How did she come to know about this woman? She had never been inside
that house over the tobacconist's, up three pairs of stairs to the left;
and yet she knew exactly the pattern of the wall-paper. It was green,
with a pinkish trellis-work, in the grand sitting-room, the one which
was opened only on Sunday evenings, when the friends used to drop in and
discuss the news, and have a game of _tresette_. You passed through the
dining-room to get through it. The dining-room had no window, and was
lit from a skylight; there was always a little smell of dinner in it,
but that was appetising. The boys' rooms were to the back. There was
a plaster Joan of Arc in the hall, close to the clothes-peg. She was
painted to look like silver, and one of the boys had broken her arm,
so that it looked like a gas-pipe. It was Momino who had done it,
jumping on to the table when they were playing. Momino was always the
scapegrace; he wore out so many pairs of trousers at the knees, but he
was so warm-hearted! and after all, he had got all the prizes at school,
and they all said he would be a first-rate engineer. Those dear boys!
They never cost their mother a farthing, once they were sixteen; and
Momino bought her a big, beautiful muff out of his own earnings as a
pupil-teacher. Here it is! Such a comfort in the cold weather, you can't
think, especially when gloves are too dear. Yes, it is rabbit-skin, but
it is made to look like ermine, quite a handsome article. Assunta, the
maid of all work, never would clean out that kitchen of hers--servants
are such sluts! and she tore the moreen sofa-cover, too, against a nail
in the wall. She ought to have seen that nail! But one mustn't be too
hard on a poor creature, who is an orphan into the bargain. Oh, God! oh,
God! and they lie in the big trench at San Martino, without even a cross
over them, or a bit of wood with their name. But the white coats of the
Austrians were soaked red, I warrant you! And the new dye they call
magenta is made of pipe-clay--the pipe-clay the dogs clean their white
coats with--and the blood of Austrians. It's a grand dye, I tell you!
Lord, Lord, how wet the poor old woman's feet are! And no fire to warm
them by. The best is to go to bed when one can't dry one's clothes; and
it saves lamp-oil. That was very good oil the parish priest made her a
present of ... Ai, ai, how one's bones ache on the mere boards, even
with a blanket over them! That good, good mattress at the pawn-shop!
It's nonsense about the Italians having been beaten. The Austrians were
beaten into bits, made cats'-meat of; and the volunteers are returning
to-morrow. Temistocle and Momino--Momino is Girolamo, you know--will be
back to-morrow; their rooms have been cleaned, and they shall have a
flask of real Montepulciano.... The big bottles in the chemist's window
are very beautiful, particularly the green one. The shop where they sell
gloves and scarfs is also very pretty; but the English chemist's is the
prettiest, because of those bottles. But they say the contents of them
is all rubbish, and no real medicine.... Don't speak of San Bonifazio!
I have seen it. It is where they keep the mad folk and the wretched,
dirty, wicked, wicked old women.... There was a handsome book bound
in red, with gold edges, on the best sitting-room table; the Aeneid,
translated by Caro. It was one of Temistocle's prizes. And that
Berlin-wool cushion ... yes, the little dog with the cherries looked
quite real....
"I have been thinking I should like to go to Sicily, to see Etna, and
Palermo, and all those places," said Madame Krasinska, leaning on the
balcony by the side of Prince Mongibello, smoking her fifth or sixth
cigarette.
She could see the hateful hooked nose, like a nasty hawk's beak, over
the big black beard, and the creature's leering, languishing black eyes,
as he looked up into the twilight. She knew quite well what sort of man
Mongibello was. No woman could approach him, or allow him to approach
her; and there she was on that balcony alone with him in the dark, far
from the rest of the party, who were dancing and talking within. And to
talk of Sicily to him, who was a Sicilian too! But that was what she
wanted--a scandal, a horror, anything that might deaden those thoughts
which would go on inside her.... The thought of that strange, lofty
whitewashed place, which she had never seen, but which she knew so well,
with an altar in the middle, and rows and rows of beds, each with its
set-out of bottles and baskets, and horrid slobbering and gibbering old
women. Oh ... she could hear them!
"I should like to go to Sicily," she said in a tone that was now common
to her, adding slowly and with emphasis, "but I should like to have
someone to show me all the sights...."
"Countess," and the black beard of the creature bent over her--close to
her neck--"how strange--I also feel a great longing to see Sicily once
more, but not alone--those lovely, lonely valleys...."
Ah!--there was one of the creatures who had sat up in her bed and was
singing, singing "Casta Diva!" "No, not alone"--she went on hurriedly,
a sort of fury of satisfaction, of the satisfaction of destroying
something, destroying her own fame, her own life, filling her as she
felt the man's hand on her arm--"not alone, Prince--with someone to
explain things--someone who knows all about it--and in this lovely
spring weather. You see, I am a bad traveller--and I am afraid ... of
being alone...." The last words came out of her throat loud, hoarse, and
yet cracked and shrill--and just as the Prince's arm was going to clasp
her, she rushed wildly into the room, exclaiming--
"Ah, I am she--I am she--I am mad!"
For in that sudden voice, so different from her own, Madame Krasinska
had recognised the voice that should have issued from the cardboard mask
she had once worn, the voice of Sora Lena.