He was sitting in the same position, with his hand shading his eyes, looking at her; as he spoke the last phrase he perceived that she colored, and colored deeply.
"You knew the story generally," he said, dropping his arm and leaning forward. "But it is not possible you saw that letter!"
She rose and walked across, as if to get a nearer view of Day. "I admire it so much!" she said, after a moment. "If it should stretch out that great right arm, it could crush us to atoms." And she turned towards him again.
As she did she saw that he had colored also; a deep, dark flush had risen in his face, and covered even his forehead.
"I am safe—very safe!" he said. "After reading such a letter as that, written to another woman, you arenot likely to bestow much regard upon the writer, try as he may!"
Miss Stowe looked at him. "You are overacting," she said, coldly. "It is not in your part to pretend to care so soon. It was to be built up gradually."
"Lorenzo understands me," he said, recovering himself. "Shall I go on?"
"I think I must go now," she answered, declining a seat; "it is late."
"In a moment. Let me finish, now that I have begun. I had thought of returning to America; indeed, Beatrice had advised it; she thought I was becoming expatriated. But I gave it up and remained in Italy because I did not wish to appear too much her slave (women do not like men who obey them too well, you know). After this effort I was consistent enough to follow her to England. I found her in—Devonshire, lovelier than ever; and I was again fascinated; I was even ready to accept beforehand all the rules and embargo of the strictest respect to the memory of Mr. Lovell."
Miss Stowe's eyes were upon Day; but here, involuntarily, she glanced towards her companion. His face remained unchanged.
"I was much in love with her. She allowed me no encouragement. But I did not give up a sort of vague hope I had until this recent change. Then, of course, I knew that it was all over for me."
"I am sorry for you," replied Miss Stowe after a pause, still looking at Day.
"Of course I have counted upon that—upon your sympathy. I knew that you would understand."
"Spare me the quotation, 'A fellow-feeling,' and soforth," she said, moving towards the door. "I am going; I feel as though we had already desecrated too long this sacred place."
"It is no desecration. The highest heights of art, as well as of life, belong to love," he said, as they went out into the cool, low hall, paved with the gravestones of the Medici.
"Don't you always think of them lying down below?" she said. "Giovanni in his armor, and Leonore of Toledo in her golden hair?"
"Since when have you become so historical? They were a wicked race."
"And since when have you become so virtuous?" she answered. "They were at least successful."
Time passed. It has a way of passing rapidly in Florence; although each day is long and slow and full and delightful, a month flies. Again the season was waning. It was now believed that Mr. Morgan had been successful, although nothing definite was known. It was remarked how unusually well Miss Stowe looked: her eyes were so bright and she had so much color that she really looked brilliant. Madame Ferri repeated this to Miss Harrison.
"Margaret was always brilliant," said her aunt.
"Oh, extremely!" said Madame Ferri.
"Only people never found it out," added Miss Harrison.
She herself maintained a calm and uninquiring demeanor. Sometimes she was with her niece and her niece's supposed suitor, and sometimes not. She continued to receive him with the same affability which she had bestowed upon him from the first, and occasionally she invited him to dinner and to drive. Shemade no comment upon the frequency of his visits, or the length of his conversations upon the little balcony in the evening, where the plash of the fountain came faintly up from below. In truth she had no cause for solicitude; nothing could be more tranquil than the tone of the two talkers. Nothing more was said about Mrs. Lovell; conversation had sunk back into the old impersonal channel.
"You are very even," Morgan said one evening. "You do not seem to have any moods. I noticed it last year."
"One is even," she replied, "when one is—"
"Indifferent," he suggested.
She did not contradict him.
Two things she refused to do: she would not sing, and she would not go to the Boboli Garden.
"As I am especially fond of those tall, ceremonious old hedges and serene statues, you cut me off from a real pleasure," said Morgan.
It was on the evening of the 16th of May; they were sitting by the open window; Miss Harrison was not present.
"You can go there after we have gone," she said, smiling. "We leave to-morrow."
"You leave to-morrow!" he repeated. Then, after an instant, "It is immensely kind to tell me beforehand," he said, ironically. "I should have thought you would have left it until after your departure!"
She made no reply, but fanned herself slowly with the beautiful gray fan.
"I suppose you consider that the month is more than ended, and that you are free?"
"You have had all you asked for, Mr. Morgan."
"And therefore I have now only to thank you for your generosity, and let you go."
"I think so."
"You do not care to know the result of my experiment—whether it has been a failure or a success?" he said. "You told me the result of yours."
"I did not mean to tell you. It was forced from me by your misunderstanding."
"Misunderstandings, because so slight that one cannot attack them, are horrible things. Let there be none between us now."
"There is none."
"I do not know." He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the soft darkness of the Italian night. "I have one more favor to ask," he said, presently. "You have granted me many; grant me this. At what hour do you go to-morrow?"
"In the afternoon."
"Give me a little time with you in the Boboli Garden in the morning."
"You are an accomplished workman, Mr. Morgan; you want to finish with a polish; you do not like to leave rough ends. Be content; I will accept the intention as carried out, and suppose that all the last words have been beautifully and shiningly spoken. That will do quite as well."
"Put any construction upon it you please," he answered. "But consent."
But it was with great difficulty that he obtained that consent.
"There is really nothing you can say that I care to hear," she declared, at last.
"The king is dead! My time is ended, evidently!But, as thereissomething you can say whichIcare to hear, I again urge you to consent."
Miss Stowe rose, and passed through the long window into the lighted empty room, decked as usual with many flowers; here she stood, looking at him, as he entered also.
"I have tried my best to prevent it," she said.
"You have."
"And you still insist?"
"I do."
"Very well; I consent. But you will not forget that I tried," she said. "Good-night."
The next morning at ten, as he entered the old amphitheatre, he saw her; she was sitting on one of the upper stone seats, under a statue of Diana.
"I would rather go to our old place," he said, as he came up; "the seat under the tree, you know."
"I like this better."
"As you prefer, of course. It will be more royal, more in state; but, to be in accordance with it, you should have been clothed in something majestic, instead of that soft, yielding hue."
"That is hardly necessary," she answered.
"By which you mean, I suppose, that your face is not yielding. And indeed it is not."
She was dressed in cream color from head to foot; she held open, poised on one shoulder, a large, heavily fringed, cream-colored parasol. Above this soft drapery and under this soft shade the darkness of her hair and eyes was doubly apparent.
He took a seat beside her, removed his hat, and let the breeze play over his head and face; it was a warm summer morning, and they were in the shadow.
"I believe I was to tell you the result of my experiment," he said, after a while, breaking the silence which she did not break.
"You wished it; I did not ask it."
If she was cool, he was calm; he was not at all as he had been the night before; then he had seemed hurried and irritated, now he was quiet. "The experiment has succeeded," he said, deliberately. "I find myself often thinking of you; I like to be with you; I feel when with you a sort of satisfied content. What I want to ask is—I may as well say it at once—Will not this do as the basis of a better understanding between us?"
She was gazing at the purple slopes of Monte Morello opposite. "It might," she answered.
He turned; her profile was towards him, he could not see her eyes.
"I shall be quite frank," he continued; "under the circumstances it is my only way. You have loved some one else. I have loved some one else. We have both been unhappy. We should therefore, I think, have a peculiar sympathy for and comprehension of each other. It has seemed to me that these, combined with my real liking for you, might be a sufficient foundation for—let us call it another experiment. I ask you to make this experiment, Margaret; I ask you to marry me. If it fails—if you are not happy—I promise not to hold you in the slightest degree. You shall have your liberty untrammelled, and, at the same time, all shall be arranged so as to escape comment. I will be with you enough to save appearances; that is all. In reality you shall be entirely free. I think you can trust my word."
"I shall have but little from my aunt," was her answer, her eyes still fixed upon the mountain. "I am not her heiress, as you suppose."
"You mean that to be severe; but it falls harmless. It is true that I did suppose you were her heiress; but the fact that you are not makes no difference in my request. We shall not be rich, but we can live; it shall be my pleasure to make you comfortable."
"I do not quite see why you ask this," she said, with the same slow utterance and her eyes turned away. "You do not love me; I am not beautiful; I have no fortune. What, then, do you gain?"
"I gain," he said—"I gain—" Then he paused. "You would not like me to tell you," he added; and his voice was changed.
"I beg you to tell me." Her lips were slightly compressed, a tremor had seized her; she seemed to be exerting all her powers of self-control.
He watched her a moment, and then, leaning towards her while a new and beautiful expression of tenderness stole into his eyes, "I gain, Margaret," he said, "the greatest gift that can be given to a man on this earth, a gift I long for—a wife who really and deeply loves me."
The hot color flooded her face and throat; she rose, turning upon him her blazing eyes. "I was but waiting for this," she said, her words rushing forth, one upon the other, with the unheeding rapidity of passion. "I felt sure that it would come. With the deeply-rooted egotism of a man you believe that I love you; you have believed it from the beginning. It was because I knew this that I allowed this experiment of yours to go on. I resisted the temptation at first, butit was too strong for me; you yourself made it so. It was a chance to make you conscious of your supreme error; a chance to have my revenge. And I yielded. You said, not long ago, that I was even. I answered that one was even when one was— You said 'indifferent,' and I did not contradict you. But the real sentence was that one was even when one was pursuing a purpose. I have pursued a purpose. This was mine: to make you put into words your egregious vanity, to make you stand convicted of your dense and vast mistake. But towards the end a better impulse rose, and the game did not seem worth the candle. I said to myself that I would go away without giving you, after all, the chance to stultify yourself, the chance to exhibit clearly your insufferable and amazing conceit. But you insisted, and the impulse vanished; I allowed you to go on to the end. I love you!You!"
He had risen also; they stood side by side under the statue of Diana; some people had come into the amphitheatre below. He had turned slightly pale as she uttered these bitter words, but he remained quite silent. He still held his hat in his hand; his eyes were turned away.
"Have you nothing to say?" she asked, after some moments had passed.
"I think there is nothing," he answered, without turning.
Then again there was a silence.
"You probably wish to go," he said, breaking it; "do not let me detain you." And he began to go down the steps, pausing, however, as the descent was somewhat awkward, to give her his hand.
To the little Italian party below, looking at the Egyptianobelisk, he seemed the picture of chivalry, as, with bared head, he assisted her down; and as they passed the obelisk, these children of the country looked upon them as two of the rich Americans, the lady dressed like a picture, the gentleman distinguished, but both without a gesture or an interest, and coldly silent and pale.
He did not accompany her home. "Shall I go with you?" he said, breaking the silence as they reached the exit.
"No, thanks. Please call a carriage."
He signalled to a driver who was near, and assisted her into one of the little rattling Florence phaetons.
"Good-bye," she said, when she was seated.
He lifted his hat. "Lung' Arno Nuovo," he said to the driver.
And the carriage rolled away.
Countries attract us in different ways. We are comfortable in England, musical in Germany, amused in Paris (Paris is a country), and idyllic in Switzerland; but when it comes to the affection, Italy holds the heart—we keep going back to her. Miss Harrison, sitting in her carriage on the heights of Bellosguardo, was thinking this as she gazed down upon Florence and the valley below. It was early in the next autumn—the last of September; and she was alone.
A phaeton passed her and turned down the hill; but she had recognized its occupant as he passed, and called his name—"Mr. Morgan!"
He turned, saw her, bowed, and, after a moment's hesitation, ordered his driver to stop, sprang out, and came back to speak to her.
"How in the world do you happen to be in Florenceat this time of year?" she said, cordially, giving him her hand. "There isn't a soul in the place."
"That is the reason I came."
"And the reason we did, too," she said, laughing. "I am delighted to have met you; one soul is very acceptable. You must come and see me immediately. I hope you are going to stay."
"Thanks; you are very kind. But I leave to-morrow morning."
"Then you must come to-night; come to dinner at seven. It is impossible you should have another engagement when there is no one to be engaged to—unless it be the pictures; I believe they do not go away for the summer."
"I really have an engagement, Miss Harrison; you are very kind, but I am forced to decline."
"Dismiss your carriage, then, and drive back with me; I will set you down at your hotel. It will be a visit of some sort."
He obeyed. Miss Harrison's fine horses started, and moved with slow stateliness down the winding road, where the beggars had not yet begun to congregate; it was not "the season" for beggars; they were still at the sea-shore.
Miss Harrison talked on various subjects. They had been in Switzerland, and it had rained continuously; they had seen nothing but fog. They had come over the St. Gothard, and their carriage had broken down. They had been in Venice, and had found malaria there. They had been in Padua, Verona, and Bologna, and all three had become frightfully modern and iconoclastic. Nothing was in the least satisfactory, and Margaret had not been well; she was quite anxious about her.
Mr. Morgan "hoped" that it was nothing serious.
"I don't know whether it is or not," replied Miss Harrison. "Margaret is rather a serious sort of a person, I think."
She looked at him as if for confirmation, but he did not pursue the subject. Instead, he asked after her own health.
"Oh, I am as usual. It is only your real invalids who are always well; they enjoy their poor health, you know. And what have you been doing since I last saw you? I hope nothing out of the way. Let me see—Trieste and Tarascon; you have probably been in—Transylvania?"
"That would be somewhat out of the way, wouldn't it? But I have not been there; I have been in various nearer places, engaged rather systematically in amusing myself."
"Did you succeed? If you did you are a man of genius. One must have a rare genius, I think, to amuse one's self in that way at forty. Of course I mean thirty-five, you know; but forty is a better conversational word—it classifies. And you were amused?"
"Immensely."
"So much so that you have to come to Florence in September to rest after it!"
"Yes."
Miss Harrison talked on. He listened, and made the necessary replies. The carriage entered the city, crossed the Carraja bridge, and turned towards his hotel.
"Can you not come for half an hour this evening, after your engagement is over?" she said. "I shall be all alone, for Margaret cannot be there before midnight; she went into the country this morning with MadameFerri—some sort of a fête at a villa, a native Florentine affair. You have not asked much about her, I think, considering how constantly you were with her last spring," she added, looking at him calmly.
"I have been remiss; pardon it."
"It is only forgetfulness, of course. That is not a fault nowadays; it is a virtue, and, what is more, highly fashionable. But there is one little piece of news I must tell you about my niece: she is going to be married."
"That is not little; it is great. Please present to her my sincere good wishes and congratulations."
"I am sorry you cannot present them yourself. But at least you can come and seemefor a little while this evening—say about ten. The grandson of your grandfather should be very civil to old Ruth Harrison for old times' sake." Here the carriage stopped at his door. "Remember, I shall expect you," she said, as he took leave.
At about the hour she had named he went to see her; he found her alone, knitting. It was one of her idiosyncrasies to knit stockings "for the poor." No doubt there were "poor" enough to wear them; but as she made a great many, and as they were always of children's size and black, her friends sometimes thought, with a kind of amused dismay, of the regiment of little funereal legs running about for which she was responsible.
He had nothing especial to say; his intention was to remain the shortest time possible; he could see the hands of the clock, and he noted their progress every now and then through the twenty minutes he had set for himself.
Miss Harrison talked on various subjects, but said nothing more concerning her niece; nor did he, on his side, ask a question. After a while she came to fashions in art. "It is the most curious thing," she said, "how people obediently follow each other along a particular road, like a flock of sheep, no matter what roads, equally good and possibly better, open to the right and the left. Now there are the wonderfully spirited frescos of Masaccio at the Carmine, frescos which were studied and copied by Raphael himself and Michael Angelo. Yet that church has no vogue; it is not fashionable to go there; Ruskin has not written a maroon-colored pamphlet about it, and Baedeker gives it but a scant quarter-page, while the other churches have three and four. Now it seems to me that—"
But what it seemed Morgan never knew, because here she paused as the door opened. "Ah, there is Margaret, after all," she said. "I did not expect her for three hours."
Miss Stowe came across the large room, throwing back her white shawl and taking off her little plumed hat as she came. She did not perceive that any one was present save her aunt; the light was not bright, and the visitor sat in the shadow.
"It was very stupid," she said. "Do not urge me to go again." And then she saw him.
He rose, and bowed. After an instant's delay she spoke his name, and put out her hand, which he took as formally as she gave it. Miss Harrison was voluble. She was "so pleased" that Margaret had returned earlier than was expected; she was "so pleased" that the visitor happened to be still there. She seemed indeed to be pleased with everything, and talked for themboth; in truth, save for replies to her questions, they were quite silent. The visitor remained but a short quarter of an hour, and then took leave, saying good-bye at the same time, since he was to go early in the morning.
"To Trent?" said Miss Harrison.
"To Tadmor, I think, this time," he answered, smiling.
The next morning opened with a dull gray rain. Morgan was late in rising, missed his train, and was obliged to wait until the afternoon. About eleven he went out, under an umbrella, and, after a while, tired of the constant signals and clattering followings of the hackmen, who could not comprehend why a rich foreigner should walk, he went into the Duomo. The vast church, never light even on a bright day, was now sombre, almost dark, the few little twinkling tapers, like stars, on an altar at the upper end, only serving to make the darkness more visible. He walked down to the closed western entrance, across whose wall outside rises slowly, day by day, the new façade under its straw-work screen. Here he stood still, looking up the dim expanse, with the dusky shadows, like great winged, formless ghosts, hovering over him.
One of the south doors, the one near the choir, was open, and through it a slender ray of gray daylight came in, and tried to cross the floor. But its courage soon failed in that breadth and gloom, and it died away before it had gone ten feet. A blind beggar sat in a chair at this entrance, his patient face faintly outlined against the ray; there seemed to be no one else in the church save the sacristan, whose form could be dimly seen moving about, renewing the lights burning before the far-off chapels.
The solitary visitor strolled back and forth in the shadow. After a while he noted a figure entering through the ray. It was that of a woman; it had not the outlines of the usual church beggar; it did not stoop or cringe; it was erect and slender, and stepped lightly; it was coming down towards the western end, where he was pacing to and fro. He stopped and stood still, watching it. It continued to approach—and at last brushed against him. Coming in from the daylight, it could see nothing in the heavy shadow.
"Excuse me, Miss Stowe," he said; "I should have spoken. My eyes are accustomed to this light, and I recognized you; but of course you could not see me."
She had started back as she touched him; now she moved away still farther.
"It is grandly solitary here on a rainy day, isn't it?" he continued. "I used often to come here during a storm. It makes one feel as if already disembodied—as if he were a shade, wandering on the gray, unknown outskirts of another world."
She had now recovered herself, and, turning, began to walk back towards the ray at the upper door. He accompanied her. But the Duomo is vast, and cannot be crossed in a minute. He went on talking about the shadows; then stopped.
"I am glad of this opportunity to give you my good wishes, Miss Stowe," he said, as they went onward. "I hope you will be quite happy."
"I hope the same, certainly," she answered. "Yet I fail to see any especially new reason for good wishes from you just at present."
"Ah, you do not know that I know. But Miss Harrison told me yesterday—told me that you were soonto be married. If you have never forgiven me, in the light of your present happiness I think you should do so now."
She had stopped. "My aunt told you?" she said, while he was still speaking. But now, as he paused, she walked on. He could not see her face; although approaching the ray, they were still in the shadow, and her head was turned from him.
"As to forgiveness, it is I who should ask forgiveness from you," she said, after some delay, during which there was no sound but their footsteps on the mosaic pavement.
"Yes, you were very harsh. But I forgave you long ago. I was a dolt, and deserved your sharp words. But I want very much to hearyousay that you forgiveme."
"There is nothing to forgive."
"That is gently spoken. It is your marriage present to me, and I feel the better for it."
A minute later they had reached the ray and the door. He could see her face now. "How ill you look!" he said, involuntarily. "I noticed it last evening. It is not conventional to say so, but it is at least a real regret. He should take better care of you."
The blind beggar, hearing their footsteps, had put out his hand. "Do not go yet," said Morgan, giving him a franc. "See how it is raining outside. Walk with me once around the whole interior for the sake of the pleasant part of our Florentine days—for therewasa pleasant part; it will be our last walk together."
She assented silently, and they turned into the shadow again.
"I am going to make a confession," he said, as theypassed the choir; "it can make no difference now, and I prefer that you should know it. I did not realize it myself at the time, but I see now—that is, I have discovered since yesterday—that I was in love with you, more or less, from the beginning."
She made no answer, and they passed under Michael Angelo's grand, unfinished statue, and came around on the other side.
"Of course I was fascinated with Beatrice; in one way I was her slave. Still, when I said to you, 'Forgive me; I am in love with some one else,' I really think it was more to see what you would say or do than any feeling of loyalty to her."
Again she said nothing. They went down the north aisle.
"I wish you would tell me," he said, leaving the subject of himself and turning to her, "that you are fully and really happy in this marriage of yours. I hope you are, with all my heart; but I should like to hear it from your own lips."
She made a gesture as if of refusal; but he went on. "Of course I know I have no right; I ask it as a favor."
They were now in deep obscurity, almost darkness; but something seemed to tell him that she was suffering.
"You are not going to do that wretched thing—marry without love?" he said, stopping abruptly. "Do not, Margaret, do not! I know you better than you know yourself, and you will not be able to bear it. Some women can; but you could not. You have too deep feelings—too—"
He did not finish the sentence, for she had turned from him suddenly, and was walking across the duskyspace in the centre of the great temple whose foundations were so grandly laid six centuries ago.
But he followed her and stopped her, almost by force, taking both her hands in his. "You must not do this," he said; "you must not marry in that way. It is dangerous; it is horrible; for you, it is a crime." Then, as he stood close to her and saw two tears well over and drop from her averted eyes, "Margaret! Margaret!" he said, "rather than that, it would have been better to have married even me."
She drew her hands from his, and covered her face; she was weeping.
"Is it too late?" he whispered. "Is there a possibility—I love you very deeply," he added. And, cold and indifferent as Florence considered him, his voice was broken.
When they came round to the ray again, he gave the blind beggar all the small change he had about him; the old man thought it was a paper golconda.
"You owe me another circuit," he said; "you did not speak through fully half of the last one."
So they went around a second time.
"Tell me when you first began to think about me," he said, as they passed the choir. "Was it when you read that letter?"
"It was an absurd letter."
"On the contrary, it was a very good one, and you know it. You have kept it?"
"No; I burned it long ago."
"Not so very long! However, never fear; I will write you plenty more, and even better ones. I will go away on purpose."
They crossed the east end, under the great dome, and came around on the other side.
"You said some bitter things to me in that old amphitheatre, Margaret; I shall always hate the place. But after all—for a person who was quite indifferent—were you not just a littletooangry?"
"It is easy to say that now," she answered.
They went down the north aisle.
"Why did you stop and leave the room so abruptly when you were singing that song I asked for—you know, the 'Semper Fidelis?'"
"My voice failed."
"No; it was your courage. You knew then that you were no longer 'fidelis' to that former love of yours, and you were frightened by the discovery."
They reached the dark south end.
"And now, as to that former love," he said, pausing. "I will never ask you again; but here and now, Margaret, tell me what it was."
"It was not 'a fascination'—like yours," she answered.
"Do not be impertinent, especially in a church. Mrs. Lovell was not my only fascination, I beg to assure you; remember, I am thirty-six years old. But now—what was it?"
"A mistake."
"Good; but I want more."
"It was a will-o'-the-wisp that I thought was real."
"Better; but not enough."
"You ask too much, I think."
"I shall always ask it; I am horribly selfish; I warn you beforehand that I expect everything, in the most relentless way."
"Well, then, it was a fancy, Trafford, that I mistook for—" And the Duomo alone knows how the sentence was ended.
As they passed, for the third time, on their way towards the door, the mural tablet to Giotto, Morgan paused. "I have a sort of feeling that I owe it to the old fellow," he said. "I have always been his faithful disciple, and now he has rewarded me with a benediction. On the next high-festival his tablet shall be wreathed with the reddest of roses and a thick bank of heliotrope, as an acknowledgment of my gratitude."
It was; and no one ever knew why. If it had been in "the season," the inquiring tourists would have been rendered distracted by the impossibility of finding out; but to the native Florentines attending mass at the cathedral, to whom the Latin inscription, "I am he through whom the lost Art of Painting was revived," remains a blank, it was only a tribute to some "departed friend."
"And he is as much my friend as though he had not departed something over five centuries ago," said Trafford; "of that I feel convinced."
"I wonder if he knows any better, now, how to paint an angel leaning from the sky," replied Margaret.
"Have you any idea why Miss Harrison invented that enormous fiction about you?" he said, as they drove homeward.
"Not the least. We must ask her."
They found her in her easy-chair, beginning a new stocking. "I thought you were in Tadmor," she said, as Trafford came in.
"I started; but came back to ask a question. Whydid you tell me that this young lady was going to be married?"
"Well, isn't she?" said Miss Harrison, laughing. "Sit down, you two, and confess your folly. Margaret has been ill all summer with absolute pining—yes, you have, child, and it is a woman's place to be humble. And you, Trafford, did not look especially jubilant, either, for a man who has been immensely amused during the same space of time. I did what I could for you by inventing a sort of neutral ground upon which you could meet and speak. It is very neutral for the other man, you know, when the girl is going to be married; he can speak to her then as well as not! I was afraid last night that you were not going to take advantage of my invention; but I see that it has succeeded (in some mysterious way out in all this rain) better than I knew. It was, I think," she concluded, as she commenced on a new needle, "a sort of experiment of mine—a Florentine experiment."
Trafford burst into a tremendous laugh, in which, after a moment, Margaret joined.
"I don't know what you two are laughing at," said Miss Harrison, surveying them. "I should think you ought to be more sentimental, you know."
"To confess all the truth, Aunt Ruth," said Trafford, going across and sitting down beside her, "Margaret and I have tried one or two of those experiments already!"
ASthe evening was delightful, their coffee was served in the garden. Modesta brought out a low table and a tray; then, returning to the kitchen, she came forth again with the coffee-pot, fresh from the fire, and filled the two cups, one for Dennison, the other for his guest, Edward Gray. The coffee was fragrant, very hot, very black. John Dennison never took at night more than this one small cupful; but it was necessary that the quality of the drops within should be of the purest, and Peppino, the cook, knew that he must not fail. The dinner which had preceded the coffee had been excellent.
"Well, Jack, youlivewell!" Gray had remarked, after he had spent two days with his former school-fellow.
"Yes, good cooking has become asine qua nonwith me," Dennison answered. "I don't take much, but it must be just so; I can't put up with even a trifling deficiency. I give Peppino very high wages for this economical land; but, on my side, I require of him unfailingly his very best skill. I am afraid," he added, with a quizzical smile, "that I couldn't get through my day and cultivate lofty thoughts if I did not feel certain that at the end of it there would be a capital little dinner waiting on the table. Physical comfort hasbecome enormously important to me. Result: I'm corpulent!"
"Oh no," said Gray.
"Well on the way to it, then. Do you remember how lean I used to be?"
"You look in much better trim than you did when—"
"When I was young. You needn't hesitate about saying it; we're in the same box in that respect. How old do we call ourselves now?"
"We're fifty-two," answered Gray. "But I to-day look fifty-eight or nine, and you about forty. To me, Jack, it's marvellous—your youth."
"Yes, I'm plump. I no longer worry; I take life easily. But it's such an immense change in every way that I've stopped watching it myself. Why, I remember when I liked pictures that tell a story, good heavens! and books with a moral, and iron-fronted blocks, and plenty of gaslight."
"Well, it's awfully tempting," said Gray, slowly, as he looked about him.
"Plenty of gaslight?"
"No; this place—the whole thing."
TEA IN THE GARDENTEA IN THE GARDEN
They were sitting at one end of a flower-bordered walk which leads to a terrace with a parapet; from here opens out a panorama of the velvety hills of Tuscany, with a crowd of serried mountain-peaks rising behind them; below, in the narrow valley of a winding stream, is the small mediæval town of Tre Ponti, or Three Bridges. The garden retains a distinctly monastic air, though its last monk took leave of it several hundred years ago; here are no statues of goddesses and muses, so common in Italy; instead there are twoworn stone crosses, with illegible Latin inscriptions at their bases. An arcade along one side is paved with flag-stones, and has the air of a cloister; at its end is a fresco representing a monk with his finger on his lips, as if inculcating silence; the face is dim, all save the eyes, but these have a strange vitality, and appear to follow the gazer with intelligence as he turns away. There are two ancient sundials, and there is a relic which excites curiosity—a flight of stone steps attached to a high boundary wall; the steps go up for a distance of eight or nine feet, and then stop, leading to nothing. On the north and west, where it stretches to the verge of the hill, the garden is open, defended only by its parapet. Across its south edge it is shut in by the irregular stone house called Casa Colombina. On the east there is the boundary wall already mentioned, and above this wall there rises outside, not fifteen yards away, a massive square battlemented tower, one hundred and thirty feet high, named Torre Colombina, or Tower of the Dove. This tower is now occupied only by owls, and travellers suppose vaguely that it belongs in some way to the little church of Santa Lucia, which nestles at its feet; they even fancy that it is the campanile for Santa Lucia's bells. But the great stone Tower of the Dove dates from the thirteenth century, and although Santa Lucia cannot be called young, her two hundred and fifty years are nothing to the greater antiquity of her ponderous, overshadowing neighbor. Santa Lucia's bells, indeed, would be lost in the Tower of the Dove. The saint has but three, each twelve inches in length, and the miniature peal is suspended in a belfry about as large as a pigeon-house which perches on the roof of her own small temple—a yellowsanctuary adorned with a flat pointed façade which looks (it is a characteristic of many church façades in Italy) as if it would come up and off if pulled strongly at the top, like the front of a box or the slide of a lantern.
Edward Gray's compliment had drawn from Dennison a disparaging "Oh, it's all dilapidated, forlorn—"
"Spare your adjectives," responded the other man. "They're pure hypocrisy. You needn't pretend you don't like it!"
"Of course I don't pretend. Haven't I lived here for nearly twenty years because I do like it? That tells the story."
"Though my occupation at home is the making of boiler-plate," Gray continued, pursuing the current of his own thoughts, "and though I couldn't and wouldn't live here as you do, giving up your own country (the greatest country in the world), yet don't imagine, Jack, that I can't take it in!"
He had risen while speaking. Now he went down to the parapet and stood looking at the view. Each mountain-peak was bathed in the light of sunset; all was softly fair—the ineffable loveliness of Italy. He came back. "It's probable that I take it in more than you do," he went on.
"Oh yes, of course; new-comers always think so. They think that we don't comprehend either the country or the people because we take them calmly. They believe that they themselves show far more discrimination in only coming now and then. For in that way they preserve their power of appreciating; they don't grow dull-eyed and stupid as we do."
"Exactly. That's just what I think," answeredGray. "What do you suppose those stairs were for?" he added, as he sat down again beside the table and lighted a cigarette.
"Probably they led to a small out-door pulpit which has fallen down. The whole top of this hill was covered by a monastery—a fortified place, I believe, with four towers. Only one of the towers remains, and nothing above ground of all the other buildings but that piece of high wall; I dare say there are plenty of substructures and vaults below. But though the monastery has gone, this old garden of the monks remains very much as it was, I fancy."
Modesta now came to take the tray. She was accompanied by a cat and a dog. The dog was a small dachshund, black, with long silky ears and very crooked paws. The cat, a sinuous yellow matron, appeared to believe that she was the favorite, for she rubbed herself against her mistress's ankles caressingly. As Modesta, with murmured "excuses," lifted the tray, four kittens rushed from the house, gambolling and tumbling over each other; they all made their way to her feet, round which they curled themselves so that she walked in a tangle of cats. She returned towards the house with her tray, laughing, and careful not to step on them. The dog waited a moment with dignity. "Here, Hannibal! Here!" said Dennison. But the dachshund paid no attention to him; he trotted back to the house as fast as his short legs could carry him.
"He is supposed to be my property. But he spends his life in the kitchen," commented Dennison.
"That girl of yours has a passion for animals; one might rather call it compassion, perhaps, for I have even seen her petting that preternaturally ill-temperedand hideous donkey who turns your water-wheel," remarked Gray. "It seems to extend in all directions, for she runs out to help the old milkman up the hill with his cans, and she gives tidbits to that idiot boy who haunts the main road."
"That isn't half. She feeds regularly two children who live a little below here, on the way down to the valley. Partly she robs me to do it, after the easy Italian fashion; but she also robs herself—I have had proof of that. She almost always has some forlorn object, varying anywhere from a lame chicken to a blind man, stowed away in a corner of the court or the kitchen, where she can see to and comfort it. And every Friday, when the regular beggars of Tre Ponti—the authorized humbugs—make the round of the villas and poderes on this side of the valley, invariably she has saved something for each one of them."
"She is extraordinarily handsome. With her full throat, her large, soft eyes, and that classic head and hair, she looks like a Madonna of one of the old painters. I have never seen a more kindly and beautiful smile."
"It's well enough. But the great thing is that she is perfect as a servant. What she has to do is done without a fault."
"And she is so placid and sweet-tempered, too, as well as skilful," Gray went on. "She's a regular marvel!"
"She's a regular Tuscan!"
"Didn't I tell you that you don't half appreciate the beautiful natures of these people? As to this particular girl—come back to America, and see what we have to put up with! A waitress like that, over there, would be worth her weight in silver—if not gold."
"A what?" asked Dennison.
"A waitress; that's what we call 'em now; we've given up 'help.' Is she married to your cook?"
"Oh no; Peppino is nearly sixty. She is only twenty-five, though she looks thirty. She is a widow, and she is thinking of taking another husband before long. Have you noticed a young fellow working in the vineyard just under your windows?"
"I have noticed some one loafing there."
"That's the man."
"Poor good-natured woman—he has imposed upon her; she will have to earn his living as well as her own. As it happens, I have watched him, and a lazier creature I never saw; he looks at the vines occasionally, and he calls down jokes to the other men below; that is the extent of his exertions. Come out for a walk."
"I don't walk after dinner."
"Come at least as far as the tower."
Thus adjured, Dennison rose. In spite of his own assertion, he was not corpulent; he was a tall man whose outlines had grown large; but he was muscular still. Gray also was tall. If Edward Gray had a hobby, it was to show to the world that an American business-man can be as athletic as an English fox-hunter or an ancient Greek; his face, which was thin and deeply lined, did not come up to his ambition; but his erect figure, wiry and elastic, was well-developed and strong.
As they passed through the house, now growing dim in the twilight, they caught a glimpse of the waitress in the distance, seated in the kitchen, knitting. On the table by her side two of the tall, slender Tuscan lamps were burning, each with its three little wicksand its three brass chains; in her lap two kittens were curled asleep. The light illumined also a gaudy print on the wall, apparently a Madonna. Beneath the print was a jug filled with flowers.
"Is that little piece of piety your cook's?" Gray asked, as they passed out.
"No. The cook is a free-thinker. It's Modesta; she is overwhelmingly devout. She has the whole house blessed at regular intervals—priest and holy-water."
The outer door of Casa Colombina opens directly upon the small square or piazza of Santa Lucia, a grassy space dotted with minute pink daisies. One side of this square is bordered by a low wall. In the daytime this wall's broad, flat top was adorned not infrequently by the recumbent figure of one of Modesta's protégés, who, after enjoying her bounty, was taking a siesta here, in the sunshine or the shade, according to the season; sometimes it was Hannibal, with his nose on his paws; sometimes it was the cat; very often it was a beggar or the idiot boy. To-night the slab was empty, and, after a stroll of half an hour up the road and back, Dennison and his visitor sat down here for a moment; it made an excellent seat. It was now dark; the lights of Tre Ponti were twinkling in the valley, the evening-star shone above the Tower of the Dove; the soft air of the Italian May was filled with the fragrance of blossoms. Suddenly on one of the mountains in the northern sky there appeared, flashing out, a gleam. Then a blaze.
"Woods on fire up there," said Gray, who was accustomed to forest fires at home.
But while he was speaking a similar glare appearedon a mountain in the south. And then a third in the east. Many summits and flanks of the Apennines were in sight, and before long there were fifty of the blazing signals visible, some near, some distant, but all at high points.
"It's the vigil of the Ascension, the night when the mountain peasants light bonfires on their peaks as a species of religious rite," explained Dennison. "In reality it is a relic of pagan times. Their belief is that the ceremony will bring tranquillity to their families during the year."
A figure which had come from the house now passed them. "Lordships will pardon," said Modesta's voice; "they know that I would not wish to disturb. But from the kitchen it is not possible to count the mountain fires. And to count them all is important, since tranquillity is most surely a blessed thing. Excuses." She passed on to a distant angle of the wall, where she stood for five or ten minutes.
"What did she say?" asked Gray, who was sure that he could learn to speak Italian in a week or two. Simplest thing in the world—so much like Latin.
Dennison translated the phrases—the lordships, the excuses, and the proffered opinion as to tranquillity.
"It's awfully pretty," said Gray, admiringly.
Modesta, after finishing her counting, crossed the piazza to the little church. In the starlit darkness they could see her kneel down there in the porch.
"She is clinching it—the tranquillity—by a few private orisons," said Dennison.
Presently, her devotions concluded, the waitress returned to the house. The two men remained where they were. They had all sorts of subjects to threshout together. They took them up, or rather Gray did, by fits and starts.
"Well, Jack, it's settled, then, that you're never coming home?" he remarked, as he accepted another cigarette.
"Not at all," Dennison answered. "I shall come back by-and-by, when I feel like it. In the meanwhile I pay my taxes regularly over there, and I subscribe to all the charities I believe in—three or four. If there were to be another war (but there won't be) I should return at once."
"Well, I don't call it a useful life."
"Is it more useful to make money—at somebody else's expense?"
"It's more useful to be a good citizen; to bring up one's family well; to—"
"Let's stop there," Dennison interposed. "People with families never approve of the people who haven't those blessings. It doesn't occur to them that nobody forced them to marry; they selected the lot, and therefore they accepted responsibilities. But a man who has not undertaken family life ought not to be saddled with its cares. You chose your boys and girls; I chose Italy. Each to his taste. You may ask, 'Isn't the world to be peopled, then?' No trouble about that; it always will be. Personally my own answer to the same question might be, however, the old one, 'Je n'en vois pas la nécessité.'"
"That's where you all end; dreary nihilism!"
A figure was now passing the piazza, following the road which ascends from the valley. "Let us see if Hannibal gives tongue from the house," said Dennison. "It's a man they call the Professor; he livesbehind the church, and he and the dog detest each other. Generally, Hannibal knows his step even from the depths of the olive-grove! You don't want to watch those fires all night, do you?"
They returned to the house. The outer door of Casa Colombina bore no relation to the drawing-room, dining-room, or library. It led to the court, to the cellar, to the gardens, to the podere, to the kitchen, to whatever you please; but it was only by a circuitous route through corridors and purposeless anterooms that Dennison could reach his own apartments. As he and his guest were following this route they caught another glimpse across the court of Modesta in her kitchen. The door was more widely open this time, and they could see the whole interior of the large, vaulted, hall-like room, with the rows of copper pans on the wall. The kittens were now in their basket on the floor, and Modesta's lap was occupied by the dachshund, who had curled himself into a ball. The waitress was still knitting, her head bent forward over her work. With her smoothly braided hair and her white apron, in her neat, quiet room, with her cats and her dog and her flower-decked shrine, she was the image of peace.
"Tranquillity is most surely a blessed thing," quoted Gray. "If it were not for the moving needles, I should say she was asleep."
"She probably is asleep; she is knitting unconsciously. She appears to require about fifteen hours of slumber out of the twenty-four," said Dennison, as he lighted wax matches, one after the other, to show the way. When he reached the sitting-room he rang for lights, and presently Modesta appeared, carrying the lamp, her eyes drowsy.
"As soon as Peppino comes in you may close the house," said Dennison. "We shall require nothing more to-night."
The waitress put down the lamp, adjusting its wick so that it burned brightly. Then she lighted the shaded candles which stood on a side table. Hannibal had followed her; when she had finished her task she stooped and picked him up. "If the master allows, he must be washed to-morrow," she said. "Or, rather, not to-morrow, for it is a festa, but the day after. As it is now warm weather, Peppino shall take him to the pond, instead of bathing him in the green crockery basin. Annibale himself will not wish to go—silly cherub!" (Here she stroked the dog's head.) "But—what do they wish? It is necessary. Good-night to the lordships." And she disappeared, carrying the dog, and murmuring endearments to him as she went.
The next morning Gray, always an early riser, found himself awake at the abnormal hour of dawn; for in May and in Italy one can see the beginnings of light in the east soon after midnight. Long before four o'clock he was dressed and out. He had a fancy to see the dew on the blossoms, to watch the sun rise above the Apennines and touch, one by one, the gray towers with which in that part of Tuscany all the hills are crowned. Peppino was up, for the kitchen door was open. Hannibal, hearing steps, looked into the court, and seeing that some one was going for a walk, he decided to go too, announcing his intention by a bark of one syllable—"wow!" This drew forth a "Be quiet!" in Tuscan from Peppino within. For no unnecessary sound must disturb the master of the house, who never appeared before eight o'clock; in winter an hour later.Gray went quietly through the corridors to the irrelevant outer door, opened it, and let himself out, followed by the dog. He walked up the road for a short distance; then he turned into a winding lane. Here he saw the thick dew on the hedges and fields, but only one bird; with great care Dennison had kept three birds'-nests in the garden of Casa Colombina, but they were probably the only nests for miles. Presently the sun rose above the eastern mountains, its first rays illumining distant high-up villages which are invisible later in the day. Then came the gleam of the towers. Some of these stand alone, like the Tower of the Dove; two belong to ruined castles; but the majority are now attached to villas which were built later, or rather the villas have attached themselves to the towers. These villas, now old in their turn, are for the most part large, solid, blank-looking structures, yellow in hue, with a dignified group of cypresses near by. When the tints of the sunrise were all gone, merged in the broad, clear light of the Tuscan summer day, Gray turned back. He was following the main road. As the cluster of houses which stand next to Santa Lucia, behind the piazza, came into view, he saw a large white dog appear suddenly on the broad top of a wall which bounds one of the gardens. This dog began to bark in a deep tone at Hannibal, who was below; for Hannibal had hurried on far in advance of his companion, with the air of expecting something. This was what he had expected; and he now answered the challenge by leaping up as high as he could towards his mocking aggressor, and barking in his turn with all his strength. As the top of the wall was ten feet above the roadway, the big dog could loftily send down his derisive scorn at intervalswithout lowering the dignity of his pose; and his derision was plainly increased when two other dogs appeared on the wall by his side and added their voices to the tumult. Hannibal meanwhile nearly turned himself inside out in his efforts to reply with appropriate contempt; he defied them all three at the top of his voice. Suddenly from a house opposite appeared a singular figure—a tall, thin man in his night-shirt, scantily covered by a short dressing-gown—who rushed into the mêlée, brandishing a cane and trying to strike the vociferous dachshund. Hannibal, relinquishing for the moment his warfare with the canine foes, turned his attention towards this new enemy, but not quickly enough to escape a blow which changed his proud bark into a yelp of dismay.
"Don't strike the dog!" called Gray, futilely, in English, as he hurried towards the scene of action. But before he could reach the spot a flying figure had intervened, coming from the opposite direction. Modesta rushed to the dodging Hannibal and picked him up, while she sent a flood of Tuscan sarcasms after his now retreating antagonist. "Two-legged brutes are much worse than four-legged ones," she announced, loudly; "and as to the quality of thelegs, there can be no comparison." The thin human limbs were, indeed, only too plainly visible below the insufficient garments, and she wittily enumerated their weak points for the benefit of the gazing heads which had now appeared at all the windows of the neighborhood, as the distracted man, losing first one of his slippers and then the other, finally seized them in his hand, and, getting his door open at last, disappeared within. "Figure it to yourself—a Professor! Legs like that for theliteraryprofession!" was the waitress's final thrust.
After breakfast, as Dennison and Gray were sitting in the garden, she appeared. "Lordships will excuse, but it seemed best that they should know. The paw of Annibale is wounded; likewise his shoulder and one ear. I have put on a lotion and bandaged him, and he has shown the patience of an angel. But that he suffers is visible, and I therefore ask the master, could I leave him here while I go to mass, so that he may not be lonely, Peppino having gone to town?"
"Oh, bring him, if you like," said Dennison. "Little scamp!" he added in English.
Modesta went off, returning after a minute or two, carrying Hannibal in his basket. The dog reposed on his cushions with the air of a wounded hero; he was arrayed in a complicated bandage of coarse white linen, which swathed one paw and encircled his shoulder and head. "To think of any one's being such a brute as to injure a creature so small!" said Modesta, after she had put the basket gently down in the shade. "But, without doubt, there are in this world absolute demons!"
"You hypocrite!" said Dennison to Hannibal, after the waitress had departed. "You go every morning of your life at dawn to wake up that poor man by a row with the Ciardelli dogs—you know you do! He is a teacher of languages from Florence, who is here for six months of rest," he added to Gray. "He has not had much rest so far! He has already thrown all his boots and shoes at Hannibal through the window more than once. This morning I suppose he was desperate."
"Is your pawverybad, Hannibal?" inquired Gray.
The bandage had slipped down, so that Hannibal had only one eye visible. With this eye he appeared to wink.
After lunch the two men went out for a stroll. The roads were gay with the country-folk, celebrating the festa in the Italian fashion by the simple amusement of being together in the open air. The wrinkled faces of the old women were framed in their new red-and-yellow kerchiefs, which were folded over their heads and tied under their chins. Each girl wore a flower in her hair, and this hair was always thick, rising up round the face in a dense mass, no matter how closely the long ends were braided and coiled behind. The men were dressed in their best, but they all carried their jackets folded and tossed over one shoulder.
The younger men were entertaining themselves.
"They will end by slicing us in two at the ankles," said Gray, indignantly, after he had jumped aside three or four times to escape a sharp disk which met them suddenly as they turned a corner, whizzing past them as it flew down the road, almost invisible from its speed.
"It's a game," said Dennison.
"Oh, is it? I thought it was assassination."
Presently they came to a little stone building adorned with a rusty tin cross. On the side towards the road it has a small, iron-barred window, whose glass within is so thickly covered with dust that it looks as if it had been painted yellow. There is a Latin inscription cut in stone over its long-closed door: "Pul—pulsate, et—Knock and it shall be opened to you," translated Gray, making out the words with difficulty.
"Nobody would dare to knock. And the last thing they wish is to have it opened," remarked Dennison. "It is the private chapel of that old villa across the fields, but for the last two hundred years there has beena tomb inside, whose occupant is supposed to rise and come to the window now and then to glare at the passers-by. She was a Countess Alberoni, who had a tragical end, if the legend is true. Her own children are said to have locked her up in that villa with one attendant and the plainest food, until at last, from sheer melancholy, she died. On the other hand, it is added that the world was well rid of her, for a more wicked old woman never lived. Her crimes, however, whatever they were, have not prevented Modesta, I see, from decorating her with the others," he continued. For as they walked on they perceived that a faded shrine, set in the outer wall of the chapel at its eastern end, had been adorned with a long garland made of fresh green leaves and blossoms.
"The others? What others?"
"Your Madonna beauty decorates every way-side shrine within a mile of Casa Colombina on all the principal festas," said Dennison. "She starts out after lunch, carrying a pile of garlands in her arms, and another poised on her head, so that she is like a walking hay-stack."
They now took a narrow track which leads to the valley. This path winds round a small low house, brilliantly pink on the outside, with a dark and gloomy interior.
"There she is now," said Gray, who, looking at everything with the keen attention of a stranger, had discovered the figure of the Casa Colombina servant within. Her back was towards them; she was talking to some one who was not visible from the road. Hearing their footsteps, she turned. And then, as the light from the doorway fell upon her, they saw that she had Hannibal in her arms.
"Put down that ridiculous animal!" called Dennison.
The waitress came out, and, joining in their laughter, placed the dog on the ground. "With his bandages, yes, he does look comical," she said, assentingly. "But it seemed best to give him a breath of fresh air."
"Have you lugged him all the way from the house?" asked Dennison, who had paused to roll two cigarettes. "The dog and the flowers too?"
"It is nothing; lordship knows his gentleness. He lay among them like a lamb."
"But why did you give a wreath to the wicked countess, Modesta?" Dennison went on. "The Signor Gray is astonished at such an action."
"Povera! to be so treated by her own children," answered the Italian; "that seems to me abominable. She was their mother, even if a bad one. And then one feels for her; only on a festa does any one pass that chapel, and so she has very little to see even when she does look out. The master may not know? This is the home of Pietro."
"The idiot boy?"
"The afflicted of God," said Modesta, gently.
The boy, hearing his name, had come shuffling out. He was a repulsive-looking child, but Modesta smoothed his hair. "To me he appears constantly more intelligent," she said, hopefully.
Dennison and his visitor, having lighted their cigarettes, now passed on. The moment their figures had disappeared round a curve the waitress stooped and took up the waiting Hannibal. "To call thee comical, with thy little paw in pain!" she murmured in his ear. "But thou knowest that I did not mean it. 'Twas but politeness for the masters."
The masters went down to Tre Ponti, where they took horses and a rattling phaeton, and went off on one of those quests with whose mild excitements Dennison enlivened his quiet Italian days. This time it was a search for some tapestry, which had been discovered, so it was said, in a villa six miles distant. The villa was one of those which had degenerated, having been used for the last hundred years as a farm-house. During the preceding week an addition had been pulled down, and the demolition had uncovered a window which corresponded to nothing within; further search had revealed a walled-up chamber, and it was this chamber which contained the tapestry. The chamber was there—a small room with a high ceiling. It contained no tapestry; nothing, in fact, but one singular object: a lady's toilet-table with a lace cover, an old mirror, two candlesticks, and various saucers, vials, and boxes. The lace, which was falling to pieces from age, was ordinary in quality; the mirror-frame and the candlesticks were made of metal that imitates bronze; and the saucers, vials, and boxes were of glass that imitates crystal; nothing, therefore, had intrinsic value. Dennison made a small offer for the whole just as it stood, in case the government should not lay claim to the objects.
"It's only for the riddle," he said to his companion, as they drove back to Tre Ponti. "There is a history, of course, and nobody can ever know it; that is the charm; one can fancy anything one pleases. If I get the table, I'll put it in one of the unused bedrooms. And then when there comes a wild windy night, such as we sometimes have in Tuscany, I'll go there after midnight, and see if she don't glide slowly in and look at herself in her old glass."
It was late in the afternoon when they drove through the eastern gate of Three Bridges. Leaving the phaeton at the stable, they strolled about the village for a while before returning to Casa Colombina.
But village is hardly the word. Although Tre Ponti has never contained more than two thousand inhabitants (at present there are but fifteen hundred), it is surrounded by an important stone wall with bastions, and two of the old gateways, massive arched portals, are still in use. The narrow winding streets are paved with broad flag-stones, which reach to the house walls on each side, so that one seems to be following hallways open at the top rather than roads. Nowhere is there an inch of garden; the high blocks stand side by side in solid rows. The only breathing-place is the central square; one side of this piazza is embellished by a palazzo-pubblico, or town-hall, decorated with griffins and armorial bearings. Along another side there is an arcade ornamented with a row of heads by Andrea della Robbia, old women, monks, knights, children, and others, each looking out with life-like expression from a heavy frame of clustered porcelain fruit.
"Those frames of fruit would do for a State fair," said Gray, irreverently. "Queer, solid, stony little place! Somehow it looks fierce, too."
"Naturally. They did almost nothing here but fight for hundreds of years; they fought with every town in Tuscany. And almost every town in Tuscany responded by fighting with them."
When Gray had seen everything, they passed through the western gate, taking the road which leads down the hill and across one of the three bridges; on the otherside of this bridge begins the path which is a short-cut to Casa Colombina.
In the open space outside of this gate there stands a small café of the most modern type. Its exterior is adorned in fresco on one side of the door with a portrait of Garibaldi as large as life. On the other side there is a second work of art, a painted open window from whose lattice leans a damsel, dressed in the remarkable apparel which is produced by a translation of the latest Paris fashions into Italian. This damsel hospitably offers to the passers-by a glass of wine. "Let's breathe," said Dennison, seating himself on one of the benches which, with a green table, was placed before the door.
"You want to attach yourself to every bench you see, Jack."
"On the contrary, I much prefer my own, at home. It's only for your sake that I go tramping about the country in this way, on my feet."
"What do they have in such a place as this?" asked Gray, fanning himself with his hat. "We can't sit here without ordering something."
"Yes, we can. Don't be throwing your money about."
"Only a quarter. What can I get for that?"
"Red vinegar."
At this moment the proprietor of the café came forth, carrying a three-legged stool and a brazier filled with hot coals. He saluted the gentlemen with a beaming smile, but made no effort to solicit their patronage; placing the stool and the brazier at a little distance, he returned to the house, and came forth again with a large shallow pan, whose bottom was coveredwith a layer half an inch deep of coffee in the berry. Seating himself on the stool, he began to roast the coffee, holding the pan over the coals by its long handle, and swaying it slightly from side to side with a rhythmical motion. He was a picturesque young man, with a brilliant pink silk handkerchief round his neck. Whenever his roving glance happened to meet that of either of the Americans he smiled genially, as though he wished to assure them that, whatever their mood might be, he should be sure to sympathize with it if admitted to their confidence.
"Ask him for the wine," said Gray.
"You can't possibly drink it," expostulated Dennison.
"I'll take it to Modesta—for her Friday beggars. You won't? Very well, then, I'll do it myself. Here, vyno! Vyno, do you hear? Vyno bono. Oon liry.Oon!" And he held up one finger.
The young landlord, with cordial smiles, put down his pan, hurried into the house, and returned with two little tumblers, and one of the graceful Tuscan flasks swathed in its covering of plaited straw. Taking out the stopper, he removed with exaggerated care the protecting layer of oil by means of a long wisp, and then placed the flask on the table with a flourish. "Ecco!"
"They always understand me," said Gray, complacently, when the coffee roasting had begun again.
"They would understand a Patagonian; one who was a lunatic, and dumb!"