Both piously knelt before the holy images. They said the Lord's Prayer in a whisper, louder at the end. She raised her eyes, and said, 'Lead us not into temptation,' and he rejoined, very humbly and disconsolately, 'Lead us not into temptation.'
CHAPTER XIV
THE MEDIUM'S IMPRISONMENT
The summer rain beat sadly on the pavement; two broad yellow gutters went down the sides of Nardones Road; the sickening sulphurous smell of August storms was in the air. In San Ferdinando Square the cabs had their hoods up, and were shiny all over with rain, dripping on all sides. The long thin horses stood with their heads down, drenched to the bones, and running down with water. The drivers sat huddled up, their shapeless hats over their eyes, keeping their heads down and hands spasmodically fixed in the pockets of their torn capes, as they patiently bore the deluge from the sky. All around was dreary-looking—the royal palace, the porch of San Francesco di Paolo Church, the Prefecture, barracks, and large coffee-houses—all were dreary, in spite of the grandeur of the buildings and the numbers of lights behind the plate-glass windows. There was the majestic edifice of San Carlo Theatre also; but the whole night landscape was wrapped up in the noisy tempest that never rested, and seemed to draw new force from its weariness to beat on houses, streets, and men. There were few passers-by, and these looked like unhappy folks' ghosts walking under dripping umbrellas, or, having no umbrella, they scraped along the wall with coat-collar raised and soft hat soaked with rain. Some few wanderers turned the corner from Toledo Street into Nardones Road, which is a broad enough street in the best quarter of the town; but it has an equivocal appearance, all the same, as if it was uninhabited and unsafe. It had no shady corners, but shutter-closed windows, ill-lit balconies, and half-open doors, where the gaze was checked by a dark passage, had a suspicious appearance. Some great door now and then broke through this doubtful impression, from the brightness of the gas and width of its courtyard, but a shop with far from clean windows, obscured by reddish stuff curtains carefully drawn, a feeble light coming through and small or large shadows showing behind, gave a new feeling of suspicion and uneasiness to the minds of people going home that way who might be bending under the weight of cares and long fatigue.
At one point a woman with a black shawl barely covering her yellow dress and white bodice turned the corner from Toledo Street and went up Nardones Road slowly, holding the corners of the handkerchief on her head tightly between her teeth, sheltering from the rain under a very small umbrella. She went along very cautiously, lifting her feet so as to wet her bright leather shoes as little as possible, lifting her skirt to let red cotton stockings be seen. When she passed under a lamp-post's reddish light she raised her head and showed the face, now sad and tired, for all its commonplace beauty, of Filomena, Annarella and Carmela's unfortunate sister. She got as far as the suspicious-looking shop with the red curtains, and stopped before the plate-glass door as if she was trying to see someone or find out what was going on, and did not dare to open the door. She could make out nothing but some dark shadows with hats on moving about. After hesitating a little, she decided to put her hand on the knob of a small window and open it. She put in her head timidly, and called:
'Raffaele! Raffaele!'
I am coming immediately,' the young Camorrist's voice answered from inside in rather an impatient tone.
She quickly shut the window again and set herself to wait in the rain. A man passed, and cast a queer look at her, his curiosity aroused by meeting anyone in that strange stormy weather at so late an hour. But she cast down her eyes as if she was ashamed, and watched the end of Nardones Road to see who came round the corner, evidently being much afraid of being recognised. Suddenly she gave a start. Two working men were coming along, going up Nardones Road, not speaking to each other, getting all the rain on their shoulders. The one man, old, hump-backed, dragging his leg, turned out to be Michele, the shoeblack, not carrying his block for once; the other, tall and thin, with burning eyes in hollow sockets, was Gaetano, the glover. On recognising her sister Annarella's husband, Filomena gave a frightened shiver and got closer to the wall, as if she wanted to get to the other side of it. She lowered her umbrella, and prayed silently, with lips that could hardly stammer out the words, that Gaetano should not recognise her. She shivered and trembled, fearing the shop door would open and that Gaetano would see the man who was coming out. But Gaetano, as he was getting the full force of the rain on his head, took no notice of the people on the road, luckily for Filomena, nor did the shop door open as he passed. Instead of that, the working men disappeared, one after the other, into a gateway, forty paces off, where some other men had gone in before them. But Filomena felt her cheeks icy under the rouge, from the fright she had got, and she opened the door again to beg and beseech in a whisper:
'Raffaele, do come!'