“Good heavens, no!” exclaimed Wilbraham, who had just been congratulating himself on having got her out of the scrimmage.
“Very well,” she returned, looking at him with a smile he did not understand. “Then you must turn down that street. But don’t be too hard on Cesare.”
Chapter Two.
Donna Teresa walked thoughtfully along the Quattro Fontane. Had she been asked for her thoughts, she would have said they were wondering how Wilbraham, left to himself, would thread the difficulties of the questura, but, in truth, her mind was filled with problematic questionings as to Cesare and his character. Her eye, trained to observation, held his features pretty faithfully. He was young—probably no older than she herself—and pale, with a long face, drooping nose, and thin resolute jaw. The head was wide across the forehead, the brows reached closely towards each other, and between them that slight wrinkle was already graven which usually comes only to older men. Teresa thought, and her thought hesitated. There rose within her, as there often rose, a vast pity for the poor of Italy, over-taxed, miserable, and sometimes desperate. Italy is not the only country where bribery and corruption help the rich, and leave the poor defenceless, but in other countries the effect is not, perhaps, as yet so apparent, and as yet there seems no such awakening of the national conscience as might give hope for the future. There is revolt seething in the lower classes, the revolt of misery. What is far more dangerous is the apparent absence of the sense of righteous justice in the upper. An upright man is apt to end by being kicked out of his department.
Teresa knew something of these matters; her emotions were swift and impulsive; she had many times been reproached for them, and it was true that they had so often led her into pitfalls that she dreaded their guidance. This fear it was which gripped her when speaking to Wilbraham, and induced her to resign matters into his hand. He, she reflected, was a man, had common-sense—it looked out all over him—he had better do what he considered to be right, and she had better stand aside and let him do it. And yet if she were wrong?
She passed the great block of the Barberini, and the piazza with the Triton, went along the Sistina, and, turning up the Porta Pinciana hill, presently reached her own door. Neither entrance nor stairs were inviting, for the house was old, and had not kept pace with the general embellishment of Rome; but the porter, old also, made up in smiles what he wanted in tidiness, and now hastened to assure her that the signora and signorina were both at home. Teresa was still grave as she climbed the weary stairs, but when she had turned the key of their flat, her face grew suddenly radiant. The wonder and joy of finding herself with her own people, the intimate delight of owning something which was, to all intents and purposes, home, the exhilaration of liberty, were as strong as, or stronger than, they had been in the first breathless moments of possession, strong enough to sweep all else out of her mind.
An old lady, very small and slight, sat in a low chair knitting. She had a charming face, sweet and yet shrewd, with clear blue eyes, a rose-blush complexion, and wavy white hair. As Teresa came in, she stretched out a welcoming hand.
“So here you are, my dear child,” she said. “Sylvia is disturbed about you. Sylvia!”