The meal at an end the chairs were pushed back and the old woman noisily assembled the dishes. Anthony's head throbbed and burned. In passing, the mother's fingers rested upon his brow. “Not too hot,” she nodded contentedly.
A consultation followed. Anthony might remain there for the night; or, if he insisted, he might drive into the city with “Nono,” who left in a few hours with a wagonload of greens for the morning market. He chose the latter, with a clumsy expression of gratitude, impatient to resume active efforts in his rehabilitation in his own mind.
“Niente!” they disclaimed in chorus.
XXXI
HE fell into an instant slumber on the hospitable heap in the corner, and was awakened while it was still dark. In the flicker of the oil lamp the old man's face swam vaguely against the night. Without the wagon was loaded, a drooping horse insecurely harnessed into patched shafts. The world was a still space of blue gloom, of indefinite forms suspended in the hush of color, sound; it seemed to be spun out of shadows like cobwebs, out of vapors, scents. A pale, hectic glow on the horizon marked the city. They ambled noiselessly, slowly, forward, under the vague foliage of trees. There was a glint of light in a passing window, the clatter of milk pails; a rooster crowed, thin and clear and triumphant; on a grassy slope by the road they saw a smoldering fire, recumbent forms.
They entered the soiled and ragged outskirts of the city—isolated ranks of hideous, boxlike dwellings amid raw stretches of clay, rank undergrowth. The horse's hoofs rang on a bricked pave, and the city surged about them. Overhead the elevated tracks made a confused, black tracing rippling with the red and white and green fire of signals. A gigantic truck, drawn by plunging horses whose armored hoofs were ringed in pale flame, passed with a shattering uproar of its metallic load. A train thundered above with a dolorous wail, showering a lurid trail of sparks into the sky, out of which a thick soot sifted down upon the streets. On either hand the blank walls of warehouses shut in the pavements deserted save for a woman's occasional, chalky countenance in the frosty area of the arc lights, or a drunkard lurching laboriously over the gutters. The feverish alarm of firebells sounded from a distant quarter. A heavy odor of stagnant oil, the fetid smoke of flaring chimneys, settled over Anthony, and gratefully he recalled the pastoral peace of the house he had left—the house hidden in its tangled verdure amid the scented space of the countryside.
They stopped finally before a shed open upon the street, where bluish-orange flames, magnified by tin reflectors, illuminated busy groups. Silvery fish with exposed carmine entrails were ranged in rows; the crisp, green spoil of the countryside was spread in the stalls—the silken stalks of early onions, the creamy pink of carrots, wine-red beets; rosy potatoes were heaped by cool, crusty cantaloupe, the vert pods of peas, silvery spinach and waxy, purple eggplant. Over all hung the delicate aroma of crushed mint, the faint, sweet tang of scarlet strawberries, the spicy fragrance of simple flowers—of cinnamon pinks and heliotrope and clover.
Anthony assisted the other to transfer his load to part of a stall presided over by a woman with bare, powerful elbows, shouting in a boisterous voice in perfect equality with her masculine neighbors.