THE OLD TOWN.
The setting sunbeams slant over the antique gateway of Sorrento, fusing
into a golden bronze the brown freestone vestments of old Saint Antonio,
who with his heavy stone mitre and upraised hands has for centuries kept
watch thereupon.
A quiet time he has of it up there in the golden Italian air, in
petrified act of blessing, while orange lichens and green mosses from
year to year embroider quaint patterns on the seams of his sacerdotal
vestments, and small tassels of grass volunteer to ornament the folds
of his priestly drapery, and golden showers of blossoms from some more
hardy plant fall from his ample sleeve-cuffs. Little birds perch and
chitter and wipe their beaks unconcernedly, now on the tip of his nose
and now on the point of his mitre, while the world below goes on its way
pretty much as it did when the good saint was alive, and, in despair of
the human brotherhood, took to preaching to the birds and the fishes.
Whoever passed beneath this old arched gateway, thus saint-guarded,
in the year of our Lord's grace--, might have seen under its shadow,
sitting opposite to a stand of golden oranges, the little Agnes.
A very pretty picture was she, reader.--with such a face as you
sometimes see painted in those wayside shrines of sunny Italy, where the
lamp burns pale at evening, and gillyflower and cyclamen are renewed
with every morning.
She might have been fifteen or thereabouts, but was so small of stature
that she seemed yet a child. Her black hair was parted in a white
unbroken seam down to the high forehead, whose serious arch, like that
of a cathedral-door, spoke of thought and prayer. Beneath the shadows of
this brow lay brown, translucent eyes, into whose thoughtful depths one
might look as pilgrims gaze into the waters of some saintly well, cool
and pure down to the unblemished sand at the bottom. The small lips had
a gentle compression which indicated a repressed strength of feeling;
while the straight line of the nose, and the flexible, delicate nostril,
were perfect as in those sculptured fragments of the antique which the
soil of Italy so often gives forth to the day from the sepulchres of the
past. The habitual pose of the head and face had the shy uplooking grace
of a violet; and yet there was a grave tranquillity of expression, which
gave a peculiar degree of character to the whole figure.
At the moment at which we have called your attention, the fair head is
bent, the long eyelashes lie softly down on the pale, smooth cheek; for
the Ave Maria bell is sounding from the Cathedral of Sorrento, and the
child is busy with her beads.
By her side sits a woman of some threescore years, tall, stately, and
squarely formed, with ample breadth of back and size of chest, like the
robust dames of Sorrento. Her strong Roman nose, the firm, determined
outline of her mouth, and a certain energy in every motion, speak the
woman of will and purpose. There is a degree of vigor in the decision
with which she lays down her spindle and bows her head, as a good
Christian of those days would, at the swinging of the evening bell.
But while the soul of the child in its morning freshness, free from
pressure or conscience of earthly care, rose like an illuminated mist
to heaven, the words the white-haired woman repeated were twined with
threads of worldly prudence,--thoughts of how many oranges she had
sold, with a rough guess at the probable amount for the day,--and her
fingers wandered from her beads a moment to see if the last coin had
been swept from the stand into her capacious pocket, and her eyes
wandering after them suddenly made her aware of the fact that a handsome
cavalier was standing in the gate, regarding her pretty grandchild with
looks of undisguised admiration.
"Let him look!" she said to herself, with a grim clasp on her
rosary;--"a fair face draws buyers, and our oranges must be turned into
money; but he who does more than look has an affair with me;--so gaze
away, my master, and take it out in buying oranges!--_Ave, Maria! ora
pro nobis, nunc et,_" etc., etc.
A few moments, and the wave of prayer which had flowed down the quaint
old shadowy street, bowing all heads as the wind bowed the scarlet
tassels of neighboring clover-fields, was passed, and all the world
resumed the work of earth just where they left off when the bell began.
"Good even to you, pretty maiden!" said the cavalier, approaching the
stall of the orange-woman with the easy, confident air of one secure
of a ready welcome, and bending down on the yet prayerful maiden the
glances of a pair of piercing hazel eyes that looked out on each side of
his aquiline nose with the keenness of a falcon's.
"Good even to you, pretty one! We shall take you for a saint, and
worship you in right earnest, if you raise not those eyelashes soon."
"Sir! my lord!" said the girl,--a bright color flushing into her smooth
brown cheeks, and her large dreamy eyes suddenly upraised with a
flutter, as of a bird about to take flight.
"Agnes, bethink yourself!" said the white-haired dame;--"the gentleman
asks the price of your oranges;--be alive, child!"
"Ah, my lord," said the young girl, "here are a dozen fine ones."
"Well, you shall give them me, pretty one," said the young man, throwing
a gold piece down on the stand with a careless ring.
"Here, Agnes, run to the stall of Raphael the poulterer for change,"
said the adroit dame, picking up the gold.
"Nay, good mother, by your leave," said the unabashed cavalier; "I make
my change with youth and beauty thus!" And with the word he stooped down
and kissed the fair forehead between the eyes.
"For shame, Sir!" said the elderly woman, raising her distaff,--her
great glittering eyes flashing beneath her silver hair like tongues of
lightning from a white cloud, "Have a care!--this child is named for
blessed Saint Agnes, and is under her protection."
"The saints must pray for us, when their beauty makes us forget
ourselves," said the young cavalier, with a smile. "Look me in the face,
little one," he added;--"say, wilt thou pray for me?"
The maiden raised her large serious eyes, and surveyed the haughty,
handsome face with that look of sober inquiry which one sometimes sees
in young children, and the blush slowly faded from, her cheek, as a
cloud fades after sunset.
"Yes, my lord," she answered, with a grave simplicity,--"I will pray for
you."
"And hang this upon the shrine of Saint Agnes for my sake," he added,
drawing from his finger a diamond ring, which he dropped into her hand;
and before mother or daughter could add another word or recover from
their surprise, he had thrown the corner of his mantle over his shoulder
and was off down the narrow street, humming the refrain of a gay song.
"You have struck a pretty dove with that bolt," said another cavalier,
who appeared to have been observing the proceeding, and now, stepping
forward, joined him.
"Like enough," said the first, carelessly.
"The old woman keeps her mewed up like a singing-bird," said the second;
"and if a fellow wants speech of her, it's as much as his crown is
worth; for Dame Elsie has a strong arm, and her distaff is known to be
heavy."
"Upon my word," said the first cavalier, stopping and throwing a glance
backward,--"where do they keep her?"
"Oh, in a sort of pigeon's nest up above the Gorge; but one never sees
her, except under the fire of her grandmother's eyes. The little one
is brought up for a saint, they say, and goes nowhere but to mass,
confession, and the sacrament."
"Humph!" said the other, "she looks like some choice old picture of Our
Lady,--not a drop of human blood in her. When I kissed her forehead, she
looked into my face as grave and innocent as a babe. One is tempted to
try what one can do in such a case."
"Beware the grandmother's distaff!" said the other, laughing.
"I've seen old women before," said the cavalier, as they turned down the
street and were lost to view.
Meanwhile the grandmother and granddaughter were roused from the mute
astonishment in which they were gazing after the young cavalier by a
tittering behind them; and a pair of bright eyes looked out upon, them
from beneath a bundle of long, crimson-headed clover, whose rich carmine
tints were touched to brighter life by setting sunbeams.
There stood Giulietta, the head coquette of the Sorrento girls, with her
broad shoulders, full chest, and great black eyes, rich and heavy as
those of the silver-haired ox for whose benefit she had been cutting
clover. Her bronzed cheek was smooth as that of any statue, and showed a
color like that of an open pomegranate; and the opulent, lazy abundance
of her ample form, with her leisurely movements, spoke an easy and
comfortable nature,--that is to say, when Giulietta was pleased; for it
is to be remarked that there lurked certain sparkles deep down in her
great eyes, which might, on occasion, blaze out into sheet-lightning,
like her own beautiful skies, which, lovely as they are, can thunder
and sulk with terrible earnestness when the fit takes them. At present,
however, her face was running over with mischievous merriment, as she
slyly pinched little Agnes by the ear.
"So you know not yon gay cavalier, little sister?" she said, looking
askance at her from under her long lashes.
"No, indeed! What has an honest girl to do with knowing gay cavaliers?"
said Dame Elsie, bestirring herself with packing the remaining oranges
into a basket, which she covered trimly with a heavy linen towel of her
own weaving. "Girls never come to good who let their eyes go walking
through the earth, and have the names of all the wild gallants on
their tongues. Agnes knows no such nonsense,--blessed be her gracious
patroness, with Our Lady and Saint Michael!"
"I hope there is no harm in knowing what is right before one's eyes,"
said Giulietta. "Anybody must be blind and deaf not to know the Lord
Adrian. All the girls in Sorrento know him. They say he is even greater
than he appears,--that he is brother to the King himself; at any rate, a
handsomer and more gallant gentleman never wore spurs."
"Let him keep to his own kind," said Elsie. "Eagles make bad work in
dovecots. No good comes of such gallants for us."
"Nor any harm, that I ever heard of," said Giulietta. "But let me see,
pretty one,--what did he give you? Holy Mother! what a handsome ring!"
"It is to hang on the shrine of Saint Agnes," said the younger girl,
looking up with simplicity.
A loud laugh was the first answer to this communication. The scarlet
clover-tops shook and quivered with the merriment.
"To hang on the shrine of Saint Agnes!" Giulietta repeated. "That is a
little too good!"
"Go, go, you baggage!" said Elsie, wrathfully brandishing her spindle.
"If ever you get a husband, I hope he'll give you a good beating! You
need it, I warrant! Always stopping on the bridge there, to have cracks
with the young men! Little enough you know of saints, I dare say! So
keep away from my child!--Come, Agnes," she said, as she lifted the
orange-basket on to her head; and, straightening her tall form, she
seized the girl by the hand to lead her away.