In the sun-flooded gardens and airy rooms of the convent across the
river nine radiant years of Giannella's childhood and girlhood slipped
happily away. The round of lessons and play, the cycle of workdays and
feastdays brought constant interest and variety, and the companionship
of children of her own age, passing from class to class with her in
the emulation which involved no rivalry or contention, satisfied
all the wants of her heart. The nuns were as kind as Mamma Candida,
though they inspired a profound respect and an unquestioning awe for
their ever-just rulings. There were pets to care for, flowers to
tend, beautiful little shrines to decorate them with if one had been
very good. All this was consciously enjoyed; less understood, but of
lasting importance was the religious training which gathered the little
comrades into companies first under the white badge of the Guardian
Angels--this for the youngest of all; then, at the time of First
Communion, under the green one of St. Joseph; and finally, when the
hour was approaching for grown girls to return to their homes in the
world and take up the whole duty of women, hung round their necks the
coveted blue ribbon and silver medal which marked their worthiness to
be enrolled among the "Enfants de Marie." These influences gave a deep
stability to Giannella's healthy normal character, and laid in her
heart the foundations of peace and right-thinking for which she was to
be deeply thankful later on.
Once or twice in the year Mariuccia was allowed to come early in the
morning and take Giannella home for a day, bringing her back before Ave
Marie; and whenever it was possible she made time to go to the convent,
bearing some humble offering of fruits and cakes from the castello for
the "Suore," and satisfy herself that the child was well and happy.
The Princess came at stated periods, notably at the great Feasts,
when prizes were distributed and wonderful little plays representing
religious allegories were got up and acted--with what throbbing
excitement--by the best and whitest lambs in the flock, those who had
had no bad marks since the last great event of the kind. Since virtue,
and not dramatic talent, was the test of proficiency, the good nuns
had to work hard over these entertainments, but the result was always
satisfactory to them and their troupe, and was believed to afford the
highest artistic pleasure to the noble patronesses, of whom Princess
Santafede was the most distinguished.
The Sisters kept open school for all the poorer children of the
quarter, but this part of their establishment was divided from that
devoted to the boarders by a twenty-foot wall, and no taint of the
streets was ever wafted across that impassable barrier. Within the
charmed circle, the girls, all of the better middle class, were as
jealously guarded, as well taught, and fed, and housed, as Teresa
Santafede herself had been in the aristocratic seclusion of her own
convent school, where only the daughters of nobles were received. The
one difference was that at Santa Eulalia less time was given to books
and more to fine needlework and embroidery, the only accomplishments
by which in those prehistoric days a refined woman in moderate
circumstances could earn a living. There were no lay schools for girls,
so there were no openings for teachers except as unpaid assistants to
the nuns, who employed some half dozen of their old pupils, homeless
orphans like Giannella, to help with the younger children. The Superior
confided to the Princess that she would gladly keep Giannella in that
capacity, her exquisite needlework and talent for design making her a
valuable help in the embroidery department. But the Princess replied
that the girl had received special training in these subjects because
there was a person--the woman who occasionally came to see her--who
had made great sacrifices on her behalf and for whom she could now, at
sixteen, do something in return. She could earn money at home; there
seemed to be no difficulty about her residing with Mariuccia Botti
under Signor Bianchi's roof--and work could always be obtained for her
there.
It was with great regret that Giannella left this, her second home,
to return to the Professor's apartment in the Palazzo Santafede. Yet
she was glad that the moment had come when she could begin to repay
the untiring goodness which had saved her from the hard and lonely
fate of the forsaken child and procured for her the education which
in time would enable her to earn her living in retirement and peace.
No anxieties for the future whispered trouble to her heart. Mariuccia
would be ever at her side; and in the background was the beneficent
Princess, always accessible through kind Signora Dati, promising that
materials and sales should not fail for the beautiful work which
the girl really loved. So, after tearful partings with teachers and
companions, Giannella was fetched home, her little box full of naïf
farewell presents of pictures of Saints, tiny pincushions, muslin bags
stuffed with "gagia" blossoms and verbena leaves which would keep
their sweet scent for twenty years to come--artificial flowers and
embroidered handkerchiefs--all her inestimably precious, and quite
valueless, earthly possessions.
Mariuccia told her to bestow these in a small empty room beyond the
kitchen, where she could set up her embroidery frame close to the big
window which looked more to the sky than to the street, and where she
could keep her delicate work free from all danger of dust or accident.
As for sleeping alone, that was out of the question. Giannella had
never tried it in her life and was sure she should never close an eye,
accustomed as she was to the big dormitory with its rows of white beds
and the curtained sanctuary in the corner, where the guardian nun was
supposed to lie awake saying her prayers all night, listening for
the first sound of whispering or larking, to issue forth with dire
retribution for the offenders. Mariuccia had made full preparation for
her Giannella in her own room, a windowless apartment on the dark
side of the passage. In it had stood for years a spindle-legged green
bed of impaired constitution, replaced, with much grumbling from the
padrone, by a stronger one when Mariuccia's wooden weight had three
separate times broken through it with a thump on the bricks in the dead
of night, causing the Professor to start from his slumbers in such a
fright that his nurse and guardian had to administer a sedative and
keep him on soup for two days to restore his nerves. The green wreck
was to have been sold at once, but just then a thrilling discovery of
new antiquities in the Foro Romano came to carry Signor Bianchi's mind
beyond the confines of personal subjects, and he had been guilty of the
frantic extravagance of forgetting to sell the bed. Mariuccia pushed it
into a corner behind the door, and had coaxed the carpenter retainer,
who had his workshop in a far recess of the colonnade, and who was
forever engaged in repairing some of the hundreds of doors and windows
in the vast building, to set the wreck safely on its legs again. One of
her own two mattresses was stuffed with fresh cornhusks smelling of the
country and brought by the carrettiere ally, and behold a nice white
couch, quite fit for a "signorina" like Mariuccia's Giannella.
This time no permission was asked of Carlo Bianchi for her reception;
the chains of servitude had changed places in the many years of
Mariuccia's abode under his roof and were now firmly riveted on the
unconscious man, who grumbled freely when things annoyed him, but was
too much afraid of losing his economical housekeeper ever to really
quarrel with that grim but faithful domestic tyrant.
So he only nodded in acquiescence when she told him that Giannella had
come home--to stay. Giannella herself appeared a moment later, intent
upon making her courtesy, inquiring after his respectable health,
and thanking him for the permission to remain in his house. The fine
gradations of social conditions had been carefully taught her by the
nuns. Since she had neither father nor uncles, there was no occasion
for her ever to kiss the hand of any gentleman, unless he were an
ecclesiastic. Otherwise this honor was to be paid only to women, her
superiors either in rank, like the Princess and the other patronesses
of the convent, or in age and virtue, like her teachers, Signora Dati,
and above all the good Sora Mariuccia, who had done so much for her.
How much, the Sisters did not quite know, but Giannella did. Signora
Dati had considered it right to make her understand the obligations
under which she lay to the unlettered, silent peasant woman who would
never refer to them herself; and Giannella, though still remembering
"Mamma Candida" with warmer affection, meant to love and cherish "Zia
Mariuccia" (as she had learned to call her when among the latter's real
nephews and nieces) all her life. But Mariuccia recoiled in horror when
Giannella attempted to kiss her hand. A young lady--the daughter of her
poor master of good memory? Dove mia? No indeed. Nor was she to call
her "Aunt" any longer, now that she was grown up. People must never be
led to believe that any relationship existed between the "signorina"
and her humble self. She was already busy with Giannella's future and
had decided that some splendidly disinterested young man, of much
"educazione" and large fortune--fifty thousand scudi at least--was to
ask her in marriage at the proper time, which apparently came later for
persons of her class than for the country folk, who reckoned sixteen
the correct age for taking a husband and twenty the end of all chances
in that direction.
It was with real pride that she watched Giannella's dignified little
greeting to the Professor and marked the expression of bewilderment
which came over his features as he turned and saw the new inmate of his
family standing in the doorway of the study. He failed for the moment
to connect the apparition with the child who had so incensed him by
knocking down chairs nine years before. That criminal had been effaced
from his memory for a long time, but was slowly recalled as he gazed
at the graceful girl whose deep gray eyes were full of intelligent
recollection of him. She had grown tall and straight, her features were
delicately aquiline, giving an impression of maturity in spite of the
dimple at the corner of her grave, fresh mouth; her faintly rosy skin
was translucent with health and vitality, and her hair was still of
the pure baby gold which had so delighted the hearts of Mariuccia and
Candida in the old days. Now it framed in her pretty face in broad,
shining braids hanging low before the ears, after the fashion of the
day, and gathered into coils at the back. The convent uniform had been
laid aside and Giannella was feeling strangely grand in the dark blue
dress (touching the ground at last) which she had made for herself,
under the direction of the nuns, for her first entrance into the great
world. Many earnest warnings against that world's distractions and
dissipations had accompanied the making of the dangerously secular
garment, in reality so rigid in its simplicity that but for the
finely embroidered collar and undersleeves it might have passed for a
modification of a religious habit. The kind nuns had sighed in secret
over Giannella's hair, the crown of glory which must attract attention
in church and street. "Poverina, she is too pretty. That hair is only
fit for a Saint in a picture," they would tell each other, "and the
world is not the place for it. But there, Our Lady will protect her,
and she has good, pious friends, thank Heaven."
The Professor, who was a gentleman, for all his abstracted ways, rose
from his chair and bowed to the charming vision, saying something
which was meant to be extremely polite. The vision courtesied again
and disappeared; Mariuccia followed, closing the door behind her with
a joyful snap; and Carlo Bianchi went back to his book, but for at
least five minutes did not understand a word of the treatise on African
marbles which had so enthralled him earlier. Who was this girl? Where
had she come from? What on earth was she doing in his house, in his
kitchen, as the companion of that tough old war-horse, Mariuccia from
the Castel? He tried to piece together the few facts which Mariuccia
had told him about her in the dim past. None of them quite accounted
for her as he had beheld her just now, and at last he gave the question
up, deciding that "Giannella" (that seemed to be her only name) was a
problem which he would waste valuable time in trying to solve.
And the Professor, who knew less about her than anyone else, had
catalogued Giannella rightly. She was a problem. What future lay before
her when she should have read through the odd dozen of gaudily bound
prize books that she had brought back from the convent, when she should
have exhausted the delights of embroidering Church vestments and bridal
trousseaux, the persons most interested in her welfare, with the one
exception of Mariuccia, who, loving much, believed all things, would
have found it hard to say. After all, that was scarcely their affair.
If her fresh youth was destined to burn itself out over the embroidery
frame in the bare little room beyond the kitchen, and her bright eyes
to grow dim over invisible stitches in gossamer cambric--well, that was
destiny's business. They had done what they could.
Giannella herself was not concerned with her future, but she soon came
to realize that the present was anything but cheering. The silent
house, the confined life, the absence of young companionship, all
struck as coldly at her heart now as it had nine years before when
she had flung herself into Mariuccia's arms and entreated to be taken
back to Mamma Candida and the pigs and the donkey. After the breezy,
healthy existence at the convent, lighted by a thousand interests and
shared by numberless bosom friends with whom she had grown up, it
was torturing to sit for hours over the work which had been made so
pleasant by talk and variety over there at Santa Eulalia, to have only
Mariuccia, ever kind but so unresponsive, as a companion; to see the
sunshine through her window and watch the cloudlets chasing across the
blue in the breeze, and know that she was a prisoner except for a short
walk with Mariuccia in the morning, first to Mass at San Severino and
then to the near shops where they did their marketing. Even when work
was to be returned to Signora Dati and materials for more brought back,
Mariuccia must accompany her, for no girl of her age could cross the
threshold of her home alone, much less run the gauntlet of the grooms
hanging round the stables and the posse of footmen in the Princess's
antechamber. How different from the liberty she had enjoyed in the
sunswept gardens of the school beyond the river. But the teachings
received there, and a certain strain of courage and hardihood derived
from her northern ancestry, helped her to shake off her growing
depression and show a cheerful face to life, whatever privations it
might choose to bring.
The periodical visits to Signora Dati in the great apartment on the
other side of the courtyard became a distinct interest and pleasure.
They gave her a glimpse into a large, majestic mode of life which had
its own romance; and though "romance" was a word Giannella had scarcely
heard, its glamor warmed and lighted her imagination and brought her
much wordless consolation; for romance is the very sap of the tree of
youth and finds its own sustenance without external help or guidance.
Since Don Onorato had really grown up a certain element of color and
change had crept into the over-ascetic atmosphere of his mother's
surroundings. Her brother, the Cardinal, had done much to effect this,
both openly, by representing that the lad should find brightness and
sympathy with his young tastes in his home, and also more subtly, by
bringing fresh books, travels, essays, even good novels, always with
the plea that they might amuse Onorato and keep him from wasting his
time on inferior literature. As the Princess still felt it her duty to
read anything she recommended to her son, the Cardinal's contributions
helped her to pass many pleasant hours and also to enlarge her views
in many directions. When, according to her custom, she visited
Onorato's rooms to see that all was right there, she would carry
off any suspicious-looking volume and leave something better in its
place, and though Onorato was a grown man by this time, his awe of her
prevented his ever protesting against these exchanges. As time went on
he learned to put away the attractively scandalous French novels which
were occasionally smuggled into the city in spite of the tyrannical
censorship which examined every atom of print that was put into the
post or set in circulation, ruthlessly burned all immoral works
or indecent pictures, and aroused the anger of freeborn foreigners
by cutting out of the newspapers all scandalous or revolutionary
items. Sad days of bigotry and darkness, when evil was stamped out as
thoroughly as organization and power would permit--when any woman,
from a foreign peeress to a dancer at the opera, was sent across the
frontier the moment her behavior overstepped the bounds of propriety.
If well-brought-up young men went wrong, they had at least to take some
trouble to accomplish it.