IV
I
For the first time in his life Gian-Luca knew what it meant to have a home; for home is a place in which we are wanted, in which there is someone to whom we matter more than anything else on earth. Of such an one’s love are the four walls created—but to cover them with garlands we ourselves must love. Maddalena had built the walls that were home, and Gian-Luca rejoiced exceedingly; nor did he perceive in his first flush of pleasure that the walls she had built were bare. He would look at his wife very gratefully and gently; at her quiet beauty, her gracious body, her eyes of a mothering doe. He would think:
“Yes, I love this woman I have married—she loves me so much, and love begets love—a man could not well help loving Maddalena.”
And feeling his thoughtful gaze upon her, she would look up and meet his eyes; she would go to him, stroking and fondling his hair.
“Amore,” she would murmur, “are you really happy?”
“Do I not love you?” he would answer, smiling.
Then Maddalena would be silent.
To the simple of the earth there comes deep wisdom; Maddalena was one of the simple of the earth and so she was very wise, and in her wisdom she read her man’s heart, and she knew that he did not love her. But something else also Maddalena knew, and that was that he thought that he loved her, that he earnestly desired to think that he loved her, from an instinct of gratitude.
He said to her one day: “I love you far more than when I married you, sweetheart—it must be because you love me so much; all my life I have wanted someone to love me—please go on loving me, Maddalena.”
He would often say artless things like this, trusting her to understand; overjoyed at having someone to whom he could speak freely—indulging himself in the blessed relief of putting his thoughts into words. She reassured him as though he were a child who might be afraid of the dark.
“You are all folded up in my love, Gian-Luca; you need never be afraid any more.”
And he wondered how she knew that he had been so much afraid, afraid of being alone.
No man could have been more kindly than he was during that first placid year of their marriage; he trusted her implicitly and would bring her all his money, asking her to keep what was needed for the house, and then to put what remained in the bank. She knew that he was saving from motives of ambition, trying to amass a little capital towards the day when he should start a restaurant of his own.
“Money is a man’s best friend,” he would tell her very often, unconsciously quoting Teresa. And sometimes he would add: “That is, next to himself.”
To please him Maddalena would go from shop to shop, bargaining, arguing, disputing. Consulting the penurious Aunt Ottavia as to where two sparrows might be bought for a farthing; rejoicing in his trust and his obvious contentment, caring very little for what she scraped and saved so long as she pleased Gian-Luca. There were times, however, when, sitting alone, Maddalena would look into her heart, and would know that even in their hours of passion, she never for one moment held the soul of this man. Her own soul leapt out to sanctify their kisses, but his remained cold and aloof, and gradually into her patient brown eyes there was creeping a look of resignation. Yet he clung to her, fearfully, desperately almost, for now less than ever could he bear solitude. If he found her from home in the afternoon, he would stand by the door, staring up and down the street, or perhaps he would hurry round to Aunt Ottavia.
“Where is Maddalena?” he would ask anxiously; “she has gone out and left no message.”
When Maddalena came back he would be sure to reproach her. “I have been here for a good half-hour,” he would grumble; “I hate to find the house empty like this; why cannot you do your shopping in the morning?”
So she ended by never going out at all when he might be expected home from the Doric. She would sit in the window and watch for his coming—he had said that he liked to see her at the window. Yet sometimes she sat at the window in vain, for he would not come home between luncheon and dinner. He might have elected to go and see Fabio, or to potter about Charing Cross Road in search of a secondhand book; or perhaps he would have gone to visit the Padrona, for whom he now felt not the slightest attraction, but who, womanlike, regretted this fact, which secretly amused Gian-Luca. He would have to go hurrying back to the Doric with never a word to Maddalena; and if he was taking late duty at the restaurant, it might be two o’clock in the morning, or after, before he got home to bed. Maddalena would probably be fast asleep, and this would make him feel lonely—his legs might be aching from the long hours of standing; he would grumble to himself until she woke up, and then ask her to rub his legs. While she rubbed he liked to talk about the clients, about all the little happenings of the day. He would tell her in confidence things overheard, careful always to withhold the names, but criticizing freely and laughing a good deal, as though his clients amused him.
“They are funny,” he would say, “they forget that their waiter has eyes and ears in his head. Millo hates eyes and ears except for his orders—so do I for that matter, in my under-waiters. But what can we do? They get mellow with food, and then they confide in each other!” Then he would pause as though considering his clients, and presently he would go on: “I have one or two favorites whom it pleases me to humor—they do not tip particularly well, but they know how to order a dinner. For the rest, I serve them all, but I do not really like them, and they do not really like me. I am just a machine; if I broke down they would miss me, but only for a little while until they got another. I talk to them, they answer; I smile and they smile—and meanwhile, my Maddalena, I prosper. In spite of the fact that I have not got a name, I shall one day be famous as Millo is famous; and these greedy children whom I do not really like, they it is who shall make me famous. And after all, why should they not be greedy, and a little impatient, too, since they pay? It is often amusing to be a headwaiter; one orders and is ordered. I say: ‘Go there, Alano!’ And Alano goes. They say: ‘Come here, Gian-Luca!’ And Gian-Luca comes. One moment I am the master of Alano, the next I am the slave of a duke; but if he only knew it my duke is the slave—I make him a slave to his stomach!”
He would go on talking happily while Maddalena rubbed, but after a time he would remember his legs—legs are very important to a waiter. “Not there!” he would say, “rub lower down, mia donna, rub just here where my ankle is swollen—that is better—and now you might rub the other ankle.” Perhaps she would look tired, as very well she might and then his conscience would smite him. “Poverina,” he would murmur, “I have kept you awake—I will try to come in very quietly tomorrow, you will see, I will creep in like a mouse.” Yet although he intended to creep in like a mouse, he always managed to wake her. A hairbrush would drop or perhaps he would cough, and then there would be the electric light. Once she was awake it seemed natural to talk, Maddalena was an excellent listener; he had never had such a fine listener before, one to whom everything he said or did mattered. But long after Gian-Luca had talked himself to sleep, his wife would lie awake thinking. She would worry a little because of the English whom he served and flattered while secretly despising them. She would wonder if he bore them a grudge in his heart because of his long-ago schooldays, those days when they had taunted him and left him out of things—he had told her about those days.
“But no,” she would think, “he cannot be so childish—it is only that we Latins feel differently, think differently; they are good, we are good, but our goodness is different, we find it very hard to draw together.”
And then she would remember that Gian-Luca was English—English in the eyes of the law, and her simple, honest mind would grow puzzled and troubled, knowing that he owed so much to this England, that in fact they all owed so much.
II
She prayed a great deal, because Gian-Luca would not pray, so that she had to pray for them both; and her prayers, unlike Teresa’s had once been, were quiet and utterly trustful. If she prayed very often that Gian-Luca might love God, she prayed still more often that he might love Maddalena; and doubtless her God who was one with His creature, listened and understood.
She felt very sure of the friendship of her Maker, and would tell Him about all sorts of everyday things. For instance she told Him how much it grieved her that she could not more often prepare her man’s food. Gian-Luca had nearly all his meals at the Doric, and Maddalena longed to cook what he ate herself, to spend hours downstairs in her spotless kitchen making his favorite dishes. He was young and hungry, he liked good things to eat, his wife knew quite well what he liked. Fritto misto he liked, and ravioli, and her father had said that no woman in Rome could make ravioli as she could. When Gian-Luca had his day off once a month, then it was that Maddalena got her chance; she would plan the meals for that day a week ahead, but when the time came she herself could eat nothing for the joy of seeing him eating. He would settle down to be greedy like a schoolboy, praising her cooking between mouthfuls.
“Give me some more!” he would order, laughing. “Millo and all his chefs can go to the devil when my Maddalena turns cook!”
Getting up she would eagerly serve her husband; and he, whose whole life was spent in serving others, would find it pleasant and rather amusing to be served in his turn by Maddalena. He would play with her, suddenly thumping the table in order to make her jump.
“Come along, waiter! I am starving!” he would thunder; “send me the maître d’hotel!” And then he would grumble to a mythical Gian-Luca: “Look here, Gian-Luca, what’s the matter today? I’ve been waiting three minutes for that partridge!”
They would laugh, and in the middle of their laughter he would kiss her, and say that never was there such a waiter and such a splendid chef rolled into one as his wonderful Maddalena. After their dinner they would go for an airing; Maddalena loved Kensington Gardens. They would jump into a taxi on that one day a month, and be driven as far as the Serpentine Bridge; from there they would stroll through the gardens arm-in-arm, Maddalena watching the children. If it was wet he would go to his bookcase and get a volume of Doria’s poems; he would read Maddalena the “Gioia della Luce,” she not understanding a word. He might look up and see her bewildered face, but still he would go on reading, not to please her but to please himself—for the joy he took in the rhythm. When he had finished he would probably relent and read her some simple poem, or to please her, the Latin hymn she loved best—the beautiful “Te lucis ante terminum” from the quiet service of Compline. His voice would grow solemn and very sweet because he adored the sound of the Latin, not because he was moved by the meaning of the words …
She would think that he looked like some medieval saint, so aesthetic were the hands that held the prayerbook, so thoughtful the line of his brow. But then he would laugh as he shut up the book.
“Well, there you are, piccina,” he would say, “it is lovely because the language is lovely, but it is not the ‘Gioia della Luce.’ ”
III
Everyone was anxious to be kind to Maddalena, and yet Maddalena was lonely. It was almost as though Gian-Luca’s loneliness in leaving him had found harborage in her, as though she had drawn it into herself, so that now she must bear it for him. Rosa came very often to see her and would talk of the infant Gian-Luca, telling of the time when he clung to her breast, telling of the day when he first said “Nonno,” and this made Maddalena feel lonelier than ever. Rosa was very maternal that autumn, for her Geppe had gone to do his military service; all the way to Italy he had gone—Geppe, who had seldom even been out of London. In the end he had actually wanted to go, glad of anything for the sake of a change, but Rosa was anxious because of those hands of his, which so easily blistered. The life would be hard, they might set him to digging, they might teach him how to dig trenches—two years he must serve in an infantry regiment. Poor Geppe, the life would be hard. Berta, whose heart had been caught on the rebound, wished to marry a young man called Albert Cole, the commercial traveler whom Geppe had once met and had longed to emulate. Nerone had disliked Albert Cole at sight—he had the misfortune to be English—Nerone was rude whenever he called, so Berta had decided to marry him at once; they were going to be married next month. And here Rosa’s eyes welled over with tears, for Cole called himself an agnostic.
“I do not know what that means,” she said helplessly. “It cannot be anything to do with Saint Agnes, for he does not believe in the saints, and my Berta wishes to give up her Church; they will marry at a register office.”
Berta said terrible things, it seemed—things connected with babies. They had made such a painful impression on Rosa that she knew most of them by heart. “Me and Bert aren’t going to be bothered with children, we know a thing or two, me and Bert!” That was one of the statements—oh, yes, but there were others—Rosa actually blushed while she told them, she could not even look at Maddalena.
And then there was Nerone who had suddenly grown homesick, talking of nothing but Italy ever since his grandson’s departure. “I am old,” he would mutter; “I feel I must go home. All my life I have saved in order to go home—I feel that the moment has arrived.”
Rosa expected him to sell up his business, which, however, he put off doing. From week to week he would put it off—they none of them knew where they were.
“He is so moody and queer,” complained Rosa. “When Mario and I think he means to see about it, he will suddenly run off and start counting his money, and then he will come back to us shaking his head. He will say, ‘No, not yet, just a month or two longer—a few more little shillings must go home to Siena before their old papa can join them.’ ”
Maddalena would listen and sympathize because Rosa had given her milk to Gian-Luca. She did not like Nerone or Geppe or Berta, but since they belonged to Gian-Luca’s foster-mother she felt that they somehow belonged to her.
Fabio always made Maddalena welcome; he approved of the quiet young wife. The Signora Rocca was also quite friendly and would often invite herself to tea. But with her Maddalena found little in common; the Signora Rocca talked only of religion, a religion so alien to that of Maddalena as to form a kind of barrier between them. Perhaps the signora was conscious of this fact, for she sent Maddalena many hot little pamphlets regarding the climatic conditions in hell, and a good few on purgatorial fires.
The Padrona of the Capo would patronize; she would give much advice regarding Gian-Luca, and this with a gentleness hard to resent. “As an old married woman—” she would usually begin, and then she would patronize.
The girls that Maddalena had known in the still-room were fond of coming to see her. “Bon Dieu! It is you who are lucky—” they would say, “to be married to Monsieur Boselli!”
They were all just a little in love with Gian-Luca, but they genuinely liked his wife. They were lighthearted creatures who were always laughing, and they teased Maddalena for being so solemn, and because of her funny, broken English. In the end she would have to laugh with them and be merry, for their youth and good spirits were infectious.
There were plenty of people who were glad to know her, to take her into their lives, and yet only one person in all the world who counted—that was how it was with Maddalena. Ah, but some day soon there would be another—surely there must be another? He would be very small and have strange, light eyes, and his hair when it grew would be ashen blond, and his name would be just Gian-Luca. A great welcome was always awaiting this other. A great welcome? Why, all the mothers of the ages were waiting in the mothering soul of Maddalena, crying out love within her.
“I shall never be lonely any more,” she would think; “all day I can care for and play with the child, and then he will sit with me by the window, watching for his father, who will surely love me when I have given him a son.”
Once she spoke of these things to Gian-Luca, scanning his face for a light in his eyes—a light that did not come.
“Ma si,” he smiled kindly, “you shall tell me when it is so—for the rest, we are surely very well as we are. Children are a great expense, my Maddalena; now if Mario had not had Berta and Geppe he would certainly have felt more free to make his way—he might have left the Capo before he was too old.”
And Maddalena wondered exceedingly. Did not they spring from a race who loved children? A race of eager, imperative fathers? And then, with a little sinking of the heart, she suddenly remembered that Gian-Luca was different—that Gian-Luca had never known a father.
IV
She missed her own father very much these days, and sometimes she would go to see the old priest, for the sake of calling him “Father.” All kindness and tolerance was Father Antonio, whose placid blue eyes could see into the heart—they had seen into so many hearts in their time that now they looked just a little sad. She never told him about her troubles, indeed, they were difficult to put into words; she and he would just sit there and talk of quiet things, like the flowers to be placed on the altar next Easter, or the picture of a saint that was said to bring healing, or the vineyards along the Via Appia. Father Antonio knew Rome very well, although he himself was a Tuscan, and while they talked thus, their faces would grow wistful; he would be thinking of the hills near Florence, and she of the friendly, wide Campagna, where all the sheep wore little bells. These visits could never be very long, for Father Antonio was busy. His work lay among the bedraggled little flock who had given the name of their country to the district—its name but none of its charm!
When she left him Maddalena would go into the church where she and Gian-Luca had been married, and there she would pray to the kindly Madonna who stood just inside the doorway. The Madonna had set her small Son on His feet, she had told Him to stretch out His arms; and in case He should fall—for He was so little—she supported Him gently with her hands. Maddalena would think that the Child looked very much as Gian-Luca must have looked when he too was a child, and then she would humbly beg God’s pardon, for this was an impious thought born of love, of her poor human love; yet somehow the Madonna always managed to comfort Maddalena.
After praying for a while she would get up slowly and trudge off to see Aunt Ottavia. Aunt Ottavia was not sympathetic these days; Maddalena was thankful that her husband had been firm when it came to taking those rooms. Indeed, she had grown to look on these visits as a species of self-imposed penance—Father Antonio imposed such small penances that Maddalena sometimes added a few.
Aunt Ottavia would say: “Well, and how is Gian-Luca?” in a voice that she made rather stern.
She was cross with Gian-Luca because of all those candles. As much as five shillings had she spent on blessed candles, and still he remained a pagan. She would ask many searching and personal questions as one who had every right to know. Was there going to be a baby? Was he after other women? At what hour did he get home at night from his work? At what hour did he usually get up in the morning? Was he tidy or untidy? How often was he angry, and what sort of things made him angry? In conclusion she would say:
“You are spoiling the creature, one has only to look at him to see it. He is vain, and like all men, of course he is selfish, and your foolishness makes him more selfish. Now I never spoilt that husband of mine; he certainly drank, and tried constantly to beat me, but for all that he knows well that I never spoilt him—he cannot blame me for his purgatory.” One day she had suddenly laughed at her thoughts, a disconcerting habit of hers. “If Gian-Luca were mine,” she had told Maddalena, “he would surely by now have come into the Church—I would surely have compelled him to come in by now, and I never had your beauty, Maddalena—”
“How?” Maddalena had inquired falteringly.
But at that Aunt Ottavia had laughed again. “If I told you you would only be shocked,” she had said, “and so I prefer not to tell you.”
V
The months slipped by in prosperity. The following summer Gian-Luca took his wife for three weeks’ holiday to Brighton; he had not wished to go too far afield, in case something should happen at the Doric in his absence. Nothing of any kind was likely to happen, but that was the way Gian-Luca took his work, he was always convinced that when his back was turned the prestige of his room would suffer. Millo had recently raised his wages, so that now he felt very well off; but this fact did not alter his way of living, the only difference that it made to Maddalena was that she had more money to put by.
The little band of exiles in Old Compton Street were feeling particularly satisfied with life; even Nerone, the least prosperous of them, had to admit that things were looking up. Geppe being abroad, he had engaged a young assistant who sold more tobacco than he stole, so Nerone continued to send home the shillings to breed little centesimi. Every evening he and Fabio played their game of dominoes—both of them peering hard at the dots because their eyesight was failing—and every evening Nerone told Fabio of his great homesickness, his longing for Italy. He would soon be going back there, he said. But each morning would find him busy in the shop, and the business still unsold, because, in spite of that great homesickness, that love of country and of all things Italian, there was still his love of the pretty silver shillings that bred little centesimi.
Berta was now living near Battersea Bridge, in a flat with her smart young husband; she came very seldom to see her mother, being much engaged with her friends. One fine day, however, Berta really could not come, nor was she prevented by social engagements—for God was not mocked, inasmuch as that Berta presented her husband with twins. Two lusty little daughters, both determined to live, came squealing into the world. Even Rosa was somewhat disconcerted, but Berta, after weeping over each of them in turn, and feeling a transitory aversion for Albert, decided that the world had much cause to applaud her, and proceeded to pose in the eyes of her neighbors as a kind of modern Cornelia.
VI
A year passed, then another. Maddalena was still childless, and her heart was heavy with dread. She knew now that even her love for Gian-Luca could not make up for the longing that was in her. She never confided her fears to her husband, held back by a painful pride; he did not particularly want her child, he had said that children cost money. Yet since she had no little son to love, she must perforce love Gian-Luca for two, so Maddalena loved him for the man that was in him, but also for the child that is in every man—she loved him as a wife and as a mother. There had always been this dual element in her love, but now something new had begun to creep in—a kind of grave desperation. Gian-Luca would sometimes force his mind from the Doric in order to consider her more closely; the gravity of her love had begun to oppress him, it made him feel in a vague, uneasy way that his wife was no longer happy.
“What is the matter?” he would think to himself; “am I not perfectly faithful to this woman? Do I not give her all?”
But Maddalena knew that he had never given all, and now in addition she feared that she might be childless; the little Gian-Luca who would make his father love her, held aloof and refused to be born. She tried to hide the ache in her heart from the world, yet everyone suspected it, it seemed.
“You spoil him! You spoil him!” chanted Aunt Ottavia; “you are making a perfect fool of the man!”
“One should never let a husband feel too certain of one,” smiled the wise, blue-eyed Padrona.
“He was always a strange little boy—” Rosa told her. “Always a strange, self-sufficient little boy; but at bottom he is all pure gold, the Gian-Luca. Do I not know it, who nursed him?”
To them all Maddalena would reply the same thing: “I have nothing to complain of in my husband.”
And Gian-Luca often said: “I have an excellent wife, I have nothing to complain of in my wife.”
Yet Maddalena had moments of sheer naked terror, when she fancied that they were drifting apart.
“What shall I do if I lose him?” she would think.
And then perhaps she would love him unwisely, so that even Gian-Luca who wanted to be loved would grow just a little impatient.
“Ma no!” he would say, “I have not got a headache, I am very well indeed, and my shoes are not wet. Now run away, sweetheart, and leave me in peace—I would like to read for an hour.”
But she could not leave him. She could not let him go even for an hour to his book. While he read she would sit there stroking his knee, wishing with all her heart that he were small, so that she might carry him in her arms. In the end he would have to shut up his book and give himself over to her loving; and when he had done this he would feel less a man, and she would know that he felt less a man, and the knowledge would be anguish to her. Then, with the sudden inconsequence of woman, she herself would feel helpless and small; she would long to burst out crying in his arms, so that he might pet her and comfort. But no tears were ever permitted to fall, because she was patient and strong. Patient as peasant women are patient who have long submitted themselves to their men, asking little in return; strong as those bygone Legions were strong, who had flung the straight, white roads across the world, and had trodden them unafraid. No, Maddalena’s eyes would be dry, but in her unhappiness she must needs push him from her—in the end she would have to let him go after all, till the pain of his nearness subsided.
“But what is the matter?” he would say, bewildered. “What have I done, Maddalena?”
And she would not dare to answer that question, lest in the answering she should become weak—weak and unable to shield him. Finally he would feel aggrieved and unhappy; angry, too, as the blind may feel angry, who stumble and hurt themselves in their blindness. He would go back to work with the uncomfortable conviction that he did not understand his wife, that he did not quite understand himself either. Surely he had all that he had longed for in the past? Companionship, love—oh, a great deal of love—as for children, well, perhaps they would come along later; at present he was very well pleased to be free from the tax they would be on his purse.
His work would be waiting, there would be much to do, a hundred little duties to perform; and gradually, as the evening wore on, his mind would be gathered back into the Doric. He would pass to and fro among the diners, the distinguished-looking men, the beautiful women—all feeling just a little more brilliant than usual because of the good food and wine. Like a general and his chief of staff, he and Roberto would hurry their waiters to the kitchens and cellars, to those vast armories that contained all the weapons wherewith to slay lassitude and boredom. Back they would come, the neat, black-and-white army, very well equipped to slay lassitude and boredom; very well equipped to slay other things, too, such as a passing scruple. Gian-Luca would watch with experienced eyes for a self-controlled face to relax; he would listen for the subtle change in a voice, in a laugh, for the voices and laughter to mingle; he would know just how long a time should elapse between the popping of a cork and the coming of the miracle. If all went well in his octagon room he would feel a glow of satisfaction; he would feel a passing affection for his diners, who were doing him credit, and via him the Doric, forgetting that they looked upon him as a machine, or not caring if he remembered. And when he got home there would be Maddalena ready to wake up and talk; a placid and gentle Maddalena again, whose beauty was that of a vine-clad arbor where a man might rest after toil.
“It was just a passing mood,” he would think, “all women are like that, they have funny moods.” And as like as not he would go to sleep happy, holding on to her hand.