with two or three other young fellows abreast, all of them with hands
in their pockets, and pipes in their mouths, and carnation in their
soft felt hats, is it not the funniest thing that Pietro should just
meet ‘_Bianca bella_’ upon the bend of the rising ground, where the
town first comes to sight, and just have been making a joke about
her to Giovanni, too? Well, well, at all events, Pietro has a very
bright red scarf to gird up his loins, and a very specially handsome
carnation, and quite a remarkable blue cravat, besides wearing his hat
a little more to one side than the rest. He looks quite as well as if
he had been dressed in Genoa; one cannot be expected not to see that,
though one has a lover in the town! And Pietro knows that Bianca _has_
seen it, and is as pleased as he need be.
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE SWAIN AT A BARGAIN.]
Surely no man ever had his way with the girls better than Pietro!
Though Bianca picks up a friend at Cerisola, and there is a great
deal of talk about woollen stuffs, our swain still fancies even the
female rubbish is trimmed and fitted to his special ear. Oh, blessed
and invariable male content! A pretty girl in front who cannot fail
to admire the best-looking man about, a glass of sour _monferrato_
at the first village, and a pipe in your mouth—Paradise can offer
nothing better! Excepting a good bargain, and for the better chance
of that, all those other three good things are abandoned when once our
Pietro gets into the thick of the cattle market. That poor pale little
brindled heifer means success or failure, perhaps for the whole year,
to our modest land and farm-owner. No wonder that knuckles come down
bravely on the little three-legged table of the _osteria_ where Pietro
sits face to face over wine with the seller; no wonder that oaths are
frequent, and words run high! Is it not a question of two whole francs?
Nevertheless, they split the difference, and make up the quarrel till
it needs must be opened afresh over the game of bowls, whither buyers
and sellers soon carry every grievance.
As Pietro stands swinging his arm for the fling—handling the bowl or
stooping for his aim, as he saunters about among the company or drinks
his glass at the open-air bar—in all or each of these poses he is an
object of admiration to many even more than to Bianca del Prato, who
has seen him grow tall ever since the day, ten years ago, when he
switched the cherry-bough back into her face! An object of admiration,
and, though he is a simple-hearted fellow enough, to none more than
to himself. Is he not young and healthy—what better can he do? And
no doubt he is right! Though Bobbio can perhaps produce better and
Cerisola several as good, our Pietro is a good enough example of his
kind. He is not very religious; he will laugh at the priests to their
face when they pass in procession, and make fun of their Latin, but he
will bend his knee and doff his hat and wedge his person just within
the church-door at benediction time, or when the bell sounds at the
elevation, as a good Catholic should: what man of sense does more? And
at a bargain he will hold his own to the last, and come off triumphant
if it be only to one _centesimo_; what better praise can one give to
a man’s honesty? Surely, Pietro Mazzacane is as good as you could wish
for a village swain!
The Love-letter.
There are three of the village girls who are prettier than its other
girls. One of them is red-haired and buxom, with pink cheeks and white
arms—she is the most admired by townsfolk: village folk have another
taste. Nettina, from the walnut-grove, carries the palm with them—she
has a figure that is grand in its every line, and when she dances
on the green on a _festa_ night, she does not bound and frolic with
uncurbed merriment, but moves stately through the ring, and has no mind
for any foolish jest with men that are from the cities. Nettina is a
very proud and modest maid—she cares for no new fashions of dress, she
is thrifty and patient, and when she walks up the steep from the church
to her father’s cottage she can bear the floursacks on her shoulders
or the dry leaf on her head without show of weariness or stain. ‘What
a fine chip of a woman,’ say the village suitors! But Nettina looks
neither to right nor to left till a fitting offer be made and a trusty
mediator ready to negotiate—so—to meet coming down the mountain or
at the well of an evening or upon the piazza at Ave Maria and at the
fair—Bianca even before Nettina is the pet of our village. She is
grey-eyed and smooth-tongued, with long hair and lithe figure, not
proud nor hasty, but good-tempered and merry, with ready jest, when the
evening’s ‘chaff’ has hit the hardest. Moreover, she can deftly spin
the distaff and weave linen on the hand-loom: Bianca is San Matteo’s
second belle.
The daylight is gone, but the clearness of the summer’s night is as
good as the sun. Supper has been cooked and eaten at home; the hearth
is swept, and though the Angelus has finished sounding awhile ago, and
resting-time is near, our Bianca sallies out into the white evening
to do a commission that has been on her mind all day. The Signor
Cappellano shall earn four _soldi_ to-night, and who knows if he shall
not earn some more on the day of the wedding, for Pietro Gambari is
rich, and every priest shall have his due. Already she begins to dream
of that pretty day in the mellow autumn, and of the silk dress, which
surely such a promising lover will not fail to bestow for the marriage,
even besides the gold which it is her right to expect! And so many
_confetti_ for the children! Bianca is rash. She is going to negotiate
a little for herself, without the help, as yet, of the inevitable
mediator. But only a little, to the extent of answering a love-letter!
If the suitor be true and worthy, he will find the mediator to send to
her father’s house.
There is an early moon. It hangs in the clear sky just above the church
spire, and floods the _piazzetta_ with grey light. The leaves of the
walnut tree near by shiver gently, and the black cypresses in the
burying-ground look very ghostly, but far off the moonlight only makes
things lovelier. Everything is a little mystified in its treacherous
beams, only the mountain’s outline looks more simply clear than even
in daylight, when white vapours are prone to stray upon the border.
Monte Bruno’s three cones stand, in even row, against the southern
sky, and the moon is so bright that you can see the large chestnut
that grows in one of the curves. Mon Pilato rears a tall mass into the
nearer distance. The Cappellano’s cottage stands quite in the shadow
of the oratory of San Gian-Battista, and there is even no light in the
window this evening; but ghosts are few in the pious valleys of the
Scrivia—Bianca has no fears.
‘Are you at home, _Frà Giuseppe_?’ she calls from below.
‘Who is it wants me at this hour of night?’ growls the under priest, as
he comes out upon the stone balcony beneath his porch? ‘And is it you,
_Bianca bella_? Come up, come up only!’ Even a priest is appeased by
the sight of a pretty girl. ‘Who would have thought of _your_ coming to
visit an old man like me?’
The Cappellano knows as well as another what is likely to be the
errand of a damsel who seeks him after working hours! But he is not in
canonicals, and would not be averse to a little amusement on his own
account before the love-letter business begins.
‘Come in, _Bianca bella_, I have two mushrooms in oil on the hearth,
that, if I don’t mistake, you will thank me right prettily for when you
have eaten!’
‘_O bella!_’ cries the girl laughing, ‘_Bella come il fondo della
padella_’ (pretty as the bottom of the frying-pan), ‘as the proverb
says. You don’t take me in with that kind of fun. I come on business.’
But even while she speaks Bianca has seated herself on the bench beside
the hearth, and is proving the merits of the mushrooms.
‘How goes it, Ninetta?’ says she the while to the old servant. You have
a fine time of it with this man, I can take my oath. If I live to be a
hundred, I’ll have nothing to do with men.’
Master and maid burst into a loud laugh.
‘I suppose it’s not to see the colour of my ink that you’ve come again
to-night, then, you little liar.’
The Cappellano makes as though to pinch her cheek, but thinks better of
it, for the girls of this village are very proud.
‘Well, well, I have a new bottle of beautiful red! Oh, what _funghi_,
eh? Come into my study. I never do business in the kitchen. Ninetta has
the long tongue; and a love-letter, why, it’s as delicate a matter as
the confessional!’
‘_Vossignoria_ can easily jest, because you are but a priest, who knows
nothing of these things’—Bianca blushes and is pleased as she says
this—‘but indeed it is of no love that I speak to-night, and that you
might have known me better than to suppose!’
More laughing; nobody believes a word that anybody else says! More
chattering, and a little good, sound gossip; then the Cappellano leads
the way to his study. It is not very different from the kitchen.
Instead of a hearth in the middle of the floor, there is an old,
rough-hewn table; instead of bright copper and earthenware vessels upon
the walls, there are strangely-coloured maps of the two hemispheres.
Two or three books bound in white calf—breviaries perhaps—lean to
one or other side of the bookcase shelves; in the table’s midst is
an ink-stand with a sponge soaked into it, a sand-pot, and a steel
pen. The Cappellano sits before these implements, takes a sheet of
pink paper from a drawer, dips the pen in the ink, shakes it, writes
the date, and awaits further orders of Bianca, who stands smiling to
herself in a corner.
She has a blooming, winsome face, grey eyes that are soft and shady,
and crisply waving hair; she has full lips, too, and lovely rows of
white gleaming teeth, and she laughs as she pulls a letter from her
pocket.
‘This is the one which he wrote to me,’ she continues. ‘Perhaps you may
like to see it, that you may know the style that will fit him best.’
‘No, no! my daughter; I have written many a love-letter, and can trust
to my own sense,’ grumbles the _scrivano_, as he sets pens and paper
in order, for he has his own well-worn phrases ready flowing to hand,
and would be greatly discomfited at having to invent any new ones. He
puts on his spectacles, smoothes the fair sheet of paper, and, dipping
his pen in the ink, again glances up at the girl for instructions.
She meanwhile stands awkwardly before him, smiling to herself, and
ejaculating beneath her breath, as she twirls her apron mechanically
round finger and thumb.
‘But I never said it was a love-letter,’ she says at last, laughing
again.
‘Eh, well, well, my daughter. A letter to a gallant, then? What matter?
it’s all the same thing. Tell me his name, and whether you mean to have
him or no, and then leave the rest to me.’
‘But no, _Signor Cappellano_,’ remonstrates the damsel eagerly; ‘it is
not just so. You must understand the affair.’ And she comes closer to
the table, for Bianca wants to have a finger in the matter herself.
‘You see,’ she says, ‘the young man is rich and fine, they tell me, and
a good match for me, a poor _contadina_: I don’t want to send him quite
away. But then, I don’t just know either if he will suit me or no! Now
you, who know the Latin, and are fine and wise, you can put it grandly,
what I mean.’
‘Yes, yes, my daughter, surely; so tell me what to write first.’
‘Well, first you shall put,’ and Bianca plays again with her apron,
‘You shall put—that I have received his letter,’ she blurts forth, as
though struck with a good and sudden thought.
The fine steel pen proceeds to work, and makes a few flourishes on the
pink paper, while the girl looks on, eager and intent.
‘That have I written,’ says the _scrivano_ at last. ‘What next?’
‘And next, next! You shall put that he does too much honour to a poor
peasant girl such as I.’ Again the pen moves warily over the paper, and
this sentence takes long to indite, for it can be inflated with many a
fine word and sentiment; but in time the _scrivano_ looks up for fresh
matter. The girl is sorely perplexed, indeed.
[Illustration: _The Love Letter._
The fine steel pen proceeds to work, and makes a few
flourishes on the pink paper, while the girl looks on, eager
and intent.]
‘But, _vossignoria_, who knows Latin,’ says she again, ‘can you not put
together a fine letter?’
‘That can I do, my daughter; but do you wish me to say he shall come
and see you or no?’
‘Well, you will understand, _vossignoria_, this is about how it is.
Pietro Gambari is a rich young man, and I am only a _contadina_. For
me, I should not mind being a miller’s wife, but it is not enough that
the man tells me I am _graziosa_, and would give me earrings.’
‘The Virgin forbid!’ ejaculates _Frà Giuseppe_.
‘Well, that’s what I say, and so I spoke up to him, “Signor Pietro, if
you wish to know of me,” said I “you can ask Pasquale, the baker, at
Ponte, and for me I will inform myself of you.” And that I have done
surely, but Pasquale has heard no word of this fine youth, so when he
lets it be written to me whether I go to the fair at Damigiano or no,
I wish to say, “Signor Pietro, it may happen I go and it may happen I
stay at home,” and who knows but that may bring him to his senses! Oh,
but you who know the Latin will understand better than a poor girl like
me!’
‘Surely, surely, _figlia mia_,’ replies the Cappellano, returning
to his flourishes on the paper, ‘we will say all that and more.’
Yet, in truth, he is somewhat puzzled at the prospect of something
outside of the elegant ready-made phrases that have served the parish
for sentiment during the last twelve years. Bianca begins to grow
suspicious after a few dozen lines.
‘You understand,’ she says, ‘he must come, and he must not think I want
him to come. So I shall go on the arm of Pasquale, and if he comes I
shall leave those two to arrange the business as well as they can. Not
another smile from me till I see the gold of his gifts to me and know
his position! I am an honest girl, and no fool! And who knows but it
might please your honour to tell him,’ adds she, as though struck by an
after-thought, ‘that Paolo of our village is speaking to the _manente_
about me! It would be but a white lie, for it was true a while ago, and
I could tell it quickly in confession!’
‘Oh, for that, no matter; but it is whether he would believe it, my
daughter!’ replied _Frà Giuseppe_. Nevertheless, something he writes
down. Poor credulous Bianca!
‘I want naught else,’ says she now, thinking of her pence.
But the priest means to earn something more yet out of this weary
letter.
‘You have said nothing, hitherto,’ he complains! ‘Poor young man! He
won’t know if you mean to have him or no! One must give him at least to
understand if you mean to look favourably on his suit.’
‘But if I don’t know myself?’
‘Eh, eh, _per Bacco_; what is to be done then?’
There is a long pause. The _scrivano’s_ pen glides cunningly over the
sheet: it forms capital letters, and small letters, and flourishes;
it reaches the bottom of the page, and then he takes the sand-box to
sprinkle it over. Bianca has looked on gloomily. She has been watching
her little earnings ebb sadly away in all those lines, and strokes, and
dots, and yet it seems as though she were to get no good out of this
epistle. She is very sore and angry.
‘Is there anything more?’ says the little man, at last, in a
provokingly mild tone.
‘No, _per Bacco_, there is no more! Is not that enough?’ she mutters
crossly.
‘But I have said no word as to whether you will have him or no!’
‘Eh, Holy Virgin! Say what you will! I care not! For the rest, so
long as you make it fine, he will not understand much of what you
mean, unless he is more of an ass than I take him for. Give here,’ she
concludes, petulantly, ‘till I put my cross.’
And the letter is sanded once more, as Bianca pulls out her silken
netted purse.
‘How much?’ demands she; ‘and are you sure the affair will lead to a
good end?’
‘The Virgin will see to your right, child, but twenty _soldi_ are not
too much for this. I say it with a clean conscience!’
‘_Dio!_ what a bold heart you have to rob a poor girl so! And if Signor
Pietro does not come after all, and if I am forced to content myself
with a peasant?’
‘_Eh, anima mia_, that will not be my fault!’
‘But it will be the fault of your letter! Oh, these men, when I could
have written it so well myself! But I can tell you, you may keep your
fine scrawl many a day before I give you a franc for it. Ten _soldi_,
come!’
‘My child, you dream! Ten _soldi_! I might have made two _Spiriti
Santi_ in the time. Impossible! Eighteen.’
‘Nevermore,’ declares Bianca, staunchly. ‘Before I pay you eighteen
_soldi_ I take the letter to some one who knows how to read, and I make
myself be told if you have said what I required.’
The poor _scrivano_ begins to get frightened. What would this bode? He
might never write a letter again. ‘Make it fifteen _soldi_,’ he pleads.
And long and hotly they wrangle ere the price can be fixed between
them, but at length a compromise is effected. _Frà Giuseppe_ is to
put up with twelve _soldi_ now, and to have a hand in the marriage
ceremony, if the letter fulfil its purpose. What more could justice
demand? The document is folded and sealed. Bianca exchanges it for
the dirty coppers, and with a hasty leave-taking makes her way across
the stream and up the rugged path to the thatched house, under the
chestnuts. Neither Pietro Gambari, nor _soldi_, nor Cappellano, trouble
her slumbers much in spite of all apparent excitement. Even a white lie
rests lightly on a conscience of eighteen years old, that gets up at
four in the morning.
La Cresima.
The Confirmation Day.
The cherries are over; neither large, black nor small bright ones are
on the trees now, and the wood-strawberries were forgotten long ago.
The grapes begin to flush purple-red over their pale green skins: soon
they will be ready for the vintage. But the grapes are not havoc for
the village children, and if it were not for many another kind of fruit
that grows on trees, and can, happily, not be made into wine, it would
be a weary time till the walnut harvest came round! Heaven be praised,
there are large purple plums and larger yellow plums and little blue
plums that may all be climbed for, letting alone the peaches, and
apricots, and figs, and the large pears, that are ripe enough now for
the taste of any simple-minded village child!
And summer is play-time. Nobody thinks of the girls till winter is well
in, and then it is only one or two out of the whole village gang whose
mothers will spare them to learn reading of the _Signor Prevosto_ of
an evening, or knitting and darning of _Ninetta del Cappellano_ in the
forenoon.
But whatever is done in the bleak months, we have not long passed
the dog days now, and no mother gives a thought to any child but the
swaddled puppet who hangs at her breast, or the tall damsel who can
weave at the handloom and fetch back purchases from town or fair. So
Virginia had naught else to do all the days of the summer but be up
and down, with the rest of the village children, amid the hamlets and
through the woods, across meadows and streams. Her mother is Maddalena,
the wife of Pietro the _pedone_, but she has six children, and four of
them are girls, who are of an age to help in the house and the fields.
Virginia thanks the Virgin that she has been of more use out of the way
than anywhere else!
Till last week nobody thought of her; she was one of the village
torments, neither more nor less: one of the children who shout at
festivals, and stare and wonder at mass when a newcomer enters the
church; one of those village inflictions who are always up other
people’s fruit trees, yet never get properly punished; one of that
dark-eyed, walnut-hued gang, whose feet are always shoeless, whose
hair is always rough, whose garments are always in rags; one of the
rest, in fact, to share and share alike, excepting that when ‘the rest’
happen to be all boys it isn’t much Virginia gets but a cuff here and
there, and not much that she gives, for the matter of that, but a good
blow back again! That was how Beppo came by his black eye yesterday,
perhaps, and Virginia by that ugly rent in her apron!
Well, till last week, nobody thought of Virginia; but last Monday, when
the _pedone_ went to Ponte Novo with the letters, he was accompanied
by the pretty Nettina, who is Virginia’s eldest sister, and in Ponte
Novo Nettina bought a piece of stuff, for which she bargained many a
long hour, on and off, and which was just enough of a remnant to make
the child a new frock. And it was no flinsy print material either, but
a bit of woollen fabric, for is not Virginia’s father the postman,
and must not his child look more fitly dressed than a mere poorest
_contadina_ when she goes to take _la Cresima_ from the Archbishop?
Yes, truly this is the great event to which we look forward, and we
have been thinking of it ever since the San Giovanni, when it was given
out in church. No wonder that the mother has been saving her _soldi_
very zealously, for after the _Cresima_ Virginia must make her _prima
communione_, and Pietro’s wife would suffer a good deal of privation
rather than not make a fitting show with each of her girls on such an
event. Even the child herself grumbles at no loss of bird-nesting or
fruit-stealing when it comes to such a grave matter as making a better
figure than anyone else! She is only nine years old, and knows no more
of the mighty problems that she will have to believe ere the week is
out, than does any other little girl of the same age who has run wild
all her life among the brambles. But the Archbishop does not come round
very often, and many of the children must needs be confirmed as young.
So Marrina, the sempstress, sets to work upon the little lithe figure,
and, though she has plenty to do with all the other confirmation
children, she will make a grown-up little gown, that shall fit to the
childish form as the mother’s fits to full and ripe proportions—a
little gown that will set in at the waist and fall down to the
ankles, with beautiful trimming on the sleeves, and buttons up the
front: henceforth Virginia will be a woman. Then to vie with the new
frock Virginia has a pair of new shoes, a little black apron, and a
transparent veil arranged over the tightly-plaited hair and falling
over the proud little childish face. What finer costume could any
town-child boast?
The great day is here. It is August—an August so hot and so dry that
even the sturdy _contadini_ have been murmuring at such heat for
harvesting. The wheat has been gathered in, and the vines upon their
trellises stand out brighter than ever against the shorn hillsides.
Those damsels who have care of the church were at work all yesterday;
they swept, and washed, and garnished, and then they adorned the
sanctuary with those choicest of adornments that only come out on the
best of all the _feste_. Above the great picture of Rachel at the Well
there are draperies of amber damask, and the high altar is profusely
laden with every description of artificial flower, with tinsel stars
and hearts and gaudy streamers. ‘Truly it will look well when the wax
candles are alight,’ says Nettina, whose work are the paper flowers!
Upon the side altars hang gorgeous embroideries, and around the
pictures and the organ-loft more of the orthodox crimson damask.
It is evening: six o’clock. He will soon be here. For he is to arrive
to-night, and to address the flock briefly from the church steps,
before he retires to rest his portly form under the Parroco’s humble
roof. The _Cresima_ will be given to-morrow morning at seven.