A Bookful of Girls
The woman, Giuditta, had confided to him all she knew, and he had surmised more. Giuditta had known the family only since the time, three years ago, when she had been called in to take care of the little Cecilia during the illness of the Signora. The father had been a handsome good-for-nothing, who had got shot in a street row in that quarter of New York known as “Little Italy.” He was nothing, —niente, niente; – but the Signora! Oh, if the gentleman could but have known the Signora, so beautiful, so patient, so sad! Giuditta had stayed with her and shared her fortunes, which were all, alas! misfortunes, – and had nursed her through a long decline. But never a word had she told of her own origin, – the beautiful Signora, – nor had her father’s name ever passed her lips. Had she known that she was dying, perhaps then, for the child’s sake, she might have forgotten her pride. But she was always thinking she should get well, – and then, one day, she died!
There was very little left, – only a few dollars; but among the squalid properties of the pitiful little stage where the poor young thing had enacted the last act of her tragedy, was one picture, a Madonna, with the painter’s name, G. Bellini, just decipherable. It was a little picture, twelve inches by sixteen, in a dingy old frame, and not a pretty picture at that. But a kind man, a dealer in antiquities, had given Giuditta one hundred dollars for it. “Think of that, Signore! One hundred dollars for an ugly little black picture no bigger than that!”
“I suppose,” Mr. Grey remarked, as they stood balancing themselves at an angle of many degrees, – “I suppose that the picture was genuine, – else the man would hardly have paid one hundred dollars for it.”
“And would it be worth more than that?”
“A trifle,” he replied, rather grimly. “Somewhere among the thousands.”
“But why should they have kept such a picture when they were so poor? Why didn’t they sell it?”
“That would hardly have occurred to them. It was evidently a family heirloom that the girl had taken with her because she loved it. I doubt if she guessed its value. A Bellini! A Giovanni Bellini, in a New York tenement house! Think of it! And now I suppose some millionaire has got it. Likely enough somebody who doesn’t know enough to buy his own pictures! Horrible idea! Horrible!” and Mr. Grey strode along, all but snorting with rage at the thought.
“But tell me more about the little girl,” Blythe entreated, wishing the wind wouldn’t blow her words out of her mouth so rudely. “Her name is Cecilia, you say?”
“Yes; Cecilia. Dopo is the name they went by, but the nurse doesn’t think it genuine. Her idea is that her Signora was the daughter of some great family, and got herself disowned by marrying an opera singer who subsequently made a fiasco and dropped his name with his fame. She doesn’t think Dopo ever was a family name. It means ‘after,’ you know, and they may have adopted it for its ironical significance.”
“And the poor lady died and never told!” Blythe panted, as they toiled painfully up-hill with the rain beating in their faces.
“Yes, and – look out! hold tight!” for suddenly the slant of the deck was reversed, and they came coasting down to an impromptu seat on a bench.
“It seems,” Mr. Grey went on, when they had resumed their somewhat arduous promenade, – “it seems the woman, Giuditta, is quite alone in the world and has been longing to get back to Italy. So she easily persuaded herself that she could find the child’s family and establish her in high life. Giuditta has an uncommonly high idea of high life,” he added. “I think she imagines that somebody in a court train and a coronet will come to meet her Signorina at the pier in Genoa. Poor things! There’ll be a rude awakening!”
“But we won’t let it be rude!” Blythe protested. “We must do something about it. Can’t you think of anything to do?”
They were standing now, clinging to the friendly rope stretched across the deck, shoulder high.
“Giuditta’s plan,” Mr. Grey replied, “is the naïve one of appealing to the Queen about it. And, seriously, I think it may be worth while to ask the American Minister to make inquiries. For there is, of course, a bare chance that the family may be known at Court. In the meantime–”
“In the meantime,” Blythe interposed, “we’ve got to get her out of the steerage!”
“But how?”
“Oh, Mamma will arrange that. We’ll just make a cabin passenger of her, and I can take her in with me in my stateroom. Oh! how happy she will be, lying in my steamer chair, with that dear Gustav to wait on her! I must go down at once and get Mamma to say yes!”
“And you think she will?”
“I know she will! She is always doing nice things. If you really knew her you wouldn’t doubt it!” And with that the young optimist vanished in her accustomed whirl of golf-cape.
If faith can move mountains, it is perhaps no wonder that the implicit and energetic faith of which Blythe Halliday was possessed proved equal to the removal of a small child from one quarter to another of the big ship. The three persons concerned in bringing about the change were easily won over; for Mrs. Halliday was quite of Blythe’s mind in the matter, Mr. Grey had little difficulty in bringing the Captain to their point of view, while, as for Giuditta, she hailed the event as the first step in the transformation of her small Signorina into the little “great lady” she was born to be.
Accordingly, close upon luncheon time, when the sun was just breaking through the clouds, and the sea, true to the Captain’s prediction, was already beginning to subside, the tiny Signorina was carried, in the strong arms of Gustav, up the steep gangway by the wheel-house, where Blythe and her mother, Mr. DeWitt and the poet, to say nothing of Captain Seemann himself, formed an impromptu reception committee for her little ladyship.
As the child was set on her feet at the head of the gangway, she turned to throw a kiss down upon her faithful Giuditta, and then, without the slightest hesitation, she placed her hand in Blythe’s, and walked away with her.
That evening there was a dance on board the Lorelei; for it had been but the fringe of a storm which they had crossed, and the sea was again taking on its long, easy swell.
The deck presented a festal appearance for the occasion. Rows of Japanese lanterns were strung from side to side against the white background of awning and deckhouse, and the flags of many nations lent their gay colours to the pretty scene. The ship’s orchestra was in its element, playing with a “go” and rhythm which seemed caught from the pulsing movement of the ship itself.
As Blythe, with Mr. DeWitt, who had been a famous dancer in his day, led off the Virginia Reel, she wondered how it would strike the sailors of a passing brig, – this gay apparition of light and music, riding the great, dark, solemn sea.
The dance itself was rather a staid, middle-aged affair, for Blythe was the only young girl on board, and none but the youngest or the surest-footed could put much spirit into a dance where the law of gravitation was apparently changing base from moment to moment. Blythe and her partner, however, took little account of the moving floor beneath their feet, or the hesitating demeanour of their companions. One after another, even the most reluctant and self-distrustful of the revellers found themselves caught up into active participation in the figure.
In a quiet corner of the deck sat Mrs. Halliday, with little Cecilia beside her, snugly stowed away in a nest of steamer-rugs; for they could not bear to take her below, out of the fresh, invigorating air. Their little guest spoke hardly any English, but, although Mrs. Halliday was under the impression that she herself spoke Italian, the child seemed more conversable in Blythe’s company than in that of any one else, not excepting Mr. Grey, about whose linguistic accomplishments there could be no question.
Accordingly when, the Virginia Reel being finished, Blythe came and sat on the foot of the little girl’s chair, they fell into an animated conversation, each in her own tongue. And presently, during a pause in the music, the Italian Count chanced to pass their way, and, stopping in his solitary promenade, appeared to give ear to their talk.
Suddenly he stooped, and, looking into the animated face of the child, inquired in his own tongue; “What is thy name, little one?”
But when the pure, liquid, childish voice answered “Cecilia Dopo,” he merely lifted his hat and, bowing ceremoniously, passed on.
Mr. Grey, who had watched the little scene from a distance, joined the group a moment later and, taking a vacant chair beside Mrs. Halliday, remarked:
“I think we shall have to cultivate the old gentleman. He might be induced to lend a hand in behalf of this young person. They are both Florentines,” he added, thoughtfully, “and Florentine society is not large.”
“Then you really believe the nurse is right about the child?” Mrs. Halliday asked.
“Oh, I shouldn’t dare say that the mother was a great lady,” he returned; “but there is certainly something high-bred about the little thing.”
“They often have that air,” Mrs. Halliday demurred, – “even the beggar children.”
“Yes; to our eyes. But, do you know, I rather think the Italians themselves can tell the difference. I would rather trust Giuditta’s judgment than my own. Besides,” he added, after a long pause, during which he had been watching the expressive face of the child. “Besides, – there’s that Giovanni Bellini. That sort of thing doesn’t often stray into low society.”
At this juncture the tall Italian moved again into their neighbourhood, and stood, at a point where the awning had been drawn back, gazing, with a preoccupied air, out to sea.
Rising from his seat, Mr. Grey approached him, remarking abruptly, and with a jerk of the head toward Cecilia, “Florentine, is she not?”
“Sicuro,” was the grave reply; upon which the Count moved away, to be seen no more that evening.
As the Englishman rejoined them after this laconic interview, Blythe greeted him with a new theory.
“Do you know,” she said, “I used to think the Count was haughty and disagreeable, but I have changed my mind.”
“That only shows how susceptible you good Republicans are to any sign of attention from the nobility,” was the teasing reply.
“Perhaps you are right,” Blythe returned, with the fair-mindedness which distinguished her. “You know I never saw a titled person before, excepting one red-headed English Lord, who hadn’t any manners. I’ve often thought I should like, of all things, to know a King or Queen really well!”
“You don’t say so!” Mr. Grey laughed. “And what’s your opinion now, of the old gentleman, since he deigned to interrupt your conversation?”
“I believe he is unhappy.”
“What makes you think so?”
“There’s an unhappy look away back in his eyes. I never looked in before, – and then–”
“And then–?”
“There’s something about his voice.”
“Yes; Tuscan, you know.”
“Oh, is that it? Well, any way, I like him!”
“If that’s the case, perhaps you could make better headway with him than I.”
“But I don’t speak Italian.”
“Perhaps you speak French.”
“I know my conjugations,” was the modest admission.
“And I’m sure he would be enchanted to hear them,” Mr. Grey laughed, as the orchestra struck into the familiar music of the Lancers, causing him to beat a retreat into the smoking-room.
And while Blythe danced gaily and heartily with a boy somewhat younger than herself, and not quite as tall, her little protégée fell into a deep sleep. And presently, the dance being over, the faithful Gustav carried her down to Blythe’s stateroom, where she was snugly tucked away in the gently rocking cradle of the lower berth.
As for Blythe, thus relegated to the upper berth, she entered promptly into an agreeable dreamland, where she found herself speaking Italian fluently, and where she discovered, to her extreme satisfaction, that the Queen of Italy was her bosom friend!
CHAPTER III
A NEW DAWN
It was pretty to see the little Signorina revive under the favouring influences of prosperity; and indeed the soft airs of the southern seas were never sweeter nor more caressing than those which came to console our voyagers for their short-lived storm.
Life was full of interest and excitement for the little girl. The heavy lassitude of her steerage days had fallen from her, and already that first morning a delicate glow of returning vigour touched the little cheek.
“She’s picking up, isn’t she?” Mr. DeWitt remarked, as he joined Blythe and the child at the head of the steerage gangway, where the little one was throwing enthusiastic kisses and musical Italian phrases down upon the hardly less radiant Giuditta.
“Oh, yes!” was the confident reply. “She’s a different child since her saltwater bath and her big bowl of oatmeal. Mamma says she really has a splendid physique, only she was smothering down there in the steerage.”
Then Mr. DeWitt stooped and, lifting the child, set her on the railing, where she could get a better view of her faithful friend below.
“There! How do you like that?” he inquired.
Upon which the little girl, finding herself unexpectedly on a level with Blythe’s face, put up her tiny hand and stroked her cheek.
“Like-a Signorina,” she remarked with apparent irrelevance.
“Oh! You do, do you? Well, she’s a nice girl.”
“Nice-a girl-a,” the child repeated, adding a vowel, Italian fashion, to each word.
Then, with an appreciative look into the pleasant, whiskered countenance, whose owner was holding her so securely on her precarious perch, she pressed her little hand gently against his waistcoat, and gravely remarked, “Nice-a girl-a, anche il Signore!”
“So! I’m a nice girl too, am I?” the old gentleman replied, much elated with the compliment.
And Giuditta, down below, perceiving that her Signorina was making new conquests, snatched her bright handkerchief from her head, and waved it gaily; whereupon a score of the steerage passengers, seized with her enthusiasm, waved their hats and handkerchiefs and shouted; “Buon’ viaggio, Signorina! Buon’ viaggio!”
And the little recipient of this ovation became so excited that she almost jumped out of the detaining arms of Mr. DeWitt, who, being of a cautious disposition, made haste to set her down again; upon which they all walked aft, under the big awning.
“She makes friends easily,” Mr. Grey remarked, later in the morning, as he and Blythe paused a moment in their game of ring-toss. The child was standing, clinging to the hand of a tall woman in black, a grave, silent Southerner who had hitherto kept quite to herself.
“Yes,” Blythe rejoined, “but she is fastidious. She will listen to no blandishments from any one whom she doesn’t take a fancy to. That good-natured, talkative Mr. Distel has been trying all day to get her to come to him, but she always gives him the slip.” And Blythe, in her preoccupation, proceeded to throw two rings out of three wide of the mark.
“Has the Count taken any more notice of her?” Mr. Grey inquired, deftly tossing the smallest of all the rings over the top of the post.
“Apparently not; but she takes a great deal of notice of him. See, she’s watching him now. I should not be a bit surprised if she were to speak to him of her own accord one of these days.”
“There are not many days left,” her companion remarked. “The Captain says we shall make Cape St. Vincent before night.”
“Oh, how fast the voyage is going!” Blythe sighed.
Yet, sorry as she would be to have the voyage over, no one was more enchanted than Blythe when Cape St. Vincent rose out of the sea, marking the end of the Atlantic passage. It was just at sundown, and the beautiful headland, bathed in a golden light, stood, like the mystic battlements of a veritable “Castle in Spain,” against a luminous sky.
“Mamma,” Blythe asked, “did you ever see anything more beautiful than that?”
They were standing at the port railing, with the little girl between them, watching the great cliffs across the deep blue sea.
“Nothing more beautiful than that seen through your eyes, Blythe.”
“I believe you do see it through my eyes, Mumsey,” Blythe answered, thoughtfully, “just as I am getting to see things through Cecilia’s eyes. I never realised before how things open up when you look at them that way.”
And Mrs. Halliday smiled a quiet, inward smile that Blythe understood with a new understanding.
They took little Cecilia ashore with them at Gibraltar the next morning, and again Blythe experienced the truth of her new theory.
It was our heroine’s first glimpse of Europe, and no delectable detail of their hour’s drive, no exotic bloom, no strange Moorish costume, no enchanting vista of cliff or sea, was lost upon her. Yet she felt that even her enthusiasm paled before the deep, speechless ecstasy of the little Cecilia. It was as if, in the tropical glow and fragrant warmth, the child were breathing her native air, – as if she had come to her own.
On their return, as the grimy old tug which had carried them across the harbour came alongside the big steamer, the child suddenly exclaimed, “Ecco, il Signore!” and, following the direction of her gesture, their eyes met those of the Count looking down upon them. He instantly moved away, and they had soon forgotten him, in the pleasurable excitement of bestowing upon Giuditta the huge, hat-shaped basket filled with fruit which they had brought for her.
Later in the day, as they weighed anchor and sailed out from the shadow of the great Rock, Blythe found herself standing with Mr. Grey at the stern-rail of their own deck, watching the face of the mighty cliff as it changed with the varying perspective.
“Oh! I wish I were a poet or an artist or something!” she cried.
“Would you take that monstrous fortress for a subject?” he asked.
“Yes, and I should do something so splendid with it that nobody would dare to be satirical!” and she glanced defiantly at her companion, whose good-humoured countenance was wrinkling with amusement.
“Let us see,” he said. “How would this do?” And he gravely repeated the following:
“There once was a fortress named Gib,
Whose manners were haughty and —
What rhymes with Gib?”
“Glib!” Blythe cried.
“Good!
Whose manners were haughty and glib.
If you tried to get in,
She replied with a grin, —
Quick! Give me another rhyme for Gib.”
“Rib!” Blythe suggested, audaciously.
“Excellent, excellent! Rib! Now, how does it go?
There once was a fortress named Gib,Whose manners were haughty and glib!If you tried to get in,She replied, with a grin,‘I’m Great Britain’s impregnable rib!’Rather neat! Don’t you think?”
“O Mr. Grey!” Blythe cried. “You’ve got to write that in my voyage-book! It’s the–”
At that moment, a gesture from her companion caused her to turn and look behind her. There, only a few feet from where they were standing, but with his back to them, was the Count, sitting on one of the long, stationary benches fastened against the hatchway, while just at his knees stood little Cecilia. She was balancing herself with some difficulty on the gently swaying deck, holding out for his acceptance a small bunch of violets, which one of the market-women at Gibraltar had bestowed upon her.
As he appeared to hesitate: “Prendili!” she cried, with pretty wilfulness. Upon which he took the little offering, and lifted it to his face.
The child stood her ground resolutely, and presently, “Put me up!” she commanded, still in her own sweet tongue.
Obediently he lifted her, and placed her beside him on the seat, where she sat clinging with one little hand to the sleeve of his coat to keep from slipping down, with the gentle dip of the vessel.
The two sat, for a few minutes, quite silent, gazing off toward the African coast, and Blythe and her companion drew nearer, filled with curiosity as to the outcome of the interview.
Presently the child looked up into the Count’s face and inquired, with the pretty Tuscan accent which sounded like an echo of his own question on the evening of the dance:
“What is thy name?”
“Giovanni Battista Allamiraviglia.”
Cecilia repeated after him the long, musical name, without missing a syllable, and with a certain approving inflection which evidently had an ingratiating effect upon the many-syllabled aristocrat; for he lifted his carefully gloved hand and passed it gently over the little head.
The child took the caress very naturally, and when, presently, the hand returned to the knee, she got possession of it, and began crossing the kid fingers one over the other, quite undisturbed by the fact that they invariably fell apart again as soon as she loosed her hold.
At this juncture the two eavesdroppers moved discreetly away, and Blythe, leaving her fellow-conspirator far behind, flew to her mother’s side, crying:
“O Mumsey! She’s simply winding him round her finger, and there’s nothing he won’t be ready to do for us now!”
“Yes, dear; I’m delighted to hear it,” Mrs. Halliday replied, with what Blythe was wont to call her “benignant and amused” expression. “And after a while you will tell me what you are talking about!”
But Blythe, nothing daunted, only appealed to Mr. Grey, who had just caught up with her.
“You agree with me, Mr. Grey; don’t you?” she insisted.
“Perfectly, and in every particular. Mrs. Halliday, your daughter and I have been eavesdropping, and we have come to confess.”
Whereupon Blythe dropped upon the foot of her mother’s chair, Mr. Grey established himself in the chair adjoining, and they gave their somewhat bewildered auditor the benefit of a few facts.
“I really believe,” the Englishman remarked, in conclusion, – “I really believe that haughty old dago can help us if anybody can. And when your engaging young protégée has completed her conquest, – to-morrow, it may be, or the day after, for she’s making quick work of it, – we’ll see what can be done with him.”
And, after all, what could have been more natural than the attraction which, from that time forth, manifested itself between the Count and his small countrywoman? If the little girl, in making her very marked advances, had been governed by the unwavering instinct which always guided her choice of companions, the old man, for his part, could not but find refreshment, after his long, solitary voyage, in the pretty Tuscan prattle of the child. Most Italians love children, and the Count Giovanni Battista Allamiraviglia appeared to be no exception to his race.
The two would sit together by the hour, absorbed, neither in the lovely sights of this wonderful Mediterranean voyage, nor in the movements of those about them, but simply and solely in one another.
“She’s telling her own story better than we could do,” Mr. Grey used to say.
It was now no unusual thing to see the child established on the old gentleman’s knee, and once Blythe found her fast asleep in his arms. But it was not until the very last day of the voyage that the most wonderful thing of all occurred.
The sea was smooth as a lake, and all day they had been sailing the length of the Riviera. All day people had been giving names to the gleaming white points on the distant, dreamy shore, – Nice, Mentone, San Remo, – names fragrant with association even to the mind of the young traveller, who knew them only from books and letters.
Blythe and the little girl were sitting, somewhat apart from the others, on the long bench by the hatchway where Cecilia had first laid siege to the Count’s affections, and Blythe was allowing the child to look through the large end of her field-glass, – a source of endless entertainment to them both. Suddenly Cecilia gave a little shriek of delight at the way her good friend, Mr. Grey, dwindled into a pigmy; upon which the Count, attracted apparently by her voice, left his chair and came and sat down beside them.
As he lifted his hat, with a polite “Permetta, Signorina,” Blythe noticed, for the first time on the whole voyage, that he was without his gloves. Perhaps the general humanising of his attitude, through intercourse with the child, had caused him to relax this little point of punctilio.
Cecilia, meanwhile, had promptly climbed upon his knee, and now, laying hold of one of the ungloved hands, she began twisting a large seal ring which presented itself to her mind as a pleasing novelty. Presently her attention seemed arrested by the device of the seal, and she murmured softly, “Fideliter.”