IV
I
One evening that June the Signora Rocca looked up from her sewing and said: “What a deplorable thing is pride, and how right I was when I warned the Bosellis not to send Gian-Luca to that heathenish Board School.”
Rocca took off his spectacles and swore, beyond which he vouchsafed no comment, so his wife continued: “I am sorry for Gian-Luca, as a Christian that is my duty—but as the English say, and it is a good saying, ‘Pride cometh before a fall.’ I do not see what he has to be proud of, considering his unfortunate birth; however, it is clear that he sets himself above us; does he ever come here to see us these days? He does not, he treats us as though we were dirt, he is getting too big for his breeches!”
Rocca, for once, sympathized with his wife. Her words had opened the vials or his wrath so that he thumped the table; large angry thumps he inflicted on the table, as though he were thumping Gian-Luca.
“Giurabaccaccio! you speak truly,” said Rocca, “we are not good enough any more! Imagine it, a fellow that I dandled as an infant, a fellow to whom I had to give fruit-drops because he so feared my small goats! It is impudent indeed the way Gian-Luca treats me, I who fought at Custozza. I did not play waiter in an Officers’ Mess! No, no, I was only a poor, common soldier; I killed men in those days, not scraggy French chickens—but then I was only a soldier!” Rocca spoke in great bitterness of heart, not for nearly five months had Gian-Luca been near him, and now, Maddalena would never come either—grown proud, no doubt, like her husband.
Rocca was so angry that he went to see Teresa in order to tell her about it: “That grandson of yours has become swollen-headed, he ignores his old friends, he gives himself airs, he is what the English call ‘snob.’ My wife is offended and I am offended at the manner in which he treats us. We are humble but proud. I am only a butcher, but I fought in the battle of Custozza!”
Teresa shrugged her shoulders: “My excellent Rocca, I am not the keeper of my grandson—he never comes here, I know nothing about him, and now his wife does not come either. Perhaps he has become what the English call ‘snob,’ or perhaps he is just very busy—Millo tells me they are all very busy at the Doric—but whatever it is I am busy myself, much too busy to run after Gian-Luca.”
“Only a fool throws away his old friends,” muttered Rocca as he turned to leave her. “As for you, I consider that he owes you a duty, in our country the family tie is sacred, and only a fool would copy these English, who care nothing for family ties.”
“That is so,” she agreed, “but on the other hand, only a fool would allow sentiment to stand in the way of his business. I do not resent the fact that my grandson is too proud or too busy to bother about me—since I am too busy to bother about him, why should I feel resentment?”
But if Rocca was angry and Teresa indifferent, Mario and Rosa were wounded; so deeply wounded that they looked at each other and their kindly brown eyes filled with tears.
“He does not love us any more,” sighed Rosa, while Mario shook his head sadly.
“Yet he drank of your milk—it is strange, my Rosa, for they say that much love flows in with the milk that is drawn from a woman’s breast—”
Poor Mario was deeply depressed this summer, and he had good cause for depression, for now he was no longer the headwaiter of the Capo; his triumph had been short-lived, and his fall the more bitter because of that short-lived triumph.
The Padrone had said quite pleasantly one morning: “I have just engaged a headwaiter. Now that we have our full staff back again, and no more lazy, imbecile women, the Padrona and I think the time has arrived to have a headwaiter at the Capo. I shall have to reduce your wages, of course—that will be only fair—but even so you will be getting more money than you dreamt of before the war. Then again, there is always the question of your lameness, my wife was speaking of it only last week: ‘It is dreadful to see how old Mario limps, we must get a headwaiter,’ she said.”
Mario had stood with his mouth slightly open and his napkin drooping from his hand, for whenever the Padrone mentioned his lameness he certainly felt very old. He had been quite unable to trust himself to speak, so had hobbled away to the pantry; and there he had started biting his nails—what could he do but start biting his nails? Give notice? Ma che! who else would engage him? He was only an old lame mule.
It was terribly hard when it came to telling Rosa, who naturally shed a few tears; “Geppe dead, and Gian-Luca so proud and now this—” she whimpered, mopping her eyes. But then she noticed her husband’s grey hair, nearly white it had gone at the temples, and all that was brave in her leapt to his defense, the kind, patient creature that he was! “It is scandalous, you look younger than ever!” she lied. “And as for your grey hair, I like it; it is very becoming, it gives you distinction, a headwaiter looks better with grey hair.”
And this obvious falsehood really consoled him, at all events for the moment, since the hearts of some men are the hearts of small children—especially when they ache badly.
Nerone, however, was not nearly so tactful. “It is all that infernal bunion!” he shouted. “Why do you not get the damned thing cut off? Are there no hospitals in England?”
But at such a terrific suggestion as this, Mario turned very pale: “I do not like operations,” he babbled, “one cannot know what they will do to one’s body; one is helpless like a pig about to be slaughtered. I have heard that they wish to experiment on one, I have heard the most terrible things—”
In his fear he began to plead for his bunion: “No, no, Babbo; no, no, I have had him for years—I will paint him with iodine night and morning, I will get some new boots many sizes too big, I will try to limp less—it is only a habit, one gets into the habit of limping—”
“Fool!” bawled Nerone. “They cut off my leg, and the students amused themselves with it! Did I care if the students played football with my leg? Well then, why need you care what they do with your bunion? Sacramento! one would think you were proud of the thing! Perhaps they would put it to float in a bottle, and then you could keep it in your bedroom!”
After which Nerone must mourn his own fate; he would have to stay in England, he declared. How could he give up his miserable business when his daughter would obviously starve? In vain did they both try to reassure him; Mario was not so ill-paid, there were no children now—why, Berta was quite rich, with her Albert promoted to buyer—there was no need to worry, there was no need to stay, Nerone could go when he pleased. Of course he must go if he still felt so homesick—poor Babbo, of course he must go! But Nerone shook his head and glared hotly at Mario, which was certainly rather unfair, for it was not the thought of his daughter that held him, but those pretty silver shillings that winked back from the till; prolific past all expectations they were being, because of the Italian exchange.
There was someone, however, who could never do wrong, according to old Nerone, and this was Gian-Luca, whom he loved more than ever for the sake of his dead friend Fabio. He said to Rosa: “You make a great fuss, always sniveling and dabbing your eyes—Dio Santo! One would think that Gian-Luca had been hanged, whereas he is only trying to make money. He is making good money, and so he has no time to come paying you foolish visits. But apart from all this, he is not well, I think, that is why I called on Maddalena. As for Rocca, I have told him quite plainly that he lies when he says that Gian-Luca has grown proud. That Rocca is making me sick with his talk of his courage, and his wounds, and his battles. Custozza, ma che! that was all very well, but my grandson died on the Isonzo! Leave Gian-Luca alone, he will come home to roost, he will want to see his old Nerone. Did he not call me ‘Nonno’ that day, and make Fabio so terribly angry?”
“Magari,” murmured Rosa, which meant nothing or all things, according as you chose to interpret.
Meanwhile Gian-Luca still held aloof, feeling strangely unwilling to see them. They would talk, about eating and food and the Doric. Oh, he knew them, they thought about nothing but food, they were almost as bad as Millo. When he got his day off at the end of June, he wanted to spend it alone, but of course Maddalena must begin about Rosa—she was always reproaching him now about Rosa whom he had forbidden her to visit.
She said precisely what he had expected: “Do let us go and see Rosa—she is very sad, caro, she misses her Geppe, and you are her foster-son.”
“Dio!” he complained, “must I never forget that I drank of that good woman’s milk? I do not wish to see Rosa or the others. I am tired, I am not getting up at all this morning, do leave me in peace, mia donna.”
She left him, and he lay in bed trying to doze; he was feeling very weak, he discovered. He had noticed lately that when he stopped working, his body ran down like a clock. At half-past one Maddalena brought his dinner all neatly arranged on a tray. He sat up in bed and glared at it frowning.
“Is it not good?” she inquired with a sigh. “I have tried to cook everything simply.”
“Ma si!” he muttered, “it is probably good, but do not stand watching, Maddalena. How can a man eat his food when you watch every morsel he puts into his mouth?”
So she went down again to her own lonely meal, which was little enough to her liking, being cooked as the English cook most things, in water, and never a touch of good butter with the beans or the dreary-faced boiled potatoes. And as she sat eating the unappetizing fare she remembered her father’s trattoria, and from this her thoughts strayed to the far-off Campagna, and then she felt homesick, terribly homesick—very lonely she felt and unhappy. For the longing to live among her own people had been growing in Maddalena lately, the longing for blue sky and wide, quiet places, where the sheep all wore little bells. She would think of that wonderful day when Our Lord had left His Footprint in stone, and would wonder if He too had loved the Campagna—if indeed that might not well have been Our Lord’s reason for blessing the humble stone. Then her heart would begin to yearn over Gian-Luca, who laughed when she spoke of such things—perhaps if she got him away to the sunshine he too might receive the blessing of faith. Some day she would show him that Footprint in stone, after which he must surely believe.
II
Late that afternoon Gian-Luca got up and went for a walk alone. He could feel Maddalena watching from the window, and for just a moment he paused on the pavement, but he did not turn his head. He wished that she would not stand there at the window, with her questioning desolate eyes—the eyes of a woman who was doomed to be childless—why must she always reproach him with her eyes, was it his fault that she was childless? His feet dragged a little as he walked on slowly, not caring much where he went. And now he was passing the Foundling Hospital—queer to be living so near that place; why had he chosen to live near that place? The thought had never occurred to him before—yes, it certainly was rather queer.
The foundlings appeared to be happy enough; they were playing out in the garden, not troubling at all about the problems of fate. At their age he had troubled very much about such problems—oh, very much he had troubled! He looked through the tall iron gates, and marveled at the noisy, shouting children, remembering the pain of his own lonely childhood; remembering bitterly, cruelly even, wounding himself in the process.
“Go on, go on!” he said, staring at the foundlings. “Go on, go on—but you will not escape it, it is waiting for you round the corner!” But when he would have liked to tell them what was waiting, he found that he did not know. “Ma che!” he thought dully, “what does it all matter; they play, they shout, they think they are happy—oh, well, and why not? It will come soon enough, that thing that is waiting round the corner.” Shrugging his shoulders he went on his way, and quite soon he forgot about the foundlings; forgot about everything except Gian-Luca, for whom he was deeply concerned. “I am ill,” he muttered, “I think I am ill.” He laid his fingers on his pulse, and then he felt frightened and walked more quickly, just to prove that he was not ill.
One or two women glanced at him in passing, struck by the expression of his face; a pale, handsome face with its arrogant mouth and its queer, inscrutable eyes. And presently a woman came up and touched him, murmuring something in his ear.
“Go to hell!” he said roughly, and pushed her with his arm so that she fell back frightened.
The noise of the traffic began to grow louder; he was suddenly conscious of the noise; he found himself walking in New Oxford Street without knowing how he had got there. All around him were shabby, insufferable people, and they jostled him as he walked. He felt sick with disgust at the contact with their bodies, and squaring his shoulders he thrust them aside; he would gladly have trampled on them. The stench of the traffic was heavy in his nostrils, the hot, greasy smell of engines; of monstrous engines, all spewing and belching up oil and petrol, and poisonous fumes from the pipes of their filthy exhausts. He hated these engines as though they had life, as though his hatred could harm them. They were foul, greedy feeders, and they stank of their food like creatures with rotting stomachs.
Oh, but he was tired! He had gone much too far; he had not intended to go far. His legs were trembling, and his hands, and his lips—Wait, he would smoke, that would steady the trembling—he groped for a cigarette. He found one, but now he could not find his matches—what had he done with his matches? He began to ransack all his pockets in a panic, so intent on this process that he passed a tobacconist’s without having noticed the shop. Now the urge to smoke was becoming a torment, he must stop that trembling of his hands. The cruelty of it, to have come without his matches! So harmless a longing, just to light a cigarette, and yet he had come without his matches! He stood still, staring round him in a kind of despair, with the cigarette lolling from his mouth; then he started to run forward; he had seen a woman who was selling matches at the corner.
“Give me a box of matches!” he panted. “Quick, give me a box of matches!” Without waiting, he snatched what he wanted from her tray and started to light his cigarette.
The woman was battered and dirty and dejected; her face looked humble yet sly; for hers was the face of the intolerably poor, of those who must cringe to the lash of Fate and fool him behind his back. But by her side stood a thin little boy who clung to her threadbare jacket, and his face, unlike hers, was wonderfully quiet. Resigned, too, it seemed, as only the faces of very young children can be. Something was terribly wrong with his eyes—what was it that was wrong with his eyes? The closed lids were shrunken and flat and disfigured—so woebegone somehow, they looked, those closed lids, in spite of that quiet expression. And Gian-Luca, who cared not at all for children, must gaze and gaze at this child as though he were suddenly suffering with him, as though in some curious way he belonged to those woebegone, sightless eyes.
He said: “That child—who is he, what is he?”
And the woman answered: “ ’E’s mine.”
And the child stood very still as though listening, with his head a little on one side.
Then Gian-Luca said: “But his eyes, his poor eyes—”
And the woman answered: “They’re gone. ’E ain’t got no eyes, they was both taken out, they was all diseased like, ’is eyes.”
She lifted the lids one after the other, showing the empty sockets; and the child never spoke, and neither did he flinch, nor indeed show any resentment.
Down the street came a jolting coster’s barrow, and the barrow was full of spring flowers. All the colors of heaven seemed to be passing, drawn by a mangy donkey. The sun came out from behind a cloud, making the flowers more lovely: and because of a child who could not see, Gian-Luca realized the flowers. Then he looked again at the face of the child, at that face of dreadful resignation, and all in a moment he had pulled out his purse and was emptying it into the tray. Something rose up in his throat and choked him, and suddenly he was weeping; the great tears went trickling down his cheeks and splashed on his coat unheeded.
The woman mumbled her words of thanks: “Thank yer, mister; God bless yer, mister.” She thought he was mad, but what did that matter, he had given her nearly five pounds! She pushed the child forward: “Just look at ’im, mister—ain’t he a poor little feller!” For she hoped that this softhearted, weeping madman might be tempted to still further madness.
But Gian-Luca had turned and was rushing away; away and away from the sightless child, away and away from suffering and affliction, and the great, blind sadness of the world. And even as he ran something ran beside him, he could feel it close at his elbow. A quiet, persistent, intangible presence—the great, blind sadness of the world.
III
When at last he got home he went to Maddalena, and he laid his head down on her knee, and he told her about the child without eyes, and all the while he was talking he wept; and over and over again he must tell her about the child without eyes.
She sat there gently stroking his hair, murmuring her pity for the little blind creature, murmuring her pity for the desolate man who crouched there sobbing at her knee. And when he had cried for more than an hour he looked up into Maddalena’s face.
“I struck you—” he whispered. “I struck you, Maddalena.” And his tearful eyes were amazed.
She shook her head slowly: “It was only your hand—you have never struck me, Gian-Luca.” And stooping, she kissed the guilty hand and forgave it and pressed it to her cheek.
Then he said: “I am very tired, Maddalena, and tomorrow I must go to the Doric; I think I should like to sleep for a little, only—sit by me, Maddalena.”
IV
That night he dreamt about the beggar who sold matches, and about the child without eyes. And in his dream he thought that they looked different; curiously different, for although they were beggars, there was something noble about them. The face of the child was serene in its suffering, and wise—oh, intensely wise; and the face of his mother was no longer as it had been; now it seemed to Gian-Luca to be full of high courage, a steadfast, enduring face.
She said: “This is my little son, Gian-Luca, who must bear so much for the world. Will you not see for my little son who must bear the blindness of the world?”
Then Gian-Luca wept afresh, in his sleep, for the eyes that were not there to weep. And hearing him, Maddalena woke him:
“You are dreaming, Gian-Luca—wake up, amore, and tell me what you have been dreaming.”
He tried to tell her but somehow he could not—he could not remember his dream.
“There, there,” she soothed, “it is all right, piccino.” And as though he himself were a child, she rocked him till he fell asleep again in her arms.