Part 39 (2/2)
Violante bounded forward, and nestled to the good man's heart.
”Tell me, Violante, when you are alone in the fields or the garden, and have left your father looking pleased and serene, so that you have no care for him at your heart,--tell me, Violante, though you are all alone, with the flowers below, and the birds singing overhead, do you feel that life itself is happiness or sorrow?”
”Happiness!” answered Violante, half shutting her eyes, and in a measured voice.
”Can you explain what kind of happiness it is?”
”Oh, no, impossible! and it is never the same. Sometimes it is so still--so still, and sometimes so joyous, that I long for wings to fly up to G.o.d, and thank Him!”
”O friend,” said the parson, ”this is the true sympathy between life and nature, and thus we should feel ever, did we take more care to preserve the health and innocence of a child. We are told that we must become as children to enter into the kingdom of Heaven; methinks we should also become as children to know what delight there is in our heritage of earth!”
CHAPTER XVII.
The maid-servant (for Jackeymo was in the fields) brought the table under the awning, and with the English luxury of tea, there were other drinks as cheap and as grateful on summer evenings,--drinks which Jackeymo had retained and taught from the customs of the South,--unebriate liquors, pressed from cooling fruits, sweetened with honey, and deliciously iced: ice should cost nothing in a country in which one is frozen up half the year! And Jackeymo, too, had added to our good, solid, heavy English bread preparations of wheat much lighter, and more propitious to digestion,--with those crisp grissins, which seem to enjoy being eaten, they make so pleasant a noise between one's teeth.
The parson esteemed it a little treat to drink tea with the Riccaboccas.
There was something of elegance and grace in that homely meal at the poor exile's table, which pleased the eye as well as taste. And the very utensils, plain Wedgwood though they were, had a cla.s.sical simplicity, which made Mrs. Hazeldean's old India delf, and Mrs. Dale's best Worcester china, look tawdry and barbarous in comparison. For it was Flaxman who gave designs to Wedgwood, and the most truly refined of all our manufactures in porcelain (if we do not look to the mere material) is in the reach of the most thrifty.
The little banquet was at first rather a silent one; but Riccabocca threw off his gloom, and became gay and animated. Then poor Mrs.
Riccabocca smiled, and pressed the grissins; and Violante, forgetting all her stateliness, laughed and played tricks on the parson, stealing away his cup of warm tea when his head was turned, and subst.i.tuting iced cherry-juice. Then the parson got up and ran after Violante, making angry faces, and Violante dodged beautifully, till the parson, fairly tired out, was too glad to cry ”Peace,” and come back to the cherry-juice. Thus time rolled on, till they heard afar the stroke of the distant church-clock, and Mr. Dale started up and cried, ”But we shall be too late for Leonard. Come, naughty little girl, get your father his hat.”
”And umbrella!” said Riccabocca, looking up at the cloudless, moonlit sky.
”Umbrella against the stars?” asked the parson, laughing. ”The stars are no friends of mine,” said Riccabocca, ”and one never knows what may happen!”
The philosopher and the parson walked on amicably.
”You have done me good,” said Riccabocca, ”but I hope I am not always so unreasonably melancholic as you seem to suspect. The evenings will sometimes appear long, and dull too, to a man whose thoughts on the past are almost his sole companions.”
”Sole companions?--your child?”
”She is so young.”
”Your wife?”
”She is so--” the bland Italian appeared to check some disparaging adjective, and mildly added, ”so good, I allow; but you must own that she and I cannot have much in common.”
”I own nothing of the sort. You have your house and your interests, your happiness and your lives, in common. We men are so exacting, we expect to find ideal nymphs and G.o.ddesses when we condescend to marry a mortal; and if we did, our chickens would be boiled to rags, and our mutton come up as cold as a stone.”
”Per Bacco, you are an oracle,” said Riccabocca, laughing. ”But I am not so sceptical as you are. I honour the fair s.e.x too much. There are a great many women who realize the ideal of men, to be found in--the poets!”
”There's my dear Mrs. Dale,” resumed the parson, not heeding the sarcastic compliment to the s.e.x, but sinking his voice into a whisper, and looking round cautiously,--”there's my dear Mrs. Dale, the best woman in the world,--an angel I would say, if the word were not profane; BUT--”
”What's the BUT?” asked the doctor, demurely.
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