LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2170, 8 February 1881, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE MYSTERY OR LORD BRACKBNBURY: A NOVEL. BY AMELIA B. EJWABDS, Author of " Barbara’s History,” Debenham's Vow,” &o. ( Continued. And then they fall to work to pick the said Ginletta to pieces. She is too tall; she is too thin ; her nose is too short; she does her hair badly ; she is unsociable ; she has no manners ; she wants education (your disparaging critic of the lower Italian class comes down with this crashing allegation) ; and so on in a gathering crescendo, which presently becomes so shrill that it attiacts the attention of the young vetturlno at the other end of the yard. • Peace, wasp-tonges ? Can’t you let the Donzslla alone? acramento ! You’re never happy but when yenr backbiting your betters.’

These words—roughly spoken and emphasised with a scowl—break up the magpie Parliament with sudden confusion. * Wasp tongues, indeed I There’s insolence for you, * Our betters ? By my faith I’d like to see them in this house ? ’

• Speak for yourself, ’Tonio Moretti. Maybe your betters are not our betters.’ ‘Such a girl as La Ginlietta, for example!' •Brought up, as yon may say, on charity !’ ‘Holy St. Nicholas! what next, I wonder ?’

Thus muttering, scolding, frowning, the gossips catch up their pitchers and prepare to go their ways, just as a young girl carrying a big brass can runs lightly down an outer stair on the sunny side of the courtyard, and comes smiling into the midst of them.

• A happy day to yon, Monna Teresa—and to yon, Lnoia. I hope the madre’s cough is better this morning ? Ah, Dame Giannetta, what a beautiful fuschia yon have on your balcony—it does one’s eyes good to look at it. Are Lisa and Lotta gone to market yet ? Cara Carolina, 1 went to your door last evening, when you were out —the poor dear baby was crying so piteously ! But I could not get in to comfort him. Another time, If you will leave your key with me, I can attend to the little one. I never go out, you know, after vespers. What, going already ? Oielo! what a hurry every one is in this morning. A girl with big serious brown eyes, and a rosy, childlike mouth, and a slender throat, and a soft olive complexion, like pale gold—a girl as light and swift of foot as Atalanta herself; her little hands tanned, but not coarsened, by the ardent Lombard sun; and her black hair coiled in a loose, careless mass at the back of her delicate head. She looks very young — younger, indeed, than she really is; for she was seventeen only a week or two ago. She is an orphan, adopted and brought up by her uncle one Stefano Beni; and Stefauo Beni, who was her mother’s brother, rents three little rooms and a balcony on the south side of the courtyard of the Osteria del Oappello. He is a hard-working, crossgrained old bachelor, by trade a wheelwright ; and his workshop is under one of the ground-floor arches of the Roman amphi pheatre in the Piazza Bra. He says he is poor ; the neighbors says he is parsimonious. Dnole and niece, at all events, live sparingly enough, and La Giulliett, who cooks, mends, washes, goes to market, and works at ecclesiastical emb oidery for the trade, thinks herself well off with a new gown once a year.

* Why are they all in such haste to be gone?’ she aste wonderingly. ‘They hardly spoke. ... Is anything the matter ?’

‘ Per Baoco! it means that I have affronted them all round. They’d been dawdling about the well, cackling their illnatured gossip for the last half hour ; and I lost patience.’ * What did you do ?’ »It isn’t what I did, but what 1 said. ’ ‘ Then what did yon say p’ •I called thr-m “ wasp-tongues.’” ‘ A hard word ’Tonio.’ * It was a true word ; and they didn’t like it. People never do like the truth. ’ * Does not that depend on how it Is said, and by whom it la spoken ? Now a bard word from you, ’Tonio, who are such a favorite— ’ The vetturo laughs, takes her [can from her hand, and stands It on the brink of the well. ‘ What do I care for their liking or disliking ? In all Verona there is but one whose goodwill I covet.’ ‘ That is ungrateful.’ ‘ Tell me that I am a favorite with yourself, and see if I will be ungrateful, Bella Giullietta ! ’ But the girl is evidently in no mood to be courted. *Do not quite fill the can, please,’ she says, brusquely; or it will be too heavy.’ ‘ I will carry it up for yon.’ ‘ And leave your horse to go where he pleases? See, he is tired cf waiting. Ho knows he ought to be at work by now! ’ ‘I wonder if he also knows by whose fault he is late ? ’ * The can is quite full enough, ’Tonio.’ * We should have been at the station in time to meet the first train, if La Oiulietta had come to the well at half-past six, instead of a quarter to seven. ’ ‘ Prythee give me the can, good ’Tonio ! I am in haste to go to market —and bark! the clocks are striking,’ • ’ Nay, 1 must dry the handle first! Sure

th ls iB a bigger can than you bring most days? It looks as if it came from Venice 1 • Uncle Stefano brought it from Chioggfa. years and years ago-I daro say it came from Venice. lam sorry to he obliged to ?. B ° lt the other leaks ' an <i I have given it to old Beppo to solder. But in truth I have no time to waste in talk— p’ease give me the can. * 6

‘lt is too heavy for yon, "Oara.” 1 must indeed carry it for you to the third landing. 1

This insistence, this “cara,” are too much. Her eyes kindle with quick anger, aud she gives him one look—just one , r* W .£ en , l , wa . nfc kelp/ she says haughtily, X will ask for it. And it will not be you whom I shall ask.*

‘So, so ! Ten need not wither a fellow up with your lighting in tb.it fashion,’ remonstrates the vetturino, sulkily sbtting down the can. ‘Yon know I mean you well . . . but do what I will, I never can please you, Bella Giulliettn !’

However, the wrath of La t'iulktto is not to be turned as : de by a soft word. Hie only tilts the can; pours off eeongh water to lighten it; and without another word crosses the yard, mounts the stairs, and is gone.

heavy frown settles meanwhile on Tonio s handsome face. For a moment he stands irresolute. Then with a defisnt laugh and a muttered oath he lights a agarette, loads his horse out into the street, flourishes his whip, and drives away. ‘Yon are late this morning, dear.’ says old Anita,’ the chestnut-seller, when La Ginlietta comes tripping presently through the archway on her road to market. Old Anita has eat in the shelter of that ancient gateway, selling frnit in summer and chestnuts In their season, for the last thirty years. She is very old, and very poor, aud the lodgers are good to her according to their means. So, when the girl stays to drop a centesimo into her little tray she smiles and nods, and accepts the tiny choice as a matter of course.

‘Yon are late, dear,’she repeats. ‘Ah, I saw how It was ! I saw ’Tonio Moretti filling somebody’s can just now at the well. Ohe ! ohe! che I —the old woman has eyes no well as another. One need not be a Git&na to foretell the futnre either.’

But La Ginlietta is half way along the street by this time ; and old Anita, looking after the slight figure threading its way rapidly am :ng carts and foot passengers, shakes her bead and aighe, and warms her withered hands over the brazier oo which her chestnuts are roasting. ‘ A good child ! a dear child !’ she mutters to herself. ‘ Too good for him—too good ! He will not make her happy.’

Chapter XXXVIII. A GOOD MORNING’S WORK,

Was it as quaint and beautiful a spot I wonder in the days of the Montecohi and. Capelletti, this market place of palaces—this Piazza delle Brbe—of old Verona? Was it crowded then, as now, with picture que stalls glowing with fruit ? Was It dotted all over with huge white cotton umbrellas. like gigantic mushrooms ? Did the Lady Juliet coax her nurse to go round this way o’ mornings as they returned from matins ; and did Peter, walking behind with his young mistress’s breviary and Madam Nurse’s fan, follow them home with hia arms full of roses and lilies fresh with the dews of who knows bow many centuries ago?

How pleasant it would be to think that the place is yet unchanged—that these palace fronts, this quaint clock tower, this Gothic market crors and sculptured fountain were seen, just as we see them, by the immortal lovers of the old, old story ! That is what the good folk of Verona—the unlettered majority believe implicitly. It matters not which ruler built this nr that monument; or even which came first in order of time, Diocletian or Can Grande, Bomtn or Scaliger. To say of a place that it is old—very old—as old as the days of the Montecchi and Cappelletti, is chronology enough for them. Bred In the simple folk-lore of her class, Ginlietta Beni not only believed all the popular traditions of her native city, but, half unconsciously, heightened and elaborated them out of her own dreams and fancies. She bad read the story of Borneo and Jnliet a hundred times over, in an old dog-eared, dilapidated, vellnm-bound volume which she found years age at the bottom of a box that had been her mother’s before hex marriage. She had seen it has a “ DramaTragioo” in the Boman Amphitheatre, performed by a strolling e mpany, with no other scenery and effects than the marble seats and the blue sky and the shifting sunlight. Once, and that was the greatest event of her life—she had hoard Bossini’s ‘ Montecohi e Capuleti” from the gallery of the Theatre della Valle. And the play, and the story, and the opera, and the tradition, and the ancient streets and squares and churches of Verona, were all fused together in her mind, and belonged indissolubly to each other. She thought she knew the very spot, over against the Boman gateway, where Tybalt w«s slain. Of Juliet’s window in the old house of the Via Cappollo, she was as confident as of her own ; and she was quite sure that a certain little rock cut chapel belonging once upon a time to the rained monastery at the back of the Ohnrch of Saints Nazzaro and Celso, was no other than Friar Laurence’s cell. As for this same Piazza della Brbe, what could be more certain than that Borneo, counting the leaden footed hours that kept him from his lady’s balcony, was wont to pace these very pavements, and watch the hands of that very clock in yonder ancient tower? When old Soalcbi, who kept the bookstall at the cornet of the Piazza doi Signori, told her one day that the clock tower was built by Can Grande della Soala more than half a century after the date at which Borneo and Jullet are said to have lived and died, she was as indignant as if a sceptic had ventured to doubt the miraculous properties of the water King Pepin’s urn, or the piscatorial prowess of San Zenone. For of the line dividing tradition from fiction, she knew nothing. To her, it was all true, all bistorial; as much part of Verona as the amphitheatre itself.

The market folk had nothing but kind words and smile- for the girl, as she threaded her way in and out the maze of stalls. Every one knew that she was Stefano Beni’s orphan niece, that she lived at the Osteria del Capello, and that her name was Giuletta. Sho had been her uncle’s little housekeeper ever since she was nine years of age ; and had come to market as regularly and made her little purchases as prudently as the oldest matron there.

* Gocd morning, La Ginletta, ’ says one. * Do you want a bit of real good straschino cheese for the uncle's supper 7 1 know be loves the Milan stracchino ; and I kept a bit back on purpose, though Count Giovi’s oook would fain have bought it all.’

* Here, Ginlietta mla,' cries another. * Hid you ever see such sweet fennel as this ? 1 brought it this morning from San Michele. You shall have it for two oenteslmi the bundle, though I sell it to everyone else for three.’

‘ What vegetables do you want for the minestra, little one ? ’ asks a third. ‘ Fresh beans, potatoes, cucumbers, onions . . . No one treats you better tHan 1 do, remember! ’

But La Ginlietta is in no haste to buy till she has been round the market; aiid so, in russet gown and dark blue kerchief, bareheaded, neatly shod, her only ornament a silver pin transfixing the dark coils of her shining hair, she goes to and fro amid alleys of scarlet tomatoes, purple mulberries, grapes, lemons, oranges, quinces, pumpkins, melons, gourds cf all shapes and colours, green and pinky, and yellow and violet; pearly rice from the rice fields about Mantua ; and nngronnd maize, like beads of clouded amber. Flowers are in profusion —roses, camellias, and autumn violets, besides mountains of mulberry leaves for silkworm breeders, pine cones for firing, flat baskets piled high with wrinkled olives ; and sacks of shining brown chestnuts.

(To he continued on Saturday.'}