A Lady of Good Family (8 page)

At the end of the uneven cobbled street, she arrived at a large iron gate, rusted and with some bars missing. A jasmine vine sprawled over the top, its ambitious tendrils twisting and twining over the gate and one another and finally even reaching into the thin air, as if it could cling to that. There was a bell with a pull rope, but no one answered to it except a dog who barked from some unseen place. A gray striped cat appeared and stared up at her with large yellow eyes.

“Magda?” Beatrix called, softly at first and then with some insistence. At the third call, an old woman hobbled to the gate.

“Sì! Sì!”
she called with impatience, only to pull up short when she found a lady standing there and not the vegetable cart she had been expecting.

“Signor . . .” Beatrix didn’t know his name. “A friendly man down the street said I might see the garden.”

“
Sì.
The garden.” The old woman, all in black, with a wizened pale face, looked her up and down and found her acceptable. She opened the gate and the unseen dog stopped barking. The cat disappeared into the undergrowth of the wisteria.

The housekeeper, lurching from side to side in an arthritic stride, chattered quickly and in an accent Beatrix couldn’t follow as she guided Beatrix through the high archway of the palazzo’s facade and into the interior courtyard. This concept had delighted Beatrix when she first began to observe it: Americans placed their gardens in the front yard, where all passersby could admire them. Romans placed their private gardens in hidden courts where they could be admired only by those living in or admitted to the household.

Such a profusion of flowers in this garden! They were planted everywhere—in urns placed in the four corners marking the cardinal directions; in pots of every size; between flagstones and under benches. Roses climbed thirty feet up the facade of the house, and untrimmed yews exploded between light and shadows. The colors were fabulous, hot yellows next to warm pinks, true reds next to purplish fuchsia. It was the kind of wild, overgrown garden one encountered in dreams, without logic or plan or control.

“Bello!”
she said to the housekeeper.

“Bellissimo,”
the housekeeper corrected.

The palazzo was in bad repair, with slipped roof slates broken over weedy graveled paths, mortar crumbling from the walls, windows with cracked and even missing panes. It was, Beatrix realized, the kind of Roman home that a wealthy American would seize upon and redo, boring guests with stories of the palazzo’s foundation back to the first century AD and then boasting about the modern wiring and plumbing being installed.

A fire-sale home. The term Mrs. Haskett had used for her own palazzo. How sad, Beatrix thought, that history could be purchased as easily as a painting.

There was the vine, opposite her, its pale green leaves as tender as a baby’s fingertips, its white flowers shining starlike against the grimy stone walls of the palazzo. What was it? Beatrix approached slowly, reverentially.

•   •   •   •

A
merigo, who was in the library having the same argument with his father as he had had the week before, and the week before that, strode impatiently to the window. How could he make the old man see his point? The world was changing. They must change with it. They must look reality in the face and not creep back into ancient tradition, hiding under it like children hiding from a ghost.

“Just one painting. The Sassetta. That’s all we need to sell,” he said again to his father. It was Amerigo’s favorite, and that was why he had chosen that one as a possible salvation for them: to show that if he could bear the pain, so must his father. The small,
jewel-lovely painting was a study for the San Sepolcro altarpiece showing the life of St. Francis. It had hung on the wall of the Palazzo dei Serpenti since Sassetta had painted it four hundred years before.

Mrs. Haskett had offered fifteen hundred dollars for it. Enough to pay the taxes, fix the roof, and make some wise investments. She knew it was old and valuable. It would be another trophy for her salon.

Amerigo had danced to Mrs. Haskett’s hired musicians, eaten at her extravagant buffet, provided “atmosphere,” as she called it, by attending her soirees. He detested the woman. Seeing the changes she had made to the ancient palazzo was like rubbing salt into the wounds. He had played in that home as a child, with the sons and daughters of the family.

“No,” his father said, pounding his desk. “We will sell no paintings. And you will obey me.”

Amerigo, tired of the endless argument, sat on the wide ledge and looked out. He felt trapped by the crowded house, by the rooms full of books unread for two hundred years, by cabinets of Chinese figurines collected three generations ago, by his own destiny.

Magda was in the courtyard, hobbling amid her pots of geraniums. Amerigo watched as she emptied a pot of water over this plant, pulled dead weeds off that one. He did not realize at first that she was not alone; then he saw that second figure. Who was there with her?

Impossible. The American girl from the Borghese gardens, bending forward to sniff a stem of thyme growing in a terra-cotta
urn. Miss Beatrix Jones, who had a fan painted with fantasy flowers. How had she found her way there?

He watched, enjoying the luxury of seeing her when she did not know she was being observed. He noted the openness of the smile she gave old Magda, the way her eyes closed when she bent to inhale the aroma of a flower. Her movements were extraordinarily graceful, smooth and unself-conscious in the way of children at play.

That ease of movement affected him as her voice had when he had first heard it, but that emotion moved from simple admiration to something else. He wondered what she would feel like, this tall, slender American, in his arms. The thought startled him.

“Are you listening, Amerigo?”

“Yes, Father. Of course.” But he was not.

He should go into the garden and greet her, offer his hospitality. But to do so would require going onto the mezzanine that housed the family art collection, because the other stairwell was no longer safe. He would, as he always did, pause before the little Sassetta painting, so perfect in its subdued pastels, the delicate filigree halo around the saint’s face as he takes the paw of the wolf of Gubbio. That was the legend: the wolf had been terrorizing the people of Tuscany, and St. Francis had asked the wolf to stop murdering and let the townspeople feed him instead. Tamed by the meek holiness of St. Francis, the wolf offers his paw, as tame as any household hound.

That day, Amerigo would pause before that painting and reflect that his father loved the painting more than he loved his son; would in fact sell the son before he would sell the painting.

Perhaps, Amerigo thought, trying to awaken slumbering hope, perhaps I can convince Mrs. Haskett to increase her offer. Mrs. Haskett and her awful soirees, her conquering American wealth.

The wolf, in Renaissance art, was a symbol of avarice, and there was something in Sassetta’s wolf’s lean, alert face that reminded him of the American art collector.

Thinking of Mrs. Haskett, the way she sometimes addressed him as if he were one of her staff, he made up his mind. He would not go into the garden, to the American girl who had wandered into it. He was weary of Americans.

W
hen Beatrix returned to the hotel, Edith and Teddy had already departed for the train station, preceded by maids and a courier, who traveled in advance to make sure the next hotel suite was prepared according to instruction. Edith had not been happy, Minnie said. She disliked train travel, the stern and inflexible schedules that must be met, the waiting in crowded public rooms.

“Edith left you this. She thought you might enjoy it. You haven’t read it yet, have you?” Minnie handed her the spine-broken copy of
The Turn of the Screw
. “It is a ghost story. I don’t know how Edith could tolerate having it in her hotel room with her. You know how she is about ghost stories. Perhaps because it is one of Henry’s . . .”

“How did they seem?” Beatrix took off her hat and placed it on the table.

“Like a cat and dog forced to share the same cushion,” Minnie admitted.

“Poor Edith. Poor Teddy as well, I suppose.”

“Before she left, she sent someone to a stationery store to fetch her a dozen journals and four more pens. I think Edith sees a way out of the situation. Work. Work. The writing is becoming more and more important to her. It was a great mistake, stopping when she married. But you. You look radiant, my darling daughter. What have you been up to?”

“I went for a walk and visited a garden. A private garden. All overgrown and wild and the prettiest thing I have seen in Rome, I think.”

“Where was this garden? And were you quite safe, alone?”

“Quite safe. Down a little street and off an even smaller street, up into the Monti section. The hills. Via dei Serpenti, it was called. Somewhere near the basilica of Maria Maggiore.”

“You overexerted yourself. You’re flushed. You should have a rest before dinner.”

“I’m not at all tired. In fact, I feel quite exhilarated. This, I think, is what Mr. Sargent wanted me to see when he told me I must travel before I begin my work. The small private gardens, little cracked orange pots against a gray stone wall, red geraniums next to purple stocks. The very still lifes and backgrounds Caravaggio would not paint because they were too pretty, too sweetly domestic. I must try to sketch it, quickly, before I forget.”

Beatrix sank into a chair, suddenly feeling a little dizzy. “Maybe I will rest. After I finish my journal for the day.” She fell asleep sitting up in the chair and dreamed of dank catacombs leading to an underground moon-shaped garden of all white flowers
, Nicotiana alata
,
Gypsophila
,
Deutzia gracilis
: flowers that
sang to her, shrubs that danced and held her hand, a fountain from which flowed Latin names instead of water.

•   •   •   •

M
innie and Beatrix spent the next week visiting the Casa Respiglia, Palazzo Colonna, the forum, and the Villa Medici, Beatrix eagerly taking measurements, listing the plantings, making notes of what worked, what might be repeated in a smaller garden, what most definitely to avoid. When she had begun her preparations for the trip, her study of the gardens to be visited, she had imagined the yew hedges would be a foot or so high, more a border of suggestion than anything else. Instead, many of them were sometimes five feet high, turning garden walks into a labyrinthine experience where one often lost sight of the beginning or end of the garden.

The experience thrilled her but also disquieted her. A garden must have a suggestion of mystery, true. But wasn’t it possible to have mystery without enclosure? Wouldn’t that be preferable? Again, the inner vision of the shore at Bar Harbor, the huge sense of horizon. Gardens were man-made and artificial, yet they must respect what was natural as well.

“I think the gardens at Casa Respiglia were the finest,” Minnie admitted when they were back at their hotel late one afternoon, swollen, shoeless feet tucked up underneath them and cool damp cloths pressed to overheated foreheads.

“I think because we were still fresh and energetic when we looked at it,” Beatrix said. “Did we receive any mail today?”

“More invitations. Nothing from Paris.” The relief in
Minnie’s voice was apparent. No news from Paris meant no more papers, no more regrets, no more worries about the divorce . . . at least for the day.

“Can’t we just stay in this evening? I’m exhausted. And tomorrow we need to visit the Vatican gardens. Perhaps we should rest,” Beatrix said.

“My girl, you will have plenty of time for rest when you are old, like me. We received another invitation from Mrs. Haskett, and I think you should accept. Show yourself in society.” Become accustomed to the whispering that will occur, once I am a divorced woman, Minnie meant. People will talk and whisper and we must learn to face it.

“If I wanted to show myself in society, I could have gone to Newport for the season. Or stayed in New York,” Beatrix said. “Perhaps we should stay in tonight. I have reading I need to do, letters to answer.”

“Mr. Sargent and Mr. Olmsted would not have been pleased if you had passed up this tour of gardens. You know they both believed you need to see them with your own eyes rather than just read descriptions. But if you really wish to stay in tonight, I will go to the concert and tell Mrs. Haskett you have a headache from the heat.”

“I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

Three hours later, after the sun had set and lamps cast flickering shadows in the dark sitting room, Minnie had gone and Beatrix sat by herself, thinking. She should have been writing in her notebooks, recording the visits of the day or writing one of the long, detailed letters Mr. Sargent expected of her garden
visits. But the exertion of the day had enervated her. Gardens should refresh, not tire. She was tired, and there was another week of Rome, then the gardens of Berlin, England, even some of France, to be visited.

A warm wind was blowing, bringing a sense of restlessness that, coupled with her physical fatigue, made Beatrix feel off-balance. She was not used to feeling uncertain, not about herself or her life or her expectations. She was used to prompt and efficient decisions and a forward movement void of regret. This evening was a night of uncertainty, though.

A professional female landscape designer. Even Mr. Sargent had had his doubts. He knew she could do it, and do it successfully. But was the world ready for such a thing? She sipped the tea that had cooled in its thin porcelain cup. She unpinned her heavy hair so she could massage her aching temples. This was before women began cropping their hair, and Beatrix’s, shook free of its bindings, fell in a dark golden-red curtain almost to her knees.

Released from the agony of pins and rolls and the heavy chignon on the back of her neck, she rose from her chair and stretched, yawning like a child. She wondered if the music at Mrs. Haskett’s that evening was any good and realized she didn’t care if it was; the cost of listening—the silly chatter and stiff manners—was too high.

She stood and adopted the familiar pose: chin high, arms at sides, elbows slightly bent to allow the lungs full expansion. She tried a few notes of the song she had heard on the Spanish Steps, a
stornello
full of yearning, the notes rising and falling like breath,
like the beat of surf on a shore, a tune in a minor key, as old as night, full of shadow.

Standing in the hall outside the door, Amerigo paused, hand already lifted to knock. Was this the American girl singing? What else could it be, unless she had hired someone for her own solitary enjoyment? No. It was she. He could tell the voice, the American accent stumbling slightly around the Italian vowels of the folk song.

What a voice she had! He stood listening, barely breathing, till she reached the last line of the verse and stumbled over the wording, guessing what it might be, trying to fill in missing words with tra-las and da-dums. Then, silence. He lifted his cane to knock on the door with it.

When a knock sounded at the door of their suite, Beatrix assumed it was Annie, who had been sent out to purchase talcum. She swung the door open.

“Oh,” she said. Her hand was on the doorknob still; she pulled it away as if the metal burned her.

This is what Amerigo saw when the door opened: the American girl, barefoot, her red-gold hair loose over her back and shoulders. Her thick brows over those pale gray eyes drew together in surprise. Fool, he thought. You should have sent a card up first, had yourself announced. But he had been afraid she wouldn’t receive him, or worse, wouldn’t remember the name on the card. And he had very much wanted to see her again.

“Forgive the intrusion. I . . . You forgot to take these. Magda sends them.” He opened his hand and revealed a tissue paper full of seeds.

“Would you give me a moment?” She shut the door again, leaving him confused in the hallway, and when the door reopened she was properly shod and her hair was bundled up again.

“You are alone? They should have told me downstairs. I would not have come up.” The sly clerk at the desk. No wonder he had smiled at him in that overly familiar manner. He would have words with him later.

“My mother has gone to Mrs. Haskett’s for the evening. Come in.”

She took his hand and pulled him gently into the sitting room. “I am old enough to receive visitors,” she reassured him. “It is one of the privileges of being an old maid.”

“Surely not,” he protested before he realized she was laughing at him, at herself.

“How did you find me?” She removed the evening paper from the most comfortable chair in the small room and indicated he was to sit in it.

Amerigo paused. In fact, Hotel d’Italie was the third hotel in which he had inquired for the two American women, Mrs. and Miss Jones, the mother short and dark, the daughter tall with red hair. Titian-colored hair, he had explained to the men at the various reception desks.

His conscience had bothered him. He had been rude, even if she hadn’t known of it. A gentleman did not behave in that manner, spying out of windows rather than properly receiving a guest . . . even an uninvited guest.

Beatrix unwrapped the tissue he had given her and saw the
seeds inside. Magda, he had said. The little woman who had opened the gate for her?

“It was your house?” she asked. She fingered the seeds, testing the pointed ends, looking closely at the tiny stripes on the brown pods. A sense of unreality crept over her as she realized that her unplanned afternoon expedition had led to his home. Plants turn, as they grow, in the direction of the sun. Did he exert some strange influence that drew her to him? Such a thing wasn’t possible. Yet, “How strange,” she murmured.

“Then you were not looking for me?”

“No. I had wandered off the tourist path and was told I should look at the garden at the Palazzo dei Serpenti. I did not know it was yours. A kind old man down the street directed me there.”

“The man must have been Giorgio. He was our stableman for many years.” When they still kept horses and carriages instead of hiring them, he did not say. “Very strange,” he agreed. “It seems destiny wishes us to be acquainted.”

They sat in silence for a long moment, both shy and tongue-tied, wondering what should come next. He was sorry she had put her hair up, though of course it was the correct thing to do.

She worried that he was right—perhaps she should not have received him while her mother was out. He sensed her discomfort and stood again, refusing the ease of the little chair.

A pink slipper, slightly frayed at the toes, stuck out from under a settee. He thought he had never seen anything so intimate, so suggestive, as that abandoned slipper. There were shawls
thrown on chair backs, a vase of too brightly colored and half-wilted dahlias, guidebooks spread open over tables and armrests, a smell of pomade and perfume. The complete femaleness of the room overwhelmed him.

“What is the name of the vine?” she asked, trying to kick the slipper back under the sofa. This, she thought, is worse than receiving a man in your boudoir. A hotel room! And not even her maid was there.

“We call it the paradise vine. Because of the fragrance, and because the flowers are the color of dawn. I don’t know it by any other name. Magda assures me the seed will grow for you.” He paused, smiling an apology for what he was about to say. “She says she saw it in your face, that you make things grow. It will take some years for the vine to climb a wall or arbor.” He had been watching her foot trying to maneuver the slipper out of sight. Sensing he was being indiscreet, he looked back up just as she did, also. Their eyes met. They both blushed. They looked away.

“Would you like to go for a walk?” he suggested. That was also risky, on the border of appropriate good manners, but he knew he could not stay alone with her in that room.

“Yes,” she said, knowing instantly where she wished to go. “Let’s go to the Colosseum. I’ve never seen it by moonlight, and it is an experience highly recommended to me by a friend. Or is it not safe?”

“If we go for just a little while, it will be safe enough. The fever is not as common as it once was. We will stay for just a few moments.”

She put on her hat and coat and they descended the grand staircase of the hotel together. There were murmurs from several white-haired ladies sitting in the lobby drinking their chamomile tisanes. Beatrix smiled at them as they passed. Her mother would get an earful when she returned from Mrs. Haskett’s. And then mother and daughter would laugh together.

He hummed as he walked. Was he nervous? Or simply enjoying the mild evening?

“I have heard that tune before,” she said.

“It is a
stornello
. A street song. A later verse of . . .” He almost said “the song you were singing earlier,” but did not want her to know he had stood outside her door, listening. “Many of the
stornelli
are as old as Rome itself, part Italian, part Greek, part Arabic. Who knows where they came from? That particular song is about a young girl going to a fountain, hoping to meet her lover.”

“Can you sing the words?”

Even in the dark she could see the renewed blush that stormed over his face. “No,” he lied.

Their steps echoed together, her long-legged stride matching his. He tried not to notice how the muslin flounces of her skirt swung back and forth.