“Your name is Francesca?” I asked, and she nodded her head, without replying.
“We shall have supper directly,” I continued. “Meanwhile, I dare say you would like to arrange your toilette a little?”
She answered with a ‘mica’, a word which she employed just as frequently as ‘Che me fa’, but I went on: “It is always pleasant after a journey.”
Then I suddenly remembered that she had not, perhaps, the necessary requisites, for she appeared to me in a very singular position, as if she had just escaped from some disagreeable adventure, and I brought her my dressing-case.
I put out all the little instruments for cleanliness and comfort which it contained: a nail-brush, a new toothbrush – I always carry a selection of them about with me – my nail-scissors, a nail-file, and sponges. I uncorked a bottle of eau de cologne, one of lavender-water, and a little bottle of new-mown hay, so that she might have a choice. Then I opened my powder-box, and put out the powder-puff, placed my fine towels over the water-jug, and a piece of new soap near the basin.
She watched my movements with a look of annoyance in her wide-open eyes, without appearing either astonished or pleased at my forethought.
“Here is all that you require,” I then said; “I will tell you when supper is ready.”
When I returned to the sitting-room I found that Paul had shut himself in the other room, so I sat down to wait.
A waiter went to and fro, bringing plates and glasses. He laid the table slowly, then put a cold chicken on it, and told me that all was ready.
I knocked gently at Mademoiselle Rondoli’s door. “Come in,” she said, and when I did so I was struck by a strong, heavy smell of perfumes, as if I were in a hairdresser’s shop.
The Italian was sitting on her trunk in an attitude either of thoughtful discontent or absent-mindedness. The towel was still folded over the waterjug that was full of water, and the soap, untouched and dry, was lying beside the empty basin; but one would have thought that the young woman had used half the contents of the bottles of perfume. The eau de cologne, however, had been spared, as only about a third of it had gone; but to make up for that she had used a surprising amount of lavender-water and new-mown hay. A cloud of violet powder, a vague white mist, seemed still to be floating in the air, from the effects of her over-powdering her face and neck. It seemed to cover her eyelashes, eyebrows, and the hair on her temples like snow, while her cheeks were plastered with it, and layers of it covered her nostrils, the corners of her eyes, and her chin.
When she got up she exhaled such a strong odor of perfume that it almost made me feel faint.
When we sat down to supper, I found that Paul was in a most execrable temper, and I could get nothing out of him but blame, irritable words, and disagreeable remarks.
Mademoiselle Francesca ate like an ogre, and as soon as she had finished her meal she threw herself upon the sofa in the sitting-room. Sitting down beside her, I said gallantly, kissing her hand:
“Shall I have the bed prepared, or will you sleep on the couch?”
“It is all the same to me. ‘Che mi fa’!”
Her indifference vexed me.
“Should you like to retire at once?”
“Yes; I am very sleepy.”
She got up, yawned, gave her hand to Paul, who took it with a furious look, and I lighted her into the bedroom. A disquieting feeling haunted me. “Here is all you want,” I said again.
The next morning she got up early, like a woman who is accustomed to work. She woke me by doing so, and I watched her through my half-closed eyelids.
She came and went without hurrying herself, as if she were astonished at having nothing to do. At length she went to the dressing-table, and in a moment emptied all my bottles of perfume. She certainly also used some water, but very little.
When she was quite dressed, she sat down on her trunk again, and clasping one knee between her hands, she seemed to be thinking.
At that moment I pretended to first notice her, and said:
“Good-morning, Francesca.”
Without seeming in at all a better temper than the previous night, she murmured, “Good-morning!”
When I asked her whether she had slept well, she nodded her head, and jumping out of bed, I went and kissed her.
She turned her face toward me like a child who is being kissed against its will; but I took her tenderly in my arms, and gently pressed my lips on her eyelids, which she closed with evident distaste under my kisses on her fresh cheek and full lips, which she turned away.
“You don’t seem to like being kissed,” I said to her.
“Mica!” was her only answer.
I sat down on the trunk by her side, and passing my arm through hers, I said: “Mica! mica! mica! in reply to everything. I shall call you Mademoiselle Mica, I think.”
For the first time I fancied that I saw the shadow of a smile on her lips, but it passed by so quickly that I may have been mistaken.
“But if you never say anything but Mica, I shall not know what to do to please you. Let me see; what shall we do to-day?”
She hesitated a moment, as if some fancy had flitted through her head, and then she said carelessly: “It is all the same to me; whatever you like.”
“Very well, Mademoiselle Mica, we will have a carriage and go for a drive.”
“As you please,” she said.
Paul was waiting for us in the dining-room, looking as bored as third parties usually do in love affairs. I assumed a delighted air, and shook hands with him with triumphant energy.
“What are you thinking of doing?” he asked.
“First of all, we will go and see a little of the town, and then we might get a carriage and take a drive in the neighborhood.”
We breakfasted almost in silence, and then set out. I dragged Francesca from palace to palace, and she either looked at nothing or merely glanced carelessly at the various masterpieces. Paul followed us, growling all sorts of disagreeable things. Then we all three took a drive in silence into the country and returned to dinner.
The next day it was the same thing and the next day again; and on the third Paul said to me: “Look here, I am going to leave you; I am not going to stop here for three weeks watching you make love to this creature.”
I was perplexed and annoyed, for to my great surprise I had become singularly attached to Francesca. A man is but weak and foolish, carried away by the merest trifle, and a coward every time that his senses are excited or mastered. I clung to this unknown girl, silent and dissatisfied as she always was. I liked her somewhat ill-tempered face, the dissatisfied droop of her mouth, the weariness of her look; I liked her fatigued movements, the contemptuous way in which she let me kiss her, the very indifference of her caresses. A secret bond, that mysterious bond of physical love, which does not satisfy, bound me to her. I told Paul so, quite frankly. He treated me as if I were a fool, and then said:
“Very well, take her with you.”
But she obstinately refused to leave Genoa, without giving any reason. I besought, I reasoned, I promised, but all was of no avail, and so I stayed on.
Paul declared that he would go by himself, and went so far as to pack up his portmanteau; but he remained all the same.
Thus a fortnight passed. Francesca was always silent and irritable, lived beside me rather than with me, responded to all my requirements and all my propositions with her perpetual Che mi fa, or with her no less perpetual Mica.
My friend became more and more furious, but my only answer was, “You can go if you are tired of staying. I am not detaining you.”
Then he called me names, overwhelmed me with reproaches, and exclaimed: “Where do you think I can go now? We had three weeks at our disposal, and here is a fortnight gone! I cannot continue my journey now; and, in any case, I am not going to Venice, Florence and Rome all by myself. But you will pay for it, and more dearly than you think, most likely. You are not going to bring a man all the way from Paris in order to shut him up at a hotel in Genoa with an Italian adventuress.”
When I told him, very calmly, to return to Paris, he exclaimed that he intended to do so the very next day; but the next day he was still there, still in a rage and swearing.
By this time we began to be known in the streets through which we wandered from morning till night. Sometimes French people would turn round astonished at meeting their fellow-countrymen in the company of this girl with her striking costume, who looked singularly out of place, not to say compromising, beside us.
She used to walk along, leaning on my arm, without looking at anything. Why did she remain with me, with us, who seemed to do so little to amuse her? Who was she? Where did she come from? What was she doing? Had she any plan or idea? Where did she live? As an adventuress, or by chance meetings? I tried in vain to find out and to explain it. The better I knew her the more enigmatical she became. She seemed to be a girl of poor family who had been taken away, and then cast aside and lost. What did she think would become of her, or whom was she waiting for? She certainly did not appear to be trying to make a conquest of me, or to make any real profit out of me.
I tried to question her, to speak to her of her childhood and family; but she never gave me an answer. I stayed with her, my heart unfettered and my senses enchained, never wearied of holding her in my arms, that proud and quarrelsome woman, captivated by my senses, or rather carried away, overcome by a youthful, healthy, powerful charm, which emanated from her fragrant person and from the well-molded lines of her body.
Another week passed, and the term of my journey was drawing on, for I had to be back in Paris by the eleventh of July. By this time Paul had come to take his part in the adventure, though still grumbling at me, while I invented pleasures, distractions and excursions to amuse Francesca and my friend; and in order to do this I gave myself a great amount of trouble.
One day I proposed an excursion to Sta Margarita, that charming little town in the midst of gardens, hidden at the foot of a slope which stretches far into the sea up to the village of Portofino. We three walked along the excellent road which goes along the foot of the mountain. Suddenly Francesca said to me: “I shall not be able to go with you to-morrow; I must go and see some of my relatives.”
That was all; I did not ask her any questions, as I was quite sure she would not answer me.
The next morning she got up very early. When she spoke to me it was in a constrained and hesitating voice:
“If I do not come back again, shall you come and fetch me?”
“Most certainly I shall,” was my reply. “Where shall I go to find you?”
Then she explained: “You must go into the Street Victor-Emmanuel, down the Falcone road and the side street San-Rafael and into the furniture shop in the building at the right at the end of a court, and there you must ask for Madame Rondoli. That is the place.”
And so she went away, leaving me rather astonished.
When Paul saw that I was alone, he stammered out: “Where; is Francesca?” And when I told him what had happened, he exclaimed:
“My dear fellow, let us make use of our opportunity, and bolt; as it is, our time is up. Two days, more or less, make no difference. Let us go at once; go and pack up your things. Off we go!”
But I refused. I could not, as I told him, leave the girl in that manner after such companionship for nearly three weeks. At any rate, I ought to say good-by to her, and make her accept a present; I certainly had no intention of behaving badly to her.
But he would not listen; he pressed and worried me, but I would not give way.
I remained indoors for several hours, expecting Francesca’s return, but she did not come, and at last, at dinner, Paul said with a triumphant air:
“She has flown, my dear fellow; it is certainly very strange.”
I must acknowledge that I was surprised and rather vexed. He laughed in my face, and made fun of me.
“It is not exactly a bad way of getting rid of you, though rather primitive. ‘Just wait for me, I shall be back in a moment,’ they often say. How long are you going to wait? I should not wonder if you were foolish enough to go and look for her at the address she gave you. ‘Does Madame Rondoli live here, please?’ ‘No, monsieur.’ I’ll bet that you are longing to go there.”
“Not in the least,” I protested, “and I assure you that if she does not come back to-morrow morning I shall leave by the express at eight o’clock. I shall have waited twenty-four hours, and that is enough; my conscience will be quite clear.”
I spent an uneasy and unpleasant evening, for I really had at heart a very tender feeling for her. I went to bed at twelve o’clock, and hardly slept at all. I got up at six, called Paul, packed up my things, and two hours later we set out for France together.
III
The next year, at just about the same period, I was seized as one is with a periodical fever, with a new desire to go to Italy, and I immediately made up my mind to carry it into effect. There is no doubt that every really well-educated man ought to see Florence, Venice and Rome. This travel has, also, the additional advantage of providing many subjects of conversation in society, and of giving one an opportunity for bringing forward artistic generalities which appear profound.
This time I went alone, and I arrived at Genoa at the same time as the year before, but without any adventure on the road. I went to the same hotel, and actually happened to have the same room.
I was hardly in bed when the recollection of Francesca which, since the evening before, had been floating vaguely through my mind, haunted me with strange persistency. I thought of her nearly the whole night, and by degrees the wish to see her again seized me, a confused desire at first, which gradually grew stronger and more intense. At last I made up my mind to spend the next day in Genoa to try to find her, and if I should not succeed, to take the evening train.
Early in the morning I set out on my search. I remembered the directions she had given me when she left me, perfectly – Victor-Emmanuel Street, house of the furniture-dealer, at the bottom of the yard on the right.
I found it without the least difficulty, and I knocked at the door of a somewhat dilapidated-looking dwelling. It was opened by a stout woman, who must have been very handsome, but who actually was only very dirty. Although she had too much embonpoint, she still bore the lines of majestic beauty; her untidy hair fell over her forehead and shoulders, and one fancied one could see her floating about in an enormous dressing-gown covered with spots of dirt and grease. Round her neck she wore a great gilt necklace, and on her wrists were splendid bracelets of Genoa filigree work.
In rather a hostile manner she asked me what I wanted, and I replied by requesting her to tell me whether Francesca Rondoli lived there.
“What do you want with her?” she asked.
“I had the pleasure of meeting her last year, and I should like to see her again.”
The old woman looked at me suspiciously.
“Where did you meet her?” she asked.
“Why, here in Genoa itself.”
“What is your name?”
I hesitated a moment, and then I told her. I had hardly done so when the Italian put out her arms as if to embrace me. “Oh! you are the Frenchman how glad I am to see you! But what grief you caused the poor child! She waited for you a month; yes, a whole month. At first she thought you would come to fetch her. She wanted to see whether you loved her. If you only knew how she cried when she saw that you were not coming! She cried till she seemed to have no tears left. Then she went to the hotel, but you had gone. She thought that most likely you were travelling in Italy, and that you would return by Genoa to fetch her, as she would not go with you. And she waited more than a month, monsieur; and she was so unhappy; so unhappy. I am her mother.”
I really felt a little disconcerted, but I regained my self-possession, and asked:
“Where is she now?”
“She has gone to Paris with a painter, a delightful man, who loves her very much, and who gives her everything that she wants. Just look at what she sent me; they are very pretty, are they not?”
And she showed me, with quite southern animation, her heavy bracelets and necklace. “I have also,” she continued, “earrings with stones in them, a silk dress, and some rings; but I only wear them on grand occasions. Oh! she is very happy, monsieur, very happy. She will be so pleased when I tell her you have been here. But pray come in and sit down. You will take something or other, surely?”
But I refused, as I now wished to get away by the first train; but she took me by the arm and pulled me in, saying:
“Please, come in; I must tell her that you have been in here.”
I found myself in a small, rather dark room, furnished with only a table and a few chairs.
She continued: “Oh, she is very happy now, very happy. When you met her in the train she was very miserable; she had had an unfortunate love affair in Marseilles, and she was coming home, poor child. But she liked you at once, though she was still rather sad, you understand. Now she has all she wants, and she writes and tells me everything that she does. His name is Bellemin, and they say he is a great painter in your country. He fell in love with her at first sight. But you will take a glass of sirup? – it is very good. Are you quite alone, this year?”
“Yes,” I said, “quite alone.”
I felt an increasing inclination to laugh, as my first disappointment was dispelled by what Mother Rondoli said. I was obliged; however, to drink a glass of her sirup.
“So you are quite alone?” she continued. “How sorry I am that Francesca is not here now; she would have been company for you all the time you stayed. It is not very amusing to go about all by oneself, and she will be very sorry also.”
Then, as I was getting up to go, she exclaimed:
“But would you not like Carlotta to go with you? She knows all the walks very well. She is my second daughter, monsieur.”
No doubt she took my look of surprise for consent, for she opened the inner door and called out up the dark stairs which I could not see:
“Carlotta! Carlotta! make haste down, my dear child.”
I tried to protest, but she would not listen.
“No; she will be very glad to go with you; she is very nice, and much more cheerful than her sister, and she is a good girl, a very good girl, whom I love very much.”
In a few moments a tall, slender, dark girl appeared, her hair hanging down, and her youthful figure showing unmistakably beneath an old dress of her mother’s.
The latter at once told her how matters stood.
“This is Francesca’s Frenchman, you know, the one whom she knew last year. He is quite alone, and has come to look for her, poor fellow; so I told him that you would go with him to keep him company.”
The girl looked at me with her handsome dark eyes, and said, smiling:
“I have no objection, if he wishes it.”
I could not possibly refuse, and merely said:
“Of course, I shall be very glad of your company.”
Her mother pushed her out. “Go and get dressed directly; put on your blue dress and your hat with the flowers, and make haste.”
As soon as she had left the room the old woman explained herself: “I have two others, but they are much younger. It costs a lot of money to bring up four children. Luckily the eldest is off my hands at present.”
Then she told all about herself, about her husband, who had been an employee on the railway, but who was dead, and she expatiated on the good qualities of Carlotta, her second girl, who soon returned, dressed, as her sister had been, in a striking, peculiar manner.
Her mother examined her from head to foot, and, after finding everything right, she said:
“Now, my children, you can go.” Then turning to the girl, she said: “Be sure you are back by ten o’clock to-night; you know the door is locked then.” The answer was:
“All right, mamma; don’t alarm yourself.”
She took my arm and we went wandering about the streets, just as I had wandered the previous year with her sister.
We returned to the hotel for lunch, and then I took my new friend to Santa Margarita, just as I had taken her sister the year previously.
During the whole fortnight which I had at my disposal, I took Carlotta to all the places of interest in and about Genoa. She gave me no cause to regret her sister.
She cried when I left her, and the morning of my departure I gave her four bracelets for her mother, besides a substantial token of my affection for herself.
One of these days I intend to return to Italy, and I cannot help remembering with a certain amount of uneasiness, mingled with hope, that Madame Rondoli has two more daughters.