From the studio Father Rocco went straight to his own rooms, hard by the church to which he was attached. Opening a cabinet in his study, he took from one of its drawers a handful of small silver money, consulted for a minute or so a slate on which several names and addresses were written, provided himself with a portable inkhorn and some strips of paper, and again went out.
He directed his steps to the poorest part of the neighborhood; and entering some very wretched houses, was greeted by the inhabitants with great respect and affection. The women, especially, kissed his hands with more reverence than they would have shown to the highest crowned head in Europe. In return, he talked to them as easily and unconstrainedly as if they were his equals; sat down cheerfully on dirty bedsides and rickety benches; and distributed his little gifts of money with the air of a man who was paying debts rather than bestowing charity. Where he encountered cases of illness, he pulled out his inkhorn and slips of paper, and wrote simple prescriptions to be made up from the medicine-chest of a neighboring convent, which served the same merciful purpose then that is answered by dispensaries in our days. When he had exhausted his money, and had got through his visits, he was escorted out of the poor quarter by a perfect train of enthusiastic followers. The women kissed his hand again, and the men uncovered as he turned, and, with a friendly sign, bade them all farewell.
As soon as he was alone again, he walked toward the Campo Santo, and, passing the house in which Nanina lived, sauntered up and down the street thoughtfully for some minutes. When he at length ascended the steep staircase that led to the room occupied by the sisters, he found the door ajar. Pushing it open gently, he saw La Biondella sitting with her pretty, fair profile turned toward him, eating her evening meal of bread and grapes. At the opposite end of the room, Scarammuccia was perched up on his hindquarters in a corner, with his mouth wide open to catch the morsel of bread which he evidently expected the child to throw to him. What the elder sister was doing, the priest had not time to see; for the dog barked the moment he presented himself, and Nanina hastened to the door to ascertain who the intruder might be. All that he could observe was that she was too confused, on catching sight of him, to be able to utter a word. La Biondella was the first to speak.
“Thank you, Father Rocco,” said the child, jumping up, with her bread in one hand and her grapes in the other—“thank you for giving me so much money for my dinner-mats. There they are, tied up together in one little parcel, in the corner. Nanina said she was ashamed to think of your carrying them; and I said I knew where you lived, and I should like to ask you to let me take them home!”
“Do you think you can carry them all the way, my dear?” asked the priest.
“Look, Father Rocco, see if I can’t carry them!” cried La Biondella, cramming her bread into one of the pockets of her little apron, holding her bunch of grapes by the stalk in her mouth, and hoisting the packet of dinner-mats on her head in a moment. “See, I am strong enough to carry double,” said the child, looking up proudly into the priest’s face.
“Can you trust her to take them home for me?” asked Father Rocco, turning to Nanina. “I want to speak to you alone, and her absence will give me the opportunity. Can you trust her out by herself?”
“Yes, Father Rocco, she often goes out alone.” Nanina gave this answer in low, trembling tones, and looked down confusedly on the ground.
“Go then, my dear,” said Father Rocco, patting the child on the shoulder; “and come back here to your sister, as soon as you have left the mats.”
La Biondella went out directly in great triumph, with Scarammuccia walking by her side, and keeping his muzzle suspiciously close to the pocket in which she had put her bread. Father Rocco closed the door after them, and then, taking the one chair which the room possessed, motioned to Nanina to sit by him on the stool.
“Do you believe that I am your friend, my child, and that I have always meant well toward you?” he began.
“The best and kindest of friends,” answered Nanina.
“Then you will hear what I have to say patiently, and you will believe that I am speaking for your good, even if my words should distress you?” (Nanina turned away her head.) “Now, tell me; should I be wrong, to begin with, if I said that my brother’s pupil, the young nobleman whom we call ‘Signor Fabio,’ had been here to see you to-day?” (Nanina started up affrightedly from her stool.) “Sit down again, my child; I am not going to blame you. I am only going to tell you what you must do for the future.”
He took her hand; it was cold, and it trembled violently in his.
“I will not ask what he has been saying to you,” continued the priest; “for it might distress you to answer, and I have, moreover, had means of knowing that your youth and beauty have made a strong impression on him. I will pass over, then, all reference to the words he may have been speaking to you; and I will come at once to what I have now to say, in my turn. Nanina, my child, arm yourself with all your courage, and promise me, before we part to-night, that you will see Signor Fabio no more.”
Nanina turned round suddenly, and fixed her eyes on him, with an expression of terrified incredulity. “No more?”
“You are very young and very innocent,” said Father Rocco; “but surely you must have thought before now of the difference between Signor Fabio and you. Surely you must have often remembered that you are low down among the ranks of the poor, and that he is high up among the rich and the nobly born?”
Nanina’s hands dropped on the priest’s knees. She bent her head down on them, and began to weep bitterly.
“Surely you must have thought of that?” reiterated Father Rocco.
“Oh, I have often, often thought of it!” murmured the girl “I have mourned over it, and cried about it in secret for many nights past. He said I looked pale, and ill, and out of spirits to-day, and I told him it was with thinking of that!”
“And what did he say in return?”
There was no answer. Father Rocco looked down. Nanina raised her head directly from his knees, and tried to turn it away again. He took her hand and stopped her.
“Come!” he said; “speak frankly to me. Say what you ought to say to your father and your friend. What was his answer, my child, when you reminded him of the difference between you?”
“He said I was born to be a lady,” faltered the girl, still struggling to turn her face away, “and that I might make myself one if I would learn and be patient. He said that if he had all the noble ladies in Pisa to choose from on one side, and only little Nanina on the other, he would hold out his hand to me, and tell them, ‘This shall be my wife.’ He said love knew no difference of rank; and that if he was a nobleman and rich, it was all the more reason why he should please himself. He was so kind, that I thought my heart would burst while he was speaking; and my little sister liked him so, that she got upon his knee and kissed him. Even our dog, who growls at other strangers, stole to his side and licked his hand. Oh, Father Rocco! Father Rocco!” The tears burst out afresh, and the lovely head dropped once more, wearily, on the priest’s knee.
Father Rocco smiled to himself, and waited to speak again till she was calmer.
“Supposing,” he resumed, after some minutes of silence, “supposing Signor Fabio really meant all he said to you—”
Nanina started up, and confronted the priest boldly for the first time since he had entered the room.
“Supposing!” she exclaimed, her cheeks beginning to redden, and her dark blue eyes flashing suddenly through her tears “Supposing! Father Rocco, Fabio would never deceive me. I would die here at your feet, rather than doubt the least word he said to me!”
The priest signed to her quietly to return to the stool. “I never suspected the child had so much spirit in her,” he thought to himself.
“I would die,” repeated Nanina, in a voice that began to falter now. “I would die rather than doubt him.”
“I will not ask you to doubt him,” said Father Rocco, gently; “and I will believe in him myself as firmly as you do. Let us suppose, my child, that you have learned patiently all the many things of which you are now ignorant, and which it is necessary for a lady to know. Let us suppose that Signor Fabio has really violated all the laws that govern people in his high station and has taken you to him publicly as his wife. You would be happy then, Nanina; but would he? He has no father or mother to control him, it is true; but he has friends—many friends and intimates in his own rank—proud, heartless people, who know nothing of your worth and goodness; who, hearing of your low birth, would look on you, and on your husband too, my child, with contempt. He has not your patience and fortitude. Think how bitter it would be for him to bear that contempt—to see you shunned by proud women, and carelessly pitied or patronized by insolent men. Yet all this, and more, he would have to endure, or else to quit the world he has lived in from his boyhood—the world he was born to live in. You love him, I know—”
Nanina’s tears burst out afresh. “Oh, how dearly—how dearly!” she murmured.
“Yes, you love him dearly,” continued the priest; “but would all your love compensate him for everything else that he must lose? It might, at first; but there would come a time when the world would assert its influence over him again; when he would feel a want which you could not supply—a weariness which you could not solace. Think of his life then, and of yours. Think of the first day when the first secret doubt whether he had done rightly in marrying you would steal into his mind. We are not masters of all our impulses. The lightest spirits have their moments of irresistible depression; the bravest hearts are not always superior to doubt. My child, my child, the world is strong, the pride of rank is rooted deep, and the human will is frail at best! Be warned! For your own sake and for Fabio’s, be warned in time.”
Nanina stretched out her hands toward the priest in despair.
“Oh, Father Rocco! Father Rocco!” she cried, “why did you not tell me this before?”
“Because, my child, I only knew of the necessity for telling you to-day. But it is not too late; it is never too late to do a good action. You love Fabio, Nanina? Will you prove that love by making a great sacrifice for his good?”
“I would die for his good!”
“Will you nobly cure him of a passion which will be his ruin, if not yours, by leaving Pisa to-morrow?”
“Leave Pisa!” exclaimed Nanina. Her face grew deadly pale; she rose and moved back a step or two from the priest.
“Listen to me,” pursued Father Rocco; “I have heard you complain that you could not get regular employment at needle-work. You shall have that employment, if you will go with me—you and your little sister too, of course—to Florence to-morrow.”
“I promised Fabio to go to the studio,” began Nanina, affrightedly. “I promised to go at ten o’clock. How can I—”
She stopped suddenly, as if her breath were failing her.
“I myself will take you and your sister to Florence,” said Father Rocco, without noticing the interruption. “I will place you under the care of a lady who will be as kind as a mother to you both. I will answer for your getting such work to do as will enable you to keep yourself honestly and independently; and I will undertake, if you do not like your life at Florence, to bring you back to Pisa after a lapse of three months only. Three months, Nanina. It is not a long exile.”
“Fabio! Fabio!” cried the girl, sinking again on the seat, and hiding her face.
“It is for his good,” said Father Rocco, calmly: “for Fabio’s good, remember.”
“What would he think of me if I went away? Oh, if I had but learned to write! If I could only write Fabio a letter!”
“Am I not to be depended on to explain to him all that he ought to know?”
“How can I go away from him! Oh! Father Rocco, how can you ask me to go away from him?”
“I will ask you to do nothing hastily. I will leave you till to-morrow morning to decide. At nine o’clock I shall be in the street; and I will not even so much as enter this house, unless I know beforehand that you have resolved to follow my advice. Give me a sign from your window. If I see you wave your white mantilla out of it, I shall know that you have taken the noble resolution to save Fabio and to save yourself. I will say no more, my child; for, unless I am grievously mistaken in you, I have already said enough.”
He went out, leaving her still weeping bitterly. Not far from the house, he met La Biondella and the dog on their way back. The little girl stopped to report to him the safe delivery of her dinner-mats; but he passed on quickly with a nod and a smile. His interview with Nanina had left some influence behind it, which unfitted him just then for the occupation of talking to a child.
Nearly half an hour before nine o’clock on the following morning, Father Rocco set forth for the street in which Nanina lived. On his way thither he overtook a dog walking lazily a few paces ahead in the roadway; and saw, at the same time, an elegantly-dressed lady advancing toward him. The dog stopped suspiciously as she approached, and growled and showed his teeth when she passed him. The lady, on her side, uttered an exclamation of disgust, but did not seem to be either astonished or frightened by the animal’s threatening attitude. Father Rocco looked after her with some curiosity as she walked by him. She was a handsome woman, and he admired her courage. “I know that growling brute well enough,” he said to himself, “but who can the lady be?”
The dog was Scarammuccia, returning from one of his marauding expeditions The lady was Brigida, on her way to Luca Lomi’s studio.
Some minutes before nine o’clock the priest took his post in the street, opposite Nanina’s window. It was open; but neither she nor her little sister appeared at it. He looked up anxiously as the church-clocks struck the hour; but there was no sign for a minute or so after they were all silent. “Is she hesitating still?” said Father Rocco to himself.
Just as the words passed his lips, the white mantilla was waved out of the window.
Even the master-stroke of replacing the treacherous Italian forewoman by a French dressmaker, engaged direct from Paris, did not at first avail to elevate the great Grifoni establishment above the reach of minor calamities. Mademoiselle Virginie had not occupied her new situation at Pisa quite a week before she fell ill. All sorts of reports were circulated as to the cause of this illness; and the Demoiselle Grifoni even went so far as to suggest that the health of the new forewoman had fallen a sacrifice to some nefarious practices of the chemical sort, on the part of her rival in the trade. But, however the misfortune had been produced, it was a fact that Mademoiselle Virginie was certainly very ill, and another fact that the doctor insisted on her being sent to the baths of Lucca as soon as she could be moved from her bed.
Fortunately for the Demoiselle Grifoni, the Frenchwoman had succeeded in producing three specimens of her art before her health broke down. They comprised the evening-dress of yellow brocaded silk, to which she had devoted herself on the morning when she first assumed her duties at Pisa; a black cloak and hood of an entirely new shape; and an irresistibly fascinating dressing-gown, said to have been first brought into fashion by the princesses of the blood-royal of France. These articles of costume, on being exhibited in the showroom, electrified the ladies of Pisa; and orders from all sides flowed in immediately on the Grifoni establishment. They were, of course, easily executed by the inferior work-women, from the specimen designs of the French dressmaker. So that the illness of Mademoiselle Virginie, though it might cause her mistress some temporary inconvenience, was, after all, productive of no absolute loss.
Two months at the baths of Lucca restored the new forewoman to health. She returned to Pisa, and resumed her place in the private work-room. Once re-established there, she discovered that an important change had taken place during her absence. Her friend and assistant, Brigida, had resigned her situation. All inquiries made of the Demoiselle Grifoni only elicited one answer: the missing work-woman had abruptly left her place at five minutes’ warning, and had departed without confiding to any one what she thought of doing, or whither she intended to turn her steps.
Months elapsed The new year came; but no explanatory letter arrived from Brigida. The spring season passed off, with all its accompaniments of dressmaking and dress-buying, but still there was no news of her. The first anniversary of Mademoiselle Virginie’s engagement with the Demoiselle Grifoni came round; and then at last a note arrived, stating that Brigida had returned to Pisa, and that if the French forewoman would send an answer, mentioning where her private lodgings were, she would visit her old friend that evening after business hours. The information was gladly enough given; and, punctually to the appointed time, Brigida arrived in Mademoiselle Virginie’s little sitting-room.
Advancing with her usual indolent stateliness of gait, the Italian asked after her friend’s health as coolly, and sat down in the nearest chair as carelessly, as if they had not been separated for more than a few days. Mademoiselle Virginie laughed in her liveliest manner, and raised her mobile French eyebrows in sprightly astonishment.
“Well, Brigida!” she exclaimed, “they certainly did you no injustice when they nicknamed you ‘Care-for-Nothing,’ in old Grifoni’s workroom. Where have you been? Why have you never written to me?”
“I had nothing particular to write about; and besides, I always intended to come back to Pisa and see you,” answered Brigida, leaning back luxuriously in her chair.
“But where have you been for nearly a whole year past? In Italy?”
“No; at Paris. You know I can sing—not very well; but I have a voice, and most Frenchwomen (excuse the impertinence) have none. I met with a friend, and got introduced to a manager; and I have been singing at the theater—not the great parts, only the second. Your amiable countrywomen could not screech me down on the stage, but they intrigued against me successfully behind the scenes. In short, I quarreled with our principal lady, quarreled with the manager, quarreled with my friend; and here I am back at Pisa, with a little money saved in my pocket, and no great notion what I am to do next.”
“Back at Pisa? Why did you leave it?”
Brigida’s eyes began to lose their indolent expression. She sat up suddenly in her chair, and set one of her hands heavily on a little table by her side.
“Why?” she repeated. “Because when I find the game going against me, I prefer giving it up at once to waiting to be beaten.”
“Ah! you refer to that last year’s project of yours for making your fortune among the sculptors. I should like to hear how it was you failed with the wealthy young amateur. Remember that I fell ill before you had any news to give me. Your absence when I returned from Lucca, and, almost immediately afterward, the marriage of your intended conquest to the sculptor’s daughter, proved to me, of course, that you must have failed. But I never heard how. I know nothing at this moment but the bare fact that Maddalena Lomi won the prize.”
“Tell me first, do she and her husband live together happily?”
“There are no stories of their disagreeing. She has dresses, horses, carriages; a negro page, the smallest lap-dog in Italy—in short, all the luxuries that a woman can want; and a child, by-the-by, into the bargain.”
“A child?”
“Yes; a child, born little more than a week ago.”
“Not a boy, I hope?”
“No; a girl.”
“I am glad of that. Those rich people always want the first-born to be an heir. They will both be disappointed. I am glad of that.”
“Mercy on us, Brigida, how fierce you look!”
“Do I? It’s likely enough. I hate Fabio d’Ascoli and Maddalena Lomi—singly as man and woman, doubly as man and wife. Stop! I’ll tell you what you want to know directly. Only answer me another question or two first. Have you heard anything about her health?”
“How should I hear? Dressmakers can’t inquire at the doors of the nobility.”
“True. Now one last question. That little simpleton, Nanina?”
“I have never seen or heard anything of her. She can’t be at Pisa, or she would have called at our place for work.”
“Ah! I need not have asked about her if I had thought a moment beforehand. Father Rocco would be sure to keep her out of Fabio’s sight, for his niece’s sake.”
“What, he really loved that ‘thread-paper of a girl’ as you called her?”
“Better than fifty such wives as he has got now! I was in the studio the morning he was told of her departure from Pisa. A letter was privately given to him, telling him that the girl had left the place out of a feeling of honor, and had hidden herself beyond the possibility of discovery, to prevent him from compromising himself with all his friends by marrying her. Naturally enough, he would not believe that this was her own doing; and, naturally enough also, when Father Rocco was sent for, and was not to be found, he suspected the priest of being at the bottom of the business. I never saw a man in such a fury of despair and rage before. He swore that he would have all Italy searched for the girl, that he would be the death of the priest, and that he would never enter Luca Lomi’s studio again—”
“And, as to this last particular, of course, being a man, he failed to keep his word?”
“Of course. At that first visit of mine to the studio I discovered two things. The first, as I said, that Fabio was really in love with the girl—the second, that Maddalena Lomi was really in love with him. You may suppose I looked at her attentively while the disturbance was going on, and while nobody’s notice was directed on me. All women are vain, I know, but vanity never blinded my eyes. I saw directly that I had but one superiority over her—my figure. She was my height, but not well made. She had hair as dark and as glossy as mine; eyes as bright and as black as mine; and the rest of her face better than mine. My nose is coarse, my lips are too thick, and my upper lip overhangs my under too far. She had none of those personal faults; and, as for capacity, she managed the young fool in his passion as well as I could have managed him in her place.”
“How?”
“She stood silent, with downcast eyes and a distressed look, all the time he was raving up and down the studio. She must have hated the girl, and been rejoiced at her disappearance; but she never showed it. ‘You would be an awkward rival’ (I thought to myself), ‘even to a handsomer woman than I am.’ However, I determined not to despair too soon, and made up my mind to follow my plan just as if the accident of the girl’s disappearance had never occurred. I smoothed down the master-sculptor easily enough—flattering him about his reputation, assuring him that the works of Luca Lomi had been the objects of my adoration since childhood, telling him that I had heard of his difficulty in finding a model to complete his Minerva from, and offering myself (if he thought me worthy) for the honor—laying great stress on that word—for the honor of sitting to him. I don’t know whether he was altogether deceived by what I told him; but he was sharp enough to see that I really could be of use, and he accepted my offer with a profusion of compliments. We parted, having arranged that I was to give him a first sitting in a week’s time.”
“Why put it off so long?”
“To allow our young gentleman time to cool down and return to the studio, to be sure. What was the use of my being there while he was away?”
“Yes, yes—I forgot. And how long was it before he came back?”
“I had allowed him more time than enough. When I had given my first sitting I saw him in the studio, and heard it was his second visit there since the day of the girl’s disappearance. Those very violent men are always changeable and irresolute.”
“Had he made no attempt, then, to discover Nanina?”
“Oh, yes! He had searched for her himself, and had set others searching for her, but to no purpose. Four days of perpetual disappointment had been enough to bring him to his senses. Luca Lomi had written him a peace-making letter, asking what harm he or his daughter had done, even supposing Father Rocco was to blame. Maddalena Lomi had met him in the street, and had looked resignedly away from him, as if she expected him to pass her. In short, they had awakened his sense of justice and his good nature (you see, I can impartially give him his due), and they had got him back. He was silent and sentimental enough at first, and shockingly sulky and savage with the priest—”
“I wonder Father Rocco ventured within his reach.”
“Father Rocco is not a man to be daunted or defeated by anybody, I can tell you. The same day on which Fabio came back to the studio, he returned to it. Beyond boldly declaring that he thought Nanina had done quite right, and had acted like a good and virtuous girl, he would say nothing about her or her disappearance. It was quite useless to ask him questions—he denied that any one had a right to put them. Threatening, entreating, flattering—all modes of appeal were thrown away on him. Ah, my dear! depend upon it, the cleverest and politest man in Pisa, the most dangerous to an enemy and the most delightful to a friend, is Father Rocco. The rest of them, when I began to play my cards a little too openly, behaved with brutal rudeness to me. Father Rocco, from first to last, treated me like a lady. Sincere or not, I don’t care—he treated me like a lady when the others treated me like—”
“There! there! don’t get hot about it now. Tell me instead how you made your first approaches to the young gentleman whom you talk of so contemptuously as Fabio.”
“As it turned out, in the worst possible way. First, of course, I made sure of interesting him in me by telling him that I had known Nanina. So far it was all well enough. My next object was to persuade him that she could never have gone away if she had truly loved him alone; and that he must have had some fortunate rival in her own rank of life, to whom she had sacrificed him, after gratifying her vanity for a time by bringing a young nobleman to her feet. I had, as you will easily imagine, difficulty enough in making him take this view of Nanina’s flight. His pride and his love for the girl were both concerned in refusing to admit the truth of my suggestion. At last I succeeded. I brought him to that state of ruffled vanity and fretful self-assertion in which it is easiest to work on a man’s feelings—in which a man’s own wounded pride makes the best pitfall to catch him in. I brought him, I say, to that state, and thenshestepped in and profited by what I had done. Is it wonderful now that I rejoice in her disappointments—that I should be glad to hear any ill thing of her that any one could tell me?”
“But how did she first get the advantage of you?”
“If I had found out, she would never have succeeded where I failed. All I know is, that she had more opportunities of seeing him than I, and that she used them cunningly enough even to deceive me. While I thought I was gaining ground with Fabio, I was actually losing it. My first suspicions were excited by a change in Luca Lomi’s conduct toward me. He grew cold, neglectful—at last absolutely rude. I was resolved not to see this; but accident soon obliged me to open my eyes. One morning I heard Fabio and Maddalena talking of me when they imagined I had left the studio. I can’t repeat their words, especially here. The blood flies into my head, and the cold catches me at the heart, when I only think of them. It will be enough if I tell you that he laughed at me, and that she—”
“Hush! not so loud. There are other people lodging in the house. Never mind about telling me what you heard; it only irritates you to no purpose. I can guess that they had discovered—”
“Through her—remember, all through her!”
“Yes, yes, I understand. They had discovered a great deal more than you ever intended them to know, and all through her.”
“But for the priest, Virginie, I should have been openly insulted and driven from their doors. He had insisted on their behaving with decent civility toward me. They said that he was afraid of me, and laughed at the notion of his trying to make them afraid too. That was the last thing I heard. The fury I was in, and the necessity of keeping it down, almost suffocated me. I turned round to leave the place forever, when, who should I see, standing close behind me, but Father Rocco. He must have discovered in my face that I knew all, but he took no notice of it. He only asked, in his usual quiet, polite way, if I was looking for anything I had lost, and if he could help me. I managed to thank him, and to get to the door. He opened it for me respectfully, and bowed—he treated me like a lady to the last! It was evening when I left the studio in that way. The next morning I threw up my situation, and turned my back on Pisa. Now you know everything.”
“Did you hear of the marriage? or did you only assume from what you knew that it would take place?”
“I heard of it about six months ago. A man came to sing in the chorus at our theater who had been employed some time before at the grand concert given on the occasion of the marriage. But let us drop the subject now. I am in a fever already with talking of it. You are in a bad situation here, my dear; I declare your room is almost stifling.”
“Shall I open the other window?”
“No; let us go out and get a breath of air by the river-side. Come! take your hood and fan—it is getting dark—nobody will see us, and we can come back here, if you like, in half an hour.”
Mademoiselle Virginie acceded to her friend’s wish rather reluctantly. They walked toward the river. The sun was down, and the sudden night of Italy was gathering fast. Although Brigida did not say another word on the subject of Fabio or his wife, she led the way to the bank of the Arno, on which the young nobleman’s palace stood.
Just as they got near the great door of entrance, a sedan-chair, approaching in the opposite direction, was set down before it; and a footman, after a moment’s conference with a lady inside the chair, advanced to the porter’s lodge in the courtyard. Leaving her friend to go on, Brigida slipped in after the servant by the open wicket, and concealed herself in the shadow cast by the great closed gates.
“The Marchesa Melani, to inquire how the Countess d’Ascoli and the infant are this evening,” said the footman.
“My mistress has not changed at all for the better since the morning,” answered the porter. “The child is doing quite well.”
The footman went back to the sedan-chair; then returned to the porter’s lodge.
“The marchesa desires me to ask if fresh medical advice has been sent for,” he said.
“Another doctor has arrived from Florence to-day,” replied the porter.
Mademoiselle Virginie, missing her friend suddenly, turned back toward the palace to look after her, and was rather surprised to see Brigida slip out of the wicket-gate. There were two oil lamps burning on pillars outside the doorway, and their light glancing on the Italian’s face, as she passed under them, showed that she was smiling.
While the Marchesa Melani was making inquiries at the gate of the palace, Fabio was sitting alone in the apartment which his wife usually occupied when she was in health. It was her favorite room, and had been prettily decorated, by her own desire, with hangings in yellow satin and furniture of the same color. Fabio was now waiting in it, to hear the report of the doctors after their evening visit.
Although Maddalena Lomi had not been his first love, and although he had married her under circumstances which are generally and rightly considered to afford few chances of lasting happiness in wedded life, still they had lived together through the one year of their union tranquilly, if not fondly. She had molded herself wisely to his peculiar humors, had made the most of his easy disposition; and, when her quick temper had got the better of her, had seldom hesitated in her cooler moments to acknowledge that she had been wrong. She had been extravagant, it is true, and had irritated him by fits of unreasonable jealousy; but these were faults not to be thought of now. He could only remember that she was the mother of his child, and that she lay ill but two rooms away from him—dangerously ill, as the doctors had unwillingly confessed on that very day.
The darkness was closing in upon him, and he took up the handbell to ring for lights. When the servant entered there was genuine sorrow in his face, genuine anxiety in his voice, as he inquired for news from the sick-room. The man only answered that his mistress was still asleep, and then withdrew, after first leaving a sealed letter on the table by his master’s side. Fabio summoned him back into the room, and asked when the letter had arrived. He replied that it had been delivered at the palace two days since, and that he had observed it lying unopened on a desk in his master’s study.
Left alone again, Fabio remembered that the letter had arrived at a time when the first dangerous symptoms of his wife’s illness had declared themselves, and that he had thrown it aside, after observing the address to be in a handwriting unknown to him. In his present state of suspense, any occupation was better than sitting idle. So he took up the letter with a sigh, broke the seal, and turned inquiringly to the name signed at the end.
It was “NANINA.”
He started, and changed color. “A letter from her,” he whispered to himself. “Why does it come at such a time as this?”
His face grew paler, and the letter trembled in his fingers. Those superstitious feelings which he had ascribed to the nursery influences of his childhood, when Father Rocco charged him with them in the studio, seemed to be overcoming him now. He hesitated, and listened anxiously in the direction of his wife’s room, before reading the letter. Was its arrival ominous of good or evil? That was the thought in his heart as he drew the lamp near to him, and looked at the first lines.
“Am I wrong in writing to you?” (the letter began abruptly). “If I am, you have but to throw this little leaf of paper into the fire, and to think no more of it after it is burned up and gone. I can never reproach you for treating my letter in that way; for we are never likely to meet again.
“Why did I go away? Only to save you from the consequences of marrying a poor girl who was not fit to become your wife. It almost broke my heart to leave you; for I had nothing to keep up my courage but the remembrance that I was going away for your sake. I had to think of that, morning and night—to think of it always, or I am afraid I should have faltered in my resolution, and have gone back to Pisa. I longed so much at first to see you once more, only to tell you that Nanina was not heartless and ungrateful, and that you might pity her and think kindly of her, though you might love her no longer.
“Only to tell you that! If I had been a lady I might have told it to you in a letter; but I had never learned to write, and I could not prevail on myself to get others to take the pen for me. All I could do was to learn secretly how to write with my own hand. It was long, long work; but the uppermost thought in my heart was always the thought of justifying myself to you, and that made me patient and persevering. I learned, at last, to write so as not to be ashamed of myself, or to make you ashamed of me. I began a letter—my first letter to you—but I heard of your marriage before it was done, and then I had to tear the paper up, and put the pen down again.
“I had no right to come between you and your wife, even with so little a thing as a letter; I had no right to do anything but hope and pray for your happiness. Are you happy? I am sure you ought to be; for how can your wife help loving you?
“It is very hard for me to explain why I have ventured on writing now, and yet I can’t think that I am doing wrong. I heard a few days ago (for I have a friend at Pisa who keeps me informed, by my own desire, of all the pleasant changes in your life)—I heard of your child being born; and I thought myself, after that, justified at last in writing to you. No letter from me, at such a time as this, can rob your child’s mother of so much as a thought of yours that is due to her. Thus, at least, it seems to me. I wish so well to your child, that I cannot surely be doing wrong in writing these lines.
“I have said already what I wanted to say—what I have been longing to say for a whole year past. I have told you why I left Pisa; and have, perhaps, persuaded you that I have gone through some suffering, and borne some heart-aches for your sake. Have I more to write? Only a word or two, to tell you that I am earning my bread, as I always wished to earn it, quietly at home—at least, at what I must call home now. I am living with reputable people, and I want for nothing. La Biondella has grown very much; she would hardly be obliged to get on your knee to kiss you now; and she can plait her dinner-mats faster and more neatly than ever. Our old dog is with us, and has learned two new tricks; but you can’t be expected to remember him, although you were the only stranger I ever saw him take kindly to at first.
“It is time I finished. If you have read this letter through to the end, I am sure you will excuse me if I have written it badly. There is no date to it, because I feel that it is safest and best for both of us that you should know nothing of where I am living. I bless you and pray for you, and bid you affectionately farewell. If you can think of me as a sister, think of me sometimes still.”
Fabio sighed bitterly while he read the letter. “Why,” he whispered to himself, “why does it come at such a time as this, when I cannot dare not think of her?” As he slowly folded the letter up the tears came into his eyes, and he half raised the paper to his lips. At the same moment, some one knocked at the door of the room. He started, and felt himself changing color guiltily as one of his servants entered.
“My mistress is awake,” the man said, with a very grave face, and a very constrained manner; “and the gentlemen in attendance desire me to say—”
He was interrupted, before he could give his message, by one of the medical men, who had followed him into the room.
“I wish I had better news to communicate,” began the doctor, gently.
“She is worse, then?” said Fabio, sinking back into the chair from which he had risen the moment before.
“She has awakened weaker instead of stronger after her sleep,” returned the doctor, evasively. “I never like to give up all hope till the very last, but—”
“It is cruel not to be candid with him,” interposed another voice—the voice of the doctor from Florence, who had just entered the room. “Strengthen yourself to bear the worst,” he continued, addressing himself to Fabio. “She is dying. Can you compose yourself enough to go to her bedside?”
Pale and speechless, Fabio rose from his chair, and made a sign in the affirmative. He trembled so that the doctor who had first spoken was obliged to lead him out of the room.
“Your mistress has some near relations in Pisa, has she not?” said the doctor from Florence, appealing to the servant who waited near him.
“Her father, sir, Signor Luca Lomi; and her uncle, Father Rocco,” answered the man. “They were here all through the day, until my mistress fell asleep.”
“Do you know where to find them now?”
“Signor Luca told me he should be at his studio, and Father Rocco said I might find him at his lodgings.”
“Send for them both directly. Stay, who is your mistress’s confessor? He ought to be summoned without loss of time.”
“My mistress’s confessor is Father Rocco, sir.”
“Very well—send, or go yourself, at once. Even minutes may be of importance now.” Saying this, the doctor turned away, and sat down to wait for any last demands on his services, in the chair which Fabio had just left.