THE SIGNORINO
One day, when Goneril, much browner and rosier for a week among the
mountains, came in to lunch at noon, she found no signs of that usually
regular repast. The little maid was on her knees polishing the floor;
Miss Prunty was scolding, dusting, ordering dinner, arranging vases, all
at once; strangest of all, Madame Petrucci had taken the oil-cloth cover
from her grand piano, and, seated before it, was practising her sweet
and faded notes, unheedful of the surrounding din and business.
“What’s the matter?” cried Goneril.
“We expect the signorino,” said Miss Prunty.
“And is he going to stay here?”
“Don’t be a fool!” snapped that lady; and then she added, “Go into the
kitchen and get some of the pasty and some bread and cheese--there’s a
good girl.”
“All right!” said Goneril.
Madame Petrucci stopped her vocalising. “You shall have all the better
a dinner to compensate you, my Gonerilla!” She smiled sweetly, and then
again became Zerlina.
Goneril cut her lunch, and took it out of doors to share with her
companion, Angiolino. He was harvesting the first corn under the olives,
but at noon it was too hot to work. Sitting still there was, however, a
cool breeze that gently stirred the sharp-edged olive-leaves.
Angiolino lay down at full length and munched his bread and cheese in
perfect happiness. Goneril kept shifting about to get herself into the
narrow shadow cast by the split and writhen trunk.
“How aggravating it is!” she cried. “In England, where there’s no
sun, there’s plenty of shade; and here, where the sun is like a
mustard-plaster on one’s back, the leaves are all set edgewise on
purpose that they sha’n’t cast any shadow!”
Angiolino made no answer to this intelligent remark.
“He is going to sleep again!” cried Goneril, stopping her lunch in
despair. “He is going to sleep, and there are no end of things I want to
know. Angiolino!”
“_Si_, signora,” murmured the boy.
“Tell me about Signor Graziano.”
“He is our padrone; he is never here.”
“But he is coming to-day. Wake up, wake up, Angiolino. I tell you, he is
on the way!”
“Between life and death there are so many combinations,” drawled the
boy, with Tuscan incredulity and sententiousness.
“Ah!” cried the girl, with a little shiver of impatience. “Is he young?”
“_Che!_”
“Is he old then?”
“_Neppure!_”
“What is he like? He must be _something_.”
“He’s our padrone,” repeated Angiolino, in whose imagination Signor
Graziano could occupy no other place.
“How stupid you are!” exclaimed the young English girl.
“Maybe,” said Angiolino, stolidly.
“Is he a good padrone? Do you like him?”
“Rather!” The boy smiled and raised himself on one elbow; his eyes
twinkled with good-humoured malice.
“My _babbo_ had much better wine than _quel signore_,” he said.
“But that is wrong!” cried Goneril, quite shocked.
“Who knows?”
After this conversation flagged. Goneril tried to imagine what a great
musician could be like: long hair, of course; her imagination did not
get much beyond the hair. He would of course be much older now than his
portrait. Then she watched Angiolino cutting the corn, and learned how
to tie the swathes together. She was occupied in this useful employment
when the noise of wheels made them both stop and look over the wall.
“Here’s the padrone!” cried the boy.
“Oh, he is old!” said Goneril. “He is old and brown, like a
coffee-bean.”
“To be old and good is better than youth with malice,” suggested
Angiolino, by way of consolation.
“I suppose so,” acquiesced Goneril.
Nevertheless she went in to dinner a little disappointed.
The signorino was not in the house; he had gone up to the villa; but
he had sent a message that later in the evening he intended to pay his
respects to his old friends. Madame Petrucci was beautifully dressed in
soft black silk, old lace, and a white Indian shawl. Miss Prunty had on
her starchiest collar and most formal tie. Goneril saw it was necessary
that she, likewise should deck herself in her best. She was much
too young and impressionable not to be influenced by the flutter of
excitement and interest which filled the whole of the little cottage.
Goneril, too, was excited and anxious, although Signor Graziano had
seemed so old and like a coffee-bean. She made no progress in the piece
of embroidery she was working as a present for the two old ladies,
jumping up and down to look out of the window. When, about eight
o’clock, the door-bell rang, Goneril blushed, Madame Petrucci gave
a pretty little shriek, Miss Prunty jumped up and rang for coffee.
A moment afterward the signorino entered. While he was greeting her
hostesses Goneril cast a rapid glance at him. He was tall for an
Italian, rather bent and rather gray; fifty at least--therefore very
old. He certainly was brown, but his features were fine and good, and he
had a distinguished and benevolent air that somehow made her think of
an abbe, a French abbe of the last century. She could quite imagine him
saying, “_Enfant de St. Louis, montez au ciel!_”
Thus far had she got in her meditations when she felt herself addressed
in clear, half-mocking tones:
“And how, this evening, is Madamigella Ruth?”
So he had seen her this evening binding his corn.
“I am quite well, padrone,” she said, smiling shyly.
The two old ladies looked on amazed, for of course they were not in the
secret.
“Signor Graziano, Miss Goneril Hamelyn,” said Miss Prunty, rather
severely.
Goneril felt that the time had come for silence and good manners. She
sat quite quiet over her embroidery, listening to the talk of Sontag, of
Clementi, of musicians and singers dead and gone. She noticed that the
ladies treated Signore Graziano with the utmost reverence, even the
positive Miss Prunty furling her opinions in deference to his gayest
hint. They talked too of Madame Lilli, and always as if she were still
young and fair, as if she had died yesterday, leaving the echo of her
triumph loud behind her. And yet all this had happened years before
Goneril had ever seen the light.
“Mees Goneril is feeling very young!” said the signorino, suddenly
turning his sharp, kind eyes upon her.
“Yes,” said Goneril, all confusion.
Madame Petrucci looked almost annoyed--the gay, serene little lady that
nothing ever annoyed.
“It is she that is young!” she cried, in answer to an unspoken thought.
“She is a baby!”
“Oh, I am seventeen!” said Goneril.
They all laughed, and seemed at ease again.
“Yes, yes; she is very young,” said the signorino.
But a little shadow had fallen across their placid entertainment: the
spirit had left their memories; they seemed to have grown shapeless,
dusty, as the fresh and comely faces of dead Etruscan kings crumble into
mould at the touch of the pitiless sunshine.
“Signorino,” said Madame Petrucci, presently, “if you will accompany me
we will perform one of your charming melodies.”
Signor Graziano rose a little stiffly and led the pretty, withered
little diva to the piano.
Goneril looked on, wondering, admiring. The signorino’s thin white hands
made a delicate, fluent melody, reminding her of running water under
the rippled shade of trees, and, like a high, sweet bird, the thin,
penetrating notes of the singer rose, swelled, and died away, admirably
true and just even in this latter weakness. At the end Signor Graziano
stopped his playing to give time for an elaborate cadenza. Suddenly
Madame Petrucci gasped; a sharp discordant sound cracked the delicate
finish of her singing. She put her handkerchief to her mouth.
“Bah!” she said, “this evening I am abominably husky.”
The tears rose to Goneril’s eyes. Was it so hard to grow old? This doubt
made her voice loudest of all in the chorus of mutual praise and thanks
which covered the song’s abrupt finale.
And then there came a terrible ordeal. Miss Prunty, anxious to divert
the current of her friend’s ideas, had suggested that the girl should
sing. Signor Graziano and madame insisted; they would take no refusal.
“Sing, sing, little bird!” cried the old lady.
“But, madame, how can one--after you?”
The homage in the young girl’s voice made the little diva more
good-humouredly insistent than before, and Goneril was too well-bred
to make a fuss. She stood by the piano wondering which to choose, the
Handels that she always drawled or the Pinsuti that she always galloped.
Suddenly she came by an inspiration.
“Madame,” she pleaded, “may I sing one of Angiolino’s songs?”
“Whatever you like, _cara mia_.”
And, standing by the piano, her arms hanging loose, she began a chant
such as the peasants use working under the olives. Her voice was small
and deep, with a peculiar thick sweetness that suited the song, half
humourous, half pathetic. These were the words she sang:
“Vorrei morir di morte piccinina,
Morta la sera e viva la mattina.
Vorrei morire, e non vorrei morire,
Vorrei veder chi mi piange e chi ride;
Vorrei morir, e star sulle finestre,
Vorrei veder chi mi cuce la veste;
Vorrei morir, e stare sulla scala,
Vorrei veder chi mi porta la bara:
Vorrei morir, e vorre’ alzar la voce,
Vorrei veder chi mi porta la croce.”
“Very well chosen, my dear,” said Miss Prunty, when the song was
finished.
“And very well sung, my Gonerilla!” cried the old lady.
But the signorino went up to the piano and shook hands with her.
“Little Mees Goneril,” he said, “you have the makings of an artist.”
The two old ladies stared, for, after all, Goneril’s performance had
been very simple. You see, they were better versed in music than in
human nature.