CHAPTER XV
For two days Rinaldo adhered to his resolution of spending all the daylight hours at his easel, but by the third morning his depression was so great that he resolved to resume the good habit of going to early Mass. He had made one or two trespassing excursions to Fra Tommaso's loggia in the hope of catching a glimpse of Giannella at her window; but her place was empty and there was a strange air of deadness, of unnatural orderliness about the few details of the room which came within his line of vision. At once a thousand fears assailed him. Was she ill? Had she gone away? Had his diffident little greeting brought trouble upon her? He had been wildly happy over her mute answer to it, but now he began to ponder as to whether it had not some hidden meaning which he, unversed in flower language, had perhaps not understood. He must find out at once. Very likely Sora Amalia could tell him. Women set store by these pretty mysteries, and although he could hardly imagine the stout mistress of the dairy as sending a love letter in flowers to its red-faced master, yet she had been young once, and probably very sentimental. He had heard that sentimental people were usually inclined to grow fat. He would run down and ask her, very guardedly of course, whether she could help him. And then he might get some tidings of Giannella; she and Mariuccia called there almost every day for one thing or another.
So when evening drew on and the sun was sinking, a ball of smoldering fire, behind heavy clouds in the west, Rinaldo said good-night to the pink-cheeked cardinal and descended to the shop, where darkness would have reigned already but for one smoky lamp. The heat inside was suffocating, and Sora Amalia, as she put things in order for the night, mopped her heated face with the corner of a long-suffering apron which seemed to have been applied to many and alien uses during the day. The good woman brightened up at the sight of a customer so late and bustled about joyfully to get the eggs and cheese which Rinaldo made the pretext for his visit.
"The signorino does his own cooking?" she inquired; "that must be a great trouble. It is all to his advantage in one way, of course, since he would never get such miraculously fresh stuff as this at a trattoria. But it must make many steps, much work—and in this hot weather too."
"It saves me four hot walks a day," Rinaldo replied, "and also much money. Those trattori are all brigands. They have an art, most diabolical, of dressing up coarse food in disguising sauces and giving it grand names. It is like a veglione in carnival—you never know what is really under the mask. I am sure I have many a time eaten goat's flesh and paid for lamb."
"Of course you have," said Sora Amalia sympathetically. "Poverino! What you want is a nice clever little wife to see to things for you. Has your good Signora Mamma not chosen one for you yet?"
"My Signora Mamma is a long way off," Rinaldo answered, "and, to tell you a secret, I mean to choose a wife for myself. How does one go about it, Sora Amalia? I am shy, and dreadfully afraid of making some young lady very angry by my stupidity. How did Sor Augusto begin when he wanted to make love to you?"
Sora Amalia crossed her arms over her ample bosom and meditated for a moment. "I am trying to remember," she said; "ah yes—he was in the pork trade in those days, and he sent me a paper of sausages. They were a cream! I ate them all, and, capperi, but I was ill afterwards!" She chuckled at the recollection.
This was a long way off from the language of flowers. Rinaldo tried another opening. "How sweet your carnations smell," he remarked, pulling one out of the glass and dangling it before his nose. "Garofoli—what does the name mean, I wonder?"
"Married happiness," she replied promptly. "Are you looking for numbers to play in the lotto?"
He caught at the idea. "Why yes, that is just what I do want. I thought of a little ambo for next Saturday."
"Benone, here is the book," and she pulled a ragged volume out from under the counter and held it close to the light. "I will find them for you. Here is the place. Garofolo, 81, you had better write it down." Rinaldo gravely produced a pencil and scribbled on his cuff. "Now," she went on, "what is the second object?"
"I will have another flower," he said, "a geranium leaf blew on to my loggia this morning. Can you find the number for that?"
"Oh yes, here it is on the same page—geranium, 29—odd numbers both. You will draw something, signorino."
"That which is to be, will be," he replied, "but has this one a bad meaning? That might bring me ill-luck."
Sora Amalia turned to an index at the end of the worn evangel of fortune and ran her finger down a list. "I don't know that you would call it bad exactly," she informed him, "but to me it smells of misfortune. 'Constancy under suffering.'"
"Madonna mia!" cried the young man with such distress in his voice that the woman looked up in surprise. He had changed color and was leaning heavily with both hands on the counter. His adviser hastened to comfort him.
"Come! come," she said soothingly, "do not let yourself be agitated. We will choose something else for you. Sora Rosa's chair broke down with her this morning and she went plump into a basket of cherries. A marmalade it was, when she got up! I will find the number for chair."
"No, no, I will not play in the lottery this week, Sora Amalia," and Rinaldo drew the book from her hand. "Listen, there is something else I want to ask you. Did Sora Mariuccia come in this morning? I am wondering whether she got the fruit I told my vignarolo to take her yesterday. That poor man is of a stupidity sometimes."
"She said nothing about it to me," replied Sora Amalia, falling into the trap at once; "she seemed in a great hurry and pretty cross too. I asked her what was the matter, and she said Giannella was ill—oh, nothing serious, just the effect of the scirocco. Do not alarm yourself, signorino. Listen to a fool and I will tell you something." She leaned over and whispered in his ear, "It is probably a disease of the heart, and there is an easy remedy for it."
She looked so serious that Rinaldo caught her hand and cried:
"Tell me, what is it? I would walk a hundred miles to get it for her. What is the remedy?"
"A pound of sausages!" Sora Amalia broke into a peal of laughter. But Rinaldo fled, leaving his purchases behind him.
The next morning he came down to the church and hung about the street a little while in the hope of seeing Mariuccia, but she did not appear, and he climbed back to his studio and began work with a heavy heart. Later in the day he felt that he must have news of Giannella, and, reflecting that he had a perfect right to go and ask for them, even from the Professor himself, went boldly to the Palazzo Santafede and stood once more before the green door, this time with a beating heart and a certain hesitation as to ringing the bell. The notion of encountering the master of the house was extremely repellent to him. Yet that was precisely what happened, for as he put his hand out towards the bell, the door opened and Bianchi emerged in a hurry, nearly knocking down the new arrival. As each started back with protests and apologies, their eyes met, and Rinaldo felt himself again possessed by the rampant antipathy he had experienced on his first view of the Professor. No reason is asked or given for such impressions in Rome. "Sympathy," "Antipathy," these terms cover everything, and to fight against the sentiments they inspire is equal to flying in the face of Providence. So the two men glared at each other for a moment, the usual conventionalities arrested on their lips. Then Bianchi inquired coldly, "What can I do to serve you?"
"If you will so far favor me, sir," Rinaldo replied, "I would wish to ask after the Signorina Giannella. I hear with deep regret that she is unwell."
A slow flush rose to the Professor's cheeks. Who was this good-looking, well-dressed young man, and what possible right had he to be interested in Giannella's health? What had been going on, that he should even know her name? A storm of suspicion and anger swept over him at the discovery of what could be nothing but some love intrigue, hidden from him by the women with abominable cunning. His gorge rose so that he could hardly reply with any show of self-restraint.
"I ought to be much obliged for this kind interest in a member of my family"—Bianchi had fairly good manners as a rule, but he could not keep a sneer out of his tone—"especially as I have not the honor of knowing your respected name." He paused, and Rinaldo, too angry to speak, drew a card from his pocket and held it out with a stiff bow. The other took it without glancing at it and continued, "I really cannot understand why the young lady's health should concern a total stranger. Perhaps you will be so kind as to explain?"
He was still standing in the open doorway, and the impertinence of not asking the visitor to enter was too much for Rinaldo's hot little temper. "I explain nothing to persons wanting in common civility," he retorted; "I should like to speak with Sora Mariuccia."
For an answer the Professor stepped back into the passage and slammed the door. Poor Giannella, lying on her bed at the other end of the house, gave a cry of alarm and pressed her hands to her aching temples. Mariuccia came down the passage to scold her bad boy. "Have you got no heart, padrone? Have I not told you that Giannella has fever, that she must be kept quiet? And there you go, slamming the door as if you wanted to bring these old walls down on our heads. Have a little consideration for that poor sick child."
"Sick, indeed," snarled Bianchi, worked up to a frenzy by his new suspicions; "don't tell lies. There is nothing the matter with her but temper—and overeating. You give her too much meat, and that young blood makes itself into fire at this season. And you spoil her and humor her, till she thinks she is the mistress of the house already. I'll teach her better soon, and you too, and if you don't care about the lesson you can go and find another master. Do you understand?"
And he flung off into his study, slamming the door, this time with vicious satisfaction.
Mariuccia shook her fist at it. "I knew this was coming," she muttered. "You want to marry Giannella, so that she shall cook and wash and patch for you gratis, and be starved to death into the bargain. And I, who have served you twenty years and have saved you hundreds of scudi, besides nursing you when you were ill and telling everybody, for the honor of the house, fine Christian lies about your being such a good master—I am to be turned out on the pavement to go and beg for new service in my old age. No, Professore mio bello, that is not going to happen. Rest easy, my son, you will not marry a new cook and you will not get rid of the old one. Leave it to me."
Giannella was really ailing now; the improvement which had surprised Mariuccia had been short-lived. The summer was long and oppressive and the scirocco had hung over the city for weeks past, stifling and heavy, an invisible pall shutting off all freshness and sucking the life out of man and beast. The older people felt it less, but to the young it was a horrible trial; little children blanched and faded away; boys and girls moved listlessly and wearily; and to those in the full tide of their youthful vitality it was like a poison absorbed with every breath. Giannella, the child of northerners, had not the yielding wiriness of the Latin constitution. She fought against lassitude and rated herself for idleness when, in the hot hours of the day, while three-quarters of the population was wisely taking its siesta, she tried task after task and dropped them all, from sheer fatigue. And now the troubles at home, the mysterious persecutions of the padrone, Mariuccia's only too natural breakdowns of temper—all these irritations on the one hand, and on the other the disturbing happiness of first love and the fear that it ought to be renounced—these things were too much for the white northern rose set to achieve its growth in the hot south, and Giannella broke down. Fever and its attendant demon, headache, had fastened upon her; for one day she lay in the dark back room, and then, feeling that she should go crazy there, she begged Mariuccia to make up a bed for her in the little workroom where at any rate the window admitted something to breathe. So Mariuccia settled her comfortably, closed the venetians and left her to herself, only looking in from time to time to bring her a sip of lemonade or turn her crumpled pillow. The summer fever was a familiar ill, and the old woman knew just what to do for it. It would pass—she had no anxiety on that score. Her whole mind was turned to something else, the discovery of some means by which to cure her padrone of the mad caprice which was destroying the peace of the household and would inevitably break up the household itself unless something were done to snap the spell.
For a spell it was, an "incanto," a cursed enchantment, cast by that stranger who had visited him some time ago but who now came no more. Yes, she had been right in fastening the blame of it on him. Again she counted the days and weeks, with all the difficulty that besets the uneducated in any attempt at accuracy, and assured herself that she had not been mistaken. It was just two days after his first visit that the padrone had discovered that Giannella cooked polpetti so beautifully—that was the beginning of his symptoms. Yes, the strange lawyer had brought the trouble (managgia to him and the best of his little dead); he had woven the spell and, according to all the canons of black magic, he alone must remove it. The only other cure would be an exorcism in form, and Mariuccia doubted whether the master in his present naughty state of mind would admit the priest and acolyte into the house, much less stand still to be sprinkled with holy water and have the prayers said over him.
So the stranger must be found and coaxed or bribed or terrorized into undoing his work. Mariuccia had no personal fear of him and no doubts of her success, could she only lay her hand upon him. If Domine Dio would but keep His Hand on her head so that she should not choke with rage before she had said her say, that say would open the lawyer's eyes to the punishments awaiting the servants of the Fiend. Cipicchia! She would describe his future and that of all his descendants, as well as the present torture of his ancestors for his misdoing, in terms so scorching that the boldest miscreant's courage must give way under them. All the splendidly vivid descriptions of hell that she had listened to in church when some Passionist Father was invited to preach repentance during Lent had been stored up in her memory, clear and sequent, as it is only possible for spoken words to be stored in minds which have always depended on oral instruction alone. Each grizzly, terrifying detail was as much a fact to Mariuccia as the visible surroundings of her daily life.
"Oh, give him to me, Madonna mia bella," she prayed, "and I will teach him something for the good of his soul, besides obtaining the cure of my poor padroncino! Tell me a little—is it his fault? How should he, good pacific man, with his blind eyes that never seem to see anything but his books and his stones—how should he recognize the emissary of Satan, in that nice frock coat too, and with such pleasant manners? That young man would have deceived anybody except an angel or a saint. Now, if I find him, I will light a candle of three pounds' weight—think of that, how grand it will look—over there at your altar in San Severino! I will indeed, if I have to go without food for a week to buy it."
Having made this heroic promise, Mariuccia felt better. She would be shown the way—who ever appealed to the Mother of Mercy in vain? And as she went cheerily about the humble tasks which made the sum of her life, a light came to her. She and Giannella must have a man to help them, a man who could go about in the streets and public places and seek out their enemy for them, as they themselves could not possibly do. And the man was there. Who but that kind, clever Signorino Goffi, who spoke so amiably, so condescendingly, not only to Giannella—small wonder in that, she was the prettiest bit of sugar in Rome—but to poor old Mariuccia Botti, who was little accustomed to courtesy and attention and had not made a new friend in twenty years.
Yes, she would tell him all about it, and he, so instructed, so intelligent, would certainly do what was required. Here was the answer to her prayer already. She would take the rest for granted and buy that candle to-morrow. The blessed Madonna would not let a poor old woman beat her in generosity—spend all that money in vain. That would hardly be delicate, and delicacy, the most exquisite consideration for the feelings of others, was, as Mariuccia knew, one of the Divine characteristics, and could always be counted upon, if poor mortals were only willing to do their part.