THE HOUSE OF DREAMS.
Pandolfini scarcely slept at all that night. His mind was full of dreams
and visions, and an agitation beyond his control. He let himself in to
his sombre _appartamento_, which was all empty, echoing and vacant, and
lit his lamp from the taper which he had carried with him up the dark
stair-case. The rooms he inhabited were in an old palace which belonged
to his family, but of which he had only a corner now. Upstairs lived an
old couple of his kindred who had their _terzo piano_ by right of blood.
In the higher storeys there were some suites of smaller rooms let to
smaller people. Down below in the _piano nobile_ was an English family,
the usual tenants of everything worth tenanting. His second floor
contained some handsome rooms, and there was one at least which showed
more signs of being lived in than seems natural to Italian rooms. It
was somewhat richly hung with old tapestry. There was a carpet--unusual
luxury!--covering the centre of the floor, and the walls which were not
tapestried were clad with book-shelves. Books, too, were in all the
corners, piled even on the floor, but carefully piled and in order,
arranged by a hand that loved them. There was no sign of any one living
but himself in the dark silent place, where his little open lamp with
its three slightly flickering flames made a mere speck of light in the
darkness, and his foot on the marble of the floor made an echoing sound
all through the house till it reached the sanctuary of the old soft
Turkey carpet, from which long usage had worn the pattern here and
there.
He put down the lamp on the table and threw himself into a chair. The
figures in the tapestry were undecipherable in the dim light, except
just opposite to it where a shepherdess and shepherd sat in eternal
dalliance upon the little green mound beloved of such art. The soft and
worn tints gave a certain faint cheerfulness to the wall, but all was
dark around and as still as the night itself. Old Antonio, his faithful
servant, slept in a corner somewhere, peacefully undisturbed by the
master’s comings or goings. The _donna da faccenda_, or
woman-of-all-work, had long ago gone home to her family. This was all
his establishment. The conversation he had just had, awakened, as may
well be supposed, a thousand thoughts in the Italian’s mind. It had been
all fervent poetry as he stood outside her door and walked home along
Arno, hearing the bells chime her sweet name: Di--ana, Di-an-a, with its
long, soft vowels, such as an Italian loves. But when he reached his own
house, other thoughts not less thrilling or sweet, though more real,
came into his mind. Was it possible that she should set foot here
even--take up her abode here? He rose up from his chair when that fancy
came to him, and stood with his breast expanded and his head held high,
not feeling that he had breath enough for such a thought. Diana--and
_here_; and then it occurred to him, perhaps for the first time, how
poor and dark and silent it was, how worn and faded, how unlike a shrine
for such a saint! What could he do to it to make it better? Pandolfini
was not of so poor a spirit as to think that Love (if for him such a
thing could be) would despise his condition and surroundings. No; if,
profoundest wonder of wonders, Diana should _love_ him, as his friend
took upon himself to promise, what to her would be the circumstances
external to him? Nothing! He had forgotten that he had heard it said she
was a great lady in her own home--forgotten even the superior wealth of
her surroundings here. He cared nothing about these, and Diana would
care nothing. If only the first might be true, there was nothing else to
be taken thought of. The wonder of her loving him could not be greater
if she were a queen.
But supposing----then what could be done to make the faded things
bright, to renovate, and warm, and light up his house for her coming? He
dropped back into his chair and began to think. Could any magic make
these apartments worthy of her? Then he rose hastily, unable to be still
in his excitement, and took up his lamp in his hand again, and began to
go over the room, his head throbbing with agitating thoughts. Every new
door he opened sent a thrill of echoes through the place, until at last
they disturbed the rest of old Antonio, who sallied forth in alarm, his
grey locks tumbled from his pillow, his eyes fiery yet full of sleep, a
coloured counterpane wrapped round him for want of better. “Ah! it is
only the _padrone_,” cried Antonio, turning his back without another
word, but with muttered grumblings in his throat. He was angry to be
disturbed. “Surely he walks enough in the day to leave one tranquil at
night,” the old man grumbled, as he restored the counterpane to his bed.
Then a momentary thought struck him that it might not be the _padrone_
at all, but his double, presaging evil. But after a moment’s thought,
Antonio dismissed that idea; for had not his quick eye caught that very
thin place, not yet a hole, on the right leg of the _padrone’s_
pantoloons, which he had brushed so carefully that morning? No ghost
risen from the grave could know about that thin place. So Antonio went
grumbling yet calm to bed.
Pandolfini took little notice of this old grey apparition. He gave the
old man a nod, and passed on. There were many empty rooms to go through,
all furnished after a sort, all with cold glistening marble floors, dim
great mirrors, into which his lamp gleamed with mysterious reflections,
dark pictures, bits of tapestry, here a frescoed wall, there a richly
decorated roof. The remains of wealth, or rather the ghosts of wealth,
were there standing with a forlorn pride in the midst of the cold and of
the dim reflected lights. Of all the rooms he went into, only his own
library could be called inhabitable, much less comfortable; and yet
there was a faded grace and dignity in everything. Would she prize that
and understand it? he wondered. Ah yes! Could it be possible that Diana
did not understand everything, see everything with the noblest, gentlest
comprehension of all that had been noble, then she would not have been
the Diana of his thoughts. She would understand. She would learn the
story of the house, and its decadence, and its pride--all in a glance.
But--would she prefer her English comfort, her warmth of carpets and
close-drawn hangings, and the insular way of cushioning and smoothing
over every sharp corner--to this old chill splendour and poverty? He
could not answer himself with any satisfaction; and his thoughts carried
him further to his little farm in Tuscany, and the villa with its bare
rooms and terraces, which had not even any trace of old splendour to
veil the present poverty. Would it be better to dismiss the _forestieri_
down below, who paid so good a rent for the _piano nobile_, and so make
more room and a more seemly habitation--something more worthy of _her_?
But then his foreign lodgers gave a very agreeable addition to his
funds; and how could he do without that? or how adapt the villa for an
English lady without spending of money which was impossible to him?
When the vague raptures of a dawning love change into plans of intending
matrimony, the difference is very great. Had he known how rich Diana
was, the simple-minded Italian might have taken matters more easily
perhaps than an Englishman would have approved of; but he was an
Anglomane, and had picked up some reflections of English thoughts,
which made him try anxiously now if there was any way by which he
himself on his own finances could accomplish all this. And the question
was grave, very grave, deepening the furrows on his forehead. When he
paused from these reflections, and the first initial thought of
all,--the idea that Diana--_Diana!_ loved him,--came back to his mind,
Pandolfini’s heart recovered itself with a great throb of happiness
beyond all imagining, an incredulous triumph of joy, which took away his
breath. But then he fell back again into his anxieties, his questions.
To realise this crown of all possible gladness and delight, what cares,
what anxious self-discussions, what elaborate calculations must he go
through! how could he make her life fair, and bright, and free from the
pinchings which were in so many Italian houses, which he had learned by
heart in his own life, and which, if they no longer existed for him now,
might come back again were he to launch into greater expenditure and
luxuries hitherto unknown?
He sat up half the night pondering all these strange new thoughts, which
were penetrated now and then as by a sudden golden arrow, by that flash
of consciousness which made everything glow and shine. But this very
consciousness, this ecstasy, was the occasion and beginning of the
care. After he had deliberated and deliberated till his very brain
ached, he took paper and a pen, and began to put down his calculations.
The very act of doing so, putting this wonderful hope, so to speak, into
black and white, and making his visionary preparations into a tangible
thing which he could look at, thrilled him through and through again
with touches of delight He leant back in his chair, and laughed softly,
so softly that the low utterance was more like a tone upon an instrument
than the commonplace happiness of laughter. To him, to come to _him!_ he
who had never expected it, never hoped for it, since his first youth.
Love! He was incredulous of it, yet believed in it to the bottom of his
profound and passionate soul.
Thus he sat through the long night, feeling neither cold nor weariness,
nor as if he could ever want such vulgar consolations as sleep, until
Antonio’s first stirring in the blue chill of the morning aroused him
from his arithmetic and his thoughts. He started guiltily, and saw the
flicker of his poor little lamp reflected in the dim mirror at the end
of the room, in the midst of a soft clearness of the day, which confused
him, and gave him a sense of shame, as if some cool and calm spectator
had suddenly looked over his shoulder and seen the follies that
occupied him. Quickly and abashed he extinguished the lamp, gathered up
all his papers carefully, opened the window to let in the morning air
still somewhat chill: and feeling for the first time a little stiff and
cold, crept noiselessly to bed, afraid to be found out by Antonio, who,
however, was not deceived by this stealthy retreat, and knew very well
by the smell of the suddenly extinguished lamp, and the creak of the
opened window, that his master had been keeping unholy vigils. “Had he
slept when all Christians ought to sleep he should have got up now,”
said Antonio, “instead of stealing to bed like a thief lest I should
find him. Ah, _padrone mio!_ if you could but learn what was for your
true advantage!” But that is what young men will never learn till it is
too late, Antonio reminded himself: for his master was yet young to
Antonio, a fit subject for lecturing and good advice still.
Pandolfini came out of his room at a respectably early hour after all,
and with innocent looks that did all but deceive his old servant “I hope
I did not disturb you last night,” he said, with hypocritical
amiability; “I was looking for--a--book.”
“The _padrone_ did not disturb me last night,” said Antonio, severely;
“but this morning when I found the lamp still hot, and the
_illustrissimo’s_ chair warm! _padrone mio_, it is no good for the
health. There is a time to sleep, which is the night; there is a time,
if you will, to make calculations to amuse one’s self--to play, if it is
necessary--and that is day.”
“I am going to make use of the day,” said Pandolfini, taking the cup of
coffee which was his cheerless breakfast. And then he added, “Don’t you
think, my old Toni, that the olives at the farm might yield a little
more oil? Marchese Rolfo has no better land than I have, and yet he
sends more flasks to the market.”
“Marchese Rolfo is an old miser; he wrings the trees and the poor men
that keep them,” cried Antonio; “and Gigi at the villa is as honest a
man as any I know. The _padrone_ forgets that it has been a bad year.”
“It is always a bad year,” said Pandolfini, ruefully. “I never knew it
otherwise since I was a boy.”
“Praised be God, yet we live! we are not, after all, at the mercy of the
olives,” said the old man, cleverly shifting his ground; then he added,
in more insinuating yet judicial tones, “If, instead of making
calculations on the _tombola_, as I see you have been doing, whether
numbers or colours I know not, the _padrone_ would make himself
beautiful and marry one of those rich English ladies, who have more
money than they know what to do with----”
“Fie, Tonino! is it better to be at the mercy of a lady, than of the
olives?”
“That is quite different. They are only women at the best, however rich
they may be; and a man is no man who cannot manage a woman; but the
Providence of heaven which is inscrutable, which will send a frost when
it is sunshine that is wanted, and torrents when one has but asked for
showers, that is what no man can manage. The _padrone_ may be sure that
I give him good advice.”
“And why not?” said Pandolfini, with that smile which is confusion to
all givers of advice. “Why not?” Was that an answer to make, as if it
were some bagatelle? Antonio began to sweep energetically, careless of
his master’s coffee; and Pandolfini sallied out into the fresh morning.
He was not a man so objectless as not to know what to do with himself
when he happened to be earlier than usual. But to-day, what was there to
do? He crossed the streets, and went and looked over the low wall at
Arno sweeping on below. There had been rain, and the stream was very
full. The hurry and sweep of the yellow water seemed to carry his soul
with it as it flowed and flowed. But it carried everything with
indifference, not to be diverted from its flowing!--all kinds of waifs
and strays, and even a common boat which had got loose, and was
blundering heavily down-stream, like the blind thing it was, bumping
here and there, carried along with a sort of labouring, piteous appeal
for guidance. Pandolfini watched it with a kind of half amusement, half
sympathy. It caught at last in a muddy corner under the first arch of
the bridge, the only gloomy and dirty spot, so far as could be seen, in
all the hurrying stream. Was this what Antonio called inscrutable
Providence?--that strange, impersonal, half-heathen deity, to whose
operations all Christendom attributes every evil with a sort of pious
resentment?
When the boat was thus arrested in its course, Pandolfini roused himself
from his fascination. He went into the little Church of the Spina, close
to the river, and heard a Mass, though it was not his custom; and then
he sallied forth again, and performed a multitude of little duties which
he had neglected--a curious jumble. He paid a few little debts; he went
and looked at some pictures which he had long forgotten; he paid a few
visits--to an old _canonico_ in the cathedral, who had taught him when
he was a boy, to an old servant, to a friend whom he had almost lost
sight of--such visits as might be made any morning. It seemed to him
afterwards that everything he had done was like the half-conscious act
of a man taking leave of his old life. When the thought occurred to him
it did not make him melancholy. It is only sad to take leave of a phase
of life which is ending, when that to which you look forward is less
happy. When it is the other way, is there not a secret exultation, a
concealed happiness, even in the farewell?
It was too early yet to go to Hunstanton, to inquire into his success.
Englishmen are not so early as Italians, and Pandolfini remembered with
a smile all the ceremonies that his friend had to get through before
commencing any enterprise out of doors. First his breakfast--a meal
unknown to the abstemious Tuscan, whose coffee was swallowed in two
minutes; then the letters and newspapers which the post brought him;
then his “business” in his study apart from the vulgar eye, a formula
Mr. Hunstanton went through religiously, as if he had his estate to
manage on the second floor of the Palazzo dei Sogni. All these had to be
gone through--and who could tell how many more? He gazed at the great
house from the other side of the river before there was any sign of
waking save in the rooms under the roof, where the tenants were out
upon the _loggias_, and busy with their morning occupations like the
rest of their countryfolk, long before the drowsy English had opened an
eyelid.
Then the _persianis_ began to open one by one, and the mist of dreams
cleared off. On the first floor the _persianis_ had not been closed at
all. How he knew Diana in that! how she loved the air, the morning
sunshine, not yet too hot for pleasure, the soft gay shining of the
morning, even the sounds beneath which more fastidious _forestieri_
objected to! Nor hers the ear that was ready to be offended by lively
voices of common life, by the morning noises and cries of humble
traffic. Pandolfini’s heart swelled, and a soft moisture of exquisite
feeling came to his eyes. Though she was of the family of the Dreams, as
he had said, no artificial gloom of drawn curtains, of hushed movement,
was natural to Diana; the early sunshine, the morning bells, the
herb-gatherers’ cry in the streets, were no disturbance to her. The
sweet homely stir of living was the best call for her. He felt that it
was in her to rise lightly as the lark to all the duties of that blessed
common living, were they necessary; and the more homely they were, the
more noble would Diana appear in them. So he thought, looking across
from the other side of Arno with that exquisite moisture in his eyes,
in that glory of the morning. As a matter of fact, the first English
head that appeared at the windows of the Palazzo dei Sogni was Mrs.
Norton’s, who pushed the _persianis_ open with her own hand to air the
rooms, and looked out like a little brown hen-bird, the grandmother, if
there could be such an official, of the nest. She called to Sophy to
make haste, to get ready, while she made the tea, and to come and look
at the market-people coming in from the country--or rather going away
again, as they were by this time; and then Sophy looked out with all her
curls. But the watcher did not so much as notice these two, and Diana’s
balcony remained vacant. Notwithstanding all these beautiful thoughts
about her, and notwithstanding that these thoughts were all true, Diana,
as a matter of fact, was not, at this period of her life, an early
riser, as has been already said.
Poor Pandolfini! He knew no more than the least interested passer-by the
disastrous business his English friend was doing for him a little later
on--nor how his fate was getting decided, and all the miraculous
sweetness over which he was brooding, being turned to gall. He waited
through all the long morning, remembering English habits, with a shrug
of his shoulders, till “luncheon”--mysterious word!--should be over;
reflecting, perhaps not quite justly as he did so, on the portentous
English appetite which demanded two meals so early in the day. Then,
with a heart which did something more than beat, which gave leaps and
bounds against his breast, and then paused breathless to recover itself,
he rushed up the long stairs. Diana was on her balcony as he approached,
and after a little wave of her hand to him, disappeared suddenly. What
did that mean? His heart sank, then bounded again with excitement,
anxiety, suspense. He rushed up to the Hunstantons’ second floor like a
whirlwind, and found himself in his friend’s room, breathless,
speechless, breaking in, he supposed, like a thief.
“Well?”--all the breath left in him, and all the fever of emotion, came
forth in the one word.
“My dear fellow!” cried Mr. Hunstanton, with both hands held out, “my
dear Pandolfini! I congratulate you! Well?--yes, of course, all’s well
as I told you. They are as pleased as possible--say they never thought
of such a thing, as all women do--but feel sure there never was anybody
so good, and so perfect and delightful. Bless you, I knew it! They are
as happy as you are, all in a flutter; and you are to go up at once.”
Pandolfini’s eager countenance was as a gamut of all emotions as his
friend spoke--the blank of utter anxiety, the leap of hasty delight, the
cloud of doubt: and withal a touch of fastidious and troubled
dissatisfaction impossible to describe. He grasped and held Hunstanton’s
hand, holding himself up by them, body and soul, and gazing at him with
eyes that grew almost terrible in the strain.
“_They!_” he said, still breathless, with a long-drawn gasp, in a voice
husky with agitation. “They? Who is--the other?”
“My dear fellow! You to ask such a thing with your Italian notions! Of
course, her aunt! You might have done it, being the lover; but you don’t
suppose I, an ambassador, could have made my proposals to little Sophy
all alone! Love has turned your head.”
Pandolfini dropped his friend’s hands: a sudden darkness seemed to come
over him and swallow him up. He staggered to the window, and stood there
silent for a moment, looking blankly out.