Giannella

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

Exhausted with so many emotions, he sat down, wiping his face, to collect his thoughts. What dreadful sin or weakness had he fallen into of late? What inner traitor had opened his heart's door to the adversary? Poor Fra Tommaso was conscious of having battled rather manfully against his besetting sin, his love of watching the congregation, of weaving his own little stories about the bright young faces and the tired old ones, his sympathy for the widow who always cried a little at Mass, and even for the pretty, naughty girl who had actually passed a note from her prayer-book into the hand of the young man who paused for a moment beside her chair. He had tried not to wonder what could be the matter over there with Giannella, that the blinds of her workroom window, whence she had often waved a smiling greeting to her old friend the sacristan, should be tightly closed—and that neither she nor Mariuccia should have come to the church for some days. He was sure he had been faithful to last Saturday's resolve to keep his eyes on the ground as he came and went. Last Saturday, and this was Tuesday. Three days. The period mentioned in that wicked letter!

The terrible conviction was forced upon him that his tempter was some member of the congregation who had noticed his refusal to look around and, aided by the powers of darkness, was taking means to shake his resolution. "For three days I have not seen thy beautiful face." There was not a mirror in the whole of the San Severino establishment, and Fra Tommaso had not seen his own face for some thirty years. He put up his hand and felt it in a wondering way. It seemed very rough and stubbly; the pious barber who shaved him for nothing only called on Saturday evenings. Surely none but the Father of Lies could tell him that it was beautiful!

Well, that enemy could be subdued. He rose wearily; the first weapon to employ being self-denial, Fra Tommaso sternly removed his dinner from the fire and put it out of sight in the cupboard. Then, instead of taking his siesta, he went down and set about cleaning one or two corners of the church with such good will that his broom dislodged clouds of dust and sent them flying about him till the stray sunbeams caught them in the air and turned them into a hundred floating aureoles above his good gray head. Perhaps they were reflections of some real and lovely halo stored up for the single of heart.

* * * * * * * * *

Twelve hours later Rome lay sleeping under the August moon, sleeping in a flood of silver that spread and broadened as the perfect orb swung slowly up till it marked its zenith in the faint yet living argent of the sky. The stars seemed to withdraw from its path, their delicate, infinite myriads weaving ethereal veils of moving silver arc above arc, in the measureless spaces beyond, like immortal spirits watching the progress of some incarnate loveliness through a world apart from theirs, a world holding it by an unseen yet inseverable tie to its splendid tangibilities of marble palaces and leaping fountains and deep old gardens full of oleander fragrances and cypress shades.

Rain had fallen in the hills, and with the full of the moon had come a cool breeze from the west; before it the miasmas of the scirocco broke up and fled. In the midnight silence the wind blew softly over the seven hills, singing little songs of health and freshness near at hand. On Fra Tommaso's loggia the carnations were reaching out to the coolness, the little lemon-tree was spreading each leaf like a shining spearhead in the calm, unscorching light; and between the carnations and the lemon-tree a young man stood bareheaded, leaning over the parapet and gazing with sorrowful eyes at a closed window in the palace wall across the way.

Rinaldo had passed the most wretched day of his life; every hour of it had been a drawn-out purgatory. This was the third of his trial, for he had had no news of Giannella since the Saturday morning when Sora Amalia had told him that she was ill. What was happening behind those impenetrable walls? Was his beloved suffering, dying perhaps, longing for a word from him, and wondering that she received none, that he did not come to her? How could he? Twice each day he had rung at the green door in the hope of learning something; and each time the little shutter behind the grating had been withdrawn, two fierce spectacled eyes had identified him from between the bars—and then the shutter was pushed sharply into place and the guardian of the house had retreated and closed another door within. The Professor had evidently forbidden Mariuccia to answer the bell, and Rinaldo could think of no means of communicating with her. As a forlorn hope he had despatched Themistocles with an impassioned letter, and Themistocles, evil fowl, had stayed away many hours, got rid of his message—and returned with no answer. Giannella must be ill indeed if she could not send him one little word to show that she was alive, was thinking of her faithful Rinaldo. Perhaps, he told himself, his sudden declaration of love, the adorable thing unnamed till now, had frightened or offended her. But in that case surely she would have sent it back. No, he was sure that she had received it, and almost sure that she was even now holding it in her fast-chilling hand or pressing it feebly to her dying lips! Death is forever on duty in the antechamber of youth's picturesque imagination; the slightest accent of sorrow calls him up, and he seems to put his head in at the door and say, "Here I am, my dear. Use me as you like. Is it for yourself? Then it shall be all flowers and elegies and lovely memories for your mourning friends. Oh, it is for your best beloved? I see. I can manage that too, and leave you a hero and a martyr, bravely carrying a broken heart to an early grave at your lost one's side."

And youth bows its head and weeps in ecstatic pain on the henchman's indulgent shoulder, and then says, "Another time, good friend," and then flies back, a thousand times deeper in love with living, to kind, familiar life, strengthened and sane once more.

Rinaldo's heart had been drawing him all day to the point when he could at least feel near to Giannella, Fra Tommaso's loggia. In the cool midnight, when he could count on the owner's heaviest sleep, he stole thither and stood with outstretched hands, praying to the closed window that barred in his dream of happiness. The breeze played comfortably on his brow, the bath of moonlight calmed his fretted nerves; he hardly knew whether the moisture in his eyes were tears or the dewy benedictions of the night. "Giannella, Giannella, flower of my soul," he murmured, "speak to me, dream of me. I am here, my heart calls you—come, come."