SI VIEILLESSE POUVAIT!
Signor Graziano’s usual week of holiday passed and lengthened into
almost two months, and still he stayed on at the villa. The two old
ladies were highly delighted.
“At last he has taken my advice!” cried Miss Prunty. “I always told him
those premature gray hairs came from late hours and Roman air.”
Madame Petrucci shook her head and gave a meaning smile. Her friendship
with the signorino had begun when he was a lad and she a charming
married woman; like many another friendship, it had begun with a
flirtation, and perhaps (who knows?) she thought the flirtation had
revived.
As for Goneril, she considered him the most charming old man she had
ever known, and liked nothing so much as to go out a walk with him.
That, indeed, was one of the signorino’s pleasures; he loved to take
the young girl all over his gardens and vineyards, talking to her in the
amiable, half-petting, half-mocking manner that he had adopted from the
first; and twice a week he gave her a music lesson.
“She has a splendid organ!” he would say.
“_Vous croyez_?” fluted Madame Petrucci, with the vilest accent and the
most aggravating smile imaginable.
It was the one hobby of the signorino’s that she regarded with
disrespect.
Goneril too was a little bored by the music lesson, but, on the other
hand, the walks delighted her.
One day Goneril was out with her friend.
“Are the peasants very much afraid of you, signore?” she asked.
“Am I such a tyrant?” counter-questioned the signorino.
“No; but they are always begging me to ask you things. Angiolino wants
to know if he may go for three days to see his uncle at Fiesole.”
“Of course.”
“But why, then, don’t they ask you themselves? Is it they think me so
cheeky?”
“Perhaps they think I can refuse you nothing.”
“_Che!_ In that case they would ask Madame Petrucci.”
Goneril ran on to pick some China roses. The signorino stopped
confounded.
“It is impossible!” he cried. “She cannot think I am in love with
Giulia! She cannot think I am so old as that!”
The idea seemed horrible to him. He walked on very quickly till he came
up to Goneril, who was busy plucking roses in a hedge.
“For whom are those flowers?” he asked.
“Some are for you and some are for Madame Petrucci.”
“She is a charming woman, Madame Petrucci.”
“A dear old lady,” murmured Goneril, much more interested in her posy.
“Old, do you call her?” said the signorino, rather anxiously. “I should
scarcely call her that, though of course she is a good deal older than
either of us.”
“Either of us!” Goneril looked up astounded. Could the signorino have
suddenly gone mad?
He blushed a little under his brown skin that had reminded her of a
coffee-bean.
“She is a good ten years older than I am,” he explained.
“Ah, well, ten years isn’t much.”
“You don’t think so?” he cried, delighted. Who knows? she might not
think even thirty too much.
“Not at that age,” said Goneril, blandly.
Signor Graziano could think of no reply.
But from that day one might have dated a certain assumption of
youthfulness in his manners. At cards it was always the signorino and
Goneril against the two elder ladies; in his conversation, too, it
was to the young girl that he constantly appealed, as if she were his
natural companion--she, and not his friends of thirty years. Madame
Petrucci, always serene and kind, took no notice of these little
changes, but they were particularly irritating to Miss Prunty, who was,
after all, only four years older than the signorino.
That lady had, indeed, become more than usually sharp and foreboding.
She received the signorino’s gay effusions in ominous silence, and would
frown darkly while Madame Petrucci petted her “little bird,” as she
called Goneril. Once, indeed, Miss Prunty was heard to remark that it
was tempting Providence to have dealings with a creature whose very
name was a synonym for ingratitude. But the elder lady only smiled and
declared that her Gonerilla was charming, delicious, a real sunshine in
the house.
“Now I call on you to support me, signorino,” she cried one evening,
when the three elders sat together in the room, while Goneril watered
the roses on the terrace. “Is not my Gonerilla a charming little
_bebe_?”
Signor Graziano withdrew his eyes from the window.
“Most charming, certainly, but scarcely such a child. She is seventeen,
you know, my dear signora.”
“Seventeen! _Santo Dio!_ And what is one at seventeen but an innocent,
playful, charming little kitten?”
“You are always right, madame,” agreed the signorino, but he looked as
if he thought she were very wrong.
“Of course I am right,” laughed the little lady. “Come here, my
Gonerilla, and hold my skein for me. Signor Graziano is going to charm
us with one of his delightful airs.”
“I hoped she would sing,” faltered the signorino.
“Who? Gonerilla? Nonsense, my friend. She winds silk much better than
she sings.”
Goneril laughed; she was not at all offended. But Signor Graziano made
several mistakes in his playing. At last he left the piano. “I cannot
play to-night,” he cried. “I am not in the humour. Goneril, will you
come and walk with me on the terrace?”
Before the girl could reply Miss Prunty had darted an angry glance at
Signor Graziano.
“Good Lord, what fools men are!” she ejaculated. “And do you think, now,
I’m going to let that girl, who’s just getting rid of her malaria, go
star-gazing with any old idiot while all the mists are curling out of
the valleys?”
“Brigida, my love, you forget yourself,” said Madame Petrucci.
“Bah!” cried the signorino. He was evidently out of temper.
The little lady hastened to smooth the troubled waters. “Talking of
malaria,” she began, in her serenest manner, “I always remember what my
dearest Madame Lilli told me. It was at one of Prince Teano’s concerts.
You remember, signorino?”
“_Che!_ How should I remember?” he exclaimed. “It was a lifetime ago,
dead and forgotten.”
The old lady shrank, as if a glass of water had been rudely thrown in
her face. She said nothing, staring blindly.
“Go to bed, Goneril!” cried Miss Prunty, in a voice of thunder.