PISA.
Frederick had left Paris between the lamps and the stars, as I have
said, on a chilly night, when the darkness and confusion in his own mind
agreed better with the mist and rolling steam that made a cloud about
the train as it dashed into the darkness, than with the serene celestial
lights which tried in vain to penetrate that veil of vapour. He came
into the harbour at Leghorn again between stars and lamps, but this time
in the blue-green dawn of an Italian spring morning, too early for any
stir except that which attended the arrival of the steamer. Do people
still have that long _promenade sur l’eau_ through the green sea basin
from point to point before they are allowed to land, and be subjected to
the final examination at the Dogana? I suppose all that has been changed
with so many other things, with the abolition of passports, and other
hindrances to the traveller. Frederick Eastwood did not now feel so
hurried as when he was in Paris. He had arranged how he was to write
home, and to telegraph to the office, begging for the extra week’s leave
which was inevitable. He wrote his mother a long letter, telling her how
he had been seized with “unpleasant symptoms” in Paris, but would not
send her word of it lest he should alarm her; how he had managed to come
on to Leghorn, taking the journey easily, and really had not suffered as
he feared he would; how, on the whole, he was much better; how he
intended to proceed to Pisa in the evening after a rest; and how within
a week they might expect to see him back with his cousin. “Don’t be
uneasy about me,” he said, “I am really a great deal better. I feel sure
I shall now get home quite comfortably; but, as you remarked before I
left, I was not well when I started--too much confinement, I
suppose”---- I don’t attempt to explain this other fiction which he put
forth with perfect gravity, and without much feeling of guiltiness.
“Unpleasant symptoms” might mean anything, and I fear that from
schoolboy days the excuses given at home are not judged by a very high
standard of truthfulness. Frederick’s conscience did not trouble him
much on this subject. He telegraphed to his chief at the office,
announcing his detention by illness, without entering into any
particulars as to where that illness had occurred, and claiming so many
days’ extension of leave as would re-establish his health for the
journey home. He felt ill enough, it must be allowed, after all he had
gone through--ill enough almost to feel justified in the report he gave
of his ailing condition--“seedy,” as he would have called it, to the
last degree. He could not eat anything, he slept badly, his lips were
parched, his hand hot and tremulous, and his looks bore him
unimpeachable testimony, better than a medical certificate. Yet he felt
rather happy in his unhappiness, as he rested and tried to eat a little
_minestra_ at the hotel at Leghorn. It was not so good as the _bouillon_
he would have got in Paris, or the beef-tea at home, but it was all he
was capable of. In the evening he proceeded on his short railway journey
to Pisa--and on the way his mind, if not his body, mended rapidly. It
was again dark when he arrived. He went to one of the hotels on the
Lung’ Arno, and took a feeble walk in the evening to see the place,
though so little could be seen. He had never been in Italy before, and
though the circumstances were such as to damp enthusiasm, there was in
Frederick’s mind a certain new-born freshness of a man returned to the
paths of duty which we can compare to nothing but the feelings of one
recovering from an illness. It was over; he felt languid, weak, but
good. He had turned his back alike on temptation and upon sin. He was
convalescent. Now there is no real moral excellence in being
convalescent even after a fever; but that sufferer must have had
unkindly tending and little love about him in his malady, who does not
feel that it is good of him to get better, and that he has done
something for which all his friends are justly grateful to him.
Frederick, though he had no friends to be grateful, felt precisely in
this condition. He felt _good_. In Paris he had felt miserable,
mournful, and what he called penitent--that is he had felt that pleasure
carried too far ends by becoming unpleasant, and that it costs very
dear, and that the amount of satisfaction to be got out of it is
scarcely proportioned to the outlay. This mood had lasted during the
greater part of his journey. But after a man has so accounted for his
misfortunes as Frederick had done, and has got the means of beginning
again, and feels himself clear of the toils for the time being, such a
mood does not last very long; and by the time he reached Pisa he had got
fully into the convalescent state, and felt good. While his dinner was
preparing he took a walk down by the side of Arno, in which once more
the stars above and the lamps below were reflecting themselves with
serene composure, the lights of heaven asserting no proud superiority
over the lights of earth; and then turned aside to that wonderful group
of buildings of which everybody has heard. Nothing in all Italy belongs
to our childhood like that leaning tower. Frederick looked up at it,
bending towards him through the darkness, and recollected pictures in
books at home which his mother had shown him of evenings when he stood
by her knee in pinafores, before “life” began. His reminiscences gave
the softest domestic turn to his mind, and made him feel still more good
than before. Even in the dark there were still some beggars about,
flitting out of corners at the sight of the stranger, and he emptied his
pocket among them, giving them francs and half francs with a wild
liberality which increased tenfold the numbers of these waiters upon
Providence next evening in the Piazza del Duomo. There were fitful
gleams of moonlight coming now and then from out a mass of clouds, and
sending broad beams of momentary glory behind and between the different
buildings. Frederick was awed and impressed, as well as touched and
softened. This was like the higher light of religious feeling coming in
to elevate the domestic piety to which his heart had been suddenly
opened by recollection. Thus impressed and ameliorated the convalescent
walked back to his hotel to dinner, and was able to eat something, the
reader will be glad to hear.
It was late, and he did not feel disposed to break the almost holy calm
of his feelings after so many agitations, by making any effort to see
his cousin that evening. He looked up at the tall houses as he went
along, wondering if perhaps one of the faint lights he saw might be
hers, but he was content to remain in this state of doubt till next day.
One night could make little difference. When he had finished the meal,
which was slight, but more satisfactory than anything he had been able
to have since he left Paris, he made inquiries of the genial Italian
waiter as to the position of the Palazzo Scaramucci, and whether
anything was known of its English inhabitants. Antonio indicated to him
exactly where the house was, and was eager to add that he knew the
servant of the English gentleman who had died there. “Figure to
yourself,” he said, “that Mademoiselle, his daughter, is all alone in
that house of the dead.” The conversation was carried on in French, and
Antonio was eloquent. He gave the stranger instantly a sketch of the
girl thus left without any one to take care of her. “Letters have come
from the friends in England, but no one has arrived,” said Antonio.
“What kind of hearts can they have, blessed Madonna! Niccolo does not
know what will become of the poor young lady. The Forestieri here are
kind to her, but what is that when she is left all alone by her friends?
Monsieur perhaps may know some of her friends? She is a beautiful young
lady, but strange, neither like the English Meeses, nor the Italian
Signorine, and Niccolo says----”
“Did you say she was beautiful?” said Frederick. This was a particular
which it was impossible to hear without a certain interest.
“She will be beautiful when she is older, when she has more
_embonpoint_,” said Antonio. “But she is not English in her beauty, nor
in anything else. Niccolo says she will sit for days together and never
speak. She had a very strange father. He is buried in the English
cemetery, so I believe all must be right. But in my opinion, though
Monsieur may think it droll, the old Englishman was _tant soit peu
sorcier_!”
“_Sorcier?_” said Frederick, with a languid smile.
“Of course Monsieur thinks it droll--but for my part I believe he has
thrown a spell over Mademoiselle. No one can melt her. She sheds no
tear, Niccolo says. She listens to the English ladies without replying a
word. The only Christian thing about her is that she goes often to St.
Maria della Spina, the little, little, very little church which Monsieur
may have remarked; and as she is Protestant, I suppose that must be a
sin. Perhaps, if Monsieur knows any of the English in Pisa, he will be
able to see this strange and beautiful young girl”----
“Perhaps,” said Frederick, taking the key of his bedroom and the candle
from Antonio’s hand. He did not choose to say that he was the lingering
messenger whom her friends had sent for Innocent. But his mind was
compassionately moved towards her. Beauty is always a point in
everybody’s favour, and the sense of power and protection in himself was
pleasant to him. It quite completed, if anything had been wanted to do
so, the rehabilitation of Frederick Eastwood in Frederick Eastwood’s own
eyes. What a change his appearance would make in the position of this
deserted young creature, whose melancholy soul no doubt only wanted the
touch of his kindness and compassion to rouse it into warmer life! “Poor
child,” he said to himself almost tenderly, as he went to bed. He would
be a brother to her, and to do them justice at home, they would be good
to the poor girl. Yet somehow he could not but feel that his own
influence, as the first to go to her, would do most for Innocent. The
thought diffused a pleasant warmth and revival about his heart.
Pisa is not a cheerful place. It has neither the beauty of situation,
nor the brightness of aspect, nor even the larger historical interest
which belongs to Florence, its near neighbour and whilom rival. It has
fallen out of the race as a town may do as well as an individual. But,
on the other hand, it has no keen ice-wind to sweep its streets like
those that chill the very blood in your veins in the deep ravines cut
through lofty blocks of houses which form the Florentine streets. The
equable temperature of Pisa hangs about it like a cloud, stilling the
life in it that it may never grow loud enough to disturb the invalids
who set up their tents in those old palaces. They have a little society
among themselves, gentle, monotonous, and dull, such as befits invalids.
A great many English people are in that subdued winter population,
people who are, or are supposed to be, _poitrinaires_, and people in
attendance upon these sufferers, and finally, people who go because
other people go, without either knowing or caring about the special
advantages of the place. An English doctor and his wife, and an English
clergyman and his wife, are generally to be found in all such places,
and most usually these excellent persons do all they can to reduce the
little colony of English, living in the midst of the quaint old foreign
town, into the aspect of a village or small country place in England,
where everybody talks of everybody, and knows his or her domestic
grievances by heart. Mr. Vane, when he came to Pisa to die, had sought
the assistance of the doctor, but not of the clergyman; so it was Mrs.
Drainham, and not Mrs. St. John, who had taken Innocent in hand when
her father died, and had tried to make something of the forlorn girl.
Though Frederick of course knew nothing about this, two letters had been
despatched but a few days before to Mrs. Eastwood and another relation,
adjuring them to come to the help of the young stranger. The doctor had
himself written in a business like way to Sir Edmund Vane, but Mrs.
Drainham had taken Mrs. Eastwood in hand, and had written her what both
herself and the doctor felt to be a very touching letter. The author of
this affecting composition had been reading it over to some select
friends on the very evening on which Frederick arrived in Pisa. Dr. and
Mrs. Drainham lived on the first floor of the Casa Piccolomini, on the
sunny side of the Arno, in a very imposing apartment, where they often
assembled round them a little society “in a very quiet way,” for the
doctor himself was something of an invalid, and practised in Pisa as
much for his own health as for that of his patients. They were people
who were generally understood to be well off, an opinion which it is
good for everybody, and especially for professional people, to cultivate
about themselves. Every Wednesday and Saturday, tea and thin bread and
butter, cut exactly as bread and butter is in England, were to be had
from eight till eleven in the Drainhams’ handsome drawing-room. On the
evening in question the English colony at Pisa was very well represented
in this modest assembly. There was Mr. and Mrs. St. John, accompanied by
a gentle young English curate with pulmonary symptoms, who was staying
with them, and giving the benefit of his services when he felt able for
it. There was old Mr. Worsley and his pretty daughters, one of whom was
suffering from bronchitis, and the other from _ennui_, the latter the
more deadly malady of the two. The healthy portion of the population was
rather in the background, and not held in much estimation. Mr. St. John
himself, who now weighed nearly sixteen stone, had come to Pisa also
with pulmonary symptoms, and was fond of citing himself as an instance
of the cures effected by its wonderful equability of temperature. “But a
winter in England would kill me still. I could never survive a winter in
England,” he would say, tapping his ample bosom with his hand, and
coughing to show that he had not quite lost the habit. On this
particular occasion he uttered these words, which were very frequent on
his lips, in order to console and encourage poor little Mrs. O’Carroll,
the wife of a gigantic Irishman, who had broken all his bones one after
another in riding across country, and who stood gaunt and tall in a
corner conversing with the doctor, with red spots upon his high
cheekbones, and a hollow circle round his big eyes, which did not
promise such a comfortable termination.
“Oh, then, and you’ll tell Harry,” said the anxious woman, with the
mellow tones of her country. “You’ll tell him all about it, Mr. Singin,
dear, and what you took, and how you lived?”
“There is nothing to tell, my dear lady,” said the clergyman. “Pisa air,
and a regular life, and taking care never to be out late or early, and
nourishing food as much as I could take. But the air is the great thing.
There is a serenity and equability in this Italian climate.”
“Ah, then!” cried poor Mrs. O’Carroll, “to get him to take care is all
the battle. He never was ill in his life, and he won’t allow he’s ill,
not if I were to preach to him night and day.”
The only persons present who had no uncomfortable symptoms were two
ladies who sometimes dominated the party, and sometimes were snubbed and
cast into the shade, according to the influence which prevailed. These
were the two Miss Boldings, ladies in the earlier half of middle-age,
one of whom studied Art, while the other studied Italy; women of perfect
independence, and perfect robustness, who when Mr. St. John was not
there, carried matters with a high hand, and dismissed the question of
health as unworthy to occupy the first place in the conversation. “You
think a great deal too much about your lungs,” Miss Bolding would say.
“Let them alone, and they will come all right. Don’t fuss about your
health. Pisa is no better than any other place, and no worse. Don’t
think about it. Occupy yourself with something. Neither I nor Maria ever
take the smallest trouble about our healths, and what is the
consequence? We have never ailed anything since we had the measles.
Don’t mind Mr. St. John, that’s his hobby. If you’ll meet me to-morrow
morning in the Campo Santo--unless you are afraid----”
“Oh, no, not at all afraid,” said the gentle curate, with a flush of
youthful shyness and wounded pride. All these conversations were
interrupted by Mrs. Drainham, who called at once to Miss Bolding for her
advice, and to Mrs. O’Carroll for sympathy.
“I want you to tell me whether you think I have done right,” she said,
with much humility. “I am so anxious about poor Miss Vane. I have just
written a letter to her aunt, though with much hesitation, for I have
not your gift in writing, dear Mrs. St. John. Would you mind just
listening to what I have said? If I had your approval I should feel
encouraged after having sent it. It is very badly expressed, I am
afraid, but it comes from the heart,” said Mrs. Drainham, casting an
appealing glance round her. She had pretty eyes, and was rather apt to
give appealing glances. The audience gave a vague murmur of assent and
applause, and Mr. St. John added, in a bold and round voice, his
certainty of approval.
“It will be an excellent letter, that I don’t doubt for a moment,” said
the clergyman; and on this encouragement Mrs. Drainham proceeded to read
it, her husband standing behind her, feeling his own pulse, with a
benevolent and complacent smile. And indeed the letter was more than
excellent, it was eloquent. It appealed to the feelings of the distant
aunt in the most touching way. It bade her remember the sister with whom
no doubt her own childhood had been passed, and oh! to extend her
motherly protection over that dear sister’s orphan child; and it brought
forward many religious, as well as natural, arguments to soften the
heart of poor Innocent’s nearest relation. In short it was just such a
letter as was calculated to bring tears into Mrs. St. John’s eyes, and
which drove Mrs. Eastwood half frantic with indignation when she read
it. “Does this woman think I am an unnatural wretch, to want all this
talking to?” poor Mrs. Eastwood asked, half crying with anger and
wounded feeling. But the company in the Casa Piccolomini thought it a
beautiful letter. They thought the relations must be hardened indeed if
they could resist such an appeal as that.
“I am sure the aunt must be a dreadful woman,” said Clara Worsley, “or
she would have come by this time. Will you take me to see her to-morrow,
dear Mrs. Drainham? After that letter everybody ought to take an
interest in her----”
“You have expressed all our feelings, my dear,” said Mrs. St. John,
pressing the hand of the doctor’s wife with mingled admiration and envy.
“I doubt very much if I could have done it half as well.”
“Oh, that from you!” said Mrs. Drainham, with enthusiasm, for Mrs. St.
John was literary, and the highest authority on matters of style.
“But I hear the girl is a very odd girl,” said Miss Bolding. “Doctor,
what did her father die of? Are they wrong in their heads? I knew a Vane
once, of a West Country family, who were all very queer. I wonder if
they were the same Vanes? Devonshire, I think, or Somersetshire, I am
not sure which”----
“They are a Devonshire family,” said Dr. Drainham. “And there is nothing
wrong about their brains. He died of general break-up, Miss Bolding, a
high-tempered man who had lived hard. I have met him about Italy in all
sorts of places. The poor girl has been oddly brought up, that is all.”
“I fear without any sort of religious training, which accounts for a
great deal,” said Mr. St. John.
“Not without some sort of religion,” said Miss Maria Bolding. “She is
constantly coming over to the little Church of the Spina, the toy
church, as my sister calls it. A perfect little gem; I prefer it myself
to the Duomo. The girl has good taste, and she is wonderfully pretty.
Not the Raphael style perhaps, but just such a face as Leonardo would
have given anything for. I called her the Leonardo before I knew who she
was.”
“Don’t you think, my dear, you take rather a superficial view of the
matter?” said Mrs. St. John. “Think what a terrible thing to be said of
an English girl--that all she knows of religion is to be constantly in
the Church of the Spina! It is bad enough for the poor Italians who know
no better----”
“You must go and see her, Martha,” said Mr. St. John, coughing. “I have
had a delicacy about it, as her poor father declined to see me. Yes, he
declined to see me, poor man,” he added, shaking his head mournfully,
with a sigh. “I don’t like to mention it, but such was the case. I fear
he was sadly deficient, sadly deficient----”
“If he is the Vane I suppose him to be,” said Mr. Worsley, in a hoarse
voice, “he was as great a scamp as I ever met in my life. A man you saw
everywhere--well connected, and all that. A fellow that played high, and
ruined every man that had anything to do with him. And died poor, of
course; all those scapegraces do,” said the comfortable invalid, putting
his hand instinctively into his pocket.
“But his poor child. Whatever he was, we must not let that detract from
our interest in the poor girl,” said Mrs. Drainham. “I have tried hard
to get her to talk to me, to open her heart and to have confidence in me
as a true friend. You would think she did not understand the meaning of
the words.”
“Have you heard that poor Lady Florence Stockport has arrived, with that
delicate boy of hers?” said Mrs. St. John: and then Miss Worsley began
to consult with Mrs. Drainham about the music at church, and whether
Miss Metcalfe, who played the harmonium, could not be induced to give up
in favour of young Mr. Blackburn, who had taken a musical degree at
Oxford, and written a cantata, and meant to spend the spring months in
Pisa.
“It would make such a difference to our little service,” said Miss
Worsley; “and don’t you think, with all the attractions of the Roman
Catholic ritual around us, we ought to do everything we can to improve
our services?”
Thus the general tide of the conversation flowed on, and Innocent was
remitted back into obscurity.
All this took place on the evening when Frederick Eastwood arrived in
Pisa. From his chamber, where he was already asleep, and from the
windows of the Casa Piccolomini, might have been seen the faint light in
the third-floor windows which marked where the lonely girl was sitting.
She was all by herself, and she did not know, as Mrs. Drainham said,
what the meaning of the word friend was. But I must turn this page and
make a new beginning before I can tell you what manner of lonely soul
this poor Innocent was.