“Thou. Leave me alone.”
VII.
One morning, before going out, Andrea kissed his wife, and said: “Have our boxes packed for to-night; we are going to Rome.”
“For how many days?” she asked, without surprise. She was accustomed to these sudden orders.
“A fortnight at least: plenty of linen and smart gowns. Leave the jewels at home.”
They left for Rome without announcing their departure to any one. It was like a second honeymoon. During their eighteen months of married life, neither had travelled farther than from Naples to Centurano. Caterina had all the artlessness and naïveté of a newly fledged bride; but she at once adapted herself to the change, like the well-balanced creature that she was. Andrea teased her delightedly, when he saw her head peeping out of the window at every station. He told her fabulous stories of every place they passed through; laughing heartily at her incredulity, offering her things to eat and drink, inviting her to take a turn up and down; and she parried his attacks like a child. He walked about the carriage, put his big head out of the window, bumped it against the roof, conversed with the railway officials, indulged in discussions with newsvendors, and impressed his fellow-travellers with his herculean stature. In a word, he was exuberant with health, noise, and jollity.
Caterina did not ever remember seeing him in such high spirits, especially since that inauspicious dinner. Oh! there had been a period of dreadful and furious ill-temper; the house had trembled from slamming of doors, pushing of chairs, and thumping of fists on writing-tables; to say nothing of the bursts of vociferation which had echoed throughout it,—a three days’ storm that she had succeeded in lulling by dint of silence, placidity, and submission. Then Andrea had calmed down, except for a certain nervous irritability and occasional bursts of anger, that became ever fewer and farther between. Still, he had not quite gone back to the old Andrea—the childlike, noisy, laughter-loving Andrea, overflowing with mirth and good temper—until they started on this journey. Caterina said nothing about it; but she felt as if her very heart were expanding, dilated with the pleasure of it.
In Rome, Andrea displayed a phenomenal activity. He woke early, with a smile for the rosy face that watched his awakening, and proceeded to call out his orders to all the waiters of the Hôtel de Rome; they drank their coffee in haste and went on a round of sight-seeing. Andrea was not devoted to antiquities and Caterina did not understand them; but it was a duty to see them all, if only by way of gaining an appetite for luncheon. So they continued to inspect everything, conscientiously, without neglecting a stone or sparing themselves a corner; exclaiming, with moderate enthusiasm: “Beautiful, beautiful, how beautiful!”
They amused themselves, all the same, because Caterina had never seen anything before, and because Andrea had a knack of imitating the guide’s nasal voice, pouring forth, the while, a jumble of rambling, explanatory description, in which Caterina corrected the erroneous Roman history. They returned to the hotel in a state of collapse, and dawdled through their luncheon. Then Andrea went out on important business. To-day, he had an appointment with the Under-Secretary of State; to-morrow, with a Cabinet Minister; the other day he had had matters to settle with the Director-General of the Agricultural Department. Sometimes he had two appointments on the same day; with the huge, muscular Member for Santa Maria, with the aristocratic Member for Capua, or with the hirsute Member for Teano. The conferences with the journalistic Member for Caserta—influential both as the editor of a Neapolitan paper of large circulation and as the intimate friend of the Prime Minister—were of infinite length. Then he would accompany his wife in her drive to the Villa Borghese or the Pincio, and leave her there; or to San Pietro, where there was always something to look at; and two or three times to the Ladies’ Gallery in the House of Parliament, where Caterina, who understood little or nothing of the subject under discussion, bored herself immensely, and suffered agonies of heat and thirst. She waited patiently for him to come and fetch her, with the resignation of a woman who would have waited for centuries, had she been bidden to wait. Andrea returned to her, red, hasty and flurried; blowing and puffing like a young bull, apologising for having kept her waiting so long, recounting to her all his experiences; the useless journeys to and fro, the inert functionaries, the diffident Secretary, the enthusiastic Cabinet Minister, the Members’ zeal for the honour of their constituencies. To all these details, Caterina listened with the attentiveness that delights a narrator, without a sign of weariness. And indeed the local Agricultural Exhibition was of supreme interest to them both. Andrea was President of the Committee of Promoters: he was to exhibit wheat, barley, wine, a special breed of fowls, and a new species of gourd, a modification of the pumpkin. The schools’ functions, of which Caterina was Lady Patroness, were fixed for the same epoch. There was to be a flower show for the delectation of the upper ten. The statue of Vanzitelli was to be unveiled, on the chief Piazza of Caserta, which means, in short, a universal fillip, the awakening of the entire province, splendid fêtes, special trains, &c. &c.: the tenth of September, in the height of the fine weather; already cool, you know, and still genial. It all hung upon whether or no permission to hold the fête in the Royal Palace could be obtained, that historic palace, beloved of the Bourbons. Caterina supported her husband in demanding the Reggia, in insisting on having the Reggia: what was the use of that empty, solemn Royal Palace? It would be splendid for the Exhibition. They must have the Reggia, at whatever the cost. When they had said and many times repeated these things, Andrea and Caterina would go here and there and everywhere to dine. They took a long time about it, and seriously studied the menu for the day; each of them ordering different dishes and tasting what the other had ordered; Andrea making friends with the waiter, and both of them relishing whatever they did with the capacity of young and healthy people for enjoyment. No one interfered with or otherwise vexed them. Rome is humane and maternal, ever smiling on those bridal couples who, under the shadow of her noble walls, under her canopy of heavenly blue, lead their loves through the maze of her uneven streets.
After a short halt at the Café du Parlement or the Café de Rome, then a short walk, and home to sleep. Andrea was tired, and had to rise early next morning. But often in those hours between luncheon and dinner, Caterina would beg him to leave her at home. She preferred staying there, in a tiny sitting-room that was next to her bedroom. Andrea would ask on his return what she had been doing. And she replied: “I have been helping my maid to arrange my grey dress. She didn’t know how to do it, so I showed her. I walked a little, as far as Pontecorvo, to choose presents for Naples....”