Little Women
“All the rest have gone to Monaco for the day. I preferred to stay at
home and write letters. They are done now, and I am going to Valrosa to
sketch, will you come?” said Amy, as she joined Laurie one lovely day
when he lounged in as usual, about noon.
“Well, yes, but isn’t it rather warm for such a long walk?” he answered
slowly, for the shaded salon looked inviting after the glare without.
“I’m going to have the little carriage, and Baptiste can drive, so
you’ll have nothing to do but hold your umbrella, and keep your gloves
nice,” returned Amy, with a sarcastic glance at the immaculate kids,
which were a weak point with Laurie.
“Then I’ll go with pleasure.” and he put out his hand for her
sketchbook. But she tucked it under her arm with a sharp...
“Don’t trouble yourself. It’s no exertion to me, but you don’t look
equal to it.”
Laurie lifted his eyebrows and followed at a leisurely pace as she ran
downstairs, but when they got into the carriage he took the reins
himself, and left little Baptiste nothing to do but fold his arms and
fall asleep on his perch.
The two never quarreled. Amy was too well-bred, and just now Laurie was
too lazy, so in a minute he peeped under her hatbrim with an inquiring
air. She answered him with a smile, and they went on together in the
most amicable manner.
It was a lovely drive, along winding roads rich in the picturesque
scenes that delight beauty-loving eyes. Here an ancient monastery,
whence the solemn chanting of the monks came down to them. There a
bare-legged shepherd, in wooden shoes, pointed hat, and rough jacket
over one shoulder, sat piping on a stone while his goats skipped among
the rocks or lay at his feet. Meek, mouse-colored donkeys, laden with
panniers of freshly cut grass passed by, with a pretty girl in a
capaline sitting between the green piles, or an old woman spinning with
a distaff as she went. Brown, soft-eyed children ran out from the
quaint stone hovels to offer nosegays, or bunches of oranges still on
the bough. Gnarled olive trees covered the hills with their dusky
foliage, fruit hung golden in the orchard, and great scarlet anemones
fringed the roadside, while beyond green slopes and craggy heights, the
Maritime Alps rose sharp and white against the blue Italian sky.
Valrosa well deserved its name, for in that climate of perpetual summer
roses blossomed everywhere. They overhung the archway, thrust
themselves between the bars of the great gate with a sweet welcome to
passers-by, and lined the avenue, winding through lemon trees and
feathery palms up to the villa on the hill. Every shadowy nook, where
seats invited one to stop and rest, was a mass of bloom, every cool
grotto had its marble nymph smiling from a veil of flowers and every
fountain reflected crimson, white, or pale pink roses, leaning down to
smile at their own beauty. Roses covered the walls of the house, draped
the cornices, climbed the pillars, and ran riot over the balustrade of
the wide terrace, whence one looked down on the sunny Mediterranean,
and the white-walled city on its shore.
“This is a regular honeymoon paradise, isn’t it? Did you ever see such
roses?” asked Amy, pausing on the terrace to enjoy the view, and a
luxurious whiff of perfume that came wandering by.
“No, nor felt such thorns,” returned Laurie, with his thumb in his
mouth, after a vain attempt to capture a solitary scarlet flower that
grew just beyond his reach.
“Try lower down, and pick those that have no thorns,” said Amy,
gathering three of the tiny cream-colored ones that starred the wall
behind her. She put them in his buttonhole as a peace offering, and he
stood a minute looking down at them with a curious expression, for in
the Italian part of his nature there was a touch of superstition, and
he was just then in that state of half-sweet, half-bitter melancholy,
when imaginative young men find significance in trifles and food for
romance everywhere. He had thought of Jo in reaching after the thorny
red rose, for vivid flowers became her, and she had often worn ones
like that from the greenhouse at home. The pale roses Amy gave him were
the sort that the Italians lay in dead hands, never in bridal wreaths,
and for a moment he wondered if the omen was for Jo or for himself, but
the next instant his American common sense got the better of
sentimentality, and he laughed a heartier laugh than Amy had heard
since he came.
“It’s good advice, you’d better take it and save your fingers,” she
said, thinking her speech amused him.
“Thank you, I will,” he answered in jest, and a few months later he did
it in earnest.
“Laurie, when are you going to your grandfather?” she asked presently,
as she settled herself on a rustic seat.
“Very soon.”
“You have said that a dozen times within the last three weeks.”
“I dare say, short answers save trouble.”
“He expects you, and you really ought to go.”
“Hospitable creature! I know it.”
“Then why don’t you do it?”
“Natural depravity, I suppose.”
“Natural indolence, you mean. It’s really dreadful!” and Amy looked
severe.
“Not so bad as it seems, for I should only plague him if I went, so I
might as well stay and plague you a little longer, you can bear it
better, in fact I think it agrees with you excellently,” and Laurie
composed himself for a lounge on the broad ledge of the balustrade.
Amy shook her head and opened her sketchbook with an air of
resignation, but she had made up her mind to lecture ‘that boy’ and in
a minute she began again.
“What are you doing just now?”
“Watching lizards.”
“No, no. I mean what do you intend and wish to do?”
“Smoke a cigarette, if you’ll allow me.”
“How provoking you are! I don’t approve of cigars and I will only allow
it on condition that you let me put you into my sketch. I need a
figure.”
“With all the pleasure in life. How will you have me, full length or
three-quarters, on my head or my heels? I should respectfully suggest a
recumbent posture, then put yourself in also and call it ‘Dolce far
niente’.”
“Stay as you are, and go to sleep if you like. I intend to work hard,”
said Amy in her most energetic tone.
“What delightful enthusiasm!” and he leaned against a tall urn with an
air of entire satisfaction.
“What would Jo say if she saw you now?” asked Amy impatiently, hoping
to stir him up by the mention of her still more energetic sister’s
name.
“As usual, ‘Go away, Teddy. I’m busy!’” He laughed as he spoke, but the
laugh was not natural, and a shade passed over his face, for the
utterance of the familiar name touched the wound that was not healed
yet. Both tone and shadow struck Amy, for she had seen and heard them
before, and now she looked up in time to catch a new expression on
Laurie’s face—a hard bitter look, full of pain, dissatisfaction, and
regret. It was gone before she could study it and the listless
expression back again. She watched him for a moment with artistic
pleasure, thinking how like an Italian he looked, as he lay basking in
the sun with uncovered head and eyes full of southern dreaminess, for
he seemed to have forgotten her and fallen into a reverie.
“You look like the effigy of a young knight asleep on his tomb,” she
said, carefully tracing the well-cut profile defined against the dark
stone.
“Wish I was!”
“That’s a foolish wish, unless you have spoiled your life. You are so
changed, I sometimes think—” there Amy stopped, with a half-timid,
half-wistful look, more significant than her unfinished speech.
Laurie saw and understood the affectionate anxiety which she hesitated
to express, and looking straight into her eyes, said, just as he used
to say it to her mother, “It’s all right, ma’am.”
That satisfied her and set at rest the doubts that had begun to worry
her lately. It also touched her, and she showed that it did, by the
cordial tone in which she said...
“I’m glad of that! I didn’t think you’d been a very bad boy, but I
fancied you might have wasted money at that wicked Baden-Baden, lost
your heart to some charming Frenchwoman with a husband, or got into
some of the scrapes that young men seem to consider a necessary part of
a foreign tour. Don’t stay out there in the sun, come and lie on the
grass here and ‘let us be friendly’, as Jo used to say when we got in
the sofa corner and told secrets.”
Laurie obediently threw himself down on the turf, and began to amuse
himself by sticking daisies into the ribbons of Amy’s hat, that lay
there.
“I’m all ready for the secrets.” and he glanced up with a decided
expression of interest in his eyes.
“I’ve none to tell. You may begin.”
“Haven’t one to bless myself with. I thought perhaps you’d had some
news from home..”
“You have heard all that has come lately. Don’t you hear often? I
fancied Jo would send you volumes.”
“She’s very busy. I’m roving about so, it’s impossible to be regular,
you know. When do you begin your great work of art, Raphaella?” he
asked, changing the subject abruptly after another pause, in which he
had been wondering if Amy knew his secret and wanted to talk about it.
“Never,” she answered, with a despondent but decided air. “Rome took
all the vanity out of me, for after seeing the wonders there, I felt
too insignificant to live and gave up all my foolish hopes in despair.”
“Why should you, with so much energy and talent?”
“That’s just why, because talent isn’t genius, and no amount of energy
can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. I won’t be a
common-place dauber, so I don’t intend to try any more.”
“And what are you going to do with yourself now, if I may ask?”
“Polish up my other talents, and be an ornament to society, if I get
the chance.”
It was a characteristic speech, and sounded daring, but audacity
becomes young people, and Amy’s ambition had a good foundation. Laurie
smiled, but he liked the spirit with which she took up a new purpose
when a long-cherished one died, and spent no time lamenting.
“Good! And here is where Fred Vaughn comes in, I fancy.”
Amy preserved a discreet silence, but there was a conscious look in her
downcast face that made Laurie sit up and say gravely, “Now I’m going
to play brother, and ask questions. May I?”
“I don’t promise to answer.”
“Your face will, if your tongue won’t. You aren’t woman of the world
enough yet to hide your feelings, my dear. I heard rumors about Fred
and you last year, and it’s my private opinion that if he had not been
called home so suddenly and detained so long, something would have come
of it, hey?”
“That’s not for me to say,” was Amy’s grim reply, but her lips would
smile, and there was a traitorous sparkle of the eye which betrayed
that she knew her power and enjoyed the knowledge.
“You are not engaged, I hope?” and Laurie looked very elder-brotherly
and grave all of a sudden.
“No.”
“But you will be, if he comes back and goes properly down on his knees,
won’t you?”
“Very likely.”
“Then you are fond of old Fred?”
“I could be, if I tried.”
“But you don’t intend to try till the proper moment? Bless my soul,
what unearthly prudence! He’s a good fellow, Amy, but not the man I
fancied you’d like.”
“He is rich, a gentleman, and has delightful manners,” began Amy,
trying to be quite cool and dignified, but feeling a little ashamed of
herself, in spite of the sincerity of her intentions.
“I understand. Queens of society can’t get on without money, so you
mean to make a good match, and start in that way? Quite right and
proper, as the world goes, but it sounds odd from the lips of one of
your mother’s girls.”
“True, nevertheless.”
A short speech, but the quiet decision with which it was uttered
contrasted curiously with the young speaker. Laurie felt this
instinctively and laid himself down again, with a sense of