Giannella

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

CHAPTER VII

It was ten o'clock in the morning and Giannella was waiting alone in the second anteroom for the advent of Signora Dati. Mariuccia, after also waiting a little, had left her, saying she would return in half-an-hour to fetch her; meanwhile there was work to do at home, and she was loth to waste any more time. At the end of a few months of her new life, waiting had become a familiar trial to Giannella. She often had to sit for a couple of hours in Signora Dati's room while the Princess's lieutenant interviewed the numberless clients and employees of the family, attended to the commands of the Excellency, inspected the mountains of linen in the "guarda roba," and kept an eye on the maids, all of whom were under her supervision and kept entirely apart, in employment, housing, and feeding, from the men-servants, for whom Ferretti, the maestro di casa, was alone responsible. When Signora Dati knew that some time must elapse before she could speak to Giannella, the latter was brought at once to her room, there to occupy herself as best she might until her turn came. When the moment at last arrived the pale little lady would glide in, sink into a chair with a half-suppressed sigh of intense fatigue, and then throw herself gallantly into the matter in hand with as much energy as if it had been the first task of her day. Each question that came up was gone into thoroughly—whether the passion-flowers on the violet chasuble should be picked out with crystal or amethyst beads; whether the web of beauty which was to be the wedding handkerchief of Donna Laura Bracciano, the Princess's niece, should have square or rounded corners; whether the coarse but ample layettes piled up in the left-hand cupboard, for the Foundling Hospital had better be counted over once again to make sure that each was complete? In all these handiworks Giannella was employed as best suited the needs of the moment, and nothing connected with them seemed too infinitesimal for Signora Dati's profound consideration. Giannella, who took her instructions day after day, conceived a deep admiration for the character of the dignified but self-effacing subordinate, who was often white to the lips with weariness but who never neglected one of the thousand minutiæ of her overlapping responsibilities.

On this particular morning a treat was in store for Giannella. After Mariuccia's departure word had come that Signora Dati was obliged to go out and would take the "ricamatrice" (embroideress) with her. She would join her in the sala in a few minutes. After receiving the message Giannella sat tingling with pleasant excitement at the prospect before her and ready to jump up the moment Signora Dati should appear. The door opened suddenly and she ran forward with a smile of greeting, ran almost into the arms of a young man who seemed to be choking with laughter—Onorato, fresh from a long maternal lecture on the sin and folly of owning too many expensive horses. He stopped half way and just saved Giannella, crimson and rooted to the spot with embarrassment, from impact with his singularly radiant waistcoat. She knew at once who he was; only the son of the house would venture to race through it in that fashion. But he, surprised for once out of his manners, stared at her, took in the charming face with its arrested smile, appraised the Etruscan gold of the hair under its light lace covering, found time to wonder who the girl was and why she had seemed so pleased and then so distressed at seeing him; then, with a word of apology, he passed out of the room, much more sedately than he had entered it. Giannella, conscious of having made an unpardonable mistake in thus thrusting herself into his path, sank back into her seat, pale and trembling. What would Signora Dati say?

Signora Dati, coming upon the scene a moment later, and receiving Giannella's almost tearful apology for her stupidity, smiled away her anxieties at once. The Prince would not be offended—oh dear no. He was most amiable and simple; it might have happened to anybody; it was his fault, not Giannella's. He always rushed about the house in a hurry, knocking things down sometimes as he dashed through the rooms. He was still such a boy! Signora Dati smiled with the incorrigible indulgence of middle-aged spinsterhood for impetuous young masculinity. Yes, Giannella might set her mind at rest, the Prince would certainly have forgotten all about her before he was half way down the stairs. Had she brought the patterns with her? Here they were at Massoni's, and now for the white velvet for Donna Laura's wedding dress. Oh, Giannella would have to treat the material like melting sugar when she embroidered it. A breath, a speck of dust—and irretrievable ruin would follow. Yes, please Sora Luisa, her Excellency had selected the pattern, and now it must be seen in the piece, in a good light.

The magnificent material was reverently unrolled and spread out in snowy, sumptuous billows in the sunshine. Signora Dati examined it with the gravity of the expert, and Giannella stood by, trying to find the answer to the first disquieting question that had ever presented itself to her mind. What mysterious ruling caused one girl to be born Donna Laura Bracciano, clothed her in robes beautiful enough for an angel, bestowed upon her at seventeen the dignity of espousing a young man as fortunate as herself, amid the rejoicings and congratulations of hundreds of friends—and decided that Giannella Brockmann, without a relation of her own in the world, was to be a dependent on charity, working in a lonely room for ten hours a day to pay charity's account? There was no rebellion in her thoughts as she meditated on the problem, only wonder, and a strange new sense of bereavement—the unconscious hunger for something young and sweet to love and laugh with, the reaching out of the plant in the shade to its comrades tossing their heads in the sun.

The encounter with Don Onorato, the light-hearted heir to accumulated honors and wealth, the catching mirth that seemed bubbling over in his laugh, in his bright face, had shaken her peace in some way, had, as it were, blown aside the gray veil which closed in her own existence, and shown her in a flash all that lay outside of it—for others. And now the pictured vision of the radiant bride on whose finery she must work till her back ached and her eyes smarted, had driven home the sense of privation like a sword. The keenest pain of it all lay in the fact that the few denizens of her tiny world took her fate as a settled question, a matter of course, and considered that she ought to be enthusiastically grateful for it. Ah, she was grateful, yes indeed, she appreciated all that had been done for her by kind human beings; but if they, on whom she had no claim, were so good and generous, could not the Giver of all good things have been a little open-handed too? It all seemed strange and sad, and Divine love just a little less loving than she had been taught to believe.

During the next two or three weeks Giannella had several glimpses of Onorato Santafede. Once she and Mariuccia met him on the great staircase; twice he burst into Signora Dati's room when she was sitting there receiving instructions about the design of orange blossoms and roses to be embroidered in silver on the grand white velvet dress. Signora Dati smiled at the young gentleman, attended to his imperious commands about some silk handkerchiefs which he declared had been vilely mishandled by the laundrymaids, and seemed totally unconscious that the true object of his visit was to have another look at the young embroideress, who stood silently aside and never opened her lips during his laughing colloquy with the domestic oracle of the household. No nascent romance had caught him in its web; Onorato was as free from romance as most young Romans of his class, which, whatever its failings, has rarely loved out of its sphere and in which a mésalliance is practically a thing unknown. But he frankly admired beauty, and enjoyed looking at Giannella as he would have enjoyed contemplating a charming and rather strange picture. He had discovered that she was the official embroideress for the family, that she was often in the house, and he saw no reason for not taking advantage of the facts to pass a pleasant moment or two in her presence. The instant he entered the room, Giannella seemed relegated to Limbo by its mistress. She simply did not exist until Onorato had departed. And he was in the habit of lingering there sometimes, for it was the room to which he had been accustomed to come all his life, first with childish joys and sorrows, afterwards with his little fastidiousnesses about wardrobe and service; and often, since he was a kind-hearted young autocrat, to cheer up "that victim of piety and recluse of duty," as he called Signora Dati, with some bit of fun and mischief.

But the perspicacious little lady, while smiling at his extravagances, noted that his eyes rested long on the golden head and half-averted face near the window, and she decided that under no circumstances must he find Giannella there again. Who could tell what evil snare the devil (whose frantic machinations Signora Dati saw in every departure from the established order of things) might not weave around two young people who saw each other continually, even if no word passed between them? She would say nothing to the Princess, but in future Giannella should only come when she was sent for, and that would be when Onorato was safely out of the house. He probably did not know that she lived just across the courtyard, for he was never up in time to see her go out with Mariuccia. All would be well, and the Excellency, who had so much on her noble mind, need never even hear of her faithful acolyte's passing anxiety.

And all would have been well had not Onorato, who took a profane delight in exploiting his solemn mother's complete lack of humor, come in that evening to take his place at table with a long face and some heavy sighs. To the Princess's anxious questions he replied that he was not ill, but that a strange melancholy had come over him. He believed—mamma must keep his secret—he really believed he had fallen in love! There!