The widow still watched him. She saw his face ghastly, his lips pale and contracted. She shook her head. He continued—
"But why did no one tell me? There are some things one has a right to know. The driver of the coach, for instance—didn't he know?"
"Perhaps. She might have told you herself; but no, she's afraid of you. When she came here for the Feast—she and that wretched blind man who made her lead him about and then deserted her—no one here recognised her. She seemed so old, she was so ragged, so stupefied by poverty and fears. I hardly knew her myself. The blind man had some horrid nickname for her. But she confided in me—only in me. She told me her whole sad story, and conjured me never to tell you a word about her. She's afraid of you."
"Why is she afraid?"
"She's afraid you'll put her in prison, because she deserted you. She's afraid of her brothers too; they have the railway Cantoniera at Iglesias."
"And her father?" asked Anania, who had never thought of these distant kinsmen.
"Her father has been dead many years. He died cursing her; at least that's what she said. She says it was his curse which destroyed her."
"I see. She must be mad. But what has she been about all these years? How has she lived? Why didn't she get some work?"
He seemed calm, almost indifferent. His questions seemed a matter of curiosity, faint curiosity, which allowed his thought to return to other affairs. Indeed at that moment he was thinking what he must do. If he was sorry for his mother's miserable condition, he was still more distressed by the consequences which would follow from his recovery of her. The widow raised her finger and said solemnly—
"It's all in the hands of God. Son, it's a terrible rod which goads us and pushes us. Didn't my husband intend to work and to die in his bed, praise the Lord! Well, it was just the same with your mother! Of course she would have liked to work and to live honestly. But the rod pushed her on."