Dorothy, and Other Italian Stories

After breakfast Dennison went down to Tre Ponti on business connected with his olive-grove. But he returned very soon, and, entering the library, rang the bell sharply.

"What's up?" said Gray, who was writing letters by the window.

"A poor old man was terribly injured while passing the house this morning; his donkey slipped on a rolling stone and fell, and the man was thrown from his two-wheeled cart with great violence. Peppino was out apparently – I can't imagine where, at that hour, as it's not his day for going to town."

"He was down at the pond washing the dog; I was with him."

"That explains it. Modesta, therefore, having the field to herself, absolutely refused to allow them to bring the poor creature in here; she let him go in a jolting wagon down to Tre Ponti, telling me nothing whatever about it. What makes it worse is that the man is a contadino who used to work for me; he worked for me, in fact, until he grew too old to work anywhere."

"Probably she has some reason for disliking him."

"On the contrary, she likes him; I happen to know it. And she has a very soft heart for old people, for all kinds of infirmity and suffering. She will fly down to see him upon the very first opportunity; she will rob herself to take him the best food and wine, and everything else she can think of; she will take the very pillows from her bed! She had cried her eyes out over him, that was evident. With her yarn about the pepper!"

"But why in the world, then – "

"Simply because her idea is never to speak of unpleasant subjects to her superiors if she can possibly avoid it; if forced to tell something of the truth, she envelops it in roundabout, optimistic phrases that would deceive even Solomon! But you'll hear for yourself. I'll translate what she says afterwards."

Modesta now appeared in answer to the ring.

"Two men are coming to-day to work in the olive-grove," said Dennison; "tell Peppino to have the tools ready; they will come every afternoon for a week. Your eyes are better, I trust?"

"Almost well, as lordship can behold. It was too much carelessness – mine – with that pepper!"

"Pepper, indeed; I feel peppery myself," replied Dennison. "Why didn't you tell me about the man who was injured here this morning?"

"Eh – lordship has heard? It was a slight accident."

"His leg and his arm were broken, and you know it. Also his head was cut."

"Most surely that is an error. It was a sprain, a wrench; nothing more."

"But I have seen him myself. And it was old Niccolo."

"Lordship has seen him? It is possible that it was Niccolo; I did not observe closely."

"You should have come to my door and wakened me, instead of taking it upon yourself to give orders," said Dennison.

"Oh!" exclaimed the waitress, with a vivid expression of repugnance in her eyes. "Waken lordship to tell him of a trouble – a misfortune like that? What, then, would become of his repose – his tranquillity?"

"You need not concern yourself about my tranquillity," answered Dennison. But he gave it up. "You may go," he said. "Stay a minute," he added; "I have provided a nurse for Niccolo, and a doctor, and he is to be paid so much a day for the best food and wine; he will therefore require nothing from you."

"Save my compassion," answered the waitress, the tears now rolling freely down her cheeks, and reddening her eyes anew. "And that I give with all my heart!" She lifted a corner of her apron to wipe away the drops. "It was sad to see – the masters can imagine! So old a man, and feeble. His white hair in the dust. But he knew me when I ran out. I wept much."

"How about the pepper?" inquired Dennison, as she left the room.

But the waitress was not disturbed by the detection of her falsehood.

"The whole thing seems to her only the most ordinary duty to me," said Dennison, after she had gone. "And if I had not happened to see Niccolo with my own eyes, she would have stuck to her lie to the judgment-day. Personally it was dreadful to her to send him away; she would have liked nothing better than to have him here, in one of those cool rooms off the court, where she could coddle him to her heart's content."

"Do you know, then, I think what she did was in one way charming," said Gray. "All these Italian peasants seem to me to have the most wonderful civility; their manners are always agreeable; they are almost polished. Think of the manners of – "

"I refuse to think of anything; the discoveries made by you new-comers are only exceeded by your conceit. For a thorough knowledge of the Italian character give me the man who has spent, in all, six weeks in Italy?"

The last day of Gray's visit came. As they sat at the breakfast-table, his host said: "There's a powwow to-night, to celebrate something or other, at one of the poderes about a mile from here. Modesta is going if I give her permission. If I do, she won't be back until after midnight, and the table service at dinner will therefore be at sixes and sevens. As the day is so fine, we might take it for a drive to that tower on the mountain – the one which is adorned, according to you, with a winding outside stairway!"

"There certainly is a stairway," persisted Gray.

"And then we could get something in the way of a dinner at a little summer hotel, which is already open for the season. There is a moon for the drive back, and we could stop and have a look at the powwow before coming home – as you're so athirst for everything Tuscan."

"Excellent. Jar!" said Gray.

"Jar? What jar?"

"Jar. Jarr, then, since you say I always cut my r's. You ought to know Italian when you hear it. Jar is what they all say to me when they mean yes."

"You ridiculous object, 'già' is the word."

"That's exactly what I said: jar."

It was three o'clock when they started, and a beautiful May afternoon. A pair of horses and the rattling phaeton had been sent to Casa Colombina from Tre Ponti. Modesta had already departed.

"The celebration begins early," said Gray, as he saw her start.

"She isn't going there now," answered Dennison. "She will go first to the house of Goro's mother, about half a mile from here; there she will sit braiding straw and gossiping with the old woman in a dark, cellar-like room, until the beloved object comes home and is ready to accompany her. I dare say she is taking him something with which to make himself smart for the occasion – a new necktie or a silk handkerchief."

As they passed out on their way to the carriage they caught a glimpse of the distant white figure of the cook seated with his back towards them outside of his kitchen door in the shade, occupying his leisure in playing the flute; his notes, which just reached them, were soft and long-drawn as sighs.

"What is it?" said Gray, listening. "I'm sure I know it."

"'Com' è gentil'; that is, 'O summer night.' Peppino is very sentimental in his musical tastes."

"He doesn't go to the party, then?"

"He despises parties. He goes in for bombs."

It was between eight and nine o'clock in the evening when, on their return from the drive, Dennison checked his horses in a hedge-bordered lane, and stopped. (It may be mentioned that they did not reach the tower; no one – that is, no stranger – has ever reached it. Italians are indifferent to its mystery.) "This is the place," he said. "The house is a quarter of a mile from here, and I could have taken you nearer by keeping to the main road; but in that case they might have heard the sound of our wheels. I haven't let any one know we were coming, so that you can have a glimpse of the scene as it really is, and not tamed by the presence of strangers." He tied the horses to the hedge, and, climbing over a stone wall, led the way across a broad field, freshly ploughed. On the other side of this field the ground ascended, and the slope was covered by an olive-grove. The sparse gray foliage of the pruned trees cast hardly more than a lace-work of shade upon the moonlit ground, and the two men made their way upward easily; in ten minutes they had reached the top. Here, on a broad plateau, stood the farm-house with its out-buildings. Beyond the plateau the ground ascended again, decked by another grove. The door and windows of the house were open, and sounds of laughter came forth. The two Americans drew near cautiously, walking as quietly as they could in the shadow of the trees. But their care was unnecessary; all were assembled within, and no one was looking either from the door or the windows; the noise, too, was so great that no sound outside could have been heard even by a listening ear. Dennison, making a détour, led the way round to one of the back casements. This window, a small one, was breast-high; its little lattices of lead-bordered panes had been thrown back; they opened into the room, as the exterior of the window was guarded by iron rods set close together. The two spectators outside, by looking between these rods, obtained a view of the scene within. The room was large, low, and smoke-browned; it was lighted by all the lamps the house could muster – lamps of the old Tuscan pattern for olive-oil; there were also earthen-ware saucers filled with the same oil, and carrying a floating wick. Two candles illumined a supper-table which was placed across one end of the apartment. This table bore upon its white linen cloth the dishes of the feast – dishes and little else, as everything had been eaten save bread, of which there was still a supply (in case any one should feel a return of hunger). There were also fresh flasks of wine for future thirst, and over a handful of coals on the hearth there was a long-handled coffee-pot. A game was now going on, or, rather, a pantomime; two men in masks were jumping about like harlequins, and every now and then they seized a person from the ranks of spectators, and whirled him or her round and round dizzily; there was guessing connected with it in some way, as everybody called out names loudly; the uproar was incessant, with occasional applause and a great deal of laughter. The feet of the harlequins had raised much dust, and at last the room became dim. "More light, more light, Filippo. We can't see," called several voices.

Filippo, a sinewy little man who had been acting as harlequin himself (for the men took turns), consulted with his wife. They had no more candles, and no more saucers and wicks; but they could make a blaze of brushwood on the hearth, if the company would not mind the additional heat? The wife, a laughing ample matron who still showed a handsome face above her rotund person, opened a door into an out-building, and, after some rummaging, produced three fagots of small, dry twigs; one of these she placed over the coals, and in a minute or two a blaze leaped up the wide chimney, lighting the room brilliantly. The game now went on with redoubled vigor and glee, and the gazers without could see all the faces of the circle distinctly.

"There is Modesta by the table," whispered Gray. "How she does laugh! It doesn't seem natural."

"Oh yes, it is. That is the way they laugh sometimes; they can go on for hours like children."

"Isn't that the Swedish girl with one of the harlequins? How light-colored she looks in that tanned, black-haired crowd! She is rather pretty; instead of letting her go back to Stockholm, one of these Italian youths had better marry her."

"She probably holds herself above them," answered Dennison, in the same low tone. "But, in any case, Tuscan peasants are extremely slow to marry a person who is not a Tuscan. They call even Romans foreigners; generally, too, they call them brutes! Well, we've been here twenty minutes: had enough?"

They turned, and, making a second circuit of the house, they crossed the plateau noiselessly, and re-entered the grove. They had gone but a few paces down the slope when the distant voices and laughter suddenly grew louder; looking back, they saw that the whole company had come outside, following the harlequins, each one of whom held a girl by the elbows, and was whirling her over the grass in the brilliant moonlight. Presently four more couples began to whirl in the same manner, and all the others, inspired by the sight, joined hands, and made a long chain which moved to and fro with rhythmical steps, forming now a star, now a square, now a figure 8. The game was at an end; everybody was dancing. One of the harlequins changed his partner every few minutes, but the other did not loosen his grasp of the girl whom he had brought with him from the house. After a while this second harlequin moved away from the other dancers, and came waltzing across the plateau towards the grove where Dennison and Gray were standing, each hidden in the shadow of a tree trunk; at the top of the slope the man did not stop, but began to descend, still dancing, or pretending to dance, and pulling his unwilling partner with him.