Life was so cheap for two abstemious women and one little boy. Vansittart had paid three years’ rent of the flat in advance before he left Southampton. Lisa and la Zia were on velvet, and while the deposit account was growing there came offers from America, which were intoxicating in their liberality. American agents had seen and heard the lovely Venetian; Anglo-American newspapers had written about her talents and her beauty; and the always enterprising agent-in-advance was eager to introduce her to the Western world.
Lisa carried the tempting offers to her London manager, who shrugged his shoulders, and raised her salary, for the sixth or seventh time.
“You will ruin me if I try to keep you, Signora,” he said; “but I can’t afford to lose you.”
The prima donna and her aunt used to sit over their handful of fire in the small hours after a cheap but savoury supper of liver, or some other abomination, chopped up in a seething mass of macaroni, reeking of garlic and oil. There was no dish the smartest restaurant in London could have provided that they would have enjoyed better than their native kitchen. They came of a people who can make a feast out of a morsel of meat which the sturdy British workman would toss to his dog. Their luxuries and their pleasures were alike of the cheapest. A jaunt to Greenwich or Kew by river, a long day roaming about the Crystal Palace, idle afternoons on the grassy levels of Battersea Park, basking in the sunshine while Paolo made pies in the sand. Pleasures as simple as these sufficed for Lisa, while her fortune was growing at the Union Bank. By the kind manager’s advice she had invested the bulk of her wealth in railway shares, to which she had added from time to time as her deposit account grew. She had at first been very chary of trusting the railway with her savings, preferring to confide in the bank, which looked solid and respectable; but on being assured that she would get better interest from the railway with equal security, she consented to become a shareholder. It was pleasant when sitting with her aunt in a third-class carriage on the way to Windsor or Richmond to be able to remind that good lady that she, Lisa, was part owner of the carriage, and indeed of the whole line.
Economical as the two women were their parsimony never degenerated into meanness. If their fare was humble they were always ready to share it with a friend. Little Zinco, who was a bachelor, dined with his pupil every Sunday, la Zia devoting the whole morning, after an early Mass in the chapel near Sloane Street, to the preparation of a little bit of beef stuffed with raisins, and a mess of rice and cheese, while Lisa in her best gown, escorted by the faithful Zinco, attended Mass at the Oratory or the Pro-Cathedral.
In their after-midnight talk by the fire, when autumnal or wintry nights made a fire a necessity, Lisa and la Zia built their castle in the air, and that castle was a small house on the Guidecca, a house of which they could let a couple of floors, reserving the piano nobile, or upper story, with its fine views over the blue water, for themselves, and furnishing the same gorgeously with carved chestnut wood and inlaid ebony, from one of the big manufactories on the Grand Canal. Here they were to live happily ever after, when once Fiordelisa had earned an income that would maintain them for the rest of their days, and pay for Paolo’s education.
Already he had shown a passionate love of music, and Zinco saw in him the makings of a fine opera singer.
“He will be handsome, he will be big,” said the cello, “and already at five years old he shows me that he has an ear as true as a bird’s, or as yours. You will send him to the Conservatorio at Milan as soon as he is old enough to enter, and he will find his fortune in his larynx as you have.”
XXXII
“A Scene of Light and Glory”
It was April, the third springtime after the parting of the wedded lovers, and to Eve it seemed as if many years had come and gone since she looked upon her husband’s face. She had endured her life somehow, a life of mornings and afternoons, of twilight and sunrise, of moons that waxed and waned, of seasons that changed from hot to cold and back again, an existence like a squirrel’s wheel, and having nothing in common with that happy wedded life in which her eyes opened every morning upon joy and love—the joy of knowing the beloved companion near, the love which seemed ever near and ever growing.
Hetty had been a comfort to her in all that time, and had shown herself so sympathetic that Eve had resolved never to part with her, except to a husband; and, as yet, among Hetty’s numerous admirers there had been no one whom she cared for as a future husband. So far Hetty was heart-whole and devoted to her sister, more than ever devoted, alas! now, when the red flag of phthisis flaunted upon Eve’s hollow cheeks, and too surely marked the beginning of the end.
She had borne up bravely in those years of exile, making the best of life in some of earth’s pleasantest places, courting cheerfulness for her young sister’s sake, and never
