CHAPTER XXIII
When Domenico inquired whether the Professor's servant might come in to see her master, the physician shook his head. "Better not," he said, "the patient is very weak and nervous still, and has fever. I cannot say whether it will abate at once. It is possible he may need great care for several days. And you know what these good females are, Sor Domenico. They weep, they wring their hands, they suggest sending for the priest, and frighten the poor creature into believing he is about to expire. Also they have ancient and noxious remedies used by their great-grandmothers for sore fingers, which they will administer to typhoid cases on the sly—and throw the doctor's medicines out of the window. I have known them give a fever patient a plate of beans because he happened to fancy it! No, the Signor Professore is better without any visitors at present. Tell these women that he is improving rapidly, that he is asleep—say that I have ordered him to have two pounds of beefsteak for his dinner. They will believe anything and that will reassure them. But mind you give him nothing but the soup, and the orzata if he is thirsty. I will return this evening."
Domenico nodded comprehendingly, showed the doctor out and, when the door had closed on him, gave Mariuccia his report with a little added color and embroidery to make it more convincing. The old woman listened eagerly, and, on receiving a rather rash promise that she should see her master the next day, declared herself satisfied, but asked leave to wait until the Signorino Goffi should be dismissed by his Eminence. She had the signorina with her—Domenico bowed perplexedly to Giannella, whose status was by no means clear to him—and the streets were in a dreadful condition still, Mariuccia explained, not fit for two women alone to traverse. Domenico, all politeness, begged them to be seated, and assured them that the Signorino Goffi would rejoin them shortly; he was about to retire when another visitor entered, the lawyer De Sanctis, looking troubled and out of breath. The messenger had told him the story of the Professor's adventure and had (after the manner of Italian servants, who consider themselves and are considered a part of the family) given him a friendly warning that the Eminenza was "proprio inchieto," very much annoyed by what had happened, and would in all likelihood administer some severe reproof to the Signor Avvocato. Sor Domenico had received a terrific scolding, and it was understood in the house that but for the intercession of Don Ignazio, the Eminenza's chaplain, he and the porter and one or two others would have been dismissed on the spot. The kind-hearted fellow suggested two or three good lies as possible excuses, but De Sanctis knew that these would not pass with his clear-sighted patron. He must take his scolding as best he might—and revenge himself for it some day by discrediting Bianchi with the Cardinal. That would be easy enough, as things stood.
He was being conducted through the sala to await his turn elsewhere, when he caught sight of Giannella. He halted, looked again at her and her companion, and whispered to Domenico that he had a word to say to the young lady; there was no need to wait for him; he would be in the room beyond when the Eminenza should condescend to send for him. And Domenico, glad to be dismissed, hurried off to attend to his many duties.
Then De Sanctis came towards Giannella with a pleasant smile of recognition. "Signorina Brockmann," he said, "I fear you do not remember me," for Giannella was meeting his glance with some surprise, "yet it was I who had the pleasure of bringing you the news of your accession to fortune some little time ago. How easily we become accustomed to agreeable things! You have perhaps forgotten that you were not always rich."
Giannella had risen from her seat when he began to speak, but her face was grave and cold. There was a touch of familiarity in his tone which offended her. As he continued, however, her expression changed to one of blank incomprehension. It was patent to De Sanctis that Bianchi had never told her about her inheritance. The shabby dress, the running out on mean errands, the discrepancies which had puzzled him, were explained now. He had not had long to wait for his pretty little revenge. Here was a weapon with which to turn the Cardinal's just wrath in quite a new direction. He smiled on the girl gratefully for providing him with it.
"I remember you perfectly, sir," Giannella said at last, "but I do not understand to what you allude. There is a mistake. You must be thinking of some other person."
Neither of them had noticed Mariuccia, who, through the colloquy, had been staring at the lawyer with an ominous frown. She remembered him, she recognized him, the visitor to whom she had wished twenty thousand apoplexies in the last three months.
Pushing Giannella aside she came before him, her eyes like fiery gimlets boring for the truth—a rough-tongued, hard-handed Nemesis prepared to chastise the disturber of household peace. "Ah, it is you!" she began in a scornful growl, "Now perhaps you will tell me what wickedness it was that you put into my poor padrone's head when you came to see him? Till that day he was an angel, good, pacific, regulated, thinking only of his studies, his blessed archæology and his bits of stones, asking only that his house should be quiet and his meals punctual and cheap. Never did he require more of us two poor creatures than that—and as for matrimony—he would have run away if anybody had had the temerity to speak to him of such folly. What should he want with a wife at fifty-five, when he never wanted one at the proper time? You come, Master Lawyer, and a thousand caprices come with you and make an earthquake in his poor head! This child and I have had no rest! He wants to marry the poor little thing, marry her, with the clothes she stands up in, a girl without a penny, who already works for him without wages, as if she were my daughter and not a lady born. Did you tell him, O assassin, that she is big enough and strong enough to do the work of two? Does he want to send me away after twenty years' service, to save my miserable wages—all that she and I have in the world—and make her his wife so that she will have to work for him, gratis, forever? Ah, that was it, was it? You said to him, 'Sor Professore mio, why feed two females and pay one when you need only feed one and pay her nothing? That old strega, Mariuccia, will soon be aged and of little use. Giannella knows how to do everything now. Marry her, so that she can live alone with you, and get rid of the other at once.' Yes, that is what you advised, infidel, imprudent," thundered the enraged seeress, "and you have committed a damnable sin, for which the devil who taught it to you shall kick your soul and the souls of all your ugly little dead about in hell for a thousand years! Madonna mia, how could such wickedness enter a man's heart?"
During this long impassioned address De Sanctis had stood quite still, never taking his eyes from his adversary's face till she stopped, gasping for breath, with clenched hands that seemed twitching to get at his throat. Giannella was clinging to her arm and had been keeping up a stream of remonstrances and entreaties that she would cease to insult the gentleman, would refrain from making such a scandalous uproar in the Cardinal's house. But all to no purpose. Mariuccia shook her off as a wolfhound would shake off a spaniel, and only paused, as it seemed, to find breath and inspiration for another tirade.
De Sanctis had allowed her to say her say, for every word she uttered only made the Professor's perfidy more plain; now his legal integrity was sitting in judgment on the offender, while his personal grudge against the man fed joyfully on the proofs of his double dealing. Having learned all that he wished to know, he spoke to Mariuccia, angrily enough. "You are a silly, ignorant woman, and you have been saying things for which you will beg my pardon on your knees! You think you know what I came to say to your master, do you? Well, listen, and never again, so long as you live, dare to insult an honorable and innocent person with vile suspicions. Yes, I thought the Professor was like myself, an upright man, a man to be trusted. I thought he had been the lifelong friend and helper of this young lady. And, as she was still under age, I placed in his hands the wonderful fortune which, largely through my disinterested efforts in discovering her, had come to her from her father's brother in Denmark. Ah, you tremble, you turn pale. Yes, that was what I came to tell Signor Bianchi—and the brigand has never informed her of it—that Giannella Brockmann had become a rich girl with an income of two thousand scudi, left her by her uncle, two thousand big silver scudi every year, all for herself; that she is no longer obliged to live on charity, but is now a young lady with a dowry that will ensure her a good husband and a comfortable establishment whenever she chooses. I came as the bearer of this beautiful news—and you insult me as if I were an executioner!"
The last part of this speech was lost on his audience. Mariuccia had sunk back on a chair, her face gray with emotion, and Giannella was kneeling beside her, covering her gnarled hands with kisses and crying through a rain of happy tears, "Mariuccia, do you understand? I am rich, rich, and now I can repay you for all your goodness to me. You shall have clothes, shoes, meat, old wine—a new bed for your poor tired body, with soft blankets—two thousand scudi—every year, for always? Oh, you shall have a gold chain as thick as my finger and earrings with pearls as big as figs. Oh, what have I done that such happiness should come to me, Madonna mia Santissima—I shall die of joy."
Not a thought for herself, nor even for Rinaldo; not a glimmer of resentment against Bianchi; only the passion of gratitude nearly breaking her heart because it could be satisfied at last.
Mariuccia bent down and kissed the golden head. Then she took the girl's face in her two hands and looked into it long and silently, a light on her own that had never shone there before. She tried to speak, but could not; only, two slow tears trickled down her cheeks. Giannella put up her soft fingers and brushed them away.
"The very last you shall ever shed, Mariuccia mia," she murmured; "we know, we two, what it has been. Domine Dio, it is all over!"
Then the old woman rose to her feet and flung up her arms with a magnificent gesture of thanksgiving, like a prophetess beholding the victories of justice, the justifications of her God. "After twenty years you have heard me, Mother of Mercy!" she cried, "Protector of the fatherless, Consoler of the afflicted, blessed be your most sweet Name for ever and ever!"
De Sanctis turned away and walked to a farther window, where he stood looking out and seeing nothing. His little fabric of false values had tumbled to pieces. His shallow appreciations of human nature had scaled off like a rotten shroud from a re-risen body. His own astuteness, of which he had been so proud, Bianchi's dishonest avarice, the low aims and rabid egoism with which he credited mankind at large—these were not the spirit level by which to measure real men and women. That was set by honest hearts incapable of selfish grief or sordid joy, by Goffi, the obscure little artist, entreating his aid to obtain a penniless bride, by the girl over there, pure of worldly taint, by the ignorant old woman who had threatened him and his dead with hell. He had looked deep into the hearts of all three, and had seen into gold and crystal. Being only a prosaic Roman he did not put it so poetically. "Good folk, good kind folk," he told himself. "Beati loro! They are the happy ones. I wonder if there are many more of them in the world?"
When he looked round again he found that he was alone. No flooded streets, no hesitations of timidity, could weigh with those two rejoicing women. They were hastening to San Severino to give thanks where thanks were due.