She handed him the scarf-pin and the necklace. The beads were warm from contact with the young girl’s neck. He looked at them a while; in every bead there were small flaws, as it were, which absorbed the light.
“You ought really to wear corals, Miss Jahrman. You would look exactly like a Roman contadina yourself.”
“You don’t say so!” She smiled, pleased. “Do you hear, you others?”
“You have an Italian name, too,” said Helge eagerly.
“No. I was named after my grandmother, but the Italian family I lived with last year could not pronounce my ugly name, and since then I have stuck to the Italian version of it.”
“Francesca,” said Ahlin, in a whisper.
“I shall always think of you as Francesca—signorina Francesca.”
“Why not Miss Jahrman? Unfortunately we cannot speak Italian together, since you don’t know the language.” She turned to the others. “Jenny, Gunnar—I am going to buy the corals tomorrow.”
“Yes; I think I heard you say so,” said Heggen.
“And I will not pay more than ninety.”
“You always have to bargain here,” said Helge, as one who knows. “I went into a shop this afternoon near St. Pietro and bought this thing for my mother. They asked seven lire, but I got it for four. Don’t you think it was cheap?” He put the thing on the table.
Francesca looked at it with contempt. “It costs two fifty in the market. I took a pair of them to each of the maids at home last year.”
“The man said it was old,” retorted Helge.
“They always do, when they see that people don’t understand, and don’t know the language.”
“You don’t think it is pretty?” said Helge, downcast, and wrapped the pink tissue paper round his treasure. “Don’t you think I can give it to my mother?”
“I think it is hideous,” said Francesca, “but, of course, I don’t know your mother’s taste.”
“What on earth shall I do with it, then?” sighed Helge.
“Give it to your mother,” said Jenny. “She will be pleased that you have remembered her. Besides, people at home like those things. We who live out here see so much that we become more critical.”
Francesca reached her hand for Ahlin’s cigarette-case, but he did not want to let her have it; they whispered together eagerly, then she flung it away, calling: “Giuseppe!”
Helge understood that she ordered the man to bring her some cigarettes. Ahlin got up suddenly: “My dear Miss Jahrman—I meant only to … you know it is not good for you to smoke so much.”
Francesca rose. She had tears in her eyes.
“Never mind. I want to go home.”
“Miss Jahrman—Cesca.” Ahlin stood holding her cloak and begged her quietly not to go. She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.
“Yes; I want to go home—you can see for yourself that I am quite impossible tonight. I want to go home alone. No, Jenny, you must not come with me.”
Heggen rose too. Helge remained alone at the table.
“You don’t imagine that we would let you go alone this time of night?” said Heggen.
“You mean to forbid me, perhaps?”
“I do absolutely.”
“Don’t, Gunnar,” said Jenny Winge. She sent the men away and they sat down at the table in silence, while Jenny, with her arms round Francesca, drew her aside and talked to her soothingly. After a while they came back to the table.
But the company was somewhat out of sorts. Miss Jahrman sat close to Jenny; she had got her cigarettes and was smoking now, shaking her head at Ahlin, who insisted that his were better. Jenny, who had ordered some fruit, was eating tangerines, and now and again she put a slice in Francesca’s mouth. How perfectly lovely she looked as she lay with her sad, childish face on Jenny’s shoulder, letting herself be fed by her friend. Ahlin sat and stared at her and Heggen played absentmindedly with the match-ends.
“Have you been in town long, Mr. Gram?” he asked.
“I have taken to saying that I came from Florence this morning by train.”
Jenny gave a polite little laugh, and Francesca smiled faintly.
At this moment a bareheaded, dark-haired woman with a bold, yellow, greasy face entered the room with a mandolin. She was accompanied by a small man in the threadbare finery of a waiter, and carrying a guitar.
“I was right, you see, Cesca,” said Jenny, speaking as to a child. “There is Emilia; now we are going to have some music.”
“That’s jolly,” said Helge. “Do the ballad singers really still go about here in Rome singing in the taverns?”
The singers tuned up “The Merry Widow.” The woman had a high, clear, metallic voice.
“Oh, how horrid,” cried Francesca, awakening; “we don’t want that, we want something Italian—la luna con palido canto, or what do you think?”
She went up to the singers and greeted them like old friends—laughed and gesticulated, seizing the guitar, and played, humming a few bars of one or two songs.
The Italian woman sang. The melody floated sweet and insinuating to the accompaniment of twanging metal strings, and Helge’s four new friends joined in the refrain. It was about amore and bacciare.
“It is a love song, is it not?”
“A nice love song,” laughed Miss Jahrman. “Don’t ask me to translate it, but in Italian it sounds very pretty.”
“This one is not so bad,” said Jenny. She turned to Helge with her sweet smile: “What do you think of this place? Is it not a good wine?”
“Excellent, and a characteristic old place.”
But all his interest was gone. Miss Winge and Heggen spoke to him now and again, but as he made no effort to keep up a conversation, they began to talk art together. The Swedish sculptor sat gazing at Miss Jahrman. The strange melodies from the strings floated past him—he felt that others understood. The room was typical, with a red stone floor, the walls and the ceiling,
