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.