Jenny | Page 8

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
absent-mindedly 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 bare-headed, 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 Sweedish 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, which was arched and rested on a thick pillar
in the middle of the room, being distempered. The tables were bare, the
chairs had green rush bottoms, and the air was heavy with the sourish
smell of the wine barrels behind the counter.
This was artist life in Rome. It was almost like looking at a picture or
reading a description in a book, but he was not in it - on the contrary,
he was hopelessly out of it. As long as it was a question only of books
and pictures, he could dream that he was a part of it, but he was
convinced that he would never get in with these people.
Confound it - well, never mind. He was no good at associating with
people anyway, least of all with people like these. Look at Jenny Winge
now, how unconcernedly she holds the smeared glass of dark red wine.
It was a revelation to him. His father had drawn his attention to the
glass, which the girl in Barstrand's picture from Rome in the
Copenhagen museum holds in her hand. Miss Winge would probably
think it a poor picture. These young girls had probably never read about
Bramante's courtyard in the Cancellaria - "this pearl of renaissance
architecture." They might have discovered it one day by chance, when
they went out to buy beads and finery, and had perhaps taken their
friends to see this new delight, of which they had not dreamt for years.
They had not read in books