Stradella | Page 9

Pina.
'And you, Maestro?' asked the latter, offering Stradella the drink.
'Thank you,' he said, 'but it is too much. With your permission!'
And then, with the effrontery of youth in love, he deliberately took the
almost empty glass from which Ortensia had drunk, poured a little into
it from the other, and drank out of it with a look of undisguised
gratitude on his handsome face. Thereupon a little colour came to
Ortensia's ivory-pale cheek, and Pina smiled pleasantly. Instead of
setting down the salver, however, she took it away, leaving the room
again.
'How beautiful that song is!' Ortensia said in a low voice, and glancing
at Stradella almost timidly, when they were again alone. 'How more
than beautiful!'
'It is yours,' answered the musician. 'I made it for you--it is not even
written down yet.'
'For me!' The exquisite colour deepened twice in her face and faded

again as her heart fluttered.
'For you,' Stradella answered, so softly that she barely heard.
The nurse came back just then, having merely left the salver outside to
be taken away. In her judgment things had gone far enough for the
present. Then the mid-day bells clanged out, and it was time to end the
lesson, and Stradella put his lute into its purple bag and bowed himself
out as he always did; but to-day he kept his eyes on Ortensia's, and hers
did not turn from him while she could see his face.
CHAPTER II
Love-dealings and Deceit, says an ancient poet, were born into the
world together, daughters of Night; and several dry-hearted old critics,
who never were in love and perhaps never deceived anybody in their
lives, have had so much trouble in understanding why these divinities
should have made their appearance in the world at the same time, that
they have suspected the passage and written pages of learned trash
about what Hesiod probably wrote instead of 'Love-dealings,' or the
pretty word for which I can think of no better translation.
Pignaver was not a particularly truthful person himself, but he exacted
strict truthfulness from others, which is good business if it is bad
morality; and Ortensia had been brought up rigidly in the practice of
veracity as a prime virtue. She had not hitherto been tempted to tell fibs,
indeed; but she had always looked upon doing so as a great sin, which,
if committed, would require penance.
Yet no sooner had she fallen in love with Alessandro Stradella than she
found herself telling the most glaring untruths every day, with a
readiness and self-possession that were nothing short of terrifying. For
instance, her uncle often asked her to tell him exactly what she had
been studying with the music-master, and he inquired especially
whether the latter ever sang any of his own music to her. To these
questions she answered that she was too anxious to profit by the lessons
she was receiving, through her uncle's kindness, to waste the precious
time in which she might be studying his immortal works.

She used those very words, without a blink, and Pignaver swallowed
the flattery as a dog bolts a gobbet of meat. She added that the Maestro
himself was so enthusiastic about the Senator's songs that he now cared
for nothing else.
Yet the truth was that Stradella had summed up his criticism in a few
words.
'They are all so much alike that they almost produce the impression of
having been written by the same person.'
That was what he had really said, and Ortensia had laughed sweetly and
cruelly; and even Pina, busy with her lace-pillow, had smiled with evil
satisfaction in her corner, for she was a clever woman, who had been
educated above her present station, and she understood.
Further, the Senator asked whether Stradella ever attempted to enter
into conversation with his pupil, between one piece of music and the
next.
'Conversation!' cried the young girl indignantly. 'He would not dare!'
If Pignaver noticed the slight blush that came with the words, he set it
down to just anger at the mere suggestion that his future wife could
stoop to talk with a music-master. Yet, being of a suspicious nature, he
also made inquiries of Pina, whom he unwisely trusted even more than
Ortensia herself.
'Conversation, Excellency? Your Excellency's niece in conversation
with a fiddler, a public singer, a creature little better than a mountebank!
My lady Ortensia would as soon talk with a footman! Shame, my lord!
The suspicion is unworthy! I would scarcely answer to the young man
himself, if he spoke to me, though I am only a poor servant! A fiddler,
indeed! A lute-strummer, a catgut-pincher, and a Neapolitan into the
bargain!'
Thus did Pina express herself, and while her rather hard grey eyes
seemed to flash