Jerry Junior (11 page)

She drew her hand away.

"I'm tired, Tony. I'm not quite myself."

"No, signorina, yesterday I sink maybe you not yourself, but to-day you ver' good ver' kind--jus' your own self ze way you ought to be."

The piazza, after the dark, narrow streets that led to it, seemed bubbling with life. The day's work was finished and the evening's play had begun. In the center, where a fountain splashed into a broad bowl, groups of women and girls with copper water-jars were laughing and gossiping as they waited their turns. One side of the square was flanked by the imposing façade of a church with the village saint on a pedestal in front; the other side, by a cheerfully inviting osteria with tables and chairs set into the street and a glimpse inside of a blazing hearth and copper kettles.

Mr. Wilder headed in a straight line for the nearest chair and dropped into it with an expression of permanence. Constance followed and they held a colloquy with a bowing host. He was vague as to the finding of carriage or donkeys, but if they would accommodate themselves until after supper there would be a diligence along which would take them back to Valedolmo.

"How soon will the diligence arrive?" asked Constance.

The man spread out his hands.

"It is due in three quarters of an hour, but it may be early and it may be late. It arrives when God and the driver wills."

"In that case," she laughed, "we will accommodate ourselves until after supper--and we have appetites! Please bring everything you have."

They supped on
minestra
and
fritto misto
washed down with the red wine of Grotta del Monte, which, their host assured them, was famous through all the country. He could not believe that they had never heard of it in Valedolmo. People sent for it from far off; even from Verona.

They finished their supper and the famous wine, but there was still no diligence. The village also had finished its supper and was drifting in family groups into the piazza. The moon was just showing above the house-tops, and its light, combined with the blazing braziers before the cook-shops made the square a patch work of brilliant high-lights and black shadows from deep cut doorways. Constance sat up alertly and watched the people crowding past. Across from the inn an itinerant show had established itself on a rudely improvised stage, with two flaring torches which threw their light half across the piazza, and turned the spray of the fountain into an iridescent shower. The gaiety of the scene was contagious. Constance rose insistently.

"Come, Dad; let's go over and see what they're doing."

"No, thank you, my dear. I prefer my chair."

"Oh, Dad, you're so phlegmatic!"

"But I thought you were tired."

"I'm not any more; I want to see the play.--You come then, Tony."

Tony rose with an elaborate sigh.

"As you please, signorina," he murmured obediently. An onlooker would have thought Constance cruel in dragging him away from his well-earned rest.

They made their way across the piazza and mounted the church steps behind the crowd where they could look across obliquely to the little stage. A clown was dancing to the music of a hurdy-gurdy while a woman in a tawdry pink satin evening gown beat an accompaniment on a drum. It was a very poor play with very poor players, and yet it represented to these people of Grotta del Monte something of life, of the big outside world which they in their little village would never see. Their upturned faces touched by the moonlight and the flare of the torches contained a look of wondering eagerness--the same look that had been in the eyes of the young peasant when he had begged to be taken to America.

The two stood back in the shadow of the doorway watching the people with the same interest that the people were expending on the stage. A child had been lifted to the base of the saint's pedestal in order to see, and in the excitement of a duel between two clowns he suddenly lost his balance and toppled off. His mother snatched him up quickly and commenced covering the hurt arm with kisses to make it well.

Constance laughed.

"Isn't it queer," she asked, "to think how different these people are from us and yet how exactly the same. Their way of living is absolutely foreign but their feelings are just like yours and mine."

He touched her arm and called her attention to a man and a girl on the step below them. It was the young peasant again who had guided them down the mountain, but who now had eyes for no one but Maria. She leaned toward him to see the stage and his arm was around her. Their interest in the play was purely a pretense and both of them knew it.

Tony laughed softly and echoed her words.

"Yes, their feelings are just like yours and mine."

He slipped his arm around her.

Constance drew back quickly.

"I think," she remarked, "that the diligence has come."

"Oh, hang the diligence!" Tony growled. "Why couldn't it have been five minutes late?"

They returned to the inn to find Mr. Wilder already on the front seat, and obligingly holding the reins, while the driver occupied himself with a glass of the famous wine. The diligence was a roomy affair of four seats and three horses. Behind the driver were three Italians gesticulating violently over local politics; a new
sindaco
was imminent. Behind these were three black-hooded nuns covertly interested in the woman in the pink evening gown. And behind the three, occupying the exact center of the rear seat, was a fourth nun with the portly bearing of a Mother Superior. She was very comfortable as she was, and did not propose to move. Constance climbed up on one side of her and Tony on the other.

"We are well chaperoned," he grumbled, as they jolted out of the piazza. "I always did think that the Church interfered too much with the rights of individuals."

Constance, in a spirit of friendly expansiveness, proceeded to pick up an acquaintance with the nuns, and the four black heads were presently bobbing in unison, while Tony, in gloomy isolation at his end of the seat, folded his arms and stared at the road. The driver had passed through many villages that day and had drunk many glasses of famous wine; he cracked his whip and sang as he drove. They rattled in and out of stone-paved villages, along open stretches of moonlit road, past villas and olive groves. Children screamed after them, dogs barked, Constance and her four nuns were very vivacious, and Tony's gloom deepened with every mile.

They had covered three quarters of the distance when the diligence was brought to a halt before a high stone wall and a solid barred gate. The nuns came back to the present with an excited cackling. Who would believe they had reached the convent so soon! They made their adieus and ponderously descended, their departure accelerated by Tony who had become of a sudden alertly helpful. As they started again he slid along into the Mother Superior's empty seat.

"What were we saying when the diligence interrupted?" he inquired.

"I don't remember, Tony, but I don't want to talk any more; I'm tired."

"You tired, signorina? Lay your head on my shoulder and go to sleep."

"Tony,
please
behave yourself. I'm simply too tired to make you do it."

He reached over and took her hand. She did not try to withdraw it for two--three minutes; then she shot him a sidewise glance.

"Tony," she said, "don't you think you are forgetting your place?"

"No, signorina, I am just learning it."

"Let go my hand."

He gazed pensively at the moon and hummed Santa Lucia under his breath.

"Tony! I shall be angry with you."

"I shall be ver' sorry for zat, signorina. I do not wish to make you angry, but I sink--perhaps you get over it."

"You are behaving abominably today, Tony. I shall never stay alone with you again."

"Signorina, look at zat moon up dere. Is it not ver' bright? When I look at zat moon I have always beautiful toughts about how much I love Costantina."

An interval followed during which neither spoke. The driver's song was growing louder and the horses were galloping. The diligence suddenly rounded a curved cliff on two wheels. Constance lurched against him; he caught her and held her. Her lips were very near his; he kissed her softly.

She moved to the far end of the seat and faced him with flushed cheeks.

"I thought you were a gentleman!"

"I used to be, signorina; now I am only poor donkey-man."

"I shall never speak to you again. You can climb as many mountains as you wish with my father, but you can't have anything more to do with me."

"
Scusi
, signorina. I--I did not mean to. It was just an accident, signorina."

Constance turned her back and stared at the road.

"It was not my fault. Truly it was not my fault. I did not wish to kiss you--no nevair. But I could not help it. You put your head too close."

She raised her eyes and studied the mountain-top.

"Signorina, why you treat me so cruel?"

Her back was inflexible.

"I am desolate. If you forgive me zis once I will nevair again do a sing so wicked. Nevair, nevair, nevair."

Constance continued her inspection of the mountain-top. Tony leaned forward until he could see her face.

"Signorina," he whispered, "jus' give me one li'l' smile to show me you are not angry forever."

The stage had stopped and Mr. Wilder was climbing down but Constance's gaze was still fixed on the sky, and Tony's eyes were on her.

"What's the matter, Constance, have you gone to sleep? Aren't you going to get out?"

She came back with a start.

"Are we here already?"

There was a suspicion of regret in her tone which did not escape Tony.

At the Villa Rosa gates he wished them a humbly deferential good-night but with a smile hovering about the corners of his mouth. Constance made no response. As he strode off, however, she turned her head and looked after him. He turned too and caught her. He waved his hand with a laugh, and took up his way, whistling Santa Lucia in double time.

CHAPTER XIII

Three days passed in which Mr. Wilder and Tony industriously climbed, and in which nothing of consequence passed between Constance and Tony. If she happened to be about when the expeditions either started or came to an end (and for one reason or another she usually was) she ignored him entirely; and he ignored her, except for an occasional mockingly deferential bow. He appeared to extract as much pleasure from the excursions as Mr. Wilder, and he asked for no extra compensation by the way.

It was Tuesday again, just a week and a day since the young American had dropped over the wall of Villa Rosa asking for the garden of the prince. Tony and Mr. Wilder were off on a trip; Miss Hazel and Constance on the point of sitting down to afternoon tea--there were no guests today--when the gardener from the Hotel du Lac appeared with a message from Nannie Hilliard. She and her aunt had arrived half an hour before, which was a good two days earlier than they were due. Constance read the note with a clouded brow and silently passed it to Miss Hazel. The news was not so entirely welcome as under other circumstances it would have been. Nannie Hilliard was both perspicacious and fascinating, and Constance foresaw that her presence would tangle further the already tangled plot of the little comedy which was unfolding itself at Villa Rosa. But Miss Hazel, divining nothing of comedies or plots, was thrown into a pleasant flutter by the news. Guests were a luxury which occurred but seldom in the quiet monotony of Valedolmo.

"We must call on them at once and bring them back to the house."

"I suppose we must." Constance agreed with an uncordial sigh.

Fifteen minutes later they were on their way to the Hotel du Lac, while Elizabetta, on her knees in the villa guest-room, was vigorously scrubbing the mosaic floor.

Gustavo hurried out to meet them. He was plainly in a flutter; something had occurred to upset the usual suavity of his manners.

"
Si
, signorina, in ze garden--ze two American ladies--having tea. And you are acquaint wif ze family; all ze time you are acquaint wif zem, and you never tell me!" There was mystification and reproach in his tone.

Constance eyed him with a degree of mystification on her side.

"I am acquainted with a number of families that I have never told you about," she observed.

"
Scusi
, signorina," he stammered; and immediately, "Tony, zat donk'-man, what you do wif him?"

"Oh, he and my father are climbing Monte Brione today."

"What time zay come home?"

"About seven o'clock, I fancy."

"Ze signora and ze signorina--zay come two days before zay are expect." He was clearly aggrieved by the fact.

Constance's mystification increased; she saw not the slightest connection.

"I suppose, Gustavo, you can find them something to eat even if they did come two days before they were expected?"

The two turned toward the arbor, but Constance paused for a moment and glanced back with a shade of mischief in her eye.

"By the way, Gustavo, that young man who taught the parrot English has gone?"

Gustavo rolled his eyes to the sky and back to her face. She understood nothing; was there ever a muddle like this?

"
Si
, signorina," he murmured confusedly, "ze yong man is gone."

Nannie caught sight of the visitors first, and with a start which nearly upset the tea table, came running forward to meet them; while her aunt, Mrs. Eustace, followed more placidly. Nannie was a big wholesome outdoor girl of a purely American type. She waited for no greetings; she had news to impart.

"Constance, Miss Hazel! I'm so glad to see you--what do you think? I'm engaged!"

Miss Hazel murmured incoherent congratulations, and tried not to look as shocked as she felt. In her day, no lady would have made so delicate an announcement in any such off-hand manner as this. Constance received it in the spirit in which it was given.

"Who's the man?" she inquired, as she shook hands with Mrs. Eustace.

[Illustration: "Nannie caught sight of the visitors first, and came running forward to meet them"]