I
Three days after the customary Easter banquet, which in the house Lamonica was always sumptuous and crowded with feasters by virtue of its traditions, Donna Cristina Lamonica counted her table linen and silver while she placed each article systematically in chest and safe, ready for future similar occasions.
With her, as usual, at this task and aiding, were the maid Maria Bisaccia and the laundress Candida Marcanda, popularly known as “Candia.” The large baskets heaped with fine linen rested in a row on the pavement. The vases of silver and the other table ornaments sparkled upon a tray; they were solidly fashioned, if somewhat rudely, by rustic silversmiths, in shape almost liturgical, as are all of the vases that the rich provincial families hand down from generation to generation. The fresh fragrance of bleached linen permeated the room.
Candia took from the baskets the doilies, the table cloths and the napkins, had the “signora” examine the linen intact, and handed one piece after another to Maria, who filled up the drawers while the “signora” scattered through the spaces an aroma, and took notes in a book. Candia was a tall woman, large-boned, parched, fifty years of age; her back was slightly curved from bending over in that position habitual to her profession; she had very long arms and the head of a bird of prey resting upon the neck of a tortoise. Maria Bisaccia was an Ortonesian, a little fleshy, of milk-white complexion, also possessing very clear eyes; she had a soft manner of speaking and made slow, delicate gestures like one who was accustomed habitually to exercise her hands amongst sweet pastry, syrups, preserves and confectionery. Donna Cristina, also a native of Ortona, educated in a Benedictine monastery, was small of stature, dressed somewhat carelessly, with hair of a reddish tendency, a face scattered with freckles, a nose long and thick, bad teeth, and most beautiful and chaste eyes which resembled those of a priest disguised as a woman.
The three women attended to the work with much assiduity, spending thus a large part of the afternoon.
At length, just as Candia went out with the empty baskets, Donna Cristina counted the pieces of silver and found that a spoon was missing.
“Maria! Maria!” she cried, suddenly panic-stricken. “One spoon is lacking.... Count them! Quick!”
“But how? It cannot be, Signora,” Maria answered. “Allow me a glance at them.” She began to re-sort the pieces, calling their numbers aloud. Donna Cristina looked on and shook her head. The silver clinked musically.
“An actual fact!” Maria exclaimed at last with a motion of despair. “And now what are we to do?”
She was quite above suspicion. She had given proof of fidelity and honesty for fifteen years in that family. She had come from Ortona with Donna Cristina at the time of her marriage, almost constituting a part of the marriage portion, and had always exercised a certain authority in the household under the protection of the “signora.” She was full of religious superstition, devoted to her especial saint and her especial church, and finally, she was very astute. With the “signora” she had united in a kind of hostile alliance to everything pertaining to Pescara, and especially to the popular saint of these Pescaresian people. On every occasion she quoted the country of her birth, its beauties and riches, the splendours of its basilica, the treasures of San Tomaso, the magnificence of its ecclesiastical ceremonies in contrast to the meagreness of San Cetteo, which possessed but a solitary, small, holy arm of silver.
At length Donna Cristina said, “Look carefully everywhere.”
Maria left the room to begin a search. She penetrated all the angles of the kitchen and loggia, but in vain, and returned at last with empty hands.
“There is no such thing about! Neither here nor there!” she cried. Then the two set themselves to thinking, to heaping up conjectures, to searching their memories.
They went out on the loggia that bordered the court, on the loggia belonging to the laundry, in order to make a final examination. As their speech grew louder, the occupants of the neighbouring houses appeared at their windows.
“What has befallen you? Donna Cristina, tell us! Tell us!” they cried. Donna Cristina and Maria recounted their story with many words and gestures.
“Jesu! Jesu! then there must be thieves among us!” In less than no time the rumour of this theft spread throughout the vicinity, in fact through all of Pescara. Men and women fell to arguing, to surmising, whom the thief might be. The story on reaching the most remote house of Sant’ Agostina, was huge in proportions; it no longer told of a single spoon, but of all the silver of the Lamonica house.
Now, as the weather was beautiful and the roses in the loggia had commenced to bloom, and two canaries were singing in their cages, the neighbours detained one another at the windows for the sheer pleasure of chattering about the season with its soothing warmth. The heads of the women appeared amongst the vases of basil, and the hubbub they made seemed especially to please the cats in the caves above.
Donna Cristina clasped her hands and cried, “Who could it have been?”
Donna Isabella Sertale, nicknamed “The Cat,” who had the stealthy, furtive movements of a beast of prey, called in a twanging voice, “Who has been with you this long time, Donna Cristina? It seems to me that I have seen Candia come and go.”
“A-a-a-h!” exclaimed Donna Felicetta Margasanta, called “The Magpipe,” because of her everlasting garrulity.
“Ah!” the other neighbours repeated in turn.
“And you had not thought of her?”
“And did you not observe her?”
“And don’t you know of what metal Candia is made?”
“We would do well to tell you of her!”
“That we would!”
“We would do well to tell you!”
“She washes the clothes in goodly fashion, there is none to dispute that. She is the best laundress that dwells in Pescara, one cannot help saying that. But she holds a defect in her five fingers. Did you not know that, now?”
“Once two of my doilies disappeared.”
“And I missed a tablecloth.”
“And I a shift shirt.”
“And I three pairs of stockings.”
“And I two pillow-cases.”
“And I a new skirt.”
“And I failed to recover an article.”
“I have lost——”
“And I, too.”
“I have not driven her out, for who is there to fill her place?”
“Silvestra?”
“No! No!”
“Angelantonia? Balascetta?”
“Each worse than the other!”
“One must have patience.”
“But a spoon, think of that!”
“It’s too much! it is!”
“Don’t remain silent about it, Donna Cristina, don’t remain silent!”
“Whether silent or not silent!” burst out Maria Bisaccia, who for all her placid and benign expression never let a chance escape her to oppress or put in a bad light the other servants of the house, “we will think for ourselves!”
In this fashion the chatter from the windows on the loggia continued, and accusation fled from mouth to mouth throughout the entire district.