DISCUSSES SEVERAL MATTERS OF MOMENT
The men drank Marsala--always offered in the afternoon in an Italian
house--and smoked in the garden, while we women wandered wherever we
liked. Those of my companions who had not before seen the interior
of an Italian villa were interested in everything, even to the
culinary arrangements, so different from those in England. The
Italian cook makes his dishes over some half-a-dozen small charcoal
fires about the size of one's hand, which he keeps burning by a kind
of rush fire-screen, the English grate being unknown.
We had been there a couple of hours, and to all of us the change had
been pleasant after so long a spell at sea. Velia was sitting apart
in the garden, and we were chatting, she telling me of the perfect
tranquillity of her married life. Rino was, she declared, a model
husband, and she was perfectly happy; indeed, her life was a
realisation of those dreams that we both used to have long ago in the
old neglected garden of the convent, when we walked together
hand-in-hand at sundown.
She recalled those days to me--days when I, in my childish ignorance,
believed the world outside to be filled with pleasant things. We had
not met since we had parted at the convent, she to enter Florentine
society and to marry, and I to drift about the world in search of a
husband.
"Suor Teresa's counsels were so very true," she said to me, as we
recalled the grey-eyed Sister who had been our foster-mother.
"Haven't you found them so, just as I have, even though you have
lived in England, your cold, undemonstrative England, and I here, in
Italia?"
"Suor Teresa gave us so much good advice. To which of her precepts
do you refer?" I asked.
"Don't you recollect how she was always saying that, as women, the
first thing of importance was always to be content to be inferior to
men--inferior in mental power in the same proportion as we are
inferior in bodily strength. Facility of movement, aptitude and
grace, the bodily frame of woman may possess in a higher degree than
that of man; just as in the softer touches of mental and spiritual
beauty her character may present a lovelier aspect than his. Yet the
woman will find, Suor Teresa used to say, that she is by nature
endowed with peculiar faculties--with a quickness of perception,
facility of adaptation, and acuteness of feeling, which fit her
especially for the part she has to act in life, and which, at the
same time, render her, in a higher degree than man, susceptible both
to pain and pleasure. These, according to our good Sister, are our
qualifications as mere women."
"Yes," I said, "I remember now. Some of Suor Teresa's counsels I've
followed, but others, I fear, I threw to the winds. She was a good
woman--a very good woman, Suor Teresa. Do you remember how she used
to lecture us girls, and say: 'When you are women of the world, how
wide is the prospect which opens before you--how various the claims
upon your attention--how vast your capabilities--how deep the
responsibility which those capabilities involve! In the first place,
you are not alone; you are one of a family--of a social circle--of a
community--of a nation. You are a being whose existence will never
terminate, who must live for ever, and whose happiness or misery
through that endless future which lies before you will be influenced
by the choice you are now in the act of making.' Do you remember the
kind of lectures she used to give us?"
"Perfectly well," answered Velia. "But she is dead, poor woman; she
died of fever last summer."
"Dead!" I echoed
A pang of regret shot through my heart, for I remembered how sweet
and kind she had always been, how just and how devout in all her
religion. To her I owed many stimulating ideas about good and evil,
few of which, I fear, remained long enough in my memory. It was she
who taught me to love the virtuous and the good, and the recollection
of those early days of her tender guidance formed a bright spot in my
life, to which, I suppose, the mind will take me back at intervals as
long as existence lasts.
Velia was about my own age, and at the convent we had treated one
another as if we were sisters. Therefore when we fell to talking of
those old days before the courses of our lives ran so far apart, my
memory drifted back to those home-truths which Suor Teresa and her
fellow-nuns had striven to instil into our rather fickle minds.
My fellow-guests left about five o'clock, for they had arranged to
continue on the sea-road and ascend to the famed pilgrimage church of
Montenero--one of the sights of Western Tuscany. As I had made a
pilgrimage there in my school-days, at Velia's invitation I remained
behind to dine with her, promising Ulrica to return on board later in
the evening.
In the glorious blaze of crimson sunset which flooded the broad,
clear Mediterranean, causing the islands of Gorgona, Capraja, and
Corsica to stand out in purple grandeur in the infinite blaze of
gold, I sat upon the marble terrace, lolling in a long cane chair,
and chatting with the Countess.
How different had been our lives, I reflected. She, married happily,
surrounded by every comfort that wealth could provide, a child which
was her idol, and a husband whom she adored; while I, one of those
unattached women who form the flotsam of society, world-weary,
forlorn, and forsaken, was beaten hither and thither up and down
Europe by every gust of the social wind.
I contrasted our lives, and found my own to be a hollow and empty
sham. Of all the passions which take possession of the female
breast, a passion for society is one of the most inimical to domestic
enjoyment. Yet how often does this exist in connection with an
amiable exterior! It is not easy to say whether one ought most to
pity or to blame a woman who lives for society--a woman who reserves
all her good spirits, all her pretty frocks, her animated looks, her
interesting conversation, her bland behaviour, her smiles, her
forbearance, her gentleness, for society. What imposition does she
not practise upon those who meet her there! Follow the same
individual home; she is impatient, fretful, sullen, weary, oppressed
with headache, uninterested in all that passes around her, and
dreaming only of the last evening's excitement, or of what may
constitute the amusement of the next; while the mortification of her
friends at home is increased by the contrast her behaviour exhibits
in the two different situations, and her expenditure upon comparative
strangers of feelings to which they consider themselves to have a
natural and inalienable right. I was terribly conscious of my own
failings in this respect, and in society Ulrica had been my chief
example.
I hated it all, and envied the woman who sat there chatting with me
so merrily.
There, in the fading afterglow, when the sun had disappeared behind
the distant headland, I told her, in reply to her question, of my
love and its disillusionment. I told her his name--Ernest
Cameron--and at mention of it I thought I detected her dark brows
grow narrow for an instant. But surely it was only fancy, for these
two had certainly never met.
"You have all my sympathy, Carmela," she said, in her soft Italian,
when I had told her the truth. "You have suffered, poor child. Your
words tell me so."
"Yes," I responded frankly. "I have suffered, and am still
suffering. Another woman stole his love from me, and I am left
deserted, forlorn; outwardly a smart figure as you see me, but within
my heart is the canker-worm of hatred."
"He may return to you," she said. "His fancy may be a mere passing
one. Men are so very fickle."
"No," I declared quickly, "it is all ended between us. I loved only
once--loved him with all the charm of a first attachment. She who
entertains this sentiment lives no longer for herself. It was so in
my case. In all my aspirations, my hopes, my energies; in all my
confidence, my enthusiasm, my fortitude, my own existence was
absorbed in his interests. But now I am despised and forgotten."
She was so sympathetic that more than once I was tempted to confide
to her the whole of the strange facts and the mysteries that were so
puzzling to me. But I hesitated--and in my hesitation resolved to
keep my own counsel.
We dined together, taking our wine from the big rush-covered _fiasco_
of Chianti placed in its swinging stand, according to the custom of
Tuscany; eating various dishes peculiarly Italian, and being waited
upon by two maids who spoke in that quaint but musical dialect of the
Tuscan shore.
Throughout the meal my thoughts wandered from my surroundings to the
dastardly plot formed to destroy the _Vispera_. Where, I wondered,
was old Mr. Keppel? For aught I knew, both he and his unseen
accomplice were engaged in buying explosives for the purpose of
causing the contemplated disaster.
Velia believed my preoccupation to be due to our conversation before
dinner, and I allowed her to continue in that belief.
Dinner in an Italian household is a very different meal to the French
_table d'hôte_ or the English evening meal. The courses are varied,
and from the _anti-pasti_ to the _dolci_, all is new to the English
palate. Those who have lived sufficiently long in Italy to become
imbued with its charm know well how difficult it is to relish the
substantial English cooking when one goes on a visit to the old
country; just as difficult as it is to enjoy the grey skies and smoky
cities of money-making Britain after the brightness and sunshine of
the garden of Europe.
At ten o'clock, after we had idled in the _salon_ with our coffee and
certosa--a _liqueur_ made by the old monks of the Certosa, outside
Florence, and not obtainable beyond the confines of Tuscany--Velia's
brougham came round, and reluctantly I took leave of her.
Our reunion had certainly been full of charm, for in those hours I
had allowed myself to forget my present position, and had, in
thought, drifted back to the placid days of long ago that had been
passed within the high grey walls of the ancient convent.
"Good-bye, Carmela," Velia said, holding my hand in hers warmly after
I had entered the carriage. "Remember your promise to return here
before you sail. I shall expect you."
I repeated my promise gaily, and then giving her a final "_Addio, e
buona notte,_" I was driven out of the great gates and into the night.
The road from Ardenza to Leghorn, a magnificent drive by day, is not
very safe at night. The trees lining it form a refuge for any
thieves or footpads, and because of this it is patrolled continually
by a pair of mounted carbineers.
At length we came to the great iron gates of the city, which stretch
across the wide highway, flanked on either side by huge porticos, in
which are stationed the officers of the dazio, as the _octroi_ in
Italy is called.
Every article entering an Italian city is inspected with a view to
the imposition of taxes, hence every conveyance, from the country
cart of the contadino laden with vegetables for the market, to the
private brougham, is stopped at the barrier, and the occupant is
asked to declare what he or she has with him.
In front of the barrier the brougham was brought to a halt, and one
of the dazio guards, in his peaked cap and long overcoat with silver
facings, opened the door, inquiring whether I had anything liable to
be taxed.
"_Niente,_" I responded, and was preparing to resettle myself for the
journey, when the man, looking rather hard at me in the
semi-darkness, said:
"The signorina is named Rosselli, I believe?"
"Yes," I replied, surprised at the man's knowledge of my name.
He fumbled in the pocket of his overcoat for a moment, produced a
letter, and then handed it to me in quite a surreptitious manner,
saying in a low tone:
"This is for the signorina."
Then he banged to the door with a great show of officiousness,
without waiting for me to thank him, and we drove forward along the
deserted promenade.
As it was quite dark within the carriage, I was unable to read the
communication that had so suddenly been handed to me.
What, I wondered, did it contain? Who had taken the precaution to
bribe one of the dazio guards to hand it to me?
Surely it must contain something of the highest importance and
strictest privacy.