“We will break this rosary in two equal parts, Caterina. Half of it you shall take with you, the other half I will keep. It will be our keepsake, to remind us of our vow. When I pray at night, I shall remember. You too will remember me in your prayers. The missing half will remind you of your absent friend.”
And taking up the rosary between them, they pulled hard at it from either side.... Lucia kept the half with the crucifix, Caterina the half with the medal. The two girls embraced. Then they heard the clock strike three. When silence reigned once more in the College and in the empty chapel, both knelt down on the steps of the altar, crossed their hands on their bosoms, and with closed eyes repeated in unison—
“Our Father....”
PART II.
I.
The green hue of the country disappeared under the heavy November rain. Caserta, down below, shrouded by the falling water as by a veil of mist, seemed but a large grey blot on a background of paler grey. The Tifata hills, that are tinged with so deep a violet during the long autumn twilights, had vanished behind the thick, opaque downpour. The small and aristocratic village of Centurano, entirely composed of lordly villas, separated from each other by narrow lanes and flowering hedges, held its peace.
At the corner of the high road that leads to Caserta, the fountain which Ferdinand of Bourbon had bestowed on Michelangiolo Viglia, his favourite barber, overflowed with rain-water. The long, melancholy, watery day was slowly dying, in a rainy twilight that seemed already evening. No sound was heard. The last lingerers among the villeganti kept within their houses, yawning, dozing, or gazing through closed windows at the drenched, denuded gardens, where the monthly roses hung their dishevelled heads, and the water trickled in little muddy rivulets among wasted flower-beds; while here and there the stalks of stocks and wallflowers showed like the bare bones of so many skeletons. Behind one window were visible the cadaverous old face and red velvet smoking-cap of Cavalier Scardamaglia, judge at the Court of Santa Maria; behind another, the aquiline nose and the long thin cheeks of Signora Magaloni, wife of the architect who was directing the repairs of the royal palace. The children of lawyer Farini were running after and shouting at each other on the covered terrace of their villa. Francesca, their nurse, sat in the arch of the window, knitting, without dreaming of scolding them. The water poured along the gutters and filled the pipes to bursting; the butts for the family washing overflowed; the walls were stained as with rust.
From behind her balcony windows, Caterina looked out upon the fountain that overflowed the road. She tried to see farther away, down the highway to Caserta, but in this the rain thwarted her. She looked back again at the fountain, and re-read the two first lines of its fatuous inscription:
DIEMMI DELL’ACQUA GIULIA
UN RIVOLETTO IL RE.
But she soon wearied of this contemplation, and again applied herself to her sewing. She was seated on the broad window-sill: before her stood her work-table, covered with reels of cotton, a needle-case, a pincushion, scissors of all sizes, and bundles of tapes; near to her was a large basket of new ready-basted household linen, at which she was sewing. Just now she was hemming a fine Flanders tablecloth; four that she had finished were lying folded on the little table. She sewed deliberately, with a harmonious precision of movement. Whenever she cut her thread with her scissors, she turned to the road for a moment to see if any one was coming. Then she resumed her hem again, patiently and mechanically, passing her pink nail across it to make it even. Once a noise in the street caused her to start: she stopped to listen. It was the little covered cart in which the Avvocata Farini was returning from Nola, whither he had gone on some legal errand. The lawyer, as he alighted, made her a low bow.