The rooms, without being lofty and vaulted, like those on the ground and first floors, were pleasantly high, and paved with brick tiles. From the one large interior room 164a window-door opened on to a terrace in the court–a deep brick terrace with a broad ledge on which stood a row of flower-pots. When water was wanted, you opened a little door in the kitchen wall and let your copper urn down, down, down into mossy-smelling blackness; you heard a splash and gurgle, and after proper exertions got it back brimming.
The Italian-ness of it all captivated the mother, who had been drawn to this dot on the map, where she was told one could live well at less expense than in the United States, by the lure of the idea of Italy. She was very humbly an artist. She had given drawing lessons to young ladies in an elegant seminary, and, when approaching middle age, married the father of one of these, a troubled, conscientious man whom the cares of an entangled and disintegrating business kept awake at night. When his need for feminine sympathy ceased, and administrators settled in their summary way the questions that had furrowed his brow, his widow’s wish to start life anew far from the scene of her worries had led to the balmy thought of Italy–Italy, where were all the wonders which had most glamour for her fancy.
She had loved it in an undiminished way to the end, had never really desired to go home, though she spoke of it sometimes when the chill of the stone floors and walls shook her fortitude, and the remembrance of furnace heat, gas-light, hot water on tap, glowed rosy as a promise of eternal summer. The children, however, were taught in their respective schools that artificial heat is insalubrious; they had Italian ideas and chilblains; not on account of any creature comfort that they missed would Florence have been changed back for Charlestown.
165In her picturing of days far ahead Mrs. Fane certainly saw Lucile, an accomplished young lady, receiving tributes of attention in the drawing-rooms of home; and Gerald, a young man of parts, finding recognition and fortune among his countrymen. To go home eventually was among her cloudy plans.
But Lucile died at sixteen, without adequate cause, one almost would have said. She merely had not the ruggedness, the resistance, needed to go on living among the rough winds of this world. The mother, a creature of old-fashioned gentleness and profound affections, survived her by only a few years.
A business matter then obliged Gerald to go to America, and had he liked the place, he might have taken up his abode there. It affected him like vinegar dropped in a wound, like street din heard from a hospital bed. He turned back, and the long stairs to his empty dwelling were dear and sweet to him on the day of his return.
This, then, had remained his home. His needs were simple, and he could live without applying himself to uncongenial work, though the allowance had been stopped, and the income, as Leslie had said, was incredibly small. The good Giovanna, who had been his mother’s servant, stayed on with her signorino, and economized for him; the wages of an Italian servant were in those days no extravagance. He had no pleasures that cost money; he neither traveled nor went to fine restaurants. He wore neat, old well-brushed clothes, went afoot, gave to the poor single coppers. But he had liberty, worked when he pleased and as he pleased; he was content to be poor, so long as his poverty did not reach the point where it involves cutting a poor figure. Giovanna, prouder than her master, disliked 166the thought of far cattiva figura even more than did he, and was careful in her household management to keep up a certain style, never forgetting the sprig of parsley on the platter beside the single braciolina.
At one period he had contemplated a change in his mode of living, had dreamed of entering the contest for laurels and gold, so as to afford a more appropriate setting for the beauty of his charmer. The Charmer had attained without need of him the setting she craved, and Gerald went on climbing his long stairs, painting in his so personal and unpopular way, and at night reading by light of a solitary lamp the choice and subtle masterpieces of many literatures.
“My land! shall we ever get to the top?” whispered Aurora to Estelle as, one behind the other, sliding their hands along the wall, they felt with their feet for the steps that led to Gerald’s door. “He told us they were long, and he warned us they were dark, but this!... I wonder why they don’t have a lamp going, or something.”