This house is the only building on the mountain except the monastery, and is under the control of the monastery. It was built merely to accommodate lady relatives of the students who might wish to see their sons, or brothers, or nephews without the fatigue of coming up and going down the mountain the same day, and without suffering the embarrassment of spending the whole day in a house inhabited and served only by men. Now and then some benefactress or a friend of the superiors of the monastery has the privilege of stopping there. The house is small and plain, and kept by a contadine and his wife. The ladies stopping there have their coffee in the house, but they dine always in a private dining-room at the monastery, from whence, also, their supper is sent down to them in the evening—supper being after Ave Maria, when the gates are closed.
Mr. Vane stayed with the prior, and the three ladies followed their guide. Their way led them a five minutes’ walk back as they had come up, then turned through an open gate in the stone wall at the right, where they found their lodgings. A contadina with dark cloth draperies pinned smoothly about her, and a huge white edifice of starched linen on her head, overshadowing a pair of bright eyes, met them at the gate and welcomed them with a pleasant voice, but in a tongue where the soft Roman consonants seemed to have each and every one turned itself into the hardest kind of a Z.
The windows looked out on a long terrace with a parapet, and outside the parapet the mountain dropped steeply to the plain.
A stair, which belonged entirely to the strangers’ house, led up to the second floor, and here they found three pleasant bed-chambers awaiting them. An hour later, as they sat at their windows looking out into the twilight, they saw their donna, Catarina, come into the terrace with a huge basket on her arm. Her head-dress and sleeves shone white in the light of the rising moon, and there was a soft richness where the scarlet stripe ran round her petticoat, and where the rainbow colors of the apron-like upper mantle bound her without a fold. Her solid step sounded on the stair the next minute, there was the spurt of a match in the outer room of the suite, and, looking through the open doors, they saw the woman, more like a picture than any picture they recollected to have seen, standing with a curious brass lamp in her hand, carefully lighting its wick, the basket she had brought sitting on the floor at her feet.
She came into the Signora’s room with that red light all over her from the lamp she carried in her hand, smiled so as to show two rows of snowy-white teeth, and, with a “Buona sera,” announced that their supper had come and would be on the table in a few minutes.
The three went out into the dining-room to witness the preparations and listen to the woman’s pleasant voice as she half-talked, half-sang an account of her life and adventures there, her manner of speech being that so common among the lower classes of Italy, especially at the south—almost a sort of chant, inexpressibly soft and touching. The peculiarity of this manner of speaking consists more, perhaps, in the ending of the sentences than in their progress; for they never come down to the definite tone that ends a period, but stop on some swinging note a little higher up, it may be only half a tone above. It is the voice of weeping, which never has a positive tone, as if the whole gamut were washed over and blurred by tears.
Talking so, the woman brought out from her basket a linen cloth for the table, next a pair of cruets with vinegar and oil, next a decanter of white-wine, next an omelette made with herbs, after that a salad that looked like sliced cucumbers, but was something else. Bread followed, then the necessary dishes.
“I’m ashamed to confess that I am hungry,” Isabel said. “It is a miserable coming down, but we won’t say anything about it.”
“My dear,” responded the Signora, “you are very ungrateful to say so. Let us be just. Our bodies have brought our souls up to this beautiful place, and carried them about from point to point of it, and kept as quiet as possible about their own affairs. Now, if they are hungry, let us feed them. Poor bodies! they have the worst of it. They are extremely useful, and we sublime creatures are always turning up our noses at them; they suffer, and we protest that we want to get rid of them, when, in nine cases out of ten, we have wantonly caused their suffering. Can a body take care of itself, or even know how it should be done? No; the soul has to do it, and ought to do it in gratitude for house-rent, or body-rent. Then, at last, the poor things have got to corrupt, and be devoured by worms, and go to dust. Fortunately, these sufferings will not be felt. It is also a satisfaction to know that this arrogant spirit, which is for ever crowing over its poor companion, will have to suffer consciously for it all and pay the uttermost farthing. You will please to recollect, Miss Isabel Vane, that if ever you should have the happiness of going to heaven, your body will go there too. Sometimes,” she said, holding her hand up before the light, which shone through and made a ruby of it,—“sometimes I think that my poor flesh has a glimmering, a presentiment of the possibility of being one day glorified.”
“Most worshipful body,” said Isabel to herself with great respect, “would you like a piece of that omelette—a large piece, a half of it, say, leaving the other half to those two? Yes? Well, you shall have it.” And she proceeded with all possible dignity to help herself to a hundred and eighty degrees of the circle of herbs and eggs before her.