Innocent : $b a tale of modern lifeOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
General
Innocent : $b a tale of modern life
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Fiction
Niccolo, after a while, became alarmed, and devoted himself to her
restoration with all the tender kindness of his race. He rushed to the
trunk, and got out the old mantle, in which he wrapped her; he put the
scaldino into her hands, he brought her wine, and petted and smiled her
back into composure. He carried the largest scaldino in the house, full
of the reddest embers, into her stony bedroom. “It is not the cold,” he
said to himself, “it is the sorrow, poverina! poverina! Let no one say
after this that she has not a tender heart.” And when she went to bed
Niccolo stayed up all night--cheerful, yet sad--to finish the packing,
to set everything straight, and to leave the apartment in such order
that the Marchese Scaramucci might have no grievance against his tenant,
and as small a bill of repairs as possible. Good, kindly soul; he was
rather glad though, on the whole, that to-morrow he was going to the new
master, who was rich, and kept a number of servants, and who, being a
milordo, might perhaps be cheated now and then in a friendly way.
And next morning Innocent’s old world did break up into clouds and
vapours. For the last time she stole over to the little church in the
dark morning, and said the Lord’s Prayer, and then sat still, looking at
the little altar, where this time the candles were lighted, and a
priest saying mass. The mass had nothing to do with Innocent. The drone
of the monotonous voice, the gleam of the candles, made no sort of
impression upon her. Her imagination was as little awakened as her heart
was. If she thought of anything at all it was, with a sore sense of a
wound somewhere, that Frederick had left her, that he had not come near
her, that he was happy away from her; but all quite vague; nothing
definite in it, except the pang. And then Santa Maria della Spina, and
the high houses opposite, and the yellow river below, and the clustered
buildings about the Duomo, and all Pisa, in short, melted into the
clouds, and rolled away like a passing storm, and the new world began.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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