Book + 

I + 

I + 

I + 

Teresa Boselli stood at the window staring down at Old Compton Street; at the greasy pavements, the greasy roadway, the carts, the intolerable slow-moving vans, those vans, that to Teresa’s agonized ears, seemed to rumble more loudly because of that window. There were men in the street, and women too, mothers⁠—yet they let those vans go on rumbling; they did not know, and even if they knew they would probably continue on their way uncaring. + 

Teresa’s whole being, soul, heart and brain, seemed to fuse itself together into something hard, resisting⁠—a shield, a wall, a barricade of steel wherewith to shut away those sounds. In the street below the traffic blocked itself; protesting horses shuffled and stamped, their drivers shouted to each other, laughing; a boy went by whistling a music-hall song; a dog, perched jauntily on a grocer’s cart, sprang up to bark at nothing in particular; and Teresa shook her clenched fists in the air, then let them drop stiffly to her sides. Her eyes, small, black and aggressively defiant, burnt with a kind of fury. + 

Turning from the window, she looked about the room with its horsehair armchair and couch. She herself had crocheted the antimacassars that, slightly out of shape and no longer very white, adorned the slippery horsehair. She herself had chosen the red serge curtains and the bottle-green window blind, the brown linoleum so very unlike parquet and the rug so alien to Persia. She herself had made the spotted muslin hangings over pink sateen that clothed the dressing-table, and she herself had pinned on the large pink bow wherewith they were looped together. She herself had fixed the little wooden bracket that held the patient plaster Virgin, and hers were the hands that had nailed the Sacred Heart directly over the bedstead. A battered wooden bedstead, a battered Sacred Heart; the one from long enduring the travail of men’s bodies, the other from long enduring the travail of their souls. In the oleograph the Heart was always bleeding⁠—no one ever staunched it, no one ever worried. To Teresa it had stood for a symbol of salvation; she had sometimes condoned with its sufferings in her prayers, but never⁠—no, not once⁠—in her life. She had seen this particular picture of the Heart in a window near the church in Hatton Garden. She had gone in and bought it, three and sixpence it had cost. That had been six months ago this November, while Olga, the beloved, the only child, the beautiful, had been away in Florence serving as maid to the children of rich Americans, teaching them Italian⁠—Maledetti! + 

On the wooden bedstead lay an old patchwork quilt, the labor of Teresa’s fingers, and under the quilt lay Olga, the beloved, the labor of Teresa’s body, and of Fabio, downstairs in the shop below cutting up mottled salame. But when Teresa thought of Olga, the beloved, she tried not to think of Fabio. + 

Teresa was forty. For forty years she had stared at life out of fierce, black eyes that had only once softened to human passion, for the rest they had softened when she looked at Olga; but when she had prayed to the Blessed Virgin, to whose gentle service she had once been dedicated, her eyes had been frightened and sometimes defiant, but not soft as when she looked at Olga. “Mea culpa, Mea culpa!” she had told the Blessed Virgin⁠—remembering the one hot sin of her youth⁠—“Ora pro nobis, Sancta Maria Virgio Mater Dei, Ora pro nobis.” And then: “Take care of Olga, dear Mother of Jesus, preserve her from temptation and the lusts of men⁠—” + 

Tall and spare as a birch tree was Teresa, as a birch tree that has waited in vain for the spring. Her wavy black hair was defying time; it shone, and where the light touched it, it bloomed, faintly blue in the light. Her forehead had much that was noble about it, but the brows⁠—thick and coarse as those of a man⁠—all but met above the arch of her nose, a few isolated hairs alone dividing them. A slight shade, more marked towards the corners of her mouth, added to the strong virile look of her. Her dress was somber and rather austere, it was fastened at the throat by a large mosaic brooch, and in her ears she wore filigree gold earrings. A purposeful woman, an efficient woman, a woman who knew well that four farthings make a penny; a woman who liked the feel of those four farthings, who invested them with romance. Farthings, pennies, shillings, sovereigns⁠—always the ultimate sovereigns. Golden things! Some people might like buttercups; Fabio did, for Fabio was simple, but Teresa preferred the cold beauty of sovereigns; sovereigns could buy flowers, but flowers could not buy sovereigns, her practical Tuscan mind told her that. And yet she was no miser, there was method in her saving, she saved for a definite reason, for Olga. Perhaps, too, she saved a little for Fabio, Fabio who was stupid where money was concerned. He could cut up salame into fine transparent slices, but only after Teresa had taught him how to do it; scolding, ridiculing, making him feel humble⁠—Fabio who always replied: “Si, si, cara.” Long ago now, more than twenty years ago, she had said: “If you love me, you’ll marry me, Fabio, in spite of what you know has happened.” + 

And Fabio had said: “I will kill him first, Cane!” + 

But Teresa had said: “No, marry me first.” + 

And Fabio had replied: “Allora⁠—” + 

After that he had brought her back with him to England. Fabio had already been a naturalized Englishman at the time of his meeting with Teresa in Florence⁠—he had found it convenient in his business⁠—yet never was man more Latin in spirit. Short flares of temper and infinite patience; the patience that sat for hours waiting for trains in the heat of a Tuscan summer; the patience that suffered the hardships of conscription, and later the heartbreaking sunlessness of England, and later still, Teresa’s cold marital endurance⁠—Teresa who was always repenting the sin that Fabio had helped her to efface. Once back again in London among his salami, his spaghetti and his Parmesan cheeses, damped down by rain and fog and mud, and a little, perhaps, by Teresa’s endurance, Fabio had forgotten to kill his “Cane,” which doubtless was just as well. Only when Olga was born two years later did he remember how often he had prayed to Saint Joseph, the wise old patron of wedlock, that she might not be born too soon. + 

Sounds! The room was full of them, the house was full of them! The whole world was full of them⁠—a hell composed of sounds! Footsteps in the shop below, the clanging of the shop bell⁠—voices⁠—Fabio’s voice, then others, unknown voices. A door banging, the shop door, people going in and out. And always that ceaseless din of traffic in the street, now fainter, and now louder, more vindictive. Teresa’s body tightened to do battle once again, as though by standing rigid and scarcely drawing breath she might hope to subdue the universe. + 

The figure on the bed moved a little and then sighed, and together with that sigh came a more imperious summons, the sharp, protesting, angry wailing of an infant not yet fully reconciled to life. + 

Teresa hurried to the bed. “Olga!” she whispered, “Olga!” The girl’s eyes opened and closed, then they opened again and remained fixed on Teresa; there was recognition in their gaze. + 

Teresa bent lower; the nurse had gone out, she would not be back for an hour. “Who was he?”⁠—the same monotonous question. “Tell me, my darling⁠—tell Mamma that loves you. Who was it hurt my little lamb?” + 

Olga’s head moved from side to side; feebly, like some sore stricken creature, she beat with her hands on the patchwork quilt. + 

Teresa’s strong arm slid under her shoulders. “Tell Mamma,” she whispered close to her ear, “tell Mamma, like a good child, Olga, my darling, and then the Blessed Virgin will make you well again.” + 

She spoke as she might have done fourteen years ago, when the five-year-old Olga had been coaxed and coerced into making some childish confession. + 

“Tell Mamma, Olga⁠—tell Mamma.” + 

But the pale lips remained very gently closed. Olga, slipping back again into oblivion, kept her secret safe in her heart. Then Teresa’s will to know rose up stern and terrible, the will of those countless peasant forbears, creatures of hot suns and icy winds, of mountains and valleys and strong, brown soil; creatures who, finding no man to respect them, had made a god of their self-respect, offering the virtue of their women on his shrine, not for that virtue’s sake but for their own. And against this god in the days of her youth, at the time of the gathering in of the grapes, Teresa Boselli had passionately sinned, and had forever after hated her sin; but never more hotly than at this moment when she saw it lifting its head in her child, in Olga, who, having betrayed her mother would not betray her lover. Teresa’s thin form towered gaunt above the bed. + 

“Tell me!” she commanded. “Tell me!” + 

The girl’s lids had fallen, she was very far away; no sounds from the external world could reach her. Teresa stared down at the drawn young face, and her breast ached as though it would kill her with its pain. Groping for her rosary she tried to tell her beads, the Dolorous Mysteries, beginning in Gethsemane, and as each tragic decade came to a close she demanded the life of her child. + 

“Give me the fruit of my womb, Blessed Mary.” + 

Her prayers gathered force as her terror increased; the face on the pillow was changing, changing⁠—it was growing very solemn, very aloof. In a passion of entreaty she dropped to her knees, pressing the rosary against her forehead until the beads scarred her flesh. In her anguish she struck at the gates of heaven, she tore at the garments of the Mother of God. + 

“Not like this⁠—not like this⁠—you spared me, spare her. I demand it of you⁠—I demand Olga’s life! Why should her sin be greater than mine? You who were a Mother, you who knew grief⁠—you who saw death at the foot of the Cross⁠—you whom I have served in penitence and love⁠—I demand it of you⁠—give me Olga’s life!” + 

And Olga, drifting always farther away, lay with quiet, closed eyelids and motionless lips, giving her life’s blood, but not the secret of her loyal and impenitent heart. + 

Then Teresa fell to weeping; she wept without restraint, noisily, heavily⁠—her sobs shook the bed. From time to time she drank in her own tears. + 

The nurse came back. “What’s the matter, what’s happened?” She laid her fingers on the girl’s thin wrist. “I must send your husband for the doctor,” she said, and she hurried downstairs to the shop. + 

Fabio lifted his head from his hands; he was sitting on a narrow, high-legged stool behind his sausages and cheeses. A small man, himself as rotund as a cheese, with a mild, pale face, and a ring of grey hair that gave him a somewhat monkish appearance, in spite of his white coat and apron. + 

“Well?” he said, blinking at her a little. + 

The nurse shook her head: “You must go for the doctor⁠—any doctor if he’s out.” + 

Fabio got heavily off his stool, his lips were trembling: “You go,” he suggested. “I would wish to be with our Olga.” + 

“No, I must go back⁠—I’m needed upstairs⁠—but be as quick as you can.” + 

II + 

Olga was dying⁠—the doctor came and went; he would call again later, he told them. + 

“Fetch me a priest!” demanded Teresa, calm as a general now before battle. “There is yet time enough for a miracle to happen, the Holy Oil has been known to save life.” + 

She stared across the bed at the kneeling Fabio. + 

“Don’t drive me from Olga⁠—” he pleaded pitifully. + 

Teresa was relentless: “Do as I tell you!” + 

And getting to his feet he obeyed her. + 

III + 

That night, in spite of the Holy Oil, Olga went on her journey. After the great love that lay hidden in her heart, after the great anguish that lay whimpering in the basket, the spirit that was Olga slipped silently away to the Maker who would have no need to question, knowing all things and the reason thereof. + 

IV + 

Teresa demanded to be left alone with her child and the child of her child, and because of her voice and the look in her eyes, Fabio left them alone. The room was shrouded in comparative darkness. Four thin, brown candles guarded the bed. From the little red lamp in front of the Virgin came a fitful, flickering glimmer. Teresa stood over the slender body, gazing down with her hard, black eyes; then she turned and lifted the baby from his basket, a tiny lump of protesting flesh muffled in folds of flannel. From her fumed-oak bracket the Virgin watched with a gentle, deprecating smile. She could not help that deprecating smile⁠—it was molded into plaster. Majestically, Teresa turned and faced her, and they looked at each other eye to eye. Then Teresa thrust the baby towards her, and the gesture was one of repudiation. + 

“Take him!” said Teresa. “I give him to you, I have no use for him. He has stolen my joy, he has killed my child, and you, you have let him do it⁠—therefore, you can have him, body and soul, but you cannot any longer have Teresa Boselli. Teresa Boselli has done with prayer, for you cannot answer and God cannot answer⁠—possibly neither of you exists⁠—but if you do exist, then I give this thing to you⁠—do as you like with it, play with it, crush it, as you crushed its mother over there!” + 

Fabio came up quietly behind her; he had stolen back to her unperceived. He took the baby from her very gently. + 

“Little Gian-Luca come to Nonno,” he murmured, pressing his cheek against the child. + 

II + 

I + 

Fabio reared himself up in bed. It was past midnight, and the candle was guttering prior to its final extinction. Fabio’s hair, a disheveled halo, stuck out grotesquely above his ears, his nightshirt, unbuttoned, snowed the thick, black hairs that gave to his chest a fictitious look of strength, and his eyes so mild and placid by nature, harbored something very like anger. + 

“I will have him baptized!” he shouted suddenly. “And I will have him called Gian-Luca!” + 

Teresa, her throat modestly concealed by the collar of her cotton nightgown, her hair brushed severely from her brow and plaited, her hands clasped before her on the red coverlet, looked at her husband coldly. + 

“Why baptized?” she inquired as though surprised. “And if baptized, why Gian-Luca?” + 

Fabio turned to her: “Is it you who speak so⁠—you who have always been so pious?” + 

“I have done with piety,” said Teresa quietly, flicking some dust from the bedspread. + 

“And you would deny him the rites of the Church?” + 

“I have done with the Church,” said Teresa. + 

“Ah! Then perhaps you have done with God, too?” + 

“Yes, I have done with God, too.” + 

Fabio stared at his wife aghast. He had not been a practicing Catholic for years; still, he had had his ideas about things, and God had been one of his ideas. Something angry and pitiful was stirring in his heart on behalf of the small Gian-Luca; a feeling that he was not receiving fair play, that for all he, Fabio, knew he was being deprived of some mystical, incomprehensible advantage, of something that he had a right to, and the more his heart smote him the angrier he grew. + 

“He shall be baptized!” he repeated furiously. + 

“Forms⁠—” murmured Teresa, “just meaningless forms⁠—” and she shrugged her angular shoulders. The child began to cry, and stooping down she rocked the wicker bassinette. “Just meaningless forms,” she murmured again, and then: “Why Gian-Luca, Fabio?” + 

“It came to me so⁠—it came to me, ‘Gian-Luca,’ I cannot say more than that.” + 

“It came to you so?” + 

“Yes, I thought ‘Gian-Luca,’ as I took him from you that night.” + 

“I see⁠—a sign from heaven, I suppose?” + 

“Corpo di Bacco!” bellowed Fabio. “Corpo di Bacco! I will baptize him now, I myself will baptize him!” + 

He lunged out of bed and over to the washstand, dipping his fingers in the jug. Bending down to the now quiet infant, he made the sign of the cross on its forehead. “Gian-Luca, I baptize thee,” he muttered fiercely, “in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Then his anger suddenly deserted him. He looked up at Teresa; she was watching the proceedings with a little smile on her lips. + 

Feeling cold and rather frightened, he crawled back to bed and tried to take her in his arms. “My Teresa,” he whispered, “be gentle, my Teresa, don’t hate our little grandson so much⁠—be gentle to him for Olga’s sake⁠—perhaps, she can see us, who knows?” + 

“Fool!” said Teresa. “Olga is dead; it would have been better if the child had died too. I feel nothing any more, neither love nor hate, my heart is broken. Can a broken heart feel?” + 

“I will try to mend it for you,” he pleaded. + 

“You!” she said, turning her face away. + 

The candle guttered and went out. Fabio stared miserably into the darkness; he prayed a little but without much hope, he had always been rather hopeless in his prayers, always a little too fearful of God. And meanwhile the newly baptized Gian-Luca had mercifully gone off to sleep, his crumpled face was pressed into the pillow, his round, shiny head, ridiculously bald, was slightly bedewed with sweat. From time to time Teresa’s hand dropped softly and set the cradle in motion; this she did automatically, from a sense of duty and custom. The rocking of the cradle fell into line with a hundred other everyday duties that must and would be accomplished, and presently Gian-Luca would fall into line too. He would never be neglected; like the shop and the house he would always be kept clean and sweet, and like the shop and the house he would come to long at times for the hand that disheveled, that rendered untidy, in a foolish access of affection. + 

II + 

Gian-Luca having no one to talk to, and having no language wherewith to talk in any case, found himself, as all infants must be, at a great disadvantage in relation to life. Had his mind been a blank, as people seemed to think, it would have been easier not to howl; but his mind was a turbulent seething muddle, in which colic and darkness and the sudden flare of gas-jets and ticklings and prickings and stupid grasping hands and uncomfortable confinement in preposterous positions, were all jumbled together in nebulous chaos, impossible at first to disentangle. From this chaos one day there suddenly emerged a creature who was beautifully concrete, a kindly young woman who had always been there and had always borne a relation to hunger and to hunger’s ultimate appeasement. But whereas before she, like everything else, had been part of the haze called life, she now emerged a well-defined being that was capable of arousing anger or approval, capable of being smiled at or howled at, capable even, of being thumped. She could open her bodice and give you what you wanted, or she could refuse to do so. In the latter contingency you felt blind with rage, in the former you felt much less than was supposed, much less indeed than you appeared to be feeling; in the former you quickly became atavistic, doing what you must, automatically, because something, somewhere, ordered you to live. + 

The concrete creature was Rosa Varese, the daughter of Nerone who sold tobacco a little way down the street; she was married and had lost her own baby of croup in the very nick of time to provide you with dinners, but all this of course you did not know, nor would you have cared if you had. Your emotions were entirely concerned with yourself, not through any wish of yours, but by order of that something that commanded you, Gian-Luca, to live. + 

Side by side with the curious mystery of food was the mystery of safety-pins; the first inanimate objects these to emerge from the nebulous chaos. They could press, they could prick, they could feel hard and cold, in fact they could fill you with fury; but⁠—and this was what was so strange about them⁠—they could fall into your lap and look very alluring⁠—beautiful even when they lay in your lap, so beautiful that you wished to pay homage and in consequence put them in your mouth. Safety-pins, no doubt rather humble in themselves, were nevertheless important; through discovering them you discovered other things such as coal and soap and thimbles; in a word you developed your sense of beauty, and your instinct told you to worship beauty by trying to swallow it. + 

But although you were fast becoming familiar with the joys and sorrows of life, there were still big gaps in your comprehension; for instance, the things that they put on your feet⁠—they caused you a most peculiar sensation, you wanted to cry, you wanted to laugh, you wanted above all to pull them off. But whenever you succeeded in pulling them off, someone was always there to slap your hands, and this, in view of your awakening perceptions, struck you as outrageously unjust. And then there was that thing they put on your head, it tormented you and tickled your ears; you were fastened to it by something soft, something that went under your chin. One day you discovered that the something soft could be chewed, and in consequence you chewed it⁠—you did not try to swallow it like beauty⁠—and since you could make but small impression with your gums, why did they always pull it away, making sounds meanwhile that you disapproved of? + 

Sounds! You began to listen for sounds, you tried to make them yourself, you began to feel that it was not enough to crow or to howl or to gurgle. You began to feel that given time, you yourself would make sounds that counted; you were still rather vague as to what they would be, but you knew that somewhere out of the void would come sounds that belonged exclusively to you; others might make them but that would not matter, for with some sort of magic that you did not understand, the fact that you made them would mean that they were yours, as surely as your mouth was yours. One way and another you were full of curiosity, full of a desire to do things. When you had done them they occasionally hurt you, as when you bit the buckle of your pram-strap and made your gum bleed, but taken on the whole you considered it worth while, and the next day you ducked your head and bit the thing again⁠—that was the way to face life, you felt. + 

III + 

Rosa spoke seldom but cried very often, so that poor Gian-Luca had not the advantage of hearing those consoling expressions of endearment that presumably help the infant subconscious to resign itself to life. Had he not possessed a great joy of living, in spite of colic and other tiresome things, Rosa’s tears might very well have damped him; as it was they only irritated. Her tears had a way of dripping on to his head in the very middle of dinner, and he vaguely divined, as it were by instinct, that they spoilt the quality of the dinner itself, which was of course quite inexcusable. + 

He could not understand the element of tears, they were wet like his bath but they tasted different, and they came for all sorts of unexpected reasons, for instance when you bumped your head. Rosa would stare at Gian-Luca in silence, and then there would come a noise in her throat, sometimes a series of noises even; “Mio bambino⁠—” and then more noises and something splashing off her on to him. They usually spent the day at the Bosellis’, but every night she returned with Gian-Luca to her father’s tobacco shop down the street where she and her husband lived. She was young and bereaved; she gave of her milk but not yet of her heart, that was not to be expected; her heart was far away with quite another baby, whose food Gian-Luca was consuming. + 

Gian-Luca had a queer, old wooden cradle beside the bed shared by Rosa and her husband. He liked Rosa’s husband, a handsome young man who roared and slapped his thighs; not so much to please Gian-Luca as to please himself⁠—he had never quite grown up. He did a delightful thing too, every morning, he smeared a species of foam on to his chin; he smeared some on to Gian-Luca’s one day, and Gian-Luca licked it off. The tobacconist was not quite so amusing, still, it must be admitted that he had a wooden leg.⁠ ⁠… The leg made a most arresting noise when he walked⁠—thump, thump, thump, thump⁠—Gian-Luca would listen, and rock with excitement when he heard it. If it had not been for a tendency to colic, every minute of the day would have seemed worth while, but of course one’s stomach being nearly the whole of one, it is apt to have very large pains. + 

Rosa’s husband was a waiter at the Capo di Monte and when he came home, which he did very late, he naturally wanted his sleep. He suffered from a swollen joint on one foot, and this made him angry at times. Between Gian-Luca’s colic and Rosa’s tears and the pain in that joint when he took off his shoe, his nights were becoming decidedly unpleasant, which reacted on them all in the mornings. There were mornings now, growing more frequent of late, when his roaring, even to Gian-Luca’s ears, did not suggest a game; when he and Rosa would settle down to quarrel, which they always did in English because they both disliked it, and because each knew that the other disliked it. Their quarrel-English was particularly florid and beautifully free from restraint; it largely partook of Saturday nights outside the George and Dragon. + 

Gian-Luca learnt that certain sounds were ugly, that they made you feel strangely disturbed and unsafe. He also learnt that some sounds might be soothing, as for instance when Mario and Rosa made it up with many soft murmurings and kissings. As the weeks turned into months he became all ears, he became a kind of reservoir for words. The words went filtering into him through his very skin, and finally emerged in one loud, triumphant vocable: “Gug!” said Gian-Luca, and then⁠—“Gug!” + 

But “Gug” was not enough, gratifying though it was, it could only express Gian-Luca, and by the time Gian-Luca had known the world a year, he had come to realize that to make one’s presence felt one might have to express a few other things as well⁠—a bore perhaps, but there it was. Gian-Luca looked about him for the next most worthy object, and wisely decided that four legs and a tail, to say nothing of a thoroughly soul-satisfying bark, had every right to his attention. “Dog!” said Gian-Luca, staring at the mongrel that wandered in and out of Nerone’s little shop. + 

“Doggie!” said Rosa, as one talking to an infant. + 

“Dog,” repeated Gian-Luca firmly. + 

“Poveretto!” wept Rosa to Mario that evening. “That his first word should be ‘doggie’ instead of ‘mamma,’ poveretto⁠—what a world of misery we live in!” + 

“You would think so if you had my bunion,” grumbled Mario; then he kissed her, for of course a dead baby hurt far more than even the most virile bunion. + 

But though Rosa wept with pity, Gian-Luca did not weep; what the ear has never heard and the eye has never seen, the heart of one year’s beating cannot mourn for. In his vast self-satisfaction he walked towards the coal box, fell down, got up, fell down, and finally decided that Nature was not mocked, and that progress on all fours was the only mode of locomotion. + 

IV + 

Fabio was told the marvel, Gian-Luca had said “Dog,” and Fabio was thoroughly offended. + 

“Nonno, Nonno, Nonno!” he cried, pointing to himself. “Little Gian-Luca must say, Nonno!” + 

Gian-Luca eyed him kindly, he liked his funny hair, and reaching up he pulled it politely. + 

“Ecco!” exclaimed Fabio. “He is as strong as any giant, but all giants call their grandfathers ‘Nonno,’ don’t they Teresa? They say: ‘Nonno, Nonno!’ ” + 

Teresa looked up from a mound of pale grey knitting, then she dropped her eyes again without speaking. She was always knitting something in her spare time these days, knitting had become her obsession. She knitted in the shop, in her cash-desk, during meals, and at night she would knit herself to sleep. She knitted very fast, with a harshly stabbing needle, occasionally raising the needle to her head for a swift, proficient scratch between the stitches. + 

“Pearl one, knit two, pearl one,” murmured Teresa glancing at a book that lay beside her. + 

“Nonno! Nonno! Nonno! Say Nonno!” shouted Fabio, shaking a finger at Gian-Luca. + 

“Poveretto!” began Rosa, with her apron to her eyes, preparing to burst into tears. + 

But at that Teresa suddenly looked up from her knitting. “Basta e supera, you hear?” she said sharply; then, as though she had forgotten Rosa, “Knit one, pearl one, slip one.” Gian-Luca considered “Nonno” for some weeks before he finally said it, and when he did so he made a grave mistake; he applied it, not to Fabio, but to the wooden leg of Fabio’s friend and rival down the street. The leg had been particularly active for some time, Gian-Luca had heard it for an hour, and when its owner, balancing himself against the counter, had actually lifted it and waved it in the air⁠—“Nonno!” screamed Gian-Luca, beside himself with pleasure. + 

It was very unfortunate that Fabio should have entered to buy some Macedonia at that moment. It was even more unfortunate that Nerone should have laughed, with something like triumph in his eyes. Fabio surveyed the group, thrust his hands into his pockets, and left the shop without a word. + 

“Ma che!” exclaimed Nerone, in an access of delight, “Ma che! I think him jealous of my stump!” + 

For fifteen years these two had behaved like ageing children; quarrelling, boasting, teasing, and loving⁠—always loving⁠—but quick to take advantage of each other whenever it offered. + 

“That salame⁠—very bad, your place is going to pieces, Fabio. You naturalize yourself and then you sell us bad salame, the salame looks at you and then goes bad.” + 

“I do not sell bad salame⁠—mine is the best in England. As for you, you talk and talk, then sell rotten cigarettes, all powder, one might as well smoke snuff.” + 

“You accuse my cigarettes, straight from Italy they come.” + 

“Teresa says they come more likely from the Ark. Teresa says I cough⁠—‘That is Nerone,’ she says, ‘with his rotten Macedonia all dropping out one end.’ She says: ‘That is that old fox Nerone.’ ” + 

“Ah! So that is what Teresa says. Well now, tell me this my Fabio, you find tobacco in my smokes, is it not? What else do you find, beside tobacco?” + 

“The dust from the shop.” + 

“Oh, I find much more than that⁠—oh, much more, in your salame.” + 

“And please, what do you find?” + 

“If I tell you you will get angry.” + 

“Not at all, I know my salame, he is prime.” + 

“Prime you say? Santa Madonna! Listen to him, prime he says! Very well, then, it is prime, but⁠—I find a little worm. He looks at me, I look at him, he bows, I lift my hat. I have him in a tumbler, come and see!” + 

For fifteen years these two had played dominoes together, drinking Amarena in the evenings. When Fabio lost the game⁠—as he nearly always did⁠—Nerone would openly rejoice; if, however, Fabio won it, Nerone lost his temper, and that made Fabio happy for a week. When both their wives had been alive, before Nerone became a widower, they had managed to quarrel over them: + 

“My Lucrezia, what a cook! What a marvelous risotto! Why do you let your Teresa boil her rice into a pulp? You should send her here, Lucrezia will teach her how to boil it.” + 

“Then you send us your Lucrezia, and we will show her zabaione, we will teach her not to turn it into lumps like scrambled eggs!” + 

But when sorrow had come upon them⁠—and to Fabio shame as well⁠—they had ceased to nag each other for the moment. They had turned away their eyes, while their hearts grew kind and shy, neither had wished to see the sorrow of the other. They had found no words, or if they spoke they did so fearfully, timid of saying the wrong thing. And when Lucrezia died, Fabio sent a wreath of iris, so large that it ousted all the other floral tributes. And when Olga died, Nerone sent a splendid cross of roses, and: “I will have them white, all white,” he told the florist. + 

V + 

No sooner had Gian-Luca found his tongue, than he found his feet with a vengeance; there were setbacks, of course, but to all intents and purposes he quickly became a biped. His adventures increased and multiplied, leading him now into strange, alluring places: the backyard, for instance, where the empty cases stood, festooned with flue and smuts. These empty packing-cases attracted him greatly; they were dirty, they were hollow, and queer, fantastic labels, together with all sorts of scrawls and lines and crosses appeared on their battered sides. To do them justice, they were very wise old cases, having travelled with aplomb all the way from Italy. Gian-Luca, of course, was not aware of this, still he felt that there was something about them⁠ ⁠… This conviction of his grew and grew, until he longed for a fuller communion, a communion only to be properly attained by filling the void with himself. Into the lowest and kindest of the cases Gian-Luca heaved his minute proportions, to discover⁠—as occasionally happens⁠—that in life it is simpler to get in than to get out, and this revelation when it came was terrific; he was rescued half an hour later by Teresa; still, there had been that half-hour⁠— + 

At about this time they weaned him from Rosa, and Gian-Luca made his first acquaintance with sorrow. Rosa came daily to push his perambulator, but Rosa, without the comfort of her breasts, was not Rosa to him any more. She seemed cold and aloof; “tout passe, tout lasse⁠ ⁠…” but naturally Gian-Luca did not know this fact as yet. Though Gian-Luca sorrowed, yet his Rosa rejoiced, she no longer splashed him with tears; if her lips trembled now they did so with smiles, any more, she was constantly laughing. “I will bring you a little new friend, one day soon!” she had taken to whispering in his ear; and sometimes she led him into a church, and sat clicking her rosary just above his nose, while he kicked and protested on her lap. “You must not tell Nonna where we have been,” Rosa would caution, holding up her finger; just as though Gian-Luca knew where they had been, or could have told Nonna if he had! + 

Sometimes Rosa would stay on and play with him a little in the room that had once been Olga’s, but more often he would be shut up there alone, and this, for some reason, he did not object to⁠—he liked the room that had been Olga’s. There were bars in front of the window now, and a high nursery guard for the occasional fire, but beyond these two drawbacks the room was all his, his to do with as he listed. He could twist the large knobs on the washstand by the window, he could crawl away under the bed, he could climb along the charming slippery horsehair sofa or toboggan down the seat of the chair. He could stare in fascination at the deep wounds in the wall; one just above the bed and four just opposite. He longed to put his finger into these deep wounds, but found that they were too high up. In the region of the wounds the paper hung torn and jagged⁠—it looked like mutilated skin; and Gian-Luca, all agog with primitive instinct, would ache and ache to tear it away. + 

“Gug!” said Gian-Luca, returning fiercely to his first form of self-expression, “Gug! Gug!” And his small hand would grasp the empty air in its eager will towards destruction. Except for those five wounds the walls were quite bare; Teresa had left them just as they had been on the night when Olga died. Only the Virgin, together with her bracket, and the Heart⁠—whose bleeding no hand ever staunched⁠—had gone, and in their place were the wounds that Gian-Luca longed to prod. + 

III + 

I + 

When he was four a splendid thing happened; Gian-Luca was given the freedom of the shop. It had been impossible to do other than accord it, short of tying up Gian-Luca’s legs, so Teresa threw open the door from the parlor and said: “Go⁠—but do not steal the pickles.” + 

This occurred one morning in July, when the warmth of the sun was busily engaged in coaxing out endless smells. The street door was also standing wide open, and through it came a series of rumblings and shoutings that expressed the spirit of Old Compton Street. + 

The shop! All his life Gian-Luca remembered those first impressions of the shop; the size of it, the smell of it, the dim, mysterious gloom of it⁠—a gloom from which strange objects would continually jump out and try to hit you in the face⁠—but above all the smell, that wonderful smell that belongs to the Salumeria. The shop smelt of sawdust and cheeses and pickles and olives and sausages and garlic; the shop smelt of oil and cans and Chianti and a little of split peas and lentils; the shop smelt of coffee and sour brown bread and very faintly of vanilla; the shop smelt of people, of Fabio’s boot blacking, and of all the boots that went in and out unblacked; it also smelt of Old Compton Street, a dusty, adventurous smell. + 

Gian-Luca stared about him in amazement and awe, he had never known before this moment how truly great Nonno was, but he saw now that Nonno distributed like God, and that what he distributed was good. From the ceiling were suspended innumerable coils of what looked like preserved intestines. They may possibly have been intestines at one time, but when Fabio sold them they had beautiful names: “Bondiola,” “Salsiccie,” “Salami di Milano,” in other words they were sausages. The sausages varied as much in figure as they did, presumably, in taste; there were short stumpy sausages; fat, bulging sausages; sly, thin sausages; anatomical sausages. There were regal sausages attired in silver paper, there were patriotic sausages in red, white and green, and endless little humble fellows hanging on a string, who looked rather self-conscious and shy. + 

And the pasta! There were plates of it, cases of it, drawers of it, and all the drawers had neat glass fronts. The glass-fronted drawers were entirely set apart for the aristocracy of pasta. One saw at a glance that social etiquette was very rigidly observed, each family of pasta kept strictly to itself, there were no newfangled ideas. + 

There were paste from Naples, marked: “Super Fine.”⁠—Tagliatelle, Gnocchi, Zita, Mezzani, Bavettine, and the learned Alfabeto. There were paste from Bologna⁠—cestini, farfalle tonde; and from Genoa, the conch-like decorative bicorni and the pious capelli di angelo. There were paste shaped like thimbles and others shaped like cushions and yet others like celestial bodies; there were rings and tubes and skeins and ribbons, all made of pasta; there were leaves and flowers and frills and ruchings, all made of pasta; there were yards of slim white paste that suggested vermifuge, and many leagues of common macaroni. The common macaroni had to fend as best it could⁠—it lay about in heaps on the floor. + 

But not alone did Fabio deal in sausages and pasta, he dealt in many other things. Providing as he did a smell for every nose, he also provided a taste for every palate. Huge jars of plump, green olives, floating in turgid juices, stood ready to be fished for with the squat, round wooden spoons; a galaxy of cheeses, all approaching adolescence, rolled or sprawled or oozed about the counter. Tomatoes, in every form most alien to their nature, huddled in cans along a shelf; there were endless sauces, endless pickles, endless pots of mustard, endless bins of split and dried and powdered peas. There were also endless bottles containing ornate liquids⁠—Menta, Arancio, Framboise, Grenadine, Limone⁠—beautiful, gem-like liquids, that when a sunbeam touched them glowed with a kind of rapture⁠—came alive. Chianti in straw petticoats, blinked through its thinnecked bottles, suspended from large hooks along the walls, while beneath it, in the shadowy bins, lurked yellow Orvieto, full-blooded, hot Barolo and the golden Tears of Christ. Apples, nutmegs, soups and jellies, herring-roes and tinned crustacea, rubbed shoulders with the honey of Bormio. A kind of garden this, a Garden of Eden, with a tree of life on whose long-suffering sides had been grafted all the strange stomachic lusts of modern Adam. And as God once walked conversing with His offspring in the garden, so now, the worthy Fabio moved among his customers; a mild-faced, placid Deity, himself grown plump with feeding⁠—smelling of food and wine and perspiration. + 

In the little wooden cash-desk sat Teresa at her knitting, with a pen-holder stuck behind her ear. A black-browed, imperturbably austere, regenerate Eve, completely indifferent to apples. From time to time she laid aside her knitting, found her pen, and proceeded to make entries in the ledger. Gian-Luca, looking at her, felt that Nonno might be God, but that Nonna was the source from which he sprang. Nonna controlled a drawer from which flowed gold and silver; enormous wealth, the kind of wealth that no amount of saving could ever hope to find in money-boxes. + 

Gian-Luca had suspected the omnipotence of Nonna, and now his suspicions were confirmed. He knew, had always known, that Nonna must be worshipped, that moreover, she was worthy of his worship. For one thing she was beautiful, she had small, black, shining eyes, and hair that reminded him of coal. He often longed to rub his cheek against her glossy hair, only somehow that would not go with worship. He adored her bushy eyebrows⁠—one eyebrow when she frowned⁠—not unlike Nerone’s moustache⁠—and the downy, dusky look just above her upper lip, and the tallness and the gauntness of her. He admired her long, brown fingers with their close-pared, oval nails, and her heavy ears that held the filigree gold earrings. He admired her blue felt slippers and her flannel dressing-gown, and most of all the queerness and the coldness that was Nonna in relation to Gian-Luca himself. It would be: + 

“Nonna, Nonna!” + 

“Yes, Gian-Luca, what is it?” + 

“See my horse! Look, I will make him run!” + 

And the horse would run, would gallop, on his little wooden wheels, but Nonna would go on with her knitting. Or: + 

“Nonna!” + 

“Yes, Gian-Luca?” + 

“I want to kiss your finger.” + 

“Do not be foolish, fingers are for work.” + 

“Then may I touch your earrings?” + 

“No.” + 

“Then may I see your knitting?” + 

“Gian-Luca⁠—run upstairs and play with Rosa.” + 

She was conscientious, quiet and she never lost her temper; Nerone had large rages, even Fabio had small rages, but Nonna very seldom raised her voice. And he loved her. With the strange perversity of childhood, he found her a creature meet for love. Her aloofness did but add to the ardor of his loving, to the wonder and fascination of her. From the room that had been Olga’s, he would often hear her footsteps passing and repassing on the landing; now surely she was coming⁠—she was coming in at last; but she never came⁠—Gian-Luca wondered why. It was Rosa who swept that room and tidied up his toys; it was Rosa who washed his hands and slapped him and caressed him. Rosa would call him: “piccolo,” “amore,” “cuore mio,” but Teresa called him Gian-Luca. Fabio would call him “angiolo,” “tesoro,” “briccone,” but Teresa called him Gian-Luca; and in this there lay great loneliness, great cause for speculation, and yet greater cause for further loving. + 

II + 

Teresa looked up from her knitting one evening, and her eyes rested long on her grandson. + 

“Gian-Luca, come here.” + 

He slid off his chair and went to her, shy but adoring. The light from the lamp lay across her long hands and fell on one side of her hair. It fell on Gian-Luca and illumined him also⁠—a thin little boy in a black overall with a large smear of jam down the front. + 

“You have spilt your jam, Gian-Luca,” said Teresa promptly, but her eyes were not on the stain; then she did a very unexpected thing, she suddenly touched his hair. For a moment her hand lingered on his head, feeling the ashen-fair mop, feeling as one who is blind might feel, seeking for sight through the fingers. “This has nothing to do with us,” she said slowly. + 

Fabio put down his paper and frowned: “You mean?” + 

She was silent for a moment, pointing. Then: “This hair has nothing to do with us,” she repeated in her flat, even voice. + 

Fabio’s frown deepened. “What of it?” he muttered. “What can it matter, the color of his hair?” + 

But Teresa had turned the child’s face to the light and was staring down into his eyes. + 

Gian-Luca’s eyes, neither grey, blue nor hazel, were a curious compound of all three. They were limpid, too, like the cool, little lakes that are found high up in mountains. His were the eyes of Northern Italy⁠—the eyes that the vast barbarian hordes, sweeping over the vine-clad fruitful valleys, had bequeathed to the full-breasted, fruitful women⁠—the eyes that they would see in their sons. + 

“Nor have we such eyes in our stock,” said Teresa, and she pushed Gian-Luca away. + 

He stood and surveyed her gravely, reproachfully, out of those alien eyes. + 

“It is bedtime,” she told him. “Little boys must go to bed.” + 

“Si, si,” agreed Fabio anxiously. “They must.” + 

Gian-Luca went up and kissed Teresa on both cheeks; every evening he kissed her like this, on both cheeks, as family custom demanded. Then he turned and kissed Fabio also on both cheeks; Fabio was very prickly to kiss, for he shaved only twice a week. + 

“I will come and turn out the gas,” Teresa told him, “and do not take too long undressing yourself, and do not eat the orange Nonno gave you until tomorrow, it would make your stomach ache.” + 

Gian-Luca nodded and went towards the door, but in looking back he felt anxious and perturbed to see that Nonna had dropped her knitting and was staring blankly at the wall. + 

III + 

Gian-Luca was usually quite happy in the darkness, after Teresa had put out the light. The darkness had never held terrors for him; he liked it, he found it friendly. Moreover, when he closed his eyes and lay half dozing, he would sometimes see pictures inside his head; vivid and clear and beautiful they were, like a landscape after spring rain. Gian-Luca knew something of trees and grass⁠—once or twice he had been on excursions out of London with Rosa and her husband⁠—but nothing he had seen then came up to his pictures; the only trouble was that they faded away if he so much as drew breath. In Gian-Luca’s pictures there were wide green spaces, and once there had been running water; sometimes there were low-lying, faraway hills, and sometimes a kind of beautiful gloom⁠—green, from the leaves that made it. The pictures were happy, intensely happy, and Gian-Luca grew happy as he saw them. By the next day, however, he had always forgotten their most alluring details; he would have to wait until he went to bed again, and then the darkness would remind him; back would come memory and sometimes new pictures, and that was why he liked the darkness. + 

Tonight, however, the pictures would not come, though he shut his eyes and waited. The act of shutting his eyes disturbed him, it reminded him suddenly of Nonna. Nonna had stared down into his eyes; she had felt his hair too, and had said things about it⁠—she had said things about his hair and his eyes, things that he had not understood. For a moment, when her hand had rested on his head, he had thought that she meant to caress him; Nonna was not at all given to caresses, still, for one moment he had thought⁠ ⁠… Well, then he had realized, without knowing how, that Nonna was not being kind⁠—she was not being actually unkind either, only⁠—she hated his hair. He lay and pondered these things, bewildered, and his heart felt afraid because of its love. It was dreadful to love a goddess like Nonna⁠—a goddess who hated your hair⁠— + 

He began crying softly to himself in the darkness, a sniffling, lonely kind of crying. The pictures would not come and Nonna would not come; why should she come when she hated his hair? Still crying, he drifted away into sleep and dreamt of hair and eyes; quantities of fair hair that blew about him, strangling; two strange, pale eyes, that snapped themselves together and became one enormous, threatening orb, watchful, coldly vindictive. + 

He woke because there were voices in the room; Fabio and Teresa were undressing. From his cot that stood beside their double bed, he could see them moving about. They spoke in hissing, insistent whispers, doubtless lest they should disturb him. He closed his eyes again, pretending to sleep, he did not want Nonna to look at him just then. Her voice sounded different, perhaps, because she whispered, perhaps because she hated his hair. The same words recurring over and over⁠—“Olga,” and then: “But his hair⁠—his eyes⁠—” over and over again. Long after both of them had climbed into bed they continued whispering together; they always seemed to be whispering about Olga, and once Nonno said, “How lovely she was!” And Gian-Luca thought that Nonna sighed. No, he could not bear it; he put out his hand and tweaked the sleeve of her nightgown. He could hear the swift movement of surprise that followed. + 

“Go to sleep, Gian-Luca,” she said coldly. + 

After that they did not whisper any more, and he must have obeyed her and fallen asleep, for the very next moment it was morning. + 

IV + 

That day he said: “Rosa, tell me, who is Olga-how-lovely-she-was?” + 

Rosa went crimson. “You listen!” she chided, frowning at him darkly. + 

He ignored this remark and clung to his point: “Who is Olga?” he persisted. At the back of his mind was a far, faint memory of having heard that name before. + 

“You come quick, or I go tell Nonna! You come quick out!” scolded Rosa; and then relenting, “Oh, look, look, caro! See those pretty flowers, Rosa buy you a bunch.” + 

He was not deceived, though he took the flowers and allowed her to stoop and kiss him. For some reason she did not like Olga, that was plain⁠—perhaps because Olga had his sort of hair. + 

At dinner he looked up from a plate of macaroni and said suddenly, “Who is Olga?” + 

There ensued a long moment of deathly silence while Teresa and Fabio stared at each other; then Teresa said quietly: “Where have you heard?” + 

And Gian-Luca answered: “Last night.” + 

“Olga,” said Teresa, “was my little girl. She is not here, she is dead.” + 

“Olga,” said Fabio, “was your mother, Gian-Luca.” And getting up slowly he went to a drawer. “This is her picture when she was small⁠—this is Olga, Gian-Luca.” + 

Gian-Luca clapped his hands: “Pretty, pretty!” he babbled, delighted with what he saw. + 

Teresa and Fabio exchanged a quick glance, then Fabio put away the photograph. Teresa took up her knitting again⁠—she was knitting a waistcoat for Fabio. Gian-Luca watched her efficient brown hands moving in the bright-colored wools; he was thinking of Nonna’s little girl. Nonna’s little girl was a matter of importance, was something that he could understand; moreover, it was comforting, it brought Nonna nearer, it made her seem so much more accessible somehow, and more⁠—well, a trifle more like other people. Rosa, for instance, had a little girl now, a plump, fretful creature of two and a half; her name was Berta, and she grabbed Gian-Luca’s toys with amazing acquisitiveness for one who was so young. Rosa would dump her down on the floor while she swept and dusted his room in the morning, pausing now and then to exclaim in admiration: “Bella, la mia Berta!” And then to Gian-Luca: “Bella, la mia bambina, non e vero?” + 

Gian-Luca thought that Berta was cross and fat and ugly, and in any case he was rather jealous of her, she took up too much of Rosa’s time. But Nonna’s little girl looked neither cross nor ugly; on the contrary, she was pretty and had masses of dark hair. He stared across at Nonna; had she ever played? he wondered⁠—with him she was anything but playful! + 

Nonna must have felt that his eyes were upon her, for she raised her own eyes and said, not unkindly: “We will not talk of Olga, Gian-Luca.” + 

“Why?” he protested. + 

“She is dead,” said Nonna: “one does not talk of the dead.” And after that nobody talked any more, so the meal was finished in silence. + 

V + 

In the afternoon Fabio reached down his hat and went in search of Gian-Luca: “Come, tesoro, I will take you for a walk, Nonna will guard the shop.” He held out a friendly hand to the child, and together they turned into the street. “Would you like to go and play with Berta?” inquired Fabio, anxious, as always, to be kind. + 

Gian-Luca shook his head, but after a moment: “I would like to play with Olga.” + 

Fabio said dully: “Olga is in heaven, she cannot play, piccino.” + 

“No?” Gian-Luca’s voice sounded doubtful. “Do they not play in heaven, Nonno? Do they not want to play?” + 

“They are with God,” Fabio told him gently. + 

“And will not God play with them?” + 

“God does not play.” + 

“I do not like God,” said Gian-Luca. + 

“And yet He is good⁠—” murmured Fabio to himself. “I am almost certain He is good⁠—” + 

They walked on in silence for a while after that; it was hot, and Gian-Luca’s legs began to flag, Fabio stooped down and took him in his arms. + 

“Nonno is a horse, you shall ride!” he said gaily, as though to reassure the child. + 

Fabio ran a little and Gian-Luca laughed, thumping to make him go faster. In this manner they returned to Old Compton Street; the sweat was pouring down Fabio’s face. At the door of his shop stood Rocca, the butcher, enjoying the balmy air. Rocca saw Fabio: + 

“Buon giorno, Capitano!” Rocca had been a good soldier in his day, and now he used military titles for fun. “Buon giorno, Capitano!” he shouted. + 

Rocca was much esteemed for his meat, which was usually both cheap and tender. He was also much esteemed for himself⁠—an honest fellow if somewhat lacking in the gift of imagination. As a rule, his display of edible wares was moderately unobtrusive, but today he had something arresting to show; Rocca had purchased a couple of kids, which dangled outside his window. The kids were very realistic indeed, they hung there complete, pelts and all. Their little hind legs were bent back over sticks, their noses pointed to the pavement. They looked young but resigned, and their patient mouths had set in a vaguely innocent smile. In their stomachs were long, straight purposeful slits through which their entrails had been drawn. Despite that innocent smile on their mouths, their eyes were terribly dead and regretful, and as they swung there, just over the pavement, they bled a little from their wounds. + 

“Belli, eh?” demanded Rocca. + 

“Ma si!” agreed Fabio, lifting Gian-Luca higher in his arms, whereupon Gian-Luca burst into tears. + 

“Oh, poor⁠—oh, poor⁠—” he sobbed wildly. + 

“Ma che!” exclaimed Fabio, genuinely astonished, “what is the matter, piccinino?” + 

But Gian-Luca could not tell him, could not explain. + 

“Can it be the little goats?” inquired Fabio incredulously. “But do not cry so, my pretty, my lamb, they cannot hurt you, they are dead!” + 

“Ecco!” roared Rocca in his voice of a corporal, “Ecco!” And producing some fruit drops from his pocket he offered them to Gian-Luca. + 

But Gian-Luca turned away. “Oh, poor⁠—oh, poor⁠—” he wailed, until Fabio, shaking his head, carried him home, still weeping. + 

“No doubt it was the heat,” he told Teresa afterwards. “I thought he might be feeling the heat.” + 

IV + 

I + 

At about this time Gian-Luca developed his first real signs of temper. This may have been due to heredity, of course, but Teresa certainly contributed. It struck him one day that even a goddess could not be quite indifferent to devotion; the thing to do, therefore, was to worry her with love, and Gian-Luca acted accordingly. He evolved the idea of climbing into her bed, and when ordered to desist, cried loudly. He constantly followed her round the house, never very far from her heels, like a puppy, or running just ahead in the region of her toes until she fell over him. If she went into her cash-desk Gian-Luca would be there, squatting by her stool; if she went into the shop to help Fabio with the serving, out would come Gian-Luca like a jack-in-the-box, and she would find him clinging to her skirts. But these signs of devotion were only a beginning, there was more, much more to follow, for Gian-Luca decided that he wanted to be petted continually, all the time. Not an evening now but he would sidle up to Teresa and stand there waiting to be petted; sometimes he would reach up and gently stroke her arm; once he got as far as stroking her cheek. When this failed to elicit the proper response, he would hurl himself into her lap. She would say: “Gian-Luca! What are you doing?”⁠—not crossly, but in a voice of surprise; and then, while he still clung, her thin arms would go round him and her hands would continue their knitting on his back, he would hear the clicking of the needles. Fabio would call him. + 

“Come here to Nonno, caro.” + 

But Gian-Luca, would reply: “I want Nonna!” + 

And at that, as like as not, Teresa would put him down: “Run away, Gian-Luca, Nonna wants to go on knitting.” + 

And when he made to clamber on her knee again, she would shake her head and say: “No, no, Gian-Luca.” + 

One morning he gallantly offered her his jam on a half-consumed slice of bread and butter. + 

“Please eat my jam, Nonna.” + 

“No, thank you, Gian-Luca.” + 

“Please, Nonna.” + 

“But I do not want your jam, my child. You eat it, it is nice cherry jam.” + 

Of course he knew that it was nice cherry jam, that was why he wanted her to eat it. She never allowed herself butter and jam, and this pained him as unworthy of a goddess. + 

When she told him, as she often did, to run away upstairs, he now invited her to follow: “You come, Nonna.” + 

“No, I cannot, Gian-Luca, I must go and help in the shop.” + 

“Oh, please.” + 

“Do not worry me so, Gian-Luca.” + 

And then he would begin to cry. His crying would reach Fabio, who would hurry from the shop to see what was happening in the parlor, and he and Teresa would argue in Italian in order that Gian-Luca should not know what they said; but as Rosa had been busily teaching him Italian, their little ruse was often unsuccessful. He understood enough to know that Fabio sympathized and considered that he ought to be petted, and, or course, at this discovery would come yet more tears, the rather pleasant tears of self-pity. + 

“Dio!” grumbled Rosa. “You nearly five years old, and yet you cry and cry like a baby; you soon will be all washed away with your tears⁠—Gian-Luca will be melted, like the sugar.” + 

The thought that he might melt like the sugar was attractive; he now took much more interest in the sugar in his coffee. If he could melt away before Nonna’s very eyes! “Oh! Oh! Oh!” he sobbed in a kind of ecstasy, choking himself with his tears. + 

“You shut it!” scolded Rosa, who was again nearing her time, and whose Mario was making her jealous with a barmaid. “You shut it up at once, you make such dreadful noise, I think my poor head split in two!” + 

But well launched, Gian-Luca found it very hard to “shut it,” for his crying would become automatic; a series of chokings and gulpings and coughings that went on independently of any will of his. + 

Then one day he made his most stupendous effort; he had sixpence, and with it he bought a bunch of flowers. He carried them with unction, using both hands in the process. + 

“Why you want?” demanded Rosa who felt cynical and cross. + 

But Gian-Luca would not answer that question. + 

Nonna was not in the shop on his return, she happened to be knitting in the parlor. He approached her very slowly with the offering extended; his face was rather red and his breath came rather fast. Nonna looked up. + 

“For you!” said Gian-Luca. “I bought them myself⁠—” + 

And he waited. + 

“Thank you,” said Nonna. “What very pretty flowers⁠—it was kind of Gian-Luca to buy them.” But she did not even smell them, she put them on the table and quietly returned to her knitting. + 

Still he waited. Nothing happened, nothing was going to happen, no rapture, no expressions of delighted gratitude, no clasping, and no kissing of himself. There lay the fading flowers, and there sat Nonna, knitting, and there stood Gian-Luca, always waiting⁠ ⁠… Then suddenly he broke, something went snap inside him. He looked about him wildly for what he might destroy. His eyes came back to Nonna, to her long brown hands, her knitting, the thing that she preferred before his flowers. His arm shot out, he seized it and tore it from her hands; he hurled it to the floor and stamped upon it: “Bestia!” he choked, as though the thing had ears. It parted from its needles and unraveled as he stamped; at the sight of this his fury increased beyond control, and hurling himself down he tore and bit the wool, like a small wild beast that worries at a victim. + 

Teresa sat very still; her empty hands were folded, they did not strike, nor did they rescue. When she spoke she did so gently, and quite without emotion: + 

“Gian-Luca, you will go at once to bed.” + 

He looked up at her: “I hate you! You do not love my flowers⁠—you do not kiss me, not ever⁠—” + 

“You may take away your flowers, I do not want them now,” she told him. “I find you a very naughty child.” + 

And that was all⁠—she found him a very naughty child⁠—he was conscious of wanting her to hit him. If Nonna would not kiss him, then he wanted her to hit him; he wanted to try and make her hit him. Words, heard, but half-forgotten until that moment leapt from him, he screamed them at her: “Vipera! vipera! Vecchia strega!” And screaming still, he waited for the blow. But Nonna did not strike, did not raise her eyes or voice⁠—she merely raised her finger and pointed to the door. And Gian-Luca, exhausted now in spirit, mind and body, left her and went stumbling upstairs to put himself to bed. + 

II + 

It was just as well, perhaps, that the following winter Gian-Luca had to go to school, for though beaten in his one supreme contest with Teresa, he still clung to the hope of imposing himself upon her, if not by one means then by another. Thus it happened that his active and versatile mind concocted quite a new scheme; the scheme was simple, it consisted in the main of becoming extremely naughty, and in this, it must be said that Gian-Luca succeeded beyond his own expectations. Just as his weeping had become automatic, so now did his naughtiness; once launched he found it difficult to stop, and scrape followed scrape with such startling rapidity that even Teresa had to put down her knitting in order to interfere; and in this lay Gian-Luca’s miniature triumph; Nonna no longer ignored him. + 

The shop was a fruitful source of mischief, there were so many things you could do. For instance, you could dip into the huge jar of pickles and consume large quantities of onions and gherkins, after which⁠—with an effort⁠—you could make yourself sick, an arresting form of disturbance. Then, of course, there were the cheeses; the hard, manly cheeses could be surreptitiously bitten; the more feminine kind that swooned on wooden platters, could be prodded or partly consumed by the tongue. Salame, when eaten in course brown chunks, was an almost infallible cure for digestion, and the essence of peppermint that Nonna administered, when properly sweetened and diluted with hot water, was really rather in the nature of a treat⁠—you sipped it out of a spoon. + 

And then there was Rosa. Rosa, grown cross, could easily be induced to make scenes. One could always torment Rosa and Rosa’s watch, especially the watch, which was very ornate. If, as sometimes happened, she would take it off while she swept and forget to put it on again, it was almost sure to attract your attention, and then⁠—well, you naturally wound it up, whereupon it had a habit of stopping. This suggested that you might not have wound it enough, so you wound it again with more vigor⁠— + 

Rosa would scream: “Mascalzone! birbone! I tell Nonna, you see if I not tell Nonna!” + 

And as this was precisely what you hoped she would do, you laughed, not in malice but in pleasure. + 

When it rained, as, of course, it did constantly⁠—you could dart away from Rosa and plump into a puddle. There was also Rosa’s Berta who grew uglier every day, and whose yells when pinched were most gratifying. + 

Then would come the longed-for evenings when Nonna would look grave, and when Nonna would say: + 

“Come here, Gian-Luca.” + 

You went at once, and standing very still beside her knee, you tingled with excitement and pleasure at the sound of her voice, retailing all your sins. Nonna might remark upon the fact that you were smiling: + 

“There is nothing whatever to smile about, Gian-Luca.” Nothing? There was everything! You were smiling because Nonna had at last been brought to recognize your sins. The more you sinned the more you swelled with pride and self-importance, the more you knew that you were brave. With this knowledge of your prowess came a knowledge of yourself, a very soul-satisfying knowledge. In your mind’s eye you saw Nonna being rescued from a dragon, and you were her rescuer. Once rescued, how she wept on you for love and gratitude! With what humbleness she kissed you, and with what timidity she asked to be allowed to hold your hand while crossing streets⁠— + 

There was just one thing, however, that you simply could not do⁠—you could not pass Rocca’s, the butcher’s; and this, while it figured in the list of your sins, had nothing at all to do with sin. It bewildered you a little, you yourself were not quite clear as to why you felt so tearful at the thought; you would shut your eyes, because a dragon-slayer never cried, and then up would come the picture of those goats! Rosa would try persuasion, she might even apply force⁠—no good, you simply could not do it. You kicked and screamed and finally lay flat down on the pavement, but⁠—you did not pass Rocca’s the butcher’s. + 

“You wicked, you do it all on purpose!” blubbered Rosa, distracted by the scene that you were making. + 

But you answered: “No⁠—I hate it! It bleeds⁠—I hate the dead-shop!” That was what you called it: “The dead-shop.” + 

III + 

Strange days; Gian-Luca himself thought them strange, filled as they were with new excitements; indeed, when he finally had to go to school it seemed rather flat by comparison. He was naughty at school, but not really very naughty, there being no Nonna there to see, and on the whole he liked it, there were lots of other children; not small, fat, silly children like Rosa’s ugly Berta, but large, thin, clever children like himself. + 

It had been arranged to send him to the Board School, which was undenominational and took all creeds alike⁠—only Gian-Luca had no creed. Beyond Scripture lessons therefore, which left him rather cold, his mind was quite undisturbed by doctrine. Teresa shrugged her shoulders. + 

“Can it matter either way?” + 

“I am not quite sure⁠—” said Fabio doubtfully. + 

“In that case I will judge, and I say it cannot matter.” + 

And as usual Teresa decided. + 

Fabio was rather tired, life was tiring him a little, and the business was growing every day. He had long since ceased to take an active part in his religion, that had been the duty of Teresa in the past; religious forms were made, he felt, for women. Teresa’s secession from the Church had grieved and shocked him, he had grown to depend on her prayers. He suspected that Teresa’s prayers had been both loud and fierce, the kind that would be heard for the sake of peace alone, if for no other reason. Fabio could not pray like that; perhaps he lacked conviction, he had always been a shy and doubtful man; it had solaced him, however, to know that his Teresa stood up to God and asked for what they wanted. At times, of course, Teresa prayed only for herself, as when she knelt beside the bed demanding God’s forgiveness. She had done continual penance, and so, via her, had Fabio; and although this had contributed to wearing down his manhood, at the same time it had brought him more in touch with God, by proxy; that is with Teresa’s God. Left to find God for himself, by reason of Teresa’s disaffection, he could only grope for something that was kind; something that was softer and more loving than Teresa, something that would understand his needs. Freed from her religious spells he no longer liked her God, though the fact that he disliked Him made him fearful. He felt angry with Teresa, who had thus disturbed his peace, who had suddenly left him in the lurch. So, partly in anger, partly in pity, and a little in superstition, Fabio had baptized Gian-Luca. It had been his final act of defiance against Teresa, there would never be another⁠—not now. + 

Fabio had grown much older⁠—it was Olga’s death that had aged him⁠—this winter he had suffered from pains across his back. The pains had been lumbago, or so the doctor said, and when they caught him, Fabio had some ado to move, had just to stand quite still and call Teresa. For some reason the lumbago would make him think of God. God⁠—lumbago, lumbago⁠—God; that was how it came to Fabio. + 

“I do believe He is kind⁠—” thought Fabio in self-pity, clinging to the counter in acute distress. + 

He was frightened when he thought of God, and when he got lumbago he was even more frightened of the pain across his back⁠—that, no doubt, was why he coupled them together. + 

There had been a final argument about Gian-Luca’s school, when Fabio, lying prostrate with red flannel round his middle, had suggested that they might consult a priest. + 

“That I will not,” said Teresa. “You may if you wish, my Fabio, but the time is short, the child must go next week.” + 

“Corpo di Dio!” bellowed Fabio, who had tried to move in bed, and whose face was bedewed with agony. “I care not what you do⁠—only bring my liniment! I care not where you send him, so you rub me!” + 

IV + 

Rosa was deeply shocked and so was Nerone, while the Signora Rocca was appalled. She announced her intention of calling on Teresa for the purpose of expressing her disgust. + 

“Leave them in peace, for God’s sake!” advised her husband. “Have they not already had their troubles?” + 

“And have I not had mine?” inquired his wife severely, and whenever she said this, Rocca’s tardy conscience smote him, and he thought it wiser to be silent. + 

Rosa spoke to Mario, who, although not very pious, had been known to make Novenas for his bunion. “Is it not dreadful, Mario, the little Gian-Luca⁠—no father and now no religion, not at all!” And finding her Berta, she began to kiss her warmly, whereupon her Berta yelled. + 

Rosa gave Gian-Luca a little Rosary and taught him to say his beads; but Gian-Luca sucked and bit the beads until they came apart, and one of them got swallowed by mistake. + 

Nerone stumped round to Fabio on an angry wooden leg: “First you naturalize yourself, then you neglect yourself the Church, then you take Gian-Luca away, what next I ask? You become a Protestant perhaps? No wonder you sell us bad salame.” + 

Except for Signora Rocca, they all attacked poor Fabio; not one of them dared tackle Teresa. The butcher’s wife was different, she had money of her own, she went to Mass in purple silk on Sundays. Teresa was busy in the cash-desk when she arrived, but together they went into the parlor. + 

“A little glass of wine?” + 

“No, I thank you.” + 

“What a pity, we have some such excellent Chianti!” + 

“I have come,” said the signora, taking the easy-chair, “to discuss the wine of the spirit.” + 

“Ah!” murmured Teresa. “Do you think that we should stock it?” + 

“I have come,” said the signora, “to speak about Gian-Luca, whose soul is in the greatest peril.” + 

“How so?” inquired Teresa. + 

“Can you ask?” Signora Rocca opened her enormous eyes as far as they would go. “Can you ask, when I hear that you have sent him to the Board School where they teach the worship of the devil?” + 

“I have not heard that,” said Teresa very mild, “but no doubt it will come in useful.” + 

“You appal me, signora!” + 

“Do not let that be so⁠—I wish only to reassure you.” + 

“But I beg you to listen⁠—a child born in our midst, and a child already at so grave a disadvantage⁠—through the misfortune of his birth⁠—” + 

“But should not that recommend him to God⁠—if, as they say, He takes care of the afflicted?” + 

“God works through His Church alone, signora⁠—would you snatch Gian-Luca from the Church? Consider!” + 

“ ‘Consideration is a constant source of error,’ ” murmured Teresa gently. + 

But Signora Rocca was also versed in proverbs. “ ‘You give the lettuce into the keeping of the geese!’ ” she quoted in her guttural Genoese. + 

“I do nothing,” said Teresa, and her tone was quite unruffled. “ ‘He who does nothing makes no blunders.’ ” + 

“ ‘He who does evil never lacks for an excuse,’ ” retorted the signora promptly. + 

“It is also said,” Teresa reminded her, smiling, “that: ‘The elephant cannot feel the biting of the flea.’ ” + 

V + 

It was natural enough that the small community gathered together in Old Compton Street should have found a fruitful source of scandal in the open withdrawal of Gian-Luca from the Church. Of late years the Bosellis had kept all tongues wagging; there had been Olga’s trip to Italy, her misfortune, her death, and now this almost unheard-of happening⁠—a child that they looked upon as one of themselves, was being sent to a Board School. They were stranger-people, all just a little homesick, all slightly misfits and thus on the defensive; and because of this they belonged to each other, bound firmly together by four most important things, their cooking, their religion, their will to make money; and last but not least by the love of their language⁠—they came together to speak it. No one approved of naturalization, yet in Fabio’s case they forgave it; had he not been naturalized to help on his business? And this, though they might not follow his example, they could at least understand. Fabio had long been lax in his religion⁠—this they also understood up to a certain point, and Teresa’s disaffection after Olga’s death they pitied rather than condemned; but to take Gian-Luca and put him at a Board School, to dump him willy-nilly among purely foreign children, quite apart from the religious aspect of the case⁠—no, this they did not understand. + 

Rosa, who was pious, had often said to Mario: “All will be well when Gian-Luca goes to school; the good little Sisters will teach him how to pray, and presently he will make his first Communion, then all will be very well.” + 

And Mario had nodded: “That is so, my Rosa.” + 

For although her Mario was occasionally weak in regard to the sins of the flesh, he was nevertheless a good son of Holy Church, attending Mass with Rosa every Sunday morning; accompanying her to Confession every Easter, when he underwent a kind of spiritual spring-cleaning⁠—after which he would be good for a little. + 

Nerone’s religion, like his love of Italy, was purely an accident of birth. Nerone was a man who clung to early associations as a child may cling to sucking its thumb long after it has left the cradle. Nerone had been poor, disastrously so; as a boy he had often gone hungry. His natal village had consisted of one street whose chief characteristic was a smell. Its church had been tawdry and shamefully neglected, its priest discouraged and untidy, its population hard-bitten to the bone by ceaseless poverty and toil. In the summer Nerone had grilled in his attic and in the winter he had frozen. Italy had given him nothing but hardships, whereas England had provided comparative ease. But Italy had bred him, her soil was the first that his flea-bitten feet had trodden; her religion had grown like him from that soil, and both she and her religion stood for associations that Nerone worshipped in his mind. If he did not always worship them in his business⁠—oh, well, a man had to live! + 

Nerone loved his country, but he lived in England above his tobacco shop; Nerone loved his Church, but he gave her very little; when approached for subscriptions his attitude was that of a man who was well acquainted with God and was not to be taken in. Nerone loved his people, but refused Italian money, even from new arrivals. To Lucrezia, in her lifetime, he had been wont to say: + 

“You be careful, Lucrezia, you never take the lira, you always ask for the shilling. We send the shilling home, and behold, he has children! We make him an Italian, and when he is a lira he has little centesimi!” + 

So the shillings all went home to a bank in Siena, where they promptly bred offspring for Nerone. Some day Nerone would follow the shillings, but not before the uttermost farthing had been squeezed from the place of his temporary exile. And Nerone had his dreams⁠—he was very full of dreams in spite of his astuteness in business. He dreamt of the village with one long, straggling street; he dreamt of the church where he had served his first Mass; of the candles, the Madonna with her faded tinsel flowers, the smell of dust and garlic and stale incense on the air, the kneeling figure of his mother. And because of his dreams which might some day come true, Nerone sold tobacco at a shop in Old Compton Street; and because of his dreams, he refused Italian money and had never been known to lend; and because of his dreams he was bigoted and proud and detested all things English. But, because of his dreams⁠—and this was so strange⁠—he had ordered white roses for Olga’s funeral; he had said: “I will have them all white.” Nerone loved Fabio and small caged birds and risotto and Amarena. He bullied Fabio and petted his birds; their perches were too narrow and so were their cages, but he fed them with groundsel and lettuce. He also loved children, even little English children who laughed at his wooden leg, and Gian-Luca he very particularly loved; had not Gian-Luca called him “Nonno”? It was therefore a personal outrage to Nerone that Fabio’s weakness had permitted, and for more than a month he never spoke to Fabio without bitter allusions to Gian-Luca’s soul, to the fact that Fabio was a traitor to his country and had once sold salame with a worm thrown in. Their evenings together had ceased abruptly, they no longer played dominoes now; but at nine o’clock every night Fabio sighed, and Nerone down the street became terribly restless. Nerone would go to a little cupboard and get out his dominoes; he would throw them on the table and begin to stir them as though he were making zabaione. “Mache!” Nerone would pick up his dominoes and put them away in their box; he would try to read the paper, or go for a walk, or find fault with the dutiful Rosa. + 

In the little back parlor behind his shop Fabio’s sighs grew louder; he would presently get up and begin touching things, until even Teresa, so calm since Olga’s death, had been known to look up and scold. On the thirty-fifth evening of this mutual torment, came Nerone stumping on his wooden leg. + 

“Good evening, Fabio!” + 

“Good evening, Nerone.” + 

“You come and play a little game of dominoes, Fabio?” + 

“Ecco! Perhaps I will.” + 

“Of course I beat you, but that you expect⁠ ⁠…” + 

“And perhaps you do not beat me!” + 

“Very well, then, suppose we go now and see.” + 

“I am ready⁠—I am not at all afraid!” + 

It was over; Gian-Luca’s soul might be lost, but not Nerone’s game. Arm in arm they hurried out into the fog. “You old fox!” said Fabio, by way of endearment. + 

“You old brigand!” chuckled Nerone. + 

Rocca took his Church in a swinging, jaunty stride, and occasionally slapped it on the back. His oaths were lewd and varied and most personal to God; he sharpened his wits on priests and nuns. Rocca had been a soldier and now he was a butcher⁠—he was pleasantly familiar with death; and as the Church, to Rocca, stood more for death than life, he was pleasantly familiar with the Church. He thought it a great pity that Gian-Luca should be sent to a Board School, because he mistrusted new ideas⁠—vegetarianism and the like. Roccas’s only comment had been short and to the point: + 

“Give me the devil I know!” he had remarked. Beyond this he would not discuss the subject except when in a fury with his wife. On such occasions Rocca lifted up his voice: “Giurabbaccaccio! But leave them in peace; is he your grandson? Alas, no!” + 

And at this Signora Rocca was forced to be silent; she was childless, a reproach among women. + 

Rocca jeered at priests, but he continually fed them, and many were the sirloins and legs of English mutton that found their way to the Old Italian Church. Rocca jeered at nuns, but the little “Flying Angels” had good cause to bless him on more than one occasion, for the wherewithal to brew beef-tea for their poor. Rocca jeered at God, but when one bitter winter, Rocca had managed to get double pneumonia, when he had lain there gasping and despairing⁠—fearful of living because of his anguish, fearful of dying because of his transgressions⁠—Rocca had invited God into his house, and God, being what He is, had not refused to come. + 

V + 

I + 

By the time that Gian-Luca was eleven years old, the resentment felt against the Bosellis for their choice of a school had all but disappeared. It could not well be otherwise; people still deplored it, but Fabio and Teresa were cogs in the machine that turned out the happenings of everyday life for the little group of exiles. And then, there was Fabio’s salumeria, no one could get on without his wares⁠—the sausages, the paste, the rich yellow oil, the straw-covered bottles of Chianti; nor could they get on without Fabio himself⁠—Fabio always so mild and friendly, with his halo of rough, grey hair. He had shown no resentment at their criticism, indeed he had seemed to feel that it was just; on the other hand, he had taken no steps to undo his grievous error. Against such humble but stubborn placidity the storm had raged in vain; now it had practically beaten itself out, and Fabio, Teresa, and the young Gian-Luca were once more at peace with their neighbors. + 

To this happy and desirable state of affairs Gian-Luca himself contributed not a little; people liked him, he was amiable and good on the whole. + 

“Can it be,” they murmured, “that the English Board School is not so infernal after all?” + 

Certainly Gian-Luca was not at all infernal, his temper was less violent than it had been. His manners were no worse than those of other children, indeed, they were rather better; he shone by comparison with Rosa’s son, Geppe⁠—a turbulent creature of six years old, born just before Gian-Luca’s first term at school. Moreover, Gian-Luca was a handsome child; he was slim and tall for his age. His hair had retained its ashen fairness, and grew low on his forehead from a little cap-like peak⁠—the boys made fun of this at school. His mouth was well modelled, but the underlip protruded slightly; a willful mouth, a mouth that might some day harden to endeavor or soften to dissipation. He was pale, with that curious southern pallor that turns to bronze in the sun. His hands were long-fingered and strong, like Teresa’s, but more firmly and delicately fashioned. + 

People whispered together: “He is beautiful, Gian-Luca, but not with the beauty of Olga Boselli.” + 

And their pleasure in his beauty was another ground for kindness; did they not spring from the race that had bred Donatello, Verrocchio, and the Della Robbias? + 

One thing only in Gian-Luca could they find to resent⁠—he seemed to them strangely aloof. They could not be certain of what he was thinking⁠—his eyes gave no clue to his thoughts. Other children looked tearful, or merry, or greedy, or sly, as the case might be; but Gian-Luca’s expression was calm and distant⁠—he always seemed to be staring through people at something they had not perceived. + 

“What are you staring at?” Nerone would grumble. “Dio! One would think that you knew me by now! Is it that you find me so handsome a fellow? Or is it that you look at something beyond me⁠—and if so what do you look at?” Gian-Luca would flush with embarrassment; conscious perhaps, that in staring at Nerone his eyes had merely sought an object to rest on while his thoughts were busy elsewhere. + 

At this time in his life he was very full of thoughts⁠—almost as full as he had been when an infant⁠—only now the thoughts were more definite and hard; they came striking at his brain like so many pebbles; he could almost feel them as they struck. Two thoughts in particular had begun to obsess him; the thought of his father and the thought of his country. No one at home ever mentioned his father, he might never have had a paternal parent⁠—he began to think this was very strange. Certain awkward questions that he could not answer were occasionally asked him at school; the boys wanted to know if his father was dead, and if he had been an Italian. + 

Gian-Luca knew a little about his mother, but nothing about his father, and since every other child appeared to own a father, he supposed that he must have owned one, too, and further that his father must naturally be dead, otherwise why had he never seen him? Very well then, that was settled; his father must be dead, but he wanted to ask Fabio what to call him; a name was a very great assistance, he felt; it helped you to visualize the person⁠—meanwhile he invented a name for his father, and after a little it became so familiar that it sounded quite true when he spoke it. + 

“My father was called Leonardo,” said Gian-Luca, in reply to a question at school one day. + 

“Then you’re an Italian,” was the prompt retort. “What’s the good of pretending you’re English!” + 

And this was another thing that worried Gian-Luca, he had pretended to be English⁠—a kind of betrayal of something or someone in order to appear more like his schoolmates. This betrayal of his would haunt him at night when he lay in bed waiting for his pictures; they very seldom came now, which also disturbed him; his nights were just sleep, or those hard-little thoughts that struck against his brain like pebbles. He often heard Nerone inveighing against Fabio, for what he called “the desertion of his country.” But Gian-Luca could never understand what he meant; who could be more Italian than Fabio? Did not Fabio eat pasta and drink good red wine that came in big cases from Italy? As for Gian-Luca, it was only when at school that he ever thought of being English; he was lonely at school, they left him out of things⁠—and moreover they called him “Macaroni.” + 

Fabio had taken to remarking lately: “You grow so very English, Gian-Luca.” + 

And Teresa would say: “You speak now as they do, you will soon have a Cockney accent.” + 

“That is not so,” Gian-Luca would protest. “I do not like their ugly accent.” + 

Nerone would pity him: “Poor Gian-Luca, you have no Church, what a disaster!” + 

But this fact did not worry Gian-Luca in the least, what he wanted was a country, not a Church. + 

“If I am English I cannot be Italian,” he argued, bewildered and distressed, “and yet if I am English I am like the other boys⁠—then why do they leave me out of things?” He finally decided that he hated the English who always left him out of things. In spite of this, however, he made colossal efforts to model himself on their pattern; he longed with the unfailing instinct of youth to be like his companions at school. He yelled, he shoved, he kicked out his boots; if the other boys swore, Gian-Luca swore too. Whatever they did, he would follow suit, hoping against hope to win their approval. But although they liked him, it was only as a stranger who had suddenly appeared within their gates; his grandfather sold queer, outlandish foodstuffs, while Gian-Luca himself had been heard to speak Italian⁠—enough in all conscience to set him apart as a kind of unnatural freak! + 

Gian-Luca grew an outward crust of indifference, which however, did not deceive them; they suspected that underneath it he was soft, and they prodded to find the softness. He still disliked passing Rocca’s shop, and this they quickly divined. They went out of their way to make him pass it whenever occasion offered. Rocca, these days, had relays of kids all hanging with their heads to the pavement; he was even more prosperous than he had been, a fact that he attributed entirely to the kids⁠—he said that they had brought him luck. The boys made a habit of punching the kids for the pleasure of seeing them swing, for the pleasure also of laughing at Gian-Luca, who invariably turned a little pale. But one day Gian-Luca, in a kind of desperation, doubled up his fist and punched too. He punched until Rocca came out to protest, and even after that he still punched. + 

“Take that! And that! And that!” he spluttered, panting and white to the lips. + 

“Look at young Macaroni!” applauded the boys. “Go it, young Macaroni!” + 

Then Gian-Luca turned on them like a thing demented: “Beasts!” he yelled. “How I hate you⁠—you beasts! Porci! Sporcaccioni!” + 

And naturally after this incident there was a coldness between Gian-Luca and his schoolmates. + 

II + 

That winter Gian-Luca decided to speak to Fabio regarding his two greatest troubles. Fabio could tell him about his father; he could also reassure him about his country; perhaps he might even be able to explain why the boys at school treated Gian-Luca like a stranger⁠—why they so often left him out of things. Fabio would speak in the soft, happy language that always set the heart beating just a little faster; the language of deep-sounding, beautiful words⁠—familiar, reassuring, fulfilling. Gian-Luca rehearsed the scene in his mind. + 

Fabio would say: “But you are an Italian, what need you care for the foolish English, they have nothing to do with us!” + 

And he, Gian-Luca would reply: “That is so. I hate the English as Nerone hates them; they are stupid, they have the brains of pigs, they think only of beer and roast beef!” Then Fabio would pat him on the back with approval: “It is good to be Italian, very good,” he would say; “your father was also an Italian. Your father was a very great man, he was a soldier; he also owned vineyards, enormous vineyards, from which comes the finest Chianti. When he died, he said: ‘Take care of my Gian-Luca and tell him how splendid I was!’ ” + 

Gian-Luca decided to speak on a Sunday, when Fabio would be free to attend. It should be in the morning before Fabio went out. Teresa would be sitting by the fire; Teresa would look up from her knitting for a moment; she might even wish to join in their conversation, adding some reassuring words of her own⁠ ⁠… In any case Teresa must be there. They would tell him those glorious things about his father that he had imagined for himself: they might even say that his father’s name was none other than Leonardo. + 

But when the momentous occasion arrived, Gian-Luca felt strangely shy; Fabio was reading his paper by the window, Teresa was knitting by the fire as he had pictured; it was all as it should be, it was all quite perfect, yet Gian-Luca felt strangely shy. He began to fidget with this thing and that, moving aimlessly about the room, picking up objects and putting them down⁠—much as Fabio did when mentally distressed⁠—until at last Teresa, who disliked this habit, looked up from her knitting with a frown. + 

“Can you not find what you want, Gian-Luca? I wish that you would read your book.” + 

He hesitated with a vase in his hand; it fell and was broken to pieces. + 

Teresa’s frown deepened: “Dio! Gian-Luca, now see what foolishness you do!” + 

He caught his breath, staring down at the vase; then suddenly he began to speak wildly. “I am not happy⁠—I am very unhappy⁠—I want to know about my father!” + 

In the silence that followed he could hear his own heart beating. Fabio had crushed the newspaper in his hand. + 

“Your father?” Fabio’s voice sounded very faraway, and the eyes that he turned on Gian-Luca were frightened. + 

But now Gian-Luca was feeling less afraid; he was able to go on almost calmly: “You knew my father, Nonno⁠—I would like to hear about him⁠—I have often thought that his name was Leonardo, I have thought that my father was a soldier.” + 

Then Fabio told the truth in a moment of panic: “But I never knew your father, Gian-Luca, I never knew your father’s name.” + 

Gian-Luca stood quite still staring at him: “You knew my mother⁠—” he began. + 

“Your mother was my child⁠—” said Fabio unsteadily. “Your mother was my own poor child!” + 

Gian-Luca considered for a moment, then he said: “And she never brought my father to show you? That was strange, for Rosa showed Mario to Nerone⁠—she says so⁠—Rosa showed Mario to Nerone, she says, a long time before they got married.” + 

“I think he is old enough to know,” said Teresa. “The children of our country age sooner than the English⁠—” + 

Her voice was quiet; it was almost detached, as though she were speaking of a stranger. + 

“Not yet,” protested Fabio quickly. + 

“I would like to know,” said Gian-Luca. + 

Teresa surveyed him in silence for a moment, then: “You have a right to know⁠—come here.” + 

He went and stood patiently beside her, while she picked up a stitch that she had dropped; this accomplished, she looked him full in the eyes: + 

“It is I who must tell you, it seems, Gian-Luca.” + 

“Too soon! Too soon!” muttered Fabio from the window. + 

But Teresa shook her head: “He has asked⁠—he has been thinking⁠—it is therefore not too soon⁠—it is I who must tell him, it seems⁠—” + 

Her fingers were moving with incredible swiftness, the sound of her needles was rhythmical, precise⁠—like the tapping of a small machine. The eyes that met Gian-Luca’s were defiant, unafraid⁠—but they made Gian-Luca feel afraid. + 

“Listen,” she said, “listen carefully, Gian-Luca⁠—we never knew your father⁠—we do not even know whether your father is dead or alive. He did not marry Olga as Mario married Rosa⁠—he did not wish to give you his name. We do not know your father’s name, and that is why we call you by ours; that is why when Olga died at your birth you remained here and lived with us. Mario was good, he had love for Rosa, so he gave her his name in marriage. Your father had no love for you nor for your mother⁠—he gave neither marriage nor name.” She paused to allow her words to sink in. + 

“Then he was not good?” faltered Gian-Luca. + 

“He was bad,” said Teresa. “He was cruel and bad; have I not just told you so?” + 

Gian-Luca stared at her, pale and aghast: “Then my father was not a great man⁠—not a soldier?” + 

“Who knows, Gian-Luca; to be great in this world does not mean that a man is good.” + 

“But⁠—” he said miserably, “you do not know his name⁠—and I thought that his name was Leonardo⁠—” + 

“We shall never know your father’s name, I am afraid; your mother kept it a secret.” + 

“Then was she also bad?” + 

“Your mother was all goodness,” Teresa’s sallow cheeks flushed with a painful crimson. + 

“And yet I have not got a name⁠—” he persisted. “You say that I have not got a name⁠—” Then a sudden thought struck him and he too flushed crimson: “Does that make me different from other boys, Nonna? Is that why they leave me outside?” + 

“I think not, Gian-Luca⁠—they may not know⁠—and yet you are not quite as other children⁠—but if you are honest and good and hardworking that will not harm you, my child.” + 

“Yes, but how am I different?” he questioned anxiously. “I cannot myself see any difference.” + 

“Some day you will understand,” she told him, “and meanwhile be patient⁠—work hard.” + 

“Yes, but how am I different? Why am I different?” Gian-Luca suddenly wanted to cry. + 

“You are all that we wish you to be,” broke in Fabio. “Is it not so, Teresa?” + 

“He is all that he can be,” she answered slowly. “Gian-Luca is all that he can be.” + 

Gian-Luca forced back his tears with an effort: “You do not know if my father is alive?” + 

“No,” said Fabio, “we do not, piccino⁠—but we sometimes think that he is.” + 

“And he does not wish to see me, who am his son?” + 

“It would seem not, my little Gian-Luca.” + 

“But why?” + 

“Because,” intervened Teresa, “he does not love you, Gian-Luca.” + 

“Dio Santo!” exclaimed Fabio; “you tell things too soon.” + 

“I think not,” she answered coldly. + 

Gian-Luca looked from one to the other; he was trying to understand; he was trying to visualize quite a new world, a world where the most unheard-of things happened⁠—where fathers, for instance, might not love their children. He thought of Nerone’s affection for Rosa, of Mario’s devotion to Berta and Geppe; of Rocca, who would shake his head and say sadly: “If only I had a son!” For with all these people among whom he lived, the love of children was a primitive instinct like that of eating and drinking⁠—no higher and no lower⁠—just a primitive instinct. A man loved his body and in consequence he fed it; a man loved the children who sprang from his body, because they were part of himself. + 

Gian-Luca, aged eleven, could not know all this⁠—nor would he have cared very much if he had. All that concerned him deeply at the moment was the love that he felt himself to be missing. His thoughts turned to Berta and Geppe with their howls, their rages, their insatiable greed; and then to Mario with his tiredness, his bunion, and his infinite, long-suffering patience. He himself had found such patience in Fabio⁠—he remembered this now⁠—he had found it in Fabio. And Teresa? She had been patient with him, too, coldly, enduringly patient. But something had been lacking even in Fabio, and all in a moment he knew what it was; Fabio’s patience had lacked a certain quality of joy⁠—the quality of joy that made Mario laugh sometimes at the sins of his small man-child. And as though Teresa had divined Gian-Luca’s thoughts, she turned her gaze full on his face. + 

“Remember,” she said, “that you always have yourself, and that should suffice a man.” + 

He nodded. He drew himself up, grateful to her for thinking of him as a man. “I am Gian-Luca,” he announced quite firmly, “also, I am an Italian!” + 

“You are not that,” she told him. “Nonno is naturalized⁠—your mother became English, so you are English⁠—you are English in the eyes of the law.” + 

“But I do not feel as they do!” he exclaimed in quick resentment. “At school they know that I do not feel as they do and they always leave me outside!” + 

“Nevertheless you are English,” said Teresa, “and perhaps it is better so.” + 

Then Gian-Luca forgot that she had called him a man, forgot to be more than eleven years old. “Non voglio! Non voglio!” he wept in fury. “I wish to be as Geppe is⁠—Italian. I shall say to them all that I am an Italian⁠—I will not pretend any more.” + 

“That is foolish,” Fabio told him gently. “In the eyes of the law you are English.” + 

“I am not! I wish only to be an Italian⁠—I hate the English and Nerone hates them too⁠—” + 

“And that is also foolish⁠—” said Fabio patiently, “for the English provide us with money.” + 

“And some day you will earn their money,” said Teresa, “and by doing so you will grow rich.” + 

Gian-Luca stopped crying and eyed her gravely: “Is it not that I have no real country, Nonna, just as I have no real father?” + 

There was silence for a moment while she too looked rather grave. “You have yourself,” she repeated firmly. “No one can take that from you, Gian-Luca⁠—remember that you always have yourself.” + 

III + 

That evening Rosa came in to supper, bringing her Berta and Geppe. Berta was now nearly ten years old; her locks as stiff and as black as horsehair⁠—they were tied up with pale pink ribbon. Berta had enormous, flashing brown eyes, and large round calves to her legs. She was wearing a number of silver bangles and a pair of minute coral earrings. Berta was already decidedly feminine⁠—she looked at Gian-Luca, who was reading, and she frowned. Presently she went up and snatched at his book, then she darted away as though frightened. + 

Gian-Luca felt unfriendly. “Get out!” he muttered. “Get out and leave me alone!” + 

At that Berta ran and complained to her mother. “He has pinched me!” she whined mendaciously. + 

“What is the matter with Gian-Luca?” inquired Rosa. “I think he has a devil on his back! Why will he not show his book to Berta? When she asked him so prettily, too!” + 

Geppe, as always, was busy sucking something, and what he sucked oozed down on to his chin. He looked like his father⁠—very red, very black⁠—and he clung to his mother’s hand with the persistence and the vigor of an octopus. Rosa made as though to disengage her hand whereupon Geppe started to howl. + 

“He is timid,” said Rosa, smiling round the room, “and moreover he adores his Mammina.” She lifted her son to a chair at the table, then seated herself beside him. Having tied a large napkin under his chin⁠—“You must eat, tesoro!” she commanded. + 

The supper consisted of a cake of polenta, pastasciutta, a salad, some gruyère cheese, and a stout fiaschone of Chianti. Berta was greedy and kept asking for more⁠—Geppe was greedy but he took without asking. + 

“Com’è carino,” laughed Rosa, beaming at him. “Com’è carino, il mio maschiotto!” + 

Geppe choked himself and in consequence was sick, so when Rosa had carefully wiped his chin, she gave him a drink of Chianti and water, by way of settling his stomach. They all went on eating; Fabio chewed his salad with the sound of a mule munching beans. At the head of the table sat Teresa with her knitting; from time to time she would put down her fork in order to knit off a row. + 

“Mario is suffering from his joint,” announced Rosa. “It is very swollen and red.” + 

“He should rub it with soap,” Fabio muttered, with his mouth full. “They say that soap hardens the skin.” + 

“The chemist gave us iodine and a plaster, but I think that the plaster draws.” + 

“Soap!” repeated Fabio. “I believe in soap! Myself I have got tender feet.” + 

“No doubt you are right. I will surely tell Mario⁠—poor fellow, his new shoes pinch. It is difficult to find any shoes to fit him, unless we make slits for the swelling.” Rosa sighed, “He cannot move quickly enough, and that is bad for a waiter; a waiter should always get about quickly, especially when clients are hungry!” + 

“It is good that they are hungry,” said Teresa, looking up. “We gain money by way of their stomachs.” + 

“That is so,” laughed Fabio, cutting himself some cheese. “That is how we are able to fill our own stomachs.” + 

“A boy at Geppe’s school has got pidocchi in his head,” chirped Berta, licking her fingers. “I think that Geppe will get them too, and if he gets pidocchi, perhaps I may catch them⁠—I do not wish to catch them, they tickle.” + 

“Be not so silly, tesoro,” smiled Rosa. “I am sure that you will not get pidocchi. Mamma will comb your hair every day; that will make it beautifully shiny.” + 

“Scema!” spluttered Geppe. “I have not got pidocchi, and if I get them I will give them to you. I will rub my head against yours!” + 

“Then I will scratch you,” said Berta firmly, and proceeded to put the threat into action. + 

There ensued a deafening shriek from Geppe, and a mild-voiced protest from Rosa. + 

“The good Saint Berta will not love you if you scratch,” she reminded her elder offspring. + 

“Give me some Chianti,” said Berta, quite unmoved. “I am thirsty; give me some Chianti!” + 

Fabio filled her glass with red wine and water, which she drank in a series of gulps. + 

“It is excellent Chianti,” murmured Fabio thoughtfully, “the best I have tasted in years.” + 

“The price of pasta has gone up,” remarked Teresa; “I blame the Italian Government for that.” + 

“If it rises much more we are ruined,” sighed Fabio, who, being replete, could afford to be gloomy. + 

“Mario’s Padrone is buying French pasta, because of the rise,” Rosa told them disapprovingly; “but I myself do not think that is right. After all, the Padrone is Italian!” + 

“One must live as one can,” Teresa retorted, “and the English will eat it just the same.” + 

“That is so,” agreed Rosa. “The English are stupid; my father thinks them very stupid.” + 

The meal finished, they wiped their mouths on their napkins and Fabio fetched a cigar. + 

“Even tobacco has risen,” he grumbled, burning his fingers with a match. + 

“Everything is always rising,” frowned Teresa, “but Fabio and I will rise with it. For those who have got the will to succeed there is nearly always a way. Our business grows, we have not enough room; soon we must hire a new shop.” + 

“That is your fine business head,” Rosa told her. “I sometimes think that my Mario’s is less fine, but then he is always so patient and kind, and moreover he suffers with his bunion.” + 

“Nerone should buy him a business of his own,” grunted Fabio. “I will speak with him about it.” + 

“That I fear he will never do,” sighed Rosa. “However, we are very well off as we are⁠—the children have plenty to eat⁠ ⁠…” + 

IV + 

Gian-Luca escaped upstairs to his room⁠—Olga’s room, in which he now slept. He wondered why Rosa’s children always howled; he could never remember them other than howling. He thought Geppe greedy and Berta a bore; he did not like either of them very much, and yet they had Mario for their father, and Mario loved them⁠—that was so strange, for he, Gian-Luca went unloved. There was Fabio, of course, but Fabio did not count, or at least he counted very little. Fabio felt old when you touched his skin, he had pains in his back, he was timid of Teresa⁠—Teresa who might have counted. + 

Gian-Luca sat down on the well-worn sofa and began to think over Teresa. With a queer, tight feeling round his heart, he realized that he no longer loved her. She allured him still, and that must be why he had that tight feeling round his heart. When she spoke in her quiet, flat voice, he had to listen; when she wished something done, he had perforce to do it, willing and eager to obey; but he no longer loved her or wished for her love⁠—and that made him feel the more lonely. + 

He tried to picture Teresa as she had been, or rather, as he had once seen her; to recapture some of the sense of beauty that had shrouded her presence like incense. His head fell back and he closed his eyes, the better to conjure up the vision, but all that he saw now was a gaunt, ageing woman with beetling brows and a high, pinched nose; a woman whose hair showed the scalp at the temples, whose lips were too pale, whose chin sagged a little, and whose teeth were no longer very white. And something in all this was intolerable to him, so that unwilling tears trickled under his closed eyelids⁠—tears for himself, but also for Teresa⁠—because he no longer found her fair. + 

He could hear the sound of laughter coming up from downstairs; then of quarrelling⁠—Berta and Geppe⁠—Fabio’s voice, heavy and soft after supper; Rosa’s voice, loud, rather shrill; and from time to time Teresa’s slow words, spoken in a pause between stitches. A door banged; thump⁠—thump⁠—that would be Nerone, come to fetch Fabio for their game of dominoes⁠—“Buona serai Buona sera; vanno bene tutti?” Then more talk, more laughter, and Nerone’s wooden leg stumping away with Fabio. + 

Gian-Luca put his head on one side and listened. His people! But were they his people? If he was English then they were not his people; and at this thought his weeping broke out afresh, he buried his face in his arm. All that was nearest and dearest about them came back to him in a flood; he wept for them now as a small child will weep for faces lost in the dark. Even Rocca and his goats seemed less to be condemned; had not Rocca offered him fruit drops? + 

There was something worth loving then, even in Rocca⁠—something that he wanted to cling to. + 

He lifted his face and stared round the room, his eyes wandered over to the wound above the bed; it had grown in dimensions, for the thin, dry plaster had crumbled still further with the years. Gian-Luca no longer wished to prod it with his finger; he merely thought it very ugly; it seemed to add to his own desolation, itself so desolate a thing. He rubbed away the tears with the back of his hand⁠—resentful, almost angry⁠—then he suddenly remembered Teresa’s words⁠—courageous words, coldly courageous. Going over to the table he found pencil and paper: “I have got myself,” wrote Gian-Luca. Climbing on to the bed, he pinned up his motto, then he climbed down again the better to see it. + 

And that was how Gian-Luca tried to cover up the wound in the plaster⁠—and in his own heart. + 

VI + 

I + 

There was someone who always wanted Gian-Luca, and that was Mario Varese; he had a good-hearted, pitiful affection for Rosa’s foster-child. Mario no longer slapped his thighs, he no longer roared in play; indeed, it might be said that he was now quite grown up⁠—he had broadened out somewhat in the process. Mario was nearly thirty-three, and his hair was receding a little. At one time his dress-suit had hung loosely on him, but now it was rather tight. His cheeks, always red, were redder than ever, and his eyes, that had bulged only slightly in the past, now resembled two brown balls of toffee. But for all this, Mario was still good-looking⁠—and when he could afford it, flashy; on the plump little finger of his large left hand he wore a gold ring with a rhinestone. + 

Mario was very much the man of affairs when reposing in the bosom of his family; to hear him talk of his prowess as a waiter was to know that the Capo di Monte without Mario would merely have ceased to exist. Mario explained at considerable length the art of dealing with clients, the methods of tempting a poor appetite, or soothing an irritable temper. + 

“You assert yourself⁠—but with grace,” said Mario. “You expatiate on the food. You say: ‘I will stroke the lettuce with garlic⁠—no more than that, a caress of garlic⁠—’ Then you say: ‘I observe that the signore is not hungry, that he feels no great wish to eat⁠—in that case, I suggest Fegato alia Veneziana, fried with onions and plenty of butter⁠—but fried, oh, so very gently!’ You watch him, and if he swallows the lot, you step forward and remark with a smile: ‘Good, very good; is it not so, signore?’ If he agrees, then you whip out the menu and tempt with another dish. It is all very easy, and you make them drink too; you observe⁠—as though you were thinking aloud⁠—‘The cellar contains some marvelous wine!’ then you smile: ‘But, alas! the Padrone has his whims; it is only the few who are permitted to taste it. He is like a hen with her chicks,’ you say: ‘He is like a great artist who will not sell his pictures; he rejoices but to look at the outside of the bottles⁠—the insides he reserves for those who have a palate⁠—however, I will do my best for you, signore; I myself will speak with the Padrone’!” + 

Mario said that the Padrone was sly, but that Mario Varese was slyer. “It is wonderful,” laughed Mario, “how the little round tins contain only that which is fresh! They say: ‘Listen, Mario! I want something light⁠—what about a plate of that good consommé? I am rather afraid of tomato soup; it usually lives in a tin!’ ‘Signore!’ I exclaim, as one who is wounded, ‘here we make all things fresh!’ The chef, he it is who opens the tin in which that excellent consommé lives; they drink it up quickly, perhaps they ask for more⁠—Ma che! They do not know the difference!” + 

Mario said that the Padrone had sworn to bring all London to the Capo di Monte. “We have red cotton curtains at the window now, but soon they will be silk!” bragged Mario. The Padrone, he said, was one who would rise; he had a beautiful wife⁠—her hair was golden and she took in the dishes from the little door just behind the bar. She was not quite a barmaid, but she stood among the bottles and bowed to the clients as they passed. Her manner was aloof and she smiled very seldom, therefore when she did smile it made an impression, and those upon whom she smiled were pleased. The Padrone was like that, he also was aloof: he had the bump of selection. “You’ll see! You’ll see!” chuckled Mario delightedly. “One of these days we become the fashion, then we put up our prices, we make them pay high for the fat green snails at the Capo di Monte; and we grow like the snails, fat and rich!” + 

Rosa never listened, but Gian-Luca did, and he came to the conclusion that all men were foolish, except of course the Padrone and Mario, who must be unusually wise. The matter of the tinned soup troubled him a little, but not, it must be said, for very long. If, as Mario had explained, they did not know the difference, then what difference could it make to them? However, he consulted Fabio about it. + 

“I myself do not take it, but I sell it,” Fabio told him. And although this left the ethical question rather vague, it appeared to satisfy Fabio. + 

Mario was so indispensable, it seemed, that holidays were few and far between; when he got one, however, the occasion was momentous⁠—it called for a gathering of the clan. A holiday was not a real holiday to Mario unless it was accompanied by toil; that was the way the good Mario took his pleasures; he planned, he worked, he wore himself out⁠—but after it was over and he lay abed with Rosa, he could count up on his fingers all the things they had done in the course of a brief nine hours. + 

Mario declared that a little glimpse of green was better than a bottle of Asti; but when he found the green there was never time to see it. He sat under it, he walked on it, he lay on it perhaps, but only until he got his breath. On those very rare occasions when Mario found a meadow he would scamper over to the next. He had the sort of mind that goes with large adventure, preferring always that which lies beyond. + 

This mind of his, imprisoned for the best part of the year within the narrow confines of his business, broke loose the very moment it could sniff the country air; off it went and Mario with it, always seeking the beyond, always trying to go just a little farther. + 

Mario was eloquent regarding country air; he said that it took at least ten years off his age. But at times the spirit led him so far afield to find it, that the day would be spent in a third-class railway carriage⁠—then it would be time to go back. He adored his children, so they too must be considered; he was never quite happy without them. He was not quite happy with them, but Mario shrugged his shoulders and supposed that that was often the way in this world. + 

II + 

It was spring, and even in Old Compton Street the spring is apt to be exciting. Nerone’s new skylark sang and jumped and sang. Nerone had made a felt top for its cage, the better to shut out the sky. + 

“Ma guarda! Is he not joyous?” said Nerone. “It appears that he too feels the spring.” + 

The skylark felt the spring, Gian-Luca felt the spring, and Mario felt the spring and grew restless. Gian-Luca looked at his motto every morning: “I have got myself,” and the words, lit up by sunshine, seemed to glow with a new and exciting meaning, until, what with youth and the spring in his bones, he almost forgot his troubles. + 

Mario, perspiring at the Capo di Monte, broke a dish, for which he had to pay. He grew less subtle in dealing with the clients; when he cleared their tables now he would whisk with his napkin until the crumbs flew into their laps. + 

“Sapristi!”⁠—the Padrone was proud of his French⁠—“Sapristi! You imbecile, what are you doing?” + 

And Mario would laugh⁠—yes, actually laugh, right in the teeth of the Padrone! + 

In the mornings, when he shaved, he did so with vigor, cutting his chin in the process. The blood might drip on to the rim of his collar, but Mario did not care; he would go to the washstand and rub off the stain with an old flannel washrag⁠—after which his collar would look limp. + 

“I will not have a clean one, it costs so much, the washing,” he would say. “We must save, we must put by the pennies for when we can go into the country.” + 

Berta got nettle-rash and cried a good deal; she got it every spring and autumn. + 

“Geppe has given me pidocchi!” she insisted, whenever Rosa would listen. + 

Geppe pretended to grope in his head and to throw the results at Berta. + 

“Oh! Oh!” shrieked Berta in a panic of fear. “Oh! Oh! He is throwing me pidocchi!” + 

Rosa scrubbed up the house, and forgetting it was London, she put the bedding out in the sun. When she brought it in it was covered with smuts. + 

“Accursed country!” said Nerone, and he swore: “We live in an accursed country!” + 

Teresa was constantly busy in the cash-desk, the money went jingling through her fingers. Whenever a sunbeam touched a golden coin she smiled and stroked it gently with her thumb. For the habit of thrift had persisted in Teresa; now she saved for the pleasure of saving. Every Saturday morning she went off to the bank with a little bag hidden in her cloak. + 

As for Fabio, his halo looked wilder than ever, but the pains in his back had disappeared. He served in the shop without coat, or even waistcoat, his shirt bulging out between his braces. + 

“God be praised,” smiled Fabio, well content with the gastronomical effects of the fine weather. “God be praised; we are selling more this spring than we have done for many years past.” + 

Even Rocca grew poetical, a mood which found expression in his garnishing and laying out of meat. Rocca bought a calf’s head to which he pinned rosettes, then he thrust a spring of parsley in its mouth. + 

The Signora Rocca said very many prayers; it was May, the month of Our Lady. + 

“Oh loving, oh clement, oh sweet Virgin Mary,” she murmured, and then, bethinking her of Michael the Archangel, and, via him, of Satan: “May God rebuke him⁠—and do thou, Prince of all the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust down into hell Satan and all wicked spirits.” + 

III + 

Late one afternoon came Mario and Rosa, accompanied by Nerone and the children. They walked solemnly into Teresa’s back parlor; their faces were preoccupied and grave. + 

Mario said: “Two weeks from tomorrow the Padrone had made me the present of a day. It is very important that we all discuss the matter; the question is, where do we go?” + 

“Yes, that is the question,” murmured Rosa dutifully; “as Mario has said, we go, where?” + 

They sat down, staring at Fabio and Teresa: “Where do we go?” they demanded. + 

“There are many nice places,” suggested Fabio. + 

“It is beautiful weather,” said Teresa. + 

“Now first,” began Mario, “we must have the Gian-Luca. You consent to his coming, I hope, Teresa? The day will of course be a Sunday.” + 

Teresa nodded and went on with her knitting. + 

“That is good,” Mario smiled. “You hear that, Gian-Luca? You accompany us once again.” + 

Gian-Luca trod slyly on Geppe’s toe, and Geppe screamed like a siren. Mario waited for the hubbub to subside, after which he went on speaking slowly: + 

“I have long wished to visit a certain place which I know is of very great interest; to begin with its name is full of romance⁠—it suggests the sea and the sky.” He paused and made a wide gesture with his arms. “The sea and the sky⁠—” he repeated. + 

“And where is this place you speak of?” inquired Rosa. + 

“It is called Land’s End,” said Mario. + 

No one laughed, no one seemed very much surprised; they had all known quite well what sort or thing was coming, for when Mario thought of a holiday he invariably longed for those faraway places that his mind had yearned over for years. Perhaps he had less imagination than the skylark, for he seemed to enjoy discussing every detail. “I have heard⁠—” he would say⁠—and then he would be off! As he talked his eyes would grow rounder and rounder, and his face would shine with enthusiastic sweat until even Rosa would hush Geppe into silence the better to fancy herself there. A harmless diversion, a game of make-believe in which Rosa joined to please Mario. + 

Mario looked from one to the other. + 

“There are rocks at Land’s End!” he announced. + 

“And the sea!” chimed in Rosa. + 

“And a beach,” said Gian-Luca. + 

“I have heard that the beach is stony,” mused Mario; “however, no doubt there are seagulls⁠—” + 

“Is it not in Cornwall?” Fabio inquired. + 

“Precisely,” said Mario complacently, “and Cornwall is a place of historical interest because of that king they call Arthur. Though I do not think Arthur lived at Land’s End, but of that I am not quite sure.” + 

“You shall tell me about him some day,” said Rosa; “you have always been clever at history. But is it not rather far for the children⁠—have you considered that, Mario?” + 

Mario frowned. “Could we not start early. Can it matter how early we start?” + 

“It will cost⁠—” murmured Rosa. “It will cost a great deal, and we should not have much time there, I am afraid, even if we did start early.” + 

“That is so,” sighed Mario, suddenly depressed, because Rosa was not quite playing the game⁠ ⁠… But after a moment he grew more hopeful. “There are castles,” he told them, “wonderful castles; I have seen the picture of one they call Corfe. What if we all go and visit the Corfe?” + 

“There is also Folkestone,” suggested Rosa, tactfully edging a little nearer home. “At Folkestone one watches the boats coming in⁠—there are sometimes Italians on board!” + 

“Mi stufano!” Mario burst out rudely. “Why should I wish to see Italians?” + 

“It has come to me!” suddenly shouted Nerone, waving a triumphant hand. “As you cannot go to Land’s End, then why not go to Southend? To me it sounds all the same thing.” But Mario shook his head. “No, I think not, Babbo; I do not much like the winkles. Moreover, there is mud and many, many, children, and some of them⁠—” He finished the sentence in English, because Berta, who was said to be frightened of illness, might not understand medical terms in that language. “And some of them cough with the whoop.” + 

Teresa glanced up at him from her knitting: “Epping Forest⁠—” she murmured. “There are too many trees,” said Mario discontentedly; “it is difficult to get beyond trees; they come in so close; they confine, they molest you⁠—and besides, they shut out the view.” His mouth drooped a little⁠—he was gentler than Geppe, but he looked rather like him at that moment⁠—“I desire to go somewhere wide,” he muttered, “somewhere enormously wide!” + 

Then Rosa spoke gently, stroking his hand the better to soften her words: “Let us go to Kew Gardens and have lunch on the grass; we will take the big hamper with us. In the afternoon we can find the cake shop we went to once before⁠—they had nice little tarts with raspberry jam⁠—I remember because Geppe ate so many. We can travel on top of the omnibus, and you always like that, don’t you Mario?” + 

For a moment Mario’s face grew darker, his expression was somber and resentful. Then all of a sudden he cheered up completely: “Ecco!” he exclaimed, “my Rosa has solved the problem! It is not quite Land’s End, but there is much to see⁠—we will study the plants and the Chinese Pagoda; after all, there is very much to see. And now we must consider what we take with us to eat⁠—Fabio shall give us a sausage!” + 

VII + 

I + 

The morning of Mario’s holiday ushered in the beginning of a heat wave. Rosa was up by five o’clock preparing the luncheon basket. A large panettone had arrived the previous evening, sent by a friend of Mario’s; it had to be cut into four fat quarters before it would fit into the hamper. Fabio had sent round a length of salame and a very ornate pork pie, while Nerone had made no less a contribution than two large bottles of Orvieto in honor of the occasion. + 

“For,” said Nerone⁠—to console himself at parting with a wine of so excellent a vintage⁠—“it is not very often that a holiday occurs, and when it does one should be generous.” Rosa, her fringe done up in curl papers, her nose already pink and shiny, rushed hither and thither in a flannel dressing-jacket worn over her petticoat. + 

“Via! Via!” she was always exclaiming, pushing Berta and Geppe out of her way: “Via! Via! Who told you to get up? I command you to go back to bed!” + 

But Berta and Geppe were not thus to be disposed of, nor for that matter was their father. Mario kept wandering in and out of the kitchen⁠—he was bursting with foolish suggestions. + 

“I would pack the hard-boiled eggs at the bottom of the hamper; that way they will not get so cracked; they will be steady.” + 

“Via! Via, Mario!” cried Rosa, frowning. “I shall put all the eggs on the top of the hamper; the bottles of wine must go at the bottom, under the panettone.” + 

“I would like my tobacco put in the hamper, too, so that it will not bulge my pocket. I do not wish to spoil my best suit, and my rubber pouch has just split.” + 

“We do not wish to eat your tobacco,” Rosa snapped, “nor do we wish to have it as a flavoring. Can’t you go and will you get us our breakfast?” + 

“We are hungry! We are hungry!” chanted Berta and Geppe, beginning to jump up and down. + 

Then Mario laughed and went off to his bedroom; his face was beaming with pleasure. “What a day!” he exclaimed, throwing open the window. “Holy Mother of God, what sunshine!” + 

The hamper packed and their breakfast eaten, Rosa washed both children. + 

“Ow!” grumbled Geppe as Rosa’s large finger entered his ear with the washrag. + 

She shook him slightly and prodded again. Presently she oiled down his hair; when she had finished it looked like black paint, but Rosa was pleased with the effect. She dressed him with care in his best sailor suit, the one that was trimmed with white braid. + 

“If you dirty yourself I will beat you!” she lied. “Go and sit over there on that chair.” + 

Berta’s toilet was much more complicated; Berta herself saw to that. “I wish to wear my white muslin dress, the one that they gave me at the convent,” she stamped. + 

“That you shall not,” announced Rosa with decision. + 

“It was given you to honor Our Blessed Lord, when you take part in His procession.” + 

“Nevertheless, I will wear it,” said Berta, and she promptly sat down on the floor. + 

“Cattiva! You will wear your pink print.” + 

“I will wear my white muslin,” said Berta mulishly. “I will wear nothing else but that.” + 

“Mario!” called Rosa, “come and speak to this Berta; she refuses to put on her dress.” + 

“And what does she wish to wear?” inquired Mario, sauntering in from his bedroom. + 

“The muslin that the good nuns gave her last year for the Blessed Sacrament procession.” + 

“And why not?” smiled the father, filling his pipe. “Why may she not wear the muslin?” + 

Rosa looked shocked. “Because,” she said gravely, “it belongs to Our Blessed Lord.” + 

“He will not object, I am certain,” said Mario. “He would wish his little Berta to be happy.” + 

So Berta got her way and wore the white frock, blue bows, silver medal and all. + 

“And see that you do not lose the medal or soil the ribbon,” cautioned Rosa. + 

Mario retired to make his own toilet. He examined his clothes that lay ready on the chair; a dove-grey suit, a pink shirt and collar and a brand-new crimson silk necktie. + 

“Va bene,” said Mario, “but where are my boots? Where are my new brown boots? Rosa!” he bawled, “come and find me my boots⁠—I have looked, but they are not here!” + 

Rosa came in with her mouth full of pins; she too had been dressing at that moment. “Here are your boots, cretino,” she said crossly, producing them from the wardrobe, “but I would not advise you to wear them; it is hot, they are certain to draw your feet.” + 

“That is nonsense!” he told her, “I wish to wear them; what one wishes to do never hurts.” + 

He fondled the yellowish leather with his hand, then he rubbed it on the bedspread. + 

“Magari!” sighed Rosa, “between you and the children, I think we shall never get off. I so carefully warned Geppe to keep himself clean, and now he has spilt coffee all down his blouse.” + 

At that moment Gian-Luca arrived, looking hot in a knickerbocker suit of brown tweed. He was wearing a spotlessly clean Eton collar and a ready-made blue satin bow. + 

“Ah! Gian-Luca!” exclaimed Mario, “you are fine this morning, almost as fine as I am!” and Mario surveyed himself in the glass, turning first this way, then that. “Now you have come, it is time we start,” he continued, straightening his necktie. “Let us go and collect the luncheon-basket, also Rosa and the children.” + 

II + 

They walked as far as Piccadilly Circus, Mario carrying the hamper. At the Circus they climbed to the top of a bus bound for Hammersmith Broadway. + 

“Be careful! Be careful!” shrieked Rosa to Geppe, who was trying to swing himself up by the handrail. + 

“He will hit me in the face with his heels,” fussed Berta; “I wish you would make him behave!” + 

Mario was stopped at the bottom of the steps by a kindly but firm conductor. “You must leave that ’amper with me,” said the conductor; “no ’ampers allowed on top.” + 

“Not so,” retorted Mario; “I will take him on my lap⁠—I will nurse him⁠—he cannot be left!” + 

The conductor pulled the cord and the bus moved off slowly behind the stout, sweating horses. + 

“I will not leave him!” cried Mario, still clutching his hamper; “you see, I take him on my lap.” + 

“Oh, all right.” The conductor stood aside for him to pass, and Mario struggled up the steps. + 

The bus was very full⁠—Geppe sat on top of Rosa. “Here we are!” shrilled Berta from her seat beside Gian-Luca. “You will have to go over there and sit beside Mamma.” Mario squeezed in with the hamper on his knees; it grew heavier every moment. “Dio!” he groaned, “what is living in this hamper? Is it perchance a giant?” + 

“You take Geppe and give it to me,” suggested Rosa; “I will now hold it for a little.” + 

Their burdens exchanged, they began to mop their faces⁠—it was growing exceedingly hot. + 

At Hammersmith Broadway the crowd was enormous, and most of it was waiting for the bus to Kew Gardens. + 

“You had better carry Geppe,” said Rosa to Mario; “I fear that he may get lost.” + 

Geppe objected, beginning to cry: “I want to walk with Gian-Luca!” + 

As his father picked him up, he beat with his heels: “Put me down, put me down, I tell you!” + 

Rosa dragged Berta along by the hand, while Gian-Luca struggled with the hamper. + 

“No more room on top!” yelled the harassed conductor. “Inside only, please.” + 

By dint of superhuman exertion, they managed at last to get in. + 

“Now then, young ’un, don’t gouge out my eyes with that basket!” protested a voice to Gian-Luca. + 

There were several other children on the knees of their parents, all fretful and on the verge of tears. + 

“It’s this terrible ’eat,” said a mother to Rosa; “it do try ’em, don’t it, the ’eat?” + 

The smell in the bus suggested that it did⁠—the sun was blazing through the windows. + 

“Phew! Ain’t it awful!” a lady complained, clinking her black jet bugles. + 

Berta sat scratching her nettle-rash, and Geppe’s nose required attention. Gian-Luca peered over the top of the hamper, his collar was feeling rather tight. + 

“May I undo my collar?” he whispered to Rosa. + 

But Rosa shook her head: “No, no, caro, you look so nice as you are; you cannot undo your collar.” + 

He subsided behind the hamper again, so as not to see Berta who was making him itch. He wished that Mario would observe Geppe’s nose⁠—it really did require blowing. Rosa’s fringe had begun to come out of curl⁠—Gian-Luca noticed that too⁠—one long, black strand was gradually uncoiling; very soon it would be in her eye. Her hat⁠—last summer’s⁠—looked rather jaded, the roses no longer very red; however, by contrast, Berta’s headgear was a triumph; a yellow poke bonnet trimmed with cornflowers and daisies and tied under the chin with white ribbon. Berta’s hair stuck out in a bush behind; her eyes stared, inquisitive and greedy. “I am hungry,” she was saying; “how long does it take?” + 

“We are nearly there,” consoled Rosa. + 

III + 

Kew Gardens lay like a jewel in the sun, the grass green and gleaming as an emerald. + 

“Ma guarda, guarda!” cried Mario in delight; “have we walked into Paradise?” + 

Gian-Luca paused to examine a magnolia that grew just inside the gate. + 

“Come on!” ordered Mario; “we have very much to see; we cannot waste time, we must hurry!” He was walking a little lopsidedly now, by reason of the hamper that he had taken from Gian-Luca. His boater straw hat had slipped back on his head, his shoulders were hunched with effort. + 

They passed a hothouse and a small museum. “Those are for later,” said Mario; “I think now we will make for the large museum; that is of interest, I remember.” + 

On the way Geppe spied some enticing-looking ducks, swimming on an artificial lake. + 

“Come on! Come on!” called Mario, sharply; “we have no time to play with ducks.” + 

The museum was stuffy and very dull, two cases only were amusing. These stood by the door; they contained little people⁠—natives with carts and oxen. The children stopped in delight before them. + 

“What funny clothes!” remarked Berta. + 

Gian-Luca agreed. + 

“Oh, look, oxen!” piped Geppe, blurring the glass with his breath. + 

“Come, piccini!” came Mario’s voice in the distance. “Come, Rosa, there are two more floors.” + 

They turned reluctantly to follow the voice, which seemed always to soar on just ahead. At the foot of the stairs they caught it up. + 

“I think I will stay here,” said Rosa. + 

“As you please,” Mario smiled; “but we will see all. Come, children, come on, Gian-Luca!” And he and the children disappeared up the stairs, leaving Rosa to wait at the bottom. + 

The tour of the museum completed at last, Mario bethought him of luncheon. “I think we might go to the Pagoda,” he suggested; “do I not see its top across there?” + 

“It is such a long way off, and already it is late,” complained Rosa; “let us find a place nearer.” + 

In the end they sat down in the shade of a wood. It was only a small imitation wood, an incongruous and rather pathetic thing, trying to look wild and romantic and careless, a few hundred yards from a hothouse. However, there were beech trees and many sanguine birds⁠—there were also bluebells in the grass. + 

“Look, Mario, are they not lovely?” exclaimed Rosa. + 

But Mario’s gaze was very far away. “We ought to have gone to that Pagoda⁠—” he said slowly, “I can see it over there against the sky.” + 

Gian-Luca was staring intently at the bluebells; he stooped and touched them with his finger. They were cool and fine as though wrought in wax, their heads bent sideways a little. Something in the blueness and coolness of them reminded him of his pictures⁠—the pictures that never came to him now when he lay between sleeping and waking⁠—but something in this blueness and coolness made him sad, not happy like things seen in his pictures. He resented this sadness; he frowned at the bluebells and suddenly pushed them with his foot. + 

“Have I not got myself?” thought Gian-Luca; then wondered what that could have to do with bluebells. + 

Rosa was unpacking the luncheon-basket and Mario was opening a bottle of wine. Berta and Geppe were trying to quarrel, but they could not settle down to it, their attention kept on wandering in the direction of the food. + 

Gian-Luca accepted a large hunk of pie, and began to forget his depression; for after all, at eleven years old, many mysteries⁠—like bluebells and sudden sadness and belonging to one’s self⁠—seem much less disturbing once the cry of the stomach is appeased. + 

“Madonna! What excellent wine!” gurgled Mario, drinking his second glass. “Your father is as mean as a Genovese, Rosa, but today he has been generous like an emperor.” They gorged until Berta and Geppe grew sleepy, and Rosa’s head nodded on her bosom. But Mario was not sleepy; like a lion refreshed, he began to pace up and down. + 

“Come on! We must go to the Pagoda,” he urged. “Avanti! There is not much time.” + 

They struggled to their feet. Rosa repacked the hamper, then she wiped Geppe’s mouth and tied on Berta’s bonnet, after which they had to hurry to catch up with Mario, who was out of the wood already. On the way to the Pagoda there were prunias in blossom, a sight to rejoice sore eyes, but Mario stumped forward with never a glance. + 

“Come on, avanti!” he kept on saying. + 

However, when at last they reached the Pagoda, Mario’s thoughts appeared to stray. “We have not seen the hothouses yet,” he told them; “and they are not to be missed.” The first houses that he chose stood all in a row; five broiling, progressive hells. No need to go out into the air for a moment; you could pass from one to the other. At the fourth degree of torment, Rosa protested: + 

“I cannot support it,” she gasped. + 

“I feel sick,” put in Berta, hoping for attention. + 

“As for me, I like it!” bragged Geppe. + 

Gian-Luca was not sure that he himself did like it; he felt rather sorry for the trees. They were tall, anxious trees, always doomed to look through windows; and, moreover, they had grown and grown, until their heads were pressing against the glass roof. But Mario, once started on a quest for knowledge, was not at all easy to coerce; he might pause for a moment to read out a label, to elicit some scrap of information from a keeper; but before there was even time to draw breath, he would be off again, faster than ever. + 

There were many other houses, some cooler, some hotter, but all of great interest to Mario, it seemed. + 

“I know I am going to be sick!” announced Berta, punctually every five minutes. + 

At last Rosa struck; they had now reached a house that was tactlessly known as: “The Stove.” + 

“Into this, my friend, you shall penetrate alone; we will wait outside,” she said firmly. + 

Even Mario showed signs of wilting a little when he finally emerged from “The Stove,” but not for very long; having dried his drenched forehead, he suggested a tour of the gardens. + 

“I am told,” he remarked, in the pompous voice of one who imparts information, “that these wonderful gardens extend for many acres⁠—two hundred and eighty-eight, I believe⁠—and at every few yards there is something of interest; we missed a great deal when we came here last time.” + 

His eyes were so round and his face was so eager that Rosa forbore to protest; so once more he started his caravan in motion, and they went for a tour of the gardens. It would not have been so tiring had he been content to investigate objects of interest as they came, but his mind worked faster even than his legs; he was always breaking off in the middle of one thing in order to push on to the next. Then his conscience would smite him: + 

“Let us go back a minute to King William’s Temple, it is not very far.” Or: “Perhaps we should have gone to the other museums; up to now, we have seen only one.” + 

In the very middle of the Rhododendron Dell, he stood still abruptly and groaned. + 

“What is the matter?” inquired Rosa in alarm. + 

Mario did not answer, but when he walked on he was limping like a horse with a splint. + 

“Did I not tell you that those new boots would draw?” inquired his wife, almost crossly. + 

“You did,” he admitted, “and, as usual, you were right; they draw with the strength of the devil!” + 

Berta and Geppe began to hang back. + 

“I am tired and my head aches,” whined Berta. + 

“I have got a stone in my shoe,” whimpered Geppe, “and that hurts much more than a bunion!” + 

Gian-Luca’s collar got tighter and tighter; he felt as though he must burst. It was his turn to carry the hamper again, and his arm was beginning to grow stiff. Rosa’s hat had slipped to one side of her head, her fringe was completely out of curl; her kind, plump face looked dusty and sallow, there were rings of fatigue round her eyes. Berta’s white frock had a rent in the side⁠—caught on a branch in passing. Geppe limped along in imitation of his father, and as he limped, he complained. But Mario, still happy in spite of his anguish, pushed on with the courage of an explorer. + 

“There are still some museums, and then the Kew Palace,” he smiled, taking Rosa’s arm. + 

“My dear,” she murmured; “my very dear Mario⁠—are you not worn out, amore?” + 

“I am splendid,” he told her. “Just a little bit lame, but otherwise I am splendid.” + 

They were gentle with each other, the two of them, these days⁠—now they seldom, if ever, quarreled. The passions of their youth were cooling a little, and with their passions, their tempers. Then the frequent quarrels between their offspring left little time for their own; they were too busy coping with Berta and Geppe to devote much thought to themselves. + 

Mario said: “It is very pleasant to get out of London for a little⁠—even if one only comes to Kew Gardens; still, it is very pleasant.” + 

She nodded: “But I wish you had let me slit that boot, I cannot endure to see you hurt⁠—” + 

He patted her hand: “Do not worry, donna mia; it would spoil the new boot to split it.” + 

They dragged themselves on through the last museums, and, finally, over the Palace; after which they found Rosa’s cheap little cake-shop, where Geppe once more ate jam tartlets. + 

IV + 

On the way home that evening Geppe fell asleep, leaning against his mother. His small hand was quite incredibly sticky, but Rosa held it in hers. Berta, very upright in the corner of the bus, blinked hard to keep herself awake. + 

“Look at that Geppe,” she whispered to Gian-Luca; “he sleeps⁠—but then, he is so young!” + 

Having left Gian-Luca at Fabio’s side-door, they betook themselves slowly homeward. Rosa was carrying Geppe, still asleep, Mario was leading Berta; with his other hand he clung to the hamper, which bumped against his leg as he hobbled. A quiet May dusk, the friend of tired faces, went with them down the street. + 

V + 

“And have you enjoyed yourself?” inquired Rosa, when at last she and Mario lay side by side in bed. + 

“Ma sicuro,” he assured her; “oh, very much, my Rosa⁠—only think of all that we have seen!” + 

Turning over he checked off the items on his fingers, calling them out one by one. There were not enough fingers, so he tapped on the bedspread, while she lay and watched him⁠—smiling. + 

VIII + 

I + 

Gian-Luca left school the following Christmas, having made neither enemies nor friends. He was missed a little by both teachers and students; by the former because of a quick intelligence that had made him an interesting pupil, by the latter because there was now no “Macaroni” to be teased and left out of things. + 

For a few weeks he experienced the novel sensation of having nothing to do. Just at first this was rather a pleasant sensation; he could lounge in and out of the shop as he pleased, or better still, stroll down the street to Nerone’s and hang about bothering Rosa in her kitchen until she drove him away. But after a time this enforced idleness began to pall on Gian-Luca, and then it was that he formed a new habit⁠—he formed the habit of books. Hitherto all books had meant lesson-books, he had read scarcely anything else, and lesson-books had been part of a rule imposed not by himself but by others. Now, however, it was different, he himself was the rule, he could read or not read what he chose; and this fact gave Gian-Luca a pleasant sense of power, so that even the volumes which he had brought from school became suddenly much more interesting. + 

From his early childhood he had loved the sound of words, and now he began to discover things about them; their length, their shape, their color, their balance, their relation one to the other. He discovered the felicity of certain groupings, the strength and virility of others; the power of a name, the clamor of a line, the solemnity and vastness of a stanza. For the magic that unsealed his ears and his eyes, lay for him in a volume of verses; the verses were Italian; he had found the book one day, quite by chance, in Mario’s bedroom. No one had ever heard of the author, or at least, so Mario said: + 

“Non lo conosco,” said Mario with a shrug. “He is doubtless somebody new.” When Teresa and Fabio had retired for the night Gian-Luca had relighted his gas, which was forbidden, and then he had crept back to bed with his book. As he read he began to see pictures again⁠—yet now he was very wide awake⁠—these were pictures that someone unknown had seen first, and left for Gian-Luca on the pages. The next morning he was knocking at Mario’s door before that good fellow was up. + 

“It is I, Gian-Luca.” + 

Mario’s voice came, rather husky: “Per carita! What do you want?” + 

Gian-Luca put his head into the room, then his hand which was clutching the book. Mario reared up in bed like an angry retriever, his curly hair standing on end. + 

“Is it not enough that I work half the night because the Padrone has decided to serve suppers? Is it not enough that Rosa must wake me at six to do her infernal washing? Is it not enough that Geppe has a cold and coughs and weeps without ceasing? And now you! Come in, there’s a draught in my ear; I shall have the earache in a minute!” + 

Gian-Luca obeyed him; closing the door, he went over and stood at the foot of the bed. His face was so solemn that in spite of his temper Mario began to smile: + 

“Have you decided to visit the North Pole or has Fabio swallowed a yard of salame? I am wide awake now⁠—what has brought you so early, and why do you look so grave?” + 

“I came,” said Gian-Luca, “to ask you for this book⁠—I find it has beautiful verses.” + 

“What book? Oh, that thing! Ma si, you can keep it. I cannot recall at the moment who gave it⁠—a friend of Rosa’s, I think; but put it in your pocket, Rosa disapproves of verses, and I hear her coming upstairs.” + 

As a matter of fact the book had been a present to Mario from his barmaid, given in the days when sentimental tokens had passed very freely between them. But Mario had never read one of the poems, and moreover, he now wished to deny the barmaid who, being a Latin, was causing him trouble by refusing to be denied. + 

Rosa came in: “What has happened?” she demanded. “I hope that no one is ill.” + 

“Not at all,” said Mario, winking anxiously at Gian-Luca, “it is only that this imp here has come to torment us, having nothing better to do⁠—” + 

“Oh, well,” sighed Rosa. “I must not be idle, I have very much to do.” And she left them. + 

“Now go!” commanded Mario, glaring at Gian Luca, “but first, have you hidden that book as I told you? You have? That is well; I am glad that you take it; I wonder that Rosa has not found it already⁠—I thought I had burnt it up.” + 

II + 

Gian-Luca’s unknown Italian poet was a wonder-worker, it seemed, for he wove a spell not only for himself, but for all his fellow craftsmen. Having read and reread what he had to say, Gian-Luca bethought him of Browning, and found to his delight that though Browning was English⁠—a very great drawback he felt to any poet⁠—yet, nevertheless, he could make the heart beat and the eyes fill with sudden tears. From Browning he turned to Tennyson and Wordsworth, and finally rediscovered Kipling. He had studied them all while he was at school, but now when he read them they seemed different. + 

Alone in the room that had once been Olga’s, Gian-Luca made friends of his books. He would talk to them, pet them: “Oh, bello!” he would say, stroking a page with his hand. Or he might feel disapproval, in which case he would scold: “That is ugly, I do not like that line; if you were in Italian it would fit much better, it would not have so many small words.” + 

He made a shelf from an old packing-case, so that his friends might be well lodged, and when it was finished he nailed it to the wall directly opposite his bed. The shelf was just long enough to cover the wounds that had gaped in the plaster for years. + 

“Bene!” smiled Gian-Luca, “I have hidden them all now; they were ugly, I am glad that they are hidden!” + 

One morning he sought out Fabio in the shop, asking him gravely for books. + 

“Ma che! I have none, but here are macaroons!” laughed Fabio, giving him a handful. + 

Gian-Luca ate the macaroons with much gusto, but the next day he sought out Mario. + 

“Can you lend me some books?” inquired Gian-Luca. + 

“Ma che! I have none,” said Mario. + 

Then, seeing Gian-Luca’s look of disappointment, Mario scratched his chin, thinking hard: “I have it, Gian-Luca! I know where you must go, you must go to the Free Lending people; there they have hundreds and thousands of books; you can bring away with you a sackful.” + 

Gian-Luca discovered the Free Library, but he asked for books in Italian. + 

The Librarian smiled. “We have nothing in Italian⁠—plain English, my child, that’s what we keep here⁠—try Shakespeare, he’s not bad you know!” + 

As the days went on the Librarian grew more friendly. “Do you write yourself?” he inquired without a tremor. Gian-Luca shook his head. “You should try,” said the Librarian, “it’s never too young to begin.” + 

“So far I am reading,” Gian-Luca told him. + 

“So I have observed,” said the Librarian. + 

“Some day I shall make money, and then I will write,” Gian-Luca remarked confidentially. “It is better to grow rich before writing lovely things, otherwise one might starve.” + 

“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings⁠—” began the Librarian, and he laughed. “I see that you appreciate England, my child; however, I believe that some writers make money⁠—” + 

“It is dangerous, my grandmother says that it is dangerous, and she is very clever,” said Gian-Luca. “You see, I have only got myself, so I cannot write until I am rich.” + 

“I wish I’d only got myself,” sighed the Librarian; “there are quite a number of me.” + 

“How many?” asked Gian-Luca, rather surprised. + 

“Five girls and two boys,” said the Librarian. + 

It was true that Teresa had mocked at poets when Gian-Luca had mentioned quite vaguely one evening that it must be rather fine to write verses. + 

“That is not for you,” she had told him firmly. “For you is a business life⁠—some day you may inherit this shop of ours, when Nonno and I are dead. Although,” she had added, “we see no reason why you should not read if you find it amusing, but never read so much that you neglect other matters. Poets are very foolish people as a rule⁠—they must also be very conceited. Nonno and I are not young any more, so you must be self-reliant, a worker⁠—you cannot afford to start scribbling nonsense, for you stand very much alone.” + 

This had neither surprised nor shocked Gian-Luca, indeed he agreed with Teresa. A person who was minus even a name would have to fight hard for a place in the world, and something in this thought made him stubborn and defiant⁠—his arrogant underlip shot out a little whenever he remembered himself. + 

He was old for his age, every day he felt older; perhaps it was because he now knew life so well, knew all sorts of queer things about fathers and children⁠—children who had no real names. Every morning on waking he looked at his motto, kneeling up in bed the better to see it; and every night he would examine it afresh⁠—he found it so reassuring. + 

“I have got myself,” he would mutter softly, and his muttering was not unlike a little prayer, and then: “I am neither Italian nor English⁠—not anything at all⁠—I am just Gian-Luca.” + 

At times this made him feel very lonely, but at others it struck him as being rather splendid; and when this happened his mouth would grow willful, with its arrogant underlip. + 

However, Gian-Luca did try to write verses, though shy and shamefaced about it. He felt quite sure that it was a waste of time, but as he had nothing very useful to do and something inside him kept asking and urging, he decided to give it its own way. Of the poems by that unknown Italian poet, there was one that Gian-Luca particularly adored: “Gioia della Luce” the poem was called, “The Joy of Light,” and the more he read it the less he understood its meaning, and yet somehow he felt that he did understand it⁠—but not exactly with his brain. The poem was long, it went on and on in a turbulent torrent of words. The great, ringing words stumbled over each other, shouting, proclaiming, lifting up their arms⁠—at least that was the idea that came to Gian-Luca⁠—the words were lifting up their arms! It made him want to laugh, it made him want to cry, it made him want to run for miles and miles. It reminded him of bluebells and blossoms at Kew Gardens, of the longings that Mario had sometimes for the sea, of things that he himself had only half imagined, of things so vast and splendid that imagination failed. Yes, that was what he knew to be so queer about the poem, it was full of little happenings like the bluebells and the blossoms, it was also full of bigness like most of Mario’s longings⁠—and of something that Gian-Luca knew to be within himself. + 

With the blessed self-assurance and temerity of youth, he selected this poem as his model. “I will write about myself,” he thought complacently, “I will write in big and lovely-sounding words.” + 

“ ‘Sono Gian-Luca⁠—Gian-Luca⁠—’ ” he began, and he suddenly added, “ ‘poverino.’ ” Then he tore up the paper; no, it was not quite right, the words sounded neither big nor lovely. He reread his model and started again, this time he composed four verses. + 

“Dio!” said Gian-Luca, “they are very bad indeed.” And once more he tore up the paper. + 

By the end of a week he had written an epic with which he was not at first ill pleased; but the more he admired it, the more he became certain that the epic ought not to be admired. + 

“Che, che!” he grumbled; “how is this, I wonder? I feel but I cannot express; perhaps I had better try something little⁠—I will write about the bluebells at Kew.” + 

The bluebells at Kew proved still harder to express, for he felt that they required so few words. He knew just what they looked like and just what they meant, but when he had finished his lyric about bluebells, it might have been written about onions. He consulted the “Gioia della Luce” once more, and this time while he read it he scowled; he was growing very angry, and he swore a fat oath that Rocca occasionally used. He wanted to punish the “Gioia della Luce,” and proceeded to slam the book. + 

“Now you cannot get out to annoy me,” he said fiercely; “I will keep all your beautiful words in prison, I will keep them shut up for a month.” After which he hurled the book under the bed, where it lay amid old dust and boxes. + 

“It is no good,” sighed Gian-Luca, feeling calmer now, but sad; “I can read but I cannot write.” + 

And some instinct told him that he would never write, however hard he might try. He might live to grow rich, to grow very, very old⁠—older than Fabio and Teresa; he might do many splendid and wonderful things, but one thing he would not do, he would never write a poem that in any way equaled “Gioia della Luce.” + 

IX + 

I + 

“Fabio,” said Teresa, “come here, my Fabio, there is something I want to show you.” + 

She was sitting at the table which was strewn with papers; a ledger and two passbooks lay open before her, and her voice when she spoke was unusually gentle, there was something caressing about it. Fabio drew up a chair to her side and adjusted his steel-rimmed glasses. + 

“So many papers!” he exclaimed with a smile. + 

“So much good money,” she answered. + 

Her hand began straying among invoices and bills, letters and order-sheets: “Today I have heard from yet one more restaurant; they send a large order for immediate delivery⁠—I am thinking we had better get another cart and horse, and another young man to drive it.” + 

Fabio scratched his head and looked rather frightened: “It seems that we grow,” he murmured. + 

“We grow,” agreed Teresa; “we are getting quite well known; the Casa Boselli prospers.” She let her eyes dwell on one of the passbooks, then she pushed it over to Fabio. “The total will show you that we grow,” she said, pointing; “that sum represents our deposit alone, and here is the drawing account.” + 

He stared incredulously, frowning a little. “I had not realized⁠—” he stammered. + 

“We have not gone over the accounts together for more than a year,” she remarked, smiling quietly. “Will you now check these figures, Fabio?” + 

He fished a stump of pencil from his waistcoat pocket and wetted the lead with his tongue. + 

“First the ledger,” said Teresa, “and then the two passbooks, after which you might total up the orders.” + 

Fabio ran his pencil down the long columns: “Trenta, trentotto, cinquanta⁠—” he muttered, then: “Cento, cento dieci, duecento, trecento⁠—” From time to time he sucked at his pencil or licked the end of his thumb. Presently he raised his eyes to Teresa. “Our Lady is good,” he said softly. + 

Teresa shrugged her shoulders: “Our wares are good, you mean; I am very well pleased with our business.” + 

“It would seem,” said Fabio, “that you and I grow rich.” But his voice lacked enthusiasm. He was thinking: “We grow rich⁠—yes⁠—but Olga is dead⁠—the dead have no use for money.” + 

Perhaps Teresa divined his thoughts, for her face closed up like a secret door that, in closing, is one with the surrounding structure; when she spoke her voice was no longer caressing. “I have not let life crush either of us, Fabio.” + 

“That is true,” he said humbly; “you speak the truth, Teresa⁠—but somehow⁠—” He paused and began to rub his eyes. “But somehow, those pains in my back, when they come, make me timid⁠—they make me feel old. I am old to to be useful in so large a business, it begins to frighten me a little. I am stupid about money, and the pains in my back⁠—” + 

“They are only lumbago; you drink too much red wine,” she told him, closing the ledger. + 

He nodded: “I know⁠—but I love my Chianti, it takes my hand like a friend⁠—when I feel it in my gullet I am more of a man⁠—however, those pains in my back⁠—” + 

Teresa, strong as a tall steel girder, surveyed him a moment in silence. “I will rub you tonight. Does it pain now?” she inquired. + 

He shook his head. + 

“Very well, then, that is good, for I want to talk about Gian-Luca.” + 

He had known that this was coming, that it had to come⁠—the boy had been idle for weeks. But Fabio, these days, shrank from all mental effort as a sea-anemone will shrink from a touch⁠—he had lived too long with Teresa. Something told him that he would be left to decide upon a career for the child; that now that Gian-Luca was no longer a baby, Teresa would feel even less obligation towards him than she had done in the past; and his fears were confirmed, for Teresa was saying: + 

“He is not a baby any more; it is now your turn, Fabio⁠—I have done what I had to⁠—it is time that you took a hand.” + 

“You mean⁠—?” he faltered. + 

“That Gian-Luca must work; we are not like the English⁠—idle.” + 

He nodded; she was right, Gian-Luca must work⁠—Fabio had no doubt at all about this, for Fabio came of a thrifty peasant stock. They might spoil their children while they were little, but once they left school they no longer spoilt them; their children then, as a matter of course, became part of the earning machine. Nor did it occur to Fabio to consider those sums lying at the bank; that had not been the way with his peasant forbears, it was not the way now with Fabio. He loved Gian-Luca, patiently, tenderly, bearing him no resentment; but the idea of giving him a better education than that provided by the local Board School never crossed his horizon. When he himself had been Gian-Luca’s age he had worked at any employment that offered; that had been and still was the way of his people, they were not afraid of small beginnings. Adaptable and infinitely painstaking in business, with an eye always on the future, they respected hard work, sagacity and money, but completely lacked imagination. + 

Fabio laid his hand on Teresa’s arm: “Will you not advise⁠—?” he began. + 

Teresa shook her head: “I have no advice to give; now it is you who must decide. The boy is twelve years old, he will soon be a man, he will not be backward, I think. While he was little I did my duty, I saw that he was clothed and fed and kept clean⁠—he is no longer little, he needs me no more, therefore I may rest from Gian-Luca.” + 

“How you hate him!” exclaimed Fabio in spite of himself. + 

Teresa looked surprised: “You are wrong, I do not hate him, but to me he is alien⁠—from the moment of his birth he has always been alien flesh.” + 

Fabio stared at her dumbly, then he cleared his throat and turning, spat into the fire. He was thinking: “I must go and consult with Nerone, perhaps he will tell me what to do.” + 

II + 

On the following day he sought out Nerone at an hour when he hoped to find Mario at home. Mario, he knew, was fond of Gian-Luca, and no doubt he also would be willing to advise. The three of them retired to a room behind the shop, in which Nerone kept his birds; the skylark, brought in because of the weather; a bullfinch that suffered much from its feet, two Norwich canaries that would very shortly breed, and a box cage of avadavats. The avadavats were huddled together in a long, ruffled, melancholy row. Mario began to tease the bullfinch with his finger, but kindly, because of its feet. + 

“I wish that I too could stand on one leg!” he said, almost enviously. + 

“I have come to talk about Gian-Luca,” began Fabio; “he must work, the moment has arrived.” + 

“You are right,” agreed Nerone, “we spoke of it last night; it is most unnatural how he reads.” + 

Mario stopped teasing the bullfinch for a moment: “What does Teresa say?” he inquired. + 

“She will not say anything at all,” sighed Fabio. “I have come to you two for advice.” + 

“Advice? Can you yourself not decide?” demanded Nerone sternly. + 

“There is so little choice,” Fabio temporized; “for Italians of our class there is very little choice, when we want to find work in England.” + 

“Oh, oh, but I thought you were English!” gibed Nerone. + 

“There is very little choice⁠—” repeated Fabio. + 

“There is of course tobacco,” Nerone smiled complacently; “but tobacco I am keeping for Geppe. When Geppe leaves school he will come into the shop, which is lucky for his father, eh, Mario?” + 

“After meals one smokes⁠—” mused Fabio, gently. “It is always much the same thing⁠—” + 

“So it is!” laughed Mario. “They may say what they please, but when a man is starving will he think of his soul? I say no, he will think of his stomach; therefore, empty or full it is all the same thing⁠—stomachs and nothing but stomachs.” + 

“Some people will even chew tobacco,” remarked Nerone; “everybody does in America, I am told.” + 

“There you are!” broke in Fabio; “what did I say? For us it is always the same.” + 

“You prosper, I believe,” Nerone said jealously; “I hear that you will soon be very rich. Why not let Gian-Luca work in your shop for a little? After that he could go as a waiter if you do not require him at home.” + 

“He may wish to be a cook,” suggested Fabio, “or perhaps a hall porter at a restaurant.” + 

“If he wants to be a waiter, I can help him,” put in Mario; “there is no doubt at all about that!” + 

“You!” sneered Nerone; “are you not well over thirty, and still at your Capo di Monte? Per Bacco! I think Gian-Luca could help you; I think it is the other way round!” + 

Mario flushed darkly. “You go too far, Babbo; insult me if you must, but not my restaurant. How often have I told you that the Capo will be famous, very famous, one of these days?” + 

“Many times you have lied thus,” Nerone said rudely; “many times have I spat out your lies!” + 

“Basta! Basta!” cried Fabio, dreading a quarrel; “I implore you not to get angry.” + 

“Who would not get angry?” grumbled Nerone. “Am I not a long-suffering man?” Presently he said: “Have you thought of our Rocca? I hear that he is wanting a boy.” + 

“I had thought of that, of course,” replied Fabio, “but I do not think it would quite suit Gian-Luca; he is still rather funny about those small goats.” + 

“Let me ask the Padrone to take him at the Capo,” Mario insisted eagerly. + 

“Sacramento!” yelled Nerone. “You and your Capo! And nothing you are, no, less than nothing! It is I who provide for Rosa and the children, it is I who scrape and save. As for you, you have nothing so far as I can see but a bunion on your left foot. I would not exchange my good wooden leg for your bunion⁠—no, that I would not!” + 

“I am thinking, Mario,” said Fabio slowly; “I am thinking of what you have said. If I kept Gian-Luca for two years in the shop, he might go to you afterwards. Already I can see him in a neat white waistcoat and a little black satin tie; I can see him in a fashionable restaurant after he has learnt at the Capo. He is one of those boys who is bound to rise; he will have such a fine appearance, I cannot promise that you will keep him long; still, no doubt it would be good training⁠—” + 

“As for that, no better exists,” bragged Mario. “Will he not be under me?” + 

“Ah!” exclaimed Fabio in enormous relief; “then I think we can take it as settled. I have always intended to make him a waiter; I have my ideas for Gian-Luca!” + 

“Then why did you come to consult us, Dio Santo!” bawled Nerone, now thoroughly roused. + 

“I wished to hear what you would say,” Fabio told him. “We are such old friends that I thought it only courteous to tell you of my plans for the boy.” + 

III + 

Everyone thought Fabio’s decision a wise one, including Gian-Luca himself. Gian-Luca, aged twelve, had no exalted ideas, and very few illusions about life. It seemed to him perfectly natural and right that he should help Fabio in the shop, and that afterwards he should work under Mario at the celebrated Capo di Monte. Most people that he knew did just that sort of thing, or at all events, something very like it. “And,” argued Gian-Luca, “if I cannot write well, perhaps I can serve well⁠—even better than Mario.” For at twelve years old he already had great confidence in his own ability to serve. + 

“What fun you will have!” said Berta enviously, with her eye on a jar of fruit toffee from Turin. “There are so many things one can eat in this shop, it is ever so much nicer than ours.” She and her brother had wandered in one Saturday afternoon, to find Gian-Luca in a little white jacket, importantly installed behind the counter. He looked at her disdainfully. + 

“We do not eat, Berta, that is not the way to grow rich; we offer our sweets to our customers, they eat and we keep the money.” + 

“Oh, but think⁠—” persisted Berta. “Just one little bit! That cannot be worth a farthing.” + 

“You are not to!” cried Gian-Luca, catching at her hand. “You are not to go stealing our toffee!” + 

“Dirty pig!” retorted Berta; “I do not want your toffee, we have much nicer toffee at home.” + 

“Then leave it alone, and do not touch those raisins, you are squashing them soft with your fingers!” + 

Geppe strolled round with his hands in his pockets: “Good day,” he said, nodding in the manner of Nerone; “it appears that we shall have some fine weather.” + 

“Good day,” said Gian-Luca, bowing a little; “it appears that we undoubtedly shall.” Geppe’s game was certainly very appealing, Gian-Luca’s eyes began to sparkle. “And now,” he said pompously, “I will show you how I serve; you go out and come in again.” + 

At that moment, however, Teresa appeared: “Be off, you two children!” she commanded. “Have you sorted that wrapping-paper, Gian-Luca? You have not? Then do so at once.” + 

“Ha, ha!” mocked Berta. “He is so very grand and he does not know how to sort paper!” + 

“I do!” said Gian-Luca. + 

“You do not!” sneered Berta. “It is obvious that you do not.” + 

Gian-Luca’s arm shot out across the counter and he tugged at a lock of black hair. + 

“Take that!” yelled Berta, slapping his face. + 

“And that!” he retorted, with a truly frightful pinch. “And that!” spluttered Berta, beginning to scratch, whilst Geppe ate olives in a corner. + 

“And this!” remarked Teresa, as she seized Rosa’s offspring and thrust them forth into the street. “And now,” she said, turning again to Gian-Luca, “if you think you have finished behaving like a baby, I will show you how to sort paper.” She proceeded to explain the art of saving, as applied to paper and string. “One does not always give a new piece,” she told him. “One uses one’s discretion according to the order; small orders may be done up in old bits of paper⁠—say anything under two shillings.” + 

Gian-Luca nodded, rather red in the face and considerably humbled in spirit. “And what must one do, Nonna, if they ask for something that does not exist in the shop?” + 

“In that case one persuades them to take something else; they should never go away empty-handed.” + 

“But if they do not want it?” + 

“You must make them think they want it; that is the art of good selling.” + 

“I will try⁠—” he murmured doubtfully, forgetting for the moment how proficient in all things he was. + 

IV + 

There was much to learn about the art of selling, as Gian-Luca was soon to discover. There was also much to learn about the ways of people who came for the purpose of buying. There were people who spoke with habitual rudeness, who ordered you about your own shop. When you handed them the parcel they never said “Thank you,” they just turned and went out of the door. You longed to make faces at these sort of people or to pinch them like you pinched Berta; however, you remembered that at least they had to pay, and that consoled you a little. There were people who never knew quite what they wanted, who could never make up their minds. They asked you for tomatoes, but their eyes strayed to funghi; when you showed them the funghi they inquired about biscuits: “I wish to take home a small present,” they told you. In the end, as like as not, they bought cheese. There were people who never fancied anything handy, anything that lived low down: “Let me see that honey up there,” they would say, pointing; “no, not this⁠—that honey up there, if you please, I think it looks fresher than this.” There were people who believed in always being friendly, no matter how busy you were. They usually arrived when the shop was quite full, and engaged you in long conversations about nothing⁠—but they always counted their change. There were people who seemed unable to see you, who looked over your head at Fabio or Teresa. You leant across the counter in your most approved manner: “Are you being served?” you inquired politely, but they answered: “I think I’ll wait, thank you.” But the worst kind of people were those who did see you, and appeared to be amused at what they saw. These people made you nervous as you struggled with their parcels or tried to make out their bills. They would thank you profusely with mock gravity, they might even tweak your ear, and they frequently called you objectionable names like “Kiddie,” “My lad,” or “Infant.” After such people left you began to grow downwards, you began to get smaller and smaller. In the end your head barely reached above the counter⁠—at least, that was the way you felt. + 

On the whole, however, you enjoyed serving people; you could study them while you served. You realized quite soon that you never knew people until you began to serve them. + 

V + 

During Gian-Luca’s two years at the shop, he learnt about all sorts of things. England was busily fighting the Boers, so Gian-Luca learnt a little about war, and a little about Death, from hearsay. The Boer War in no way affected his people, it scarcely even touched their trade; but into Old Compton Street there crept a sense of sadness⁠—Rosa was constantly wiping her eyes for the mothers she did not know. He learnt about Teresa, and in place of his love there grew up an aloof respect. He saw her as she was when she stood at the helm, hardheaded, closefisted, fearless in business, with a kind of genius for affairs. He learnt about Fabio; about his little fears, his weariness, his sense of growing old, the pains in his back that made him think of God, that God who was part of the pains in his back, but never quite a part of Fabio. And Gian-Luca, very young, very strong, and very gallant as he seized the long knife and sliced the salame, began to pity Fabio and, in pitying, despised him⁠—as is sometimes the way of youth. + 

All his life he had seen packing-cases arrive, and had often watched Fabio unpack them. But never before had he quite understood the full significance of all those large cases, that now arrived in their hundreds. There were certainly more than there used to be, and this fact was rather exciting; for in each was a smell or a series of smells, a taste or a series of tastes. Every case contained something that someone would eat, an astonishing quantity when seen all together, and this meant that the whole world was always hungry⁠—incredibly hungry, preposterously hungry, ready and eager to consume every morsel that Teresa and her kind could produce. He found this thought amusing; he would look at a cheese and begin to speculate about it: “I wonder who you will go to,” he would think; “I wonder whose palate you will tickle.” He visualized millions of red, gaping caverns, into which must be poured something pleasing to the taste. “We are right who take up this business,” he would think; “they could never get on without us!” And then there would come a sense of secureness, he would feel less alone in the world. + 

VI + 

Gian-Luca still went to the Free Library, and this surprised the Librarian. “I should think you’d have no time for reading,” he remarked, “now that you’re such a man of business. I should think that you must feel rather bored with books, considering there’s no money in them⁠—” + 

“What has that got to do with it?” inquired Gian-Luca, staring at him in surprise; for at this time he was very much a Latin; he kept two distinct Gian-Lucas, one for beauty, one for business, and so far they had never collided. + 

“I can’t make you out,” said the puzzled Librarian; “it’s so queer that you like books at all.” + 

“Rocca likes music,” Gian-Luca told him, “he goes to the gallery at Covent Garden; Rocca is mad about opera!” + 

“And who is Rocca?” inquired the Librarian. “He sounds very hard, somehow.” + 

“Rocca’s our butcher, he used to be a soldier. When he was a little boy he knew Garibaldi,” said Gian-Luca, defending Rocca. + 

“Ah, well,” smiled the Librarian, “it’s a very large world, there must surely be room for us all⁠—Come and see me some day, I live in Putney; perhaps you could come to tea?” + 

“It would have to be a Sunday,” Gian-Luca told him gravely. “I am very busy all the week⁠—” + 

“That will do; you can come next Sunday at four⁠—I will show you my own special books. What would you like for tea⁠—Chelsea buns? Or do you prefer Swiss roll?” + 

“I prefer Swiss roll, apricot,” said Gian-Luca. + 

“I will tell my wife,” promised the Librarian. + 

VII + 

Gian-Luca arrived at the Librarian’s house punctually at four the next Sunday. Fabio had laughed when bidding him goodbye: + 

“It seems you make new English friends, piccino. Now I have never been the friend of a Librarian, though perhaps I may have fed one⁠—it may be so⁠—unless they eat only books!” + 

The Librarian lived in one of a row of neat little redbrick villas; its name was “Balmoral,” and each side of the gate stood a foolish-looking acacia. The Librarian opened the door himself, his feet were in carpet slippers; an old briar pipe was gripped between his teeth, and he wore neither collar nor tie. + 

“Come in, come in! I am so pleased to see you,” he exclaimed, holding out his hand. + 

A small, rosy lady of uncertain age, was awaiting them in the drawing-room. The walls of the room were lined with books, as had also been those of the passage. She shook hands with Gian-Luca and smiled at him kindly with her head a little on one side. Her eyes were the eyes of a tame city bird⁠—she reminded Gian-Luca of a sparrow. + 

“My husband has talked so much about you that I feel as though I knew you quite well,” she said. + 

At which Gian-Luca made a stiff little bow and brushed her hand with his lips. Teresa believed in punctilious good manners, and considered the English very boorish. + 

“You have very many books!” remarked Gian-Luca, quite unable to hide his curiosity. + 

“We have,” she agreed, “very, very many books.” And unlike a sparrow, she sighed. + 

The books had a somewhat rakish appearance, caused by the sagging of the shelves; in one corner of the room a shelf had collapsed, and its contents were stacked on the floor. + 

“A slight accident, you see,” observed the Librarian, “it happens occasionally here; I made all the shelves in this room myself, and they’re really not so bad considering⁠—” + 

Tea not being ready, he took the boy’s arm, and proceeded to conduct him over the house. “If you want to see all my books,” he said happily, “I shall have to take you even into the bathroom. We have to be careful not to have our baths too hot, otherwise the steam might spoil the bindings.” + 

Gian-Luca was astonished; every room they went into was packed and bulging with books; they elbowed the wardrobes, edged up close to the beds, or lay in untidy heaps on the chairs. The queer, bookish smell of them filled the air⁠—it was pleasant to Gian-Luca’s nostrils. Presently they went downstairs to the study, an absurdly small apartment overlooking the yard. Its sole furniture consisted of a roll-top desk, an armchair and a reading-lamp. + 

“Here,” said the Librarian in a very solemn voice, “are all my old first editions. They deserve a veritable palace to themselves, yet I find them wonderfully uncomplaining⁠—” + 

He looked round at his treasures with the eyes of a parent who marvels at the sweetness of his offspring. “They are so full of wisdom, it must be that,” he murmured, “the wise are seldom self-assertive.” + 

“Are they not worth much money?” said Gian-Luca. + 

“Hundreds!” the Librarian told him; “but no money could buy them,” he hastened to add, in the tone of one on the defensive. He placed a slim volume in Gian-Luca’s hands. “Take this, for instance, it is almost unique; they haven’t got this one at the British Museum, and they won’t have it until I am dead! I should like to take it with me for my library in Heaven, but that I fear wouldn’t be allowed.” His quizzical eyes were watching Gian-Luca, who by now was staring round him in open amazement. + 

“So many, so valuable, so expensive!” said Gian-Luca; “I have never seen so many owned books before⁠—at home they have none at all.” He went over to a shelf and took out a volume which he opened, beginning to read. The Librarian noticed his gentle hands, and forbore to protest at his action. In a minute or two Gian-Luca looked up: + 

“I very much love their smell. It is such an old smell and yet it seems alive⁠—do you think that perhaps they may breathe?” + 

“Who knows?” said the Librarian, smiling at the thought. “They feel very much alive to me.” + 

Then Gian-Luca’s mind became practical again. “Did you buy them all yourself?” he demanded. + 

The Librarian laughed: “Do I look as though I had? Do I look as though I could afford them?” + 

Gian-Luca examined his friend more closely, and observed that his cleanshaven face was much wrinkled, as though from continual smiling. Two funny, deep lines ran down into his chin, and his hair had a tuft like a schoolboy’s. But although he appeared to have amused himself vastly⁠—over what Gian-Luca could not conceive⁠—his clothes would have thoroughly shocked Teresa, so frayed and untidy were they. + 

“No,” said Gian-Luca, who felt bound to tell the truth, “you look terribly poor to me.” + 

The Librarian nodded: “You’re right, I am poor⁠—we’re all as poor as rats. But when I was younger a dreadful thing happened⁠—I had a most wicked old uncle. He left me no money but all his books, I’m afraid he must have done it out of spite! It was rather like leaving a cellar to a drunkard, he probably knew that I’d read myself to death, as I have done financially.” + 

Gian-Luca was silent for a moment, then he said: “Could you not sell your fine books? After all, one must live and one cannot eat books, and at times one feels very hungry.” + 

“Good Lord!” sighed the Librarian; “now I’m disappointed in you. Do you always think only of your stomach?” + 

“We think of other people’s at the Casa Boselli⁠—that is what really pays. My grandmother says that your money is your best friend, and as she has much she must know.” Then Gian-Luca’s heart softened quite suddenly, and he smiled at the shabby Librarian. “All the same,” said Gian-Luca, “I would like you for a father⁠—I think you would make a nice father.” And he meant it. + 

The Librarian surveyed him very kindly. “You’re wrong there,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m a rotten bad father, and in any case, I’ve got far too many children as it is!” + 

“Which do you like best, books or children?” Gian-Luca inquired, a little puzzled. + 

“That,” said the Librarian, “is a difficult question⁠—I’ve never been able to decide.” As he spoke, something bumped against the door, which opened rather abruptly. A very fat child lurched into the room, and seeing Gian-Luca, began to suck its thumb. “My latest folly!” said its father, pointing. + 

“It’s three, the others are all grown-up. Go away at once, folly!” he commanded sternly; “you’re much too corpulent to fit into my study, in another minute you’ll get stuck.” But the infant continued to stare at Gian-Luca, and its father apparently forgot it. “You were saying,” he went on, “that you think of people’s stomachs⁠—a revolting portion of the body.” + 

“Why?” said Gian-Luca, a little offended. “I cannot buy books and I cannot write them; so I am going to be a waiter.” + 

The Librarian seemed to be thinking aloud: “Dull, very dull, very ugly⁠—” he murmured. + 

“It will interest me,” said Gian-Luca, with dignity, “to see where all the food goes to. We have hundreds of pounds of food at our shop, it arrives in enormous cases!” + 

“I know where it ultimately goes,” said the Librarian; “but come on, I expect tea’s ready.” And seizing his latest folly by the hand, he led the way to the dining-room. + 

“You observe,” he smiled, motioning Gian-Luca to a chair, “that we have not forgotten the Swiss roll!” + 

The plump little lady who looked like a sparrow, beamed across the table at Gian-Luca. She seemed to feel that he must need comforting, and put four lumps of sugar in his tea. Gian-Luca preferred two, but he drank his tea politely, he was obviously growing very thoughtful. + 

“If you had fewer children, could you then not buy more books?” he suddenly inquired of the Librarian. + 

“Dear me!” said the hostess, looking rather startled. But Gian-Luca continued to be thoughtful. + 

“Or suppose,” he went on dreamily, “that you read fewer books, could you not afford to have more children?” + 

“I’m greedy!” smiled his host; “I’m greedy, I want both; that’s why I wear carpet slippers on a Sunday⁠—it’s not to ease my feet, but to save my boots⁠—and that is what comes of being greedy!” + 

“I do not understand you,” said Gian-Luca, frowning. + 

“I don’t understand myself,” said the Librarian. Then he looked at Gian-Luca: “Now, you’re what the world calls wise, you don’t neglect the substance for the shadow; that’s what we all do here, we all neglect the substance, in spite of this disgracefully stout offspring whom you see. However, if at moments you should come to long for the shadow⁠—well, Gian-Luca, we’ll be very glad to see you.” + 

“Yes, indeed, always glad,” said the hostess gently; “you must come very often, Gian-Luca.” + 

She was looking at her guest with pity in her eyes, a pity that she could not have explained. “Undoubtedly, a very prosperous child,” she was thinking, “he’s well dressed⁠—I suppose his grandparents must be rich, these Italians only come here to make money!” Yet the mother that was in her was not quite satisfied, it was thinking too, but not about prosperity⁠—it was thinking that never in its life had it seen such a queer, unresponsive and lonely little boy⁠—so self-sufficient and so lonely. + 

VIII + 

That evening Gian-Luca went up to his room and found his pencil and paper. A vague spirit of discontent was upon him, a vague longing to find self-expression. + 

“The Librarian lives in the shadows,” he wrote, “But Gian-Luca must live in the daylight.” + 

Only rhymes could appease the ache that was in him, he disdained the idea of prose. But the rhymes would not come; there was no rhyme for shadows and nothing that seemed to go very well with daylight. So Gian-Luca lost his temper and tore up his paper, and hurled his pencil to the floor. He sat glaring into space: + 

“It is all wrong!” he muttered. “Something is all wrong with me. I wish to write poems, I wish to be a waiter; yet a waiter cannot write, and a poet cannot wait⁠—I am greedy like the Librarian. Also, I am sometimes greedy over food, I should very much dislike to go hungry.” + 

“Piccino!” came Fabio’s voice up the stairs; “come quick! We have minestrone for supper!” + 

The would-be poet got up with some haste, he was feeling very hungry at that moment. A most enticing odor was pervading the whole house. + 

“I come now at once!” replied Gian-Luca. + 

X + 

I + 

The Capo di Monte was in Dean Street, Soho. It occupied the whole of a tall, blistered house that had once been painted brown, and on either side of its swing glass doors sat two white Capo di Monte cherubs, perched on pedestals of carved Italian walnut. Judging from their smiles and the contours of their figures, the food at the Capo was good, a fact which they proclaimed to the hungry of Dean Street⁠—or at least had been put there to proclaim. The Padrone was intensely proud of his cherubs, he dusted them himself every morning; they had come with him all the way from Italy, and had given their name to the restaurant. + 

The Padrone was still quite young in years, but old in the ways of business. He had soft brown eyes and a devilish temper. His skin was sallow and luminously greasy; his nose was aggressive, his mouth overripe, and his teeth were magnificently healthy. He was tall, but already his soiled white waistcoat showed signs of a little paunch. For the rest he was obviously born to succeed, being quite untroubled by scruples. + 

Fabio had felt a little doubtful about him when it actually came to the point, but Gian-Luca had preferred the life of the restaurant to the more monotonous career of the shop. + 

“I would like to see things outside,” he had said, “a waiter sees all sorts of people, Nonno; I think I would rather go to the Capo, Mario likes it so much.” + 

So Fabio had nodded and murmured: “Si, si,” as he usually did when afraid of an argument, and one morning Gian-Luca started off with Mario en route for the Capo di Monte. + 

Gian-Luca was carrying a brown paper parcel which contained his exciting new clothes; a black suit with a species of Eton jacket, some stiff shirts and collars, and four white cotton bows which fastened with a clip at the back. In addition to all this he had six enormous aprons that would cover him down to his feet; in fact he had been very generously equipped for his duties as “piccolo.” The March wind blew clouds of dust in their eyes as they turned the corner of Dean Street. + 

“Now listen,” said Mario, halting on the pavement; “I would say a few final words.” + 

Gian-Luca stood still obediently, though he secretly wondered what there could be left to say, so much had been said already. It was ten o’clock, and since seven that morning Mario had never stopped talking. However, he was evidently still full of words which were no doubt better out than in. + 

“Now first,” said Mario, removing some dust from the corner of an eye with his thumb; “now first, you observe me in all that I do, and whenever you can, you do likewise. Now second, you are always smiling to the clients, even if they spit in your face⁠—they do not quite spit, I speak figuratively, but one feels sometimes that they would like to. Now third, you move quickly; whatever you do, do it quickly and do not make a noise; a plate should be given or removed with a flourish, and yet it should seem to be arriving out of space⁠—do not fumble with the hand, the hand should appear superfluous, but be careful not to spill the gravy. Now fourth, keep a quarter of an eye on the clients, but an eye and three-quarters on the Padrone; he has many little ways that are purely his own, for instance, a language of gestures. You must learn all his gestures and exactly what they mean, otherwise he may lift his voice⁠—I have found it better to understand his gestures, it often saves trouble later on. The Padrone is a genius, and as such he has his moods, that is only to be expected; he appears to be impatient, that, however, is not so, he is probably thinking about a new dish that will some day make him famous. Now fifth, you must always wait on the Padrona and do whatever she asks you; she is beautiful, so the Padrone loves her⁠—I do not think she on her part loves him, but that is none of our business. If you win the Padrona, you win the Padrone, and that makes an easier life; I myself am always most careful to win her, I have found that it more than pays. The Padrona controls all the dishes from the lift, you will have many dealings with her; she also controls all the wines and the spirits, but that need not concern you just yet. And sixth, never give away any secrets regarding the business of the house; every house, you will find, has a few little secrets; they are not for the public, they are not for the clients⁠—” + 

Mario glanced at his watch. “Come on, come on! Already it is late,” he said, pushing Gian-Luca; “we have no time to stand here talking in the street!” + 

They began to hurry against the wind, Gian-Luca clutching his parcel. “This way!” cried Mario, as, arrived at the Capo, he led Gian-Luca through a grimy side-door, and down some steep stairs to the basement. + 

Gian-Luca had often been past the restaurant, but had never until now been inside its portals⁠—the Padrone did not encourage visits from the friends and relations of his staff. Gian-Luca found himself standing by Mario in a narrow passage lit by one electric globe; the uneven stone floor was very far from clean, the walls were discolored with damp and mildew, and from somewhere out of sight came a furious voice, swearing loudly in Italian. + 

“The Padrone,” whispered Mario, in the awed tone of one who hears God speaking in His thunder. + 

They stood very still while the storm subsided, or rather until it betook itself upstairs, then Mario smiled nervously: “Come along to the kitchen, I will show you our chef, Moscatone.” + 

The kitchen was a vault quite devoid of daylight; like the passage it had one electric globe; in this case, however, the globe was more powerful, so that every defect jumped at once to the eye, and Gian-Luca decided that there were many. The cooking appeared to be all done by gas, judging from the huge gas stove and the smell; the smell of the kitchen was far from appetizing, consisting, as it did of greasy gas ovens, a stopped sink, and last night’s black beetles. Moscatone, a gigantic Neapolitan, was standing in the middle of the floor; his huge face was shining and splotched with temper: + 

“I will slay him! Corpo di Dio, I will slay him!” he rumbled, like a bursting volcano. + 

A scullion, busily peeling potatoes from a pan gripped between his knees, looked up with a smile. + 

“He is offal,” he murmured; “he is even less than offal⁠—” + 

And he mentioned with some detail exactly and precisely what he was. + 

“Here is my friend Gian-Luca,” said Mario; “Gian-Luca, this is Moscatone; the very best chef in England we have here, that is why some day we will be famous.” + 

Moscatone’s anger blew away like a cloud, dispelled by his enormous guffaw. “Famous, the Capo! I think not, however⁠—how do you do, Gian-Luca?” + 

Gian-Luca took the extended hand, which felt soft and unpleasantly greasy. + 

“He is going to learn to be a waiter under me,” put in Mario, with pride in his voice. + 

“Is that so?” said Moscatone, as though surprised. “He will learn under you, you say?” Then he changed the subject, for in spite of his temper he was really a kindhearted giant. + 

“Come along, you must change your clothes,” ordered Mario; “I will show you the way to the dressing-room, Gian-Luca.” And he led the way to a green baize door at the end of a long dark passage. + 

What Mario had called the “dressing-room” was a small composite apartment; part wardrobe, part storeroom for boxes and rubbish, part dustbin, and part lavatory. A fair young man with a round, foolish face, was already very much in possession. He was standing in front of a bit of cracked mirror, in his shirt sleeves, adjusting his tie. + 

“Here we are!” announced Mario, as though they were expected; “Gian-Luca, this is yet another waiter. His name is Schmidt, and moreover he is Swiss, a very excellent fellow.” + 

“Good Morgen,” said Schmidt, who spoke no Italian, but who prided himself on his English; “I vill not be a tick, not ein half a tick⁠—it is nearly completed already.” + 

“Do not hurry,” said Gian-Luca, surveying him gravely; “we can wait while you finish your tie.” + 

Schmidt grinned. “Do not hurry? Vell, my friend, I must hurry; if I do not I get in the soup.” He turned from the glass to put on his coat, and pushing past Mario was gone. + 

“He is always like that,” said Mario disapprovingly. “He is always in too great a hurry; a waiter must be quick, but never in a hurry. They are foolish people, these Swiss.” + 

He began to unearth some old dress clothes from the crowded peg on the door. Gian-Luca undid his brown paper parcel, and together they struggled to dress. There was so little room that whenever they moved they promptly collided with each other. + 

“Pazienza!” sighed Mario in a vague, patient protest, as Gian-Luca bumped him with his elbow. + 

“I do not understand my apron,” said Gian-Luca. “It seems to me very wide.” + 

“I will show you,” Mario told him kindly. “The wider it is the better.” He folded Gian-Luca into the apron which swathed his legs like a shroud. “Ecco!” exclaimed Mario. “And now you are ready, and very fine indeed you look, piccino,” and he smiled with affection and approval. + 

II + 

Upstairs it was certainly more cheerful than the basement, it also smelt less of stopped sink. The restaurant was a long, low, well-lighted room, with a stand of aspidistras in the center. Here and there, in a pot tied up in pink paper, a fern was trying not to die; there were many little tables, and the one good-sized window was embellished with red cotton curtains. + 

“Some day they will be silk,” thought Gian-Luca when he saw them, remembering Mario’s words. + 

“Ah!” exclaimed the Padrone, jumping up from a table at which he had been drinking vermouth. “You are late as usual, accursedly late. I am sick of you and your lateness!” + 

Mario’s eyes goggled: “I am sorry⁠—” he faltered. + 

“My apron delayed us,” piped Gian-Luca. + 

The Padrone stared. “And who may you be? Ah, yes, I remember, the new piccolo.” + 

“At what time would you wish me to arrive?” inquired Gian-Luca, assuming the air of a man. + 

“Half-past nine and not a minute later,” he was told. + 

“I will come,” said Gian-Luca calmly. + 

“That is well,” growled the Padrone, rather taken aback, “that is well. Time is money at the Capo. And now go and wash the glass in those doors; after that you must sweep out the restaurant. Come here you, Schmidt, and give him a baize apron and show him the buckets and brooms!” he bellowed. “Corpo di Bacco! Where is the fool? Santa Madonna! where is he?” + 

III + 

Gian-Luca washed the glass, and then, just for fun, he polished all the brass as well. He brushed down the steps and finally retired to sweep up the restaurant floor. From the corner of his eye he watched Mario and Schmidt scuttling in and out of the pantry; they were very busy laying the tables for luncheon, and Mario puffed a good deal. Schmidt, who was rather a painstaking fellow, had a habit of breathing on things, especially the glasses, which he always suspected, and once, when he thought he detected a smudge, he spat on his finger and removed it. Gian-Luca, thumping about on his knees, watched the proceedings with interest. + 

“Nun was! You not got those clean serviettes yet? Mein Gott! You take long, venever you be ready?” he heard Schmidt grumbling at Mario. + 

“Mind you your business!” shouted Mario hotly. “I know how I set the table!” Schmidt laughed. “You not spit on the glasses,” went on Mario, who had looked up and caught him in the act. + 

“Then why you bring them in dirty from the pantry?” + 

“You not make them any cleaner with spit!” + 

“Was? Do you say then that my mouth is dirty?” Schmidt’s face was now red with temper, “Ich ask; you perhaps would accuse my mouth?” + 

“Dio!” groaned Mario, who was limping a little. “What do I care about your mouth!” + 

Schmidt went back to the pantry, muttering in German, and Mario stood still for a moment; very gently he began to rub his sore joint against the calf of his leg, then he sighed, and mopping his brow with his napkin he too hobbled off to the pantry. + 

Gian-Luca, left alone, settled into his stride⁠—the proverbial new broom sweeps clean. The dust rose in clouds, in less than five minutes he produced a miniature dust-storm. + 

Through the haze he could see a woman approaching: “Santa Madonna!” she was saying. “Santa Madonna! Do not use so much force. Have we imported a Samson?” He paused with the brush firmly gripped in his hand and, still kneeling, stared up into her face. Then he sneezed and she sneezed; after that he stood up. + 

“The floor is very dirty,” he told her. + 

The Padrona laughed softly. “Do I not know as much? Naturally the floor is very dirty.” And then, speaking in Italian: “But you must brush gently. One flicks with the brush to make the top clean; one does not disinter all the filth of a year⁠—see, like this, I will show you, like this⁠—” + 

And together they both went down on their knees. + 

The Padrona smelt nice when she came close to you. Gian-Luca could smell her through the dust. She had very small hands with pink-tinted nails; her feet were small, too⁠—she wore little bronze slippers and thin silk stockings to match. She laid her hand gently over Gian-Luca’s and moved the brush backwards and forwards. + 

“Ecco!” she murmured. “Now I think you understand. As they say here in England, ‘Let sleeping dogs lie!’ And that proverb applies to our dust.” + 

“Thank you,” said Gian-Luca, very red in the face, and he quickly looked down at the floor. With a gentleness worthy of the Padrona he caressed the carpet with his brush. + 

The Padrona went behind the counter of the bar and busied herself with some bottles; from time to time she glanced at Gian-Luca, and her lips twitched into a smile. She began to notice his ash-blond head bent in an effort of attention. The back of his neck looked absurdly young, the hair grew down into a youthful hollow, and where it ended it turned suddenly sideways, forming a little comma. + 

“Have you not swept enough?” inquired the Padrona. “I think you have swept enough.” + 

“As you will,” said Gian-Luca, getting to his feet, “but I feel that the floor is not clean.” + 

“Come here,” said the Padrona. “You shall help me with these bottles; you shall take this damp cloth and wipe them; but first, what is your name and how old are you? Mario brought you, did he not?” + 

He was staring at her now because he found her lovely; his pleasure overcame his shyness. He said: “I am called Gian-Luca, signora; I am nearly fifteen, I was fourteen last November, I came here with Mario this morning.” + 

“I see⁠—Gian-Luca; but Gian-Luca what?” + 

“Boselli,” he told her, and flushed; then quickly, “But I’d like to be called Gian-Luca, please; I have always been called just Gian-Luca.” + 

“Why not? It’s a very nice name,” she smiled, surveying him calmly with experienced eyes, the color of mountain gentians. “You are tall, very tall for your age, Gian-Luca⁠—” And she nearly added, “and amazingly handsome.” But instead she pointed to the row of bottles, which Gian-Luca proceeded to dust. + 

The Padrona was thirty; she was also a Venetian; she was also married to the Padrone; three facts which she found no cause to resent⁠—she looked younger than thirty, she was proud of her birthright, and her husband was⁠—well, just the usual husband⁠—a thing it was always essential to possess and to pet into comparative good temper. Her nature was skeptical, sunny and placid; having never expected too much of life, she had never been disappointed. She was conscious of her beauty and in consequence of men, but her technical virtue was perfectly intact, and was always likely to remain so. With the clients she assumed that air of aloofness that had always impressed the good Mario. With her husband she was docile and unfailingly good-tempered, there was no necessity to be anything else; her beauty was the only weapon she needed to subjugate the Padrone. The Padrone was jealous, he adored and he suffered, and the more he suffered the more he adored. He lived in perpetual terror of losing the love of so beautiful a creature. Her docility never made him quite happy⁠—he feared that it might be a cloak; yet so foolish was his love that he cringed to his wife and vented his anguish on the waiters. + 

But at moments the Padrona felt a little dull; she detested the English climate. It was weary work standing for hours behind the counter, serving out other people’s drinks. There were times when her husband’s ridiculous outpourings had begun to get on her nerves, when she noticed that little inclination to a paunch⁠—it had not been there when they married. So when Gian-Luca turned to her with a smile, because he could not resist it, the Padrona smiled back and said: + 

“Splendid, Gian-Luca; you polish my bottles to perfection.” + 

And when he was once more busily at work she began to speculate about him, her speculations being principally concerned with what he would be like in a few years’ time, and with what would happen when he first fell in love, and with whether the woman would be fair or dark, older than he was or younger. For of such fairly harmless but foolish romancing the mind of the Padrona was full. The more strictly virtuous the married woman, the more she will sometimes dally with fancies; and then Gian-Luca being almost a child, what could be the harm in her fancies? + 

Presently she said: “Is your mother dead, Gian-Luca?” + 

“Si, signora; she is dead.” + 

“And your father?” + 

A long pause and then: “Si, signora; my father is also dead.” + 

The Padrona sighed. “I see, that is sad; but I also have lost both my parents. What part of Italy do you come from⁠—from Rome?” + 

“My mother was born here in England, signora, and I too was born in England.” + 

He stood quite still with a bottle in his hand, dreading the Padrona’s next question. Would she ask if his father had been born in England, too? And if she did, what would he say? The Padrona spared him this embarrassment, however; her mind had reverted to business; it was nearly one o’clock and she had suddenly discovered that she had only two siphons left. + 

“Go quickly, piccolo, and fetch me six more siphons and twelve small bottles of soda,” she ordered. + 

He flew to obey and went rushing downstairs, all but upsetting Mario in the process. + 

“Piano, piano!” cautioned Mario. “You must walk with more repose; a waiter should never appear hurried.” + 

“Where are the siphons?” said Gian-Luca breathlessly. + 

“In the cellar at the end of the passage,” Mario told him; “but, Gian-Luca, remember what I say and walk softly; a waiter must not be a whirlwind.” + 

IV + 

By half-past one the Capo was crowded. The Padrona took dish after dish from the lift that came up with a bump at the back of the bar, and passed them across to Mario and Schmidt, who grabbed quickly and disappeared. In between times she served out whisky and brandy, filled glasses with beer from the nickel-plated tap, produced cigarettes, cigars and liqueurs, shouted orders down the lift shaft, opened bottles, stacked up glasses, and surreptitiously powdered her nose with a puff in a pink silk handkerchief. + 

Gian-Luca watched Mario with the bright, alert eyes of a dog who expects an order; he was anxious to study the celebrated manner that Mario employed to the clients. Mario had said: “You assert yourself, but with grace⁠—you expatiate on the food.” And Gian-Luca, who was there on his first day to learn, waited, growing ever more anxious. He remembered all the things that Mario had said about tempting the appetite; his words regarding the handling of dishes⁠—only that morning he had spoken of a flourish, and remarked that a plate should appear out of space, quickly but without noise. He had begged Gian-Luca to watch all his movements, and not only to watch but to copy⁠—and yet now Mario was doing none of these things, and moreover he was making a noise. Schmidt, on the other hand, could carry four dishes and two plates with never a sound, but when Mario did likewise the pyramid slipped; and once a truly dreadful thing happened, for Mario upset a large dish of salad right on to the shoulder of a client. Gian-Luca dashed forward to the rescue with his napkin, but he only rubbed in the mayonnaise; the client, a fat business man, objected; the Padrone was called to apologize, and Mario, pale, with goggling eyes, stood there doing nothing at all. Of course after that Mario may have been nervous, for a number of small things happened; an irate lady was given a chop when her order had been for chicken; a coffee cup was broken; some clients were kept waiting unduly long for their food. + 

“I say, look here, waiter, we can’t sit here all day; do hurry up with that mutton!” + 

And Mario was dumb⁠—that was what was so dreadful, he neither protested nor cajoled. And he hobbled; the more impatient they grew the more ostentatiously he hobbled. There was peace at Schmidt’s tables, comparative peace; but Mario was having a bad day. + 

“Perhaps,” thought Gian-Luca, “he watches the Padrone too much, and that makes him careless.” + 

The Padrone was certainly well worth watching, for his strange sign-language was now in full swing; he appeared to be spelling things out on his fingers as though they were all deaf and dumb. From time to time his sallow cheeks would swell as though about to burst, and this happened whenever Mario went near him, and yet he remained quite speechless. The Padrone’s silence was more terrifying than the explosion of a bomb, for one felt that he must be gathering force for what was to come later on. Possibly Mario was feeling this too, for his face looked worried and pale. + 

“Via! Do not get under my feet!” he kept hissing in Gian-Luca’s ear. + 

There were far too many plates and dishes for the lift, and in consequence much running up and down to and from the kitchen. + 

“Can you not help?” whispered Mario furiously, turning to glare at Gian-Luca. + 

“What must I do?” Gian-Luca whispered back. + 

“Why, take all those dishes to the scullery, and on your way up bring a basket of rolls, and I want some more clean knives and forks.” + 

“Und I vant four coffee and fasti,” ordered Schmidt. “You hurry und bring me at once.” + 

“Gian-Luca,” came the Padrona’s soft voice, “go and get me a few clean glasses.” + 

It was almost as though as Mario’s first protest, a spell had been suddenly broken. Now the orders poured in on Gian-Luca like hail; hitherto he had not been asked to assist, being there on his first day to learn. + 

“Hallo, boy! Can you give me a match?” said a young man, and proceeded to hold out a cigar. + 

“Send me that waiter; I’ve asked for my bill!” came a voice from the opposite table. + 

Up and downstairs with armfuls of dishes, with glasses, with coffee, with ices, went Gian-Luca. He had no time to observe Mario’s methods and he felt that this might be just as well. His arms ached from the weight of the large metal trays, his legs ached from the steep kitchen stairs, his head ached from a superhuman effort to remember, not one thing, but more like a dozen. In the kitchen Moscatone had returned to bad temper, and he almost threw the food at Gian-Luca. The man who washed up in the vault-like pantry would keep sending messages to the Padrone⁠—of a kind that could not be repeated. Whenever this happened Gian-Luca snatched his plates and tried hard to pretend not to hear; then the man who washed up got offended with Gian-Luca and called him an insolent, bandy-legged puppy, and many less complimentary things. + 

At half-past three there were still people eating, just two little inconsiderate groups; or rather not eating, but chewing the cud, a habit that all waiters learn to dread very early in their careers. At half-past four Gian-Luca got his luncheon, which consisted of odds and ends; he shared them with Schmidt and the now sulky Mario who refused to speak or to look up. But the odds and ends were both plentiful and good, and Schmidt and Mario had each a glass of beer wherewith to enliven their spirits. After gobbling their food they all got up stiffly and went to the door for some air. Presently Mario decided to go home for a little, while Schmidt went out for a stroll; but Gian-Luca, feeling work-tired for the first time in his life, preferred to remain at the Capo. + 

V + 

That evening Mario acquitted himself better; Rosa had managed to cheer him up, and when he came back he was looking almost playful. + 

“Ah, Gian-Luca,” he said very brightly, as they washed their hands together at the sink, “and what do you think of the Capo di Monte? Is it not rather fine?” + 

Gian-Luca was silent for a moment, then he said: “I think that one must begin.” + 

“Jawohl,” agreed Schmidt, “one must begin. I am nur here to learn English.” + 

The evening clients appeared more aristocratic, some of them had dressed for dinner. The Capo was occasionally patronized by people who were going on to the theatre. This amused Gian-Luca; he liked the women’s clothes and the neat dress suits of the men. + 

“Some day I will have waistcoat buttons like his,” he decided, examining a smart young man out of the corner of his eye. + 

Once or twice Gian-Luca was actually able to get near to these elegant people. + 

“A match?” said Gian-Luca, striking one with a flourish and holding it to a fair lady’s cigarette. + 

“Thank you,” said the fair lady with a small, fleeting smile. + 

“Niente, signora,” bowed Gian-Luca. + 

“That was very well done,” whispered generous Mario; “that was done with distinction and grace.” + 

But the next time Gian-Luca offered a match his hand was pushed away with a curt refusal. + 

“If I want one I’ll ask,” said a lonely male diner, beginning to study the menu. + 

The Padrone was very busy recommending wines to those who had dressed for dinner. A handful of bank clerks and suchlike people he ignored completely, as did the Padrona, though some of them lifted their hats to her in passing and one youth openly admired her. Gian-Luca, of course, had no time to admire her, though he felt very conscious of her presence; when passing the bar he would look the other way because he so much wished to look at her. He hoped that she observed him with an armful of plates, quite as many as Schmidt could manage. When he felt her eyes on him, he assumed the grand air, he whisked out his napkin or made a remark with a shrug of the shoulders to Mario. If he had to approach her he became very stiff. + 

“A packet of Gold-Flakes, if you please, signora.” + 

“Ecco! How many packets?” + 

“Only one, please, signora.” + 

“Very well, there you are then, Gian-Luca.” + 

And off he would go without even a glance, convinced that the Padrona was smiling. He could feel that smile on the back of his head; it seemed to be singeing his hair. + 

They had had to abandon serving suppers at the Capo after a fortnight’s trial. The Padrone was too experienced a slave-driver not to be able to gauge with some niceness the limits of endurance of his slaves. At half-past ten or a little after, the waiters found themselves free, and Mario, Gian-Luca, and the still cheerful Schmidt were jostled together in a last frantic effort to get out of and into their clothes. Mario appeared to have wilted again, his round face looked weary and drawn; from time to time he would glance through the door as though expecting something to happen. And it happened quite soon; downstairs came the Padrone, they could hear him talking to himself⁠—he was muttering fiercely under his breath. + 

“He works himself up,” thought Gian-Luca. + 

The Padrone stood still in the doorway for a moment with his soft brown eyes fixed on Mario; then he opened his mouth and began to shout. All the while he was shouting his eyes remained gentle⁠—dove’s eyes in the face of a tiger. One by one he checked off the mistakes of the day, beginning with the horror of the salad: + 

“Scemo! Imbecille! Sporcaccione!” he shouted. “How long am I going to endure you! You limp round my place like an old lame mule; no one else would engage you; very well you know that! If you did not come cheap, I myself would dismiss you; you bring shame on my Capo di Monte.” + 

And then, as though Heaven itself cast off Mario, Schmidt happened to move his foot⁠—the toe of his boot struck full on that joint that had ached so intolerably all day. With a sharp yell of anguish Mario collapsed like a rag doll against the wall; his face grew red and, to Gian-Luca’s horror, he suddenly burst into tears. + 

XI + 

I + 

“On s’accoutume a tout,” said a wise French writer, and he might have added, “Surtout quand on est jeune”; for youth in spite of its many small tragedies, its longings, its revolts, its uncertainties of spirit, has at least the blessing of adaptability, and no mean a blessing either. And so it was that by the end of eight months Gian-Luca had got used to the life of the Capo; his arms and his legs no longer ached acutely, his brain learnt to keep calm in moments of confusion, he seldom lost his temper and never lost his head; in fact, according to the watchful Padrone, Gian-Luca possessed that rarest of all gifts, the instinct for perfect service. + 

Mario’s fall from grace as a super-waiter had somewhat disconcerted his pupil, who had honestly believed all that he had said regarding his position at the Capo. Mario was such a fine fellow at home, at times almost overbearing; but Mario at the Capo was a very different person; a cringing, servile, incompetent creature, who, far from being the Padrone’s right hand, was obviously not even his left. It was evident therefore, that Mario had lied in a foolish spirit of bravado. + 

“Ma che!” thought Gian-Luca, making a grimace. “Ma che! He is really a very bad waiter; if I were the Padrone I would not keep him even if he is cheap.” + 

But then would come memories of early childhood, of a Mario more active, more fierce, more lighthearted; a Mario who had insisted that a lonely little boy should always take part in his rare excursions; and Gian-Luca would be conscious of a tightening of his throat at times when he looked at Mario, of a vague regret, of an irritating pity for the great, limping, foolish fellow⁠—a pity that was irksome and quite out of place in the busy life of the restaurant. All the same, it inclined him to neglect his own work in order to help his friend; and this worried Gian-Luca, who would tell himself sternly that a boy who had not even got so much as a name could ill afford to neglect his work, could indeed ill afford to pity. For Gian-Luca, now fifteen years old and a Latin, was quickly advancing towards manhood; more than ever he discerned the important difference that lay between substance and shadow. And somewhere in the region of unpractical shadows belonged this pity for Mario; it went with the pity for Rocca’s small goats, a thing he sternly ignored. + 

Mario still bragged when Gian-Luca would listen⁠—yes he actually still had the face to brag! Even after eight months of daily revelations, he continued to weave romances. Gian-Luca would stare incredulously at him, finding no adequate words; feeling hot and uncomfortable all down his spine, blushing with embarrassment for him. Then gradually a light began to dawn on Gian-Luca, though he tried to turn away his eyes; with a terribly clear vision he perceived the truth⁠—Mario bragged from self-abasement; Mario had long ago realized himself, and he lied from the humility of failure. + 

“But a man should not fail,” thought Gian-Luca sternly. “Who has got the time for failures?” + 

Meanwhile he could not help glowing a little with the knowledge of his own success. The Padrone was pleased; he could see that by his fingers which now seldom signaled to him. Poems were all very well, thought Gian-Luca, for those who wished to stay poor⁠—he knew a poet now who fed at the Capo, that was when he fed at all. He was always hungry and he never washed his neck, and moreover, he seldom paid his bills. + 

“Sapristi!” the Padrone would grumble when he saw him. “I am stupid to give that vile little worm credit; but he knows those of Chelsea, some that are famous, and they are the people I want. They shall come to the Capo and paint pictures on my walls, and eat foolish dry birds like peacocks. I shall make them believe that the peacocks strut in with their tails spread out: I shall say: ‘If only you had seen him, how he walked round the kitchen, so lovely, so elegant, only this morning!’ And then they will think that he tastes all the better; I know them; they like a sensation.” + 

So the poet got credit from time to time, but from time to time he did not; and when he came back with some money in his pockets he would usually be looking rather thin. He said to Gian-Luca: + 

“You’re a handsome boy, why don’t you go as a model? I can get you taken on by Munster, if you like; he’s looking for a sort of John the Baptist.” + 

“What would he pay me?” inquired Gian-Luca promptly. + 

“That depends on his circumstances. When he’s flush he pays well; otherwise, my true Italian, he might pay you nothing at all.” + 

“Then I think I am better where I am,” smiled Gian-Luca, “for some day I shall be a headwaiter.” + 

“Oh, summit of all ambition!” sighed the poet, who was picking a cutlet bone. + 

Gian-Luca surveyed him with patient eyes; he forgave much in one who was so hungry. There were not many people, for the luncheon hour was past, so he talked to the poet a little. + 

“You write poetry, do you not?” he said politely. + 

The young man looked up in feigned surprise. “Is it possible that my fame gets abroad?” he inquired. “Yes, I write, and I read too beautifully aloud⁠—my own poems, of course; other people’s are so dull. I’ll send you my latest production, if you like, because I adore your profile. Only beautiful people are allowed to read my book; I’ve stated that clearly in the preface.” + 

But the book was never sent, for the poet went to Paris, owing ten pounds to the Padrone. + 

“No,” thought Gian-Luca, “I do not think I will write poems; I do not think I will try any more.” + 

II + 

The Padrone liked Gian-Luca so well that he went in person to see Fabio. “I hear that you are cheap,” was how he began. “Now suppose I should give you an order?” + 

“We are cheaper than cheap,” said Fabio promptly, “and we only sell of the best.” + 

“That remains to be seen,” said the Padrone suspiciously. “I have heard that story before.” + 

Now Fabio was mild, but the mildest Italian responds like an old warhorse to a bugle when he senses the battle of a bargain. Fabio’s eyes began to shine in anticipation, and he rubbed his plump hands on his apron. + 

“I am likely to require twelve dozen tins of tomatoes,” the Padrone announced with unction. “On so large an order what discount do I get? My order depends on the discount.” + 

“Is that all?” exclaimed Fabio. “So insignificant an order⁠—will you not be requiring paste?” + 

“That is as it may be,” grinned the Padrone. “Let us first come to terms for the tomatoes.” + 

“Shall we say two percent, for cash?” inquired Fabio. + 

“Per Bacco! No!” shouted the Padrone. + 

“That is generous,” remarked Fabio in a rising crescendo. + 

“It is robbery!” retorted the Padrone. + 

They argued, they glared, they thumped on the counter, bringing strange but explicit accusations. One would have thought that blows were in the offing, so fierce were their faces and their gestures. As a matter of fact they were fast becoming friends, acquiring a mutual respect. In the end they retired to the room behind the shop and opened a bottle of wine. + 

“Salute!” smiled Fabio. + 

“Felicita!” bowed the Padrone, lifting his glass with an air. “Tomorrow we deliver without fail,” promised Fabio. “Do not incommode yourself unduly, Signor Boselli; tomorrow will be good, but a day more or less⁠—” + 

“I thank you for your courtesy,” beamed Fabio. + 

III + 

In the course of a week came the beautiful Padrona to pay her respects to Teresa. Teresa surveyed her with critical eyes, not at all allured by her beauty. + 

“She is Venetian, she is false, she is stupid,” said Teresa; “and moreover she has a wanton eye on Gian-Luca.” + 

“Ma Dio!” gasped Fabio; “he is yet but a child.” + 

“He will not remain always a child,” she reminded. + 

“But what of the husband? I am certain he is firm, I am sure he is a lion among men.” + 

“When the lion lies down with the lamb,” smiled Teresa, “I have heard that he loses his strength.” + 

Fabio groaned loudly. “Madonna!” he complained; “and we have but now completed that large order.” + 

“That is why,” said Teresa. “Her eye is on Gian-Luca, so she sends her lion here to spend money.” + 

“What must be done?” inquired Fabio weakly, beginning to fidget with the things about the room. + 

“Nothing,” said Teresa. “If we take him away, we do but make him think the more.” + 

“But supposing⁠—” + 

“We will not suppose,” she said firmly. “He is handsome and young, but he is also ambitious; he will not stay long at the Capo di Monte. Meanwhile he will probably meet some young girls, one of whom he can marry later on⁠—there is Berta, for instance; it is true she is plain, still, she will probably improve.” + 

“Alas!” exclaimed Fabio, wringing his hands. “What a terrible danger is youth! When I think of our Olga⁠—” + 

But Teresa’s face stopped him. + 

“I wish you would weigh up those hams,” she said quickly; “I feel sure they are under weight again.” + 

IV + 

A year slipped by uneventfully enough in all save one momentous happening; Gian-Luca experienced his first love of woman, and the woman he loved was the blue-eyed Padrona with her masses of red-gold hair. + 

A boy’s first love is a love apart, and never again may he hope to recapture the glory and the anguish of it. It is heavy with portent and fearful with beauty, terrible as an army with banners; yet withal so tender and selfless a thing as to brush the very hem of the garment of God. Only once in a life comes such loving as this, and now it had come to Gian-Luca. In its train came all those quickening perceptions that go to the making of a lover; the acuteness of hearing, of seeing, of divining. A hitherto unsuspected capacity for joy; and an equal capacity for sorrow. + 

Gian-Luca felt himself taken unawares; yet when he thought it over he would feel quite convinced that he must have always loved the Padrona. Be this as it may, he now noticed things about her that had quite escaped him in the past; the lights in her hair; a dimple in her cheek, so faint as to be almost imperceptible; the fact that two of her pink fingernails had little white marks upon them, and above all a tiny scar on her hand, a scar that filled him with the queerest emotion whenever his eyes beheld it. And what he now found so strange in his condition was his yearning over imperfections; he loved those two nails with the white marks the best, and the hand with the scar, and the whole of the Padrona when she looked tired, or ill, or fretful⁠—or if her hair was untidy. + 

Alone in the night he would think mighty thoughts about goodness and greatness and valor; yet so humble was he that these thoughts would be detached. He longed to lay down his life for the Padrona, but that would be neither greatness nor valor, not even goodness⁠—just something quite simple, like fetching cigarettes from the bar. This love of Gian-Luca’s was a thing of pure giving, expecting nothing in return. Its motto was to serve, its desire to comfort, its ultimate ambition to worship. And as all that he now did was done unto Love, he polished the nickel more brightly; his tumblers and wineglasses shone like the sun, his aprons were spotless, his hands red from washing, and he surreptitiously bought a pocket-comb with which he was always combing his hair when he found himself alone in the pantry. + 

If the Padrona noticed these things, she gave no sign that she did so. Her manner was gentle, her smile kind and sunny⁠—though in this last respect she unbent just a little, she was always smiling at Gian-Luca. As time went on it was him she would call to fetch and carry for her bar. + 

“You go,” she would say, and her small front teeth would come gleaming out at him like pearls of great worth, “you go⁠—that old Mario is always so slow, and I cannot endure our fat Swiss.” + 

Occasionally too, she would send him on errands in the time between luncheon and dinner. This time belonged by rights to the waiters, in it they could usually do as they pleased; but the days when Gian-Luca was not sent on errands he would generally sit near the bar with a book, for among other things he wished to grow wise, in order to be worthy of the Padrona. + 

The Padrona would sometimes come into the bar. “Reading, Gian-Luca?” she would say, smiling at him; and once she had asked him to show her his book. “Dio Santo!” she had exclaimed, “it looks very dull; as for me, I am not at all clever!” + 

At such moments Gian-Luca could only stare, all his self-assurance would leave him. In the hands of the Padrona he melted like wax; and once he had had to remember his motto: “I have got myself,” in order to be certain that his legs were not turning into fluid. But somehow these days the motto sounded wrong, nor could it restore his self-assurance. “I have got Gemma!” he would catch himself repeating; Gemma being the name of the Padrona that nobody used but the Padrone. + 

The Padrone! a large, black-browed, insolent man who bullied the miserable Mario; a man whom the fierce Moscatone of the kitchen had threatened to split like a fowl. A man who had more lurid titles below stairs than hairs in his greasy black head; a man who owned the Capo and the food of the Capo and the slaves of the Capo and the mistress of the Capo. + 

“If only I too, were a man!” groaned Gian-Luca, writhing at the thought of the Padrone. + 

Yet he served him more devotedly than ever before, in mortal terror of offending. To offend the Padrone was to anger the Padrona⁠—how strange were the ways of women! + 

At about this time Schmidt grew very friendly to Gian-Luca, anxious to curry favor, for everyone knew at the Capo di Monte that Gian-Luca was much liked by the Padrona. No doubt it was owing to her intercessions that he was given an evening now and then, and sometimes, on a Sunday, he would get the day off, an unusual proceeding at the Capo. She had once been heard telling the Padrone that Gian-Luca was young and still growing: “If we work him too hard he may get ill,” she had said, “and that would be very inconvenient.” Schmidt had winked heavily at Mario over this, but Mario had only frowned. Mario, outrageous old poacher that he was, had the makings of a fine gamekeeper. + 

To Gian-Luca, Schmidt said: “You admire our Padrona? She is beautiful, wunderschön!” + 

Schmidt looked very sympathetic, he sighed once or twice, and just at that moment Gian-Luca’s heart was full; so instead of snubbing Schmidt as he generally did he expanded ever so slightly. Schmidt was as sentimental as a schoolgirl and as lustful as any satyr, thus Gian-Luca’s budding manhood began to amuse him. + 

“Ach Gott! They are dreadful, these women,” mourned Schmidt, “they are surely put here to torment us.” + 

Mario, ever watchful, cautioned Schmidt severely. “You be careful with Gian-Luca; I will not have you teach him to be a dirty dog like you are. I love him, he is clean, he knows nothing of life, my wife she was his foster-mother.” + 

Schmidt nodded and grinned wisely. “I understand,” he said, “but Gian-Luca is in love mit die Padrona.” + 

“You shut your face up quick,” Mario told him in a rage. “If you do not, I make it shut up for you.” + 

In his methods with Gian-Luca, however, Mario was foolish for he jeered at the Holy of Holies. “Caspita!” he laughed one afternoon that summer, “you are growing as vain as any peacock. Now if all this fuss is about our Padrona, I advise you to stop being silly; for one thing you are young, for another she is old, I can see several wrinkles already⁠—anyhow, it is silly, and if your Nonna knew she would certainly laugh at you as I do.” + 

Gian-Luca got up quickly from his chair in the pantry; he was pale, and his voice shook a little. “She is young and she has not got one single wrinkle.” He turned to the door. “I am going out with Schmidt,” he flung over his shoulder at Mario. + 

Now this was the last thing that Mario had wanted, so he hobbled after Gian-Luca. “Piccino!” he called, “do not stay out too long, and be a good boy, remember.” + 

Schmidt, who was standing on the pavement, sniggered: “You are his little baby.” + 

Gian-Luca grew scarlet. “I am sixteen,” he said hotly; “at sixteen one is not a baby.” + 

Schmidt whistled and merrily twirled his cane. His hat was too small for his head; he looked vulgar and foolish with a rosebud in his coat, and an imitation diamond in his tie. Gian-Luca eyed him with disapproval, and decided that he could not endure him. But presently Schmidt said: + 

“I have heard the Padrona⁠—she praised you today to that husband.” + 

“Did she?” breathed Gian-Luca, trying to keep calm. “Do you think you could remember what she said?” + 

Schmidt pretended to think hard, and after a minute he invented a little conversation. He watched Gian-Luca from the corner of his eye; he was inwardly splitting with laughter. “Did she really say that?” Gian-Luca kept repeating. + 

“Jawohl,” smiled the mendacious Schmidt. Then he suddenly got bored⁠—“I shall follow that girl, look how pretty she is, she have got die small feet! You come on, Gian-Luca, perhaps we can speak⁠—you make love, I let you this time, and that way you forget all about your Padrona for a while, and that do you good.” + 

Gian-Luca turned and left him in disgust, his soul had been deeply outraged. It was almost as though Schmidt had spat in the face of something very pure and sacred. He felt, too, as though he himself had been to blame, as though he had exposed her to this. “Oh, forgive me!” he murmured. “My very dear, forgive me. My beautiful⁠—my good⁠—my holy⁠—” + 

XII + 

I + 

Two days later the Padrona said to Gian-Luca: “Would you like to come upstairs and have tea with me? It is terribly hot down here.” + 

She was neither so sly, nor so stupid, nor so wanton as Teresa had proclaimed her to be; indeed at that moment she felt purely maternal⁠—she was sorry for the pale-faced boy. + 

Gian-Luca hastily tore off his apron. “Signora!” he murmured. “Signora⁠—” + 

“Come along then, you look tired⁠—you work harder than them all, my husband was saying so this morning.” + 

He followed her upstairs and into a room that smelt of her favorite scent; it was crammed with the carved walnut furniture so dear to the Venetian heart. The chairs and the settee were upholstered in plush which stuck to your clothes as you sat. There were endless colored photographs of Venice on the walls, and over the fireplace hung an oleograph depicting the Holy Family. A large tea-table was already set out, it was generously supplied with cakes; Gian-Luca had seen them in the process of baking⁠—Moscatone liked the Padrona. + 

“Sit down,” she said, pointing to a little armchair. “Will you have tea or coffee, Gian-Luca?” + 

“Whichever you prefer, signora⁠—” he faltered. + 

She laughed and gave him some coffee. It was not very easy to make him talk, he kept flushing and paling, by turns. To everything she said he replied: + 

“Si, signora.” + 

“No, signora.” Or, “Prego, signora.” Beyond this he seemed incapable of speech, nor was he enjoying his tea. + 

“Now do not be prim and shy,” she said smiling; “at this moment we are just two friends. Downstairs you are a waiter and I am your Padrona; up here you are Gian-Luca and I am your friend. You think that is strange? But it is not strange at all, I have been to call on your Nonna.” + 

“Have you?” said Gian-Luca. “Oh, but that was kind, signora!” He had not been told of the visit. + 

She waved this aside: “We have business dealings, and in business it is always best to be friendly. Now tell me about yourself, Gian-Luca; are you happy with us at the Capo?” + 

“Signora⁠—” he began, then stopped abruptly, unable to control his voice. + 

“Well, go on, my child.” + 

“I am more than happy⁠—I⁠—I am no longer lonely.” + 

She looked at him with interest in her large blue eyes, she had heard a little of his story. “Were you lonely before, then, povero bambino?” she said softly. “It is wrong that the young should be lonely.” + 

“I have always been very lonely,” he told her, suddenly not feeling shy any more; “you see I had only got myself before I came here, signora.” + 

“And now, Gian-Luca?” + 

He hesitated, but only for a moment. “Now I have got you,” he said quite simply; “and so I no longer feel lonely.” His queer, limpid eyes were full upon her, innocent, ardent, unashamed. “When one may see you every day, signora, and be near you, and hope to please you and serve you, then one is blessed⁠—one grows and grows⁠—something inside one blossoms.” + 

“You are a queer child!” she said, flushing slightly. “You are a strange boy, Gian-Luca⁠—yet if I had a son I would wish him to be like you.” And she suddenly took his hand. + 

His fingers closed quickly and strongly over hers, and stooping he kissed the little scar. “I have so often wondered if it hurt⁠—” he whispered. “I have so often wondered if it hurt.” + 

She sat very still with her hand in his⁠—for a long time she did not speak; then she said: “No, it did not hurt very much, Gian-Luca⁠—not as much as you are hurting me now.” + 

He started. “I am hurting you now, signora?” + 

And she could not help smiling at the horror in his face; then she grew very grave. “Yes, my child, you are hurting⁠—because I think you grow too fond. You are so young, Gian-Luca, and I am quite old, therefore you must not get angry. I am old enough to be your mother, remember⁠—that is, very nearly,” she added. + 

“But can one ever be too fond?” he asked her; “is it not beautiful to love?” + 

“It is beautiful,” she told him, “but not always wise, especially for you who do all things intensely. I have watched you, piccino⁠—as you work, so you would love, and life being what it is, that makes me fearful for you.” She let her gaze rest on his questioning face⁠—she was strangely disturbed and sorry. She thought: “Calf love: it is natural enough⁠—it always begins for an older woman, but I must be more careful⁠—yet what can it matter, he is perfectly safe with me.” Then she thought: “If Cesare knew, what a fury! Ma che! That man is an imbecile. It is always the same, this thing we call love; it pretends, we pretend, but it is always the same⁠—” Yet her skeptical thoughts did not quite reassure her. “Gian-Luca,” she said, “what will happen to you when you come face to face with real life? You are so quiet, so self-assured⁠—you are old for your age, but if all the while you burn up inside, as I think you do, what will happen to the poor Gian-Luca?” + 

He smiled. “Signora,” he said very gently, and his voice sounded suddenly mature; “signora, I have never had anyone before, I have only had myself, just Gian-Luca. It had to be so⁠—it could not be helped⁠—I had not even a country. I was born all wrong⁠—I had no name, signora; that is why they called me Boselli. I loved my grandmother when I was a child, but she did not want me⁠—I wounded. That was not her fault⁠—she hated my eyes, and also my hair, I remember. At first I was angry and then very sad, and then I wrote out a motto. I wrote: ‘I have got myself.’ For you see, everyone must have something⁠—” He paused, still smiling, as though at his thoughts; then he said: “But that is all over; now I no longer have such a motto, I have quite a new motto now.” + 

She could not resist it⁠—she said: “And your new one?” + 

“Must I tell you?” he asked, but quite calmly. + 

“I think so⁠—” she faltered, a little ashamed. + 

“ ‘I have got Gemma.’ It is that now,” he told her. + 

Once again she fell silent. He still held her hand⁠—he was stroking it softly with his fingers. His face was very pale, very quiet, very earnest; his arrogant mouth looked composed and gentle, and his eyes were dropped to the hand he was stroking, as though it needed vigilance and care. The Padrona stirred and the movement seemed to rouse him for he looked up into her face. As he did so she smiled a little questioning smile, slightly raising her eyebrows. Then all of a sudden his composure left him, he became very much a child. + 

“Oh!” he burst out; “if the house would catch fire. If only the house would catch fire!” + 

“Madonna!” she exclaimed, and drew away her hand; “I hope that it will not⁠—but why?” + 

“So that I could save you,” he said, flushing deeply; “so that I could rescue you, signora!” + 

Then she laughed, and he too laughed a little with embarrassment. “Forgive, signora,” he said shyly. At that moment who should walk in but the Padrone; he was all affability and smiles. + 

“Ah, Gian-Luca, so here you are. Have you devoured many cakes?” He sat down and began unbuttoning his waistcoat. “I have just come from seeing your Nonno,” he went on; “he and I have affairs together. He inquired was I pleased. And I said that Gian-Luca would some day make a fine headwaiter. He is really an excellent fellow, your Nonno, and his shop is a joy to the eye.” The Padrone was now taking off his shoes⁠—he had large and untidy stockinged feet. + 

“Shall I get you your slippers?” inquired the Padrona⁠—and when she had fetched them she stooped and put them on. + 

He patted her head as one pats a dog, but his hand lingered over her hair. + 

“It is time that I go,” said Gian-Luca, getting up. “I am deeply grateful for your kindness.” He brushed the Padrona’s fingers with his lips, and bowed to the smiling Padrone. + 

“A fine boy,” said the Padrone, as the door closed on Gian-Luca; “I hope we may some day have one like him.” + 

II + 

A great happiness came down like a luminous cloud, in which Gian-Luca moved and had his being. Every detail of that afternoon spent with the Padrona, lived vital and clear in his mind. + 

He remembered that her hand had lain passively in his, when he had bent and kissed the scar; that her smile had been gentle, her voice reassuring, her words full of kindness for him. + 

“Is it possible,” he thought, “that she loves me⁠—Gian-Luca?” And he all but decided that it was. So great was his joy that one day he said to Mario: “Let me help you a bit more. I have plenty of time, I can quite well take on part service at your tables, and that way perhaps you can rest your poor foot.” For joy in the heart makes it kind. + 

Meanwhile the Padrone, observing his growth, ordered him to get a dress-suit. “That short jacket is foolish now,” he told Gian-Luca; “you look like a telegraph pole. How tall are you anyhow?” he inquired. + 

“I am nearly six foot,” said Gian-Luca. + 

“Dio mio, what a giant, and not quite seventeen⁠—but when you are older you may then look less gawky.” And the Padrone laughed. + 

Fabio was told about the dress-suit, and he promptly consulted Mario. “Where can one find it secondhand?” asked Fabio; “he will only grow out of a new one.” + 

“And in any case,” said Mario, “it is always the custom that a waiter’s first dress-suit should be bought secondhand.” + 

“For what is the use of needlessly spending?” added Fabio. + 

“But a waste of good money,” agreed Mario. + 

It was not very easy to fit Gian-Luca, his arms and his legs were so long. In the end he looked like an elegant scarecrow, and he frowned at his own reflection in the glass, but Mario declared that he would do. His duties as piccolo now fell to the share of a new boy recently imported, and Gian-Luca became a fully-fledged waiter, sanctioned to open wine. The Capo was certainly rising in the world, the fame of its cooking was spreading. Moscatone had had his wages augmented. + 

“You see,” said the Padrone, in the privacy of bed; “there is no other chef in all England, Gemma, who could do what he does in such premises as these; the kitchen is unfit for a pig.” + 

“Will you be raising Gian-Luca as well?” his wife inquired. + 

“Gia, I think I will raise him, if I do not he may go, and I want him to stay on⁠—I may shortly put him over Mario.” + 

The Padrona was silent; she was not quite certain that she wished Gian-Luca to stay on. It was not always easy to remember, these days, that the thin young giant was a child. Moreover, she had recently witnessed his temper; it had only been over the cat⁠—Schmidt had hurled the cat through the pantry window because he had caught it lapping his tea. Everyone knew, except Gian-Luca, that a cat was possessed of nine lives⁠—the Padrona herself did not care much for animals, she kept the cat to catch mice. But Gian-Luca had seized the Swiss by the collar and had shaken him until he yelled. The Padrona had had to go into the pantry and protest before he would let go; and even then he had looked reluctant, so much was he enjoying himself. The cat had survived⁠—cats always survived; it was only a little bit lame⁠—but the incident had thrown a new light on Gian-Luca, who could be very violent, it seemed. Yet whenever she thought of Gian-Luca leaving, she felt dull and a little depressed. After all, her existence was not a bed of roses⁠—no bed could be that, that was shared with the Padrone. + 

These thoughts, however, remained hidden from Gian-Luca, who continued to see only kindness in her smile. And yet⁠—with the infallible instinct of the lover, he began to feel strangely uneasy. For one thing, he had not been invited again to have tea in that room upstairs; for another, she seldom spoke to him now, unless it were to give orders. It was all very subtle, very hard to define, as elusive as a will-o’-the-wisp; but somehow the Padrona was withdrawing herself, was gradually slipping far away. He would look at her now with appeal in his eyes, standing tall and abashed in his ill-fitting clothes; waiting while she groped for a bottle of wine, or drew off the beer into glasses. Once she had noticed that look in his eyes and had frowned: + 

“Make haste!” she had said irrelevantly. + 

He had flushed and had stretched out a trembling hand for the glasses that were not ready. + 

The cloud of glory was certainly changing, becoming a damp, cold mist, through which Gian-Luca groped helplessly, unable to find his way. At times he would be stupid from sheer eagerness to please, bringing the Padrona the wrong thing; or he might grin at her familiarly, while his only desire was to be deferential. There were moments when his voice sounded sulky and gruff when he wished to be polite⁠—and always his eyes held that dumb appeal, the appeal of a creature in a trap. + 

Schmidt, intensely attracted by the lure of emotion, felt obliged to forgive Gian-Luca. He could never resist discussing such matters, and so began sympathizing. + 

“You think she not like you so much as before? Never mind, Gian-Luca, it all come right. You bring her a small bunch of flowers one day⁠—Ach! but she is wunderschön!” + 

He oozed sentiment now from every pore, he was like a ridiculous maiden. “I vill tell you about my girl,” he said sighing; “she is all pink and white like raspberries and cream⁠—she have lovely brown eyes and the big, round hips, what move all the time ven she walks⁠—” + 

“Go to hell!” growled Gian-Luca, who could not endure this coupling of his love with Schmidt’s. + 

“Very well then,” said Schmidt, as he turned away; “you think yourself vunderful, very high up! But one efning you come and you say to me: ‘Schmidt, you show me some jolly, nice girls!’ ” + 

“Dio!” groaned Gian-Luca; “will you leave me alone? I do not want any of your girls!” + 

III + 

The Padrone it was, and not the Padrona, who suddenly invited Gian-Luca to take part in a day’s excursion on the river. This was in September when business was still slack, they would all lunch at Maidenhead. The Padrone was anxious to appear polite to Fabio, in order that he might drive harder bargains, so his ever fertile mind hit upon the idea of doing a small kindness to the grandson. + 

“Guarda,” Mario shrugged, “you are getting very grand, you will soon not wish to come with me and Rosa.” + 

“Foolish words!” Gian-Luca told him. “Do I not love you and Rosa?” He was feeling far too happy to be cross. + 

The train was very crowded but this did not incommode them; the Padrone travelled grandly, first class. This had always been his way when things were going well; he drove hard and squeezed in business, but when on pleasure bent he spent his money freely, like a duke. The Padrona was most richly dressed in cherry-colored foulard; her shady hat had three white ostrich feathers. Round her neck she wore a large, expensive, puffy feather boa, and her little hands were squeezed into new gloves. She was feeling tired, however, and her face looked pale and fretful⁠—she leant back and closed her eyes during the journey. From time to time Gian-Luca stole a surreptitious glance; her long lashes lay so softly⁠—they were golden like her hair, but they darkened very slightly at their tips. + 

Arrived at Maidenhead, the Padrone hired a steam launch; they were very rich in everything today. They steamed up and down the river, the Padrone sprawling out with his greasy head supported by red cushions. He was smoking a cigar which he chewed from time to time, and then spat across his wife into the water. They went to lunch at Skindles’ to amuse the tired Padrona, who liked gaiety, or so her husband said. Skindles’ was very crowded and the service very slow; the Padrone made several little scenes. + 

“These English people!” he jeered to Gian-Luca: “they eat roast beef and cabbage and pickled onions. Their waiters are vile and their cooks are still viler; and when they come out to enjoy themselves, one would think they were attending a funeral.” + 

The Padrone himself was growing rather noisy, he was drinking a good deal of wine. His morning had begun with several gins and bitters, and just before luncheon he had swallowed another in order to keep up his spirits. The Padrona was very quiet and aloof, she scarcely glanced at Gian-Luca; in his desperation he began making jokes at which the Padrone laughed boisterously⁠—the Padrona did not laugh at all. Gian-Luca was filled with the bitter knowledge of doing and saying the wrong thing; he was thankful when at last the meal came to an end and his host was disputing the bill. The Padrona left them to go to the cloakroom and Gian-Luca strolled into the garden, but after him hurried the redfaced Padrone and seized the lapel of his coat. The Padrone was now feeling melodramatic, his brown eyes were swimming, his lips sagged a little. + 

“If you knew how that woman torments me!” he began; “if you knew how she makes me suffer. I say: ‘Cesare, be careful, be very, very careful, she is young, any moment she may leave you!’ ” + 

“Ma no,” said Gian-Luca. + 

“Ma si,” babbled the Padrone; “I say; ‘She is young, she may leave you.’ ” + 

Gian-Luca had perforce to stand there and listen, the Padrone was really very drunk. + 

“If you knew⁠—if you knew⁠—” he kept on repeating, and his eyes filled with idiotic tears. + 

“I do not wish to know,” Gian-Luca told him, hot with embarrassment and shame. + 

“You are so discreet⁠—” gulped the tearful Padrone. “I would not tell anyone but you⁠—” + 

The Padrona came back, having powdered her nose, and they went for a walk by the river. She was still very silent, still very aloof; she walked primly between Gian-Luca and her husband, taking the latter’s arm. On the feeble pretext of showing her a boat, Gian-Luca got her away. The Padrone, scarcely seeming to notice, strolled on down the towpath alone. + 

“Signora, are you angry with me?” whispered Gian-Luca. + 

“Of course not,” she answered, smiling; but she looked straight passed him along the river, as one will look who is bored. + 

Words failed him. He suddenly seized her hand which he pressed and tried to retain; he felt that he must die of loving at that moment unless she would let him express it. He glanced at the unconscious back of the Padrone⁠—the Padrone did not turn his head. + 

“I love you so terribly!” gasped Gian-Luca; “I love you so terribly, signora!” + 

“Be quiet!” she said, wrenching her hand away; “I will not tolerate this folly.” And turning, she hurried after her husband, leaving Gian-Luca to follow. + 

For the rest of the day they were all very silent, the Padrone was growing sleepy. In the train going home he did fall asleep, and proceeded to snore quite loudly. Gian-Luca sat looking out of the window, not daring to look at the Padrona. His heart ached with a pain so intolerable and new that he wanted to protest, to cry out; but arrived at the station he helped them to alight⁠—the Padrone as well as the Padrona. + 

“So,” thought Gian-Luca; “so this is love!” And because of his heartache he felt a little frightened. + 

IV + 

By the time that his seventeenth birthday arrived, Gian-Luca had decided that no one in the world was so utterly unhappy as he was. If all had not been well with the Padrona before, it was certainly less well now; if he had felt that she was slipping away, she was now so far off as to be quite inaccessible, for now she no longer singled him out to attend to her needs at the bar. She selected Schmidt⁠—the plump Schmidt of all people⁠—to polish and tidy and fetch and carry; Schmidt who would have a sly look in his eye whenever he passed Gian-Luca. + 

“Nun was!” grinned Schmidt; “I do not wish it, you know⁠—I have my own girl I like much better, and this gives me nur more work.” + 

Gian-Luca eyed him with open contempt; did he think, the fool, that the Padrona admired him? “No, no, it cannot be that⁠—” thought Gian-Luca; “it is only that she now hates me.” + 

Yet why did she hate him? He had told her of his love, but surely she had known it long before he had spoken that day at Maidenhead? Then what was his transgression? A transgression of words? Yes, that must be it, he might love her it seemed, and she on her part might know that he loved her⁠—only, he must not say so. This made him laugh a little it seemed so very foolish; then it made him frown a little, it seemed so very mean. + 

“While I spoke as a child, she could smile,” thought Gian-Luca; “that day in her sitting-room I spoke as a child, I amused her perhaps; now I do not amuse her because she knows I am a man.” + 

For the quality of his love was gradually changing, the dew was no longer on the meadow. The knight-errant of youth was still in the saddle, but his armor was already slightly tarnished. Something deep down in Gian-Luca was conscious of this change and began to grow infinitely sad. It cried out because of the splendor that was passing⁠—that particular splendor that could never come again, for no two dawns are alike in this world. Gian-Luca began to feel very angry because of the sadness that was in him; he would glare at the Padrona from the end of the room, and all that she did would seem mean and unlovely, yet this in itself would fill him with loving, and then he would almost hate her. + 

The poor Padrona would have many little tasks to perform in connection with the bar. She might be mopping up the counter, for instance, removing the stale-smelling, beery foam, or rubbing the blurs left by whisky and brandy; or perhaps she might be wiping the sides of a bottle that had grown sticky sweet with liqueur. Her face would almost certainly be flushed by the exertion of providing other people with drinks; from time to time she would pause to draw a cork, bending ungracefully to the bottle which she held between her round feminine knees. “Two mixed grill and mashed!” she might shout down the lift shaft, electing to speak in English; and when she did this her voice sounded Cockney, not soft and pleasing as when she spoke Italian. + 

The restaurant would smell stuffy, Schmidt’s forehead would be beaded, and Mario’s collar damp and creased; while downstairs in the kitchen, the sweating Moscatone might pause from time to time to pick his front teeth with a fork. And the beautiful Padrona with her fine Venetian hair, and her eyes the color of gentians, would seem strangely out of place amid her surroundings, yet very much a part of them too. + 

V + 

“You grow sulky,” said Mario to his foster-son; “what is the matter? You no longer work gladly.” + 

“I am tired of the Capo,” Gian-Luca told him; “I think I must find a better job.” + 

“You are young and a fool,” snapped Mario crossly. “I too have been foolish enough in my day, but never, no, never such a big fool as you are.” + 

“I am tired of the Capo,” Gian-Luca repeated, pretending not to understand. + 

It was all very lonely, more lonely by far than anything he had yet known. In the past he had been lonely but without the Padrona, whereas now he was utterly lonely with her; and to find oneself lonely with the creature one loves is to plumb the full depths of desolation. There was no one he could talk to, Mario did not sympathize and Schmidt was a low-minded fellow; as for Fabio and Teresa⁠—at the mere thought of them Gian-Luca could not help laughing. + 

He still had his books, and long into the night he would read the “Gioia della Luce.” All poetry hurt him a little it was true, but that poem could comfort while it hurt. There were many other poems which he reread in that book, some of them spiritual and placid⁠—they might have been written by a saint or a seer; but then would come others, crude outpourings of passion that he had not understood as a child. Like the “Gioia della Luce,” they partook of the greatness that, carnal or spiritual, belonged to the genius of their writer, Ugo Doria. + 

“A very curious book,” thought Gian-Luca; “I must read some more of this poet’s work.” So one day he made his way to Hatchard’s, where he heard that they sold foreign books. + 

“Ugo Doria?” said the salesman, smiling at Gian-Luca. “Oh, yes, he is getting quite famous. Will you have him in English or in Italian? We have all the translations of his earlier works, but his new book of essays has not been translated yet.” + 

“I can only afford one book,” said Gian-Luca; “I will take the essays in Italian.” And he went to the Capo with the book in his pocket, in case he could read it between luncheon and dinner. + 

Gian-Luca could not know that the technique was flawless, that each word had been tried and weighed and considered, that side by side with his vast inspiration the writer possessed the mind of an explorer⁠—an explorer in the country of language. He could not know that all Italy was saying that Doria wrote with his pen dipped in gold dust, that never since Dante had there lived such a poet, and moreover, that his prose was even finer than his verse. But he did know that he, the sorrowful waiter, who could not write poems though his heart felt full to breaking, found solace and comparative comfort while he read, because of the beautiful lilt of the words. While he read he could almost forget the Padrona⁠— + 

“And so,” thought Gian-Luca, “he must be very great. I would like to see him, I would like to serve him, I myself would like to pour out his wine⁠—I wish that he would come to the Capo.” + 

But Doria never came to the Capo⁠—he happened to be living in Rome at that moment; and then, after all, he could only write⁠—he might make one forget the Padrona for a while, but he could not soften her heart. + 

XIII + 

I + 

It was just after Christmas when Signor Millo marched into Fabio’s shop one day and handed his card across the counter. + 

“This way, signore, this way!” exclaimed Fabio, pink to the brow with pleasure and excitement. And he took him into Teresa’s back parlor and pushed up the most propitious chair. + 

Signor Millo was a man of forty-five, of medium height and broad-shouldered. His brown hair curled close to his round, shapely head; there was something about him that suggested the antique⁠—perhaps the Roman arena. But his brow was intellectual, and his mouth rather grave. His eyes, dark and set very wide apart, had a wonderfully wise and benign expression as though they neither questioned nor condemned. Seeing him thus, as he sat in the armchair with his hat held loosely between his knees, was to wonder what manner of man this was. An athlete? An author? A philosopher, perhaps? As a matter of fact he was none of these things; he was Francesco Millo, the director of the Doric, which, thanks to his skill, to his excellent judgment and elegant epicurean palate, had risen in the last few years to great fame among the restaurants of London. + 

That he should have come in person to the Casa Boselli was quite on a par with the rest of the man. He might have sent several intelligent people, all well up in their professional duties, but instead he had preferred to call on Fabio himself⁠—such little excursions amused him. It is said that in each man there lurks the hunter; the hunter of money, the hunter of lions, the hunter of fame, the hunter of women; and Francesco Millo was also a hunter, as keen on the trail and as steadfast as any, indeed he was tireless, hence the fame of his restaurant, for Millo was a hunter of food. + 

He had said to himself at the beginning of his career: “There are three very vital things; quality, variety and originality, and the last is perhaps the most vital of the three. A dinner should have, like a book or a picture, good workmanship, plenty of light and shade, and above all that individual touch, that original central idea.” + 

And so, whenever the spirit moved him⁠—which was often, for he was a restless man⁠—Millo went forth in search of strange viands. Just now he was after some special funghi that grew in the woods not far from Turin. As luck would have it he had heard from a confrère that the Casa Boselli had but lately imported a case of those special funghi. + 

“Ma sicuro,” said Fabio, “we certainly keep them; they are fat, good funghi, you may see for yourself, you may smell them.” And he fetched a terrific looking toadstool for the great man’s careful inspection. + 

Millo sniffed it. “It is prime, as you say,” he remarked, and he promptly bought the whole case. “And now I will look at your stock, if you please; I would also like to see your price-list.” + 

Fabio was trembling with excitement by now⁠—the Casa Boselli and Millo. What a happening to make Nerone more jealous! What a snub for the Signora Rocca! He pottered about showing first this, then that, his paste, his hams, his tomatoes; then those elegant, more highly-specialized foods, caviar in jars, carciofini in oil, tunnyfish, fillets of anchovies with capers, and large, green, globular snails. + 

“All excellent, fresh, and quite inexpensive!” he kept chanting in a kind of litany. “All excellent, fresh, and quite inexpensive⁠—and we keep a great variety of foodstuffs.” + 

Signor Millo stood still, and surveyed him gravely. “I would speak,” he said, holding up his hand. + 

“Prego!” bowed Fabio, trembling more than ever in case he had talked too much. + 

“I am rather disposed to give you some orders, your shop is so excellently kept; I think also that there must be someone here who has an enterprising mind. If you get my custom, of course you are made, for I never stint recommendations; but, and this is important, so I beg that you listen, the first time you fail me I break you, signore. If ever you should send me a thing that is not fresh, a thing that could injure the stomach of a client, that day I write round to my confrères and tell them⁠—I cancel my recommendations, signore; and such is my system of management.” + 

Fabio bowed low; he was longing intensely for the reassuring presence of Teresa, but Teresa had unfortunately gone to the Capo to call on the Padrona that afternoon. + 

“It shall be as you say, I am honored,” babbled Fabio. “You shall have no cause for complaint.” + 

At that moment, Gian-Luca strolled in at the door, and seeing the stranger, paused. He looked very tall in the little shop as he towered over Fabio and Millo. His neat blue serge suit became him well⁠—it had not been bought secondhand, for Gian-Luca was particular about his clothes, and when in mufti he dressed with great care, he was even a little foppish. Standing there young, fair-haired and alert, there was something incongruous about him, something that seemed to set him apart from the salumeria in Old Compton Street, from Fabio, from Millo even. + 

“This is my grandson,” Fabio explained; “he is a waiter at the Capo di Monte.” Millo bowed slightly. “Piacere,” he murmured, as though he were thinking of something quite different; as a matter of fact he was all attention and his mind was working very quickly. + 

If Francesco Millo had a palate for good food, he had also an eye for a waiter; those who served were as carefully chosen by him as the dishes they were privileged to handle. Moreover, he prided himself on his flair. “I know in a moment,” he was wont to say proudly; “I know the moment my eye rests upon them. It amounts to a psychic faculty with me: I can pick the good waiter out of a thousand; the waiter is born and not made.” His eyes took in every line of Gian-Luca, without appearing to do so. “He is mine!” he was thinking, with that thrill of satisfaction that belongs to the ardent collector. “As it happens,” he said casually, turning to Fabio, “I am wanting a waiter next month; now if your grandson is free I might try him⁠—I suppose he has had some experience?” + 

“He has had three years at the Capo,” Fabio told him. + 

“That says nothing to me,” smiled Millo. + 

“The Capo di Monte in Dean Street, signore.” + 

“I have never heard of the place.” Then after a minute: + 

“But that need not matter, no doubt it serves some sort of meals. Perhaps you will give me the name of the Padrone so that I may take up your grandson’s reference; he will get a good reference, I think.” + 

All this time Gian-Luca had not opened his mouth, nor had he once been consulted; now, however, Millo turned and addressed him directly. + 

“If your reference is good, as I think it will be, you may come on the morning of the twentieth, side-door, 9:30. I will let you know when I hear from your Padrone, so that you may order yourself a dress-suit.” He scribbled an address on a leaf from his notebook: “This is the tailor who makes for the Doric, he will know how I wish your dress-suit to be made, he will also tell you what else is required. As for terms⁠—they depend entirely on yourself; I pay high, but only for good service. You will not be dependent upon your tips, everyone at the Doric receives a salary⁠—I cannot stop to go into that now, I will speak to you when you come on the twentieth. If you prove satisfactory you will not complain of my terms; if you prove unsatisfactory there will not be any terms, for you go⁠—we will try you and see. I think that is all⁠—oh, do you speak English?” + 

“I do, Signore,” said Gian-Luca promptly, but before he could get in another word, the great one was leaving the shop. + 

“Dio mio!” breathed Fabio. “Our Lady is good; she is patient in spite of Teresa.” + 

But Gian-Luca said nothing, he was thinking deeply⁠—he was thinking about the Padrona. + 

II + 

A new idea came to Gian-Luca that night, and he sat up suddenly in bed. “When I go she will miss me,” he thought triumphantly. “She shall find out for herself what it means to be without me, how lonely it will feel not to have the Gian-Luca who was always so ready to serve her.” + 

He pictured the Padrona sitting behind the bar, with her face in her hands⁠—weeping. “Gian-Luca, Gian-Luca, I want you!” she wailed. “I cannot get on without you!” + 

He would go there and see her, in a suit of fine clothes, they paid high for good service at the Doric. He would say: “I have come!” And she would reply: “Oh, but I am glad, Gian-Luca! I will meet you tomorrow between luncheon and dinner. Where can we go to be alone?” + 

“Gia,” thought Gian-Luca, nodding very wisely, “that is the way with women; when they have you they despise you, but when they have you not, then it is they find out that they want you.” He was very near tears in this moment of triumph, but his fighting instinct held. “I will go to the Doric,” he told himself bravely. “I am glad that I have come to a decision.” + 

This of course was the purest make-believe, for he knew that he had no choice in the matter; Fabio might be weak, but he would not consent to the loss of a fine job like this. Moreover, there was Millo’s custom to consider⁠—that might mean fame for the Casa Boselli. And then there was Teresa, the ambitious, the strong-minded, the dominating woman of affairs. + 

Nevertheless, he went on repeating: “I will certainly go to the Doric.” And he added: “Tomorrow I tell the Padrone, then we shall see what we shall see.” + 

III + 

The next morning he arrived at the Capo very early in order to tell the Padrone. By the greatest good fortune the Padrona was present, which was what Gian-Luca had hoped for. He did not look at the Padrone when he spoke, his eyes were on the Padrona. + 

The Padrone said wrathfully: “So this is gratitude!” and his facial expression was appalling. Then he went out, banging the door behind him, and his voice could be heard coming up from the kitchen with a dash of Moscatone thrown in. + 

The Padrona said: “This is very fine, Gian-Luca, I congratulate you, my child.” She was checking the accounts of the bar at the moment, and she went on checking her accounts. + 

Gian-Luca said uncertainly: “I am going in four weeks⁠—this means that I am going away⁠—” + 

“It does,” said the Padrona; “we must find another waiter, and that is always a bother. I shall not take a Swiss, I dislike them on the whole, though Schmidt is a very good fellow. By the way, we can give you an excellent reference, you have always been capable and quick.” + 

Gian-Luca left her without another word. His lip shot out, his eyes were very bright. He said to Mario later: + 

“I am lucky, my good Mario, I shall make my fortune now, you will see!” + 

IV + 

The last four weeks at the Capo di Monte passed like an evil dream. For one thing there was Mario, very sorrowful and servile; he was going to miss Gian-Luca, and he said so. His manner to the boy had now completely changed, it was that of failure towards success. He bragged less about the Capo and not at all about himself. + 

“I am just an old lame mule,” he would say humbly, remembering that taunt of the Padrone’s. + 

“He is not so lame as all that!” Gian-Luca would try to think; “he puts it on in order to get pitied.” But he knew that this was not so; Mario’s lameness was quite real, and moreover, it was often very painful. + 

Mario said: “Since you were little and Rosa gave you milk, I have always been so fond of you, Gian-Luca⁠—now you go out into the world with no old Mario near. You be careful; do not listen to people like this Schmidt, who are always thinking about women.” + 

“Women!” frowned Gian-Luca, “I want no more of women!” + 

And at that Mario’s mouth twitched a little; but he went on very gravely: “You are angry with our Padrona, you have great unkindness in your heart towards her. Now that is what I fear, piccino, anger in the heart⁠—I know, for I too have felt such anger. It is dangerous, it is stupid, it makes a man a beast; it makes him forget how strong he is. The Padrona is a woman and therefore you should pity, and moreover she is really very right. For one thing she is nearly old enough to be your mother, for another she considers her business, for another she remembers the Padrone no doubt⁠—a terrible man when in anger.” He paused, for Gian-Luca had turned his back, but presently he went on still more gravely: “Forget her when you leave here, it would be better so⁠—but if you must remember, do so kindly.” + 

“Is it I, then, who must show all the kindness?” exclaimed Gian-Luca. + 

“Precisely⁠—that is so,” Mario told him. “You have nothing to forgive, and if you had, remember the Padrona is only a woman.” + 

They were standing in the pantry. Gian-Luca glared at Mario; then he noticed that his hair had greyed a little. He looked old and sad and tired; the coarse texture of his sock was showing through the slits across his shoe. Nor was he very clean; his white shirtfront was spotted and the buttons of his coat were stained and frayed. He fidgeted self-consciously under Gian-Luca’s eyes, and his hand went up to straighten his white necktie. They began collecting things; Mario could not find the napkins, he swore because the table-drawer had stuck; and presently he grumbled: + 

“It is hard, this life of ours, always standing, always running, always serving someone else. I feel at times as though I must go out and climb a mountain so as to look over something wide.” + 

Gian-Luca only grunted, and picking up a tray, he hurried off to set his luncheon tables. + 

Mario watched his youthful back disappearing through the door. “He is very young,” thought Mario, “he is very innocent⁠—yet I think he grows a little proud.” + 

But Gian-Luca at that moment felt anything but proud; all he wanted was to get away from Mario. He did not want to pity, to see any cause for pity⁠—and Mario was very pitiful. + 

V + 

Gian-Luca’s worst times were in the afternoons, for he never quite knew whether to go home. If he sat beside the bar the Padrona did not come, but if he left the Capo he always thought that she might have come if he had remained. At home would be Teresa who detested the Padrona and said so between her rows of knitting. She would say it from the cash-desk, from the shop or from the parlor, whenever she could do so with discretion. In the shop there would be Fabio very jubilant and proud, relating for the hundredth time his interview with Millo. Rocca might look in a moment, slap Gian-Luca on the back and say; “Ecco, you are grand now, Generale!” Then Nerone, who was genuinely pleased about Gian-Luca, was forever stumping round to see his favorite. He loved the boy, and consequently only saw his virtues⁠—by contrast he detested Rosa’s children. + 

“You are lucky, you old brigand!” he said one day to Fabio. “Now my Rosa’s children are disgusting. That Geppe will not work and he steals my cigarettes, and when I leave he does not guard the shop. As for Berta, she is awful, she speaks only Cockney English and what she would have us think is French; our language is no longer good enough for her, it seems, and also she is very vain and ugly.” + 

He would ramble on and on, always cross, always complaining, and finally would try to pick a quarrel with his friend. “Your prices are too high⁠—you no longer sell good food⁠—that is why you grow so proud and rich, no doubt.” Sometimes Rosa appeared too, just to pass the time of day, and if it were a weekend she brought her Berta with her. Berta worked for Madame Germaine⁠—née Smith and wedded Bulgin⁠—who sold exclusive models in her shop near Wardour Street. Berta ran all the errands and took models home to clients⁠—one in every dozen costumes might, with any luck, be French. Berta was temperamental and thought she loved Gian-Luca; she was always making eyes⁠—enormous eyes. Her hair had grown more frizzy and, if possible, more black, and she wore it in a heavy pompadour. She refused to speak Italian, but had learnt a little French from the sisters at her convent school; this she tried hard to remember so that she could plague Nerone who loathed the French because about a hundred years before they had stolen those bronze stallions from St. Mark’s. For the rest she spoke in English; not the rather stilted English of Gian-Luca who had never really learnt to clip his words, but in the English of the workrooms; and she spoke it without accent, that is, of course without a foreign accent. + 

Gian-Luca loathed and feared her; she was always edging close, and he lived in mortal terror that one day she would kiss him. Her hand was always waiting to be squeezed or stroked or cuddled; he felt sure of this whenever he observed it. And so, when Berta came, which was as often as she could, Gian-Luca would rush back to the Capo. The bar would be deserted until the dinner-hour, still, it was at least a sanctuary from Berta. + 

VI + 

Gian-Luca dressed one morning with almost painful care; he was going to say goodbye to the Padrona. In two days’ time he would take up his new work, but this morning he was going to say goodbye. It had all seemed so queer and unreal the night before⁠—the pantry, the kitchen with its giant Moscatone, the long low restaurant, the chattering diners, the clanking of the glasses and bottles in the bar; and above all, he himself, in his shabby old dress-suit, writing orders, serving dishes, fetching drinks, striking matches. It had seemed as though his body did these duties out of habit, while he stood aside and thought of the Padrona. + 

The suit he wore this morning had been a present from Fabio, and very smart it was, an immaculate grey tweed. + 

Fabio had said: “I would not have you shabby before Millo. We wish him to observe that our little business prospers. Is that not so, Teresa?” + 

And she had nodded: “That is so.” + 

Gian-Luca stared at his reflection in the glass, and in spite of his heartache he approved of what he saw. He gave a final touch to his necktie and his hair, then, picking up his hat, he went downstairs. + 

“Do not be long,” called Fabio from the shop. “I must consult you⁠—I have certain business matters to discuss regarding Millo.” + 

Old Compton Street was foggy, there was mud on the pavement: Gian-Luca stooped and turned up his new trousers, for one part of him remembered that he wore expensive clothes. At Nerone’s door stood Rosa with her hair still done in curlers; she was shaking out a very dusty mat. She smiled broadly at Gian-Luca: + 

“How smart you look, piccino! What would Berta say, I wonder!” And she laughed. + 

Geppe peered across her shoulder, he looked spotty and unwashen. “He is lucky, not like me who have to stop at home,” he grumbled. + 

“Continue with your sweeping!” said Rosa, turning quickly. “You cannot have swept out half the shop.” + 

There were lights in Rocca’s window because it was so foggy. Rocca himself was moving in and out among his corpses. As Gian-Luca passed he saw him neatly slicing off a shoulder with a quick, experienced sweep of his knife. The whole street was very busy preparing for its business, which consisted of supplying other people’s daily needs. + 

“They need so much, so very much⁠—how funny!” thought Gian-Luca, who himself was only conscious of needing the Padrona. + 

The Padrone was waiting for him when he reached the Capo; he was in a great hurry to go out. + 

“Here you are!” he said impatiently, glancing at his watch. “Be good enough to sign the wages book.” Then he held out his hand, turning affable, it seemed: “Well, I wish you good fortune. I am sorry to lose you, but when one is young one must think of oneself.” The Padrone did not wish to quarrel with Fabio, it was much too convenient to deal at his shop. + 

“May I see the Padrona?” faltered Gian-Luca. + 

“Sicuro, she will want to wish you luck. Gemma!” he called. “Gian-Luca is here.” + 

“Let him come up,” came a voice. + 

“Go up,” said the Padrone, “you know the way. I have to go to the City.” He shook hands once again and turned to the door. Gian-Luca went slowly up the stairs. + 

The Padrona was sitting on a low settee. The firelight fell on her thick coils of hair and slanted across her averted face, which was partially shielded by her hand. She did not look round, and Gian-Luca in the doorway stood watching her in silence for a moment, then he closed the door quietly and stepped into the room. + 

“It is I,” he said softly. “Gian-Luca.” + 

She nodded; and now she was looking at him, smiling very kindly, he thought. “I hope you will be happy, Gian-Luca,” she said, and then fell silent again. + 

A coal crashed into the grate and lay there smoking; the Padrona pushed it with her foot. Outside in the passage a cuckoo clock struck nine; the small, childish sound of it seemed to fill the room. Gian-Luca’s strange eyes were very wide open, his breath came a little fast. As he stood there he could hear the beating of his heart, he could hear the Padrona’s breathing. Then he drew himself up, he felt suddenly strong, he was filled with a knowledge of his manhood. He called her⁠—standing there motionless, he called her. “Gemma!” And then again, “Gemma!” + 

She got up and stared blankly at him for a moment as though bewildered⁠—uncertain. There was something very like appeal in her face⁠—he saw it and his heart thumped with triumph. + 

“Gemma!” His voice was loud and compelling, and after he had called her he smiled. Then all of a sudden she was lying in his arms, giving him back his kisses. + 

As they stood there the years came down on the boy and dropped away from the woman; they were just two creatures welded into one by an impulse of mutual passion. + 

He began to speak hotly: “My beautiful! My joy! I will never let you go any more. All my life I have waited, and now I have got you⁠—I am all burning up with this loving.” Then his mood changed, his eyes filled with sudden tears. “You are holy,” he whispered softly. “I must treat you very gently⁠—you are little and weak, and you need Gian-Luca because you are so little.” + 

But something, perhaps it was the sound of his whispering, made her stiffen as she lay in his arms. With a cry of anger she pushed him away. + 

“Stop!” she said shrilly. “Stop!” + 

And then the Padrona sinned in her fear as she had not sinned in her passion. In her fear she struck out wildly like an animal at bay; she accused, she insulted, she degraded. She might have made an appeal to his goodness, to the chivalry that was in him, to that great, shy, virginal spirit of youth that was wrestling with him even now. But instead she confronted him, flushed and disheveled, with the crude, ugly words on her lips. + 

“Go!” she said finally, pointing to the door. “Go⁠—or I tell my husband!” + 

And he went, without one more look at the Padrona. He was utterly bewildered, incredulous and outraged. Alone in her room the Padrona wept bitterly, but Gian-Luca’s eyes were quite dry. + 

VII + 

That night Gian-Luca returned to the Capo, but this time he did not go in. He hid like a thief in the opposite doorway, watching for the waiters to leave. Mario came first; that was good. He was glad. He shrank farther into the shadow, but Mario passed him with never a glance and went limping away down the street. Then came the new waiter accompanied by the boy; they said goodnight and the waiter caught a bus. The boy looked round him then lit a cigarette⁠—obviously one that he had stolen⁠—after which he too walked away down the street, whistling softly between puffs. + 

In an upper window of the Capo a light showed⁠—that was the Padrona’s sitting-room. Gian-Luca watched it, and as he did so he was filled with a queer, ugly sense of pleasure. He was glad that the light should stream out between the curtains; it meant that the Padrona was near; and he thought of what he was about to do and felt glad that she should be near him. A door opened and shut, Schmidt came across the road⁠—he was now all but touching Gian-Luca. + 

“Schmidt!” + 

“Nun was!” Schmidt jumped as though frightened. “Oh, hallo! Is that you, Gian-Luca?” + 

Gian-Luca jingled the money in his pockets, then he slipped his arm into Schmidt’s. “Will you take me to see those girls?” said Gian-Luca, and he turned his face up to the lighted window. + 

“Ach so!” murmured Schmidt. “You make up your mind⁠—come along then, I understand.” + 