Delphi Collected Works of Ouida, page 443
For the present, however, he stifled his feelings, and only kept the water in memory, to use if need be; just for all the world as
Clerks of the civil service or of any public works.
Torquemada would have kept the torture; and he continued his courtship, stealthily, so that Santa Rosalia might know nothing of it, but boldly, so far as he dispensed with all hesitating preliminaries and plunged in media res, with all the disregard of delicacy that became a great man condescending to notice a poor maiden. He did not, however, to his surprise, make much way in the maiden’s good graces. He could never manage to see her alone; old Pippo was almost sure to be there, till Messer Nellemane longed to throttle him with his own reeds; or, if he were absent, there was the next‐door neighbour, the cooper’s wife with her tribe of children, or some of the Pastorini girls, or Viola’s great‐aunt by the mother’s side, a little withered rosy‐cheeked old apple of a woman, who called him Excellenza and opened her little black eyes wide at seeing such a grand personage come to the cottage.
Nobody was ever alone in Santa Rosalia; all doors were open, and all work was done to a chorus of chattering voices. Gossip is the very staff of life to all Italian communities, and the scanty bread and the watered wine are made up for by the delight of endless talk. The talk is of Lippo’s cow that has calved, of Tina’s baby that has cut its teeth, of Dina’s girl that is to marry at Pasqua; of the vicar’s new surplice, of the fattoressa’s new gown, of the chances of oil being cheap and of flour being dear, of all sorts of little odds and ends of local tittle‐tattle that are to them as the scandals of the Jockey Club, the combinations of Worth, the actions of the Porte, or the speeches of Prince Bismarck, are to us.
Viola had never been alone in all her life; her grandfather thought no woman ever should be; but her new admirer fancied that all these people round her were precautions taken against himself, and waxed very angry accordingly.
He did not want all the neighbourhood to talk of his courtship of this poor old man’s granddaughter, and he knew very well that if you only fling an acorn in the dust one day people, the next, will swear to a grove of oaks against you.
The Italian tongue chatters like a magpie’s; if they did not let the steam off thus they would be less easily ruled than they are; but no great talker ever did any great thing, yet, in this world.
Messer Gaspardo Nellemane was by no means an immoral man; he was rather cold of temperament, and being a wise person he saw how often a little naughty story when it gets afloat about a public career is to it as fatal as the rift in the lute. He had a wholesome horror of ever being compromised by foolish frivolities; he was an ambitious man, and these wayside dallyings had but little temptation for him. Nevertheless, Messer Nellemane was not a saint, and the beauty of Viola, granddaughter of Pippo, was seductive to him.
Marry her? No; he did not mean to marry; not until he should get some better post than this of Santa Rosalia, and be able to discover some heiress of a wax candle‐maker, or a strozzino, or an oil merchant, whose money would help to make him a deputy, since he fully intended some day to jump from the office‐stool of the municipality to the benches of Montecitorio. No; he had no thought of marrying Viola, but she was very handsome, very beautiful, and there was docile Bindo Terri ready to take any‐ thing off his hands, from a frayed coat to a tarnished love. Bindo Terri would marry her — for a consideration.
Messer Gaspardo, though only a clerk, had all the ideas of a gentleman.
As it chanced Corpus Domini fell late in May that year, and of course there were to be processions all over the country, and every girl, however penniless she might be, would find a white or a blue frock, and perhaps a bit of tulle for a veil, and would walk with the Host as it was borne under an umbrella between the mulberry trees that lined the dusty roads and through the gardens of the neighbouring villas.
Viola was very poor, and her clothes, though clean, were always sorely patched and frayed; so Messer Gaspardo thought it good policy to go down into the city himself and choose a most delicate print of the Madonna’s own azure, and a wreath of white roses and some shoes, shoes with bright silvered‐looking buckles, just such as the ladies wore; and making all these up into a parcel when he got home, he left them himself on the table of old Pippo’s cottage when Pippo and his daughter were absent.
On the roll of print he had pinned a card,— ‘Con ossequie teneri all più bella del mondo: dal suo devoto. — G.N.’
He knew the right road to the female heart. Viola chanced to see the parcel when alone; her grandfather being outside smoking pipe with a neighbour. She coloured very much, and then grew very pale. She could just spell out the words on the card. She hastened up the steep stone staircase to her own little miserable room and hid the packet under the sheet on her bed. She had only just caught a glimpse of the blue print, and the white wreath, and the buckles; and they had made her tremble as though she had seen the face of a ghost.
She was keen in all her simplicity as her people almost always are, and she had that doubt which always underlies their sanguine temper. If Carmelo saw these things he would be capable of flinging them at their giver’s head and saying perilous words in the very palace of the municipality itself.
Even her old grandfather —
Her heart sank like a stone in the deep sea as she thought of the forbidden rushes and the running water at the threshold.
‘If I spoke him fair?’ she said to herself with her country‐folk’s belief in fair words as a panacea for all evils and ills, and a talisman against all peril and enmity.
‘May I go and see the aunt ‘Nunziatina this evening?’ she asked of Pippo. Her great aunt lived at the other end of Santa Rosalia ; the same little apple‐cheeked old woman who had stared at Messer Nellemane; she was poor, nay, she was penniless; she shared a room with three others and lived frankly on alms; very honest begging it was; she went round from house to house with a big basket, and got bread and broken meats, and a little money, and now and then a flask of wine, and then she sung her Jubilate. Everybody knew and liked her in this place where she lived all her life, and knew very well that she had not a soldo in the world; her husband had been a day‐labourer, and when he had chopped his hand off, in cutting a hedge of oakscrub and myrtle, and had died of mortification, the old Annunziata had been left destitute.
The Government which forbids begging, and lands those who do beg in prisons, has as yet provided no poor‐law; so eighty‐year old ‘Nunziatina had no choice but to trot round with her basket, or to die silently of hunger. Many do the latter — and nobody cares.
Want seems sadder in this light and lovely land, where life requires so little to make it happy and to fill its needs, than it does in the dark grim North, where fog hides the suffering multitudes and cold is the tyrant of all. Here, give but a little bread, a little oil and wine, and life can sparkle on cheerily as the firefly burns in the cornfields; but alas! even that little, thousands and tens of thousands have not, and so perish.
Messer Nellemane, and his kind, know the reason why.
‘May I go and see ‘Nunziatina?’ said Viola, and her grandfather nodded ascent; she went and got the parcel from under her bed and went out with it.
‘What have you got there?’ said Pippo.
‘The cloth I have spun; auntie can sell it better than I,’ said Viola, thinking nought of a little fib for peace’ sake, though she coloured as she spoke, for she was of a straightforward and truthful nature.
The old man ambled by her side on his little lean shrivelled shanks, for he never let the girl go through the village alone.
Arrived at the dwelling of Annunziata he let his granddaughter go upstairs, while he stayed below, chatting with the carpenter who owned the cottage, and dwelt in the ground‐floor of it, and let the rest to lodgers.
The cottage stood on a bit of waste land by a bend in the river; some poplars made a pleasant murmur near; some geese and goats strayed about on the worn grass.
‘The Giunta cuts the trees down come Ognissanti,’ said the carpenter with a groan.
‘By Bacchus!’ cried Pippo, who never tasted any wine better than vinegar.
‘They’ll cut our toe‐nails off next,’ sighed the carpenter.
‘They would if they could get a centime a toe!’ assented Pippo, and told his grievances as to the rushes and the stream.
Meanwhile, Violas upstairs told her story to her grand‐aunt; a little old square figure with a straw hat on, and a very short skirt, and old leather boots like a ploughman’s, and a cheerful sunburnt ugly pleasant face.
‘Dear our Lady! But it is beautiful stuff for a gown!’ cried the old woman, fingering the blue print as reverentially as if the had been the holy wafer. ‘Eh, eh! I opened my eyes at him the other day! I thought, thought I, “Yon master comes not for naught!”’
‘But I cannot keep it,’ said Viola, with a flush on her cheeks and a little tone of inquiry in the words.
The old woman said at once: ‘No, my joy; you would do ill to keep it,’
They had been all of them very upright and unstained folks in both these families from which Viola Mazzetti sprang, and their women had always been honest and chaste.
‘Maybe though, he means it in all honour?’ said ‘Nunziatina doubtingly, and thinking to herself: ‘She is so handsome, the child; why not? — and after all, though a great man here, he was a tinker’s son, they say; and when all is told he is but a clerk.’
Viola shook her head, and her cheeks grew red. The maidens of the poor soon learn what evil means.
‘No, no; he is a bad man,’ she said with a slight shudder. ‘And besides, if he did mean well, I must keep faith with Carmelo.’
‘The lad has spoken out, then?’
‘Yes; we shall marry when the fathers say we can.’
‘That is another thing,’ said the old woman. ‘Now what is it you want me to do, my dear; for there is something, I can see?’
‘I thought this,’ said Viola. ‘I thought, I cannot go to Messer Gaspardo; that would never do; I never scarce stir by myself, and grandfather would be furious; and besides, I want him to know nothing, and Carmelo nothing either; so I thought, if you would take the parcel back to Messer Gaspardo, and thank him, and speak him fair, and tell him I am betrothed, I thought that might be the best way? You can see him any day they say, at the communal palace; and we must try not to offend him, because he can hurt people so much, and he is already angry at things grandfather has done.’
The old woman chuckled a little, for she was a merry soul, though she was eighty‐four and had not a penny on earth, and when she should die would be buried in a deal box by the parish.
‘A pretty figure am I for a palace!’ she said with a laugh as bright as a robin’s song. ‘But let us talk it over, my dearly beloved, and may the dear saints counsel us!’
They did talk it over, turning the matter inside out, and in every possible light, Italians like to do on all occasions; the girl was harassed and oppressed by this love‐gift; the old woman was rather flattered and amused.
‘Pray speak him fair,’ Viola begged of her amabassadress as old Pippo called her to go down. ‘Pray be humble and pretty of language to him, because he can do father so much harm!’
‘Pooh, he can’t eat us,’ said the old woman, who had a spirit of her own. ‘And he won’t be the first man, my dear, that has found himself forestalled by a better than himself with a handsome maiden!’
Viola could neither smile nor blush.
‘He can do everybody so much harm!’ she said anxiously with a sigh. The dread of Gaspardo Nellemane was like a hand of lead upon her, ‘Do speak him fair, dear, pray do!’
‘Never fear,’ said the old fool merrily. ‘He can’t do me any mischief, my child. Who has nothing loses nothing. Does not the proverb say so? Why should you be angry with the young man? He means no harm, I will warrant.’
‘Viola! come down I say! Your tongue will reach to the town and go twice round the cathedral!’ roared Pippo impatiently from below; and the girl went down the cottage stairs heavy of heart, and wondering how her grand‐aunt’s errand would speed. She could not shake off the memory of Messer Gaspardo’s bold black eyes.
But at the cottage‐door they met Carmelo driving a cart of his father’s home, empty, having taken sacks of flour to a neighbouring hamlet; and she and her grandfather to up into the cart behind the good old grey horse Bigio with its jingling bells, and so sped cheerfully past the poplars and along the river; and in the gaze of their lover’s honest beaming eyes she was half though not wholly cured of her fears, and repaid a hundredfold on the loss of the dress and the rose‐wreath and the shoes with the shining buckles.
In the forenoon ‘Nunziatina took the parcel in her alms‐basket and trotted with her stick to help her through Santa Rosalia to the municipal building, and then boldly asked for Messer Nellemane. She was a bright‐hearted, high‐couraged, old woman, and had that sturdy independence which still extant among the old people who are too old to be able to learn to cringe before the national curse of municipal law.
She cared nought for all the greatness of Messer Gaspardo, and fought valiantly with Tonino and Maso and Bindo, all of whom tried to shut their doors on her, and at last, in sheer despite of them, she stumped up the stone stairs in her hobnailed boots that were three times too large for her, and at ten of the clock precisely stood in the august presence.
Messer Gaspardo welcomed her quite charmingly; he knew she was the grand‐aunt of Viola Mazzetti. He was seated in state, ready to receive anybody, as was his wont from ten to twelve, with a long writing‐table before him, covered with papers, and the green blinds shut against the sun, and maps of the district and books of the Penal Code and the Civil Code around him; and really he might almost have been taken for the Prefect of the Province, so grave and majestic an embodiment of the Law did he look.
‘I am glad to find your excellency all alone,’ said the bright little old woman, laying down the big parcel on the writing‐table, for she thought to herself, ‘I am told to speak him fair, and nothing will please him like a grand title, that makes me look like an ass to use it.’
‘All the country is always talking of all it owes to your illustrious self’ (and that is true, she thought, because every living soul is always cursing and abusing him from morning till night), ‘and never should I have ventured, a poor old beggar as I am, to intrude upon you, only that I have to speak to you about my sister’s granddaughter —
‘Speak on,’ said the secretary, but his eye grew annoyed and startled; this was by no means what he wished; to have his admiration of Viola made a subject of discussion in her family was the last thing that consorted with his desires or designs. ‘The girl has been boasting already,’ he thought angrily, and gave a malediction to the vanity of woman.
‘You admire Viola, they tell me, and so indeed it seems, since you send such fine presents, signore mio,’ continued the crafty ‘Nunziatina, and waited for him to reply.
Messer Gaspardo gnawed his moustachios irritably.
‘Everyone admires a beautiful girl,’ he said at last, with an uneasy laugh. ‘You must not conclude too much from that—’
‘No, no, sir, not I, ‘ said the old woman very cheerfully, but her little sunken still bright brown eyes plunged their regard into his and read him, down to the secrets of his innermost soul. ‘Gentlemen like you have a kindly way of paying compliments that mean nothing; oh, nothing at all; and my Viola is a girl of a great deal too much sense to have put meaning into anything you said or did. Only as she is very grateful to you for such courtesy, and could not come very well to say so, she bade me speak for her; and do you be very sure, sir, that none the less thankful is she, though her feeling as to what is right makes her send your pretty things back by me, sir.’
Therewith ‘Nunziatina took out of her basket all the gifts that had represented with Messer Nellemane the pearls of Faust, and laid them very respectfully down on his table.
Messer Nellemane grew of a sickly colour. He was pallid with rage. He half rose from his seat.
‘What, woman!’ he stammered; ‘what? Are you mad? Do you dare to insult me?’
‘No, no, sir; never a thought of it,’ said wily Annunziata; ‘no more of it than you had in buying those pretty things for the child to wear on Corpus Domini; a kindly thought, just like a gentleman—’
‘Why then — why—’ still stammered Messer Gaspardo, still aghast with wrath and wonder.
‘Why, sir?’ — the little old woman drew herself up quite straight, with both her hands on her elm‐stick— ‘Why, sir, because it is not meet for maidens, and motherless maidens, to take gifts from those too much above them to mean honest marriage, or have nay thought except a foolish sport that may divert the man but does destroy the woman. City girls, I know, are ready for that sort of play, but our girls are not. That is all I wanted just to say, and thank you kindly, Signore Gaspardo; for I am quite sure you had no thought of harming Viola. And now let me take away the inconvenience of myself, and bid you a very good day.’
With that Italian phrase of peasant farewell which here was no figure of speech, for she was indeed the greatest discomfort to him that had ever fallen across his prosperous career, the little old woman in her straw hat and her short petticoats bowed to him, with that grace which oftentimes even the humblest and the very aged keep in the land where Art once ruled supreme, and trotted out of his room and down the stone stairs with a little tranquil chuckle.
She had said nothing of Viola’s betrothal; the Italian courtesy and caution alike lay down as a fixed rule for rich and poor, that you should never say a disagreeable thing under any pretext or pressure.
‘He will learn it soon enough, ‘ she thought, ‘and he is a bad man, and a dangerous; the devil dwells under his eyelids.’
