Daphne: an Autumn Pastoral

CHAPTER I

"Her Excellency,--will she have the politeness," said Daphne slowly, reading from a tiny Italian-English phrase-book, "the politeness to"--She stopped helpless. Old Giacomo gazed at her with questioning eyes. The girl turned the pages swiftly and chose another phrase.

"I go," she announced, "I go to make a walk."

Light flashed into Giacomo's face.

"Si, si, Signorina; yes, yes," he assented with voice and shoulders and a flourish of the spoon he was polishing. "Capisco; I understand."

Daphne consulted her dictionary.

"Down there," she said gravely, pointing toward the top of the great hill on whose side the villa stood.

"Certainly," answered Giacomo with a bow, too much pleased by understanding when there was no reason for it to be captious in regard to the girl's speech. "The Signorina non ha paura, not 'fraid?"

"I'm not afraid of anything," was the answer in English. The Italian version of it was a shaking of the head. Then both dictionary and phrase-book were consulted.

"To return," she stated finally, "to return to eat at six hours." Then she looked expectantly about.

"Assunta?" she said inquiringly, with a slight shrug of her shoulders, for other means of expression had failed.

"Capisco, capisco," shouted Giacomo in his excitement, trailing on the marble floor the chamois skin with which he had been polishing the silver, and speaking in what seemed to his listener one word of a thousand syllables.

"The-Signorina-goes-to-walk-upon-the-hills-above-the-villa-because- it-is-a-most-beautiful-day.-She-returns-to-dine-at-six-and-wishes- Assunta-to-have-dinner-prepared.-Perhaps-the-Signorina-would- tell-what-she-would-like-for-her-dinner?-A-roast-chicken,-yes?- A-salad,-yes?"

Daphne looked dubiously at him, though he had stated the case with entire accuracy, and had suggested for her solitary meal what she most liked. There was a slight pucker in her white forehead, and she vouchsafed no answer to what she did not understand.

"Addio, addio," she said earnestly.

"A rivederla!" answered Giacomo, with a courtly sweep of the chamois skin.

The girl climbed steadily up the moist, steep path leading to the deep shadow of a group of ilex trees on the hill. At her side a stream of water trickled past drooping maidenhair fern and over immemorial moss. Here and there it fell in little cascades, making a sleepy murmur in the warm air of afternoon.

Halfway up the hill Daphne paused and looked back. Below the yellow walls of the Villa Accolanti, standing in a wide garden with encompassing poplars and cypresses, sketched great grassy slopes and gray-green olive orchards. The water from the stream, gathered in a stone basin at the foot of the hill, flowed in a marble conduit through the open hall. As she looked she was aware of two old brown faces anxiously gazing after her. Giacomo and Assunta were chattering eagerly in the doorway, the black of his butler's dress and the white of his protecting apron making his wife's purple calico skirt and red shoulder shawl look more gay. They caught the last flutter of the girl's blue linen gown as it disappeared among the ilexes.

"E molto bello, very beautiful, the Signorina," remarked Assunta. "What gray eyes she has, and how she walks!"

"But she knows no speech," responded her husband.

"Ma che!" shouted Assunta scornfully, "she talks American. You couldn't expect them to speak like us over there. They are not Romans in America."

"My brother Giovanni is there," remarked Giacomo. "She could have learned of him."

"She is like the Contessa," said Assunta. "You would know they are sisters, only this one is younger and has something more sweet."

"This one is grave," objected Giacomo as he polished. "She does not smile so much. The Contessa is gay. She laughs and sings and her cheeks grow red when she drinks red wine, and her hair is more yellow."

"She makes it so!" snapped Assunta.

"I have heard they all do in Rome," said Giacomo. "Some day I would like to go to see."

"To go away, to leave this girl here alone with us when she had just arrived!" interrupted Assunta. "I have no patience with the Contessa."

"But wasn't his Highness's father sick? And didn't she have to go? Else they wouldn't get his money, and all would go to the younger brother. You don't understand these things, you women." Giacomo's defense of his lady got into his fingers, and added much to the brightness of the spoons. The two talked together now, as fast as human tongues could go.

Assunta. She could have taken the Signorina.

Giacomo. She couldn't. It's fever.

Assunta. She could have left her maid.

Giacomo. Thank the holy father she didn't!

Assunta. And without a word of language to make herself understood.

Giacomo. She can learn, can't she?

Assunta. And with the cook gone, too! It's a great task for us.

Giacomo. You'd better be about it!... Going walking alone in the hills! And calling me "Excellency." There's no telling what Americans will do.

Assunta. She didn't know any better. When she has been here a week she won't call you "Excellency"! I must make macaroni for dinner.

Giacomo. Ma che! Macaroni? Roast chicken and salad.

Assunta. Niente! Macaroni!

Giacomo. Roast chicken! You are a pretty one to take the place of the cook!

Assunta. Roast chicken then! But what are you standing here for in the hall polishing spoons? If the Contessa could see you!

Assunta dragged her husband by the hem of his white apron through the great marble-paved dining-room out into the smoke-browned kitchen in the rear.

"Now where's Tommaso, and how am I going to get my chicken?" she demanded. "And why, in the name of all the saints, should an American signorina's illustrious name be Daphne?"

CHAPTER II

An hour later it was four o'clock. High, high up among the sloping hills Daphne sat on a great gray stone. Below her, out beyond olive orchards and lines of cypress, beyond the distant stone pines, stretched the Campagna, rolling in, like the sea that it used to be, wave upon wave of color, green here, but purple in the distance, and changing every moment with the shifting shadows of the floating clouds. Dome and tower there, near the line of shining sea, meant Rome.

Full sense of the enchantment of it all looked out of the girl's face. Wonder sat on her forehead, and on her parted lips. It was a face serious, either with persistent purpose or with some momentary trouble, yet full of an exquisite hunger for life and light and space. Eyes and hair and curving cheek,--all the girl's sensitive being seemed struggling to accept the gift of beauty before her, almost too great to grasp.

"After this," she said half aloud, her far glance resting on Rome in the hazy distance, "anything is possible."

"I don't seem real," she added, touching her left hand with the forefinger of her right. "It is Italy, ITALY, and that is Rome. Can all this exist within two weeks of the rush and jangle of Broadway?"

There was no answer, and she half closed her eyes, intoxicated with beauty.

A live thing darted across her foot, and she looked down to catch a glimpse of something like a slender green flame licking its way through the grass.

"Lizards crawling over me unrebuked," she said smiling. "Perhaps the millenium has come."

She picked two grass blades and a single fern.

"They aren't real, you know," she said, addressing herself. "This is all too good to be true. It will fold up in a minute and move away for the next act, and that will be full of tragedy, with an ugly background."

The heights still invited. She rose, and wandered on and up. Her step had the quick movement of a dweller in cities, not the slow pace of those who linger along country roads, keeping step with nature. In the cut and fashion of her gown was evinced a sophistication, and a high seriousness, possibly not her own.

She watched the deep imprint that her footsteps made in the soft grass.

"I'm half afraid to step on the earth here," she murmured to herself. "It seems to be quivering with old life."

The sun hung lower in the west. Of its level golden beams were born a thousand shades of color on the heights and in the hollows of the hills. Over all the great Campagna blue, yellow, and purple blended in an autumn haze.

"Oh!" cried the girl, throwing out her arms to take in the new sense of life that came flooding in upon her. "I cannot take it in. It is too great."

As she climbed, a strength springing from sheer delight in the wide beauty before her came into her face.

"It was selfish, and I am going to take it back. To-night I will write and say so. I could face anything now."

This hill, and then the side of that; one more gate, then Daphne turned for another look at Rome and the sea. Rome and the sea were gone. Here was a great olive orchard, there a pasture touching the sky, but where was anything belonging to her? Somewhere on the hills a lamb was bleating, and near the crickets chirped. Yes, it was safe, perfectly safe, yet the blue gown moved where the heart thumped beneath it.

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