we were pledged to some new cook at the moment when he was free. So it all came to nothing—which was perhaps just as well. He was a choleric little man. Loki’s Mamma dreamt he stabbed the kitchen-maid and buried her in the garden, which was not at all an unlikely thing to happen, for, like Vatel, his dishes were his glory, his honour was bound up in them, and the race of Cinderellas in this land would inflame the blood of such an enthusiast.

* * * * *

This is not to say that all Italian servants are like those three. We had some very thrilling experiences in the shape of Roman rascality during our first weeks of housekeeping there. After the odd custom we had one woman servant to three men; and, as the genus housemaid does not exist at all in many parts of the Continent, we had extreme difficulty in procuring a donna di faccenda. We had a whole large house in the Via Gregoriana, and it was imperative we should have something female to scrub its bedrooms and bathrooms.—Scrub? It is not a word you could get any Roman to understand the meaning of, much less put into application; but still we had to get somebody to sweep the dust into the corner or under the rug, and pass an occasional wet rag languidly round the rim of a bath. Loki’s Ma-Ma, being the Italian scholar of the family, engaged the staff. She was enchanted with the appearance of a splendid young girl from the Campagna, with cheeks like ripe nectarines, and a coroneted black head. Alert and brisk as a mountain kid, she seemed to us. Alas! who could have thought it? The creature was a bacchante! She ordered in a cask of wine all for herself, and then ran out the second evening and never came in till the next morning. Having danced with Bacchus all night, she was altogether unfit for any Christian habitation in the morning. It may be all very well to sleep off the red fumes on a thymy bank in a pagan world; but it’s not at all poetical or attractive at close quarters within four walls! A sordid, pitiful, revolting business! And the happy mountain kid, who proved after all to be only a bad little gutter goat, had to be driven forth when the legs that had caracoled so much were able to crawl again.

Aristide had a profile like the head of a philosopher on a Roman coin. He was a magnificent driver. We had a pair of powerful, fiery Russian horses, and they wanted all his skill. Whenever they took to plunging—and when they did so they struck sparks out of the stones and filled the street with the thunder of their hoofs—Aristide’s method of reassuring “his family” was invariably to gather the reins in one hand and blow his nose with great désinvolture with the other. He always turned sideways to do this, flourishing an immense pocket-handkerchief, as one who would say: “Behold! how calm I am!... Have no fear!”

Only on the occasions when we discarded our carriage for the use of a motor was the harmony disturbed between Aristide and ourselves. He would droop on his box for days afterwards and take the characteristic Roman revenge of declining to shave.

Loki’s Grandmother developed a sudden and violent attack of influenza on one of these motor expeditions, and had to be conveyed home in a collapsed condition.

“Ah,” said Aristide, “if Mamma had been with me, this would not have happened! Autos are nasty feverish things.”

* * * * *

We were very sorry to leave our Roman house, with its delicious proximity to the Pincio. It was a very old house, with a round marble staircase, deep-grilled windows, and a delightful tiled inner courtyard filled with green, where a fountain splashed day and night—a courtyard into which the sunshine literally poured. A great many of the objects which now give us pleasure at Villino Loki we placed originally in that double drawing-room which the owners of the house had left in somewhat denuded condition.

The gardener of the Barberini Palace kept us supplied with hired plants. Never have we seen Azaleas or Orange trees grown like those, with such exquisite artistic freedom. We had a Tangerine tree that was a complete joy. This arrangement worked beautifully for the first month. But unfortunately the gardeners, father and son, were professed anarchists and, when they were in their cups, their ethical principles overcame their business sense. Loki’s Grandmother had one day to stand by helplessly while Loki’s Ma-Ma was cursed and vituperated in a foam of vulgar Italian for innocently requesting to have a faded Azalea replaced. Not being able to speak Italian herself, she could not come to the assistance of her more talented daughter.... And both felt ignominiously inclined to cry!... Alas! that any spot so beauty-haunted should have been desecrated by such coarse and stupid passions! Those gardens of the Barberini, with their Lemon groves and Orange groves; the lush grass filled with Narcissus and Violets, and, in the Roman way, with water dripping from every corner; with the bits of columned wall and the statues and the three great stone pines against the blue sky! It is all Italy in one small enclosure.

We moved from the Pincian Hill to much less interesting quarters; but, with the luck that followed us all through that happy time, quite close to the Borghese gardens. There we had a black-and-white tiled dining-room and a long drawing-room all hung with pearl grey satin and a wonderful Aubusson carpet. And when the room was filled with almond blossom there were compensations for the exiguity of our accommodation. The lady who was obliging enough to accept us as her tenants ‹for a rent that filled our Roman friends with horror at our profligate extravagance›, although bearing a noble Austrian name, it was darkly whispered, had a commercial origin. Her businesslike spirit certainly showed itself in her transactions with us; for neither blankets, nor cooking utensils, nor the necessary glass and china were forthcoming, in spite of magnificent assurances.

“What will you?” said Fiori, our beloved little chef, shrugging his shoulders, “Sono Polacchi!” “The Countess,” he informed the young housekeeper, “sent in her maid, and I showed her the few poor pans, the miserable couple of pots she expected me to do with. ‘Is it not enough?’ she cried. ‘Enough?’ I answered. ‘Enough perhaps for your lady, for a service that is content with an egg on a plate, or one solitary cutlet! But my noble family must be nobly served.’”

Excellent Fiori, he used to trot upstairs every night to receive his orders, clad in the most spotless white garments and a new white paper cap, which he doffed with a superb gesture on entering the room. Upon receiving a well-deserved compliment, he would spread out his small fat hands and bow profoundly, exclaiming, “My duty, Excellency, only my duty!”

In one single instance was his entire content in our establishment clouded; that was when, in a moment of abstraction, he forgot to send up a dish of young peas—the first in the market—which he had prepared with his own superlative skill, and adorned with a pat of fresh butter whipped to a cream at the top: “All’Inglese,” he called it. We believe he spent the evening in tears, and he could not speak of it next day without emotion.

“Useless, useless, to try and console me, Excellency,” he exclaimed. “I am profoundly humiliated, I shall never get over it!”

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XIX

The warm weather has come with a burst in this last week of April. We have torn ourselves away from Villino Loki to London pavements. The Floribunda trees are covered with red buds. We expect a glory when we return. Loki’s Great Aunt has presented his family with twenty-five shillings worth of purple Aubretia, with which ‹much to Adam’s annoyance› we have decided to carpet the blue border. The Blue Border, we think, is under some evil bewitchment. Our late gardener assured us that no “human gardener” could find room for another plant. Yet it was the only border in the garden that “came up bald,” if one can use such an expression. Perhaps we had too much initiative and he too little; a combination bound to result in failure sometimes, if it is accompanied on one side by plunging ignorance, and on the other by “slowness of intellect, Birdie, my dear.”

* * * * *

To come back to one’s garden in April after ten days of strenuous London is a wonderful little experience for people who care for the pure joys of the young green and the spring flowers.—There is an indescribable panorama of woodland beauty on the hills opposite Villino Loki. A great marching regiment of pines, straggling upwards, emphasize the tints of birch and larch—tints which no pen, hardly any brush, could portray. The very sunlight seems caught and sent forth again from the pale yet vivid sheen. The White Broom is pearled with bud; in a few days it will burst into bloom and toss plumes as of some fantastic, fairy knighthood above the yew hedges that enclose the Dutch Garden.

* * * * *

The dogs’ welcome to their lost masters and to Loki ‹who, of course, always accompanies his family wherever it goes› is very genuine, and rather obstreperous. Bettine runs in and out of the room, up and down the furniture, as if in joyful pursuit of imaginary rats. Arabella, fond and foolish as ever, tries to crawl into everybody’s lap. Being about the size of a young calf, these blandishments are not encouraged. Loki, little Fur-man, as we call him, has a different way of expressing his feelings. True, he runs about and yelps rapture to the other dogs; but he sobs and cries like a child on reunion with any of his own, and half swoons with rapture in our arms. Sometimes it seems as if the love in his heart were too big for his little flame-coloured body, and must burst it in the endeavour to express his joy!

Loki is always very bumptious and pleased with himself in London—being Only-dog there—but he cannot bear visitors beyond a certain limit. Friends who come to tea are very much touched and charmed at the sight of the “dear little dog” going from one to the other, sitting up and waving his paws with frantically imploring gesture.

“Sweet little fellow—what can he want?” they say, and vainly offer tit-bits from the tea-table. Loki’s Grandparents of course cannot answer, “He begs you to go away”—but such unfortunately is the true explanation. He sneezes with rapture when the door is closed on the last departing guest: he then is able to lead his Grandmother upstairs for the evening romp. His Grandmamma has weak health, which is no doubt the reason why he has fixed on her as the only person who understands the true inwardness of his games. They are very exhausting to mere humans, and he has a great deal of cat perversity in his composition. He spent the whole time of a recent dinner-party sitting upon a chair in full view of the company, ceaselessly begging with prayerful paws; “Oh do, do go away!” As usual he evoked a great deal of undeserved sympathy—meanwhile his tactful family held their peace.

Bettine is growing into the hobbledehoy stage. A few weeks ago it was an entrancing spectacle to see her playing with a butterfly on the moor. It was a yellow butterfly, and we think it must have understood the rules of catch-who-catch-can, for it fluttered along just ahead of the white puppy’s nose. It was a little vision of youth and spring to snapshot for the gallery of mental memories. Loki’s female relations, who are given to transcendental discussions, sometimes wonder whether in the next world they will be vouchsafed these dear small pleasures which make up the best of life down here. Unless we find our animals there, there will certainly be something missing. Surely there are flowers in Heaven, and birds—why not those faithful creatures in which a soul seems so often struggling into birth?

“My little god, my little god!” Maeterlinck makes the dog say to his master. It is certain that man, in making the dog his companion, has in some sort endowed him with spiritual faculties. And it is this piteously loving, confiding, blindly adoring, dumb creature that has been selected by the “master minds” of the day as the chief victim for the horrors of scientific research!

Indeed, that humanity should thus use its God-given dominion over the helpless lower order of creation is an idea so hideous that it can only have emanated from the Powers of Darkness. All the glib arguments that this animal torture benefits suffering man seem to us as much beside the mark as they are immoral. Almost every crime can be justified by some such theory, from the century-old customs of child exposure in China to the modern Suffragette outrages. And already the boundaries on this speculative field have been extended so as to include members of the community whose defencelessness or unimportance preclude unpleasant reprisals. How many unfortunate patients, for instance, are quite unnecessarily operated upon in our great hospitals? Within our narrow personal experience we have known cases where life has been absolutely sacrificed to the “knife mania.”

Loki’s Grandmother, who feels very strongly on this subject, has always wanted to write an article giving chapter and verse of the facts. She would have headed her instructive pages with the title “Killing no Murder;” but she knows no magazine would publish them because of the storm it would raise.