NEW AND STRANGE EXPERIENCES.
When I awoke the sun was streaming in through the chinks of the
shutters, and a servant was standing at my bedside with a cup of coffee
and some rolls. But I felt no disposition to attack my breakfast,
and lay still, with a dreamy sensation as my eyes wandered round the
unfamiliar room.
I saw a great, dim chamber, with a painted ceiling rising sky-high
above me; plaster walls, coarsely stencilled in arabesques; a red-tiled
floor, strewn here and there with squares of carpet; a few old and
massive pieces of furniture, and not the vestige of a stove. The
bed on which I lay was a vast four-post structure, mountains high,
with a baldaquin in faded crimson damask, and was reflected, rather
libellously, in a glass-front of a wardrobe opposite.
"I shall never, never feel that it is a normal, human bedroom," I
thought, appalled by the gloomy state of my surroundings. Then I drank
my coffee, and, climbing out of bed, went across to the window, and
unshuttered it.
An exclamation of pleasure rose to my lips at the sight which greeted
me.
Below flowed the full waters of the Arno, spanned by a massive bridge
of shining white marble, and reflecting on its waves the bluest of blue
heavens. A brilliant and delicate sunshine was shed over all, bringing
out the lights and shades, the differences of tint and surface, of the
tall old house on the opposite bank, and falling on the minute spires
of a white marble church perched at the very edge of the stream.
The sight of this toy-like structure--surely the smallest and daintiest
place of worship in the world--served to deepen the sense of unreality
which was hourly gaining hold upon me.
"I wonder where the Leaning Tower is," I thought, as I hastily drew on
my stockings, for standing about on the red-tiled floor had made me
very cold, in spite of the sunshine flooding in through the windows;
"what would they say at home if they heard I had been twenty-four hours
in Pisa without so much as seeing it in the distance."
But I did not allow myself to think of home, and devoted my energies
to bringing myself up to the high standard of neatness which would
certainly be expected of me.
I found the ladies sitting together in a large and cold apartment,
which was more homelike than the yellow room of yesterday, inasmuch
as its bareness was relieved by a variety of modern ornaments,
photograph-frames, and other trifles, all as hideous as your latter-day
Italian loves to make them. They greeted me with ceremony, making
many polite inquiries as to my health and comfort, and invited me to
sit down. The room was very cold, in spite of the morning sun, whose
light, moreover, was intercepted by venetian blinds. The chilly little
Marchesa had her hands in her muff, while her daughter warmed hers over
a _scaldino_, a small earthern pot filled with hot wood ashes, which
she held in her lap.
The amiable lady in the dressing-jacket was evidently a more
warm-blooded creature, for she stitched on, undaunted by the cold, at a
large and elaborate piece of embroidery, taking her part meanwhile in
the ceaseless and rapid flow of chatter.
It was rather a shock to me to gather that she was the wife of the
charming son of the house; to whom, moreover, a fresh charm was added,
when it came out that his name was Romeo. I had put her down for a
woman of middle age, but I learned subsequently that she was only
twenty-eight years old, and had brought her husband a very handsome
dowry. The pair were childless after several years of marriage, and
they lived permanently at the Palazzo Brogi, according to the old
patriarchal Italian custom, which, like most old customs, is dying out.
I sat there, stupidly wondering if I should ever be able to understand
Italian, replying lamely enough to the remarks in French which were
thrown out to me at decent intervals, and encountering every now and
then with some alarm the suspicious glances of the Signorina Bianca.
Once the kind Marchesina Annunziata--Romeo's wife--drew my attention
with simple pride to a leather chair embroidered with gold, her own
handiwork, as I managed to make out.
I smiled and nodded the proper amount of admiration, and wished
secretly that my feet were not so cold, for the tiled floor struck
chill through the carpet. Bianca offered me a scaldino presently, and
the Marchesa explained that she wished the English lessons to begin on
the following day. After that I sat there in almost unbroken silence
till twelve o'clock, when the casual man-servant strolled in and
announced that lunch was ready.
The dining-room, a large and stony apartment with a vaulted roof, was
situated on the ground-floor, and here we found the Marchesino Romeo
and the old Marchese, to whom I was introduced. The meal was slight but
excellently cooked; and the sweet Tuscan wine I found delicious. Romeo,
who sat next to me, and attended to my wants with his air of gentle and
serious courtesy, addressed a few remarks to me in English and then
subsided into a graceful silence, leaving the conversation entirely in
the hands of his womenkind.
After lunch, a drive and round of calls was proposed by the ladies, who
invited me to join them. The thought of being shut up in a carriage
with these three strange women, all speaking their unknown tongue, was
too much for me, and gathering courage, the courage of desperation, I
announced that unless my services were required I should prefer to go
for a walk.
The ladies looked at me, and then at one another, and the good-natured
Annunziata burst into a laugh. "It is an English custom," she
explained. "You must not go beyond the city walls, Miss Meredith, not
even into the Casine; it would not be safe," said the Marchesa; while
Bianca looked scrutinizingly at my square, low-heeled shoes which
contrasted sharply with her own.
It was with a feeling of relief, some twenty minutes later, that,
peeping from the window of my room, I saw them all drive off,
elaborately apparelled, in a closed carriage; Romeo, bareheaded,
speeding them from the steps.
Then I sat down and wrote off an unnaturally cheerful letter to the
people at home, only pausing now and then when the tears rose to my
eyes and blurred my sight.
"I hope I haven't overdone it," I thought, as I addressed the envelope
and proceeded to dress. "I'm not sure that there isn't a slightly
inebriated tone about the whole thing, and mother is so quick at
reading between the lines."
I passed across the corridor and down the stair to the first landing,
where I lingered a moment. A covered gallery ran along the back of the
house, and through the tall and dingy windows I could see a surging,
unequal mass of old red roofs.
"How Jenny would love it all," I thought, as I turned away with a sigh.
As I reached the street door, Romeo emerged from that mysterious
retreat of his on the ground-floor, where he appeared to pass his time
in some solitary pursuit, looked at me, bowed, and withdrew.
"At last!" I cried, inwardly, as I sped down the steps. At last I could
breathe again, at last I was out in the sunlight and in the wind, away
from the musty chilliness, the lurking shadows of that stifling palace.
Oh, the joy of freedom and of solitude! Was it only hours? Surely it
must be years that I had been imprisoned behind those thick old walls
and iron guarded windows. On, on I went with rapid foot in the teeth
of the biting wind and the glare of the scorching sunlight, scarcely
noticing my surroundings in the first rapture of recovered freedom. But
by degrees the strangeness, the beauty of what I saw, began to assert
themselves.
I had turned off from the Lung' Arno, and was threading my way among
the old and half-deserted streets which led to the cathedral.
What a dead, world-forgotten place, and yet how beautiful in its
desolation! Everywhere were signs of a present poverty, everywhere of a
past magnificence.
The men with their sombreros and cloaks worn toga fashion; their
handsome, melancholy faces and stately gait; the women bareheaded,
graceful, drawing water from the fountain into copper vessels, moved
before me like figures from an old-world drama.
Here and there was a little, empty piazza, the tall houses abutting on
it at different angles, without sidewalks, the grass growing up between
the stones. It seemed only waiting for first gentleman and second
gentleman to come forward and carry on their dialogue while the great
"set" was being prepared at the back of the stage.
The old walls, roughly patched with modern brick and mortar, had bits
of exquisite carving imbedded in them like fossils; and at every street
corner the house leek sprang from the interstices of a richly wrought
moulding. A great palace, with a wonderful façade, had been turned into
a wineshop; and the chestnut-sellers dispensed their wares in little
gloomy caverns hollowed out beneath the abodes of princes. Already the
nameless charm of Italy was beginning to work on me; that magic spell
from which--let us once come under its influence--we can never hope to
be released.
A long and straggling street led me at last to the Piazzi del Duomo,
and here for a moment I paused breathless, regardless of the icy blast
which swept across from the sea.
I thought then, and I think still, that nowhere in the world is there
anything which, in its own way, can equal the picture that greeted my
astonished vision.
The wide and straggling grass-grown piazza, bounded on one side by
the city wall, on the other by the low wall of the Campo Santo, with
the wind whistling drearily across it, struck me as the very type and
symbol of desolation.
At one end rose the Leaning Tower, pallid, melancholy, defying the
laws of nature in a disappointingly spiritless fashion. Close against
it the magnificent bulk of the cathedral reared itself, a marvel of
mellow tints, of splendid outline, and richly modelled surfaces. And,
divided from this by a strip of rank grass, up sprang the little quaint
baptistery, with its extraordinary air of freshness and of fantastic
gaiety, looking as though it had been turned out of a mould the day
before yesterday.
Such richness, such forlornness, struck curiously on the sense. It was
as though, wandering along some solitary shore, one had found a heaped
treasure glittering undisturbed on the open sand.
I strolled for some time spell-bound about the cathedral, not caring
to multiply impressions by entering, shivering a little in the wind
which held a recollection of the sea, and was at the same time cold
and feverish. By and by, however, I made my way into the Campo Santo,
lingering fascinated in those strange sculptured arcades, with the
visions of life and death, and hell and heaven, painted on the walls.
One or two cypresses rose from the little grass-plot in the middle,
and in the rank grass the jonquils were already in flower. I plucked a
few of these and fastened them in my dress. They had a sweet, peculiar
odour, melancholy, enervating.
The bright light was beginning to fail as I sped back hurriedly through
the streets.
It was Epiphany, and the children were blowing on long glass
trumpets. Every now and then the harsh sound echoed through the stony
thoroughfare. It fell upon my overwrought senses like a sound of doom.
The flowers in my bodice smelt of death; there was death, I thought,
crying out in every old stone of the city.
The palazzo looked almost like home, and I fled up the dim stairs with
a greater feeling of relief than that with which an hour or two ago I
had hastened down them.
After dinner the Marchesa received her friends in the yellow
drawing-room.
A wood fire was lighted on the flat, open hearth of the stove, and
a side table was spread with a few light refreshments--a bottle of
Marsala wine, and a round cake covered with bright green sugar, being
the most important items.
About eight o'clock the visitors began to arrive, and in half an hour
nine or ten ladies and three or four gentlemen were clustered on the
damask sofas, talking at a great rate, and gesticulating in their
graceful, eager fashion. Bianca had withdrawn into a corner with a
pair of contemporaries, whose long, stiff waists, high-heeled shoes,
and elaborately dressed hair, resembled her own. The old Marchese sat
apart, silent and contemplative, as was his wont, and Romeo, drawing a
chair close to mine, questioned me in his precise, restricted English
as to my afternoon walk.
This parliament of gossip, which, as I afterwards discovered, occurred
regularly three times a week, was prolonged till midnight, but, kind
Annunziata noticing my tired looks, I was able to make my escape by ten
o'clock.
As I climbed into my bed, worn out by the crowded experiences of the
day, there rose before me suddenly a vision of the parlour at home;
of mother sewing by the fireside; of Jenny and Rosalind at work in the
lamplight; of Hubert coming in with the evening papers and bits of
literary gossip.
"If they could only see me," I thought, "alone in this unnatural place,
with no one to be fond of me, with no one even being aware that I have
a Christian name."
This last touch struck me as so pathetic that the tears began to pour
down my face. But the tall bed, with the faded baldaquin, if oppressive
to the imagination, was, it must be confessed, exceedingly comfortable,
and it was not long before I forgot my troubles in sleep.