On this occasion the pretty countess gets many a hint, and knows what most of the marchese will wear to-night, so that she is able still to devise—with la pettinatrice’s help—some extravagance that shall outvie them all. Fortunately for her, she is a favourite with Marrina, and may trust just a little more to the discretion of Marrina’s tongue than all the poor ladies who confided the secret of their toilets to her yesterday—because, though her hands will work amongst hair till far into the coming night, Marrina dressed many a head yester eve, whose owner sat upright in a chair till this morning—nor thought anything of it—for appearance sake! ‘Amuse yourself, Signora Contessa, and have a care for that poor little marquis of last week, now that you have a new gallant,’ says Marrina, deftly placing the last pile. ‘Dio, what time I waste with you,’ adds she, as the church clock strikes! And she is down the stair, down the street almost with the thought, and out into the flower-strewn Acquasola, where the air is flushed with summer sunshine, and waxen blossoms stand stiffly amid the broad leaves of horse-chestnuts in the sloping avenue. La Marchesa Tagliafico lives on the Salita dei Cappucini, where she can see the flowering creepers against the tall old wall of the Villetta de’ Negri opposite, that is now the new Acquasola, where she can hear the rush of the cascade, and scent the limes and acacias off the public-gardens, and watch the nobility driving round of a warm Sunday evening; where she is close to the ancient Church of the Cappucini, besides, and can stand beneath its cypresses two minutes after leaving home, to visit its Presepio at Epiphany or its Santo Sepolcro in Holy Week, to hear its Frati Predicatori, to attend mass and buy waxen images on all or any of the festas. La Marchesa is one of the devout; nevertheless she is to be at the ball to-night, and Marrina is to do her hair.
Even la pettinatrice’s goodly strength is well-nigh spent and her fingers greased to the bone, before the last head is finished off, for, in spite of her only having taken half-an-hour’s rest to see the Princess drive round the gardens, it is midnight long past when the final touch is put to the final Marchesa. The day’s work is over, but Marrina does not go home to the tall house on the dusty road beyond Porta Pila. She too must have her night’s recreation. Who would expect the love of folly to be spent in a woman of that figure and those eyes, even though her calendar count thirty birth-days? But after the gas-lit night, the summer sunshine still comes back, bright and pure, and fresh apple-blossoms blow beside la pettinatrice’s home.
Fisher-Folk.
When the high road of the eastern Riviera has left the town behind a space, and has even travelled clear of the last palaces without the walls of the city of marbles—when it has crossed that tongue of Albaro’s Hill that divides the waves, and, having left sea behind in Genoa’s Bay, comes back to more sea that laps freely upon a free and rocky coast—when it has coiled closely round corners and skirted precipices for many a mile—it comes, on its way, across a little town where the hills rise abruptly behind, and the orange groves are thick around, and the villas of nobles lie sumptuously upon the shore.
There have been many little towns, scarcely larger than villages, all along the road from Porta Pila, and many a lovely palace standing in its garden and fruit-groves along the coast—so many, indeed, that even a quarter of a mile has not been left untenanted by man-kind; but Nervi is a prettier place than any of the other places since Albaro’s villas were left behind. The hills that stand for background to it are straight hills and fairly wooded, yet they are not the best features in its beauty, for, excepting from the sea, no one has seen their shapes impressively, so close do they rise, looking down upon the village. Nervi’s loveliness is in her gardens, with the palms and pines that grow there, and the stately palaces whose time-tinted marble walls stand in the midst; it is in her lemon orchards and orange groves, where the breeze blows laden with scent in the flowering time, and the pale or golden fruit hangs heavily-gorgeous through the early spring days; it is in her rocky beach, where the changing sea laps for ever and is never the same, where fishers spread their nets, and children wade and play, and the wonderful water-line is broken and perilous because of the cloven rocks that lie guarding it.
The little straight street is not beautiful, though its barber and dressmaker and its Fabbrica di paste be indispensable to the dwellers round about, and though dirty shops and tall houses, because strange, have often been called picturesque; the Mediterranean lies hid from Nervi’s street, and, when one is on the Riviera the Mediterranean is the thing most powerful to charm. But, on the sea-shore, street and barber and shops are forgotten. The sun gleams on white wave-crests that temper the sea’s blue on some breezy spring day; the sun lies scorching the weed-grown jagged rocks, the sloping slate rocks that slide far down beneath water that grows green near shore; the sun sweetens the oranges, and makes the flowers more luscious of scent, and the fishermen lay their nets. Though Nervi is a village where rich folk have their dwellings and marble steps lead down to the water for bathing, there are hamlets near around, of poorly squalid mien and strangest name, where fisher-folk live and fisher-children hunt crabs and shell-fish in the bays.
Walking along the winding way that creeps round the lip of little gulfs, and dives into dark crevices of crags—or along the way that, being poised midway aloft upon the cliff some hundred feet above the water, leads from Nervi to the fishing village of Bogliasco—you might see Maso, perhaps, out at sea in his broad and tanned old boat, spreading nets for the night’s fishery, or, further on, from off the smoother shingle, Paolo pushing out upon the coming wave, with the children standing by to help with shout and laughter, and the women with parting joke or reproof.
May is near to her end now, and the long evenings make summer again. The water is warm, because the sun has lain upon it all day, and blue with a memory of the clouds overhead, that are paling now in the waning lights. A golden glamour comes down upon the waves; the sun is near to setting. Paolo stands in the sea, making ready to push off; his brown, broad feet upon the yellow shingle are broader, but not browner, beneath the green water that reaches to his knee where the striped hose rolls up; the golden light strikes across his face on its way to the bright group upon shore and to the bright spring green over the hill beyond. He is a tall man and strongly built, but his face is battered and seamed; they call him in the fishery ‘the furrowed one,’ but he is liked well enough notwithstanding, and, truly, that careworn face has a kindling eye and an honest smile. Paolo is a married man. That mischievous urchin is his own first-born, who leans against the boat with his calves in deep water—as the calves of the rising generation are apt to be; his hard young hands are eager to help, his keen black eyes look for the signal. And that is Paolo’s wife—that broad-hipped woman with the full, free figure, who waits upon the beach with the swaddled infant in one arm and the year-old boy clinging to her skirt; all the other children play around, they are waiting to see father away.
Now his ropes are coiled, his nets are in order; Gian-Battista has arrived leisurely—Paolo’s lazy nephew, who helps in the fishery. When his lighter skiff has also been made ready, two strong pairs of hands—that nine-year-old boy helping lustily—start both old crafts out to sea. Paolo leaps in swiftly, the oars are dipped, and the golden sun sinks a little lower upon the horizon. ‘Andiamo bambini!’ calls Maddalena shrilly, only she calls it in strangest dialect, to the loitering children. And by the time she has dragged the younger and driven the elder up the short, steep slope of beach on to the jagged rocks beyond, that lie beneath the village, the boats have pulled a mile out to sea, and Paolo has sunk his nets for the tunny fishery.