The Lace Weaver.
On the hill with crest that is fringed with stone pines, above Santa Margherita’s town and harbour, Lucrezia’s grey cottage stands, with thatched roof, among the trees. Olives are around her dwelling, for it stands on the nether slopes, where the fir’s fragrance from above scarce reaches; their fine branches and crooked stems rest traced upon the sky, and into their grey tones fig-trees bring brighter green for contrast, though brightest of all are the vines that twine beneath. The blue-grey smoke curls above the green-grey trees, to show where the lace-weaver lives; a rough spring flows freshly out of the earth beside her cottage, with wooden trough to guide its stream into the brick basin, and thence into the beans and potatoes of her garden; a rude balcony flanks the house, a walnut tree shadows it over, apergoladims the light at the kitchen window; and the gourd-plants trail beneath it on the ground, with ample golden flowers; carnations, side by side with kitchen herbs, grow in a box upon the window-sill.
Lucrezia sits outside on the little terrace; the peartree is white with blossom, just opposite, and at the foot of many a sloping, stone-hemmed garden, where green wheat waves and gladioli bloom between, the sunny sea spreads far away and breaks white upon the rocks; but her face is not raised to look, for before her is the lace-pillow, and, while her fingers ply busily, her head is bowed, and she softly rocks a cradle with her foot. Lucrezia is a young mother. Last year, when the fruit was at the best and the fishing had been good, she was married to Pietro of Santa Margherita, and the little swaddled infant that sleeps at her feet is the first-born, who came with the summer’s return this May-time. He has no features to boast of yet, and his legs and arms are tightly bound with swathing bands, but Lucrezia thinks him truly fair nevertheless, nor minds the piteous wail with which he will shortly break in upon her deftest bit of labour. She is a comely woman, but beautiful rather with the recollection of other beauty—the beauty of past generations—than perfect in her own person. She is dark and tall and straight, with square, broad shoulders and ample bosom; her hair is almost black, her eyes are grey, her skin is bronzed and slightly freckled, her mouth is wide, and the teeth within it white and even; the hands that weave and twist amid a labyrinth of threads are coarse and large, though seemly shaped; the foot upon the cradle’sedge is no dainty foot, for it has grown hard upon the hard stones, and tanned with the sun, and soiled with the world’s work of every day. Neithercontadinenor fisherwives waste their scant pence on shoes and stockings.
The Lace Weaver.While her fingers ply busily, her head is bowed, and she softly rocks a cradle with her foot.
The Lace Weaver.
While her fingers ply busily, her head is bowed, and she softly rocks a cradle with her foot.
Lucrezia plaits her white threads swiftly—so swiftly that you might almost see the pattern growing beneath her fingers, though it is no simple design that she weaves thus from memory, but an elaborate arrangement of groundwork and spray and border, that go to make the width most used for flounces. The wooden bobbins clap together merrily when Lucrezia thus nimbly twists and crosses threads over the pink pillow’s surface. She is crooning a lullaby to the bandagedbambocciothe while, and nearly mars the use of it by the loud peals of laughter that Maria’s conversation provokes, who sits idling on the cottage door-step.
‘Marry? I wouldn’t marry for worlds, and have to work as you’re working now,’ declares decisively that one who is yet a spinster. ‘What man is worth it? For me, I like to amuse myself—in the way one should, of course!Santa Vergine!you’re always at it! If you’re not at the lace-pillow, you’re with the fish to market or down in the villa round thetomateand the herbage! And then that marmot of yours! It’s one thing to dandle him a bit for you when you’re up toSanta Margherita on an errand, but to have a thing like that of one’s own——! Not for me!’ ‘Go to!’ laughs Lucrezia. ‘And that young man of Camogli that I know of?’ ‘And that young man—and that young man! What young man, and what’s he to do with me?’ simpers the maid. ‘All very fine,’ replies the married woman, with a giggle so loud that Ernesto gives an ominous whine, and would probably move his limbs were they not so well secured, ‘that willheknow better than I for a surety!’ And she rocks the cradle faster, and begins to croon afresh, till the pins on the pillow want shifting forwards, and Maria so far recovers her gravity as to continue, ‘You are always up to your jokes, you! But tell me a little—wilt teach me the lace-making if I have the patience to learn? It’s the only way for us poor girls to earn a pair of ear-rings, I suppose.’ ‘Dear heart, you would never have patience,’ says Lucrezia. ‘A fisher-girl like you! Why, your hands are rough from the oar, and you’d never sit still a little half-hour. It’s bad enough for me, who have been used to it since I was twelve years old!’
A portion of the pattern gets finished off at this point, and Lucrezia casts a handful of threads aside—the threads that have twined one kind of weft for sprays—and takes up a new set to fill in the ground with. She has had a good day’s work, has been at the pillowat least five or six hours, and has completed nearlymezzo palmoof flounce, which is about five inches. If she were not the nimblest worker in all Santa Margherita’s vicinity, she could never make as much lace as this in the whole twelve hours, and yet the Genoa shops will scarcely pay her more than a franc for the piece she has done, weaving since daybreak, till now that it is time to cook thecena. Indeed, if hers were not the best and smoothest made lace to be had along that shore, Lucrezia would not even earn as much. It is not without some reason that to Maria’s remark about its being the best means of gain for a woman, she answers, but curtly, ‘You believe it? Listen to me rather; that you, who have hard hands and slow wits, and the patience only of a spirit in purgatory, you would not make half a franc with your day at the pillow! Even the glove-sewing would suit you better, though ’tis but a poor trade! Take to yourself that young man of Camogli, and go in peace! He has a house above his head, and you are fit for nothing so well as to sell his fish for him at Santa Margherita, and harvest his wheat and his olives.’
Lucrezia rises to stretch her arms, for the shadows are creeping longer and a filmier light dims the sun’s dazzle on the bay. It will be time to pare the potatoes and wash the rice forminestra, though, on second thoughts, she has a mind to cook somepolenta—thatis quicker done, and just as acceptable for a second meal. Maria’s gossip must end for this time. She, too, has acenato make ready at home for the men, and Lucrezia has enough to do now, for, just when the pot wants putting on—that bundle in the cradle begins to wail, of course! ‘It’s always so,’ laments she plaintively, but the mother’s heart cannot find it within to be cross, though she must rake the fire with one hand while holding the infant to her breast with the other.
The first-born’s woes are stilled, supper simmers over the burning logs, in the light of whose flames Lucrezia’s copper vessels shine brightly on the smoke-tarnished walls; without, the sunlight has faded, and grey clouds cross the west. ‘We shall have a storm to-night,’ muses she on the terrace, looking seawards with her back to the road, and to the chestnut-woods behind her olive trees. Truly, the blue waves are sadder-coloured than before and begin to wear white feathers on their bosoms. A wind moves in the grey branches overhead, and rustles more noisily amid the broader-leaved chestnuts behind; on the hill’s crest it is sighing beneath the stone pines. ‘Pietro will surely not go to the fishing this night,’ says she, half aloud; and she turns to fetch the copper cauldron to fill at the spring.
Some one is coming through the chestnut wood that lies away from the sea—a lady. Is it one of the ladiesfrom thepalazzoon Santa Margherita’s beach? Yes—good Virgin—it is indeed, and the same one who bought lace of her last week! What a good fortune, for a private customer buys at double the price offered at Genoa shops. ‘Your servant,’ says she modestly, but without a curtsey—that is not the way with ourcontadine; yet her manner is none the less respectful. ‘A fair evening to you, my good girl,’ replies the town dame in the high singsong that is special to Genoese dialect, and different from the Venetian twitter or the deep Milanese chest notes. She is not alone—a tall man attends her, dressed after a supposed English mode, as for the country; he is chestnut-haired, and would call himselfbiondo, or fair, spite of his skin’s colour; that is why he affects the English style, and he too says a gracious ‘Felice sera’ to our Lucrezia, because she is a comely woman. She meanwhile, standing beside the fountain with her hand resting on the copper bowl to steady it, gazes with appreciating eyes on the lady’s elegant attire, who says presently to the swain beside her, ‘It will rain, I think—it behoves to go quickly home;’ then to thecontadinawhose vessel has filled the while at the trickling spring, ‘Have you any more lace of that sort that I bought last time?’ ‘Come up the steps beneath thepergola, dear lady, and I will show you what I have,’ replies Lucrezia, frankly, but withno curtness as the words might imply. And she heaves the water-vessel to her head, which must first be replaced in the kitchen, whence she then brings two nicely dusted rush chairs for thesignori.La marchesasits down, asks a question about the prospects of grape and olive harvest, speaks a word to the now wakefulbambino, and handles black and white lace while the fair-haired gallant leans against the stone parapet and smokes and gives valuable opinions on stitch and pattern and quality.
Lucrezia has a handsome store of completed lace—of course, some of it is promised to the shop, but what matter? No one can quicker invent a suitable lie for the shopwoman, should themarchesatake a fancy to any special piece. There are lengths of all widths, in flounce, and edge, and insertion-lace; there are scarves and shawls, and parasol covers, and every kind of female adornment that is in fashion, whether suited to this special kind ofguipuretrimming or no. Lucrezia’s lace is the finest made in the neighbourhood, but even hers is no fine and precious kind. True, in olden times the Riviera girls used to make a straight-edged and thin-threaded lace that was worthier the name, but, for this long time past, florid designs and Maltese stitches have come into vogue, and now we have nothing butguipuremade along the shores.La marchesabuys her five metresof heavy-weighted black silk flouncing, in which kind the loose-woven patterns show to best advantage, and when she has bargained a while over it, and laughed and talked friendly with Lucrezia, it is discovered suddenly by all three that the rising blast has lashed our blue sea’s waters into swelling and breaking billows, and that the storm is overhead. Dark clouds hasten across the sunset, and the rain begins to drop. ‘Misericordia!’ says the lady. For the square pink palace looks a long way off. She is fain to take the shelter of the lace-weaver’s shady kitchen, that is now gracefully offered, and to blacken her dainty slippers on the square brick hearth and listen to the first-born’s wail till the rain have ceased to water the garden, and the wind to turn up the olive leaves’ white linings, till the worst of the storm be over, in fact, though waves still dash white spray on black and cloven rocks in the bay, and the sunlight be blotted out for good this day. But Pietro has good news on his return to the cottage; the fishing has been good this broken weather, and Lucrezia has good news, too—she has sold fivemetriat an honest price to themarchesaof the great palace.