I
Three days after the Easter banquet, which was traditionally a great occasion in the Lamonica household, both in its lavishness and in the number of its guests, Donna Cristina Lamonica was counting the table linen and silver service, and replacing them one by one, methodically, in drawer and cupboard, in readiness for future banquets.
As usual, she had with her, to help in the task, the chambermaid, Maria Bisaccia, and the laundress, Candida Marcanda, familiarly known as Candia. The huge hampers, filled with fine linen, stood in a row upon the floor. The silver platters and other table service gleamed brightly from the sideboard—massive vessels, somewhat crudely wrought by rustic silver-smiths, and of more or less liturgical design, like all the plate which rich provincial families hand down from generation to generation. A fresh fragrance of soapy water pervaded the room.
From the hampers Candia took tablecloths, napkins, and towels; she made the mistress take note that each piece was intact, and then passed them over to Maria, who laid them away in the drawers, while the mistress sprinkled lavender between them and entered the numbers in a book. Candia was a tall, lean, angular woman of fifty, with back somewhat bent from the habitual attitude of her calling, with arms of unusual length, and the head of a bird of prey mounted on a turtle’s neck. Maria Bisaccia was a native of Ortona, a trifle stout, with a fresh complexion and the clearest of eyes; she had a soft fashion of speech, and the light, leisurely touch of one whose hands were almost always busy over cakes and sirups, pastry and preserves. Donna Cristina, also an Ortonese, and educated in a Benedictine convent, was of small stature, with a somewhat too generous expanse of bosom, a face overstrewn with freckles, a large, long nose, poor teeth, and handsome eyes cast downward in a way that made one think of a priest in woman’s clothing.
The three women were performing their task with the utmost care, giving up to it the greater part of the afternoon. All at once, just as Candia was leaving with the empty baskets, Donna Cristina, in the course of counting the small silver, found that a spoon was missing.
“Maria! Maria!” she cried, in utter dismay, “count these! There’s a spoon missing! Count them yourself!”
“But how could it? That’s impossible, Signora!” replied Maria, “let me have a look.” And she in turn began to count the small pieces, telling off the numbers aloud, while Donna Cristina looked on, shaking her head. The silver gave forth a clear, ringing sound.
“Well, it’s a fact!” Maria exclaimed at last, with a gesture of despair; “what’s to be done about it!”
She herself was safe from all suspicion. For fifteen years she had given proofs of her fidelity and honesty in this very household. She had come from Ortona together with Donna Cristina at the time of the wedding, almost as though she were a part of the marriage settlement; and from the first she had acquired a certain authority in the house, through the indulgence of her mistress. She was full of religious superstitions, devoted to the saint and the belfry of her birthplace, and possessed of great shrewdness. She and her mistress had formed a sort of offensive alliance against Pescara and all pertaining to it, and more particularly against the saint of the Pescarese. She never missed a chance to talk of her native town, to vaunt its beauty and its riches, the splendor of its basilica, the treasures of San Tommaso, the magnificence of its religious ceremonies, as compared with the poverty of San Cetteo, that possessed only one single little silver cross.
Donna Cristina said:
“Take a good look in there.”
Maria left the room to extend the search. She explored every nook and corner of the kitchen and the balcony, but in vain. She came back empty-handed.
“It isn’t there! It isn’t there!”
Then the two together tried to think, to make conjectures, to ransack their memories. They went out upon the balcony that communicated with the court, the balcony back of the laundry, to make one last research. As they talked together in loud tones, women’s heads began to appear at the windows of the surrounding houses.
“What has happened, Donna Cristina? Tell us about it.”
Donna Cristina and Maria related the occurrence with many words and many gestures.
“Lord, Lord! Then there have been thieves here?”
In a moment the report of the theft had spread through the neighborhood, through all Pescara. Men and women fell to discussing, to imagining who could have been the thief. By the time the news had reached the most distant houses of Sant’ Agostino, it had gathered volume; it was no longer a question of a mere spoon, but of all the silver plate in the house of Lamonica.
Now, since the weather was fine and roses were beginning to bloom upon the balcony, and a pair of linnets were singing in their cage, the women lingered at their windows, for the pleasure of gossiping across the grateful warmth of the outdoor air. Female heads continued to appear from behind the pots of sweet basil, and a chatter arose that must have rejoiced the cats upon the housetops.
Clasping her hands, Donna Cristina asked: “Who could it have been?”
Donna Isabella Sertale, nicknamed the Pole-cat, who had the lithe and stealthy movements of a beast of prey, asked in a strident voice: “Who did you have with you, Donna Cristina? It seems to me that I saw Candia on her way—”
“Ahah!” exclaimed Donna Felicetta Margasanta, nicknamed the Magpie because of her continuous garrulity. “Ahah!” repeated the other gossips.—“And you hadn’t thought of it?”—“And you never noticed?”—“And you don’t know about Candia?”—“We can tell you about Candia!”—“Indeed we can!”—“Oh, yes, we can tell you about her!”
“She washes clothes well, there is no denying it. She is the best laundress in Pescara, there’s no question about it. But the trouble with her is that she is too light-fingered—didn’t you know that, my dear?”
“She got a couple of towels from me once.”—“And a napkin from me.”—“And a night-gown from me.”—“And three pairs of stockings from me.”—“And a new petticoat from me.”—“And I never got them back again.”—“Nor I.”—“Nor I.”
“But I didn’t discharge her. Whom could I get? Silvestra?”
“Oh! oh!”
“Angelantonia? The African?”
“Each one worse than the other!”
“We must put up with it.”
“But it’s a spoon this time!”
“That’s a little too much!”
“Don’t you let it pass, Donna Cristina, don’t you let it pass!”
“Let it pass, or not let it pass!” burst forth Maria Bisaccia, who in spite of her placid and benign appearance, never let an opportunity pass for displaying her superiority over her fellow servants. “That is for us to decide, Donna Isabella, that is for us to decide!”
And the chatter continued to flow back and forth from windows to balcony. And the accusation spread from lip to lip throughout the whole countryside.