Part 3

“Oh, Signore, you are like your countrywoman; it is impossible to make you understand! But it must be a country,--yours! For a girl like Gioja to put a hat on is to declare herself without shame at once. Honest girls of her class let such _roba di signore_ alone; yes, and rightly, for God has put people in their places. A girl who showed herself in a signora’s hat would find it impossible to live in Vignola; she would be hooted out of the village. And as for the wife of a lad like Oreste pretending to that,--half-a-dozen lovers would not be a worse scandal. Those at least the others could understand, but a _cappello di signora_--” He stopped to take several agitated sips, shaking his head all the time. “I do not say she would have been so mad as to cross the threshold in it (the Signorina had given it to her to sell for the feathers upon it); but who could tell what such a girl might do? I scolded her well for her wicked vanity, and such ideas above her place. Santa Maria!--lovers and such are enough, without a scandal like that among my people.

“Well, what was the end? Signore, she rushed off and hung that hat, with at least twenty francs’ worth of good feathers on it, in the Madonna’s chapel, beside ‘Maso’s crutch and the little hearts and legs and other offerings to Our Lady! There it hung, where all the world would see it, and every tongue in the place be set wagging, if I had not providentially gone in and found it before Mass next day. And even then what could I do? It was the Madonna’s, and I dared not remove it. But Heaven sends accidents, and as it chanced, _providentially_, Signore, my candle brushed the feathers in passing and, _presto_, I dropped it quickly into a bucket of water. It was not fit for Our Lady after that, so I took it away, and I myself made it up to her in candles, that no one might feel hurt. And after all nobody was the richer for all those francs’ worth of feathers; they were singed more than I hoped, and did not bring me in Florence the price of the candles. Oh, she has a terrible nature,--that Gioja! No, no, _grazie_,--if I must speak to Oreste, I must; but to her!--candles cost, Signore, and I am a poor man.”

Still shaking his head, he rose to depart.

The Signore, left alone, paced the terrace a few times, smiling to himself; then he sat down again,--this time in the priest’s place,--and fell to musing, and as he mused his fingers stole almost furtively to the long rose-tendrils, and twisted them gently, while the smile died abruptly on his lips.

Presently he rang, and Giuseppina came out.

“You may take away these things,” said the Signore, “and bring me pen and paper. Oh, and by the way, Giuseppina, in future put my seat here,--the valley sees itself better.”

Coming from the post that evening the Signore was aware of a slender shape slipping along through the deepening shadows ahead. Quickening his steps, he overtook it easily.

“_Buon sera_; so it is you, Gioja?”

“Si, Signore!”--the voice was both startled and appealing.

But the Signore strode along looking keenly at the downcast face.

“Oreste is not with you?”

“No, Signore; he went to the city.”

“And you have doubtless been visiting your nonna?”

“Yes, Signore,”--the voice was almost inaudible.

The Signore turned on his heel, with a curt “_Buona sera!_” and was still muttering things under his breath when, fifteen minutes later, he beheld from the terrace Oreste and Elisabetta toiling wearily up the hill.

“How well she times it,” he thought contemptuously, as the bell of the big gate sounded, and he heard Giuseppina’s challenge: “Who is it?”

“_Amici_, friends,” answered Oreste’s voice, and Oreste swiftly followed, with his frank smile and a square envelope of dull blue, which the Signore’s hand involuntarily stretched to grasp.

“_Ecco_, Signore,--the only one!” said Oreste, with that polite gesture of regret with which he daily accompanied this small comedy. The Signore having possessed himself of the letter avidly, put it into his pocket with ostentatious carelessness and coolly lighted a cigarette. Oreste smiled comprehendingly but respectfully.

“You have had a long day of it?”

“Yes, Signore,” Oreste smiled with the satisfied air of one who has done a good day’s work.

“I suppose you have made a handful of money,” continued the Signore, severely.

Oreste shrugged his shoulders. “Not great things,--but, _altro_, I am content.”

The Signore shrugged in his turn. “Each to his own mind. Your _sposina_ has also made a long day; I saw her just now.”

“Ah, yes; it is a long way to Vincigliata, when one must walk. The Signore’s commands?”

“None.”

Truly, the Signorina Americana, if this was her work, had small reason to be proud of it. The Signore’s frown enveloped even the blue envelope, at which he stood staring long after Oreste had left the room.

And so it ran through the spring months,--the mournfully beautiful Tuscan spring. The nightingales in the villa gardens sang and sang, at dusk, in the moonlight, and at dawn, and the fireflies glittered all through the darkness up and down the olive slopes. An intenser life quickened in the little community as the summer stirred in the veins of her children. The youths went singing up and down the hills, and the girls and women lingered over their water jars at the fountain in the square. For what is it to be poor in the summer time?

Sometimes the Signore, lying awake at night, heard Oreste’s mellow voice as he passed by to the little house. But through all this gayety of being Gioja stole silently and dreamily, and the whisper of turned heads and eyes askance followed her. For there were the ever-recurring _festas_, when Oreste went to the city, and where then did Oreste’s _sposa_ go? That is what the community would like to know; for the tale of her grandmother was quite too large for the village throat. She kept her secret well,--yes; but there is only one kind of a secret possible to the Italian mind.

“Birbone!” said the women, with contempt of Oreste, while the men laughed and shrugged their shoulders. Oreste had caught a pretty _sposa_ who had thought herself much too good for them, but, _ma chè_,--he was paying for it.

It was impossible that the public curiosity should content itself with being curious. Maria, one of those public-minded souls which never lack in any community, toiled all the way over to Vincigliata, and brought back personal assurance from the _nonna_ herself that that pious granddaughter had not been seen in Vincigliata all these months.

“Eight good miles I trudged in all that sun, and a day’s work lost,” declared Maria, mopping her brow in the midst of an excited and sympathetic group. “_If_ my legs ache! But for the good of the community I did it; and what I know to-night the priest shall know before morning. I made haste to go to-day, for to-morrow, being the _festa_ of our Saint John, Oreste goes to the city, and that _civetta_--”

And nobody could say but that Maria had done well, and the girl deserved whatever might come of it.

But when the priest, sad-eyed and stern, knocked at the door of the little house in the early morning after Mass, no one was there. Having delivered a vain fusillade, to the accompaniment of many suggestions offered from the neighbors’ windows, the priest turned away and betook himself, with a clouded brow, to the Signore, who had invited him, by Oreste, to breakfast with him that morning. He was waiting for him now on the terrace with a morning countenance; and the breakfast-table, heaped with roses, wore a festal air which did not escape the priest, preoccupied though he was.

“You also are keeping a feast, Signore, to appearances?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, indeed! a _festa_ Americana?”

“No, my own. And now what is it about these two? Oreste, I know, went to the city. I tried to engage him, but he was pre-engaged to that patron of his. And Gioja,--well, I saw her pass a little later.”

“While we were in the church,--the guilty child!” said the priest, sternly. “But where can she have gone?” he added, sighing. “I have been much to blame; I have been too negligent; I should have dealt with her from the first. _Culpa mia!_” He crossed himself and looked so discouraged that the Signore was touched.

“Listen, _amico mio_,” he said. “As you say, it is a bad business; and, arrange it how you will, it will never be well that those two shall live here. The last of it will never be heard,--if I know your people. I am going away to Livorno next week, and I have asked Oreste to go with me. I like the fellow, and away from here she may come to her senses. She is young, and, guilty though she may be, she does not seem case-hardened.”

“Going away!” exclaimed the startled priest, in dismay. “And going to take those two away from their own country,--to a foreign place! What an idea,--but what an idea!”

“Scarcely foreign; it is only the other side of Florence.”

“Ah, ah! to you, but to us villagers! It is not a little thing to leave one’s home, where one has been born and bred, and knows his neighbors, after all, whether they be good or bad. It is a great thing to know one’s neighbors. And to go so far!--but they will think twice before they say ‘Yes.’”

“On the contrary, Oreste goes willingly. I do not think he is so blind; he knows well they are not friendly to his _sposa_ here.”

“And Gioja,” said the startled priest, “will she go?”

“He says so.”

The priest drew a long breath, half relief, half regret, and wholly wonder.

“Well, well, it is perhaps the best that could happen. But to lose two of my flock--and to leave one’s country like that! You are a strange people, you Americans. And what becomes of us without either you or the Signorina Americana here in the villa?”

“There are more Americans,” replied the Signore, smiling; “and who knows but that your Signorina will return to make you more trouble yet?”

The priest shook his head. “The next time she may bring her own maid. Not another girl from our village shall she turn the head of, that Signorina,” and the very tone of his voice as he said it was witness that he affirmed what he knew to be false. The Signore understood and laughed.

“Put it all away, _amico mio_, for to-day, and go with me to Florence. Gioja has gone; and you can do nothing but listen to your people, who will deafen you before night. Come and see your _bella Firenze_ in her _festa_ dress. We will take a tram below and find a cab at the gates.”

The priest’s face brightened like a child’s.

“Ah, Signore, now it is I you are proposing to carry away! But why not? It is long since I was in Florence, and I have already said service here. But it is not necessary to say anything to my people. Discretion, Signore, discretion is a great thing!”

And thus it happened that when the village folk saw the good father depart in company with the Signore _forestiere_, they sagely concluded, with that sense of the importance of our own affairs common to the race, that the two had gone to Fiesole, or who knew but even Florence, to consult the authorities in the matter of that unhappy Gioja. And, in point of fact, though the priest was fairly running away from the subject, he was destined to run straight into its arms instead.

Florence was all in _festa_; and if there is anything lovelier than Florence in _festa_, who has seen it? The streets ran over with bright sunshine; and the Florentines, reinforced by _contadini_ from all the neighboring towns, in holiday garb, made a bright, shifting mass for the sunbeams to play over. Arno rolled its now shallow stream like muddy gold, and pale golden palaces stood loftily up and looked down at her. Over her streaming Ways, Florence shook the bells in all her towers every fifteen minutes, and at intervals the deep, golden-throated voice in Giotto’s Tower answered with a rich hum, hum-m, hum-m-m, like a melodious summer bee. The strident notes of the _grilli_, in their little wicker cages, brought from the Cascine at dawn, completed the joyous pandemonium.

The Signore’s spirits ran at higher tide than even the bright tide of humanity about him. He laughed at all; he bought flowers of the boys and girls who ran after the carriage holding up glowing armfuls, until the carriage-seat was heaped, and the priest held up his hands at the extravagance. He climaxed his folly by buying all the remaining _grilli_ in their cages, and letting them loose upon the grass of the Cascine.

“Do not scold, _amico mio_,” he said to the priest gayly; “I told you it is a _festa_. I have come into a fortune, and it is written that nobody must be shut up to-day or hungry.” He tossed a handful of soldi to a group of children.

“I am afraid your fortune will not last long,” replied the priest, shaking his head.

But he forgot his own prudence when, a little later, they went to a restaurant,--not Doney’s, where the foolish tourists go, fancying themselves in Italy, and where the priest would have been miserable,--but Gilli’s on the Piazza Signoria. There, it being a feast day, and his host newly come into a fortune, the good father ate, for the honor of religion and his own temporal good, such a meal as had never before found its way to his stomach, and washed it down with glasses of Chianti, not merely old (vecchio), but extravagantly old (stravecchio). Golden moments were these, and he put down his glass at last with a sigh of regret that it was impossible to prolong them further. His limit of possibility was reached.

“Now,” said the Signore, casting an extravagant fee upon the table, “where next?”

“To the Baptistery and the Duomo, my son,” answered the priest, with sudden gravity, crossing himself, “to say our _grazie_, and put up a little prayer to our good Saint John.”

It was precisely upon emerging from the door of Gilli’s in this comfortable and untroubled frame of mind, arising from the perfect balance of the carnal and the spiritual, that he came face to face with the worst trouble of all. For, straightening his shabby hat and smoothing his shabby cassock, what should his eyes fall upon but Oreste,--Oreste, who, having that moment emerged from a café below, was assisting a very elegant signora into his cab. Just as he got her safely tucked in, his eye caught the two pairs staring at him. His sturdy face blanched; then, before either could make step forward, he had shut the door, sprung quickly to the seat, and, touching up Elisabetta, with a glance of defiance whirled away. The two left, staring, drew a long breath.

“_Ebbene_,” remarked the Signore, at last, “so the patron was a _padrona_; perhaps Gioja has not been so much to blame after all.”

“I will know,” answered the priest, sharply.

The Signore said a word to the nearest cabman, slipping something into his hand, and in a moment they were bowling up the Via Calzaioli. It cost a city cabman nothing to keep Elisabetta in sight; and they drew up in the Piazza del Duomo just in time to see Oreste deferentially assisting his Signora to alight at the Cathedral steps. He saw them and his eyes shot such a glance of stern warning that both men sat stupidly, and the next moment nearly fell over each other as the Signora, in her silks and nodding plumes, swept by,--for, lo, it was Gioja!

In another instant she had swept up the steps and the great doors had swallowed her. Then Oreste’s manner changed. He leaned against the cab-door, and turned upon the two men a regard which said: “And now what have you to say about it?”

There was a decidedly awkward silence while they drew near; then the Signore burst out laughing.

“You have found a fine patron, _amico mio!_” he said.

“What folly!” ejaculated the priest, holding up his hands and recovering breath at last. “Gran’ Dioy what folly!”

“Reverendo,” replied Oreste, quietly, “perhaps not so much folly as some of you have thought. Perhaps I know what the tongues up there wag like, and if I choose not to mind, whose affair is that? If it pleases us to please ourselves, who is the worse for that?”

“And the scandal!” exclaimed the priest. “And the waste, and the ideas you are putting in Gioja’s head,--the wicked vanity and pride--Oh, I told the Signorina how it would end!”

“As for that, Reverendo, you will pardon me; but tongues must wag when they are hung in the middle, and if they wag about Gioja,--why it does n’t hurt her, and some one else goes safe. And as for the waste,--the price of a fare now and then,--why if it suits us to live on polenta six days, and take our pleasure on the seventh, whose misery is that? I have never yet lacked my soldo for the Church or for a neighbor poorer than I.”

“And the ideas you are encouraging in her unhappy head!--but I will have something to say to that child.”

“Reverendo,” interposed Oreste, sternly, “by your leave,--you are a good man, half a saint, and I am only an ignorant peasant, but there are some things priests and nuns do not understand, and what one does not understand, that one should not meddle with. The Signorina understood; she knew well it was neither pride nor vanity in Gioja, but just a kind of _poesia_ which made her like to play the signora. The Signorina understood because she herself was full of _poesia_.”

“Oh, the Signorina,--the Signorina!” interjected the priest, in despair.

“She _knew_,” Oreste went on. “You remember the time of the hat, Reverendo?”

“_If_ I remember!” groaned the priest.

“_Ebbene!_” said Oreste, emphatically, “when I found it out, I went straight to the Signorina and told her. She was on the terrace, and she sat down and laughed a little. You remember our Signorina’s way of laughing?”

It was to the priest that he addressed this; but it was the Signore, looking straight before him and smiling, who looked as if he remembered.

“Nothing would do,” continued Oreste, “but that she must jump into my cab then and there, with only a lace on her head, and she a Signorina! [here the Signore laughed aloud]--and drive straight to Florence, not to one of the small shops, but to the great milliner’s on Tornabuoni, where she bought a hat,--who knows what it cost?--and she bade me take it to Gioja and tell her to wear it when she liked, for there was nothing wicked about it.”

The priest groaned again.

“Only,” added Oreste, with the suspicion of a twinkle, “she bade us say nothing about it, lest you, Reverendo, might think it your duty to lecture the child again; and it was a pity, she said, to make so good a man uncomfortable. So, as she could not wear it openly, we had to find a way under the plate; and as the whole village would have been talking if we went away together, I had to make that little story of a patron. Once outside of Vignola, I wait for Gioja, and there in the olive grove she makes herself into a signora; and on the way home we stop again, and--the signora’s hat and gown stowed away under my seat--my little _sposa_ climbs up beside me and we talk it all over. And then the next day I count my francs, and the folk call me ‘_Birbone_;’ and the lads think evil of my Gioja because she would never look at them; and we laugh in our sleeves. What does all that matter when one is happy?”

“And so,” said the priest, sternly, “you let all Vignola think your wife has a lover, and say nothing?”

“They have to think something; and isn’t it better they should think she has a lover, Reverendo, than a _cappello di signora?_”

“Surely,” assented the priest, quickly; “a lover, at least, they can all understand; and only too many of them--Madonna pardon them!--have had; but a signora’s hat nobody in the village has ever had, and they would never pardon Gioja for having. And they have right; Gioja has no business with a signora’s hat, nor you to waste your time and money, as if you would be _bambini_ all your lives. And for you, a man, to make yourself the servant of your wife,--oh, it is shameful, _vergognoso!_”

“Pardon again, Reverendo, but that, too, you can’t understand. If it is Gioja’s _poesia_ to play the signora,--why, Gioja is _my poesia_. As for its lasting, _altro!_ the future is long; and if we had others to feed all that might be different. She is only a child herself now; but when the good God sends a child to a child, that makes a woman of her; He himself sees to that. When that comes, she will care nothing to play the signora with her stupid Oreste. All this our Signorina knew; for that night, when the child came to me weeping, and saying how wicked she had been, and begging me to forgive her and marry her at once, _at once_--I, Signori, who would have married her any moment for years!--it put me in trouble. I had fear to take her like that, and perhaps have her sorry for it later. But I went to our Signorina with her, and told her all; and she looked at us both and said: ‘Marry her, Oreste; you safely may;’ for the Signorina understood. And so--I married her.”

The eyes of the two young men met suddenly, and exchanged across the gulf of position and race one rapid thrill of comprehension. The priest looked half-timidly at both; but perhaps he, too, comprehended something, for he said meekly,--

“After all, I did no harm.”

“Perhaps not,” replied Oreste, with his frank smile; “but that was not your fault, Reverendo. And now, if the Signore and you will excuse me, that was the bell of the Elevation. If Gioja saw you, she would have no more pleasure; and that would be all the more a pity, because it is our last _festa_ here. We are going to live with the Signore and his Signora. Is n’t it so, Signore?”

“Ah, ah!” exclaimed the priest, with vivacity, “so that was your _festa_ and your fortune, Signore? And that is why you have so much sympathy for even the _grills_ and these foolish children! Well, well, it is perhaps the best that could happen; for it would be impossible to go on giving scandal like this, and if I said a word you would all be for taking my life. It may do for Gioja, who is not like the others; but Heaven forbid the other _ragazze_ should get such ideas in their heads; I have enough to do to keep track of them and their affairs as it is.”

“Signori!” said Oreste, warningly. The two slunk behind the next cab, and from there beheld the stream of life suddenly burst from the big doors of the Duomo,--men and women and children, prince and citizen and peasant, and among them a slender, graceful shape, her cappello di signora sitting well upon the ruffled gold of her hair, and her long skirt raised in one gloved hand with a gesture at which the Signore’s heart beat suddenly faster against the blue envelope above it. So very excellent an imitation of the Signora that even an expert need not blush to be deceived by it.

Oreste stepped forward and flung open the cab-door with ostentation. The Signora mounted languidly, and sank back against the cushions, making a great rustling of silk. The loungers on the Duomo steps stole covert glances at the pretty woman. Then Oreste slammed the door, took off his hat, and approached deferentially.

“Commanda, Signora?” he said, loud enough for everybody to hear.

“_Alla casa_,--home,” responded the Signora, with superb languor.

And, mounting upon the seat, with a parting glance of mingled triumph and humor in the direction of the two watchers, Oreste, Elisabetta, and the Signora whirled triumphantly away.

The two left upon the sidewalk remained speechless for a few minutes; then the priest’s eye caught his companion’s, deprecatingly, but with an echo of Oreste’s twinkle.

“That Signorina,” he said, with an indulgent sigh, “she has much to answer for!”

But the Signore, looking into the distance and laughing softly to himself, said not a word.

THE APPEAL TO ANNE

By Edward Cummings

I--FROM ROGER

YOU are my friend. Therefore I am sure of your patience. My dearest, yield it to me now, of all times! This is a confession and prayer.

True, I might dissemble still. Chance lends the ready garment.