CHAPTER II: THE SIGNORINO

One day, when Goneril, much browner and rosier for a week among the mountains, came in to lunch at noon, she found no signs of that usually regular repast. The little maid was on her knees polishing the floor; Miss Prunty was scolding, dusting, ordering dinner, arranging vases, all at once; strangest of all, Madame Petrucci had taken the oil-cloth cover from her grand piano, and, seated before it, was practising her sweet and faded notes, unheedful of the surrounding din and business.

“What’s the matter?” cried Goneril.

“We expect the signorino,” said Miss Prunty.

“And is he going to stay here?”

“Don’t be a fool!” snapped that lady; and then she added, “Go into the kitchen and get some of the pasty and some bread and cheese—there’s a good girl.”

“All right!” said Goneril.

Madame Petrucci stopped her vocalising. “You shall have all the better a dinner to compensate you, my Gonerilla!” She smiled sweetly, and then again became Zerlina.

Goneril cut her lunch, and took it out of doors to share with her companion, Angiolino. He was harvesting the first corn under the olives, but at noon it was too hot to work. Sitting still there was, however, a cool breeze that gently stirred the sharp-edged olive-leaves.

Angiolino lay down at full length and munched his bread and cheese in perfect happiness. Goneril kept shifting about to get herself into the narrow shadow cast by the split and writhen trunk.

“How aggravating it is!” she cried. “In England, where there’s no sun, there’s plenty of shade; and here, where the sun is like a mustard-plaster on one’s back, the leaves are all set edgewise on purpose that they sha’n’t cast any shadow!”

Angiolino made no answer to this intelligent remark.

“He is going to sleep again!” cried Goneril, stopping her lunch in despair. “He is going to sleep, and there are no end of things I want to know. Angiolino!”

“Si, signora,” murmured the boy.

“Tell me about Signor Graziano.”

“He is our padrone; he is never here.”

“But he is coming to-day. Wake up, wake up, Angiolino. I tell you, he is on the way!”

“Between life and death there are so many combinations,” drawled the boy, with Tuscan incredulity and sententiousness.

“Ah!” cried the girl, with a little shiver of impatience. “Is he young?”

“Che!”

“Is he old then?”

“Neppure!”

“What is he like? He must be something.”

“He’s our padrone,” repeated Angiolino, in whose imagination Signor Graziano could occupy no other place.

“How stupid you are!” exclaimed the young English girl.

“Maybe,” said Angiolino, stolidly.

“Is he a good padrone? Do you like him?”

“Rather!” The boy smiled and raised himself on one elbow; his eyes twinkled with good-humoured malice.

“My babbo had much better wine than quel signore,” he said.

“But that is wrong!” cried Goneril, quite shocked.

“Who knows?”

After this conversation flagged. Goneril tried to imagine what a great musician could be like: long hair, of course; her imagination did not get much beyond the hair. He would of course be much older now than his portrait. Then she watched Angiolino cutting the corn, and learned how to tie the swathes together. She was occupied in this useful employment when the noise of wheels made them both stop and look over the wall.

“Here’s the padrone!” cried the boy.

“Oh, he is old!” said Goneril. “He is old and brown, like a coffee-bean.”

“To be old and good is better than youth with malice,” suggested Angiolino, by way of consolation.

“I suppose so,” acquiesced Goneril.

Nevertheless she went in to dinner a little disappointed.

The signorino was not in the house; he had gone up to the villa; but he had sent a message that later in the evening he intended to pay his respects to his old friends. Madame Petrucci was beautifully dressed in soft black silk, old lace, and a white Indian shawl. Miss Prunty had on her starchiest collar and most formal tie. Goneril saw it was necessary that she, likewise should deck herself in her best. She was much too young and impressionable not to be influenced by the flutter of excitement and interest which filled the whole of the little cottage. Goneril, too, was excited and anxious, although Signor Graziano had seemed so old and like a coffee-bean. She made no progress in the piece of embroidery she was working as a present for the two old ladies, jumping up and down to look out of the window. When, about eight o’clock, the door-bell rang, Goneril blushed, Madame Petrucci gave a pretty little shriek, Miss Prunty jumped up and rang for coffee. A moment afterward the signorino entered. While he was greeting her hostesses Goneril cast a rapid glance at him. He was tall for an Italian, rather bent and rather gray; fifty at least—therefore very old. He certainly was brown, but his features were fine and good, and he had a distinguished and benevolent air that somehow made her think of an abbe, a French abbe of the last century. She could quite imagine him saying, “Enfant de St. Louis, montez au ciel!”

Thus far had she got in her meditations when she felt herself addressed in clear, half-mocking tones:

“And how, this evening, is Madamigella Ruth?”

So he had seen her this evening binding his corn.

“I am quite well, padrone,” she said, smiling shyly.

The two old ladies looked on amazed, for of course they were not in the secret.

“Signor Graziano, Miss Goneril Hamelyn,” said Miss Prunty, rather severely.

Goneril felt that the time had come for silence and good manners. She sat quite quiet over her embroidery, listening to the talk of Sontag, of Clementi, of musicians and singers dead and gone. She noticed that the ladies treated Signore Graziano with the utmost reverence, even the positive Miss Prunty furling her opinions in deference to his gayest hint. They talked too of Madame Lilli, and always as if she were still young and fair, as if she had died yesterday, leaving the echo of her triumph loud behind her. And yet all this had happened years before Goneril had ever seen the light.

“Mees Goneril is feeling very young!” said the signorino, suddenly turning his sharp, kind eyes upon her.

“Yes,” said Goneril, all confusion.

Madame Petrucci looked almost annoyed—the gay, serene little lady that nothing ever annoyed.

“It is she that is young!” she cried, in answer to an unspoken thought. “She is a baby!”

“Oh, I am seventeen!” said Goneril.

They all laughed, and seemed at ease again.

“Yes, yes; she is very young,” said the signorino.

But a little shadow had fallen across their placid entertainment: the spirit had left their memories; they seemed to have grown shapeless, dusty, as the fresh and comely faces of dead Etruscan kings crumble into mould at the touch of the pitiless sunshine.

“Signorino,” said Madame Petrucci, presently, “if you will accompany me we will perform one of your charming melodies.”

Signor Graziano rose a little stiffly and led the pretty, withered little diva to the piano.

Goneril looked on, wondering, admiring. The signorino’s thin white hands made a delicate, fluent melody, reminding her of running water under the rippled shade of trees, and, like a high, sweet bird, the thin, penetrating notes of the singer rose, swelled, and died away, admirably true and just even in this latter weakness. At the end Signor Graziano stopped his playing to give time for an elaborate cadenza. Suddenly Madame Petrucci gasped; a sharp discordant sound cracked the delicate finish of her singing. She put her handkerchief to her mouth.

“Bah!” she said, “this evening I am abominably husky.”

The tears rose to Goneril’s eyes. Was it so hard to grow old? This doubt made her voice loudest of all in the chorus of mutual praise and thanks which covered the song’s abrupt finale.

And then there came a terrible ordeal. Miss Prunty, anxious to divert the current of her friend’s ideas, had suggested that the girl should sing. Signor Graziano and madame insisted; they would take no refusal.

“Sing, sing, little bird!” cried the old lady.

“But, madame, how can one—after you?”

The homage in the young girl’s voice made the little diva more good-humouredly insistent than before, and Goneril was too well-bred to make a fuss. She stood by the piano wondering which to choose, the Handels that she always drawled or the Pinsuti that she always galloped. Suddenly she came by an inspiration.

“Madame,” she pleaded, “may I sing one of Angiolino’s songs?”

“Whatever you like, cara mia.”

And, standing by the piano, her arms hanging loose, she began a chant such as the peasants use working under the olives. Her voice was small and deep, with a peculiar thick sweetness that suited the song, half humourous, half pathetic. These were the words she sang:

“Very well chosen, my dear,” said Miss Prunty, when the song was finished.

“And very well sung, my Gonerilla!” cried the old lady.

But the signorino went up to the piano and shook hands with her.

“Little Mees Goneril,” he said, “you have the makings of an artist.”

The two old ladies stared, for, after all, Goneril’s performance had been very simple. You see, they were better versed in music than in human nature.

H2 anchor