One afternoon Helge Gram sat in the club reading Norwegian newspapers. He was alone in the reading-room when Miss Jahrman entered. He stood up and bowed, but she came up to him with a smile and shook hands: “How are you getting on? Jenny and I have been wondering why we never see you; we were determined to come here on Saturday to see if we could find you and ask you to go out with us somewhere. Have you got rooms yet?” [58]
“No, I am sorry to say. I am still at the hotel. All the rooms I have seen are so expensive.”
“But it is not cheaper at the hotel, is it? I suppose you have to pay three lire a day at least? I thought so. It is not cheap in Rome, you know. You must have rooms to the south in winter. You don’t speak Italian, of course, but why did you not ask us to help you? Jenny or I would willingly have gone with you to look for rooms.”
“Thank you very much. I would not dream of troubling you about that.”
“It is no trouble whatever. How are you getting on? Have you met any people?”
“No. I came here on Saturday, but I did not speak to anybody. I read the papers. The day before yesterday I saw Heggen in a café on the Corso and exchanged a few words with him. I have also met two German doctors I knew in Florence, and I went with them to Via Appi one day.”
“Ugh! German doctors are not nice, are they?”
Helge smiled, embarrassed.
“Perhaps not, but we have some interests in common, and when one goes about without having anybody to talk to....”
“Yes, but you must make up your mind to speak Italian; you know the language, don’t you? Come for a walk with me and we will talk Italian all the way. I shall be a very strict maestra, you will see.”
“Thank you very much, Miss Jahrman, but I am afraid you will not find me very entertaining—except unwittingly perhaps.”
“Rubbish! Look here, I’ve got an idea! Two old Danish ladies left for Capri the day before yesterday. Their room may be vacant still. I am sure it is. A nice little room and cheap. I don’t remember the name of the street, but I know where it is. Shall I go with you and have a look at it? Come along.”
[59]
On the stairs she turned round and smiled awkwardly at him:
“I was awfully rude to you the other evening, Mr. Gram. Please accept my apologies.”
“My dear Miss Jahrman!”
“I was out of sorts that day. You cannot imagine what a scolding I got from Jenny, but I deserved it.”
“Not at all. I was to blame for forcing my company upon you, but it was so tempting to speak to you when I saw you and heard that you were Norwegians.”
“Of course, an adventure like that could be great fun, but I spoilt it with my bad temper. I was ill, you see. My nerves worry me; I can’t sleep and I can’t work, and then I get horrid sometimes.”
“Are you feeling better now?”
“Not really. Jenny and Gunnar are working—everybody works but myself. Is your work getting on all right? Aren’t you pleased? Every afternoon I sit to Jenny for my picture. I am having a day off today. I think she does it only to prevent me from being alone with my thoughts. Sometimes she takes me for a ride outside the walls. She is like a mother to me—Mia cara mammina.”
“You are very fond of your friend?”
“I should think so! She is so good to me. I am delicate and spoilt, and nobody but Jenny could stand me in the long run. She is so clever too, intelligent and energetic. And pretty—don’t you think she is lovely? You should see her hair when it is let down! When I am good she lets me do it for her. Here we are,” she said.
They mounted a pitch-dark staircase.
“You mustn’t mind the stairs; ours are still worse: you will see for yourself when you pay us a visit. Come one evening. We’ll get hold of the others and all go for a proper rag. I spoilt the last one for you.”
[60]
She rang a bell on the top floor. The woman who opened the door looked nice and tidy. She showed them a room with two beds. It looked out over a grey backyard with washing hanging in the windows, but there were plants on the balconies; loggias and terraces with green shrubs rose above the grey roofs.
Francesca went on talking to the woman while she examined the beds and looked into the stove, and explained things to Helge:
“There’s sun here all the morning. When one bed’s moved out, the room will look bigger; and the stove is all right. The price is forty lire without light and fire, and two for servizio. It is cheap. Shall I say you take it? You can move in tomorrow, if you like.”
“Don’t thank me. I just loved to help you,” she said, as they walked down the stairs. “I hope you will like it. Signora Papi is very clean, I know.”
“It is not a common virtue here, I suppose?”
“No, indeed. But I don’t think the people who let rooms in Christiania are much better. My sister and I lived once in rooms in Holbergsgate and I had a pair of patent leather shoes under the bed, but I never dared to take them out. Sometimes I peeped at them under the bed; they looked like two little white woolly lambs.”
“I have no experience in that way. I have always lived at home.”
Francesca burst out laughing all of a sudden. “The signora thought I was your moglie, do you know, and that we were going to live there together. I said I was your cousin, but she did not catch on. Cugina—it is not an accepted relationship anywhere in the world, it seems.”
Both laughed.
“Would you care to go for a walk?” asked Miss Jahrman suddenly. “Shall we go to Ponte Molle? Have you been[61] there? Is it too far? We can come back by tram.”
“Is it not too far for you? You’re not well.”
“It does me good to walk. ‘You must walk more,’ says Gunnar always—Mr. Heggen, you know.”
She chatted all the time, looking at him now and again to see if he was amused. They took the new road along by the Tiber; the yellow-grey river rolled between the green slopes. Small, pearl-tinted clouds sailed over the dark shrubbery of Monte Mario and the blocks of villas between the evergreen trees.
Francesca nodded to a policeman and said laughingly to Gram:
“Do you know, that man has proposed to me. I used to walk here very often alone, and sometimes I spoke to him, and one day he proposed. The son of our tobacconist has also proposed to me. Jenny says it was my own fault, and I suppose it was.”
“Miss Winge seems to scold you very often. She is a strict mamma, I can see.”
“No, she isn’t. She only scolds me when I need scolding: I wish somebody had done it long before.” She sighed. “But nobody ever did.”
Helge Gram felt quite free and easy in her company. There was something very soft about her—her lissom gait, her voice, and her face under the big mushroom hat. He did not quite like Jenny Winge when he thought of her now; she had such determined grey eyes and such an enormous appetite. Cesca had just told him that she herself could hardly eat anything at present.
“Miss Winge is a very determined young lady, I should think,” he said.
“No doubt about that! She has a very strong character; she has always been wanting to paint, but she had to go on[62] teaching, teaching! She has had a hard time, poor Jenny. You would not believe it when you see her now. She is so strong, she never gives in. When I first met her at the art school I thought she was very reserved, almost hard—armour-plated, Gunnar called it. She was very retiring; I did not know her really till we came out here. Her mother is a widow for the second time—she is a Mrs. Berner—and there are three more children. They had only three small rooms, imagine, and Jenny had to live in a tiny servant’s room, work and study to complete her education, besides helping her mother in the house and with money as well. They could not afford a servant. She knew nobody and had no friends. She shuts herself up, as it were, when things go badly, and does not want to complain, but when she is in luck she opens her arms to every one that needs comfort and support.”
Francesca’s cheeks were burning. She looked at him with her big eyes.
“All the bad luck I have had has been my own doing. I am a bit hysterical, and give way to all sorts of moods. Jenny gives me a talking-to; she says that if anything irreparable happens to you it is always your own fault, and if you cannot train your will to master your moods and impulses and so on, and have not complete control of yourself, you might as well commit suicide at once.”
Helge smiled at her. “Jenny says,” and “Gunnar says,” and “I had a friend who used to say.” How young and trusting she seemed!
“Don’t you think it possible that Miss Winge’s principles might not apply to you? You are so different, you two. No two people have the same views on life itself even.”
“No,” she said quietly. “But I am so fond of Jenny. I need her so.”
They came to the bridge. Francesca bent over the railing. Farther up the river there was a factory; its tall chimney stood[63] reflected in the swift yellow water. Behind the undulating plain, far away, lay the Sabine mountains, mud-grey and bare, and behind them, farther still, rose snowclad peaks.
“Jenny has painted this with strong evening light on it. The factory and the chimney are quite red. It was on a hot day, when you cannot see the mountains for mist, but only a few white snow-peaks in the heavy metallic blue of the sky, and the clouds above the snow. It is very pretty. I must ask her to show it to you.”
“Shall we have some wine here?” he asked.
“It’ll soon be getting cold, but we might sit down a little.”
She led the way across the round piazza behind the bridge. She chose an osteria with a small garden. Behind a shed with chairs and tables stood a seat under some bare elms. At the back of the garden was a meadow, and on the opposite side of the river the slope appeared dark against the limpid sky. Francesca broke a twig from an elder that grew by the fence; it had small green shoots, with tops blackened by the cold.
“All the winter they stand like that, shivering with cold, but when spring comes they have not been harmed.”
When she dropped the twig he picked it up and kept it. They had white wine. Francesca mixed hers with water, and hardly drank any of it. She smiled imploringly:
“Will you give me a cigarette?”
“With pleasure, if you think you can stand it.”
“I scarcely ever smoke now. Jenny has almost given it up for my sake. I suppose she is making up for it tonight, though. She is with Gunnar.” She laughed. “You must not tell Jenny that I smoked, promise me.”
“I won’t,” he said, laughing too.
She smoked in silence for a while: “I wish she and Gunnar would marry, but I am afraid they won’t. They have always been such friends. You don’t easily fall in love with a friend, do you? One you knew so well before. They are very much[64] alike in character, and it is just the contrast that attracts you, people say. It is stupid it should be so, I think, for it would be much better to fall in love with somebody akin to you, as it were; it would save all the misery and disappointment, don’t you think?
“Gunnar’s home is a small farm in the country. He came to Christiania, to an aunt, who took care of him, because they were so poor at home. He was only nine then, and had to carry the washing; his aunt kept a laundry. Later he got into a factory. He’s taught himself all he knows by sheer hard work. He reads a lot; he takes an interest in everything, and wants to get to the bottom of it. Jenny says he even forgets to paint. He has learnt Italian thoroughly; he can read any book—poetry, too.
“Jenny is the same. She has learnt heaps because it interested her. I can never learn out of books; reading always gives me a headache. But when Jenny or Gunnar tell me things, I remember them. You are very clever too; do tell me about the things you are studying. There is nothing I love more, and I store it in my memory.
“Gunnar has taught me to paint too. I always loved to draw; it came naturally. Three years ago I met him in the mountains at home. I had gone there to sketch. I made very nice pictures, quite correct, but not an ounce of art in them. I could see it myself, but I could not understand the reason why. I saw there was something missing in my pictures—something I wanted to put into them—but did not quite know what it was, and had not the least idea how to get it there.
“I spoke to him about it, showed him my things. He knew less than I about technique—he is only a year older than I—but he could make better use of what he had learnt. Then I made two pictures of a summer night in that wonderful chiaroscuro, where all the colours are so deep and yet with such a strong light. They were not good, of course, but they had[65] something of what I had wanted. I could see they were done by me and not by any little girl who had just learnt something about drawing. You see what I mean?
“I’ve a subject out here—on the other way to the city. We’ll go there another time. It is a road between two vineyards—quite a narrow one. In one place there are two baroque gates with iron gratings, each of them with a cypress beside it. I have made a couple of coloured drawings. There is a heavy dark blue sky above the cypresses and clearness of green air, and a star, and a faint outline of houses and cupolas in the distant city. I wanted the picture to be sort of stirring, you see.”
Twilight began to fall upon them. Her face looked pale under the brim of her hat.
“Don’t you think I ought to get well, and be allowed to work?”
“Yes,” he said in a low voice; “dear....”
He could hear that she was breathing heavily. They were both quiet for a moment, then he said:
“You are very fond of your friends, Miss Jahrman?”
“I want to like everybody, you see,” she said quietly, taking a long breath.
Helge Gram bent suddenly forward and kissed her hand, which rested white and small on the table.
“Thank you,” said Francesca in a low voice, and after a short pause:
“Let us go back now; it is getting cold.”
The next day when he moved into his new room a majolica vase with small blue iris was standing in the sunlight on his table. The signora explained that his “cousin” had brought them. When Helge was alone he bent over the flowers and kissed them one by one.