NETTINA RETURNING FROM THE WELL.
The polenta is boiling in the great pot, the beans are shelled, and the neighbour’s baby has been carried away to be unswathed and swathed again, when Tonietta, playing now in the road, shrieks out in her piping treble to say that the signori of the villa are about to come by on their evening walk. Nettina steps out upon the terrace, the wooden staff in her hand with which she has been stirring the pot, and even the mother is no less curious to have a peep at the blue muslin dresses, and starched frills, and elaborate-dressed hair of the gentry. They pick their way over the dirty ground with dainty shoes, no wise fitted for mountain wear. The ladies belong to a fine family of negozianti, who have rented the doctor’s house in the larger village. They are grand now, and glad to be stared at, for it is the eve of a great festa, otherwise might they be seen in the mornings, around their lodging, in attire far more slatternly than Nettina’s at the present moment.
‘Orsù,’ whispers the elder woman loudly to her daughter, ‘haste thee, and dish up the polenta. The signori will eat with us to-night, who knows?’
But ere the meal is served and ready, the fine ladies have gone their way, mobbed and gazed at by many children, commented upon by many voices of the more learned ones.
Further down the village, families are already at supper, eating their minestra from off wooden platters, while they lounge in the cool upon steps and balconies of rough stone.
‘A happy evening, pretty ladies! Come and eat a mouthful with us.’ Such are the courteous invitations poured out from all sides upon the passers-by. Hospitable-natured, for all their rough simplicity and their poverty, these good peasants are gracious and gentle-mannered, with never a thought of false shame. What they offer is of their best, and the gift needs no apology. Frank and primitive people, with winning and cheery ways, are these. Often have I rested with them beneath vine-trellised pergole, eating of their savoury food, or have sat upon a wooden bench, when youths and maidens gathered round the hearth on autumn evenings to toss and roast the chestnuts, and always have I been cared for as an honoured guest, while yet the merriment and the plain-speaking went on alike, nor did irksomeness creep in amongst them because of the presence of one guest who was not of their own caste.
But the twilight is fast deepening into night. The signore have doffed their holiday clothes, doubtless, and are eating their supper by this time. Within the cottage there is scarce time to display the goods bought at the fair, scarce a moment wherein to question and marvel at the centesimi which were deducted from each bargain, before the men are all there, clamouring for the supper that is so late to-night, and laughing at the yellow kerchiefs and tapes and buttons displayed to view on the kitchen dresser. All the purchases are quickly cleared away for very shame! Nettina lifts the flat baskets within doors, in which maize has been drying all day in the sun, and gathers up the golden cones that were hanging on cords along the cottage’s front; that other gold of the gourd-flowers, where they trail on the ground, changed to green an hour ago, when they shut their petals with the sunset.
Men and women close round the hearth, for supper is ready at last. ‘The minestra is good to-night,’ some one remarks; ‘the faggioli are boiled to a savoury pulp, the tagliarini are finely cut.’ Darkness has fallen; nine o’clock strikes. ‘Good-night, neighbours; I am weary,’ says Nettina. ‘Good-night.’
The Village Swain.
Ask Nettina what she thinks of him: pretty, proud Nettina, who can tread so stately a measure at the village fête, and can throw so scornful a glance at the man who has been too frivolous for her well-ordered mind! Well, maybe she is a bad one to choose for a fair opinion, for whether he please her or no she will toss her head, and answer you only with a gruff ‘Cosa me ne fasso?’ which, being interpreted from our dialect, means, What is he to me? So, better than that, ask our village pet, our dear little cosy, most comfortable, and convenient of flirts—Bianca del Prato; she will tell you truth! Yes; though with her lips—curling, smiling, rosy lips—she only simper, ‘he is not amiss,’ yet does not the creeping crimson colour say as clearly as any words, and would not the two brown eyes say so too, if only they were not cast down, ‘The village swain? He is charming; he is beautiful! Life would be nothing without him! And the red kerchief that I wore at the fair is lovely only because he told me my lips could shame the colour even of that.’ And yet he is not Bianca’s betrothed. Prepare to be shocked, oh righteous damsels! He is only one of the village swains—only ‘a young man like every other’—only a youth whose name and whose voice she knows well, the fire of whose banter she has stood bravely, the glance of whose eyes she has blushed beneath, nothing more. But where would be the use of the summer sun, thinks Bianca, if one might only look pretty for one’s own gallante!