SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER I.
“CITTÀ VECCHIA!”
A comfortable family party came Romeward one May morning from Turin. They had the railway carriage quite to themselves, and occupied it fully. Mr. Vane lay stretched at length on the front seat, with a travelling-bag and two shawls under his head. It was his first visit to Italy, consequently his first approach to Rome, but he declined his daughters’ invitation to look out. He would prefer, he said, to admire the country when he should feel more in the mood. “Besides,” he said, “to look at scenery when one is going through it behind a locomotive irritates both the eyes and the temper. If you wish to see a near object, no sooner have you fixed your eyes upon it than it is whisked out of sight, and your pupils contract with a snap; if a distant one, the moment you perceive that it is worth seeing, some sharp bit of foreground starts up and enters like a bramble between your eyelids. It’s a Sancho Panza feast, and I’ll none of it. You children can look out and tantalize your tempers, if it please you.”
“Oh! thank you,” his daughter Isabel said dryly, availing herself of the permission.
Presently she addressed him again: “Papa, if I could find a fault in you, it would be that you are such a very unreasonably reasonable man. You have always so many arguments in favor of every proposition you lay down, there
isn’t a handle left to take it up by.”
“Thank you!” the gentleman echoed. And then there was silence for a little while—a silence of tongues; but, with a ceaseless whirr and buzz, the flying train was casting the north behind, and plunging into the south like a bee into a flower.
Mr. Vane’s two daughters, twenty and twenty-two years of age, sat opposite him, each at a window, Isabel moving frequently, glancing here and there, and speaking whenever the spirit was stirred; Bianca, the younger, seeming to be in a trance. These two girls were as unlike in appearance as it is possible for two persons to be who have many points of resemblance. Both had fine dark eyes, dark hair, complexions of a clear, pale olive, and features sufficiently regular. Bianca was a trifle taller and finer in shape, and her manner had a gentle dignity, while her sister’s was lively and positive. Bianca’s mouth was fuller, sweeter, and more silent, and her voice softer. She had a more penetrating mind than most persons were aware of, and thought and observed more than she said. Isabel caught quickly at the surfaces of things, and had a clever way of weaving other people’s ideas into her talk that sometimes made her appear brilliant. It might be said that the impressions of the elder were cameo, those of the
younger intaglio. For the rest, let their story speak for them.
The father was a large, leisurely, middle-aged gentleman, whom critical people like to call indolent. He certainly had, as his elder daughter intimated, the faculty of finding a great many excellent reasons why he should not exert himself unnecessarily, and it is probable that he might never have been brought to the pitch of a trans-atlantic voyage but for Miss Isabel’s politic arguments in urging the matter.
“In Europe one can be so quiet,” she said. “One can live there without being tormented by the idea that one should be doing something for somebody. It isn’t considered necessary to have a mission. Everything happens half an hour or so after time, and everybody goes to sleep in the middle of the day—in the middle of the street, too, if they like. I’ve heard people say that it’s just delicious the way the clergy take their promenade there. Two of them will walk slowly along a few minutes, then stop and carry on their conversation a little while, as if they were in the Elysian Fields, then resume their walk, and so on, walking and pausing, in the most delightfully leisurely way. Fancy that in New York! Why, our idea of walking is to get one foot before the other as quickly as we can. Going out, we see only the spot we start from and the spot we arrive at, and we shoot from the one to the other as if we wore percussion-caps on our heads. Marion says that Italy is the fabled lotos, and that all the dust and dirt people talk so about is nothing but pollen.”
Mr. Vane, who in America felt himself like a drone in the midst of bees, could not resist this charming
picture, and we accordingly find him in the land of the lotos.
“Bianca,” her sister said presently, “do you remember the Goldsmith’s history of Rome we studied at school? I’ve forgotten every bit of it but the title, and an impression of great uncomfortable doings, and haranguing and attitudinizing, and killing. I recollect it was always a wonder to me when I found there were people enough left to begin a new chapter with. Now we are going to see the places. How glad I am we shall not see any of the tremendous people!”
She put her head out of the window and added: “I don’t find that the country looks any better than Massachusetts. But, for all that, I am enchanted to be here. How I have longed to come!”
“Indeed!” her father said, staring a little. “Why, then, did you not let us come six months ago, instead of clinging to London and Paris?”
She smiled indulgently on him. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten how, when I was a child, and when I had mince-pie for dinner, I used to slyly pick out the large raisins and put them under the edge of my plate to eat afterward. I recollect your finding me out once, and asking me if I didn’t like raisins, and I was in terror lest you were going to take them away from me. I’ve been doing the same thing now—saving the best for the last. I wished to dispose of everything else first, so that, when I return to America, I can shut my eyes in Rome, and not open them again till they see the shores of the New World. And, between ourselves, papa, isn’t it a dreadfully new world? I wouldn’t own it to a foreigner, of course; but you’re such a dear, stanch old Yankee!” And she leaned forward
and gave him an affectionate pinch in the cheek.
The younger sister turned quickly at that. “O Bell! don’t turn traitor,” she exclaimed. “Newness is not a disadvantage always. When the world was new the Creator praised it, but there is no record of his ever having praised it after.”
Mr. Vane looked at his younger daughter with a wistful, lingering smile. He always looked attentively at Bianca when she spoke.
Isabel lifted her hands in wonder. “Well, really, she is playing patriot! Who have I heard say that her body was born in America, but her soul in Italy? Who have I heard say that the children of Israel were not Egyptians, though they were born by the Nile?”
Bianca smiled to herself softly, and looked out of the window as she answered: “I am not playing patriot. The feeling was always in my mind, hanging there silent like a bell in its tower; and now and then it rang. It always rang when struck.”
“That’s my darling!” her father exclaimed. “Keep your sweet-toned patriotism in its bell-tower. I don’t like the sort that is always firing india-crackers under everybody’s nose. By the way,” he added after a while, rousing again, rather unaccountably, “what an absurdity it is in us, this coming to Rome in May! To-day is the second of the month. We should have come in December. I wonder I allowed myself to be so persuaded. I have a mind to go back at once.”
His elder daughter regarded him tranquilly. “Don’t excite yourself unnecessarily, papa,” she said; “we are behind a coachman who never turns back. By the time we reach Rome you will be as contented as a lamb. Do not you perceive something
beautiful in our coming at this season, with the orange-flowers and the jasmines? We do not arrive, we simply bloom. Even dear old papa will put on a film of tender green over his sombreness, like a patriarchal spruce-tree; and as to Bianca and me—”
She sang:
“Two half-open roses on one twig grew,
Sweet is the summer.
A nightingale sang there the whole night through
Sweet is the summer.”
“Here we are! What a comfort that we have not to go to a hotel nor search for lodgings! It is very nice to have a friend to prepare everything.”
In fact, a friend of the family, resident in Rome, who had written and received a score or so of letters on the subject of this journey, was waiting outside the barrier at that moment. They saw her a little apart from the crowd, looking for them as they gave up their tickets; then a servant took their packages, and they were cordially welcomed to Rome. This lady has so long been accustomed to hearing herself announced by the maid-servants of the friends she visits as the “Signora Ottant’-otto,” from the number of her house, that she will not be displeased if we continue the title.
A carriage was called, and in a few minutes they had reached the home prepared for their reception. It was an old-fashioned Roman house, situated on a high slope of the Viminal where it meets the Esquiline in a scarcely perceptible dent. The portone, entrance, and stairs were palatial in size, the latter having broad landings lighted by double windows in the middle of each story; and instead of a mere passage or small waiting-room, the door of the apartment
opened at once into a noble sala. Large chambers surrounded this sala, and a backward-extending wing held smaller rooms and a kitchen. All this part of the house looked into a garden, where orange-trees stood with their sprinkle of fragrant snow, and jasmines reared their solid cones of flowery gold, perfuming every breeze that entered. Beyond the garden extended an orchard and vineyard, hiding all that part of the city except the long roof and façade of the church of St. Catherine of Siena, and the grand old tower that Vittoria Colonna built her convent walls about. These looked over the rich verdure, standing out dark and massive against the clear western sky.
“The front rooms are town, the back rooms country,” the Signora said. “In the front rooms we have the ‘dim, religious light’ that Italians love; here are silence, except for the birds, sunshine, and flowers.”
The front drawing-rooms were conventional, but the sala and dining-room had a character quite new to the travellers. The uncovered brick floors, freshly sprinkled and swept; the faded old screens of green silk or embroidered satin, set in carved frames; the tarnished gilt chairs with scarlet velvet cushions; the large sofas, and tables, and cases of drawers, all finely carved; the walls almost entirely covered with old oil-paintings of every size, some without frames, some so dim that amid the haze of faded color a face would look forth, or an arm be thrust out as from a cloud—all these made up a picture very different from the rich, toned-down freshness of their New England home, where they trod on velvet, and would no more have admitted
a chair of scarlet and gold than they would have allowed a curtain to hang after the sun had made a streak in it.
The girls were enchanted. “How delightfully dingy everything is!” Isabel cried. “It’s like grandmother’s beautiful cashmere shawl that is a hundred years old.”
And then the travellers were good enough to say that they were hungry, and would not be displeased if luncheon should be very prompt at the hour of noon.
“After this, you see, we shall sail right into your track without a break,” Mr. Vane said. “Your hours suit me perfectly; and whether it should be luncheon or dinner at noon does not make the least difference to me at this season. In cold weather I like a late dinner.”
“I think you will find the early dinner pleasanter in summer,” the Signora said; “that is, if you rise early. You will soon learn, if you have not learned already, to give up the heavy American breakfast, and so will be hungry by noon. That gives you the fresh of the morning free, with little digestive work to dull your activity, and the lovely evenings from five to eight or nine. If you wish to go out romancing by moonlight, the supper is just enough to content, without clogging. The next best plan is, coffee on waking, breakfast at ten, and dinner at four or five after your nap. I have tried all ways, and settled on the first for this country. Of course it wouldn’t answer for our indoor, chilly life at the other side of the world.”
“I do not like a four or five o’clock dinner,” Mr. Vane said with decision. “It is neither one thing nor the other; and I hate to go from the bed to the dinner-table.”
It was the Signora’s first house-keeping for any one but herself, and she was full of a pleasant anxiety. What solemn conferences she had with the donna, what explanations, what charges she gave! And how learned she became in matters to which before she had not given a thought! In such a dark and narrow street, in a dingy little shop, was to be found the best chocolate in Rome. In such another place, where you would least expect, they sold coffee of unimpeachable excellence, which, of course, one had roasted and ground in one’s own house. Another journey was made for tea. She became an object of terror to sellers of meat and vegetables, and fruit-venders trembled before her. To witness the scorn with which she rejected apricots that had not the precise cloudless sunset tint, peaches that were of a vulgar red and green complexion or too pale in hue, mandarins not sufficiently loose of skin and flattened at the poles, and grapes and figs that could not answer in the affirmative at least six stern questions, one would have supposed that she must have been accustomed to such fruits as grew in the Garden of Eden. As to wine, the story of its getting was an admirable illustration of moral pulley-power. A friend’s friend’s, etc., friend had two friends who owned vineyards and made wine, and one was famous for his white and another for his red. The first power in this machinery was a semi-weekly cup of tea which a certain respectable, antique bachelor had taken regularly with the Signora time out of mind, and, losing which, his life would have been quite disjointed. The flavor of the tea did not, of course, extend beyond him, but it influenced certain favors in his power
to grant, which, in turn, moved the next wheel; and so on, quite in order, till a way was made from certain cool grottos, where the hoarded wines sparkled to themselves in the dark, to the small dinner-table where our friends in the old Roman house sat and sipped liquid rubies or sunshine for an absurdly small price considering the result.
“But you are giving us too much of your time,” the Vanes expostulated. “We cannot permit you to turn housekeeper for us. How will you be able to write?”
For the Signora Ottant’-otto was an authoress. “In the first flush of seeing you I could not content myself to write a line,” she said; “and by the time I shall have become calm my machinery will be in working order. After that nothing will be necessary but an occasional warning word or glance.”
This conversation did not, however, take place till the end of the first week. The first day the house-keeping seemed to have arranged itself without human intervention.
As they seated themselves at the luncheon-table the soft boom of the gun from St. Angelo proclaimed the hour of noon, and immediately another booming, as soft, but more musical, came from the near campanile of the Liberian basilica, where the great bell struck the Angelus, followed by all the bells in the tower in a festa ringing.
“That is Maria Assunta and her four ladies of honor,” the Signora said, with all the pride of a proprietor. “I may as well tell you that they and the church they belong to are my one weakness in Rome. I have been up the campanile to visit those bells, have read their inscriptions and touched their embossed sides, even while
they were being rung. An Italian boy who was with me exclaimed when I put my hand to the ringing rim of the great bell: ‘E un peccato! Ha fatto tacere Maria Santissima!’”
They smiled and listened. It pleased them to know what the Signora liked and how she liked.
“I remember the first time I saw that church,” she said, pleased to go on. “It was my first Christmas in Rome, and, after having heard a Mass at Aurora, I went out alone later, to lose myself and see what I would come to. I wandered into the long street that is now so familiar, and saw the tip of a campanile peeping at me over the hill in front like a beckoning finger. I followed, and presently knew where I must be, though I had carefully refrained from reading descriptions of anything. The morning was fresh and clear, but inside the church was quite dim, except that the round window high up the eastern end of the nave was thrust through by a long bar of sunshine that looked as though it might make a hole for itself out the other end, it was so live and solid. I recollected pictures I had seen of the Jewish tabernacle, with the two bars by which it was carried, or lifted, and I said to myself, Suppose another gold bar should be put in, and the whole church, and all who are in it, carried off over hill and dale, and through the air to some Promised Land fairer than Italy. There was a man up outside who seemed to be afraid of such a catastrophe; for he was struggling to draw together the two halves of a red curtain over the window. It was not easy to do—I presume he was resisted—but finally everything was shut out but a blush. All that upper end
of the nave was rosy, and pink reflections ran along the inner sides of the two rows of white columns, like ripples in water, and faded at the grand altar they had strained to reach. You could fancy they sighed with contentment when they did reach it. The sacristy-bell rang for a Mass beginning just as I entered, and I took that as an indication that I was to go no further till I had heard it. So I knelt close to the door in a little nook by the tribune. The priest stopped at the altar in the very farthest corner. I could see him between the columns, and so far away that I could hardly know when he knelt or rose. When the Mass was over, I seated myself where the bases of two columns before the Borghese Chapel form a grand marble throne, and there I stayed the whole forenoon.”
“Nothing strikes me more in Catholic churches,” Mr. Vane said, “than to see a worshipper attending to the service from some far nook or corner, with a crowd of people walking about between him and the altar. You do not seem to think it necessary to be near the priest or hear what he is saying. That is one great difference between you and Protestants. What their minister says is all. Though, to be sure,” he added, “one wouldn’t always know what the priest were saying, if one were close to him.”
“It isn’t necessary as long as we know what he is doing,” the Signora replied rather quickly. “Besides, Catholics, even uneducated ones, do know very nearly the words he is speaking, without hearing them. It is a mistake constantly made by Protestants to think that Catholics do not understand, because they themselves do not. They forget that there is little variety in the service, and that in all essential
parts one Mass is like all other Masses. An intelligent Catholic, whether he can read or not, can tell you just what the priest is doing as far off as he can see him, and knows just what prayers he should offer at the moment. As for the priest or his assistant not speaking distinctly, they often do, oftener than not; and when they do not, it is not strange. The same words, repeated over and over again, even when repeated with the whole heart, have a tendency to become indistinct, and to drop the consonants and keep only the vowels. The torso of sound is all right.”
“Like the foot of your bronze St. Peter, worn smooth with oft-repeated, fervent kisses,” the gentleman said, with a gravity that hid a
smile.” You may say that it has only the vowel shape of a foot, the consonant angles quite kissed away.”
The Signora lifted her head a little, and immediately changed the subject. Decidedly, she thought, it would be necessary to correct Mr. Vane’s conversation. But it would not be pleasant to do so the first day.
They lingered at the table nearly an hour, talking over old times and friends, and who were dead and who were married; till presently, it having got buzzed about among the select number of flies in the room that there was fruit at hand, they reminded the company to retire.
“Tea at five and supper at nine,” was the Signora’s parting reminder. “And now, a pleasant rest to you!”
CHAPTER II.
“AY DE MI, ALHAMA!”
Those who knew little or nothing of Mr. Vane usually fancied that they knew him perfectly, and were in the habit of describing him with epigrammatic brevity: A kind, honorable man, indolent of mind and body, very tolerant, has no strong convictions, and seems, not so much to live, as to be waiting to live, and waiting quite comfortably—as if a fish out of water should find itself for a few days in wine and water.
Those who knew him best hesitated to describe him; but all agreed that he was kind and honorable. We will not attempt any dissection of his character.
Twenty-three years before we find him in Rome he married a beautiful girl born in New Orleans of Spanish parents. He had long admired her, but had been kept at a distance by her coldness; and
when, quite suddenly, she consented to be his wife, he could scarcely have told if his delight were greater than his surprise.
“I do not love you,” she said with gentle calmness, “but I esteem you, and am prepared to do my duty as a wife. I should have preferred not to marry; but my parents desire that I should, and, as I am their only child, I do not think it right to oppose their wishes.”
It was scarcely an explanation to satisfy even an accepted lover, and Mr. Vane could not help asking if there were any one whom she preferred to him.
The answer was not prompt in coming, and was given with great reserve, though the lady showed neither confusion nor unwillingness to give it. She thought gravely for a minute before speaking, her fair,
quiet face all the time open to his study. “I have never had a lover,” she said then, “and I have never wished to marry any one. I have nothing to confess nor to repent of in this regard.”
With this he had been obliged to content himself. What unacknowledged maiden preference, untouched by passion, her words might have concealed, if any such had been, he could not ask and he never knew; but gentle, faithful, prompt in every duty, and sincerely desirous to render him happy as she was, he always felt that there was an inner chamber in her heart where he had never penetrated, and which she had even closed to her own eyes. There was no appearance of concealment or conscious reserve, no hidden pain, but only a something wanting, as if some delicate spring in her soul had been broken. He had hoped to make her forget whatever shadow of regret her life might have known, and to restore her to an elastic joyousness more suited to her age; and, in the earlier months of their married life, finding his efforts vain, he had broken out in some slight reproaches now and then. But the blush of pain and alarm, the anxious inquiries, “In what have I failed?” “What have I done to displease you?” and the gayety she strove to assume for his pleasure, made him regret his impatience. Tacitly he allowed her to renounce an affectation which was the first she had ever stooped to, and, as time passed on, they settled into a friendly and undemonstrative intercourse. Isabel seemed to have drawn her disposition from this lively surface of her mother’s briefly-troubled life; but the younger showed something of that quiet melancholy which had succeeded. Mrs. Vane died when
Bianca was but six years old, and her husband had never manifested any disposition to marry again, seeming to be satisfied with the society of his children.
In religion the daughters followed their mother, who had been a Catholic. The father was still Protestant.
“Poor papa!” Isabel said when speaking to a friend on the subject, “he never will be persuaded to study theology. The only way to attract him to a religion would be by the excellence of its professors; and he protests that he sees no difference in people in general, that he has no doubt the Chinese have amiable qualities, and that, if he lived among the Turks, he should probably become very fond of them. What can one do with such a man? Bring out all your hard little arguments and lay them down before him, showing how perfectly they fit into the most beautiful mosaic for your side, and he listens with the greatest attention, then mixes them all up, and rearranges them into an entirely different pattern for the opposite side, and ends by declaring that both are true as far as they go. You see, he has spent his life with two excellent women, one Protestant and the other Catholic—his mother and our mamma—and that has spoiled him for conversion. I’ve often wished that dear grand-mamma had been the least bit of a vixen, or had even taken snuff in her old age; but she never did a thing to spoil the beautiful white halo about her, and died at last as she had lived. Mamma went as the moon goes, waning, growing dimmer every day, till you see it like a little silver cloud in the sky, and then it is gone. But grand-mamma seemed to look up suddenly,
and smile, and disappear, as if some one she thought the world of, and hadn’t seen for a long time, had come and called her out of the room for a minute.”
“You ask what you are to do with such a man as your father,” her friend said. “I answer, you can let him alone, and I strongly advise you to do so. He is quite capable of thinking and observing without being teased. He leaves you free; do the same by him.”
“I suppose I must,” the girl sighed unwillingly.
Bianca, who remembered her mother only as the little silver cloud fading in the sky, had also her pretty tribute to pay to the grandmother, who had not been many years dead.
“Of course we wished her to be a Catholic,” she said; “but no one could know her and doubt that she was good. She did not believe our dogmas because she did not understand them, but she never spoke an uncharitable word of us. Indeed, I used to think that unconsciously she believed everything. Her religion was like a rose-bush on which only one rose bloomed out, and that rose was Christ. All the rest were just buds with the smallest pink tips showing. She was so dazzled and wondering over her wonderful one rose that she could not think of the others. What a blossoming out there will be when she reaches heaven, if she is not there already!”
While we have been giving this little history, casa Ottant’-otto has been as tranquil as if it were mid-night instead of mid-day. The rooms were perfectly dark, except where a chink in the shutter or a loose hasp let in here and there a light too small to be called a ray, which made a pale glow in one
spot, showing like a blotch on the darkness. Not a sound was heard within, and scarcely a sound from without; for, early as it was in the season, the street had its quiet hour, and the birds, the only noisy people on the garden side, would no more have thought of singing at noon than of remaining silent in the morning.
But, as the afternoon wore on, something stirred on a red cushion in a corner of the dining-room. It was a black cat, called, from its color, the abate. This member of the family rose, stretched himself slowly, first one side, then the other, opened his mouth in a portentous yawn, and seemed to utter an inquiring “Mew!” but, what with sleepiness, warmth, and languor, the sound was very nearly inaudible. Looking about, he saw Adriano, the man-servant, asleep in an arm-chair, his head, in a little scarlet cap with a tassel, dropped on one shoulder, his arms hanging down over the arms of the chair. Wakened, perhaps, by the glance, the man opened his eyes, gathered up his head and arms, and began, in turn, to stretch himself out of sleep, giving an audible yawn instead of a “Mew.” The abate then exerted himself so far as to saunter to the threshold of the door looking into the kitchen. Annunciata, who had placed her chair in a corner of the room in such a manner that the walls supported her while she slept, was just stretching out one foot to pick up the sandal that had dropped off during her nap. All this the cat saw, doubtless. It was too dark for any one else to see.
Presently Adriano opened a half shutter in the dining-room, admitting a faint light; then, passing, with slip-shod feet, into the sala,
threw the windows wide open. Instantly all the bright out-doors, which had been waiting to enter—sunshine, perfume, and west wind—rushed in together, lit the gilding in a new glitter, reddened the velvet again, whitened the curtains and set them blowing about, roused a hundred little winking mischiefs in the carvings, and almost brought a smile into the many pictured faces on the walls that had been waiting so long in the dark with their eyes wide open.
After a little interval, the Signora came out of her room; then Isabel’s bright face appeared.
“I didn’t believe I should sleep a wink on this first day,” she said; “but I have slept the whole time. One becomes accustomed to everything. But where can Bianca be? I’m not at all sure she did right to go out alone, and at this hour. That girl does the most extraordinary things sometimes, quiet as she seems. I sometimes think, Signora, that Bianca has great force of will.”
Uttering this last remark, the young woman looked at her friend as if she expected an astonished denial. The Signora, on the contrary, replied with a rather significant smile: “Only ‘sometimes,’ my dear? If your sister had a motive worthy, her will would be strong enough to oppose the whole world.”
“Bianca!” cried Isabel in astonishment. “Why, she is the softest creature alive.”
The Signora was arranging tea-cups on a table drawn up before one of the large sofas, and waited until her hands were free of them before replying, as she wished to speak with emphasis. “Do you think,” she said then, “that it is only the positive, opinionated women who have firmness of character? My experience is that your
women who are constantly driving and directing people in small things can almost always be themselves driven in great things, while those who do not like to make a fuss about trifles will stand their ground when it comes to a matter of importance. If the truth could be known, I believe it would be found that the world’s heroines of action and of suffering have been those same soft creatures in ordinary circumstances. And here’s the child now.”
In fact, the entrance-door opened at that moment from without, and Bianca Vane came in with cheeks as red as roses. She had begged the Signora’s permission to go out instead of going to bed, promising to go no farther than Santa Maria Maggiore, which was but five minutes’ walk from the house.
Isabel looked at her sister very gravely while she stood pulling the great key out of the lock, smiling to herself, and tugging away with the softest, prettiest hands in the world. The elder sister had been accustomed to be called, and to consider herself, the stronger of the two, and she was not altogether certain now that the Signora had not been jesting.
The great Italian key, large enough for a prison, was got out of the lock, the door shut, half by the wind and half by the lady, with a force that made its three little bells and its two immense iron bolts rattle and ring, and Bianca went straight to the Signora and kissed her—a somewhat unusual demonstration. “I’ve been so happy!” she whispered close to the cheek her lips had touched. “How beautiful it is! You must let me have a ‘weakness’ for your church and its bells, and all that belongs to it.”
A nod and glance of intelligence
were exchanged between the two, and the girl went to take off her bonnet.
Mr. Vane appeared at the same moment, looking as if he had enjoyed a most satisfying nap, and tea was prepared. The Signora and the two girls occupied the long red sofa, over which, on the wall, a stately Penelope, seated among her maidens, laid aside her often-ravelled web, and earnestly regarded the Ulysses whom she had not yet recognized, but could not remove her eyes from. At the other side of the table, opposite them, a high-backed, ample chair had been placed for the gentleman of the family, who seemed to feel himself very much at home.
“Has my little girl been asleep?” he asked, looking at his younger daughter.
“Well, no, papa,” was the reply, “but she has been dreaming.”
No more questions were asked then. Mr. Vane was looking at the picture opposite him, which had a very pleasant suggestion of perils and journeys over, and happy reunion after long separation. Suddenly his glance dropped to the lady beneath, went back to the picture, and a second time sought the Signora’s face.
“Why,” he said, “that Penelope looks as though you had sat for her to a not very good artist.”
The Signora gave him his tea. “I assure you,” she said, “that I never posed for that nor any other Penelope during the whole course of my life. The character doesn’t suit me.”
Mr. Vane took his cup, and studied over this little speech while he slowly stirred in his tea two cubes of sugar. He had been quite correct in his remark. The two faces were strikingly alike—fine in their oval
shape, with dark-blue eyes, and a hint of yellow in the thick flaxen hair.
Presently he looked up. “I can’t guess,” he said.
The lady laughed. “When it is so plain? Well, in the first place, I am not so industrious; in the next place, I shouldn’t have let Ulysses go away without me; in the third place, I haven’t the suitors; and, in the fourth place, if I had had them, I should have kept them in better order. I think the places are all taken. And now, Bianca has for a long time had something on her mind to say. You have the floor, my dear.”
“Oh! it’s nothing,” Bianca said; “only if you are done talking about Penelope, I should like to give you all a piece of advice.”
The company were unanimously anxious to hear. Gentle suggestions they often heard from this young lady; but it was perhaps the first time they had ever heard her propose deliberately to give advice to any one, and still less to a company of elders.
“My advice is this,” she said: “whenever any of you take your first walk in a strange city, look at the house you live in before you go away from it, and see how it is made, and what number it is, and make sure of the name of the street; otherwise, though you may find every place you do not want, you may never find your own house again. That’s all I have to say.”
“Excellent advice!” Mr. Vane said. “But may I ask what made you think of it just now?”
“First let me tell you a little story,” said Bianca. “Once upon a time a young woman I know went to live in a strange city where they spoke a language she did not understand. The very first day, almost
the first hour, she went out for a walk, and went alone; but her mind was so full of the place she was going to that she took no note of the place she was leaving. No matter what a nice time she had before she started to return; that doesn’t belong to the story, which is entirely tragical. Her troubles began when she thought that in two minutes she would be at her own door. Come to think about it, she had no idea where her own door was, in which of three or four radiating streets it was to be found, or what the number of it was, nor how it looked. So she wandered up and down, and to and fro, in the hot sun, and passed her home without recognizing it any more than the Signora’s portrait up there recognizes her husband; and at last, when she was just ready to cry, and to believe that the house and everybody in it had been bewitched and whisked off to some other continent, and that she had to go blowing about for ever in that lost way, what do you think happened?”
The story-teller had reason to be gratified by the expression of intense interest with which her audience waited for the catastrophe.
“Well,” she continued, “this poor wanderer happened to glance up a house-front as she was passing, and she saw out of a window a hand laid on the frame—just the hand of some one who stood inside. It was very handsome and white, and on one finger of it was a ring that she recognized. And then the tears of sorrow that she was about to shed changed to tears of joy, and she said: ‘O darling hand of my papa, with my own good-for-nothing cameo face on it—’”
And Bianca finished her story by flying up out of her chair, and rushing to hang on her father’s
shoulder, and kiss the hand that had found her.
“You don’t mean to say that you have been out wandering about Rome all alone!” Mr. Vane exclaimed, reddening.
“I only went up to the Liberian basilica,” she said; “and it was an absurd thing in me, getting lost. You didn’t imagine I was going properly to sleep my first day in Rome, did you? You might as well have put a flame to bed, and told it to shut its eyes.”
As she spoke, a dash of clear crimson stained her cheeks, as if the juice of a ripe pomegranate had been flung over them, and her head was raised quickly and with an air that was almost defiant, though unconsciously so.
The Signora had seen this gesture and blush once or twice before, and thought she understood the meaning of them; how the impassioned and enthusiastic nature hidden under that pensive softness and silence resented now and then the languid indifference of the father and the superficial positiveness of the sister, and proudly asserted its own claim to an individual and untrammelled existence.
Mr. Vane dropped his eyes, and an expression of pain passed momentarily over his face. He also had seen the look before—seen it in his wife’s face as well as in his daughter’s. “I do not mean to shut you up, my dear,” he said gravely. “I only wish that you should come to no harm. If you like to go about freely, the Signora can, perhaps, recommend a good, trusty servant, who will protect you without being intrusive.”
She did not say a word, only leaned close to him, and laid her cheek, still glowing red, on his hair.
He smiled, and spoke more lightly. “But I should like to have you go with me sometimes, and kindle my fuel with your fires.”
She embraced him silently and went back to her seat.
The Signora smiled into her teacup over this little scene, in which nothing had pleased her more than the sweet readiness of the father to be reconciled, and his quick comprehension of the meaning of his daughter’s mute caress. “He has certainly great delicacy and sensitiveness,” she thought. “I wonder if Bianca and he may not be very much alike!”
“The chief danger in walking out in Rome,” she said, “is from the public carriages. The traditions are evidently all in favor of those who drive, not of those who walk, and pedestrians have no rights which quadrupeds and the bipeds who drive them are bound to respect. For the rest, I have gone about a good deal alone, and have had no more annoyance than I should have had in any other large city in the world. Of course young Italian women have not so much liberty as we take; but all sensible and honest people here understand that foreigners do not cross land and sea, and come to the most famous city in the world, in order to shut themselves up in houses; and, moreover, that it may well be inconvenient sometimes to find an escort. I told Bianca that she could go up to the church as well as not, but must go no further. It was stupid of me not to warn her of losing her way back. And,” she added, with a sudden change, “it was still more stupid of me not to recollect the difference between American and Italian bread. You poor child!” For she had caught sight of Isabel getting quite red in
the face over a roll she was trying to break.
“They do bake their bread so hard here and in France,” the girl sighed, giving up the attempt in despair. “In Paris I could throw our rolls all about the room without injuring anything but the furniture. I didn’t make the smallest dent in the bread.”
The Signora promised them the most American of bread for the future, but added: “I have become so accustomed to this hard baking that I had forgotten all about the difference. In time you will come to prefer it, and to find that the lighter baking will taste raw to you. Indeed, you will adopt a good many Italian customs in regard to eating, which, so far as concerns health, I think they understand better than any other nation. Their prohibitions you must certainly attend to, however unreasonable they may seem to you; but you are not obliged to eat what they like. The first year I came here I broke a tooth trying to eat a piece of cake they brought me on Christmas Eve. They said it was their custom to eat it at that season, and I obeyed dutifully. It is dark, a caricature of our fruit-cake, and seems to be made of nuts and raisins, held together by a tough, dry paste. It was like a piece out of a badly-macadamized street. Fortunately, I broke only one tooth, and that saved my stomach; for I do not know what would have become of me if I had swallowed the stuff.”
Mr. Vane gave a significant “Ahem!” “I should have supposed,” he remarked, “that any one who had swallowed the Infalli—”
“Papa!” cried Isabel, making a peremptory gesture to silence him.
“—bility—” he pursued calmly.
“O papa!” said Bianca, with soft
entreaty. He winced, but finished—“ought to be able to digest anything that Rome can offer.”
The two girls looked at the Signora. They knew her rather better than their father did. She was folding her napkin up very carefully, and considering. After a minute, still smoothing the damask folds, she spoke. “I have always thought it wrong to ridicule even a false religion. When I think that on the poor crumbling mythologies of the world the souls of men have tried to climb to such a heaven as they had glimpses of, or were capable of imagining, their mistakes become to me sad, or terrible—anything but laughable. One doesn’t laugh at sight of a rotten plank that broke in the hands of a drowning man. And if falsehood, when human prayers have been breathed on it, and human tears shed on it, and human hearts have clung to it, believing it to be truth, is something no longer to be ridiculed, how much more should we treat the truth seriously! The dogma of Infallibility was the anchor the church dropped when she saw the storm coming, and it is probable that before we shall have peace again we may hang for a time on that one rope. Nothing in revelation is more serious to me.”
She rose, without giving any opportunity for reply, and without looking at any one. “If you like, we will prepare for a drive,” she added, and left the room quietly.
But in spite of the calmness with which she spoke the Signora was much agitated, and scarcely refrained from tears when she was alone. To give such a reproof was only less difficult than to suffer an affront to the church to pass unreproved; and it was with a little nervousness that she went out to meet her guest again.
He was in the drawing-room alone, evidently waiting for her, and the first glance in his face entirely reassured her, so sweet and untroubled was his expression.
“I am like a great rough elephant who has stepped on the kind lady who was feeding him with sugarplums,” he said, and offered his hand to her with a confidence in her good-will which was almost more pleasing than her confidence in his.
And so ended their first and last quarrel.
The girls, who came presently, with a little timidity, beamed when they saw the two standing by a window and watching the work going on across the street. All the space there had once been a palace-garden, but now nearly every flowery thing had disappeared, and in their place the foundations of a large building were being laid in a superbly solid way. Wide walls of stone, on which three men could walk abreast, had in some places risen a few feet above the outer level, their bases sunk ten feet, perhaps, below the deep cellar bottom, and the trenches for founding the partition-walls were being dug in the same manner. They could see, too, the beginning of the grand stone arches which were to support the floors. An Italian would have passed all this without notice; but to one accustomed to the flimsy style of American architecture the sight was refreshing. In the centre of the space the building was to occupy still remained a fountain-basin from which the water had been drawn away, exposing a circle of beautiful round arches of gray stone. Under these arches the workmen were accustomed to take refuge when a shower came up, crouching there contentedly, and
looking out at the bright drops as they fell, like swallows out of a row of nests under the barn-eaves.
“I have wondered whether there ever before was a house on this spot,” the Signora said. “If there were, a garden has bloomed over it for centuries, as, perhaps, at some future time, another garden will cover the ruins of this work of to-day. A few months ago some flowers still lingered here, but they were trampled or dug away, till at last only one red poppy was left at the edge of the cellar-wall. I watched it day after day, blazing there like a heart on fire. Every morning I looked out I feared to miss it; but there it clung among trampling feet of men and beasts, with stone-work being built almost over it, and every sort of destruction threatening, but never falling. When nearly a week had passed, I could bear it no longer. If at that time I had seen a foot set upon, or a rock crushing, the flower, I should have cried out as though I were myself being crushed. I sent Adriano out to get it for me, and pressed it carefully in the prettiest book I have—the brave little blossom! Here it is, see! The thin petals are like faded blood-stains, but the seed-vessel in the centre is firm, and precisely like a little marble urn with a mossy vine wreathing its base and running up one side. In that urn repose the dust and the hope of a long line of scarlet poppies.”
The gentleman listened indulgently to the Signora’s story, and watched her with interest as she put the relic carefully away.
And then they went down to the carriage that was waiting for them, and drove through the long street that stretches over hill and valley from the Esquiline to the Pincio, so
that one looks, as through a telescope, from the sunny brow of the former to the campanile where Maria Assunta and her maidens
“Sprinkle with holy sounds the air, as the priest with the hyssop
Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters blessings upon them.”
Some one has said of this street that it is like a boa-constrictor after it has swallowed an ox and stretched itself out to digest him, and the Quirinal Hill is the ox.
All the world was out that evening, and even the most insensible promenader spared a glance for the sky. It was Roman form with Gothic colors, the round arch of the heavens a pale, pure gold, bright, yet tender as a flower, and against that background, less like a city than like an embossed picture, Rome, with its great cupola, its crowded beauties of architecture, its pines and its cypresses. Of the personages, more or less distinguished, in the circle of carriages behind them, the new-comers took but little note. The old papal picture, with its cardinals’ coaches and its prelates’ costumes, was effaced, and there was nothing in the human part of the scene more striking than the last Paris fashions—as if some tyro with his coarse brush should paint over a Titian. If one should seek for royalty in that crowd, he would not find the angelic old king, clothed in white, as if already among the blest, beaming on all the faces turned toward him, and giving benediction right and left as he went. In place of that might be seen to pass a brutal face, with the color of one half-strangled, with upturned nose and curled-up moustache, and with eyes whose glances no respectable woman would encounter. The Roman people used to say, “When the pope comes out,
the sun comes out”; but no such shining proverb was suggested by this dark and forbidding face.
The Signora, looking with her friends, seemed herself to behold Rome for the first time, and to see in swift contrast both present and past. Was it past, indeed, and for ever, that dominion of centuries, around which had gathered a glory so unique? She stretched her hands out involuntarily, and sighed in the song of the vanquished Moors:
“Ay de mi, Alhama!”
Mr. Vane turned to her rather suddenly. “I have great confidence in your sincerity,” he said, “and I believe that you who know the truth need not fear. Now, setting aside the questions of the right of the church to possess Rome, and the need she has of it as a base of operations, and the fact that the great functions are no longer performed, tell me, do you really regret the old time?”
“You are setting aside a great deal,” she said smilingly; “but I answer you yes with all my heart. Rome has lost in every way. There seems no longer in the world a place for tired people to come to. All is hurry, and fret, and fuss; and comfort is gone. Has it ever occurred to you to think that many people, especially in progressive countries, inflict an immense deal of discomfort on themselves and others in striving for what they call the comforts of life, losing with one hand what they gain with the other? The contented spirit is gone, the quiet, the patience, the simplicity, the charity. Poverty was never before unpitied in Rome, and now the poor not only beg, they starve. They never starved in the old time. I would not undervalue
the improvements of modern science—I am proud of them; but they are not all, nor the greatest, glories of life. Such of them as suited the place would have come in gently and gradually, without disturbing anything. They have been brought in at the point of the bayonet, and the bayonet-point has been left in them. We still feel it. I sometimes pity these progressionists, who are often, no doubt, sincere in their hopes and aspirations, as well as immensely conceited at the same time. They feel the pains of life for themselves and for others, and they fancy that they have found a new solution for the problem that the church solved centuries ago, and that they can have heaven let down to them, instead of having the trouble of climbing to it. It’s a pitiful thing to dedicate one’s life to a great mistake. Yes, Rome is spoilt, looking at it from a philanthropic as well as from an artistic and a religious point of view.”
“It was here Lucullus gave his famous supper,” Isabel said, glancing back at the gardens. “Was that what is called the most costly supper ever given? I forget.”
Bianca clasped the Signora’s arm and whispered against her shoulder: “We know a costlier one, don’t we?”
“Speak, darling!” was the answering whisper.
“Where the Host gave himself, and made the feast eternal.”
After a few minutes they looked round to find the drive almost deserted, and, entering their carriage, drove slowly homeward, making a few little turns in the neighborhood to familiarize the new-comers with the location of the house. The Ave Maria was ringing from all the belfries, great and small, from
storied campanile, and little arches set against the sky; workmen and workwomen were going homeward, and windows were everywhere being shut on the beautiful twilight, whose air the Italians so fear.
They went up to the sala, and, albeit with a sigh, shut out the west with its crescent now triumphant, and all the sweetness of orange and jasmine flowers, and all the twitter of subsiding birds.
“I think,” the Signora said, “that the Roman past wishes, to monopolize the Roman nights, and that the unhealthy air we fear is nothing but the breath of ghosts who do not desire our company out of doors. But it’s a pity, besides being very disagreeable of them.”
Annunciata brought in a lamp, and said “Buona sera!” in setting it down.
“They always wish you buona sera when they bring the lamp, and felice or felicissima notte when they leave you for the night,” the Signora said. “Impatient as I am with them sometimes, they constantly conciliate me by some pretty custom. I followed one of these customs this morning—a beautiful one,
too. It is this: When a priest says his first Mass, any one who will may follow him to the sacristy, and kiss his hand in the palm and at the back. Isn’t it beautiful? A young priest from one of the colleges said his first Mass in the Borghese chapel this morning. An elder priest, whom they call in such cases the padrino or god-father, stood by him, and two young fellow-students served the Mass, one of them receiving Holy Communion. When it was over, I begged and received permission to kiss the sacred hand that had just consecrated and touched the Holy Eucharist for the first time.”
They were a little tired that evening, and separated very soon after supper. The father went to his room, Isabel to hers, and, after their doors had closed, the Signora stole to Bianca’s to give her one good-night kiss, and found her just kneeling by her bedside.
The girl gave a tearful smile over her shoulder, but did not rise.
“Felicissima notte!” said her friend, and, embracing, left her to the care of the angels.
TO BE CONTINUED.