II.
The Princess Caracciolo, the great benefactress of the poor, the aged, and the children, presided. She reigned in the Hall of Maria Carolina, where the ladies of the jury were assembled, with the mingled air of regal hauteur and amiable piety peculiar to her. An ascetic pallor had left her cheeks colourless and her lips faded; while her person retained the seductive grace of the woman who had loved, and loved to be beautiful. She had left her own poor and her children, for the sake of these other children. The thirty ladies had, with one voice, elected her as their president. There was only one man, the secretary, among them—a professor, a pedagogue, saturated with the principles of Froebel and of Pick; a bald, ambiguous-looking, and perfectly innocuous being. The ladies of the jury sat in a circle, on brocaded couches, where the most opposite types were brought into juxtaposition. Three German teachers had come from Naples: one, tall, thin and brick-coloured, with her hair in a green net; another, older, stout, florid, and dressed in black; the third was a deal plank, with a waxen head stuck on the end of it; all three had gold spectacles and guide-books. They were talking, with animation, to each other, in their own language, the deal plank ejaculating rapid ja’s by fits and starts. Then there were the Directresses of the Institutes of Caserta, Santa Maria, and Maddaloni; all frills and cheap trinkets, black silk dresses, starched collars and light gloves. A couple of professors’ wives, of the genus that teaches, brings children into the world, and does the cooking. They had pale, emaciated faces, were flat where they should have been round, and protuberant where they should have been flat. Then eight or ten wealthy ladies from the neighbourhood, provincial aristocracy or plutocracy, wives of landed proprietors or communal councillors; with bored, inexpressive faces, and toilets that had come from Naples, some being worn awkwardly and others with supreme elegance. Among the notabilities were the Contessa Brambilla, a fresh-looking young woman, with perfectly white hair and very bright eyes; the illustrious poetess Nina, small, fragile and vivacious as a grain of pepper; the wife of the Member for Santa Maria, a calm austere woman, with full pensive eyes. All these ladies inspected each other with a curiosity they endeavoured to dissemble, while they discussed the relative merits of hand-made stockings, hand-stitched shirts, and darns in felt. Some of them carried special communications to and fro from the presidential platform.
Caterina was the most silent of them all; she was reading, or pretending to read, in her little note-book. It was a present of the day before from her husband; on its morocco binding was the name Nini. Andrea had become more tenderly affectionate of late, and in this tenderness she sunned herself with devout collectedness and the absence of demonstration that characterised her. When they were alone, Andrea would take her on his knee or carry her round their room in his arms, murmuring “Nini, Nini,” ever “Nini,” while he kissed her. And it sometimes happened that on these occasions his voice trembled from emotion; he no longer laughed his noisy laugh that used to make the house ring with its mirth. Perhaps it was because of the guests who had been with them for the last fortnight. Caterina had long known that Andrea’s character had all the delicacy of a woman’s. In the presence of those two sickly beings, Alberto, a martyr to his cough, and Lucia, a prey to latent or pronounced nevrose, Andrea restrained the exuberance of his perfect health. When he went out he abstained, from delicacy, from kissing Caterina in their presence; for Alberto never kissed Lucia in public. Perhaps that was why Andrea made such enthusiastic love to her when they were alone, to make up for all the time they passed in a friendly partie carrée.
Caterina was not less bored than the other eight or ten ladies of her set. She could not appreciate the needlework exhibits: stockings in coarse, yellowish thread, knitted with rusty needles; shirts covered with the fly-marks accumulated during the six months they had been in hand, sewn with big, inexpert stitches, ill-cut and folded in coarse material; interminable productions in every kind of crochet, darns done with hair, miracles of patience, that made her sick. The exhibits had been sent in in heaps, badly arranged and catalogued, from rural schools, in which the teachers laboured, almost in vain, to teach the use of the needle to poor fingers hardened by the use of the spade—rural schools that can neither provide needles, thread, irons, nor material wherewith to work. Caterina with her instinctive love of pure, fine, sweet-smelling linen, felt a sort of physical disgust in inspecting these objects of dubious whiteness. Besides, what did she know about it? These humble accomplishments had not been taught her. She felt her own ignorance, and offered up inward thanks that it had saved her from the vice-presidency of a district.
Meanwhile the meeting continued in academic form, in discussion that was at once official and colloquial. The vice-presidents read lengthy accounts of their own districts, and insisted on prizes being distributed to everybody: the poetess suggested buying materials for those pupils who were too poor to do so for themselves: the professor read letters of sympathy and adhesion from pedagoguish clubs and committees; but Caterina heard not a word of it all. There was the cook, who did just as he chose lately. Since Lucia and Alberto had come to pass the villa season with her, Caterina was more particular than ever as to her table. Those two were so delicate; they needed strong bouillon and light dishes; quite a different diet from Andrea’s, which was also hers. She and Andrea ate underdone meat and refreshing salads; and the fish question was a serious one at Caserta, an inland town, where the fish had to be sent from Naples and Gaeta, and was not always fresh. One day, in fact one evening, Caterina had sent Peppino, a labourer, to Naples, for soles; her two guests often partook of this delicate, innocuous fish. And now, what with official entertainments, banquets, and hotels filled to overflowing, the market was cleared out in a moment.
Mouzu Giovanni, with whom she held a consultation every morning, shook his head doubtfully on the slightest provocation, saying sceptically:
“If we can get any! If there is any in the market! If it isn’t all gone.”
This was the difficult question which Caterina was debating, while the Princess Caracciolo requested the ladies to proceed to the election of a vice-president, who in one report would combine those of six divisions. Caterina was in continual fear of not having sufficiently mastered the study of Lucia’s tastes, poor nervous creature that she was, whose digestion was completely destroyed. She had arranged a pretty, fresh, airy room for her—hung with Pompadour cretonne, a room full of pretty nicknacks, to please her. But she believed that in secret Lucia hankered after her prie-dieu, which she had taken away from her father’s house to her own in Via Bisignano. One afternoon, when Alberto and Andrea had gone out riding, Caterina had entered the room and found Lucia on her knees before a chair, just as she used to kneel at school. If she could but arrange with Alberto to send Peppino to Naples to fetch the prie-dieu, what a pleasant surprise for Lucia! It could surely be managed without much difficulty, and it would give her so much pleasure! Ah, she must remember to write to Naples for good tea—Souchong; for Lucia said that from September on she could only drink tea in the evening: coffee was too exciting for her nerves. The question was whether she should write to Caflish or to Van Bol for Souchong; Andrea would know; he was always well posted in such matters.
“Signora Lieti, will you come and vote?” broke in the Princess Caracciolo, gently.
Caterina, scarcely realising what she was doing, wrote the first name that occurred to her on her script, which she then rolled up and dropped in the crystal bowl. Looking at her little gold watch, she returned to her place. It was getting late; they had been there, losing their time, for nearly three hours.
Elsewhere, at home for instance, she could have employed it usefully. The washerwoman had brought home an enormous pile of washing, and Caterina never allowed it to be ironed until she had carefully examined it and ascertained where a button or a tape was missing. The linen was new, but she suspected the washerwoman of using potash, because of certain tiny holes she had discovered therein. She had taxed her with it, and the woman had replied that she was incapable of such deception, and that all she used was pure wood-ash and soap.
At last there was a stir in the meeting. The result of the voting was uncertain; it was even remarkable for divergence of opinion. Each lady appeared either to have given her vote to herself or to the person who happened to be sitting next her. The Princess read out each scrip with the same indulgent smile. She was a woman of unerring tact, who saw and noted all that befell in her presence. She requested the ladies to do their voting over again, and to make up their minds to one name, so that some result might be attained. They then formed into groups; the Colonel’s wife went from one juror to the other, talking to each in an undertone.
“Signora Lieti, would you like to vote for the Member’s wife? We ought to get an unanimous vote.”
“I will vote for any one you please. Will the meeting last much longer?”
“Don’t talk about it; it’s torture. To-day I am supposed to be at home to the superior officers, and my husband is there waiting for me, and I shall find him furious. Shall we decide on that name?”
“I am quite of your opinion.”
Andrea, Alberto, and Lucia were walking up and down the agricultural show. They had driven over to Caserta after luncheon, leaving Caterina in the Hall of the Didactic Jury, and promising to call for her soon. That day Alberto had declared that he felt perfectly well and strong, and he intended to see everything. Lucia, on the contrary, happened to be in a bad humour; still she had vouchsafed a smile of melancholy joy when the news was broken to her. Andrea was happy in his summer garments—a great relief to him after the evening attire which had sat so heavily on him the day before. He felt at his ease, free and content, and frequently addressed himself to Alberto. Lucia, walking between them, listened in silence. They stopped before everything of interest—she longer than her companions—so that she did not always keep up with them.
“Are you in low spirits to-day?” queried Andrea at last.
“No, no,” she replied, shaking her head.
“Do you feel ill?”
“Not worse than usual.”
“Then what is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing ... is too little.”
“It is nothing that spoils my life for me.”
“Don’t ask her questions,” said Alberto to Andrea, as they went on in front; “it’s one of her bad days.”
“What do you do when she is in one of her bad days?”
“Nothing. If she doesn’t care to speak, I ask her no questions; if she speaks, I don’t contradict her. It’s the least I can do for her. Do you realise the sacrifice she has made in marrying me?”
“What an idea!”
“No, no; I am right. She is an angel, Andrea, an angel! and a woman at the same time. If I could but tell you.... No lemons or oranges here, are there, Andrea?”
“No, Alberto. You must know that the soil is unfavourable to them. Besides, we are too far inland; they thrive well along the coast. Have you many at Sorrento?”
“Oh, a good many; and, sai, they yield six per cent. free of income-tax, while other produce only yields two and a half.”
Lucia broke in with her faint, dragging intonation:
“Alberto, why don’t we build a villa at Sorrento?”
“Eh! It wouldn’t be a bad plan. I have thought of it sometimes myself; but building runs away with time and money....”
“Not a palace; no big useless edifice. What would be the good of it? But a microscopic villa, a nest for us two, with three or four rooms flooded with sun; a conservatory, and an underground kitchen that would not destroy the poetry of the house; no dining-room, but a porch hung with jasmin and passion-flowers; an aviary, where singing-birds would pipe and birds of Paradise hop from branch to branch—and go together, we two alone, into that fragrant land, washed by that divine sea, and stay there together, apart from the world: thou restored to health, I dedicating myself to thee....”
She said all this to Alberto, looking the while at Andrea, who was rather embarrassed by such a demonstration of conjugal affection. He pretended to be immersed in the study of onions, but not one of the slow, chiselled, seductive words escaped him.
“You are right; it would be delightful, Lucia. We will think about it when we get back to Naples. Oh! we really must build this nest. But where do you find these strange notions that would never occur to me? Who suggests them to you?”
“The heart, Alberto. Shall we sit down?”
“By no means; I am not a bit tired. I am flourishing—almost inclined for a ride. You are tired, perhaps?”
“I am never tired,” was the grave, deliberate answer. “Sometimes, Signor Andrea, I ask myself what the people would do without bread.”
“Eh!” he exclaimed.
“If the wheat were to fail...! Who can have invented bread?”
They turned to her in amazement; Alberto attempted a joke.
“You should be able to tell us, Lucia. They must have taught you that at school, where you learnt so many things.”
“No; there is nothing that I know. I am always thinking, but I know nothing.”
She was looking singularly youthful, in her simple cotton frock, striped white and blue, confined at the waist by a leather band, from which hung a small bag; with a straw hat with a blue veil which the sun mottled with luminous spots; her chin was half buried in folds of the gauze that was tied under it.
They had halted before a large panel, a marvel of patience, whose frame consisted of dried beans strung together. Along it ran a design executed in split peas in relief; the ground of the tablet itself was in fine wheat, threaded grain by grain. On it, in letters formed of lentils, might be read: “A Margherita di Savoia: Regina d’Italia.”
“Whose work is it?” asked Lucia.
“Two young ladies, daughters of a landowner at San Leucio.”
“How old are they?”
“I think ... about twenty eight or thirty.”
“Are they beautiful?”
“Oh, no; but so good.”
“That I am sure of. Do you know that in that tablet I can decipher a romance? Poor creatures! passing their lonely winter evenings imprisoned within their own walls, and finding their recreation in this lowly, provincial, inartistic work. And perhaps, labouring over it, they sighed for unrequited love ... an affection which their avaricious parents refused to sanction. Oh! they foresaw their own existence—an old maid’s dull life. Poor picture! I should like to buy it.”
“It’s not for sale. Perhaps it will be sent to the Queen.”
By degrees her melancholy was infecting her companions by the contact of her fascinating sadness. Andrea shrugged his shoulders in an effort to regain his good humour, but he had not the power to recall it—the spring was gone. Alberto, tugging at his scanty moustache, tried to shake off the impression of fatigue that had stolen upon him.
“Is there much more to be seen?” he inquired of Andrea.
“I,” observed Lucia, “have no will of my own. Take me where you please. Do you know that I belong to the ladies’ jury for flowers? Yesterday I received the appointment.”
“These juries are an epidemic,” exclaimed Alberto. “They take our wives away from us. The Signora Caterina has become invisible; now they want to sequestrate mine. I refuse my consent.”
“Have your own way; I will do whatever you choose,” said Lucia, with a smile. “Still the flower jury is a pretty idea.... To feel the delight of colour, perfume, exquisite form: to examine the most delicate, mysterious, extraordinary of flowers, and among them to seek the beautiful, the perfect one, the flower of flowers.”
“After all, there would be no harm in your accepting ... Lucia,” suggested Alberto.
“Very well, then; I will accept for your sake—to please you, Signor Andrea, what do you think about it?”
“I am not a competent judge,” said Andrea, drily.
Lucia, as if from fatigue, then slipped her arm through his, and leant on it. He started, smiled, and then quickened his step, as if he would run away with her.... They were about to enter the hemp-room: there it was, in the rough, in bundles, then combed, spun and made up in skeins; a complete exhibition of it in every stage.
“Look, look at this mass of hemp; it is like the tresses of a Scandinavian maiden looking down from her balcony on the Baltic, awaiting her unknown lover. And this, paler still, so finely spun; might it not be the hair of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark? Oh, how full of meaning are all these things for me!”
“She sees things that people like us never see,” said Alberto, as if to himself. “Tell me, Signor Andrea, is it true that the lives of the hemp-spinners are as wretched as those of the unfortunate peasants who work in the rice plantations?”
“Not quite so bad, but nearly, Signora Lucia. Hemp-netting is done at midsummer, in the dog-days; a kind of heat that causes the exhalation of miasma. The water in which the hemp lies becomes putrid and poisons the atmosphere.”
“But do you know that what you’re telling me is odious? Do you know that our artificial life, that feeds on rural life, is an anthropophagous one? Do you know that the daily homicide.... Oh! let us go away, away from this place. This exhibition represents to me a place of human butchery.”
“There is a little exaggeration in this view of it,” he replied, not daring to contradict her flatly. “For the disease is decreasing, and fatal cases are growing less frequent. Landowners supply quinine gratis to the women who fall ill. Besides, if we think seriously on all things mundane, we shall perceive that human life needs these obscure sacrifices. Progress....”
“You are as odious as you are wicked. I cannot bear you; go away.”
She dropped his arm, as if in horror. Alberto sniggered at Andrea’s sudden discomfiture.
“Oh! poor Andrea, didn’t you know that Lucia was a humanitarian?”
“I did not know it,” he replied, gravely.
“Oh! my heart is full of love for the disinherited of life; for the poor, down-trodden ones; for the pariahs of this cruel world. I love them deeply, warmly; my heart burns with love for them.”
Andrea felt pained. He felt the weakness of Lucia’s argument, but dared not prove it to her: he felt the predominance she usurped in conversation and over those who approached her, and shrank from it as from a danger. When she had leant on his arm he had throbbed, in every vein, with a full and exquisite pleasure. When she had dropped it, he had experienced a strange loneliness, he had felt himself shrink into something poorer and weaker, and was almost tempted to feel his arm, so that he might revive the sensation of the hand that had been withdrawn. Now Alberto was laughing at him, and that irritated him beyond measure.... That little Alberto, a being as stupid as he appeared innocuous, was capable of biting, when the spirit moved him. He could be poisonous, when he chose, the consumptive insect! Why shouldn’t he crush his head against the wall? Andrea took off his light grey hat and fanned his face to disperse the mist of blind rage that clouded his brain. All three pursued their walk in silence, as if isolated by their own thoughts. The embarrassing silence prolonged itself. Alberto had an idea.
“Make peace with Andrea, Lucia.”
“No; he is a bad-hearted egotist.”
“Via, make it up. Don’t you see he is sorry?”
“Are you sorry for what you said just now, Signor Andrea?”
“Mah! ...”
“Repent at once, and we will be friends again, and you shall once more be my knight of the Exhibition. You do repent? Here is my pledge of peace.”
She separated a spray of lilies of the valley from the bunch at her waist and gave it to him. He placed it in his button-hole, and, taking her hand in his, tucked it under his arm....
“And you, Alberto, who are the mediator between us, will you have some lilies?”
“What should I do with them? I have no button-hole to this overcoat. You shall give me another pledge—a kiss ... when we get home.”
Andrea squeezed the arm that rested on his, so hard that it was all she could do to suppress a cry.
“Yes, yes,” she stammered, trembling.
“What is the average value of the Wine Show?” inquired Alberto, who possessed vineyards in Puglia which produced the noted Lagarese. This he said with the air of a connoisseur....
“Not much,” replied Andrea, with forced composure. “For the vine-growers have not all sent exhibits. You see, there are the special viticultural expositions. But there’s some good in that too.”
“Is this your wine, that the Prime Minister praised you for?”
“Yes; and there is some more over there.”
“Does this wine intoxicate, Signor Andrea?” inquired Lucia.
“That’s according; I have some of greater strength.”
“Intoxicating?”
“Yes.”
“Wine is an excellent and beneficent gift. It gives intoxication and forgetfulness,” she said, slowly.
“Forgetfulness,” murmured Alberto; “and the Signora Caterina, whom we are forgetting.”
The other two exchanged a rapid glance. They had indeed forgotten Caterina, who had been waiting for them for an hour in the Maria Carolina saloon, whence the other ladies had departed.
At table, between the roast and the salad, Lucia mentioned that she had been, and was, still in low spirits on account of poor Galimberti. The impending misfortune took her appetite away.
“What misfortune?” asked Caterina.
“His sister writes me that he begins to show signs of mental alienation.”
“Oh! poor, poor man!”
“Most unhappy being, victim of blind fate, of cruel destiny. The case is not hopeless, but he has never been quite all there. In addition to this, they are poor, and do not like to confess their poverty.”
“Have you sent money?”
“They would be offended. I wrote to them.”
A shiver ran through the circle. When they separated for the night, Andrea was pensive.
“What is the matter with you?” said Caterina, who was plaiting her hair.
“I am thinking of that unfortunate Galimberti. Let us send him something, anonymously.”
“Yes, let us send!”
“All the more ... all the more because his misfortune might befall any of us,” he added, so low that she did not hear him. A sudden terror had blanched his face.