Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1521 page)

She came into the room with a sad and weary expression in her eyes, which changed, however, the moment she observed the magnificently-dressed French forewoman, into a look of astonishment, and almost of awe. Her manner became shy and embarrassed; and after an instant of hesitation, she turned back silently to the door.

“Stop, stop, Nanina,” said Brigida, in Italian. “Don’t be afraid of that lady. She is our new forewoman; and she has it in her power to do all sorts of kind things for you. Look up, and tell us what you want You were sixteen last birthday, Nanina, and you behave like a baby of two years old!”

“I only came to know if there was any work for me to-day,” said the girl, in a very sweet voice, that trembled a little as she tried to face the fashionable French forewoman again.

“No work, child, that is easy enough for you to do,” said Brigida. “Are you going to the studio to-day?”

Some of the colour that Nanina’s cheeks wanted began to steal over them as she answered “Yes.”

“Don’t forget my message, darling. And if Master Luca Lomi asks where I live, answer that you are ready to deliver a letter to me; but that you are forbidden to enter into any particulars at first about who I am, or where I live.”

“Why am I forbidden?” inquired Nanina, innocently.

“Don’t ask questions, baby! Do as you are told. Bring me back a nice note or message to-morrow from the studio, and I will intercede with this lady to get you some work. You are a foolish child to want it, when you might make more money here and at Florence, by sitting to painters and sculptors; though what they can see to paint or model in you I never could understand.”

“I like working at home better than going abroad to sit,” said Nanina, looking very much abashed as she faltered out the answer, and escaping from the room with a terrified farewell obeisance, which was an eccentric compound of a start, a bow, and a courtesy.

“That awkward child would be pretty,” said Mademoiselle Virginie, making rapid progress with the cutting-out of her dress, “if she knew how to give herself a complexion, and had a presentable gown on her back. Who is she?”

“The friend who is to get me into Master Luca Lomi’s studio,” replied Brigida, laughing. “Rather a curious ally for me to take up with, isn’t she?”

“Where did you meet with her?”

“Here, to be sure; she hangs about this place for any plain work she can get to do, and takes it home to the oddest little room in a street near the Campo Santo. I had the curiosity to follow her one day, and knocked at her door soon after she had gone in, as if I was a visitor. She answered my knock in a great flurry and fright, as you may imagine. I made myself agreeable, affected immense interest in her affairs, and so got into her room. Such a place! A mere corner of it curtained off to make a bedroom. One chair, one stool, one saucepan on the fire. Before the hearth the most grotesquely hideous unshaven poodle-dog you ever saw; and on the stool a fair little girl plaiting dinner-mats. Such was the household — furniture and all included. ‘Where is your father?’ I asked. ‘He ran away and left us years ago,’ answers my awkward little friend who has just left the room, speaking in that simple way of hers, with all the composure in the world. ‘And your mother?’ — ’Dead.’ She went up to the little mat-plaiting girl as she gave that answer, and began playing with her long flaxen hair. ‘Your sister, I suppose,’ said I. ‘What is her name?’ — ’They call me La Biondella,’ says the child, looking up from her mat (La Biondella, Virginie, means The Fair). ‘And why do you let that great, shaggy, ill-looking brute lie before your fireplace?’ I asked. ‘Oh!’ cried the little mat-plaiter, ‘that is our dear old dog, Scarammuccia. He takes care of the house when Nanina is not at home. He dances on his hind legs, and jumps through a hoop, and tumbles down dead when I cry Bang! Scarammuccia followed us home one night, years ago, and he has lived with us ever since. He goes out every day by himself, we can’t tell where, and generally returns licking his chops, which makes us afraid that he is a thief; but nobody finds him out, because he is the cleverest dog that ever lived!’ The child ran on in this way about the great beast by the fireplace, till I was obliged to stop her; while that simpleton Nanina stood by, laughing and encouraging her. I asked them a few more questions, which produced some strange answers. They did not seem to know of any relations of theirs in the world. The neighbours in the house had helped them, after their father ran away, until they were old enough to help themselves; and they did not seem to think there was anything in the least wretched or pitiable in their way of living. The last thing I heard, when I left them that day, was La Biondella crying ‘Bang!’ — then a bark, a thump on the floor, and a scream of laughter. If it was not for their dog, I should go and see them oftener. But the ill-conditioned beast has taken a dislike to me, and growls and shows his teeth whenever I come near him.”

“The girl looked sickly when she came in here. Is she always like that?”

“No. She has altered within the last month. I suspect our interesting young nobleman has produced an impression. The oftener the girl has sat to him lately, the paler and more out of spirits she has become.”

“Oh! she has sat to him, has she?”

“She is sitting to him now. He is doing a bust of some Pagan nymph or other, and prevailed on Nanina to let him copy from her head and face. According to her own account the little fool was frightened at first, and gave him all the trouble in the world before she would consent.”

“And now she has consented, don’t you think it likely she may turn out rather a dangerous rival? Men are such fools, and take such fancies into their heads — ”

“Ridiculous! A thread-paper of a girl like that, who has no manner, no talk, no intelligence; who has nothing to recommend her but an awkward, babyish prettiness! Dangerous to me? No, no! If there is danger at all, I have to dread it from the sculptor’s daughter. I don’t mind confessing that I am anxious to see Maddalena Lomi. But as for Nanina, she will simply be of use to me. All I know already about the studio and the artists in it, I know through her. She will deliver my message, and procure me my introduction; and when we have got so far, I shall give her an old gown and a shake of the hand; and then, good-by to our little innocent!”

“Well, well, for your sake I hope you are the wiser of the two in this matter. For my part, I always distrust innocence. Wait one moment, and I shall have the body and sleeves of this dress ready for the needle-women. There, ring the bell, and order them up; for I have directions to give, and you must interpret for me.”

While Brigida went to the bell, the energetic Frenchwoman began planning out the skirt of the new dress. She laughed as she measured off yard after yard of the silk.

“What are you laughing about?” asked Brigida, opening the door and ringing a hand-bell in the passage.

“I can’t help fancying, dear, in spite of her innocent face and her artless ways, that your young friend is a hypocrite.”

“And I am quite certain, love, that she is only a simpleton.”

CHAPTER II.

The studio of the master-sculptor, Luca Lomi, was composed of two large rooms unequally divided by a wooden partition, with an arched doorway cut in the middle of it.

While the milliners of the Grifoni establishment were industriously shaping dresses, the sculptors in Luca Lomi’s workshop were, in their way, quite as hard at work shaping marble and clay. In the smaller of the two rooms the young nobleman (only addressed in the studio by his Christian name of Fabio) was busily engaged on his bust, with Nanina sitting before him as a model. His was not one of those traditional Italian faces from which subtlety and suspicion are always supposed to look out darkly on the world at large. Both countenance and expression proclaimed his character frankly and freely to all who saw him. Quick intelligence looked brightly from his eyes; and easy good humour laughed out pleasantly in the rather quaint curve of his lips. For the rest, his face expressed the defects as well as the merits of his character, showing that he wanted resolution and perseverance just as plainly as it showed also that he possessed amiability and intelligence.

At the end of the large room, nearest to the street door, Luca Lomi was standing by his life-size statue of Minerva; and was issuing directions, from time to time, to some of his workmen, who were roughly chiseling the drapery of another figure. At the opposite side of the room, nearest to the partition, his brother, Father Rocco, was taking a cast from a statuette of the Madonna; while Maddalena Lomi, the sculptor’s daughter, released from sitting for Minerva’s face, walked about the two rooms, and watched what was going on in them.

There was a strong family likeness of a certain kind between father, brother and daughter. All three were tall, handsome, dark-haired, and dark-eyed; nevertheless, they differed in expression, strikingly as they resembled one another in feature. Maddalena Lomi’s face betrayed strong passions, but not an ungenerous nature. Her father, with the same indications of a violent temper, had some sinister lines about his mouth and forehead which suggested anything rather than an open disposition. Father Rocco’s countenance, on the other hand, looked like the personification of absolute calmness and invincible moderation; and his manner, which, in a very firm way, was singularly quiet and deliberate, assisted in carrying out the impression produced by his face. The daughter seemed as if she could fly into a passion at a moment’s notice, and forgive also at a moment’s notice. The father, appearing to be just as irritable, had something in his face which said, as plainly as if in words, “Anger me, and I never pardon.” The priest looked as if he need never be called on either to ask forgiveness or to grant it, for the double reason that he could irritate nobody else, and that nobody else could irritate him.

“Rocco,” said Luca, looking at the face of his Minerva, which was now finished, “this statue of mine will make a sensation.”

“I am glad to hear it,” rejoined the priest, dryly

“It is a new thing in art,” continued Luca, enthusiastically. “Other sculptors, with a classical subject like mine, limit themselves to the ideal classical face, and never think of aiming at individual character. Now I do precisely the reverse of that. I get my handsome daughter, Maddalena, to sit for Minerva, and I make an exact likeness of her. I may lose in ideal beauty, but I gain in individual character. People may accuse me of disregarding established rules; but my answer is, that I make my own rules. My daughter looks like a Minerva, and there she is exactly as she looks.”

“It is certainly a wonderful likeness,” said Father Rocco, approaching the statue.

“It the girl herself,” cried the other. “Exactly her expression, and exactly her features. Measure Maddalena, and measure Minerva, and from forehead to chin, you won’t find a hair-breadth of difference between them.”

“But how about the bust and arms of the figure, now the face is done?” asked the priest, returning, as he spoke, to his own work.

“I may have the very model I want for them to-morrow. Little Nanina has just given me the strangest message. What do you think of a mysterious lady admirer who offers to sit for the bust and arms of my Minerva?”

“Are you going to accept the offer?” inquired the priest.

“I am going to receive her to-morrow; and if I really find that she is the same height as Maddalena, and has a bust and arms worth modeling, of course I shall accept her offer; for she will be the very sitter I have been looking after for weeks past. Who can she be? That’s the mystery I want to find out. Which do you say, Rocco — an enthusiast or an adventuress?”

“I do not presume to say, for I have no means of knowing.”

“Ah, there you are with your moderation again. Now, I do presume to assert that she must be either one or the other — or she would not have forbidden Nanina to say anything about her in answer to all my first natural inquiries. Where is Maddalena? I thought she was here a minute ago.”

“She is in Fabio’s room,” answered Father Rocco, softly. “Shall I call her?”

“No, no!” returned Luca. He stopped, looked round at the workmen, who were chipping away mechanically at their bit of drapery; then advanced close to the priest, with a cunning smile, and continued in a whisper, “If Maddalena can only get from Fabio’s room here to Fabio’s palace over the way, on the Arno — come, come, Rocco! don’t shake your head. If I brought her up to your church door one of these days, as Fabio d’Ascoli’s betrothed, you would be glad enough to take the rest of the business off my hands, and make her Fabio d’Ascoli’s wife. You are a very holy man, Rocco, but you know the difference between the clink of the money-bag and the clink of the chisel for all that!”