La Donna di Casa. The Country Housekeeper.
Portofino’s bay lies calmly blue beneath a morning sky: the sun shines, and its glamour is set upon dainty ripples of restless sea, where the Mediterranean sways and washes without a quiet harbour. The Villa C—— stands to westward, with face set seaward toward Sestri’s opposite shore, and terrace built inward over the bay. It was a fortified castle once upon a time, long ago, when battles were fought along the coast, and Genoa was a great maritime power; the castle’s battlements are there still, built down into the rock that lies sunk in the waves; around their base aloes and sweet thyme cling to barren soil, and upon their crown a modern dwelling-house has grown into shape, with windows that see the water a hundred feet below, and a patch of terrace-garden growing upon scant mould, between the old walls of the fortifications. A goodly fig-tree finds room spite of scant space, and spreads wide boughs into the castle’s very windows, with fresh big leaves upon them, and luscious fruit thick between; the gate is to the hinder side, looking inland, and, when you find its mouth in the hill-side among the olives, dank and rugged stone steps will lead you within the house, and through the house out again on to that terrace upon the battlements that is sea-framed.
Here lived Teresa years ago when the Villa C—— belonged to an old Genoese marchese of lone life and bachelor ways, and Teresa is the country housekeeper. Her master is her pride, her pet, and her slave; she scorns the negoziante class who can grow rich in a trice, and buy a title, too, since the year 1848! She would tell lies, white or black, for an old family’s honour; day and night her simple soul schemes to uphold, amid poverty, the traditions of a race for whom she has lived alone these twenty years; the coronet of the house of C—— is the fairest of all in her eyes, and there is no place, though ruined, like Portofino Castle and Portofino Bay.
And here Teresa is right. Leaning upon the fortification’s old wall before the front windows—that wall that holds the terrace I have told of, looking around on this sun-lit summer morning that I call to mind, scarce anyone would grumble at Teresa’s verdict. To westward Genoa is hid from sight because of many rocks and promontories that seek the waves, and are pine-fringed and clad with olives; towards the sun-rising a near point—the other of the harbour’s arms, of which our Castle’s pedestal is one—hides neighbouring clefts of the shore, but further on a space, the bays seem to sweep inland with larger curves, and from the point of Portofino Cape many creeks, big and little, go together at last to make the one great gulf that curves round again to Chiavari and Sestri, lying opposite. The blue waves sway softly to and fro with the sun’s glitter on their bosoms; the sky is pale and calm in the heat; white sails and yellow mark the horizon and link sea and sky in the nearer foreground; round shapes of hills along the coast lie languidly to right and left, for the coming heat has sent a white mist before it. This is all looking seaward; from beneath the fig-tree or from off the hindermost wall of battlement you might see that gentle slopes or steeps are around, to girdle the bay—that vineyards and rich cultivations adorn them, that olive and fruit trees shade their sides, that green turf springs near the water, and aloes and house-leeks upon the rocks. And Portofino’s tiny town lies around the head of Portofino’s harbour; this also you can see from off the battlements of Villa C——, can even hear the sound of children’s voices from off the stone-paved piazza—fisher-children, who play around the beach and the little pier—or the harsher tones of women calling and men in argument. Where the land heaves inward and the slopes climb up into hills, chestnut trees grow in place of olives and aloes, and the turf is more mossy beneath them, for streams flow there, on whose brink ferns and the maiden-hair flourish. Looking across the tranquil blue bay, to the hill and cliff over against us, other villas stand up on the green background—where other old families live or have lived with other country housekeepers. And of these our Teresa is strangest and best of all. Watch her now, with Maso the fisher, as she stands in the shadow of the Castle wall, with face set towards that inland aspect that is green with luxuriant vegetation. No silk gown, white apron and sober cap are here the badges of responsible service. Though Teresa’s power be absolute and her position in the household invulnerable, she has rough work to do and wears no stockings to her feet, while her gown is but of homespun linen, her plaited, grey locks are uncovered, and no collar shields a throat that is open to the sun within an amber kerchief. But it is in her strange, strong face that she wears all the dignity of her office. Seamed though it be with gathering years and the labour of life, individuality is set in its every wrinkle, and power in the massive chin, swelling nostrils and heavy brow, while in the keen, black eyes youth’s fire is not yet quenched. Maso is afraid as he stands, leaning with curly, dark head against a cherry tree, for ‘And you think you can pass off your nasty tunny fish on me,’ screams the tall, old woman! ‘And you would like to get soldi from the marchese for what you can’t sell elsewhere, I don’t doubt! Go to, ill-educated man that you are! Sardines for the master’s dinner I will have, if you fish for them even at this hour!’ And Teresa’s palms are poised defiantly on her broad hips, her tall and powerful frame sways with agitation. Maso laughs, but his laughter is timorous, and quickly he turns to run lightly down the hill with the scorned contents of his basket. ‘Yes, yes; you may well run, for back again you need to be in a quarter of an hour, mind you!’ calls the housekeeper in his wake. ‘It is a little fast day, and the marchese eats magro, and requires the fish! Truly it seems impossible,’ continues she, using this favourite ejaculation as she comes slowly up again, and round the outer battlements to the brick-paved kitchen! Its deep-set windows look down the castle wall, and down the steep rock into the sea; the sunlight streams through them to flicker the rough floor over, and noting this, that tells the time of day, ‘Up, and quick, you lazy wench!’ calls Teresa sharply to the gaunt help-woman who slaves at her orders. ‘The Signor padrone will be home presently, and no breakfast cooked, and that linen yet to wring out! Come, lend me a hand!’ So the shirts of the marquis being hung out to dry on the castle turret, in company with sundry sheets and aprons, the crumpled-featured woman falls to fanning the charcoal fire with a feather screen, whilst Teresa chops fine herbs for the master’s daily omelette. ‘Here he is now,’ mutters she half crossly, as a heavy footfall climbs the stone stair, and, bustling into the forecourt that is open to the terrace by an archway, she begins to set out two-pronged forks and blunt knives on a coarse linen tablecloth for the meal. The marchese always eats in this middle court, whence he can see his pots of carnation and sweet geranium-leaf on the terrace, and get a glimpse of the sea behind the leaves of the fig-tree across the arch; but the housekeeper oftentimes scolds at him for not using the salotto in preference, which is dark and dirtily furnished; here, in the hall, the coarse oaken table and carved oak press stand alone with a few rush-seated chairs on the brick floor, and are nowise adequate, in Teresa’s eyes, to her master’s high lineage. He comes slowly, he is a man of somewhat sad countenance—dark, and pale, and fat. He wears a limp, long frock-coat now, but soon changes it for a many-coloured dressing-gown, while keeping the flower-worked smoking-cap still that Nina, his pretty niece, made for him last New Year. ‘I have fairly hunger,’ says he somewhat glumly to the old woman, glancing at the scarce-spread table. ‘So much the better,’ replies this one; ‘vossignoria will eat with the keener appetite!’ ‘It is near to eleven,’ murmurs he again, but would not venture closer than this towards a reproof to the all-powerful donna di casa. Teresa condescends to no reply; but, when she has placed the white-wine flask beside plate and knife and fork, and has retired into the kitchen to put the omelette on the fire, some sense of justice, perhaps, compels her to deal sharp words again to the drudge, and this is the only effect of the padrone’s mild displeasure! But the omelette is good, and the funghi are better than yesterday’s, so when the marchese has eaten a mouthful he is content to obey Teresa’s summons on the terrace that he may see a white-sailed schooner pass across the offing well in sight. ‘There will be ugly weather to-night,’ remarks the woman. ‘No, I think not,’ replies he, thinking of an unfinished tumbler of Monferrato. ‘Vossignoria is not always right, however! It is not the fishers who will make so sure of fine weather because the sun shines in heaven and the sea is blue! Wait and see if they moor not their boats high on the beach before evening!’ ‘May be,’ says the marchese mildly, and returns to his breakfast, while Teresa, approaching that other turret over the harbour, sends a cry out of good lungs to the fisherman coiling ropes in a boat below. It is Maso, who has not sent the fish. His answer comes travelling up through the olive trees, betwixt and above whose boughs the jewel-blue water lies cool in the heat, and deeper-coloured where a rim of midday shadow is around each brown old boat. ‘We have taken a “sea-serpent!”’ calls Maso again, and Teresa hastens within with this piece of news, for the capture of these dog-fish is an event, even if the sight of a shark or a monster cuttle-fish be a matter of yet more thrilling interest because of rarer occurrence. ‘What will Vossignoria take for dinner?’ asks the housekeeper when the tale has been told. And after a moment’s pause for the reply that well she knows the marchese dares not give, ‘You have a miserable portion of sardines,’ continues the autocrat, having been through this daily mockery of humility, ‘the half of a boiled fowl—which well the priests allow on a half-fast day, having but the health you have—two potatoes, and a filled tomato with a fry to finish.’ ‘Benissimo!’ says the marchese, as he has said every day these twelve years, and then he knows he has ordered his dinner.
THE MARQUIS AND HIS HOUSEKEEPER.
It is evening and—in the boat that has lain gently swaying in the harbour all day, beneath a pink awning—the marchese takes his nightly row. The dolphins, whence Portofino has its name, sport around the prow, but soon they gather in companies, and sink safely low beneath the sea’s surface, for Teresa was right after all, and there is a storm brewing behind the sunset. The marchese comes within doors with the clothes that hung a-drying, for the rain-drops begin to fall. The boats are moored high, the waves gather white crests over the darkening blue. Even in Portofino’s land-locked harbour that is the safest on all the coast, the waters that were as smooth as glass begin to swell a little with the rush of the sea from without; they are blue still from far, and green from off a boat’s prow, but they are duller beneath the grouping clouds than they were in the searching sunlight. Teresa does not mind, for did she not prophesy that bad weather was blowing up?