The Portrait of A Lady (36 page)

22

ON ONE of the first days of May, some six months after old Mr. Touchett's death, a picturesque little group was gathered in one of the many rooms of an ancient villa which stood on the summit of an olive-muffled hill, outside of the Roman Gate of Florence. The villa was a long, rather blank-looking structure, with the far-projecting roof which Tuscany loves, and which, on the hills that encircle Florence, when looked at from a distance, makes so harmonious a rectangle with the straight, dark, definite cypresses that usually rise, in groups of three or four, beside it. The house had a front upon a little grassy, empty, rural piazza which occupied a part of the hill-top; and this front, pierced with a few windows in irregular relations and furnished with a stone bench which ran along the base of the structure and usually afforded a lounging-place to one or two persons wearing more or less of that air of undervalued merit which in Italy, for some reason or other, always gracefully invests any one who confidently assumes a perfectly passive attitude—this ancient, solid, weather-worn, yet imposing front, had a somewhat incommunicative character. It was the mask of the house; it was not its face. It had heavy lids, but no eyes; the house in reality looked another way—looked off behind, into splendid openness and the range of the afternoon light. In that quarter the villa overhung the slope of its hill and the long valley of the Arno, hazy with Italian colour. It had a narrow garden, in the manner of a terrace, productive chiefly of tangles of wild roses and old stone benches, mossy and sun-warmed. The parapet of the terrace was just the height to lean upon, and beneath it the ground declined into the vagueness of olive-crops and vineyards. It is not, however, with the outside of the place that we are concerned; on this bright morning of ripened spring its tenants had reason to prefer the shady side of the wall. The windows of the ground-floor, as you saw them from the piazza, were, in their noble proportions, extremely architectural; but their function seemed to be less to offer communication with the world than to defy the world to look in. They were massively cross-barred and placed at such a height that curiosity, even on tiptoe, expired before it reached them. In an apartment lighted by a row of three of these obstructive apertures—one of the several distinct apartments into which the villa was divided, and which were mainly occupied by foreigners of conflicting nationality long resident in Florence—a gentleman was seated, in company with a young girl and two good sisters from a religious house. The room was, however, much less gloomy than my indications may have represented, for it had a wide, high door, which now stood open into the tangled garden behind; and the tall iron lattices admitted on occasion more than enough of the Italian sunshine. The place, moreover, was almost luxuriously comfortable; it told of habitation being practised as a fine art. It contained a new variety of those faded hangings of damask and tapestry, those chests and cabinets of carved and time-polished oak, those primitive specimens of pictorial art in frames pedantically rusty, those perverse-looking relics of mediaeval brass and pottery, of which Italy has long been the not quite exhausted storehouse. These things were intermingled with articles of modern furniture, in which liberal concession had been made to cultivated sensibilities; it was to be noticed that all the chairs were deep and well padded, and that much space was occupied by a writing-table of which the ingenious perfection bore the stamp of London and the nineteenth century. There were books in profusion, and magazines and newspapers, and a few small modern pictures, chiefly in water-colour. One of these productions stood on a drawing-room easel, before which, at the moment when we begin to be concerned with her, the young girl I have mentioned had placed herself. She was looking at the picture in silence.

Silence—absolute silence—had not fallen upon her companions; but their conversation had an appearance of embarrassed continuity. The two good sisters had not settled themselves in their respective chairs; their attitude was noticeably provisional, and they evidently wished to emphasize the transitory character of their presence. They were plain, comfortable, mild-faced women, with a kind of business-like modesty, to which the impersonal aspect of their stiffened linen and inexpressive serge gave an advantage. One of them, a person of a certain age, in spectacles, with a fresh complexion and a full cheek, had a more discriminating manner than her colleague, and had evidently the responsibility of their errand, which apparently related to the young girl. This young lady wore her hat—a coiffure of extreme simplicity, which was not at variance with a plain muslin gown, too short for the wearer, though it must already have been ‘‘let out.'' The gentleman who might have been supposed to be entertaining the two nuns was perhaps conscious of the difficulties of his function; to entertain a nun is, in fact, a sufficiently delicate operation. At the same time he was plainly much interested in his youthful companion, and while she turned her back to him his eyes rested gravely upon her slim, small figure. He was a man of forty, with a well-shaped head, upon which the hair, still dense, but prematurely grizzled, had been cropped close. He had a thin, delicate, sharply cut face, of which the only fault was that it looked too pointed; an appearance to which the shape of his beard contributed not a little. This beard, cut in the manner of the portraits of the sixteenth century and surmounted by a fair moustache, of which the ends had a picturesque upward flourish, gave its wearer a somewhat foreign, traditionary look, and suggested that he was a gentleman who studied effect. His luminous intelligent eye, an eye which expressed both softness and keenness—the nature of the observer as well as of the dreamer—would have assured you, however, that he studied it only within well-chosen limits, and that in so far as he sought it he found it. You would have been much at a loss to determine his nationality; he had none of the superficial signs that usually render the answer to this question an insipidly easy one. If he had English blood in his veins, it had probably received some French or Italian commixture; he was one of those persons who, in the matter of race, may, as the phrase is, pass for anything. He had a light, lean, lazy-looking figure, and was apparently neither tall nor short. He was dressed as a man dresses who takes little trouble about it.

‘‘Well, my dear, what do you think of it?'' he asked of the young girl. He used the Italian tongue, and used it with perfect ease; but this would not have convinced you that he was an Italian.

The girl turned her head a little to one side and the other.

‘‘It is very pretty, papa. Did you make it yourself?''

‘‘Yes, my child; I made it. Don't you think I am clever?''

‘‘Yes, papa, very clever; I also have learned to make pictures.'' And she turned round and showed a small, fair face, of which the natural and usual expression seemed to be a smile of perfect sweetness.

‘‘You should have brought me a specimen of your powers.''

‘‘I have brought a great many; they are in my trunk,'' said the child.

‘‘She draws very—very carefully,'' the elder of the nuns remarked, speaking in French.

‘‘I am glad to hear it. Is it you who have instructed her?''

‘‘Happily, no,'' said the good sister, blushing a little. ‘‘
Ce n'est pas ma partie.
I teach nothing; I leave that to those who are wiser. We have an excellent drawing-master, Mr.—Mr.—what is his name?'' she asked of her companion.

Her companion looked about at the carpet.

‘‘It's a German name,'' she said in Italian, as if it needed to be translated.

‘‘Yes,'' the other went on, ‘‘he is a German, and we have had him for many years.''

The young girl, who was not heeding the conversation, had wandered away to the open door of the large room, and stood looking into the garden.

‘‘And you, my sister, are French,'' said the gentleman.

‘‘Yes, sir,'' the woman replied, gently. ‘‘I speak to the pupils in my own language. I know no other. But we have sisters of other countries—English, German, Irish. They all speak their own tongue.''

The gentleman gave a smile.

‘‘Has my daughter been under the care of one of the Irish ladies?'' And then, as he saw that his visitors suspected a joke, but failed to understand it—‘‘You are very complete,'' he said, instantly.

‘‘Oh, yes, we are complete. We have everything, and everything is the best.''

‘‘We have gymnastics,'' the Italian sister ventured to remark. ‘‘But not dangerous.''

‘‘I hope not. Is that your branch?'' A question which provoked much candid hilarity on the part of the two ladies; on the subsidence of which their entertainer, glancing at his daughter, remarked that she had grown.

‘‘Yes, but I think she has finished. She will remain little,'' said the French sister.

‘‘I am not sorry. I like little women,'' the gentleman declared, frankly. ‘‘But I know no particular reason why my child should be short.''

The nun gave a temperate shrug, as if to intimate that such things might be beyond our knowledge.

‘‘She is in very good health; that is the best thing.''

‘‘Yes, she looks well.'' And the young girl's father watched her a moment. ‘‘What do you see in the garden?'' he asked, in French.

‘‘I see many flowers,'' she replied, in a sweet, small voice, and with a French accent as good as his own.

‘‘Yes, but not many good ones. However, such as they are, go out and gather some for
ces dames.
''

The child turned to him, with her smile brightened by pleasure. ‘‘May I, truly?'' she asked.

‘‘Ah, when I tell you,'' said her father.

The girl glanced at the elder of the nuns.

‘‘May I, truly,
ma mère
?''

‘‘Obey monsieur your father, my child,'' said the sister, blushing again.

The child, satisfied with this authorization, descended from the threshold, and was presently lost to sight.

‘‘You don't spoil them,'' said her father, smiling.

‘‘For everything they must ask leave. That is our system. Leave is freely granted, but they must ask it.''

‘‘Oh, I don't quarrel with your system; I have no doubt it is a very good one. I sent you my daughter to see what you would make of her. I had faith.''

‘‘One must have faith,'' the sister blandly rejoined, gazing through her spectacles.

‘‘Well, has my faith been rewarded? What have you made of her?''

The sister dropped her eyes a moment.

‘‘A good Christian, monsieur.''

Her host dropped his eyes as well; but it was probable that the movement had in each case a different spring.

‘‘Yes,'' he said in a moment, ‘‘and what else?''

He watched the lady from the convent, probably thinking that she would say that a good Christian was everything.

But for all her simplicity, she was not so crude as that. ‘‘A charming young lady—a real little woman—a daughter in whom you will have nothing but contentment.''

‘‘She seems to me very nice,'' said the father. ‘‘She is very pretty.''

‘‘She is perfect. She has no faults.''

‘‘She never had any as a child, and I am glad you have given her none.''

‘‘We love her too much,'' said the spectacled sister, with dignity. ‘‘And as for faults, how can we give what we have not?
Le couvent n'est comme le monde, monsieur.
She is our child, as you may say. We have had her since she was so small.''

‘‘Of all those we shall lose this year she is the one we shall miss most,'' the younger woman murmured, deferentially.

‘‘Ah, yes, we shall talk long of her,'' said the other. ‘‘We shall hold her up to the new ones.''

And at this the good sister appeared to find her spectacles dim; while her companion, after fumbling a moment, presently drew forth a pocket-handkerchief of durable texture.

‘‘It is not certain that you will lose her; nothing is settled yet,'' the host rejoined, quickly; not as if to anticipate their tears, but in the tone of a man saying what was most agreeable to himself.

‘‘We should be very happy to believe that. Fifteen is very young to leave us.''

‘‘Oh,'' exclaimed the gentleman, with more vivacity than he had yet used, ‘‘it is not I who wish to take her away. I wish you could keep her always!''

‘‘Ah, monsieur,'' said the elder sister, smiling and getting up, ‘‘good as she is, she is made for the world.
Le monde y gagnera.
''

‘‘If all the good people were hidden away in convents, how would the world get on?'' her companion softly inquired, rising also.

This was a question of a wider bearing than the good woman apparently supposed; and the lady in spectacles took a harmonizing view by saying comfortably: ‘‘Fortunately there are good people everywhere.''

‘‘If you are going there will be two less here,'' her host remarked, gallantly.

For this extravagant sally his simple visitors had no answer, and they simply looked at each other in decent deprecation; but their confusion was speedily covered by the return of the young girl, with two large bunches of roses—one of them all white, the other red.

‘‘I give you your choice, Mamman Catherine,'' said the child. ‘‘It is only the colour that is different, Mamman Justine; there are just as many roses in one bunch as another.''

The two sisters turned to each other, smiling and hesitating, with—‘‘Which will you take?'' and ‘‘No, it's for you to choose.''