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Then, before taking off the dowdy hat, before removing the white cotton gloves, she went to the window that overlooked the noisy Via Babbuino, closed the massive wooden shutters, fastened the heavy windows and drew the thick curtains. Then she stood a moment, eyes shut. In that little room the roar of Rome was tamed to a dull humming.
"Presto!" she said to the half-sleeping driver. Then she waved a gay hand at the carriage in the rear. "Presto!" she called, smiling. "Presto!" At six o'clock Mary Gowd entered the little room in the Via Babbuino. She went first to the window, drew the heavy curtains. The roar of Rome was hushed to a humming. She lighted a candle that stood on the table. Its dim light emphasized the gloom.
As we went on, other streams of people kept surging into the Corso from all the side streets, which were just as closely packed; on we swept from the Capitol; and they said that there were thousands more in the Forum. Hordes kept pouring in from the Piazza di Spagna, from the Via del Babbuino, from the Piazza del Popolo.
As the procession advanced more swarms of people streamed into the Corso from the side streets, which were also thronged from end to end; and the procession continued to ascend from the Campidoglio, and the rumor spread that thousands more were coming from Campo Vaccino. Numbers of people arrived from the Piazza di Spagna, from the Via del Babbuino, from the Piazza del Popolo.
But besides these there were the Abate Luigi of the Palazzo Valle, Madama Lucrezia, who still sits behind the Venetian palace near the Church of St. Mark, the Baboon, from which the Via Babbuino takes its name, and the marble portrait of Scanderbeg, the great enemy of the Turks, on the façade of the house which he at one time occupied in Rome.
Many, many times that same glint of humour had saved English Mary Gowd from seeking peace in the muddy old Tiber. Her card read imposingly thus: Mary M. Gowd, Cicerone. Certificated and Licensed Lecturer on Art and Archaeology. Via del Babbuino, Roma. In plain language Mary Gowd was a guide. Now, Rome is swarming with guides; but they are men guides. They besiege you in front of Cook's.
It was six o'clock of an evening early in March when Mary Gowd went home to the murky little room in the Via Babbuino. She was too tired to notice the sunset. She was too tired to smile at the red-eyed baby of the cobbler's wife, who lived in the rear. She was too tired to ask Tina for the letters that seldom came.
Mary Gowd, born and bred amid the green of Northern England, had never become hardened to the maddening noises of the Via Babbuino: The rattle and clatter of cab wheels; the clack-clack of thousands of iron-shod hoofs; the shrill, high cry of the street venders; the blasts of motor horns that seemed to rend the narrow street; the roar and rumble of the electric trams; the wail of fretful babies; the chatter of gossiping women; and above and through and below it all the cracking of the cabman's whip that sceptre of the Roman cabby, that wand which is one part whip and nine parts crack.
They drove the remainder of the way in silence. At her door in the Via Babbuino: "You mean to marry her?" asked Mary Gowd. Blue Cape shrugged eloquent shoulders: "I think not," he said quite simply. It was to be the Appian Way the next morning, with a stop at the Catacombs. Mary Gowd reached the hotel very early, but not so early as Caldini.
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