So much for news from home. The London papers afforded ample information about Signora Vivanti, who pursued her successful career unchecked, and rose a step or so in public estimation with each new part she created—“created” was the word the critics used of this uncultured islander’s impersonations. She had fresh whims, and eccentricities, and gaieties for each new character. She was peuple to the marrow of her bones, and she had all the cleverness and unflagging pleasure in life which belongs to the populace. Her London public adored her, and to provincial audiences she came as a revelation of what gaiety of heart really means. She seemed a well-spring of joyousness, and sent her audience home convinced that life was not so very dreary after all.
Could Eve have known more than the newspapers told her she would have known that the Signora was keeping herself what Mr. Hawberk called “straight.” Slander had not breathed upon her name. She had loved, and her love had been rejected; and from the hour of that disillusion she had concentrated her affections upon that which never betrays or disappoints. Lisa and her aunt found the chief delight of their lives in the scraping and self-denial which enabled them to add to their hoard.
Lisa no longer bought diamonds, and wore her whole fortune upon her neck and arms. The diamonds were a very delightful form of investment, but the elementary theory of principal and interest had been gradually borne in upon her mind, and she now knew enough of finance to know that she ought to get something for her money. Reluctantly, and with serious misgivings, she followed the advice of her manager and opened a deposit account at the Union Bank, whither her light feet tripped gaily once a week, and where she handed in the major part of her salary to a clerk who could scarcely write the receipt under the too near radiance of those dazzling eyes.
Life was so cheap for two abstemious women and one little boy. Vansittart had paid three years’ rent of the flat in advance before he left Southampton. Lisa and la Zia were on velvet, and while the deposit account was growing there came offers from America, which were intoxicating in their liberality. American agents had seen and heard the lovely Venetian; Anglo-American newspapers had written about her talents and her beauty; and the always enterprising agent-in-advance was eager to introduce her to the Western world.
Lisa carried the tempting offers to her London manager, who shrugged his shoulders, and raised her salary, for the sixth or seventh time.
“You will ruin me if I try to keep you, Signora,” he said; “but I can’t afford to lose you.”
The prima donna and her aunt used to sit over their handful of fire in the small hours after a cheap but savoury supper of liver, or some other abomination, chopped up in a seething mass of macaroni, reeking of garlic and oil. There was no dish the smartest restaurant in London could have provided that they would have enjoyed better than their native kitchen. They came of a people who can make a feast out of a morsel of meat which the sturdy British workman would toss to his dog. Their luxuries and their pleasures were alike of the cheapest. A jaunt to Greenwich or Kew by river, a long day roaming about the Crystal Palace, idle afternoons on the grassy levels of Battersea Park, basking in the sunshine while Paolo made pies in the sand. Pleasures as simple as these sufficed for Lisa, while her fortune was growing at the Union Bank. By the kind manager’s advice she had invested the bulk of her wealth in railway shares, to which she had added from time to time as her deposit account grew. She had at first been very chary of trusting the railway with her savings, preferring to confide in the bank, which looked solid and respectable; but on being assured that she would get better interest from the railway with equal security, she consented to become a shareholder. It was pleasant when sitting with her aunt in a third-class carriage on the way to Windsor or Richmond to be able to remind that good lady that she, Lisa, was part owner of the carriage, and indeed of the whole line.
Economical as the two women were their parsimony never degenerated into meanness. If their fare was humble they were always ready to share it with a friend. Little Zinco, who was a bachelor, dined with his pupil every Sunday, la Zia devoting the whole morning, after an early Mass in the chapel near Sloane Street, to the preparation of a little bit of beef stuffed with raisins, and a mess of rice and cheese, while Lisa in her best gown, escorted by the faithful Zinco, attended Mass at the Oratory or the Pro-Cathedral.
In their after-midnight talk by the fire, when autumnal or wintry nights made a fire a necessity, Lisa and la Zia built their castle in the air, and that castle was a small house on the Guidecca, a house of which they could let a couple of floors, reserving the piano nobile, or upper story, with its fine views over the blue water, for themselves, and furnishing the same gorgeously with carved chestnut wood and inlaid ebony, from one of the big manufactories on the Grand Canal. Here they were to live happily ever after, when once Fiordelisa had earned an income that would maintain them for the rest of their days, and pay for Paolo’s education.
Already he had shown a passionate love of music, and Zinco saw in him the makings of a fine opera singer.