terrace with a parapet; from here opens out a panorama of the velvety
hills of Tuscany, with a crowd of serried mountain-peaks rising behind
them; below, in the narrow valley of a winding stream, is the small
mediæval town of Tre Ponti, or Three Bridges. The garden retains a
distinctly monastic air, though its last monk took leave of it several
hundred years ago; here are no statues of goddesses and muses, so common
in Italy; instead there are two worn stone crosses, with illegible
Latin inscriptions at their bases. An arcade along one side is paved
with flag-stones, and has the air of a cloister; at its end is a fresco
representing a monk with his finger on his lips, as if inculcating
silence; the face is dim, all save the eyes, but these have a strange
vitality, and appear to follow the gazer with intelligence as he turns
away. There are two ancient sundials, and there is a relic which excites
curiosity--a flight of stone steps attached to a high boundary wall; the
steps go up for a distance of eight or nine feet, and then stop, leading
to nothing. On the north and west, where it stretches to the verge of
the hill, the garden is open, defended only by its parapet. Across its
south edge it is shut in by the irregular stone house called Casa
Colombina. On the east there is the boundary wall already mentioned, and
above this wall there rises outside, not fifteen yards away, a massive
square battlemented tower, one hundred and thirty feet high, named Torre
Colombina, or Tower of the Dove. This tower is now occupied only by
owls, and travellers suppose vaguely that it belongs in some way to the
little church of Santa Lucia, which nestles at its feet; they even fancy
that it is the campanile for Santa Lucia's bells. But the great stone
Tower of the Dove dates from the thirteenth century, and although Santa
Lucia cannot be called young, her two hundred and fifty years are
nothing to the greater antiquity of her ponderous, overshadowing
neighbor. Santa Lucia's bells, indeed, would be lost in the Tower of the
Dove. The saint has but three, each twelve inches in length, and the
miniature peal is suspended in a belfry about as large as a pigeon-house
which perches on the roof of her own small temple--a yellow sanctuary
adorned with a flat pointed façade which looks (it is a characteristic
of many church façades in Italy) as if it would come up and off if
pulled strongly at the top, like the front of a box or the slide of a
lantern.
Edward Gray's compliment had drawn from Dennison a disparaging "Oh, it's
all dilapidated, forlorn--"
"Spare your adjectives," responded the other man. "They're pure
hypocrisy. You needn't pretend you don't like it!"
"Of course I don't pretend. Haven't I lived here for nearly twenty years
because I do like it? That tells the story."
"Though my occupation at home is the making of boiler-plate," Gray
continued, pursuing the current of his own thoughts, "and though I
couldn't and wouldn't live here as you do, giving up your own country
(the greatest country in the world), yet don't imagine, Jack, that I
can't take it in!"
He had risen while speaking. Now he went down to the parapet and stood
looking at the view. Each mountain-peak was bathed in the light of
sunset; all was softly fair--the ineffable loveliness of Italy. He came
back. "It's probable that I take it in more than you do," he went on.
"Oh yes, of course; new-comers always think so. They think that we don't
comprehend either the country or the people because we take them calmly.
They believe that they themselves show far more discrimination in only
coming now and then. For in that way they preserve their power of
appreciating; they don't grow dull-eyed and stupid as we do."
"Exactly. That's just what I think," answered Gray. "What do you
suppose those stairs were for?" he added, as he sat down again beside
the table and lighted a cigarette.
"Probably they led to a small out-door pulpit which has fallen down. The
whole top of this hill was covered by a monastery--a fortified place, I
believe, with four towers. Only one of the towers remains, and nothing
above ground of all the other buildings but that piece of high wall; I
dare say there are plenty of substructures and vaults below. But though
the monastery has gone, this old garden of the monks remains very much
as it was, I fancy."
Modesta now came to take the tray. She was accompanied by a cat and a
dog. The dog was a small dachshund, black, with long silky ears and very
crooked paws. The cat, a sinuous yellow matron, appeared to believe that
she was the favorite, for she rubbed herself against her mistress's
ankles caressingly. As Modesta, with murmured "excuses," lifted the
tray, four kittens rushed from the house, gambolling and tumbling over
each other; they all made their way to her feet, round which they curled
themselves so that she walked in a tangle of cats. She returned towards
the house with her tray, laughing, and careful not to step on them. The
dog waited a moment with dignity. "Here, Hannibal! Here!" said Dennison.
But the dachshund paid no attention to him; he trotted back to the house
as fast as his short legs could carry him.
"He is supposed to be my property. But he spends his life in the
kitchen," commented Dennison.
"That girl of yours has a passion for animals; one might rather call it
compassion, perhaps, for I have even seen her petting that
preternaturally ill-tempered and hideous donkey who turns your
water-wheel," remarked Gray. "It seems to extend in all directions, for
she runs out to help the old milkman up the hill with his cans, and she
gives tidbits to that idiot boy who haunts the main road."
"That isn't half. She feeds regularly two children who live a little
below here, on the way down to the valley. Partly she robs me to do it,
after the easy Italian fashion; but she also robs herself--I have had
proof of that. She almost always has some forlorn object, varying
anywhere from a lame chicken to a blind man, stowed away in a corner of
the court or the kitchen, where she can see to and comfort it. And every
Friday, when the regular beggars of Tre Ponti--the authorized
humbugs--make the round of the villas and poderes on this side of the
valley, invariably she has saved something for each one of them."
"She is extraordinarily handsome. With her full throat, her large, soft
eyes, and that classic head and hair, she looks like a Madonna of one of
the old painters. I have never seen a more kindly and beautiful smile."
"It's well enough. But the great thing is that she is perfect as a
servant. What she has to do is done without a fault."
"And she is so placid and sweet-tempered, too, as well as skilful," Gray
went on. "She's a regular marvel!"
"She's a regular Tuscan!"
"Didn't I tell you that you don't half appreciate the beautiful natures
of these people? As to this particular girl--come back to America, and
see what we have to put up with! A waitress like that, over there, would
be worth her weight in silver--if not gold."
"A what?" asked Dennison.
"A waitress; that's what we call 'em now; we've given up 'help.' Is she
married to your cook?"
"Oh no; Peppino is nearly sixty. She is only twenty-five, though she
looks thirty. She is a widow, and she is thinking of taking another
husband before long. Have you noticed a young fellow working in the
vineyard just under your windows?"
"I have noticed some one loafing there."
"That's the man."
"Poor good-natured woman--he has imposed upon her; she will have to earn
his living as well as her own. As it happens, I have watched him, and a
lazier creature I never saw; he looks at the vines occasionally, and he
calls down jokes to the other men below; that is the extent of his
exertions. Come out for a walk."
"I don't walk after dinner."
"Come at least as far as the tower."
Thus adjured, Dennison rose. In spite of his own assertion, he was not
corpulent; he was a tall man whose outlines had grown large; but he was
muscular still. Gray also was tall. If Edward Gray had a hobby, it was
to show to the world that an American business-man can be as athletic as
an English fox-hunter or an ancient Greek; his face, which was thin and
deeply lined, did not come up to his ambition; but his erect figure,
wiry and elastic, was well-developed and strong.
As they passed through the house, now growing dim in the twilight, they
caught a glimpse of the waitress in the distance, seated in the kitchen,
knitting. On the table by her side two of the tall, slender Tuscan lamps
were burning, each with its three little wicks and its three brass
chains; in her lap two kittens were curled asleep. The light illumined
also a gaudy print on the wall, apparently a Madonna. Beneath the print
was a jug filled with flowers.
"Is that little piece of piety your cook's?" Gray asked, as they passed
out.
"No. The cook is a free-thinker. It's Modesta; she is overwhelmingly
devout. She has the whole house blessed at regular intervals--priest and
holy-water."
The outer door of Casa Colombina opens directly upon the small square or
piazza of Santa Lucia, a grassy space dotted with minute pink daisies.
One side of this square is bordered by a low wall. In the daytime this
wall's broad, flat top was adorned not infrequently by the recumbent
figure of one of Modesta's protégés, who, after enjoying her bounty, was
taking a siesta here, in the sunshine or the shade, according to the
season; sometimes it was Hannibal, with his nose on his paws; sometimes
it was the cat; very often it was a beggar or the idiot boy. To-night
the slab was empty, and, after a stroll of half an hour up the road and
back, Dennison and his visitor sat down here for a moment; it made an
excellent seat. It was now dark; the lights of Tre Ponti were twinkling
in the valley, the evening-star shone above the Tower of the Dove; the
soft air of the Italian May was filled with the fragrance of blossoms.
Suddenly on one of the mountains in the northern sky there appeared,
flashing out, a gleam. Then a blaze.
"Woods on fire up there," said Gray, who was accustomed to forest fires
at home.
But while he was speaking a similar glare appeared on a mountain in the
south. And then a third in the east. Many summits and flanks of the
Apennines were in sight, and before long there were fifty of the blazing
signals visible, some near, some distant, but all at high points.
"It's the vigil of the Ascension, the night when the mountain peasants
light bonfires on their peaks as a species of religious rite," explained
Dennison. "In reality it is a relic of pagan times. Their belief is that
the ceremony will bring tranquillity to their families during the year."
A figure which had come from the house now passed them. "Lordships will
pardon," said Modesta's voice; "they know that I would not wish to
disturb. But from the kitchen it is not possible to count the mountain
fires. And to count them all is important, since tranquillity is most
surely a blessed thing. Excuses." She passed on to a distant angle of
the wall, where she stood for five or ten minutes.
"What did she say?" asked Gray, who was sure that he could learn to
speak Italian in a week or two. Simplest thing in the world--so much
like Latin.
Dennison translated the phrases--the lordships, the excuses, and the
proffered opinion as to tranquillity.
"It's awfully pretty," said Gray, admiringly.
Modesta, after finishing her counting, crossed the piazza to the little
church. In the starlit darkness they could see her kneel down there in
the porch.
"She is clinching it--the tranquillity--by a few private orisons," said
Dennison.
Presently, her devotions concluded, the waitress returned to the house.
The two men remained where they were. They had all sorts of subjects to
thresh out together. They took them up, or rather Gray did, by fits and
starts.
"Well, Jack, it's settled, then, that you're never coming home?" he
remarked, as he accepted another cigarette.
"Not at all," Dennison answered. "I shall come back by-and-by, when I
feel like it. In the meanwhile I pay my taxes regularly over there, and
I subscribe to all the charities I believe in--three or four. If there
were to be another war (but there won't be) I should return at once."
"Well, I don't call it a useful life."
"Is it more useful to make money--at somebody else's expense?"
"It's more useful to be a good citizen; to bring up one's family well;
to--"
"Let's stop there," Dennison interposed. "People with families never
approve of the people who haven't those blessings. It doesn't occur to
them that nobody forced them to marry; they selected the lot, and
therefore they accepted responsibilities. But a man who has not
undertaken family life ought not to be saddled with its cares. You chose
your boys and girls; I chose Italy. Each to his taste. You may ask,
'Isn't the world to be peopled, then?' No trouble about that; it always
will be. Personally my own answer to the same question might be,
however, the old one, 'Je n'en vois pas la nécessité.'"
"That's where you all end; dreary nihilism!"
A figure was now passing the piazza, following the road which ascends
from the valley. "Let us see if Hannibal gives tongue from the house,"
said Dennison. "It's a man they call the Professor; he lives behind the
church, and he and the dog detest each other. Generally, Hannibal knows
his step even from the depths of the olive-grove! You don't want to
watch those fires all night, do you?"
They returned to the house. The outer door of Casa Colombina bore no
relation to the drawing-room, dining-room, or library. It led to the
court, to the cellar, to the gardens, to the podere, to the kitchen, to
whatever you please; but it was only by a circuitous route through
corridors and purposeless anterooms that Dennison could reach his own
apartments. As he and his guest were following this route they caught
another glimpse across the court of Modesta in her kitchen. The door was
more widely open this time, and they could see the whole interior of the
large, vaulted, hall-like room, with the rows of copper pans on the
wall. The kittens were now in their basket on the floor, and Modesta's
lap was occupied by the dachshund, who had curled himself into a ball.
The waitress was still knitting, her head bent forward over her work.
With her smoothly braided hair and her white apron, in her neat, quiet
room, with her cats and her dog and her flower-decked shrine, she was
the image of peace.
"Tranquillity is most surely a blessed thing," quoted Gray. "If it were
not for the moving needles, I should say she was asleep."
"She probably is asleep; she is knitting unconsciously. She appears to
require about fifteen hours of slumber out of the twenty-four," said
Dennison, as he lighted wax matches, one after the other, to show the
way. When he reached the sitting-room he rang for lights, and presently
Modesta appeared, carrying the lamp, her eyes drowsy.
"As soon as Peppino comes in you may close the house," said Dennison.
"We shall require nothing more to-night."
The waitress put down the lamp, adjusting its wick so that it burned
brightly. Then she lighted the shaded candles which stood on a side
table. Hannibal had followed her; when she had finished her task she
stooped and picked him up. "If the master allows, he must be washed
to-morrow," she said. "Or, rather, not to-morrow, for it is a festa, but
the day after. As it is now warm weather, Peppino shall take him to the
pond, instead of bathing him in the green crockery basin. Annibale
himself will not wish to go--silly cherub!" (Here she stroked the dog's
head.) "But--what do they wish? It is necessary. Good-night to the
lordships." And she disappeared, carrying the dog, and murmuring
endearments to him as she went.
The next morning Gray, always an early riser, found himself awake at the
abnormal hour of dawn; for in May and in Italy one can see the
beginnings of light in the east soon after midnight. Long before four
o'clock he was dressed and out. He had a fancy to see the dew on the
blossoms, to watch the sun rise above the Apennines and touch, one by
one, the gray towers with which in that part of Tuscany all the hills
are crowned. Peppino was up, for the kitchen door was open. Hannibal,
hearing steps, looked into the court, and seeing that some one was going
for a walk, he decided to go too, announcing his intention by a bark of
one syllable--"wow!" This drew forth a "Be quiet!" in Tuscan from
Peppino within. For no unnecessary sound must disturb the master of the
house, who never appeared before eight o'clock; in winter an hour
later. Gray went quietly through the corridors to the irrelevant outer
door, opened it, and let himself out, followed by the dog. He walked up
the road for a short distance; then he turned into a winding lane. Here
he saw the thick dew on the hedges and fields, but only one bird; with
great care Dennison had kept three birds'-nests in the garden of Casa
Colombina, but they were probably the only nests for miles. Presently
the sun rose above the eastern mountains, its first rays illumining
distant high-up villages which are invisible later in the day. Then came
the gleam of the towers. Some of these stand alone, like the Tower of
the Dove; two belong to ruined castles; but the majority are now
attached to villas which were built later, or rather the villas have
attached themselves to the towers. These villas, now old in their turn,
are for the most part large, solid, blank-looking structures, yellow in
hue, with a dignified group of cypresses near by. When the tints of the
sunrise were all gone, merged in the broad, clear light of the Tuscan
summer day, Gray turned back. He was following the main road. As the
cluster of houses which stand next to Santa Lucia, behind the piazza,
came into view, he saw a large white dog appear suddenly on the broad
top of a wall which bounds one of the gardens. This dog began to bark in
a deep tone at Hannibal, who was below; for Hannibal had hurried on far
in advance of his companion, with the air of expecting something. This
was what he had expected; and he now answered the challenge by leaping
up as high as he could towards his mocking aggressor, and barking in his
turn with all his strength. As the top of the wall was ten feet above
the roadway, the big dog could loftily send down his derisive scorn at
intervals without lowering the dignity of his pose; and his derision
was plainly increased when two other dogs appeared on the wall by his
side and added their voices to the tumult. Hannibal meanwhile nearly
turned himself inside out in his efforts to reply with appropriate
contempt; he defied them all three at the top of his voice. Suddenly
from a house opposite appeared a singular figure--a tall, thin man in
his night-shirt, scantily covered by a short dressing-gown--who rushed
into the mêlée, brandishing a cane and trying to strike the vociferous
dachshund. Hannibal, relinquishing for the moment his warfare with the
canine foes, turned his attention towards this new enemy, but not
quickly enough to escape a blow which changed his proud bark into a yelp
of dismay.
"Don't strike the dog!" called Gray, futilely, in English, as he hurried
towards the scene of action. But before he could reach the spot a flying
figure had intervened, coming from the opposite direction. Modesta
rushed to the dodging Hannibal and picked him up, while she sent a flood
of Tuscan sarcasms after his now retreating antagonist. "Two-legged
brutes are much worse than four-legged ones," she announced, loudly;
"and as to the quality of the _legs_, there can be no comparison." The
thin human limbs were, indeed, only too plainly visible below the
insufficient garments, and she wittily enumerated their weak points for
the benefit of the gazing heads which had now appeared at all the
windows of the neighborhood, as the distracted man, losing first one of
his slippers and then the other, finally seized them in his hand, and,
getting his door open at last, disappeared within. "Figure it to
yourself--a Professor! Legs like that for the _literary_ profession!"
was the waitress's final thrust.
After breakfast, as Dennison and Gray were sitting in the garden, she
appeared. "Lordships will excuse, but it seemed best that they should
know. The paw of Annibale is wounded; likewise his shoulder and one ear.
I have put on a lotion and bandaged him, and he has shown the patience
of an angel. But that he suffers is visible, and I therefore ask the
master, could I leave him here while I go to mass, so that he may not be
lonely, Peppino having gone to town?"
"Oh, bring him, if you like," said Dennison. "Little scamp!" he added in
English.
Modesta went off, returning after a minute or two, carrying Hannibal in
his basket. The dog reposed on his cushions with the air of a wounded
hero; he was arrayed in a complicated bandage of coarse white linen,
which swathed one paw and encircled his shoulder and head. "To think of
any one's being such a brute as to injure a creature so small!" said
Modesta, after she had put the basket gently down in the shade. "But,
without doubt, there are in this world absolute demons!"
"You hypocrite!" said Dennison to Hannibal, after the waitress had
departed. "You go every morning of your life at dawn to wake up that
poor man by a row with the Ciardelli dogs--you know you do! He is a
teacher of languages from Florence, who is here for six months of rest,"
he added to Gray. "He has not had much rest so far! He has already
thrown all his boots and shoes at Hannibal through the window more than
once. This morning I suppose he was desperate."
"Is your paw _very_ bad, Hannibal?" inquired Gray.
The bandage had slipped down, so that Hannibal had only one eye visible.
With this eye he appeared to wink.
After lunch the two men went out for a stroll. The roads were gay with
the country-folk, celebrating the festa in the Italian fashion by the
simple amusement of being together in the open air. The wrinkled faces
of the old women were framed in their new red-and-yellow kerchiefs,
which were folded over their heads and tied under their chins. Each girl
wore a flower in her hair, and this hair was always thick, rising up
round the face in a dense mass, no matter how closely the long ends were
braided and coiled behind. The men were dressed in their best, but they
all carried their jackets folded and tossed over one shoulder.
The younger men were entertaining themselves.
"They will end by slicing us in two at the ankles," said Gray,
indignantly, after he had jumped aside three or four times to escape a
sharp disk which met them suddenly as they turned a corner, whizzing
past them as it flew down the road, almost invisible from its speed.
"It's a game," said Dennison.
"Oh, is it? I thought it was assassination."
Presently they came to a little stone building adorned with a rusty tin
cross. On the side towards the road it has a small, iron-barred window,
whose glass within is so thickly covered with dust that it looks as if
it had been painted yellow. There is a Latin inscription cut in stone
over its long-closed door: "Pul--pulsate, et--Knock and it shall be
opened to you," translated Gray, making out the words with difficulty.
"Nobody would dare to knock. And the last thing they wish is to have it
opened," remarked Dennison. "It is the private chapel of that old villa
across the fields, but for the last two hundred years there has been a
tomb inside, whose occupant is supposed to rise and come to the window
now and then to glare at the passers-by. She was a Countess Alberoni,
who had a tragical end, if the legend is true. Her own children are said
to have locked her up in that villa with one attendant and the plainest
food, until at last, from sheer melancholy, she died. On the other hand,
it is added that the world was well rid of her, for a more wicked old
woman never lived. Her crimes, however, whatever they were, have not
prevented Modesta, I see, from decorating her with the others," he
continued. For as they walked on they perceived that a faded shrine, set
in the outer wall of the chapel at its eastern end, had been adorned
with a long garland made of fresh green leaves and blossoms.
"The others? What others?"
"Your Madonna beauty decorates every way-side shrine within a mile of
Casa Colombina on all the principal festas," said Dennison. "She starts
out after lunch, carrying a pile of garlands in her arms, and another
poised on her head, so that she is like a walking hay-stack."
They now took a narrow track which leads to the valley. This path winds
round a small low house, brilliantly pink on the outside, with a dark
and gloomy interior.
"There she is now," said Gray, who, looking at everything with the keen
attention of a stranger, had discovered the figure of the Casa Colombina
servant within. Her back was towards them; she was talking to some one
who was not visible from the road. Hearing their footsteps, she turned.
And then, as the light from the doorway fell upon her, they saw that she
had Hannibal in her arms.
"Put down that ridiculous animal!" called Dennison.
The waitress came out, and, joining in their laughter, placed the dog on
the ground. "With his bandages, yes, he does look comical," she said,
assentingly. "But it seemed best to give him a breath of fresh air."
"Have you lugged him all the way from the house?" asked Dennison, who
had paused to roll two cigarettes. "The dog and the flowers too?"
"It is nothing; lordship knows his gentleness. He lay among them like a
lamb."
"But why did you give a wreath to the wicked countess, Modesta?"
Dennison went on. "The Signor Gray is astonished at such an action."
"Povera! to be so treated by her own children," answered the Italian;
"that seems to me abominable. She was their mother, even if a bad one.
And then one feels for her; only on a festa does any one pass that
chapel, and so she has very little to see even when she does look out.
The master may not know? This is the home of Pietro."
"The idiot boy?"