In the cool of the evening Dr. Riccabocca walked home across the fields.
Mr. and Mrs. Dale had accompanied him half-way, and as they now turned
back to the parsonage, they looked behind to catch a glimpse of the tall,
outlandish figure, winding slowly through the path amidst the waves of
the green corn.
"Poor man!" said Mrs. Dale, feelingly; "and the button was off his
wristband! What a pity he has nobody to take care of him! He seems very
domestic. Don't you think, Charles, it would be a great blessing if we
could get him a good wife?"
"Um," said the parson; "I doubt if he values the married state as he
ought."
"What do you mean, Charles? I never saw a man more polite to ladies in
my life."
"Yes, but--"
"But what? "You are always so mysterious, Charles dear."
"Mysterious! No, Carry; but if you could hear what the doctor says of
the ladies sometimes."
"Ay, when you men get together, my dear. I know what that means--pretty
things you say of us! But you are all alike; you know you are, love!"
"I am sure," said the parson, simply, "that I have good cause to speak
well of the sex--when I think of you and my poor mother."
Mrs. Dale, who, with all her "tempers," was an excellent woman, and loved
her husband with the whole of her quick little heart, was touched. She
pressed his hand, and did not call him dear all the way home.
Meanwhile the Italian passed the fields, and came upon the high road
about two miles from Hazeldean. On one side stood an old-fashioned
solitary inn, such as English inns used to be before they became railway
hotels,--square, solid, old-fashioned, looking so hospitable and
comfortable, with their great signs swinging from some elm-tree in front,
and the long row of stables standing a little back, with a chaise or two
in the yard, and the jolly landlord talking of the crops to some stout
farmer, whose rough pony halts of itself at the well-known door.
Opposite this inn, on the other side of the road, stood the habitation of
Dr. Riecabocca.
A few years before the date of these annals, the stage-coach on its way
to London from a seaport town stopped at the inn, as was its wont, for a
good hour, that its passengers might dine like Christian Englishmen--not
gulp down a basin of scalding soup, like everlasting heathen Yankees,
with that cursed railway-whistle shrieking like a fiend in their ears!
It was the best dining-place on the whole road, for the trout in the
neighbouring rill were famous, and so was the mutton which came from
Hazeldean Park.
From the outside of the coach had descended two passengers, who, alone
insensible to the attractions of mutton and trout, refused to dine,--two
melancholy-looking foreigners, of whom one was Signor Riccabocca, much
the same as we see him now, only that the black suit was less threadbare,
the tall form less meagre, and he did not then wear spectacles; and the
other was his servant. "They would walk about while the coach stopped."
Now the Italian's eye had been caught by a mouldering, dismantled house
on the other side the road, which nevertheless was well situated; half-
way up a green hill, with its aspect due south, a little cascade falling
down artificial rockwork, a terrace with a balustrade, and a few broken
urns and statues before its Ionic portico, while on the roadside stood a
board, with characters already half effaced, implying that the house was
"To be let unfurnished, with or without land."
The abode that looked so cheerless, and which had so evidently hung long
on hand, was the property of Squire Hazeldean. It had been built by his
grandfather on the female side,--a country gentleman who had actually
been in Italy (a journey rare enough to boast of in those days), and who,
on his return home, had attempted a miniature imitation of an Italian
villa. He left an only daughter and sole heiress, who married Squire
Hazeldean's father; and since that time, the house, abandoned by its
proprietors for the larger residence of the Hazeldeans, had been
uninhabited and neglected. Several tenants, indeed, had offered
themselves; but your true country squire is slow in admitting upon his
own property a rival neighbour. Some wanted shooting. "That," said the
Hazeldeans, who were great sportsmen and strict preservers, "was quite
out of the question." Others were fine folks from London. "London
servants," said the Hazeldeans, who were moral and prudent people, "would
corrupt their own, and bring London prices." Others, again, were retired
manufacturers, at whom the Hazeldeans turned up their agricultural noses.
In short, some were too grand, and others too vulgar. Some were refused
because they were known so well: "Friends were best at a distance," said
the Hazeldeans; others because they were not known at all: "No good
comes of strangers," said the Hazeldeans. And finally, as the house fell
more and more into decay, no one would take it unless it was put into
thorough repair: "As if one was made of money!" said the Hazeldeans. In
short, there stood the house unoccupied and ruinous; and there, on its
terrace, stood the two forlorn Italians, surveying it with a smile at
each other, as for the first time since they set foot in England, they
recognized, in dilapidated pilasters and broken statues, in a weed-grown
terrace and the remains of an orangery, something that reminded them of
the land they had left behind.
On returning to the inn, Dr. Riccabocca took the occasion to learn from
the innkeeper (who was indeed a tenant of the squire) such particulars as
he could collect; and a few days afterwards Mr. Hazeldean received a
letter from a solicitor of repute in London, stating that a very
respectable foreign gentleman had commissioned him to treat for Clump
Lodge, otherwise called the "Casino;" that the said gentleman did not
shoot, lived in great seclusion, and, having no family, did not care
about the repairs of the place, provided only it were made weather-
proof,--if the omission of more expensive reparations could render the
rent suitable to his finances, which were very limited. The offer came
at a fortunate moment, when the steward had just been representing to the
squire the necessity of doing something to keep the Casino from falling
into positive ruin, and the squire was cursing the fates which had put
the Casino into an entail--so that he could not pull it down for the
building materials. Mr. Hazeldean therefore caught at the proposal even
as a fair lady, who has refused the best offers in the kingdom, catches,
at last, at some battered old captain on half-pay, and replied that, as
for rent, if the solicitor's client was a quiet, respectable man, he did
not care for that, but that the gentleman might have it for the first
year rent-free, on condition of paying the taxes, and putting the place
a little in order. If they suited each other, they could then come
to terms. Ten days subsequently to this gracious reply, Signor
Riccabocca and his servant arrived; and, before the year's end, the
squire was so contented with his tenant that he gave him a running lease
of seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years, at a rent merely nominal, on
condition that Signor Riccabocca would put and maintain the place in
repair, barring the roof and fences, which the squire generously renewed
at his own expense. It was astonishing, by little and little, what a
pretty place the Italian had made of it, and, what is more astonishing,
how little it had cost him. He had, indeed, painted the walls of the
hall, staircase, and the rooms appropriated to himself, with his own
hands. His servant had done the greater part of the upholstery. The two
between them had got the garden into order.
The Italians seemed to have taken a joint love to the place, and to deck
it as they would have done some favourite chapel to their Madonna.
It was long before the natives reconciled themselves to the odd ways of
the foreign settlers. The first thing that offended them was the
exceeding smallness of the household bills. Three days out of the seven,
indeed, both man and master dined on nothing else but the vegetables in
the garden, and the fishes in the neighbouring rill; when no trout could
be caught they fried the minnows (and certainly, even in the best
streams, minnows are more frequently caught than trout). The next thing
which angered the natives quite as much, especially the female part of
the neighbourhood, was the very sparing employment the two he creatures
gave to the sex usually deemed so indispensable in household matters. At
first, indeed, they had no woman-servant at all. But this created such
horror that Parson Dale ventured a hint upon the matter, which Riccabocca
took in very good part; and an old woman was forthwith engaged after some
bargaining--at three shillings a week--to wash and scrub as much as she
liked during the daytime. She always returned to her own cottage to
sleep. The man-servant, who was styled in the neighbourhood "Jackeymo,"
did all else for his master,--smoothed his room, dusted his papers,
prepared his coffee, cooked his dinner, brushed his clothes, and cleaned
his pipes, of which Riccabocca had a large collection. But however close
a man's character, it generally creeps out in driblets; and on many
little occasions the Italian had shown acts of kindness, and, on some
more rare occasions, even of generosity, which had served to silence his
calumniators, and by degrees he had established a very fair reputation,--
suspected, it is true, of being a little inclined to the Black Art, and
of a strange inclination to starve Jackeymo and himself, in other
respects harmless enough.
Signor Riccabocca had become very intimate, as we have seen, at the
Parsonage. But not so at the Hall. For though the squire was inclined
to be very friendly to all his neighbours, he was, like most country
gentlemen, rather easily /huffed/. Riccabocca had, with great
politeness, still with great obstinacy, refused Mr. Hazeldean's earlier
invitations to dinner; and when the squire found that the Italian rarely
declined to dine at the Parsonage, he was offended in one of his weak
points,--namely, his pride in the hospitality of Hazeldean Hall,--and he
ceased altogether invitations so churlishly rejected. Nevertheless, as
it was impossible for the squire, however huffed, to bear malice, he now
and then reminded Riccabocca of his existence by presents of game, and
would have called on him more often than he did, but that Riccabocca
received him with such excessive politeness that the blunt country
gentleman felt shy and put out, and used to say that "to call on
Rickeybockey was as bad as going to Court."
But we have left Dr. Riccabocca on the high road. By this time he has
ascended a narrow path that winds by the side of the cascade, he has
passed a trellis-work covered with vines, from which Jackeymo has
positively succeeded in making what he calls wine,--a liquid, indeed,
that if the cholera had been popularly known in those days, would have
soured the mildest member of the Board of Health; for Squire Hazeldean,
though a robust man who daily carried off his bottle of port with
impunity, having once rashly tasted it, did not recover the effect till
he had had a bill from the apothecary as long as his own arm. Passing
this trellis, Dr. Riccabocca entered upon the terrace, with its stone
pavement as smoothed and trimmed as hands could make it. Here, on neat
stands, all his favourite flowers were arranged; here four orange trees
were in full blossom; here a kind of summer-house, or belvidere, built by
Jackeymo and himself, made his chosen morning room from May till October;
and from this belvidere there was as beautiful an expanse of prospect as
if our English Nature had hospitably spread on her green board all that
she had to offer as a banquet to the exile.
A man without his coat, which was thrown over the balustrade, was
employed in watering the flowers,--a man with movements so mechanical,
with a face so rigidly grave in its tawny hues, that he seemed like an
automaton made out of mahogany.
"Giacomo," said Dr. Riccabocca, softly.
The automaton stopped its hand, and turned its head.
"Put by the watering-pot, and come hither," continued Riccabocca, in
Italian; and, moving towards the balustrade, he leaned over it. Mr.
Mitford, the historian, calls Jean Jacques "John James." Following that
illustrious example, Giacomo shall be Anglified into Jackeymo. Jackeymo
came to the balustrade also, and stood a little behind his master.
"Friend," said Riccabocca, "enterprises have not always succeeded with
us. Don't you think, after all, it is tempting our evil star to rent
those fields from the landlord?" Jackeymo crossed himself, and made some
strange movement with a little coral charm which he wore set in a ring on
his finger.
"If the Madonna send us luck, and we could hire a lad cheap?" said
Jackeymo, doubtfully.
"Piu vale un presente che dui futuri,"--["A bird in the hand is worth two
in the bush."]--said Riccabocca.
"Chi non fa quando pub, non pub, fare quando vuole,"--["He who will not
when he may, when he wills it shall have nay."]--answered Jackeymo, as
sententiously as his master. "And the Padrone should think in time that
he must lay by for the dower of the poor signorina."
Riccabocca sighed, and made no reply.
"She must be that high now!" said Jackeymo, putting his hand on some
imaginary line a little above the balustrade. Riccabocca's eyes, raised
over the spectacles, followed the hand.
"If the Padrone could but see her here--"
"I thought I did," muttered the Italian.
"He would never let her go from his side till she went to a husband's,"
continued Jackeymo.
"But this climate,--she could never stand it," said Riccabocca, drawing
his cloak round him, as a north wind took him in the rear.
"The orange trees blossom even here with care," said Jackeymo, turning
back to draw down an awning where the orange trees faced the north.
"See!" he added, as he returned with a sprig in full bud.
Dr. Riccabocca bent over the blossom, and then placed it in his bosom.
"The other one should be there too," said Jackeymo.
"To die--as this does already!" answered Riccabocca. "Say no more."
Jackeymo shrugged his shoulders; and then, glancing at his master, drew
his hand over his eyes.
There was a pause. Jackeymo was the first to break it. "But, whether
here or there, beauty without money is the orange tree without shelter.
If a lad could be got cheap, I would hire the land, and trust for the
crop to the Madonna."
"I think I know of such a lad," said Riccabocca, recovering himself, and
with his sardonic smile once more lurking about the corners of his
mouth,--"a lad made for us."
"/Diavolo!/"
"No, not the Diavolo! Friend, I have this day seen a boy who--refused
sixpence!"
"/Cosa stupenda!/" exclaimed Jackeymo, opening his eyes, and letting fall
the watering-pot.
"It is true, my friend."
"Take him, Padrone, in Heaven's name, and the fields will grow gold."
"I will think of it, for it must require management to catch such a boy,"
said Riccabocca. "Meanwhile, light a candle in the parlour, and bring
from my bedroom that great folio of Machiavelli."