A Lady of Good Family by Jeanne Mackin Page B

and a plain hat that did not invite glances. She strode quickly down the stairs, through the lobby, and out the door, aware of eyes following her with curiosity and disapproval. A young woman going out alone? There would be talk that evening in the dining room.
    Beatrix paused as soon as she had reached the street. Which way? She’d had enough of the places One Must Visit in Rome, enough of formal gardens.
    She turned left instead of right, away from the Corso and the popular tourist sections. At the next corner, she walked in the direction of the more open sky, where the buildings were lower; at the next corner she chose the narrowest street and followed it. She walked uphill, turned again, and up another hill.
    After half an hour, she was in a neighborhood of rutted streets where housewives had hung their linen out the windows and over balcony railings to air. Some of the houses hadenclosures where donkeys brayed; this was the section of Rome where the carters and laborers lived. She could smell cooking cabbage playing in and out of the wonderful honey scent of mimosa. Children paused in their rough play to stare at her, but none swarmed at her as they had in the Borghese gardens.
    “Look for beauty in rustic places,” Olmsted had told her. This place, this neighborhood, was beautiful. It was full of life and small dreams, the everyday hopes not of those who moved through the rarified atmosphere of the wealthy and the foreign, but of those who knew this place, this soil, the plants and birds and the names of all the local children, the color of the sky in January, in June. The simplicity of it was the same as honesty, in the way that the waves at Bar Harbor were honest, and the barrels in the shops where people bought their pickles and flour were honest.
    There, in that rough wooden doorway, a vine climbed up and over the lintel, cooling the ochre walls with white flowers. An urn of geranium and ivy shone red and green against a brick wall. A crawling weed sprawled over a dusty gravel path. It was the same plant she had plucked from the formal gravel walk of the Borghese gardens, but here it looked at home, even pretty. She would have to discover its name.
    The homely beauty of this neighborhood took her breath. Why had she wasted her time in all those villas and plazas, with their mathematical precision and coy, artificial plantings?
    If Aunt Edith and Teddy could walk down this street, they might enjoy each other’s company here, she thought. They might smile together at that birdcage hanging in the window, the prettypattern of the quilt draped over that railing. They might be friends again.
    Beatrix turned in circles in the narrow street, trying to take it all in at once, delighted even by the children who had begun to watch her, to giggle. She closed her eyes and lifted her head, letting the heat of the sun warm her face. The gray morning drizzle, the dark catacombs, seemed a long time ago.
    “Are you lost?” An old man stood before her, frowning.
    “No. I simply wished to go for a walk. Away from the others. What is this street?”
    “Via dei Serpenti.” He nodded, frowning with concern.
    Now, she thought, he will warn me about thieves and men who are too bold and threatening. He will tell me to go back to the safety of my hotel. But he did not.
    “You were looking at that vine,” he said, “over my door. Do you wish to see it closer? Come. I will bring you a glass of water. Sit here. Rest.” He used his dingy handkerchief to wipe clean a stone bench placed where the hot sun could not reach, then disappeared through his dark doorway.
    When he came back out carrying a stoneware pitcher and two glasses, she gratefully accepted one of them. “What is the name of this vine?” She reached up to touch one of the white flowers and rub its waxy petals. It was cool and smooth, like the sweet water he had brought her.
    “If it has a name, I do not know it. My mother planted it. She stole a piece from the garden at