THE PALAZZO SCARAMUCCI.
A long, bare room, the walls painted in distemper, with a running border
of leaves and flowers, and the same design running across the rafters
overhead; three huge windows, with small panes, draped with old brocaded
hangings round the top, but without either blinds or curtains to shut
out the cloudy glimpses of the sky; very sparely furnished; some old
cabinets and rococo tables by the walls, some old settees and chairs,
which had once been handsome; the floor tiled with red triangular tiles,
with pieces of carpet before the sofas. At one end a stove, which opened
to show the little fire, erected upon a stone slab like a door-step, and
with an ugly piece of black tube going almost horizontally into the
wall, had been added for the advantage of the English Forestieri, who
insisted--benighted northern people--upon such accessories of what they
called comfort. Another old rug, faded out of its natural brightness
into sweet secondary tints of colour, had been laid before this
impromptu fireplace; but the aspect of the place was cold, chilling the
spectator to the bone. One or two dark portraits, painted on panels,
hung on the walls; they were very grim and very old; for this was the
_terzo piano_, let at a cheap rate, and with few elegancies to boast of.
Near the stove, on a little marble-topped table, stood the tall lamp,
with its two unshaded wicks blazing somewhat wildly, for it had not been
trimmed for some time. The oil in it, however, one good, cheap luxury,
which even the poor may have in Italy, was so sweet and pure that the
air was quite untainted. On a little tray was a long loaf of the brown,
very dry bread of the country, a plate of green salad, and a thin flask
of common red wine--a pretty supper to look at, but scarcely appetizing
fare for a delicate appetite. At the first glance there seemed to be no
one in the room to benefit by these preparations, but after a while you
could perceive in the recess of one of the windows a shadowy figure,
leaning up in a corner, with its head against the pane, looking out. All
that could be seen from that window was the cloudy sky, and some
occasional gleams of moonlight, which threw silver lines upon the dark
floor, and--when you looked down, as into a well--the Arno, flowing far
below, with the stars, and clouds, and fitful moon, all reflected in it;
and on its very edge the little Church of St. Maria della Spina, with
all its tiny pinnacles tipped with silver. She who looked out from this
high window could not be looking for any one; the people below were as
specks hurrying along in the cold, with cloaks twisted over their
shoulders. The watcher was nearer the heavens than the earth. She stood
there so long, and was so motionless, that gradually the blazing light,
blown about softly by some draught from door or window, the little
table with the salad and the wine-flask became the centre of the still
life, and the human shadow in the window counted for nothing. No breath
or sound betrayed that something was there more alive than the light of
the lamp or the glimmer of the wood embers, which, indeed, fell now and
then in white ashes, and broke the utter silence of the place.
This silence, however, was much more effectually broken by the entrance
of a stout, middle-aged Italian, with a cloak over one of his shoulders,
and the _cache-nez_ in his hand in which he was about to muffle his
features when he went out. He looked round and round the large room,
apparently unable to see the figure in the window, and then, with an
impatient exclamation, went to the table and snuffed the blazing wicks
and trimmed the lamp. “Just like her, just like her,” he said to
himself, “gazing somewhere; never eating, never considering that one
must live. If I were to add a slice of salami--though the child is
fastidious, she does not eat salami----”
“I am here, Niccolo,” said a voice from the window.
“So I supposed, signorina; I knew you must be in some corner. May I be
permitted to remark that life is not supported by the eyes, but by the
mouth? If you will not eat the _cena_ I have prepared for you, what can
I do? I cannot take you on my knees and feed you like a baby. Oh, I have
done it; I have been obliged to do it, when I had the poor padrone’s
authority to sustain me, before now.”
“Niccolo,” said the voice, “I shall not want anything more to-night. If
you are ready you may go.”
“Oh yes, I may go,” said Niccolo fretfully, “not knowing whether I may
not find you a little heap of cinders in the morning, or fallen down in
the window and frozen to death, Madonna Santissima! without the power to
raise yourself up. If you would but have Philomena to stay with you, at
least, in case you should want anything.”
“I want nothing,” said the girl. She came out of the window, advancing a
few steps, but still keeping quite out of the cheerful circle of the
light.
“No, the signorina wants nothing; the signorina will soon not want
anything but a hole in the heretic cemetery beside her father; and when
one goes sinfully out of the world by one’s own wickedness, besides
being a Protestant and believing nothing, what can one look for? If I
were the signorina, I should take very good care as long as I could not
to die, and put myself in the power of those beings with the prongs that
you see in the Campo Santo. I should take very great trouble, for my
part, not to die.”
Upon this she came out altogether out of the darkness, and approached
the fire. “Do you think that not eating kills people?” she asked. “I
cannot eat, I have no appetite, but I do not wish to die.”
“At least, under any circumstances, one can drink a little wine,” said
Niccolo, with disapproving dignity; “no effort is necessary to swallow a
little wine. Signorina, I have put everything in order. I will leave the
key with Luigi down-stairs, that the Philomena may enter in the morning
without disturbing you. I now wait only to bid you a _felicissimina
notte_. _Buona notte_, my little mistress--sleep well; and the Madonna
and the saints take care of you, poor child!”
This little outburst was not unusual. The girl extended her hand to him
with a smile, and Niccolo kissed it. Then throwing his cloak over his
other shoulder, and wrapping it round him, he left her in her solitude.
The guests at the Casa Piccolomini were dispersing at the same time,
escorting each other, and escorted by their servants through the still
streets. As Niccolo closed the great door after him, the sound seemed to
reverberate through the blackness of the great staircase, down which he
plunged, darkling, groping his way by the walls. Mr. Worsley, who lived
on the first floor, had a coil of green wax-taper in his pocket, which
he lighted to guide himself and his daughter to the door. They were a
little afraid when they heard the footsteps stumbling down, not having
been able to divest themselves of the idea that stiletto-thrusts were
the natural accompaniments of a dark staircase. And with his cloak
doubled over his left shoulder, and his red _cache-nez_ hiding his
countenance, Niccolo looked dangerous, more like killing his man in a
corner than watching with the tenderness of a woman over the wayward
child whom he had just left with an ache in his honest heart.
All alone in the house! The _appartamento_ was not so large as that of
Mr. Worsley down-stairs, for it was divided into two, as being adapted
for cheaper lodgers. Besides this large _salone_, however, there was an
ante-chamber, of which while Mr. Vane was alive he made a dining-room;
and then a long stone passage, echoing and dreary, through which the
solitary girl had to pass to her bed-room, another terrible stone room,
floored with tiles, at the other end of the house. She had to pass her
father’s room by the way, and another gaping empty chamber, full of the
furniture which, with Italian superstition, had been turned out of the
chamber of death. She was not afraid. She had been used to such constant
solitude that it seemed natural to her. While her father was alive she
had been as solitary as she was now, and it did not seem to her, as it
did to everybody else, that his mere presence in the house made so much
difference. She had been brought up in a Spartan-Italian fashion, to
bear the cold and heat as things inevitable. She put her feet upon the
stone slab, which did duty as a hearth, more from custom than for the
warmth, which she scarcely thought of. A small scaldino stood under the
table, full of fresh embers, which Niccolo had brought with him from the
kitchen; but though she was cold she did not take it up and warm her
hands over it, as a thorough Italian would have done. She was half
Italian only, and half English, rejecting many habits of both nations.
She had a small cloak of faded velvet drawn round her shoulders, old and
cut after no fashion that had prevailed within the memory of man. It had
come, I believe, originally from a painter’s studio, but it was warm and
kept her alive in the penetrating cold. Kind Mrs. Eastwood, in her
luxurious chamber, was wondering at that moment how the poor child would
brave an English winter, and if “the little room” would be warm enough,
with its soft carpets and close-drawn curtains, and cheery fire. If she
could have seen the Italian girl with her old mantle on her shoulders,
and the scaldino at the foot of her chair!
I am afraid I am describing too much, which is a fatal weakness for a
historian to fall into; but yet, of course, the gentle reader who does
not scorn that delightful title would prefer to hear what this solitary
girl was like. She had a straight, slim figure, too slim for beauty,
though that defect of youth is one which it is easy to forgive. Her hair
was dark and soft, and hung about her face, framing it with a soft fold,
very slightly undulating at the ends, though not in anything that could
be called a curl. I must warn my dear friend and gentlest auditor, that
this sounds a great deal better in words, and looks a great deal better
in a picture, than it does in reality; for a girl of sixteen with hair
thus hanging about her, neither curled nor dressed, is apt to be an
objectionable young person, inclining to untidiness, and to look like a
colt, unkempt and untrimmed. But Innocent was a neglected girl, who had
never known any better. She did not strike you at the first glance as
beautiful. She had no colour, and even had been called sallow by some
observers. The chief beauty that struck the beholder was the perfect
shape of her face, a pure oval, with the chin somewhat accentuated, as
in the pictures of Leonardo da Vinci, and the eyes somewhat long in
shape. Miss Bolding was right when she called the girl a Leonardo. She
wanted the crisped hair, and that subtle, sidelong sweetness in the
eyes, which is so characteristic of that great master; but otherwise the
character of her face was the same--somewhat long, and with all the
softness of youth in the prolonged and perfect curve of the colourless
cheek. The eyes were heavy-lidded; they were not “well-opened eyes.”
Only in moments of emotion did she raise the heavy lids freely, and
flash the full light of her look upon you. At the present moment those
lids were doubly heavy with dreams. The lips, which were thin and rather
straight, without curves, were closed upon each other with the closeness
of meditation; her hair fell into the hollow of her neck on either side,
and lay in a half ring and careless twist upon her shoulder. A very
simple back dress, without trimmings, appeared under the velvet cloak;
these were the days before the Watteau fashion became popular, when
dresses were made with but one skirt, and long, sweeping over the
wearer’s feet. Such was her costume and her appearance. She took a
little of the wine from the flask, and a morsel of the dry brown bread,
and swallowed them as it seemed with great difficulty, bending over the
fire in the stove, which began to sink into white ashes. Silence, cold,
solitude, all around; and here in the empty house, in the empty world,
this solitary creature, so young and forlorn. But she was not afraid.
After a while she rose quite calmly, and lifted the long stalk of the
lamp, and went away through the long echoing, ghostly passage. She saw
nothing, feared nothing; her imagination was not at liberty, it was
absorbed about other things.
Next morning it was more cheerful in the great _salone_; there was
light, at least, which was much, and I think there was sunshine; but the
gentle reader will forgive me if I confess that I have forgotten whether
the Palazzo Scaramucci was on the sunny or the shady side. At all
events, there was daylight, and a blue, clear, shining sky, and the
sight of sunshine outside if not its actual presence. When Mrs.
Drainham, who was really concerned about the girl, came to see her
before twelve next morning, she found her seated by the same little
table which had held her lamp on the previous night, with a little dish
of polenta before her, and again the dry brown bread and the small flask
of wine. It seemed the strangest, most distasteful breakfast to the
Englishwoman. “Oh, my dear,” she cried, “do send away that mess, and
have a nice cup of tea. Wouldn’t you enjoy a nice cup of tea? If you
will come with me, my maid will make you one directly--and perhaps an
egg and a little delicate bread and butter. I don’t wonder that you have
no appetite, my poor child.”
“I like polenta,” said Innocent, playing with her spoon, “and I don’t
like tea.”
This seemed immoral to Mrs. Drainham. “If you go to England, my dear,
you must not say you have been in the habit of having wine for
breakfast,” she said, “It would be thought so very strange for a young
girl.”
Innocent made no immediate answer. With a perverse impulse she poured
out a little of the nostralé wine, the commonest and cheapest, and
diluted it with water. I do not, I confess, think it was an attractive
beverage. “Probably I shall never be in England,” she said in a very low
tone.
“Oh, you must go to England; that is one thing there can be no doubt of.
What are you to do here, poor child? Friends have been raised up to you
here, but it is not likely that people who are not connected with you
would continue--and the apartment, you know,” continued Mrs. Drainham,
in her eagerness to prove what was self-apparent, “must be let. The
marchese is very poor, and he could not be expected to lie out of his
money, and Niccolo must find another situation. Everything, in short,
is at a standstill until you go away.”
Something hot rushed to the girl’s eyes--but if they were tears it was
so unusual to shed them, that they rushed back again after an
ineffectual effort to get forth. She made no answer. She had learned ere
now, young as she was, the benefit of taking refuge in silence. Mrs.
Drainham had drawn a chair near her, and sat looking at her, with eyes
full of a curiosity not unmixed with disapproval. Mrs. Drainham, in
short, disapproved of everything about her--her loose hair, her odd
dress, her old velvet cloak, even the polenta on the tray before her,
and the coloured water she was drinking. “What will they do with her in
England?” she asked herself in dismay; but then _her_ responsibility, at
least, would be over, and her mind relieved.
“You have never been at school, my dear, I suppose?”
“No.”
“Nor learned anything? But you must have had some resources; you must be
able to do something? Needlework at least, or tapestry, or something to
amuse yourself with? You must have been very lonely in your papa’s time,
as I hear he never saw any one. And you could not sit all the day with
your hands before you; you must have been able to do something?” Mrs.
Drainham cried, impressed almost against her will by the silence of her
companion.
“I can read,” said Innocent.
“And no more? I hope your aunt, Mrs. Eastwood, is well off. It would be
dreadful indeed if your relations were not well off. Girls in your
position frequently have to go out as governesses. I don’t want to be
unkind; but, my dear, it is for your advantage that you should look your
circumstances in the face. Most girls of your age (you are past
sixteen?) would have thought of that already. Suppose, for instance,
that you were compelled to try and work for your own living. Now, what
would you do?”
The suggestion was so strange that Innocent lifted her eyelids, and
turned a wondering look upon her questioner; but apparently perceiving
that nothing was to be made of it, cast them down again, with a slight
shrug of her shoulders, and made no reply. “Why should I take the
trouble to talk?” she seemed to say, which was not very civil to Mrs.
Drainham, nor encouraging to that lady’s benevolence, it must be
allowed.
“You never thought of that view of the matter?” said the persevering
woman. “But you ought to think of it. Few people, unless they are very
rich, are disposed to take all the responsibility of a girl like you.
They might help you, and be kind to you; but they would most likely
think it was right and best that you should contribute at least to your
own support.”
“I do not know what you mean,” said Innocent looking at her with
mingled wonder and resentment. She pushed away her little tray from her,
and in sheer bewilderment took up the scaldino, putting it in her lap,
and holding her hands over it. This was another thing upon which the
doctor’s wife, as she herself avowed, could not look with any
toleration. She made a little gesture of distress, as if she would have
put it away.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, my dear, don’t let me see you with that odious
thing on your knee! An English girl keeps her hands warm with doing
something or other. You will find nothing of that sort in England. There
your time will be all filled up in a rational way. There is always
something going on, and you will find no time to nurse your hands in
your lap. Of course, there is a great deal that will be very novel. Put
down that scaldino, dear. I can’t bear to see you with it. It is such an
odd thing for an English girl to do.”
“Am I an English girl?” said Innocent dreamily. She did not respond to
what was said to her. “She never gives you a reasonable answer,” Mrs.
Drainham said afterwards, with an impatience for which it was not
difficult to account.
It was just then that the tinkling bell at the door pealed, and Niccolo
after some parley admitted a stranger. Niccolo recognized the name at
once, though no English visitor could have recognized it had he heard it
from Niccolo’s lips. “Signor Estvode,” he said, looking in at the door,
and pausing, with the true instinct of an Italian servant, to watch the
effect of the announcement. Innocent started to her feet, in her haste,
dropping instinctively from her shoulders her old velvet mantle, and
Mrs. Drainham sat and stared with genuine British composure, without any
thought of politeness. Frederick came in, looking (as he was) something
of an invalid still. He was pale; he had that look of convalescence we
have already referred to on his interesting countenance. He came
forward, holding out both his hands to the girl, who stood devouring him
with her eyes, which for once were fully opened. She could not say
anything; she could scarcely breathe. Many speculations had crossed her
mind as to the kind of messenger who might arrive. This young man,
looking not unlike one of the heroes of her dreams, pale, melancholy,
yet smiling, holding out his hands to her, made such a sudden lodgment
in the girl’s inexperienced heart as I can neither define nor account
for. The chances are that his mother, who was much kinder than
Frederick, would have made no impression at all upon Innocent. She
looked at him with her eyes all aglow and shining, with a sudden glad
contraction and then expansion of her heart. She put down the scaldino,
and went a step forward. “You are my little cousin,” said Frederick, in
a voice which the natural impulse of kindness and the pleasant sense of
beneficence made melodious. He looked at her with no criticism in his
eyes, rather with admiration and pleasure. The girl paused all aglow, on
tiptoe, her sudden impulse betraying itself in every line of her slim
figure. Then she obeyed that impulse, poor, forlorn child. She threw
herself forward, took the outstretched hands, and bent down and kissed
them in her pretty Italian way. “Yes, I am Innocent,” she said; “oh,
take me away! take me away!”