subsequently to this gracious reply, Signor Riccabocca and his servant arrived; and, before the year’s end, the squire was so contented with his tenant that he gave him a running lease of seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years, at a rent merely nominal, on condition that Signor Riccabocca would put and maintain the place in repair, barring the roof and fences, which the squire generously renewed at his own expense. It was astonishing, by little and little, what a pretty place the Italian had made of it, and, what is more astonishing, how little it had cost him. He had, indeed, painted the walls of the hall, staircase, and the rooms appropriated to himself, with his own hands. His servant had done the greater part of the upholstery. The two between them had got the garden into order.
The Italians seemed to have taken a joint love to the place, and to deck it as they would have done some favourite chapel to their Madonna.
It was long before the natives reconciled themselves to the odd ways of the foreign settlers. The first thing that offended them was the exceeding smallness of the household bills. Three days out of the seven, indeed, both man and master dined on nothing else but the vegetables in the garden, and the fishes in the neighbouring rill; when no trout could be caught they fried the minnows (and certainly, even in the best streams, minnows are more frequently caught than trout). The next thing which angered the natives quite as much, especially the female part of the neighbourhood, was the very sparing employment the two he creatures gave to the sex usually deemed so indispensable in household matters. At first, indeed, they had no woman-servant at all. But this created such horror that Parson Dale ventured a hint upon the matter, which Riccabocca took in very good part; and an old woman was forthwith engaged after some bargaining—at three shillings a week—to wash and scrub as much as she liked during the daytime. She always returned to her own cottage to sleep. The man-servant, who was styled in the neighbourhood “Jackeymo,” did all else for his master,—smoothed his room, dusted his papers, prepared his coffee, cooked his dinner, brushed his clothes, and cleaned his pipes, of which Riccabocca had a large collection. But however close a man’s character, it generally creeps out in driblets; and on many little occasions the Italian had shown acts of kindness, and, on some more rare occasions, even of generosity, which had served to silence his calumniators, and by degrees he had established a very fair reputation,—suspected, it is true, of being a little inclined to the Black Art, and of a strange inclination to starve Jackeymo and himself, in other respects harmless enough.
Signor Riccabocca had become very intimate, as we have seen, at the Parsonage. But not so at the Hall. For though the squire was inclined to be very friendly to all his neighbours, he was, like most country gentlemen, rather easily huffed. Riccabocca had, with great politeness, still with great obstinacy, refused Mr. Hazeldean’s earlier invitations to dinner; and when the squire found that the Italian rarely declined to dine at the Parsonage, he was offended in one of his weak points,—namely, his pride in the hospitality of Hazeldean Hall,—and he ceased altogether invitations so churlishly rejected. Nevertheless, as it was impossible for the squire, however huffed, to bear malice, he now and then reminded Riccabocca of his existence by presents of game, and would have called on him more often than he did, but that Riccabocca received him with such excessive politeness that the blunt country gentleman felt shy and put out, and used to say that “to call on Rickeybockey was as bad as going to Court.”
But we have left Dr. Riccabocca on the high road. By this time he has ascended a narrow path that winds by the side of the cascade, he has passed a trellis-work covered with vines, from which Jackeymo has positively succeeded in making what he calls wine,—a liquid, indeed, that if the cholera had been popularly known in those days, would have soured the mildest member of the Board of Health; for Squire Hazeldean, though a robust man who daily carried off his bottle of port with impunity, having once rashly tasted it, did not recover the effect till he had had a bill from the apothecary as long as his own arm. Passing this trellis, Dr. Riccabocca entered upon the terrace, with its stone pavement as smoothed and trimmed as hands could make it. Here, on neat stands, all his favourite flowers were arranged; here four orange trees were in full blossom; here a kind of summer-house, or belvidere, built by Jackeymo and himself, made his chosen morning room from May till October; and from this belvidere there was as beautiful an expanse of prospect as if our English Nature had hospitably spread on her green board all that she had to offer as a banquet to the exile.
A man without his coat, which was thrown over the balustrade, was employed in watering the flowers,—a man with movements so mechanical, with a face so rigidly grave in its tawny hues, that he seemed like an automaton made out of mahogany.
“Giacomo,” said Dr. Riccabocca, softly.
The automaton stopped its hand, and turned its head.
“Put by the watering-pot, and come hither,” continued Riccabocca, in Italian; and, moving towards the balustrade, he leaned over it. Mr. Mitford, the historian, calls Jean Jacques “John James.” Following that illustrious example, Giacomo shall be Anglified into Jackeymo. Jackeymo came to the balustrade also, and stood a little behind his master. “Friend,” said Riccabocca, “enterprises have not always succeeded with us. Don’t you think, after all, it is tempting our evil star to rent those fields from the landlord?” Jackeymo crossed himself, and made some strange movement with a little coral charm which he wore set in a ring on his finger.
“If the Madonna send us luck, and we could hire a lad cheap?” said Jackeymo, doubtfully.
“Piu vale un presente che dui futuri,”—[“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”]—said Riccabocca.
“Chi non fa quando pub, non pub, fare quando vuole,”—[“He who will not when he may, when he wills it shall have nay.”]—answered Jackeymo, as sententiously as his master. “And the Padrone should think in time that he must lay by for the dower of the poor signorina.”
Riccabocca sighed, and made no reply.
“She must be that high now!” said Jackeymo, putting his hand on some imaginary line a little above the balustrade. Riccabocca’s eyes, raised over the spectacles, followed the hand.
“If the Padrone could but see her here—”
“I thought I did,” muttered the Italian.
“He would never let her go from his side till she went to a husband’s,” continued Jackeymo.
“But this climate,—she could never stand it,” said Riccabocca, drawing his cloak round him, as a north wind took him in the rear.
“The orange trees blossom even here with care,” said Jackeymo, turning back to draw down an awning where the orange trees faced the north. “See!” he added, as he returned with a sprig in full bud.
Dr. Riccabocca bent over the blossom, and then placed it in his bosom.
“The other one should be there too,” said Jackeymo.
“To die—as this does already!” answered Riccabocca. “Say no more.”
Jackeymo shrugged his shoulders; and then, glancing at his master, drew his hand over his eyes.
There was a pause. Jackeymo was the first to break it. “But, whether here or there, beauty without money is the orange tree without shelter. If a lad could be got cheap, I would hire the land, and trust for the crop to the Madonna.”
“I think I know of such a lad,” said Riccabocca, recovering himself, and with his sardonic smile once more lurking about the corners of his mouth,—“a lad made for us.”
“Diavolo!”
“No,
