The Complete Novels and Selected Writings of Amy Levy, page 44
The Marchesa, with her glib talk, her stately courtesy, was in truth the chilliest and the most reserved of mortals. Of Romeo I saw but little. With the old Marchese, alone, I was conscious of a silent sympathy.
Chapter 6. Costanza Marchetti
One morning after breakfast I found the whole family assembled in the yellow drawing-room in a state of unusual excitement. Even the bloodless little Marchesa had a red spot on either shrivelled cheek, and her handsome old husband had thrown off for once his mask of impenetrable and impassive dignity in favour of an air of distinct and lively pleasure.
Bianca was chattering, Romeo was smiling, and Annunziata, of course, was smiling too. Beckoning me confidentially towards her, and showing her gums even more freely than usual, she said: "There is great news. The Marchesino Andrea is coming home. We have had a letter this morning, and we are to expect him within a fortnight."
I received with genuine interest this piece of information. From the first I had decided that the rebel was probably the most interesting member of his family, and had even gone so far as to "derive" him from his father, in accordance with the latter-day scientific fashion which has infected the most unscientific among us.
Bianca was quite unmanageable that morning, and I had finally to abandon all attempts at discipline and let her chat away, in English, to her heart's content.
"I cried all day when Andrea went away," she rattled on; "I was quite a little thing, and I did nothing but cry. Even mamma cried too. When he was home she was often very, very angry with Andrea. Every one was always being angry with him," she added presently, "but every one liked him best. There was often loud talking with papa and Romeo. I used to peep from the door of my nursery and see Andrea stride past with a white face and a great frown." She knitted her own pale brows together in illustration of her own words, and looked so ridiculous that I could not help laughing.
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I judged it best, moreover, to cut short these confidences, and we adjourned, with some reluctance on her part, to the piano.
Lunch was a very cheerful meal that day, and afterwards Bianca thrust her arm in mine and dragged me gaily upstairs to the sitting-room.
"Only think," she said, "mamma is writing to Costanza Marchetti at Florence to ask her to stay with us the week after next."
"Is the signorina a great friend of yours?"
Bianca looked exceedingly sly. "Oh yes, she is a great friend of mine. I stayed with her once at Florence. They have a beautiful, beautiful house on the Lung' Arno, and Costanza has more dresses than she can wear."
She spoke with such an air of naïve and important self-consciousness that I could scarcely refrain from smiling.
It was impossible not to see through her meaning. The beloved truant was to be permanently trapped; the trap to be baited with a rich, perhaps a beautiful bride.
The situation was truly interesting; I foresaw the playing out of a little comedy under my very eyes. Life quickened perceptibly in the palazzo after the receipt of the letter from America.
Plans for picnics, balls, and other gaieties were freely discussed. There was a constant dragging about of heavy furniture along the corridors, from which I gathered that rooms were being suitably prepared both for Andrea and his possible bride.
At the gossip parliaments, nothing else was talked of but the coming event; the misdemeanours of servants, the rudeness of tradesmen, and the latest Pisan scandal being relegated for the time being to complete obscurity.
In about ten days Costanza Marchetti appeared on the scene.
We were sitting in the yellow drawing-room after lunch when the carriage drove up, followed by a fly heavily laden with luggage.
Bianca had rushed to the window at the sound of wheels, and had hastily described the cavalcade.
A few minutes later in came Romeo with a young, or youngish, lady, dressed in the height of fashion, on his arm.
She advanced towards the Marchesa with a sort of sliding curtsy, and shook hands from the elbow in a manner worthy of Bond Street. But the meeting between her and Bianca was even more striking.
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Retreating a little, to allow free play for their operations, the young ladies tilted forward on their high heels, precipitating themselves into one another's arms, where they kissed one another violently on either cheek. Retreating again, they returned once more to the charge, and the performance was gone through for a second time.
Then they sat down close together on the sofa, stroking one another's hands.
"Costanza powders so thickly with violet powder, it makes me quite ill," Bianca confided to me later in the day; "and she thinks there is nobody like herself in all the world."
When the Contessima, for that I discovered was her style and title, had detached her fashionable bird-cage veil from the brim of her large hat, I fell to observing her with some curiosity from my modest corner. She was no longer in her first youthabout twenty-eight, I should saybut she was distinctly handsome, in a rather hard-featured fashion.
When she was introduced to me, she bowed very stiffly, and said, "How do you do, Miss?" in the funniest English I had ever heard.
"It is so good of you to come to us," said the Marchesa, with her usual stateliness; "to leave your gay Florence before the end of the Carnival for our quiet Pisa. We cannot promise you many parties and balls, Costanza."
Perhaps Costanza had seen too many balls in her timehad discovered them, perhaps (who knows?), to be merely dust and ashes.
At any rate, she eagerly and gushingly disclaimed her hostess's insinuation, and there was voluble exchange of compliments between the ladies.
"Will you give Bianca a holiday for this week, Miss Meredith?" said the Marchesa, presently.
"Certainly, if you will allow it," I answered, saying what I knew I was intended to say.
Costanza looked across at me coldly, taking in the modest details of my costume.
"And when does the Marchesino arrive?" she asked, turning to his mother.
"Not till late on Thursday night."
Bianca counted upon her fingers.
"Three whole days and a half," she cried.
"On Friday," said the Marchesa, "we have arranged a little dance. It is so
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near the end of Carnival we could not put it off till long after his arrival."
"Ah, dearest Marchesa," cried Costanza, clasping her hands in a rather mechanical rapture, "it will be too delightful! Do we dance in the ball-room below, or in here?"
"In the ball-room," said the Marchesa, while Annunziata nodded across at me, saying
"Do you dance, Miss Meredith?"
"Yes; I am very fond of it," I answered, but it must be owned that I looked forward with but scant interest to the festivity. My insular mind was unable to rise to the idea of Italian partners.
Costanza raised her eyeglass, with its long tortoiseshell handle, to her heavy-lidded eyes, and surveyed me scrutinizingly. It had been evident from the first that she had but a poor opinion of me.
"I hope you will join us on Friday, Miss Meredith," said the Marchesa, with much ceremony.
I could not help feeling snubbed. I had taken it for granted that I was to appear; this formal invitation was inexpressibly chilling.
I did not enjoy my holiday of the next few days. I had always been exceedingly grateful for my few hours of daily solitude, and these were mine no more.
The fact that the ladies of the household never seemed to need either solitude or silence had impressed me from the first as a curious phenomenon. Now, for the time being, I was dragged into the current of their lives, and throughout the day was forced to share in the ceaseless chatter, without which, it seemed, a guest could not be entertained, a ball given, or even a son received into the bosom of his family.
Here, there, and everywhere was the unfortunate Miss Meredithat everybody's beck and call, "upstairs, downstairs, and in my lady's chamber."
"It is fortunate that it is only me," I reflected. "I don't know what Jenny or Rosalind would do. They would just pack up and go." For, at home, the liberty of the individual had always been greatly respected, which was, perhaps, the reason why we managed to live together in such complete harmony.
As for Bianca and her friend, they clattered about all day long together on their high heels, their arms intertwined, exchanging confidences, com-
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paring possessions, and eating torino till their teeth ached. In the intervals of this absorption in friendship my pupil would come up to me, throw her arms round me, and pour out a flood of the frankest criticisms on the fair Costanza. To these I refused to listen.
"How can I tell, Bianca, that you do not rush off to the Contessima and complain of me to her?"
"Dearest little signorina, there could be nothing to complain of."
"Of course," I said, "we know that. I am perfect. But, seriously, Bianca, I do not understand this kissing and hugging of a person one moment, and saying evil things of her the next."
Bianca was getting on for nineteen, but it was necessary to treat her like a child. She hung her head, and took the rebuke very meekly.
"But, signorina, say what you will, Costanza does put wadding in her stays because she is so thin, and then pretends to have a fine figure. And she has a bad temper, as every one knows. "
"Bianca, you are incorrigible!" I put my hand across her mouth, and ran down the corridor to my own room.
Chapter 7. The Home-Coming of the Rebel
The covered gallery which ran along the back of the house was flooded in the afternoon with sunshine. Here, as the day declined, I loved to pace, basking in the warmth and rejoicing in the brightness, for mild and clear as the day might be out of doors, within the thick-walled palace it was always mirk and chill.
The long, high wall of the gallery was covered with pictureschiefly paintings of dead and gone Brogimost of them worthless, taken singly; taken collectively, interesting as a study of the varieties of family types.
Here was Bianca, to the life, painted two centuries ago; the old Marchese looked out from a dingy canvas 300 years old at least, and a curious mixture of Romeo and his sister disported itself in powder amid a florid eighteenth century family group. Conspicuous among so much indifferent workmanship hung a genuine Bronzino 18 of considerable beauty, representing a young man, whose charming aspect was scarcely marred by his stiff and elaborate fifteenth century costume. The dark eyes of this picture had a way of following one up and down the gallery in a rather
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disconcerting manner; already I had woven a series of little legends about him, and had decided that he left his frame at night, like the creatures in Ruddygore, 19 to roam the house as a ghost where once he had lived as a man.
Opposite the pictures, on which they shed their light, was a row of windows, set close together deep in the thick wall, and rising almost to the ceiling. They were not made to open, but through their numerous and dingy panes I could see across the roofs of the town to the hills, or down below to where a neglected bit of territory, enclosed between high walls, did duty as a garden.
In one corner of this latter stood a great ilex tree, its massive grey trunk old and gnarled, its blue-green foliage casting a wide shadow. Two or three cypresses, with their broom-like stems, sprang from the overgrown turf, which, at this season of the year, was beginning to be yellow with daffodils, and a thick growth of laurel bushes ran along under the walls. An empty marble basin, approached by broken pavement, marked the site of a forgotten fountain, the stone-crop running riot about its borders; the house-leek thrusting itself every now and then through the interstices of shattered stone. Forlorn, uncared for as was this square of ground, it had for me a mysterious attraction; it seemed to me that there clung to it through all change of times and weathers, something of the beauty in desolation which makes the charm of Italy.
It was about four o'clock on Thursday afternoon, and I was wandering up and down the gallery in the sunshine.
I was alone for the first time during the last three days, and was making the best of this brief respite from the gregarious life to which I saw myself doomed for some time to come. The ladies were out driving, paying calls and making a few last purchases for the coming festivities. In the evening Andrea was expected, and an atmosphere of excitement pervaded the whole household.
"They are really fond of him, it seems," I mused; "these people who, as far as I can make out, are so cold."
Then I leaned my forehead disconsolately against the window, and had a little burst of sadness all by myself.
The constant strain of the last few days had tired me. I longed intensely for peace, for rest, for affection, for the sweet and simple kindliness of home.
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I had even lost my interest in the coming event which seemed to accentuate my forlornness.
What were other people's brothers to me? Let mother or one of the girls come out to me, and I would not be behindhand in rejoicing. ''No one wants me, no one cares for me, and I don't care for any one either," I said to myself gloomily, brushing away a stray tear with the back of my hand. Then I moved from the window and my contemplation of the ilex tree, and began slowly pacing down the gallery, which was getting fuller every minute of the thick golden sunlight.
But suddenly my heart seemed to stop beating, my blood froze, loud pulses fell to throbbing in my ears. I remained rooted to the spot with horror, while my eyes fixed themselves on a figure, which, as yet on the further side of a shaft of moted sunlight, was slowly advancing towards me from the distant end of the gallery.
"Is it the Bronzino come to life?" whispered a voice in the back recess of my consciousness. The next moment I was laughing at my own fears, and was contemplating with interest and astonishment the very flesh-and-blood presentment of a modern gentleman which stood bowing before me.
"I fear I have startled you," said a decidedly human voice, speaking in English, with a peculiar accent, while the speaker looked straight at me with a pair of dark eyes that were certainly like those of the Bronzino.
"Oh, no; it was my own fault for being so stupid," I answered rather breathlessly, shaken out of my self-possession.
"I am Andrea Brogi," he said, with a little bow; "and I believe I have the pleasure of addressing Miss Clarke?"
"I am Miss Meredith, your sister's governess," I answered, feeling perhaps a little hurt that the substitution of one English teacher for another had not been thought a matter of sufficient importance for mention in the frequent letters which the family had been in the habit of sending to America. Andrea, with great simplicity, went on to explain his presence in the gallery.
"I am some hours before my time, you see. I had miscalculated the trains between this and Livorno. Now don't you think this a nice reception, Miss Meredith?" he went on, with a smile and a sudden change of tone.
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"No one to meet me at the depôt, no one to meet me at home! Father and brother at the club, mother and sister amusing themselves in the town."
His remark scarcely seemed to admit of a reply; it was not my place to assure him of his welcome, and I got out of the situation with a smile.
He looked at me again, this time more attentively. "But I fear you were really frightened just now. You are pale still and trembling. Did you think I was a ghost?"
"I thoughtI thought you were the Bronzino come down from its frame," I answered, astonished at my own daring. The complete absence of self-consciousness in my companion, the delight, moreover, of being addressed in fluent English, gave me courage.
