"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:
"Vorrei morir di morte piccinina, Morta la sera e viva la mattina. Vorrei morire, e non vorrei morire, Vorrei veder chi mi piange e chi ride;Vorrei morir, e star sulle finestre, Vorrei veder chi mi cuce la veste;Vorrei morir, e stare sulla scala, Vorrei veder chi mi porta la bara:
Vorrei morir, e vorre' alzar la voce, Vorrei veder chi mi porta la croce."
"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. CHAPTER III SI VIEILLESSE POUVAIT! Signor Graziano's usual week of holiday passed and lengthened into almost two months, and still he stayed on at the villa. The two old ladies were highly delighted.
"At last he has taken my advice!" cried Miss Prunty. "I always told him those premature gray hairs came from late hours and Roman air." Madame Petrucci shook her head and gave a meaning smile. Her friendship with the signorino had begun when he was a lad and she a charming married woman; like many another friendship, it had begun with a flirtation, and perhaps (who knows?) she thought the flirtation had revived. As for Goneril, she considered him the most charming old man she had ever known, and liked nothing so much as to go out a walk with him. That, indeed, was one of the signorino's pleasures; he loved to take the young girl all over his gardens and vineyards, talking to her in the amiable, half-petting, half-mocking manner that he had adopted from the first; and twice a week he gave her a music lesson.
"She has a splendid organ!" he would say.
"/Vous croyez/?" fluted Madame Petrucci, with the vilest accent and the most aggravating smile imaginable. It was the one hobby of the signorino's that she regarded with disrespect. Goneril too was a little bored by the music lesson, but, on the other hand, the walks delighted her. One day Goneril was out with her friend.
"Are the peasants very much afraid of you, signore?" she asked.
"Am I such a tyrant?" counter-questioned the signorino.
"No; but they are always begging me to ask you things. Angiolino wants to know if he may go for three days to see his uncle at Fiesole."
"Of course."
"But why, then, don't they ask you themselves? Is it they think me so cheeky?"
"Perhaps they think I can refuse you nothing."
