Constance Fenimore Woolson

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

  “Piano; but singing too, please,” Dorothy answered.

  Again Mrs. North descended to Florence; Fräulein Lundborg was engaged for instrumental music, and Madame Farinelli for vocal. Dorothy wished to have a lesson each day from each of her teachers. “It’s a perfect procession up and down this hill!” thought Mrs. Tracy. There was a piano in the billiard-room, and another in the drawing-room; but now Dorothy wished to have a third piano in her own sitting-room up-stairs.

  “But, my dear, what an odd fancy! Are you going to sing there by yourself?” her mother inquired.

  “Yes!” said Dorothy.

  “Do you think she is well?” asked Mrs. Tracy, confidentially, with some anxiety.

  “Perfectly well. It is the repressed life she is leading,” Mrs. North answered. “But we must make the best of it. This is as good a place as any for the next three months.”

  But again this skilful directress was forced to abandon the “good place.” Early in March, when the almond-trees were in bloom, Dorothy, coming in from the garden, announced, “I hate Belmonte! Let us go away, mamma—anywhere. Let us start to-morrow.”

  “We took you to Cannes, and you did not wish to stay. We shall be leaving Belmonte in any case in June; that isn’t long to wait.”

  “You like Paris; will you go to Paris?” the girl went on.

  “What can you do in Paris more than you do here?”

  “I love the streets, they are so bright—so many people. Oh, mamma, if you could only know how dull I am!” And sinking down on the rug, Dorothy laid her face on the sofa-cushion at her mother’s side.

  Mrs. Tracy coming in and finding her thus, bent and felt her pulse.

  “Yes, one hundred and fifty!” said Dorothy, laughing. “Take me to Paris, and to the opera or theatre every night, and it will go down.”

  “Oh, you don’t mean that,” said the aunt, assuringly.

  “Yes, but I do,” Dorothy answered. And then, with her cheek still resting on the cushion, she looked up at her mother. “You will take me, mamma, won’t you? If I tell you that I must?”

  “Yes,” replied Mrs. North, coldly.

  They went to Paris. And then, for four weeks, almost every night at the back of a box at the opera or at one of the theatres were three ladies in mourning attire, the youngest of the three in widow’s weeds. Mrs. Tracy was so perturbed during these weeks that her face was constantly red.

  “Why are you so worried?” Mrs. North inquired. “I manage it perfectly; people don’t in the least know.”

  “Do I care for ‘people’? It’s—it’s—” But she would not say “It’s Dorothy.” “It’s ourselves,” she finally ended.

  “Always sentimental,” said Laura.

  Midway in the first week of April, Dorothy suddenly changed again. “I can’t stay here a moment longer!” she said.

  “Perhaps you would like to take a trip round the world?” suggested Mrs. North, with a touch of sarcasm.

  “No. I don’t know what you will say, mamma, but I should like to go back to Belmonte.”

  “I have a good deal of patience, my dear, but I must say that you wear it out.”

  “I know I do; but if you will take me back, I promise to stay there this time as long as you like.”

  “I like—” began Mrs. North; but Dorothy, with a frown, had rushed out of the room.

  “What shall we do now?” said the aunt.

  “Go back, I suppose; I have always thought Belmonte the best place up to really hot weather. One good thing: if we do go back we can take the opportunity to rid ourselves definitely of both of those villas. My idea is the Black Forest country for August and September. Then we could come here again for a few weeks. For the winter, what do you say to a long cruise towards the South somewhere, in a yacht of our own? We could select the right people to go with us.”

  They returned to Italy, reaching Bellosguardo again on the 11th of April.

  On the 6th of May Charlotte Tracy said, “Laura, to me this is dreadful! Waddy is here morning, noon, and night.”

  “So many people have left Florence that it hardly matters; nobody knows what is going on up here. He amuses her, and that is something gained.”

  “I wish he wouldn’t be forever singing!” said the aunt, irritably.

  “He sings very well. And Dorothy has shown a new interest in singing lately. Don’t you remember that she took lessons herself before we went to Paris?”

  “You don’t mean to intimate that Waddy had anything to do with that?”

  “Why not? A girl of that age has all sorts of changing interests and tastes; there will be something new every month or two, probably, for a long time yet.”

  In June, Mrs. Tracy demanded, “Is Owen Charrington one of your something-news?”

  “I dare say he is,” Mrs. North answered, smiling.

  For Owen Charrington had come back from Australia. He found the zigzags which led to Belmonte very hot and very solitary; there was no Waddy going up or coming down, either on foot or in a carriage, although his ascents and descents had been as regular as those of the postman during the six preceding weeks. Shortly before Charrington’s return, Dorothy, entering the boudoir one evening at ten o’clock, said:

  “Mamma—Aunt Charlotte—will you tell the servants, please, that whenever Mr. Brunetti calls, after this, they are to say that we are engaged, or not at home? I don’t suppose you care to see him?”

  “What can have happened?” said Mrs. Tracy, when the girl had gone out again without explanation.

  “There hasn’t been time for much to happen. I have been out there with them all the evening; I only came in for my tea,” answered Mrs. North, sipping that beverage.

  “Since then he has been singing. At least, I thought I heard his voice—not very loud.”

  “Perhaps she is tired of his voice—not very loud.”

  Mrs. Tracy threw a lace scarf over her head and went out to the garden. The long aisles under the trees were flooded with moonlight, the air was perfumed with the fragrance of the many flowers; but there was no Dorothy. She entered the house by another door, and, going softly up the great stairway, turned towards Dorothy’s rooms at the south end of the long villa. Here a light was visible, coming under the door of the sitting-room; the aunt did not lift the latch, she stood outside listening. Yes, Dorothy was there, and she was singing to herself in a low tone, playing the accompaniment with the soft pedal down:

  “Through the long days, the long days and the years,

  What will my loved one be,

  Parted from me, parted from me,

  Through the long days and years?”

  “She is up there singing; singing all alone,” reported the aunt, when she came back to the boudoir down-stairs.

  “I suppose you like that better than not alone?” suggested Mrs. North.

  Waddy came to Belmonte five times without success. Then he left Florence.

  Dorothy did not stroll in the garden with Owen Charrington. If her mother and aunt were outside when he came, she remained with them there; but if they were in the drawing-room or the boudoir, she immediately led her guest within; then she sat looking at him while he talked. Charrington talked well; all he said was amusing. Dorothy listened and laughed. If he paused, she urged him on again. This urgency of hers became so apparent that at last it embarrassed him. To carry it off he attacked her:

  “You force me to chatter, Mrs. Mackenzie—to chatter like a parrot!”

  “Yes,” answered Dorothy, “you must talk; you must talk all the time.”

  “‘All the time’—awfully funny Americanism!”

  “And the French ‘tout le temps’?”

  “Oh, French; I don’t know about French.”

  “Of course you don’t. We are willing to be funny with the French. Are you
‘very pleased’ to be here to-day? Answer.”

  “Of course I am very pleased.”

  “And you would say, wouldn’t you, ‘Directly I returned to Florence, I bought a horse’?”

  “But I didn’t,” said Charrington, laughing; “I only hired one. And that reminds me, Mrs. Mackenzie; you can’t think how divine it is now at four o’clock in the morning. Won’t you go for a ride at that hour some day soon? Mrs. North and Mrs. Tracy could follow in the carriage” (with a look towards those ladies).

  “Ride?” repeated Dorothy. A flush rose in her cheeks. “No,” she answered, in an altered voice—“no!”

  She said nothing more, and she did not speak again; she sat looking at the floor. Mrs. North filled the pause with her placid sentences. But Dorothy’s manner was so changed and constrained that the young Englishman soon went away. The girl had taken something into her head. But it would not last long; nothing ever did last long with Dorothy.

  This belief of his was soon jostled by the fact that Dorothy would not see him. Mrs. North covered the refusal as well as she could by saying that her daughter was not well; that she was not seeing any visitors at present. But Florence was empty; there were no visitors to come; it simply meant, therefore, that she was not seeing Owen Charrington. He lingered on through the month, coming every day to Belmonte. Mrs. North received him graciously. But he was obliged to content himself with a close investigation of their plans for the summer. At last, on the 2d of July, unable any longer to endure the burning, glaring Lung’ Arno and the furnace-like atmosphere of the Hôtel d’Italie, he took his departure. He went to Baden-Baden, writing home to his family that he should probably spend the summer in the Black Forest country with friends.

  The morning after Charrington’s departure, illness (real illness this time) seized Dorothy. For a week she remained motionless on a couch, her face white, her eyes closed.

  “We must take her to Switzerland; we must go straight up to the snow,” said Charlotte Tracy. “When she sees the glacier water she will revive at once. The gray glacier water, you know; one begins to meet it at Chiomonte; it comes rushing over the rocks, gray and cool, with sometimes a little foam; but gray, always gray—a sort of leady gray.”

  She said gray so many times that Mrs. North cried out at last, “Oh, do call it green!”

  Speedy preparations were made for departure; the trunks were packed and sent down to the railway station. Dorothy remained passive, making no objection to their plans, but showing no interest in them. Caroline, her maid, dressed her for the journey. But when the little black bonnet with its long black veil had been put on, and the black gloves, and the young mistress of the house rose to walk to the carriage, after a few steps her figure swayed, and she sank to the floor; she had fainted. She remained unconscious for so long a time that it was evident there could be no travelling that day; they must wait until she was stronger. They waited, therefore, from one day to the next, each morning expecting to start, and each morning postponing departure. The 15th of July found them still at Belmonte. The thick stone walls of the majestic old house kept out the burning sunshine, and Dorothy appeared to like the warm air that came in through the shaded windows; she lay breathing it quietly, with her eyes closed. The American physician of Florence had gone to New York for six months. An English doctor came up daily. But there was nothing to combat. There was no fever, no malady save this sudden physical weakness. Everything possible was done for this, but with small results. At last Dr. Hotham advised them to attempt the journey in any case. A nurse was engaged; Dorothy was to be carried on a couch to the station, where a railway carriage, provided with an invalid’s bed, was waiting. But before they had traversed a quarter of the length of the Via dei Serragli, the clatter of the carriage wheels and the other noises of the street threw the girl into a delirium, and they returned hastily to Bellosguardo. The delirium passed away and they made another attempt. This time they were to cross Florence in the middle of the night, and a special train was to take them northward. But the paroxysm came on again, and with greater violence. Before they reached the bottom of the Bellosguardo hill Dorothy threw up her arms like a wild creature; the nurse could scarcely hold her. This time high fever followed; the girl, now in bed, lay with scarlet cheeks and glassy eyes, knowing nobody. Dr. Hotham conquered the fever. Then she was as she had been before, save that the weakness was increased.

  With the exception of Dr. Hotham, there was now no one in Florence whom they knew. Nora Sebright remained at St. Martin’s Orphan House out in the country; but she knew nothing of events in town. One day Dr. Hotham, having been called to the orphan house to see a child, spoke to Nora of the puzzling illness of Mrs. Mackenzie; he knew that the Sebrights were among the acquaintances of these American ladies. Nora hurried to town, and, although it was evening, drove up to Belmonte without delay. There were now two nurses at the villa. But Nora was the best nurse; and, after seeing Dorothy for a moment, she begged the mother and aunt to allow her to remain and assist.

  “You are extremely kind, Miss Sebright. But I do not think you ought to give yourself so much trouble,” said Mrs. North. “Dorothy will soon be stronger; the fever, as you see, has entirely disappeared, and in a few days we shall go to Switzerland.”

  But Nora followed Mrs. Tracy into the next room. “Dear Mrs. Tracy, do let me stay. I am such a good nurse—you can’t think. And I am so fond of Dorothy. And I really think she ought to be amused, if possible. Not that I am very amusing; but at least it makes one more.”

  There was no lamp in this room, but, all the same, Charlotte Tracy seemed to read an expression in the face she could not see. “What has Dr. Hotham said to you?” she asked.

  “Indeed, nothing; he never talks. It is only that Dorothy has always been so well; she was well all winter, you know. Even now (for the fever was only the effort of the journey) there seems to be nothing one can take hold of. And so the question came up, as it always does in such a case, could she have anything weighing upon her mind—weighing too much, I mean? But I am sure,” continued Nora, her voice calm as usual (but her face, in the darkness, quivering for an instant), “that we need apprehend no danger of that sort; Dorothy’s mind is perfectly healthy. And she has been from the very first so brave, you know—so wonderfully brave.”

  Charlotte Tracy, a prey to conflicting feelings, bent and kissed Nora without a word. Grief for Alan Mackenzie had indeed been more deeply felt at the dreary orphan house down in the dusty valley than in his own home on this beautiful hill. Nora stayed.

  August burned itself out. At Belmonte the heavy outer portals were kept closed; within, all the doors stood open in order to create, if possible, a current of air through the darkened rooms. Once in two hours, night and day, Nora came to Dorothy’s bedside and offered some delicate nourishment; Dorothy took it unobjectingly. She seldom spoke, but she appeared to like Nora’s presence and her gentle ministrations.

  Mrs. Tracy had forced herself to speak to Laura about the doctor’s question. Some force was necessary, for she was always exasperated by Laura’s replies. “I am beginning to be a little frightened about Dorothy, Laura; she doesn’t gain. It is no time to mince matters; such things have happened before, and will happen again as long as the world lasts, and it seems that even Dr. Hotham has asked whether there could be anything weighing upon her mind. Now what I want to know is, do you think she is brooding about something?”

  “Brooding?”

  “Yes. I mean, do you think she is interested in somebody?—Owen Charrington, if I must name him. You used to think that she liked him? And that she cannot bear the separation? Yet thinks it too soon? And that that was the reason she refused to see him again? And now it is weighing upon her?”

  “Mercy, what theories! You have always saddled Dorothy with deeper feelings than she has ever possessed. Do leave the poor child alone; don’t make her out so unusual and unpleasant; she is like any other girl of ninetee
n. She is interested in Owen—yes; but not in that exaggerated way; she isn’t pining herself ill about him. And let me tell you, too, that if he were to her at this moment all you are imagining him to be, she wouldn’t in the least be deterred by considerations of its being ‘too soon,’ as you call it; she would not even remember that it was soon.”

  Mrs. Tracy’s eyes filled.

  “Well, what now? Do you wish her to be breaking her heart for Alan? I thought you came in to suggest sending post-haste for Owen Charrington! Do you know really what you want yourself? Dorothy will grow stronger in time. A hot summer in Italy has pulled her down, but with the first cool weather she will revive, and then we can carry out our plans.”

  Towards the middle of September the rains came, the great heat ended. With the return of the fresh breeze Dorothy left her bed, and lay on the broad divan among its large, cool cushions; she even walked about the room a little, once or twice a day. The first time she walked they saw how thin she was; the black dressing-gown hung about her like a pall.

  “Take it off,” said Mrs. Tracy, when she had beckoned Caroline into the next room. “Never let her wear it again.”

  “But I have fear that madame is not enough strong yet to wear a costume,” suggested the maid, respectfully.

  Mrs. Tracy unlocked a wardrobe and took out a pile of folded draperies. They were white morning dresses, long and loose, covered with beautiful laces and knots of ribbon; they had formed part of Dorothy’s trousseau. “Let her wear these,” she said, briefly.

  Dorothy made no objection to the change. Occasionally she looked at her new attire, and smoothed out the ribbons and lace. Throughout her illness she had scarcely spoken. They had supposed that this silence came from her weakness—the weakness which had made it an effort sometimes for her to lift her hand. But now that she was up again, and walking about the room, the muteness continued. She answered their questions, but it seemed necessary for her to recall her thoughts from some distant place in order to answer. She lived in a reverie, and her eyes had a far-off expression. But these were slight things. When ten days had slowly passed without any relapse, Charlotte Tracy, who had counted the hours, exclaimed, with joy, “Now we can go!” Dr. Hotham was to accompany them as far as Vevey. Nothing was to be said to Dorothy, in order that she should not have even a feather’s weight of excitement; but the preparations were swiftly made. On the afternoon before the day appointed for the start, Dorothy suddenly left her easy-chair, crossed the room, opened a door, and looked down a corridor. At the end of the corridor she saw Caroline kneeling before open trunks.