Margherita’s town and harbour, Lucrezia’s grey cottage stands, with
thatched roof, among the trees. Olives are around her dwelling, for
it stands on the nether slopes, where the fir’s fragrance from above
scarce reaches; their fine branches and crooked stems rest traced upon
the sky, and into their grey tones fig-trees bring brighter green for
contrast, though brightest of all are the vines that twine beneath.
The blue-grey smoke curls above the green-grey trees, to show where the
lace-weaver lives; a rough spring flows freshly out of the earth beside
her cottage, with wooden trough to guide its stream into the brick
basin, and thence into the beans and potatoes of her garden; a rude
balcony flanks the house, a walnut tree shadows it over, a _pergola_
dims the light at the kitchen window; and the gourd-plants trail
beneath it on the ground, with ample golden flowers; carnations, side
by side with kitchen herbs, grow in a box upon the window-sill.
Lucrezia sits outside on the little terrace; the pear tree is white
with blossom, just opposite, and at the foot of many a sloping,
stone-hemmed garden, where green wheat waves and gladioli bloom
between, the sunny sea spreads far away and breaks white upon the
rocks; but her face is not raised to look, for before her is the
lace-pillow, and, while her fingers ply busily, her head is bowed, and
she softly rocks a cradle with her foot. Lucrezia is a young mother.
Last year, when the fruit was at the best and the fishing had been
good, she was married to Pietro of Santa Margherita, and the little
swaddled infant that sleeps at her feet is the first-born, who came
with the summer’s return this May-time. He has no features to boast of
yet, and his legs and arms are tightly bound with swathing bands, but
Lucrezia thinks him truly fair nevertheless, nor minds the piteous wail
with which he will shortly break in upon her deftest bit of labour. She
is a comely woman, but beautiful rather with the recollection of other
beauty—the beauty of past generations—than perfect in her own person.
She is dark and tall and straight, with square, broad shoulders and
ample bosom; her hair is almost black, her eyes are grey, her skin is
bronzed and slightly freckled, her mouth is wide, and the teeth within
it white and even; the hands that weave and twist amid a labyrinth of
threads are coarse and large, though seemly shaped; the foot upon the
cradle’s edge is no dainty foot, for it has grown hard upon the hard
stones, and tanned with the sun, and soiled with the world’s work of
every day. Neither _contadine_ nor fisherwives waste their scant pence
on shoes and stockings.
[Illustration: _The Lace Weaver._
While her fingers ply busily, her head is bowed, and she
softly rocks a cradle with her foot.]
Lucrezia plaits her white threads swiftly—so swiftly that you might
almost see the pattern growing beneath her fingers, though it is
no simple design that she weaves thus from memory, but an elaborate
arrangement of groundwork and spray and border, that go to make the
width most used for flounces. The wooden bobbins clap together merrily
when Lucrezia thus nimbly twists and crosses threads over the pink
pillow’s surface. She is crooning a lullaby to the bandaged _bamboccio_
the while, and nearly mars the use of it by the loud peals of laughter
that Maria’s conversation provokes, who sits idling on the cottage
door-step.
‘Marry? I wouldn’t marry for worlds, and have to work as you’re working
now,’ declares decisively that one who is yet a spinster. ‘What man
is worth it? For me, I like to amuse myself—in the way one should,
of course! _Santa Vergine!_ you’re always at it! If you’re not at the
lace-pillow, you’re with the fish to market or down in the villa round
the _tomate_ and the herbage! And then that marmot of yours! It’s one
thing to dandle him a bit for you when you’re up to Santa Margherita
on an errand, but to have a thing like that of one’s own——! Not for
me!’ ‘Go to!’ laughs Lucrezia. ‘And that young man of Camogli that I
know of?’ ‘And that young man—and that young man! What young man, and
what’s he to do with me?’ simpers the maid. ‘All very fine,’ replies
the married woman, with a giggle so loud that Ernesto gives an ominous
whine, and would probably move his limbs were they not so well secured,
‘that will _he_ know better than I for a surety!’ And she rocks
the cradle faster, and begins to croon afresh, till the pins on the
pillow want shifting forwards, and Maria so far recovers her gravity
as to continue, ‘You are always up to your jokes, you! But tell me a
little—wilt teach me the lace-making if I have the patience to learn?
It’s the only way for us poor girls to earn a pair of ear-rings, I
suppose.’ ‘Dear heart, you would never have patience,’ says Lucrezia.
‘A fisher-girl like you! Why, your hands are rough from the oar, and
you’d never sit still a little half-hour. It’s bad enough for me, who
have been used to it since I was twelve years old!’
A portion of the pattern gets finished off at this point, and Lucrezia
casts a handful of threads aside—the threads that have twined one kind
of weft for sprays—and takes up a new set to fill in the ground with.
She has had a good day’s work, has been at the pillow at least five or
six hours, and has completed nearly _mezzo palmo_ of flounce, which is
about five inches. If she were not the nimblest worker in all Santa
Margherita’s vicinity, she could never make as much lace as this in
the whole twelve hours, and yet the Genoa shops will scarcely pay her
more than a franc for the piece she has done, weaving since daybreak,
till now that it is time to cook the _cena_. Indeed, if hers were not
the best and smoothest made lace to be had along that shore, Lucrezia
would not even earn as much. It is not without some reason that to
Maria’s remark about its being the best means of gain for a woman, she
answers, but curtly, ‘You believe it? Listen to me rather; that you,
who have hard hands and slow wits, and the patience only of a spirit in
purgatory, you would not make half a franc with your day at the pillow!
Even the glove-sewing would suit you better, though ’tis but a poor
trade! Take to yourself that young man of Camogli, and go in peace! He
has a house above his head, and you are fit for nothing so well as to
sell his fish for him at Santa Margherita, and harvest his wheat and
his olives.’
Lucrezia rises to stretch her arms, for the shadows are creeping longer
and a filmier light dims the sun’s dazzle on the bay. It will be time
to pare the potatoes and wash the rice for _minestra_, though, on
second thoughts, she has a mind to cook some _polenta_—that is quicker
done, and just as acceptable for a second meal. Maria’s gossip must end
for this time. She, too, has a _cena_ to make ready at home for the
men, and Lucrezia has enough to do now, for, just when the pot wants
putting on—that bundle in the cradle begins to wail, of course! ‘It’s
always so,’ laments she plaintively, but the mother’s heart cannot
find it within to be cross, though she must rake the fire with one hand
while holding the infant to her breast with the other.
The first-born’s woes are stilled, supper simmers over the burning
logs, in the light of whose flames Lucrezia’s copper vessels shine
brightly on the smoke-tarnished walls; without, the sunlight has faded,
and grey clouds cross the west. ‘We shall have a storm to-night,’ muses
she on the terrace, looking seawards with her back to the road, and to
the chestnut-woods behind her olive trees. Truly, the blue waves are
sadder-coloured than before and begin to wear white feathers on their
bosoms. A wind moves in the grey branches overhead, and rustles more
noisily amid the broader-leaved chestnuts behind; on the hill’s crest
it is sighing beneath the stone pines. ‘Pietro will surely not go to
the fishing this night,’ says she, half aloud; and she turns to fetch
the copper cauldron to fill at the spring.
Some one is coming through the chestnut wood that lies away from
the sea—a lady. Is it one of the ladies from the _palazzo_ on Santa
Margherita’s beach? Yes—good Virgin—it is indeed, and the same one
who bought lace of her last week! What a good fortune, for a private
customer buys at double the price offered at Genoa shops. ‘Your
servant,’ says she modestly, but without a curtsey—that is not the
way with our _contadine_; yet her manner is none the less respectful.
‘A fair evening to you, my good girl,’ replies the town dame in the
high singsong that is special to Genoese dialect, and different from
the Venetian twitter or the deep Milanese chest notes. She is not
alone—a tall man attends her, dressed after a supposed English mode,
as for the country; he is chestnut-haired, and would call himself
_biondo_, or fair, spite of his skin’s colour; that is why he affects
the English style, and he too says a gracious ‘_Felice sera_’ to our
Lucrezia, because she is a comely woman. She meanwhile, standing beside
the fountain with her hand resting on the copper bowl to steady it,
gazes with appreciating eyes on the lady’s elegant attire, who says
presently to the swain beside her, ‘It will rain, I think—it behoves
to go quickly home;’ then to the _contadina_ whose vessel has filled
the while at the trickling spring, ‘Have you any more lace of that sort
that I bought last time?’ ‘Come up the steps beneath the _pergola_,
dear lady, and I will show you what I have,’ replies Lucrezia, frankly,
but with no curtness as the words might imply. And she heaves the
water-vessel to her head, which must first be replaced in the kitchen,
whence she then brings two nicely dusted rush chairs for the _signori_.
_La marchesa_ sits down, asks a question about the prospects of grape
and olive harvest, speaks a word to the now wakeful _bambino_, and
handles black and white lace while the fair-haired gallant leans
against the stone parapet and smokes and gives valuable opinions on
stitch and pattern and quality.
Lucrezia has a handsome store of completed lace—of course, some
of it is promised to the shop, but what matter? No one can quicker
invent a suitable lie for the shopwoman, should the _marchesa_ take
a fancy to any special piece. There are lengths of all widths, in
flounce, and edge, and insertion-lace; there are scarves and shawls,
and parasol covers, and every kind of female adornment that is in
fashion, whether suited to this special kind of _guipure_ trimming
or no. Lucrezia’s lace is the finest made in the neighbourhood, but
even hers is no fine and precious kind. True, in olden times the
Riviera girls used to make a straight-edged and thin-threaded lace
that was worthier the name, but, for this long time past, florid
designs and Maltese stitches have come into vogue, and now we have
nothing but _guipure_ made along the shores. _La marchesa_ buys her
five metres of heavy-weighted black silk flouncing, in which kind the
loose-woven patterns show to best advantage, and when she has bargained
a while over it, and laughed and talked friendly with Lucrezia, it is
discovered suddenly by all three that the rising blast has lashed our
blue sea’s waters into swelling and breaking billows, and that the
storm is overhead. Dark clouds hasten across the sunset, and the rain
begins to drop. ‘_Misericordia!_’ says the lady. For the square pink
palace looks a long way off. She is fain to take the shelter of the
lace-weaver’s shady kitchen, that is now gracefully offered, and to
blacken her dainty slippers on the square brick hearth and listen to
the first-born’s wail till the rain have ceased to water the garden,
and the wind to turn up the olive leaves’ white linings, till the
worst of the storm be over, in fact, though waves still dash white
spray on black and cloven rocks in the bay, and the sunlight be blotted
out for good this day. But Pietro has good news on his return to the
cottage; the fishing has been good this broken weather, and Lucrezia
has good news, too—she has sold five _metri_ at an honest price to the
_marchesa_ of the great palace.
Il Manente.
The Husbandman.
At Camogli, where the stone-pines adorn the cliff’s edge, and burthen
even the fresh sea-breeze with their strange and heavy sweetness—at
Camogli, that is built beside the waves, and that has the quaint
harbour where fishers dwell, there are many new houses for gentlefolk
to live in, and one or two old ones for old families to whom they
belong; and these well-worn palaces stand on their own lands, beside
their own fig-trees, and beneath pines of their own planting. Such
things are at Camogli, and even at Recco, though Recco is a little town
with church and streets, not so picturesque by half as the thriving
fishing village—such city memories are at both these places because
they lie beside the sea, and because from homes and lodgings in their
midst people can easily spend the half of their summer days in the
water.
But at Ruta there are not many fine houses for city folk, and not even
many old palaces, for Ruta is up on the hill with the land-breezes
behind it, that come through clefts and valleys, and the sea-scent
in front of it that must travel across vineyards and up corn-covered
terraces to get there. Yet there is a broad, smooth, carriage-road from
Recco to the village on the hill—that same old road along which many a
traveller of many a nation has come in the days when the railroad was
yet unmade, of which many another has heard tell because of its beauty;
for Ruta stands on the way that used to be the highway from Genoa to
La Spezia. And besides this wide and dusty one, there is another path
by which you may reach the village that I mean—a path that strikes off
from Camogli’s gayest front, to wind steeply up the hill when once it
has left Camogli’s church behind; a rough foot-path, whose sides are
hemmed with low stone walls, and upon which other loose stones roll
perilously. It is the way that the _manenti_ take when they come in
the sunrise hours to Camogli with their market goods, and carry fish up
again that has been bought on the shore with their morning’s earnings,
for Ruta lies crowning the valley that is called in Genoa and on the
Riviera the valley of fruit; and, though nobles of old did not build
their palaces so far from the sea, any more than town-folk of to-day,
all of them are glad enough of the fruit that grows better where the
shade is, and where dry sea-breezes are not so prone to wither.
Giovanni’s villa lies on the western side of the hill, and looks to
the sunrise. He is an old man, his hair is whitening fast and his
hands are wrinkled and horny, his face is seamed; though so tall and
strong a frame scarce will have need to stoop yet a while. But for
all he has been on the ground, pruning the vines and the fruit-trees,
and tilling the soil these many years, Giovanni has rarely yet had
occasion to grumble much at his land’s produce, though neighbours do
tell him oftentimes the place lies with an unprofitable aspect. The
terraced fields and little plantations where he grows the maize and
peas and fine asparagus in season, lie one above another in patches, on
the steep, with the rising ground behind to shield them from untoward
winds, and the sun full to their front; and beyond, where the hill
curves round to westward, his cherry trees and pear and plum trees
grow, with peach and almond trees between for a good sprinkling, and
aloes faintly grey and stiff on the rocky wall above; silver-lined
olive-leaves wave from knotted boughs where wheat grows, with gladiolas
blooming in its midst; fig trees spread widely, and vines twine around
wildly wherever there is room amongst all the cultivation: truly,
Giovanni has no need to complain.
The old _manente_ lives lonely; he has few friends so close as
the crops and the fruit-gathering that he labours so fondly for.
The tender-leaved lettuce and early asparagus are more to him than
neighbours, and the ripening of the red tomatoes is of keener interest
than anything that happens in the village, for the weather-worn man has
none at home to care for him: his wife is dead, and, of his children,
the sons are about the world, fishing at sea, and selling _pasta_ in
Genoa; the daughters are well married in distant towns and villages. It
is better so; and to heave the pickaxe in the upturned field, to train
the vines while thinking on Marrina’s last-born babe or on Pietro’s
success a-board the merchant vessel, is dearer to the husbandman’s
heart than the sound even of loved voices around his hearth.
The day is a July day; the wheat is waving yellow and near to the
harvesting; the melons have ripened well, and it is a good year for
all the fruit; the peaches have even been so many that _manenti_ have
given them away in baskets-full. Fine and tender spring crops have
had their day, and it is over. This is the full time when nature is
the most lavish—not a time of sharpest interest, perhaps, but the
husbandman joys in his reward. It will be a good vintage, and the green
autumn figs crowd thick on their trees’ branches; they are swelling
fast, and will streak their soft green skins ere long with pink, as
they come to full maturity. People say there will be a falling-off
in the chestnut-harvest on the other hand, but that matters less to
this _manente_ of whom I write, because his riches are greater in
olive-woods.
Giovanni has been to Camogli this early morning already, and he is an
old man, but he means to go to Rappallo in the forenoon yet. ‘Fair
Madonna, and it is the old ones must work whether they will or no,’
says he to neighbours who greet him on the steep and stony way, with
some comment on his toil; ‘the young have all gone to the devil,
and to the city trades; what would the soil do if it weren’t for us,
whose bones are oiled to the labour?’ But though he fret and fume a
bit now and then, if truth were told, Giovanni would ill brook even
a day’s idleness! What if the path be bad, and the burthen on an old
man’s shoulder makes the sweat to steal down his brow? Do not the
fig-leaves cast broad shadows where one sits awhile on the flints by
the roadside to rest, and is it not consolation enough to note how
the fruit waxes full, and how the olives are rich in berries? Besides
even at three hours after dawn, when Giovanni was climbing the hill
again from market, dews were still moist and breezes fresh off the sea
from behind; it is of a hot sultry night, or with a fierce midday sun
overhead, that one fears the mount a bit, and wearies of the secret
stillness amid trees, or of the silver dazzle on that blue sheet, of
Mediterranean that one leaves behind and below. No one can say that
in Ruta there is a hardier labourer than the _manente_ who rents the
larger portion of his villa from those silk-mercers of Genoa—owners of
the white house on the ridge. It is sale-time and profit-time now; and
though Giovanni may silently love the season best that is for tilling
and sowing and reaping, it is not he who will shrink from any day’s
work. Just an hour to eat the breakfast that a little neighbour’s wench
will have prepared him, who comes in from hard-by to do such jobs at
a modest price, just another little half-hour to go the dearly-loved
round of his property and pluck more fruit and herbs for the new
market, just a grim jest or two with the children of the _signori_
from the house, who frolic around and get many a handful of garden
spoil—then Giovanni is away again, for Rappallo is a bit of way off,
and one must be there not too late at the _stabilimento_, or others
will have gotten the custom.
The sun glitters on the pale sea that is down and away a mile or
more, beyond the sloping fields and gardens, and the dipping valley.
Giovanni’s villa is above that part of Ruta’s village lying along the
roadside, above the church too, and close upon the bend of a path that
turns away from the sea into turf and chestnut woods; nevertheless,
he keeps a hold on the great white water still, and can look over the
valley that is rich of careful cultivation, can see churches standing
cypress-guarded, and palaces where the land drops shore-ward—can see
as much, and even more, of the sea-view than they can from the top
windows of the old tavern in the village, where carriage-folk used to
stop when carriages were many along the highway, and Ruta was a place
for the horses to bait at and _vetturini_ to feed at, while their
_signori_ got dinner on the terrace beneath the vines. For all he never
remembers thinking of it, Giovanni would not like to have his back to
the sea, not though it dazzle old eyes, even from far, as it dazzles
them to-day, for no clouds have come up to make walking lighter beneath
a burthen by the time Giovanni shoulders his fruit-baskets anew and
comes down the steps upon the high road. The church bells ring a chime
as he passes, and Maria, the _pedona_ who sells eggs, comes down the
paved way behind to go to Rappallo as well. She is a woman of years,
and fit to join company with Giovanni, to whom her tongue can wag
none the less fast for his economy of response. The old _manente_ is
a heavy-jawed and tough-hided specimen of _contadino_; one can see
at a glance his words will be few, but Maria’s chatter flows not the
less merrily because his deep-set eyes show no sign, and the wrinkles
that strew his ancient face do not let themselves be displaced into
smiles. Maria is an old woman in whose yellow cheeks the lines seem
to have no rhythm, so purposeless is she; but every seam on the old
husbandman’s countenance is as though set there by careful length of
living. Striking into the tunnel that, just outside of Ruta’s village,
covers the roadway, Maria turns to hurl a neighbourly jest after the
girl whom they have met driving a donkey from some distant market.
A sapphire-coloured morsel of sea lies behind a frail-foliaged aspen
tree—lies framed in the green of shrubs that grow around the grotto’s
mouth; a long, broken water-line hems the land that fondly goes out in
crags and points to meet it, and puts forward her fairest vegetation
to fringe the border; in the farthest distance the sea seems to creep
into wider bays, and the cliffs to grow less, and the water margin
straighter, till a mist gathers into shape, and holds dim white roofs
and tall spires and domes within its folds where Genoa lies away to
westward. Giovanni, standing with head bent beneath a burthen, Maria,
with shrunken face and forehead bound about with crimson kerchief, have
this and more before them as they linger a space out of the sunlight,
but neither notes skies and seas so familiar, for Rappallo is yet
a long way off. ‘The _parroco_ of San Martino has got to manage now
without that serving-woman of his that he thought so much of,’ says
Maria, as they step out into the cooler shadow on the grotto’s other
side. ‘Did you know it? The foolish thing is going to marry! No husband
will be what _that_ old master was to her. Yes—yes, poor holy man!—the
feasts coming on, too, and he who scarcely knows where to lay hand
on his own canonicals unless she’s by. And as for the sacred wafers,
who, indeed, will see to them?’ Giovanni’s comment is but a suppressed
murmur as he turns to look towards the priest of San Martino’s Church,
whose spire lies up against a chestnut-mantled hill to left. The green
is the brighter green of inland foliage here, for even olives are
scarcer to mingle their silver-grey tones; hills lie behind and beside
one another, and turf is fresh beneath these shadier woods, rills
trickle and flowers grow; the Mediterranean’s memory is forgotten for
a while, and the hot, grey aloe plants and Indian figs give place to
gorse bushes and mountain ash. Giovanni tramps forward steadily, and
both man and woman have soon left the few tall houses of _negozianti_
behind, that have been built on this side the archway by those who
prefer land to sea breezes for change from town. And Maria beguiles the
way with many a tale about these same _negozianti_, till, rounding a
point in the smooth high road, Giovanni pauses to rest his burthen upon
the wall just where the way turns to right again and, with mountains
and chestnut-clad hills behind it still, looks forward once more upon
the blue, sunny sheet of the sea. Figs, and aloes, and olives grow
again by the roadside with vines between, and here the chestnut-woods
flourish beside them as well, and dark cypress trees crown the long
crests of hills to the front. So now, as the old people walk, the
sea draws ever nearer again if a bend in the road hide it sometimes
from view; but the mountains are not left behind all the same, nor
the chestnuts shorn for other culture, and, when they reach Rappallo,
a river winds about it, and mountains guard it, in whose cleft the
town lies; greenest woods girdle it round, though its front be spread
beside the waves, and the _stabilimento_ be aptly enough placed for
the bathing. Maria sells her new-laid eggs for the summer visitors,
Giovanni has disposed of green herbs and melons enough; but the one
lingers to return with the sunset cool, and the other hastens back
betimes to the village that is his home, and to the _villa_ that reaps
all his labours and his fondest affections.
[Illustration: _The Husbandman._