University of Virginia Library

THE STORY.

“I had been about a month at Lucca, when it was
suddenly proposed by Crinny that we should take a

vetturino together, and go to Venice. Ninny and she
had come down to dinner with a sudden disgust for
the baths—owing, perhaps, to the distinction they had
received as the only strangers in the place who were
not invited to the ball of a certain prince, our next-door
neighbor. The Blidgimses and their economies, in
fact, had become the joke of the season, and, as the
interpreter in the egg-trades, I was mixed up in the
omelette, and as glad to escape from my notoriety as
they. So I set about looking up the conveyance with
some alacrity.

“By the mass, it was evidently a great saving of
distance to cross the mountains to Modena, and of
course a great saving of expense, as vetturinos are
paid by the mile; but the guide-books stated that the
road was rough, and the inns abominable, and recommended
to all who cared for comfort to make a circumbendibus
by the way of Florence and Bologna.
Ninny declared she could live on bread and apples,
however, and Crinny delighted in mountain air—in
short, economy carried it, and after three days' chaffering
with the owner of a rattletrap vettura, we set off
up the banks of the Lima without the blessing of
Jacomo, the head waiter.

“We soon left the bright little river, and struck
into the mountains, and as the carriage crept on very
slowly, I relieved the horses of my weight and walked
on. The ladies did the same thing whenever they
came in sight of an orchard, and for the first day
Ninny munched the unripe apples and seemed getting
along very comfortably. The first night's lodging
was execrable, but as the driver assured us it was the
best on the route, we saved our tempers for the worst,
and the next day began to penetrate a country that
looked deserted of man, and curst with uninhabitable
sterility. Its effect upon my spirits, as I walked on
alone, was as depressing as the news of some trying
misfortune, and I was giving it credit for one redeeming
quality—that of an opiate to a tongue like Crinny
Blidgims's—when both the ladies began to show symptoms
of illness. It was not long after noon, and we
were in the midst of a waste upland, the road bending
over the horizon before and behind us, and neither
shed nor shelter, bush, wall, or tree, within reach of
the eye. The only habitation we had seen since morning
was a wretched hovel where the horses were fed
at noon, and the albergo, where we should pass the
night, was distant several hours—a long up-hill
stretch, on which the pace of the horses could not
possibly be mended. The ladies were bent double in
the carriage, and said they could not possibly go on.
Going back was out of the question. The readiest
service I could proffer was to leave them and hurry
on to the inn, to prepare for their reception.

“Fortunately our team was unicorn-rigged—one
horse in advance of a pair. I took off the leader, and
galloped away.

“Well, the cholera was still lingering in Italy, and
stomachs must be cholera-proof to stand a perpetual
diet of green apples, even with no epidemic in the air.
So I had a very clear idea of the remedies that would
be required on their arrival.

“At a hand-gallop I reached the albergo in a couple
of hours. It was a large stone barrack, intended, no
doubt, as was the road we had travelled, for military
uses. A thick stone wall surrounded it, and it stood
in the midst, in a pool of mud. From the last eminence
before arriving, not another object could be
descried within a horizon of twenty miles diameter,
and a whitish soil of baked clay, browned here and
there by a bit of scanty herbage, was foreground and
middle and background to the pleasant picture. The
site of the barrack had probably been determined by
the only spring within many miles, and by the dryness
without and the mud within the walls, it was contrived
for a monopoly by the besieged.

“I cantered in at the unhinged gate, and roared
out `casa!' `cameriere!' `botega!' till I was frightened
at my own voice.

“No answer. I threw my bridle over a projection
of the stone steps, and mounted, from an empty
stable which occupied the ground floor (Italian
fashion), to the second story, which seemed equally
uninhabited. Here were tables, however, and wooden
settees, and dirty platters—the first signs of life. On
the hearth was an iron pot and a pair of tongs, and
with these two musical instruments I played a tune
which I was sure would find ears, if ears there were
on the premises. And presently a heavy foot was
heard on the stair above, and with a sonorous yawn
descended mine host—dirty and stolid—a goodly pattern
of the `fat weed on Lethe's wharf,' as you would
meet in a century. He had been taking his siesta,
and his wife had had a colpo di sole, and was confined
helplessly to her bed. The man John was out tending
sheep, and he, the host, was vicariously, cook,
waiter, and chambermaid. What might be the pleasure
of il signore?

“My pleasure was, first, to see the fire kindled and
the pot put over, and then to fall into a brown
study.

“Two fine ladies with the cholera—two days' journey
from a physician—a fat old Italian landlord for
nurse and sole counsellor—nobody who could understand
a word they uttered, except myself, and not a
drug nor a ministering petticoat within available
limits! Then the doors of the chambers were without
latches or hinges, and the little bed in each great
room was the one article of furniture, and the house
was so still in the midst of that great waste, that all
sounds and movements whatever, must be of common
cognisance! Should I be discharging my duty to
ladies under my care to leave them to this dirty old
man? Should I offer my own attendance as constant
nurse, and would the service be accepted? How, in
the name of Robinson Crusoe, were these delicate
damsels to be `done for'?

“As a matter of economy in dominos, as well as to
have something Italian to bring home, I had bought at
Naples the costume of a sister of charity, and in it I
had done all my masquerading for three carnivals. It
was among my baggage, and it occurred to me
whether I had not better take the landlord into my
confidence, and bribe him to wait upon the ladies, disguised
in coif and petticoat. No—for he had a mustache,
and spoke nothing but Italian. Should I do it
myself?

“I paced up and down the stone floor in an agony
of dilemma.

“In the course of half an hour I had made up my
mind. I called to Boniface, who was watching the
boiling pot, and made a clean breast to him of my
impending distresses, aiding his comprehension by
such eye-water as landlords require. He readily undertook
the necessary lies, brought out his store of
brandy, added a second bed to one of the apartments,
and promised faithfully to bear my sex in mind, and
treat me with the reverence due my cross and rosary.
I then tore out a leaf of the grocery book, and wrote
with my pencil a note to this effect, to be delivered to
the ladies on their arrival:—

“The delivery of this was subject, of course, to
the condition of the ladies when they should arrive,
though I had a presentiment they were in for a serious
business.

“And, true to my boding, they did arrive, exceedingly
ill. An hour earlier than I had looked for him,
the vetturino came up with foaming horses at a tugging
trot, frightened half out of his senses. The
ladies were dying, he swore by all the saints, before he
dismounted. He tore open the carriage door, shouted
for il signore and the landlord, and had carried both
the groaning girls up stairs in his arms, before fat
Boniface, who had been killing a sheep in the stable,
could wash his hands and come out to him. To his
violent indignation, the landlord's first care was to
unstrap the baggage and take off my portmanteau,
condescending to give him neither why nor wherefore,
and as it mounted the stairs on the broad shoulders of
my faithful ally, it was followed by a string of oaths
such as can rattle off from nothing but the voluble
tongue of an Italian.

“I immediately despatched the note by the host,
requesting him to come back and `do my dress,' and
in half an hour sister Benedetta's troublesome toilet
was achieved, and my old Abigail walked around me,
rubbing his hands, and swore I was a `meraviglia di
belleza.' The lower part of my face was covered by
the linen coif, and the forehead was almost completely
concealed in the plain put-away of a `false front;'
and, unless the Blidgimses had reconnoitred my nose
and eyes very carefully, I was sure of my disguise.
The improvements in my figure were, unluckily,
fixtures in the dress, for it was very hot; but by the
landlord's account they were very becoming. Do you
believe the old dog tried to kiss me?

“The groans of Ninny, meantime, resounded
through the house, for, as I expected, she had the
worst of it. Her exclamations of pain were broken
up, I could also hear, by sentences in a sort of spiteful
monotone, answered in regular `humphs!' by Crinny—Crinny
never talking except to astonish, and being
as habitually crisp to her half-witted sister as she was
fluent to those who were capable of surprise. Fearing
that some disapprobation of myself might find its
way to Ninny's lips, and for several other reasons
which occurred to me, I thought it best to give the
ladies another half hour to themselves, and by way of
testing my incognito, bustled about in the presence of
the vetturino, warming oil and mixing brandies-and-water,
and getting used to the suffocation of my petticoats—for
you have no idea how intolerably hot they
are, with trowsers under.

“Quite assured, at last, I knocked at the door.

“`That's his nun!' said Ninny, after listening an
instant.

“`Come in!—that is to say, entrez!' feebly murmured
Crinny.

“They were both in bed, rolled up like pocket-handkerchiefs;
but Ninny had found strength to band-box
her wig and abbo, and array herself in a nightcap
with an exceedingly broad frill. But I must not
trench upon the `secrets of the prison-house.' You
are a bachelor, and the Blidgimses are still in a `world
of hope.'

“I walked in and leaned over each of them, and
whispered a benedicite, felt their pulses, and made
signs that I understood their complaints and they need
not trouble themselves to explain; and forthwith I commenced
operations by giving them their grog (which
they swallowed without making faces, by-the-by), and,
as they relaxed their postures a little, I got one foot at
a time hung over to me from the side of the bed into
the pail of hot water, and set them to rubbing themselves
with the warm oil, while I vigorously bathed
their extremities. Crinny, as I very well knew, had
but five-and-twenty words of French, just sufficient to
hint at her wants, and Ninny spoke only such English
as Heaven pleased, so I played the ministering angel
in safe silence—listening to my praises, however, for I
handled Ninny's irregular doigts du pied with a tenderness
that pleased her.

“Well—you know what the cholera is. I knew
that at the Hotel Dieu at Paris, women who had not
been intemperate were oftenest cured by whiskey
punches, and as brandy toddies were the nearest approach
of which the resources of the place admitted,
I plied my patients with brandy toddy. In the weak
state of their stomachs, it produced, of course, a delirious
intoxication, and as I began very early in the
morning, there were no lucid intervals in which my
incognito might be endangered. My ministrations
were, consequently, very much facilitated, and after
the second day (when I really thought the poor girls
would die), we fell into a very regular course of hospital
life, and for one, I found it very entertaining.
Quite impressed with the idea that sister Bellidettor
(as Ninny called me) understood not a word of English,
they discoursed to please themselves, and I was
obliged to get a book, to excuse, even to their tipsy
comprehension, my outbreaks of laughter. Crinny
spouted poetry and sobbed about Washington Irving,
who, she thought, should have been her lover, and
Ninny sat up in bed, and, with a small glass she had
in the back of a hair-brush, tried on her abbo at every
possible angle, always ending by making signs to sister
Bellidettor to come and comb her hair! There was a
long, slender, mustache remaining on the back of the
bald crown, and after putting this into my hand, with
the hair-brush, she sat with a smile of delight till she
found my brushing did not come round to the front!

“`Why don't you brush this lock?' she cried,
`this—and this—and this!' making passes from her
shining skull down to her waist, as if, in every one, she
had a handful of hair! And so, for an hour together,
I threaded these imaginary locks, beginning where
they were rooted `long time ago,' and passing the
brush off to the length of my arm—the cranium,
when I had done, looking like a balloon of shot silk,
its smooth surface was so purpled with the friction of
the bristles. Poor Ninny! She has great temptation
to tipple, I think—that is, `if Maeassar won't bring
back the lost chevelure!'

“About the fifth day, the ladies began to show
signs of convalescence, and it became necessary to
reduce their potations. Of course they grew less
entertaining, and I was obliged to be much more on
my guard. Crinny fell from her inspiration, and
Ninny from her complacency, and they came down to
their previous condition of damaged spinsters, prim
and peevish. `Needs must' that I should `play out
the play,' however, and I abated none of my petits
soins for their comfort, laying out very large anticipations
of their grateful acknowledgments for my dramatic
chivalry, devotion, and delicacy!”

“Well—they are ungrateful!” said I, interrupting
F— for the first time in his story.

“Now, are not they? They should at least, since
they deny me my honors, pay me for my services as
maid-of-all-work, nurse, hair-dresser, and apothecary!
Well, if I hear of their abusing me again, I'll send in
my bills. Wouldn't you? But, to wind up this long
story.

“I thought that perhaps there might be some little
circumstances connected with my attentions which
would look best at a distance, and that it would be
more delicate to go on and take leave at Modena as

sister Benedetta, and rejoin them the next morning in
hose and doublet as before—reserving to some future
period the clearing up of my apparently recreant desertion.
On the seventh morning, therefore, I instructed
old Giuseppe, the landlord, to send in his bill
to the ladies while I was dressing, and give notice to
the vetturino that he was to take the holy sister to
Modena in the place of il signore, who had gone on
before.

“Crinny and Ninny were their own reciprocal
dressing-maids, but Crinny's fingers had weakened by
sickness much more than her sister's waist had diminished,
and, in the midst of shaving, in my own room,
I was called to `finish doing' Ninny, who backed up
to me with her mouth full of pins, and the breath, for
the time being, quite expelled from her body. As I
was straining, very red in the face, at the critical hook,
Giuseppe knocked at the door, with the bill, and the
lack of an interpreter to dispute the charges, brought
up the memory of the supposed `absquatulator' with
no very grateful odor. Before I could finish Miss
Ninny and get out of the room, I heard myself
charged with more abominations, mental and personal,
than the monster that would have made the fortune of
Trinculo. Crinny counted down half the money, and
attempted, by very expressive signs, to impress upon
Giuseppe that it was enough; but the only palm of
the old publican was patiently held out for more, and
she at last paid the full demand, fairly crying with vexation.

“Quite sick of the new and divers functions to
which I had been serving an apprenticeship in my
black petticoat, I took my place in the vettura, and
dropped veil, to be sulky in one lump as far as Modena.
I would willingly have stopped my ears, but after
wearing out their indignation at the unabated charges
of old Giuseppe, the ladies took up the subject of the
expected donation to the charity-fund of sister Benedetta,
and their expedients to get rid of it occupied
(very amusingly to me) the greater part of a day's
travel. They made up their minds at last, that half a
dollar would be as much as I could expect for my
week's attendance, and Crinny requested that she
should not be interrupted while she thought out the
French for saying as much when we should come to
the parting.

“I was sitting quietly in the corner of the vettura,
the next day, felicitating myself on the success of my
masquerade, when we suddenly came to a halt at the
gate of Modena, and the doganiere put his mustache
in at the window, with `passaporti, signore!'

“Murder! thought I—here's a difficulty I never
provided for!

“The ladies handed out their papers, and I thrust
my hand through the slit in the side of my dress and
pulled mine from my pocket. As of course you
know, it is the business of this gatekeeper to compare
every traveller with the description given of him in
his passport. He read those of the Blidgimses and
looked at them—all right. I sat still while he opened
mine, thinking it possible he might not care to read
the description of a sister of charity. But to my dismay
he did—and opened his eyes, and looked again
into the carriage.

“`Aspetta, caro!' said I, for I saw it was of no use.
I gathered up my bombazine and stepped out into the
road. There were a dozen soldiers and two or three
loungers sitting on a long bench in the shade of the gateway.
The officer read through the description once
more, and then turned to me with the look of a functionary
who has detected a culprit. I began to pull up
my petticoat. The soldiers took their pipes out of their
mouths and uttered the Italian `keck' of surprise.
When I had got as far as the knee, however, I came
to the rolled-up trowsers, and the officer joined in the
sudden uproar of laughter. I pulled my black petticoat
over my head, and stood in my waistcoat and
shirt-sleeves, and bowed to the merry official. The
Blidgimses, to my surprise, uttered no exclamation,
but I had forgotten my coif. When that was unpinned,
and my whiskers came to light, their screams
became alarming. The vetturino ran for water, the
soldiers started to their feet, and in the midst of the
excitement, I ordered down my baggage and resumed
my coat and cap, and repacked under lock and key
the sister Benedetta. And not quite ready to encounter
the Blidgimses, I walked on to the hotei and
left the vetturino to bring on the ladies at his leisure.

“Of course I had no control over accidents, and
this exposure was unlucky; but if I had had time to
let myself down softly on the subject, don't you see it
would have been quite a different sort of an affair? I
parted company from the old girls at Modena, however,
and they were obliged to hire a man-servant who
spoke English and Italian, and probably the expense
of that was added to my iniquities. Anyhow, abusing
me this way is very ungrateful of these Blidgimses.
Now, isn't it?”