Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  In a moment he was gone, and his quick step resounded on the stairs as he ran down, leaving Lucia at the door above, to catch the last good-bye he called up to her when he reached the bottom. His fresh voice came up to her mingled with the rattle of the lumbering carts in the street. She answered the cry and went in.

  Just then the sleepy Signora Pandolfi emerged from her chamber, clad in the inevitable skirt and white cotton jacket, her heavy black hair coiled in an irregular mass on the top of her head, and held in place by hair-pins that seemed to be on the point of dropping out.

  “Ah, Lucia, my darling! Such a night as I have passed!” she moaned, sinking into a chair beside the table, on which the coffee-pot and the empty cups were still standing. “Such a night, my dear! I have not closed an eye. I am sure it is the last judgment! And this scirocco, too, it is enough to kill one!”

  “Courage, mamma,” answered Lucia gaily. “Things are never so bad as they seem.”

  “Oh, that monster, that monster!” groaned the fat lady. “He would make an angel lose his patience! Imagine, my dear, he insists that you shall be married in a fortnight, and he has left me money to go and buy things for your outfit! Oh dear! What are we to do? I shall go mad, my dear, and you will all have to take me to Santo Spirito! Oh dear! Oh dear! This scirocco!”

  “I think papa will go mad first,” said Lucia. “I never heard of such an insane proposition in my life. All in a moment too — I think I am to marry Tista — papa gets into a rage and — patatunfate! a new husband — like a conjuror’s trick, such a comedy! I expected to see the door open at every minute, Pulcinella walk in and beat everybody with a blown bladder! But Uncle Paolo did quite as well.”

  “Oh, my head!” complained the Signora Pandolfi. “I have not slept a wink!”

  “And then it was shameful to see the way papa grew quiet and submissive when Uncle Paolo gave him the order for the crucifix! If it had been anybody but papa, I should have said that a miracle had been performed. But poor papa! No — the miracle of the soldi — that is the truth. I would like to catch sight of the saint who could work a miracle on papa! Capers, what a saint he would have to be!”

  “Bacchus!” ejaculated Maria Luisa, “San Filippo Neri would be nowhere! The Holy Father would have to make a saint on purpose to convert that monster! A saint who should have nothing else to do. Oh, how hot it is! My head is splitting. What are we to do, Lucia, my heart? Tell me a little what we are to do — two poor women — all alone — oh dear!”

  “In the first place, it needs courage, mamma,” answered Lucia, “and a cup of coffee. It is still hot, and you have not had any—”

  “Coffee! Who thinks of coffee?” cried the Signora Pandolfi, taking the cup from her daughter’s hands, and drinking the liquid with more calmness than might have been anticipated.

  “That is right,” continued the girl. “Drink, mamma, it will do you good. And then, and then — let me see. And then you must talk to Suntarella about the dinner. That old woman has no head—”

  “Dinner!” cried the mother, “who thinks of dinner at such a time? And he left me the money for the outfit, too! Lucia, my love, I have the fever — I will go to bed.”

  “Eh! What do you suppose? That is a way out of all difficulties,” answered Lucia philosophically.

  “But you cannot go out alone—”

  “I will stay at home in that case.”

  “And then he will come to dinner, and ask to see the things—”

  “There will be no things to show him,” returned the young girl.

  “Well? And then where should we be?” inquired the Signora Pandolfi. “I see him, my husband, coming back and finding that nothing has been done! He would tear his hair! He would kill us! He would bring his broomstick of a lawyer here to marry you this very afternoon, and what should we have gained then? It needs judgment, Lucia, my heart — judgment, judgment!” repeated the fat lady, tapping her forehead.

  “Eh! If you have not enough for two, mamma, I do not know what we shall do.”

  “At the same time, something must be done,” mused Maria Luisa. “My head is positively bursting! We might go out and buy half a dozen handkerchiefs, just to show him that we have begun. Do you think a few handkerchiefs would quiet him, my love? You could always use them afterwards — a dozen would be too many—”

  “Bacchus!” exclaimed Lucia, “I have only one nose.”

  “It is a pity,” answered her mother rather irrelevantly. “After all, handkerchiefs are the cheapest things, and if we spread them out, all six, on the green sofa, they will make a certain effect — these men! One must deceive them, my child.”

  “Suppose we did another thing,” began Lucia, looking out of the window. “We might get some things — in earnest, good things. They will always do for the wedding with Tista. Meanwhile, papa will of course have to change his mind, and then it will be all right.”

  “What genius!” cried the Signora Pandolfi. “Oh, Lucia! You have found it! And then we can just step into the workshop on our way — that will reassure your father.”

  “Perhaps, after all, it would be better to go and tell him the truth,” said Lucia, beginning to walk slowly up and down the room. “He must know it, sooner or later.”

  “Are you mad, Lucia?” exclaimed her mother, holding up her hands in horror. “Just think how he would act if you went and faced him!”

  “Then why not go and find Uncle Paolo?” suggested the girl. “He will know what is best to be done, and will help us, you may be sure. Of course, he expected to see us before anything was done in the matter. But I am not afraid to face papa all alone. Besides, Tista is talking to him at this very minute. I told him all he was to say, and he has so much courage!”

  “I wish I had as much,” moaned the Signora Pandolfi, lapsing into hesitation.

  “Come, mamma, I will decide for you,” said Lucia. “We will go and find Uncle Paolo, and we will do exactly as he advises.”

  “After all, that is best,” assented her mother, rising slowly from her seat.

  Half an hour later they left the house upon their errand, but they did not enter the workshop on their way. Indeed, if they had, they would have been surprised to find that Marzio was not there, and that Gianbattista was consequently not talking to him as Lucia had supposed.

  When Gianbattista reached the workshop, he was told that Marzio had only remained five minutes, and had gone away so soon as everybody was at work. He hesitated a moment, wondering whether he might not go home again and spend another hour in Lucia’s company; but it was not possible to foretell whether Marzio would be absent during the whole morning, and Gianbattista decided to remain. Moreover, the peculiar smell of the studio brought with it the idea of work, and with the idea came the love of the art, not equal, perhaps, to the love of the woman but more familiar from the force of habit.

  All men feel such impressions, and most of all those who follow a fixed calling, and are accustomed to do their work in a certain place every day. Théophile Gautier confessed in his latter days that he could not work except in the office of the Moniteur — elsewhere, he said, he missed the smell of the printers’ ink, which brought him ideas. Artists know well the effect of the atmosphere of the studio. Five minutes of that paint-laden air suffice to make the outer world a mere dream, and to recall the reality of work. There was an old dressing-gown to which Thackeray was attached as to a friend, and which he believed indispensable to composition. Balzac had his oval writing-room, when he grew rich, and the creamy white colour of the tapestries played a great part in his thoughts. The blacksmith loves the smoke of the forge and the fumes of hot iron on the anvil, and the chiseller’s fingers burn to handle the tools that are strewn on the wooden bench.

  Gianbattista stood at the door of the studio, and had he been master instead of apprentice, he could not have resisted the desire to go to his place and take up the work he had left on the previous evening. In a few minutes he was hammering away as busily as though there were
no such thing as marriage in the world, and nothing worth living for but the chiselling of beautiful arabesques on a silver ewer. His head was bent over his hands, his eyes followed intently the smallest movements of the tool he held, he forgot everything else, and became wholly absorbed in his occupation.

  Nevertheless, much of a chiseller’s work is mechanical, and as the smooth iron ran in and out of the tiny curves under the gentle tap of the hammer, the young man’s thoughts went back to the girl he had left at the top of the stairs a quarter of an hour earlier; he thought of her, as he did daily, as his promised wife, and he fell to wondering when it would be, and how it would be. They often talked of the place in which they would live, as they had done that morning; and as neither of them was very imaginative, there was a considerable similarity between the speculations they indulged in at one time and at another. It was always to be a snug home, high up, with a terrace, pots of carnations, and red curtains. Their only difference of opinion concerned the colour of the walls and furniture. Like most Italians, they had very little sense of colour, and thought only of having everything gay, as they called it; that is to say, the upholstery was to be chosen of the most vivid hues, probably of those horrible tints known as aniline. Italians, as a rule, and especially those who belong to the same class as the Pandolfi family, have a strong dislike for the darker and softer tones. To them anything which is not vivid is sad, melancholy, and depressing to the senses. Gianbattista saw in his mind’s eye a little apartment after his own heart, and was happy in the idea. But, as he followed the train of thought, it led him to the comparison of the home to which he proposed to take his wife with the one in which they now lived under her father’s roof, and suddenly the scene of the previous evening rose clearly in the young man’s imagination. He dropped his hammer, and stared up at the grated windows.

  He went over the whole incident, and perhaps for the first time realised its true importance, and all the danger there might be in the future should Marzio attempt to pursue his plan to the end. Gianbattista had only once seen the lawyer who was thus suddenly thrust into his place. He remembered a thin, cadaverous man, in a long and gloomy black coat, but that was all. He did not recall his voice, nor the expression of his face; he had only seen him once, and had thought little enough of the meeting. It seemed altogether impossible, and beyond the bounds of anything rational, that this stranger should ever really be brought forward to be Lucia’s husband.

  For a moment the whole thing looked like an evil dream, and Gianbattista smiled as he looked down again at his work. Then the reality of the occurrence rose up again and confronted him stubbornly. He was not mistaken, Marzio had actually pronounced those words, and Don Paolo had sprung forward to prevent Gianbattista from attacking his master then and there. The young man looked at his work, holding his tools in his hands, but hesitating to lay the point of the chisel on the silver, as he hesitated to believe the evidence of his memory.

  CHAPTER V

  MARZIO HAD RISEN early that morning, as has been said, and had left the house before any one but Gianbattista was up. He was in reality far from inclined to drink his coffee in the company of his apprentice, and would have avoided it, if possible. Nor did he care to meet Lucia until he had found time and occasion to refresh his anger. His wife was too sleepy to quarrel, and hardly seemed to understand him when he gave her money and bade her look to Lucia’s outfit, adding that the wedding was to take place immediately.

  “Will you not let me sleep in peace, even in the morning?” she groaned.

  “Magari! I wish you would sleep, and for ever!” growled Marzio, as he left the room.

  He drank his coffee in silence, and went out. After looking into the workshop he walked slowly away in the direction of the Capitol. The damp morning air was pleasant to him, and the gloomy streets through which he passed were agreeable to his state of feeling. He wished Home might always wear such a dismal veil of dampness, scirocco, and cloud.

  A man in a bad humour will go out of his way to be rained upon and blown against by the weather. We would all like to change our surroundings with our moods, to fill the world with sunshine when we are happy, and with clouds when we have stumbled in the labyrinths of life. Lovers wish that the whole earth might be one garden, crossed and recrossed by silent moonlit paths; and when love has taken the one and left the other, he who stays behind would have his garden changed to an angry ocean, and the sweet moss banks to storm-beaten rocks, that he may drown in the depths, or be dashed to pieces by the waves, before he has had time to know all that he has lost.

  As we grow older, life becomes the expression of a mood, according to the way we have lived. He who seeks peace will find that with advancing age the peaceful moment, that once came so seldom, returns more readily, and that at last the moments unite to make hours, and the hours to build up days and years. He who stoops to petty strife will find that the oft-recurring quarrel has power to perpetuate the discontented weakness out of which it springs, and that it can make all life a hell. He who rejoices in action will learn that activity becomes a habit, and at last excludes the possibility of rest, and the desire for it; and his lot is the best, for the momentary gladness in a great deed well done is worth a millennium of sinless, nerveless tranquillity. The positive good is as much better than the negative “non-bad,” as it is better to save a life than not to destroy a life. But whatever temper of mind we choose will surely become chronic in time, and will be known to those among whom we live as our temper, our own particular temper, as distinguished from the tempers of other people.

  Marzio had begun life in a bad humour. He delighted in his imaginary grievances, and inflicted his anger on all who came near him, only varying the manifestation of it to suit the position in which he chanced to find himself. With his wife he was overbearing; with his brother he was insolent; with his apprentice he was sullen; and with his associates at the old Falcone he played the demagogue. The reason of these phases was very simple. His wife could not oppose him, Don Paolo would not wrangle with him, Gianbattista imposed upon him by his superior calm and strength of character, and, lastly, his socialist friends applauded him and nattered his vanity. It is impossible for a weak man to appear always the same, and his weakness is made the more noticeable when he affects strength. The sinews of goodness are courage, moral and physical, a fact which places all really good men and women beyond the reach of ridicule and above the high-water mark of the world’s contempt.

  Marzio lacked courage, and his virulence boiled most hotly when he had least to fear for his personal safety. It was owing to this innate weakness that such a combination of artistic sensitiveness and spasmodic arrogance was possible. The man’s excitable imagination apprehended opposition where there was none, and his timidity made him fear a struggle, and hate himself for fearing it. As soon as he was alone, however, his thoughts generally returned to his art, and found expression in the delicate execution of the most exquisite fancies. Under other circumstances his character might have developed in a widely different way; his talent would still have been the same. There is a sort of nervous irritability which acts as a stimulant upon the faculties, and makes them work faster. With Marzio this unnatural state was chronic, and had become so because he had given himself up to it. It is a common disease in cities, where a man is forced to associate with his fellow-men, and to compete with them, whether he is naturally inclined to do so or not. If Marzio could have exercised his art while living as a hermit on the top of a lonely mountain he might have been a much better man.

  He almost understood this himself as he walked slowly through the Via delle Botteghe Oscure— “the street of dark shops” — in the early morning. He was thinking of the crucifix he was to make, and the interest he felt in it made him dread the consequences of the previous night’s domestic wrangling. He wanted to be alone, and at the same time he wanted to see places and things which should suggest thoughts to him. He did not care whither he went so long as he kept out of the new Rome. When he reac
hed the little garden in front of San Marco he paused, looked at the deep doorway of the church, remembered the barbarous mosaics within, and turned impatiently into a narrow street on the right — the beginning of the Via di Marforio.

  The network of by-ways in this place is full of old-time memories. Here is the Via Giulio Romano, where the painter himself once lived; here is the Macel dei Corvi, where Michael Angelo once lodged; hard by stood the statue of Marforio, christened by the mediæval Romans after Martis Forum, and famous as the interlocutor of Pasquino. The place was a centre of artists and scholars in those days. Many a simple question was framed here, to fit the two-edged biting answer, repeated from mouth to mouth, and carefully written down among Pasquino’s epigrams. First of all the low-born Roman hates all that is, and his next thought is to express his hatred in a stinging satire without being found out.

  Like every real Roman, Marzio thought of old Marforio as he strolled up the narrow street towards the Capitol, and regretted the lawless days of conspiracy and treacherous deeds when every man’s hand was against his fellow. He wandered on, his eyes cast down, and his head bent. Some one jostled against him, walking quickly in the opposite direction. He looked up and recognised Gasparo Carnesecchi’s sallow face and long nose.

  “Eh! Sor Marzio — is it you?” asked the lawyer.

  “I think so,” answered the artist. “Excuse me, I was thinking of something.”

  “No matter. Of what were you thinking, then? Of Pasquino?”

  “Why not? But I was thinking of something else. You are in a hurry, I am sure. Otherwise we would speak of that affair.”

  “I am never in a hurry when there is business to be treated,” replied Carnesecchi, looking down the street and preparing to listen.

  “You know what I mean,” Marzio began. “The matter we spoke of two days ago — my plans for my daughter.”