|A fortnight later, Signora Cecca walked sulkily down the narrow
staircase of the handsome Englishman's little studio. Signora Cecca was
evidently indulging herself in the cheap luxury of a very bad humour. To
an Italian woman of Cecca's peculiarly imperious temperament, indulgence
in that congenial exercise of the spleen may be looked upon as a real
and genuine luxury. Cecca brooded over her love and her wrath and her
jealousy as thwarted children brood over their wrongs in the solitude
of the bedroom where they have been sent to expiate some small everyday
domestic offence in silence and loneliness. The handsome Englishman had
then a sweetheart, an innamorata, in his own country, clearly; and now
she had come to Rome, the perfidious creature, on purpose to visit him.
That was a contingency that Cecca had never for one moment counted upon
when she left her native village in Calabria and followed the
unknown sculptor obediently to Rome, where she rose at once to be the
acknowledged queen of the artists' models.
Not that Cecca had ever seriously thought, on her own part, of marrying
Colin. Mother of heaven, no! for the handsome Englishman was a heretic
and a foreigner; and to marry him would have been utterly shocking to
all Cecca's deepest and most ingrained moral and religious feelings.
For Cecca was certainly by no means devoid of principle. She would have
stuck a knife into you in a quarrel as soon as look at you: she would
have poisoned a rival remorselessly in cold blood under the impelling
influence of treacherous Italian jealousy without a moment's hesitation,
but she would have decidedly drawn a sharp line at positively marrying
a foreigner and a heretic. No, she didn't want to marry Colin. But
she wanted to keep him to herself as her own private and particular
possession: she wanted to have him for her own without external
interference: she wanted to prevent all other women from having anything
to say or to do with her own magnificent handsome Englishman. He needn't
marry _her_, of course, but he certainly mustn't be allowed to go and
marry any other woman.
'If I were a jealous fool,' Cecca thought to herself in her own vigorous
Calabrian patois, 'I should run away and leave him outright, and make
Bazzoni's fortune all at once by letting him model from me. But I'm not
a jealous fool, and I don't want, as the proverb says, to cut off my
own right hand merely in order to fling it in the face of my rival. The
English signorina loves the handsome Englishman--that's certain. Then,
mother of God, the English signorina will have to pay for it. Dear
little Madonna della Guardia, help me to cook her stew for her, and you
shall have tapers, ever so many tapers, and a couple of masses too
in your own little chapel on the headland at Monteleone. There is
no Madonna so helpful at a pinch as our own Madonna della Guardia at
Monteleone. Besides, she isn't too particular. She will give you her aid
on an emergency, and not be so very angry with you after all, because
you've had to go a little bit out of your way, perhaps, to effect your
purpose. Blood of St. Elmo, no: she took candles from the good uncle
when he shot the carabiniere who came to take him up over the affair of
the ransom of the American traveller; and she protected him well for
the candles too, and he has never been arrested for it even to this very
minute.
The English signorina had better look out, by Bacchus, if she wants to
meddle with Cecca Bianchelli and Madonna della Guardia at Monteleone.
Besides, she's nothing but a heretic herself, if it comes to that, so
what on earth, I should like to know, do the blessed saints in heaven
care for her?'
Signora Cecca stood still for a moment in the middle of the Via
Colonna, and asked herself this question passionately, with a series of
gesticulations which in England might possibly have excited unfavourable
attention. For example, she set her teeth hard together, and drew an
imaginary knife deliberately across the throat of an equally imaginary
aerial rival. But in Rome, where people are used to gesticulations,
nobody took the slightest notice of them.
'She has been four times to the studio already,' Signora Cecca went on
to herself, resuming her homeward walk as quietly as if nothing at all
had intervened to diversify it: 'and every time she comes the handsome
Englishman talks to her, makes love to her, fondles her almost before my
very eyes. And she, the basilisk, she loves him too, though she pretends
to be so very coy and particular: she loves him: she cannot deceive me:
I saw it at once, and I see it still through all her silly transparent
pretences. She cannot take in Cecca Bianchelli and Madonna della Guardia
at Monteleone. She loves him, the Saracen, and she shall answer for it.
No other woman but me shall ever dare to love the handsome Englishman.
'The other English signorina, to be sure, she loves him too: but then,
pooh, I don't care for her, I don't mind her, I'm not afraid of her.
The Englishman doesn't love her, that's certain. She's too cold and
white-faced. He loves the little one. The little one is prettier; she
has life in her features; she might almost be an Italian girl, only
she's too insipid. She shall answer for his loving her. I hate her; and
the dear little Madonna shall have her candles.'
As she walked along, a young man in a Roman workman's dress came up
to her wistfully, and looked in her face with a doubtful expression of
bashful timidity. 'Good morning, Signora Cecca,' he said, with curiously
marked politeness. 'You come from the Englishman's studio, I suppose?
You have had a sitting?'
Cecca looked up at him haughtily and coldly. 'You again, Giuseppe,' she
said, with a toss of her beautiful head and a curl of her lip like
a tragedy Cleopatra. 'And what do you want with me? You're always
bothering me now about something or other, on the strength of some
slight previous boyish acquaintance.'
The young man smiled her back an angry smile, Italian fashion. 'It's
Giuseppe now, I suppose,' he said, with a sniff: 'it used to be Beppo
down there yonder at Monteleone. I shall have to take to calling you in
your turn “Signora Francesca,” I'm thinking: you've grown too fine
for me since you came to Rome and got among your rich sculptor
acquaintances. A grand trade indeed, to sit half the day, half
uncovered, in a studio for a pack of Englishmen to take your figure and
make statues of you! I liked you far better, myself, when you poured the
wine out long ago at the osteria by the harbour at Monteleone.'
Cecca looked up at him once more haughtily. 'You did?' she said. 'You
did, did you? Well, that was all very well for a fellow like you, only
fit to tend a horse or chop up rotten olive roots for firewood. But for
me that sort of life didn't answer. I prefer Rome, and fame, and art,
and plenty.' And as she said the last words she clinked the cheap silver
bracelets that she wore upon her arm, and touched the thin gold brooch
that fastened up the light shawl thrown coquettishly across her shapely
shoulders.
'You don't,' Giuseppe answered boldly.
'You are not happy here, Cecca mia, as you were at Monteleone. You worry
your heart out about your Englishman, and he does not love you. What
does he think of you or care for you? You are to him merely a model, a
thing to mould clay from; no more than the draperies and the casts that
he works with so carelessly in his studio. And it is for that that you
throw me over--me, Beppo, who loved you always so dearly at Monteleone.'
Cecca looked at him and laughed lightly. '_You_, Beppo!' she cried, as
if amused and surprised. 'You, my friend! You thought to marry Cecca
Bianchelli! Oh no, little brother; that would be altogether too
ridiculous. There is no model in Rome, do you know, who has such a
figure or earns so much money as I do.'
'But you loved me once, or at least you said so, Signora Francesca.'
'And you should hear how the excellencies admire me, and call me
beautiful, Signor Giuseppe.'
'Cecca, Cecca, you know I have come to Rome for your sake only. I don't
want you to love me, I only want to see you and be near you. Won't you
let me come and see you this evening?'
'Very sorry, Signor Giuseppe. It would have given me the deepest
satisfaction, but I have a prior engagement. A painter of my
acquaintance takes me to the Circo Beale.'
'But, Cecca, Cecca!'
'Well, Beppo?'
'Ah, that is good, “Beppo.” You relent then, Signora?'
'As between old friends, Signor Giuseppe, one may use the diminutive.'
'And you will let me come then tomorrow night and see you for half an
hour--for half an hour only, Cecca?'
'Well, you were a good friend of mine once, and I have need of you for a
project of my own, at the moment. Yes, you may come if you like, Beppo.'
'Ten thousand thanks, Signora. You are busy, I will not keep you. Good
evening, Cecca.'
'Good evening, my friend. You are a good fellow after all, Beppo. Good
evening.'