Constance Fenimore Woolson

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

  For two days Mrs. Spurr wished for nothing but to hear, over and over again, every detail of her boy’s last hours. Then the excitement and renewed grief made her dangerously ill. After ten days she began to improve; but two weeks passed before she came back to the present sufficiently to describe to her daughter all “Mr. No-ul’s kind attentions.” He had returned to Rome the first of October, and had come at once to the street of the Hyacinth. Learning what had happened, he had devoted himself to her “most as if he was my real son, Ettie, I do declare! Of course, he couldn’t never be like my own darling boy,” continued the poor mother, overlooking entirely, with a mother’s sublime forgetfulness, the small amount of devotion her boy had ever bestowed; “but he’s just done everything he could, and there’s no denying that.”

  “He has not been mentioned in your letters, mother.”

  “Well, child, I just told Mrs. Bowler not to. For he said himself, frankly, that you might not like it; but that he’d make his peace with you when you come back. I let him have his way about it, and I have enjoyed seeing him. He’s the only person I’ve seen but Mrs. Bowler and the doctor, and I’m mortal tired of both.”

  During Mrs. Spurr’s second illness Noel had not come in person to the street of the Hyacinth; he had sent to inquire, and fruits and flowers came in his name. Miss Macks learned that these had come from the beginning.

  When three weeks had passed Mrs. Spurr was back in her former place as regarded health. One of her first requests was to be taken out to drive; during her daughter’s absence Mr. Noel had taken her five times, and she had greatly enjoyed the change. It was not so simple a matter for the daughter as it had been for Mr. Noel; her purse was almost empty; the long journeys and her mother’s illness had exhausted her store. Still she did it. Mrs. Spurr wished to go to the Pincio. Her daughter thought the crowd there would be an objection.

  “It didn’t tire me one bit when Mr. No-ul took me,” said Mrs. Spurr, in an aggrieved tone; “and we went there every single time—just as soon as he found out that I liked it. What a lot of folks he does know, to be sure! They kept him a-bowing every minute.”

  The day after this drive Mr. Noel came to the street of the Hyacinth. He saw Miss Macks. Her manner was quiet, a little distant; but she thanked him, with careful acknowledgment of every item, for his kind attentions to her mother. He said little. After learning that Mrs. Spurr was much better he spoke of her own health.

  “You have had two long, fatiguing journeys, and you have been acting as nurse; it would be well for you to give yourself entire rest for several weeks at least.”

  She replied, coldly, that she was perfectly well, and turned the conversation to subjects less personal. He did not stay long. As he rose to take leave, he said:

  “You will let me come again, I hope? You will not repeat the ‘not at home’ of last spring?”

  “I would really much rather not see you, Mr. Noel,” she answered, after hesitating.

  “I am sorry. But of course I must submit.” Then he went away.

  Miss Macks now resumed her burdens. She was obliged to take more pupils than she had ever accepted before, and to work harder. She had not only to support their little household, but there were now debts to pay. She was out almost the whole of every day.

  After she had entered upon her winter’s work Raymond Noel began to come again to the street of the Hyacinth. But he did not come to see her; his visits were to her mother. He came two or three times a week, and always during the hours when the daughter was absent. He sat and talked to Mrs. Spurr, or rather listened to her, in a way that greatly cheered that lady’s monotonous days. She told him her whole history; she minutely described Tuscolee and its society; and, finally, he heard the whole story of “John.” In addition, he sent her various little delicacies, taking pains to find something she had not had.

  Miss Macks would have put an end to this if she had known how. But certainly Mr. Noel was not troubling her, and Mrs. Spurr resented any attempt at interference.

  “I don’t see why you should object, Ettie. He seems to like to come, and there’s but few pleasures left to me, I’m sure! You oughtn’t to grudge them!”

  In this way two months passed, Noel continuing his visits, and Miss Macks continuing her lessons. She was working very hard. She now looked not only pale, but much worn. Count L——, who had been long absent, returned to Rome about this time. He saw her one day, although she did not see him. The result of this vision of her was that he went down to Naples, and, before long, the desirable second cousin with the fortune was the sister of the Princess C——.

  One afternoon in March Miss Macks was coming home from the broad, new, tiresome piazza Indipendenza; the distance was long, and she walked with weariness. As she drew near the dome of the Pantheon she met Raymond Noel. He stopped, turned, and accompanied her homeward. She had three books.

  “Give them to me,” he said, briefly, taking them from her.

  “Do you know what I have heard to-day?” he went on. “They are going to tear down your street of the Hyacinth. The Government has at last awakened to the shame of allowing all those modern accretions to disfigure longer the magnificent old Pagan temple. All the streets in the rear, up to a certain point, are to be destroyed. And the street of the Hyacinth goes first. You will be driven out.”

  “I presume we can find another like it.”

  He went on talking about the Pantheon until they entered the doomed street; it was as obstinately narrow and dark as ever. Then he dropped his Pagan temple.

  “How much longer are you going to treat me in this way, Faith?” he said. “You make me very unhappy. You are wearing yourself out, and it troubles me greatly. If you should fall ill I think that would be the end. I should then take matters into my own hands, and I don’t believe you would be able to keep me off. But why should we wait for illness? It is too great a risk.”

  They were approaching her door. She said nothing, only hastened her steps.

  “I have been doing my best to convince you, without annoying you, that you were mistaken about me. And the reason I have been doing it is that I am convinced myself. If I was not entirely sure last spring that I loved you, I certainly am sure now. I spent the summer thinking of it. I know now, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that I love you above all and everything. There is no ‘duty’ or ‘generosity’ in this, but simply my own feelings. I could perfectly well have let the matter drop; you gave me every opportunity to do so. That I have not done it should show you—a good deal. For I am not of the stuff of which heroes are made. I should not be here unless I wanted to; my motive is the selfish one of my own happiness.”

  They had entered the dark hallway.

  “Do you remember the morning when you stood here, with two tears in your eyes, saying ‘Never mind; you will come another time’?” (Here the cobbler came down the stairs.) “Why not let the demolition of the street of the Hyacinth be the crisis of our fate?” he went on, returning the cobbler’s bow. (Here the cobbler departed.) “If you refuse, I shall not give you up; I shall go on in the same way. But—haven’t I been tried long enough?”

  “You have not,” she answered. “But, unless you will leave Rome, and—me, I cannot bear it longer.”

  It was a great downfall, of course; Noel always maintained that it was.

  “But the heights upon which you had placed yourself, my dear, were too superhuman,” he said, excusingly.

  The street of the Hyacinth experienced a great downfall, also. During the summer it was demolished.

  Before its demolition Mrs. Lawrence, after three long breaths of astonishment, had come to offer her congratulations—in a new direction this time.

  “It is the most fortunate thing in the world,” she said to everybody, “that Mrs. Spurr is now confined to her bed for life, and is obliged to wear mourning.”

  But Mrs. Spurr is not confined to her bed; she
drives out with her daughter whenever the weather is favorable. She wears black, but is now beginning to vary it with purple and lavender.

  FROM

  DOROTHY AND OTHER

  ITALIAN STORIES

  Contents

  “Dorothy”

  “A Transplanted Boy”

  “A Florentine Experiment”

  “At the Château of Corinne”

  Dorothy

  * * *

  AS it was Saturday, many visitors came to the villa, Giuseppe receiving them at the open door, and waving them across the court or up the stone stairway, according to their apparent inclination, murmuring as he did so: “To the garden; the Signora North!” “To the salon; the Signora Tracy!” with his most inviting smiles. Dorothy probably was with Mrs. North in the garden. And everybody knew that the tea and the comfortable chairs were up-stairs. The company therefore divided itself, the young people as far as possible, the men who like to appear young, and the mothers who have heavier cares than the effects of open-air light on a middle-aged complexion, crossing the paved quadrangle to the north hall, while the old ladies and the ladies (not so old) who detest gardens ascended the stairs, accompanied by, first, the contented husbands; second, the well-trained husbands; third, other men, bond or free, who cherish no fondness for damp belvederes, for grassy mounds, or for poising themselves on a parapet which has a yawning abyss below.

  Giuseppe was the gardener; he became a footman once a week, that is, on Saturday afternoons, when the American ladies of the Villa Dorio received those of their friends who cared to come to their hill-top above the Roman Gate of Florence—a hill-top bearing the appropriate name of Bellosguardo. For fair indeed is the outlook from that supremely blessed plateau, whether towards the north, south, east, or west, with perhaps an especial loveliness towards the west, where the Arno winds down to the sea. Enchanting as is this Occidental landscape, Mrs. Tracy had ended by escaping from it.

  “When each new person begins: ‘Oh, what lovely shadows!’ ‘Oh, the Carrara Mountains!’ we cannot look at each other, Laura and I,” she explained; “it’s like the two Roman what-do-you-call-ems—augurs. I’m incapable of saying another word about the Carrara Mountains, Laura; and so, after this, I shall leave them to you.”

  This was the cause of Giuseppe’s indicating the drawing-room, and not the garden, as Mrs. Tracy’s domain.

  It was not difficult for Giuseppe to turn himself into a footman; Raffaello, the butler (or cameriere), could have turned himself into a coachman, a cook, a laundress, a gardener, or even a parlor-maid, if occasion had so required; for Italian servants can do anything. And if Mrs. Sebright sighed, “Ah, but so badly!” (which was partly true from the English point of view) the Americans at least could respond, “Yes, but so easily!” In truth, it was not precisely in accordance with the English standard to be welcomed by smiles of personal recognition from the footman at the door, nor to have the tea offered by the butler with an urgent hospitality which was almost tender. But Italy is not England; radiant smiles from the servants accord perhaps with radiant sunshine from the sky, both things being unknown at home. As for the American standard, it does not exist, save as a vacillating pennon.

  The Villa Dorio is a large, ancient structure of pale yellow hue; as is often the case in Tuscany, its façade rises directly from the roadway, so that any one can drive to the door, and knock by simply leaning from the carriage. But privacy is preserved all the same by the massive thickness of the stone walls, by the stern iron cages over the lofty lower windows, and by an entrance portal which resembles the gateway of a fortress. The villa, which, in the shape of a parallelogram, extends round an open court within, is large enough for five or six families; for in the old days, according to the patriarchal Italian custom, the married sons of the house, with their wives and children, were all gathered under its roof. In these later years its tenants have been foreigners, for the most part people of English and American birth—members of that band of pilgrims from the land of fog and the land of haste, who, having once fallen under the spell of Italy, the sorcery of that loveliest of countries, return thither again and yet again, sometimes unconscious of their thraldom, sometimes calling it staying for the education of the children, but seldom pronouncing the frank word “living.” Americans who have stayed in this way for twenty years or more are heard remarking, in solemn tones, “In case I die over here, I am to be taken home to my own country for burial; nothing less could content me.” This post-mortem patriotism probably soothes the conscience.

  Upon the Saturday already mentioned the Villa Dorio had but one tenant; for Mrs. Tracy had taken the entire place for a year—the year 1881. She could not occupy it all, even with the assistance of Mrs. North and Dorothy, for there were fifty rooms, besides five kitchens, a chapel, and an orange-house; she had selected, therefore, the range of apartments up-stairs which looked towards the south and west, and the long, frescoed, echoing spaces that remained were left to the ghosts. For there was a ghost, who clanked chains. The spectre of Belmonte, another villa near by, was more interesting; he was a monk in a brown gown, who glided at midnight up the great stairway without a sound, on his way to the tower. The American ladies had chosen for their use the northwestern garden. For the Villa Dorio has more than one garden; and it has also vineyards, olive groves, and the fields of the podere, or farm, in the valley below, with their two fountains, and the little chapel of the Holy Well. The northwestern garden is an enchanting spot. It is not large, and that adds to the charm, for its secluded nearness, so purely personal to the occupier, yet overhangs, or seems to, a full half of Tuscany; from the parapet the vast landscape below rolls towards the sunset as wide and far-stretching as the hidden shelf, one’s standing-point, is private and small. When one ceases to look at the view—if one ever does cease—one perceives that the nook has no formal flower-beds; grass, dotted with the pink daisies of Italy, stretches from the house walls to the edge; here and there are rose-bushes, pomegranates, oleanders, and laurel, but all are half wild. The encircling parapet is breast-high; but, by leaning over, one sees that on the outside the ancient stones go plunging down, in course after course, to a second level far below, the parapet being in reality the top of a massive retaining-wall. At the corner where this rampart turns northward is perched a little belvedere, or arbor, with vines clambering over it. It was upon this parapet, with its dizzy outer descent, that the younger visitors were accustomed to perch themselves when they came to Villa Dorio. And Dorothy herself generally led them in the dangerous experiment. But one could never think of Dorothy as falling; her supple figure conveyed the idea that she could fly—almost—so lightly was it poised upon her little feet; in any case, one felt sure that even if she should take the fancy to throw herself off, she would float to the lower slope as lightly as thistle-down. The case was different regarding the Misses Sebright; they, too, were handsome girls, but they would certainly go down like rocks. And as for Rose Hatherbury, attenuated though she was, there would be, one felt certain, no floating; Rose would cut the air like a needle in her swift descent. Rose was thin (her aunts, the Misses Wood, called it slender); she was a tall girl of twenty-five, who ought to have been beautiful, for her features were well cut and her blue eyes lustrous, while her complexion was delicately fair. Yet somehow all this was without charm. People who liked her said that the charm would come. The Misses Wood, however, spent no time in anticipation; to them the charm was already there; they had always believed that their niece was without a fault. These ladies had come to Florence twenty years before from Providence, Rhode Island; and they had remained, as they said, “for art” (they copied as amateurs in the Uffizi Gallery). Of late they had begun to ask themselves whether art would be enough for Rose.

  At five o’clock on this April afternoon the three Misses Sebright, Rose, Owen Charrington—a pink-cheeked young Englishman, long and strong—Wadsworth Brunetti, and Dorothy were all perched upon the parapet, while Mi
ss Maria Wood hovered near, pretending to look for daisies, but in reality ready to catch Rose by the ankles in case she should lose her balance. Miss Jane Wood was sitting with Mrs. North in the aguish belvedere. With remarkable unanimity, the group of men near by had declared that, in order to see the view, one must stand.

  “Your garden is like an opera-box, Mrs. North,” said Stephen Lefevre; “you sit here at your ease, and see the whole play of morning, noon, and night sweeping over Tuscany.”

  “A view like this is such a humanizer!” remarked Julian Grimston, thoughtfully. “One might indeed call it a hauberk.”

  To this mysterious comparison Miss Jane Wood responded, cheerfully, “Quite so.” She did not ask for explanations (Julian’s explanations were serious affairs); she spoke merely on general principles; for the Misses Wood considered Julian “such an earnest creature!” Julian, a wizened little American of uncertain age, was protected by a handsome mother, who possessed a firm eye and a man-like mouth; this lady had almost secured for her son an Italian countess of large circumference and ancient name. Julian so far held back; but he would yet go forward.

  “Its most admirable quality, to my mind, is that it’s here,” Mr. Illingsworth remarked, after Julian’s “hauberk.” “Generally, when there is a noble view, one has to go noble miles to see it; one has to be out all day, and eat hard-boiled eggs on the grass. You can’t think how I loathe hard-boiled eggs! Or else one has to sleep in some impossible place, and be routed out at dawn. Can any one admire anything at dawn?”

  “There isn’t much dawn in this,” answered Daniel Ashcraft. “Up to noon the view’s all mist, and at noon everything looks too near. It doesn’t amount to much before four o’clock, and only shows out all its points as the sun goes down.”