Chapter VI (3)

"I am going to make a confession," he said, as they passed the choir; "it can make no difference now, and I prefer that you should know it. I did not realize it myself at the time, but I see now--that is, I have discovered since yesterday--that I was in love with you, more or less, from the beginning."

She made no answer, and they passed under Michael Angelo's grand, unfinished statue, and came around on the other side.

"Of course I was fascinated with Beatrice; in one way I was her slave. Still, when I said to you, 'Forgive me; I am in love with some one else,' I really think it was more to see what you would say or do than any feeling of loyalty to her."

Again she said nothing. They went down the north aisle.

"I wish you would tell me," he said, leaving the subject of himself and turning to her, "that you are fully and really happy in this marriage of yours. I hope you are, with all my heart; but I should like to hear it from your own lips."

She made a gesture as if of refusal; but he went on. "Of course I know I have no right; I ask it as a favor."

They were now in deep obscurity, almost darkness; but something seemed to tell him that she was suffering.

"You are not going to do that wretched thing--marry without love?" he said, stopping abruptly. "Do not, Margaret, do not! I know you better than you know yourself, and you will not be able to bear it. Some women can; but you could not. You have too deep feelings--too--"

He did not finish the sentence, for she had turned from him suddenly, and was walking across the dusky space in the centre of the great temple whose foundations were so grandly laid six centuries ago.

But he followed her and stopped her, almost by force, taking both her hands in his. "You must not do this," he said; "you must not marry in that way. It is dangerous; it is horrible; for you, it is a crime." Then, as he stood close to her and saw two tears well over and drop from her averted eyes, "Margaret! Margaret!" he said, "rather than that, it would have been better to have married even me."

She drew her hands from his, and covered her face; she was weeping.

"Is it too late?" he whispered. "Is there a possibility--I love you very deeply," he added. And, cold and indifferent as Florence considered him, his voice was broken.

* * * * *

When they came round to the ray again, he gave the blind beggar all the small change he had about him; the old man thought it was a paper golconda.

"You owe me another circuit," he said; "you did not speak through fully half of the last one."

So they went around a second time.

"Tell me when you first began to think about me," he said, as they passed the choir. "Was it when you read that letter?"

"It was an absurd letter."

"On the contrary, it was a very good one, and you know it. You have kept it?"

"No; I burned it long ago."

"Not so very long! However, never fear; I will write you plenty more, and even better ones. I will go away on purpose."

They crossed the east end, under the great dome, and came around on the other side.

"You said some bitter things to me in that old amphitheatre, Margaret; I shall always hate the place. But after all--for a person who was quite indifferent--were you not just a little _too_ angry?"

"It is easy to say that now," she answered.

They went down the north aisle.

"Why did you stop and leave the room so abruptly when you were singing that song I asked for--you know, the 'Semper Fidelis?'"

"My voice failed."

"No; it was your courage. You knew then that you were no longer 'fidelis' to that former love of yours, and you were frightened by the discovery."

They reached the dark south end.

"And now, as to that former love," he said, pausing. "I will never ask you again; but here and now, Margaret, tell me what it was."

"It was not 'a fascination'--like yours," she answered.

"Do not be impertinent, especially in a church. Mrs. Lovell was not my only fascination, I beg to assure you; remember, I am thirty-six years old. But now--what was it?"

"A mistake."

"Good; but I want more."

"It was a will-o'-the-wisp that I thought was real."

"Better; but not enough."

"You ask too much, I think."

"I shall always ask it; I am horribly selfish; I warn you beforehand that I expect everything, in the most relentless way."

"Well, then, it was a fancy, Trafford, that I mistook for--" And the Duomo alone knows how the sentence was ended.

As they passed, for the third time, on their way towards the door, the mural tablet to Giotto, Morgan paused. "I have a sort of feeling that I owe it to the old fellow," he said. "I have always been his faithful disciple, and now he has rewarded me with a benediction. On the next high-festival his tablet shall be wreathed with the reddest of roses and a thick bank of heliotrope, as an acknowledgment of my gratitude."

It was; and no one ever knew why. If it had been in "the season," the inquiring tourists would have been rendered distracted by the impossibility of finding out; but to the native Florentines attending mass at the cathedral, to whom the Latin inscription, "I am he through whom the lost Art of Painting was revived," remains a blank, it was only a tribute to some "departed friend."

"And he is as much my friend as though he had not departed something over five centuries ago," said Trafford; "of that I feel convinced."

"I wonder if he knows any better, now, how to paint an angel leaning from the sky," replied Margaret.

* * * * *

"Have you any idea why Miss Harrison invented that enormous fiction about you?" he said, as they drove homeward.

"Not the least. We must ask her."

They found her in her easy-chair, beginning a new stocking. "I thought you were in Tadmor," she said, as Trafford came in.

"I started; but came back to ask a question. Why did you tell me that this young lady was going to be married?"

"Well, isn't she?" said Miss Harrison, laughing. "Sit down, you two, and confess your folly. Margaret has been ill all summer with absolute pining--yes, you have, child, and it is a woman's place to be humble. And you, Trafford, did not look especially jubilant, either, for a man who has been immensely amused during the same space of time. I did what I could for you by inventing a sort of neutral ground upon which you could meet and speak. It is very neutral for the other man, you know, when the girl is going to be married; he can speak to her then as well as not! I was afraid last night that you were not going to take advantage of my invention; but I see that it has succeeded (in some mysterious way out in all this rain) better than I knew. It was, I think," she concluded, as she commenced on a new needle, "a sort of experiment of mine--a Florentine experiment."

Trafford burst into a tremendous laugh, in which, after a moment, Margaret joined.

"I don't know what you two are laughing at," said Miss Harrison, surveying them. "I should think you ought to be more sentimental, you know."

"To confess all the truth, Aunt Ruth," said Trafford, going across and sitting down beside her, "Margaret and I have tried one or two of those experiments already!"

A WAITRESS

As the evening was delightful, their coffee was served in the garden. Modesta brought out a low table and a tray; then, returning to the kitchen, she came forth again with the coffee-pot, fresh from the fire, and filled the two cups, one for Dennison, the other for his guest, Edward Gray. The coffee was fragrant, very hot, very black. John Dennison never took at night more than this one small cupful; but it was necessary that the quality of the drops within should be of the purest, and Peppino, the cook, knew that he must not fail. The dinner which had preceded the coffee had been excellent.

"Well, Jack, you _live_ well!" Gray had remarked, after he had spent two days with his former school-fellow.

"Yes, good cooking has become a _sine qua non_ with me," Dennison answered. "I don't take much, but it must be just so; I can't put up with even a trifling deficiency. I give Peppino very high wages for this economical land; but, on my side, I require of him unfailingly his very best skill. I am afraid," he added, with a quizzical smile, "that I couldn't get through my day and cultivate lofty thoughts if I did not feel certain that at the end of it there would be a capital little dinner waiting on the table. Physical comfort has become enormously important to me. Result: I'm corpulent!"

"Oh no," said Gray.

"Well on the way to it, then. Do you remember how lean I used to be?"

"You look in much better trim than you did when--"

"When I was young. You needn't hesitate about saying it; we're in the same box in that respect. How old do we call ourselves now?"

"We're fifty-two," answered Gray. "But I to-day look fifty-eight or nine, and you about forty. To me, Jack, it's marvellous--your youth."

"Yes, I'm plump. I no longer worry; I take life easily. But it's such an immense change in every way that I've stopped watching it myself. Why, I remember when I liked pictures that tell a story, good heavens! and books with a moral, and iron-fronted blocks, and plenty of gaslight."

"Well, it's awfully tempting," said Gray, slowly, as he looked about him.

"Plenty of gaslight?"

"No; this place--the whole thing."

They were sitting at one end of a flower-bordered walk which leads to a terrace with a parapet; from here opens out a panorama of the velvety hills of Tuscany, with a crowd of serried mountain-peaks rising behind them; below, in the narrow valley of a winding stream, is the small mediæval town of Tre Ponti, or Three Bridges. The garden retains a distinctly monastic air, though its last monk took leave of it several hundred years ago; here are no statues of goddesses and muses, so common in Italy; instead there are two worn stone crosses, with illegible Latin inscriptions at their bases. An arcade along one side is paved with flag-stones, and has the air of a cloister; at its end is a fresco representing a monk with his finger on his lips, as if inculcating silence; the face is dim, all save the eyes, but these have a strange vitality, and appear to follow the gazer with intelligence as he turns away. There are two ancient sundials, and there is a relic which excites curiosity--a flight of stone steps attached to a high boundary wall; the steps go up for a distance of eight or nine feet, and then stop, leading to nothing. On the north and west, where it stretches to the verge of the hill, the garden is open, defended only by its parapet. Across its south edge it is shut in by the irregular stone house called Casa Colombina. On the east there is the boundary wall already mentioned, and above this wall there rises outside, not fifteen yards away, a massive square battlemented tower, one hundred and thirty feet high, named Torre Colombina, or Tower of the Dove. This tower is now occupied only by owls, and travellers suppose vaguely that it belongs in some way to the little church of Santa Lucia, which nestles at its feet; they even fancy that it is the campanile for Santa Lucia's bells. But the great stone Tower of the Dove dates from the thirteenth century, and although Santa Lucia cannot be called young, her two hundred and fifty years are nothing to the greater antiquity of her ponderous, overshadowing neighbor. Santa Lucia's bells, indeed, would be lost in the Tower of the Dove. The saint has but three, each twelve inches in length, and the miniature peal is suspended in a belfry about as large as a pigeon-house which perches on the roof of her own small temple--a yellow sanctuary adorned with a flat pointed façade which looks (it is a characteristic of many church façades in Italy) as if it would come up and off if pulled strongly at the top, like the front of a box or the slide of a lantern.

Edward Gray's compliment had drawn from Dennison a disparaging "Oh, it's all dilapidated, forlorn--"

"Spare your adjectives," responded the other man. "They're pure hypocrisy. You needn't pretend you don't like it!"

"Of course I don't pretend. Haven't I lived here for nearly twenty years because I do like it? That tells the story."

"Though my occupation at home is the making of boiler-plate," Gray continued, pursuing the current of his own thoughts, "and though I couldn't and wouldn't live here as you do, giving up your own country (the greatest country in the world), yet don't imagine, Jack, that I can't take it in!"

He had risen while speaking. Now he went down to the parapet and stood looking at the view. Each mountain-peak was bathed in the light of sunset; all was softly fair--the ineffable loveliness of Italy. He came back. "It's probable that I take it in more than you do," he went on.

"Oh yes, of course; new-comers always think so. They think that we don't comprehend either the country or the people because we take them calmly. They believe that they themselves show far more discrimination in only coming now and then. For in that way they preserve their power of appreciating; they don't grow dull-eyed and stupid as we do."

"Exactly. That's just what I think," answered Gray. "What do you suppose those stairs were for?" he added, as he sat down again beside the table and lighted a cigarette.

"Probably they led to a small out-door pulpit which has fallen down. The whole top of this hill was covered by a monastery--a fortified place, I believe, with four towers. Only one of the towers remains, and nothing above ground of all the other buildings but that piece of high wall; I dare say there are plenty of substructures and vaults below. But though the monastery has gone, this old garden of the monks remains very much as it was, I fancy."

Modesta now came to take the tray. She was accompanied by a cat and a dog. The dog was a small dachshund, black, with long silky ears and very crooked paws. The cat, a sinuous yellow matron, appeared to believe that she was the favorite, for she rubbed herself against her mistress's ankles caressingly. As Modesta, with murmured "excuses," lifted the tray, four kittens rushed from the house, gambolling and tumbling over each other; they all made their way to her feet, round which they curled themselves so that she walked in a tangle of cats. She returned towards the house with her tray, laughing, and careful not to step on them. The dog waited a moment with dignity. "Here, Hannibal! Here!" said Dennison. But the dachshund paid no attention to him; he trotted back to the house as fast as his short legs could carry him.

"He is supposed to be my property. But he spends his life in the kitchen," commented Dennison.

"That girl of yours has a passion for animals; one might rather call it compassion, perhaps, for I have even seen her petting that preternaturally ill-tempered and hideous donkey who turns your water-wheel," remarked Gray. "It seems to extend in all directions, for she runs out to help the old milkman up the hill with his cans, and she gives tidbits to that idiot boy who haunts the main road."

"That isn't half. She feeds regularly two children who live a little below here, on the way down to the valley. Partly she robs me to do it, after the easy Italian fashion; but she also robs herself--I have had proof of that. She almost always has some forlorn object, varying anywhere from a lame chicken to a blind man, stowed away in a corner of the court or the kitchen, where she can see to and comfort it. And every Friday, when the regular beggars of Tre Ponti--the authorized humbugs--make the round of the villas and poderes on this side of the valley, invariably she has saved something for each one of them."

"She is extraordinarily handsome. With her full throat, her large, soft eyes, and that classic head and hair, she looks like a Madonna of one of the old painters. I have never seen a more kindly and beautiful smile."

"It's well enough. But the great thing is that she is perfect as a servant. What she has to do is done without a fault."

"And she is so placid and sweet-tempered, too, as well as skilful," Gray went on. "She's a regular marvel!"

"She's a regular Tuscan!"

"Didn't I tell you that you don't half appreciate the beautiful natures of these people? As to this particular girl--come back to America, and see what we have to put up with! A waitress like that, over there, would be worth her weight in silver--if not gold."

"A what?" asked Dennison.

"A waitress; that's what we call 'em now; we've given up 'help.' Is she married to your cook?"

"Oh no; Peppino is nearly sixty. She is only twenty-five, though she looks thirty. She is a widow, and she is thinking of taking another husband before long. Have you noticed a young fellow working in the vineyard just under your windows?"

"I have noticed some one loafing there."

"That's the man."

"Poor good-natured woman--he has imposed upon her; she will have to earn his living as well as her own. As it happens, I have watched him, and a lazier creature I never saw; he looks at the vines occasionally, and he calls down jokes to the other men below; that is the extent of his exertions. Come out for a walk."

"I don't walk after dinner."

"Come at least as far as the tower."

Thus adjured, Dennison rose. In spite of his own assertion, he was not corpulent; he was a tall man whose outlines had grown large; but he was muscular still. Gray also was tall. If Edward Gray had a hobby, it was to show to the world that an American business-man can be as athletic as an English fox-hunter or an ancient Greek; his face, which was thin and deeply lined, did not come up to his ambition; but his erect figure, wiry and elastic, was well-developed and strong.

As they passed through the house, now growing dim in the twilight, they caught a glimpse of the waitress in the distance, seated in the kitchen, knitting. On the table by her side two of the tall, slender Tuscan lamps were burning, each with its three little wicks and its three brass chains; in her lap two kittens were curled asleep. The light illumined also a gaudy print on the wall, apparently a Madonna. Beneath the print was a jug filled with flowers.

"Is that little piece of piety your cook's?" Gray asked, as they passed out.

"No. The cook is a free-thinker. It's Modesta; she is overwhelmingly devout. She has the whole house blessed at regular intervals--priest and holy-water."

The outer door of Casa Colombina opens directly upon the small square or piazza of Santa Lucia, a grassy space dotted with minute pink daisies. One side of this square is bordered by a low wall. In the daytime this wall's broad, flat top was adorned not infrequently by the recumbent figure of one of Modesta's protégés, who, after enjoying her bounty, was taking a siesta here, in the sunshine or the shade, according to the season; sometimes it was Hannibal, with his nose on his paws; sometimes it was the cat; very often it was a beggar or the idiot boy. To-night the slab was empty, and, after a stroll of half an hour up the road and back, Dennison and his visitor sat down here for a moment; it made an excellent seat. It was now dark; the lights of Tre Ponti were twinkling in the valley, the evening-star shone above the Tower of the Dove; the soft air of the Italian May was filled with the fragrance of blossoms. Suddenly on one of the mountains in the northern sky there appeared, flashing out, a gleam. Then a blaze.

"Woods on fire up there," said Gray, who was accustomed to forest fires at home.

But while he was speaking a similar glare appeared on a mountain in the south. And then a third in the east. Many summits and flanks of the Apennines were in sight, and before long there were fifty of the blazing signals visible, some near, some distant, but all at high points.

"It's the vigil of the Ascension, the night when the mountain peasants light bonfires on their peaks as a species of religious rite," explained Dennison. "In reality it is a relic of pagan times. Their belief is that the ceremony will bring tranquillity to their families during the year."

A figure which had come from the house now passed them. "Lordships will pardon," said Modesta's voice; "they know that I would not wish to disturb. But from the kitchen it is not possible to count the mountain fires. And to count them all is important, since tranquillity is most surely a blessed thing. Excuses." She passed on to a distant angle of the wall, where she stood for five or ten minutes.

"What did she say?" asked Gray, who was sure that he could learn to speak Italian in a week or two. Simplest thing in the world--so much like Latin.

Dennison translated the phrases--the lordships, the excuses, and the proffered opinion as to tranquillity.

"It's awfully pretty," said Gray, admiringly.

Modesta, after finishing her counting, crossed the piazza to the little church. In the starlit darkness they could see her kneel down there in the porch.

"She is clinching it--the tranquillity--by a few private orisons," said Dennison.

Presently, her devotions concluded, the waitress returned to the house. The two men remained where they were. They had all sorts of subjects to thresh out together. They took them up, or rather Gray did, by fits and starts.

"Well, Jack, it's settled, then, that you're never coming home?" he remarked, as he accepted another cigarette.

"Not at all," Dennison answered. "I shall come back by-and-by, when I feel like it. In the meanwhile I pay my taxes regularly over there, and I subscribe to all the charities I believe in--three or four. If there were to be another war (but there won't be) I should return at once."

"Well, I don't call it a useful life."

"Is it more useful to make money--at somebody else's expense?"

"It's more useful to be a good citizen; to bring up one's family well; to--"

"Let's stop there," Dennison interposed. "People with families never approve of the people who haven't those blessings. It doesn't occur to them that nobody forced them to marry; they selected the lot, and therefore they accepted responsibilities. But a man who has not undertaken family life ought not to be saddled with its cares. You chose your boys and girls; I chose Italy. Each to his taste. You may ask, 'Isn't the world to be peopled, then?' No trouble about that; it always will be. Personally my own answer to the same question might be, however, the old one, 'Je n'en vois pas la nécessité.'"

"That's where you all end; dreary nihilism!"

A figure was now passing the piazza, following the road which ascends from the valley. "Let us see if Hannibal gives tongue from the house," said Dennison. "It's a man they call the Professor; he lives behind the church, and he and the dog detest each other. Generally, Hannibal knows his step even from the depths of the olive-grove! You don't want to watch those fires all night, do you?"

They returned to the house. The outer door of Casa Colombina bore no relation to the drawing-room, dining-room, or library. It led to the court, to the cellar, to the gardens, to the podere, to the kitchen, to whatever you please; but it was only by a circuitous route through corridors and purposeless anterooms that Dennison could reach his own apartments. As he and his guest were following this route they caught another glimpse across the court of Modesta in her kitchen. The door was more widely open this time, and they could see the whole interior of the large, vaulted, hall-like room, with the rows of copper pans on the wall. The kittens were now in their basket on the floor, and Modesta's lap was occupied by the dachshund, who had curled himself into a ball. The waitress was still knitting, her head bent forward over her work. With her smoothly braided hair and her white apron, in her neat, quiet room, with her cats and her dog and her flower-decked shrine, she was the image of peace.

"Tranquillity is most surely a blessed thing," quoted Gray. "If it were not for the moving needles, I should say she was asleep."

"She probably is asleep; she is knitting unconsciously. She appears to require about fifteen hours of slumber out of the twenty-four," said Dennison, as he lighted wax matches, one after the other, to show the way. When he reached the sitting-room he rang for lights, and presently Modesta appeared, carrying the lamp, her eyes drowsy.

"As soon as Peppino comes in you may close the house," said Dennison. "We shall require nothing more to-night."

The waitress put down the lamp, adjusting its wick so that it burned brightly. Then she lighted the shaded candles which stood on a side table. Hannibal had followed her; when she had finished her task she stooped and picked him up. "If the master allows, he must be washed to-morrow," she said. "Or, rather, not to-morrow, for it is a festa, but the day after. As it is now warm weather, Peppino shall take him to the pond, instead of bathing him in the green crockery basin. Annibale himself will not wish to go--silly cherub!" (Here she stroked the dog's head.) "But--what do they wish? It is necessary. Good-night to the lordships." And she disappeared, carrying the dog, and murmuring endearments to him as she went.

The next morning Gray, always an early riser, found himself awake at the abnormal hour of dawn; for in May and in Italy one can see the beginnings of light in the east soon after midnight. Long before four o'clock he was dressed and out. He had a fancy to see the dew on the blossoms, to watch the sun rise above the Apennines and touch, one by one, the gray towers with which in that part of Tuscany all the hills are crowned. Peppino was up, for the kitchen door was open. Hannibal, hearing steps, looked into the court, and seeing that some one was going for a walk, he decided to go too, announcing his intention by a bark of one syllable--"wow!" This drew forth a "Be quiet!" in Tuscan from Peppino within. For no unnecessary sound must disturb the master of the house, who never appeared before eight o'clock; in winter an hour later. Gray went quietly through the corridors to the irrelevant outer door, opened it, and let himself out, followed by the dog. He walked up the road for a short distance; then he turned into a winding lane. Here he saw the thick dew on the hedges and fields, but only one bird; with great care Dennison had kept three birds'-nests in the garden of Casa Colombina, but they were probably the only nests for miles. Presently the sun rose above the eastern mountains, its first rays illumining distant high-up villages which are invisible later in the day. Then came the gleam of the towers. Some of these stand alone, like the Tower of the Dove; two belong to ruined castles; but the majority are now attached to villas which were built later, or rather the villas have attached themselves to the towers. These villas, now old in their turn, are for the most part large, solid, blank-looking structures, yellow in hue, with a dignified group of cypresses near by. When the tints of the sunrise were all gone, merged in the broad, clear light of the Tuscan summer day, Gray turned back. He was following the main road. As the cluster of houses which stand next to Santa Lucia, behind the piazza, came into view, he saw a large white dog appear suddenly on the broad top of a wall which bounds one of the gardens. This dog began to bark in a deep tone at Hannibal, who was below; for Hannibal had hurried on far in advance of his companion, with the air of expecting something. This was what he had expected; and he now answered the challenge by leaping up as high as he could towards his mocking aggressor, and barking in his turn with all his strength. As the top of the wall was ten feet above the roadway, the big dog could loftily send down his derisive scorn at intervals without lowering the dignity of his pose; and his derision was plainly increased when two other dogs appeared on the wall by his side and added their voices to the tumult. Hannibal meanwhile nearly turned himself inside out in his efforts to reply with appropriate contempt; he defied them all three at the top of his voice. Suddenly from a house opposite appeared a singular figure--a tall, thin man in his night-shirt, scantily covered by a short dressing-gown--who rushed into the mêlée, brandishing a cane and trying to strike the vociferous dachshund. Hannibal, relinquishing for the moment his warfare with the canine foes, turned his attention towards this new enemy, but not quickly enough to escape a blow which changed his proud bark into a yelp of dismay.

"Don't strike the dog!" called Gray, futilely, in English, as he hurried towards the scene of action. But before he could reach the spot a flying figure had intervened, coming from the opposite direction. Modesta rushed to the dodging Hannibal and picked him up, while she sent a flood of Tuscan sarcasms after his now retreating antagonist. "Two-legged brutes are much worse than four-legged ones," she announced, loudly; "and as to the quality of the _legs_, there can be no comparison." The thin human limbs were, indeed, only too plainly visible below the insufficient garments, and she wittily enumerated their weak points for the benefit of the gazing heads which had now appeared at all the windows of the neighborhood, as the distracted man, losing first one of his slippers and then the other, finally seized them in his hand, and, getting his door open at last, disappeared within. "Figure it to yourself--a Professor! Legs like that for the _literary_ profession!" was the waitress's final thrust.

After breakfast, as Dennison and Gray were sitting in the garden, she appeared. "Lordships will excuse, but it seemed best that they should know. The paw of Annibale is wounded; likewise his shoulder and one ear. I have put on a lotion and bandaged him, and he has shown the patience of an angel. But that he suffers is visible, and I therefore ask the master, could I leave him here while I go to mass, so that he may not be lonely, Peppino having gone to town?"

"Oh, bring him, if you like," said Dennison. "Little scamp!" he added in English.

Modesta went off, returning after a minute or two, carrying Hannibal in his basket. The dog reposed on his cushions with the air of a wounded hero; he was arrayed in a complicated bandage of coarse white linen, which swathed one paw and encircled his shoulder and head. "To think of any one's being such a brute as to injure a creature so small!" said Modesta, after she had put the basket gently down in the shade. "But, without doubt, there are in this world absolute demons!"

"You hypocrite!" said Dennison to Hannibal, after the waitress had departed. "You go every morning of your life at dawn to wake up that poor man by a row with the Ciardelli dogs--you know you do! He is a teacher of languages from Florence, who is here for six months of rest," he added to Gray. "He has not had much rest so far! He has already thrown all his boots and shoes at Hannibal through the window more than once. This morning I suppose he was desperate."

"Is your paw _very_ bad, Hannibal?" inquired Gray.

The bandage had slipped down, so that Hannibal had only one eye visible. With this eye he appeared to wink.

After lunch the two men went out for a stroll. The roads were gay with the country-folk, celebrating the festa in the Italian fashion by the simple amusement of being together in the open air. The wrinkled faces of the old women were framed in their new red-and-yellow kerchiefs, which were folded over their heads and tied under their chins. Each girl wore a flower in her hair, and this hair was always thick, rising up round the face in a dense mass, no matter how closely the long ends were braided and coiled behind. The men were dressed in their best, but they all carried their jackets folded and tossed over one shoulder.

The younger men were entertaining themselves.

"They will end by slicing us in two at the ankles," said Gray, indignantly, after he had jumped aside three or four times to escape a sharp disk which met them suddenly as they turned a corner, whizzing past them as it flew down the road, almost invisible from its speed.

"It's a game," said Dennison.

"Oh, is it? I thought it was assassination."

Presently they came to a little stone building adorned with a rusty tin cross. On the side towards the road it has a small, iron-barred window, whose glass within is so thickly covered with dust that it looks as if it had been painted yellow. There is a Latin inscription cut in stone over its long-closed door: "Pul--pulsate, et--Knock and it shall be opened to you," translated Gray, making out the words with difficulty.

"Nobody would dare to knock. And the last thing they wish is to have it opened," remarked Dennison. "It is the private chapel of that old villa across the fields, but for the last two hundred years there has been a tomb inside, whose occupant is supposed to rise and come to the window now and then to glare at the passers-by. She was a Countess Alberoni, who had a tragical end, if the legend is true. Her own children are said to have locked her up in that villa with one attendant and the plainest food, until at last, from sheer melancholy, she died. On the other hand, it is added that the world was well rid of her, for a more wicked old woman never lived. Her crimes, however, whatever they were, have not prevented Modesta, I see, from decorating her with the others," he continued. For as they walked on they perceived that a faded shrine, set in the outer wall of the chapel at its eastern end, had been adorned with a long garland made of fresh green leaves and blossoms.

"The others? What others?"

"Your Madonna beauty decorates every way-side shrine within a mile of Casa Colombina on all the principal festas," said Dennison. "She starts out after lunch, carrying a pile of garlands in her arms, and another poised on her head, so that she is like a walking hay-stack."

They now took a narrow track which leads to the valley. This path winds round a small low house, brilliantly pink on the outside, with a dark and gloomy interior.

"There she is now," said Gray, who, looking at everything with the keen attention of a stranger, had discovered the figure of the Casa Colombina servant within. Her back was towards them; she was talking to some one who was not visible from the road. Hearing their footsteps, she turned. And then, as the light from the doorway fell upon her, they saw that she had Hannibal in her arms.

"Put down that ridiculous animal!" called Dennison.

The waitress came out, and, joining in their laughter, placed the dog on the ground. "With his bandages, yes, he does look comical," she said, assentingly. "But it seemed best to give him a breath of fresh air."

"Have you lugged him all the way from the house?" asked Dennison, who had paused to roll two cigarettes. "The dog and the flowers too?"

"It is nothing; lordship knows his gentleness. He lay among them like a lamb."

"But why did you give a wreath to the wicked countess, Modesta?" Dennison went on. "The Signor Gray is astonished at such an action."

"Povera! to be so treated by her own children," answered the Italian; "that seems to me abominable. She was their mother, even if a bad one. And then one feels for her; only on a festa does any one pass that chapel, and so she has very little to see even when she does look out. The master may not know? This is the home of Pietro."

"The idiot boy?"

"The afflicted of God," said Modesta, gently.

The boy, hearing his name, had come shuffling out. He was a repulsive-looking child, but Modesta smoothed his hair. "To me he appears constantly more intelligent," she said, hopefully.

Dennison and his visitor, having lighted their cigarettes, now passed on. The moment their figures had disappeared round a curve the waitress stooped and took up the waiting Hannibal. "To call thee comical, with thy little paw in pain!" she murmured in his ear. "But thou knowest that I did not mean it. 'Twas but politeness for the masters."

The masters went down to Tre Ponti, where they took horses and a rattling phaeton, and went off on one of those quests with whose mild excitements Dennison enlivened his quiet Italian days. This time it was a search for some tapestry, which had been discovered, so it was said, in a villa six miles distant. The villa was one of those which had degenerated, having been used for the last hundred years as a farm-house. During the preceding week an addition had been pulled down, and the demolition had uncovered a window which corresponded to nothing within; further search had revealed a walled-up chamber, and it was this chamber which contained the tapestry. The chamber was there--a small room with a high ceiling. It contained no tapestry; nothing, in fact, but one singular object: a lady's toilet-table with a lace cover, an old mirror, two candlesticks, and various saucers, vials, and boxes. The lace, which was falling to pieces from age, was ordinary in quality; the mirror-frame and the candlesticks were made of metal that imitates bronze; and the saucers, vials, and boxes were of glass that imitates crystal; nothing, therefore, had intrinsic value. Dennison made a small offer for the whole just as it stood, in case the government should not lay claim to the objects.

"It's only for the riddle," he said to his companion, as they drove back to Tre Ponti. "There is a history, of course, and nobody can ever know it; that is the charm; one can fancy anything one pleases. If I get the table, I'll put it in one of the unused bedrooms. And then when there comes a wild windy night, such as we sometimes have in Tuscany, I'll go there after midnight, and see if she don't glide slowly in and look at herself in her old glass."

It was late in the afternoon when they drove through the eastern gate of Three Bridges. Leaving the phaeton at the stable, they strolled about the village for a while before returning to Casa Colombina.

But village is hardly the word. Although Tre Ponti has never contained more than two thousand inhabitants (at present there are but fifteen hundred), it is surrounded by an important stone wall with bastions, and two of the old gateways, massive arched portals, are still in use. The narrow winding streets are paved with broad flag-stones, which reach to the house walls on each side, so that one seems to be following hallways open at the top rather than roads. Nowhere is there an inch of garden; the high blocks stand side by side in solid rows. The only breathing-place is the central square; one side of this piazza is embellished by a palazzo-pubblico, or town-hall, decorated with griffins and armorial bearings. Along another side there is an arcade ornamented with a row of heads by Andrea della Robbia, old women, monks, knights, children, and others, each looking out with life-like expression from a heavy frame of clustered porcelain fruit.

"Those frames of fruit would do for a State fair," said Gray, irreverently. "Queer, solid, stony little place! Somehow it looks fierce, too."

"Naturally. They did almost nothing here but fight for hundreds of years; they fought with every town in Tuscany. And almost every town in Tuscany responded by fighting with them."

When Gray had seen everything, they passed through the western gate, taking the road which leads down the hill and across one of the three bridges; on the other side of this bridge begins the path which is a short-cut to Casa Colombina.

In the open space outside of this gate there stands a small café of the most modern type. Its exterior is adorned in fresco on one side of the door with a portrait of Garibaldi as large as life. On the other side there is a second work of art, a painted open window from whose lattice leans a damsel, dressed in the remarkable apparel which is produced by a translation of the latest Paris fashions into Italian. This damsel hospitably offers to the passers-by a glass of wine. "Let's breathe," said Dennison, seating himself on one of the benches which, with a green table, was placed before the door.

"You want to attach yourself to every bench you see, Jack."

"On the contrary, I much prefer my own, at home. It's only for your sake that I go tramping about the country in this way, on my feet."

"What do they have in such a place as this?" asked Gray, fanning himself with his hat. "We can't sit here without ordering something."

"Yes, we can. Don't be throwing your money about."

"Only a quarter. What can I get for that?"

"Red vinegar."

At this moment the proprietor of the café came forth, carrying a three-legged stool and a brazier filled with hot coals. He saluted the gentlemen with a beaming smile, but made no effort to solicit their patronage; placing the stool and the brazier at a little distance, he returned to the house, and came forth again with a large shallow pan, whose bottom was covered with a layer half an inch deep of coffee in the berry. Seating himself on the stool, he began to roast the coffee, holding the pan over the coals by its long handle, and swaying it slightly from side to side with a rhythmical motion. He was a picturesque young man, with a brilliant pink silk handkerchief round his neck. Whenever his roving glance happened to meet that of either of the Americans he smiled genially, as though he wished to assure them that, whatever their mood might be, he should be sure to sympathize with it if admitted to their confidence.

"Ask him for the wine," said Gray.

"You can't possibly drink it," expostulated Dennison.

"I'll take it to Modesta--for her Friday beggars. You won't? Very well, then, I'll do it myself. Here, vyno! Vyno, do you hear? Vyno bono. Oon liry. _Oon!_" And he held up one finger.

The young landlord, with cordial smiles, put down his pan, hurried into the house, and returned with two little tumblers, and one of the graceful Tuscan flasks swathed in its covering of plaited straw. Taking out the stopper, he removed with exaggerated care the protecting layer of oil by means of a long wisp, and then placed the flask on the table with a flourish. "Ecco!"

"They always understand me," said Gray, complacently, when the coffee roasting had begun again.

"They would understand a Patagonian; one who was a lunatic, and dumb!"

"That is what I mean; they are so extraordinarily intelligent," replied Gray, declining to be snubbed.

Tre Ponti was keeping the festa with much gayety; the streets were full of strolling figures; the benches in front of all the cafés were full. This little way-side hostlery beyond the gate now began to receive its share; four men coming to town from a distant podere stopped here to refresh themselves with wine and chunks of the dark Italian bread. Then came a procession of youths returning from an expedition up the valley. They wore branches of blossoms in their hats, and kept step as they marched. More wine was brought out, and they all drank.

"I have not seen a drunken man in Italy," said Gray; "it's perfectly wonderful. Think of the whiskey and whiskey-brawls at home! Think of the gin and horrible wife-beating in England!"

"I don't know why I should think of them. They're not pleasant subjects."

A party of women now appeared, coming through the gateway from the town; one of them had a baby in her arms, and another was carrying a heavy boy of three, whose head, adorned with a red cap, lay sleepily on her shoulder. Set in the wall outside of this gateway there is a large shrine shielded by a grating. It bears an inscription in Italian--"Erected in token of mercies felt on this spot." There is a low marble step outside of the grating, and the woman who had the older child knelt down here for a moment, and made the child kneel by her side; taking some flowers from the knot at her belt, she showed him how to throw them through the grating as far as he could, as an offering to the Madonna within. The boy obeyed her; and then she gently bent his head forward with her hand as salutation. The other women knelt also, after this one had risen; but they did it perfunctorily; they bobbed down and bobbed up again, crossing themselves, the whole process taking about two seconds.

"The one carrying the red-capped boy is your waitress again," said Gray, as the women, their devotions over, drew nearer on their way to the bridge. "What is she doing down here?"

"It's her home; she is a Tre Ponti girl--was born here; and her family live here still. She herself much prefers the town to the country; she shares to the full the ideas which Browning expressed in 'Up in a Villa, Down in the City.'"

Modesta had now discovered them, and paused, while the women who were with her gave such a general greeting to "lordships" that it seemed to Gray that he beheld several yards of white teeth, surmounted by rows of dark eyes whose depths held a sweetness which no Northern orbs could ever contain.

"I accompany for a short distance my friend Paola," explained the waitress, "Paola being tired, and having already the baby to carry. This, the one I have, is her Angelo--as the master can perceive for himself, an angel indeed--though his little ankles are not strong. But--what would they have? That requires patience; it will improve. The masters would like without doubt to see also the baby? A miracle of beauty!" And giving the older child to one of her companions, she took the swaddled infant from its mother, and brought it to Dennison and his friend, a smile of pure enthusiasm irradiating her face. "His cheeks--do the masters behold them? And his eyes like stars? Lordships can note the quality of his arms."

Gray lightly pinched the dimpled roll of fat extended towards him. "Oui, oui. Grandeena!" he said, emphatically.

Modesta appeared to be charmed with this attention; she thanked him warmly. Then she carried the baby back to its mother, kissing it before she gave it up, and, taking the other child, led the way down the hill, the whole party making fresh obeisances before they turned away.

"What frank, pleasant faces they all have!" said Gray.

"Very frank. They never changed a muscle when, as a token of your admiration of the baby, you told them that it was hailing."

"Hailing? What are you talking about? I said the baby's arm was big."

"Grandina happens to mean 'it is hailing'; that's all."

"It couldn't; it wouldn't be such a fool! Are we going to stay here all night? It's awfully dusty."

For the open space outside of the gate was now filled with loungers, and the café of Garibaldi was crowded both inside and out; the two Americans left their bench and strolled down the hill. When they reached the bridge they stopped to watch the water. As they did so they heard music; down the gorge beside the stream came a party of girls, two and two, with linked arms; they were singing all together something slow and sweet, and as they passed under the bridge each gave a glance upward towards the two gentlemen who were leaning over the parapet to look at them.

"What are they singing?" asked Gray.

"A hymn to the Virgin, with an endless number of verses; stay here a month, and you'll hear it so often that you'll sing it in your sleep."

"That girl who was last did not look like an Italian," Gray went on, as the musical band disappeared round a bend.

"She isn't; she is a Swede. She was brought here last summer by a queer old English woman, who has lived for ten years, off and on, in that villa just above the second bridge; she had a fancy for servants who could not speak a word of English, and she picked up this girl in Stockholm during one of her journeys--for when she wasn't in Tuscany, she was trotting all over the globe. She died, at the last, suddenly; it was two months ago, and, so far, her heirs in England, distant cousins, I believe, have refused to do anything for this stranded maid. The Swedish consul, however, has taken it up, and I hear that there is prospect of a remittance some time or other--enough to pay her expenses back to Stockholm. Fortunately for herself, she had learned to speak Italian. And she had made friends in Tre Ponti; she is staying with these friends now, and turning her hand meanwhile to anything that offers in order to support herself until the money comes. Let's go home and have some tea. Dinner will be very late this evening on account of the festa; no hope of its being on the table before nine o'clock."

"Just a minute more," said Gray.

It was no wonder that the man who was unfamiliar with the scene should wish to linger. The sun was sinking out of sight, sending up broad shafts of gold as he disappeared; above the gold a deep rose tint filled the sky. The water of the stream was gilded, and gilded were the bristling turrets of a fourteenth-century monastery, which here crowns a crag where the gorge makes a bend towards the south. Opposite, beyond Casa Colombina, the soaring Tower of the Dove was flushed with pink. And on the eastern side, over their heads, the little stone town with its bastioned walls was colored in bars of salmon and pearl. The close circle of hills, the wider amphitheatre of mountains behind, all of them clothed in the violet mantle which mountains wear in Italy, were tipped with orange. And somehow all these lovely hues seemed to deepen as the chimes of Tre Ponti began to ring the Angelus. The peal of the monastery on the crag soon joined in the anthem, these latter bells flinging themselves far out from their open belfry against the sky, to and fro, to and fro, with an abandon which was in itself a picture. And when the chime stopped, music of another kind took its place, for coming up the road appeared the same band of girls singing their slow hymn; they had left the gorge, and were returning by way of the bridge to Tre Ponti.

They were no longer a small company; a dozen women had joined them, and six or eight youths followed behind. Modesta accompanied the girls, having finished her duties as escort to Paola and her children.

"Here is your waitress coming back," said Gray. "How handsome she looks!"