CHAPTER VI
In the sun-flooded gardens and airy rooms of the convent across the river nine radiant years of Giannella's childhood and girlhood slipped happily away. The round of lessons and play, the cycle of workdays and feastdays brought constant interest and variety, and the companionship of children of her own age, passing from class to class with her in the emulation which involved no rivalry or contention, satisfied all the wants of her heart. The nuns were as kind as Mamma Candida, though they inspired a profound respect and an unquestioning awe for their ever-just rulings. There were pets to care for, flowers to tend, beautiful little shrines to decorate them with if one had been very good. All this was consciously enjoyed; less understood, but of lasting importance was the religious training which gathered the little comrades into companies first under the white badge of the Guardian Angels—this for the youngest of all; then, at the time of First Communion, under the green one of St. Joseph; and finally, when the hour was approaching for grown girls to return to their homes in the world and take up the whole duty of women, hung round their necks the coveted blue ribbon and silver medal which marked their worthiness to be enrolled among the "Enfants de Marie." These influences gave a deep stability to Giannella's healthy normal character, and laid in her heart the foundations of peace and right-thinking for which she was to be deeply thankful later on.
Once or twice in the year Mariuccia was allowed to come early in the morning and take Giannella home for a day, bringing her back before Ave Marie; and whenever it was possible she made time to go to the convent, bearing some humble offering of fruits and cakes from the castello for the "Suore," and satisfy herself that the child was well and happy. The Princess came at stated periods, notably at the great Feasts, when prizes were distributed and wonderful little plays representing religious allegories were got up and acted—with what throbbing excitement—by the best and whitest lambs in the flock, those who had had no bad marks since the last great event of the kind. Since virtue, and not dramatic talent, was the test of proficiency, the good nuns had to work hard over these entertainments, but the result was always satisfactory to them and their troupe, and was believed to afford the highest artistic pleasure to the noble patronesses, of whom Princess Santafede was the most distinguished.
The Sisters kept open school for all the poorer children of the quarter, but this part of their establishment was divided from that devoted to the boarders by a twenty-foot wall, and no taint of the streets was ever wafted across that impassable barrier. Within the charmed circle, the girls, all of the better middle class, were as jealously guarded, as well taught, and fed, and housed, as Teresa Santafede herself had been in the aristocratic seclusion of her own convent school, where only the daughters of nobles were received. The one difference was that at Santa Eulalia less time was given to books and more to fine needlework and embroidery, the only accomplishments by which in those prehistoric days a refined woman in moderate circumstances could earn a living. There were no lay schools for girls, so there were no openings for teachers except as unpaid assistants to the nuns, who employed some half dozen of their old pupils, homeless orphans like Giannella, to help with the younger children. The Superior confided to the Princess that she would gladly keep Giannella in that capacity, her exquisite needlework and talent for design making her a valuable help in the embroidery department. But the Princess replied that the girl had received special training in these subjects because there was a person—the woman who occasionally came to see her—who had made great sacrifices on her behalf and for whom she could now, at sixteen, do something in return. She could earn money at home; there seemed to be no difficulty about her residing with Mariuccia Botti under Signor Bianchi's roof—and work could always be obtained for her there.
It was with great regret that Giannella left this, her second home, to return to the Professor's apartment in the Palazzo Santafede. Yet she was glad that the moment had come when she could begin to repay the untiring goodness which had saved her from the hard and lonely fate of the forsaken child and procured for her the education which in time would enable her to earn her living in retirement and peace. No anxieties for the future whispered trouble to her heart. Mariuccia would be ever at her side; and in the background was the beneficent Princess, always accessible through kind Signora Dati, promising that materials and sales should not fail for the beautiful work which the girl really loved. So, after tearful partings with teachers and companions, Giannella was fetched home, her little box full of naïf farewell presents of pictures of Saints, tiny pincushions, muslin bags stuffed with "gagia" blossoms and verbena leaves which would keep their sweet scent for twenty years to come—artificial flowers and embroidered handkerchiefs—all her inestimably precious, and quite valueless, earthly possessions.
Mariuccia told her to bestow these in a small empty room beyond the kitchen, where she could set up her embroidery frame close to the big window which looked more to the sky than to the street, and where she could keep her delicate work free from all danger of dust or accident. As for sleeping alone, that was out of the question. Giannella had never tried it in her life and was sure she should never close an eye, accustomed as she was to the big dormitory with its rows of white beds and the curtained sanctuary in the corner, where the guardian nun was supposed to lie awake saying her prayers all night, listening for the first sound of whispering or larking, to issue forth with dire retribution for the offenders. Mariuccia had made full preparation for her Giannella in her own room, a windowless apartment on the dark side of the passage. In it had stood for years a spindle-legged green bed of impaired constitution, replaced, with much grumbling from the padrone, by a stronger one when Mariuccia's wooden weight had three separate times broken through it with a thump on the bricks in the dead of night, causing the Professor to start from his slumbers in such a fright that his nurse and guardian had to administer a sedative and keep him on soup for two days to restore his nerves. The green wreck was to have been sold at once, but just then a thrilling discovery of new antiquities in the Foro Romano came to carry Signor Bianchi's mind beyond the confines of personal subjects, and he had been guilty of the frantic extravagance of forgetting to sell the bed. Mariuccia pushed it into a corner behind the door, and had coaxed the carpenter retainer, who had his workshop in a far recess of the colonnade, and who was forever engaged in repairing some of the hundreds of doors and windows in the vast building, to set the wreck safely on its legs again. One of her own two mattresses was stuffed with fresh cornhusks smelling of the country and brought by the carrettiere ally, and behold a nice white couch, quite fit for a "signorina" like Mariuccia's Giannella.
This time no permission was asked of Carlo Bianchi for her reception; the chains of servitude had changed places in the many years of Mariuccia's abode under his roof and were now firmly riveted on the unconscious man, who grumbled freely when things annoyed him, but was too much afraid of losing his economical housekeeper ever to really quarrel with that grim but faithful domestic tyrant.
So he only nodded in acquiescence when she told him that Giannella had come home—to stay. Giannella herself appeared a moment later, intent upon making her courtesy, inquiring after his respectable health, and thanking him for the permission to remain in his house. The fine gradations of social conditions had been carefully taught her by the nuns. Since she had neither father nor uncles, there was no occasion for her ever to kiss the hand of any gentleman, unless he were an ecclesiastic. Otherwise this honor was to be paid only to women, her superiors either in rank, like the Princess and the other patronesses of the convent, or in age and virtue, like her teachers, Signora Dati, and above all the good Sora Mariuccia, who had done so much for her. How much, the Sisters did not quite know, but Giannella did. Signora Dati had considered it right to make her understand the obligations under which she lay to the unlettered, silent peasant woman who would never refer to them herself; and Giannella, though still remembering "Mamma Candida" with warmer affection, meant to love and cherish "Zia Mariuccia" (as she had learned to call her when among the latter's real nephews and nieces) all her life. But Mariuccia recoiled in horror when Giannella attempted to kiss her hand. A young lady—the daughter of her poor master of good memory? Dove mia? No indeed. Nor was she to call her "Aunt" any longer, now that she was grown up. People must never be led to believe that any relationship existed between the "signorina" and her humble self. She was already busy with Giannella's future and had decided that some splendidly disinterested young man, of much "educazione" and large fortune—fifty thousand scudi at least—was to ask her in marriage at the proper time, which apparently came later for persons of her class than for the country folk, who reckoned sixteen the correct age for taking a husband and twenty the end of all chances in that direction.
It was with real pride that she watched Giannella's dignified little greeting to the Professor and marked the expression of bewilderment which came over his features as he turned and saw the new inmate of his family standing in the doorway of the study. He failed for the moment to connect the apparition with the child who had so incensed him by knocking down chairs nine years before. That criminal had been effaced from his memory for a long time, but was slowly recalled as he gazed at the graceful girl whose deep gray eyes were full of intelligent recollection of him. She had grown tall and straight, her features were delicately aquiline, giving an impression of maturity in spite of the dimple at the corner of her grave, fresh mouth; her faintly rosy skin was translucent with health and vitality, and her hair was still of the pure baby gold which had so delighted the hearts of Mariuccia and Candida in the old days. Now it framed in her pretty face in broad, shining braids hanging low before the ears, after the fashion of the day, and gathered into coils at the back. The convent uniform had been laid aside and Giannella was feeling strangely grand in the dark blue dress (touching the ground at last) which she had made for herself, under the direction of the nuns, for her first entrance into the great world. Many earnest warnings against that world's distractions and dissipations had accompanied the making of the dangerously secular garment, in reality so rigid in its simplicity that but for the finely embroidered collar and undersleeves it might have passed for a modification of a religious habit. The kind nuns had sighed in secret over Giannella's hair, the crown of glory which must attract attention in church and street. "Poverina, she is too pretty. That hair is only fit for a Saint in a picture," they would tell each other, "and the world is not the place for it. But there, Our Lady will protect her, and she has good, pious friends, thank Heaven."
The Professor, who was a gentleman, for all his abstracted ways, rose from his chair and bowed to the charming vision, saying something which was meant to be extremely polite. The vision courtesied again and disappeared; Mariuccia followed, closing the door behind her with a joyful snap; and Carlo Bianchi went back to his book, but for at least five minutes did not understand a word of the treatise on African marbles which had so enthralled him earlier. Who was this girl? Where had she come from? What on earth was she doing in his house, in his kitchen, as the companion of that tough old war-horse, Mariuccia from the Castel? He tried to piece together the few facts which Mariuccia had told him about her in the dim past. None of them quite accounted for her as he had beheld her just now, and at last he gave the question up, deciding that "Giannella" (that seemed to be her only name) was a problem which he would waste valuable time in trying to solve.
And the Professor, who knew less about her than anyone else, had catalogued Giannella rightly. She was a problem. What future lay before her when she should have read through the odd dozen of gaudily bound prize books that she had brought back from the convent, when she should have exhausted the delights of embroidering Church vestments and bridal trousseaux, the persons most interested in her welfare, with the one exception of Mariuccia, who, loving much, believed all things, would have found it hard to say. After all, that was scarcely their affair. If her fresh youth was destined to burn itself out over the embroidery frame in the bare little room beyond the kitchen, and her bright eyes to grow dim over invisible stitches in gossamer cambric—well, that was destiny's business. They had done what they could.
Giannella herself was not concerned with her future, but she soon came to realize that the present was anything but cheering. The silent house, the confined life, the absence of young companionship, all struck as coldly at her heart now as it had nine years before when she had flung herself into Mariuccia's arms and entreated to be taken back to Mamma Candida and the pigs and the donkey. After the breezy, healthy existence at the convent, lighted by a thousand interests and shared by numberless bosom friends with whom she had grown up, it was torturing to sit for hours over the work which had been made so pleasant by talk and variety over there at Santa Eulalia, to have only Mariuccia, ever kind but so unresponsive, as a companion; to see the sunshine through her window and watch the cloudlets chasing across the blue in the breeze, and know that she was a prisoner except for a short walk with Mariuccia in the morning, first to Mass at San Severino and then to the near shops where they did their marketing. Even when work was to be returned to Signora Dati and materials for more brought back, Mariuccia must accompany her, for no girl of her age could cross the threshold of her home alone, much less run the gauntlet of the grooms hanging round the stables and the posse of footmen in the Princess's antechamber. How different from the liberty she had enjoyed in the sunswept gardens of the school beyond the river. But the teachings received there, and a certain strain of courage and hardihood derived from her northern ancestry, helped her to shake off her growing depression and show a cheerful face to life, whatever privations it might choose to bring.
The periodical visits to Signora Dati in the great apartment on the other side of the courtyard became a distinct interest and pleasure. They gave her a glimpse into a large, majestic mode of life which had its own romance; and though "romance" was a word Giannella had scarcely heard, its glamor warmed and lighted her imagination and brought her much wordless consolation; for romance is the very sap of the tree of youth and finds its own sustenance without external help or guidance. Since Don Onorato had really grown up a certain element of color and change had crept into the over-ascetic atmosphere of his mother's surroundings. Her brother, the Cardinal, had done much to effect this, both openly, by representing that the lad should find brightness and sympathy with his young tastes in his home, and also more subtly, by bringing fresh books, travels, essays, even good novels, always with the plea that they might amuse Onorato and keep him from wasting his time on inferior literature. As the Princess still felt it her duty to read anything she recommended to her son, the Cardinal's contributions helped her to pass many pleasant hours and also to enlarge her views in many directions. When, according to her custom, she visited Onorato's rooms to see that all was right there, she would carry off any suspicious-looking volume and leave something better in its place, and though Onorato was a grown man by this time, his awe of her prevented his ever protesting against these exchanges. As time went on he learned to put away the attractively scandalous French novels which were occasionally smuggled into the city in spite of the tyrannical censorship which examined every atom of print that was put into the post or set in circulation, ruthlessly burned all immoral works or indecent pictures, and aroused the anger of freeborn foreigners by cutting out of the newspapers all scandalous or revolutionary items. Sad days of bigotry and darkness, when evil was stamped out as thoroughly as organization and power would permit—when any woman, from a foreign peeress to a dancer at the opera, was sent across the frontier the moment her behavior overstepped the bounds of propriety. If well-brought-up young men went wrong, they had at least to take some trouble to accomplish it.