CHAP-BOOK STORIES
By Various Authors
Being a Miscellany of Curious and Interesting Tales; Histories, Newly composed by Many Celebrated Writers and very delightful to read.
1896, By Herbert S. Stone & Co
Chicago
CONTENTS
[ THE MAKING OF MONSIEUR LESCARBOT’S BALLAD ]
WHITHER THOU GOEST
By Katharine Bates
THE wind stirred the tops of the maple trees in the Quinsby front yard, and the old man who stood on the steps, watching the shadows and the moonlight, sighed as he heard the soft rustling sound. He glanced back into the house, through the hall, into the bedroom, where his wife was lighting a candle preparatory to turning down the bed.
“I reckon I’ll jest step down there a minit,” he whispered to himself, and hurriedly but softly went down the steps. Far down in a corner of the yard, near the front fence, a hammock hung between two small pin oaks, and it was here the old man went, looking back uneasily now and then, as if he expected a call from his wife. The hammock was an old one, and had evidently hung there all summer, for the meshes were torn and all the gay colors had faded to a dingy gray. It tossed lightly in the breeze as the wind grew stronger, and the old man’s hand trembled as he caught at its swaying folds.
“Girls,” he whispered softly, “are you both here? Are you pushing the swing, Winnie?”
A sudden flutter went over the leaves of a lilac bush near, and he turned quickly to it. “That’s Nan’s laugh-gigglin’ at yore old pa jest as usual, Nanny girl?”
“Father,” his wife called from the porch, “you better come in.”
He turned and hurried back to her. She stood on the steps with the candle still in her hand, its tiny flame looking almost blue in the moonlight.
“Mebbe a storm is cornin’ up and you’ll ketch cold,” she said when he reached her. Her voice was stern, but the look in her gray eyes was as sad as the trembling of his lips when he said to her, “Ain’t it jest the sorter night the girls use’ to beg to stay out, and not have to go to bed yet a while?”
“It’s a mighty pretty night,” she answered. She followed him into their room, closing the hall door after her.
“Oh, don’t shet it, Mira, don’t! It seems as if you was shettin’ the children out.”
Mrs. Quinsby turned to him. “Hiram, I must speak out to you,” she said. “I don’t see any more’n you why the Lord thought best to take our girls, our two good, pretty girls, but He has done it, and it ain’t right for you to be lettin’ yoreself fancy you hear ‘em ‘round on nights like this. I’ve faith to believe if we can keep ourselves outer sin for the rest of our days we shall see the children again—but not here, Hiram, not here in the old place.”
“I know it ain’t Nan and Winnie sure ‘nough,” Hiram answered apologetically, “but these nights make me think of ‘em a terrible lot—and the leaves goin’ so and so in the wind does sound real like Nan’s laugh. Mira, I was out in the garden while you was puttin’ the dishes away and strainin’ the milk, and jest as the moon came out and the wind started up I heard a laugh like Nan’s, and then something danced by me that must have been Winnie. I hurried down the path after it, and there by the poppy bed were the girls, rompin’ jest like children again, ‘most grown girls that they are. As the wind came up more they laughed again, not so soft as they had been doin’, but a real burst of gay laughin’ like they use’ to work themselves up to, and then they ran towards the arbor and peeped out from the honeysuckle, and Nan called, ‘Here, Pa,’ and Winnie sorter sang out, ‘Father, Father,’ in her soft way.” Mrs. Quinsby put her hands on his shoulders and gave him a little shake. Her eyes were frightened, and her voice came quick and stern.
“Hush, Father,” she said. “You are doin’ yoreself an injury. The girls are in heaven, not here, and don’t you let go yore grip on yore mind. Think of me, Hiram—you’ve got me left, and I can’t stand the thought of the lonesomeness if you let your senses go. You and me have been married so many years, Hiram, we could n’t get on without each other. Why, it seems to me the good Lord would surely let me get foolish too—mebbe it ain’t fittin’ for one of my years to say it, but I’d ruther, yes, I’d ruther if it comes down to choosin’ between my senses and you, Hiram!”
The far-away look disappeared from Hiram’s eyes. “I was jest thinkin’, Mira,” he said reassuringly. “It was only that the night was so powerful pretty. But now we won’t talk of the children any more.”
Mrs. Quinsby drew him back to the porch again.
“Don’t think me hard, Father,” she said entreatingly, “but I want you to be sure. Look over there towards the church; you can see the dark heap of trees against the sky in the churchyard, can’t you? There’s where the girls are—there’s where they are.”
“Why, of course, Mira. Though how the Lord could take those pretty young things, and our only two, that had come to us when we was long past hopin’, is more’n I can see.”
They went to bed, but later in the night Mrs. Quinsby waked suddenly. Her first thought was that the storm was really coming and she had left the pantry windows open. She slipped out of bed, but as she realized that her movement did not disturb her husband, a blind terror came over her; she struck match after match before she could make herself believe he was not there. Then she picked up a shawl and flung it over her nightgown, and, regardless of her bare feet, rushed out to the garden. The wind was blowing hard and the moon was half hidden by the lightly scudding clouds, but Hiram’s laugh—the pleased, indulgent laugh that his girls’ nonsense had so often produced—guided her to him.
“That you, Mother?” he called as she ran down the path. “What a couple of colts you’ve brought up, Mira. Reckon you could find their beat anywheres in Mizzourer for friskiness? Just see those girls racin’ round—a storm comin’ up always did go to their heads. Hear Nan laugh! Ain’t she the greatest girl for foolin’ you ever saw?”
He pointed to some tall hollyhocks that she could see were bending low with the wind, and added, “Watch her bow; Nan was always as easy movin’ in her body as a saplin’ or a tall flower.”
Mrs. Quinsby put her arm around his shoulder. “Oh, he’s let go—you’ve let go, Father, and I’m left! I can’t stand the lonesomeness, I can’t, I can’t!”
They moved toward the arbor. As they passed under the drooping honeysuckle, Hiram laughed aloud.
“They are putting their hands over our eyes to make us guess which is which—the little geese!” Mrs. Quinsby put her hand to her forehead and pressed the cool honeysuckle leaves against her eyes.
She laughed too. “I knew it,” she whispered, “I knew the Almighty would let me go with him. He knew how it was with Hiram and me.” Aloud she said, “I guess Winnie. Yore hands ain’t as soft as Winnie’s, Nan.”
AN IMPASSABLE GULF
By Katharine Bates
PETER ELSTON’S two nieces, Nancy Rollins and Hester Elston, stood on opposite sides of the frame, working together silently. Suddenly Hester dropped her needle, straightened her lithe young figure, and throwing back her pretty head, said hurriedly:
“I don’t see how you can feel so, Nan! You must see how good he is, as well as bein’ different from any boy we’ve ever known round here on the Prairie. Ain’t he always thoughtful ‘bout pleasin’ Uncle Peter? And he’s gone to church reg’lar with us every Sunday he’s been here, ain’t he?”
She pauses, catching her breath after her eager speech, and looking yearningly at Nancy. The older girl’s pale face hardened as she caught the imploring glance.
“He seems to me to be very worldly,” she said coldly.
The color rushed to Hester’s cheeks, and she bent quickly over the frame; for a few moments she sewed vigorously, saying to herself with fierce indignation, as she worked:
“I declare if I think Nancy is so spiritual, after all—a judgin’ Fred like that, and all because he told her he liked to go now and then to the the-a-tre!”
Resentment, however, never lingered long in Hester’s heart, and at last she raised her head again.
“I wish you did feel different, Nan,” she said gently. “I can’t bear to think of you not takin’ to the man I’m goin’ to marry. You and me have always seemed jest like sisters ever since Uncle Pete took us to raise.”
Nancy’s blue eyes met the pleading brown ones more gently this time.
“Yes,” she said slowly, “you have been jest like a sister to me, Hetty.”
Hester ran around the frame and threw her arms around her cousin with the eager expression of affection which always embarrassed Nancy.
“Nan,” she cried, “I jest do wish you could see it the way I do. Fred is so good, and it’s only because he lives in town that he has gotten to like such things as the-a-tres. You do take to him sure ‘nough, don’t you?”
Nancy’s voice quivered as she answered the passionate appeal.
“I know he’s got pleasant ways, and he’s right principled about a lot of things, but, Hetty, there’s no denyin’ he puts pleasure before servin’ the Lord, and we are told mighty plain in the Bible not to make friends with the Mammon of unrighteousness.”
Hester bit her lip.
“There’s some folks, and real good ones, too, who think havin’ some pleasures like Fred cares for and bein’ real down good Christians, too, ain’t incompatible,” she said, struggling to speak calmly.
“There’s a gulf,” Nancy said firmly, “between me and the-a-tre goers, and I’m mighty sorry for you, Hester.”
“You needn’t be,” cried Hester, impatiently. “I’m happy and satisfied about marryin’ Fred!”
“What’s all this talk about marryin’?” Uncle Peter called in at the doorway, as he paused to wave his bundle of birds and squirrels at his nieces. “Jest leave a couple of girls alone, and their tongues are sure to get to waggin’ ‘bout marryin’! Come along, Hetty, and help me pick and clean this lot. It’s been a fine huntin’ day, if ‘tis a trifle coldish for an old man like me.”
“You old!” laughed Hester, as they settled themselves by the kitchen fire.
“Yes, I am gettin’ on,” cried Uncle Peter, seriously, “and I don’t see how I am goin’ to do without you, Hester. You are sure you want to marry Fred?”
“Yes, sure,” said Hester, quickly. “Uncle Pete, wasn’t it jest marvellous for him to fall in love with me, when he’s a town man and knows such a lot of girls with better manners and all that?” Uncle Peter looked meditatively at the delicate rose complexion, the large brown eyes, and the soft, waving hair.
“I don’t see as it was so dreadful queer,” he said. “You’d pass in a crowd, Het.”
There was silence for a little while, Hester dreaming happy dreams of her future, and Uncle Peter groaning inwardly at the prospect of being left to live alone with the more spiritual of his nieces. Suddenly a gleam of hope came to him, and he said:
“Mebbe you can’t marry him after all—town folks have a great way of not makin’ a livin’, Hetty.”
“I know it,” admitted Hester, almost despondently, but her face brightened as she added; “but it is such a great big store Fred is clerkin’ in that I’m jest sure we won’t have to wait long, Uncle Pete.”
The waiting time proved to be as short as Hester and Fred had hoped, for in spite of his “worldliness” Fred was a faithful young fellow, and the promotion which made possible a tiny flat, and housekeeping on a limited scale, came even before he had expected it. Uncle Peter did his best to be cheery at the simple little wedding, and Nancy had baked as many cakes for them as if the young couple were not starting out on a sinful career. Hester prized keenly the expressions of affection which had been rare up to the time when her uncle and cousin had realized what a difference her going would make in their lives, and her grief at leaving her home amazed and almost annoyed Fred, who had grown to look upon himself as her deliverer from a life which seemed very cramped and hard to him.
“I wish there was somethin’ I could do for you, Hetty,” Uncle Peter said, when the last of the wedding guests had departed, and he and Nancy were hurrying Fred and Hester away to the train, for they were going at once to their new home. He took her carpet-bag from her, and awkwardly helped her to button the linen duster, which Nancy had insisted should be worn to the station to protect the new travelling dress from the mud.
“There is,” said Hester, tremulously. “Uncle Pete, if you could jest make Nancy see that goin’ to the the-a-tre ain’t incompatible with goin’ to Heaven some day, I ‘d be greatly obliged to you.”
Uncle Peter drew a long breath.
“You’ve done a sight of work here, Hetty,” he said tenderly, “and I’ve been dreadful fond of you, too, but I’ll be damned if I will try to get a new notion into Nancy’s head, even for you!” Hester sighed. “I s’pose it would be askin’ a good deal of you,” she said simply “but, Uncle Pete, you will remind her anyway that Fred and I won’t be able to afford goin’ more’n once in a long, long time, won’t you? Now good-bye, Uncle.”
He helped her into the wagon, and while Fred and Nancy were crossing the yard, he stood looking at her with his lips twitching nervously.
“Good-bye, Hester,” Nancy said, climbing up on the step of the wagon. The two kissed each other, and Hester clung for a second to her cousin’s neck.
“Oh, Nan,” she whispered, “we have always played together and done our work together—don’t feel hard to me.”
Nancy looked down at her sadly.
“I ain’t a mite hard,” she said gently. “I ain’t judgin’, Hetty, only there’s a gulf. Goodbye.”
She turned to Fred and held out her hand. “I wish you well,” she said, in her clear, calm tones, and then she opened the yard gate and stood inside, leaving Uncle Peter a chance for his farewell.
He wrung Fred’s hand, but no words came from his trembling lips.
“I’ll be very good to her,” Fred said hurriedly. “Good-bye, sir. I hope you won’t mind if I say I consider it an honor to be your nephew.”
At the time Uncle Peter grasped only the first words. “Yes,” he said, “be good to her, Fred—she’s a good girl, a good girl.”
He stepped on the hub of the wheel, and Hester threw her arms around him, kissing vehemently his gray head and wrinkled cheeks.
“Don’t forget me,” she sobbed. “Oh, how can I leave you and Nan and the old place? Goodbye, and I love you, I do so love you, Uncle Pete!”
At a sign from Nancy the hired man whipped up the horses. As they drove away Hester looked back at the clump of oak-trees around the house, and then at the two figures at the yard gate.
“I wish I’d done more for’em all these years they’ve been so good to me,” she said, the tears streaming down her cheeks. Fred held her hand close between both of his, but he made no answer, for her grief dazed him. He knew that many elements in her life had been distasteful to her; and why should a woman who was marrying the man she loved, and was moreover going to town to live, grieve in this way? The hired man turned in his seat and gave the needed word of comfort.
“You’ve done a sight for’em,” he said warmly, “and you ain’t no cause to fret, Miss Hetty. We’ll all miss you terrible.”
Uncle Peter wandered restlessly around the farm until dinner-time. An aching heart was a new experience to him, and one that he did not know how to meet. He went into the orchard and picked up apple after apple, and after a mere taste flung each of them away; as he left the orchard he stopped to look back at the mass of Spanish needle and goldenrod, through which he had just made his way.
“How she did like all that yeller stuff,” he said aloud. “What a sight of interest she took in everything about the place. She was a good girl, and I wish I’d a quit swearin’—‘twould have tickled her mightily. Hanged if I don’t quit it now!”
Nancy had an unusually good dinner ready for him. Preparing it had helped her to pass the morning, for Uncle Peter’s was not the only aching heart. She helped him lavishly to half a dozen vegetables, but for the first time within her memory of him, he had no appetite. He pushed back his chair before she brought his pie, and as he did so a sudden wave of antagonism to her came over him; he had never spoken to her of her stern words to Hester, but now involuntarily his criticism of her slipped from him.
“Blessed if I can see how you could have been so hard on Fred, and let pore Hetty go away feelin’ so broke up,” he said impetuously.
Nancy pressed her lips together firmly.
“I never judged Fred himself,” she said. “I always separated the sin from the sinner, and we are bidden to be unceasing in denouncing sin.”
Uncle Peter said no more; he rose from the table and went out to the porch, and as he sat there Fred’s words recurred to him, and roused a glow of affectionate feeling.
“Proud to be my nephew,” he repeated. “He’s a fine feller, he is, and Hetty’s done well for herself, if it is pretty hard on us to be left.” He went back to the dining-room, where Nancy was clearing the dishes away, and opening the door he called in vehemently:
“Blamed if I care if he takes her to the the-a-tre every night in the week!”
Nancy turned a startled face to him, forgetful of the fact that tears were rolling down her cheeks.
The unexpected sight of her grief touched her uncle keenly; he had never before seen her cry, and going over to her and laying his hand on her shoulder, he said affectionately, “I’m a reg’lar old brute, Nan. You must excuse me, and remember it’s losin’ Hetty that’s sorter upset me. I orter be better ‘n usual to you, instead of meaner, for I can see you are grievin’ too.”
“I have more cause to be grievin’ even than you, Uncle Peter,” Nancy said sadly, “for there’s an impassable gulf between Hetty and me now.” Uncle Peter’s hand slipped from her shoulder.
“Gulfs be damned,” he said impatiently.
IN A GARDEN
By Neith Boyce
OVER the wall of the Mission, against the glowing west, the tops of the trees flickered in the wind from the sea, shot through with level glancing arrows of clear light. The sky was all astir with little soft, gold-tipped clouds. To the languid hush of the hot day had succeeded a subtle animation like the smile on the lips of a sleeping woman.
On this awakening air the last organ-notes of the vesper service died away, and were echoed by the slow, rhythmic swing of the tall eucalyptus-trees. The rustle of the leaves imitated the sound of the devout dispersing from the chapel; and a magnolia shook out from its great white chalices an incense more penetrating than any wafted before the altar. Suddenly all this gentle derision seemed to voice itself in a burst of mocking laughter, faint and far away, like the airy merriment of elves. The sound approached and grew louder, running through the notes of a treble scale. And the trees in the monks’ garden seemed to bend and listen and to beckon while they shook all over with malicious glee.
Scurrying over the ground beyond, with bare, dusty feet, appeared a group of creatures pulling each other by extended arms, or brown garments which seemed a part of the earth, or by their braids of strong, black hair. Writhing in this rough play they flung themselves against the wall. A palefaced girl in a scarlet blouse, like a cactus-flower bursting from its dull sheath, threw up her arms into the dense, dark foliage of an overhanging fig-tree and dragged down the bough.
“They are ripe!—what did I tell you?” she cried, as at a touch a purple, bloomy fig fell into her hand. She tore it open and fastened her teeth, sharp and white as those of a squirrel, in the pink flesh.
Her companions hung back, looking at her.
“If we are caught—”
“What do we care? Cowards! There—now you can put all the blame on me. Eat, then, little pigs that you are!”
Her heavy-lidded eyes were cold and contemptuously smiling. Hanging to the bough with both hands, she shook it roughly, and the ripe figs fell in a shower, some flattening to pulp on the ground. The girls flung themselves down, and, chattering, gathered the unspoiled fruit into the skirts of their gowns.
“It is true; they are better than ours,” cried one.
“Trust the holy fathers to have the best,” added another, lowering her voice.
“They taste better,” said Fiora, the tall girl in the scarlet blouse, “because we are stealing them.” And she licked her red lips with satisfaction.
“There must be better ones higher up,” said a fourth, greedily, standing with her hands on her broad hips and her head thrown back.
“Let us see,” responded Fiora.
Again she caught hold of the drooping branch, drew herself up, and in an instant the thick foliage hid her from sight. Her companions, half-smothered with laughter, besought her to return.
“Oh, if you are seen!”
“Catch!” cried Fiora.
A rain of soft bodies fell, thumping them about the shoulders. Through the parted leaves an impudent face looked down, framed like a young faun’s in living green.
“I am going higher—I am going to look into the garden!”
“Oh! Oh!” in frightened and delighted chorus. “You dare not!”
“Listen, my children,” said Fiora, condescendingly. “They say no woman has ever seen this garden. Well, I have a great mind to be the first!”
Lying along the thick branch, she listened smilingly.
“It is forbidden!”
“You will be punished!”
“The holy fathers—”
“What have they in their garden,” she cried at last, “that is so sacred that we may not see it? Would our feet soil the grass or the paths?”
The girls looked at one another slyly and hid their faces; and their malicious laughter, stifled with difficulty and uncontrollable, mingled again with the eager murmurs of the trees.
Fiora, herself laughing, she scarcely knew why, disappeared, the leaves closing behind her like a green sea. She crept along the great branch until her feet found something firm—the top of the wall. Clinging to the trunk of the tree which leaned against this wall, she tried to pierce the thick layers of foliage below her, but in vain; nothing was to be seen in the garden. She swore softly. Then, in trying to extend herself upon a branch which projected into the garden, she slipped, catching vainly at the nearest twigs, and with a thrill of alarm came to her feet upon the forbidden soil. She clenched her hands, full of bruised leaves, against her breast, as she crouched in the shelter of the drooping boughs. Startled by the noise of her fall, her companions took flight like a covey of birds, with a rustle, a faint murmur—silence.
Fiora sank to her knees and remained for some moments motionless, gazing out into the garden. In the dusk, deepened by the shadow of encircling trees, nothing was visible save narrow paths strewn with opal-colored sea-shells glimmering amid fresh turf, and roses blooming in masses along these walks and hiding the wall under their heavy leaves, thick with flowers like pale flames. Silence—except for the applauding whisper of the trees and the plash of water. There was no one in the garden.
Taking courage, the intruder pushed her way out from under the boughs of the fig-tree. The freshly sprinkled grass caressed her feet. The perfume of the roses and the magnolia blossoms, becoming more intense as the dew began to gather, surrounded her like an invisible presence, seeming to draw her on. She stole softly forward, her eyes alert for the least warning and alive with curiosity. The path led her through an arbor drifted deep with the perfumed snow of wistaria, and between banks of golden pansies set in mosaic borders. At the intersection of this gleaming streak with another a fountain played in a white basin, tossing high in the air a crystal ball. The crest of the plume of water caught a gleam of golden light, and the transparent ball glittered as it rose every instant from shadow. Fiora paused to watch it and to follow the arrowy glidings of the gold-fish in the basin. The short southern twilight was already ended. It was now dark—the hour at which the fathers took their evening meal. Yielding, therefore, to her fancy, she followed the windings of the paths, stopping recklessly to pluck now a scarlet pomegranate, which she ate with puckered lips; now a rose, crimson or yellow, or a long spray of white roses with pink hearts, set close together on the stem. Huge cacti, their gray, distorted bodies spotted with blood-colored blossoms, stood here and there in clumps. Banana trees waved softly their long, graceful fronds. The wind stirred with a dry rustle among palms with broad trunks and large fans, and others, slender and lofty, with crests like stacked swords, and among masses of pampas-grass tufted with great white plumes. Along the wall, to which now and then Fiora’s wanderings in the confined space brought her, grew apricot and peach trees heavy with ripe fruit. These perfect sweets also she tasted capriciously and threw away half-eaten. The place exerted a strange influence over her. The hour, the delicious thrill of danger, the heavy perfumes, intoxicated her. It seemed that the trees bent toward her to murmur something, that the pale faces of the flowers held some mysterious message. They looked friendly; they appeared to smile knowingly at her, to encourage her, to urge her on. Vaguely she felt all this breathing, eager life a part of her, belonging to her. She threw back her head, turning it from side to side with an air of satisfied possession, drawing in the cool air through her nostrils and parted lips with sensuous delight—this pale creature whose eyes showed a savage response to the cajoling beauty about her.
Convinced at last that the garden held no secret, save that of certain flowers and fruits cultivated to unknown perfection,—for she had explored it from the limiting wall to where the pallid outline of some building of the Mission gleamed through the trees,—she came back to the fountain and sat down on the wooden bench at the path’s edge, her flowers heaped in her lap. She gave herself a few moments more to watch the leaping ball, which now sparkled like silver in the midst of glittering spray. A shaft of moonlight, striking through the trees upon the jet of water, crept steadily downward. The girl, her eyes fixed on this trembling column of white fire and foam, fell in a vague, trance-like dream. The ripple of the fountain in her ears drowned the echo of slow footsteps advancing along the path.
It was Father Anselmo’s custom, while digesting his supper of meat pasty and chocolate, to pace the garden, whose beauty seldom failed to inspire him with poetical images, and to add each evening some dozen lines to his panegyric ode on Saint Francis. Anselmo was, in fact, a poet,—but a poet whose strictly regulated fancy never openly strayed beyond the confines of the cloister. His gentle muse sang consecrated themes alone. And if, surrounded by an indolent, veiled fervor of tropical nature, apt to long, arid trances, and to sudden outbursts of fierce luxuriance, his imagination was sometimes troubled, these secret vagaries were repressed or found no acknowledged utterance. In his black, shapeless robe, above which his placid face showed like a sickly moon, the father, whether meditating on the pasty or Saint Francis, seemed no prey to the poetic ardor; its afflatus left him undizzied and peaceful. Yet the mystery of the night, the garden’s magic, must have struck some responsive chord within him. For how else should his bodily eyes have beheld beneath the shadow of the acacia bushes a creature not human, surely not divine; no spiritual vision, but an apparition born of the earth and evil. It sat half-visible, buried to the chin in flowers, motionless, its face a mere pale shimmer, its great shadowy eyes fixed upon him. These eyes were terrifying.
Anselmo retreated some steps upon their discovery; then, after much hesitation, advanced again, extending the cross of his rosary and muttering with trembling lips certain words of proved potency. But neither holy symbol nor exorcism availed against the evil spirit. It refused to flee; sat dumb—it seemed to Anselmo disdainful. Suddenly, wrathful, he took another step forward; the creature drew in its breath sharply, with an audible sound; its lips parted, showing a row of gleaming teeth. Anselmo paused.
This was, he perceived, the spirit of the garden, and it was plainly hostile. Was he, then, the intruder? Vaguely a sense of helpless fright invaded his soul. Yes, the trees were in league with this being; they bent towards him threateningly! The air was full of veiled alarms. What of the rosebushes which even now reached out clutching hands to detain him? An overblown white rose broke and fell in a soft shower about his shoulders, and he started; a bat swooped down with swift, filmy wings, just grazing his head; he shrank back.
Could it be that he was in danger, that his wandering thoughts were known, that his sinful fancies had thus taken shape to confound him? Anselmo crossed himself. It was true—moved by the garden’s spell he had sometime in reverie invoked the animating principle of this beauty of earth, which he knew well was soulless and evil—and behold it incarnate!
Yet the apparition did not menace him overtly, perhaps it felt his spiritual armor proof. Nevertheless, it was his part to fly possible danger, to deliver over the unhallowed domain to its true possessor. What part had he in these caresses of the breeze, these wooings of flowers, these marriages of insects, this glamour of nocturnal magic?
Knowing, as he did, the evil power of the moon at its full, how had he been persuaded to walk in debatable ground where that demoniac glory, rising warm and wanton above the trees, could mock and threaten him? Under the branches of the acacia the shadow sat still in deeper shadow; save that the rays of the moon fell upon two slim, naked feet, which the short grass could not cover. It had taken, then, the form of a woman, that the garden and its tradition might be doubly desecrated! Anselmo’s indignation was not fierce enough to nerve his soul, weakened by mystic terrors. He turned to fly, but, instead, uttered an exclamation, calling in a trembling voice:
“Brother Emanuel!”
“I am coming,” was the answer.
Another black robe, another pale face, appeared beside him, and, like him, started back at perceiving the strange figure. After consultation in whispers the bolder monk approached the acacia.
“This is no spirit, Brother Anselmo—it is a woman!” he cried.
“A woman! How could a woman get into the garden?”
The first speaker cast a troubled glance in the direction of the high wall.
“True,” he said uncertainly. “Still it must be.”
But involuntarily he moved a step nearer his companion.
Both glanced down at the slender feet in the grass. These seemed to move, and the spirit, or woman, turned her head swiftly from side to side. Her breath came quicker, but the monks could not hear it, or they might have taken courage.
“It is astonishing,” murmured Brother Emanuel, uneasily.
While they stood undecided between the attack and the retreat, suddenly from the chapel near by the organ gave voice in a deep, swelling chord, which climbed by subtle and suave modulations and soared aloft into a tender melody.
“It is Brother Angelo,” whispered Anselmo.
“It is holy music!” said Emanuel, devoutly, and he made the sign of the cross in the air before him.
The tremulous notes, growing louder, drowned the rustle of the leaves, the plash of the fountain, the sigh of the wind. It seemed as though the garden hushed half-unwillingly to listen, when a voice, humanly deep and sweet, but spiritualized into something not less than divine, took up the melody and bore it higher and heavenward, pouring out into the night a flood of ecstasy and aspiration. The march of the music was solemn and splendid, and its soul was a joy unearthly and beyond utterance.
The black-robed brothers stood and listened, rebuked and dumb, turning their faces toward the glimmering wall of the chapel, and forgetting for a moment the fears which had agitated them, with their cause. What were all the potencies of the passionate earth, so easily diverted from good, against this royal dominion?
The evil-seeming spell was broken. A sudden movement, no sound but a stirring of the air, recalled their attention. The foliage of the acacia trembled as though a bird had taken wing. The bench was vacant, flowers strewed the ground before it, the presence had vanished. Her white feet or a breath of air had borne her away. The diapason of the organ drowned the sound her flight might have made; and the trees bent as though to bury in shadow her possible path. Emanuel made a long step forward.
“Woman or spirit, she is gone!” he cried, and stooped to see what trace of her those scattered roses might show. Anselmo grasped his companion’s sleeve.
“Do not touch them,” he entreated, glancing fearfully over his shoulder. “Who knows what spell is upon them?”
True, when found next morning, withered and scentless, these flowers appeared commonplace enough. Nor did there exist other proof that on this spot two brothers of the order had beheld a strange and dangerous vision. None the less was their sober account accepted implicitly by the brethren, of whom the wiser ever thereafter avoided to walk in the garden at the moon’s full; though certain of the more youthful were known to adventure themselves at that place and season.
It is not recorded that their daring and zeal met with any reward or recognition. Nor, perhaps, is this to be wondered at. For if any wandering spirit, coveting, yet not daring to enter the garden, had strayed near to the confining wall, it must have heard daily the solemn chant of the Church’s exorcism directed against all powers unholy; it must daily have beheld a slow procession of monks make the circuit of the shell-strewn paths, sprinkling the ground with holy-water to purify it from the contaminating touch of a woman’s foot. And if, spirit or woman, it were still undeterred, there was Angelo’s music at evening—like another flaming sword at the gate of this Eveless Eden!
ORESTE’S PATRON
By Grace Ellery Channing
THE Signore Americano, musing over his morning coffee on the Villa terrace, gazed intently into the distance where Florence lay invisible behind the hills.
“Buon’ giorno, Signore!” called Oreste, reining in Elisabetta and lifting his cap with a smile.
“Buon’ giorno!” returned the Signore, starting. “Ah, you are going to the city, and I wanted to go myself!”
Oreste looked troubled.
“Signore,—how much I am sorry! It displeases me, but I am already promised to my patron. When one is poor, one must think of the francs for the family,” he added apologetically.
The Signore, who knew no such necessity, frowned.
“This is the fifth time this Carnivale—and you just married! If I had a sposina—”
“The Signore’s sposina would lack for nothing,” smiled Oreste. “We others,—we must do as we can. As for Gioja, she goes to pass the day with her nonna at Vincigliata. I will bring the Signore’s mail as usual.”
The Signore waved his hand impatiently, and knocked the ashes from his cigarette, then, as the shabby cab, with Elisabetta pulling heroically back against the steepness, wound from sight, his glance softened. It was a piece of fortune surely for a Vignola cabman to have a city patron. Fortunes were not to be made up here where nobody but the forestieri, who came from time to time to make a villegiatura in one or another of the villas, would think of wasting francs for the sole purpose of getting somewhere. The inhabitants stayed where they found themselves placed by Providence. To all intents, Vignola might be a hundred miles from Florence instead of a bare six. Besides, a stranger Signore passes with the season, but a city patron remains. Nuisance as it was to have his own plans conflicted with, the Signore forgave Oreste.
Fifteen minutes later this melting mood congealed again, as a slender figure stole quietly down the Way.
It was Gioja, walking with her usual listless grace.
Her small head, its crisply waved Tuscan hair bound with a kerchief of dull blue, was carried far back as no kerchiefed head has a right to be; and her eyes, blue as the kerchief but not dull, looked straight ahead, dilated and musing. She did not see the Signore,—a thing that could have befallen no other girl in the village, unless it were blind Chiara, and the Signore watched her go with a frown,—for this was not the direction of Vincigliata. And why was she starting so early, unless to defeat the glances with which all these closed doors would soon be alive?
Yet he continued to watch her. There were other girls in the village just as pretty. Many a strain of noble blood had gone to the making of these Vignolese peasants. This was not the first girl the Signore had seen who looked as if—change her gown and tie a bonnet over her hair—she might loll in her carriage of an afternoon at the Cascine with the best of the fine ladies in the city below. But there was no other whom the Signore ever leaned over the wall to look after. And as he leaned his frown deepened; he was sorry for Oreste; but—marry a girl like that and leave her alone, in Italy! Anybody might foresee the end. And he frowned again, not at Gioja this time, who had disappeared from view, but at a mental image, wearing, it is true, an air dangerously like that of Oreste’s sposa.
Yes, indeed, anybody might foretell the end. That was what the whole community, already buzzing with the scandal, said. And it was exactly what the Padre said when, five minutes later, he came up the path and sank upon the marble seat, mopping his brow beneath the beaver hat.
“I have been to Oreste’s,” he said apologetically, “and thought I would look in upon the Signore in passing. There was nobody there.”
The Signore, engaged in pouring red wine for his guest, made no response, and the priest stole a troubled glance at him as he took the glass from his hand.
“Perhaps, Signore, you may have seen them pass, and can tell me if that child went with her husband?”
“No,” said the Signore, after a minute’s deliberation, “I could not.”
His guest sighed as he sipped the wine. He had grown gray in the service of the village. He had known Gioja from her babyhood. His was the hand which had held and oiled and dipped her at the font, and had led her from then until her present estate; and he, if any one, had a right to borrow trouble, seeing that all troubles were brought to him in the end. His fine, thin lips shut above the wineglass in the sensitive line which marks the better of Rome’s two types. His soul was straight and simple. The one vanity it owned was to be on terms of companionship with the occupant of the big villa. The half hour on its terrace or in its salotto formed his social dissipation, and dearly did he prize the importance it gave him in the eyes of his flock. Nay, it gave importance to the whole community.
“Not every village has a priest like ours,” said the gossips, complacently, “that a so-educated stranger Signore would make so much of.”
Moreover, if his people were poor, God alone knows how poor their priest was, and the Signore possessed a fine taste in wines,—true Chianti, a very different thing from vino rosso at eighty centesimi the flask,—while his lavishness was that of his country.
As for the Signore, he would pour the oil from a fresh flask any time to unseal the lips pressed together as now over the case of Oreste’s sposa.
“The truth is,” sighed the priest, “the end is too easy to foresee. The child is not like others; and there is nothing worse than that. That’s what Luigi’s sposa said yesterday when I rebuked her for thinking evil, and recalled to her how Gioja helped nurse her three through the fever only last spring. ‘Oh, I’m not saying she has n’t a heart,’ said Luigi’s sposa; ‘but you can’t deny that all is not right when a girl is different from all the rest; it is better to have less heart and be more like one’s neighbors.’ And Luigi’s wife had reason. Nothing is worse than to be different from all the folk about you. When I had her safely married, I thought indeed there would be an end of trouble;—Heaven grant it do not prove a beginning!”
“Does she not love her husband?”
“Who can tell?” sighed the priest, impatiently. “Oreste is not one to set the Arno afire, but he is a good lad. But about her he is a mule,—a very mule. Would you believe, Signore, when I ventured a word,—I, whose duty it is,—he flared up like a Befana torch,—he whose manner to me ordinarily is a lesson to the community!”
The Signore smiled and reflected upon the strength of man.
“One would say I had spoken ill of the Saints,” continued the exasperated priest. “And the thing is becoming insufferable,—such a tale of scandal as some one whispers to me every day. One would think she has neither eyes nor ears, and cares not whether she has friends or foes for neighbors.” There is, in truth, no such broad and flowery path to unpopularity as this which Gioja undeviatingly pursued. Nobody who elects to be unlike his neighbors gets social good of it. Had not the Signore himself seen?
Bad enough it was to have her sitting wide-eyed and absolutely indifferent at her machine, and so pretty that one could see the youths looking at her when they pretended not to; or mooning over her straw work with never a word of gossip or a little story about a friend, more than if they were all stones: but what did these absences all by herself mean, which looked the worse now that she was a decent man’s wife? It was an absolute scandal—which is only another name for a godsend sometimes—to a sober community.
Oreste might pretend to shut his eyes,—he had always been a fool about her; but it could not be asked that all the village should do the same, especially those girls who would have made decent wives if any one had given them the chance, and those lads who would have known how to keep a wife in order if they had taken one.
The priest, thinking of these things, sighed. He, too, might affect blindness; but he would need to be stone deaf as well to escape hearing what every tongue in the village felt it a duty and a privilege to confide to him daily.
“It must be admitted that the Signorina Americana has something to answer for,” the priest wound up, as he invariably did, and always with an indulgent accent which forgave while it accused.
The Signorina Americana!—how many times was she not levelled at the ears of the Signore Americano who had inherited her tradition with the villa of which he was the next lessee. If the contadini were to be believed, there was little for which she might not be held accountable. They spoke of her smilingly, Oreste tenderly, the priest indulgently (the Signorina also had possessed a generous taste in wines), and Gioja not at all. Yet apparently it was precisely Gioja who might have had most to say.
“Ah, yes; if I could have foreseen when I brought that child to her! But what harm could come to her from earning a few francs as the Signo-rina’s maid? I chose her for the very reason that she had more gentleness and was more educated than the others,—the Signorina, your countrywoman, was herself very educated and full of gentilezza. But she was too good to Gioja, and then she could never be made to see. She had a way with her,—when I began to remonstrate with her she would fill up my glass and ask about my poor, and, before I knew it—altro! she was very generous, your countrywoman. But if there are many like her in your country it must be a terrible place; a man would not possess his own soul.”
The Signore laughed.
“She would sit here—precisely where I sit now—and smile a little smile she had, and twist this rose-vine about her fingers, and just so she twisted us all. Ah,” he concluded, lifting his glass, “she was truly terrible, that Signorina; but simpatica, altro! never have I seen so simpatica a signorina.”
Simpatica! When you are that, there is nothing else you can be; and when you are not that, nothing that you can be is of any use. When everybody, down to the newsboys and cab-openers, loves you and doesn’t know why,—you are simpatica; when people would rather do things for you than not, and don’t care about the payment,—then you may be sure you are simpatica; when the expression of their eyes and the tones of their voices change insensibly when they look at and speak to you,—there is no room to doubt that you are simpatica. You may not be rich, nor beautiful, nor “educated” (such a very different thing from book-fed), but you do not need to be. Simpatica is the comprehending sky of praise in which separate stars of admiration are swallowed up.
While the Signore figured rapidly the mischief possible of accomplishment by a dangerous Signorina possessing this attribute, the priest drank another glass of wine and returned to the trouble of his soul.
“I thought, indeed, with a wife’s work to do, she would settle down like others; but Oreste encourages her wilfulness.”
“Why do you not speak to Gioja herself?”
“Heaven forbid!” exclaimed the priest, crossing himself. “I have tried that once. She has a terrible nature,—that child! I have never told any one; but see if I have not reason to say so, Signore.” He sipped his wine agitatedly, and then began with feeling:—
“It was the Signorina to begin with; she saw that the child was pretty, and she put ideas in her head. And in fact, though Heaven forbid I should compare Gioja, who is only a little contadina. with a real Signorina, yet she has always seemed to me to have a little something about her which recalls the Signorina herself,—a way of walking and carrying her head. And the Signorina had not an idea of keeping her in her place. She was always giving her gowns and ribbons and trinkets and vanities of all kinds,—that was her way, always giving. The end of it was that one day I surprised that child with a hat of the Signorina’s on her unhappy head; yes, actually, Signore, if you will credit me, a hat,—a cappello di signora on her head!” He spread his hands in deprecating despair.
The Signore looked blankly.
“Oh, Signore, you are like your countrywoman; it is impossible to make you understand! But it must be a country,—yours! For a girl like Gioja to put a hat on is to declare herself without shame at once. Honest girls of her class let such roba di signore alone; yes, and rightly, for God has put people in their places. A girl who showed herself in a signora’s hat would find it impossible to live in Vignola; she would be hooted out of the village. And as for the wife of a lad like Oreste pretending to that,—half-a-dozen lovers would not be a worse scandal. Those at least the others could understand, but a cappello di signora—” He stopped to take several agitated sips, shaking his head all the time. “I do not say she would have been so mad as to cross the threshold in it (the Signorina had given it to her to sell for the feathers upon it); but who could tell what such a girl might do? I scolded her well for her wicked vanity, and such ideas above her place. Santa Maria!—lovers and such are enough, without a scandal like that among my people.
“Well, what was the end? Signore, she rushed off and hung that hat, with at least twenty francs’ worth of good feathers on it, in the Madonna’s chapel, beside ‘Maso’s crutch and the little hearts and legs and other offerings to Our Lady! There it hung, where all the world would see it, and every tongue in the place be set wagging, if I had not providentially gone in and found it before Mass next day. And even then what could I do? It was the Madonna’s, and I dared not remove it. But Heaven sends accidents, and as it chanced, providentially, Signore, my candle brushed the feathers in passing and, presto, I dropped it quickly into a bucket of water. It was not fit for Our Lady after that, so I took it away, and I myself made it up to her in candles, that no one might feel hurt. And after all nobody was the richer for all those francs’ worth of feathers; they were singed more than I hoped, and did not bring me in Florence the price of the candles. Oh, she has a terrible nature,—that Gioja! No, no, grazie,—if I must speak to Oreste, I must; but to her!—candles cost, Signore, and I am a poor man.”
Still shaking his head, he rose to depart.
The Signore, left alone, paced the terrace a few times, smiling to himself; then he sat down again,—this time in the priest’s place,—and fell to musing, and as he mused his fingers stole almost furtively to the long rose-tendrils, and twisted them gently, while the smile died abruptly on his lips.
Presently he rang, and Giuseppina came out.
“You may take away these things,” said the Signore, “and bring me pen and paper. Oh, and by the way, Giuseppina, in future put my seat here,—the valley sees itself better.”
Coming from the post that evening the Signore was aware of a slender shape slipping along through the deepening shadows ahead. Quickening his steps, he overtook it easily.
“Buon sera; so it is you, Gioja?”
“Si, Signore!”—the voice was both startled and appealing.
But the Signore strode along looking keenly at the downcast face.
“Oreste is not with you?”
“No, Signore; he went to the city.”
“And you have doubtless been visiting your nonna?”
“Yes, Signore,”—the voice was almost inaudible.
The Signore turned on his heel, with a curt “Buona sera!” and was still muttering things under his breath when, fifteen minutes later, he beheld from the terrace Oreste and Elisabetta toiling wearily up the hill.
“How well she times it,” he thought contemptuously, as the bell of the big gate sounded, and he heard Giuseppina’s challenge: “Who is it?”
“Amici, friends,” answered Oreste’s voice, and Oreste swiftly followed, with his frank smile and a square envelope of dull blue, which the Signore’s hand involuntarily stretched to grasp.
“Ecco, Signore,—the only one!” said Oreste, with that polite gesture of regret with which he daily accompanied this small comedy. The Signore having possessed himself of the letter avidly, put it into his pocket with ostentatious carelessness and coolly lighted a cigarette. Oreste smiled comprehendingly but respectfully.
“You have had a long day of it?”
“Yes, Signore,” Oreste smiled with the satisfied air of one who has done a good day’s work.
“I suppose you have made a handful of money,” continued the Signore, severely.
Oreste shrugged his shoulders. “Not great things,—but, altro, I am content.”
The Signore shrugged in his turn. “Each to his own mind. Your sposina has also made a long day; I saw her just now.”
“Ah, yes; it is a long way to Vincigliata, when one must walk. The Signore’s commands?”
“None.”
Truly, the Signorina Americana, if this was her work, had small reason to be proud of it. The Signore’s frown enveloped even the blue envelope, at which he stood staring long after Oreste had left the room.
And so it ran through the spring months,—the mournfully beautiful Tuscan spring. The nightingales in the villa gardens sang and sang, at dusk, in the moonlight, and at dawn, and the fireflies glittered all through the darkness up and down the olive slopes. An intenser life quickened in the little community as the summer stirred in the veins of her children. The youths went singing up and down the hills, and the girls and women lingered over their water jars at the fountain in the square. For what is it to be poor in the summer time?
Sometimes the Signore, lying awake at night, heard Oreste’s mellow voice as he passed by to the little house. But through all this gayety of being Gioja stole silently and dreamily, and the whisper of turned heads and eyes askance followed her. For there were the ever-recurring festas, when Oreste went to the city, and where then did Oreste’s sposa go? That is what the community would like to know; for the tale of her grandmother was quite too large for the village throat. She kept her secret well,—yes; but there is only one kind of a secret possible to the Italian mind.
“Birbone!” said the women, with contempt of Oreste, while the men laughed and shrugged their shoulders. Oreste had caught a pretty sposa who had thought herself much too good for them, but, ma chè,—he was paying for it.
It was impossible that the public curiosity should content itself with being curious. Maria, one of those public-minded souls which never lack in any community, toiled all the way over to Vincigliata, and brought back personal assurance from the nonna herself that that pious granddaughter had not been seen in Vincigliata all these months.
“Eight good miles I trudged in all that sun, and a day’s work lost,” declared Maria, mopping her brow in the midst of an excited and sympathetic group. “If my legs ache! But for the good of the community I did it; and what I know to-night the priest shall know before morning. I made haste to go to-day, for to-morrow, being the festa of our Saint John, Oreste goes to the city, and that civetta—”
And nobody could say but that Maria had done well, and the girl deserved whatever might come of it.
But when the priest, sad-eyed and stern, knocked at the door of the little house in the early morning after Mass, no one was there. Having delivered a vain fusillade, to the accompaniment of many suggestions offered from the neighbors’ windows, the priest turned away and betook himself, with a clouded brow, to the Signore, who had invited him, by Oreste, to breakfast with him that morning. He was waiting for him now on the terrace with a morning countenance; and the breakfast-table, heaped with roses, wore a festal air which did not escape the priest, preoccupied though he was.
“You also are keeping a feast, Signore, to appearances?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, indeed! a festa Americana?”
“No, my own. And now what is it about these two? Oreste, I know, went to the city. I tried to engage him, but he was pre-engaged to that patron of his. And Gioja,—well, I saw her pass a little later.”
“While we were in the church,—the guilty child!” said the priest, sternly. “But where can she have gone?” he added, sighing. “I have been much to blame; I have been too negligent; I should have dealt with her from the first. Culpa mia!” He crossed himself and looked so discouraged that the Signore was touched.
“Listen, amico mio,” he said. “As you say, it is a bad business; and, arrange it how you will, it will never be well that those two shall live here. The last of it will never be heard,—if I know your people. I am going away to Livorno next week, and I have asked Oreste to go with me. I like the fellow, and away from here she may come to her senses. She is young, and, guilty though she may be, she does not seem case-hardened.”
“Going away!” exclaimed the startled priest, in dismay. “And going to take those two away from their own country,—to a foreign place! What an idea,—but what an idea!”
“Scarcely foreign; it is only the other side of Florence.”
“Ah, ah! to you, but to us villagers! It is not a little thing to leave one’s home, where one has been born and bred, and knows his neighbors, after all, whether they be good or bad. It is a great thing to know one’s neighbors. And to go so far!—but they will think twice before they say ‘Yes.’”
“On the contrary, Oreste goes willingly. I do not think he is so blind; he knows well they are not friendly to his sposa here.”
“And Gioja,” said the startled priest, “will she go?”
“He says so.”
The priest drew a long breath, half relief, half regret, and wholly wonder.
“Well, well, it is perhaps the best that could happen. But to lose two of my flock—and to leave one’s country like that! You are a strange people, you Americans. And what becomes of us without either you or the Signorina Americana here in the villa?”
“There are more Americans,” replied the Signore, smiling; “and who knows but that your Signorina will return to make you more trouble yet?”
The priest shook his head. “The next time she may bring her own maid. Not another girl from our village shall she turn the head of, that Signorina,” and the very tone of his voice as he said it was witness that he affirmed what he knew to be false. The Signore understood and laughed.
“Put it all away, amico mio, for to-day, and go with me to Florence. Gioja has gone; and you can do nothing but listen to your people, who will deafen you before night. Come and see your bella Firenze in her festa dress. We will take a tram below and find a cab at the gates.”
The priest’s face brightened like a child’s.
“Ah, Signore, now it is I you are proposing to carry away! But why not? It is long since I was in Florence, and I have already said service here. But it is not necessary to say anything to my people. Discretion, Signore, discretion is a great thing!”
And thus it happened that when the village folk saw the good father depart in company with the Signore forestiere, they sagely concluded, with that sense of the importance of our own affairs common to the race, that the two had gone to Fiesole, or who knew but even Florence, to consult the authorities in the matter of that unhappy Gioja. And, in point of fact, though the priest was fairly running away from the subject, he was destined to run straight into its arms instead.
Florence was all in festa; and if there is anything lovelier than Florence in festa, who has seen it? The streets ran over with bright sunshine; and the Florentines, reinforced by contadini from all the neighboring towns, in holiday garb, made a bright, shifting mass for the sunbeams to play over. Arno rolled its now shallow stream like muddy gold, and pale golden palaces stood loftily up and looked down at her. Over her streaming Ways, Florence shook the bells in all her towers every fifteen minutes, and at intervals the deep, golden-throated voice in Giotto’s Tower answered with a rich hum, hum-m, hum-m-m, like a melodious summer bee. The strident notes of the grilli, in their little wicker cages, brought from the Cascine at dawn, completed the joyous pandemonium.
The Signore’s spirits ran at higher tide than even the bright tide of humanity about him. He laughed at all; he bought flowers of the boys and girls who ran after the carriage holding up glowing armfuls, until the carriage-seat was heaped, and the priest held up his hands at the extravagance. He climaxed his folly by buying all the remaining grilli in their cages, and letting them loose upon the grass of the Cascine.
“Do not scold, amico mio,” he said to the priest gayly; “I told you it is a festa. I have come into a fortune, and it is written that nobody must be shut up to-day or hungry.” He tossed a handful of soldi to a group of children.
“I am afraid your fortune will not last long,” replied the priest, shaking his head.
But he forgot his own prudence when, a little later, they went to a restaurant,—not Doney’s, where the foolish tourists go, fancying themselves in Italy, and where the priest would have been miserable,—but Gilli’s on the Piazza Signoria. There, it being a feast day, and his host newly come into a fortune, the good father ate, for the honor of religion and his own temporal good, such a meal as had never before found its way to his stomach, and washed it down with glasses of Chianti, not merely old (vecchio), but extravagantly old (stravecchio). Golden moments were these, and he put down his glass at last with a sigh of regret that it was impossible to prolong them further. His limit of possibility was reached.
“Now,” said the Signore, casting an extravagant fee upon the table, “where next?”
“To the Baptistery and the Duomo, my son,” answered the priest, with sudden gravity, crossing himself, “to say our grazie, and put up a little prayer to our good Saint John.”
It was precisely upon emerging from the door of Gilli’s in this comfortable and untroubled frame of mind, arising from the perfect balance of the carnal and the spiritual, that he came face to face with the worst trouble of all. For, straightening his shabby hat and smoothing his shabby cassock, what should his eyes fall upon but Oreste,—Oreste, who, having that moment emerged from a café below, was assisting a very elegant signora into his cab. Just as he got her safely tucked in, his eye caught the two pairs staring at him. His sturdy face blanched; then, before either could make step forward, he had shut the door, sprung quickly to the seat, and, touching up Elisabetta, with a glance of defiance whirled away. The two left, staring, drew a long breath.
“Ebbene,” remarked the Signore, at last, “so the patron was a padrona; perhaps Gioja has not been so much to blame after all.”
“I will know,” answered the priest, sharply.
The Signore said a word to the nearest cabman, slipping something into his hand, and in a moment they were bowling up the Via Calzaioli. It cost a city cabman nothing to keep Elisabetta in sight; and they drew up in the Piazza del Duomo just in time to see Oreste deferentially assisting his Signora to alight at the Cathedral steps. He saw them and his eyes shot such a glance of stern warning that both men sat stupidly, and the next moment nearly fell over each other as the Signora, in her silks and nodding plumes, swept by,—for, lo, it was Gioja!
In another instant she had swept up the steps and the great doors had swallowed her. Then Oreste’s manner changed. He leaned against the cab-door, and turned upon the two men a regard which said: “And now what have you to say about it?”
There was a decidedly awkward silence while they drew near; then the Signore burst out laughing.
“You have found a fine patron, amico mio!” he said.
“What folly!” ejaculated the priest, holding up his hands and recovering breath at last. “Gran’ Dioy what folly!”
“Reverendo,” replied Oreste, quietly, “perhaps not so much folly as some of you have thought. Perhaps I know what the tongues up there wag like, and if I choose not to mind, whose affair is that? If it pleases us to please ourselves, who is the worse for that?”
“And the scandal!” exclaimed the priest. “And the waste, and the ideas you are putting in Gioja’s head,—the wicked vanity and pride—Oh, I told the Signorina how it would end!”
“As for that, Reverendo, you will pardon me; but tongues must wag when they are hung in the middle, and if they wag about Gioja,—why it does n’t hurt her, and some one else goes safe. And as for the waste,—the price of a fare now and then,—why if it suits us to live on polenta six days, and take our pleasure on the seventh, whose misery is that? I have never yet lacked my soldo for the Church or for a neighbor poorer than I.”
“And the ideas you are encouraging in her unhappy head!—but I will have something to say to that child.”
“Reverendo,” interposed Oreste, sternly, “by your leave,—you are a good man, half a saint, and I am only an ignorant peasant, but there are some things priests and nuns do not understand, and what one does not understand, that one should not meddle with. The Signorina understood; she knew well it was neither pride nor vanity in Gioja, but just a kind of poesia which made her like to play the signora. The Signorina understood because she herself was full of poesia.”
“Oh, the Signorina,—the Signorina!” interjected the priest, in despair.
“She knew,” Oreste went on. “You remember the time of the hat, Reverendo?”
“If I remember!” groaned the priest.
“Ebbene!” said Oreste, emphatically, “when I found it out, I went straight to the Signorina and told her. She was on the terrace, and she sat down and laughed a little. You remember our Signorina’s way of laughing?”
It was to the priest that he addressed this; but it was the Signore, looking straight before him and smiling, who looked as if he remembered.