V
Now that he was dead and gone, everyone knew how much they had liked poor Fabio. They missed the mild-eyed, deprecatory figure that had wandered about Old Compton Street for more years than they cared to remember. But Nerone knew how much he had loved Fabio, and that was a very different thing. Nerone mourned the friend of his youth, and with him the passing of his own generation.
“I suppose it will be my turn next,” said Nerone. “I am not so very much younger than he was; but God grant that I die in Italy—when this war is ended Nerone goes home.”
“So you shall, papa,” comforted Rosa.
“Ma sicuro!” Mario said kindly.
After the funeral Nerone spoke little, but he went to the cupboard and found his dominoes. He turned them out on to the sitting-room table, where he dusted them one by one; from time to time he spat on his finger and rubbed some dirt off an ivory face, then, he laid them back gently, reverently even, as though they were poor little corpses. He made Rosa go out and buy him some striped ribbon—the green, white and red that they were selling in the shops—and with this he carefully tied up the box, then put it at the back of the cupboard. Thus, the dominoes had a small military funeral, being laid to rest in the colors of their country; and all this for the love and honor of Fabio, who had not had a military funeral.
Teresa was alone now at the Casa Boselli, alone, too, at night in her bed. No need to lie stiffly not twitching a muscle, for now there was no old husband to wake—Fabio was sleeping very soundly. All night long she could think undisturbed. Oh, and Teresa had very many thoughts, some of them coming unbidden to her mind—queer, faraway thoughts about sunshine and youth at a time of the gathering-in of the grapes. And the thoughts would paint pictures for old Teresa, and then she would begin to remember. Into these pictures that worried and perplexed her would come walking a quiet, unimportant little man; a man with the eyes of a patient dog whose importunate loving wearies the master, who, nevertheless, must keep it to guard him. Then, less dimly, would come the figure of that other—so gallant, so merry, so passionately young, so anxious to drink youth down to the dregs—ay, and to make her drink with him. And face to face they would stand, those two men, as perhaps they were standing now—who could tell? For she was the debt that had lain between them, the debt that Fabio had paid for that other, who had been unwilling to pay.
How futile a thing was this so-called life, which always ended in death—the death of Olga, the death of Fabio, the approaching death of the Casa Boselli. Struggle and sweat and sweat and struggle to make fine good pasta in the turmoil of war—that was what Fabio had done, and had failed, for down he had dropped like a little old bundle, beside his huge mountain of flour—Fabio the patient, the timid, the foolish—Fabio, the father of Olga.
Thoughts, always thoughts, intolerable thoughts; but not pity, no, for pity was weakness—weakness that might lead you to pray for the dead; you, who had long since done with prayers.
Teresa would sit up stiffly in the darkness, with her thin hands clenched on the bedspread. Her hard black eyes would be staring at nothing, now that she had them wide open. Then one night she must suddenly speak to the Madonna to whom she had not spoken for years.
“You think I am beaten!” she told her fiercely. “You are glad to think that Teresa is beaten, Teresa who will not serve you. But no, you are wrong, for Teresa is not beaten—she will never be beaten while she lives! If she has to sell matches as a beggar in the streets she will not be beaten by you to her knees.”
And then she listened as though for an answer, an answer that did not come. For not in poor, faltering human speech could the Mother of God reply to Teresa.
“Ah!” said Teresa. “You answer me nothing, you wish me to think that you are angry. The foolishness of it! You are a thing of plaster that my hands destroyed easily many years ago. Less than a minute it took to destroy you—of course you can answer me nothing!”