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The Floating Press - Fenimore Woolson Constance

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143 pages

English

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Constance Fenimore Woolson's fiction is heavily concerned with the notion of place and the ways in which the culture, traditions, and customs of a particular locale can influence the attitudes and relationships of the people who live there. This theme is front and center in many of the stories collected in The Front Yard, which draw heavily on Woolson's own experiences in Europe.

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Short story

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 juin 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775560944
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE FRONT YARD
AND OTHER ITALIAN STORIES
* * *
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON

*
The Front Yard And Other Italian Stories First published in 1895 ISBN 978-1-77556-094-4 © 2012 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
The Front Yard Neptune's Shore A Pink Villa The Street of the Hyacinth A Christmas Party In Venice
*
Of the stories contained in this volume, "In Venice" was originallypublished in the Atlantic Monthly , "The Street of the Hyacinth" in the Century Magazine , and the other four stories in Harper's Magazine .
The Front Yard
*
"Well, now, with Gooster at work in the per-dairy, and Bepper settled atlast as help in a good family, and Parlo and Squawly gone to Perugia,and Soonter taken by the nuns, and Jo Vanny learning the carpenter'strade, and only Nounce left for me to see to (let alone Granmar, ofcourse, and Pipper and old Patro), it doos seem, it really doos, as if Imight get it done sometime ; say next Fourth of July, now; that's onlyten months off. 'Twould be something to celebrate the day with, thatwould; something like!"
The woman through whose mind these thoughts were passing was sitting ona low stone-wall, a bundle of herbs, a fagot of twigs, and a sickle laidcarefully beside her. On her back was strapped a large deep basket,almost as long as herself; she had loosened the straps so that she couldsit down. This basket was heavy; one could tell that from the relaxeddroop of her shoulders relieved from its weight for the moment, as itsend rested on a fallen block on the other side of the wall. Her feetwere bare, her dress a narrow cotton gown, covered in front to the hemby a dark cotton apron; on her head was a straw bonnet, which had behinda little cape of brown ribbon three inches deep, and in front broadstrings of the same brown, carefully tied in a bow, with the loopspulled out to their full width and pinned on each side of her chin.This bonnet, very clean and decent (the ribbons had evidently beenwashed more than once), was of old-fashioned shape, projecting beyondthe wearer's forehead and cheeks. Within its tube her face could beseen, with its deeply browned skin, its large irregular features,smooth, thin white hair, and blue eyes, still bright, set amid a bed ofwrinkles. She was sixty years old, tall and broad-shouldered. She hadonce been remarkably erect and strong. This strength had been consumedmore by constant toil than by the approach of old age; it was not allgone yet; the great basket showed that. In addition, her eyes spoke alanguage which told of energy that would last as long as her breath.
These eyes were fixed now upon a low building that stood at a littledistance directly across the path. It was small and ancient, built ofstone, with a sloping roof and black door. There were no windows;through this door entered the only light and air. Outside were two largeheaps of refuse, one of which had been there so long that thick mattedherbage was growing vigorously over its top. Bars guarded the entrance;it was impossible to see what was within. But the woman knew withoutseeing; she always knew. It had been a cow; it had been goats; it hadbeen pigs, and then goats again; for the past two years it had been pigssteadily—always pigs. Her eyes were fixed upon this door as if heldthere by a magnet; her mouth fell open a little as she gazed; her handslay loose in her lap. There was nothing new in the picture, certainly.But the intensity of her feeling made it in one way always new. If lovewakes freshly every morning, so does hate, and Prudence Wilkin hadhated that cow-shed for years.
The bells down in the town began to ring the Angelus. She woke from herreverie, rebuckled the straps of the basket, and adjusting it by a jerkof her shoulders in its place on her back, she took the fagot in onehand, the bundle of herbs in the other, and carrying the sickle underher arm, toiled slowly up the ascent, going round the cow-shed, as theinterrupted path too went round it, in an unpaved, provisional sort ofway (which had, however, lasted fifty years), and giving a wave of herherbs towards the offending black door as she passed—a gesture that wasalmost triumphant. "Jest you wait till next Fourth of July, you indecentold Antiquity, you!" This is what she was thinking.
Prudence Wilkin's idea of Antiquity was everything that was old anddirty; indecent Antiquity meant the same qualities increased to a degreethat was monstrous, a degree that the most profligate imagination ofLedham (New Hampshire) would never have been able to conceive. There wasnaturally a good deal of this sort of Antiquity in Assisi, her presentabode; it was all she saw when she descended to that picturesque town;the great triple church of St. Francis she never entered; themagnificent view of the valley, the serene vast Umbrian plain, she nevernoticed; but the steep, narrow streets, with garbage here and there, thecrowding stone houses, centuries old, from whose court-yard doors issuedodors indescribable—these she knew well, and detested with all hersoul. Her deepest degree of loathing, however, was reserved for theespecial Antiquity that blocked her own front path, that elbowed her ownfront door, this noisome stable or sty—for it was now one, now theother—which she had hated and abhorred for sixteen long years.
For it was just sixteen years ago this month since she had first enteredthe hill town of St. Francis. She had not entered it alone, but in thecompany of a handsome bridegroom, Antonio Guadagni by name, and so happywas she that everything had seemed to her enchanting—these same steepstreets with their ancient dwellings, the same dirt, the sameyellowness, the same continuous leisure and causeless beatitude. Andwhen her Tonio took her through the town and up this second ascent tothe squalid little house, where, staring and laughing and crowdingnearer to look at her, she found his family assembled, innumerablechildren (they seemed innumerable then), a bedridden grandam, adisreputable old uncle (who began to compliment her), even this did notappear a burden, though of course it was a surprise. For Tonio had toldher, sadly, that he was "all alone in the world." It had been one of thereasons why she had wished to marry him—that she might make a home forso desolate a man.
The home was already made, and it was somewhat full. Desolate Tonioexplained, with shouts of laughter, in which all the assemblage joined,that seven of the children were his, the eighth being an orphan nephewleft to his care; his wife had died eight months before, and this washer grandmother—on the bed there; this her good old uncle, a veryaccomplished man, who had written sonnets. Mrs. Guadagni number two hadexcellent powers of vision, but she was never able to discover thegoodness of this accomplished uncle; it was a quality which, like thebeneficence of angels, one is obliged to take on trust.
She was forty-five, a New England woman, with some small savings, whohad come to Italy as companion and attendant to a distant cousin, aninvalid with money. The cousin had died suddenly at Perugia, andPrudence had allowed the chance of returning to Ledham with her effectsto pass by unnoticed—a remarkable lapse of the quality of which herfirst name was the exponent, regarding which her whole life hitherto hadbeen one sharply outlined example. This lapse was due to her havingalready become the captive of this handsome, this irresistible, thiswholly unexpected Tonio, who was serving as waiter in the Perugian inn.Divining her savings, and seeing with his own eyes her wonderfulstrength and energy, this good-natured reprobate had made love to her alittle in the facile Italian way, and the poor plain simple-heartedspinster, to whom no one had ever spoken a word of gallantry in all herlife before, had been completely swept off her balance by the novelty ofit, and by the thronging new sensations which his few English words, hisspeaking dark eyes, and ardent entreaties roused in her maiden breast.It was her one moment of madness (who has not had one?). She marriedhim, marvelling a little inwardly when he required her to walk toAssisi, but content to walk to China if that should be his pleasure.When she reached the squalid house on the height and saw its crowd ofoccupants, when her own money was demanded to send down to Assisi topurchase the wedding dinner, then she understood—why they had walked.
But she never understood anything else. She never permitted herself tounderstand. Tonio, plump and idle, enjoyed a year of paradisiacalopulence under her ministrations (and in spite of some of them); he waseighteen years younger than she was; it was natural that he should wishto enjoy on a larger scale than hers—so he told her. At the end oftwelve months a fever carried him off, and his widow, who mourned forhim with all her heart, was left to face the world with the eightchildren, the grandmother, the good old uncle, and whatever courage shewas able to muster after counting over and over the eighty-five dollarsthat alone remained to her of the six hundred she had brought him.
Of course she could have gone back to her own country. But that ideanever once occurred to her; she had married Tonio for better or worse;she could not in honor desert the worst now that it had come. It hadcome in force; on the very day of the funeral she had been obliged towork eight hours; on every day that had followed through all theseyears, the hours