_TERTIUM QUID_
A year passed, two years passed. Vanna was three and twenty, no more
round but no less blooming in face and figure; still a reedy,
golden-haired girl. But Baldassare was fifty-seven, and there was no
sign of issue. The neighbours, who had nudged each other at one season,
whose heads had wagged as their winks flew about, now accepted the
sterile mating as of the order of things. Pretty Vanna, mother as she
had been to her brothers and sisters, was to be a mother no more. There
was talk of May and December. Baldassare was advised to lock up other
treasure beside his florins; some, indeed, of the opposite camp gave
hints none too honest to the forlorn young wife. The Piazza Sant'
Anastasia at the falling-in of the day, for instance. Thus they put it.
All girls--and what else was Vanna, a wife in name?--walked there arm in
arm. Others walked there also, she must know. By-and-by some pretty lad,
an archer, perhaps, from the palace, some roistering blade of a
gentleman's lackey, a friar or twinkling monk out for a frolic, came
along with an "Eh, la bellina!" and then there was another arm at work.
So, for one, whispered La Testolina, dipping a head full of confidence
and mystery close to Vanna's as the girl sat working out the summer
twilight. The Via Stella was narrow and gloomy. The tall houses nearly
met in that close way. Looking up you saw the two jagged edges of the
eaves, like great tattered wings spread towards each other. When the
green sky of evening deepened to blue, and blue grew violet, these
shadowing wings were always in advance, more densely dark. There it was
that Vanna worked incessantly, sewing seam after seam, patching,
braiding, and fitting the pieces. By no chance at all did a hint of the
sun fall about her; yet she always sang softly to herself, always wore
her pretty fresh colours, and still showed the gold sheen in her yellow
hair. Her hair was put up now, pulled smoothly back over her temples;
she spoke in a low, sober, measured voice, and to La Testolina's sly
suggestions responded with a little blush, a little shake of the head,
and a very little sigh. "Ser Baldassare is good to me," she would say;
"would you have me do him a wrong? Last Friday he gave me a silver piece
to spend in whatsoever I chose. I bought a little holy-water stoup with
a Gesulino upon it, bowered in roses. On Sunday morning he patted my
cheek and called me a good girl. To say nothing of the many times he has
pinched my ear, all this was very kind, as you must see. With what do
you ask me to reward him? Fie!" La Testolina snorted, and shrugged
herself away. Vanna went on with her sewing and her little song----
"Giovanottin, che te ne vai di fuora,
Stattene allegro, e così vo' far io.
Se ti trovassi qualche dama nuova,
L'ha da saper che tua dama son io."
So sang she, innocently enough, whose sweethearting went no farther than
her artless lips. There was not a spice of mischief in the girl. What
she had told La Testolina had been no more than the truth: Master
Baldassare was good to her--better than you would have believed possible
in such a crabbed old stub of a man. He was more of a father to her than
ever Don Urbano had been to anything save his own belly; but it was
incontestable that he was not father to anything else. That alone might
have been a grievance for Vanna, but there is no evidence that it was.
Baldassare was by nature gruff, by habit close-fisted: like all such
men, the more he felt the deeper he hoarded the thought under his ribs.
The most he would venture would be a hand on her hair and a grunt when
she did well; so sure as she looked up gratefully at him the old man
drew off, with puckered brows and jaws working together. He may have
been ashamed of his weakness; it is dead certain that no one in Verona,
least of all Vanna herself, suspected him of any affection for his young
wife. Mostly he was silent; thus she became silent too whenever he was
in the house. This was against nature, for by ordinary her little songs
bubbled from her like a bird's. But to see him so glum and staring
within doors awed her: she set a finger to her lips as she felt the tune
on her tongue, and went about her business mute. Baldassare would go
abroad, stooping under his pack: she took her seat at the shop-door,
threaded her needle, her fingers flew and her fancy with them. The
spring of her music was touched, and all the neighbours grew to listen
for the gentle cadences she made.
So passed a year, so two years passed. Vanna was twenty-three, looking
less, when along there came one morning a tall young friar, a Carmelite,
by name Fra Battista, with a pair of brown dove's eyes in his smooth
face. These he lifted towards Vanna's with an air so timid and so
penetrating, so delicate and hardy at once, that when he was gone it was
to leave her with the falter of a verse in her mouth, two hot cheeks,
and a quicker heart.
This Fra Battista, by birth a Bergamask, accredited to the convent at
Verona by reason of his parts as a preacher, was tall and shapely, like
a spoilt pretty boy to look at, leggy, and soft in the palm. His frock
set off this petted appearance--it gave you the idea of a pinafore on
him. He did not look manly, was not manly by any means, and yet not so
girlish but that you could doubt his sex. His eyes, which, as I say,
were soft as a dove's pair, he was not fond of showing; and this gave
them the more searching appeal when he did. His mouth, full and fleshy
in the lips, had a lovely curve. He kept it very demure, and, when he
spoke, spoke softly. This was a young man born to be Lancilotto to some
Ginevra or other; and, to do him justice, he had had his share of
adventure in that sort at an early age. He had learned more out of Ovid
than from the Fathers of Divinity, you may believe. Very popular he was
in whatsoever convent he harboured, as a preacher famous all over
Lombardy and the March,--in Bergamo, in Brescia, even as far as Mantua
he had been heard of. The superior at Verona did his best to spoil him
by endearment, flattery, and indulgence; but this was difficult, since
he had been spoilt already.
He passed down the Via Stella morning and evening for a week. Morning
and evening his eyes encountered Vanna's. The third evening he smiled at
her, the fourth morning he saluted her; the fifth evening he stopped and
slipped in a gentle word; the first evening of the second week he
stopped again, and that night, La Testolina being by, there was quite a
little conversation.
La Testolina had black eyes, a trim figure, and a way of wriggling which
showed these to advantage. Fra Battista's fame and the possibility of
mischief set her flashing; she led the talk and found him apt: it was
not difficult to aim every word that it should go through and leave a
dart in Vanna's timid breast. The girl was so artless, you could see her
quiver, or feel her, at every shot. For instance, was his sanctity very
much fatigued by yesterday's sermon? _Eh, la bella predica!_ What
invocations of the saints, what heart-groping, what reachings after the
better parts of women! It was some comfort to know that a woman had a
better part at all--by the Saviour! for their handling by men gave no
hint of it. Let Fra Beato--ah, pardon, Fra Battista she should have
said--send some such arrows into men's hides! See them, for the
gross-feeding, surly, spend-all, take-all knaves that they were! One or
two she might name if she had a mind--ah! one or two in this very city
of Verona, in this very Street of the Star, who--But there! Vanna must
go and hear the Frate's next sermon, she must indeed. And if she could
take her old curm-- Pshutt! What was she saying? How she ran on! She did
indeed. Fra Battista, leaning against the lintel, kept his eyelids on
the droop, seemed to find his toes of interest. But now and again he
would look delicately up, and so sure as he did the brown eyes and the
grey seemed to swim towards each other, to melt in a point, swirl in an
eddy of the feelings, in which Vanna found herself drowning and found
such death sweet. La Testolina still ran on, but now in a monologue. Fra
Battista looked and longed, and Vanna looked again and thrilled. It grew
quite dark; nothing of each other could they see and little know, until
the friar put out his foot and found Vanna's. A tremor, beginning at her
heart, ran down to her toes; Battista felt the flutter of it and was
assured.
When he left her that night he kissed her cold hand, then La
Testolina's, which he found by no means cold, and moved off leisurely
towards the Piazza dell' Erbe. Neither woman spoke for a while: La
Testolina was picking at her apron, Vanna sat quietly in the dark
holding her heart. She was still in a tremble, so ridiculously moved
that when her friend kissed her she burst out crying. La Testolina went
nodding away; and the end of the episode may be predicted. Not at one
but at many sermons of the tall Carmelite did Vanna sit rapt; not for
one but for every dusk did he stoop to kiss her hand. All Verona saw
her devotion,--all Verona, that is, but one old Veronese. The essence of
comedy being that the spectators shall chuckle at actors in a fog, here
was a comedy indeed.