The Front Yard, and Other Italian StoriesWoolson, Constance Fenimore
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The Front Yard, and Other Italian Stories
Woolson, Constance Fenimore
Americans -- Italy -- Fiction; Italy -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
"Without being convinced? That I could never do."
"You want to be convinced against your will?"
"No; my will itself must be convinced to its lowest depths."
"This manuscript won't help you."
"Indeed, it has helped me greatly already. I have been here twice with
it. I wrote it out the evening after I saw you. I only wish I had one
for each of the galleries! But I feel differently now about asking you
to go."
"I told you you would desert me."
"No, it is not that. But Mr. Jackson says you are much taken up with the
fashionable society here, and that I must not expect you to give me so
much of your time as I had hoped for. He says, too, that your art
articles will do me quite as much good as you yourself, and more;
because you have a way, he says, like all society men, of talking as if
you had no real convictions at all, and that would unsettle me."
"Jackson is an excellent fellow," replied Noel; "I like him extremely.
And when would you like to go to the Borghese?"
"Oh, will you take me?" she said, joyfully. "Any time. To-morrow."
"Perhaps Mrs.--your mother, will go, also," he suggested, still unable
to recall the name; he could think of nothing but "stirrup," and of
course it was not that.
"I don't believe she would care about it," answered the daughter.
"She might. You know we make more of mothers here than we do in
America," he ventured to remark.
"That is impossible," said Miss Macks, calmly. Evidently she thought his
remark frivolous.
He abandoned the subject, and did not take it up again. It was not his
duty to instruct Miss Macks in foreign customs. In addition, she was not
only not "in society," but she was an art student, and art students had,
or took, privileges of their own in Rome.
"At what hour shall I come for you?" he said.
"It will be out of your way to come for me; I will meet you at the
gallery," she answered, radiant at the prospect.
He hesitated, then accepted her arrangement of things. He would take her
way, not his own. The next morning he went to the Borghese Palace ten
minutes before the appointed time. But she was already there.
"Mother thought she would not come out--the galleries tire her so," she
said; "but she was pleased to be remembered."
They spent an hour and a half among the pictures. She listened to all he
said with the same earnest attention.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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