"Yes," he went on, lowering his voice, and standing before his mother, "your wanderings are finished. Let us talk, crying is quite useless. You ought to be happy now you've found a good son who will pay you good for evil. If it's to be in proportion, you may expect a great deal of good! I tell you, you must not leave this, till I order it; I. Do you see? Do you see?" he repeated, again raising his voice and slapping his chest. "I am master now. I'm no longer the child whom you cruelly deceived and deserted. I'm no longer the piece of rubbish which you threw away. I'm a man now, and I shall know how to defend myself, yes, to defend myself. I shall know how, because you've never been anything but an offence to me. You've been killing me day by day; betraying and mining me. Do you understand? destroying me as one destroys a house or a wall, stone by stone—thus!"
He made the gesture of throwing down an imaginary wall, stooped, sweated, as if oppressed by some actual physical force. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, as he looked at the weeping woman his anger cooled, disappeared. He was oppressed as by frost. What was this woman he was reviling? That bundle of rags, that creeping thing, that beggar, that being without a soul? Was she capable of understanding what he was saying, what she had done? What could there be in common between him and this unclean creature? Was she really his mother? She? And if she was, what did it mean? What did it matter? The mother is not the material woman who gives to the material light, a material being, fruit of a moment's pleasure, and then flings it out into the street, or on to the knees of the perfidious seducer who has made it be born! No, that woman there was not his mother; she was not a mother at all, even unconsciously. He owed her nothing. Perhaps he had no right to reprove her, but neither was it his duty to sacrifice himself for her. His mother should have been Aunt Tatàna, or Aunt Grathia; even Maria Obinu, even Aunt Varvara, even Nanna the drunkard, anyone except that cowering creature who stood before him.
"I'd have done better to leave her alone as Aunt Grathia advised," he thought. "Perhaps I'd better let her go her own way. What does it matter to me? No, she does not matter to me at all."
Olì wept on.
"Have done," he said coldly, but no longer angrily; and he turned to the widow, signing to her to administer some consolation and enforce quietness.
"Don't you see she's frightened!" murmured Aunt Grathia, as she passed him moving to Olì's side.
"Come, come!" she said, tapping the poor thing on the shoulder, "Have courage, daughter, have patience. Crying's no good! He isn't going to eat you. After all, you know, he's the son of your womb. Come! come! Take a little coffee; after that you'll be able to talk. Do me the favour, son Anania, to go out for a little. Then you'll be able to speak better. Go out, jewel of gold!"
He did not move. Olì, however, controlled herself somewhat, and when Aunt Grathia brought the coffee she took it, trembling, and drank avidly, looking about her with eyes still frightened, yet sometimes shot with gleams of pleasure. Like all Sardinian women she loved coffee, and Anania, who had inherited the taste, looked at her with some sympathy. He seemed to be watching some wild shy animal, a furtive hare nibbling the grapes in a vineyard, trembling with enjoyment, and with fear of surprise.
"More?" asked Aunt Grathia, bending down and speaking as to a child. "Yes? No? If you'd like some more, say so. Here, give me your cup. Get up. Come and wash your eyes, and be quiet. Do you hear? Come, girl!"
Olì got up, aided by the old woman, and went straight to the water tub, as she had been accustomed to do twenty years earlier. First, she washed her cup, then herself, drying her face with her ragged apron. Her lips twitched, sobs still swelled her bosom; her red and encircled eyes, enormous in the shrunken face, shunned the cold gaze of her son.