CHAPTER X
Mariuccia regarded it as too drastic an answer to her prayers when the erring padrone returned from Ostia shivering and sneezing, his clothes covered with green mud from the excavations where he had been joyously burrowing over some valuable discoveries just made in Tiber's forgotten port. His boots were soaked—his lunch uneaten.
"Figlio mio," cried Mariuccia, all her animosity quenched in anxious pity as she opened the door and beheld him in this heartbreaking condition. "What have you been doing? But this is fatal. Domine Dio, you shake, you have fever. Animal that I was to let you go in those old boots. Come in and let me put you to bed at once."
Bianchi resigned himself to her ministrations only too gladly, and while she rolled him up in hot blankets and surrounded him with fortifications of scalding bricks, Giannella, all undeterred by the late hour, rushed off to the apothecary for quinine and other potent drugs. She had never found herself in the street after dark before, but charity gave her wings and she was whipped along by remorse. Suppose the poor padrone were to die? And she had been feeling so cross with him lately, had been so ungrateful for the little attentions which he had been trying to show her and which probably only her own stupid conceit had distorted into anything more alarming than kindness and condescension. Did man but know it, he has only to catch a cold in the head to make the women of his establishment forget all the grumpinesses and tyrannies of years. Poor darling, he wasn't well all the time! What a shame to have resented shortcomings which one ought to have known were but symptoms of approaching indisposition. Quick, cosset him, doctor him, and in a few days perhaps the gentle invalid will feel well enough to put his pretty foot on our necks again.
The Professor basked contentedly enough in the excitement he had caused, and by the end of the second day was feeling much better. Mariuccia having reduced him to a state of apparent subjugation and tucked him up in his blankets with fearful threats of what would overtake him if he put so much as a hand out of bed, hoisted a basket of wet linen on her head and climbed up to the roof where each tenant was allowed a small space for drying clothes.
Giannella had been feeling unusually light-hearted all day. The padrone was better—what a comfort. And the house was peaceful; there had been no more "little arguments" between him and Mariuccia. Then the morning had been so lovely when she slipped out to the five o'clock Mass, a summer morning with fragrance everywhere, as if ghostly violets and roses had been dancing about the streets all night and had left their sweetness behind them when they fled at the coming of the sun. This was not her own idea; Giannella could not be called imaginative; she had found it in a book of very sentimental poems which somebody had most inappropriately presented to the Professor. But it struck her as pretty, and she had remembered it as she crossed the cool, empty piazza in the summer dawn. Then it had been most consoling to see a young man devoutly following the Mass. Young men were not in the habit of coming to church on weekdays; Mariuccia said they were too lazy or too frivolous. Mariuccia had a bad opinion of men in general, and Giannella accepted it, as she accepted most axioms enounced by her elders, in unruffled good faith. But here was living contradiction to such pessimism, a sprightly-looking young gentleman, as well dressed as Don Onorato himself, kneeling piously on a pretty silk handkerchief from the "Deus in adjutorium" to the "Ite Missa Est." Giannella was sure that she had never turned her head to look at him, and was a little puzzled to know how she had ascertained all these attractive details. True, she had dropped her rosary—very stupidly—and he had picked it up and returned it to her with grave politeness but without attempting to meet her glance of thanks. Ah, how comforting it was to a Christian heart to witness such faith and piety. The world was perhaps not so evil after all. Mariuccia, and the dear nuns who used to rail at it, and Padre Anselmo, who told her to give special thanks for her separation from it, had never seen a good, handsome young man saying his prayers!
So Giannella, singing softly to herself, was moving about, tidying up the kitchen (still redolent with damp soap from Mariuccia's washtubs) when she heard the Professor calling for her. She ran to his door and looked in. There was very little of the Professor to be seen except a pair of mournful eyes and a long nose; all the rest was blanket. "Please give me my spectacles," he whispered hoarsely, "she took them away, and I am like one blind. They are over there on the bureau. Santa Pazienza! May I die of an apoplexy if I am ever so stupid as to catch cold again. She makes me do my purgatory, that woman."
Giannella brought the spectacles and respectfully placed them on the sufferer's nose; he beamed at her through them gratefully. Then he asked for something else, the Report of the Archæological Society, there on the chair, under the coat. She handed it to him and was about to move away when he slipped the pamphlet under his pillow and, forgetting all his promises, put out a hand to detain the girl, saying, "Wait a moment, Giannella. I have something to say to you—we may not be alone again."
Giannella gazed at him in surprise, "Well, Signor Professore?" she asked.
"It is this," he said; "but pray sit down. I fear you will be agitated. Calm yourself, my child, and be prepared for a beautiful piece of news."
He had never spoken to her so kindly before. What was coming? Something very pleasant, certainly. Giannella carefully removed the coat and sat down on the only chair, directly facing him, an expectant smile on her pretty face.
The Professor coughed and took a sip of barley water. "Giannella, you are a good girl," he said solemnly, "and you are about to be rewarded. Now—control your feelings—I intend to make you my wife."
Giannella sprang to her feet with a shriek. He smiled indulgently. "I warned you not to give way to emotion," he continued; "of course you could not figure to yourself that this good fortune awaited you. There, there, Giannella—be calm, I entreat you."
The girl's face had turned crimson, she appeared about to choke. Then she hid her face in her hands and turned away her head over the back of the chair. Her shoulders were heaving convulsively.
The grating of a key in the lock of the front door brought the interview to a sudden end. "Run," whispered Bianchi, ducking down under his coverings with an expression of terror, "she is coming. Not a word to her. Run, you can thank me another time."
Giannella was gone already, flying to the most distant corner in the house, the corner behind her embroidery frame. There she stood, close in the angle of the wall, her apron over her face, trying to suppress all sound of the hysterical laughter which shook her from head to foot.
Mariuccia's war-horse tread resounded on the bricks of the kitchen. She called out through the open door, "Are you there, Giannella? Eh, but the roof is scorching to-day. I thought the soles of my shoes would come off." Receiving no answer she came and peered into the work-room, saw the bowed figure in the corner, rushed to the girl and tore the apron away from her face. "Giannella, what is the matter?" she cried. "For the love of Heaven tell me what has happened."
"Go to the padrone, quick," gasped Giannella, looking up at her with scarlet cheeks and tear-drowned eyes. "Oh, mamma mia, I shall die of laughing—it hurts—speak gently to him—he has gone mad."
Mariuccia turned pale and her jaw fell. "Madonna Santissima," she whispered, "give me strength. Has he got a knife?" In imagination she saw the Professor leaping wildly round his room seeking for someone to kill.
"No, no, he is quiet—there is no danger, but he is quite mad, I fear. It must be the fever, I suppose."
"Leave it to me," Mariuccia exclaimed. "I will give him a calmante. Where is the camomile?"
A few minutes later she entered his room on tiptoe, inwardly cursing the "scrocchio," the bit of hard-creaking leather which the shoemaker always put into the soles of the boots (and charged extra for, the brigand!) to make them sound new to their dying day. Bianchi was pretending to be asleep. His nurse came and leaned over him anxiously. He was breathing with suspicious regularity, and the confiscated spectacles were still on his nose.
"He has been getting up," she whispered to herself, "and the poor boy has caught a chill. It has sent the blood to his head. But he shall perspire, I will put on leeches—it will pass. Padroncino," she murmured coaxingly, "wake up for a moment. Drink this." And she held the scalding cup to his lips.
The invalid was astute enough to see his advantage in her anxiety. He opened his eyes wearily and gazed up at her. "I do feel very ill," he said, "and it is less from the cold I caught than from the agitation I suffered before going to Ostia. Oh, my nerves are in a terrible state. I was not fit to go—after you had made me that scene. My poor Mariuccia, you must never so upset me again. It is not safe. I do not know now whether I shall ever recover from the shock."
"What do you feel?" she asked anxiously. "Is it the head? Oh, you break my heart. Rash beast that I was to let my evil tongue so disturb you."
"And all for nothing," continued the patient reproachfully. "What had I done? Merely proposed an act of benevolence—which I intended to follow up with one of noble generosity. But your ignorant impetuosity shall not turn me from my purpose. If I recover from this terrible illness, this fire in my head, this numbness in my limbs, then, my good Mariuccia, you shall carry the burden of maintaining Giannella no longer. That pertains to me in future. Have you not realized that I am going to marry her?"
"Dio mio," wailed the old woman, "the girl is right, the fever has gone to his head." Then, forcing herself to be calm for the sick man's sake, she said in soothing tones, "Padroncino mio bello, you are agitating yourself again. You must not talk any more. Go to sleep—and when you are better you shall say all that is in your mind. There, are you comfortable?" She smoothed the pillows, drew up the coverings, and left him in the darkened room.
Outside in the passage she leaned back against the wall, faint with fear and remorse. It was all her fault. Who could say how this dreadful visitation would end? In a fatal illness, or in permanent derangement of that illustrious understanding? She would fetch a doctor at once—God send she should not have to go for the priest!
There was an anxious consultation between the two women over the kitchen table that night. The doctor, put in possession of the facts, had diagnosed the distemper as "rabbia rientrata" (unvented anger), one of the most dangerous known to the faculty. How many regrettable losses to society had it not caused! And how unfortunate that the aid of science should not have been invoked at once. What could one do after well-intentioned but ignorant persons had taken it upon themselves to treat it for forty-eight hours?
Mariuccia and Giannella collapsed under this bitter reproach, and it was only when the afflicted Professor had been finally lured to slumber by innocent opiates of orange-flower water that Giannella recovered sufficiently to remark to her companion, "I do not think we really made so many mistakes, after all. What did the doctor order but just what you had done? Leeches, quinine, a sedative—I wonder if he knows so very much more than you do?"
"Tell me, Giannella?" Mariuccia asked, lifting her head and looking at the girl curiously, "I had not time to ask you before—what did the padrone say to you? What was it that first showed you he was delirious?"
Giannella thought for a moment, then she replied, while the lamplight showed a gleam of rebellious amusement in her eyes, "He told me that he had a piece of beautiful good news for me, and I sat down to hear it—and then he said he—he intended to marry me. I could not help laughing. He looked so funny, and the thought was such craziness. But I am sorry—I should have had more heart."
Mariuccia reflected; then she shook her head sagely. "This craziness has been coming on for a long time, I believe," she said, "it is not all the result of our little argument the other day. I must tell you now—though I did not mean to—that we were talking about you then, Giannella. He said he wished to pay for your board—he, who counts his coins as if they were beads of a rosary. 'Santo Baiocco, ora pro nobis!' Proverino, it is his only fault. I ought not to speak of it now that he is in such danger. And then I was angry—and he said to me what he said to you this morning, that he intended to marry you. Now let us reason a little, figlia mia. You have been at home for over four years, and the padrone hardly seemed to see you till three months ago. He changed then, suddenly. Now have you no suspicion of what was the cause?"
"I cannot imagine," replied Giannella simply. "I thought at first that perhaps he was sorry for me because I should soon be growing old and ugly and my shoes were going to pieces—and since dear Signora Dati of good memory died—and the Princess is too busy to remember, there is no one to get me any work. But now he speaks of—marriage. What man in his right senses could wish to marry me, nearly twenty-one and without a penny?" She looked up in perplexed good faith as she asked the question, and the lamplight fell on the calm, lovely face which had so enchanted one man that he dreamed of it all night and crept down to the church morning after morning to catch another glimpse of it.
"There might be plenty," growled Mariuccia, "if they could only see you. You will be beautiful till you are a hundred, core of my heart. Now don't smother me!" for Giannella suddenly ran round the table and hugged her friend. "But the padrone is not like other men. The time has come when I must tell you what I have discovered. You are young, you saw nothing, but I saw, I understood. This bewitchment had a beginning. It came with the first visit of that stout gentleman who asked you such strange questions. Do you remember? Ah, they could not deceive me. I wish I had thought of it when he was last here. If he comes again I will ask him some questions, I can tell you. What did he want here, putting folly into my poor boy's head and disturbing the tranquillity of a Christian family? I have lived twenty-three years with that poor afflicted angel in there, and never have we had a disagreement till that fat demon, whoever he was, came to upset us all, and may his best dead suffer for it. There, it is late, go to bed, Giannella, I am going to sit up in here—the padrone may want something."