II
All the boarders were at table when Biagio Speranza entered the dining-room, announcing gaily:
“Safe! Sound! I come from the hospital. In about three weeks we shall once more have at our table the magnificent poet. Gentlemen, I invite you to cry: Long live Giannantonio Cocco Bertolli!”
No one echoed this cry. Signor Martinelli bent his long nose over his plate. Trunfo cast a side glance, and went on eating. Signora Pentoni wept.
Cedebonis was the only one who rejoiced at sight of Biagio Speranza, who made him laugh quite as much as hygiene required, and exclaimed: “Oh, bravo! Now you must tell us all about it.”
But Biagio Speranza did not assent. He looked at the mistress of the house.
“In Heaven’s name!” implored Signora Pentoni, “leave me in peace this evening!”
Biagio Speranza glanced round at his friends, and with a gesture asked what had happened.
“Martinelli,” explained Cariolin, “has been to the hospital before you to get news, and Carolinona has learned—”
“And regrets it?” cried Biagio Speranza, feigning surprise. “Ah, excuse me, Carolinona; what ingratitude! I have seen your poet, and by a miracle restrained myself from kissing his brow. What a hero of love! He spoke to me only of you. He asked me—”
Signora Pentoni rose to her feet, convulsed; she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, tried to say “Excuse me,” but a burst of sobs smothered the words in her throat, and she rushed toward the door of her room.
Cariolin, Scossi, ran forward and stopped her; all except Cedebonis and Trunfo rose to their feet and surrounded the weeping woman.
“Rubbish! Absurd!” sneered Trunfo from the table.
But the others, all in chorus, exhorted Carolinona to be of good courage. Was she really afraid that Cocco Bertolli would compel her to marry him? Preposterous, if she did not wish to! Disturbances? But were there not the police to keep him in order? Her promise as he lay at the point of death? What promise? Oh, nonsense! He should be made to understand, willy-nilly, that she had but uttered a pious lie. No? How was that?
“See here!” Biagio Speranza cut short the discussion, becoming fervent. “Be quiet, Carolinona, I will marry you myself.” All burst out laughing.
“What is there to laugh at?” cried Speranza, in earnest. “I am speaking seriously. Are we, or are we not, gentlemen? A hawk, gentlemen, threatens this dove; I will defend her. I shall marry her, I tell you. Who wishes to wager on it?”
“I do; a thousand francs!” suddenly proposed Cariolin. And Biagio Speranza cried as promptly: “Out with your thousand francs!” Then Cedebonis too rose from the table, rubbing his hands with delight: “Excellent! Excellent! Do you wish me to hold the stakes, gentlemen?”
“Out with the thousand francs!” repeated Biagio Speranza more emphatically.
“I have not got them with me,” said Cariolin, feeling in his pockets. “But I give my word. Here is my hand on it. A thousand francs and the wedding breakfast.”
“You will lose!” affirmed Speranza, clasping Cariolin’s hand. “All of you gentlemen are witnesses of the wager: I shall marry Carolinona. Come, come, hush, my betrothed. Dry your tears, smile, look at me! Do you not like me?”
With affectionate violence he drew her fat, puffy hands from her face. Pentoni smiled amid her tears. Applause and cries of “Bravo!” broke forth. Biagio Speranza, growing more and more ardent, embraced his betrothed, who struggled: “In Heaven’s name, let me go! let me go!”
“Let the engaged couple sit side by side!” some of them proposed. “Here, here! at the head of the table!” And Biagio Speranza and Carolinona were escorted in triumph, and made to sit side by side.
Good Martinelli was confounded. His nose seemed to grow visibly. Trunfo continued to sneer. “Rubbish! Rubbish!”
“Are you jealous perhaps?” Biagio cried to him, rising to his feet, and striking his fist on the table. “Will you do me the great favor of stopping that? If you gentlemen believe that at this moment I am jesting, you are mistaken. If you think that I am committing a mad act in marrying Carolinona, I have the honor of telling you that you are crazy yourselves. I, who know my poor clay, am aware that at this moment I am wiser than I have ever been before in my life. I am a poor man, gentlemen, who, as a punishment from God, must fall in love with every beautiful woman I see. In love I at once become capable of the greatest follies. Quite different from Cariolin’s lies. Twice, gentlemen, twice I have been at the point—I shudder to think of it—at the point of really marrying. I must escape as soon as possible, at any cost, from this terrible catastrophe which continually threatens me. I profit by this moment, in which, fortunately, I am not in love, and shall marry Carolinona. A flash of genius, gentlemen. A true inspiration from heaven!”
“It is necessary to see,” objected Scossi, “whether Carolinona consents.”
Biagio Speranza turned toward his betrothed.
“Would you do me such a wrong? To such a good-looking young fellow as me? No, no; you see? My bride laughs, and the world laughs. It is settled, gentlemen!”
At this point Trunfo leaped to his feet, furiously tearing the napkin from his neck.
“Let us make an end to it once for all! This senseless, stupid jest gets on my nerves; this jest on a subject which you do not understand, and which I will tell you about, by Heaven!”
At thought of Trunfo’s matrimonial disaster there was a moment of embarrassment. All the faces became fixed in the act of laughing, then the laughter suddenly ceased.
“Pardon me,” said Biagio Speranza pacifically. “Why do you persist in believing that this is a joke of mine? I know better than you what an enormous folly it is to marry, and repeat that it is to prevent myself from committing such an act that I am marrying Carolinona.”
“The reasoning could not be more logical,” remarked Dario Scossi, again provoking all to mirth. “And I appeal to Cedebonis, professor of logic.”
“Most logical, most logical!” the latter affirmed. “Signor Speranza is, in fact, marrying so to escape the temptation of marrying.”
“Exactly!” replied Biagio Speranza. “And this is no joke. For Carolinona is seriously afraid of the poet Cocco Bertolli, and I am seriously afraid of losing my liberty some day or other. By marrying, we are both saving ourselves; she from that kind of a husband, I from a feared reality of a future wife. Married, we are both of us absolutely free to do whatever we please. She here, and I in my own home. In the eyes of the law, we have but the name in common, which is not properly a name at all, I beg you to observe, gentlemen. Speranza[1], just a common noun; I do not know what to do with it, and I cede it voluntarily. What do you say, Carolinona?”
“As far as I am concerned,” said Pentoni, smiling and shrugging her shoulders, “if you do not regret it—”
New applause, new congratulations, amid bursts of laughter.
The following day the whole city was filled with the amazing news. Biagio Speranza, stroking his fine blond beard with his fat, white hand, laughed with his limpid blue eyes, and from time to time his hand passed quickly, with a gesture habitual with him, from his beard upward and beneath his bold nose. He was most content with the great folly he was about to commit. Folly in the opinion of stupid people, be it understood. He was conscious of acting well. He had thought it over all night long, and had almost died of laughing. “Carolinona, my wife!”
Friends and acquaintances stopped him on the streets. “You are joking, then?”—“No; I mean to marry, really to marry. But as a precaution, you understand? To protect myself from taking a wife, that is all.”—“What! But you are marrying!”—“Why, yes! I shall stay in my own home; I shall do as I please. I shall only go to her home as I do now, to dine. I shall not give her anything except the price of my meals, as usual. Well?”—“And your name?”—“But if she is willing, why not? It does not seem to me such a serious thing.”
And he left his questioner planted there in the middle of the street.
He had an appointment with Dario Scossi at the pension, to go over Carolinona’s papers together. At the pension besides Scossi, a witness for the groom, he found the timorous Martinelli, a witness for the bride, who had come purposely first of all to dissuade Signora Pentoni from lending herself to this highly scandalous proceeding.
“But do you think so?” she had replied, with a sad smile. “They are merry young fellows, let them alone. They were joking, and by this time think no more of it. I, on the other hand, have not been able to close my eyes all last night, thinking of that other in the hospital.”
But at the arrival of Scossi she had been amazed.
“What is this all about? Really? Again?”
Biagio Speranza found her obstinate in her refusal.
“Oh, do not let us have any nonsense,” said he to her. “Do you wish to make me lose the thousand francs of the wager?”
“What thousand francs? Nonsense, say no more about it, Signor Biagio.”
“What?” said the latter. “Did we not come to an agreement yesterday evening? Have you repented? You are then no longer afraid of Cocco Bertolli? You will see that he will seriously wish to marry you then.”
And once more he began to discuss the terms of the bargain, and dilate upon the reciprocal advantages of this marriage, at once serious and burlesque. “We, Carolinona, should not ascribe any importance to this our marriage, is it not so? and therefore for us it is not a serious affair.”
“Now, perhaps not,” remarked Signora Pentoni. “But what if later you repent it?”
“But undoubtedly I shall repent it!” admitted Biagio. “And just when I repent it I shall feel the advantage of it. Do you understand? That is why I am taking this step.”
“You understand then?” said Pentoni in conclusion. “If I offer opposition it certainly is not for myself. What have I to lose by it? I have everything to gain and nothing to lose. While you—”
“Do not think of me,” said Biagio Speranza, cutting short the discussion. “I know what I am doing. Come, let us get on, Scossi, it is getting late. But come then, answer, Carolinona: Name (I know that), paternity—age—place of birth—state; maid, widow, nothing; it is not necessary to tell the truth on this point. But the age, yes, be accurate; I beg of you.”
“Thirty-five,” replied Carolinona.
“There now!” exclaimed Biagio, shrugging his shoulders. “Do not begin at once!”
“Thirty-five, I assure you; I was born in 1865 at Caserta.”
“Good gracious! So you are still young and tender? Oh, my dear! One would never have thought it. And—well, shall we say a maid?”
“Most assuredly, yes, sir!”
“I believe you. Let us then write to Caserta for the birth certificate. Come, Scossi, let us hasten to the City Hall for the announcement.”