“An actual fact!” Maria exclaimed at last with a motion of despair. “And now what are we to do?”
She was quite above suspicion. She had given proof of fidelity and honesty for fifteen years in that family. She had come from Ortona with Donna Cristina at the time of her marriage, almost constituting a part of the marriage portion, and had always exercised a certain authority in the household under the protection of the “signora.” She was full of religious superstition, devoted to her especial saint and her especial church, and finally, she was very astute. With the “signora” she had united in a kind of hostile alliance to everything pertaining to Pescara, and especially to the popular saint of these Pescaresian people. On every occasion she quoted the country of her birth, its beauties and riches, the splendours of its basilica, the treasures of San Tomaso, the magnificence of its ecclesiastical ceremonies in contrast to the meagreness of San Cetteo, which possessed but a solitary, small, holy arm of silver.
At length Donna Cristina said, “Look carefully everywhere.”
Maria left the room to begin a search. She penetrated all the angles of the kitchen and loggia, but in vain, and returned at last with empty hands.
“There is no such thing about! Neither here nor there!” she cried. Then the two set themselves to thinking, to heaping up conjectures, to searching their memories.
They went out on the loggia that bordered the court, on the loggia belonging to the laundry, in order to make a final examination. As their speech grew louder, the occupants of the neighbouring houses appeared at their windows.
“What has befallen you? Donna Cristina, tell us! Tell us!” they cried. Donna Cristina and Maria recounted their story with many words and gestures.
“Jesu! Jesu! then there must be thieves among us!” In less than no time the rumour of this theft spread throughout the vicinity, in fact through all of Pescara. Men and women fell to arguing, to surmising, whom the thief might be. The story on reaching the most remote house of Sant’ Agostina, was huge in proportions; it no longer told of a single spoon, but of all the silver of the Lamonica house.
Now, as the weather was beautiful and the roses in the loggia had commenced to bloom, and two canaries were singing in their cages, the neighbours detained one another at the windows for the sheer pleasure of chattering about the season with its soothing warmth. The heads of the women appeared amongst the vases of basil, and the hubbub they made seemed especially to please the cats in the caves above.
Donna Cristina clasped her hands and cried, “Who could it have been?”