Florence altogether was full of pleasant novelty to the young traveller.
To find herself living up two pair of stairs, with windows overlooking
the Arno, and at a little distance the quaint buildings of the Ponte
Vecchio, was as great a change as the first change had been from
Langton-Courtenay to the little Cottage at Shanklin. Mrs. Anderson’s
apartment on the second floor of the Casa Graziana was not large. There
was a drawing-room which looked to the front, and received all the
sunshine which Florentine skies could give; and half a mile off, at the
other end of the house, there was a grim and spare dining-room,
furnished with the indispensable tables and chairs, and with a curious
little fireplace in the corner, raised upon a slab of stone, as on a
pedestal. It would be difficult to tell how cold it was here as the
Winter advanced; but in the _salone_ it was genial as Summer whenever
the sun shone. The family went, as it were, from Nice to Inverness when
they went from the front to the back, for their meals. Perhaps it might
have been inappropriate for Miss Courtenay of Langton-Courtenay to live
up two pair of stairs; but it was not at all unsuitable for Mrs.
Anderson; and, indeed, when Lady Barker, who was Mrs. Anderson’s friend,
came to call, she was much surprised by the superior character of the
establishment. Lady Barker had been a Consul’s daughter, and had risen
immensely in life by marrying the foolish young _attaché_, whom she now
kept in the way he ought to go. She was not the Ambassadress, but the
Ambassadress’s friend, and a member of the Legation; and, though she was
now in a manner a great lady herself, she remembered quite well what
were the means of the Andersons, and knew that even the _terzo piano_ of
a house on the Lung-Arno was more than they could have ventured on in
the ancient days.
‘What a pretty apartment,’ she said; ‘and how nicely situated! I am
afraid you will find it rather dear. Florence is so changed since your
time. Do you remember how cheap everything used to be in the old days?
Well, if you will believe me, you pay just fifteen times as much for
every article now.’
‘So I perceive,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘We give a thousand francs for
these rooms, which ought not to be more than a hundred scudi--and
without even the old attraction of a pleasant accessible Court.’
Lady Barker opened her eyes--at once, at the fact of Mrs. Anderson
paying a thousand francs a month for her rooms, and at her familiar
mention of the pleasant Court.
‘Oh, there are some very pleasant people here now!’ she said; ‘if your
young ladies are fond of dancing, I think I can help them to some
amusement. Lady Granton will send you cards for her ball. Is Ombra
delicate?--do you still call her Ombra? How odd it is that you and I,
under such different circumstances, should meet here!’
‘Yes--very odd,’ said Mrs. Anderson; ‘and yet I don’t know. People who
have been once in Italy always come back. There is a charm about
it--a----’
‘Ah, we didn’t think so once!’ said Lady Barker, with a laugh. She could
remember the time when the Andersons, like so many other people
compelled to live abroad, looked upon everything that was not English
with absolute enmity. ‘You used to think Italy did not agree with your
daughter,’ she said; ‘have you brought her for her health now?’
‘Oh no! Ombra is quite well; she is always pale,’ said Mrs. Anderson.
‘We have come rather on account of my niece--not for her health, but
because she had never seen anything out of her own country. We think it
right that she should make good use of her time before she comes of
age.’
‘Oh! will she come of age?’ said Lady Barker, with a glance of laughing
curiosity. She decided that the pretty girl at the window, who had two
or three times broken into the conversation, was a great deal too pretty
to be largely endowed by fortune; and smiled at her old friend’s
grandiloquence, which she remembered so well. She made a very good story
of it at the little cosy dinner-party at the Embassy that evening, and
prepared the good people for some amusement. ‘A pretty English country
girl, with some property, no doubt,’ she said. ‘A cottage _ornée_, most
likely, and some fields about it; but her aunt talks as if she were
heiress to a Grand Duke. She has come abroad to improve her mind before
she comes of age.’
‘And when she goes back there will be a grand assemblage of the
tenantry, no doubt, and triumphal arches, and all the rest of it,’ said
another of the fine people.
‘So Mrs. Vice-Consul allows one to suppose,’ said Lady Barker. ‘But she
is so pretty--prettier than anything I have seen for ages; and Ombra,
too, is pretty, the late Vice-Consul’s heiress. They will _far
furore_--two such new faces, and both so English; so fresh; so
_gauche_!’
This was Lady Barker’s way of backing her friends; but the friends did
not know of it, and it procured them their invitation all the same, and
Lady Granton’s card to put on the top of the few other cards which
callers had left. And Mrs. Anderson came to be, without knowing it, the
favourite joke of the ambassadorial circle. Mrs. Vice-Consul had more
wonderful sayings fastened upon her than she ever dreamt of, and became
the type and symbol of the heavy British matron to that lively party.
Her friend made her out to be a bland and dignified mixture of Mrs.
Malaprop and Mrs. Nickleby. Meanwhile, she had a great many things to
do, which occupied her, and drove even her anxieties out of her mind.
There was the settling down--the hiring of servants and additional
furniture, and all the trifles necessary to make their rooms
‘comfortable;’ and then the dresses of the girls to be put in order, and
especially the dress in which Kate was to make her first appearance.
Mrs. Anderson had accepted Mr. Courtenay’s conditions; she had
acquiesced in the propriety of keeping silent as to Kate’s pretensions,
and guarding her from all approach of fortune-hunters. There was even
something in this which was not disagreeable to her maternal feelings;
for to have Kate made first, and Ombra second, would not have been
pleasant. But still, at the same time, she could not restrain a natural
inclination to enhance the importance of her party by a hint--an
inference. That little intimation about Kate’s coming of age, she had
meant to tell, as indeed it did, more than she intended; and now her
mind was greatly exercised about her niece’s ball-dress. ‘White
tarlatane is, of course, very nice for a young girl,’ she said,
doubtfully, ‘it is all my Ombra has ever had; but, for Kate, with her
pretensions----’
This was said rather as one talks to one’s self, thinking aloud, than as
actually asking advice.
‘But I thought Kate in Florence was to be simply your niece,’ said
Ombra, who was in the room. ‘To make her very fine would be bad taste;
besides,’ she added, with a little sigh, ‘Kate would look well in white
calico. Nature has decked her so. I suppose I never, at my best, was
anything like that.’
Ombra had improved very much since their arrival in Florence. Her
fretfulness had much abated, and there was no envy in this sigh.
‘At your best, Ombra! My foolish darling, do you think your best is
over?’ said the mother, with a smile.
‘I mean the bloom,’ said Ombra. ‘I never had any bloom--and Kate’s is
wonderful. I think she gives a pearly, rosy tint to the very air. I was
always a little shadow, you know!’
‘You will not do yourself justice,’ cried Mrs. Anderson. ‘Oh! Ombra, if
you only knew how it grieves me! You draw back, and you droop into that
dreamy, melancholy way; there is always a mist about you. My darling,
this is a new place, you will meet new people, everything is fresh and
strange. Could you not make a new beginning, dear, and shake it off!’
‘I try,’ said Ombra, in a low tone.
‘I don’t want to be hard upon you, my own child; but, then, dear, you
must blame yourself, not any one else. It was not his fault.’
‘Please don’t speak of it,’ cried the girl. ‘If you could know how
humbled I feel to think that it is _that_ which has upset my whole life!
Ill-temper, jealousy, envy, meanness--pleasant things to have in one’s
heart! I fight with them, but I can’t overcome them. If I could only
“not care!” How happy people are who can take things easily, and who
don’t care!’
‘Very few people do,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘Those who have command of
themselves don’t show their feelings, but most people _feel_ more or
less. The change, however, will do you good. And you must occupy
yourself, my love. How nicely you used to draw, Ombra! and you have
given up drawing. As for poetry, my dear, it is very pretty--it is very,
very pretty--but I fear it is not much good.’
‘It does not sell, you mean, like novels.’
‘I don’t know much about novels; but it keeps you always dwelling upon
your feelings. And then, if they were ever published, people would talk.
They would say, “Where has Ombra learned all this? Has she been as
unhappy as she says? Has she been disappointed?” My darling, I think it
does a girl a great deal of harm. If you would begin your drawing again!
Drawing does not tell any tales.’
‘There is no tale to tell,’ cried Ombra. Her shadowy face flushed with a
colour which, for the moment, was as bright as Kate’s, and she got up
hurriedly, and began to arrange some books at a side-table, an
occupation which carried her out of her mother’s way; and then Kate came
in, carrying a basket of fruit, which she and Francesca had bought in
the market. There were scarcely any flowers to be had, she complained,
but the grapes, with their picturesque stems, and great green leaves,
stained with russet, were almost as ornamental. A white alabaster tazza,
which they had bought at Pisa, heaped with them, was almost more
effective, more characteristic than flowers.
‘I have been trying to talk to the market-women,’ she said, ‘down in
that dark, narrow passage, by the Strozzi Palace. Francesca knows all
about it. How pleasant it is going with Francesca--to hear her chatter,
and to see her brown little face light up! She tells me such stories of
all the people as we go.’
‘How fond you are of stories, Kate!’
‘Is it wrong? Look, auntie, how lovely this vine-branch looks! England
is better for some things, though. There will still be some clematis
over our porch--not in flower, perhaps, but in that downy, fluffy stage,
after the flower. Francesca promises me everything soon. Spring will
begin in December, she says, so far as the flowers go, and then we can
make the _salone_ gay. Do you know there are quantities of English
people at the hotel at the corner? I almost thought I heard some one say
my name as I went by. I looked up, but I could not see anybody I knew.’
‘I hope there is nobody we know,’ cried Ombra, under her breath.
‘My dear children,’ said Mrs. Anderson, with solemnity, ‘you must
recognise this principle in Italy, that there are English people
everywhere; and wherever there are English people, there is sure to be
some one whom you know, or who knows you. I have seen it happen a
hundred times; so never mind looking up at the windows, Kate--you may be
sure we shall find out quite soon enough.’
‘Well, I like people,’ said Kate, carelessly, as she went out of the
room. ‘It will not be any annoyance to me.’
‘_She_ does not care,’ said Ombra--‘it is not in her nature. She will
always be happy, because she will never mind. One is the same as another
to her. I wish I had that happy disposition. How strange it is that
people should be so different! What would kill me would scarcely move
her--would not cost her a tear.’
‘Ombra, I am not so sure----’
‘Oh! but I am sure, mamma. She does not understand how things can matter
so much to me. She wonders--I can see her look at me when she thinks I
don’t notice. She seems to say, “What can Ombra mean by it?--how silly
she is to care!”’
‘But you have not taken Kate into your confidence?’ said Mrs. Anderson,
in alarm.
‘I have not taken any one into my confidence--I have no confidence to
give,’ said Ombra, with the ready irritation which had come to be so
common with her. The mother bore it, as mothers have to do, turning away
with a suppressed sigh. What a difference the last year had made on
Ombra!--oh! what a thing love was to make such a difference in a girl!
This is what Mrs. Anderson said to herself with distress and pain; she
could scarcely recognise her own child in this changed manifestation,
and she could not approve, or even sympathise with her, in the degree,
at least, which Ombra craved.