Part 5 (1/2)
”You often go to the convent, do you not?” asked the Scotchman, filling his gla.s.s, for the first mouthful of ham made him thirsty again. ”You take the linen up with your mother, I know.”
”Sometimes, when I feel like going,” answered the girl, willing to show that it was not her duty to carry baskets. ”I only go when we have the small baskets that one can carry on one's head. I will tell you. They use the small baskets for the finer things, the abbess's linen, and the altar cloths, and the chaplain's lace, which belongs to the nuns. But the sheets and the table linen are taken up in baskets as long as a man.
It takes four women to carry one of them.”
”That must be very inconvenient,” said Dalrymple. ”I should think that smaller ones would always be better.”
”Who knows? It has always been so. And when it has always been so, it will always be so--one knows that.”
Annetta nodded her head rhythmically to convey an impression of the immutability of all ancient customs and of this one in particular.
Dalrymple, however, was not much interested in the question of the baskets.
”What do the nuns do all day?” he asked. ”I suppose you see them, sometimes. There must be young ones amongst them.”
Annetta glanced more keenly at the Scotchman's quiet face, and then laughed.
”There is one, if you could see her! The abbess's niece. Oh, that one is beautiful. She seems to me a painted angel!”
”The abbess's niece? What is she like? Let me see, the abbess is a princess, is she not?”
”Yes, a great princess of the Princes of Gerano, of Casa Braccio, you know. They are always abbesses. And the young one will be the next, when this one dies. She is Maria Addolorata, in religion, but I do not know her real name. She has a beautiful face and dark eyes. Once I saw her hair for a moment. It is fair, but not like yours. Yours is red as a tomato.”
”Thank you,” said Dalrymple, with something like a laugh. ”Tell me more about the nun.”
”If I tell you, you will fall in love with her,” objected Annetta. ”They say that men with red hair fall in love easily. Is it true? If it is, I will not tell you any more about the nun. But I think you are in love with the poor old Grape-eater. It is good ham, is it not? By Bacchus, I fed him on chestnuts with my own hands, and he was always stealing the grapes. Chestnuts fattened him and the grapes made him sweet. Speaking with respect, he was a pig for a pope.”
”He will do for a Scotch doctor then,” answered Dalrymple. ”Tell me, what does this beautiful nun do all day long?”
”What does she do? What can a nun do? She eats cabbage and prays like the others. But she has charge of all the convent linen, so I see her when I go with my mother. That is because the Princes of Gerano first gave the linen to the convent after it was all stolen by the Turks in 1798. So, as they gave it, their abbesses take care of it.”
Dalrymple laughed at the extraordinary historical allusion compounded of the very ancient traditions of the Saracens in the south, and of the more recent wars of Napoleon.
”So she takes care of the linen,” he said. ”That cannot be very amusing, I should think.”
”They are nuns,” answered the girl. ”Do you suppose they go about seeking to amuse themselves? It is an ugly life. But Sister Maria Addolorata sings to herself, and that makes the abbess angry, because it is against the rules to sing except in church. I would not live in that convent--not if they would fill my ap.r.o.n with gold pieces.”
”But why did this beautiful girl become a nun, then? Was she unhappy, or crossed in love?”
”She? They did not give her time! Before she could shut an eye and say, 'Little youth, you please me, and I wish you well,' they put her in. And that door, when it is shut, who shall open it? The Madonna, perhaps? But she was of the Princes of Gerano, and there must be one of them for an abbess, and the lot fell upon her. There is the whole history. You may hear her singing sometimes, if you stand under the garden wall, on the narrow path after the Benediction hour and before Ave Maria. But I am a fool to tell you, for you will go and listen, and when you have heard her voice you will be like a madman. You will fall in love with her. I was a fool to tell you.”
”Well? And if I do fall in love with her, who cares?” Dalrymple slowly filled a gla.s.s of wine.
”If you do?” The young girl's eyes shot a quick, sharp glance at him.
Then her face suddenly grew grave as she saw that some one was at the street door, looking in cautiously. ”Come in, Sor Tommaso!” she called, down the table. ”Papa is out, but we are here. Come in and drink a gla.s.s of wine!”
The doctor, wrapped in a long broadcloth cloak with a velvet collar, and having a case of instruments and medicines under his arm, glanced round the room and came in.
”Just a half-foglietta, my daughter,” he said. ”They have sent for me.