'If not, I will shut you in.'
'There is no need of that. As I love the blessed Virgin, I won't move.'
'Good-bye in the meanwhile,' said he, going away.
'God will reward you,' the girl called out after him.
The long waiting began, and to the love-lorn maiden these minutes had the weight of lead. Still, she stood motionless behind the dull, dirty window, and her warm breath dulled the panes more. There were a couple of bottomless chairs and a wooden stool in the room, but she did not think of sitting down. She was too anxious to mount guard at the window, looking at the two sunny roads that mild winter's day, examining the peaceful landscape, where city noises were silent. Only twice she went backwards and forwards in that room full of black sausages and brown cheese, choked by their bad smell, and she saw there was another window that looked to the back of the inn, over the fields going up to Capodimonte. It was perfectly silent on that side too.
As time passed, a sharp anguish caught her heart. Perhaps the man who had told her of Farfariello's and his friend's trip to Barbassone's inn had cheated her, or she might have misunderstood what he meant. Farfariello, his friends, and the others, perhaps at that time were already in some other place, and all might be happening far off, without her being able to stop it. Perhaps it had happened already. She often turned her eyes to heaven, praying that it should not be so. At one time, not managing to keep down her uneasiness, she pulled her rosary from her pocket and began to say Ave Marias and Pater Nosters mechanically, thinking of something else. Seeing a dreadful vision, that made her despairing heart go out to the Virgin, for her to save Raffaele from misfortune 'and in the hour of our death,' she caught herself saying aloud once. It was just then a noise of wheels and a cracking of whips came from Capodimonte Road, and Raffaele and three other youths, almost the same age, appeared in a cab.
'Oh, Our Lady of Sorrows!' sobbed out Carmela from behind the window.
Raffaele paid for the cab, and, contrary to the usual habit in these country trips, that the driver always shares the pleasures of the day, this time the horse turned round and went back the way it came. The young fellows, with trousers tight at the knee and caps hanging by one hair, were now making a great uproar in the lower room, perhaps because dinner was not ready. The boy quickly spread the cloth on one of the tables which ought to have been shaded by the leaves of the arbour, but it was bare. In the meanwhile, quite calmly, these youths set to playing bowls, waiting till the macaroni was ready. Raffaele especially went about quietly, with that low-class ease that charmed Carmela's heart.
'May you be blessed!' she whispered, rather reassured by that calmness.
Now, seated at four sides of the table, pulling macaroni into their plates from a big dish in the middle, Raffaele and his friends ate straight on with youthful appetites, improved by the wintry country air. They drank a lot, and often lifted their glasses of bluish dark wine, and, looking fixedly at each other, said something and drank it off at a gulp, without winking. Carmela, though she heard no voices, understood that they were drinking healths, or to the success of something.