Frances Mary Peard

“ The idea that it was she, she, whom ironical fate had chosen to interpose between Sylvia’s image and Wilbraham’s heart, made her coldly, cruelly contemptuous. That he should dream!
“I shall go to bed,” yawned Mrs Maxwell, “though I don’t believe I shall be able to sleep a wink. Shall I take Jem away? He is such a blind old goose, he never sees that he is monopolising our lovers. But Sylvia is in high spirits to-night.”
“Oh, don’t disturb anybody,” implored Teresa. “The thunder is getting nearer, and I shall have to sweep away Sylvia in ten seconds; she hates it so! ”

“ No, no, no, that is not Cesare.”
“Why did not the guardie say so, then?” demanded Teresa impatiently.
“See, eccellenza, they are afraid, and they do not like him. He is hand and glove with the fiercest men in Rome, men who would overthrow anything, everything, king or pope, what you will! Since Camilla died it is as if an evil spirit had entered into him—he keeps with those men, he never hears mass, he is like a lost soul. What took him into San Martino, I wonder? At any rate I wish the eccellenza had had nothing to do with him,” Nina ended, uneasily. ”

“ Wandering about a tangle of narrow streets, rugged, uneven, unchanged to all appearance from those Middle Ages when men’s lives and men’s thoughts were both simpler and more frankly expressed than in our subtler days, they found themselves in the central piazza, where Minerva’s columns have faced the sun of centuries. Wilbraham had made his way there the evening before, and had been so much impressed by their grandeur that he had looked forward to bringing Sylvia. ”

“ Darkness out of which colours glow, colours laid on by Cimabue and Giotto, darkness shrouding in mystery those strange grave impassible faces looking down into a world which does not touch them. Teresa stood silent, squeezing her hands; Sylvia asked many questions, and Wilbraham answered them; a monk came forward and pointed out this, that, and the other; another monk arranged hideous imitation flowers on the central altar. Presently Wilbraham came back to where Teresa stood. ”

“ For Teresa upheld Sylvia through thick and thin, and would cheerfully efface herself for her sister.
Wilbraham walked towards the Trevi with his temper still ruffled, so that he scarcely glanced at the great fountain dashing its wealth of waters into the sea at its base. Passing it, he plunged into a network of narrow streets leading to the questura. He did not notice two or three men, who, standing at the door of the Avanti printing office, pointed him out to each other with scarcely perceptible gestures. ”

“ She reflected that Peppina would probably also keep her knowledge to herself. “It is certain she may know.”
Teresa made no further attempt. She went down the stairs and out into the sun. Her heart grew gay as she felt the warm blessed glow and saw the clear bright colours of the South. She was going to the Maxwells’ hotel, but made a round on purpose to breathe the light air, and to have a look at a vegetable shop which she wanted to paint, where lettuces, tomatoes, green peas, carrots, rings of endive, orange flesh of gourds, glowed out of a cavernous darkness. ”

“ Teresa, what is it?”
For she saw that the young marchesa was trembling, and began to think that the matter must be more considerable than she had imagined.
“He has left me a thousand a year,” Teresa said in a very low voice. There was not a touch of triumph in it, but the thing was amazing because they were all unaccustomed to good fortune, and they simply stared at each other. Sylvia broke the silence—
“A thousand a year! How rich you will be!”
“How rich we shall all be!” echoed Teresa in a gay unsteady voice. “Granny, every day of your life you will go for a drive. ”

“ Seen more closely, however, their aggressive ugliness is appalling, and Teresa, as she walked along certain streets which lay below the ascent to San Pietro in Montorio, glanced at the overgrown blocks with extreme distaste. She could see something of the emptiness and dirt of the houses, the strings of ragged clothes fluttering from balconies, the evil-looking old hags stretching out skinny hands and muttering curses on her as she passed, the children with pinched and hungry faces, bare-footed, scantily clothed, with touzled hair and a smile which belongs to Italy, and Italy only. ”

“ Teresa said. “I don’t think your simile pretty, all the same,” she went on. “Nobody is going to be crushed; and I believe you’ll see that this being loved is just what Sylvia wanted to give her confidence. She’ll develop.”
Mrs Brodrick wanted to ask what would develop, and didn’t dare. She thought of Sylvia as a pretty face and a sweet nature masking an absolutely empty mind, and doubted. The young marchesa could not be always at hand to turn a stupid remark into something which did not seem so stupid after all, and she did not believe that Sylvia could stand on her own feet. ”

“ Take off thy apron, which the signora said should only be worn in the kitchen—the saints alone know why—and remember to say, ‘Buon giorno eccellenza.’—Quattro soldi, Peppina mia, true as that I sit here, and at Viterbo—ah, at Viterbo they do not rob like that.”
“It is true,” said Peppina, sighing. “In Rome it is hard to live.”
“But not for you. You are like me. Eh-h-h-h-h! It was a good day for me when Signora Bianco at the laundry told me these angels wanted a donna.” Peppina still looked gloomy.
“Why should you be their donna? Why should some have so much money, and others none at all?” ”

“ Surely Teresa would see for herself, would understand, that he was not so much to blame? She, if any one, must be aware of Sylvia’s shallowness, must recognise that a man could not be content to pass through life with no other companion, would excuse, forgive—ah, if he could but make her love him, how much would not she forgive? ”

“ Teresa would have liked to have been as sure of Wilbraham, for her sympathies were too lively not to have often alarmed her. She tried to close her eyes, and to make the house as pleasant as she could for him, succeeding only too well.
“Let us go to-morrow to Villa Madama,” she said one Friday evening. Fernanda, with her broad smile, had just brought in the coffee, a log fire burnt merrily in the open stove, from the street rose a stir of voices, cracking of whips, cries of “Tribuna! Ecco Tribu—u—na!” “Polenti!” “Cerini, un sol’ cerini!” ”

“ Or she might be found under Duca Stefano’s tower, peaceful now after, so says tradition, its strange and wicked cruelties, where, for a few soldi, you may rest undisturbed in a wilderness garden, and look through palms at a luminous sea, or at queer corners of houses with deep eaves and wooden balconies, where bright rags flutter, vines clamber, and women lean for gossip. High behind is a sweep of arid hill, rough with prickly pear, and catching the shadow of every passing cloud and the glory of the sun as it sinks behind Etna. ”

“ Wilbraham almost started. He had accepted the fact that Sylvia was rather unusually ignorant, but somehow or other until now Teresa had been there, to toss aside any wonder with a jest. It had never come before him in so staringly obtrusive a light. And Sylvia, anxious to prove her interest, went on gravely—
“Hadn’t she something to do with an owl?”
But, as she said it, kind fate made her turn her face again up towards his. He looked, and laughed.
“You’ve remembered one thing, haven’t you, darling? We’ll read up about Minerva some day. People do forget their classics.” ”

“ Walter said you were not.”
“Oh, Walter. That’s his name, is it?”
Teresa hated herself for speaking with a certain asperity. It is so much easier to disparage one’s self than to bear with others doing it. But Sylvia was at last genuinely amazed.
“Do you mean that all this time you never knew that? Why, I have always known it. Teresa, how very funny! You have never thought about him as Mr Walter Wilbraham? It is such a beautiful name! But that you should not—Teresa, you are funny!” ”

“ Age is tolerant, and there was nothing for it now save to accept failure.
“You and I,” said Teresa, with a caressing hand, “will always live together.”
“Always,” said Mrs Brodrick bravely, a smile covering the pain in her heart.
And she turned to go down.
When they reached the piazza the sky had changed. All the gold had gone. In its stead a long red line stretched across the mountainous horizon; above it, light deepened into blue, masses of clouds had suddenly trooped up from the south. Sylvia and Wilbraham came out quite unexpectedly from the shadow of the great church. ”

“ Next to Sylvia came her grandmother. Her grandmother was old. Age wants to have the rugged bits of life’s road made smooth for steps no longer buoyant and unfaltering. Teresa thought of a hundred ways for doing this, yet, after all, they came to very little. For as Mrs Brodrick had foreseen from the first, we can’t wrench off the habits of a lifetime without hurt. ”

“ It becomes a type to her, and she almost always idealises it.
So as Sylvia talked, Teresa grew more silent.
Wilbraham treated his hurts too lightly, and had two or three weeks of lameness after they reached Rome. Naturally he spent most of his time in the Porta Pinciana—that beautiful, soft, fresh, early winter-time of Rome, when day after day the sun shines gaily out, when the sky is of an ineffable colour, when beyond the broad stretch of the campagna the bordering mountains take wonderful tints of clear yet veiled blue ”

“ Teresa rose up and stood before the fire, so that its glow fell on her white dress. Mrs Brodrick moved uneasily in her chair, for she saw that although Wilbraham was sitting on a sofa beside Sylvia, he was watching Teresa.
“I don’t know if Mary can come, but I am sure she would like it.”
“Then,” said Wilbraham, “she will. She always does what she likes.”
“She does what she likes,” agreed Mrs Brodrick smiling, “but she doesn’t always like what she does.”
“Who does?” Wilbraham said, with a queer quick ring in the question. Teresa caught it, and twisted the conversation. ”

“ Mrs Brodrick suddenly collapsed.
“Nothing,” she said miserably. “How can any one move? It rests between him and Sylvia, and Sylvia, poor child, is absolutely—piteously content. She doesn’t see.”
“And never will!” thought Mrs Maxwell; “Heaven help us, for there must be some way out of this tangle, if one could only find it!” She said aloud, hesitatingly, “Could Teresa speak to her?”
“Could she?” Mrs Brodrick turned a pallid face, and Mrs Maxwell shook her head.
“True—impossible. Teresa must be kept out of it. Is there any hint that Sylvia would accept? Granny, you might try.” ”

“ Then everything is so light, so fresh, so sparkling, that it will make even a tired heart believe the old world and all its life is young again. But there are other times when storms rush madly forwards, and the sea grows grey, and the slopes of Etna are sullen purple, and wind and rain battle each other passionately on the heights of Taormina. You look with fear, and lo, the fierce southern rage is over, the clouds are gone, and, faint and lovely at first, presently out laughs the ethereal blue again.
A sketching fever possessed Donna Teresa. ”

“ The girl started as if she had been stung.
“The Cianchetti! She is a viper.”
Nina nodded her head, and began to wash her lettuces.
“Perhaps. But Cesare did not always think her a viper.”
“Oh!” Peppina flung out her hands, flung her rival and the whole world on one side. “If he spoke to her, I could kill him. But he will not.”
“It seems to me that when we are going to do good to everybody, there are always a few we mean to leave out. Perhaps, in that way we should all be left out. Who knows?” remarked the philosopher, still nodding like a mandarin. The girl’s socialism had received a check. ”

“ Moreover, blots as they are upon the old beauty of Rome, it is noticeable already from distant points, such as the front of Sant’ Onofrio, or farther along the Janiculum drive, where form is scarcely to be distinguished, that in colour, at least, they begin to harmonise better with their surroundings, and that the sun, the great alchemist of the South, is turning raw whites and greys into tawny gold and amber, and that soft indescribable tone which is at once the joy and the despair of the painter. ”

“ His mind had shot away to Teresa, Teresa with an angry light in her eyes, for which he loved her the more. Hopeless, he would not have had her different; but different—to him—what might she not have been! Suddenly, unexpectedly, a word of Sylvia’s caught his attention.
“I don’t think that people ought to marry unless they love each other. Every one always says they ought not,” she was remarking in a nervously excited voice. ”

“ Why is it the good people who always have to suffer? Little Sylvia! And I meant her to be so happy! Granny, be very, very kind to her. Must it be to-day?”
“No,” said Mrs Brodrick, considering. “Let us wait a day.”
“Till Monday.”
“Well—till Monday. Perhaps he will speak. Perhaps something will come to her. Do you think that man was really Cesare?”
“What do I care if it was?”
But in spite of her indifference her grandmother, without mentioning the incident, asked Mrs Maxwell whether Peppina’s lover was in Taormina.
“I wonder?” returned Mrs Maxwell meditatively. ”

“ I am sure I am, for I don’t in the least know where in Rome to get a decent hat. Now, my dear—just think, what would a hat seem to them?”
Mrs Brodrick laughed. Mrs Maxwell talked on.
“Still, I’m not so sure. I don’t know that I should like never to be in the dance. And if they do get at all interested, existence must be so scrappy. There is Sylvia, pretty, and young, and in love. They’ve seen it all before, a hundred times—isn’t this the place for lovers to come?—but don’t tell me that the poor grey old things wouldn’t be curious to know how it’s going on. ”

“ She need not have minded. Wilbraham was looking at the girl with a pleased satisfaction. He thought that women were much alike, except that some were prettier than others. Mrs Brodrick laughed, and did not resent her granddaughter’s explanation, but her eyes were grave and looked as if she, too, were observing. Teresa saw this, and saw that another had hit upon her discovery. She was very swift in carrying out her impulses, and she made up her mind that if Sylvia really liked this man her part must be to smooth matters for her happiness. ”

“ The word was only a half jest, for she had more than once breathed a wish to enlist a socialist on her side; to hear at least what his party had to suggest for the mending of matters which seemed beyond the reach of others. If she could see—if she could soften Cesare!—and being a woman and young, she never doubted that softening would follow the seeing—if, perhaps, she might indirectly help him, so lifting away the unpleasant remembrance of having once made him suffer unjustly! ”

“ Nina had not been content until she had got two or three of these jars from Viterbo, of coarse highly-glazed pottery, with a fine free design of yellow on the brown. She now pointed out her treasure to Peppina with joyous pride.
“And our marchesa has two in the sala with all her other beautiful things,”—Nina exalted her family to the skies—“she took them away from me and left me nothing for the wine. But that, see you, was because she could find nothing like them in Rome. Rome is a poor place, for all they talk so much, and make one pay, pay, pay. ”

“ The thought she flung at Wilbraham was tinged with a slight wonder, but his action was his own affair. She would do what seemed best for her sister.
“You are right, granny,” she said, “we have wasted our time disgracefully. It was my fault. Sylvia wanted to come and be informed. So now!”
“Now we will have our food. All that I have heard has made me hungry.” She spoke lightly, but her old eyes were still grave, and Teresa could see that what had come to them both was troubling her grandmother. The consciousness of this roused a reckless spirit in herself. ”