Mr Gilfil's Love Story Page 5

fruit-woman, however, was all smiles and deep curtsies to the Eccelentissima,

  who, not very well understanding her Milanese dialect, abbreviated the

  conversation by asking to be shown at once to Signor Sarti. La Pazzini preceded

  her up the dark narrow stairs, and opened a door through which she begged her

  ladyship to enter. Directly opposite the door lay Sarti, on a low miserable bed.

  His eyes were glazed, and no movement indicated that he was conscious of their

  entrance.

  On the foot of the bed was seated a tiny child, apparently not three years old,

  her head covered by a linen cap, her feet clothed with leather boots, above

  which her little yellow legs showed thin and naked. A frock, made of what had

  once been a gay flowered silk, was her only other garment. Her large dark eyes

  shone from out her queer little face, like two precious stones in a grotesque

  image carved in old ivory. She held an empty medicine-bottle in her hand, and

  was amusing herself with putting the cork in and drawing it out again, to hear

  how it would pop.

  La Pazzini went up to the bed and said, 'Ecco la nobilissima donna;' but

  directly after screamed out, 'Holy mother! he is dead! '

  It was so. The entreaty had not been sent in time for Sarti to carry out his

  project of asking the great English lady to take care of his Caterina. That was

  the thought which haunted his feeble brain as soon as he began to fear that his

  illness would end in death. She had wealth�she was kind�she would surely do

  something for the poor orphan. And so, at last, he sent that scrap of paper

  which won the fulfilment of his prayer, though he did not live to utter it. Lady

  Cheverel gave La Pazzini money that the last decencies might be paid to the dead

  man, and carried away Caterina, meaning to consult Sir Christopher as to what

  should be done with her. Even Mrs Sharp had been so smitten with pity by the

  scene she had witnessed when she was summoned up-stairs to fetch Caterina, as to

  shed a small tear, though she was not at all subject to that weakness; indeed,

  she abstained from it on principle, because, as she often said, it was known to

  be the worst thing in the world for the eyes.

  On the way back to her hotel, Lady Cheverel turned over various projects in her

  mind regarding Caterina, but at last one gained the preference over all the

  rest. Why should they not take the child to England, and bring her up there?

  They had been married twelve years, yet Cheverel Manor was cheered by no

  children's voices, and the old house would be all the better for a little of

  that music. Besides, it would be a Christian work to train this little Papist

  into a good Protestant, and graft as much English fruit as possible on the

  Italian stem.

  Sir Christopher listened to this plan with hearty acquiescence. He loved

  children, and took at once to the little black-eyed monkey�his name for Caterina

  all through her short life. But neither he nor Lady Cheverel had any idea of

  adopting her as their daughter, and giving her their own rank in life. They were

  much too English and aristocratic to think of anything so romantic. No! the

  child would be brought up at Cheverel Manor as a protegee, to be ultimately

  useful, perhaps, in sorting worsteds, keeping accounts, reading aloud, and

  otherwise supplying the place of spectacles when her ladyship's eyes should wax

  dim.

  So Mrs Sharp had to procure new clothes, to replace the linen cap, flowered

  frock, and leathern boots; and now, strange to say, little Caterina. who had

  suffered many unconscious evils in her existence of thirty moons, first began to

  know conscious troubles. 'Ignorance,' says Ajax, 'is a painless evil;' so, I

  should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it. At any

  rate, cleanliness is sometimes a painful good, as any one can vouch who has had

  his face washed the wrong way, by a pitiless hand with a gold ring on the third

  finger. If you, reader, have not known that initiatory anguish, it is idle to

  expect that you will form any approximate conception of what Caterina endured

  under Mrs Sharp's new dispensation of soap-and-water. Happily, this purgatory

  came presently to be associated in her tiny brain with a passage straightway to

  a seat of bliss�the sofa in Lady Cheverel's sitting-room, where there were toys

  to be broken, a ride was to be had on Sir Christopher's knee, and a spaniel of

  resigned temper was prepared to undergo small tortures without flinching.

  Chapter 4

  IN three months from the time of Caterina's adoption�namely, in the late autumn

  of 1773�the chimneys of Cheverel Manor were sending up unwonted smoke, and the

  servants were awaiting in excitement the return of their master and mistress

  after a two years' absence. Great was the astonishment of Mrs Bellamy, the

  housekeeper, when Mr Warren lifted a little black-eyed child out of the

  carriage, and great was Mrs Sharp's sense of superior information and

  experience, as she detailed Caterina's history, interspersed with copious

  comments, to the rest of the upper servants that evening, as they were taking a

  comfortable glass of grog together in the housekeeper's room. A pleasant room it

  was as any party need desire to muster in on a cold November evening. The

  fireplace alone was a picture: a wide and deep recess with a low brick altar in

  the middle, where great logs of dry wood sent myriad sparks up the dark

  chimney-throat; and over the front of this recess a large wooden entablature

  bearing this motto, finely carved in old English letters, 'Fear God and honour

  the King'. And beyond the party, who formed a half-moon with their chairs and

  well-furnished table round this bright fireplace, what a space of chiaroscuro

  for the imagination to revel in! Stretching across the far end of the room, what

  an oak table, high enough surely for Homer's gods, standing on four massive

  legs, bossed and bulging like sculptured urns! and, lining the distant wall,

  what vast cupboards, suggestive of inexhaustible apricot jam and promiscuous

  butler's perquisites! A stray picture or two had found their way down there, and

  made agreeable patches of dark hrown on the huff-coloured walls. High over the

  loud-resounding double door hung one which, from some indications of a face

  looming out of blackness, might, by a great synthetic effort, be pronounced a

  Magdalen. Considerably lower down hung the similitude of a hat and feathers,

  with portions of a ruff, stated by Mrs Bellamy to represent Sir Francis Bacon,

  who invented gunpowder, and, in her opinion, 'might ha' been better emplyed.'

  But this evening the mind is but slightly arrested by the great Verulam, and is

  in the humour to think a dead philosopher less interesting than a living

  gardener, who sits conspicuous in the half-circle round the fireplace. Mr Bates

  is habitually a guest in the housekeeper's room of an evening, preferring the

  social pleasures there�the feast of gossip and the flow of grog �to a bachelor's

  chair in his charming thatched cottage on a little island, where every sound is

  remote, but the cawing of rooks and the screaming of wild geese. poetic sounds,

&nb
sp; doubtless, but, humanly speaking, not convivial.

  Mr Bates was by no means an average person, to be passed without special notice.

  He was a sturdy Yorkshireman, approaching forty, whose face Nature seemed to

  have coloured when she was in a hurry, and had no time to attend to nuances, for

  every inch of him visible above his neckcloth was of one impartial redness; so

  that when he was at some distance your imagination was at liberty to place his

  lips anywhere between his nose and chin. Seen closer, his lips were discerned to

  be of a peculiar cut, and I fancy this had something to do with the peculiarity

  of his dialect, which, as we shall see, was individual rather than provincial.

  Mr Bates was further distinguished from the common herd by a perpetual blinking

  of the eyes; and this, together with the red-rose tint of his complexion, and a

  way he had of hanging his head forward, and rolling it from side to side as he

  walked, gave him the air of a Bacchus in a blue apron, who, in the present

  reduced circumstances of Olympus, had taken to the management of his own vines.

  Yet, as gluttons are often thin, so sober men are often rubicund; and Mr Bates

  was sober, with that manly, British, churchman-like sobriety which can carry a

  few glasses of grog without any perceptible clarification of ideas,

  'Dang my boottons!' observed Mr Bates, who, at the conclusion of Mrs Sharp's

  narrative, felt himself urged to his strongest interjection, 'it's what I

  shouldn't ha' looked for from Sir Cristhifer an' my ledy, to bring a furrin

  child into the coonthry; an' depend on't, whether you an' me lives to see't or

  noo, it'll coom to soom harm. The first sitiation iver I held �it was a hold

  hancient habbey, wi' the biggest orchard o' apples an' pears you ever see� there

  was a French valet, an' he stool silk stoockins, an' shirts, an' rings, an'

  iverythin' he could ley his hands on, an' run awey at last wi' th' missis's

  jewl-box. They're all alaike, them furriners. It roons i' th' blood.'

  'Well,' said Mrs Sharp, with the air of a person who held liberal views, but

  knew where to draw the line, 'I'm not a-going to defend the furriners, for I've

  as good reason to know what they are as most folks, an' nobody'll ever hear me

  say but what they're next door to heathens, and the hile they eat wi' their

  victuals is enough to turn any Christian's stomach. But for all that�an' for all

  as the trouble in respect o' washin' and managin' has fell upo' me through the

  journey�I can't say but what I think as my Lady an' Sir Cristifer's done a right

  thing by a hinnicent child as doesn't know its right hand from its left, i'

  bringing it where it'll learn to speak summat better nor gibberish, and be

  brought up i' the true religion. For as for them furrin churches as Sir

  Cristifer is so unaccountable mad after, wi' pictures o' men an' women a-showing

  themselves just for all the world as God made 'em. I think, for my part, as it's

  almost a sin to go into 'em.'

  'You're likely to have more foreigners, however,' said Mr Warren, who liked to

  provoke the gardener, 'for Sir Christopher has engaged some Italian workmen to

  help in the alterations in the house.'

  'Olterations! ' exclaimed Mrs Bellamy, in alarm. 'What olterations! '

  'Why,' answered Mr Warren, 'Sir Christopher, as I understand, is going to make a

  new thing of the old Manor-house both inside and out. And he's got portfolios

  full of plans and pictures coming. It is to be cased with stone, in the Gothic

  style�pretty near like the churches, you know, as far as I can make out; and the

  ceilings are to be beyond anything that's been seen in the country. Sir

  Christopher's been giving a deal of study to it.'

  'Dear heart alive!' said Mrs Bellamy, 'we shall be pisoned wi' lime an' plaster,

  an' hev the house full o' workmen colloguing wi' the maids, an' makin' no end o'

  mischief.'

  'That ye may ley your life on, Mrs Bellamy,' said Mr Bates.

  'Howiver, I'll noot denay that the Goothic stayle's prithy anoof, an' it's

  woonderful how near them stoon-carvers cuts oot the shapes o' the pine apples,

  an' shamrucks, an' rooses. I dare sey Sir Cristhifer'll meck a naice thing o'

  the Manor, an' there woon't be many gentlemen's houses i' the coonthry as'll

  coom up to't, wi' sich a garden an' pleasure-groons an' wall-fruit as King

  George maight be prood on.'

  'Well, I can't think as the house can be better nor it is, Gothic or no Gothic,'

  said Mrs Bellamy; 'an' I've done the picklin' and preservin' in it fourteen year

  Michaelmas was a three weeks. But what does my lady say to't? '

  'My lady knows better than cross Sir Cristifer in what he's set his mind on,'

  said Mr Bellamy, who objected to the critical tone of the conversation. 'Sir

  Cristifer'll hev his own way, that you may tek your oath. An' i' the right on't

  too. He's a gentleman born, an's got the money. But come, Mester Bates, fill

  your glass, an' we'll drink health an' happiness to his honour an' my lady, and

  then you shall give us a song. Sir Cristifer doesn't come hum from Italy ivery

  night.'

  This demonstrable position was accepted without hesitation as ground for a

  toast; but Mr Bates, apparently thinking that his song was not an equally

  reasonable sequence, ignored the second part of Mr Bellamy's proposal. So Mrs

  Sharp, who had been heard to say that she had no thoughts at all of marrying Mr

  Bates, though he was 'a sensable fresh-coloured man as many a woman 'ud snap at

  for a husband,' enforced Mr Bellamy's appeal.

  'Come, Mr Bates, let us hear "Roy's Wife". I'd rether hear a good old song like

  that, nor all the fine Italian toodlin.'

  Mr Bates, urged thus flatteringly, stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his

  waistcoat, threw himself back in his chair with his head in that position in

  which he could look directly towards the zenith, and struck up a remarkably

  staccato rendering of 'Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch'. This melody may certainly be

  taxed with excessive iteration, but that was precisely its highest

  recommendation to the present audience, who found it all the easier to swell the

  chorus. Nor did it at all diminish their pleasure that the only particular

  concerning 'Roy's Wife', which Mr Bates's enunciation allowed them to gather,

  was that she 'chated' him,�whether in the matter of garden stuff or of some

  other commodity, or why her name should, in consequence, be repeatedly

  reiterated with exultation, remaining an agreeable mystery.

  Mr Bates's song formed the climax of the evening's good-fellowship, and the

  party soon after dispersed�Mrs Bellamy perhaps to dream of quicklime flying

  among her preserving-pans, or of love-sick housemaids reckless of unswept

  corners� and Mrs Sharp to sink into pleasant visions of independent housekeeping

  in Mr Bates's cottage, with no bells to answer, and with fruit and vegetables ad

  libitum.

  Caterina soon conquered all prejudices against her foreign blood; for what

  prejudices will hold out against helplessness and broken prattle? She became the

  pet of the household, thrusting Sir Christopher's favourite bloodhound of that

  day, Mrs Bellamy's two canaries, a
nd Mr Bates's largest Dorking hen, into a

  merely secondary position. The consequence was, that in the space of a summer's

  day she went through a great cycle of experiences, commencing with the somewhat

  acidulated goodwill of Mrs Sharp's nursery discipline. Then came the grave

  luxury of her ladyship's sitting-room, and, perhaps, the dignity of a ride on

  Sir Christopher's knee, sometimes followed by a visit with him to the stables,

  where Caterina soon learned to hear without crying the baying of the chained

  bloodhounds, and say, with ostentatious bravery, clinging to Sir Christopher's

  leg all the while, 'Dey not hurt Tina.' Then Mrs Bellamy would perhaps be going

  out to gather the rose-leaves and lavender, and Tina was made proud and happy by

  being allowed to carry a handful in her pinafore; happier still, when they were

  spread out on sheets to dry, so that she could sit down like a frog among them,

  and have them poured over her in fragrant showers. Another frequent pleasure was

  to take a journey with Mr Bates through the kitchen-gardens and the hothouses,

  where the rich bunches of green and purple grapes hung from the roof, far out of

  reach of the tiny yellow hand that could not help stretching itself out towards

  them; though the hand was sure at last to be satisfied with some

  delicate-flavoured fruit or sweet-scented flower. Indeed, in the long monotonous

  leisure of that great country-house, you may be sure there was always some one

  who had nothing better to do than to play with Tina. So that the little southern

  bird had its northern nest lined with tenderness, and caresses, and pretty

  things. A loving sensitive nature was too likely, under such nurture, to have

  its susceptibility heightened into unfitness for an encounter with any harder

  experience; all the more, because there were gleams of fierce resistance to any

  discipline that had a harsh or unloving aspect. For the only thing in which

  Caterina showed any precocity was a certain ingenuity in vindictiveness. When

  she was five years old she had revenged herself for an unpleasant prohihition by

  pouring the ink into Mrs Sharp's work-basket; and once, when Lady Cheverel took

  her doll from her, because she was affectionately licking the paint off its

  face, the little minx straightway climbed on a chair and threw down a

  flower-vase that stood on a bracket. This was almost the only instance in which

  her anger overcame her awe of Lady Cheverel, who had the ascendancy always

  belonging to kindness that never melts into caresses, and is severely but

  uniformly beneficent.

  By-and-by the happy monotony of Cheverel Manor was broken in upon in the way Mr

  Warren had announced. The roads through the park were cut up by waggons carrying

  loads of stone from a neighbouring quarry, the green courtyard became dusty with

  lime, and the peaceful house rang with the sound of tools. For the next ten

  years Sir Christopher was occupied with the architectural metamorphosis of his

  old family mansion; thus anticipating, through the prompting of his individual

  taste, that general reaction from the insipid imitation of the Palladian style,

  towards a restoration of the Gothic, which marked the close of the eighteenth

  century. This was the object he had set his heart on, with a singleness of

  determination which was regarded with not a little contempt by his fox-hunting

  neighbours, who wondered greatly that a man with some of the best blood in

  England in his veins, should be mean enough to economize in his cellar, and

  reduce his stud to two old coach-horses and a hack, for the sake of riding a

  hobby, and playing the architect. Their wives did not see so much to blame in

  the matter of the cellar and stables, but they were eloquent in pity for poor

  Lady Cheverel, who had to live in no more than three rooms at once, and who must

  be distracted with noises, and have her constitution undermined by unhealthy