The Village Sempstress.
When the road leaves the church to steer for the valley’s narrower end and to follow the river’s course, it leads, before half a mile is gone, into the midst of a little hamlet that is one of San Matteo’s prettiest parasites. And there stands a cottage that has always been a marked feature in the neighbourhood. It is the house of Marrina, the village sempstress.
When the day’s heat has abated, and the shadows begin to deepen, and the breezes to blow more freshly, let us, with the villagers, gather round one of the village’s greatest characters.
She is an old maid. An old maid with plenty of ditties, like most of her kind, ditties about the youthful days when Paolo proposed, and nothing but prudence induced her to send poor Giovanni about his business—he who was such a handsome young fellow, too, and had such a flourishingpastabusiness! But in spite of them all, Marrina is still single, though she is past fifty, and is of so portly a figure as to excuse any man for thinking twice about the necessary allowance ofpolentaand beans. If you ask her, she will praise the Virgin to your face, who has kept her a virgin in peace and contentment until this age, and will assure you that, though Giovanni and Paolo were dying of love, nothing should persuade her to change her determination. Has she not nephews and nieces of all sizes, sexes, natures, and ages to cheer her loneliness? Does she not nourish towards all the men whose coats she fashions, and whose breeches she mends, a love far greater and more philanthropic than any she could have borne to one poor single husband?
It must surely be under no protest that Marrina is happy. Watch her broad, beaming face as she turns it round on the bystanders; listen to her good-humoured jests! She is no soured woman, though she has been lame from childhood, and has probably never been wooed as she pretends. She is proud of her position—the position which gowns and petticoats, corduroys and jackets, have won for her. With heavy figure, scantily clad in red and purplebordato—the homespun linen of the district—a bright yellow kerchief folded across her ample bosom, and her few grey locks neatly braided and packed into a lump behind her head, she sits on the stone bench beneath her cottage porch, two stockingless feet propped on an oppositestool, while she clips rashly with great scissors, sewing, settling, and jabbering jocosely the while.
A knot of peasants has gathered round; Marrina’s porch is almost as common a meeting-ground as the church piazza onfestasor the well at sunset. If there is any news rife anywhere, it is to be heard from the sempstress sooner than from anyone else; if there is any advice wanted, she is the one whose advice is asked at least, if rarely taken. A more sympathetic person could not be with whom to gossip over all matters of personal interest, with whom to weigh the pros and cons in all affairs of female indecision, and perhaps the taking of advice rarely includes much that is more definite. Besides the family circle—that children of brothers and of sisters, boys and girls of all ages, have swelled to goodly proportions around her—many inhabitants, not only of this hamlet, but of others in the parish, have met together to-night. Some have brought their own supper from home to eat, standing or lounging on steps and wall, others content themselves only with taking their evening rest. Amongst the men, many do not even talk; Marrina and her crew do it for them.
‘I never knew a man like you, Gian-Battista, for wearing out the knees of your breeches! I’ve patched this pair for you three or four times!’ (And this may clearly be discerned, for stuffs of more than one colourand texture have been used to help out the poor brown fustian.) ‘If you had a wife, and were not a blessed unencumbered mortal as I am, she would have told you long ago it wasn’t worth paying twosoldievery fortnight to get these things seen to! But I must earn my money, though I shan’t have the face to ask you for the coppers this time! Look there, here’s Bianca! She’s been to Ponte Decimo and some new stuff she’ll have brought to show me! I’m sick of these girls’ vanity! When I was a girl we took what our aunts and mothers gave us, without being so bold as to choose for ourselves. Eh, well, come on, child! What if I do talk? We’ve all been young once. Hand over the things.’
The Village Sempstress.“I never knew a man like you Gian Battista, for wearing out the knees of your breeches.”
The Village Sempstress.
“I never knew a man like you Gian Battista, for wearing out the knees of your breeches.”
And the old face is as eager as any of the young ones over the merits of pure woolversuscheaper mixed wares. ‘Give over thy silk apron, for the love of the Holy Mother, girl, and just buy a good thing while you’re about it! Who cares whether you’ve a silk apron or a decent stuff one? New-fangled notions from the towns! I’ve no patience with you all! As long as you’ve a good dress, a clean veil, and a little gold on, not the Lord himself but must needs be content with your looks!’
‘Don’t you think it’s too bright?’ objects the anxious and undecided purchaser. ‘They do say that in Genoa one wears nothing but dark colours.’
‘You go away with you!’ retorts the old woman angrily. ‘Why, when you can’tgeta colour now if you want it! When I was young that pedlar that you’ve heard me speak of—who used to look two ways out of his eyes, you know—why, I’ve known him bring round stuffs with colours in them that shamed the very Creator of the world! Now, hasn’t the Virgin that they carry round in procession got fine colours on? You don’t suppose the holyMadonnadoesn’t know what’s to be worn! Go to!’
And Marrina flings her big shears recklessly into some yards of calico, out of which there issues speedily the roughest pattern of a man’s shirt.
‘You’ve woven good linen this year, mother Teresa. I’ll buy twentypalmiof it to make my Virginia some sheets against her marriage. The girl must have them, and, if her mother won’t give them her, I suppose her aunt must! And you,’ turning to the former girl, ‘not content with a stuff like that for a merefestadress, when my poor Tonietta has got nothing but a calico frock to have her First Communion! Why, I’d almost believe the wool was English, and they make no bad goods there, for they’re so rich they don’t need to.’
And Marrina takes the coveted stuff in her hands, crushing it to test its genuineness, and regarding it with the eye of a true connoisseur. Then, carefully refoldingit, she gives back the packet without another word, and returns to her work.
The sky has become overcast. Banks and boulders of heavy cloud rest on the hills of Savignone down the valley. The mountains have caught the gloom, and look so dark that the ruined castle upon Monte Pilato’s side scarcely shows from off its background. A storm has been prophesied all day, because the air was so sultry; and now the walnuts overhead rustle ominously, and even the chestnuts far away seem to sway as though before a coming strength. Large drops of rain begin to fall.
‘Holy Madonna, and the tempest must come now when we want to keep the wheat upright!’
Marrina takes her huge person hastily away, limping over the stones, and calling with shrill voice to one niece to see to the linen, to the other to drive in the cows.
‘Ah, it’s become a strange parish since the days when I was a girl,’ she mutters. ‘Not a bell ringing yet for the Lord’s mercy against the storm, and it’s upon us, with the corn standing half a yard high, and the maize too!’
Most of the neighbours have disappeared to see after their property, but to the remaining Marrina addresses her complaint.
‘Why, when I was fifteen there wasn’t a stranger in the village—not even other country folk, let alone town folk! And now, because our valleys grow things better than theirs do, they must come and spoil our luck! It’s the strangers do it all. Not but that I admire the fine pink house over the river that Signor Mendicano built, as well as the blue front to the miller’s new cottage, but I say it’s the strangers spoil everything!’
‘You can’t have it both ways, dear heart,’ remarks a young man from beneath.
‘That’s all very well for you, Giannino. The strangers do you a great deal of good, I suppose, when they persuade you to play bowls all day and waste your time! When your land has gone to rack and ruin, and the disease has killed all your vines from want of a little care, they can set it all to-rights, I suppose, by just talking you over to go to America! It’s no fortune you’ll make there, but the fortune of pride and conceit, though you’ll have left your native land for it, and the girl who loves you well! But the young are all alike nowadays—no fear in them, and no fitting shame of things they know nothing about! And, to be sure, it’s not much there is in the girls of to-day that would keep a man to them! Yes, they’ll be all off to get their fortunes too, as if the poverty that did for their parents couldn’t do for them!
‘Ah, the bellshavebegun to ring at last,’ she puts in as the clashing chime breaks in on her speech.
‘It’s all the foreigners from the towns!’ she goes on again glibly. ‘Now, I remember when I first used to go and mend canonicals in the sacristy for thePrevosto! It was as fearful he was of theseSignorias I am. They’ll ruin the village, Marrina, he said. And now doesn’t he go and eat their veryminestra—I should even dare to say broth that’s made with meat on a Saturday, if it weren’t I’d be afraid for my soul at saying such a thing of the Lord’s priest! And no more delight does he take in walking under the canopy at procession than—Dio!And there he is with the lady of the Signor Perrino! And a real woollen dress she has on, with this rain down on us! Why it’s a sin!’
Marrina quickly swings herself down the broken steps of her abode, and hastens towards the advancing couple.
‘Fetch a chair for her under thepergola; why it’s no education you young men have nowadays,’ she whispered angrily to Giannino.
The rain has come up the valley in a great mist; it has broken over the fields and the woods in a torrent that quickly saturates the ground; it drops again from the broad-leaved chestnuts. It is scarcely a wholesome rain, though the land was parched, for the hail descendsand a violent storm might heavily damage the growing things of the country.
ThePrevostoseeks Marrina’s sympathy in this evil chance, but all her complaints have quickly given place to pleasure in the very presence of the townwoman with the real woollen dress on of a working-day. She is only a tradesman’s wife, but she has bits of news from the city and a figured silk jacket to display, and Marrina warms so that she is really mortified at the refusal of beans andpolenta, which refreshment was offered at once with the gracious hospitality that comes as naturally to these courteous peasants as the passing benediction or chance greeting by the roadside.
But at last the storm is over, the air is fresh, the soil is fragrant after the rain. ThePrevostogoes on his way towards the sick person, whom he has to visit. The tradesman’s wife, after an exciting gossip, returns to the pink house in the meadows. Marrina lays aside her needle, for the night has darkened, and work cannot be done by firelight. ‘She’s a good soul, and it was a beautiful stuff,’ she murmurs sitting by the hearth. ‘But I say let everyone keep to what he’s been brought up in. And as for the strange folk and the going to America, I say, God forbid!’